Introduction
The Mexican American minority group is believed to have started migrating to USA in the twentieth-century. They originated from the subordination of the nation of Mexico to USA for the reasons that have been termed and described by the Historians as economic and political interests, for example, Romeo (p. 115) asserts that, “the historical movement of Mexican workers to the US has been characterized by an ‘ebb and flow’ or ‘revolving door’ pattern of labor migration, one often calibrated by seasonal labor demands, economic recessions and mass deportations.” The migration of the Mexican to USA over many years has been increasing and at times, it was viewed as an “American problem” that affected the welfare, education, culture, crime, drugs, budgets and many others (Gonzalez and Fernandez, p. 29). This made Americans believe that to solve this problem; it was through enacting tough measures in form of legislations, for example, the California’s Proposition 187 (Gonzalez and Fernandez, p. 29). In broad view, Mexican migration has been regarded as a national crisis and many have viewed this migration to reflect Mexico’s economic subordination in the face of USA hegemony and also of the limitations placed on its national sovereignty by that domination. “Decades of mass border crossings greatly signified the breaking a part of the social fabric of the Mexican nation and its resettlement in enclaves across the USA as a national minority” (Gonzalez and Fernandez, p. 29).
The domination of Mexico by the United States in history has had great impact on the sociopolitical arrangements of Mexico. The control impacts were enormous, for example, it led to USA to largely undermine the social and political cohesion of Mexico, which resulted into dislocation of its domestic agriculture and industry (Gonzalez and Fernandez, p. 29). The Mexican migration to USA can also be viewed through the Push-Pull model which explains the supply and demand factors that were key determinants in the migration of the Mexicans. For instance, a set of push conditions in one country (many people and too few resources) motivated the people to consider a significant move (Gonzalez and Fernandez, p. 32) while in the other country pull factors (shortage of labor) functioned to attract the disaffected. Other factors contributed significantly into the migration of the Mexicans into USA, such as the Mexican revolutionary period that began in 1909 to 1910 and which ignited the first significant and permanent migration to the USA. “By liberating masses of people from social as well as geographical immobility, the revolution served to activate a latent migration potential of vast dimensions” (Gonzalez and Fernande, p. 33).
Mexican Americans as ‘whites’
The Mexicans took up the American racial project by claiming whiteness for themselves and seeking to distance themselves from the non-white groups including Pueblo Indians, free and enslaved Blacks and the Indians. Initially the racial divide between the blacks and the wide became a line of protection from the threat of commodification whereby whiteness protected one against being an object of property. After the slavery had ended the trend continued where, the status of being white continued to be a valuable asset that carried with it assumptions, privileges and benefits. This made the minority groups to pass and be classified as whites. The minority did this with conviction that becoming white insured greater economic, political and social security. Furthermore, becoming white they thought meant gaining access to the available public and private privileges which was only preserved for the whites.
In the case ‘Inland Steel Co. v. Barcelona’ an Indiana appellate court addressed the question of whether Mexicans were white. In its ruling, the court noted that the Encyclopaedia Britannica stated that “approximately one-fifth of the inhabitants of Mexico are whites, approximately two-fifths Indians and the balance made up of mixed bloods, blacks, Japanese and Chinese and as a result ‘Mexican’ should not be necessarily found to be a white person” (Delgado and Stefancic, p. 210). At the same time Texas courts ruled in the case of ‘In re Rodriguez’ which examined whether the Mexicans were white as a result of immigration. Citing the naturalization laws that the Congress had enacted and the treaties USA had entered into with Mexico, the courts ruled that, Mexicans were “white” (Delgado and Stefancic, p. 210).
