Mexican Americans ( es, mexicano-estadounidenses, , or ) are
Americans
Americans are the citizens and nationals of the United States of America.; ; Although direct citizens and nationals make up the majority of Americans, many dual citizens, expatriates, and permanent residents could also legally claim Ame ...
of full or partial
Mexican
Mexican may refer to:
Mexico and its culture
*Being related to, from, or connected to the country of Mexico, in North America
** People
*** Mexicans, inhabitants of the country Mexico and their descendants
*** Mexica, ancient indigenous people ...
heritage.
In 2019, Mexican Americans comprised 11.3% of the US population and 61.5% of all
Hispanic and Latino Americans
Hispanic and Latino Americans ( es, Estadounidenses hispanos y latinos; pt, Estadunidenses hispânicos e latinos) are Americans of Spaniards, Spanish and/or Latin Americans, Latin American ancestry. More broadly, these demographics include a ...
.
In 2019, 71% of Mexican Americans were born in the United States,
[ though they make up 53% of the total population of foreign-born Latino Americans and 25% of the total foreign-born population.][ The United States is home to the second-largest Mexican community in the world (24% of the entire Mexican-origin population of the world), behind only ]Mexico
Mexico (Spanish language, Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a List of sovereign states, country in the southern portion of North America. It is borders of Mexico, bordered to the north by the United States; to the so ...
. Most Mexican Americans reside in the Southwest (over 60% in the states of California
California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...
and Texas
Texas (, ; Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2020, it is the second-largest U.S. state by ...
). Many Mexican Americans living in the United States have assimilated into American culture
The culture of the United States of America is primarily of Western, and European origin, yet its influences includes the cultures of Asian American, African American, Latin American, and Native American peoples and their cultures. The U ...
which has made some become less connected with their culture of birth (or of their parents/ grandparents) and sometimes creates an identity crisis
In psychology, identity crisis is a stage theory of identity development where it involves resolution of a conflict over the 8 stages of the lifespan.(Schultz, 216) The term was coined by German psychologist Erik Erikson.
The stage of psychosoci ...
.
Most Mexican Americans have varying degrees of Indigenous and European ancestry, with the latter being mostly Spanish origins. Those of indigenous ancestry descend from one or more of the over 60 indigenous groups in Mexico (approximately 200,000 people in California alone). It is estimated that approximately 10% of the current Mexican American population are descended from early Mexican residents such as New Mexican Hispanos, Tejanos
Tejanos (, ; singular: ''Tejano/a''; Spanish for "Texan", originally borrowed from the Caddo ''tayshas'') are the residents of the state of Texas who are culturally descended from the Mexican population of Tejas and Coahuila that lived in th ...
and Californios
Californio (plural Californios) is a term used to designate a Hispanic Californian, especially those descended from Spanish and Mexican settlers of the 17th through 19th centuries. California's Spanish-speaking community has resided there sinc ...
, who became US citizens in 1848 through the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ( es, Tratado de Guadalupe Hidalgo), officially the Treaty of Peace, Friendship, Limits, and Settlement between the United States of America and the United Mexican States, is the peace treaty that was signed on 2 ...
, which ended the Mexican–American War
The Mexican–American War, also known in the United States as the Mexican War and in Mexico as the (''United States intervention in Mexico''), was an armed conflict between the United States and Mexico from 1846 to 1848. It followed the ...
. Mexicans living in the United States after the treaty was signed were forced to choose between keeping their Mexican citizenship or becoming a US citizen. Few chose to leave their homes in the States. The majority of these Hispanophone
Hispanophone and Hispanic refers to anything relating to the Spanish language (the Hispanosphere).
In a cultural, rather than merely linguistic sense, the notion of "Hispanophone" goes further than the above definition. The Hispanic culture is th ...
populations eventually adopted English as their first language and became Americanized
Americanization or Americanisation (see spelling differences) is the influence of American culture and business on other countries outside the United States of America, including their media, cuisine, business practices, popular culture, tec ...
. Also called Hispanos
Hispanos (from es, adj. prefix Hispano- relating to Spain, from la, Hispānus) are Hispanic residents of the United States who are culturally descended from the original Spanish-speaking settlers in the areas which were once part of New Spai ...
, these descendants of independent Mexico from the early to middle 19th century
The 19th (nineteenth) century began on 1 January 1801 ( MDCCCI), and ended on 31 December 1900 ( MCM). The 19th century was the ninth century of the 2nd millennium.
The 19th century was characterized by vast social upheaval. Slavery was abolish ...
differentiate themselves culturally from the population of Mexican Americans whose ancestors arrived in the American Southwest after the Mexican Revolution
The Mexican Revolution ( es, Revolución Mexicana) was an extended sequence of armed regional conflicts in Mexico from approximately 1910 to 1920. It has been called "the defining event of modern Mexican history". It resulted in the destruction ...
.
Although most of the Mexican American population was considered white
White is the lightest color and is achromatic (having no hue). It is the color of objects such as snow, chalk, and milk, and is the opposite of black. White objects fully reflect and scatter all the visible wavelengths of light. White ...
by the Treaty, many continued to face discrimination in the form of Anti-Mexican sentiment
Anti-Mexican sentiment is an attitude toward people of Mexican descent, Mexican culture and/or Mexican Spanish and is most commonly found in the United States.
Its origins in the United States date back to the Mexican and American Wars ...
, noted in the idea that Mexicans were "too Indian" to be citizens.[ Despite assurances to the contrary, the ]property rights
The right to property, or the right to own property (cf. ownership) is often classified as a human right for natural persons regarding their possessions. A general recognition of a right to private property is found more rarely and is typically h ...
of formerly Mexican citizens were often not honored by the US government. Continuous large-scale migration
Migration, migratory, or migrate may refer to: Human migration
* Human migration, physical movement by humans from one region to another
** International migration, when peoples cross state boundaries and stay in the host state for some minimum le ...
, particularly after the 1910 Mexican Revolution
The Mexican Revolution ( es, Revolución Mexicana) was an extended sequence of armed regional conflicts in Mexico from approximately 1910 to 1920. It has been called "the defining event of modern Mexican history". It resulted in the destruction ...
, added to this population. During the Great Depression
The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagio ...
, many Mexican Americans were repatriated or deported to Mexico. An estimated 355,000 to 1 million people were repatriated in total, 40–60% of whom were US citizens
Citizenship of the United States is a legal status that entails Americans with specific rights, duties, protections, and benefits in the United States. It serves as a foundation of fundamental rights derived from and protected by the Constitu ...
– overwhelmingly children. Critical race theorist Ian Haney López
Ian F. Haney López (born 1964) is the Chief Justice Earl Warren Professor of Public Law at the University of California, Berkeley. He works in the area of racism and racial justice in American law.
Life and career
Haney López born on July 6, ...
, posited that in the 1930s, "community leaders promoted the term ''Mexican American'' to convey an assimilationist
Cultural assimilation is the process in which a minority group or culture comes to resemble a society's majority group or assume the values, behaviors, and beliefs of another group whether fully or partially.
The different types of cultural assi ...
ideology stressing white identity" and that by the 1940s and 1950s, the community had fractured over the issue of cultural assimilation
Cultural assimilation is the process in which a minority group or culture comes to resemble a society's majority group or assume the values, behaviors, and beliefs of another group whether fully or partially.
The different types of cultural ass ...
with some anti-assimilationist youth rejecting ''Mexican American'' and instead developed an "alienated ''pachuco
Pachucos are male members of a counterculture associated with zoot suit fashion, jazz and swing music, a distinct dialect known as '' caló'', and self-empowerment in rejecting assimilation into Anglo-American society that emerged in El Pas ...
'' culture that fashioned itself neither as Mexican nor American" while others developed a more assimilationist stance by promoting the ''Mexican American'' identity "as a white ethnic group that had little in common with African Americans
African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...
." The anti-assimilationist challenge to ''Mexican American'' identity would form the basis of '' Chicano/a'' identity in the 1960s, which itself was influenced by the reclamation of ''Black
Black is a color which results from the absence or complete absorption of visible light. It is an achromatic color, without hue, like white and grey. It is often used symbolically or figuratively to represent darkness. Black and white ha ...
'' by African Americans
African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...
. Although ''Chicano/a'' had previously been used as a classist
Class discrimination, also known as classism, is prejudice or discrimination on the basis of social class. It includes individual attitudes, behaviors, systems of policies and practices that are set up to benefit the upper class at the expense of ...
and racial slur
The following is a list of ethnic slurs or ethnophaulisms or ethnic epithets that are, or have been, used as insinuations or allegations about members of a given ethnicity or racial group or to refer to them in a derogatory, pejorative, or oth ...
to refer to working class
The working class (or labouring class) comprises those engaged in manual-labour occupations or industrial work, who are remunerated via waged or salaried contracts. Working-class occupations (see also " Designation of workers by collar colou ...
Mexican American people in Spanish-speaking neighborhoods, the Chicano Movement
The Chicano Movement, also referred to as El Movimiento, was a social and political movement in the United States inspired by prior acts of resistance among people of Mexican descent, especially of Pachucos in the 1940s and 1950s, and the Black ...
reclaimed the term to promote cultural revitalization and community empowerment in the 1960s and 1970s.
In the 1980s, following the decline of the Chicano Movement, assimilation
Assimilation may refer to:
Culture
* Cultural assimilation, the process whereby a minority group gradually adapts to the customs and attitudes of the prevailing culture and customs
** Language shift, also known as language assimilation, the prog ...
and economic mobility became a goal of many Mexican Americans in an era of conservatism
Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy that seeks to promote and to preserve traditional institutions, practices, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civilizati ...
, many of whom adopted the terms ''Hispanic
The term ''Hispanic'' ( es, hispano) refers to people, cultures, or countries related to Spain, the Spanish language, or Hispanidad.
The term commonly applies to countries with a cultural and historical link to Spain and to viceroyalties for ...
'' and '' Latino''. Prior to this time, the United States Census provided no clear way for Mexican Americans to identify. On the 1980 census, the US government promoted the term ''Hispanic'' while ''Chicano'' appeared as a subcategory underneath the category of ''Spanish/Hispanic'' descent. Immigration from Mexico increased greatly during the 1980s and 1990s and peaked in the mid-2000s. With the peak of immigration in the 1980s the Immigration Amnesty was passed, letting many of the Mexican immigrants get their residency in the United States. The Great Recession
The Great Recession was a period of marked general decline, i.e. a recession, observed in national economies globally that occurred from late 2007 into 2009. The scale and timing of the recession varied from country to country (see map). At ...
(2007–2009) resulted in a decline in immigration from Mexico.
History of Mexican Americans
In 1900, there were slightly more than 500,000 Latinos
Hispanic and Latino Americans ( es, Estadounidenses hispanos y latinos; pt, Estadunidenses hispânicos e latinos) are Americans of Spaniards, Spanish and/or Latin Americans, Latin American ancestry. More broadly, these demographics include a ...
of Mexican descent living in New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Colorado, California and Texas. Most were Mexican Americans of Spanish descent and other Hispanicized European settlers who settled in the Southwest during Spanish colonial times, as well as local and Mexican Amerindians.
As early as 1813, some of the Tejano
Tejanos (, ; singular: ''Tejano/a''; Spanish for "Texan", originally borrowed from the Caddo ''tayshas'') are the residents of the state of Texas who are culturally descended from the Mexican population of Tejas and Coahuila that lived in t ...
s who colonized Texas in the Spanish Colonial Period established a government in Texas that desired independence from Spanish-ruled Mexico. In those days, there was no concept of identity as Mexican. Many Mexicans were more loyal to their states/provinces than to their country as a whole, which was a colony of Spain. This was particularly true in frontier regions such as Zacatecas
, image_map = Zacatecas in Mexico (location map scheme).svg
, map_caption = State of Zacatecas within Mexico
, coordinates =
, coor_pinpoint =
, coordinates_footnotes =
, subdivision_type ...
, Texas
Texas (, ; Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2020, it is the second-largest U.S. state by ...
, Yucatán
Yucatán (, also , , ; yua, Yúukatan ), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Yucatán,; yua, link=no, Xóot' Noj Lu'umil Yúukatan. is one of the 31 states which comprise the federal entities of Mexico. It comprises 106 separate mun ...
, Oaxaca
Oaxaca ( , also , , from nci, Huāxyacac ), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Oaxaca ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Oaxaca), is one of the 32 states that compose the Federative Entities of Mexico. It is divided into 570 municipaliti ...
, New Mexico
)
, population_demonym = New Mexican ( es, Neomexicano, Neomejicano, Nuevo Mexicano)
, seat = Santa Fe, New Mexico, Santa Fe
, LargestCity = Albuquerque, New Mexico, Albuquerque
, LargestMetro = Albuquerque metropolitan area, Tiguex
, Offi ...
, etc.
As shown by the writings of colonial Tejanos such as Antonio Menchaca
José Antonio Menchaca (January 1800 – November 1, 1879) was an American soldier and politician who fought in the Texas Revolution and was recognized by a Joint Resolution of the Republic of Texas on December 22, 1838. Following the war, Menc ...
, the Texas Revolution was initially a colonial Tejano cause. Mexico encouraged immigration from the United States to settle east Texas and, by 1831, English-speaking
Speakers of English are also known as Anglophones, and the countries where English is natively spoken by the majority of the population are termed the ''Anglosphere''. Over two billion people speak English , making English the largest language ...
settlers outnumbered Tejanos ten to one in the region. Both groups were settled mostly in the eastern part of the territory. The Mexican government became concerned about the increasing volume of Anglo-American immigration and restricted the number of settlers from the United States allowed to enter Texas. Consistent with its abolition of slavery, the Mexican government banned slavery within the state, which angered American slave owners. The American settlers, along with many of the Tejano, rebelled against the centralized authority of Mexico City
Mexico City ( es, link=no, Ciudad de México, ; abbr.: CDMX; Nahuatl: ''Altepetl Mexico'') is the capital and largest city of Mexico, and the most populous city in North America. One of the world's alpha cities, it is located in the Valley o ...
and the Santa Anna Santa Anna may refer to:
* Santa Anna, Texas, a town in Coleman County in Central Texas, United States
* Santa Anna, Starr County, Texas
* Santa Anna Township, DeWitt County, Illinois, one of townships in DeWitt County, Illinois, United States. ...
regime, while other Tejano remained loyal to Mexico, and still others were neutral.
