But no matter how assimilated, the status of American was never fully granted to Mexican heritage peoples, no matter how deep their American roots and they were systematically denied access to those New Deal welfare benefits that were supposed to be for all Americans.. The program lasted until 1964, and it is estimated that in this 22 year period, approximately 4.6 million Mexican nationals came to work in the U.S. as braceros. This fund, in conjunction with LNESC (LULAC National Educational Service Centers), has assisted almost 10 percent of the 1.1 million Hispanic students who have gone to college. They are not getting that much work, so obviously it makes it more complicated. . But within Chicana scholarship and borderlands scholarship, white people in general are usually referred to as Anglo. By 1938, the league had created the first women's national office in Mrs. Ester Machuca as Ladies Organizer General. So this is about a bracero worker named Ricardo Velasquez who came from the small town, Aqua Caliente de Garada. Although many members were hesitant, the leaders of the organizations convinced the delegates of the necessity of a merger. But although Mexicans were not affected by the quota system, they still faced Anglo racism as exemplified in this quote from the commissioner general of immigration, Long established routes from southern Europe to mexican ports and overland to the Texas border, formerly patronized almost exclusively by diseased and criminal aliens, are now resorted to by large numbers of Europeans who cannot gain legal admission because of passport difficulties, illiteracy, or the quota law., Dan: Yeah, so theyre not bringing the best [sarcasm], Elizabeth: Theyre bringing drugs and rapists right?
And, just a sort of interesting side point here is there was labor issues in these factories and stuff, well you know who they called in to be the strike-breakers?
European and Mexican immigrants who arrived on first-class trains were actually allowed to forgo these humiliating inspections. Elizabeth: In our podcast a few weeks ago Dan and I discussed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and the Mexican residents that lived within the borderlands, or the areas that were annexed by the United States. The Mexican Revolution which raged for a decade between 1910 and 1920 increased this flow of immigrants. Its good wages for someone living in Mexico thats not part of the elite but compared to an American wage its still not a lot. But like you said, what are they going to do? : Weve kind of banged you over the head with that but socially at least, Mexican heritage peoples were not given the same social rights as white people. The Mexican Revolution which raged for a decade between 1910 and 1920 increased this flow of immigrants. For permission to publish any DIG: A History Podcast or History Buffs Podcast episode in whole or in part please contact the Executive Producer at hello@digpodcast.org, Elizabeth: Its 1926 and youre in a mine cage, a type of elevator contraption that slowly descends down the shaft of a coal mine. Many border residents fled into the U.S. for safety and also many political exiles sought shelter in the U.S. too.
When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America. An article that appeared in the Progressive Era journal.
That should be one indication that this was a race-based form of discrimination. The escalating warfare in Mexico came so close that inhabitants in Laredo could hear the sound of gunfire reverberating off of buildings in Nuevo Laredo just across the Rio Grande. A committee, with two delegates from each organization, was formed. So, although they didnt face the quota, they had to pass certain entry requirements such as a head tax and a visa fee, which pushed some to avoid legal immigration into the U.S. So Ill try to say white but I just want to throw that identifier out there in case you experience it in further readings. That land became New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona, Utah, Nevada and California. So a lot of scholars actually argue that this pulled themselves up by the bootstraps idea of 20th century immigrants is kind of a fallacy. In addition, LULAC fought for equal treatment of Hispanics through negotiation with state and local leaders when possible but through the legal system when necessary. LULAC Blames A Broken Immigration System For The Deaths Of Dozens Of Migrants Found In A Sealed Trailer In Texas Women of LULAC: A History of Accomplishments, 50th anniversary of John Kennedys visit with LULAC in 1963, LULAC Archives at The University of Texas at Austin, Proponen ms representacin de hispanos en el Distrito J de Houston: estos son los detalles, As Houston's Hispanic population grows, there's a push to get more representation, LULAC Analysis: Texas Governors Tactics And Lt. Governors Code Words Create A Dangerous Police State Climate For Latinos. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2006. As the mining and agricultural businesses in the Southwest grew, more and more laborers from where needed. During this time, Alonso S. Perales and Ben Garza were constantly discussing how to bring about the merger. ~ux,.x2`lvd%K)EcMh?E7LEgpMY Dan: Yeah, and whats interesting is part of the deal, too, was that these workers would not be used to replace domestic workers, or to lower domestic farm wages.
