CHICANO STUDIES 101
Instructors Notes
Developed by Charlene Garcia Simms

UNIT 3

Review of events -- Unit 2 and Unit 3

    The following is a chronology of events that represent factors that affected Chicanos from the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 and well into the 20th Century. These events are not inclusive but very relevant in the Chicano experience.  Most of these events are also included in Chapters 1-8.
     Under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo executed on February 2, 1848, Mexico ceded to the U. S. a vast territory. The treaty provided specific guarantees to the Citizens by default for their property and political rights. They were also given the right to retain their language religion and culture. According to historian David Weber, the fact they were guaranteed all the right of citizens did not prevent them from becoming foreigners in their native land.  The promises of the Treaty of Guadualpe Hidalgo were not fulfilled.
     As the need for more laborers in  railroad, mines, etc. and migrant workers for the farms increased in the late 1800's and the 1900's we should look at what occurred to the citizens by default and the first and second group of Mexican immigrants to realize the need for a Civil Rights Movement in the 1960's.

Laws and Labor Factors:

Prior to 1848 under Spanish Law citizens of Spain and later Mexico were given land grants. After the Mexican American War the United States did not honor these land grants and citizens by default were cheated out of their land by unscrupulous methods, often with the help of newly enacted U. S. Laws. The majority of Citizens by Default did not understand the English language nor U. S. law.

1849 - Foreign Miner's Tax (California) - levied a charge to stake out claims to anyone who was not a U S. citizen. This was one of the most unfair laws affecting Hispanics.
1851 - The Land Law of 1851 - Congress established a commission to review the validity of claims in California based on grants made during the Spanish and Mexican periods. Displacement of land on a grand scale for Hispanics took place.
1854 - the Surveyor of General Claims Office was established in the New Mexico territory to resolve land disputes between Hispano and newcomers. This system was slower than the one in California.  At times it took fifty years to settle just a few claims and in the meantime Hispanic New Mexicans were defrauded in land scams similar to those in California, especially by a group who later became known as the Santa Fe Ring
1855 - Greaser Laws - enacted in California to prohibit bull fights, bear fights and cock fights. Vagrancy codes in local governments were also mainly directed at Mexicans and were applied selectively when a community wanted to force Mexicans out.
1857 - The Cart War of 1857 involved a systematic campaign on the part of Anglo Americans to force Mexican freighters out of this lucrative business. For over a year, organized bands of Texans preyed on the Mexican freight trains, killing the drivers, stealing the merchandise and generally disrupting the traffic.
1862 - Homestead Act allowed squatters to settle and claim vacant lands in frontier areas. It was hard for Mexicans to prove that these lands were theirs and not vacant.
1880 - Mexican immigration to the U. S. was stimulated by the advent of the railroad. (First group of Mexican immigrants started coming to the U. S.)
*1882 - Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 - barred immigration from China
*1885 - Alien Contract Labor Law of 1885 prohibited the recruiting and importation of   contract labor from foreign countries.
1892 --Court of Public Land Claims - highly disadvantageous to Hispanos. The result was that eventually Anglos came to own four-fifths of the former grant areas.
1897 - Tariff of 1897 raised the tax on imported sugar, dramatically expanding the growing of sugar beets in the Southwest and Midwest, increasing the need for migrant workers.
1902 --Reclamation Act of 1902 - put more agricultural land into production, increasing the need for migrant workers.
*1907 - The Gentlemen's Agreement of 1907 made between the governments of Japan and the
U. S. where the government of Japan pledged to cooperate in efforts to limit the immigration of Japanese to the U.S.
1910 - beginning of the Mexican Revolution
1914 - development of the Federal Trade Commission
1917 - World War I - Draft Laws passed
*1917 - The Immigration and Nationality Act set up new restrictions establishing literacy tests as a condition for entry and a head tax of $8 . During World War I, "temporary" Mexican farm workers, railroad laborers and miners were given a waiver to the immigration law so they could enter the U. S.
*1920 - Temporary Quota Law established quotas for immigration based on the nationality of immigrants already in the U. S. as of 1910, and set an upper limit on total immigration from Europe.
*1924 - a permanent Immigration Act set new quotas based on the proportion of the various nationalities in the U. S. as of 1890. These were set up to reduce immigration from southern and eastern Europe.
1924 saw the establishment of the Border patrol.
1919-1929 - The border evils - see Chapter II
1929 - Immigration Act - served as partial victory to nativists who had pressed for a specific Mexican immigration ban throughout the 1920s. It called for imprisonment of one year for those caught without documents a second time and a one thousand dollar fine.
1931-1932 - During the worst years of the Great Depression, thousands of Mexicans were repatriated only to find themselves destitute in Mexico. Some of these people repatriated were
U. S. citizens.
1933 -- National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 - encouraged workers to form unions and bargain collectively. Mexicans were excluded from participating in trade unions. If they formed their own unions their efforts were squelched with violence followed by deportations.
1933 - National Labor Relations Act of 1933 - guaranteed the right to organize and bargain collectively.
1935 - Founding of the Congress of Industrial Organizations - signaled the coming of big industrial unions.
1938 -- Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 - minimum wage--caused many Mexicans to lose their jobs.
1942 - Bracero Program - represented a planned and orderly process of labor recruitment with Mexican laborers from Mexico.
1951 - Public Law No. 78 - extended the Bracero program after the war under a labor shortage caused by the Korean War.
1954-58 - Operation Wetback - deported 3.8 million persons of Mexican descent. Only a few were allowed deportation hearings.

