Ariannah Retamoza, River Heights Intermediate student, will compete in the Constitutional Rights Foundation State History Day Competition in Sacramento, CA, May 8 – 11, 2008!  She has competed and won at the District competition in February and just last weekend won 2^nd place at the Riverside County competition. The top two entries move on to the State Finals competition in Sacramento. 1^st and 2^nd place winners at the State competition will then move on and represent the State of California at the National competition in June in Washington D.C. It is a very competitive academic competition and we hope that she will do well and continue to bring Eastvale students positive recognition!

Ariannah is in 8^th grade and is very excited to represent Corona/Norco Unified School District at the State Competition. This year’s theme is “Conflict and Compromise in History”.  The children are required to pick a topic that fits this theme. There are different categories that they can enter; exhibits, documentary, website, performance and historical papers. Ariannah created an exhibit and the title is “Fleeing Castro: The Communist Conflict and Heartbreaking Compromise That Led to Operation Pedro Pan.

Her exhibit explains how Castro took over Cuba and started killing Cubans that protested against him with firing squads and he also started sending the children to “Work Camps” and sent them to Russia to become “Better Communist”.  Faced with the conflict in their country, Cuban parents had to make a heartbreaking compromise and send their children all by themselves (ages 2 – 17 years old) to America to escape communism. The Catholic Church, the American government and the American people took in 14.048 unaccompanied Cuban children in the largest mass exodus of the Western Hemisphere which is known as Operation Pedro Pan.  These children flew to a country where they didn’t know the language, didn’t know who would be caring for them or even if they would ever see their families again. Some were eventually reunited with their parents here in the States about a year or two later but many children never saw their families again. It is an amazing topic and the judges love it because of its uniqueness.

Ariannah was fortunate enough to go to the National Competition last year with her exhibit: “Excess Military Equipment or America’s Forgotten Heroes? The Triumph and Tragedy of Vietnam War Dogs”.  She did extremely well and placed 3^rd in the Nation! National History Day starts at the local school level and by the time children reach the National level there has been a total of 500,000 children who competed, so out of 500,000 children Ariannah placed 3^rd and this achievement helped put River Heights Intermediate School on the map! She was actually interviewed on C-Span for her topic! She knows it’s a tough competition but she hopes to continue to do well this year and we all wish her the best of luck at the State Competition in May!

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