By DEBORAH MARTINEZ MARTINEZ, PhD
Thinking of book burning brings the picture of Nazi Germany in the 1930s but one could be visualizing the burning of Bless Me, Ultima in 1981, New Mexico, or Colorado in 2010.
Or, according to Charlene Garcia Simms, retired Pueblo librarian, book burning started on this continent with the Spanish burning the codices, the books of the Maya which documented star positions and brain surgery. “Look how much knowledge was lost! They erased history,” she lamented.
The ugly head of censorship rises above libraries like a rattlesnake above intended prey. In Colorado, two school districts, Elizabeth and Woodland Park, pushed to remove reading material from school and public library shelves last year after electing very conservative school board members. Across the United States, nearly 4,240 books were challenged in 2024 according to the American Library Association.
Banning means the book is removed from library shelves; in some states it becomes illegal to own the book. Censorship means some people feel that the content of challenged books is against the U.S. Constitution. In Colorado, eight books have successfully been banned but many others have and are being challenged.
The late Rudolfo Anaya’s book Bless Me, Ultima has been banned and burned in some school districts in Colorado, New Mexico, and Oklahoma for foul language and witchcraft. In review of the book, a group of little boys use the F*** word. The character of Ultima is a curandera offering healing herbs to the community but some have interpreted her as a “witch.”
Anaya said, “(In the 1970s,) fifteen million Chicanos were clamoring at the door insisting that schools also belonged to us, that we had a right to our literature and the conservative opposition in power fought back by burning our books. That narrow-minded, conservative opposition is still fighting us.”
If a parent or community person complains about inclusion of a book in the library or in a course, as happened in Elizabeth School District (north of Denver), the process of challenging begins. Complaints usually focus on the book being sexually explicit, containing characters or people (transgender) not recognized by the parents’ religion, or containing violence, or foul language.
In reality most of the books, ALA said, feature people of color or included LGBTQIA+ people or characters. The Colorado legislature took up the issue of banning books and passed one law May 3, 2024 to clarify standards that can be used to remove books in public libraries , and a second law May 1, 2025 to affect the policies regarding public school libraries.
According to Sherri Baca, MSL, Executive Director of Pueblo City-County Library District, the library adheres to the ALA best practices and the Library policy is their bedrock. The policy, available at the Library’s website www.pueblolibrary.org and states, “The library upholds the right of the individual to secure information, although the content may be controversial, unorthodox, or unacceptable to others.”
Baca said the Library welcomes the community input but it is rare to move a book as inappropriate for the age group, or the author is not authoritative. “Typically,” she said, “we receive 1-3 requests per year.”
“We have a well-developed procedure for collection development and for requests to reconsider Library resources (challenge books).
The challenge to 19 book in the Elizabeth Schools is ongoing as the district pulled the books from shelves in 2024 but replaced them at the injunction of a federal judge. The ACLU of Colorado filed a federal lawsuit claiming the district’s actions violated federal and state free speech protections.
Some of the books the curriculum committee intended to ban are Beloved and The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, and #Pride: Championing LGBTQ Rights by Rebecca Felix. Captain Underpants has had multiple attempts to ban it. The judge ordered the District to return the removed books by March 25 and the District appealed in April. The case is currently headed for trial, according to a CPR reporter.
In 2012, the Tuscon United School District (AZ), in response to a state ruling, removed books by boxing them up and removing them from the classroom in front of the students. The Mexican American Studies and Ethnic Studies courses were suspended after theArizona State Superintendent ruled that the high school courses were in direct violation of the law signed in 2010. The law says that a school can’t: “Promote the overthrow of the United States government, promote resentment toward a race or class of people, or advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals,” as reported in Huffpost, Jan. 31, 2012.
Tony Diaz, founder of Nuestra Palabra (.com), organized ‘Librotraficante’ (Book Trafficking),a caravan of activists and writers from Houston to return confiscated titles to Tuscon. Some of the books removed (not banned, technically) were:
Critical Race Theory by Richard Delgado, 500 Years of Chicano History in Pictures edited by Elizabeth Martinez, Occupied America: A History of Chicanos by Rodolfo Acuña, Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire, Rethinking Columbus: The Next 500 Years by Bill Bigelow.