Author John P. Schmal wrote of the effect Texas independence had on the Tejano community:
A native of San Antonio, Juan Seguín
Juan Nepomuceno Seguín (October 27, 1806 – August 27, 1890) was a Spanish-Tejano political and military figure of the Texas Revolution who helped to establish the independence of Texas. Numerous places and institutions are named in his hon ...
is probably the most famous Tejano to be involved in the War of Texas Independence. His story is complex because he joined the Anglo rebels and helped defeat the Mexican forces of Santa Anna. But later on, as Mayor of San Antonio, he and other Tejanos felt the hostile encroachments of the growing Anglo power against them. After receiving a series of death threats, Seguín relocated his family in Mexico, where he was coerced into military service and fought against the US in 1846–1848 Mexican–American War.
Although the events of 1836 led to independence for the people of Texas, the Latino population of the state was very quickly disenfranchised, to the extent that their political representation in the Texas State Legislature disappeared entirely for several decades.
As a Spanish colony, the territory of California also had an established population of colonial settlers. Californios
Californio (plural Californios) is a term used to designate a Hispanic Californian, especially those descended from Spanish and Mexican settlers of the 17th through 19th centuries. California's Spanish-speaking community has resided there sinc ...
is the term for the Spanish-speaking residents of modern-day California; they were the original Mexicans (regardless of race) and local Hispanicized Amerindians in the region (Alta California
Alta California ('Upper California'), also known as ('New California') among other names, was a province of New Spain, formally established in 1804. Along with the Baja California peninsula, it had previously comprised the province of , but ...
) before the United States acquired it as a territory. In the mid-19th century, more settlers from the United States began to enter the territory.
In California, Mexican settlement began in 1769 with the establishment of the Presidio and Catholic mission of San Diego. 20 more missions were established along the California coast by 1823, along with military Presidios and civilian communities. Settlers in California tended to stay close to the coast and outside of the California interior. The California economy was based on agriculture and livestock. In contrast to central New Spain, coastal colonists found little mineral wealth. Some became farmers or ranchers, working for themselves on their own land or for other colonists. Government officials, priests, soldiers, and artisans settled in towns, missions, and presidios.[Pitti, Jose (1988). A History of Mexican Americans in California. State of California, Department of Parks and Recreation. p.207.]
One of the most important events in the history of Mexican settlers in California occurred in 1833, when the Mexican Government secularized the missions. In effect this meant that the government took control of large and vast areas of land. These lands were eventually distributed among the population in the form of Ranchos, which soon became the basic socio-economic units of the province.
Relations between Californios and English-speaking settlers were relatively good until 1846, when military officer John C. Fremont
John is a common English name and surname:
* John (given name)
* John (surname)
John may also refer to:
New Testament
Works
* Gospel of John, a title often shortened to John
* First Epistle of John, often shortened to 1 John
* Second E ...
arrived in Alta California with a United States force of 60 men on an exploratory expedition. Fremont made an agreement with Comandante Castro that he would stay in the San Joaquin Valley
The San Joaquin Valley ( ; es, Valle de San Joaquín) is the area of the Central Valley of the U.S. state of California that lies south of the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta and is drained by the San Joaquin River. It comprises seven ...
only for the winter, then move north to Oregon. However, Fremont remained in the Santa Clara Valley
The Santa Clara Valley is a geologic trough in Northern California that extends 90 miles (145 km) south–southeast from San Francisco to Hollister. The longitudinal valley is bordered on the west by the Santa Cruz Mountains and on the east ...
then headed towards Monterey
Monterey (; es, Monterrey; Ohlone: ) is a city located in Monterey County on the southern edge of Monterey Bay on the U.S. state of California's Central Coast. Founded on June 3, 1770, it functioned as the capital of Alta California under bot ...
. When Castro demanded that Fremont leave Alta California, Fremont rode to Gavilan Peak, raised a US flag and vowed to fight to the last man to defend it. After three days of tension, Fremont retreated to Oregon without a shot being fired.
With relations between Californios and Americans quickly souring, Fremont returned to Alta California, where he encouraged European-American settlers to seize a group of Castro's soldiers and their horses. Another group seized the Presidio of Sonoma
The Sonoma Barracks ( Spanish: ''Cuartel de Sonoma'') is a two-story, wide-balconied, adobe building facing the central plaza of the City of Sonoma, California. It was built by order of Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo to house the Mexican soldiers tha ...
and captured Mariano Vallejo.
The Americans chose William B. Ide as chosen Commander in Chief and on July 5, he proclaimed the creation of the Bear Flag Republic
The California Republic ( es, La República de California), or Bear Flag Republic, was an unrecognized breakaway state from Mexico, that for 25 days in 1846 militarily controlled an area north of San Francisco, in and around what is now S ...
. On July 9, US military forces reached Sonoma; they lowered the Bear Flag Republic's flag, replacing it with a US flag. Californios organized an army to defend themselves from invading American forces after the Mexican army retreated from Alta California to defend other parts of Mexico.
The Californios defeated an American force in Los Angeles on September 30, 1846. In turn, they were defeated after the Americans reinforced their forces in what is now southern California. Tens of thousands of miners and associated people arrived during the California Gold Rush
The California Gold Rush (1848–1855) was a gold rush that began on January 24, 1848, when gold was found by James W. Marshall at Sutter's Mill in Coloma, California. The news of gold brought approximately 300,000 people to California f ...
, and their activities in some areas meant the end of the Californios' ranching lifestyle. Many of the English-speaking 49ers turned from mining to farming and moved, often illegally, onto land granted to Californios by the former Mexican government.
The United States had first come into conflict with Mexico in the 1830s, as the westward spread of United States settlements and of slavery brought significant numbers of new settlers into the region known as Tejas (modern-day Texas), then part of Mexico. The Mexican–American War
The Mexican–American War, also known in the United States as the Mexican War and in Mexico as the (''United States intervention in Mexico''), was an armed conflict between the United States and Mexico from 1846 to 1848. It followed the ...
, followed by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 and the Gadsden Purchase
The Gadsden Purchase ( es, region=MX, la Venta de La Mesilla "The Sale of La Mesilla") is a region of present-day southern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico that the United States acquired from Mexico by the Treaty of Mesilla, which took effe ...
in 1853, extended US control over a wide range of territory once held by Mexico, including the present-day borders of Texas and the states of New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, Arizona and California.
Although the treaty promised that the landowners in this newly acquired territory would have their property rights preserved and protected as if they were citizens of the United States, many former citizens of Mexico lost their land in lawsuits before state and federal courts over terms of land grants, or as a result of legislation passed after the treaty. Even those statutes which Congress passed to protect the owners of property at the time of the extension of the United States' borders, such as the 1851 California Land Act, had the effect of dispossessing Californio owners. They were ruined by the cost over years of having to maintain litigation to support their land titles.
Following the concession of California to the United States under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, Mexicans were repeatedly targeted by legislation that targeted their socio-economic standing in the area. One significant instance of this is exemplified by the passage of legislation that placed the heaviest tax burden on land. The fact that there was such a heavy tax on land was important to the socio-economic standing of Mexican Americans, because it essentially limited their ability to keep possession of the Ranchos that had been originally granted to them by the Mexican government.
19th-century and Early 20th-century Mexican migration
In the late nineteenth century, liberal Mexican President Porfirio Díaz
José de la Cruz Porfirio Díaz Mori ( or ; ; 15 September 1830 – 2 July 1915), known as Porfirio Díaz, was a Mexican general and politician who served seven terms as President of Mexico, a total of 31 years, from 28 November 1876 to 6 Decem ...
embarked on a program of economic modernization that triggered not only a wave of internal migration in Mexico from rural areas to cities, but also Mexican emigration to the United States. A railway network was constructed that connected central Mexico to the US border and also opened up previously isolated regions. The second factor was the shift in land tenure that left Mexican peasants without title or access to land for farming on their own account. For the first time, Mexicans in increasing numbers migrated north into the United States for better economic opportunities. In the early 20th century, the first main period of migration to the United States happened between the 1910s to the 1920s, referred to as the Great Migration. During this time period the Mexican Revolution
The Mexican Revolution ( es, Revolución Mexicana) was an extended sequence of armed regional conflicts in Mexico from approximately 1910 to 1920. It has been called "the defining event of modern Mexican history". It resulted in the destruction ...
was taking place, creating turmoil within and against the Mexican government causing civilians to seek out economic and political stability in the United States. Over 1.3 million Mexicans relocated to the United States from 1910 well into the 1930s, with significant increases each decade. Many of these immigrants found agricultural work, being contracted under private laborers.
During the great depression
The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagio ...
in the 1930s, many Mexicans and Mexican Americans were repatriated to Mexico. Many deportations were overseen by state and local authorities who acted on the encouragement of Secretary of Labor William N. Doak and the Department of Labor. The government deported at least 82,000 people. Between 355,000 and 1,000,000 were repatriated or deported to Mexico in total; approximately forty to sixty percent of those repatriated were birthright citizens - overwhelmingly children. Voluntary repatriation was much more common during the repatriations than formal deportation. According to legal professor Kevin R. Johnson, the repatriation campaign was based on ethnicity and meets the modern legal standards of ethnic cleansing
Ethnic cleansing is the systematic forced removal of ethnic, racial, and religious groups from a given area, with the intent of making a region ethnically homogeneous. Along with direct removal, extermination, deportation or population transfer ...
, because it frequently ignored citizenship.
The second period of increased migration is known as the Bracero Era from 1942 to 1964, referring to the Bracero program implemented by the United States, contracting agricultural labor from Mexico due to labor shortages from the World War II draft. An estimated 4.6 million Mexican immigrants were pulled into the United States through the Bracero Program from the 1940s to the 1960s. The lack of agricultural laborers due to increases in military drafts for World War II opened up a chronic need for low wage workers to fill jobs.
Late 20th century
While Mexican Americans are concentrated in the Southwest
The points of the compass are a set of horizontal, radially arrayed compass directions (or azimuths) used in navigation and cartography. A compass rose is primarily composed of four cardinal directions—north, east, south, and west—each sepa ...
: California, Arizona
Arizona ( ; nv, Hoozdo Hahoodzo ; ood, Alĭ ṣonak ) is a state in the Southwestern United States. It is the 6th largest and the 14th most populous of the 50 states. Its capital and largest city is Phoenix. Arizona is part of the Fou ...
, New Mexico
)
, population_demonym = New Mexican ( es, Neomexicano, Neomejicano, Nuevo Mexicano)
, seat = Santa Fe, New Mexico, Santa Fe
, LargestCity = Albuquerque, New Mexico, Albuquerque
, LargestMetro = Albuquerque metropolitan area, Tiguex
, Offi ...
, and Texas, during World War I many moved to industrial communities such as St. Louis, Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland
Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the United States, U.S. U.S. state, state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County, Ohio, Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along ...
, Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Wester ...
, and other steel-producing regions, where they gained industrial jobs. Like European immigrants, they were attracted to work that did not require proficiency in English. Industrial restructuring in the second half of the century put many Mexican Americans out of work in addition to people of other ethnic groups. Their industrial skills were not as useful in the changing economies of these areas.
During the first half of the 20th century, Mexican-American workers formed unions of their own and joined integrated unions. The most significant union struggle involving Mexican Americans was the effort to organize agricultural workers and the United Farm Workers
The United Farm Workers of America, or more commonly just United Farm Workers (UFW), is a labor union for farmworkers in the United States. It originated from the merger of two workers' rights organizations, the Agricultural Workers Organizing ...
' long strike and boycott aimed at grape growers in the San Joaquin and Coachella valleys in the late 1960s. Leaders César Chávez
Cesar Chavez (born Cesario Estrada Chavez ; ; March 31, 1927 – April 23, 1993) was an American labor leader and civil rights activist. Along with Dolores Huerta, he co-founded the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA), which later merg ...
and Dolores Huerta
Dolores Clara Fernández Huerta (born April 10, 1930) is an American labor leader and civil rights activist who, with Cesar Chavez, is a co-founder of the National Farmworkers Association, which later merged with the Agricultural Workers Organiz ...
gained national prominence as they led a workers' rights organization that helped workers get unemployment insurance to an effective union of farmworkers almost overnight. The struggle to protect rights and sustainable wages for migrant workers has continued.
The Delano grape strike
The Delano grape strike was a labor strike organized by the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC), a predominantly Filipino and AFL-CIO-sponsored labor organization, against table grape growers in Delano, California to fight agains ...
was influenced by the Filipino-American
Filipino Americans ( fil, Mga Pilipinong Amerikano) are Americans of Filipino ancestry. Filipinos and other Asian ethnicities in North America were first documented in the 16th century as slaves and prisoners on ships sailing to and from New ...
farm worker strike in Coachella Valley, May 1965. In which Migrant Filipino-American workers asked for a $0.15/hour raise.
The 1965 Delano grape strike
The Delano grape strike was a labor strike organized by the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC), a predominantly Filipino and AFL-CIO-sponsored labor organization, against table grape growers in Delano, California to fight agains ...
, sparked by mostly Filipino American
Filipino Americans ( fil, Mga Pilipinong Amerikano) are Americans of Filipino ancestry. Filipinos and other Asian ethnicities in North America were first documented in the 16th century as slaves and prisoners on ships sailing to and from New ...
farmworkers, became an intersectional
Intersectionality is an analytical framework for understanding how aspects of a person's social and political identities combine to create different modes of discrimination and privilege. Intersectionality identifies multiple factors of adva ...
struggle when labor leaders and voting rights
Suffrage, political franchise, or simply franchise, is the right to vote in representative democracy, public, political elections and referendums (although the term is sometimes used for any right to vote). In some languages, and occasionally i ...
and civil rights
Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from infringement by governments, social organizations, and private individuals. They ensure one's entitlement to participate in the civil and political life ...
activists Dolores Huerta
Dolores Clara Fernández Huerta (born April 10, 1930) is an American labor leader and civil rights activist who, with Cesar Chavez, is a co-founder of the National Farmworkers Association, which later merged with the Agricultural Workers Organiz ...
