Boost for Pocho

Well aware that the Southwest's 5,000,000 Mexican-Americans constitute the second largest disadvantaged minority in America (TIME, April 28), and working from a concern rooted deep in his Texas past, Lyndon Johnson last week appointed Armando Rodriguez, 46, as coordinator of the new Mexican-American Affairs Unit of the U.S. Office of Education. Born in Durango, Mexico, and a former California educator, Rodriguez will supervise programs aimed at easing the lot of both braceros (Mexican farm workers) and pochos (a self-description used by native-born Mexican-Americans that the more assimilated consider pejorative), as well as innovating programs to dissolve the cultural barrier that keeps so many Mexican-Americans in proud poverty.

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