“Sad Flower in the Sand”: Camilla Lopez and the Erasure of Memory in Ask the Dust

2020 ◽  
pp. 58-82
Author(s):  
Meagan Meylor
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
Mexican Americans ◽  
Mexican American ◽  
Ethnic Identities ◽  
Female Subjectivity ◽  
Presence And Absence

While scholars of Ask the Dust have given considerable attention to the novel’s protagonist Arturo Bandini, his Mexican American love interest Camilla Lopez has been relatively neglected. Scholarship concerning Camilla has been limited to her destructive relationship with Arturo and her attempts at adopting Hollywood values. By foregrounding the figure of Camilla through the socio-historical lens of the marginalization and deportation of Mexicans and Mexican Americans during the 1930s, this chapter offers important insights into Fante’s novel, most notably in its treatment of ethnic identities within Los Angeles. It also provides a feminist reading of Ask the Dust by examining Fante’s treatment of working-class female subjectivity and of how Camilla’s recurring presence and absence draw attention to the Mexican past of Los Angeles, a history often erased in the city’s collective memory.

The Ambivalent Minority: Mexican Americans and the Voting Rights Act

1994 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-95 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Skerry
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
Mexican Americans ◽  
Mexican American ◽  
San Antonio ◽  
Voting Rights Act ◽  
News Magazine ◽  
The People ◽  
Political Orientations ◽  
Rich History

In the countless conversations about U.S. immigration policy that I have had with Mexican Americans of varied backgrounds and political orientations, seldom have my interlocutors failed to remind me that “We were here first,” or that “This was our land and you stole it from us.” Even a moderate Mexican American politician like former San Antonio Mayor Henry Cisneros sounds the same theme in a national news magazine:It is no accident that these regions have the names they do—Los Angeles, San Francisco, Colorado, Montana.…It is a rich history that Americans have been led to believe is an immigrant story when, in fact, the people who built this area in the first place were Hispanics.

Generations of Segregation

2019 ◽  
pp. 210-241
Author(s):  
George J. Sanchez
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Mexican Americans ◽  
Mexican American ◽  
American Citizenship ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Film Making ◽  
The City

Los Angeles was built by immigrants from the U.S. South, Asia, and especially Mexico. After 1900 the city grew as a rail terminus, Pacific port, and tourist destination. It became a focus of film making and petroleum production, and developed booming defense industries during World War II and the Cold War. Marketed as the city of dreams, continuing immigration made it increasingly Mexican while Mexicans faced residential segregation that constrained educational chances, economic opportunities, and political participation. Fragmented urban administration allowed Realty Boards and County officials to limit Mexican-American (and African-American) citizenship despite national civil rights policies promoting integration and participation. When defense, energy, and other industries declined in the turn to globalization, African American (1973-93) and Mexican American (2005-13) mayors offered images of opening while enduring segregation constrained education, employment, and life opportunities for Mexican-Americans and African Americans. New immigrants from Mexico, Central America and beyond faced lives of marginality.

Mexican American

2019 ◽  
pp. 78-104
Author(s):  
Edward Telles ◽  
Christina A. Sue
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Identity ◽  
National Identity ◽  
Mexican Americans ◽  
Mexican American ◽  
National Identities ◽  
Ethnic Identities ◽  
Economic Opportunities ◽  
American Society ◽  
The Individual

This chapter assesses whether U.S.-born Mexican Americans feel American or a part of American society, even though they have been portrayed as threats to Americanism and have had their allegiance questioned. It also considers how their ethnic identity affects their sense of Americanness. For the respondents, they in no way perceive their ethnic and national identities as being mutually exclusive; to the contrary, they find these identities to be highly compatible and complementary. They define Americanness in terms of birthplace, political loyalty, and economic opportunities; they define Mexicanness in terms of culture, family, and ancestral background. Moreover, the vast majority of the respondents view national identity as their primary identity, something that is constant, natural, and unquestioned, whereas their ethnic identities vary in intensity, depending on the individual and the situation.

Mexican American

2019 ◽  
pp. 40-77
Author(s):  
Edward Telles ◽  
Christina A. Sue
Keyword(s):  
Urban Area ◽  
Mexican Americans ◽  
Skin Color ◽  
Mexican American ◽  
Ethnic Identities ◽  
American Study ◽  
Linked Fate ◽  
European Americans

This chapter examines Mexican Americans’ understandings of their ethnic identities, including the meaning and importance they attribute to them and the relevance of ethnicity to their lives. It reveals how their ethnic expressions generally involve a mix of symbolic and consequential ethnicity but how ethnicity often manifests differently than the symbolic or optional expressions of ethnicity experienced by many later-generation European Americans. Many of the respondents, to varying degrees, had experiences of lacking choice regarding their ethnicity, having to negotiate both Mexican and American communities, having a sense of linked fate to co-ethnics, and being stereotyped or discriminated against—all of which signal a consequential aspect to their ethnicities. The chapter also illustrates how the full Mexican American Study Project sample is distributed along a symbolic–consequential ethnicity continuum and how these distributions vary by factors such as urban area, gender, skin color, and generation.