, founder of the National Farm Workers Association and her co-leader César Chávez
Cesar Chavez (born Cesario Estrada Chavez ; ; March 31, 1927 – April 23, 1993) was an American labor leader and civil rights activist. Along with Dolores Huerta, he co-founded the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA), which later merg ...
united with the strikers to form the United Farm Workers
The United Farm Workers of America, or more commonly just United Farm Workers (UFW), is a labor union for farmworkers in the United States. It originated from the merger of two workers' rights organizations, the Agricultural Workers Organizing ...
. Huerta's slogan " Sí, se puede" (Spanish for "Yes we can"), was popularized by Chávez's fast and became a rallying cry for the Chicano Movement
The Chicano Movement, also referred to as El Movimiento, was a social and political movement in the United States inspired by prior acts of resistance among people of Mexican descent, especially of Pachucos in the 1940s and 1950s, and the Black ...
or Mexican American civil rights movement. The Chicano movement aimed for a variety of civil rights
Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from infringement by governments, social organizations, and private individuals. They ensure one's entitlement to participate in the civil and political life ...
reforms and was inspired by the civil rights movement
The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional racial segregation, discrimination, and disenfranchisement throughout the Unite ...
; demands ranged from the restoration of land grants to farm workers' rights, to enhanced education, to voting and political rights, as well as emerging awareness of collective history. The Chicano walkouts of antiwar students is traditionally seen as the start of the more radical phase of the Chicano movement.
Since the late 20th century, undocumented Mexican immigrants have increasingly become a large part of the workforce in industries such as meat packing, where processing centers have moved closer to ranches in relatively isolated rural areas of the Midwest
The Midwestern United States, also referred to as the Midwest or the American Midwest, is one of four Census Bureau Region, census regions of the United States Census Bureau (also known as "Region 2"). It occupies the northern central part of ...
; in agriculture in the southeastern United States; and in the construction, landscaping, restaurant, hotel and other service industries throughout the country.
Since there weren't many job opportunities in their country, Mexicans moved to the United States to help them receive a job. However, when they came to the United States their wages were extremely low.
Mexican-American identity has changed throughout these years. Over the past hundred years, activist Mexican Americans have campaigned for their constitutional rights as citizens, to overturn discrimination in voting and to gain other civil rights. They have opposed educational and employment discrimination, and worked for economic and social advancement. In numerous locations, court cases have been filed under the Voting Rights Act of 1965
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is a landmark piece of federal legislation in the United States that prohibits racial discrimination in voting. It was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson during the height of the civil rights m ...
to challenge practices, such as poll taxes and literacy tests in English, that made it more difficult for Spanish-language minorities to register and vote. At the same time, many Mexican Americans have struggled with defining and maintaining their community's cultural identity as distinct from mainstream United States. That changes in response to the absorption of countless new immigrants.
In the 1960s and 1970s, some Latino student groups flirted with Mexican nationalism, and differences over the proper name for members of the community. Discussion over self-identification as Chicano/Chicana, Latino or Mexican Americans became tied up with deeper disagreements over whether to integrate into or remain separate from mainstream American society. There were divisions between those Mexican Americans whose families had lived in the United States for two or more generations and more recent immigrants, in addition to distinctions from other Latino immigrants from nations in Central and South America with their own distinct cultural traditions.
During this period, civil rights groups such as the National Mexican-American Anti-Defamation Committee The National Mexican-American Anti-Defamation Committee (N.M.A.A.D.C) is the major advocacy group for Mexican-Americans and DACA recipients in The United States. Mostly active between 1968-1971. The group has undergone development and is actively wo ...
were founded. By the early 21st century, the states with the largest percentages and populations of Mexican Americans are California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Colorado
Colorado (, other variants) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It encompasses most of the Southern Rocky Mountains, as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of the ...
, Nevada
Nevada ( ; ) is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, Western region of the United States. It is bordered by Oregon to the northwest, Idaho to the northeast, California to the west, Arizona to the southeast, and Utah to the east. N ...
and Utah
Utah ( , ) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. Utah is a landlocked U.S. state bordered to its east by Colorado, to its northeast by Wyoming, to its north by Idaho, to its south by Arizona, and to its ...
. There have also been markedly increasing populations in Oklahoma
Oklahoma (; Choctaw: ; chr, ᎣᎧᎳᎰᎹ, ''Okalahoma'' ) is a state in the South Central region of the United States, bordered by Texas on the south and west, Kansas on the north, Missouri on the northeast, Arkansas on the east, New ...
, Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...
and Illinois
Illinois ( ) is a state in the Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolitan areas include, Peoria and Rock ...
.
In terms of religion, Mexican Americans are primarily Roman Catholic
Roman or Romans most often refers to:
* Rome, the capital city of Italy
*Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD
* Roman people, the people of ancient Rome
*'' Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a let ...
. A large minority are Evangelical Protestants. Notably, according to a Pew Hispanic Center report in 2006 and the Pew Religious Landscape Survey in 2008, Mexican Americans are significantly less likely than other Latino groups to abandon Catholicism for Protestant churches.
In 2008, "Yes We Can" (in Spanish: ''" Sí, se puede"'') was adopted as the 2008 campaign slogan
The following is a list of notable political slogans.
Political slogan (listed alphabetically) A
* Abki baar Modi Sarkar – Bharatiya Janata Party's campaign slogan for 2014 Indian Parliamentary Elections
* ACT UP, Fight Back, Fight AIDS – ...
of Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party, Obama was the first Af ...
, whose election
An election is a formal group decision-making process by which a population chooses an individual or multiple individuals to hold public office.
Elections have been the usual mechanism by which modern representative democracy has operat ...
and reelection
The incumbent is the current holder of an office or position, usually in relation to an election. In an election for president, the incumbent is the person holding or acting in the office of president before the election, whether seeking re-el ...
as the first African American
African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...
president underlined the growing importance of the Mexican American vote. The failure of both parties' presidents to properly enact immigration reform in the United States led to an increased polarization of how to handle an increasingly diverse population as Mexican Americans spread out from traditional centers in the Southwest and Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
, image_map =
, map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago
, coordinates =
, coordinates_footnotes =
, subdivision_type = List of sovereign states, Count ...
.
Most Mexican Roma
Roma or ROMA may refer to:
Places Australia
* Roma, Queensland, a town
** Roma Airport
** Roma Courthouse
** Electoral district of Roma, defunct
** Town of Roma, defunct town, now part of the Maranoa Regional Council
* Roma Street, Brisbane, a ...
came to the United States from Argentina. In 2015, the United States admitted 157,227 Mexican immigrants, and as of November 2016, 1.31 million Mexicans were on the waiting list to immigrate to the United States through legal means.
A 2014 survey showed that 34% of Mexicans would immigrate to the United States if given the opportunity, with 17% saying they would do it illegally.
Race and ethnicity
Ethnically, Mexican Americans are a diverse population, including those of European ancestry, Indigenous, African, East Asian, Mexicans of Middle Eastern descent (mainly Lebanese) and mixed race peoples (primarily mestizo
(; ; fem. ) is a term used for racial classification to refer to a person of mixed European and Indigenous American ancestry. In certain regions such as Latin America, it may also refer to people who are culturally European even though thei ...
). The majority of the Mexican population identifies as mestizo. In colonial times, Mestizo was meant to be a person of mixed heritage, particularly European and Native American. Nonetheless, the meaning of the word has changed through time, currently being used to refer to the segment of the Mexican population who is of at least partial Indigenous ancestry, but does not speak Indigenous languages. Thus in Mexico, the term "Mestizo", while still mostly applying to people who are of mixed European and Indigenous descent, to various degrees, the term has become more of a cultural label rather than a racial one. It is vaguely defined and includes people who do not have Indigenous ancestry, people who do not have European ancestry as well as people of mixed, and sometimes predominant African ancestry.
Such transformation of the word is not a casualty but the result of a concept known as "mestizaje", which was promoted by the post-revolutionary Mexican government in an effort to create a united Mexican ethno-cultural identity with no racial distinctions. It is because of this that sometimes the Mestizo population in Mexico is estimated to be as high as 93% of the Mexican population.
Per the 2010 US Census
The United States census of 2010 was the twenty-third United States national census. National Census Day, the reference day used for the census, was April 1, 2010. The census was taken via mail-in citizen self-reporting, with enumerators serv ...
, the majority (52.8%) of Mexican Americans identified as being white
White is the lightest color and is achromatic (having no hue). It is the color of objects such as snow, chalk, and milk, and is the opposite of black. White objects fully reflect and scatter all the visible wavelengths of light. White ...
. The remainder identified themselves as being of "some other race" (39.5%), "two or more races" (5.0%), Native American (1.4%), black
Black is a color which results from the absence or complete absorption of visible light. It is an achromatic color, without hue, like white and grey. It is often used symbolically or figuratively to represent darkness. Black and white ha ...
(0.9%) and Asian / Pacific Islander
Pacific Islanders, Pasifika, Pasefika, or rarely Pacificers are the peoples of the Pacific Islands. As an ethnic/ racial term, it is used to describe the original peoples—inhabitants and diasporas—of any of the three major subregions of O ...
(0.4%). It is notable that only 5% of Mexican Americans reported being of two or more races despite the presumption of mestizaje among the Mexican population in Mexico.
This identification as "some other race" reflects activism among Mexican Americans as claiming a cultural status and working for their rights in the United States, as well as the separation due to different language and culture. Latinos are not a racial classification, however, but an ethnic group.
Genetic studies made in the Mexican population have found European ancestry ranging from 56% going to 60%, 64% and up to 78%. In general, Mexicans have both European and Amerindian ancestries, and the proportion varies by region and individuals. African ancestry is also present, but in lower proportion. There is genetic asymmetry, with the direct paternal line predominately European and the maternal line predominately Amerindian. Younger Mexican Americans tend to have more Indigenous ancestry; in those studied born between the 1940s and 1990s, there was an average increase in ancestry of 0.4% per year. Though there is no simple explanation, it is possibly some combination of assortative mating
Assortative mating (also referred to as positive assortative mating or homogamy) is a mating pattern and a form of sexual selection in which individuals with similar phenotypes or genotypes mate with one another more frequently than would be ...
, changes in migration patterns over time (with more recent immigrants having higher levels of Indigenous ancestry), population growth and other unexamined factors.
For instance, a 2006 study conducted by Mexico's National Institute of Genomic Medicine (INMEGEN), which genotyped 104 samples, reported that Mestizo Mexicans are 58.96% European, 35.05% "Asian" (primarily Amerindian), and 5.03% Other. According to a 2009 report by the Mexican Genome Project, which sampled 300 Mestizos from six Mexican states and one Indigenous group, the gene pool of the Mexican mestizo population was calculated to be 55.2% percent Indigenous, 41.8% European, 1.0% African, and 1.2% Asian. A 2012 study published by the ''Journal of Human Genetics
The ''Journal of Human Genetics'' is a monthly peer-reviewed scientific journal covering all aspects of human genetics and genomics. It was established in 1956 as the ''Japanese Journal of Human Genetics'' and was independently published by the J ...
'' found the deep paternal ancestry of the Mexican Mestizo population to be predominately European (64.9%) followed by Amerindian (30.8%) and Asian (1.2%). An autosomal ancestry study performed on Mexico City reported that the European ancestry of Mexicans was 52% with the rest being Amerindian and a small African contribution, additionally maternal ancestry was analyzed, with 47% being of European origin. Unlike previous studies which only included Mexicans who self-identified as Mestizos, the only criteria for sample selection in this study was that the volunteers self-identified as Mexicans.
While Mexico does not have comprehensive modern racial censuses, some international publications believe that Mexican people of predominately European descent (Spanish or other European) make up approximately one-sixth (16.5%), this based on the figures of the last racial census in the country, made in 1921. According to an opinion poll conducted by the Latinobarómetro
Latinobarómetro Corporation is a private non-profit organization, based in Providencia, Chile. It is responsible for carrying out Latinobarómetro, an annual public opinion survey that involves some 20,000 interviews in 18 Latin American countr ...
organization in 2011, 52% of Mexican respondents said they were mestizos, 19% Indigenous, 6% white, 2% mulattos and 3% "other race."
US census bureau classifications
As the United States' borders expanded, the United States Census Bureau
The United States Census Bureau (USCB), officially the Bureau of the Census, is a principal agency of the U.S. Federal Statistical System, responsible for producing data about the American people and economy. The Census Bureau is part of th ...
changed its racial classification methods for Mexican Americans under United States jurisdiction. The Bureau's classification system has evolved significantly from its inception:
* From 1790 to 1850, there was no distinct racial classification of Mexican Americans in the US census. The categories recognized by the Census Bureau
The United States Census Bureau (USCB), officially the Bureau of the Census, is a principal agency of the Federal Statistical System of the United States, U.S. Federal Statistical System, responsible for producing data about the Americans, Ame ...
were ''White,'' ''Free People of Color'', and ''Black''. The Census Bureau estimates that during this period the number of persons who could not be categorized as white or black did not exceed 0.25% of the total population based on 1860 census data.[
]
* From 1850 through 1920, the Census Bureau expanded its racial categories to include multi-racial persons, under ''Mestizos
(; ; fem. ) is a term used for racial classification to refer to a person of mixed European and Indigenous American ancestry. In certain regions such as Latin America, it may also refer to people who are culturally European even though thei ...
'', '' Mulattos'', as well as new categories of distinction of ''Amerindians
The Indigenous peoples of the Americas are the inhabitants of the Americas before the arrival of the European settlers in the 15th century, and the ethnic groups who now identify themselves with those peoples.
Many Indigenous peoples of the Am ...
'' and ''Asians
Asian people (or Asians, sometimes referred to as Asiatic people)United States National Library of Medicine. Medical Subject Headings. 2004. November 17, 200Nlm.nih.gov: ''Asian Continental Ancestry Group'' is also used for categorical purpos ...
.'' It classified Mexicans and Mexican Americans as "white".
