Voices of the U.S. Latino Experience Three Volumes

Voices of the U.S. Latino Experience

Voices of the U.S. Latino Experience

~a and Edited by Rodolfo F. Acun
n Guadalupe Compea

GREENWOOD PRESS Westport, Connecticut ¥ London

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Voices of the U.S. Latino experience / edited by Rodolfo F. Acu~ na and Guadalupe Compe
an. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978 0 313 34020 8 (set : alk. paper) ISBN 978 0 313 34021 5 (v. 1 : alk. paper) ISBN 978 0 313 34022 2 (v. 2 : alk. paper) ISBN 978 0 313 34023 9 (v. 3 : alk. paper) 1. Hispanic Americans History Sources. I. Acu~ na, Rodolfo. II. Compe
an, Guadalupe. E184.S75V65 2008 9730 .0468 dc22 2007046170 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available. C 2008 by Rodolfo F. Acu~ na and Guadalupe Compe
an Copyright


All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, by any process or technique, without the express written consent of the publisher. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2007046170 ISBN: 978 0 313 34020 8 (set) 978 0 313 34021 5 (vol. 1) 978 0 313 34022 2 (vol. 2) 978 0 313 34023 9 (vol. 3) First published in 2008 Greenwood Press, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881 An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. www.greenwood.com Printed in the United States of America

The paper used in this book complies with the Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National Information Standards Organization (Z39.48 1984). 10 9 8 7

6 5 4 3

2 1

Every reasonable effort has been made to trace the owners of copyright materials in this book, but in some instances this has proven impossible. The author and publisher will be glad to receive information leading to more complete acknowledgments in subsequent printings of the book and in the meantime extend their apologies for any omissions.

To Our Angela and Her Shadow

Contents Documents by Group Introduction Timeline of U.S. Latino History

Part I Borders 1. Excerpts from J. Eric S. Thompson, ed., Thomas Gage’s Travels in the New World, 1648 2. The Secret Treaty of San Ildefonso, October 1, 1800 3. Excerpts from the Louisiana Purchase, April 30, 1803 4. Excerpts from the Proclamation of Haiti’s Independence by the General in Chief, Jean Jacques Dessalines, to the Haitian People in Gonaives, January 1, 1804 5. Letter from John Sibley to General Henry Dearborn, October 12, 1808 6. Letter from Ignacio de Allende to Fr. Miguel Hidalgo, August 31, 1810 7. El Grito de Dolores, September 16, 1810 8. Jos
e Mar
ıa Morelos Decree, October 13, 1811 9. Excerpts from a Letter from Thomas Jefferson to Alexander von Humboldt, December 6, 1813 10. Excerpts from the Adams-On
ıs Treaty of 1819 11. Plan of Iguala, February 24, 1821 12. Treaty of C
ordova, August 24, 1821 13. Excerpts from Sim
on Bol
ıvar Letter, Kingston, Jamaica, September 6, 1815 14. Excerpt from Sim
on Bol
ıvar’s Speech before the Congress of Angostura, February 15, 1819 Part II Going West, 1820–1840s 15. Excerpts from the Letter from Stephen Austin to Edward Lovelace or Josiah Bell, November 22, 1822 16. The Monroe Doctrine, December 2, 1823 17. Petition Concerning Slavery, June 10, 1824 18. Decree Abolishing the Slave Trade in Mexico, July 13, 1824 19. Decree No. 16: The Colonization of the State of Coahuila and Texas, 1825 20. Decree of Mexican President Vicente Guerrero Abolishing Slavery, September 15, 1829

xxiii xli lvii

1 1 2 4

6 8 10 10 11 13 14 16 18 21 21 25 25 27 29 30 30 37

viii

Contents

21. Excerpts from Gen. Manuel de Mier y Ter
an’s Diaries, 1789 1832 22. Letter from Gen. Manuel de Mier y Ter
an to Luc
as Alam
an, ‘‘¿En qu
e parar
a Texas? En lo que Dios quiera.’’ (‘‘What is to become of Texas? Whatever God wills.’’), July 2, 1832 23. Jos
e Antonio Navarro’s Letter to the Editor of the San Antonio Ledger, October 30, 1853 24. Excerpts from Lorenzo de Zavala, Journey to the United States of North America, Early 1830s 25. Texas Declaration of Independence, March 2, 1836 26. Excerpts from the Address of the Honorable S. F. Austin, Louisville, Kentucky, March 7, 1836 27. Excerpt from Jos
e Mar
ıa Salom
e Rodr
ıguez, The Memoirs of Early Texas, 1913 28. Excerpt from the Memoirs of Antonio Menchaca 29. Excerpts from Jos
e Juan S
anchez Navarro, A Mexican View of the War in Texas, 1830s 30. Excerpt from the Diary Entry of Jos
e Enrique de la Pe~ na, 1836 31. Excerpt from the Treaty of Velasco, May 14, 1836 32. Letter from Vicente C
ordova to Manuel Flores, July 19, 1838 33. Excerpts from John L. O’Sullivan’s Column on ‘‘Manifest Destiny,’’ 1839 34. Excerpt from Juan Segu
ın’s Address to the Texas Senate, February 1840 35. Letter from Texas President Mirabeau B. Lamar to the People of Santa F
e, April 14, 1840 36. Excerpts from Juan Nepomuceno Segu
ın, Personal Memoirs of Juan N. Segu
ın Part III The Mexican-American War 37. Excerpts from the Treaty of Annexation between the United States and the Republic of Texas, April 12, 1844 38. Jos
e Joaqu
ın de Herrera, ‘‘A Proclamation Denouncing the United States’ Intention to Annex Texas,’’ June 4, 1845 39. Letter from Abraham Lincoln to Williamson Durley, October 3, 1845 40. Excerpts from President James Polk’s State of the Union Address, December 2, 1845 41. Letter from Ulysses S. Grant to Fianc
ee Julia Dent, July 25, 1846 42. Abraham Lincoln’s ‘‘Spot Resolutions,’’ December 22, 1847 43. John C. Calhoun, ‘‘The Conquest of Mexico,’’ 1848 44. Excerpts from Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, 1855 45. Abraham Lincoln’s Speech to Congress against Seizing Mexican Territory, January 12, 1848 46. Excerpts from the Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant, 1885 47. Excerpt from Abiel Abbott Livermore, The War with Mexico Reviewed, 1850 48. Excerpts from The Other Side: Or Notes for the History of the War between Mexico and the United States Written in Mexico, 1846 1847 49. Excerpts from George B. McClellan, ‘‘On Volunteers in the Mexican War’’ 50. Excerpts from Samuel E. Chamberlain, My Confessions

38

40 41 48 51 53 56 62 65 67 68 70 71 73 74 75 81 81 82 83 85 88 88 89 94 95 100 101 102 105 106

Contents ix

51. Excerpts from the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, 1848 52. Deleted Article X from the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, 1848 53. President James K. Polk (1795 1849) on Article X of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, February 22, 1848 54. The Quer
etaro Protocol, May 26, 1848 55. Excerpt from Manuel Crescion Rej
on on the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, 1848

Part IV The Border and Reannexation 56. Henry Clay’s Resolutions on the Compromise of 1850, January 29, 1850 57. Excerpt from Governor William Carr Lane’s Manifesto Regarding the Drawing of the Boundary between Mexico and the United States, 1853 58. Excerpt from Commissioner James Bartlett’s Reply to William Carr Lane, 1853 59. A Letter from John Disturnell to the New York Daily Times on the Drawing of the New-Mexican Boundary, May 6, 1853 60. Excerpts from the Gadsden Purchase Treaty, December 30, 1853 61. Excerpt from a letter of Joaqu
ın Corella, Head of Arizpe’s Ayuntamiento (Town Council) to Sonoran Gov. Manuel G
andara, January 25, 1856 62. Excerpt from ‘‘From the Rio Grande,’’ March 7, 1855 63. Excerpt from ‘‘The French in Sonora and Dominica The Monroe Declaration,’’ December 16, 1852 64. Letter from John Forsyth to Hon. Lewis Cass on the Execution of Colonel Henry Crabb and Associates, Message from the President of the United States of America, February 16, 1858 65. Excerpt from a Special Correspondent, ‘‘A Tour in the Southwest,’’ 1854 66. Excerpts from the New York Daily Times, ‘‘New Mexico Its Social Condition,’’ 1852 (author unknown) 67. Excerpt from O. Henry, ‘‘Tamales,’’ 1912 68. Excerpt from William D. Carrigan and Clive Webb, ‘‘The Lynching of Persons of Mexican Origin or Descent in the United States, 1848 to 1928’’ 69. Jos
e Mar
ıa Loaiza’s Claim for the Lynching of His Wife Josefa and His Banishment by a Mob in Downieville, California, July 4, 1852 70. Letter from ‘‘Dame Shirley’’ Concerning San Francisco Vigilante Committee Activities against Chileans, 1852 71. Excerpts from Jay Monaghan, Chile, Peru, and the California Gold Rush of 1849, 1973 72. Excerpts from Jill L. Cossley-Batt, ‘‘The Capture of Joaqu
ın Murieta,’’ 1928 73. Excerpts from David Bacon, ‘‘Interview with Antonio Rivera Murrieta’’ [descendant of Joaqu
ın Murrieta], December 15, 2001 74. Excerpts from Horace Bell, Reminiscences of a Ranger; or, Early Times in Southern California, 1881 75. Excerpt from a Statement by Tiburcio V
asquez, 1874 76. Excerpts from Robert Greenwood, The California Outlaw: Tiburcio V
asquez, 1960

107 111 112 113 114

115 115 117 118 120 121 123 123 124

127 128 128 129

132 133 134 135 138 139 143 146 148

x

Contents

Part V

Texas

77. Judge Jos
e Tom
as Canales on Juan Cortina, 1949 78. Excerpts from Report of Major Samuel P. Heintzelman to Colonel Robert E. Lee, March 1, 1860 79. Excerpts from Report of the Mexican Commission on the Northern Frontier Question, 1875 80. Excerpt from ‘‘A Little War on the Border,’’ 1877 81. Excerpt from W. M. Dunn’s Report to War Department, Bureau of Military Justice, April 19, 1878 82. Excerpt from ‘‘El Paso Troubles in Texas,’’ Letter from Colonel John H. King, Secretary of War, House of Representatives, to the Bureau of Military Justice, April 19, 1878 Part VI

Voices Mexicanas

83. Excerpts from the Testimony of Eulalia P
erez Regarding Her Life in Mexican California, 1877 84. Francisco Ram
ırez, ‘‘El Dia de Muertos’’ (‘‘The Day of the Dead’’), 1857 85. Francisco Ram
ırez, ‘‘Let There Be Justice,’’ 1856 86. Manuel Retes, ‘‘Emigration to Sonora,’’ 1858 87. Excerpts from Mar
ıa Amparo Ruiz de Burton, Who Would Have Thought It?, 1872 88. Excerpts from Mar
ıa Amparo Ruiz de Burton, The Squatter and the Don, 1885 89. Excerpts from Sostenes Betancourt, ‘‘The Wife of Joaqu
ın Murieta and el Ferrocarril del Sur,’’ 1885 90. Excerpts from Miguel Antonio Otero II, My Life on the Frontier 1864 1882 Part VII

Land

91. Excerpt from ‘‘The Concept of Common Lands Defines Community Land Grants,’’ 2007 92. Excerpts from Herbert O. Brayer, William Blackmore: The Spanish Mexican Land Grants of New Mexico and Colorado, 1863 1878 93. Petition of Antonio Mar
ıa Pico et al. to the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States, 1859 94. Excerpts from de Arguello v. United States, 1855 95. Excerpts from W. W. Robinson, The Story of Mission Lands, Ranchos, Squatters, Mining Claims, Railroad Grants, Land Scrip, Homesteads, 1948 96. Excerpts from Gonzales v. Ross, 1887 97. Excerpt from Las Gorras Blancas (The White Caps) Manifesto, 1890 Part VIII

Latinos South of the Border

98. Author Unknown, Excerpts from ‘‘Cuba,’’ 1849 99. Excerpts from a Letter from U.S. Secretary of State James Buchanan to R. M. Saunders, June 17, 1848 100. Excerpts from the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, 1850

149 149 151 162 165 168

169 173 173 179 179 180 181 183 186 190 193 193 195 197 200 204 205 213 215 215 217 218

Contents xi

101. Excerpts from President Millard Fillmore’s State of the Union Address, December 2, 1851 102. Excerpts from Martin R. Delany, ‘‘A Glance at Ourselves, Conclusion,’’ 1852 103. Excerpts from Pierre Soul
e, ‘‘The Cuban Question: Defence of the L
opez Expedition,’’ January 25, 1853 104. Ostend Manifesto, October 18, 1854 105. ‘‘Designs upon Cuba,’’ 1856 106. Excerpt from Speech Given by William Walker in New Orleans, May 30, 1857 107. ‘‘Gen. Walker’s Letter,’’ September 21, 1857 108. Excerpts from The United States Democratic Review, ‘‘The Nicaraguan Question,’’ 1858 109. ‘‘The Cuban Scheme,’’ January 10, 1859 110. Democratic Party Platform, June 18, 1860 111. El Grito de Lares, Principles of Unity, 1867 112. Excerpt from Correspondent Quasimodo, ‘‘Cuba,’’ 1868 113. Excerpts from the Address of Manuel de Quesada of Cuba to the United States, December 4, 1873 114. Excerpt from a U.S. Senate Debate Regarding Whether the United States Should Annex Santo Domingo, 1870 Part IX Independistas 115. Excerpt from Mar
ıa Eugenia Echenique, ‘‘The Emancipation of Women,’’ 1876 116. Letter from Jos
e Mart
ı to the Editor of the New York Evening Post, March 25, 1889 117. ‘‘My Race,’’ by Jos
e Mart
ı, April 16, 1893 118. ‘‘To Cuba!’’ Jos
e Mart
ı, January 27, 1894 119. Letter from Jos
e Mart
ı to Manuel Mercado, May 18, 1895 120. Excerpt from ‘‘The Labor Strikes,’’ 1875 121. ‘‘The Strike of the Cigar Men,’’ 1883 122. ‘‘Cigarmakers Protesting,’’ 1884 123. Letter from Maximo G
omez to U.S. President Grover Cleveland, February 9, 1897 124. U.S. Resolution on the ‘‘Recognition of the Independence of Cuba’’ and the Teller Amendment, 1898 125. ‘‘Interment of Jos
e Mart
ı,’’ 1895 126. ‘‘Porto Rico in Rebellion,’’ 1895 127. Letter from Col. Charles Gordon to the U.S. Consul to Cuba on the Death of Cuba’s Gen. Antonio Maceo, January 1, 1897 128. George Reno, ‘‘History of the Brilliant Career of Gen. Mario Menocal,’’ 1899

220 225 226 235 240 242 246 249 250 253 254 254 256 268 273 273 275 279 281 287 289 290 291 294 296 297 298 300 302

Part X The Occupation

307

129. Excerpts from the Treaty of Paris between the United States and Spain, 1898

307

xii

Contents

130. 131. 132. 133. 134. 135. 136. 137. 138. 139. 140. 141. 142. 143. 144. 145.

Excerpts from the Diary of General M
aximo G
omez, January 8, 1899 Campaign Speech Given by Albert Beveridge, September 16, 1898 Excerpts from ‘‘The Field Laborer,’’ Testimony of Severo Tulier, 1899 Excerpts from ‘‘La Miseria: A Los Negros Puertorrique~ nos,’’ a Letter from Ram
on Romero Rosa to Black Puerto Ricans, March 27, 1901 Excerpts from a Petition from Puerto Rican Workers at the Plantation Paauilo to the Governor of Puerto Rico, 1902 Rudyard Kipling, ‘‘The White Man’s Burden,’’ 1899 ‘‘Revolution in Colombia,’’ 1902 ‘‘By Treaty or by War,’’ 1902 Excerpts from Theodore Roosevelt’s Annual Message to Congress, December 6, 1904 The Platt Amendment, 1903 Rub
en Dar
ıo, ‘‘To Roosevelt’’ (Poem to President Theodore Roosevelt), 1904 ‘‘Roosevelt Boasts of Canal,’’ 1911 ‘‘Porto Rican Labor for Panama Canal,’’ Letter to the Editor of the New York Times, 1904 ‘‘Taft to Porto Ricans,’’ 1907 Letter on Women’s Roles from Luisa Capetillo to Dr. Paul Vigne, 1910 Letter on Socialism from Luisa Capetillo to Manuel Ugarte, 1911

310 311 316 317 319 320 321 323 325 328 329 331 331 332 333 335

Part XI Push and Pull

337

146. 147. 148. 149. 150. 151. 152. 153. 154. 155.

338 343 345 348 350 353 355 360 365

156. 157. 158. 159. 160. 161. 162. 163. 164. 165. 166.

Excerpts from In re Ricardo Rodr
ıguez, 1897 ‘‘Opening Up Mexico,’’ 1881 ‘‘Progress of the Revolt,’’ 1892 ‘‘To Mexico for Revenge,’’ 1895 Maud Mason Austin, ‘‘Teresa Urrea,’’ 1896 Excerpts from the Chinese Exclusion Act, 1882 Excerpts from the Memoirs of Federico Jos
e Mar
ıa Ronstadt Excerpts from Joseph Park, ‘‘The 1903 ‘Mexican Affair’ at Clifton,’’ 1903 ‘‘Fearing Arizona Mob, Sisters Start East,’’ 1904 Mariano Mart
ınez, ‘‘Arizona Americans,’’ Letter to the Editor of the New York Times, 1904 ‘‘Big Man Hunt in Texas,’’ 1901 Anonymous, ‘‘El Corrido de Gregorio Cortez,’’ ca. 1901 Excerpts from Victor S. Clark, ‘‘Mexican Labor in the United States,’’ 1908 Excerpts from John Kenneth Turner, Barbarous Mexico, 1910 Excerpt from Nellie Campobello, Cartucho Letter from Ricardo Flores Mag
on to Harry Weinberger, May 9, 1921 ‘‘Mexicans Burn American Flag,’’ 1910 Rev. Pedro Grado’s Farewell Address, 1911 Excerpts from the Plan of San Luis Potosi, November 20, 1910 Excerpts from the New Mexico Constitution, 1912 Excerpts from Samuel Bryan, ‘‘Mexican Immigrants in the United States,’’ 1912

366 367 368 369 377 383 384 389 390 392 394 395

Contents xiii

167. Excerpts from Henry ‘‘Hank’’ L
opez, ‘‘Papa and Pancho Villa,’’ 1970 168. ‘‘Race War in Arizona; Death List Is Sixteen,’’ 1914 169. Excerpts from Francisco Garc
ıa Calder
on, ‘‘Imperialism of Decadence,’’ 1913 170. Excerpts from the Plan de San Diego, 1915 171. Excerpts from ‘‘Immigration Bill Enacted over Veto,’’ 1917 172. ‘‘Press Move for Loyalty,’’ 1917 173. Excerpt from the 1918 Amendment to the Espionage Act of 1917 174. Excerpt from Gilberto Hinojosa, ‘‘WWI Veteran also Crusader for Rights,’’ 2003 175. Excerpt from Lon C. Hill’s Testimony before Albert B. Fall Committee, 1920 176. Excerpt from Walter Prescott Webb, The Texas Rangers: A Century of Frontier Defense, 1935 177. ‘‘Mexicans Given Baths,’’ 1917 178. ‘‘ ‘Viva Villa’ Shouted in Riots at Juarez,’’ 1917

398 407 408 409 411 412 413 415 416 418 418 419

Part XII The Gateway to the Americas

421

179. 180. 181. 182.

422 423 426

183. 184. 185. 186. 187. 188. 189. 190. 191. 192. 193. 194. 195.

196.

Excerpt from ‘‘Overcrowded Porto Rico,’’ 1916 Excerpt from the Deposition of Rafael F. March
an, October 24, 1918 ‘‘Units of Old Guard Now All Recruited,’’ 1922 ‘‘Porto Ricans and America,’’ Letter from Rafael George Gatell to the Editor of the New York Times, 1921 James Weldon Johnson, ‘‘Self-Determining Haiti: IV. The Haitian People,’’ 1920 Ernest H. Gruening, ‘‘Haiti and Santo Domingo Today,’’ 1922 Excerpts from Salom
on de la Selva, ‘‘On the Proposed Union of Central America,’’ 1920 Excerpts from Cayetano Coll y Cuchi, ‘‘American Rule in Porto Rico,’’ 1922 Augusto C
esar Sandino, ‘‘To Abolish the Monroe Doctrine,’’ 1933 ‘‘Calvin Coolidge: Intervention in Nicaragua,’’ 1927 Excerpt from Jes
us Col
on, ‘‘Stowaway,’’ ca. 1917 Excerpts from the Memoirs of Bernardo Vega Memo from Ram
on Lebr
on to the Department of Agriculture and Labor, 1921 Excerpts from Margaret Hill Benedict, ‘‘Why My Children Speak Spanish,’’ 1920 Correspondence from the Puerto Rican Club of San Francisco and the Puerto Rican League of California, 1925 Excerpts from Luis Mu~ noz Mar
ın, ‘‘The Sad Case of Porto Rico,’’ February 1929 Excerpts from ‘‘Porto Rico: A Colonial Responsibility,’’ The New Republic’s Response to President Calvin Coolidge’s Presidential Address, February 6, 1929 ‘‘Cubans vs. Porto Ricans,’’ Letter to the Editor of the New Republic Responding to ‘‘Porto Rico: A Colonial Responsibility,’’ 1929

427 428 432 437 439 443 443 447 451 454 455 457 459

461 464

xiv

Contents

Part XIII Americanization of Latino Immigrants

467

197. Theodore Roosevelt on ‘‘True Americanism,’’ 1894 198. Ernestine M. Alvarado, ‘‘A Plea for Mutual Understanding between Mexican Immigrants and Native Americans,’’ 1920 199. Excerpts from Merton E. Hill, The Development of an Americanization Program, 1928 200. ‘‘Flood of Mexican Aliens a Problem,’’ 1919 201. Excerpt from ‘‘Naturalization Bill Alters Women’s Status,’’ 1921 202. Excerpts from the Immigration Act, 1921 203. Excerpts from Adolfo Romo v. Tempe School District, 1925 204. ‘‘Mexican Laborers Drifting over Line,’’ 1921 205. Excerpt from Bylaws of La Liga Protectora Latina, 1920 206. Excerpts from Sen. David A. Reed, ‘‘America of the Melting Pot Comes to End,’’ 1924 207. The National Origins Immigration Act of 1924 208. Excerpts from Paul S. Taylor, ‘‘The Municipio of Arandas,’’ 1933 209. Excerpts from Lina E. Bresette, ‘‘Mexicans in the United States: A Report of a Brief Survey,’’ 1929 210. Excerpt from R. N. McLean and Charles A. Thompson, ‘‘Spanish and Mexican in Colorado,’’ 1924 211. Excerpt from ‘‘Autos Increase Ranch Troubles,’’ 1924 212. Circular from Imperial Valley Workers Union, ca. 1930 213. Excerpts from Devra Anne Weber, ‘‘The Organizing of Mexicano Agricultural Workers: Imperial Valley and Los Angeles 1928 34, an Oral History Approach,’’ 1973 214. Excerpts from Ernesto Galarza, ‘‘Life in the United States for Mexican People: Out of the Experience of a Mexican,’’ 1929 215. Excerpts from Emory S. Bogardus, ‘‘The Mexican Immigrant and Segregation,’’ 1930 216. Excerpts from ‘‘Life, Trial, and Death of Aurelio Pompa,’’ 1928 217. Excerpts from Steve Zuckerman, ‘‘Didn’t Think I Was Great, Fighter Said,’’ 1979 218. The Constitution of the League of United Latin American Citizens, 1929 219. Excerpts from Robert C. Jones and Louis R. Wilson, ‘‘The Mexican in Chicago,’’ 1931

468 476 477 478 479 480 483 484 486 487 488 493 496 498 500 501

502 504 505 507 509 509 511

Part XIV Latinos and the Great Depression

515

220. 221. 222. 223. 224.

516 518 522 524

225. 226. 227. 228.

Excerpt from Paul J. Dosal, The Building of El C
ırculo Cubano, 1902 1918 Excerpts from Oral History Interview of Ferm
ın Souto, ca. 1939 Excerpts from F. Vald
ez, ‘‘Life History of Mr. Pedro Barrios,’’ ca. 1939 Excerpts from Victor S. Clark, Porto Rico and Its Problems, 1930 Excerpts from Herschel T. Manuel, ‘‘Results of a Half-Century Experiment in Teaching a Second Language,’’ 1952 Excerpts from a Jos
e M. Gallardo Speech, 1947 ‘‘Factory Employment in the Needle Trades,’’ 1933 Excerpts from the Memoirs of Bernardo Vega, 1929 1939 Excerpts from an FBI Document on Pedro Albizu Campos, February 19, 1936

527 528 531 532 535

Contents xv

229. Acci
on Feminista Domincana’s Statement of Priniciples, ca. 1931 230. Excerpts from the Annual Report by Puerto Rican Gov. James R. Beverley to the Secretary of War, July 1, 1933 231. Eleanor Roosevelt, ‘‘Our Island Possessions,’’ 1934 232. Excerpts from Caroline Manning, ‘‘Employment of Women in Puerto Rico,’’ 1934 233. Letter from Pastor Alberto B
aez to President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Administration, October 11, 1935 234. Excerpt from a Letter by Mervin J. Sacks, ‘‘Puerto Rican Children; Results of Group Study Here Intended to Apply Locally,’’ 1936 235. Excerpt from ‘‘Harlem Relief Is Poor; Misery Caused Race War,’’ 1935 236. Thyra Edwards, ‘‘Social Worker Visits Spanish Loyalist Men,’’ 1938 237. Arthur Garfield Hays, ‘‘Defending Justice in Puerto Rico,’’ 1937 238. Excerpts from the Testimony of Florentino Irizarry before the Tolan Committee on Internal Migration, 1940 239. Excerpts from the Testimony of Antonia Arana before the Tolan Committee on Internal Migration, 1940 240. Excerpts from Congressman Vito Marcantonio, ‘‘Five Years of Tyranny,’’ 1939

537

Part XV Mexican Americans and the Great Depression

563

241. Excerpts from David Washburn, ‘‘Oral History Interview with Ned Dur
an,’’ November 5, 2002 242. Excerpts from an Interview with Jos
e Flores, 1940 1941 243. ‘‘Another Case of Racial Prejudice,’’ 1936 244. Robert N. McLean, ‘‘The Mexican Return,’’ 1932 245. ‘‘Deportations Continue,’’ 1931 246. Excerpts from Independent School Dist. et al. v. Salvatierra et al., 1930 247. ‘‘What Was the Lemon Grove School Desegregation Case All About?,’’ 1931 248. Excerpt from Norman Humphrey, ‘‘The Migration and Settlement of Detroit Mexicans,’’ 1943 249. Edna Ewing Kelley, ‘‘The Mexicans Go Home,’’ 1932 250. Excerpts from ‘‘New ‘Jim Crow’ Bill Denounced,’’ 1931 251. Miriam Allen Deford, ‘‘Blood-Stained Cotton in California,’’ 1933 252. Excerpts from Ella Winter, And Not to Yield: An Autobiography, 1963 253. Excerpt from Oral History Interview of Eduvigen Navarette Hern
andez about Mexican American Life in Morenci, Arizona, ca. 1996 254. Excerpt from Oral History Interview with Valent
ın S. Herrera about Mexican American Life in Morenci, Arizona, ca. 1996 255. Excerpt from Oral History Interview of Mar
ıa Mannelli Ponce about Mexican American Life in Morenci, Arizona, ca. 1996 256. Excerpts from Bruce Johansen and Roberto Maestas, El Pueblo: The Gallegos Family’s American Journey, 1503 1980 257. Excerpt from Ted Le Berthon, ‘‘Why It’s Hard for Mexicans to Become Americans,’’ 1932 258. Allan Turner, ‘‘A Night That Changed San Antonio: Woman Recalls Leading Labor Riot in 1939,’’ 1986

538 542 545 546 547 547 548 549 551 554 556

564 568 569 570 574 575 583 585 586 591 591 594 595 596 599 600 603 604

xvi

Contents

259. Philip Stevenson, ‘‘Deporting Jes
us,’’ 1936 260. Excerpts from Audrey Granneberg, ‘‘Maverick’s San Antonio,’’ 1939 261. William S. Taylor, ‘‘Some Observations of Marginal Man in the United States,’’ 1940 262. Excerpt from Luisa Moreno, ‘‘Non-Citizen Americans of the Southwest: Caravan of Sorrow,’’ March 3, 1940 263. Excerpts from Testimonies of Max Guzm
an and Lupe Marshall about Violence during Steelworker Strike, 1937

610

Part XVI Latinos, World War II, and the Aftermath

631

264. Excerpt from Anne Quach, ‘‘From the ‘Bulge’ to the Halls of Academia,’’ 2004 265. Excerpt from Juan de la Cruz, ‘‘Combat Engineer Fernando Pagan Went from Normandy to Belgium and Germany, Where a Sniper Nearly Killed Him,’’ 2003 266. J. Brooks Deton, Jr., ‘‘Negro Fate in U.S. Tied to Puerto Rico Freedom,’’ 1943 267. Excerpts from Elena Padilla, Up from Puerto Rico, 1958 268. Julia de Burgos, ‘‘Farewell in Welfare Island,’’ 1953 269. Excerpt from Jes
us Col
on, How to Know the Puerto Ricans 270. Excerpts from ‘‘Puerto Ricans Fought for Independence in WWII,’’ 2005 271. Excerpt from ‘‘Puerto Rican Girls to Get Jobs Here,’’ 1948 272. Excerpts from Edwin Maldonado, ‘‘Contact Labor and the Origins of Puerto Rican Communities in the United States,’’ 1979 273. Lucius C. Harper, ‘‘The Puerto Rican in Our Midst,’’ 1951 274. Excerpt from B. L. Donaldson, ‘‘Trouble in Paradise: The Miami Hotel Strike,’’ 1955 275. Langston Hughes, ‘‘Simple Says Puerto Ricans Must Have Poro in Their Blood,’’ 1953 276. Citations for Valor: Fernando Luis Garc
ıa, Pablo Ram
ırez, and Pedro Rodr
ıguez, ca. 1951 1952 277. Central Intelligence Agency Document on Guatemala, 1954 278. Excerpt from ‘‘Woman Terrorist Freed of ‘Intent,’ ’’ 1954 279. Dan Wakefield, ‘‘Puerto Rico: Rebels Find a Welcome,’’ 1957 280. Excerpts from Fidel Castro, ‘‘The Revolution Begins Now,’’ January 3, 1959 Part XVII Mexican Americans, World War II, and the Aftermath 281. Excerpt from Franklin D. Roosevelt, Executive Order 8802, June 25, 1941 282. Felipe Vald
es Le
al, ‘‘El Soldado Raso,’’ 1943 283. Katie Gibson, ‘‘Guardsman Credits Japanese Prisoner of War with Saving His Life,’’ September 11, 2001 284. Excerpts from Richard Santillan, ‘‘Saving Private Jos
e: Midwestern Mexican American Men during World War II,’’ 2001

615 617 619 620

632

634 636 638 640 640 642 644 644 647 648 649 650 652 655 656 660 663 664 665 666 669

Contents xvii

285. Excerpt from Leigh E. Smith, Jr., ‘‘El Paso’s Company E Survivors Remember Rapido River Assaults,’’ 1995 286. Excerpt from Leigh E. Smith, Jr., ‘‘Company E Survivor Recalls Days as Prisoner of War,’’ 1995 287. Ruchika Joshi, ‘‘Mr. Guy Louis Gabald
on: The Pied Piper of Saipan,’’ 2000 288. Rachna Sheth and Sandra Taylor, ‘‘God’s on My Side; I Wonder Why,’’ Interviewed at His Home in El Paso by Robert Rivas on July 7 10, 2003 289. Elizabeth Wilder, ‘‘Liberty and Fraternity for Europe, Then Back to Racist Kansas,’’ 2003 290. Excerpts from Beverly Beyette, ‘‘Ralph Lazo Remembers Manzanar,’’ 1981 291. Excerpt from the Citizens’ Committee for the Defense of Mexican-American Youth, ‘‘The Sleepy Lagoon Case,’’ 1942 292. Excerpts from Anthony Quinn, The Original Sin: A Self-Portrait, 1972 293. Excerpts from Octavio Paz, The Labyrinth of Solitude: Life and Thought in Mexico, 1961 294. Excerpts from Senate Journal of April 16, 1945, Containing Report Joint Fact-Finding Committee on Un-American Activities in California 295. Excerpts from People v. Zammora, The People, Respondent v. Gus Zammora et al., Appellants, October 4, 1944 296. Excerpts from Westminster School Dist. of Orange County et al. v. M
endez et al., 1947 297. Telegram from U.S. Senator Lyndon B. Johnson to Hector Garc
ıa, 1948 298. Testimony of Jos
e de la Luz S
aenz, ‘‘Racial Discrimination: A Number One Problem of Texas Schools,’’ 1948 299. Excerpts from Fair Employment Practices Act Hearings, March 1945 300. Testimony of Frank Paz before the Fair Employment Practices Commission (FEPC), 1945 301. ‘‘Discrimination Here Shocks Visiting Valley Teacher,’’ Letter from Ava I. Humphreys to the Editor of the Valley Morning Star, Harlingen, Texas, July 1947 302. Excerpt from Interview with Hector P. Garc
ıa, Founder, American G.I. Forum, 1992 303. ‘‘Election of Roybal Democracy at Work,’’ from Remarks of Rep. Chet Holifield in the House of Representatives, 1949 304. Excerpt from ‘‘Texans Combat Red Propaganda,’’ 1950 305. Los Braceros, ‘‘Testimony from a ‘Bracero,’’’ 1951 306. Excerpts from Isabel Gonz
alez, ‘‘Step-Children of a Nation: The Status of Mexican-Americans,’’ 1947 307. Excerpts from Rudy M. Lucero, ‘‘E Company Marines Remembered’’ 308. Carey McWilliams, ‘‘Nervous Los Angeles,’’ 1950 309. Excerpt from Gloria L
opez-Stafford, A Place in El Paso: A Mexican-American Childhood, 1996 310. Excerpt from Beatrice Griffith, American Me, 1954 311. Excerpts from Hern
andez v. Texas, 1954 312. Catherine Lavender, ‘‘Salt of the Earth (1953),’’ 1998 313. Excerpts from Lyle Saunders and Olen E. Leonard, The Wetback in the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas, 1951

671 673 675 678 680 682 683 684 689 693 698 701 703 704 706 711

713 714 717 720 721 722 724 725 727 729 733 735 737

xviii

Contents

314. Excerpts from Patricio Morgan, Shame of a Nation: A Documented Story of Police-State Terror against Mexican-Americans in the U.S.A., 1954 315. Excerpts from the Testimony of Albert B
aez, Greenbrae, California

740

Part XVIII Latinos in the 1960s

749

316. Excerpts from Frances Negr
on-Muntaner, ‘‘Feeling Pretty: West Side Story and Puerto Rican Identity Discourses,’’ 2000 317. Al Burt, ‘‘Miami: The Cuban Flavor,’’ 1971 318. ‘‘Confidential Cabinet Meeting Decisions,’’ October 6, 1960 319. Excerpt from Harriet B. Presser, ‘‘Puerto Rico: The Role of Sterilization in Controlling Fertility,’’ 1969 320. Excerpts from Jorge Duany, ‘‘Caribbean Migration to Puerto Rico: A Comparison of Cubans and Dominicans,’’ 1992 321. Classified U.S. State Department Documents on the Overthrow of Chilean President Salvador Allende, 1973 322. Excerpts from Antonia Pantoja, Memoir of a Visionary: Antonia Pantoja, 2002 323. Excerpt from Bernard Weinraub, ‘‘War Hits Home in Death of Bronx Soldier,’’ 1966 324. Excerpt from ‘‘Badillo Scores Young Lords for Attack on Puerto Rican,’’ 1970 325. Excerpt from Jos
e Yglesias, ‘‘Right On with the Young Lords,’’ 1970 326. Excerpt from Linda Ocasio, ‘‘Portrait of an Organizer: Edgar deJesus,’’ 1996 327. Young Lords, ‘‘Young Lords Party: 13 Point Program and Platform,’’ 1969 328. Excerpts from Young Lords, ‘‘The Ideology of the Young Lords Party,’’ 1969 329. Young Lords, ‘‘Position on Women’s Liberation,’’ May 1971 330. Excerpt from Peter Kihss, ‘‘ ‘La Guardia School’ Taking Hispanic Radical’s Name,’’ 1976 331. Excerpt from Nicholas M. Horrock, ‘‘F.B.I. Releases Most Files on Its Programs to Disrupt Dissident Groups,’’ 1977 332. Excerpt from Felix Cort
es, Angel Falc
on, and Juan Flores, ‘‘The Cultural Expression of Puerto Ricans in New York: A Theoretical Perspective and Critical Review,’’ 1976 333. Excerpt from Wayne King, ‘‘4 Nationalists Are Welcomed as Heroes in Puerto Rico,’’ 1979 334. Excerpt from ‘‘Socialism’’ from ‘‘Pastoral Letter of the Nicaraguan Episcopate,’’ November 17, 1979 335. Excerpts from ‘‘U.S. Formally Recognizes New Nicaragua Regime,’’ 1979

746

750 752 756 758 759 760 763 774 774 775 775 778 780 783 785 786

786 787 788 789

Contents

Part XIX Chicanos, the 1960s, and Heritage 336. Excerpts from Jos
e Angel Guti
errez, ‘‘Oral History Interview with Albert Pe~ na, Jr.,’’ July 2, 1996 337. Excerpts from Time Magazine, ‘‘Revolt of the Mexicans,’’ April 12, 1963 338. Excerpts from the Voting Rights Act, 1965 339. Marcos de Le
on, ‘‘Statements of Philosophy and Policy as They Pertain to the Acculturation and Education of the Mexican-American,’’ 1964 340. Excerpts from National Education Association, Invisible Minority: Report of the NEA-Tucson Survey on the Teaching of Spanish to the Spanish Speaking, 1966 341. Ernesto Galarza, ‘‘La Mula No Nacio Arisca,’’ 1966 342. Excerpts from Previously Classified, Sanitized U.S. Department of State Telegram on the Tlatelolco Massacre, Mexico City, 1968 343. Excerpts from Eugene Nelson, Jr., ‘‘Huelga: New Goals for Labor,’’ 1967 344. Excerpts from Rub
en Salazar, ‘‘State Calls for Probe of Judge in Latin Slurs,’’ 1969 345. Remarks of Hon. James G. O’Hara of Michigan about the Proclamation of the Delano Grape Workers for International Boycott Day, House of Representatives, May 10, 1969 346. Excerpts from Salvador B. Castro et al., Petitioners v. the Superior Court of Los Angeles County 347. Excerpts from Rodolfo ‘‘Corky’’ Gonzales, ‘‘I Am Joaqu
ın,’’ 1967 348. Excerpts from El Plan Espiritual de Aztl
an, 1969 349. Excerpts from Chicano Coordinating Council on Higher Education, El Plan de Santa Barbara: A Chicano Plan for Higher Education, 1969 350. Excerpts from Jos
e Angel Guti
errez, ‘‘Mexicanos Need to Control Their Own Destinies,’’ 1970 351. Excerpt from Ernesto B. Vigil, The Crusade for Justice: Chicano Militancy and the Government’s War on Dissent, 1999 352. Excerpts from Herman Baca, ‘‘The Day the Police Rioted! Remembering 32 Years Ago,’’ August 15, 2002 353. Excerpts from Congressman Henry B. Gonz
alez’s Congressional Speech of April 22, 1969 354. Excerpts from MAYO document on Student Walkouts, Crystal City, Texas, 1973 355. Jos
e Angel Guti
errez, ‘‘Oral History Interview with Viviana Santiago Cavada,’’ 1998 356. Excerpts from H. Joaqu
ın Jackson and David Marion Wilkinson, One Ranger: A Memoir, 2005 357. Excerpts from Reies L
opez Tijerina, ‘‘A Letter from the Santa Fe Jail,’’ 1969 358. Excerpts from Carlos Montez [sic] et al., Petitioners v. the Superior Court of Los Angeles County, Respondent; The People, August 7, 1970 359. Enrique Hank L
opez, ‘‘Overkill at the Silver Dollar,’’ 1970 360. Excerpt from a Statement by Elma Barrera, 1970 361. Excerpts from Marjorie Heins, Strictly Ghetto Property: The Story of Los Siete de La Raza, 1972 362. Excerpts from Robert Kistler, ‘‘Women ‘Pushed’ into Sterilization, Doctor Charges,’’ 1974

791 793 796 796 807 809 813 818 820 821

822 824 827 830 833 842 848 848 850 852 854 855 865 868 871 876 879 883

xix

xx

Contents

363. 364. 365. 366. 367. 368. 369. 370. 371.

Excerpts from the Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project, c. 1971 Excerpts from Lau v. Nichols, 1974 Excerpt from Manuel A. Machado, Jr., Listen Chicano!, 1978 Excerpt from the University of California Regents v. Bakke, 1978 Excerpts from Celeste Durant, ‘‘California Bar Exam Pain and Trauma Twice a Year,’’ 1978 Excerpts from an Interview with Ernie Cort
es, Jr., 2002 Interview with Antonio Gonz
alez on Willie Vel
asquez, Southwest Voter Registration Education Project, 2004 Excerpt from Enriqueta V
asquez and the Chicano Movement, 2006 Excerpts from Elizabeth Mart
ınez, ‘‘A View from New Mexico: Recollections of the Movimiento Left,’’ 2002

Part XX Latinos, 1980–Present 372. Excerpts from Bjorn Kumm, ‘‘The Loyola Opposition: El Salvador’s Rebel Priests,’’ 1978 373. Excerpts from Maura I. Toro-Morn, ‘‘Yo Era Muy Arriesgada: A Historical Overview of the Work Experiences of Puerto Rican Women in Chicago,’’ 2001 374. Excerpts from Silvia M. Unzueta, ‘‘The Mariel Exodus: A Year in Retrospect,’’ 1981 375. Excerpts from Chip Berlet, The Hunt for Red Menace: How Government Intelligence Agencies and Private Rightwing Counter Subversion Groups Forge Ad Hoc Covert Spy Networks That Target Dissidents as Outlaws, 1987 376. Testimony of Peter Kornbluh, ‘‘Congressional Inquiry into Alleged Central Intelligence Agency Involvement in the South Central Los Angeles Crack Cocaine Drug Trade,’’ October 19, 1996 377. Excerpts from Brittmarie Janson P
erez, ‘‘Political Facets of Salsa,’’ 1987 378. Excerpt from ‘‘Joint Resolution, Deploring the Actions of President Clinton Regarding Granting Clemency to FALN Terrorists,’’ 1999 379. Excerpts from Ramona Hern
andez and Francisco L. Rivera-Batiz, ‘‘Dominicans in the United States: A Socioeconomic Profile,’’ 2003 380. Excerpt from Roberto Suro and Audrey Singer, ‘‘Latino Growth in Metropolitan America: Changing Patterns, New Locations,’’ 2002 381. Letter from D
amaso Serrano L
opez, Mayor-Elect of the Municipality of Vieques to President William J. Clinton, November 10, 2000 382. Excerpts from Regina Arag
on, Jennifer Kates, and Liberty Greene, Latinos’ Views of the HIV/AIDS Epidemic at 20 Years: Findings from a National Survey, 2001 383. Excerpt from ‘‘3 Who Survived Sinking Won’t Be Deported,’’ 1999 384. Attorney General Janet Reno’s Statement Regarding the Removal of Eli
an Gonz
alez, April 22, 2000 385. Excerpts from Roberto Suro, ‘‘Counting the ‘Other Hispanics’: How Many Colombians, Dominicans, Ecuadorians, Guatemalans, and Salvadorans Are There in the United States?’’ May 9, 2002

884 887 890 893 903 904 914 919 920 927 928

931 934

938

943 948 955 957 960 961

963 965 965

967

Contents

386. Mireya Navarro, ‘‘Puerto Rican Presence Wanes in New York,’’ 2000 387. Consuelo L
opez Springfield and Elizabeth Hern
andez, ‘‘Women and Writing in Puerto Rico: An Interview with Ana Lydia Vega,’’ 1994 388. Excerpts from John R. Logan, ‘‘The New Latinos: Who They Are, Where They Are,’’ 2001 389. Excerpts from Roberto Suro and Jeffrey S. Passel, ‘‘The Rise of the Second Generation,’’ 2003 390. Excerpts from John R. Logan, ‘‘Choosing Segregation: Racial Imbalance in American Public Schools, 1990 2000,’’ 2002 391. Excerpts from John Ross, ‘‘Mexicanizing the Mara,’’ 2004 392. Excerpts from Stacey Chapman, ‘‘Yo Soy Boricua, Pa’ que Tu Lo Sepas! (I’m Boricua, Just So You Know!): An Interview with Rosie P
erez,’’ June 12, 2006 393. Rodolfo F. Acu~ na, ‘‘The Inquiring Mind and Miguel Estrada,’’ 2002 394. Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA), ‘‘Guatemala’s Cursed Armed Forces: Washington’s Old Friend Is Back in Town,’’ March 16, 2006

969

1000

Part XXI Chicanas/os and Mexican Americans in Contemporary Society

1003

395. Excerpts from David Reyes, ‘‘GI Forum Address,’’ 1980 396. Excerpts from Judy Aulette and Trudy Mills, ‘‘Something Old, Something New: Auxiliary Work in the 1983 1986 Copper Strike,’’ 1988 397. Memo from John Tanton to WITAN IV Attendees, October 10, 1986 398. Excerpt from a Summary of the Immigration Reform and Control Act (Simpson-Mazzoli Act), 1986 399. ‘‘In Memory: Remembering C
esar Ch
avez,’’ c. 1990 400. Jorge R. Mancillas, ‘‘At UCLA, the Power of the Individual Chicano Studies: The Hunger Strike Was a Morally Justifiable, Politically Reasonable Use of the Tactic,’’ 1993 401. ‘‘Declaration of War,’’ December 31, 1993 402. California Proposition 187: Illegal Aliens. Ineligibility for Public Services, 1994 403. Glynn Custred and Tom Wood, ‘‘California’s Proposition 209,’’ 1996 404. Ron K. Unz and Gloria Matta Tuchman, ‘‘Initiative Statute: English Language Education for Children in Public Schools,’’ 1998 405. Patrisia Gonzales and Roberto Rodr
ıguez, ‘‘Aztl
an Draws Ire of Anti-Immigrants,’’ 1998 406. Excerpts from Rakesh Kochhar, Roberto Suro, and Sonya Tafoya, ‘‘Report: The New Latino South: The Context and Consequences of Rapid Population Growth,’’ 2005 407. Excerpts from Stuart Silverstein, ‘‘Racial Issues Lose Urgency, Study Finds; UCLA Survey Shows That a Record High Percentage of College Freshmen Believe Discrimination Is No Longer a Major Problem in the U.S.,’’ 2005 408. Testimony of Mar
ıa Elena Durazo before the Subcommittee on Employer Employee Relations, Committee on Education and the Workforce, U.S. House of Representatives, July 21, 1999

1005

970 981 988 989 992

995 997

1006 1007 1012 1020

1021 1023 1025 1027 1028 1032

1033

1036

1037

xxi

xxii

Contents

409. Linda Lutton, ‘‘Old-Time Chicago Politics Aren’t Dead Yet Just Ask ‘Chuy’ Garc
ıa,’’ 1998 410. Rodolfo F. Acu~ na, ‘‘Latino Leaders Take a Holiday,’’ 1999 411. David Bacon, ‘‘Crossing L.A.’s Racial Divide: City Could Elect Its First Latino Mayor in More Than a Century,’’ 2001 412. Dane Schiller, ‘‘Castro Upholds Family’s Involvement Tradition,’’ 2001 413. Rodolfo F. Acu~ na, ‘‘Lessons from Vietnam,’’ 2003 414. David Bacon, ‘‘Los Angeles Turns Out for Amnesty,’’ 2000 415. Testimony of Commissioner Richard M. Estrada, U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform, ‘‘Agricultural Guest Worker Programs,’’ December 7, 1995 416. Enrique C. Ochoa and Gilda L. Ochoa, ‘‘Governor’s Comments Reveal the Depth of Sexism and Racism,’’ 2006 417. Excerpts from Roberto Suro, Sergio Bendixen, and Dulce C. Benavides, ‘‘Billions in Motion: Latino Immigrants, Remittances, and Banking,’’ 2002 418. ‘‘An Interview with Sub-Comandante Marcos of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation,’’ 1995 419. Suzanne L
opez, ‘‘The Dense, Impenetrable Adobe Ceiling,’’ 2003 420. Chip Jacobs, ‘‘Return of the Native,’’ 2005 421. Excerpts from Erica Frankenberg, Chungmei Lee, and Gary Orfield, ‘‘A Multiracial Society with Segregated Schools: Are We Losing the Dream?’’ 422. Pew Hispanic Center, ‘‘Fact Sheet: Latinos and the War in Iraq,’’ January 4, 2007 423. Jorge Mariscal, ‘‘They Died Trying to Become Students The Future for Latinos in an Era of War and Occupation,’’ 2003 Index

1039 1044 1047 1049 1050 1052

1057 1058

1060 1062 1065 1069

1077 1079 1083 1087

Documents by Group AFRICAN AMERICANS 102. Excerpts from Martin R. Delany, ‘‘A Glance at Ourselves, Conclusion,’’ 1852 235. Excerpt from ‘‘Harlem Relief Is Poor; Misery Caused Race War,’’ 1935 236. Thyra Edwards, ‘‘Social Worker Visits Spanish Loyalist Men,’’ 1938 243. ‘‘Another Case of Racial Prejudice,’’ 1936 275. Langston Hughes, ‘‘Simple Says Puerto Ricans Must Have Poro in Their Blood,’’ 1953 ANGLO AMERICANS 3. Excerpts from the Louisiana Purchase, April 30, 1803 5. Letter from John Sibley to General Henry Dearborn, October 12, 1808 9. Excerpts from a Letter from Thomas Jefferson to Alexander von Humboldt, December 6, 1813 10. Excerpts from the Adams-On
ıs Treaty of 1819 15. Excerpts from the Letter from Stephen Austin to Edward Lovelace or Josiah Bell, November 22, 1822 16. The Monroe Doctrine, December 2, 1823 17. Petition Concerning Slavery, June 10, 1824 25. Texas Declaration of Independence, March 2, 1836 26. Excerpts from the Address of the Honorable S. F. Austin, Louisville, Kentucky, March 7, 1836 31. Excerpt from the Treaty of Velasco, May 14, 1836 33. Excerpts from John L. O’Sullivan’s Column on ‘‘Manifest Destiny,’’ 1839

35. Letter from Texas President Mirabeau. B. Lamar to the People of Santa F
e, April 14, 1840 37. Excerpts from the Treaty of Annexation between the United States and the Republic of Texas, April 12, 1844 39. Letter from Abraham Lincoln to Williamson Durley, October 3, 1845 40. Excerpts from President James Polk’s State of the Union Address, December 2, 1845 41. Letter from Ulysses S. Grant to Fianc
ee Julia Dent, July 25, 1846 42. Abraham Lincoln’s ‘‘Spot Resolutions,’’ December 22, 1847 43. John C. Calhoun, ‘‘The Conquest of Mexico,’’ 1848 44. Excerpts from Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, 1855 45. Abraham Lincoln’s Speech to Congress against Seizing Mexican Territory, January 12, 1848 46. Excerpts from the Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant, 1885 47. Excerpt from Abiel Abbott Livermore, The War with Mexico Reviewed, 1850 49. Excerpts from George B. McClellan, ‘‘On Volunteers in the Mexican War’’ 50. Excerpts from Samuel E. Chamberlain, My Confessions 51. Excerpts from the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, 1848 52. Deleted Article X from the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, 1848 53. President James K. Polk (1795 1849) on Article X of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, February 22, 1848 54. The Quer
etaro Protocol, May 26, 1848

xxiv

Documents by Group

56. Henry Clay’s Resolutions on the Compromise of 1850, January 29, 1850 57. Excerpt from Governor William Carr Lane’s Manifesto Regarding the Drawing of the Boundary between Mexico and the United States, 1853 58. Excerpt from Commissioner James Bartlett’s Reply to William Carr Lane, 1853 59. A Letter from John Disturnell to the New York Daily Times on the Drawing of the New-Mexican Boundary, May 6, 1853 60. Excerpts from the Gadsden Purchase Treaty, December 30, 1853 62. Excerpt from ‘‘From the Rio Grande,’’ March 7, 1855 63. Excerpt from ‘‘The French in Sonora and Dominica The Monroe Declaration,’’ December 16, 1852 64. Letter from John Forsyth to Hon. Lewis Cass on the Execution of Colonel Henry Crabb and Associates, Message from the President of the United States of America, February 16, 1858 65. Excerpt from a Special Correspondent, ‘‘A Tour in the Southwest,’’ 1854 66. Excerpts from the New York Daily Times, ‘‘New Mexico Its Social Condition,’’ 1852 (author unknown) 67. Excerpt from O. Henry, ‘‘Tamales,’’ 1912 68. Excerpt from William D. Carrigan and Clive Webb, ‘‘The Lynching of Persons of Mexican Origin or Descent in the United States, 1848 to 1928’’ 70. Letter from ‘‘Dame Shirley’’ Concerning San Francisco Vigilante Committee Activities against Chileans, 1852 71. Excerpts from Jay Monaghan, Chile, Peru, and the California Gold Rush of 1849, 1973 72. Excerpts from Jill L. Cossley-Batt, ‘‘The Capture of Joaqu
ın Murieta,’’ 1928 73. Excerpts from David Bacon, ‘‘Interview with Antonio Rivera Murrieta’’ [descendant of Joaqu
ın Murrieta], December 15, 2001 74. Excerpts from Horace Bell, Reminiscences of a Ranger; or, Early Times in Southern California, 1881 75. Excerpt from a Statement by Tiburcio V
asquez, 1874

76. Excerpts from Robert Greenwood, The California Outlaw: Tiburcio V
asquez, 1960 78. Excerpts from Report of Major Samuel P. Heintzelman to Colonel Robert E. Lee, March 1, 1860 80. Excerpt from ‘‘A Little War on the Border,’’ 1877 81. Excerpt from W. M. Dunn Report to War Department, Bureau of Military Justice, April 19, 1878 82. Excerpt from ‘‘El Paso Troubles in Texas,’’ Letter from Colonel John H. King, Secretary of War, House of Representatives, to the Bureau of Military Justice, April 19, 1878 91. Excerpt from ‘‘The Concept of Common Lands Defines Community Land Grants,’’ 2007 92. Excerpts from Herbert O. Brayer, William Blackmore: The Spanish Mexican Land Grants of New Mexico and Colorado, 1863 1878 94. Excerpts from de Arguello v. United States, 1855 95. Excerpts from W. W. Robinson, The Story of Mission Lands, Ranchos, Squatters, Mining Claims, Railroad Grants, Land Scrip, Homesteads, 1948 96. Excerpts from Gonzales v. Ross, 1887 98. Author Unknown, Excerpts from ‘‘Cuba,’’ 1849 99. Excerpts from a Letter from U.S. Secretary of State James Buchanan to R. M. Saunders, June 17, 1848 100. Excerpts from the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, 1850 101. Excerpts from President Millard Fillmore’s State of the Union Address, December 2, 1851 103. Excerpts from Pierre Soul
e, ‘‘The Cuban Question: Defence of the L
opez Expedition,’’ January 25, 1853 104. Ostend Manifesto, October 18, 1854 105. ‘‘Designs upon Cuba,’’ 1856 106. Excerpt from Speech Given by William Walker in New Orleans, May 30, 1857 107. ‘‘Gen. Walker’s Letter,’’ September 21, 1857

Documents by Group

108. Excerpts from The United States Democratic Review, ‘‘The Nicaraguan Question,’’ 1858 109. ‘‘The Cuban Scheme,’’ January 10, 1859 110. Democratic Party Platform, June 18, 1860 127. Letter from Col. Charles Gordon to the U.S. Consul to Cuba on the Death of Cuba’s Gen. Antonio Maceo, January 1, 1897 128. George Reno, ‘‘History of the Brilliant Career of Gen. Mario Menocal,’’ 1899 129. Excerpts from the Treaty of Paris between the United States and Spain, 1898 131. Campaign Speech Given by Albert Beveridge, September 16, 1898 135. Rudyard Kipling, ‘‘The White Man’s Burden,’’ 1899 136. ‘‘Revolution in Colombia,’’ 1902 137. ‘‘By Treaty or by War,’’ 1902 138. Excerpts from Theodore Roosevelt’s Annual Message to Congress, December 6, 1904 140. Rub
en Dar
ıo, ‘‘To Roosevelt’’ (Poem to President Theodore Roosevelt), 1904 141. ‘‘Roosevelt Boasts of Canal,’’ 1911 142. ‘‘Porto Rican Labor for Panama Canal,’’ Letter to the Editor of the New York Times, 1904 143. ‘‘Taft to Porto Ricans,’’ 1907 147. ‘‘Opening Up Mexico,’’ 1881 151. Excerpts from the Chinese Exclusion Act, 1882 158. Excerpts from Victor S. Clark, ‘‘Mexican Labor in the United States,’’ 1908 159. Excerpts from John Kenneth Turner, Barbarous Mexico, 1910 166. Excerpts from Samuel Bryan, ‘‘Mexican Immigrants in the United States,’’ 1912 167. Excerpts from Henry ‘‘Hank’’ L
opez, ‘‘Papa and Pancho Villa,’’ 1970 168. ‘‘Race War in Arizona; Death List Is Sixteen,’’ 1914 171. Excerpts from ‘‘Immigration Bill Enacted over Veto,’’ 1917 172. ‘‘Press Move for Loyalty,’’ 1917 173. Excerpt from the 1918 Amendment to the Espionage Act of 1917

xxv

175. Excerpt from Lon C. Hill’s Testimony before Albert B. Fall Committee, 1920 176. Excerpt from Walter Prescott Webb, The Texas Rangers: A Century of Frontier Defense, 1935 177. ‘‘Mexicans Given Baths,’’ 1917 192. Excerpts from Margaret Hill Benedict, ‘‘Why My Children Speak Spanish,’’ 1920 195. Excerpts from ‘‘Porto Rico: A Colonial Responsibility,’’ The New Republic’s Response to President Calvin Coolidge’s Presidential Address, February 6, 1929 197. Theodore Roosevelt on ‘‘True Americanism,’’ 1894 202. Excerpts from the Immigration Act, 1921 206. Excerpts from Sen. David A. Reed, ‘‘America of the Melting Pot Comes to End,’’ 1924 207. The National Origins Immigration Act of 1924 219. Excerpts from Robert C. Jones and Louis R. Wilson, ‘‘The Mexican in Chicago,’’ 1931 244. Robert N. McLean, ‘‘The Mexican Return,’’ 1932 245. ‘‘Deportations Continue,’’ 1931 248. Excerpt from Norman Humphrey, ‘‘The Migration and Settlement of Detroit Mexicans,’’ 1943 249. Edna Ewing Kelley, ‘‘The Mexicans Go Home,’’ 1932 321. Classified U.S. State Department Documents on the Overthrow of Chilean President Salvador Allende, 1973 342. Excerpts from Previously Classified, Sanitized U.S. Department of State Telegram on the Tlatelolco Massacre, Mexico City, 1968 CARIBBEANS 4. Excerpts from the Proclamation of Haiti’s Independence by the General in Chief, Jean Jacques Dessalines, to the Haitian People in Gonaives, January 1, 1804 98. Author Unknown, Excerpts from ‘‘Cuba,’’ 1849

xxvi

Documents by Group

99. Excerpts from a Letter from U.S. Secretary of State James Buchanan to R. M. Saunders, June 17, 1848 101. Excerpts from President Millard Fillmore’s State of the Union Address, December 2, 1851 102. Excerpts from Martin R. Delany, ‘‘A Glance at Ourselves, Conclusion,’’ 1852 131. Campaign Speech Given by Albert Beveridge, September 16, 1898 135. Rudyard Kipling, ‘‘The White Man’s Burden,’’ 1899 138. Excerpts from Theodore Roosevelt’s Annual Message to Congress, December 6, 1904 151. Excerpts from the Chinese Exclusion Act, 1882 183. James Weldon Johnson, ‘‘Self-Determining Haiti: IV. The Haitian People,’’ 1920 184. Ernest H. Gruening, ‘‘Haiti and Santo Domingo Today,’’ 1922 320. Excerpts from Jorge Duany, ‘‘Caribbean Migration to Puerto Rico: A Comparison of Cubans and Dominicans,’’ 1992 CENTRAL AMERICANS 13. Excerpts from Sim
on Bol
ıvar Letter, Kingston, Jamaica, September 6, 1815 14. Excerpt from Sim
on Bol
ıvar’s Speech before the Congress of Angostura, February 15, 1819 101. Excerpts from President Millard Fillmore’s State of the Union Address, December 2, 1851 102. Excerpts from Martin R. Delany, ‘‘A Glance at Ourselves, Conclusion,’’ 1852 106. Excerpt from Speech Given by William Walker in New Orleans, May 30, 1857 107. ‘‘Gen. Walker’s Letter,’’ September 21, 1857 108. Excerpts from The United States Democratic Review, ‘‘The Nicaraguan Question,’’ 1858 112. Excerpt from Correspondent Quasimodo, ‘‘Cuba,’’ 1868 131. Campaign Speech Given by Albert Beveridge, September 16, 1898 135. Rudyard Kipling, ‘‘The White Man’s Burden,’’ 1899

136. ‘‘Revolution in Colombia,’’ 1902 137. ‘‘By Treaty or by War,’’ 1902 138. Excerpts from Theodore Roosevelt’s Annual Message to Congress, December 6, 1904 140. Rub
en Dar
ıo, ‘‘To Roosevelt’’ (Poem to President Theodore Roosevelt), 1904 151. Excerpts from the Chinese Exclusion Act, 1882 185. Excerpts from Salom
on de la Selva, ‘‘On the Proposed Union of Central America,’’ 1920 187. Augusto C
esar Sandino, ‘‘To Abolish the Monroe Doctrine,’’ 1933 188. ‘‘Calvin Coolidge: Intervention in Nicaragua,’’ 1927 277. Central Intelligence Agency Document on Guatemala, 1954 334. Excerpt from ‘‘Socialism’’ from ‘‘Pastoral Letter of the Nicaraguan Episcopate,’’ November 17, 1979 335. Excerpts from ‘‘U.S. Formally Recognizes New Nicaragua Regime,’’ 1979 372. Excerpts from Bjorn Kumm, ‘‘The Loyola Opposition: El Salvador’s Rebel Priests,’’ 1978 376. Testimony of Peter Kornbluh, ‘‘Congressional Inquiry into Alleged Central Intelligence Agency Involvement in the South Central Los Angeles Crack Cocaine Drug Trade,’’ October 19, 1996 CENTRAL AMERICANS IN THE UNITED STATES 262. Excerpt from Luisa Moreno, ‘‘Non-Citizen Americans of the Southwest: Caravan of Sorrow,’’ March 3, 1940 334. Excerpt from ‘‘Socialism’’ from ‘‘Pastoral Letter of the Nicaraguan Episcopate,’’ November 17, 1979 335. Excerpts from ‘‘U.S. Formally Recognizes New Nicaragua Regime,’’ 1979 376. Testimony of Peter Kornbluh, ‘‘Congressional Inquiry into Alleged Central Intelligence Agency Involvement in the South Central Los Angeles Crack Cocaine Drug Trade,’’ October 19, 1996 380. Excerpt from Roberto Suro and Audrey Singer, ‘‘Latino Growth in Metropolitan

Documents by Group

385.

388.

389.

390.

391. 393. 394.

402. 403. 404.

413. 414. 416.

417.

421.

422.

America: Changing Patterns, New Locations,’’ 2002 Excerpts from Roberto Suro, ‘‘Counting the ‘Other Hispanics’: How Many Colombians, Dominicans, Ecuadorians, Guatemalans, and Salvadorans Are There in the United States?’’ May 9, 2002 Excerpts from John R. Logan, ‘‘The New Latinos: Who They Are, Where They Are,’’ 2001 Excerpts from Roberto Suro and Jeffrey S. Passel, ‘‘The Rise of the Second Generation,’’ 2003 Excerpts from John R. Logan, ‘‘Choosing Segregation: Racial Imbalance in American Public Schools, 1990 2000,’’ 2002 Excerpts from John Ross, ‘‘Mexicanizing the Mara,’’ 2004 Rodolfo F. Acu~ na, ‘‘The Inquiring Mind and Miguel Estrada,’’ 2002 Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA), ‘‘Guatemala’s Cursed Armed Forces: Washington’s Old Friend Is Back in Town,’’ March 16, 2006 California Proposition 187: Illegal Aliens. Ineligibility for Public Services, 1994 Glynn Custred and Tom Wood, ‘‘California’s Proposition 209,’’ 1996 Ron K. Unz and Gloria Matta Tuchman, ‘‘Initiative Statute: English Language Education for Children in Public Schools,’’ 1998 Rodolfo F. Acu~ na, ‘‘Lessons from Vietnam,’’ 2003 David Bacon, ‘‘Los Angeles Turns Out for Amnesty,’’ 2000 Enrique C. Ochoa and Gilda L. Ochoa, ‘‘Governor’s Comments Reveal the Depth of Sexism and Racism,’’ 2006 Excerpts from Roberto Suro, Sergio Bendixen, and Dulce C. Benavides, ‘‘Billions in Motion: Latino Immigrants, Remittances, and Banking,’’ 2002 Excerpts from Erica Frankenberg, Chungmei Lee, and Gary Orfield, ‘‘A Multiracial Society with Segregated Schools: Are We Losing the Dream?’’ Pew Hispanic Center, ‘‘Fact Sheet: Latinos and the War in Iraq,’’ January 4, 2007

xxvii

423. Jorge Mariscal, ‘‘They Died Trying to Become Students The Future for Latinos in an Era of War and Occupation,’’ 2003 CUBAN AMERICANS 116. Letter from Jos
e Mart
ı to the Editor of the New York Evening Post, March 25, 1889 117. ‘‘My Race,’’ by Jos
e Mart
ı, April 16, 1893 118. ‘‘To Cuba!’’ Jos
e Mart
ı, January 27, 1894 119. Letter from Jos
e Mart
ı to Manuel Mercado, May 18, 1895 120. Excerpt from ‘‘The Labor Strikes,’’ 1875 121. ‘‘The Strike of the Cigar Men,’’ 1883 122. ‘‘Cigarmakers Protesting,’’ 1884 151. Excerpts from the Chinese Exclusion Act, 1882 220. Excerpt from Paul J. Dosal, The Building of El C
ırculo Cubano, 1902 1918 221. Excerpts from Oral History Interview of Ferm
ın Souto, ca. 1939 222. Excerpts from F. Vald
ez, ‘‘Life History of Mr. Pedro Barrios,’’ ca. 1939 317. Al Burt, ‘‘Miami: The Cuban Flavor,’’ 1971 374. Excerpts from Silvia M. Unzueta, ‘‘The Mariel Exodus: A Year in Retrospect,’’ 1981 380. Excerpt from Roberto Suro and Audrey Singer, ‘‘Latino Growth in Metropolitan America: Changing Patterns, New Locations,’’ 2002 383. Excerpt from ‘‘3 Who Survived Sinking Won’t Be Deported,’’ 1999 384. Attorney General Janet Reno’s Statement Regarding the Removal of Eli
an Gonz
alez, April 22, 2000 397. Memo from John Tanton to WITAN IV Attendees, October 10, 1986 398. Excerpt from a Summary of the Immigration Reform and Control Act (SimpsonMazzoli Act), 1986 CUBANS 98. Author Unknown, Excerpts from ‘‘Cuba,’’ 1849 99. Excerpts from a Letter from U.S. Secretary of State James Buchanan to R. M. Saunders, June 17, 1848

xxviii

Documents by Group

101. Excerpts from President Millard Fillmore’s State of the Union Address, December 2, 1851 102. Excerpts from Martin R. Delany, ‘‘A Glance at Ourselves, Conclusion,’’ 1852 103. Excerpts from Pierre Soul
e, ‘‘The Cuban Question: Defence of the L
opez Expedition,’’ January 25, 1853 104. Ostend Manifesto, October 18, 1854 105. ‘‘Designs upon Cuba,’’ 1856 106. Excerpt from Speech Given by William Walker in New Orleans, May 30, 1857 107. ‘‘Gen. Walker’s Letter,’’ September 21, 1857 109. ‘‘The Cuban Scheme,’’ January 10, 1859 110. Democratic Party Platform, June 18, 1860 112. Excerpt from Correspondent Quasimodo, ‘‘Cuba,’’ 1868 113. Excerpts from the Address of Manuel de Quesada of Cuba to the United States, December 4, 1873 116. Letter from Jos
e Mart
ı to the Editor of the New York Evening Post, March 25, 1889 117. ‘‘My Race,’’ by Jos
e Mart
ı, April 16, 1893 118. ‘‘To Cuba!’’ Jos
e Mart
ı, January 27, 1894 119. Letter from Jos
e Mart
ı to Manuel Mercado, May 18, 1895 123. Letter from Maximo G
omez to U.S. President Grover Cleveland, February 9, 1897 124. U.S. Resolution on the ‘‘Recognition of the Independence of Cuba’’ and the Teller Amendment, 1898 125. ‘‘Interment of Jos
e Mart
ı,’’ 1895 127. Letter from Col. Charles Gordon to the U.S. Consul to Cuba on the Death of Cuba’s Gen. Antonio Maceo, January 1, 1897 128. George Reno, ‘‘History of the Brilliant Career of Gen. Mario Menocal,’’ 1899 129. Excerpts from the Treaty of Paris between the United States and Spain, 1898 130. Excerpts from the Diary of General M
aximo G
omez, January 8, 1899 131. Campaign Speech Given by Albert Beveridge, September 16, 1898

135. Rudyard Kipling, ‘‘The White Man’s Burden,’’ 1899 139. The Platt Amendment, 1903 196. ‘‘Cubans vs. Porto Ricans,’’ Letter to the Editor of the New Republic Responding to ‘‘Porto Rico: A Colonial Responsibility,’’ 1929 221. Excerpts from Oral History Interview of Ferm
ın Souto, ca. 1939 280. Excerpts from Fidel Castro, ‘‘The Revolution Begins Now,’’ January 3, 1959 374. Excerpts from Silvia M. Unzueta, ‘‘The Mariel Exodus: A Year in Retrospect,’’ 1981 DOMINICAN AMERICANS 379. Excerpts from Ramona Hern
andez and Francisco L. Rivera-Batiz, ‘‘Dominicans in the United States: A Socioeconomic Profile,’’ 2003 380. Excerpt from Roberto Suro and Audrey Singer, ‘‘Latino Growth in Metropolitan America: Changing Patterns, New Locations,’’ 2002 385. Excerpts from Roberto Suro, ‘‘Counting the ‘Other Hispanics’: How Many Colombians, Dominicans, Ecuadorians, Guatemalans, and Salvadorans Are There in the United States?’’ May 9, 2002 388. Excerpts from John R. Logan, ‘‘The New Latinos: Who They Are, Where They Are,’’ 2001 389. Excerpts from Roberto Suro and Jeffrey S. Passel, ‘‘The Rise of the Second Generation,’’ 2003 390. Excerpts from John R. Logan, ‘‘Choosing Segregation: Racial Imbalance in American Public Schools, 1990 2000,’’ 2002 397. Memo from John Tanton to WITAN IV Attendees, October 10, 1986 398. Excerpt from a Summary of the Immigration Reform and Control Act (SimpsonMazzoli Act), 1986 417. Excerpts from Roberto Suro, Sergio Bendixen, and Dulce C. Benavides, ‘‘Billions in Motion: Latino Immigrants, Remittances, and Banking,’’ 2002

Documents by Group

421. Excerpts from Erica Frankenberg, Chungmei Lee, and Gary Orfield, ‘‘A Multiracial Society with Segregated Schools: Are We Losing the Dream?’’ 422. Pew Hispanic Center, ‘‘Fact Sheet: Latinos and the War in Iraq,’’ January 4, 2007 423. Jorge Mariscal, ‘‘They Died Trying to Become Students The Future for Latinos in an Era of War and Occupation,’’ 2003 DOMINICANS 114. Excerpt from a U.S. Senate Debate Regarding Whether the United States Should Annex Santo Domingo, 1870 130. Excerpts from the Diary of General M
aximo G
omez, January 8, 1899 184. Ernest H. Gruening, ‘‘Haiti and Santo Domingo Today,’’ 1922 229. Acci
on Feminista Domincana’s Statement of Priniciples, ca. 1931 320. Excerpts from Jorge Duany, ‘‘Caribbean Migration to Puerto Rico: A Comparison of Cubans and Dominicans,’’ 1992 EUROPEANS 1. Excerpts from J. Eric S. Thompson, ed., Thomas Gage’s Travels in the New World, 1648 2. The Secret Treaty of San Ildefonso, October 1, 1800 3. Excerpts from the Louisiana Purchase, April 30, 1803 5. Letter from John Sibley to General Henry Dearborn, October 12, 1808 9. Excerpts from a Letter from Thomas Jefferson to Alexander von Humboldt, December 6, 1813 10. Excerpts from the Adams-On
ıs Treaty of 1819 12. Treaty of C
ordova, August 24, 1821 100. Excerpts from the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, 1850 129. Excerpts from the Treaty of Paris between the United States and Spain, 1898 135. Rudyard Kipling, ‘‘The White Man’s Burden,’’ 1899

xxix

LATINOS IN GENERAL 171. Excerpts from ‘‘Immigration Bill Enacted over Veto,’’ 1917 172. ‘‘Press Move for Loyalty,’’ 1917 173. Excerpt from the 1918 Amendment to the Espionage Act of 1917 192. Excerpts from Margaret Hill Benedict, ‘‘Why My Children Speak Spanish,’’ 1920 197. Theodore Roosevelt on ‘‘True Americanism,’’ 1894 201. Excerpt from ‘‘Naturalization Bill Alters Women’s Status,’’ 1921 202. Excerpts from the Immigration Act, 1921 206. Excerpts from Sen. David A. Reed, ‘‘America of the Melting Pot Comes to End,’’ 1924 207. The National Origins Immigration Act of 1924 221. Excerpts from Oral History Interview of Ferm
ın Souto, ca. 1939 236. Thyra Edwards, ‘‘Social Worker Visits Spanish Loyalist Men,’’ 1938 281. Excerpt from Franklin D. Roosevelt, Executive Order 8802, June 25, 1941 338. Excerpts from the Voting Rights Act, 1965 364. Excerpts from Lau v. Nichols, 1974 366. Excerpt from the University of California Regents v. Bakke, 1978 375. Excerpts from Chip Berlet, The Hunt for Red Menace: How Government Intelligence Agencies and Private Rightwing Counter Subversion Groups Forge Ad Hoc Covert Spy Networks That Target Dissidents as Outlaws, 1987 380. Excerpt from Roberto Suro and Audrey Singer, ‘‘Latino Growth in Metropolitan America: Changing Patterns, New Locations,’’ 2002 382. Excerpts from Regina Arag
on, Jennifer Kates, and Liberty Greene, Latinos’ Views of the HIV/AIDS Epidemic at 20 Years: Findings from a National Survey, 2001 385. Excerpts from Roberto Suro, ‘‘Counting the ‘Other Hispanics’: How Many Colombians, Dominicans, Ecuadorians,

xxx

Documents by Group

386. 388.

389.

390.

391. 393. 394.

397. 398.

402.

403. 404.

406.

407.

413.

Guatemalans, and Salvadorans Are There in the United States?’’ May 9, 2002 Mireya Navarro, ‘‘Puerto Rican Presence Wanes in New York,’’ 2000 Excerpts from John R. Logan, ‘‘The New Latinos: Who They Are, Where They Are,’’ 2001 Excerpts from Roberto Suro and Jeffrey S. Passel, ‘‘The Rise of the Second Generation,’’ 2003 Excerpts from John R. Logan, ‘‘Choosing Segregation: Racial Imbalance in American Public Schools, 1990 2000,’’ 2002 Excerpts from John Ross, ‘‘Mexicanizing the Mara,’’ 2004 Rodolfo F. Acu~ na, ‘‘The Inquiring Mind and Miguel Estrada,’’ 2002 Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA), ‘‘Guatemala’s Cursed Armed Forces: Washington’s Old Friend Is Back in Town,’’ March 16, 2006 Memo from John Tanton to WITAN IV Attendees, October 10, 1986 Excerpt from a Summary of the Immigration Reform and Control Act (SimpsonMazzoli Act), 1986 California Proposition 187: Illegal Aliens. Ineligibility for Public Services, 1994 Glynn Custred and Tom Wood, ‘‘California’s Proposition 209,’’ 1996 Ron K. Unz and Gloria Matta Tuchman, ‘‘Initiative Statute: English Language Education for Children in Public Schools,’’ 1998 Excerpts from Rakesh Kochhar, Roberto Suro, and Sonya Tafoya, ‘‘Report: The New Latino South: The Context and Consequences of Rapid Population Growth,’’ 2005 Excerpts from Stuart Silverstein, ‘‘Racial Issues Lose Urgency, Study Finds; UCLA Survey Shows That a Record High Percentage of College Freshmen Believe Discrimination Is No Longer a Major Problem in the U.S.,’’ 2005 Rodolfo F. Acu~ na, ‘‘Lessons from Vietnam,’’ 2003

414. David Bacon, ‘‘Los Angeles Turns Out for Amnesty,’’ 2000 416. Enrique C. Ochoa and Gilda L. Ochoa, ‘‘Governor’s Comments Reveal the Depth of Sexism and Racism,’’ 2006 417. Excerpts from Roberto Suro, Sergio Bendixen, and Dulce C. Benavides, ‘‘Billions in Motion: Latino Immigrants, Remittances, and Banking,’’ 2002 419. Suzanne L
opez, ‘‘The Dense, Impenetrable Adobe Ceiling,’’ 2003 421. Excerpts from Erica Frankenberg, Chungmei Lee, and Gary Orfield, ‘‘A Multiracial Society with Segregated Schools: Are We Losing the Dream?’’ 422. Pew Hispanic Center, ‘‘Fact Sheet: Latinos and the War in Iraq,’’ January 4, 2007 423. Jorge Mariscal, ‘‘They Died Trying to Become Students The Future for Latinos in an Era of War and Occupation,’’ 2003 MEXICAN AMERICANS/TEJANOS/ CHICANOS 15. Excerpts from the Letter from Stephen Austin to Edward Lovelace or Josiah Bell, November 22, 1822 17. Petition Concerning Slavery, June 10, 1824 23. Jos
e Antonio Navarro’s Letter to the Editor of the San Antonio Ledger, October 30, 1853 24. Excerpts from Lorenzo de Zavala, Journey to the United States of North America, Early 1830s 25. Texas Declaration of Independence, March 2, 1836 26. Excerpts from the Address of the Honorable S. F. Austin, Louisville, Kentucky, March 7, 1836 27. Excerpt from Jos
e Mar
ıa Salom
e Rodr
ıguez, The Memoirs of Early Texas, 1913 28. Excerpt from the Memoirs of Antonio Menchaca 29. Excerpts from Jos
e Juan S
anchez Navarro, A Mexican View of the War in Texas, 1830s

Documents by Group

30. Excerpt from the Diary Entry of Jos
e Enrique de la Pe~ na, 1836 31. Excerpt from the Treaty of Velasco, May 14, 1836 32. Letter from Vicente C
ordova to Manuel Flores, July 19, 1838 33. Excerpts from John L. O’Sullivan’s Column on ‘‘Manifest Destiny,’’ 1839 34. Excerpt from Juan Segu
ın’s Address to the Texas Senate, February 1840 36. Excerpts from Juan Nepomuceno Segu
ın, Personal Memoirs of Juan N. Segu
ın 37. Excerpts from the Treaty of Annexation between the United States and the Republic of Texas, April 12, 1844 39. Letter from Abraham Lincoln to Williamson Durley, October 3, 1845 40. Excerpts from President James Polk’s State of the Union Address, December 2, 1845 41. Letter from Ulysses S. Grant to Fianc
ee Julia Dent, July 25, 1846 42. Abraham Lincoln’s ‘‘Spot Resolutions,’’ December 22, 1847 43. John C. Calhoun, ‘‘The Conquest of Mexico,’’ 1848 51. Excerpts from the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, 1848 52. Deleted Article X from the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, 1848 53. President James K. Polk (1795 1849) on Article X of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, February 22, 1848 54. The Quer
etaro Protocol, May 26, 1848 56. Henry Clay’s Resolutions on the Compromise of 1850, January 29, 1850 60. Excerpts from the Gadsden Purchase Treaty, December 30, 1853 62. Excerpt from ‘‘From the Rio Grande,’’ March 7, 1855 64. Letter from John Forsyth to Hon. Lewis Cass on the Execution of Colonel Henry Crabb and Associates, Message from the President of the United States of America, February 16, 1858 65. Excerpt from a Special Correspondent, ‘‘A Tour in the Southwest,’’ 1854 66. Excerpts from the New York Daily Times, ‘‘New Mexico Its Social Condition,’’ 1852 (author unknown)

xxxi

67. Excerpt from O. Henry, ‘‘Tamales,’’ 1912 68. Excerpt from William D. Carrigan and Clive Webb, ‘‘The Lynching of Persons of Mexican Origin or Descent in the United States, 1848 to 1928’’ 69. Jos
e Mar
ıa Loaiza’s Claim for the Lynching of His Wife Josefa and His Banishment by a Mob in Downieville, California, July 4, 1852 72. Excerpts from Jill L. Cossley-Batt, ‘‘The Capture of Joaqu
ın Murieta,’’ 1928 73. Excerpts from David Bacon, ‘‘Interview with Antonio Rivera Murrieta’’ [descendant of Joaqu
ın Murrieta], December 15, 2001 74. Excerpts from Horace Bell, Reminiscences of a Ranger; or, Early Times in Southern California, 1881 75. Excerpt from a Statement by Tiburcio V
asquez, 1874 76. Excerpts from Robert Greenwood, The California Outlaw: Tiburcio V
asquez, 1960 77. Judge Jos
e Tom
as Canales on Juan Cortina, 1949 78. Excerpts from Report of Major Samuel P. Heintzelman to Colonel Robert E. Lee, March 1, 1860 79. Excerpts from Report of the Mexican Commission on the Northern Frontier Question, 1875 80. Excerpt from ‘‘A Little War on the Border,’’ 1877 81. Excerpt from W. M. Dunn Report to War Department, Bureau of Military Justice, April 19, 1878 82. Excerpt from ‘‘El Paso Troubles in Texas,’’ Letter from Colonel John H. King, Secretary of War, House of Representatives, to the Bureau of Military Justice, April 19, 1878 83. Excerpts from the Testimony of Eulalia P
erez Regarding Her Life in Mexican California, 1877 84. Francisco Ram
ırez, ‘‘El Dia de Muertos’’ (‘‘The Day of the Dead’’), 1857 85. Francisco Ram
ırez, ‘‘Let There Be Justice,’’ 1856 86. Manuel Retes, ‘‘Emigration to Sonora,’’ 1858

xxxii

Documents by Group

87. Excerpts from Mar
ıa Amparo Ruiz de Burton, Who Would Have Thought It?, 1872 88. Excerpts from Mar
ıa Amparo Ruiz de Burton, The Squatter and the Don, 1885 89. Excerpts from Sostenes Betancourt, ‘‘The Wife of Joaqu
ın Murieta and el Ferrocarril del Sur,’’ 1885 90. Excerpts from Miguel Antonio Otero II, My Life on the Frontier 1864 1882 91. Excerpt from ‘‘The Concept of Common Lands Defines Community Land Grants,’’ 2007 92. Excerpts from Herbert O. Brayer, William Blackmore: The Spanish Mexican Land Grants of New Mexico and Colorado, 1863 1878 93. Petition of Antonio Mar
ıa Pico et al. to the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States, 1859 94. Excerpts from de Arguello v. United States, 1855 95. Excerpts from W. W. Robinson, The Story of Mission Lands, Ranchos, Squatters, Mining Claims, Railroad Grants, Land Scrip, Homesteads, 1948 96. Excerpts from Gonzales v. Ross, 1887 97. Excerpt from Las Gorras Blancas (The White Caps) Manifesto, 1890 146. Excerpts from In re Ricardo Rodr
ıguez, 1897 147. ‘‘Opening Up Mexico,’’ 1881 148. ‘‘Progress of the Revolt,’’ 1892 149. ‘‘To Mexico for Revenge,’’ 1895 150. Maud Mason Austin, ‘‘Teresa Urrea,’’ 1896 151. Excerpts from the Chinese Exclusion Act, 1882 152. Excerpts from the Memoirs of Federico Jos
e Mar
ıa Ronstadt 153. Excerpts from Joseph Park, ‘‘The 1903 ‘Mexican Affair’ at Clifton,’’ 1903 154. ‘‘Fearing Arizona Mob, Sisters Start East,’’ 1904 155. Mariano Mart
ınez, ‘‘Arizona Americans,’’ Letter to the Editor of the New York Times, 1904 156. ‘‘Big Man Hunt in Texas,’’ 1901 157. Anonymous, ‘‘El Corrido de Gregorio Cortez,’’ ca. 1901

158. Excerpts from Victor S. Clark, ‘‘Mexican Labor in the United States,’’ 1908 159. Excerpts from John Kenneth Turner, Barbarous Mexico, 1910 160. Excerpt from Nellie Campobello, Cartucho 161. Letter from Ricardo Flores Mag
on to Harry Weinberger, May 9, 1921 162. ‘‘Mexicans Burn American Flag,’’ 1910 163. Rev. Pedro Grado’s Farewell Address, 1911 164. Excerpts from the Plan of San Luis Potosi, November 20, 1910 165. Excerpts from the New Mexico Constitution, 1912 166. Excerpts from Samuel Bryan, ‘‘Mexican Immigrants in the United States,’’ 1912 167. Excerpts from Henry ‘‘Hank’’ L
opez, ‘‘Papa and Pancho Villa,’’ 1970 168. ‘‘Race War in Arizona; Death List Is Sixteen,’’ 1914 169. Excerpts from Francisco Garc
ıa Calder
on, ‘‘Imperialism of Decadence,’’ 1913 170. Excerpts from the Plan de San Diego, 1915 171. Excerpts from ‘‘Immigration Bill Enacted over Veto,’’ 1917 172. ‘‘Press Move for Loyalty,’’ 1917 173. Excerpt from the 1918 Amendment to the Espionage Act of 1917 174. Excerpt from Gilberto Hinojosa, ‘‘WWI Veteran also Crusader for Rights,’’ 2003 175. Excerpt from Lon C. Hill’s Testimony before Albert B. Fall Committee, 1920 176. Excerpt from Walter Prescott Webb, The Texas Rangers: A Century of Frontier Defense, 1935 177. ‘‘Mexicans Given Baths,’’ 1917 178. ‘‘ ‘Viva Villa’ Shouted in Riots at Juarez,’’ 1917 198. Ernestine M. Alvarado, ‘‘A Plea for Mutual Understanding between Mexican Immigrants and Native Americans,’’ 1920 199. Excerpts from Merton E. Hill, The Development of an Americanization Program, 1928 200. ‘‘Flood of Mexican Aliens a Problem,’’ 1919

Documents by Group

201. Excerpt from ‘‘Naturalization Bill Alters Women’s Status,’’ 1921 202. Excerpts from the Immigration Act, 1921 203. Excerpts from Adolfo Romo v. Tempe School District, 1925 204. ‘‘Mexican Laborers Drifting over Line,’’ 1921 205. Excerpt from Bylaws of La Liga Protectora Latina, 1920 206. Excerpts from Sen. David A. Reed, ‘‘America of the Melting Pot Comes to End,’’ 1924 208. Excerpts from Paul S. Taylor, ‘‘The Municipio of Arandas,’’ 1933 209. Excerpts from Lina E. Bresette, ‘‘Mexicans in the United States: A Report of a Brief Survey,’’ 1929 210. Excerpt from R. N. McLean and Charles A. Thompson, ‘‘Spanish and Mexican in Colorado,’’ 1924 211. Excerpt from ‘‘Autos Increase Ranch Troubles,’’ 1924 212. Circular from Imperial Valley Workers Union, ca. 1930 213. Excerpts from Devra Anne Weber, ‘‘The Organizing of Mexicano Agricultural Workers: Imperial Valley and Los Angeles 1928 34, an Oral History Approach,’’ 1973 214. Excerpts from Ernesto Galarza, ‘‘Life in the United States for Mexican People: Out of the Experience of a Mexican,’’ 1929 215. Excerpts from Emory S. Bogardus, ‘‘The Mexican Immigrant and Segregation,’’ 1930 216. Excerpts from ‘‘Life, Trial, and Death of Aurelio Pompa,’’ 1928 217. Excerpts from Steve Zuckerman, ‘‘Didn’t Think I Was Great, Fighter Said,’’ 1979 218. The Constitution of the League of United Latin American Citizens, 1929 219. Excerpts from Robert C. Jones and Louis R. Wilson, ‘‘The Mexican in Chicago,’’ 1931 245. ‘‘Deportations Continue,’’ 1931 246. Excerpts from Independent School Dist. et al. v. Salvatierra et al., 1930 247. ‘‘What Was the Lemon Grove School Desegregation Case All About?,’’ 1931

xxxiii

248. Excerpt from Norman Humphrey, ‘‘The Migration and Settlement of Detroit Mexicans,’’ 1943 249. Edna Ewing Kelley, ‘‘The Mexicans Go Home,’’ 1932 250. Excerpts from ‘‘New ‘Jim Crow’ Bill Denounced,’’ 1931 251. Miriam Allen Deford, ‘‘Blood-Stained Cotton in California,’’ 1933 252. Excerpts from Ella Winter, And Not to Yield: An Autobiography, 1963 253. Excerpt from Oral History Interview of Eduvigen Navarette Hern
andez about Mexican American Life in Morenci, Arizona, ca. 1996 254. Excerpt from Oral History Interview with Valent
ın S. Herrera about Mexican American Life in Morenci, Arizona, ca. 1996 255. Excerpt from Oral History Interview of Mar
ıa Mannelli Ponce about Mexican American Life in Morenci, Arizona, ca. 1996 256. Excerpts from Bruce Johansen and Roberto Maestas, El Pueblo: The Gallegos Family’s American Journey, 1503 1980 257. Excerpt from Ted Le Berthon, ‘‘Why It’s Hard for Mexicans to Become Americans,’’ 1932 258. Allan Turner, ‘‘A Night That Changed San Antonio: Woman Recalls Leading Labor Riot in 1939,’’ 1986 259. Philip Stevenson, ‘‘Deporting Jes
us,’’ 1936 260. Excerpts from Audrey Granneberg, ‘‘Maverick’s San Antonio,’’ 1939 261. William S. Taylor, ‘‘Some Observations of Marginal Man in the United States,’’ 1940 262. Excerpt from Luisa Moreno, ‘‘Non-Citizen Americans of the Southwest: Caravan of Sorrow,’’ March 3, 1940 263. Excerpts from Testimonies of Max Guzm
an and Lupe Marshall about Violence during Steelworker Strike, 1937 281. Excerpt from Franklin D. Roosevelt, Executive Order 8802, June 25, 1941 282. Felipe Vald
es Le
al, ‘‘El Soldado Raso,’’ 1943

xxxiv

Documents by Group

283. Katie Gibson, ‘‘Guardsman Credits Japanese Prisoner of War with Saving His Life,’’ September 11, 2001 284. Excerpts from Richard Santillan, ‘‘Saving Private Jos
e: Midwestern Mexican American Men during World War II,’’ 2001 285. Excerpt from Leigh E. Smith, Jr., ‘‘El Paso’s Company E Survivors Remember Rapido River Assaults,’’ 1995 286. Excerpt from Leigh E. Smith, Jr., ‘‘Company E Survivor Recalls Days as Prisoner of War,’’ 1995 287. Ruchika Joshi, ‘‘Mr. Guy Louis Gabald
on: The Pied Piper of Saipan,’’ 2000 288. Rachna Sheth and Sandra Taylor, ‘‘God’s on My Side; I Wonder Why,’’ Interviewed at His Home in El Paso by Robert Rivas on July 7 10, 2003 289. Elizabeth Wilder, ‘‘Liberty and Fraternity for Europe, Then Back to Racist Kansas,’’ 2003 290. Excerpts from Beverly Beyette, ‘‘Ralph Lazo Remembers Manzanar,’’ 1981 291. Excerpt from the Citizens’ Committee for the Defense of Mexican-American Youth, ‘‘The Sleepy Lagoon Case,’’ 1942 292. Excerpts from Anthony Quinn, The Original Sin: A Self-Portrait, 1972 293. Excerpts from Octavio Paz, The Labyrinth of Solitude: Life and Thought in Mexico, 1961 294. Excerpts from Senate Journal of April 16, 1945, Containing Report Joint Fact-Finding Committee on Un-American Activities in California 295. Excerpts from People v. Zammora, The People, Respondent v. Gus Zammora et al., Appellants, October 4, 1944 296. Excerpts from Westminster School Dist. of Orange County et al. v. M
endez et al., 1947 297. Telegram from U.S. Senator Lyndon B. Johnson to Hector Garc
ıa, 1948 298. Testimony of Jos
e de la Luz S
aenz, ‘‘Racial Discrimination: A Number One Problem of Texas Schools,’’ 1948 299. Excerpts from Fair Employment Practices Act Hearings, March 1945

300. Testimony of Frank Paz before the Fair Employment Practices Commission (FEPC), 1945 301. ‘‘Discrimination Here Shocks Visiting Valley Teacher,’’ Letter from Ava I. Humphreys to the Editor of the Valley Morning Star, Harlingen, Texas, July 1947 302. Excerpt from Interview with Hector P. Garc
ıa, Founder, American G.I. Forum, 1992 303. ‘‘Election of Roybal Democracy at Work,’’ from Remarks of Rep. Chet Holifield in the House of Representatives, 1949 304. Excerpt from ‘‘Texans Combat Red Propaganda,’’ 1950 305. Los Braceros, ‘‘Testimony from a ‘Bracero,’ ’’ 1951 306. Excerpts from Isabel Gonz
alez, ‘‘StepChildren of a Nation: The Status of Mexican-Americans,’’ 1947 307. Excerpts from Rudy M. Lucero, ‘‘E Company Marines Remembered’’ 308. Carey McWilliams, ‘‘Nervous Los Angeles,’’ 1950 309. Excerpt from Gloria L
opez-Stafford, A Place in El Paso: A Mexican-American Childhood, 1996 310. Excerpt from Beatrice Griffith, American Me, 1954 311. Excerpts from Hern
andez v. Texas, 1954 312. Catherine Lavender, ‘‘Salt of the Earth (1953),’’ 1998 313. Excerpts from Lyle Saunders and Olen E. Leonard, The Wetback in the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas, 1951 314. Excerpts from Patricio Morgan, Shame of a Nation: A Documented Story of PoliceState Terror against Mexican-Americans in the U.S.A., 1954 315. Excerpts from the Testimony of Albert B
aez, Greenbrae, California 336. Excerpts from Jos
e Angel Guti
errez, ‘‘Oral History Interview with Albert Pe~ na, Jr.,’’ July 2, 1996 337. Excerpts from Time Magazine, ‘‘Revolt of the Mexicans,’’ April 12, 1963 338. Excerpts from the Voting Rights Act, 1965

Documents by Group

339. Marcos de Le
on, ‘‘Statements of Philosophy and Policy as They Pertain to the Acculturation and Education of the Mexican-American,’’ 1964 340. Excerpts from National Education Association, Invisible Minority: Report of the NEA-Tucson Survey on the Teaching of Spanish to the Spanish Speaking, 1966 341. Ernesto Galarza, ‘‘La Mula No Nacio Arisca,’’ 1966 342. Excerpts from Previously Classified, Sanitized U.S. Department of State Telegram on the Tlatelolco Massacre, Mexico City, 1968 343. Excerpts from Eugene Nelson, Jr., ‘‘Huelga: New Goals for Labor,’’ 1967 345. Remarks of Hon. James G. O’Hara of Michigan about the Proclamation of the Delano Grape Workers for International Boycott Day, House of Representatives, May 10, 1969 346. Excerpts from Salvador B. Castro et al., Petitioners v. the Superior Court of Los Angeles County 347. Excerpts from Rodolfo ‘‘Corky’’ Gonzales, ‘‘I Am Joaqu
ın,’’ 1967 348. Excerpts from El Plan Espiritual de Aztl
an, 1969 349. Excerpts from Chicano Coordinating Council on Higher Education, El Plan de Santa Barbara: A Chicano Plan for Higher Education, 1969 350. Excerpts from Jos
e Angel Guti
errez, ‘‘Mexicanos Need to Control Their Own Destinies,’’ 1970 351. Excerpt from Ernesto B. Vigil, The Crusade for Justice: Chicano Militancy and the Government’s War on Dissent, 1999 352. Excerpts from Herman Baca, ‘‘The Day the Police Rioted! Remembering 32 Years Ago,’’ August 15, 2002 353. Excerpts from Congressman Henry B. Gonz
alez’s Congressional Speech of April 22, 1969 354. Excerpts from MAYO document on Student Walkouts, Crystal City, Texas, 1973 355. Jos
e Angel Guti
errez, ‘‘Oral History Interview with Viviana Santiago Cavada,’’ 1998

xxxv

356. Excerpts from H. Joaqu
ın Jackson and David Marion Wilkinson, One Ranger: A Memoir, 2005 357. Excerpts from Reies L
opez Tijerina, ‘‘A Letter from the Santa Fe Jail,’’ 1969 358. Excerpts from Carlos Montez [sic] et al., Petitioners v. the Superior Court of Los Angeles County, Respondent; The People, August 7, 1970 359. Enrique Hank L
opez, ‘‘Overkill at the Silver Dollar,’’ 1970 360. Excerpt from a Statement by Elma Barrera, 1970 361. Excerpts from Marjorie Heins, Strictly Ghetto Property: The Story of Los Siete de La Raza, 1972 362. Excerpts from Robert Kistler, ‘‘Women ‘Pushed’ into Sterilization, Doctor Charges,’’ 1974 363. Excerpts from the Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project, c. 1971 364. Excerpts from Lau v. Nichols, 1974 365. Excerpt from Manuel A. Machado, Jr., Listen Chicano!, 1978 366. Excerpt from the University of California Regents v. Bakke, 1978 367. Excerpts from Celeste Durant, ‘‘California Bar Exam Pain and Trauma Twice a Year,’’ 1978 368. Excerpts from an Interview with Ernie Cort
es, Jr., 2002 369. Interview with Antonio Gonz
alez on Willie Vel
asquez, Southwest Voter Registration Education Project, 2004 370. Excerpt from Enriqueta V
asquez and the Chicano Movement, 2006 371. Excerpts from Elizabeth Mart
ınez, ‘‘A View from New Mexico: Recollections of the Movimiento Left,’’ 2002 380. Excerpt from Roberto Suro and Audrey Singer, ‘‘Latino Growth in Metropolitan America: Changing Patterns, New Locations,’’ 2002 396. Excerpts from Judy Aulette and Trudy Mills, ‘‘Something Old, Something New: Auxiliary Work in the 1983 1986 Copper Strike,’’ 1988

xxxvi

Documents by Group

397. Memo from John Tanton to WITAN IV Attendees, October 10, 1986 398. Excerpt from a Summary of the Immigration Reform and Control Act (SimpsonMazzoli Act), 1986 399. ‘‘In Memory: Remembering C
esar Ch
avez,’’ c. 1990 400. Jorge R. Mancillas, ‘‘At UCLA, the Power of the Individual Chicano Studies: The Hunger Strike Was a Morally Justifiable, Politically Reasonable Use of the Tactic,’’ 1993 401. ‘‘Declaration of War,’’ December 31, 1993 402. California Proposition 187: Illegal Aliens. Ineligibility for Public Services, 1994 403. Glynn Custred and Tom Wood, ‘‘California’s Proposition 209,’’ 1996 404. Ron K. Unz and Gloria Matta Tuchman, ‘‘Initiative Statute: English Language Education for Children in Public Schools,’’ 1998 405. Patrisia Gonzales and Roberto Rodr
ıguez, ‘‘Aztl
an Draws Ire of Anti-Immigrants,’’ 1998 406. Excerpts from Rakesh Kochhar, Roberto Suro, and Sonya Tafoya, ‘‘Report: The New Latino South: The Context and Consequences of Rapid Population Growth,’’ 2005 407. Excerpts from Stuart Silverstein, ‘‘Racial Issues Lose Urgency, Study Finds; UCLA Survey Shows That a Record High Percentage of College Freshmen Believe Discrimination Is No Longer a Major Problem in the U.S.,’’ 2005 408. Testimony of Mar
ıa Elena Durazo before the Subcommittee on Employer Employee Relations, Committee on Education and the Workforce, U.S. House of Representatives, July 21, 1999 409. Linda Lutton, ‘‘Old-Time Chicago Politics Aren’t Dead Yet Just Ask ‘Chuy’ Garc
ıa,’’ 1998 410. Rodolfo F. Acu~ na, ‘‘Latino Leaders Take a Holiday,’’ 1999 411. David Bacon, ‘‘Crossing L.A.’s Racial Divide: City Could Elect Its First Latino Mayor in More Than a Century,’’ 2001

412. Dane Schiller, ‘‘Castro Upholds Family’s Involvement Tradition,’’ 2001 413. Rodolfo F. Acu~ na, ‘‘Lessons from Vietnam,’’ 2003 414. David Bacon, ‘‘Los Angeles Turns Out for Amnesty,’’ 2000 415. Testimony of Commissioner Richard M. Estrada, U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform, ‘‘Agricultural Guest Worker Programs,’’ December 7, 1995 416. Enrique C. Ochoa and Gilda L. Ochoa, ‘‘Governor’s Comments Reveal the Depth of Sexism and Racism,’’ 2006 417. Excerpts from Roberto Suro, Sergio Bendixen, and Dulce C. Benavides, ‘‘Billions in Motion: Latino Immigrants, Remittances, and Banking,’’ 2002 418. ‘‘An Interview with Sub-Comandante Marcos of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation,’’ 1995 419. Suzanne L
opez, ‘‘The Dense, Impenetrable Adobe Ceiling,’’ 2003 420. Chip Jacobs, ‘‘Return of the Native,’’ 2005 421. Excerpts from Erica Frankenberg, Chungmei Lee, and Gary Orfield, ‘‘A Multiracial Society with Segregated Schools: Are We Losing the Dream?’’ 422. Pew Hispanic Center, ‘‘Fact Sheet: Latinos and the War in Iraq,’’ January 4, 2007 423. Jorge Mariscal, ‘‘They Died Trying to Become Students The Future for Latinos in an Era of War and Occupation,’’ 2003 MEXICANS 6. Letter from Ignacio de Allende to Fr. Miguel Hidalgo, August 31, 1810 7. El Grito de Dolores, September 16, 1810 8. Jos
e Mar
ıa Morelos Decree, October 13, 1811 11. Plan of Iguala, February 24, 1821 12. Treaty of C
ordova, August 24, 1821 18. Decree Abolishing the Slave Trade in Mexico, July 13, 1824 19. Decree No. 16: The Colonization of the State of Coahuila and Texas, 1825

Documents by Group

20. Decree of Mexican President Vicente Guerrero Abolishing Slavery, September 15, 1829 21. Excerpts from Gen. Manuel de Mier y Ter
an’s Diaries, 1789 1832 22. Letter from Gen. Manuel de Mier y Ter
an to Luc
as Alam
an, ‘‘¿En qu
e parar
a Texas? En lo que Dios quiera.’’ (‘‘What is to become of Texas? Whatever God wills.’’), July 2, 1832. 24. Excerpts from Lorenzo de Zavala, Journey to the United States of North America, Early 1830s 31. Excerpt from the Treaty of Velasco, May 14, 1836 38. Jos
e Joaqu
ın de Herrera, ‘‘A Proclamation Denouncing the United States’ Intention to Annex Texas,’’ June 4, 1845 48. Excerpts from The Other Side: Or Notes for the History of the War between Mexico and the United States Written in Mexico, 1846 1847 51. Excerpts from the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, 1848 52. Deleted Article X from the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, 1848 53. President James K. Polk (1795 1849) on Article X of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, February 22, 1848 54. The Quer
etaro Protocol, May 26, 1848 55. Excerpt from Manuel Crescion Rej
on on the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, 1848 60. Excerpts from the Gadsden Purchase Treaty, December 30, 1853 61. Excerpt from a letter of Joaqu
ın Corella, Head of Arizpe’s Ayuntamiento (Town Council) to Sonoran Gov. Manuel G
andara, January 25, 1856 147. ‘‘Opening Up Mexico,’’ 1881 160. Excerpt from Nellie Campobello, Cartucho 162. ‘‘Mexicans Burn American Flag,’’ 1910 164. Excerpts from the Plan of San Luis Potosi, November 20, 1910 245. ‘‘Deportations Continue,’’ 1931 293. Excerpts from Octavio Paz, The Labyrinth of Solitude: Life and Thought in Mexico, 1961

xxxvii

342. Excerpts from Previously Classified, Sanitized U.S. Department of State Telegram on the Tlatelolco Massacre, Mexico City, 1968 401. ‘‘Declaration of War,’’ December 31, 1993 418. ‘‘An Interview with Sub-Comandante Marcos of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation,’’ 1995 PUERTO RICANS 111. El Grito de Lares, Principles of Unity, 1867 126. ‘‘Porto Rico in Rebellion,’’ 1895 132. Excerpts from ‘‘The Field Laborer,’’ Testimony of Severo Tulier, 1899 133. Excerpts from ‘‘La Miseria: A Los Negros Puertorrique~ nos,’’ a Letter from Ram
on Romero Rosa to Black Puerto Ricans, March 27, 1901 134. Excerpts from a Petition from Puerto Rican Workers at the Plantation Paauilo to the Governor of Puerto Rico, 1902 142. ‘‘Porto Rican Labor for Panama Canal,’’ Letter to the Editor of the New York Times, 1904 143. ‘‘Taft to Porto Ricans,’’ 1907 144. Letter on Women’s Roles from Luisa Capetillo to Dr. Paul Vigne, 1910 145. Letter on Socialism from Luisa Capetillo to Manuel Ugarte, 1911 151. Excerpts from the Chinese Exclusion Act, 1882 179. Excerpt from ‘‘Overcrowded Porto Rico,’’ 1916 180. Excerpt from the Deposition of Rafael F. March
an, October 24, 1918 181. ‘‘Units of Old Guard Now All Recruited,’’ 1922 182. ‘‘Porto Ricans and America,’’ Letter from Rafael George Gatell to the Editor of the New York Times, 1921 186. Excerpts from Cayetano Coll y Cuchi, ‘‘American Rule in Porto Rico,’’ 1922 189. Excerpt from Jes
us Col
on, ‘‘Stowaway,’’ ca. 1917 190. Excerpts from the Memoirs of Bernardo Vega

xxxviii

Documents by Group

191. Memo from Ram
on Lebr
on to the Department of Agriculture and Labor, 1921 193. Correspondence from the Puerto Rican Club of San Francisco and the Puerto Rican League of California, 1925 194. Excerpts from Luis Mu~ noz Mar
ın, ‘‘The Sad Case of Porto Rico,’’ February 1929 195. Excerpts from ‘‘Porto Rico: A Colonial Responsibility,’’ The New Republic’s Response to President Calvin Coolidge’s Presidential Address, February 6, 1929 196. ‘‘Cubans vs. Porto Ricans,’’ Letter to the Editor of the New Republic Responding to ‘‘Porto Rico: A Colonial Responsibility,’’ 1929 223. Excerpts from Victor S. Clark, Porto Rico and Its Problems, 1930 224. Excerpts from Herschel T. Manuel, ‘‘Results of a Half-Century Experiment in Teaching a Second Language,’’ 1952 225. Excerpts from a Jos
e M. Gallardo Speech, 1947 226. ‘‘Factory Employment in the Needle Trades,’’ 1933 227. Excerpts from the Memoirs of Bernardo Vega, 1929 1939 228. Excerpts from an FBI Document on Pedro Albizu Campos, February 19, 1936 230. Excerpts from the Annual Report by Puerto Rican Gov. James R. Beverley to the Secretary of War, July 1, 1933 231. Eleanor Roosevelt, ‘‘Our Island Possessions,’’ 1934 232. Excerpts from Caroline Manning, ‘‘Employment of Women in Puerto Rico,’’ 1934 233. Letter from Pastor Alberto B
aez to President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Administration, October 11, 1935 234. Excerpt from a Letter by Mervin J. Sacks, ‘‘Puerto Rican Children; Results of Group Study Here Intended to Apply Locally,’’ 1936 235. Excerpt from ‘‘Harlem Relief Is Poor; Misery Caused Race War,’’ 1935 236. Thyra Edwards, ‘‘Social Worker Visits Spanish Loyalist Men,’’ 1938

237. Arthur Garfield Hays, ‘‘Defending Justice in Puerto Rico,’’ 1937 238. Excerpts from the Testimony of Florentino Irizarry before the Tolan Committee on Internal Migration, 1940 239. Excerpts from the Testimony of Antonia Arana before the Tolan Committee on Internal Migration, 1940 240. Excerpts from Congressman Vito Marcantonio, ‘‘Five Years of Tyranny,’’ 1939 241. Excerpts from David Washburn, ‘‘Oral History Interview with Ned Dur
an,’’ November 5, 2002 242. Excerpts from an Interview with Jos
e Flores, 1940 1941 243. ‘‘Another Case of Racial Prejudice,’’ 1936 264. Excerpt from Anne Quach, ‘‘From the ‘Bulge’ to the Halls of Academia,’’ 2004 265. Excerpt from Juan de la Cruz, ‘‘Combat Engineer Fernando Pagan Went from Normandy to Belgium and Germany, Where a Sniper Nearly Killed Him,’’ 2003 266. J. Brooks Deton, Jr., ‘‘Negro Fate in U.S. Tied to Puerto Rico Freedom,’’ 1943 267. Excerpts from Elena Padilla, Up from Puerto Rico, 1958 268. Julia de Burgos, ‘‘Farewell in Welfare Island,’’ 1953 269. Excerpt from Jes
us Col
on, How to Know the Puerto Ricans 270. Excerpts from ‘‘Puerto Ricans Fought for Independence in WWII,’’ 2005 271. Excerpt from ‘‘Puerto Rican Girls to Get Jobs Here,’’ 1948 272. Excerpts from Edwin Maldonado, ‘‘Contact Labor and the Origins of Puerto Rican Communities in the United States,’’ 1979 273. Lucius C. Harper, ‘‘The Puerto Rican in Our Midst,’’ 1951 274. Excerpt from B. L. Donaldson, ‘‘Trouble in Paradise: The Miami Hotel Strike,’’ 1955 275. Langston Hughes, ‘‘Simple Says Puerto Ricans Must Have Poro in Their Blood,’’ 1953 276. Citations for Valor: Fernando Luis Garc
ıa, Pablo Ram
ırez, and Pedro Rodr
ıguez, ca. 1951 1952

Documents by Group

278. Excerpt from ‘‘Woman Terrorist Freed of ‘Intent,’ ’’ 1954 279. Dan Wakefield, ‘‘Puerto Rico: Rebels Find a Welcome,’’ 1957 281. Excerpt from Franklin D. Roosevelt, Executive Order 8802, June 25, 1941 316. Excerpts from Frances Negr
on-Muntaner, ‘‘Feeling Pretty: West Side Story and Puerto Rican Identity Discourses,’’ 2000 318. ‘‘Confidential Cabinet Meeting Decisions,’’ October 6, 1960 319. Excerpt from Harriet B. Presser, ‘‘Puerto Rico: The Role of Sterilization in Controlling Fertility,’’ 1969 320. Excerpts from Jorge Duany, ‘‘Caribbean Migration to Puerto Rico: A Comparison of Cubans and Dominicans,’’ 1992 322. Excerpts from Antonia Pantoja, Memoir of a Visionary: Antonia Pantoja, 2002 323. Excerpt from Bernard Weinraub, ‘‘War Hits Home in Death of Bronx Soldier,’’ 1966 324. Excerpt from ‘‘Badillo Scores Young Lords for Attack on Puerto Rican,’’ 1970 325. Excerpt from Jos
e Yglesias, ‘‘Right On with the Young Lords,’’ 1970 326. Excerpt from Linda Ocasio, ‘‘Portrait of an Organizer: Edgar deJesus,’’ 1996 327. Young Lords, ‘‘Young Lords Party: 13 Point Program and Platform,’’ 1969 328. Excerpts from Young Lords, ‘‘The Ideology of the Young Lords Party,’’ 1969 329. Young Lords, ‘‘Position on Women’s Liberation,’’ May 1971 330. Excerpt from Peter Kihss, ‘‘ ‘La Guardia School’ Taking Hispanic Radical’s Name,’’ 1976 331. Excerpt from Nicholas M. Horrock, ‘‘F.B.I. Releases Most Files on Its Programs to Disrupt Dissident Groups,’’ 1977 332. Excerpt from Felix Cort
es, Angel Falc
on, and Juan Flores, ‘‘The Cultural Expression of Puerto Ricans in New York: A Theoretical Perspective and Critical Review,’’ 1976 333. Excerpt from Wayne King, ‘‘4 Nationalists Are Welcomed as Heroes in Puerto Rico,’’ 1979 338. Excerpts from the Voting Rights Act, 1965

xxxix

364. Excerpts from Lau v. Nichols, 1974 366. Excerpt from the University of California Regents v. Bakke, 1978 373. Excerpts from Maura I. Toro-Morn, ‘‘Yo Era Muy Arriesgada: A Historical Overview of the Work Experiences of Puerto Rican Women in Chicago,’’ 2001 375. Excerpts from Chip Berlet, The Hunt for Red Menace: How Government Intelligence Agencies and Private Rightwing Counter Subversion Groups Forge Ad Hoc Covert Spy Networks That Target Dissidents as Outlaws, 1987 377. Excerpts from Brittmarie Janson P
erez, ‘‘Political Facets of Salsa,’’ 1987 378. Excerpt from ‘‘Joint Resolution, Deploring the Actions of President Clinton Regarding Granting Clemency to FALN Terrorists,’’ 1999 380. Excerpt from Roberto Suro and Audrey Singer, ‘‘Latino Growth in Metropolitan America: Changing Patterns, New Locations,’’ 2002 381. Letter from D
amaso Serrano L
opez, Mayor-Elect of the Municipality of Vieques to President William J. Clinton, November 10, 2000 386. Mireya Navarro, ‘‘Puerto Rican Presence Wanes in New York,’’ 2000 387. Consuelo L
opez Springfield and Elizabeth Hern
andez, ‘‘Women and Writing in Puerto Rico: An Interview with Ana Lydia Vega,’’ 1994 392. Excerpts from Stacey Chapman, ‘‘Yo Soy Boricua, Pa’ que Tu Lo Sepas! (I’m Boricua, Just So You Know!): An Interview with Rosie P
erez,’’ June 12, 2006 421. Excerpts from Erica Frankenberg, Chungmei Lee, and Gary Orfield, ‘‘A Multiracial Society with Segregated Schools: Are We Losing the Dream?’’ 422. Pew Hispanic Center, ‘‘Fact Sheet: Latinos and the War in Iraq,’’ January 4, 2007 423. Jorge Mariscal, ‘‘They Died Trying to Become Students The Future for Latinos in an Era of War and Occupation,’’ 2003

xl

Documents by Group

SOUTH AMERICANS 13. Excerpts from Sim
on Bol
ıvar Letter, Kingston, Jamaica, September 6, 1815 14. Excerpt from Sim
on Bol
ıvar’s Speech before the Congress of Angostura, February 15, 1819 70. Letter from ‘‘Dame Shirley’’ Concerning San Francisco Vigilante Committee Activities against Chileans, 1852 71. Excerpts from Jay Monaghan, Chile, Peru, and the California Gold Rush of 1849, 1973 115. Excerpt from Mar
ıa Eugenia Echenique, ‘‘The Emancipation of Women,’’ 1876

131. Campaign Speech Given by Albert Beveridge, September 16, 1898 135. Rudyard Kipling, ‘‘The White Man’s Burden,’’ 1899 136. ‘‘Revolution in Colombia,’’ 1902 137. ‘‘By Treaty or by War,’’ 1902 138. Excerpts from Theodore Roosevelt’s Annual Message to Congress, December 6, 1904 321. Classified U.S. State Department Documents on the Overthrow of Chilean President Salvador Allende, 1973

Introduction The wealth of documents in Voices of the U.S. Latino Experience were selected to help students and other interested readers better understand the diverse role of Latinos in U.S. history and today. Voices of the U.S. Latino Experience seeks to provide primary and secondary documents that shed light on relations between Latinos and other ethnic groups. The Latinos include Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, Cuban Americans, Dominican Americans, and Central American immigrants. Although the primary focus is Latinos in the United States, contextual documents concerning events in Spain, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Cuba and the Caribbean, and Central and South America are included as well. Sources include letters, memoirs, speeches, articles, essays, interviews, treaties, government reports, testimony, oral histories, and other documents of historical importance. The voices include whites and African Americans as well as Latinos, prominent and obscure, and EuroAmericans as well as people outside the United States. Each of the 423 documents has a short introduction to briefly place it in context and explain its significance. The collection is divided into 21 sections that each cover a particular timespan, with an overarching theme for the period. Generally, the order of ‘‘appearance’’ of a Latino group in the documents is determined by how many Latin Americans from a specific nation resided in the United States at the given time in history in which the document was produced. The collection does not provide documents for each of the more than 20 Latin American nations equally as it would if it were documenting the history of Latin America. Instead, we have selected documents according to the intensity of the contact between the United States and the particular Latin American nation. The bulk of the documents in this collection concerns Mexicans and Mexican Americans because Mexicans are the closest physically to the United States and have the longest history of contact and migration. At the time of this writing, Mexico’s population is approximately 114 million people, making it the largest Spanishspeaking nation in the world. Of the Latin American countries, it is only second in land size to Brazil. Mexican migration to the United States has been a constant factor, and Mexican Americans are the largest Latino group in the United States. The documents begin in 1648 and end in 2007. The real starting point for this collection, however, is during the 1800s because it was at this time that the borders between the United States and Latin America were formed. The various treaties set the boundaries between the United States and the new emerging Latin American nationalities, which had in part been formed by 300 years of Spanish colonialism. It was during these years that disparate cuisines, language intonations, and histories

xlii

Introduction

were formed. Inspired in part by the French Revolution (1789), most Latin American entities became independent from Spain by 1821. The Great Liberator, Sim
on Bol
ıvar, had a vision of a united Latin America but the differences and the distances prevented the formation of such a union. Slowly, the United States exceeded its borders, encroaching on the lands of the Native American and then neighboring nations. At this point, the question of slavery takes on relevance. Voices within Latin America called for the abolition of slavery from their own nations during their wars for independence. At the same time, slavery was the engine that drove U.S. expansion at the frantic pace it enjoyed. After the United States annexed the Louisiana Territory in 1803, it looked south to what is today Mexico, and in 1819 after it took Florida into its borders, slave interests looked to Cuba. By the 1820s, the religious notion of Manifest Destiny was expressed in the form of the Monroe Doctrine (1823) that essentially proclaimed that the Americas were for Americans. Slave interests moved into what is today Texas. The documents show that nativism was not a recent phenomenon but had been in motion even before 1803. These documents also show the formation of the Mexican nation (the formation of the Mexican nationality would take time). The purpose of the documents representing this period is to have the reader explore how Euro-Americans got to Texas, why they went there, and the interaction between Euro-Americans and Mexicans during this time period. Two wars were fought with Mexico (1836, 1846 1848); these events, along with the Gadsden Purchase (1853), created 2,000 miles of border dividing the United States and Mexico. The Texas filibuster (1836) and the Mexican-American War (1846 1848) left indelible scars. Mexico lost half its land and great rivers like the Rio Grande, Colorado, and Gila. There are numerous books on this topic both in English and Spanish that will help the reader understand the documents, as they address the causes of the wars and the lives of those who had been left behind as the borders changed. (See the suggested reading list at the end of this introduction.) Without a doubt, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848) is one of the most important primary documents in the history of people of Mexican origin in the United States. This important treaty affected their property and civil rights. Our collection explores the treaty. Documents from the period after 1848 deal with Euro-American and Mexican relations on the border. The largest mass of Spanish-speaking people was along the 2,000-mile U.S. border as Mexican origin people crossed at will. There were Latinos other than Mexicans in the Southwest; however, they generally were assimilated into the Mexican community. As a group, they described themselves as Hispanos, referring to a common language and culture. They, however, maintained their individuality. Treaties, boundary commissions, and racism are important elements of this dialectic once the border crosses over and incorporates people of Mexican and Indian extraction. Newspapers were an important part of the Mexican experience, as was racial conflict. It has been estimated that at least 132 Spanish-language or bilingual newspapers were published between 1848 and 1900 in the southwestern United States. In many ways, the documents in this collection show the other side the Englishlanguage side. The Mexican voices include Mar
ıa Amparo Ruiz de Burton, the first Mexican woman to write novels in English.

Introduction

In the nineteenth century, we took into account that Mexicans living in various places along the border formed slightly different identities. In Texas, Mexicans were called Tejanos, and because of their physical proximity to the heart of Mexico, incorporated the norte~ no, or northern Mexican, culture. Those living in Brownsville, Texas, were less than 1,000 miles from Mexico City, almost half the distance to Los Angeles, California. With this in mind, we selected representative documents from Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California. There are excellent histories available which set a contextual framework for the limited space given to this period of history that some Chicano historians have characterized as a colonial period for the new, emerging Mexican American nationality. The next Latino nationalities in contact with the Euro-American people were the Cubans and Puerto Ricans. The Cuban presence was felt by the 1850s in the aftermath of the Mexican-American War. Cuba was 90 miles south of Florida. Despite its proximity to the United States, the Cuban experience differed from the Mexican experience; it was a lot easier to walk across a line than to swim across a sea. Puerto Rico was a thousand miles from Florida, and distance definitely was a barrier to mass migration. These two Caribbean islands did not gain independence until the turn of the century. Nevertheless, they inherited the negative feelings Euro-Americans had toward Mexicans and Spaniards. Many Euro-Americans especially Southerners believed it was just a matter of time before the United States acquired these fertile islands run by ‘‘corrupt’’ Spaniards that were off the coast of Florida. In 1850, Cuba had a white population of 565,560; it also had 204,570 free Africans, and 436,400 African slaves. The Puerto Rican population was not as large as the Cuban population but was concentrated in a much smaller space. In 1847, Puerto Rico had a population of 628,000; of these, there were 329,000 mixed bloods, 258,000 free Africans, and 32,000 slaves. Because Cuba was closer to the U.S. mainland, Cuban migration was within reach, access was easier. However, the immobile nature of its population prevented a sizeable out-migration at this time. As aspirations for an interocean canal grew in the United States, these islands became strategically important to Euro-American interests. The fact that Central America is an isthmus containing the shortest point between the two oceans, made it vital to the interests of the United States. Central American market resources such as coffee and bananas also attracted Euro-American adventurers and investors who wanted to seize the land for the United States. Because of trade between the two sides of the hemisphere, especially after the 1849 California Gold Rush, interest in an interocean canal increased, and Cuba and then Puerto Rico became gateways to the isthmus of Central America. The documents tell of the rivalry between the United States and Great Britain around this time. The United States thought that it was ‘‘America’s’’ canal, and that the region belonged to the chosen. This set the stage for U.S. filibustering expeditions often with Euro-American sponsors that left U.S. soil in an effort to reannex what they considered U.S. soil and to expand slavery. Tennessean William Walker (1824 1860) led expeditions into Baja California and temporarily seized control of Nicaragua in 1857. Throughout this period, U.S. newspapers and journals discussed the Cuban Question and how democracy should be taken to the island; the documents address this question. We focus on Jos
e Mart
ı, who spent two decades in exile in the United States. He began his exile in this country full of hope for the independence of Cuba from

xliii

xliv

Introduction

Spain, but racism and political realities embittered him. With few exceptions, we have purposefully stayed away from strictly literary works and concentrated on those that captured the historical moment. For example, Cuban cigar makers were not the only cigar makers in the United States, but they were the best. The Cuban cigar industry began a presence in Key West in 1831. After this point, there was a steady influx of Cuban cigar makers. The stream of Cubans quickened after 1868 and there were over 80 cigar factories by 1883. These factories employed almost 2,703 Cuban cigar workers. Primary source documents show how they founded the first trade unions in the U.S. South, and were politically conscious. In 1864, Cuban cigar makers introduced lectores, readers, who would read literary and political works to the cigar makers as they rolled cigars. They educated the workers through their readings. By the 1880s, cigar makers were closely associated with the Cuban independence movement. During this period, Cuba over shadowed Puerto Rico, not because the latter did not have its share of intellectuals as mentioned, its population numbers rivaled those of Cuba but because of Puerto Rico’s distance from the U.S. mainland. The U.S. imperial desire to fold Cuba and Puerto Rico within its borders never let up; however, the Civil War took some of the steam out of the movement. In the 1860s, the independence movements in both of these nations (1868 1897) accelerated. All of this set the stage for the Spanish-American War (1898). Cubans and Puerto Ricans had warred with Spain for thirty years to achieve independence without much help from the outside world. Unlike the experience of the 13 colonies that would later become the United States of America, in which other nations helped the rebels, the Latin American nations did it mostly on their own. In the case of Cuba and Puerto Rico, the United States stepped in late in the game. It then, independently concluded a treaty with Spain that ceded Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and other territories to the United States. The documents deal with the forging of an imperialist U.S. mentality an attitude that would lead to Latin Americans labeling the United States the Colossus of the North an image that was confirmed during the first three decades of the twentieth century with its treatment of the Caribbean and Central America. At the conclusion of the Spanish-American War, Puerto Ricans were forcefully annexed to the United States, and life for Puerto Ricans worsened with the U.S. occupation. The tenuousness of the relation reinforced Puerto Rican nationalism. The war transformed the Puerto Rican economy and accelerated the diaspora of Puerto Rican workers throughout the region and to parts of the United States. Readers are also introduced to Puerto Ricans who are not normally portrayed in texts. In 1898, Cuba did not become part of the United States because there were antiimperialist voices within the country that were paying attention to the question of expansion. Nevertheless, President Theodore Roosevelt built a web that included the Caribbean and Central American in what we will call the U.S. sphere of influence and a policy to defend ‘‘America’s’’ canal in Panama at all costs. The parallel history of Mexicans within the United States takes a different twist. They had been a nationality with a nation within a nation for over a half century. Identities of the individual U.S. Latino nationalities have changed with time of residence in the United States. Their separate national identities had been forged through centuries of civilization building and European colonialism. In the United States, these identities changed as they clashed with the white Anglo-Saxon

Introduction

Protestants (WASP) ideal of Euro-Americans. Historically, they fought for equality under the U.S. Constitution. Civil rights are the protections and privileges of personal power given to all citizens by law. But these rights are a ‘‘catch-22,’’ a paradox in a law, regulation, or practice. For instance, one is a victim regardless of the choice he makes. Like searching for a job. A catch-22 develops when one cannot get a job without work experience, but one cannot gain experience without a job. Catch-22 is the chickenor-the-egg dilemma. Personal power is based on education, but you cannot get an education without money, and you cannot get money without an education. Hence, civil rights are meant to resolve the paradox, which they seldom do. Throughout their history in the United States, Mexican Americans and Puerto Ricans fought for civil rights, and as their populations grew they won the entitlements and guarantees that all Latinos now have and enjoy under the law. One of the first court cases was brought by Ricardo Rodr
ıguez, a native of Mexico who had lived in Texas for 10 years. He petitioned to become a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1897, but was denied. The catch-22 was that only white people could become citizens; Mexicans were not considered white, so they could not be citizens. The dilemma was resolved by blurring the racial status of Mexicans because the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo inferred that they were white that is, the treaty made Mexicans neither Indians or Asians because they could be citizens. Time and time again the catch-22 was not resolved but short-circuited to be used to the disadvantage of Latinos. Meanwhile, in the 1880s the Mexican Central Railroad linked Mexico with the United States, facilitating and determining the movement of huge numbers of workers from Mexico’s interior to build the American Southwest. Industrialization demanded large work forces of unskilled workers. This migration accelerated at the turn of the century, which also saw large waves of Mexicans pulled into the United States by the dramatic expansion of U.S. mines, farms, railroads, and cities. U.S. economic expansion in Mexico accelerated the demise of small subsistence farms and the uprooting of thousands of small farmers and peasants. Moreover, Mexico’s population had recovered to about 15 million during the first decade of the 20th century, and hence served as a large reserve labor pool for the United States. This labor pool was essential to the growth of the U.S. economy as Euro-Americans excluded the Chinese and other Asians from the workforce and limited the immigration of Central and Southern Europeans. The history of immigration greatly affects the migration of Mexicans to the United States as the exclusion of the Chinese and then the limiting of European immigration created a demand for Mexican labor. The year 1910 brought changes with the Mexican Revolution, accelerating migration to the United States. Because of the proximity of Mexico, the populations on both sides of the border reacted to events north and south of the border. Hence, the Mexican Revolution played a huge role in the formation of stereotypes such as the violent Mexican outlaw and the need for the Texas Rangers. Later, World War I acts as a key event in forming a Mexican American identity. The formation of the Puerto Rican identity differed from that of the Mexican during the 1910s. Readers cannot limit themselves to what is happening on the U.S. mainland but must also take into account the island of Puerto Rico, which is, after all, part of the United States. The Jones-Shafroth Act (1917) made Puerto Ricans citizens consequently, they were eligible for the military draft.

xlv

xlvi

Introduction

Other Latino voices were present. During the 1920s, U.S. intervention in the Caribbean and Central American increased. The documents of this period provide a valuable context for future migration and understanding the Latino stereotype. Unlike the formation of a Latino consciousness, the making of the Central American identity was well under way; since the 1820s there were efforts to form a unified nation (they had a common language, contiguous space, and shared history). This effort was accelerated in face of U.S. intervention. At this point, aside from the Mexican voices, only the Puerto Ricans and the Cubans were loud enough to be heard in the United States. As mentioned, Cuban exiles and workers had been trickling into the United States for some time. According to the 1910 Census the number of Cubans in the United States was officially over 15,000. Their numbers were concentrated in Florida and New York. During this period, Puerto Rican workers continued to migrate to Arizona and other parts of the United States, but New York was clearly their largest homeland after the island. Puerto Ricans in the United States numbered only 12,000 in 1920; by 1930 the number had climbed to 53,000. The documents show the Puerto Rican diaspora, their relationship to the island, and their formation of colonias in the United States. During the 1920s, a second-generation middle class and labor organizations emerged among Mexican Americans. By this time, the profile of the group was shifting from a rural to an urban one. Prior to this time, mutual aid societies were the most popular form of organization. As with Puerto Rican and other Latino nationalities, first-generation societies concentrated on homeland issues. The 1920s saw a transformation of these groups that formed second-generation associations to deal more with local issues and obtaining equality under the law than with concerns about the homeland. The link between population and power became more evident as more groups took to the courts to protect their civil rights. Between 1910 and 1920, at least 219,000 Mexican immigrants entered the United States. (The actual figure was probably closer to one million.) This doubled the population of Mexican origin in Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. In California, it quadrupled. The best estimate is that there were between 1.5 and 2 million people of Mexican origin in the United States by 1930. Some would say that the number was closer to 3 million. The growing Mexican presence produced an intense nativist reaction with segregated schools jumping by at least 50 percent. This was all done under the guise of Americanization. We have included documents on this process to help the reader understand the transformation that was taking place during the 1920s, as the second and third generations of Mexican Americans increased in visibility and importance. Who were the voices that advocated for the working Mexicans and Mexican Americans and their families? How did identity change during these years? What were the newspapers saying? Did they differ from what is being said today? Within this historical argument, we consider the Immigration Acts of 1921 and 1924. These acts are cornerstones in the history of all Latinos with the exception of the Puerto Ricans who were U.S. citizens as of 1917. The early twentieth century began a period of social engineering where the immigration policy of the United States was designed to maintain a nation that was not only white but as northern European as possible. Mexicans were excluded from the quotas because they were crucial to U.S. agriculture and Latin Americans were not subjected to immigration

Introduction

quotas because they simply lived too far away to come here in significant numbers. During this period, Mexicans individuals and organizations filed successful desegregation suits. This section of documents has more documents than preceding decades. This is because of the size of the Mexican population is much larger, much more stable, and much more urban than in previous years. Greater numbers mean more organizations, more people studying the group, more literacy, and more awareness. A significant number of Mexican Americans served during World War I; they returned home with a much different attitude toward their rights. The 1920s ended, almost symbolically, with the 1929 formation of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), a middle-class, citizens-only organization that was the premier Mexican American Civil Rights organization of the time. The next period our documents cover is the Great Depression, which began in 1929 and lasted throughout most of the 1930s. The Depression devastated Puerto Rico as the remaining small farmers were almost wiped out. But also important is that Pan American Airlines began its first flights to Miami, Florida, from the island partially overcoming the 1,000-mile gap between Puerto Rico and the mainland. Meanwhile, Florida continued to house a large Cuban population, many of whom were Afro-Cubans. The cigar industry declined in the Great Depression, and an unsuccessful 1931 strike devastated the union. The decade accelerated a migration of Afro-Cubans back to Cuba and to the U.S. Northeast. Fifty percent of Florida’s Afro-Cuban population left Florida in the 1930s. Job opportunities seemed better in Cuba or the North. Fifty percent of the Afro-Cuban community left Tampa from 1930 and 1940, leaving older members trying to keep the community together. Militancy remained high in Puerto Rico as the needle workers, mostly women, struck for better wages. New Deal acts such as the National Recovery Administration (NRA) bypassed the island, worsening an already dire economic situation. The decade also saw the rise of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party as misery on the island grew. Throughout the Caribbean, sugar prices fell drastically, and workers were without a source of income. In turn, the lack of income increased political discontent. On March 21, 1937, at Ponce, Puerto Rico, as some 100 demonstrators were wounded, 19 killed, including 17 men, a woman, and a seven-year-old girl. The documents on Puerto Rico from this era are key because they set the stage for the mass migration to the mainland that accelerated in 1945. The Great Depression also had a huge impact on the segment of the population of Mexican origin in the United States. Between 600,000 and a million Mexicans who were repatriated (deported) largely to save money during the Depression. The documents included encapsulate this period. What was life like for the people? Because of the size of the group, more interviews and oral histories were recorded than in previous years, and attention was paid to this group. At this time, Mexicans were also migrating within the United States and beginning to live outside the Southwest. The Midwest had a sizeable Mexican population in the 1930s. Chicago had as many as 25,000 Mexicans in 1930. However, as in every aspect of Mexican life, repatriation drives affected the Mexican community in the Midwest with its community shrinking to 16,000 by the end of the decade. Los Angeles rivaled San Antonio, Texas, as the Mecca of Mexicans in the United States. In both states, Mexicans battled school segregation. In California,

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the notorious Bliss bill attempted to codify Mexican inferiority in the schools. During this period gigantic strikes took place in agriculture and the cities. Larger numbers of Mexican women worked in factories than ever before and their militancy increased. The purpose of the documents on this timespan is to widen the readers’ appreciation for the period. These documents put a face on the people through interviews and other accounts devoting space to heroes such as Emma Tenayuca and Luis Moreno, a Guatemalan who organized Mexican women. An estimated 400,000 Mexican Americans and 53,000 Puerto Ricans fought in World War II. The war was a turning point in the history of these people who were impacted by the antiracism rhetoric of the war as well as forces that pulled them into the United States mainland in greater numbers than ever before. They were greatly impacted and changed by the experience. As in previous sections, the documents from the war years are meant to complement existing texts. The war changed the world views of an entire generation. The war brought changes in Latino groups as well as with Mexican Americans. Many Latino soldiers returned home to encounter the same racism they had left before going to war. In the case of Puerto Ricans, many had been transported to the mainland and taken across oceans to Africa, Europe, and Asia. The war brought an increased awareness of the strategic value of Puerto Rico and Latin America, as technological breakthroughs in aviation made travel cheaper and safer than before. The Cold War that followed World War II fueled the sense that the United States had to keep its sovereign power over the island for national security reasons. The number of military personnel and bases increased in Puerto Rico. A postwar economic boom led to more industrialization and modernization programs. This caused a mass migration of Puerto Ricans to the mainland. Other changes were taking place as Puerto Ricans swept into Chicago. African Americans drew analogies between the Third World status of the island of Puerto Rico and themselves. The status of Puerto Rican women also changed. Cubans were recruited to play baseball during World War II. However, even in sports, the color line was enforced. The major leagues failed to recruit the first Puerto Rican baseball star Peruch
ın Cepeda, an infielder. He was African and not eligible to play U.S. baseball. His son, Orlando Cepeda, was later inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Cuban migration quickened after the war, as U.S.-sponsored dictators increased political dissent among dissatisfied compatriots. Cubans’ favorite destination was Miami. The postwar documents tell not only how people lived in New York but also the reaction to Puerto Rican immigration. Many Puerto Ricans were brought over on labor contracts. Disillusionment gripped many Puerto Ricans and some refused military service. Still, approximately 60,000 Puerto Ricans served in Korea. Meanwhile, tensions built on the island as the Nationalists gained strength. The fact that poverty increased and the U.S. presence grew on the island solidified opposition. In 1950, Nationalists led an assault on Blair House in Washington, D.C., where President Harry Truman was temporarily being housed. Four years later, the Nationalists led an attack on Congress. They were labeled terrorist instead of nationalist. The surge in Puerto Rican nationalism accompanied the rise of nationalist, populist, and anticolonial movements throughout Latin America. The fear of Soviet-Communist involvement in the hemisphere renewed calls for adherence to the Monroe Doctrine and saw increased U.S. support of right-wing

Introduction

dictatorships. Four years after the attack on Blair House, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) directed the overthrow of the constitutionally elected Guatemalan government. In 1958, the United States sent troops to Panama after flag protests. The decade ended with the success of Fidel Castro in Cuba and his triumphant march into Havana. World War II also brought changes for the 350,000 to 400,000 Mexican Americans who served in the armed forces. The war created labor shortages and thus created opportunity for those who remained behind. Women were pressed into service in the labor force. Mexican Americans won 17 Medals of Honor during the war. Many returned from the frontlines determined to demand first-class citizenship and their rights as Americans. Cases such as the Sleepy Lagoon case (1942) increased awareness of racial injustices. New organizations such as the American G.I. Forum and the Community Service Organization (CSO) evolved in response to inequality. They joined older Mexican American organizations in the courts. Issues such as the Bracero Program, immigration, and the protection of the rights of the foreign born rivaled questions such as police abuse, land use problems, and inferior education. The documents for the period 1945 1960 reflect the quest to resolve the catch22 dilemma. When Pvt. Felix Longoria’s body was brought home to Three Rivers, Texas, in the proverbial pine box, his family expected a hero’s welcome. Instead, the mortuary refused to accept his body because he was a Mexican American. Even Three Rivers’ cemetery was segregated. Hector Garc
ıa’s American G.I. Forum swelled with new members who vowed, never again. The G.I. Forum along with LULAC and La Alianza brought suits to ensure protection of Mexican American rights. The year before, in M
endez v. Westminster, the 9th Circuit Federal Court in California found that Mexican students were entitled to equal protection. The case had been filed by Gonzalo M
endez, Thomas Estrada, William Guzm
an, Frank Palomino, and Lorenzo Ram
ırez in 1945. Gonzalo M
endez was of Mexican extraction and his wife Felicitas was Puerto Rican. They challenged the state’s right to put their children in segregated classrooms and won. After the war, more Mexican Americans also participated in the political process by registering in their communities to vote. Edward R. Roybal was elected to the Los Angeles City Council in 1949, and four years later Henry B. Gonz
alez was elected to the San Antonio, Texas, City Council. Many Mexican American activists were Red-baited, called Communist, for insisting on equal rights. This reaction intensified as the United States entered the Korean War only five years after the World War II. As in World War II, Mexican Americans served beyond their proportion in the population. The corresponding documents reflect on the growing concern over immigration and the role of the Mexican American community to protect the rights of the foreign born. They closed out the decade a more aware and involved community. The 1960s were driven by a global decline in colonialism, the baby boom, the African American civil rights movement, and the Vietnam War. There had been a surge in the Puerto Rican population on the mainland during the previous decades. After triumph of Fidel Castro in the Cuban Revolution, the number of Cubans, mostly in the Miami, Florida, area, increased dramatically. In 1959, the number of Cubans in the United States was estimated at 124,000. After this point, many of the wealthier Cubans fled the island to protect their assets. During the 1960s, about 215,000 Cubans moved to the United States.

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Economic problems and political turmoil in the Dominican Republic also led to a vast migration of Dominicans to the United States. Throughout the century, the United States had sought stability in the region by supporting dictators. The United States worsened the situation by invading the Dominican Republic and preventing constitutionally elected president Juan Bosch from taking office. The Puerto Rican community began to look less to Puerto Rico and more to the huge problems that they had in the United States. During the sixties, a youth generation emerged that was in tune with contemporary politics. Still highly nationalistic, they wanted to improve poor housing, education, health care, and end poverty. Territorial, the barrios were their homes. They fought for rights in the 1960s. They saw life with more urgency than their parents, wanting to end the colonization of Puerto Ricans; they were ‘‘colonial immigrants.’’ The 1960 census counted 892,513 Puerto Ricans in the mainland United States. Almost 72 percent, 642,622, lived in New York; 55,351 in New Jersey; and 36,081 in Illinois. The rest were scattered throughout the country. During the preceding decade, migration had quickened an average of 45,000 annually migrating to the United States. Migration slowed in the 1960s in response to temporary improvements and jobs created by Operation Bootstrap, which had been started in 1948 to industrialize the island. The annual migration of Puerto Ricans was cut by over half. However, the natural increase offset this decrease. Puerto Ricans had a large youth population. As mentioned, after New York and New Jersey, it was Chicago, Illinois, that had the largest concentration of Puerto Ricans. Like other immigrant youth, Puerto Ricans were well aware of their disparate treatment at the hands of police. Chicago lacked the organizational infrastructure of older barrios such as those in New York, and was the scene of the first Puerto Rican protests in the United States. This uprising began on Division Street after a parade and was in response to the police shooting of a young Puerto Rican man. Chicago was also the birthplace of the Young Lords, a youth gang that evolved into a political and human rights organization. Documents from this period concentrate heavily on the Young Lords. U.S. Cubans remained obsessed with what was happening in Cuba. Because the first wave of immigrants was an educated portion of the middle class, Cuban Americans acquired political power, whereas Puerto Ricans remained marginal. The Borinquen (as the island of Puerto Rico was called by the Ta
ıno Indians native to the island) community was involved in protesting the Vietnam War and demanding civil rights for the community. There were still cries for self-determination for the island but the struggle for equality in the States took some of the steam from that movement although not entirely. For example, there was uproar about reports of the mass sterilizations of Puerto Rican women on the island by mainland employers as a hiring practice. Nationalism continued, mingling with the Socialist ideas of the day. By the 1970s, the Young Lords and other leftist groups were on the decline After being heavily infiltrated by police and federal agents. Both at home and abroad, the U.S. government became more proactive in fighting ‘‘communism.’’ In 1973, the CIA participated in the overthrow of Chilean President Salvador Allende. This sent ripples throughout Latin America and led to the immigration of a small number of Chilean political refugees. Changes were also taking place in Central America that would influence the composition of the Latino in the United States. Since the 1960s, the Catholic

Introduction

Church through comunidades de base, base communities, had been politicizing Central Americans. As they grew more militant, the military and local elites clamped down on the dissidents. In El Salvador, the military assassinated a Jesuit priest in 1977. The opposition grew, and, in 1979, rebels overthrew Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza, who moved to Miami, Florida. In 1960, there were officially about 3.5 million U.S. residents of Mexican origin in the Southwest (actual numbers were surely much larger). The largest concentrations were in California and Texas, with about 1.5 million Mexicans apiece. Just fewer than 55 percent were native born and their median age was 19.6 compared to 30.4 for Euro-Americans. The median age had fallen by a year in both cases. Migration from Mexico quickened during the decade as Mexico’s population from 1940 to 1970 increased by 250 percent growing at an average of 3.4 percent per year from 1960 to 1970. Mexico’s population zoomed from 27.4 million in 1950 to 37.1 million in 1960, to 51.2 million in 1970. Like Puerto Rican youth, Chicano youth were nationalistic and wanted to end the exploitation of Mexicans in the United States. As a group, young Chicanos were exposed to civil rights violations and the horrors of the Vietnam War. Activist groups like the Black Berets and the Brown Berets were part of this formation that included Chicano students. Their rhetoric took on cultural symbols and they reacted vigorously to racism. Aztl
an, the legendary birthplace of the Aztecs, became a symbol to show that they were not foreigners in the United States, but that they were native to the land with ties to a culture that predated the original 13 colonies. They adopted the name Chicano and increasingly militant tactics invigorated the social movements of the time by giving hope that their catch-22 dilemma could be resolved. Not all Mexican-origin activity was led by youth. Organizations such as LULAC and the G.I. Forum struggled within the mainstream for equal protection, bilingual education, and economic equality. Through the pressure and influence of youth they became more militant during this period. Within U.S. society, civil rights and the war in Vietnam had an impact. In response, Mexican Americans formed new organizations such as the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF) to litigate their rights. The sixties brought a growing awareness of inequities as organizations evolved to take advantage of the recognition of Chicanos as an entitled group. Both Puerto Ricans and Mexican Americans were influenced by nationalism, socialism, and anticolonial theories. This brought about a question, not only of equality of race, but of gender. For Chicanos, these events reached a climax at the Chicano Moratorium of 1970, after which three people involved in a peaceful rally were killed, including journalist Rub
en Salazar. For Puerto Ricans, there are the Puerto Rican nationalist uprisings of the 1970s. With more Chicanos making it to the universities in the 1970s, there was more seepage into the middle class. With this phenomenon, there was greater participation in mainstream politics, and larger numbers defected to so-called movement politics. In the Mexican-origin community, the first casualty was the term Chicano that defined movement politics as a mission to raise access to education, political participation, and economic opportunity to the working class. Broad sectors of the Mexican community turned to Hispanic and even Latino politics as a method of muting nationalism. It was as subtle as President Richard Nixon shifting the funds of

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antipoverty groups from job training to the Small Business Administration. The marketplace and the media also played a role by hyping the label Hispanic, which was easier than Chicano to sell to the middle class and the public. With politicos it created a larger voting bloc. The 1970s also brought increased numbers of Mexican immigrants who did not accept the Chicano identity, in large part because it was not defined for them. The immigrant did not have the same historical memory or sense as the Mexican Americans or Chicanos had, and the schools substituted the illusion of inclusion for the reality that they were not Hispanics or Latinos. This sifted the focus from the struggle, protections, and entitlements under the law won by the Mexican American and Chicano generations. Subtly, there was the illusion that the catch-22 dilemma could be solved for all Latinos through political brokers and more professionals. Meanwhile, events south of the border increased immigration. The Immigration Act of 1965 brought large numbers of Asians and Middle Easterners to the country as its policy shifted from national origins to family preferences. In reality, Latin Americans were discriminated against since historically the United States had sold the myth that the peoples of the Americas were members of the same family. This part of the family was not subject to immigration quotas until 1965. Shaken by the fall of U.S.-friendly Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza, the United States stepped up its involvement in Central America. The United States carried on a war to overthrow the leftist Sandinistas and gave massive military aid to the right-wing governments of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, as well as continuing its economic boycott and political subversion of Cuba. Civil wars pushed millions of Central American Latinos north. The documents covering these topics appear in the section covering the 1980s as more than a million Central Americans immigrated to the United States during the decade. With the arrival of such large numbers of Central Americans and critical numbers of South Americans, identity became more problematic, and the hegemony of Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and Cuban Americans was challenged. Even before this time, Mexicans had moved in substantial numbers to the Midwest and Northwest. In Chicago, they lived in close proximity to Puerto Ricans. Over a million Mexicans migrated to the United States in the 1970s; this migration did not slow down in the next two decades as they were joined by millions of other Latin Americans. For the first time, they shared a common space, which was one of the requisites for sharing a nationality. This raised the question of a Latino identity, which will be resolved in the future through intellectual discourse and life experiences. Within the documents presented for this time period, there is more crossover than previous decades. Puerto Ricans and Mexicans continued to share certain characteristics. Both groups began to gain political positions and patronage. There was a shift from idealism to ethnic politics where members of both groups gained political positions (not power). Core issues remained unresolved because of this lack of power and inability to shift their party’s paradigm. Puerto Ricans and Mexicans gained tremendously by the increased numbers of other Latin Americans whose numbers collectively added to their national presence. By the 1990s, the new Latino immigrants were forming their own distinct identities. Although the so-called Latino populations became more diverse they spread to the U.S. South and East Coast. Mexican populations in New York City increased from around 62,000 in 1990 to more than 400,000 by many estimates at the turn of

Introduction

the century. There, they share space with Puerto Ricans and other Latinos. Growth in numbers and lawsuits by MALDEF, as well as the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, has increased the number of Latino elected officials immeasurably. In 2002, there were 37.4 million Latinos in the United States population: 66.9 percent were of Mexican origin, 14.3 percent were Central and South American, 8.6 percent were Puerto Rican, 3.7 percent were Cuban, and the remaining 6.5 percent were of other Hispanic origins. Because many of these communities lived in close proximity, sharing the same economic class, intermarriage was taking place. In Los Angeles, for example, many college students are half Mexican and half Salvadoran. Both have large populations. Intermarriage is widespread among U.S.-born Mexican Americans. Census 2000 showed that almost half (48 percent) of Mexican American marriages involved a non-Mexican spouse. The Census data also showed that intermarriage is a fundamental as to whether the children of Mexican Americans retain their ethnic identification. With two U.S.-born Mexicans or between a U.S.-born Mexican and a Mexican immigrant, the child’s Mexican identification is almost assured. Other Latino groups follow a similar trend. It is hoped that these documents will help Latinos become more introspective. Documents on the Puerto Rican, Cuban, and Mexican experiences are fairly accessible, as shown in the suggested reading list at the end of this introduction. However, documents on the other Latinos’ U.S. experience are sparse the Dominicans being the exception. Collecting these data will be difficult, and is made even more nebulous by the Latino categorization. Another challenge for new Latino groups in establishing their history in the United States through documents is that most of these groups have come to the United States after 1980. Although a corpus of knowledge exists about their experiences in Latin America, there are few studies on their U.S. experience. In this initial stage, newspapers and anthologies are important in forging a sense of the fields of study. But these groups are challenged by copyright laws that protect documents published after 1923. It is here that these groups must take the example of the Dominican Americans. We have included a number of websites in the suggested reading list that follows, to facilitate the document gathering process. Two previous sections will help the reader find documents of interest: the table of contents lists each document by author, title, and (where known) year, and the list of documents by group forms an index arranged by geopolitical group. To further assist the reader in putting all of these documents into context, a suggested reading list completes this introduction, and the next section provides a timeline of U.S. Latino history. SUGGESTED READING Acu~ na, Rodolfo. Anything but Mexican: Chicanos in Contemporary Los Angeles. New York: Verso, 1996. . Community under Siege: Chicanos East of the Los Angeles River. Los Angeles: Mexican American Studies Resource Center, UCLA, 1984. . Corridors of Migration: The Odyssey of Mexican Laborers, 1600 1933. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2007. . Occupied America: A History of Chicanos. 5th ed. New York: Longman, 2004. . Sometimes There Is No Other Side: Chicanos and the Myth of Equality. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1998.

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Introduction Appel, John C. ‘‘The Unionization of Florida Cigarmakers and the Coming of the War with Spain.’’ Hispanic American Historical Review 36, no. 1 (1956): 38 49. Aranda, Jos
e, Jr., ed. Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage. Vol. 4. Houston: Arte P
ublico Press, 2002. Balderama, Francisco E., and Raymond Rodriguez. Decade of Betrayal: Mexican Repatriation in the 1930s. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1994. Bancroft, Hubert Howe. History of Arizona and New Mexico, 1530 1888. Albuquerque, NM: Horn & Wallace, 1962. Carroll, Patrick. Felix Longoria’s Wake: Bereavement, Racism, and the Rise of Mexican American Activism. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2003. Craig, Jenkins J. ‘‘Push/Pull in Recent Mexican Migration to the United States.’’ International Migration Review 11, no. 2 (1977): 178 89. Cruz, Jose E. Identity and Power: Puerto Rican Politics and the Challenge of Ethnicity. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998. Deutsch, Sarah. No Separate Refuge: Culture, Class, and Gender on an Anglo-Hispanic Frontier in the American Southwest. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987. Eisenhower. John S. D. So Far from God: The U.S. War with Mexico, 1846 1848. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2000. Ferrer, Ada. Insurgent Cuba: Race, Nation, and Revolution, 1868 1898. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999. Flores, John, ed. Divided Arrival: Narratives of the Puerto Rican Migration, 1920 1950. 2nd ed. New York: Centro Estudios Puertotique~ nos, Hunter College, City University of New York, 1998. Galarza, Ernesto. Merchants of Labor: The Mexican Bracero Story, an Account of the Managed Migration of Mexican Farm Workers in California, 1942 1962. Charlotte, NC: McNally & Loftin, 1964. Gamio, Manuel. The Life Story of the Mexican Immigrant: Autobiographic Documents. New York: Dover Publications, 1972. . Mexican Immigration to the United States: A Study of Human Migration and Adjustment. New York: Dover Publications, 1971. Garcia, Juan G. Mexicans in the Midwest, 1900 1932. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1996. G
omez Qui~ nones, Juan. ‘‘Critique on the National Question, Self-Determination, and Nationalism.’’ Latin American Perspectives 9, no. 2 (1982): 62 83. . Mexican Students for La Raza: The Chicano Student Movement in California, 1967 1977. Santa Barbara, CA: Editorial La Causa, 1978. . Sembradores: Ricardo Flores Magon y el Partido Liberal Mexicano, a Eulogy and Critique. Los Angeles: UCLA, 1979. Gonz
alez, Juan. Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America. New York: Penguin, 2001. Grebler, Leo, Joan E. Moore, and Ralph C. Guzman. The Mexican American People: The Nation’s Second Largest Minority. New York: Free Press, 1970. Griswold Del Castillo, Richard. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo: A Legacy of Conflict. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992. Guti
errez, David G., ed. The Columbia History of Latinos in the United States since 1960. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004. Haas, Lisbeth. Conquests and Historical Identities in California, 1769 1936. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. Handbook of Texas Online. Available at: http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/ MM/qdm2.html. Hardy, Osgood. ‘‘The Revolution and the Railroads of Mexico.’’ Pacific Historical Review 3, no. 3 (1934): 249 69. Harper, Paula. ‘‘Cuba Connections: Key West. Tampa. Miami, 1870 to 1945.’’ Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts 22, Cuba issue (1996): 278 91.

Introduction Harrison, Brady. Agent of Empire: William Walker and the Imperial Self in American Literature. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2004. Hern
andez, Jos
e M. ‘‘Cuba in 1898.’’ In The World of 1898: The Spanish-American War. Washington, DC: Hispanic Division, Library of Congress. Available at: http://www.loc.gov/rr/ hispanic/1898/hernandez.html. Lafeber, Walter. Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central America. New York: W. W. Norton, 1993. Long, Jeff. Duel of Eagles: The Mexican and U.S. Fight for the Alamo. New York: William Morrow, 1990. Maree Bachelis, Faren. The Central Americans. New York: Chelsea House, 1990. Mathews, Thomas. Puerto Rican Politics and the New Deal. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1960. Matovina, Timothy M. The Alamo Remembered: Tejano Accounts and Perspectives. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995. May, Robert E. Manifest Destiny’s Underworld: Filibustering in Antebellum America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004. . The Southern Dream of a Caribbean Empire, 1854 1861. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1973. McWilliams, Carey. North from Mexico: The Spanish-Speaking People of the United States. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1968. Mel
endez, Miguel, and Jos
e Torres. We Took the Streets: Fighting for Latino Rights with the Young Lords. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2005. Menchaca, Martha. Recovering History, Constructing Race: The Indian, Black, and White Roots of Mexican Americans. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001. Montejano, David. Anglos and Mexicans in the Making of Texas, 1836 1986. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987. Moya Pons, Frank. The Dominican Republic: A National History. 2nd revised ed. Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers, 1998. Nodin Valdes, Dennis. Al Norte: Agricultural Workers in the Great Lakes Region, 1917 1970. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1991. Oboler, Suzanne, and Deena J. Gonzalez, eds. The Oxford Encyclopedia of Latinos and Latinas in the United States. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Paredes, Am
erico. ‘‘With His Pistol in His Hand’’: A Border Ballad and Its Hero. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1970. Park, Joseph F. ‘‘At Clifton: 1903 Clifton-Morenci Strike.’’ Journal of Arizona History 18 (Summer 1977): 119 48. P
erez Brignoli, H
ector. A Brief History of Central America. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989. Pitt, Leonard. Decline of the Californios. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966. Poniatowska, Elena, and David Dorado Romo. Las Soldaderas: Women of the Mexican Revolution. El Paso, TX: Cinco Puntos Press, 2006. Ramos, Henry A. J. A People Forgotten, a Dream Pursued: The History of the American G.I. Forum, 1948 1972. N.p.: American G.I. Forum of the United States, 1983. Reisler, Mark. By the Sweat of Their Brow: Mexican Immigrant Labor in the United States, 1900 1940. Reprint ed. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1976. Rivas-Rodr
ıguez, Maggie. Mexican Americans and World War II. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005. Robinson, Cecil. With the Ears of Strangers: The Mexican in American Literature. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1963. Rodr
ıguez, Clara E. Changing Race: Latinos, the Census, and the History of Ethnicity in the United States. New York: New York University Press, 2000. . Puerto Ricans Born in the USA. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1989.

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Introduction Romo, David Dorado. Ringside Seat to a Revolution: An Underground Cultural History of El Paso and Juarez, 1893 1923. El Paso, TX: Cinco Puntos Press, 2005. Rosales, Francisco Arturo. Chicano! The History of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement. Houston: Arte Publico Press, 1997. , ed. Testimonio: A Documentary History of the Mexican American Struggle for Civil Rights. Houston: Arte Publico Press, 2000. Rubens, Horatio S. Liberty: The Story of Cuba. New York: Arno Press, 1970. S
anchez, George J. Becoming Mexican American: Ethnicity, Culture, and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles, 1900 1945. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. San Miguel, Guadalupe. ‘‘Let All of Them Take Heed’’: Mexican Americans and the Campaign for Educational Equality in Texas, 1910 1981. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1988. Shorris, Earl. Latinos: A Biography of the People. New York: W. W. Norton, 2001. Sobarzo, Alejandro. Deber y Consciencia: Nicol
as Trist, el Negociador Norteamericano en la Guerra del 47. M
exico City: Fondo de Cultura Econ
omica, 1996. Sons of DeWitt Colony, Texas. Available at: http://www.tamu.edu/ccbn/dewitt/dewitt.htm. Tenayuca, Emma, and Homer Brooks. ‘‘The Mexican Question in the Southwest.’’ Political Affairs (March 1939): 257 68. Thelen, David, ed. Rethinking History and the Nation State: Mexico and the United States. A special online issue of the Journal of American History (September 1999). Available at: http://www.indiana.edu/jah/mexico. Tijerina, Andres. Tejanos under the Mexican Flag, 1821 1836. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1994. V
elez-Iba~ nez, Carlos G. Border Visions: Mexican Cultures of the Southwest United States. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1996. Wagenheim, Olga Jim
enez de, and Kal Wagenheim, eds. The Puerto Ricans: A Documentary History. Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2002. Webb, Walter Prescott. The Texas Rangers: A Century of Frontier Defense. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1965. Zavella, Patricia. Women’s Work and Chicano Families: Cannery Workers of the Santa Clara Valley. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1987.

Timeline of U.S. Latino History 1803

The Louisiana Purchase makes New Spain (Colonial Mexico) the neighbor of the United States and U.S. exploration of the area west of the Mississippi begins.

1810

In Mexico, Fr. Miguel Hidalgo issues the call for Mexican independence, beginning 11 years of warfare.

1819

Sim
on Bol
ıvar, the great Latin American liberator, addresses the Congress of Angostura and expresses his vision of one Latin America strong enough to resist the encroachments of Europe and the United States. Adams-On
ıs Treaty of 1819, in which Spain cedes Florida to the United States, is signed after years of border wars.

1821

Treaty of C
ordova, in which Mexico gains independence from Spain, is signed on August 24. A Congress of Central America declares independence from Spain on September 15. Texas Gov. Antonio Mar
ıa Mart
ınez authorizes Euro-American Stephen Austin to colonize 300 families in Texas. The Spanish originally made this grant to his father, Moses Austin, who died before completing the contract. Meanwhile, Texas, while still part of Mexico, gets its independence from Spain.

1823

In his December 2 speech to a joint session of Congress, U.S. President James Monroe declares that further European colonization in the Americas will not be permitted. The Monroe Doctrine serves as the justification for U.S. intervention in the hemisphere to this day.

1824

Mexico’s Congress abolishes slave trade in Mexico.

1829

Mexican President Vicente Guerrero abolishes slavery.

1832

Former U.S. congressman Sam Houston arrives in Texas.

1836

White Texans and Mexican elites declare the independence of Texas on March 2. Treaty of Velasco between Mexican President Antonio L
opez de Santa Anna and Texas dissidents is signed on May 14 but never ratified by Mexico’s Congress.

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Timeline of U.S. Latino History

1845

President James Polk’s December 2nd State of the Union Address blames Mexico for tensions between the two countries and makes public Polk’s commitment to the expansion of the United States through the annexation of Texas, the Oregon territory, and the purchase of California.

1846

The Mexican-American War begins.

1848

Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo forces Mexico to cede 52 percent of its territory to the United States. In return, the United States pays Mexico $15 million. Article V of the treaty establishes the boundary between both countries, pending a survey. The controversy over this treaty continues to the present. Nearly 600 Mexicans are lynched in the Southwest from this year to 1928.

1849

Survey efforts to establish the border between Mexico and the United States as required by Article V of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo begin in San Diego.

1850

Clayton-Bulwer Treaty is signed by the United States and Great Britain, both rivals in colonizing Central America and particularly concerned over a proposed isthmian canal. Both agree not to attempt to gain exclusive control over the canal or Nicaragua, Costa Rica, the Mosquito Coast, or any part of Central America.

1853

U.S. Senator Pierre Soul
e’s January 25 speech, ‘‘The Cuban Question,’’ heats up the rhetoric to take Cuba from Spain. Soul
e and other expansionists are supported by southern interests. The Gadsden Purchase is made on December 30 after heavy-handed U.S. tactics and threats that if not allowed to purchase southern Arizona and parts of New Mexico from Mexico, the United States will take this land. For $10 million, Mexican authorities cede 45,000 square miles of land including the Mesilla Valley as well as use of the Gila River to the United States.

1854

The Ostend Manifesto, a secret document written by U.S. diplomats instructing Senator Pierre Soul
e to try to buy Cuba from Spain, is signed on October 18.

1856

Filibusterer William Walker overthrows the government of Nicaragua, gaining a foothold for slave interests.

1859

In South Texas, Juan Cortina rebels and is chased by the Texas Rangers, the U.S. Army, and local authorities for the next 15 years.

1868

On September 23, between 600 to 1000 men, mostly Puerto Rican born, demand Puerto Rico’s independence from Spain but their revolt fails. The unsuccessful Ten Years War begins and is fought under the leadership of attorney Carlos Manuel de C
espedes, who issues the Grito de Yara proclaiming Cuban independence.

1875

Report of the Mexican Commission on the Northern Frontier Question is issued. California social bandit Tiburcio V
asquez is executed for murder and his alleged outlaw activities.

Timeline of U.S. Latino History

Cuban cigarmakers strike in Florida for better work conditions and higher wages. 1876

La Ondina del Plata, an Argentine journal, publishes an article by Mar
ıa Eugenia Echenique on the emancipation of women. Echenique was among a group of feminist writers who were read throughout the Americas.

1877

Salt War over Euro-American monopoly of salt deposits near El Paso leads to Mexican American opposition and one of the largest white vigilante actions against Mexicans in Southwest history.

1880

Mexican Central Railroad links Mexico City to El Paso, accelerating migration to the United States.

1882

U.S. passage of Chinese Exclusion Act keeps Chinese from entering the United States for the next 10 years and is the first serious immigration ban in U.S. history. It was renewed in 1892 and again in 1902, when Congress moved to make the ban permanent. It remained in effect until 1965.

1890

Manifesto of the Las Vegas, New Mexico White Caps (Las Gorras Blancas) declares war on land encroachers who monopolize the land and water.

1894

The Alianza Hispano Americana, a mutual aid society, was founded by Tucson, Arizona, elites in response to the growing nativism against Mexicans. By 1932, this group boasted 11,000 members and was active in civil rights litigation.

1895

Jos
e Mart
ı, Cuban poet and martyr for Cuban independence, leads the second Cuban War of Independence. Border wars between Mexico and the United States intensify. Mexican American Victor Ochoa at El Paso is sentenced for violation of Neutrality Laws and leading revolutionary bands into Mexico.

1897

In re Ricardo Rodr
ıguez holds that the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo considered Mexicans eligible for citizenship and entitled to full rights under the U.S. Constitution.

1898

Spanish-American War between Spain and the United States begins while Cubans are already fighting for their independence. The Teller Amendment to the U.S. resolution of war with Spain stating that the United States claims it has no ‘‘intention to exercise sovereignty, jurisdiction, or control’’ over Cuba and resolves ‘‘to leave the government and control of the island to its people,’’ passes in Congress. Treaty of Paris between the United States and Spain is signed. It excludes Puerto Ricans seeking independence from the bargaining table. The U.S. occupation of Puerto Rico begins.

1899

‘‘The White Man’s Burden,’’ by English poet Rudyard Kipling is published. It reinforces the concept that the United States is the custodian of Western civilization in the world, taking its blessings to less civilized peoples.

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Timeline of U.S. Latino History

1900

U.S. Congress passes the Foraker Act that establishes the governing structure of Puerto Rico.

1901

Gregorio Cortez, a poor Mexican farm hand who shoots a sheriff who had shot his brother eludes Texas Rangers and law enforcement during a massive 10-day manhunt. He is immortalized in corridos (ballads) that tell of his bravery and vicariously identify with his success against the hated Texas Rangers.

1902

A revolution gives Panama independence from Colombia. Shortly afterward, Panama signs a treaty giving the United States the right to build a canal across the Panamanian isthmus.

1903

The Platt Amendment is signed and makes Cuba a U.S. protectorate. Clifton-Morenci Strike pits 2,000 miners against the territorial militia, federal troops, and the Arizona Rangers.

1904

‘‘To Roosevelt,’’ a poem by Nicaraguan Rub
en Dar
ıo to Theodore Roosevelt, expresses anger at U.S. intervention and high handiness in Latin America.

1910

The Mexican Revolution pushes over 10 percent of Mexico’s population to emigrate to the United States over the next decade.

1911

Primer Congreso Mexicanista, Verificado en Laredo, Texas, a congress of mutual aid societies, meets to discuss recent lynchings and violations of civil rights.

1912

New Mexico and Arizona are granted U.S. statehood due to an increase in their white population.

1914

The United States sends troops to Vera Cruz, Mexico, occupying it for six months over an incident that occurred when U.S. Marines were sent to this Mexican port under the pretext of preventing a German steamer from importing arms to Mexico. U.S. steamers bombard the port.

1915

Plan de San Diego calls for the uprising of people of color, the division of the United States among them, and the killing of white men.

1916

Gen. John Pershing leads an expedition into Mexico to hunt for Mexican revolutionary hero Pancho Villa, who had invaded Columbus, New Mexico, earlier that year.

1917

The Literacy Act requires immigrants pass a literacy test that keeps most Europeans from coming to the United States and increases U.S. demand for Mexican laborers. Carmelita Torres, a 17-year-old Mexican maid, refuses to take a gas bath while crossing the border to work in El Paso. Her actions begin a riot as other Mexican women refuse to submit to this indignity. The Jones-Shafroth Act (also known as the Jones Act for Puerto Rico or the 1917 amendments to the ‘‘Organic Act of Puerto Rico’’) amends the Foraker Act to confer citizenship on Puerto Ricans. Nearly 1,200 striking copper miners in Bisbee, Arizona, mostly Mexican, are rounded up, put on cattle cars, and dumped in the middle of the New

Timeline of U.S. Latino History

Mexican desert under the pretext that they were members of the radical Industrial Workers of the World and thus unpatriotic. 1918

Puerto Ricans, as U.S. citizens, are consequently subject to the military draft. Large numbers of Mexican Americans serve in U.S. armed forces.

1920s

U.S. intervention in Central America and the Caribbean affairs increases. Americanization rises as almost 50 percent of U.S. public schools with Mexican American students are segregated during the decade.

1920

Mexican American sociologist Ernestine M. Alvarado makes a plea for mutual understanding among Mexican Americans and other Americans. Protestant organizations challenge Catholic Church hegemony among Mexicans.

1921

The Immigration Act sets quotas for Europeans, excludes Asians, and denaturalizes U.S.-born women who marry noncitizens. Economic recession prompts the deportation or repatriation to Mexico of thousands of Mexican workers.

1924

The Immigration Act of 1924 sets the policy of national origins, continues the exclusion of Asians, and reduces the number of immigrants by using the quota percentage from the 1890 Census instead of the 1910 Census. It supercedes the 1921 Immigration Act.

1925

Adolfo Romo v Tempe School District, the first U.S. desegregation case, is tried.

1927

Confederaci
on de Uniones Obreras Mexicanas (Federation of Mexican Workers Union), CUOM, is founded in Los Angeles.

1928

Imperial Valley Worker’s Union goes on strike in California.

1929

The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) is organized in Texas. Puerto Rican Luis Mu~ noz Mar
ın rises to leadership, challenging the existing political parties. He would become the first democratically elected governor of the island in 1949. The Great Depression begins. Repatriation of between 600,000 and a million Mexicans, over 60 percent born in the United States, occurs between this year and 1936.

1930

Independent School Dist. v. Salvatierra (Texas), a discrimination case, is filed by the League of United Latin American Citizens. The appeal is dismissed and allows the school district to continue segregating migrant children because they start school late in the year. This policy only applies to Mexican Americans and not white migrant children. The Lemon Grove segregation case in which Mexican American children were placed in a separate school in Lemon Grove, California, results in one of

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Timeline of U.S. Latino History

the first successful school desegregation court decisions in the history of the United States. U.S. economist Victor S. Clark’s Study of Puerto Rico gives a political, social, and economic portrait of the island and the conditions that were driving Puerto Rican emigration to the United States. 1933

Cotton pickers in California’s San Joaquin Valley, 80 percent of whom are Mexican, take part in the largest agriculture strike in California history up to this date. Growers, assisted by police, shoot three strikers down in cold blood, starve nine infants to death, and beat and wound countless workers. The strike is broken by government intervention.

1935

The Chicago Defender comments on disturbance in the Puerto Rican section of Harlem, blaming uneven appropriation of relief to Harlem as compared to other parts of New York, unemployment, and poor housing conditions.

1936

Pedro Alibizu Campos, head of the Nationalist Party calling for independence for Puerto Rico, is convicted of trying to overthrow the U.S. government after widespread demonstrations the year before led to the killing of four nationalists and the attempted assassination of the U.S.-appointed governor of Puerto Rico.

1938

San Antonio pecan shellers, mostly Mexican women, numbering about 12,000, go on strike. During the three-month strike, shellers confront management and the San Antonio political establishment. In Ponce, Puerto Rico, on July 25, police fire on demonstrators calling for the independence of Puerto Rico and protesting the arrest of nationalist leaders. Seventeen are killed.

1941

World War II begins. It brings huge changes to the hemisphere and to Latino groups in the United States. U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs Executive Order 8802, June 25, which calls for equal employment opportunities for minorities in an attempt to quiet African American charges of racism and blacks’ threat to oppose the draft.

1942

Nearly two dozen Mexican youths are put on trial in the Sleepy Lagoon case. They are accused of causing the death of Jos
e D
ıaz, a Mexican American youth, in Los Angeles, California, and convicted on murder and lesser chargers in an emotionally charged trial. The case is sent back for a retrial on appeal. The Bracero program (1942 1964) allows Mexican nationals to take temporary agricultural work in the United States. More than 4.5 million Mexican nationals are legally contracted under this program.

1943

The Zoot Suit Riots take place in Los Angeles. Cheered on by the police and the media, servicemen beat Mexican youths during the course of a week.

1947

Westminster School District of Orange County et al. v. Mendez et al. desegregates the Orange County, California, school district and ends de jure segregation of Mexican children.

Timeline of U.S. Latino History

1948

The body of U.S. Army Pvt. Felix Longoria is returned to Three Rivers, Texas. The town mortuary refuses to provide services because he is a Mexican American. Uproar swells the ranks of Hector Garc
ıa’s American G.I. Forum. Longoria is buried at Arlington National Cemetery. Puerto Rico’s Gov. Luis Mu~ noz Marin institutes Operation Bootstrap to relieve the island’s unemployment problem. As part of the program, tax exemptions are given to U.S. industry to exploit cheap labor.

1949

Helped by a massive voter registration drive spearheaded by the Community Service Organization (CSO), Edward R. Roybal is elected to the Los Angeles City Council. He is the first Mexican American since 1887 to win a seat on the Los Angeles City Council.

1950

Approximately 40,000 Puerto Ricans migrate to the mainland United States in this year. Puerto Rican nationalist uprisings produce armed attacks in Puerto Rico led by Blanca Canales. At Blair House in Washington D.C., Puerto Rican nationalists attempt to assassinate U.S. President Harry Truman.

1952

Walter-McCarran Act passes, making it so anyone accused of voicing the wrong political opinions (i.e., communism) could be denied entry into the United States. Those already working in the United States, visiting, or seeking citizenship, could be deported. Naturalized citizens could be denaturalized and deported.

1953

Operation Wetback initiates massive sweeps of undocumented Mexican workers in the United States that continue until 1955 and result in the deportation of a million Mexicans a year.

1954

Puerto Rican Lolita Lebr
on and other Puerto Rican nationalists stage and take part in a shootout in the rotunda of the U.S. Congress in Washington, D.C., wounding five congressmen. Hernandez v. Texas, a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case, upholds that Mexican Americans and all other racial groups in the United States have equal protection under the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. A Mexican had not been on a jury for over 25 years. Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz is overthrown by a CIA-sponsored coup. Military dictators seize control and kill more than 200,000 Guatemalans to date. Guatemalan migration to the United States accelerates.

1959

Cuban leader Fidel Castro delivers ‘‘The Revolution Begins Now’’ speech signaling that the Cuban Revolution would not be sold out as it had in 1898 when Cuban leaders did not oppose U.S. intervention. The first wave of Cuban immigration due to the revolution begins after tyrannical Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista is overthrown and many of his supporters leave the island most migrating to the United States. The Mexican American Political Association (MAPA) is organized in California.

lxiii

lxiv

Timeline of U.S. Latino History

1960

Viva Kennedy political clubs are established to attract Hispanics to vote for John F. Kennedy for U.S. president.

1961

Puerto Rican Antonia Pantoja organizes Aspira in New York City. The group is dedicated to empowering the Puerto Rican community. Mexican American activist Henry B. Gonz
alez wins election to Congress from Texas.

1962

Farmworker leader C
esar Ch
avez, along with Dolores Huerta and others, form the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA). New Mexico preacher Reies L
opez Tijerina drafts the first plan of the Alianza Federal de Mercedes to recover Spanish and Mexican land grants from the United States.

1963

Crystal City, Texas, revolts lead to Mexican American majority elected to the city council, led by Juan Cornejo, a local Teamsters Union business agent.

1965

New York City’s Puerto Rican population exceeds 1 million, an increase from 700,000 in 1955 and 13,000 in 1945. The Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC), a mostly Filipino union, strikes at Delano, California. They are joined by C
esar Ch
avez and the NFWA. U.S. Marines invade Santo Domingo to establish firm grip on the island. Working-class Dominican migration to the United States increases. Puerto Rican nationalist Pedro Albizu Campos dies. The Immigration Act of 1965 passes. This legislation changes U.S. immigration policy from national origins to family preferences. For the first time, Latin Americans are placed on a quota. Voting Rights Act abolishes the poll tax on voting and ends de jure (not de facto) gerrymandering. In a speech to the graduating class at Howard University, President Lyndon B. Johnson frames the concept underlying affirmative action.

1966

The Crusade for Justice is founded by boxer, poet, and activist Rodolfo ‘‘Corky’’ Gonzales.

1967

The Mexican American Youth Organization (MAYO) is founded at St. Mary’s College in San Antonio, Texas.

1968

In Chicago, Jos
e ‘‘Cha Cha’’ Jim
enez reorganizes the Young Lords, a Puerto Rican street gang, into a political and human rights organization. The Los Angeles public school Blowouts demand equal education for Mexican Americans as students and some faculty walk out of class in a coordinated protest. The Tlatelolco Massacre of Mexican students in Mexico City causes outrage among Chicano students in the United States.

