Viva Los Suns

Bird on Fire ◽  
2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Ross
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Mexican Immigrants ◽  
Good Reason ◽  
El Paso ◽  
Power Sharing ◽  
Foreign Born ◽  
Civil Rights Era ◽  
Political Dominance ◽  
Origin Myth ◽  
Over Time

In other Southwestern cities, like Tucson, El Paso, and Albuquerque, with Mexican urban cores that preexisted Anglo settlement, a cultural, if not political, condominium of power sharing had evolved over time. Phoenix was a more straightforward product of Anglo America. Notwithstanding that Trinidad Mejia Escalante, the wife of the founding father, Jack Swilling, was Mexican, the city’s origin myth was one of Anglos re-creating a city on top of Hohokam remnants, and it was reinforced by a strong presence of Mormon settlers in the East Valley, with their own version of white pioneerism. Anglo dominance was unquestioned for at least a century. As an early twentieth-century promoter put it, Phoenix was “a modern town of 40,000 people, and the best kind of people too. A very small percentage of Mexicans, negroes, or foreigners.” For sure, the public drama and energy of the civil rights era ushered some nonwhite politicians into high office—Raul Castro became governor and Alfredo Gutierrez senate majority leader in the late 1970s. But it was only in recent years that Anglo ascendancy had been challenged by the mercurial growth of the Latino population (according to the 2010 U.S. census, 30.8 percent of the state, 31.8 percent of Maricopa County, and 34.1 percent of Phoenix itself, all numbers that had more than doubled since 1990), spreading well beyond the traditional barrio districts where its political representatives had been contained. Anxiety about the decline of demographic and political dominance was a new wrinkle in the ongoing debate about population growth that Phoenix had long hosted. Historically, most of the anxiety about growth was founded, with good reason, on fears that water supplies would not be adequate for the rapidly expanding urban needs. Concerns about the deterioration of air quality, wilderness loss, and the overall environmental impact of urban sprawl had sharpened the anxiety over time. But the influx of Mexican immigrants from the south after the passage of NAFTA changed its tenor. Metro Phoenix had only 86,593 foreign-born residents in 1980, and by 2005, 612,850 were foreign-born, most of them from Mexico.

Mexican Immigration to the United States

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ramón A. Gutiérrez
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Census Data ◽  
Mexican Immigrants ◽  
El Paso ◽  
The United States ◽  
Service Industries ◽  
Mexican Immigration ◽  
Foreign Born ◽  
Forthcoming Article ◽  
Long Course

This is an advance summary of a forthcoming article in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History. Please check back later for the full article. Mexican immigration to the United States is a topic of particular interest at this moment for a number of political reasons. First, and probably foremost, Mexicans are currently the single largest group of foreign-born residents in the country. In 2013, the United States counted 41.3 million individuals of foreign birth; 28 percent, or 11.6 million, were Mexican. If census data are aggregated more broadly, adding together the foreign-born and persons of Mexican ancestry who are citizens, the number totals 31.8 million in 2010, or roughly 10 percent of the country’s total population of 308.7 million. What has nativists and those eager to restrict immigration particularly concerned is that the Mexican origin population has been growing rapidly, by 54 percent between the 2000 and 2010 censuses, or from 11.2 million to 31.8 million persons. This pace of growth has slowed, but not enough to calm racial and xenophobic fears of the citizenry fearful of foreigners and terrorists. Mexican immigration to the United States officially began in 1846 and has continued into the present without any significant period of interruption, also making it quite distinct. The immigration histories of national groups that originated in Asia, Africa, and Europe are much more varied in trajectory and timing. They usually began with massive movements, driven by famine, political strife or burgeoning economic opportunities in the United States, and then slowed, tapered off, or ended abruptly, as was the case with Chinese immigration from 1850 to 2015. This fact helps explain why Mexico has been the single largest source of immigrants in the United States for the longest period of time. The geographic proximity between the two countries, compounded by profound economic disparities, has continuously attracted Mexican immigrants, facilitated by a border that is rather porous and that has been poorly patrolled for much of the 20th century. The United States and Mexico are divided by a border that begins at the Pacific Ocean, at the twin cities of San Diego, California and Tijuana, Baja California. The border moves eastward until it reaches the Rio Grande at El Paso, Texas and Ciudad Júarez, Chihuahua. From there the border follows the river’s flow in a southeastern direction, until its mouth empties into the Gulf of Mexico where Brownsville, Texas and Matamoros, Tamaulipas sit. This expanse of over 1,945 miles is poorly marked. In many places, only old concrete markers, sagging, dry-rotted fence posts with rusted barbed wire, and a river that has continually changed its course, mark the separation between these two sovereign national spaces. Since 1924, when the U.S. Border Patrol was created mainly to prohibit the unauthorized entry of Chinese immigrants, not Mexicans, American attempts to effectively regulate entries and exits has been concentrated only along known, highly trafficked routes that lead north. The inability of the United States to patrol the entire length of its border with Mexico has meant that any Mexican eager to work or live in the United States has rarely found the border an insurmountable obstacle, and if they have encountered it temporarily so, they have simply hired expensive professional smugglers (known as coyotes) to maximize safe passage into the United States without border inspection or official authorization. In 2014, there were approximately 11.3 million such unauthorized immigrants in the United States; 49 percent, or 5.6 million of them were Mexican. Over the long course of history Mexican immigration is best characterized as the movement of unskilled workers toiling in agriculture, railroad construction, and mineral extraction; for the last two decades, they have worked in construction and service industries as well. This labor migration has evolved through five distinct phases, each marked by its own logic, demands, and governance.

