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Big Bend People: Sanchez driven to teach life and Spanish

Martha Sanchez’s room at Alpine Middle School is replete with color, from costumes for her Spanish Club dancers to posters to trophies. Avalanche photo / Cindy Perry

By Cindy Perry / cindyperry@alpineavalanche.com

The room says it all — color, excitement, movement, exhilaration, culture, variety. And Martha Sanchez brings that room to life.

In addition to being Alpine Middle School’s Spanish teacher, she’s the driving force behind the Spanish Club whose hard-working members are known throughout West Texas for their brilliant dancing and musical performances.

For more than a dozen years, Sanchez and her award-winning club have entertained thousands of people and introduced

dozens of youngsters to Mexican and Spanish culture through songs, dances, food, language and civilization lessons.

They become immersed in the Mexican/Spanish culture thanks to this animated native of Chihuahua, Mexico.

The students start practicing for dances and competition in August, then when school starts, the club begins its fundraising efforts. That includes concession stands at ballgames and the little store in Sanchez’s room called “La Tienda,” where water and snacks are sold. All the proceeds go to the club, as do membership fees that help students see the value in their efforts.

The club’s performances don’t come without costs: Nearly all of the costumes are hand-made by Sanchez’s sister and friends in Chihuahua, and some cost thousands of dollars. In addition, trips where they dance at events like Hispanic Heritage Week in the Midland/Odessa area mean paying for meals and sometimes lodging.

One of the club’s biggest expenses — but also one of its largest rewards — comes when Sanchez takes around two dozen dancers to San Antonio for the Pan American Student Forum convocation. She’s taken a group to this major event for 14 years, and AMS is the only middle school that has been chosen to perform each time.

“The convocation is a UIL Spanish academic competition,” Sanchez said.

“Everything is in Spanish: oral reading, vocabulary, grammar, culture and civilization. You pick students you know are going to do well in Spanish and start preparing them; they don’t know you’re preparing them, though.”

About 80 schools enter the competition, she said.

“You have to tape your group’s performance (a poem, play, dance, song) and send it off and wait,” she said. “Then they call you a week or two before and say, ‘Congratulations, you’ll be dancing at the Pan American convention.’ And this past year, we represented women of the Mexican Revolution, and we closed the show.

“It was amazing,” Sanchez added. “People from everywhere came up to say, ‘Alpine is the best, Alpine is always the best.’ … When you’re there and watching the kids, oh, you cry and the parents cry, too.

“They ask me, ‘Does it get old doing this year after year?’ But it never gets old because there are new kids every year.”

One of Sanchez’s goals in sponsoring the Spanish Club is to expose its members to — as she describes it — the other side of Mexican culture.

“You want them to see it’s not just illegal immigrants crossing the border, not just the picture of the lazy man with a hat, or men with guns and the drugs,” she said.

“It’s about the colorfulness, the awesomeness of our culture and how we enrich the United States with that culture. … It’s not just Mexicans but Puerto Ricans and Cubans and others.

“In the club, I have kids from all different cultures, I’ve had kids from all over — even had one member from Singapore,” she added.

“Whoever is interested is welcome. My door is always open, and I’m going to find something for them whether it’s being in charge of posters or concessions or costume managers.”

As for the costumes — well, they almost defy belief with their exquisite lacework, vibrant colors, yards (if not miles) of ribbon and fine tailoring.

“I made some of the older costumes with all the ribbons in them, spending hours and hours,” Sanchez said. “I still alter them and iron them. One group was so tiny, I had to take the dresses in; next year, they might be taller and I’ll have to let them out.

“The flamenco dresses are made by my sister and one of my former neighbors in Chihuahua,” she said. “I call and give them the sizes, send a money order, and pay them.”

Occasionally, Sanchez buys costumes from Guadalajara or Mexico City. But this past spring, when the dancers were headed to San Antonio, one of the bigger boys didn’t have a suit that fit him and there wasn’t time to order one from a tailor in Mexico. Sanchez said the young man’s father found a suit in San Antonio and paid for it himself.

Besides their stellar performances in San Antonio year after year, the Spanish Club dancers show off for hometown crowds at Cinco de Mayo, school assemblies and other events around the Big Bend.

“We also do private parties,” Sanchez said. “We charge for those, and the money goes right back into the Spanish Club. We do quinceaneras, but we don’t charge for those; we put them together.”

Sanchez said she caught the dancing and teaching fever as a child growing up in Chihuahua.

“The lady that lived behind our house was a seamstress, and that was where I started sewing for my dolls,” she said. “I had a little Barbie and I’d sew things for my Barbie and other dolls.

“Then I started making puppets for the neighborhood and put on puppet shows. I wanted a place for neighborhood kids to come. I’d charge 25 cents, but then I’d make popcorn for the kids and there would go my profit. I produced the shows and loved it.”

Sanchez’s father worked in Coyanosa, near Fort Stockton, as a bracero. The family in Chihuahua would see him only once a year, at Christmas. He became so lonely for his family, she said, that he took his wife, Martha and her brother back to Texas.

“We went to Coyanosa, and there was nothing for me to do,” Sanchez said. “Then I went to school in Fort Stockton, but I didn’t know any English.

“When I went there, it was so hard, everybody thought I was stuck-up, but it was because I couldn’t speak English. But then I finally came out of my shell.”

After graduating from Fort Stockton High, Sanchez went to Sul Ross State University where she said she “fell in love with the idea of teaching and graduated and met my now-husband.” An earlier marriage had failed, Sanchez said, because she got married too young “and realized I had made a mistake.”

Now, she said, “Every day gives me something. It’s fuel for the soul, keeps me going.”

Sanchez praised the Alpine ISD administration for supporting the Spanish Club and its activities, but she gave the highest marks to her students and their parents.

“Sometimes I’m asked, ‘Don’t you wish you had gone further?’ And I say, ‘What do you mean, further? I love this!’ … And some of my kids, former students, are now in Spain, some in South America, some in the service.

“Some now have children, and I’m already teaching some of my kids’ kids, and it is tough because parents complain.

“But when they do that, I say, ‘What do you mean? You were worse than them.’”

Sanchez takes great pride in where she is and what she does.

“I’m very, very blessed. I’m very happy to be here, and I take a lot of pride in Alpine,” she said. “This is my kingdom.

“I walk into heaven every day. My kids know that. And you appreciate it every day. They let you know how much they love you, every day.”