Mexican American Identity: Regional Differentiation in New Mexico

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 179-194 ◽  
Author(s):  
Casandra D. Salgado
Keyword(s):  
New Mexico ◽  
Mexican Americans ◽  
Mexican American ◽  
Mexican Immigrants ◽  
Ethnic Identification ◽  
Regional Differentiation ◽  
Defensive Strategy ◽  
Long Time ◽  
History Of ◽  
Mexican American Identity

Existing research inadequately addresses the variation in Mexican Americans’ patterns of ethnic identification. Drawing on 78 interviews, I address this question by exploring how conceptions of ancestry and nationality shape ethnic identification among New Mexico’s long-standing Mexican American population, Nuevomexicanos. I find that Nuevomexicanos emphasized their ties to Spanish heritage within the history of New Mexico to explain their ethnicity and to construct their identity in opposition to Mexican immigrants. Although Nuevomexicanos varied in their claims to Mexican ancestry, they generally prioritized their roots in the original Spanish settlement of New Mexico to emphasize distinctions in ancestry, nationality, and regionality from Mexican immigrants. Moreover, despite Nuevomexicanos’ persistent claims to Spanish ancestry, they did not perceive themselves as racially White. Instead, Spanish ancestry was integral to Nuevomexicano identity because it enabled them to highlight their regional ties to New Mexico and long-time American identities. Thus, I argue that Nuevomexicanos’ enduring claims to Spanish ancestry represent a defensive strategy to enact dissociation from stigmatized Mexican immigrants. Overall, these findings show that Mexican Americans’ dissociation strategies are contingent on how they define themselves as members of an ethnic and national community. These findings also indicate that “Mexican American” as an identity term is a loosely maintained membership category among “Mexican Americans” because of their intragroup heterogeneity.

Attitudes About Immigration

2019 ◽  
pp. 146-177
Author(s):  
Edward Telles ◽  
Christina A. Sue
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Group ◽  
Mexican Americans ◽  
Mexican American ◽  
Mexican Immigrants ◽  
American Identity ◽  
American Population ◽  
Attitudes Toward Immigrants ◽  
Small Minority ◽  
Mexican Heritage ◽  
The Media

This chapter addresses Mexican Americans’ attitudes about Mexican immigrants in the context of mass immigration. In addition to the boundary that exists between persons of Mexican heritage and non-Latinos, there is another important social boundary operating that highlights Mexican Americans’ understandings of their own ethnicity and American identity—the boundary between Mexican immigrants and themselves. Study respondents displayed a broad range of attitudes toward immigrants, illustrating the internal diversity of the Mexican American population, which runs contrary to their treatment in the media as a homogeneous ethnic group in terms of attitudes, politics, and voting. This chapter also demonstrates the underlying ideologies, philosophies, and rationales that respondents used to justify their immigration positions: whereas many framed their views based on American ideals, only a small minority framed them in terms of their ethnicity, basing their perceptions in an understanding of Mexican immigrants as co-ethnics.

Spanish Language

2019 ◽  
pp. 105-145
Author(s):  
Edward Telles ◽  
Christina A. Sue
Keyword(s):  
Mexican Americans ◽  
Mexican American ◽  
Ethnic Community ◽  
Spanish Language ◽  
American Identity ◽  
Primary Language ◽  
Language Competence ◽  
English Only ◽  
Central Characteristic ◽  
Mexican American Identity

This chapter explores Mexican American identity and ethnicity through the prism of the Spanish language, which is perhaps the central characteristic in ethnic culture and identity among Mexican Americans. However, whereas virtually all U.S.-born Mexican Americans speak English, not all speak Spanish. More precisely, Mexican Americans are distributed along a continuum of language competence that ranges from English only to complete fluency in both English and Spanish, with the majority of individuals falling somewhere in-between. For the respondents, English is their primary language, whereas the use of Spanish varies greatly, depending on the situation and each individual’s linguistic abilities. Thus, regardless of actual linguistic ability, language as a concept raises a number of issues regarding Mexican Americans’ own ethnic identities and their relationship to members of the ethnic community.

Legally White, Socially “Mexican”: The Politics of De Jure and De Facto School Segregation in the American Southwest

2012 ◽  
Vol 82 (2) ◽  
pp. 202-225 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rubén Donato ◽  
Jarrod Hanson
Keyword(s):  
Mexican Americans ◽  
Mexican American ◽  
State Level ◽  
American Southwest ◽  
Boards Of Education ◽  
School Segregation ◽  
School Officials ◽  
State Statutes ◽  
De Jure Segregation ◽  
History Of

The history of Mexican American school segregation is complex, often misunderstood, and currently unresolved. The literature suggests that Mexican Americans experienced de facto segregation because it was local custom and never sanctioned at the state level in the American Southwest. However, the same literature suggests that Mexican Americans experienced de jure segregation because school officials implemented various policies that had the intended effect of segregating Mexican Americans. Rubén Donato and Jarrod S. Hanson argue in this article that although Mexican Americans were legally categorized as “White,” the American public did not recognize the category and treated Mexican Americans as socially “colored” in their schools and communities. Second, although there were no state statutes that sanctioned the segregation of Mexican Americans, it was a widespread trend in the American Southwest. Finally, policies and practices historically implemented by school officials and boards of education should retroactively be considered de jure segregation.

