Week 17/18 Smyth
Themes
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 Mexico/US: frontier vs borderlands
 Labor and migration in the early twentieth century
 Filming the Revolution
 Becoming Mexican American (1929-)
 Being Chicano (1942-)
 Rethinking the Cold War
 Brown Power
 Borderlands/Fronteras
Reminders
 1848, 30,000 Mexicans became US citizens (10,000 californios)
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 Between 1849 and 1860 over 150 Mexicans were lynched in
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California
Between 1880 and 1930, 27.4 in 100,000 Mexican Americans lynched.
African Americans at 37 in 100,000.
Immigration from Mexico to US jumps with Mexican Revolution– 1
million between 1911 and 1913
Are Mexican Americans white? 1930 census lists Mexican as raciala
category. 1935 Federal judge refuses citizenship to 3 Mexican
applicants as they aren’t “white.” 1940 the race category is removed.
500,000 Mexican American men serve overseas yet Felix Longoria
denied burial in Three Rivers, TX because he was Mexican (Hector
Garcia est. GI Forum 1948)
In Southwest before 1960s Mexican Americans had separate schools,
toilets, restaurants, and could not see films with ‘whites’
Immigration
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 Plan de San Diego, 1915– kill all the white Texans –
retake the space
 Mexicans brought in as strike breakers in 1919
Chicago Steel
 Mexican immigrants exempted from 1924
Immigration Act
 LULAC formed by middle class Mexican Americans,
1929 (aims for citizenship, assimilation, ending
segregation in schools, outlawing poll taxes and
voting restrictions. Term Mexican American
promoted– excludes illegals
 Contrast: El Congreso de Pueblos de Habla
Espanola, 1938, co organized by Josephina Bright,
arguing for rights for all Mexican immigrants
Labor
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 IWW focuses on West and agricultural workers
 Nearly 1 million Mexican Americans deported under
Hoover at start of Depression
 1936 agricultural workers exempt from National Labor
relations act
 1939: Grapes of Wrath ignores Mexican American workers,
although 2/3 of all strikes in the Depression were lead by
Latinos
 1941: Bracero program brings back Mexican workers to
undercut domestic wages and break strikes– extended
through 1964 440,000 per annum at height
 Luisa Moreno becomes first Latina to hold national union
office as Veep of United Cannery, Agricultural, Packing
and allied Workers of America (CIO affiliate)
Brown Power
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 Dolores Huerta and Cesar Chavez co-found United
Farm Workers, 1962
 United Farm Workers’ flag uses Aztec eagle
 Brown Berets (1967)– La Causa deliberately ignores
women’s liberation (Grace Reyes)
 Anti-Vietnam War protests, 1968-71
 Moratorium March to protest in East LA, 1970
 Death of Rueben Salazar of LA Times
 Aztlan and the cultural reclamation of the Southwest
(Oscar Zeta Acosta)
Mexico and images of
American revolt
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 John Reed’s coverage of Mexican revolution
 Mexican muralism later inspiration for Chicano art
 Socialist regime in 1930s
 Trotsky lives with Rivera and Kahlo while in exile
 State sponsored socialist educational films: Redes,
1936
 Eisenstein’s Que viva Mexico (1930-4) done at behest
of the Sinclairs
 Cold War exiles
Bicultural Chicano Art
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 Great Wall of LA, Judy Baca
Chicana Literature and “La
mestiza”
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 “Until I am free to write bilingually and to switch
codes without having always to translate, while I still
have to speak English or Spanish when I would
rather speak Spanglish, and as long as I have to
accommodate the English speakers rather than
having them accommodate me, my tongue will be
illegitimate. I will no longer be made to feel ashamed
of existing. I will have my voice: Indian, Spanish,
white. I will have my serpent's tongue - my woman's
voice, my sexual voice, my poet's voice. I will
overcome the tradition of silence.” Gloria Anzaldua
Other side of fence…
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 repatriation/deportation during 1930s (including 50%
legals)
 Bracero program/ increased security at borders
 Operation Wetback, 1954
 1965 immigration act stricter for Latin America
 1986 amnesty for those who were in US illegally from
1982
 CA Proposition 187 (1994); declared unconstitutional
 7-20 million estimated illegal immigrants in US
 Deportation levels have increased 60% from 2004-08 with
2/3 Mexican
 400,000 deportations in 2010– increasing every year.