And that was if they were even allowed to join. By 1938, the league had created the first womens national office in Mrs. Ester Machuca as Ladies Organizer General. So like the pay would be less or you know, theyd have like ten guys to a room, or you know this is like the hot desert, so just really unsatisfactory conditions that they come into. Ben Garza, leader of Council #4 of the Order of the Sons of America in Corpus Christi, united all Mexican American organizations under one title, one set of objectives, and one constitution. But there was an urgent task to be done; the muddy streets were of little concern to those men about to make history. So the braceros are promised more work than quote what the American workers could get? These are cities that cross over the border. In response to the need for quality bilingual education, Jovita Idar and other likeminded reformers founded free bilingual kindergartens in their homes. Obviously they had, they risked being treated unfairly and put in a situation where they couldnt do much about it.
So its kind of a dance, you know, throughout this process. But despite all of these positive things and all of these protections that Mexican workers were supposed to have, many laborers faced an array of injustices and abuses, it was exactly a very attractive or appealing process in practice.
One family in particular, the Idar family, was very active in Mexican and American politics.
Canales friendly amended the motion so that the name read League of United Latin American Citizens. Elizabeth: Wow!
Elizabeth: Cause thats basically her argument with the GI Bill. That land became New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona, Utah, Nevada and California. In 1924 a very restrictive immigration act, the Johnson Reed Act, took effect. Right. What follows are some of the milestones accomplished by LULAC in its history. Elizabeth: So to jog your memory, the Treaty of Hidalgo was signed in 1848 and ceded thousands of acres of northern Mexico to the United States. Receive recent news from the League In the La Crnica article Por la Raza, La Niez Mexicana en Texas, Jovita wrote about the sub-par education that Mexican-heritage children received in Texas. Dan: Yeah, absolutely, weve talked about how land that is now U.S. used to be Mexico which is something important to consider. And just to put this into perspective, they had stopped doing these kind of inspections and de-lousing things at Ellis Island just a few years before.
Rodriguez, the petitioner in the case, was granted the right to become a naturalized U.S. citizen. Canales and J. Luz Saenz as committee members. A famous Anglo gunfighter was once asked how many men he had killed. : Wow! Elizabeth: But during the 1930s and the New Deal, ideas about race and who was considered white and assimilable and non-white and therefore un-assimilable became really important to the formation and implementation of welfare policy.
As I mentioned in the last episode, Texas practiced a tripart segregated school system, and most Spanish surname children were funneled into subpar Mexican schools and taught by teachers who were usually under-qualified.
The Mexican government also had the power to blacklist certain states from receiving Braceros if states were found to be discriminating against them. Uh, for the History Buffs Im Elizabeth. They called in a lot of Mexican immigrants. A constitutional convention was to be held on 18, and 19 May 1929, in Corpus Christi, Texas, and an executive committee was established to administer LULAC until the convention.
The World of the Mexican Worker in Texas.
So. Um, and that kind of takes it into the 40s and 50s. Clemente Idar was appointed in 1918 by Samuel Gompers as the first AFL organizer for Mexican-Americans in the Southwest and in the early 1930s he was asked by FDR to serve as U.S. Secretary of Labor, but had to decline due to failing health. In 1945, a California LULAC Council successfully sued to integrate the Orange County School System, which had been segregated on the grounds that Mexican children were more poorly clothed and mentally inferior to white children. Additionally, in 1954, LULAC brought another landmark case, Hernandez vs. the State of Texas, to protest the fact that a Mexican American had never been called to jury duty in the state of Texas. First LULAC Convention Invitation - May 1929. It was created through the merger of several community groups, and many of its leaders were middle-class Mexican Americans.
And just to put this into perspective, they had stopped doing these kind of inspections and de-lousing things at Ellis Island just a few years before. He was even more condescending when speaking of the women who traveled with the army. Reprint edition. Elizabeth: From what I remember, it was as it is now. Three Worlds of Relief: Race, Immigration, and the American Welfare State from the Progressive Era to the New Deal. If youll remember, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and the annexation of northern Mexico by the United States meant that Mexican heritage peoples had to be considered white in order to become naturalized citizens.