* The 1930 US census added a separate category for "color" or "race" which declassified Mexicans as white. Census workers were instructed to write "W" for white and "Mex" for Mexican." Other categories were "Neg" for Negro; "In" for Amerindian; "Ch" for Chinese; "Jp" for Japanese; "Fil" for Filipino; "Hin" for Hindu; and "Kor" for Korean.[
]
* In the 1940 census, due to widespread protests by the Mexican American community following the 1930 changes, Mexican Americans were re-classified as ''White''. Instructions for enumerators were: "Mexicans – Report 'White' (W) for Mexicans unless they are definitely of Indigenous or other non-white race." During the same census, however, the bureau began to track the ''White population of Spanish mother tongue''. This practice continued through the 1960 census. The 1960 census also used the title "Spanish-surnamed American" in their reporting data of Mexican Americans; this category also covered Cuban Americans, Puerto Ricans and others under the same category.
* From 1970 to 1980, there was a dramatic increase in the number of people who identified as "of Other Race" in the census, reflecting the addition of a question on 'Latino origin' to the 100-percent questionnaire, an increased propensity for Latinos to identify as other than White as they agitated for civil rights, and a change in editing procedures to accept reports of "Other race" for respondents who wrote in ethnic Latino entries, such as Mexican, Cuban, or Puerto Rican. In 1970, such responses in the Other race category were reclassified and tabulated as white. During this census, the bureau attempted to identify all ''Latinos'' by use of the following criteria in sampled sets:
** Spanish speakers and persons belonging to a household where the head of household was a Spanish speaker
** persons with Spanish heritage by birth location or surname
** Persons who self-identified Spanish origin or descent
* From 1980 on, the Census Bureau has collected data on Latino origin on a 100-percent basis. The bureau has noted in 2002 that an increasing number of respondents identify as of Latino origin but not of the ''White'' race.
For certain purposes, respondents who wrote in "Chicano" or "Mexican" (or indeed, almost all Latino origin groups) in the "Some other race" category were automatically re-classified into the "White race" group.
Politics and debate of racial classification
In some cases, legal classification of White racial status has made it difficult for Mexican-American rights activists to prove minority discrimination. In the case ''Hernandez v. Texas
''Hernandez v. Texas'', 347 U.S. 475 (1954), was a landmark case, "the first and only Mexican-American civil-rights case heard and decided by the United States Supreme Court during the post-World War II period." In a unanimous ruling, the court he ...
'' (1954), civil rights lawyers for the appellant, named Pedro Hernandez, were confronted with a paradox: because Mexican Americans were classified as White by the federal government and not as a separate race in the census, lower courts held that they were not being denied equal protection by being tried by juries that excluded Mexican Americans by practice. The lower court ruled there was no violation of the Fourteenth Amendment by excluding people with Mexican ancestry among the juries. Attorneys for the state of Texas and judges in the state courts contended that the amendment referred only to racial, not "nationality," groups. Thus, since Mexican Americans were tried by juries composed of their racial group—whites—their constitutional rights were not violated. The US Supreme Court ruling in ''Hernandez v. Texas'' case held that "nationality" groups could be protected under the Fourteenth Amendment, and it became a landmark in the civil rights history of the United States.
While Mexican Americans served in all-White units during World War II, many Mexican–American veterans continued to face discrimination when they arrived home; they created the G.I. Forum to work for equal treatment.
In times and places in the United States where Mexicans were classified as White, they were permitted by law to intermarry with what today are termed "non-Latino whites." Social customs typically approved of such marriages only if the Mexican partner was not of visible Indigenous ancestry.
Legally, Mexican Americans could vote and hold elected office; however, in many states electoral practices discriminated against them, especially as a language minority. After they created political organizations such as the League of United Latin America Citizens and the G.I. Forum, Mexican Americans began to exert more political influence and gain elective office. Edward Roybal's election to the Los Angeles City Council in 1949 and to Congress in 1962 also represented this rising Mexican-American political power.
In the late 1960s the founding of the Crusade for Justice in Denver and the land grant movement in New Mexico in 1967 set the bases for what would become known as Chicano (Mexican American) nationalism. The 1968 Los Angeles, California school walkouts expressed Mexican-American demands to end ''de facto'' ethnic segregation (also based on residential patterns), increase graduation rates, and reinstate a teacher fired for supporting student political organizing. A notable event in the Chicano movement was the 1972 Convention of La Raza Unida (United People) Party, which organized with the goal of creating a third party to give Chicanos political power in the United States.
In the past, Mexicans were legally considered "White" because either they were accepted as being of Spanish ancestry, or because of early treaty obligations to Spaniards and Mexicans that conferred citizenship status to Mexican peoples before the American Civil War. Numerous slave states bordered Mexican territory at a time when 'whiteness' was nearly a prerequisite for US citizenship in those states.
Although Mexican Americans were legally classified as "white" in terms of official federal policy, socially they were seen as "too Indian" to be treated as such. Many organizations, businesses, and homeowners associations and local legal systems had official policies in the early 20th century to exclude Mexican Americans in a racially discriminatory way. Throughout the Southwest, discrimination in wages was institutionalized in "White wages" versus lower "Mexican wages" for the same job classifications. For Mexican Americans, opportunities for employment were largely limited to guest worker programs.
The ''bracero'' program, begun in 1942 during World War II, when many United States men were drafted for war, allowed Mexicans temporary entry into the United States as migrant workers at farms throughout California and the Southwest. This program continued until 1964.[JS Online: Filmmaker explores practice of redlining in documentary](_blank)
A number of western states passed anti-miscegenation
Anti-miscegenation laws or miscegenation laws are laws that enforce racial segregation at the level of marriage and intimate relationships by criminalizing interracial marriage and sometimes also sex between members of different races. Anti-mi ...
laws, directed chiefly at Chinese and Japanese. As Mexican Americans were then classified as "White" by the census, they could not legally marry African or Asian Americans (See '' Perez v. Sharp''). According to historian Neil Foley in his book ''The White Scourge: Mexicans, Blacks, and Poor Whites in Texas Cotton Culture'', Mexicans and Mexican-Americans in Texas did marry non-Whites, typically without reprisal.
While of racial segregation and discrimination against both Mexican American and African American minorities were subject to segregation and racial discrimination, they were treated differently. There were legal racial demarcations between Whites and blacks in a state like Texas, whereas the line between Whites and Mexican Americans was not legally defined. Mexican Americans could attend White schools and colleges (which were racially segregated against blacks), mix socially with Whites and, marry Whites. These choices were prohibited to African Americans under state laws. Racial segregation operated separately from economic class and was rarely as rigid for Mexican Americans as it was for African Americans. For instance, even when some African Americans in Texas enjoyed higher economic status than Mexican Americans (or Whites) in an area, they were still segregated by law.
Demographics
Mexican-born population over time
Culture
Food and drink
Mexican Americans have influenced American cuisine, burrito
A burrito (, ) is a dish in Mexican and Tex-Mex cuisine that took form in Ciudad Juárez, consisting of a flour tortilla wrapped into a sealed cylindrical shape around various ingredients. The tortilla is sometimes lightly grilled or stea ...
s, enchiladas, guacamole
Guacamole (; (informally shortened to ''guac'' in the United States since the 1980s) is an avocado-based dip, spread, or salad first developed in Mexico. In addition to its use in modern Mexican cuisine, it has become part of international cuisi ...
, nachos, taco
A taco (, , ) is a traditional Mexican food consisting of a small hand-sized corn- or wheat-based tortilla topped with a filling. The tortilla is then folded around the filling and eaten by hand. A taco can be made with a variety of fillin ...
s, tamale
A tamale, in Spanish tamal, is a traditional Mesoamerican dish made of masa, a dough made from nixtamalized corn, which is steamed in a corn husk or banana leaf. The wrapping can either be discarded prior to eating or used as a plate. Tam ...
s, and tortilla
A tortilla (, ) is a thin, circular unleavened flatbread originally made from maize hominy meal, and now also from wheat flour. The Aztecs and other Nahuatl speakers called tortillas ''tlaxcalli'' (). First made by the indigenous peoples of M ...
s, are regular in American vernacular. The cuisines of New Mexican and Tex-Mex
Tex-Mex cuisine (from the words ''Texan'' and ''Mexican'') is an American cuisine that derives from the culinary creations of the ''Tejano'' people of Texas. It has spread from border states such as Texas and others in the Southwestern United ...
are native to the cuisine of the Southwestern United States, and Mexican cuisine has influenced Californian cuisine.
Music
The popular radio format Regional Mexican
Regional Mexican is a Latin music radio format encompassing the musical genres from the different parts of rural Mexico and the Southwestern United States. Genres include banda, country en español, Duranguense, grupero, mariachi, New Mex ...
includes Mexican styles of music; Norteño, ranchera
Ranchera () or canción ranchera is a genre of traditional music of Mexico. It dates to before the years of the Mexican Revolution. Rancheras today are played in virtually all regional Mexican music styles. Drawing on rural traditional folk musi ...
, Conjunto
The term ''conjunto'' (, literally 'group', 'ensemble') refers to several types of small musical ensembles present in different Latin American musical traditions, mainly in Mexico and Cuba. While Mexican conjuntos play styles such as '' norteño' ...
, Son Jarocho
Son jarocho ("Veracruz Sound") is a regional folk musical style of Mexican Son from Veracruz, a Mexican state along the Gulf of Mexico. It evolved over the last two and a half centuries along the coastal portions of southern Tamaulipas state an ...
, and mariachi
Mariachi (, , ) is a genre of regional Mexican music that dates back to at least the 18th century, evolving over time in the countryside of various regions of western Mexico. The usual mariachi group today consists of as many as eight violins, t ...
. It also includes the indigenous and Mexican American music styles of the New Mexico music
New Mexico music ( es, música nuevo mexicana) is a genre of music that originated in the US state of New Mexico, it derives from Pueblo music in the 13th century, and with the folk music of Hispanos during the 16th to 19th centuries in Santa F ...
, Tejano music
Tejano music ( es, música tejana), also known as Tex-Mex music, is a popular music style fusing Mexican and US influences. Typically, Tejano combines Mexican Spanish vocal styles with dance rhythms from Czech and German genres – particular ...
, Chicano rock
Chicano rock is rock music performed by Mexican American (Chicano) groups or music with themes derived from Chicano culture. Chicano Rock, to a great extent, does not refer to any single style or approach. Some of these groups do not sing in Span ...
, and Chicano rap
Chicano rap is a subgenre of hip hop that embodies aspects of Southwest Mexican American or Chicano culture. It is typically performed by rappers and musicians of Mexican descent.
History Early years
The first widely recognized Chicano rap arti ...
, which originate in the United States.
Economic and social issues
Immigration issues
:''See also Strangers No Longer: Together on the Journey of Hope'', a pastoral letter written by both the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) is the episcopal conference of the Catholic Church in the United States. Founded in 1966 as the joint National Conference of Catholic Bishops (NCCB) and United States Catholic Conference (US ...
and the Mexican Episcopal Conference, which deals with the issue of migration in the context of the United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...
and Mexico
Mexico (Spanish language, Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a List of sovereign states, country in the southern portion of North America. It is borders of Mexico, bordered to the north by the United States; to the so ...
.
Since the 1960s, Mexican immigrants have met a significant portion of the demand for cheap labor in the United States. Fear of deportation
Deportation is the expulsion of a person or group of people from a place or country. The term ''expulsion'' is often used as a synonym for deportation, though expulsion is more often used in the context of international law, while deportation ...
makes them highly vulnerable to exploitation by employers. Many employers, however, have developed a "don't ask, don't tell" attitude toward hiring undocumented Mexican nationals. In May 2006, hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants, Mexicans and other nationalities, walked out of their jobs across the country in protest
A protest (also called a demonstration, remonstration or remonstrance) is a public expression of objection, disapproval or dissent towards an idea or action, typically a political one.
Protests can be thought of as acts of cooper ...
to support immigration reform (many in hopes of a path to citizenship similar to the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986
The Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA or the Simpson–Mazzoli Act) was passed by the 99th United States Congress and signed into law by U.S. President Ronald Reagan on November 6, 1986.
The Immigration Reform and Control Act altered U.S ...
signed into law by President Ronald Reagan, which granted citizenship to Mexican nationals living and working without documentation in the US). Governmentalities have been the result of unequal relations with its northern neighbors versus a response to more locally driven needs.
US politicians cited numbers as high as 20 million undocumented immigrants in the United States without providing statistical proof.
Even legal immigrants to the United States, both from Mexico and elsewhere, have spoken out against illegal immigration. However, according to a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center
The Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan American think tank (referring to itself as a "fact tank") based in Washington, D.C.
It provides information on social issues, public opinion, and demographic trends shaping the United States and th ...
in June 2007, 63% of Americans would support an immigration policy that would put undocumented immigrants on a path to citizenship if they "pass background checks, pay fines and have jobs, learn English", while 30% would oppose such a plan. The survey also found that if this program was instead labeled "amnesty", 54% would support it, while 39% would oppose.
Alan Greenspan
Alan Greenspan (born March 6, 1926) is an American economist who served as the 13th chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1987 to 2006. He works as a private adviser and provides consulting for firms through his company, Greenspan Associates LLC. ...
, former Chairman of the Federal Reserve, has said that the growth of the working-age population is a large factor in keeping the economy growing and that immigration can be used to grow that population. According to Greenspan, by 2030, the growth of the US workforce will slow from 1 percent to 1/2 percent, while the percentage of the population over 65 years will rise from 13 percent to perhaps 20 percent. Greenspan has also stated that the current immigration problem could be solved with a "stroke of the pen", referring to the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007 which would have strengthened border security, created a guest worker program, and put undocumented immigrants currently residing in the US on a path to citizenship if they met certain conditions.
According to data published by the Bank of Mexico, Mexicans in the United States sent $24.7 billion in remittance
A remittance is a non-commercial transfer of money by a foreign worker, a member of a diaspora community, or a citizen with familial ties abroad, for household income in their home country or homeland. Money sent home by migrants competes wi ...
s to Mexico in 2015.
Discrimination and stereotypes
Throughout US history, Mexican Americans have endured various types of negative stereotypes which have long circulated in media and popular culture. Mexican Americans have also faced discrimination based on ethnicity, race, culture, poverty, and use of the Spanish language.
Mexicans faced racially segregated schooling in a number of Western states during the Depression era. In Wyoming, the segregation of Mexican children—regardless of US citizenship—mirrored the South's Jim Crow laws. The segregation of Mexicans also occurred in California and in neighboring Colorado, Montana, and Nebraska.