Timeline of U.S. Latino History

The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) is founded to pursue civil rights cases. La Hermandad Mexicana Nacional (Mexican National Brotherhood) founded in the early 1950s is organized in Los Angeles by Bert Corona and Soledad ‘‘Chole’’ Alatorre to organize undocumented immigrants. The National Council of La Raza (NCLR) is founded to organize disparate Latino organizations under one umbrella. Bilingual Education Act, or Title VII, of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) encourages instruction in English and multicultural awareness. It gives school districts the opportunity to provide bilingual education programs without violating segregation laws. It provides funding and resources. 1969

Denver Youth Conferences adopt a Chicano identity and the Plan Espiritual de Aztl
an. Plan of Santa Barbara begins movement for Chicano Studies in public colleges and universities and the Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano/a de Aztl
an (MEChA) is founded.

1970

Texas activist Jos
e Angel Guti
errez and MAYO volunteers take control of the Crystal City, Texas, Board of Education. La Raza Unida Party (LRUP), a Chicano political party is established on January 17, 1970 at Campestre Hall in Crystal City, Texas. On August 29, some 30,000 Chicanos demonstrate against the Vietnam War at Laguna Park in Los Angeles. A police riot kills three, among them journalist Rub
en Salazar who is shot in the head with a tear gas projectile at close range while seated at the Silver Dollar Bar. Cisneros v. Corpus Christi Independent School District is the first case to extend U.S. Supreme Court’s Brown v. the Board of Education decision (1954) to Mexican Americans. It recognizes them as a minority group that could be and was frequently discriminated against. The conspiracy case against Salvador B. Castro, a Los Angles teacher who led the Los Angeles School Blowout (1968) is dismissed.

1973

The government of Chilean President Salvador Allende is overthrown with the support of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.

1974

The Chicana Research and Learning Center, the first research and service project in the nation founded and run by and for Mexican American women, is founded at the University Methodist Student Center in Austin, Texas. Lau v. Nichols case determines that students not receiving special help in school due to their inability to speak English are entitled to this assistance under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that banned educational discrimination on the basis of national origin. Communities Organized for Public Service (COPS), an affiliate of the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF), is founded in San Antonio, Texas, to organize grassroots support in the west and south sides of the city.

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Timeline of U.S. Latino History

1978

University of California Regents v. Bakke imposes limitations on affirmative action by claiming that affirmative action was unfair if it led to reverse discrimination. This has resulted in continual litigation led by Mexican American and Puerto Rican organizations.

1979

The overthrow of Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza starts civil wars throughout Central America and marks the beginning of mass migrations to the United States.

1980s

Continued violence in Central America drives immigration to the United States.

1980

Roughly 125,000 people are allowed to leave Cuba from the port of Mariel. Called Marielitos, most head for the United States.

1986

Initiative Proposition 63, English as the Official Language of California, is passed with the support of nativist organizations. Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 gives amnesty to undocumented Latinos.

1990

Janitors in the Century City (Los Angeles) high-rise commercial office area stage a three-week general strike for improved wages and benefits. Los Angeles police officers attack a group of 400 nonviolent demonstrators, injuring two dozen janitors and causing at least two miscarriages.

1992

The Salvadoran Peace Accords are signed, ending that country’s civil war and setting up a mechanism for elections.

1993

United Farm Worker President C
esar Ch
avez dies in Yuma, Arizona, on April 23.

1994

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) between the United States, Canada, and Mexico is implemented. It encourages the privatization of Mexico and the further demise of the subsistence farm, leading to a massive migration of peasants to Mexican cities and the United States. Proposition 187, which denies illegal immigrants social services, health care, and public services, is overwhelmingly passed by California voters, penalizing undocumented residents.

1996

Mexican American union leader Miguel Contreras is elected executive secretary treasurer of the Los Angeles Federation of Labor. Proposition 209 amends the California Constitution to supposedly prohibit public institutions from discriminating on the basis of race, sex, or ethnicity. This is prompted by the California Civil Rights Initiative Campaign, which was designed to eliminate affirmative action. As a consequence, the number of African Americans college and university students in the state fell: at UCLA in 2006 there were only 100 first-year African American students admitted, down from 488 in 1996.

1998

Proposition 22, English for the Children, passes by an overwhelming majority. This initiative ends bilingual education in California’s public schools.

Timeline of U.S. Latino History

2000

Massive protests against U.S. Navy bombardments of the Island of Vieques off the shore of Puerto Rico lead to arrests and harassment.

2002

Millionaire banker Antonio R. ‘‘Tony’’ S
anchez, Jr., runs unsuccessfully for governor of Texas.

2003

The Iraq War begins.

2004

Writer Gloria Anzald
ua dies prematurely of cancer. She authored Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1987) and other important works on gender and homophobia.

2005

Councilman Antonio Villaraigosa is elected mayor of Los Angeles, becoming the first Mexican American mayor of the city since the start of U.S. rule.

2006

Millions protest nationally on May 1 in response to proposed legislation known as H.R. 4437 that would raise penalties for illegal immigration and classify unauthorized immigrants and anyone who helps them as felons.

2007

The U.S. Census Bureau says that Latinos were the largest minority group in the nation at 42.7 million an increase of 1.3 million, 800,000 from natural increase (births minus deaths) and 500,000 from immigration. Latinos were 3.3 times more likely to be in prison than whites; 4.2 times more likely to be in prison for murder, and 5.8 times more likely to be in prison for felony drug crimes.

lxvii

PART I Borders When the Spaniards invaded the New World in 1494, at least 100 million people lived in the Americas. They included more than 350 major tribal groups, 15 distinct cultural centers, and more than 160 linguistic stocks. No borders existed as we know them. The present framework of the modern nation-states of Latin America and the United States came about through the conquest of the Americas and the carving up of territories into political units after the wars of independence of the early nineteenth century. The Spanish, Portuguese, and English controlled most of these units. These three colonial powers were divided along more than physical borders there were also linguistic, religious, and racial borders. Proximity to the British colonies in North America played a role in the development of the identities of the former Spanish colonies, and the growth of the North American colonies was spurred on by what included the richest farmland in the world. Once it became its own country in North America, the United States sought to expand at the expense of British Canada to the north and New Spain, which became modern-day Mexico, to the south.

1. Excerpts from J. Eric S. Thompson, ed., Thomas Gage’s Travels in the New World, 1648 Central America is an isthmus located at the southernmost end of North America abutting South America. It is the shortest landmass between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Since the eighteenth century, the United States has seen strategically located Central America as important to its political, military, and economic interests. During the Spanish colonial period, the early 1500s to 1821, Panama served as a center of commerce for Spain’s colonies in America, because Spain shipped trade items and slaves from Panama to Peru. On September 15, 1821, the colonies that made up the Captaincy General of Guatemala declared their independence from Spain. For two years, Central America was under the rule of Emperor Agust
ın de Iturbide, but on July 1, 1823, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica formed the United Provinces of Central America. The following description was written by Thomas Gage, a British subject and a Spanish Dominican who spent two or three years in Guatemala City, where he began to have religious doubts. Gage published a book in 1648 describing his travels in Latin America.

The isthmus of Panama, which runneth between the north and south seas, besides gold in it, is admirably stored with silver, spices, pearls, and medicinal herbs … Guatemala, seated in the midst of a Paradise on one side and a hell on the other [a

2

Voices of the U.S. Latino Experience

volcano], yet never hath this hell broke so loose as to consume that flourishing city. True it is that many years ago it opened a wide mouth on the top, and breathed out such fiery ashes as filled the houses of Guatemala and the country about … The trading of the city [Guatemala] is great, for by mules it partakes of the best commodities of Mexico, Oaxaca, and Chiapa, and, southward, of Nicaragua and Costa Rica. By sea, it hath commerce with Peru, by two sea ports and havens … The Government of all the country about, and of all Honduras, Socomusco, Comayagua, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Vera Paz, Suchitep
equez, and Chiapas is subordinate unto the Chancery [Audencia] of Guatemala; for although every governor over these several provinces is appointed by the King and Council of Spain, yet when they come to those parts to the enjoyment of their charge and execution office, their actions, if unjust, are weighed and judged, censured, and condemned by the Court residing in the city [of Panama] … It is held to be one of the richest places in all America, having by land and, by the river Chagres, commerce with the North Sea, and by the south, trading with all Peru, East Indies, Mexico, and Honduras. Source: J. Eric S. Thompson, ed., Thomas Gage’s Travels in the New World (Norman: University C 1958), pp. 95, 183, 186, 187, 327. of Oklahoma Press,


2. The Secret Treaty of San Ildefonso, October 1, 1800 The secret San Ildefonso Treaty was entered into between the French Republic and the King of Spain. Through this treaty, which was negotiated under duress when Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte of France pressured Spain to cede back the territory, Spain returned the Louisiana Territory to France. In its haste, the treaty did not clearly indicate the boundaries of the territory that was returned. This lack of specifity would open the door for the United States to make claims far in excess of the original boundaries of the Louisiana territory. The San Ildefonso Treaty became a topic of controversy for Spain and the United States after France transferred the Louisiana Territory to the United States in 1803.

His Catholic Majesty having always manifested an earnest desire to procure for His Royal Highness the Duke of Parma an aggrandizement which would place his domains on a footing more consonant with his dignity; and the French Republic on its part having long since made known to His Majesty the King of Spain its desire to be again placed in possession of the colony of Louisiana; and the two Governments having exchanged their views on these two subjects of common interest, and circumstances permitting them to assume obligations in this regard which, so far as depends on them, win assure mutual satisfaction, they have authorized for this purpose the following: the French Republic, the Citizen Alexandre Berthier General in Chief, and His Catholic Majesty, Don Mariano Luis de Urquijo, knight of the Order of Charles III, and of that of St. John of Jerusalem, a Counselor of State, his Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary appointed near the Batavian Republic, and his First Secretary of State ad interim, who, having exchanged their powers, have agreed upon the following articles, subject to ratification. ARTICLE 1 The French Republic undertakes to procure for His Royal Highness the Infant Duke of Parma an aggrandizement of territory which shad increase the population of

Borders

his domains to one minion inhabitants, with the title of King and with all the rights which attach to the royal dignity; and the French Republic undertakes to obtain in this regard the assent of His Majesty the Emperor and King and that of the other interested states’ BO that His Highness the Infant Duke of Parma may be put into possession of the said territories without opposition upon the conclusion of the peace to be made between the French Republic and His Imperial Majesty. ARTICLE 2 The aggrandizement to be given to His Royal Highness the Duke of Parma may consist of Tuscany, in case the present negotiations of the French Government with His Imperial Majesty shall permit that Government to dispose thereof; or it may consist of the three Roman legations or of any other continental provinces of Italy which form a rounded state. ARTICLE 3 His Catholic Majesty promises and undertakes on his part to retrocede to the French Republic, six months after the full and entire execution of the above conditions and provisions regarding His Royal Highness the Duke of Parma, the colony or province of Louisiana, with the same extent that it now has in the hands of Spain and that it had when France possessed it, and such as it ought to be according to the treaties subsequently concluded between Spain and other states. ARTICLE 4 His Catholic Majesty will give the necessary orders for the occupation of Louisiana by France as soon as the territories which are to form the arrandizement [sic] of the Duke of Parma shall be placed in the hands of His Royal Highness. The French Republic may, according to its convenience, postpone the taking of possession; when that is to be executed, the states directly or indirectly interested will agree upon such further conditions as their common interests and the interest of the respective inhabitants require. ARTICLE 5 His Catholic Majesty undertakes to deliver to the French Republic in Spanish ports in Europe, one month after the execution of the provision with regard to the Duke of Parma, six ships of war in good condition built for seventy-four guns, armed and equipped and ready to receive French crews and supplies. ARTICLE 6 As the provisions of the present treaty have no prejudicial object and leave intact the rights of an, it is not to be supposed that they win give offense to any power. However, if the contrary shall happen and if the two states, because of the execution thereof, shall be attacked or threatened, the two powers agree to make common cause not only to repel the aggression but also to take conciliatory measures prosper for the maintenance of peace with all their neighbors.

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ARTICLE 7 The obligations contained in the present treaty derogate in no respect from those which are expressed in the Treaty of Alliance signed at San Ildefonso on the 2d Fructidor, year 4 (August 19, 1796); on the contrary they unite anew the interests of the two powers and assure the guaranties stipulated in the Treaty of Alliance for all cases in which they should be applied. ARTICLE 8 The ratifications of these preliminary articles shall be effected and exchanged within the period of one month, or sooner if possible, counting from the day of the signature of the present treaty. In faith whereof we, the undersigned Ministers Plenipotentiary of the French Republic and of His Catholic Majesty, in virtue of our respective powers, have signed these preliminary articles and have affixed thereto our seals. Done at San Ildefonso the 9th Vendemiaire, 9th year of the French Republic (October 1, 1800). Alexandre Birthier and Mariano Luis De Urquijo Source: Courtesy of the Avalon Project, Yale University, http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/ ildefens.htm.

3. Excerpts from the Louisiana Purchase, April 30, 1803 On April 30, 1803, Napoleon Bonaparte of France sold the Louisiana Territory, more than 800,000 square miles (2 million square kilometers) of land extending from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains, to the United States for about $15 million. This put the United States at the Texas border, on the rim of New Spain (Mexico). Euro-Americans viewed Texas as being controlled by a corrupt and intrusive European power. From the beginning, the United States was aggressive in its claims to Texas: U.S. President Thomas Jefferson insisted that the Rio Grande River was the western boundary of the Louisiana Territory. The U.S. claimed that it owned all of the land to and including half of New Mexico. The U.S. minister to Spain was instructed by Jefferson to insist upon the Rio Bravo (Rio Grande) but to yield in case of the probability of armed conflict. With the Louisiana Purchase, the United States doubled its size, and, more importantly, was free to navigate the Mississippi River. Although many considered the taking of more territory a violation of the U.S. Constitution since there was no specific power to purchase the land, the Senate ratified the treaty on October 20, 1803. The following articles deal with the cession of the territory and accentuate the lack of specification of clear boundaries. However, with regard to boundaries, the United States promised to honor the San Ildefonso Treaty.

ARTICLE I Whereas by the Article the third of the Treaty concluded at St Ildefonso the 9th Vend
emiaire on 1st October 1800 between the First Consul of the French Republic and his Catholic Majesty it was agreed as follows.

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His Catholic Majesty promises and engages on his part to cede to the French Republic six months after the full and entire execution of the conditions and Stipulations herein relative to his Royal Highness the Duke of Parma, the Colony or Province of Louisiana with the Same extent that it now has in the hand of Spain, & that it had when France possessed it; and Such as it Should be after the Treaties subsequently entered into between Spain and other States. And whereas in pursuance of the Treaty and particularly of the third article the French Republic has an incontestible [sic] title to the domain and to the possession of the said Territory The First Consul of the French Republic desiring to give to the United States a strong proof of his friendship doth hereby cede to the United States in the name of the French Republic for ever and in full Sovereignty the said territory with all its rights and appurtenances as fully and in the Same manner as they have been acquired by the French Republic in virtue of the above mentioned Treaty concluded with his Catholic Majesty. ARTICLE II In the cession made by the preceeding [sic] article are included the adjacent Islands belonging to Louisiana, all public lots and Squares, vacant lands and all public buildings, fortifications, barracks and other edifices which are not private property. The Archives, papers & documents relative to the domain and Sovereignty of Louisiana and its dependances [sic] will be left in the possession of the Commissaries of the United States, and copies will be afterwards given in due form to the Magistrates and Municipal officers of such of the said papers and documents as may be necessary to them. ARTICLE III The inhabitants of the ceded territory shall be incorporated in the Union of the United States and admitted as soon as possible according to the principles of the federal Constitution to the enjoyment of all these rights, advantages and immunities of citizens of the United States, and in the mean time they shall be maintained and protected in the free enjoyment of their liberty, property and the Religion which they profess.… ARTICLE VI The United States promise to execute Such treaties and articles as may have been agreed between Spain and the tribes and nations of Indians until by mutual consent of the United States and the said tribes or nations other Suitable articles Shall have been agreed upon.… ARTICLE X The present treaty Shall be ratified in good and due form and the ratifications Shall be exchanged in the Space of Six months after the date of the Signature by the Ministers Plenipotentiary or Sooner if possible.

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In faith whereof the respective Plenipotentiaries have Signed these articles in the French and English languages; declaring nevertheless that the present Treaty was originally agreed to in the French language; and have thereunto affixed their Seals. Done at Paris the tenth day of Floreal in the eleventh year of the French Republic; and the 30th of April 1803. Robt R Livingston, Jas. Monroe and Barb
e Marbois Source: The People’s Vote, http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash true&doc 18.

4. Excerpts from the Proclamation of Haiti’s Independence by the General in Chief, Jean Jacques Dessalines, to the Haitian People in Gonaives, January 1, 1804 By the late eighteenth century, a bond was forming among Latin Americans. They had a common colonial history, and African slavery plagued many of the colonies. There was an African consciousness that formed among many of the colonies as 10 million Africans were imported to the Americas. African music and culture linked the Caribbean with Colombia, Venezuela, and Brazil. In 1791, an African slave rebellion established Haiti as a free, black republic— the first of its kind—plunging the country into civil war. It both spread fear and inspired many colonists. After initially opposing the revolt of 1791, Toussaint Louverture (1743–1803) led the rebels. His army defeated a British expeditionary force in 1798. He then led an invasion of Santo Domingo, and freed the slaves there. By 1803, Napoleon and Toussaint agreed to terms of peace. However, the French betrayed Toussaint, placing him under arrest and assassinated him. In the following document of 1804, Jean Jacques Dessalines (1758–1806) declared the independence of Haiti, sending ripples throughout the Americas. Dessalines was a Haitian nationalist and the first ruler of a free Haiti. In the late nineteenth century, the United States would claim a common American heritage with Latin America. However, unlike Haiti, which Latin Americans considered a Latin American nation, the United States’ Latin American neighbors to the south considered them to be a European nation.

Citizens, It is not enough to have expelled from your country the barbarians who have bloodied it for two centuries; it is not enough to have put a brake to these ever reviving factions which take turns to play-act this liberty, like ghost[s] that France had exposed before your eyes; it is necessary, by a last act of national authority, assure forever an empire of liberty in this country our birth place; we must take away from this inhumane government, which held for so long our spirits in the most humiliating torpor, all hope to resubjugate us; we must at last live independent or die. Independence or death … May these sacred words bring us together, and may they be the signal of our struggles and of our gathering. Citizens, my compatriots, I have gathered in this solemn day these courageous servicemen, who on the eve of harvesting the last crotchets rest of liberty, have given their blood to save it; these generals who led your efforts against tyranny, have not yet done enough for your well being.… The French name still glooms our countryside. All is there to remind us of the atrocities of this barbarian people: our laws, our customs, our cities, all bear the French imprint; what do I say? There are French in

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our island, and you believe yourself to be free and independent of that republic which fought all nations, it is true, but who has never been victorious over those who wished to be free. Well what! victims for over fourteen years of our own credulity and our own indulgence; defeated, not by the French armies, but by the shamefaced eloquence of the proclamation of their agents; when will we get tired of breathing the same air than them? Its cruelty compared to our moderated patience; its color to our[s]; the vast seas that keep us apart, our avenging climate, tell us enough that they are not our brothers, and that they will never become and that, if they find asylum amongst us, they will be once more the schemers of our troubles and our divisions. Indigenous citizens, men, women, girls and children, bear your regards on all the parts of this island; look for, yourself, your spouses, your husbands, yourself, your brothers, you, your sisters; what do I say? Look for your children, your children, those that are being breast fed! What have they become? … I tremble to say it … the prey of these vultures. Instead of these interesting victims, your eye dismayed can only perceive their assassins; may the tigers that are still dripping their blood, and whose horrible presence reproach your insensibility and your slowness to avenge them. What are you waiting for to appease their souls? Remember that you have wished that your remains be buried near the remains of your fathers, when you had chased away tyranny; would you go down to your tomb without avenging them? No, their skeleton would push away yours. And you, precious men, intrepid generals, whose lack of insensibility to your own misfortunes, have resurrected liberty by giving it all your blood; you should know that you have done nothing if you do not give to the nations a terrible example, but just, of the avenge that must exercise a proud people who have recovered their liberty, and jealous to maintain it; let us instill fear in all those whom would dare try to take it away from us again; let us begin with the French.… May they tremble when they approach our coasts, if not by the memory of the cruelty that they have inflicted, at least by the terrible resolution that we are about to take to devote to death, anyone born French, who would dirty of his sacrilegious foot the territory of liberty. We dared to be free, let us dare to be so by ourselves and for ourselves, let us emulate the growing child: his own weight breaks the edge that has become useless and hamper its walk. What nation has fought for us? What nation would like to harvest the fruits of our labors? And what dishonorable absurdity than to vanquish and be slaves. Slaves! Leave it to the French this qualifying epithet: they have vanquished to cease to be free. Let us walk on other footprints; let us imitate these nations whom, carrying their solicitude until they arrive on a prospect, and dreading to leave to posterity the example of cowardliness, have preferred to be exterminated rather than to be crossed out from the number of free peoples. Let us be on guard however so that the spirit of proselytism does not destroy our work; let our neighbors breath[e] in peace, may they live in peace under the empire of the laws that they have legislated themselves, and let us not go, like spark fire revolutionaries, erecting ourselves as legislators of the Caribbean, to make good of our glory by troubling the peace of neighboring islands: they have never, like the one that we live in, been soaked of the innocent blood of their inhabitants; they have no vengeance to exercise against the authority that protects them.

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Fortunate to have never known the plagues which have destroyed us, they can only make good wishes for our prosperity. Peace to our neighbors! but anathema to the French name! Eternal hate to France! That is our cry. Indigenous of Haiti, my fortunate destiny reserved me to be one day the sentinel who had to watch guard the idol to which you are making your sacrifice, I have watched, fought, sometimes alone, and, If I have been fortunate to deliver in your hands the sacred trust that you had under my care, remember that it is up to you now to conserve it. Before you consolidate it by laws which assure your individual liberty, your leaders, which I assemble here, and myself, we owe you the last proof of our devotion. Generals, and you, leaders, reunited here near me for the well being of our country, the day has come, this day which must make eternal our glory, our independence. If there could exist amongst you a half-hearted, may he distance himself and tremble to pronounce the oath that must unite us. Let us swear to the entire universe, to posterity, to ourselves, to renounce forever to France, and to die rather than to live under its domination. To fight until the last crotchet rest for the independence of our country! And you, people for too long misfortuned, witness to the oath that we are pronouncing, remind yourself that it is on your perseverance and your courage that I depended on when I threw myself in this career for liberty in order to fight against despotism and tyranny against which you struggled since fourteen years. Remind yourself that I sacrificed myself to jump to your defense, parents, children, fortune, and that now I am only rich of your liberty; that my name has become in horror to all nations who wish for slavery, and that the despots and tyrants do not pronounce it only while cursing the day that saw me born; and if for whatever reason you refused or received while murmuring the laws that the genius which watch over your destiny will dictate me for your good fortune, you would deserve the fate of ungrateful peoples. But away from me this horrible idea. You will be the support of the liberty that you cherish, the support to the chief which command you. Take then in your hands this oath to live free and independent, and to prefer death to all those who would love to put you back under the yoke. Swear at last to pursue forever the traitors and the enemies of your independence. Done at the general headquarter of Gonaives, this January 1st 1804, the first year of Independence. Jean Jacques Dessalines Source: ‘‘Live free or die!’’ Proclamation of Haiti’s Independence. Haitian Arawak Movement, http://www.haitianarawak.com/documents/historical/proclamation.php.

5. Letter from John Sibley to General Henry Dearborn, October 12, 1808 Euro-American merchants played an active role in expanding borders of the United States. They were often spies or filibusterers. One of the most notorious American adventurers was John Sibley (1757–1837), a Massachusetts medical doctor who moved to Natchitoches, Texas, after the United States received the Louisiana Territory from France. Sibley became acquainted with the Red

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River Valley and, in 1804, President Thomas Jefferson named Sibley an Indian Agent in the border country. Sibley later received several thousand dollars from Congress to use to bribe the Indian tribes to support Americans. The physician participated in early filibustering expeditions to take Texas from Spain and was considered a menace by Spain. Sibley’s correspondence to various personages in the United States helped to shape the image of Texas. Sibley also contributed articles on Spanish Texas that were published in various U.S. newspapers. The following letter from Sibley to General Henry Dearborn concerns the Mexican War for Independence from Spain and records Euro-American reactions to this movement. It expresses the notion that Texas was part of the United States.

Natchitoches, October 12th 1808 Sir Mr. Erwin has lately informed me that he shall leave this place On the first of April next & return Again to Philada[delphia]: I have a Son in Wilmington, N. Carolina, by the name of Samuel Hopkins Sibley, about two years younger than his brother George C. Sibley (who you know), who I take the Liberty of Recommending as the Successor of Mr. Erwin & Shall feel much obliged & gratified should you think proper to give him the appointment. I think him as Capable as his brother & will be responsible for his good Conduct in every respect. His appointment will be perfectly Agreeable to Mr. Linnard, who wishes Mr. Erwin’s place may be Supplied by the time he will leave this. I very much regret the loss of Mr. Erwin from our Small Society, for I never knew a young man of a Purer Mind, or of more Chaste morality. I shall always esteem his Virtues as well as admire his Understanding all good Men who know him cant help but wish him well. Everything in this quarter is quiet. The season is healthy & very great Crops of everything, no Occurrence Amongst the Indians worthy of notice, everybody wishes the embargo raised; but not untill [sic] the Object for which it was laid is affected: or it is found insufficient to affect it. The late events in Spain Seems to me very much to Change our prospects in this quarter. If the Govt of Spain in Europe is destroyed by France, Mexico & its dependencies are prepared to declare themselves independent, & will place the Present Vice King of Mexico at their head, Untill [sic] some Branch of the Bourbon family shall Arrive in America, they will cultivate the friendship of the United States by all means in their power. A very friendly Intercourse on their part has already Commenced, the heart of the New Governor Salcedo is entirely with us. About Thirty Negroes from two or three plantations on Red River about 40 Miles below this Town deserted Yesterday morning together they stole Arms, Ammunition & Horses, their persuers [sic] have not Returned. They went towards the River Sabine. Governor Salcedo Said repeatedly when here, that he would have all Such Sent Back that might Come into his Province after his Arrival, Unless he received from the King an express order to the contrary. His Sincerity will in a few days be put to proof I am With great Esteem Your Obt Servant John Sibley. Genl. Henry Dearborn

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Voices of the U.S. Latino Experience Source: Julia Kathryn Garrett, ‘‘Dr. John Sibley and the Louisiana-Texas Frontier, 1803 1814,’’ Southwestern Historical Quarterly Online, vol. 47, no. 1, http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/publications/journals/ shq/online/v047/n1/contrib DIVL1027.html.

6. Letter from Ignacio de Allende to Fr. Miguel Hidalgo, August 31, 1810 Captain Ignacio de Allende (1779–1811) served in the Spanish Army in Colonial Mexico during the first part of the nineteenth century. He became a supporter of the Mexican independence movement in 1810. Along with Do~ na Josefa Ort
ız de Dom
ınguez, Juan de Aldama, and Mariano Abasolo, he was among the core conspirators. The following letter was written to Fr. Miguel Hidalgo (1753–1811), who is considered the Father of Mexico, a month before the revolt. It discusses what was being said at the meetings in preparation for the declaration of independence. The letter, dated 31/810 for the 31st of August 1810, is a window into the secret activities before the Grito de Dolores (Document 7). It also reveals some of the conspirators’ prejudices toward the Indians.

Sn. Cura Dn. Migl. Hidalgo y Costilla. Sn. Mign. el Gre. Ago. 31/810. Esteemed Se~ nor Cura: I arrived from Queretaro and have not been able to write to you because I found no messenger in whom I had confidence. On the 13th instant the anniversary of the conquest of Mejico it was arranged that there would be public celebrations [in Queretaro] which lasted three days and we [Allende and Juan de Aldama], without paying any attention to them, went to the home of the Gonzalez family, where many important matters were discussed. It was decided to work with our intentions carefully concealed, since if the movement was openly revolutionary it would not be seconded by the general mass of the people, and Second Lieutenant Dn. Pedro Se[p]tien strengthened his stand saying that if the revolution was inevitable, as the Indians were indifferent to the word liberty, it was necessary to make them believe the insurrection was being accomplished only in order to help King Ferdinand. In the next meeting I am going to propose that we start the uprising at San Juan [de los Lagos] during the days of the fair, where without being at all unprepared we will pretend to be peaceful elements; but before the meeting I want to go to see you as soon as possible so that we may always work in agreement in this cause. I wish you good health and beg God to protect you and repeat myself your appreciative, affectionate and dependable servant who attentively kisses your hand. (Signed) Igno. de Allende Source: Archivo General de la Naci
on, Mexico City. Courtesy of Sons of DeWitt Colony Texas, Archives: Father Miguel Hidalgo, http://www.tamu.edu/ccbn/dewitt/hidalgoarchive.htm.

7. El Grito de Dolores, September 16, 1810 At midnight on September 16, 1810, Fr. Miguel Hidalgo rang his parish bell in the city of Dolores, Guanajuato, and declared Mexico’s independence. The declaration of independence was called El Grito de Dolores (the Shout for

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Independence). Hidalgo called for Mexican independence, the exile or arrest of all Spaniards in Mexico, and ended by calling out, ‘‘Mexicanos, ¡Viva M
e xico!’’ (Mexicans, long live Mexico!). The exact words that Fr. Hidalgo used have not been found, and the two quotations below are two renditions of what Fr. Hidalgo might have said.

EL GRITO DE DOLORES FR. MIGUEL HIDALGO SEP 15, 1810 ‘‘My children: a new dispensation comes to us today. Will you receive it? Will you free yourselves? Will you recover the lands stolen three hundred years ago from your forefathers by the hated Spaniards? We must act at once … Will you not defend your religion and your rights as true patriots? Long live our Lady of Guadalupe! Death to the gachupines!’’ Source: Michael C. Meyer and William L. Sherman, ‘‘Mexican Independence,’’ in The Course of Mexican History, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), pp. 287 288.

‘‘My friends and countrymen: neither the king nor tributes exist for us any longer. We have borne this shameful tax, which only suits slaves, for three centuries as a sign of tyranny and servitude; [a] terrible stain which we shall know how to wash away with our efforts. The moment of our freedom has arrived, the hour of our liberty has struck; and if you recognized its great value, you will help me defend it from the ambitious grasp of the tyrants. Only a few hours remain before you see me at the head of the men who take pride in being free. I invite you to fulfill this obligation. And so without a patria nor liberty we shall always be at a great distance from true happiness. It has been imperative to take this step as now you know, and to begin this has been necessary. The cause is holy and God will protect it. The arrangements are hastily being made and for that reason I will not have the satisfaction of talking to you any longer. Long live, then, the Virgin of Guadalupe! Long live America for which we are going to fight!’’ Sons of the Dewitt Colony Source: ‘‘Father Hidalgo’s Grito de Dolores.’’ Courtesy of Sons of DeWitt Colony Texas, http:// www.tamu.edu/ccbn/dewitt/mexicanrev.htm.

8. Jos
e Mar
ıa Morelos Decree, October 13, 1811 Fr. Miguel Hidalgo’s 1810 War of Mexican Independence deepened racial divisions among the various castes in Mexico. His cry, Death to the Spaniards, alienated many criollos (creoles, American-born Spaniards) and even mestizos (those of mixed Indian/European ancestry) who were afraid of Indian nationalism. After Fr. Hidalgo’s execution in 1811 for treason, the war shifted to guerrilla warfare. Jos
e Mar
ıa Morelos (1765–1815), of Spanish, Indian, and African ancestry, became the principal leader of the revolution after the death of Fr. Hidalgo. In 1815, Spanish forces captured Morelos. He was put on trial by the viceroy’s military court and the Spanish Inquisition. In the following document, Morelos sought to smooth out the racial rifts in order to unify the disparate castes behind the war.

Don Jos
e Mar
ıa Morelos, Lt. Gen. of the Army, and General of the South hereby decrees:

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Albeit that a grave error has been incurred, and what we have suffered on this coast could bring upon all of us the inhabitants the worst of anarchy, or better stated a lamentable desolation. This came in part from the damage done because officials have gone beyond their boundaries and faculties. Now the inferior has proceeded with charges against the superior, their revolution has experienced difficulty in great part with little progress. Our weapons are to cut off at the root, uprisings and disorders which have come about and I am come to declare by degree this day the following points. For in as much our system only shall be able to proceed once that the political government and military falls into the hands of ‘‘the criollos’’ who would be better keepers of the rights of our lord Don Fernando the Seventh [King of Spain]. And as a consequence, from hereon no distinction shall be made in categories of qualities, being that generally all of us call ourselves Americans, and looking each to the other as brothers, we ought to live in the Holy Peace that our Redeemer, Jesus Christ has left us when he made a triumphant ascension into the heavens, and it follows that all should know him, that there be no motive for those groupings that are called castes, which only want to destroy each one the other, the whites against the blacks, and these against the native Americans. For it would be the worst crime of all that man would commit, which deed would not have any equal example in all of the centuries and nations, much less we ought not to permit this [anarchy] in our time, because it would be the cause of our total destruction, both spiritual and moral. Since the whites were the first representatives in the kingdom, and they were the first ones to take up arms in defense of the native peoples, and the other castes with them, we then owe to the whites the object of our merit and gratitude and not our hate, which easily could be formed against them. That the officials of the troops, judges and commissioned officers ought not to show excess in their duly rights, but that they concede in their tasks, unless charged by an inferior against the superior, and then only with special allowance of the Suprema Junta [Congress], in written form, not verbally, manifesting the grievance against the person they wish to charge. That no official acting as judge or commissioned officer, neither deputized agents without authority bring charges, the inferior against the superior until receiving special orders from me, or His Majesty the Suprema Junta, and that be done by bona fide persons. That no individual be that who it may, take the voice of the Nation to proceed in other kinds of riots, now that we have a legitimate superior entity should bring to them their most difficult cases of betrayal of the nation and so that no one bring charges in his own authority. Being now that it is our system, we will not bring charges against the rich, for whatever reasons, and much less against the rich criollos. No one dare to lay hands on their goods, no matter how rich that person may be, it will be against all rights of our neighbors to take this action, principally against the Divine Law, which prohibits us from robbing and stealing other’s things against the will of their rightful owner, and even the thought of coveting things that belong to another. Even though they may be guilty as rich europeans or criollos none shall lay hold of their goods without express orders from a superior. This order or rules needs to be effective also against kidnapping or confiscating so that everything be done in due process. Be it that anyone dares to commit a crime against this decree, he shall be punished with all rigor of the laws and the same punishment shall have anyone who has ideas

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of rioting, overthrowing the government, and in all accounts not expressly mentioned here for lack of definition, those given to evil spirits, and are against the law of God, tranquility of the inhabitants of the kingdom and progress of our arms [cause]. And so that this notice can reach everyone and no one be ignorant of the same, I order that this publication be posted in the city, on the entrance and everywhere people can read and comprehend my orders, posting it upon the pathways as is the customs. It is dated in the City of Our Lady of Guadalupe of Tecpan, Oct. 13th, 1811, Jos
e Mar
ıa Morelos. Source: ‘‘War of the Castes Archives: Jos
e Mar
ıa Morelos.’’ Courtesy of Sons of Dewitt Colony Texas, http://www.tamu.edu/ccbn/dewitt/morelossent.htm.

9. Excerpts from a Letter from Thomas Jefferson to Alexander von Humboldt, December 6, 1813 U.S. President Thomas Jefferson is often portrayed as an isolationist, but his correspondence to German Baron Alexander von Humboldt and others suggests otherwise. Jefferson had a expansionist view of Euro-American destiny. Jefferson had contact with world intellectuals, such as the world traveler von Humboldt, to whom he wrote the following letter on December 6, 1813. The letter suggests that Euro-Americans were making use of Humboldt’s maps and information in regard to New Spain. Jefferson mentions that American explorer Zebulon Pike was a spy. In the letter, Jefferson betrays his biases toward Spain.

MY DEAR FRIEND AND BARON I think it most fortunate that your travels in those countries were so timed as to make them known to the world in the moment they were about to become actors on its stage. That they will throw off their European dependence I have no doubt; but in what kind of government their revolution will end I am not so certain. History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance, of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes. The vicinity of New Spain to the United States, and their consequent intercourse, may furnish schools for the higher, and example for the lower classes of their citizens. And Mexico, where we learn from you that men of science are not wanting, may revolutionize itself under better auspices than the Southern provinces. These last, I fear, must end in military despotisms. The different casts of their inhabitants, their mutual hatreds and jealousies, their profound ignorance and bigotry, will be played off by cunning leaders, and each be made the instrument of enslaving others. But of all this you can best judge, for in truth we have little knowledge of them to be depended on, but through you. But in whatever governments they end they will be American governments, no longer to be involved in the never-ceasing broils of Europe. The European nations constitute a separate division of the globe; their localities make them part of a distinct system; they have a set of interests of their own in which it is our business never to engage ourselves. America has a hemisphere to itself. It must have its separate system of interests, which must not be subordinated to those of Europe. The insulated state in which nature has placed the American continent, should so far avail it that no spark of war kindled in the other

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quarters of the globe should be wafted across the wide oceans which separate us from them. And it will be so. In fifty years more the United States alone will contain fifty millions of inhabitants, and fifty years are soon gone over. The peace of 1763 is within that period. I was then twenty years old, and of course remember well all the transactions of the war preceding it. And you will live to see the epoch now equally ahead of us; and the numbers which will then be spread over the other parts of the American hemisphere, catching long before that the principles of our portion of it, and concurring with us in the maintenance of the same system. You see how readily we run into ages beyond the grave; and even those of us to whom that grave is already opening its quiet bosom. I am anticipating events of which you will be the bearer to me in the Elysian fields fifty years hence.… That their Arrowsmith should have stolen your Map of Mexico, was in the piratical spirit of his country. But I should be sincerely sorry if our [Zebulon] Pike has made an ungenerous use of your candid communications here; and the more so as he died in the arms of victory gained over the enemies of his country. Whatever he did was on a principle of enlarging knowledge, and not for filthy shillings and pence of which he made none from that work. If what he has borrowed has any effect it will be to excite an appeal in his readers from his defective information to the copious volumes of it with which you have enriched the world. I am sorry he omitted even to acknowledge the source of his information. It has been an oversight, and not at all in the spirit of his generous nature. Let me solicit your forgiveness then of a deceased hero, of an honest and zealous patriot, who lived and died for his country. You will find it inconceivable that Lewis’s journey to the Pacific should not yet have appeared; nor is it in my power to tell you the reason. The measures taken by his surviving companion, Clarke, for the publication, have not answered our wishes in point of despatch. I think, however, from what I have heard, that the mere journal will be out within a few weeks in two volumes. These I will take care to send you with the tobacco seed you desired, if it be possible for them to escape the thousand ships of our enemies spread over the ocean. The botanical and zoological discoveries of Lewis will probably experience greater delay, and become known to the world through other channels before that volume will be ready. The Atlas, I believe, waits on the leisure of the engraver. Although I do not know whether you are now at Paris or ranging the regions of Asia to acquire more knowledge for the use of men, I cannot deny myself the gratification of an endeavor to recall myself to your recollection, and of assuring you of my constant attachment, and of renewing to you the just tribute of my affectionate esteem and high respect and consideration. Thomas Jefferson Source: ‘‘A Hemisphere to Itself,’’ The Letters of Thomas Jefferson: 1743 1826, Oxford Archives, Oxford, England.

10. Excerpts from the Adams-On
ıs Treaty of 1819 The Adams-On
ıs Treaty is also known as the Transcontinental Treaty of 1819 or the Florida Purchase Treaty. Since before the United States of America achieved independence in 1783, Americans had designs on Florida, which they considered part of U.S. territory. There were frequent border raids and Americans regarded the Seminoles as a menace. These tensions increased in December

Borders

1817, when President James Monroe ordered General Andrew Jackson to lead an expedition against Florida’s Seminole Indians. Many scholars say the underlying reason for this expedition was to empower Monroe to put pressure on Spain—already having problems with independence movements throughout the Americas—to sell. Another pretext was that Spain was harboring runaway African slaves in Florida. In 1818, Jackson invaded Florida, took control of Spanish forts, and executed British nationals. Jackson’s raid led to an international incident with England and put pressure on Spain to enter into negotiations regarding Spanish Florida. The Adams-On
ıs Treaty of 1819, signed by Spanish Foreign Minister Luis de On
ıs and U.S. Secretary of State John Quincy Adams, ceded Florida to the United States and settled a dispute regarding borders along the Sabine River in Texas. Among other reasons, the following treaty articles are important because they specified the new borders.

ARTICLE 2. His Catholic Majesty cedes to the United States, in full property and sovereignty, all the territories which belong to him, situated to the Eastward of the Mississippi, known by the name of East and West Florida. The adjacent Islands dependent on said Provinces, all public lots and squares, vacant Lands, public Edifices, Fortifications, Barracks and other Buildings, which are not private property, Archives and Documents, which relate directly to the property and sovereignty of said Provinces, are included in this Article. The said Archives and Documents shall be left in possession of the Commissaries, or Officers of the United States, duly authorized to receive them. ARTICLE 3. The Boundary Line between the two Countries, West of the Mississippi, shall begin on the Gulf of Mexico, at the mouth of the River Sabine in the Sea, continuing North, along the Western Bank of that River, to the 32d degree of Latitude; thence by a Line due North to the degree of Latitude, where it strikes the Rio Roxo of Nachitoches, or Red-River, then following the course of the Rio-Roxo Westward to the degree of Longitude, 100 West from London and 23 from Washington, then crossing the said Red-River, and running thence by a Line due North to the River Arkansas, thence, following the Course of the Southern bank of the Arkansas to its source in Latitude, 42. North and thence by that parallel of Latitude to the South-Sea. The whole being as laid down in Melishe’s Map of the United States, published at Philadelphia, improved to the first of January 1818. But if the Source of the Arkansas River shall be found to fall North or South of Latitude 42, then the Line shall run from the said Source due South or North, as the case may be, till it meets the said Parallel of Latitude 42, and thence along the said Parallel to the South Sea: all the Islands in the Sabine and the Said Red and Arkansas Rivers, throughout the Course thus described, to belong to the United States; but the use of the Waters and the navigation of the Sabine to the Sea, and of the said Rivers, Roxo and Arkansas, throughout the extent of the said Boundary, on their respective Banks, shall be common to the respective inhabitants of both Nations. The Two High Contracting Parties agree to cede and renounce all their rights, claims and pretensions to the Territories described by the said Line: that is to say The United States hereby cede to His Catholic Majesty, and renounce forever, all their rights, claims, and pretensions to the Territories lying West and South of the above described Line; and, in like manner, His Catholic Majesty cedes to the said United States, all his rights, claims, and pretensions to any Territories, East and North of the said Line, and, for himself, his heirs and successors, renounces all claim to the said Territories forever.

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ARTICLE 4. To fix this Line with more precision, and to place the Landmarks which shall designate exactly the limits of both Nations, each of the Contracting Parties shall appoint a Commissioner, and a Surveyor, who shall meet before the termination of one year from the date of the Ratification of this Treaty, at Nachitoches on the Red River, and proceed to run and mark the said Line from the mouth of the Sabine to the Red River, and from the Red River to the River Arkansas, and to ascertain the Latitude of the Source of the said River Arkansas, in conformity to what is above agreed upon and stipulated, and the Line of Latitude 42 to the South Sea: they shall make out plans and keep Journals of their proceedings, and the result agreed upon by them shall be considered as part of this Treaty, and shall have the same force as if it were inserted therein. The two Governments will amicably agree respecting the necessary Articles to be furnished to those persons, and also as to their respective escorts, should such be deemed necessary. ARTICLE 5. The Inhabitants of the ceded Territories shall be secured in the free exercise of their Religion, without any restriction, and all those who may desire to remove to the Spanish Dominions shall be permitted to sell, or export their Effects at any time whatever, without being subject, in either case, to duties. ARTICLE 6. The Inhabitants of the Territories which His Catholic Majesty cedes to the United States by this Treaty, shall be incorporated in the Union of the United States, as soon as may be consistent with the principle of the Federal Constitution, and admitted to the enjoyment of all the privileges, rights and immunities of the Citizens of the United States.… ARTICLE 8. All the grants of land made before the 24th of January 1818 by His Catholic Majesty or by his lawful authorities in the said Territories ceded by His Majesty to the United States, shall be ratified and confirmed to the persons in possession of the lands, to the same extent that the same grants would be valid if the Territories had remained under the Dominion of His Catholic Majesty. But the owners in possession of such lands, who by reason of the recent circumstances of the Spanish Nation and the Revolutions in Europe, have been prevented from fulfilling all the conditions of their grants, shall complete them within the terms limited in the same respectively, from the date of this Treaty; in default of which the said grants shall be null and void all grants made since the said 24th of January 1818 when the first proposal on the part of His Catholic Majesty, for the cession of the Floridas was made, are hereby declared and agreed to be null and void.… John Quincy Adams and Luis De On
ıs Source: Modern History Sourcebook: United States Spain: Treaty of 1819, http://www.fordham. edu/halsall/mod/1819florida.html.

11. Plan of Iguala, February 24, 1821 The Mexican war for independence lasted just over 10 years, 1810–1821, encouraging the rise of local caudillos (strongmen). It also created national heroes, such as Vicente Guerrero (1782–1831), a mule driver of African, Indian, and Spanish ancestry who became commander-in-chief of the Mexican Army. Eight years later, Guerrero became president of Mexico, and he abolished slavery. The war encouraged unity among many of the racial groups in Mexico. Along with Agust
ın de Iturbide (1783–1824), a former Spanish army officer, Guerrero

Borders

agreed on the Plan de Iguala, known as the Plan of Three Guarantees, which called for independence, union with equality of races, and the Catholic religion. When Mexico was under Spain, it was called New Spain. The new nation of Mexico would be independent of Spain, but ruled by a constitution. Guerrero joined with the former royalist officer Iturbide to successfully overthrow Spain.

Plan or indications to the government that must be provisionally installed with the objective of ensuring our sacred religion and establishing the independence of the Mexican Empire: and it will have the title of the North American Government Junta [Assembly], proposed by Colonel D. Agustin de Iturbide to his Excellency The Viceroy of New Spain, Count del Venadito. 1st. The Religion of New Spain is and shall be catholic, apostolic and Roman, without toleration of any other. 2nd. New Spain is independent of the old and of any other power, even of our Continent. 3rd. Its Government shall be a Monarchy moderated with arrangement to the Constitution peculiar and adaptable to the kingdom. 4th. Its Emperor will be D. Fernando VII, and if he does not present himself personally for swearing in M
exico within the term prescribed by the Courts, his Most Serene Highness the Infante [Crown Prince] Carlos, D. Francisco de Paulo, Archduke Carlos or other individual of the reining house that the Congress considers suitable will be called upon in his place. 5th. While the courts convene, there will be a Junta that will have that meeting and the assurance of compliance with the plan in all its extent as its objective. 6th. Said Junta, that will be denominated as Governing, must be composed of voters [speakers] of whom the official letter from his Excellency The Viceroy speaks. 7th. While D. Fernando VII presents himself in M
exico to render a swearing, the Junta will govern in the name of His Majesty by virtue of the swearing of loyalty that it made to the nation; however the orders that he may have imparted will be suspended while he has not been sworn. 8th. If D. Fernando VII does not consider it worthwhile coming to M
exico, while the Emperor to be crowned is resolved, the Junta or the Regency shall rule in the name of the nation. 9th. This government shall be supported by the army of the three warranties that will be discussed later. 10th. The courts shall resolve the continuation of the Junta, or of a Regency if one should substitute for it while a person arrives to be crowned. 11th. The courts shall immediately establish the Constitution of the Mexican Empire. 12th. All the inhabitants of New Spain, without any distinction among Europeans, Africans or Indians, are citizens of this Monarchy, with options to all employment according to their merits and virtues. 13th. The person of every citizen and his properties, shall be respected and protected by the government. 14th. The secular and regular cleric will be preserved in all its rights and preeminences. 15th. The Junta shall take care that all the branches of the state, and all the political, ecclesiastic, civil and military personnel remain without any alteration in the

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same state as they exist today. Only those that indicate to be in disagreement with the plan shall be removed, replaced by those more distinguished by virtue and merit. 16th. A protective army will be formed that shall be denominated of the three warranties, and under its protection it will take first the conservation of the Catholic, apostolic and Roman Religion cooperating by all means that are within its reach so that there will be no mixing of with any other sect and will attack opportunely the enemies that could damage it; second the independence under the manifested system; third the intimate union of American and Europeans therefore guaranteeing the bases so fundamental to the happiness of New Spain, sacrificing the life of the first to the last of its individuals before consenting to their infringement. 17th. The troops of the army will observe the most exacting discipline to the letter of the ordinances, and the chiefs and officers will continue afoot as they are today: that is in their respective classes with options to vacant employment and those to be vacated by those who would not wish to follow its flags or by any other cause, and with option to those that are considered of necessity or convenience. 18th. The troops of said army shall be considered of the line [regular army troops]. 19th. The same will take place with those that follow this plan. Those that do not differ, those of the system prior to the independence that join said army immediately, and the countrymen who intend to enlist, shall be considered national militia troops, and the Courts shall dictate the form of all of them for the domestic and foreign security of the kingdom. 20th. Employment will be granted according to the true merit by virtue of reports from the respective chiefs and provisionally in the name of the Nation. 21st. While the Courts are established delinquencies will be processed in total arrangement with the Spanish Constitution. 22nd. Conspiring against independence shall be processed by imprisonment without progressing to any other action until the Courts decide the penalty for the gravest of the delinquencies after that of Divine Majesty. 23rd. Those who encourage disunion shall be watched and shall be considered conspirators against independence. 24th. Since the Courts to be installed shall be constituent, it will be necessary that the representatives [deputies] receive sufficient powers to that effect; and furthermore as it is of great importance that the voters know that their representatives will be to the Mexican Congress, and not to Madrid, the Junta shall prescribe the just rules for the elections and shall indicate the time necessary for those and for the opining of Congress. Since the elections may not be verified in March, its completion shall occur as soon as possible. Source: Courtesy of Sons of DeWitt Colony Texas, http://www.tamu.edu/ccbn/dewitt/iguala.htm.


rdova, August 24, 1821 12. Treaty of Co The agreement on the independent kingdom of Mexico was concluded in C
ordova, Spain, on August 24, 1821. The treaty was signed by Don Juan O’Donnoju, Lieutenant-General of the Armies of Spain, and Don Agust
ın de Iturbide (1763–1823). The Treaty of C
ordova adopted existing Spanish law

Borders

for the Mexican nation and recognized the independence of Mexico. Because of this the Treaty of C
ordova would become relevant in later land grant suits during the Euro-American occupation of the Southwest.

1st. This kingdom of America shall be recognised as a sovereign and independent nation; and shall, in future, be called the Mexican Empire. 2d. The government of the empire shall be monarchical, limited by a constitution. 3d. Ferdinand VII, catholic king of Spain, shall, in the first place, be called to the throne of the Mexican Empire, (on taking the oath prescribed in the 10th Article of the plan,) and on his refusal and denial, his brother, the most serene infante Don Carlos; on his refusal and denial, the most serene infante Don Francisco de Paula; on his refusal and denial, the most serene Don Carlos Luis, infante of Spain, formerly heir of Tuscany, now of Lucca; and upon his renunciation and denial, the person whom the cortes of the empire shall designate. 4th. The emperor shall fix his court in Mexico, which shall be the capital of the empire. 5th. Two commissioners shall be named by his excellency Senor O’Donnoju, and these shall proceed to the court of Spain, and place in the hands of his Majesty King Ferdinand VII, a copy of this treaty, and a memorial which shall accompany it, for the purpose of affording information to his Majesty with respect to antecedent circumstances, whilst the cortes of the empire offer him the crown with all the formalities and guarantees which a matter of so much importance requires; and they supplicate his Majesty, that on the occurrence of the case provided for in Article 3, he would be pleased to communicate it to the most serene infantes called to the crown in the same article, in the order in which they are so named; and that his Majesty would be pleased to interpose his influence and prevail on one of the members of his august family to proceed to this empire, inasmuch as the prosperity of both nations would be thereby promoted, and as the Mexicans would feel satisfaction in thus strengthening the bands of friendship, with which they may be, and wish to see themselves, united to the Spaniards. 6th. Conformably to the spirit of the ‘‘Plan of Iguala,’’ an assembly shall be immediately named, composed of men the most eminent in the empire for their virtues, their station, rank, fortune, and influence; men marked out by the general opinion, whose number may be sufficiently considerable to insure by their collective knowledge the safety of the resolutions which they may take in pursuance of the powers and authority granted them by the following articles. 7th. The assembly mentioned in the preceding article shall be called the ‘‘Provisional Junta of Government.’’ 8th. Lieutenant-General Don Juan O’Donnoju shall be a member of the Provisional Junta of Government, in consideration of its being expedient that a person of his rank should take an active and immediate part in the government, and of the indispensable necessity of excluding some of the individuals mentioned in the above Plan of Iguala, conformably to its own spirit. 9th. The Provisional Junta of Government shall have a president elected by itself from its own body, or from without it, to be determined by the absolute plurality of votes; and if on the first scrutiny the votes be found equal, a second scrutiny shall take place, which shall embrace those two who shall have received the greatest number of votes.

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10th. The first act of the Provisional Junta shall be the drawing up of a manifesto of its installation, and the motives of its assemblage, together with whatever explanations it may deem convenient and proper for the information of the country, with respect to the public interests, and the mode to be adopted in the election of deputies for the cortes, of which more shall be said hereafter. 11th. The Provisional Junta of Government after the election of its president, shall name a regency composed of three persons selected from its own body, or from without it, in whom shall be vested the executive power, and who shall govern in the name and on behalf of the monarch till the vacant throne be filled. 12th. The Provisional Junta as soon as it is installed, shall govern ad interim according to the existing laws, so far as they may not be contrary to the ‘‘Plan of Iguala,’’ and until the cortes shall have framed the constitution of the state. 13th. The regency immediately on its nomination, shall proceed to the convocation of the cortes in the manner which shall be prescribed by the Provisional Junta of Government, conformably to the spirit of Article No. 7 in the aforesaid ‘‘Plan.’’ 14th. The executive power is vested in the regency, and the legislative in the cortes; but as some time must elapse before the latter can assemble, and in order that the executive and legislative powers should not remain in the hands of one body, the junta shall be empowered to legislate; in the first place, where cases occur which are too pressing to wait till the assemblage of the cortes, and then the junta shall proceed in concert with the regency; and, in the second place, to assist the regency in its determinations in the character of an auxiliary and consultative body. 15th. Every individual who is domiciled amongst any community, shall, on an alteration taking place in the system of government, or on the country passing under the dominion of another prince, be at full liberty to remove himself, together with his effects, to whatever country he chooses, without any person having the right to deprive him of such liberty, unless he have contracted some obligation with the community to which lie had belonged, by the commission of a crime, or by any other of those modes which publicists have laid down; this applies to the Europeans residing in New Spain, and to the Americans residing in the Peninsula. Consequently it will be at their option to remain, adopting either country, or to demand their passports, (which cannot be denied them,) for permission to leave the kingdom at such time as may be appointed before-hand, carrying with them their families and property; but paying on the latter the regular export duties now in force, or which may hereafter be established by the competent authority. 16th. The option granted in the foregoing article shall not extend to persons in public situations, whether civil or military, known to be disaffected to Mexican independence; such persons shall necessarily quits the empire within the time which shall be allotted by the regency, taking with them their effects after having paid the duties, as stated in the preceding article. 17th. The occupation of the capital by the Peninsular troops being an obstacle to the execution of this treaty, it is indispensable to have it removed. But as the Commander-in-Chief of the imperial army fully participating in the sentiments of the Mexican nation, does not wish to attain this object by force, for which, however, he has more than ample means at his command, notwithstanding the known valour and constancy of the Peninsular troops, who are not in a situation to maintain themselves against the system adopted by the nation at large. Don Juan O’Donnoju agrees to exercise his authority for the evacuation of the capital by the said troops

Borders

without loss of blood, and upon the terms of an honourable capitulation. AGUST
IN DE ITURBIDE, JUAN O’DONNOJU. (A true copy.) JOSE DOMINGUEZ. Dated in the Town of Cordova, 24th August, 1821. Source: Courtesy of Sons of DeWitt Colony Texas, http://www.tamu.edu/ccbn/dewitt/iguala.htm.


n Bol
ıvar Letter, Kingston, Jamaica, 13. Excerpts from Simo September 6, 1815 No Latin American hero is as revered as Sim
on Bol
ıvar (1783–1830), the ‘‘Great Liberator’’ of Latin America. To this day, he has kept alive the hope of a united Latin America. Bol
ıvar believed a united hemisphere would strengthen the hemisphere against foreign threats. On September 6, 1815, the Carta de Jamaica was written in Kingston, Jamaica. Bol
ıvar reviewed the historical successes in the struggle for Latin American independence. The document discusses the causes and justifications for independence and calls upon Europe to help free the Latin American nations in their common struggle against Spain. Bol
ıvar also reflects on the future of Mexico, Central America, and South America. The following excerpt discusses the centrality and importance of Central America to Latin American unity.

It is a grandiose idea to think of consolidating the New World into a single nation, united by pacts into a single bond. It is reasoned that, as these parts have a common origin, language, customs, and religion, they ought to have a single government to permit the newly formed states to unite in a confederation. But this is not possible. Actually, America is separated by climatic differences, geographic diversity, conflicting interests, and dissimilar characteristics. How beautiful it would be if the Isthmus of Panam
a could be for us what the Isthmus of Corinth was for the Greeks! Would to God that some day we may have the good fortune to convene there an august assembly of representatives of republics, kingdoms, and empires to deliberate upon the high interests of peace and war with the nations of the other three-quarters of the globe … The states of the Isthmus of Panam
a, as far as Guatemala, will perhaps form a confederation. Because of their magnificent position between two mighty oceans, they may in time become the emporium of the world. Their canals will shorten distances throughout the world, strengthen commercial ties between Europe, America, and Asia, and bring to that happy area tribute from the four quarters of the globe. There some day, perhaps, the capital of the world may be located reminiscent of the Emperor Constantine’s claim that Byzantium was the capital of the ancient world … I am, Sir, etc. etc. Sim
on Bol
ıvar Source: Sim
on Bol
ıvar, Reply of a South American to a Gentleman of this Island [Jamaica], pp. 118 119. In Harold Bierck, Jr., ed., Selected Writings of Bolivar, vol. I (New York: Colonial Press, 1951), pp. 103 122.


n Bol
ıvar’s Speech before the Congress 14. Excerpt from Simo of Angostura, February 15, 1819 General Sim
on Bol
ıvar advocated a centralized Spanish American government that would evolve into a democracy. At the Congress of Angostura, Bol
ıvar

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laid out his vision for the foundation for the formation of the Republic of Colombia (1819–1830). It included what are now the separate countries of Colombia, Panama, Venezuela, and Ecuador. As with Mexico and Central America, divisions within the region thwarted Bol
ıvar’s plan to unite the former Spanish colonies as a new nation or confederation. The following excerpt reviews the history of the Americas and discusses the similarities with the fallout of the decline of the Spanish Empire, with the dismemberment of the Roman Empire.

We are not Europeans; we are not Indians; we are but a mixed species of aborigines and Spaniards. Americans by birth and Europeans by law, we find ourselves engaged in a dual conflict: we are disputing with the natives for titles of ownership, and at the same time we are struggling to maintain ourselves in the country that gave us birth against the opposition of the invaders. Thus our position is most extraordinary and complicated. But there is more. As our role has always been strictly passive and political existence nil, we find that our quest for liberty is now even more difficult of accomplishment; for we, having been placed in a state lower than slavery, had been robbed not only of our freedom but also of the right to exercise an active domestic tyranny.… We have been ruled more by deceit than by force, and we have been degraded more by vice than by superstition. Slavery is the daughter of darkness: an ignorant people is a blind instrument of its own destruction. Ambition and intrigue abuses the credulity and experience of men lacking all political, economic, and civic knowledge; they adopt pure illusion as reality; they take license for liberty, treachery for patriotism, and vengeance for justice. If a people, perverted by their training, succeed in achieving their liberty, they will soon lose it, for it would be of no avail to endeavor to explain to them that happiness consists in the practice of virtue; that the rule of law is more powerful than the rule of tyrants, because, as the laws are more inflexible, every one should submit to their beneficent austerity; that proper morals, and not force, are the bases of law; and that to practice justice is to practice liberty. Although those people [North Americans], so lacking in many respects, are unique in the history of mankind, it is a marvel, I repeat, that so weak and complicated a government as the federal system has managed to govern them in the difficult and trying circumstances of their past. But, regardless of the effectiveness of this form of government with respect to North America, I must say that it has never for a moment entered my mind to compare the position and character of two states as dissimilar as the English-American and the Spanish-American. Would it not be most difficult to apply to Spain the English system of political, civil, and religious liberty: Hence, it would be even more difficult to adapt to Venezuela the laws of North America. Nothing in our fundamental laws would have to be altered were we to adopt a legislative power similar to that held by the British Parliament. Like the North Americans, we have divided national representation into two chambers: that of Representatives and the Senate. The first is very wisely constituted. It enjoys all its proper functions, and it requires no essential revision, because the Constitution, in creating it, gave it the form and powers which the people deemed necessary in order that they might be legally and properly represented. If the Senate were hereditary rather than elective, it would, in my opinion, be the basis, the tie, the very soul of our republic. In political storms this body would arrest the thunderbolts of the

Borders

government and would repel any violent popular reaction. Devoted to the government because of a natural interest in its own preservation, a hereditary senate would always oppose any attempt on the part of the people to infringe upon the jurisdiction and authority of their magistrates … The creation of a hereditary senate would in no way be a violation of political equality. I do not solicit the establishment of a nobility, for as a celebrated republican has said, that would simultaneously destroy equality and liberty. What I propose is an office for which the candidates must prepare themselves, an office that demands great knowledge and the ability to acquire such knowledge. All should not be left to chance and the outcome of elections. The people are more easily deceived than is Nature perfected by art; and although these senators, it is true, would not be bred in an environment that is all virtue, it is equally true that they would be raised in an atmosphere of enlightened education. The hereditary senate will also serve as a counterweight to both government and people; and as a neutral power it will weaken the mutual attacks of these two eternally rival powers. The British executive power possesses all the authority properly appertaining to a sovereign, but he is surrounded by a triple line of dams, barriers, and stockades. He is the head of government, but his ministers and subordinates rely more upon law than upon his authority, as they are personally responsible; and not even decrees of royal authority can exempt them from this responsibility. The executive is commander in chief of the army and navy; he makes peace and declares war; but Parliament annually determines what sums are to be paid to these military forces. While the courts and judges are dependent on the executive power, the laws originate in and are made by Parliament. Give Venezuela such an executive power in the person of a president chosen by the people or their representatives, and you will have taken a great step toward national happiness. No matter what citizen occupies this office, he will be aided by the Constitution, and therein being authorized to do good, he can do no harm, because his ministers will cooperate with him only insofar as he abides by the law. If he attempts to infringe upon the law, his own ministers will desert him, thereby isolating him from the Republic, and they will even bring charges against him in the Senate. The ministers, being responsible for any transgressions committed, will actually govern, since they must account for their actions. A republican magistrate is an individual set apart from society, charged with checking the impulse of the people toward license and the propensity of judges and administrators toward abuse of the laws. He is directly subject to the legislative body, the senate, and the people: he is the one man who resists the combined pressure of the opinions, interests, and passions of the social state and who, as Carnot states, does little more than struggle constantly with the urge to dominate and the desire to escape domination. This weakness can only be corrected by a strongly rooted force. It should be strongly proportioned to meet the resistance which the executive must expect from the legislature, from the judiciary, and from the people of a republic. Unless the executive has easy access to all the administrative resources, fixed by a just distribution of powers, he inevitably becomes a nonentity or abuses his authority. By this I mean that the result will be the death of the government, whose heirs are anarchy, usurpation, and tyranny.… Therefore, let the entire system of government be strengthened, and let the balance of power be drawn up in such a manner that it will be permanent and incapable of decay because of its own tenuity. Precisely because no form of government is so weak as the democratic, its framework

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must be firmer, and its institutions must be studied to determine their degree of stability … unless this is done, we will have to reckon with an ungovernable, tumultuous, and anarchic society, not with a social order where happiness, peace, and justice prevail. Source: Sim
on Bol
ıvar, An Address of Bol
ıvar at the Congress of Angostura (February 15, 1819), reprint ed. (Washington, D.C.: Press of B. S. Adams, 1919), passim. Scanned by: J. S. Arkenberg, Dept. of History, Cal. State Fullerton. Prof. Arkenberg has modernized the text. Courtesy of Paul Halsall, ed., Internet History Sourcebooks Project, Fordham University, http://www.fordham.edu/ halsall/mod/1819bolivar.html.

PART II Going West, 1820–1840s During the first two decades of the nineteenth century, the United States through a series of purchases and aggressions expanded dramatically. The Louisiana territory in 1803, which encompassed today’s Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, parts of Missouri, much of North Dakota, and almost all of South Dakota, as well as portions of other states, added 820,000 square miles to the new nation. In 1819, U.S. aggressions in Florida added another 58, 664 square miles. This crossing of borders took a dramatic turn in 1821 as Mexico gained its independence from Spain. And the new nation was bordered by the United States in Texas, New Mexico, among other northern Mexican lands. The rapid expansion of the EuroAmericans had acquired a sense of uniqueness and entitlement, believing that Texas once belonged to them and that moving the U.S. Border south was not aggression but reannexing of what was already theirs. The first wave of permanent Euro-American settlers was cotton growers who wanted land and the right to own other human beings. They were followed by speculators, filibusterers, and merchants. Soon Mexican officials reacted to the belligerency of newcomers who wanted to do it their own way. Not all Mexicans resisted the encroachments it was a class thing with many of the landed gentry profiting greatly from a change of flags. Some Mexicans admired Euro-American Republican ideas and modernizing society. In the end the border moved further south and the stage was set for the United States to ‘‘reannex’’ another 261,797 square miles as the borders crossed river valleys.

15. Excerpts from the Letter from Stephen Austin to Edward Lovelace or Josiah Bell, November 22, 1822 The Euro-American aggression into Texas in the 1820s was about slavery, not the desire for freedom or democracy. It was about more land and more slaves. In 1819, Moses Austin (1761–1821)—the father of Stephen Austin—received permission from the Spanish Crown to settle in Texas and bring other colonists. The settlers received vast land tracts that they did not, in most cases, have to pay for. In return for free and low-cost land, they promised to obey the laws, become Spanish subjects, and become Catholics. However, before Moses could comply with the terms of the contract, he died, and New Spain became Mexico. His son Stephen met with Mexican officials and made much the same agreement. From the beginning, the younger Austin considered slavery critical to the prosperity of the Euro-American colonists. Texas after 1821 was part of the Mexican Republic that had won its freedom in that year. Although slavery

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had been legal under Spain, Mexican revolutionary leaders promised to abolish slavery. Thus, Austin went to Mexico City to protect the interests of slaveholders who were part of his colony. It is believed that this letter, which discusses political affairs in Mexico City, was written to Edward Lovelace, a planter from Louisiana who had accompanied Stephen Austin to Texas. There is some question that the letter may have been written to Josiah Bell (1791–1839) because it was found in the possession of Bell’s wife. Bell was one of Austin’s original 300 planters, so it is probable that the letter was to him. Regardless of the recipient, the letter makes clear that Austin was of the opinion that the only thing that could save Mexico was a monarchy.

Dear Sir: When I arrived here Congress were sitting but progressing very slowly, the discord and jealousy manifested from the first day of the session of Congress against the Generalissimo Iturbide (now Emperor) was increasing daily and everything was at a stand[still]. There were three distinct parties in Congress, one for a Bourbon King, one for an Emperor from this country, and the other for a Republic, in this state of things the government was approximating towards Anarchy, when on the night of the 18 of May the army stationed in this city proclaimed Iturbide Emperor, the next day Congress elected him in due form and on the 21 he took the oath, these things put a stop to all business for some time Agreeably to the Emperors Oath he could do nothing without the consent of Congress and this body moved most astonishingly slow and were more occupied in watching the Emperor than in attending to the interest of the country On the 21 July the Emperor was crowned, and very soon after serious collisions began to arise between him and Congress, the latter wished to keep all power in their hands and things were getting worse every day all was at a dead stand, for Congress would do nothing for fear of granting a little power to the executive, and the Emperor could do nothing so long as Congress existed without its sanction In this state of things it was in vain for an individual to urge his business … Matters progressed in this manner from bad to worse and were again verging towards Anarchy; one dangerous conspiracy was discovered and quelled by the imprisonment of about 70, amongst whom were 20 members of Congress and at length finding that nothing but an extraordinary and desicive [sic] step could save the nation from the confusion and the established government from ruin, the Emperor desolved [sic] congress by a decree of his own on the 31 of October last and created a national Junta of his own choosing from amongst the members of Congress since then things have gone on better and with more harmony. My business relative to the settlement is now, acting on and in less than 10 days I shall be dispatched with everything freely arranged. The principal difficulty is slavery, this they will not admit as the law is all slaves are to be free in ten years, but I am trying to have it amended so as to make them slaves for life and their children free at 21 years but do not think I shall succeed in this point, and that the law will pass as it now is, that is, that the slaves introduced by the settlers shall be free after 10 years As regards all other matters there will be no difficulty, I will write you again from here after I get through and let you know the particulars. I am doubtful nothing can be done about getting land at or near Galveston, the government seems opposed to any settlement being formed so near the borders of the United States, when I return to Texas I will write you very fully you must not be frightened at

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the name of an Imperial government, you like myself have lived under a Monarchy, when Louisiana belonged to Spain and I think we lived as happy then as under the government of the United States The Emperor has his enemies and in the United States the Democrats will abuse him no doubt, but he is doing the best for his country. These people will not do for a Republic nothing but a Monarchy can save them from Anarchy. Stephen F. Austin This is a true copy of the letter, recd from S. F. Austin. Received from Mrs. Bell and I presume was addressed to her husband Josiah H Bell. Guy M. Bryan Source: Courtesy of Sons of DeWitt Colony Texas, http://www.tamu.edu/ccbn/dewitt/slavery letters.htm.

16. The Monroe Doctrine, December 2, 1823 U.S. President James Monroe (1758–1831) delivered this speech to a joint session of Congress on December 2, 1823. In it, Monroe outlined the foreign policy objectives of the United States, and proclaimed that European powers should no longer colonize or interfere with the affairs of the nations of the ‘‘Americas.’’ The United States planned to stay neutral in wars between European powers and those between Spain and its colonies. But if the latter’s wars spilled over to the Americas, the United States would not permit it. America was for Americans and no longer open to European colonization. Generally, Latin Americans have interpreted the Monroe Doctrine as an expression of the United States’ imperial designs toward Latin America. In contrast, the United States saw the doctrine as anti-colonialism and, in the following document, President Monroe sets out his reasons for the proclamation.

Fellow-Citizens of the Senate and House of Representatives: At the proposal of the Russian Imperial Government, made through the minister of the Emperor residing here, a full power and instructions have been transmitted to the Minister of the United States at St. Petersburgh [sic] to arrange, by amicable negotiation, the respective rights and interests of the two nations on the northwest coast of this continent. A similar proposal has been made by His Imperial Majesty to the Government of Great Britain, which has likewise been acceded to. The Government of the United States has been desirous, by this friendly proceeding, of manifesting the great value which they have invariably attached to the friendship of the Emperor, and their solicitude to cultivate the best understanding with his Government. In the discussions to which this interest has given rise, and in the arrangements by which they may terminate the occasion has been judged proper for asserting, as a principle in which the rights and interests of the United States are involved, that the American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers.… It was stated at the commencement of the last session that a great effort was then making in Spain and Portugal, to improve the condition of the people of those countries, and that it appeared to be conducted with extraordinary moderation. It need scarcely be remarked, that the result has been, so far, very different from what was then anticipated. Of events in that quarter of the globe, with which we have so

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much intercourse, and from which we derive our origin, we have always been anxious and interested spectators. The citizens of the United States cherish sentiments the most friendly, in favor of the liberty and happiness of their fellow men on that side of the Atlantic. In the wars of the European powers, in matters relating to themselves, we have never taken any part, nor does it comport with our policy to do so. It is only when our rights are invaded, or seriously menaced, that we resent injuries, or make preparation for our defence. With the movements in this hemisphere, we are, of necessity, more immediately connected, and by causes which must be obvious to all enlightened and impartial observers. The political system of the allied powers is essentially different, in this respect, from that of America. This difference proceeds from that which exists in their respective governments. And to the defence of our own, which has been achieved by the loss of so much blood and treasure, and matured by the wisdom of their most enlightened citizens, and under which we have enjoyed unexampled felicity, this whole nation is devoted. We owe it, therefore, to candor, and to the amicable relations existing between the United States and those powers, to declare, that we should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere, as dangerous to our peace and safety. With the existing colonies or dependencies of any European power we have not interfered, and shall not interfere. But with the governments who have declared their independence, and maintained it, and whose independence we have, on great consideration, and on just principles, acknowledged, we could not view any interposition for the purpose of oppressing them, or controlling, in any other manner, their destiny, by any European power in any other light than as the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition towards the United States. In the war between those new governments and Spain we declared our neutrality at the time of their recognition, and to this we have adhered, and shall continue to adhere, provided no change shall occur, which, in the judgement [sic] of the competent authorities of this government, shall make a corresponding change, on the part of the United States, indispensable to their security. The late events in Spain and Portugal, show that Europe is still unsettled. Of this important fact, no stronger proof can be adduced than that the allied powers should have thought it proper, on any principle satisfactory to themselves, to have interposed, by force, in the internal concerns of Spain. To what extent such interposition may be carried, on the same principle, is a question, to which all independent powers, whose governments differ from theirs, are interested; even those most remote, and surely none more so than the United States. Our policy, in regard to Europe, which was adopted at an early stage of the wars which have so long agitated that quarter of the globe, nevertheless remains the same, which is, not to interfere in the internal concerns of any of its powers; to consider the government de facto as the legitimate government for us; to cultivate friendly relations with it, and to preserve those relations by a frank, firm, and manly policy; meeting, in all instances, the just claims of every power; submitting to injuries from none. But, in regard to these continents, circumstances are eminently and conspicuously different. It is impossible that the allied powers should extend their political system to any portion of either continent, without endangering our peace and happiness: nor can any one believe that our Southern Brethren, if left to themselves, would adopt it of their own accord. It is equally impossible, therefore, that we should behold such interposition, in any form, with indifference. If we look to the comparative strength and

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resources of Spain and those new governments, and their distance from each other, it must be obvious that she can never subdue them. It is still the true policy of the United States to leave the parties to themselves, in the hope that other powers will pursue the same course. James Monroe Washington, December 2, 1823 Source: Basic Readings in U.S. Democracy, http://usinfo.state.gov/usa/infousa/facts/democrac/50.htm.

17. Petition Concerning Slavery, June 10, 1824 An 1824 petition from the colonists at the Austin (Texas) Colony called upon the Mexican Congress to allow emigrants to bring slaves into Texas. According to the petitioners, the slaves were not for the purpose of trade or speculation. They were family servants who had been raised by them since infancy. These slaves, according to American leader Stephen Austin (1793–1836) and other Americans in Texas, were essential to make the colony prosperous since it was they who would clear the land and develop the farms.

These inhabitants respectfully represent to your sovereignty that the Slaves introduced into this establishment by the emigrants were not brought here for the purpose of Trade or speculation neither are they Africans but are the family servants of the emigrants and raised by them as such from their infancy and were intended to aid in clearing the Land and establishing their farms which these Colonists could not have effected without them for this Province is entirely uninhabited and great Labor required in Opening farms and as the Law sanctioned the introduction of slaves into the Country the emigrants felt entirely safe in bringing them. These Inhabitants therefore respectfully solicit that your sovereignty will take into Consideration the right of property they have to their slaves that they brought them here As a necessary part of the Capital required by the desert State of the Country to establish their farms and Ranches and if freed the loss of their value added to the very heavy expences [sic] of removing such a distance and settling in an entire wilderness and suffering all the miseries of Hunger, exposed to the attack of Hostile Indians will complete their total ruin Also these Inhabitants respectfully represent that some of their friends and Relations visited this Country last spring and winter and selected their Lands as a part of the Above named 300 families After building Cabins they returned to move out their families this summer and fall and are now on the Road bringing their Slaves with them relying on the faith of the Colonization Law under which Austin’s establishment is formed Article [30] of which Law Authorises [sic] the introduction of Slaves by the Colonists those emigrants therefore who are on the Road and are detained by the excessive heat and destructive drought that now pervades this whole Country will be totally and forever ruined if on their arrival here after so much fatigue labor and expense in removing they are to loose their Slaves and besides that be liable to heavy punishment for bringing them. These Inhabitants therefore respectfully pray that your sovereignty may take their Case into Consideration and declare that the slaves and their descendents of the 300 families who emigrate to the Establishment formed by the Emprasario Stephen F. Austin in this province shall be slaves for Life … San Felipe do Austin June 10, 1824.

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Signed Estevan F. Austin, Jared E. Groce, Santiago Cummins, Juan P. Coles [To Federal Congress or Executive.] Source: Courtesy of Sons of DeWitt Colony Texas, http://www.tamu.edu/ccbn/dewitt/slaveryletters. htm#petitioncongress.

18. Decree Abolishing the Slave Trade in Mexico, July 13, 1824 Indian and African slavery existed in Mexico during the era of Spanish colonialism. Forms of de facto slavery persisted even after Mexican independence in 1821. But the nation’s leaders were committed to ending this institution. On December 6, 1810, Fr. Miguel Hidalgo, a parish priest in Guanajuato, declared that slavery was abolished in Mexico. Hidalgo was executed in 1811, and Fr. Jos
e Mar
ıa Morelos, a priest and insurgent, reiterated the pronouncement against slavery. Once Mexico achieved independence from Spain in 1821, the question of slavery emerged again as proslavery groups attempted to exploit the fact that there were no constitutional guarantees. The Decree of July 13, 1824, prohibited slave trade, but it was not fully enforced because of the instability of the new Mexican government.

PROHIBITION OF THE COMMERCE AND TRAFFIC IN SLAVES The Sovereign General Constituent Congress of the United Mexican States has held it right to decree the following: 1. The Commerce and Traffic in Slaves, proceeding from whatever power, and under whatever flag, is for ever prohibited, within the territories of the United Mexican States. 2. The Slaves, who may be introduced contrary to the tenor of the preceding article, shall remain free in consequence of treading the Mexican soil. 3. Every vessel, whether National or Foreign, in which Slaves may be transported and introduced into the Mexican territories, shall be confiscated with the rest of its cargo and the Owner, Purchaser, Captain, Master, and Pilot, shall suffer the punishment of ten years confinement. 4. This law will take effect from the date of its publication; however, as to the punishments prescribed in the preceding article, they shall not take effect till [sic] six months after, towards the Planters who, in virtue of the law of the 14th October last, relating to the Colonization of the Isthmus of Guazacoulco, and may disembark Slaves for the purpose of introducing them into the Mexican territory. (See the 21st Article of the Decree of October 11, 1823.) Source: ‘‘Abolition of the Slave Trade: Decree of July 13, 1824.’’ Courtesy of Sons of DeWitt Colony Texas, http://www.tamu.edu/ccbn/dewitt/slaverybugbee.htm#slavedecree1824.

19. Decree No. 16: The Colonization of the State of Coahuila and Texas, 1825 In 1825, Texas was not an independent entity—it was part of the Mexican state of Coahuila and, as such, was governed by the laws of Mexico and the

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state of Coahuila. The following are the laws of colonization, which EuroAmericans and other colonists had agreed to uphold. However, almost immediately upon arrival after 1822, Euro-American colonists pressured the Mexican government to change these laws and grant them more autonomy. The Mexican state, on the other hand, sought to make the new settlers comply and obey the laws.

The Governor provisionally appointed by the Sovereign Congress of this State. To all who shall see these presents; Know that the said Congress have decreed as follows. Decree No. 16. The Constituent Congress of the Free, Independent and Sovereign State of Coahuila and Texas, desiring by every possible means, to augment the population of its territory; promote the cultivation of its fertile lands; the raising and multiplication of stock; and the progress of the arts and commerce; and being governed by the Constitutional act, the Federal Constitution, and the basis established by the National Decree of the General Congress, No. 72, have thought proper to decree the following LAW OF COLONIZATION: Art. 1. All Foreigners, who in virtue of the general law, of the 18th August, 1824, which guarantees the security of their persons and property, in the territory of the Mexican Nation, wish to remove to any of the settlements of the state of Coahuila and Texas, are at liberty to do so; and the said State invites and calls them. Art. 2. Those who do so, instead of being incommoded, shall be admitted by the local authorities of said settlements, who shall freely permit them to pursue any branch, of industry that they may think proper, provided they respect the general laws of the nation, and those of the state. Art. 3. Any foreigner, already in the limits of the state of Coahuila and Texas who wishes to settle himself in it, shall make a declaration to that effect, before the Ayuntamiento [town council] of the place, which he selects as his residence; the Ayuntamiento in such case, shall administer to him the oath which he must take to obey the federal and state constitutions, and to observe the religion which the former prescribes; the name of the person, and his family if he has any, shall then be registered in a book kept for that purpose, with a statement of where he was born, and whence from, his age, whether married, occupation, and that he has taken the oath prescribed, and considering him from that time and not before, as domiciled. Art. 4. From the day in which any foreigner has been enrolled, as an inhabitant, in conformity with the foregoing article, he is at liberty to designate any vacant land, and the respective political authority will grant it to him in the same manner, as to a native of the country, in conformity with the existing laws of the nation, under the condition that the proceedings, shall be passed to the government for its approbation. Art. 5. Foreigners of any nation, or a native of any of the Mexican states, can project the formation of any towns on any lands entirely vacant, or even on those of an individual, in the case mentioned in 35th article; but the now settlers who present themselves for admission, must prove their Christianity, morality and good habits, by a certificate from the authorities where they formerly resided. Art. 6. Foreigners who emigrate at the time in which the general sovereign congress may have prohibited their entrance, for the purpose of colonizing, as they have the power to do, after the year 1840, or previous to that time, as respects those of

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any particular nation, shall not then be admitted; and those who apply in proper time, shall always subject themselves to such precautionary measures (if national security, which the supreme government, without prejudicing the object of this law, may think proper to adopt relative to them). Art. 7. The government shall take care, that within the twenty leagues bordering on the limits of the United States of the North, and ten leagues in a straight line from the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, within the limits of this state, there shall be no other settlements, except such as merit the approbation of the supreme government of the Union, for which object, all petitions on the subject, whether made by Mexicans or foreigners, shall be passed to the superior government, accompanied by a corresponding responding report. Art. 8. The projects for new settlements in which one or more persons offer to bring at their expertise, one hundred or more families, shall be presented to the government, and if found conformable with this law, they will be admitted; and the government will immediately designate to the contractors, the land where they are to establish themselves, and the term of six years, within which, they must present the number of families they contracted for, under the penalty of losing the rights and privileges offered in their favor, in proportion to the number of families which they fail to introduce, and the contract totally annulled if they do not bring at least one hundred families. Art. 9. Contracts made by the contractors or undertakers, Empresarios [land contractors], with the families brought at their expense, are guaranteed by this law, so far as they are conformable with its provisions. Art. 10. In the distribution of lands, a preference shall be given to the Military entitled to them, by the diplomas issued by the supreme executive power, and to Mexican citizens who are not Military, among whom there shall be no other distinction, than that founded on their individual merit, or services performed for the country, or in equal circumstances, a residence in the place where the land may be situated; the quantity of land which may be granted, is designated in the following articles. Art. 11. A square of land, which on each side has one league or five thousand varas, or what is the same thing, a superficies of twenty-five million varas, shall be called a sitio, and this shall be the unity for counting one, two, or more sitios; and also the unity for counting one, two or more labors, shall be one million square varas, or one thousand varas on each side, which shall compose a labor. The vara for this measurement shall be three geometrical feet. Art. 12. Taking the above unity as a basis, and observing the distinction which must be made, between grazing land, or that which is proper for raising of stock, and farming land, with or without the facility of irrigation, this law grants to the contractor or contractors, for the establishment or a new settlement, for each hundred families which he may introduce and establish in the state, five sitios of grazing land and five labors, at least the one half of which, shall be without the facility of irrigation; but they can only receive this premium for eight hundred families, although a greater number should be introduced, and no fraction whatever, less than one hundred shall entitle them to any premium, not even proportionally. Art. 13. Should any contractor or contractors in virtue of the number of families which he may have introduced, acquire in conformity with the last article, more than eleven square leagues of land, it shall nevertheless be granted, but subject to the condition of alienating the excess, within twelve years, and if it is not done, the

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respective political authority shall do it by selling it at public sale, delivering the proceeds to the owners, after deducting the costs of sale. Art. 14. To each family comprehended in a contract, whose sole occupation is cultivation of land, one labor shall be given; should he also be a stock raiser, grazing land shall be added to complete a sitio, and should his only occupation be raising of stock, he shall only receive a superficies of grazing land, equal to twenty-four million square bars. Art. 15. Unmarried men shall receive the same quantity when they enter the matrimonial state, and for foreigners who marry native Mexicans, shall receive one fourth more; those that are entirely single, or who do not form a part of some family whether foreigners or natives, shall content themselves with the fourth part of the above mentioned quantity, which is all that can be given them until they marry. Art. 16. Families or unmarried men who, entirely of their own accord, have emigrated and may wish to unite themselves to any new towns, can at all times do so, and the same quantity of land shall be assigned them, which is mentioned in the two last articles; but if they do so within the first six years from the establishment of the settlement, one labor more shall be given to families, and single men in place of the quarter designated in the 15th article shall have the third part. Art. 17. It appertains to the government to augment the quantity indicated in the 14, 15, and 16th Articles, in proportion to the family industry, and activity of the colonists, agreeably to the information given on these subjects by the Ayuntamientos [town councils] and Commissioners; the said government always observing the provisions of the 12th article, of the decree of the general congress on the subject. Art. 18. The families who emigrate in conformity with the 16th article shall immediately present themselves to the political authority of the place which they may have chosen for their residence, who, finding in them the requisites, prescribed by this law for new settlers, shall admit them, and put them in possession of the corresponding lands, and shall immediately give an account thereof to the government; who of themselves, or by means of a person commissioned to that effect, will issue them a title. Art. 19. The Indians of all nations, bordering on the state, as well as wandering tribes that may be within its limits, shall be received in the markets, without paying any duties whatever for commerce, in the products of the country; and if attracted by the moderation and confidence, with which they shall be treated, any of them, after having first declared themselves in favor of our Religion and Institutions, wish to establish themselves in any settlements that are forming, they shall be admitted, and the same quantity of land given them, as to the settlers spoken of in the 14th and 15th articles, always preferring native Indians to strangers. Art. 20. In order that there may be no vacancies between tracts, of which, great care shall be taken in the distribution of lands, it shall be laid off in squares, or other forms although irregular, if the local situation requires it; and in said distribution, as well as the assignation of lands for new towns, previous notice shall be given to the adjoining proprietors, if any, in order to prevent dissentions and law suits. Art. 21. If by error in the concession, any land shall be granted, belonging to another, on proof being made of that fact, an equal quantity shall be granted elsewhere, to the person who may have thus obtained it through error, and he shall be indemnified by the owner of such land, for any improvements he may have made; the just value of which improvements, shall be ascertained by appraisers.

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Art. 22. The new settlers as an acknowledgment, shall pay to the state, for each sitio of pasture land, thirty dollars; two dollars and a half for each labor without the facility of irrigation, and three dollars and a half, for each one that can be irrigated, and so on proportionally according to the quantity and quality of the land distributed; but the said payments need not be made, until six years after the settlement and by thirds; the first within four years, the second within five years, and the last within six years, under the penalty of losing the land for a failure, in any of said payments; there are excepted from this payment, the contractors, and Military, spoken of in the 10th article; the former with respect to lands given them, as a premium, and the latter, for those which they obtained, in conformity with their diplomas. Art. 23. The Ayuntamiento of each municipality (Comarca) shall collect the above mentioned funds, gratis, by means of a committee appointed either within or without their body; and shall remit them as they are collected, to the treasurer of their Funds, who will give the corresponding receipt, and without any other compensation than two and a half per cent, all that shall be allowed him; he shall hold them at the disposition of the government, rendering an account every month of the ingress and egress, and of any remissness or fraud, which he may observe in their collection of all which, the person employed, and the committee, and the individuals of the Ayuntamientos who appoint them, shall be individually responsible and that this responsibility may be at all effectual, the said appointments shall he made viva voce, and information shall be given thereof immediately to the government. Art. 24. The government shall sell to Mexicans and to them only, such lands as they may wish to purchase, taking care that there shall not be accumulated in the same hands, more than eleven sitios, and under the condition, that the purchaser must cultivate what he acquires by this title within six years, from its acquisition, under the penalty of losing them; the price of each sitio, subject to the foregoing condition, shall be one hundred dollars, if it be pasture land; one hundred and fifty dollars, if it be farming land without the facility of irrigation; and two hundred and fifty dollars if it can be irrigated. Art. 25. Until six years after the publication of this law, the legislature of this state, cannot alter it as regards the acknowledgement, and price to be paid or land, or as regards the quantity and quality, to be distributed to the new settlers, or sold to Mexicans. Art. 26. The new settlers, who within six years from the date of the possession, have not cultivated or occupied the lands granted them, according to its quality, shall be considered to have renounced them, and the respective political authority, shall immediately proceed to take possession of them, and recall the titles. Art. 27. The contractors and Military, heretofore spoken of, and those who by purchase have acquired lands, can alienate them at any time, but the successor is obliged to cultivate them in the same time, that the original proprietor was bound to do; the other settlers can alienate theirs when they have totally cultivated them, and not before. Art. 28. By testamentary will, made in conformity with the existing laws, or those which may govern in future, any new colonist, from the day of his settlement, may dispose of his land, although he may not have cultivated it, and if he dies intestate, his property shall be inherited by the person or persons entitled by the laws to it; the heirs being subject to the same obligation and condition imposed on the original grantee.

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Art. 29. Lands acquired by virtue of this law, shall not by any title whatever, pass into mortmain. Art. 30. The new settler, who wishing to establish himself in a foreign country, resolves to leave the territory of the state, can do so freely, with all his property; but after leaving the state, he shall not any longer hold his land, and if he had not previously sold it, or the sale should not be in conformity with the 27th article, it shall become entirely vacant. Art. 31. Foreigners who in conformity with this law, have obtained lands, and established themselves in any new settlement, shall be considered from that moment, naturalized in the country; and by marrying a Mexican, they acquire a particular merit to obtain letters of citizenship of the state, subject however to the provisions which may be made relative to both particulars, in the constitution of the state. Art. 32. During the first ten years, counting from the day on which the new settlements may have been established, they shall be free from all contributions, of whatever denomination, with the exception of those which, in case of invasion by an enemy, or to prevent it, are generally imposed, and the produce of agriculture or industry of the new settlers, shall be free from excise duty, Alcabala, or other duties, throughout every part of the state, with the exception of the duties referred to in the next article; after the termination of that time, the new settlements shall be on the same footing as to taxes with the old ones, and the colonists shall also in this particular, be on the same footing with the other inhabitants of the state. Art. 33. From the day of their settlement, the new colonists shall be at liberty to follow any branch of industry, and can also work mines of every description, communicating with the supreme government of the confederation, relative to the general revenue appertaining to it, and subjecting themselves in all other particulars, to the ordinances or taxes, established or which may be established on this branch. Art. 34. Towns shall be founded on the sites deemed most suitable by the government, or the person commissioned for this effect, and for each one, there shall be designated four square leagues, whose area may be in a regular or irregular form, agreeably to the situation. Art. 35. If any of the said sites should be the property of an individual, and the establishment of new towns on them, should notoriously be of general utility, they can, notwithstanding, be appropriated to this object, previously indemnifying the owner for its just value, to be determined by appraisers. Art. 36. Building lots in the new towns shall be given gratis, to the contractors of them and also to artists of every class, as many as are for the establishment of their trade; and to the other settlers they shall be sold at public auction, after having been previously valued, under the obligation to pay the purchase money by installments of one third each, the first in six months, the second in twelve months and the third in eighteen months; but all owners or lots, including contractors and artists, shall annually pay one dollar for each lot, which, together with the produce of the sales, shall be collected by the Ayuntamientos, and applied to the building of churches in said towns. Art. 37. So far as is practicable, the towns shall be composed of natives and foreigners, and in their delineation, great care shall be taken to lay off the streets straight, giving them a direction from north to south, and from east to west, when the site will permit it.

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Art. 38. For the better location of the said new town, their regular formation and exact partition of their land and lots, the government on account of having admitted any project, and agreed with the contractor or contractors, who may have presented it, shall commission a person of intelligence and confidence, giving him such particular instructions as may be deemed necessary and expedient and authorizing him under his own responsibility, to appoint one or more surveyors, to lay off the town scientifically, and do whatever else that be required. Art. 39. The Governor in conformity with the last fee bill, Arancel, of notary public’s of the ancient audience of Mexico, shall designate the fees of the commissioner, who in conjunction with the colonists shall fix the surveyor’s fees; but both shall be paid by the colonists and in the manner which all parties among themselves may agree upon. Art. 40. As soon as at least forty families are united in one place, they shall proceed to the formal establishment of the new towns, and all of them shall take an oath, to support the general and state constitutions; which oath will be administered by the commissioner; they shall then, in his presence, proceed for the first time, to the election of their municipal authority. Art. 41. A new town, whose inhabitants shall not be less than two hundred, shall elect an Ayuntamiento, provided there is not another one established within eight leagues, in which case, it shall be added to it. The number of individuals which are to compose the Ayuntamiento, shall be regulated by the existing laws. Art. 42. Foreigners are eligible, subject to the provisions which the constitution of the state may prescribe, to elect the members of their municipal authorities, and to be elected to the same. Art. 43. The municipal expenses, and all others which may be considered necessary, or of common utility to the new towns, shall be proposed to the Governor, by the Ayuntamientos through the political chief, accompanied with a plan of the taxes, arbitrios, which in their opinion may be just and best calculated to raise them, and should the proposed plan, be approved of by the Governor, he shall order it to be executed, subject however to the resolutions of the legislature, to whom it shall be immediately passed with his report and that of the political chief, who will say whatever occurs to him on the subject. Art. 44. For the opening and improving of roads, and other public works in Texas, the government will transmit to the chief of that department, the individuals, who in other parts of the state, may have been sentenced to public works as vagrants, or for other crimes; these same persons may be employed by individuals for competent wages, and as soon as the time of their condemnation is expired, they can unite themselves as colonists, to any new settlement, and obtain the corresponding lands, if their reformation shall have made them worthy of such favor in the opinion of the chief of the department, without whose certificate, they shall not be admitted. Art. 45. The government in accord with the respective ordinary ecclesiastics, will take care to provide the new settlements with the competent number of pastors, and in accord with the same authority, shall propose to the legislature for its approbation, the salary which the said pastors are to receive, which shall be paid by the new settlers. Art. 46. The new settlers as regards the introduction of slaves shall subject themselves to the existing laws, and those which may hereafter be established on the subject.

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Art. 47. The petitions now pending relative to the subject of the law, shall be dispatched in conformity with it, and for this purpose they shall be passed to the Governor, and the families who may be established within the limits of the state, without having any land assigned them, shall submit themselves to this law, and to the orders of the supreme government of the Union, with respect to those who are within twenty leagues of the limits of the United States of America, and in a straight line of the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. Art. 48. This law shall be published in all the villages of the state; and that it arrives at the notice of all others, throughout the Mexican confederation, it shall be communicated to their respective legislatures, by the secretary of this state; and the Governor will take particular care, to send a certified copy of it, in compliance with the 16th article of the federal constitution, to the two houses of Congress, and the supreme executive power of the nation, with a request to the latter, to give it general circulation through foreign states, by means of our ambassadors. The Governor pro tem of the state will cause it to be published and circulated. Saltillo, 24 March, 1825
Signed, RAFAEL RAMOS Y VALDEZ, President JUAN VICENTE CAMOS, Member & Secretary
JOAQU
IN ROSALES, Member & Secretary JOSE Therefore I command all Authorities, as well Civil as Military and Ecclesiastical, to obey and cause to be obeyed, the present decree in all its parts. Rafael Gonzales, Governor Source: Courtesy of Sons of DeWitt Colony Texas, http://www.tamu.edu/ccbn/dewitt/ cololaws.htm.

20. Decree of Mexican President Vicente Guerrero Abolishing Slavery, September 15, 1829 Between 1821 and 1829, the Mexican government attempted to regulate slave traffic in Texas and also make Euro-American colonists comply with Mexican laws. By 1829, Texas had a population of about 20,000, not counting slaves who numbered just over a thousand. By this time, many Mexicans feared the steady migration of Euro-Americans into Texas was undermining its sovereignty and moved to secure its borders. One of the ways suggested to stem American migration was to emancipate the slaves; the prosperity of the white colonists depended on slave labor. The abolitionists convinced Mexican President Vicente Guerrero, who was of Indian, African, and Spanish heritage, to sign the law abolishing slavery. The law is as follows.

Abolition of Slavery. The President of the United Mexican States, to the inhabitants of the Republic. Be it known; That in the year 1829, being desirous of signalizing the anniversary of our Independence by an Act of national Justice and Beneficence, which may contribute to the strength and support of such inestimable welfare, as to secure more and more the public tranquility, and reinstate an unfortunate portion of our inhabitants in the sacred rights granted them by Nature, and may be protected by the Nation under wise and just Laws, according to the

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Provision in Article 30 of the Constitutive Act; availing myself of the extraordinary faculties granted me, I have thought proper to Decree: 1. That slavery be exterminated in the Republic. 2. Consequently those are free, who, up to this day, have been looked upon as slaves. 3. Whenever the circumstances of the Public Treasury will allow it, the owners of slaves shall be indemnified, in the manner which the Laws shall provide.
MAR
IA de BOCANEGRA. Mexico 15 Sept. 1829, A. D. JOSE Source: Courtesy of Sons of DeWitt Colony Texas, http://www.tamu.edu/ccbn/dewitt/ chieftains.htm#guerroedict.


n’s Diaries, 21. Excerpts from Gen. Manuel de Mier y Tera 1789–1832
n (1789–1832), head of a In his diaries, Mexican Gen. Manuel de Mier y Tera boundary commission in 1828–1829, reports on the seditious atmosphere in Texas eight years before the revolution. The general served in the Mexican War for Independence and was active in the political life of the new nation. His mission was primarily a scientific one, taking data and critiquing the agricultural and commercial potential of the natural resources of the land. He also evaluated the political chaos and the spirit of rebellion among the Euro-American colonists.

As one covers the distance from B
exar to this town [Nacogdoches], he will note that Mexican influence is proportionately diminished until on arriving in this place he will see that it is almost nothing. And indeed, whence could such influence come? Hardly from superior numbers in population, since the ratio of Mexicans to foreigners is one to ten; certainly not from the superior character of the Mexican population, for exactly the opposite is true, the Mexicans of this town comprising what in all countries is called the lowest class the very poor and very ignorant. The naturalized North Americans in the town maintain an English school, and send their children north for further education; the poor Mexicans not only do not have sufficient means to establish schools, but they are not of the type that take any thought for the improvement of its public institutions or the betterment of its degraded condition. Neither are there civil authorities or magistrates; one insignificant little man not to say more who is called an alcalde, and an Ayuntamiento [town council] that does not convene once in a lifetime is the most that we have here at this important point on our frontier; yet, wherever I have looked, in the short time that I have been here, I have witnessed grave occurrences, both political and judicial. It would cause you the same chagrin that it has caused me to see the opinion that is held of our nation by these foreign colonists, since, with the exception of some few who have journeyed to our capital, they know no other Mexicans than the inhabitants about here, and excepting the authorities necessary to any form of society, the said inhabitants are the most ignorant of Negroes and Indians, among whom I pass for a man of culture. Thus, I tell myself that it could not be otherwise than that from such a state of affairs should arise an antagonism between the Mexicans and foreigners, which is not the least of the smoldering fires which I have discovered. Therefore, I am warning you to take timely measures. Texas could throw the whole nation into revolution.

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The colonists murmur against the political disorganization of the frontier, and the Mexicans complain of the superiority and better education of the colonists; the colonists find it unendurable that they must go three hundred leagues to lodge a complaint against the petty pickpocketing that they suffer from a venal and ignorant alcalde, and the Mexicans with no knowledge of the laws of their own country nor those regulating colonization, set themselves against the foreigners, deliberately setting nets to deprive them of the right of franchise and to exclude them from the Ayuntamiento. Meanwhile, the incoming stream of new settlers is unceasing; the first news of these comes by discovering them on land already under cultivation, where they have been located for many months; the old inhabitants set up a claim to the property, basing their titles of doubtful priority, and for which there are no records, on a law of the Spanish government; and thus arises a lawsuit in which the alcalde has a chance to come out with some money. In this state of affairs, the town where there are no magistrates is the one in which lawsuits abound, and it is at once evident that in Nacogdoches and its vicinity, being most distant from the seat of the general government, the primitive order of things should take its course, which is to say that this section is being settled up without the consent of anybody.… In spite of the enmity that usually exists between the Mexicans and the foreigners, there is a most evident uniformity of opinion on one point, namely the separation of Texas from Coahuila and its organization into a territory of the federal government. This idea, which was conceived by some of the colonists who are above the average, has become general among the people and does not fail to cause considerable discussion. In explaining the reasons assigned by them for this demand, I shall do no more than relate what I have heard with no addition of my own conclusions, and I frankly state that I have been commissioned by some of the colonists to explain to you their motives, notwithstanding the fact that I should have done so anyway in the fulfillment of my duty. They claim that Texas in its present condition of a colony is an expense, since it is not a sufficiently prosperous section to contribute to the revenues of the state administration; and since it is such a charge it ought not to be imposed upon a state as poor as Coahuila, which has not the means of defraying the expenses of the corps of political and judicial officers necessary for the maintenance of peace and order. Furthermore, it is impracticable that recourse in all matters should be had to a state capital so distant and separated from this section by deserts infected by hostile savages. Again, their interests are very different from those of the other sections, and because of this they should be governed by a separate territorial government, having learned by experience that the mixing of their affairs with those of Coahuila brings about friction. The native inhabitants of Texas add to the above other reasons which indicate an aversion for the inhabitants of Coahuila; also the authority of the comandante and the collection of taxes is disputed.… The whole population here is a mixture of strange and incoherent parts without parallel in our federation: numerous tribes of Indians, now at peace, but armed and at any moment ready for war, whose steps toward civilization should be taken under the close supervision of a strong and intelligent government; colonists of another people, more progressive and better informed than the Mexican inhabitants, but also more shrewd and unruly; among these foreigners are fugitives from justice, honest laborers, vagabonds and criminals, but honorable and dishonorable alike travel with

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their political constitution in their pockets, demanding the privileges, authority and officers which such a constitution guarantees. Source: Alleine Howren, ‘‘Causes and Origin of the Decree of April 6, 1830,’’ Southwestern Historical Quarterly, XVI (1913), 395 398.


n to Luca
s Alama
n, 22. Letter from Gen. Manuel de Mier y Tera

‘‘¿En que parara Texas? En lo que Dios quiera.’’ (‘‘What is to become of Texas? Whatever God wills.’’), July 2, 1832 Mexican Gen. Manuel de Mier y Ter
an (1789–1832) led a boundary commission tour of Texas in 1828–29. In his last letter a day before his death he wrote Luc
as Alam
an, the intellectual leader of the Mexican conservatives. Mier y Ter
an was a seasoned and respected officer and after the 1828–29 tour was made commandant general of the Eastern Interior Provinces. In this capacity, he visited Galveston Bay in November 1831. His 1828 report had a sense of urgency and he recommended strong measures to stop U.S. expansion into Texas. As a first step, he recommended more presidios or garrisons placed close to major settlements. Concerned with the growing trade with the United States, he urged closer trade ties between Mexico proper and Texas. Then he urged more Mexican and European settlers be recruited to settle in Texas. These measures were not effectively implemented. And in this letter Mier y Ter
an anticipated the Texas revolt of 1836 and the loss of Texas.

A great and respectable Mexican nation, a nation of which we have dreamed and for which we have labored so long, can never emerge from the many disasters which have overtaken it. We have allowed ourselves to be deceived by the ambitions of selfish groups; and now we are about to lose the northern provinces. How could we expect to hold Texas when we do not even agree among ourselves? It is a gloomy state of affairs. If we could work together, we would advance. As it is, we are lost. I believed, and with reason, that the withdrawal of the ministry would end the revolution. It only gave courage to those factions of discord who now hope to occupy all the country. There is commotion from Tampico to Mexico. The present state of affairs in Texas does not permit me to leave. The revolution absorbs the energies of men who should be working together. From the twenty-fourth of last May I held a position in order to protect the states of San Luis and Tamaulipas from the military forces of the revolutionists, and to a certain extent overcome their influence in closing the principal means of communication; but it was impossible to stay their activities in Huasteca and other towns in Tamaulipas, from which places they were able completely to surround my camp. Particularly in Victoria did they make headway. The authorities and powers there were in a. most critical position, since the legal existence of their government depended upon my success in this fracas. As individuals, they were about equally divided in their allegiance-some favored the government and some supported the revolution. Was ever a general faced with a more insuperable obstacle? I could expect no direct aid from the state government in pursuing a rigorous plan of war. Even when I received orders from Victoria, I realized under the circumstances that they were not constitutional. The effect has been to leave me. isolated in Tamaulipas with my depleted forces. If I 1eave, the, state is lost. If I remain, all is lost. Martial

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law would be a precarious remedy, and one justified by the revolution; but our constitution makes no provision for such a law, and if it were changed so as to provide for such measures today, in Tamaulipas and everywhere in the federation it would produce such lamentable results, that it is best not to consider it. In the first place, it is an impossibility, and secondly, if it were not, I as commander would have to ask for my relief. Moctezuma would not listen to reason. His forces now are larger than mine. His successes are due to numbers rather than to his generalship … When I came through this country in 1829, on my way to Tampico, I noticed many places connected with the return of Iturbide to Mexico. I have seen the house where he spent his last night. The wall in front of which he was shot is still standing. This morning dawned diaphanous, radiant, beautiful. The sky was blue; the trees green, the birds were bursting with joy; the river crystalline, the flowers yellow, making drops of dew shine in their calyces. Everything pulsed with life, everything gave evident signs that the breath of God had reached nature. In contrast to these things the village of Padilla is alone and apathetic, with its houses in ruin and its thick ashen adobe walls; and my soul is burdened with weariness. I am an unhappy man, and unhappy people should not live on earth. I have studied this situation for five years and today, I know nothing, nothing, for man is very despicable and small; and let us put an end to these reflections, for they almost drive me mad. The revolution is about to break forth and Texas is lost. Immortality! God! The Soul! What does all this mean? Well, then, I believe in it all, but why does man not have the right to put aside his misery and his pains? Why should he be eternally chained to an existence which is unpleasant to him? And this spirit which inspires, which fills my mind with ideas-where will it go? Let us see, now; the spirit is uncomfortable, it commands me to set it free, and it is necessary to obey. Here is the end of human glory and the termination of ambition. ¿En qu
e parar
a Texas? En lo que Dios quiera. [‘‘What is to become of Texas? Whatever God wills.’’] Source: Courtesy of Wallace L. McKeehan, Sons of DeWitt Colony Texas. http://www.tamu. edu/ccbn/dewitt/teranmanuel.htm.

23. Jos
e Antonio Navarro’s Letter to the Editor of the San Antonio Ledger, October 30, 1853 Many Tejano Mexican (those of Mexican heritage living in Texas) notables were sympathetic to Euro-American migration because of the benefits they received from an increase in trade and land values spurred by Euro-American settlement. One of the leaders of the Tejano elite was Jos
e Antonio Navarro, a conservative. He was the leader of a faction loyal to Euro-American colonists.
xar in Texas Navarro, a second-generation Tejano born at San Antonio de Be on February 27, 1795, was a criollo, a full-blooded Spaniard born in the New World. He flaunted that his father was a native of Corsica, and claimed that his mother was from a noble Spanish family. A strong advocate of states’ rights during the U.S. Civil War (1861–1865), he supported the Confederacy. He wrote the following letter in Spanish to the editor of the San Antonio, Texas, Ledger. In it Navarro bitterly criticizes the Mexican government and speaks of the War of Independence from Mexico in Texas.

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Dear Sir: In the issue of September 17th last, I read some historical memoirs concerning the foundation and ancient history of San Antonio de Bexar. Since I was an eyewitness of all the events described in that work, I cannot resist the temptation to correct certain substantial errors contained in that narrative. Undoubtedly, they are the result of inaccurate reports which were perhaps taken from mutilated and incomplete documents from which it is difficult to maintain chronological sequence. I have always wanted to obtain the most exact report of those events so that the customs, character, abilities and moral traits of the men and events of that epoch might be presented to posterity. In 1813, the author of this letter was eighteen years old; he was then in San Antonio and he still retains fresh memories of that time. This act and his concern for everything pertaining to San Antonio, beloved for thousands of reasons, are the result of the present emanation and should be narrated with due respect to the truth. You will not discover in this writing flowers of speech nor the persistence of excellence of its style but an unreserved narrative of bloody and revolutionary times. The Mexican priest named Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, illustrious by a thousand titles, actually was the first to utter the cry of Independence in the Pueblo of Dolores. The priest Jos
e Mar
ıa Morelos was famous from that time to this for his military talents. He was also another one of the heroes of Mexican Independence and who later after the execution of the priest Hidalgo, convoked the first Mexican Congress of Apacigen. General Felix Mar
ıa Calleja, later Viceroy of Mexico, was particularly distinguished of his bloody persecutions and iniquities against the patriots Hidalgo, Guerrero, Morelos, Bravo, and others. Calleja was the most dangerous enemy of the Mexicans. Morelos was captured, treated with ignominy and was finally shot in the old castle of San Christobal one-fourth league distance from the capital of Mexico. Jos
e Bernardo Gut
ıerrez, a native of Revilla, Tamaulipas, fled to the United States immediately after the capture and imprisonment of the patriot heroes in Acatita de Bajan near Monclova, in the year 1811. He visited Washington and other cities in the United States and finally in the state of Louisiana enlisted 450 American volunteers with whom he again invaded Texas in the month of October 1812. Nacogdoches, a military fortification on the Trinity River, was captured by him without resistance and subsequently he took La Bah
ıa del Espiritu Santo, known today as Goliad. Manuel Salcedo, military Governor of Texas, and Simon de Herrera of Nuevo Leon, went out with more than 2,000 men and besieged La Bah
ıa, November 15, 1812. Generals Gut
ıerrez [sic], McGee, Kemper, Perry and Ross sustained the siege for the better of three months. In desperation the besieged finally went out from the wall of Goliad with almost all their force composed of American volunteers and some Mexicans. They fought the enemy and returned to the fort leaving 200 of the enemy dead and wounded and they suffered scarcely any losses. After twenty-seven regular encounters, Salcedo and Herrera discontinued the siege and retired to San Antonio towards the end of March 1813. Gut
ıerrez, Kemper and the others, stimulated by the forced retreat of the enemy, followed them day by day. Salcedo had not arrived at San Antonio with his army when he was ordered by Simon de Herrera to abandon the city and march to the Salado, where, at the place called ‘‘Rosilla,’’ he encountered the army of Gut
ıerrez, if a band of 900 patriots could be called an army.

Going West, 1820 1840s 43

The two armies fought to the end of March. It was a bloody battle. Herrera lost 400 men, dead and wounded, and Gut
ıerrez lost only five dead and fourteen wounded. The royal army fled in disorder in the direction of San Antonio which Salcedo and Herrera had begun to fortify for the purpose of resisting Gut
ıerrez. Kemper and others, after collecting the spoils of battle and burying the dead, pursued Salcedo with their victorious army and took possession of Concepci
on Mission, southeast of San Antonio. The following day they marched to San Antonio. The army of patriots formed in double columns in the lower labor where at present stand the private residences of Devine, Callaghan and Gilbeau. From that memorable place, Bernardo Gut
ıerrez demanded the unconditional surrender of Governors Salcedo and Herrera. Surrender took place March 30, 1813. On the evening of the 31st these same persons with their entire staff and other officers of high rank left Bexar on foot and met Gut
ıerrez and his victorious army. It was clear that nothing was known of what had happened to the conference between the victors and the conquered except that the request that their lives be spared had been guaranteed. Gut
ıerrez replied evasively but gave them to understand that they were in no danger of losing their lives. Those unfortunate Spanish officers surrendered at the discretion of the enemy and so by their cowardice sealed their own doom. They surrendered their swords and were placed between two files of soldiers. Gut
ıerrez and his army returned to the eastern side of the river compelling their prisoners to march in front to the sound of martial music, and they entered within the walls of the Alamo, the same Alamo which in March 1836 was to become the cradle of the liberty of Texas and the scene of the marvel of valor. There, the valiant patriot[s], Gut
ıerrez, Kemper, Ross and their brave companions enjoyed the first sleep since the triumph of March 31st. There, they sealed the mysterious bond of those terrible events which happened in the year of 1836. On April 1st at nine in the morning, the republican army marched to the beating of drums from the Alamo to Main Plaza of San Antonio. They crossed the river of Commerce street. The Spanish-Mexican army had disbanded and retired the preceding night and could not be seen in any part of the city. Only a few who were overcome with terror and a few citizens of San Antonio remained. Gut
ıerrez took possession of all the houses of Government where the beautiful store of the Mesdames Bances now stands, and immediately called an administrative Junta [committee] of civil council of those citizens who with great ardor had opposed Spanish rule and who consequently had favored Mexican Independence. This Junta was composed of from eight to ten members, a President, and a Secretary. From the writings of Gut
ıerrez it seems that he signed it with the sole object of court-martialing and sentencing the Spanish prisoners. The secretary of this Junta, Mariano Rodrigues, is still living. At that time he was a youth, active and jolly. Today he is an antiquated septuagenarian who merely exists in San Antonio with a very limited recollection of the past and an extreme indifference for the future. On the fourth day of April, or possibly on the night of the fifth, a company of sixty Mexican men under the command of Antonio Delgado led out of San Antonio fourteen Spanish prisoners, including four of Mexican birth, to the eastern bank of the Salado near the same spot on which occurred the battle of Rosilla. There they alighted from their fine horses, and with no other arms than the large, dull machetes which each of those monsters carried hanging from their

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belts. After having heaped offensive words and insulting epithets upon them, they beheaded them with inhuman irony, some of those assassins sharpened their machetes on the soles of their boots in the presence of their defenseless victims. Oh, shame of the human race! What a disgrace for the descendants of a Christian nation! What blood can coolly suffer in silence an act unparalleled in the annals of the history of San Antonio de Bexar? But we owe an impartial history to posterity that such horrible deeds may be known to the future generations so that through their own good conduct of the future, they may eradicate such horrible stains from our benign soil. One day after the slaughter, I myself saw that horde of assassins arrive with their officer, Antonio Delgado, who halted in front of the houses of Government to inform Bernardo Gut
ıerrez that the fourteen victims had been disposed of. On that morning of ominous glory, a large number of other young spectators and I stood at the door of the Palace of the Governor and watched Captain Delgado’s entrance into the hall. He doffed his hat in the presence of General Gut
ıerrez and stuttering, he proffered some words mingled with shame. He handed Gut
ıerrez a paper which, I believe, contained a list of the beheaded ones, and whose names I give below: SPANIARDS: Manuel Salcedo, Governor Simon de Herrera, Colonel Geronimo Herrera, Colonel Juan Echevarria, Captain Jos
e Mateos, Lieutenant Jos
e Goescochea, Lieutenant Juan Ignacio Arrambide, Lieutenant Gregorio Amador, Lieutenant Antonio L
opez, Lieutenant Francisco Perciva, Captain MEXICANS: Miguel de Arcos, Lieutenant Luis Hijo y Francisco, Lieutenant Juan Caso, Lieutenant I myself saw the clothing and the blood-stained jewels which those tigers carried hanging from their saddle horns, making public festival of their crime and of having divided the spoils among themselves pro rata. As I have said, it is certain that Gut
ıerrez received in the Palace of the Governor an account of that cruel affair although later he disavowed taking part in the execution of the prisoners. Gut
ıerrez says in a manuscript which he wrote and printed in Monterey May 6, 1827, that he had never given the order to execute those unfortunate fourteen prisoners, but that a great number of citizens who were greatly excited provoked against the Spanish Governors, induced a majority of the Junta to pass a formal order so that the guard who had custody of the prisoners should hand them over could avoid such a scandal, much less relinquish his command on seeing his cause blackened by the most infamous action that could be authorized by a leader of vandals. Consequently, Gut
ıerrez shared in the atrocity. He was a hypocrite; he pronounced sentence and like Pilate, washed his hands. It was not a court martial which passed sentence as has been erroneously stated.

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Kemper and his American auxiliaries were horrified by so barbarous a deed and they prepared to leave the country, demanding of Gut
ıerrez that they be justified in the name of the Mexican Republic but due to the pleadings in chorus of Miguel Menchaca and other Mexican leaders, they consented to remain in San Antonio to help the cause of Mexican Independence. Some days after these events, it became known with certainty that Colonel Ignacio Elizondo was marching from the Rio Grande to San Antonio with an army of more than 2,000 men. Elizondo was furious on receiving the news of the murder of the governors and by forced marches arrived at the place known as Alazan about two miles west of San Antonio. Gut
ıerrez and Peery met him there June 3, 1813, and from the towers of the Catholic Parish Church, a number of curious youths, including myself, watched the conflict of shining weapons through our field glasses and listened to the deep thunder of the cannons. Elizondo, after a combat of four hours was defeated and he abandoned the field of battle, leaving 400 men dead, wounded and prisoners. Gut
ıerrez lost 22 men and 42 wounded. Among the dead was the aide-de-camp Maricos, a French youth, skillful, learned, with a personal valor and such bravery that not even the marshals of Napoleon could rival. Scarcely had the victors, Gut
ıerrez and Perry, returned to San Antonio when it was learned that the Commander in Chief of the province, Joaqu
ın de Arredondo, was in Laredo on his way to San Antonio with more than 3,000 of the best troops of Mexico, united with the fugitives of the battles of Alazan who with the defeated Colonel Elizondo had joined them on the road. At this time, Gut
ıerrez, despite his victories, began to lose the confidence of his officers and soldiers. Either the barbarous and abnormal conduct of Gut
ıerrez towards the murdered Spaniards or the political tricks of Jos
e Alvarez de Toledo, a Spaniard who had been sent by the Cortes of Cadiz to the island of San Domingo, a liberal opposed to the rule of the King of Spain, who came from the state of Louisiana to dismiss Gut
ıerrez from office, all effected the feeling of the Republican officers and the army. But what is absolutely certain is that Gut
ıerrez’ influence diminished with the same rapidity as that with which he had triumphed in a thousand battles. Discouraged on seeing himself abandoned, Gut
ıerrez left Be[x]ar with some of his intimate friends for the United States. And a few days later, General Toledo took command of the army. Gut
ıerrez, in his proclamation of May 25, 1827, said that General Alvares de Toledo was only a hypocritical patriot of Mexican independence and that when he came to Texas to take command of the Republican troops, he was in secret correspondence with the King of Spain in an attempt to hinder the progress and the success of the patriots. As proof of his assertion it is said that some time after the year 1813, Alvares de Toledo had returned to Spain and he was not only received by Fernando VII, but he was even rewarded with the appointment of Ambassador to one of the European Courts. Whether this is true of not is the mystery hidden in the misty twilight of time long passed. There is further proof of Toledo’s having been a sincere patriot in 1813, after which he suffered the weakness of taking refuge in the amnesty and favor of the King. But if we may judge by reputation and appearances, we must confess that the assertions of Gut
ıerrez are confirmed by the epithets that his own countrymen have hurled in his face, ‘‘He was a politician without principles, an unlettered judge, an undisciplined soldier and cruel to the marrow.’’

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On the other hand, Toledo was apparently a young man of 32 years, of liberal principles, affluent in speech, pleasing personality, skillful, of gentle manly demeanor and very obsequious. With this multitude of fascinating qualities, he immediately captured the hearts and goodwill of the army and the inhabitants of San Antonio, and later, he became the commanding officer. Finally, General Arredondo became furious and impatient to pacify the minds of the people and to avenge the death of his countrymen, the Governors. On the 18th of August and not on the 13th, as it has been stated, Toledo opened battle at Medina. This general had 1,500 men including 600 American volunteers. Arredondo had 4,000 men. The battle was fought with great military skill on both sides. The American volunteers formed the regiment of infantry and the company of artillery was composed of nine cannon[s] from four to eight inches in caliber. The cavalry consisted of inhabitants of San Antonio and vicinity and of certain individuals from Tamaulipas and the Rio Grande. By a strategic movement Arredondo caused his army to raise a unanimous cry of Long live the King! Victory is ours! At the same time the band played their notes of victory, causing the cavalry of terrorized patriots to flee from the field. However, the phlegmatic America Infantry, and its artilleries sustained the deadly fire from the eighteen heavy-calibered cannon[s] of Arredondo for more than four hours. No one can overcome impossibilities, nor is it natural for one to combat a disproportionately large force. The America Infantry finally abandoned the artillery and hurriedly fled from the field of battle, breaking their files against the oak and mesquite trees, rather than leave them as trophies for the enemy and resolutely they gave themselves up to fate. Arredondo’s cavalry pursued them with saber in hand and lance prepared, inflicting terrible slaughter upon them for six long miles, and so perished the better part of those brave compatriots. On the following day, Arredondo entered the city triumphantly, with his carts laden with wounded and dying. At this point my hand trembles in recording the scenes of horror with which they spurred one of the bitterest enemies of Gut
ıerrez in requital for the previous atrocities of Gut
ıerrez. Arredondo avenged himself in the most infamous manner and without distinction, and he ordered the imprisonment of 700 of the most peaceful inhabitants of San Antonio. At the same time, he imprisoned 300 unfortunate people in the cells of the Catholic priests on the night of the 20th of August. They were crowded in like sheep in the fold in the hottest months of summer. On the morning of the following day, 18 of them had perished from suffocation. The remainder were placed before the firing squad from day to day for no more response than that they had been accused of being in favor of Independence. By a unexplicable [sic] coincidence, it appears that in San Antonio, in those same places where so many cruelties were committed, reserved for providence so that in happier times they might serve as lessons in devotion, justice, education and recreation, there today stands the courthouse, and facing Main Plaza is the balustrade of the hotel; the former is the sanctuary of the law, and the latter a lodging place that affords the most delicious food the gastronomist can possibly procure. In those times, daily executions took place and often the laments of the dying were heard where now stands the Post Office through which the inner thoughts are communicated in writing, and through which knowledge and policies are diffused through the community.

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Arredondo erected a large prison for women known as La Quinta. There, they suffered agony. More than 500 married and single women whose husbands and fathers were known as insurgents! For four months, an insolent guard compelled them to convert twenty-four bushels of corn into tortillas daily to feed the officers and soldiers of Arredondo. There, the modest and gentle wives and daughters were exposed to the insults of those depraved undisciplined troops and frequently they suffered the defiled and lewd gazes and endearing remarks of officers and soldiers who enjoyed that detestable and repugnant pastime. Juana Leal de Tar
ın and Concepci
on Leal de Garza, who then lived on their farms on the banks of the San Antonio River, were among those innocent and unfortunate prisoners of La Quinta. They endured their defaming captivity with a spirited courage before submitting to the shameful proposals of their jailers. After the battle of Medina, Col. Elizondo left San Antonio with 500 men in pursuit of the fugitives, who were on the road to the United States. At the Trinity River on the old road from San Antonio he overtook a body of men and families, and at that point 105 persons were shot. Perhaps I shall be excused of exaggerating in giving details of the manner in which those captives were condemned and executed on the Trinity. Elizondo had for a chaplain a despicable priest known as Padre Camacho and when some of the fugitive insurgents were captured, Elizondo brought them to the confessional and ordered the said clergyman to confess them according to the rites of the Catholic Church. Belief in Christianity and hope of eternity compelled those unfortunate men to confess without reserve the part they had taken in the revolution. Padre Camacho, in the conviction of these confessions, gave a prearranged signal to the officers of the guard so that they might lead the victims immediately to the place of execution. One other aggravating circumstance may fill the readers with horror. Padre Camacho by chance had been wounded by a spent bullet which broke the muscles of his leg at the battle of Alazan. More than once on the Trinity River, where some unfortunate condemned to death pleaded aloud for mercy, the priest, raising his clerical garments said to him, ‘‘Move on my son, and suffer the penalty in the name of God, because perhaps the bullet which wounded me may have come from your gun.’’ After these executions on the Trinity River, Elizondo took as prisoners all the broken families, many ladies, black eyed and beautiful. They were handcuffed and were compelled to cross the San Antonio River on foot at the very place which now is the pleasant bathing place of Mr. Hall, and Elizondo himself invited the weaker sex to bathe their delicate forms. Who could have foretold that the heads of the famous spies of Gen. Gut
ıerrez, Gulas, Botas Negras and Ayamontes, whom Arredondo had had executed in San Antonio, would be crated and placed on the sharp end of a pike at the very spot where now the American flag proudly waves on Military Plaza. Who could have foretold that thirty-three years later an emblem of terror feared by the tyrants, a flag respected by the world, would mark the place where their lifeless heads had been exhibited. After the independence of Mexico was gained, Gov. Trespalacios crossed the Medina River towards San Antonio and upon viewing the prairies sprinkled with human skeletons, he had them collected and buried with full military honors.

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I distinctly remember the following Inscription written on a square of wood which was on the trunk of an oak tree: Here lie the Mexican heroes who followed the example of Leonides Who sacrificed their wealth and lives Ceaselessly fighting against tyrants.

This is an imperfect but truthful history of the events of that period. San Antonio remained quiet and subjected to the dominion of the King of Spain after the arrival of Arredondo. He confiscated and sold the property of the patriots known as rebels who never recovered their goods, not even after the consummation of Mexico[’s] Independence in the year of 1821. The noble citizens of Bexar sacrificed their lives and property, performing prodigies of valor in the year 1813. They left to their descendants no other inheritance than the indifference and ingratitude of the Mexican Republic. They never received my recompense of indemnity, not even the due respect and gratitude of their fellow citizens of Mexico. Our courage and heroism were cast into complete oblivion by the government of an ancient and respected country. For that reason, I do not believe that anyone will be surprised that the germ of discontent which the people of Texas nurtured and for which reason they adhere to the new order of things that is offered to us by the institutions of a great, powerful, and growing Republic. Such is the source an opportunity for the Independence of Texas which State is separated from that Government forever. Maybe this condition will continue indefinitely. Source: The Memoirs of Jos
e Antonio Navarro: Historical Sketches about San Antonio de Bexar by an Eye-Witness, October 30, 1853. www.tamu.edu/ccbn/dewitt.htm.

24. Excerpts from Lorenzo de Zavala, Journey to the United States of North America, Early 1830s Lorenzo de Zavala (1788–1836), a native of M
erida, Yucat
an, was one of Mexico’s most active political leaders of the 1820s. He held a number of political and diplomatic posts. But he went into exile in the early 1830s after a fallout with the conservative ruling junta. Zavala traveled throughout the United States. He later deserted the Mexican side in Texas and served as vice-president of the Lone Star State (the Republic of Texas) These excerpts telling of his travels through the United States give a glimpse into the mentality of the nineteenth-century Mexican Liberal who wanted to privatize Mexico. He was enamored with the Euro-American experiment, and his writings show the biases and racism typical of his class. Zavala, at the time his book was written, was close to many Euro-American politicos, including the former disruptive U.S. Minister to Mexico from 1825–1829, Joel Poinsett (1779–1851), who became embroiled in the domestic affairs of Mexico offending officials by trying to purchase parts of the Mexican state in 1827.

The Mexican is easy going, lazy, intolerant, generous almost to prodigality, vain, belligerent, superstitious, ignorant and an enemy of all restraint. The North

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American works, the Mexican has a good time; the first spends less than he has, the second even that which he does not have; the former carries out the most arduous enterprises to their conclusion, the latter abandons them in the early stages; the one lives in his house, decorates it, furnishes it, preserves it against the inclement weather; the other spends his time in the street, flees from his home, and in a land where there are no seasons he worries little about a place to rest. In the United States all men are property owners and tend to increase their fortune; in Mexico the few who have anything are careless with it and fritter it away. As I say these things it must be understood that there are honorable exceptions, and that especially among educated people are to be found very commendable social and domestic virtues. There are also in the United States people who are prodigal, lazy, and despicable. But that is not the general rule. I seem to hear some of my fellow countrymen yelling: ‘‘How awful! See how that unworthy Mexican belittles and exposes us to the view of civilized peoples.’’ Just calm down, gentlemen, for others have already said that and much more about us and about our forefathers, the Spaniards. Do you not want it said? Then mend your ways. Get rid of those eighty-seven holidays during the year that you dedicate to play, drunkenness and pleasure. Save up capital for the decent support of yourselves and your families in order to give guarantees of your concern for the preservation of the social order. Tolerate the opinions of other people; be indulgent with those who do not think as you do; allow the people of your country to exercise freely their trade, whatever it may be, and to worship the supreme Author of the Universe in accordance with their own consciences. Repair your roads; raise up houses in order to live like rational beings; dress your children and your wives with decency, don’t incite riots in order to take what belongs to somebody else. And finally, live on the fruit of your labors, and then you will be worthy of liberty and of the praises of sensible and impartial men. The people of Mexico are my Maecenas, but I do not follow in the way of others who fill a page with the praises of those persons whose patronage they solicit. The advantage of those who write without expecting a reward is that they say what they feel, and they are believed and respected.… For a Mexican who has never left his country, or who has not done so in a long time, the first impression as he arrives at any point in the United States or England is that of seeing all classes of people dressed. They say that when the Emperor Alexander visited London in 1814, he said to those about him that he found no common people in that capital. What a pleasant spectacle to the eye of the beholder is that of a society that announces by its appearance of decorum and decency, the industry, the comforts and even the morality of a people! On the contrary, how unpleasant is the aspect of nudity and lack of cleanliness and what a sad idea a nation gives of the state of its civilization and of its morality when it is inhabited by such people! In a work on Spain that he published in Paris a certain M. Faurefour years ago put on the title page of the book an engraving of a student wearing a to[rn] cloak and other rags, with a staff in his hand, begging alms for the love of God. This alone gave an idea of the object which most attracted the attention of the French traveler in the Pyrenean Peninsula.… In my Historical Essay on the revolutions of Mexico I have set forth my opinions concerning that beautiful and rich portion of land known formerly as the province of Texas and today as an integral part of the State of Coahuila and Texas. Once the

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way was opened to colonization, as it should have been, under a system of free government, it was necessary that a new generation should appear within a few years and populate a part of the Mexican Republic, and consequently that this new population should be entirely heterogeneous with respect to the other provinces or states of the country. Fifteen or twenty thousand foreigners distributed over the vast areas of Mexico, Oaxaca, Veracruz, etc., scattered among the former inhabitants cannot cause any sudden change in their ways, manners and customs. Rather they adopt the tendencies, manners, language, religion, politics and even the vices of the multitude that surrounds them. An Englishman will be a Mexican in Mexico City, and a Mexican an Englishman in London. The same thing will not happen with colonies. Completely empty woods and lands, uninhabited a dozen years ago, converted into villages and towns suddenly by Germans, Irish, and North Americans, must of necessity form an entirely different nation, and it would be absurd to try to get them to renounce their religion, their customs and their deepest convictions. What will be the result? I have stated it many times. They will not be able to subject themselves to a military regime and an ecclesiastical government such as unfortunately have continued in Mexican territory in spite of the republican-democratic constitutions. They will point out the institutions that should govern the country, and they will want it not to be a deceit, an illusion, but a reality. When a military leader tries to intervene in civil transactions, they will resist, and they will triumph. They will organize popular assemblies to deal with political matters as is done in the United States and in England. They will build chapels for different faiths to worship the Creator according to their beliefs. Religious practices are a social necessity, one of the great consolations for the ills of humanity. Will the government of Mexico send a legion of soldiers to Texas to enforce Article 3 of the Mexican constitution which prohibits the exercise of any other faith than the Catholic?… In the city of New York there are a considerable number of blacks and colored people, although as in the other states to the north of Maryland slavery is not permitted. But in spite of this emancipation of the African class and its descendants, it is excluded from all political rights, and even from the common trade with the others, living to a certain degree as though excommunicated. This situation is not very natural in a country where they profess the principles of the widest liberty. Nothing, however, can overcome the concern that exists with respect to this particular subject. The colored people have their separate homes, hotels, and churches; they are the Jews of North America. This rejection by society degrades them and takes from them the incentive to work; they resign themselves to idleness and do not try to improve a hopeless situation, circumscribed within limits so narrow that there is scarcely room to calculate self-interest. Hence the vices and laziness which with very few exceptions holds this whole class down to the lowest ranks of society. This is the great argument against the emancipation of the slaves, an argument that discourages its most ardent supporters and that would make their efforts useless if the abolition of slavery were not demanded by a necessity that within a short time will admit no further delay.… In 1830 I visited the widow of Senor Don Agust
ın de Iturbide in Georgetown near Washington, where she was living and looking after the education of her children. In 1834 I had the pleasure of seeing this respectable Mexican family for a second time in Philadelphia, after the president of the Mexican republic, General

Going West, 1820 1840s 51

Santa Anna, had lifted the banishment which condemned her to live outside her own country, although with a good pension. Senora Iturbide had achieved in good part the fruits of her endeavors; her older daughters, receiving an education according to the culture of the country, have followed the wishes of their teachers and have augmented the charms of their sex with the advantages of the mind and with the physical perfection of a material education. Source: Lorenzo de Zavala, Journey to the United States of North America. Houston: Arte Publico C 2005, pp. 2 3, 50, 79, 90, 107. Wallace Woolsey, trans. JohnPress, University of Houston
Michael Rivera, ed. Reprinted with permission of the publisher. (Originally published as Merida de Yucatan: Imprenta de Castillo y Compa~ n
ıa, 1846.)

25. Texas Declaration of Independence, March 2, 1836 The political climate in Texas deteriorated and, by 1831, Euro-Americans from the United States flooded into Texas ready to ‘‘free’’ it from Mexico. There were hostilities after this point and by the mid-1830s uprising was in the making. Meanwhile, Antonio L
opez de Santa Anna (1794–1876) marched troops to Texas in order to secure Mexico’s north Texas borders. Santa Anna arrived in February and by March 1, 1836, Euro-Americans supported by a minority of Mexican elites held a convention appointing a committee of five delegates to draft a Declaration of Independence that was voted on and passed by the delegates. Like the 1776 U.S. Declaration of Independence it stated the function and responsibility of government encased by a list of grievances. Thus, Texas was declared a free and independent republic.

The Unanimous Declaration of Independence made by the Delegates of the People of Texas in General Convention at the town of Washington on the 2nd day of March 1836. When a government has ceased to protect the lives, liberty and property of the people, from whom its legitimate powers are derived, and for the advancement of whose happiness it was instituted, and so far from being a guarantee for the enjoyment of those inestimable and inalienable rights, becomes an instrument in the hands of evil rulers for their oppression. When the Federal Republican Constitution of their country, which they have sworn to support, no longer has a substantial existence, and the whole nature of their government has been forcibly changed, without their consent, from a restricted federative republic, composed of sovereign states, to a consolidated central military despotism, in which every interest is disregarded but that of the army and the priesthood, both the eternal enemies of civil liberty, the everready minions of power, and the usual instruments of tyrants. When, long after the spirit of the constitution has departed, moderation is at length so far lost by those in power, that even the semblance of freedom is removed, and the forms themselves of the constitution discontinued, and so far from their petitions and remonstrances being regarded, the agents who bear them are thrown into dungeons, and mercenary armies sent forth to force a new government upon them at the point of the bayonet. When, in consequence of such acts of malfeasance and abdication on the part of the government, anarchy prevails, and civil society is dissolved into its original

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elements. In such a crisis, the first law of nature, the right of self-preservation, the inherent and inalienable rights of the people to appeal to first principles, and take their political affairs into their own hands in extreme cases, enjoins it as a right towards themselves, and a sacred obligation to their posterity, to abolish such government, and create another in its stead, calculated to rescue them from impending dangers, and to secure their future welfare and happiness. Nations, as well as individuals, are amenable for their acts to the public opinion of mankind. A statement of a part of our grievances is therefore submitted to an impartial world, in justification of the hazardous but unavoidable step now taken, of severing our political connection with the Mexican people, and assuming an independent attitude among the nations of the earth. The Mexican government, by its colonization laws, invited and induced the Anglo-American population of Texas to colonize its wilderness under the pledged faith of a written constitution, that they should continue to enjoy that constitutional liberty and republican government to which they had been habituated in the land of their birth, the United States of America. In this expectation they have been cruelly disappointed, inasmuch as the Mexican nation has acquiesced in the late changes made in the government by General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, who having overturned the constitution of his country, now offers us the cruel alternative, either to abandon our homes, acquired by so many privations, or submit to the most intolerable of all tyranny, the combined despotism of the sword and the priesthood. It has sacrificed our welfare to the state of Coahuila, by which our interests have been continually depressed through a jealous and partial course of legislation, carried on at a far distant seat of government, by a hostile majority, in an unknown tongue, and this too, notwithstanding we have petitioned in the humblest terms for the establishment of a separate state government, and have, in accordance with the provisions of the national constitution, presented to the general Congress a republican constitution, which was, without just cause, contemptuously rejected. It incarcerated in a dungeon, for a long time, one of our citizens, for no other cause but a zealous endeavor to procure the acceptance of our constitution, and the establishment of a state government. It has failed and refused to secure, on a firm basis, the right of trial by jury, that palladium of civil liberty, and only safe guarantee for the life, liberty, and property of the citizen. It has failed to establish any public system of education, although possessed of almost boundless resources, (the public domain) and although it is an axiom in political science, that unless a people are educated and enlightened, it is idle to expect the continuance of civil liberty, or the capacity for self government. It has suffered the military commandants, stationed among us, to exercise arbitrary acts of oppression and tyrrany [sic], thus trampling upon the most sacred rights of the citizens, and rendering the military superior to the civil power. It has dissolved, by force of arms, the state Congress of Coahuila and Texas, and obliged our representatives to fly for their lives from the seat of government, thus depriving us of the fundamental political right of representation. It has demanded the surrender of a number of our citizens, and ordered military detachments to seize and carry them into the Interior for trial, in contempt of the civil authorities, and in defiance of the laws and the constitution.

Going West, 1820 1840s 53

It has made piratical attacks upon our commerce, by commissioning foreign desperadoes, and authorizing them to seize our vessels, and convey the property of our citizens to far distant ports for confiscation. It denies us the right of worshipping the Almighty according to the dictates of our own conscience, by the support of a national religion, calculated to promote the temporal interest of its human functionaries, rather than the glory of the true and living God. It has demanded us to deliver up our arms, which are essential to our defence, the rightful property of freemen, and formidable only to tyrannical governments. It has invaded our country both by sea and by land, with intent to lay waste our territory, and drive us from our homes; and has now a large mercenary army advancing, to carry on against us a war of extermination. It has, through its emissaries, incited the merciless savage, with the tomahawk and scalping knife, to massacre the inhabitants of our defenseless frontiers. It hath been, during the whole time of our connection with it, the contemptible sport and victim of successive military revolutions, and hath continually exhibited every characteristic of a weak, corrupt, and tyrranical [sic] government. These, and other grievances, were patiently borne by the people of Texas, untill [sic] they reached that point at which forbearance ceases to be a virtue. We then took up arms in defence of the national constitution. We appealed to our Mexican brethren for assistance. Our appeal has been made in vain. Though months have elapsed, no sympathetic response has yet been heard from the Interior. We are, therefore, forced to the melancholy conclusion, that the Mexican people have acquiesced in the destruction of their liberty, and the substitution therefor of a military government; that they are unfit to be free, and incapable of self government. The necessity of self-preservation, therefore, now decrees our eternal political separation. We, therefore, the delegates with plenary powers of the people of Texas, in solemn convention assembled, appealing to a candid world for the necessities of our condition, do hereby resolve and declare, that our political connection with the Mexican nation has forever ended, and that the people of Texas do now constitute a free, Sovereign, and independent republic, and are fully invested with all the rights and attributes which properly belong to independent nations; and, conscious of the rectitude of our intentions, we fearlessly and confidently commit the issue to the decision of the Supreme arbiter of the destinies of nations. Richard Ellis, President of the Convention and Delegate from Red River, et al. Source: Courtesy of the Avalon Project at Yale Law School, http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/ texdec.htm.

26. Excerpts from the Address of the Honorable S. F. Austin, Louisville, Kentucky, March 7, 1836 Stephen Austin (1793–1836) led Euro-Americans in Texas from 1821 to 1836. He actively sought money and military support from Euro-Americans in the United States for the uprising. In this speech to supporters in Louisville, Kentucky, Austin paints Texas as an uncivilized place until the coming of EuroAmericans, who, according to him, were invited into Texas. Outside support

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of volunteers and arms was vital to the success of the insurrection, and many of the early volunteers came from Kentucky and neighboring southern states.

It is with the most unfeigned and heartfelt gratitude that I appear before this enlightened audience, to thank the citizens of Louisville, as I do in the name of the people of Texas, for the kind and generous sympathy they have manifested in favor of the cause of that struggling country; and to make a plain statement of facts explanatory of the contest in which Texas is engaged with the Mexican Government. But a few years back Texas was a wilderness, the home of the uncivilized and wandering Comanche and other tribes of Indians, who waged a constant warfare against the Spanish settlements. These settlements at that time were limited to the small towns of Bexar (commonly called San Antonio) and Goliad, situated on the western limits. The incursions of the Indians also extended beyond the Rio Bravo del Norte, and desolated that part of the country. In order to restrain these savages and bring them into subjection, the government opened Texas for settlement. Foreign emigrants were invited and called to that country. American enterprise accepted the invitation and promptly responded to the call. The first colony of Americans or foreigners ever settled in Texas was by myself. It was commenced in 1821, under a permission to my father, Moses Austin, from the Spanish government previous to the Independence of Mexico, and has succeeded by surmounting those difficulties and dangers incident to all new and wilderness countries infested with hostile Indians. These difficulties were many and at times appalling, and can only be appreciated by the hardy pioneers of this western country, who have passed through similar scenes.… The fact is, we had such guaranteed; for, in the first place the government bound itself to protect us by the mere act of admitting us as citizens, on the general and long established principle, even in the dark ages, that protection and allegiance are reciprocal a principle which in this enlightened age has been extended much further; for its received interpretation now is, that the object of government is the well being, security, and happiness of the governed, and that allegiance ceases whenever it is clear, evident, and palpable, that this object is in no respect effected.… In 1833, the people of Texas, after a full examination of their population and resources, and of the law and constitution, decided, in general convention elected for that purpose, that the period had arrived contemplated by said law and compact of 7th May, 1824, and that the country possessed the necessary elements to form a state separate from Coahuila. A respectful and humble petition was accordingly drawn up by this convention, addressed to the general congress of Mexico, praying for the admission of Texas into the Mexican confederation as a state. I had the honor of being appointed by the convention the commissioner or agent of Texas to take this petition to the city of Mexico, and present it to the government. I discharged this duty to the best of my feeble abilities, and, as I believed, in a respectful manner. Many months passed and nothing was done with the petition, except to refer it to a committee of congress, where it slept and was likely to sleep. I finally urged the just and constitutional claims of Texas to become a state in the most pressing manner, as I believed it to be my duty to do; representing also the necessity and good policy of this measure, owning to the almost total want of local government of any kind, the absolute want of a judiciary, the evident impossibility of being governed any longer by Coahuila (for three fourths of the legislature were from

Going West, 1820 1840s 55

there) and the consequent anarchy and discontent that existed in Texas. It was my misfortune to offend the high authorities of the nation my frank and honest exposition of the truth was construed into threats. At this time (September and October, 1833) a revolution was raging in many parts of the nation, and especially in the vicinity of the city of Mexico. I despaired of obtaining anything, and wrote to Texas, recommending to the people there to organize as a state de facto without waiting any longer. This letter may have been imprudent, as respects the injury it might do me personally, but how far it was criminal or treasonable, considering the revolutionary state of the whole nation, and the peculiar claims and necessities of Texas, impartial men must decide. It merely expressed an opinion. This letter found its way from San Antonio de Bexar (where it was directed) to the government. I was arrested at Saltillo, two hundred leagues from Mexico, on my way home, taken back to that city and imprisoned one year, three months of the time in solitary confinement, without books or writing materials, in a dark dungeon of the former inquisition prison. At the close of the year I was released from confinement, but detained six months in the city on heavy ball [surveillance]. It was nine months after my arrest before I was officially informed of the charges against me, or furnished with a copy of them. The constitutional requisites were not observed, my constitutional rights as a citizen were violated, the people of Texas were outraged by this treatment of their commissioner, and their respectful, humble and just petition was disregarded. These acts of the Mexican government, taken in connexion [sic] with many others and with the general revolutionary situation of the interior of the republic, and the absolute want of local government in Texas, would have justified the people of Texas in organizing themselves as a State of the Mexican confederation, and if attacked for so doing in separating from Mexico. They would have been justifiable in doing this, because such acts were unjust, ruinous and oppressive, and because self-preservation required a local government in Texas suited to the situation and necessities of the country, and the character of its inhabitants. Our forefathers in ’76 flew to arms for much less. They resisted a principle, ‘‘the theory of oppression,’’ but in our case it was the reality it was a denial of justice and of our guarantied [sic] rights it was oppression itself.… In 1834, the President of the Republic, Gen. Santa Anna, who heretofore was the leader and champion of the republican party and system, became the head and leader of his former antagonists the aristocratic and church party. With this accession of strength, this party triumphed. The constitutional general Congress of 1834, which was decidedly republican and federal, was dissolved in May of that year by a military order of the President before its constitutional term had expired. The council of government composed of half the Senate which, agreeably to the constitution, ought to have been installed the day after closing the session of Congress, was also dissolved; and a new, revolutionary, and unconstitutional Congress was convened by another military order of the President. This Congress met on the 1st of January, 1835. It was decidedly aristocratic, ecclesiastical and central in its politics. A number of petitions were presented to it from several towns and villages, praying that it would change the federal form of government and establish a central form. These petitions were all of a revolutionary character, and were called ‘‘pronunciamientos,’’ or prenouncements for centralism. They were formed by partial and revolutionary meetings gotten up by the military and priests. Petitions in favour of the federal

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system and constitution, and protests against such revolutionary measures, were also sent in by the people and by some of the State Legislatures, who still retained firmness to express their opinions.… The emancipation of Texas will extend the principles of self-government, over a rich and neighbouring country, and open a vast field there for enterprise, wealth, and happiness, and for those who wish to escape from the frozen blasts of a northern climate, by removing to a more congenial one. It will promote and accelerate the march of the present age, for it will open a door through which a bright and constant stream of light and intelligence will flow from this great northern fountain over the benighted regions of Mexico. Source: Courtesy of The Avalon Project, http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/texind01.htm.

27. Excerpt from Jos
e Mar
ıa Salom
e Rodr
ıguez, The Memoirs of Early Texas, 1913 Jos
e Mar
ıa Salom
e Rodr
ıguez, a member of the Mexican elite, wrote his memoirs shortly before his death on February 22, 1913. Born in San Antonio on October 29, 1829, his father, Ambrosio Rodriguez, fought on the filibusters’ side. J. M. Rodr
ıguez was judge of Webb County for 35 years. His family supported Texas breaking away from Mexico, and belonged to the landed elite that considered themselves natives. Mexicans sided with or opposed the EuroAmericans along class lines, with those with land seeing the benefits of becoming part of the United States. In this excerpt, Rodr
ıguez recalls what had been told to him about the Alamo and the Texas War and its immediate aftermath.

BATTLE OF BEXAR AND THE ALAMO My earliest recollection is when I was a boy about six years old. One evening I was coming with my father and mother up Soledad Street, where the Kampmann Building is now, and as we got a little further [sic] up the street, we were stopped by a sentry and there were other soldiers there and we saw some breastworks there. General Cos, the Mexican general, my father told me, was in possession of the town. We went a little further down where the present corner of Travis and Soledad Street is. We crossed a ditch on a plank and went up Soledad Street to see my uncle, Jose Olivarri. I heard a great deal of shooting towards the Plaza and my father said that General Burleson of the Texas Army was trying to capture the city. The next day General Cos capitulated and was allowed to take his arms and leave the city. Ben Milam was killed at the Veramendi House. The arms the Mexicans had were old English muskets that did not reach much over fifty yards. The Texas army used long range flint rifles. Shortly after that, Colonel [William Barrett] Travis was put in command with a small garrison and he stayed at the Alamo. Colonel Travis was a fine looking man of more than ordinary height. I recollect him distinctly from the very fact that he used to come up to our house from the Alamo and talk to my father and mother a great deal, Our house was the first one after you crossed the river coming from the Alamo and Colonel Travis generally stopped at our home going and coming. He was a very popular man and was well liked by everyone. My father was always in sympathy with the Texas cause, but had so far not taken up arms on either side.

Going West, 1820 1840s 57

Soon after this, a report came to my father from a reliable source that Santa Ana [sic] was starting for San Antonio with 7,000 men, composed of cavalry, infantry and artillery, in fact a well organized army. My father sent for Colonel Travis and he came to our house and my father told him about this coming of Santa Ana and advised him to retire into the interior of Texas and abandon the Alamo. He told him he could not resist Santa Ana’s army with such a small force. Colonel Travis told my father that he could not believe it, because General Cos had only been defeated less than three months, and it did not seem possible to him that General Santa Ana could organize in so short a time as large an army as that. Colonel Travis, therefore, remained at the Alamo, and at the last, Travis told my father, ‘‘Well we have made up our minds to die at the Alamo fighting for Texas.’’ My father asked him again to retire as General Sam Houston was then in the interior of Texas organizing an army. The Mexicans in San Antonio who were in sympathy with the war of Independence organized a company under Colonel Juan Seguin. There were twenty-four in the company including my father and they joined the command of General Sam Houston. My mother and all of us remained in the city. One morning early a man named Rivas called at our house and told us that he had seen Santa Ana in disguise the night before looking in on a fandango on Soledad Street. My father being away with General Houston’s army, my mother undertook to act for us, and decided it was best for us to go into the country to avoid being here when General Santa Ana’s army should come in. We went to the ranch of Dona Santos Ximenes. We left in ox carts, the wheels of which were made of solid wood. We buried our money in the house, about $800.00; it took us nearly two days to get to the ranch. A few days after that, one morning about daybreak, I heard some firing, and Pablo Olivarri, who was with us woke me up. He said, ‘‘You had better get up on the house; they are fighting at the Alamo.’’ We got up on the house and could see the flash of the guns and hear the booming of the cannon. The firing lasted about two hours. The next day we heard that all the Texans had been killed and the Alamo taken. A few days after that, an army consisting of about 1,200 men under General Urrea came by from San Antonio on their way to Goliad to attack Fannin. I saw these troops as they passed the ranch. There has been a great deal of discussion with reference to what had been done with the bodies of the Texans who were slain in the Alamo. It is claimed that Colonel Seguin wrote a letter in which he stated that he got together the ashes in the following February and put them in an iron urn and buried them in San Fernando Cathedral. This does not seem possible to me; because nothing of that kind could have happened without us knowing that and we never heard of any occurrence of that kind. Seguin did not return from Houston’s army until my father did, both of them being in the same command, my father a first Lieutenant and he a Colonel. It is true that the bones were brought together somewhere in the neighborhood or a little east of where the Menger Hotel is now and were buried by Colonel Seguin, but that any of them were ever buried in the Cathedral, I have never heard nor do I believe that to be true. The only person I know of being buried in the Cathedral was Don Eugenio Navarro, who was buried near the south wall of the Cathedral near the chancel. Some days after the Urrea army passed, we heard of the massacre of Fannin’s army at Goliad. My mother, along with other loyal families, determined then to

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move to East Texas, and we started with all our goods and chattels in ox-carts. The Flores and Seguin families were among those who went with us. Most of us traveled in the carts. Horses were very scarce, the army taking nearly all they could find. We had gotten as far as the Trinity River on the road to Nacogdoches where we heard of Santa Ana being defeated and all returned to San Antonio, except our family, who went on to Washington, which was the Texas capital, as my father was still in the field with Houston’s troops. THE BATTLE OF SAN JACINTO The company which my father [Ambrosio Rodr
ıquez] joined belonged to General Sam Houston’s forces and were attached to General Houston’s staff. My father and General Houston became very warm friends, which friendship lasted until my father’s death, and continued with our family until Houston died. My father often told us the story of the Battle of San Jacinto. He told us that General Santa Ana picked out 1,200 of his best men from his army and crossed the Brazos in pursuit of Houston under the impression that Houston was retreating toward Louisiana, and his main army of about 5,000 men or more remained on this side of the river under General Filisola. Houston discovered all these movements of Santa Ana, and he told his men that he was preparing to fight Santa Ana’s advance army. Santa Ana came up within only a few miles of Houston’s camp. One evening Houston sent out a scouting party consisting of my father and others, to reconnoiter. They ran into Santa Ana’s scouts and had a little brush. Santa Ana’s men had a small cannon, and a cannon ball passed so close to my father’s eyes that he was blinded for three or four hours. The next day about two o’clock, General Houston went around and talked to all of his men in camp and he told them, that now was the best time to fight Santa Ana and asked them would they do so, and they all agreed to it enthusiastically. Houston had about 600 men, all cavalry. The next day he prepared for the attack, and my father’s company was placed on the left hand of Houston, and he told them that when they got in certain distance to lay down and drag themselves on the ground until they got in rifle shot of Santa Ana’s men, who were taking a siesta. As soon as they got in range they let loose a volley into Santa Ana’s men. After they had fired, they were afraid to stand up again and load. One of the company, a man named Manuel Flores, got up to load his gun and said, ‘‘Get up you cowards, Santa Ana’s men are running.’’ Then they got up, loaded their guns and commenced firing again. Santa Ana’s men kept on running from the first volley and General Lamar coming up stopped the shooting, and took about six hundred prisoners. Santa Ana’s horse was shot about six times. The horse was brought to General Houston and died. General Houston was slightly wounded in the leg. A day or two after the battle, two of Houston’s men went out from the camp to kill some game, and when a few miles from camp, they found a man sitting in an old log house, and they took him prisoner. As soon as they arrested him, one of the men said to him, ‘‘Look here, you are Santa Ana.’’ The man denied this and made signs with his hands that he was a clerk; he was a scribe. The men said that as he wore a fine shirt, he could not be a common soldier because the common soldiers did not wear such shirts. They started with him for Houston’s camp, but he only

Going West, 1820 1840s 59

walked a few steps and then complained that he could not walk, so one of the men gave him his horse and kept asking him if he were not Santa Ana. One of the men thought he was Santa Ana and the others did not. Soldiers did not wear shirts trimmed with lace, so that surely must be Santa Ana. He put the man on the horse and led him. When they got near the camp with their prisoner, the Mexican prisoners in the Texas camp began to cry, ‘‘Santa Arina [sic], Santa Ana.’’ They took him into camp and as soon as they came to General Houston, Santa Ana said, ‘‘General Houston, I am General Santa Ana, your prisoner of war.’’ General Houston said ‘‘What can I do for you?’’ He answered ‘‘Give me something to eat, for I am hungry.’’ Then General Houston said to my father, ‘‘Rodr
ıquez, you and Menchaca cook a fine Mexican dinner for General Santa Ana.’’ There was not much to cook, but they made tortillas of flour and gave him the best they had in camp. As soon as he had eaten dinner, General Houston asked him, ‘‘Why did you put to the sword every man in the Alamo,’’ to which Santa Ana replied, that according to the rules of war when a superior force demanded unconditional surrender of inferior forces, if not obeyed, they forfeited their lives. General Houston told him that such was a barbarous custom and should not be practiced in these days. Then General Houston asked Santa Ana why all of Fannin’s men were massacred. Santa Ana said that he had nothing to do with that; that he was not responsible. General [Jos
e Mar
ıa] Urrea was in full command at Goliad. General Houston asked Santa Ana then to issue an order commanding General Filisola to retire across the Rio Grande. To this, Santa Ana replied that he was not in command of the Mexican army then, he was a prisoner of war and that General Filisola was the commander and was not bound to obey his orders. General Houston told him to issue the order anyway, and if not obeyed that he, Santa Ana, would not be to blame. He gave the order and General Filisola obeyed and retired. This greatly helped the Texas cause. General Santa Ana said he wanted to make arrangements for his liberty. General Houston replied, ‘‘I have no authority to make such arrangements. We have a Congress and a Provisional Government. We will have to submit that question to them.’’ I omitted to state that Santa Ana, after he had come into the camp and had eaten, inquired if his aid General Almonte was alive and was told that he was alive and he sent for Almonte, who was a good English scholar and who thereafter acted as interpreter. Santa Ana asked for his baggage and it was brought to him. He took out a gold watch and offered it to the soldier who loaned him his horse. General Houston said, ‘‘My men cannot take presents.’’ Then they had a long conversation about his liberty, and this conversation between General Houston and General Santa Ana was in my father’s presence. My father said that while Santa Ana was in the camp with Houston, some of the men of his army attempted to create a mutiny and demanded that Santa Ana be executed because of the massacre of Fannin’s men and the Alamo. General Houston, being wounded, was lying down at the time and he rose up and made a speech to the men. ‘‘If we keep Santa Ana alive,’’ said he, ‘‘We have the liberty of Texas in our hands; if we kill him, we will have the contempt and the odium of the entire world and will lose our war. If you kill him, you might as well kill me.’’ They talked it over and finally agreed to drop the matter. My father was a witness to all of this. A peculiar circumstance of the battle of San Jacinto is that my father’s kinsman, Mariano Rodr
ıquez also took part in that battle, but he was on Santa Ana’s staff as

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Captain and paymaster, and he retired to Mexico with the Mexican army and did not return until after the Mexican War was over in 1849. The Mexican troops, having departed from Texas altogether, the Texans then organized their government, but a great portion of the army remained in the field, expecting the return of the troops from Mexico. About eight months after the battle of San Jacinto, the company in which my father served was mustered out and he was honorably discharged. While he was still in the army, a brother of my mother’s came to Washington and brought us back to San Antonio, and my father after leaving the army returned to San Antonio and went to merchandising. Two or three days after we got to San Antonio, I went to the Alamo and saw the blood on the walls. AFTER THE WAR Colonel [Seguin] was then appointed mayor of San Antonio and had charge of the town as to both military and civil affairs. A great many of the Mexicans who were in sympathy with the Mexican Government had fled to Mexico, and others who had been loyal to the Texas cause, returned and helped to establish the civil government. J. D. McLeod was the first Chief Justice and Jose Antonio Navarro represented Bexar County in the first Congress. My father opened a store next to our residence on Commerce Street. Then came the Vasquez raid at which time I was at the ranch with my father, near Seguin. General Vasquez made his raid in 1841 but only remained here a short time. There was no fighting and he finally left. I am not familiar with the details of that raid. GENERAL WOLL’S INVASION In 1842, a report came into San Antonio that a band of robbers from Mexico was coming to rob San Antonio. The people then got together and organized two companies of citizens. My father belonged to the company with Capt. Menchaca and they had their quarters in the old court house on the corner of Market and Main Plaza. On the corner of Soledad and Main Plaza, an American named Chauncy Johnson had a company of forty men, all Americans, and they composed the divisions to fight against these robbers. As soon as they organized, they sent three Mexicans with an escort to meet this band. They met them and it turned out to be the regular army of Mexico, instead of robbers, and they kept them prisoners. One morning, just before daybreak, I heard a gun fired, and woke up and I heard a band of music, playing an old air called La Cachucha. It was the dancing tune in those days. It was very fine music. It was a band of fifty musicians. The firing of the gun was the warning to the citizens that the army was here. As this was the regular army of Mexico, Menchaca’s company agreed that they could not stand up against a whole army and withdrew to a safe distance. Chauncy Johnson, however, said his company should not disband, but would fight it out. The army then marched into town. The band was in the lead coming into Main Plaza between the Cathedral and what is now Frost’s Bank. Then Johnson’s men turned loose a volley on the band and killed and wounded fifteen or twenty musicians. This angered General Woll, and he placed a small cannon where the Southern Hotel now stands and fired on

Going West, 1820 1840s 61

Johnson’s men. Johnson then raised a white flag and the Mexicans took them all prisoners and they finally were sent back to Mexico. General Woll had a fine ball given in his honor by the citizens. After the ball, a report came in that Colonel Hays was camped on the Salado preparing to attack Woll. General Woll sent a portion of his men out to the Salado to attack Col. Hays; They fought one day and night but could not dislodge Hays and the next day they retreated towards the Rio Grande. Antonio Perez, the father of the present Antonio Perez now living at San Antonio, who was with General Woll, came at night to our house and told us the army was going to retire into Mexico. While the battle was going on at the Salado, Woll sent a company of cavalry and attacked and killed Dawson’s men, who were coming from Seguin to reinforce Hays. They killed and butchered nearly all of them. After Woll’s raid, General Somerville organized a force, and disobeying the orders of General Sam Houston went into Mexico and was defeated at Mier, and all were taken prisoners. Those prisoners were taken into the interior of Mexico, and one of them related to me the whole circumstance. His name was Glascock. He said that they had orders to kill one out of every ten. They filled a pitcher with black and white beans, then the men were formed into line and each man would run his hand into the pitcher and take a bean. Glascock said that when he went up to the pitcher to take his bean out that he was shivering. He ran his hand into the pitcher and got a white bean and was saved. Glascock afterwards started the first English newspaper in San Antonio. TEXAS AS A STATE In 1845, the Republic of Texas was annexed to the United States as a state and thus passed away the Republic of Texas. I was sent to New Orleans in 1842, where I attended the French schools for two years. While there, I heard that Henry Clay was a candidate for President. He was opposed to the Annexation of Texas to the Union, but he was a weak candidate and was defeated and Polk was elected on the democratic platform, which favored annexation. After Polk’s election, followed the annexation of Texas as a state. Then came the war with Mexico. The United States troops came, a regiment of cavalry and camped on the Salado. They were here for a time and afterwards went into Mexico. After I returned from New Orleans, I went to work in my father’s store. The Mexican War, of course settled the status of this government and it then became the same as any other state of the Union and the people became interested in the politics of the United States, of which the leading issue was slavery. In this particular section of the state, there were not many slaves, because Mexican people as a rule do not believe in slavery. My family owned some slaves, but we worked them as other servants and treated them kindly. I became interested in local politics in 1854 and was elected alderman. My father had been an alderman also, during the term Colonel Seguin was Mayor of San Antonio. Afterwards I was elected assessor and tax collector and served in these offices for two years. The secession question then came to be a burning issue. General Houston was a candidate for Governor on the Union issue and Runnels was his opponent. General Houston made an eloquent speech at San Pedro Park on the Union issue against secession; he was speaking from a small platform erected by the democrats. In his speech, he alluded to the democratic platform and said that he did not

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believe in platforms. He was a very fine orator, and during his speech he ridiculed the democratic platform and called out, ‘‘Platforms will not stand.’’ Just at that moment the platform upon which he was standing fell, and General Houston went through. He continued his speech, although the people could only see his head and shoulders above the fallen stand, and said, ‘‘Ladies and Gentlemen, you see the democratic platform will not stand.’’ He carried Bexar County by a great majority and was elected Governor by 10,000 or more votes. I saw him inaugurated and carried my sister Carolina with me to attend the inaugural ball, and General Sam Houston did us the honor to invite my sister to lead the grand march at the Inaugural ball. He was a steadfast friend of our family and had a great affection for my father. Shortly after that, the secession convention was called and I attended it as interpreter for Colonel Basilio Benavides, representative from Webb County. Sam Smith and Jose Angel Navarro represented Bexar County. After the secession was declared and established, Houston refused to accept it by taking an oath and he was removed from office. His place was taken by Lieutenant Governor Clark. After Houston was relieved from office he went out on the capitol grounds, and before a large crowd, among whom was about 500 of McCullough’s men, delivered a most magnificent address. Among other things he said, ‘‘You Southern people stand to-day as traitors to your country and your flag and you will regret the day that you made such a move because the United States is a powerful nation and they will get reinforcement from Europe. You will not be recognized as a nation by the world, and have no standing whatever, and it will not be long before you will be paying five dollars a pound for your coffee.’’ This later came true. ‘‘You will put up a good fight and then have to surrender. You have no more right to secede than a county has from a state, you are revolutionists, and as I stand here to-day, although I am ready to risk my life for Texas, I hate to see the Texans lose their lives and property.’’ In the meantime there were shouts from those who opposed him, and some people would no longer listen to his speech. He retired to his home, but the war went on, and everything he predicted came to pass.… Source: Courtesy of Sons of DeWitt Colony Texas, http://www.tamu.edu/ccbn/dewitt/ rodmemoirs.htm.

28. Excerpt from the Memoirs of Antonio Menchaca Antonio Menchaca (1800–1879), a former Mexican army officer, fought on the Euro-American side in the Texas War of Independence (1836). Menchaca was close to Juan Segu
ın (1806–1890) and fought in the battle of San Jacinto (1836). His memoirs were published by the Yanaguana Society of San Antonio, Texas, which attempted to preserve the history of San Antonio and South Texas. This excerpt is about the events leading up to the Texas Declaration of Independence. It is important because it gives a glimpse of key players such as James Bowie (1796–1836) from Kentucky, the ambitious slave trader and land speculator who had been active in filibustering since 1819. Bowie permanently entered Texas in 1830 where he was befriended by Jos
e Martin de Varamend
ı (1778–1833), whose daughter Bowie married. Varamend
ı later became governor of Texas and Coahuila; he was pro-Euro-American. Tensions reached a boiling point with the beginning of the decade when Mexico decreed that Euro-Americans could no longer immigrate to Texas. Recently

Going West, 1820 1840s 63

arrived adventurers like Bowie fanned the flames. In 1832, the Battle of Velasco resulted in deaths; conventions were held in 1832 and 1833. Hostilities did not occur spontaneously.

I was born in 1800. Was baptized in the church of San Fernando de Austria [San Fernando de Bexar] on the 12 Jan. same year; was raised in San F. de A. up to the year 1807.… In 1830, in March, James P. Bowie, of Kentucky, came to San Antonio, in company with Gov. [William H.] Wharton. From here, Bowie went to Saltillo. In the same year, J. M. [Juan Mart
ın] Veramendi was appointed Lt. Gov., and started for Mexico to qualify. There, Bowie and him met and became friends. Veramendi came back with his family and Bowie accompanied him. Bowie and Ursula Veramendi became engaged … and Bowie, not having what he considered enough to justify him in marrying, asked Veramendi to give him time to go to Kentucky and get funds, and he would then marry his daughter. Veramendi granted the request. Bowie went and returned in the month of March 1831, and married; remained three months here, then left for the interior of Texas to recruit forces for the war [with Mexico]. Returned in 1832, went to look for the S. Saba mines; returned remained here four months; again went to look for mines. While Bowie was on this second trip, news reached here that [Jos
e Mar
ıa de] Letona, the Governor of Mexico, had died. Veramendi had to go to Mexico to take charge of government. While Bowie was on the Colorado, he received a command from San Felipe, directed by [Stephen] Austin, that he should repair immediately to S. F. that his services were greatly needed. Upon receipt of this news, Bowie wrote a letter to his wife, telling her where he was going and on what business and that it was hard to tell when they would meet again. Veramendi, having heard of Letonia’s [sic] death, made ready for his trip to Saltillo, started and arrived there on the 11th of November 1832. As soon as he arrived, he received his com. [commission] as Gov., which he exercised until the 7th of February 1833, when Bowie with seven other Americans arrived there also. On the following day he had an interview with Veramendi, and was introduced to the members of Congress. As soon as his acquaintance with the leading members became such as to warrant it, he told them what his object was. He received the assurances of Marcial Borrego and Jose Maria Uranga that they would aid him his enterprise. He tried, and succeeded in making them change the Congress from Saltillo to Monclova [Coahllila]. Congress having been established at Mexico, he returned to Texas. In the same year, in the month of July, Veramendi sent $10,000 to Musquiz to be sent to N. O. In the month of September, Veramendi’s family, as well as Bowie’s wife, with $25,000 worth of goods, were taken to Monclova, where they arrived on the 27th of September. On that day the cholera commenced there. The first who died of it being Madame Veramendi; then Madame Bowie, the balance of the family remained there until the lst of November, when they were brought to San Antonio by A[ntonio] M[enchaca], when they arrived. The year 1834 passed; also 1835, in which year in July, Col. Nicholas Condelle, with 500 Infantry and 100 Cavalry, arrived here; for it was reported that the Americans were gathered at S. Felipe. With these last troops there were here 1,100 soldiers, 1,000 Cavalry, and 100 Infantry. On the 23 of October, A[ntonio] M[enchaca] received a letter from Bowie in which was enclosed a note addressed to Marcial Borrego and G.M. Uranga. The letter told A[ntonio] M[enchaca] to deliver

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the note in person, to trust it to no one; and to be as quick about it as possible. He went, while the report here was that the Americans were at Gonzales, delivered the note, and on his return got as far as San Fernando de Rosas, where he was detained and would not be allowed to pass; though his liberty was given him upon his giving bond. Six days after the capitulation of San Antonio, a friend of his, Pedro Rodriguez, furnished him with two men and horses to bring him to San Antonio. He crossed at night at Eagle Crossing, and arrived here on the 20th of December. The companies who had assisted in the siege were still here. As soon as he arrived here, he sought Bowie who, as soon as he saw him, put his arms around his neck, and commenced to cry to think that he had not seen his wife die. He said, ‘‘My father, my brother, my companion and all my protection has come. Are you still my companion in arms?’’ he asked. Antonio answered, ‘‘I shall be your companion, Jim Bowie, until I die.’’ ‘‘Then come this evening’’, said Bowie, ‘‘to take you to introduce you to [William Barrett] Travis, at the Alamo.’’ That evening he was introduced to Travis, and to Col. Niel. Was well received. On the 26th December 1835, Dn. Diego Grant left San Antonio, towards Matamoros, with about 500 men … They here kept up guards and patrols of night. 250 men went from here to keep a lookout on Cos who had gone to Mexico, and returning here on the 5th January, 1836. On the 13 January, 1836, David Crockett presented himself at the old Mexican graveyard, on the west side of the San Pedro Creek, had in company with him fourteen young men who had accompanied him from Tennessee, here as soon as he got there he sent word to Bowie to go and receive him, and conduct him into the City. Bowie … lodged at Erasmo Seguin’s house. Crockett, Bowie, Travis, Niell and all the officers joined together, to establish guards for the safety of the City … fearing that the Mexicans would return. On the 10 February 1836, A. was invited by officers to a ball given in honor of Crockett … [A]t the ball, at about 1 o’clock A.M. of the 11th, a courier, sent by Placido Benavides, arrived, from Camargo, with the intelligence that Santa Ana, [sic] was starting from the Presidio Rio Grande, with 13,000 troops, 10,000 Infantry and 3,000 Cavalry, with the view of taking San Antonio. The courier arrived at the ball room door inquired for Col. Seguin, and was told that Col. Seguin was not there. Asked if Menchaca was there, and was told that he was. He spoke to him and told him that he had a letter of great importance, which he had brought from P.B. from Camargo, asked partner and came to see letter. Opened letter and read the following: ‘‘At this moment I have received a very certain notice, that the commander in chief, Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, marches for the city of San Antonio to take possession thereof, with 13,000 men.’’ As he was reading letter, Bowie came opposite him … Travis came up, and Bowie called him to read that letter; but Travis said that at that moment he could not stay to read letters, for he was dancing with the most beautiful lady in San Antonio. Bowie told him that the letter was one of grave importance, and for him to leave his partner. Travis came and brought Crockett with him. Travis and Bowie understood Spanish, Crockett did not. Travis then said, it will take 13,000 men from the Presidio de Rio Grande to this place thirteen or fourteen days to get here; this is the 4th day. Let us dance to-night and to-morrow we will make provisions for our defense. The ball continued until 7 o’clock, A.M. … Travis invited officers to hold a meeting with a view of consulting as to the best means they should adopt for the security of the place. The council gathered; many resolutions were offered and adopted, after which Bowie and Seguin made a motion

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to have A[ntonio] M[enchaca] and his family sent away from here, knowing that should Santa Anna come, A[ntonio] and his family would receive no good at his hands. A[ntonio] left here and went to Seguin’s ranch, where he stayed six days, preparing for a trip. Started from there and went as far as Marcelino to sleep; then three miles the east side of Cibolo, at an old pond at sun up next morning. Nat Lewis, passed with a wallet on his back, a-foot from San Antonio, and A[ntonio] asked him why he went a-foot and he was answered that he could not find a horse; that Santa Anna had arrived at San Antonio, the day previous with 13,000 men. A[ntonio] asked what the Americans had done. He said they were in the Alamo inside the fortifications. A[ntonio] asked why N[at] did not remain there and he answered that he was not a fighting man, that he was a business man. A[ntonio] then told him to go then about his business. A[ntonio] continued his journey, got to Gonzales, at the house of G. Dewitt, and there met up with Gen. Ed Burleson, with seventy-three men, who had just got there, then, slept. And on the following day, attempted to pass to the other side with families, but was prevented by Burleson, who told him that the families might cross, but not him; that the men were needed in the army. There met up with fourteen Mexicans of San Antonio, and they united and remained there until a company could be formed … Six days after being there, Col. Seguin, who was sent as courier by Travis, arrived there and presented himself to Gen. Burleson, who, upon receipt of the message, forwarded it to the Convention assembled at Washington, Texas. On the following day, the M. Co. was organized with twenty-two men … [that included] Capt. Seguin; 1st. Lt. Manuel Flores, and A.M. 2nd. Lieut. On the 4th of March, the news reached that Texas had declared her Independence.… Source: Yanaguana Society, San Antonio, 1937. Courtesy of Wallace L. McKeehan, Sons of DeWitt Colony Texas, http://www.tamu.edu/ccbn/dewitt/menchacamem.htm.


nchez Navarro, 29. Excerpts from Jos
e Juan Sa A Mexican View of the War in Texas, 1830s From a prominent northern Mexican family, Jos
e Juan S
anchez-Navarro was an adjutant inspector of the departments of Nuevo Le
on and Tamaulipas during the 1830s. In the Ayudantia de Inspecci
o n de Nuevo Le
o n y Tamaulipas, his almanac, dated April 1831 to November 1839, he included notations in the form of a diary, presented here. S
anchez Navarro chronicled the tensions and major encounters between the Mexican and Texan forces in San Antonio de B
exar. S
anchez Navarro gave an eyewitness account that is among the best primary sources of the Battle of the Alamo. His feeling toward the American colonists is bitter. Much as he despised the ‘‘norteamericanos,’’ however, S
anchez could take little comfort in the quality of Mexican leadership, as is shown in his account of his encounter with Antonio L
opez de Santa Anna in Leona Vicario in February 1836. At the same time, in Monclova as the Mexican reinforcements were on their way to San Antonio, S
anchez described the soldiers’ wretched conditions. He is consistently critical of many of the superior officers, particularly of Santa Anna, the president and commander-in-chief of the army. With reference to the recapture of the Alamo by the Mexican forces, S
anchez makes extensive comments, as shown at the end of this section. His diary is prefaced by the first passage below and other excepts follow.