In the case of ‘Independent School District v. Salvatierra’ the plaintiff sought to enjoin the segregation of Mexican-Americans in the city of Del Rio, Texas. The court went a head to treat and regard the Mexican Americans as white and that they could not be segregated from the children of “other whites’ races” but interestingly the court permitted segregation of Mexican-Americans on the basis of linguistic difficulties and the migrant farming patterns (Delgado and Stefancic, p. 211). But what can be seen is that the Mexican Americans paid a price for the legal fiction that they were ‘white’ (Olivas, p. 38). When USA inhabited the territories of the Mexicans and the subsequent colonization, the American colonizers tapped native elite to govern in a region with far more Euro-American soldiers than civilians and also they viewed the need to keep Mexicans and Indians in their racial place. Some Mexicans were incorporated as the native elite in the colony but the distinction between the political and social equality became paramount and though Euro-American men ceded formal political equality to Mexicans, this did not translate into social equality between the Euro-Americans and the Mexicans (Olivas, p. 38). Largely the Mexican men became eligible to vote and hold office and they were co-opted by the American colonizers. But as from the end of the 19th century, the political system shift started to take place and which saw the ascendancy of Euro-Americans in the region and the end of the period of power-sharing with Mexican elites (Olivas, p. 38).
Mexicans’ claim to whiteness was fragile because, while they were formally recognized as whites, they were informally treated as non-white and regarded as inferior to Euro-Americans (Olivas, p. 39). Mexican Americans resisted the racial subordination by constructing themselves as Mexican nationals and rather than directly challenging the racial logic that depicted them as inferiors, they sought to evade it by holding themselves a part from the American society.
Mexican Americans as a separate race from whites
The historical writings indicate that, the mixed Spanish, indigenous and African ancestry of the Mexican people opened the door to questions about where the Mexicans would fit in the American racial order (Go’mez, p. 83). Though the there was no homogeneity of attitudes among the Americans, a broad consensus existed specifically among the Euro-Americans who asserted that the Mexicans were not White specifically because they were racially mixed (Go’mez 83). Most Americans viewed the Mexicans as “mongrel” a status that was widely associated with their racial inferiority (Go’mez, p. 83). But the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo raised the Mexicans status and regarded as ‘whites’ legally, because collective naturalization of Mexicans under the treaty suggested Mexicans had white status (Go’mez, p. 84). Tension arose as a result of this since the social definition of the Mexicans contradicted the legal recognition of these people and entirely saw Mexicans as non-white. As a result, Mexican Americans came to occupy a position in the American racial ladder that was between white and non-white or what some writers have termed as “off-white” (Go’mez, p. 84).
The type of attitudes about the Mexicans in the 19th century as well as the kind of social relations between Euro-Americans and Mexicans in New Mexico conclusions by many writers has been that the racial subordination of the Mexicans was pervasive. The evidence further explains how these beliefs formed enduring feature of the social landscape and the ‘colored’ interaction between Euro-Americans and their Mexican and also the Pueblo neighbors in almost all the social spheres in which they interacted (Go’mez, p. 84).
During the Mexican period, it was observed that the small number of Euro-American immigrants to the region assimilated into Mexican communities. They in turn learnt how to speak Spanish and sometimes converted to Catholicism and became naturalized Mexicans citizens (Go’mez, p. 85). But after the American occupation, most of the towns to which Euro-Americans emigrated in significant numbers like Las Vegas, Santa Fe and also Albuquerque became to be largely characterized by segregation. For instance the 1880 census show that almost all Euro-Americans in Las Vegas county lived in “New Town” while the Mexican Americans in the same county were concentrated in the “Old Town” (Go’mez, p. 85). What can be observed and explained is that, in most Smaller New Mexico communities there was few Euro-Americans and in those with more sizeable Euro-American presence, Mexicans Americans and Euro-Americans lived in separate areas and towns, attended separate churches, separate social points and largely they did not mix in many social sphere areas. These kind of relation and treatment that Mexican Americans compounded by their non-white ancestry, made Mexican American claim to whiteness to be both weak and also conditional (Go’mez, p. 87).
In 1930 the pattern of counting Mexican Americans as ‘white’ changed when for the first time, “Mexican appeared as a separate racial category” (Go’mez, p. 152). This categorization of Mexican Americans as a racial group was spurred by the Great Depression and also the economic competition between the whites and the Mexicans. “The economic climate fomented anti-Mexican racism, violence and the government hostility that included mass deportation to Mexico.” (Go’mez, p. 152). The racist and violent events of the late 1930s remained sharp reminder to Mexican Americans of their inferior status whereby, although they were formally US citizens, their Mexican American racial status kept them in a second-class position.