Since the majority of undocumented immigrants in the US have traditionally been from Latin America, the Mexican American community has been the subject of widespread immigration raids. During The Great Depression
The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagio ...
, the United States government sponsored a Mexican Repatriation program which was intended to encourage people to voluntarily move to Mexico, but thousands were deported against their will. During the 1930s, between 355 000 and 1 million individuals were repatriated or deported to Mexico, approximately 40 to 60 percent of which were actually United States citizens - overwhelmingly children. Voluntary repatriation was far more common than formal deportation.[Counseling Kevin: The Economy](_blank)
In the post-war era, the Justice Department launched Operation Wetback.
During World War II, more than 300,000 Mexican Americans served in the US armed forces. Mexican Americans were generally integrated into regular military units; however, many Mexican–American War veterans were discriminated against and even denied medical services by the United States Department of Veterans Affairs
The United States Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is a Cabinet-level executive branch department of the federal government charged with providing life-long healthcare services to eligible military veterans at the 170 VA medical centers a ...
when they arrived home. In 1948, war veteran Hector P. Garcia
In Greek mythology, Hector (; grc, Ἕκτωρ, Hektōr, label=none, ) is a character in Homer's Iliad. He was a Trojan prince and the greatest warrior for Troy during the Trojan War. Hector led the Trojans and their allies in the defense o ...
founded the American GI Forum to address the concerns of Mexican American veterans who were being discriminated against. The AGIF's first campaign was on the behalf of Felix Longoria, a Mexican American private who was killed in the Philippines while in the line of duty. Upon the return of his body to his hometown of Three Rivers, Texas
Three Rivers is a city in Live Oak County, Texas, United States. The population was 1,848 at the 2010 census.
History
Mrs. Annie T. Hamilton of Cuero owned a tract of land in the Brush Country where Three Rivers now sits. At the urging of M ...
, he was denied funeral services because of his nationality.
In the 1948 case of '' Perez v. Sharp'', the Supreme Court of California recognized that the ban on interracial marriage violated the Fourteenth Amendment of the Federal Constitution from 1868. The case involved Andrea Perez, a Mexican-American woman listed as White, and Sylvester Davis, an African American man.
In 2006, ''Time'' magazine reported that the number of hate groups in the United States increased by 33% since 2000, with illegal immigration being used as a foundation for recruitment. According to the 2011 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Hate Crimes Statistics Report, 56.9% of the 939 victims of crimes motivated by a bias toward the victims’ ethnicity or national origin were directed at Latinos. In California, the state with the largest Mexican American population, the number of hate crimes committed against Latinos almost doubled from 2003 to 2007. In 2011, hate crimes against Latinos declined 31% in the United States and 43% in California.
Social status and assimilation
There have been increases in average personal and household incomes for Mexican Americans in the 21st century. US-born Americans of Mexican heritage earn more and are represented more in the middle and upper-class segments more than most recently arriving Mexican immigrants.
Most immigrants from Mexico, as elsewhere, come from the lower classes and from families generationally employed in lower skilled jobs. They also are most likely from rural areas. Thus, many new Mexican immigrants are not skilled in white collar professions. Recently, some professionals from Mexico have been migrating, but to make the transition from one country to another involves re-training and re-adjusting to conform to US laws —i.e. professional licensing is required. Millions crossed into the United States to find work that would help them survive as well as sustain their families in Mexico.
According to James P. Smith, the children and grandchildren of Latino immigrants tend to lessen educational and income gaps with White American. Immigrant Latino men earn about half of what whites make, while second generation US-born Latinos make about 78 percent of the salaries of their white counterparts and by the third generation US-born Latinos make on average identical wages to their US-born white counterparts. However, the number of Mexican American professionals have been growing in size since 2010.
The Mexican median household income was a mere $37,390 compared to that of $49,487 and $54,656 for immigrants and native-born populations respectively. This pushed 28% of Mexican families to live in poverty, to put that in perspective the rest of the immigrants where at 18% and native-born families 10%.
Huntington (2005) argues that the sheer number, concentration, linguistic homogeneity, and other characteristics of Latin American immigrants will erode the dominance of English as a nationally unifying language, weaken the country's dominant cultural values, and promote ethnic allegiances over a primary identification as an American. Testing these hypotheses with data from the US Census and national and Los Angeles opinion surveys, Citrin et al. (2007) show that Latinos generally acquire English and lose Spanish rapidly beginning with the second generation, and appear to be no more or less religious or committed to the work ethic than native-born non-Mexican American whites. However, the children and grandchildren of Mexican immigrants were able to make close ties with their extended families in Mexico, since United States shares a 2,000 mile border with Mexico. Many had the opportunity to visit Mexico on a relatively frequent basis. As a result, many Mexicans were able to maintain a strong Mexican culture, language, and relationship with others.
South et al. (2005) examine Latino spatial assimilation and inter-neighborhood geographic mobility
Geographic mobility is the measure of how populations and goods move over time. Geographic mobility, population mobility, or more simply mobility is also a statistic that measures migration within a population. Commonly used in demography and huma ...
. Their longitudinal analysis of seven hundred Mexican, Puerto Rican, and Cuban immigrants followed from 1990 to 1995 finds broad support for hypotheses derived from the classical account of assimilation into American society. High income, English-language use, and embeddedness in American social contexts increased Latin American immigrants' geographic mobility into multi-ethnic neighborhoods. US citizenship and years spent in the United States were positively associated with geographic mobility into different neighborhoods while co-ethnic contact and prior experiences of ethnic discrimination decreased the likelihood that Latino immigrants would move from their original neighborhoods and into non-Latino white census tracts.
Intermarriage
According to 2000 census data, US-born ethnic Mexicans have a high degree of intermarriage with non-Latino whites. Based on a sample size of 38,911 US-born Mexican husbands and 43,527 US-born Mexican wives:
* 50.6% of US-born Mexican men and 45.3% of US-born Mexican women married US-born Mexicans;
* 26.7% of US-born Mexican men and 28.1% of US-born Mexican women married non-Latino whites; and
* 13.6% of US-born Mexican men and 17.4% of US-born Mexican women married Mexico-born Mexicans.
In addition, based on 2000 data, there is a significant amount of ethnic absorption of ethnic Mexicans into the mainstream population with 16% of the children of mixed marriages not being identified in the census as Mexican.
A study done by the National Research Council (US) Panel on Latinos in the United States published in 2006 looked at not only marriages, but also non-marriage unions. It found that since at least 1980, marriage for females across all Latino ethnic groups, including Mexican Americans, has been in a steady decline.[Nancy S. Landale, R. Salvador Olopesa, and Christina Bradatan]
Hispanic Families in the United States: Family Structure and Process in an Era of Family change
In addition, the percentage of births to unmarried mothers increased for females of Mexican descent from 20.3% in 1980 to 40.8% in 2000, more than doubling in that time frame. The study also found that for females of all Latino ethnicities, including Mexican origin, "considerably fewer births to unmarried Latino mothers involve partnerships with non-Latino white males than is the case for married Latino mothers. Second, births outside marriage are more likely to involve a non-Latino black father than births within marriage." Additionally, "Unions among partners from different Latino origins or between Latinos and non-Latino blacks are considerably more evident in cohabitation and parenthood than they are in marriage. In particular, unions between Latinos and non-Latino blacks are prominent in parenthood, especially non-marital births." Furthermore, for 29.7% of unmarried births to native-born females of Mexican origin and 40% of unmarried births to females of "Other Latino" origin, which may include Mexican American, information on the father's ethnicity was missing. The study was supported by the US Census Bureau, amongst other sources.
Segregation issues
Housing market practices
Studies have shown that the segregation among Mexican Americans and Mexican immigrants seems to be declining. One study from 1984 found that Mexican American applicants were offered the same housing terms and conditions as non-Latino white Americans. They were asked to provide the same information (regarding employment, income, credit checks, etc.) and asked to meet the same general qualifications of their non-Latino white peers.[James, Franklin J., and Eileen A. Tynan. Minorities in the Sunbelt. New Jersey: The State University of New Jersey, 1984.] In this same study, it was found that Mexican Americans were more likely than non-Latino white Americans to be asked to pay a security deposit or application fee and Mexican American applicants were also more likely to be placed onto a waiting list than non-Latino white applicants.
Battle of Chavez Ravine
The Battle of Chavez Ravine
The Battle of Chavez Ravine refers to controversy surrounding government acquisition of land largely owned by Mexican-Americans in Los Angeles' Chavez Ravine. The efforts to repossess the land, which lasted approximately ten years (1951–1961), e ...
has several meanings, but often refers to controversy surrounding government acquisition of land largely owned by Mexican Americans in Los Angeles
Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world ...
' Chavez Ravine over approximately ten years (1951–1961). The eventual result was the removal of the entire population of Chavez Ravine from land on which Dodger Stadium was later constructed. The great majority of the Chavez Ravine land was acquired to make way for proposed public housing. The public housing plan that had been advanced as politically "progressive" and had resulted in the removal of the Mexican American landowners of Chavez Ravine, was abandoned after passage of a public referendum prohibiting the original housing proposal and election of a conservative Los Angeles mayor opposed to public housing. Years later, the land acquired by the government in Chavez Ravine was dedicated by the city of Los Angeles as the site of what is now Dodger Stadium
Dodger Stadium is a baseball stadium in the Elysian Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. It is the home stadium of Major League Baseball's Los Angeles Dodgers. Opened in 1962, it was constructed in less than three years at a cost of ...
.
Latino segregation versus Black segregation
When comparing the contemporary segregation of Mexican Americans to that of Black Americans, some scholars claim that "Latino segregation is less severe and fundamentally different from Black residential segregation." suggesting that the segregation faced by Latinos is more likely to be due to factors such as lower socioeconomic status and immigration while the segregation of African Americans is more likely to be due to larger issues of the history of racism in the US.[Martin, Michael E. Residential Segregation Patterns of Latinos in the United States, 1991–2000. New York: Routledge, 2007.]
Legally, Mexican Americans could vote and hold elected office, however, it was not until the creation of organizations such as the League of United Latin America Citizens and the G.I. Forum that Mexican Americans began to achieve political influence. Edward Roybal's election to the Los Angeles City Council in 1949 and then to Congress in 1962 also represented this rising Mexican American political power. In the late 1960s the founding of the Crusade for Justice in Denver in and the land grant movement in New Mexico in 1967 set the bases for what would become the Chicano (Mexican American) nationalism. The 1968 Los Angeles school walkouts expressed Mexican American demands to end segregation, increase graduation rates, and reinstate a teacher fired for supporting student organizing. A notable event in the Chicano movement was the 1972 Convention of La Raza Unida (United People) Party, which organized with the goal of creating a third party that would give Chicanos political power in the United States.
In the past, Mexicans were legally considered "White" because either they were considered to be of full Spanish heritage, or because of early treaty obligations to Spaniards and Mexicans that conferred citizenship status to Mexican peoples at a time when whiteness was a prerequisite for US citizenship. Although Mexican Americans were legally classified as "White" in terms of official federal policy, many organizations, businesses, and homeowners associations and local legal systems had official policies to exclude Mexican Americans. Throughout the southwest discrimination in wages were institutionalized in "white wages" versus lower "Mexican wages" for the same job classifications. For Mexican Americans, opportunities for employment were largely limited to guest worker programs. The bracero program, which began in 1942 and officially ended in 1964, allowed them temporary entry into the United States as migrant workers in farms throughout California and the Southwest.
Mexican Americans legally classified as "White", following anti-miscegenation
Miscegenation ( ) is the interbreeding of people who are considered to be members of different races. The word, now usually considered pejorative, is derived from a combination of the Latin terms ''miscere'' ("to mix") and ''genus'' ("race") ...
laws in most western states until the 1960s, could not legally marry African or Asian Americans (See '' Perez v. Sharp''). However, most were not socially considered white, and therefore, according to Historian Neil Foley in the book ''The White Scourge: Mexicans, Blacks, and Poor Whites in Texas Cotton Culture'', Mexicans and Mexican-Americans did marry non-whites typically without reprisal.
Despite the similarities between Mexican American and African American patterns of segregation, there were important differences. The racial demarcations between whites and blacks in a state like Texas were inviolable, whereas those between whites and Mexican Americans were not. It was possible for Mexican Americans to attend white schools and colleges, mix socially with whites and, on occasion, marry whites: all of these things were impossible for African Americans, largely due to the legalized nature of black-white segregation. Racial segregation was rarely as rigid for Mexican Americans as it was for African Americans, even in situations where African Americans enjoyed higher economic status than Mexican Americans.
Segregated schools
During certain periods , Mexican American children sometimes were forced to register at "Mexican schools", where classroom conditions were poor, the school year was shorter, and the quality of education was substandard.[Ferg-Cadima, James A. Black]
"White and Brown"
Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund. April 28, 2008
Various reasons for the inferiority of the education given to Mexican American students have been listed by James A. Ferg-Cadima including: inadequate resources, poor equipment, unfit building construction. In 1923, the Texas Education Survey Commission found that the school year for some non-white groups was 1.6 months shorter than the average school year. Some have interpreted the shortened school year as a "means of social control" implementing policies to ensure that Mexican Americans would maintain the unskilled labor force required for a strong economy. A lesser education would serve to confine Mexican Americans to the bottom rung of the social ladder. By limiting the number of days that Mexican Americans could attend school and allotting time for these same students to work, in mainly agricultural and seasonal jobs, the prospects for higher education and upward mobility were slim.
Immigration and segregation
Immigration hubs are popular destinations for Latino immigrants. These segregated areas have historically served the purpose of allowing immigrants to become comfortable in the United States, accumulate wealth, and eventually leave.
This model of immigration and residential segregation, explained above, is the model which has historically been accurate in describing the experiences of Latino immigrants. However, the patterns of immigration seen today no longer follows this model. This old model is termed the standard spatial assimilation model. More contemporary models are the polarization model and the diffusion model: The spatial assimilation model posits that as immigrants would live within this country's borders, they would simultaneously become more comfortable in their new surroundings, their socioeconomic status would rise, and their ability to speak English would increase. The combination of these changes would allow for the immigrant to move out of the barrio and into the dominant society. This type of assimilation reflects the experiences of immigrants of the early twentieth century.
