This study details the political climate and logic priming the termination of Mexican
American Studies in elementary and high school programs within the state of Arizona. The
author applies conceptual content analysis and intertextuality to decode euphemisms
incorporated by opponents of the program. Primary sources by the state’s Attorney General Tom
Horne and school board Superintendent of Public Instruction John Huppenthal are examined for
rationales used in the elimination of a pedagogically empowering program for Latina/o students
within Tucson Unified School District. Repetitive paradoxes in arguments against Mexican
American Studies are found to have implicitly formed a threat to the majority. Reasoning in
public statements by the aforementioned politicians and frames for discussion of the program are
concluded to have appealed to mainstream audiences as a decoy from alternative motives of
maintaining current power structures with Latina/os subjugated to lower socio-economic statuses
compared to White counterparts
