Mexican Americans

EUROPEAN INVASION

EUROPEAN COLONIZATION

THE TEXAS-MEXICAN WAR AND THE NORTH AMERICAN INTERVENTION

THE TRANSFORMATION

CITIZENSHIP

THE MEXICAN REVOLUTION AND MEXICAN IMMIGRATION

THE DEPORTATIONS OF THE 1930s

WORLD WAR II AND THE MEXICAN AMERICAN GENERATION

THE MEXICAN AMERICAN CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT

THE CONTEMPORARY PERIOD

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Mexican Americans (also known as Chicanos and Chicanas) are one of the oldest population groups in the United States, and simultaneously one of the newest as a result of ongoing immigration from Mexico. Indeed, the immigration of Mexicans into the United States is considered the longest sustained migration of labor anywhere in the world. The 2005 mid-decade census counted 42 million Hispanics in the United States, representing 14.5 percent of the national population. Mexican Americans represent 64 percent of the total Hispanic American population, or 27 million people.

The historical background of Mexican Americans is complex due to the mixed heritage that was forged through mestizaje, or the process that fused Indians, Europeans, Africans, and Asians biologically and culturally during three hundred years of colonialism in the Americas. The indigenous background of Mexican Americans includes numerous groups from the Mexica (Aztecs), Maya, and Tarahumara, as well as many of the indigenous populations of the American Southwest. Long before the arrival of Europeans in the Americas in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, indigenous groups created magnificent societies that ranged from the Pueblos of the Four Corners region of the American Southwest to the Mayan culture of southern Mexico. This diversity created for Mexican Americans a multilayered identity based primarily on Spanish and indigenous culture.

EUROPEAN INVASION

The region known as Mesoamerica, or that area stretching from central Mexico to the borders of Central America, has been inhabited by numerous indigenous groups for thousands of years. Indeed, this region is considered one of the “cradles” of civilization, and saw the emergence of highly sophisticated and complex societies, such as the Olmecas, the Teotihuacán, the Maya, the Toltecs, and the Aztecs. European contact with the Americas began with the arrival of Cristóbal Colón (Christopher Columbus, 1451–1506) in 1492. The Spanish invasion and conquest of what is now Mexico began with the arrival of Hernán Cortés (c. 1484–1547) in the spring of 1519 in what is today Veracruz. During this period, the Aztec Empire controlled large areas of the Valley of Mexico. The Aztecs were under the control of an indigenous group known as the Mexica, who had migrated from a homeland known as Aztlán north of the Valley of Mexico. The arrival of Cortés and his conquistadores led to the downfall of indigenous control of the region. Initially, the Aztecs were able to repel the Spanish invasion, but when the Spaniards regrouped and returned to Tenochtitlán in 1521, they found the Aztec capital in the midst of an epidemic of smallpox contracted from earlier European visitors. The Aztecs’ lack of immunity to European diseases decimated the population of the capital, and with the help of Indian allies, the Spaniards were able topple the Aztec Empire in August 1521.

EUROPEAN COLONIZATION

The Mexican American experience can be linked directly to the colonial period by the process of mestizaje. This process also included the mixing of Africans with Europeans and Indians. Mestizaje created not only multiple heritages, it layered the Mexican American experience with multiple identities. In conjunction with the mixing of various population groups, the colonial Spaniards developed racial hierarchies that were based on the concept of whiteness. Thus, those who could claim a so-called pure European ancestry were accorded special privileges and access to power. In its most basic form, this hierarchy had peninsulares (Spaniards born in Spain) at the top, followed by criollos (Spaniards born in the Americas), mestizos (those of mixed Indian and European descent), and indigenous people, with blacks at the bottom. This system was based on class, race, and stereotypes developed by the Spaniards about mestizos, Indians, and blacks. These positions were not static, and the Spanish colonial system allowed for movement up and down this racial hierarchy. This movement through the hierarchy occurred over time by the process of miscegenation where offspring could be “whitened” or the reverse. There are also recorded instances where colonial subjects paid officials for documents authenticating their “whiteness.”

Mexican independence from Spain is connected with the political turmoil in Europe that emerged in the early nineteenth century. Although Mexico gained independence in 1821, the Republic of Mexico was not born until 1824. At the time, Mexico’s territory stretched from the Pacific Northwest to northern Central America. As a newborn republic, Mexico faced many challenges from European and European American powers that coveted Mexican territory. Not long after gaining independence, Mexico found itself fighting for its sovereignty in a civil war in its northern territories in 1836, followed by a war against the United States from 1846 to 1848.