Mexican Americans and civil rights era
The period from 1960s was characterized by conflict that has been described as the civil rights era. Street protests and demonstrations became convectional methods for social, political and economic redress (Donato, p. 57). People from diverse backgrounds participated in this Cultural Revolution that was greatly changing the American society. As a result, the Mexican Americans became part of this revolution especially in the Southwest. This period gave the Mexican Americans the opportunity to challenge the politics, assumptions and the principles of the social order and which had been the face of racism against them (Donato, p. 57). Mexican Americans for a long time they had been classified as “Mexican” by the US Census and public opinion. Their Spanish language, skin color and the working-class status that was resulting from a century of economic and political submersion made the Mexican Americans to be the victims of discrimination and segregation for a long time while at the same time being considered second class citizens. For them this was a prime opportunity for their cultural renaissance to be pursued which over time had fostered pride in their ethnic, language and history. Although the Mexican Americans numbered more than five million in the Southwest during the late 1960s, they were ‘invisible’ and what the writers described as “A minority nobody knows” (Donato, p. 60).
The Mexican Americans conditions were described to be worse than even for those minority groups that were regarded as non-white in USA. They were largely characterized by; substandard housing, high unemployment, low education attainment and more so discrimination. Despite these conditions that Mexican Americans were experiencing, very few white Americans were discussing the issues that related to them, news media ignored then and politicians were not even concerned about them (Donato p.60). With this wide atmosphere of neglect, the Mexican Americans decided to pursue a sole course to gain recognition. They began to organize themselves and demand better educational opportunities and other reforms.
The Chicano generation and ‘non-whiteness’ identity
The Mexican Americans and mostly activists before 1960 period had largely resorted to employing the vote and the courts for improving conditions. This became different with those after the 1960 who resorted to more directly confrontation tactics and embraced an ideology more in keeping with the identity shift from Mexican American to Chicano (Storey and Kelley 58). Most of the Mexican Americans had adopted white identity (Haney-López Para 6), but to the Chicanos they emphasized their uniqueness as the descendants of Aztecs who had swept into central Mexico from their mythical homeland in the American Southwest (El Plan De Aztlan Para 1). This new identity largely embraced the Spanish language and the Mexican customs and the Chicanos felt no need to appear acceptable to whites (Storey and Kelley, p. 58). This group was marked by a strong sense of cultural nationalism and separatism and they embraced a harsh critique of capitalism, the political structure and what they termed as half-hearted measures towards educational and social equality. To this group the Mexican Americans were uniformly an oppressed racial group by the whites.
Chicano saw themselves to be Mexican descends and hence their belief was that they were not ‘white’. In fashioning their new racial identity, Chicanos celebrated themselves as mestizo people who referred to the descents from Europeans and Native Americans. For the Chicanos, mestizaje (racial mixture) produced a new race of people readily identifiable through physical features (Haney-López 218). In stressing the mestizaje the Chicanos were being deeply inspired by Jose Vasconcelos who was an intellectual serving as education minister in Mexico during the 1920s who argued against continued celebration of the Spanish ancestry and instead advocated for the country’s people to instead honor their mixed origins. He extolled the racial mixing that was prevalent in Latin America as the precondition for a new race, “one that would emerge out of the four “great” races, white, black, yellow and red and into a fifth and triumphant race that combined only the best attributes of its parent stock” (Haney-López, p. 219). He called this race, ‘la raza cosmica,’ the cosmic race. In referring to those in America Vasconcelos asserted that “We in America shall arrive, before any other part of the world, at the creation of a new race fashioned out of the treasures of all of the previous ones: The final race, the cosmic race” (Haney-López, p. 219). This cosmic race provided a ready-made tool for reconceptualizing Mexican racial identity in the United States.
Conclusion
Mexican Americans have been defined as whites through the political and legal institutions of United States of America. But socially they have remained and largely been treated as second class citizens just like the non-white citizens. Gonzalez (Para 25) emphasizes this when he state that “Equality is but a word that is just another treacherous promise.” Historical injustices directed at the Mexican Americans for example during the depression and the subsequent mass deportation, racism and segregation all have made the Mexican Americans to identify themselves as non-white and as a minority group. This has been a strategic and to extend conviction that, as a minority group, they are better placed to champion for their course and rights just like other minority groups.
References
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