“Oppressed and Destroyed”

2020 ◽  
Vol 89 (4) ◽  
pp. 528-556
Author(s):  
S. Janelle Montgomery
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Mexican Americans ◽  
Complex Interplay ◽  
Race And Class ◽  
Civic Discourse ◽  
Unique Site ◽  
History Of ◽  
Politics Of Race ◽  
Depression Era

In 1932 in Depression-era Los Angeles, Mexican muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros took advantage of a unique site on Olvera Street to confront Los Angeles’s establishment on behalf of not only Mexican Americans in California but the proletariat everywhere. The resulting mural, América tropical, challenged Los Angeles’s sanitized history of its Mexican past and the persecution of the city’s immigrant working class. The establishment responded by requesting that Siqueiros leave the country and by whitewashing the mural. In the late 1960s, the white overpaint began to fade, and América tropical re-emerged to play a part in another chapter of the politics of race and class in Los Angeles. Revisiting the mural and its destruction illuminates the complex interplay between outdoor art and civic discourse.

Self-Reports of Spousal Violence in a Mexican-American and Non-Hispanic White Population

1991 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan B. Sorenson ◽  
Cynthia A. Telles
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
Sexual Assault ◽  
Mexican Americans ◽  
Mexican American ◽  
The United States ◽  
Spousal Violence ◽  
Mexican American Women ◽  
Self Reports ◽  
Hispanic White

As part of a survey of Los Angeles households, 1,243 Mexican Americans and 1,149 non-Hispanic whites were surveyed about their experiences of spousal violence. Questions to assess violence included both perpetration (whether they had been physically violent toward a partner) and victimization (whether they had been the victim of sexual assault by a partner). Over one-fifth (21.2%) of the respondents indicated that they had, at one or more times in their lives, hit or thrown things at their current or former spouse or partner. Spousal violence rates for Mexican Americans born in Mexico and non-Hispanic whites born in the United States were nearly equivalent (20.0% and 21.6%, respectively); rates were highest for Mexican Americans born in the United States (30.9%). While overall rates of sexual assault were lower for Mexican Americans, one-third of the most recent incidents reported by Mexico-born Mexican-American women involved the husband and approximated rape.

Bloody Christmas and the Irony of Police Professionalism: The Los Angeles Police Department, Mexican Americans, and Police Reform in the 1950s

2003 ◽  
Vol 72 (2) ◽  
pp. 171-199 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward J. Escobar
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
Mexican Americans ◽  
Mexican American ◽  
Police Department ◽  
City Government ◽  
Civilian Control ◽  
Police Reform ◽  
Minority Communities ◽  
Los Angeles Police Department ◽  
The Rule Of Law

On December 25, 1951, approximately fifty Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) officers brutally beat seven young men in their custody, including five Mexican Americans. The ensuing controversy became known as Bloody Christmas. Mexican American activists demanded investigations into allegations of police brutality and LAPD accountability to civilian control. The LAPD's new chief, William Parker, however, had just launched a reform campaign based on the police professionalism model, which stressed police autonomy, particularly about internal discipline. Parker and his allies in city government stifled external investigations into department matters, vilified LAPD critics, and even ignored perjury by officers. They thus helped create an organizational culture that valued LAPD independence above the rule of law and led to the LAPD's estrangement from Mexican American and other minority communities.

scholarly journals Predictors of Gestational Weight Gain in Mexican American Women in Los Angeles

2015 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 01-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth Mielke ◽  
Nicholas Gorman
Keyword(s):  
Weight Gain ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
Gestational Diabetes ◽  
Gestational Weight Gain ◽  
Mexican Americans ◽  
Mexican American ◽  
The United States ◽  
Mexican American Women ◽  
American Women ◽  
Gestational Weight

Background and Significance: Extremes of gestational weight gain (GWG) are associated with newborn and pregnancy complications, postpartum obesity and chronic illnesses. In the United States, Mexican American women are the largest subgroup of Hispanics but have been studied least often. The purpose of the study was to determine the prevalence, characteristics, and predictors of GWG in Mexican American women. Methods: A retrospective, correlational design used data from charts (n=684) in a federally qualified health center in Los Angeles. Prevalence of GWG was inadequate, 22%; adequate, 33%; and excessive, 45%. Risk factors for excessive GWG were hypertension (p = .04), overweight (p = .00), or obese pre-pregnancy BMI (p = .01). Conversely, women who had gestational diabetes (p = .02), ate more snacks (p = .01), were multiparous (p = .03), and less acculturated (p = .03) experienced less excessive gain. Conclusions: Efforts to prevent excessive GWG in Mexican Americans should be targeted to women having their first baby and those with high pre-pregnancy BMI. One strategy may be recommending diet/exercise similar to that used in women with gestational diabetes. For women who are less acculturated and/or who are multiparous, strategies that will minimize inadequate GWG may improve newborn outcomes.

“A Pledge Is Not Self-Enforcing”:

2012 ◽  
Vol 82 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-94 ◽  
Author(s):  
Max Felker-Kantor
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Mexican Americans ◽  
Mexican American ◽  
Title Vii ◽  
Civil Rights Organizations ◽  
Grass Roots ◽  
Fair Employment ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Job Prospects

This article explores African American and Mexican American struggles for equal employment in Los Angeles after 1965. It argues that activists and workers used the mechanisms set up by Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act to attack the barriers that restricted blacks and Mexican Americans to poor job prospects. It shows that implementation of fair employment law was part of a dialectic between policymakers and regulatory officials, on one hand, and grass-roots individuals and civil rights organizations, on the other. The bureaucratic mechanisms created by Title VII shaped who would benefit from the implementation of the law. Moreover, blacks and Mexican Americans mixed ethnic power and civil rights frameworks to make the bureaucratic system more capacious and race-conscious, which challenged the intentions of the original legislation.

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