THE TEXAS-MEXICAN WAR AND THE NORTH AMERICAN INTERVENTION

With independence, Mexico became concerned with possible invasion not only by the United States but also by European powers seeking to colonize regions of what is now the American West. Another concern for Mexico was the various indigenous groups who were raiding Mexican settlements in Texas. During this period most Mexicans refused to settle in Mexico’s northern territories because of the hostile environment and only a small population existed in Texas. Mexico addressed some of these worries by inviting European Americans to settle in the Texas territory in the early 1820s under the premise that an increase in population would create a buffer against the United States and other groups vying for Mexican territory. Under conditions of colonization European Americans that settled in Mexico agreed to become Mexican citizens and swore an oath of loyalty. U.S. citizens jumped at this opportunity, and by the 1830s more than twenty thousand Anglo settlers, primarily from the American South, were living in Mexico’s Texas territory, along with about five thousand of their slaves. Mexican citizens in the same region numbered fewer than five thousand. Before long, Mexico became concerned with the growing Anglo population, and attempted to stem the flow by outlawing slavery in the Texas territory in 1829 and repealing the colonization law in 1830. When the central government of Mexico denied the Texas territory statehood, Anglos and their Tejano allies opted to fight for independence from Mexico.

The 1836 Texas-Mexican War lasted a few short months, but in the end Texas gained its independence from Mexico and for nine years was an independent nation. The Texas-Mexican War—in particular the battles at the Alamo, Goliad, and San Jacinto—led to a lasting animosity between Mexicans and Anglos. On April 21 at San Jacinto, Anglo forces crying “Remember the Alamo” massacred over seven hundred Mexican soldiers in retaliation for the earlier Anglo defeat at the Alamo. The defeat of the Mexican Army at San Jacinto and Texas’s declaration of independence did not prevent Mexico from continuing to claim the Texas territory. When the United States annexed Texas in 1845, Mexico considered it an act of aggression and intervention.

The American government’s annexation of Texas was part of a grand design of invasion, conquest, and movement toward the Pacific Ocean. This movement was imbued with the notion of manifest destiny, in which the United States and its citizens believed that God had given the nation a mission to spread democracy throughout North America. This concept also encompassed ethnocentric views of non-Europeans, and was thus inherently racist. When Mexico refused to sell California to the United States during this period, the American government, determined to gain this land, used a skirmish between U.S and Mexican troops along disputed territory in Texas as a pretext to declare war on Mexico.

The Mexican-American War (1846–1848) left thousands dead on both sides. The United States occupied the remaining northern territories of Mexico, and U.S. troops laid siege to Mexico City. The war ended on February 2, 1848, with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which gave California, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada, Utah, and parts of Colorado and Wyoming to the United States. More than 100,000 Mexicans remained in these conquered territories and became U.S. citizens. The treaty included a number of articles to protect the liberties of these new Mexican Americans, but like other treaties signed by the U.S. government, these provisions were mostly ignored or circumvented. Article X of the treaty, which would have protected all titles to land grants issued by the Spanish and Mexican authorities, was eliminated by the U.S. Senate. As a result of the war, Mexico lost approximately half of its territory to the United States, leaving a legacy of animosity between the two nations. The Mexican American experience within the confines of the United States begins during this period.

THE TRANSFORMATION

Between 1848 and 1910, the lives of Mexicans and their descendants in the conquered territories underwent a profound change. Mexicans lost millions of acres of land to the U.S. government, land speculators, railroads, industrialists, thieves, and squatters, whose efforts were abetted by the U.S. judicial system. This enormous loss of land created a Mexican American population that was displaced from the small farms where they made a subsistence living. By the beginning of the twentieth century, most had become day laborers.

Structural changes also occurred at the social level. As more Anglos arrived in the conquered territories, the culture and customs of Mexicans diminished, while those of the new Anglo settlers became dominant. Over time, the majority of Mexican Americans began to lose position in the social, economic, and political structure of the United States. However, a small elite class of Mexican Americans that resided in enclaves in Texas, New Mexico, and southern California was able to maintain its viability at all levels through strong economic interests.

Furthermore, as racial animosity and oppression increased, many Mexicans in the conquered territories resorted to resistance, which has often been labeled by Anglos as banditry. Such individuals as Josefa, who in 1851 became the first woman lynched in California, resisted oppression by defending herself against Anglo aggressors, killing an attacker. Others, including Turbucio Vasquez and Juan Cortina and a group known as Las Gorras Blancas (“The White Caps”), resorted to armed resistance and rebellion to challenge Anglo hegemony in the conquered areas. State and territorial governments reacted by unleashing such units as the Texas Rangers to indiscriminately round up and kill Mexicans. Similar organizations were raised in Arizona and California. Anglo hegemony of the region included not only political control, but also an ideological philosophy that viewed all non-Europeans as inferior. The Mexican American experience in the second half of the nineteenth century was marked by racial strife.

CITIZENSHIP

Although the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo conferred U.S. citizenship on Mexicans living in the conquered territories, Mexican Americans were often denied the rights of citizens. Like American blacks and indigenous groups, they were relegated to a second-class status. The government of California, for example, made attempts in the early twentieth century to reclassify Mexican Americans as Indians so they could be denied their legal rights.

