From the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo to Hopwood: The Educational Plight and Struggle of Mexican Americans in the Southwest

1998 ◽  
Vol 68 (3) ◽  
pp. 353-413 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guadalupe San Miguel, Jr. ◽  
Richard Valencia
Keyword(s):  
Mexican Americans ◽  
Mexican American ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Southwest ◽  
American People ◽  
Mexican Origin ◽  
American Education ◽  
Educational Equality ◽  
Mexican American Education ◽  
The Impact

The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which brought an end to the Mexican American War of 1846–1848, marked its sesquicentennial on February 2, 1998. The signing of the Treaty and the U.S. annexation, by conquest, of the current Southwest signaled the beginning of decades of persistent, pervasive prejudice and discrimination against people of Mexican origin who reside in the United States. In this article, Guadalupe San Miguel and Richard Valencia provide a sweep through 150 years of Mexican American schooling in the Southwest. They focus on the educational "plight" (e.g., forced school segregation, curricular tracking), as well as the "struggle" (e.g., litigation) mounted by the Mexican American people in their quest for educational equality. The authors cover four major historical eras: 1) the origins of schooling for Mexican children in the "American" Southwest, 1848–1890s; 2) the expansion of Mexican American education, 1890–1930; 3) the changing character of public education, 1930–1960; and 4) the contemporary period. In their discussion they identify a number of major themes that characterize the education of Mexican Americans in the Southwest from the time of the Treaty up to the Hopwood decision in Texas—the landmark case that gutted affirmative action in higher education. These include the exclusion and removal of the Mexican-origin community and its cultural heritage from the schools; the formation of the template (segregated, inferior schooling) for Mexican American education; the quest for educational equality; the continuing academic gap between Mexican American and Anglo or White students; and the impact of nativism on educational opportunity, as reflected most recently in the regressive and oppressive voter-initiated propositions in California and in the legal decisions in Texas. As such, Mexican Americans face an educational crisis of an unprecedented magnitude in the history of racial/ethnic minority education.

An Immigrant's Tale: The Mexican American Southwest 1850 to 1950

2015 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
pp. 521-550 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Gratton ◽  
Emily Klancher Merchant
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Mexican Americans ◽  
Mexican American ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Southwest ◽  
Political Activity ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Mexican Origin ◽  
Explanatory Factors

Recent scholarship on Mexican Americans in the United States, relying largely on qualitative evidence, sees racism and exploitation as the major explanatory factors in their history. Using representative samples of persons of Mexican origin, we argue that immigration is fundamental to their historical experience. A small, beleaguered community in 1850, the Mexican-origin population grew during the late nineteenth century due to greater security under US jurisdiction. However, immigration between 1900 and 1930 created a Southwest broadly identified with persons of Mexican origin. Economic development in Mexico, restriction of European immigration to the United States, and extreme cross-border wage differentials prompted extensive emigration. Despite low human capital, circular migration, and discrimination, immigrant Mexicans earned substantially higher wages than workers in Mexico or native-born Hispanics in the United States. They followed typical immigrant paths toward urban areas with high wages. Prior to 1930, their marked tendency to repatriate was not “constructed” or compelled by the state or employers, but fit a conventional immigrant strategy. During the Depression, many persons of Mexican origin migrated to Mexico; some were deported or coerced, but others followed this well-established repatriation strategy. The remaining Mexican-origin population, increasingly native born, enjoyed extraordinary socioeconomic gains in the 1940s; upward mobility, their family forms, and rising political activity resembled those of previous immigrant-origin communities. In the same decade, however, the Bracero Program prompted mass illegal immigration and mass deportation, a pattern replicated throughout the late twentieth century. These conditions repeatedly replenished ethnicity and reignited nativism, presenting a challenge not faced by any other immigrant group in US history.

scholarly journals Acculturation and Life Satisfaction Among Immigrant Mexican Adults

10.18060/3758 ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-64 ◽  
Author(s):  
Flavio F. Marsiglia ◽  
Jaime M. Booth ◽  
Adrienne Baldwin ◽  
Stephanie Ayers
Keyword(s):  
Life Satisfaction ◽  
Mexican Americans ◽  
Mexican American ◽  
First Generation ◽  
Work Practice ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Work Practice ◽  
English Only ◽  
The Impact