Polarization model suggests that the immigration of non-black minorities into the United States further separates blacks and whites, as though the new immigrants are a buffer between them. This creates a hierarchy in which blacks are at the bottom, whites are at the top, and other groups fill the middle. In other words, the polarization model posits that Asians and Latinos are less segregated than their African-American peers because white American society would rather live closer to Asians or Latinos than African-Americans.
The diffusion model has also been suggested as a way of describing the immigrant's experience within the United States. This model is rooted in the belief that as time passes, more and more immigrants enter the country. This model suggests that as the United States becomes more populated with a more diverse set of peoples, stereotypes and discriminatory practices will decrease, as awareness and acceptance increase. The diffusion model predicts that new immigrants will break down old patterns of discrimination and prejudice, as one becomes more and more comfortable with the more diverse neighborhoods that are created through the influx of immigrants. Applying this model to the experiences of Mexican Americans forces one to see Mexican American immigrants as positive additions to the "American melting pot," in which as more additions are made to the pot, the more equal and accepting society will become.
The Chicano movement and the Chicano Moratorium
In the heady days of the late 1960s, when the student movement was active around the globe, the Chicano movement conducted actions such as the mass walkouts by high school students in Denver
Denver () is a consolidated city and county, the capital, and most populous city of the U.S. state of Colorado. Its population was 715,522 at the 2020 census, a 19.22% increase since 2010. It is the 19th-most populous city in the Unit ...
and East Los Angeles
East Los Angeles ( es, Este de Los Ángeles), or East L.A., is an unincorporated area in Los Angeles County, California. As of the 2020 census it had a population of 118,786, a drop of 6.1% from 2010, when it was 126,496. For statistical purpo ...
in 1968 and the Chicano Moratorium
The Chicano Moratorium, formally known as the National Chicano Moratorium Committee Against The Vietnam War, was a movement of Chicano anti-war activists that built a broad-based coalition of Mexican-American groups to organize opposition to the Vi ...
in Los Angeles in 1970. The movement was particularly strong at the college level, where activists formed MEChA
In science fiction, or mechs are giant robots or machines controlled by people, typically depicted as humanoid walking vehicles. The term was first used in Japanese after shortening the English loanword or , but the meaning in Japanese is ...
, an organization that seeks to promote Chicano unity and empowerment through education and political action, but also espouses revanchist ideals centered around "taking back" the American southwest for Mexican- Americans (Chicanos) through education. The new Chicano college graduate's ideal was to become empowered through education, return to his/her community and advise more chicanos to continue with their college education after high school. And upon graduation, the purpose was to return to their communities and advise other members of their families and ethnic groups to follow their footsteps. The communities political positions, and management positions were going to be reached by empowering chicanos through higher education and become involved in city councils, management positions, and politics (Pinzon, 2015)
The Chicano Moratorium, formally known as the National Chicano Moratorium Committee, was a movement of Chicano anti-war activists that built a broad-based but fragile coalition of Mexican-American groups to organize opposition to the Vietnam War
The Vietnam War (also known by #Names, other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vie ...
. The committee was led by activists from local colleges and members of the "Brown Berets
The Brown Berets (Spanish: ''Los Boinas Cafés'') is a pro-Chicano paramilitary organization that emerged during the Chicano Movement in the late 1960s. David Sanchez and Carlos Montes co-founded the group modeled after the Black Panther Par ...
", a group with roots in the high school student movement that staged walkouts in 1968, known as the East L.A. walkouts, also called "blowouts".
The best known historical fact of the Moratorium was the death of Rubén Salazar, known for his reporting on civil rights and police brutality. The official story is that Salazar was killed by a tear gas
Tear gas, also known as a lachrymator agent or lachrymator (), sometimes colloquially known as "mace" after the early commercial aerosol, is a chemical weapon that stimulates the nerves of the lacrimal gland in the eye to produce tears. In ...
canister fired by a member of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department
The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department (LASD), officially the County of Los Angeles Sheriff's Department, is a law enforcement agency serving Los Angeles County, California. LASD is the largest sheriff's department in the United States ...
into the Silver Dollar Café at the conclusion of the National Chicano Moratorium March
The Chicano Moratorium, formally known as the National Chicano Moratorium Committee Against The Vietnam War, was a movement of Chicano anti-war activists that built a broad-based coalition of Mexican-American groups to organize opposition to the Vi ...
.
Education
Parental Involvement
Parents are commonly associated with being a child's first teacher. As the child grows older, the parent's role in their child's learning may change; however, a parent will often continue to serve as a role model. There are multiple research articles that have looked at parental involvement and education. A key aspect of parental involvement in education is that it can be transmitted in many ways. For a long time, there has been a misconception that the parents of Mexican American students are not involved in their children's education; however, multiple studies have demonstrated that parents are involved in their children's education (Valencia & Black, 2002). It is important to know that the parents of Mexican American students frequently display their involvement through untraditional methods; such as, consejos, home-base practices, and high academic expectations.
Literature has demonstrated that parental involvement has had a positive influence in the academic achievement of Mexican American students. Studies have shown that Mexican families show their value towards education by using untraditional methods (Kiyama, 2011). One educational practice that is commonly used among Mexican families are consejos (advice). Additional research has supported the idea that parents’ consejos have had a significant influence on the education of Mexican American students. Espino (2016) studied the influence that parental involvement had on seven, 1st generation Mexican American PhDs. The study found that one of the participant's father would frequently use consejos to encourage his son to continue his education. The father's consejos served as an encouragement tool, which motivated the participant to continue his education. Consejos are commonly associated with the parents’ occupation. Parents use their occupation as leverage to encourage their child to continue his or her education, or else they may end up working an undesirable job (Espino, 2016). While this might not be the most common form of parental involvement, studies have shown that it has been an effective tool that encourages Mexican American students. Although that might be an effective tool for Mexican American students, a mother can be just as an important figure for consejos. A mother's role teaches their child the importance of everyday tasks such as knowing how to cook, clean and care for oneself in order to be independent and also to help out around the house. The children of single mothers have a huge impact on their children in pushing them to be successful in school in order to have a better life than what they provided to their children. Most single mothers live in poverty and are dependent of the government, so they want the best for their children so they are always encouraging their children to be focused and do their best.
Another study emphasized the importance of home-based parental involvement. Altschul (2011) conducted a study that tested the effects of six different types of parental involvement and their effect on Mexican American students. The study used previous data from the National Education Longitudinal Study (NELS) of 1988. The data was used to evaluate the influence of parental practices in the 8th grade and their effect on students once they were in the 10th grade. Altschul (2011) noted that home-based parental involvement had a more positive effect on the academic achievement of Mexican American students, than involvement in school organizations. The literature suggests that parental involvement in the school setting is not necessary, parents can impact the academic achievement of their children from their home.
Additional literature has demonstrated that parent involvement also comes in the form of parent expectations. Valencia and Black (2002) argued that Mexican parents place a significant amount of value on education and hold high expectations for their children. The purpose of their study was to debunk the notion that Mexicans do not value education by providing evidence that shows the opposite. Setting high expectations and expressing their desire for their children to be academically successful has served as powerful tools to increase of the academic achievement among Mexican American students (Valencia & Black, 2002). Keith and Lichtman (1995) also conducted a research study that measured the influence of parental involvement and academic achievement. The data was collected from the NELS and used a total of 1,714 students that identified as Mexican American (Chicana/o). The study found a higher level of academic achievement among 8th grade Mexican American students and parents who had high educational aspirations for their children (Keith & Lichtman, 1995).
Additional research done by Carranza, You, Chhuon, and Hudley (2009) added support to the idea that high parental expectations were associated with higher achievement levels among Mexican American students. Carranza et al. (2009) studied 298 Mexican American high school students. They studied whether perceived parental involvement, acculturation, and self-esteem had any effect on academic achievement and aspirations. Results from their study demonstrated that perceived parental involvement had an influence on the students’ academic achievement and aspirations. Additionally, Carranza et al. noted that among females, those who perceived that their parents expected them to get good grades tended to study more and have higher academic aspirations (2009). The findings suggest that parental expectations can affect the academic performance of Mexican American students.
Based on current literature, one can conclude that parental involvement is an extremely important aspect of Mexican American students’ education. The studies demonstrated that parental involvement is not limited to participating in school activities at the school; instead, parental involvement can be displayed through various forms. There are numerous studies that suggest that parental expectations are associated with the achievement level of Mexican American students. Future research should continue to study the reasons why Mexican American students perform better when their parents expect them to do well in school. Furthermore, future research can also look into whether gender influences parental expectations.
''Stand and Deliver
''Stand and Deliver'' is a 1988 American drama film directed by Ramón Menéndez, written by Menéndez and Tom Musca, based on the true story of a high school mathematics teacher, Jaime Escalante. For portraying Escalante, Edward James Olmos ...
'' was an inductee of the 2011 National Film Registry
The National Film Registry (NFR) is the United States National Film Preservation Board's (NFPB) collection of films selected for preservation, each selected for its historical, cultural and aesthetic contributions since the NFPB’s inception ...
list. The National Film Board said that it was "one of the most popular of a new wave of narrative feature films produced in the 1980s by Latino filmmakers" and that it "celebrates in a direct, approachable, and impactful way, values of self-betterment through hard work and power through knowledge."
Mexican American communities
Large Mexican American populations by both size and per capita exist in the following American cities:
California
* Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, largest city in the U.S. state, state of California and the List of United States cities by population, sec ...
area – The city proper is home to over 1.2 million of Mexican ancestry, another 2.3 million throughout Los Angeles County
Los Angeles County, officially the County of Los Angeles, and sometimes abbreviated as L.A. County, is the List of the most populous counties in the United States, most populous county in the United States and in the U.S. state of California, ...
, and a total of about 6.3 million in the five-county Greater Los Angeles Area
Greater Los Angeles is the second-largest metropolitan region in the United States with a population of 18.5 million in 2021, encompassing five counties in Southern California extending from Ventura County in the west to San Bernardino ...
. Largest Mexican ancestry populated city in the United States. (according to the 2010 census, L.A. is now 31.9% of Mexican descent with numerous Central American
Central America ( es, América Central or ) is a subregion of the Americas. Its boundaries are defined as bordering the United States to the north, Colombia to the south, the Caribbean Sea to the east, and the Pacific Ocean to the west. Cen ...
national groups).
** East Los Angeles, California
East Los Angeles ( es, Este de Los Ángeles), or East L.A., is an unincorporated area in Los Angeles County, California. As of the 2020 census it had a population of 118,786, a drop of 6.1% from 2010, when it was 126,496. For statistical purpo ...
– Unincorporated community of roughly 130,000, name synonymous with Mexican Americans, 97% Latino, 88% of Mexicans are immigrant, 40% of east L.A. residents reportedly Mexican including American-born.
** Montebello, California
Montebello (Italian for "Beautiful Mountain") is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States, located just east of East Los Angeles and southwest of San Gabriel Valley. It is an independent city. east of downtown Los Angeles. It i ...
– Over 62% of the population is Mexican.
** Culver City, California
Culver City is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States. As of the 2020 census, the population was 40,779. Founded in 1917 as a "whites only" sundown town, it is now an ethnically diverse city with what was called the "third-most ...
– Also the site of the infamous Zoot Suit Riots in 1943.
** Long Beach, California
Long Beach is a city in Los Angeles County, California. It is the 42nd-most populous city in the United States, with a population of 466,742 as of 2020. A charter city, Long Beach is the seventh-most populous city in California.
Incorporate ...
– Third largest city in Southern California
Southern California (commonly shortened to SoCal) is a geographic and cultural region that generally comprises the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. It includes the Los Angeles metropolitan area, the second most populous urban ...
, one of many cities in the region with a large Mexican/Latin American population.
** South Gate, California
South Gate is the 19th largest city in Los Angeles County, California, United States, with . South Gate is located southeast of Downtown Los Angeles. It is part of the Gateway Cities region of southeastern Los Angeles County.
The city was inc ...
– Over 70.77% of the population is Mexican or Mexican American.
** La Puente, California
La Puente (Spanish for "The Bridge") is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States. The city had a population of 39,816 at the 2010 census and is approximately east of downtown Los Angeles.
History
The original inhabitants of the ...
– About two-thirds are of Mexican ancestry or Latino, one of the largest Latino (in percentage, the most Mexican American community) populations in California.
** Downey, California
Downey is a city located in Southeast Los Angeles County, California, United States, southeast of downtown Los Angeles. It is considered part of the Gateway Cities. The city is the birthplace of the Apollo space program. It is also the home ...
- Between 45 and 50% are of Mexican descent.
** San Gabriel Valley
The San Gabriel Valley ( es, Valle de San Gabriel) is one of the principal valleys of Southern California, lying immediately to the east of the eastern city limits of the city of Los Angeles, and occupying the vast majority of the eastern part ...
– There is a large Mexican American community in San Gabriel Valley cities such as West Covina
West or Occident is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from east and is the direction in which the Sun sets on the Earth.
Etymology
The word "west" is a Germanic word passed into some R ...
** El Monte, California
}
El Monte ( Spanish for "The Mountain") is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States. The city lies in the San Gabriel Valley, east of the city of Los Angeles.
El Monte's slogan is "Welcome to Friendly El Monte" and is historica ...
– 71.89% Mexican
** Oxnard, California
Oxnard () is a city in Ventura County, California, United States. On California's South Coast, it is the most populous city in Ventura County and the 22nd-most-populous city in California. Incorporated in 1903, Oxnard lies approximately west ...
– 65.96% Mexican
** Inland Empire, California
The Inland Empire (IE) is a metropolitan area and region inland of and adjacent to coastal Southern California, centering around the cities of San Bernardino and Riverside, and bordering Los Angeles County to the west. It includes the cities ...
(Riverside/ San Bernardino Counties- and the cities of that namesake) – About a third of the population are of Mexican descent. Including Pomona and Romoland with high Mexican percentages.
*** Riverside, Adelanto, Hesperia, Victorville and Apple Valley in the Victor Valley
The Victor Valley is a valley in the Mojave Desert and subregion of the Inland Empire, in San Bernardino County in Southern California.
It is located east of the Mojave's Antelope Valley, north of the Cajon Pass and the San Bernardino Valle ...