It was counter to the prevailing ideology of the period to grant U.S. citizenship to individuals who were considered nonwhite. However, there was a question in the minds of the American public: Were Mexicans “white” or not? This question plagued Mexicans in the United States well into the twentieth century. The Mexicans that were incorporated into the United States in 1848 were not natural-born citizens of the country, and therefore did not fall under jus soli, a British common law used by the United States that stipulated that citizenship is granted to those born within the nation’s jurisdiction. But this concept did not include racial minorities for the first one hundred or more years of U.S history, and jus soli did not become part of the organic law of the United States until after the Civil War (1861–1865) and the adoption in 1868 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The “whiteness” of Mexicans became an important legal question when Mexican immigrants began to enter the United States in larger numbers in the late nineteenth century. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, as well as state and territorial constitutions, clearly included resident Mexicans as citizens. What remained unclear was whether or not Mexicans fit the legal definition of white in accordance with the 1870 Naturalization Act, which stipulated that a “white person” and “persons of African nativity, or African descent” could become naturalized citizens of the United States, but not others. This question was finally addressed in 1897 in a Texas federal court.

In the 1897 case, known as In re Rodriguez, Ricardo Rodriguez, who had resided in San Antonio, Texas, for ten years, petitioned the court to grant him naturalization. The court described Rodriguez using language typical of the day, pointing to various phenotypes to label him Indian or Asian, but not white. Rodriguez described himself as “pure-blooded Mexican,” meaning neither purely Spanish nor purely Indian. One court brief characterized him as Asian by referring to the so-called Bering Strait hypothesis, according to which Indians originated in Asia and walked across an ice-bridge between present-day Russia and Alaska tens of thousands of years ago. Since Indians and Asians were barred from naturalization, attempts were made to categorize Rodriguez into one of those groups. In the end, the court relied on legal precedent, treaties that affirmed the citizenship of Mexican Americans, and various constitutions, such as that of the Republic of Texas, which conferred citizenship upon Mexicans in 1836. The court stated, “Citizens of Mexico are eligible for American naturalization, and may be individually naturalized by complying with the provisions of our laws.” The court did not confer “whiteness” on Mexicans, but stated “if the strict scientific classification of the anthropologist should be adopted, he [Rodriguez] would probably not be classified as white.” Thus, with reference to Mexicans and naturalization, the courts decided to use national origin, rather than race. However, despite the admission of Rodriguez to citizenship, Mexicans in the United States suffered considerable legal repression in the decades after the U.S. conquest and well into the twentieth century.

THE MEXICAN REVOLUTION AND MEXICAN IMMIGRATION

By the beginning of the twentieth century, the Mexican descent population in the United States was estimated at between 380,000 to 560,000, with the majority living in the Southwest. The first four decades of the twentieth century had a profound effect on Mexican Americans and Mexican immigrants. The discontent of the Mexican population exploded into the first revolution of the twentieth century in 1910. By 1911 Mexican president Porfirio Díaz (1830–1915) was forced into exile and Mexico was plunged into a violent political struggle among numerous factions that continued for over a decade.

While Mexico was engaged in civil war, the United States was developing the Southwest. The impact of the Mexican Revolution and U.S. economic development of the Southwest resulted in: (1) more than 500,000 Mexicans immigrating to the United States as war refugees; (2) U.S. agricultural growers and other industries drawing Mexican laborers into such states as California and Arizona; and (3) an increase in the Mexican population along the border region, leading to the first large-scale exodus of Mexicans to other parts of the United States, including the Midwest, the Rocky Mountain region, the Pacific Northwest, and as far east as Pennsylvania and New York.

By the early 1920s the Mexican population in the United States was estimated by the Census Bureau at 766,000. However, many sources consider this figure to be an undercount because the census only counted Mexican immigrants and the first generation of U.S.-born Mexicans. Overall, Mexicans accounted for roughly 2 percent of all immigrants entering the United States during the decade leading up to 1920. However, this period also saw a rise in nativism and the passage of legislation aimed at curtailing the arrival of “undesirable” immigrants. The categorization of “undesirability” can be traced to the eugenics movement of the early twentieth century, when groups of scientists and such individuals as Charles Davenport (1866–1944) and Harry Laughlin (1880–1943) promoted a theory of racial betterment that became known as scientific racism.

The height of the influence of the eugenics movement came with the passage of the 1924 U.S. Immigration Act, which essentially halted immigration from eastern and southern Europe. According to the views of eugenicists, these groups represented a pollutant to the gene pool of the United States, and their immigration needed to be restricted. Immigrants from the countries of the Western Hemisphere were not included in this legislation because of the U.S. need for a reliable and temporary workforce, primarily from Mexico. However, beginning in 1925, Mexican immigration became the next target of opportunity for exclusion. From this period until the end of the 1920s, numerous congressional hearings were held to determine the “desirability” of Mexican immigrants and whether an immigration quota should be attached to Mexico. By 1930 the Mexican-origin population in the United States had grown to approximately 1.5 million. The Great Depression of the 1930s brought to a temporary conclusion the discussion on Mexican immigration.

THE DEPORTATIONS OF THE 1930s

Regardless of the rationalization that has been used to explain the repatriation and deportation of Mexicans in the 1930s, the fact remains that 360,000 to 500,000 individuals of Mexican origin were deported or strongly encouraged to leave the United States. At least half of those deported or repatriated were U.S. citizens whose constitutional rights were thus violated. The 1930s were not an aberration: deportations of Mexicans had begun as early as the 1920s when the U.S. experienced a recession. Close to one million Mexicans may have been deported during the 1920s and 1930s.