The numbers of Mexican Americans living in the United States, many of whom are first generation immigrants, are increasing. The process of immigration and acculturation can be accompanied by stress, as an individual attempts to reconcile two potentially competing sets of norms and values and to navigate a new social terrain. However, the outcomes of studies investigating the relationship between levels of acculturation and well-being are mixed. To further investigate the dynamic of acculturation, this article will address the impact of acculturation and familismo, on reported life satisfaction and resilience among Mexican American adults living in the Southwest (N=307), the majority (89%) of which are immigrants. The findings indicate that bilingual individuals report significantly higher levels of life satisfaction and resilience than their Spanish-speaking counterparts do. Speaking primarily English only predicted higher levels of resilience but not life satisfaction. Implications for social work practice with Mexican American immigrants are discussed.

The Impact of Ethnicity and Socialization on Definitions of Democracy: The Case of Mexican Americans and Mexicans

2003 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-104 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rodolfo O. de la Garza ◽  
Muserref Yetim
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Mexican Americans ◽  
Mexican American ◽  
The United States ◽  
Democratic Citizenship ◽  
Historical Background ◽  
The Political ◽  
Direct Experience ◽  
The Impact

This paper argues that Mexican American views of democracy differ significantly from those of Mexicans because of their exposure to the political institutions and culture of the United States. Our results vindicate Diamond's claim that there is no better way of developing the values, skills, and commitments of democratic citizenship than through direct experience with democracy (Diamond 1999). Equally significant is that the study demonstrates that ethnic ties do not determine political attitudes. That is, despite a shared historical background and contemporary cultural commonalities, Mexican views of democracy differ from those of Mexican Americans. Este artíículo arguye que las visiones de la democracia de los mexicano-americanos difieren significativamente de las de los mexicanos debido a su exposicióón a las instituciones de políítica y cultura de los Estados Unidos. Nuestros resultados justifican la idea de Diamond de que no hay mejor manera de desarrollar los valores, habilidades y el compromiso con una ciudadaníía democráática qua a travéés de la experiencia directa con la democracia (Diamond 1999). De igual importancia, el estudio demuestra que los lazos éétnicos no determinan las actitudes polííticas. Esto es, a pesar de compartir un trasfondo históórico y de las concordancias culturales contemporááneas, las visiones de la democracia de los mexicanos difieren de las de los mexicano-americanos.

A Legacy of Neglect: George I. Sánchez, Mexican American Education, and the Ideal of Integration, 1940–1970

2012 ◽  
Vol 114 (6) ◽  
pp. 1-34
Author(s):  
Carlos Kevin Blanton
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Mexican Americans ◽  
Mexican American ◽  
The United States ◽  
Compensatory Education ◽  
American People ◽  
Political Equality ◽  
The 1960S

This biographical study of Dr. George I. Sánchez, a leading Mexican American educator, intellectual, and activist from the 1930s through the 1960s, opens up the idea of compensatory education—the prevalent notion of the 1960s that schools use specialized instructional programs to combat the alleged cultural deprivation of some children, particularly minorities—to a wider focus. While George Sánchez addressed key themes of compensatory education in critical and even predictive ways since at least the 1940s, he was not known to the compensatory education movement, nor was his most passionate subject, Mexican Americans, much of a factor in compensatory education thinking. And this was most unfortunate. No one captured more forcefully the tension between liberal sympathy to offer special schooling to Mexican Americans and how such innovative educational programs maintained and perpetuated the widespread practice of racial segregation. I focus on several discrete, illustrative episodes of Sánchez's life and activism over a three-decade period: first, Sánchez's New Deal-era idealism from the late 1930s and early 1940s in which he used stricter sociological definitions of Mexican American culture as deficient and in need of government action; second, his efforts of the 1940s and 1950s to desegregate public schools in Texas and the Southwest on behalf of the nascent Mexican American civil rights movement; third, his support for bilingual education in the 1960s for reasons of civic and political equality, but not from the perspective of sociolinguistic theory; and finally, Sánchez's surprisingly persistent and pugnacious opposition throughout the 1960s to a preschool compensatory program that originated from within the Mexican American community. These four phases of Sanchez's career illustrate the degree to which Sánchez wrestled with, and even predicted, some key points of later criticism of the entire compensatory education intellectual project. These aspects of Sanchez's work also document just how invisible Mexican American struggles were to national intellectual and policy circles. But most of all, George I. Sánchez recognized that the Mexican American people in the United States, his people, suffered greatly from a sad legacy of neglect. One of the central consistencies to his pedagogical thinking regardless of the decade was his willingness to call attention to that tragic legacy in the hopes of correcting it. This underlying principle to Sánchez's life and work, as well as his sharp diagnosis of the leading educational theories of the day, makes his marginal, almost invisible position among compensatory education thinkers of the 1960s, who also sought to correct legacies of injustice, just as tragic. Educational thinkers today should know more about George I. Sánchez as well as his perspectives on Mexican Americans, schools, and justice.