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‘‘All has been lost save honor!’’ I do not remember, nor am I in the mood to remember, what French king said this, perhaps under better circumstances than those in which we are today, the eleventh of December 1835. B
exar, and perhaps Texas has been lost, although the majority of the faithful subjects the Supreme Government had here for its defense cannot be blamed for such a loss. This is my humble opinion; and to prove it, I shall relate the event in so far as it is within my power to do so … [Ayudantia de Inspecci
on de Nuevo Le
on y Tamaulipas, 1831 1839, 2 vol-418ff., I:253.] We were surrounded by some gross, proud, and victorious men. Anyone who knows the character of the North Americans can judge what our situation must have been! [Ayudantia de Inspecci
on de Nuevo Le
on y Tamaulipas, 1831 1839, 2 vol418ff. I:245v.] The Most Excellent President, to whom I introduced myself and who recognized me we were classmates in officers’ training … has granted the request I made him [to permit me] to return to the Texas campaign … There is much activity by way of preparation for this purpose. There are many troops and [there is] much noise; but I see no indications of good political, military, and administrative systems. His Excellency himself attends to all matters whether important or most trivial. I am astonished to see that he has personally assumed the authority of major general … of quartermaster, of commissary, of brigadier generals, of colonels, of captains, and even of corporals, purveyors, arrieros, and carreteros. Would it not be better for His Excellency to rid himself of such troublesome work which will occupy his time, which is more needed for the execution of the high duties of his office, by keeping each individual member of the army in complete exercise of his authority according to the provisions of the general ordinances.… What will become of the army and of the nation if the Most Excellent President should die? Confusion and more confusion because only His Excellency knows the springs by means of which these masses of men called the army are moved. The members of the army in general have no idea of the significance of the Texas war, and all of them believe that they are merely on a military excursion. If, when questioned, one tells the truth about what one has seen there, one is considered a poor soul. As if the enemy could be conquered merely by despising him.… Today the Most Excellent President left with his General Staff. He was accompanied by General Cos as far as Santa Mar
ıa. It is said that His Excellency is very economical, even miserly. Those close to him assert that whoever wants to, can make him uncomfortable by asking him for a peso; and they add that he would rather give a colonel’s commission than ten pesos. Can all this be true? Even if it is, would it not be better not to mention it? I believe so. But the facts speak for themselves. When we took leave of each other, His Excellency shook my hand and expressed surprise that I was not wearing the insignia of lieutenant colonel, and he told me so. [Ayudantia de Inspecci
on de Nuevo Le
on y Tamaulipas, 1831 1839, 2 vol-418ff. II:3-3v.] It is pitiful and despairing to go looking for provisions and beasts of burden, money in hand when there is plenty of everything in the commissaries, the almacenes, and depots, and to have everyone from the quartermaster general, who is General Woll, and the jefe pol
ıtico to the humblest clerk reply as if I were a Turk and the supplies I order and for which I offer to pay cash were for the Russians ‘We cannot sell that, we cannot let you have it because it is for the army.’ Consequently, we are perishing from hunger and misery in the midst of plenty. [Ayudantia de Inspecci
on de Nuevo Le
on y Tamaulipas, 1831 1839, 2 vol-418ff. II:4]

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When we arrived in this city [Monclova], His Excellency the President had left for R
ıo Grande the day before. He is going to B
exar with inconceivable, rather, astonishing haste. Why is His Excellency going in such haste? Why is he leaving the entire army behind? Does he think that his name alone is sufficient to overthrow the colonists? [ II:4-4v.] On the 21st [of March 1836], Fannin and four hundred twenty one prisoners were shot at la Bah
ıa between six and eight in the morning. Sad day! God grant that there may not be another like it! Would it not be well to save the prisoners for the purpose of using them if we should some day suffer reverses? [ II:78v.] The Most Excellent President and many of those close to him assert that the campaign is ended; but Generals Filisola, Arago who is dying Amador, Andrade, and Cos say that it has hardly started. I am of the opinion of the latter gentlemen. It is reported as a fact that we set fire to all the residences that are not burned by the colonists. I have made many efforts to see what there is by way of a plan for the campaign. I believe there is none; or that if there is one, it is in the mind of His Excellency the President. [ II:79.] If it is true, as is asserted, that an army of four thousand men is coming from Mexico to carry on the Texas campaign, why was the Texas army dissolved and withdrawn? Who or what circumstances can give to the generals, the jefes, the officers, and the troops that are coming now for the first time the experience and the practical knowledge of those who have been in Texas previously? Is it possible that we Mexicans must always learn by trial and error? It is indeed dangerous to expose the fate of a nation a second time. [II:93v.] Long live our country, the Alamo is ours! Today at five in the morning, the assault was made by four columns under the command of General Cos and Colonels Duque, Romero, and Morales. His Excellency the President commanded the reserves. The firing lasted half an hour. Our jefes, officers, and troops, at the same time as if by magic, reached the top of the wall, jumped within, and continued fighting with side arms. By six thirty there was not an enemy left. I saw actions of heroic valor I envied. I was horrified by some cruelties, among others, the death of an old man named Cochran and of a boy about fourteen. The women and children were saved. Travis, the commandant of the Alamo died like a hero; Buy [Bowie], the braggart son-in-law of Beramendi died like a coward. The troops were permitted to pillage. The enemy have suffered a heavy loss: twenty-one field pieces of different caliber, many arms and munitions. Two hundred fifty-seven of their men were killed: I have seen and counted their bodies. But I cannot be glad because we lost eleven officers with nineteen wounded, including the valiant Duque and Gonz
alez; and two hundred forty-seven of our troops were wounded and one hundred ten killed. It can truly be said that with another such victory as this we’ll go to the devil.… [ II:6v.] Source: A Mexican View of the War in Texas: Memoirs of a Veteran of the Two Battles of the Alamo, transcribed for the Second Flying Company of Alamo de Parras by Robert Durham, The Library Chronicle, vol. IV, no. 2. Courtesy of Sons of DeWitt Colony Texas, http://www.tamu.edu/ccbn/ dewitt/adp/archives/maps/sanchezdoc.html.

30. Excerpt from the Diary Entry of Jos
e Enrique ~a, 1836 de la Pen Lt. Col. Jos
e Enrique de la Pe~ na (1805–1844), an officer on Gen. Antonio L
opez de Santa Anna’s (1794–1876) staff in 1836, gives a first-person

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eyewitness account of the Battle of the Alamo. He reported the capture and execution of the legendary outdoorsman Davy Crockett. His account debunks the traditional story that Crockett, the former congressman from Tennessee, fought to the end, wielding his long-rifle, ‘‘Betsy.’’

Shortly before Santa Anna’s speech, an unpleasant episode had taken place, which, since it occurred after the end of the skirmish, was looked upon as base murder and which contributed greatly to the coolness that was noted. Some seven men had survived the general carnage and, under the protection of General Castrill
on, they were brought before Santa Anna. Among them was one of great stature, well proportioned, with regular features, in whose face there was the imprint of adversity, but in whom one also noticed a degree of resignation and nobility that did him honor. He was the naturalist David Crockett, well known in North America for his unusual adventures, who had undertaken to explore the country and who, finding himself in B
exar at the very moment of surprise, had taken refuge in the Alamo, fearing that his status as a foreigner might not be respected. Santa Anna answered Castrill
on’s intervention on Crockett’s behalf with a gesture of indignation and, addressing himself to the sappers, the troops closest to him, ordered his execution. The commanders and officers were outraged at this action and did not support the order, hoping that once the fury of the moment had blown over these men would be spared, but several officers who were around the president and who, perhaps, had not been present during the moment of danger, became noteworthy by an infamous deed, surpassing the soldiers in cruelty. They thrust themselves forward, in order to flatter the commander, and with swords in hand, fell upon these unfortunate, defenseless men just as a tiger leaps upon his prey. Though tortured before they were killed, these unfortunates died without complaining and without humiliating themselves before their torturers. Source: Jos
e Enrique de la Pe~ na, With Santa Anna in Texas: A Personal Narrative of the Revolution. Carmen Perry, trans. (College Station: Texas A & M University, 1997), p. 53.

31. Excerpt from the Treaty of Velasco, May 14, 1836 The Treaty of Velasco was negotiated between officials of the interim government of the Republic of Texas and General Antonio L
opez de Santa Anna (1794–1876) about three weeks after his capture on April 22, 1836. Santa Anna did not have the authority to negotiate the treaty that gave Texas to the United States, since all treaties have to be ratified by Congress. Hence, the status of Texas was tenuous since legally it was still part of Mexico. Tensions between slave and free states in the United States stood in the way of U.S. annexation, although the latter kept troops poised at the border. This excerpt includes a discussion of the prisoners of war taken during the Texas Revolt (1836) and relations between the Mexican and Euro-American Texas armies.

Articles of an agreement entered into, between His Excellency David G. Burnet, President of the Republic of Texas, of the one part, and His Excellency General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, President General in Chief of the Mexican Army, of the other part.

Going West, 1820 1840s 69

ARTICLE 1ST General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna agrees that he will not take up arms, nor will he exercise his influence to cause them to be taken up against the people of Texas, during the present War of Independence. ARTICLE 2ND All hostilities between the Mexican and Texian troops will cease immediately both on land and water. ARTICLE 3RD The Mexican troops will evacuate the Territory of Texas, passing to the other side of the Rio Grande del Norte. ARTICLE 6TH The troops of both armies will refrain from coming into contact with each other, and to this end the Commander of the Army of Texas will be careful not to approach within a shorter distance of the Mexican Army than five leagues. ARTICLE 7TH The Mexican Army shall not make any other delay on its march, than that which is necessary to take up their hospitals, baggage and to cross the rivers any delay not necessary to these purposes to be considered an infraction of this agreement. ARTICLE 8TH By express to be immediately dispatched, this agreement shall be sent to General Filisola and to General T. J. Rusk, commander of the Texian Army, in order that they may be apprised of its stipulations, and to this and they will exchange engagements to comply with the same. ARTICLE 9TH That all Texian prisoners now in possession of the Mexican Army or its authorities be forthwith released and furnished with free passports to return to their homes, in consideration of which a corresponding number of Mexican prisoners, rank and file, now in possession of the Government of Texas shall be immediately released. The remainder of the Mexican prisoners that continue in possession of the Government of Texas to be treated with due humanity any extraordinary comforts that may be furnished them to be at the charge of the Government of Mexico. ARTICLE 10TH General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna will be sent to Veracruz as soon as it shall be deemed proper.

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The contracting parties sign this Instrument for the above mentioned purposes, by duplicate, at the Port of Velasco this fourteenth day of May 1836. David G Burnet Ant. Lopez de Santa Anna Jas Collinsworth, Sec of State Bailey Hardeman, Secy of Treasury T W Grayson, Atty General Ant. Lopez de Santa Anna David G Burnet Jas Collinsworth, Secretary of State Bailey Hardeman, Secy of Treasury T W Grayson, Atty General Source: Courtesy of the Yale University Law School Library. The Avalon Project, http:// www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/velasco.htm.


rdova to Manuel Flores, July 19, 1838 32. Letter from Vicente Co In 1838, a plot was discovered against the Republic of Texas. Mexicans had been the largest portion of the population in northeast Texas before 1836. However, after the Treaty of Velasco (1836) the Euro-American population grew, and these settlers brought with them their notions of race. Aside from the Mexicans, the Indians resented the intrusion, and it was rumored that the Cherokees had made a treaty with Mexico to war on Texas. Enter Vicente C
ordova (1798–1842), a prominent Mexican leader from the Nacogdoches region in Texas who had not joined the Texas Revolt. He was the reputed leader of the conspiracy. In 1838, hysteria mounted among the Euro-Americans as C
ordova, with more than 100 men, revolted. In response, Lone Star Gov. Sam Houston issued a proclamation prohibiting unlawful assemblies and the carrying of arms. He further ordered all assembled without authorization to dissolve. The C
ordova Revolt was put down, but C
ordova escaped and made his way into Mexico. Meanwhile, the Nacogdoches District Court indicted 33 Mexicans for treason. Jos
e Antonio Menchaca (1995–?), who was second in command to C
ordova, was found guilty of treason and sentenced to hang. Then Governor of Texas Mirabeau Buonaparte (1798–1859) pardoned Jos
e Antonio Menchaca (1795–?) only four days before his scheduled execution. Authorities used this incident as a pretext for the removal of the Cherokees from Texas. The document speaks to the fact that C
ordova had a commission from the Mexican Army to recruit among the Indians for a revolt.

To Manuel Flores July 19, 1838 Sir: I hold a commission from General Vicente Filisola to raise the Indians as auxiliaries to the National Army and I have already entered upon my duties by inviting a meeting of the neighboring tribes, and being informed that you are appointed for the same purpose I would be glad to know what preliminary arrangements you have made towards the accomplishment of the objects contemplated; and I hope you will make every effort to approach with such force as you may have at your command as far as you may judge proper, and that you will make all effort to hold with me a

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verbal communication in order that we may have in our respective stations an understanding, and that you will bring the pipe which I understand you are in possession in order that the Indian Chiefs may smoke it of the Cherokee and other tribes, who have promised me to unite as soon as possible for action, and who have also agreed that in case our plans should be discovered. In the mean time, they then will commence operations with the force we may have at command, and it is highly desirable that you should approach to give us in such case a helping hand. We have heard here that the troops have commenced operations in La Bahia but do not know whither [sic] it is true. I desire we should treat with each other in full confidence which is necessary to the success of our commission. I will say no more at present than that you may act in full confidence of your friend that S.M.B. Vicente C
ordova. Source: Vicente C
ordova to Manuel Flores, July 19, 1838, Texas Indian Papers, vol. 1, no. 2. Archives and Manuscripts, Texas State Library and Archives Commission, www.tsl.state.tx.us/ exhibits/indian/early/cordova-1838.html.

33. Excerpts from John L. O’Sullivan’s Column on ‘‘Manifest Destiny,’’ 1839 All wars of aggression have an ideology to justify them. This is especially true of the United States, which is a Christian nation, and does not intentionally steal without rationalizing its behavior. The rationale for the Mexican-American War in 1846 was ‘‘Manifest Destiny,’’ a religious doctrine with roots in Calvinist and Puritan ideas. It is important because it influences U.S. foreign policy to this day. According to the doctrine, God determines salvation, and He predestined the European race for salvation. The United States was the chosen land and Americans God’s chosen people. Many Euro-Americans believed that God chose the United States to be the custodian of democracy and hence the nation had a mission—that is, that God had predestined Western Europeans to spread His principles. Mexico, on the other hand, was a Catholic country. John L. O’Sullivan (1813–1885), a columnist and editor for the influential United States Magazine and Democratic Review, coined the term ‘‘Manifest Destiny.’’ He said that it was the destiny of the United States to annex Texas and the Oregon territory. The excerpt lays out this ideology in passionate detail.

The American people having derived their origin from many other nations, and the Declaration of National Independence being entirely based on the great principle of human equality, these facts demonstrate at once our disconnected position as regards any other nation; that we have, in reality, but little connection with the past history of any of them, and still less with all antiquity, its glories, or its crimes. On the contrary, our national birth was the beginning of a new history, the formation and progress of an untried political system, which separates us from the past and connects us with the future only; and so far as regards the entire development of the natural rights of man, in moral, political, and national life, we may confidently assume that our country is destined to be the great nation of futurity. It is so destined, because the principle upon which a nation is organized fixes its destiny, and that of equality is perfect, is universal. It presides in all the operations

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of the physical world, and it is also the conscious law of the soul the self-evident dictates of morality, which accurately defines the duty of man to man, and consequently man’s rights as man. Besides, the truthful annals of any nation furnish abundant evidence, that its happiness, its greatness, its duration, were always proportionate to the democratic equality in its system of government.… What friend of human liberty, civilization, and refinement, can cast his view over the past history of the monarchies and aristocracies of antiquity, and not deplore that they ever existed? What philanthropist can contemplate the oppressions, the cruelties, and injustice inflicted by them on the masses of mankind, and not turn with moral horror from the retrospect? America is destined for better deeds. It is our unparalleled glory that we have no reminiscences of battlefields, but in defence of humanity, of the oppressed of all nations, of the rights of conscience, the rights of personal enfranchisement. Our annals describe no scenes of horrid carnage, where men were led on by hundreds of thousands to slay one another, dupes and victims to emperors, kings, nobles, demons in the human form called heroes. We have had patriots to defend our homes, our liberties, but no aspirants to crowns or thrones; nor have the American people ever suffered themselves to be led on by wicked ambition to depopulate the land, to spread desolation far and wide, that a human being might be placed on a seat of supremacy. We have no interest in the scenes of antiquity, only as lessons of avoidance of nearly all their examples. The expansive future is our arena, and for our history. We are entering on its untrodden space, with the truths of God in our minds, beneficent objects in our hearts, and with a clear conscience unsullied by the past. We are the nation of human progress, and who will, what can, set limits to our onward march? Providence is with us, and no earthly power can. We point to the everlasting truth on the first page of our national declaration, and we proclaim to the millions of other lands that ‘‘the gates of hell’’ the powers of aristocracy and monarchy ‘‘shall not prevail against it.’’ The far-reaching, the boundless future will be the era of American greatness. In its magnificent domain of space and time, the nation of many nations is destined to manifest to mankind the excellence of divine principles; to establish on earth the noblest temple ever dedicated to the worship of the Most High the Sacred and the True. Its floor shall be a hemisphere its roof the firmament of the star-studded heavens, and its congregation [a] Union of many Republics, comprising hundreds of happy millions, calling, owning no man master, but governed by God’s natural and moral law of equality, the law of brotherhood of ‘‘peace and good will amongst men.’’… Yes, we are the nation of progress, of individual freedom, of universal enfranchisement. Equality of rights is the cynosure of our union of States, the grand exemplar of the correlative equality of individuals; and while truth sheds its effulgence, we cannot retrograde, without dissolving the one and subverting the other. We must onward to the fulfilment of our mission to the entire development of the principle of our organization freedom of conscience, freedom of person, freedom of trade and business pursuits, universality of freedom and equality. This is our high destiny, and in nature’s eternal, inevitable decree of cause and effect we must accomplish it. All this will be our future history, to establish on earth the moral dignity and salvation of man the immutable truth and beneficence of God. For this blessed mission

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to the nations of the world, which are shut out from the life-giving light of truth, has America been chosen; and her high example shall smite unto death the tyranny of kings, hierarchs, and oligarchs, and carry the glad tidings of peace and good will where myriads now endure an existence scarcely more enviable than that of beasts of the field. Who, then, can doubt that our country is destined to be the great nation of futurity? Source: ‘‘The Great Nation of Futurity,’’ The United States Democratic Review, vol. 6, no. 23, (Nov. 1839): 426 430. Courtesy of Cornell University Library, http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/ moa/sgml/moa-idx?notisid AGD1642-0006-46.

34. Excerpt from Juan Segu
ın’s Address to the Texas Senate, February 1840 Soon after so-called Texas independence in 1836, disillusionment set in among Mexicans in Texas, such as Juan Segu
ın (1806–1880), a leader of the Mexican faction and close friend of Stephen Austin (1793–1836), the deceased leader of the Euro-American colonists. Segu
ın, and many Mexican elites, believed that they would be treated as equals. However, many EuroAmerican newcomers considered all Mexicans greasers, a pejorative term for Mexicans. Some were driven off their land and threatened physically. Segu
ın was well respected among the Texas Mexican population, also known as Tejanos. Because of the growing antagonism toward Mexicans, Segu
ın left Texas and fought on the Mexican side during the Mexican-American War (1846– 1848). After the war, he returned to Texas. The following address to the Texas Senate was written in 1840 before he left Texas, and it advocates the printing of laws in Spanish.

I wish, sir, to know upon what data the Second Auditor founded his estimate of the cost of translating and printing the Laws to be enacted by the present Congress, to the amount of $15,000. I wish to know, Mr. President, what the cost of translating the laws, enacted by the former Legislative bodies of Texas is, laws which in virtue of the existing laws upon that subject, ought to have been translated, and printed; also, what laws have been translated, and where do they exist? My constituents have, as yet, not seen a single law translated and printed; neither do we know when we shall receive them: Mr. President, the dearest rights of my constituents as Mexico-Texians are guaranteed by the Constitution and the Laws of the Republic of Texas; and at the formation of the social compact between the Mexicans and the Texians, they had rights guaranteed to them; they also contracted certain legal obligations of all of which they are ignorant, and in consequence of their ignorance of the language in which the Laws and the Constitution of the land are written. The Mexico-Texians were among the first who sacrificed their all in our glorious Revolution, and the disasters of war weighed heavy upon them, to achieve those blessings which, it appears, are destined to be the last to enjoy, and as a representative from Bexar, I never shall cease to raise my voice in effecting the object. But, in order not to detain this honorable body, at this time any longer, I will conclude these cursory remarks, leaving my detailed observations upon the subject to a more proper occasion. Texas State Senator, Bexar County: Honorable Juan N. Seguin

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Voices of the U.S. Latino Experience Source: The Seguin Family Historical Society, ‘‘The Original and Official Seguin Family Organization and Web Site,’’ http://www.seguinfamilyhistory.com/index.html#address.

35. Letter from Texas President Mirabeau B. Lamar to the People of Santa F
e, April 14, 1840 After the 1836 Treaty of Velasco, the status of Texas was uncertain, and although most Euro-Americans and Mexicans knew it was a matter of time before Texas would be annexed by the United States, there was some sentiment in favor of maintaining an independent Lone Star Republic. Within Texas there was an interest in extending the border north and west to the Rio Grande. Meanwhile, there were frequent border clashes. Texas President Mir
trade. On abeau B. Lamar wanted Texas to acquire control of the Santa Fe June 19, 1841, a party called the Santa F
e Pioneers set out to ‘‘liberate’’ New Mexico. New Mexico’s Gov. Manuel Armijo misrepresented their numbers and fooled the Texans into surrendering without the firing of a single shot. Among those involved was Jos
e Antonio (1795–1871), a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence (1836) who was captured. The prisoners were marched to Mexico City and later given clemency, all except Navarro, who spent 14 months in San Juan de Ul
ua prison. This letter from President Lamar to the people of Santa F
e attempted to persuade New Mexico’s residents to join Texas.

Republic of Texas Executive Department Austin April 14, 1840 To the Citizens of Santa F
e, Friends, and Compatriots, You have doubtless heard of the glorious Revolution by which the late Province of Texas has been emancipated from the thralldom of Mexican domination. That revolution was forced upon us by circumstances too imperative to be resisted. The Anglo American population of Texas had left the comforts and the enlightened liberty of their own country, and had immigrated to this wilderness, under the most solemn guarantees of the Constitution of 1824. We had witnessed many disastrous civil commotions in the Government of Mexico, and greatly deplored the want of harmony and the frequent convulsions which distracted our adopted country. But we still entertained an illusive hope that a dear-bought experience the lessons of many calamities would exert harmonizing influence, and teach the authorities of Mexico that frequent political chances and domestic discords were destructive of the prosperity and character of a people, that Union and Stability were necessary to strength; and peace and harmony to happiness. These hopes, so long and patiently cherished, were finally dissolved forever when the Federal Constitution under which we had migrated to the Country and identified our destiny with hers, was forcibly abrogated, and a military despotism reared in its stead. Texas then resolved to be free to endure no longer the vicissitudes of a fickle and corrupt influence which controlled the powers of Mexico, subverting, all hopes of her greatness, and all our native aspirations for tranquility at home and national respectability abroad. Impelled by these high considerations which a benignant Providence has sanctioned by conferring in unexampled prosperity upon us, we have asserted and achieved our Independence, and have entered the great family of nations

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as a free and sovereign people. As such we have been formally recognized by the illustrious Governments of the United States, and by the ancient Monarchy of France, and other powers of Europe are ready to extend the right hand of Fellowship. Our national resources are in a rapid progress of development; our population increasing by numerous accessions from Europe and the United States, and our commerce extending with a power and celerity seldom equalled in the history of nations. Under these auspicious circumstances we tender to you a full participation in all our blessings. The great River of the North, which you inhabit, is the natural and convenient boundary of our territory, and we shall take great pleasure in hailing you as fellow citizens, members of our young Republic, and co-aspirants with us for all the glory of establishing, a new happy and free nation. Our Constitution is liberal as a rational and enlightened regard to human infirmities will safely permit. It confers equal politic privileges on all; tolerates all religions without distinction, and guarantees an even and impartial administration of the laws. This communication, I trust, will be received by you and by your public authorities, in the same spirit of kindness and sincerity in which it is dictated. And if nothing shall intervene to vary my present intention, I shall despatch in time for them to arrive in your section of the Country about the month of September proximo, one, or more Commissioners, gentlemen of worth and confidence, to explain more minutely the condition of our country; of the sea-board and the cor[r]elative interests which so emphatically recommend and ought perpetually to cement the perfect union and identity of Santa F
e and Texas. The Commissioners will be accompanied by a military escort for the purpose of repelling any hostile Indians that may infest the passage, and with the further view of ascertaining and opening a safe and convenient route of communication between the two sections of Country which being strongly assimilated in interests, we hope to see united in friendships and consolidated under a common Government. Until the arrival of these Commissioners, I have empowered some of your own citizens, Capt W. G. Dryden, Mr. W. H. Workman, and Mr. Rowland (to who[m] the views and feelings of this Government have been communicated) [to] confer with you upon the subject matter of this communication. Mirabeau B Lamar Source: Courtesy of Sons of DeWitt Colony Texas, http://www.tamu.edu/ccbn/dewitt/ santafeexped.htm.

36. Excerpts from Juan Nepomuceno Segu
ın, Personal Memoirs of Juan N. Segu
ın In this document, Juan Segu
ın, a leader of the Mexicans within the faction that supported the Euro-Americans, explains why he left Texas in the 1840s. Following independence, a flood of southerners came into the state, many of whom brought with them biases toward Catholics and people with darker skin. They resented landowners such as Segu
ın, who felt entitled because of their social status and contributions to the success of the war with Mexico. The tensions and threats to his life forced Segu
ın into exile. This explains his contributions to Texans and the reasons for his exile.

The tokens of esteem, arid evidences of trust and confidence, repeatedly bestowed upon me by the Supreme Magistrate, General Rusk, and other dignitaries of the

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Republic, could not fail to arouse against me much invidious and malignant feeling. The jealousy evinced against me by several officers of the companies recently arrived at San Antonio from the United States, soon spread amongst the American straggling adventurers, who were already beginning to work their dark intrigues against the native families, whose only crime was that they owned large tracts of land and desirable property. John W. Smith, a bitter enemy of several of the richest families of San Antonio, by whom he had been covered with favors, joined the conspiracy which was organized to ruin me. I will also point out the origin of another enmity which on several occasions, endangered my life. In those evil days, San Antonio was swarming with adventurers from every quarter of the globe. Many a noble heart grasped the sword in the defence of the liberty of Texas, cheerfully pouring out their blood for our cause, and to them everlasting public gratitude is due; but there were also many bad men, fugitives from their country, who found in this land an open field for their criminal designs. San Antonio claimed then, as it claims now, to be the first city of Texas; it was also the receptacle of the scum of society. My political and social situation brought me into continual contact with that class of people. At every hour of the day and night, my countrymen ran to me for protection against the assaults or exactions of those adventurers. Sometimes, by persuasion, I prevailed on them to desist; some times, also, force had to be resorted to. How could I have done other wise? Were, not the victims my own countrymen, friends and associates? Could I leave them defenceless, exposed to the assaults of foreigners, who, on the pretext that they were Mexicans, treated them worse than brutes[?] Sound reason and the dictates of humanity would have precluded a different conduct on my part.… 1842. After the retreat of the Mexican army under Santa Anna, until [the] Vasquez invasion in 1842, the war between Texas and Mexico ceased to be carried on actively. Although open commercial intercourse did not exist, it was carried on by smuggling, at which the Mexican authorities used to wink, provided it was not carried on too openly, so as to oblige them to notice it, or so extensively as to arouse their avarice. In the beginning of this year, I was elected Mayor of San Antonio. Two years previously, a gunsmith named Goodman had taken possession of certain houses situated on the Military Plaza, which were the property of the city. He used to shoe the horses of the volunteers who passed through San Antonio, and thus accumulated a debt against the Republic, for the payment of which he applied to the President to give him possession of the buildings referred to, which had always been known as city property. The board of Aldermen passed a resolution to the effect that Goodman should be compelled to leave the premises; Goodman resisted, alleging that the houses had been given to him by the President, in payment for public services. The Board could not, of course, acknowledge in the President any power to dispose of the city property, and consequently directed me to carry the resolution into effect. My compliance with the instructions of the Board caused Goodman to become my most bitter and inveterate enemy in the city. The term for the mortgage that Messrs. Ogden and Howard held on my property had run out. In order to raise money and comply with my engagements, I determined to go to Mexico for a drove of sheep. But fearful that this new trip would

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prove as fatal as the one already alluded to, I wrote to General Vasquez, who was then in command of the Mexican frontier, requesting him to give me a pass. The tenor of Vasquez’ answer caused me to apprehend that an expedition was preparing against Texas, for the following month of March. I called a session of the Board of Aldermen, (of which the Hon. S. A. Maverick was a member,) and laid before them the communication of General Vasquez, stating that according to my construction of the letter we might soon [see] the approach of the Mexicans. A few days afterwards, Don Jose Maria Garcia of Laredo came to San Antonio; his report was so circumstantial as to preclude all possible doubts as to the near approach of Vasquez to San Antonio. Notice was immediately sent to the Government of the impending danger. In the various meetings held to devise means of defence, I expressed my candid opinion as to the impossibility of defending San Antonio. I observed that for myself; I was going to the town of Seguin, and advised every one to do the same. On leaving the city, I passed through a street where some men were making breastworks; I stated to them that I was going to my ranch, and thence to Seguin, in case the Mexican forces should take possession of San Antonio. From the Nueces river, Vasquez forwarded a proclamation by Arista to the inhabitants of Texas. I received at my ranch, a bundle of those proclamations, which I transmitted at once to the Corporation of San Antonio. As soon as Vasquez entered the city, those who had determined upon defending the place, withdrew to Seguin. Amongst them were Dunn and Chevallie, who had succeeded in escaping from the hands of the Mexicans, into which they had fallen while on a reconnoitering expedition on the Medina. The latter told me that Vasquez and his officers stated that I was in favor of the Mexicans; and Chevallie further added that, one day as he was talking with Vasquez, a man named Sanchez, came within sight, whereupon the General observed: ‘‘You see that man! Well, Colonel Seguin sent him to me, when he was at Rio Grande. Seguin is with us.’’ He then drew a letter from his pocket, stating that it was from me. Chevallie asked to be allowed to see it, as he knew my handwriting, but the General refused and cut short the interview. On my return to San Antonio, several persons told me that the Mexican officers had declared that I was in their favor. This rumor, and some threats uttered against me by Goodman, left me but little doubt that my enemies would try to ruin me. Some of the citizens of San Antonio had taken up arms in favor of the enemy. Judge Hemphill advised me to have them arrested and tried, but as I started out with the party who went in pursuit of the Mexicans, I could not follow his advice. Having observed that Vasquez gained ground on us, we fell back on the Nueces River. When we came back to San Antonio, reports were widely spreading about my pretended treason. Captain Manuel Flores, Lieutenant Ambrosio Rodriguez, Matias Curbier, and five or six other Mexicans, dismounted with me to find out the origin of the imposture. I went out with several friends leaving Curbier in my house. I had reached the Main Plaza, when several persons came running to inform me that some Americans were murdering Curbier. We ran back to the house, where we found poor Curbier covered with blood. On being asked who assaulted him, he answered that the gunsmith, Goodman, in company with several Americans, had struck him with a rifle. A few minutes afterwards, Goodman returned to my house,

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with about thirty volunteers, but, observing that we were prepared to meet them, they did not attempt to attack us. We went out of the house and then to Mr. Guilbeau’s, who offered me his protection. He went out into the street, pistol in hand, and succeeded in dispersing the mob, which had formed in front of my house. Mr. John Twohig offered me a shelter for that night; on the next morning, I went under disguise to Mr. Van Ness’ house; Twohig, who recognised me in the street, warned me to ‘‘open my eyes.’’ I remained one day at Mr. Van Ness’; next day General Burleson arrived at San Antonio, commanding a respectable force of volunteers. I presented myself to him, asking for a Court of Inquiry; he answered that there were no grounds for such proceedings. In the evening I went to the camp, and jointly with Colonel Patton, received a commission to forage for provisions in the lower ranchos. I complied with this trust. I remained, hiding from rancho to rancho, for over fifteen days. Every party of volunteers en route to San Antonio declared, ‘‘they wanted to kill Seguin.’’ I could no longer go from farm to farm, and determined to go to my own farm and raise fortifications, &c. Several of my relatives and friends joined me. Hardly a day elapsed without receiving notice that a party was preparing to attack me; we were constantly kept under arms. Several parties came in sight, but, probably seeing that we were prepared to receive them, refrained from attacking. On the 30th of April, a friend from San Antonio sent me word that Captain Scott, and his company, were coming down by the river, burning the ranchos on their way. The inhabitants of the lower ranchos called on us for aid against Scott. With those in my house, and others to the number of about 100, I started to lend them aid. I proceeded, observing the movements of Scott, from the function of the Medina to Pajaritos. At that place we dispersed and I returned to my wretched life. In those days I could not go to San Antonio without peril of my life. Matters being in this state, I saw that it was necessary to take some step which would place me in security, and save my family from constant wretchedness. I had to leave Texas, abandon all, for which I had fought and spent my fortune, to become a wanderer. The ingratitude of those who had assumed to themselves the right of convicting me; their credulity in declaring me a traitor on mere rumors when I had to plead in my favor the loyal patriotism with which I had always served Texas, wounded me deeply. But, before leaving my country, perhaps forever, I determined to consult with all those interested in my welfare. I held a family council. All were in favor of my removing for some time to the interior of Texas. But, to accomplish this, there were some unavoidable obstacles. I could not take one step from my ranch towards the Brazos without being exposed to the rifle of the first person who might meet me, for, through the whole country, credit had been given to the rumors against me. To emigrate with my family was impossible, as I was a ruined man from the time of the invasion of Santa Anna and our flight to Nacogdoches, furthermore, the country of the Brazos was unhealthier than that of Nacogdoches, and what might we not expect to suffer from disease in a new country and without friends or means[?] Seeing that all these plans were impracticable, I resolved to seek a refuge amongst my enemies, braving all dangers. But before taking this step, I sent in my resignation to the Corporation of San Antonio, as Mayor of the city, stating to them that, unable any longer to suffer the persecutions of some ungrateful Americans who

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strove to murder me, I had determined to free my family and friends from their continual misery on my account, and go and live peaceably in Mexico. That for these reasons I resigned my office, with all my privileges and honors as a Texan. I left Bexar without any engagements towards Texas, my services paid by persecutions, exiled and deprived of my privileges as a Texan citizen, I was in this country a being out of the pale of society, and when she could not protect the rights of her citizens, they seek protection elsewhere. I had been tried by a rabble, condemned without a hearing, and consequently was at liberty to provide for my own safety.… REMARKS After the expeditions of General Woll, I did not return to Texas till the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. During my absence nothing appeared that could stamp me as a traitor. My enemies had accomplished their object; they had killed me politically in Texas, and the less they spoke of me, the less risk they incurred of being exposed in the infamous means they had used to accomplish my ruin.… The rumor that I was a traitor was seized with avidity by my enemies in San Antonio. Some envied my position, as held by a Mexican; others found in me an obstacle to the accomplishment of their villainous plans. The number of land suits which still encumbers the docket of Bexar County would indicate the nature of plans, and anyone, who has listened to the evidence elicited in cases of this description will readily discover the base means adopted to deprive rightful owners of their property.… I have finished my memoirs; I neither have the capacity nor the desire to adorn my acts with literary phrases. I have attempted a short and clear narrative of my public life, in relation to Texas. I give it publicity, without omit[t]ing or suppressing anything that I thought of the least interest, and confidently I submit to the public verdict. Several of those who witnessed the facts which I have related are still alive and amongst us; they can state whether I have in any way falsified the record. Source: Juan Nepomuceno Segu
ın, Personal Memoirs of Juan N. Segu
ın (San Antonio, TX: Ledger Bok and Job Office, 1858), pp. 18 27, 29 32.

PART III The Mexican-American War The war with Mexico pushed the borders further south crossing people, rivers, and other resources. The admission of Texas on March 1, 1845, was a provocation that made war inevitable. Even if Mexico would have accepted the loss of Texas, there was the question of the border. Mexico claimed the Nueces River (Rio Grande) that was 150 miles north of the Rio Bravo as the Mexican. The United States claimed the Rio Grande as the boundary using the Treaty of Velasco of 1836 as its authority. The only problem was that Mexico had never signed nor approved the boundary. On the basis of this fiction, the United States pushed for the war that cost Mexico more than 500,000 square miles of territory, over 25,000 dead, and valuable rivers and resources. A strong ‘‘all Mexico’’ movement energized a feeling of American exceptionalism and entitlement over all of Latin America. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo of 1848 ended the war but not the fallout of the crossing of borders.

37. Excerpts from the Treaty of Annexation between the United States and the Republic of Texas, April 12, 1844 The Treaty of the Annexation of Texas, negotiated in 1844, was not approved by Congress until February 28, 1845. Most Euro-Americans in Texas favored annexation to the United States, although a substantial number wanted to remain independent. Yet a majority of Texans were Southerners by birth and they wanted unification with the United States. They also felt threatened by British insistence that they emancipate their slaves. These excerpts are from the Treaty of Annexation in which the United States recognized Mexican and Texan land grants and agreed to pay its debts.

… ARTICLE II The citizens of Texas shall be incorporated into the Union of the United States, maintained and protected in the free enjoyment of their liberty and property and admitted, as soon as may be consistent with the principles of the federal constitution, to the enjoyment of all the rights, privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States. ARTICLE III All titles and claims to real estate, which are valid under the laws of Texas, shall be held to be so by the United States; and measures shall be adopted for the speedy

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adjudication of all unsettled claims to land, and patents shall be granted to those found to be valid. ARTICLE IV The public lands hereby ceded shall be subject to the laws regulating the public lands in the other Territories of the United States, as far as they may be applicable; subject, however, to such alterations and changes as Congress may from time to time think proper to make. It is understood between the parties that if, in consequence of the mode in which lands have been surveyed in Texas, or from previous grants or locations, the sixteenth section cannot be applied to the purpose of education, Congress shall make equal provision by grant of land elsewhere. And it is also further understood, that, hereafter, the books, papers and documents of the General Land Office of Texas shall be deposited and kept at such place in Texas as the Congress of the United States shall direct. ARTICLE V The United States assume and agree to pay the public debts and liabilities of Texas, however created, for which the faith or credit of her government may be bound at the time of the exchange of the ratifications of this treaty; which debts and liabilities are estimated not to exceed, in the whole, ten millions of dollars, to be ascertained and paid in the manner hereinafter stated. Done at Washington, the twelfth day of April, eighteen hundred and forty-four. J. C. Calhoun, Isaac Van Zandt and J. Pinckney Henderson Source: ‘‘The Treaty of Annexation Texas.’’ Courtesy of The Avalon Project, Yale University Law School, http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/texan05.htm.

38. Jos
e Joaqu
ın de Herrera, ‘‘A Proclamation Denouncing the United States’ Intention to Annex Texas,’’ June 4, 1845 Jos
e Joaqu
ın de Herrera (1792–1854) was president of Mexico three times (1844, 1844–1845, 1848–1851). A general in the Mexican Army, de Herrera served during the Mexican-American War (1846–1848). After the war, de Herrera reluctantly assumed the presidency after a congressional commission implored him to accept. Mexico City was still in the hands of the United States, and he was in office from 1848 until January 1851. The following proclamation was in response to U.S. hostilities toward Mexico over the annexation of Texas.

PROCLAMATION The minister of foreign affairs has communicated to me the following decree: Jos
e Joaquin de Herrera, general of division and president and interim of the Mexican Republic, to the citizens thereof. Be it known: That the general congress has decreed, and the executive sanctioned, the following: The national congress of the Mexican Republic, considering:

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That the congress of the United States of the North has, by a decree, which its executive sanctioned, resolved to incorporate the territory of Texas with the American union; That this manner of appropriating to itself territories upon which other nations have rights, introduces a monstrous novelty, endangering the peace of the world, and violating the sovereignty of nations; That this usurpation, now consummated to the prejudice of Mexico, has been in insidious preparation for a long time; at the same time that the most cordial friendship was proclaimed, and that on the part of this republic, the existing treaties between it and those states were respected scrupulously and legally; That the said annexation of Texas to the U[nited] States tramples on the conservative principles of society, attacks all the rights that Mexico has to that territory, is an insult to her dignity as a sovereign nation, and threatens her independence and political existence; That the law of the United States, in reference to the annexation of Texas to the United States, does in nowise destroy the rights that Mexico has, and will enforce, upon that department; That the United States, having trampled on the principles which served as a basis to the treaties of friendship, commerce and navigation, and more especially to those of boundaries fixed with precision, even previous to 1832, they are considered as inviolate by that nation. And, finally, that the unjust spoliation of which they wish to make the Mexican nation the victim, gives her the clear right to use all her resources and power to resist, to the last moment, said annexation; IT IS DECREED 1st. The Mexican nation calls upon all her children to the defense of her national independence, threatened by the usurpation of Texas, which is intended to be realized by the decree of annexation passed by the congress, and sanctioned by the president, of the United States of the north. 2d. In consequence, the government will call to arms all the forces of the army, according to the authority granted it by the existing laws; and for the preservation of public order, for the support of her institutions, and in case of necessity, to serve as the reserve to the army, the government, according to the powers given to it on the 9th December 1844, will raise the corps specified by said decree, under the name of ‘‘Defenders of the Independence and of the Laws.’’ Jos
e Joaqu
ın de Herrera. Palace of the National Government, City of Mexico, June 4, 1845. Source: Steven R. Butler, ed., A Documentary History of the Mexican War (Richardson, TX: Descendants of Mexican War Veterans, 1995), p. 5, http://www.dmwv.org/mexwar/documents/herrera.htm.

39. Letter from Abraham Lincoln to Williamson Durley, October 3, 1845 The conflict between Mexico and Euro-American colonists in Texas in 1836 had brought slavery to the national stage. In the United States it heightened

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the debate between pro- and anti-slavery factions. The U.S. Congress approved the annexation of Texas in late February 1845, and it was only a matter of time before Texas would become part of the United States. A debate formed around the annexation and the inevitability of a war with Mexico. Opposition was led by the abolitionists, or Liberty Party. In Illinois. Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865), then a Congressman, found himself obliged to answer Democratic Party arguments for annexation. The following letter is to his friend Williamson Durley of Hennepin, Illinois, who, along with his brother Madison, advocated forming a third party. They were abolitionists who operated an underground railroad that conducted runaway African slaves to freedom. Lincoln courted the Durleys, and in the letter he argued the immorality of annexation and discussed the Texas question.

Springfield Friend Durley: When I saw you at home, it was agreed that I should write to you and your brother Madison. Until I then saw you, I was not aware of your being what is generally called an abolitionist, or, as you call yourself, a Liberty man; though I well knew there were many such in your county. I was glad to hear you say that you intend to attempt to bring about, at the next election in Putnam, a union of the whigs proper, and such of the liberty men, as are whigs in principle on all questions save only that of slavery. So far as I can perceive, by such union, neither party need yield any thing on the point in difference between them. If the whig abolitionists of New York had voted with us last fall, Mr. Clay would now be president, whig principles in the ascendant, and Texas not annexed; whereas by the division, all that either had at stake in the contest, was lost. An, indeed, it was extremely probably, beforehand, that such would be the result. As I always understood, the Liberty men deprecated the annexation of Texas extremely; and, this being so, why they should refuse to so cast their votes as to prevent it, even to me seemed wonderful. What was their process of reasoning, I can only judge from what a single one of them told me. It was this: ‘‘We are not to do evil that good may come.’’ This general proposition is doubtless correct; but did it apply? If by your votes you could have prevented the extension, &c., of slavery, would it not have been good and not evil so to have used your votes, even though it involved the casting of them for a slaveholder? By the fruit the tree is to be known. An evil tree can not bring forth good fruit. If the fruit of electing Mr. Clay would have been to prevent the extension of slavery, could the act of electing have been evil? But I will argue f[u]rther. I perhaps ought to say that individually I never was much interested in the Texas question. I never could see much good to come of annexation; inasmuch, as they were already a free republican people on our own model; on the other hand, I never could very clearly see how the annexation would augment the evil of slavery. It always seemed to me that slaves would be taken there in about equal numbers, with or without annexation. And if more were taken because of annexation, still there would be just so many the fewer left, where they were taken from. It is possibly true, to some extent, that with annexation, some slaves may be sent to Texas and continued in slavery, that otherwise might have been liberated. To whatever extent this may be true, I think annexation an evil. I hold it to be a paramount duty of us in the free states, due to the Union of the

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States, and perhaps to liberty itself (paradox though it may seem) to let the slavery of the other states alone; while, on the other hand, I hold it to be equally clear, that we should never knowingly lend ourselves directly or indirectly, to prevent that slavery from dying a natural death to find new places for it to live in, when it can no longer exist in the old. Of course I am not now considering what would be our duty, in cases of insurrection among the slaves. To recur to the Texas question, I understand the Liberty men to have viewed annexation as a much greater evil than I ever did; and I would like to convince you if I could, that they could have prevented it, without violation of principle if they had chosen. I intend this letter for you and Madison together; and if you and he or either shall think fit to drop me a line, I shall be pleased. Yours with respect A. Lincoln Source: Abraham Lincoln, Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, vol. 1. Roy P. Basler et al., eds. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Digital Library Production Services, 2001), pp. 347 48.

40. Excerpts from President James Polk’s State of the Union Address, December 2, 1845 James Knox Polk (1795–1849), the eleventh president of the United States, ran on the platform of expanding the United States at the expense of Mexico and Canada. Because of the war fever he was able to override Whig opposition to the war with Mexico. In addition to securing 1.2 million square miles from Mexico, he secured the Oregon Territory (including Washington, Oregon, and Idaho) and opened the debate regarding slavery in the new territories. The following are excerpts of his State of the Union Address in which he blames Mexico for tensions between the two countries. Although Polk manipulated events to make war inevitable, he stated that he had done everything in his power to avert a confrontation.

Fellow Citizens of the Senate and of the House of Representatives: I regret to inform you that our relations with Mexico since your last session have not been of the amicable character which it is our desire to cultivate with all foreign nations. On the 6th day of March last the Mexican envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary to the United States made a formal protest in the name of his Government against the joint resolution passed by Congress ‘‘for the annexation of Texas to the United States,’’ which he chose to regard as a violation of the rights of Mexico, and in consequence of it he demanded his passports. He was informed that the Government of the United States did not consider this joint resolution as a violation of any of the rights of Mexico, or that it afforded any just cause of offense to his Government; that the Republic of Texas was an independent power, owing no allegiance to Mexico and constituting no part of her territory or rightful sovereignty and jurisdiction. He was also assured that it was the sincere desire of this Government to maintain with that of Mexico relations of peace and good understanding. That functionary, however, notwithstanding these representations and assurances, abruptly terminated his mission and shortly afterwards left the country. Our envoy

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extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary to Mexico was refused all official intercourse with that Government, and, after remaining several months, by the permission of his own Government he returned to the United States. Thus, by the acts of Mexico, all diplomatic intercourse between the two countries was suspended. Since that time, Mexico has until recently occupied an attitude of hostility toward the United States has been marshaling and organizing armies, issuing proclamations, and avowing the intention to make war on the United States, either by an open declaration or by invading Texas. Both the Congress and convention of the people of Texas invited this Government to send an army into that territory to protect and defend them against the menaced attack. The moment the terms of annexation offered by the United States were accepted by Texas the latter became so far a part of our own country as to make it our duty to afford such protection and defense. I therefore deemed it proper, as a precautionary measure, to order a strong squadron to the coasts of Mexico and to concentrate an efficient military force on the western frontier of Texas. Our Army was ordered to take position in the country between the Nueces and the Del Norte, and to repel any invasion of the Texan territory which might be attempted by the Mexican forces. Our squadron in the Gulf was ordered to cooperate with the Army. But though our Army and Navy were placed in a position to defend our own and the rights of Texas, they were ordered to commit no act of hostility against Mexico unless she declared war or was herself the aggressor by striking the first blow. The result has been that Mexico has made no aggressive movement, and our military and naval commanders have executed their orders with such discretion that the peace of the two Republics has not been disturbed. Texas had declared her independence and maintained it by her arms for more than nine years. She has had an organized government in successful operation during that period. Her separate existence as an independent state had been recognized by the United States and the principal powers of Europe. Treaties of commerce and navigation had been concluded with her by different nations, and it had become manifest to the whole world that any further attempt on the part of Mexico to conquer her or overthrow her Government would be [in] vain. Even Mexico herself had become satisfied of this fact, and whilst the question of annexation was pending before the people of Texas during the past summer, the Government of Mexico, by a formal act, agreed to recognize the independence of Texas on condition that she would not annex herself to any other power. The agreement to acknowledge the independence of Texas, whether with or without this condition, is conclusive against Mexico. The independence of Texas is a fact conceded by Mexico herself, and she had no right or authority to prescribe restrictions as to the form of government which Texas might afterwards choose to assume. But though Mexico can not complain of the United States on account of the annexation of Texas, it is to be regretted that serious causes of misunderstanding between the two countries continue to exist, growing out of unredressed injuries inflicted by the Mexican authorities and people on the persons and property of citizens of the United States through a long series of years. Mexico has admitted these injuries, but has neglected and refused to repair them. Such was the character of the wrongs and such the insults repeatedly offered to American citizens and the American flag by Mexico, in palpable violation of the laws of nations and the treaty between the two countries of the 5th of April 1831, that they have been repeatedly brought to the notice of Congress by my predecessors. As early as the 6th of February 1837, the President of the United States declared in a message to Congress that … our Army

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and Navy had remained on the frontier and coasts of Mexico for many weeks without any hostile movement on her part, though her menaces were continued, I deemed it important to put an end, if possible, to this state of things. With this view I caused steps to be taken in the month of September last to ascertain distinctly and in an authentic form what the designs of the Mexican Government were whether it was their intention to declare war, or invade Texas, or whether they were disposed to adjust and settle in an amicable manner the pending differences between the two countries. On the 9th of November an official answer was received that the Mexican Government consented to renew the diplomatic relations which had been suspended in March last, and for that purpose were willing to accredit a minister from the United States. With a sincere desire to preserve peace and restore relations of good understanding between the two Republics, I waived all ceremony as to the manner of renewing diplomatic intercourse between them, and, assuming the initiative, on the 10th of November, a distinguished citizen of Louisiana was appointed envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary to Mexico, clothed with full powers to adjust and definitively settle all pending differences between the two countries, including those of boundary between Mexico and the State of Texas. The minister appointed has set out on his mission and is probably by this time near the Mexican capital. He has been instructed to bring the negotiation with which he is charged to a conclusion at the earliest practicable period, which it is expected will be in time to enable me to communicate the result to Congress during the present session. Until that result is known I forbear to recommend to Congress such ulterior measures of redress for the wrongs and injuries we have so long borne as it would have been proper to make had no such negotiation been instituted. When orders were given during the past summer for concentrating a military force on the western frontier of Texas, our troops were widely dispersed and in small detachments, occupying posts remote from each other. The prompt and expeditious manner in which an army embracing more than half our peace establishment was drawn together on an emergency so sudden reflects great credit on the officers who were intrusted with the execution of these orders, as well as upon the discipline of the Army itself. To be in strength to protect and defend the people and territory of Texas in the event Mexico should commence hostilities or invade her territories with a large army, which she threatened, I authorized the general assigned to the command of the army of occupation to make requisitions for additional forces from several of the States nearest the Texan territory, and which could most expeditiously furnish them, if in his opinion a larger force than that under his command and the auxiliary aid which under like circumstances he was authorized to receive from Texas should be required. The contingency upon which the exercise of this authority depended has not occurred. The circumstances under which two companies of State artillery from the city of New Orleans were sent into Texas and mustered into the service of the United States are fully stated in the report of the Secretary of War. I recommend to Congress that provision be made for the payment of these troops, as well as a small number of Texan volunteers whom the commanding general thought it necessary to receive or muster into our service.… James K. Polk Source: Joint Session of Congress, State of the Union Address, 29th Congress, First Session, December 2, 1845, http://www.presidentialrhetoric.com/historicspeeches/polk/stateoftheunion 1845.html.

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41. Letter from Ulysses S. Grant to Fianc
ee Julia Dent, July 25, 1846 In the following letter from Lt. Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885) to his fianc
ee, Julia Dent, he expressed horror over the Mexican-American War, saying that it was unjust. However, it was his duty to fight in the war against Mexico—the United States was his country, whether right or wrong. In this case, Grant considered the war unjust. Throughout his memoirs, Grant was critical of the war against Mexico because he considered it a U.S. war of aggression.

Since we have been in Matamoros, a great many murders have been committed, and what is strange there seems to be very week [weak] means made use of to prevent frequent repetitions. Some of the volunteers and about all the Texans seem to think it perfectly right to impose on the people of a conquered City to any extent, and even to murder them where the act can be covered by dark. And how much they seem to enjoy acts of violence too! I would not pretend to guess the number of murders that have been committed upon the persons of poor Mexicans and our soldiers, since we have been here, but the number would startle you. Source: John Y. Simon, The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, vol. 1 (London: Feffer & Simons, 1967), p. 102.

42. Abraham Lincoln’s ‘‘Spot Resolutions,’’ December 22, 1847 President James K. Polk (1795–1849) ordered Gen. Zachary Taylor (1784– 1850) into the disputed land between the Nueces and Rio Grande Rivers to provoke the Mexican Army, which fired on Taylor’s troops on April 24, 1846. Polk labeled this an act of war and called for hostilities with Mexico. Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865), who was a freshman Whig congressman from Illinois at the time, questioned the ‘‘spot’’ where blood had first been shed in the Mexican-American War. Was it on U.S. soil? Was the president lying about the provocation? Lincoln was one of several congressmen opposing the war. On December 22, 1847, he introduced the ‘‘Spot Resolutions,’’ in which he demanded to know the spot where American blood was spilled. This was important because Polk claimed that the Mexicans attacked U.S. troops on American soil. Lincoln’s legislation was never acted upon by the full Congress. However, it earned him the nickname ‘‘Spotty Lincoln.’’

And whereas this House is desirous to obtain a full knowledge of all the facts which go to establish whether the particular spot on which the blood of our citizens was so shed was or was not at that time our own soil: Therefore, Resolved by the House of Representatives, That the President of the United States be respectfully requested to inform this House 1st. Whether the spot on which the blood of our citizens was shed, as in his messages declared, was or was not within the territory of Spain, at least after the treaty of 1819 until the Mexican revolution. 2d. Whether that spot is or is not within the territory which was wrested from Spain by the revolutionary Government of Mexico. 3d. Whether that spot is or is not within a settlement of people, which settlement has existed ever since long before the Texas revolution, and until its inhabitants fled before the approach of the United States army.

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4th. Whether that settlement is or is not isolated from any and all other settlements by the Gulf and the Rio Grande on the south and west, and by wide uninhabited regions on the north and east. 5th. Whether the people of that settlement, or a majority of them, or any of them, have ever submitted themselves to the government or laws of Texas or of the United States, by consent or by compulsion, either by accepting office, or voting at elections, or paying tax, or serving on juries, or having process served upon them, or in any other way. 6th. Whether the people of that settlement did or did not flee from the approach of the United States army, leaving unprotected their homes and their growing crops, before the blood was shed, as in the messages stated; and whether the first blood, so shed, was or was not shed within the enclosure of one of the people who had thus fled from it. 7th. Whether our citizens, whose blood was shed, as in his messages declared, were or were not, at that time, armed officers and soldiers, sent into that settlement by the military orders of the President, through the Secretary of War. 8th. Whether the military force of the United States was or was not so sent into that settlement after Gen. Taylor had more than once intimated to the War Department that, in his opinion, no such movement was necessary to the defence or protection of Texas. Source: Printed Resolution and Preamble on Mexican War: ‘‘Spot Resolutions,’’ The Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress, http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/ mal:@field(DOCIDþ@lit(d0007000)).

43. John C. Calhoun, ‘‘The Conquest of Mexico,’’ 1848 U.S. Sen. John C. Calhoun (D–South Carolina) (1782–1850) had advocated the annexation of Texas, after it had broken away from Mexico and declared its independence in 1836. The status of the Lone Star State, as it was called, was tenuous, and Mexico did not recognize Texas as a separate country. Mexico let it be known that any attempt on the part of the United States to annex Texas would be a declaration of war. Calhoun had been secretary of state in the cabinet of President John Tyler in 1844–1845. However, as a U.S. senator from South Carolina, Calhoun grew suspicious of President James K. Polk’s intrigues and fearful that the president’s intentions of acquiring significant territory below the Rio Grande would hurt the slave states since it would be incorporating a non-white people. Hence, Calhoun abstained from the initial vote for the war and supported unilaterally withdrawing to the Rio Grande and keeping everything north of the river. Calhoun took a leading role in the senate debate over the question of incorporating Mexico. ‘‘To incorporate Mexico, would be the very first instance of the kind of incorporating an Indian race,’’ Calhoun said, ‘‘for more than half of the Mexicans are Indians, and the other is composed chiefly of mixed tribes. I protest against such a union as that! Ours, sir, is the Government of a white race.’’

RESOLVED, That to conquer Mexico and to hold it, either as a province or to incorporate it into the Union, would be inconsistent with the avowed object for which the war has been prosecuted; a departure from the settled policy of the Government; in conflict with its character and genius; and in the end subversive of our free and popular institutions.

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RESOLVED, That no line of policy in the further prosecution of the war should be adopted which may lead to consequences so disastrous. In offering, Senators, these resolutions for your consideration, I have been governed by the reasons which induced me to oppose the war, and by the same considerations I have been ever since guided. In alluding to my opposition to the war, I do not intend to notice the reasons which governed me on that occasion, further than is necessary to explain my motives upon the present. I opposed the war then, not only because I considered it unnecessary, and that it might have been easily avoided; not only because I thought the President had no authority to order a portion of the territory in dispute and in possession of the Mexicans, to be occupied by our troops; not only because I believed the allegations upon which it was sanctioned by Congress, were unfounded in truth; but from high considerations of reason and policy, because I believed it would lead to great and serious evils to the country, and greatly endanger its free institutions. But after the war was declared, and had received the sanction of the Government, I acquiesced in what I could not prevent, and which it was impossible for me to arrest; and I then felt it to be my duty to limit my course so as to give that direction to the conduct of the war as would, as far as possible, prevent the evil and danger with which, in my opinion, it threatened the country and its institutions. For this purpose, at the last session, I suggested to the Senate a defensive line, and for that purpose, I now offer these resolutions. This, and this only, is the motive which governs me. I am moved by no personal nor party considerations. My object is neither to sustain the Executive, nor to strengthen the Opposition, but simply to discharge an important duty to the country. But I shall express my opinion upon all points with boldness and independence, such as become a Senator who has nothing to ask, either from the Government or from the people, and whose only aim is to diminish, to the smallest possible amount, the evils incident to this war. But when I come to notice those points in which I differ from the President, I shall do it with all the decorum which is due to the Chief Magistrate of the Union. When I suggested a defensive line, at the last session, this country had in its possession, through the means of its arms, ample territory, and stood in a condition to force indemnity. Before then, the successes of our arms had gained all the contiguous portions of Mexico, and our army has ever since held all that it is desirable to hold that portion whose population is sparse, and on that account the more desirable to be held. For I hold it in reference to this war a fundamental principle, that when we receive territorial indemnity, it shall be unoccupied territory. In offering a defensive line, I did it because I believed that, in the first place, it was the only certain mode of terminating the war successfully; I did it, also, because I believed that it would be a vast saving of the sacrifice of human life; but above all, I did so because I saw that any other line of policy would expose us to tremendous evil, which these resolutions were intended to guard against. The President took a different view. He recommended a vigorous prosecution of the war not for conquest: that was disavowed but for the purpose of conquering peace; that is, to compel Mexico to sign a treaty making a sufficient cession of territory to indemnify this Government both for the claims of its citizens and for the expenses of the war. Sir, I opposed this policy. I opposed it, among other reasons, because I believed that if the war should be ever so successful, there was great hazard to us, at least, that the object intended to be effected by it would not be accomplished. Congress thought differently. Ample

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provisions, in men and money, were granted for carrying on the war. The campaign has terminated. It has been as successful as the Executive of the country could possibly have calculated. Victory after victory has followed in succession, without a single reverse. Santa Anna was repelled and defeated, with all his forces. Vera Cruz was carried, and the Castle with it. Jalapa, Perote, and Puebla fell; and, after two great triumphs of our army, the gates of Mexico opened to us. Well, sir, what has been accomplished? What has been done? Has the avowed object of the war been attained? Have we conquered peace? Have we obtained a treaty? Have we obtained any indemnity? No, sir: not a single object contemplated has been effected; and, what is worse, our difficulties are greater now than they were then, and the objects, forsooth, more difficult to reach than they were before the campaign commenced. So much for the past; we now come to the commencement of another campaign; and the question is, What shall be done? The same measures are proposed. It is still ‘‘a vigorous prosecution of the war.’’ The measures are identically the same. It is not for conquest that is now as emphatically disowned as it was in the first instance. The object is not to blot Mexico out of the list of nations, for the President is emphatic in the expression of his desire to maintain the nationality of Mexico. He desires to see her an independent and flourishing community, and assigns strong and cogent reasons for all that. Well, sir, the question is now, What ought to be done? We are now coming to the practical question, Shall we aim at carrying on another vigorous campaign under present circumstances? Mr. President, I have examined this question with care, and I repeat, that I cannot support the recommendations of the President. There are many and powerful reasons, stronger than those which existed at the commencement of the last campaign, to justify my opposition now. The cost in money will be vastly greater. There is a bill for ten additional regiments now before the Senate, and another bill providing for twenty regiments of volunteers has been reported, making in all, not less, I suppose, than twenty-five thousand troops; raising the number of troops in the service as, I presume, the chairman of the Committee on Military Affairs can inform you to not much less than seventy thousand in the whole. Well, sir, the expense will be much more than that of the last campaign. It will cost not much short of sixty millions of dollars. Sir, we have heard how much glory our country has acquired in this war. I acknowledge it to the full amount, Mr. President, chivalrously; they have conferred honor on the country, for which I sincerely thank them. Mr. President, I believe all our thanks will be confined to our army. So far as I know, in the civilized world there is no approbation of the conduct of the civil portion of our power. On the contrary, everywhere the declaration is made that we are an ambitious, unjust, hard people, more given to war than any people of modern times. Whether this be true or not, it is not for me to inquire. I am speaking now merely of the reputation which we heard abroad everywhere, I believe; for as much as we have gained in military reputation abroad, I regret to perceive, we have lost in our political and civil reputation. Now, sir, much as I regard military glory; much as I rejoice to behold our people in possession of the indomitable energy and courage which surmount all difficulties, and which class them amongst the first military people of the age, I would be very sorry indeed that our Government should lose any reputation for wisdom, moderation, discretion, justice, and those other high qualities which have distinguished us in the early stages of our history.

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The next reason which my resolutions assign, is, that it is without example or precedent, wither [sic] to hold Mexico as a province, or to incorporate her into our Union. No example of such a line of policy can be found. We have conquered many of the neighboring tribes of Indians, but we have never thought of holding them in subjection never of incorporating them into our Union. They have either been left as an independent people amongst us, or been driven into the forests. I know further, sir, that we have never dreamt of incorporating into our Union any but the Caucasian race the free white race. To incorporate Mexico, would be the very first instance of the kind of incorporating an Indian race; for more than half of the Mexicans are Indians, and the other is composed chiefly of mixed tribes. I protest against such a union as that! Ours, sir, is the Government of a white race. The greatest misfortunes of Spanish America are to be traced to the fatal error of placing these colored races on an equality with the white race. That error destroyed the social arrangement which formed the basis of society. The Portuguese and ourselves have escaped the Portuguese at least to some extent and we are the only people on this continent which have made revolutions without being followed by anarchy. And yet it is professed and talked about to erect these Mexicans into a Territorial Government, and place them on an equality with the people of the United States. I protest utterly against such a project. Sir, it is a remarkable fact, that in the whole history of man, as far as my knowledge extends, there is no instance whatever of any civilized colored races being found equal to the establishment of free popular government, although by far the largest portion of the human family is composed of these races. And even in the savage state we scarcely find them anywhere with such government, except it be our noble savages for noble I will call them. They, for the most part, had free institutions, but they are easily sustained among a savage people. Are we to overlook this fact? Are we to associate with ourselves as equals, companions, and fellow-citizens, the Indians and mixed race of Mexico? Sir, I should consider such a thing as fatal to our institutions. The next two reasons which I assigned, were, that it would be in conflict with the genius and character of our institutions, and subversive of our free government. I take these two together, as intimately connected; and now of the first to hold Mexico in subjection. Mr. President, there are some propositions too clear for argument; and before such a body as the Senate, I should consider it a loss of time to undertake to prove that to hold Mexico as a subjected province would be hostile, and in conflict with our free popular institutions, and in the end subversive of them. Sir, he who knows the American Constitution well he who has duly studied its character he who has looked at history, and knows what has been the effect of conquests of free States invariably, will require no proof at my hands to show that it would be entirely hostile to the institutions of the country to hold Mexico as a province. There is not an example on record of any free State even having attempted the conquest of any territory approaching the extent of Mexico without disastrous consequences. The nations conquered have in time conquered the conquerers by destroying their liberty. That will be our case, sir. The conquest of Mexico would add so vast an amount to the patronage of this Government, that it would absorb the whole power of the States in the Union. This Union would become imperial, and the States mere subordinate corporations. But the evil will not end there. The process will go on.

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The same process by which the power would be transferred from the States to the Union, will transfer the whole from this department of the Government (I speak of the Legislature) to the Executive. All the added power and added patronage which conquest will create, will pass to the Executive. In the end, you put in the hands of the Executive the power of conquering you. You give to it, sir, such splendor, such ample means, that, with the principle of proscription which unfortunately prevails in our country, the struggle will be greater at every Presidential election than our institutions can possibly endure. The end of it will be, that that branch of Government will become all-powerful, and the result is inevitable anarchy and despotism. It is as certain as that I am this day addressing the Senate. But, Mr. President, suppose all these difficulties removed; suppose these people attached to our Union, and desirous of incorporating with us, ought we to bring them in? Are they fit to be connected with us? Are they fit for self-government and for governing you? Are you, any of you, willing that your States should be governed by these twenty-odd Mexican States, with a population of about only one million of your blood, and two or three millions of mixed blood, better informed, all the rest pure Indians, a mixed blood equally ignorant and unfit for liberty, impure races, not as good as Cherokees or Choctaws? We make a great mistake, sir, when we suppose that all people are capable of self-government. We are anxious to force free government on all; and I see that it has been urged in a very respectable quarter, that it is the mission of this country to spread civil and religious liberty over all the world, and especially over this continent. It is a great mistake. None but people advanced to a very high state of moral and intellectual improvement are capable, in a civilized state, of maintaining free government; and amongst those who are so purified, very few, indeed, have had the good fortune of forming a constitution capable of endurance. It is a remarkable fact in the history of man, that scarcely ever have free popular institutions been formed by wisdom alone that have endured. It has been the work of fortunate circumstances, or a combination of circumstances a succession of fortunate incidents of some kind which give to any people a free government. It is a very difficult task to make a constitution to last, though it may be supposed by some that they can be made to order, and furnished at the shortest notice. Sir, this admirable Constitution of our own was the result of a fortunate combination of circumstances. It was superior to the wisdom of the men who made it. It was the force of circumstances which induced them to adopt most of its wise provisions. Well, sir, of the few nations who have the good fortune to adopt self-government, few have had the good fortune long to preserve that government; for it is harder to preserve than to form it. Few people, after years of prosperity, remember the tenure by which their liberty is held; and I fear, Senators, that is our own condition. I fear that we shall continue to involve ourselves until our own system becomes a ruin. Sir, there is no solicitude now for liberty. Who talks of liberty when any great question comes up? Here is a question of the first magnitude as to the conduct of this war; do you hear anybody talk about its effect upon our liberties and our free institutions? No, sir. That was not the case formerly. In the early stages of our Government, the great anxiety was how to preserve liberty; the great anxiety now is for the attainment of mere military glory. In the one, we are forgetting the other. The maxim of former times was, that power is always stealing from the many to the few; the price of liberty was perpetual vigilance. They were constantly looking out and watching for danger. Then, when any great

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question came up, the first inquiry was, how it could affect our free institutions how it could affect our liberty. Not so now. Is it because there has been any decay of the spirit of liberty among the people? Not at all. I believe the love of liberty was never more ardent, but they have forgotten the tenure of liberty by which alone it is preserved. We think we may now indulge in everything with impunity, as if we held our charter of liberty by ‘‘right divine’’ from Heaven itself. Under these impressions, we plunge into war, we contract heavy debts, we increase the patronage of the Executive, and we even talk of a crusade to force our institutions, our liberty, upon all people. There is no species of extravagance which our people imagine will endanger their liberty in any degree. But it is a great and fatal mistake. The day of retribution will come. It will come as certainly as I am now addressing the Senate; and when it does come, awful will be the reckoning heavy the responsibility somewhere! Source: http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?documentprint 478.

44. Excerpts from Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, 1855 Poet Walt Whitman (1819–1892) was a paradox—a walking contradiction. He was a staunch abolitionist so much so that he was fired from his job as editor of the Brooklyn Eagle. But unlike his fellow abolitionists, he supported the war with Mexico. A romantic, Whitman had no doubt in the alleged greatness and superiority of the American nation. His poetry offered assurances of the legitimacy of the war, and his expressions communicated certainty and self-evident truth. In the following document Whitman spoke of his belief in the uniqueness of the Euro-American people; his poem ‘‘Song of Myself’’ heralded Euro-American exceptionalism. He saw America as the prime mover of human history—a belief that most Euro-Americans shared at this time.

America does not repel the past or what it has produced under its forms or amid other politics or the idea of castes or the old religions … accepts the lesson with calmness … is not so impatient as has been supposed that the slough still sticks to opinions and manners and literature while the life which served its requirements has passed into the new life of the new forms … perceives that the corpse is slowly borne from the eating and sleeping rooms of the house … perceives that it waits a little while in the door … that it was fittest for its days … that its action has descended to the stalwart and well shaped heir who approaches … and that he shall be fittest for his days.… The American poets are to enclose old and new for America is the race of races. Of them a bard is to be commensurate with a people. To him the other continents arrive as contributions … he gives them reception for their sake and his own sake. His spirit responds to his country’s spirit … he incarnates its geography and natural life and rivers and lakes. Mississippi with annual freshets and changing chutes, Missouri and Columbia and Ohio and Saint Lawrence with the falls and beautiful masculine Hudson, do not embouchure where they spend themselves more than they embouchure into him. The blue breadth over the inland sea of Virginia and Maryland and the sea off Massachusetts and Maine and over Manhattan bay and over Champlain and Erie and over Ontario and Huron and Michigan and Superior, and

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over the Texan and Mexican and Floridian and Cuban seas and over the seas off California and Oregon, is not tallied by the blue breadth of the waters below more than the breadth of above and below is tallied by him. When the long Atlantic coast stretches longer and the Pacific coast stretches longer he easily stretches with them north or south. He spans between them also from east to west and reflects what is between them.… The English language befriends the grand American expression … it is brawny enough and limber and full enough. On the tough stock of a race who through all change of circumstance was never with-out the idea of political liberty, which is the animus of all liberty, it has attracted the terms of daintier and gayer and subtler and more elegant tongues. It is the powerful language of resistance … it is the dialect of common sense. It is the speech of the proud and melancholy races and of all who aspire. It is the chosen tongue to express growth faith self-esteem freedom justice equality friendliness amplitude prudence decision and courage. It is the medium that shall well nigh express the inexpressible. Source: Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass (Brooklyn, NY: Gabriel Harrison daguerreotype, 1855), pp. iii, iv, xi. I.

45. Abraham Lincoln’s Speech to Congress against Seizing Mexican Territory, January 12, 1848 Illinois Congressman Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) continued to question the U.S. role in the Mexican-American War and claimed that its purpose was to seize Texas, California, and other Southwest land areas. According to Lincoln, James K. Polk (1795–1849), the president of the United States, had lied and taken the nation into a war of aggression against Mexico to support the South’s expansionist goals. Clear and simple, it was to support the ambitions of the slave states. The document denied the claims of Texas that the Rio Grande was the boundary between the two countries.

Some, if not all the gentlemen on the other side of the House, who have addressed the committee within the last two days, have spoken rather complainingly, if I have rightly understood them, of the vote given a week or ten days ago, declaring that the war with Mexico was unnecessarily and unconstitutionally commenced by the President [James K. Polk].… I now proceed to examine the President’s evidence, as applicable to such an issue. When that evidence is analized [sic], it is all included in the following propositions: 1. That the Rio Grande was the Western boundary of Louisiana as we purchased it of France in 1803. 2. That the Republic of Texas always claimed the Rio Grande, as her Western boundary. 3. That by various acts, she had claimed it on paper. 4. That Santa Anna, in his treaty with Texas, recognised [sic] the Rio Grande, as her boundary. 5. That Texas before, and the U.S. after, annexation had exercised jurisdiction beyond the Nueces between the two rivers. 6. That our Congress, understood the boundary of Texas to extend beyond the Nueces.

Now for each of these in its turn.

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His first item is, that the Rio Grande was the Western boundary of Louisiana, as we purchased it of France in 1803; and seeming to expect this to be disputed, he argues over the amount of nearly a page, to prove it true; at the end of which he lets us know, that by the treaty of 1819, we sold to Spain the whole country from the Rio Grande eastward, to the Sabine. Now, admitting for the present, that the Rio Grande, was the boundary of Louisiana, what, under heaven, had that to do with the present boundary between us and Mexico? How, Mr. Chairman, the line, that once divided your land from mine, can still be the boundary between us, after I have sold my land to you, is, to me, beyond all comprehension. And how any man, with an honest purpose only, of proving the truth, could ever have thought of introducing such a fact to prove such an issue, is equally incomprehensible. His next piece of evidence is that ‘‘The Republic of Texas always claimed this river (Rio Grande) as her western boundary[.]’’ That is not true, in fact. Texas has claimed it, but she has not always claimed it. There is, at least, one distinguished exception. Her state constitution the republic’s most solemn, and well considered act that which may, without impropriety, be called her last will and testament revoking all others makes no such claim. But suppose she had always claimed it. Has not Mexico always claimed the contrary? So that there is but claim against claim, leaving nothing proved, until we get back of the claims, and find which has the better foundation. Though not in the order in which the President presents his evidence, I now consider that class of his statements, which are, in substance, nothing more than that Texas has, by various acts of her convention and congress, claimed the Rio Grande as her boundary, on paper. I mean here what he says about the fixing of the Rio Grande as her boundary in her old constitution (not her state constitution) about forming congressional districts, counties &c &c. Now all of this is but naked claim; and what I have already said about claims is strictly applicable to this. If I should claim your land, by word of mouth, that certainly would not make it mine; and if I were to claim it by a deed which I had made myself, and with which you had had nothing to do, the claim would be quite the same, in substance or rather, in utter nothingness. I next consider the President’s statement that Santa Anna in his treaty with Texas, recognised [sic] the Rio Grande, as the western boundary of Texas. Besides the position, so often taken that Santa Anna, while a prisoner of war a captive could not bind Mexico by a treaty, which I deem conclusive besides this, I wish to say something in relation to this treaty, so called by the President, with Santa Anna. If any man would like to be amused by a sight of that little thing, which the President calls by that big name, he can have it, by turning to Niles’ Register volume 50, page 336. [See Santa Anna Treaty.] And if any one should suppose that Niles’ Register is a curious repository of so mighty a document as a solemn treaty between nations, I can only say that I learned, to a tolerable degree [of] certainty, by enquiry at the State Department, that the President himself never saw it any where else. By the way, I believe I should not err if I were to declare, that during the first ten years of the existence of that document, it was never, by any body, called a treaty that it was never so called, till the President, in his extremity, attempted, by so calling it, to wring something from it in justification of himself in connection with the Mexican war. It has none of the distinguishing features of a treaty. It does not call itself a treaty. Santa Anna does not therein, assume to bind Mexico; he assumes only to act as the President-Commander-in-chief of the Mexican Army and Navy; stipulates that the then present hostilities should cease, and

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that he would not himself take up arms, nor influence the Mexican people to take up arms, against Texas during the existence of the war of independence[.] He did not recognize [sic] the independence of Texas; he did not assume to put an end to the war; but clearly indicated his expectation of its continuance; he did not say one word about boundary, and, most probably, never thought of it. It is stipulated therein that the Mexican forces should evacuate the territory of Texas, passing to the other side of the Rio Grande; and in another article, it is stipulated that, to prevent collisions between the armies, the Texan army should not approach nearer than within five leagues of what is not said but clearly, from the object stated it is of the Rio Grande. Now, if this is a treaty, recognising [sic] the Rio Grande as the boundary of Texas, it contains the singular feature of stipulating that Texas shall not go within five leagues of her own boundary. Next comes the evidence of Texas before annexation, and the United States afterwards, exercising jurisdiction beyond the Nueces, and between the two rivers. This actual exercise of jurisdiction is the very class or quality of evidence we want. It is excellent so far as it goes; but does it go far enough? He tells us it went beyond the Nueces; but he does not tell us it went to the Rio Grande. He tells us, jurisdiction was exercised between the two rivers, but he does not tell us it was exercised over all the territory between them. Some simple minded people, think it is possible, to cross one river and go beyond it without going all the way to the next that jurisdiction may be exercised between two rivers without covering all the country between them. I know a man, not very unlike myself, who exercises jurisdiction over a piece of land between the Wabash and the Mississippi; and yet so far is this from being all there is between those rivers that it is just one hundred and fifty two feet long by fifty wide, and no part of it much within a hundred miles of either. He has a neighbour between him and the Mississippi that is, just across the street, in that direction whom, I am sure, he could neither persuade nor force to give up his habitation; but which nevertheless, he could certainly annex, if it were to be done, by merely standing on his own side of the street and claiming it, or even sitting down and writing a deed for it. But next the President tells us, the Congress of the United States understood the state of Texas they admitted into the union, to extend beyond the Nueces. Well, I suppose they did. I certainly so understood it. But how far beyond? That Congress did not understand it to extend clear to the Rio Grande, is quite certain by the fact of their joint resolutions for admission expressly leaving all questions of boundary to future adjustment. And it may be added that Texas herself is proved to have had the same understanding of it that our Congress had, by the fact of the exact conformity of her new constitution to those resolutions. I am now through the whole of the President’s evidence; and it is a singular fact, that if any one should declare the President sent the army into the midst of a settlement of Mexican people, who had never submitted, by consent or by force, to the authority of Texas or of the United States, and that there, and thereby, the first blood of the war was shed, there is not one word in all the President has said which would either admit or deny the declaration. This strange omission, it does seem to me, could not have occurred but by design. My way of living leads me to be about the courts of justice; and there, I have sometimes seen a good lawyer, struggling for his client’s neck, in a desperate case, employing every artifice to work round, befog, and cover up, with many words, some point arising in the case, which he dared not

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admit, and yet could not deny. Party bias may help to make it appear so; but with all the allowance I can make for such bias, it still does appear to me, that just such, and from just such necessity, is the President’s struggle in this case. Some time after my colleague (Mr. Richardson) introduced the resolutions I have mentioned, I introduced a preamble, resolution, and interrogatories intended to draw the President out, if possible, on this hitherto untrodden ground. To show their relevancy, I propose to state my understanding of the true rule for ascertaining the boundary between Texas and Mexico. It is, that wherever Texas was exercising jurisdiction was hers; and wherever Mexico was exercising jurisdiction was hers; and that whatever separated the actual exercise of jurisdiction of the one, from that of the other, was the true boundary between them. If, as is probably true, Texas was exercising jurisdiction along the western bank of the Nueces, and Mexico was exercising it along the eastern bank of the Rio Grande, then neither river was the boundary; but the uninhabited country between the two was. The extent of our territory in that region depended, not on any treaty-fixed boundary (for no treaty had attempted it), but on revolution Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable most sacred right a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people that can, may revolutionize, and make their own, of so much of the territory as they inhabit. More than this, a majority of any portion of such people may revolutionize, putting down a minority, intermingled with, or near about them, who may oppose their movement. Such minority was precisely the case of the tories of our own revolution. It is a quality of revolutions not to go by old lines, or old laws; but to break up both, and make new ones. As to the country now in question, we bought it of France in 1803, and sold it to Spain in 1819, according to the President’s statements. After this, all Mexico, including Texas, revolutionized against Spain; and still later, Texas revolutionized against Mexico. In my view, just so far as she carried her revolution by obtaining the actual, willing or unwilling, submission of the people, so far, the country was hers, and no farther. Now sir, for the purpose of obtaining the very best evidence, as to whether Texas had actually carried her revolution to the place where the hostilities of the present war commenced, let the President answer the interrogatories I proposed, as before mentioned, or some other similar ones. Let him answer, fully, fairly, and candidly. Let him answer with facts, and not with arguments. Let him remember he sits where Washington sat, and so remembering, let him answer as Washington would answer. As a nation should not, and the Almighty will not, be evaded, so let him attempt no evasion no equivocation. And if, so answering, he can show that the soil was ours where the first blood of the war was shed that it was not within an inhabited country or, if within such, that the inhabitants had submitted themselves to the civil authority of Texas, or of the United States, and that the same is true of the site of Fort Brown, then I am with him for his justification. In that case I, shall be most happy to reverse the vote I gave the other day. I have a selfish motive for desiring that the President may do this. I expect to give some votes, in connection with the war, which, without his so doing, will be of doubtful propriety in my own judgment, but which will be free from the doubt if he does so. But if he can not, or will not do this if on any pretence, or no pretence, he shall refuse or omit it, then I shall be

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fully convinced, of what I more than suspect already, that he is deeply conscious of being in the wrong, that he feels the blood of this war, like the blood of Abel, is crying to Heaven against him. That originally having some strong motive what, I will not stop now to give my opinion concerning to involve the two countries in a war, and trusting to escape scrutiny by fixing the public gaze upon the exceeding brightness of military glory that attractive rainbow that rises in showers of blood that serpent’s eye that charms to destroy, he plunged into it, and has swept on and on, till, disappointed in his calculation of the ease with which Mexico might be subdued, he now finds himself, he knows not where. How like the half insane mumbling of a fever-dream, is the whole war part of his late message! At one time telling us that Mexico has nothing whatever that we can get but territory; at another, showing us how we can support the war by levying contributions on Mexico. At one time, urging the national honor, the security of the future, the prevention of foreign interference, and even the good of Mexico herself, as among the objects of the war; at another, telling us that ‘‘to reject indemnity, by refusing to accept a cession of territory, would be to abandon all our just demands, and to wage the war, bearing all its expenses, without a purpose or definite object.’’ So then, the national honor, security of the future, and every thing but territorial indemnity, may be considered the no-purposes, and indefinite, objects of the war! But, having it now settled that territorial indemnity is the only object we are urged to seize by legislation here, all that he was content to take, a few months ago, and the whole province of lower California to boot, and to still carry on the war to take all we are fighting for and still fight on. Again, the President is resolved, under all circumstances, to have full territorial indemnity for the expenses of the war; but he forgets to tell us how we are to get the excess, after those expenses shall have surpassed the value of the whole of the Mexican territory. So again, he insists that the separate national existence of Mexico shall be maintained; but he does not tell us how this can be done after we shall have taken all her territory. Lest the questions I here suggest be considered speculative merely, let me be indulged a moment in trying [to] show they are not. The war has gone on some twenty months; for the expenses of which, together with an inconsiderable old score, the President now claims about one half of the Mexican territory; and that, by far the better half, so far as concerns our ability to make any thing out of it. It is comparatively uninhabited; so that we could establish land offices in it, and raise some money in that way. But the other half is already inhabited, as I understand it, tolerably densely for the nature of the country; and all its lands, or all that are valuable, already appropriated as private property. How then are we to make any thing out of these lands with this encumbrance on them or how, remove the encumbrance? I suppose no one will say we should kill the people, or drive them out, or make slaves of them, or even confiscate their property. How then can we make much out of this part of the territory? If the prosecution of the war has, in expenses, already equalled the better half of the country, how long its future prosecution will be in equalling the less valuable half is not a speculative, but a practical question, pressing closely upon us. And yet it is a question which the President seems to never have thought of. As to the mode of terminating the war and securing peace, the President is equally wandering and indefinite. First, it is to be done by a more vigorous prosecution of the war in the vital parts of the enem[y’]s country; and, after apparently talking himself tired on this point, the President drops down into a half despairing tone, and tells us that ‘‘with a people distracted and

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divided by contending factions, and a government subject to constant changes, by successive revolutions, the continued success of our arms may fail to secure a satisfactory peace.’’ Then he suggests the propriety of wheedling the Mexican people to desert the counsels of their own leaders, and trusting in our protection, to set up a government from which we can secure a satisfactory peace; telling us that ‘‘this may become the only mode of obtaining such a peace.’’ But soon he falls into doubt of this too; and then drops back on to the already half abandoned ground of ‘‘more vigorous prossecution.’’ All this shows that the President is, in no wise, satisfied with his own positions. First he takes up one, and in attempting to argue us into it, he argues himself out of it; then seizes another, and goes through the same process; and then, confused at being able to think of nothing new, he snatches up the old one again, which he has some time before cast off. His mind, tasked beyond its power, is running hither and thither, like some tortured creature on a burning surface, finding no position on which it can settle down and be at ease. Again, it is a singular omission in this message, that it no where intimates when the President expects the war to terminate. At its beginning, Genl. Scott was, by this same President, driven into disfavor, if not disgrace, for intimating that peace could not be conquered in less than three or four months. But now, at the end of about twenty months, during which time our arms have given us the most splendid successes every department, and every part, land and water, officers and privates, regulars and volunteers, doing all that men could do, and hundreds of things which it had ever before been thought men could not do after all this, this same President gives us a long message, without showing us that, as to the end, he himself has, even an imaginary conception. As I have before said, he knows not where he is. He is a bewildered, confounded, and miserably perplexed man. God grant he may be able to show there is not something about his conscience more painful than all his mental perplexity! Source: United States House of Representatives. The Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress. Series 1. General Correspondence. 1833 1916. Library of Congress, http://memory.loc. gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/mal:@field(DOCIDþ@lit(d0007400)).

46. Excerpts from the Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant, 1885 As a lieutenant, West Point graduate Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885) fought under the command of Gen. Zachary Taylor (1784–1850) during the MexicanAmerican War. Grant later became the leading Union general of the Civil War and, after the war, became president. In his memoirs, Grant gave blunt evaluations of the politics of slavery and U.S. expansionist aggression.

Generally the officers of the army were indifferent whether the annexation [of Texas] was consummated or not; but not so all of them. For myself, I was bitterly opposed to the measure, and to this day regard the war [with Mexico] which resulted as one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation. It was an instance of a republic following the bad example of European monarchies, in not considering justice in their desire to acquire additional territory. Texas was originally a state belonging to the republic of Mexico. It extended from the Sabine River on the east to the Rio Grande on the west, and from the Gulf of Mexico on the south and east to the territory of the United States and New Mexico another Mexican state at that time on the north and west. An empire in

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territory, it had but a very sparse population, until settled by Americans who had received authority from Mexico to colonize. These colonists paid very little attention to the supreme government, and introduced slavery into the state almost from the start, [al]though the constitution of Mexico did not, nor does it now, sanction that institution. Soon they set up an independent government of their own, and war existed, between Texas and Mexico, in name from that time until 1836, when active hostilities very nearly ceased upon the capture of Santa Anna, the Mexican President. Before long, however, the same people who with permission of Mexico had colonized Texas, and afterwards set up slavery there, and then seceded as soon as they felt strong enough to do so offered themselves and the State to the United States, and in 1845 their offer was accepted. The occupation, separation and annexation were, from the inception of the movement to its final consummation, a conspiracy to acquire territory out of which slave states might be formed for the American Union. Even if the annexation itself could be justified, the manner in which the subsequent war was forced upon Mexico cannot. The fact is, annexationists wanted more territory than they could possibly lay any claim to, as part of the new acquisition. Texas, as an independent State, never exercised jurisdiction over the territory between the Nueces River and the Rio Grande. Mexico never recognized the independence of Texas, and maintained that, even if independent, the State had no claim south of the Nueces. I am aware that a treaty, made by the Texans with Santa Anna while he was under duress, ceded all the territory between the Nueces and the Rio Grande; but he was a prisoner of war when the treaty was made, and his life was in jeopardy. He knew, too, that he deserved execution at the hands of the Texans, if they should ever capture him. The Texans, if they had taken his life, would have only followed the example set by Santa Anna himself a few years before, when he executed the entire garrison of the Alamo and the villagers of Goliad. In taking military possession of Texas after annexation, the army of occupation, under General [Zachary] Taylor, was directed to occupy the disputed territory. The army did not stop at the Nueces and offer to negotiate for a settlement of the boundary question, but went beyond, apparently in order to force Mexico to initiate war. It is to the credit of the American nation, however, that after conquering Mexico, and while practically holding the country in our possession so that we could have retained the whole of it, or made any terms we chose, we paid a round sum for the additional territory taken; more than it was worth, or was likely to be, to Mexico. To us it was an empire and of incalculable value; but it might have been obtained by other means. The Southern rebellion was largely the outgrowth of the Mexican war. Nations, like individuals, are punished for their transgressions. We got our punishment in the most sanguinary and expensive war of modern times. Source: U.S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant (New York: Charles L. Webster & Co., 1885), pp. 22 24, http://www.bartleby.com/1011/.

47. Excerpt from Abiel Abbott Livermore, The War with Mexico Reviewed, 1850 Abiel Abbott Livermore (1811–1892), a minister of the Congregational Church in New England, opposed the Mexican-American War because he considered it unjust and a plot by slave states to secure more land. In 1850,

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he won the American Peace Prize for a graphic book, The War with Mexico Reviewed, which covered extensively the atrocities of the war. Not much is known about Livermore, who continued to be involved in progressive causes such as the abolitionist movement that sought to end slavery. In this excerpt, Livermore quotes an eyewitness to the atrocities committed against Mexicans during the war. Livermore represents the progressive strain within American society that has worked for peace and questioned the motives for war.

Again, the pride of race has swollen to still greater insolence the pride of country, always quite active enough for the due observance of the claims of universal brotherhood. The Anglo-Saxons have been apparently persuaded to think themselves the chosen people, anointed race of the Lord, commissioned to drive out the heathen, and plant their religion and institutions in every Canaan they could subjugate.… Our treatment both of the red man and the black man has habituated us to feel our power and forget right … The god Terminus is an unknown deity in America. Like the hunger of the pauper boy of fiction, the cry had been, ‘more, more, give us more.… [He quotes one account:] Among the hundreds of the dead whom I saw there [at the Battle of Buena Vista], I was much touched by the appearance of the corpse of a Mexican boy, whose age, I should think, could not have exceeded fifteen years … [a bullet had struck him through the breast]. Source: Abiel Abbott Livermore, The War with Mexico Reviewed (Boston: American Peace Society, 1850), pp. 8, 11, 12, 139.

48. Excerpts from The Other Side: Or Notes for the History of the War between Mexico and the United States Written in Mexico, 1846–1847 The original articles were written from September 1848, and May 1849, under the general title of Apuntes para la Historia de la Guerra entre M
e xico y los Estados-Unidos. They were attributed to 15 Mexican officers. One of the principal contributors was Ram
on Alcaraz, an officer in the Mexican Army during the Mexican-American War (1846–1848). He wrote many books about the topic. Apuntes para la Historia was translated in 1850 by Albert C. Ramsey as The Other Side: Or Notes for the History of the War between Mexico and the United States. It was published in Mexico, England, and the United States. The book gave the Mexican side of the Mexican-American War. The following excerpts have been attributed to Alcaraz’s eyewitness accounts from the various battles in which he participated.

Matamoros is situated on the west bank of the Rio Bravo, in a vast plain, composed of wooden and brick houses, fourteen leagues distant from the coast. The proximity of the enemy indicated that they would little hesitate to attack a place presenting such important difficulties to its defenders. Open on all sides, except that where the river flowed, little resistance could be made towards the interior, and what increased the danger was that the fortifications which had existed were reduced now to a small redoubt. This had been constructed to the west of the city, and at some 600 yards distant from it, upon the bank of the river at the ford called the Anacuitas …

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To sustain the attack, they could not count on a sufficient force. The garrison was composed in the beginning of the battalion of Sappers, the 2d light, the 1st and 10th infantry regiments of the line, and the 7th of cavalry, the auxiliaries of the towns of the North, several companies of Presidiales, and a battalion of the National Guard of the city of Matamoros. The artillery consisted of 20 field pieces, served by one company. Two or three days after the coming of the Americans, the marines of Tampico arrived, the 6th infantry, and a battalion of the Guarda Costa of that place. These two sections being united, they formed a total of about 3,000 men. The munitions were not scarce, if they were not abundant. But it was not so fortunate with provisions, because the necessary supply had not been obtained in time, and before the blockade of the port. From the interior of the country it was impossible to bring them, and much less now was there an opportunity. On the 8th it was positively ascertained from the spies, that the enemy, in number about 3,000 men with an abundance of artillery and numerous wagons, were directing their march from the Fort of Isabel to the entrenched camp in front of Matamoros. The General-in-Chief at once determined to give battle; an opportunity which he had sought for so many days. At ten o’clock in the morning our cavalry went forth upon the spacious plain of Palo Alto: the infantry followed at two in the day, and there came in sight of the enemy. The artillery of the Americans, much superior to ours, made horrid ravages in the ranks of the Mexican [A]rmy. The soldiers yielded, not overwhelmed in a combat in which they might deal out the death which they received not in the midst of the excitement and gallantry which the ardor of a battle brings forth, but in a fatal situation in which they were killed with impunity, and decimated in cold blood. The action was prolonged for whole hours under such unfortunate auspices, and the slain increased every minute. The troops at last, tired of being slaughtered for no use, demanded with a shout to be led on to the enemy with the bayonet, for they wished to fight hand to hand, and to die like brave men. The fire began to spread. Its sinister splendor illuminated the camp, in which a short time before resounded the roar of artillery, and in which now were heard heart-rending groans of our wounded. As most of these were from cannon-shot, they were horribly mutilated. The sight deeply saddened, and the misfortune was complete, when nothing could be done to alleviate their sufferings, for the surgeon who carried the medicine-chests had disappeared at the first fire, without breathing where he had deposited them. There was no other choice than to send some of them to Matamoros in the carts that had brought provisions. The rest were left abandoned on the 9th in the field. The Battles of Palo Alto and La Resaca, Ram
on Alcaraz (Mexican Army Officer), 1846 A little further on, they came up with the enemy on the field of battle known by the name of the Angostura. The ground which had to be passed over was formed of extensive and broad plains, in which it would not have been possible to resist the vigorous shock of our troops, especially of our beautiful cavalry. But where the enemy had halted to give battle, two successive series of hills and barrancas began, which formed a position truly formidable. Each hill was fortified with a battery and ready to deal its murderous fire upon any attempting to take it. The position presenting serious obstacles to an attack, manifested very plainly, that for the Mexicans to gain a victory they would have to sustain a heavy loss in men.

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At the second charge of our troops, a lieutenant, D. Jos
e Maria Montoya, who was in the front rank, became mixed up with the Americans. Seeing himself alone, and not desiring to be killed nor taken prisoner, he availed himself of a stratagem to feign a parley, whereby he was carried into the presence of General Taylor. This was followed by his returning to our camp accompanied by two officers of their army, to have an interview with General Santa Anna. But Montoya, who had his reasons for not presenting himself, separated from the commissioners, who fulfilled their instructions. General Santa Anna has not been embraced in this accusation. Friends and enemies have recognised [sic] the valor with which he constantly braved the fire. It is to be regretted his combinations did not correspond with his gallantry, that his errors dim the splendor of his merits, and that while it is painful to blame his conduct as a general, it is also pleasing to praise his courage as a soldier. The Battle of Buena Vista, Ram
on Alcaraz, February 1846 At dawn on the 18th, the roar of the enemy’s artillery resounded through the camps, as a solemn announcement of a battle. Some of our soldiers now began to leave their ranks, and to descend the opposite side, attempting to mingle with the wounded who were retiring, but General Santa Anna, observing it, ordered some of his adjutants to prevent this disorder and they, either on compulsion or by the stimulus of enthusiasm, succeeded in persuading the fugitives to return. In the meantime, General Baneneli appealed to the last resource, and ordered his men to charge bayonets. They, eager to join in an action which they had only heard, immediately hastened this movement in full force to come up to where they were directed; but, surprised at finding themselves hand to hand with an enemy so superior in numbers and surrounded on all sides, were panic-struck in an instant, fell into disorder, and their commander in vain endeavored to keep them in their ranks. Being himself involved in the crowd with the chiefs of engineers and other officers who endeavored, sword in hand, to keep back the men, they were actually rolled together down the opposite declivity, borne along by the multitude, which poured onward like a torrent from the height. Among the fire and smoke, and above the mass of blue formed by the Americans behind the summit of the Tel
egrafo, still floated our deserted flag. But the banner of the stars was soon raised by the enemy upon the same staff, and for an instant both became entangled and confounded together, our own at length falling to the ground, amidst the shouts and roar of the victors’ guns, and the mournful cries and confused voices of the vanquished. When the Tel
egrafo was lost, the 6th infantry had retreated to the positions on the right, where they capitulated with the other corps. The grenadier battalion, which had been drawn out from the battery of the centre to the foot of the hill, chiefly dispersed, in spite of the exertions made to collect it. An enthusiastic officer harangued the troops at the pitch of his voice, assuring them that they had yet lost nothing, wishing to reanimate the spirit now dead in all that unfortunate crowd. General Baneneli, rushing in with his horse and full of wrath, poured forth a thousand horrible imprecations upon his soldiers, and with the butt of his pistol threatened particularly one of his captains. The General-in-Chief vented his rage upon the officers who had lost their positions; and the agitation of the multitude, and the difficulties of the ground, with the general dangers and desperation, rendered the scene indescribable.

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Horrible, indeed, was the descent by that narrow and rocky path, where thousands rushed, disputing the passage with desperation, and leaving a track of blood upon the road. All classes being confounded, all military distinction and respect were lost, the badges of rank became marks for sarcasms, that were only meted out according to their grade and humiliation. The enemy, now masters of our camp, turned their guns upon the fugitives. This augmented more and more the terror of the multitude crowded through the defile, and pressed forward every instant by a new impulse, which increased the confusion and disgrace of the ill-fated day. Cerro-Gordo was lost! Mexico was open to the iniquity of the invader. The Battle of Cerro Gordo, Ram
on Alcaraz, Mexican Army, April 1847 We will speak in the first place of Chapultepec, the key of Mexico, as then was commonly said, and whose reminiscences and traditions made it doubly important for the enemy, and moreover for the military projects they had conceived. On the exterior it had the following fortifications. A horn-work in the road which leads to Tacubaya. A parapet in the gate at the entrance. Within the [e]nclosure which surrounds the woods to the south side, a breast-work was constructed, and a ditch eight yards wide and three in depth. The artillery defending this fortification were 2 pieces of twenty-fours, 1 of eight, 3 field of fours, and 1 howitzer of 68, in all, 7 pieces. The chief of the castle was General D. Nicolas Bravo and the second General, D. Mariano Monterde. At dawn on the 12th, the enemy’s battery, situated in the hermitage, opened its fire on the garita of the Ni~ no Perdido, without any other object, as we can learn from the documents published by the American chiefs, than to call attention, and to properly be able to plant the ordnance which should batter Chapultepec in the places which we have mentioned. In effect, in a few minutes, these batteries began to fire upon Chapultepec. At first, they caused no destruction. But rectifying their aim, the walls of the building commenced to be pierced by balls in all directions, experiencing great ravages also in the roofs, caused by the bombs which the mortar threw that, as we have said, was concealed in the court of the Molino. The artillery of Chapultepec answered with much precision and accuracy. The engineers worked incessantly to repair the damage done by the enemy’s projectiles, and the troops quite behind the parapets suffered from this storm of balls. The most intelligent in the military art judge that the troops could have been placed at the foot of the hill to avoid the useless loss, leaving in the building only the artillerymen and the requisite engineers. This was not done, and the carcasses of the bombs and hollow balls killed and wounded many soldiers, who had not even the pleasure of discharging their muskets. The Battle of Chapultepec, Ram
on Alcaraz Source: Ram
on Alcaraz et al., eds., The Other Side: Or Notes for the History of the War between Mexico and the United States Written in Mexico, Albert C. Ramsey, trans. (New York: John Wiley, 1850), pp. 33 38, 45 50, 122 129, 208 214, 353 365.

49. Excerpts from George B. McClellan, ‘‘On Volunteers in the Mexican War’’ As in the case of many other generals who participated in the U.S. Civil War (1861–1865), George B. McClellan (1826–1885) served as a lieutenant

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during the Mexican-American War. Like many junior officers, he had doubts about the war and the conduct of U.S. volunteers who committed atrocities. The following excerpts are from his Mexican War Diary in which he criticizes the behavior of many Euro-American volunteers.

December 1846 I was perfectly disgusted coming down the river. I found that every confounded Voluntario in the ‘‘Continental Army’’ ranked me, to be ranked and put aside for a soldier of yesterday, a miserable thing with buttons on it, that knows nothing whatever, is indeed too hard a case. I have pretty much made up my mind that if I cannot increase my rank in this war, I shall resign shortly after the close of it. I cannot stand the idea of being a Second Lieutenant all my life. I have learned some valuable lessons in this war. I am (I hope and believe) pretty well cured of castle building. I came down here with high hopes, with pleasing anticipations of distinction, of being in hard fought battles and acquiring a name and reputation as a stepping stone to a still greater eminence in some future and greater war. I felt that if I could have a chance I could do something; but what has been the result the real state of the case? The first thing that greeted my ears upon arriving off Brazos was the news of the battle of Monterey the place of all others where this Company and its officers would have had an ample field for distinction. There was a grand miss but, thank heaven, it could not possibly have been avoided by us. Well, since then we have been dodging about waiting a week here, two weeks there for the pontoon train, a month in the dirt somewhere else, doing nothing, half the company sick, have been sick myself for more than a month and a half and here we are going to Tampico. What will be the next thing it is impossible to guess at. We may go to San Luis, we may go to Vera Cruz, we may go home from Tampico, we may see a fight, or a dozen of them, or we may not see a shot fired. I have made up my mind to act the philosopher to take things as they come and not worry my head about the future, to try to get perfectly well, and above all things to see as much fun as I can ‘‘scare up’’ in the country. I have seen more suffering since I came out here than I could have imagined to exist. It is really awful. I allude to the sufferings of the Volunteers. They literally die like dogs. Were it all known in the States, there would be no more hue and cry against the Army, all would be willing to have so large a regular army that we could dispense entirely with the volunteer system. The suffering among the Regulars is comparatively trifling, for their officers know their duty and take good care of the men. Source: William Starr Myers, ed., The Mexican War Diary of George B. McClellan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1917), pp. 16 21.

50. Excerpts from Samuel E. Chamberlain, My Confessions Samuel E. Chamberlain (1829–1908) was a soldier, artist, and author who traveled throughout the Southwest and Mexico. At the age of 15 he left home and joined the Second Illinois Volunteer Regiment that was headed to Texas. Once in Texas, he joined the regular army. He participated in border fights and rode with the Glanton gang who took Mexican scalps. My Confessions documents Euro-American racism and destruction during the MexicanAmerican War. The book was apparently based on Samuel Chamberlain’s

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scrapbook, MC092, at the San Jacinto Museum of History, Houston, Texas. The book was published long after Chamberlain’s death. The following excerpts are a report from the Mexican city of Parras (Coahuila, Mexico).

We found the patrol had been guilty of many outrages.… They had ridden into the church of San Jos
e during Mass, the place crowded with kneeling women and children, and with oaths and ribald jest had arrested soldiers who had permission to be present. [He described a massacre by volunteers, mostly from Yell’s Cavalry, at a cave:] On reaching the place we found a ‘‘greaser’’ shot and scalped, but still breathing; the poor fellow held in his hands a Rosary and a medal of the ‘‘Virgin of Guadalupe,’’ only his feeble motions kept the fierce harpies from falling on him while yet alive. A Sabre thrust was given him in mercy, and on we went at a run. Soon shouts and curses, cries of women and children reached our ears, coming apparently from a cave at the end of the ravine. Climbing over the rocks we reached the entrance, and as soon as we could see in the comparative darkness, a horrid sight was before us. The cave was full of our volunteers yelling like fiends, while on the rocky floor lay over twenty Mexicans, dead and dying in pools of blood. Women and children were clinging to the knees of the murderers shrieking for mercy … Most of the butchered Mexicans had been scalped; only three men were found unharmed. A rough crucifix was fastened to a rock, and some irreverent wretch had crowned the image with a bloody scalp. A sickening smell filled the place. The surviving women and children sent up loud screams on seeing us, thinking we had returned to finish the work!… No one was punished for this outrage. Source: Samuel E. Chamberlain, My Confessions (New York: Harper & Row, 1956), pp. 75, 87 88.

51. Excerpts from the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, 1848 With the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, Mexico ceded Arizona, New Mexico, California, and parts of Utah, Nevada, and Colorado to the United States. Mexico was forced to relinquish claims to Texas—recognizing the Rio Grande as the boundary (Article V) between the two countries. The United States paid Mexico for taking half its territory. The United States paid Mexico $15,000,000 in compensation for war-related damage to Mexican property and agreed to compensate American citizens for debts owed to them by the Mexican government. These debts were mostly related to the loss of runaway slaves who found refuge in Mexico. The Treaty called for the property and civil rights of Mexican nationals on what was to become the U.S. side of the border. Finally, the United States promised to police its boundaries. The Senate ratified the treaty by a vote of 34–14 on March 10, 1848. It only passed by a one-vote margin since a two-thirds majority was required for passage. Article X, which guaranteed the protection of Mexican land grants, was deleted. The following are key articles of the Treaty.

… ARTICLE V The boundary line between the two Republics shall commence in the Gulf of Mexico, three leagues from land, opposite the mouth of the Rio Grande, otherwise

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called Rio Bravo del Norte, or opposite the mouth of its deepest branch, if it should have more than one branch emptying directly into the sea; from thence up the middle of that river, following the deepest channel, where it has more than one, to the point where it strikes the southern boundary of New Mexico; thence, westwardly, along the whole southern boundary of New Mexico (which runs north of the town called Paso) to its western termination; thence, northward, along the western line of New Mexico, until it intersects the first branch of the River Gila; (or if it should not intersect any branch of that river, then to the point on the said line nearest to such branch, and thence in a direct line to the same); thence down the middle of the said branch and of the said river, until it empties into the Rio Colorado; thence across the Rio Colorado, following the division line between Upper and Lower California, to the Pacific Ocean. The southern and western limits of New Mexico, mentioned in the article, are those laid down in the map entitled ‘‘Map of the United Mexican States,[’’] as organized and defined by various acts of the Congress of said republic, and constructed according to the best authorities. Revised edition. Published at New York, in 1847, by J. Disturnell, of which map a copy is added to this treaty, bearing the signatures and seals of the undersigned Plenipotentiaries. And, in order to preclude all difficulty in tracing upon the ground the limit separating Upper from Lower California, it is agreed that the said limit shall consist of a straight line drawn from the middle of the Rio Gila, where it unites with the Colorado, to a point on the coast of the Pacific Ocean, distant one marine league due south of the southernmost point of the port of San Diego, according to the plan of said port made in the year 1782 by Don Juan Pantoja, second sailing-master of the Spanish fleet, and published at Madrid in the year 1802, in the atlas to the voyage of the schooners Sutil and Mexicana; of which plan a copy is hereunto added, signed and sealed by the respective Plenipotentiaries. In order to designate the boundary line with due precision, upon authoritative maps, and to establish upon the ground land-marks which shall show the limits of both republics, as described in the present article, the two Governments shall each appoint a commissioner and a surveyor, who, before the expiration of one year from the date of the exchange of ratifications of this treaty, shall meet at the port of San Diego, and proceed to run and mark the said boundary in its whole course to the mouth of the Rio Bravo del Norte. They shall keep journals and make out plans of their operations; and the result agreed upon by them shall be deemed a part of this treaty, and shall have the same force as if it were inserted therein. The two Governments will amicably agree regarding what may be necessary to these persons, and also as to their respective escorts, should such be necessary. The boundary line established by this article shall be religiously respected by each of the two republics, and no change shall ever be made therein, except by the express and free consent of both nations, lawfully given by the General Government of each, in conformity with its own constitution. … ARTICLE VII The River Gila, and the part of the Rio Bravo del Norte lying below the southern boundary of New Mexico, being, agreeably to the fifth article, divided in the middle between the two republics, the navigation of the Gila and of the Bravo

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below said boundary shall be free and common to the vessels and citizens of both countries; and neither shall, without the consent of the other, construct any work that may impede or interrupt, in whole or in part, the exercise of this right; not even for the purpose of favoring new methods of navigation. Nor shall any tax or contribution, under any denomination or title, be levied upon vessels or persons navigating the same or upon merchandise or effects transported thereon, except in the case of landing upon one of their shores. If, for the purpose of making the said rivers navigable, or for maintaining them in such state, it should be necessary or advantageous to establish any tax or contribution, this shall not be done without the consent of both Governments. The stipulations contained in the present article shall not impair the territorial rights of either republic within its established limits. ARTICLE VIII Mexicans now established in territories previously belonging to Mexico, and which remain for the future within the limits of the United States, as defined by the present treaty, shall be free to continue where they now reside, or to remove at any time to the Mexican Republic, retaining the property which they possess in the said territories, or disposing thereof, and removing the proceeds wherever they please, without their being subjected, on this account, to any contribution, tax, or charge whatever. Those who shall prefer to remain in the said territories may either retain the title and rights of Mexican citizens, or acquire those of citizens of the United States. But they shall be under the obligation to make their election within one year from the date of the exchange of ratifications of this treaty; and those who shall remain in the said territories after the expiration of that year, without having declared their intention to retain the character of Mexicans, shall be considered to have elected to become citizens of the United States. In the said territories, property of every kind, now belonging to Mexicans not established there, shall be inviolably respected. The present owners, the heirs of these, and all Mexicans who may hereafter acquire said property by contract, shall enjoy with respect to it guarantees equally ample as if the same belonged to citizens of the United States. ARTICLE IX The Mexicans who, in the territories aforesaid, shall not preserve the character of citizens of the Mexican Republic, conformably with what is stipulated in the preceding article, shall be incorporated into the Union of the United States and be admitted at the proper time (to be judged of by the Congress of the United States) to the enjoyment of all the rights of citizens of the United States, according to the principles of the Constitution; and in the mean time, shall be maintained and protected in the free enjoyment of their liberty and property, and secured in the free exercise of their religion without restriction. ARTICLE X [STRICKEN BY U.S. AMENDMENTS] ARTICLE XI Considering that a great part of the territories, which, by the present treaty, are to be comprehended for the future within the limits of the United States, is now

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occupied by savage tribes, who will hereafter be under the exclusive control of the Government of the United States, and whose incursions within the territory of Mexico would be prejudicial in the extreme, it is solemnly agreed that all such incursions shall be forcibly restrained by the Government of the United States whensoever this may be necessary; and that when they cannot be prevented, they shall be punished by the said Government, and satisfaction for the same shall be exacted all in the same way, and with equal diligence and energy, as if the same incursions were meditated or committed within its own territory, against its own citizens. It shall not be lawful, under any pretext whatever, for any inhabitant of the United States to purchase or acquire any Mexican, or any foreigner residing in Mexico, who may have been captured by Indians inhabiting the territory of either of the two republics; nor to purchase or acquire horses, mules, cattle, or property of any kind, stolen within Mexican territory by such Indians. And in the event of any person or persons, captured within Mexican territory by Indians, being carried into the territory of the United States, the Government of the latter engages and binds itself, in the most solemn manner, so soon as it shall know of such captives being within its territory, and shall be able so to do, through the faithful exercise of its influence and power, to rescue them and return them to their country or deliver them to the agent or representative of the Mexican Government. The Mexican authorities will, as far as practicable, give to the Government of the United States notice of such captures; and its agents shall pay the expenses incurred in the maintenance and transmission of the rescued captives; who, in the mean time, shall be treated with the utmost hospitality by the American authorities at the place where they may be. But if the Government of the United States, before receiving such notice from Mexico, should obtain intelligence, through any other channel, of the existence of Mexican captives within its territory, it will proceed forthwith to effect their release and delivery to the Mexican agent, as above stipulated. For the purpose of giving to these stipulations the fullest possible efficacy, thereby affording the security and redress demanded by their true spirit and intent, the Government of the United States will now and hereafter pass, without unnecessary delay, and always vigilantly enforce, such laws as the nature of the subject may require. And, finally, the sacredness of this obligation shall never be lost sight of by the said Government, when providing for the removal of the Indians from any portion of the said territories, or for its being settled by citizens of the United States; but, on the contrary, special care shall then be taken not to place its Indian occupants under the necessity of seeking new homes, by committing those invasions which the United States have solemnly obliged themselves to restrain. … ARTICLE XV The United States, exonerating Mexico from all demands on account of the claims of their citizens mentioned in the preceding article, and considering them entirely and forever canceled, whatever their amount may be, undertake to make satisfaction for the same, to an amount not exceeding three and one-quarter millions of dollars. To ascertain the validity and amount of those claims, a board of commissioners shall be established by the Government of the United States, whose awards shall be final and conclusive; provided that, in deciding upon the validity of

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each claim, the boa[rd] shall be guided and governed by the principles and rules of decision prescribed by the first and fifth articles of the unratified convention, concluded at the city of Mexico on the twentieth day of November, one thousand eight hundred and forty-three; and in no case shall an award be made in favour of any claim not embraced by these principles and rules. If, in the opinion of the said board of commissioners or of the claimants, any books, records, or documents, in the possession or power of the Government of the Mexican Republic, shall be deemed necessary to the just decision of any claim, the commissioners, or the claimants through them, shall, within such period as Congress may designate, make an application in writing for the same, addressed to the Mexican Minister of Foreign Affairs, to be transmitted by the Secretary of State of the United States; and the Mexican Government engages, at the earliest possible moment after the receipt of such demand, to cause any of the books, records, or documents so specified, which shall be in their possession or power (or authenticated copies or extracts of the same), to be transmitted to the said Secretary of State, who shall immediately deliver them over to the said board of commissioners; provided that no such application shall be made by or at the instance of any claimant, until the facts which it is expected to prove by such books, records, or documents, shall have been stated under oath or affirmation. Source: Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, February 2, 1848, The Avalon Project at Yale Law School, http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/diplomacy/mexico/guadhida.htm.

52. Deleted Article X from the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, 1848 Article X of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo used strong terms to guarantee the property rights of Mexicans and Indians who remained in the ceded territory. However, there was some question whether the article applied to Texas. There was also sentiment against leaving large amounts of lands in Mexican hands. The debate was heated and many U.S. senators did not want to make any concessions to the vanquished nation. The Senate finally approved the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo without Article X, which guaranteed the protection of Mexican land grants, and with changes made to Article IX that obligated the United States to police its boundaries, on March 10, 1848. U.S. Secretary of State James Buchanan sent a letter to the Mexican Congress giving reasons for the elimination of Article X and the revision of Article IX. He wrote that the U.S. Constitution already promised to protect private property. Article IX was changed because it violated precedents in treaties negotiated with France and Spain. The Quer
etaro Protocol was given to the Mexican Congress prior to the U.S. ratification of the treaty giving the reasons why the United States had changed the original. In short, it said ‘‘Trust us.’’ The U.S. Constitution would protect Mexican Americans. The protocol’s interpretation of the treaty, however, had no legal force.

ARTICLE X All the land grants made by the Mexican government or by the competent authorities which pertained to Mexico in the past and which will remain in the

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future within the boundaries of the United States will be respected as valid, with the same force as if those territories still remained within the limits of Mexico. But the grantees of lands in Texas who had taken possession of them and who because of the conditions of the state since discord began between the Mexican Government and Texas, may have been impeded from complying with all the conditions of the grants, have the obligation of fulfilling the same conditions under the stated terms of the respective grants, but now counted from the date of the exchange of the ratifications of this Treaty; for failing to do this the same grants are not obligatory upon the State of Texas, in virtue of stipulations contained in this article. Source: Article X, Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/mexican voices/voices display.cfm?id 62.

53. President James K. Polk (1795–1849) on Article X of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, February 22, 1848 President James K. Polk sent U.S. Minister Nicholas Trist (1800–1874), a seasoned diplomat, to Mexico in the spring of 1847 to negotiate a treaty of peace for ending the Mexican-American War. By August 1847, negotiations were well underway. However, President Polk was not pleased with the outcome of the negotiations and wanted more of Mexico’s land. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ceded 55 percent of Mexico’s territory to the United States in exchange for $15 million in compensation for war-related damage to Mexican property. Polk actively campaigned against the inclusion of Article X guaranteeing the protection of Mexican land grants. He did not want strong guarantees to protect Mexican property—opining that the U.S. Constitution already protected Mexicans in the United States. Polk pressured senators to vote against the inclusion of Article X. The following document raises what he called serious flaws in Article X, saying there was no need for the article since U.S. law would protect property rights.

IN EXECUTIVE SESSION, SENATE OF THE U. STATES. WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 1848. The following message was received from the President of the United States, by Mr. Walker, his secretary: To the Senate of the United States: I lay before the Senate, for their consideration and advice as to its ratification, a treaty of peace, friendship, limits, and settlement, signed at the city of Guadalupe Hidalgo, on the second day of February 1848, by N. P. Trist on the part of the United States, and by plenipotentiaries appointed for that purpose on the part of the Mexican government. I deem it to be my duty to state that the recall of Mr. Trist as commissioner of the United States, of which Congress was informed in my annual message, was dictated by a belief that his continued presence with the army could be productive of no good, but might do much harm by encouraging the delusive hopes and false impressions of the Mexicans; and that his recall would satisfy Mexico that the United States had no terms of peace more favorable to offer. Directions were given that any propositions for peace, which Mexico might make, should be received and transmitted by the commanding general of our forces, to the United States.

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It was not expected that Mr. Trist would remain in Mexico, or continue in the exercise of the functions of the office of commissioner, after he received his letter of recall. He has, however, done so, and the plenipotentiaries of the government of Mexico, with a knowledge of the fact, have concluded with him this treaty. I have examined it with a full sense of the extraneous circumstances attending its conclusion and signature, which might be objected to; but, conforming, as it does substantially on the main questions of boundary and indemnity, to the terms which our commissioner, when he left the United States in April last, was authorized to offer, and animated, as I am, by the spirit which has governed all my official conduct towards Mexico, I have felt it to be my duty to submit it to the Senate for their consideration, with a view to its ratification. To the tenth article of the treaty there are serious objections, and no instructions given to Mr. Trist contemplated or authorized its insertion. The public lands within the limits of Texas belong to that State, and this government has no power to dispose of them, or to change the conditions of grants already made. All valid titles to land within the other territories ceded to the United States will remain unaffected by the change of sovereignty; and I therefore submit that this article should not be ratified as a part of the treaty. There may be reason to apprehend that the ratification of the ‘‘additional and secret article’’ might unreasonably delay and embarrass the final action on the treaty by Mexico. I therefore submit whether that article should not be rejected by the Senate. If the treaty shall be ratified as proposed to be amended, the cessions of territory made by it to the United States, as indemnity, the provision for the satisfaction of the claims of our injured citizens, and the permanent establishment of the boundary of one of the States of the Union, are objects gained of great national importance; while the magnanimous forbearance exhibited towards Mexico, it is hoped may insure a lasting peace and good neighborhood between the two countries. I communicate herewith a copy of the instructions given to Mr. Slidell in November 1845, as enjoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary to Mexico; a copy of the instructions given to Mr. Trist in April last, and such of the correspondence of the latter with the Department of State, not heretofore communicated to Congress, as will enable the Senate to understand the action which has been had with a view to the adjustment of our difficulties with Mexico. James K. Polk Washington, February 22, 1848. Source: U.S. Senate, 30th Cong., 1st Sess., Executive Order 68. Congressional Record.

54. The Quer
etaro Protocol, May 26, 1848 The Mexican Congress reluctantly ratified the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo by the U.S. Senate on March 10, 1848. One vote against the treaty would have lacked the two-thirds majority required. Article 10 was absent from the ratified version of the treaty and changes to Article 11 had lessened the obligation of the United States to protect Mexican property. The treaty passed the Mexican Congress by a one-vote margin and was ratified on May 19, 1848. Some Mexican legislators relied on a letter of protocol by American negotiators, known as the Quer
etaro Protocol, that assured Mexicans that their rights would

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be protected by the U.S. Constitution and that the deletion of Article X and parts of the other articles was in their interest. Many Mexican legislators did not trust the United States and wanted a guarantee of property rights as well as the inclusion of parts of Article IX that guaranteed Mexicans left behind full citizenship, guaranteeing immediate statehood to the Mexican Southwest, and obligated the United States to police its borders.

1st. The American Government by suppressing the IXth article of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and substituting the IIId article of the Treaty of Louisiana, did not intend to diminish in any way what was agreed upon by the aforesaid article IXth in favor of the inhabitants of the territories ceded by Mexico. Its understanding is that all of the agreement is contained in the 3d article of the Treaty of Louisiana. Inconsequence of all the privileges and guarantees civil, political, and religious, which would have been possessed by the inhabitants of the ceded territories, if the IXth article of the treaty had been retained, will be enjoyed by them, without any difference, under the article which has been substituted. 2nd. The American Government by suppressing the Xth article of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo did not in any way intend to annul the grants of lands made by Mexico in the ceded territories. These grants notwithstanding the suppression of the article of the treaty, preserve the legal value which they may possess, and the grantees may cause their legitimate (titles) to be acknowledged before American tribunals. (Titles: those which were legitimate titles up to the 13th of May, 1846, and in Texas up to the 2nd March, 1836.) Source: Protocol of Qu
eretaro, http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/mexican voices/voices display. cfm?id 65.


n on the Treaty 55. Excerpt from Manuel Crescion Rejo of Guadalupe Hidalgo, 1848 Many Mexican intellectuals expressed doubt as to the good faith of the United States in 1848. For them, the United States had unjustly invaded Mexico. In 1848, at the time the treaty was signed, Mexican diplomat Manuel Crescion Rej
on predicted that Mexicans in the United States would be at the mercy of the Euro-Americans and, because of their race, would be treated as secondclass citizens in the United States.

Our race, our unfortunate people, will have to wander in search of hospitality in a strange land, only to be ejected later. Descendants of the Indians that we are, the North Americans hate us, their spokesmen depreciate us, even if they recognize the justice of our cause, and they consider us unworthy to form with them one nation and one society, they clearly manifest that their future expansion begins with the territory that they take from us, and pushing aside our citizens who inhabit the land. Source: Antonio de la Pe~ na y Reyes, Algunos Documentos Sobre el Tratado de Guadalupe-Hidalgo (M
exico, D.F.: Sec de Rel. Ext., 1930), p. 159, quoted in Richard Gonzales, ‘‘Commentary on the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.’’ In Feliciano Rivera, A Mexican American Source Book (Menlo Park, CA: Educational Consulting Associates, 1970), p. 185.

PART IV The Border and Reannexation The existing Mexican and United States border is the result of the Texas and Mexican-American Wars. After these wars, establishing a line was not easy. Both nations sent out survey teams; often where the border was had to be negotiated. Meanwhile, politicos lobbied for extending the line to favor their interests. Texas claimed the Rio Grande to and including half of New Mexico, and expansionists talked about the reannexation of land that was supposedly their land. The documents in this section address ‘‘The Mexican Border.’’ We use the term reannex because Euro-Americans thought of it in those terms. The lines on the maps were meant to designate the limits of Mexico not the limits of the United States. Drawing lines was highly political. The boundary that was drawn at the time of the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was based on J. Disturnell’s 1847 Map. It was a faulty map that made the drawing of the line almost impossible. The task of Boundary Commissioner James Bartlett was complicated by members of the U.S. Congress and the territorial governor of New Mexico who questioned his decisions and even accused him of selling out the United States.

56. Henry Clay’s Resolutions on the Compromise of 1850, January 29, 1850 The annexation of Texas to the United States and the acquisition of a huge portion of Mexican territory did not decrease tensions between the North and the South. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the Mexican-American War (1848) but almost immediately the north and the south sought to further their interests—the South wanted slavery legalized in the newly acquired land and the North wanted to exclude slavery. Before going to war, Congress had passed the Wilmot Proviso (1846) as an amendment to a House of Representatives bill that prohibited slavery in any land acquired from Mexico. However, once the war was over, slave interests were not satisfied and a crisis similar to that of the Missouri Compromise of 1820 ensued. In the case of the latter, Missouri in 1818 had sufficient population to be admitted as a state. An amendment was proposed that prohibited slavery from entering Missouri. The amendment passed the House but not the Senate. In 1820, a compromise was reached in which Maine was admitted as a free state, and Missouri was not required to prohibit slavery. Slavery was prohibited in the Louisiana Territory (obtained through the Louisiana Purchase [1803]) above 36° 30° (latitude/ longitude)—except for Missouri. In 1849, there was a similor stalemate and

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five laws were passed that became known as the Compromise of 1850. As with the Missouri Compromise, the purpose of the Compromise of 1850 was to balance the interests of the slaveholding states and the free states and to avert a split. In sum, California was designated as a free state; Texas received money to give up its claims to the Rio Grande to the east that included New Mexico, Arizona, and parts of Utah; the slave trade was prohibited, but slavery was not outlawed except in the District of Columbia; and fugitive slave laws were passed, requiring the return of runaway slaves. Henry Clay, U.S. senator from Kentucky, offered the following resolution that encapsulated the compromise.

It being desirable, for the peace, concord, and harmony of the Union of these States, to settle and adjust amicably all existing questions of controversy between them arising out of the institution of slavery upon a fair, equitable and just basis: therefore, 1. Resolved, That California, with suitable boundaries, ought, upon her application to be admitted as one of the States of this Union, without the imposition by Congress of any restriction in respect to the exclusion or introduction of slavery within those boundaries. 2. Resolved, That as slavery does not exist by law, and is not likely to be introduced into any of the territory acquired by the United States from the republic of Mexico, it is inexpedient for Congress to provide by law either for its introduction into, or exclusion from, any part of the said territory; and that appropriate territorial governments ought to be established by Congress in all of the said territory, not assigned as the boundaries of the proposed State of California, without the adoption of any restriction or condition on the subject of slavery. 3. Resolved, That the western boundary of the State of Texas ought to be fixed on the Rio del Norte, commencing one marine league from its mouth, and running up that river to the southern line of New Mexico; thence with that line eastwardly, and so continuing in the same direction to the line as established between the United States and Spain, excluding any portion of New Mexico, whether lying on the east or west of that river. 4. Resolved, That it be proposed to the State of Texas, that the United States will provide for the payment of all that portion of the legitimate and bona fide public debt of that State contracted prior to its annexation to the United States, and for which the duties on foreign imports were pledged by the said State to its creditors, not exceeding the sum of dollars, in consideration of the said duties so pledged having been no longer applicable to that object after the said annexation, but having thenceforward become payable to the United States; and upon the condition, also, that the said State of Texas shall, by some solemn and authentic act of her legislature or of a convention, relinquish to the United States any claim which it has to any part of New Mexico. 5. Resolved, That it is inexpedient to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia whilst that institution continues to exist in the State of Maryland, without the consent of that State, without the consent of the people of the District, and without just compensation to the owners of slaves within the District. 6. But, resolved, That it is expedient to prohibit, within the District, the slave trade in slaves brought into it from States or places beyond the limits of the District, either to be sold therein as merchandise, or to be transported to other markets without the District of Columbia.

The Border and Reannexation

7. Resolved, That more effectual provision ought to be made by law, according to the requirement of the constitution, for the restitution and delivery of persons bound to service or labor in any State, who may escape into any other State or Territory in the Union. And, 8. Resolved, That Congress has no power to promote or obstruct the trade in slaves between the slaveholding States; but that the admission or exclusion of slaves brought from one into another of them, depends exclusively upon their own particular laws. Source: Compromise of 1850, U.S. Congress, http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash true&doc 27&page transcript.

57. Excerpt from Governor William Carr Lane’s Manifesto Regarding the Drawing of the Boundary between Mexico and the United States, 1853 The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848) mandated a joint boundary commission to determine the boundary between the United States and Mexico. In December 1848, President James K. Polk (term of office 1845–1849) named Ambrose Sevier as U.S. Commissioner but he died before he could be confirmed to head the U.S. commission. John B. Weller (1812–1875), a former Congressman from Ohio, replaced Sevier and on July 6, 1849, met with Mexican Commissioner Gen. Pedro Garc
ıa Conde. The joint commission ran a line from the Pacific Ocean to the Gila and Colorado Rivers. They planned to meet in El Paso. Weller was forced to leave the commission because of political intrigue and infighting. He was replaced by John Russell Bartlett (1805–1886) and the commission resumed its work in the El Paso, Texas, area. Immediately, an impasse developed over the location of the southern boundary of New Mexico. Controversy developed when several serious discrepancies were found in the official Disturnell Treaty map used by the framers of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848) to set the boundaries. Bartlett and Garc
ıa Conde reached a compromise in the spring of 1851. This agreement resulted in a crisis that was not resolved until the Gadsden Purchase was negotiated in 1853. Federal, state, and local representatives from New Mexico and the rest of the country claimed that Bartlett had sold them out by giving ‘‘their’’ land to Mexico. The following document is an excerpt from a manifesto issued by New Mexico Territorial Governor Willam Carr Lane (1789–1863), a Whig who had served as mayor of St. Louis from 1837 to 1840. President Millard Fillmore (1800–1874) appointed him in 1852 to be the new governor of the New Mexican Territory. The statement inflamed Mexican authorities in neighboring Chihuahua who charged that the United States was attempting to goad Mexico into another war in order to seize more land.

The mere fact, without any other reason, that the President and Congress of the United States have disapproved and repudiated the provisional boundary line which has been run from the Rio Grande to the Gila, is of itself an ample justification of the act of the Government of New-Mexico in promulgating the proclamation of the 19th inst., and the want of special instructions from Mexico does not in the slightest degree invalidate this official act. Whatever your Excellencies may have heard to the contrary from persons as ignorant as presumptuous, it is none the less true that

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my authority is to be found in the laws and constitution of the United States, in the law of nations, in the treaty with Mexico, and in the duties of my office as Governor of this Territory. Your Excellencies have affirmed that the southern boundary line of New-Mexico terminated at New-Mexico, twenty-two miles north of the provisional line of Mr. Bartlett, while a degree of the Mexican Congress fixes the line at El Paso; this decree has never, to my knowledge, been revoked. In your communication your Excellencies frankly admit that Chihuahua never exercised its jurisdiction over the territory in dispute, before the running of Mr. Bartlett’s line, notwithstanding it was entreated by the inhabitants so to do. And why did it not exercise its jurisdiction? I will answer for your Excellencies it was because it was well known that the territory belonged to New-Mexico, and not to Chihuahua. The error committed by Mr. Bartlett, when he determined the said line, induced Chihuahua into error, and it is now incumbent upon Chihuahua to correct it. ‘‘If we should have to suspend for a time the work on one portion of the line, by reason of a difference of opinion, or any other cause, we may go on and determine some other part, so that, in case we should not agree as to the southern boundary line, and should therefore have to refer to our respective Governments, the work on the Gila may progress, should it be deemed expedient.’’ To these reasonable propositions, Mr. Bartlett turned a deaf ear, and obstinately insisted upon his established line, without the concurrence of his colleagues, even though the latter had shown the said line to be wrong.… (Signed) WM. CARR I.ANE, Governor of the Territory of New-Mexico. Source: New York Daily Times, June 20, 1853, p. 3.

58. Excerpt from Commissioner James Bartlett’s Reply to William Carr Lane, 1853 John Russell Bartlett (1805–1886), the head of the U.S. Boundary Commission, kept a journal of the United States–Mexican Boundary Survey Commission’s work. In 1854, he published the two-volume Personal Narrative of Explorations and Incidents in Texas, New Mexico, California, Sonora, and Chihuahua, 1850–1853 (1856). While commissioner, he was under constant criticism from expansionists like the New Mexican Territorial Governor, William Carr Lane (1789–1863), who wanted a more liberal interpretation of the mandate of the Guadalupe Treaty and accused Bartlett of giving away American soil. The expansionists wanted the entire Mesilla Valley. In the following passage, Bartlett explains why the boundaries were drawn as they were and he answers New Mexico Territorial Gov. Lane’s claim that Bartlett had sold out U.S. interests and given away the Mesilla Valley to Mexico.

Mesilla is the diminutive of the Spanish word mesa, table, i.e., table land, or plateau; and is applied to a lesser plateau in the valley of the Rio Grande, beneath that of the great mesa, plateau, or table land which extends for several hundred miles in all directions from the Rio Grande. It means, therefore, little plateau, or little table land.

The Border and Reannexation

It is situated on the western side of the Rio Grande, about fifty miles above El Paso, in latitude about 32° 18’ North; and until the year 1850, it was without an inhabitant. Immediately preceding, and after the war with Mexico, the Mexican population occupying the eastern bank of the Rio Grande in Texas and New Mexico, were greatly annoyed by the encroachments of the Americans, and by their determined efforts to despoil them of their landed property. This was done by the latter, either settling among them, or, in some instances, forcibly occupying their dwellings and cultivated spots. In most cases, however, it was done by putting ‘‘Texas head-rights’’ on their property. These head-rights, were grants issued by the State of Texas, generally for 640 acres, or a mile square, though they sometimes covered very large tracts. They were issued to persons who had served in her wars, and resembled our military land warrants; or to original settlers. These certificates or ‘‘head-rights’’ are still bought and sold in that State. The owner of them may locate his land where he pleases, unless previously occupied, or in lawful possession of another. With these land certificates or ‘‘head-rights,’’ many Americans flocked to the valley of the Rio Grande, and located them in many instances on property which, for a century, had been in the quiet possession of the descendants of the old Spanish colonists. The latter, to avoid litigation, and sometimes standing in fear of their lives, abandoned their homes, and sought a refuge on the Mexican side of the river. Dona Ana, a modern town on the eastern bank of the Rio Grande, 55 miles above El Paso, and near the ‘‘initial point;’’ being a well located and desirable place, and moreover, selected by the United States for one of its military posts, became an attractive point among speculators, and was, in consequence, pounced upon by them and covered by the ‘‘Texas head-rights’’ or land-warrants. Whether the Mexican occupants of the town and lands adjacent were the lawful owners or not, it is needless to state; it is sufficient to say that they had long been in undisturbed possession. They now became alarmed. Litigations commenced. Some applied to the authorities of NewMexico, Texas or the United States for protection. Failing to obtain it, in despair, several hundred abandoned their property and homes, determined to seek an asylum within the territory of Mexico, preferring the very uncertain protection they could obtain there, to remaining as citizens of the United States. With this resolution, a spot was selected on the opposite or western side of the river, eight or ten miles below Dona Ana, which, it was believed, would be within the limits of Mexico. In the month of May 1850, this persecuted people established themselves there, and named the place ‘‘La Mesilla,’’ i.e., the little table. To increase the colony, the Government of Mexico offered to give lands to other actual settlers, which offer induced large numbers of dissatisfied Mexicans living in New-Mexico and in the small settlements along the Rio Grande, in Texas, to remove there. More than half the population of Dona Ana removed to Mesilla within a year. When the boundary line was agreed upon, in December 1850, and it became certain that La Mesilla was south of it, according to the treaty map, a day was set apart for public rejoicing, for the astronomers had been observing near them, and led them to doubt on which side of the line their valley would fall. The day came, and the event was celebrated by firing of cannon and a grand ball, which many from El Paso attended. After this, the population increased much on account of the inducements offered, and in October 1852, the Prefect of El Paso stated that the population numbered 1,900 souls. Very few Americans ever settled there; in fact, none but traders, and it is probable that there neve[r] were twenty altogether.

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Last Summer, some Mexican speculators attempted to practice the same impositions upon them as were practiced when they were citizens of New-Mexico, by claiming their lands. This created great dissatisfaction, and then they threatened to abandon their lands and again become citizens of the United States. At this time, some mischievous persons put an idea into their heads to deny the jurisdiction of Mexico, and thus save their property; and this is, doubtless, the foundation of Gov. LANE’s assertion, that they desire to be reannexed to New-Mexico. B. Source: ‘‘The Mesilla Valley,’’ New York Daily Times, May 5, 1853, p. 6.

59. A Letter from John Disturnell to the New York Daily Times on the Drawing of the New-Mexican Boundary, May 6, 1853 John Disturnell (1801–1877) was the most influential and well-known U.S. mapmaker of the nineteenth century. When the United States turned to an authority to establish the U.S.-Mexican border, they based their assumptions on Disturnell’s map since it was the most authoritative. But, his 1847 map was flawed and caused a dispute over the placing of the U.S.-Mexico boundary around the El Paso area. An error in the coordinates of the map raised the issue as to whether the lines in that area should be disputed. El Paso was incorrectly located on the official map 34 miles too far north and 100 miles too far east. The dispute was resolved by a compromise between U.S. Boundary Commissioner James Bartlett and Mexican Commissioner Pedro Garc
ıa Conde (1806–1851). This compromise caused uproar with U.S. politicos claiming that Bartlett had given away U.S. territory. In the following letter, Disturnell defended the Boundary Commission’s compromise and called the Mesilla dispute of imaginary value and an attempt to take advantage of Mexico. The letter is fundamental to understanding the dispute and the Euro-American maneuver of reannexation.

THE NEW-MEXICAN BOUNDARY To the Editor of the New York Daily Times: The article in your paper of the 5th inst., on the subject of ‘‘The Mexican Boundary,’’ signed ‘‘W.H.S.’’ is one-sided, and partly erroneous in regard to the matter in dispute. For a correct view of the subject, the public should read the article in the National Intelligencer of the 5th of April, signed ‘‘P.F.,’’ which quotes from the instructions given to N.P. Trist, Esq., the Commissioner on the part of the United States, and who signed the Treaty of Peace and Limits, Feb. 2, 1848. Also refer to the Constitution of Chihuahua, as revised in 1847, which defines the northern boundary between New-Mexico, at 32° 57’ 43’’ north latitude. Then examine a map of the Republic of Mexico, certified to by Don Garcio Conde in 1845, which valuable and authentic map is in the possession of the late Commissioner to settle the boundary between the two countries; and in conclusion, refer to the ‘‘Treaty Map,’’ revised edition, 1847, which indicates, on careful examination, the line in dispute to run parallel to 32° 22’ north latitude being no doubt the fair and equitable boundary line, according to the letter of said Treaty.

The Border and Reannexation

As to the imaginary value of the Mesilla Valley, or tract in dispute, it has no force other than a greater inducement for a stronger party to despoil a weaker foe. As regards the Treaty Map of the Republic of Mexico, which has of late so often been referred to, it was first published in the City of New-York, in 1828, being then considered the most correct map of Mexico, and certified to as such by competent authority. Since then, in many respects, the map has been improved and corrected from time to time, as new information has been received from the Departments at Washington and otherwise. In December 1847, it was discovered that a geographical error existed in regard to the true position of El Paso, a frontier town of Chihuahua, which error was corrected from official documents, derived in Washington by the publisher of said map. In changing the boundary between New-Mexico and Chihuahua, the compiler was guided by new and supposed reliable American authority, which, however, seems to have been an error in regard to said boundary, according to the import of the able article in the National Intelligencer, and from an official map of Chihuahua, which has recently been shown to me by J. R. Bartlett, Esq., the late Commissioner on the part of the United States, to settle the boundary between the two countries, as called for by the Treaty of 1848. Yours, &c., John Disturnell New York, May 6, 1853 Source: New York Daily Times, May 7, 1853, p. 3.

60. Excerpts from the Gadsden Purchase Treaty, December 30, 1853 The U.S. minister to Mexico, James Gadsden (1788–1858), attempted to purchase Sonora and northern Mexico from Mexico. When Mexico was unwilling to sell this area, Gadsden used heavy-handed methods in the negotiations, threatening Mexican ministers that, if they did not sell southern Arizona and parts of New Mexico, ‘‘we shall take it.’’ Under pressure, Mexico ceded over 45,000 square miles, of which some 35,000 were in southern Arizona, for $10 million. The Gadsden, or Mesilla, Treaty settled the controversy surrounding where the boundary between the countries should be placed. The following documents are excerpts of the treaty that deal with the Mesilla Valley’s transfer to the United States and the relieving of the United States of responsibility for Indian raids emanating from U.S. territory.

ARTICLE I The Mexican Republic agrees to designate the following as her true limits with the United States for the future: retaining the same dividing line between the two Californias as already defined and established, according to the 5th article of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo limits between the two republics shall be as follows: Beginning in the Gulf of Mexico, three leagues from land, opposite the mouth of the Rio Grande, as provided in the 5th article of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo;

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thence, as defined in the said article, up the middle of that river to the point where the parallel of 31° 47’ north latitude crosses the same; thence due west one hundred miles; thence south to the parallel of 31° 20’ north latitude; thence along the said parallel of 31° 20’ to the 111th meridian of longitude west of Greenwich; thence in a straight line to a point on the Colorado River twenty English miles below the junction of the Gila and Colorado Rivers; thence up the middle of the said River Colorado until it intersects the present line between the United States and Mexico. For the performance of this portion of the treaty, each of the two governments shall nominate one commissioner, to the end that, by common consent the two thus nominated, having met in the city of Paso del Norte, three months after the exchange of the ratifications of this treaty, may proceed to survey and mark out upon the land the dividing line stipulated by this article, where it shall not have already been surveyed and established by the mixed commission, according to the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, keeping a journal and making proper plans of their operations. For this purpose, if they should judge it necessary, the contracting parties shall be at liberty each to unite to its respective commissioner, scientific or other assistants, such as astronomers and surveyors, whose concurrence shall not be considered necessary for the settlement and of a true line of division between the two Republics; that line shall be alone established upon which the commissioners may fix, their consent in this particular being considered decisive and an integral part of this treaty, without necessity of ulterior ratification or approval, and without room for interpretation of any kind by either of the parties contracting. The dividing line thus established shall, in all time, be faithfully respected by the two governments, without any variation therein, unless of the express and free consent of the two, given in conformity to the principles of the law of nations, and in accordance with the constitution of each country respectively. In consequence, the stipulation in the 5th article of the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo upon the boundary line therein described is no longer of any force, wherein it may conflict with that here established, the said line being considered annulled and abolished wherever it may not coincide with the present, and in the same manner remaining in full force where in accordance with the same.

ARTICLE II The government of Mexico hereby releases the United States from all liability on account of the obligations contained in the 11th article of the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and the said article and the thirty-third article of the treaty of amity, commerce, and navigation between the United States of America and the United Mexican States concluded at Mexico, on the fifth day of April 1831, are hereby abrogated. BY THE PRESIDENT: FRANKLIN PIERCE W. L. Marcy, Secretary of State. Source: The Avalon Project, Yale University Law School, http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/ diplomacy/mexico/mx1853.htm.

The Border and Reannexation

61. Excerpt from a letter of Joaqu
ın Corella, Head of Arizpe’s Ayuntamiento (Town Council) to Sonoran Gov.
ndara, January 25, 1856 Manuel Ga This document is from Joaqu
ın Corella, head of Arizpe’s (Sonora, Mexico) town council. He was critical of the 1853 Gadsden Treaty that ceded the Mesilla Valley to the United States. Much of the Mesilla belonged to Sonora. Apache raids had decimated Sonora. Mexicans blamed the Euro-Americans for the raids. Corella saw the Gadsden Treaty as absolving U.S. authorities from a guarantee of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848) to prevent Indian raids into Mexico and predicted this would have disastrous consequences.

The Gadsden Treaty [1853], we repeat, has again brought misfortune to Sonora; it has deprived the state of its most valuable land, as well as resulting in the protection of the Apache who launch their raids from these lands [Arizona] and to North Americans [bandits] who live among them, because in less than twenty-four hours they can cross the boundary; there the robbers and assassins remain beyond punishment; in our opinion it is vital as well as indispensable to garrison the border with sufficient troops that are always alert, since only in this way can their operation be successful and [only in this way] can they defend the integrity of a state threatened by filibusters.… Source: Fernando Pesqueira, ‘‘Documentos Para la Historia de Sonora,’’ 2nd series, vol. 3 (Manuscript in the University of Sonora Library, Hermosillo, Sonora), Rodolfo Acuna and Guadalupe Compean, trans.

62. Excerpt from ‘‘From the Rio Grande,’’ March 7, 1855 The total length of the U.S.–Mexico border is 1,951 miles; from its mouth on the Gulf of Mexico to El Paso, Texas, the border is about 1,254 miles. The Rio Grande dips into the heartland of Mexico, placing U.S. cities like Brownsville, Texas, less than 1,000 miles from Mexico City and close to major Mexican populations. After Texas became part of the United States, U.S. merchants sought to establish a hegemony over trade along the Mexican side of the border. In the early 1850s, a so-called Merchants War broke out due to the uncertainty of the Rio Grande boundary and Mexico’s tariff laws that sought to end Euro-American economic encroachments. U.S. merchants claimed that these privileges had been granted by the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Article XXII specified that if war ever broke out that merchants of either republic residing in the other country could remain for twelve months and settle their affairs. They would be protected and respected. The merchant claimed Favored Nation Status. Intrigue bristled along the border as filibusters sought their fortune. Often they were joined by Mexian Americans. Take Jos
e Mar
ıa Jes
us Carbajal (?– 1874), born in San Fernando de B
exar (San Antonio), an ardent Protestant, whose family supported the Texas Revolt. Carbajal was a leader of expeditions financed by Texas merchants. He led four expeditions into Mexico between 1850 and 1853, attempting to set up the Republic of the Rio Grande, consisting of the Mexican states of Tamaulipas, Nuevo Le
on, and Coahuila. The expeditions became known as the Merchants War. The following is an

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excerpt describing filibustering activities emanating from Brownsville, Texas. It mentions Carbajal.

The Brownsville Flag of the 21st inst., says: A grand ball came off in Brownsville on the evening of the 19th, in honor of Mr. Castillo late Mexican Consul at that place. The Flag describes it as a brilliant affair. The Flag has the following: Fillibusters on the Rio Grande It is stated that $60,000 have been subscribed by the merchants at Brownsville, Texas, and the Mexicans residing there to fit out a filibustering expedition against Mexico, to be commanded by Gen. Carvajal, and that the citizens of Monterey have pledged themselves to raise $100,000 for the same purpose. Gen. [Adri
an] Woll [1795 1875], the Mexican commander, had stopped all communication with the American side of the Rio Grande. He has 1,000 men at Matamoras [sic], 100 at Reynosa, 400 at Camargo, 400 at Mier and 100 at Guerro [sic]. We find the above paragraph in several of our exchanges, without credit. Like other counterfeits, its fabricator is ashamed of the production. Instead of $60,000, the merchants of Brownsville have not subscribed 60 cents to aid any fillibuster organization nor do we believe that the Mexicans residing here have. Our towns on the Rio Grande, as yet, are chiefly commercial, and for this commerce we are dependent, almost wholly, upon our neighbors of Mexico. To secure this trade, quiet on the frontier is absolutely necessary, and our merchants have had time to be taught by experience the futility of border revolutions revolutions instigated, in most instances, by visionary aspirants for fame and place, rather than from motives of patriotism and the welfare of their countrymen. The citizens of Brownsville have hospitably received political exiles from Mexico those who have fled from persecution under the present rulers of that country and would be as ready to extend the same hospitality and afford the same refuge to the persecutors, should, as it is by no means improbable, the continual changes of fortune render such a refuge necessary. The spirit and genius of our institutions guarantee this to all alike, without partiality. The above paragraph is wholly untrue. There is no organization forming here. Aside from a harmless paper warfare occasionally waged, the whole of the northern frontier of Mexico is quiet. The new commandant, Gen. Vega, seems to give general satisfaction. Many of those engaged in the late revolution have been pardoned and returned to their homes, where their valorous swords and stout lance poles have been exchanged for pruning knives and plowshares, for the peaceful cultivation of the soil. Carvajal is still on this side; but, in the retirement of the shades of private life, is, so far as we know, complying with the laws of the country whose protection he has sought. Source: New York Daily Times, March 7, 1855, p. 3.

63. Excerpt from ‘‘The French in Sonora and Dominica—The Monroe Declaration,’’ December 16, 1852 The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848) and the Gadsden Purchase (1853) crossed Mexican land. Some Euro-Americans believed that all of northern Mexico belonged to them, and pressed their economic and territorial interests. Often Euro-Americans were paranoid of European designs on what they believed belonged to them. They were especially covetous of Sonora, which was

The Border and Reannexation

renowned for its vast mineral resources, and kept an eye on the colony of Count Gaston Raousset Boulbon in that Mexican state. Raousset (1817–1854) was a French nobleman who had gone to California to seek his fortune. He and other Frenchmen encountered prejudice in California and sought to colonize Sonora, Mexico. The following excerpt from an article in the Washington Union was balanced and minimized efforts of the French to plant a colony in Sonora, but noted increased French presence in the Caribbean and raised the Monroe Doctrine as a justification for the U.S. action against France. The United States, according to the article, could not let France gain a foothold on the continent.

THE FRENCH IN SONORA AND DOMINICA—THE MONROE DECLARATION From the Washington Union The recent extraordinary intelligence of the revolt of a French colony in the Mexican province of Sonora, of the defeat of the Federal troops by the insurgent forces under command of Count Raousset Boulbon, and the annexation of the Department to the Empire of France, by the proclamation of the victorious adventurer, excited throughout the country a mingled sensation or doubt and astonishment. Viewing the announcement in connection with the speculations of a portion of the French press, respecting the propriety of encouraging European colonization in Mexico, to prevent its absorption by the United States, some of our journals were disposed to credit the singular story, and to anticipate an attempt on the part of the French Government to accept and make good the conquest. By a subtle and ingenious method of reasoning, other circumstances were adduced in support of this position. In our opinion the importance of this affair is very much exaggerated, and its aim and tendency altogether misapprehended. We have no idea that the French Government is in the least implicated in the movement, or that it originates in any concerted plot; nor do we apprehend that it will receive the sanction of the Emperor of France. We take it to be one of a class of adventurous and indefinite outbreaks of ambition or cupidity by which the supremacy of law and social order in the republic of Mexico is prostrated and the fields of industry made desolate. It is agreed that the immediate provocation of the conflict between Count Boulbon’s followers and the Mexican authorities grew out of some misunderstanding in relation to the title to the mine of Arizona; and that the origin of the French colony in Sonora was accidental and for commercial ends, rather than formed by design and for political effect. Moreover, by one, and in our judgment the more probable, account, Boulbon has simply proclaimed the independence of Sonora, without reference to its annexation to France. The same account intimates that the probable result of the affair will be the annexation of Sonora to the United States. The view here presented of the insurrection in Mexican Sonora strikes us as the correct view of the matter. However ambitious Napoleon III may be of colonial conquest, he is hardly so stupid as to believe that this Government will suffer him to plant his foot on the confines of California. He would not expend his energies in so foolish and futile an effort as this Sonora plot. If he covets a foothold on this hemisphere, he will, doubtless seek to compass his purpose by some surer, safer, and wiser scheme.

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That the French Government does entertain the purpose of extending its power on the American continent is scarcely a matter of doubt; in fact, at this very moment, this purpose is in process of accomplishment. Some time since, it was announced that a French squadron had taken possession of the Peninsula of Samana, in the Republic of Dominica, with the avowed intention of fortifying it and converting it into a naval station. This is a most significant and important event. By incredible effort the force of the French navy has been increased, until it is scarcely inferior to that of the British war marine. As a basis for the operation of this immense navy in the waters of the American Continent, the Peninsula and Bay of Samana are appropriated by the French Government, under the plausible pretext of protecting the Spanish population of Hayti [sic] from the ravages of the negro neighbor, the savage Soulouque. It is said that the President of the Dominican Republic is entirely in the interests of France, and that he has surrendered the independence of his country to French domination. The effect of the cession of Samana to France, and the establishment of a French naval station in its bay, will undoubtedly give that Government a supreme control over the Dominican Republic. By some it is contended that France has in prospect the ulterior object of subjugating the Empire of Hayti, and reducing the entire island to its dominion: but we do not believe this to be the policy of the French Government. Its object is the establishment of a naval depot in the Bay of Samana, whence it may securely exert its influence on the affairs of the American Continent. The Bay of Samana affords the finest harbors in the world, and by the fortification of the Peninsula can be made inaccessible to any hostile assault by water. It commands absolutely the Mona passage between Hayti and Puerto Rico, and would enable any naval power possessing it to harrass [sic], if not destroy our commerce around Cape Horn, and with the West Indies and Central America. With a naval force securely stationed in the Bay of Samana, France might exert a powerful influence on the political condition of the West India isles, and in the event of war with this country might easily ravage our commerce and desolate our coasts. Will the Government of the United States suffer France to effect a foothold on this continent, or establish a position in its waters whence it may operate so imperiously on American affairs? Will not this Government remove the pretext under which France acts, by itself assuming the protectorate of Dominica? Shall the Monroe doctrine be maintained or shall we surrender the principle that the ‘‘American Continents are not to be considered as subjects for Colonization by any European power?’’ The aggressions of France in Dominica have imposed upon our Government the imperative duty of deciding this question at once. If it be an open question if the submission of this Government to the usurpations of Great Britain in Central America be not deemed a surrender of the Monroe principle then it is time to revive it, to reassert and to stand by it, when a chief power of Europe plants itself right in the pathway of our commerce, and frowns menacingly on our flag. The Government of the United States has formally disclaimed any design of interfering in the affairs of Europe; the time has come when it should enforce the observance of the principle of non-intervention in the affairs of this Continent, on the ambitious powers of Europe. Source: Washington Union, no date, reprinted in New York Daily Times, December 16, 1852, p. 5.

The Border and Reannexation

64. Letter from John Forsyth to Hon. Lewis Cass on the Execution of Colonel Henry Crabb and Associates, Message from the President of the United States of America, February 16, 1858 California was a hotbed of filibustering activity. Many expeditions were launched from there with the objective of annexing Mexican land. They wanted to recreate another Texas (1836). Sonora, Mexico, was attractive because of its renowned mineral wealth, especially silver. This attracted Euro-American and European filibusterers. Sonora also had fertile farmlands, watered by rivers such as the Yaqui and Mayo—two of the most productive rivers in Mexico. Another factor that made Sonora attractive was that it had one of the best natural harbors on the Gulf of California that connected to the Pacific Ocean. One of the most notorious filibustering expeditions to Sonora was led by Henry Crabb, a former California state senator and Whig, in 1857. He was ordered out of the state, and when he refused he was attacked by Sonoran troops who captured him and cut off his head. President James Buchanan (1791–1868) tried to use the incident as a pretext to invade and occupy Sonora, calling the beheading of Crabb barbaric. Buchanan’s true intention was to unify the United States in a foreign war so as to take attention away from the sectional conflict. On December 19, 1859, Buchanan requested that the U.S. Congress approve occupation of Sonora as well as Chihuahua. The following document from the U.S. Minister to Mexico discusses the filibusters and how far the U.S. consular agents should go to protect the encroachers. Its tone is moderate and a departure from Buchanan’s bellicose rhetoric.

Mr. Forsyth to Mr. Cass No. 32. LEGATION OF THE UNITED STATES, City of Mexico, April 24,1857 SIR: The Mexican papers have been filled for two months past, with rumors of a filibustering expedition from California, under one General Crabb, against Sonora. As we have no commercial or consular agents in that part of the republic, I am without other information on the subject than I can gather from the California and Mexican journals. The minister of relations has, upon several occasions, inquired of me what advices I had on a subject which gives the government a good deal of concern. While I have not been able to add to his stock of information, I have taken occasion to assure him that expeditions of this character against the sovereign rights of Mexico, were viewed by my government with displeasure, and would be prevented, so far as it was in its power to do it. I think there is little doubt that a body of armed men from California some three hundred in number, and the advance guard of a larger force are on their march to, if not already arrived in, Sonora. If so, we have the beginning of a series of personal tragedies which will impose a serious and delicate duty on this legation. In the natural course of the conflict between the invaders and the Mexican troops, some of our misguided countrymen will fall into the hands of the latter, and will, doubtless, be summarily dealt with. In such a contingency I should be glad to have the instructions of my government how far to interfere in their behalf. In the absence of instructions, I should hold it to be my duty to demand for them a fair and regular trial, and if condemned, to use my influence, official and personal, to save their lives, not as a demand of right, but as a matter of grace and policy. The expeditionists

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have certainly chosen an unfortunate time for their movements as regards the interests of the United States in their relations with Mexico. The invasion is calculated to produce an unhappy influence, adverse to the efforts which I have constantly and perseveringly made to eradicate from the Mexican mind the deeply-seated distrust of Americans, and to establish in its stead a confidence in the friendly and honorable sentiments of our government and people towards them. My observation has taught me to believe that nothing but this distrust and fear of our people has prevented the States bordering on the United States especially those like Chihuahua and Sonora, overrun by savages and receiving no protection from the Mexican government from breaking their feeble ties with the central government, and seeking, in annexation with us, that security for life and property of which they are now wholly destitute. The people of Mexico have been taught to believe, from the examples cited to them in California and Texas, that their proper titles, especially to land, would not be respected by their new rulers. I have the opinions of the most intelligent men I meet here, that this circumstance alone has saved to the republic of Mexico the fidelity of Tamaulipas, New Leon, Chihuahua, and Sonora. I am, very respectfully, your obedient servant, John Forsyth Hon. LEWIS CASS, &c., &c., &c. Source: John Forsyth to Hon. Lewis Cass, Execution of Colonel Crabb and Associates, Message from the President of the United States of America, February 16, 1858, pp. 2 3.

65. Excerpt from a Special Correspondent, ‘‘A Tour in the Southwest,’’ 1854 Racial attitudes of Euro-Americans toward Mexicans were formed by popular articles published by travelers along the almost 2,000-mile U.S.–Mexican border. The following excerpt is an account of a traveler along the Rio Grande that was printed in the New York Daily Times. It speaks of Mexicans in racial terms and perpetuates stereotypes that were rampant at the time.

It must be remembered that the Mexican population within the territory is large and increasing, and that it is a dark-colored, mixed race, including often no small proportion of African blood, so much so, that it requires the eye of an expert to distinguish many of those held as slaves, on account of their color, from others among the Mexicans who are constitutionally eligible to the highest offices. The Mexicans have no repugnance, but rather the contrary, to equality and the closest intimacy with negroes. But the intelligence, the enterprise, and the peculiar habits of mind which are the effects of early industrial training, that exist as most important elements in the Germans, as well as the rational regard for liberty, as a right of man, which they generally have, is wanting in the degraded Mexicans. Source: New York Daily Times, June 3, 1854, p. 2.

66. Excerpts from the New York Daily Times, ‘‘New Mexico—Its Social Condition,’’ 1852 (author unknown) Along with Euro-American merchants and U.S. soldiers who moved into the occupied territory along the Rio Grande, Protestant missionaries descended on the newly occupied territory that once belonged to Mexico. Much like the

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Spanish missionaries, they entered Mexico with their cultural and racial biases. They believed that the Mexicans were pagans and that through their conversion to Christianity, not only would their souls be saved, but they would become civilized. The following document from a Protestant minister comments on Mexicans in New Mexico and their ‘‘depraved’’ state.

He found there some 6,000 Mexicans who had never heard a gospel sermon. There were numbers of American traders there, and a host of gamblers. The state of society was most deplorable and alarming. It does not materially differ from the society of some of the other heathen territories. Ignorance, superstition and idolatry were prevalent in such a degree as I had never before heard of in any uncivilized country. There never had been a school-house or institution of learning of any kind for the instruction of the youth, neither were there any school books of any description. The Mexicans are a depraved, lawless set of desperadoes. Gambling is a universal habit. I believe there is not a single Mexican, man or woman, boy or girl, of the age of eight years, but knows how to gamble. Mothers teach their children from infancy the art of gambling. They are trained up in the school of deception by their parents until able to deceive, cheat and gamble on their own hook. The most depraved and wicked are the greatest to be respected. Licentiousness in all its deplorable malignity in the worst conceivable forms stalks abroad at mid-day. Until this vice is checked, little can be done for the elevation of the people, and unless missionaries are sent there to teach them, their reformation is hopeless. It is a lamentable fact that since the conquest by the Americans, their vices have increased. The Americans have been instrumental in carrying among them. Their christenings, their weddings, and their funerals are celebrated in the most debasing and humiliating debauchery. Source: New York Daily Times, September 21, 1852, p. 6.

67. Excerpt from O. Henry, ‘‘Tamales,’’ 1912 O. Henry is the pen name of Euro-American writer William Sydney Porter (1862–1910). He wrote more than 400 short stories. The following excerpt of his poem, ‘‘Tamales,’’ expresses the racism toward Mexicans that was prevalent during the time it was written.

This is the Mexican Don Jos
e Calder
on One of God’s countrymen. Land of the buzzard. Cheap silver dollar, and Cacti and murderers. Why has he left his land Land of the lazy man, Land of the pulque Land of the bull fight, Fleas and revolution. This is the reason, Hark to the wherefore; Listen and tremble.

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One of his ancestors, Ancient and garlicky, Probably grandfather, Died with his boots on. Killed by the Texans, Texans with big guns, At San Jacinto. Died without benefit Of Priest or clergy; Died full of minie balls, Mescal and pepper. Don Jos
e Calderon Heard of the tragedy. Heard of it, thought of it, Vowed a deep vengeance; Vowed retribution On the Americans, Murderous gringos, Especially Texans. ‘‘Valga me Dios! Que Ladrones, diablos, Matadores, mentidores, Caraccos y perros, Voy a matarles, Con solos mis manos, Toditas sin falta.’’ Thus swore the Hidalgo Don Jos
e Calderon. He hied him to Austin. Bought him a basket, A barrel of pepper, And another of garlic; Also a rope he bought. That was his stock in trade; Nothing else had he. Nor was he rated in Dun or in Bradstreet, Thought he meant business, Don Jos
e Calderon. Seeker of vengeance. With his stout lariat, Then he caught swiftly Tomcats and puppy dogs, Caught them and cooked them, Don Jos
e Calderon. Vower of vengeance. Now on the sidewalk

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Sits the avenger Selling Tamales to Innocent purchasers. Dire is thy vengeance, Oh, Jos
e Calderon, Ritiless Nemesis Fearful Redresser Of the wrongs done to thy Sainted grandfather. Now the doomed Texans, Rashly hilarious, Buy of the deadly wares, Buy and devour. Rounders at midnight, Citizens solid, Bankers and newsboys, Bootblacks and preachers, Rashly importunate, Courting destruction. Buy and devour. Beautiful maidens Buy and devour, Gentle society youths Buy and devour. Buy and devour Thins thing called Tamale; Made of rat terrier,m Spitz dog and poodle. Maltese cat, boarding house Steak and red pepper. Garlic and tallow, Clorn meal and shucks. Buy without shame Sit on store steps and eat, Stand on the street and eat, Ride on the cars and eat, Strewing the shucks around Over creation. Dire is thy vengeance, Don Jos
e Calderon. For the slight thing we did Killing thy grandfather. What boots it if we killed Only one greaser, Don Jos
e Calderon. This is your deep revenge, You have greased all of us, Grease a whole nation

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With your Tamales, Don Jos
e Calderon Santos Espiriton, Vicente Camillo, Quitana de Rios, De Rosa y Ribera. Source: O. Henry. Rolling Stones (New York, Collier & Sons, 1912), pp. 257 258.

68. Excerpt from William D. Carrigan and Clive Webb, ‘‘The Lynching of Persons of Mexican Origin or Descent in the United States, 1848 to 1928’’ The Euro-American people had made war on the Native American for two centuries. They also considered the Mexican an Indian. Phrases such as the only good Indian is a dead Indian were part of their vernacular. Euro-Americans transferred these racial and cultural attitudes to Mexicans upon moving into what was formerly Mexican land. This racism created barriers that reinforced inequality and led to a lack of protection from the law for Mexicans that is prevalent up to this day. The brutality was not confined to groups such as the Texas Rangers (formed in 1823), who were infamous for their brutal treatment of Mexicans, but also from ordinary people who saw the Mexican as an intruder and menace to the American way of life. Hence, in the name of justice, many white Americans executed hundreds of Mexican migrants and residents without any repercussions. This gave rise to vigilante groups, often called Minute Men, who perpetuated atrocities. Lynchings were the worst of these atrocities. Studies, such as that from which the following excerpt is taken, suggest that 473 out of every 100,000 Mexican migrant workers during this time period died as lynching victims. The following excerpt describes the extent of the lynching of Mexicans in the Southwest.

Although no comprehensive work on the lynching of Mexicans was ever produced, several historians have addressed the subject of mob violence against Mexicans in more general terms. Despite the extensive documentation of anti-Mexican mob violence provided by these scholars, historians of lynching continue to ignore the brutal repression of Spanish-speakers in the United States. One reason is that no scholar has attempted to provide an actual count of Mexican lynching victims. Discussions of African American lynching victims in the South have rested upon an actual count of individual cases since the turn of the twentieth century. The treatment of Mexican lynching victims, by contrast, often rests upon impressionistic estimates. In 1949, Carey McWilliams wrote in North from Mexico that ‘‘vast research would be required to arrive at an estimate of the number of Mexican lynchings’’.… Between 1848 and 1928, mobs lynched at least 597 Mexicans. Historian Christopher Waldrep has asserted that the definition of lynching has altered so much over the course of time as to render impossible the accurate collection of data on mob violence. It is therefore essential to familiarize the reader from the outset with the interpretation of lynching used to compile the statistics in this essay. The authors regard lynching as a retributive act of murder for which those responsible claim to be serving the interests of justice, tradition, or community good. Although our notion as to what constitutes a lynching is clear, it is still impossible to provide a

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precise count of the number of Mexican victims. We have excluded a significant number of reported lynchings when the sources do not allow for verification of specific data such as the date, location, or identity of the victim. The statistics included in this essay should therefore be considered a conservative estimate of the actual number of Mexicans lynched in the United States. Frontier conditions undoubtedly fostered the growth of vigilantism in general. Nonetheless, the conventional interpretation of western violence cannot be applied to the lynching of Mexicans. The most serious criticism of the ‘‘socially constructive’’ model of vigilantism espoused by Richard Maxwell Brown is that it legitimates the actions of lawbreakers. There is an implicit presumption in the civic virtue of the vigilantes and the criminal guilt of their victims. In truth, the popular tribunals that put Mexicans to death can seldom be said to have acted in the spirit of the law. According to Joseph Caughey, vigilante committees persisted in their activities ‘‘long after the arrival’’ of the law courts. However, Anglos refused to recognize the legitimacy of these courts when they were controlled or influenced by Mexicans. Determined to redress the balance of racial and political power, they constructed their own parallel mechanisms of justice. This is precisely what occurred in Socorro, New Mexico, during the 1880s when an Anglo vigilance committee arose in opposition to the predominantly Mexican legal authorities. These committees showed little respect for the legal rights of Mexicans, executing them in disproportionately large numbers. Their actions therefore amounted to institutionalized discrimination.… The lynching of Mexicans not only occurred in areas where there was a fully operating legal system but often involved the active collusion of law officers themselves. In February 1857, a Justice of the Peace assembled an unwilling audience of Mexicans outside the San Gabriel mission to watch as he decapitated Miguel Soto and then stabbed repeatedly at the corpse. The most systematic abuse of legal authority was by the Texas Rangers. Their brutal repression of the Mexican population was tantamount to state-sanctioned terrorism. Although the exact number of those murdered by the Rangers is unknown, historians estimate that it ran into the hundreds and even thousands. In March 1881, Rangers crossed the border into Mexico and illegally arrested Onofrio Baca on a charge of murder. Baca was returned without extradition orders to the United States where he was handed over to a mob ‘‘and strung up to the cross beams of the gate in the court house yard until he was dead.’’ The terrorizing of Mexicans continued well into the twentieth century. On October 18, 1915, Mexican outlaws derailed a train traveling toward Brownsville, killing several passengers. Some who survived the crash were robbed and murdered by the bandits. The Rangers exacted brutal revenge. Two Mexican passengers aboard the train were shot for their supposed assistance of the raid. The Rangers then executed eight suspected Mexican criminals along the banks of the Rio Grande.… Source: William D. Carrigan and Clive Webb, ‘‘The Lynching of Persons of Mexican Origin or Descent in the United States, 1848 to 1928.’’ Journal of Social History 37.2 (2003), pp. 412 417.

69. Jos
e Mar
ıa Loaiza’s Claim for the Lynching of His Wife Josefa and His Banishment by a Mob in Downieville, California, July 4, 1852 In 1851, a Downieville, California, kangaroo court sentenced a 26-year-old Mexican woman called Juanita (her real name was Josefa) to hanging. She

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was the first woman hanged in California. Early accounts minimized the gravity of the lynching, claiming that Juanita Loaiza was a prostitute who lived with a gambler, Jos
e Mar
ıa Loaiza. On July 4, 1851, during a drunken rage, Fred Cannon, one of the miners in Downieville, in northern California, intentionally broke down Josefa’s door and tried to force sexual favors from her. She ran him off. When Josefa and her husband approached Cannon the next day and asked him to pay for the door, he called her a whore. Josefa went to the door of her home and said, ‘‘This is no place to call me bad names, come into my house and call me that.’’ Josefa stabbed Cannon with a knife. Although the miners wanted to lynch Josefa and Jos
e on the spot, they held a kangaroo trial. Cannon’s body was displayed in a tent, dressed in a red flannel shirt, unbuttoned to show the wound. A pregnant Josefa was convicted. She was hanged from a bridge, while over 2,000 men lined the river to watch. For years, the lynching of Josefa was excused because, according to the defenders of the vigilantes, she was a whore. The following document from the Rodolfo F. Acu~ na Archives at California State University Northridge presents an electronic mail message from Sacramento, California historian Roberto Carrillo Gantz in which he summarizes his research on the Josefa Loaiza lynching and exposes the lie that she was a prostitute. Gantz, who is a vocational instructor for Sacramento County, historian, and screenwriter, was moved by a Public Broadcasting television program about the California Gold Rush and the lynching of Josefa. He did quite a bit of research on the subject at the California State Library in Sacramento while researching the injustice for a screenplay. While browsing microfiche on the U.S. Mexican Claims Commission, he came across a claim made by Josefa’s husband.

A claim made by Jos
e Mar
ıa Loaiza, filed against the U.S. government for ‘‘the lynching of his wife and the banishment of himself by a mob … July 4, 1852 … Downieville, California.’’ The date was inaccurate but further research verified that it was Josefa’s husband. Josefa and Jos
e Mar
ıa Loaiza were from Sonora. ‘‘Schedule of Mexican Claims against the United States,’’ Senate Executive Document 31, 44th Congress 2nd Session. Docket Number 904. Jos
e Mar
ıa Loaiza made a claim for the lynching of his wife Josefa and his banishment by a mob on July 4, 1852 in Downieville, California. The claim was made on June 11, 1875. The claim was dismissed by the commissioner. Source: Rodolfo F. Acu~ na Archives, Special Collections, California State University Northridge.

70. Letter from ‘‘Dame Shirley’’ Concerning San Francisco Vigilante Committee Activities against Chileans, 1852 Mexicans were not the only victims of vigilantism from 1848–1928. Chinese, blacks, and other Latinos also were targeted. Not all Latinos went to the mine fields and a sizeable colony grew in San Francisco, California. The following document is a letter from Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe (1819–1906), who used the pseudonym Dame Shirley, to her sister Molly in Massachusetts. It is about the San Francisco Vigilante Committee and its activities in San Francisco and views the committees as an improvement from more spontaneous lynchings and an attempt to purge civic sins.

The Border and Reannexation

This frightful accident recalled the people to their senses, and they began to act a little less like madmen, than they had previously done. They elected a vigilance committee, and authorized persons to go to The Junction and arrest the suspected Spaniards. The first act of the Committee was to try a Mexicana, who had been foremost in the fray. She has always worn male attire, and on this occasion, armed with a pair of pistols, she fought like a very fury. Luckily, inexperienced in the use of fire-arms, she wounded no one. She was sentenced to leave the Bar by day-light, a perfectly just decision, for there is no doubt she is a regular little demon. Some went so far as to say she ought to be hanged, for she was the indirect cause of the fight. You see always, it is the old, cowardly excuse of Adam in Paradise the woman tempted me, and I did eat as if the poor frail head, once so pure and beautiful, had not sin enough of its own, dragging it forever downward, without being made to answer for the wrong-doing of a whole community of men. The next day, the Committee tried five or six Spaniards, who were proven to have been the ringleaders in the sabbath-day riot. Two of them were sentenced to be whipped, the remainder to leave the Bar that evening, the property of all to be confiscated to the use of the wounded persons. Oh Mary! imagine my anguish when I heard the first blow fall upon those wretched men. Source: Indian Bar, August 4, 1852. Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe, The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851 1852: Being a Series of Twenty-Three Letters from Dame Shirley … to Her Sister in Massachusetts … Reprinted from the Pioneer Magazine of 1854 55, Thomas C. Russell, ed. (San Francisco: Thomas C. Russell, 1922), pp. 263 264. Quoted in Leonard Pitt, California Controversies: Major Issues in the History (New York: Scott, Foresman and Company, 1968), p 72.

71. Excerpts from Jay Monaghan, Chile, Peru, and the California Gold Rush of 1849, 1973 Chileans arrived in San Francisco soon after the discovery of gold in 1848. Since Chile was on the Pacific side of the Western Hemisphere, Chileans were closer to California than the first wave of 49ers who came from the East overland. The Chileans arrived before this group of Euro-Americans. Like Mexicans they were young, single, and did not speak English. The first wave went to the gold fields, often staking out the best claims. They suffered from the history of racism toward Mexicans. They were darker than Euro-Americans, spoke Spanish, and were Catholics. They used the gold fields as a base. Some started businesses in San Francisco, Sacramento, and Monterey where small communities formed. Those that prospered had some capital and they engaged in the importation of flour and mining equipment from Chile. Euro-Americans grew jealous of the Chileans’ prosperity, believing that all of the wealth belonged to them. An anti-Chilean hysteria developed and, on July 15, 1849, angry mobs in San Francisco attacked the peaceful Chileans. The following excerpt is from Jay Monaghan’s book on the California Gold Rush, a classic in the field.

Many of the Chileans in town were men of property who had come to San Francisco with goods to sell, and one of them who established a shop in his tent had trouble on June 21, 1849. That day, while the shopkeeper was serving a customer, two entered and quarreled about an alleged payment. In apparent fright, the

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shopkeeper drew a pistol. One of the gangsters pled with him and the other one fled. As he ran out the door the handgun fired. Who pulled the trigger was never known, the bullet hit the running man and he died the next day. His name was Benjamin B. Bailey, a private in the recently banded New York regiment. The sound of the shot attracted a crowd, and by the time the sheriff arrived with a warrant the Chilean shopkeeper had disappeared. His tent and goods auctioned off to the crowd, and the self-righteous Hounds, several of whom had served in the regiment with Bailey, maintain; that his death justified them in organizing themselves as the city’s Regulators. The editor of Alta California protested, holding the Chilean shopkeeper’s right to protect his property with a gun. Obviously two points of view were beginning [to] polarize in San Francisco, and at this time businessmen who happened to be Chileans were respected by the best citizens. The sudden influx of displaced Chileans from the placers [mining areas] during the last weeks of June gave the city a real problem. The refugees came in an ugly mood and rotos [broken-derogatory word referring to a person in poverty and of vulgar habits] were known dangerous characters. Policemen were needed, but the city had no money to pay them. Perhaps the self-styled Regulators might serve in this capacity. They claimed to be upholders of law and order. Some persons welcomed them and lauded the grotesque costumes they wore while marching, two by two, through the streets. Tradesmen smiled indulgently when the Regulators (or Hounds) ended their march at a saloon, where the drinks were ‘‘charged to the dust so the rain could settle it.’’ These young men crossed the bay to Contra Costa on Sunday, July 15, to parade there, and Sam Roberts, who would be convicted for leading the Hounds in the notorious riot, entered upon the scene. He was an odd ruffian from Valparaiso. Unable to read or write, he had served on a Chilean man-of-war and had probably deserted to come to California with a United States regiment. He may have been a member of the New York volunteers to which Ben Bailey belonged. Certainly, he marched with the Hounds wearing a lieutenant’s uniform. Between parades he had operated a boat for landing incoming passengers, and no doubt he resented the necessity of competing in this occupation with newly arrived Chileans who supported themselves temporarily as boatmen the way P
erez Rosales’ companions had done. Nevertheless, Sam did have friendly relations with some Chileans, and, knowing Spanish, he was naturally attracted to Washington Hall on the plaza. This Chilean house of prostitution later became famous when the beautiful spitfire, Mariquita, stabbed the equally fair Camille La Reine. Her crime was considered totally inexcusable because the death of her victim.… Sam, knowing Spanish, led a group of some twenty men to the saloon tent of Dominguez Cruz at Clark’s Point. Inside, along the bar, he saw the backs of twenty Chileans. Sam marched his party in and, with drawn pistol, ordered the drinkers to disperse. Dominguez recognized Sam, the ex-sailor from Valparaiso, and served his men a round or two of drinks. They proclaimed his saloon their headquarters, then marched out. Thus, if a full-scale riot ensued, one Chilean saloonkeeper would be on the rioter’s side.… The extent of the depredations committed by Sam and his gang cannot be determined. Certainly he tried to recruit followers from other gangs by attracting attention with fife, drum, and shouts of encouragement through his megaphone. Before dawn, however, he returned to Dominguez’ saloon, bringing 1oot to be stored there.