Yet, not all Mexicans were victims of these deportations. In fact, as Mexicans in such cities as Detroit and Chicago were being deported, Mexican labor was badly needed to harvest crops in California, Idaho, and elsewhere. During the 1930s, Mexican Americans became heavily involved in U.S. labor issues, as exemplified by the efforts of activists such as Emma Tenayuca (1916–1999), who organized a strike in 1938 at the Southern Pecan Shell Company in Texas. Throughout the country, the Mexican American community resorted to insulation and mobilization as protection from the economic fallout of the Great Depression. The 1940s brought further change for the Mexican American community.

WORLD WAR II AND THE MEXICAN AMERICAN GENERATION

The entry of the United States into World War II (1939–1945) changed the lives of Mexican Americans dramatically. As the United States mobilized for the war, more than 500,000 Mexican Americans either were drafted or volunteered for service. Mexican American men and women served with distinction, earning the highest percentage of medals of honor of any minority group. Mexican nationals known as braceros (“those who work with their arms”) also served with distinction on the home front. The Bracero Program was initiated in 1942 to fill a labor shortage in the United States. Although braceros came from such places as Puerto Rico, Haiti, and Newfoundland, the overwhelming numbers were Mexican nationals. The Mexican braceros worked primarily in the agriculture and railroad industries throughout the war period. Due to easy access to a supply of labor, growers petitioned the U.S. government to extend the bracero program beyond the war years. The U.S. government agreed, but after 1947 growers were responsible for the transportation to and from Mexico. Between 1942 and 1964 approximately five million Mexican braceros entered the country under contract for six to twelve months. When their contract expired they were returned to Mexico. Congress, under pressure from various groups and unions, allowed the program to expire on December 31, 1964. There is a direct correlation between the conclusion of the bracero program and the increase in undocumented immigration from Mexico. However, because the program brought in a temporary and cheap labor force, it continued to operate after the war, and lasted until 1964. In addition, Mexican Americans throughout the country were mobilized to work for war industries. Mexican American women were prominent in these industries, earning the moniker Rosita the Riveter.

However, as Mexican American servicemen and women were fighting for liberty and democracy, many Mexican Americans in the United States were not afforded basic civil liberties. Segregation was rampant and Jim Crow laws prevented Mexican Americans from entering many establishments in the Southwest. During the war, intense racism against Mexicans became manifest in riots instigated in Los Angeles, California, between June 3 and 9, 1943 by U.S. military personnel. The primary targets of these riots were Mexican American youth wearing zoot suits, whose apparel was seen as not conforming to cultural norms. Large groups of U.S. sailors rampaged through barrios seeking Mexican American men and women to assault. When the riots ended on June 9, 1943, hundreds of Mexican Americans had been violated, but they were blamed by the police and media for starting the riots.

The end of the 1940s brought significant victories against the segregation of Mexican American schoolchildren. A 1948 district court decision, Delgado v. Bastrop, made it illegal to segregate children of Mexican descent in Texas schools. This and other accomplishments of the 1940s, plus the return of Mexican American war veterans, set the stage for additional civil rights struggles in the next decade.

THE MEXICAN AMERICAN CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT

By the 1950s the Mexican population in the United States had reached approximately 2.2 million. Texas and California had the largest population of Mexican Americans, and although Mexican Americans were dispersed throughout the United States, the largest concentrations continued to reside in the five southwestern states. The small gains achieved by the Mexican American community during the 1950s were overshadowed by continuing residential segregation and a lack of housing, racism, job discrimination, segregation and disparities in education, attacks on Mexican American unions, and poverty.

Despite being oppressed, one of the singular characteristics of the Mexican American community has been its resiliency. Since the nineteenth century, Mexican Americans have resisted oppression at every opportunity. During the twentieth century, such organizations as the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), La Confederación de Uniones de Campesinos y Obreros Mexicanos (the Confederation of Mexican Farmworkers and Laborers Unions, CUCOM), the American G.I. Forum, and the United Cannery, Agricultural, Packing, and Allied Workers of America (UCAPAWA) fought for the civil rights of Mexican Americans on a variety of fronts. Dennis Chávez Jr. (1888–1962) was elected a U.S. senator from New Mexico in 1936 and held the seat until his death in 1962. In California, Edward R. Roybal (1916–2005) became an influential politician at the grass-roots level, and rose to national prominence when he was elected to Congress in 1962.

For a small segment of U.S. society, the 1950s represented a period of conformity, upward mobility, and security. But for others, including most Mexican Americans, the 1950s was characterized by government attacks on unions. Luisa Moreno (1907–1992), a Latina labor activist, was deported by the U.S. government in the 1950s for alleged ties to the Communist Party and so-called un-American activities. Furthermore, as civil liberties were diminished and “witch hunts” for suspected communists curtailed activism, Mexican immigrants were again rounded up and deported under a military action dubbed Operation Wetback. Despite the landmark court case of Brown v. Board of Education (1954), which called for the desegregation of educational institutions nationally, Mexican Americans continued to find themselves marginalized. In 1950 the average median education for Mexican Americans was 6.1 years, compared to 11.8 for European Americans.

