Julian Castro, Mayor of San Antonio, Texas

At the 2012 The Democratic National Convention the Mayor of San Antonio, Texas, Julián Castro, delivered a keynote address to the democratic delegates documenting his own family’s migration journey from Mexico to San AntonioTexas.  Julián Castro’s journey centered on the roles that his grandmother, Victoria, and his mother, Rosie, played in the personal values that typify his family background as a social archetype for immigrant families. In the construction of his story Castro affirms a traditional narrative that defines the dominant culture of the United States—expectionalism.  Julián Castro clearly presents the ideas of exceptionalism that characterize the personal, social, and economic development of his own family.  However, in the presentation of Castro’s narrative as an exceptional immigrant figure that made it in the United States because of the educational opportunities that his family experienced, his personal story omits and negates the critical social issues the Latino communities face today.  For example, at the end of his speech,  Julián Castro, masterfully, distinguishes the social and personal values that three women play in his live, his grandmother, mother, and daughter.  In a wonderful ending he presents an organic family unity that supports each other.  Yet, Castro’s family unity contrasts with the Obama immigration practices that, despite his support for the Dreamers, fragments millions of Latino family because of deportation.  Moreover, Castro’s own educational opportunities shed no light on the crises of poor urban and  rural schools Latino students attend, typified by high percentage of students’ dropped out, overcrowded campuses, and institutions without any financial support to provide the required texts.