The Border and Reannexation

The next morning many outraged citizens appealed to alcalde [mayor], who claimed that he could do nothing without an armed constabulary, or what the Chileans called vigilantes, an ominous word in California history. He did, however, call a meeting in the plaza for three o’clock that afternoon. So Chileans believed, erroneously, that the alcalde had resigned, a natural assumption when they saw distinguished citizens assemble to take the government into their own hands. At meeting, Sam Brannan, always eager to address any audience, spoke out in his best auctioneer voice, insisting on justice for Chileans, the good people from a neighboring republic. California, Brannan boomed, depended on Chile for flour, on skilled artisans for laying bricks, on her bakers for bread. He did not mention that Chileans under P
erez Rosales had paid him well for poor accommodations on his decrepit craft to Sacramento, but he insisted that a collection be taken to reimburse those who had been robbed. The Hounds, he thundered must be suppressed.… Somewhat different indictments were rendered against nineteen other Hounds, and seventeen of these men were arrested immediately. Since there was no jail in San Francisco, they were confined on the United States war sloop Warren in the bay. Three Hounds, including Sam Roberts, could not be found in town, but before arraignment two days later they had all been apprehended. Roberts was on a schooner headed for Stockton. The trial commenced on July 18. Prompt justice surely! Pioneers did not believe in legal procrastination. Many witnesses were called, including Sam’s woman, Felice, and the badly wounded Rinaldo Alegria, whose mother and sister helped him into court. The poor fellow died soon afterward from the bullet in his abdomen. According to the evidence, thirty-eight Chileans had been either assaulted or intimidated. Rioters had stolen $6,300 in coin, gold dust worth $1,500, and clothes, jewelry, and firearms valued at $1,400. In addition, the looters had carried off many casks of wine and brandy. The defense attorney cross-examined all witnesses with care, and in his concluding argument, begged for leniency, basing his plea on General Smith’s proclamation against foreigners and a lack of identification of the looters. He proved effectively that there were no organized Hounds, although an unfinished constitution had been written to form the Regulators into an association for mutual benefit in case of illness. Several witnesses testified that the leader of the rioters wore a military uniform. Some described it to be more like a major general’s than a lieutenant’s uniform, and the jury decided that the resplendent man must be Sam Roberts. Consequently they adjudged him guilty on all counts in the indictment. He was sentenced to hard labor for ten years in whatever penitentiary the governor of California might select. The other prisoners who were found guilty received lesser sentences according to their crimes, but for one reason or another none of the terms were served. The prompt decision from the jury and the severity of the sentences might have been consoling to some Chileans in San Francisco, but hundreds of their fellow countrymen had already returned to Valparaiso with bitter memories of their treatment in California. By the time they reached home, dozens of ships carrying Argonauts from the eastern United States would be stopping at Valparaiso. What a chance to give those yanquis some of their own medicine when they came ashore! Trouble between the two peoples seemed sure to erupt next in South America.… Source: Jay Monaghan, Chile, Peru, and the California Gold Rush of 1849 (Berkeley, CA: UniverC 1973), pp. 164 170. sity of California Press,


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72. Excerpts from Jill L. Cossley-Batt, ‘‘The Capture of Joaqu
ın Murieta,’’ 1928 The legend of the so-called Mexican bandit Joaqu
ın Murieta (whose spelling varies according to source) has fascinated Hollywood. The legendary Zorro was fashioned on his times. The story is simple. Murieta was attacked by EuroAmericans who raped his wife and killed his family members. Unable to obtain justice, he turned to creating his own justice. The story is a mixture of fact and fantasy. Even the great Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda (1904–1973), claimed Joaqu
ın as a Chilean. However, through the tireless work of Alfredo Figueroa, a composer and Chicano activist from Blythe, California, we know that the California Rangers got the wrong man, and the real Joaqu
ın Murieta died of old age in Sonora, Mexico. The following is an excerpt from Jill L. CossleyBatt’s book describing the death of Murrieta.

On May 17 of this year the State Assembly, then in session at Benicia, passed a joint resolution empowering Governor John Bigler to organize a joint company of determined men to be known as ‘‘The California Rangers,’’ and to offer three thousand dollars reward for the capture of Joaqu
ın Murrieta.… ‘‘There’s Joaqu
ın!’’ Captain Love detailed John White to follow Murieta, while a general battle took place between the remaining bandits and Rangers. Three-Fingered-Jack put up a game fight; two of his wounds were mortal, and it is known that he fired his last shot after his heart had been pierced with a bullet from the rifle of George Chase. The bandits were armed exclusively with six-shooters, whereas the Rangers, being fitted out with rifles, revolvers, and shot-guns, had the advantage, and soon made short work of the swarthy desperadoes. Twelve were killed outright and two were taken prisoners. The Rangers were uninjured, but Captain Love had experienced a ‘‘close shave.’’ While all this fighting was going on, John White, mounted on a fresh steed which he had been leading for any possible emergency, experienced little difficulty in overtaking the fleeing bandit chieftain. Joaqu
ın was riding ‘‘Injun fashion’’ with one hand clutching the mane of his mount, and only his feet exposed to view, his body being shielded by that of the horse he was riding. As the two men came into close quarters, White discharged his revolver at Murrieta. The first shot missed him, as he moved quickly to one side; a second shattered the hand that clutched the animal’s mane, causing the rider to fall on the ground. Quickly rising to his feet and holding the bleeding hand aloft in [a] token of submission, the wounded man addressed his captor in Spanish, saying: ‘‘Mira mi mano, amigo!’’ (‘‘Look at my hand, friend!’’) White, who had formerly been the trusted lieutenant of Jack Hayes, a renowned Indian fighter, was exceptionally courageous, but too chivalrous to take advantage of a wounded man. He said to Joaquin, ‘‘I arrest you,’’ and the young Mexican surrendered. At this moment, however, the other Rangers arrived upon the scene, and some of them, seeing Joaqu
ın’s arm lowered, and thinking the two were still in combat, shot the bandit to pieces. This impulsive action upset many of the Rangers, for they were anxious to take Joaqu
ın alive in order to present substantial proof, when claiming the reward which had been offered for his capture.

The Border and Reannexation

The whole affair happened about eighty miles from Fresno, and a question arose concerning the proper disposition of the dead bandit’s body. After considerable discussion they decided to cut off Murieta’s head, sever the hand of Three-FingeredJack, and take these trophies along for the purpose of satisfying public anxiety and giving tangible proof that the bloodthirsty bandits were out of the way. One of the prisoners, when fording the river, committed suicide by plunging under the water and holding on to the growth beneath, thus defying the efforts of the Rangers to save him. The other was placed in jail, but the jail was mobbed at night, and the next day he was found hanging near the spring of a prominent citizen. The head and hand were taken to Fresno and preserved in alcohol, then placed in the office of Doctor Leach for safety’s sake. Here they were identified by Mr. Dorsey and several others from Mariposa, where Joaqu
ın Murieta was well known. Later they were moved to Hornitos, where Edward Connor and Captain Howard helped to prepare the affidavits establishing the capture and identity of the dead bandit. After a while Black and Henderson placed them on exhibition in San Francisco, where an admission of twenty-five cents was charged. They attracted so much attention that the same men exhibited them in New York, where they netted a large amount of money. Then the Rangers raised so much objection that the relics were brought back to San Francisco, where they were destroyed in the great earthquake and fire of 1906, which wiped out almost every landmark and relic of the gold-rush days. Some of the old Spanish families appear thoroughly convinced that Joaqu
ın Murrieta was not killed that it was one of the other Joaqu
ıns. However, the head was inspected by Governor Bigler, and the bill granting the reward passed the Senate, May 13, 1854. Captain Howard states that there was no doubt as to its being Joaqu
ın Murieta; also that the terrible murders and robberies ceased from that time forth, and that Californians lived in a reasonable degree of peace until 1872, when there was a revival of banditry under the leadership of Vasquez. This later criminal was eventually captured by the Sheriff’s posse and executed in the Santa Clara jail, San Jos
e, March 19, 1875. According to the following letter written to Howard by Edward Connor (later Gen. Connor), there was some doubt as to whether Harry Love would divide the three thousand dollars reward that had been offered for the capture of Joaqu
ın Murieta. It appears that Connor went to Sacramento in order that he might be on hand should anything unjust occur. Source: Jill L. Cossley-Batt, The Last of the California Rangers (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1928), http://www.yosemite.ca.us/library/california rangers/joaquin murieta.html.

73. Excerpts from David Bacon, ‘‘Interview with Antonio Rivera Murrieta’’ [descendant of Joaqu
ın Murrieta], December 15, 2001 The following is an interview by journalist David Bacon with Antonio Rivera Murrieta, a descendant of Joaqu
ın Murrieta—the most famous Mexican bandit of the 1850s. The story goes that he and his family were robbed by white Americans who raped and killed his wife. Unable to get justice from the EuroAmerican system, he turned to the highway avenging his wife’s death. Many experts claim that Joaqu
ın was not killed by California Ranger Harry Love who

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cut off Joaqu
ın’s head and the hand of his accomplice, Three Finger Jack. There was a reward for the capture of Murrieta. Recent studies say that there were as many as five dozen Joaqu
ıns and, in fact, the real Joaqu
ın Murrieta died of old age in Sonora, Mexico. David Bacon (DB) is a well-known author and photographer of the border and Mexico. The interview recounts recollections of the family of Joaqu
ın and confirms that he died in Sonora, Mexico.

DB: Where are you from? My name is Antonio Rivera Murrieta. I was born on February 19th at a very beautiful place in the state of Sonora in Trincheras, on the land of Joaqu
ın Murrieta. I called it Joaqu
ın Murrieta’s land because that’s what my great grandfather told me and he was Murrieta’s cousin. DB: What did they say to you in your youth about Joaqu
ın Murrieta? They spoke about him as the one who went to California at the time to guide the others from Sonora, to mine gold there. There used to be 10,300 people living in California who were from Sonora back then. After they returned to Mexico, they were afraid because of the persecution against Murrieta, and they didn’t speak much about him. That was very true of my grandfather, although not my great grandfather. They feared that the people who persecuted Murrieta would follow them all the way to Trincheras. In addition, people from our family, the Murrietas, couldn’t come to the United States it was taboo. Many would be denied entry, many were denied a passport, and others were denied entrance. One of them was Juan Murrieta brother of the president of the association of Murrieta’s descendants in Trincheras. It took the U.S. government more than 3 years to give me a visa because they’d ask me if I was in the Communist Party, or if I was an activist against the Mexican government. They made a lot of excuses, but I knew what the problem was. It was that I had the last name of Murrieta. The name bothered them. So it took 3 years. I had an appointment every 6 months and finally after 3 years they gave me my passport in Sonoita, Sonora. DB: What happened with Juan Murrieta? Juan Murrieta was passing through Nogales and they said they asked him, ‘‘are you related to Joaqu
ın Murrieta?’’ When he answered that he was, they told him that he no longer had a passport, and they ripped it up. This happened in 1946 47. DB: So almost 100 years after Joaqu
ın Murrieta died, they still feared him? They still had that fear because the textbooks in the primary schools in Arizona and California said he was a ‘‘gringo eater,’’ that he killed one for breakfast, one for lunch and another for dinner. They said he killed people in knife fights, and called him a bandit, an assailant. But we all know that Joaqu
ın Murrieta was a social fighter. He wanted to retrieve the part of Mexico that was lost at that time in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. DB: When I was a child I read the kinds of things you’re talking about in the schools I attended in California. What was the real story of Joaqu
ın Murrieta? Where was he from and what did he do? The true story is that the people from Sonora living in California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas the Mexicans here were the last ones to realize that the land wasn’t part of Mexico any more, and that they were no longer Mexicans. There wasn’t mail in those days, or anything that could have told them that this happened. They started to realize it when Anglos came and wanted to take away their mines,

The Border and Reannexation

their farms, their cattle, their way of living and the little they had. In addition, they were assaulted in Yuma. There were many Joaqu
ın Murrietas. Many Mexicans were angry during that time and fought, but Joaqu
ın Murrieta lasted the longest because he had more luck and was more organized. He wanted to recover that part of Mexico that was ours. There is talk that he had contact with the Mexican federal government back then, but the federal government didn’t support his effort to recover that lost part of Mexico. So the only thing left for him was to defend himself and the rights of the Mexicans the people from Sonora who were still living there. DB: Who were these people? They were country people. They were the ones who showed the Anglos how to mine the gold, to extract the gold from the earth. Up until then, in the United States there weren’t many gold mines, only one in North Carolina. So the Anglos who arrived in California didn’t know how to mine the gold. It was the people from Sonora who showed them. That’s what we want to explain, so that North Americans understand the fundamental value that Mexicans made to the development of California and what it is today. That’s the point. The gold fever was the foundation that made California, and people from Sonora had the principal role in teaching the Anglos how to mine the gold. Joaqu
ın Murrieta was not a bandit. He was not a killer of North Americans. He was a social fighter, and that’s why Mexicans called him a patriot. DB: And now, 150 years later, why is Joaqu
ın Murrieta’s life still something important or relevant? I would like North Americans to better understand us, the Mexicans the fundamental value that we have because we still come to work here. We come to develop this country. They, of course, pay us, thank God, but we are a very important part of this country. Chicanos and Mexicans still come to work in industry, the restaurants, the cleaning, in the warehouses, and the fields. Without Mexicans, the crops wouldn’t be harvested, because, let’s be honest, the majority of the North Americans don’t want to work as farmworkers because it’s hard work. We do. Why? Possibly because we’re already used to hard work. That’s what we want them to learn. And we need to learn more about North Americans as well. DB: When did you get interested in social movements, and when did it become part of your own life? I began to participate in forming the social movement of the International Association of the Descendents of Joaqu
ın Murrieta in 1987. Before that, we had conversations with Alfredo Figueroa in Blythe, California, who is the president of the association. But in 1988, we started to openly fight to clear Joaqu
ın Murrieta’s name, and for these ideas of social justice. We fight for our people here that can’t get a drivers license, and whose car insurance costs them triple that of a resident or a North American. Just because someone is an illegal, it doesn’t mean that he doesn’t know how to drive. DB: So the Association of the Descendents of Joaqu
ın Murrieta is part of a broader movement for the civil rights of the undocumented here? We want mutual understanding between the North Americans and the Mexicans of who Murrieta was, to dissipate from the minds of children and adults of that Murrieta was a ‘‘gringo killer’’ that he was [a] bandit, a pistolero, that he stole and

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murdered. We want people to understand that he fought to recover part of his fatherland and that he defended the Mexicans of that time. To us, that’s part of a better understanding between North Americans and Mexicans that since we’re here, we have to fight for the undocumented as well, against the abuse they suffer. We have more than 3 million undocumented right now in the United States and we have no way to document them. We want an agreement that these people have rights, that they get paid better, that they can get a green card, a driver’s license, car insurance, and a house to live in. Since we started, we’ve helped the clinic in Trincheras, where Joaqu
ın Murrieta lived. We have taken them medication and medical instruments, and an ambulance. We are in the process of getting them a school bus and a few other things: clothes, typewriters. We have two complete computers with printers for the high school in Trincheras. We still don’t have the 23 kilometers that are needed of asphalt, to pave the primary road to the state highway. DB: Hector Moroyoqui, the high school teacher in Trincheras, says cultural activities are needed to encourage more respect toward the indigenous heritage of the people that live there, from the Mayos, the Yaquis, the Papagos, and other indigenous groups. Is the Murrieta Association also supporting this effort? Yes, we have always been in contact with the indigenous groups. The governor of the Papagos, Rafael Garcia-Valencia, is a consultant to us. He is an assistant to the mayor of Caborca, and is a teacher in Quitovac, near Sonoita, an indigenous Papago community. Because of the current change in the political party of the president of the republic, we feel that indigenous people have more support. So we’re going to take advantage of that opportunity for us to ask more from the government. The municipal president of Trincheras is of Mayo origin, from Navojoa. He helped us get into contact with the Mayo, and for the first time, three and a half years ago, we were able to bring a strong group of the Mayo to dance at our fiesta. A Yaqui group also came from Ciudad Obregon. DB: So the association has two areas of emphasis, one to establish this dialog between the Mexicans and North Americans to have more respect towards the Mexicans and also to have more recognition of the indigenous heritage of the people in Sonora in the area of Trincheras and Caborca? Yes, that’s it. We are doing both things supporting the indigenous people, the Mexican Indians: the Otum, the Guarillios, the Papago, the Mayo, the Yaqui, the Cucapaz, the Mujavi, the Chimahuevo, because those are the people of Murrieta. Back then, Joaqu
ın Murrieta was guided by them. He wasn’t born familiar with the trails where they walked from Trincheras to California. That was a 6-month trip. He was guided by the Papagos, in the Trincheras region of Caborca. The Papagos and the Pimas and the Opotas, were the ones who guided Murrieta all the way to California. The authentic paths are still there the ‘‘Devil’s Path,’’ where Murrieta passed. Thirty years ago, on a mountain near Caborca, I saw a rock with Joaqu
ın Murrieta’s name on it, that says 1850 with a[n] arrow next to it, next to the Devil’s Path. But we have not been able to find that rock again. It disappeared as though through an act of magic. We are still looking for it. I think Murrieta himself also had indigenous blood because his last name was Orozco from his mother’s side, and that name is associated with the Otum and Pima. Even more, he could have Mayo blood, because the original Murrietas, Joaqu
ın’s parents and uncles, came from Alamo, Sonora. Alamo was the Mayos’ fundamental

The Border and Reannexation

area then. So I think that the principal blood that we, the Murrietas have, is Mayo blood. DB: Many things remaining from that era are disappearing. I saw and photographed some of the iron crosses on the graves in the cemetery in La Cienega, that were made in the time of Murrieta, but many of them have now disappeared. Yes. La Cienega is the place where Joaqu
ın Murrieta had his ranch, where he kept almost 2,000 horses. It was called La Verruga. That’s where he stored the horses, weapons, and ammunition he planned to use to take the part of Mexico back that was taken from us, supposedly sold by Antonio Lopez Santana after the war in Texas.… Source: Interview with Antonio Rivera Murrieta, Phoenix AZ (12/15/01). From Communities C David Bacon, http://dbacon.igc.org. Without Borders (Cornell/ILR Press, 2006),


74. Excerpts from Horace Bell, Reminiscences of a Ranger; or, Early Times in Southern California, 1881 Horace Bell (1830–1918), an attorney, wrote his autobiography in a gossiplike fashion about the lawless days of Los Angeles in the 1850s. Although he chased the Mexican bandit Joaqu
ın Murrieta and contemporary gangs of Mexican bandits, in the following excerpt he was very critical of fellow EuroAmericans in California, conceding that Murrieta and other Mexican rebels were justified in rebelling against white American racism and mistreatment.

On the morning following my arrival in the city of the Angels I walked around to take notes in my mind as to matters of general interest. First I went immediately across the street to a very small adobe house with two rooms, in which sat in solemn conclave, a sub-committee of the great constituted criminal court of the city. On inquiry I found that the said sub-committee had been in session for about a week, endeavoring to extract confessions from the miserable culprits by a very refined process of questioning and cross-questioning, first by one of the committee, then by another, until the whole committee would exhaust their ingenuity on the victim, when all of their separate results would be solemnly compared, and all of the discrepancies in the prisoner’s statements would be brought back to him and he be required to explain and reconcile them to suit the examining committee; and the poor devil, who doubtless was frightened so badly that he would hardly know one moment what he had said the moment previous, was held strictly accountable for any and all contradictions, and if not satisfactorily explained, was invariably taken by the wise heads of the said committee to be conclusive evidence of guilt. Six men were being tried, all Sonoranians, except one, Felipe Read, a half-breed Indian, whose father was a Scotchman; all claimed, of course, to be innocent; finally one Reyes Feliz made a confession, probably under the hypothesis that hanging would be preferable to such inquisitorial torture as was being practiced on him by the seven wise men of the Angels. Reyes said in his confession that he and his brother-in-law, Joaqu
ın Murietta, with a few followers, had, about a year previous, ran off the horses of Jim Thompson from the Brea ranch, and succeeded in getting them as far as the Tejon, then exclusively inhabited by Indians; that old Zapatero, the Tejon chief, on recognizing Jim Thompson’s brand, arrested the whole party, some dozen in all, men and women, and stripped them all stark naked, tied them

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up, and had them whipped half to death, and turned loose to shift for themselves in the best way they could. Fortunately for the poor outcasts, they fell in with an American of kindred sympathies, who did what he could to relieve the distress of the forlorn thieves, who continued their way-as best they could toward the ‘‘Southern Mines’’ on the Stanislaus and Tuolumne, no mining being done south of those points at that time. In the meantime, brave old Zapatero, who was every inch a chief, sent Thompson’s herd back to him an act for which I hope Jim is to this day duly grateful. At the time this confession was made, Joaqu
ın was walking around, as unconcerned as any other gentleman; but when the minions of the mob went to lay heavy hand upon him he was gone, and from that day until the day of his death, Joaqu
ın Murietta was an outlaw and the terror of the southern counties. Until that confession he stood in this community with as good a character as any other Mexican of his class. Reyes Feliz denied all knowledge of the murder of General Bean. One of the prisoners, Cipriano Sandoval, the village cobbler of San Gabriel, also, after having for several days maintained his innocence, and denied any and all knowledge of the murder, came out and made a full confession. He said he was on his way home from the maromas (rope-dancers) at about 11 o’clock one night, it being quite dark. He heard a shot, and then the footsteps of a man running toward him; that a moment after he came in violent contact with a man whom he at once recognized as Felipe Read. They mutually recognized each other, when Felipe said: ‘‘Cipriano, I have just shot Bean. Here is five dollars; take it, say nothing about it, and when you want money come to me and get it.’’ That was the sum total of his confession. All the others remained obdurate, and what I have related was the sum of the information elicited by the seven days [of] inquisition. The committee had certainly found the murderer of General Bean. The fact was, I believe, that Bean, who kept a bar at the Mission, had seduced Felipe’s mistress, and Indian woman, away from him, and hence the assassination. Three days after my arrival the ‘‘inquisitors’’ announced themselves as ready to report. In the meantime I went around taking notes in my mind. Los Angeles, at the time of my arrival, was certainly a nice looking place the houses generally looked neat and clean, and were well whitewashed. There were three two-story adobe houses in the city, the most important of which is the present residence of Mrs. Bell, widow of the late Capt. Alex. Bell; then the Temple building, a substantial two-story, at the junction of Main and Spring Streets; and the old Casa Sanchez, on what is now Sanchez Street. The lower walls of the latter are still there, the house having been razed. The business of the place was very considerable; the most of the merchants were Jews, and all seemed to be doing a paying business. The fact was, they were all getting rich. The streets were thronged throughout the entire day with splendidly mounted and richly dressed caballeros, most of whom wore suits of clothes that cost all the way from $500 to $1,000, with saddle and horse trappings that cost even more than the above named sums. Of one of the Lugos, I remember, it was said his horse equipments cost over $2,000. Everybody in Los Angeles seemed rich, everybody was rich, and money was more plentiful, at that time, than in any other place of like size, I venture to say, in the world. The question will at once suggest itself to the reader: Why was it that money was so plentiful in Los Angeles at the time referred to? I will inform him. The great rush to the gold mines had created a demand for beef cattle, and the years ’48, ’49, and

The Border and Reannexation

’50 had exhausted the supply in the counties north of San Luis Obispo, and purchasers came to Los Angeles, then the greatest cow county of the State. The southern counties had enjoyed a succession of good seasons of rain and bountiful supply of grass. The cattle and horses had increased to an unprecedented number, and the prices ranged from $20 to $35 per head, and a man was poor indeed who could not sell at the time one or two hundred head of cattle, and many of our first class rancheros, for instance the Sepulvedas, Abilas, Lugos, Yorbas, Picos, Stearns, Rowlands, and Williams, could sell a thousand head of cattle at any time and put the money in their pockets as small change, and as such they spent it. On the second evening after my arrival, in company with a gentleman, now of high standing in California, I went around to see the sights. We first went to the ‘‘El Dorado’’ and smiled at the bar. The ‘‘El Dorado’’ was a small frame building, a duplicate of the ‘‘Imprenta,’’ wherein the Star was published; the room below being used as a bar and billiard room, while the upper room was used as a dormitory. The place was kept by an elegant Irishman, John H. Hughes, said to have been a near Kinsman of the late great church dignitary, Archbishop Hughes. John was a scholar, and without doubt, so far as manners and accomplishments went, was a splendid gentleman, and the whole community accorded to him the honor of being a good judge of whisky. The ‘‘El Dorado’’ was situated at about the southeast corner of the Merced theater. Along toward the spring of 1853, the Rev. Adam Bland, without the fear of the virtuous community before his eyes, purchased the ‘‘El Dorado,’’ pulled down its sacred sign, and profanely converted it into a Methodist church! Alas, poor Hughes! I believe it broke his heart. He never recovered from the blow. It broke his noble spirit, and a few years later, when a fair Se~ norita withheld her smiles from the brilliant Hughes, it was the feather that broke the camel’s back, and the disconsolate Hughes joined the Crabbe filibustering expedition to Sonora and was killed. From the ‘‘El Dorado’’ we betook ourselves to Aleck Gibson’s gambling house on the plaza, where a well kept bar was in full blast, and some half dozen ‘‘monte banks’’ in successful operation, each table with its green baize cover, being literally heaped with piles of $50 ingots, commonly called ‘‘slugs.’’ Betting was high. You would frequently see a ranchero with an immense pile of gold in front of him, quietly and unconcernedly smoking his cigarrito and betting twenty slugs on the turn, the losing of which produced no perceptible discomposure of his grave countenance. For grave self-possession under difficult and trying circumstances, the Spaniard is in advance of all nationalities that I know of. From the great gambling house on the plaza we hied us to the classic precincts of the ‘‘Calle de los Negros,’’ which was the most perfect and full grown pandemonium that this writer, who had seen the ‘‘elephant’’ before, and has been more than familiar with him under many phases since, has ever beheld. There were four or five gambling places, and the crowd from the old Coronel building on the Los Angeles street corner to the plaza was so dense that we could scarcely squeeze through. Americans, Spaniards, Indians, and foreigners, rushing and crowding along from one gambling house to another, from table to table, all chinking the everlasting eight square $50 pieces up and down in their palms. There were several bands of music of the primitive Mexican-Indian kind, that sent forth most discordant sound, by no means in harmony with the eternal jingle of gold while at the upper end of the street, in the rear of one of the gambling houses was a Mexican ‘‘Maroma’’ in uproarious confusion. They positively made night hideous with their howlings. Every few minutes a rush would be

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made, and may be a pistol shot would be heard, and when the confusion incident to the rush would have somewhat subsided, and inquiry made, you would learn that it was only a knife fight between two Mexicans, or a gambler had caught somebody cheating and had perforated him with a bullet. Such things were a matter of course, and no complaint or arrests were ever made. An officer would not have had the temerity to attempt an arrest in ‘‘Negro Alley,’’ at that time. I have no hesitation in saying that in the years of 1851, ’52, and ’53, there were more desperadoes in Los Angeles than in any place on the Pacific Coast, San Francisco with its great population not excepted. It was a fact, that all of the bad characters who had been driven from the mines had taken refuge in Los Angeles, for the reason that if forced to move further on, it was only a short ride to Mexican soil, while on the other hand all of the outlaws of the Mexican frontier made for the California gold mines, and the cut-throats of California and Mexico naturally met at Los Angeles, and at Los Angeles they fought. Knives and revolvers settled all differences, either real or imaginary. The slightest misunderstandings were settled on the spot with knife or bullet, the Mexican preferring the former at close quarters and the American the latter.… As stated in the beginning of this history, on the arrest and confession of Reyes Feliz, Joaqu
ın Murietta [another spelling], his brother-in-law, who had for one or two years been domiciled among the angels, decamped, and was not heard of until the spring of 1853, when he commenced a succession of bold and successful operations in the southern mines, beginning at San Andres, in Calaveras County. His acts were so bold and daring, and attended with such remarkable success, that he drew to him all the Mexican outlaws, cut-throats and thieves that infested the country extending from San Diego to Stockton. No one will deny the assertion that Joaqu
ın in his organizations, and the successful ramifications of his various bands, his eluding capture, the secret intelligence conveyed from points remote from each other, manifested a degree of executive ability and genius that well fitted him for a more honorable position than that of chief of a band of robbers. In any country in America except the United States, the bold defiance of the power of the government, a half year’s successful resistance, a continuous conflict with the military and civil authorities and the armed populace the writer repeats that in any other country in America other than the United States the operations of Joaqu
ın Murietta would have been dignified by the title.… there is little doubt in the writer’s mind that Joaquin’s aims were higher than that of mere revenge and pillage. Educated in the school of revolution in his own country, where the line of demarcation between rebel and robber, pillager and patriot, was dimly defined, it is easy to perceive that Joaqu
ın felt himself to be more the champion of his countrymen than an outlaw and an enemy to the human race.… Source: Major Horace Bell, Reminiscences of a Ranger; or, Early Times in Southern California (Los Angeles: Yarnell, Caystile & Mathes, Printers, 1881), pp. 23 29, 72, 108, http://memory.loc. gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/calbk:@field(DOCIDþ@lit(calbk103)).


squez, 1874 75. Excerpt from a Statement by Tiburcio Va Tiburcio V
asquez (1839–1875), from the San Jose, California area, was perhaps the best-known Mexican bandit of his time after Joaqu
ın Murrieta,

The Border and Reannexation

exemplifying what British historian E. J. Hobsbawm called a ‘‘primitive rebel’’ or ‘‘social bandit.’’ He was not a revolutionary because his intent was not independence but instead a revolt against injustice. In his case, injustice was fueled by the racism of the times. His career spanned 15 years and, like Jesse James and even Bonnie and Clyde, he was supported by his people. In the following excerpt he talks about his early life and why he became an outlaw.

I was born in Monterey County, California, at the town of Monterey, August 11, 1835.… I can read and write, having attended school in Monterey. My parents were people in ordinarily good circumstances; owned a small tract of land and always had enough for their wants. My career grew out of the circumstances by which I was surrounded as I grew to manhood. I was in the habit of attending balls and parties given by the native Californians, into which the Americans, then beginning to become numerous, would force themselves and shove the native-born men aside, monopolizing the dances and the women. This was about 1852. A spirit of hatred and revenge took possession of me. I had numerous fights in defense of what I believed to be my rights and those of my countrymen. The officers were continually in pursuit of me. I believed that we were unjustly and wrongfully deprived of the social rights which belonged to us. So perpetually was I involved in these difficulties that I at length determined to leave the thickly settled portion of the country, and did so. I gathered together a small band of cattle and went into Mendocino County, back of Ukiah and beyond Fallis Valley. Even here I was not permitted to remain in peace. The officers of the law sought me out in that remote region, and strove to drag me before the courts. I always resisted arrest. I went to my mother and told her I intended to commence a different life. I asked for and obtained her blessing, and at once commenced the career of a robber. My first exploit consisted in robbing some peddlers of money and clothes in Monterey County. My next was the capture and robbery of a stagecoach in the same county. I had confederates with me from the first, and was always recognized as leader. Robbery after robbery followed each other as rapidly as circumstances allowed, until in 1857 or ’58 I was arrested in Los Angeles for horse-stealing, convicted of grand larceny, sent to the penitentiary and was taken to San Quentin and remained there until my term of imprisonment expired in 1863. Up to the time of my conviction and imprisonment, I had robbed stagecoaches, houses, wagons, etc., indiscriminately, carrying on my operations for the most part in daylight, sometimes, however, visiting houses after dark. After my discharge from San Quentin I returned to the house of my parents and endeavored to lead a peaceful and honest life. I was, however, soon accused of being a confederate of Procopio and one Sato, both noted bandits, the latter of whom was afterward killed by Sheriff Harry Morse of Alameda County. I was again forced to become a fugitive from the law-officers, and, driven to desperation, I left home and family and commenced robbing whenever opportunity offered. I made but little money by my exploits, I always managed to avoid arrest. I believe I owe my frequent escapes solely to my courage. I was always ready to fight whenever opportunity offered, but always tried to avoid bloodshed. Source: Los Angeles Star, May 16, 1874.

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76. Excerpts from Robert Greenwood, The California Outlaw: Tiburcio Va
squez, 1960 Author Robert Greenwood’s account is the best known biography of Tiburcio V
asquez, who for some 15 years robbed mostly white merchants and establishments throughout California (1859–1875). He was supported and shielded by the Mexican community. In the following excerpts, Greenwood quotes V
asquez on his motives for becoming an outlaw, and quotes George A. Beers, a special correspondent for the San Francisco Chronicle, on why V
asquez became a bandit and how he captured the imagination of the Mexican populace.

V
asquez turned to the life of a bandido because of the bitter animosity then existing, and which still exists, between the white settlers and the native or Mexican portion of the population. The native Californians, especially the lower classes, never took kindly to the stars and stripes. Their youth were taught from the very cradle to look upon the American government as that of a foreign nation. This feeling was greatly intensified by the rough, brutal conduct of the worst class of American settlers, who never missed an opportunity to openly exhibit their contempt for the native Californian or Mexican population designating them as ‘‘d d Greasers.’’ Source: Robert Greenwood, The California Outlaw: Tiburcio V
asquez (Los Gatos, CA: Talisman Press, 1960), pp. 12, 75.

PART V Texas The border between Matamoros, Texas, and Tijuana, Mexico, stretches 1,969 miles; the outcome of the United States’ crossing borders. The distance from the mouth on the Gulf of Mexico to El Paso/Cuidad Juarez is 1,254 miles. Just under two-thirds of the U.S. side of the border falls in Texas. The loss of the Rio Grande was a major one for Mexico since the river sustained considerable agriculture and Mexican towns sprang up along the river. This concentration of population on the border distinguished it from the rest of the international border. It was where the two peoples clashed and the Mexican population in South Texas was caught in the middle. The racism of most white Americans who felt entitled to the little that the Mexican had prevented the assimilation of the Mexican in South Texas and led to what British historian E. J. Hobsbawn has called social banditry bandit-rebel robbers and outlaws who were seen by many Mexican Americans as champions of the people rather than criminals. Driven too far, the border people sporadically rose up to defend their way of life and dignity. Because of the intensity of the contact Texas deserves special note during the 1860s and 1870s.


s Canales on Juan Cortina, 1949 77. Judge Jos
e Toma Mexicans had lived on what would be the Mexican-American border well before the Euro-American takeover of 1836. While many more affluent Mexicans sided with the Euro-Americans, others resented the colonization. Many of those who were initially pro–Euro-American grew disillusioned. Most of the descendants, whatever side they belonged to, preserved memories of the past.
Toma
s Canales (1877–1976), a prominent On his mother’s side, Judge Jose politico, was related to the Cavazos and the Garza families who were prominent border landowners on both the U.S. and Mexican sides of the border. Canales was active politically and was a player in the political machines during the first decades of the twentieth century. Canales became a judge and legislator. By the late 1910s, Canales was locked in a fight with the Texas Rangers who, from 1915–1950, brutalized the Mexican population. He held hearings showing flagrant abuses that led to the disbandment of the rangers. Canales was related to Juan Cortina (1824–1892), born in Camargo, Tamaulipas, a member of the Cavazos family. Cortina was branded an outlaw after he shot a marshal after he made a racial slur in 1859. Cortina raised an army and challenged U.S. authorities. He operated out of Tamaulipas where he became the governor until the mid 1870s. Canales endorsed the work of

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Charles W. Goldfinch, saying that he did not believe that the Mexican side of Cortina’s story would ever be told.

When Charles W. Goldfinch informed me in 1947 that he had decided to write his Master’s Thesis on the life and character of Juan N. Cortina, I tried to dissuade him from doing so. Cortina’s life is quite an enigma and practically all that has been written about him is most derogatory in effect; and since Mr. Goldfinch had married into my family, I was afraid he would only echo what had been written about Cortina, which would have earned him a dislike and disapproval of the family; as, traditionally, Cortina has been considered a patriot and hero, who sacrificed himself fighting against racial hatred and discrimination. But Mr. Goldfinch argued that Cortina had not had anyone who was fair enough to interpret the facts from his (Cortina’s) point of view; that all who had written about him were either his enemies, like Adolphus Glavecke, or persons who were prejudiced against him on account of his race, and those who resented his taking the side of the recently conquered Mexicans. He insisted that Cortina was entitled to have an unbiased presentation of the facts from his viewpoint as even a common felon would be entitled to that much if he were on trial. When I saw that Mr. Goldfinch had already made up his mind to make Cortina the subject of his Master’s Thesis, I then turned over to him all the data that I had. For many years, I had intended to write the life of Juan N. Cortina for I had felt that no one had done justice to him nor had truly understood, or interpreted Cortina’s actions. I admit that I possess neither the aptitude nor the ability to write a biography such as this and, also, that Mr. Goldfinch has done an excellent work. Those who have never experienced the humiliating feeling of being pointed out as a member of an inferior race cannot truly interpret Cortina’s life. That is why neither Professor J. Frank Dobie, nor Professor J. Fred Rippy, nor Dr. Walter Prescott Webb (although all are excellent gentlemen and true Texans) have interpreted the actions of Cortina in any other light, except that of a bandit and a thief. Perhaps a personal experience would explain this point: Some years ago, I was trying a case in the City of Alice, Texas, County Seat of Jim WeIls County. One morning, on my way to the Court House, I passed in front of what appeared to be a very nice looking barber shop, whose owner I knew personally. I needed a haircut and a shave and decided to enter the place. The owner, somewhat embarrassed, told me: ‘‘Mr. Canales, I am sorry that I cannot serve you, because you do not belong to the right race.’’ I retorted: ‘‘I thought that only registered stock were required to show a pedigree’’; and left the place. My feeling[s] must have been very similar to those of Cortina when the AngloAmericans of his time not only refused to recognize him us an American citizen, but scornfully referred to him as ‘‘a damned ‘Mexican Greaser.’ ’’ Had I been Cortina at the time of the incident above related, perhaps I would have shot the barber, even at the risk of getting shot myself; but I do not believe in using force in vindication of my own rights; much less to take human life. This incident strongly reminded me, at the time, of what Juan N. Cortina must have felt and what he had to endure, and, I believe, what undoubtedly caused him to resort to violence. On the other hand, Mr. Carey McWilliams, in his excellent book North from Mexico, although not a Texan, but one who, as a reporter, had actually seen the great injustices done to people of the Mexican race in California in the Zoot-Suit Riots comes nearer to understanding Cortina’s true character, when he says of him: ‘‘there was unquestionably something of the Robin Hood about Cortina.’’

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There has been some controversy as to the personal appearance of Cortina. J. Frank Dobie says: ‘‘the expression of his face sinister, sensual and cruel.’’ Co1. J. S. (Rip) Ford, who knew him personally, in his unpublished memoirs (page 705) says: ‘‘He is of medium size, with regular features, and a rather pleasing countenance. He is rather fairer than most men of his nationality. He is fearless, self-possessed, and cunning. In some cases he has acted towards personal and political enemies with a clemency worthy of imitation.’’ And this from Cortina’s mortal enemy, the one who fought him most and did his best to kill him! Again, on page 1111, Co1. Ford further says: ‘‘In regard to the manner in which Cortina treated citizens of the United States, and of Texas, while he was in power in the State of Tamaulipas (1864) was worthy of remembrance. There were Americans in Matamoros known to have been personally unfriendly to Cortina, and he treated them kindly and honorably.’’ These incidents are related solely to explain why, at the beginning of this Foreword, I refer to Cortina as an enigma. It requires a complete familiarity with the facts and an intimate acquaintance with the life-habits and customs of Cortina and of his family and people, in order to arrive at a true estimate of his real character. Unquestionably, Cortina’s frank and open sympathy towards the Union Forces during the Civil War and the fact that he was a friend of Governor Edmund J. Davis, whom he had befriended in Matamoros (while the latter was a refugee from the Confederate State of Texas), contributed largely to his being branded ‘‘a cattle thief’’ in addition to the epithet of ‘‘bandit’’ when the attempt was made during the Reconstruction Period (1871) to have him pardoned. So long as Cortina remained in Mexico and would decide to stay there, his enemies were, apparently, well satisfied; but when they heard that a Petition had been presented to the Legislature to have him pardoned that he might return to Texas, his enemies would not permit this for they would have to meet him on equal terms and perhaps, face him on equal ground. A fair and impartial examination of the facts surrounding the application for a pardon and the sudden activity taken by his enemies, at that time, show this to be a fact. While at first I did not approve of Mr. Goldfinch’s choice of theme for his thesis; yet, after he had written it and I had read it, I must confess that it has given me a great personal satisfaction; I also feel that it should be made public for many of the facts stated and commented therein have not been fully revealed or made clear by any writer on Texas History. By the reading of this thesis we may not only learn new and important facts in Texas History, but we may, also, find a new and better way of interpreting historical events which may enable us to solve many of our present problems fraught with biases and racial prejudice. The labor and great research required in the preparation of this thesis fully justifies its printing and publication. BROWNSVILLE, TEXAS, OCTOBER 1949 J. T. Canales Source: Preface to Charles W. Goldfinch, ‘‘Juan Cortina 1824 1892: A Re-Appraisal,’’ MA dissertation, University of Chicago, 1949, 1 3.

78. Excerpts from Report of Major Samuel P. Heintzelman to Colonel Robert E. Lee, March 1, 1860 Col. Robert E. Lee (1807–1870) was sent to the Rio Grande to pursue Juan Cortina (1824–1894), who was called the scourge of the R
ıo Grande by EuroAmericans. Cortina (misspelled by many sources) became a fugitive in 1859,

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when he shot a marshal who was pistol-whipping one of his mother’s former servants and called him what amounted to ‘‘a dirty Mexican.’’ When the white townspeople lynched an old man who was a friend of Cortina’s, he raised an army and attacked Euro-American towns. For the next 15 years he was hunted by U.S. rangers, state militia, and the U.S. Army. Lee, much as General John Pershing was sent years later to pursue Pancho Villa (1878–1923) in 1916, was unable to find the elusive Cortina. The following letter is from Maj. Samuel P. Heintzelman (1805–1880) to Lee, reporting extensively on the status of the chase and hostilities on the border near Brownsville, Texas.

MAJOR HEINTZELMAN TO COLONEL LEE Headquarters Brownsville Expedition Fort Brown, Texas, March 1, 1860 In compliance with Special Order No. 103, headquarters department of Texas, San Antonio, November 12, 1859, I repaired to San Antonio and reported to the commanding general for instructions. I was directed to proceed towards Brownsville and disperse any hostile parties I might meet, &c. From accounts received soon after, the reports were believed to be greatly exaggerated and the expedition was broken up. But I was directed to proceed to Brownsville and make full inquiries there and on the frontier above. I reached Brownsville on the night of the 5th of December. Juan Nepomosina Cortinas, (or Cortina,) the leader of the banditti who have for the last five months been in arms on the Lower Rio Grande, murdering, robbing, and burning, is a ranchero, at one time claiming to be an American, and at another a Mexican, citizen. At the time General Taylor arrived on the banks of the Rio Grande, he was a soldier in General Arista’s army. He has been for years noted as a lawless, desperate man. Ten years ago he was indicted for murder, and the sheriff attempted to arrest him, which made him, for a long period, keep out of the way until the witnesses were gone. In 1854, he again began to be seen about; but no effort was made to arrest him until in the spring of 1859, when he was indicted for horse stealing, and he has since been a fugitive from justice. When he came to town he was always well armed, or had some of his friends around him, making it dangerous to interfere with him. His principal business has been dealing in stock, purchasing or stealing, as was the most convenient. He had great influence with his class of the Mexican population, and thus, as he controlled so many votes, was courted at elections by politicians. He has a ranch called San Jos
e, a few miles from town, and whenever there was any danger of arrest he would retire to this place and keep himself surrounded by a band of outlaws, as desperate as himself. Leading this lawless life, he and those around him made numerous enemies. On the 13th of July last he was in Brownsville with some of his ranchero friends, when a man who was formerly a servant of his was arrested by the city marshal for abusing a coffee-house keeper. Cortinas attempted to rescue the man; he fired twice on the marshal, the second shot wounding him in the shoulder, and rescued the prisoner. He mounted his horse, took the prisoner up behind him, and with his friends around him, rode off defying the authorities to arrest him. He escaped to Matamoras, and there was treated with consideration and lauded as the defender of Mexican rights.

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For this, an effort was made by the sheriff to arrest him. A party was got up, but they did not succeed in getting what they considered a sufficient force and the posse never started. Several of the men who were active on this occasion were known to Cortinas, and they were marked. It has been reported that he held a captain’s commission in the Mexican Army. He at one time was a lieutenant under General Garcia, but was detected selling the horses given to him for a remount, and was dismissed. Since these troubles commenced he has offered his services with fifty men to General Garcia, but they were declined. He probably held some commission in the custom-house or maritime guards. Under this pretext he recruited men and purchased arms. Don Miguel Tigerino, his first cousin, on the 28th of September, said in Brownsville to some of his friends that he ‘‘was a desperate, contrary, fellow. When every one thought that he had started for the interior he turned up suddenly in Brownsville.’’ He no doubt, when he came over here, intended to kill all his enemies that he could catch, and then go into the interior. Before daylight on the morning of the 28th of September, Cortinas entered the city of Brownsville with a body of mounted men, variously estimated at from forty to eighty, leaving two small parties [on] foot outside one near the cemetery, the other near the suburb of Framireno. The citizens were awakened by firing and cries of ‘‘Viva cheno Cortinas!’’ ‘‘Mueran los Gringos!’’ ‘‘Viva Mexico!’’ [‘‘Long live Cheno Cortinas!’’ ‘‘Death to the Gringos!’’ Long live Mexico!’’] The city was already in his possession, with sentinels at the corners of the principal streets and armed men riding about. He avowed his determination to kill the Americans, but assured Mexicans and foreigners that they should not be molested. Thus was a city of from two thousand to three thousand inhabitants occupied by a band of armed bandits, a thing till now unheard of in these United States. He made his headquarters in the deserted garrison of Fort Brown, and sent mounted men through the streets hunting up their enemies. He broke open the jail, liberated the prisoners, knocked off their irons, and had them join him. He killed the jailer, Johnson, a constable named George Morris, young Neale in his bed, and two Mexicans; was after Glaseche, the wounded city marshal, and others. One of his men was killed by the jailer, in the attack on the jail. Cortinas himself rode up to a store on the levee and called for spirits of turpentine. A few minutes after this, General Caravajal made his appearance on the levee, and said that he would try and put a stop to all this, and seeing Don Miguel Tiguino [sic] on the opposite bank of the river, called to him to cross over to this side instantly. This he did, on horseback, accompanied by Don Agassito Longosia. General Caravajal then sent for Cortinas, and, after a talk with him, he with his men, mounted and on foot, numbering about sixty, marched along the levee out towards his mother’s rancho, about nine miles above the town. Matamoras [sic] came over at 11 o’clock P.M., at the request of those Mexican gentlemen, to persuade the people of Brownsville to comply with his demand, whilst an express awaited, on the other side, their answer, to carry it to Cortinas. His demand was refused, but he was informed that the man was in the hands of the sheriff, to be dealt with by the laws of the country. The night after the arrival of Captain Tobin’s company, Cabrera was found hung.

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Cortinas, with forty men, crossed the river the same night. He received their answer, and took up his old quarters, at his mother’s rancho. Here he collected men and arms, and prepared to carry out his threats, occasionally sending threatening communications to the authorities. His men would make their appearance on the outskirts of the town in open daylight; but the citizens had now organized and armed, and kept a guard day and night. Some Mexican troops, who had been called over about the 30th of September, and who had returned home when Cortinas recrossed to the Mexican side, were now invited over again. About seventy-five men came over, with a piece of artillery, to join an expedition which the citizens were preparing for the purpose of attacking Cortinas. They were of the National Guards, of Matamoras [sic], under the command of Colonel Loranco and Don Miguel Tigerino, who accompanied the expedition as a volunteer. There were about twenty Americans, under Captain Thompson, and forty Mexicans, from the town and ranches below, under a Mexican called Portillo, all mounted. They took along a four-pounder howitzer. The expedition started on the 22d of October, met the enemy nine miles from town on the 24th, routed him from his first position, and followed him up as he retreated into the chaparral, from which, without being seen, he kept up a constant fire. Here, the Mexican gun stuck in the mud, and on the second discharge it was dismounted, and was then abandoned. The advance fell back. The other gun, with its ammunition, was also abandoned, but, it is said, not until it was thrown into the river. However, both the guns were in Cortinas’s camp that night. The flight now became general, all being anxious to be the first to reach Brownsville. The Mexican troops had four men wounded, and brought up the rear. One Mexican with Portillo was also badly wounded. Two men of Cortinas’s all that he lost were killed by the Mexican troops. The Mexican troops had but from eight to twelve rounds of ammunition, and they did not retreat until it gave out. They are accused, but I think most unjustly, of having fired blank cartridges, and that the cap squares were loosened to dismount the gun. Cortinas now had two pieces of artillery, and was much emboldened by his success. Large reinforcements joined him, some voluntarily, others he compelled from the neighboring ranches. He commenced levying contributions of arms, horses, beef cattle, corn, everything that he wanted for his men, sometimes giving receipts for what he took. He intercepted all the mails to and from this place, except the Point Isabel, by capturing the mail riders, cut open the mail bags, and had the letters read to him; he cannot read or write. Once he sent in the letters opened, with a note apologizing to the postmaster, ‘‘as it was a matter of necessity for him to know what steps were taken against him.’’ By this means he knew more of what was going on outside of Brownsville than its citizens. He knew when the rangers with Captain Tobin were expected, and made arrangements to intercept them. Glaseche, however, went and guided them in about midnight, without their meeting any one. The same night, Cortinas was known to be hovering about town, and Tobin’s men were received with a shower of grape, fired at them before they were recognized. This was the 10th of November. About eight days after, thirty men were sent under Lieutenant Littleton, towards the Arroyo Colorado, to meet Captain Donaldson’s company. He missed Donaldson,

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but on the Palo Alto prairie fell into an ambuscade prepared by Cortinas, and lost three men killed and one wounded and a prisoner. The next day, when a party went out to bring the dead they found this man murdered and all the dead mutilated. They went to Santa Rita, seven miles from here, to attack Cortinas, but knowing that he had artillery, and thinking he was too strong, they only made a demonstration and returned to the city. All this only served to give Cortinas and his followers confidence. He now believed that he could stand his ground against the whole State of Texas. In the meantime more volunteers arrived. On the 22d of November the rangers under Captain Tobin, numbering about two hundred and fifty men, including in this Captain Kenedy’s company of citizens from Brownsville, the Indianola company, and a 24-pounder howitzer in charge of Lieutenant Langdon, United States artillery, who volunteered, again started out to exterminate Cortinas. On the 24th, Captain Tobin had his whole force collected at Santa Rita, seven miles above town. Here he left the 24-pounder and about sixty men, and advanced with the main body of his force to make a reconnoissance [sic]. The advance, when near the intrenchment, two miles above Santa Rita, was fired upon by both cannon and small arms. The fire was returned. Captain Tobin now gave the order to fall back and wait for the artillery, but the whole force fell back to Santa Rita. Here there was another council and a misunderstanding, and the next morning sixty men started back to town. The next day (25th) Captain Tobin again advanced, but when near the barricades there was another consultation, and it was decided to be imprudent to risk an attack, and the whole force marched back to Brownsville. It was a wise decision. In their disorganized condition an attack would have brought certain defeat. About a month before, this the streets of Brownsville were barricaded. Cortinas was now a great man; he had defeated the ‘‘Gringos,’’ and his position was impregnable; he had the Mexican flag flying in his camp, and numbers were flocking to his standard. When he visited Matamoras [sic] he was received as the champion of his race as the man who would right the wrongs the Mexicans had received; that he would drive back the hated Americans to the Nueces, and some even spoke of the Sabine as the future boundary. The lower order of Mexicans hate Americans, and the educated classes are not always exempt from this feeling. This is well shown from the difficulty we had in obtaining information. When his force and all his movements were well known in Matamoras [sic], with daily intercourse with his camp, we were answered with vague and exaggerated accounts. Men who have lived here for years, and are united to Mexican women, could learn nothing reliable. A party of forty men, under Santo Cadena, joined him from Agua Leguas, in Nueva [sic] Leon, remained until they were loaded with plunder and then returned to their homes. Another party of sixty convicts escaped from prison at Victoria, in Tamuulipas [sic], armed themselves, and, after a fight with the authorities, marched through the country to the Rio Grande, and joined him. Affairs remained in this state until we arrived here on the night of the 5th of December. I entered the town that night with Captain Stoneman’s company ‘‘E,’’ 2d cavalry, forty-six men, and ‘‘L’’ and ‘‘M’’ companies, 1st artillery, sixty-six men, and five men of the 1st infantry in all, five officers and one hundred and seventeen men. In Fort Brown, were Captain Rickett’s company, 1st artillery, of forty-eight men. On our march from the Nueces to the Arroyo Colorado we only met two Americans and a Mexican cart; all travel had ceased for some time. At the arroyo we first

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learned to a certainty that Captain Tobin was in Brownsville, but that he had not dislodged Cortinas, and got the most exaggerated accounts of the latter’s forces. The morning after our arrival I endeavored to get information as to the number, position, and objects of Cortinas; every one appeared to be as ignorant of these matters as I was; accounts ranged as high as fifteen hundred men. I finally satisfied myself that he could not have over three hundred and fifty men, and that he occupied a fortified position across the river road, about nine miles above town, and that his works were armed with two pieces of artillery. As to his objects no one knew. Captain Tobin informed me that he had about one hundred and fifty rangers, and placed himself under my command; I wished him to send out parties to reconnoitre [sic] their position; several went, but none of them ever got near enough to give me any information. At 1 o’clock A.M., the 14th of December, we marched out of Brownsville with one hundered and sixty-five officers and men of the regular army, and one hundred and twenty rangers; half an hour before day I halted a mile and a half from the point where I was told his intrenchment was. I was desirous of having a reconnoisance [sic] made before proceeding further; the rangers were so thoroughly stampeded by their previous expedition that it was only after much difficulty and delay that I could get any one to go, and then only by Judge Davis, who had been out with them before, volunteering to go with them; we advanced and found that the intrenchment had been abandoned apparently for a week; it consisted of a heavy breastwork of ebony logs and earth mixed with brush across the road, with two embrasures and a ditch in front; about one hundred yards beyond another had been commenced to face the other way; the first was badly located and could easily have been turned. After a short delay in clearing a road around these obstructions, the march was resumed. About three miles f[a]rther, where the road is straight and passing through a very dense chaparral with ebony trees, our attention was attracted by the waving of a flag six or seven hundred yards in advance, with a few men about it. In a moment more, a burst of smoke and a round shot down the road informed me that the enemy was before us. Until this event, the general impression was that Cortinas would not dare fire upon the United States troops. I immediately ordered the guns unlimbered and the fire returned. The rangers seeing with how much coolness the regular troops stood the fire of the enemy regained confidence, and were finally induced to advance to the attack. With the aid of ‘‘L’’ and ‘‘M’’ companies, 1st artillery, they took the enemies’ camp, at Vicente Guenais, a few hundred yards beyond, capturing some provisions and arms. The pursuit was continued about two miles further. Some horsemen made their escape across the river into Mexico. Where the enemy was posted, the chaparral was so dense that but a small portion of the force was engaged. This was one of Cortinas’s principal camps, and had been long occupied, but he was not in it. The infantry were commanded by Pancho Balli, and the artillery by Antonio Juarez, or Jantes, and in all about sixty men. The resistance they made was quite trifling. We had two men of the artillery slightly wounded, and a ranger mortally. The enemy lost eight. Here, whilst we halted to refresh the men and animals, Major Ford came up with fifty-five men. He heard the firing in the morning, and rode forty miles, via Brownsville, to join us. A rain set in, and continuing, the next morning we returned to town. I had learned that Cortinas was behind us, back in the country, and would probably come in on the river. We reached town without meeting any of the enemy.

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I was, on my return to town, informed that Cortinas was on his way to attack Point Isabel and burn the custom-house, full of valuable goods, and that he had also large parties towards the Arroyo Colorado. I sent out three strong parties, but in a few days they returned with out meeting any one. I was now satisfied that he had concentrated his whole force, and was retiring up the river to lay waste the country. I started on the 21st of December with all the force I could collect, amounting to one hundred and fifty regulars and one hundred and ninety-eight rangers. I had information that was deemed reliable that Cortinas had fortified himself at the Baston, thirty-five miles from town, in Mr. Neale’s brick house, loop-holed and surrounded by corrals. We came in sight of the Baston at twelve o’clock [P.]M. on the 23d, found the fences, corrals, and jacales [thatch-roofed huts] burned, the house sacked, and the enemy gone. The next place I was told that we should certainly meet him was in a bend of the river a mile beyond Edinburg. We reached Edinburg on Sunday, the 25th of December. Although we met several Mexicans from Reynosa, Mexico, not one could tell us anything about him, except that he had left after plundering the custom-house, post office, &c., which we could see ourselves. His next position was a canebrake, a few miles beyond Edinburg; but when we arrived he had left. The next day I learned that Cortinas was occupying Ringgold barracks and Rio Grande City, with his troops encamped on the plaza. Major Ford, who was in advance here, sent Colonel Lockridge with the information. I determined to surprise him by a night march. As our march was most of the way in full view from the Mexican side of the river, we went into camp at the usual time and in the usual manner. At midnight we resumed our march in silence, and an hour before daylight were three miles from Rio Grande City. Here, our spies met us with the assurance that he was still encamped in Rio Grande City. I now made the arrangement for Ford’s and Henon’s companies, eighty-five men, to make a detour, and get on the road to Koma, above the city, and Captain Tobin, with Tomlinson’s and Hampton’s companies, one hundred and thirteen men, to move in advance of our right flank, whilst the regulars, giving the rangers half an hour’s start, would advance with the artillery along the road, and attack him in front. We advanced in this order, but when we reached the barracks some ranger rode up and reported that Major Ford could not get beyond on the road, and had commenced the attack in front. On entering the town, I learned that most of his men had encamped about half a mile beyond. Here, he had been attacked by Ford, who was supported by Captain Tobin, with his, Tomlinson’s, and Hampton’s companies. The enemy made a vigorous resistance, but as soon as he saw the regular troops, with the ‘‘white-topped wagons’’ rise the ridge back of the town, he gave way. He here abandoned his provisions, half-cooked breakfast, and a baggage cart, but carried off his artillery. I ordered up more troops, but the men, fatigued by a march of forty miles since the morning before, could not overtake the advance, and were sent after those who had escaped into the chapparal. At this time a dense fog set in, enabling many of the enemy to escape into the thick chapparal which lined the whole road. I rode forward, and found the ranger companies all broken up, and strewed along the road, with most of the officers in advance. I soon overtook Major Ford, and gave directions to press the pursuit, as our victory would not be complete if they succeeded in carrying off their guns. After a pursuit of more than nine miles, we captured both

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his guns, loaded. There was no more attempt made at resistance, and here the last dispersed. Within a few minutes after the capture of the second gun, the men on foot and guns and all our wagons were up. They had made a march of nearly fifty miles in twenty-five hours, thirty of them without stopping for water. There was not a straggler from the regular troops. The defeat was complete. We captured his guns, ammunition and baggage carts, provisions, everything he could throw away to lighten his flight, and entirely dispersed his force. We had sixteen rangers wounded, mostly very slight cases. Cortinas had between five and six hundred men, and his loss was about sixty killed and drowned in the river. Most of them who escaped got across the river into Mexico, and without arms. He fled to Grunoro, where he made his appearance next day. He afterwards was seen at Mier Camargo, Keynosa, and so continued down the river collecting able stragglers. Many small parties were seen on the Mexican side of the river, but generally unarmed. I sent Captain Stoneman’s company the same evening to Koma for its protection. Captain Dawson, with ‘‘L’’ and ‘‘M’’ companies, first artillery, left on the 29th of December to garrison Fort Brown. I went to Koma, and remained until the 15th of January, 1860, then returned to this place to collect, in compliance with instructions, the names of the killed and amount of damage done by Cortinas. A difficulty about the organization and command of the rangers created much embarrassment and delay. An election was held, and Tobin was elected major. I endeavored to have the rangers distributed along the river in small parties to prevent the reorganization of the enemy’s forces but my orders were never fully carried out. Two commissioners of the State of Texas, Messrs. Navarro and Taylor, now arrived in Brownsville, to inquire into the causes of this disturbance, and authorized to reorganize the rangers. They mustered all out of service, and then mustered in Ford’s and Littleton’s companies. I was called upon by the commissioners to say what force of rangers would be sufficient for the protection of the frontier. With but one company of cavalry I was of the opinion that the two then in service would be sufficient. They were placed under my command. I placed Captain Stoneman’s cavalry and Ford’s and Littleton’s companies of rangers on the river between here and Rio Grande City with orders to keep out small parties. Cortinas’s men were very active at this time crossing over and driving stock into Mexico. Cortinas, soon after his defeat at Rio Grande City, established a camp at La Bolza, thirty-five miles above here, with the avowed object of attacking the steamboat Ranchero, on her return from the towns above. This being her first trip since last September, it was well known that she would have a valuable freight. Her whole cargo was valued by the officer of the boat at $200,000. During his stay at La Bolza, Cortinas recruited men, procured arms, ammunition, and supplies. He crossed at Las Rusias to the American side of the river, intercepted the United States mail carrier, cut open the mail bags, and rifled them of their contents. He threatened the carrier with death for serving the Americans, and only spared him because the contractor is a Mexican. He was taken to La Bolsa and there kept until he made his escape in the confusion of the fight of the 4th of February. At La Bolsa, a frequent subject of conversation was the intercepting and robbing of

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the steamboat. During the time, Cortinas was in constant communication with the inhabitants of Matamoros [sic] and other towns on the river. On the 31st of January I called, with one of the Texas commissioners and the American consul, on General Garcia, the Mexican commander of the line of the Brazos. He showed us the instructions he had to cooperate with the United States forces in arresting Cortinas and dispersing his bands. He told as that he had sent out but could not learn where Cortinas was to be found. We had known for near a month past that he was at La Bolsa. On the 4th of February, near La Bolsa, Cortinas’s men fired from the Mexican side of the river on a party of Captain Ford’s men, mortally wounding one, and also a few minutes after, on the steam boat; to repel this attack, and to protect the lives and property on board the boat it was advisable to cross into Mexico; Captain Ford, with Major Tobin and Captain Tomlinson, crossed with forty-nine men, attacked Cortinas in his camp, and after a sharp skirmish, drove him out of it. Cortinas is said to have had about two hundred men, and that his loss was twenty-nine killed and forty wounded. We had but two men slightly wounded. Captain Stoneman, who was a few miles below, hastened up with his company, and before daylight the next morning we had over two hundred men on the ground. At 10 1/2 o’clock P.M., an express reached me with a report of what had occurred. The town was wild with excitement; people declared that war had commenced. A party got together with the object of crossing at this ferry and seizing the ferryboats, which are kept at night on the Mexican side in charge of a guard. As there has been for some time past considerable alarm of an invasion of filibusters and rangers, a strong Mexican guard has been kept at the ferry. Some gentlemen who met them came and told me as I was returning to the garrison. I found the party armed on the bank of the river; I had but little difficulty in convincing them of the folly of such an act; that it would only complicate affairs; that the boats were now in our power, but that we were not prepared nor authorized to occupy Matamoras. The next morning I addressed a note to General Garcia, informing him of what had occurred, and calling upon him now to co-operate with me in arresting Cortinas. I knew that he had received an express an hour or two earlier than we, and that from eighty to a hundred men had left the same night, but it was believed more to aid Cortinas than to arrest him. The object of my note was more to learn the feelings of the Mexican authorities than from any expectation of any action on their part towards arresting Cortinas. He had too many friends in Matamoras, and I doubt whether they had the power, if they had the inclination, to arrest him. A few hours brought me a reply, in which General Garcia informed me that he had sent out a portion of the rural police, and would send more as soon as they could be organized, and asking me to withdraw our troops. Don Miguel G. Cabezas, the second alcalde, and Don Manuel Trevino, the Mexican consul, brought the letter, and were authorized to give me explanations. I learned from these gentlemen that about forty men of the police force had gone, and that more would leave in the afternoon and evening. More went, as promised. In the conversation with them I impressed upon them the absolute necessity for the most prompt and energetic measures on their part to arrest this man, for if he was permitted to go on, the most grave consequences would follow. As we had accomplished our object and as I did not wish to continue this cause of irritation, I

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sent orders for the troops to recross which they did the next day, after an interview with the commander of the police force. When Captain Ford came in sight of the police force there was a large number of armed men around. Some sixty of those withdrew to our side. These men the police force would not vouch for. They were evidently Cortinas’s men. The prudence of Captain Ford and the good order he had observed, together with his prompt withdrawal, have quieted down the excitement. After the fright at La Bolsa, some one along, but not of his command and contrary to Captain Ford’s orders, set fire to the jacales and fences, and they were consumed. On the 7th of February Inaquin Arguilles, who succeeded General Garcia in the command, addressed me a note making reclamations for the burning of these jacales, as some compensation for the violation of their territory. In my reply I justified the act, as they had failed in their international obligations in permitting Cortinas, after having been driven from our soil, to occupy their territory, recruit, arm, and equip his men, and occupy those jacales for weeks, for the avowed object of attacking this steamboat engaged in lawful traffic, &c. To this I have received no reply. A few days after his defeat at La Bolsa we again heard of Cortinas, with from forty to sixty men, encamped near a rancho called ‘‘La Mesa,’’ about six miles f[a]rther from the river and nearly opposite his old place. Captain Ford took post on our side of the river, nearly opposite, and was getting minute information as to the localities, with the intention of surrounding his camp. A few days ago he broke up this camp and went up the river, it is supposed by some, to Camargo, and by others for the interior. Linaus and Cadruta are mentioned. He has evidently left this frontier. His brother says that he intends to join the Indians. His mother and a brother are desirous to return to this side of the river and to reoccupy their ranches. This has strengthened me in the belief that he has left permanently. In reviewing the events of the past five or six months, I arrive at the following facts: Cortinas has been an outlaw and fugitive from justice for the last ten years. Some politicians found that he could influence a large vote amongst his countrymen, and during an election he was courted. Thus there was never any great effort made to bring him to justice. His mother owns ten leagues of land in a body near town, much of it covered with a dense chapparal. A few miles back from his house, near the river, he built a rancho called San Jos
e, which is arranged for a secure retreat, where it would be difficult to surprise any one. This was an asylum for horse and cattle thieves, robbers, and murderers, for those whose enemies would not permit them to live on the Mexican side of the river, or who dared not show themselves in the thickly settled parts of this State. In Brownsville there were several persons who had made themselves obnoxious to him and his associates. His first object in coming here was, no doubt, revenge to get rid of these. Then he would have gone off into the interior with some of his friends, in a government employment, until his deeds were forgotten. But the arrest of Cabrera, as he was ready to leave, kept him back. He recrossed the river to rescue Cabrera, and punish those who held him in custody. The idle and the dissolute flocked around him, lured by the prospect of plunder. He soon gained notoriety, and the affair grew beyond his control. The hatred of Americans on the frontier, amongst all classes of Mexicans, brought him men and means. Our side of the river furnished some horses and beef; with but few arms. Most of his arms, ammunition, and supplies to maintain

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his forces for so many months, came from Mexico, and principally from Matamoras. Most of his men were ‘‘pelados’’ from the towns and ranches along the Rio Grande. On the Mexican side he always found a market for his plunder. At Rio Grande City, in an ammunition box which we captured, were orders in which he is styled ‘‘General on Gefe’’ [‘‘Chief General’’], and he went about with a body guard. The whole country from Brownsville to Rio Grande City, one hundred and twenty miles, and back to the Arroya [sic] Colorado, has been laid waste. There is not an American, or any property belonging to an American, that could be destroyed in this large tract of country. Their horses and cattle were driven across into Mexico, and there sold, a cow, with a calf by her side, for a dollar. At Rio Grande City, in answer to the complaints of his men that he had not fulfilled his promises, he told them that they should the next day have ‘‘manos libres’’ [‘‘men available’’] from ten to twelve. Our unexpected arrival saved the city from being sacked and burned, and the few Americans left from murder. Rio Grande City is almost depopulated, and there is but one Mexican family in Edinburg. On the road this side I met but two ranchos occupied, and those by Mexicans. The jacales and fences are generally burned. The actual loss in property can give but a faint idea of the amount of the damage. The cattle that were not carried off are scattered in the chapparal, and will soon be wild and lost to their owners. Business, as far up as Lerido [Laredo], two hundred and forty miles, has been interrupted or suspended for five months. It is now too late to think of preparing for a crop, and a whole season will be lost. The amount of the claims for damages presented is three hundred and thirty-six thousand eight hundred and twenty-six dollars and twenty one cents: many of them are exaggerations, but then there are few Mexicans who have put in any. There have been fifteen Americans and eighty friendly Mexicans killed, Cortinas has lost one hundred and fifty-one men killed; of the wounded I have no account. The severe punishment that this people have received it is to be hoped will long deter any one from another such undertaking. A small garrison in Fort Brown would have prevented a thought of such a thing. No people care less for the civil, and are more afraid of the military power. His idea and that of his dupes was that this was in the nature of a Mexican pronunciamento; that he would, when he became formidable, be bought off by the authorities; that his men would return unmolested to their homes, and soon all be forgotten. The citizens of Brownsville are not entirely guiltless. Had they performed their civil duties, and brought this man to justice in the first part of his career, or had they even have had a military organization, the morning of the 28th of September Cortinas would have been shot down or arrested. It will be a long time before the ill-feeling engendered by this outbreak can be allayed. It is dangerous for Americans to settle near their boundary. The river is narrow, and now low, and easy to cross. A robbery or murder is committed, and in a few minutes the criminal is secure from pursuit. Both banks must be under the same jurisdiction. It will at once add to the value of the lands and promote settlement. The industrious, enterprising, active race on one side cannot exist in such close proximity with the idle and vicious on the other without frequent collisions. The class of the Mexican population (pelados) who joined Cortinas, are an idle, thriftless, thieving, vicious people, living principally on jerked beef and corn, a frijole as a luxury. The climate is such that they require but little in the way of clothing, or

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to shelter themselves from the weather, and the soil produces spontaneously much that they live upon. When they have enough to eat they only work on compulsion, which the system of peonage furnishes on the Mexican side of the river. For the protection of the frontier, I think that it will be necessary to station at least one company of infantry at Fort Duncan, one at Fort McIntosh, one at Fort Ringgold barracks, and two at Fort Brown. Until there is a more stable government on the other side, I would keep two companies of cavalry in the field, between Ringgold barracks and Brownsville. My thanks are due to the officers and men of the regular army, and to those of the rangers for their cheerful and efficient aid during the last four months. I also am much indebted for valuable information to Judge Haris, Mr. Yturia, Mr. Cummins, and Mr. Galsan. The accompanying lists give the names of the killed and the accounts of damages with the claims. I also add a few letters which, with my previous reports, will give you a full history of what has occurred. The two field returns give the names of the officers engaged on the 14th and 27th of December 1859. Respectfully submitted, S. P. Heintzelman, Major 1st Regiment Infantry, Com’dg Brownsville Expedition. Captain John Withers, Ass’t Adj’t Gen., U.S.A., San Antonio, Texas. Source: Troubles on Texas Frontier, House of Representatives, 36th Congress, 1st Session, Ex. Doc. No. 81, Letter from the Secretary of War, pp. 2 14.

79. Excerpts from Report of the Mexican Commission on the Northern Frontier Question, 1875 Juan Cortina (1824–1894) had become, according to Euro-Americans, an outlaw for shooting a marshal who pistol-whipped an elderly servant of his mother and called Cortina a ‘‘greaser’’ when he intervened. The Texas press and many merchants demanded more troops and forts on the border. Many Mexicans charged that the hysteria was manufactured and that the threat was exaggerated. The motive, they believed, was to pressure the government to sustain military forts on the border so that the merchants could make fortunes through supply contracts necessary to maintain the forts and to insure the flow of money spent by soldiers in the nearby towns. Considerable diplomatic pressure was put on the Mexican government to arrest Cortina with many EuroAmericans demanding that the United States invade Mexico. Tired of the accusations, the Mexican government conducted its own investigation. Some of the findings follow in a Mexican Commission Report that some historians consider one of the most important documents of its time.

Desirous of hearing the complaints of the sufferers of injuries received, the Commission issued copies of the regulations of the 21st November, and invited the citizens of Mexico and Texas to present their claims before them. They then set about to collect all the facts relative to cattle stealing on the United States frontier, whether favorable or adverse to the Mexican Republic. Besides this, and in compliance with the law of Congress, their duties extended to the hearing and

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investigation of the complaints of American citizens, and to this end the abovenamed regulations were issued, as follows: Although testimonial evidence on all these points has been most useful and important, yet circumstantial proofs culled from the archives have in all cases been more conclusive. In those examined by the Commission are a series of regulations framed by the municipal and police authorities for the suppression of horse thieves in the towns lying on the bank of the river. Very few of these measures looked to the prevention of the traffic in stolen cattle from Texas, from which it would seem that this evil did not exist to the same extent; whilst on the contrary, the laws had in view the damages resulting from horse stealing in Mexico, and the transportation of the horses into Texas, proving that this was the greater traffic, and the one that needed greater legislation. Measures for the prevention of this crime have been issued in every town along the river, from which it may be deduced that like injuries were experienced in every village on the Mexican line; and as these preventive measures were constant and frequently repeated, it would seem that the injuries were constant and frequently recurring.… The great weight of these proofs cannot be estimated from a few isolated measures of this kind, but must be judged as a whole; for whilst instituting a repressive system of horse stealing on the Mexican frontier for the Texan market, since 1848, they also indicate the robberies organized on the Texan shore of the Rio Bravo, in injury to Mexican proprietors. They are contemporaries, at least, in the robberies committed in 1848, and which have since continued. Adolfo Glaevecke is one of those who have most actively engaged in horse stealing in Mexico, ever since the Rio Bravo has been the dividing line between the two nations. Persons who have belonged to the police corps, accomplices of Glaevecke, and persons who have appeared in court at various times to reclaim stolen animals, have appeared before the Commission as witnesses against Glaevecke, so that with all the overwhelming testimony before them, the Commission feels confident to express an opinion as to his character. Glaevecke owns a horse pen on the Texas shore of the river, which used to bear the name of Santa Rita, but is now called Linero. On one side of this enclosure was the ford known as Tia Morales. Here the thieves in the employ of Glaevecke congregate, and to this pen, or enclosure, are the animals stolen in Mexico carried; driven for the most part across the ford Tia Morales. The evidence of title witnesses on this point is corroborated by documentary testimony. This ford was the object of the most active vigilance on the part of the authorities, and the extracts from the documents in Matamoros show that seizure was here often made of thieves and stolen animals, and that various enactments of law were made to guard the ford of Tia Morales. Since 1848 to the present, for the space of twenty-five years, there has existed in Texas the trade in goods stolen in Mexico, without the attempt at interference on the part of the authorities to punish the offenders of law in this illicit traffic. During this same period the collection of droves of animals at certain periods of each year along the whole American line has been permitted, with the knowledge that these animals were stolen from Mexican territory. Finally, there had been tolerated the public organization of bands of robbers, who under the patronage of influential persons have gone to Mexico to steal for the benefit of their patrons. We quote the following extracts from a correspondence dated at Rome, Star County, and published in a Texan newspaper:

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‘‘In Guerrero, Mexico,’’ says the correspondent, ‘‘I was informed by the city authorities that there was an organized band of robbers, whose constant occupation was to steal horses in Mexico and carry them to Texas, where they in return stole horses and cattle to bring back to Mexico. The three principal leaders are, Atilano Alvarado, Procopio Gutierrez, and Landin, the former being the foreman of Captain R. King, on whose rancho he has lived for a number of years, and is well known to the stock-raisers of that section of the country; our informer says also, I am sure they have many accomplices and co-operators on the ranches of Texas on this side of the river and all along the coast. Procopio Gutierrez resides a part of the time in Texas, on San Bartolo rancho, Zapote county, with his adoptive father. I crossed afterwards to the American side and investigated the matter in the most secret manner possible, and found all these things to be perfectly correct. I asked several persons of the city whether they were doing anything to put a stop to the robbery. What can we do? they replied. Our sheriff lives on a ranch twentytwo miles from here: and has not come within the county. for several months, and even he himself has aided in transporting the stolen animals through his rancho over into Mexico on the 10th or 12th of November. No one knows or can swear with any certainty that said cattle had been stolen, but it is presumed that the whole or a part of them were stolen, as the drivers kept away from the collector of customs and from the inspector of hides and cattle; and when an authority of the county connives in the robbery, instead of preventing it, there is nothing to be done against such powerful bands of robbers.’’ Daily Ranchero, Brownsville, January 12th, 1873, p. 84 The residents of Texas have complained constantly that the Mexican authorities have not taken all the necessary precautions to prevent the stealing of cattle on our borders; that the State of Texas has, to the contrary, done all in its power by way of keeping the laws. Now an investigation has become indispensable in order to ascertain what has occurred on both frontiers.… The question relative to Texas presents four aspects her legislation, her public administration, her police, and her administration of justice. The Texas legislation is imperfect. It contains no efficacious, energetic means to prevent the robberies which take place in the branding pens, and which contribute to maintain a state of perfect disorder, in the prolongation of which the proprietors who give themselves up to these depredations are interested. To commit these depredations they require accomplices men destitute of conscience, who rob for others without any other consideration than the pay which they receive; and it is certain that these men, accustomed not to respect property, rob on their own account whenever it is possible. One of the proprietors who has distinguished himself most in these depredations is Ricardo King, owner of the estate Santa Gertrudis, county of Nueces. He has had as chief, Tomas Vasquez, accomplice in robberies of Mexican horses, and in the robberies of cattle committed in Texas, and Fernando Lopez, accomplice in the last. He has kept in his rancho this Atilano Alvarado, who is thought to be chief of a party of robbers stationed in Guerrero. They appear also in the dispatches drawn up before the Commission, the dates of which are not very accurate with regard to the robberies in which the individuals have participated who have been in his service. Ricardo King had a large band who ran constantly in all directions of the country marking calves, though they did not belong to him. It is impossible to admit that

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the people forming that party possessed any sentiments of morality. The laws of Texas offer no energetic remedies for this evil, and are insufficient. His revolt was brought about by the following circumstances. He saw the sheriff at Brownsville dragging a Mexican along by the collar; [Juan] Cortina remonstrated with him; the sheriff made use of insulting language in his reply; Cortina then shot at and wounded him, and carried off the prisoner. This occurred on the 13th of July, 1859. On the 28th of September of the same year, he again appeared at Brownsville with some fifty men, and took possession of the town. Several of those who, it was alleged, had been guilty of outrage toward the ‘‘Texan Mexicans,’’ were killed, and all the prisoners who joined him were released. At the request of various persons he left the city and retired to his ranch; he was disposed to lay down his arms and leave Texas; several parties saw him for this purpose, and he agreed to it, requiring only from four to six days to transfer to the Mexican side some cattle which some of his companions had, and divide his people into small parties of three or four each, to avoid their being pursued by the Mexican authorities at the time of their crossing the river. He did so, but shortly after he was told that one of his followers bad been hung at Brownsville, upon which he went into Texas and began gathering people together, giving his movement a more definite character. It is worthy of notice that when the revolt assumed this aspect it was highly popular among the ‘‘Texan Mexicans,’’ that is, among all the Mexican population which had settled in Texas before or after the Treaty of Guadaloupe [sic]. The fact that Cortina was joined by a large number of these, some of whom were land owners, can be attributed to no other reason.… Richard King has in his service a large band; he makes use of it for depredating upon other people’s cattle, by seizing all of the unbranded calves, which are then branded with King’s brand, notwithstanding the ownership of the calves is shown by their following cows bearing other people’s brands. These depredations are continuous, because King’s band is almost always uninterruptedly in movement. He thus develops and maintains demoralization among a great number of people, because only men without principle could accept the position of instrument for the commission of such crimes. He has had among his herders the accomplices in robberies committed in Texas or Mexico, as, for example, Fernando Lopez and Tomas Vazquez: nevertheless, he states that his injuries amount to millions. MONTEREY, May 15th, 1873 Emilio Velasco, Ygnacio Galindo, Antonio Garoia Carrillo and Augustin Silacio, Secretary Source: Report of the Mexican Commission on the Northern Frontier Question: Investigating Commission of the Northern Frontier (New York, Baker & Goodwin Printer, 1875), pp. 3, 13, 28, 39, 83 84, 105 106, 126 129, 176.

80. Excerpt from ‘‘A Little War on the Border,’’ 1877 Like water, salt is essential for life in arid environments. A power struggle broke out in the late 1860s as to who would control the salt deposits located in the Guadalupe Mountains 110 miles east of El Paso. Mexicans had not made an effort to secure ownership of the beds that supplied all of western Texas, southern New Mexico, and Mexico with salt. Mexicans engaged in the salt trade during bad times and used the salt free of charge. In the 1870s

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bloody battles broke out when unscrupulous elements attempted to monopolize the salt, which would deprive Mexicans of a needed resource. A Salt Ring comprised of influential Euro-American politicos led the monopolists. Two factions maneuvered to control the salt beds for commercial purposes. The following excerpt from The New York Times reports on conditions around the El Paso area and the friction between whites and Mexicans.

Gen. Sheridan seems to have taken from the first a common-sense view of the latest troubles on the Texan frontier. His brief comment on the El Paso affair, which he described as ‘‘a row about some salt,’’ was a dash of cold water on the fire which a few sensational newspapers had kindled. According to the military critics and international lawyers who infest some of the newspaper offices, a cause of war existed on the frontier. It was distinctly declared that at least 400 Mexicans had crossed the Rio Grande, had captured the civil authorities of El Paso County, and had, as in such case is made and provided, ‘‘inaugurated a reign of terror.’’ The immediate object of this invasion was not clear. But it was evident to those who were clamorous for war that hostilities had been begun, and that nothing but armed reprisals would vindicate the honor of the United States. Within a few days, and while The Times was making fun of these ‘‘invasions,’’ the hysterical appeals to arms which the war newspapers were uttering suffered modification. It was then asserted that the Mexican residents of El Paso County, Texas, reinforced by arrivals from the further side of the Rio Grande, had defied the local authorities, and were in a state of revolt. The ‘‘invaders’’ became ‘‘insurgents,’’ and it was asserted that they openly declared that El Paso County belonged to Mexico. By a clumsy reversal of all the facts in the case, it was argued that this latest difficulty was only the legitimate result of the failure of the United States Government to demand, at the cannon’s mouth, the extradition of the Mexican citizens who lately took out of Rio Grande City Jail certain of their compatriots and retreated with them to Mexican soil. The World, which is naturally the organ of these filibusteros, coolly said that it was of no consequence what the cause of the local disturbance might be. The general question remained the same. Anarchy and disorder on the other side of the Rio Grande perpetually threatened the peace and good-will which notoriously prevail on our side of the boundary. It will not encourage these amateur warmakers to learn that the ‘‘invaders’’ or ‘‘insurgents’’ of El Paso are known to the military authorities as ‘‘the mob,’’ and that the officer commanding has not only had several confabs with the leaders, but that the mob has dispersed, after the General commanding had given orders that they should be left to the authorities of the State, to deal with as was thought best. Sheridan was right when he said that the whole trouble, so wickedly and willfully exaggerated by demagogues, was only ‘‘a row about some salt.’’ There were no invaders, no insurgents. About thirty miles from the town of El Paso is the salt spring which has been such a prolific source of trouble. It is a considerable lake, which yields salt so abundantly that it is only necessary for the people who visit it to shovel it into their wagons. For more than two hundred years this natural deposit has been considered common property, and has been the source to which people inhabiting the territory now known as Texas, New-Mexico, and Northern Mexico have resorted for supplies. Recently some land-grabbers, said to be New-Yorkers, have seized upon the lake, and have covered it with a paper title under what is known as the ‘‘Desert Lands Law’’ a

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statute of doubtful expediency and more than doubtful paternity. These persons having seized upon the property, demanded forty cents a bushel for the salt taken from the lake, and, to enforce their claim, they made such improvements as were considered necessary to perfect their title. The people of the region, who are as largely of Mexican origin as are the voters of New-Mexico and Arizona, resisted what they considered an invasion of popular rights. Most likely their resistance was illegal; certainly it was violent and sanguinary. The mob assaulted the civil authorities, who were only doing their duty by upholding the rights of those who, at least, had the forms of law on their side. The result was a riot, in which several people were killed. It was a lamentable affair, very much such as often disgraces an older state than Texas, when a neighborhood quarrel over a line fence or right of way culminates in murder and defiance of law. But only the most distempered imagination could connect this local disturbance with the supposed dark designs of Mexican invaders. The disturbers were of all races, and the so-called ‘‘insurgents’’ were intent only on preserving what they considered their right to shovel salt. They had no more thought of ‘‘invading’’ the United States than they had of invading the planet Mars. It is not claimed, however, that the population on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande is peaceable and orderly. From the time of Carbrajal, in 1850, until now, the country has been as frequently agitated by risings and petty revolts as any other part of the Mexican Republic. As soon as a rising takes place, the so-called insurgents harry the Americans on this side of the boundary, and, secure from the effects of any demand made by our Government upon that of Mexico, continue their work of brigandage until the ‘‘revolution’’ drops into pieces. On the other hand, it cannot be claimed for our own citizens that they are the lamblike non-resistants and longsuffering peace-makers which they have claimed to be. Those who are at all familiar with the border Texan will laugh at the assertion that the Mexicans have been the only aggressors in all these recent disturbances. It is the fixed belief of the Texan that the Sierra Madre, not the Rio Grande, should be the boundary line betwixt the two Republics. A long series of raids and ‘‘revolutions,’’ in which the Americans have been the moving spirits, have harassed Mexico during the past twenty-five years. A correspondent of The Times, whose letter is printed to-day, makes mention of some of these disgraceful affairs. And our correspondent, whose statements are impartial and worthy of credence, points out some of the difficulties of the situation. Chief among these is the inadequacy of existing extradition treaties. Our convention with Mexico provides for the return of American citizens who have been indicted under the laws of the United States. But it is demanded sometimes, as in the case of the raid upon the jail at Rio Grande City, that Mexican criminals should be sent over to us to be tried under the laws of the United States. This demand, in any event, would be an unusual one; and as long as the extradition treaty would not justify it, such a request must be made with moderation. Nevertheless, some of the warlike newspapers, with more zeal than knowledge, have actually proposed that a formidable force be sent to the Rio Grande to coerce the Mexican authorities into giving up their own citizens for trial in our country. Let us imagine, if we can, the howl of rage and indignation which these belligerent editors would emit if they heard of a similar demand being made upon the United States by Mexican officials. The correspondence to which we have just referred does not encourage us to hope for speedy peace on the frontier. But it is evident that, while the Mexicans are

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lawless, uneasy spirits are constantly committing all manner of acts from our side of the line for the purpose of embroiling the two Republics in war. Source: New York Times, October 22, 1877, p. 4.

81. Excerpt from W. M. Dunn’s Report to War Department, Bureau of Military Justice, April 19, 1878 The Mexicans and Euro-Americans often clashed in many ways after the U.S. occupation of South Texas as newly arrived Euro-American settlers forced Mexican farmers off the land. The two peoples also clashed culturally and had different attitudes toward the use of land, water, and salt. An example of this clash of cultures took place around the small town of San Elizario, near present-day El Paso, Texas, in 1877, over salt beds in the Guadalupe Mountains 110 miles east of El Paso that supplied all of western Texas, southern New Mexico, and Mexico with salt. Two competing groups, one led by the Salt Ring and another by Father Antonio Borrajo and Louis Cardis (1825–1877), a local politician, formed as each side sought to obtain ownership of the beds. Local Mexicans supported Father Borrajo’s cabal. Charles Howard (1842–1877), a Democratic politician, at first supported the Borrajo-Cardis faction but Howard and Cardis quarreled over ownership of the salt. Things got ugly when Howard took control of the salt flats in 1877, and he shot and killed Cardis. Howard, a former Texas Ranger, enlisted the support of the rangers and with a troop of 20 Texas Rangers rode into San Elizario. The Mexicans defended themselves and captured Howard and two of his men, executing them in front of a firing squad. This gave Euro-Americans the pretext for the Salt War of 1877, which led to EuroAmerican mob action and widespread vigilantism. The rangers and the army also indiscriminately attacked Mexicans. The following document by the Judge Advocate General W. M. Dunn relates how Howard was killed.

The outbreak was, it is believed, the result of a desire for revenge for the murder of [Louis] Cardis, a crime which had no justification, which was deliberate and brutal, and which exasperated the people beyond control. [Charles] Howard was brought before a justice of the peace for the murder, but was released at once on bail, in violation of law, and as not long before he had caused the arrest and imprisonment of two men for the mere offense of saying that they meant to get salt from the ponds, law or no law, the Spanish-American populace naturally thought they saw that there was no equality of justice, and felt compelled to take the law into their own hands. Of the mob of five hundred which captured the town of Elizario and the Texas force and killed Howard, perhaps one hundred were men from the Mexican side, who had come over in defiance of the Mexican authorities. These, or the guiltier of these, the extradition against [agent?], Judge Blacker, has officially demanded. No answer has yet been received. The amount of damage by robbing and destruction wrought by the mob is estimated at about $12,000. The evidence is abundant that a small force of United States soldiers would have prevented all the trouble. That an outbreak would sooner or later follow the withdrawal of troops the testimony shows was predicted months before. It seems apparent from the opinions of the leading citizens, embodied in the testimony, that another emeute of the same sort may occur at any moment under

Texas

provocation, the first one having met with so much success and such impunity from punishment. Many outrages were committed on innocent people in the neighborhood during the excitement, but of these not a few were perpetrated by members of the State force, raised under authority of the governor of Texas by Sheriff Kerber, who recruited his men from Silver City, N.M. These last seem especially to be responsible for the rapes, homicides, and other crimes of which the people justly complained. The evidence makes it manifest that the Spanish population on both sides of the Rio Grande hold the American military in the highest awe, while they feel no dread of State levies, and despise the civil authorities unless protected by the military arm. Of these civil authorities not a few are Spaniards who took part in the emeute; of the others the county judge is an inveterate drunkard, disqualified by his habits to enforce order, and the rest are powerless for want of jails, a posse, or an armed force. The members of the board selected and appointed by the governor of Texas appends a statement to the record of proceedings, in which, after expressing his full concurrence in the board’s recommendations, he protests against some of its opinions and inferences, and announces his intention to forward, as soon as possible, a minority report. W. M. Dunn, Judge-Advocate-General The Secretary of War (Through the General of the Army) Source: ‘‘El Paso Troubles in Texas,’’ Letter from the Secretary of War, House of Representatives, 45th Cong., 2d. Sess., Ex. Doc. No. 93, May 28, 1878, pp. 3 5. Congressional Record.

82. Excerpt from ‘‘El Paso Troubles in Texas,’’ Letter from Colonel John H. King, Secretary of War, House of Representatives, to the Bureau of Military Justice, April 19, 1878 The following is a summary of the report of the military inquiry board into the causes of the Salt War commencing in 1877. It was based on testimonies by local residents of San Elizario, a small town near El Paso, Texas, as to why Charles Howard (1842–1877) was seized and executed in a dispute over the ownership of salt beds just over a hundred miles from El Paso. A Mexican faction had formed around parish priest Antonio Borajo who, with Italian Louis Cardis (1825–1877), claimed the beds. Borajo-Cardis had been partners of Howard but broke when Howard unilaterally claimed the salt, and Howard shot and killed Cardis with a shotgun. The Mexicans fought back when a troop of 20 Texas Rangers led by Howard entered the region. They captured Howard and two of his cohorts and, on orders of Fr. Borajo, executed them. During the investigation, the Mexican population was reluctant to testify. The report pieces together the events leading to Howard’s death, which touched off the so-called war. It took oral testimonies.

EL PASO, TEX., March 16, 1878. The Board met pursuant to adjournment at 8 P.M. Present: Col. John H. King, Ninth Infantry; Lieut. Col. William H. Lewis, Nineteenth Infantry; Maj. John B. Jones, Frontier Battalion.

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The Board adopted the following as its final report, which is signed by two members, one, Maj. J. B. Jones, dissenting, and handing in a communication, which was received by the Board and agreed to, and is attached to its report, following next after. PRELIMINARY The Board met with noticeable reluctance on the part of many people, in the different localities where its sessions were held, to testify upon all the points which it was within its province to examine. Some, fearing that their statements might be published after leaving the hands of the Board, and finding their way, through the medium of the press, back to this neighborhood, so excite local animosities as to lead to their ruin, refused to testify at all. Hence, also, the guarded language to be found in many of the statements made by intelligent parties. The Board in the prosecution of the duties devolving upon it, visited, on two different occasions, the towns of Ysleta, Socorro, and San Elizario, Texas, and pursuant to its instructions submit the following result of its labors: SUMMARY The Board finds that at San Elizario, in the latter part of September (September 29, 1877), Charles H. Howard, Gregoria N. Garcia, the county judge and a justice of the peace, were, for causing the arrest of two Mexicans, citizens of that town, named Maadonia [sic] Gandara and Jose Maria Juarez, for saying they intended to go and get salt from the salt lakes (as charged in affidavits), themselves arrested confined in durance, and threatened by an armed mob numbering about fifty or sixty men, of whom ten were from the Mexican side of the Rio Grande; they were led by Cisto Salcido and Leon Granido, at that time citizens of Texas. It is believed that even then Howard’s life was in danger, but at the earnest and united petitions of the Rev. Pierre Bourgad, the priest of the parish, and Louis Cardis, as stated in their own words, it was spared, and both he and the two officials were released, but on condition that the first should bind himself in the sum of $12,000, with good security, to relinquish his interests in the Salinas, and then to leave the county never to return, nor yet to prosecute them for their action in the matter. As for the county judge and the justice, they were released on tendering the resignation of their respective offices. (Appendix E, No. 5; F, Nos. 8 and 9; and L, Nos. 3, 7, and 20.) In the beginning of November following, Howard returned to the county, notwithstanding the pledge he had given to remain away, whereupon the Mexicans became incensed and gathered together again, some with arms in their hands, to the number of about two hundred, of whom about twenty were citizens of Mexico, living on this and the other side of the river, and threatened the lives of the bondsmen to enforce the payment of the bond which they declared was rendered forfeit by Howard’s return. But the timely arrival of an officer of the State of Texas, Maj. John B. Jones, who came before their junta accompanied by the parish priest as interpreter, prevented their half-matured plans from culminating into any overt acts of disorder. They expressed themselves satisfied with the interview, and as a result of his visit promised to disband and disperse and await the decisions of the courts. (Appendix L, Nos. 3, 7, and 20.) But their professions and promises must have been insincere, for as found (see Appendix B, Nos. 1 to 25), the people, early in

Texas

December, that is to say, December 12, 1877, rose en masse and armed themselves for the mischief that ensued. Yet with imperfect organization and little discipline they were speedily joined by friends and sympathizers who came, some to fight and others to steal, from across the river in squads of a few at a time, until their numbers grew to formidable proportions. Their exact force is difficult to compute. Their leaders who know are in foreign parts, and the estimate of those who have testified differs widely, but there could not have been far from 400, of whom not less than onethird were Mexican citizens, the remainder being from El Paso County, Texas. All were under the leadership of Francisco (alias Chico) Barcla, with Desiderio Apodaca as second in command, and these were assisted by Ramon Sambrano, Leon Granido, Cisto Salcido, Anastasio Montez, and Acaton Porras, all residents of Texas, except Montez, who was from Mexico. (Appendix H, No. 1 to 5; F, Nos. 8 and 9.) They assembled in the town of San Elizario and made no secret of their intentions to kill Charles H. Howard (who had gone there under escort of a small company of the Texas Battalion of Rangers), but disavowing at the same time, so it is said, any purpose to become involved with the United States Government. Here the mob remained in possession from the 12th to the 17th of December. They surrounded and besieged the house and corral where the rangers were quartered, and, after some casualties on both sides, compelled their surrender and disarmament. They plundered stores and warehouses of goods and provisions, and carried the booty across the river. They killed on the 12th Mr. Charles E. Ellis, whose store and mill they afterward robbed. On the 13th they shot down in the street Sergt. C. E. Mortimer, of the Frontier Battalion of Rangers, and on the 17th, after the surrender, in broad daylight and in cold blood, they murdered Charles H. Howard, John G. Atkinson, and John E. McBride; the last-named was one of the rangers, the other two were quartered in the building for protection. The death of Mortimer was the only loss suffered by the rangers during the siege. The number and extent of the casualties on the side of the mob is not known, and probably never will be. It must have been large. (Appendix D, No. 1, and F, Nos. 8, 9, 11.) It is impracticable as yet to fix the true value of the property destroyed and stolen, as the principal losers are dead, but it is believed that the amount is rather more than instead of less than $12,000. (Appendix F, No. 9, and L, Nos. 5 and 8, P, No. 6.) No evidence taken substantiates the report heretofore prevalent, that the people coming from Mexico and taking part in these criminal proceedings were an organized body previously drilled and disciplined by officers of the Mexican Army. One Ferris Lermo, or, as known by the Mexicans, Teniente Lermo, who was formerly a lieutenant in the Mexican Army, but not connected with it for many years, and now an old man, did assist the mob of November by written advice and personal instruction in tactics, but finding they were disposed to adopt extreme measures, which he could not second and from which he would have dissuaded them, he incurred their dislike, and went or was driven away before the rising, and there is nothing to show that he returned. (Appendix L, Nos. 7 and 20.) The inhabitants of the adjacent towns on both sides of the river have hitherto, for many years, lived in a state of amity, and are intimately connected by the bonds of a common faith, like sympathies and tastes, and are related in numerous instances by marriage; hence each would naturally support and defend the other, if occasions real or fancied demanded their aid, to any sacrifice. In the words of one who ought

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to know them well, if they have a good man to lead them, there is not a more pacific, easily governed, and loyal people on the face of the earth; if they have a bad one they will be just as bad as he would have them. (Appendix P, No. 6.) The statements of reliable citizens, showing the character of the people, in this view are important and worthy of consideration. They will be found in Appendix C. Nos. 1 to 4.… John H. King, Colonel Ninth Infantry, President of Board W. H. Lewis, Lieutenant Colonel Nineteenth Infantry, Member of Board Leonard Hay, First Lieutenant and Adjutant Ninth Infantry, Recorder Source: ‘‘El Paso Troubles in Texas,’’ 45th Cong., 2d. Sess., Ex. Doc. No 93, May 28, 1878, pp. 13 18.

PART VI Voices Mexicanas The section on Voices Mexianas could very well be dominated by Spanish language newspapers that were common wherever there was a concentration of Mexican people. The main regional concentrations of Spanish language newspapers were Californis, the Upper Rio Grande Valley, and South Texas. From 1848 1876, San Francisco, California, housed ten newspapers among them El Eco del Pacific, a daily. In Brownsville, Texas, seven Spanish-language newspapers were published. Los Angeles, Santa Fe, and Las Cruces also circulated Spanish-language newspapers. As the Mexican population increased along the Texas-Mexico border so did the number of newspapers. New Mexico was also fertile territory with many weeklies. The daily La Voz del Pueblo served the people of Las Vegas, New Mexico, from 1879 1929. In Tucson, Arizona, El Fronterizo, a weekly, was printed from 1878. This section could very well have been all about these newspapers that tell about the everyday life of the Mexicans who the border had crossed. However, in order to diversify the voices, we have included excerpts from an oral interview taken by Hubert Howe Bancroft, selections from the first Mexican woman novelist Mar
ıa Amparo Ruiz de Burton, and an excerpt from the autobiography of Miguel Antonio Ortero II of New Mexico. Many of these voices are being recovered by Nicol
as Kanellos’ ‘‘Recovering the U.S. Literary Heritage Project,’’ at Arte P
ublico Press at the University of Houston.

83. Excerpts from the Testimony of Eulalia P
erez Regarding Her Life in Mexican California, 1877 Eulalia P
erez (1768–1878) was the ‘‘keeper of the keys’’ at Mission San Gabriel Arc
angel and the owner of Rancho del Rinc
on de San Pascual in Alta, California. She was born in Baja, California. Court records show that she lived to be 140, but her descendants agree that she was only 110 years old when she died. This testimony from a Native American is one of the few to survive history. In the following passage, she described her duties as a housekeeper in a California mission in 1823. The testimony was taken by Hubert Howe Bancroft, who conducted some 100 interviews with descendants of the original Californios (Californians of Mexican extraction) to preserve the early history of the state. Of these 100, 12 testimonies were from women.

I, Eulalia P
erez, was born in the Presidio of Loreto in Baja California. My father’s name was Diego P
erez, and he was employed in the Navy Department of said presidio; my mother’s name was Antonia Rosalia Cota. Both were pure white.

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I do not remember the date of my birth, but I do know that I was fifteen years old when I married Miguel Antonio Guillen, a soldier of the garrison at Loreto Presidio. During the time of my stay at Loreto I had three children two boys, who died there in infancy, one girl, Petra, who was eleven years old when we moved to San Diego, and another boy, Isidoro, who came with us to this [Alta] California. I lived eight years in San Diego with my husband, who continued his service in the garrison of the presidio, and I attended women in childbirth. I had relatives in the vicinity of Los Angeles, and even farther north, and asked my husband repeatedly to take me to see them. My husband did not want to come along, and the commandant of the presidio did not allow me to go either, because there was no other woman who knew midwifery. In San Diego everyone seemed to like me very much, and in the most important homes they treated me affectionately. Although I had my own house, they arranged for me to be with those families almost all the time, even including my children. In 1812, I was in San Juan Capistrano attending Mass in church when a big earthquake occurred, and the tower fell down. I dashed through the sacristy, and in the doorway the people knocked me down and stepped over me. I was pregnant and could not move. Soon afterwards I returned to San Diego and almost immediately gave birth to my daughter Maria Antonia, who still lives here in San Gabriel. After being in San Diego eight years, we came to the Mission of San Gabriel, where my husband had been serving in the guard. In 1814, on the first of October, my daughter Maria del Rosario was born, the one who is the wife of Michael White and in whose home I am now living.… When I first came to San Diego the only house in the presidio was that of the commandant and the barracks where the soldiers lived. There was no church, and Mass was said in a shelter made out of some old walls covered with branches, by the missionary who came from the Mission of San Diego. The first sturdy house built in San Diego belonged to a certain Sanchez, the father of Don Vicente Sanchez, alcalde [administrator] of Los Angeles and deputy of the Territorial Council. The house was very small, and everyone went to look at it as though it were a palace. That house was built about a year after I arrived in San Diego. My last trip to San Diego would have been in the year 1818, when my daughter Maria del Rosario was four years old. I seem to remember that I was there when the revolutionaries came to California. I recall that they put a stranger in irons and that afterwards they took them off. Some three years later I came back to San Gabriel. The reason for my return was that the missionary at San Gabriel, Father Jose Sanchez, wrote to Father Fernando at San Diego who was his cousin or uncle asking him to speak to the commandant of the presidio at San Diego requesting him to give my son Isidoro Guillen a guard to escort me here with all my family. The commandant agreed. When we arrived here, Father Jose Sanchez lodged me and my family temporarily in a small house until work could be found for me. There I was with my five daughters my son Isidoro Guillen was taken into service as a soldier in the mission guard. At that time, Father Sanchez was between sixty and seventy years of age a white Spaniard, heavy set, of medium stature a very good, kind, charitable man. He, as well as his companion Father Jose Maria Zalvidea, treated the Indians very well, and the two were much loved by the Spanish-speaking people and by the neophytes and other Indians.

Voices Mexicanas

Father Zalvidea was very tall, a little heavy, white; he was a man of advanced age. I heard it said that they summoned Zalvidea to San Juan Capistrano because there was no missionary priest there. Many years later, when Father Antonio Peyri fled from San Luis Obispo it was rumored that they were going to kill the priests I learned that Zalvidea was very sick, and that actually he had been out of his mind ever since they took him away from San Gabriel, for he did not want to abandon the mission. I repeat that the father was afraid, and two Indians came from San Luis Rey to San Juan Capistrano; in a rawhide cart, making him as comfortable as they could, they took him to San Luis, where he died soon after from the grueling hardships he had suffered on the way. Father Zalvidea was very much attached to his children at the mission, as he called the Indians that he himself had converted to Christianity. He traveled personally, sometimes on horseback and at other times on foot, and crossed mountains until he came to remote Indian settlements, in order to bring them to our religion. Father Zalvidea introduced many improvements in the Mission of San Gabriel and made it progress a very great deal in every way. Not content with providing abundantly for the neophytes, he planted [fruit] trees in the mountains, far away from the mission, in order that the untamed Indians might have food when they passed by those spots. When I came to San Gabriel the last time, there were only two women in this part of California who knew how to cook [well]. One was Maria Luisa Cota, wife of Claudio Lopez, superintendent of the mission; the other was Maria Ignacia Amador, wife of Francisco Javier Alvarado. She knew how to cook, sew, read, and write and take care of the sick. She was a good healer. She did needlework and took care of the church vestments. She taught a few children to read and write in her home, but did not conduct a formal school. On special holidays, such as the day of our patron saint, Easter, etc., the two women were called upon to prepare the feast and to make the meat dishes, sweets, etc. The priests wanted to help me out because I was a widow burdened with a family. They looked for some way to give me work without offending the other women. Frs. Sanchez and Zalvidea conferred and decided that they would have first one woman, then the other and finally me, do the cooking, in order to determine who did it best, with the aim of putting the one who surpassed the others in charge of the Indian cooks so as to teach them how to cook. With that idea in mind, the gentlemen who were to decide on the merits of the three dinners were warned ahead of time. One of these gentlemen was Don Ignacio Tenorio, whom they called the Royal Judge, and who came to live and die in the company of Father Sanchez. He was a very old man, and when he went out, wrapped up in a muffler, he walked very slowly with the aid of a cane. His walk consisted only of going from the missionary’s house to the church. The other judges who also were to give their opinions were Don Ignacio Mancisidor, merchant; Don Pedro Narvaez, naval official; Sgt. Jose Antonio Pico who later became lieutenant, brother of Gov. Pio Pico; Don Domingo Romero, who was my assistant when I was housekeeper at the mission; Claudio Lopez, superintendent at the mission; besides the missionaries. These gentlemen, whenever they were at the mission, were accustomed to eat with the missionaries. On the days agreed upon for the three dinners, they attended. No one told me anything regarding what it was all about, until one day Father Sanchez called me

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and said, ‘‘Look, Eulalia, tomorrow it is your turn to prepare dinner because Maria Ignacia and Luisa have already done so. We shall see what kind of a dinner you will give us tomorrow.’’ The next day I went to prepare the food. I made several kinds of soup, a variety of meat dishes and whatever else happened to pop into my head that I knew how to prepare: The Indian cook, named Tomas, watched me attentively, as the missionary had told him to do. At dinner time those mentioned came. When the meal was concluded, Father Sanchez asked for their opinions about it, beginning with the eldest, Don Ignacio Tenorio. This gentleman pondered awhile, saying that for many years he had not eaten the way he had eaten that day that he doubted that they ate any better at the King’s table. The others also praised the dinner highly. Then the missionary called Tomas and asked him which of the three women he liked best which one of them knew the most about cooking. He answered that I did. Because of all this, employment was provided for me at the mission. At first they assigned me two Indians so that I could show them how to cook, the one named Tomas and the other called ‘‘The Gentile.’’ I taught them so well that I had the satisfaction of seeing them turn out to be very good cooks, perhaps the best in all this part of the country. The missionaries were very satisfied; this made them think more highly of me. I spent about a year teaching those two Indians. I did not have to do the work, only direct them, because they already had learned a few of the fundamentals. After this, the missionaries conferred among themselves and agreed to hand over the mission keys to me. This was in 1821, if I remember correctly. I recall that my daughter Maria del Rosario was seven years old when she became seriously ill and was attended by Father Jose Sanchez, who took such excellent care of her that finally we could rejoice at not having lost her. At that time I was already the housekeeper. The duties of the housekeeper were many. In the first place, every day she handed out the rations for the mess hut. To do this, she had to count the unmarried women, bachelors, day-laborers, vaqueros both those with saddles and those who rode bareback. Besides that, she had to hand out daily rations to the heads of households. In short, she was responsible for the distribution of supplies to the Indian population and to the missionaries’ kitchen. She was in charge of the key to the clothing storehouse where materials were given out for dresses for the unmarried and married women and children. Then she also had to take care of cutting and making clothes for the men. Furthermore, she was in charge of cutting and making the vaqueros’ outfits, from head to foot that is, for the vaqueros who rode in saddles. Those who rode bareback received nothing more than their cotton blanket and loin-cloth, while those who rode in saddles were dressed the same way as the Spanish-speaking inhabitants; that is, they were given shirt, vest, jacket, trousers, hat, cowboy boots, shoes, and spurs; and a saddle, bridle, and lariat for the horse. Besides, each vaquero was given a big silk or cotton handkerchief, and a sash of Chinese silk or Canton crepe, or whatever there happened to be in the storehouse. They put under my charge everything having to do with clothing. I cut and fitted, and my five daughters sewed up the pieces. When they could not handle

Voices Mexicanas

everything, the father was told, and then women from the town of Los Angeles were employed, and the father paid them. Besides this, I had to attend to the soap-house, which was very large, to the winepresses, and to the olive-crushers that produced oil, which I worked in myself. Under my direction and responsibility, Domingo Romero took care of changing the liquid. Luis the soap-maker had charge of the soap-house, but I directed everything. I handled the distribution of leather, calf-skin, chamois, sheepskin, Morocc[an] leather, fine scarlet cloth, nails, thread, silk, etc., everything having to do with the making of saddles, shoes, and what was needed for the belt- and shoe-making shops. Every week I delivered supplies for the troops and Spanish-speaking servants. These consisted of beans, com, garbanzos, lentils, candles, soap, and lard. To carry out this distribution, they placed at my disposal an Indian servant named Lucio, who was trusted completely by the missionaries. When it was necessary, some of my daughters did what I could not find the time to do. Generally, the one who was always at my side was my daughter Maria del Rosario. After all my daughters were married the last one was Rita, about 1832 or 1833 Father Sanchez undertook to persuade me to marry First Lt. Juan Marine, a Spaniard from Catalonia, a widower with family who had served in the artillery. I did not want to get married, but the father told me that Marine was a very good man as, in fact, he turned out to be besides, he had some money, although he never turned his cash-box over to me. I gave in to the father’s wishes because I did not have the heart to deny him anything when he had been father and mother to me and to all my family. I served as housekeeper of the mission for twelve or fourteen years, until about two years after the death of Father Jose Sanchez, which occurred in this same mission. A short while before Father Sanchez died, he seemed robust and in good health, in spite of his advanced age. When Capt. Barroso came and excited the Indians in all the missions to rebel, telling them that they were no longer neophytes but free men, Indians arrived from San Luis, San Juan, and the rest of the missions. They pushed their way into the college, carrying their arms, because it was raining very hard. Outside the mission, guards and patrols made up of the Indians themselves were stationed. They had been taught to shout ‘‘Sentinel on guard!’’ and ‘‘On guard he is!’’ but they said ‘‘Sentinel open! Open he is!’’ On seeing the Indians demoralized, Father Sanchez was very upset. He had to go to Los Angeles to say Mass, because he was accustomed to do so every week or fortnight, I do not remember which. He said to me, ‘‘Eulalia, I am going now. You know what the situation is; keep your eyes open and take care of what you can. Do not leave here, neither you nor your daughters.’’ (My daughter Maria Antonia’s husband, named Leonardo Higuera, was in charge of the Rancho de los Cerritos, which belonged to the mission, and Maria del Rosario’s husband, Michael White, was in San Blas.) The father left for the pueblo, and in front of the guard some Indians surged forward and cut the traces of his coach. He jumped out of the coach, and then the Indians, pushing him rudely, forced him toward his room. He was sad and filled with sorrow because of what the Indians had done and remained in his room for about a week without leaving it. He became ill and never again was his previous self. Blood flowed from his ears, and his head never stopped paining him until he died. He lived perhaps a little more than a month after the affair with the Indians, dying in the

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month of January, I think it was, of 1833. In that month, there was a great flood. The river rose very high and for more than two weeks no one could get from one side to the other. Among our grandchildren was one that they could not bring to the mission for burial for something like two weeks, because of the flood. The same month a few days after the father’s death Claudio Lopez, who had been superintendent of the mission for something like thirty years, also died. In the Mission of San Gabriel there was a large number of neophytes. The married ones lived on their rancherias with their small children. There were two divisions for the unmarried ones: one for the women, called the nunnery, and another for the men. They brought girls from the ages of seven, eight, or nine years to the nunnery, and they were brought up there. They left to get married. They were under the care of a mother in the nunnery, an Indian. During the time I was at the mission, this matron was named Polonia they called her ‘‘Mother Superior.’’ The alcalde was in charge of the unmarried men’s division. Every night, both divisions were locked up, the keys were delivered to me, and I handed them over to the missionaries. A blind Indian named Andresillo stood at the door of the nunnery and called out each girl’s name, telling her to come in. If any girl was missing at admission time, they looked for her the following day and brought her to the nunnery. Her mother, if she had one, was brought in and punished for having detained her, and the girl was locked up for having been careless in not coming in punctually. In the morning the girls were let out. First they went to Father Zalvidea’s Mass, for he spoke the Indian language; afterwards they went to the mess hut to have breakfast, which sometimes consisted of com gruel with chocolate, and on holidays with sweets and bread. On other days, ordinarily they had boiled barley and beans and meat. After eating breakfast each girl began the task that had been assigned to her beforehand sometimes it was at the looms, or unloading, or sewing, or whatever there was to be done. When they worked at unloading, at eleven o’clock they had to come up to one or two of the carts that carried refreshments out to the Indians working in the fields. This refreshment was made of water with vinegar and sugar, or sometimes with lemon and sugar. I was the one who made up that refreshment and sent it out, so the Indians would not get sick. That is what the missionaries ordered. All work stopped at eleven, and at twelve o’clock the Indians came to the mess hut to eat barley and beans with meat and vegetables. At one o’clock they returned to their work, which ended for the day at sunset. Then all came to the mess hut to eat supper, which consisted of gruel with meat, sometimes just pure gruel. Each Indian carried his own bowl, and the mess attendant filled it up with the allotted portion.… The Indians were taught the various jobs for which they showed an aptitude. Others worked in the fields, or took care of the horses, cattle, etc. Still others were carters, oxherds, etc. At the mission, coarse cloth, serapes, and blankets were woven, and saddles, bridles, boots, shoes, and similar things were made. There was a soap-house, and a big carpenter shop as well as a small one, where those who were just beginning to learn carpentry worked; when they had mastered enough they were transferred to the big shop. Wine and oil, bricks, and adobe bricks were also made. Chocolate was manufactured from cocoa, brought in from the outside; and sweets were made. Many of these sweets, made by my own hands, were sent to Spain by Father Sanchez.

Voices Mexicanas

There was a teacher in every department, an instructed Indian. Source: Carlos N. Hijar, Eulalia P
erez, and Agust
ın Escobar, Three Memoirs of Mexican California, 1877 (University of California, Bancroft Library, 1988), pp. 73 82.

84. Francisco Ram
ırez, ‘‘El Dia de Muertos’’ (‘‘The Day of the Dead’’), 1857 El Clamor was founded by 18-year-old Francisco Ram
ırez, who published the newspaper in Los Angeles, California, from 1855–1859. The young publisher was well read, having been tutored by local Californios (a name given to Californians of Mexican extraction), which was the custom of the day. Spanish-language newspapers such as El Clamor and Tucson’s El Fronterizo (1889– 1929) were common and provided a voice for the Mexican people. El Clamor championed equal rights for Mexicans, condemned the lynchings of the times, and led a back-to-Mexico movement. Ram
ırez’s writing is all the more remarkable since there were no schools in colonial California and Ram
ırez was selftaught. In the following article, the author describes the Day of the Dead in Los Angeles, California, which is, to this day, celebrated by people of Mexican extraction.

The Day of the Dead is near. On this day, fighting in the city stops: the day is the day that memories of those who are no longer with us excite our heart. Tearful faces show their pain. They have expressions of mourning. The raspy sounds of the bells affect the heart, and each sound arouses a sad and melancholy memory. A cemetery is a deplorable sight of images of death … an old man wipes his tears, tears for a wife whom death seized; farther away there is a beautiful and innocent young girl accompanied by her brother, who prays for the soul of their mother, whose death abandoned them to the miseries of the orphanhood; they cry, they moan, and they ask their mother to protect them, requesting that upon their death to reunite with her … All moan this day, the father, the son, the husband, the lover, the friend, releasing expressions of their pain; the fisherman, the day laborer, the domestic servant, the poor man … Human misery! The moment man is born until he dies, he suffers pain in this world … condemned to support the loss of loved ones; although it is horrible to see a dead friend who sweetened our lives … it is preferable to lose a friend through death than through infidelity: the man who we believed true and is unfaithful … this is a misfortune worse than death … the ingratitude. Because of this, the saintly God, floods man with many sufferings? Sinks him into misery? Drowns him in misfortune?… Without hope what would man be in this world? This hope makes us wish death without horror, it sustains us in virtue, and it alleviates and it mitigates our evils. Source: El Clamor Publico (Los Angeles), October 31, 1857; Trans. Guadalupe Compean.

85. Francisco Ram
ırez, ‘‘Let There Be Justice,’’ 1856 Francisco Ram
ırez, the 18-year-old publisher of Los Angeles’ El Clamor P
ublico, published from 1855 to 1859, was steeped in the rational thinking of many Latin American intellectuals during the mid-nineteenth century. His

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Spanish-language newspaper carried articles from Latin American newspapers, especially from Sonora, Mexico, and other parts of Mexico. This article analyzes the concept of justice. A parish priest had brought a complaint against defendants who had broken down a cemetery’s gate. The jury found for the defendants and ordered the plaintiff to pay for the costs of the trial. The article takes this decision apart and shows there was no justice.

Let there be justice! (Even if the skies fall) a criminal lawsuit took place a few days ago in this city, before a Justice of the Peace, whose aim was very extraordinary. It was not a civil case, but criminal suit, an action taken by the State of California caused when the defendant broke down the door of the cemetery. The complaint was signed by the Rev. P
arraco. It seems that the defendant was set free, and the priest who swore out the complaint was sentenced to pay the costs of the jury which was made up of young people, who had chosen with very little care and in a matter of minutes, and as it appears, without much reflection; the failures of the jury, the verdict that the criminal was not guilty, and that the case was brought with malice and without cause by the priest. The Justice of the Peace decided there was no probable cause.… Civilized countries generally have good laws; but the injustice arises from bad execution in applying them. This has been borne out in this judgment.… In the first place, juries do not have right to say more than the defendant was guilty or not guilty … the defendant was declared not guilty … it was not a charge for the jury to determine whether the complaint was malicious or without probable cause … hence the jury exceeded its authority … the judge based his sentence on the jury’s verdict which was illegal and thus null and void according to the law.… the question of the malice or probable cause could be considered and argued by the lawyer of the Priest, but the Justice of the Peace arbitrarily refused to listen to a single word in favor of the Priest.… the Justice of the Peace erred and should have examined the complaint and the offense, and whether the circumstances justified the arrest order; and if it was not an offense he did not have to file it. There is a very profound contradiction in the conduct of this Justice of the Peace who issued the order of arrest and hence admitted that there was probable cause to arrest the defendant; and later ruled that it was without probable cause. The whole world knows that the Rev. Father is young person that just arrived from Spain, that he is ignorant of American laws, and knows very little English … it is evident that his declaration was made without malice or bad faith. Source: El Clamor P
ublico, ‘‘Let There Be Justice,’’ Los Angeles, July 5, 1856, pp. 2 3, ed. Francisco Ram
ırez, trans. Guadalupe Compean.

86. Manuel Retes, ‘‘Emigration to Sonora,’’ 1858 El Clamor P
ublico’s publisher, Francisco Ram
ırez, at first advocated living under the American flag. He believed that the U.S. Constitution would protect the rights of Mexicans in the United States. However, he was soon disillusioned by racism and the lynching of Mexicans, and advocated the return to Mexico as the only means of achieving justice. Manuel Retes was an agent for the return-to-Mexico movement and regularly advertised in El Clamor with the support of Ram
ırez. This circular advertises a meeting at the home of the last Mexican governor, Pio Pico (1801–1894).

Voices Mexicanas

EMIGRATION FOR SONORA (Circular) The Board responsible for promoting emigration to Sonora, informs its countrymen that registration in this county has started and so far has, amounts five hundred fifty to date. In view of the support for this movement … that has barely begun … the organizing board still has had no time to start in other counties; and considering that the number of those wishing to emigrate continue multiply, the Board Representative believes that it is now time this venture should be put under the protection and consideration of the Government of Sonora, and the Supreme Court of Mexico.… Accordingly, it is agreed as of 16 October a commissioner will be appointed on 1st of next January.… all Hispanic American residents currently in this county are invited to a General Board meeting, with this end in mind, in this city, to be held at twelve noon, in the house of tiles of D. Pio Pico, located in the plaza. At this time, a discussion will be submitted to the General Board according to the terms proposed, the commissioner, to the [Sonoran] government, to be considered and discussed, and approved by all emigrants. Chamber of Sessions, Los Angeles, December 16 of 1858. Manuel Retes and Manuel Escalante, President Source: El Clamor Publico, Los Angeles, December 18, 1858; trans. Guadalupe Compean.

87. Excerpts from Mar
ıa Amparo Ruiz de Burton, Who Would Have Thought It?, 1872 Mar
ıa Amparo Ruiz de Burton (ca. 1832–1895), one of California’s first female novelists, wrote from the perspective of the Mexican elite of her time. Born in Baja, California, she moved to U.S. soil after marrying a Euro-American captain. The following are excerpts from her first novel about a young Mexican girl as she is delivered from Indian captivity in the Southwest and comes to live in the household of a New England family. The author gives her insight into culture and perspectives on national history and identity clash. The passages criticize the dominant society’s opportunism and hypocrisy, and showcase northern racism. The novel is set in Massachusetts and New England. The main character is Dr. James Norval, a geologist, who returns home with dark skinned Mar
ıa Dolores Medina, a.k.a. Lola. Norval had been captured by Indians along the Colorado River and encountered Lola and her mother who were also captives. Lola’s mother dies and Norval escapes with Lola, returning home. Lola’s presence causes friction with Norval’s racist wife Jemina. Through the tension Ruiz de Burton critiques the hypocrisy of New England’s Puritan society as well as northern righteousness. The first passage contrasts Norval’s humanity with his wife’s snobbery. The last passage discusses the French occupation of Mexico during this same period of the 1860s.

‘‘What would the good and proper people of this world do if there were no rogues in it no social delinquents? The good and proper, I fear, would perish of sheer inanity of hypochondriac lassitude or, to say the least, would grow very dull for want of convenient whetstones to sharpen their wits. Rogues are useful.’’

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So saying, the Rev. Mr. [John] Hackwell scrambled up the steep side of a crazy buggy, which was tilting ominously under the pressure of the Rev. Mr. Hammerhard’s weight, and sat by him. Then the Rev. Hackwell spread over the long legs of his friend Hammerhard a well-worn buffalo-robe, and tucked the other end carefully under his own graceful limbs, as if his wise aphorism upon rogues had suggested to him the great necessity of taking good care of himself and friend, all for the sake of the good and dull of this world.… But Mrs. [Jeminia] Norval was so shocked at this that the doctor, tired as he was in body by his journey, and in mind by all the harassing little incidents and disputes which had occurred since his arrival, left the matter for that night to his wife’s discretion. The child, then, was sent with Hannah to share her room for the night. The doctor kissed Lola several times and embraced her to bid her good night, and she, sobbing as if her heart would break, and looking back several times as she left the room, went away to sleep the sleep of the orphan under that inhospitable roof.… ‘‘Don’t you know, doctor, that you kissed that Indian child more affectionately than you kissed your own daughters?’’ Mrs. Norval said fiercely to her husband when they had closed their bedroom door to the outer world. ‘‘Maybe I did, for I pity the poor orphan. My daughters, thank God, have yet their parents to take care of them, but this poor little waif has no one in the world, perhaps, to protect her and care for her but myself.’’ ‘‘As for that, she’ll get along well enough. She is not so timid as to need anybody’s particular protection. Her eyes are bold enough. She will learn to work I’ll see to that and a good worker is sure of a home in New England. Mrs. Hammerhard will want just such a girl as this, I hope, to mind the baby, and she will give her some of her castoff clothes and her victuals.’’ ‘‘Cast-off clothes and victuals!’’ the doctor repeated, as if he could not believe that his ears had heard rightly. ‘‘Why, yes. We certainly couldn’t expect Mrs. Hammerhard would give more to a girl ten years old to mind a little baby in the cradle.’’ ‘‘And how is she to go to school, if she is to mind Mrs. Hammerhard’s baby for old clothes and cold victuals?’’… [Issac in the land of the Aztecs] Don Felipe and Don Luis, therefore, had been among the firm and most prompt supporters of the republican government up to winter of 1863. In December of this year, however, and just about time of Isaac’s arrival in Mexico, these letters which the two gentlemen perused so eagerly as Isaac was riding towards them had come. These letters said that there was a very strong probability almost a certainty that the Archduke Maximilian would accept the proposed throne of Mexico; that he still hesitated, but that, as a great field for a noble and lofty ambition was thus opened to him, and he was known to be of generous impulses, the friends of monarchism anticipated [he] would accept in the hope of effecting a great good by giving the Mexican people a stable government, which would bring to them peace and prosperity and raise them to a high rank among the civilized nations of the world. Source: Mar
ıa Amparo Ruiz de Burton, Who Would Have Thought It? Edited and introduced by C 1997, Rosaura Sanchez and Beatrice Pita. Houston: Arte Publico Press University of Houston
pp. 9, 21 22, 196. Reprinted with permission of the publisher.

Voices Mexicanas

88. Excerpts from Mar
ıa Amparo Ruiz de Burton, The Squatter and the Don, 1885 Mar
ıa Amparo Ruiz de Burton (ca. 1832–1895) wrote two novels in English. Born in Loreto, Baja California, Mexico, she belonged to an elite land holding family. She lived through the 1846 U.S. invasion of La Paz, Baja California. Ruiz married a captain of the invading army, Henry S. Burton. She attended President Abraham Lincoln’s 1861 inauguration. However, she acquired proConfederate sympathies. Aside from her novels, she left a treasure trove of letters and a play. She criticized Euro-American materialism and also lamented the decline of the Californios (Californians of Mexican extraction) who were exploited by Euro-Americans. The Squatter and the Don is about a Californio rancher, Don Mariano Alamar. Published in 1885, it was from the perspective of the conquered. As the editors of the reprint point out, ‘‘The Squatter and the Don avoids addressing the dispossession of the Indians, seen here only as ranch hands and servants; neither does it essentialize ethnicity in and of itself, nor limit the characters to one spatial dimension.’’ The following passages are excerpts from this novel describing the Californios and the loss of their patrimony. William Darrell was a formed squatter—one of many Euro-Americans who moved on California and challenged the legal titles of the owners in the courts using them to steal the Califonios’ land.

THE SQUATTER AND THE DON But [William] Darrell [of Alameda County] was no longer the active squatter that he had been. He controlled many votes yet, but in his heart he felt the weight which his wife’s sad eyes invariably put there when the talk was of litigating against a Mexican land title. This time, however, Darrell honestly meant to take no land but what belonged to the United States. His promise to his wife was sincere, yet his coming to Southern California had already brought trouble to the Alamar rancho. Don Mariano Alamar [of San Diego] was silently walking up and down the front piazza of his house at the rancho; his hands listlessly clasped behind and his head slightly bent forward in deep thought. He had pushed away to one side the many armchairs and wicker rockers with which the piazza was furnished. He wanted a long space to walk. That his meditations were far from agreeable could easily be seen by the compressed lips, slight frown, and sad gaze of his mild and beautiful blue eyes. Sounds of laughter, music, and dancing came from the parlor, the young people were entertaining friends from town with their usual gay hospitality, and enjoying themselves heartily. Don Mariano, though already in his fiftieth year, was as fond of dancing as his sons and daughters, and not to see him come in and join the quadrille was so singular that his wife thought she must come out and inquire what could detain him. He was so absorbed in his thoughts that he did not hear her voice calling him, ‘‘What keeps you away? Lizzie has been looking for you; she wants you for a partner.…’’ ‘‘But, as George is to marry my [Don Alamar’s] daughter, he would be the last man from whom I would ask a favor’’ [to use his influence on the Attorney General on Don Alamar’s behalf].

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‘‘What is that I hear about not asking a favor from me?’’ said George Mechlin, coming out on the piazza with Elvira on his arm, having just finished a waltz. ‘‘I am interested to know why you would not ask it.’’ ‘‘You know why, my dear boy. It isn’t exactly the thing to bother you with my disagreeable business.’’ ‘‘And why not? And who has a better right? And why should it be a bother to me to help you in any way I can? My father spoke to me about a dismissal of an appeal, and I made a note of it. Let me see, I think I have it in my pocket now,’’ said George, feeling in his breast pocket for his memorandum book, ‘‘yes, here it is ‘For uncle to write to the attorney general about dismissing the appeal taken by the squatters in the Alamar grant, against Don Mariano’s title, which was approved.’ Is that the correct idea? I only made this note to ask you for further particulars.’’ ‘‘You have it exactly. When I give you the number of the case, it is all that you need say to your uncle. What I want is to have the appeal dismissed, of course, but if the attorney general does not see fit to do so, he can, at least, remand back the case for a new trial. Anything rather than this killing suspense. Killing literally, for while we are waiting to have my title settled, the settlers (I don’t mean to make puns) are killing my cattle by the hundred head, and I cannot stop them.’’ ‘‘But are there no laws to protect property in California?’’ George asked. ‘‘Yes, some sort of laws, which in my case seem more intended to help the lawbreakers than to protect the law-abiding,’’ Don Mariano replied. ‘‘How so? Is there no law to punish the thieves who kill your cattle?’’ ‘‘There are some enactments so obviously intended to favor one class of citizens against another class that to call them laws is an insult to law, but such as they are, we must submit to them. By those laws any man can come to my land, for instance, plant ten acres of grain, without any fence, and then catch my cattle which, seeing the green grass without a fence, will go to eat it. Then he puts them in a ‘corral’ and makes me pay damages and so much per head for keeping them, and costs of legal proceedings and many other trumped up expenses, until for such little fields of grain I may be obliged to pay thousands of dollars. Or, if the grain fields are large enough to bring more money by keeping the cattle away, then the settler shoots the cattle at any time without the least hesitation, only taking care that no one sees him in the act of firing upon the cattle. He might stand behind a bush or tree and fire, but then he is n[ot] seen. No one can swear that they saw him actually kill the cattle, and jury can convict him, for although the dead animals may be there, lying on the ground shot, still no one saw the settler kill them. And so it is at the time. I must pay damages and expenses of litigation, or my cattle [get] killed almost every day. ‘‘It could be done, perhaps, if our positions were reversed, and the Spanish people ‘the natives’ were the planters of the grain fields, and the Americans were the owners of the cattle. But as we, the Spaniards, are the owners of the Spanish Mexican-land grants and also the owners of the cattle ranchos, our State legislators will not make any law to protect cattle. They make laws ‘to protect agriculture’ (they say proudly), which means to drive to the wall all owners of cattle ranchos. I am told that at this session of the legislature a law more strict yet will be passed, which will be ostensibly ‘to protect agriculture’ but in reality to destroy cattle and ruin the native Californians. The agriculture of this State does not require legislative protection. Such pretext is absurd.’’ ‘‘I thought that the rights of the Spanish people were protected by our treaty with Mexico,’’ George said.

Voices Mexicanas

‘‘Mexico did not pay much attention to the future welfare of the children she left to their fate in the hands of a nation which had no sympathies for us,’’ said Dona Josefa, feelingly. ‘‘I remember,’’ calmly said Don Mariano, ‘‘that when I first read the text of the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, I felt a bitter resentment against my people; against Mexico, the mother country, who abandoned us her children with so slight a provision of obligatory stipulations for protection. But afterwards, upon mature reflection, I saw that Mexico did as much as could have been reasonably expected at the time. In the very preamble of the treaty the spirit of peace and friendship, which animated both nations, was carefully made manifest. That spirit was to be the foundation of the relations between the conqueror and conquered. How could Mexico have foreseen then that when scarcely half a dozen years should have elapsed the trusted conquerors would, In Congress Assembled, pass laws which were to be retroactive upon the defenseless, helpless, conquered people, in order to despoil them? The treaty said that our rights would be the same as those enjoyed by all other American citizens. But, you see, Congress takes very good care not to enact retroactive laws for Americans, laws to take away from American citizens the property which they hold now, already, with a recognized legal title. No, indeed. But they do so quickly enough with us with us, the Spano-Americans, who were to enjoy equal rights, mind you, according to the treaty of peace. This is what seems to me a breach of faith, which Mexico could neither presuppose nor prevent.’’ ‘‘It is nothing else, I am sorry and ashamed to say,’’ George said. ‘‘I never knew much about the treaty with Mexico, but I never imagined we had acted so badly.’’ ‘‘I think but few Americans know or believe to what extent we have been wronged by Congressional action. And truly, I believe that Congress itself did not anticipate the effect of its laws upon us and how we would be despoiled,’’ said Don Mariono sadly.… [conclusion: reviews the fraud committed by Cols. P. Huntington and the Central Pacific Railroad Co.] This, surely, is an ‘‘aggravation of excess!’’ The House Committee on Public Lands in their report on the ‘‘forfeiture of the Texas Pacific land grant,’’ reviewed Mr. Huntington’s acts with merited severity. Amongst many other truths the report says: ‘‘The Southern Pacific claims to ‘stand in the shoes’ of the Texas Pacific. Your committee agrees that ‘standing in the shoes’ would do if the Southern Pacific filled the shoes.’’ But it does not. It never had authority or recognition by Congress east of Yuma. For its own purpose, by methods which honest men have denounced, greedy to embrace all land within its network of rails, to secure monopoly of transportation, surmounting opposition, and beating down all obstacles in its way, and in doing so, crushing the agent Congress has selected as instrument to build a road there, doing nothing, by governmental authority or assent even, and having succeeded in defeating a necessary work and rendering absolutely abortive the attempt to have one competing transportation route to the Pacific built, it coolly asks to bestow upon it fifteen millions of acres of lands; to give it the ownership of an area sufficient for perhaps one hundred thousand homes, as a reward for that result.’’ And the committee (with one dissenting voice only) reported their opinion that the Southern Pacific Railroad Company had neither legal nor equitable claim to the lands of the Texas Pacific which Mr. Huntington wished to appropriate. But is it not a painful admission that these few men should have thwarted and defeated the purpose and intent of the Government of the United States of having

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a competing railway in the Texas Pacific? Not only Col. Scott, and Hon. John C. Brown, and Mr. Frank T. Bond, the President and Vice President of this road, but also Sen. Lamar, Mr. J. W. Throckmorton, Mr. House, Mr. Chandler of Mississippi, and many, many other able speakers, honorable, upright men, all endeavored faithfully to aid the construction of the Texas Pacific. All failed. The falsehoods disseminated by ex-Sen. Gwin, which Sen. Gordon and others believed, and thus in good faith reproduced, had more effect when backed by the monopoly’s money. But Tom Scott is laid low, and so is the Texas Pacific; now the fight for greedy accumulation is transferred to California. The monopoly is confident of getting the land subsidy of the Texas Pacific after killing it; of getting every scrap that might be clutched under pretext of having belonged to the decapitated road. Thus, the lands that the City of San Diego donated to Tom Scott on condition that the Texas Pacific should be built, even these, the monopoly has by some means seized upon. No Texas Pacific was built, but nevertheless, though clearly specified stipulations be violated, San Diego’s lands must go into the voracious jaws of the monster. Poor San Diego! After being ruined by the greed of the heartless monopolists, she is made to contribute her widow’s mite to swell the volume of their riches! This is cruel irony indeed. Source: Mar
ıa Amparo Ruiz de Burton, The Squatter and the Don. Edited and introduced by C 1997, Rosaura Sanchez and Beatrice Pita. Houston: Arte P
ublico Press University of Houston
pp. 62 66, 340. Reprinted with permission of the publisher.

89. Excerpts from Sostenes Betancourt, ‘‘The Wife of Joaqu
ın Murieta and el Ferrocarril del Sur,’’ 1885 Spanish-language newspapers were abundant in the United States during the nineteenth century. Almost every established Latino community had a newspaper. They carried news of other Spanish-speaking communities in the United States and Mexico. The following article is from El Cronista of San Francisco and tells of the travels of Sostenes Betancourt through the San Jose area. He describes the vivid life of Latinos in the mid-1880s. Aside from describing people of distinction, he relates an account of a scam perpetrated by a woman claiming to be the widow of the legendary Mexican bandit or freedom fighter Joaqu
ın Murieta (1829–1853), who was allegedly killed by Capt. Harry Love and his rangers—even thirty years after his alleged death Murieta was remembered by the Mexican community.

Commissioned by the Southern Pacific Railroad, I made an inspection tour of the beautiful lands traveled by the railroad … I chose the northern route, which extends 143 miles, from the Pacific’s Metropolis all the way to La Soledad’s limit where the splendid mountain range almost dissolves, it is an exuberant and florid picture of the opulent valleys of Santa Clara, Salinas, Hollister, Tres Pinos, and others. But before I begin my narrative, which is an exact replica of my travel notes, I would like to make it clear that I have neither the desire for honor or benefit, nor do I fear antagonizing powerful companies, to compromise my telling the truth.… If deserved praises of North American railroads, principally, Southern Pacific Railroads, are not welcomed by some readers, I will be sorry, because as I said at the beginning, I am obliged to honor the company which granted me the honor, honor that even the North American writers themselves rarely receive.

Voices Mexicanas

On April 2nd, a day of great remembrances for all Mexicans, I began the trip. Barely leaving the city, you see the beauty of this privileged land, rich in gold and soft to the touch of the sowing hand of the working men. From San Bruno to La Soledad, one valley follows another; tight as a billiards table, the greenery of an ocean, delineated by two funny ranges that protect it from the sea and the lack of elevation, an eternal emerald cloth. A curious fact: the range on the right, going from here, is covered in luxurious vegetation. There are no palm trees, but one can guess the immensity beyond; there are no huge tamarind trees, but the leaves of those trees have a dreamy whispering as those found on the Mexican coast.… And to the left, covered in vegetation, exuberant mint, which seduces you even more with its attractive and immense wheat granaries of different shades, depending on the saut
eing they reach and its silvery threads of innumerable formed creeks. To the right, the reflection of the sun attracts birds of colored feathers, yellow and red.… confused with flowers of identical color, birds’ blue wings as active as the golondrina [swallow]. To the left … the land forms creeks, in a swamp and soft bed.… Everywhere, on mountain tops, slopes, and valleys, huge sheep herds, cow herds, which [one beast] because of his size reminds me of the cow seen in the dreams of the Egyptians’ Pharaoh, life and its multiple manifestations of wealth, the agribusiness is felt and admired as we get some distance from the city.… To the working men, the honest family man, the loving husband who wishes to give his companion a peaceful home, I would happily advise him to establish himself on any of the land plots which crosses the Southern Railroad that are easily acquired. The mundane life in San Francisco is very difficult and very expensive. The poor, with some job and thrift … can become a property owner in a few years, and then, work for himself and not for a salary. Even more, in the countryside there is no fragmentation of the city, nor need for religious bread for the soul, nor the intelligence bread of instruction. There are schools, churches for different cults that the human race adopts, and the child, the men, the women, can attend without the worries that exist in the cities. In the countryside, the greatest preoccupation consists in the cleanliness of the body which reflects the cleanliness of the soul.… San Bruno, Milbrae, Oak Grove, San Mateo, Belmont, Redwood City, Fair Oaks, Menlo Park, Mayfield, Mountain View, Murphy’s Lawrence’s Santa Clara, are within 47 miles, 13 stations perfectly attended line the path. In each one there are excellent hotels, telegraph, telephone, and express available to the guests. In order to avoid mistakes, the conductor is obliged to speak in a loud voice, the name of each station as well as the next one. There are no changing cars till Gilroy; therefore a child can travel without the fear of getting lost. There is a waiting room, warm in the winter and cooled in the summer. Vanity Room for the ladies and gentlemen. Books to read while waiting, which is never prolonged, since the train works exactly as the [rider expects, keeping to] its scheduled time. The admirable beauty of certain points, such as the poetry of our own memories, are powerful motives so that we at least mention them in these notes, at least the way one greets an old acquaintance. One can hear the Castilian language here.… during siesta time it is common to see those honest working men resting while reading a newspaper of their absent land. With such noble workers, forced out countrymen, I have seen you cry as children when reading the paper of our Minister of Foreign Relations refuting the revolution started by barrios de Guatemala, and your tears and loneliness in the fields, are the

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most convenient proof that the Mexican government knew how to interpret the sentiment of Mexicans. Belmont, the name says it, is a beautiful and splendid mountain, well known because every year there are delicious picnics in the countryside. Menlo Park is a very nice area of recreation; it protects from the wind lovely little orchards, so well known that only with an expert guide one can get close to them. It is said that Santa Clara is like the Athens of California … at all hours of the day, young people of both sexes walk through the spacious avenues studying voluminous books and abstracts yanking from science its secrets. Santa Clara is known for its Jesuit College established there, where young people honor their generation by getting an education. San Jose, head of Santa Clara’s county, is a well-known city. In a small scale, they have all the comforts of that great metropolis. Well populated, in its downtown, all business transactions from many southern towns transpire. Its all-seasons’ benign climate is famous. Only Monterey has better climate, but is chosen by those unfortunate ill, for kindness of its climate and the fact that it possesses miraculous thermal waters which instantly cure rheumatism and painful ailments. There is a great number of Mexicans, Chileans, and Argentines, and among them are very distinguished people because of their education and the positions they hold. On the first and second of each month the movement is extraordinary. On those days, the government pays teachers of both sexes, and the county schools, which are many, those days are not close[d] but deserted, because habit becomes law, and it is complete rigor that all students accompany the teachers to the government offices to collect their pay.… A bit more than 30 miles to the south of San Jose is Gilroy, passing by readied stations of Eden Vale, Coyote, Perris, Madrone, and tenants. A new town of 1,600 inhabitants is dedicated to farming. On the northeast sierras, [there are] huge vineyards, and sarsaparilla is grown. The Fahrenheit thermometer, in the shade, at the meridian hour marks 60°. There are several Mexicans that get together at night, after work, in a saloon of a Chilean named Fernando Devia. Gilroy’s business is paralyzing. With the exception of the bank’s appearance, which does not allow comparison with stores of fifth or sixth level in the city, gold or silver coins are nowhere to be found. There are three well-furnished hotels, protestant temples, one catholic, and one mason, fire department, and a billiard saloon. The property is well depreciated, since an acre of good land for growing vineyards can be purchased for $15 dollars. We were assured that in time of harvest this, an essentially agricultural town, presents a non-use mercantile movement. We sadly noticed that there some of our compatriots live badly and look worse. During 30 hours, we visited D. Fernando Devia several times, and from the first to the last, we noticed players persevering at billiard, Panguingui, and other similar games. Moreover, the saloon does not speak very well in favor of the parishioners’ culture. It is true that they are workers, but the traveler’s comparison won’t cease to clash when compared between this and other recreation places. Regarding the weather, it is the undeniable kindness of Gilroy, where spring continues … good weather, the abundance of medicinal plants, the tranquility one enjoys there, the easiness to get nutritious and healthy meals at a low cost, Gilroy is not only convenient for the ill but also for the industrialists to settle somewhere else when in need of abundant resources. To the gentlemen, courtesy of Don Estolano N. Larios, merchant, we owe those 18 agreeable hours in Los Tres Pinos. Not only did he offer us his honest hospitality, such are the customs of our ancestors, he accompanied us to the most notable places of the area and gave us facts which helped us [in] writing the story of our trip. Tres

Voices Mexicanas

Pinos is a town of only one street, a population of 250, of which 50 are Mexican. Since this is the end of the South Pacific and due to land deals, the company is in litigation and it is feared that the railroads will not continue, most businessmen or industrialists have refused to improve the town the railroad is going through. However, there are some establishments that give certain representation. Two hotels, wood-processing plant, public school where Mass is given on Sundays, meat-shop, shoe store, bars, mixed stores, dancing halls, postal office, express, telegraph, two extensive granaries.… The principal sources of public wealth consist of agriculture and cattle raising. There are large vineyards and fruit tree farms, so much that the idea of starting a factory for fruit preserves seems to be growing. Tres Pinos is surrounded by distinguished ranches, among them are ‘‘Santa Anita,’’ ‘‘Quien Sabe,’’ ‘‘Los Muertos,’’ where all the extensive labor, although seasonal, give each year abundant harvests. The rich personalities of Spanish origin, among them Don Joaquin Bolado, Don E. Anzar, Dona Dolores de Laveaga, are justly esteemed for their excellent qualities. So that the great Hoax which took place two years ago, 70 miles south of the Tres Pinos, be understood, we need to refresh the memory with few paragraphs of history. Father Magin, a Franciscan, was the first missionary of Santa Clara. Famous for his virtues, dies as a saint and, according to tradition, God Almighty interceded for him. In all those valleys, they talk about extraordinary adventures, as if they had occurred yesterday, of the legendary Joaqu
ın Murieta. They talk of his wife Mariana, without anyone truly knowing how she disappeared. Twenty years ago the ‘‘crazy one,’’ that is what they called her, associated with a French man, set up a tent near San Luis Obispo; and in a close-by creek sowed gold sputters. Soon word got out.… Adventurous men and women came in mass, they formed a town, and during the night they lost the game at the tent of Mariana and the French man, the fraudful who took all the gold and more that had been collected during the day. Finally, their fraudulent deception was exposed and the fleeced victims were able to leave town considering themselves lucky with their lives … Almost three years ago Mariana reappeared, still accompanied by the French man, and also Carperio Ramadas, Guadalupe Olivas, and two assistants. This time, she appeared where the Santa Cruz valley narrows on the side of Nueva Indria, very close to the abrupt boulder Gavil
an, where Joaqu
ın Murieta held meetings with his subordinates. They preached the end of the world, claimed they were authorized by Father Magin who appeared to thousands of people … through his interpreter, to supposedly preached the destruction of the world. Mariana made running water flow from the boulders, she would say where on the earth to dig and surprised spectators with the innumerable treasures in diamonds and other rocks, silver, and gold. Close to the day when Mariana and her two assistants disappeared, there were up to six thousand penitents. Even today there are people who are very respectable, but can not explain the miracles they believed. There are many who believe that in their desire to have the heavenly kingdom, they lost all their earthly possessions. Now they vegetate in the cursed land they once called holy. Mariana ran away with some capital, which according to the people, was no less than eight thousand dollars. In the Salinas Valley, 118 miles south of this city, a town is growing which is taking the same name as the valley. The population is 3,500 people; close to one thousand are of Spanish origin. Generally, they are in Monterey County which at one point was the best of California, the happiest Mexican people with their

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original customs and their generous talent. The principal source of wealth in Salinas consists of agriculture, cattle ranching, industrial factories and mercantile businesses. In a small scale, all the negotiations are handled here, even though generally these are implemented in the large mercantile nucleus. An excellent friend of ours, businessman sic, son of the country, Don W. A. Richardson, showed us the best places in the city and even had the kindness of introducing us to people in high places. The city is surrounded by swamps, however, the low lands of the valley look good. However, it needs a well organized police and a cleaning crew or a public works inspection. The two proud institutions would benefit since it is a public health issue. The effects of humidity and squalor are diphtheria, paralysis, and rheumatism, which are the prevalent diseases of today. With respect to public buildings, there are some well-known buildings. The Justice Department … cost the county 60,000 dollars. There are four churches or temples, but the highest valued at $20,000 is a Catholic one.… Focused and hard-working men carry out all types of banking transactions. Director Don W. S. Johnson is a well respected and loved gentleman … his wife was a native. There is a business plaza, six or seven hotels, workers from all industries, railroad, telephone, telegraph, casinos, saloons, recreational places, and many more [establishments that] clearly indicate a profile of a civilized population. Let’s not doubt even for a second that Salinas has an excellent future. An acre of land, depending on the location, can be bought from twenty to one thousand pesos, so persons of means will find it easy to get established, and the poor who has nothing but the patrimony of his work will find permanent work in the Salinas Valley. That the Spanish language is as easily spoken as English will attract those of our nationality who live sadly in San Francisco. In Salinas, they would find a social niche: there are beautiful young marrying women, and there are permanent jobs. At the end of the south of the state, a mission was called San Vicente the Great during colonial times. In its memory, La Soledad was founded, its northern borders [meet] with the Southern Pacific Railroad. From 250 inhabitants, which the provisional small town has, almost all the thirty workers would be Mexican. There is a great element of wealth, outside of the one railroad line, [that] consists of sowing the land and raising sheep. The valley still extends beyond La Soledad.… The Salinas River crosses through the middle of the Rancho San Vicente and … gets lost in the hills or stubborn brooks. It is truly a shame to see that those rivers’ water is not used to water the fields. In that area, innumerable patriots are descendants of wealthy Mexican families, among them Don Gregorio Soberanes, owner of the most comfortable hotel in La Soledad, owner of the San Vicente Convent; and he has hanging from a gold nail, the key of the hall where the priests celebrated their rituals. Source: El Cronista, San Francisco, year 11, no. 62, Saturday, April 18, 1885. Trans. Guadalupe Compean.

90. Excerpts from Miguel Antonio Otero II, My Life on the Frontier 1864–1882 Miguel Antonio Otero II (1859–1944) was from a prominent New Mexico family. Like the elites of other territories and states taken from Mexico, he intermarried and had business dealings with prominent Euro-Americans immigrating to the territory. Otero became governor of New Mexico Territory from

Voices Mexicanas

1897 to 1906. He was the son of Miguel Antonio Otero, a prominent businessman and New Mexico politician. The following passages are from his autobiography, a trilogy, which tells of life in New Mexico, largely from the viewpoint of an elite ‘‘New Mexican.’’

My father, Don Miguel Antonio Otero I, had declined a renomination as New Mexico delegate to the United States Congress because of a determination to retire from politics. He had also refused the appointment as Minister to Spain which President Lincoln.… It was my father’s strong conviction that he devote his time and energies entirely to the business he had previously formed with David Whiting. Whiting & Otero was engaged in the multiform profitable activities of banking, outfitting, wholesaling.… During our stay at Don Juan’s home [upon returning to New Mexico,] we saw some of the lawlessness that prevailed in that part of the Territory. A band of Texa[n]s had debouched into northern New Mexico … and were rustling all the cattle and horses in the country. In their raids they had killed several herders who had opposed them. I saw the large herd of cattle these Texans had stolen near Las Vegas. The rustlers all wore chaps and were armed to the teeth with rifles and pistols. The presence of this outfit was naturally a great source of excitement to Las Vegas people, and, as my father had arrived the day before, a delegation of the most prominent citizens of northern New Mexico appealed to him to do something to relieve the section from this scourge, their notion being that a man of my father’s prominence might have some influence with the rustlers. My father undertook the mission, without much hope of success, and to our great delight he allowed my brother and me to accompany him. We all rode out to their camp, located where East Las Vegas now stands. When my father asked for the leader of the band, a large, red-headed man with chin whiskers, weighing fully two hundred and twenty-five pounds, presented himself. My father urged him to have greater regard for the property of the citizens of New Mexico. When my father had finished, the leader of the Texans answered thus: ‘‘These God damn greasers have been stealing our horses and cattle for the past fifty years, and we got together and thought we would come up this way and have a grand roundup, and that is why we are here. What is more, we intend to take all the horses and cattle we come across and drive them back to their old ranges in Texas, where they belong. My advice to you fellows is: Don’t attempt to interfere with what we are doing unless you are looking for trouble.’’ My father did not attempt to argue the matter further, knowing that it was useless. I have never forgotten the episode, for it revealed that hostile and vengeful feeling displayed by the Texans which produced acts of lawlessness calculated to make the name ‘‘Tejano’’ a hated word among the New Mexicans. It is said that mothers were in the habit of censuring their children with the dire threat: ‘‘If you are not good, I’ll give you to the Tejanos, who are coming back.’’ In this instance, as in many others, the New Mexicans were long suffering. The people of the northern part of the Territory had suffered heavily from these pillagers and reasoned that it would cost them their lives to interfere in any way with the northern ruffians. So they stood the losses and allowed the Texans to proceed on their way. Two days after my father made his plea, the whole herd and the Tejanos had disappeared in a southeasterly direction. It was afterwards learned that the

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leader of this band of marauders took the proceeds of the raid and invested it in Denver, erecting one of that city’s largest office buildings. After a pleasant renewal of friendship with their many acquaintances in Las Vegas, my parents started for Santa Fe on the Barlow & Sanderson Stage, taking all of us children with them. On our arrival, we took rooms in a building which stood just across the street from the old Exchange Hotel, called the ‘‘La Fonda,’’ celebrated as being the end of the Santa Fe Trail (on the site where H. H. Dorman now has his real estate office), and here we remained until conveyances arrived to take us to my uncle’s home at La Constancia. My uncle’s home was a typical hacienda, or country estate, located in the richest and most desirable part of the Territory the valley of the Rio Grande, extending from Pen~ na Blanca to EI Paso, Texas. At such haciendas, the life was lavish and luxurious to a degree hard to imagine nowadays; in many respects it resembled the principality of some foreign prince. The owners of these haciendas were fittingly called ‘‘Don’’ and ‘‘Dona,’’ titles of respect and honor. Uncle Manuel and Aunt Doloritas were very fond of entertaining, and while we were there, they gave several dances. The dances usually lasted until sunrise, refreshments and wines being served from midnight on. A good hot breakfast was furnished [to] all the guests before they started for their homes. Source: Miguel Antonio Otero, My Life on the Frontier 1864 1882 (New York: Arno Press, 1974), pp. 1, 61 63.

PART VII Land Land has always been important to Mexicans. Many Mexican old-timers would symbolically put dirt to their mouths and taste the land. It meant the place where they were raised, lived and passed on memories to their children. Land has been associated with liberty. Different people had different interpretations of land. For the Native American, it meant life not ownership and land was not tied to profit. Under Spanish and Mexican frontier law, their laws provided for the communal use of lands and private and public space was often shared. The latter was a semi-feudal society and communal lands were given to villages to settle frontier areas; even in the case of large grants the community was, in theory, protected. The United States concept of land differed, and it was tied to the free market. The Euro-American approach to land was tied to the notion of race and entitlement. They conjured up myths such as that they paid for the land with their blood. During the first three decades after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848) there was a massive transference of land in which Mexicans lost most of their land grants and all of their communal lands. This huge transference of land was abetted by government and the courts. This transference ignored the provisions of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848) that guaranteed a respect for Mexican land titles. In theory, a treaty is the law of the land in practice the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was given separate status and allowed local courts jurisdiction over the adjudication of land titles. The confusion encouraged squatters’ rights or the moving onto other people’s land and claiming it. The latter had the burden to prove title which was a lengthy and costly proposition. In the case of communal lands the commons were taken from them and often given to capitalist farmers.

91. Excerpt from ‘‘The Concept of Common Lands Defines Community Land Grants,’’ 2007 Land policy differs from country to country and is often based on the environment and tradition. For example, water laws in arid countries like Mexico and Spain differ from those in wet places like England. After the U.S. conquest of 1848, the United States was forced to use Mexican water use laws to avoid conflicts. In the Mexican tradition, water belonged to the public—or at least this was how it was supposed to work. The Spanish and Mexican governments followed a similar logic; to settle their northern frontier, the Spanish Crown, and later the Mexican government in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries,

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the governors of California, New Mexico, and Coahuila y Tejas granted or sold land to individuals and communities. The Spanish crown distributed grants to groups of people to form towns or villages. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848) explicitly protected the rights of holders of private and communal lands. The original Article IX of the treaty also included language that required the immediate admission of former Mexican territories as states so the Mexican settlers would have a say in their governance. The U.S. government violated the treaty and rather than simply accepting titles to Spanish or Mexican land grants, Congress required claimants to confirm the legality of their land grants through a lengthy and expensive legal process before courts or commissions. Meanwhile, the communal lands were privatized and villagers lost their use of common lands and forests. Grantees had the burden of proof, which was often at an expense that was beyond their means. Judges and commissioners unfamiliar with Spanish and Mexican land law (let alone the Spanish language) weighed the evidence.

From the end of the seventeenth century to the middle of the nineteenth century, Spain and M
exico issued grants of land to individuals, groups, towns, pueblos, and other settlements in order to populate present-day New Mexico. Academic treatises and popular literature typically divide these grants into two types: ‘‘individual grants’’ and ‘‘community land grants.’’ Grants to towns and other settlements were modeled on similar communities created in Spain, where the king granted lands adjacent to small towns for common use by all town residents. Under Spanish and Mexican law in the territory of New Mexico, officials made grants to towns and other communities. Such grants were in keeping with Spanish laws, including the 1680 Recopilaci
on de las Leyes de los Reynos de las Indias. However, local laws, practices, and customs often dictated how grants were made and confirmed. After achieving independence from Spain in 1821, M
exico continued to adhere to Spanish law by extending additional land grants to individuals to encourage settlements in unoccupied areas and to stave off U.S. encroachment on Mexican territory. The Mexican-American War began in 1846 and formally ended with the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848. Under the treaty, M
exico ceded most of what is presently the American Southwest, including the present day states of New Mexico and California, to the United States for $15 million.… Land grant documents contain no direct reference to ‘‘community land grants’’ nor do Spanish and Mexican laws define or use this term. Scholars, land grant literature, and popular terminology use the phrase ‘‘community land grants’’ to denote land grants that set aside common lands for the use of the entire community. We adopted this broad definition for the purposes of this report. To determine the meaning of the term ‘‘community land grants,’’ we first reviewed land grant documents, and found that grant documents do not describe grants as community land grants. We also did not find applicable Spanish and Mexican laws that defined or used the term. However, as a result of our review of land grant literature, court decisions, and interviews with scholars, legal experts, and grantee heirs, we found that the term is frequently used to refer to grants that set aside some land for general communal use (ejidos) or for specific purposes, including hunting (caza), pasture (pastos), wood gathering (le~na) or watering (abrevederos). Our definition coincides with the way in which scholars, the land-grant literature, and grant heirs use the term.

Land

Under Spanish and Mexican law, common lands set aside as part of an original grant belonged to the entire community and could not be sold. Typically, in addition to use of common lands, settlers on a community land grant would receive individual parcels of land designated for dwelling (solar de casa) and growing food (suerte). Unlike the common lands, these individual parcels could be sold or otherwise disposed of by a settler who fulfilled the requirements of the grant, such as occupying the individual parcel for a continuous period. For example, the documentation for the Ant
on Chico grant, issued by M
exico in 1822, contains evidence that common lands were part of the original grant. The granting document provided for individual private allotments and common lands. Congress confirmed the Ant
on Chico grant in 1860 and the grant was patented in 1883. APPROXIMATELY FIFTY-TWO PERCENT OF ALL NEW MEXICO LAND GRANTS MAY BE CLASSIFIED AS COMMUNITY LAND GRANTS [there were] three types of community land grants, totaling 152 grants, or approximately 52 percent of the 295 land grants in New Mexico. In 79 of the community land grants, the common lands formed part of the grant according to the grant documentation. Scholars, grant heirs, and others have found an additional 51 grants that they believe to contain communal lands; and we located 22 grants of communal lands to the indigenous pueblo cultures in New Mexico.… The third type of community land grants … encompasses grants extended by Spain to the indigenous pueblo cultures in New Mexico to protect communal lands that had existed for centuries before the Spanish settlers arrived. For the most part, the pueblo settlements these colonists encountered in the sixteenth century were permanent, communally owned villages, where inhabitants engaged in agricultural pursuits. Spain declared itself guardian of these communities, respected their rights to land adjacent to the pueblos, and protected pueblo lands from encroachment by Spanish colonists. Spain made grants to these communities in recognition of their communal ownership of village lands. M
exico continued to recognize pueblo ownership of land and considered pueblo residents to be Mexican citizens. After the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the Congress required the Surveyor General to investigate and report on pueblo claims. The Congress subsequently confirmed Spanish grants to 22 pueblos on the recommendation of the Surveyor General.… Source: U.S. Government Accounting Office, http://www.gao.gov/guadalupe/commland.htm.

92. Excerpts from Herbert O. Brayer, William Blackmore: The Spanish Mexican Land Grants of New Mexico and Colorado, 1863–1878 New Mexico was the most heavily populated Mexican province at the time of the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848). Because so many people were dispossessed there as a result of land grabs, the Land Question—or the question of from whom the land was stolen—continues to be important to this day. Under Mexican law, two types of grants existed: private grants to

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individuals and communal grants, made to villages in frontier regions. These types of communal land grants were made to frontier settlers and to the pueblos for tribal use. The Mexican signers of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848) wanted to protect property rights, but they believed the promises of U.S. negotiators that their property would be respected. Further, Article 8 of the treaty provided that ‘‘property of every kind now belonging to Mexicans not established there shall be inviolably respected.’’ However, in 1854, the office of the Surveyor General of New Mexico was set up to review titles. It was supposed to respect Spanish and Mexican laws, usages, and customs in reviewing the claims. In all, this office reviewed approximately 180 claims (not including grants to pueblo villages) and confirmed 46 of these non-pueblo grants. In 1891, the Court of Private Land Claims was established to judge land grant claims in New Mexico and the Southwest. In the next 13 years, the Court reviewed 282 claims to land grants in New Mexico and confirmed 82. The following passages are by Herbert O’Brayer, the state archivist of Colorado, in his biography of William Blackmore, an infamous British entrepreneur and spectator in Spanish and Mexican land grants in Colorado and New Mexico who represented English mining interests in New Mexico after the Civil War. Here Brayer reviews Anglo-Saxon law and attitude and their applicability to New Mexico and gives a brutal assessment.

Anglo-Saxon principles of law, taxation and land holding, as well as the newfound trade and commerce, also made definite, though for a time unnoticeable, inroads on the traditional economy of the territory. The terms of the [T]reaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo had pledged the United States to respect and protect the private property rights of the former Mexican citizens within the ceded territory. Unfortunately for the owners of New Mexico land grants, the methods devised by Congress for confirming their holdings became so involved, prolonged, and expensive, that many owners ultimately lost their lands instead of obtaining confirmation of them. The legal process established by the government was, in theory, relatively simple. A grant claimant was called upon to present his evidence of title to the newly created Surveyor General of New Mexico who examined the documents, held hearings, and, after determining the validity of the title to each grant, reported his findings to Congress with the recommendation that final confirmation be made by that body. In practice, however, the system failed to function so easily. Many of the grantees, unable to understand the English language, and naturally suspicious of the ‘‘gringo,’’ flatly refused to submit their documents to the surveyor general, believing that they were well protected by the provisions of the treaty with Mexico. To further complicate matters, a group of shrewd, and not too scrupulous Yankee lawyers, many of them ex-soldiers who had entered with the army of occupation or had settled in the territory after the Civil War, took advantage of the situation and within a few years had not only succeeded in obtaining control of many of the more important grants, but had actually obtained ownership of them. Since the native was dependent upon large tracts of land for the successful grazing of his flocks, this practice contributed largely to the breakup of the traditional economy by forcing the New Mexican to contract his operations or to seek other, less desirable lands. Impoverishment, dispossession, and the dislocation of population was the inevitable result. The method practiced by these representatives of ‘‘Yankee’’ law was to

Land

approach the native land grant residents and, after grossly exaggerating the intricacies of the confirmation process and their influence with officials both in Santa Fe and in Washington, to offer their services as attorneys for the claimants. The gullible land owners, desiring to avoid all personal contact with the new and frequently misunderstood government, readily consented. As only a few of the grantees could afford monetary remuneration, the astute lawyers generously agreed to accept payment in land. It took a good many acres at twenty-five to thirty-five cents an acre to pay the well-padded expense accounts and retainer fees charged by the counselors. Land became the usual media for payment of legal services by the natives. In one acknowledged instance, a noted Santa Fe attorney received title to more than 50,000 acres of one of the most valuable grants in the territory as payment for his efforts in defending a native charged with murder. The success of a small group of politically powerful attorneys in literally ‘‘cornering the land grant market,’’ led to much controversy. This famous clique controlled territorial politics for more than half a century, exercising undue influence over the territorial courts, and obtaining powerful support both in Congress and in the executive branch of the federal government.… Slowly, the process whereby over eighty percent of the grants were to be lost to their hispanic settlers and owners set in and destroyed the economic equilibrium of New Mexico. The changes wrought by the imposition of the Anglo-American culture were very real, but in 1870 were not readily discernible to the casual observer. The native New Mexican remained essentially a subsistence farmer, utilizing centuries’ old agricultural methods and implements.… Source: Herbert O. Brayer, William Blackmore: The Spanish Mexican Land Grants of New Mexico C 1949, pp. 16 19. and Colorado, 1863 1878. Volume 1. Denver: Bradford Robinson,


93. Petition of Antonio Mar
ıa Pico et al. to the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States, 1859 After California became part of the United States in 1848, land ownership became the major cause of hostility between the conquered and the conquerors. With the heavy immigration of Euro-Americans, the question of the validity of Mexican land titles was raised. The discovery of gold brought hoards of new settlers who contested Mexican ownership of land. California had been an isolated Spanish colony and then a Mexican province. The governors had liberally handed out land. As in other former Mexican states and territories, the U.S. government, under the pretext of validating titles, encouraged squatters to compete for land titles distributed before 1848. Mexican law provided that any Californian wanting a land grant applied to the governor. The applicant listed his or her name, age, country, vocation, and the quantity and description of the desired land. Surveying was very expensive so the applicant made a hand-drawn map, or dise~ no, laying out the boundaries of the grant. The U.S. system evolved at a different time in history and required a more involved process. The American process required that the land was surveyed and plotted on a grid system. In 1851, in order to clear up the confusion over land ownership in California, Congress established the California Land Commission, which placed the burden of proof of land ownership on the

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claimant. This was an expensive burden that included appeals of the Commission’s decisions to the federal courts. Land owners were required to hire attorneys, who often took their land as collateral. Litigation over land grants lasted years. The following is a petition by Antonio Mar
ıa Pico and other Californios to the U.S. Congress presenting their grievances.

We, the undersigned, residents of the state of California, and some of us citizens of the United States, previously citizens of the Republic of Mexico, respectfully say: That during the war between the United States and Mexico the officers of the United States, as commandants of the land and sea forces, on several occasions offered and promised in the most solemn manner to the inhabitants of California, protection and security of their persons and their property and the annexation of the said state of California to the American Union, impressing upon them the great advantages to be derived from their being citizens of the United States, as was promised them. That, in consequence of such promises and representations, very few of the inhabitants of California opposed the invasion; some of them welcomed the invaders with open arms; a great number of them acclaimed the new order with joy, giving a warm reception to their guests, for those inhabitants had maintained very feeble relations with the government of Mexico and had looked with envy upon the development, greatness, prosperity, and glory of the great northern republic, to which they were bound for reasons of commercial and personal interests, and also because its principles of freedom had won their friendliness. When peace was established between the two nations by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, they joined in the general rejoicing with their new American fellow countrymen, even though some a very few indeed decided to remain in California as Mexican citizens, in conformity with the literal interpretation of that solemn instrument; they immediately assumed the position of American citizens that was offered them, and since then have conducted themselves with zeal and faithfulness and with no less loyalty than those whose great fortune it was to be born under the flag of the North American republic believing, thus, that all their rights were insured in the treaty, which declares that their property shall be inviolably protected and insured; seeing the realization of the promises made to them by United States officials; trusting and hoping to participate in the prosperity and happiness of the great nation of which they now had come to be an integral part, and in which, if it was true that they now found the value of their possessions increased, that was also to be considered compensation for their sufferings and privations.… They heard with dismay of the appointment, by Act of Congress, of a Commission with the right to examine all titles and confirm or disapprove them, as their judgment considered equitable. Though this honorable body has doubtless had the best interests of the state at heart, still it has brought about the most disastrous effects upon those who have the honor to subscribe their names to this petition, for, even though all landholders possessing titles under the Spanish or Mexican governments were not forced by the letter of the law to present them before the Commission for confirmation, nevertheless all those titles were at once considered doubtful, their origin questionable, and, as a result, worthless for confirmation by the Commission; all landholders were thus compelled de facto to submit their titles to the Commission for confirmation, under the alternative that, if they were not submitted, the lands would be considered public property.

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The undersigned, ignorant then, of the forms and proceedings of an American court of justice, were obliged to engage the services of American lawyers to present their claims, paying them enormous fees. Not having other means with which to meet those expenses but their lands, they were compelled to give up part of their property, in many cases as much as a fourth of it, and in other cases even more. The discovery of gold attracted an immense number of immigrants to this country, and, when they perceived that the titles of the old inhabitants were considered doubtful and their validity questionable, they spread themselves over the land as though it were public property, taking possession of the improvements made by the inhabitants, many times seizing even their houses (where they had lived for many years with their families), taking and killing the cattle and destroying their crops; so that those who before had owned great numbers of cattle that could have been counted by the thousands, now found themselves without any, and the men who were the owners of many leagues of land now were deprived of the peaceful possession of even one acre. The expenses of the new state government were great, and the money to pay for these was only to be derived from the tax on property, and there was little property in this new state but the above-mentioned lands. Onerous taxes were levied by new laws, and if these were not paid, the property was put up for sale. Deprived as they were of the use of their lands, from which they had now no lucrative returns, the owners were compelled to mortgage them in order to assume the payment of taxes already due and constantly increasing. With such mortgages upon property greatly depreciated (because of its uncertain status), without crops or rents, the owners of those lands were not able to borrow money except at usurious rates of interest. The usual interest rate at that time was high, but with such securities it was exorbitant; and so they were forced either to sell or lose their lands; in fact, they were forced to borrow money even for the purchase of the bare necessities of life. Hoping that the Land Commission would take quick action in the revision of titles and thus relieve them from the state of penury in which they found themselves, they mortgaged their lands, paying compound interest at the rate of from three to ten percent a month. The long-awaited relief would not arrive; action from the Commission was greatly delayed; and, even after the Commission would pronounce judgment on the titles, it was still necessary to pass through a rigorous ordeal in the District Court; and some cases are, even now, pending before the Supreme Court of the nation. And in spite of the final confirmation, too long a delay was experienced (in many cases it is still being experienced), awaiting the surveys to be made by the United States SurveyorGeneral … Congress overlooked making the necessary appropriations to that end, and the people were then obliged to face new taxes to pay for the surveys, or else wait even longer while undergoing the continued and exhausting demands of high and usurious taxes. Many persons assumed the payment of the surveyors and this act was cause for objection from Washington, the work of those surveyors rejected, and the patents refused, for the very reason that they themselves had paid for the surveys. More than 800 petitions were presented to the Land Commission, and already 10 years of delays have elapsed and only some 50 patents have been granted. The petitioners, finding themselves unable to face such payments because of the rates of interest, taxes, and litigation expenses, as well as having to maintain their families, were compelled to sell, little by little, the greater part of their old possessions. Some, who at one time had been the richest landholders, today find

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themselves without a foot of ground, living as objects of charity and even in sight of the many leagues of land which, with many a thousand head of cattle, they once had called their own; and those of us who, by means of strict economy and immense sacrifices, have been able to preserve a small portion of our property, have heard to our great dismay that new legal projects are being planned to keep us still longer in suspense, consuming, to the last iota, the property left us by our ancestors. Moreover, we see with deep pain that efforts are being made to induce those honorable bodies to pass laws authorizing bills of review, and other illegal proceedings, with a view to prolonging still further the litigation of our claims. Source: Manuscript HM 514, Huntington Library, San Marino, California.

94. Excerpts from de Arguello v. United States, 1855 The de Arguello family appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court on the ruling of a California Court on the disposition of their land grant. As early as 1795, Jos
e de Arguello, the commandant of the Presidio of San Francisco, occupied the ranch known as ‘‘Las Pulgas.’’ Rancho de las Pulgas, at that time, encompassed an area of 35,260 acres. Upon Jos
e’s death (ca. 1820), the rancho passed to his son, Luis Arguello. Apparently the original proof of title was lost, which was common at the time. In 1820 or 1821, Gov. Pablo Vincente de Sola gave a new title to Luis. In 1830, after the death of Luis, his family remained in possession of the rancho. Over the years, challenges were made to the title of the grant, but the Arguellos prevailed. In 1855, de Arguello v. United States was one of a series of cases ignoring the Treaty of Guadalupe (1848) and the Quer
etaro Protocol (1848), which guaranteed former Mexican citizens equal protection of their property rights. Under the California Land Act of 1851, each grantee had to present his or her claim to protect her or his interests. The commissioners and the court confirmed the Arguellos’ legal title of the Las Pulgas grant, but not to the valley. The court said the Arguellos did not prove their title, although there was considerable evidence to the contrary. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the lower court and found that there was no trace of evidence of a grant from the Mexican governor. The Court held the Arguellos’ occupancy of the land was not evidence of ownership. The Court discounted oral evidence and insisted on archival proof, which, considering the circumstances and the times, was a very strict standard. The following excerpts of the case give the Court’s rationale for their decision.

The following is a U.S. Supreme Court case on a California Land Grant case: In a Mexican claim, where the archives of government show no trace or evidence of a grant from the Governor, and its existence is not proved by any one who had seen it, its existence and loss being assumed because none can be found, the grant is not proved by pasturing or cutting timber on the land, nor are such acts ground of an adverse claim. Nor does the refusal of the Governor to grant the land to another, because it belonged to or was claimed by claimant, operate to give title by estoppel. When the equity of claimant has been adjudicated and the boundary and quantity ascertained, it is conclusive. Distinction between ‘‘empresario’’ contracts for colonization, and grants to Mexican citizens. Construction of Act in relation thereto Restraint by the Mexican Act of 1724 of grants of land within the littoral leagues had no application except to colonies of foreigners; not to Mexican citizens.

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On the 26th of November 1835, the governor of California gave an order that the petitioner should have a tract of land without specifying the boundaries, which was done by an order, having the formalities of a definitive title on the 27th. This latter document must govern the case. No good title is shown which can include the valley on the west.… The appellants represent the heirs of Don Luis Arguello, who died about the year 1830. 1. They allege that Don Jose Dario Arguello, father of Don Luis, being one of the founders of the country, and in its military service as commandant of the Presideo [sic] at San Francisco, was the owner of a tract called ‘‘Las Pulgas,’’ by virtue of some title or license derived from Don Diego Borica, then governor of the province, who was in possession of it as early as 1795; that this early title has been lost, and remains only in tradition. 2. That, in 1820 or 1821, Don Pablo Vincente de Sola made a new title to Don Luis Arguello, who had succeeded his father, Don Jose, in the possession. 3. That after the death of Don Luis, in 1830, his family remained in possession; that in August, [**479] 1835, one Alvisu petitioned the governor for a grant of the ‘‘Canada de Raymundo,’’ and, it being found that the heirs of Arguello claimed that valley to be within the bounds of their rancho Pulgas, notice was ordered to be given to the widow and heirs, of Alvisu’s petition. That they appeared by their attorney, Estrada, before the governor, and protested against the grant to Alvisu; and that the governor on inquiry, acknowledged the justice of the claim of the Arguello, and refused to grant the valley to Alvisu. 4. That in October 1835, Estrada, the executor of Luis Arguello, and acting as agent for the family, made application to the governor, setting forth their long possession and praying a corresponding title to be issued in their names; and that the governor, after examining into the justice of their claim, issued a decree of concession dated 26th of November 1835, which was approved by the territorial assembly on the 10th of December following. This last-mentioned decree or grant thus approved is the only documentary evidence of title exhibited by the claimants. If it includes within its boundaries the ‘‘Canada de Raymundo,’’ as part of ‘‘Las Pulgas,’’ it will follow that the claimants have shown a complete title thereto; and our inquiry would end here. Therefore, though last in order in the claimants’ deraignment of their title, we shall consider it first. On the 27th of October, 1835, Don Jose Estrada, executor of Don Luis Arguello, presented his petition on behalf of the widow and heirs, to Don Jose Castro, the governor, praying for a grant of the ‘‘rancho of Las Pulgas,’’ and describing its boundaries as ‘‘from the Creek of San Matteo to the Creek of San Francisquito, and from the Estheros, (the estuary or bay) to the Sierra, or mountains.’’ The petition alleged also that the Arguellos had ‘‘been in possession of the same since 1800, as is publicly and notoriously known, but the papers of possession had been mislaid.’’ The alcalde made a report, accompanied by the testimony of three witnesses, who proved an occupancy of the rancho of Las Pulgas by the Arguellos for many years as a cattle range. One describes it as extending from east to west (evidently a mistake for north to south) four leagues, and from the estuary to the hills (lomas) situate[d] at the west of Monte Redondo and Canada ‘‘Raymundo.’’ This would include the valley now claimed … order, dated 26th November 1835:

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Voices of the U.S. Latino Experience Monterey, November 26, 1835. In view of the petition with which this expedient begins, and the information of three competent witnesses, and in conformity with the laws and regulations of the subject, the minor orphans of the deceased citizen, Don Louis Arguello, at the petition of Jose Estrada, citizen, are declared the owners in property of the tract known under the name of ‘‘Las Pulgas’’; reserving the approval of the M.E. territorial deputation, to which this expedient shall be sent, the corresponding patent to be signed, and recorded in the corresponding book, delivering it to the interested parties for its suitable uses. Senor Don Jose Castro, senior member (vocal) of the M.E. territorial deputation, and political chief, ad interim, of Upper California, thus ordered, decreed, and signed; to which I certify.