Protecting Students' Civil Rights: The Federal Role in School Discipline

2020 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica Cardichon ◽  
Linda Darling-Hammond
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
School Discipline ◽  
Educational Equity ◽  
Policy Tools ◽  
Educational Inequalities ◽  
Federal Law ◽  
Over Time ◽  
Policies And Practices

This article takes a careful look at political and policy tools that presidential administrations have at their disposal for ameliorating educational inequalities. These tools, the authors suggest, include issuing federal guidance that informs and supports states and districts as they work to implement policies and practices that comply with federal law. However, as the authors point out, the extent to which administrations have chosen to leverage these opportunities to advance educational equity has varied over time.

Black Lives Matter and the revitalization of collective visionary leadership

Leadership ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 174271502097592
Author(s):  
Sarah J Jackson
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
The United States ◽  
Visionary Leadership ◽  
Global Network ◽  
Ordinary People ◽  
Community Based ◽  
Civil Rights Era ◽  
Black Lives Matter ◽  
Black Queer

Herein, I share a conversation with Alicia Garza, co-founder of the Black Lives Matter Global Network, as context to detail the collective visionary leadership of the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States. After highlighting how Garza enacts this tradition in the contemporary era, I revisit Ella Baker’s foundational model of collective visionary leadership from the civil rights era. Collective visionary leadership, embodied across these generations, is local and community-based, centers the power and knowledge of ordinary people, and prioritizes transformative accountability and liberatory visions of the future. Such leadership has been central to a range of transformational movements, and especially those anchored by Black women and Black queer folk. I also consider what critiques of traditional models of leadership collective visionary leadership levies both past and present. I call on all those concerned with the act of leading justly to take up this model.

Federal Policy and the Racial Integration of Southern Industry, 1961–1980

1999 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 147-178 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy J. Minchin
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Federal Government ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
Voting Rights ◽  
Racial Violence ◽  
Racial Integration ◽  
Single Issue ◽  
Civil Rights Era ◽  
Federal Intervention

In the last two decades, one of the central debates of civil rights historiography has concerned the role that the federal government played in securing the gains of the civil rights era. Historians have often been critical of the federal government's inaction, pointing out that it was only pressure from the civil rights movement itself that prompted federal action against Jim Crow. Other scholars have studied the civil rights record of the federal government by analyzing a single issue during several administrations. In this vein, there have been studies of the federal government's involvement in areas as diverse as black voting rights and racial violence against civil rights workers. These studies have both recognized the importance of federal intervention and have also been critical of the federal government's belated and half-hearted endorsement of civil rights.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document