Monterey Park, Calif.

East Los Angeles College (ELAC) is the site of a controversy that many people have seen coming for a long time. It revolves around what appears to be an academic battle over turf.

The Chicano Studies department here has proposed a class called "Central Americans: The New Chicanos." However, the Social Science department has challenged the right of the Chicano Studies department to propose such a class.

Sybil Venegas, chair of the Chicano Studies department, does not see it as a territorial dispute. However, she does acknowledge there is a growing conflict between her department and that of Consuelo Rey, the chair of the Social Science department.

"What we have done is provocative," says Venegas, who adds, "We don't think the administration has a problem with what we're doing."

For her part, Rey, a former Chicano studies professor, says she is not anti-Chicano studies.

"I am co committed to the discipline," says Rey. "The question of who should be teaching a Central American class and which department the class should be taught from is real and relates to legal and contract issues. It's a duplication of what we offer. It's a bread-and-butter issue."

The Chicano, Studies department denies any duplication. Venegas says the rationale for creating the class within the Chicano Studies department is based on wanting to meet the changing demographics of Los Angeles.

According to Venegas, two facts motivated the Chicano Studies department at ELAC to propose the class. First, more Central Americans reside in Los Angeles than anywhere else in the United States -- particularly Salvadorans, Guatemalans, and Nicaraguans. It's estimated that as many as a million Central Americans reside in Southern California, but there is no formal study of them on a campus in the region.

A Question of Identity

Many of the Central American students at ELAC were either raised or born in the United States, says Venegas, who views the plight of these students as similar to that of Chicanos.