[The U.S. Supreme Court] The document of the 26th has none of the characteristics of a definitive grant. It shows only that the governor assents that the petitioner shall have a grant of a tract of land called ‘‘Las Pulgas.’’ It describes no boundary, and ascertains no quantity. It contemplates a ‘‘corresponding patent,’’ and does not purport itself to be such document. On the contrary, the document of the 27th that has all the formalities of a definitive title, and purports on its face to be made for that purpose. It gives the boundaries of the tract known as ‘‘Las Pulgas,’’ namely: ‘‘On the south the creek San Francisquito, on the north the San Matteo, on the east the estuary, on the west the Canada de Raymundo, four leagues in length and one in breadth.’’ [The court is attempting to limit the Arguello grant of ‘‘Las Pulgas’’ they are claiming more.] The Mexican authorities have themselves given a construction to this grant in 1840, when they granted the Canada de Raymundo to Coppinger, calling for ‘‘Las Pulgas’’ as its eastern boundary. Moreover, jurisdical possession was given to the Arguellos, establishing the western boundary of the Las Pulgas, one league west of the estuary or bay of San Francisco. The commissioners and the court below having confirmed the claim of the appellants to the extent of this legal title, the question on their appeal is, whether they have shown any title to the valley of Raymundo, or for any land west of the boundary adjudged to Las Pulgas by the Mexican authorities, so many years ago. In support of their claim the appellants rely upon a supposed grant from Governor Borrica to Don Jose Arguello, at an early day, and a regrant or new title to Don Luis Arguello in 1820 or 1821, by De Sola. Much parol testimony, and some historical documents, have been introduced on this subject. The value and effect of this evidence has been very fully discussed by the commissioners and the court below. We fully concur in their conclusions on this subject, but do not think it necessary to indicate our opinion by a special and particular examination of it. It will be sufficient to state the results at which we arrived after a careful consideration. 1. There is no sufficient evidence to satisfy our minds that any grant was ever made by Governor Borrica, or by De Sola. The archives of government show no trace of evidence of such a grant from either of them. They have not proved the existence of it by the testimony of any one who had seen it; they assume the existence and loss of the documents, from the fact that none can now be found. Without stopping to inquire, whether, by the Spanish law, a subject could claim against the king by prescription, we will assume, for the purposes of this case, that as a presumption of fact, the court would be justified in presuming a grant on proof of fifty years’ continuous, notorious, adverse possession of a tract of land having certain admitted and well-defined boundaries; and inquire whether we have such evidence as regards this

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valley of Raymundo, and the eight additional leagues of land now claimed to belong to the ranches of Las Pulgas. Don Jose Arguello was, for many years, commandant of the Presidio of San Francisco; after his death he was succeeded in the command by his son Don Luis. As early as 1797, the king’s horses were pastured and herded on this rancho. As early as 1804, soldiers, under the command of Don Jose, resided in huts on the land included in the grant made to appellants in 1835, and had charge of cattle said to belong to the commandant Don Jose. The sheep of the neighboring mission of Santa Clara were sometimes pastured on it. The king’s cattle, as well as those of the commandant, were pastured on it as late as 1821. After the death of Don Jose, his son and successor in office, Don Luis, continued the occupation of it, by his herds and herdsmen. The cattle on this rancho, at some seasons, wandered over the valley of Raymundo, and to the foot of the western sierra. Don Luis also cut timber at one time on the hills west of said valley. About 1821, Gov. Sola had the king’s cattle removed, and permitted Don Luis to remain in possession of the rancho, which he continued to claim as his own up to the time of his death; though he took no steps towards obtaining a definitive title. As to the extent of his claim; his eastern, northern, and southern boundaries by the creek and the estuary were well known and ascertained. The western, though said to be the hills, or mountains, and, in one sense, a fixed boundary, was very uncertain. It might be at one league from the bay to the first range of woody hills, or four leagues to the highest summit of the main ridge of the sierra. Not one of the witnesses who attempt to establish this title by tradition can state what number of square leagues it contained. The fact that the governor, in 1835, refused to grant this valley to Alvisu, because it belonged or was claimed by the heirs of Arguello, cannot operate to give a title to them by way of estoppel. 2. We come now to the consideration of the appeal entered on behalf of the United States. The authenticity of the patent or concession to the claimants for Las Pulgas, in 1835, is not disputed; but it is contended that it is void, ‘‘because, under the regulations of 1824, lands lying within the literal leagues could not be granted by territorial governors, but only by the supreme government.’’ On the contrary, it is contended by the counsel for the claimants, ‘‘that this clause in the colonization laws is not intended as a general prohibition of grants of land within those boundaries, but refers only to foreign colonization; and is applicable to States only, and not to the Territories of the republic.’’ It is evident from an inspection of this act of 1824, and consequent regulations of 1828, that they contemplate two distinct species of grants. 1. Grants to impresarios, or contractors, sometimes called pobladores, who engaged to introduce a body of foreign settlers. 2. The distribution of lands to Mexican citizens, ‘‘families or single persons.’’ On the whole, we are of [the] opinion that the judgment of the district court is correct, and it is adjudged that the said claim of the petitioners is valid as to that portion of the land described in the petition, which is bounded as follows, to wit: On the south by the Arroygo, or creek of San Francisquito, on the north by the creek San Matteo, on the east by the Esteras, or waters of the bay of San Francisco, and on the west by the eastern borders of the valley known as the ‘‘Canada de Raymundo,’’ said land being of the extent of four leagues in length and one in breadth, be the same more or less, and it is therefore hereby decreed that the said land be, and the same is hereby confirmed to them; and it is further adjudged and decreed

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that the said petitioners have and hold the same under this confirmation in the following shares or proportions, to wit: Maria de la Solidad Ortega Arguello, one equal undivided half thereof; Jose Ramon Arguello, one equal undivided fourth part thereof; Luis Antonio Arguello, one equal undivided tenth part thereof; and S. M. Mezes three equal undivided twentieth parts of said premises.… Source: Maria de la Solidad de Arguello et al., Claimants and Appellants, v. the United States. The United States, Appellants, v. Maria de la Solidad de Arguello et al. Supreme Court of the United States *59 U.S. 539;* 15 L. Ed. 478; 1855 U.S. LEXIS 730; 18 HOW 539 May 12, 1856, Decided; December 1855 Term.

95. Excerpts from W. W. Robinson, The Story of Mission Lands, Ranchos, Squatters, Mining Claims, Railroad Grants, Land Scrip, Homesteads, 1948 William Wilcox Robinson (1891–1972) was a prolific writer of pamphlets, articles, and books on the history of Southern California. In The Story of Mission Lands, Ranchos, Squatters, Mining Claims, Railroad Grants, Land Scrip, Homesteads, Robinson described California’s early Spanish land laws and institutions, then selected San Pascual (Pasadena) as their archetype, and narrated California’s land history. He wrote about changes in land institutions and laws that followed the Mexican-American War, profiling San Francisco and Los Angeles. The following passage describes the phenomenon of squatterism in California.

Every American is a squatter at heart or so it seems if we think of the tide of adventurous men that began moving west at the close of the Revolutionary War, men impatient of governmental authority and as contemptuous of the rights of Indians as of wild animals, men who believed land should be free as air. This tide finally reached the westernmost boundary of California. Squatterism is as old as our country. George Washington, in 1784, was making entries in his diary about his experiences with squatters on lands he owned west of the Alleghenies. The squatter movement that began in the eastern states continued steadily west and farther west, greatly influencing the land policies of the government. It found its climax, but hardly its conclusion, when gold-hungry pioneers looked enviously and graspingly on the vast ranchos held by Californians under Mexican laws. Squatterism in California has never entirely died out, although shotguns gave way to lawyers. In recent years, with California rancho titles all settled, we still find mild flare-ups of the squatter spirit, for the desire to settle upon the good lands held by another person dies hard. Who does not want to get something for nothing! Even before California became a part of the Union September 9, 1850 the wagons of the immigrants were moving in and coming to a stop on the good valley lands of the rancheros. Squatters began early to organize into armed bands to get what they wanted. Some were interested in ranches. Some began staking out, or helping themselves to, lots on the outskirts of growing towns like San Francisco and Sacramento. Many years were to elapse before a land commission, authorized under Act of Congress in 1851, and the courts to which its decisions could be appealed, could pass upon all of the 800 and more private land claims in California. Meanwhile,

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adventurous American immigrants, who believed as in the popular song that ‘‘Uncle Sam is rich enough to give us all a farm,’’ found on their arrival that all the best land in California, or at least the most usable, was included in enormous grants made by the Mexican regime. To many of these ‘‘North American adventurers,’’ as native Californians liked to refer to them, the great landowners were merely monopolists who, like the Indians, were obstructing the path or progress of civilization. After all, California had been captured, as well as bought, from Mexico. No doubt some of these newcomers brought with them the honest notion that this territory obtained from Mexico was inevitably public land and that they, therefore, had the right to preempt and settle upon lands in California as freely as they had been doing upon any part of the public domain in other states. When they found the best areas under Mexican titles or held by speculators who had bought them up, clashes were inevitable. Hardly any part of California was free from violence. The story of squatterism in California is just one chapter in the story of mob law in America.… In May 1853, Jack Powers, who was a squatter on land of Nicholas Den near Santa Barbara, barricaded himself with fifteen of his friends behind logs and wagons and defied the sheriff’s attempt to oust him. They were armed with revolvers, rifles, and shotguns and were supplied with liquor and food. In the battle that developed there were killed and wounded on both sides. Trespassers and squatters roamed and mined at will along the creek beds of John Charles Fremont’s ore-rich Mariposas grant, and when the final survey showed valuable mines included within the rancho’s boundaries, Fremont’s settlement became an armed camp. Miners attempted to seize the mines they had worked. Bloodshed and riots followed. Source: W. W. Robinson, The Story of Mission Lands, Ranchos, Squatters, Mining Claims, Railroad C 1979, Grants, Land Scrip, Homesteads. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press,
pp. 111 113, 126.

96. Excerpts from Gonzales v. Ross, 1887 The history of Texas land grants after 1848 is even more tortuous than that of Californian and New Mexican territory (which, up to the mid-1860s, included Arizona). Portions of Texas had been part of Coahuila, Tamaulipas and Chihuahua, Mexico—which had made land grants to encourage settlements through the colonization law of 1825. Between 1821–1836, Mexico made various grants to Mexican ranchers and Euro-American colonists in Texas. In 1836, the so-called Republic of Texas claimed disputed land that belonged to Tamaulipas that continued to issue land titles in the Trans-Nueces region until 1848. Texas had officially recognized the land grants made under Spanish and Mexican rule as valid. In 1850, the Texas legislature established a board of commissioners to manage the land grant question and issue a report. Later, the legislature passed a law that gave jurisdiction to district courts for confirming Spanish and Mexican titles. Gonzales v. Ross was brought by the heirs of Juan Gonzales. They sued the International and Great Northern Railroad Company and their tenant for trespass and for the recovery of eleven leagues of land situated in Kinney County, Texas, adjoining the Rio Grande. A jury was waived by the court, which found for the defendants. The court said that the

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plaintiffs failed to prove their title. Significantly, the court had overruled and dismissed testimony offered by the plaintiffs as evidence that their ancestor, Juan Gonzales, owned the land. The U.S. Supreme Court, in a rare instance, overruled the lower court and said that it should have accepted the testimonies of proof of title by Gonzales.

The Congress of Coahuila and Texas on the 28th April 1832, passed a law respecting the grant of public lands. One Gonzales applied for a grant under this law, and, on the 16th October 1832, the governor made the grant of the land in dispute under which the plaintiffs claim in the customary form for such grants. A commissioner was appointed to give possessory title to the tract, and on the 18th April 1834, he delivered to the grantee at Dolores formal possession of the tract, and executed and delivered a formal ‘‘testimonio’’ thereof. On the 26th March 1834, the Congress of Coahuila and Texas at Monclova repealed the act of April 28, 1832. The laws of the Mexican states did not then take effect in any part of the country until promulgated there. There was no evidence of the promulgation of the repealing act at Dolores, but there was presumptive evidence tending to show that on the 3d May 1834, it had not been promulgated there. Held: that under all the circumstances, and in view of the distances of Dolores from Monclova, the presumption was that the repealing act had not been promulgated when the commissioner extended the title to Gonzales. The act of the Congress of Coahuila and Texas of March 26, 1834, creating a new system of disposing of the public lands, did not abrogate the grants and sales which had been made under the act of April 28 1832, nor abolish the office and function of commissioners necessary for extending such grants. From the notorious public history of the colony of Beales and Grant, and from other notorious facts which are stated in the opinion of the court, it is Held, that the governor in the gran[t] to Gonzales, which is the subject matter of this suit, intended to designate and did designate the commissioner of the neighboring enterprise as the officer to locate the grant and deliver possession to the grantee, and that his official acts therein, having been accepted and acquiesced in by the government, must be considered as valid, even if done by him only as commissioner de facto. The public officer who extended the lands in dispute must be presumed to have extended them in the proper department, and this presumptive conclusion of law is made certain in fact by examining the laws referred to in the opinion of the court. In 1834, the state of Coahuila and the department of Monclova extended eastwardly at least as far as the river Nueces. As all favorable presumptions will be made against the forfeiture of a grant, and as it will be presumed, unless the contrary be shown, that a public officer acted in accordance with law and his instructions, and as the government acquiesced in the commissioner’s acts in extending the grant in dispute and no attempt had been made to revoke them or to assert a forfeiture; Held, that he had authority to extend the title, and his acts must be considered valid. The testimonio in this case sufficiently connects itself with the original grant and subsequent steps taken under it: it is not necessary that it should be attached to it by a physical connection. The grant in this case gave power and authority to the commissioner to extend it, and no further order was necessary.

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The extension of the title of the grantee by the commissioner in a Mexican grant completed the title, without patent or other act of the government, and notwithstanding the imposition of conditions subsequent; and the non-performance of such conditions subsequent constituted no objection to the admission of plaintiff’s evidence to show such extension. If a forfeiture of a Mexican land grant from non-payment or condition subsequent can be availed of by a private person at all, it can only be after he has shown some right to the land in himself by virtue of a subsequent purchase or grant from the sovereignty of the soil. Prior to the adoption of the constitution of 1876 the laws of Texas did not require that a title under a Mexican grant should be registered in the county or deposited among the archives of the land office, in order to give it vitality; and it was only void as against third persons acquiring title from the sovereignty of the soil, not having notice of it. Defences [sic] against Spanish and Mexican titles in Texas under Art. XIII of the constitution of Texas of 1876 constitute no objection to the admission of evidence in support of such titles. Quoere, as to the effect of the provisions in that article prohibiting the future registration of titles, or the depositing of them in the land office.… OPINION: … MR. JUSTICE BRADLEY delivered the opinion of the court. This is an action of trespass to try title, brought by the heirs of Juan Gonzales against The International and Great Northern Railroad Company and their tenant in possession (Ross), to recover eleven leagues of land situate[d] in Kinney County, Texas, adjoining the Rio Grande. The defendants pleaded not guilty, and title from the sovereignty of the soil. At the trial a jury was waived, and the court … rendered judgment for the defendants. The judgment is based upon the failure of the plaintiffs to make out their title; and their failure to make title arose from the court’s overruling and rejecting the testimony offered by the plaintiffs as evidence of the extension of title to their ancestor, Juan Gonzales. The court found and decided that the plaintiff had shown an application for, and concession of, eleven leagues of land in the name of Juan Gonzales, in the state of Coahuila and Texas, and gave the purport of the documents showing the same, being an exemplification of the original in the archives of the government of Coahuila, at Saltillo. These documents were in Spanish, accompanied by a verified translation. They were exemplified under date of August 20, 1874, and had been duly recorded in the clerk’s office in the records of Kinney County on the 8th of February, 1878, as appeared by the clerk’s certificate thereon. The application of Gonzales, as translated, was as follows, to wit: ‘‘To his Excellency: The citizen Juan Gonzales, before your Excellency, with greatest respect, states: ‘‘That in accordance with the provisions of the law of colonization of the state your Excellency will please grant me the sale of eleven sitios of land of those vacant lands of the department of Monclova and places by me designated, promising to introduce in them the number of stock required by the same law and paying the value, delivering at once the fourth part of the same and binding myself to fulfil [sic] all requirements of the same law. Praying your Excellency will grant this petition as requested, will receive grace and justice. ‘‘JUAN GONZALES.’’

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The grant, bearing date, Leona Vicario, October 16, 1832, was attached to the application, and was in the name of the Governor in the usual form, and, as translated, was as follows: ‘‘In accordance to Article 13 of the new law of colonization enacted by the honorable Congress of the state, April 28, 1832, I grant the sale to petitioner of the eleven sitios of land prayed for at the place designated by him, provided that they shall be all in one tract and not under any title belonging to any corporation or person whatsoever. ‘‘The commissioner for the division of lands in the enterprise to which corresponds the one which petitioner solicits, and in his default, or in case there is none, or not being engaged in any other enterprise, the alcalde 1st, or the only one acting of the respective municipality or the nearest one, complying with [the] order given in the matter, will place him in possession of the said sitios, and will extend the corresponding title to the same, first classifying the quality of said lands, so as to be able to state the amount to be paid the state, which payment must first be paid by the interested party in the manner and terms specified in the last part of said Article 13, making the payment at once as provided by this article, in the treasury of the state, receipt of which he will present to the secretary, so that the secretary, upon sight of it, will proceed to give [the] interested party [a] copy of his petition, with which he will go to the commissioner and have its requirements complied with. ‘‘ECA Y MUSQUIZ. (One rubric.) ‘‘SANTIAGO DEL VALLE, Secretary. (One rubric.)’’ The court next found as follows: ‘‘Second. That Fortunato Soto was duly appointed by the proper authority of the state of Coahuila and Texas, as commissioner to extend titles in the colony contracted for by Juan Carlos Beales and Diego Grant. That his commission of authority was dated March 13th, 1834, and was signed by Francisco Vidann y Vallastenor, the then governor of the state of Coahuila and Texas and by J. Mijuel [sic] Falcon, the then secretary of [the] state of Coahuila and Texas. ‘‘Third. The plaintiffs are the legal heirs of Juan Gonzales, the beneficiary and grantee of the concession referred to in decision number one, above set forth. ‘‘Fourth. That defendants are in possession of the land described in plaintiff’s petition. ‘‘Fifth. That the boundaries of the colony contracted for by Juan Carlos Beales and Diego Grant are shown by the following … contract of colonization entered into with the citizen Diego Grant and Don Juan Carlos Beales as empresarios to introduce 800 families in the vacant lands of the state.’’ The contract referred to, between the government of Coahuila and Texas and Juan Carlos Beales and Diego Grant, is then set out in full, the application bearing [the] date October 5, 1832, and the concession October 9, 1832. It included, first, a grant for the whole territory lying between the Rio Grande and Nueces Rivers, and bounded south by the state of Tamaulipas, and north by the 29th parallel of latitude; secondly, a grant of a tract formerly granted to Woodbury and Vehlein, and subject to their right to colonize 200 families, embracing a territory over 200 miles in length, bounded north by the 32d parallel of latitude, south by the old road leading from Rio Grande to Bexar, west by the 100th degree of west longitude, and east by other grants in the interior of Texas. The first tract adjoins the southwest corner of

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the second; and Kinney County, in which the lands in question are situated, lies in the angle between the two tracts, but outside of both. The 9th Article of the concession to Beales and Grant has the following provision: ‘‘This colony shall be regulated and their lands divided by a commissioner of the government, who in proper time will be appointed, and will discharge his duties in accordance with the laws and instructions that for said officials have been approved by the honorable Congress.’’ The bill of exceptions then exhibits two maps given in evidence by the plaintiffs, certified by the Secretary of State of the United States, one being a copy taken from Disturnell’s map of the united Mexican states, published in 1847, and deposited with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, 1848; the other showing the boundary line between the United States and Mexico, as laid down in Melish’s map, published in 1818, and agreed to in the treaty of January 12, 1828. These maps show that the province of Texas did not then embrace any territory west of the river Nueces. In view of this evidence and the findings of the court thereon, the plaintiffs then offered in evidence a paper purporting to be a testimonio, with formal and sufficient proof of its execution, by which testimonio it appeared that in April, 1834, the possessory title of the land in controversy was extended to Juan Gonzales, the ancestor of the plaintiffs, by Fortunato Soto, commissioner for the state in the colony of Rio Grande. This paper was in the Spanish language, and together with the authentications and translation thereof, had been recorded in the clerk’s office of Kinney County on the 21st of June 1878, as appears by the clerk’s certificate thereon. The following is a copy of the said document as translated, to wit: ‘‘In the village of Dolores, state of Coahuila, Texas, on the 18th day of the month of April, 1834, I, the citizen Fortuato Soto, as commissioner for the supr. government of the state in the colony of the Rio Grande, and in compliance with the contract celebrated (entered into) between said government and the citizen Juan Gonzales, and in accordance with the requirements and stipulations which the law provides in this matter, I extend the present title, in the name of the government and in accordance with the provision in its superior decree of the 16th of October 1832, contained in the aforesaid contract, to the citizen Juan Carlo Bealers, as attorney of the said citizen Juan Gonzales, which power of attorney he presented, of the eleven sitios of land to which said contract has reference, which said lands in their actual state I have classed as pasture lands, and which said boundaries are: Commencing from the place where the boundary line of the property of Dona Dolores Soto do Beales forms an angle between south and west, a line will be drawn to the south, prolonging in the same direction, which will there terminate the said section at a distance of thirteen thousand seven hundred and fifty varas; from whence another line will be drawn in a right angle, which, crossing the arroyo (creek) of Piedra Pinta, will have the length of twenty thousand varas; and from this point another line will be drawn towards the north parallel with the first, and of the same length, and ends with another line to the east that, crossing the same arroyo (creek), will extend up to the place of beginning; so that in all form and right he, the said citizen Juan Gonzales, may at all times prove his rights to the said eleven sitios of land, I went with his attorney, citizen Juan Carlos Beales, which, after being surveyed by the surveyor, C. Guillo Egerton, I put him in possession, and taking him by the right hand, and in the name of the supreme government of the state, walked him over the said eleven sitios of land and caused him to perform all the

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other ceremonies, as provided by the laws in this case of real possession, being witnesses the citizens Eduardo Little, Enrique Brown, and George Colwell, beside those of my assistance [sic], all residents of the village, who for the validity of it signed with me, and the interested party said day, month and year, pledging himself to replace the proper paper with the seal that is required, not having at present any of the seal in this village nor its surroundings. ‘‘FORTUNATO SOTO. ‘‘THOS. H. F. O’S. ADDICKS, De Assistencia. ‘‘THOMAS PLUNCKETT, De Assistencia. ‘‘JUAN CARLOS BEALES. ‘‘ENRIQUE BROWN. ‘‘EDUARDO LITTLE. ‘‘GEORGE COLWELL.’’ ‘‘I, the citizen, Fortunato Soto, commissioner for the Supreme Government of the state of Coahuila and Texas in this colony, certify that the preceding testimonio is a literal copy legally taken from its original, which is of record in the proper book of these archives, and in compliance with Article 8 of the instructions of the 25th of April 1830, I give the present to the interested party as title, which is given on common paper, not having any of the proper seal, and for the validity of the same I signed it with the assisting witnesses in said village the 18th of April 1834. ‘‘FORTUNATO SOTO. ‘‘THOS. H. F. O’S. ADDICKS, De Assistencia. ‘‘THOS. SAM. PLUNCKETT, De Assistencia.’’ To the introduction of this paper the defendants objected for the following reason: 1st. It has not been proved and recorded according to law, and its registration was not authorized by law when it pretends to have been recorded. No protocol or matrix of it has been shown ever to have been filed in the archives of the General Land Office, and no such is or ever was an archive of such office; no possession of the land claimed by any one holding under it has been shown; no payment of taxes thereon by plaintiffs, or any one for them, has been shown; no compliance with or fulfillment of the conditions of the law under which it purports to have been issued has been or attempted to be proved; and if it ever had any validity, it appears from the face thereof that it is such a claim as was never perfected, but wholly abandoned, and the land remitted to the public domain, and that it is a stale demand and void. 2d. It does not contain and is not based upon any executive grant, concession, or primitive title, nor does it contain any petition or application of the pretended grantee for a concession or for a survey of the land or the execution of final title of possession, nor any order referring it to the empresario order of survey, surveyor’s field notes, or other constituent element of an expediente of final title, nor apt words to express a grant of land from the state by way of sale as required by law at its date; but it purports to be a kind of grant unknown to and not authorized by such law, and it appears therefrom that the same issued without authority of and against law. 3d. It purports to have been issued by one unknown to the law, claiming to exercise the powers and perform the functions of an office not then existing, but the existence, powers, and jurisdiction whereof had already been repealed, styling himself commissioner of a colony not shown to have existed, and which, it is well known, never did exist; and it is claimed to be title embracing and relating to land situated

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in Kinney County, as averred in the petition, which is well known to have been embraced within the Woodbury colony district at the date it bears, for which colony the person purporting to have issued it was not, and does not by the terms of the instrument pretend to have been, a commissioner or officer. 4th. It appears there from that its matrix or protocol, if it is in fact a testimonio of such, contained no executive concession or petition for such; no petition or application for a survey of the land, nor for the execution of final title; no reference to the empresario order of survey nor surveyor’s field notes, and no one of the requisite antecedent steps, papers, documents, or acts entering into and forming the expediente of a valid final title or grant under the law in force when and where it purports to have been issued; none of which can be established by parol. 5th. It does not express any consideration paid, or to be paid, or conditions to be performed or required by law. 6th. It purports to have been executed pursuant to a contract stated to have been ratified with the executive, while the only one so to be ratified was that of an empresario. 7th. It pretends to be an absolute grant in fee, which was not authorized or contemplated by the law. 8th. If the contract it refers to was an executive concession by way of sale, this instrument shows it to have been forfeited under the law, and constituting no authority for the execution of this paper on the 18th of April 1834. 9th. It has vices before the law, and is defective in manner and form, using bad grammar, awkward construction, and a form and style diverse from the usual general practice, and contains unaccustomed clauses without any reason therefor. 10th. It is not written upon sealed or stamped paper, as required by law, nor upon paper validated by the proper officers of the municipality or any other; and its execution has not been proved, and no attempt has been made to show that the persons purporting to have signed it did so when and where it bears date or in the capacity therein stated. 11th. It was never registered, as required by law, under the former government of Coahuila and Texas, nor under the republic or state of Texas; it was never presented nor any payment on it made to the collector of the former government, nor to any officer of the republic or state of Texas; it was never presented to either of the commissions established by law to investigate titles to land in the section of the state where the demanded premises are situate, nor was it ever brought forward or set up as a claim to land till more than forty years after its date, and now only with the greatest want of verisimilitude in the matters it contains and expresses. 12th. It attempts to conceal the fact that the land, if it relates to the demanded premises, was, at its date, embraced within a colony for which the one purporting to have executed it did not by its terms pretend to be a commissioner or officer, and falsely claims to have been issued in and by the commissioner of a colony which never existed. 13th. It has no receipt for any instalment [sic] of the purchase money written out at the bottom of it, as required by law, nor has any attempt been made to prove such payment. 14th. It is incompetent and irrelevant, and shows upon its face that it is not a subject of judicial cognizance, and it does not describe or identify the demanded premises, but is void for want of certainty.

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15th. It is prohibited from being used in evidence by the thirteenth article of the constitution of Texas, and if it ever had any validity, it is stale and forfeited, and the land to which it relates was reunited to the public domain by legislative equivalent for reunion by office found. The bill of exceptions states that the court sustained the said objections, and refused to admit the said document in evidence, mainly on the ground that the same was issued without authority of law, the law and instructions under which the commissioner pretended to act having been repealed prior to the execution thereof; to which ruling rejecting said documents plaintiffs, by counsel, excepted. The court thereupon rendered judgment for the defendants. We will first consider the main reason assigned by the court below for rejecting the evidence offered, namely, that the law and instructions under which the commissioner pretended to act had been repealed prior to the execution thereof. The law under which the grant was made to Juan Gonzales, and under which the commissioner acted in extending the title, was that passed by the Congress of Coahuila and Texas, April 28, 1832. This law, it is true, was repealed and supplied by an act of the Congress passed at the city of Monclova, March 26, 1834, and the testimonio offered in evidence is dated at the village of Dolores, April 18, 1834, some three weeks afterwards. But the laws of the Mexican states did not take effect in any part of the country until they were promulgated there; and as Dolores was situated in the present county of Kinney, about 200 miles from Monclova, and probably much more than that as the roads there ran, and as the means of communication in that region at that time were difficult and dilatory, it is not probable that the act of March 26 was promulgated at Dolores prior to the 18th of April. Besides, the commissioner was a public officer, having a public duty to perform, and in the absence of evidence to the contrary, the presumption would be that he acted in accordance with the law as known at the time. This presumption is strengthened by the language of another act passed in the same session of the Congress, on the 3d day of May 1834, which declared that certain favorable terms as to the price of lands, proffered by a law of 1830, should ‘‘be understood only in respect to the price of lands acquired until (hasta) the publication of the decree of 26th of March of this year,’’ implying, it would seem, that the law of the 26th of March had not yet been published. Looking at the matter in every point of view, we think the presumption is, that this act, which was the repealing act referred to, had not been promulgated at Dolores, or in that vicinity, when the commissioner extended the title of possession to Gonzales.… although the act of 26th March 1834, created a new system of disposing of the public lands, and repealed the act of 1832, it did not abrogate the grants and sales which had been made under it; nor did it abolish the office and functions of commissioner, necessary for extending such grants.… On the whole we think it clear that Fortunato Soto had authority to extend the title in question, or, at least, that his official acts were acquiesced in by the government, and are to be considered as valid. We are, therefore, of opinion that the court below should have admitted the testimonio in evidence, unless it was incompetent by reason of some matter or thing occurring after its execution and delivery to Gonzales. Analyzing the various and somewhat confused and multifarious objections of the defendants, we find three such matters assigned as grounds for rejecting the evidence: First, the non-fulfilment of the conditions of the grant; secondly, that no protocol, or matrix of the concession or testimonio, was amongst the archives of the

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land office, nor on record in the proper county in proper time; thirdly, that, not being amongst the archives, and not being recorded in proper time, and never being followed by actual possession, the testimonio was an absolute nullity by force of the XIIIth Article of the Constitution of 1876. These matters may constitute very good and substantial grounds of defence, and we are not disposed to intimate anything to the contrary in this opinion. But we think they can only be effectual by way of defence.… As to the matter of registration, the laws of Texas prior to the adoption of the constitution of 1876, so far as we can discover, did not require that a title should be registered in the county, or deposited amongst the archives of the land office, in order to give it validity. It was only void as against third persons acquiring title from the sovereignty of the soil, not having notice of it. In this respect the laws of Texas were not dissimilar to those of most of the states of the Union. Indeed, the original titles could not be deposited in the land office when, as was often the case, they belonged to the archives of the foreign government at Saltillo, or other place where they were originally deposited. Copies of them, amounting to second originals, or testimonies of the final title, might be so deposited, or might be registered in the proper county; but even that was not necessary to their validity, although it might be necessary to protect the owners against titles subsequently acquired without notice of their existence. It is manifest, however, that titles thus subsequently acquired, if relied on by a defendant, must be proved as matter of defence, and cannot be urged against the competency of the plaintiff’s evidence of his title.… The judgment of the Circuit Court is reversed, and the case is remanded, with directions to award a new trial. Source: Gonzales v. Ross. Supreme Court of the United States. 120 U.S. 605; 7 S. Ct. 705; 30 L. Ed. 801; 1887 U.S. LEXIS 2007. Submitted November 2, 1886. March 14, 1887, Decided.

97. Excerpt from Las Gorras Blancas (The White Caps) Manifesto, 1890 Las Gorras Blancas (The White Caps) was a group of New Mexicans, mostly around the Las Vegas, New Mexico, area, who fought to retain community control of the common lands in the 1880s and 1890s. They conducted raids on white farmers who threatened native-owned land near Las Vegas. They cut fences and destroyed property. On August 12, 1890, Le Baron Bradford Prince, Governor of the New Mexico territory, begged officials in Washington to send federal troops to patrol the area around Las Vegas. Many of the white ranchers had built fences to separate cattle from flocks of sheep belonging to the native inhabitants. The enclosure movement accelerated after 1870 with the introduction of cheap barbed-wire fencing. The following excerpt summarizes the grievances of the native farmers.

Not wishing to be misunderstood, we hereby make this our declaration. Our purpose is to protect the rights and interests of the people in general; especially those of the helpless classes. We want the Las Vegas Grant settled to the benefit of all concerned, and this we hold is the entire community within the grant.

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We want no ‘‘land grabbers’’ or obstructionists of any sort to interfere. We will watch them. We are not down on lawyers as a class, but the usual knavery and unfair treatment of the people must be stopped. Our judiciary hereafter must understand that we will sustain it only when ‘‘Justice’’ is its watchword. The practice of ‘‘double-dealing’’ must cease. There is a wide difference between New Mexico’s ‘‘law’’ and ‘‘justice.’’ And justice is God’s law, and that we must have at all hazards. We are down on race issues, and will watch race agitators. We are all human brethren, under the same glorious flag. We favor irrigation enterprises, but will fight any scheme that tends to monopolize the supply of water courses to the detriment of residents living on lands watered by the same streams. We favor all enterprises, but object to corrupt methods to further the same. We do not care how much you get so long as you do it fairly and honestly. The People are suffering from the effects of partisan ‘‘bossism’’ and these bosses had better quietly hold their peace. The people have been persecuted and hacked about in every which way to satisfy their caprice. If they persist in their usual methods, retribution will be their reward. We are watching ‘‘political informers.’’ We have no grudge against any person in particular, but we are the enemies of bulldozers and tyrants. We must have a free ballot and a fair count, and the will of the majority shall be respected. Intimidation and the ‘‘indictment’’ plan have no further fears for us. If the old system should continue, death would be a relief to our sufferings. And for our rights our lives are the least we can pledge. If the fact that we are law-abiding citizens is questioned, come out to our homes and see the hunger and desolation we are suffering; and ‘‘this’’ is the result of the deceitful and corrupt methods of ‘‘bossism.’’ Be fair and just and we are with you, do otherwise and take the consequences. The White Caps, 1,500 Strong and Growing Daily Source: Las Vegas Daily Optic, March 12, 1890.

PART VIII Latinos South of the Border The Mexican border marks where the first world ended and the third, according to many Americans, began. In reality, Euro-American interests in the other America did not end with the acquisition of Florida and the Mexican cession as Euro-Americans sought to incorporate much of the Caribbean and secure its interests in Central America both of which were keys to the projected construction of a ‘‘U.S.’’ interocean canal. The Gem of the Antilles was Cuba whose trade was vital to U.S. commercial interests and its land was also coveted by Euro-American slave owners. This gave rise to the Cuban Question that discussed American interests within the island 90 miles off the shore of Florida. Sectional interests within the United States made its forcible acquisition much more complicated than the invasion of Mexico (1846). Nevertheless, the 1850s were a period of filibustering expeditions often financed by private Euro-American capital. Tensions were also heightened by crude U.S. diplomatic efforts to purchase Cuba. As the canal fever grew hotter, and U.S. merchant and sea power increased so did interest in the rest of the Caribbean. Puerto Rico was a thousand miles away but it was strategically located in routes to Panama. Cuba and Puerto Rico were the last two islands in Spain’s possession. And in the 1860s, independence movements emerged in these two locations. The United States before 1865 was divided over the question of the acquisition of Cuba due to the slave issue. After this it continued to deny belligerency status to rebels because of U.S. economic interests on the island, and its desire to maintain the status quo. There were those who argued that the United States did not want Cuban independence but favored the status quo until such time as Spain sold the island to it.

98. Author Unknown, Excerpts from ‘‘Cuba,’’ 1849 Once Florida became part of the United States in 1819, U.S. commercial and political interest turned their attention to Cuba that was only 90 miles off the southern tip of Florida. Cuba was the largest of the Caribbean Islands and had vast acres of land available for plantation-type crops such as sugar and tobacco. By the mid-nineteenth century, the United States had additional reason to covet Cuba and the Caribbean. Its strategic location made it vital to U.S. sea power, which needed fueling ports. These ports were essential to the defense of U.S. business interests in Central American and to the future of a canal through the isthmus. Moreover, the political competition between the North and the South over representation heated up during the 1850s. More states meant more votes in Congress and Cuba, because of its plantation-like

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economy and climate, would be in the slave column. Hence, slaveholders saw it as part of the south; U.S. merchants saw Cuba as vital to U.S. hegemony in the isthmus; and the U.S. Navy and military saw the Caribbean as militarily essential. Spain owned these lands. At first, the United States tolerated Spanish rule since it feared that Great Britain would step into the vacuum if Cuba won its independence and the British would gain a foothold in the region. The following article, published in 1849, introduces a discussion of the Cuban Question and addresses the activities of Cuban independistas in the United States. It includes a letter of a Cuban in the United States asking for U.S. aid in securing Cuban independence. The writer advocates for the Cuban independistas. During the 1850s, Cuban exiles routinely used the United States as a staging area. Euro-Americans often supported these ventures economically purchasing arms for favored rebels. According to the article, it would not take much to take over Cuba.

The island of Cuba possessed of soil of unsurpassed fertility, and the most salubrious climate … The slave population does not naturally increase, but is sustained by a constant arrival of large importations from Africa … The creole population are the occupiers of the land, and owners of the slaves producing the wealth of the island … sugar, coffee and tobacco … affairs [in Cuba] have now reached [the point] that the Cuban is taxed beyond the exactions imposed on the citizens of any other known community.… The Cubans, in their natural aspirations for liberty, have been checked by the fact, that being deprived of arms by the government, they are placed on one hand in danger of the insurrection of slaves forced upon them, and on the other at the mercy of a foreign mercenary and licentious soldiery quartered among them. Under these circumstances they perceive that their only chance of freedom is foreign aid, in some force, around which they can rally, give expression to their opinions, and assert their rights in the government. They now pay $20,000,000 per annum to their oppressors.… Accordingly an extensive organization was formed in Cuba and out of it. In New York was established an able periodical, La Verdad, to advocate the cause of Cuban freedom … Several persons accused of writing those articles [in La Verdad] were arrested in Cuba [among them Cirilo Villaverde] … a scholar, full of the generous enthusiasm and patriotism natural to a cultivated mind. [His letter follows] SAVANNAH, APRIL 19, 1849. My Dear T, At last I am resting under the wings of the American Eagle. It may be that you are already apprised of my miraculous escape from the prison of Havana, where, as a man guilty of high treason, and accused of a capital crime by the District Attorney (Fiscal). I was lately watched with the greatest diligence. First, be it known to you that the District Attorney (Fiscal) had accused M, and me of a capital crime and that the Council decreed ten years’ transportation against you, (three of the members being of opinion that you should be condemned to death), and against M and me six years’ transportation. I succeeded in escaping two days after the Council of War had met, that is to say, the 31st of March, in the night. Since then I have received no intelligence from Havana and I do not know yet whether the Captain General has approved or disapproved the sentences. However, I believe he will approve it and then the unfortunate M, who remained in chains in

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the Castle … to bear the torments of the iron hand that condemns him. Unfortunate youth! CIRILO VILLAVERDE. That our treaty obligations forbid any armed expedition to be fitted out within our borders against nations with which we are at peace, is undoubtedly the case; but the assumption that armed citizens are going to march against some particular state with which we are at peace, is a most absurd stretch of power. That American citizens have the full and undoubted right to enter into the service of any foreign nation, has frequently been asserted, and acted upon. Our gallant officers entered freely into the service of the Texans, when struggling for independence, and the Texans loaned money, bought arms, and procured aid among us, as did also Don Carlos, in London, when he attempted to seize the crown of Spain. Hundreds of similar instances present themselves, affording precedents that justify the entering into the service of the Cubans, against their ruthless oppressors. The practicability of the enterprise is unquestionable. A force of 3[000] to 4,000 Americans, landed in Cuba, in the winter months, would have to contend with perhaps 14,000 Spaniards, divided in small garrisons, throughout the island, each at the mercy of the people, if those people have a sufficient rallying point. Sixty days probably would suffice to place a provisional government at the head of affairs, declare the independence of the island, organize its revenues, and bid defiance to the utmost power of Spain. Under the influence of annexation, the property of the Cubans would immediately equalise with that of similar property in the United States, and the sugar plantations of Louisiana would find, in the hitherto untouched soil of Cuba, the means of underselling the world in sugar; while the capacity of Cuba, to purchase and consume the beef, ham, flour, and other supplies of the Western states, would develope [sic] itself in an almost limitless degree. The $20,000,000 now drawn from the island, annually, for remittances to Madrid, accumulating in the island as a capital in the employment of its free industry, would draw desirable settles from all nations to avail themselves of its limitless advantages. Source: The United States Magazine, and Democratic Review, Vol. 25, No. cxxxv, September 1849, pp. 197, 198, 200, 203, 205, http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/moa-cgi?notisid AGD 1642-0025&byte 226352056.

99. Excerpts from a Letter from U.S. Secretary of State James Buchanan to R. M. Saunders, June 17, 1848 This excerpt is part of a set of a dozen letters exchanged between Secretary of State James Buchanan and R. M. Saunders of the American legation in Madrid, Spain. In this particular letter, Buchanan calls attention to conditions in Cuba and explains how much more productive the island would be as a part of the United States. It expresses the thinking of the time that as long as the island was under Spanish rule, the United States could tolerate it but it did not want Cuba to fall into another country’s hands. The letters talk about rumors of Great Britain’s interest in Cuba and the American fear of a British presence so close to the U.S. coastline.

Mr. Buchanan to Mr. Saunders [Extract.] [No. 21.] Department of State, Washington, June 17, 1848.

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Sir: By direction of the President, I now call your attention to the present condition and future prospects of Cuba. The fate of this island must ever be deeply interesting to the people of the United States. We are content that it shall continue to be a colony of Spain. Whilst in her possession, we have nothing to apprehend. Besides, we are bound to her by the ties of ancient friendship, and we sincerely desire to render these perpetual. But we can never consent that this island shall become a colony of any other European Power. In the possession of Great Britain, or any strong naval power, it might prove ruinous both to the domestic and foreign commerce, and even endanger the Union of States. The highest and first duty of every independent nation is to provide for its own safety; and, acting upon this principle, we should be compelled to resist the acquisition of Cuba by any powerful maritime State, will all the means which Providence has placed at our command. Cuba is almost within sight of the coast of Florida, situated between that State and the peninsula of Yucatan, and possessing the deep, capacious, and impregnably fortified harbor of Havana. If this island were under the dominion of Great Britain, she could command both the inlets to the Gulf of Mexico. She would thus be enabled, in time of war, effectively to blockade the mouth of the Mississippi, and to deprive all the Western States of this Union, as well as those within the Gulf, teeming as they are with an industrious and enterprising population, of a foreign market for their immense productions. But this is not the worst: she could also destroy the commerce by sea between our ports on the Gulf and our Atlantic ports, a commerce of nearly as great a value as the whole of our foreign trade. Is there any reason to believe that Great Britain desires to acquire the island of Cuba? We know that it has been her uniform policy, throughout her past history, to seize upon every valuable commercial point throughout the world, whenever circumstances have placed this in her power. And what point so valuable as the Island of Cuba? … Were Cuba a portion of the United States, it would be difficult to estimate the amount of breadstuffs, rice, cotton, and other agricultural as well as manufacturing and mechanical productions; of lumber, of the produce of our fisheries and of other articles which would find a market if that island, in exchange for their coffee, sugar, tobacco, and other productions. Yours, very respectfully, James Buchanan Source: Important Documents. Attempted Purchase of Cuba. New York Daily Times, November 24, 1852; front page.

100. Excerpts from the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, 1850 The chief rival of the United States in the Caribbean and Central America was Great Britain. Great Britain had the mightiest navy in the world and maintained a global empire. Spain was on the decline; most of its American colonies had won their independence; its last major colonies in the New World were Cuba and Puerto Rico. The U.S. and Great Britain competed over who would build and control an Atlantic-Pacific inter-ocean canal throughout the 1850s. However, despite its bluster that the Americas were for Americans, and the waving of the Monroe Doctrine (1823), the United States could ill afford a war with Great Britain. In Central America, Great Britain claimed

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Belize, the Mosquito Coast, and the Bay Islands. The United States had treaties with Nicaragua and Honduras. In order to ease tensions, the United States and Great Britain signed the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty in 1850. The chief negotiators were U.S. Secretary of State John M. Clayton and Great Britain’s Sir Henry Lytton Bulwer. The Treaty stipulated that neither the United States nor Great Britain would ask for exclusive control of an inter-ocean canal. The treaty said that neither the United States nor Great Britain would ‘‘occupy, or fortify, or colonize, or assume or exercise any dominion over Nicaragua, Costa Rica, the Mosquito Coast, or any part of Central America.’’

ARTICLE I The governments of the United States and Great Britain hereby declare, that neither the one nor the other will ever obtain or maintain for itself any exclusive control over the said ship canal; agreeing that neither will ever erect or maintain any fortifications commanding the same or in the vicinity thereof, or occupy, or fortify, or colonize, or assume or exercise any dominion over Nicaragua, Costa Rica, the Mosquito coast, or any part of Central America; nor will either make use of any protection which either affords or may afford, or any alliance which either has or may have, to or with any State or people, for the purpose of erecting or maintaining any such fortifications, or of occupying, fortifying, or colonizing Nicaragua, Costa Rica, the Mosquito coast, or any part of Central America, or of assuming or exercising dominion over the same; nor will the United States or Great Britain take advantage of any intimacy, or use any alliance, connection, or influence that either may possess, with any State or government through whose territory the said canal may pass, for the purpose of acquiring or holding, directly or indirectly, for the citizens or subjects of the one, any rights or advantages in regard to commerce or navigation through the said canal which shall not be offered on the same terms to the citizens or subjects of the other. … ARTICLE VIII The governments of the United States and Great Britain having not only desired, in entering into this convention, to accomplish a particular object, but also to establish a general principle, they hereby agree to extend their protection, by treaty stipulations, to any other practicable communications, whether by canal or railway, across the isthmus which connects North and South America, and especially to the inter oceanic communications, should the same prove to be practicable, whether by canal or railway, which are now proposed to be established by the way of Tehuantepec or Panama. In granting, however, their joint protection to any such canals or railways as are by this article specified, it is always understood by the United States and Great Britain that the parties constructing or owning the same shall impose no other charges or conditions of traffic thereupon than the aforesaid govern[ments] shall approve of as just and equitable; and that the same canals or railways, being open to the citizens and subjects of the United States and Great Britain on equal terms, shall also be open on like terms to the citizens and subjects of every other State which is willing to grant thereto such protection as the United States and Great Britain engage to afford.

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Voices of the U.S. Latino Experience Source: Convention between the United States of America and Her Britannic Majesty; April 19, 1850. Courtesy of The Avalon Project at Yale Law School, http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/ diplomacy/britain/br1850.htm.

101. Excerpts from President Millard Fillmore’s State of the Union Address, December 2, 1851 Millard Fillmore (1800–1874), the 13th president of the United States, served from 1850 to 1853. He became president when Zachary Taylor (1784– 1850) died in office. As president, Fillmore focused on strengthening U.S. hegemony in the hemisphere and limiting the nation’s commitments elsewhere in the world. The Clayton-Bulwer Treaty of 1850 did not end the competition between United States and Great Britain over control of the Caribbean and Central America nor who would control the construction of a canal joining the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. During his tenure Fillmore acted aggressively, dispatching warships to protect U.S. merchant ships from British interference. Fillmore also supported filibustering expeditions bound for Cuba from American soil. The most notorious was that of Venezuelan Narciso L
opez (1797–1851), who was captured and executed by Spanish troops in 1851. In the following excerpt, President Fillmore describes American attitude toward Spain and Cuba and the expedition of Narciso L
opez as well as events in the Isthmus of Panama.

Fellow-Citizens of the Senate and of the House of Representatives: Since the close of the last Congress certain Cubans and other foreigners resident in the United States, who were more or less concerned in the previous invasion of Cuba, instead of being discouraged by its failure have again abused the hospitality of this country by making it the scene of the equipment of another military expedition against that possession of Her Catholic Majesty, in which they were countenanced, aided, and joined by citizens of the United States. On receiving intelligence that such designs were entertained, I lost no time in issuing such instructions to the proper officers of the United States as seemed to be called for by the occasion. By the proclamation a copy of which is herewith submitted I also warned those who might be in danger of being inveigled into this scheme of its unlawful character and of the penalties which they would incur. For some time there was reason to hope that these measures had sufficed to prevent any such attempt. This hope, however, proved to be delusive. Very early in the morning of the 3rd of August, a steamer called the Pampero departed from New Orleans for Cuba, having on board upward of 400 armed men with evident intentions to make war upon the authorities of the island. This expedition was set on foot in palpable violation of the laws of the United States. Its leader was a Spaniard, and several of the chief officers and some others engaged in it were foreigners. The persons composing it, however, were mostly citizens of the United States. Before the expedition set out, and probably before it was organized, a slight insurrectionary movement, which appears to have been soon suppressed, had taken place in the eastern quarter of Cuba. The importance of this movement was, unfortunately, so much exaggerated in the accounts of it published in this country that these adventurers seem to have been led to believe that the Creole population of

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the island not only desired to throw off the authority of the mother country, but had resolved upon that step and had begun a well-concerted enterprise for effecting it. The persons engaged in the expedition were generally young and ill informed. The steamer in which they embarked left New Orleans stealthily and without a clearance. After touching at Key West, she proceeded to the coast of Cuba, and on the night between the 11th and 12th of August, landed the persons on board at Playtas, within about 20 leagues of Havana. The main body of them proceeded to and took possession of an inland village 6 leagues distant, leaving others to follow in charge of the baggage as soon as the means of transportation could be obtained. The latter, having taken up their line of march to connect themselves with the main body, and having proceeded about 4 leagues into the country, were attacked on the morning of the 13th by a body of Spanish troops, and a bloody conflict ensued, after which they retreated to the place of disembarkation, where about 50 of them obtained boats and reembarked therein. They were, however, intercepted among the keys near the shore by a Spanish steamer cruising on the coast, captured, and carried to Havana, and after being examined before a military court were sentenced to be publicly executed, and the sentence was carried into effect on the 16th of August. On receiving information of what had occurred, Commodore Foxhall A. Parker was instructed to proceed in the steam frigate Saranac to Havana and inquire into the charges against the persons executed, the circumstances under which they were taken, and whatsoever referred to their trial and sentence. Copies of the instructions from the Department of State to him and of his letters to that Department are herewith submitted. According to the record of the examination, the prisoners all admitted the offenses charged against them, of being hostile invaders of the island. At the time of their trial and execution, the main body of the invaders was still in the field making war upon the Spanish authorities and Spanish subjects. After the lapse of some days, being overcome by the Spanish troops, they dispersed on the 24th of August. [Narciso] L
opez, their leader, was captured some days after, and executed on the 1st of September. Many of his remaining followers were killed or died of hunger and fatigue, and the rest were made prisoners. Of these, none appear to have been tried or executed. Several of them were pardoned upon application of their friends and others, and the rest, about 160 in number, were sent to Spain. Of the final disposition made of these, we have no official information. Such is the melancholy result of this illegal and ill-fated expedition. Thus, thoughtless young men have been induced by false and fraudulent representations to violate the law of their country through rash and unfounded expectations of assisting to accomplish political revolutions in other states, and have lost their lives in the undertaking. Too severe a judgment can hardly be passed by the indignant sense of the community upon those who, being better informed themselves, have yet led away the ardor of youth and an ill-directed love of political liberty. The correspondence between this Government and that of Spain relating to this transaction is herewith communicated. Although these offenders against the laws have forfeited the protection of their country, yet the Government may, so far as consistent with its obligations to other countries and its fixed purpose to maintain and enforce the laws, entertain sympathy for their unoffending families and friends, as well as a feeling of compassion for themselves. Accordingly, no proper effort has been spared and none will be spared

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to procure the release of such citizens of the United States engaged in this unlawful enterprise as are now in confinement in Spain; but it is to be hoped that such interposition with the Government of that country may not be considered as affording any ground of expectation that the Government of the United States will hereafter feel itself under any obligation of duty to intercede for the liberation or pardon of such persons as are flagrant offenders against the law of nations and the laws of the United States. These laws must be executed. If we desire to maintain our respectability among the nations of the earth, it behooves us to enforce steadily and sternly the neutrality acts passed by Congress and to follow as far as may be the violation of those acts with condign punishment. But what gives a peculiar criminality to this invasion of Cuba is that, under the lead of Spanish subjects and with the aid of citizens of the United States, it had its origin with many in motives of cupidity. Money was advanced by individuals, probably in considerable amounts, to purchase Cuban bonds, as they have been called, issued by L
opez, sold, doubtless, at a very large discount, and for the payment of which the public lands and public property of Cuba, of whatever kind, and the fiscal resources of the people and government of that island, from whatever source to be derived, were pledged, as well as the good faith of the government expected to be established. All these means of payment, it is evident, were only to be obtained by a process of bloodshed, war, and revolution. None will deny that those who set on foot military expeditions against foreign states by means like these are far more culpable than the ignorant and the necessitous whom they induce to go forth as the ostensible parties in the proceeding. These originators of the invasion of Cuba seem to have determined with coolness and system upon an undertaking which should disgrace their country, violate its laws, and put to hazard the lives of ill-informed and deluded men. You will consider whether further legislation be necessary to prevent the perpetration of such offenses in future. No individuals have a right to hazard the peace of the country or to violate its laws upon vague notions of altering or reforming governments in other states. This principle is not only reasonable in itself and in accordance with public law, but is Engrafted into the codes of other nations as well as our own. But while such are the sentiments of this Government, it may be added that every independent nation must be presumed to be able to defend its possessions against unauthorized individuals banded together to attack them. The Government of the United States at all times since its establishment has abstained and has sought to restrain the citizens of the country from entering into controversies between other powers, and to observe all the duties of neutrality. At an early period of the Government, in the Administration of Washington, several laws were passed for this purpose. The main provisions of these laws were reenacted by the act of April 1818, by which, amongst other things, it was declared that If any person shall, within the territory or jurisdiction of the United States, begin, or set on foot, or provide or prepare the means for, any military expedition or enterprise to be carried on from thence against the territory or dominions of any foreign prince or state, or of any colony, district, or people, with whom the United States are at peace, every person so offending shall be deemed guilty of a high misdemeanor, and shall be fined not exceeding $3,000 and imprisoned not more than three years.

And this law has been executed and enforced to the full extent of the power of the Government from that day to this.

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In proclaiming and adhering to the doctrine of neutrality and nonintervention, the United States have not followed the lead of other civilized nations; they have taken the lead themselves and have been followed by others. This was admitted by one of the most eminent of modern British statesmen, who said in Parliament, while a minister of the Crown, ‘‘that if he wished for a guide in a system of neutrality he should take that laid down by America in the days of Washington and the secretaryship of Jefferson’’; and we see, in fact, that the act of Congress of 1818 was followed the succeeding year by an act of the Parliament of England substantially the same in its general provisions. Up to that time there had been no similar law in England, except certain highly penal statutes passed in the reign of George II, prohibiting English subjects from enlisting in foreign service, the avowed object of which statutes was that foreign armies, raised for the purpose of restoring the House of Stuart to the throne, should not be strengthened by recruits from England herself. All must see that difficulties may arise in carrying the laws referred to into execution in a country now having 3,000 or 4,000 miles of seacoast, with an infinite number of ports and harbors and small inlets, from some of which unlawful expeditions may suddenly set forth, without the knowledge of Government, against the possessions of foreign states. ‘‘Friendly relations with all, but entangling alliances with none,’’ has long been a maxim with us. Our true mission is not to propagate our opinions or impose upon other countries our form of government by artifice or force, but to teach by example and show by our success, moderation, and justice, the blessings of self-government and the advantages of free institutions. Let every people choose for itself and make and alter its political institutions to suit its own condition and convenience. But while we avow and maintain this neutral policy ourselves, we are anxious to see the same forbearance on the part of other nations whose forms of government are different from our own. The deep interest which we feel in the spread of liberal principles and the establishment of free governments and the sympathy with which we witness every struggle against oppression forbid that we should be indifferent to a case in which the strong arm of a foreign power is invoked to stifle public sentiment and repress the spirit of freedom in any country. The Governments of Great Britain and France have issued orders to their naval commanders on the West India station to prevent, by force if necessary, the landing of adventurers from any nation on the island of Cuba with hostile intent. The copy of a memorandum of a conversation on this subject between the charge’ d’affaires of Her Britannic Majesty and the Acting Secretary of State and of a subsequent note of the former to the Department of State are herewith submitted, together with a copy of a note of the Acting Secretary of State to the minister of the French Republic and of the reply of the latter on the same subject. These papers will acquaint you with the grounds of this interposition of two leading commercial powers of Europe, and with the apprehensions, which this Government could not fail to entertain, that such interposition, if carried into effect, might lead to abuses in derogation of the maritime rights of the United States. The maritime rights of the United States are founded on a firm, secure, and well-defined basis; they stand upon the ground of national independence and public law, and will be maintained in all their full and just extent. The principle which this Government has heretofore solemnly announced, it still adheres to, and will maintain under all circumstances and at all hazards. That principle is that in every regularly documented merchant vessel the

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crew who navigate it and those on board of it will find their protection in the flag which is over them. No American ship can be allowed to be visited or searched for the purpose of ascertaining the character of individuals on board, nor can there be allowed any watch by the vessels of any foreign nation over American vessels on the coast of the United States or the seas adjacent thereto. It will be seen by the last communication from the British charge’ d’affaires to the Department of State that he is authorized to assure the Secretary of State that every care will be taken that in executing the preventive measures against the expeditions which the United States Government itself has denounced as not being entitled to the protection of any government, no interference shall take place with the lawful commerce of any nation. In addition to the correspondence on this subject herewith submitted, official information has been received at the Department of State of assurances by the French Government that in the orders given to the French naval forces they were expressly instructed, in any operations they might engage in, to respect the flag of the United States wherever it might appear, and to commit no act of hostility upon any vessel or armament under its protection. Ministers and consuls of foreign nations are the means and agents of communication between us and those nations, and it is of the utmost importance that while residing in the country they should feel a perfect security so long as they faithfully discharge their respective duties and are guilty of no violation of our laws. This is the admitted law of nations and no country has a deeper interest in maintaining it than the United States. Our commerce spreads over every sea and visits every clime, and our ministers and consuls are appointed to protect the interests of that commerce as well as to guard the peace of the country and maintain the honor of its flag. But how can they discharge these duties unless they be themselves protected? And if protected, it must be by the laws of the country in which they reside. And what is due to our own public functionaries residing in foreign nations is exactly the measure of what is due to the functionaries of other governments residing here. As in war the bearers of flags of truce are sacred, or else wars would be interminable, so in peace ambassadors, public ministers, and consuls, charged with friendly national intercourse, are objects of especial respect and protection, each according to the rights belonging to his rank and station. In view of these important principles, it is with deep mortification and regret I announce to you that during the excitement growing out of the executions at Havana, the office of Her Catholic Majesty’s consul at New Orleans was assailed by a mob, his property destroyed, the Spanish flag found in the office carried off and torn in pieces, and he himself induced to flee for his personal safety, which he supposed to be in danger. On receiving intelligence of these events I forthwith directed the attorney of the United States residing at New Orleans to inquire into the facts and the extent of the pecuniary loss sustained by the consul, with the intention of laying them before you, that you might make provision for such indemnity to him as a just regard for the honor of the nation and the respect which is due to a friendly power might, in your judgment, seem to require. The correspondence upon this subject between the Secretary of State and Her Catholic Majesty’s minister plenipotentiary is herewith transmitted. I am happy to announce that an interoceanic communication from the mouth of the St. John to the Pacific has been so far accomplished as that passengers have actually traversed it and merchandise has been transported over it, and when the canal shall have been completed according to the original plan, the means of

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communication will be further improved. It is understood that a considerable part of the railroad across the Isthmus of Panama has been completed, and that the mail and passengers will in future be conveyed thereon. Whichever of the several routes between the two oceans may ultimately prove most eligible for travelers to and from the different States on the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico and our coast on the Pacific, there is little reason to doubt that all of them will be useful to the public, and will liberally reward that individual enterprise by which alone they have been or are expected to be carried into effect. Peace has been concluded between the contending parties in the island of St. Domingo, and, it is hoped, upon a durable basis. Such is the extent of our commercial relations with that island that the United States can not fail to feel a strong interest in its tranquility. Source: PresidentialRhetoric.com, http://www.presidentialrhetoric.com/historicspeeches/fillmore/ stateoftheunion1851.html.

102. Excerpts from Martin R. Delany, ‘‘A Glance at Ourselves, Conclusion,’’ 1852 Over 10 million African slaves were imported to the Americas. In the United States, there was interest among the descendants of the original slaves to learn about their presence in the disparate parts of the Western Hemisphere. This interest was heightened by the abolitionist movement. By the 1840s, there were a number of free African Americans in the United States who were writing books and articles and speaking for their own cause of freedom. In 1852, Martin R. Delany (1812–1885) wrote The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People in the United States. Delany had been taught to read by his mother and, when his father purchased the family’s freedom in 1823, Delany went to the North. Delany wrote articles that were published in William Lloyd Garrison’s anti-slavery newspaper, the Liberator. Along with Frederick Douglass, he founded the North Star, an African American freedom newspaper. Delany was admitted to Harvard Medical School in 1850 but was dismissed because of the racist backlask from fellow students. He practiced medicine in Pittsburgh. Delaney evolved into a Black nationalist and advocated African American immigration to Africa. In his search for a Black Israel, Delany called for the immigration of African Americans to Central America and other parts of the Americas because he believed that these places would be conducive to African American settlement and he recognized the presence of large African populations already there.

We have advised an emigration to Central and South America, and even to Mexico and the West Indies to those who prefer to go to either of the last named places, all of which are free countries, Brazil being the only real slave holding State in South America, there being nominal slavery in Dutch Guiana, Peru, Buenos Ayres, Paraguay, and Uruguay, in all of which places colored people have equality in social, civil, political, and religious privileges; Brazil making it punishable with death to import slaves into the empire. Our oppressors, when urging us to go to Africa, tell us that we are better adapted to the climate than they, that the physical condition of the constitution of colored people better endures the heat of warm climates than that of the whites; this we

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are willing to admit, without argument, without adducing the physiological reason why, that colored people can and do stand warm climates better than whites; and find an answer fully to the point in the fact that they also stand modified that white people can stand; therefore, according to our oppressors’s own showing, we are a superior race, being endowed with properties fitting us for all parts of the earth, while they are only adapted to certain parts. Of course, this proves our right and duty to live wherever we may choose; while the white race may only live where they can. We are content with the fact, and have ever claimed it. Upon this rock, they and we shall ever agree. Of the West India Islands, Santa Cruz, belonging to Denmark; Porto Rico and Cuba with its little adjuncts, belonging to Spain, are the only slaveholding Islands among them, three fifths of the whole population of Cuba being colored people who cannot and will not much longer endure the burden and the yoke. They only want intelligent leaders of their own color, when they are ready at any moment to charge to the conflict to liberty or death. The remembrance of the noble mulat[t]o, Placido, the gentleman, scholar, poet, and intended Chief Engineer of the Army of Liberty and Freedom in Cuba; and the equally noble black, Charles Blair, who was to have been Commander in Chief, who were shamefully put to death in 1844, by that living monster, Capt. Gen. O’Donnell, is still fresh and indelible to the mind of every bondsman of Cuba. In our own country, the United States, there are three million five hundred thousand slaves; and we, the nominally free colored people, are six hundred thousand in number; estimating one sixth to be men, we have one hundred thousand able bodied freeman, which will make a powerful auxiliary in any country to which we may become adopted, an ally not to be despised by any power on earth. We love our country, dearly love her, but she don’t love us, she despises us and bids us begone, driving us from her embraces; but we do go, whatever love we have for her, we shall love the country none the less that receives us as her adopted children.… Doomed by the Creator, to servility and degradation; The SERVANT of the white man, And despised of every nation! Source: Martin R. Delany, The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States, and Official Report of the Niger Valley Exploring Party. Philadelphia: The Author, 1852. In Chapter XXIII. Courtesy of the West Virginia Humanities Council and the George Washington Carver Institute, http://www.libraries.wvu.edu/delany/conclude.htm.

103. Excerpts from Pierre Soul
e, ‘‘The Cuban Question:
pez Expedition,’’ January 25, 1853 Defence of the Lo U.S. senator from Louisiana, Pierre Soul
e (1801–1870), was born in Paris, France, and migrated to New Orleans, Louisiana, via Haiti. Soul
e became a lawyer and prospered in this largely French-speaking part of Louisiana. Elected to the Louisiana State Senate in 1845, he was appointed to the United States Senate in 1847, Soul
e was a rogue, charming and multi-lingual. In 1853, President Franklin Pierce offered Soul
e the mission to Spain with the hope of acquiring Cuba from Spain. News of Soul
e’s mission leaked out and when he arrived in Spain he was told he was a persona non grata. This is a passage from a speech by Soul
e in the U.S. Senate where he speaks against a resolution by Sen. Lewis Cass (1782–1866) of Michigan to respect Spain’s sovereignty over Cuba. Relations between the United States and Spain had

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pez worsened since Spain’s execution of the Venezuelan filibuster Narciso Lo and many of his soldiers—some of whom were Americans. The Senate split along sectional grounds. The following documents includes Cass’s resolution and Soul
e’s vigorous arguments against it. He takes this occasion to defend the L
opez expedition and U.S. pretensions to Cuba.

Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the United States do hereby declare that ‘‘the American Continents, by the free and independent position which they have assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European power;’’ and while ‘‘existing rights should be respected,’’ and will be by the United States, they owe it to their own ‘‘safety and interests’’ to announce, as they now do, ‘‘that no future European colony or dominion shall, with their consent, be planted or established on any part of the North American continent;’’ and should the attempt be made, they thus deliberately declare that it will be viewed as an act originating in motives regardless of their ‘‘interests and their safety,’’ and which will leave them free to adopt such measures as an independent nation may justly adopt in defense of its rights and its honor. And be it further resolved, That while the United States disclaim any designs upon the Island of Cuba inconsistent with the laws of nations and with their duties to Spain, they consider it due to the vast importance of the subject to make known, in this solemn manner, that they should view all efforts on the part of any other power to procure possession, whether peaceably or forcibly, of that island, which, as a naval or military position, might under circumstances easy to be foreseen, become dangerous to their southern coast, to the Gulf of Mexico, and to the mouth of the Mississippi, as unfriendly acts directed against them, to be resisted by all the means in their power. Mr. Soule: The sole object I had in view, Mr. President, when, on a former occasion I moved the postponement of this question or debate, was to protect myself against the danger of a too hasty expression of sentiment with reference to so great and momentous a subject, as that in the discussion of which we are now engaged. I felt much unwillingness to give my judgment crudely upon any scheme of speculative or abstract policy, concerning matters which in the significant language of my honorable friend from Michigan, (Mr. Lewis Cass,) were so liable to present themselves from hour to hour for practical consideration. [The] occasion was taken to censure the President for … disclosing all the Cuban correspondence. Why so? Was it because by so doing, he disclosed the fact that we were willing to purchase that island, and then in the same breath we state to the world, that we ourselves are ready now and ever to purchase it, if it should ever be for sale? Was it because it disclosed the price which one of our Presidents was willing to give for it? Yet honorable Senators stated from their seats here, that they are now ready to purchase it at any price. I cannot see why we should pass censure upon the President, for doing the very thing that we are doing in our places in this Hall. But while we censured him for matters which in themselves do not perhaps strictly justify the censure, I had wished that some voice here might have been heard denouncing the fact of placing before the public eye a correspondence which the present administration must have found in a private place under seal, and considered by those who preceded them as a secret of State. But while we thus unsparingly

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denounce him for having abused the discretion left to him in the choice of the papers which he was to send to the other House, we praise him for the course which he pursued with reference to our late difficulties with the Cuban authorities. I cannot give my assent to the course which the present Administration pursued towards Spain in whatever difficulties have arisen between that Power and our own citizens. And God knows I am unwilling to do any wrong to Spain, as I shall presently show. But I cannot yield my commendation to this Administration for the course which they have thought proper to pursue. Now, in the first occurrences which took place upon the occasion of the unfortunate expedition of [Narciso] Lopez, what do we find! We find that though our own citizens had been left without protection, had been awarded none of those securities which under the treaty, they were entitled to claim at the hands of the Spanish authorities, when Com. Parker approaches the Captain General and asks for information as to the motives which could have impelled him to follow such a course, his answer was ‘‘Your own President has denounced these men as pirates, and as pirates I have treated them.’’ And when our Consul, Mr. Owen, approaches him, pleading for mercy, says [General Jos
e de la] Concha ‘‘You know well that what you do here is against the will and wishes of the President of the United States.’’ Against his wishes! And is his Administration to receive Democratic commendation for having thus used their power in the contest between our own citizens and the Spanish authorities of Havana? Are we ready to endorse Mr. Fillmore’s [Millard] (1800 1874) proclamation, the edict of Concha [General Jos
e de la Concha a field marshal of Spain] which I have just read, and the slaughter of the gallant [Col. W. S.] Crittenden [a member of the L
opez expedition who was executed] and his fifty associates who were immolated at Havana! Are we ready to endorse all this in the face of facts which I have thus cursorily laid before the Senate! I cannot do so. But these young men are branded again and again with those ugly names which are to be found in almost every column of those newspaper which seem to be devoted exclusively to denouncing whoever may show the least sympathy for the suffering Cubans. They are called ‘‘Marauders.’’ Ah! were they Marauders, these youthful enthusiasts who congregated in one of our southern cities, at the call, as they thought, of their suffering brethren who went to a foreign country, landed there, knowing that they were to meet a million of inhabitants and 25,000 soldiers in arms to protect them? What kind of marauders were they who chose to go to such a country with the hope of plunder, and who, upon setting their feet upon the island, sent off, with their last adieus to their mothers and sisters, the very vessel that had brought them there? Why, Sir, they were young men against whom to this very day Spain herself has not been able to bring successfully the charge of the least delinquency. And yet we brand them with names declined to hand them down to posterity as common robbers. Mr. Seward Will the honorable gentlemen from La. [Louisiana], (Mr. Soule) allow me to ask, by way of information and explanation, as I known he wishes to be perfectly fair and just, whether in any official document issued by this Government, these persons were stigmatized as or termed pirates? Does he affirm such to be the fact? Mr. Soule [Gen.] Concha did not care much about the terms used, but he took care of the meaning. And if you place a man beyond the law, if you denounce him as being no longer under its protection, call him robber, or pirate, or outcast names signify nothing; he is doomed.

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I was going on to ask whether he was a common robber, a common robber, that young Crittenden, who so nobly met his fate? Were his last words the words of a robber, when, summoned to kneel, he proudly answered, ‘‘I never kneel but to my God!’’ Was he a common robber whose last words could be these: ‘‘You may kill me, but you cannot kill that hope which bounds within my heart, and denounces your cruelty at the bar of the future?’’ No, he was not a common robber. But the honorable Senators disagree with the President in other respects. They are for purchasing Cuba now and ever: the President is against purchasing at present. It must be somewhat interesting to know what his reasons are for objecting to the acquisition of the Island of Cuba at present … the present administration feels unwilling, at the present time, to have Cuba incorporated into the Union. The condition of the present population of that island is one ground, the other is predicated upon domestic considerations … what are the domestic considerations which constitute an impediment at the present time in the way of the acquisition of Cuba, which may not constitute an impediment hereafter? I will put the question to Southern Senators particularly. What are those circumstances, what is the condition of the present population of Cuba, and what are the domestic considerations which constitute our impediment now to this Administration accepting the transfer of the Island of Cuba to us, which could not be an obstacle hereafter? It is known that upon all hands, in every Administration, from the lips of every statesman who has addressed himself to the subject, we have the admission that Cuba is bound to be ours so say they; and still, though bound to become ours, the time has not yet arrived. My honorable friend, with feelings I am sure congenial with my own, says: Let the fruit become ripe, it is sure to fall, and falling, to fall in our lap. Not so with the President. My friend is ready to purchase at any time and at any price. The President is unwilling to do so. Why? Because of the present condition of its population; because of domestic reasons … Viscount Palmerston to Lord Howden, dated, ‘‘Foreign Office, Oct. 20, 1851’’ … ‘‘the slaves of Cuba form a large portion, and by no means an unimportant one, of the population of Cuba, and that any steps taken to provide for their emancipation would, therefore, as far as the black population is concerned, be quite in unison with the recommendation made by Her Majesty’s Government, that measures should be adopted for contenting the people of Cuba, with a view to secure the connection between that island and the Spanish crown; and it must be evident that, if the negro population of Cuba were rendered free, that fact would create a most powerful element of resistance to any scheme for annexing Cuba to the United States, where slavery still exists.’’ [Soul
e] If England has any power, any influence with Spain, you may now see in what condition you will find the Island. Tear up the veil that conceals the proximate future, and ask yourselves this question: If we do wait, in what condition will Cuba be? I am against purchasing Cuba I shall come to that presently. I am now arguing upon the premises which are furnished me by those who have spoken upon this subject, and by the President himself; and I ask you, in what condition do you expect to find the Island of Cuba, if you wait much longer? I will tell you. Here is a Madrid paper referring to the same subject and showing what impression had already been produced by the communication of Viscount Palmerston. ‘‘It is well for all to know, whether native or foreign that the Island of Cuba can only be Spanish or African. When the day comes when the Spaniards will be found to abandon it, they will do so by bequeathing their sway to the blacks.’’

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Here stands, in bold relief before you, the destiny which, under British influence, awaits your relations with that Island. Let Southern senators, particularly ponder this. You deny the policy of the past. Statesmen who have preceded you have asserted, in their communications, that the idea of purchasing Cuba would only be taken into consideration if there should be an impossibility of maintaining Spain in the possession of that island. We have asserted, heretofore and an English writer very pointedly refers to these repeated assertions that our object was not to get possession of the island, but to maintain Spain in the dominion. And therefore, as far as that goes, our present disposition to purchase, alters the policy of the past. Sir, I am against purchasing Cuba. Whoever knows anything of Castilian pride, must be aware that Spaniards can never be brought to sell Cuba to us. No, sir, I have still another objection against purchasing Cuba. There is something there that speaks aloud for those suffering Cubanos who call upon us for assistance. They are proud, and would not consent to this purchase. I am unwilling to move their susceptibilities; and thus, as far as a wish of mine can have any bearing upon any policy which might now or hereafter be pursued, the idea of purchasing Cuba has become an obsolete one and must be abandoned.… Spain is unwilling to sell, and from the surrounding political atmosphere, I do not know that we would run less danger in purchasing than in conquering the Island. I am against purchasing it. But, sir, I cannot dissemble the fact that in the present condition of the popular mind in these United States, a question is broken out which actually threatens us with peril. It may be upon us tomorrow, and it may not come to present its exigencies before a quarter of a century. But it may be upon us tomorrow, and it is for us to face the danger. I want now to test the question whether England has always been as scrupulous herself with reference to that very possession, as she seems to be now-a-days, when we are ourselves interested. It may seem strange, yet it is not the less true, that as early as 1739, England had attempted and had considered a projet of buccaneering, for the purpose of getting hold of that Island. I have it in my hands. I want to put the Senate in possession of one of the most curious facts of history in the last century. A Proposal to take the Island of Cuba with very little expense to England, by a Force raised in the American Colonies. If the Crown of England could become possessed of the Island of Cuba, that key of all America, no man of knowledge can denye [sic] but that Great Britain, in that case, must become possessed of the whole trade of the Spanish Empire there; and if the simple privilege of trading with those people, upon very high terms, is now become one of the greatest prizes contended for by all the Powers in Europe, surely England will not neglect any opportunity which is offered of acquiring such a possession as must infallibly secure that whole invaluable trade to its subjects alone, especially since Great Britain is now in a fair way of losing all the trade she has hitherto had with those ports. It is proposed, therefore, to take Cuba without putting England to any material expense or trouble, in ye following manner, viz: For a person of conduct and experience to be commissioned from hence for the chief command in this expedition, to take Cuba, &c. That the number of men thus raised and armed shall consist of 10,000 … it will be necessary to send instructions of the same import to the several Governors in America, to issue orders, and give

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their best assistance to fit out, with all expedition, such transports, &c., and men so equipped. That when each Province has furnished their quota of transports and men, according to their ability, these shall immediately repair to one place appointed, which may be at South Carolina, and from thence proceed, under the command and direction of the person to be commissioned, from hence. They may, (if it shall appear advisable) in their passage, make a feint to take St. Augustine and having managed that stratagem properly, they are to proceed to the Island of Cuba, and land in the Bay of Matanzas that being a good harbor, and not guarded, yet lying the nearest of any other proper one to ye Havana. Here they shall land 700 or 800 men, more or less, as necessity shall require, and with that force to march down and pitch at a proper distance, to surround the Havana and cut off all manner of provisions going thereto by land; at the same time that some ships shall lye [sic] before the town, to prevent any provisions or relief coming to it by sea; in which situation that important place must surrender in a very short time. In order to render this conquest both sure and expeditious, it will be necessary to send six or eight sixtygun ships, and two bomb ketches, with about 2,000 troops on board them. If the conquest of Cuba is effected, a small part of the forces when does that, may, with very little trouble, take Porto Rico and St. Augustine, if it will appear advisable so to do. The British colonies in America, lying so near the object now in view, before ye knowledge of ye proposed attempt, can reach to Europe ye whole designe will be executed. It may be asked, were Cuba taken, how it would be garrisoned without forces from England? for it is to be understood that ye American people who are proposed to be raised must not be compelled to stay in ye garrison against their own inclination. In answer to ye, it is enough to say, that ye proposer has also conceived a pretty certain method to garrison not only that, but all ye places mentioned, if they are taken, without much expense to England, but which he beggs leave to reserve to himself, it being too long to insert it here, till he sees how this proposal will be approved of Y. H. Endorsed. ‘‘Proposals for taking Cuba, in America.’’ In Mr. Hamilton’s, of May ye 14th, 1739. The Senate will see that these American filibusters and buccaneers who have, of late seemed to have attracted the attention of the whole world, had some precidents to follow; and it behooves not England to show herself very scrupulous with reference to anything which may take place here, when we find in her own archives such strange indications of similar projets of undertakings having been entertained by herself. The communication of the British Minister, and that of the French Minister to our Government [protesting attempts to seize Cuba], contain nothing less than a threat, a positive and unequivocal threat, that if any attempt of the kind made by Lopez should be renewed, the United States would be made answerable for it. That threat remains still unanswered and unexplained, either by the Secretary of State or by any Senator upon this floor. Here is the precise language used: ‘‘The attacks which have been lately made upon the Island of Cuba, by lawless bands of adventurers from the United States, with the avowed design of taking possession of that island, have engaged the serious attention of Her Majesty’s Government, the more especially as they are most anxious that the friendly relations now existing between

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Great Britain and the United States should not be endangered, as they must be by a repetition of attacks such.’’ Thus the United States are made answerable by France and England, for the attacks of ‘‘lawless bands of adventurers from the United States, with the avowed design of taking possession of that island.’’ The correspondence acknowledges that the United States have in no way been engaged in those undertakings, yet we are here threatened, upon a renewal of the same undertaking, by another band of disorderly citizens, to be made answerable for it and why? Because, I suppose they felt encouraged to hold that language to the United States, from the manner in which their interposition last year, their appearance in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, had been received and treated by us. In vain did Mr. Crittenden insist upon an explanation from the British Minister. The only answer he could get from him, was a renewal of the assertion, for which the explanation had been demanded. And now we are told by those two proud powers, that if a new attempt be made upon the Island of Cuba, and made as described here, ‘‘by a lawless band of adventurers with the avowed design of taking possession of that island,’’ peace between those two powers and the United States will be endangered. One may well ask what interest do these two powers feel in the matter that should prompt them to take the subject in hand and to press it upon us in the threatening form which they have chosen to adopt!? In the instructions from the Ministers of France to M. Sartiges I wish to remark here that the whole correspondence throughout bears the impress of such a perfect understanding existing between the two powers of France and Great Britain that the letters written by their respective representatives here are identical, word for word, the only difference being that the one is written in English and the other in French; but they are to all intents and purposes identical so are the instructions with that single difference … I translate from the French as I read. ‘‘We have, therefore, sent to the commanders of our naval forces, in the Gulf of Mexico, instructions prescribing, that if the occasion should arise, to take the necessary measures in order to cooperate with the Spanish authorities for the purpose of defending the island (of Cuba) and maintaining its sovereignty in Spain. The Government of Her Britannic Majesty, prompted by the same feeling of respect for the rights of the Crown of Spain, and actuated by the same principles, has taken analogous steps in order to maintain Spain in the possession of Cuba, a possession which imports no loss to the relations between the great maritime powers than to Spain herself. Here we have the assertion upon the part of England and France, that their interests in Cuba arising out of the relations which now exist, is as great as that of Spain herself. That also has not been noted by the able Secretary of State who took in hand to answer that communication. Here, then, two powers come forth and tell you in the very teeth of your declaration, that you had no concern at all in the expedition of Lopez they tell you that should that expedition be renewed you shall be made answerable for it. And why so? I suppose because they abrogate to themselves the right of instructing America as to what course she should pursue in reference to anything which passes within its borders; and it is because the interest which they feel in the occupancy of Cuba by Spain, arising out of those relations which have been lately created between France and England, is as deep as that of Spain herself. And yet we are told here, it will not do for us to take any steps in this matter; we are to remain still; we must not disturb the calm waters of the political sea. We may remain still, Mr. President, but we may yet find that the quiet we preserve is to be paid for dearly. But I shall come to this matter again.

Latinos South of the Border

And why should we speak of bucanneering [sic] now? … I can hardly account for the forbearance we have exhibited whenever that question from any quarter has been pressed upon the consideration of this country. It is one thing certain, that the United States cannot be willing to disparage themselves in the eyes of the world by any interposition in the affairs of other nations that would not be justified by the strictest rules of propriety. That, no one can doubt. And while we are ready to let the world know that we shall respect the rights of others, it is proper that the world should also know, that, above all other rights, is the right of protecting ourselves. The right of self-defence is above every other right. What that right may be under peculiar exigencies, is not for me to say. Enough for those who may have the control of the destinies of this nation to decide for themselves as circumstances may demand. But in the mean time, I cannot bear the idea that we should divorce ourselves with respect to any attempt that may be made by European powers upon this continent, from the policy of the past. [Soul
e invokes the Monroe Doctrine (1823)] Why, sir, in the same message, on the occasion of the interept which we felt in the destinies of the Southern Republics of this continent, we find the following declaration: ‘‘The United States consider any attempt on the part of the European powers to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere, as dangerous to their peace and safety.’’ Here, again, whatever movement on the part of the European powers might be construed as having a tendency, in any way, to extend to this continent their own system, was considered as a flagrant casus belli. And will the Senate allow me to ask, what was the occasion which prompted President Monroe to lay down this principle? Was it, as it would seem from assertions which I have heard, that we were here being threatened by the European Powers? Not in the least. There had been no movement on the part of any European Power that could be constued by us as a threat. They had not sent their ambassadors here to teach us how we should deal with a neighboring island. But this is not all; the doctrine of proximity for this Monroe doctrine is not in the dark the doctrine which, upon considerations of proximity, has been deemed by all writers on public laws as authorizing a government, in self protection, to do at times what, in the absence of that necessity, might be considered as wrong that doctrine did not originate with Mr. Monroe; and it may be a matter of surprise for some Senators to learn for it may have escaped many of them, as it has escaped me that [Sen.] Rufus King (1755 1827) was originator, as far as American statesmen are concerned with it, of that doctrine. In 1801, being then at the Court of London, he hears that France is about to obtain possession of Louisiana by means of a retrocession on the part of Spain, of that country. He at once interposes, and interposes upon what ground? Upon the ground that the proximity, in which that possession is with the other possessions of the United States, made it a matter of paramount interest to us. And it is curious to see what he says in that respect. He was exceedingly guarded in his relations with the British Minister, and he contented himself with a very witty allusion, by which he meant to say, that though at present we could not be willing to endanger our situation in order to take possession of Louisiana, still we might insist upon Louisiana remaining in the possession of Spain. In speaking of the rumored cession of Louisiana by Spain to France, he supports the opinion that our policy should be to take care that it remains with Spain, and he quotes Montesquieu in the following words:

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‘‘It is happy for trading powers that God has permitted Turks and Spaniards to be in the world, since, of all nations, they are most proper to possess a great Empire with insignificance.’’ It was injustice to Spain on the part of Montesquieu no doubt; but it is important in the presentation of the present view, in order to show where originated the first idea that our interest required that this possession, which was in the hands of Spain, should go to no other power but the United States. My object, Mr. President, has been merely to present the danger with which this delicate question is surrounded. I have sedulously abstained to express any opinion as to what course it might suit the policy of our Government, present or future, to pursue. It is not a matter of mine; it belongs to other hands. But, at the same time, I have deemed it my duty to show that the policy of the past teaches us, that wherever there is danger, it is our duty to provide for it. We have been reminded of the time when a mere invasion into Spain was considered a proper occasion for signifying to the world that we should not suffer European Powers to transfer to these shores anything of their own system of Government. We are told that the doctrine of 1824 was not intended to be carried beyond the circumstances in which it originated. What were they? I have already shown that not an act of the European powers could have been considered on the part of our Government as a threat. None of their vessels made their appearance here. Is it so now? See the fleet of England in the waters of Havana, French vessels in the Bay of Samana, the Bay Islands colonized, and lately, Belize transformed into a British Colony. And, if I am well instructed and I think I am while we are here debating these questions, in the presence of the correspondence that came to us yesterday, where repeated declarations are to be found on the part of England, as late as 1849 and 1850, that she does not mean, that she never meant to colonise in the face of all these declarations, we have the fact staring us in the face that she has colonized the Bay Islands, and is now colonizing Belize. And something more; she has taken it for granted that Queen Isabel Secunda [sic] possesses all the rights in her real authority which her predecessors possessed over this continent. And she takes for granted, though the recognition of the independence of most of the South American Republics may have divested Spain of her title in so far as the limits of those Republics extend, that in so far as Belize is concerned, the title remains still in Spain. So says England, and she is at this very day suing for an actual transfer on the part of Spain of the absolute title to the whole strip of territory between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Such is the situation, and while she is thus daring while she shows us this unmistakable indication of her boldness, we are told, sir politely told, as far as diplomatic communication can go, that two must enter into a treaty with England and France, not to lay hands on Cuba. Clearly, sir, should no circumstance justify on the part of the United States, any such attempt, and should nothing arise which could bring us forcibly to the necessity of placing our hands over that possession, Spain has nothing to apprehend from us. Our dispositions are and will be most friendly; but she would commit a great blunder if she could remain blind to the intimations of proximity to us. Let her take counsel of the experience of the past. Let her realise, under the promptings of that generosity so becoming to her race.… If she does it, why she may secure to herself all the advantages which she now enjoys from Cuba, by entering into treaties with that newly-created power. And, sir, I have no doubt, if Spain could be induced to view the question in that light, Cuba, proud as she is,

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herself, would not hesitate to tender her hand to the mother country, and probably to assume a part of the heavy burdens which weigh upon her. And, perhaps, I may be permitted to say, that, if in that struggle of generosity between the regenerated island and the mother country, a sponsor were necessary, the United States would easily tender themselves to become such for the island. But beyond that I repudiate all idea of possessing ourselves of that island in any other manner than those which the strict law of nations will authorize. If there is no danger for us in leaving that Island in the condition it now is, our duty is to maintain Spain in her possession; but if circumstances not within our control circumstances over which two great maritime powers of Europe have assumed a controlling influence if any such circumstances should arise, and if we should be placed in that situation where delay might be loss of our position for the future then, of course, let us expect that our Government will take counsel from the exigency of the moment, and act as behooves a great nation.… Source: New York Daily Times, January 28, 1853, p. 1.

104. Ostend Manifesto, October 18, 1854 In a letter to President James Monroe on October 24, 1823, Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) wrote, ‘‘I candidly confess that I have ever looked on Cuba as the most interesting addition which could ever be made to our system of States. The control which, with Florida, this island would give us over the Gulf of Mexico, and the countries and isthmus bordering on it, as well as all those whose waters flow into it, would fill up the measure of our political well-being.’’ Jefferson was not alone in this sentiment and many Americans considered Cuba as appendage of this country that was politically and commercially vital to its prosperity. Given this mindset, and the experiences of the Texas War (1836) and the Mexican American War (1846–1848), both of which brought huge amounts of land and riches to the United States, many Americans looked for a pretext to seize Cuba. In March 1854, an incident occurred that encouraged American invention: the American steamer Black Warrior anchored in Havana, Cuba. Spanish authorities apprehended the ship, its cargo, and its crew. Only sectional struggle between northern and southern states averted a confrontation with Spain. About then, the Ostend Manifesto (1854) came to light. The manifesto was a secret document written by U.S. diplomats at Ostend, Belgium. Its purpose was to grab Cuba from Spain. The plan was for the United States to pay Spain $120 million for Cuba, a considerable sum considering that the entire Mexican Cession (1848) cost $15,000. When the contents of the document were made public, they outraged abolitionists, Spaniards, and Cubans alike. The cabal was composed of James Buchanan (1791–1868) who was later president, Virginia Senator James Mason (1798–1871) and Louisiana Senator Pierre Soul
e (1801– 1870). The Ostend Manifesto argued that U.S. occupation of Cuba was vital to national security of the United States and, hence, taking Cuba off Spain’s hands was in the best interest of that country. The Ostend Manifesto sparked a debate not only along the lines of free versus slave states but also as to whether the United States should become an imperial power.

SIR: The undersigned, in compliance with the wish expressed by the President in the several confidential despatches you have addressed to us, respectively, to that

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effect, have met in conference, first at Ostend, in Belgium, on the 8th, 10th, and 11th instance, and then at Aix la Chapelle in Prussia, on the days next following, up to the date hereof. There has been a full and unresolved interchange of views and sentiments between us, which we are most happy to inform you has resulted in a cordial coincidence of opinion on the grave and important subjects submitted to our consideration. We have arrived at the conclusion, and are thoroughly convinced, that an immediate and earnest effort ought to be made by the government of the United States to purchase Cuba from Spain at any price for which it can be obtained, not exceeding the sum of. The proposal should, in our opinion, be made in such a manner as to be presented through the necessary diplomatic forms to the Supreme Constituent Cortes about to assemble. On this momentous question, in which the people both of Spain and the United States are so deeply interested, all our proceedings ought to be open, frank, and public. They should be of such a character as to challenge the approbation of the world. We firmly believe that, in the progress of human events, the time has arrived when the vital interests of Spain are as seriously involved in the sale, as those of the United States in the purchase, of the island and that the transaction will prove equally honorable to both nations. Under these circumstances we cannot anticipate a failure, unless possibly through the malign influence of foreign powers who possess no right whatever to interfere in the matter. We proceed to state some of the reasons which have brought us to this conclusion, and, for the sake of clearness, we shall specify them under two distinct heads: 1. The United States ought, if practicable, to purchase Cuba with as little delay as possible. 2. The probability is great that the government and Cortes of Spain will prove willing to sell it, because this would essentially promote the highest and best interests of the Spanish people. Then, 1. It must be clear to every reflecting mind that, from the peculiarity of its geographical position, and the considerations attendant on it, Cuba is as necessary to the North American republic as any of its present members, and that it belongs naturally to that great family of States of which the Union is the providential nursery. From its locality it commands the mouth of the Mississippi and the immense and annually increasing trade which must seek this avenue to the ocean. On the numerous navigable streams, measuring an aggregate course of some thirty thousand miles, which disembogue themselves through this magnificent river into the Gulf of Mexico, the increase of the population within the last ten years amounts to more than that of the entire Union at the time Louisiana was annexed to it. The natural and main outlet to the products of this entire population, the highway of their direct intercourse with the Atlantic and the Pacific States, can never be secure, but must ever be endangered whilst Cuba is a dependency of a distant power in whose possession it has proved to be a source of constant annoyance and embarrassment to their interests. Indeed, the Union can never enjoy repose, nor possess reliable security, as long as Cuba is not embraced within its boundaries.

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Its immediate acquisition by our government is of paramount importance, and we cannot doubt but that it is a consummation devoutly wished for by its inhabitants. The intercourse which its proximity to our coasts begets and encourages between them and the citizens of the United States, has, in the progress of time, so united their interests and blended their fortunes that they now look upon each other as if they were one people and had but one destiny. Considerations exist which render delay in the acquisition of this island exceedingly dangerous to the United States. The system of immigration and labor lately organized within its limits, and the tyranny and oppression which characterize its immediate rulers, threaten an insurrection at every moment which may result in direful consequences to the American people. Cuba has thus become to us an unceasing danger, and a permanent cause of anxiety and alarm. But we need not enlarge on these topics. It can scarcely be apprehended that foreign powers, in violation of international law, would interpose their influence with Spain to prevent our acquisition of the island. Its inhabitants are now suffering under the worst of all possible governments, that of absolute despotism, delegated by a distant power to irresponsible agents, who are changed at short intervals, and who are tempted to improve the brief opportunity thus afforded to accumulate fortunes by the basest means. As long as this system shall endure, humanity may in vain demand the suppression of the African slave trade in the island. This is rendered impossible whilst that infamous traffic remains an irresistible temptation and a source of immense profit to needy and avaricious officials, who, to attain their ends, scruple not to trample the most sacred principles under foot. The Spanish government at home may be well disposed, but experience has proved that it cannot control these remote depositaries of its power. Besides, the commercial nations of the world cannot fail to perceive and appreciate the great advantages which would result to their people from a dissolution of the forced and unnatural connexion [sic] between Spain and Cuba, and the annexation of the latter to the United States. The trade of England and France with Cuba would, in that event, assume at once an important and profitable character, and rapidly extend with the increasing population and prosperity of the island. 2. But if the United States and every commercial nation would be benefited by this transfer, the interests of Spain would also be greatly and essentially promoted. She cannot but see what such a sum of money as we are willing to pay for the island would effect in the development of her vast natural resources. Two-thirds of this sum, if employed in the construction of a system of railroads, would ultimately prove a source of greater wealth to the Spanish people than that opened to their vision by Cortez. Their prosperity would date from the ratification of that treaty of cession. France has already constructed continuous lines of railways from Havre, Marseilles, Valenciennes, and Strasbourg, via Paris, to the Spanish frontier, and anxiously awaits the day when Spain shall find herself in a condition to extend these roads through her northern provinces to Madrid, Seville, Cadiz, Malaga, and the frontiers of Portugal. This object once accomplished, Spain would become a centre of attraction for the traveling world, and secure a permanent and profitable market for her various

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productions. Her fields, under the stimulus given to industry by remunerating prices, would teem with cereal grain, and her vineyards would bring forth a vastly increased quantity of choice wines. Spain would speedily become, what a bountiful Providence intended she should be, one of the first nations of Continental Europe rich, powerful, and contented. Whilst two-thirds of the price of the island would be ample for the completion of her most important public improvements, she might, with the remaining forty millions, satisfy the demands now pressing so heavily upon her credit, and create a sinking fund which would gradually relieve her from the overwhelming debt now paralyzing her energies. Such is her present wretched financial condition, that her best bonds are sold upon her own Bourse at about one-third of their par value; whilst another class, on which she pays no interest, have but a nominal value, and are quoted at about onesixth of the amount for which they were issued. Besides, these latter are held principally by British creditors who may, from day to day, obtain the effective interposition of their own government for the purpose of coercing payment. Intimations to that effect have been already thrown out from high quarters, and unless some new source of revenue shall enable Spain to provide for such exigencies, it is not improbable that they may be realized. Should Spain reject the present golden opportunity for developing her resources, and removing her financial embarrassments, it may never again return. Cuba, in its palmiest days, never yielded her exchequer after deducting the expenses of its government, a clear annual income of more than a million and a half dollars. These expenses have increased to such a degree as to leave a deficit chargeable on the treasury of Spain to the amount of six hundred thousand dollars. In a pecuniary point of view, therefore, the island is an incumbrance [sic], instead of a source of profit, to the mother country. Under no probable circumstances can Cuba ever yield to Spain one per cent on the large amount which the United States are willing to pay for its acquisition. But Spain is in imminent danger of losing Cuba, without remuneration. Extreme oppression, it is now universally admitted, justifies any people in endeavoring to relieve themselves from the yoke of their oppressors. The sufferings which the corrupt, arbitrary, and unrelenting local administration necessarily entails upon the inhabitants of Cuba, cannot fail to stimulate and keep alive that spirit of resistance and revolution against Spain, which has, of late years, been so often manifested. In this condition of affairs it is vain to expect that the sympathies of the people of the United States will not be warmly enlisted in favor of their oppressed neighbors. We know that the President is justly inflexible in his determination to execute the neutrality laws; but should the Cubans themselves rise in revolt against the oppression which they suffer, no human power could prevent citizens of the United States and liberal minded men of other countries from rushing to their assistance. Besides, the present is an age of adventure, in which restless and daring spirits abound in every portion of the world. It is not improbable, therefore, that Cuba may be wrested from Spain by a successful revolution; and in that event she will lose both the island and the price which we are now willing to pay for it a price far beyond what was ever paid by one people to another for any province.

Latinos South of the Border

It may also be remarked that the settlement of this vexed question, by the cession of Cuba to the United States, would forever prevent the dangerous complications between nations to which it may otherwise give birth. It is certain that, should the Cubans themselves organize an insurrection against the Spanish government, and should other independent nations come to the aid of Spain in the contest, no human power could, in our opinion, prevent the people and government of the United States from taking part in such a civil war in support of their neighbors and friends. But if Spain, dead to the voice of her own interest, and actuated by stubborn pride and a false sense of honor, should refuse to sell Cuba to the United States, then the question will arise, What ought to be the course of the American government under such circumstances? Self-preservation is the first law of nature, with States as well as with individuals. All nations have, at different periods, acted upon this maxim. Although it has been made the pretext for committing flagrant injustice, as in the partition of Poland and other similar cases which history records, yet the principle itself, though often abused, has always been recognized. The United States have never acquired a foot of territory except by fair purchase, or, as in the case of Texas, upon the free and voluntary application of the people of that independent State, who desired to blend their destinies with our own. Even our acquisitions from Mexico are no exception to this rule, because, although we might have claimed them by the right of conquest in a just war, yet we purchased them for what was then considered by both parties a full and ample equivalent. Our past history forbids that we should acquire the island of Cuba without the consent of Spain, unless justified by the great law of self-preservation. We must, in any event, preserve our own conscious rectitude and our own self-respect. Whilst pursuing this course we can afford to disregard the censures of the world, to which we have been so often and so unjustly exposed. After we shall have offered Spain a price for Cuba far beyond its present value, and this shall have been refused, it will then be time to consider the question, does Cuba, in the possession of Spain, seriously endanger our internal peace and the existence of our cherished Union? Should this question be answered in the affirmative, then, by every law, human and divine, we shall be justified in wresting it from Spain if we possess the power, and this upon the very same principle that would justify an individual in tearing down the burning house of his neighbor if there were no other means of preventing the flames from destroying his own home. Under such circumstances we ought neither to count the cost nor regard the odds which Spain might enlist against us. We forbear to enter into the question, whether the present condition of the island would justify such a measure? We should, however, be recreant to our duty, be unworthy of our gallant forefathers, and commit base treason against our posterity, should we permit Cuba to be Africanized and become a second St. Domingo, with all its attendant horrors to the white race, and suffer the flames to extend to our own neighboring shores, seriously to endanger or actually to consume the fair fabric of our Union. We fear that the course and current of events are rapidly tending towards such a catastrophe. We, however, hope for the best, though we ought certainly to be prepared for the worst.

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We also forbear to investigate the present condition of the questions at issue between the United States and Spain. A long series of injuries to our people have been committed in Cuba by Spanish officials and are under dressed. But recently a most flagrant outrage on the rights of American citizens and on the flag of the United States was perpetrated in the harbor of Havana under circumstances which, without immediate redress, would have justified a resort to measures of war in vindication of national honor. That outrage is not only unatoned, but the Spanish government has deliberately sanctioned the acts of its subordinates and assumed the responsibility attaching to them. Nothing could more impressively teach us the danger to which those peaceful relations it has ever been the policy of the United States to cherish with foreign nations are constantly exposed than the circumstances of that case. Situated as Spain and the United States are, the latter have forborne to resort to extreme measures. But this course cannot, with due regard to their own dignity as an independent nation, continue; and our recommendations, now submitted, are dictated by the firm belief that the cession of Cuba to the United States, with stipulations as beneficial to Spain as those suggested, is the only effective mode of settling all past differences and of securing the two countries against future collisions. We have already witnessed the happy results for both countries which followed a similar arrangement in regard to Florida. Yours, very respectfully, James Buchanan, J. Y. Mason, Pierre Soul
e Source: Hon. Wm. L. Marcy, Secretary of State, House Executive Documents, 33rd Cong., 2nd Sess., Vol. X, pp. 127 136.

105. ‘‘Designs upon Cuba,’’ 1856 William Walker (1824–1860), a 5-foot, 2-inch Tennessean, led filibustering expeditions into Baja California and Nicaragua. Called a visionary by southerners, he wanted to add more slave states to the Union. Walker’s plan included annexing Central America, the Caribbean, and Cuba to the United States. Pro-slave interests supported his military ventures with arms, money, and volunteers. The following article alleges that the success of annexing Cuba depended on the success of Walker’s filibustering expeditions. Walker had invaded Nicaragua and controlled its government. He was heralded as a patriot and compared to the heroes of the Alamo (1836) who seized Texas from Mexico. The 1850s were the heyday of Euro-American filibusterers; pirates who led military expeditions into Latin American nations hoping to repeat the theft of Texas. The authority for the United States to annex Cuba and Central America was Manifest Destiny—the doctrine that held Americans were God’s chosen people and that the United States was not violating the rights of other nations but that it was only reannexing land that already belonged to them.

DESIGNS UPON CUBA We have satisfactory evidence that the ultimate object of the Walker expedition to Nicaragua is, not so much to conquer that country as to obtain a foothold for a

Latinos South of the Border

renewed invasion of Cuba. The neutrality laws of the United States were found to interfere seriously and fatally with the project while it was prosecuted in this country. At the outset of the Administration of Gen. Pierce, while it was hoped that he would be found favorable to such attempts, and that the Federal authorities would wink at the outfit of a new invading force, the leading filibusters directed their efforts to the recruitment of men and the raising of money for a renewal of the invasion which came to so fatal an end under Gen. [Narciso] Lopez. But it was soon found that nothing could be hoped from this quarter. The Administration was not ready for such a movement. Europe was then at peace and it was only when the Russian war broke out that Mr. Buchanan and other American Ministers abroad united in proclaiming that the United States should purchase Cuba, if possible, and seize her, if not. But our Government was not even then prepared for open action upon such a policy. Mr. Marcy’s conservation and good sense prevailed over the rash councils of his Cabinet associates. And even after Walker had obtained a foothold in Nicaragua, and when his position there appeared to be much stronger than ever, before or since, his Minister was rejected, and the President refused to recognize his Government. But this policy was suddenly changed. Those who had been the leading men in the crusade against Cuba espoused the Walker movement in Nicaragua. Gen. Goicuria a native Cuban, a man of wealth, ability, and character, who since his exile had been the life and soul of the Cuban movement, left New York, which had been his head-quarters, joined Walker in Nicaragua, took command under him and was engaged in some of the late skirmishes with the Costa Rican troops. At the same time, the Administration reversed its policy, without the slightest apparent cause, ignored the cogent reasons it had previously assigned for not recognizing Walker’s Government, received his Minister and proclaimed its purpose to regard his rule as an established fact. This was speedily followed by the nomination at Cincinnati of the author of the Ostend Manifesto through the active exertions of Messrs. Soule, Sickles, Saunders, and other prominent filibusters, and the declaration, by the Democratic Party in the Cincinnati platform, of a purpose to insist not upon equality and neutrality in the affairs of the Isthmus, but upon our absolute preponderance in everything relating to Central America, and our naval ascendency in the Gulf of Mexico. And close upon the heels of this come Mr. James Buchanan’s declarations to Hon. A. G. Brown made officially in reply to the announcement of his nomination that he believed the possession of Cuba would speedily become a ‘‘national necessity’’ and that he regarded its acquisition as one of the great objects of his Administration. Upon this point, as well as upon all others relating to Southern interests, Mr. Brown declares that Mr. Buchanan is ‘‘as much entitled to Southern confidence and Southern votes, as Mr. [John C.] Calhoun himself.’’ The plan is to avoid the appearance of direct invasion from the United States as this would subject us to complaints and probable hostility from England and France as well as Spain. But [William] Walker’s rule is to be recognized and consolidated in Nicaragua. When this is effected, Nicaragua will be made the headquarters of the Cuban invaders. They will then have ground where they can organize their forces outside the jurisdiction of the United States and our Government will thus be able entirely to evade the responsibility of the movement. But if England or France should then interfere it ‘‘will be for our Government to consider,’’ in the words of the Ostend Manifesto,’’ whether the possession of Cuba is a national

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necessity’’ and whether our ‘‘preponderance’’ and ‘‘supremacy’’ in the affairs of Central America do not require us to resist such interference, by force of arms. That this is the programme of operations, to which the Cuban filibusters, Walker’s Government and Mr. Buchanan and his political friends are parties, we have no doubt. There are several contingencies in the way of its execution. The first grows out of the difficulty which Walker is likely to experience, in maintaining his position and the second springs from the doubt of Buchanan’s election. The success of both Walker and Buchanan is essential to the scheme; and yet just now the chances of both seem clouded and desperate. Source: New York Daily Times, August 16, 1856, p. 4.

106. Excerpt from Speech Given by William Walker in New Orleans, May 30, 1857 Gen. William Walker (1824–1860), the epitome of the ugly American in Latin America, was a 5-foot, 2-inch Tennessean. He wanted to repeat the taking of Texas from Mexico in 1836. The base of Walker’s support in the United States was the American South where he recruited volunteers and raised money for arms. The following speech was given in New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1857, to 20,000 wildly applauding admirers. He laid out his plan of incorporating Central America into the United States. According to Walker, Nicaragua was the first step in the liberation of the region; according to him, Nicaraguans implored him on bended knees to be their president. Walker said Central America was in bad shape because of the mongrelization of its people and needed the United States to save it.

Fellow Citizens: I stand before you, not to vindicate a cause, for it needs none; what is just needs no vindication. This concourse of citizens and the sympathy here manifested, attest the interest you fele [feel]. But I stand to vindicate Americans, and the acts by which the American cause has been upheld by American citizens. In examining the motives of these acts, I ask you to discard all prejudices; to stand here as if you were posterity, to judge of history to judge without fear and without favor. Many and unscrupulous have been the means resorted to for the purpose of placing me in a false light before my countrymen. These reports it is necessary to explain: and I challenge my enemies to stand and point to a single act of mine which has been in violation of either civil, national, or international rights [cheers]; I challenge any one present to name any act of mine in Nicaragua which has not been stamped with the seal of justice. There are those who have charged upon me such motives as to attempt to vindicate would be a sheer mockery. There are those who have charged upon me avarice and mere personal gain; from such I scorn to exonerate myself. The men who were with me in Nicaragua my fellow-countrymen in arms will exculpate me from the charge of ever having entertained such motives. But there are other insinuations not so degrading at the first blush that I was a mere soldier of fortune, attempting to carry out an ambitious scheme, and endeavoring to make for myself a name and a fame. This imputation I reject as equally unfounded, and I hope to convince you that such were not my motives that I was not a mere soldier of fortune and adventure risking the lives of my countrymen for selfish purposes the actions of my

Latinos South of the Border

hand prove a more noble purpose. If I have exerted myself for any thing and for and purpose, it has been to extend American influence and Americanize Nicaragua. For thirty five years, a struggle for liberty had been going on among the Central American Republics. Civil wars showed that that people were incapable of self government. Nicaragua was in a State of anarchy when I received the offer of Castillon; but, after my arrival there, I refused to act in open violation of the laws of the United States; but I replied to the Cabinet that there would be no violation of the laws of our country in their asking me to fight in behalf of the Democratic Party. I sent an agent to Castillon to inform him that the contract between us must be made accordingly; that I had an invitation to assist the Hondurians [sic] from Gen. Cambaras, and would go there if Castillon apprehended any danger from the presence of Americans in Nicaragua. On bended knees, and in the most suppliant terms, the Provisional President of the Republic insisted that I should remain he wished the Americans to be on his side, for he knew they were loyal, brave and true. [Applause.] After my success on the Transit route, I made a treaty, by which the presence of Americans was approved by Corral and his party. I did this to secure the good will of all, and there was not a Nicaraguan who, in the face of this treaty, could say he did not approve the presence of Americans of their soil. Seven days after, in the awful presence of the priests, before whom Gen. Corral and myself had sworn to the treaty, and ere the ink was scarcely dry upon the paper, he penned encouraging letters to the people of Honduras against the Americans; these fell into my hands, and I felt that I might have brought him to the block, and by the provisions of the treaty could not evade his execution. This traitor proved to be guilty, and proved nothing in his extenuation, but begged for mercy: but I felt then as I do now, that a Court of Justice was a thing of wisdom, and mercy the part of folly. [Applause.] I felt that justice and mercy would still be meted out, and that in six months after Corral’s death, his party would be vanquished. After the execution of Corral, the Rivas party went over to the Democratic side, and Gen. Cabanas assisted the Hondurans. I went, by invitation, to the assistance of the Nicaraguans. Gen. Hebez joined in the application that was made to me. Every exertion was made to influence me to take the Americans to Honduras. I replied that the Americans were there as friends to all parties. By my suggestions, Commissioners were sent to Honduras and all the States, stating that we desired peace, and that our policy was pacific, and that, under the circumstances, to take sides was illiberal. Hebez acknowledged the truth of my suggestion. He was not a Democrat, and was not in favor of aiding Cabanas. Deputies were sent by my advice, stating that the Nicaraguans desired peace. We shall see how far it was granted. In the meantime, an important event transpired at the suggestion of Don Patricio Rivas, an American was sent to represent the republic at Washington. I opposed this as bad policy, but I was not in authority, and my opposition was unavailable. They wanted an American to speak the American language. You all know, fellow-citizens, how he was received, and now can paint the surprise of the Nicaraguans, because, on the plea of Pierce and Marcy, he was rejected on account of his being born in the United States. I well knew the result, and told them of the relations that existed between this country and Nicaragua, but I assured them that my countrymen knew a power higher than that of Cabinets and Presidents, and that I had infinite confidence in that higher power, which the people held in their own hands the true American sovereignty. [Applause.]

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The alliance which followed, between the four States of Central America the combination against American citizens in Nicaragua, due to Pierce and Marcy, under their rejection of the Nicaraguan Minister brought the matter to maturity, for immediately the Costa Ricans the supposed weakest party of the combination commenced hostilities by an open declaration of war. Then followed the almost anomalous decree, by which the Costa Ricans made war, not against a State, but the Americans in Nicaragua. Thus commenced the war of the races the great battle of the mongrels and the white men. This war, then, was not started by Americans in Nicaragua, and I challenge the mention of a single act in which they did anything but uphold the pledges made by the whole people of Nicaragua. After this it appears that Don Patricio Rivas plotted with the Northern States for effecting the desertion of such Americans as he could not expel by force. American rights were ignored in Nicaragua; bribes of money, and even lands, were freely offered, in the face of our having braved war in its worst forms, and suffered the loss of life by the rage of famine and pestilence. They pretended to be convinced as to my assurances, and were willing that the merits of an election should go before the people. This I desired, for I well knew that the mass of the people detested, with an implacable hatred, the forced military services of the Costa Ricans. The election was decreed, but only think! the result was scarcely declared before Rivas was found plotting a revolution, under the pretence that the people were overawed by my presence. But ‘‘the wicked flee when no man pursueth’’; I was not there they were running from their own consciences. Notwithstanding this conduct of Rivas, an election was had, and I was declared President of the Republic. [Great applause.] By this election I stood forth as the only protector and lawful representative of the Nicaraguans. Rivas was previously but the provisional President. I was commander-in chief of one portion of the army, and it was through me that Rivas was named for the provisional. I was joint sponsor of his choice and after the death of Corral was the sole cause of his elevation. I was bound by oath to put Rivas out when I was sworn in, but I was justified by the unmistakable voice of the Nicaraguans, who knew the facts under which I had been elected. I need not recount the events that followed: but to vindicate the Americans in Nicaragua, you all know how long and successfully I strived with, and I forced back the enemy braved that worst of foes, the lurking pestilence, then raging with violence in Granada. But for a new influence an influence which, I regret to say, comes little less from my own than a foreign country we might still be in arms in Nicaragua. It is probable we had no right to expect sympathy of the British, even if determined at the sacrifice of the honor and rights of British officers. But I need not tell you that officers of the British service encouraged desertion from our army, themselves forgetting their swords, and pretending to have honor in their hearts, they were but bound to obey the dictum from a superior authority. But, whatever the position of these officers, I could not but think that, unless governed by some strange collusion, they would not thus have interfered with American citizens. It is impossible to explain it but supposing that Americans were on the British side. Our worst enemies were Americans. Oh! That they had been born in some other country. It is to our shame that they should have drawn the same breath with honest Americans. It was not until the last exigency that of reverse and danger an American, bearing the name and arms of an American officer, consummated what

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British ingenuity had begun. It is a duty to myself to explain why we are no longer in arms and that however insignificant might be the representative of our Government, I would respect the American flag as much in him as in the highest officer, and that on surrendering I reserved the right of appeal, not to the Government, but to the people themselves. Capt. Davis made representations which I could hardly believe were true, an American as he was, permitted an act which was really an act of war in Nicaragua. But consider, fellow-citizens, that little vessel, the Granada, was covered with glory, at American hands, she was manned by Americans; had met the vessel of the enemy; come off victorious in an engagement unequaled in the annals of warfare, ever since the days of J. Paul Jones. Yes, fellow-citizens, that event, in which the little Nicaragua schooner was successful, will be recurred [referred] to with pride by the historian, and the eleventh of April will long be remembered by the American people. Who of you cannot feel proud of the spirit of manhood manifested by an American, one born within your midst? Yes, gentlemen, you can but feel that that little vessel was a fact in the history of American enterprise, surrounded with glorious memories that cannot be erased; yet, despite the glories which she attached to our fame, there was not wanting an American to commit an act of which every lover of his country will be ashamed. Yes, it was reserved for Capt. Davis to make himself a party to an alliance between the British and the mongrels of Central America, in order to drive his own race from the Isthmus. He expressed his determination to seize the Granada and we were bound to yield to him; yes, fellow-citizens, we were forced to make terms, to surrender to an officer of the American Navy. Great was our indignation when we learned that the Americans had thus interfered with the American cause in Nicaragua. Why this action of Davis? Because he had received instructions from Washington: but, why were these instructions given! It was because, here was presented the real issue between the Marcy Treaty as it was, and the Americans in Nicaragua. Here was the starting source. The American Minister in Great Britain, and the Abolitionists at the North determined, that Slavery should be excluded from a place over which Americans had no control. I care not what may be the ideas of those present, or what they may say in justification, it was but a combination to exclude an action of a sovereignty of Honduras from the Bay Islands. Between the States of New Granada and Costa Rica, there existed a question of boundary, originated mainly through men at New York, the agents of the Steamship Company. There was also a question of territory between New Granada and Costa Rica, and Costa Rica and Nicaragua, in relation to Buenacosta and the Mosquito country. The idea of this question was to have New-Granada to enter into an agreement with Nicaragua that Slavery should be excluded. He commenced British intrigue, in the desire to confound the relation of this Government with our domestic institutions. Here let me say that I do not wish to excite political feeling on this subject. It is perhaps fortunate that I was born on Southern soil; it may be unfortunate that I cannot consider Slavery a moral or political wrong. My teachings may not have been altogether of Wilberforce I may have touched a too sensitive point, but I feel that I have but struck upon the pivot of British interference. Look back to the origin of Slavery in American history; who introduced it into this country? Was he a man without honor? Certainly few have stood higher in moral worth than La Casas, the Spanish priest, who was the head and front of this offending. He introduced it in the Sixteenth Century for the relief of the Indians

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from the Spanish subjection. It were better that he had fixed it permanently not only in Cuba, but other regions than Central America. Certainly, he was wise and far more liberal for his day than the present followers of Clarkson and Wilberforce. Central America was in a worse condition than under the Spanish rule. The government was going to ruin. Mongrelism was the secret of its waning fortune. What was to be done? It was left for us to Americanize Central America; on whom rests the right of regenerating the amalgamated race, and no other than the people of the United States, and especially of the Southern States. I call upon you therefore, to execute this mission. You cannot, in justice to yourselves shrink from your duty. You cannot but continue your energies in carrying out the great principle of American influence. As for myself, forced here as I am, I can but appeal to you to assist in retaining the American ascendancy. My duty has been paid, and I would turn back on the path I have traversed. No, gentlemen, forced here against my will, I feel that my duty calls upon me to return. [Applause.] All who are nearest and dearest to me are there. There sleep the men, soldiers, and officers, whose rights I cannot fail to see respected; here, too, the heirs of those who have perished claim that I should return; nor, while I draw one breath, shall I leave a single stone unturned in securing them in their inheritance. I call upon you, then, fellow-citizens, male and female, whose friends and relatives have perished, to lend your aid upon the men to assist with their fortunes and purses; upon the mothers, to belt the swords about their sons; upon the maiden, as she listens to the lover at her feet, until he shall vow to go forth on the mission of his duty. Aye, fellow-citizens, I call upon you all, by the glorious recollections of the past, and the bright anticipations for the future, to assist in carrying out and perfecting the Americanization of Central America. [Tremendous applause.] The General closed, and the band struck up ‘‘Yankee Doodle,’’ and the loud plaudits of an admiring audience, who accompanied him en masse to the St. Charles Hotel, his present place of abode. Such a gathering has seldom been seen in New Orleans; and never, upon any previous occasion, have we witnessed so much enthusiasm among the people. Source: ‘‘Filibusterism,’’ New York Daily Times, June 8, 1857, p. 2.

107. ‘‘Gen. Walker’s Letter,’’ September 21, 1857 In this letter to the New York Daily Times the correspondent, Aqviday, takes issue with filibusterer William Walker (1824–1860), who declared himself president of Nicaragua (1856–1857) and his statement that he had not gone to Nicaragua to extend slavery. The correspondent questions Walker’s statement and says that Walker planned to spread slavery into Central America and South America. As proof, he cites the fact that Walker targeted the South for support. The correspondent alleges that the South had a mission to extend slavery throughout Mexico, Central, and South America.

GEN. WALKER’S LETTER The Extension of Slavery into the Central and South American States. Correspondence of the New York Times. Washington, Monday, Sept. 21, 1857.

Latinos South of the Border

Whatever serves to develop the intentions of the South on the subject of Slavery deserves public attention. As an indication of Southern policy, I cannot but regard the last published letter of William Walker in support of his scheme for reestablishing the institution in Nicaragua with profound interest. Disposed to deny him the possession of abilities requisite for the conduct of great affairs. I am yet forced to concede that this letter is a most skillfully [sic] framed appeal to the South, and that it is marked by great power of thought and correctness of argument. No publication has lately appeared presenting in so clear a manner the general idea of Southern expansion as a means of securing the permanent domination of the great Southern institution. It is worth as much for what it unwittingly suggests to the conservatism of the South for its incitements to unlawful aggressions upon the territories and rights of the neighbors and friends of that section. Let us analyze Mr. Walker’s statements and reasoning. Walker admits that though he did not go to Central America to establish Slavery, that measure was the guiding star of his policy after he got there. He admits, too, that the decree issued with this object in view was his individual act, and that it was opposed by the whole body of native inhabitants. He asserts also that the measure was resorted to by him as part of a system for promoting ‘‘the increase of negro Slavery on this Continent,’’ which system he calls upon the South to support as the corner-stone of its safety. What he says about the benevolence of Las Casas in suggesting the situation of Negro for Indian Slavery, is only true in part. Las Casas was a Dominican monk, celebrated as an Abolitionist. He opposed the Slavery imposed upon the Indians upon grounds hostile to any kind of Slavery. He was supported by his sect, but was bitterly reviled and threatened by the Franciscans, who were conservatives, and the Spanish settlers, who were owners of Indian slaves. In a public debate before Charles V., Las Casas contended against the Bishop of Darien that it was inhuman and irreligious to hold that any race had been designed by God for servitude. Why he consented to Negro Slavery does not clearly appear, but it seems that he regarded it as a temporary expedient necessary for the liberation of his Indians, of whom he had been appointed by Zimenes ‘‘Protector.’’ Walker proves by a methodical and consistent statement the existence of a combination among all the people of Spanish America from the Rio Grande to Chili, ‘‘for the purpose of excluding slavery forever from the territories now occupied by them.’’ He then goes on to show that England has joined this combination, and that she furnished the Costa Ricans arms to aid them in the defence of their country against him and his filibusters. He notices that the new Mexican Constitution has a clause forbidding the making of any treaty for the extradition of fugitive slaves, and sums up upon the testimony thus: ‘‘In fact, you have but to read the journals of the Spanish American Republics from Mexico to Chili to be satisfied of the enmity active as well as passive to the people and institutions of the Southern States.’’ I do not see how there can be any doubt of the correctness of this conclusion. All the people threatened by the South with invasion and subjugation have combined to defend themselves. Walker then asks the people of the South whether they intend to submit to this; whether they will be hemmed in on the South as on the North; whether they will surrender the right of carrying their slaves into other countries, and reducing to servitude the people who now inhabit those countries? These are momentous questions, and Walker is quite right in asking the South to pause now

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and consider them. They may be stated, however, in another form, as thus: Have not the people of Spanish-America a right to be free? Have they not a right to resist invasion if they suspect ‘‘the South,’’ which is their North, of an intention to seize their several countries and enslave their free citizens, is it not their duty to combine for their defence? And if they did not so combine, would not all mankind denounce them as dolts and cowards? No man of common sense, and especially no one who could write such a letter as this which I am commenting upon, can affect to believe that ‘‘the South’’ has any other or better right to move on farther south for purposes of conquest and propagandism than the North has. Now, if the South has a mission to seize Mexico, the West Indies, Central America, Venezuela, the Guianas, New-Granada, Peru, and Chili for the purpose of fixing therein African Slavery forever, which Walker avows, by implication, to be his design, who can deny to the Free States of the Union the right to move on after the South, to occupy the present Slave States, and to extirpate the ‘‘peculiar,’’ institution of African Slavery forever? Let it be borne in mind that while the South claims the right to extend over all America an institution which she declares to be ‘‘peculiar,’’ the institutions of the North are not peculiar, but are in harmony with those of the Christian and civilized world. But directly after making this important disclosure, Mr. Walker proceeds to relieve his mind by this portentous admonition: ‘‘If the South is desirous of imitating the gloomy grandeur of the Eschylian Prometheus, she has but lie supine a little while longer, and force and power will bind her to the rock, and the vulture will descent to tear the liver from her body. In her agony and grief she may console herself with the idea that she suffers a willing sacrifice.’’ Is this a confession, or what is it? Does Mr. Walker mean to say that Slavery is a vulture which is tearing out the liver from the body of the South? This is exactly what he means. He tells the people of the South that Slavery is a vulture that is feeding upon their hearts; but they must not kill the vulture, they must only enlarge the area of the rock, and allow the obscenus volucres [obscene vultures] to feed away at its leisure. The point of a powerful combination already formed to resist the ambition and rapacity of the South, is certainly very suggestive of the necessity of caution in increasing the strength of this combination. It is the most overwhelming argument for the dependence of the South upon the Federal Union that I have ever heard. Southern conservatives will at once perceive that when the secessionists and incendiaries of the Jefferson and Toombs and Keitt school get the upper hand of them, and set up their exclusive Slave Empire, the North, above Mason and Dixon’s, must form an offensive and defensive alliance with tropical America to limit and, if need be, to cripple the new aggressive power forever. And if Great Britain is now hostile to the South, and is forming combinations against her expansion, what would be her policy after the principle of territorial aggression had been inaugurated in a new government informed by no other motive? It is said that Mr. Jenkins, to whom Mr. Walker addresses his manifesto, will repudiate the plan developed. This is very likely. Mr. Jenkins is a so-called conservative, who in 1852 was nominated for Vice President on the ticket which had Mr. Webster’s name at its head. As a man of sense, who knows the real design, and the true wants of the South, he cannot assume any responsibility for the sentiments and recommendations of his correspondent. Source: New York Times, September 23, 1857, p. 4.

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108. Excerpts from The United States Democratic Review, ‘‘The Nicaraguan Question,’’ 1858 Gen. William Walker (1824–1860), a 5-foot, 2-inch Tennessean, drifted into California in the 1850s and launched a series of filibustering expeditions against Mexico. He caught the imagination of Euro-Americans in 1853, when he landed a party in Sonora, Mexico, and invaded Baja California. He was kicked out. But in 1855, he enlisted some 60 men and sailed for Nicaragua where he led a successful coup. Walker was opposed by Com. Cornelius Vanderbilt, a wealthy banker, who built a route through Nicaragua and then a railroad through Panama that joined the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Costa Rica declared war on Walker and, in May 1857, forced him to surrender and leave Nicaragua. His departure did not end Euro-American dreams of annexing Nicaragua. Walker led an invasion of Honduras where he was captured and executed in 1860. His successes inspired debate on the Nicaraguan Question, which concerned the status of Nicaragua within the U.S. sphere of influence. While many Americans coveted its land, the thinking of most was influenced by racial doctrines that saw Nicaragua as a land of mongrels. The following excerpt deals with how Americans viewed Nicaraguans and the impediments to democracy there. The article argues that Euro-Americans had good reason to disown the ‘‘abominable bastard democracies of Central and South America.’’ This antipathy was overcome by the potential profits that would be derived from its rich lands.

The first objection to this method is that there are no democracies, in the American sense, nor can be, in the Spanish American republics. A collection of negroes, mestizoes, mulattoes, and renegades of all colors, without political ideas, a sense of right, or notions of common humanity, much less of progressive civilization, must not be dignified with the name of a Democracy. We resolutely protest against it, and the good sense of the nation will go with us. The same objections that apply to the sudden emancipation of Negro slave populations, apply to these misnamed democracies of Negroes and Indians. They are mere sluggish anarchies, liable at any moment to despotism, their natural end, or to barbarism, their natural and real condition. It is unbecoming the dignity of the Federal Government, or people of the United States, to lend themselves to such contemptible fallacies. If we disown Mormonism, as [many] good reasons can be found for disowning the abominable bastard democracies of Central and South America. It has been proposed, in a spirit of opposition, and in order to turn the scale of immigration in favor of the North, to encourage northern laborers, artisans from Massachusetts, farmers with ‘‘subsoil ploughs,’’ and McCormick’s reapers, to in large bodies to Nicaragua. Those who propose an emigration of this character to Nicaragua are either very ignorant or very cruel. When we consider that the mortality of white men in Nicaragua is as great as at Cayenne or the mouths of the Niger, and that not one person in a hundred escapes the fever, the idea of sending shiploads of emigrants with ‘‘subsoil ploughs’’ will be abandoned. Subsoil ploughs will never be used in Nicaragua. Agricultural labor in that climate is simple: it consists only in ‘‘keeping down the weeds and killing vermin.’’ The wealth of the soil is generally excessive and inexhaustible. One year of neglect turns a ploughed field into an impenetrable thicket of thorns and brambles.

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It is hardly necessary to develop at large, or in many words, the commercial importance of the Nicaraguan Isthmus. It is in fact the key to the Pacific. During the last two years there has been a desperate struggle among the great steamship and transit owners of California and New York to gain exclusive possession of the Nicaraguan Isthmus. These steamship owners, independently of Southern sympathy, have been the real instigators and supporters of the private war waged by adventurers against the governments of Central America for the possession of the Isthmus. The ships of these ambitions speculators have transported armies with their provisions and munitions of war to obtain by force what they had failed to secure by negotiation. Not less than five thousand lives, in all, of white men, and some fifteen thousand of Central Americans have been destroyed by lead, steel, and fever, in this contest of transit monopolists. Another five or ten thousand are waiting to be shipped away and poured into the same deadly abyss. If our intelligent but unprincipled speculators stand ready to throw entire armies into that Nicaraguan gulf which lies midway between New York and California, to fill it up even with human bones, over which to build a solid causeway for commerce, the Federal Government needs no other apology for laying its powerful hand upon the territory. Without violating any individual or territorial right, without sacrificing the least interest of a political nature at home; without favoring the claims of South or North, or even so much as taking these into consideration, we may purchase the Nicaraguan right of way, and as much territory as may be necessary to open it for gradual and healthy colonization. Source: The United States Democratic Review, Vol. 41, Issue 2 (New York: J & H.G. Langley, etc. Publishers, February 1858), pp. 115 123. Courtesy of Cornell University Library, Making of America, http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/sgml/moa-idx?notisid AGD1642-0041-24.

109. ‘‘The Cuban Scheme,’’ January 10, 1859 The fervor to gain Cuba had not cooled by the end of the 1850s. The center of the southern lobby was the state of Louisiana where U.S. Sen. John Slidell (1793–1871) proposed a bill in which the United States would set aside $30 million as an installment for the $100 million purchase of Cuba. Similar proposals had been made prior to 1859, but Slidell had a large following in the Senate. During the 1840s he had served on a commission that attempted to purchase California and New Mexico from Mexico. The bill failed because, by this time, the die was cast in the struggle between the free and slave states and the South did not have sufficient votes to pass the bill. The following article calls for a more aggressive policy in acquiring Cuba and favored the Slidell bill.

THE CUBAN SCHEME Important Movement of Resistance among the Virginia Democracy. From the Richmond Enquirer, Jan. 10 The proposition of Sen. Slidell to place $30,000,000 ‘‘as an installment for the purchase of Cuba,’’ in the hands of the President, is treated by the press with a superficial comment scarcely more satisfactory than the marked indifference to its

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passage or rejection, which seems to possess both Houses of Congress, with regard to most of the startling propositions, Executive or Legislative in their origin, which have distinguished the present session of Congress. Mr. Slidell’s proposition will not, however, we sincerely trust, be allowed to pass through default of opposition, or by sufferance. The serious financial embarrassment in which it cannot fail to involve us, offers a very serious obstacle to a scheme which affords no perceptible promise of countervailing advantage. When a proposition is made to raise the public debt (which, twelve months ago, stood at ‘‘0’’) by a single coup, to $100,000,000, we have the right to demand some substantial evidence of good to be accomplished, of benefit to be derived. What is the immediate object or necessity to be met by this appropriation of money to coax a purchase? The sum offered, however important at this time to our depleted treasury, is entirely too insignificant to tempt the cupidity of Spain. It is not even pretended that this $30,000,000 would be regarded as a sufficient equivalent for the purchase of Cuba. Indeed, it is regarded as a mere ‘‘installment’’ by the proposer himself. In what manner, then, is this installment to be rendered an inducement to Spain for the sale of Cuba? In the earlier years of our Republic, when the galvanic wire of Alexander Hamilton had scarcely revived the pallid corpse of public credit, when our Government was as yet a mere experiment, when the permanency of the Union was as doubtful and more doubted than the solvency of the treasury, it was natural that foreign nations should demand some pledge in the way of prospective appropriation, before negotiating for the transfer of valuable territories. But now, will it be pretended that Spain doubts or can doubt the ability of the Federal Government, to raise and appropriate without delay or impediment the whole sum, however large, which may, and whenever it may be required for the purchase of Cuba? Equally flimsy would be the presence that this appropriation is necessary to convince Spain of the willingness of the Legislative Department of the Government, to cooperate with the Executive in the purchase of Cuba. Spain knows, England knows, France knows, everybody knows that both Legislature and Executive, as well as the people themselves, are only too desirous to secure this darling object. Why, then, shall the appropriation be made? If it is intended as a link in the policy of practical argument by which it is attempted to force on us an increase of tariff duties that line of vicious management which would increase expenditures, present and prospective, for the purpose of increasing the rates of taxation, only for the ultimate purpose of stimulating certain branches of industrial pursuit at the expense of all other pursuits and occupations then we owe it to ourselves, and to the principles of the party to which we owe our honest loyalty, to crush this bantling as remorselessly as we would assail the protective system itself. Nay, the qualifying ‘‘if’’ is scarcely necessary, for whatever be the intent of Mr. Slidell’s proposition, its tendency of domestic influence is obviously what we indicate. But there is another supposition. The most probable of all, and one which will not fail to receive immediate credence in Europe, to be exclusion of all others; that this appropriation is intended, not as an installment of a round sum to be fixed by a future treaty as the amount of purchase money to be paid over to Spain, but a bonus to be employed in secret negotiation with Spanish officials, so as to induce the accomplishment of a treaty of purchase. We will not pause to discuss the morality of such an arrangement, not the probability of such intent. Whether this be the intent or not, it will at once be recognized as

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such by European diplomatists, and this alone will be sufficient to delay the acquisition of Cuba. The ostentatious publicity which has unfortunately been given to diplomatic documents bearing on this question, and the loose, vague, devil-may-care tone of undetermined rashness and undefined purpose which has marked Congressional discussions on the same subject have already served to awaken and irritate the selfish apprehensions of England and France, to call into exercise all their resources of diplomatic management and powerful influence at the Court of Madrid to arouse in Spain, if not in Cuba, all the opposition of national jealousy. We have lost much ground, both as regards time and international confidence, by inopportune movements for the acquisition of Cuba. At present, an abstinence from all public demonstration, if not an entire ‘‘masterly inactivity,’’ is what is needed to ripen this fruit of territorial aggrandizement. There are more reasons than one to justify such a conservative course, and to require its adoption. In order to succeed in any of the great objects of domestic or home policy, we must retrench not only the present rates of expenditure, but also the extravagant list of magnificent schemes which has received the sanction of the Executive. To accomplish anything at all we must refrain from attempting too much. The great Napoleon himself, with all the resources of an empire at his sole command, never ventured the simultaneous accomplishment of so many daring projects. The acquisition of Cuba, at a minimum expense of $100,000,000, the construction of a Pacific Railroad, at perhaps double the figure; a Mexican protectorate, international preponderance in Central America, in spite of all the powers of Europe; the submission of distant South American States; the repulse of unwarrantable demands, in which the selfish British policy of foreign encroachment is deeply interested; the enlargement of the navy; a largely increased standing army; a vital reactionary change in the mode of collecting revenue, directly opposed to the current of freetrade sentiment which is now drawing into its channel all the nations of the earth; a gigantic financial revolution, which contemplates a transfer of all the power over banking and industrial corporations from the hands of the States to those of the Federal Government. Involving a monopoly of monetary command at the centers of trade what Government on earth could possibly meet all the exigencies of such a flood of innovations? What Treasury could afford the drain required to supply it? No, this sort of thing is out of the question. This chasing after a multitude of objects will inevitably lose us everything of solid benefit, besides involving us in complicated embarrassments, which the wisdom of a subsequent century will hardly be sufficient to unravel. We want a Napoleon in the field. We want some man who can concentrate all the energies and resources, Governmental and national, on some one great point of reform or advancement. Abundant promises, magnificent and various, although mutually destructive, may indeed win for an Administration, an agglomeration of tolerance, not of support, from conflicting interests and interested contestants. But the Administration which aims to secure for itself, or for the party which it represents, the confidence and the earnest cooperation of popular support, or which aims still higher at the speedy accomplishment of great and beneficial public measures, such an Administration must be chary of promises, and must resort to a concentration of purpose, and a provident consolidation of public resources. We must at once take hold on the first point of policy, the comparative importance and present urgency of which command the most immediate attention. In the domain of foreign policy, a Virginia Representative, the Hon. A. G. Jenkins, seems to have recognized the clue to the disentanglement of our international

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complications. Before we can calculate the expediency of any other step, the abrogation of the Bulwer-Clayton Treaty must be effected. Source: New York Times, January 21, 1859 (as obtained from the Richmond Enquirer, January 10, 1859), p. 2.

110. Democratic Party Platform, June 18, 1860 In 1860, two Democratic Party platforms emerged when the Democratic Convention split into North and South. The majority faction nominated Stephen Douglas (1813–1861) for president, and its platform was adopted at both the Charleston, North Carolina, and Baltimore, Maryland, conventions. Because the party nominated Douglas it was called the Douglas Platform. Along with protecting slavery, the Platform appealed to the southern dissidents by resolving to annex Cuba, which was popular among southerners. However, southern Democrats bolted from the party and held their own convention in Richmond, Virginia, where they selected Kentucky senator and U.S. Vice President John C. Breckenridge (1821–1875) as their nominee for president.

Resolved, that we, the Democracy of the Union in Convention assembled, hereby declare our affirmance of the resolutions unanimously adopted and declared as a platform of principles by the Democratic Convention at Cincinnati, in the year 1856, believing that Democratic principles are unchangeable in their nature, when applied to the same subject matters; and we recommend, as the only further resolutions, the following: Inasmuch as difference of opinion exists in the Democratic party as to the nature and extent of the powers of a Territorial Legislature, and as to the powers and duties of Congress, under the Constitution of the United States, over the institution of slavery within the Territories, Resolved, That the Democratic party will abide by the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States upon these questions of Constitutional Law. Resolved, That it is the duty of the United States to afford ample and complete protection to all its citizens, whether at home or abroad, and whether native or foreign born. Resolved, That one of the necessities of the age, in a military, commercial, and postal point of view, is speedy communications between the Atlantic and Pacific States; and the Democratic Party pledge such Constitutional Government aid as will insure the construction of a Railroad to the Pacific Coast, at the earliest practicable period. Resolved, that the Democratic Party are in favor of the acquisition of the Island of Cuba on such terms as shall be honorable to ourselves and just to Spain. Resolved, That the enactments of the State Legislatures to defeat the faithful execution of the Fugitive Slave Law, are hostile in character, subversive of the Constitution, and revolutionary in their effect. Resolved, That it is in accordance with the interpretation of the Cincinnati platform, that during the existence of the Territorial Governments the measure of restriction, whatever it may be, imposed by the Federal Constitution on the power of the Territorial Legislature over the subject of the domestic relations, as the same has been, or shall hereafter be finally determined by the Supreme Court of the

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United States, should be respected by all good citizens, and enforced with promptness and fidelity by every branch of the general government. June 18, 1860. Source: See TeachingAmericanHistory.org, A Project of the Ashbrook Center for Public Affairs at Ashland University, http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document 79.

111. El Grito de Lares, Principles of Unity, 1867 The Puerto Rican Independence movement gained ground in the 1860s. The leader was medical doctor Ram
on Betances (1827–1898) who had been exiled for sedition because he raised the issue of Puerto Rican independence. By the day’s standards, Puerto Rico was heavily populated with estimates of a million people. Although it was influenced by movements in Cuba, Puerto Rico was some 900 miles from Cuba and 1,000 miles from the United States. There were several factions—on opposite sides were those calling for more autonomy within the Spanish government and those wanting independence. On September 23, 1868, the rebels called for Puerto Rican independence from Spain. The movement was influenced by successful struggles throughout Latin America. However, the revolt was premature and failed. Only a year before, Betances and his fellow revolutionaries founded the Revolutionary Committee of Puerto Rico. They issued the following principles of unity, which formed the building blocks of the independence movement. It is known today as El Grito de Lares (the Cry of Lares). After this point, Puerto Ricans formed a government in exile, operating from New York and Latin American capitals where they recruited money for arms and supporters.

THE TEN COMMANDMENTS OF FREE MEN 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

Abolition of slavery The right to fix taxes Freedom of worship Free press Free speech Free trade Freedom of assembly Right to bear arms Civil liberties of the citizens Right to elect their own public officials

Source: World of Guazabara Federation, http://guazabara.com/GritodeLares.htm.

112. Excerpt from Correspondent Quasimodo, ‘‘Cuba,’’ 1868 Spain, on the eve of the conquest of the Caribbean Islands in the 1490s, had become a major sugar producer. Plantations in the south of Spain and in the Azore and Canary Islands were expanded in the Caribbean. Cuba, under the Spanish crown, had one of the largest land masses in the Caribbean and was ideal for sugar cultivation. During the 1800s, a worldwide abolitionist

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movement led mostly by England limited the number of Africans imported to the island. After 1865, the United States joined in the abolition of the slave trade. The following article notes the decline of the African population in Cuba in 1868, and talks about the labor shortage on the sugar plantations. Plantation owners turned to China for laborers who were treated abysmally.

CUBA Proposed Revival of the Slave Trade How Plantation Hands Are Treated—A Cuban Loan—Distinguished Visitors— Movements of Gen. Lersundi Havana, Saturday, March 18, 1868. From Our Own Correspondent. Summer has made its appearance somewhat too soon for the comfort of these who are compelled to remain in this hot climate. The warm weather has a peculiar influence on the population, and manifests its power in many ways. Among those most affected by it are undoubtedly the editors of the Havana journals. These gentlemen form a very peculiar class, judging from their ponderous leaders, which advocate the most absurd and even criminal measures, such as the revival of the slave-trade, a suggestion put forward by the Diario de la Marina. That paper had not expressed the fact in so many plain words, but has published several articles demonstrating, after a fashion, the impossibility of obtaining the field hands needed to cultivate the sugar-cane fields, and giving utterance to a firm conviction that a free white or a forced Chinese immigration can never supply the places vacated by the hundreds of Africans who are annually sacrificed to fill the pockets of the planter. The black population is continually decreasing instead of multiplying, as was the case in the Southern States while Slavery existed there. The reason for this is obvious and well known to everybody who has been enabled to observe the treatment of the slaves on most Cuban plantations. In the first place, the negroes are poorly fed. The usual daily allowance of food on most plantations is so small that it is hardly worth while mentioning, being merely a hash of sweet potatoes, plantains, and a little jerked beef, and in many instances even the jerked beef is dispensed with. How the human frame can long sustain itself with such insufficient victuals is a wonder, and it is not therefore to be marveled at that the negroes and Chinamen die so soon. The Chinamen receive a ration of rice at every meal, as otherwise they would rise is mutiny at once. The allowance of rice to these ill-treated Asiatics can therefore not be ascribed to the liberality of the planter, but to fear. Fresh meat is an article which is known on many plantations only by name, as the article, when given, is of such a wretched quality and so limited in quantity that the blacks might as well not have any. There are some plantations, it is true, where the slaves are better cared for than on others, but the above statement holds good when applied to the generality. The second grand cause for the annual lessening of the number of slaves is the overwork. During the grinding season the slaves of both sexes, and irrespective of age, work from nineteen to twenty-two hours per day. This appears incredible, but it is a well-known and authenticated fact, having come under the personal observation of your correspondent on several occasions. The negroes retire at midnight from the

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sugar-house, after working from 4 o’clock in the morning, to obtain from three to four hours’ sleep before beginning the next day’s labor. There is no Sunday, no day of rest; it is a continual succession of days of labor; no rest or relaxation is afforded the poor negro, for the owner of the plantation must have money enough to support his town establishment, and save enough for a Summer trip to Saratoga or to Europe; he must have his carriages and boxes at the opera, while his friends must be entertained. Is it a wonder, therefore, that the working population should be decreasing and that the planters should clamor for field hands? The white population increases fast enough; in fact they may be classed as super prolific, but its offspring not that which is wanted or needed by the planter, who can always find drivers and overseers in abundance. Yet it must be conceded that these whites are fully as capable of performing a reasonable snare of farm labor as the blacks, unless they should also be compelled to work twenty hours a day. Source: New York Times, April 26, 1868, p. 10.

113. Excerpts from the Address of Manuel de Quesada of Cuba to the United States, December 4, 1873 Manuel de Quesada (1830–1886), a Cuban patriot born in Puerto Rico, was forced to immigrate to Mexico in 1853, because of his anti-Spanish government activities. He joined the ranks of Mexican President Benito Ju
arez (1806– 1872) and fought against the French from 1861 to 1868. Promoted to brigadier general, he became governor of Coahuila and Durango, Mexico. When the first popular Cuban insurrection began in 1868, he organized a revolutionary expedition in U.S. territory and landed at Guanaja, in the northern part of Cuba. In 1870, he left the island, to tour the United States and the South American republics while recruiting for Cuban independence. The Spaniards captured one of his steamers, Virginius, and the crew, including his son, was executed at Santiago de Cuba. After the insurrection failed, he moved to Costa Rica. The following address is one of his early appeals to the United States for support. In the letter to President U.S. Grant Quesada aligns the interests of Cuban independist with anti-slavery forces in the United States. Quesada makes a case for a recognition of Cuban belligerency and foreign assistance from the United States. This is a very important document because it documents early Cuban migration to the United States, and it methodically reviews United States policy toward Cuba.

THE REPRESENTATIVES OF THE CUBAN REPUBLIC IN FOREIGN LANDS, TO HIS EXCELLENCY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES Your Excellency [President Ulysses S. Grant] even at a time when, by order of the Spanish officials in the island of Cuba, the captain, crew, and a large portion of the passengers of the American steamer ‘‘Virginius,’’ captured, near Jamaica by a Spanish man-of-war, have been executed, and the survivors remain subjected to … [cruel] treatment … [and] the American people and the whole civilized world stand amazed at the horrors of the transaction … your Excellency’s high minded …

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Message to Congress strengthened the hopes … that the Cuban question was at last to receive the solution demanded by the interest of civilization and the spirit of American institutions.… II As the war in Cuba broke out a short time after [the U.S. Civil War (1861 65)], the men engaged in the contest here [the U.S.], were perhaps inclined to regard the Cubans as holding the same relations to the Spanish government that the seceding States did to the government of this Union, and looked upon them as rebels to the mother country.… a great part of the American merchants resident in the island [of Cuba], or having business relations therewith … [had] interests … identical with those of the slave-trading Spaniards who constituted the real Spanish government of Cuba. The commerce of the United States with the Island represents more than $100,000,000 yearly, and many of the Americans engaged in it are the very energetic, though not avowed, defenders of the Spanish power in the island. And, for the reason that such power furnishes for them the slave labor which produces the sugar, coffee, and tobacco, the traffic in which makes them rich. The men in this country who sustain this commerce necessarily exert a great influence, without appearing to mingle in any political questions, and they may have created in Washington a feeling opposed to Cuba, which will prevent the question being seen in its true light. The Cubans constituted a colony of Spain, without political rights or rights of any kind; the South [the Confederacy] belonged to a confederation of free States, bound to submit to the decision of the greater number; the Cubans fight to abolish slavery, the South fought to preserve it; the Cubans desire to be allied to the Union, the South only wished to be separate there from. To sum up the whole matter, the South, whether wrong or otherwise, decided to establish, by an appeal to arms, the new principle of the right of a portion of a nation to separate from the main body; the Cubans have the long since admitted [the] right of independence belonging to every oppressed colony, as proclaimed in 1776 by the fathers of this country [the U.S.]. They had many times asked political rights from Spain, which had been as often denied them, and when they had lost every hope, they took to the field. Whether they are entitled to any credit for the manner they have conducted themselves, is a question not to be treated as idle words, as, it is feared, has been done heretofore. In Cuba was formed a respectable society, augmented by emigration from Florida, St. Domingo, and all Spanish America, and influenced by the fact that a certain market for their productions could be found in the United States. The families who there acquired wealth, not finding an opportunity of educating their sons in a satisfactory manner under Spanish rule, adopted the habit of sending them to foreign lands, and in this way, after many years, there grew up in that country a population refined and cultured in opposition to the aims and wishes of the government of Spain. When this population decided to break the ties which bound them to the mother country, propositions were made to inaugurate the movement in April 1869, at which time it was thought all the arms and necessary supplies could be obtained and properly distributed; but the intention having been discovered by the Spaniards the outbreak was anticipated by several months, and on the 10th of October of the

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year previous it took place. The Cubans preferred to go to the field without arms rather than remain and be executed in cold blood by the Spaniards. From that moment the only question has been how to obtain arms from abroad. The Spanish government, being well aware that the oppressed people of the great Antille had means enough to arm their forces and to create a navy, confiscated the property of a great part of them. This property amounted to several hundreds of millions of dollars, as can be proved by the official records in Havana. This measure could not, however, prevent the patriots from buying arms, though it diminished to an immense extent the revolutionary resources. By private subscriptions of Cubans only there have been purchased fourteen steamers, sixteen sailing vessels, and 40,000 rifles. Unfortunately, as the requisite funds could not be collected rapidly, it was impossible to apply them on as large a scale as necessary to evade the Spanish blockade and not to break in any respect the neutrality laws of this country. The expeditions, sometimes owing to the scarcity of resources and at others to the want of experience natural under the circumstances have not always arrived at their destinations. It was essential to employ a greater amount of money at one time than could be obtained from private subscriptions. There were three methods of raising such money sending to sea to prey upon Spanish commerce, exchanging for funds those products remaining within the extent of the insurgent lines, and to negotiate a foreign loan. To the first was presented the obstacle that the worthy representatives of the Cuban Republic at that time did not dare to assume the responsibility, as they were made aware that the American government would not view favorably the existence of Cuban privateers when it was pressing the Alabama claims. To the second existed the obstacle, that Cuban belligerency not being recognized, it was impossible to excite the spirit of gain to engage in any enterprises the object of which was to run the blockade. The third had for its obstacle that all the European and some American houses disposed to enter upon its negotiation, imposed always as a sine qua non condition the previous recognition of the belligerency by the United States. Consequently, the main object of all our diplomatic efforts has been, during a certain time, to bring about such recognition. The Spaniards, on their part, knowing that the immediate loss of the island would result from this recognition, stopped at no means to prevent it [sic] accomplishment, and without doubt they have displayed herein great diplomatic sagacity. But if on the field of intrigue they gained the result which they desired, they were not equally fortunate on the field of battle. As was natural, the greater part of the unarmed Cubans and families who were within the theatre of the war were dispersed or sent away in the midst of the military movements. At the same time, a regular army was formed, equipped by the arms and materials furnished by the successful expeditions and with those taken from the enemy, which army has during the past five years, been increasing in numbers, morale and strength. The Spanish army in Cuba had lost, during the first four years of the war, 60,000 men, and it was supposed that the Cuban loss had been correspondingly great. As the Spaniards are naturally interested in belittling the importance of the insurrection, it may be concluded these figures are not exaggerated. Admitting that the loss, during the past year, the most bloody of all, has been in proportion equally large, it will be seen that since the beginning of the war 150,000 men have perished. The loss resulting from the destruction of property is immense. The value of the productions which could have been controlled by the republican government of Cuba, during the first months of the war is estimated at $10,000,000.

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These productions were afterwards lost through the military operations which followed. The value of the crops in those districts which constitute the seat of war, and which have been lost, can be estimated at $15,000,000 a year … notwithstanding all these immense losses of life and property, the non-recognition of the belligerency of the Cubans by the United States and the supreme efforts made to suppress them by Spain, they are now, as no one will deny, stronger than ever, and they have an army which renders nugatory all the efforts of their foes in the field. Their hearts have been tempered until they are injustice proof … the delay in the recognition of their belligerency by this [U.S.] country, will compel the postponement of their [Cuban] independence until the ruin of the Antille is complete. With the slow but inevitable march of the cancer, the liberating army is encroaching upon the Spanish dominion in the island. As time moves on, this dominion is constantly growing weaker in the midst of its furious convulsions, while the revolution is constantly spreading, and the ultimate result will be to destroy in America the ignominious power of the nation of Torquemada, Alva, and Burriel. The Cubans, notwithstanding the embargoes and confiscations from which they have suffered, are always enabled to raise funds among themselves, and every effort made by them to give assistance to the liberating army is always succeeded by another, and there is no possibility of a cessation of these efforts.… The patriots have never been wanting in fighting material, as every man capable of bearing arms has always been inclined to do so. They have done and they do everything alone, entirely alone, notwithstanding the fact that they have been opposed by an army stronger than that which Great Britain sent to this country to suppress the American Revolution, added to the number which Spain herself sent out to suppress the revolts against her power in Mexico and in her South American colonies. There were never forty thousand British soldiers on American soil; there were never forty thousand Spanish soldiers on the continent they lost. In Cuba there were during the first four years of the existing struggle, sixty thousand regular troops, and besides, some thousands of Spanish volunteers, who garrisoned the towns. With all this extraordinary force, with a formidable navy and the best American weapons, the Spanish government has year after year seen its battalions disappear, and it has no resources to-day to replace them. Every Cuban, every progressive man, will always admire the history of this wonderful country [the United States], whose noble and intelligent people have changed materially and morally the world with the marvels of electricity, of steam, and of liberal institutions. This beloved land of America, this powerful nation, is the natural ally of Cuba. It is the market of Cuba. Its society is that which must be interlaced with the society of Cuba. Its glories reflect upon Cuba, its misfortunes are hers, and she ever prays for its success in all endeavors. The defenders of the island, however, are inclined to believe that their patriotism is not inferior to the patriotism of the fathers of the American revolution.… The lesson of the historian is, that without foreign assistance it is probable its first effort for independence would have been suppressed and George Washington died on the scaffold treated by the British writers as a filibuster; a term applied to-day by an eminent jurist to the men of education and high position in society who have recently sacrificed their lives for the liberty of their country, and among whom the undersigned has the glory to count a son, a youth eighteen years old. [Quesada reviews the history of the American Revolution and the crucial support of France.]…

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But this assistance, so secretly afforded, did not satisfy the French people, and many volunteers, depending upon their own resources, came hither to offer their lives in defense of the independence of this nation, when the news of the loss of New York and the retreat through the Jerseys made most foreigners despair of the American cause, as said Hildreth: ‘‘The Marquis of Lafayette, a youth of nineteen, belonging to one of the most illustrious families of France, who had just arrived in America, and whom Washington now met, in Philadelphia, for the first time … like all other French nobles of that date, he had received a military education, and held a commission in the French Army. In garrison at Metz, he had been present at an entertainment given by the Duke of Gloucester, brother of the British king, and on that occasion, from the Duke’s lips he heard, first, the story of the American rebellion. His youthful fancy was fired by the idea of this trans-Atlantic struggle for liberty, and, though master of an ample fortune, and married to a wife whom he tenderly loved, he resolved at once to adventure in it. For that purpose, he opened a communication with Deane. His intention becoming known, the French Court, which still kept up the forms of neutrality, forbade him to go. But he secretly purchased a ship, which Deane loaded with military stores, and set sail at a moment when the news of the loss of New York and the retreat through the Jerseys made most foreigners despair of the American cause.’’ With the reception of these resources, the Americans were enabled to enter upon a new and active campaign which proved one of victories, though with occasional reverses.… The Modern Greek, too, as is well known, owes his independence, first to recognition of his belligerent rights by the leading powers of Europe, and, subsequently, to the practical assistance of the same. And lately Lombardy and Venetia owe their independence of Austria to the alliance of Italy and Prussia. It cannot be inferred from this that they were not entitled to their independence, that they did not fight bravely the Americans, Spaniards, South Americans, Greeks, Lombards and Venetians.… no people has acquired its independence without foreign assistance, is it to be assumed that Cuba, which has had no such aid, is to be conquered by the Spanish? No; the immense misfortunes which have fallen upon that unhappy country appear to be a punishment for the horrors and abominations which have been manifested in its fields in order to coin gold from the blood of the slaves. For this great crime, both Spaniards and Cubans are responsible, as well as those who in any way foster the productions of slavery. It is true that as soon as the Cubans rose in arms against Spanish domination, they began to cleanse their skirts of the dark spot, declaring freedom to the slaves and making them their equals before the law; but it was necessary that they should expiate the abominations of the slave-trade, of the whip and the anvil block, with sufferings proportionate to them, and the ferocity of the Spaniards in Cuba has cleansed them from all the guilt of this so great crime. The spirit of evil, incarnate in these Spaniards, and extending through the island, has furnished to the Cubans an expiation for the sins of their fathers, and as they have not a single ally on earth, they have the alliance of Providence. This is not a common expression, nor without significance in the sphere of fact. In that splendid island which Columbus pronounced ‘‘the most beautiful land that human eye ever dwelt upon,’’ under its clear skies, amid its picturesque seas, among its odorous flowers, its

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birds of brilliant plumage, and its proud forests, Mother Nature has placed a germ of disease, deadly to the European the malaria. the complete exhaustion of the Spanish treasury, as has already been said, has rendered it impossible for Spain to send to Cuba the necessary number of troops to maintain her present military position. This leads to the conclusion that if Spain, with all the moral and material assistance of this nation, has not been able to sustain herself victoriously against the Cubans, the latter would easily have conquered, had they, from the beginning, been enabled to introduce into the island the arms they needed. Your Excellency will, may be, answer this, that the high interest of this [his] country would not permit her to take any steps in this matter, and that the wiser and more prudent course was the one which has been adopted.… [Quesada complains] Meanwhile, the Spanish ambassador was an especial favorite in Washington. Nor was this all. In this country was constructed a squadron of gunboats to aid in suppressing the Cuban movement; and from this country, too, were sent the artillery and the Remington rifles used by the Spanish Army in Cuba. The record of the aid extended by this great Republic to rivet the chains upon a people struggling to be free will not be complete without referring to the order of American war vessels, cruising along the coast of the island, to receive all deserters from the Cuban forces who might make application to be taken on board an order which constituted a true armed intervention on the part of this country in the struggle in favor of Spain. That this is so is evident from the fact that Spain, though so punctilious regarding any interference in her affairs from without, has, so far as is known, made no remonstrance found no fault. In the meantime, the government at Madrid was sending thousands upon thousands of soldiers to the island, and, in order to prevent any change of policy on the part of the American government, a change which was demanded by the American people, it resorted to the subterfuge of proclaiming several times the entire pacification of Cuba. This was done by the Captains General, De Rodas and Valmaseda, during 1869, and in 1870, the Spanish Cortes extended a unanimous vote of thanks to the former for his action in bringing about the alleged pacification. Their object, in these deceitful declarations, has been to gain time, and to continue the American government bound to inaction, knowing that the recognition at Washington of the belligerency of the Cubans would be the death-blow to their power in America. The slave question was also used by them to win the good graces of the American government. Striving to make it appear that they were inspired by a spirit of abolition, they issued laws with bombastic preambles, which, so far from abolishing the criminal institution in the island, only resulted in its continuance. Thus, year after year has passed away without the Cubans obtaining that recognition to which they were entitled. Unquestionably, had they been less vigorous, they would have succumbed. Cuban authorities, becoming convinced of the enmity of the American government, withdrew their representatives accredited it, though giving to the undersigned full powers in every respect, including authority to treat with the American government, whenever it should be deemed proper to recognize the Cubans as a people struggling for independence. This action of the modest government, established on the battlefields of Cuba Libre, might perchance seem ridiculous and contemptible were the executive mansion at Washington occupied by a man less high-minded and noble than the one who shook hands with Lee on the banks of the Appomatox.… What other

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conviction could the Cuban government have had than that the American Administration was hostile to it? What could it do but recall its minister in this country, seeing he was always repulsed by the authority to which he was accredited? Cuba, conscious of its own inherent strength, accepted with sorrow the apparently undeniable fact of the hostility of the administration at Washington, and determined to continue its struggle for independence, relying solely upon its own resources and convinced of its ultimate triumph. This confidence was incited not alone by the justice of its cause, but by the unanimity of sentiment among the natives, and the fact that every man, no matter what his situation in life, or place of residence, was doing something to advance the interests of the cause. As a general rule, the Spaniards, born in the Iberian Peninsula and settled in the American colonies, have been far more despotic and pitiless in their treatment of the descendants of Spaniards born therein, than has the government of Madrid. The codes embodying the laws of the Indies and the municipal laws were, perhaps, not perfect models of liberalism, but, considering the times in which they were enacted, were calculated to bring about the prosperity of the societies affected by them, had not the Spanish residents always prevented their execution, in order to retain a monopoly of every good thing. In fact, the Creole population throughout Spanish America could well have endured the tyranny of the government at Madrid, and been resigned to remain thereunder, but they could not endure the tyranny of the Spanish residents, who condemned them to imbecility, misery, and death. And thus it is with Cuba, as is indicated in the recent message of Your Excellency. The Spaniards established in the island have always bitterly opposed any measures for the improvement of the natives, interested only in the slave trade and in accomplishing the total degradation of the Cubans. Far from composing the aristocratic portion of the people, as has been erroneously reported to Your Excellency, they constitute an uneducated population of bachelors, and careful to create no ties in the country. They are thus left free to indulge in their hatred to the people, which they never relinquish. When the war for independence broke out they formed themselves into militia organizations, called ‘‘The Volunteers,’’ more ferocious than the Janizaries and Mamelukes. In order to overawe the native population they have grossly exaggerated their numbers, but there are, nevertheless, as many as 25,000 of them in the island, doing garrison duty in all the towns, the natives thereof being defenceless, as arms are prohibited them. Besides the volunteers and regular troops there are but few Spaniards in the island. It is not easy to estimate the entire population, as the government and the volunteers have always been interested in preventing a reliable census, and they have fixed as they liked the returns. It may be safely assumed that of the 1,500,000 the estimated population 500,000 are colored. Of the latter, more than 300,000 are slaves. There are in all 100,000 Spaniards on the island. The Volunteers being the only armed bodies in the towns, they are enabled to perpetrate their outrages with impunity. They began their murders in January 1869, in Havana; and, not satisfied with having shot without trial several thousands in Bayamo, Manzanillo, Holguin, Camaguey, Matanzas, and Santiago de Cuba, the theatre of the late massacre by Burriel, they have rebelled against every Captain-General who has not obeyed them, and in one way or another they have sent back to Spain Dulce, De Rodas, Ceballos, and Pieltain. The secret of their power can be easily understood. They have the monopoly of the interior commerce and retail trade; they have the slave trade, which still exists,

Latinos South of the Border

though carried on with the greatest secrecy, and they have the management of the embargoed properties of the Cubans. In fact, they are in league with the Spanish government to appropriate to themselves all the agricultural wealth of the island, resulting from the labors of the natives. Holding as they do the cities, the triumph of the Spanish cause would be the signal for exterminating the Cubans, as has already been done in many of the interior towns.… The Cubans can only expect death from these Volunteers. They realize that with the suppression of the insurrection, the work of extermination would commence, in one form or another: by immense deportations from the island, as in the case of the Fernando Po prisoners, so conducted that few, if any, would survive, without for a moment neglecting the easier task of daily shootings.… If the Cubans could for a moment doubt that this is the fate reserved for them in case of their being routed, they would easily be convinced of it by a consideration of the treatment accorded to the blacks in 1844. There existed on the island at that time a numerous and wealthy colored population. The Spaniards determined on a scheme to deprive them of their money. To this end, they affected to believe that a conspiracy existed among them, a conspiracy of which no proof has been found after thirty years, and under the lash and by the rifle, they were all exterminated. A great poet, Placido, perished among them. Considering these precedents, demonstrating as they do that the Cubans are fighting for life, it is easy to see how they have been able to neutralize the most energetic efforts of the Spaniards.… The United States long since became a resort of all the Cuban families, as could be seen at Saratoga, Newport, and, above all, in the Empire City, and, not satisfied with this yearly trip, they, soon began to purchase real estate and establish their residence in this country, making Cuba their winter resort. Meanwhile all their available means were invested in this country in national securities, railroad bonds, &c. This transfer of property from the Antille to the United States has assumed large proportions since 1865, and, had the outbreak been postponed for three years, there would have remained only a few wealthy Cuban families not established in this country. In the early part of 1869, the decree of confiscation against many of them was issued, but already large numbers naturalized as Americans had a great part of their fortunes in this [the U.S.] country. Thus it can be easily seen from what source are drawn these very, very considerable expenditures. Moreover, the assassinations which took place, after the insurection [sic] of Yara, in the towns of the island, drove very many of the inhabitants to these hospitable shores. Not all of them were rich, and the poor soon began to employ themselves in a manner profitable to both the country which had received them and to the patriotic cause. They mostly dedicated themselves to the manufacture of cigars, and, according to the statistics, they have increased fivefold the wealth of the nation in this branch of industry since 1868. At least it cannot be denied that during the intervening time, large factories have been established in Key West, New Orleans, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, and other places. These honest men, earning from $3 to $5 a day, have contributed constantly to the patriotic fund, reducing as much as possible their personal expenses that they might contribute the more. It is worthwhile here to mention the middle class composed of those who could not save their property before the Revolution and those who have adopted professional careers or are devoted to literary and artistic pursuits. By the first of these, this mercantile community has been enlarged in wealth and

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numbers, and by the latter, scientific and illustrated papers of a higher order have been established in New York, which propagate the progress and glories of the United States throughout all Spanish America, and, to an extent, in Spain itself. In medical science they have some distinguished representatives in this country, and the musical societies and the picture galleries of this enlightened city are sustained to a large degree by Cubans eminent in their respective fields. All contribute, whether rich or poor, to the patriotic fund, and will continue to do so, and while doing this they also contribute with their blood to bring about the independence of their native country. In every one of the expeditions which have been fitted out the Henry Burden, Salvador, Peril, Grapeshot, Catharine Whiting, Lilian Anna, Upton, Virginius, Edgar Stuart, and many others it has been necessary to reject applications from Cubans, as the lists were full. As many of them have gone to Cuba as could be provided with means of transportation. Notwithstanding all these well-established facts there are those who accuse the Cubans of lack of patriotism, and it is believed that there are here many thousands who do not honorably represent their cause. It is to them a sorrowful matter that, instead of receiving a due appreciation of their efforts and sacrifices, they only meet with misrepresentation and revilement. As these misrepresentations have been so often repeated without refutation, the representative of the Cuban Republic takes advantage of this occasion to make a full statement of the facts. According to the most reliable information, collected and on file in this office, the natives of Cuba resident in the United States, including old people, women, and children, do not exceed 5,000. Of those capable of bearing arms only a few remain; the balance are in the field. Of those few, many are detained here as being the only support of families. The journals who for sensational purposes make so much of the Cubans in this country ought to realize that the importance attached to them springs rather from their wealth and sacrifices than from their numbers. In order to conclude the matter, it may be added that this emigration, though so small in numbers, may have been more profitable to the country than others which have been very large. They are free from those habits of intemperance which, unfortunately, are so prevalent in some other classes of society. They do not disturb public tranquility with violent demonstrations. The assurance can be made that, with the recognition of belligerency and the consequent facilities for obtaining arms, there will be none left capable of carrying a rifle, and even many of the old men will go. It is to be hoped that, hereafter, they will be regarded in the true light. It is not so easy a matter as has often been said to leave home, wealth, and every enjoyment to enter upon a fearful campaign.… The United States recognized the belligerency and independence of Texas because they considered it to their own interest. The same United States treated Mexico as a republic when she was a de facto empire because they considered this course to their own interest. Interest, and before everything, interest, has always ruled diplomacy since this modern invention was applied by Louis XI and Ferdinand V. And there is no other conclusion than that, in the disposition of the Cuban question, interest, and only interest, will control the action of this nation. The principle accepted, the question will, at the end, be reduced to one of dollars and cents. What has been, what is the interest of the United States in this Cuban question? Let us examine this point, placing on one side justice, humanity, and duty. First, what has been? When the Spanish American colonies accomplished their independence, Bolivar decided that Spain should be entirely expelled from the New

Latinos South of the Border

World, and for this purpose he organized a formidable expedition to invade Cuba to act in co-operation with the natives, it being well known that the principal families were engaged in the conspiracies of the Aguila Negra and Soles de Bolivar. This expedition, fully organized and equipped by Colombia and Mexico, with the squadron in readiness to transport it to the shores of Cuba, was on the point of embarking when the United States notified the powers engaged in it that they would not allow the proposed operations to be carried out, and that they would assist, with their military and naval forces, Spain to retain under her dominion the Island of Cuba.… The movement for independence in Spanish America being essentially abolitionist in its character, the American administration of that period could not see, with pleasure, the liberty of the blacks in Cuba brought about; not only because, as these notes indicated, the results would be detrimental to the peace and prosperity of this nation, but, as was carefully concealed, it hoped eventually to bring it within the Union as a slave State. Moreover, the independence of Cuba at that time might have resulted in a European protectorate in the Antilles, and perhaps the occupation of the island by England with the assent of the natives. Spain, a weak nation, having no navy, was preferred by the United States to hold temporarily the island, as she would preserve slavery in it, and the expectation was entertained that, at some future day, it would be ceded by her … from 1848 to 1850 and 1854, the government of the United States, controlled by the slave interest, took some steps in favor of the annexation of the island. The Southern States saw with alarm the growing influence and increasing development of northern principles, and out of this grew this movement for annexation. The Cubans, though, they have always been inclined to substitute free labor for slave.… In 1854, another annexation scheme was presented in the slave interest. Gen. Quitman, of Mississippi, was to command a formidable expedition. The conspiracy was discovered, and Pinto and several others were executed by the Spaniards. The interest of the dominant party lay in the acquisition of the Gem of the West Indies, to be divided into three States, to add to the influence of the South; and if this scheme did not succeed it was because France and England intervened in the matter, proposing to the United States the tripartite alliance to guarantee to Spain the possession of Cuba.… What is now the interest of this nation? When the American civil war brought about as a trophy of victory to the North, the abolition of slavery, the government changed entirely its fundamental basis. It had no further reasons for desiring the preservation of the island in the power of Spain or to accomplish annexation with slave labor. Spain, instead of being a nation without a navy, as it was in 1826, had become a maritime power. Cuba, instead of being, with her slaves, a pleasant picture to the United States, became a monument of their own past ignominy that they could not tolerate at their own doors and this, even though the island remained faithful to the crown of Spain. The Cubans, as has been so often repeated, in 1868, took to the field to gain their independence. They took possession of a large portion of the island and from the very beginning declared free all of its inhabitants. The new Republic was in accordance with the regenerated Republic of the northern continent. At this moment, this nation was compelled to look to its interest in the question, and it appears the government thought it had found it in the propositions made by Mr. Sickles to the cabinet of Madrid. If it is true that these propositions were for the Cubans to purchase the island from Spain, with the guarantee of the United States, it is to be supposed that they would be advantageous to three

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contracting parties. But Spain did not accept them, though she employed the diplomatic arts referred to, and such a solution should have been abandoned. Was it the interest of the United States after that to preserve the status quo, that the horrors of the war should be continued, the natives not being allowed to arm themselves? This was in some respects the interest of Spain, but certainly not that of the United States. It appears that the United States abandoning the Cuban question to itself and without reference to justice thought it was their interest to retain their connection with the slave power in Cuba as long as possible. The recognition of Cuban belligerency would produce a declaration by Spain of the blockade of the island, and, as a consequence, the right of the Spaniards to search American vessels according to the treaty of 1795; this, of course, was a bad prospect for the commerce sustained with the slave power. May be it was considered that the continued arrival of sugar and tobacco from Cuba, paying its high duties, amounting to several millions of dollars, was preferable to any other solution for the present. It is true that such commerce grew out of slave labor, and that the United States have made it appear that they desire the abolition of such labor in Cuba and everywhere; but the question of slavery could be treated diplomatically, and extended through an indefinite period, the United States meanwhile deriving all the advantage from such traffic and from the duties on such articles. Though the Cubans, notwithstanding the course of the United States, persisted in imitating the founders of the great nation who fought for independence, nothing could be done which would change the relation of the country to such slave power.… It is very easy to comprehend, moreover, that, with the abolition of the custom houses in Cuba, or if, unhappily, this measure should be considered too progressive the suspension of the export duties on these commodities, and the reduction on the import duties there imposed upon the supplies and machinery required by the planters would result in an immense saving to both these planters and the merchants in the United States. This would more than recompense the former for the losses consequent on passing from slave to free labor, while the latter would find their remuneration in the increased profits on their wares, thus relieved of the onerous duties now imposed upon them. At the same time, Cuba would become a market for a large number of exports from this country which are now shut out from the island by the high duties imposed, in order that they may not compete with the productions of the peninsula.… These undeniable facts being borne in mind, it seems the interests of the United States, at the breaking out of the revolution was to favor, at least morally, the Cubans in their efforts to become independent.… The opportunities which the government has had since the outbreak of the war to assume a position favorable to the patriots have been very numerous. In March 1869, the American brig Mary Lowell was captured at Ragged Island, brought to Havana and condemned as a good prize, having on board a valuable cargo. This was an act more in contravention of international law than even the seizure of the Virginius. According to the treaty of 1795, the right of search and seizure of American vessels by the Spaniards extended only to the time of war. The infraction of this treaty, in the taking of the Mary Lowell, constituted a just cause for the American government to declare that the Spanish authorities had, by their action, virtually admitted the existence of a war in Cuba. The United States, therefore, should have recognized such war, and declared their neutrality in it. From this would have resulted a rapid termination of the struggle without these immense losses of

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property which have since occurred, to say nothing of the great destruction of American lives. After this remarkable event, which produced only a lengthy official correspondence, the American steamer Florida was overhauled and searched on two occasions by Spanish men-of-war in 1871. And so well satisfied was the administration at Washington that the action of the Spanish war vessels demonstrated the existence of a war in Cuba that on the 16th of July 1869, the honorable Secretary of State, in a protest against the edict of the Captain-General de Rodas, of the 7th of that month, stated the same in unequivocal language: ‘‘The United States cannot fail to regard any exercise on the part of Spain of the right of visit and search of American vessels, under color of the treaty of 1795, as involving the logical conclusion of the recognition by Spain of a state of war in Cuba,’’ is the idea conveyed. Notwithstanding that the government of the United States could not ‘‘fail to regard’’ any exercise on the high seas, near the island of Cuba, by any vessel of war or privateer of Spain, of the right to visit or board any vessel of the United States, under color of the provisions of the treaty of 1795, as involving the logical conclusion of a recognition by Spain of a state of war in Cuba, it is unhappily true that the American government did fail, when the boarding and search of the Florida occurred. The whole matter can be closed with the expression of a hope that this government will not fail, now, to take the action indicated in the protest referred to. Admitting that the nationality of the Virginius is a matter of doubt, and that her antecedents cannot be justified, this does not affect the question, as in the case of the Florida no such doubt, no such antecedents exist. She had never been to the coast of Cuba, and never carried arms or expeditionists there. The American government has maintained, in an official note, that certain acts involved the logical conclusion of a recognition by Spain of a state of war in Cuba. Spain has performed such acts, and so it must be concluded such war exists. The recognition of this war by Spain should be followed by the recognition of it by the United States and a declaration of its neutrality therein. This would be sufficient, and only will free America of the ignominious presence of the never-wearying murderers who have established themselves in that wealthy and beautiful island. This would increase the glory and wealth of this great nation.… The Cubans await the decisions of the American government at this critical moment. If it is in favor of justice, humanity, and freedom, they will bow in gratitude to Providence, acting in conformity to the sacrifices already made. In favor of the maintenance of the present condition of affairs, they shall continue to the end in the struggle in which they have so long, and at the cost of so much blood and treasure, been engaged.… This question must be considered in the light of the facts so clearly stated by your Excellency in your message. In that document it is recognized that in Cuba, besides the forces of the government of Spain, there exists what is called the insurrection of Yara and the pro-slavery party, the latter being ‘‘an element,’’ says your Excellency, ‘‘opposed to granting any relief from misrule and abuse, with no aspirations after freedom, commanding no sympathy in generous breasts, aiming to rivet still stronger the shackles of slavery and oppression.’’ Such an element, which ‘‘has seized many of the emblems of power in Cuba, is still a power in Madrid, and recognized by the government.’’ The undersigned, in the name of the government which he has the honor to represent, anticipates the expression of his gratitude to the government of the United States.… It is impossible to suppose that the high-minded statesmen of the great republic have determined upon a status quo which will leave the Cubans unable to

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obtain their independence through want of the requisite arms and materials the Spaniards at the same time unable to suppress their efforts until both parties become so weakened that the island will fall an easy prey to the government they represent. This would be far more ferocious and cruel than the conduct of the Spanish Volunteers of Havana, which is so much deprecated by the civilized world. No Machiavellian policy ever adopted in the history of mankind could be compared with this. No; it would be unjust so to insult the high and Christian members of the American government. Your Excellency’s obedient servant, M. QUESADA New York, December 4, 1873. Source: M. Quesada, Address of Cuba to the United States (New York: Comes, Lawrence & Co., Stationers and Printers, 1873), pp. 1 40, Library of Congress, http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/ r?ammem/murray:@field(DOCIDþ@lit(lcrbmrpt2502div2)).

114. Excerpt from a U.S. Senate Debate Regarding Whether the United States Should Annex Santo Domingo, 1870 Santo Domingo gained its independence from Spain in 1821. A year later, Haitians who shared the island invaded the Dominican Republic. In 1844, Dominicans ousted the Haitians but continued Haitian attacks bankrupted the republic. Conditions deteriorated to the point that, in 1870, President Buenaventura B
aez (1812–1884) asked the United States to annex Santo Domingo. A congressional debate was touched off by President Ulysses S. Grant (1869– 1877) annual message that proposed Congress should authorize a commission to negotiate an annexation treaty with San Domingo. Grant favored annexation. Congress passed a resolution in January 1871, authorizing the appointment of a commission. The document below reviews B
aez’s request; it was one of many documents representing the pro and con arguments for further U.S. expansion. This issue was debated in the forty-first U.S. Congress, third Session, 1870–1871, Senate.