, Rialto
The Rialto is a central area of Venice, Italy, in the ''sestiere'' of San Polo. It is, and has been for many centuries, the financial and commercial heart of the city. Rialto is known for its prominent markets as well as for the monumental Ria ...
and San Bernardino, California
San Bernardino (; Spanish for "Saint Bernardino") is a city and county seat of San Bernardino County, California, United States. Located in the Inland Empire region of Southern California, the city had a population of 222,101 in the 2020 ce ...
*** Indio Indio may refer to:
Places
* Indio, Bovey Tracey, an historic estate in Devon, England
* Indio, California, a city in Riverside County, California, United States
People with the name
* Indio (musician), Canadian musician Gordon Peterson
* Índi ...
and Coachella, California
es, Ciudad de Coachella
, nicknames = Coachello, La Coachelita and Cochela
, image_skyline = Coachella City Hall.jpg
, imagesize = 240px
, image_caption = Coachella City Hall
, image_flag ...
(primarily Mexican-American).
** Santa Ana – 78% Latino with the majority being of Mexican descent.
** Southern California
Southern California (commonly shortened to SoCal) is a geographic and cultural region that generally comprises the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. It includes the Los Angeles metropolitan area, the second most populous urban ...
is the highest densely populated Mexican-American region, but by areas of percentage it is South Texas
South Texas is a region of the U.S. state of Texas that lies roughly south of—and includes—San Antonio. The southern and western boundary is the Rio Grande, and to the east it is the Gulf of Mexico. The population of this region is about 4.96 ...
.
* San Diego
San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the eighth most populous city in the United States ...
, California – slightly less than one-third of the city's population is Latino, primarily Mexican American; however, this percentage is the lowest of any significant border city.
* Imperial Valley
, photo = Salton Sea from Space.jpg
, photo_caption = The Imperial Valley below the Salton Sea. The US-Mexican border runs diagonally across the lower left of the image.
, map_image = Newriverwatershed-1-.jpg
, map_caption = Map of Imperial ...
region (Imperial County, California
Imperial County is a county on the southeast border of the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 census, the population was 179,702, making it the least populous county in Southern California. The county seat is El Centro. Imperial is th ...
and Yuma, Arizona
Yuma ( coc, Yuum) is a city in and the county seat of Yuma County, Arizona, United States. The city's population was 93,064 at the 2010 census, up from the 2000 census population of 77,515.
Yuma is the principal city of the Yuma, Arizona, M ...
).
* San Francisco Bay Area
The San Francisco Bay Area, often referred to as simply the Bay Area, is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun Bay estuaries in Northern California. The Bay Area is defined by the Association of Bay Area G ...
– also with over one million Latinos, many of whom are Mexican Americans, both US-born and foreign-born (see also Oakland
Oakland is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. A major West Coast port, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the third largest city overall in the Bay ...
about 10–20% Latino and San Francisco – the Mission District section- the city is 10–20% Latino).
** Oakland
Oakland is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. A major West Coast port, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the third largest city overall in the Bay ...
– California's third largest Mexican-American city by percentage (over 25%) after Long Beach (about 30%). Many live in the Fruitvale district.
** San Jose – Nearly one-third of the city's population is Mexican American or of Latino origin; San Jose has the largest Mexican American population within the Bay Area.
* Central Valley of California
The Central Valley is a broad, elongated, flat valley that dominates the interior of California. It is wide and runs approximately from north-northwest to south-southeast, inland from and parallel to the Pacific coast of the state. It cov ...
both the Sacramento
)
, image_map = Sacramento County California Incorporated and Unincorporated areas Sacramento Highlighted.svg
, mapsize = 250x200px
, map_caption = Location within Sacramento ...
and San Joaquin Valley
The San Joaquin Valley ( ; es, Valle de San Joaquín) is the area of the Central Valley of the U.S. state of California that lies south of the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta and is drained by the San Joaquin River. It comprises seven ...
s have majority Mexican American communities. Examples being Sacramento
)
, image_map = Sacramento County California Incorporated and Unincorporated areas Sacramento Highlighted.svg
, mapsize = 250x200px
, map_caption = Location within Sacramento ...
and Fresno
Fresno () is a major city in the San Joaquin Valley of California, United States. It is the county seat of Fresno County and the largest city in the greater Central Valley region. It covers about and had a population of 542,107 in 2020, maki ...
, and the heaviest concentrations in Kern County, California
Kern County is a county located in the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 census, the population was 909,235. Its county seat is Bakersfield.
Kern County comprises the Bakersfield, California, Metropolitan statistical area. The county ...
around Bakersfield
Bakersfield is a city in Kern County, California, United States. It is the county seat and largest city of Kern County. The city covers about near the southern end of the San Joaquin Valley and the Central Valley region. Bakersfield's populat ...
.
Arizona
* Phoenix – Fifth-largest Mexican-American population.
* Tucson
, "(at the) base of the black ill
, nicknames = "The Old Pueblo", "Optics Valley", "America's biggest small town"
, image_map =
, mapsize = 260px
, map_caption = Interactive map ...
– 30% of the almost 1 million people in the metro area.
Texas
* Dallas/Fort Worth Area – Fifth-largest Mexican-American population and over 1.5 million Mexicans in the Dallas–Fort Worth Metroplex
The Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, officially designated Dallas–Fort Worth–Arlington by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, is a conurbated metropolitan statistical area in the U.S. state of Texas encompassing 11 counties and anchor ...
(third-largest foreign born Mexican population in the US per MSA).
* San Antonio, Texas
("Cradle of Freedom")
, image_map =
, mapsize = 220px
, map_caption = Interactive map of San Antonio
, subdivision_type = Country
, subdivision_name = United States
, subdivision_type1= State
, subdivision_name1 = Texas
, subdivision_ ...
– Over half of the population in the city proper (53.2%, 705,530) and second largest Mexican population of any city in the US.
* Laredo - The largest Mexican-American community bordering Nuevo Laredo, Mexico
Nuevo Laredo () is a city in the Municipality of Nuevo Laredo in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas. The city lies on the banks of the Rio Grande, across from Laredo, United States. The 2010 census population of the city was 373,725. Nuevo Lar ...
. The majority of Laredo speaks Spanish as their first language.
* Houston, Texas
Houston (; ) is the most populous city in Texas, the most populous city in the Southern United States, the fourth-most populous city in the United States, and the sixth-most populous city in North America, with a population of 2,304,580 i ...
– Third-largest Mexican ancestry community in the United States.[Hispanic or Latino by Type: 2019](_blank)
/ref>
* San Angelo
San Angelo ( ) is a city in and the county seat of Tom Green County, Texas, United States. Its location is in the Concho Valley, a region of West Texas between the Permian Basin to the northwest, Chihuahuan Desert to the southwest, Osage Pl ...
with other areas of West Texas
West Texas is a loosely defined region in the U.S. state of Texas, generally encompassing the arid and semiarid lands west of a line drawn between the cities of Wichita Falls, Abilene, and Del Rio.
No consensus exists on the boundary betw ...
, home to Tejanos
Tejanos (, ; singular: ''Tejano/a''; Spanish for "Texan", originally borrowed from the Caddo ''tayshas'') are the residents of the state of Texas who are culturally descended from the Mexican population of Tejas and Coahuila that lived in th ...
.
* El Paso – Largest Mexican-American community bordering a state of Mexico.
* South Texas
South Texas is a region of the U.S. state of Texas that lies roughly south of—and includes—San Antonio. The southern and western boundary is the Rio Grande, and to the east it is the Gulf of Mexico. The population of this region is about 4.96 ...
– Heavily populated by Mexican-Americans, who are the ethnic majority, in a region spanning from Laredo to Corpus Christi to Brownsville.
* Harlingen, Texas
Harlingen ( ) is a city in Cameron County in the central region of the Rio Grande Valley of the southern part of the U.S. state of Texas, about from the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. The city covers more than and is the second-largest city in ...
– The Latino population of Harlingen is 72% due to its proximity to the Rio Grande
The Rio Grande ( and ), known in Mexico as the Río Bravo del Norte or simply the Río Bravo, is one of the principal rivers (along with the Colorado River) in the southwestern United States and in northern Mexico.
The length of the Rio G ...
Mexico border.
Illinois
* Illinois
Illinois ( ) is a state in the Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolitan areas include, Peoria and Rock ...
- As of 2021, the state has 1.76 million people of full or partial Mexican ancestry (13.9% of the state population)
* Chicago metropolitan area
The Chicago metropolitan area, also colloquially referred to as Chicagoland, is a metropolitan area in the Midwestern United States. Encompassing 10,286 sq mi (28,120 km2), the metropolitan area includes the city of Chicago, its suburbs and hin ...
– As of 2021, nearly 1.69 million people of full or partial Mexican ancestry (17.8% of the metro population) live in the Chicago metropolitan area
The Chicago metropolitan area, also colloquially referred to as Chicagoland, is a metropolitan area in the Midwestern United States. Encompassing 10,286 sq mi (28,120 km2), the metropolitan area includes the city of Chicago, its suburbs and hin ...
(which includes Racine
Jean-Baptiste Racine ( , ) (; 22 December 163921 April 1699) was a French dramatist, one of the three great playwrights of 17th-century France, along with Molière and Corneille as well as an important literary figure in the Western traditi ...
and Kenosha
Kenosha () is a city in the U.S. state of Wisconsin and the seat of Kenosha County. Per the 2020 census, the population was 99,986 which made it the fourth-largest city in Wisconsin. Situated on the southwestern shore of Lake Michigan, Kenosh ...
counties in Wisconsin and Lake
A lake is an area filled with water, localized in a basin, surrounded by land, and distinct from any river or other outlet that serves to feed or drain the lake. Lakes lie on land and are not part of the ocean, although, like the much large ...
and Porter
Porter may refer to:
Companies
* Porter Airlines, Canadian regional airline based in Toronto
* Porter Chemical Company, a defunct U.S. toy manufacturer of chemistry sets
* Porter Motor Company, defunct U.S. car manufacturer
* H.K. Porter, Inc., ...
counties in Indiana).
* Cook County
Cook County is the most populous county in the U.S. state of Illinois and the second-most-populous county in the United States, after Los Angeles County, California. More than 40% of all residents of Illinois live within Cook County. As of 20 ...
- As of 2021, 1,032,984 people of full or partial Mexican ancestry live in Cook County
Cook County is the most populous county in the U.S. state of Illinois and the second-most-populous county in the United States, after Los Angeles County, California. More than 40% of all residents of Illinois live within Cook County. As of 20 ...
(20.0% of the county population), the largest county in the state by population.
* Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
, image_map =
, map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago
, coordinates =
, coordinates_footnotes =
, subdivision_type = List of sovereign states, Count ...
- As of 2021, 571,577 people of full or partial Mexican ancestry live in Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
, image_map =
, map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago
, coordinates =
, coordinates_footnotes =
, subdivision_type = List of sovereign states, Count ...
proper (21.2% of the city population).
Colorado
* Denver
Denver () is a consolidated city and county, the capital, and most populous city of the U.S. state of Colorado. Its population was 715,522 at the 2020 census, a 19.22% increase since 2010. It is the 19th-most populous city in the Unit ...
– Colorado has the eighth largest population of Latinos, seventh highest percentage of Latinos, fourth largest population of Mexican-Americans, and sixth highest percentage of Mexican-Americans in the United States. According to the 2010 census, there are over 1 million Mexican-Americans in Colorado. Over one-third of the city's population is Mexican-American or Latino, as well as approximately one-fourth of the entire Denver Metropolitan area. About 17% of the cities population is foreign born, mostly from Latin America.
* Greeley – Over one-third of the city's population is Latino, mostly Mexican-American.
** Garden City is Latino majority and Evans
Evans may refer to:
People
*Evans (surname)
* List of people with surname Evans
Places United States
*Evans Island, an island of Alaska
* Evans, Colorado
*Evans, Georgia
*Evans County, Georgia
*Evans, New York
*Evans Mills, New York
*Evans Cit ...
has a very large Latino population as well.
* Southern Colorado
South-Central Colorado is a region of the U.S. state of Colorado. It can be roughly defined by Chaffee County in the northwest, El Paso County in the northeast, Las Animas County in the southeast, and Conejos County in the southwest. Some notab ...
is home to many communities of Latinos descended from Mexican settlers who arrived during Spanish colonial times. Roughly half of Pueblo
In the Southwestern United States, Pueblo (capitalized) refers to the Native tribes of Puebloans having fixed-location communities with permanent buildings which also are called pueblos (lowercased). The Spanish explorers of northern New Spain ...
's population is Latino, mostly Mexican-American. Many other towns in southern Colorado have high proportions of Mexican-Americans. La Junta, Rocky Ford, Las Animas, Lamar, Walsenburg
The City of Walsenburg is the Statutory City that is the county seat and the most populous municipality of Huerfano County, Colorado, United States. The city population was 3,049 at the 2020 census, down from 3,068 in 2010.
History
Walsenb ...
and Trinidad
Trinidad is the larger and more populous of the two major islands of Trinidad and Tobago. The island lies off the northeastern coast of Venezuela and sits on the continental shelf of South America. It is often referred to as the southernmos ...
all have large Mexican American communities.
** San Luis Valley
The San Luis Valley is a region in south-central Colorado with a small portion overlapping into New Mexico. The valley is approximately long and wide, extending from the Continental Divide on the northwest rim into New Mexico on the south. It c ...
– The San Luis Valley has many towns with large Mexican-American populations. Antonito, Blanca, Center
Center or centre may refer to:
Mathematics
*Center (geometry), the middle of an object
* Center (algebra), used in various contexts
** Center (group theory)
** Center (ring theory)
* Graph center, the set of all vertices of minimum eccentrici ...
, Del Norte, Fort Garland
Fort Garland (1858–1883), Colorado, United States, was designed to house two companies of soldiers to protect settlers in the San Luis Valley, then in the Territory of New Mexico. It was named for General John Garland, commander of the Military ...
, Monte Vista and Romeo
Romeo Montague () is the male protagonist of William Shakespeare's tragedy ''Romeo and Juliet''. The son of Lord Montague and his wife, Lady Montague, he secretly loves and marries Juliet, a member of the rival House of Capulet, through a priest ...
are all Latino majority.