In reaction to widespread racial discrimination, some Mexican Americans demanded to be classified as white. A number of civil rights organizations, however, sought legal relief from racial discrimination by petitioning the courts to classify Mexicans and Mexican Americans as ethnically and linguistically distinct and nonwhite (Martinez 2001, p. 76). The landmark case of Hernández v. Texas (1954) officially classified Mexican Americans as a distinct ethnic group, opening the way for lawsuits fighting racial discrimination under the Fourteenth Amendment.

Labor issues were another major concern for Mexican Americans during the 1950s, but gains were few. However, the 1950–1951 “Salt of the Earth” strike by the International Union of Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers against Empire Zinc Company of Silver City, New Mexico, was a significant victory during a decade of union busting by the government. Mexican American political activists also became more visible during this decade. Groups such as La Alianza Hispano-Americana (the Hispanic-American Alliance), the Community Service Organization (CSO), LULAC, the American G.I. Forum, and an umbrella organization called the National Spanish-Speaking Council all continued to develop grassroots movements to bring about change within and outside of the Mexican American community.

According to the 1960 U.S. Census, there were approximately 3.5 million Spanish-surnamed persons in the United States, residing primarily in the Southwest. The per capita annual income for Mexican Americans at this time was $968, compared to $2,047 for European Americans. The median educational attainment for Mexicans was 8.1 years of education, compared to 12.0 for European Americans. Mexican Americans also had higher unemployment rates, higher poverty, and less access to adequate housing. The 1960s also saw discontent among Mexican Americans with the increasing involvement of the United States in Vietnam and continued neglect at all levels of education. In addition, social and economic inequality continued unabated, and Mexican Americans struggled to make their voices heard in national politics.

It was during this period that a significant portion of the Mexican American community emerged to challenge the status quo. Along with a new approach to the issues faced by Mexican Americans, the labels of Chicano and Chicana were adopted when Mexican Americans sought to embrace their indigenous background. The Chicano civil rights movement that developed in the 1960s had its roots primarily in the early twentieth century. The 1960s represented a continuation of the struggle that had been fought for generations. Yet this decade also represented a different approach to the economic, social, and political issues facing Chicanos. This approach has been characterized as militant and confrontational as Mexican Americans began to assert their rights and demand equal treatment. Additionally, the Chicano movement contained strong elements of cultural nationalism as Mexican Americans began to embrace their indigenous past.

The movement included a variety of organizations and issues. The ending of the Bracero Program in 1964 had two effects: (1) an increase in the number of Mexicans entering the United States outside of proper channels; and (2) a lack of a steady form of cheap Mexican labor that enabled César Chávez (1927–1993) and Dolores Huerta to establish the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA) in 1962. With the help of Filipino workers and the Agricultural Organizing Committee (AWOC) Chávez and Huerta organized the first major strike in 1965 known as the Delano Grape Strike, which lasted five years. This organization championed the rights of agricultural workers throughout many regions of the United States. In 1966, the NFWA and AWOC merged to become the United Farm Workers and the symbol for the Chicano movement.

Reies López Tijerina founded La Alianza Federal de Mercedes (the Federal Alliance of Autonomous Land Grants) in 1962. Tijerina’s objective was to reclaim land grants that were stolen by a variety of groups, organizations, and institutions in New Mexico after 1848. La Alianza used a variety of tactics that included occupying Carson National Forest in northern New Mexico, arresting game wardens, and confronting authorities who attempted to impede these actions. Tijerina was eventually arrested for inciting a riot and sentenced to three years in prison. However, his efforts in New Mexico brought national exposure to the Chicano movement, and other organizations emerged as a result.

Two other interrelated groups that emerged in the late 1960s had a profound influence on the Mexican American experience. In 1969 the Crusade for Justice, an organization established by Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzales (1928–2005), held the First National Chicano Youth Liberation Conference in Denver, Colorado. From this meeting came an important manifesto for self-determination, El Plan Espiritual de Aztlán (the spiritual plan of Aztlan), which described the American Southwest as the symbolic homeland of Mexican Americans. The manifesto took its name from the Mexica place of origin, Aztlán, and adopted the term Chicano as a symbol of resistance. During this period, La Raza Unida Party (LRUP) was established by Luz Gutiérrez and José Angel Gutiérrez in Crystal City, Texas. LRUP became an important political party in many regions of the American Southwest, winning a number of local and regional elections.

The Chicano movement reached its height with the August 1970 moratorium against the Vietnam War (1957–1975). The disproportionate number of Chicano casualties resonated throughout the community. Mexican Americans in the 1960s represented only 8 percent of the population of the Southwest, yet accounted for 20 percent of all casualties in Vietnam. Thousands of Chicanos and Chicanas from throughout the country marched in Los Angeles demanding policy changes ranging from a reduction in the number of Chicanos serving in Vietnam to the opening of higher education to more Mexican Americans. The moratorium, like the military riots of the 1940s, turned into chaos when police officers attacked the peaceful marchers. In the end, many Chicanos and Chicanas were injured, and Los Angeles Times reporter Rubén Salazar (1928–1970) was killed when Los Angeles Sheriff deputies fired a tear gas canister into a crowded bar hitting Salazar in the head. The brutality of the police left many of the marchers further disillusioned.