The Congress of the United States is now being called upon to settle a question of the very greatest importance. This is the annexation of San Domingo, which Baez, for the last year, has been asking at the hands of the government at Washington. In every age, the people of a country have been consulted with regard to their wishes in the matter of being annexed to other countries, but such a rule has not been followed in the present case. On the 29th of November last, a treaty was signed for the annexation of San Domingo to the Union, without the people of that country being, in the slightest manner, informed thereof. The fourth article of the treaty states that the people of San Domingo ‘‘shall in the shortest possible time, express in a manner conformable to the laws, their will concerning the cession herein provided for, and the United States shall until such expression shall he had, protect the Dominican Republic against foreign intervention (Cabral and his party), in order that the national expression shall be free.’’ It is clear that the people of San Domingo had not, up to the 29th of last November, expressed the slightest wish for annexation. They were first annexed by treaty, and then were provided a mode, but a very poor one, of backing out from its provisions. The United States government not only appears to have given

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protection, but to have actively intervened in a struggle, which has been going on in that country for a year past. It has done more; for the facts show that it has actively aided the Baez party by a money contribution of $150,000; by the presence of ships of war, and by sending down cannon and material of war. Latterly, it has gone a step further, for Admiral Poor has just noticed the Haytiens [Haitians], who are the friends of the Cabral party, that they must do nothing whatever towards aiding that party. It would seem that Congress ought to have some respect for the laws of San Domingo, especially if it would imbue that people with a spirit of kindness. The Constitution of the Republic prohibits by Article 7th, all sale or alienation of territory, or any part of the same and a law was passed by the Congress of the Republic in 1867, which declared that man a traitor to his country who should propose a sale or alienation of any part of the soil. Has there been anything done which manifests a change of public sentiment in that regard? The accompanying documents will show that the so-called re-incorporation of San Domingo into the Spanish Monarchy was productive of bad results. Yet the Spaniards claim that the vote of the Republic was voluntary. That vote has been repeated in the swindling management restored to but a few days ago by Baez. The Spaniards came into the country a four years war did not make their fortunes better, and they had to retire ignominiously from the soil. Is it quite certain that, if the present annexation project be carried out, the people of that country, who according to the Spaniards at the time of abandoning the island, preferred above all times, the independence of the soil, may not exhibit signs of dissatisfaction, would they not have the sympathies of all free nations, because of the abstract justice of their cause? We first hear of this negotiation in June 1868, when Baez addressed a confidential letter to Mr. S. Reward, in which he said that HE was willing to sell the Peninsula of Samana to the United States, upon substantially the same terms the United States had heretofore to the administration of Cabral. On the 8th of July, Mr. Seward replied (confidentially) by saying, that this communication would be held under consideration. The astute Secretary of State further said: ‘‘National transactions, however desirable and however important, sometimes depend upon occasions quite as much as they do upon the merit of the policy involved. On the 18th of July, Baez replied by saying, that he desired the material assistance of the United States to establish his government permanently, and for such aid will recompose [recompense] the United States with Samana,’’ etc. It will be here seen that Baez wants to treat; ‘‘will recompense,’’ etc., but not a word is heard from the San Domingo people in the affair. On the 18th of August, the President complains that the New York papers had spoken of one Fabeus as his Commissioner for the purpose of concluding the Samana negotiation, and informs Mr. Seward ‘‘that he had no special Commissioner or agent,’’ etc., but at the same moment Mr. Fabens had a regular Commission as such in his pocket, duly signed by the Secretary of State of San Domingo. This letter was written to conceal from his own people what he was doing, and he went so far as to seize all letters coming from the United States, and to prohibit the circulation in San Domingo of any and all newspapers coming from the States. On the 9th of November 1868, Baez wrote again to Mr. Seward, the purport of which was as follows: 1. He desired ‘‘the protection of the United States over the Dominican Republic. The United States to take possession of Samana, or any other position that they may deem necessary, and must send troops and a fleet (to the island).’’

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2. ‘‘In case they (the United States) cannot give protection, without the sale of Samana, it will be sold.’’ 3. ‘‘The government is composed of men WHO DO NOT COMPROMISE THEMSELVES USELESSLY. They would like to have $200,000 paid down on the signing of the Convention! An answer was returned to this by Mr. Seward, the nature of which may be divined from the reply of Baez: ‘‘He is well aware,’’ said the Dominican Secretary of State, ‘‘that the Congress of the United States may not be inclined to bring about the annexation of any State or country by an act of war or what might be considered as conquest, but only by the free and general consent of the people expressed in a constitutional manner. The government of the Dominican Republic is prepared to obtain this national declaration by the common vote, or by acclamation, or in any other form that the United States government may indicate as satisfactory.’’ ‘‘It is necessary, however, that the United States should first give the assurance, by means of a formal dispatch [sic], that the measure, proposed by the Dominican government, is accepted, and, at the same time, send out to this city a vessel of war with a treaty, and the sum of $300,000. One vessel of war would be sufficient at present,’’ etc. Baez then threatens Mr. Seward with being compelled to effect a negotiation with an English company, in case he should not be able to succeed with the United States. The next communication is forwarded to Washington, under date of 9th of January 1869. Caliral was at that time operating in the South East, and the President was seriously alarmed. The following extraordinary question was asked in the letter forwarded to Mr. Seward: ‘‘What step would the United States take in the event that the different provinces should, at once, hoist the American flag and proclaim, by acclamation, that they placed themselves under the government of United States?’’ Remarking at the same time, ‘‘that such was the state of feeling existing throughout the country that the President, even if disposed, could scarcely restrain a movement which may occur at any time.’’ ‘‘The re-annexation of Dominica, as a province to Spain, was the personal act of President Samana, and is not a parallel case with the measures now proposed,’’ continues the President, ‘‘where a sister Republic, by spontaneous consent of its people, desires to be admitted into the American Union.’’ ‘‘If the possession of Samana Bay is considered a necessity for the future operations, which the government of the United States may yet have to undertake in the Western Hemisphere, then there can be no doubt that the moment has arrived for the realization of this idea; and, if so, it is essential now to reflect about the manner by which negotiations can be effected without complications.’’ ‘‘The purchase of the Peninsula is a simple question, but ought not its sale to be considered as prejudicial to the interests of England, France, and Spain in this quarter of the world, and may not those powers act conjointly in offering to purchase it for a general depot?’’ The same line of argument was pursued by the wily President, who added: ‘‘The Dominican government entertains no fear of being vanquished by its enemies outside, but the real danger is that it may fail on absolute want of means to carry it on (the war), unless speedily assisted,’’ etc. To this Mr. Seward replied, under the date of February 5th. He acknowledges ‘‘the receipt of the letter which has been addressed by President Baez to the

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President of the United States, and which contains a favorable response to the sentiments expressed by the President of the United States in his annual message to Congress, on the condition of the political affairs in the two Republics of San Domingo and Hayti.’’ All these papers,’’ he says, ‘‘have been submitted to the President of the United States. Soon after the opening of Congress, Mr. Banks, Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, in the House of Representatives, submitted a proposition, authorizing the President of the United States, with the consent of the Republic of St. Domingo, to extend a naval protection to that Republic. On the first of February, Mr. Orth, from the same committee, submitted to the House of Representatives a resolution, declaring the consent of Congress to the annexation of the Dominican Republic to the United States, with the consent of the people and government of the Republic. This resolution was laid upon the table, by a vote of one hundred and ten against sixty-two in favor of the resolution. I am informed that the same resolution, or one of similar effect, will be again brought before the House of Representatives on the 8th day of February, with the prospect of increased favor.’’ ‘‘There is always a necessity for the practice of much reserve on the part of the Executive in treating of questions of a Legislative character, upon which Congress is actually engaged. Writing under the restraint of this reserve, I think I may say two things for the information of the Dominican Republic. First, that the strong vote of the House of Representatives unfavorable to the resolutions, which I have mentioned, was largely due to the fact that the movers of the resolutions proceeded upon information, which is regarded by the Executive department as confidential, and therefore not in possession of the House of Representatives. That information, however, is regarded by the President of the United States, but with such considerations of propriety and delicacy as may be becoming toward the government and people of Dominica. Secondly, such proceedings, as are indicated by the resolution upon which the House of Representatives were engaged, are regarded by a part of Congress and the American people as being inconvenient in the present juncture of our domestic affairs; while, on the other hand, those proceedings are believed to be in harmony with the general sentiments and expectations of the government and people of the United States.’’ It may be here asked, if the Dominican people were willing to dispose of the most valuable part of the Republic, wherefore were all these propositions made in such a confidential manner? Mr. Fish has displayed more zeal in the matter than his predecessor. Without demanding any basis or conditions which might tend towards preventing the United States’ Treasury from being defrauded by a set of sharpers, he signs two treaties; one for the lease of Samana for fifty years, at an annual rent of $150,000, and makes the first payment in advance ($147,229.91), and another for the annexation of the Republic to the American Union. Source: Annexation of San Domingo. New York, J. Dickson, printer, 1870, pp. 1 7. Library of Congress, http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/murray:@field(DOCIDþ@lit(lcrbmrpt2505div1)): @@@$REF$.

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PART IX Independistas By the 1870s, most Latin American colonies had become independent republics. The only two remaining under the Spanish yoke were Cuba and Puerto Rico. The two islands were generously populated; Cuba was however closer to the United States and larger. Culturally and intellectually they were part of the region that can be described as south of the border. Ideas flowed freely across the borders of the disparate Latino nations many of whose newspaper articles flowed into the United States bonding the Spanish speaking people there. Because of the proximity of Cuba to the United States, and its fertile soil, the imperial designs on it were most persistent. Meanwhile, the independista movement grew on both islands and crystalized during the post U.S. Civil War (1861 1865). This led to the Spanish government brutally repressing uprisings in Cuba which led to the exile of independista leaders and workers to the United States. Spain, during this period, granted Puerto Rico more autonomy, but by this time it was too late, and Puerto Ricans had formed their own national identity. This section draws heavily from the writings of the Apostle of Cuban Independence, Jos
e Mart
ı (1853 1895) and other independistas during the thirty years of heavy sacrifices made by Cuban and Puerto Rican freedom fighters and their people.

115. Excerpt from Mar
ıa Eugenia Echenique, ‘‘The Emancipation of Women,’’ 1876 In 1876, Argentine feminist Mar
ıa Eugenia Echenique (1851–1878) wrote the following critique on the role and rights of women. There was a budding feminist movement throughout Latin America at the time. Latinas were well acquainted with Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896) and had read Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Stowe’s views on emancipation were applied to the emancipation of women. In her journal, Stowe wrote, ‘‘I wrote what I did because as a woman, as a mother, I was oppressed and brokenhearted, with the sorrows and injustice I saw, because as a Christian I felt the dishonor to Christianity, because as a lover of my country I trembled at the coming day of wrath.’’ While downplaying Stowe’s views on race, many Latina feminist writers emphasized gender inequality. The following excerpt is in the context of a six-month debate between Mar
ıa Eugenia Echenique and poet and novelist Josefina Pelliza de Sagasta (1848–1888) in the journal La Ondina del Plata. Echenique passionately advocates the emancipation of women.

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When emancipation was given to men, it was also given to women in recognition of the equality of rights, consistent with the principles of nature on which they are founded, that proclaim the identity of soul between men and women. Thus, Argentine women have been emancipated by law for a long time. The code of law that governs us authorizes a widow to defend her rights in court, just as an educated woman can in North America, and like her, we can manage the interests of our children, these rights being the basis for emancipation. What we lack is sufficient education and instruction to make use of them, instruction that North American women have; it is not just recently that we have proclaimed our freedom. To try to question or to oppose women’s emancipation is to oppose something that is almost a fact, it is to attack our laws and destroy the Republic. So let the debate be there, on the true point where it should be: whether or not it is proper for women to make use of those granted rights, asking as a consequence the authorization to go to the university so as to practice those rights or make them effective. And this constitutes another right and duty in woman: a duty to accept the role that our own laws bestow on her when extending the circle of her jurisdiction and which makes her responsible before the members of her family. This, assuming that the woman is a mother. But, are all women going to marry? Are all going to be relegated to a life of inaction during their youth or while they remain single? Is it so easy for all women to look for a stranger to defend their offended dignity, their belittled honor, their stolen interests? Don’t we see every day how the laws are trodden underfoot, and the victim, being a woman, is forced to bow her head because she does not know how to defend herself, exposed to lies and tricks because she does not know the way to clarify the truth? Far from causing the breakdown of the social classes, the emancipation of women would establish morality and justice in them; men would have a brake that would halt the ‘‘imperious need’’ that they have made of the ‘‘lies and tricks’’ of litigations, and the science of jurisprudence, so sacred and magnificent in itself but degenerated today because of abuses, would return to its splendor and true objective once women take part in the forum. Generous and abnegated by nature, women would teach men humanitarian principles and would condemn the frenzy and insults that make a battlefield out of the courtroom. ‘‘Women either resolve to drown the voice of their hearts, or they listen to that voice and renounce emancipation.’’ If emancipation is opposed to the tender sentiments, to the voice of the heart, then men who are completely emancipated and study science are not capable of love. The beautiful and tender girl who gives her heart to a doctor or to a scientist, gives it then, to a stony man, incapable of appreciating it or responding to her; women could not love emancipated men, because where women find love, men find it too; in both burns the same heart’s flame. I have seen that those who do not practice science, who do not know their duties or the rights of women, who are ignorant, are the ones who abandon their wives, not the ones who, concentrated on their studies and duties, barely have time to give them a caress. Men as much as women are victims of the indifference that ignorance, not science, produces. Men are more slaves of women who abuse the prestige of their weakness and become tyrants in their home, than of the schooled and scientific women who understand their duties and are capable of something. With the former, the husband has to play the role of man and woman, because she ignores everything: she is not capable of consoling nor helping her husband, she is not capable of giving

Independistas

tenderness, because, preoccupied with herself, she becomes demanding, despotic, and vain, and she does not know how to make a happy home. For her, there are no responsibilities to carry out, only whims to satisfy. This is typical, we see it happening every day. The ignorant woman, the one who voluntarily closes her heart to the sublime principles that provoke sweet emotions in it and elevate the mind, revealing to men the deep secrets of the All-Powerful; the woman incapable of helping her husband in great enterprises for fear of losing the prestige of her weakness and ignorance; the woman who only aspires to get married and reproduce, and understands maternity as the only mission of women on earth she can be the wife of a savage, because in him she can satisfy all her aspirations and hopes, following that law of nature that operates even on beasts and inanimate beings. I would renounce and disown my sex if the mission of women were reduced only to procreation, yes, I would renounce it; but the mission of women in the world is much more grandiose and sublime, it is more than the beasts’, it is the one of teaching humankind, and in order to teach it is necessary to know. A mother should know science in order to inspire in her children great deeds and noble sentiments, making them feel superior to the other objects in the universe, teaching them from the cradle to become familiar with great scenes of nature where they should go to look for God and love Him. And nothing more sublime and ideal than the scientific mother who, while her husband goes to caf
es or to the political club to talk about state interests, she goes to spend some of the evening at the astronomical observatory, with her children by the hand to show them Jupiter, Venus, preparing in that way their tender hearts for the most legitimate and sublime aspirations that could occupy men’s minds. This sacred mission in the scientific mother who understands emancipation the fulfillment of which, far from causing the abandonment of the home, causes it to unite more closely instead of causing displeasure to her husband, she will cause his happiness. The abilities of men are not so miserable that the carrying out of one responsibility would make it impossible to carry out others. There is enough time and competence for cooking and mending, and a great soul such as that of women, equal to that of their mates, born to embrace all the beauty that exists in Creation of divine origin and end, should not be wasted all on seeing if the plates are clean and rocking the cradle. Source: Courtesy of Paul Brians, Mary Gallwey, Douglas Hughes, Azfar Hussain, Richard Law, Michael Myers, Michael Neville, Roger Schlesinger, Alice Spitzer, and Susan Swan, eds. Translated by Francisco Manzo Robledo. Excerpt from Reading About the World, Volume 2, Harcourt Brace Custom Books, 1999. http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~wldciv/world civ reader/world civ reader 2/ echenique.htm.

116. Letter from Jos
e Mart
ı to the Editor of the New York Evening Post, March 25, 1889 Jos
e Mart
ı (1853–1895), perhaps the most beloved Cuban hero, spent much of his life exiled from his beloved Cuba. A renowned poet, he campaigned for Cuban independence and led several military expeditions. Mart
ı briefly returned to Cuba in 1878, but was again exiled for conspiring against the Spanish authorities. Throughout the following years, Mart
ı was in and out of

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the United States where he organized with fellow independentistas. In the United States, Mart
ı was at first optimistic about the United States, but confronted with indifference and racism, he grew disillusioned. In the late 1880s, U.S. President Benjamin Harrison’s administration renewed efforts to purchase Cuba from Spain. The United States had a budget surplus and Cuban sugar was a good investment. On Thursday, March 21, 1889, the New York Evening Post published a reprint of a short article entitled, ‘‘A Protectionist,’’ which revealed racist opinions that generated a strong response from the Cuban community. Mart
ı responded in the following letter.

To the editor of The Evening Post: Sir: I beg to be allowed the privilege of referring in your columns to the injurious criticism of the Cubans printed in the Manufacturer of Philadelphia, and reproduced in your issue of yesterday. This is not the occasion to discuss the question of the annexation of Cuba. It is probable that no self-respecting Cuban would like to see his country annexed to a nation where the leaders of opinion share towards him the prejudices excusable only to vulgar jingoism or rampant ignorance. No honest Cuban will stoop to be received as a moral pest for the sake of the usefulness of his land in a community where his ability is denied, his morality insulted, and his character despised. There are some Cubans who, from honorable motives, from an ardent admiration for progress and liberty, from a prescience of their own powers under better political conditions, from an unhappy ignorance of the history and tendency of annexation, would like to see the island annexed to the United States. But those who have fought in war and learned in exile, who have built, by the work of hands and mind, a virtuous home in the heart of an unfriendly community; who, by their successful efforts as scientists and merchants, as railroad builders and engineers, as teachers, artists, lawyers, journalists, orators, and poets, as men of alert intelligence and uncommon activity, are honored wherever their powers have been called into action and the people are just enough to understand them; those who have raised, with their less prepared elements, a town of workingmen where the United States had previously a few huts in a barren cliff; those, more numerous than the others, do not desire the annexation of Cuba to the United States. They do not need it. They admire this nation, the greatest ever built by liberty, but they dislike the evil conditions that, like worms in the heart, have begun in this mighty republic their work of destruction. They have made of the heroes of this country their own heroes, and look to the success of the American commonwealth as the crowning glory of mankind; but they cannot honestly believe that excessive individualism, reverence for wealth, and the protracted exultation of a terrible victory are preparing the United States to be the typical nation of liberty, where no opinion is to be based in greed, and no triumph or acquisition reached against charity and justice. We love the country of Lincoln as much as we fear the country of Cutting. We are not the people of destitute vagrants or immoral pigmies that the Manufacturer is pleased to picture; nor the country of petty talkers, incapable of action, hostile to hard work, that, in a mass with the other countries of Spanish America, we are by arrogant travellers and writers represented to be. We have suffered impatiently under tyranny; we have fought like men, sometimes like giants, to be freemen; we are passing that period of stormy repose, full of germs of revolt, that

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naturally follows a period of excessive and unsuccessful action; we have to fight like conquered men against an oppressor who denies us the means of living, and fostersin the beautiful capital visited by the tourists, in the interior of the country, where the prey escapes his grasp a reign of such corruption as may poison in our veins the strength to secure freedom; we deserve in our misfortune the respect of those who did not help us in our need. But because our Government has systematically allowed after the war the triumph of criminals, the occupation of the cities by the scum of the people, the ostentation of ill-gotten riches by a myriad of Spanish office-holders and their Cuban accomplices, the conversion of the capital into a gambling-den, where the hero and the philosopher walk hungry by the lordly thief of the metropolis; because the healthier farmer, ruined by a war seemingly useless, turns in silence to the plough that he knew well how to exchange for the machete; because thousands of exiles, profiting by a period of calm that no human power can quicken until it is naturally exhausted, are practising [sic] in the battle of life in the free countries the art of governing themselves and of building a nation; because our half-breeds and city-bred young men are generally of delicate physique, of suave courtesy and ready words, hiding under the glove that: polishes the poem, the hand that fells the foe are we to be considered, as the Manufacturer does consider us, an ‘‘effeminate’’ people? These city-bred young men and poorly built half-breeds knew in one day how to rise against a cruel government, to pay their passages to the seat of war with the product of their watches and trinkets, to work their way in exile while their vessels were being kept from them by the country of the free in the interest of the foes of freedom, to obey as soldiers, sleep in the mud, eat roots, fight ten years without salary, conquer foes with the branch of a tree, die these men of eighteen, these heirs to wealthy estates, these dusky striplings a death not to be spoken of without uncovering the head. They died like those other men of ours who, with a stroke of the machete, can send a head flying, or by a turn of the hands bring a bull to their feet. These ‘‘effeminate’’ Cubans had once courage enough, in the face of a hostile government, to carry on their left arms for a week the mourning for Lincoln. The Cubans have, according to the Manufacturer, ‘‘a distaste for exertion’’; they are ‘‘helpless,’’ ‘‘idle.’’ These ‘‘helpless,’’ ‘‘idle’’ men came here twenty years ago empty-handed, with very few exceptions; fought against the climate; mastered the language; lived by their honest labor, some in affluence, a few in wealth, rarely in misery; they bought or built homes; they raised families and fortunes; they loved luxury and worked for it; they were not frequently seen in the dark roads of life; proud and self-sustaining, they never feared competition as to intelligence or diligence. Thousands have returned to die in their homes; thousands have remained where, during the ‘hardships of life, they have triumphed, unaided by any help of kindred language, sympathy of race, or community of religion. A handful of Cuban toilers built Key West. The Cubans have made their mark in Panama by their ability as mechanics of the higher trades, as clerks, physicians, and contractors. A Cuban, Cisneros, has greatly advanced the development of railways and river navigation in Colombia. Marquez, another Cuban, gained, with many of his countrymen, the respect of the Peruvians as a merchant of eminent capacity. Cubans are found everywhere, working as farmers, surveyors, engineers, mechanics, teachers, journalists. In Philadelphia, the Manufacturer has a daily opportunity to see a hundred Cubans, some of them of heroic history and powerful build, who live by their work in easy

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comfort. In New York, the Cubans are directors of prominent banks, substantial merchants, popular brokers, clerks of recognized ability, physicians with a large practice, engineers of world-wide repute, electricians, journalists, tradesmen, cigarmakers. The poet of Niagara is a Cuban, our Heredia; a Cuban, Menocal, is the projector of the canal of Nicaragua. In Philadelphia itself, as in New York, the college prizes have been more than once awarded to Cubans. The women of these ‘‘helpless,’’ ‘‘idle’’ people, with ‘‘a distaste for exertion,’’ arrived here from a life of luxury in the heart of the winter; their husbands were in the war, ruined, dead, imprisoned in Spain; the ‘‘Senora’’ went to work; from a slave-owner she became a slave, took a seat behind the counter, sang in the churches, worked button-holes by the hundred, sewed for a living, curled feathers, gave her soul to duty, withered in work her body. This is the people of ‘‘defective morals.’’ We are ‘‘unfitted by nature and experience to discharge the obligations of citizenship in a great and free country.’’ This cannot be justly said of a people who possess, besides the energy that built the first railroad in Spanish dominions and established against the opposition of the Government all the agencies of civilization, a truly remarkable knowledge of the body politic, a tried readiness to adapt itself to its higher forms, and the power rare in tropical countries of nerving their thought and pruning their language. Their passion for liberty, the conscientious study of its best teachings, the nursing of individual character in exile and at home, the lessons of ten years of war and its manifold consequences, and the practical exercise of the duties of citizenship in the free countries of the world, have combined, in spite of all antecedents, to develop in the Cuban a capacity for free government so natural to him that he established it, even to the excess of its practices, in the midst of the war, vied with his elders in the effort to respect the laws of liberty, and snatched the sabre, without fear of consideration, from the hands of every military pretender, however glorious. There seems to be in the Cuban mind a happy faculty of uniting sense with earnestness and moderation with exuberance. Noble teachers have devoted themselves since the beginning of the century to explain by their words and exemplify by their lives the self-restraint and tolerance inseparable from liberty. Those who won the first seats ten years ago at the European universities by singular merit have been proclaimed, at their appearance in the Spanish Parliament, men of subtle thought and powerful speech. The political knowledge of the average Cuban compares well with that of the average American citizen. Absolute freedom from religious intolerance, the love of man for the work he creates by his industry, and theoretical and practical familiarity with the laws and processes of liberty, will enable the Cuban to rebuild his country from the ruins in which he will receive it from its oppressors. It is not to be expected, for the honor of mankind, that the nation that was rocked in freedom, and received for three centuries the best blood of liberty loving men, will employ the power thus acquired in depriving a less fortunate neighbor of his liberty. It is, finally, said that ‘‘our lack of manly force and of self-respect is demonstrated by the supineness with which we have so long submitted to Spanish oppression, and even our attempts at rebellion have been so pitifully ineffective that they have risen little above the dignity of farce.’’ Never was ignorance of history and character more pitifully displayed than in this wanton assertion. We need to recollect, in order to answer without bitterness, that more than one American bled by our side, in a war that another American was to call a farce. A farce! the war that has been by foreign observers compared to an epic, the upheaval of a whole country, the voluntary

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abandonment of wealth, the abolition of slavery in our first moment of freedom, the burning of our cities by our own hands, the erection of villages and factories in the wild forests, the dressing of our ladies of rank in the textures of the woods, the keeping at bay, in ten years of such a life, a powerful enemy, with a loss to him of 200,000 men, at the hands of a small army of patriots, with no help but nature! We had no Hessians and no Frenchmen, no Lafayette or Steuben, no monarchical rivals to help us; we had but one neighbor who confessedly ‘‘stretched the limits of his power, and acted against the will of the people’’ to help the foes of those who were fighting for the same Chart of Liberties on which he built his independence. We fell! a victim to the very passions which could have caused the downfall of the thirteen States, had they not been cemented by success, while we were enfeebled by procrastination; a procrastination brought about, not from cowardice, but from an abhorrence of blood, which allowed the enemy in the first months of the war to acquire unconquerable advantage, and from a childlike confidence in the certain help of the United States: ‘‘They cannot see us dying for liberty at their own doors without raising a hand or saying a word to give to the world a new free country!’’ They ‘‘stretched the limits of their powers in deference to Spain.’’ They did not raise the hand. They did not say the word. The struggle has not ceased. The exiles do not want to return. The new generation is worthy of its sires. Hundreds of men have died in darkness since the war in the misery of prisons. With life only will this fight for liberty cease among us. And it is the melancholy truth that our efforts would have been, in all probability, successfully renewed, were it not, in some of us, for the unmanly hope of the annexationists of securing liberty without paying its price; and the just fears of others that our dead, our sacred memories, our ruins drenched in blood, would be but the fertilizers of the soil for the benefit of a foreign plant, or the occasion for a sneer from the Manufacturer of Philadelphia. With sincere thanks for the space you have kindly allowed me, I am, sir, yours very respectfully, Jos
e Mart
ı Source: From Jos
e Mart
ı: Selected Writings by Jos
e Mart
ı, introduction by Roberto Gonzalez C 2002 by Esther Allen. Echevarria, edited by Esther Allen, translated by Esther Allen, copyright
Used by permission of Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. pp. 263 267.

117. ‘‘My Race,’’ by Jos
e Mart
ı, April 16, 1893 Jos
e Mart
ı (1853–1895) was born in La Habana (also called Havana), Cuba. He became politically active at a young age, helping to found an anti-colonial newspaper, for which he was arrested and sentenced to six years of hard labor at age 15. In 1871, after serving three years, Mart
ı moved to Spain, and in 1878, he moved to Mexico City where he joined other exiles from various Latin American countries. In 1881, Mart
ı moved to New York where he worked as a journalist and organized Cuban and Puerto Rican dissidents. In the following article he reacts to the term racist. Racism was fully developed within the Cuban community since colonial times—but in the United States it took on a new meaning.

‘‘Racist’’ is becoming a confusing word, and it must be clarified. No man has any special rights because he belongs to one race or another: say ‘‘man’’ and all rights

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have been stated. The black man, as a black man, is not inferior or superior to any other man; the white man who says ‘‘my race’’ is being redundant, and the black man who says ‘‘my race’’ is also redundant. Anything that divides men from each other, that separates them, singles them out, or hems them in, is a sin against humanity. What sensible white man thinks he should be proud of being white, and what do blacks think of a white man who is proud of being white and believes he has special rights because he is? What must whites think of a black man who grows conceited about his color? To insist upon the racial divisions and racial differences of a people naturally divided is to obstruct both individual and public happiness, which lies in greater closeness among the elements that must live in common. It is true that in the black man there is no original sin or virus that makes him incapable of developing his whole soul as a man, and this truth must be spoken and demonstrated, because the injustice of this world is great, as is the ignorance that passes for wisdom, and there are still those who believe in good faith that the black man is incapable of the intelligence and feelings of the white man. And what does it matter if this truth, this defense of nature, is called racism, because it is no more than natural respect, the voice that clamors from man’s bosom for the life and the peace of the nation. To state that the condition of slavery does not indicate any inferiority in the enslaved race for white Gauls with blue eyes and golden hair were sold as slaves with fetters around their necks in the markets of Rome is good racism, because it is pure justice and helps the ignorant white shed his prejudices. But that is the limit of just racism, which is the right of the black man to maintain and demonstrate that his color does not deprive him of any of the capacities and rights of the human race. And what right does the white racist, who believes his race has superior rights, have to complain of the black racist, who also believes that his race has special traits? What right does the black racist who sees a special character in his race have to complain of the white racist? The white man who, by reason of his race, believes himself superior to the black man acknowledges the idea of race and thus authorizes and provokes the black racist. The black man who trumpets his race when what he is perhaps trumpeting instead is only the spiritual identity of all races authorizes and provokes the white racist. Peace demands the shared rights of nature; differing rights go against nature and are the enemies of peace. The white who isolates himself isolates the Negro. The Negro who isolates himself drives the white to isolate himself. In Cuba there is no fear whatsoever of a race war. ‘‘Man’’ means more than white, more than mulatto, more than Negro. ‘‘Cuban’’ means more than white, more than mulatto, more than Negro. On the battlefields, the souls of whites and blacks who died for Cuba have risen together through the air. In that daily life of defense, loyalty, brotherhood, and shrewdness, there was always a black man at the side of every white. Blacks, like whites, can be grouped according to their character timid or brave, self-abnegating or egotistical into the diverse parties of mankind. Political parties are aggregates of concerns, aspirations, interests, and characters. An essential likeness is sought and found beyond all differences of detail, and what is fundamental in analogous characters merges in parties, even if their incidental characteristics or motives differ. In short, it is the similarity of character a source of unity far superior to the internal relations of the varying colors of men, whose different shades are sometimes in opposition to each other that commands and prevails in the formation of parties. An affinity of character is more powerful than an affinity

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of color. Blacks, distributed among the diverse or hostile specialties of the human spirit, will never want or be able to band together against whites, who are distributed among the same specialties. Blacks are too tired of slavery to enter voluntarily into the slavery of color. Men of pomp and self-interest, black and white, will be on one side, and generous and impartial men will be on the other. True men, black or white, will treat each other with loyalty and tenderness, taking pleasure in merit and pride in anyone, black or white, who honors the land where we were born. The word ‘‘racist’’ will be gone from the lips of the blacks who use it today in good faith, once they understand that that word is the only apparently valid argument-valid among sincere, apprehensive men for denying the Negro the fullness of his rights as a man. The white racist and the Negro racist will be equally guilty of being racists. Many whites have already forgotten their color, and many blacks have, too. Together they work, black and white, for the cultivation of the mind, the dissemination of virtue, and the triumph of creative work and sublime charity. There will never be a race war in Cuba. The Republic cannot retreat and the Republic, from the extraordinary day of the emancipation of blacks in Cuba and from its first independent constitution of April 10, in Guaimaro, never spoke of whites or blacks. The rights already conceded out of pure cunning by the Spanish government, and which have become habitual even before the Island’s independence, can no longer be denied now, either by the Spaniard, who will maintain them as long as he draws breath in Cuba-in order to continue dividing Cuban blacks from Cuban whites or by the independent nation, which will not, in liberty, be able to deny the rights that the Spaniard recognized in servitude. As for the rest, each individual will be free within the sacred confines of his home. Merit, the clear and continual manifestation of culture and inexorable trade will end by uniting all men. There is much greatness in Cuba, in blacks and in whites. April 16, 1893 Source: From Jos
e Mart
ı: Selected Writings by Jos
e Mart
ı, introduction by Roberto Gonzalez EcheC 2002 by Esther Allen. Used varria, edited by Esther Allen, translated by Esther Allen, copyright
by permission of Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. pp. 318 321.

118. ‘‘To Cuba!’’ Jos
e Mart
ı, January 27, 1894 Jos
e Mart
ı (1853–1895), like so many other Latin American revolutionaries, used established Latino colonies in the United States to recruit volunteers, raise money, and popularize the Cuban struggle for independence from Spain. Mart
ı and his cohorts also identified with the struggles of Latinos in the United States and sought to give them a voice. In January 1894, the tobacco workers in Cayo Hueso (Key West), Florida, protested that the owners had replaced many of them with Spanish workers brought directly from Cuba. The Cuban dissident workers were supporters of the revolution who lived in a shanty town called Marti City. The following article discusses the tensions. While Mart
ı identified and championed the rights of the Cuban workers, he cautioned them that they had no right to object to Spaniards because they were Spanish. He encouraged them to fight oppressive conditions.

When has the cry ‘‘To Cuba!’’ burst from the Cuban heart with greater reason and greater anguish and love than today, after the events in Key West and the

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loathsome spectacle of a town built by its adoptive sons that is straying from its own soil and laws to bring the enemies of those sons in from outside. The city of Key West emerged triumphant from its early trials. In Yankee hands it was no more than sand and shacks, but now it can point proudly to factories that in their continual thought and study are like academies of learning; schools where the hand that rolls the tobacco leaf by day lifts a book and teaches by night; societies of art and recreation from which only those unfaithful to their patria are, for reasons of moral hygiene, excluded; homes whose great virtue makes their poverty scarcely noticeable. Key West was built by the poorest, neediest Cubans, along with a wealthy criollo or two, led there by his love of the sun, and later by a handful of fervent soul, both moneyed and destitute, drawn there by that loyal town’s reputation for being like a single family. From his hybrid mixture into which a corrupted Havana poured its crimes by the boatload from this Cuban core, where all the sublimity of hope sprang from all the miseries of life; and where the humble worker’s quota for Cuban honor was, year after year, the primary support of the proud, from this everyday mingling of dethroned master and emancipated slave, eating the same bread together at the workingman’s productive table, arose, with no counsel or teaching but that of our island soul, a virtuous and orderly industrial city that then spilled over and gave life to the gray state, animating moribund coast with Tampa’s industries, creating and sustaining railroads and steamers throughout that region of Florida, and transforming the Yankee village of small farmers and fishermen into a city of free academies and schools and generous gentlemen of industry: the principal port of the State of Florida. Those who silence this fact of deny it are paper men, with a magazine covering one eye and the other one blinded by preoccupation, for this is a fact acknowledged by men of truth, who work themselves and admire workingmen and know that the hands of masons, who assemble and construct, must be hardened by stone and stained by lime. We must cast into the fire for its impurity and uselessness the silken hand that, by way of greeting, licks the bloodied, debased hand of its country’s corrupter, and instead beckon the rough hand that works the rifle which must drive the insolent to the sea, and the saintly hand, sometimes bony from hunger, that caresses and constructs in darkness, with the hope of the humble, the just and warm hearted patria that will rise from sea to sky with arms open to all mankind. Excessive gratitude and trust were the principal and perhaps the only errors of that budding community: trust in the Washington of legend, who was more the offspring of his people than their father, and in the love of Lincoln, for whom we Cubans wore mourning, and who showed ineffable goodness in everything, except in consenting to make Cuba the dumping ground for all his nation’s aggravations. Because of that blind admiration for North American liberties, which is just another form, natural in any progressive man, of the hatred of Spanish injury, blood-rule, and un-Americanism, and because of the forthright nature of the Cuban, who has been deeply marked by a long-rooted affection for the land in which he could at least think freely and work without dishonor, the Cubans of Key West came to love this harboring republic so well and to be so thoroughly taken in by the liberty if wears as a mask for the conquest it nurtures in its bosom that with their very hands they delivered to the few native settlers the government of the town that, before the Cubans arrived, had never been built. The grateful Cuban, already converted into an enthusiastic American citizen, carried this love for his adopted country into

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his domestic life: one quarreled with his friends for the sake of an American votehunter; another, though devoted to his mother island, spent his whole savings on building a house, as the monument of his affection, by the hospitable sea; another blessed every morning, from under the trees he had planted, the land where his family, persecuted and impoverished in Cuba, had brightened again into hope and prosperity; a daughter was born to another and he called her by the name of a state of the Union; many had Blaine’s picture on the mantelpiece, believing that crafty manipulator of national prejudices to be the friend of Cuba; many had Cleveland’s picture in their parlor, honoring him as steely foe of the republic of privileges and unjust monopolies that must everywhere be stamped out. American industry had been living off of the future, assuming that when the domestic market was replete it would be ever so easy to empty their excess products into the torpid lands of the American continent: this and this alone was the purpose of their farcical reciprocity treaties and the shamelessness, averted in time, of the Pan-American Congress. The Hispanic republics did not lack forethought or cleareyed sentinels and the plan failed, so the North has lived since then with its hands tugging at its purse strings, unable to pay for the production of its surplus manufactures and still less able to sell them. The sumptuary industries such as cigar-making were naturally the first to suffer from the stringency and alarm that greeted the sudden and unexpected imbalance in the nation’s accounts. But the Cubans of Key West did not much mind their penury. Hadn’t the city’s founders lived there for twenty-five years? Hadn’t the workingman, by his own sweat, bought his home there? Weren’t the poor aged mother, the wife with her callused hands, and the firstborn son buried there, in that white sand? Hadn’t the former slave, the oppressed campesino, and the urchin of the city streets learned all the delights of liberty there and all the arrogance of men? Work was scarce or slack, there was only one meal a day, and shoes were only for Sunday; but there they remained, hundreds and thousands of them, unemployed but faithful to the family tombs and the beloved town, faithful to Key West. Suddenly one of the city’s factories, which had been closing and reopening for some time and had recently been shored up by two new Spanish partners, began negotiating with the rival city of Tampa, which offered manufacturers land and privileges that Key West unwisely refused them. The North Americans in Key West asked why Seidenberg wanted to go to Tampa, only to hear that it was because he could not bring Spanish workers to Key West. Subterranean forces, which buy and keep watch, stirred up the unbridled greed of the English-speaking population. And that city, built by Cuban effort, those merchants whose every dollar was increased a hundredfold by the Cuban Saturday, those judges placed on their benches by Cuban votes, those drunkards cured of their deliria by Cuban doctors, those sons of emancipated colonies who cannot, without denying their own history, wonder at the natural fact that the Cubans wish to rid Cuba of its masters, just as they themselves wished to be rid of the English tax on tea those very men whom the Cubans upheld in true friendship filled the public square in anger, calling the Cubans ruffians, expressing a foul wish ‘‘to hang some Cubans,’’ and deserting the positions they owe to the trust and prosperity of the Cuban community and the patriotism and labor of the sons of the Cuban revolution. They left the city created by the Cuban revolution to beg a foreign monarchy for soldiers known to be the rabid enemies of the American-born men who built the town for them; they began bringing new

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workmen, simply because those workmen were Europeans and sworn enemies of the Cuban community, to the city where hundreds of the workmen who built it had been unemployed for a year. It was not a blow to their income; it was a blow to the heart. Those men were loved like brothers, and they had turned against their brothers. Those men were seen as the embodiment of the liberty for which the Cubans yearned, the freedom and republicanism, the justness and prestige of the law, the progress and emancipation of America and they filled our homes with terror, took the bread from our workingmen’s mouths, sent innocent men to jail, locked a messenger who was taking a note to the jail in a cell, asked for a gallows to be put up for the Cubans, and bore on their breasts as a badge of honor the colors that are in America the emblem of tyranny and that have waved, stained with blood, over the ruins of our households and the corpses of our brothers. The republicans of America were wearing the emblem of murder upon their bosoms! The men of a free people were knocking at the door of a hypocritical foreign despot to ask him for workers and soldiers with whom to impoverish and humiliate those whose only guilt is to seek, as the North Americans once sought, freedom for their country! No greater shock could have stricken the Cubans had they seen those they love most killed by a knife in their beds. Was this blue sea a sea of blood, too, like the one back in Cuba? Were they, too to be ousted, like the zorros of California or the last tejanos, from the town they had built by the product of their industry, and, more important, by their earnest and uncompromising patriotism! One Cuban wanted to uproot his new house and throw it into the ray; another wanted to take his nine children and leave to seek justice somewhere in the world; another wanted to change his daughter’s name. There is no greater and more irreparable horror than seeing that which we loved become contemptible or infamous. Is this whole universe thus? Can no merit or virtue, no persecution or misfortune, ever move a stranger’s heart? Is it futile, then, to have raised, before the eyes of a nation that the world supposes to be judicious and manly, stone by stone, out of the defective remnants of a tyrannical civilization, a city where the disorder and crime of despotism have been compressed and ordered into honest industry and the frank and diverse life of liberty? Can it be, then, that the world’s leading republic is a nation without love, without charity, without friendship, without gratitude, without laws? Even in the leading republic of the world there is no harbor for a people seeking refuge from ignominious slavery! What right does a man without patria have to the security of a patria? Let he who wants a safe patria conquer one. He who does not will live in exile under the lash, hunted down like a wild animal, cast from one country to another with a beggar’s smile on his face to hide the death in his soul from the disdain of free men. There is no solid ground but the ground on which one was born. ‘‘To Cuba!’’ says our whole soul, after this deceit in Key West, this brutal wound to our love and our illusions: to the only country in the world from which we shall not be chased away like the zorros from California and the tejanos from Texas! Had there been some provocation, some relation between a Cuban offense and the action of the North Americans, had in fact the Cubans violated the right of free transit, until recently conceded to all men with no exception by the United States Constitution, it could never have been sufficient pretext for the North Americans to go forth in patent violation of international law and the labor laws of their own

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country and ask a foreign government for workers to import into a market glutted with labor, and for enemies to provoke a conflict in the city whose peace they should be preserving. However, in stark justice, which is the only sort of justice to which a sensible and dignified man must appeal, the Key West authorities would be right to uphold the law against any abusive, untenable resistance by the Cubans. If the Cubans want a land of special privilege, where they can command, they must win their own land, as the Yankee won his from the Englishman. A Yankee who has conquered his land is not equal but superior to a Cuban who has not conquered his, just as the Yankees who fought the Englishman for their freedom are superior to the Yankees who are going to ask a foreign power for help in impoverishing and humiliating the sons of America who are fighting for their own freedom! And while the Cuban revolutionaries who populated and enriched Key West out of their love for Cuban independence believe they have a moral, though not a legal, right to keep their city free of Spanish persecution, it is also true that the history and spirit of the American nation gave them some right to hope that it would show for the sons of an American nation who are fighting for emancipation from a European monarchy the same sacred indulgence that the Irish who fight to emancipate themselves from Great Britain enjoy here. But that indulgence is up to the North Americans, and it falls to the Cubans to abide by the law of the country. Cubans have no right whatever to forbid a Spaniard, because he is a Spaniard, to disembark on United States territory. The United States can and must punish whoever breaks this law or any other. But before a violation is punished, the law must have been violated and proof of the violation must be established in accordance with the law and the guarantees that the law furnishes to the accused. Years ago, a passion for independence may have driven a handful of fanatical Cubans, who can fight as well on a Key West pier as when they face the Spaniard’s artillery, to brandish punitive clubs, and one Cuban or another might have waited on the pier, club in hand, for the Spaniards who, not content with driving the Cuban away from all of his own worktables, pursue him to a foreign country to rob him of the industry that the Spaniard learned from the Cuban. Have the Spaniards no heart, that they do not see the injustice of this? Have the North Americans no heart, that they can assist in this injustice? For on the basis of something that a handful of Cubans may have attempted in the past, when the disorderly life of Key West had not yet been gathered into the superior social order of today and which, even in the past, because of the Cuban’s natural nobility, never was nor could have been anything like the South’s barbaric lynchings or the continual murders perpetrated by men in white masks in the Northeast a law-abiding people, a people of sensible, honorable, just, and friendly men, cannot presume, against truth and all appearances, that the law has been violated in a much later case, and with rabid rage and wicked vengeance turn against an entire city of men who have done it only good, to punish in advance a crime no one has committed. Did not a friendship of so many years’ standing at least demand a proper investigation of the idiotic conspiracy that a few Spanish-speaking rogues groundlessly charged the Cubans with? Do not the moral grounds for the Cubans’ unhappiness at seeing the city they have peopled and where they live today without work occupied by workers who despoil them in their own country at least deserve the respectful affection and generous courtesy of right-thinking North Americans, rather than their frenzied hatred? What mysterious hand [is] at work there? What North

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American scoundrel took money from the government of Spain to incite the greed and discredit the republicanism of his compatriots? What vengeful losing candidate or base and venomous heart inflamed the unjust suspicions of those of the North against the Cubans, whose labor of twenty-five years was forgotten in an hour? Why does the city that owes us its commerce, its industry, its renown, and the intimate love we once had for it, rise up unquestioningly against us, and organize, with cries of terror, a resistance that is completely out of proportion to the vague rumor that seems to have given rise to it? Who prepared this resistance, which was so well prepared? For how long had it been planned, to have sprung up so fully formed? Who paid for it, and was so well served? Why did the good men of Key West yield, out of passion, ignorance, or a false idea of their true interests, to what was obviously a coalition of the private interests of demagogues who make their living catering to public prejudices, and pedants who are unable to understand a people they disdain and who, in one hour of revolt, vented the wrath they had suppressed for years at having lived from their favor and their votes? Or is the entire North American nation incapable of justice, and the respect that is virtues due, and the gratitude that is an obligation of friendship? Is the entire North American nation so ferocious and ungrateful? Is there in the soul of that race such a hatred of the Hispanic criollo, so false an idea of his moral and political capacities, that the most despicable men of the North dare to disdain the Cuban’s most admirable virtues simply because the Cuban has maintained them amid impoverishment and slavery? Are there no honorable men there who feel ashamed of what they have helped to do, and are turning against those who, with wicked deceit, forced them to violate the laws of their nation, of all nations, and of humanity? And as for rights, did the North Americans have any right whatsoever to commit such acts, to hold the accusatory meeting in the public square, and distribute the inexcusable printed protest, to go and negotiate, without permission from their country, with a foreign and despotic monarch, to request military aid from a foreign government by which to injure and provoke their fellow citizens, to bring more workers from abroad, against the law of the country and the natural generosity of mankind, to a country where hundreds of workers are unemployed? All of this was done because it was said that nineteen Cuban conspirators had decided to oppose the landing of the Spaniards. But when the most highly respected men in the city, heroes of antique lineage in the Cuban revolution, justly venerated apostles of the rights of citizens, and former mayors of Cuban cities, asked in the name of their people for some evidence of the conspiracy, and volunteered their help in punishing it, no one presented them with any evidence, and no one could give them an answer. And when a lawyer, alone in that unfriendly and terrorstricken city, demanded the immediate release of the two Cubans unlawfully imprisoned as the heads of the conspiracy, the court released both men immediately, because no charges had been brought against them. Why, Spanish tyranny, did we fly from you only to find all your horrors in an American republic? Why did we trust and love this inhuman and ungrateful land? There is no patria, Cubans, but the one we shall win with our own efforts. The foreign sea, too, is a sea of blood. No one loves or forgives except our own country. The only solid ground in the universe is the ground on which we were born. We will be brave, or we will wander. We will finally put our efforts to the test, or we will be outcasts, roaming the world from one country to another. The very ones we love shall bite us in the heart like rabid dogs. Cubans, there is no man without a patria,

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and no patria without freedom. This insult has made us all the stronger, has further united us, and has taught us, better than books and diplomas, that we are all of one soul: Spain is our only enemy, in Cuba we are trapped and corrupted, and outside of Cuba we are harassed, wherever there is a man of honor or a table with bread on it. We have no other friend or source of help than ourselves. Once more, Cubans, with our homes at our backs, abandoning our dead, we must make our way across the sea! Cubans: to Cuba! January 27, 1894 Source: From Jos
e Mart
ı: Selected Writings by Jos
e Mart
ı, introduction by Roberto Gonzalez EcheC 2002 by Esther Allen. Used varria, edited by Esther Allen, translated by Esther Allen, copyright
by permission of Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. pp. 325 329.

119. Letter from Jos
e Mart
ı to Manuel Mercado, May 18, 1895 Cuban poet and journalist Jos
e Mart
ı (1853–1895) lived in the United States for 15 years where he grew increasingly disillusioned with white Americans. The Cuban War for Independence from Spain had been going on for 30 years, and many Cuban rebels had hoped that the United States would help them. Mart
ı had returned to his beloved island and in the heat of the battle he warned his fellow revolutionaries to guard against possible U.S. intervention. The day before he was killed, Mart
ı wrote an unfinished letter to Manuel Mercado (1838–1909) about his fear of U.S. imperialism in the region. Mercado was born in Michoac
an, Mexico, where he met Mart
ı. They formed a close friendship.

Dos Rios Camp, May 18, 1895 Mr. Manuel Mercado My dearest brother: Now I can write, now I can tell you with what tenderness and gratitude and respect I love you, and your home that is my own and with what pride and commitment. Every-day now I am in danger of giving my life for my country and duty since I understand it and have the spirit to carry it out in order to prevent, by the timely independence of Cuba, the United States from extending its hold across the Antilles and falling with all the greater force on the lands of our America. All I have done up to now and all I will do is for that. It has had to be concealed in order to be attained: proclaiming them for what they are would give rise to obstacles too formidable to be overcome. The nations such as your own and mine, which have the most vital interest in keeping Cuba from becoming, through an annexation accomplished by those imperialists and the Spaniards, the doorway which must be blocked and which, with our blood, we are blocking to the annexation of the peoples of our America by the turbulent and brutal North that holds them in contempt, are kept by secondary, public obligations from any open allegiance and manifest aid to the sacrifice being made for their immediate benefit. I lived in the monster, and I know its entrails and my sling is the sling of David: Even now, a few days ago, in the wake of the triumph with which the Cuban people greeted our free descent from the mountains where six expenditionaries walked for fourteen days, a correspondent from the New York Herald took me from my hammock and hut and told me about the activities aimed at annexation which is less fearsome because of the scant realism of those who aspire to it by men of the legal

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ilk who, having no discipline or creative power of their own, and as a convenient disguise for their complacency and subjugation to Spain, request Cuba’s autonomy without conviction, content that there be a master, Yankee or Spaniard, to maintain them and grant them, in reward for their services as intermediaries, positions as leaders, scornful of the vigorous masses, the skilled and inspiring mestizo mass of this country the intelligent, creative masses of whites and blacks. And did the Herald correspondent, Eugene Bryson, tell me about anything else? About a Yankee syndicate, backed by the Customs Office, in which rapacious white Spaniards have a deep hand, and that may become a toehold in Cuba for those from the North, whose complex and entrammeled political constitution fortunately leaves them unable to undertake or support this plan as the project of their government. And Bryson told me something else, though the truth of the conversation he reported to me can only be understood by one who has seen at close hand the vigor with which we have launched the revolution, and the disorder, reluctance, and poor pay of the raw Spanish army and the inability of Spain to muster, either in or out of Cuba, the resources with which to fight this war, resources that, during the last war, it extracted from Cuba alone. Bryson told me about a conversation he had with Martinez Campos at the end of which he was given to understand that no doubt, when the time came, Spain would prefer to reach an agreement with the United States than to hand the Island over to the Cuban people. And Bryson told me still more: about an acquaintance of ours who is being groomed in the North as the United States’ candidate for the presidency of Mexico, once the current President has disappeared. I am doing my duty here. The Cuban war a reality that is superior to the vague and disparate desires of the annexationist Cubans and Spaniards whose alliance with the government of Spain would give them only relative power has come at the right hour in America to prevent, even against the open deployment of all these forces, the annexation of Cuba to the Unites States, which would never accept the annexation of a country that is at war, and which, since the revolution will not accept annexation, cannot enter into a hateful and absurd commitment to crush, for its own benefit and with its own weapons, an American war of independence. And Mexico? Will it not find a wise, effective, and immediate way of supplying aid, in time, to those who are defending it? Yes, it will, or I will find one on Mexico’s behalf. This is life or death; there is no room for error. Discretion is the only option. I would have found and proposed a way already, but I must have more authority myself, or know who does have it, before acting or advising. I have just arrived. The constitution of a simply, practical government may take two more months, if it is to be real and stable. Our soul is one, I know that, and so is the connections’, timeliness, and compromise. I represent a certain constituency, and I do not want to do anything that might appear to be a capricious expansion of it. I arrived in a boat with General Maximo Gomez and four other men, taking the lead oar through a storm to land on an unknown, rocky stretch of one of our beaches. For fourteen days I carried my rucksack and rifle on foot across brambles and high places rousing the people to take up arms as we passed through. I feel, in the benevolence of these souls, the root of my attachment to the pain of mankind and to the justice that will alleviate it. The countryside is undisputedly ours, to such a degree that in a month I’ve heard gunfire only once; at the gates of the cities we either win a victory or pass three thousand armed men in review, to an enthusiasm

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akin to religious fervor. We are going on now to the center of the Island where, in the presence of the revolution that have given rise to, I will lay aside the authority given me by the Cubans off the island, which has been respected on the island, and which an assembly of delegates of the visible Cuban people, the revolutionaries now in arms, must renew in accordance with their new state. The revolution desires full liberty for the army, without the nee imposed on it by a Chamber of Deputies with no real authorization, or by the suspicions of a younger generation that is its republicanism, or by jealousy and fear of the excessive future prominence of some painstaking and farsighted caudillo. However at the same time, the revolution wants concise and respectable republican representation the same spirit of humanity and decency, full for individual dignity, in the republic’s representatives as is revolutionaries on and keeping them at war. For myself, I understand that a nation cannot be made to go against the spirit that moves it, or to do without that spirit, and I know how to set hearts on fire and how to use the ardent and gratified state of those hearts for incessant agitation and attack. But where forms are concerned, there is room for many ideas, and the things of men are made by men. You own me. For myself, I will defend only that which I believe will or serve the revolution. I know how to disappear. But my ideas would not disappear, nor would my own obscurity embitter me. And as long as we have a form, we will work, whether the fulfillment of it falls to me or to others. And now that matters of the public interest have gone first, I’ll tell you about myself. Only the emotion of this duty was able to raise from coveted death the man who knows you best now that Najera no longer lives where he can be seen and who cherishes the friendship which you distinguish him like a treasure in his heart. I know you have been scolding me, silently, since my journey began. We give him all our soul, and he is silent! What a disappointment! How callused his soul must be if the tribute and honor of our affection has not been enough to make him write one letter more, among all the pages of letters and newspaper articles he writes each day! There are affections of such delicate honesty. Source: From Jos
e Mart
ı: Selected Writings by Jos
e Mart
ı, introduction by Roberto Gonzalez EcheC 2002 by Esther Allen. Used varria, edited by Esther Allen, translated by Esther Allen, copyright
by permission of Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., pp. 346 349.

120. Excerpt from ‘‘The Labor Strikes,’’ 1875 By 1859, almost 10,000 tobacco plantations with around 1,300 cigar factories were situated near Havana, Cuba. The first large wave of Cuban cigar makers arrived in the United States in the early 1870s. Eventually some manufacturers moved to Key West. One of the first centers was Ybor City, which started out as 40 acres of swamp and scrub and northeast of Tampa. Ybor City and Tampa were separated by thick palmetto scrub. Soon cigar manufacturers from Havana, Key West, and the northern United States moved their plants to Ybor City, which became renowned for the finest Cuban cigars; it was known as the ‘‘Cigar Capital of the World,’’ and eventually 200 cigar factories employed 12,000 tabaqueros (cigar makers), producing 700 million cigars a year. Ybor City became known as ‘‘Little Havana.’’ With a large worker population it became a mecca for labor organization. The following news item reports on one of the first cigar-maker strikes in the United States.

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THE LABOR STRIKES THE CIGAR MAKERS NOT AT WORK— THE BROWN-STONE RUBBERS’ DIFFICULTIES NEARLY ENDED The strike of the Cuban journeymen cigar-makers still continues, but like all similar strikes seems destined to a brief career. Mr. Lierena, Secretary of the Cuban Cigar Manufacturers’ Association, stated yesterday that by the time the manufacturers required employees the strike would be at an end. Nearly all of the manufacturers have large stocks of cigars on hand, owing to the dull season and the small demand for high-priced cigars. Yesterday the strikers assembled in groups in the vicinity of their former places of business, and discussed the situation in their native language until the Police dispersed them. Mr. Lierena stated that the article recently published in a morning paper, placing the reduction in the rates paid at from $18 to $16 per thousand, was erroneous. The reduction made was from $20 to $18 per thousand cigars, as stated in The Times some days since. A strike is contemplated among the journeymen cigar-makers at Key West and Havana, who have been receiving about the same rate of wages as that provided in the proposed reduction. Consequently the manufacturers in this City have abandoned the proposition to import men from Cuba to fill the vacancies caused by the strike. The strike of the brown-stone rubbers is virtually ended. The society men are now working nine hours a day in nearly all the yards. In some instances they have objected to working with non-society men, and their employers have favored them in their objection by refusing to employ non-society men. Messrs. Tate & Osborne yesterday employed six society men at $2.60 per day, for ten hours work, in addition to the number of non-society men already in their employ, thus ignoring all the rules and stipulations of the Brown-stone Rubbers’ Society. James Kenney, the man who was so badly beaten by James Myers, the President of the East-side Rubbers’ Society, was yesterday notified that counsel would be provided for him by the brown-stone cutters of the Mechanics’ Exchange, for the purpose of prosecuting his assailant when the case comes up for trial in the Court of General Sessions. Source: New York Times, April 7, 1875, p. 2.

121. ‘‘The Strike of the Cigar Men,’’ 1883 Throughout the nineteenth century, cigar makers lived in immigrant ghettos and worked in sweatshops in places such as Union City, New Jersey, and in Miami and Tampa, Florida. Cigar making was a highly specialized craft. In 1857, the Society of Mutual Aids of Craftsmen and Day Laborers of Havana was formed to provide mutual aid to its members and their families. In 1866, the Union of Workers of the Branch of Tabaquer
ıas was created. During the War of Ten Years (1868–1878) as revolutionary activity grew in Cuba, the Spanish government became more repressive toward workers’ organizations and mutual aid societies became more proactive as they were transformed into labor unions. That is, they evolved from fraternal organizations into labor organizations intent on controlling production. In 1872, a union arose from the Escogedores, the wrappers, who distinguished shades of color, and took care that all of the cigars in the box were the exact same shade. In 1875, the Union of Despalilladores (strippers) was formed. These different currents evolved into the Gremio de Tabaqueros (Union of Cigar Makers) and had

Independistas

locals in Havana, Key West, Vera Cruz, New Orleans, and other cities. By the 1880s, these unions were ideological, with many having anarchist and socialist tendencies that were aired in their own newspapers. A milestone was Oscar Hammerstein’s 1883 patenting of the first cigar rolling machine. This led to factory owners tightening work conditions and, in some cases, lowering wages in hopes of making huge profits after the lowering of an excise tax on cigars that was passed during the Civil War (1861–1865). Labor responded militantly and, in New York, a strike ensued at Lozano Pendas & Company. Lozano Pendas & Company had a factory in Ybor City, Florida. The following article also mentions the 1883 strike for a $2 per day pay increase.

The strike of the Spanish and Cuban cigar-makers for an advance of wages still continues. At the head-quarters of the strikers several employers were reported yesterday as having promised to pay the advance demanded. The Executive Committee of the Germio de Tabaqueros issued a notice stating that the strikers were willing to suffer the inconveniences arising from the suspension of work for any length of time that it might be necessary to obtain the additional $2, and resolving that in case the strike be prolonged that the strikers would go to Havana, Key West, Vera Cruz, New-Orleans, and other cities. They were, however, very hopeful that the manufacturers would in a short time accede to their demands, because they were short of stock. There were several informal conferences among the manufacturers, and a prominent manufacturer said that a conference would be held this afternoon. The cigar dealers had asked for a reduction of $3 in the price of cigars, and the manufacturers wrote informing them that the workmen had struck for an advance of $2, and that the tobacco-strippers were also clamoring for an the increase of wages, and that they could not increase the wages of their workmen and reduce the prices of stock. Source: ‘‘The Strike of the Cigar Men,’’ The New York Times, April 27, 1883.

122. ‘‘Cigarmakers Protesting,’’ 1884 Not every cigar maker in the United States in the late nineteenth century was Cuban, Puerto Rican, or Spanish. But they were among the best. At this point, not many Puerto Ricans migrated to the United States. Puerto Rico was 1,000 miles away and workers had to travel by water. Spaniards came by way of Cuba which was only 90 miles away. There were a large number of German cigar makers who learned the craft in Europe. Samuel Gompers (1850– 1924), a founder of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) in 1886, learned the craft from his father. His family emmigrated to New York where a relatively few cigar sweat shops packed as many as 75 employees into a small space. Thousands of small children worked in these sweatshops and factories, helping their parents. Gompers worked his way up through the union and, in 1881, Gompers was sent as the delegate of the cigar makers to a conference that formed the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Councils, which evolved into the AFL. Gompers was elected as this group’s first president, and held the presidency for nearly 40 years. The following article talks about a committee of workers from the AFL that was sent to Washington, D.C., to lobby the Committee on Foreign Affairs not to sign a treaty with Spain that

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would lower the tariff on foreign-made cigars by 50 percent and allow the tobacco leaves to be imported to the United States duty free. Cuban American cigar makers played a role in union affairs. The stream of Cubans to the United States quickened after the 1868 Cuban war of independence broke out. There were over 80 cigar factories by 1883. These factories employed almost 2,703 Cuban cigar workers. They founded the first trade unions in the U.S. South. The Cuban cigar makers were highly politicized. In 1864, cigar makers introduced lectores (readers), that workers paid to read them literary and political works as they rolled cigars. They were educated through these readings.

CIGARMAKERS PROTESTING TO USE EVERY EFFORT TO HAVE THE TREATY REJECTED The cigarmakers held a meeting yesterday afternoon at No. 189 Bowery to discuss the best means to prevent the ratification of the Spanish treaty, by which the import tax on cigars is to be reduced 50 per cent and the duty on tobacco leaf is to be abolished altogether. This was an adjourned meeting from a previous one, at which the cigarmakers expressed their unqualified opposition to the treaty as not only derogatory to the tobacco manufacturing interests of the country, but also as prejudicial to themselves as workingmen, as such a treaty would lower their wages to the level of those of European workmen, and cause them great sufferings, if it did not drive a great portion of that industry out of the country. All were agreed as to the necessity of opposing the ratification of the treaty, and the only question was what was the best method to do it. For the first time in a long while, the manufacturers and workingmen were in unison, and behind the cigarmakers there stand many large cigar and tobacco manufacturing firms in the country. Among these are the firms of Lesano & Pendas, manufacturers of fine Havana tobacco cigars; Lichtenstein Brothers, Wengler & Co., Brown & Earle, McCoy, Sutro & Newmark, Sanchez, Hayga & Co., C. Upman, Kaufman Brothers, George P. Lies, Powell, Wenigman & Smith, A. A. Suma & Co., C. Bartolini, M. Stachelberg & Co., and M. Hutchinson & Co. Although none of these manufacturers have taken part in the meetings of the workmen or have been known to be present at any of them, they are not any the less interested in the agitation, and are working on their own account to obtain the same result the rejection of the treaty by the Senate. A committee of 11 was appointed at the first meeting to go to Washington to appear against the treaty before the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs or any other committee to whom it might be referred. There were a number of workmen, however, who wanted to call a mass meeting of cigarmakers to protest against the treaty, to pass resolutions demanding its rejection, and to discuss the subject more thoroughly, and another meeting was called for yesterday afternoon, at which Samuel Gompers presided. A motion was made to hold a mass meeting, but that did not receive as much support as its friends expected. It was argued that while a great deal of indignation would undoubtedly be expressed, the reports of the arguments that would be made at the mass meeting would hardly be presented to the Senators, while the advocates of the treaty would be on the spot with all their arguments and persuasions. Nevertheless, some of the German cigarmakers insisted on a mass meeting being held, and

Independistas

Mr. Feltenberg, one of the Committee of Eleven, made an earnest appeal for one. The Senators, he declared, were the public servants of the workingmen, who had a right to demand the rejection of the treaty, and it was the duty of the Senators and of Congress to accede to the demands of the voters. All that the cigarmakers had to do would be to call a mass meeting and to make known their demands. Unless a mass meeting was called, Mr. Feltenberg threatened to resign from the committee, and, with his supporters, to withdraw from the agitation. Another more philosophic delegate remarked that there might not be time enough to call and make preparations for a mass meeting upon a grand scale, and that meanwhile the enemy might steal a march upon them. Still another delegate who supported Feltenberg suggested that all cigarmakers and other trades unions throughout the country be requested to make demonstrations. Mr. Gompers, in reply to Mr. Feltenberg, remarked that it was true that workingmen had a right to make certain demands upon Senators and Congressmen, but when they did not have the power to enforce those demands it was unwise and a waste of time to make them. It was better to ask for what they wanted in a practical manner and to present their arguments in such a way as to obtain the desired result. The advocates of the treaty were on the spot, trying their utmost to make an impression upon the Senators and push the treaty through, while the workingmen were away in New York and other cities, far the scene of action. Mr. Gompers had acted as a committeeman to Washington upon a former occasion, and he knew that even if the Senators were honest in their intentions they were not posted on everything that came up before them. When he was last in Washington as a member of a committee they found that the Senators were to a great extent ignorant of the wants of the workingmen. Senator Allison requested Mr. Gompers to write out the workingmen’s case just as he would write it for an entirely ignorant man, and the Senator would thus be enabled to use it in his argument on the floor of the Senate. A black-eyed and black-haired woman came into the meeting room, and after giving her name to the Chairman, was introduced as Mrs. Velasquez, of Washington. She spoke English fluently and said that she was a Cuban and had come to help the cigarmakers. She was an old worker in Congress, although she wanted it to be understood that she was not a woman’s rights agitator. She had been requested by several Senators to come on to New York and confer with the cigarmakers and sugar manufacturers. One hundred and forty members of Congress and 41 Senators were decidedly opposed to the treaty. The speaker said she was very well acquainted with Messrs. Edmunds, Blair, Sherman, Randall, and numerous other Senators and Congressmen. Mr. Foster’s object in drafting the treaty was to further his own individual interests and the interests of his friends, and they would do all that lay in their power to push it through the Senate. Mrs. Velasquez was not only opposed to the treaty, but she wanted to see Cuba annexed, and there were many in Washington who wanted that, too. Mr. Hill, of Ohio, was in her office on Saturday, and she had a letter from Senator Blair asking her to see the different societies in this city. She urged the cigarmakers to send representatives to Washington, where committees would arrive from New Orleans, California, and other places, and if the workingmen only showed sufficient interest in the matter the treaty would undoubtedly be rejected. The motion to hold a mass meeting was finally tabled. Source: ‘‘The Cigarmakers Protesting.’’ The New York Times, December 8, 1884, p. 1.

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mez to U.S. President 123. Letter from Maximo Go Grover Cleveland, February 9, 1897 M
aximo G
omez (1836–1905) was a leader in the Cuban War for Independence. Born in Santo Domingo in 1836, he served in the Spanish Army and fought for Spain. Upon visiting Cuba in 1865, he was converted to the cause of Cuban independence and he changed sides in the war for independence. Traveling to the United States, G
omez met Jos
e Mart
ı and other independistas who were lobbying for support and raising money. G
omez was a military man and his advice was valuable. Mart
ı would ask G
omez to lead the rebel Cuban Army in 1895. In December 1896, U.S. President Grover Cleveland announced that the United States might reconsider its policy of nonintervention if Spain did not resolve the civil war. G
omez wrote Cleveland that although Cubans welcomed assistance, their request for help from the United States should not be considered a license to intervene in the affairs of Cuba. Many Latin Americans feared the growing U.S. interest in the region and were afraid that United States would use the war as a pretext for occupying the Caribbean islands.

Sancti Sp
ıritus, February 9, 1897 Mr. Grover Cleveland, President of the United States Sir: Permit a man whose soul is torn within him by the contemplation of unutterable crimes to raise his voice to the supreme chief of a people free, cultivated, and powerful. Do not, I beg, regard this action as an inopportune act of officialism. You yourself authorized it when you conceded to me a place in your last message to Congress. Even more, I beg you, do not regard it as a request for intervention in our affairs. We Cubans have thrown ourselves into this war, confident in our strength. The wisdom of the American people should alone decide what course of action you should take. I will not speak of the Cubans in arms. No; I raise my voice only in the name of unarmed Americans victims of a frightful cruelty. I raise it in the name of weakness and of innocence sacrificed, with forgetfulness of the elementary principles of humanity and the external maxims of Christian morality sacrificed brutally in the closing days of the nineteenth century, at the very gates of the great nation which stands so high in modern culture; sacrificed there by a decaying European monarchy, which has the sad glory of setting forth the horrors of the middle ages. Our struggle with Spain has an aspect very interesting to that humanity of which you are so noble an exemplar, and to this aspect I wish to call your illustrious attention. Look through the world and you will see how all people, with the possible exception of the Americans, contemplate with indifference, or with sentimental platonism, the war which makes red the beautiful fields of fertile Cuba as if it were a thing foreign to their interests and to those of modern culture; as if it were not a crime to forget in this manner the duties of social brotherhood. But you know it is not Cuba alone; it is America, it is all Christianhood, it is all humanity, that sees itself outraged by Spain’s horrible barbarity. Well it is that the Spanish struggle with desperation, and that they are ashamed to explain the methods they employ in this war. But we know them, and we expected them. We accept it all as a fresh sacrifice on the altar of Cuban independence.

Independistas

It is logical that such should be the conduct of the nation that expelled the Jews and the Moors; that instituted and built up the terrible Inquisition; that established the tribunals of blood in the Netherlands; that annihilated the Indians and exterminated the first settlers of Cuba; that assassinated thousands of her subjects in the wars of South American independence, and that filled the cup of iniquity in the last war in Cuba. It is natural that a people should proceed thus who, by hint of superstitious and fanatical education, and through the vicissitudes of its social and political life, have fallen into a sort of physiological deterioration, which has caused it to fall back whole centuries on the ladder of civilization. It is not strange that such a people should proclaim murder as a system and as a means of putting down a war caused by its desires for money and power. To kill the suspect, to kill the criminal, to kill the defenseless prisoner, to kill the helpless wounded, to kill all who are able to impede its desolating action all this is comprehensible as the way that the Spaniards have always understood and carried on warfare. But not to pause at the holy and venerated hearth, personification of all most peaceful and noble; nor at women, emblem of weakness; nor at children, overwhelming symbol of inoffensive innocence. To bring upon these destruction, ruin and murder, constant and cruel; ah, sir, how horrible this is! The pen falls from my hand when I think of it, and I doubt at times human nature, in contemplating with my eyes dim with tears, so many hearts outraged, so many women sacrificed, so many children cruelly and uselessly destroyed by the Spanish columns. The Spanish, unable to exercise acts of sovereignty over the interior of Cuba, have forced the peasants to concentrate in villages, where it is hoped misery will force them to serve in the armies of a Government which they abhor. Not only are these unhappy ones forced to abandon the only means by which they can live; not only are they forced to die of starvation, but they are branded as decided supporters of our arms, and against them, their wives and children, is directed a fearful and cruel persecution. Ought such facts to be tolerated by a civilized people? Can human powers, forgetting the fundamental principles of Christian community, permit these things go on? Is it possible that civilized people will consent to the sacrifice of unarmed and defenseless men? Can the American people view with culpable indifference the slow but complete extermination of thousands of innocent Americans? No. You have declared that they can not; that such acts of barbarity ought not to be permitted nor tolerated. We see the brilliant initiative you have taken in protesting strongly against the killing of Europeans and Christians in Armenia and in China, denouncing them with evidence of heartfelt energy. Knowing this, I today frankly and legally appeal to you, and declare that I can not completely prevent the acts of vandalism that I deplore. It does not suffice that I protect the families of Cubans who join us, and that my troops, following the example of civilization, respect and put at immediate liberty prisoners of war, cure and restore the enemy’s wounded, and prevent reprisals. It still appears that the Spaniard are amenable to no form of persuasion that is not backed up by force. Ah, sir, the vicissitudes of this cruel struggle have caused much pain to the heart of an old and unfortunate father, but nothing has made me suffer so much as the horrors which I recite unless it is to see that you remain indifferent to them.

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Say to the Spaniards that they may struggle with us and treat us as they please, but that they must respect the pacific population; that they must not outrage women nor butcher innocent children. You have a high and beautiful precedent for such action. Read the sadly famous proclamation of the Spanish general, Balmaceda, of 1869, proclaiming, practically, the reproduction of this war, and remember the honorable and high-minded protest that the Secretary of State formulated against it. The American people march legitimately at the head of the Western Continent, and they should no longer tolerate the cold and systematic assassination of defenseless Americans less history impute to them a participation in these atrocities. Imitate the high example that I have indicated above. Your conduct, furthermore, will be based solidly on the Monroe doctrine, for this can not refer only to the usurpation of American territories and not to the defense of the people of America against European ambitions. It can not mean to protect American soil and leave its helpless dwellers exposed to the cruelties of a sanguinary and despotic European power. It must extend to the defense of the principles which animate modern civilization and form an integral part of the culture and life of the American people. Crown your honorable history of statesmanship with a noble act of Christian charity. Say to Spain that murder must stop, that cruelty must cease, and put the stamp of your authority on what you say. Thousands of hearts will call down eternal benedictions on your memory, and God, the supremely merciful, will see in it the most meritorious work of your entire life. I am, your humble servant, M
aximo G
omez Source: J.A. Sierra, ed. A&E Television Networks, http://www.historyofcuba.com/history/ gomez4.htm.

124. U.S. Resolution on the ‘‘Recognition of the Independence of Cuba’’ and the Teller Amendment, 1898 The following resolution was passed in response to a message sent to Congress by William McKinley, U.S. president from 1897 to 1901, asking for permission to intervene in Cuba and go to war with Spain. The support of the United States was important to the rebels because they did not have a navy and needed supplies and food. At this time, the United States considered Cuba and Puerto Rico vital to its interests in the Caribbean and Central America— both would become staging areas for future intervention and the building and protection of the Panama Canal. The fourth and final resolution presented in the following document, is known as The Teller Resolution, named for its author, U.S. Sen. Henry M. Teller (1830–1914) (D-Colorado) who, like many Americans, feared that the United States had imperial designs on Cuba and that the war was a pretext for grabbing more territory. His resolution specified that the United States would not establish permanent control over Cuba and it disclaimed any intention of annexing the island. It was passed without opposition in Congress. However, after Spanish troops left the island in 1898, the United States occupied Cuba until 1902 after which Cuba, for all intents and purposes, became a U.S. protectorate.

Independistas

JOINT Resolution for the recognition of the independence of the people of Cuba, demanding that the Government of Spain relinquish its authority and government in the Island of Cuba, and to withdraw its land and naval forces from Cuba and Cuban waters, and directing the President of the United States to use the land and naval forces of the United States to carry these resolutions into effect. Whereas, the abhorrent conditions which have existed for more than three years in the Island of Cuba, so near our own borders, have shocked the moral sense of the people of the United States, have been a disgrace to Christian civilization, culminating, as they have, in the destruction of a United States battle-ship, with two hundred and sixty-six of its officers and crew, while on a friendly visit in the harbor of Havana, and can not longer be endured, as has been set forth by the President of the United States in his message to Congress of April eleventh, eighteen hundred and ninety-eight, upon which the action of Congress was invited: Therefore, Resolved, by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, First. That the people of the Island of Cuba are, and of right ought to be, free and independent. Second. That it is the duty of the United States to demand, and the Government of the United States does hereby demand, that the Government of Spain at once relinquish its authority and government in the Island of Cuba, and withdraw its land and naval forces from Cuba and Cuban waters. Third. That the President of the United States be, and he hereby is, directed and empowered to use the entire land and naval forces of the United States, and to call into the actual service of the United States, the militia of the several States, to such extent as may be necessary to carry these resolutions into effect. Fourth. That the United States hereby disclaims any disposition or intention to exercise sovereignty, jurisdiction, or control over said Islands except for the pacification thereof, and asserts its determination, when that is accomplished, to leave the government and control of the Island to its people. Approved, April 20, 1898. Source: ‘‘Recognition of the Independence of Cuba, 1898.’’ American Historical Documents, 1000 1904, The Harvard Classics, 1909 14. http://www.bartleby.com/43/45.html.

125. ‘‘Interment of Jos
e Mart
ı,’’ 1895 The following article describes the burial of Jos
e Mart
ı (1853–1895), the apostle for Cuban independence. Mart
ı was a poet, journalist, and independista. He is credited with creating sympathy for the Cuban Revolution in the United States, and in the mid-1890s took command of the armed struggle on the island. The following document describing his burial ceremonies would be the equivalent of a document describing George Washington’s burial.

INTERMENT OF JOSE MARTI Official Documents Relative to the Death of the Insurgent Correspondence of The United Press HAVANA, June 1 The official documents relative to the burial of Marti have been published in full. An epitome of them is as follows:

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‘‘In the General Cemetery of Santiago de Cuba, at 8 A.M., May 27, there was a meeting of a military commission named by his Excellency the Military Governor of Santiago. Among the prominent men were Col. Sandoval, who commanded the troops at the engagement of Dos Rios, May 19; Gen. Garrich, Col. Caberro, and many others. The Governor’s commission was read. It empowered them to proceed to the identification and burial of the body of the so-called chief of the rebels, one Jos
e Mart
ı. ‘‘Several of the senior officers knew Mart
ı in his lifetime, having known him during the 1868 to 1878 rebellion, and several having seen him during recent engagements. After a close and careful scrutiny of the remains, they were unanimously of the opinion that the body before them was that of Jos
e Mart
ı. ‘‘Following the identification, Col. Sandoval, acting for the Spanish Government, authorized the sepulture of the body in Compartment No. 134 of the Bovedas. ‘‘All the legal requirements having been complied with in every detail, the certificate of death and identification of the body of Jos
e Mart
ı was signed by the following: Manuel Tejerizo, Enrique Ubieta Maurl, Enrique Yatue, Pablo A. de Valencia, Jos
e X. de Sandoval. ‘‘At the conclusion of the official ceremonies, Col. Sandoval addressed the vast concourse, asking if any relative or friend of Mart
ı was present. Such friend or relative was at liberty to step forward and take part in the last offices to the dead. No one offering to do so, Col. Sandoval addressed the people, saying that in the presence of death the past was forgotten. Mart
ı had ceased to be an enemy of Spain, and the body before them was worthy of honorable and Christian burial. ‘‘The coffin was then placed in its niche, and the opening was closed with the usual stone tablet. When this had been done, Gen. Salcedo, in an eloquent address, said that if Spanish soldiers knew how to overcome enemies, they knew also how to respect the vanquished and how to pay honors to the dead. ‘‘This closes the Mart
ı incident the one and only Mart
ı is literally and legally dead.’’ Source: ‘‘Interment of Jos
e Mart
ı’’ New York Times, June 9, 1895, p. 5.

126. ‘‘Porto Rico in Rebellion,’’ 1895 In 1850, Cuba had a population of 1.2 million—605,560 of whom were white. That year 205,570 were free Africans and the rest were slaves. According to a royal census, in 1858, 300,430 Puerto Ricans were white, 341,015 were free Africans, and 41,736 were slaves. By 1894, the Cuban population had grown substantially with about 709,000 Spanish immigrants arriving between 1868 and 1894. Puerto Rico had a total population of about a million people. To the United States, the main difference between the two island nations was that Puerto Rico was 1,000 miles away whereas Cuba was only 90 miles away. U.S. business interests had already invaded Cuba. Like in Cuba, Puerto Rico witnessed the growth of a pro-independence movement. Spain initially responded by conceding colonial reforms such as establishing the first national political parties, the abolition of slavery, and a short-lived experiment in autonomy under the Spanish crown. In other words, Puerto Rico had representation in the Spanish courts (parliament). Like other Latin

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American nations, Puerto Rico developed an identifiable culture. As with Cuba, Puerto Rico’s struggle for independence came to a head in 1895. Puerto Rico had had a strong presence in the Cuban Revolutionary Party. The following article predicts that Puerto Rico would soon declare its independence and describes the activities of the Puerto Rican Separatist Party as well as its independence activities in New York City where it worked with the Cuban Revolutionary Party to raise, funds, seek volunteers, and win U.S. popular support.

PORTO RICO IN REBELLION NEW YORK, Dec. 11 A local paper says that in her struggle for independence Cuba has found a powerful ally in the Island of Porto Rico. According to the latest intelligence, Spain has now two insurrections on her hands, or will have if the plans maturing are carried into execution. Porto Rico has gone so far, it is said, as to issue a declaration of independence and will soon join her sister island in the active struggle for liberty. An army is being formed by the Separatist party of Porto Rico, and as soon as the leaders are ready the new campaign will open. As in the Venezuelan affair, the revolutionists are Cuban patriots residing in this city, and the same secrecy attended their movements. At a meeting held at the home of Dr. Julio Hanna, business calculated to further harass the Spanish government was transacted. It was that the initial steps were taken in the country towards a revolution in Porto Rico. If these plans and those formulated by the leaders on the island are carried out the first blow against Spain will be struck in a very short time. It may be but a few days before the people of Porto Rico, the only Spanish province in the West Indies which is not revolting against the mother country, will be in arms against Spain. The leaders here declare that a vigorous declaration of independence has been prepared by the leaders of the Porto Rican Separatist party and that it is their intention to issue this as soon as they feel sure that they can defend themselves against any action Spain may take. One of the most prominent Porto Ricans in New York declared that this may be in less than a week. The declaration of independence was prepared on the island and at least one copy of it was sent to this city for the leaders to pass upon. They have given it their approval and have so informed the Separatist party in Porto Rico. In starting this new revolution in Porto Rico, the leaders are fully carrying out the original plans of Gen. Jos
e Mart
ı, the late leader of the Cuban revolution, which were to first get the Cuban insurrection well under way and then to encourage, or rather create, a similar uprising in Porto Rico. There were to be two separate revolutions, the army of each of the two provinces acting independently as far as possible, but necessarily in conjunction when a crisis was reached, but each striving for the same object, the defeat of Spain. If a victory should be won, it was arranged that the sister island should form entirely separate governments, the republic of Cuba and the republic of Porto Rico. In formulating this plan, Gen. Mart
ı consulted prominent Porto Ricans who are now in this city, one of whom corroborated the above statement last night. These men are among those who are arranging the present proposed coup. Cuba’s cause and Porto Rico’s cause, they say, are identical. Source: Los Angeles Times, December 12, 1895, p. 3.

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127. Letter from Col. Charles Gordon to the U.S. Consul to Cuba on the Death of Cuba’s Gen. Antonio Maceo, January 1, 1897 The following document is an account of the death of Cuba’s Gen. Antonio Maceo (1845–1896). Col. Charles Gordon sent this information to the U.S. Consul in Cuba, Fitzhugh Lee. Antonio Maceo, the son of a Venezuelan mulato and an Afro-Cuban mother, was one of the main leaders of the Cuban struggle for independence. He is credited with liberating western Cuba while leading an Afro-Cuban army. After his death in battle, Maceo was called the ‘‘Titan of Bronze.’’ He had taken part in the Ten Years’ War of 1868–1878, and the final war, which began in 1895 and would end two years after his death in 1898. When he died at age 51, Maceo was second-in-command of the Cuban Army of Independence.

Friday Jan. 1st, 1897 Dear Sir, Some time ago, about Dec. 20th, I wrote a letter to a friend of mine, Dr. Guitierez [sic] at Key West, in which I described our passage of the Trocha and Maceo’s death, which I requested him, after reading, to forward to the ‘‘World’’, for publication, but I am afraid, the Spaniards have the letter, as I intrusted it to Lieut. Col. Pacio to forward, and his fate just now is unknown. I will therefore write about it once more. On December. 4th at 2 P.M. Gen. A. Maceo, accompanied by about 30 persons on his staff, assistants, and a few cavalrymen commanded by Comandante Varios, left San Felipe at the foot of the Gobernador (a large conspicuous hill); and as my clothes had not come, although I had dispatched two messengers, the General told me to come without them. About 6 P.M. we got to the beach, between Cabanas and Mariel, where the boat was hidden in the woods; but there was a very strong northerly wind and very heavy sea, so as to make it very dangerous, if not impossible to launch the boat. We therefore picked the boat up on our shoulders, even the General taking hold several times, and carried it about a mile and a half across a neck of land, launching it inside the harbor of Mariel, not more than 2 miles outside the town, about 10 P.M. Gen. A. Maceo, Gen. Pedro Diaz, Panchito Gomez [son of Maj. Gen. M
aximo G
omez ] and I were the first 4 to cross, with one guide and two boatmen. We landed after a passage of about 20 25 minutes at a little wharf near what I took to be some bathhouses, and all of us picking up a load, started a march of about 21=2 miles, when we stopped at a deserted house. The guide went back, and shortly returned with the 2nd group, namely Brig. Gen. Miro, Col. Nordarse, Dr. Zertoucha, Com. Justis and Ramon Umaha. By 2 A.M. the rest, namely, Com. Piedra and Beaberes, one captain, and 5 assistants had joined us and we went about 1=2 mile further, to a safer point, where we waited for daylight. About 6 A.M. on the 5th we started on the march and about 7 A.M. near La Merced, met Lt. Vazquez and some of his men, who took us to a house, where we camped all day. Next day, Dec. 6th, we left about noon, mounted on the horses of Vazquez’s men, as our horses had not come yet; met Lt. Col. Baldomero Acosta with men and horses 2 P.M. and camped at Gara 4 P.M. 9 P.M. Then resumed the march and camped at Baracoa [a Havana province] at midnight. At 4 A.M. Dec. 7th

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resumed the march and met Brig. Silverio Sanchez, encamped with about 300 men, at 8 A.M. at San Pedro. As we had not had much sleep and there was nothing to eat, most of us (the Grl. Staff) went to sleep and the General had his hammock put up as well. We naturally had all confidence in Brig. Sanchez, but he did not have any exploradores and when suddenly about 2 P.M. without any warning, heavy firing commenced at our advance guard, all was for a moment confusion. Not enough, to be without exploration, but the advance guard was so near the camp, that when the fire opened, the bullets entered and passed beyond the camp. Naturally we all mounted as quick as possible, and the General, Miro, Diaz, Nodarse, I, and 3 4 more were riding in a group, when immediately outside the little wood, in which was the camp, we met our retreating and, at no great distance, saw the enemy advancing and firing en guerilla. The General gave his horse the spurs and drawing his machete, shouted to the retreating men, ‘‘Atras! al machete!’’ The men and others who were all the time coming from the camp to the front seemed electrified, and with enthusiastic shouts wheeled their horses and charged, while the enemy precipitately retreated about 200 yards where he took position behind a strong stonewall about 4 feet high and, even dismounting his cavalry, opened a terrific fire by volleys. The General at this moment told me to collect what men I could, and charge the enemy’s right flank (on our left) while he himself charged on the left. I collected about 35 40 men, and seeing the stonewall not extended very far, also knowing it to be impossible for a small cavalry to take a wall like that from infantry by a direct charge, I went about 500 yards further to our left and then charged around the end of the wall. I broke their first line of fire, but was losing men fast, and when I fell wounded with 3 bullets, my men put me on another horse and retreated. As I went back, I saw the General [Antonio Maceo (Daley)], with [a] small group, not more than 6 8, charging away on our right, and it seemed but a moment, when all but 2 or 3 were on the ground. Commander Manuel Sanchez, was charging at the General’s side, when a bullet entered the chin of Maceo, coming out at the back of the neck. The General fell forward on his horse’s neck and Sanchez catching his arm exclaimed, ‘‘General, no soy cobarde!’’ Maceo could not speak, but gave him a terrible look and at this moment Sanchez received a bullet through his right leg which, after traversing his horse, also entered the stomach of the General. Maceo fell but a short distance from the stone wall and it seems it was impossible for our people to advance and get his body. Some of the Spaniards advanced and robbed both him and Panchito Gomez, but they never got their bodies as the fire of our men drove then back. Near dark about 5 P.M. the enemy retreated and our people then got the bodies. And I here wish to protest against the horrible custom of the Spanish to kill the wounded. They say Panchito Gomez committed suicide and I saw a picture in one of the Spanish papers, where he put the revolver to his brain. But that are all lies. First and foremost he had no revolver; on Dec. 2nd before we crossed, we have a nice little fight near San Felipe, and Panchito was wounded in the left shoulder and also lost his revolver. Second, he had no bullet wound in the head. He had besides his old wound in the shoulder, only one bullet wound in the left side of the stomach; but they found him alive with that by the side of the General and gave him a pinch (thrust) with the point of a sword in the right breast, a cut in the hollow of the left

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arm, and a horrible machetazo, that laid open the whole back of his head and left side of the neck. All of us who crossed with the General were wounded except Gen. Diaz and Zertucha and Com. Justis who was killed. I received a bullet in the right knee, one through the right arm and another in the left side, but the last 2 light wounds are about well. The bullet in the knee is one of those confounded copper bullets that make a hole, size of your thumb, and besides it hurts the bone. I believe you want to know also about some of the atrocities of the soldiers towards Pacificos, and I could write lots that I have personally witnessed, but I refer you to Mr. George Bronson Rhea, who has a host of well authenticated instances at your disposal. Still if you wish for some more, let me know, and I will supply them. As for the talk of the papers and Gen. Weyler about his speedy pacification of the island do not believe a word of it. In Pinar del Rio are at least 6,000 armed Cubans, besides 4 6,000 more with machetes. They have a splendid general (Rius Rivera) there and at present plenty to eat. I was there sometime and never went hungry, besides had the satisfaction there to see Weyler with 25,000 men unable to force our position for 5 days, when we had not more than 80 men. Of course everyone deplores the loss of Maceo, but I find nobody discouraged; on the contrary everybody, soldiers as well as leaders, are strong in the determination, to fight till [sic] their island is free. They all have still great hopes of American intervention, but even without that, they will fight on, trusting to tire out Spain, and especially Spaniard finances. Let me know if you wish to know more. Yours, El Coronel Carlos Gordon Source: http://www.spanamwar.com/maceodeath.htm.

128. George Reno, ‘‘History of the Brilliant Career of Gen. Mario Menocal,’’ 1899 Gen. Mario Menocal (1866–1941), president of Cuba from 1913–1921, served in the liberation war from Spain (1895–1898). Educated in the United States, he was well liked by Euro-American politicos. He became a conservative politician and initiated a ‘‘businessman’’ government in Cuba that was corrupt and arbitrary. The following Los Angeles Times article hails Menocal’s selection as chief of police of Havana in the early days of his political career and portrays him as a friend of the United States who wanted to place Cuba under the protection of the United States. He secured U.S. support for his Cuban presidency by taking Cuba into World War I.

HISTORY OF THE BRILLIANT CAREER OF GEN. MARIO MENOCAL Cuba has today for the first time in her four centuries of history, a man at the head of the police department who is a Cuban. And he is the coming man of Cuba. The selection of Gen. Mario Menocal as Chief of Police of Havana has a significance which is understood and appreciated all over the island. His appointment by Gen. Brooke was not only a recognition of Menocal’s merit and executive ability,

Independistas

but was to a certain extent a reward for perhaps the most striking act of personal heroism performed in the Cuban war, or for that matter in any war in any country. It was in the spring of [18]97 that the city of Guaymaro in Camaguey was besieged by Garcia’s forces and captured after a stubborn resistance on the part of the enemy. Americans now know what kind of a fight Spaniards can make when placed behind entrenchments and fortifications. At Guaymaro, after the outer defenses had been abandoned, a massive stone cathedral in the center of the place, heavily garrisoned by men who kept up a merciless fire from the long, narrow windows and protected arches, minarets and belfries, promised to be almost impregnable. The insurgents had fought their way into the city, but to approach within range of this fortified church was simply sure death. While this citadel remained in the hands of the Spaniards, the capture of Guaymaro was impossible. In this emergency, Menocal came to the rescue. Under a heavy fire, encumbered with a torpedo of dynamite, he made his way, where possible along protecting walls, where shelter could not be found he dashed across the open from house to house, but with each step approaching nearer to the church. From which came a perfect hail storm of bullets. Had one of them but touched the explosive he carried in his arms, Menocal would have been blown into eternity. Watching his chance, little by little, slowly but surely, he neared the cathedral; one last dash and he gained the shelter of the edifice itself, placed the bomb under the edge of the great stone wall, and in an instant was away again. From a protected point fifty yards distant he seized the rifle of a companion and sent a bullet into the dynamite. The explosion which followed tore out the entire end of the cathedral, whereupon the garrison hauled down the Spanish flag, surrendered to Gen. Garcia, and Guaymaro became henceforth the city of Cuba Libre. The courage of the Cuban has been not only questioned, but at times absolutely denied, but I have reason to believe that even our brave Col. Roosevelt or Lt. Hobson might have hesitated a moment before offering to carry twenty-five pounds of dynamite up San Juan Hill on July 1. For this heroic deed, Col. Menocal was made a brigadier-general. In September of the same year came the attack on Victoria de las Tunas. Slowly but surely, the Cuban lines enveloped the Spanish stronghold. On the morning of the third day, the dynamite gun, under the direction of Aristo Portuondo, was brought up to a position where it could be rendered effective. Several shots from it struck the base and sides of a stone fort which was the key to the city’s defenses, and at last a shot penetrated the roof; the effect of the explosion which followed was marvelous. The walls of the fort simply bulged outward and the structure collapsed; nearly every man within or near was instantly killed. Consternation and terror momentarily overwhelmed the Spanish forces. Brig. Gen. Menocal saw his opportunity. Without waiting to consult his general, at the head of his brigade, he immediately charged and carried the enemy’s trenches, and before the Spaniards could recover from their surprise, Victoria de las Tunas was in the hands of the Cuban forces, there to remain. For this gallant action, Menocal was made a general of division. Not long before our late unpleasantness with Spain resulted in war, Gen. Menocal was sent to the West and placed in command of the insurgent forces of Havana province. It was thought at that time that we would be compelled to take Havana by storm, and Menocal was selected as one of the ablest Cuban officers in the anticipated attack.

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Up to the time of his appointment as chief of Havana Police, Gen. Menocal was stationed at Marianao, where the excellent influence which he exercised over the men in his command won the admiration of Gen. Brooke and the entire staff of American officers in Havana. It is needless to say that he is loved in his native city, where his family have held a high social position for more than a century. Mario Menocal was sent from Cuba to this country to be educated when only sixteen. He remained in New York eight years, and was graduated with high honors from Cornell University as a civil, mining, and military engineer. A little before the breaking out of the last revolution he returned to Havana, where Gen. Martinez Campos ordered him to proceed as an engineer to Porto Principe to give color to this proposed construction of a railroad from the latter city to Santa Cruz, on the south coast. This proposition was intended to pacify the people of that province and prevent them from joining the revolt. But no sooner did Gen. M
aximo G
omez cross the line from Oriente into Camaguey, than Menocal dropped his quadrant, shouldered his rifle, and presented himself to the commander of the insurgent forces. Gen. G
omez immediately placed him on his staff as a lieutenant, and soon promoted him to the rank of captain, for bravery and ability displayed at the battles of Altagracia and Mulato, which took place in the summer of 1895, and afterward made him a commandante, or major. In such high esteem were Menocal’s services held that he was elected Assistant Secretary of War by the Cuban Assembly which met in the following September. The young officers, however, preferred the more active duties of the field, and in the spring of 1896, he was transferred to the forces of Gen. Calisto Garcia, who had just landed near Baracoa. Garcia made him his chief of staff, and in this capacity he assumed nearly all of the arduous detail and much of the responsibility of the fortunate campaign of the Oriente, in which Gen. Garcia became virtually master of the situation in the province of Santiago de Cuba. It was during this campaign in May of 1896, that I first met Mario Menocal, then a colonel, near the Cauto River, ‘‘It seems good,’’ he remarked, ‘‘to meet some one once more, who has come to the field direct from New York. It is a great old town,’’ he sighed. After a moment which evidently recalled some pleasant recollection, he continued; ‘‘Tell me, what is now on at the Broadway theaters?’’ This, within hearing of rifle volleys which the Spanish forces of Jiguani were firing at a party of Cuban cavalry, suggested anything but the lawful realities of war. I told him of the different plays then running, as well as I could recall them, while mounted couriers momentarily brought reports of the success of the insurgent force which was engaged in driving away cattle from under the enemy’s guns in the fortified suburbs of the town nearby. In the operations which were carried on in Holgain district soon after, Col. Menocal did enough work for any five men. Our hammocks were usually swung near each other, and night after night officers and practicos were reporting to him and receiving orders until long after midnight. We were always up, saddled, and on the march before dawn. ‘‘Are you never going to take a night off and indulge in a good rest?’’ I once asked him. ‘‘I shall not care to until Cuba is free,’’ was his quiet reply. During the summer of 1896, I saw many evidences of Menocal’s coolness and unerring judgment at critical moments in different engagements with the enemy.

Independistas

Although a quiet, serious man, he greatly enjoyed a joke, even at his own expense. One morning previous to my departure from Gen. Garcia’s command for the headquarters of the provisional government some two hundred miles distant, I rode alongside of Col. Menocal and noticed him eyeing my horse very carefully. ‘‘That’s s splendid animal you’re riding, Reno,’’ he remarked. ‘‘Yes, isn’t he a beauty?’’ I replied. ‘‘Where did you get his mouse-colored majesty?’’ he asked. ‘‘I traded a new dollar-and-a-quarter machete for him last night.’’ ‘‘It was a good bargain. He’ll carry you from one end of the island to the other, if you take care of that little sore under the saddle.’’ ‘‘How did you discover that there is a sore under my saddle?’’ ‘‘Oh, easily enough. That pacifico traded you my reserve horse, that’s all,’’ he replied. I at once offered to restore the property to its rightful owner, but he would not have it so. ‘‘He is just what you need. Don’t say a word, the joke is on me, that’s all.’’ Aside from the excellent work inaugurated in the police department by its new Chief, Menocal is serving as a valuable object lesson to that large body of illinformed and pessimistic Americans, who, not only doubt, but with singular assurance, assert that all talk about the Cubans governing themselves for at least several years to come is idiotic. When a few days ago in Havana, I referred one of these doubting individuals, a New York ex-alderman, to some of the new chief’s executive work which merited approval, he exclaimed: ‘‘Why, he’s no Cuban; he’s got blue eyes and he speaks English.’’ It is true that Gen. Menocal speaks English, perfect English, and that he has blue eyes, but he is, nevertheless, a Cuban, born in Havana. The Menocals have been conspicuous as leaders in every revolution against Spanish rule in Cuba since the people of that unfortunate country commenced to send their sons to the United States to be educated. The mother, sisters, and daughters of the Menocal family are equally patriotic with the male members. I can recall but two women, Caridad Aguero and Concha Agramonte Sanchez, who sent her five sons to the field, whose enthusiasm for the cause of independence quite equals that of Gen. Menocal’s mother. She sent her four sons, all she had to battle for freedom, and when at Marianao, she visited the general a few days ago, joy and pride were pictured in every lineament of her handsome face. ‘‘As chief of police,’’ she said. ‘‘Mario can do much good. Of course, I am proud of him; he has fought for Cuba since the first battle cry of liberty was sounded by Jos
e Mart
ı. Were he not my son, I would exact of him a renewal of his promise never to desist in his efforts until our island republic is firmly and honorably established under the protection of the United States.’’ The new chief’s uncle, Aniceto Menocal, is the celebrated engineering expert of Washington, who was intrusted with the report on the Nicaragua Canal route. One of his cousins is the well-known surgeon and physician of Havana, Dr. Raimundo Menocal. Another is the distinguished artist, Armando Menocal, who painted that famous masterpiece of the Fortuny School, which was exhibited at the World’s Fair, Columbus in Chains. It is needless to state that Gen. Menocal is making an efficient and satisfactory Chief of Police. Untiring energy, quickness in thought and action, perfect control of

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temper, and absolute fearlessness in the face of danger are his most prominent characteristics. Although under thirty, the four years in the field have given him a wonderful experience in enforcing obedience and in controlling both large and small bodies of men. Added to these qualifications, he has had the benefit of a thorough American education and possesses a practical knowledge of ‘‘the way we do things in the United States.’’ More than all, he has the respect, confidence, and esteem and will receive the support of the better element of Havana, Cubans and Spaniards alike. The corrupt know that they cannot buy him, and the criminal that they cannot trifle with him. From the moment that Spain’s flag was lowered over Havana and Old Glory was sent up in its place, a new day dawned, a new regime commenced in the control of the city’s affairs. He has already closed those theaters which, under Spanish protection, have been a blot upon the city’s reputation, and the dissolute classes have been driven into a locality where they may be confined and controlled. Against publishers and disseminators of vile literature, who have so long thrived unmolested. If not absolutely protected under the old order of things, he has inaugurated a war of extermination. ‘‘I may not be able to make Havana a morally ideal city,’’ he recently remarked, ‘‘but I can and will at least remove it from the category of places which disgrace the civilization of the century.’’ Chief McCullagh, who was sent to Havana this winter for the purpose of inspecting the police department, has reported that it is one of the most orderly cities of its size in the world. George Reno Source: Los Angeles Times, March 26, 1899, p. 9.

PART X The Occupation The Nineteenth Century was a period of adjustment and consolidation for most Latin American Republics as they formed distinct nationalities. They remained united by a colonial experience which in most part unified them through a common culture or language. This process of nationalism was greatly affected by the resources and location of the country viz-
a-viz its proximity to the United States of America. Most of the republics won their independence in the early nineteenth century Haiti from France in 1804, most from Spain or Portugal by the 1820s. The transition into modern states was tumultuous as in the case of most former colonial subjects for whom the free market is never a kind place. The invasions of Mexico in 1836 and ten years later sent ripples throughout the hemisphere forecasting the future of the Americas. Soon afterward Euro-Americans made their intentions known and moved to obtain Cuba. As the U.S. merchant and naval fleets grew, its world view of the Caribbean and Central America formed in which the isthmus was the cornerstone of U.S. commercial and national interests. The factor that deterred U.S. seizure of Cuba was the U.S.’s sectional problems that were resolved by the American Civil War (1861 1865). The end of this war was a great American milestone that saw the last two Spanish colonies launch their thirty years wars of independence. Both by this time had sizeable populations; both had large slave populations that the independistas wanted to free. In the final days of the wars for independence, the United States stepped in and unilaterally signed the Treaty of Paris (1898) with Spain that ceded it Puerto Rico and control of Cuba. The following section deals with the consequences of U.S. involvement in the area and its domination of the Caribbean and Central America. Because Puerto Rico was now a vassal of the United States, the commercialization of its institutions was accelerated, and this created an almost immediate uprooting of small farmers many of whom had to leave the island to find work.

129. Excerpts from the Treaty of Paris between the United States and Spain, 1898 The 1898 Treaty of Paris granted Cuba independence from Spain. The following excerpts show that the treaty was solely between Spain and the United States, giving the United States the right to occupy Cuba. Spain ceded to the United States the island of Puerto Rico and other islands then under Spanish control in the West Indies, as well as the island of Guam in the Marianas or

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Ladrones. This treaty also began the occupation of the Philippines by the United States. The treaty was criticized by anti-colonial forces because it did not take into account the wishes of the nations fighting for their independence. The following excerpts from the treaty deal with the granting of independence to Cuba.

The United States of America and Her Majesty the Queen Regent of Spain, in the name of her august son Don Alfonso XIII, desiring to end the state of war now existing between the two countries, have for that purpose appointed as plenipotentiaries: The President of the United States, William R. Day, Cushman K. Davis, William P. Frye, George Gray, and Whitelaw Reid, citizens of the United States; And Her Majesty the Queen Regent of Spain, Don Eugenio Montero Rios, president of the senate; Don Buenaventura de Abarzuza, senator of the Kingdom and ex-minister of the Crown; Don Jose de Garnica, deputy of the Cortes and associate justice of the supreme court; Don Wenceslao Ramirez de Villa Urrutia, envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary at Brussels; and Don Rafael Cerero, general of division; Who, having assembled in Paris, and having exchanged their full powers, which were found to be in due and proper form, have, after discussion of the matters before them, agreed upon the following articles: ARTICLE I Spain relinquishes all claim of sovereignty over and title to Cuba. And as the island is, upon its evacuation by Spain, to be occupied by the United States, the United States will, so long as such occupation shall last, assume and discharge the obligations that may under international law result from the fact of its occupation, for the protection of life and property. ARTICLE II Spain cedes to the United States the island of Porto Rico and other islands now under Spanish sovereignty in the West Indies, and the island of Guam in the Marianas or Ladrones. ARTICLE III Spain cedes to the United States the archipelago known as the Philippine Islands, and comprehending the islands lying within the following line. … ARTICLE VI Spain will, upon the signature of the present treaty, release all prisoners of war, and all persons detained or imprisoned for political offences, in connection with the insurrections in Cuba and the Philippines and the war with the United States. Reciprocally, the United States will release all persons made prisoners of war by the American forces, and will undertake to obtain the release of all Spanish prisoners in the hands of the insurgents in Cuba and the Philippines.

The Occupation

The Government of the United States will at its own cost return to Spain and the Government of Spain will at its own cost return to the United States, Cuba, Porto Rico, and the Philippines, according to the situation of their respective homes, prisoners released or caused to be released by them, respectively, under this article. ARTICLE VII The United States and Spain mutually relinquish all claims for indemnity, national and individual, of every kind, of either Government, or of its citizens or subjects, against the other Government, that may have arisen since the beginning of the late insurrection in Cuba and prior to the exchange of ratifications of the present treaty, including all claims for indemnity for the cost of the war. The United States will adjudicate and settle the claims of its citizens against Spain relinquished in this article. ARTICLE VIII In conformity with the provisions of Articles I, II, and III of this treaty, Spain relinquishes in Cuba, and cedes in Porto Rico and other islands in the West Indies, in the island of Guam, and in the Philippine Archipelago, all the buildings, wharves, barracks, forts, structures, public highways and other immovable property which, in conformity with law, belong to the public domain, and as such belong to the Crown of Spain. And it is hereby declared that the relinquishment or cession, as the case may be, to which the preceding paragraph refers, can not in any respect impair the property or rights which by law belong to the peaceful possession of property of all kinds, of provinces, municipalities, public or private establishments, ecclesiastical or civic bodies, or any other associations having legal capacity to acquire and possess property in the aforesaid territories renounced or ceded, or of private individuals, of whatsoever nationality such individuals may be. The aforesaid relinquishment or cession, as the case may be, includes all documents exclusively referring to the sovereignty relinquished or ceded that may exist in the archives of the Peninsula. Where any document in such archives only in part relates to said sovereignty, a copy of such part will be furnished whenever it shall be requested. Like rules shall be reciprocally observed in favor of Spain in respect of documents in the archives of the islands above referred to. In the aforesaid relinquishment or cession, as the case may be, are also included such rights as the Crown of Spain and its authorities possess in respect of the official archives and records, executive as well as judicial, in the islands above referred to, which relate to said islands or the rights and property of their inhabitants. Such archives and records shall be carefully preserved, and private persons shall without distinction have the right to require, in accordance with law, authenticated copies of the contracts, wills and other instruments forming part of notorial protocols or files, or which may be contained in the executive or judicial archives, be the latter in Spain or in the islands aforesaid. ARTICLE IX Spanish subjects, natives of the Peninsula, residing in the territory over which Spain by the present treaty relinquishes or cedes her sovereignty, may remain in

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such territory or may remove there from, retaining in either event all their rights of property, including the right to sell or dispose of such property or of its proceeds; and they shall also have the right to carry on their industry, commerce, and professions, being subject in respect thereof to such laws as are applicable to other foreigners. In case they remain in the territory they may preserve their allegiance to the Crown of Spain by making, before a court of record, within a year from the date of the exchange of ratifications of this treaty, a declaration of their decision to preserve such allegiance; in default of which declaration they shall be held to have renounced it and to have adopted the nationality of the territory in which they may reside. The civil rights and political status of the native inhabitants of the territories hereby ceded to the United States shall be determined by the Congress. … ARTICLE X The inhabitants of the territories over which Spain relinquishes or cedes her sovereignty shall be secured in the free exercise of their religion.… … ARTICLE XVII The present treaty shall be ratified by the President of the United States, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate thereof, and by Her Majesty the Queen Regent of Spain; and the ratifications shall be exchanged at Washington within six months from the date hereof, or earlier if possible. In faith whereof, we, the respective Plenipotentiaries, have signed this treaty and have hereunto affixed our seals. Done in duplicate at Paris, the tenth day of December, in the year of Our Lord one thousand eight hundred and ninety-eight. [Seal] William R. Day [Seal] Cushman K. Davis [Seal] William P. Frye [Seal] Geo. Gray [Seal] Whitelaw Reid [Seal] Eugenio Montero Rios [Seal] B. de Abarzuza [Seal] J. de Garnica [Seal] W. R. de Villa Urrutia [Seal] Rafael Cerero Source: U.S. Congress, 55th Cong., 3d sess., Senate Doc. No. 62, Part 1 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1899), pp. 5 11.


ximo Go
mez, 130. Excerpts from the Diary of General Ma January 8, 1899 M
aximo G
omez Baez (1836–1905) was born in Santo Domingo. A member of the Spanish armed forces, he supported and fought in Cuba’s Ten Years’ War from 1868 to 1878, which was the first major insurgency and the

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beginning of the wars for independence. He traveled to the United States where he met Jos
e Mart
ı (1853–1895), who spent his life dedicated to the cause of Cuban independence. Mart
ı was a poet and journalist, as well as the leader of Cubans in exile. G
omez bristled at Euro-Americans’ attitude of superiority toward Cubans. In the following excerpt he decries the American occupation of Cuba, saying that it was too high a price to pay for the military aid that Cubans received from the United States in the last year of the war. He concludes that the EuroAmericans turned the Cuban victory from a joyous occasion to a bitter experience. Cuban nationalists from this time forward would accuse the United States of imperialism rather than solidarity with Cubans and other Latin American nations.

The Americans’ military occupation of the country is too high a price to pay for their spontaneous intervention in the war we waged against Spain for freedom and independence. The American government’s attitude toward the heroic Cuban people at this history-making time is, in my opinion, one of big business. This situation is dangerous for the country, mortifying the public spirit and hindering organization in all of the branches that, from the outset, should provide solid foundations for the future republic, when everything was entirely the work of all the inhabitants of the island, without distinction of nationality. Nothing is more rational and fair than that the owner of the house should be the one to live in it with his family and be the one who furnishes and decorates it as he likes and that he not be forced against his will and inclination to follow norms imposed by his neighbor. All these considerations lead me to think that Cuba cannot have true moral peace which is what the people need for their happiness and good fortune under the transitional government. This transitional government was imposed by force by a foreign power and, therefore, is illegitimate and incompatible with the principles that the entire country has been upholding for so long and in the defense of which half of its sons have given their lives and all of its wealth has been consumed. There is so much natural anger and grief throughout the island that the people haven’t really been able to celebrate the triumph of the end of their former rulers’ power. They have left in sadness, and in sadness we have remained, because a foreign power has replaced them. I dreamed of peace with Spain; I hoped to bid farewell with respect to the brave Spanish soldiers with whom we always met, face to face, on the field of battle. The words peace and freedom should inspire only love and fraternity on the morning of concord between those who were combatants the night before; but, with their guardianship imposed by force, the Americans have turned the Cubans’ victorious joy to bitterness and haven’t sweetened the grief of the vanquished. The situation that has been created for this people one of material poverty and of grief because their sovereignty has been curbed is ever more distressing. It is possible that, by the time this strange situation finally ends, the Americans will have snuffed out even the last spark of goodwill. Source: J. A. Sierra and HistoryofCuba.com, http://www.historyofcuba.com/history/gomez.htm.

131. Campaign Speech Given by Albert Beveridge, September 16, 1898 Albert Beveridge (1862–1927), was a fervent advocate of Euro-American imperialism which meant U.S. control of territories outside its borders.

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Beveridge and others claimed that the United States had the right and duty to control less developed nations. Cuba served as the model for forging an empire. In the following campaign speech made on September 16, 1898, during Beveridge’s successful race for the U.S. Senate (from Indiana), he embraced the notion of the United States becoming an imperial power, saying the Philippines were ours forever, it was ‘‘territory belonging to the United States.’’ This notion of entitlement and Euro-American superiority rankled Latin Americans and contributed to their distrust of the United States.

It is a noble land that God has given us; a land that can feed and clothe the world; a land whose coastlines would inclose half the countries of Europe; a land set like a sentinel between the two imperial oceans of the globe, a greater England with a nobler destiny. It is a mighty people that He has planted on this soil; a people sprung from the most masterful blood of history; a people perpetually revitalized by the virile, manproducing workingfolk of all the earth; a people imperial by virtue of their power, by right of their institutions, by authority of their Heaven-directed purposes the propagandists and not the misers of liberty. It is a glorious history our God has bestowed upon His chosen people; a history heroic with faith in our mission and our future; a history of statesmen who flung the boundaries of the Republic out into unexplored lands and savage wilderness; a history of soldiers who carried the flag across blazing deserts and through the ranks of hostile mountains, even to the gates of sunset; a history of a multiplying people who overran a continent in half a century; a history of prophets who saw the consequences of evils inherited from the past and of martyrs who died to save us from them; a history divinely logical, in the process of whose tremendous reasoning we find ourselves today. Therefore, in this campaign, the question is larger than a party question. It is an American question. It is a world question. Shall the American people continue their march toward the commercial supremacy of the world? Shall free institutions broaden their blessed reign as the children of liberty wax in strength, until the empire of our principles is established over the hearts of all mankind? Have we no mission to perform, no duty to discharge to our fellow man? Has God endowed us with gifts beyond our deserts and marked us as the people of His peculiar favor, merely to rot in our own selfishness, as men and nations must, who take cowardice for their companion and self for their deity as China has, as India has, as Egypt has? Shall we be as the man who had one talent and hid it, or as he who had ten talents and used them until they grew to riches? And shall we reap the reward that waits on our discharge of our high duty; shall we occupy new markets for what our farmers raise, our factories make, our merchants sell aye, and please God, new markets for what our ships shall carry? Hawaii is ours; Porto Rico is to be ours; at the prayer of her people Cuba finally will be ours; in the islands of the East, even to the gates of Asia, coaling stations are to be ours at the very least; the flag of a liberal government is to float over the Philippines, and may it be the banner that Taylor unfurled in Texas and Fremont carried to the coast. The Opposition tells us that we ought not to govern a people without their consent. I answer, The rule of liberty that all just government derives its authority from the consent of the governed, applies only to those who are capable of

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self-government We govern the Indians without their consent, we govern our territories without their consent, we govern our children without their consent. How do they know what our government would be without their consent? Would not the people of the Philippines prefer the just, humane, civilizing government of this Republic to the savage, bloody rule of pillage and extortion from which we have rescued them? And, regardless of this formula of words made only for enlightened, self-governing people, do we owe no duty to the world? Shall we turn these peoples back to the reeking hands from which we have taken them? Shall we abandon them, with Germany, England, Japan, hungering for them? Shall we save them from those nations, to give them a self-rule of tragedy? They ask us how we shall govern these new possessions. I answer: Out of local conditions and the necessities of the case methods of government will grow. If England can govern foreign lands, so can America. If Germany can govern foreign lands, so can America. If they can supervise protectorates, so can America. Why is it more difficult to administer Hawaii than Ne[w] Mexico or California? Both had a savage and an alien population: both were more remote from the seat of government when they came under our dominion than the Philippines are today. Will you say by your vote that American ability to govern has decayed, that a century’s experience in self-rule has failed of a result? Will you affirm by your vote that you are an infidel to American power and practical sense? Or will you say that ours is the blood of government; ours the heart of dominion; ours the brain and genius of administration? Will you remember that we do but what our fathers did we but pitch the tents of liberty farther westward, farther southward we only continue the march of the flag? The march of the flag! In 1789, the flag of the Republic waved over 4,000,000 souls in thirteen states, and their savage territory which stretched to the Mississippi, to Canada, to the Floridas. The timid minds of that day said that no new territory was needed, and, for the hour, they were right. But Jefferson, through whose intellect the centuries marched; Jefferson, who dreamed of Cuba as an American state, Jefferson, the first Imperialist of the Republic Jefferson acquired that imperial territory which swept from the Mississippi to the mountains, from Texas to the British possessions, and the march of the flag began! The infidels to the gospel of liberty raved, but the flag swept on! The title to that noble land out of which Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Montana have been carved was uncertain: Jefferson, strict constructionist of constitutional power though he was, obeyed the Anglo Saxon impulse within him, whose watchword is, ‘‘Forward’’: another empire was added to the Republic, and the march of the flag went on! Those who deny the power of free institutions to expand urged every argument, and more that we hear today; but the people’s judgment approved the command of their blood, and the march of the flag went on! A screen of land from New Orleans to Florida shut us from the Gulf, and over this and the Everglade Peninsula waved the saffron flag of Spain; Andrew Jackson seized both, the American people stood at his back, and, under Monroe, the Floridas came under the dominion of the Republic, and the march of the flag went on! The Cassandras prophesied every prophecy of despair we hear today, but the march of the flag went on! Then Texas responded to the bugle calls of liberty, and the march of the flag went on! And, at last, we waged war with Mexico, and the flag swept over the

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southwest, over peerless California, past the Gate of Gold to Oregon on the north, and from ocean to ocean its folds of glory blazed. And, now, obeying the same voice that Jefferson heard and obeyed, that Jackson heard and obeyed, that Monroe heard and obeyed, that Seward heard and obeyed, that Grant heard and obeyed, that Harrison heard and obeyed, our President today plants the flag over the islands of the seas, outposts of commerce, citadels of national security, and the march of the flag goes on! Distance and oceans are no arguments. The fact that all the territory our fathers bought and seized is contiguous, is no argument. In 1819, Florida was farther from New York than Porto Rico is from Chicago today; Texas, farther from Washington in 1845 than Hawaii is from Boston in 1898; California, more inaccessible in 1847 than the Philippines are now. Gibraltar is farther from London than Havana is from Washington; Melbourne is farther from Liverpool than Manila is from San Francisco. The ocean does not separate us from lands of our duty and desire the oceans join us, rivers never to be dredged, canals never to be repaired. Steam joins us; electricity joins us the very elements are in league with our destiny. Cuba not contiguous? Porto Rico not contiguous! Hawaii and the Philippines not contiguous! The oceans make them contiguous. And our navy will make them contiguous. But the Opposition is right there is a difference. We did not need the western Mississippi Valley when we acquired it, nor Florida! nor Texas, nor California, nor the royal provinces of the far northwest. We had no emigrants to people this imperial wilderness, no money to develop it, even no highways to cover it. No trade awaited us in its savage vastnesses. Our productions were not greater than our trade. There was not one reason for the landlust of our statesmen from Jefferson to Grant, other than the prophet and the Saxon within them. But, today, we are raising more than we can consume, making more than we can use. Therefore we must find new markets for our produce. And so, while we did not need the territory taken during the past century at the time it was acquired, we do need what we have taken [in] 1898, and we need it now. The resource[s] and the commerce of the immensely rich dominions will be increased as much as American energy is greater than Spanish sloth. In Cuba, alone, there are 15,000,000 acres of forest unacquainted with the ax, exhaustless mines of iron, priceless deposits of manganese, millions of dollars’ worth of which we must buy, today, from the Black Sea districts. There are millions of acres yet unexplored. The resources of Porto Rico have only been trifled with. The riches of the Philippines have hardly been touched by the fingertips of modern methods. And they produce what we consume, and consume what we produce the very predestination of reciprocity a reciprocity ‘‘not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.’’ They sell hemp, sugar, cocoanuts, fruits of the tropics, timber of price like mahogany; they buy flour, clothing, tools, implements, machinery, and all that we can raise and make. Their trade will be ours in time. Do you indorse that policy with your vote? Cuba is as large as Pennsylvania, and is the richest spot on the globe. Hawaii is as large as New Jersey; Porto Rico half as large as Hawaii; the Philippines larger than all New England, New York, New Jersey, and Delaware combined. Together they are larger than the British Isles, larger than France, larger than Germany, larger than Japan.

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If any man tells you that trade depends on cheapness and not on government influence, ask him why England does not abandon South Africa, Egypt, India. Why does France seize South China, Germany the vast region whose port is Kaouchou? Our trade with Porto Rico, Hawaii, and the Philippines must be as free as between the states of the Union, because they are American territory, while every other nation on earth must pay our tariff before they can compete with us. Until Cuba shall ask for annexation, our trade with her will, at the very least, be like the preferential trade of Canada with England. That, and the excellence of our goods and products; that, and the convenience of traffic; that, and the kinship of interests and destiny, will give the monopoly of these markets to the American people. The commercial supremacy of the Republic means that this Nation is to be the sovereign factor in the peace of the world. For the conflicts of the future are to be conflicts of trade struggles for markets commercial wars for existence. And the golden rule of peace is impregnability of position and invincibility of preparedness. So, we see England, the greatest strategist of history, plant her flag and her cannon on Gibraltar, at Quebec, in the Bermudas, at Vancouver, everywhere. So Hawaii furnishes us a naval base in the heart of the Pacific; the Ladrones another, a voyage further on; Manila another, at the gates of Asia Asia, to the trade of whose hundreds of millions American merchants, manufacturers, farmers, have as good right as those of Germany or France or Russia or England; Asia, whose commerce with the United Kingdom alone amounts to hundreds of millions of dollars every year; Asia, to whom Germany looks to take her surplus products; Asia, whose doors must not be shut against American trade. Within five decades the bulk of Oriental commerce will be ours. No wonder that, in the shadows of coming events so great, free silver is already a memory. The current of history has swept past that episode. Men understand, today, the greatest commerce of the world must be conducted with the steadiest standard of value and most convenient medium of exchange human ingenuity can devise. Time, that unerring reasoner, has settled the silver question. The American people are tired of talking about money they want to make it. There are so many real things to be done canals to be dug, railways to be laid, forests to be felled, cities to be builded [sic], fields to be tilled, markets to be won, ships to be launched, peoples to be saved, civilization to be proclaimed and the [fl]ag of liberty [h]ung to the eager air of every sea. Is this an hour to waste upon triflers with nature’s laws? Is this a season to give our destiny over to wordmongers and prosperity-wreckers? No! It is an hour to remember our duty to our homes. It is a moment to realize the opportunities fate has opened to us. And so is [it the] hour for us to stand by the Government. Wonderfully has God guided us Yonder at Bunker Hill and Yorktown. His providence was above us at New Orleans and on ensanguined seas His hand sustained u[s]. Abraham Lincoln was His minister and His was the altar of freedom the Nation’s soldiers set up on a hundred battlefields. His power directed Dewey in the East and delivered the Spanish fleet into our hands, as He delivered the elder Armada into the hands of our English sires two centuries ago [Note: actually in 1588]. The American people can not use a dishonest medium of exchange; it is ours to set the world its example of right and honor. We can not fly from our world duties; it is ours to execute the purpose of a fate that has driven us to be greater than our small

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intentions. We can not retreat from any soil where Providence has unfurled our banner; it is ours to save that soil for liberty and civilization. Source: ‘‘Modern History Sourcebook: Albert Beveridge: The March of the Flag.’’ Courtesy of Fordam University’s Internet Modern History Sourcebook, http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/ 1898beveridge.html.

132. Excerpts from ‘‘The Field Laborer,’’ Testimony of Severo Tulier, 1899 In 1898, the United States took military possession of Puerto Rico as a result of the Treaty of Paris. The Puerto Rican people did not have a say in the treaty or in becoming part of the United States. The stated purpose of Euro-American leaders was that Puerto Rican bases were strategic for their naval operations. A majority of Puerto Ricans initially welcomed U.S. forces, believing that they would soon leave. The following excerpts are from an interview between Henry K. Carroll and Severo Tulier, the owner of a small farm in Vega Baja before the occupation. The U.S. occupation had an immediate impact on his life as he was forced to sell his farm in 1899, because he could not compete with the commercial plantation economy that came to Puerto Rico with the U.S. occupation. The commercialization of the island uprooted small farmers, some of whom—like Tulier—would continue to labor in the fields. In the following interview, he describes life in Puerto Rico.

Tulier: The usual rate [of wages] is 25 centavos and breakfast, and 371=2 centavos to the better class of workmen. A few laborers who have some special skill receive as high as 50 centavos a day, but it should be borne in mind that where 50 centavos is paid, payment is made in vales, which are mere tokens … redeemable at the company’s store…. The customary hours of work are from six to six; that is, for work in the field. For work in the shops and on the sugar machinery, they have to go earlier, sometimes as early as 4 o’clock in the morning…. Carroll: What do they have to eat in the evenings? Tulier: The basis of their evening meal is a big plantain, which they sometimes make into a mess with rice and beans…. They have meat only on Sundays…. Their food improves a little during the corn season, as that forms an addition to the daily diet. Their three chief articles of food, it may be said, are sweet potatoes, plantains, and corn…. Carroll: What about their houses? Tulier: The house is made of poles, thatched about with palm, and about 4 or 5 varas square [a vara is about 33 inches] partitioned off into a parlor, a bedroom and a kitchen…. The kitchen has no flooring, and the parlor and bedroom flooring is badly laid. Frequently the house lets in the rain…. Their wardrobe consists of two changes one that is being worn and the other that is being washed…. The children, as a rule, have only one shirt, and while the mother is washing that one they must run about without any clothing. The number of [infant] deaths caused from want of medical assistance is not considerable, because the women lead a free, out-of-door life, but owing to want of

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proper nourishing food, a great many [infants] succumb from weakness…. The poor people are absolutely in want of medical assistance in the country places, and if they go to the village to obtain medical aid they can only do so through the charity of the doctors, as they are not able to pay for such services. Usually about five persons live in a house of the kind I have described. They all sleep together father, mother, grown-up sons and daughters and when they haven’t sufficient beds, they sleep on piles of palm leaves…. The peasant is naturally intelligent, and his mind is as fertile as the land which he works and is only waiting the implements of education. As a proof of this I will cite an instance. When it was known that autonomy was to be granted and that suffrage was limited to men of 25 years of age who knew how to read and write, I formed a class in my district and offered to teach free all men of that age and over, to fit them to vote. I had men in the class whose ages ranged from 25 to 60 years, and some of them after a few lessons knew the letters of the alphabet at sight and could write them. This was done without the aid of any modern appliances used in teaching, a piece of rough board and chalk being the only materials at hand.… The desire of everybody to learn was manifest. Source: Henry K. Carroll, Report on the Island of Puerto Rico, U.S. Treasury Department Document 2118 (Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1899), pp. 724 726.

~os,’’ 133. Excerpts from ‘‘La Miseria: A Los Negros Puertorriquen
n Romero Rosa to Black Puerto Ricans, a Letter from Ramo March 27, 1901 Ram
on Romero Rosa (1863–1907), a Puerto Rican anarchist, was dedicated to organizing the working class. He was a printer, playwright, and agitator. He used the theater to teach workers to defend themselves against the power of the ruling class. Romero Rosa opposed the ideology of individualism popular in the years after the Spanish-American War and expressed a strong racial consciousness. For Romero Rosa, the recognition of African culture was essential. European traditions had been superimposed on Puerto Ricans, hiding the African essence. ‘‘A Los Negros Puertorrique~ nos’’ (‘‘To the Black Puerto Ricans’’) was a pamphlet circulated in 1899 and published in 1901. In it, Romero Rosa says that ‘‘the children of Africa’’ were the first ‘‘brought over to settle this untamed region, constituted our first working people after the conquest.’’ It was as if the African heritage had come out of the closet. The following excerpt is in response to a proposal from a member of the Puerto Rican elite that encouraged the exportation of Black Puerto Ricans while promoting white immigration.

TO BLACK PUERTO RICANS: MISERY You unfortunate martyrs have doubly suffered unjust exploitation at the hands of the white slave trader of all times and of all ages.… listen to the horrible sentence just dictated against you by a miserable man, who if his skin is clear, it is because his entrails are dark. My pen refuses to write his name, because the ink, as black as

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ebony, is ashamed to trace it. However, it is important that you know who he is … so you can spit on his face. His name is Don Ram
on de Castro Rivera. This miserable creature, who if he is Puerto Rican dishonors his own origin, has written to the Civil Governor, cynically telling him the importance of keeping emigration at a ratio of two thirds Blacks and mulattos and one third white, and not to permit the immigration of Blacks onto the island; that as many whites as possible be brought to the island from the United States, but not a single Black, since there are already many on the island and there should be an effort to get rid of them, since there is absolutely no need for them. Also, he advocates the fomenting of the emigration of Blacks to Ecuador since there are few and there will be no complaints of this emigration. Oh, unspeakable the shame of this miserable creature! That means, that the country’s Blacks, those unfortunate workers who created the wealth of Puerto Rico, today THERE IS NO NEED FOR THEM AT ALL and you get must rid of them: How is this unfortunate race repaid for their good service. In what miserable conditions they have placed this people of virtuous and honest men who have only worked and worked to produce the gold which has been wasted by the vagabonds of this earth; the white who only have known how to handle the shameful whip of slavery and prostitution. We are not to become unraveled with insults that is not or ever will be how we behave: our minds are fresh and our hearts are honest. But we shall take our notes to the neurotic brain of this miserable being and at least remind him certain points of the history of Blacks in Puerto Rico. Listen, Ram
on de Castro Rivera, and also listen, white exploiters of the Borinquen country, the wealth that today you hold hidden, has been extracted from the blood of Blacks. Listen to those features in the history of slavery in Puerto Rico. Four centuries and eight years have gone by since the first day, in the name of Christianity, the Spain of Catholic Kings robbed the natives of their land. Maybe the immortal Col
on did not imagine that his discovery would be the major cause of slavery and infamous cruelty for the Black race. However, what happened after the discovery was a crime against humanity: the Borinquen Indians, not only were pulled from their collective way of life, they were completely exterminated by the sharp arrows and sharp blades of the scribes of the Catholic Kingdom and bourgeois aristocracy of the middle ages. All perversity is disguised with a benevolent end; and to that we repeat, in name of Christianity and European civilization the natives were expropriated of their own land and massacred. In the name of Christianity, the conquest legalized the usurpation by the expropriators of the Borinquen, and with another horrific crime substituted the fully exterminated natives. And now we get into history. It was the commercial trade of this unfortunate race from Africa, this race that today you are asking for its annulment in Puerto Rico, the ones that populated this region and were once free in their country and owned their own piece of land and who were taken by force by the cursed slave-traders, with their white faces, and a heart of darkness. European aristocracy committed this horrendous crime. Understand correctly, it was the sons of Africa, the unfortunate beings who were brought to colonize this Indian land, the first working people after the conquest. And we would fail Reason and Justice, if the richness and wealth produced in this land is denied … to all unfortunate workers, twice slaves of the tyrannical patronage and of the state. Even today there is a scarcity of white workers arriving in Puerto Rico. The haciendas, the factories, the fields, the shops, and in all that is practical and useful the majority are black hands.

The Occupation

Ram
on de Castro Rivera’s white hands are only used to maneuver the shameful whip and to horde the wealth which was produced and continues to be produced with the sweat and blood of Blacks. Now Ram
on de Castro Rivera can see, as well as all the white bourgeoisie criminals, that with the blood and sweat of Blacks who they no longer need, made and fomented the making of all the wealth of the bourgeoisie expropriators of yesterday and the hording bourgeoisie of today. Miserable human being! You should kiss the Black hand that has been the source of inexhaustible richness, instead you lash out with those horrible words that so degrade us and enrage us. Those of you who have a conscience and know civics, answer: what has been the rewards for blacks for their labor, either today or in the past? Absolutely none! If we are to talk of those tragic and horrific times of marketing human flesh; if we are to speak of those inquisitional acts, in which the poor Black man, wearing nothing, but a pair of light shorts, with their ebony-color backs exposed to the elements of nature, having the hot sun rays reverberating of their backs, and subjugated by the infamous whip, was forced to perform in inhuman labor conditions; if we are to remember the crimes committed against Blacks who were not to lift their face to face the punisher, boss, manager, patron because it would make his blood boil and maybe even seek revenge. Yesterday Anduza, another miserable creature like many other whites, requested the whip … for Puerto Rico, today Ram
on de Castro Rivera requests the governor to get all Blacks out of the country, because they are no longer needed! What depravity have we reached! Maybe Anduza, as Castro Rivera, and all the white criminals, enslavers of Blacks, do not remember that their elders and maybe even themselves while taking all the wealth and delighting themselves in orgies, also prostituted black women, then sold their own children to the human trade. Blacks lived in dirty quarters and were forced to eat roots and fungi. To add to the vast inequity, basic education was denied to the Black people. And as a sublime rewarding law, a venerable black teacher, Rafael Cordero taught a group of white children who became luminaries in science and humanities. Black Puerto Ricans know that yesterday Anduza requested the whip law and today Castro Rivera asserts that Black Puerto Ricans are no longer needed. Blacks must not emigrate: Puerto Rico belongs to them. Let the thieves emigrate. Comrades, defend yourselves! Ram
on Romero Rosa March 27, 1901 Source: Sources for the Study of Puerto Rican Migration, 1879 1930. History Task Force/Centro de Estudios Puertorrique~ nos Research Foundation of the City University of New York, 1982, pp. 30 33. Translated by Guadalupe Compe
an.

134. Excerpts from a Petition from Puerto Rican Workers at the Plantation Paauilo to the Governor of Puerto Rico, 1902 The Treaty of Paris, signed in 1898, stipulated that U.S. industrialists would take over most of Puerto Rico’s industries. Further, under U.S. rule the commercialization of agriculture accelerated, uprooting subsistence farmers who then were forced to eke out a living in the factories and sweatshops.

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Conditions worsened as Hurricane San Ciriaco (1899) ripped through the island, and 28 days of continuous rain destroyed farms, leaving 3,400 dead and thousands of people displaced. The destruction of Caribbean sugar increased the demand for sugar. In response to the demand, Hawaiian plantation owners put more land into production. They looked to Puerto Rico where there was a large unemployed labor pool. The first group of Puerto Ricans left for Hawaii in November 1900, followed within a year by over 5,000 Puerto Rican men, women, and children. They were distributed to plantations on four Hawaiian islands where they were often mistreated. The following excerpts, written from Hawaii to the governor of Puerto Rico, describe the workers’ suffering and their wishes for the governor to arrange their return to their beloved Puerto Rico.

Hon. Sir: We, the Puerto Ricans at the Plantation of Paauilo, with the greatest respect, petition and beg you for protection as well as bringing to your attention what is happening to us in this plantation. We, Puerto Ricans, that happen to be here, find ourselves abused to the point of wishing we were dead, we are like slaves, and we beg you out of your goodness to return us to our country because we do not deserve this treatment; they treat us like prisoners … we left our beloved Borinquen to seek our prosperity and have met our perdition in the territories of Oceania. And for those reasons we turn to you to end servitude to the sugar companies and compel them to send us back in order to prevent trouble between the Puerto Ricans and the associates of the companies. The said gentlemen wish that want us to work like animals and whether right or wrong, sick or well, they want no one to remain in his house. We are no more than slaves here and we can no longer endure the savagery that is inflicted on every one of us Puerto Ricans; every day they are inflicting more barbarities on us. The first complaint is that the pay is low; it is not what they agreed to pay us before we left Puerto Rico; the second is that the company store charges us half of our day’s wage; the result is that were are left with nothing. For these reasons, we, the undersigned, ask for your Honor’s protection and place ourselves at your command. Source: ‘‘Manifestaci
on,’’ Fondo Fortaleza. Archivo General de Puerto Rico 14 de julio de 1902, Sources for the Study of Puerto Rican Migration, 1879 1930. History Task Force/Centro de Estudios Puertorrique~ nos, Research Foundation of the City University of New York, 1982, pp. 52 53. Literal translation by Guadalupe Compean.

135. Rudyard Kipling, ‘‘The White Man’s Burden,’’ 1899 In February 1899, British novelist and poet Rudyard Kipling wrote the poem ‘‘The White Man’s Burden: The United States and The Philippine Islands.’’ Like American poet Walt Whitman (1819–1892) who supported the War against Mexico and the acquisition of half its nation, in the 1840s, Kipling laid the justification for U.S. imperialism on racial and moral superiority. ‘‘The White Man’s Burden’’ was published in McClure’s Magazine in February 1899, at a pivotal point in the U.S. debate over imperialism. The Treaty of Paris (1898) gave the United States control of Puerto Rico and the Philippines. Kipling’s poem urged the United States to take up the burden of ‘‘civilizing’’ the former Spanish colonies; a thankless task, but a noble

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undertaking. Beginning in 1899, native Filipinos revolted against U.S. dominance, and began an insurgency lasting into 1902. Most Latin Americans resented the notion that they had to be civilized as well as Christianized, pointing to the fact that most were Catholics, hence they already were Christians.

THE WHITE MAN’S BURDEN Take up the White Man’s burden Send forth the best ye breed Go send your sons to exile To serve your captives’ need To wait in heavy harness On fluttered folk and wild Your new-caught, sullen peoples, Half devil and half child. Take up the White Man’s burden In patience to abide To veil the threat of terror And check the show of pride; By open speech and simple An hundred times made plain To seek another’s profit And work another’s gain.… Take up the White Man’s burden And reap his old reward: The blame of those ye better The hate of those ye guard The cry of hosts ye humour (Ah slowly) to the light: ‘‘Why brought ye us from bondage, ‘‘Our loved Egyptian night?’’… Take up the White Man’s burden Have done with childish days The lightly proffered laurel, The easy, ungrudged praise. Comes now, to search your manhood Through all the thankless years, Cold-edged with dear-bought wisdom, The judgment of your peers! Source: Rudyard Kipling, ‘‘The White Man’s Burden,’’ McClure’s Magazine 12 (February 1899).

136. ‘‘Revolution in Colombia,’’ 1902 The construction of an inter-ocean canal through Yucat
an, Mexico, Nicaragua, or Panama was discussed by the Spaniards as the early sixteenth

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century. The United States became interested in the late 1700s, as trade in the Pacific Northwest increased. Later, as U.S. interest in the Pacific Rim grew, so did the desire for a shortened all-water route to connect both oceans. In 1846, the U.S. negotiated a treaty with New Granada (presentday Panama and Colombia). New Granada granted the United States transit rights across the Isthmus of Panama in return for the United States guaranteeing its sovereignty. In 1855, U.S. investor Cornelius Vanderbilt built a railroad across Panama. However, the United States, Britain, and France wanted an all-water route. In 1878, the French gained a concession to build a sea-level canal in Panama. But, this venture went bankrupt in 1889. U.S. interest was high in obtaining the rights from the French, but a U.S. commission recommended a canal through Nicaragua in 1901. The Panama route had strong support among U.S. politicos and the French reduced their asking price. After heavy lobbying, the commission reversed its findings and recommended the Panama route, which Congress rapidly authorized. The United States and Colombia signed the Hay-Herr
an Treaty (1903) that gave the United States a strip of land across the Isthmus of Panama. But the Colombian senate hesitated ratifying it. In November 1903, Panamanians revolted against Colombia and, within days, the United States and Panama signed the Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty giving the United States the terms that it wanted. The following article describes ‘‘the revolution.’’

REVOLUTION IN COLOMBIA Bocas del Toro Threatened with Bombardment—Revolutionists Seize American Company’s Property COLON, Columbia, April 16 A launch belonging to the Panama Canal Company returned here this morning from Bocas del Toro, bringing reports that the situation there is growing more serious. Liberal troops under Gen. Buendia have reached Old Bank, a settlement on an island near the entrance to Bocas del Toro. Gen. Buendia notified the Government Commander at Bocas yesterday that fourteen hours would be given him to surrender the town, and that his non-compilance with this ultimatum would result in immediate attack. The launch left Bocas for Colon before the fourteen hours had expired. The revolutionists at Bocas have already seized steam launches, barges, &c., belonging to the United Fruit Company. Bocas del Toro is entirely devoted to the banana business, and American interests there are almost supreme. The seizure of the property is receiving the attention of the United States gunboat Machias, which is now the only warship at Bocas. It is believed that the Colombian Government is sending a commission from Honda, on the Magdalena, consisting of three prominent foreigners, which has full authority to arrange terms and treat for peace with the revolutionists. Besides the Government victory at Soacha Feb. 23, and the defeats of Gen. UribeUribe in the Department of Tolima, news received here from Barranquilla today says Government Gen. Rivera recently defeated insurgent Gen. Marin at Ibague and Chicoral, In the same department. Gen. Marin has expressed a desire to lay down his arms if his life and the lives of his troops be guaranteed by the Government. Source: New York Times, April 17, 1902, p. 2.

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137. ‘‘By Treaty or by War,’’ 1902 Central America is an isthmus. It is a narrow piece of land dividing two great oceans. Consequently, it was of great interest to the United States and Western Europe. The U.S. and Great Britain competed fiercely in the early 1850s. American banker Cornelius Vanderbilt built the Panama Railway across the isthmus, which opened in 1855. This railroad greatly facilitated trade. Plans for an all-water route between the oceans were revived after the success of Ferdinand de Lesseps (1805–1894) in the construction of the Suez Canal, which linked the Mediterranean Sea to the Indian Ocean in 1869. Without proper financial backing, the French began construction of a Panama canal in the 1880s. However, the venture was plagued with financial difficulties as well as malaria and yellow fever. The French abandoned the project in 1893, after a great deal of work. The United States, under Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919), bought out the French equipment and excavations in 1902, and began work in 1904 after encountering minor opposition. The following article says that Colombian opposition to the canal would be an act of war and expressed the intention of the United States to take Panama whether the Colombians wanted it or not.

BY TREATY OR BY WAR It is incredible that the Washington dispatches correctly report Sen. [Shelby] Cullom when they represent him as intimating that the United States will have full authority to dig and operate a canal through the territory of Colombia as soon as it has taken title to the property and concessions of the New Panama Canal Company. Sen. Cullom is Chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, and of course would be careful to make no statement of that nature unless it were amply warranted by the facts. If there were warrant for such a statement, it would be found in the terms of the concession to the New Panama Canal Company. It is not found there, but, on the contrary, the theory attributed to Sen. Cullom is expressly excluded by the language of the concession. The Republic of Colombia granted a concession to the Panama Railroad Company, giving it exclusive privileges on the Isthmus, and by subsequent modifications this concession was made to continue for ninety-nine years from Aug. 16, 1806. The Wise concession for the Panama Canal Company required it to come to an understanding with the railroad company, which it did by purchasing a majority of its stock. The canal concession runs for ninety-nine years from the date when it shall be opened to ships. This date originally was Oct. 31, 1904. It has been extended to Oct. 31, 1910. The failure of the concession would still leave the New Panama Canal Company, through its ownership of the Panama Railroad, in legal control of the territory through which the canal is to be built. As to the power of the canal company to transfer its concessions, and thereby to give the right to enter upon the work of construction, regardless of the attitude of the Colombian Government at the time, we quote from the repost of the Isthmian Canal Commission of June 10, 1899: The canal company is absolutely prohibited to cede or mortgage its rights, under any consideration whatever, to any nation or foreign Government, under penalty of forfeiture. The contract with the railroad company contains a like prohibition and

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declares further that the pain of forfeiture will be incurred by the mere act of attempting to cede or transfer its privilege to a foreign Government, and such an act is declared absolutely null and of no value or effect. There concessions, if acquired by the United States, would not give to the Government the control and ownership evidently contemplated by the law that is, an absolute ownership in perpetuity. The right under the contract with the railroad company is designated as the ‘‘use and possession’’ of the property for ninety-nine years, and it is provided that ‘‘at the expiration of the term of the privilege,’’ and by the sole fact of the expiration, the Government of Colombia shall be substituted in all the rights of the company, and shall immediately enter into the enjoyment of the line of communication, its fixtures, dependencies, and all its products. The right of the canal company is substantially of the same character. Its concession expressly provides that five years previous to the expiration of the ninety-nine years of the ‘‘privileges,’’ the executive power shall appoint a Commissioner to examine the condition of the Canal and annexes, and make an official report describing the condition of the property in every detail. This report is to establish the condition in which the canal and its dependencies are to be delivered to the National Government on the day of the expiration of the privilege. There is no provision for an extension of either concession beyond the period mentioned, and the entire property in each case passes from the company without compensation. This being the situation, it was manifest that, even if the privileges of the companies could be purchased by, and transferred to, the United States, they were incumbered with charges and conditions that would not permit this Government to exercise all the rights of complete ownership over a canal constructed by it at the Panama route. A new arrangement is necessary if the United States is to undertake the work. The situation is peculiar, as there are three parties in interest. The United States can obtain from Columbia no concession that does not have the approval of the company, and its concessions do not permit the company to transfer or attempt to transfer its rights to a foreign Government. Any attempt on our part to enter into possession of the property and rights of the New Panama Canal Company without first securing by treaty the sanction of the Colombian Government to the transfer would be resisted by Colombia as an act of war. It has been understood everywhere and by everybody since the negotiations with the Frenchmen began that a new treaty between Colombia and the United States was indispensable to the construction of a canal by the United States Government on the Panama route. War is the alternative of a treaty. The situation is complicated, and it is not growing less so. Its most mysterious feature, of course, is the attitude of Se~ nor Concha, the Minister of Colombia at Washington. The report that he does not faithfully represent his Government, that the officials at Bogota earnestly wish to make a treaty with us, while he takes an attitude which makes a treaty impossible, rests either upon idle gossip or impudent assumption. Until the contrary fact is officially proclaimed, it must always be assumed that a Minister knows what his Government wants. The Secretary of State is now, or soon will be, in a position to advise President Roosevelt whether a satisfactory title to property and control of territory in Colombia can be acquired. If title and control cannot be acquired, it is then the duty of the president under the Spooner Amendment to enter into negotiations with Costa Rica and Nicaragua for the construction of a canal on the Nicaragua route. The President and his Administration, the Republican Party, the Democratic Party, both houses of Congress, and the

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American people are committed to a policy of Isthmian canal construction. There is another party not political, not openly organized, that is committed to a policy of canal obstruction and defeat. The beet-sugar interests defeated the President in his attempt to make a reciprocity treaty with Cuba. Whether the enemies of the canal will defeat him is a question of high interest and importance. We do not imagine that he will shrink from the encounter. Source: New York Times, December 1, 1902, p. 8.

138. Excerpts from Theodore Roosevelt’s Annual Message to Congress, December 6, 1904 President Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., (1858–1919), known as T. R. or Teddy, is revered in the United States and hated in Latin America until this day. As U.S. president from 1901 to 1909, he personified the ‘‘cowboy’’ persona. He gained popularity in the United States as the leader of the Rough Riders, a volunteer cavalry regiment that fought in Cuba during the Spanish-American War. He referred to Latin Americans as ‘‘our Little Brown brothers,’’ had a policy that said, ‘‘speak softly and carry a big stick,’’ believed in a strong Navy, and looked upon Caribbean bases as U.S. fueling depots. Roosevelt tied his foreign policy to the Monroe Doctrine. According to most U.S. historians, the Monroe Doctrine was used as a justification for the United States becoming an ‘‘international police power’’ in the Western Hemisphere in order ‘‘to see the neighboring countries stable, orderly, and prosperous.’’ The following excerpt is known as the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. In 1823, the Monroe Doctrine was allegedly used to prevent European intervention in the Western Hemisphere. In 1904, Roosevelt expanded the doctrine to justify American intervention throughout the Western Hemisphere. To this day, some Americans claim that the United States has the right to intervene in Latin American nations to protect its interests.

In treating of our foreign policy and of the attitude that this great Nation should assume in the world at large, it is absolutely necessary to consider the Army and the Navy, and the Congress, through which the thought of the Nation finds its expression, should keep ever vividly in mind the fundamental fact that it is impossible to treat our foreign policy, whether this policy takes shape in the effort to secure justice for others or justice for ourselves, save as conditioned upon the attitude we are willing to take toward our Army, and especially toward our Navy. It is not merely unwise, it is contemptible, for a nation, as for an individual, to use high-sounding language to proclaim its purposes, or to take positions which are ridiculous if unsupported by potential force, and then to refuse to provide this force. If there is no intention of providing and keeping the force necessary to back up a strong attitude, then it is far better not to assume such an attitude. The steady aim of this Nation, as of all enlightened nations, should be to strive to bring ever nearer the day when there shall prevail throughout the world the peace of justice. There are kinds of peace which are highly undesirable, which are in the long run as destructive as any war. Tyrants and oppressors have many times made a wilderness and called it peace. Many times peoples who were slothful or timid or shortsighted, who had been enervated by ease or by luxury, or misled by

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false teachings, have shrunk in unmanly fashion from doing duty that was stern and that needed self-sacrifice, and have sought to hide from their own minds their shortcomings, their ignoble motives, by calling them love of peace. The peace of tyrannous terror, the peace of craven weakness, the peace of injustice, all these should be shunned as we shun unrighteous war. The goal to set before us as a nation, the goal which should be set before all mankind, is the attainment of the peace of justice, of the peace which comes when each nation is not merely safeguarded in its own rights, but scrupulously recognizes and performs its duty toward others. Generally peace tells for righteousness; but if there is conflict between the two, then our fealty is due first to the cause of righteousness. Unrighteous wars are common, and unrighteous peace is rare; but both should be shunned. The right of freedom and the responsibility for the exercise of that right can not be divorced. One of our great poets has well and finely said that freedom is not a gift that tarries long in the hands of cowards. Neither does it tarry long in the hands of those too slothful, too dishonest, or too unintelligent to exercise it. The eternal vigilance which is the price of liberty must be exercised, sometimes to guard against outside foes; although of course far more often to guard against our own selfish or thoughtless shortcomings. If these self-evident truths are kept before us, and only if they are so kept before us, we shall have a clear idea of what our foreign policy in its larger aspects should be. It is our duty to remember that a nation has no more right to do injustice to another nation, strong or weak, than an individual has to do injustice to another individual; that the same moral law applies in one case as in the other. But we must also remember that it is as much the duty of the Nation to guard its own rights and its own interests as it is the duty of the individual so to do. Within the Nation the individual has now delegated this right to the State, that is, to the representative of all the individuals, and it is a maxim of the law that for every wrong there is a remedy. But in international law we have not advanced by any means as far as we have advanced in municipal law. There is as yet no judicial way of enforcing a right in international law. When one nation wrongs another or wrongs many others, there is no tribunal before which the wrongdoer can be brought. Either it is necessary supinely to acquiesce in the wrong, and thus put a premium upon brutality and aggression, or else it is necessary for the aggrieved nation valiantly to stand up for its rights. Until some method is devised by which there shall be a degree of international control over offending nations, it would be a wicked thing for the most civilized powers, for those with most sense of international obligations and with keenest and most generous appreciation of the difference between right and wrong, to disarm. If the great civilized nations of the present day should completely disarm, the result would mean an immediate recrudescence of barbarism in one form or another. Under any circumstances, a sufficient armament would have to be kept up to serve the purposes of international police; and until international cohesion and the sense of international duties and rights are far more advanced than at present, a nation desirous both of securing respect for itself and of doing good to others must have a force adequate for the work which it feels is allotted to it as its part of the general world duty. Therefore it follows that a self-respecting, just, and far-seeing nation should on the one hand endeavor by every means to aid in the development of the various movements which tend to provide substitutes for war, which tend to render nations in their actions toward one another, and indeed toward their own peoples, more responsive to the general sentiment of humane and civilized mankind; and on

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the other hand that it should keep prepared, while scrupulously avoiding wrongdoing itself, to repel any wrong, and in exceptional cases to take action which in a more advanced stage of international relations would come under the head of the exercise of the international police. A great free people owes it to itself and to all mankind not to sink into helplessness before the powers of evil. We are in every way endeavoring to help on, with cordial good will, every movement which will tend to bring us into more friendly relations with the rest of mankind. In pursuance of this policy I shall shortly lay before the Senate treaties of arbitration with all powers which are willing to enter into these treaties with us. It is not possible at this period of the world’s development to agree to arbitrate all matters, but there are many matters of possible difference between us and other nations which can be thus arbitrated. Furthermore, at the request of the Inter Parliamentary Union, an eminent body composed of practical statesmen from all countries, I have asked the Powers to join with this Government in a second Hague conference, at which it is hoped that the work already so happily begun at The Hague may be carried some steps further toward completion. This carries out the desire expressed by the first Hague conference itself. It is not true that the United States feels any land hunger or entertains any projects as regards the other nations of the Western Hemisphere save such as are for their welfare. All that this country desires is to see the neighboring countries stable, orderly, and prosperous. Any country whose people conduct themselves well can count upon our hearty friendship. If a nation shows that it knows how to act with reasonable efficiency and decency in social and political matters, if it keeps order and pays its obligations, it need fear no interference from the United States. Chronic wrongdoing, or an impotence which results in a general loosening of the ties of civilized society, may in America, as elsewhere, ultimately require intervention by some civilized nation, and in the Western Hemisphere the adherence of the United States to the Monroe Doctrine may force the United States, however reluctantly, in flagrant cases of such wrongdoing or impotence, to the exercise of an international police power. If every country washed by the Caribbean Sea would show the progress in stable and just civilization which with the aid of the Platt Amendment Cuba has shown since our troops left the island, and which so many of the republics in both Americas are constantly and brilliantly showing, all question of interference by this Nation with their affairs would be at an end. Our interests and those of our southern neighbors are in reality identical. They have great natural riches, and if within their borders the reign of law and justice obtains, prosperity is sure to come to them. While they thus obey the primary laws of civilized society they may rest assured that they will be treated by us in a spirit o cordial and helpful sympathy. We would interfere with them only in the last resort, and then only if it became evident that their inability or unwillingness to do justice at home and abroad had violated the rights of the United States or had invited foreign aggression to the detriment of the entire body of American nations. It is a mere truism to say that every nation, whether in America or anywhere else, which desires to maintain its freedom, its independence, must ultimately realize that the right of such independence can not be separated from the responsibility of making good use of it. In asserting the Monroe Doctrine, in taking such steps as we have taken in regard to Cuba, Venezuela, and Panama, and in endeavoring to circumscribe the theater of war in the Far East, and to secure the open door in China, we have acted in our

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own interest as well as in the interest of humanity at large. There are, however, cases in which, while our own interests are not greatly involved, strong appeal is made to our sympathies. Ordinarily it is very much wiser and more useful for us to concern ourselves with striving for our own moral and material betterment here at home than to concern ourselves with trying to better the condition of things in other nations. We have plenty of sins of our own to war against, and under ordinary circumstances we can do more for the general uplifting of humanity by striving with heart and soul to put a stop to civic corruption, to brutal lawlessness, and violent race prejudices here at home than by passing resolutions and wrongdoing elsewhere. Nevertheless there are occasional crimes committed on so vast a scale and of such peculiar horror as to make us doubt whether this [is] not our manifest duty to endeavor at least to show our disapproval of the deed and our sympathy with those who have suffered by it. The cases must be extreme in which such a course is justifiable. There must be no effort made to remove the mote from our brother’s eye if we refuse to remove the beam from our own. But in extreme cases, action may be justifiable and proper. What form the action shall take must depend upon the circumstances of the case; that is, upon the degree of the atrocity and upon our power to remedy it. The cases in which we could interfere by force of arms as we interfered to put a stop to intolerable conditions in Cuba are necessarily very few. Yet it is not to be expected that a people like ours, which in spite of certain very obvious shortcomings, nevertheless as a whole shows by its consistent practice its belief in the principles of civil and religious liberty and of orderly freedom, a people among whom even the worst crime, like the crime of lynching, is never more than sporadic, so that individuals and not classes are molested in their fundamental rights it is inevitable that such a nation should desire eagerly to give expression to its horror on an occasion like that of the massacre of the Jews in Kishinev, or when it witnesses such systematic and long-extended cruelty and oppression as the cruelty and oppression of which the Armenians have been the victims, and which have won for them the indignant pity of the civilized world. Source: Historical Documents, http://www.historicaldocuments.com/TheodoreRooseveltscorollary totheMonroeDoctrine.htm.

139. The Platt Amendment, 1903 The Platt Amendment was a rider to the Army Appropriations Act, passed on March 2, 1901, that—for all intents and purposes—made Cuba a vassal of the United States. The United States would not evacuate its forces until Cuba stipulated that Cuba would not make a treaty or enter into debt with a foreign nation without the approval of the United States. Connecticut Republican Sen. Orville H. Platt (1827–1905) offered the amendment, which was similar to the Teller Amendment in the 1898 U.S. resolution on the Recognition of the Independence of Cuba, in which the U.S. resolved to go to war with Spain over Cuba. Like the Teller Amendment (1898), the Platt Amendment said that the United Stated had no intention of annexing Cuba and would leave the country in the hands of the Cuban people. A critical difference between both amendments is that the Platt Amendment forced Cuba to lease Guant
anamo Bay to the United States in perpetuity and gave the United States the right to intervene in Cuban affairs.

Article I. The Government of Cuba shall never enter into any treaty or other compact with any foreign power or powers which will impair or tend to impair the

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independence of Cuba, nor in any manner authorize or permit any foreign power or powers to obtain by colonization or for military or naval purposes, or otherwise, lodgment in or control over any portion of said island. Article II. The Government of Cuba shall not assume or contract any public debt to pay the interest upon which, and to make reasonable sinking-fund provision for the ultimate discharge of which, the ordinary revenues of the Island of Cuba, after defraying the current expenses of the Government, shall be inadequate. Article III. The Government of Cuba consents that the United States may exercise the right to intervene for the preservation of Cuban independence, the maintenance of a government adequate for the protection of life, property, and individual liberty, and for discharging the obligations with respect to Cuba imposed by the Treaty of Paris on the United States, now to be assumed and undertaken by the Government of Cuba. … Article V. The Government of Cuba will execute, and, as far as necessary, extend the plans already devised, or other plans to be mutually agreed upon, for the sanitation of the cities of the island, to the end that a recurrence of epidemic and infectious diseases may be prevented, thereby assuring protection to the people and commerce of Cuba, as well as to the commerce of the Southern ports of the United States and the people residing therein. … Article VII. To enable the United States to maintain the independence of Cuba, and to protect the people thereof, as well as for its own defense, the Government of Cuba will sell or lease to the United States lands necessary for coaling or naval stations, at certain specified points, to be agreed upon with the President of the United States. Source: Vincent Ferraro, Mount Holyoke College, and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/platt.htm.

140. Rub
en Dar
ıo, ‘‘To Roosevelt’’ (Poem to President Theodore Roosevelt), 1904 Nicaraguan Rub
en Dar
ıo (1867–1916) was one of the most admired poets in Latin America. He was the father of Latin American modernism and wielded enormous influence with Latino intellectuals and literary folk. His poetry was widely published. Dar
ıo was considered to be apolitical, but like other Latin Americans, he feared and resented the bullying of the United States. President Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) supported a 1903 revolution in Panama that resulted in the annexation of the Panama Canal and, in 1904, a corollary to the Monroe Doctrine justifying intervention in Latin America. The following Dar
ıo poem expresses how Latin America feared the United States and its intentions to dominate the region through force.

TO ROOSEVELT It is with the voice of the Bible, or the verse of Walt Whitman, that I should come to you, Hunter, primitive and modern, simple and complicated,

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with something of Washington and more of Nimrod. You are the United States, you are the future invader of the naive America that has Indian blood, that still prays to Jesus Christ and still speaks Spanish. You are the proud and strong exemplar of your race; you are cultured, you are skillful; you oppose Tolstoy. And breaking horses, or murdering tigers, you are an Alexander-Nebuchadnezzar. (You are a professor of Energy as today’s madmen say.) You think that life is fire, that progress is eruption, that wherever you shoot you hit the future. No. The United States is potent and great. When you shake there is a deep tremblor that passes through the enormous vertebrae of the Andes. If you clamor, it is heard like the roaring of a lion. Hugo already said it to Grant: The stars are yours. (The Argentine sun, ascending, barely shines, and the Chilean star rises …) You are rich. You join the cult of Hercules to the cult of Mammon, and illuminating the road of easy conquest, Liberty raises its torch in New York. But our America, that has had poets since the ancient times of Netzahualcoyotl, that has walked in the footprints of great Bacchus who learned Pan’s alphabet at once; that consulted the stars, that knew Atlantis whose resounding name comes to us from Plato, that since the remote times of its life has lived on light, on fire, on perfume, on love, America of the great Montezuma, of the Inca, the fragrant America of Christopher Columbus, Catholic America, Spanish America, the America in which noble Cuauhtemoc said: ‘‘I’m not in a bed of roses’’; that America that trembles in hurricanes and lives on love, it lives, you men of Saxon eyes and barbarous soul. And it dreams. And it loves, and it vibrates, and it is the daughter of the Sun. Be careful. Viva Spanish America! There are a thousand cubs loosed from the Spanish lion. Roosevelt, one would have to be, through God himself,

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the-fearful Rifleman and strong Hunter, to manage to grab us in your iron claws. And, although you count on everything, you lack one thing: God! [M
alaga, 1904] Source: 1904 World Policy Institute, http://www.worldpolicy.org/globalrights/nicaragua/1904Dar%C3%ADo-english.html.

141. ‘‘Roosevelt Boasts of Canal,’’ 1911 In 1911, after the completion of the Panama Canal, former U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt boasted of taking the canal from Columbia in 1903, during his presidency. Colombia had hesitated signing a treaty that would have given the United States complete control over its Panamanian territory, so Panamanian friends of the United States revolted against Colombia, declared its independence and, within days, signed a treaty with the United States. The following article confirms what most knew but the United States denied—that the United States started the Panamanian war of independence and seized the canal from Colombia at the instigation of Roosevelt. In his ‘‘the end justifies the means’’ address in the article below he rationalized his actions.

ROOSEVELT BOASTS OF CANAL Took It, He Says, without Giving Congress a Chance to Debate BERKELEY, Cal., March 23 Speaking at the annual Charter Day exercises in the Greek Theatre at the University of California to-day, Col. Theodore Roosevelt made a plea for higher education and told how he started the Panama Canal. ‘‘I am interested in the Panama Canal,’’ he said, ‘‘because I started it. If I had followed traditional, conservative methods I would have submitted a dignified State paper of probably 200 pages to Congress and the debates on it would have been going on yet; but I took the Canal Zone and let Congress debate: and while the debate goes on the Canal does also. After speaking at a student rally in Harmon Gymnasium to-night and attending a smoker given by the Faculty Club, Col. Roosevelt crossed the bay to San Francisco to spend the night at the home of his son, Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. Source: New York Times, March 24, 1911, p. 1.

142. ‘‘Porto Rican Labor for Panama Canal,’’ Letter to the Editor of the New York Times, 1904 Puerto Ricans continued their diaspora after the U.S. occupation. U.S. industry followed the flag, and the presence of U.S. corporations accelerated the commercialization of land and the uprooting of the small subsistence farmer. These displaced Puerto Ricans migrated to the cities where there was limited work. At the same time, employment contractors heavily recruited Puerto Rican labor to work in Mexico, Hawaii, California, and Panama. The following letter to the editor of the New York Times responds to the constant harping of American officials

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and citizens that Puerto Ricans should be grateful to the United States for liberating them and suggests that the people of Puerto Rico were in better financial condition under Spanish rule than U.S. occupation.

PORTO RICAN LABOR FOR PANAMA CANAL To the Editor of the New York Times: The suggestion made to employ Porto Ricans for work on the Panama Canal has so much to recommend it that it is to be hoped that it will receive the consideration it merits. Up to date the people of Porto Rico have little to be grateful for to the people of the United States. Having ceased to be Spaniards they expected to become Americans, yet this has not been granted to them. The island appears to be less prosperous now than it was under the Spanish flag, and it would seem to be a duty to assist its people in every way possible. It is to our own interest to give employment to these people, as they will doubtless return with their earnings, in part at least, so that this money will serve to help develop our ‘‘Island Paradise.’’ All things being equal, preference should be given to those under our own flag. Citizen Orange, N, J., Dec. 28, 1904 Source: New York Times, December 30, 1904, p. 8.

143. ‘‘Taft to Porto Ricans,’’ 1907 In 1907, while visiting Puerto Rico, U.S. Secretary of War William Howard Taft, who would later become president of the United States from 1909 to 1913, told the Puerto Rican people that they should be grateful to be a part of the United States. This remark was made in response to the Chief Justice of Puerto Rico’s statement that it was his hope that Puerto Rican children would someday be American citizens—which at that time they were not. Taft replied that Puerto Ricans should be grateful that they had free trade with the United States but begged the question of citizenship, which he said should be left up to Congress. This was a thorny issue. The status of Puerto Ricans was left in the air. They were part of the United States but lacked the rights of American citizens. It was little consolation to have unlimited access to U.S. markets, because those same markets were commercializing agriculture and driving Puerto Ricans from the island.

TAFT TO PORTO RICANS Tells Them Difficulties Stand in Way of American Citizenship SAN JUAN, Porto Rico, April 15 Secretary of War Taft, who arrived here yesterday on board the Government yacht Mayflower, spent the day in consultation with various heads of departments inquiring minutely as to details in an effort to ascertain the reasons for the grievances of the people. Among others, he conferred with Surgeon General Robert M. O’Reilly relative to the building now being used as a military hospital. The Supreme Court and the Executive Council entertained the Secretary at luncheon. In a speech of welcome Chief Justice Quinones expressed the hope that

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the Porto Rican children now growing up would receive from the United States the great honor of American citizenship. Secretary Taft made a brief reply, in which he said Porto Rico was free from many of the difficulties existing in the Philippines and Cuba, and he called attention to the fact that trade with the United States had brought prosperity and contentment to the island. Referring to citizenship, he said: ‘‘I beg of you to think of those things which you do have; let me call your attention to them. You have what is desired by the Philippines and Cuba, namely, the unsurpassed markets of the United States. What I am saying is not intended to oppose citizenship, but there are difficulties in the way of securing the passage of such laws through Congress.’’ Source: New York Times, April 16, 1907, p. 5.

144. Letter on Women’s Roles from Luisa Capetillo to Dr. Paul Vigne, 1910 Puerto Rican feminist Luisa Capetillo (1879–1922) was a committed anarchist and activist. Capetillo’s book Mi opini
o n acerca de las libertades, derechos y deberes de la mujer (My Opinion about the Liberaties, Rights and Duties of Women) was published in 1911 and reprinted in 1913. Born out of wedlock in the northern town of Arecibo, Puerto Rico, on October 28, 1879, to working class parents, she rebelled by wearing trousers. Capetillo was highly political and tied the misery of Puerto Ricans to low pay and poor working conditions. She championed workers’ rights, especially livable wages, and was an early advocate of gender rights. In the following letter, she discusses the role of women historically, particularly with regard to women entering the field of medicine as physicians.

(From L’Avenir M
edical of Paris) The legislative elections, which have just been held, have not been favorable to feminism. One or another female candidate has run, but none has been able to sustain a true struggle until the end. But this doesn’t mean despair for those apostles of women’s causes. All countries will continue to heed their aspirations, either under a timid veneer as in France, or in tumultuous abundance, as in England or in the Americas. In fact, the feminist cause has had many important partisans among the strong sex. In 1877, Victor Hugo heatedly defended feminism in a letter to Leon Richer: ‘‘Women,’’ wrote the poet, ‘‘are seen as lesser beings civically and as slaves, morally. Her [woman’s] upbringing suffers from this double sense of inferiority; and from this all the suffering that man inflicts on her, which is unjust. Men have tipped the scales of the law, in whose equilibrium human consciousness is invested, putting all of the rights on their own little plates, and all the duties on the woman’s. From this, the profound upheaval, from this, the slavery of woman. We need reform and this reform will be achieved for the benefit of civilization, of society, of light.’’ The eminent philosopher, John Stuart Mill has written: ‘‘All of the egotistical inclinations, the cult of oneself, the injustice of self preference that dominates humanity, has its origin and roots in the way that current relations between men and women take place, and it is from these relations that such egotisms derive their principal force. Consider the vanity of the young man who when he becomes a man, is convinced

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that, without merit, without having done a thing on his own, and even if he is among the most frivolous and incapable of men, just by having been born a man, feels that he is superior to half of humanity without exception, when in that half one can find people whose superiority is capable of weighing over him every day and at every moment. By giving women the freedom to use their faculties, letting them freely choose the manner in which they want to exercise those faculties, by opening up the same work opportunities, and offering the same stimuli as those available to men, one of the principle benefits of such an endeavor would be to duplicate the total of intellectual faculties that humanity would have at its service.’’ But perhaps we should not follow these authors so far along this road, and instead, to return to what concerns our profession. We can agree that various women have undertaken this profession with great success. Even in remote times, we have seen woman become interested in our art. In France, Diana of Poitiers and Marguerite of Valois are known for having practiced the art of medicine from antiquity. Madame Necker, wife of the renowned minister of Louis XVI, was responsible for the reorganization of French hospitals. In Germany, women doctors were numerous during the Middle ages, and even more so in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. And in our times there are many women who have devoted themselves to medicine. Miss Elisabeth Blackwell, who had been a primary school teacher, is the first in the United States to become a doctor, at Boston University in 1847, also having studied in Geneva and Paris. Only eight years after Boston, the University of Philadelphia began to admit women to medical school, and this example was quickly imitated by other universities. In 1874, for the first time, Madame Putnam-Jacobi became a professor at Mount Sinai’s teaching hospital. Later, there have been women doctors in the Army and one could cite the example of Madame MacGee, who was appointed military surgeon in Puerto Rico, with the rank of lieutenant. Miss Mar
ıa Walcher had a similar position in the Union Army during the Civil War. Without trying to make this brief analysis something more extensive, and even if we didn’t recognize that women have the same aptitude as men to undertake study as arduous as that of medicine, we can safely conclude from the previously cited examples, that women, by force of will and energy, are quite capable of doing certain jobs that they previously had been denied. This theory is constantly disputed by those who claim women’s inferiority due to sexual difference, which, it is said, seems to be an immutable law of nature. But there is nothing more false than to attempt in this way to uphold the permanent superiority of men. There are numerous animal species for whom this rule has been broken. Elephants, for example, when they migrate and are about to cross into rough terrain, send the females ahead, because they are considered more apt to find the safest road. Among birds it is often the female that is dominant in the couple. The female sparrow is not bashful about harshly reprimanding the male; and the female tosses the male sparrow out of the nest when there isn’t sufficient food for the both of them. The female pigeon makes the male sit on the eggs and guard the nest from ten to four every day, while she goes off and gets some fresh air. Among birds of prey, the female is more ferocious than the male, a fact that is well known to falconers, who prefer the females. She is so unaffectionate that, when made prisoner, she will kill her male companion.

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Even among insects, a husband’s fate is frequently of a most humiliating nature. The queen bee has many suitors. Forced to dash after her, the most agile male catches up with her and is accepted; but the joy of this husband is ephemeral because of course he dies. The destiny of the rivals he overcame is more enticing. These wellfed and non-working bees take on the leisurely pace of a lord, but then one fine morning, the female worker bees realize that they are feeding lazy and useless beings, and massacre the males. But the true epitome of female triumph in the animal realm is reached in the spider. In this species, the female is much heavier and much stronger than the male, which is why the male is reduced to slavery, immediately and until the moment of fertilization. Once mating is finished and there is no more need for his services, he is simply devoured. An elegant solution to conjugal problems! But we trust that the amiable members of the female sex have yet tended toward such a solution, in spite of overwhelming us everywhere with their vindications, and in spite of the fact that they already greet in the figure of a liberated Eve according to the phrase coined by Miss Odette Laguerre the engenderer of a more worthy humanity. Source: ‘‘Doctor Paul Vigne, Paris, 1910’’ is reprinted with permission of the publisher of Luisa Capetillo’s A Nation of Women: An Early Feminist Speaks Out, Edited by Fekix V. Natos Rodriguez. C 2005. pp. 42 45. Translated by Alan Houston: Arte P
ublico Press University of Houston
West-Duran.

145. Letter on Socialism from Luisa Capetillo to Manuel Ugarte, 1911 Puerto Rican feminist Luisa Capetillo (1879–1922) was a committed anarchist and activist. In addition to her focus on gender issues, she was involved in the political and labor struggles of the working class. She condemned the exploitation of workers by political parties, religious institutions, and capitalism. She defines the kind of socialist she was in the following letter.

I am a socialist because I want all the advances, discoveries, and inventions to belong to everyone, that their socialization be achieved without privilege. Some understand this to mean that the State regulate this socialization, I see it without government. That does not mean that I will oppose a government that regulates and controls wealth, as it needs to do, but I maintain my position in being decidedly against government per se: Socialist anarchism. What I solemnly declare here is that to be a socialist it is necessary to have analyzed and understood psychology. It is a mistake to think oneself as a socialist and accept the fanatical dogmas, rites, and practices of religion because Socialism is truth and imposed religions are erroneous. Equally wrong is to think oneself a socialist and be an atheist, a skeptic, and a materialist. Socialism is not a negation, nor violence, nor a utopia. It is a real and tangible truth. Under socialism there isn’t room for the cunning (no!) to live comfortably from the work of others. There is no deceit, nor the imposition or imperialism over the weak or ignorant. Socialism persuades with truth, it does not wound. In socialism we find pure reason, the harmony between all, sweetness of demeanor,

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equality in everything. It is truth not lies, sincerity not intrigue. Now I have said sweetness of demeanor, isn’t that what religions preach? Let us analyze this further. Reason is a straight path, serene, peaceful, and impassive. Jesus was a rationalist. A person whose norms follow reason does not violate himself, does not run away, does not make fun of nor express joy at the evil of his enemy or adversary. So a reasonable person does not have enemies, and should he have them he does not hate them. What are the results of this? If they are insulted or struck by a hand, or with hurtful remarks, and respond in kind, what do they get out of it? (I cannot accept that someone be struck or mistreated without motive). Well, you’ll say, what about getting even, vengeance? But reason is serene, self-controlled, it is not vengeful or injurious, and a socialist, for the good and emancipation of humankind should be reasonable. Whoever has reason is in control of themselves, and is not the instrument of vengeance and its consequences: crime, violence, and all sorts of brutal passions. Socialism is found within the luminous Christianity that shook the foundations of Roman power, because of its notion of fraternity. And universal brotherhood will be the implementation of socialism, which is selflessness, sweetness, modesty, temperance: ‘‘All for one and one for all.’’ These are sure steps that lead us to human perfection, toward the freedom and the still undefined spiritual progress of a plurality of superior worlds. Let us enlighten and purify ourselves, let us educate our wills to do good, and let us consume the fire of our passions under guiding reason, in an offering to human emancipation to achieve spiritual progress. Source: ‘‘My Profession of Faith to Manuel Ugarte’’ is reprinted with permission of the publisher of Luisa Capetillo’s A Nation of Women: An Early Feminist Speaks Out, Edited by Fekix V. Natos C 2005, pp. 110 111. Translated Rodriguez. Houston: Arte P
ublico Press University of Houston
by Alan West-Duran.

PART XI Push and Pull Most Latin American contact with the United States was through Mexico that shared a 2,000 mile border with the United States. Aside from many towns being of Mexican origin, north from Mexico, the Rio Grande was a magnet for Mexicans. A country with limited agricultural land and water, it was hit hard by the Euro-American invasions and the taking of large rivers such as the Rio Grande, the Gila, and large parts of the Colorado. Indeed, the Rio Grande would have been like a Nile cutting through half the width of the country. The nineteenth century saw a gradual privatization of Mexico that shifted its land and its resources into the hands of the few. There was also a shift in the racial composition of its people from a majority Indian to a dominance of the mestizo. The liberal program of privatization came to a head in the last two decades of the nineteenth century as Mexican President Porfirio D
ıaz (1830 1915) implemented Liberal party land and commercial policies. D
ıaz’s business friendly administration attracted huge amounts of capital to develop railroads and mines. The flight of capital was followed by an uprooting of peasant farmers who lost their land in the transformation of the economy with many migrating to mining states like Chihuahua and Sonora and eventually to the mines and agricultural fields of the United States that were undergoing a huge growth period creating a demand for labor. This flight of resources would create a dependency on the United States. Further American xenophobia ended Asian immigration and limited the entrance of working class Europeans creating a further demand for Mexican labor. Mexican laborers were confronted with American racist nativism that labeled them foreigners as well as non-white. Ninety percent of the Mexican nation would eventually be of mestizo and Indian blood versus less than one percent of the U.S. citizens who have native blood. By 1910 Mexico had a population of approximately 14 million. Mexicans immigrating to the United States inherited antagonisms from the Alamo (1836) and the Mexican-American War (1846 1848). They were considered non-white and foreigners and relegated to menial jobs. The United States also became a refuge for Mexican political refugees that protested the dictatorship of D
ıaz, and his giving away of the country’s natural resources to American and European business interests. Meanwhile, new forms of resistance evolved among Mexican workers and their families as exploration increased. Mexican migration accelerated during the first two decades of the twenty-first century as a result of laws that limited immigration from central and southern Europe.

