The chicano movement: dead or alive?  (Page 2/11)

Among the useful and recent theories propounded by scholars to examine SM’s in the U.S., there have been the collective behavior of the disaffected and marginalized, rational actor models, and exchange relations involving resource mobilization. Respectively, see C. Tilley, From Mobilization to Revolution, Reading, PA; Addison-Wesley, 1978; J. Elster, Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences, Cambrdge: Cambridge University Press, 1989; and, A. Oberschall, Social Conflict and Social Movements, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice hall, 1973. Taken together, however, the definitions and theories have not examined or been applied to the Chicano Movement of the late 1960s. Works on farm worker labor movements in the U.S. stopped short of including the efforts of the United Farm Workers and Cesar E. Chavez. C. Jenkins and C. Perrow, “Insurgency of the powerlessness farm worker movements (1946-1972),” American Sociological Review, 42 (2): 244-68.

The concern here is neither with an overarching definition nor a theoretical framework. Rather, the concern is with describing the evolution of the Chicano Movement and analyzing its trajectory.

Brief history of mexicans in north america

The Spanish conquest promoted by Charles V, King of Spain, created a new race of people in the Americas, neither Spanish, African, nor Indigenous, but a hybrid group, a bi-racial confluence of civilizations. From these mixed racial groups and cultures were bred the Mestizos , later to be self-identified in Mexico as Mexicanos . Other mestizos in the Americas chose various names, usually a label depicting national origin. Mestizos , however, are indigenous and native to the Americas. All other groups such as, European-Americans, African-Americans, and Asian- Americans, and including those today referred to as the native peoples, Indians, are immigrants.

The Spanish conquest also created and occupied space from one tip to another of the Americas, present day Alaska to Punta del Fuego and Las Islas Malvinas . Britain also began a conquest and colonization of the North American continent starting in the Northeast corner facing the Atlantic. The British and their colonists, later to be self-named Americans, began a campaign of genocide of Indian clans, groups, and tribes from their homelands. Indians were driven westward and southward creating space for the formation of the original thirteen American colonies. These colonies soon rebelled and proclaimed independence from England.

With the independence movements in the Americas beginning in the late 1700s to the early 1800s, Spain lost most of the mini-Spains in the Americas and Caribbean, including Mexico. Napoleon Bonaparte, and his brother Joseph, who was sitting on the Spanish throne, dismembered part of the Spanish lands by “selling” the Louisiana Purchase (land west of the Floridas, north to Lake Michigan along the Mississippi River, south to the Texas-Coahuila border with the present day state of Louisiana) to the United States of America in 1803-1805. By 1820, an emerging Mexico under the dictatorship of Augustin Iturbide debated and struggled within itself for a form of government: centralism or federalism. Within a decade and a half of this raging controversy in Mexico, the United States of America sponsored intervention and insurrection in Texas-Coahuila . Primarily, Anglos from Kentucky, Tennessee, and Georgia rushed into Texas-Coahuila seeking free land offered by the Mexican government to qualified empresarios in exchange for loyalty to Mexico, the Catholic faith, and exclusion of African slaves. These illegal Anglo trespassers were not empresarios and did not make or keep such promises. Instead, they rebelled, brought African slaves, and proclaimed independence from Mexico. They eventually obtained military, political, and legal control of these lands by duress from prisoner of war, Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, President and Commander-in-Chief of the Mexican troops. Santa Anna attempted to rid Mexico of these foreigners coming from the United States of America, but lost a decisive battle at San Jacinto, near present day Houston, Texas, in March 1835. Rebel General Sam Houston, later to become the first President of the Republic of Texas, captured him. Houston coerced Santa Anna to order the remaining Mexican troops back to Mexico and sign Texas over to the new Republic of Texas under terms of the Treaty of Velasco. Santa Anna, as a prisoner of war, was then taken to Washington, D.C. and kept under house arrest for nine months during which time President Andrew Jackson unsuccessfully attempted to persuade him to sell California to the United States of America. Ultimately, Santa Anna was allowed free passage back to Mexico. He became president once again. The U.S. continued to press Mexico to sell its northern borderlands, the Southwest. Meanwhile, in 1845, the United States of America annexed Texas as a state. By then, the African slave population reached 28 percent of the total population in Texas. In 1846, the U.S. invaded Mexican territory and Santa Anna once again was forced by the U.S. government to sign a treaty, The treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, in 1848 ceding not only California but also Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada, Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, parts of Utah, Montana, Washington, Oregon, and the entire Southwest, a total of 918,000,000 square miles. The Mexican people in the Americas became the first dismembered nation, divided to this day between those relatives and families in the U.S. and those in Mexico. Mexicans became a foreign minority in their own homeland.