Overall, the Chicano movement had a lasting impact. Mexican Americans realized that the community could be mobilized, and important organizations, such as the student group El Movimiento Estudantil Chicano de Aztlán (the Chicano Student Movement of Aztlán), were created. Mexican American culture and history became more open and prevalent throughout the country. The UFW remains vital to agriculture workers in the contemporary period. LRUP remained relevant until the mid-1970s. The Crusade for Justice receded to Colorado, but continues its activism. And Tijerina’s movement spawned lawsuits from Mexican American families to reclaim their land from the U.S. government.

THE CONTEMPORARY PERIOD

In 1980 the U.S. Census Bureau began to use the term Hispanic for Mexican Americans. The 1980 Census counted 8.7 million Mexican Americans in the United States, and by 1990 that population had risen to 13.5 million. Between 1980 and 1990, the overall Hispanic population grew by 42 percent, approaching almost 10 percent of the nation’s population. The unemployment rate for Hispanics was 11.9 percent in 1990, which was lower than the 16.5 percentage of 1980 but higher than the national average of 7.1 percent. According to census reports, 50 percent of Hispanics over twenty-five years of age had high school diplomas, compared to 82 percent of non-Hispanics of the same age. Furthermore, the median income for Mexican Americans remained lower and increased less than non-Hispanics during the 1980s.

Geographically, the number of Mexican Americans increased in regions outside of the American Southwest. In 1990 Washington state had the tenth-largest Mexican American population in the United States at 155,864. In the Midwest, states such as Illinois (623,688) and Michigan (132,312) had significant clusters of Mexican Americans. New York (93,244) and Florida (161,499) also saw sizeable increases in their Mexican American populations. These increases were largely the result of a dramatic rise in Mexican immigration to the United States between 1970 and 1990.

The Mexican-origin population in the United States saw a further surge between 1990 and 2000. By 2005, the Mexican American population in the United States had reached twenty-seven million, not including a sizeable number of undocumented Mexican immigrants, estimated at between ten and twelve million. This increase has resulted primarily from high immigration rates, but also from high fertility rates among the young Latino American population, whose median age is twenty-five years compared to thirty-six for white Americans. According to the 2000 U.S. Census this population increase has made Hispanics the largest minority group in the country and the second-largest labor force at 13 percent, after whites. However, 36 percent of the Hispanic labor force lacks a high school diploma, compared to fewer than 9 percent of non-Hispanic workers. This translates into Mexican Americans working in low-skilled jobs in areas such as private household services, construction, agriculture, forestry and fishing, and manufacturing.

The distribution of the Mexican population has reached virtually every region of the country. Some of the largest increases have occurred in the American South, where economic opportunities have drawn many Mexicans. States that saw rapid and sizeable increases were Oregon, Washington, Nevada, Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, and Massachusetts. The fast growth of the Hispanic population has also increased the number of Hispanic schoolchildren in U.S. schools. By 2005 there was a noticeable increase in the number of Hispanics completing high school and enrolling in college; however, Latinos continue to lag behind white students at all key milestones of their educational journey (Pew Hispanic Center 2005, p. 3).

Since a large portion of America’s Mexican-origin population is made up of either recent arrivals or first-generation citizens, assimilation is a factor in various economic indicators. The process of assimilation, whereby immigrants and their offspring adopt some of the values, beliefs, and behaviors more characteristic of mainstream U.S. culture, is not monolithic, and some individuals change more than others. Studies completed by the Pew Hispanic Center (2005) have shown that the attitudes of Hispanics who speak primarily English are much more like those held by non-Latinos than are the attitudes of Spanish-dominant Latinos.

The immigration debate in the United States has been a major issue since the 1980s, and Mexicans and Mexican Americans have felt the impact of increasingly restrictive immigration laws, including the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, California’s 1993 Proposition 187, and the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act. These were followed by post-September 11 hysteria over immigration and the 2006 Secure Fence Act. Latinos nationwide responded to this immigration backlash by holding large rallies that attracted millions in the spring of 2006, a demonstration that was dubbed “A Day Without a Mexican.”

However, the long-established Mexican American community has made great gains in the political arena, and Mexican American politicians have become influential at the local, regional, and national levels. The ability of the community to mobilize and organize constituents was vital in electing Mexican Americans to office. There are 24 members of the 109th Congress of the United States out of 435 total members. In the House of Representatives there are nineteen Democrats and five Republicans of Hispanic origin, and two U.S. Senators of Hispanic descent (one Democrat, one Republican). In Texas, Mexican Americans hold 20 percent of state house seats and 19 percent of all state senate positions in 2007. In California, Mexican Americans hold over one-fourth of all Senate seats as of 2007. In the California Assembly, Mexican Americans hold 25 percent of the seats as of 2007. However, according to the current census figures, Hispanics comprise 35 percent of California’s total population. California also has elected a number of Mexican American women into the U.S. Congress, including Loretta Sanchez, first elected in 1997. In 1999 California voters elected Cruz Bustamante as the first Mexican American lieutenant governor of the state since 1875, and in 2005 the city of Los Angeles elected Antonio Villaraigosa as the first Mexican American mayor since 1872. Most of these politicians ran on Democratic Party tickets.