Yes, and I can think of one interesting example, I think it was in 1943 where there was a strike- it was in Washington and it was Mexican braceros who actually joined up with Japanese American workers who were allowed to leave internment camps and go and do some work in the Northwest and were facing injustice and banded together. And also, Im not, or were not implying that being white was preferred or even wanted by Mexican heritage people.
For example, both Pancho Villa and Porfirio Diazs wives lived in San Antonio, TX during parts of the revolution. The delicate task of uniting these groups was assigned to Juan Solis and Mauro Machado, members of The Knights of America, Alonso S. Perales and J.T.
Although they did.
Ngai, Mai. They then journeys to the contracting center of Monterrey in Nuevo Leon, where they waited then days before being processed.
But yeah, this article in the, really shows that these uh, these kind of. Learn how your comment data is processed.
The quota provided immigration visas to two percent of the total number of people of each nationality in the United States as of the 1890 national census, meaning that the calculations used to decide on the quotas were based on numbers that included large numbers of people of British descent whose families had been in the United States for generations. So there was a serious need for workers in the country. Mexican Americans were not allowed to learn English. The US was recovering from the social and economic damages caused by the Great Depression, while also sending many of its potential laborers off to war in Europe. Fox, Cybelle. He was even more condescending when speaking of the women who traveled with the army. Hmm. Notify me of follow-up comments by email. The annexation of northern Mexico affected an estimated one hundred thousand Mexicans and indigenous Native Americans. As a result, war time was accompanied by growing fears of racial mixing and prophecies Read more, 2017 The Producers of Dig: A History Podcast. A Harpers Weekly article entitled, Mexican Camp-Followers, for example, gives us an exceptionally xenophobic account of the Constitutionalist armies of the Revolution and the women who traveled with them. A legal example of how Mexican whiteness had different implications in social and legal contexts can be see in the court case: In re Rodriguez, This was an 1897 court case tried in a Texas federal court where a pure-blooded Mexican petitioner was admitted to U.S. citizenship. It was a meeting that would merge three largest Mexican American organizations into one. Gonzalez was elected Vice President General, A. DeLuna was elected Secretary General, and Louis C. Wilmot of Corpus Christi, Texas, was elected Treasurer General. Im not sure if it was ever used. Its not like they could just go home. Articles from Britannica Encyclopedias for elementary and high school students. Many were denied jobs because they were perceived as lazy, poorly dressed, dirty, ill educated, and thought to be thieves.
Many wanted to revolt and regain the territories that Mexico ceded to the United States of America after the Mexico-Texas War. We only bring this up because only white people could become naturalized citizens to the U.S. during this period, and only white men were truly granted full citizenship under the law at this time.
On the other hand there was actually some encouragement for them to come into the country right?
Because if this bracero program is starting to put small farmers out of business, then those farmers and the families that rely on them are going to start seeing these braceros as the problem as whats putting them out of business. southern and eastern Europeans, were largely pulled into the fold of the welfare state and thus, basically full and equal citizenship while those who were un-white, African and Mexican Americans, became kind of subject to a stricter social control if they were allowed to participate in welfare programs. Press Release: LULAC Blames A Broken Immigration System For The Deaths Of Dozens Of Migrants Found In A Sealed Trailer In TexasRead here. For example, both Pancho Villa and Porfirio Diazs wives lived in San Antonio, TX during parts of the revolution.
This was not a day for a meeting. We only bring this up because only white people could become naturalized citizens to the U.S. during this period, and only white men were truly granted full citizenship under the law at this time. But um, no matter if they were involved in the conflict, in the fighting or not, Tejanos, ie Mexican Texans, were suspected of being cattle bandits, gunrunners, revolutionaries and insurrectionists by the powers that be, whether they were or not. And there is hard data to show that social workers in the Southwest kind of cherry-picked data to make it seem as if Mexican-Americans and Mexican immigrants were more reliant on relief than they actually were. So Mexico is kind of in a tight spot too, you know, they want their citizens to be treated with respect but they also want to keep this program going. We have another section of this story and were going to cover were going to go into NAFTA and talking about the. Uh, El Paso and Ciudad Juarez. Discrimination against Mexican Americans was rampant. Basically that uh, African-Americans and Mexican-Americans werent given the GI Bill because they were systematically kept if they did serve they were overwhelmingly kept in positions in the military where they were not eligible for these kinds of benefits once they got out. The maximum pace was set by the capacity of the X-ray machines which was set to see 175 braceros per hour. So what the Immigration Act of 1924 did however, was create the policies that required a more robust U.S./Mexico border control. where there had not previously been in any kind of practical or physical sense. Inspections of immigrants at the Mexican border now consisted of bathing, delousing, and a medical inspection. And just curious, you said they were getting about 50 cents an hour, was that a good wage?