The Mexican Revolution (prior and during) brought the most dramatic development to the U. S. because 10% of Mexico's population moved north and they fit into the existing labor colonial structure. Americans made no distinctions between the new arrivals and those who had become citizens by default after the Mexican American War. Those allowed in, wound up staying; some due to labor shortages; the majority settled in the Southwest, although some did go northeast to work in the steel mills in Pennsylvania; automobile factories in Detroit, etc.  The experiences of these people were different than those who settled in the Southwest and merits different study from Chicanos in the Southwest. The people from Mexico had been largely agricultural workers. Other occupational categories for the new immigrants were teamsters, freighters, woodcutter, stonemasons, shoemakers, miners.

I mentioned the revolving door factor--meaning that when we need labor from Mexico we open the door wide open but as soon as we don't need the labor we push them out. There are several push-pull factors from both sides.  Some of the push factors coming from Mexico and the pull factors from the U. S. in the past have been:

Push factors (from Mexico)

1. The political upheaval associated with the Mexican Revolution
2. Social and economic factors such as the population growth in Mexico.
3. Improvement in infrastructure especially the railroad made it easier and cheaper to travel
4. Building and maintenance of the railroads led to employment in the southwest railroads.
5. Inflation increased -- real wages to workers declined
6. Modernization displaced farm workers providing a surplus of laborers in Mexico
7. American capital investment in Mexico continued -- the Hearsts, the Guggenheims, U. S. Steel, Anacona Corporation, Standard Oil. By 1910 American investment in Mexico had grown to a billion dollars exceeding the total capital owned by the Mexicans themselves. (Mostly export products made them responsible for the push as well as the pull side)

Pull factors (form the U.S.)

1. Southwest employers wanted cheap labor and labor which could be manipulated in ways beneficial to the employers The demand was not for labor but for wage labor.
2. Mexican labor and Mexican immigration was conditioned by the relative non-availability of other sources of cheap labor during this period.
3. Labor contractors - recruiters (quite often unscrupulous-coyotes, man snatchers, enganchistas see page 44 of Chicano) - the pull was an active and aggressive force. It set the pattern for the waves of Mexican immigration that continues through today.
4. Immigration policies (shown by asterisks* in chronology)

How did all this affect Mexican immigration? It increased the demand for Mexican labor. Some Mexicans were made exempt form some of these immigration policies. Some employers ignored the laws. There were several efforts to control Mexican immigration and by 1929 were ordered to follow these laws. There were restricitonist forces who feared the continued importation of "inferior and culturally different foreigners" (Xenophobia). This attitude brought about the passage of the Immigration Law of 1929. However, the employers were on the other extreme--they wanted the cheap labor.

Chicano Labor is a study in itself. I have barely touched on it. It is important to understand its implication to Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans. A desire by employers to keep their conditions status quo as well as the hardships these people went through to get out of the pattern of employment of low wages, worst jobs, etc. needs to be understood. Chicanos were also dealing with  repatriation and deportation. Unionization was the next battle Mexican-Americans and newly arrived Mexicans would have to battle.

The Second Defeat:

Like other minorities under similar circumstances, Mexicans tried to minimize contacts with dominant groups by withdrawing into their own world. Falling into a world of subordination, immigrants attempted to rebel.

These people were set apart as a caste, stereotyped, segregated, and regarded as an inferior race. Between 1900 and 1930 they started to organized for self-protection mainly in California. Most attempts were stopped, broken by the use of violence and was followed by deportation. The suppression of these strikes represented in effect, a second defeat, a second rebuff.

