Local education committee stopped talking and took action to
help deserving students
Talk is cheap.
But talk can also help raise hundreds of thousands of dollars
for local students in need of money for college.
A conversation in 1970 about the lack of bilingual teachers in
San Benito County led to the formation of the Mexican-American
Committee on Education (MACE), which in 38 years has distributed
more than $342,000 in scholarship funds to local college-bound
students.
Local education committee stopped talking and took action to help deserving students
Talk is cheap.
But talk can also help raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for local students in need of money for college.
A conversation in 1970 about the lack of bilingual teachers in San Benito County led to the formation of the Mexican-American Committee on Education (MACE), which in 38 years has distributed more than $342,000 in scholarship funds to local college-bound students.
“I am good friends with Al Gutierrez, who was my insurance agent at the time,” remembers George Muñoz, a MACE founding member. “This one day he was telling me all about this group of people who were going to hold this meeting and I told him I’d go and listen in. Once I was there and listened for a while, I said ‘That’s it. I’m in.'”
During that meeting, the decision to form MACE was made, in part because the founding members were concerned that Hispanic students were not going on to college, Muñoz said.
“We spent a great deal of time talking about bilingual education at the beginning,” he said. “The population of this county, even then, was highly Hispanic, and the number of teachers that had any type of ethnic background was very limited. So we started going to board meetings to speak out on screening teachers.”
MACE members also wanted to find a way to encourage students – any student – to stay in school.
“As we sat through these board meetings, and offered our support, we realized we wanted to do what we could to help kids want to stay in school,” Muñoz said. “We decided the best way to do that was to give them money.”
That first year, MACE held two fundraisers, one around Cinco de Mayo and another in the middle of September in honor of Mexico’s Independence Day. The next year, they handed out a $200 scholarship, but two fundraisers soon proved to be too much work for community activists with other full-time jobs, Muñoz said.
“It got to be a bit overwhelming,” he said. “We stuck with the Cinco de Mayo event, since of the two holidays it is the one most recognized in America.”
Sergio Martinez was the recipient of that first $200 scholarship; after graduating from college, Martinez came back home as a teacher and now teaches math at Marguerite Maze Middle School. He also became involved with MACE, along with several other scholarship recipients, such as Veronica Lezama.
Lezama, a 1997 San Benito High School graduate, received scholarships from both MACE and the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC). After graduating from San Jose State, she moved back to Hollister where she now works with the Council of Governments. Lezama is involved with both organizations, and last year served a term as MACE’s president, the first MACE recipient ever to be elected to the position.
MACE’s annual Cinco de Mayo banquet generally sells out each year. Held at the Veterans Memorial Building, the night typically features home-cooked Mexican specialties such as enchiladas, beans and rice, live music and entertainment, dancing and a special program honoring two selected members of the community – MACE’s Man and Woman of the Year.
This year’s honorees are Marcellina Muñoz, 85, a long-time MACE volunteer, five-year MACE member and mother of three former MACE presidents, including Mary Muñoz Martinez, the group’s first-ever woman president. Joe Paul Gonzalez, 50, San Benito’s county clerk, is MACE Man of the Year. Gonzalez was selected for his work both as a public servant (he served on the Hollister City Council and did a term as mayor) and his charitable contributions (including stints with the county’s Boy Scouts organization, San Benito Youth Services, LULAC, Hollister Little League and the Homeless Task Force).
Thanks in part to the banquet’s popularity, MACE is now able to award from $10,000 to $15,000 in scholarships annually.
“We also stay on top of our recipients to make sure they collect their entire award,” Muñoz said. “We will call recipients to remind them to apply and divide payments in half so they don’t spend everything all at once. And if there is anything not used, it stays in the scholarship fund for the next year.”
The 38th annual MACE Cinco de Mayo Scholarship Banquet will take place Saturday, May 3, beginning at 5 p.m. at the Veterans Memorial Building on San Benito Street. Tickets are $50 per person and must be purchased in advance. To purchase tickets, call 637-2009 or 245-6971.
