In 1902, the congressional sub-committee on territories visited New Mexico to assess its fitness for statehood. Their subsequent report recommended against statehood, in part because too much Spanish was spoken throughout the territory. This historical moment provided a rhetorical exigency for the students at the University of New Mexico to use their student newspaper as a site for negotiating citizenship in a border space. By incorporating Spanish into their English-language newspaper, these students challenged monolingual notions of literacy and advocated for a multilingual understanding of American citizenship.