When Mexicans in the United States got on relief,  efforts to get them off relief involved large scale forced repatriations to Mexico. Some of the people were American citizens but if you looked Mexican you were put in a box car or other means of transportation and shipped south regardless of where you had been born. Ironically, the people who went to Mexico had gotten a lot of experience in organizing when they tried to unionize in the U. S.  They used this experience to organize in Mexico and the Mexican labor movement dates back to these attempts.

The Mexican Problem

The Mexican Problem had been defined in terms of the social consequences of Mexican immigration; statistics of Mexican delinquency, poor housing, low wages, illiteracy and rates of disease. Mexicans became the No. l immigration problem. The focus was on the consequences instead of the causes. There was little attempt to look at Mexican immigration as different from European immigration.* With Mexican immigration there is a time factor and a space factor. There were also schisms between Mexicans - those native born and the new immigrants. Those who were native born had started to assimilate. The new immigrants brought a heavy element of their old culture with them.

*Mexico is not France, Italy or Poland. Geographically, it is part of the Southwest. Geography alone indicates that Chicanos "cannot be regarded as merely another immigrant group in the U. S. destined for ultimate absorption." There has to be a merge or fusion. It must be remembered that the process of acculturation is somewhat different in the southwest than elsewhere in the U. S. Here we adopted the Spanish-speaking minority; they did not adopt us. It is this difference which accounts for the tenacity with which the Spanish speaking have clung to certain aspects of their native culture."

The pattern of employment for Chicanos was low wages; quite often it was not only an individual who was employed but a group or an entire family; the jobs were undesirable by location, often dead end type of employment; and the; employment was often seasonal or casual. This type of employment dictated the type and location of residence. Segregated residential areas resulted in segregated schools. This perpetuated stereotypes.  (We already went through one example of segregation in The Lemon Grove Incident) Exclusion from the trade unions closed another avenue of escape.

The Colonia Complex

The colonias were formed when the second group of Chicanos started to arrive in the U. S. Most of us know them as barrios or Mexican neighborhoods. They generally have been located "on the other side of the tracks," certainly determined by low wages, cheap rents, low land valued, prejudice, closeness to employment, undesirability of the site, etc. The houses, or in reality shacks, were generally unpainted, weather-beaten and dilapidate. They were very clean and neat on the inside with much effort to make them look attractive. In the past most had no inside toilets and baths nor electricity. They were located at just sufficiently inconvenient distances from the parent community. The physical isolation naturally bred a social and psychological isolation. Resentment of living a fenced in character of their existence developed. They were aware of not being wanted and segregation was enforced by law as well as by custom and opinion. The ostracism of the Mexican had great affect on their feelings of who they were. If they have projected an inferiority complex it is really a defeatist attitude arising from frustration at being unable to break out of this cycle. Children dropped out of school for several reasons, one being segregation and an inferior education they were being provided. So, sometimes the result has been to remain in the cycle of poverty, low wages, poor housing, etc. While lack of funds, the language difficulty, and illiteracy were important factors to this despair, most influential were segregation and discrimination. The new generations, however, showed lively interest to improve their socio-economic status.

Source: North from Mexico by Carey McWilliams

The early 40's

We discussed last week what was going in the early 40's

1. Lazaro Cardenas stopped some U. S. corporations from coming into Mexico. This angered newspaper mogul Hearst.
2. Pearl Harbor was attacked
3. U. S. entered World War II
4. 120,000 residents of Japanese ancestry were forced to internment camps; 70,000 of them U. S. citizens.
5. Bracero Program was initiated
6. Sleepy Lagoon incident in Los Angeles
7. Round up of Mexican teenagers in L.A. for the murder of Jose Diaz. A Kangaroo Court was held for the boys.
8. Convictions took place.  Two years later everyone was exonerated.
9. Zoot Suit Riots

The Case of Sleepy Lagoon

A young man by the name of Jose Diaz was murdered. Boys from the 38th Street Gang were arrested and nine were convicted of second degree murder plus two counts of assault. The served two years in San Quentin before they were exonerated. Others were convicted of lesser crimes and only did jail time.