Since the 1980s the Republican Party has also made gains within the Mexican American community. However, George W. Bush’s presidency, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the Republican Party’s position on immigration has slowed any momentum the party may have enjoyed shortly after 2000. Overall, it is clear that people of Mexican origin are becoming a strong demographic and political force in the United States. The projected demographics indicate that Latinos will constitute 25 percent of the U.S. population by 2050, a population growth that should translate into stronger political power. Simultaneously, Mexican Americans will continue to face many of the challenges of the previous decades, but they will confront those challenges with the same resiliency that carried them through adverse conditions in the past.

SEE ALSO Annexation; Brown v. Board of Education, 1954 ; Brown v. Board of Education, 1955 ; Chávez, César; Colonialism; Hernandez v. Texas; Immigration ; Latinos; Malinchistas; Mexican Revolution (1910–1920); Politics, Latino; Protest; Social Movements

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Acuña, Rodolfo F. 2006. Occupied America: A History of Chicanos. 6th ed. New York: Pearson Longman.

Garcia, Jerry, and Gilberto Garcia, eds. 2005. Memory, Community, and Activism: Mexican Migration and Labor in the Pacific Northwest. Lansing: Julian Samora Research Institute and Michigan State University Press.

Gutiérrez, David G. 1995. Walls and Mirrors: Mexican Americans, Mexican Immigrants, and the Politics of Ethnicity. Berkeley: University of California Press.

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Jerry Garcia

MEXICAN AMERICANS

MEXICAN AMERICANS. A unique tradition characterizes the history of Mexican Americans in the United States in comparison to that of other ethnic groups. They have been both a conquered people and immigrants, in the classical sense of both terms. After prevailing in the Mexican-American War (1846–1848), the United States carved out what became the American Southwest and inherited approximately 80,000 Mexicans. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo assured Mexicans in the United States "all the rights of citizens, " but this agreement was continuously violated as Mexicans lost their lands and their political rights.

Nonetheless, in areas where they dominated numerically, Mexicans maintained a modicum of political and economic influence. Americans and Mexicans in the Southwest had been trading with American interests in the East before the takeover, and Anglo-Americans and Europeans had actually lived among and intermarried with Mexicans. Following the transition to U.S. rule, the Gold Rush, military efforts to subdue and destroy the nomadic Indian tribes, and population growth created opportunities for merchants, farmers, livestock raisers, and transportation companies. This expanded economic activity engaged Anglo, European, and Mexican entrepreneurs, and involved Mexicans at every level; thus, migration from Mexico increased proportionally.

After 1880 a railroad network in the American Southwest and northern Mexico, built mainly with American capital, radically transformed the economy of both areas. The new economic structure was based on the production of industrial raw materials and linked the border region to markets of the industrial basin in the Midwest and the northeast. It also led to the decline of Mexican entrepreneurship and political power in the Southwest, as preindustrial economic activity lost its viability and the numbers of Hispanics declined in proportion to the non-Mexican population. But this transformation spurred a dramatic increase in immigration from Mexico. By 1900,127,000 Mexicans had entered the United States—a number equaling more than a third of the population that had lived in the Southwest before the U.S. takeover. Rapid economic expansion in the Southwest meant that the settlement of Mexicans shifted beyond native-Hispanic centers. Numerous communities sprang up along the length of the railway lines in new agricultural sections and in the emerging mining districts that attracted Anglos and Mexicans alike. By 1915 Mexicans lived as far north as Kansas City and Chicago.

The Mexican Revolution, which began in 1910, forced an exodus of émigrés trying to escape turmoil and violence. All in all, Mexicans endured twenty years of interminable bloodshed. In the 1920s large numbers of middle-class Mexicans, a group critical to the formation of expatriate culture in the United States, joined the emigrant streams as refugees. Meanwhile, World War I spurred growth in every sector of the United States economy. Labor requirements had never been so great, yet disruption in transatlantic transportation, the restriction of immigration from southern and eastern Europe, and the drafting of American laborers to fight in the war created a labor vacuum. To fill this need, employers increasingly sought workers south of the border. Immigration policy also hindered the influx from Mexico, but Congress granted Mexicans a waiver to restrictions—a testimony to the importance of Mexicans in the labor market. During this era Mexicans migrated to labor sectors—in the urban Midwest cities or in rapidly growing Southwest cities—where they had never worked before.

