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

Appendix 1

Political Generations Among Persons of Mexican Ancestry in the United States, 1835-2010

• Texas Independence and Statehood: “Get Rid of the Mexicans.”

During this period, White persons from Southeastern states illegally moved into Texas and promoted insurrection against the government of Mexico. Once successful in gaining Texas Independence in 1835, they were annexed by the United States in 1845. Tejanos of Mexican ancestry were violently pushed out of the state and into Mexico.

• Loss of Aztlan, the Ancient Homeland: The Second Diaspora

During this period the United States government invaded Mexico beginning in 1846 and forced the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo granting the invader half of the remaining Mexican territory, currently the Southwestern states of Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma, California, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Oregon, and parts of Washington. Persons were given until 1849 to opt for either U.S. citizenship and remain in these lands or leave for Mexico. In 1853 the United States pressured Mexico into selling the Mesilla territory, land between Tucson and the border of California, and known as the Gadsden Purchase.

• The Making of a Minority: Marginalization and Oppression

Best estimates are that between 88,000 and 100,000 persons of Mexican and Spanish descent remained in the occupied territory. These two classes were divided into the Spanish ricos that kept parts of their land holdings and Mexican peones that worked those lands. Those remaining once a majority of the population now were a minority and suffered indignities and oppression at the hands of Whites.

1910-1930* The Migrant Generation: “Going Back to Mexico Manana”

With the outbreak of the Mexican Revolution on November 20, 1910, over a million Mexicans fled into the lost homeland in the United States, relocating primarily from Brownsville, Texas to San Diego, California, waiting for the revolution to subside. They assumed return to Mexico was in the near future. Normalcy did not return to Mexican politics or social life until the early 1930s. By this decade, Mexicans in the United States numbered three million, comprised mostly of 1.5-generation foreign-born and 2 ^nd generation U.S. born children of Mexican ancestry. These generations attempted to forge a new group identity. The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) was founded in 1927-29. Membership in LULAC was limited to adult male U.S. citizens who could speak English.

• The Farm Worker Generation: “Going Back to the Southwest”

With three million Mexicans and their growing number of U.S. born children residing along the U.S.-Mexico border since the Mexican Revolution, jobs were scarce. Mexican families began seeking and finding temporary agricultural work further and further away from the border during seasonal harvest times in the northern states and returning to their “temporary residences” in the Southwest. While their parents often dreamed of “returning to Mexico” these “returned to the Southwest” at the end of harvest season. The number of Mexicans in the U.S. was increased beginning in 1947 with the inception of an emergency war measure to support agricultural, forestry, fishery, and railroad interests, the Bracero Program. Mexican Americans, primarily returning war veterans during this era, formed two major civil rights organizations: the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) in 1927 and the American G.I. Forum in 1948. These organizations fought school segregation and sought assimilation and integration into Anglo society.

• The Chicano Generation: “This is Home”

This generation began to speak more English and less Spanish because they were integrated into Anglo schools; began to enter college and universities in greater numbers; and rejected the liberal Anglo social agenda of assimilation and integration. They also rejected the old Mexican politics of prior generations and affiliation with anything Spanish. They saw themselves as neither Mexican nor Anglicized Mexican-Americans; they called themselves Chicanos, a derivative of Meshicano , the ancient Aztec name. Many organizations were formed during this period emanating from their social movements, all focused on the nation-building of Aztlan , a nation within a nation.

• The Hispanic Generation and Other Beneficiaries

Chicanos, like other previous generations, made babies in larger numbers than Anglos or African-Americans. These babies became the beneficiaries of many of the gains made by the Chicano Movement; however, they self-identified themselves as Hispanics. Immigrants from Cuba had begun to arrive in 1960 joining Puerto Ricans, which have enjoyed an open border with the mainland since incorporation in the late 1880s and acquiring permanent U.S. citizenship in 1905. Central Americans began arriving in 1970s as U.S. military operations began in that region. These three major population groups began to coalesce and seek common ground. The primary issue of concern became immigration policy. Major reform was made in this policy area in the 1980s that opened the door to residency and citizenship to many more persons of various Hispanic ancestries, primarily more Mexicans.

• 21st Century Panethnic Latinos: Identity Politics Re-Visited

The 2000 U.S. Census reported the presence of 30 million persons of various

Hispanic ancestries in the U.S.** Persons of Mexican ancestry were 67% of the total Hispanic population in that census enumeration. Within the first years of the decade, the major media outlets began reporting on the growing numbers of Hispanics in the U.S.; they called it the “Browning” of America. Hispanics became the largest ethnic or racial minority in the U.S., and population projections forecast that Hispanics will become a majority of the population in many cities, counties, states, and regions by 2050. Increasingly, more Hispanics and new immigrants from the Caribbean and Central and South America in search of an all encompassing ethnic identifier label prefer to call themselves Latinos.

* The use of a twenty-year span is to merge biological reproduction with the minimal age requirement for formal civic engagement such as voter registration, eligibility to hold public office, legal age to contract and marry, for example.

** Population numbers for “Hispanics” in the U.S. does not include the numbers of Puerto Ricans on the island. (Emphasis added.)

José Ángel Gutiérrez has Doctor of Philosophy and Doctor of Juris Prudence degrees and is Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Texas-Arlington.