Madera Method students dig up Mexican hero’s past

Wikimedia Commons/For The Madera Tribune

Benito Pablo Juárez Garcia.

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Editors: Carolina Bojorquez, Bella Doan, Daniel Garcia, Danna Reyes, Abel Rodriguez, Gloria Valdivia.

Inspired by the three-week field trip taken by a dozen MUSD educators to the city of Oaxaca, Mexico and the creation of a local organization of Oaxcan transplants to Madera, two 8th-grade Madera classes have chosen a hero from Oaxaca as the subject of this year’s Madera Method project.

Working with individuals from Oaxaca, and conducting their own, independent research, Madera teenage historians from Eastin Arcola and Lavina schools are digging into the life of Benito Pablo Juárez García, and they have struck paydirt. So impressed are they with the diminutive Juarez, who stood 4’6”, they are calling the pint-sized leader a giant hero. The results of their initial sleuthing has guaranteed a first-rate biography by the end of the project.

According to the students’ research, Juarez was born in San-Pablo-Guelatao (Oaxaca, Mexico) on March 21, 1806. His birth village had 200 inhabitants — all Zapoteca Indians. He was the son of Marcelino Juárez and Brígida García, both full-blooded Zapoteca Indians.