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146. Excerpts from In re Ricardo Rodr
ıguez, 1897 From the beginning of its existence, the question of race has been very important in the United States, setting the standard for what was an American. Racial attitudes toward Africans and Native Americans were transferred to Mexicans who were a mixture races—most having Indian blood as well as some Spanish and African lineage. This became a problem when half of Mexico’s territory was incorporated into the United States and Mexico insisted that its former citizens have the right of U.S. citizenship. By inference, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848) made Mexicans white without which status they could not be equal or immigrate to the United States. In 1897, Richard Rodr
ıguez, who had been born in Mexico, applied for citizenship and was denied the right because immigration authorities said he was an Indian. Rodr
ıguez had lived in Texas for ten years. Federal attorneys argued against his eligibility on the grounds that Rodr
ıguez was ‘‘not a white person, not an African, nor of African descent.’’ U.S. District Judge Thomas Maxey held that because Rodr
ıguez knew ‘‘nothing of the Aztecs or Toltecs,’’ hence he was not an Indian and thus had the right to become a naturalized citizen. The excerpt below is from Judge Maxey’s convoluted holding.

OPINION The applicant, a citizen by birth of the republic of Mexico, desires to avail himself of the inherent right of expatriation, and to invest himself with the rights and privileges pertaining to citizenship of our country. Although 49 years have elapsed since the negotiation of the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, which greatly increased our territorial area, and incorporated many thousands of Mexicans into our common citizenship, as will be hereinafter shown, the question of the individual naturalization of a Mexican citizen is now for the first time, so far as the court is advised, submitted for judicial determination. To the question, why may not he be naturalized under the laws of Congress? It is replied that by section 2169 of the Revised Statutes it is provided: ‘‘The provisions of this title shall apply to aliens (being free white persons, and to aliens) of African nativity, and to persons of African descent.’’ The contention is that, by the letter of the statute, a Mexican citizen, answering to the description of the applicant, is, because of his color, denied the right to become a citizen of the United States by naturalization.… If the strict scientific classification of the anthropologist should be adopted, he [Rodriguez] would probably not be classed as white. It is certain he is not an African, nor a person of African descent. According to his own statement, he is a ‘‘pure-blooded Mexican,’’ bearing no relation to the Aztecs or original races of Mexico. Being, then, a citizen of Mexico, may he be naturalized pursuant to the laws of Congress? If debarred by the strict letter of the law from receiving letters of citizenship, is he embraced within the intent and meaning of the statute? If he falls within the meaning and intent of the law, his application should be granted, notwithstanding the letter of the statute may be against him.… A reference to the constitution of the republic of Texas and the constitution, laws, and treaties of the United States will disclose that both that republic and the United States have freely, during the past 60 years, conferred upon Mexicans the

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rights and privileges of American citizenship, not individually, it is true, but by various collective acts of naturalization. The first of such acts will be found in the language of section 10 of the general provisions of the constitution of the republic of Texas, adopted in 1836. By that section it is provided: All persons (Africans, the descendants of Africans, and the Indians excepted) who were residing in Texas on the day of the declaration of independence [March 2, 1836] shall be considered citizens of the republic, and entitled to all the privileges of such.

Under this provision, Mexicans who resided in Texas on March 2, 1836, become citizens of the republic; and by the resolutions of March 1, 1845, and December 29, 1845, passed by the national Congress, all such citizens, without express authorization, became incorporated into the citizenship of the Union.… By the annexation of Texas, under a joint resolution of Congress of March 1, 1845, and its admission into the Union on an equal footing with the original states, December 29, 1845, all the citizens of the former republic became, without any express declaration, citizens of the United States.

The next collective act in chronological order, providing for the naturalization of Mexicans, is the treaty concluded between the United States and Mexico, February 2, 1848, commonly known as the ‘‘Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo.’’ The eighth article of that treaty is as follows: Art. 8. Mexicans now established in territories previously belonging to Mexico, and which remain for the future within the limits of the United States, as defined by the present treaty, shall be free to continue where they now reside, or to remove at any time to the Mexican republic, retaining the property which they possess in the said territories, or disposing thereof, and removing the proceeds wherever they please, without their being subjected, on this account, to any contribution, tax, or charge whatever. Those who shall prefer to remain in the said territories may either retain the title and rights of Mexican citizens, or acquire those of citizens of the United States. But they shall be under the obligation to make their election within one year from the date of the exchange of ratifications of this treaty; and those who shall remain in the said territories after the expiration of that year, without having declared their intention to retain the character of Mexicans, shall be considered to have elected to become citizens of the United States. In the said territories, property of every kind, now belonging to Mexicans not established there, shall be inviolably respected. The present owners, the heirs of these, and all Mexicans who may hereafter acquire said property by contract, shall enjoy with respect to it guaranties equally ample as if the same belonged to citizens of the United States.

That Mexicans who remained in the territory ceded by the treaty of 1848, and who failed to declare their intention within the time limited to remain citizens of Mexico, became citizens of the United States, is a fact scarcely open to serious controversy. In Boyd v. Nebraska, supra, it is said by the Supreme Court, speaking through Mr. Chief Justice Fuller, that: By the eighth article of the treaty with Mexico of 1848, those Mexicans who remained in the territory ceded, and who did not declare within one year their intention to remain Mexican citizens, were to be deemed citizens of the United States.

Speaking of the treaty with Spain, which is similar in essential particulars to the treaty of 1848 with Mexico, the Supreme Court says:

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Voices of the U.S. Latino Experience On the 22d of February, 1819, Spain ceded Florida to the United States. The sixth article of the treaty of cession contains the following provision: ‘‘The inhabitants of the territories, which his Catholic majesty cedes to the United States by this treaty, shall be incorporated in the Union of the United States as soon as may be consistent with the principles of the federal constitution, and admitted to the enjoyment of the privileges, rights, and immunities of the citizens of the United States.’’ This treaty is the law of the land, and admits the inhabitants of Florida to the enjoyment of the privileges, rights, and immunities of the citizens of the United States. It is unnecessary to inquire whether this is not their condition, independent of stipulation. They do not, however, participate in political power. They do not share in the government till [sic] Florida shall become a state.…

Upon articles 8 and 9 of the treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo a similar construction has been placed by the Supreme Court of California. On September 9, 1850, Congress passed three acts having more or less bearing upon the question under discussion, to wit, the act for the admission of California into the Union, and the acts establishing territorial governments for New Mexico and Utah. By the act [of] admitting California, Mexicans who were recognized as citizens by the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo became citizens of the new state. See authorities above referred to. Section 5 of the act ‘‘to establish a territorial government for Utah,’’ which adopts literally the language of section 6 of the New Mexico act, provides as follows: And be it further enacted, that every free white male inhabitant above the age of twenty-one years, who shall have been a resident of said territory at the time of the passage of this act, shall be entitled to vote at the first election, and shall be eligible to any office within the said territory; but the qualifications of voters and of holding office, at all subsequent elections, shall be such as shall be prescribed by the legislative assembly: provided, that the right of suffrage and of holding office shall be exercised only by the citizens of the United States, including those recognized as citizens by the treaty with the republic of Mexico, concluded February second, eighteen hundred and forty-eight.

It has been shown that Mexicans (and the term includes all Mexicans, without discrimination as to color) who remained in the ceded territory, and who failed to declare their intention within one year to remain Mexican citizens, became, by virtue of the stipulations of the treaty of February 2, 1848, citizens of the United States. Whether Congress intended to include Mexicans in the expression ‘‘white male inhabitants,’’ as employed in the territorial acts above mentioned, may admit of question. But it is entirely clear, whatever meaning may be attached to those words, that the language of the acts explicitly recognized Mexicans who remained in the ceded territory, and who did not renounce their Mexican citizenship within one year, as citizens of the United States, and conferred upon them the elective franchise, and the important and valuable right to hold office. It is equally true that by article 5 of the treaty between the United States and Mexico proclaimed June 30, 1854, known as the ‘‘Gadsden Treaty,’’ Mexicans who remained within the territory ceded by Mexico to the United States in article 1 of the treaty, and who failed to renounce their Mexican citizenship within a year, became citizens of the United States. The next act affecting the question of citizenship to which attention will be directed is the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution, declared to be part of

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the organic law, by resolution of Congress, July 21, 1868 (15 Stat. 709, 711). By this amendment, which completely overthrew the last remaining vestige of the doctrine announced in Scott v. Sandford, 19 How. 393, touching the question of citizenship of the African, and invested the native-born negro with the rights of an American citizen, it is provided: ‘‘All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.’’ … this amendment, … was intended primarily for the benefit of the negro race, it also confers the right of citizenship upon persons of all other races, white, yellow, or red, born or naturalized in the United States, and ‘‘subject to the jurisdiction thereof.’’ The language has been held to embrace even Chinese, to whom the laws of naturalization do not extend.… Mexicans, therefore, born in the United States, and who, at the date of birth, were subject to the jurisdiction of our government as all were, except children of diplomatic officers, and a few others, not necessary in this connection to notice are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. The intimation in some of the briefs of counsel that Elk v. Wilkins, 112 U.S. 94, 5 Sup. Ct. 41, excludes Mexicans from citizenship, is not maintainable. That case refers exclusively to tribal Indians born and residing within the territory forming a part of the United States. The following extract taken from the syllabus of the case will disclose the point decided: An Indian, born a member of one of the Indian tribes within the United States, which still exists and is recognized as a tribe by the government of the United States, who has voluntarily separated himself from his tribe, and taken up his residence among the white citizens of a state, but who has not been naturalized or taxed or recognized as a citizen either by the United States or by the state, is not a citizen of the United States, within the meaning of the first section of the fourteenth article of amendment of the Constitution.

In a word, Elk’s severance of his tribal relations had not been accepted by the United States, and, within the meaning of the amendment, he was not regarded as having been born ‘‘subject to the jurisdiction thereof.’’ The dissimilarity between the Elk case and the one at bar is so pronounced that further reference to it is not deemed essential. There was concluded at Washington, July 10, 1868, it may be said contemporaneously with the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, a treaty between the United States and Mexico, ‘‘relative to naturalization.’’ Pursuant to notice given by the Mexican government, this treaty, as the court is informed by the secretary of state, was terminated February 11, 1882. It is therefore not now operative, and reference is made to it only for the purpose of indicating the construction placed upon our naturalization laws at that time by the treaty-making power of the respective governments. The first article of that treaty provides: Article 1. Those citizens of the United States who have been made citizens of the Mexican republic by naturalization, and have resided without interruption in Mexican territory five years, shall be held by the United States as citizens of the Mexican republic, and shall be treated as such. Reciprocally, citizens of the Mexican republic who have become citizens of the United States, and who have resided uninterruptedly in the territory of the United States for five years, shall be held by the republic of Mexico as citizens of the United States, and shall be treated as such. The declaration of an intention to become a citizen of the one or

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Voices of the U.S. Latino Experience the other country has not for either party the effect of naturalization. This article shall apply as well to those already naturalized in either of the countries contracting as to those hereafter naturalized.

Two conclusions are fairly deducible from an analysis of the foregoing language: (1) The two high contracting parties recognized that Mexicans were embraced within our naturalization laws; and (2) that they had the right, individually, to invoke the aid of the statute, notwithstanding the provision which at that time limited the right of naturalization to free white persons. When all the foregoing laws, treaties, and constitutional provisions are considered, which either affirmatively confer the rights of citizenship upon Mexicans, or tacitly recognize in them the right of individual naturalization, the conclusion forces itself upon the mind that citizens of Mexico are eligible to American citizenship, and may be individually naturalized by complying with the provisions of our laws. And this conviction is further strengthened by a consideration of the first section of the act of July 27, 1868, re-enacted as section 1999 of the Revised Statutes. Its language is as follows: Whereas the right of expatriation is a natural and inherent right of all people, indispensable to the enjoyment of the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and whereas in the recognition of this principle this government has freely received emigrants from all nations, and invested them with the rights of citizenship; and whereas it is claimed that such American citizens, with their descendants, are subjects of foreign states, owing allegiance to the governments thereof; and whereas it is necessary to the maintenance of public peace that this claim of foreign allegiance should be promptly and finally disavowed: Therefore any declaration, instruction, opinion, order, or decision of any officer of the United States which denies, restricts, impairs, or questions the right of expatriation, is declared inconsistent with the fundamental principles of the republic.

It will be observed the preamble declares that we have freely received emigrants from all nations, and invested them with the rights of citizens; and the enacting clause denounces, as inconsistent with the fundamental principles of the republic, any opinion, decision, or order of any United States officer which denies, restricts, impairs, or questions the right of expatriation. It may appropriately be said that naturalization is the final step in the process of expatriation, and, literally construed, any order, opinion, or decision of a United States officer denying, restricting, or questioning the right to become a naturalized citizen, save as to Chinese, would come within the denunciation of the statute. It is probable that the statute was not intended to have an effect so far reaching in its consequences, and that the primary purpose was, as the title of the original act asserts, to protect the rights of American citizens in foreign states. But the language of the act is significant as illustrating the policy of the government ‘‘to bestow,’’ using the words of Vice Chancellor Sandford, ‘‘the right of citizenship freely, and with a liberality unknown in the old world.’’ Lynch v. Clarke, 1 Sandf. Ch. 661. After a careful and patient investigation of the question discussed, the court is of opinion that, whatever may be the status of the applicant viewed solely from the standpoint of the ethnologist, he is embraced within the spirit and intent of our laws upon naturalization, and his application should be granted if he is shown by the testimony to be a man attached to the principles of the constitution, and well disposed

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to the good order and happiness of the same. It is suggested that the proof fails in this respect; and the objection appears to be based upon the ground, intimated in the briefs, of his inability to understand or explain those principles. That the applicant is lamentably ignorant is conceded, and that he is unable to read and write the testimony clearly discloses. Naturally enough, his untrained mind is found deficient in the power to elucidate or define the principles of the Constitution. But the testimony also discloses that he is a very good man, peaceable and industrious, of good moral character, and law abiding ‘‘to a remarkable degree.’’ And hence it may be said of him, notwithstanding his inability to undergo an examination on questions of constitutional law, that by his daily walk, during a residence of 10 years in the city of San Antonio, he has practically illustrated and emphasized his attachment to the principles of the Constitution. Congress has not seen fit to require of applicants for naturalization an educational qualification, and courts should be careful to avoid judicial legislation. In the judgment of the court, the applicant possesses the requisite qualifications for citizenship, and his application will therefore be granted. Source: District Court, W. D. Texas 81 F. 337; 1897 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 50, May 3, 1897.

147. ‘‘Opening Up Mexico,’’ 1881 In the early 1880s, the Mexican Central Railroad linked the center of Mexico to the United States, facilitating the U.S. exploitation of Mexico’s natural resources and physically binding the two countries. The railroads paid peasants considerably more than they made on haciendas. Hence, the pull of the Mexican Central Railroad uprooted thousands, and eventually millions, of Mexican workers. The railroad also commercialized much of the nation’s agriculture, encouraging the encroachment of large owners on peasant and communal farms. The railroads were crucial in the forging of the modern Mexican nation, setting the stage for the Mexican Revolution of 1910 and the development of the Southwest which Mexican labor built. The following article is on the building of the Mexican Central Railroad and its importance on economically exploiting Mexico.

It looks as though a new era was about to dawn for the Republic of Mexico. Until recent years it has been so disturbed by internal convulsions and external complications that it has failed to make the progress of which its situation and natural resources give promise. For a long time it had good reason for being distrustful of the United States; it could hope for no stimulus from its neighbors to the south, and European intrusion was justly regarded with suspicion and dread. Thus, isolated and impoverished by her struggles, Mexico has remained undeveloped and unprogressive, while the country to the north of her has been growing in wealth and prosperity. Latterly the barriers have been falling, especially those that prevented Mexico from sympathizing with and sharing in the advancement of her northern neighbor. The United States has no longer its old motive for encroachment, and Mexico has not its old reason for fearing the consequences of closer relations, and both are beginning to see that such relations might be made mutually profitable and helpful. Mexico awakens to a desire for commercial and industrial activity and growth to find herself without lines of communication, without capital, and without any

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organization of her labor forces. The most that she can do to promote her own advancement is to open her doors to the enterprise of others, invite capital in to arouse her labor forces to activity, and give fair guarantees of profit to the undertakings which are to develop her industrial energies. The republic has no large navigable rivers which as natural highways do so much to promote the development of new countries. Its territory is compact, and rising from either coast to the plateaus of the Cordilleras, enjoys every variety of climate, soil, and production. Its harbor facilities are ample, but they are not connected with the regions of the interior in which there are so many elements of natural wealth. Railroads are the necessary instrumentality of her industrial and commercial growth. Without them she is nothing, and she has not the means of building them. She has shown evidence of appreciating her needs in the liberal charters which she has lately granted, especially to capitalists of this country. Since the reestablishment of the republic in 1867, one hundred and one acts have been passed by its Congress or initiated by the President under general legislative sanction for the encouragement of railroad construction. The various charters, agreements, and contracts represent 14,530 miles of road, for which subsidies amounting to over $171,000,000 were granted. Many of the contracts and concessions were made to the Governors of States for local lines of communication. Some charters have expired by limitation; some have been forfeited for one cause or another, and others will doubtless lapse, but there are several very substantial schemes on foot to which $69,000,000 in subsidies have been promised. The most important of the Mexican railroad enterprises, and those of which most has been heard, are the Mexican Central, that of the Mexican Construction Company, the Sonora, the Mexican Southern, and the Tehuantepec Interocean Railroad. The first of these has recently been made familiar to our readers. It is in the hands of Boston capitalists concerned in the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa F
e system of communication, which will bring it into connection with the diverging lines eastward from Kansas City. The main line of the Mexican Central is more than a thousand miles in length, connecting the capital of Mexico with El Paso on the northern border. There it will not only have the eastern outlet already mentioned into our great railroad system, but will be brought into immediate connection with that of the Pacific coast. It has a large subsidy secured by a pledge of Customs revenue and liberal privileges, and work upon it is already going on with great energy. Its two branches diverging from the main stem near Leon will traverse the country north of the capital to either coast. The Sonora line is being constructed in the same interest, and will traverse a rich territory from the Gulf of California to Arizona. Both the Central and the Sonora are organized under Massachusetts law. The Mexican Construction Company is operating under the Sullivan and Palmer grant. It was a line from the City of Mexico to the Pacific at Manzanill[o], further to the south than that of the Central Company, and one from the same city to the Rio Grande at Laredo, where it will connect through Texas with our Southern system. The two lines include over 1,200 miles of length and are liberally subsidized. The Mexican Southern has been seeking a charter from this State. It is intended to cross the country from Anton Lizardo on the Gulf of Huatalco on the Pacific, with connections to Vera Cruz and Mexico on the one side and Tehuantepec on the other. Its line is over 500 miles, and it has a subsidy of $8,000 per kilometre. The Tehuantepec Interocean Railroad is under construction, and its main object is to form a connecting link for the commerce of the two oceans. These schemes are active and

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promising and will of themselves give Mexico a system of communication, which will stimulate development and set in motion the forces that are to regenerate that country. In a few years results may be looked for, and it will be surprising if Mexico does not enter upon a career of commercial and industrial growth in sharp contrast with her past lethargy. Source: New York Times; March 8, 1881, p. 4.

148. ‘‘Progress of the Revolt,’’ 1892 Catarino Erasmo Garza Rodr
ıguez was born close to the border near Matamoros, Tamaulipas, Mexico, in 1859. He moved north of the Rio Bravo in 1877, where he worked at various jobs that gave him the opportunity to travel through Texas and other parts of the United States. In St. Louis, Missouri, Garza worked as a Mexican consul and wrote for the Spanish language newspaper La Revista Mexicana. At this point, sociedades mutualistas (mutual aid societies) were very popular among Mexicans in the United States. They were fraternal societies that furnished immigrants with insurance protection paying for death and, in some cases, health benefits. Garza was involved with mutual aid societies and helped found Texas chapters in Brownsville, Laredo, and Corpus Christi during the 1880s. He also founded the Spanish language newspapers El Bien P
ublico in Brownsville, El Comercio Mexicano and then El Libre Pensador in Eagle Pass. These newspapers criticized Mexican President Porfirio D
ıaz and the Coahuilan governor. Charging Garza with libel, Mexican authorities tried to extradite him to Mexico. Along the way he also raised the ire of former Texas Ranger Victor Sebree, with whom he had a shooting duel. After 1888, Garza increased his anti-D
ıaz rebel activities. He issued a manifesto in September 1891, near the R
ıo Bravo in Tamaulipas. American authorities forced Garza to abandon his raids into Mexico. However, he continued his revolutionary activity and took part in a revolution in Colombia where he was allegedly killed. The following article reports on his life and activities.

SAN ANTONIO, Texas, Jan. 6 The pack-mule train, consisting of thirty-one mules and six experienced guides, that left Post D. A. Russell, Wyoming, eight days ago, arrived here this morning in charge of Hendry Dailly, who for thirty years has been employed as scout in the United States Army, serving in Gen. Crook’s campaign against the Indians in Arizona and in the later Pine Ridge troubles. The train will proceed to-morrow to Fort McIntosh, where it will be divided into two sections, thirteen mules going to Fort Ringgold and the others remaining at the disposal of Maj. Morriz, in command at Fort McIntosh. It was learned here to-day from a reliable source that Garza is receiving a portion of his support from the cattle raisers of Southwest Texas, who are furnishing the revolutionists with money and free beef rations. Garza has in return for this support promised them that when he has accomplished his form of Government the present prohibitory tariff on cattle will be removed, and that the concession on free grazing privileges will be granted the Texas ranchmen who are supporting him for vast tracts of land in the States of Coahuila and Durango. The only official information received at military depot headquarters here to-day was the following dispatch from Capt. William B. Wheeler of the Eighteenth Infantry, in command at Fort Ringgold, Texas, addressed to Assistant Adjt. Gen. J. P. Martin:

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‘‘I was informed last night that there was a party of forty well-mounted and armed revolutionists camped twenty miles below here. I ordered Capt. James O. Mackey of the Third Cavalry and a detachment of twenty-five men to proceed at once to the place. Capt. J. S. McNeil of the Texas Rangers and eighteen men accompanied the troops. I have just received a telegram from Havana, where the telegraph wire was tapped, which says: ‘We struck the revolutionists’ camp at daybreak. The revolutionists fled and escaped, some of them crossing into Mexico. We captured eight horses and equipments, among them being the Government horse that we lost in the fight at Retinal.’’’ There have been many sketches of an unreliable nature published of Catarino Garza, but the following is the only authentic account of his life and deeds ever written. It was furnished by a gentleman who is one of Garza’s most intimate, lifelong friends: Catarino Erasmo Garza was born in the jurisdiction of Matamoros, Mexico, at a place called Los Lagur’s. He worked in a printing office in Matamoros and then went to Brownsville, where he clerked for Delomberg & Rafael. While in Brownsville he married a Miss Caroline Conner. He then became a sewing machine agent. After giving up the machine business he went to Laredo and organized a club of his countrymen and had some differences with Jos
e Lopez Montalbo, the editor of il Horizonic. He went to St. Louis, Mo., and had some connection with the Mexican Consul at that place. He then went to San Antonio, and from there to Eagle Pass, where he was in partnership with the celebrated.… While in Eagle Pass, Garza published a paper and some articles attacking Galou, Governor of Coahuilla arousing the ire of that gentleman. He had Garza arrested, and sent his Secretary to Austin to interview Gov. Ireland and urge the Governor to grant extradition papers for Garza, which Gov. Ireland refused. Garza was released, and went to Corpus Christi, where he published his paper, El Comeral [El Commercial] Mexicana, and became a popular idol with some of the local politicians on account of his great influence with his countrymen on the ‘‘hill,’’ which is quite a factor in municipal elections. Garza, in conjunction with Macandizar, took an active part in the prosecution of Victor Sebree and A. Dillard, who were charged with the killing of Abraham Resendez at Rio Grande City. The trial was changed to Duval County and the jury failed to agree. Garza made some severe criticism in his paper on the jury, and especially on Mr. Sebree, who was an Inspector of Customs, and A. Dillard, who was deputy United States marshal. Shortly afterward Garza went to Rio Grande City, where Sebree met him in front of a barber’s shop and a fight ensued. Garza and a companion named Frederico Lopez were on one side and Sebree on the other. Sebree shot Garza in the chin and through the liver, and shot Lopez in the ear. This caused great excitement among the friends of Garza, and the Mexican element became so excited and boisterous that Sebree had to go to Fort Ringgold for protection, and A. Dillard, though not engaged in the difficulty, had to seek Fort Ringgold, while Garza was laid up for repairs. After recovering, Garza ceased issuing his papers at Corpus Christi. He had the bullets that struck him incased in gold and wears them on his watch chain. Then he wrote a book called ‘‘La Logica de los Hechos’’ The Logic of Acts. About this time he filed a suit for divorce against his wife, who lived in Brownsville. The case came up in the District Court at Corpus Christi, and resulted in

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Garza taking a nonsuit. At the succeeding term of the District Court at Brownsville, Garza’s wife obtained a divorce from him, the court, awarding her the custody of their two children. Garza shortly after married a Miss Gonzales, a daughter of Alejandro Gonzales, one of the most prominent and wealthy ranchers of Neucks County and a true type of the high-minded Mexican. Garza’s wife is also a niece of Capt. Manuel Cadena, a noted Indian fighter, who led the van of the ranchers in their pursuit of the Indians in 1873. Shortly after his marriage Garza started a paper at his father-in-law’s ranch, calling it El Libre Pensador, The Free Thinker. He attacked the Mexican Government in brisk style, and his friends claimed that the truth published caused his paper to be prohibited in Mexico. Among his many charges against Diaz and his Government was that Diaz had broken his promise made in El Plan de Tuxtepec, wherein he had declared against the re-election of the President in Mexico; that Diaz had established a military despotism worse than that of Russia, abridged the liberty of speech and the freedom of the press; abolished the right of ‘‘amparo’’ similar to our habeas corpus and established ‘‘La Leydo Pesgo [La Ley de Fuego],’’ whereby persons could be shot without trial. He further charged that the right of suffrage had been trampled on; that the elections from the largest state to the most obscure municipality had become a farce; that the Government always won and was nominated at the capital, returns being set aside and offices usurped in seven to eight certificates; that Diaz, in violation of his oath and the laws of reform of 1867 [1857], was standing in with the old Centralists, Resactionists, or Church Party, and the Imperialists; that old and tried patriots like Escabedo and others had been cast aside and the first places of honor given to ex-Imperialists like Romero Rublo, Gen. N. de Lapana, and others, while the old reform element that had a relative position to our Grand Army was left out in the cold; that the Consular service of Mexico was even was worse than that of the United States. Just previous to the Sandoval revolution, Garza visited his friend Gen. Martinez, editor of El Mundo at Laredo, and while there made a rabble rousing speech to his countrymen, but didn’t participate in the revolution, although Reuz Sandoval offered him an important command in his army. After the assassination of Gen. Martinez at Laredo, which Garza charged to the Mexican Government, he attacked bitterly the Mexican Government, and especially Gen. Bernardo Reyes, Governor of Nueve Leon, calling him ‘‘Jackal Reyes.’’ Garza announced that he would publish the biographies of celebrated men of Mexico. He commenced with the biography of Gen. Reyes and has been so occupied since that he has not had time to finish. The first number caused a good deal of comment and the special reference to ‘‘El Burro de Oro’’ the golden donkey incensed American friends of Gen. Reyes at Laredo, and they proferred charges against Don Catarino for libel. Garza’s friends claimed that the Mexican Government had sent men over to kidnap or kill Garza as they had Gen. Martinez. The railway company thought it prudent to send Capt. Vice Morel and an escort to protect the train on its return. Garza was not arrested, as he was not at home when the officers came, and to their repeated visits, he failed to materialize. The officers could not account for this delicacy of feeling on Garza’s part, as he had been in a tighter place before when the State of Cohahuila was pleading with the Governor of Texas for his extradition. Garza was being continually advised by friends that Diaz and Reyes had men out

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camping for him. He held consultations with parties dissatisfied with the present order of things, and on the eve of the 16th of September last he crossed the Rio Bravo and raised the standard of revolt. The revolution was organized in Mexico, Garza merely passing over from this side with his personal staff and a few others. The sending of Gen. Lorenzo Gorie to the frontier and the reckless shooting of persons on the caprice of Garcia created discontent and sent every contrabandist and these who had been denounced as suspects since the Ruiz Sandoval affairs to Garza’s standard and has been the prime cause of the revolution increasing instead of decreasing. Had the Mexican Government placed the affair in the hands a man thoroughly acquainted with the frontier, the revolution would have been a thing of the past. Garza was born in 1856. He is about 5 feet 8 and spare built, is an indifferent horseman, and his use of arms has been confined to carrying them in his hip pocket. His specialty is writing in the papers and making speeches to his countrymen. He possesses a certain magnetism that strikes the Mexican ranchero in a tender spot. Garza spent the holidays in Neuces County and appears to be enjoying good health and has increased in weight. His personal staff consists of twelve men who are considered the most nervy of his patriots. He does not permit his men to depredate, and on various occasions has turned loose enemies that he captured, telling them that he was not like their master, Diaz, and was not an assassin. He affects the style of Gen. Nicolas Bravo, whose noble instincts are held in high reverence in Mexico. Garza has nine one-eyed men in his command, some of whom have been contrabandists of note. They have a singe eye to business and they never fail to express themselves on the ‘‘Mochos’’ as they call the soldiers of our sister republic. The ‘‘Tamaulipoes’’ that is those of the frontier of Tamaulipas have no regard for the ‘‘Mochos’’ of the interior. One hundred ‘‘Tamaulipoes’’ have been known to clean out a whole battalion of ‘‘Mochos.’’ Garza’s men even claim that the celebrated Fourth Regiment couldn’t be depended on unless their flank was covered with a good contingent of rurals and ‘‘Contraresguerodias’’ of the frontier to keep them up to their work. Garza has a man with him who drills his men. They call him ‘‘El Doche,’’ (the Dutchman.) He is chief drillmaster and chief of ordnance, and has the reputation of being familiar with the handling of explosives, and the elusive tactics practiced by the patriots are attributed to his advice. None of rank know where he came from. He speaks Spanish fluently. Some who have seen some of the bands claim that the movement is loaded, and that by next March Mexico will be aglow with patriotic fever for the movement of regeneration and that Diaz will be either in tented field or in the United States. Source: New York Times, January 7, 1892, p. 2.

149. ‘‘To Mexico for Revenge,’’ 1895 V
ıctor Ochoa (ca. 1868–1945) was a revolutionary, a newspaper editor and an inventor. Ochoa’s family crossed the border when he was a child, and he lived in El Paso and Las Vegas, New Mexico throughout his life. During the

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early 1890s, while he was in his early twenties, Ochoa was active in El Paso’s Mexican community where he advocated for the rights of Mexicans living in El Paso. He helped organize La Uni
on Occidental Mexicana, a mutual aid society, to help Texas Mexicans preserve their Spanish language, safeguard their morality, and otherwise encourage fraternalism. Ochoa had contact with Mexican revolutionists in the Guerrero, Chihuahua, area, and he opposed Mexican President Porfirio D
ıaz. Ochoa became more militant after Mexican forces slaughtered the residents of Tomochic, Chihuahua, Mexico, in the early 1890s. Arrested in 1893 then acquitted for planning and leading raids in Mexico—a violation of U.S. neutrality laws—he was convicted two years later by a federal court on a similar charge. Ochoa served two years in Kings County prison in Brooklyn, New York. The reporter in the following newspaper article interviews Ochoa at the time of his conviction and gives insight into his motives.

Warden Hayes of the Kings Country Penitentiary received eight United States prisoners Thursday. Among them was Victor L. Ochoa, thirty years old, who is sentenced to two years and a half imprisonment for leading a military expedition against the Republic of Mexico. Ochoa is 5 feet 8 inches in height, with regular features, and of pleasing address. Speaking of his present trouble, he said it was due to the misgovernment of Mexico and the unhappiness of the people. Gen. Diaz, he declared, had ruled for twenty years, and had ruled with an iron hand. There are 245 Prefects, all of whom are his personal appointees, and they are all military men, and, as they appoint the election officers, the machinery, he said, is absolutely in the hands of Gen. Diaz. ‘‘In 1802,’’ said Ochoa, ‘‘the Perfect of the district of Tomochic in the State of Chihuahua, committed a brutal crime. This man caused his soldiers to murder a young woman’s parents and brother. When the neighbors heard of his brutality, and the uses to which he had put his soldiers, they determined they could no longer live under such rule. They organized a revolution, and decided to form a new State. I was then editor of a daily newspaper in El Paso, Texas El Hispano-Americano whose circulation was largely on Mexican soil. A native of Chihuahua, I heard with horror of the massacre of my friends, and published the facts. The paper was excluded from Mexico, and my constituents forced to give it up. Merchants who advertised in it were compelled by the authorities to boycott me. Meanwhile, the Government had learned of the plot in Tomochic, and massed troops there under the Prefect to put it down. ‘‘The soldiers massacred the whole population of 600 souls in the village, with the exception of 114 women and children. Imagine my horror at this. My own family had fallen victims to the relentless cruelty of the Prefect. This too, I published. My paper soon succumbed for its lack of support. I gathered all I had, and turning all my effects into cash, threw the money into the fund for my people’s liberation. ‘‘The revolt was planned for May 5, 1893, and Simon Amaya, an ex-Governor of the State of Chihuahua, was to lead it. We were betrayed, and Amaya and many of the revolutionists were killed. I was in Texas then, the United States Agent for my party. Upon Amaya’s death they asked me to become leader, and I unwillingly

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accepted. We meant to strike our first blow Jan. 15, 1894. I intended to concentrate 5,000 men near Chihuahua, and march against the Prefect of Tomochic first of all. ‘‘To avenge our families, our loved ones, we intended to hang him. Again knowledge of our intentions was given to the Government, and our six divisions were unable to reach the rendezvous previously chosen. I, with a detachment of only 500 men, arrived at the set time, and I was forced to retreat before the masses of Government troops sent to cut us to pieces. At last we had to disband to save ourselves. ‘‘I escaped from a mountain gulch in the clothes of a Mexican soldier whom I killed there. I reached the Mexican Central Railroad twenty miles away, and rode with a trainload of Mexican troops, undiscovered in my disguise, 200 miles to the border, where I made my escape. ‘‘Mexico asked for my extradition, but the United States Government refused to surrender a political prisoner, and instead I was arrested last October for filibustering. The Government had no difficulty in proving its charges.’’ Ochoa said that while he was in prison at Fort Stockton, the Sheriff of the County, at the instigation of the Mexican officials, intended to kidnap him and take him to Mexico, where he would have been shot. He was actually taken out of prison but he escaped from his captors. He was caught and imprisoned in San Antonio, where his trial was held. Two weeks after the attempt to kidnap him, he said, the Sheriff was killed. Ochoa has written the history of his expedition. At one time he was President of the Spanish-American Press Association in which were sixty-four newspapers. Source: New York Times, August 17, 1895, p. 9.

150. Maud Mason Austin, ‘‘Teresa Urrea,’’ 1896 ~a de Cabora, Santa TerTeresa de Urrea (1873–1906) was known as la Nin esa, Teresita, La Santa. Her fame spread throughout northern Mexico and the southwestern United States. People would travel hundreds of miles to be healed by Teresa who they believed performed miracles. For others, she held out hope that their redemption was near and that she would bring about a revolution. Born on October 15, 1873, in Sinaloa, Mexico, she was the natural child of Tom
as Urrea and Cayetana Ch
avez. As a child, she moved to Cabora, Sonora, where she lived with her father on his hacienda. In her teens, Teresa had a seizure and fell into a coma for three months and 18 days. When she woke up, many considered it a sign that she was blessed. As the word spread, thousands of pilgrims traveled to Cabora to visit La Santa. At the time, the end of the millennium was approaching and many awaited the end of the world; this inspired millenarian movements that included Yaquis, Tarahumara, and villagers as far away as Tomochic, Chihuahua. Because of the notoriety and the fear of the government, Teresa and her father were forced to leave Sonora in 1892, taking refuge in the Nogales, Arizona area. Within three years, they moved to Solomonville, Arizona, and to El Paso, Texas. As revolutionists increased activity within Mexico and along the border, D
ıaz blamed Teresa. She moved away from the border to Clifton, Arizona, where rumors continued that she was going to head a revolution against D
ıaz who sent an agent to Clifton who she married. He tried to force her to return to Mexico where she would have been executed. When she refused he shot her,

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and he was arrested. She later died in Clifton in 1906. The following is an article describing her pilgrimages in the United States.

TERESA URREA The Unlettered Mexican Girl who Claims to Heal the Sick. (CONTRIBUTED TO THE TIMES.) If, as Carlyle says, ‘‘matter exists only spiritually and to represent some idea, and body it forth,’’ then Teresa Urrea the saint of Cabora, embodies charity, love, selfabnegation and all those cardinal virtues which pulpit orators bepraise. This picturesque ‘‘maravillosa sanadora,’’ believing that all aspirations should be utilitarian in their scheme and show forth God’s harmonies regardless of man’s creeds, moves among her horde of afflicted devotees, giving with a touch and a smile great cheer to the sorrowing.

TERESA’S METHODS She is an unlearned Mexican girl, born and bred in an isolated hacienda, in Sonora, where no hint of odylic force uses which ‘‘from female finger-tips burnt blue’’ could ever have reached her for imitation. She never could have heard of Gassner’s strokes with the hand or of Franz Anton Mesmer, yet her method is theirs. She has had no education, so she cannot have read Deleuze, or Mayo, or Teste or Carpenter. Her chirography has been acquired, as she naively explains, with a piece of charcoal upon a board, yet she is associate editor of El Independiente a creditable weekly published in El Paso.… Tomochic are Mexicans, not Tarahumar[a]s impelled by oppression and poverty, fanaticism and defiance, perhaps would have needed, even less than this girlish idol, to precipitate the horrors of Tomochic and San Tomas. When 18 years of age, Teresita lay in a trance for three months. In this comatose state she began denouncing sectarianism and performing her wonderful curses which her family, being, at that time, orthodox people, looked upon with small sympathy. It was in the succeeding year, when her fame was already abroad and the people coming to her from within 400 miles thereabouts by wagon, that Gov. Carrillo of Chihuahua, came to the little mountain pueblo of Tomochic to remove certain famous paintings from the church. These paintings were presumably by Murillo and very dear to the pride and hearts of the people. When the canvases were cut the frames were imbedded in the walls the people protested, defying the Governor and the jefe politico in defense of their altars. Carillo returned empty-handed and indignant, leaving some ill-will behind him. This was in August 1891. The following December, Padre Manuel Gastelum came from Urnachic to preach to the Tomochitecos, and denounced Teresa from the pulpit as a heretic and evil-worker. But the people were sullen and only praised her good works. Much incensed, the good padre betook himself to Guerrero in high dudgeon and notified the authorities that the Tomochitecos were in revolt. How meets Mexico any uprising or massing, political, ecclesiastical or incidental? Soldiers were sent at once from Guerrero. Thirty Tomochitecos, rudely armed, resisted them, but were routed and all prisoners shot. Having registered a vow that they would appeal to Teresa Urrea now a sort of saint and prophetess by virtue of her fame and their superstitions they repaired to Cabora, a pueblo on the Urrea

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estate. The girl’s father, Tomas Urrea, an intelligent and comely Mexican, denies that the girl further inflamed them or led them. He characterizes the trouble as persecution and the government’s well-known distrust of the populacho. But the troops fell upon all, and riot, incendiarism, and bloodshed followed. Women and children were shamelessly butchered and Tomochic burnt. Before this was accomplished, however, fifty-eight valiant rebels killed 580 pelon[e]s soldiers in one encounter, and it is not to be wondered at that Diaz laid his sword upon these poor creatures maddened by previous wrongs and oppressions. They fought not like men, but demons, shouting the names of Maria Santisima and Teresa until they were exterminated. ‘Tis no wonder the soldiers dubbed them ‘‘tigres de la Sierra.’’

TERESA’S BANISHMENT The Urrea family, abandoning large landed property, under pronounciamentos, escaped into Arizona; and Santa Teresa, her name still a talisman recklessly flaunted by the defiant Mexicans, innocently bore the responsibility of being a ‘‘leader of insurrections’’ in their campaigns. This gentle girl could never have reveled in bloodshed. Expatriated, but undaunted, she finds on the American side of the Rio Grande at El Paso no armed opposition to her creed which seems to be: Be good, and love. She leaves science to the wise, theories to investigators, pelf to the avaricious. Her surroundings are poor beyond compare. She sleeps upon a bed woven of raw-hide. When, if she chose, she could coin ‘‘pesos.’’ It may count for one’s eternal salvation to wear one’s skin away on bare boards like Wesley, but good workers seem to me more efficacious; and I see no difference between his self-torture and the crucifratres. He it was, too, who said: ‘‘A string of opinions is no more Christian faith than a string of beads is Christian holiness.’’ Because Teresa Urrea is not orthodox what freedom of thought was ever orthodox? need we scoff at her honesty? And because she believes like Kardec but in her own words that ‘‘God is a spirit and we a spark of Him, hence needing no mediations’’ need we denounce her into a calabash, like the Kalmucks, and wait for the wind to turn them. Are texts to be used only as pretexts, constraining us to believe that ‘‘there is nothing true but doubt,’’ and then to even doubt this? Such finished pyrrhonism in pulpit rationale threatens to have religion enveloped in hypotheses and God vanishing in mist; but the most callous is touched by the honest self-sacrifice which will thus serve the repulsively poor and afflicted. Teresa Urrea does not profess to work miracles, neither is she attempting as the malicious declare to raise the dead and insurrections. But she nestles a suffering infant into her tender arms and hushes it; strokes the throbbing temples of the aged; feeds the hungry, and lays her pretty magnetic hands upon aching and distorted limbs, smiling into sad eyes in so truly saint-like a way as touches the unregenerate heart into respect and reverence such as must have brooded over the multitude about the shores of Galilee. Somehow as I look at her wretched court the thought will come to me likening the poor hard herd about this earnest soul into animals gathering from the outskirts of civilization and returning home wearied but comforted to their several lairs. It is only a little span here at best. Who dares to impugn or retard one infinitesimal movement toward.

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O Heaven, whither? Sense knows not; Faith knows not; only that it is through Mystery to Mystery. From God and to God Maud Mason Austin Source: Los Angeles Times, August 23, 1896, p. 18.

151. Excerpts from the Chinese Exclusion Act, 1882 During the nineteenth century, Chinese labor was very important to the growth of American agriculture and the building of the railroads. On May 6, 1882, in response to a virulent and racist campaign, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act that suspended Chinese immigration for 10 years. The law provided that Chinese workers already in the United States who had work visas would receive a certificate of residency and were to be allowed to travel in and out of the United States. In 1892, the Geary Act renewed this suspension of Chinese immigration for another 10 years, and again in 1902, with no terminal date. The Chinese Exclusion Act was important on numerous scores: it was the first U.S. nativist immigration law passed that specified a particular group and it created a labor shortage. In order for American agriculture and for the Southwest to grow it needed immigration. So railroads, mine corporations, and agribusiness turned to the Mexican, who they heavily recruited. The Act was immensely important in attracting Mexican laborers to the United States.

PREAMBLE Whereas, in the opinion of the Government of the United States the coming of Chinese laborers to this country endangers the good order of certain localities within the territory thereof: Therefore, Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That from and after the expiration of ninety days next after the passage of this act, and until the expiration of ten years next after the passage of this act, the coming of Chinese laborers to the United States be, and the same is hereby, suspended; and during such suspension it shall not be lawful for any Chinese laborer to come, or, having so come after the expiration of said ninety days, to remain within the United States.… … SECTION II That the master of any vessel who shall knowingly bring within the United States on such vessel, and land or permit to be landed, any Chinese laborer, from any foreign port of place, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and on conviction thereof shall be punished by a fine of not more than five hundred dollars for each and every such Chinese laborer so brought, and may be also imprisoned for a term not exceeding one year. SECTION III That the two foregoing sections shall not apply to Chinese laborers who were in the United States on the seventeenth day of November, eighteen hundred and

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eighty, or who shall have come into the same before the expiration of ninety days next after the passage of this act, and who shall produce to such master before going on board such vessel, and shall produce to the collector of the port in the United States at which such vessel shall arrive, the evidence hereinafter in this act required of his being one of the laborers in this section mentioned; nor shall the two foregoing sections apply to the case of any master whose vessel, being bound to a port not within the United States by reason of being in distress or in stress of weather, or touching at any port of the United States on its voyage to any foreign port of place: Provided, That all Chinese laborers brought on such vessel shall depart with the vessel on leaving port. SECTION IV That for the purpose of properly identifying Chinese laborers who were in the United States on the seventeenth day of November, eighteen hundred and eighty, or who shall have come into the same before the expiration of ninety days next after the passage of this act, and in order to furnish them with the proper evidence of their right to go from and come to the United States of their free will and accord, as provided by the treaty between the United States and China dated November seventeenth, eighteen hundred and eighty, the collector of customs of the district from which any such Chinese laborer shall depart from the United States shall, in person or by deputy, go on board each vessel having on board any such Chinese laborer and cleared or about to sail from his district for a foreign port, and on such vessel make a list of all such Chinese laborers, which shall be entered in registry-books to be kept for that purpose, in which shall be stated the name, age, occupation, last place of residence, physical marks or peculiarities, and all facts necessary for the identification of each of such Chinese laborers, which books shall be safely kept in the customhouse; and every such Chinese laborer so departing from the United States shall be entitled to, and shall receive, free of any charge or cost upon application therefore, from the collector or his deputy, at the time such list is taken, a certificate, signed by the collector or his deputy and attested by his seal of office, in such form as the Secretary of the Treasury shall prescribe, which certificate shall contain a statement of the name, age, occupation, last place of residence, personal description, and fact of identification of the Chinese laborer to whom the certificate is issued, corresponding with the said list and registry in all particulars. In case any Chinese laborer after having received such certificate shall leave such vessel before her departure he shall deliver his certificate to the master of the vessel, and if such Chinese laborer shall fail to return to such vessel before her departure from port the certificate shall be delivered by the master to the collector of customs for cancellation. The certificate herein provided for shall entitle the Chinese laborer to whom the same is issued to return to and re-enter the United States upon producing and delivering the same to the collector of customs of the district at which such Chinese laborer shall seek to re-enter; and upon delivery of such certificate by such Chinese laborer to the collector of customs at the time of re-entry in the United States, said collector shall cause the same to be filed in the custom house and duly canceled. SECTION V That any Chinese laborer mentioned in section four of this act being in the United States, and desiring to depart from the United States by land, shall have the

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right to demand and receive, free of charge or cost, a certificate of identification similar to that provided for in section four of this act to be issued to such Chinese laborers as may desire to leave the United States by water; and it is hereby made the duty of the collector of customs of the district next adjoining the foreign country to which said Chinese laborer desires to go to issue such certificate, free of charge or cost, upon application by such Chinese laborer, and to enter the same upon registrybooks to be kept by him for the purpose, as provided for in section four of this act. SECTION VI That in order to the faithful execution of articles one and two of the treaty in this act before mentioned, every Chinese person other than a laborer who may be entitled by said treaty and this act to come within the United States, and who shall be about to come to the United States, shall be identified as so entitled by the Chinese Government in each case, such identity to be evidenced by a certificate issued under the authority of said government, which certificate shall be in the English language or (if not in the English language) accompanied by a translation into English, stating such right to come, and which certificate shall state the name, title, or official rank, if any, the age, height, and all physical peculiarities, former and present occupation or profession, and place of residence in China of the person to whom the certificate is issued and that such person is entitled conformably to the treaty in this act mentioned to come within the United States. Such certificate shall be prima-facie evidence of the fact set forth therein, and shall be produced to the collector of customs, or his deputy, of the port in the district in the United States at which the person named therein shall arrive. … SECTION XV That the words ‘‘Chinese laborers,’’ whenever used in this act, shall be construed to mean both skilled and unskilled laborers and Chinese employed in mining. Source: Courtesy of the Yale Law School Avalon Project, May 6, 1882, http://www.yale.edu/ lawweb/avalon/statutes/chinese exclusion act.htm.

152. Excerpts from the Memoirs of Federico Jos
e Mar
ıa Ronstadt Tucson, Arizona, was a center for Mexicans from Sonora, Mexico, after the U.S. takeover in 1853. Workers as well as members of prominent Sonoran families would migrate to the town, which linked the mines of Arizona and Sonora. The following is from an autobiography written by the founder of the Ronstadt family in the United States, which includes many prominent members including singer Linda Ronstadt. Federico Jos
e Mar
ıa Ronstadt was born in Sonora in 1868, to a Mexican mother and a German father. He immigrated to Tucson to apprentice with an uncle. Ronstadt wrote proudly of his Mexican heritage and gives a flavor of life on the border. He was the conductor of the Club Filarm
onica Tucsonense, the Tucson Philharmonic Club, for nine years and active within the Mexican community in other civic organizations. The following excerpts are about his life in Mexico and his immigration and settling in Tucson.

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Before I say anything about myself, I wish to note down a few things about my father and my mother. My father, Frederick Augustus Ronstadt, was born in Hanover, Germany, and educated at the university of the same city. His father’s name was Godfrey Ronstadt, and as far as we knew he had only one sister, named Henrietta. He came from Germany with a group of engineers to Buenos Aires, from there by mule back across the Andes to Chile and by water to San Francisco; from San Francisco overland to San Diego and Arizona and Sonora in the early fifties.… My mother’s father, Don Jos
e Mar
ıa Redondo, was a successful gentleman farmer, stockman, and merchant. He happened to be Prefecto of the District of Altar when the filibustering expedition of Crabb invaded Caborca. He had a reputation for extreme kindness and patience. My mother’s mother, Dona Jes
us V
asquez, died during the cholera epidemic in 1848 when my mother was only 2 years old.… I was born at ‘‘Las Delicias,’’ the hacienda and home of Gen. Pesqueira near Cananea in 1868, when my father was working the original Cananea mine of that time. I can remember when I must have been between 2 and 3 years old [in] an assay room that my father had across the street from where we lived at a mining town called Banamichi not far from Cananea. I filled my cap with flakes of silver from a mound on the floor one day and ran with it across the street for home. I don’t remember any more but it is almost sure that my disciplining must have started from that day.… My father was a lover of music and wanted me to start learning it as early as possible. There was a private school in La Paz conducted by Father Arce. It was called a college. They had a number of boarding students from several of the other towns in the peninsula besides the day scholars; a music department for sight reading (solfeo); band and orchestra instruments; a manual training teacher; an art teacher for drawing; and four or five other teachers for the various school courses. I was sent to the music class every afternoon after public school hours to take solfeo. When I had been going for that a few months my father decided to place me there as a boarder for the better schooling and discipline. My brother, Dick, also went as a day scholar. I attended this school as a boarder for a year, until my mother received a letter advising her that her father had died without leaving a will and calling her to come at once to see about the distribution of the estate. While attending Padre Arce’s college I again took English. The English teacher was a graduate of Santa Clara College. His name was Salvador Solario.… We were taken for walks along the beach, and out in the country. At times we were served chocolate at some country home of friends of the school. We were never permitted to go out of the school grounds alone to any place.… This idyllic life could not last forever. My father had planned to send me to Philadelphia to learn the ship building trade. He had a friend connected with one of the large shipyards who had offered to look after me. My mother had protested when my father had wanted to send me to Mexico City to a preparatory school for the military college where President Juarez had granted him a ‘‘beca’’ (scholarship) for one of his boys. She did not want any more soldiers in the family. I was disappointed but now I know how sound her judgment was. Both finally compromised on sending me to Tucson where Mr. Dalton and his brother-in-law, Adolfo Vasquez, were operating a carriage shop. The carriage and wagon industry was a major one in those days and my parents decided that I could

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do well in that line. Mrs. Dalton was my mother’s cousin, and I was to live at their home while serving my apprenticeship. While waiting to be taken to the U.S., I occupied my time hunting rabbits, doves, and quail in the foothills near Magdalena. I also made some stools and benches for my mother at the carpenter shop of our neighbors Alberto and Alejandro Barreda. Mrs. Barreda’s maiden name was Elias of the old Elias family, founders of the town of Arizpe from which we know at the present day, Pancho Elias, ex-governor of Sonora, and one of ex-President Calles’ right hand men. One of our great grandmothers was an El
ıas and my mother always recognized these blood relations and we were taught to know them as parientes (relatives) in the well established Spanish custom. A pariente [relative] even in the fourth or fifth degree is a blood relative and must be recognized as such. Therefore about half of the people of Sonora are descendants from the Redondos, Vasquez, Urreas, and the Elias. We have an army of blood relatives (parientes).… There I met Mrs. Dalton who 22 years later was to be my mother-in-law. Mrs. Dalton was my mother’s cousin. That was one of the reasons for my coming to their home. My parents knew their beautiful character and that I would have a real home with them. Mrs. Dalton’s mother, Tia Chona was then about 45, very vigorous and in complete charge and control of the home. I had seen Tia Chona at Magdalena a few months before when she had gone there to visit her brother, Don Jesus Suastegui. Tia Chona was very methodical. Her house was well managed and she exacted punctuality from everyone but, with all that, she was kind and very charming. I soon learned to love her. However, my ideal of a young mother and wife was Mrs. Dalton. At that time she was only 27 years old, a rare beauty, and lovely in every way. Her only baby then was Hortense, about three years old. Lupe, my own wife, came that same year of 1882 in August. It was my privilege to have been sent at midnight to call the midwife that took care of Mrs. Dalton. I was then 14 years old. I never imagined that some day Lupe would be the mother of my four boys. Tia Chona had a nice garden in the back lot and part of my work was to draw water every evening from a sixty-foot well to irrigate the garden. In the morning before breakfast I had to fill the barrels and ollas for the day’s supply and carry water to the front of the house to water the trees. I also had to chop firewood and keep the yard raked. This work together with 10 hours of shop work kept me from mischief. In the shops of that time, we also had to draw water from our wells, as Tucson did not have water works until 1884. For drinking water we would get a few buckets from Joe Phy’s water wagon at 5 cents per bucket, and for a hot bath we would go to Sander’s Bath House located about the present site of the Carrillo School house. At home I washed from a pail out in the yard through summer and winter. Sometimes we had to break the ice on top of the water tub to get water for washing. My first year in Tucson, Tia Chona saw to it that I made my First Communion and was confirmed. I was confirmed by Bishop [Jean-Baptiste] Salpointe (1825 1896) at the old St. Agustin Cathedral on Church Plaza. Part of the old building and the main cut stone entrance still stand. It is now used for a garage. This is a historical landmark that should be preserved.… My first 16th of September (Mexican Independence Day), 1882 in Tucson, was celebrated with a great public feast. They had a number of fine floats in the parade,

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and a troupe of boys had been uniformed and drilled to act as a guard of honor to the queen and her court. I was a private in that troupe. The parade marched to Levin’s Park where the annual fiesta of St. Agustin was in full sway. This feast (honoring the patron saint of Tucson) started on the 28th of August and lasted for a month. The guard of honor was formed in a square along the back of both sides of the stage. The queen of the celebration and her maids of honor occupied the center and the members of the Junta Patriotica (the executive committee) and the speakers sat on the sides. The official speaker of the evening was to be Don Vicente Lomeli, the Mexican consul, a highly cultured gentlemen who had just arrived from Mexico City. Everyone was anticipating a Spanish masterpiece as he came with the reputation of a fine orator. The first musical numbers in the program were given and when Sr. Lomeli did not appear, his secretary stepped forward and in a few words told the waiting audience that the Hon. Consul was indisposed and begged the audience to excuse him. This left the Junta without a speaker, and in a rather embarrassing situation. This same barber, Maximo Zu~ niga who was a member of the Junta on the stage went to the Chairman and pointing to me told him that he knew I had prepared a speech to deliver it at the end of the program when it was the custom to invite voluntary speakers. I had prepared a patriotic speech, more for the fun of it than expecting to have a chance to use it. I had recited it to Zu~ niga in the barber shop when there was no one else around and he had liked it. So the President of the Junta pulled me out of the ranks and announced to the audience that I would speak. I am sure that I must have been scared stiff, but I knew my piece and I delivered it so that every one would be sure to hear it. It evidently made a hit at least with a good part of the crowd. Before we left the stage and after the regulation abrazos (hugs) of congratulation someone brought me an invitation to a champagne supper. Before I could decide what to do I was pulled through the mob into one of the restaurants (fondas) of the fiesta and here were eight or more women and men standing around a table loaded with food and bottles. I was to be the guest of honor, a boy of 15 years old. I don’t remember how I acted. I do remember that I did not like the champagne and drank water. The next day I received by a messenger boy a very nice letter and a silver eagle cut out of a Mexican peso. Don Miguel Roca, the father of our well known citizen, City Councilman and personal friend, Lautaro Roca, had sent me the letter and the eagle in appreciation of my speech. Don Miguel Roca was a native of Chile but was then a merchant and a prominent citizen of Tucson. His family was socially prominent and leaders among the best people at that time. Of his daughters we still have with us Mrs. Ben Heney and Mrs. George Smalley. I remember particularly that Mrs. Ben Heney, Erminia Roca, was an accomplished pianist and an attractive girl.… On my return from California in 1888, and after my father’s death on March 2 of 1889, some of my friends expressed a desire to form a group to meet in the evenings and take music lessons. We had Rufino Velez, who was a lover of music and always ready for a good time. He knew not a note but he had (like many Spaniards), a beautiful tenor voice of great power. Also in the group were Samaniego, Henry Levin, Villaescusa, my brother Dick, Tom Legarra, Lucas Estrella, and Santos Aros. I gave them all a few lessons in the rudiments of music. Dick was a good flutist, Henry could play a little on the violin, Santos Aros had played guitar by ear, and Samaniego had played flute in his young days. We organized as a music club and subscribed enough money to purchase a bass violin, a cello, and a viola. I purchased

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a clarinet, Rufino a trombone, Villaescusa a baritone, and Samaniego a flute. Dick got a cornet and we started teaching notes and the use of these instruments to the members. Samaniego dropped out and Dick took over the flute. Tom Legarra and Henry Levin had their own violins. Any printed music of the very easy grades was too insipid and I got the idea of arranging some that could be played more effectively, giving the melodies and counterparts to Dick and Levin, Legarra, and myself. In a few months we had a repertoire of danzas, mazurkas, polkas, songs, and serenades that I had arranged, easy to play and pleasing melodies and simple harmonies to treat our friends. Some of the Tucson music lovers suggested to us to get band instruments for a larger group and play weekly concerts at the Court plaza. A Mrs. Strauss (a good pianist) offered to raise the necessary funds to buy the larger instruments like tubas, drums, trombones, and altos. They brought us $300.00 and the rest of the money was used to build a bandstand at the Court plaza. Some of the boys owned their own instruments and we all subscribed enough to buy a quartet of saxophones. We called the club, Club Filarmonico Tucsonense. We played once a week at the plaza for nine years. Always had a good audience. In the summer we would play Wednesday evenings, and Sunday afternoons in the winter months. Once every year we would play a concert at Reid’s Opera House for the benefit of the St. Vincent de Paul Society. These concerts and promenade dances would net over a thousand dollars. We would play for church socials, National Holidays, Christmas, and New Years festivities, dances for our friends, and serenades gratis.… With the $1,500 that Rufino V
elez had offered to loan me I bought a 100-foot lot from Mr. Hittinger on the corner of Broadway and Scott where the Roskruge Hotel and DeLux Bar is now located. I financed the shop building that I erected there by building a wagon for Tom Russell who did the foundations and walls. Another wagon to Thomas Wilson Lumber Co. for the lumber needed and another wagon to Gardner Worthen and Goss for the roofing iron.… About that time, W. C. Greene of Cananea fame had started to build a R.R. [railroad] from Naco to Cananea, approximately 40 miles, after failing to interest the Southern Pacific R.R. Co. in his project. The grading was done by mule teams, wagons, and scrapers. Bill Demery called on his regular visit and told me that there was going to be a shortage of wagons for the following year and also an advance of 10% on the prices. He estimated that I would have a demand for at least 100 wagons for the Naco-Cananea R.R., and advised me to order four carloads before the advance saying that the Bain Wagon Company would accept the order if received before December 31, and I could get the wagons shipped one carload at a time as needed. Of course I was glad to sign the order, but when it reached the factory they refused to accept it unless I would take shipment at their convenience. Demery thought I would be safe in that believing that the factory would not be able to make early shipments. I consented and prayed for delay. Between January 15 and March 1, all four carloads of wagons were shipped. The freight alone amounted to $3,000 and the Baker and Hamilton invoices totaled over $10,000. Since most of 100 wagons were heavy, I had to hire barns and old adobe houses, where I could find them, to store the wagons safely where they could be insured.… By 1906, we had built up a good trade for custom made wagons and other lines in Southern Arizona and in the state of Sonora, Mexico. We had established an

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agency in Cananea and also had subagents in Nogales, Hermosillo, and Guaymas. Pepe would travel over this territory and made a good many friends and good customers. Our agent at Cananea, Alfredo Pesqueira, a son of my godfather, Gen. Ignacio Pesqueira, also purchased 100 shares of our Treasury stock. We also sold 20 shares to Carl Bucholtz who was by that time superintendent and designer in our carriage shop. About 1906, Mr. William C. Greene, the man who had developed Cananea to one of the largest copper producing mines in the U.S., started to build a railroad from Chihuahua towards Cananea. He had timber lands and other mining interests in the region through which this railroad was to pass. He had in mind a separate and independent transportation connection from the eastern cities to Cananea through El Paso, Texas. We realized that a direct line from El Paso through Chihuahua and Sonora to Cananea would place Tucson at a disadvantage as a supply point. It appeared that to retain the trade we had developed at Cananea and northeastern Sonora, we would need a branch either at Cananea or El Paso, Texas. We decided that El Paso was the best location and we started a branch there under the management of a local man who had experience in handling vehicles and harness. Source: Excerpts from Borderman: The Memoirs of Federico Jos
e Mar
ıa Ronstadt, edited by Edward C 2003 The Arizona Board of Regents, Reprinted by permission of the University of F. Ronstadt.
Arizona Press. pp. 3, 6, 35, 54, 55, 79, 92, 93, 125 126.

153. Excerpts from Joseph Park, ‘‘The 1903 ‘Mexican Affair’ at Clifton,’’ 1903 Copper mining attracted tens of thousands of Mexican workers into Arizona, which by the turn of the century was a leading producer of copper. This growth was accompanied by changes in production that stratified workers according to skill and race. Mexican miners occupied the lower skilled jobs and were segregated in job categories and residence. Mexican workers organized defense groups to protect themselves. Mutual aid societies were organized to insure workers a decent burial and their families a measure of protection. They also organized against the racism of white-dominated labor unions and local groups that discriminated against them. In 1903, Mexican miners faced a drastic cut in pay when the territorial legislature ordered a cut in work hours that also meant a cut in pay. The legislation singled out Mexicans since white workers were already on an eight-hour day. When the mine owners would not restore their full pay, the Mexican and other unskilled miners struck the mines of Clifton, Morenci and Metcalf, Arizona. The late University of Arizona librarian, Joseph Park, did groundbreaking research on Mexican workers in Arizona. The following excerpts are from an article by Joe Park on the strike.

The Strike at Clifton in June, 1903, the only significant outbreak in Arizona until the onset of labor disorders accompanying the First World War, was unique in being largely a Mexican affair. In all its outward aspects, the episode was a paradox that caught the whole Territory by surprise. The Western Federation of Miners [WFM], active in Arizona since a labor-management confrontation at Globe in 1896, had not gained a foothold in the Clifton-Morenci district. There was no

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apparent labor organization and in view of the preponderant number of alien Mexicans in the area, the strikers could expect no support from the Union. Yet, where the WFM had not succeeded thus far in staging a successful strike on a large scale, the Mexican workers at Clifton managed to tie up the whole district. In fact, the conduct of the walkout revealed a sense of unity and a power of decision notably lacking in the activities of the predominantly Anglo WFM. The strike failed through a combination of circumstances that nobody could have expected or foreseen, but it wrote a chapter in the labor history of the state and was a landmark in the painful upward progress of the Mexican workman without whom Arizona could not have achieved industrial significance. This important mining district is a good laboratory for the study of Mexican labor in Arizona beginning in post Civil War years when workers from both sides of the border offered a solution to the mine owner’s problems as the industry revived in a virtually abandoned region. Indian labor had proved unsatisfactory. Anglo-Americans were restless in the employ of others and tended to work only long enough to grubstake themselves. Chinese laborers, no longer needed by the railroad companies, came and went but not in significant numbers. In the villages south of the Mexican border, however, there existed an abundance of capable workers, many of them with experience in working ores of the Arizona-Sonora zone. These aliens crossed the frontier, legally or illegally, in increasing numbers both before and after the turn of the century to join the native-born work force, and little distinction was made between the two groups. They were given largely the same treatment, paid the ‘‘Mexican’’ wage, and usually assigned to jobs considered by the Americans as ‘‘Mexicans’ work.’’ In the development of the Clifton mines these Mexicans played a major role. An account of their origin, background, treatment and eventual rebellion throws considerable light on the labor history of the copper state. Their employment at Clifton-Morenci became important with the opening of the district in 1872. Except for a few ranches in the upper Gila, this region was completely isolated, and the environmental and social problems encountered there during the developmental years were fully as difficult as those experienced on other frontiers in Arizona during earlier decades. The nearest point of supply was Silver City, New Mexico. Military posts were too distant to offer effective protection, and renegade Apaches from the San Carlos reservation roamed freely through the region, attacking supply wagons and wood-chopping crews, and even raiding the settlement, thus adding to the problems of inaccessibility and isolation a factor of danger that made it doubly difficult to attract and retain workmen. The Clifton ores were known to Mexican prospectors of the early nineteenth century, who reported the presence of copper in the precipitous mountains north of the Gila River. In 1864, Henry Clifton rediscovered the ore body, but due to its remote location, he returned to Silver City without attempting to file on it. Six years later Robert Metcalf and a group of prospectors found outcrops of beautiful copper carbonates along the cliffs about two thousand feet above the bed of Chase Creek. After locating claims, Metcalf returned to Silver City, where he sold the controlling interest in the prospect to Charles and Henry Lesinsky. At Las Cruces, the Lesinskys organized the Longfellow Copper Mining Company and made preparations to enter the region. Aware that Mexicans had a traditional knowledge of smelting, Henry Lesinsky recruited a small force with experience in copper mining, deciding to leave it to them to build and operate the first smelters at Clifton.

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Returning to Silver City, he was joined by Metcalf and others, and they packed into the area. Deep in a canyon at the junction of Chase Creek and the San Francisco River, they founded the settlement of Clifton, built entirely by Mexican labor. By October 1873, they had thirty men working steadily and were smelting seventy to eighty-percent ore using Mexican processes. The undertaking was a success from the start. During the next two or three years, according to Hiram C. Hodge, thousands of tons were worked through the furnaces, several of which were in continual operation. From 200 to 400 men were being employed at three to four dollars a day. On account of the rough terrain, however, they experienced increasing difficulty in handling the volume then being processed. From the mouth of the Longfellow Mine the mineral was carried down a steep incline to a wagon road, then hauled some five miles to the reduction works at Clifton, where Mexican workers shouldered the ore baskets and carried them to the smelters. In 1874, Henry Lesinsky improved the local transportation arrangements by building a twenty-inch railway over the route. Mules hauled the cars up the incline. Then, according to James Colquhoun, a young Scottish engineer who later took charge of the Clifton mines as president of the Arizona Copper Company and functioned also as the community historian, ‘‘the ore cars hauled the mules down.’’ The shipping of the copper bullion, however, posed the greatest problem. During the early years, the owners used bull teams, hauling their copper 1,200 miles to Kansas City and returning with supplies. Colquhoun remarked of the hazards of the journey, ‘‘Sometimes teamsters left Clifton with their loads of copper, and were never heard of again. A few dead bodies, and the wreck of a plundered wagon, told the tale to the teamsters who followed.’’ Through the mid-1870s, shipping remained the principal barrier to volume production, and for this there was no apparent remedy other than adding voice to the growing agitation for the construction of a railroad across the Territory.… The Immigration Act of 1891 provided for the location of inspection stations at ports of entry along the seaboard and on the Mexican and Canadian borders. Two of them were in operation on the Mexican boundary by 1894. On account of the great length of the border and the constant remigration across it, however, the smuggling of Orientals as well as the traffic in Mexican labor went on unabated. After 1900, Mexican immigration became a matter of general concern. The rush to build feeder railroads into the copper districts and the resultant upturn in production brought thousands of Mexican workers into Arizona. Between 1900 and 1910, the number of these immigrants was three times larger than that of the two preceding decades combined.… According to the editor of the Bisbee Daily Review, thousands of Mexicans were brought into Arizona during 1901 to work on the railroads and in the mines. The inflow was so great at this time that he questioned the accuracy of the 1900 census in setting Arizona’s total population at 122,212. ‘‘There is little doubt, despite these official figures,’’ he said, ‘‘that the territory has a bona fide population of about 140,000.’’ No immigration statistics were kept at this time, but Clark estimated that between 60,000 and 100,000 Mexicans crossed the border annually.… The success of the recruiters was largely due to economic conditions in Mexico, which encouraged a constant northward movement among the laboring class to supply demands in the less developed areas and to escape peonage in the agricultural states above the Valley of Mexico. The northward construction of the Mexican

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Central Railway gave a tremendous impetus to this grass-roots migration. The people of the agricultural states tended to be more sedentary than those of the northern frontier. They disliked taking work, even on a temporary basis, if it led them into areas beyond daily traveling distance from their homes. Many worked on the haciendas, which held laborers in one locality through indenture, even though better wages might have been available elsewhere. As the railroad built northward, however, many Mexican villagers found both the means and the incentive to leave their native regions. Once hired to lay track, the peon found the promise of a daily wage a powerful inducement to remain with the construction company as a section laborer. With this decision, the regional bond was broken.… Wages now became the principal means of support for the railroad workers, thus further loosening their psychological and economic ties to the land, as well as providing greater mobility. Family loyalties, always strong among Mexican laborers, remained a problem, but the companies circumvented it by providing box cars in which the workers’ families could live and travel. The arrangement offered them the promise of better living conditions in the future. Arizona originally received the majority of its Mexican immigrants from Sonora and Chihuahua, but the turn of the century witnessed a tremendous inflow from the villages adjacent to the Mexican railways, including natives of states as far south as Guanajuato, Aguas Calientes, and Michoacan. The results were visible in the mining districts. Clark writes that the Mexican worker of the early 1900s supplemented all other kinds of laborers in the mines of New Mexico and Arizona. In exploratory work, ‘‘he will be found … using the drill and powder and in some new mine opened in a new district, to the exclusion of white labor, yet later, if the property proves valuable, he may be supplanted wholly by skilled American miners.’’ One mine owner said that in isolated regions he preferred Mexicans because they could be replaced easily if they became dissatisfied. With an adequate supply of Mexican workers, Arizona’s social and economic progress might have continued along increasingly tranquil paths through the Territorial period to statehood. On the eve of the twentieth century, however, a collision occurred between the mounting tide of alien laborers from Mexico and the members of the miners’ union, which was expanding southward from the Rocky Mountain zone into the mining districts of Arizona. Already smarting under the defeats they suffered through the importation of Mexican strike breakers during the Colorado coal strikes of 1903 04, union organizers entering Arizona directed their principal efforts against the employers of alien Mexicans. They found their strongest support in the intermountain zone, where Anglo-American miners viewed the northward surge of Mexican immigration as a threat which would soon destroy the two-wage system.… While the union organizers and Anglo-American workers often made an effort not to discriminate against citizens of Latin extraction, the growing sentiment against alien Mexicans tended to generalize, lumping all people of this heritage in the cheap labor class then being exploited to the detriment of other workers. Thus through no fault of their own, Mexican-Americans became the object of a renewed anti-Mexicanism typical of the early years of the present century. While resident Mexicans felt sympathetic to the immigrant national, they did not want to be identified with him in public opinion. Furthermore, they resented being placed in direct competition with the alien Mexican laborer, feeling that he could afford to work for

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a cheaper wage since he had no family with him. They could not escape, however, from sharing his problems and his fate. For one thing, the steady increase in corporate control of Arizona’s mines prompted an impersonal relationship between the workers and their employers. These latter had little interest in balancing social factors against economic realities in setting wages. Railroad and mining work usually required no particular skill, and employers stood fast on their prerogative of moving ahead by the cheapest possible means. Consequently unskilled Mexican-Americans had no alternative but to work for the prevailing rate paid to imported labor. Although the Mexican labor scale had increased from an average of one dollar and a half in 1885 to about two dollars in 1895, it leveled off and remained constant through the first decade of the present century as Mexican immigration doubled. Meanwhile, the gap between Mexican and Anglo pay scales was widening. With the increase of union activity in Arizona during the period 1900 1910, Anglo-American wages rose from about three dollars to four for the same type of work. Nevertheless, the past effects of alien competition on the wages of Anglo-American workers, along with the current leveling of the wages of resident Mexicans, serves as a warning to the Anglos and turned their thoughts increasingly to collective action as their only defense against management.… The strike of 1903 was preceded by two events which indicated the growing influence of the union movement in Arizona politics, particularly in regard to the question of hiring alien Mexican laborers. On March 21, 1901, during Gov. Nathan O. Murphy’s last year in office, the legislature passed a bill enabling the governor to create a special body called the Arizona Rangers.… On June 1, the eight-hour law went into effect with the understanding that wages would remain unchanged. On the following day, mine operators in the Clifton-Morenci District cut the work day from ten to eight hours accordingly, but in doing so offered their men only nine hours’ pay, in effect reducing their wage by one-tenth. The men rejected this proposal and commenced to walk out. On the morning of June 3, the smelters and mills were shut down and 3,500 men were idled. There was no violence and everyone seemed to be in a good humor, as well as in agreement with the action being taken. Of the men who started the strike, eighty to ninety percent were Mexican. Though no leadership had been apparent, the editor of the Bisbee Daily Review observed, ‘‘The Mexicans belong to numerous societies and through these they can exert some sort of organization to stand together.’’ As the strike progressed, it became known that the principal men in charge were A. Salcido, president of a Mexican society, Frank Colombo, an Italian, and W. H. Lastenneau, a Rumanian [in reality a Mexican].… On June 9, they watched some 2,000 sullen workers conduct a one-hour parade through the streets of Morenci in defiance of the Rangers and a relentless downpour of rain. Noting that most of the demonstrators were armed with rifles, pistols, and knives, Sheriff Parkes sent word to the governor requesting more help. Meanwhile the rain continued and flooding was impelled by thunderstorms in the adjacent mountains. Suddenly, two torrents of water converged on the junction of Chase Creek and the San Francisco River, forming a crest that ripped thought the length of Clifton, destroyed nearly $100,000 in property and took a death toll of nearly fifty persons, according to later estimates. Federal troops were rushed to the strike-bound district, followed by six companies of the national guard. On June 12, the

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community was declared under martial law and the Mexican consul, Arturo El
ıas, arrived in hope of exerting his influence on the strikers. The strike was over, however. The flood had constituted a formidable distraction since the principal damage occurred along the narrow valley of Chase Creek which was thickly settled by Mexican laborers and their families. Despite its tragic outcome, however, the flood may have averted a collision between the armed strikers and the incoming troops which could have resulted in even more fatalities. As Arizona’s first major strike came to a close, the strikers were disarmed, their houses were searched, and arrests were made. The leaders were tried and ultimately confined in the Territorial prison at Yuma. Though the companies won an easy victory, they had done so behind an array of troops larger than any witnessed in Arizona since the campaigns of Gen. Crook during the closing years of the Apache wars. This fact brought even greater notoriety to the ‘‘Mexican affair’’ at Clifton and may have exerted a sobering effect upon the WFM regarding Mexican workers since it illustrated the extent to which employers might go to prevent the spread of unionism in Arizona. Source: Joseph F. Park, ‘‘The 1903 ‘Mexican Affair’ at Clifton,’’ Journal of Arizona History, vol. 18 (Summer 1977): 119 148.

154. ‘‘Fearing Arizona Mob, Sisters Start East,’’ 1904 In 1904, a Clifton-Morenci, Arizona-area parish priest named Constant Mandin, age 25, read a letter from an orphanage called the New York Foundling Asylum. The letter explained that orphans were looking for homes. Fr. Mandin was French speaking and knew limited Spanish or English. The Mexican families in his parish enthusiastically responded and requested adoptees. The orphans were Irish babies who arrived later that year. Learning that the Mexicans were adopting white babies, the townspeople organized minutemen-like vigilante groups to prevent these mixed-race adoptions and broke into the Mexican homes pointing guns and took their adoptees from them. The mobs threatened the priest, the nuns, and the adoptive parents, spreading a reign of terror. Later, the territorial Supreme Court upheld the abductions and adoption of the children by non-Catholic white vigilantes. The court labeled Mexicans unfit to raise white children and, without any evidence, labeled the Mexican women whores and ruled in favor of the vigilantes. The following article reported on the incident, blaming the nuns and not the vigilantes. The nuns, according to the article, should have known better than to place white children in Mexican homes.

The Sisters at the New York Foundling Asylum, in East Sixty-Eighth Street, are greatly disturbed over the reports from Clifton and Morenci, Arizona, that a batch of children sent there from the asylum to be placed in good homes had been disposed of to wretched and questionable Mexican families for a consideration. The reports also say an agent of the institution has been arrested, that three Sisters accompanying the party were roughly treated, and a riot between the Mexicans and the whites threatened over the affair. Mother Theresa Vincent, the Superior in charge of the asylum, said yesterday that she had been informed of the trouble in a brief telegram from Sister Anna, who

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went out in charge of the party, and who now is returning East with twenty-one of the forty children that were to be placed in the two Arizona towns and vicinity. The Mother Superior said the telegram was lacking in detail, but added that if conditions upon further report were found to be as represented in the press dispatches, legal action immediately would be taken to recover the nineteen foundlings which the Sisters had been compelled to leave in their hasty departure from mob violence. ‘‘If any money figured in the turning over of the children to these families in Arizona,’’ said the Mother Superior, ‘‘I am at a loss to understand it. We never permit even the mention of money in transactions of this kind. The railroad fare and all the expenses of our charges are paid to the place where they are to be delivered, and there was no exception in this case. This matter will be fully investigated and the responsibility fixed. I am positive Sister Anna, the three other Sisters, and our paid agent, George Whitney Swayne, could have had nothing to do with such transactions.’’ According to the dispatches from the West, it was alleged that money had been paid to the Rev. Fr. Mandin, a Spanish priest, before the foundlings were turned over to the respective families where they were to stay. It was this that aroused the white people of the town against the Sisters as well against the Mexicans and led to the arrest of Fr. Mandin and Agent Swayne. ‘‘The children left here in a tourist sleeper on Sunday a week ago,’’ continued Mother Theresa ‘‘There were fifty-seven altogether, varying in age from two to five years. Sister Anna was in charge of the party with three other Sisters, three trained nurses and Agent Swayne to assist her. Seventeen of the children were left with families in Missouri, two or three in Texas, and all the rest were bound for the two Arizona towns and vicinity. We were induced to send our children there by Fr. Mandin. ‘‘We are not looking for aristocratic homes for our foundlings but for homes with just enough means to insure a good education and a certain degree of refinement to the little ones, and such homes we believed those recommended by Fr. Mandin to be. I am quite sure Fr. Mandin is in good standing as a priest, but beyond that we know little about him here. I am quite sure the families he recommended were all right morally, whatever their economical conditions may be. The standard of living there is quite different from what it is here, and Fr. Mandin, having lived there all his life and being accustomed to such conditions, might have believed the homes he recommended all right.’’ Source: New York Times, October 7, 1904, p. 5.

155. Mariano Mart
ınez, ‘‘Arizona Americans,’’ Letter to the Editor of the New York Times, 1904 This is an eloquent letter to the New York Times from Mariano Mart
ınez, a Mexican American in Arizona, in response to editorials written by the paper essentially condoning vigilantism where a mob took the law into its own hands and was then given de facto approval by authorities in Clifton-Morenci, Arizona (see Document 154). Mart
ınez defended the Mexican race, asking who was an American? He questioned the Times’ definition of what an American was; many Mexicans in Arizona had been born there and voted. Was being an American based on color? Mart
ınez was tired of the superior attitude of recent white immigrants whose time in the United States could not match that of many Mexicans who had been in Arizona for generations.

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To the Editor of The New York Times: I have read carefully your editorial about the experience of the Sisters of the New York Foundling Asylum who endeavored to place their charges in Mexican families in Arizona. I believe that you, being a true American, love truth and justice above everything, and therefore I desire to inform you that the Mexican families to whom these children were to be given were carefully selected before the American children arrived, both from a moral and from a financial point of view. The priest did his duty without race prejudice. He read the circular about the distribution and conditions of those orphans, both in English and Spanish. The Mexicans applied and complied with the requirements for the adoption of the American children. The English-speaking population was indifferent. Nearly all of the Mexican families referred to own their own farms, ranches, cattle, &c. and are better able financially to take care of themselves than the ‘‘Americans of Arizona.’’ The heads of these Mexican families and their children were born and raised in Arizona under the American flag. They are able to write and speak both the Spanish and English languages, and they do not butcher it as do your so-called ‘‘Arizona Americans,’’ who are composed of Swedes, Norwegians, Serbians, Canadians, and Dutch, who have been shipped from the old country to work our mines and make out of this portion of the United States a dumping ground. The majority of the ‘‘Arizona Americans’’ are not even entitled to cast a vote because they have not been in this country long enough. Probably the only claim you have to call them ‘‘Americans’’ is that they have blue eyes, red hair, a face full of freckles, and long feet. The ‘‘low-down’’ Mexicans whom you refer to [we didn’t by the way] are nearly all native-born American citizens and voters, as the great register of Graham County will prove. They have absolute respect for law and order. They know that the United States has laws which must be respected, and that it is strong and able to enforce them, without having to resort to mob violence, like your so-called ‘‘Arizona Americans.’’ My parents were born in this Territory. I was born and raised in Tucson, Arizona. I was educated in the public schools, and I always considered myself an American, though of Mexican parents. Since I have read your editorial about the assault on the Sisters by the mobs of Clifton and Morenci, I have been wondering whether I have a right to call myself an American citizen and to vote the Democratic ticket next November or not. The heads of the Mexican families you refer to are in the same position as myself. Mariano Mart
ınez Benson, Arizona, Oct. 22, 1904 Source: New York Times, October 31, 1904, p. 8.

156. ‘‘Big Man Hunt in Texas,’’ 1901 The Texas Rangers continued to unjustly persecute the Mexican population of South Texas into the twentieth century. At the turn of the century, the hunt for an alleged horse rustler, Gregorio Cortez (1875–1916), polarized Mexicans and white Americans. In 1901, a sheriff mistakenly accused Cortez and his

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brother of stealing a horse. When the sheriff shot Cortez’s brother, Gregorio shot the sheriff and a huge manhunt followed. It seemed as if the whole state of Texas was chasing Cortez. During this period, Cortez’s wife and children were incarcerated and his friends were harassed. He was finally tried and convicted after several trials. Cortez was lionized by Mexican balladeers. The following article reports on the hunt for Gregorio Cortez.

AUSTIN, June 17 The killing of Sheriff Robert M. Glover of Gonzales County, Sheriff W. T. Morris of Karnes County, and ‘‘Tony’’ Schnabel, a well-known ranchman, by Mexicans, during the last few days, has aroused the authorities of every county in Southwest Texas, and large posses of determined men, headed by the Sheriffs of Travis, Hays, Bee, Bexar, Falls, Bastrop, Kerr, Kendall, Star, Atascosa, Webb, and several other counties are hunting for the guilty men. Mayor Emmett White of Austin is in the field with a large body of men. Gov. Sayers to-day directed a detachment of the State Rangers to join in the pursuit, and altogether there are probably 500 men searching for the Mexican fugitives. This big man hunt has excited the Mexican population of Southwest Texas, and hundreds are leaving their homes on the farms and ranches and flocking into the towns for protection. As fast as they arrive, they are disarmed by the police and placed under guard. Every Mexican home in town and country is being searched for some clue that will lead to the capture of the men who committed the recent murders. The leaders of this band is known to be Gregorio Cortez, and it is said that he has with him a dozen or more Mexicans who will fight to the last should there be an effort made to capture them. Cortez’s home is a short distance south of Austin, and that locality is being watched by Mayor White and his posse. They believe that Cortez will make his way to his home, and his presence there is expected any time. Gov. Sayers has taken every precaution to protect the Mexicans from mob violence when they are captured. Source: New York Times, June 18, 1901, p. 1.

157. Anonymous, ‘‘El Corrido de Gregorio Cortez,’’ ca. 1901 Gregorio Cortez (1875–1916) became a folk hero among Mexican Americans in the early 1900s after shooting a Sheriff and he was chased by the Texas Rangers (see Document 156). On June 12, 1901, he was approached by Karnes County Sheriff W. T. ‘‘Brack’’ Morris. After a misunderstanding in which Morris shot Cortez’s brother, lawmen including the Texas Rangers chased him for nearly two weeks. During this period, he was immortalized and portrayed as a Mexican who stood up to the gringos. The following is a corrido, a folk song used to tell a story. Corridos (folk ballad) are very common among northern Mexicans. The earliest border corrido can be traced to Juan Cortina (1824–1894) who shot a white marshal in 1859 for mistreating one of his mother’s young servants. Today corridos frequently protest injustice and racism in the United States. The following tells of a Mexican, outnumbered—as is usually the case in a corrido, defending his rights with a pistol in hand against the Texas Rangers who were unjustly chasing him.

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In the county of El Carmen A great misfortune befell; The major sheriff is dead; Who killed him no one can tell. At two in the afternoon, In half an hour or less, They knew that the man who killed him Had been Gregorio Cortez. They let loose the bloodhound dogs; They followed him from afar. But trying to catch Cortez Was like following a star. All the rangers of the county Were flying, they rode so hard; What they wanted was to get The thousand-dollar reward. And in the county of Kiansis They cornered him after all; Though they were more than three hundred He leaped out of their corral. Then the Major Sheriff said, As if he was going to cry, ‘‘Cortez, hand over your weapons; We want to take you alive.’’ Then said Gregorio Cortez, And his voice was like a bell, ‘‘You will never get my weapons Till you put me in a cell.’’ Then said Gregorio Cortez With his pistol in his hand, ‘‘Ah, so many mounted Rangers Just to take one Mexican!’’ Source: From With His Pistol in His Hand: A Border Ballad and its Hero by Am
erico Paredes, C 1958, renewed 1986. By permission of the University of Texas Press, p. 3. Copyright


158. Excerpts from Victor S. Clark, ‘‘Mexican Labor in the United States,’’ 1908 The following excerpts are from a report by economist Victor S. Clark, an immigration and labor investigator for the U.S. Immigration Department of the Department of Commerce and Labor during this period. His 1908 study was both important but highly biased against Mexican immigrants, racializing the study of immigration. It set the tone for many subsequent studies. These excerpts follow Mexican immigrants through El Paso and trace the industries for which they worked.

Most immigrants passing through El Paso reported that they had paid their own fare directly from some town named in one of the interior States, with money

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obtained by a ‘‘sacrifice,’’ such as the sale of a yoke of steers, a pair of burros, a crop of corn, or by loans from a ‘‘patron’’ or a relative. Several boys, who reported their ages as between 17 and 20 years, said they had been given money by their father to come to the United States to work, and that their father had obtained the money from his ‘‘patron’’ or by the sale of some small property. Many of these statements are doubtless true in substance, while others are manufactured for the occasion. Recruited laborers who are given transportation are probably supplied with personal information to be used at the frontier. Interest was aroused by the number of immigrants who reported that they had paid their railway fare with money loaned them by a ‘‘patron.’’ The name of the ‘‘patron’’ was often given, and he was sometimes a political officer in one case a judge and sometimes a merchant, possibly also a landowner. Strictly the word ‘‘patron’’ might be expected to mean an employer, and especially the employer to whom the immigrant had rendered traditional service as a peon. But this class of employers is so unanimously hostile to the emigration of labor that it is extremely unlikely that anyone of them would assist this movement, even though he received a high rate of interest on his money. The immigrants claimed to be paying from 5 to 12 percent for loans running probably six months. In the districts of Mexico from which this labor comes, everyone from whom information was sought, without exception, scouted the idea that a bona fide employer could be induced by any means within reach of his workmen to assist them to emigrate, even for temporary employment abroad.… Tickets from points in Jalisco and in Guanajuato to El Paso cost the emigrants from $20 to $25 in Mexican currency, or one-half that amount in American money. Laborers appear usually to provide themselves with from $30 to $50 (Mexican) for a trip to the United States. A good riding horse or a few pigs sell for the former sum, so it is not beyond the reach of most industrious peasants. Nearly all the immigrants who had left families behind them explained that they had given their wives a few dollars for subsistence during their absence. Mexicans residing on the American side of the boundary line said that even where there is easy railway communication, a laborer and his family will often travel 300 miles on foot to reach the border. This was near El Paso. During a good cotton season in Texas, laborers often come on foot and go back in carriages which they have purchased with their season’s earnings. Though the Mexican of the Indian type is not ambitious, when he once gets a definite object in view he appears to be very persistent in following it up. A youngish boy passing through the El Paso station stated, and as proof showed his calloused hands, that he had worked in a quarry in Mexico for two years. His wages had been $6 Mexican ($3 United States currency) a month and rations, and it had taken him the full two years to save money enough to get to the frontier. He wanted to come to the United States, because during one week he could earn more there than during a month in Mexico.… With the possible exception of agriculture at certain seasons, more Mexicans are employed in the United States as railway laborers than at any other occupation. It is from this occupation that they drift into other lines of work. Mexicans are distributed as railway laborers over practically all of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. They are the main labor employed on the railroads of California as far north as Fresno, in southern Nevada, and in Colorado, and on some Colorado lines into Wyoming; also, they are working in increasing numbers along the

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Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railway, and the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway through Kansas, Missouri, and even into Chicago and to central Iowa. In Mexico, native labor now does practically everything on a railroad except operate fast trains, superintend construction and administration, and do more responsible shopwork. In the United States, this labor is confined to track maintenance usually under American or European foremen and construction, and employment as extra and yard gangs. There are many Mexican section bosses scattered throughout the Southwest, and their number is likely to increase. The reasons for the growing use of Mexican labor in these occupations are that it is cheap and docile; but these qualities alone would not give it favor were it not also fairly efficient. Employers and foremen do not differentiate the various motives that induce them to prefer a certain kind of labor, but they are usually perfectly clear as to the order of choice among different nationalities. A trackmaster who had worked various kinds of labor in southern Kansas said: ‘‘Mexicans are better than Greeks or Italians, and next to the American ‘hobo.’ They must be well fed, and want fresh beef and mutton, but don’t eat so much pork. They don’t have feuds and disorders like the Italians, who are always fighting unless the whole gang is from the same town in Italy. We send a man every spring to the Rio Grande to get our men for the summer. We have to keep our engagements with them, or we can’t get any men the next year. Though they are used to low pay at home, they want as much as anybody when they get to this country.’’ A Texas railway official said: ‘‘We have worked Mexicans out of EI Paso for several years, and since 1903 have substituted them for Italians who were disorderly and for Negroes in northern Texas, nearly to Texarkana. They suit us better than any other immigrant labor we can get. They are better than Negroes at ballasting, laying ties, and ordinary track work; but the Negroes can beat them laying rails, and will work better long hours or at rush jobs, as in case of washouts or getting a track around.’’ … As a body, the railway laborers who have come from Mexico seem to be fairly well treated. The editor of a Spanish daily in the City of Mexico said that he had received letters from railroad hands in Texas saying they were ill treated, but that the contents of the letters, which had been lost or destroyed, did not impress him seriously. There were some complaints in Colorado and in New Mexico of petty grafting by minor railway officials. The laborers say that pay clerks take part of the pay due them from their envelopes.… The Mexican immigrant has been, in most cases, an agricultural laborer in his own country, and, though his experience at home has given him little familiarity with American farming methods, it is to this occupation in the United States that he turns most readily when the opportunity offers. Cotton and corn, the staple crops of the States where Mexicans are most numerous in this country, are both cultivated extensively in Mexico. Stock-raising is a great industry on both sides of the boundary line. In this industry, the Mexicans, many of whom were born north of the border, have excelled for a long period. They are now found as shepherds, cowboys, and ‘‘broncho busters’’ as far north as Wyoming. But the main importance of Mexican labor in agriculture is during the harvest season in the cotton fields. Cotton picking suits the Mexican for several reasons: It requires nimble fingers rather than physical strength, in which he can not compete with the white man or the Negro; it employs his whole family; he can follow it from place to place, living out of doors, which seems to suit the half-subdued nomadic instinct of a part of the Mexican race; it is a

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seasonal occupation, fitting in conveniently with the demands of labor and leisure in his own country, and it is well paid, and paid by the piece. In Texas and in Oklahoma, cotton is raised by prairie farming methods, with more extensive use of machinery than farther east, where soil and climate, and the cotton itself, are different. In these two States a white farmer can raise more cotton than several families can pick in proper season, in the same way that the Kansas farmers can raise more wheat in normal years than the resident labor of the State can harvest. So the man with 40 or 80 acres of cotton opening secures two or three families of Mexicans that migrate from the southward at this season, camp in an outhouse or in their canvas-topped carts, and pick the fields clean, then move on, northward to where the crop is just maturing. Pickers are paid from 50 cents to $1 a hundred pounds in the seed. Two or three hundred pounds is a fair day’s work, though under favorable conditions, 400 pounds are sometimes gathered. Children often pick as much as adults, so that a man with a family can earn $5 or more a day during the height of the season. In Texas, Mexicans are employed throughout the year on onion and vegetable farms and as tenants or hired cultivators on cotton and rice plantations. Their home experience makes them very good.… In the copper and silver mines of New Mexico and of Arizona, American and Cornish miners are employed, with considerable numbers of Italians and Slavs, who are both miners and laborers. The latter two nationalities predominate in the coal mines. American Negroes are sometimes employed as hostlers and mule men, but are rarely miners. In the larger camps, and in small camps connected with important properties, union labor is used. The Mexican supplements all these other kinds of labor. He will be found mining copper and silver that is, using drill and powder in some new mine opened in a new district, to the entire exclusion of white labor, yet later, if the property proves valuable, he may be supplanted wholly by skilled American miners. In a district where white labor is chiefly used, a few Mexicans will sometimes be found in smaller and less profitable workings. In most border districts, large gangs of Mexican surface men, wood choppers, and often muckers are encountered. There are large mining centers, as at Fierro, Silver City, and San Antonio, N. Mex., where coal and iron as well as other metals are mined that use Mexican labor mainly, stripping and in shafts and drifts. This mingling of Mexican and white labor, without either supplanting the other entirely, comes from an equilibrium of competitive conditions, due to the general scarcity of labor, the extensive development now occurring, and the easy adjustment of the wage of the Mexican to his true worth. The rates paid white miners are standardized by custom and by union regulations and range from $3 to $5 a day. Mexicans will accept a rate much lower than this not exceeding $2 a day in most places but they do not do as much work as a white man. Mining men were undecided which got out the ore for the least money. In one mine, where a complete change from Mexican to American miners had been made within twelve months, one of the owners attributed the change to the fact that the new manager was used to working with white men, adding that there was no special economy in changing, and at the same time no appreciable loss. He suggested, however, that a manager working for absentee owners might make a little more out of the Mexicans for himself, especially if he had an interest in the company store. Another mine owner, who was employing Mexicans alone, said that he was influenced by fear of

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labor difficulties, that his mine was isolated and a white union might tie it up entirely; but that if some of the Mexicans left him or became dissatisfied he could easily replace them.… The lumber industry is not important in the section of the United States where Mexican labor is common. At Albuquerque, N. Mex., and at Flagstaff and a few other places in northern Arizona, there are sawmills of some size, supplied with timber from mountain camps at a considerable distance. The American Lumber Company, in Albuquerque, has about 1,000 employees, of whom something over one-half are Spanish-speaking, though mostly American born. A few of the latter are employed in the camps, but most of them are laborers and lumber pilers at the mills, where they earn from $1.25 to $2 a day. Immigrant Mexicans were to be distinguished from natives, according to the superintendent, only by being slightly slower and duller. They were not considered ideal laborers, but improved and were willing to learn. Young New Mexicans were employed as bench Workers, and in operating machines in the box factory, where they earned up to $2.75 a day. They were reported to work regularly and to give satisfaction. At Flagstaff, where some 500 men are employed in mill and camp, a large majority of the laborers are New Mexicans, and give satisfaction. About 20 immigrant Mexicans were employed as tie cutters, earning $2 a day. They are also satisfactory. Mexicans were employed as section men on the logging road. Some Mexican laborers are located in city colonies, having drifted away from the railroads to engage in various occupations requiring little skill. During the clearing-up operations at San Francisco they worked by the side of Italians and Japanese, sometimes in groups, often scattered among workmen of other nationalities, earning the regulation $2 a day. Contractors in that city spoke of them as less efficient than Italians, but seemed to place them vaguely in the same class. As the demand for unskilled labor lessens, they will probably be replaced entirely by Europeans. In Los Angeles and vicinity, Mexicans of California descent and immigrants are employed as builders’ helpers and in minor occupations connected with construction. Parties of these laborers were unpacking and passing tile in a large steel office building. Employers say these workers are mainly from Mexico. They carry hods and drive dirt carts. Through the southern counties of Arizona, in the Gadsden Purchase, there has always been a larger Mexican population than in any other parts of the Territory, and here in such towns as Phoenix and Tucson the less skilled building trades are largely controlled by workers of this nationality. As at Laredo and at other Mexican-American frontier towns, the better class of these workers enter trade unions, or form unions separate from their English-speaking colleagues. In these occupations, men earn from $1.50 to $2 a day. At Monterey, Mexico, similar laborers, employed on a large ice plant, were paid but 75 cents (silver) a day. An American manager in Monterey said Mexicans worked fairly well under foremen of their own nationality, but that as soon as they had finished what they were told to do they folded their arms and stood still until they received further instructions. In southern California and in Texas, Mexicans do most of the excavating and road building, and are otherwise employed on public works. In the former State, a contractor said Mexicans could drive a two-mule scraper, but that he would not trust them with a four-mule scraper. They were paid $2.25 a day. White laborers were preferred, because they received the same wages, except that the four-mule scraper drivers were paid $2.50 a day. Asphalt and cement workers, except skilled

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hands, are paid $1.25 a day in Los Angeles. Mexicans accept lower wages in the city, because they can be with their families. The pay rolls of one contracting firm, engaged largely in street grading and in other public works, showed that Mexican laborers were paid from 22 to 30 cents an hour in the vicinity of the city. In San Antonio, Tex., street laborers are paid $1.25 and $1.50 a day. They are mostly Mexican immigrants or of Mexican descent. A number of Mexicans are employed by the Government upon its irrigation projects in the southwest. They were said to be receiving the same pay as other laborers that is, from $2 to $2.50 for an eight-hour day but it was evident from talk with the foremen that where uniform wages are paid, as in this instance, other laborers are much preferred. In the city colonies of Mexican immigrants, especially in families where children have attended public school, evidences begin to appear of a differentiation of employments, and a rise of the more intelligent to a better class of positions. In Los Angeles, immigrant Mexicans are working in slaughterhouses and in meat shops. One boy is foreman of a bed spring factory, receiving $18 a week. A number of girls work in canneries and at packing crackers. One girl is clerk in a 10-cent store that caters to Mexican trade. A few women are said to be employed in clothing factories, though none were actually found in this occupation. At Austin, Tex., a number of Mexican girls work in a candy factory, where they are said to be more regular and to have better morals than white help. But Mexican women and children do not usually work in factories in the United States. This is partly because husbands and fathers oppose it, having a peasant prejudice to their women leaving home, and it is partly because these women lack the foundations of industrial training. For the same reason, Mexicans do not become domestic servants. Women of the better laboring class will not leave home, and the immigrant women have so little conception of domestic arrangements in the United States that the task of training them would be too heavy for American housewives. The fairly well-trained servants of Mexico do not emigrate. Even in that country, the Chinese are often the only competent and trustworthy servants obtainable by American residents. CHARACTER, AND COMPARISON WITH OTHER NATIONALITIES The Mexican laborer is unambitious, listless, physically weak, irregular, and indolent. On the other hand, he is docile, patient, usually orderly in camp, fairly intelligent under competent supervision, obedient, and cheap. If he were active and ambitious, he would be less tractable and would cost more. His strongest point is his willingness to work for a low wage. Though Mexicans lack ambition, they are alert in certain ways. In the Colorado [sugar] beet country, they are said to be the first to reach a section where higher wages are paid. ‘‘Quick to catch on,’’ was the expression used in characterizing them. A California contractor, who had very broad experience with laborers of this nationality, said: ‘‘They have more intelligence than you think at first. They learn quickly, so that they can do anything in asphalt work.’’ Other employers, both in Mexico and in the United States, noted similar qualities in their laborers; the usual opinion, however, is that they are dull. Though careless in some ways about money, the Mexicans are very tenacious of their rights. Many disputes arise between them and the farmers employing them, on

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contract in the beet fields. Their suspicions of the fairness of their employer seem easily aroused, and they will quit a job at once if they think they are being cheated. One employer said the Mexicans were always trying ‘‘to do’’ their boss, but this opinion of them is not common. Many of them drink to excess, and lose time after a spree; but they never attack a man placed over them, and they settle their rows among themselves. Ordinarily their credit is poor, and commissary managers complain of losing much money through Mexican patrons. One storekeeper, in a Colorado mining camp, tried the experiment of extending to some of the old settled and more reliable Mexicans credit to the amount of $25 on thirty days’ time; but the men slowly fell behind in their accounts and would not pay up, and the experiment was abandoned after six months. This manager said he would trust ten Italians rather than one Mexican. On the other hand, when the payment of a debt depends upon a sentimental obligation, or something more than everyday commercial honor, it is generally paid. The assistant general manager of one of the Texas railroads said that he had often loaned a dollar or two to Mexican workmen, who chanced to be stranded in the city, and who had at one time been employed by the road, and that they had never, in a single instance, failed to repay him. In one case, a sick man, with a family, on his way back to Mexico borrowed $2, which was given as an act of charity without expectation of its being returned. But a few weeks or months later, when the man was well again and had returned to work, he stepped into an office of the same railroad several hundred miles off, and handed the money to the agent to be forwarded to the lender. Money lenders in Mexico seem to loan money without much security, to intending emigrants though the actual conditions under which these loans are made could not be discovered. But probably in such cases there is some means of exacting payment in case the emigrant ever returns to his home and family. Mexicans who have families are said generally to be faithful to their marriage relations. Yet this common testimony of employers and foremen and those dealing most with these laborers was directly contradicted by other men in a position to be equally well informed. The devotion of the Mexican laborer to his family while it is with him, and his desire to return to it in Mexico, are everywhere recognized by Americans. The bishop of an American Catholic diocese, himself a Spaniard, said that as a rule the immigrants sent money to their families left in Mexico and ultimately either returned to them or brought them to the United States; but that cases occurred where a man deserted his family in Mexico and took up with some woman or his class in the United States. Wherever immigrant Mexican laborers are employed in any numbers in the Southwest, postmasters reported that they sent money back to Mexico. Usually the postal orders were for small sums, but often they made a respectable total in the aggregate. From Rocky Ford, Colo., some $300 a month is thus sent. By reason of the fact that the laborers there work but for a season, most of them doubtless hoard their earnings (such as they do not spend currently) and carry them back with them on their return. Neal Gallup, N. Mex., mine and railroad laborers send money home through the post-office, and from northern Arizona, as an educated Mexican who acted as correspondent for illiterate laborers expressed it, ‘‘very much of what they don’t spend’’ is thus sent home. The postmistress at Flagstaff, Ariz., said that making out postal orders for Mexicans formed a considerable part of the work of the office. Some officials, though remarking that the total sum was small, noted it as a new item or a growing item in their post-office transactions.…

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HOME LIFE AND STANDARD OF LIVING The wants of the Mexican peon are hardly more complex than those of the original Indian from whom he is descended. An adobe hut with an earth floor, or even a shelter of branches against the wind, a few pieces of pottery, a serape or a sheepskin to lie on at night and to keep out the keener blasts by day, a modicum of cotton clothing, sandals, and a cheap straw sombrero are a sufficient domestic equipment. Corn, beans, and chilis are the staples of his coarse and simple diet. Equally cheap pulque or its more potent and dangerous distillation, mescal, supplies the stimulant demanded by the crudeness of his food, and card playing affords the diversion needed to break the monotony of his life. In New Mexico, one can observe a more advanced stage in the transformation from this simple and unprogressive condition than is to be seen as yet in Mexico itself. For the same influences are at work upon the Pueblo-Aztec races in both republics, though they have come a little earlier in the north. Thirty years ago, the New Mexican villager had no use for money. There was not even an iron hinge in his hut. His pottery was fashioned by his own hands, as was the Crude plow with, ‘‘which he scratched a bit of valley land. Clothing was often woven by the family from the wool of his own flocks.… Then came the railroad, along which circulated dollars, as well as other commodities new to the country. The peasant felt the pressure of novel needs about the time he found a market for his labor. Gradually, his standard of living rose. Now, except in remote localities, the adobe hut, to which the American-born Mexican wisely clings, usually contains an iron bed, frequently a good cooking range, and not unusually other furniture. His windows are glazed, cheap prints adorn the walls, and a white spread sets forth the importance of the bed. These adobe dwellings are usually neat and clean, with an orderliness not always to be found in the homes of immigrant laborers from Europe. The New Mexican no longer is village shy, averse to leaving the neighborhood where he was born and where he can always find shelter and food among his friends. He makes seasonal migrations to distant parts of the west in search of work, often leaving his family behind him to attend to the crop in his absence. A Las Vegas (N. Mex.) merchant received answers to an advertisement in a local Spanish paper from Texas, Arizona, California, Wyoming, and Colorado, so widely had the resident Mexicans scattered to find employment upon the ranches and the railroads. One little village had 70 men absent, mostly in Utah, as sheep herders. As a rule, the hamlets in the irrigated bottoms do not afford work for wages, so this migration of the Spanish-speaking people within the United States is a migration for money not the nomadic restlessness of an old Indian stock, but a definite seeking after better economic conditions after the means to supply new needs. Although the women stay at home and do not themselves become earners, they appear to be the spenders, or the ones for whom money is first and chiefly spent. A Mexican laborer will dress his wife and children expensively while he wears rags himself. Social emulation or some kindred sentiment seems to account for the slow but steady improvement in the New Mexican home. In fact, showy furniture frequently stands as a symbol of means rather than of use. A well draped bed will occupy a prominent place in an apartment where the family sleeps on the floor. And these new standards of style and ostensible comfort are set by the women rather than by the men.

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The immigrant from Old Mexico is passing along the same road as his brother north of the line, only he is a little behind. He dons American working clothes when he crosses the border; and if he goes into a boarding camp becomes accustomed to a dietary scale far above that to which he was accustomed at home. It is doubtful if the fresh-meat eating laborer ever returns willingly to a vegetable diet. Some Mexicans in Texas seem to appreciate the United States chiefly as a place where there is more to eat than in Mexico. In migrating to the United States, the Mexican loosens the home tie more than does the New Mexican in his migrations; for he goes to a greater distance and to a different country. Therefore he breaks away more completely from the system of communal dependence common to the Spanish-speaking peasantry of both countries, where the lazy man and the man out of work live off their relatives and neighbors, so that the sense of individual economic responsibility is never developed.… Source: Department of Commerce and Labor, Bureau of Labor Bulletin, No. 78. Washington, D.C., 1908. pp. 467, 472 473, 477, 480, 482, 485 486, 494 497, 501, 503.

159. Excerpts from John Kenneth Turner, Barbarous Mexico, 1910 John Kenneth Turner (1879–1948), a socialist and journalist, was born in Oregon and migrated to Los Angeles. He and his wife, Ethel, were early supporters of Mexican anarchist and revolutionary Ricardo Flores Mag
on (1873– 1922) and the Partido Liberal Mexicano (Mexican Liberal Party), which they continued to support throughout the 1910s. The following excerpts are from Turner’s book about his travels through Mexico on the eve of the Mexican Revolution in 1909.

THE D
IAZ SYSTEM The slavery and peonage of Mexico, the poverty and illiteracy, the general prostration of the people, are due, in my humble judgment, to the financial and political organization that at present rules that country in a word, to what I shall call the ‘‘system’’ of Gen. Porfirio Diaz. That these conditions can be traced in a measure to the history of Mexico during past generations, is true. I do not wish to be unfair to Gen. Diaz in the least degree. The Spanish Dons made slaves and peons of the Mexican people. Yet never did they grind the people as they are ground today. In Spanish times the peon at least had his own little patch of ground, his own humble shelter; today he has nothing. Moreover, the Declaration of Independence, proclaimed just one hundred years ago, in 1810, proclaimed also the abolition of chattel slavery. Slavery was abolished, though not entirely. Succeeding Mexican governments of class and of church and of the individual held the people in bondage little less severe. But finally came a democratic movement which broke the back of the church, which overthrew the rule of caste, which adopted a form of government as modern as our own, which freed the slave in fact as well as in name, which gave the lands of the people back to the people, which wiped the slate clean of the blood of the past.… It was under Porfirio Diaz that slavery and peonage were reestablished in Mexico, and on a more merciless basis than they had existed even under the Spanish Dons.

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Therefore, I can see no injustice in charging at least a preponderance of the blame for these conditions upon the system of Diaz. I say the ‘‘system of Diaz’’ rather than Diaz personally because, though he is the keystone of the arch, though he is the government of Mexico more completely than is any other individual the government of any large country on the planet, yet no one man can stand alone in his iniquity. Diaz is the central prop of the slavery, but there are other props without which the system could not continue upright for a single day. For example, there is the collection of commercial interests which profit by the Diaz system of slavery and autocracy, and which puts no insignificant part of its tremendous powers to holding the central prop upright in exchange for the special privileges that it receives. Not the least among these commercial interests are American, which, I blush to say, are quite as aggressive defenders of the Diaz citadel as any. Indeed … these American interests undoubtedly form the determining force of the continuation of Mexican slavery. Thus does Mexican slavery come home to us in the full sense of the term.… In order that the reader may understand the Diaz system and its responsibility in the degradation of the Mexican people, it will be well to go back and trace briefly the beginnings of that system. Mexico is spoken of throughout the world as a Republic. That is because it was once a Republic and still pretends to be one. Mexico has a constitution which has never been repealed, a constitution said to be modeled after our own, and one which is, indeed, like ours in the main. Like ours, it provides for a national congress, state legislatures, and municipal aldermen to make the laws, federal, state, and local judges to interpret them, and a president, governors, and local executives to administer them. Like ours, it provides for manhood suffrage, freedom of the press and of speech, equality before the law, and the other guarantees of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness which we ourselves enjoy, in a degree, as a matter of course. Such was Mexico forty years ago. Forty years ago, Mexico was at peace with the world. She had just overthrown, after a heroic war, the foreign prince, Maximilian, who had been seated as emperor by the armies of Napoleon Third of France. Her president, Benito Juarez, is today recognized in Mexico and out of Mexico as one of the most able, as well as unselfish, patriots of Mexican history. Never since Cortez fired his ships there on the gulf coast had Mexico enjoyed such prospects of political freedom, industrial prosperity, and general advancement. But in spite of these facts, and the additional fact that he was deeply indebted to Juarez, all his military promotions having been received at the hands of the latter, Gen. Porfirio Diaz stirred up a series of rebellions for the purpose of securing for himself the supreme power of the land. Diaz not only led one armed rebellion against a peaceable, constitutional, and popularly approved government, but he led three of them. For nine years, he plotted as a common rebel. The support that he received came chiefly from bandits, criminals, and professional soldiers who were disgruntled at the antimilitarist policy which Juarez had inaugurated and which, if he could have carried it out a little farther, would have been effective in preventing military revolutions in the future and from the Catholic church.… In defiance of the will of the majority of the people of Mexico, Gen. Diaz, thirtyfour years ago, came to the head of government. In defiance of the will of the majority of the people he has remained there ever since except for four years, from 1880 to 1884, when he turned the palace over to an intimate friend, Manuel Gonzalez,

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on the distinct understanding that at the end of the four years Gonzalez would turn it back to him again. Since no man can rule an unwilling people without taking away the liberties of that people, it can be very easily understood what sort of regime Gen. Diaz found it necessary to establish in order to make his power secure. By the use of the army and the police powers generally, he controlled elections, the press, and public speech and made of popular government a farce. By distributing the public offices among his generals and granting them free rein to plunder at will, he assured himself of the continued use of the army. By making political combinations with men high in the esteem of the Catholic Church and permitting it to be whispered about that the church was to regain some of its former powers, he gained the silent support of the priests and the Pope. By promising full payment of all foreign debts and launching at once upon a policy of distributing favors among citizens of other countries, he made his peace with the world at large.… Take, for example, Diaz’s method of rewarding his military chiefs, the men who helped him overthrow the government of Lerdo. As quickly as possible after assuming the power, he installed his generals as governors of the various states and organized them and other influential figures in the nation into a national plunderbund. Thus he assured himself of the continued loyalty of the generals, on the one hand, and put them where he could most effectively use them for keeping down the people, on the other. One variety of rich plum which he handed out in those early days to his governors came in the form of charters giving his governors the right, as individuals, to organize companies and build railroads, each charter carrying with it a huge sum as a railroad subsidy. The national government paid for the road and then the governor and his most influential friends owned it. Usually the railroads were ridiculous affairs, were of narrow-gauge and of the very cheapest materials, but the subsidy was very large, sufficient to build the road and probably equip it besides. During his first term of four years in office Diaz passed sixty-one railroad subsidy acts containing appropriations aggregating $40,000,000, and all but two or three of these acts were in favor of governors of states. In a number of cases not a mile of railroad was actually built, but the subsidies are supposed to have been paid, anyhow. In nearly every case, the subsidy was the same, $12,880 per mile in Mexican silver, and in those days Mexican silver was nearly on a par with gold. This huge sum was taken out of the national treasury and was supposedly paid to the governors, although Mexican politicians of the old times have assured me that it was divided, a part going out as actual subsidies and a part going directly into the hands of Diaz to be used in building up his machine in other quarters. Certainly something more than mere loyalty, however invaluable it was, was required of the governors in exchange for such rich financial plums. It is a wellauthenticated fact that governors were required to pay a fixed sum annually for the privilege of exploiting to the limit the graft possibilities of their offices. For a long time, Manuel Romero Rubio, father-in-law of Diaz, was the collector of these perquisites, the offices bringing in anywhere from $10,000 to $50,000 per year. The largest single perquisite whereby Diaz enriched himself, the members of his immediate family, his friends, his governors, his financial ring and his foreign favorites, was found for a long time in the confiscation of the lands of the common people a confiscation, in fact, which is going on to this day. Note that this land

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robbery was the first direct step in the path of the Mexican people back to their bondage as slaves and peons. The lands of the Yaquis of Sonora were taken from them and given to political favorites of the ruler. The lands of the Mayas of Yucatan, now enslaved by the henequen planters, were taken from them in almost the same manner. The final act in this confiscation was accomplished in the year 1904, when the national government set aside the last of their lands into a territory called Quintana Roo. This territory contains 43,000 square kilometers or 27,000 square miles. It is larger than the present state of Yucatan by 8,000 square kilometers, and moreover is the most promising land of the entire peninsula. Separated from the island of Cuba by a narrow strait, its soil and climate are strikingly similar to those of Cuba and experts have declared that there is no reason why Quintana Roo should not one day become as great a tobacco-growing country as Cuba. Farther than that, its hillsides are thickly covered with the most valuable cabinet and dyewoods in the world. It is this magnificent country which, as the last chapter in the life of the Mayas as a nation, the Diaz government took and handed over to eight Mexican politicians. In like manner have the Mayos of Sonora, the Papagos, the Tomosachics in fact, practically all the native peoples of Mexico been reduced to peonage, if not to slavery. Small holders of every tribe and nation have gradually been expropriated until today their number is almost down to zero. Their lands are in the hands of the governmental machine, or persons to whom the members of the machine have sold for profit or in the hands of foreigners. This is why the typical Mexican farm is the million-acre farm, why it has been so easy for such Americans as William Randolph Hearst, Harrison Gray Otis, E. H. Harriman, the Rockefellers, the Guggenheims, and numerous others each to have obtained possession of millions of Mexican acres. This is why Secretary of Fomento Molina holds more than 15,000,000 acres of the soil of Mexico, why ex-Gov. Terrazas, of Chihuahua, owns 15,000,000 acres of the soil of that state, why Finance Minister Limantour, Mrs. Porfirio Diaz, Vice-President Corral, Gov. Pimentel, of Chiapas, Gov. Landa y Escandon of the Federal District, Gov. Pablo Escandon of Morelos, Gov. Ahumada of Jalisco, Gov. Cosio of Queretaro, Gov. Mercado of Michoacan, Gov. Ca~ nedo of Sinaloa, Gov. Cahuantzi of Tlaxcala, and many other members of the Diaz machine are not only millionaires, but they are millionaires in Mexican real estate. Chief among the methods used in getting the lands away from the people in general was through a land registration law which Diaz fathered. This law permitted any person to go out and claim any lands to which the possessor could not prove a recorded title. Since up to the time the law was enacted it was not the custom to record titles, this meant all the lands of Mexico. When a man possessed a home which his father had possessed before him, and which his grandfather had possessed, which his great-grandfather had possessed, and which had been in the family as far back as history knew; then he considered that he owned that home, all of his neighbors considered that he owned it, and all governments up to that of Diaz recognized his right to that home. Supposing that a strict registration law became necessary in the course of evolution, had this law been enacted for the purpose of protecting the land owners instead of plundering them, the government would, naturally, have sent agents through the country to apprise the people of the new law and to help them register

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their property and keep their homes. But this was not done and the conclusion is inevitable that the law was passed for the purpose of plundering. At all events, the result of the law was a plundering. No sooner had it been passed than the aforesaid members of the governmental machine, headed by the father-in-law of Diaz, and Diaz himself, formed land companies and sent out agents, not to help the people keep their lands, but to select the most desirable lands in the country, register them, and evict the owners. This they did on a most tremendous scale. Thus hundreds of thousands of small farmers lost their property. Thus small farmers are still losing their property.… Another favorite means of confiscating the homes of small owners is found in the juggling of state taxes. State taxes in Mexico are fearfully and wonderfully made. Especially in the less populous districts, owners are taxed inversely as they stand in favor with the personality who represents the government in their particular district. No court, board, or other responsible body sits to review unjust assessments. The jefe politico may charge one farmer five times as much per acre as he charges the farmer across the fence, and yet Farmer No. 1 has no redress unless he is rich and powerful. He must pay, and if he cannot, the farm is a little later listed among the properties of the jefe politico, or one of the members of his family, or among the properties of the governor of the state or one of the members of his family. But if he is rich and powerful, he is often not taxed at all. American promoters in Mexico escape taxation so nearly invariably that the impression has got abroad in this country that land pays no taxes in Mexico. Even Frederick Palmer made a statement to this effect in his recent writings about that country. Of course, such bandit methods as were employed and are still employed were certain to meet with resistance, and so we find numerous instances of regiments of soldiers being called out to enforce collection of taxes or the eviction of time-honored landholders.… Hardly a month passes today without there being one or more reports in Mexican papers of disturbances, the result of confiscation of homes, either through the denunciation method or the excuse of nonpayment of taxes.… Graft is an established institution in the public offices of Mexico. It is a right vested in the office itself, is recognized as such, and is respectable. There are two main functions attached to each public office, one a privilege, the other a duty. The privilege is that of using the special powers of the office for the amassing of a personal fortune; the duty is that of preventing the people from entering into any activities that may endanger the stability of the existing regime. Theoretically, the fulfillment of the duty is judged as balancing the harvest of the privilege, but with all offices and all places this is not so, and so we find offices of particularly rosy possibilities selling for a fixed price. Examples are those of the jefes politicos in districts where the slave trade is peculiarly remunerative, as at Pachuca, Oaxaca, Veracruz, Orizaba, Cordoba, and Rio Blanco; of the districts in which the drafting of soldiers for the army is especially let to the jefes politicos; of the towns in which the gambling privileges are let as a monopoly to the mayors thereof; of the states in which there exist opportunities extraordinary for governors to graft off the army supply contracts. Monopolies called ‘‘concessions,’’ which are nothing more nor less than trusts created by governmental decree, are dealt in openly by the Mexican government. Some of these concessions are sold for cash, but the rule is to give them away gratis

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or for a nominal price, the real price being collected in political support. The public domain is sold in huge tracts for a nominal price or for nothing at all, the money price, when paid at all, averaging about fifty Mexican centavos an acre. But never does the government sell to any individual or company not of its own special choice; that is, the public domain is by no means open to all comers on equal terms. Public concessions worth millions of dollars to use the water of a river for irrigation purposes, or for power, to engage in this or that monopoly have been given away, but not indiscriminately. These things are the coin with which political support is bought and as such are grafts, pure and simple. Public action of any sort is never taken for the sake of improving the condition of the common people. It is taken with a view to making the government more secure in its position. Mexico is a land of special privileges extraordinary, though frequently special privileges are provided for in the name of the common people. An instance is that of the ‘‘Agricultural Bank,’’ which was created in 1908. To read the press reports concerning the purpose of this bank one would imagine that the government had launched into a gigantic and benevolent scheme to reestablish its expropriated people in agriculture. The purpose, it was said, was to loan money to needy farmers. But nothing could be farther from the truth, for the purpose is to help out the rich farmer, and only the richest in the land. The bank has now been loaning money for two years, but so far not a single case has been recorded in which aid was given to help a farm that comprised less than thousands of acres. Millions have been loaned on private irrigation projects, but never in lumps of less than several tens of thousands. In the United States, the farmer class is a humble class indeed; in Mexico the typical farmer is the king of millionaires, a little potentate. In Mexico, because of the special privileges given by the government, medievalism still prevails outside the cities. The barons are richer and more powerful than were the landed aristocrats before the French Revolution, and the canaille poorer, more miserable. And the special financial privileges centering in the cities are no less remarkable than the special privileges given to the exploiters of the hacienda slave. There is a financial ring consisting of members of the Diaz machine and their close associates, who pluck all the financial plums of the ‘‘republic,’’ who get the contracts, the franchises and the concessions, and whom the large aggregations of foreign capital which secure a footing in the country find it necessary to take as coupon-clipping partners. The ‘‘Banco National,’’ an institution having some fifty-four branches and which has been compared flatteringly to the Bank of England, is the special financial vehicle of the government camarilla. It monopolizes the major portion of the banking business of the country and is a convenient cloak for the larger grafts, such as the railway merger, the true significance of which I shall present in a future chapter. Diaz encourages foreign capital, for foreign capital means the support of foreign governments. American capital has a smoother time with Diaz than it has even with its own government, which is very fine from the point of view of American capital, but not so good from the point of view of the Mexican people. Diaz has even entered into direct partnership with certain aggregations of foreign capital, granting these aggregations special privileges in some lines which he has refused to his own millionaires. These foreign partnerships which Diaz has formed [have] made his government international insofar as the props which support his system are concerned. The certainty of foreign intervention in his favor has been one of the powerful

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forces which have prevented the Mexican people from using arms to remove a ruler who imposed himself upon them by the use of arms. When I come to deal with the American partners of Diaz I mention those of no other nationality in the same breath, but it will be well to bear in mind that England, especially, is nearly as heavily as interested in Mexico as is the United States. While this country has $900,000,000 (these are the figures given by Consul General Shanklin about the first of the year 1910) invested in Mexico, England (according to the South American Journal) has $750,000,000. However, these figures by no means represent the ratio between the degree of political influence exerted by the two countries. There, the United States bests all the other countries combined.… In this chapter I have attempted to give the reader an idea of the means which General Diaz employed to attract support to his government. To sum up, by means of a careful placing of public offices, public contracts, and special privileges of multitudinous sorts, Diaz absorbed all of the more powerful men and interests within his sphere and made them a part of his machine. Gradually the country passed into the hands of his office holders, their friends, and foreigners. And for this the people paid, not only with their lands, but with their flesh and blood. They paid in peonage and slavery. For this they forfeited liberty, democracy, and the blessings of progress. Source: John Kenneth Turner, Barbarous Mexico (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr & Company, 1910), pp. 120 135, 137.

160. Excerpt from Nellie Campobello, Cartucho Nellie Francisca Ernestina Campobello (1909–1986) was a Mexican author who wrote Cartucho and Las Manos de Mama
, first person accounts of the Mexican Revolution (1910–1920) based on her experiences at Villa Ocampo in Durango. We see the Mexican Revolution through Nellie Campobello’s childhood. The stories are deceptively simple—they simultaneously denounce war while paying tribute to the common soldier. Like most novels the passage gives the essence of the times. In order to appreciate it, the reader should read the entire novel.

Cartucho didn’t say his name. He didn’t know how to sew or replace buttons. One day his shirts were brought to our house. Cartucho came to say thank you. ‘‘Money sometimes makes people forget how to laugh,’’ I said, playing under a table. Cartucho took off the big sombrero he was wearing and, with his eyes half closed, said, ‘‘Goodbye.’’ How nice he was! One day he sang something about love. His voice sounded very pretty. Tears ran down his cheeks. He said he was a cartucho because of a woman. He used to play with my little sister Gloria and give her horseback rides. Up and down the street. A time came when they said the Carranzistas were going to arrive. The Villistas went out to buy cigarettes, holding on to their 30 30s. Cartucho came to visit. He would sit in the window and stare at the crack in a lavender flagstone. Or he’d wipe Gloria’s runny nose and improvise little slippers for her with his handkerchiefs. One afternoon he took her in his arms and walked up the street. Suddenly, shots rang out. Cartucho, with little Gloria in his arms, was firing in the direction of La Cruz Hill from the corner where Don Manuel lived. He had already fired several volleys

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when they took her away from him. Later … the shooting got heavy. Houses were closed up. No one knew what happened to Cartucho. He had kept on firing his rifle from the corner. A few days went by. He didn’t appear. Mama asked about him. Then Jos
e Ruiz, from over in Balleza, told her, ‘‘Cartucho has finally found what he was looking for.’’ Jos
e Ruiz said, ‘‘There is only one song, and that was the one Cartucho was singing.’’ Jos
e was a philosopher. His blond hair, parted in the middle and greased down with suet, hung limp from the cold. The keen eyes of a yellow dog. He spoke synthetically and thought with the Bible on the tip of his rifle. ‘‘Love made a cartucho of him. And us? … Cartuchos.’’ So he said, in a philosophic prayer, buckling on his cartridge belt. Source: From Cartucho and My Mother’s Hands by Nellie Campobello, translated by Doris Meyer C 1988. By permission of the University of Texas Press, p. 6. and Irene Matthews, Copyright



n to Harry Weinberger, 161. Letter from Ricardo Flores Mago May 9, 1921 Ricardo Flores Mag
on (1873–1922) was an anarcho-syndicalist thinker from Oaxaca, Mexico. He was thrown into prison for writing and publishing articles critical of Mexican dictator Porfirio D
ıaz (1830–1915) who ruled Mexico from 1876 to 1911. When Mag
on was threatened with prison, once more he fled to Texas and established the Partido Liberal Mexicano (PLM) in 1905. In the United States, he rallied other dissidents around the banner of the PLM and published the newspaper Regeneraci
o n (Regeneration). The PLM published denunciations of D
ıaz, smuggled arms into Mexico and conducted border raids. Mag
on was charged with violating U.S. neutrality laws. He refused to support in the United States Francisco Madero and his followers. Imag
on led a separate anarchist revolt in Baja California, resulting in more prison time in the United States. The following is a letter from Leavenworth Prison from Mag
on to his attorney, Harry Weinberger, shortly before his death. The letter conveys the essence of Mag
on, who was offered freedom in return for renouncing his principles—something he refused to do.

Post Office Box 7 Leavenworth, Kansas May 9, 1921 Mr. Harry Weinberger Counselor at Law New York City My Dear Mr. Weinberger: Your letter of the 25th of last April and a copy of Mr. Daugherty’s letter to you received. You want me to furnish you with data regarding the sentence which ended on January 19, 1914; but in order for you to judge whether I have been the victim of a conspiracy bent on keeping in bondage the Mexican peon, or not, I am going to furnish you with an abstract of the persecution I have suffered ever since I took

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refuge in this country. I must, before going any further, beg your pardon for my keeping your attention from other business undoubtedly more important than mine. After years, many years, of an unequal struggle in the press and the political clubs of the City of Mexico against the cruel despotism of Porfirio Diaz; after having suffered repeated incarcerations for my political beliefs ever since I was 17 years old, and having almost miraculously escaped death at the hands of hired assassins on several occasions in that dark period of the Mexican history when the practice of the government was to silence truth’s voice with the firing squad, or the dagger, or the poison; after the judiciary, by judicial decree of June 30, 1903, forbade me not only to write for my own journals but to contribute for theirs as well, having my printing plants successively sequestrated by the government and my life being in peril, I decided to come to this country, which I knew to be the land of the free and the home of the brave, to resume my work of enlightenment of the Mexican masses. The 11th day of January, 1904, saw me set my foot on this land, almost penniless, for all that I had possessed had been sequestrated by the Mexican Government, but rich in illusion and hopes of social and political justice. Regeneraci
on made its reappearance on American soil in November 1904. On the following December, a ruffian sent by Diaz entered my domicile, and would have stabbed me in the back had it not been for the quick intervention of my brother, Enrique, who happened to be near by. Enrique threw the ruffian out of the house, and showing that this brutal assault on my person had been prepared by certain authorities, and the possible failure of the ruffian’s attempt foreseen, at the falling of the latter on the sidewalk, a swarm of agents of the public peace invaded the premises. Enrique was made a prisoner and jailed, and finally condemned to pay a fine for disturbing the peace. Embolded by the protection he enjoyed, the ruffian again forced his entrance into my house. This time I telephoned the police; the man was arrested, and I was summoned to appear in court the following day early in the morning. When I arrived at the police court the man had already been released.… Being my life was so lightly regarded by those who claim to have been empowered with authority to safeguard human interests and life, I decided to move southward, and in February 1905, Regeneraci
on resumed publication at St. Louis, Mo. In October, same year, trouble broke loose against me. A Mexican Government official, by the name of Manuel Esperon y de la Flor, who maintained the worst type of slavery in the district under his command, for he used to kill men, women, and children as feudal lords used to do, was chosen by Diaz to come and file against me a complaint for what he deems to be a slanderous article which had been printed in Regeneraci
on, and dealing with the despotism he displayed on the unfortunate inhabitants of the district under his control. A charge of criminal libel was preferred and I was thrown into jail with my brother, Enrique, and Juan Sarabia. Everything in the newspaper office was sequestrated printing plant, typewriter machines, books, furniture, and so on and sold before a trial had taken place. A detail that illustrates the connivance between the Mexican and American authorities to persecute one, may be seen in the fact that the postmaster at St. Louis called me to his office with the apparent purpose of getting from me some information as to the financial status of the newspaper, but in reality to let a Pinkerton detective see me, that he might identify me later. The detective was already in the postmaster’s office when I arrived there in compliance to his summons. This same detective led the officers who arrested me. After months of languishing in a cell, I got released on bail, to find that the second-class privilege of Regeneraci
on

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had been canceled by the Postmaster General on the flimsy pretext that more than half of the regular issues of the newspaper circulated in Mexico, and that extradition papers were being prepared in Mexico to ask my delivery to the Mexican authorities. I paid my bondsman the amount of my bail, and on March 1905, I took refuge in Canada, for I was certain that death awaited me in Mexico. At that time, the mere asking by Diaz for a man he wanted was enough to spirit a man across the line to be shot. While in Toronto, Ontario, Regeneraci
on was being published in St. Louis. The Diaz agents found at least my whereabouts. I was informed of their intentions and evaded arrest by moving to Montreal, Quebec. Few hours after my having left Toronto, the police called at my abandoned domicile. I ignore until today how could Diaz throw the Canadian authorities against me. While in Montreal, my Mexican comrades in Mexico were planning an uprising to overthrow the savage despotism of Porfirio Diaz. I secretly moved to the Mexican frontier on September 1906, to participate in the generous movement. My presence in El Paso, Texas, though kept strictly unknown, was discovered by American and Mexican sleuths, who on the 20th of October, same year, assaulted the room where I had to confer with some of my comrades. Antonio I. Villarreal, now Minister of Agriculture in Obregon’s cabinet, and Juan Sarabia, were arrested. I escaped. A price was put on my head. A $25,000 reward was offered for my capture, and hundreds of thousands of leaflets bearing my picture and a description of my personal features were circulated throughout the Southwest, and fixed in post offices and conspicuous places with the tempting reward. I succeeded, however, in evading arrest until August 23, 1907, when, with Librado Rivera and Antonio I. Villarreal, I was made prisoner in Los Angeles, Cal., without the formality of a warrant. The intention of the persecutors was to send us across the border, this being the reason of their actions without a warrant, as they had done to Manuel Sarabia on June of the same year. Sarabia was one of my associates. Without a warrant, he was arrested at Douglas, Ariz., by American authorities, and in the dead of night delivered to Mexican rurales, who took him to the Mexican side. The whole Douglas population arose against such a crime, and the unrest which it produced was so intense that Sarabia was sent back to the United States three or four days later, where he was immediately released. We avoided being kidnapped into Mexico by voicing in the street the intentions of our captors. A big crowd gathered, and it was necessary for our abductors to take us to the police station, and to rapidly manufacture a charge against us. Our lawyer, Job Harriman, got an affidavit, which I think was sent to the Department of Justice, wherein it is alleged that one Furlong, head of a St. Louis detective’s agency, confessed that he was in the employment of the Mexican Government and paid by it, and that it was his purpose to kidnap us across the Mexican border. Charge after charge was proffered against us, ranging in importance from resisting an officer to robbery and murder. All these charges were successfully fought by Harriman, but in the meantime our persecutors were forging documents, training witnesses, and so forth, until at length they finally charged us with having broken the neutrality laws by giving material assistance to patriots to rise in arms against Porfirio Diaz. The forged documents and trained witnesses were examined by the United States Commissioner at Los Angeles, and as a result we were, after more than 20 months’ incarceration in the county jail, sent to Tombstone, Ariz., to be tried. The mere reading of the depositions made by the government witnesses before

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the United States Commissioner at Los Angeles, and then before the judge of our trial at Tombstone, shows that they committed perjury in either place, or in both. Experts for the defense proved that the exhibited documents were gross forgeries. We were, however, sentenced to 18 months’ imprisonment, which we served in Yuma and Florence, Ariz., being released on August 1, 1910, after three years spent behind prison bars. Regeneraci
on appeared again in September of the same year, this time in Los Angeles. Cal. On June, 1911, I was arrested with my brother, Enrique, Librado Rivera, and Anselmo L. Figueroa, charged with having violated the neutrality laws by sending men, arms, and ammunition to those fighting in Mexico against that form of chattel slavery known as peonage, which has been the curse of four-fifths of the Mexican population, as everybody knows. Jack Mosby, one of the prospected witnesses for the prosecution, said on the stand that the United States District Attorney had promised him all kinds of benefits if he perjured against us. Fake testimony was introduced by the prosecution, as proven by affidavits sworn by its witnesses after the trial was over, affidavits which must be on file in the Department of Justice, as they were sent there in 1912. In June 1912, after a year of fighting the case, we were sent to McNeil Island to serve the 23 months’ imprisonment to which we were condemned, having been released on January 19, 1914. Figueroa died shortly afterward as a result of his imprisonment. On February 18, 1917, I was arrested with my brother Enrique, for having published in Regeneraci
on articles against the treachery committed by Carranza, then President of Mexico, against the workers, and for having written that the Mexicans who at the time were being assassinated by Texas Rangers deserved justice rather than bullets. I got a sentence of one year and one day, for I was expected to live only a few more months, having been taken from a hospital bed to be tried. Enrique got three years. We appealed and finally succeeded in getting bond, under which we were released pending the appeal. On the 21st of March 1918, I was arrested with Rivera for having published in Regeneraci
on the ‘‘Manifesto’’ for which I was given 20 years’ imprisonment and Rivera 15. The wording and meaning of the ‘‘Manifesto’’ were construed as seditious by the prosecution, that is, as aiming at the insubordination and revolt of the military and naval forces of the United States. Any sensible person who happened to read the ‘‘Manifesto’’ would not draw such a conclusion, for in reality the ‘‘Manifesto’’ is only an exposition of facts and a fair warning to all mankind of the evils those facts might produce. In one of its paragraphs it is clearly stated that no one can make a revolution on account of it being a social phenomenon. The ‘‘Manifesto’’ was aimed at the prevention of the evils a revolution carries, itself the revolution being regarded from a scientific standpoint as a world-wide inevitable result of the unsettled conditions of the world. The ‘‘Manifesto’’ does not refer in the least to the policies of the American Government in the last war, nor gives aid and comfort to its enemies. It is neither pro-German nor pro-Ally, and does not single out the United States in its brief review of the world conditions. It was enough, however, to secure for me a life term behind prison bars. The persecution, this time, was exceedingly severe. My poor wife, Maria, was incarcerated during five months, and is now free on bond awaiting trial for having notified my friends of my arrest, that they should assist me in my legal defense. After reading this extremely long and dreadfully tedious statement of facts, how could any person believe that I have rightfully been prosecuted and in no way

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persecuted? In each case, and in defiance of the law, bail has been fixed at enormous rates so as to prevent me making use of the privilege. As to the veracity of my assertions, my honor as a life-long fighter for justice is hereby solemnly pledged. Mr. Daugherty says I am a dangerous man because of the doctrines I assert and practice. Now, then, the doctrines I assert and practice are the anarchist doctrines, and I challenge all fair-minded men and women the world over to prove to me that the anarchist doctrines are detrimental to the human race. Anarchism strives for the establishment of a social order based on brotherhood and love, as against the actual form of society, founded on violence, hatred, and rivalry of one class against the other, and of members of one class among themselves. Anarchism aims at establishing peace forever among all the races of the earth by the suppression of this fountain of all evils the right of private property. If this is not a beautiful ideal, what is it? No one thinks that the peoples of the civilized world are living under ideal conditions. Every conscientious person feels himself shocked at the sight of this continual strife of man against man, of this unending deceiving of one another. Material success is the goal that lures men and women the world over, and to achieve it no vileness is too vile, no baseness is too base, to deter its worshippers from coveting it. The results of this universal madness are appalling; virtue is trampled upon by crime, and artfulness takes the place of honesty. Sincerity is only a word, or at the most, a mask under which fraud grins. There is no courage to uphold the convictions. Frankness has disappeared and deceit forms the slippery plan on which man meets man in his social and political intercourse. ‘‘Everything for success’’ is the motto, and the noble face of the earth is desecrated with the blood of the contending beasts.… Such are the conditions under which we civilized men live, conditions which breed all sorts of moral and material torture, alas! And all sorts of moral and material degradation. At the correction of all these unwholesome influences [is] the anarchist doctrines’ aim, and a man who sustains these doctrines of brotherhood and love can never be called dangerous by any sensible, decent person. Mr. Daugherty agrees on my being sick, but he thinks that I can be taken care of in my sickness in prison as well as it could be done on the outside. Environment is all-important in the treatment of diseases, and no one would ever imagine that a prison cell is the ideal environment for a sick man, and much less when the presence in prison of such a man is owing to his having been faithful to truth and justice. The government officials have always said that there are not in the United States, persons kept in captivity on account of their beliefs, but Mr. Daugherty says in his letter to you: ‘‘He, in no manner, evinces any evidence of repentance, but on the contrary, rather prides himself upon his defiance of the law.… I am of the opinion, therefore, that until he indicates a different spirit than that expressed in his letter to Mrs. Branstetter, he should at least serve until August 15, 1925.’’ The quoted paragraphs, and the part of Mr. Daugherty’s letter in which he says I am regarded dangerous on account of my doctrines, are the best evidence that there are persons kept in prison owing to their social and political beliefs. If I believed that it is not persecution, but prosecution, that has been exerted against me; if I believed that the law under which I was given a life term in prison was a good law, I would be set free, according to Mr. Daugherty. That law was undoubtedly a good law but to a few persons, those who had something to gain with its enactment. As for the masses, the law was a bad one, for thanks to it thousands of young American men lost their lives in Europe, many thousands more were maimed or otherwise incapacitated to earn a livelihood, and thanks to it the colossal European carnage, where scores of

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millions of men were either slain or maimed for life, received momentous impulse and bred the tremendous financial crisis which is threatening to plunge the world into chaos. However, as I have stated before, I did not violate this law with the issuance of the ‘‘Manifesto’’ of March 16, 1918. As for the matter of repentance to which Mr. Daugherty gives so much importance, I sincerely state that my conscience does not reproach me with having done wrong, and therefore, to repent of what I am convinced is right would be a crime on my part, a crime that my conscience would never pardon me. He who commits an anti-social act may repent, and it is desired that he repents, but it is not fair to exact a vow of repentance from him who all he wishes is to secure freedom, justice and well-being for all his fellow men regardless of race and creed. If someone ever convinces me that it is just that children starve, and that young women have to choose of two infernos one, prostitution, or starvation; if there is a person who could drive out of my brain the idea of not being honorable to kill within oneself that elementary instinct of sympathy which prompts every sociable animal to stand by the members of its species, and that it is monstrous that man, the most intelligent of beasts, has to wield the weapons of fraud and deceit if he wants to achieve success; if the idea that man must be the wolf of man enters my brain, then I shall repent. But as this will never be, my fate is sealed. I have to die in prison, branded as a felon. Darkness is already enshrouding me as though anxious of anticipating for me the eternal shadows into which the dead sink. I accept my fate with manly resignation, convinced that some day, long perhaps after Mr. Daugherty and myself have breathed our last, and of what we have been there only remained his name exquisitely carved in a marble flag upon his grave in a fashionable cemetery, and mine, only a number, 14596, roughly scraped in some plebeian stone in the prison graveyard, justice shall be done me. With many thanks for the activity you have shown on my behalf, I remain, sincerely yours, Ricardo Flores Mag
on Source: Ricardo Flores Mag
on, Collected Works, http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist archives/ bright/magon/works/letters/harry050921.html.

162. ‘‘Mexicans Burn American Flag,’’ 1910 The lynching of Antonio Rodr
ıguez, a Mexican youth in Rock Springs, Texas, accused of murdering a white woman, in early November 1910, unleashed anti-American demonstrations and riots throughout Mexico. By this time, there was considerable resentment toward Euro-Americans because of the racism and unequal treatment suffered by Mexican workers in the United States. The protests created tensions not only between Mexicans and Americans, but between the government of Porfirio D
ıaz (1876–1911) and the United States. D
ıaz supported Euro-American official protests and apologized for the riots and destruction of ‘‘American property.’’

MEXICANS BURN AMERICAN FLAG Rioters in Guadalajara Wreck Americans’ Houses

Police Save Consulate.

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ANOTHER RIOT AT DIAZ Sunday Bullfights Banned in Mexico City for Fear of More Trouble, and 51 Arrests Made. GUADALAJARA, Mexico, Nov. 11 An American flag was burned amid cries of ‘‘Death to the Gringos’’ last night during riotous demonstrations against Americans because of the lynching of the Mexican Rodriguez in Texas. Depredations committed by the rioters were not made known until late to-day, when the danger of a further outbreak seemed unlikely. Conservative estimates to-day place the damage to property of Americans at from $5,000 to $10,000. The rioters wore themselves out about midnight. The efforts of Government officers to preserve order prevented further rioting to-day, but a spirit of unrest prevailed and renewed violence was feared. Manuel Cuestra Gallarde, candidate for Governor, is doing everything possible in conjunction with the commander of the Federal troops to maintain peace. American Consul Samuel Magill has been assured by Mexican officers that there will be no further trouble. [Later last] night a high iron fence surrounding the Methodist Missionary Institute was torn down by the mob and the windows in the building were smashed. Glass doors and windows in the houses of C. N. Strotz, W. L. Kline, the Rev. R. C. Eilot, C. E. Coruthers, and Dr. W. H. Swayze in the American colony were demolished. Plate-glass fronts in the American Banking Company Building, the German Drug Store, the Commercial Banking Company offices, the National Candy Company, the West End Realty Company, the hardware store of Carlos Hering, and the American Drug Company’s store were broken. Windows were also demolished in the Cosmopolitan Hotel and an American restaurant. C. E. Myers of Joplin, Mo., and Cliff Munger of York, Penn., railroad employees, were beaten and kicked by rioters, but they were not seriously injured. Source: New York Times, November 12, 1910, p. 5.

163. Rev. Pedro Grado’s Farewell Address, 1911 The Alianza Hispano-Americana (AHA), founded in Tucson in 1894, was a Mexican American fraternal insurance society organized along Masonic lines into lodges, or log
ıas. This type of mutual aid society was formed throughout Mexico and the southwest. These societies were important because they identified leaders and issues giving Mexican workers unity during labor disputes. The Alianza was based in Tucson, but lodges spread throughout the Southwest and even into Mexico. When a critical mass of these organizations developed, it was not uncommon to form federations or congresses. For example, in 1911, the Congreso Mexicanista was convened to discuss the growing racism toward Mexicans within Texas. Delegates from 24 Texas communities convened at the border town of Laredo. The following excerpt was from a speech by the Rev. Pedro Grado addressing the delegates’ concern for justice, mutual protection, and education.

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The Rev. Pedro Grado Mr. President: Respectable Audience: My turn has arrived in the progression of the program of the Congreso Mexicanista to step in the place from which have come forth words full of erudition; ideas that, although heterogeneous, demonstrated with few exceptions, beloved unity in the objective that occupies our attention.… In this conversation, and it is nothing more, I will touch on some of the points or topics which are most interesting to review, and which may be most useful to us in placing the first bricks of the great social edifice that this Congreso Mexicanista proposes. There are two black points that, with a prophetic threat, sprout forth and grow in the pure heaven of our liberty and which day by day, worry all good Mexicans, all true patriots, and all persons who shelter altruism and philanthropy in their souls. The first of these points concerns the oppression and the abuses that the sons of Uncle Sam commit daily to our countrymen, especially in the State of Texas. The second is the imprudent conduct of men and women, our fellow citizens, in the State of Texas. The first point has the following classification: I. Bad application of the law when it deals with Mexicans. II. Unpunished molesting of Mexicans by particular Americans. III. The exclusion of Mexican children from the American schools. Order demands that the bad application of the law in treating Mexicans be discussed. The disease has its remedy, and it is here that the utility of the Congreso Mexicanista is illustrated, inasmuch as experience teaches us that isolation causes weakness and that weakness produces failure. Reason tells us to make ourselves strong.… The Congreso Mexicanista can and should enhance the Mexican press of Texas. The newspaper is the scourge of the unjust and the denouncer of the abusers of office. It is a powerful medium to carry complaints to the desks of officials and demonstrate by turns that we are not indolent, that we are concerned about the poverty of our countrymen, and that we are able to do all that is within the law for them. The Congreso Mexicanista can and should embrace wealthy, influential men because of their morality, their knowledge, and their contacts. These are the ones who, in case of difficulty, will have access to elevated representatives of the law. The Congreso will broaden itself admirably, and admirable will be the results, if it tries to attract to it all the secret societies of the Masonic type, or whose members might be our countrymen, or the lodges that might be of this kind. It should do the same with the mutual societies and those that simply have altruism as their ideal. How surprising will be the effect of a petition, or a request, or of a communication backed by thousands of individuals! What greater satisfaction for a needy person than the loving hand of thousands of his fellow citizens, ready to put to flight the terrible anxiety which poverty causes. Considering that this Congreso will come to be that which I suppose, with the elements now established, the oppressions of the authorities will stop.… The unpunished vexations of particular Americans may continue.

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This problem is more difficult to solve.… The Mexican braceros who work in a mill, on a hacienda, or in a plantation would do well to establish Ligas Mexicanistas, and see that their neighbors form them. Thus, once united, with the help of the press, and with the valuable group of philanthropists of wealth or influence in some department, they will be able to strike back at the hatred of some bad sons of Uncle Sam who believe themselves better than the Mexicans because of the magic that surrounds the word white. It remains for us to say something of the exclusion of Mexican children from the Anglo-Saxon schools in the majority of the counties of the State of Texas. We can say this is a difficult but not unsolvable problem. What happens in Laredo, Texas, in San Diego of the same state, and in other river communities where the Mexican children have free access to the American schools and high schools? The purpose of this question is to go to the reasons, because if these reasons are transmissible, the problem is not far from resolving itself.… In the aforementioned towns, the Mexican element dominates and is intimately bound to the Anglo-Saxon by ties of commerce and other kinds. In these same towns, there are respectable Mexicans with prominent positions in the court houses, so that we find in this one of the causes, or the reason, for the Mexican children’s access to American schools. Would we be able to make these means transmissible, and make the influence of those men extend to many miles round about? Yes, it is possible when all in mass distinguish themselves as Mexicanistas and take interest in their countrymen. Whatever may be the reasons they exclude Mexicans from the schools, I do not find another solution than the influence and heterogeneous powers of Mexicanismo. Source: Primer Congreso Mexicanista, Verificado en Laredo, Texas, EE. UU. de A., 14 al 22 de Septiembre de 1911. Discursos y Conferencias por la raza y para la raza (Laredo, Tex.: 1912), pp. 35 37. Trans. David J. Weber In David J. Weber, ed., Foreigners in their Native Land: Historical Roots of the Mexican Americans (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1973), pp. 248 251.

164. Excerpts from the Plan of San Luis Potosi, November 20, 1910 By 1910, Mexicans wanted a change; Porfirio D
ıaz (1830–1915) had ruled Mexico for three decades. Much of the popular support coalesced around Francisco Madero (1873–1913), a wealthy hacienda owner from Coahuila who campaigned against D
ıaz in Mexico’s 1910 presidential elections. When Madero lost, his followers claimed that the election was stolen by D
ıaz who ordered Madero arrested and imprisoned on charges of treason. Madero fled to San Antonio and issued the Plan of San Luis Potosi, calling for the nullification of the elections. In the following excerpts, Madero called upon Mexicans to take up arms against the government. Not all revolutionists accepted the leadership of Madero. The Magonistas, the followers of Ricardo Flores Mag
on, fought under their own banner, as did the followers of Emiliano Zapata, the agrarian leader of the Mexican state of Morelos in the southern part of Mexico. The following are excerpts from the Plan of San Luis Potosi, which was Madero’s proclamation explaining why he was leading the revolution to overthrow D
ıaz.

People, in their constant efforts for the triumph of the ideal of liberty and justice, are forced, at precise historical moments, to make their greatest sacrifices.

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Our beloved country has reached one of those moments. A force of tyranny, which we Mexicans were not accustomed to suffer after we won our independence, oppresses us in such a manner that it has become intolerable. In exchange for that tyranny, we are offered peace, but peace full of shame for the Mexican nation, because its basis is not law, but force; because its object is not the aggrandizement and prosperity of the country, but to enrich a small group who, abusing their influence, have converted the public charges into fountains of exclusively personal benefit, unscrupulously exploiting the manner of lucrative concessions and contracts. The legislative and judicial powers are completely subordinated to the executive; the division of powers, the sovereignty of the States, the liberty of the common councils, and the rights of the citizens exist only in writing in our great charter; but, as a fact, it may almost be said that martial law constantly exists in Mexico; the administration of justice, instead of imparting protection to the weak, merely serves to legalize the plundering committed by the strong; the judges instead of being the representatives of justice, are the agents of the executive, whose interests they faithfully serve; the chambers of the union have no other will than that of the dictator; the governors of the States are designated by him and they in their turn designate and impose in like manner the municipal authorities. From this it results that the whole administrative, judicial, and legislative machinery obeys a single will, the caprice of Gen. Porfirio Diaz, who during his long administration has shown that the principal motive that guides him is to maintain himself in power and at any cost. For many years, profound discontent has been felt throughout the Republic, due to such a system of government, but Gen. Diaz with great cunning and perseverance, has succeeded in annihilating all independent elements, so that it was not possible to organize any sort of movement to take from him the power of which he made such bad use. The evil constantly became worse, and the decided eagerness of Gen. Diaz to impose a successor upon the nations in the person of Mr. Ramon Corral carried that evil to its limit and caused many of us Mexicans, although lacking recognized political standing, since it had been impossible to acquire it during the 36 years of dictatorship, to throw ourselves into the struggle to recover the sovereignty of the people and their rights on purely democratic grounds.… In Mexico, as a democratic Republic, the public power can have no other origin nor other basis than the will of the people, and the latter can not be subordinated to formulas to be executed in a fraudulent manner.… For this reason, the Mexican people have protested against the illegality of the last election and, desiring to use successively all the recourses offered by the laws of the Republic, in due form asked for the nullification of the election by the Chamber of Deputies, notwithstanding they recognized no legal origin in said body and knew beforehand that, as its members were not the representatives of the people, they would carry out the will of Gen. Diaz, to whom exclusively they owe their investiture. In such a state of affairs, the people, who are the only sovereign, also protested energetically against the election in imposing manifestations in different parts of the Republic; and if the latter were not general throughout the national territory, it was due to the terrible pressure exercised by the Government, which always quenches in blood any democratic manifestation, as happened in Puebla, Vera Cruz, Tlaxcala, and in other places.

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But this violent and illegal system can no longer subsist. I have very well realized that if the people have designated me as their candidate. for the Presidency it is not because they have had an opportunity to discover in me the qualities of a statesman or of a ruler, but the virility of the patriot determined to sacrifice himself, if need be, to obtain liberty and to help the people free themselves from the odious tyranny that oppresses them. From the moment I threw myself into the democratic struggle, I very well knew that Gen. Diaz would not bow to the will of the nation, and the noble Mexican people, in following me to the polls, also knew perfectly the outrage that awaited them; but in spite of it, the people gave the cause of liberty a numerous contingent of martyrs when they were necessary and, with wonderful stoicism, went to the polls and received every sort of molestation. But such conduct was indispensable to show to the whole world that the Mexican people are fit for democracy, that they are thirsty for liberty, and that their present rulers do not measure up to their aspirations. Besides, the attitude of the people before and during the election, as well as afterwards, shows clearly that they reject with energy the Government of Gen. Diaz and that, if those electoral rights had been respected, I would have been elected President of the Republic. Therefore, and in echo of the national will, I declare the late election illegal and, the Republic being accordingly without rulers, provisionally assume the Presidency of the Republic until the people designate their rulers pursuant to the law. In order to attain this end, it is necessary to eject from power the audacious usurpers whose only title of legality involves a scandalous and immoral fraud. With all honesty, I declare that it would be a weakness on my part, and treason to the people who have placed their confidence in me, not to put myself at the front of my fellow citizens, who anxiously call me from all parts of the country, to compel Gen. Diaz by force of arms, to respect the national will. Source: United States Congress, Senate Subcommittee on Foreign Relations, Revolutions in Mexico, 62nd Congress, 2nd Session (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1913), pp. 730 736.

165. Excerpts from the New Mexico Constitution, 1912 There was considerable controversy over the admission of New Mexico and Arizona as states. New Mexico had a sufficient number of inhabitants to qualify since 1848. Indeed, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848) between Mexico and the United States called for rapid admission of territories within the Mexian cession as states. But there was the feeling in Congress that the territory had too many non whites—too many Indians and Mexicans. Deals were cut and even the Catholic Church opposed statehood for New Mexico in return for control of education in the territory. New Mexico and Arizona were split in 1863. The same objections were made to Arizona’s admission. Finally, when New Mexico was granted statehood in 1912, its Constitution explicitly affirmed the protections provided by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848) that ended the war between the United States and Mexico. It also guaranteed the rights of those left behind in the conquered territory. The following excerpts from the Constitution of New Mexico refer to those articles that protected the rights of those of Mexican extraction. …

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ARTICLE II Sec. 5. Rights under Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo preserved. The rights, privileges, and immunities, civil, political, and religious, guaranteed to the people of New Mexico by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo shall be preserved inviolate. … ARTICLE VII Sec. 3. Religious and racial equality protected; restrictions on amendments. The right of any citizen of the state to vote, hold office, or sit upon juries, shall never be restricted, abridged, or impaired on account of religion, race, language, or color, or inability to speak, read, or write the English or Spanish languages except as may be otherwise provided in this Constitution; and the provisions of this section and of section one of this article shall never be amended except upon a vote of the people of this state in an election at which at least three-fourths of the electors voting in the whole state, and at least two-thirds of those voting in each county of the state, shall vote for such amendment. … ARTICLE XII Sec. 5. Teachers to learn English and Spanish. The legislature shall provide for the training of teachers in the normal schools or otherwise so that they may become proficient in both the English and Spanish languages, to qualify them to teach Spanish-speaking pupils and students in the public schools and educational institutions of the State, and shall provide proper means and methods to facilitate the teaching of the English language and other branches of learning to such pupils and students.… Sec. 10. Educational rights of children of Spanish descent. Children of Spanish descent in the State of New Mexico shall never be denied the right and privilege of admission and attendance in the public schools or other public educational institutions of the State, and they shall never be classed in separate schools, but shall forever enjoy perfect equality with other children in all public schools and educational institutions of the State, and the legislature shall provide penalties for the violation of this section. This section shall never be amended except upon a vote of the people of this State, in an election at which at least three-fourths of the electors voting in the whole State and at least two-thirds of those voting in each county in the State shall vote for such amendment. Source: Excerpt of New Mexico Constitution, 1912. Zia Net. Entire Constitution found at http://www.zianet.com/drbill/govnmt/nmconst.htm.

166. Excerpts from Samuel Bryan, ‘‘Mexican Immigrants in the United States,’’ 1912 In this article published in the Survey, a Progressive Era journal, Samuel Bryan writes about the growth in Mexican migration to the United States in the first decade of the twentieth century, how Mexicans lived, and the discrimination they faced. He ties Mexican immigration to the growth of agriculture spurred by the Newlands Reclamation Act of 1902 (also known as the National

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Reclamation Act), which funded the building of dams and the irrigation of millions of acres of farmland. The huge demand for labor on these enormous farms brought large numbers of Mexicans to the United States without whose labor the Southwest agricultural empire would not have been built. The article memorializes this massive movement of Mexicans who came to the United States in response to the vast production that resulted from reclamation.

Previous to 1900, the influx of Mexicans was comparatively unimportant. It was confined almost exclusively to those portions of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California which are near the boundary line between Mexico and the United States. Since these states were formerly Mexican territory and have always possessed a considerable Mexican population, a limited migration back and forth across the border was a perfectly natural result of the existing blood relationship. During the period from 1880 to 1900 the Mexican-born population of these border states increased from 66,312 to 99,969 a gain of 33,657 in twenty years. This increase was not sufficient to keep pace with the growth of the total population of the states. Since 1900, however, there has been a rapid increase in the volume of Mexican immigration, and also some change in its geographical distribution.… In 1908, it was estimated that from 60,000 to 100,000 Mexicans entered the United States each year. This estimate, however, should be modified by the wellknown fact that each year a considerable number of Mexicans return to Mexico. Approximately 50 percent of those Mexicans who find employment as section hands upon the railroads claim the free transportation back to El Paso which is furnished by the railroad companies to those who have been in their employ six months or a year. Making allowance for this fact, it would be conservative to place the yearly accretion of population by Mexican immigration at from 35,000 to 70,000. It is probable, therefore, that the Mexican-born population of the United States has trebled [tripled] since the census of 1900 was taken. This rapid increase within the last decade has resulted from the expansion of industry both in Mexico and in the United States. In this country, the industrial development of the Southwest has opened up wider fields of employment for unskilled laborers in transportation, agriculture, mining, and smelting. A similar expansion in northern Mexico has drawn many Mexican laborers from the farms of other sections of the country farther removed from the border, and it is an easy matter to go from the mines and section gangs of northern Mexico to the more remunerative employment to be had in similar industries of the southwestern United States. Thus the movement from the more remote districts of Mexico to the newly developed industries of the North has become largely a stage in a more general movement to the United States. Entrance into this country is not difficult, for employment agencies in normal times have stood ready to advance board, lodging, and transportation to a place where work was to be had, and the immigration officials have usually deemed no Mexican likely to become a public charge so long as this was the case. This was especially true before 1908.… Most of the Mexican immigrants have at one time been employed as railroad laborers. At present they are used chiefly as section hands and as members of construction gangs, but a number are also to be found working as common laborers about the shops and powerhouses. Although a considerable number are employed as helpers, few have risen above unskilled labor in any branch of the railroad service. As section hands on the two more important systems, they were paid a uniform

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wage of $1.00 per day from their first employment in 1902 until 1909, except for a period of about one year previous to the financial stringency of 1907, when they were paid $1.25 per day. In 1909, the wages of all Mexican section hands employed upon the Santa Fe lines were again raised to $1.25 per day. The significant feature is, however, that as a general rule they have earned less than the members of any other race similarly employed. For example, of the 2,455 Mexican section hands from whom data were secured by the Immigration Commission in 1908 and 1909, 2,111 or 85.9 percent, were earning less than $1.25 per day, while the majority of the Greeks, Italians, and Japanese earned more than $1.25 and a considerable number [earned] more than $1.50 per day. In the arid regions of the border states where they have always been employed and where the majority of them still live, the Mexicans come into little direct competition with other races, and no problems of importance result from their presence. But within the last decade, their area of employment has expanded greatly. They are now used as section hands as far east as Chicago and as far north as Wyoming. Moreover, they are now employed to a considerable extent in the coal mines of Colorado and New Mexico, in the ore mines of Colorado and Arizona, in the smelters of Arizona, in the cement factories of Colorado and California, in the beet sugar industry of the last mentioned states, and in fruit growing and canning in California. In these localities they have at many points come into direct competition with other races, and their low standards have acted as a check upon the progress of the more assertive of these. Where they are employed in other industries, the same wage discrimination against them as was noted in the case of railroad employees is generally apparent where the work is done on an hour basis, but no discrimination exists in the matter of rates for piecework. As pieceworkers in the fruit canneries and in the sugar beet industry, the proverbial sluggishness of the Mexicans prevents them from earning as much as the members of other races. In the citrus fruit industry, their treatment varies with the locality. In some instances they are paid the same as the ‘‘whites,’’ in others the same as the Japanese, according to the class with which they share the field of employment. The data gathered by the Immigration Commission show that although the earnings of Mexicans employed in the other industries are somewhat higher than those of the Mexican section hands, they are with few exceptions noticeably lower than the earnings of Japanese, Italians, and members of the various Slavic races who are similarly employed. This is true in the case of smelting, ore mining, coal mining, and sugar refining. Specific instances of the use of Mexicans to curb the demands of other races are found in the sugar beet industry of central California, where they were introduced for the purpose of showing the Japanese laborers that they were not indispensable, and in the same industry in Colorado, where they were used in a similar way against the German-Russians. Moreover, Mexicans have been employed as strikebreakers in the coal mines of Colorado and New Mexico, and in one instance in the shops of one important railroad system. Socially and politically, the presence of large numbers of Mexicans in this country gives rise to serious problems. The reports of the Immigration Commissions show that they lack ambition, are to a very large extent illiterate in their native language, are slow to learn English, and [in] most cases show no political interest. In some instances, however, they have been organized to serve the purposes of political bosses, as for example in Phoenix, Arizona. Although more of them are married and

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have their families with them than is the case among the south European immigrants, they are unsettled as a class, move readily from place to place, and do not acquire or lease land to any extent. But their most unfavorable characteristic is their inclination to form colonies and live in a clannish manner. Wherever a considerable group of Mexicans are employed, they live together, if possible, and associate very little with members of other races. In the mining towns and other small industrial communities, they live ordinarily in rude adobe huts outside of the town limits. As section hands they, of course, live as the members of the other races have done, in freight cars fitted with windows and bunks, or in rough shacks along the line of the railroad. In the cities, their colonization has become a menace. In Los Angeles, the housing problem centers largely in the cleaning up or demolition of the Mexican ‘‘house courts,’’ which have become the breeding ground of disease and crime, and which have now attracted a considerable population of immigrants of other races. It is estimated that approximately 2,000 Mexicans are living in these ‘‘house courts.’’ Some 15,000 persons of this race are residents of Los Angeles and vicinity. Conditions of life among the immigrants of the city, which are molded to a certain extent by Mexican standards, have been materially improved by the work of the Los Angeles Housing Commission.… However, the Mexican quarter continues to offer a serious social problem to the community.… In conclusion, it should be recognized that although the Mexicans have proved to be efficient laborers in certain industries, and have afforded a cheap and elastic labor supply for the southwestern United States, the evils to the community at large which their presence in large numbers almost invariably brings may more than overbalance their desirable qualities. Their low standards of living and of morals, their illiteracy, their utter lack of proper political interest, the retarding effect of their employment upon the wage scale of the more progressive races, and finally their tendency to colonize in urban centers with evil results, combine to stamp them as a rather undesirable class of residents. Source: The Survey, 20, No. 23 (September 1912): 726 730.


pez, ‘‘Papa and 167. Excerpts from Henry ‘‘Hank’’ Lo Pancho Villa,’’ 1970 Hank L
opez was a Harvard-trained attorney who, after a failed political career in California, turned to writing during the 1960s. In 1970, a time when many Mexican Americans traced their Mexican roots, he looked back at the Mexican Revolution. Pancho Villa was an icon and it seemed as if the grandfather of every Mexican American had ridden with Pancho Villa. In the following article, L
opez recalls the stories told by his father—a private in Pancho Villa’s army—in fact the only private in Pancho Villa’s army everyone else was a sergeant or better. Villa’s army operated in Chihuahua, Mexico, in the 1910s where Hank L
opez was born and from which his father came. The article memorializes the revolution during which more than a million Mexicans migrated to the United States.

Aside from being the only private in Pancho Villa’s army, my father had another distinction he was probably the only man ever to be dragged into an army at the end of a harness. But, as any fair-minded person will concede, he was not trying to

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avoid military service; he was simply resisting an outrageous expropriation of his personal property. His sudden ‘‘enlistment’’ occurred on a sultry October afternoon in the dusty little [plaza] of Bachimba, Chihuahua. My father had come to town to purchase a harness at Don Epifanio’s general store, and many years later he could still recall the strange, ghostly silence that seemed to hover in every doorway as he entered the square. Only an occasional child greeted him when he clomped along the wooden sidewalk, half dragging an old cart with squeaky wheels. He was slightly more than seventeen years old. He passed Don Miguel’s barbershop, the old barber asleep in his swivel chair. This being the siesta hour, the three small stores beyond the barbershop-canteen were also closed and shuttered against the blistering sun. But Don Epifanio, a stayawake gachupin from Madrid who was the only affluent merchant in that impoverished area, was predictably open for business when my father entered his store. ‘‘Qu
e tal, viejo,’’ he said. (In Mexico people greet all boys as ‘‘old man’’ and all old men as ‘‘youngster.’’) Emboldened by Don Epifanio’s friendly familiarity, my father acknowledged the greeting and then inquired about the unusual quiet in Bachimba and the absence of any adults in the plaza. ‘‘Then you have not heard?’’ asked the Spaniard. ‘‘Pancho Villa was here yesterday. With two hundred men he came. And he took ten sacks of flour from me, four jugs of tequila, and a dozen steel combs. Some other things, too. Then he told me to charge it.’’ My father glanced at the loaded shelves beyond the old man and wondered why Pancho Villa’s men had left so much behind. ‘‘And he also took some men with him,’’ Don Epifanio added. ‘‘They grabbed Domingo Ortega, Jes
us Silva, the M
arquez boys, and that young man who helped me in the store. All of them are in the army now. That’s why everybody’s hiding now. That’s why you don’t see anybody in the plaza.’’ ‘‘But Villa’s gone. You just told me.’’ ‘‘Not very far, amigo. He left a small cadre behind, just south of Bachimba. You can see their camp from the church tower. And you’d better get out of town, muchacho. Don Pancho may decide to draft you into his thieving army.’’ When my father mentioned that he was only seventeen, Don Epifanio knowingly observed that young boys, being more foolhardy and less circumspect than most adults, were probably preferred by the reckless vagabond leader of the fugitive Division del Norte. But my father-to-be, having never seen that youthful army, had no basis for either agreeing or disagreeing with Don Epifanio’s judgment nor for heeding his advice about getting out of town to avoid being kidnapped. He chose instead to dawdle, and the impatient storekeeper finally interrupted his browsing with an almost abrasive curtness. ‘‘Surely you didn’t come here to loaf. What do you want, boy?’’ It was then that my father told him he might want to buy a new harness. But first he wanted to know if the old one (which he had hauled in the cart) could be repaired. It was ancient, its leather cracked and torn, and Don Epifanio scoffed at the possibility of salvaging it. With a heavy sigh of resignation, my father tossed it into a waste barrel and proceeded to haggle about the price of a secondhand harness that the old man had reclaimed from a nonpaying customer from San Luis. My

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father (after two hours of sporadic bargaining) offered to pay seventeen pesos. Shortly before sunset they settled on a price of eighteen pesos and fifty cents, the old gachupin darkly muttering, ‘‘You’re a worse bandit than Pancho Villa.’’ Modestly pleased by this minor triumph and no doubt flattered by the comparison to Villa, my father carefully stowed the harness in his cart and solemnly thanked Don Epifanio for a pleasant afternoon. The sun, by now a precise red-orange disk poised on the jagged silhouette of the barren sierra west of Bachimba, cast an amber glow on the deserted bandstand in the plaza as my father started to cross the street. Then quite suddenly a loud and probably drunken voice ordered him to halt. Four soldiers shuffled toward him in a crudely menacing manner. ‘‘Where are you going, boy?’’ ‘‘What do you have in that cart?’’ The two voices rolled over each other, yet my father heard them both clearly and separately. But before he could answer either question, one of the men reached for the newly bought harness. Instantly his proprietary instincts overriding his fear my father grabbed the harness and started to pull it toward him. With almost equal alacrity, the two soldiers snagged the halter and started pulling in the opposite direction. My father held on to the harness with mulish determination. They struggled for several minutes; then one of the soldiers gradually narrowed his emotions to plain unadulterated disgust. ‘‘All right, you little bastard,’’ he muttered, simultaneously reaching for his heavy pistol. ‘‘Since you’re so in love with your lousy harness, you may as well stick with it. We’re going to take you both, you and your harness, into the army.’’ And that’s exactly what they did. In one single act, my father was both expropriated and drafted. Ordinarily, one would have expected my father to continue his resistance and raise a bit of hell once he reached camp. He had, admittedly, a stubborn nature. But he calmly accepted his new status and was assigned the duty of stable hand in a cavalry unit, to which his harness had also been assigned. The camp itself was a rather shabby affair consisting of three wind-battered tents stolen from a hacienda, a makeshift corral of seven horses, several sacks of flour piled on a flat-bed wagon, and with my dad’s arrival twenty-nine soldiers, most of them younger than twenty. Their uniforms were the least uniform uniforms any army ever wore. No two men were dressed alike, although several of them wore the large, cumbersome, wide-brimmed sombreros that soon became the symbol of Villa’s troops. However, whether in uniform or not, my father had no difficulty realizing that he was now a soldier. On the very first night he was handed a heavy rifle and ordered to serve as a lookout on a nearby hill. ‘‘If you see any f
ed
erales chingados just wake us up, and we’ll get the hell out.’’ Apparently this rear-guard cadre’s sole responsibility was to shoot and run (in several different directions) and later regroup at a more southerly rendezvous. Many years later, as we sat around the supper table in our rented flat in Denver, my father recalled, in minute detail, the awful fear that nearly paralyzed him as he stood guard on that scabrous hill four miles south of Bachimba. It was a quiet night, so deathly quiet that he could hear every lizard that skittered across the parched earth. And somewhere behind him he was too frightened to ascertain its exact whereabouts a lonely coyote moaned at fitful intervals. Yet his fear did not keep him from sitting down on a flat rock, where at last he fell sound asleep. He woke up

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at sunrise, stretched his cramped limbs until they felt normal again, and then walked slowly down the barranca toward the still slumbering camp. ‘‘I’m a soldier now,’’ he said to himself, a slight strut momentarily creeping into his gait. ‘‘I’m a private in Pancho Villa’s army.’’ A few moments later he heard an abrupt snort from the tent nearest him, followed by a petulant grumbling that quickly crescendoed into a rolling thunder of curses that would have awed Satan himself. It was the capitan, Luis Jimenez, sounding reveille in his own piquant manner. My father, who was no stranger to pungent language, forever claimed that Capit
an Jim
enez had the most violent, most profane, and most imaginatively obscene vocabulary he had ever heard. He had twenty-seven different expressions for homosexual, sixteen for unnatural birth, nine for canine maternal parentage, and a vast number of dark synonyms for murder and mayhem. Right now, he wanted to get his detachment away from there. Ten minutes later the tents were haphazardly folded and stashed next to the flour sacks on the flat-bed wagon, two horses were hitched to it with the previously expropriated harness, and they quickly pulled out of camp in a southerly direction. Having wisely decided not to ask permission to inform his parents about his spontaneous induction, my father rode in glum silence on the bumpy rear of the wagon. He wouldn’t permit himself to cry, but his throat felt tight and bitterly dry. Shortly before sunset, after long hours of tedium and discomfort, they finally caught up with the advance battalion. Pancho Villa himself greeted them as they shuffled into camp. My father nearly gasped when he first saw Villa standing spread-legged by the huge bonfire, his voice booming a hearty ‘‘Bienvenidos, muchachos.’’ Here, then, was the legendary Centauro del Norte in the flesh! He was a big man by Mexican standards, with a head like a proud lion and massive shoulders that strained the seams of his khaki tunic. But his eyes (not his large mustache, as most people think) were his most arresting feature. ‘‘They seemed to burn with volcanic energy,’’ my father later told us. ‘‘And yet there was a gentle mockery in those dark, intense eyes, a kind of teasing amusement that seemed to say there was nothing in the world that couldn’t be laughed at.’’ As for that famous mustache, which was to become a slobbery shank of messy hair in the movie portrayals by Wallace Beery and other actors, everyone who knew Villa insists that it was always clean and well clipped. My father’s first impression was a mixture of surprise and speechless awe. He was so dumbstruck by Villa’s charismatic presence that he stumbled backward when the general moved forward to greet the new arrivals, bear-hugging two of the cadre leaders, shaking hands with some, and greeting others with friendly belly jabs, his rough, husky voice full of comradely warmth and cheerful obscenity. Then, suddenly noting my father shyly half-hiding behind another soldier, he leaned out and grabbed my father’s arm. ‘‘So this is one of our new comrades,’’ he said. ‘‘What is your name, muchacho?’’ ‘‘Jos
e Patricio L
opez Sep
ulveda.’’ The name gushed from my father in a roll of frightened syllables. ‘‘That’s a large name for a small muchacho, but a good one.’’ ‘‘Everybody calls me Pepe,’’ whispered my father. ‘‘Just Pepe.’’ ‘‘And where do you come from, Pepe?’’