And also a reminder about whiteness and naturalization. , was less harsh in its blatant criticism of Mexican-heritage people, yet its author still prescribed to racist ideals. Read the latest LULAC News or past issues here.
Download this episode (right click and save), Written and Produced by: Elizabeth Garner Masarik and Dan Wallace. Fears emerged that hoards of Eastern European and Chinese immigrants would circumvent national quotas by entering the U.S. illegally through the the Mexican and Canadian borders which also pushed policies to implement stronger controls at both borders. And this is important as so much of our current immigration discourse circles around Hispanic immigrants and welfare, so understanding Mexicans historical treatment in regards to the welfare state is important for putting current debates into historical context.
Not necessarily over Mexicans, um, although as well see a little later, definately a lot of Anglos didnt want Mexicans coming in but like you said, the agricultural lobby was obviously a big part in this Johnson-Reed Act in making sure that Mexican immigrants. So there was a serious need for workers in the country. The court record states that if the strict scientific classification of the anthropologist should be adopted, he [the petitioner] would probably not be classified as white. Yet because of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, Rodriguez passed the whiteness test of the court. Its first Council #9 was created on February 22, 1934, in El Paso, Texas. Between the years of 1845 to roughly the 1890s immigration to the United States from Mexico was very low. Yeah, [sarcasm]. And, just a sort of interesting side point here is there was labor issues in these factories and stuff, well you know who they called in to be the strike-breakers? And most of the Mexicans who volunteered for the program were family men. So a lot of money going back home. Often considered one of the more conservative Latino civil rights groups, LULAC initially restricted membership to U.S. citizens, made English its official language, and promoted assimilation. Alonso S. Perales initially proposed the name Latin American Citizens League. In response, Mauro Machado suggested they use the word United as apropos for the merger and as a way of differentiating the title from The League of Latin American Citizens. Princeton N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2012.
Cursory readings of articles in Anglo-newspapers covering the Mexican Revolution make very clear the daily racism Tejanos experienced in the United States. Princeton University Press, 2014. And not only did they face discrimination and poor conditions while they were working here but just the process to get from Mexico to the US to be part of the bracero program, was a pretty taxing thing.
Elizabeth: These two groups that are very marginalized during the 1940s, banding together, having this agency to to strike. In 1921, courageous men and women in Texas began organizing to ensure that juries reflected the composition of the population and filed suits to have Mexican Americans placed on jury rosters. : It was good for them. In another instance, a LULAC member (who later became a LULAC President General) had to dress as a woman in order to get pass a sheriff with rifle in arm who had vowed to prevent LULAC from organizing in his town. Thus, The League of United Latin American Citizens was formed. And remember too that there were many people that lived in border towns where one half of the city was on the U.S. side and one half on the Mexican side. Um, but the writer of this article writes These women, he wrote, are generally of the Indian type, totally uneducated, unspeakably dirty, and apparently quite content to undergo physical hardships for the sake of being with their masters. I bring this up because this is just one example of this disdain that Mexicans and Tejanos faced from Anglo journalists, law enforcement, and settlers. LULAC played a significant role in the creation of Operation SER (1964; Operation Service, Employment, and Redevelopment [later renamed SER-Jobs for Progress National]) and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (1968; MALDEF). There were three main organizations: The Order of the Sons of America with councils in Somerset, Pearsall, Corpus Christi, and San Antonio; The Knights of America in San Antonio; and The League of Latin American Citizens with councils in Harlingen, Brownsville, Laredo, Penitas, La Grulla, McAllen, and Gulf. Well I think it kind of, back to your earlier point, you can see why that kinda would engender animosity toward Mexican laborers right? One of the ways we can see how Mexicans, both US citizens and unnaturalized immigrants, operated within this kind of binary idea of American and non-American um, is when we consider the expansion of the welfare state during the 1930s and the New Deal. An interesting component to this program was that these workers would not be subject to discrimination, meaning that they would not be excluded from white areas of segregated public areas. The organization also sought funding from government and corporate grants.