For the majority of the one million Mexicans who entered the United States between 1910 and 1930, finding work, setting up homes and businesses, building churches, and organizing mutual aid societies dominated their lives. To contend with a hostile reception from Anglos, including intense police brutality, violence from civilians, segregation, abuse in the workplace, and general rejection from the mainstream community, the immigrants created organizations to defend themselves. In 1911, for example, they held El Primer Congreso Mexicanista (The First Mexican Congress) in Texas in order to implement a strategic plan to stem the tide of legal abuses and violence. One of the most painful abuses was the disproportionate subjection of Mexicans to imprisonment and capital punishment. In many parts of the United States, Mexicans formed organizations such as La Liga Protectora Mexicana (The Mexican Protective League), founded in Phoenix in 1915, and the Asamblea Mexicana, organized in Houston in 1924. When the 1921 depression caused severe destitution among unemployed Mexicans, the consular service formed Comisiones Honorifícas Mexicanas (Mexican Honorary Commissions; 1921–1942) to help ameliorate the problems faced by unemployment and destitution.

Immigrants from the Mexican urban middle classes, displaced as refugees during the revolution, promoted an immigrant nationalism, which was manifested through an often-stated desire to return to Mexico; maintaining Spanish; the celebration of Mexico's patriotic holidays; Catholicism, with special reverence to Our Lady of Guadalupe; and a symbolic identification with Mexico's pre-Columbian civilizations—in essence a nostalgic México Lindo (Pretty Mexico) expatriate nationalism. To partially offset a negative stigma and provide cohesion, Mexicans relied on cultural traditions such as live Mexican vaudeville, drama, and musical productions, activities that were just as important as religious, political, and economic institutions.

The Great Depression dramatically changed the evolution of the Mexican community in the United States. In 1930 about one and a half million ethnic Mexicans lived in the United States. Unemployed Mexicans were seen as a major problem. The federal government deported thousands of undocumented aliens, while local governments, charitable institutions, and employers organized massive repatriation drives, especially from large cities such as Los Angeles, Chicago, and Detroit. The Mexican government attempted to help by providing expatriates free transportation back to their homes. Those that resisted repatriation became more rooted and, in most cases, had families with children.

By the end of the 1930s thousands of young Mexican Americans were exposed to the greater Anglo society through formal education and through New Deal agencies designed to keep young people off the streets during the Great Depression. Mexicans born in the U.S. founded organizations such as the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), in Texas, and other like groups emerged in other states. Basically they practiced "Mexican Americanism, " an ideology that embraced assimilation to American values and a less faithful adherence to Mexican culture. These groups were committed to breaking down segregation codes in the school system and fighting discrimination in general. Mexicans also became involved in unionism in agriculture, mining, and in Midwest industries throughout the twentieth century, and became an integral part of this activity.

When the United States declared war in 1941, Mexican Americans enthusiastically enrolled in all branches of the armed forces, and Mexican American civilians not serving in the military engaged in "Home Front" efforts, such as bond drives. Mexican women, like their Anglo counterparts, worked in war industries. But after the war discrimination and rejection continued. In 1947 the American G.I. Forum, organized by Mexican American veterans, and LULAC became leading advocates for civil rights. A wartime need for labor prompted the Bracero program, which recruited thousands of Mexicans to work in agriculture and in railroad maintenance until the program ended in 1965. Since then, immigration has continued unabated.

In spite of the resurgence of Mexican immigration and the persistence of Mexican cultural modes, in the 1960s and 1970s many Mexican Americans were educated in Anglo systems, lived in integrated suburbs, and were subjected to Anglo-American mass media. Mexican Americans, now more integrated into mainstream society, made dramatic strides in breaking down obstacles, such as school segregation, to economic and social mobility. A crowning achievement of this generation was the formation of the "Viva Kennedy Clubs" in the 1960 presidential election; when John F. Kennedy was elected they took partial responsibility for his victory.

The late 1960s and early 1970s were a time of intellectual ferment and rebellion in the United States. Caught up in the mood, young Mexican Americans sought a new identity while struggling for the same civil-rights objectives of previous generations. This atmosphere generated the "Chicano Movement, " which was fueled by the conviction that a racist American society deliberately subordinated Mexican Americans; its participants rejected assimilation, which they perceived the previous Mexican American generation had fostered. In the 1980s the term "Hispanic" took on a special generic meaning, referring to any person of Spanish American ancestry living in the United States. Many observers argue that the term represents a rejection by the Mexican American leadership of both cultural nationalism and the radical postures offered by the Chicano Movement.

In the early 2000s immigration from Mexico and Latin America continued unabated, a condition that has to be taken into account as we trace the continuing development of Mexican communities throughout the United States. Since the 1960s the massive influx of Hispanic immigrants reinforced Hispanic culture in the United States. The 2000 census counted about 35 million Latinos living in the United States, eighty percent of whom were ethnic Mexicans. All in all, the culture and identity of Mexican Americans will continue to change, reflecting both inevitable generational fusion with Anglo society and the continuing influence of immigrants, not only from Mexico, but from throughout Latin America.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Gutiérrez, David G. Walls and Mirrors: Mexican Americans, Mexican Immigrants, and the Politics of Ethnicity. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.

Rosales, F. Arturo. Chicano!: The History of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement. Houston, Tex.: Arte Público Press, 1996.

———. Pobre Raza!: Violence, Justice, and Mobilization among México Lindo Immigrants, 1900–1936. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1999.

F. ArturoRosales

See alsoHispanic Americans ; Immigration Restriction ; andvol. 9:Pachucos in the Making .

Mexican Americans. See Hispanic Americans.