Some of the criminals, the boy gangsters, the murders involved in the Sleepy Lagoon Case were:

1. Henry Leyvas, 20, worked on his father's ranch.
2. Chepe Ruiz, a fine amateur athlete who wanted to play big league baseball. In May 1942, his head had been cracked open by the butt of a policeman's gun when he had been arrested on suspicion of robbery, although later he was found not guilty of the charge. While in San Quentin, he won the admiration of the warden, the prison staff and the inmates when he continued on in a boxing match, after several of his ribs had been broken.
3. Robert Telles, eighteen,  was working in a defense plant at the time of his arrest. He was an amazing artist and showed remarkable skill as he drew caricatures of the judge, the all white jury and the prosecutor during the trial.
4. Manuel Reyes, 17,  had joined the Navy in July 1942 and was waiting induction when arrested.
5. Angel Padilla, one of the defendants most severely beaten by the police, was a furniture worker.
6. Henry Ynostras, 18 was married and the father of a one year old girl. He had supported his mother and two sisters since he was fifteen.
7. Manual Delgado, 19, also a woodworker, was married and the father of two children, one born on the day he entered San Quentin.
8. Gus Zamora, 21 was also a furniture worker.
9. Victor Rodman Thompson, 21, was an Anglo young man who by long association with the Mexican boys in his neighborhood had become completely Mexicanized.
10. Jack Melendez, 21 had been sworn into the Navy before he was arrested. He got a dishonorable discharge.
11. John Matuz, 20, had worked in Alaska with the U. S. Engineers.

These boys had been pushed around by  the police, given a rough time in the court and the  Sleepy Lagoon prosecution capped the climax. The court was tried before a biased and prejudiced judge, conducted by a  prosecutor who pointed the clothes and style of haircuts of the defendants as evidence of guilt and  was staged in an atmosphere of intense community wide prejudice which had been whipped up and artfully sustained by the entire press of L. A.

They were not allowed to sit with their counsel only permitted to communicate with them during recess or after adjournment. For the first weeks of the trial the defendants were not permitted to get haircuts and packages of clean clothes were intercepted by the jailer on orders of the prosecutor. They came  to trial unkempt, looking like vagabonds. They were also tried as a group, not individually.

On October 3, 1944, the District Court of Appeals, in a unanimous decision reversed the conviction of all the defendants and the case was later dismissed for lack of evidence. In its decision the court sustained all but two of the contentions the Sleepy Lagoon Defense Committee had raised, castigated the  trial judge for his conduct of the trial and criticized the methods by which the prosecution had secured a conviction.

Mexican Americans boys never used the term zoot-suit, preferring drape in speaking of their clothes. The drapes began to appear in the late 30's and early 40's. They resembled the zoot-suits worn by Black young people in Harlem, although there were differences in detail and design. They were very functional and used specifically for dancing which would be disastrous to the average suit. The trouser cuffs are tight around the ankles in order not to catch on the heels of the boy's quickly; moving feet. The shoulders of the coat are wide, giving plenty of room for strenuous arm movements and the shoes are heavy, serving to anchor the boy to the dance floor as he spins his partner around. For the boys, peg-topped pants with pleats, high waists up under the armpits, the long loose-backed coat, thick sole blucher shoes and ducktail haircut. For the girls, black huarachas, short black skirt, long black stockings, sweater and high pompadour, the length of the coat and the width of the shoulders became as much a mark of prestige as the merit badges of    boy scouts. Important to note that not all young Mexican Americans wore them.

Zoot Suit Riots or Military-Government-Police Riots?

Players (elements of the Zoot Suit Riots):
1. Xenophobia
2. Pachucos - boys of Mexican descent, many 1st generation, rarely over 18
3. Police - overwhelmingly non-Mexican. Acting on reliance of Captain Ayers theory
4. Newspaper - media yellow journalism at its worst. It was a dull period, major war going on; looking for a scapegoat, an internal enemy on which accumulated frustrations of a population could be vented.
5. People of L. A. Sponsoring a private war, Mexican and non-Mexican
6. Military - on leave with full pay - bored; strangers supported by the police and media.

Captain E. Duran Ayers, Chief of the Foreign Relations Bureau of the L.A Sheriff's office presented a report presumably prepared under the instructions of his superiors during the Sleepy Lagoon Trial. He was called to the stand to explain his theory of the Mexican's inborn love for killing and violence, in other words, the biological factors. He basically said that when Anglo-Saxons fight they use their fists. When Mexicans fight they have a need to use a knife or lethal weapon. They have a desire to kill or at least let blood, a characteristic inherited from their Aztec ancestors.

The stereotype of the evil Pachuco formed in the minds of many L. A. residents.

One police lieutenant offered the following rational for the gang crimes: "Crime is a matter of race and the tendency to commit crimes can be inherited. Therefore, the race must be punished."