At this time the US was recovering from the social and economic damages caused by the Great Depression, while also sending many of its potential laborers off to war in Europe. : Right exactly, so when you have these White workers and then Mexicans strikebreakers, this only deepens racial animosity between different groups of people.
So the meat packing up there. In 1924 a very restrictive immigration act, the Johnson Reed Act, took effect.
But I would, and many scholars will argue, that the American welfare state began much earlier, reaching back into the 19th century.
Also, LULAC adopted the Robert Rules of Order as its governing rules during meetings and conventions. This podcast is part of a series on immigration that we are doing here on the History Buffs. Obviously they had, they risked being treated unfairly and put in a situation where they couldnt do much about it.
But Anglo, or white, prejudice against Mexicans and Mexican Americans was only heightened by the Mexican Revolution that was raging across the border, which sometimes spilled into Texas. : Theyre not going to go home. So this is from Mai Ngais book, Impossible Subjects, which if you are interested in this topic I suggest you pick up and take a look at. As laborers in Mexico they earned what was equivalent to 65 US cents a day, so the prospect of earning 30-50 cents an hour was alluring.
La Cronica and particularly Jovita Idar addressed the treatment that Spanish-speaking Americans received in the borderlands in the early 20th century. So there were varying types of legal entry that Mexican citizens might have while traveling in the U.S., making Border Patrol and U.S. immigration agents caste more suspicion on Mexican workers and travelers.
This lead Council #4 of The Order of the Sons of America to withdraw on February 7, 1929.
Okay, well we appreciate you so much for sticking around and listening to this episode. Discrimination knew no age limits. But those who were considered assimilable and white, i.e. Right. So it wasnt a pleasant process, the treatment was never great. Dan: Theyre not going to go home. Right. Uh, for the History Buffs Im Elizabeth. In exchange for their labor they were guaranteed a minimum wage of 30 cents an hour during the 40s and 50 cents during most of the 50s. Historian George Sanchez describes this new border crossing as becoming a momentous occasion, a break from the pasta painful and abrupt event permeated by an atmosphere of racism and control- an event that clearly demarcated one society from another., These new laws and vetting procedures also meant that an official Border Patrol was needed. Elizabeth: I think historically, when youre studying labor history you hear a lot about African-Americans being called in as strikebreakers. This act severely limited the number of immigrants allowed entry into the United States through a national origins quota.
But just to put this larger mexican immigration story into an historical context. You may hear me refer to white people in the borderlands as Anglos.
And also, just as an aside, because Im a welfare historian and a bit of a wonk about it, the American welfare state did not begin in the 1930s, it just became broader and more visible. Council #4 of The Order of the Sons of America and The Knights of America considered the proposed merger for a year.
There was a lot of lobbying going on behind the scenes to make sure that these two populations were denied access to labor rights that most other Americans really began to take for granted. The rain was filling the dirt streets. If youll remember, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and the annexation of northern Mexico by the United States meant that Mexican heritage peoples had to be considered white in order to become naturalized citizens. If youre interested in this story stay tuned, and well finish it up in a future episode. And that was if they were even allowed to join. In the 1950s, Braceros sent home 30 million dollars a year, making it the third largest industry in Mexico.
If youre interested in this story stay tuned, and well finish it up in a future episode. So its clear from these examples that Mexicans were facing some pretty blatant racism on one hand. Right, so really its like the borders get pumped up because of these fears of southern and eastern Europeans coming in. The agricultural lobby played a large part in promoting and expanding Mexican migration into the U.S. : No I mean thats thats the thing that I remember about this particular story is the surprising agency that a lot of these men um, uh.. Had in these situations. The Immigration Act of 1924 completely excluded immigrants from Asia. And were talking a lot about Mexicans who made it up north, in the more industrial cities. So Mexico also has a large vested interest in having this continue.