scholarly journals Gender-Based Pathways to Cognitive Aging in the Mexican-Origin Population in the United States: The Significance of Work and Family

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sunshine M Rote ◽  
Jacqueline L Angel
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Impairment ◽  
Cognitive Aging ◽  
Mexican Americans ◽  
Mexican American ◽  
Late Life ◽  
The United States ◽  
Work And Family ◽  
Life Course Perspective ◽  
Mexican Origin ◽  
Number Of Children

Abstract Objectives This study uses the life course perspective to explore the role of key midlife factors (occupation and number of children) for gender- and nativity-based pathways to cognitive aging for older Mexican Americans. Method Using the Hispanic Established Populations for the Epidemiologic Study of the Elderly (H-EPESE, 1993/1994–2016, n = 2,779), this study presents (a) cognitive impairment trajectories over 20 years of data and (b) multinomial logistic regression analyses of trajectory group membership by lifetime occupation and number of children, controlling for educational attainment. Results For older Mexican American men, lifetime employment in agricultural occupations is associated with elevated risk for late-life cognitive impairment. Delayed risk for impairment is observed for U.S.-born men who were employed in factory work (e.g., production and repair) and in Mexican-born men who were employed in occupations with skilled or supervisory requirements. For all women, labor force participation, especially in skilled occupations, is related to a delayed risk of cognitive impairment. Number of children is unrelated to impairment for men; however, women with five or more children (compared to women with two to four children) are at risk for consistent and rapid cognitive impairment in late life. Discussion Late-life cognitive health disparities that disproportionately impact the Mexican American population can be addressed by improving access to educational and occupational opportunities in early and midlife. This study points to key areas of intervention within work and the home for the Mexican-origin population.

Overeducation and the Earnings of Black, Hispanic, and White Male Workers

1988 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 190-212 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard R. Verdugo ◽  
Naomi Turner Verdugo
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Mexican Americans ◽  
Minority Groups ◽  
Puerto Ricans ◽  
White Male ◽  
The United States ◽  
Using Data ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Male Workers ◽  
White Minority

This study addresses two issues: (1) the impact of overeducation on the earnings of male workers in the United States, and (2) white-minority earnings differences among males. Given that educational attainment levels are increasing among workers, there is some suspicion that earnings returns to education are not as great as might be expected. This topic is examined by including an overeducation variable in an earnings function. Regarding the second issue addressed in this article, little is actually known about white-minority differences because the bulk of such research compares whites and blacks. By including selected Hispanic groups in this analysis (Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, and Other Hispanics) we are able to assess white-minority earnings differences to a greater degree. Using data from a 5% sample of the 1980 census to estimate an earnings function, we find that overeducated workers earn less than either undereducated or adequately educated workers. Second, we find that there are substantial earnings differences between whites and minorities, and, also, between the five minority groups examined.