Other states
* Las Vegas
Las Vegas (; Spanish for "The Meadows"), often known simply as Vegas, is the 25th-most populous city in the United States, the most populous city in the state of Nevada, and the county seat of Clark County. The city anchors the Las Veg ...
, Nevada - 70% of Latinos that are eligible to vote in Nevada
Nevada ( ; ) is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, Western region of the United States. It is bordered by Oregon to the northwest, Idaho to the northeast, California to the west, Arizona to the southeast, and Utah to the east. N ...
are Mexican
** North Las Vegas
North Las Vegas is a suburban city in Clark County, Nevada, United States, in the Las Vegas Valley. As of the 2010 census it had a population of 216,961, with an estimated population of 251,974 in 2019. The city was incorporated on May 1, 19 ...
– 30.14% Mexican
* The Yakima Valley and Tri-Cities, Washington
The Tri-Cities are three closely linked cities ( Kennewick, Pasco, and Richland) at the confluence of the Yakima, Snake, and Columbia Rivers in the Columbia Basin of Eastern Washington. The cities border one another, making the Tri-Cities se ...
– This region of Washington
Washington commonly refers to:
* Washington (state), United States
* Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States
** A metonym for the federal government of the United States
** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered o ...
contains many communities of Mexican-American majority thanks to high demand for agricultural labor.
* New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
– Mexicans are the third largest Latino ethnic group after Puerto Ricans and Dominicans. New York City's Mexican population ranked 11th among major American cities in 2000 at 186,872.
* Atlanta
Atlanta ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Georgia. It is the seat of Fulton County, the most populous county in Georgia, but its territory falls in both Fulton and DeKalb counties. With a population of 498,7 ...
– Atlanta has a sizable Mexican population. Mexicans are the largest Latino ethnic group in Atlanta. Mexicans are concentrated in Gwinnett County
Gwinnett County ( ) is located in the north central portion of the U.S. state of Georgia. It forms part of the Atlanta metropolitan area. In 2020, the population was 957,062, making it the second-most populous county in Georgia (after Fulton ...
.
Other US destinations
Major cities like Boise, Idaho
Boise (, , ) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Idaho and is the county seat of Ada County. On the Boise River in southwestern Idaho, it is east of the Oregon border and north of the Nevada border. The downtown ar ...
; Detroit
Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at t ...
, Michigan
Michigan () is a state in the Great Lakes region of the upper Midwestern United States. With a population of nearly 10.12 million and an area of nearly , Michigan is the 10th-largest state by population, the 11th-largest by area, and t ...
; Milwaukee
Milwaukee ( ), officially the City of Milwaukee, is both the most populous and most densely populated city in the U.S. state of Wisconsin and the county seat of Milwaukee County. With a population of 577,222 at the 2020 census, Milwaukee i ...
, Wisconsin
Wisconsin () is a state in the upper Midwestern United States. Wisconsin is the 25th-largest state by total area and the 20th-most populous. It is bordered by Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake M ...
; Portland, Oregon
Portland (, ) is a port city in the Pacific Northwest and the largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon. Situated at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers, Portland is the county seat of Multnomah County, the most populous ...
; Salt Lake City
Salt Lake City (often shortened to Salt Lake and abbreviated as SLC) is the capital and most populous city of Utah, United States. It is the seat of Salt Lake County, the most populous county in Utah. With a population of 200,133 in 2020, th ...
, Utah
Utah ( , ) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. Utah is a landlocked U.S. state bordered to its east by Colorado, to its northeast by Wyoming, to its north by Idaho, to its south by Arizona, and to its ...
; and Seattle
Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest region o ...
, Washington
Washington commonly refers to:
* Washington (state), United States
* Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States
** A metonym for the federal government of the United States
** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered o ...
have a large Mexican-American population.
US states by Mexican American population
Cities (metro areas) with the largest Mexican populations
#Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA Metro Area
#Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN-WI Metro Area
#Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington. TX Metro Area
#Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land, TX Metro Area
#Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, CA Metro Area
#Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler, AZ Metro Area
#San Diego-Chula Vista-Carlsbad, CA Metro Area
#New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ-PA Metro Area
#San Francisco-Oakland-Berkeley, CA Metro Area
#McAllen-Edinburg-Mission, TX Metro Area
Health
Diabetes
Diabetes
Diabetes, also known as diabetes mellitus, is a group of metabolic disorders characterized by a high blood sugar level ( hyperglycemia) over a prolonged period of time. Symptoms often include frequent urination, increased thirst and increased ...
refers to a disease in which the body has an inefficiency of properly responding to insulin
Insulin (, from Latin ''insula'', 'island') is a peptide hormone produced by beta cells of the pancreatic islets encoded in humans by the ''INS'' gene. It is considered to be the main anabolic hormone of the body. It regulates the metabolism ...
, which then affects the levels of glucose. The prevalence of diabetes in the United States is constantly rising. Common types of Diabetes are type 1 and type 2. Type 2 is the more common type of diabetes among Mexican Americans, and is constantly increasing due to poor diet habits. The increase of obesity
Obesity is a medical condition, sometimes considered a disease, in which excess body fat has accumulated to such an extent that it may negatively affect health. People are classified as obese when their body mass index (BMI)—a person's ...
results in an increase of type 2 diabetes
Type 2 diabetes, formerly known as adult-onset diabetes, is a form of diabetes mellitus that is characterized by high blood sugar, insulin resistance, and relative lack of insulin. Common symptoms include increased thirst, frequent urinatio ...
among Mexican Americans in the United States. Mexican American men have higher prevalence rates in comparison to non-Latinos, whites and blacks. “The prevalence of diabetes increased from 8.9% in 1976–1980 to 12.3% in 1988–94 among adults aged 40 to 74” according to the third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, 1988–1994. In a 2014 study, The US Census Bureau estimates that by 2050, one in three people living in the United States will be of Latino origin including Mexican Americans. Type 2 diabetes prevalence is rising due to many risk factors and there are still many cases of pre-diabetes and undiagnosed diabetes due to lack of sources. According to the US Department of Health and Human Services (2011), individuals of Mexican descent are 50% more likely to die from diabetes than their white counterparts.
Notable people
See also
* Mexicans
Mexicans ( es, mexicanos) are the citizens of the United Mexican States.
The most spoken language by Mexicans is Spanish, but some may also speak languages from 68 different Indigenous linguistic groups and other languages brought to Mexi ...
* Demographics of Mexico
* Indigenous Mexican Americans
* Mexico–United States barrier
* Migrant deaths along the Mexico–United States border
United States border with Mexico is one of the world's "most lethal land borders". Hundreds of migrants die per year as they attempt to cross into the United States from Mexico illegally. The US Border Patrol reported 251 migrant deaths in the fi ...
* American immigration to Mexico
* Mexico–United States relations
* Hyphenated American
* Emigration from Mexico
Emigration from Mexico is the movement of people from Mexico to other countries. The top destination by far is the United States, by a factor of over 150 to 1 compared to the second most popular destination, Canada.
Overview
Emigration fro ...
* Mexican cuisine
Mexican cuisine consists of the cooking cuisines and traditions of the modern country of Mexico. Its earliest roots lie in Mesoamerican cuisine. Its ingredients and methods begin with the first agricultural communities such as the Olmec and ...
* Tex-Mex
Tex-Mex cuisine (from the words ''Texan'' and ''Mexican'') is an American cuisine that derives from the culinary creations of the ''Tejano'' people of Texas. It has spread from border states such as Texas and others in the Southwestern United ...
* Mexican-American cuisine
Mexican-American cuisine is the cuisine of Mexican Americans and their descendants, who have modified Mexican cuisine under the influence of American culture and immigration patterns of Mexicans to the United States.
What many recognize as ...
* History of Mexican Americans in Los Angeles
Mexican Americans have lived in Los Angeles since the original Pobladores, the 44 original settlers and 4 soldiers who founded the city in 1781. People of Mexican descent make up 31.9% of Los Angeles residents, and 32% of Los Angeles County r ...
* History of Mexican Americans in Texas
Indigenous peoples lived in the area now known as Texas long before Spanish explorers arrived in the area. However, once Spaniards arrived and claimed the area for Spain, a process known as ''mestizaje'' occurred, in which Spaniards and Native Am ...
* History of Mexican Americans in Dallas–Fort Worth
* History of Mexican Americans in Houston
The city of Houston has significant populations of Mexican Americans, Mexican immigrants, and Mexican citizen expatriates. Houston residents of Mexican origin make up the oldest Hispanic ethnic group in Houston, and Jessi Elana Aaron and José E ...
* History of Mexican Americans in Metro Detroit
* Mexicans in Chicago
There is a very large Mexican American community in the Chicago metropolitan area. Illinois, and Chicago's Mexican American community is the largest outside of the Western United States.
History
The first Mexicans who came to Chicago, mostly e ...
Ethnic:
* Melting pot
The melting pot is a monocultural metaphor for a heterogeneous society becoming more homogeneous, the different elements "melting together" with a common culture; an alternative being a homogeneous society becoming more heterogeneous throu ...
(metaphor for cultural fusion)
* Indigenous peoples of the Americas
The Indigenous peoples of the Americas are the inhabitants of the Americas before the arrival of the European settlers in the 15th century, and the ethnic groups who now identify themselves with those peoples.
Many Indigenous peoples of the A ...
* White Hispanic and Latino Americans
In the United States, a white Hispanic or Latino is an individual who is of full or partial Hispanic or Latino descent, the largest group being white Mexican Americans. Although not differentiated in the U.S. Census definition, White Latino Am ...
* White Mexicans
* Olive skin
Olive skin is a human skin colour spectrum. It is often associated with pigmentation in the Type III to Type IV and Type V ranges of the Fitzpatrick scale. It generally refers to light or moderate tan skin, and it is often described as having ...
* Mestizo
(; ; fem. ) is a term used for racial classification to refer to a person of mixed European and Indigenous American ancestry. In certain regions such as Latin America, it may also refer to people who are culturally European even though thei ...
* Bronze (racial classification)
* Brown (racial classification)
* '' La raza cósmica''
* Afro-Mexicans
Afro-Mexicans ( es, afromexicanos), also known as Black Mexicans ( es, mexicanos negros), are Mexicans who have heritage from sub-Saharan Africa and identify as such. As a single population, Afro-Mexicans include individuals descended from both ...
Political:
* Reconquista (Mexico)
The ''Reconquista'' ("reconquest") is a term to describe an irredentist vision by different individuals, groups, and/or nations that the Southwestern United States should be politically or culturally returned to Mexico. Such opinions are often ...
Cultural:
* Chicanismo
* Chicano poetry Chicano poetry is a branch of American literature, and specifically Mexican-American literature, written by and primarily about Mexican Americans and the many Mexican-American ways of life in U.S. society. The term "Chicano" is a political and cultu ...
* List of Mexican-American writers
* El Pueblo de Los Ángeles Historical Monument
El Pueblo de Los Ángeles Historical Monument, also known as Los Angeles Plaza Historic District and formerly known as El Pueblo de Los Ángeles State Historic Park, is a historic district taking in the oldest section of Los Angeles, known for man ...
* Cholo (subculture)
A cholo or chola is a member of a Chicano and Latino subculture or lifestyle associated with a particular set of dress, behavior, and worldview which originated in Los Angeles. A veterano or veterana is an older member of the same subculture. ...
Film:
* '' A Better Life''
* ''Cesar Chavez'' (film)
* ''Fools Rush In'' (1997 film)
* ''From Prada to Nada
''From Prada to Nada'' is a 2011 American romantic comedy film directed by Angel Gracia, loosely based on Jane Austen's 1811 novel ''Sense and Sensibility''. The screenplay was adapted by Fina Torres, Luis Alfaro, and Craig Fernandez to be a Latin ...
''
* ''La Bamba'' (film)
* ''Lowriders'' (film)
* ''McFarland, USA
''McFarland, USA'' (also known as ''McFarland'') is a 2015 American sports drama film directed by Niki Caro, produced by Mark Ciardi and Gordon Gray, written by Christopher Cleveland, Bettina Gilois and Grant Thompson with music composed by Ant ...
''
* ''Spare Parts'' (2015 film)
* ''Tortilla Soup
Tortilla soup ( es, sopa de tortilla) is a traditional Mexican soup made of fried corn tortilla pieces, submerged into a broth of tomato, garlic, onion, and '' chile de árbol'' and epazote. It is served with pieces of pasilla chiles, chicharr ...
''
References
Bibliography/further reading
* Englekirk, Allan, and Marguerite Marín. "Mexican Americans." ''Gale Encyclopedia of Multicultural America,'' edited by Thomas Riggs, (3rd ed., vol. 3, Gale, 2014), pp. 195–217
online
* Gomez, Laura. Manifest Destinies: The Making of the Mexican American Race (New York UP, 2007).
* Gómez-Quiñones, Juan, and Irene Vásquez. ''Making Aztlán: Ideology and Culture of the Chicana and Chicano Movement, 1966-1977'' (2014)
* Meier, Matt S., and Margo Gutiérrez. ''Encyclopedia of the Mexican American civil rights movement'' (Greenwood 2000
online
* Quiroz, Anthony (ed.), ''Leaders of the Mexican American Generation: Biographical Essays.'' Boulder, CO: University Press of Colorado, 2015.
* Orozco, Cynthia E. ''No Mexicans, women, or dogs allowed: The rise of the Mexican American civil rights movement'' (University of Texas Press, 2010
online
* Rosales, F. Arturo. ''Chicano! The history of the Mexican American civil rights movement'' (Arte Público Press, 1997)
online
*
External links
- University of California Santa Barbara
The University of California, Santa Barbara (UC Santa Barbara or UCSB) is a public land-grant research university in Santa Barbara, California with 23,196 undergraduates and 2,983 graduate students enrolled in 2021–2022. It is part of the Un ...
California Ethnic and Multicultural Archives – Digital Chicano Art
- University of California Santa Barbara
- University of California System
ImaginArte – Interpreting and Re-imaging Chican@Art
- University of California Santa Barbara
Mexican American News – Network of the Mexican American Community
2009-11-01)
Think Mexican – News, Culture, and Information on the Mexican Community
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American people of Mexican descent
Hispanic and Latino American people
Hispanic and Latino American history
Mexican diaspora in North America
Ethnic groups in the United States