English Skills, Earnings, and the Occupational Sorting of Mexican Americans along the U.S.-Mexico Border

2000 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 133-157 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alberto Dávila ◽  
Marie T. Mora
Keyword(s):  
Mexican Americans ◽  
Mexican American ◽  
Mexican Immigrants ◽  
Labor Market Outcomes ◽  
Minority Language ◽  
Market Outcomes ◽  
Mexico Border ◽  
Language Region ◽  
Occupational Sorting ◽  
The U.S

While English proficiency enhances labor market outcomes, its role in minority-language regions remains largely unexplored. Employing the U.S.-Mexico border as a minority-language region, we analyze whether English skills differently affect the earnings and occupational sorting of Mexican Americans along the border relative to their non-border peers. We find comparable English deficiency earnings penalties for Mexican immigrants, suggesting that this group responds to English-specific regional wage gaps. U.S.-born men, however, have a larger earnings penalty along the border, possibly reflecting natives’ relative immobility owing to strong geographic preferences. Occupational sorting exercises give credence to this interpretation for native Mexican American females.

Clinically Significant Diuretic-Induced Glucose Intolerance

1988 ◽  
Vol 22 (12) ◽  
pp. 969-972 ◽  
Author(s):  
N. Kathryn Lowder ◽  
Henry I. Bussey ◽  
Nancy J. Sugarek
Keyword(s):  
Blood Glucose ◽  
Glucose Intolerance ◽  
Mexican Americans ◽  
Mexican American ◽  
Blood Glucose Concentration ◽  
Fasting Blood Glucose ◽  
American Woman ◽  
History Of ◽  
Clinically Significant

Diuretic-induced glucose intolerance is cited frequently as a problem of only limited clinical significance. In certain populations, such as Mexican-Americans, this effect may be much more dramatic. A 50-year-old obese Mexican-American woman presented with a three-month history of increased thirst and frequent urination. A fasting blood glucose concentration of 365 mg/dL prompted initiation of chlorpropamide therapy. A review of her medical history revealed that a thiazide diuretic was started six months previously. A reduction in thiazide dose and potassium supplementation together with chlorpropamide therapy controlled the patient's blood glucose. Subsequently, all three medications were discontinued, and the patient remained normoglycemic during a full year of follow-up. The temporal relationship between symptomatic diabetes and hydrochlorothiazide therapy incriminates the diuretic as the most probable cause.

Before Chicano

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alberto Varon
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Mexican Americans ◽  
Mexican American ◽  
Cultural Life ◽  
Government Documents ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Unpublished Manuscripts

Before Chicano: Citizenship and the Making of Mexican American Manhood, 1848-1959 is the first book-length study of Latino manhood before the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Mexican Americans are typically overlooked or omitted from American cultural life of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, despite their long-standing presence in the U.S. This book dislodges the association between Mexican Americans and immigration and calls for a new framework for understanding Mexican American cultural production and U.S. culture, but doing so requires an expanded archive and a multilingual approach to U.S. culture.Working at the intersection of culture and politics, Mexican Americans drew upon American democratic ideals and U.S. foundational myths to develop evolving standards of manhood and political participation. Through an analysis of Mexican American print culture (including fiction, newspapers and periodicals, government documents, essays, unpublished manuscripts, images, travelogues, and other genres), it demonstrates that Mexican Americans in the 19th and 20th centuries envisioned themselves as U.S. national citizens through cultural depictions of manhood. Before Chicano moves beyond the resistance paradigm that has dominated Latino Studies and uncovers a long history of how Latinos shaped—and were shaped by—American cultural life.

The Catholic Church and Mexican American Social Mobility in the Postwar Midwest: Evidence from Life and Family Histories

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 32-48
Author(s):  
Bienvenido Ruiz ◽  
Ramon S. Guerra ◽  
Arlett S. Lomeli ◽  
Rolando R. Longoria ◽  
Billy James Ulibarrí
Keyword(s):  
Social Mobility ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Mexican Americans ◽  
Mexican American ◽  
Mexican Immigrants ◽  
Religious Affiliation ◽  
Family Histories ◽  
American Society ◽  
American Catholic ◽  
Human And Social Capital

Religious affiliation has long been recognized as a relevant factor among the variables that intervene in the integration of immigrants to American society. While previous generations of many predominantly Roman Catholic ethnic groups are thought to have been helped along their way to assimilation by strong institutional support from American Catholic church institutions, Latinos, and in particular Mexican Americans, are considered an exception. This study examines the role that inclusion in Catholic institutions played in the social mobility experienced by multigenerational families of Mexican immigrant origin in the Midwest during the decades between 1945 and 1975. The analysis of life and family histories collected from in-depth interviews with older second- and third-generation Mexican Americans illustrates how integration into urban Catholic institutions and communities was instrumental in the upward social mobility observed in many of their family trajectories during the postwar decades. In particular, access to parochial schools and other institutions in the Catholic educational system once provided the children and grandchildren of Mexican immigrants the forms of human and social capital that allowed many in that generation to attain social mobility.

They Lynched Mexican-Americans Too: A Question of Anglo Colorism

2020 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 62-76
Author(s):  
Ronald E. Hall
Keyword(s):  
Mexican Americans ◽  
Mexican American ◽  
The United States ◽  
Domestic Terrorism ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Border States ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Historical Archives ◽  
History Of ◽  
The U.S

The act of lynching in the United States was in fact a form of domestic terrorism perpetrated against darker-skinned Americans. Historians have been pressed to acknowledge the lynching of African-Americans particularly in the Bible-belt South in such states as Mississippi and Alabama. The history of Mexican-Americans lynched by Anglo mobs has been for the most part, ignored by Western historians. Said ignored transgressions occurred frequently in border-states including Texas. Approximately 40 years before the lynching of 14-year-old African-American Emmett Till was the lynching of 14-year-old Mexican-American Antonio Gómez. Both were boys accused of Anglo disrespect. Buried in historical archives, the lynching of Gómez was a Mexican-American manifestation of Anglo colorism. Once informed, social scientists and the U.S. society at-large must then readily admit they lynched Mexican-Americans too!

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