Some people called the Zoot-Suit Riots, a race riot, and were immediately labeled communists. Even Eleanor Roosevelt called it a race riot and was severely criticized. Meanwhile her husband had just held a historical meeting in April with Mexican president Camacho on the soil of Mexico to develop the Good Neighbor Policy.

Ten days of rioting took place in L. A. in the summer of 1943 and we hardly hear about it in our history books including the text you are using!. According to Carey McWilliams in North from Mexico, "What the riots did was expose the rotten foundations upon which the City of Los Angeles had built a paper-mache facade of International American Good Will made up of fine-sounding Cinco deMayo proclamations. During the riots, the press, the police, the officialdom and the dominant control groups of Los Angeles were caught with the bombs of prejudice in their hands. The riots left a residue of resentment and hatred in the minds and hearts of thousands of young Mexican Americans in Los Angeles." Most important, the incident helped to build the foundation for the Chicano Movement. These young men would remember the humiliation of the Zoot Suit Riots and demanded full rights of citizenship.

The War Years - The war provided Mexican American an opportunity to prove their loyalty to their country. Several medal of honor winners emerged. Some heroes were:

1. Joe Martinez
2. Macario Garcia, a medal of honor winner was refused service in a restaurant in Texas because he was Mexican.
3. Felix Longoria - his body was refused burial in Three Rivers Texas after being killed in the Philippines. Longoria had been a medal of honor recipient. Lyndon B. Johnson intervened and Longoria was buried at Arlington Cemetery in Washington D. c.
4. Sylvestre Herrera
5. Dr. Hector P. Garcia, founder of the American G. I. Forum

What was the counterpoint of migration? While the Good Neighbor Policy was being preached, discrimination was running rampant against Mexican Americans and Mexican Nationals. Texas was forbidden access to Braceros because of their discriminatory practices so they used undocumented workers for their labor.

Los Braceros -- In August of 1942, both Mexico and the U. S. set forth conditions which Mexican labor might be recruited for wartime employment limited to agricultural employment. These workers helped harvest practically every major crop; in addition 80,000 Mexicans were recruited as maintenance workers on the railroad. The farm labor importation ended on December 31, 1947, with the option to renew the agreement which in time was. The Bracero Program did not officially end until 1964. Millions and millions of Bracers worked in the U. S.

What was the real crux of the Mexican Problem? The pattern of discrimination in employment, in the schools and in civic life throughout the borderlands continued. "So long as the Mexican knows that he may be killed with impunity by any American who chooses to kill him, then all our talk about being good neighbors is merely paying lip service to a friendship we both know is a joke." The president of Mexico pleaded that Mexicans be given quality of opportunity. If not, there could be no good neighborly relations between Mexico and the U. S.

What started occurring? Grass Roots democracy -- organizing from the bottom up - self-determination -- refusal to be treated like second class citizens any longer --organizations such as CAO-Community action groups. LULAC had been active since the late 1920's.

Changes from World War II

World War II brought about dramatic changes to Chicanos. The war effort created earlier undreamed of opportunities for education, jobs, training, and economic advancement for Chicanos. Involvement in World War II strengthened their sense of citizenship, which in turn resulted in organizational development focusing on civil rights.

The war against the fascist powers and the tremendous demand for labor that it created, plus efforts of the War Manpower Commission and the Fair Employment Practices Committee helped to reduce open discrimination against Chicanos in employment and they were not totally excluded from unions anymore. However, after the war Chicano veterans were still met with discrimination and little increase in social acceptance.  The difference now was that these veterans who had been willing to die for their country were no longer going to accept second class citizenship. They devoted their energies to goals of personal, social and economic improvement, in other words they lay the groundwork for the upcoming period, The Politics of Protest.  Urbanization also took -place--moving from rural areas to the city.

A very positive development was the founding of American G. I. Forum founded under the leadership of Dr. Hector Garcia. The forum initially for Mexican descent veterans soon found itself leading voter registration drives, filed lawsuits against civil and social discrimination, especially against segregation in Texas schools.

After a hundred years since the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo there was recognition that the treaty had not been honored. It was the beginning of action programs to help Chicanos. Public attention also began to focus on the Anglo-Hispano relations in the entire Southwest. The Mexican Problem started being viewed as the Anglo-American problem. Throughout southern California, Mexican Americans began moving toward a new awareness, a new consciousness of their rights as U. S. citizens and "gaining access to the proverbial piece of the pie."

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