Good Neighbor in the American Historical Imagination: Mexican American Intellectual Thought in the Fight for Civil Rights, 1930s–1940s

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalie Mendoza
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Mexican Americans ◽  
Mexican American ◽  
The United States ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
Historical Imagination ◽  
American Intellectual ◽  
Good Neighbor

Abstract This article argues that historical narrative has held a significant role in Mexican American identity formation and civil rights activism by examining the way Mexican Americans in the 1930s and 1940s used history to claim full citizenship status in Texas. In particular, it centers on how George I. Sánchez (1906–1972), a scholar of Latin American education, revised historical narrative by weaving history and foreign policy together through a pragmatic lens. To educators and federal officials, Sánchez used this revisionist history to advocate for Mexican Americans, insisting that the Good Neighbor policy presented the United States with the chance to translate into reality the democratic ideals long professed in the American historical imagination. The example of Sánchez also prompts us to reexamine the historiography in our present day: How do we define the tradition and trajectory of Mexican American intellectual thought in U.S. history? This article posits that when Sánchez and other Mexican Americans thought about their community’s collective identity and civil rights issues through history, they were contributing to a longer conversation driven by questions about identity formation and equality that first emerged at the end of the U.S. War with Mexico in 1848. These questions remain salient in the present, indicating the need for a historiographic examination that will change how we imagine the tradition of intellectual thought in the United States.

scholarly journals THE IMPACT OF INTERGENERATIONAL SUPPORT ON DEPRESSIVE SYMPTOMS AMONG OLDER MEXICAN AMERICANS: DOES GENDER MATTER?

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. S817-S817
Author(s):  
Yaolin Pei ◽  
Zhen Cong ◽  
Bei Wu
Keyword(s):  
Depressive Symptoms ◽  
Mexican Americans ◽  
Mexican American ◽  
Adult Child ◽  
Living Alone ◽  
Intergenerational Support ◽  
West Texas ◽  
Different Types ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Gender Specific

Abstract The study examined gender differences in the impact of living alone and intergenerational support on depressive symptoms among Mexican American older adults. The sample included 335 parent-adult child dyads which were nested within 92 Mexican American respondents in a city in West Texas. Each respondent reported their specific relationships with each child. The results from clustered regression showed that men provided and received less intergenerational support than women, but their depressive symptoms were more susceptible to living alone and different types of intergenerational support. Factors such as living alone, and receiving instrumental support were related to higher levels of depressive symptoms among Mexican American older men than among in their female counterparts, whereas emotional closeness with children was associated with lower level of depressive symptoms in men than in women. The findings can be used to develop and target a gender-specific approach for depression interventions among older Mexican Americans.

Mexican American Faculty in Research Universities: Can the Next Generation Beat the Odds?

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 458-473 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth Enid Zambrana ◽  
Brianne A. Dávila ◽  
Michelle M. Espino ◽  
Lisa M. Lapeyrouse ◽  
R. Burciaga Valdez ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Capital ◽  
Research Universities ◽  
Mexican Americans ◽  
Mexican American ◽  
Maternal Education ◽  
Educational Aspirations ◽  
Implicit Bias ◽  
The United States ◽  
National Study ◽  
Underrepresented Minority

Mexican Americans represent the largest Latina/o subpopulation and have the lowest levels of educational attainment in the United States. Mexican Americans are underrepresented in all professional fields, including academia, and thus warrant attention. The purposes of this study are to describe the experiences of early and mid-career Mexican American faculty, emphasizing key sources of inspiration, support, and mentoring, perceived discrimination, and their coping responses; assess the ways in which these factors influence their careers; and examine differences by gender and maternal education. Mixed methods were used to obtain information from 133 Mexican American faculty who participated in a larger national study of underrepresented minority (URM) faculty at research universities. Five major findings emerged: (1) early life course support sustained and encouraged educational aspirations, (2) mentorship from significant others provided valuable advice in developing social capital throughout higher education and early faculty experiences, (3) female respondents were more likely to report inadequate mentoring and higher levels of distress due to recurrent experiences of racially gendered discrimination, (4) strategies of resistance reveal high levels of emotional labor as respondents deconstruct the hidden curriculum to perform effectively in environments that are imbued with implicit bias, and (5) maternal education contributed to improved mentoring experiences and active resistance strategies. The findings suggest that expanding social capital–driven strategies and increasing understanding of persistent anti-Mexican social policy that leads to misidentification and implicit bias are key in retention and professional success for Mexican American faculty.

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