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‘‘From Bachimba from Bachimba, Chihuahua but we live on a rancho.’’ The smile of Villa’s face broadened into a toothy grin. ‘‘Then you must know Mart
ın L
opez also from Bachimba.’’ ‘‘He’s my cousin. Mart
ın is my cousin.’’ With less shyness now, ‘‘But he is much older. He’s already twenty-five and I’m only seventeen.’’ ‘‘Ah, yes,’’ answered Villa in his gently ironic manner. ‘‘Mart
ın is getting to be an old man like the rest of us. But he’s still young enough to raise hell with the pinches f
ed
erales. He’s one of my best men, Pepe, one of the toughest rebels in all Mexico.’’ Like everyone else in Bachimba, my father knew that Mart
ın L
opez had once pulled a gun on Villa and that his act of defiance had, curiously enough, resulted in his being assigned to Villa’s los dorados, that famed inner circle of ‘‘golden ones’’ who might be equated with a modern-day Mafia. Perhaps sensing my father’s private knowledge, Villa pressed his arm with a certain intimacy and quietly said, ‘‘Mart
ın L
opez is the only man who ever openly defied me. And it takes much courage, Pepe, it takes great courage to defy Pancho Villa. Now he’s one of my dorados and also a most trusted friend.’’ Mart
ın Lopez rode into camp on the following afternoon, and shortly thereafter my father was summoned to Villa’s command tent by a gruff, potbellied sergeant. When they finally reached the large officers’ tent, Villa and another man were studying a map spread on the dirt floor, the noncom having to clear his throat twice to catch their attention. Villa looked up and quickly recognized my father. ‘‘Mart
ın,’’ he said, touching the other man’s shoulder, ‘‘I have a surprise for you. Here’s your little cousin Pepe.’’ ‘‘My God it is! It’s little Pepe, my little cousin Pepe.’’ Mart
ın grabbed my father and warmly embraced him, nearly squeezing him breathless. ‘‘But what are you doing here, muchacho?’’ ‘‘He’s our newest volunteer,’’ said Villa. ‘‘We volunteered him three days ago. Near Bachimba.’’ ‘‘But he’s only a boy, my general. He can’t be more than sixteen,’’ protested Mart
ın. ‘‘The last time I saw him about three years ago at my uncle’s ranch he was only thirteen years old.’’ Sensing an abrupt end to his military career, my father shook his head and stammered, ‘‘No, no, no, Cousin Mart
ın! You’re wrong really you are I’m seventeen I’m already a man I really am I’m seventeen and I want to stay.’’ ‘‘Don Pancho’’ (as many people called him with great affection) put his arms around the boy’s slight shoulders and held him tight. ‘‘Perhaps your cousin is right, Pepe. Maybe you’d better go home. We may need you later on, muchacho.’’ My father wheedled and cajoled and argued with desperate conviction, and finally, after an hour of futile polemics, they agreed to let him remain on condition that he serve as personal aide to Mart
ın L
opez for the duration of the revolution. Thus, though he could not have anticipated it then, my father was soon to bear witness to some of the most exciting and daring exploits of that prolonged and bloody revolution, and his cousin was destined to become one of the most feared soldier-bandits in northern Mexico. Yet Mart
ın L
opez was surprisingly gentle when my father panicked during his first exposure to gunfire. This happened late in November 1913. The federal troops had been harassing Villa’s rear guard and were apparently planning a major advance along a railroad route north of Candelaria, in Sonora, where they had temporarily stopped to replenish themselves with food, women, and

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ammunition. Villa learned of their plans and fell back on one of his favorite tactics: to immobilize the enemy by blowing up its troop trains before departure. This, of course, was always a rather tricky and suicidal maneuver requiring a special kind of talent and courage. On this occasion, Villa assigned the chore to Mart
ın L
opez and Rodolfo Fierro, each of whom was to select five aides. Quite understandably, Mart
ın bypassed ‘‘little Cousin Pepe’’ in choosing his five; but after several hours of spirited lobbying my father persuaded him that he could never become an experienced soldier unless he could have some experience. He thus became the thirteenth man in a sabotage team that was immediately dubbed the Odd Dozen. Shortly after sunset, the squadron pulled out of camp heading south, nine of them on horseback and four others walking alongside two large mules laden with dynamite. My father was one of the four on foot. They traveled several hours through pitch blackness, skirting the dirt highways and hugging the foothills, where an occasional cactus or bush offered at least minimal concealment from prospective enemy scouts. An hour before sunrise they sighted the troop train on a siding near the town of Candelaria. They could spot only one guard slouched against the rear platform of the caboose. ‘‘There are probably more guards on the other side,’’ Mart
ın whispered to Fierro. ‘‘But we have a fairly clear approach from this side.’’ After a brief second look he ordered the squadron to unpack the dynamite and divide it into packets of four sticks bound together with baling wire. Everyone having been given two packets and a pair of fuses, Mart
ın drew a rough sketch of a railroad car, quickly explained his special demolition technique, and then assigned a car to each man. Fierro was to blow up the caboose and Mart
ın the engine. With only a bare half hour of darkness remaining, the thirteen saboteurs fanned out in a wide arc and stealthily crept their way across the scrubby plain. To his great surprise, my father felt no fear during this phase of the operation. All he could think about was the fourth car behind the engine, its silhouette looming larger and larger as he got closer. Suddenly he was there, right under the middle of its ‘‘long belly’’ (Mart
ın’s term for it), and now he had to find the cross rod. His head bumped against it, and he was momentarily stunned. But he quickly regained his composure, pulled the dynamite packets from inside his shirt, tied them onto the cross rod, attached the fuse cord, and slowly commenced to unravel it while he crept backward in a crouched position. Glancing to his right he saw his compa~ neros also pulling back from their respective cars in crouched positions, with their fuse cords unravelling. Fierro had apparently stabbed the man guarding the caboose, so until now they had not been detected by the f
ed
erales. It was like a well-rehearsed game. Then, quite suddenly, the sky seemed to shatter. Someone had spotted Mart
ın as he was crawling away from the engine and immediately shouted a general alarm. Almost instantly, the air was punctured by a wild scattering of bullets, most of them whistling into nowhere. Taking advantage of the brief chaos, the Odd Dozen hastily ignited their fuses, carefully laid them on the ground, and started crawling away, zigzagging every few feet to avoid gunfire. Once again following Mart
ın’s lead, they commenced shooting back, hoping to distract attention from the sizzling fuses. Thus crawling and shooting and crawling once again, most of them managed to reach a safe distance before the railroad cars started to explode, first the engine and then the passenger cars, one after the other like falling dominoes. But the fourth car behind the engine the one assigned to my father did not explode. It merely

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teeter-tottered off the track as the cars on either side were blasted off the rails. That’s when my father, pausing to look back at the massive wreckage, remembered that in his panic he had forgotten to ignite his fuse. When they finally got back to their horses and quickly mounted them for the getaway, it became painfully apparent that six of their compa~ neros had been killed or disabled. Although four of the thirteen saboteurs had come on foot, escorting the ammunition mules, there were now two extra horses. My father, still acutely conscious of having flubbed his chore, deliberately trailed behind the others as they raced toward the protective shadows of the Sierra Madre foothills. He was heartsick and depressed, and when they had found a safe haven, he told his older cousin about the unlit fuse, and about the only car that hadn’t exploded, reluctantly but frankly admitting he had panicked as the gunfire broke out. Mart
ın looked at him with gentle cousinly concern and drew him into a tight embrace. ‘‘Never mind, Pepe, never mind. It happens to all of us. The man who says he’s never afraid is a liar or a fool. Even Pancho Villa is afraid sometimes. He simply hides his fear better than most men. And you’ll learn to hide yours, Pepe. It takes time.’’ During the next few months my father did indeed learn to mask or at least ignore the awful fear. He ostensibly overcame his qualms in a succession of historic battles late in 1913, the first of which took place in San Sostenes, Durango, where the Villistas attacked a federal-army supply center in a bold maneuver that caught the enemy flat-footed during the siesta hour. That particular raid, which turned into a spirited hand-to-hand ruckus before the f
ed
erales retreated into the hills, netted the rebels two tons of clothing, several thousand rounds of ammunition, and some miscellaneous railroad equipment. Two weeks later, Mart
ın Lopez led a band of fifty specially chosen guerrillas into the town of Mulato, Chihuahua, a wind-blown village temporarily designated as a headquarters for the forces of Venustiano Carranza, the leader of the Constitutionalists. Again relying on surprise plus outrageous daring, the rebels moved in shortly after midnight. Except for a few drunkenly inattentive guards, the federal troops had taken refuge in an old adobe church facing the plaza, the more fortunate ones lying on rows of wooden benches while the others shared the hard-packed dirt floor with an occasional scorpion. Having wenched and drunk pulque all evening long, they were sleeping quite soundly in spite of the hard bedding; and only two or three of them were even half awakened as Mart
ın’s men carefully crept over inert bodies and between the benches, deftly expropriating rifles, pistols, knives, and ammunition. Then, having first posted his men at strategic places inside the chapel fourteen of them now armed with newly acquired machine guns Mart
ın asked his bugler to blow a rousing three o’clock reveille. The ensuing blast, needless to say, was not too graciously received by the 260 bleary-eyed f
ed
erales. They were even less gracious when ordered to remove their trousers and start marching toward the next town. Thirty rebels escorted them on horseback. Two hours later, as dawn broke over the ragged foothills, the rebel escorts abandoned the shivering, trouserless marchers on a long stretch of desert plain and galloped back to Mulato. They arrived in time for breakfast. Cheerfully attended by the grateful womenfolk of that impoverished but hospitable village, Mart
ın’s fifty men ate huge servings of tamales, huevos rancheros, hot tortillas, and frijoles refritos, after which they packed their looted rifles and ammunition on ten of the captured mules and headed back to Villa’s headquarters in the city of Durango.

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Shortly after their arrival there on January 1, 1914, Pancho Villa ordered Mart
ın’s men to join several other rebel contingents at Ojinaga, Chihuahua, where a large force of Carranzistas was heavily entrenched. This particular battle was the most disastrous event my father was ever to witness. Initially there were three days of furious fighting, the outnumbered rebels periodically picking and snapping at the well-fortified f
ed
erales like packs of angry but toothless coyotes. Ojinaga was situated on a flat, barren desert that offered no chance of cover for an attacking group. Thus, in the absence of any clearly defined strategy, the rebels continued their fitful inand-out forays, eighty men losing their lives in senseless assaults across wide-open areas murderously exposed to machine guns. Then an enemy cavalry unit closed in from the north in a lightning thrust that sandwiched 130 Villistas between two layers of firepower. Some of them tried to escape and were quickly shot down; the others prudently threw down their arms and surrendered. Brutally prodded with rifle butts, the prisoners were marched into the square and incarcerated in a local church. My father was among them, but somehow he managed to escape into a tiny corridor that led to a dark, narrow staircase winding up to the bell tower. There, alongside the belfry, he found a cracked and discarded bronze bell, and he snuggled into it like a frightened cat. Long after nightfall (he never knew exactly when, for he had finally fallen asleep) he heard the staccato bark of machine guns somewhere beneath him, then a short silence followed by another brief volley, and then silence again. He simply could not imagine why anyone would be firing a machine gun inside a church, nor was he anxious to find out. Shifting his tired body into a reversed coil inside the bell, he soon managed to fall asleep again, and he was not fully awakened until just after dawn, when the dreamy silence was shattered by loud, angry voices from the plaza. He scrambled to his knees, shook the grogginess from his head, and then cautiously crawled across the roof toward the edge facing the square. Below him, my father recognized some of the men from Mart
ın’s brigade. At first he thought they had been taken captive but then quickly noticed they were carrying arms. He bounded to his feet and raced across the roof and down the narrow stairs into the main chapel. In his wild excitement, he stumbled across two inert bodies before he realized that the floor was littered with bullet-shattered corpses, many of them grotesquely sprawled over each other in pools of drying blood. Some of the faces were mangled beyond recognition. Stunned and soon sickened by the horror all around him, he backed into the corridor, and there he felt a soft comforting hand on his shoulder. It was Cousin Mart
ın, standing close to him with an unutterably sad expression in his eyes. ‘‘How did you escape?’’ Mart
ın asked in a near whisper. ‘‘I thought you were dead, Pepe. I was just now searching for your body. And then I saw you.’’ My father slowly explained how he had sneaked up to the tower and slept through the awful massacre beneath him. Then Mart
ın told him how the f
ed
erales, apparently but erroneously assuming that Pancho Villa was sending a large battalion to reinforce his men at Ojinaga, had abandoned the town long before daybreak. But they had first of all murdered their 130 prisoners inside the chapel. To my father, the mass execution of Ojinaga would always represent the absolute depth of cruelty. And to Pancho Villa’s men, particularly to los dorados like Mart
ın, it would serve as justification for acts of equal depravity. Yet no war is without its lighter aspects. One need not be a Hemingway to observe that between battles there might sometimes occur a moment of sexual

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whimsy. One such moment came to Pancho Villa late in 1915, when he fell in love with Conchita del Hierro. They had met in Jim
enez, Chihuahua, through the auspices of her Aunt Clotilda [Colilde], a person with no discernible excess of modesty. She was, in fact, an ambitious bawd, and within three days after the Division del Norte had moved out of Jim
enez she sent the general a note by personal messenger telling him that her niece had been greatly impressed with his ‘‘gentility’’ and was most anxious to see him again. His response was characteristically immediate and expansive. Summoning Mart
ın to his headquarters tent they were now in Guadalupe, Zacatecas he asked him to go forthwith to Jim
enez and bring back Conchita and her aunt. ‘‘Take an engine and a caboose and enough men to run them,’’ he said. ‘‘Treat them with all consideration, Mart
ın. Their every wish must be granted.’’ Then, with a vaguely skeptical glance at his much younger and more handsome comrade, he added, ‘‘And don’t forget that Conchita is my girl. No monkey business, amigo.’’ Early that afternoon Mart
ın and five compa~ neros chugged out of the railroad station, my father stoking the boiler of the engine and doubling as assistant porter. He was in high good spirits all the way to Jim
enez, whistling ‘‘Adelita’’ over and over again, periodically scraping the coal shovel as accompaniment but his spirits soared even higher when he first saw Conchita. Her shy, tentative smile and soft voice made the men feel that she was altogether unaware of her exquisite mestizo face and lithe, slender body. On the assumption that Villa would find the girl more desirable if her shoulders were half exposed, her aunt had forced her to wear a skimpy lace blouse, but Conchita had nullified this erotic ploy by wearing a thick black rebozo that shielded her like a nun’s cape. Indeed, as she got off the caboose at Guadalupe, her entire demeanor was that of a young nun, her frightened eyes glinting now and then with helpless resentment, her naturally full lips pulled into a tight, childlike pout. Villa, waiting on the platform to greet them, instantly realized that Aunt Clotilda had lied to him about the girl’s yearning desire to see him again; yet his ego was not prepared to admit what his eyes clearly told him. ‘‘Bienvenidos!’’ he said with determined gusto. ‘‘I was beginning to think Mart
ın had kidnapped you.’’ Not to be outdone by the general’s effusiveness, Aunt Clotilda, pushing the reluctant girl forward, also gushed with good cheer. ‘‘She’s here, Don Pancho. You see I’ve kept my word. But the child’s overcome with fatigue and excitement. We’ll have to rest a while.’’ ‘‘Yes, yes, of course. That’s a long journey.’’ Briskly assigning four aides to escort the ladies to a small hacienda nearby, Villa almost recovered his composure in the process of snapping orders. But, not quite. His men, at least those close to him, could see that Conchita’s manner had deeply shaken him. And during the next forty-eight hours she managed not with malice, nor even by the slightest intention to bruise his pride as few women would have dared. She locked herself in the master bedroom, pushed a heavy divan against the door, and simply refused to see either Villa or her aunt. In the end, Conchita had her way. My father was far from surprised when the girl and her aunt abruptly left the hacienda on Friday morning, riding a plain buckboard wagon in considerably less grandeur than upon their arrival. While helping them with their luggage he heard the enraged aunt scolding her niece. ‘‘You foolish child,’’ she said bitterly. ‘‘That man will be president of Mexico, and you could be the first lady.’’ Several months later, Pancho Villa’s troops marched

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into Mexico City, and he temporarily seized the national palace, proclaiming himself president. Had she been more expedient, Conchita del Hierro would have been first lady for seventy-two hours. She might have also been shoved aside by the fickle Centauro del Norte, for he was notoriously inclined to break his word. On several occasions, for example, he promised to promote my father to corporal one of the many promises he never kept. Jos
e Patricio L
opez Sep
ulveda remained a lowly private for three long years, after which he fled across the border to El Paso, Texas, to escape the ultimately triumphant f
ed
erales. As a child living in a Mexican neighborhood in Denver, where everyone’s father bragged about having been officers and noncoms, I was never fully reconciled to his unique status as the only private in that famous rebel army. I, in fact, sorely resented Pancho Villa for failing to promote him. Not until recently have I come to appreciate the ironic whimsy that no doubt prompted my father’s quiet refusal to elevate himself to an officer’s rank. I now have the suspicion that he was really a full corporal. Source: Henry ‘‘Hank’’ L
opez, ‘‘Papa and Pancho Villa.’’ American Heritage Magazine, August 1970, Volume 21, Issue 5 http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/ah/1970/5/1970 C 1970. 5 57.shtml. Reprinted By Permission of American Heritage Inc.


168. ‘‘Race War in Arizona; Death List Is Sixteen,’’ 1914 Mostly unrecorded in history books are the race riots in Arizona mining camps during the 1910s when white miners tried to drive Mexican miners and their families from the copper camps. In places like Ray, Arizona, gun battles broke out with dozens of Mexicans killed. These racial encounters were encouraged by copper and mining barons throughout the Southwest. Most notable were the Ludlow Massacres of 1914 in Colorado, where the National Guard shot down miners in cold blood and the Bisbee Deportation of 1917, where nearly 1,200 strikers were rounded up, put on trains, and dumped in the middle of the desert. The following violence took place around the segregated mining camps of Ray, Arizona, in 1914–1915, when white miners attacked Mexicans, killing at least a dozen.

GLOBE (Ariz.) Aug. 19 Four Americans and twelve Mexicans were reported killed in a series of clashes in and near Ray today and tonight, according to information received here late tonight. Deputy Sheriff Finn Brown and two Mexican horse thieves were killed today when officers and a band of Mexican outlaws first clashed. This fight occurred in Devil’s Canyon near Ray. Early tonight the third Mexican was killed by Deputy Sheriff Henderson, when that officer and Deputy O’Neil were ambushed by the thieves. The horse of O’Neil was shot from beneath him. Two more Americans and two Mexicans were killed when a posse late tonight came upon the outlaws. The Americans killed in this clash were Earl and Frank Miller, brothers. Infuriated at the news of the death of members of the posse, American residents of Ray tonight invaded the Mexican section of town, driving the terror-stricken men, women and children of the section from their homes. One American and seven Mexicans were killed when a number of the Mexican residents resisted the attack upon their homes. The others fled to the hills.

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Reports said that many Americans were searching the hills near Ray tonight, bent upon killing every Mexican they meet. Officers and citizens who have been sworn in as deputies, were sent to patrol the entire section to prevent a spread of the race rioting, if possible. Source: Los Angeles Times, August 20, 1914, p. I3.


n, ‘‘Imperialism of 169. Excerpts from Francisco Garc
ıa Caldero Decadence,’’ 1913 Francisco Garc
ıa Calder
on (1883–1953) was a Peruvian diplomat and writer. In the following excerpts, he criticizes U.S. imperialist policy, as well as U.S. businesses, for exploiting Latin Americans. He also warns of the dangers of cultural imperialism. Like many Latin American intellectuals in the twentieth century, he had concerns about Latin America under the Monroe Doctrine (1823) and the Roosevelt Corollary (1904), in which the U.S. justified its self-appointed as the policeman of Latin America. When President Theodore Roosevelt (1858– 1919) said the United States had the right to send troops into the Carribbean and Central America to protect the Panama Canal. Garc
ıa Calder
on reacted and criticized ‘‘Yankee imperialism.’’

Interventions have become more frequent with the expansion of frontiers. The United States have recently intervened in the territory of Acre, there to found a republic of rubber gatherers; at Panama, there to develop a province and construct a canal; in Cuba, under cover of the Platt Amendment, to maintain order in the interior; in Santo Domingo, to support the civilising revolution and overthrow the tyrants; in Venezuela, and in Central America, to enforce upon these nations, torn by intestine disorders, the political and financial tutelage of the imperial democracy. In Guatemala and Honduras, the loans concluded with the monarchs of North American finance have reduced the people to a new slavery. Supervision of the customs and the dispatch of pacificatory squadrons to defend the interests of the Anglo-Saxon have enforced peace and tranquility: such are the means employed. The New York American announces that Mr. Pierpont Morgan proposes to encompass the finances of Latin America by a vast network of Yankee banks. Chicago merchants and Wall Street financiers created the Meat Trust in the Argentine. The United States offer millions for the purpose of converting into Yankee loans the moneys raised in London during the last century by the Latin American States; they wish to obtain a monopoly of credit. It has even been announced, although the news hardly appears probable, that a North American syndicate wished to buy enormous belts of land in Guatemala, where the English tongue is the obligatory language. The fortification of the Panama Canal, and the possible acquisition of the Galapagos Island in the Pacific, are fresh manifestations of imperialistic progress.… Warnings, advice, distrust, invasion of capital, plans of financial hegemony all these justify the anxiety of the southern peoples.… Neither irony nor grace nor skepticism, gifts of the old civilizations, can make way against the plebeian brutality, the excessive optimism, the violent individualism of the North American people. All these things contribute to the triumph of mediocrity; the multitude of primary schools, the vices of utilitarianism, the cult of the average citizen, the transatlantic M. Homais, and the tyranny of opinion noted by Tocqueville; and in this vulgarity, which is devoid of traditions and has no leading aristocracy, a return to the primitive type of the redskin, which has already been noted by close observers,

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is threatening the proud democracy. From the excessive tension of wills, from the elementary state of culture, from the perpetual unrest of life, from the harshness of the industrial struggle, anarchy and violence will be born in the future. In a hundred years, men will seek in vain for the ‘‘American soul,’’ the ‘‘genius of America,’’ elsewhere than in the undisciplined force or the violence which ignores moral laws.… Essential points of difference separate the two Americas. Differences of language and therefore of spirit; the difference between Spanish Catholicism and multiform Protestantism of the Anglo-Saxons; between the Yankee individualism and the omnipotence of the State natural to the nations of the South. In their origin, as in their race, we find fundamental antagonism; the evolution of the North is slow and obedient to the lessons of time, to the influences of custom; the history of the southern peoples is full of revolutions, rich with dreams of an unattainable perfection. Source: Francisco Garcia Calder
on, Latin America: Its Rise and Progress (London: T. F. Unwin, 1913), pp. 392 393.

170. Excerpts from the Plan de San Diego, 1915 The Plan de San Diego (1915) is one of those controversial events which is hotly debated. Mexican revolutionist Ricardo Flores Mag
on (1873–1922) criticized the plan as voyeuristic; others have justified it, while still others have called it terrorist. The most popular view is that it was proclaimed during a period of intense oppression of Mexicans from 1915–1920 when the Texas Rangers and other authorities lynched and hounded Mexicans. They used the Mexican Revolution and the hysteria as to whether German spies were agitating Mexicans as a pretext to harass Mexicans. In response to the violence, a small group of Mexican Americans proclaimed the ‘‘Plan of San Diego,’’ a revolution, on January 6, 1915, in the Texas town of San Diego. The manifesto called for the raising of a liberating army made up of Mexican Americans, African Americans, and Japanese, to ‘‘free’’ the states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, and Colorado and form an independent republic. It called for the death of white males. The manifesto fanned nativist brutality and federal reports indicated that more than 300 Mexicans or Mexican Americans were summarily executed in the South. What is amazing is that a couple of dozen Mexicans could create so much fear. The following excerpt is from a book by Charles H. Harris III and Louis R. Sadler on atrocities committed against Mexicans.

(1) On February 20, 1915, at 2:00 there would occur an uprising against the United States government to proclaim the liberty of blacks from the ‘‘Yankee tyranny’’ that had held them in ‘‘iniquitous slavery since remote times’’ and to proclaim the independence of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, and California, ‘‘of which States the Republic of Mexico was robbed in a most perfidious manner by North American imperialism.’’ (2) To achieve these objectives, an army would be formed under the leadership of commanders named by the Supreme Revolutionary Congress of San Diego, Texas. This army, known as the ‘‘Liberating Army for Races & Peoples,’’ would fight under a red and white banner bearing the inscription ‘‘Equality & Independence.’’ (3) Each commander was assigned certain cities to capture; once he had done so, he would amass their weaponry and funds in order to provide the necessary

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(4)

(5)

(6) (7)

(8)

(9)

(10)

(11)

(12)

(13)

(14)

(15)

resources to continue the struggle. Commanders would account for everything to their superiors. Upon capturing a city, especially a state capital, commanders must immediately appoint municipal authorities to preserve order and assist the revolutionary cause. ‘‘It is strictly forbidden to hold prisoners, either special prisoners (civilians) or soldiers; and the only time that should be spent in dealing with them is that which is absolutely necessary to demand funds (loans) of them; and whether these demands be successful or not, they shall be shot immediately without any pretext.’’ ‘‘Every foreigner who shall be found armed and cannot prove his right to carry arms, shall be summarily executed, regardless of his race or nationality.’’ ‘‘Every North American over sixteen years of age shall be put to death; and only the aged men, the women, and the children shall be respected; and on no account shall the traitors to our race be spared or respected.’’ ‘‘The Apaches of Arizona, as well as the Indians (Redskins) of the territory’’ would have their lands returned, so that they would assist the revolutionary cause. All appointments and ranks of subordinate officers in the revolutionary army, as well as those of other conspirators who might wish to cooperate with the cause, would be reviewed by their superiors. ‘‘The movement having gathered force, and once having possessed ourselves of the States alluded to, we shall proclaim them as an Independent Republic, later requesting (if it be through expedient annexation to Mexico, without concerning ourselves at that time about the form of government which may control the destinies of the common mother country.’’ When the revolutionary movement had obtained independence for the blacks, the revolutionaries would grant them a banner, ‘‘which they themselves shall be permitted to select,’’ and the revolutionists would aid them in obtaining ‘‘six States of the American Union, which states border on those already mentioned,’’ so the blacks could form an independent republic of their own. ‘‘None of the leaders shall have the power to make terms with the enemy, without first communicating with their superior officers of the army, bearing in mind that this is a war without quarter; nor shall any leader enroll in his ranks any foreigners unless said foreigner belong to the Latin, the Negro, or the Japanese race.’’ It is understood that upon the triumph of the cause, no member of this conspiracy would fail to recognize his superior, nor to aid others seeking to destroy ‘‘what has been accomplished by such great work.’’ As soon as possible, each local junta would select delegates who would elect a Permanent Directorate of the Revolutionary Congress. At this meeting the powers and duties of the Permanent Directorate would be determined, and the revolutionary plan could be amended or revised. It was understood that the revolutionists would achieve the independence of the blacks, and that ‘‘on no account will we accept aid, either moral or pecuniary, from the Government of Mexico; and it need not consider itself under any obligations in this, our movement.’’

Source: Charles H. Harris III, and Louis R. Sadler. The Texas Rangers and the Mexican Revolution: The Bloodiest Decade, 1910 1920. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2004. pp. 210 212.

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171. Excerpts from ‘‘Immigration Bill Enacted over Veto,’’ 1917 This 1917 legislation was called the Literacy Act, but it also had other objectionable provisions. It reduced European immigration to the United States to a trickle since most immigrants were not literate. It exempted Mexicans because they were vital to agriculture and the railroads, and legislation sponsors could not have gotten the support of the Western growers, so Mexicans were admitted under an exemption. The following excerpts give the background of the act that was passed over the veto of President Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924). The act barred all illiterate immigrants over the age of 16 from immigration to the United States, and it also excluded most Asians. It is because of the latter that Wilson vetoed the bill because he did not believe the literacy provision was warranted.

WASHINGTON, Feb. 5. By a vote of 62 to 19 the Senate today repassed the Immigration bill, containing the literacy test, thus enacting it into law despite the President’s veto. The House repassed the bill over the veto last week by a vote of 287 to 106. By this action, the first time a veto by President Wilson has been overridden, Congress has at last ended a fight for the restriction of immigration by the literacy test which began in 1897, when President Cleveland vetoed the measure. President Taft also vetoed the provision, and President Wilson has done so twice. The first time Mr. Wilson refused his signature, the bill was repassed by the Senate with a sufficient majority to override the veto, but failed of the necessary two-thirds vote in the House. The law goes into effect May 1. The literacy test, President Wilson declared in his recent veto message, is unjust in principle, constituting a test, not of character but of opportunity. He also objected that the provision of the bill which permits immigration officials to exempt from the operation of the test foreigners who, in their judgment, are fleeing from religious persecution would raise delicate questions which might involve this nation in international difficulties.…

VOTE ON REPASSAGE OF THE BILL The vote today was non-partisan, 34 Democrats and 28 Republicans voting for the bill and 11 Democrats and 8 Republicans voting to sustain the veto.…

SAYS JAPAN HAS OBJECTED ‘‘I am authorized to say to the Senate,’’ he went on, ‘‘that the Japanese Embassy has called attention to this language. The State Department feels that the clause may be the occasion of some misunderstanding, and is exceedingly desirous that nothing shall be done which will cause the Japanese Government to feel that we have in any way impinged upon the understanding that now exists.’’ Under the present wording, the bill excludes by geographical limitation Asiatics coming from certain countries. Japan was expressly omitted from this restriction at the request of the State Department because the immigration of Japanese labor is now forbidden by a ‘‘gentlemen’s agreement’’ between the two nations, and the

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Japanese Embassy objected to having Japan discriminated against specifically while the Japanese Government was carrying out this agreement faithfully. ‘‘Senators from the Pacific Coast attempted to secure definite restriction of the Japanese in spite of this, but the Senate refused to permit it. The conference committee which framed the final draft of the bill finally agreed on a clause, to follow the geographical restriction paragraph, reading, ‘‘And no alien now in any way excluded from or prevented from entering the United States shall be admitted to the United States.’’ This, Sen. Reed asserted, was objectionable to the Japanese as referring to the existence of the agreement. It was said by an official at the State Department today, however, that some misunderstanding must have occurred, as, so far as he knew, the Japanese Embassy had made no objection to the bill in its present from. The final draft of the bill was decided upon after Secretary Lansing had conferred with the committee on this particular point. Sen. Smith of South Carolina, Chairman of the Immigration Committee, answered Sen. Reed with the declaration that the present state of international affairs emphasized the necessary for a pure, homogeneous American people, such as the bill was intended to protect. Source: New York Times, February 6, 1917, p. 12.

172. ‘‘Press Move for Loyalty,’’ 1917 In 1917, there were strikes throughout the mining camps of Arizona. Miners had been provoked by copper-mine owners to strike in order to break the union movements that had gained a foothold in the state. The Bisbee Deportation of 1917 was instigated by copper barons led by Walter Douglas of Phelps Dodge to break the Bisbee, Arizona, strike in July 1917. Over 1,100 miners were rounded up in Bisbee, Arizona, loaded on a train, and dumped in the middle of the New Mexican desert. The pretext was that the strikers were un-American and led by the radical Industrial Workers of the World (I.W.W.), an anarchist group. In reality, the mine owners wanted to get rid of the Western Federation of Miners (WFM), a moderate group belonging to the American Federation of Labor (AFL). Shortly before this, miners had been deported from Jerome, Arizona, in June. No one was ever convicted of this gross violation of the U.S. Constitution. After the deportation, workers were forced to prove that they were not members of a labor union. The following is an eyewitness account.

[BY A. P. NIGHT WIRE] BISBEE (Ariz.) July 19 A meeting of operators of copper mines in Arizona is to be held within the next week, it was announced today, for the purpose of initiating a movement to extend the ‘‘Loyalty Legion’’ movement to most of the camps in this section and for the Americanization of inborn employed at all but the CliftonMorenci-Metcalf district. The stand against employment of foreign miners was first taken by Bisbee companies. The Old Dominion plant at Globe, it was declared here today, has taken a similar stand. The Clifton-Morenci-Metcalf district has ores of such a class that no attempt will be made to supplant foreigners with Americans there as yet, it was said.

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The move to organize ‘‘Loyalty Leagues’’ is described as the operator’s effort to offset the activities of the Industrial Workers of the World. There were no deportations from Bisbee today. The Citizens’ Investigating Committee, however, spent a busy day examining about seventy-five men seeking employment at the mines. Foreigners applying were told to wait until later. The Copper Queen Mine had 1,465 men at work yesterday. Its normal number is 2,200. Copper operators here say they will welcome investigation of the deportations a week ago, but declare it must be made by a fair investigating body and should include events immediately preceding the deportations. ‘‘Buck’’ Leggott, a cageman at the Junction mine, was killed and two other workmen were injured today in an accident which had no connection with the strike.

EXAMINE APPLICANTS The investigation committee was in session all day today, examining 113 applicants. Miles Merrill, a miner, and president of the Workmen’s Loyalty League, conducts these examinations, assisted by Bassett Watkins and others. All applicants are given an opportunity to state their cases, spectators are permitted to ask questions and a decision is then arrived at as to the disposition of the case under consideration. A miner who was born in East Prussia, but who said he was a naturalized American, was examined late today. Witnesses appeared against him, he answered their charges, and M. J. Cunningham, a banker, vouched for his good character and he was finally released and permitted to return to work. An American who belonged to the Industrial Workers of the World, and who said he thought the recent round-up was ‘‘most un-American’’ was permitted to remain until he could arrange his affairs, and then leave town. Three others were allowed to leave camp today. At the conclusion of the hearing today, Merrill made a statement to the men examined, setting forth the position of the volunteer organization which conducted the round-up. ‘‘We considered this I.W.W. movement one against the government,’’ he said. ‘‘It was not a local Bisbee labor disagreement, but apparently a nation-wide movement to embarrass the government and we took the bull by the horns and found our own solution of the difficulty. We welcome workers, but we want no agitators.’’ Source: Los Angeles Times; July 20, 1917; p. I3.

173. Excerpt from the 1918 Amendment to the Espionage Act of 1917 The Espionage Act of 1917, passed on June 15, 1917, made it a crime for a person to convey information with the intent to interfere with the operation or success of the armed forces of the United States. The offense was punishable by a maximum fine of $10,000 and 20 years in prison. The act was passed to suppress all dissent and was used against progressives. Many of

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those deported were Latinos who belonged to labor unions. The law intimidated activists. It was important because it was in large part directed the against foreign-born and follows an anti-foreign tradition of this country dating from the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798. The following are excerpts from this convoluted act.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That section three of title one of the Act entitled ‘‘An Act to Punish Acts of Interference with the Foreign Relations, the Neutrality, and the Foreign Commerce of the United States, to Punish Espionage, and Better to Enforce the Criminal Laws of the United States, and for Other Purposes,’’ approved June fifteenth, nineteen hundred and seventeen, be, and the same is hereby, amended so as to read as follows: Section 3. Whoever, when the United States is at war, shall willfully make or convey false reports or false statements with intent to interfere with the operation or success of the military or naval forces of the United States, or to promote the success of its enemies, or shall willfully make or convey false reports or false statements, or say or do anything except by way of bona fide and not disloyal advice to an investor or investors, with intent to obstruct the sale by the United States of bonds or other securities of the United States or the making of loans by or to the United States, and whoever, when the United States is at war, shall willfully cause or attempt to cause, or incite, or attempt to incite, insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, or refusal of duty in the military or naval forces of the United States, or shall willfully obstruct or attempt to obstruct the recruiting or enlistment services of the United States, and whoever, when the United States is at war, shall willfully utter, print, write, or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of government of the United States or the Constitution of the United States, or the military or naval forces of the United States, or the flag of the United States, or the uniform of the Army or Navy of the United States into contempt, scorn, contumely, or disrepute, or shall willfully utter, print, write, or publish any language intended to incite, provoke, or encourage resistance to the United States, or to promote the cause of its enemies, or shall willfully display the flag of any foreign enemy, or shall willfully by utterance, writing, printing, publication, or language spoken, urge, incite, or advocate any curtailment of production in this country of any thing or things, product or products, necessary or essential to the prosecution of the war in which the United States may be engaged, with intent by such curtailment to cripple or hinder the United States in the prosecution of war, and whoever shall willfully advocate, teach, defend, or suggest the doing of any of the acts or things in this section enumerated, and whoever shall by word or act support or favor the cause of any country with which the United States is at war or by word or act oppose the cause of the United States therein, shall be punished by a fine of not more than $10,000 or the imprisonment for not more than twenty years, or both: Provided, That any employee or official of the United States Government who commits any disloyal act or utters any unpatriotic or disloyal language, or who, in an abusive and violent manner criticizes the Army or Navy or the flag of the United States shall be at once dismissed from the service. Any such employee shall be dismissed by the head of the department in which the employee may be engaged, and any such

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official shall be dismissed by the authority having power to appoint a successor to the dismissed official. Section 4. When the United States is at war, the Postmaster General may, upon evidence satisfactory to him that any person or concern is using the mails in violation of any of the provisions of this Act, instruct the postmaster at any post office at which mail is received addressed to such person or concern, to return to the postmaster at the office at which they were originally mailed, all letters or other matter so addressed, with the words ‘‘Mail to this address undeliverable under Espionage Act’’ plainly written or stamped upon the outside thereof, and all such letters or other matter so returned to such postmasters shall be by them returned to the senders thereof under such regulations as the Postmaster General may prescribe. Source: Citizensource, http://www.citizensource.com/History/20thCen/Espionage1917.htm.

174. Excerpt from Gilberto Hinojosa, ‘‘WWI Veteran also Crusader for Rights,’’ 2003 Jos
e de la Luz Saenz was born in South Texas, graduated from high school in Alice in 1905, became a teacher, joined the army, and served in World War I. After the war, he wrote a book titled Los Mexico-Americanos y la Gran Guerra y Su Contingente en Pro de la Democracia, la Humanidad y La Justicia: Mi Diario Particular (Mexican Americans and the Great War, Their Army for Democracy, Humanity and Justice: My Personal Diary). Witnessing racism as a child, upon his return from the war, he was active in the social and political life of Mexicans. S
aenz in 1929, was a founder of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC). LULAC was the first national Mexican American organization dedicated to organizing middle-class Mexican Americans who were citizens of the United States. A requirement for membership was the ability to speak English. LULAC still exists and has the longest record in the arena of civil rights.

Because of his language expertise, Saenz served in the Intelligence Section of the 36th Infantry Regiment of the 90th Division of the American Expeditionary Forces between February 1918 to June 1919. ‘‘My country’s call took me from where I was, teaching the children of my people, and placed me where I could defend their honor, their racial pride, [so] I could assure them a happier future,’’ wrote Saenz of his military service. That ‘‘happiness would never be complete’’ for Saenz ‘‘without the removal of that hateful historical and social prejudice against our people in Texas.’’ Many others served in the Great War. Some units were made up overwhelmingly of Mexicans and Mexican Americans who, because they did not know English, could not avail themselves of legitimate exemptions from the draft. Even when they applied, they were not likely to be exempted. Such was the case of Simon Gonzalez from Martindale, who was his elderly father’s sole caregiver. As it turned out, the father died alone. Shortly thereafter, Gonzalez was killed in action. But Saenz remained optimistic. ‘‘Perhaps this obvious demonstration of our loyalty,’’ he wrote, ‘‘will have underscored our manner of fulfilling our duty as loyal citizens.’’ Mexican and Mexican American service is especially significant in light of rumors that the United States was to declare war against Mexico to counteract any German intention to recruit Mexico into the conflict. German spies and provocateurs were

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supposedly inciting Mexican Americans in South Texas to rebel against Americans or such was the very convenient interpretation given to any protest against injustices and discrimination. In fact, many U.S.-born Mexican Americans such as Saenz and many naturalized immigrants were either members or supporters of citizenship organizations that promoted naturalization and full participation in the American political system. Most of the so-called ‘‘radical’’ activities on the part of Mexicanos were in the labor unions. Additionally, Mexican Americans were seeking equal educational opportunities and an end to segregationist practices. They were seeking to change the social structure. After the war, Saenz and others re-entered that crusade, joining organizations such as the League of United Latin American Citizens. In war and peace, they were ‘‘fighting for humanity’’ and forjando patria, building their country. ‘‘If we die,’’ wrote Saenz, ‘‘it will be defending the honor of our people for our nation and demonstrating with our example to our children and other fellow Mexicanos how one can die to make a NATION.’’ C 2003 San AntoSource: San Antonio Express-News [Metro Edition], Nov 10, 2003. p. 05.B.
nio Express-News, reprinted with permission.

175. Excerpt from Lon C. Hill’s Testimony before Albert B. Fall Committee, 1920 Congressional investigations were held in 1919–1920 to investigate claims of brutality toward Mexicans. In Texas, there were calls for the abolition of the Texas Rangers, who many claimed wantonly lynched Mexicans. University of Texas historian Walter Prescott Webb (1888–1963) who wrote The Texas Rangers in 1935, later excused the Rangers, blaming Mexicans for the violence on the border. He supported the testimony of Lon C. Hill, who testified at the Senate hearings. Hill blamed Ricardo Flores Mag
on for the violence and Mexicans for creating the overreaction. It was a matter of preemptive strikes against terrorists.

Q. A. Q. A.

Q. A.

Now, what was the general condition about that time among the citizens on the border down there did they feel safe under the protection of their flag? No, sir; no. They were just in this fix, gentlemen: All the Americans … the biggest part of them, were going this way [indicating]. Which way? Up north, up the railroad, getting out of that country. And all the Mexicans were going that way [indicating towards Mexico], and the people, they came into town and lived the people that lived out in the country … They brought their women and children into town, and a great many just got on the train, left their chickens and hogs and cows, and everything else, and just went to Corpus and San Antonio, and went from there to Canada just scattered all over the country.… What were the objects of those raids? Well, Senator, … that is a question that bothered us down there for a good little while. What were they up to? Now, when the thing first started we couldn’t understand … why those fellows there would want to come over there and steal a few cows … and run across the river.… We got to investigating … and we

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Q. A.

Q. A. Q. A. Q. A. Q. A. Q. A.

Q. A.

found out that they had been sending off a lot of money through the post office … and they sent a world of money to Los Angeles, California … to a firm known as the Magnon Bros. Ricardo Magnon? [sic] I think he is the fellow. Well, they sent worlds of money over there, and they had all kinds of literature from California on this I.W.W. stuff.… Well, now, they would send this money off, and then they would order guns and ammunition … lots of it … and it … got noised around … that they were trying to take that country and they said they were going to run all of the Gringos out of there. Well, to my mind and to the other fellows’, that was absolutely inconceivable … how a bunch of Mexicans would take a fool idea in their heads that they were going to kill all those Americans and take all that country; it was just laughable to us that they really meant it. But they were coming … they would tell us coming … in bunches and take your horses and burn up your houses and kill you and then, after a while, they were just going to come over in a great big army and take the whole country.… Well … the inside dope … we could never get it from the leaders … but we would get hold of some fellow, and they would tell us … and ask them what in the name of goodness is the matter with you Mexicans; are you all going crazy here? Well, what are you up to; what are you going to do? ‘‘Well,’’ they said, ‘‘we have organized, and we have got some foreigners going to help us, and we are going to take all the land back that you Gringos stole from us before the constitution of 1857.’’ What term did they use to describe these foreigners? Well, ‘‘enrejados’’ [sic] something like that. Extranjeros? That is it; that is the name. Do the Mexicans … by the term ‘‘extranjeros’’ … mean Mexican citizens? No; they don’t. Do they mean Americans? No; they don’t; them fellows didn’t; they meant Alemans, to come out and tell you the right of it. Aleman means a German? Aleman means a German. They would tell you they had instruction not to kill any Germans and not to molest any Germans and … there was a whole raft of Germans came down there and lived down there, and on both sides of that river, too. They … would say that they were going to take the country between the Rio Grande and the Nueces.… And they were going to take it back? Yes, sir; and the Aleman was going to help them, furnish them ammunition, money, and everything.

Source: Fall, Albert B. United States Congress. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. Investigation of Mexican affairs preliminary report and hearings of the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, pursuant to S. res. 106, directing the Committee on Foreign Relations to investigate the matter of outrages on citizens of the United States in Mexico (Washington DC: G.P.O., 1920), p. 1253.

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176. Excerpt from Walter Prescott Webb, The Texas Rangers: A Century of Frontier Defense, 1935 Walter Precott Webb (1888–1963) was a giant among Texas historians. He was president of the American Historical Association and a professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin. Throughout his writing career he was an apologist for the Texas Rangers, a special police force first organized in the 1820s to deal with Indians. Webb described the Rangers as the protectors of civilization. They had to be ruthless to deal with Mexicans and Indians who were treacherous, according to Webb. In excusing the Rangers in the following excerpt, he does not use facts but the testimony of a wealthy rancher who was notoriously anti-Mexican. Webb wrote or edited more than twenty books. The Texas Rangers: A Century of Frontier Defense (1935) is still considered by some as the definitive study of this frontier law enforcement agency and is often quoted by Texas historians. The problem is that he excludes the Mexican viewpoint—that is, the Mexican side of the controversies. He twists Hill’s testimony to show that Americans did not know what they were doing. Webb did not offer hard facts to support his conclusions.

The testimony of Lon Hill indicates the confusion that existed in the minds of the Americans when the Mexicans began their inexplicable raids. There were strange rumors of great plans that were [afoot] to take Texas, but as Hill said, it was inconceivable ‘‘how a bunch of Mexicans would take a fool idea in their heads that they were going to kill all those Americans and take all that country.’’ The mystery was deepened when the Americans learned that some of their own Mexicans, people who had lived in close harmony with them for years, were joining the raiders. Source: Walter Prescott Webb, The Texas Rangers: A Century of Frontier Defense. Austin: UniC 1935 and
C 1965, renewed 1993. p. 482. versity of Texas Press,


177. ‘‘Mexicans Given Baths,’’ 1917 There have been countless acts of courage by minority women who refused to suffer indignities. The border is full of incidents where people stood up and said y
a basta! That’s enough! In El Paso, Texas Mexicans were routinely forced to undergo strip searches and were fumigated with toxic gases. In 1917, Carmelita Torres, age 17, refused to take a gasoline bath when she entered the United States. The excuses for administering baths was that Mexicans spread typhoid or that Mexicans had lice. Often the soldiers would stare at the disrobed women as they were forced to take the DDT baths. The year before, Mexican inmates in El Paso were given a similar bath with gasoline and were burned to death when a fire ignited the gas. Carmelita, tired of suffering this indignity, agitated the other passengers on a trolley. Thirty trolley passengers joined the protest, touching off two days of uprisings. The following article describes the encounter.

[BY A. P. DAY WIRE] EL PASO, Jun. 30 Nine hundred and twenty-nine Mexicans were given baths at the United States immigration station today, the third day of the enforcement of

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quarantine regulations as a preventative of typhus fever. No rioting occurred during the day, and the danger of a repetition of the ‘‘bath riots’’ is now believed by the United States health officers to have passed. The only disturbance today was when two Mexican men and one woman were arrested by local police officers at the American end of the international bridge. They were placed in the City Jail on charges of inciting a riot, the specific charge being that they crossed the international line and assaulted Sgt. J. M. Peck of the Twenty-Third United States Infantry and Inspector Roy Scuyler of the customs service. The woman was later dismissed and the men fined in Police Court. A mutual arrangement has been made by the American and Mexican health officers by which certificates from the Juarez disinfecting plant will be accepted by the American officers. Source: Los Angeles Times, January 31, 1917, p. I5.

178. ‘‘‘Viva Villa’ Shouted in Riots at Juarez,’’ 1917 Mexicans were often stereotyped as dirty by Euro-Americans and accused of bringing plagues and diseases into the United States. During the first decades of the twentieth century, U.S. health authorities sprayed Mexican commuters and visitors with noxious and toxic chemicals, they said, to delouse Mexican entering the United States. Mexicans were fumigated with DDT and other insecticides. In the 1920s, authorities at the Santa Fe Bridge that joined Ju
arez and El Paso deloused Mexicans with Zyklon B which was later used by the Nazis at their border crossings. Mexican women were often forced to disrobe as soldiers peeked. In 1917, Carmelita Torres, a seventeen–year–old maid, refused to disrobe and be gassed. A riot followed as other women joined her.

THOUSANDS OF MEXICANS BLOCK TRAFFIC IN ANTI-AMERICAN DEMONSTRATION [BY A. P. NIGHT WIRE] EL PASO (Tex.) Jun. 28 A misunderstanding over quarantine regulations led to a riot at the Juarez end of the main international bridge today, which threatened for a time to assume dangerous proportions. Energetic measures taken by the Carranza garrison and a conference between the American and Mexican immigration officials later brought about an arrangement satisfactory to the Mexicans and quiet was restored. The rioters were mostly Mexican women, employed as servants in El Paso, who resented the placing in effect of an American quarantine order that all persons of unclean appearance seeking to cross the bridge be given a shower bath and their clothing be disinfected to kill the typhus-bearing vermin. WOMEN INDIGNANT Women, stopped by the authorities, returned to Juarez and circulated stories that all were to receive a bath in a gasoline mixture, similar to that which resulted in a fire in the El Paso Jail last March, in which more than a score of persons were

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burned to death. Stories also were circulated that American soldiers were photographing the women while bathing, and making the pictures public. Excited women thronged the Mexican side of the bridge, held up streetcars and completely blocked traffic for several hours. They shouted defiantly, waved controller bars at the helpless manager of the street car system, scurried against the shade of the bridge walls when a moving picture man tried to take them, and had a good time generally. Some of the American carmen were roughly handled and several car windows were broken. Mexican men, who attempted to cross to El Paso, had their hats snatched off and thrown into the Rio Grande. Andres Garcia, inspector-general of Carranza consulates, and Sorlano Bravo, the Consul-General, advanced in a motor car that was shoved back by the women, some of whom later shouted, ‘‘Viva Villa’’ when they tried to address the mob. But the garrison soldiery appeared and pressed the women back from the bridge. The Villa demonstration seemed to be due to a sprit of mischief. SHOTS ARE FIRED Several shots were heard in succession at this time, but Carranza officers and government investigators say no one was hurt, despite a detailed story that spread through El Paso that a peon had been killed for shouting: ‘‘Long live Villa, death to Carranza.’’ It was said that the shots were intended to cow the mob. At an international conference held at noon it was arranged that the American authorities would recognize bath and sterilization certificates issued by the Mexicans, who have an effective quarantine plant. Because of the riot, the races on the Juarez track were called off and the gambling halls closed. A black flag with skull and cross bones in white, which was displayed by the Carranza cavalrymen on the Juarez end of the bridge, created excitement among American spectators who were ignorant of its significance. The flag is the divisional flag adopted by Gen. Francisco Murguia on taking charge of the present campaign against Villa. Its significance was explained in ‘‘Death to Villa’’ and it was first made public when Murguia’s troops reoccupied Chihuahua City. Source: Los Angeles Times, January 29, 1917, p. I1.

PART XII The Gateway to the Americas Prior to 1848 the focus of U.S. foreign policy in the Caribbean was Cuba. It was the largest island in the Caribbean and only ninety miles from the Florida shore. The Gem of the Antilles was in ruins following the Spanish-American war. The Treaty of Paris (1898) legitimized the U.S. occupation of Cuba, and U.S. troops occupied the island until 1902 when it handed over the governance to what many called a puppet government. The Platt Amendment, passed in 1902, gave the United States the right to intervene militarily and the right to lease Guantanamo Bay for a naval base in perpetuity. The economy of the island was based on sugar, and Euro-American capital controlled Cuban finance, agriculture, and industry. Even before the war, Euro-Americans owned fifty million dollars in Cuban sugar, tobacco, and iron industries. Cuban migration to the United States during the first part of the twentieth century greatly depended on political conditions on the island and the economic class of the migrant. The ninety miles of sea was a major obstacle to migration. The roots of Cuban labor within the United States remained in tobacco. The fortunes of Puerto Ricans also changed. The Foraker Act (1900) set up a territorial government that was largely run by a Euro-American governor. The United States established commerce between the mainland and its vassal. U.S. rule meant that American capital enjoyed a financial and political hegemony on the island. Puerto Rico was a colony; before the occupation, its economy was based on some tobacco, sugar cane, and small subsistent farms. They elected delegates to both houses of the Spanish Courts. Under U.S. rule, Puerto Ricans had no vote in the U.S. Congress and no voice in the election of a governor. It became a one-crop economy with the subsistent farmer being uprooted. The economy was monopolized by corporations from the U.S. mainland. High profits were made by paying low wages and siphoning profits to the mainland. Puerto Rico was about a thousand miles from the United States, mostly by sea. Closer to Venezuela than the United States, there was little migration off the island. Culturally Puerto Rico was Latin American. Its people did not ask to be part of the United States. The commercialization of the island uprooted the people who were vulnerable to labor recruitment. Labor contractors paid for transportation deducting it from the workers’ wages. This labor recruitment shaped Puerto Rican communities in the United States. From 1900 to 1910, 2,000 Puerto Ricans emigrated; 1910 to 1920, 11,000; 1920 to 1930, 42,000. The favorite destination was New York City. The Borinquen communities on the mainland grew from about 1,500 in 1910 to 12,000 in 1920 to 53,000 in 1930. The Jones Act (1917) made Puerto Ricans citizens removing all barriers to migration to the United States. As a consequence of the war, Puerto Rican migration accelerated after this period.

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In the worldview of the United States, the Caribbean and Central America were inseparable; this link was forged in steel when construction began in 1904 of the 51 mile route that linked the two oceans. The Chinese market and the relative ease of defeating Spain set the stage for what Euro-Americans considered the natural extension of the United States. According to U.S. thinking, it had to protect ‘‘its’’ canal and ‘‘its’’ investment and this meant policing the region. The roots of Central American and Caribbean migration can be traced to these interventions. The following document occurred within this context.

179. Excerpt from ‘‘Overcrowded Porto Rico,’’ 1916 Before the Euro-American occupation beginning in 1898, Puerto Rico was a nation of subsistence farmers called jibaros. The U.S. occupation introduced laws that favored the expansion of plantations and corporate interests that were attracted to the island because of low production costs. The further commercialization of agriculture led to a drastic decline in the number of small farmers, many of whom were uprooted and forced to seek employment in factories in the cities of the island and the U.S. mainland. Many ended up on plantations in Hawaii and Arizona, where workers were in great demand. Problems for small farmers increased when Puerto Rican islands like Vieques came under the control of the U.S. Navy. The lack of land caused not only poverty, but hunger. U.S. policymakers attempted to explain this poverty, and the diaspora of Puerto Ricans, by raising the pretext of overpopulation. The following excerpt is from an article that illustrates the American sentiment at the time that the island of Puerto Rico was overcrowded in comparison to other nations. This mindset would influence future U.S. policy in Puerto Rico.

The gross area of the island, land, and water, including the small adjacent and dependent islands, is 3,435 square miles, and the present population therefore is nearly 350 to the square mile. This is a greater density than that of China proper (200 to the square mile in 1910) or of India (175) or of Japan (362). It is more than ten times greater than that of the United States proper (30.9) and over three times as great as that of New England (105.7). In fact, there are only two states in the American Union that have more people per square mile, viz., Massachusetts (419) and Rhode Island (509), and in these states about three-fourths of the people live in cities and depend upon manufactures, while in Porto Rico only about 10 per cent of the people live in cities of more than 10,000 population and there are almost no manufactures. In short, if we consider both the area and the industrial development of this little island there is perhaps no region in the world, save Java, more densely populated. The island is about four-fifths mountainous, much of it so steep that it can hardly be cultivated, and yet this great population is so evenly distributed over its whole surface that the center of population is only about 5 miles in a straight line from the geographical center of Porto Rico. Moreover, the population has been produced by the natural increase of the people of the island. There is practically no immigration and, according to the census of 1910, only about one percent of the people are of foreign birth. Furthermore, the population is still steadily increasing. The first census, taken by the Americans in 1899, enumerated in round numbers 953,000 persons in Porto

The Gateway to the Americas

Rico. At the present time they exceed that number by 250,000. By comparison with the census taken by the Spanish government in 1887, which enumerated 732,000, we find that in the twenty-two years immediately preceding the coming of the Americans there was an increase of 221,000 people, or about 30 percent, while in the sixteen years since the American annexation there has been an increase of 250,000, or about 27 percent. To put it another way, during the latter part of the Spanish period, the average annual increase was about 1.3 percent, while during the whole of the American period, it has been 1.6 percent. The increase last year, according to the official reports of births and deaths, was 24,000, or 2 percent, of the whole population. This rapid increase in population has been made possible by the commercial expansion and industrial development that has followed the American occupation.… Source: Geographical Review, Vol. 1, No. 3 (March 1916), pp. 211 212.


n, 180. Excerpt from the Deposition of Rafael F. Marcha October 24, 1918 As the United States passed laws that excluded or limited the number of immigrants, the people of Puerto Rico became a reserve labor pool for U.S. agriculture and industry. In 1918, a U.S. Employment Service Bulletin estimated that 75,000 unemployed Puerto Rican workers on the island could be used elsewhere in case of a shortage of labor. Meanwhile, the island was administered by military officers trained in the Indian and border wars. The U.S. Navy took a proprietary interest of islands’ harbors. It was, from the American point of view, a perfect colonial situation. The War Department entered into an agreement to ship Puerto Ricans to war plants and military bases on the mainland. Conditions were often horrible in many of the labor camps to which Puerto Ricans were sent, and amounted to forced labor. Records have been left of workers appealing to authorities on the island for help. The passage below is the 1918 deposition of Rafael March
an who appealed to the commissioner of labor to intervene in the situation, alleging that in 1918 conditions were so bad in Arkansas labor camps that nearly two dozen Puerto Rican—or Borinquen, as was their native name from the indigenous Ta
ıno Indians—workers died. The document is important because it records the struggle of Borinquen workers to protect their human rights.

Rafael F. March
an, being first duly sworn, deposes and says: That he is a native of Porto Rico, and a citizen of the United States, twenty-seven years old, married, and temporarily residing at Camp Bragg, Fayetteville, North Carolina; that he, and some other 1,700 Porto Ricans, were induced and persuaded, directly or indirectly, by Mr. F. C. Roberts, Special Agent, Bureau of Immigration, Department of Labor, to come, and did come, to this country for the purpose of cooperating within the scope of their respective ability, in the noble task of carrying on this war to a successful issue, by contributing their labor to American industries and works, it being distinctly and clearly understood at the time, that he, the affiant, Rafael F. March
an, and the other Porto Ricans, as aforesaid, came under the aegis and protection of the Government, and that he and they were to be employed in their respective trades or such occupations as they were fit for; that it was equally and specifically understood

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at the said time also that the housing accommodations and living and working conditions were to be of such a kind as to insure their health and comfort, and that proper measures would be taken to provide for their welfare and protection against mistreatment and abuse while employed in such work as aforesaid; that it was further understood that the said affiant and the other Porto Ricans as aforesaid, were to be sent to such States of the Union as are farthest south, where the climate and general conditions are more similar to those under which they have been accustomed to live and work. It was also understood that if any or all of the said Porto Ricans should not be satisfied with working or living conditions or should merely wish to change to some other work for which he or they were competent or fit for or to some other place of his or their choosing, he or they could do so, and that they were not to be restrained in their personal liberty or in any way compelled to do any kind of work or live in any given place against their will. The affiant, Rafael F. March
an, further deposes and says, that he and the other Porto Ricans as aforesaid were brought from Porto Rico to this country in the Government Transport City of Savannah, through the Port of Wilmington, Delaware, whence they were brought to Camp Bragg, at Fayetteville, North Carolina, on September 29, 1918, where they were housed in improperly constructed barracks without protection from the cold weather; that so far as he can make out they were turned over to James Stewart and Company, Inc., contractors for the construction of the said Camp, to work for them under conditions and terms wholly unsatisfactory to them, the said affiant and the other Porto Ricans as aforesaid, who, without any distinction or discrimination as to capacity or qualifications, were on the next and successive days ordered to clear the grounds of timber and brush for the Camp, with the exception of a few of them who were detailed to hospitals, offices, etc. The affiant, Rafael F. March
an, further deposes and says, that owing to the improper and unsanitary conditions under which the said Porto Ricans labor and live at the said Camp Bragg their health and comfort and even their lives are not only endangered and put in jeopardy but actually broken up and destroyed as it has been the case with some twenty-two of them who have died from utter lack of proper care and medical attention. And the affiant says that at the hospital the same drinking glass and other utensils are indiscriminately used by all without previous disinfection, with the resulting infection and contagion of such dreaded diseases as influenza, consumption, pneumonia, etc.; and the affiant further says that there have been cases of such utter and inhuman cruelty as to compel sick men under the pretext of their being lazy, to either go to work or be locked up, just because in fear of the ill treatment which they expected to receive at the hospital they would rather stay in their own beds, and when the men are sent to the hospital they are not always sure they will not be neglected and abused without any consideration or regard for their condition; and the affiant further says that there was a case of such apparent neglect and criminal negligence as to permit a man to die from a wound on his foot which was infected and aggravated by the first aid bandage which was put on it and never removed for about a week until he passed away; and that there was a notorious case of abuse of a sick man in the hospital who was ordered from his bed by the attending physician and when he would not do it as quickly as ordered, the said attending physician took him by the arm and violently threw him out of bed upon the floor. And the affiant further says that men are put to bed at the hospital with their working clothes on, that they all are given no other medicine or

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treatment than some ‘‘white tablets’’ which have become a sort of a joke among the Porto Ricans as being considered a sort of omnipresent cure-all or universal panacea for all ailments, from a simple cold to sore feet, pneumonia or rheumatism; and that the same holds true as to diet there being no difference made in this respect as between the very sick and those slightly ill. The affiant, Rafael F. March
an, further deposes and says, that these Porto Ricans are compelled to use mess books which are obtained at the office, and when men working far away from the said office arrive there a little late they are told to go without food because the man in charge is generally in a hurry to close up and go to town for the night, usually making some remark or excuse such as that there are no more mess books left, or that office hours are over, etc.; and the affiant says that at one time when a number of men went to work to some particular place a little ways off from the regular mess halls, they were compelled by force at the point of revolvers to take some food which they did not want because it was not satisfactory, and prevented from going to the regular mess halls, where they would prefer to go for their dinner, and those who resisted this outrageous imposition were violently pushed about and abused, and one was quite badly injured; and the affiant further says that at these regular mess halls they serve only one kind of food and if any of the men wishes to have something else within reason, such as a glass of milk, a couple of eggs or a piece of pie, etc., they are met with the invariable remark that they can not have it. And the affiant further says that, in exchange, those at the office can have most anything they wish while they pay exactly the same price for their food as the common laborers who must be contented to accept what they can get, to their detriment and with evident injustice to them. And the affiant further deposes and says, that as illustrating the general treatment accorded these Porto Ricans at the Camp, there have been such cases of outrageous unspeakable abuse and degrading ill treatment of the men that some have positively refused to continue at the Camp and announced their intention to leave, but have been prevented to do so by sheer compulsion of force, thus being deprived of their liberty and, what is still worse, compelled to remain in a state of involuntary servitude; and the affiant says, that even the Fire Chief, who evidently is a regular bully at the Camp has gone so far outside the scope of his authority at different occasions that the men under him are wont to look upon him as the terror of the place, the bulldog of the Camp, who has no hesitation in striking men with his fist or brandish his revolver in their faces; and the affiant further says that the acts of cruelty committed daily against these men are too numerous to be cited here in all their repulsive and disgusting details; that as illustrative of the callousness and heartlessness of the treatment accorded to these people by some of the men in authority at the Camp the case may be cited of a poor old man who was inhumanely knocked down and made to cry by one of these fiendish individuals who afterwards, finding him asleep near the same spot where he was knocked down, set fire to the dried leaves and twigs around his helpless form in order to frighten the old man, making him believe that he was to be burned alive. And the affiant further deposes and says that he has been instructed by a number of these Porto Ricans to lay before the Commissioner of Porto Rico their grievances with the request that the matter be taken up with the proper authorities of the Government with a view to have the proper remedy applied to a situation which has become unbearable; and the affiant says that the said petition to said Commissioner

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was not subscribed by all of the men, because it has to be done under secrecy in order to avoid detection at the Camp by those interested in having all these shameful things ignored and kept from the general public and the Government of the United States, even at the cost of further and greater crimes against them. (signed) Rafael F. March
an Subscribed and sworn to before me this 24th day of October 1918. (signed) illegible Notary Public, D.C. Source: ‘‘Rafael Marchan Statement,’’ October 24, 1918. Record of the Bureau of Insular Affairs, Record Group 350, File 1493 (Washington, DC: National Archives), 123 126. http://www.history matters.gmu.edu/d/5064/.

181. ‘‘Units of Old Guard Now All Recruited,’’ 1922 The history of Puerto Rican participation in World War I is just being pieced together. In 1917, Puerto Ricans were made citizens of the United States. In searching for documents on Puerto Rican war veterans, more often than not, the documents referred to Euro-Americans who had fought in the Spanish American War. The 65th Infantry Regiment nicknamed ‘‘The Borinqueneers’’ was an all-volunteer Puerto Rican regiment that served in World War I and later in World War II and the Korean War. Congress approved the unit on May 27, 1908, and in May 1917, the regiment recruited 1,969 men. It was sent to Panama to defend the Canal Zone. On the down side, the unit was often used for social control as a backup to the regular forces to put down labor and other unrest. In 1919, it was renamed ‘‘The 65th Infantry.’’ The following is one of the few newspaper accounts referring to Puerto Rican soldiers during this time. It suggests a build-up in recruitment from the island.

State Organization Has Been Virtually Doubled in the Last Year, Says Report 24,054 in Second Corps Regular Army Officers Expect to Have 35,000 by June—Work Is Praised The National Guard of the State has been virtually doubled during the past year and the Second Corps Area, embracing New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and Porto Rico, leads all other corps with 24,054 men. Although it has been necessary to renumber units of the National Guard whose old numbers were famous in pre-war days, the numbers assigned correspond with those allotted during the war, so that every one of the historic regiments of the city has been reorganized. A report on National Guard activities issued by Headquarters Second Corps shows that last January there were only 67 officers and 14,030 men in the corps. On Nov. 30 the corps had almost doubled, numbering 882 officers and 18,052 men. Similar progress has been made in other units, the report shows. Delaware, which last January had no National Guard, now has a force of 48 officers and 726 men. New Jersey has advanced from 142 officers and 2,542 men last January to 199 officers and 2,542 men, while Porto Rico, from 35 officers and 1,507 men, now has increased its unit to 46 officers and 1,616 men. Source: New York Times, January 15, 1922, p. 25.

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182. ‘‘Porto Ricans and America,’’ Letter from Rafael George Gatell to the Editor of the New York Times, 1921 The issue of race was an irritant with the better-off Puerto Ricans, who disagreed with the characterization of Puerto Ricans as being hybrid people. In the following article New York Times reader Rafael George Gatell took issue with this characterization, claiming that Puerto Rico was 100 percent white, descendants of the Spanish or French. He said that there were three social clubs that were purely white and denies the recent claims of former Consular Agent L. S. Delaplaine that the American flag had recently been disrespected by Puerto Ricans. Gatell insisted that Puerto Ricans were grateful to the United States for all it had done for them and happy that the Americans were in Puerto Rico.

To the Editor of the New York Times: I have read in today’s edition of your paper various statements made by L. S. Delaplaine Jr., formerly in the Consular Service of the United States in South America, regarding conditions prevailing in the island of Porto Rico. Fortunately, many sensible and friendly Americans have visited the island in the last years and do not share in the least this gentleman’s opinions. In the first place, Mr. Delaplaine states that ‘‘the native Porto Rican is the greatest hybrid on earth.’’ This is not so. The native Porto Rican is 100 percent white and is a descendant either from Spanish or French people. Naturally, there are colored Porto Ricans as well as there are colored Americans. In San Juan, which is the capital of the island, there are three social organizations, as follows: The Union Club (American), Spanish Casino, and Porto Rican Casino. They are all composed of the most refined and well educated Americans, Spaniards, and Porto Ricans, and are the places by which our race should be judged and not by visiting the colored section of the city. The Porto Ricans are grateful for what the United States had done for them, and that has been proved by facts in the recent World War. The quotas assigned to the island for Liberty Bond and Red Cross subscriptions were always oversubscribed and our loyalty to the flag demonstrated by the spirit of patriotism with which we accepted the Compulsory Military Service law. But that was not all. Hundreds of Porto Ricans enlisted voluntarily in the United States Army, and I have the honor to be one of them. While I must admit that we have now better roads and schools than previous to the American domination beginning in 1898, it should not be forgotten that these roads and schools were built with money from the Porto Rican Treasury and not from the Federal Treasury, as Mr. Delaplaine states. Therefore, the native Porto Ricans, through taxes, paid for their roads and schools. As a matter of justice I should say that the Military Road from San Juan to Ponce, considered one of the best roads in the whole world, was built during the Spanish domination and is a masterpiece of the Spanish civil engineers. It is the first time that I have heard that the American flag has been hissed by my countrymen and I doubt it, as I know them too well. To show how the present generation is Americanized it would be sufficient to ask a schoolboy who was

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Washington or Lincoln? On the other hand, if one inquired about prominent Porto Ricans, he probably might not know who they were. Mr. Delaplaine says that the Porto Ricans have no desire to be civilized, but he certainly did not see there, negroes being lynched and burned alive. His last compliment is calling us dirty. He saw the poorer suburbs of the cities. I wish that Mr. Delaplaine would visit certain sections of the east side of New York City. He will be certainly shocked. But it would not be fair for a Porto Rican tourist to call New York unclean, as the east side is only a part of the city. The American colony at San Juan will undoubtedly disapprove the action of this gentleman, aimed to destroy the brotherhood between Americans and Porto Ricans. Ralph George Gatell New York, Feb. 23, 1921 Source: New York Times, February 27, 1921, p. XX3.

183. James Weldon Johnson, ‘‘Self-Determining Haiti: IV. The Haitian People,’’ 1920 The issue of race was complex since the Latin American views of race differed from the Euro-American’s one-drop standard—if a person had one drop of African blood, then he or she was considered African. Latin Americans saw race as a continuum that had many categories and was affected by other variables. By the twentieth century, many mixed bloods labeled themselves white in order to step up in category and avoid discrimination. In many cases, the richer they were, the whiter they became. However, many Caribbean people were obviously mixed, and once in the United States, race became more important. In the United States, race was less flexible. Many Puerto Ricans and Cubans sharing space with African Americans crossed over and chose to be African American. Many U.S. African Americans recognized this relationship. James Weldon Johnson (1871–1938) was a leading African American author, critic, journalist, poet, anthropologist, educator, lawyer, songwriter, collector of folklore, and early civil rights activist. He was a prominent contributor to the Harlem Renaissance. Like other African American intellectuals, he felt a kinship to the inhabitants of the Caribbean. Johnson worked with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) from 1920 to 1931, and served as the organization’s secretary. In the following article for The Nation, Johnson described Port-au-Prince and life on the island of Haiti. Through writings such as Johnson’s, African Americans were introduced to the Caribbean and to African heritage outside the United States.

The first sight of Port-au-Prince is perhaps most startling to the experienced Latin-American traveler. Caribbean cities are of the Spanish-American type buildings square and squat, built generally around a court, with residences and business houses scarcely interdistinguishable. Port-au-Prince is rather a city of the French or Italian Riviera. Across the bay of deepest blue the purple mountains of Gonave loom against the Western sky, rivaling the bay’s azure depths. Back of the business section, spreading around the bay’s great sweep and well into the plain beyond, rise the green hills with their white residences. The residential section spreads over the slopes and into the mountain tiers. High up are the homes of the well-to-do,

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beautiful villas set in green gardens relieved by the flaming crimson of the poinsettia. Despite the imposing mountains, a man-made edifice dominates the scene. From the center of the city, the great Gothic cathedral lifts its spires above the tranquil city. Well paved and clean, the city prolongs the thrill of its first unfolding. Cosmopolitan yet quaint, with an old-world atmosphere yet a charm of its own, one gets throughout the feeling of continental European life. In the hotels and cafes the affairs of the world are heard discussed in several languages. The cuisine and service are not only excellent but inexpensive. At the Caf
e Dereix, cool and scrupulously clean, dinner from hors d’oeuvres to glaces, with wine, of course, recalling the famous antebellum hostelries of New York and Paris, may be had for six gourdes [$1.25]. A drive of two hours around Port-au-Prince, through the newer section of brick and concrete buildings, past the cathedral erected from 1903 to 1912, along the Champ de Mars where the new presidential palace stands, up into the Peu de Choses section where the hundreds of beautiful villas and grounds of the well-to-do are situated, permanently dispels any lingering question that the Haitians have been retrograding during the 116 years of their independence. In the lower city, along the water’s edge, around the market and in the Rue R
epublicaine, is the ‘‘local color.’’ The long rows of wooden shanties, the curious little booths around the market, filled with jabbering venders and with scantily clad children, magnificent in body, running in and out, are no less picturesque and no more primitive, no humbler, yet cleaner, than similar quarters in Naples, in Lisbon, in Marseilles, and more justifiable than the great slums of civilization’s centers London and New York, which are totally without aesthetic redemption. But it is only the modernists in history who are willing to look at the masses as factors in the life and development of the country, and in its history. For Haitian history, like history the world over, has for the last century been that of cultured and educated groups. To know Haitian life one must have the privilege of being received as a guest in the houses of these latter, and they live in beautiful houses. The majority have been educated in France; they are cultured, brilliant conversationally, and thoroughly enjoy their social life. The women dress well. Many are beautiful and all vivacious and chic. Cultivated people from any part of the world would feel at home in the best Haitian society. If our guest were to enter to the Cercle Bellevue, the leading club of Port-au-Prince, he would find the courteous, friendly atmosphere of a men’s club; he would hear varying shades of opinion on public questions, and could scarcely fail to be impressed by the thorough knowledge of world affairs possessed by the intelligent Haitian. Nor would his encounters be only with people who have culture and savoir vivre; he would meet the Haitian intellectuals poets, essayists, novelists, historians, critics. Take for example such a writer as Fernand Hibbert. An English authority says of him, ‘‘His essays are worthy of the pen of Anatole France or Pierre Loti.’’ And there is Georges Sylvaine, poet and essayist, conf
erencier at the Sorbonne, where his address was received with acclaim, author of books crowned by the French Academy, and an Officer of the L
egion d’Honneur. Hibbert and Sylvaine are only two among a dozen or more contemporary Haitian men of letters whose work may be measured by world standards. Two names that stand out preeminently in Haitian literature are Oswald Durand, the national poet, who died a few years ago, and Damocles Vieux. These people, educated, cultured, and intellectual, are not accidental and sporadic offshoots of the Haitian people; they are the Haitian people and they are a demonstration of its inherent potentialities.

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However, Port-au-Prince is not all of Haiti. Other cities are smaller replicas, and fully as interesting are the people of the country districts. Perhaps the deepest impression on the observant visitor is made by the country women. Magnificent as they file along the country roads by scores and by hundreds on their way to the town market, with white or colored turbaned heads, gold-looped-ringed ears, they stride along straight and lithe, almost haughtily, carrying themselves like so many Queens of Sheba. The Haitian country people are kind-hearted, hospitable, and polite, seldom stupid but rather, quick-witted and imaginative. Fond of music, with a profound sense of beauty and harmony, they live simply but wholesomely. Their cabins rarely consist of only one room, the humblest having two or three, with a little shed front and back, a front and rear entrance, and plenty of windows. An aesthetic touch is never lacking a flowering hedge or an arbor with trained vines bearing gorgeous colored blossoms. There is no comparison between the neat plastered-wall, thatched-roof cabin of the Haitian peasant and the traditional log hut of the South or the shanty of the more wretched American suburbs. The most notable feature about the Haitian cabin is its invariable cleanliness. At daylight the country people are up and about, the women begin their sweeping till the earthen or pebble-paved floor of the cabin is clean as can be. Then the yards around the cabin are vigorously attacked. In fact, nowhere in the country districts of Haiti does one find the filth and squalor which may be seen in any backwoods town in our own South. Cleanliness is a habit and a dirty Haitian is a rare exception. The garments even of the men who work on the wharves, mended and patched until little of the original cloth is visible, give evidence of periodical washing. The writer recalls a remark made by Mr. E. P. Pawley, an American, who conducts one of the largest business enterprises in Haiti. He said that the Haitians were an exceptionally clean people, that statistics showed that Haiti imported more soap per capita than any country in the world, and added, ‘‘They use it, too.’’ Three of the largest soap manufactories in the United States maintain headquarters at Port-au-Prince. The masses of the Haitian people are splendid material for the building of a nation. They are not lazy; on the contrary, they are industrious and thrifty. Some observers mistakenly confound primitive methods with indolence. Anyone who travels Haitian roads is struck by the hundreds and even thousands of women, boys, and girls filing along mile after mile with their farm and garden produce on their heads or loaded on the backs of animals. With modern facilities, they could market their produce much more efficiently and with far less effort. But lacking them, they are willing to walk and carry. For a woman to walk five to ten miles with a great load of produce on her head which may barely realize her a dollar is doubtless primitive, and a wasteful expenditure of energy, but it is not a sign of laziness. Haiti’s great handicap has been not that her masses are degraded or lazy or immoral. It is that they are ignorant, due not so much to mental limitations as to enforced illiteracy. There is a specific reason for this. Somehow the French language, in the French-American colonial settlements containing a Negro population, divided itself into two branches, French and Creole. This is true of Louisiana, Martinique, Guadeloupe, and also of Haiti. Creole is an Africanized French and must not be thought of as a mere dialect. The French-speaking person cannot understand Creole, excepting a few words, unless he learns it. Creole is a distinct tongue, a graphic and very expressive language. Many of its constructions follow closely the African idioms. For example, in forming the superlative of greatness, one says in Creole, ‘‘He is great

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among great men,’’ and a merchant woman, following the native idiom, will say, ‘‘You do not wish anything beautiful if you do not buy this.’’ The upper Haitian class, approximately 600,000, speak and know French, while the masses, probably more than 2,000,000 speak only Creole. Haitian Creole is grammatically constructed, but has not to any general extent been reduced to writing. Therefore, these masses have no means of receiving or communicating thoughts through the written word. They have no books to read. They cannot read the newspapers. The children of the masses study French for a few years in school, but it never becomes their every-day language. In order to abolish Haitian illiteracy, Creole must be made a printed as well as a spoken language. The failure to undertake this problem is the worst indictment against the Haitian Government. This matter of language proves a handicap to Haiti in another manner. It isolates her from her sister republics. All of the Latin-American republics except Brazil speak Spanish and enjoy an intercourse with the outside world denied Haiti. Dramatic and musical companies from Spain, from Mexico and from the Argentine annually tour all of the Spanish-speaking republics. Haiti is deprived of all such instruction and entertainment from the outside world because it is not profitable for French companies to visit the three or four French-speaking islands in the Western Hemisphere. Much stress has been laid on the bloody history of Haiti and its numerous revolutions. Haitian history has been all too bloody, but so has that of every other country, and the bloodiness of the Haitian revolutions has of late been unduly magnified. A writer might visit our own country and clip from our daily press accounts of murders, robberies on the principal streets of our larger cities, strike violence, race riots, lynchings, and burnings at the stake of human beings, and write a book to prove that life is absolutely unsafe in the United States. The seriousness of the frequent Latin-American revolutions has been greatly overemphasized. The writer has been in the midst of three of these revolutions and must confess that the treatment given them on our comic opera stage is very little further removed from the truth than the treatment which is given in the daily newspapers. Not nearly so bloody as reported, their interference with people not in politics is almost negligible. Nor should it be forgotten that in almost every instance the revolution is due to the plotting of foreigners backed up by their Governments. No less an authority than Mr. John H. Allen, vice-president of the National City Bank of New York, writing on Haiti in the May number of The Americas, the National City Bank organ, who says, ‘‘It is no secret that the revolutions were financed by foreigners and were profitable speculations.’’ In this matter of change of government by revolution, Haiti must not be compared with the United States or with England; it must be compared with other Latin American republics. When it is compared with our next-door neighbor, Mexico, it will be found that the Government of Haiti has been more stable and that the country has experienced less bloodshed and anarchy. And it must never be forgotten that throughout not an American or other foreigner has been killed, injured or, as far as can be ascertained, even molested. In Haiti’s 116 years of independence, there have been twenty-five presidents and twenty-five different administrations. In Mexico, during its 99 years of independence, there have been forty-seven rulers and eightyseven administrations. ‘‘Graft’’ has been plentiful, shocking at times, but who in America, where the Tammany machines and the municipal rings are notorious, will dare to point the finger of scorn at Haiti in this connection.

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And this is the people whose ‘‘inferiority,’’ whose ‘‘retrogression,’’ whose ‘‘savagery,’’ is advanced as a justification for intervention for the ruthless slaughter of three thousand of its practically defenseless sons, with the death of a score of our own boys, for the utterly selfish exploitation of the country by American big finance, for the destruction of America’s most precious heritage her traditional fair play, her sense of justice, her aid to the oppressed. ‘‘Inferiority’’ always was the excuse of ruthless imperialism until the Germans invaded Belgium, when it became ‘‘military necessity.’’ In the case of Haiti, there is not the slightest vestige of any of the traditional justifications, unwarranted as these generally are, and no amount of misrepresentation in an era when propaganda and censorship have had their heyday, no amount of slander, even in a country deeply prejudiced where color is involved, will longer serve to obscure to the conscience of America the eternal shame of its last five years in Haiti. Fiat justitia, ruat coelum! Source: The Nation, Vol. 111, No. 2882, September 25, 1920, pp. 345 347.

184. Ernest H. Gruening, ‘‘Haiti and Santo Domingo Today,’’ 1922 Ernest H. Gruening (1887–1974) was a medical doctor who became a journalist. He was editor of The Nation from 1920 to 1923. Gruening was drawn to New Deal in the 1930s. Throughout his career he was interested in Latin American affairs. U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed him to the post of director of the Division of Territories and Island Possessions in the Department of Interior, where Gruening backed the reactionary, U.S.appointed governor of Puerto Rico, Blanton C. Winship (1869–1947), a U.S. Army major general who had fought in the Spanish-American War. In 1939, he was appointed governor of Alaska, later becoming a senator from the same state. During the 1920s, Haiti and the Dominican Republic were targets of U.S. intervention. The following article describes Gruening’s views of conditions there under U.S. occupation.

In ten days’ diligent inquiry in the Dominican Republic, I could not find a single native who did not want the American Occupation to get out, bag and baggage, at the earliest possible moment. In twice that period in Haiti I could not discover a single Haitian who was not profoundly unhappy, disillusioned about all things American, and did not desire the return of Haitian sovereignty and independence. Among thinking Haitians I found that beneath the universal discontent were varying shades of sentiment. First, there is the group, by far the largest, represented by the Union Patriotique, which sees the American Occupation exactly for what it is an illegal and unwarranted assault conceived in wholly selfish motives on the rights and liberty of an independent, small, and always friendly state and stands in consequence for unconditional return of unqualified Haitian sovereignty at the earliest moment. A second group, which includes a fair proportion of the small businessmen, while longing for the withdrawal of the Americans, still hopes that some kind of an advantageous situation in the nature of a compromise may be worked out it wants Haiti’s liberty but still hopes for unselfish American assistance. A third group, insignificant numerically but holding by virtue of the American Occupation all the privileges and perquisites which the latter can bestow, is willing to connive with the Occupation as the best course for its members personally in a

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situation which they feel rather hopeless. In this group are the President, his council of state of twenty-one members, and a few of the other more important stateappointed functionaries. Their views are in part undoubtedly colored by their positions, by the strenuous efforts of the Occupation to cause a split in Haitian ranks, and in part by the inevitable personalities of such men who after the six and a half years of oppression are the docile and pliant residue from whom have been gradually filtered those who preferred principle to expediency and would not longer assist in riveting the chains on their country. The Occupation propaganda which was visibly absorbed by Sen. Pomerene I cannot account for his discourteous heckling of M. Georges Sylvain in any other way that the Union Patriotique merely represents the political ‘‘outs’’ is amply disproved by the history of those of its members that have had public careers. Virtually everyone of these has been tempted with high office, many in vain, while others, having tried it for a time in the hope of rendering some service to their country, have found themselves inevitably forced into a position which they believed to be wholly against Haiti’s interests. For the government so-called, in short, the President for his council merely executes his orders and the slightest resistance on the part of any of them causes his dismissal is a phantom government, a marionette of which the Occupation pulls the strings. Ever since Secretary Daniels’s radio ordering Admiral Caperton, one week after the election of Dartiguenave, to seize Haitian custom-houses with the prescription: ‘‘Have President Dartiguenave solicit it, but whether President so requests or not, proceed,’’ the Occupation has attempted to follow this ingenious policy. Every act of autocratic tyranny for which President Dartiguenave could be induced to take verbal responsibility has been more than pliant. The testimony of Generals Butler, Waller, Cole, and other high marine officers before the Senatorial Commission would indicate that in many instances he exceeded the wishes of the Occupation in demanding repressive measures. Of course the situation is admirably adapted to the game known as ‘‘passing the buck,’’ but a psychoanalytical study would go far to explain President Dartiguenave’s course. The Eumenides are haunting his waking hours. In not one of the three interviews I had with him privately, nor in the meeting with President Henriquez y Carvejal, at which I was present, could he keep from talking of his enemies and how they were attacking him. As he is amply protected by American bayonets, these fears are but the reflection of his own conscience. I believe not many Haitians would hold up against him his responsibility for the treaty which they now fear has destroyed their birthright they all hope, not irretrievably. They realized at the time and the whole world now knows since the Navy Department’s dispatches have been read into the record that he was under every kind of pressure, and that in that grave crisis his course may have seemed the wisest. At least no one could expect that the United States would itself fail as it has to carry out a single one of its own obligations in the treaty which it had written and imposed. No, not for that would the name of Dartiguenave be anathema in Haiti today, but rather because having turned over the country to the alien invader he used his every effort to defeat the attempt of other Haitians to regain the lost independence. His position of unique security and vantage he used to oppress his own fellow-countrymen, to demand himself the imprisonment of patriotic journalists who were criticizing his actions, and, most ignominious of all, to decorate, to adorn with his own hands, the breasts of marine officers for the exploits against the Haitians who were revolting against the invader. Surely, they say in Haiti, that was a

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depth to which he need not have sunk, made to appear to have the sanction of the Haitian Government. And unfortunately for the Haitians, Dartiguenave, [is] the man whose election ‘‘the United States prefers,’’ according to Admiral Benson’s radio to Admiral Caperton. Only once did he resist the encroachments of the Americans: in the summer of 1920, when he opposed the efforts of Mr. McIlhenny, the financial adviser, to put through a loan and was punished by having his salary held up for weeks one of scores of gross illegalities practiced by American officials in Haiti. This resistance may have been inspired wholly by patriotic motives. On the other hand, the military Occupation has no love for Mr. McIlhenny. President Dartiguenave showed me the carbon of a letter written November 10 last to President Harding in which he demanded McIlhenny’s removal and protested against the loan which the latter was negotiating, but he took occasion to devote the second part of this letter dealing supposedly with financial matters to an enthusiastic eulogy of Col. John H. Russell, the chief of the Occupation, expressing the hope that he would be retained in Haiti whatever else happened. The working alliance between these two has long been obvious. It is just to record here that I also heard Col. Russell highly praised by Archbishop Conan of Port au Prince and by Bishop Pichon of Aux Cayes, who spoke to me of the chief of the Occupation as a fine, upstanding man, beloved of all the Haitians. Truth compels me to report that I did not find the view shared by any Haitians (the clergy is French) although in my personal relations with him I found Col. Russell thoroughly courteous and kind. I tried to ascertain whether his general unpopularity was merely the natural opposition of an oppressed people to the chief agent of the Occupation, but I found the Haitians distinguishing sharply between individuals. Everywhere I heard nothing but the highest praise for certain marine officers who had in the past held responsible posts in Haiti General Catlin, Colonel Little, and Lieutenant Colonel Wise of whom without exception all who discussed the marine personnel spoke in terms of admiration and even affection. Here were three officers, I was told, who had understood the tragic difficulty of the Haitian position and had been friendly and sympathetic. The question of personnel is of course tremendously important as long as the Occupation continues, though nobody, be he ever so kindly and human[e], can wholly transmute a military Occupation into a lawn party; and it should not be forgotten for an instant that the great atrocity in Haiti is that we are there at all and the manner of our going in. And this is fundamentally why the present situation is and will continue impossible, even should we substitute a more sympathetic type of marine personnel and replace the civilian ‘‘deserving Democrats,’’ the most important of whom Sen. McCormick described as ‘‘both socially attractive and personally charming, but how otherwise qualified I am not informed.’’ As Haiti has not been permitted under the rigid color line the Occupation has drawn to enjoy their social attractiveness and personal charm, the actual benefit derived is not difficult to calculate. The situation is fundamentally impossible because the Haitians now firmly believe, following the preliminary report of the Senatorial Commission, that faith and honor are not in the United States. They had been hopeful and confident in the belief that the invasion of 1916 was the act of an irresponsible autocracy in Washington, undertaken without the consent of Congress or the knowledge of the American people, as indeed it was. They hoped that when the American people

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were finally informed, all this would be swept away and that their century-old liberty would be regained. President Harding’s campaign declarations on the subject of Haiti naturally fortified their hope. What is behind the seizure of Haiti and Santo Domingo? How much is commercial and financial, how much military, and how much just plain blundering? One of the earliest impressions I received, even en route to Haiti, was the way in which marine officers took the Caribbean for granted as a field of activity; being detailed to Costa Rica to keep the Panamanians in their place, or getting ‘‘action’’ in Nicaragua appeared to be all in the day’s work; and Haiti and Santo Domingo, while apparently viewed as United States’ domains, furnished splendid military opportunities, the Caribbean, indeed, is already a great Marine Corps ‘‘proving’’ ground, and the subconscious effect on the attitude of the average marine officer is evident. The corps is not a large body, and its proportion of officers to men is larger than in army or navy. Marines now hold Haiti and Santo Domingo; they have been in Nicaragua since 1912; detachments are in Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, the Canal Zone, Panama, and for all any ordinary citizen of our democracy is permitted to know, in other Central American republics. It would perhaps need but one more ‘‘Occupation’’ to necessitate an increase in the size of the Marine Corps and that means more officers and more rapid promotion. Moreover, the opportunities for the individual officer are obviously far greater under conditions of military rule than they would be at some dull post in the United States, as indeed they always are in the field. In Santo Domingo, a formerly obscure paymaster, Lt. Commander Mayo, the man who floated the notorious 14 percent loan, became the financial mogul of that republic. In Haiti, American officers live infinitely better than they could at home. A lieutenant can afford a large house and several servants, and as an officer in the Gendarmerie d’Haiti (or Guardia Nacional in Santo Domingo) he gets an automobile at the expense of the Haitians or Dominicans, and other perquisites. As for the chiefs of the respective Occupations, they are not only civil and military dictators but the supreme social arbiters of the foreign colony as well. [In] every sense they are monarchs of all they survey. No one who incurs the royal displeasure in Haiti is received at the American Club or at other social American functions. The businessman, American and foreign, soon finds that it is not merely to his advantage but essential to his well-being to keep on good terms with them. One American businessman who complained to me bitterly that the methods employed by the Americans in Haiti had destroyed the prestige and good name of the United States and that such a policy was bound to work to our commercial disadvantage, shuddered at the suggestion of relating these facts to the Senatorial Commission. In answer to my inquiry, he said, ‘‘Frankly, because I have a wife and children, and I want to stay in Haiti.’’ I asked him whether he really felt that giving such information to the Commission would endanger his safety ‘‘I would certainly be put out of business,’’ he said. ‘‘As far as my life is concerned, all I can say is that most everyone here knows what happened to Lifsch€utz.’’ Lifsch€utz was the one American civilian who dared openly to criticize the Occupation and he happens also to have been the only American civilian ever killed in Haiti. Sen. McCormick, who long before the Commission was created, recorded himself publicly in favor of our retention for twenty years of the Civil Occupation of Haiti, but now accepts the military view completely, told me in conversation that his interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine gave us ‘‘militant rights down to the Orinoco

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Basin.’’ This, I take it, means that we can, according to our needs, more or less gobble up everything in and around the Caribbean. South of the Orinoco, Sen. McCormick is ‘‘wiring that the United States should pursue a noli me tangere [touch me not] policy.’’ Mr. McCormick’s successor may substitute the Amazon for the Orinoco, and Senator Some-one-else may feel that our sphere of militancy should not stop short of the Straits of Magellan. But the fruits of this policy are already visible in our actual, partial, potential, and rapidly increasing domination of the weaker states of the Caribbean. Of course all this proceeds under the guise of benevolence a pretension solemnly maintained with evident sincerity by a great number of persons and with a tongue in cheek by others. Col. Russell told me that it was the two million Haitian country people that he wanted to help, and that he was very fond of them but against the ‘‘three hundred agitators in Port au Prince,’’ and this view was echoed by other officers. The Occupation’s affection for the Haitian proletariat is truly touching. Obviously, if the intellectual crowd, which for better or worse has made Haiti for a century or more, is eliminated, the most docile and cheapest labor supply that a concessionaire ever dreamed of will be easily available. Twenty cents a day is the current Haitian wage. But if this was Col. Russell’s view, it was not that of his friend H. P. Davis, vice-president and general manager of the United West Indies Corporation, the American civilian who is generally referred to as the spokesman of the Occupation. To me, at least, he was engagingly frank. ‘‘There has been a lot of bunk about helping the Haitians,’’ he said in answer to my inquiry. ‘‘I am not here to help the Haitians. I am here to make money out of Haiti for myself and my friends. I am an expert in developing and discovering new territories for development for banks. It is true that in helping myself I have helped some Haitians, but I have helped them incidentally and for purely selfish reasons.’’ It is generally rumored in Haiti that Mr. Davis has ambitions to succeed Mr. McIlhenny as financial adviser, should we remain in Haiti. I fail to see why he is not eminently eligible. But nowhere is the situation more lucidly pictured than in the verses, which begin: If you see an island shore Which has not been grabbed before Lying in the track of trade as islands should, With the simple native quite Unprepared to make a fight, Oh, you just drop in and take it for his good. And yet despite all this there are Americans in Haiti who have broken through the iron pressure of their environmental opinion and know better. There must be others like one clear-eyed officer of no mean rank who said to me: ‘‘We’ve no business here. The fact is that the fellows who stood up against us and were shot down were patriots. These people have as much right to their independence as we have.’’ And another told me simply that the ‘‘job is impossible. We don’t understand them and they don’t understand us. We can’t change their natures, and that is what we’d have to do to make them do things our way. It’s not the Marine Corps’ work anyway.’’ And they are right but it is not the prevailing or the official opinion, nor one that these officers could express openly with impunity. We have no business there

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and our being there benefits no one unless it be a few investors. It will not help the Haitians although we may build them a few roads; you do not need an Occupation for that. It’s no job for young rosy-cheeked boys of yesteryear who return to the States, burned out by the tropical sun, soaked with rum, often irremediably diseased as well. And above all, it never will help the United States unless we consider the lining of the pockets of a handful a help to our country, to be weighed against the dislike and bitter resentment of a formerly friendly people and the distrust and fear of a dozen others who dread the day when their turn will come. And even for the capitalists Haiti so far has been a graveyard of high hopes. Eight millions have been sunk in the Haitian-American Sugar Company and a receiver is in charge; the National City Bank’s venture has not been profitable despite its special advantages; the largest American cotton-growing venture was a flat failure; the West Indies Trading Company literally went up in smoke when I was in Port au Prince all this despite the Occupation and the Franklin Roosevelt constitution. Maybe there’s a fatality about it; Roger L. Farnham of the National City Bank told the Commission of acres of American cotton that withered while Haitian cotton planted adjacently flourished the Mamaloi’s curse, it might be called in fiction. The really important thing to salvage from Haiti is American honor. It can still be retrieved. Admiral Caperton’s revealing we - are - getting - this - treaty - through - thanks - to - military - pressure cable and Josephus Daniels’s infamous message ordering the admiral on - your - own - authority - to - tell - the - Haitians - that unless - they - sign - the - Occupation - will - be - permanent, can hardly be formally voted into the American archives of famous documents. Will the Senate of the United States care to enshrine them with the Declaration of Independence, Patrick Henry’s invocation, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the Gettysburg address? For it is doubtful whether a single Senator knew when he voted to ratify the Haitian treaty in 1916 by what methods it had been imposed. If there be one, let him stand up! Yet is it more moral to condone an offense because it has occurred? Sen. McCormick had no hesitancy in condemning to me in unsparing terms the crime committed against Haiti by Woodrow Wilson and Josephus Daniels. Yet his preliminary report, which gives no inkling that the United States had illegally seized two republics and held them since against the will of their inhabitants, condones this crime. Sen. McCormick knows better; he is intelligent enough to know that what we did in Haiti in 1915, and in Santo Domingo in 1916, was dishonest, indecent, and rotten. Sen. King’s bill calling for withdrawal and abrogation of the treaty fortunately shows the way out. Source: The Nation, Vol. 114, No. 2953, February 8, 1922, pp. 147 149.


n de la Selva, ‘‘On the Proposed 185. Excerpts from Salomo Union of Central America,’’ 1920 The United States looked at Central American and Caribbean nations in much the same way in the 1920s—that is, they were ripe for U.S. intervention. In both instances, policies toward these areas were determined by perceived threats to the Panama Canal and the considerable U.S. investment in the region. Central American countries, since the time of their independence from

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Spain in the 1820s, had sought to unite and had a sense of common nationality. The following article reviews the 100-year history of the isthmus since independence from Spain, including efforts to create a unified Central American Federation as well as the barriers to this unity. There was a natural affinity between the states that had an ambivalence toward the United States. Nicaraguan poet Salom
on de la Selva (1893–1959) penned the following article, which urges the United States to support unification efforts.

In September 1921, the first centenary of the Independence of Central America will be celebrated. On the 15th of that month, in the year 1821, the Spanish Colonial Captaincy General of Guatemala (including what are now the five Central American republics and the State of Chiapas, now irrevocably a part of Mexico) declared its entire freedom from Spain and from any and all other countries of the world, constituting itself a new free, autonomous, and sovereign political entity. The United States of Central America became fragmentary republics shortly after their independence, by reason of regional dissensions. Since then, through several periods of Central American history, union has been striven and even fought for, but unsuccessfully, owing to the opposition to it offered and maintained by the politico-military rulers of the various states, each jealous of the power of his brother presidents. It is, in the end, to this segregation of Central America, and, directly, to the petty kind of politics that such a condition alone has made possible there, that the historian can trace every interstate war in Central America and also every revolution. Outside the Central American sphere, the different governments composing it have not had, except very slightly, any participation as active belligerents in wars or revolutions. Their conflicts have been local. They have at least had the wisdom to make trouble only among themselves and to keep those troubles at home.… It may be very properly asked what has been the attitude … of the Central American people in this question of the Union. There is only one answer. The people of Central America have always desired the union of their little republics. This desire has been very solemnly stated in each and every constitution enacted in Central America, and by virtue of this ideal … Any Central American country enjoys certain rights of citizenship in all the others of those five republics, which are very properly denied to citizens of other countries. For instance, a Nicaraguan may become a citizen of Guatemala merely by fixing his residence in Guatemala and stating his willingness to become a Guatemalan. And so naturalized, he becomes invested with every right inherent to a born citizen of Guatemala even that of becoming, if chosen, the chief executive of the State, just as a man born in California can fix his residence in North Dakota and be, on that score, eligible to the governorship of this latter state. The Central American regard for other Central Americans is that of a United States citizen of one State for the citizens of other States of the Union; for the vast majority of Central Americans earnestly desire the Union and know that a unity of tradition, of history, and of aspiration, a racial and religious unity, pervades and animates them all. Another pertinent question arises at this point. Why, if such has been and is the attitude and the will of the people, has the Union not been made a fact? We have already partly answered this question. The jealousies among the military, despotic presidents of the different Central American countries, the desire of each of these leaders to become himself the president of the Federation, the stubborn selfishness of each in not being willing to yield his power as president except to assume a

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greater similar power; these have been the reason why the Union has not been made a fact. Not until this year has Central America freed itself from that kind of enthroned ruler; dictatorships of many years’ duration have been, until this day, the rule there. And these petty tyrants always gave as primal reason for their abstaining from the formation of one single Central American republic, the opposition of the United States of America to that idea. The United States of America, the people of Central America were told, would not recognize the Central American Federation. All work for that ideal was therefore futile. And this doctrine easily gained ground on the predicated strength that Washington, minded imperialistically, preferred the segregation of Central America in order to absorb it, in the weakness of its disunion, all the more easily. It is this and this only, an all-sufficing explanation for every manner of America interference in Central America that has bred in those ardent latitudes the unquestionable anti-American feeling existing there. This feeling is not unknown in the United States; it has been felt; it has been looked upon with apprehension. During the war with Germany, despite the fact that all the Central American governments had either declared war with Germany or officially come out as neutrals but favoring the United States.… More specifically, is it wise conduct for the United States to maintain so near its Cana1 (and consider all that the Canal can mean to the United States at war) a people living in hatred of the United States, a hatred that that people regard as righteous and patriotic?… I have affirmed that not until this year has Central America been out of the direct control of selfish and ambitious petty rulers. Now for the first time in Central American history, the presidents of Central America are men mindful of the constitutions of their countries and respectful to the will of the people they govern. The new President of Guatemala was acclaimed unanimously on a Unionist program. The President of El Salvador has recently invited the governments of the other Central American republics to a conference this autumn to discuss the Federation. All the Central American governments have responded to that invitation declaring in favor of the Union.… The time is now … it is precisely in the United States that the financial aspect of the Central American Federation, the distribution or consolidation of the existing Central American foreign debts, must be settled. Born, as it were, from the loins of the United States in Dionysiac fashion, the new Federation of Central America cannot but be, in a very high sense, a child of this country. Central America will honor that parentage. Salomon de La Selva Washington, D.C., August 9, 1920 Source: The Hispanic American Historical Review, Vol. 3, No. 4, November 1920, pp. 566 570.

186. Excerpts from Cayetano Coll y Cuchi, ‘‘American Rule in Porto Rico,’’ 1922 Cayetano Coll y Cuchi (1877–1960), a member of the Puerto Rican House of Delegates and the Union Party, was in favor of statehood and annoyed by the United States lack of acceptance of Puerto Rico as an equal. Like so many

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intellectuals of his time, Coll y Cuchi searched for a political identity under U.S. rule. He was elected to the Puerto Rican Chamber of Delegates in 1904 as a member of the Puerto Rican Republican Party. However, he became convinced that the Foraker Law of 1900, which established a civilian government in Puerto Rico and strictly regulated its commerce, threatened the island’s identity as a nation. This realization prompted his switch to Antonio R. Barcel
o’s Puerto Rican Union Party. Reelected in 1908, he led the fight against the Foraker Law. In 1919, he was a founder of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party. The transition of Coll y Cuchi’s views of American rule are shown in the following excerpts.

I entered public [office] in 1902, together with many other young men, all graduates of American universities. Almost immediately a phenomenon worthy of note occurred. The men of my generation had been born at a time when the radical parties in Porto Rico were engaged in their long and bitter struggle against our Spanish rulers. We had grown up in an atmosphere of ardent longing to be free from Spain. We believed that every patriot should insist that Porto Rico become an independent republic, like her South American neighbors. All our political thinking and theories were based on these assumptions, at the time when we departed for the United States to study in the academic halls of the great Republic. As students in American universities, we read and re-read the nation’s great Declaration of Independence, and studied sedulously its Constitution and the principles upon which its government was formed, until we almost forgot the lessons of our earlier years. We spoke English better than our mother tongue. Our whole intellectual life was Anglo-Saxon. By the time we returned to Porto Rico, just as the United States was setting up a civil government in our homeland, we had thoroughly assimilated that nation’s political ideals. Naturally, we were ardent partisans of the Americanization of Porto Rico. But our old and battle-scarred leaders started an agitation against the new government Washington had imposed upon us, and when we had leisure to review our past, and to recall our glorious Castilian origin, we joined and speedily became the leaders of that movement. It fell to us, the graduates of American universities, to voice Porto Rico’s protest, to give her people a programme, to show the logic and reason of her demands, and to become the champions of our traditions and our race. I fancied, when I graduated, that I possessed an immense fund of political wisdom. I was filled with ardent enthusiasm for great struggles for freedom of thought, for separation of church and state, and for the rights of man. My political standards had formed in accordance with these doctrines. But I had forgotten my soul, which still retained the memories of my Spanish child. The moment that my artificial student personality came into conflict with my true native personality, with the traditions of race, as soon as I discovered that what I had learned in the United States was repudiated by the spontaneous sentiments of my heart. I realized that it was impossible to change that part of us God has shaped with his own hand. I still cherished profound respect for all that was great and noble and just in the North American people; but my Spanish soul asserted itself. My fellow students of Spanish ancestry passed through the same experience. It seemed to us abnegation of our rights as men, apostasy to our own high impulses, to act otherwise than as we did. So we threw our selves headlong into the battle to rescue our indestructible heritage our traditions, our race, our language, our religion.

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It was clearly an unequal battle. A million and a quarter people inhabiting thirty-six hundred square miles of territory, defied one hundred and fifteen million people, possessing more than three million miles of territory. But even these figures do not measure adequately the immense power of the United States, which America’s leaders so confidently expected would speedily Americanize Porto Rico and demonstrate the ease with which Anglo-Saxon civilization can establish its sway over a Spanish-American people. But we were undaunted. Political delegations from North America, the pressure of North American capital, the political philosophy of that country’s thinkers, the efforts of her representatives, deprive us of our civil rights and to rob us of our Spanish civilization all these things counted as nothing against our enthusiasm, which burned the brighter after every attempt to quench it. So we accepted the challenge of battle, although we still welcomed, small country that we were, whatever the United States could give us that did not prevent the free development of our Spanish culture. This struggle culminated in 1909. That year an effort was made to abolish the teaching of Spanish in the public schools. Our schoolmasters were ordered to give their instruction exclusively in English. We knew perfectly well that the soul of a people is incarnated in its language. We would have preferred being without a country, losing our native tongue. Upon this issue, we joined battle, spontaneously my friends and I threw ourselves into the thick of the fight. That was quite natural. But it was the children children of six, seven, and ten years of age-who really started the revolt. They were the first to rebel. The men at the head of the government were first apprised of the resistance to substituting English for Spanish by a pupils’ strike. Children refused to attend their classes unless they might be instructed in the language of their fathers and their country. A resort to brutal measures followed. Children were expelled from the schools. Those who did not attend English classes, or who refused to be taught in that language were turned into the streets. They could not continue their studies; their future was ruined. Then we got together and founded a Spanish school the Jos
e de Diego Institute where children expelled from the public schools were received and taught gratuitously. We next appealed to the authorities at Washington. Immediately after President Wilson assumed office, we sent a commission to that city to describe the evils under which we were laboring. The President and the leaders of his party gave us a cordial welcome. A bill [conferring] upon us complete autonomy was submitted to Congress. Since that change could not be made immediately, Wilson sent a new Governor to the Island, to whom he gave most liberal instructions. All of the North American cabinet members were replaced by Porto Ricans. At last we were given an autonomous r
egime. We elected our first independent legislature. My party, the party that championed a free Porto Rico, won in practically every precinct. The moment they had an opportunity to express their will, the Porto Rican people voted for liberty. Then came the War. At the insistence of the administration, a bill was brought into Congress establishing compulsory military service, but expressly excluding Porto Ricans from this provision. Porto Rico protested at once, and insisted that her soldiers also should be sent the battlefields of France, and should share both the sacrifices [and] glories of our national victory. Her protest was heard. Our island with 1,300,000 inhabitants, mobilized 140,000 soldiers, among whom there was not a

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single deserter. We witnessed the unusual spectacle of a people, not themselves entirely free, ready to die for the freedom of another nation, even though it were under the flag of a Government that refused them their full rights. After the War was over, and Wilson left office, the new Administration at Washington adopted an absolutely reactionary policy toward Rico. In place of the Governor appointed by President Wilson, we received a man who had previously been a commercial traveler, something of the sort, in his own country. As soon as he arrived [in] Porto Rico, he began to denounce, in violent discourses, our national aspirations. Six hours after his inauguration, the Unionist party, took up the challenge. The whole Island was aroused. The new Administration started out by dismissing Porto Rican officials, and replacing them with men from the United States. So at present we are in a most unhappy situation, a situation likely to imperil seriously the good relations between our Island and the United States. The people of Porto Rico are more resolved than ever to resist such a reactionary policy, and are courageously confident that their protest will eventually be heard and their rights respected. We cannot hold the noble people of North America responsible for the reprehensible deeds of an unjust and incompetent Governor, who has used the powers entrusted to him to serve men there enriching themselves by oppressing a helpless community. The Porto Rican people rest their hope in a nation whose cemeteries in France are symbols of its love for liberty. We cannot conceive that the people of the United States, after liberating Poland and restoring Bohemia, will refuse freedom to Porto Rico, and thus create an Ireland in America. What lesson does the recent history of Porto Rico, which we have here so briefly traced, teach to the Spanish-American nations? In the first place, that there are no grounds for fearing the results of the contact of Anglo-Saxon and Spanish civilization. That is the fundamental lesson. Marvelous progress in industry, science, and commerce, and a successful pursuit of riches are not, exclusively, the patrimony of the Anglo-Saxons. But our culture of two thousand years belongs to us alone. By studying Anglo-Saxon methods and accommodating Anglo Saxon institutions to our own ideals and temperament, we can create Spanish-American communities where all men are equal, where there is no hereditary privilege, where justice is unbought, where every man’s home is his castle. But our efforts and sacrifices will amount to naught unless the Spanish-American nations realize that they must work shoulder to shoulder. Such a union of effort, however, means something far more permanent and enduring than our present Latin-American rallies and banquets, and our exuberant floods of sentimental oratory. We should bear in mind that we are one hundred and ten millions of people, that we dwell in the richest and most fertile territory upon the globe, and that nearly every great modern industry depends upon us for indispensable raw materials. Let us bear these facts steadily in mind as our gaze sweeps over the immense spaces of the American continent. Then we shall comprehend what Spanish-American Union may come to mean; what the future of the Spanish race in the Western hemisphere may prove to be. Source: Repertorio Americano, March 27 and April 3, 1922; In the Living Age, Eighth Series, XXVII (July, August, September 1922), pp. 263 267. [Also printed in Google Books.]

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187. Augusto C
esar Sandino, ‘‘To Abolish the Monroe Doctrine,’’ 1933 The United States intervened in Nicaragua throughout the early 1900s, repeatedly landing U.S. Marines there. In 1912, the United States sent marines to Nicaragua to support a pro-American government and they remained until 1934. Augusto Nicol
as Calder
on Sandino [Sandino shortened his name to Augusto C
esar Sandino] (1895–1934), a peasant worker, rebelled against the U.S. military occupation of Nicaragua, and between 1927 and 1933, led a guerilla war against the government. The U.S. branded him a bandit. In 1934, the U.S. marines departed Nicaragua, leaving Anastasio Somoza (ca. 1890–1956) as commander of the National Guard. Somoza had Sandino assassinated. Members of the Somoza family ruled Nicaragua for the next five decades. In 1933, Sandino expressed his grievances against the United States and called upon all the nations of Central America to oppose U.S. imperialism. The following document is important in understanding the region’s struggle for national identity and the causes of Central American migration to the United States.

Well then, deeply convinced that the grotesque Yankee imperialism, day by day is infiltrating the domestic and foreign policy of Central America, turning our cowardly leaders into mummies the vibrating spirit of the Indo-Hispanic race becomes at this time the Autonomist Army of Central America to save its racial dignity, flinging militarily, politically, and economically away from its territory the Wall Street bankers, even if to do this we will have to leave our bodies dead, lying face up towards the sun. The Autonomist Army of Central America declares abolished the far[c]ical Monroe Doctrine and, by the same declaration, annuls the right that said doctrine pretends to have to enmesh itself cowardly in the political life, domestic and foreign, of the Indo-Hispanic republics. We do not protest against the magnitude of the intervention, but simply against intervention. The United States has gotten into the affairs of Nicaragua for many years. We cannot rely on their promise that some day they will leave from here. Source: ‘‘To Abolish the Monroe Doctrine: Proclamation from Augusto C
esar Sandino, Nicaragua (1933) National Archives. In History Matters, ‘To Abolish the Monroe Doctrine’’’ Proclamation from Augusto C
esar Sandino, http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/4988.

188. ‘‘Calvin Coolidge: Intervention in Nicaragua,’’ 1927 U.S. President Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) assumed the presidency after Warren G. Harding died in office. From 1912 to 1933, the United States sent troops to Nicaragua, conveying the message to the rest of the region that the United States supported its dictators. The United States intervened in Nicaraguan affairs at least half a dozen times for reasons ranging from the usual political motives to keeping the region open to missionary activity. On January 10, 1927, President Coolidge told Congress he would protect U.S. assets in Nicaragua because, according to Coolidge, liberals did not respect American private property. He authorized U.S. Marine Corps to supply the Nicaraguan

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military to prevent leftist takeovers of U.S. assets. Thus, in Nicaragua, the U.S. prevented liberal reforms. The following document shows American interest in the region and reveals why the United States believed that it had the right to intervene in the inner workings of foreign nations—the motive was not democracy but profit.

While conditions in Nicaragua and the action of this government pertaining thereto have in general been made public, I think the time has arrived for me officially to inform the Congress more in detail of the events leading up to the present disturbances and conditions which seriously threaten American lives and property, endanger the stability of all Central America, and put in jeopardy the rights granted by Nicaragua to the United States for the construction of a canal. It is well known that in 1912 the United States intervened in Nicaragua with a large force and put down a revolution, and that from that time to 1925, a legation guard of American Marines was, with the consent of the Nicaragua government, kept in Managua to protect American lives and property. In 1923, representatives of the five Central American countries, namely, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Salvador, at the invitation of the United States, met in Washington and entered into a series of treaties. These treaties dealt with limitation of armament, a Central American tribunal for arbitration, and the general subject of peace and amity. The treaty last referred to specifically provides in Article II that the governments of the contracting parties will not recognize any other government which may come into power in any of the five republics through a coup d’etat, or revolution, and disqualifies the leaders of such coup d’etat, or revolution, from assuming the presidency or vice-presidency.… The United States was not a party to this treaty, but it was made in Washington under the auspices of the secretary of state, and this government has felt a moral obligation to apply its principles in order to encourage the Central American states in their efforts to prevent revolution and disorder. The treaty, it may be noted in passing, was signed on behalf of Nicaragua by Emiliano Chamorro himself, who afterwards assumed the presidency in violation thereof and thereby contributed to the creation of the present difficulty. In October 1924, an election was held in Nicaragua for president, vice-president, and members of the Congress. This resulted in the election of a coalition ticket embracing Conservatives and Liberals. Carlos Solorzano, a Conservative Republican, was elected president, and Juan B. Sacasa, a Liberal, was elected vice-president. This government was recognized by the other Central American countries and by the United States. It had been the intention of the United States to withdraw the Marines immediately after this election, and notice was given of the intention to withdraw them in January 1925. At the request of the president of Nicaragua, this time was extended to Sept. 1, 1925. Pursuant to this determination and notice, the Marines were withdrawn in August 1925.… Notwithstanding the refusal of this government and of the other Central American governments to recognize him, Gen. Chamorro continued to exercise the functions of president until Oct. 30, 1926. In the meantime, a revolution broke out in May on the east coast in the neighborhood of Bluefields and was speedily suppressed

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by the troops of Gen. Chamorro. However, it again broke out with considerable more violence. The second attempt was attended with some success, and practically all of the east coast of Nicaragua fell into the hands of the revolutionists. Throughout these events, Sacasa was at no time in the country, having remained in Mexico and Guatemala during this period. Repeated requests were made of the United States for protection, especially on the east coast, and on Aug. 24, 1926, the secretary of state addressed to the secretary of the Navy the following communication: I have the honor to suggest that war vessels of the Special Service Squadron proceed as soon as possible to the Nicaraguan ports of Corinto and Bluefields for the protection of American and foreign lives and property in case that threatened emergencies materialize. The American charg
e d’affaires at Managua has informed the department that he considers the presence of war vessels at these ports desirable, and the American consul at Bluefields has reported that a warship is urgently needed to protect life and property at that port. An attack on The Bluff and Bluefields is expected momentarily.

Accordingly, the Navy Department ordered Admiral Latimer, in command of the Special Service Squadron, to proceed to Bluefields. Upon arriving there he found it necessary for the adequate protection of American lives and property to declare Bluefields a neutral zone. This was done with the consent of both factions, afterwards, on Oct. 26, 1926, reduced to a written agreement, which is still in force. In October 1926, the good offices of the United States were sought by both parties for the purpose of effecting a settlement of the conflict. Admiral Latimer, commanding the Special Service Squadron, brought about an armistice to permit a conference being held between the delegates of the two factions. The armistice was originally for fifteen days and was later extended for fifteen days more. At the request of both parties, Marines were landed at Corinto to establish a neutral zone in which the conference could be held. Dr. Sacasa was invited to attend this conference but refrained from doing so and remained in Guatemala City. The United States government did not participate in the conference except to provide a neutral chairman; it simply offered its good offices to make the conference possible and arranged a neutral zone at Corinto at the request of both parties during the time the conference was held. I understand that at this conference Gen. Chamorro offered to resign and permit the Congress to elect a new designate to assume the presidency. The conference led to no result, since, just at the time when it seemed as though some compromise agreement would be reached, the representatives of Dr. Sacasa suddenly broke off negotiations.… The Nicaraguan constitution provides in Article 106 that in the absence of the president and vice-president, the Congress shall designate one of its members to complete the unexpired term of president. As President Solorzano had resigned and was then residing in California, and as the vice-president, Dr. Sacasa, was in Guatemala, having been out of the country since November 1925, the action of Congress in designating Se~ nor D
ıaz was perfectly legal and in accordance with the constitution. Therefore, the United States government, on Nov. 17, extended recognition to Se~ nor D
ıaz.… Immediately following the inauguration of President D
ıaz, and frequently since that date, he has appealed to the United States for support, has informed this government of the aid which Mexico is giving to the revolutionists, and has stated that he is unable solely

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because of the aid given by Mexico to the revolutionists to protect the lives and property of American citizens and other foreigners. When negotiations leading up to the Corinto conference began, I immediately placed an embargo on the shipment of arms and ammunition to Nicaragua. The Department of State notified the other Central American states, to wit, Costa Rica, Honduras, Salvador, and Guatemala, and they assured the department that they would cooperate in this measure. So far as known, they have done so. The State Department also notified the Mexican government of this embargo and informally suggested to that government like action. The Mexican government did not adopt the suggestion to put on an embargo but informed the American ambassador at Mexico City that, in the absence of manufacturing plants in Mexico for the making of arms and ammunition, the matter had little practical importance. As a matter of fact, I have the most conclusive evidence that arms and munitions in large quantities have been, on several occasions since August 1926, shipped to the revolutionists in Nicaragua. Boats carrying these munitions have been fitted out in Mexican ports, and some of the munitions bear evidence of having belonged to the Mexican government. It also appears that the ships were fitted out with the full knowledge of and, in some cases, with the encouragement of Mexican officials and were in one instance, at least, commanded by a Mexican naval reserve officer. At the end of November, after spending some time in Mexico City, Dr. Sacasa went back to Nicaragua, landing at Puerto Cabezas, near Bragmans Bluff. He immediately placed himself at the head of the insurrection and declared himself president of Nicaragua. He has never been recognized by any of the Central American republics nor by any other government, with the exception of Mexico, which recognized him immediately. As arms and munitions in large quantities were reaching the revolutionists, I deemed it unfair to prevent the recognized government from purchasing arms abroad, and, accordingly, the secretary of state notified the D
ıaz government that licenses would be issued for the export of arms and munitions purchased in this country. It would be thoroughly inconsistent for this country not to support the government recognized by it while the revolutionists were receiving arms and munitions from abroad. During the last two months, the government of the United States has received repeated requests from various American citizens, both directly and through our consuls and legation, for the protection of their lives and property. The government of the United States has also received requests from the British charg
e at Managua and from the Italian ambassador at Washington for the protection of their respective nationals. Pursuant to such requests, Admiral Latimer, in charge of the Special Service Squadron, has not only maintained the neutral zone at Bluefields under the agreement of both parties, but has landed forces at Puerto Cabezas and Rio Grande and established neutral zones at these points where considerable numbers of Americans live and are engaged in carrying on various industries. He has also been authorized to establish such other neutral zones as are necessary for the purposes above mentioned. For many years, numerous Americans have been living in Nicaragua, developing its industries, and carrying on business. At the present time, there are large investments in lumbering, mining, coffee growing, banana culture, shipping, and also in general mercantile and other collateral business. All these people and these industries have been encouraged by the Nicaraguan government. That government has at

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all times owed them protection, but the United States has occasionally been obliged to send naval forces for their proper protection. In the present crisis, such forces are requested by the Nicaraguan government, which protests to the United States its inability to protect these interests and states that any measures which the United States deems appropriate for their protection will be satisfactory to the Nicaraguan government. In addition to these industries now in existence, the government of Nicaragua, by a treaty entered into on the 5th of August 1914, granted in perpetuity to the United States the exclusive proprietary rights necessary and convenient for the construction, operation, and maintenance of an oceanic canal.… There is no question that if the revolution continues, American investments and business interests in Nicaragua will be very seriously affected, if not destroyed. The currency, which is now at par, will be inflated. American as well as foreign bondholders will undoubtedly look to the United States for the protection of their interests. It is true that the United States did not establish the financial plan by any treaty, but it nevertheless did aid through diplomatic channels and advise in the negotiation and establishment of this plan for the financial rehabilitation of Nicaragua. Manifestly, the relation of this government to the Nicaraguan situation and its policy in the existing emergency are determined by the facts which I have described. The proprietary rights of the United States in the Nicaraguan canal route, with the necessary implications growing out of it affecting the Panama Canal, together with the obligations flowing from the investments of all classes of our citizens in Nicaragua, place us in a position of peculiar responsibility. I am sure it is not the desire of the United States to intervene in the internal affairs of Nicaragua or of any other Central American republic. Nevertheless, it must be said that we have a very definite and special interest in the maintenance of order and good government in Nicaragua at the present time, and that the stability, prosperity, and independence of all Central American countries can never be a matter of indifference to us. The United States cannot, therefore, fail to view with deep concern any serious threat to stability and constitutional government in Nicaragua tending toward anarchy and jeopardizing American interests, especially if such state of affairs is contributed to or brought about by outside influences or by any foreign power. It has always been and remains the policy of the United States in such circumstances to take the steps that may be necessary for the preservation and protection of the lives, the property, and the interests of its citizens and of this government itself. In this respect, I propose to follow the path of my predecessors. Consequently, I have deemed it my duty to use the powers committed to me to ensure the adequate protection of all American interests in Nicaragua, whether they be endangered by internal strife or by outside interference in the affairs of that republic. Source: Congressional Record, 69 Cong., 2d Sess., pp. 1324 1326.


n, ‘‘Stowaway,’’ ca. 1917 189. Excerpt from Jes
us Colo Known as the father of the New York Puerto Rican Movement, Jes
us Col
on (1901–1974) stowed away in Puerto Rico and arrived in New York in 1918.

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He was a member of the Socialist Party until he became a member of the Communist Party U.S.A. Col
on was published in Spanish- and English-language newspapers such as Justicia, La Uni
o n Obrera from Puerto Rico, Grafico, El Curioso, Liberaci
o n, Mainstream, The Daily Worker, and other left-of-center newspapers. In New York, Col
on suffered discrimination because of his African roots and difficulty in speaking English. He overcame the linguistic obstacle and was the first Puerto Rican to publish extensively in English. His best known work is A Puerto Rican in New York. In the following passage, he writes about his arrival in New York and how Puerto Ricans were treated in the Big Apple.

STOWAWAY I still remember the name of the boat S. S. Carolina. An old ship painted in funeral black around the hull and in hospital white from the deck up. Everything was planned with one of the crew. I just walked up the narrow wooden ladder of thin timber rungs far apart. This ladder connected the dock with the ships. I think I don’t have to explain that I did not carry a valise or other bundles with me. Just myself. The sailor at the top of the ladder must have thought that I was one of those kids always going up and down with messages to the passengers. I was sixteen years old. As soon as I was inside the S. S. Carolina, the friend on the crew installed me uncomfortably inside one of the linen closets, banging the door practically right on my nose. Time passed. The minutes seemed like hours. The hours felt like days. At last I heard the clanking of chains as the anchor was hoisted. After a little while, I listened to the metallic noise of the propellers as they started their enormous metal four-leaf clovers circling in the waters of San Juan Bay. The third shrill whistle of the ship gave me the sign that we were finally getting away from the dock. I imagined from my hiding place in the linen closet that the S. S. Carolina was now on its course pointing its prow toward the entrance under the watchful eye of Morro Castle.… EASY JOB, GOOD WAGES This happened early in 1919. We were both out of work, my brother and I. He got up earlier to look for a job. When I woke up, he was already gone. So I dressed, went out, and bought a copy of the New York World and turned its pages until I got to the ‘‘Help Wanted: Unskilled’’ section of the paper. After much reading and rereading the same columns, my attention was caught by a small advertisement. It read: ‘‘Easy job. Good wages. No experience necessary.’’ This was followed by a number and street on the West Side of Lower Manhattan. It sounded like the job I was looking for. Easy job. Good wages. Those four words revolved in my brain as I was traveling toward the address indicated in the advertisement. Easy job. Good wages. Easy job. Good wages. Easy.… The place consisted of a small front office and a large loft on the floor of which I noticed a series of large galvanized tubs half filled with water, out of which I noticed the necks of many bottles of various sizes and shapes protruding. Around these tubs there were a number of workers, male and female, sitting on small wooden benches. All had their hands in the water of the tub, the left hand holding a bottle and with the thumbnail of the right hand scratching the labels.

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The foreman found a vacant stool for me around one of the tubs of water. I asked why a penknife or a small safety razor could not be used instead of the thumb nail to take off the old labels from the bottles. I was expertly informed that knives or razors would scratch the glass thus depreciating the resale value of the bottles. I sat down and started to use my thumbnail on one bottle. The water had somewhat softened the transparent mucilage used to attach the label to the bottle. But the softening did not work out uniformly somehow. There were always pieces of label that for some obscure reason remained affixed to the bottles. It was on those pieces of labels tenaciously fastened to the bottles that my right-hand thumbnail had to work overtime. As the minutes passed I noticed that, the coldness of the water started to pass from my hand to my body giving me intermittent body shivers that I tried to conceal with the greatest of effort from those sitting beside me. My hands became deadly clean and tiny little wrinkles started to show especially at the tips of my fingers. Sometimes, I stopped a few seconds from scratching the bottles, to open and close my fists in rapid movements in order to bring blood to my hands. But almost as soon as I placed them in the water they became deathly pale again. But these were minor details compared with what was happening to the thumb of my right hand. From a delicate, boyish thumb, it was growing by the minute into a full-blown tomato-colored finger. It was the only part of my right hand remaining blood red. I started to look at the workers’ thumbs. I noticed that these particular fingers on their right hands were unusually developed with a thick layer of callus covering the tip of their right thumb. The nails on their thumbs looked coarser and smaller than on the other fingers thumb and nail having become one and the same thing a primitive unnatural human instrument especially developed to detach hard pieces of labels from wet bottles immersed in galvanized tubs. After a couple of hours I had a feeling that my thumbnail was going to leave my finger and jump into the cold water in the tub. A numb pain imperceptibly began to be felt coming from my right thumb. Then I began to feel the pain as if coming from a finger bigger than all of my body. After three hours of this, I decided to quit. I told the foreman, showing him my swollen finger. He calculated that I had earned 69 cents at 23 cents an hour. Early in the evening, I met my brother in our furnished room. We started to exchange experiences of our job hunting for the day. ‘‘You know what?’’ my brother started, ‘‘early in the morning I went to work where they take labels off old bottles with your right-hand thumb nail. Somewhere on the West Side of Lower Manhattan. I only stayed a couple of hours. ‘Easy job … Good wages …’ they said. The person who wrote that ad must have had a great sense of humor.’’ And we both had a hearty laugh that evening when I told my brother that I also went to work at that same place later in the day. Now when I see ads stating, ‘‘Easy job. Good wages,’’ I just smile an old, tired, knowing smile. THE LADY WHO LIVED NEAR THE STATUE OF A MAN ON A HORSE It was a cold January night in 1924. I was working the 6:00 P.M. to 2:30 A.M. ‘‘night shift’’ at the General Post Office in Brooklyn. A snowstorm was raging as I stepped out on my way home a little after 2:30 that morning. As I struggled through the snow toward Tillary Street, I noticed a figure coming toward me. As it came

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closer to me I could distinguish a woman rather old and seemingly very tired. ‘‘Usted habla espa~ nol?’’ [Do you speak Spanish?]. Her voice was weak and forlorn. When I answered, ‘‘Si, hablo espa~ nol,’’ [Yes, I speak Spanish] she breathed a deep sigh of relief. Despite the night, the snow and the wind, I could notice a hunched, weary figure becoming erect, as if a new puff of life had been injected into her. We returned to the lobby of the post office where it was nice and warm. My coworkers were passing us by on their way home as I scanned the woman before me. She was dark brown; her hair was gray; her face was full of deep wrinkles. She was wearing a light summer cape not suitable at all for a wintry, snowy, January night. She had on no overshoes or rubber boots, only a pair of very worn shoes. I noticed two large holes in the soles as she took off each shoe to warm her numb cold feet with her hands. ‘‘Where do you come from?’’ I asked her in Spanish. ‘‘Puerto Rico,’’ she answered. And then, without further prompting, she told me a long story of misery and exploitation. She was a domestic worker in Puerto Rico earning a miserable monthly wage. At the house where she worked, a rich American couple came from the States to spend a few weeks there. They saw how she worked, and they liked what they saw. This couple managed to get hold of a translator through whom they proposed to the domestic worker that she come to the United States and work in their home. She accepted. Their American home was in one of the ‘‘well-to-do’’ parts of Brooklyn. She soon found out that she had to cook, wash, iron, and clean a fourteen-room house full of furniture and bric-a-brac. She also found that though these two people were living in this house all by themselves they had frequent guests and gave many parties. The Puerto Rican domestic worker was supposed to clean for the numerous guests, besides cooking, washing, and ironing for them while they were at the house. When the first month passed she discovered that they wanted to pay her the same miserable monthly wages she was getting from the other family in Puerto Rico! One night, when the rich American couple had gone to sleep she packed her few belongings in the old valise that she brought from Puerto Rico and left the palatial home. ‘‘And where did you go to?’’ I inquired. ‘‘I took the first trolley car that I could find in the neighborhood, until the last stop. I left that and got into another. The main thing I wanted to do was to get as far away as possible from that house where there was all toil and no rest. At last, I knocked at a door. A Negro man opened the door. He could see that I was crying and very much fatigued. He and his wife took me in. Since then, I have been living with them. One of them usually takes me to different houses to work a few hours here and a few hours there. Then one of the two, the man or his wife, comes for me during the evening. ‘‘Yesterday morning the man took me to a house where I had worked before for a few hours. I finished early. Thinking that I could get to the house all by myself, I did not wait for anybody. I thought that I took the same trolley car that they would have taken if they came for me. Somehow I did not get off where they always did. And, here I am, having taken trolley cars all day and all night, cold, hungry, and tired.’’ ‘‘And where is the house of this family with whom you are now staying?’’ ‘‘All I know is that a few blocks from the house, there is a statue of a man on a horse. That is all I know.’’ At that late hour of the night I could think of only one solution … take the lady home with me. When I arrived home, I told my wife the story as briefly as possible given the late hour. She helped the woman remove all her clothing, as she was cold

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and wet ‘‘to the bone.’’ Then she gave her something warm to wear and some hot food to eat. Concha, my wife, was very glad that I brought the lady with me. Besides being the human thing to do, she would serve as her companion for at least a few days. We were newlyweds. Working from six to two-thirty in the morning, I left her alone every day in a four-room apartment on the top floor way out in the Williamsburg district of Brooklyn. From then on, each Sunday early in the morning I would go out with our new friend. We spent practically all day looking for statues of men on horses. After a few Sundays we had covered almost all the squares and parks in Brooklyn, from the statue of George Washington on his horse at the Brooklyn entrance to the Williamsburg Bridge, to the most obscure statue of a man on a horse in the most remote section of every park in Brooklyn. Whenever, in our Sunday promenades, I discovered a statue of a man on a horse, I pointed triumphantly to it and said: ‘‘Is that the statue?’’ To which, she said, at least for a half-dozen Sundays, each time her voice a trifle wearier, ‘‘No, that is not the statue.’’ Then we went home, tired and hungry and we waited for the coming Sunday hoping for better luck. One Sunday morning about eleven o’clock we came upon a statue of a man on a horse. The lady stopped short as soon as she saw the statue she said: ‘‘That is the one. ‘‘We came upon it accidentally. The statue was in one of those places where statues have no business to be. It was on a very small square. The man and horse seemed to be too big for the ground surrounding it. We had at last found what we were looking for these many Sundays. It seemed to me as if the statue had been waiting for us for a long time. Man and horse were so serene not in a hurry to go anywhere. The horse’s right front leg was in a graceful arched position but its hoof remained up in the air all the time we were there looking at it, never touching the ground. The left front leg never moved forward as it seemed to me the animal thing to do. But all those things were of course minor, debatable questions at the moment. The important thing was that we were looking right at THE statue the lady and myself were after for so many Sundays. It was the statue of General Ulysses S. Grant on a horse at Bedford Avenue near Bergen Street. From this point on, the little lady seemed to know exactly where she was. She led me a few blocks to Kingston Avenue and entered an apartment building. The family was very glad and relieved to see her. They had worried for weeks. They understood and were happy that she had found and would now live with people who spoke her language. She got her valise and a few of her things together and, after thanking the family very warmly I had to translate all her phrases of gratitude and thanks we took a taxi and came back to my home. My wife was very pleased. She knew that my Sunday explorations for the man on a horse were at an end. Source: John Flores, ed. Divided Arrival, Narratives of the Puerto Rican Migration, 1920 1950, 2nd Edition (New York: Centro Estudios Puertotique~ nos Hunter College, City University of New York, 1998). 101, 109, 111, 113, 115, 117, 119, 121.

190. Excerpts from the Memoirs of Bernardo Vega Bernardo Vega (1885–?) arrived in New York from Puerto Rico in 1916 just before the U.S. involvement in World War I. Originally a cigar maker in Puerto Rico, like so many Puerto Rican immigrants, he found employment in

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munitions factories. As a reader for cigar makers, he achieved an extraordinary education with a highly developed class consciousness. Memoirs of Bernardo Vega tells of the Puerto Rican struggle for justice from a socialist perspective during the early making of the Puerto Rican community in New York, describing life in the city, how Puerto Ricans adjusted to this new environment, their past times, and organization.

The Battery, which as I found out later is what they call the tip of lower Manhattan where our ferry from Staten Island docked, was also a port of call for all the elevated trains. The Second, Third, Sixth, and Ninth Avenue lines all met there.… The train snaked along at breakneck speed. I pretended to take note of everything, my eyes like the golden deuce in a deck of Spanish cards. The further along we moved, and as the dingy buildings filed past my view, all the visions I had of the gorgeous splendor of New York vanished. The skyscrapers seemed like tall gravestones, I wondered why, if the United States was so rich, as surely it was, did its biggest city look so grotesque?… We returned by the same route, but got off the bus at 110th Street. We walked up Manhattan Avenue to 116th, which is where the Leon brothers Antonio, Pep
ın, and Abelardo were living. They owned a small cigar factory. They were part of a family from Cayey that had emigrated to New York back in 1904. The members of that family were some of the first Puerto Ricans to settle in the Latin barrio of Harlem. In those days the Nadals, Matienzos, Pietris, Escalonas, and Umpierres lived there too; I also knew of a certain Julio Ortiz. In all, I’d say there were some one hundred and fifty Puerto Ricans living in that part of the city around the turn of the century. Before our countrymen, there were other Hispanics here. There was a sizable Cuban colony in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, members of the Quesada, Arango, and Mantilla families, as well as Emilia Casanova de Villaverde. They must have been people of some means, since they lived in apartments belonging to Sephardic Jews on 110th Street facing Central Park. As I was saying, when I took up residence in New York in 1916, the apartment buildings and stores in what came to be known as El Barrio, ‘‘our’’ barrio, or the Barrio Latino, all belonged to Jews. Seventh, St. Nicholas, and Manhattan Avenues, and the streets in between, were all inhabited by Jewish people of means, if not great wealth. [Then] 110th Street was the professional center of the district. The classy, expensive stores were on Lenox Avenue, while the more modest ones were located east of Fifth Avenue. The ghetto of poor Jews extended along Park Avenue between 110th and 117th and on the streets east of Madison. It was in this lowerclass Jewish neighborhood that some Puerto Rican and Cuban families, up to about fifty of them, were living at that time.… In those years, and for a long time to come, the Socialist Party, the Cigarmakers’ Union, and the Seamen’s Union were the only groups that were concerned about defending foreign workers. The other labor unions either showed no interest, or were too weak to do anything, as in the case of the Dressmakers’ Union, which later became the powerful International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union.… As soon as I had assured myself of a job at the cigar factory, I enrolled in a public school on 86th Street off First Avenue. The other students were mostly Hungarians and Germans. The class was taught by a little teacher of Irish descent. One night

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she talked of the advantages of being a United States citizen and how to go about becoming one. ‘‘How can I become an American citizen?’’ I asked. She replied that you just have to follow the steps she had outlined. I responded by pointing out that, unlike our Hungarian and German classmates, Puerto Ricans do not really have any citizenship. Outside of Puerto Rico our natural citizenship is not recognized. Without any citizenship to give up, it would seem pretty hard for us to become Americans. A bit flustered, the teacher could only restate what she had said before: that you just have to give up your own citizenship, follow the steps, and there you have it. And it was the same for everyone who was a resident of the United States! ‘‘Yes, for everyone,’’ I said, ‘‘except Puerto Ricans.’’ The teacher did not like my attitude. She must have thought that I was trying to make her look stupid in front of the whole class. She called the principal who, informed of the situation, felt it his duty to save the teacher from ridicule. After hemming and hawing, he concluded by saying that the problem was that so little is known about Puerto Rico here in the United States. This incident wouldn’t be worth mentioning if it weren’t for what happened as a result: they transferred me to a school so far from where I was living that I had to give up my studies. I would have been better off if I hadn’t said anything. Which is how I learned that keeping your mouth shut is the key to ‘‘success’’ in the United States.… Cigar workers bought and circulated a wide assortment of books, especially works expressing the most advanced ideas published in America and Europe. There were also many newspapers and magazines advocating all kinds of social and political doctrines. In New York City there were several newspapers published in Spanish: the anarchist Cultura Proletaria; the more general-interest El Heraldo; Las Novedades, an old-time Spanish paper founded in 1887; and La Prensa, a daily that began publishing in 1913. There were a few monthly magazines, too, such as El Comercio. This variety reflected the cultural, political, and civic environment of the Hispanic community in New York in 1917. Cigar makers and their families made up more than 60 percent of the Puerto Rican population.… In about 1918, entertainment for Puerto Ricans in New York was confined to the apartments they lived in. They celebrated birthdays and weddings and, of course, Christmas Eve, New Year’s Day, and the Feast of the Epiphany. But always at home, with friends and neighbors. There would be dancing, and between numbers somebody would recite poetry or hold forth about our distant homeland. At some of the parties there were charangas, lively groups of Puerto Rican musicians. But most of the time we played records. By that time, Columbia Records was recording danzas, aguinaldos, and other kinds of music from back home. Almost every family owned a Victrola, and many even had a Pianola. The fact is that once this music gained in popularity, Puerto Ricans were exploited mercilessly. Pianolas cost about $500.00, on credit. Many was the worker who wound up losing what little he earned by falling behind on his payments. Not to mention the times a family would move and have to leave their Pianola behind … just getting it from one place to another cost more than moving the rest of their belongings! Those boisterous Puerto Rican parties would often disturb neighbors of other nationalities, which led to some serious conflicts and unpleasant quarrels. And there were some less innocent events as well. In the more spacious apartments in Harlem, some people threw parties on Saturdays and Sundays that weren’t

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just family parties, but full-scale dances with a cover charge and all. And once you were in they’d take you for whatever else you had, for drinks and tidbits. Which is not the least of the shameful things that went on. There was none of that in the homes of the tabaqueros.… Source: Cesar Andreu Iglesias, ed. Memoirs of Bernardo Vega: A Contribution to the History of the C 1984 by Monthly Puerto Rican Community in New York. Translated by Juan Flores. Copyright
Review Press. Reprinted by permission of Monthly Review Foundation. pp. 7, 9, 15, 27, 35, 101.


n Lebro
n to the Department of 191. Memo from Ramo Agriculture and Labor, 1921 The Puerto Rican diaspora continued during the 1920s. Puerto Rican workers were taken to Arizona to work in cotton fields because of labor shortages brought about by the Immigration Acts of 1921 and 1924 that placed southern and central Europeans on immigration quotas and totally shut the door on Asians. Western growers feared that restrictions would be put on Mexican immigration so the answer was to import Puerto Ricans who could not be restricted. The U.S. government was complicit in importing Puerto Ricans into Arizona to beat down Mexican wages by creating a larger labor surplus. This was done with the cooperation of Puerto Rican authorities. More outrageous was the Hawaiian Sugar Planters Association that imported thousands of Puerto Ricans to the sugar plantations of Hawaii. Since the 1890s, this organization brought Japanese, Chinese, and Portuguese workers to the islands where an oligarchy of sugar growers controlled every aspect of life in Hawaii. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1892 and other immigration acts had cut the supply of Asians. The planters turned to Puerto Rico as early as 1900. Puerto Rican families were scattered over forty-four plantations where contractors often divided families, sending members to different islands. Six Puerto Ricans even got sent to the leper colony. Wages were uneven with women earning half as much as the men, and children getting a nickel a day less than the women. The following is a memo on agreements made by the Hawaiian Sugar Planters Association. The problem was that the terms were not enforced, although the terms of the contract were specific. This document also shows the enticement to workers by government officers who did not enforce the memo’s guarantees.

CONDITIONS IN WHICH THEY WILL EMIGRATE TO HAWAII Democracy, June 6, 1921 Department of Agriculture and Labor Information for workers interested in emigration to Hawaii, Mr. R. D. Mead, hired representative of the Hawaiian Sugar Planters Association, is presenting the conditions established by the company under which emigration will take place. Emigration for the workers is of their own free will, Pact XI with the representatives of the Hawaiian Sugar Planters Association. The mission of the Department of Agriculture and Labor is limited to establishing certain guarantees so that the clauses in the contract between workers and the corporation are carried out. These are the conditions: First: Fare and expenses to the Hawaiian Sugar Planters’ Association are free of charge.

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Second: The workers who emigrate will not have the right to repatriation. Third: The Hawaiian Sugar Planters’ Association makes the commitment to provide permanent work during one whole year to the emigrants with a salary of thirty dollars per month for men, and twenty dollars and fifty cents for women, children’s earnings will be according to the type of work. Fourth: A month will consist of twenty-six days of work; one day is ten hours in the fields and twelve hours in the factory for men. Hours will be based on Hawaiian law for women and children. Fifth: Once workers have worked twenty days or more a month, they will receive gratification. If the price of 96-grade sugar was $58.00 per ton, they will receive 10 percent on working days increasing one percent each time the sugar increases to $2.00 per ton. Sixth: Working days and gratification expressed in last paragraph are in effect until October 31, 1921. After this date and every time the price of 96-grade sugar of Hawaii is no less than five cents per pound, the company guarantees that both working days and gratification will not be less than $30.00 per month. Seventh: The company guarantees that Hawaiian sugar of grade 96 is no less than five cents per pound during three years as expressed in last paragraph, Puerto Rican workers will receive the same compensation and gratification as the national and foreign workers. After three years if workers wish to continue working in the plantations, they will receive compensation and gratification usually paid to national and foreign workers in Hawaii. Eighth: The corporation will set annually the gratification tariffs. Ninth: The workers will have free housing for multi- or single-family dwelling; doctor, medicines, hospital treatment, coal and water, as is provided by Hawaiian Reparation laws. Tenth: The Hawaiian Sugar Planters Association will deposit a sum in the amount of two thousand dollars to the Department of Agriculture and Labor, in case of any violation to the contract’s clauses. Eleventh: A signed contract will not be valid until the corporation gets all the workers together in a place and labor officers informs them the covenant clauses and these must by approved by workers. Twelfth: The corporation has the obligation to give the Business Labor Bureau a complete list of all the workers who have signed contracts for emigration. Ram
on Lebr
on, Interim Chair, Labor Business June 5, 1921 Source: History Task Force, Sources of the Study of Puerto Rican Migration 1879 1930 (New York: Centro de Estudios Puertorique~ nos, 1982), 156 157.

192. Excerpts from Margaret Hill Benedict, ‘‘Why My Children Speak Spanish,’’ 1920 Another conflict between Americans and Latinos was the issue of language. Most Latino people have claimed that if you know three languages, you are trilingual; if you know two languages, you are bilingual; and if you know one,

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you are American. From the beginning of the occupation there was an effort to Americanize the island, and the litmus test was English. Indeed, U.S. authorities attempted to impose an English-only policy on Puerto Ricans. After World War I, there was a further backlash against ‘‘foreign’’ languages in the United States. However, there were people of both races who recognized the utility of knowing two languages. The following is one of the early arguments in defense of Latino immigrant children being bilingual. This piece was by a Euro-American without the all-too-common nativist biases.

If you live in a bilingual country like Porto Rico or in a border region like that along the Rio Grande, there is no particular difficulty about getting a child to speak, read, and write well in both languages, although even this is a far greater task than it is ordinarily considered. But when parents who speak two languages come to live in a country where only one is commonly spoken, their troubles begin, that is, if they wish to have their children speak both languages. In most cases of this sort, the second language is either entirely forgotten in a few months or becomes so hopelessly confused in the minds of the children that they are too discouraged and puzzled to take it up again. A gentleman, himself an educated Mexican, came to the northern part of our country with his American wife and their son, a boy of eleven years. The wife spoke Spanish very well and the boy knew at that time, very little English. Seven years later, this gentleman was talking with a Spanish teacher in the city where he was living at that time. He said, ‘‘My son will not speak Spanish any more. No amount of threatening or persuasion or promise of reward will make him say a sentence. He seems to hate it.’’ The teacher replied with a question. ‘‘What language do you use in the home?’’ she asked. ‘‘Why, English, of course,’’ was the reply, ‘‘it seems more natural.’’ ‘‘Well then,’’ said the teacher, ‘‘how do you expect the child to keep on with anything so difficult as a language with nobody to help him?’’ How with thousands of people constantly talking English all around him is any child to keep from forgetting even the simplest expressions of a language which he hears only now and then? Seven years ago, with a little daughter three years old and a tiny baby, I left Porto Rico. The older child spoke almost no English although she had been accustomed to hearing that language and understood what was said to her. How was I, among English speaking people, away from the Spanish atmosphere and the Spanish language, to keep for my daughters this priceless heritage which I felt was theirs by right? Seven years of experience have taught me to answer my own question. My girls understand all that I say to them in Spanish and take pride in answering in that language. The older one is now ten years old and has a better understanding of Spanish grammar than the average high school student after two years’ study.… When we lived in Porto Rico, my older girl spoke almost no English. I spoke English to her but she answered in Spanish. When we came to the United States matters were reversed. I began to talk to the child in Spanish. For a short time she answered me in that tongue but as soon as she had American playmates, and American aunts and uncles began to appear, she answered me in English. As her Spanish prattle had not troubled me in Porto Rico, so I did not allow myself to be distressed about this English baby talk in our own country. I spoke to her always in Spanish when we were alone and usually in the presence of others. I used to arrange sets of questions for her and teach her the answers. These we repeated every day. I taught her to say,

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‘‘Good morning’’ and ‘‘Good night,’’ and to ask and answer all the polite and solicitous questions which in Spanish must always be repeated morning and evening. Source: The Modern Language Journal, Vol. 4, No. 6, March 1920, pp. 280 282.

193. Correspondence from the Puerto Rican Club of San Francisco and the Puerto Rican League of California, 1925 Puerto Ricans did not migrate to the United States in large numbers before 1898 because of the distance, a thousand miles by sea. When they came, most immigrated to New York yet many went to other places as contract laborers. Not all Puerto Ricans were laborers: some were middle-class Puerto Ricans who left the island, migrating to places other than New York. The recruitment of Puerto Rican workers by brokers increased in the 1920s as immigration acts cut the flow of eastern and southern Europeans to a trickle. In western agriculture, many feared that Mexicans would be placed on a quota. Since Puerto Ricans were U.S. citizens, they were looked at as an alternative. The only thing that stood in the way of massive recruitment was the general belief of Euro-Americans that Puerto Ricans were of African descent. Many Puerto Ricans who left their homeland to work in the fields did not stay in agricultural work—they migrated to the cities where they joined clusters of merchants and Puerto Rican professionals. They formed their own social clubs such as the ones described below. The following letter tells of the formation of Puerto Rican clubs in San Francisco and their quest for community—Puerto Rican identity was very important to these immigrants.

CORRESPONDENCE FROM OCTOBER 12, 1925 The ‘‘Puerto Rican Club of San Francisco’’ and the ‘‘Puerto Rican League of California’’ are two organizations which honor their founders. (FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT IN NEW YORK) New York, September 30th. Mr. Octavio Torres, secretary general of the San Francisco Puerto Rican Club, has had the courtesy of providing very interesting data regarding social and patriotic movements among our large Puerto Rican community in the state of California, and we are always up to date on interesting news for our large readership from Puerto Rico Correspondence, especially those relating to our resident compatriots throughout the continent. We take the opportunity to transmit daily reading to our brothers in Puerto Rico so that Puerto Ricans are informed about those who live in far-away regions. Without a doubt, our kind readers know that the majority of the Puerto Rican community that today resides in California is formed of immigrant compatriots who left Puerto Rico around 1900 and went to the Hawaiian Isles, enticed by quite splendid offers, they went in search of a better life. However, those enticing offers in a far-away land never became a reality. They suffered cultural differences and did not speak the language, and if that was not bad enough they were mistreated by their bosses; this extreme mistreatment forced them to immigrate again, and this time they went to the welcoming beaches of the state of California. Of course, not all of them came to California, but the majority did.

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As time went by, the Puerto Rican community in California decided to form a society that would protect the rights of the people and would work toward social and economic improvement. On February 25th, 1912 they celebrated an assembly and, after the preliminary deliberations, the ‘‘San Francisco Puerto Rican Club,’’ a social-patriotic club was founded and its emblem was and still is: ‘‘Fraternity and Progress.’’ Six months later, the society is incorporated under the state of California law, and since then has worked hard for Puerto Ricans regardless of race and color. The February 25th of the next year will be the fourteenth anniversary, so arrangements are taking place to celebrate with great pomp and circumstance; more importantly they will celebrate the anniversary with the inauguration of their house ‘‘Casa Puertoriquena de California,’’ and overjoyed compatriots will see their dream being realized, which has been impossible for Puerto Ricans in New York. There is another organization the ‘‘Puerto Rican League’’ of California, which has been previously discussed in this paper. This society was organized about three years ago and, in spite of its short existence, it has already grown beautifully and is contributing to the exaltation of the Puerto Rican community in California. We want to emphasize the fact that it has not been possible in New York. Even though the two Puerto Rican societies in California are completely different in their organization and run by different sets of principles, they enjoy mutual cooperation; unlike the very common fights and envy among the New York Puerto Rican community. For example, recently both organizations showed their solidarity by working on a legal case of a young Puerto Rican man. Recently, a Puerto Rican employee of a ship arriving from New York got in trouble. We will transcribe what the San Francisco La Prensa wrote so you can better understand how the two societies proceded and behaved. A timely defense: The press has been busy following a criminal case, one of the San Francisco Penal Judges, against a young man Primitivo Rodriguez, who killed a machinist by the name Charles Steve, aboard the Charles McCormick. Rodriguez is twenty years old and is of frail constitution. Steve was a corpulent man who at every opportunity had verbally and physically mistreated this young man. When arriving in San Francisco, Rodriguez was speaking Spanish with another worker when the machinist beat him mercilessly into pieces. Once the young man regained conscience from the beating he took an axe and walked to Steve and with an accurate hit cracked Steve’s head open. The machinist died. Judge Louis presided and delivered it to a jury on Monday, continuing until Wednesday, in which the jury found the accused not guilty and set him free. Rodriguez was defended by an intelligent attorney, John H., and the cost was paid by the Puerto Rican community who put all its energy and will in favor of Rodriguez.

Here is a beautiful example worth imitation, worthy of our praise: the ‘‘San Francisco Puerto Rican Club’’ and the ‘‘California Puerto Rican League’’ who struggle together for our cause. The Board of Directors of the ‘‘Puerto Rican League’’ was previously published; but now we have the pleasure to publish the names of the people on the Board of Directors of the ‘‘San Francisco Puerto Rican Club’’ which are the following: President, Alfredo Col
on; Vice-president, Emilio Ramons; Treasurer, Clemente Laverne; Secretary, Octavio Torres; Sub-secretary, Jose M. Torres; Guard Gentlemen, Regino

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Gonz
alez and Ram
on Vegas; Vocals, Francisco Torres, Juan Molina, Francis Pochi, Felipe Mart
ınez, Victor P
erez, Lorenzo Dide, Nicasio Medil Santos Santiago, Felipe Correa, Jos
e Amoros, Vicente Sanches, Domingo Figueroa; Master of Ceremony, Manuel Matos. It can be said that the board is well integrated, and that it has friendly tendencies and this is how it differs from the other Puerto Rican organization. We congratulate the Puerto Rican community in California, for the wonderful job both associations have done elevating the name of Puerto Rico. New York Correspondent, September 1925 Source: History Task Force, Sources of the Study of Puerto Rican Migration, 1879 1930 (New York: Puerto Rican Center, 1982), pp. 183 185.

~oz Mar
ın, ‘‘The Sad Case of 194. Excerpts from Luis Mun Porto Rico,’’ February 1929 Luis Mu~ noz Mar
ın (1898–1980) was one of Puerto Rico’s most prominent politicos. After the U.S. takeover of the island, there were three political parties in Puerto Rico—the Alliance Party, the largest; the Unionist Party under Antonio R. Barcel
o (1868–1938); and the Socialist Party under Santiago Iglesias (1872–1939) and Rafael Mart
ınez Nadal (1877–1941). They represented the divergent political tendencies on the island. Mu~ noz Mar
ın at first joined the Socialists but later became a liberal. Puerto Ricans were faced with dire problems in the 1920s: Thirty percent of the farms had been wiped out between 1910–1920; 50 percent of Puerto Rican farmers worked on small farms of 1–10 acres. Absentee ownership was a major problem and less than 500 owned one-third of the land. Added to this, was the insult over the question of statehood. Puerto Ricans grew painfully aware of racist views harbored by most Americans toward them. The following excerpts are from an article in which Luis Mu~ noz Mar
ın describes conditions on the island and reacts to the consequences of American investment and cultural Americanization. It is an important article in understanding the man who would become the first democratically elected governor of Puerto Rico in 1949.

Two major problems perplex the old Spanish province of Porto Rico, arising out of its enforced relationship to the United States. One deals with the consequences of American economic development, the other with cultural Americanization. Both go to the root of the drama now being acted on that gorgeous stage; both are portentous in their potentialities. The American flag found Porto Rico penniless and content. It now flies over a prosperous factory worked by slaves who have lost their land and may soon lose their guitars and their songs. In the old days, most Porto Rican peasants owned a few pigs and chickens, maybe a horse or a cow, some goats, and in some way had the use of a patch of soil. Today, this modest security has been replaced by a vision of opulence. There are more things that they can’t have and what they can imagine has widened monstrously. While there are many more schools for their hungry children and many more roads for their bare feet, their destiny is decidedly narrower now than it was when they were part and parcel of one of the most interesting and incompetent nationalities in the world.

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In 1898, Porto Rico was a semi-feudal country, typical of the old Spanish provinces in America, willing and capable of assuming with a natural grace and a natural awkwardness its position in the Spanish commonwealth of provinces, or to venture into a simple, old-fashioned Latin-American national form. Its economics were those developed by Spain in the tropical New World: fiscally rotten, socially humble, and sound. Culturally, it was a slow, calm place. Racially, it shared with Costa Rica one peculiarity: a predominantly unmixed European peasantry if Spain be Europe. Schools were few, roads were fewer; chickens laid eggs under thatched cottages, goats cavorted outside and were corralled for a milking and sometimes killed for a stuffing, the squeal of pigs and not of factory whistles woke up the countryside. Pale, wiry, mustached, sleepy-eyed men tumbled out of hammocks pulling up their trousers for the day, and barefooted women in terribly starched dresses of many colors began preparing strong coffee in iron kettles and serving it steaming in polished cocoanut shells. Although Porto Rico was not then one of the great sugar producing centers of the world, there was usually sugar at the bottom of the cocoanut and the sleepy-eyed man stirred it lazily with a wooden spoon, tasting it with his eyes and his nose. Inside the hut, the brats wailed; one of them soothed itself by finding five eggs, certified by cackles, under the floor, another by plucking from the wall the image of the Virgin, printed in screaming blue and red. The men left for the field to cut cane, to lead the oxen on their sugar grinding merry-go-round, to prune or pick the coffee bushes in the sloping shade of the tall guavas, to pick and seed the cotton, or sift the tobacco leaves, or spade in their masters’ truck field. As they wound their way along the coastal plain or twisted along the precipitous mountain paths, a very few pennies jingled in their pockets. At noon the j
ıbaro comforted himself, for two cents, with a tumbler of rum bought at the store under the Ceiba tree, and went home to a meal of codfish with sweet potatoes and rice mixed with beans. The rice and beans were plentiful; he ate of them until he had enough, and then he slept. After the day’s work, he loafed in the starlight, sang fantastic songs, usually depicting a topsy-turvy grandeur of some sort, made love to one or two girls, and then went home and made love to his wife. On a Sunday, he might, with a number of his friends, carve a barbecued pig, get drunk in the shade, and go to a cockfight. If there was sickness in the family, the master of the plantation would send his doctor, and the master’s wife might send some quinine or rhubarb or cadillo leaves. I don’t believe he ever went to bed hungry or muddled through a spell of sickness without attention. As he could not read, it was unlikely that he would discover that Porto Rico’s total production for the year came to something less than $9,000,000 and that 950,000 human beings were living, sleeping, eating, drinking, feasting, gambling, singing, and loving on that money. His master, the feudal lord, rose out of an enormous mahogany bed, washed his hands and face in cold water out of an enameled bowl with a design of roses, and breakfasted on a cup of coffee, rolls, butter, and cheese. Then he shouted for his horse and rode over his land, seeing that everyone was at work, inquiring after those who were sick or lazy, listening to gossip, giving advice on marriages. It was not until later in the morning that, coming upon a secluded bend of the stream where the Pomarrosas bent over the water, he took off his clothes and bathed.… It is close contact with the United States rather than the influence of the small group of resident Americans that has given a decided, if superficial, direction to the

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institutional life of the island. The Y.M.C.A. has its swimming pool, its basketball court, its inspirational talks, but I doubt that such implied notions as Christ’s disapproval of cigarettes get much serious attention from the local young men. Rotary slaps backs, sings, and hears speeches in a bored and genial way, but when I gave it a somewhat fantastic talk on the culture of light ladies as an index of civilization, the members really had a good time. The Elks and Odd Fellows play with their rituals, charity becomes slightly organized, evangelical preachers thunder in the villages, Holy Rollers roll in the back alleys, three or four prominent citizens become Protestants and are considered funny, women are beginning to be feared as the rolling-pin follows the flag, virginity still abounds and often attains to old age, but is perceptibly on the wane. It is probably through the women that the largest doses of Americanism are being administered. The Latin-American attitude in this respect is confusing to a narrowly egalitarian world. Certainly we are wont to make a sharp nonsensical distinction between good and bad women there is hardly any middle ground between chastity and prostitution. But this has not heretofore meant that the mere goodness of good women gave them any appreciable influence on the social point of view. Good women have been powerless and tame among us, and have grown smug in the consciousness of their hard luck. Generally speaking, there were only four things Latin women could be: old maids, wives, mistresses, or prostitutes. Now, they can be girls. They can be girls for a long time. They can also be stenographers, bookkeepers, telephone operators, shop assistants, and feminists. They may speak in public and harass legislators. Porto Rican politicians may now be publicly accused of keeping mistresses. The charge doesn’t come near defeating them, but evidently there is some suggestion in the atmosphere that makes it seem relevant. Twenty years ago, it would have seemed preposterous to advance such an argument as in any way affecting a man’s fitness for office.… Will this [Americanization] ever come about? Will the island retain its historical personality? An unqualified answer to either of these questions would necessarily fall short of the possibilities. Perhaps a more absurd fate is in store for us. Perhaps we are destined to be neither Porto Ricans nor Americans, but merely puppets of a mongrel state of mind, susceptible to American thinking and proud of Latin thought, subservient to American living and worshipful of the ancestral way of life. Perhaps we are to discuss Cervantes and eat pork and beans in the Child’s restaurant that must be opened sooner or later. Perhaps we will try not to let mother catch us reading the picaresque verses of Quevedo. Perhaps we are going to a singularly fantastic and painless hell in our own sweet way. Perhaps all this is nothing but a foretaste of Pan-Americanism. Source: Luis Mu~ noz Mar
ın. ‘‘The Sad Case of Porto Rico.’’ The American Mercury, February 1929 issue. http://www.logofilo.com/LMM-TheSadCaseOfPortoRico1929.htm.

195. Excerpts from ‘‘Porto Rico: A Colonial Responsibility,’’ The New Republic’s Response to President Calvin Coolidge’s Presidential Address, February 6, 1929 It was generally conceded in the 1920s that the United States had colonized Puerto Rico in 1898. The following article appeared in the New Republic on

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the colonial responsibility of the United States toward Puerto Ricans. Many journals acknowledged that the United States had destroyed the island’s agrarian economy and compounded poverty on the island. The following article is a response to the views of President Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) that Puerto Ricans should be grateful for the American occupation, the opportunity to trade with the United States, and the blessing of American citizenship. The response indicates a more progressive view: that the United States did not do Puerto Rico a favor and had indeed destroyed its subsistence economy, driving many people to the cities and forcing them to immigrate. It raises the question of sovereignty.

In his famous Armistice Day address, President Coolidge declared that our territorial possessions were not a help but a hindrance to us, and that we held them as a ‘‘duty.’’ Just before Christmas, Congress provided some evidence for this assertion by voting a loan of $6,000,000 for the relief of Porto Rico, so cruelly damaged by a recent hurricane. It seems correct to say that under American rule Porto Rico has reached a higher standard of literacy than any other territory in the Caribbean or in Central America. The administration of public health and the promotion of agricultural experimentation in this island places Porto Rico far in advance of her neighbors. The Porto Ricans are not, however, content with such manifestations of progress. In fact, it is their superior position in these respects which strengthens their demands for self-government. Cuba and Santo Domingo, and (in theory) Haiti are independent states, although inhabited by peoples intellectually more backward than the Porto Ricans. Yet Porto Rico is a dependency of the United States. As a result of the demands of the Porto Ricans, Congress, in 1917, bestowed upon them American citizenship and a degree of self-government. They [seat] their own legislature, the upper branch of which passes upon most of the executive appointments. Nevertheless, Congress has authority to nullify or supplement any law passed by the Porto Rican legislature, and the administration of the island is in the hands of a Governor appointed in Washington. The President of the United States also selects the Attorney-General, the Commissioner of Education, the Auditor and the judges of the Supreme Court. In installing our administration in Porto Rico, the United States proceeded along the familiar lines of Americanization. Confident that our ways are best, we transplanted to this island, political institutions which were already cracking at home; we introduced mechanical appliances … destroying tropical beauty, have made the main streets of San Juan look like a city in Iowa. We have emphasized and reemphasized the teaching of English in the schools. We have induced a Latin people to accept prohibition; we have vetoed Porto Rican bills allowing cockfights. The obvious goal of this policy has been assimilation, but we have failed in this effort. Spanish is more than ever the language of the people, and despite their American citizenship, Porto Ricans are more than ever conscious of their cultural nationhood, even though it exists in warped form. A Spanish writer, Se~ nor Araquistain, who recently visited the Greater Antilles, observed that while in Cuba, Haiti, and Santo Domingo, people live joyously though poor, in Porto Rico the attempted imposition of an Anglo-Saxon culture has produced a general melancholy. ‘‘The presence of the North Americans has imposed a veil of sorrow upon the Porto Rican conscience.’’ This feeling of cultural repression can only be removed by abolishing the political dependence of Porto Rico upon the United States. The

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younger element and especially the women are coming to demand complete independence. The more respectable and conservative politicians have for the last five years been advocating the right to elect their own Governor. As he [the governor] would presumably be a local Porto Rican, the only check which the federal government would then have over the administration would be through the power of the President to remove the Governor, and through review by the courts. It seems, however, that if Porto Rico is to become self-governing, she should assume the responsibilities as well as the privileges of that status. The strongest argument now advanced against Porto Rican independence is an economic one. Should Porto Rico become independent, the American tariff would obstruct the entrance of her sugar into the United States, and this would kill the industry upon which the life of the island is dependent. At present, because of free trade, 90 percent of the foreign trade of Porto Rico is with America. The most obvious answer to this argument is tariff reciprocity. In 1902, we made a treaty with Cuba allowing the admission of Cuban products into this country at a 20 percent reduction in duties; and we ought to be even more willing to make such a treaty with Porto Rico. As a matter of fact, in the long run, the present social condition of the island would be benefited by a decline in the sugar industry. Before the American occupation, the peasant farm system prevailed in Porto Rico and the island was relatively self-sufficient from the standpoint of food. Today, as a result of the development of the sugar industry, artificially stimulated by a tariff which restricts Cuban sugar, but allows Porto Rican sugar to enter free, the number of small farms in Porto Rico has declined 40 percent during the last ten years. The Porto Ricans have become attached to the large sugar estates, or have flocked into dingy towns. The island is almost wholly dependent upon the continental United States for its daily bread. Because of our tariff, the Porto Rican jibaro must import rice, the main article in his diet, from Texas and Louisiana, instead of from foreign markets where it could be purchased more cheaply. Because of our tariff, Porto Rico cannot develop a reciprocal trade with her neighbors, Venezuela, Santo Domingo, or Cuba. Her trade is monopolized by the United States. The result is a high cost of living for the Porto Rican people, while wages are at the starvation level. Three-fifths of the population is lacking in permanent employment. There is under housing, tuberculosis and other diseases are rife, while the infant mortality rate is excessive. Yet, despite the impoverishment of the Porto Rican people, American sugar corporations wax fat from dividends, which in some cases range as high as 30 to 50 percent a year. Realizing the dangers of a foreign land monopoly. Congress passed a joint resolution in 1900, limiting the ownership of land in Porto Rico by corporations to 500 acres. The resolution did not, however, carry a penalty, and it has never been enforced. Today, there are more than 400 partnerships and corporations holding land in excess of the limitation. The shocking failure to enforce this law is a sad commentary on the American system of colonization, and on our conception of our duties to the Porto Rican people. The sugar corporations are operating in Porto Rico in open defiance of the law. Having succeeded in evading this restriction, they have felt encouraged also to resist the enforcement of labor legislation, and to obtain injunctions against the payment of taxes. Until Congress finally passed an act discharging these injunctions in 1927, the corporations during a period of five years held back taxes to such an extent that the government was obliged to contract a large floating debt. Desirable as political independence is, the most pressing needs of Porto Rico are economic.

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Some plan of agrarian reform should be adopted. History has repeatedly warned us of the latifundia peril. He who holds the land is the source of political power. The people of Porto Rico cannot be really free, they cannot be socially healthy and enterprising, until they have a stake in the soil. The government of the United States should act to enforce the 1900 land law, and compel all corporations to dispose of their lands, illegally held, by a certain date. Land not disposed of at the end of this period should be purchased by the Porto Rican government and then sold in small plots to Porto Rican owners upon the installment plan. Here we have merely to follow the precedent of the friar lands in the Philippines, where we purchased about 400,000 acres of land from the Catholic Church with the proceeds of a $7,000,000 bond issue. We then sold the parcels of land to Filipinos upon the basis of annual payments which made them owners in twenty-five years. Having returned the land to the Porto Rican people, the Agricultural Department should encourage its proper use. The settlement of this agrarian question is the key to Porto Rico’s future. Porto Rico should also be granted tariff autonomy, enabling the people to buy their food in the cheapest markets. The Porto Rican government should have the right to fix its own tariff duties, and to negotiate reciprocity treaties with its neighbors. If trade is developed between these states, it may eventually lead to a Caribbean federation, of great usefulness to its members. As a result of the American occupation of Porto Rico, the trade of this territory has increased more rapidly than that of any other Caribbean country, with the possible exception of Cuba. But gross increases in wealth count for little: the production of wealth is certainly less important from the social point of view than the means by which it is produced, and the method of its distribution. Even though gross production were only half the present figure, the people of Porto Rico would be more happy under a system which insured to each family in the island a self-respecting existence than under the present system, which pays large profits to absentee stockholders, but reduces the people of Porto Rico to a condition of half-starved and feudal helplessness. Mr. Hoover fed the Belgians; it is now his responsibility to see to it that the Porto Rican people become able to feed themselves. Source: ‘‘Porto Rico: A Colonial Responsibility,’’ The New Republic, February 6, 1929. pp. 311 312.

196. ‘‘Cubans vs. Porto Ricans,’’ Letter to the Editor of the New Republic Responding to ‘‘Porto Rico: A Colonial Responsibility,’’ 1929 The following letter responds to ‘‘Porto Rico: A Colonial Responsibility,’’ a February 6, 1929 article in the New Republic regarding Calvin Coolidge’s controversial speech that Puerto Ricans should be grateful to be part of the United States. The author called the article silly and goes beyond the Coolidge statement advising Puerto Rican gratitude. It is an expression of the racism of the times.

SIR: The editorial, ‘‘Porto Rico: A Colonial Responsibility’’ in the New Republic of February 6 is how shall I term it without hurting feelings? well, silly. I am disappointed with you for publishing it. On what grounds does the writer of that editorial base the statement: ‘‘Cuba and Santo Domingo and (in theory) Haiti are inhabited

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by peoples intellectually more backward than the Porto Ricans?’’ I know nothing about the Haitians and little about the Dominicans (though I am one of a large number who believe the Dominican, M
aximo G
omez, was the greatest military intelligence in the history of the Americas). But I do know the other races sufficiently well to challenge the assertion that Cubans are intellectually inferior to Porto Ricans. The fact is, the Porto Ricans are living in the best of all possible worlds for them. They are a supine, stodgy, spiritless race. They have not even as yet developed a spirit of nationalism at a time in the world’s history when among cultured peoples nationalism has started on the way to join the family, the clan, and the city fetishes in the realm of the dodo. Had the Porto Ricans existed two thousand years ago they would inevitably have been the slaves of whatever virile people wanted them, if any.… w. z. w. Washington, D.C. Source: Cubans vs. Porto Ricans, The New Republic, April 10, 1929. p. 230.

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PART XIII Americanization of Latino Immigrants Americans have historically felt exceptional and fostered anti-foreign-born sentiments. The roots can be found in the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 that led to a cycle of naturalization acts and definitions of alien enemies. They constructed a standard of the ideal American as a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP). The Irish immigration of the 1820s challenged this model and anti-immigrant riots broke out. With the Second Industrial Revolution after the U.S. Civil War, anti-foreign-born campaigns were energized as greater parts of the Anglo-Saxon standard were challenged. This anti-immigrant hysteria encouraged politicians to scapegoat the immigrant and the study of eugenics became popular in academe where studies supposedly showed the superiority of Northern Europeans. Calls went up to limit Eastern and Southern European immigration and to totally exclude Asians. Along with the anti-foreign born crusades was the call to Americanize the immigrants who were already here try to mold them more in the WASP ideal. The liberals believed in the power of American schools to teach immigrants to speak English and make them act more like WASPs. The 1920s was a decade of Americanization. Nativism had been heightened by World War I which many Americans believed the United States had single handedly won. During this decade, two immigration acts were passed with the express purposes of excluding Asians and limiting European immigration with the end of making America a WASP nation. From 1900 to 1910, almost one million immigrants entered the country annually. Meanwhile, Mexicans, fueled by the cutting of Asian labor and the limiting of Europeans, entered the United States in huge numbers. Nativist tried to exclude Mexicans while social reformers sought to change the Mexican families’ cultural patterns. They established English-only schools. Simultaneously they tried to alter the family ‘‘work ethic’’ and dietary and health habits. The remaking of the Mexican meant isolating them in Mexican schools to meet their ‘‘special needs.’’ The justification or rationale for these programs was that Mexicans were ‘‘dirty, shiftless, lazy, irresponsible, unambitious, thriftless, fatalistic, selfish, promiscuous, and prone to drinking, violence, and criminal behavior.’’ Mexican culture and the Spanish language were barriers to reaching the WASP nirvana. Americanization programs often assumed that Mexicans lacked intelligence. IQ testing played a major role in justifying programs that trained Mexicans for subordinate roles in American society. The IQ test became pretext for not educating Mexicans. Racial stereotypes allowed school boards to track Mexican students in vocational education programs since it was assumed that Mexicans were intellectually slower. Before the 1920s, Mexican children were not universally segregated. The 1920s saw the segregation of about half of Mexican students.

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This section is designed to give the reader a sense of what Americanization was and the growth of a community outrage to the rhetoric of the times. By the 1920s there were different layers of Mexican generations in the United States, and they no longer worked primarily in rural areas. They were rapidly migrating to urban areas such as Los Angeles, San Antonio, and Chicago.

197. Theodore Roosevelt on ‘‘True Americanism,’’ 1894 The following document was written by Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) when he was a Civil Service commissioner. He called for Americanizing immigrants into true Americans that he describes in romantic terms as the synthesis of good, the antithesis of evil. This theme ran through most of Roosevelt’s political writings and speeches. He later expanded the notion of ‘‘true Americanism’’ and spoke out against ‘‘hyphenated Americanism.’’ Roosevelt recognized the power of narrative in forming national identity, especially at the expense of the immigrant. The passage, ‘‘it is not only necessary to Americanize the immigrants of foreign birth who settle among us, but it is even more necessary for those among us who are by birth and descent already Americans not to throw away our birthright’’ is still quoted by nativists, and re-emerged in the post World War I era as the United States entered into a decade of jingoism. It encouraged the feeling that Americans were particular and that in order to preserve this ‘‘particularness,’’ Americans had to nurture their cultural and racial superiority and exclude those who were racially inferior and vigorously Americanize the immigrant. Roosevelt, as shown in the following, made patriotism a religion.

Patriotism was once defined as ‘‘the last refuge of a scoundrel’’; and somebody has recently remarked that when Dr. Johnson gave this definition he was ignorant of the infinite possibilities contained in the word ‘‘reform.’’ Of course both gibes were quite justifiable, in so far as they were aimed at people who use noble names to cloak base purposes. Equally of course the man shows little wisdom and a low sense of duty who fails to see that love of country is one of the elemental virtues, even though scoundrels play upon it for their own selfish ends; and, inasmuch as abuses continually grow up in civic life as in all other kinds of life, the statesman is indeed a weakling who hesitates to reform these abuses because the word ‘‘reform’’ is often on the lips of men who are silly or dishonest. What is true of patriotism and reform is true also of Americanism. There are plenty of scoundrels always ready to try to belittle reform movements or to bolster up existing iniquities in the name of Americanism; but this does not alter the fact that the man who can do most in this country is and must be the man whose Americanism is most sincere and intense. Outrageous though it is to use a noble idea as the cloak for evil, it is still worse to assail the noble idea itself because it can thus be used. The men who do iniquity in the name of patriotism, of reform, of Americanism, are merely one small division of the class that has always existed and will always exist the class of hypocrites and demagogues, the class that is always prompt to steal the watchwords of righteousness and use them in the interests of evil-doing. The stoutest and truest Americans are the very men who have the least sympathy with the people who invoke the spirit of Americanism to aid what is vicious in our government or to throw obstacles in the way of those who strive to reform it. It is

Americanization of Latino Immigrants

contemptible to oppose a movement for good because that movement has already succeeded somewhere else, or to champion an existing abuse because our people have always been wedded to it. To appeal to national prejudice against a given reform movement is in every way unworthy and silly. It is as childish to denounce free trade because England has adopted it as to advocate it for the same reason. It is eminently proper, in dealing with the tariff, to consider the effect of tariff legislation in time past upon other nations as well as the effect upon our own; but in drawing conclusions it is in the last degree foolish to try to excite prejudice against one system because it is in vogue in some given country, or to try to excite prejudice in its favor because the economists of that country have found that it was suited to their own peculiar needs. In attempting to solve our difficult problem of municipal government it is mere folly to refuse to profit by whatever is good in the examples of Manchester and Berlin because these cities are foreign, exactly as it is mere folly blindly to copy their examples without reference to our own totally different conditions. As for the absurdity of declaiming against civil-service reform, for instance, as ‘‘Chinese,’’ because written examinations have been used in China, it would be quite as wise to declaim against gunpowder because it was first utilized by the same people. In short, the man who, whether from mere dull fatuity or from an active interest in misgovernment, tries to appeal to American prejudice against things foreign, so as to induce Americans to oppose any measure for good, should be looked on by his fellow countrymen with the heartiest contempt. So much for the men who appeal to the spirit of Americanism to sustain us in wrong doing. But we must never let our contempt for these men blind us to the nobility of the idea which they strive to degrade. We Americans have many grave problems to solve, many threatening evils to fight, and many deeds to do, if, as we hope and believe, we have the wisdom, the strength, the courage, and the virtue to do them. But we must face facts as they are. We must neither surrender ourselves to a foolish optimism, nor succumb to a timid and ignoble pessimism. Our nation is that one among all the nations of the earth which holds in its hands the fate of the coming years. We enjoy exceptional advantages, and are menaced by exceptional dangers; and all signs indicate that we shall either fail greatly or succeed greatly. I firmly believe that we shall succeed; but we must not foolishly blink the dangers by which we are threatened, for that is the way to fail. On the contrary, we must soberly set to work to find out all we can about the existence and extent of every evil, must acknowledge it to be such, and must then attack it with unyielding resolution. There are many such evils, and each must be fought after a fashion; yet there is one quality which we must bring to the solution of every problem, that is, an intense and fervid Americanism. We shall never be successful over the dangers that confront us; we shall never achieve true greatness, nor reach the lofty ideal which the founders and preservers of our mighty Federal Republic have set before us, unless we are Americans in heart and soul, in spirit and purpose, keenly alive to the responsibility implied in the very name of American, and proud beyond measure of the glorious privilege of bearing it. There are two or three sides to the question of Americanism, and two or three senses in which the word ‘‘Americanism’’ can be used to express the antithesis of what is unwholesome and undesirable. In the first place, we wish to be broadly American and national, as opposed to being local or sectional. We do not wish, in politics, in literature, or in art, to develop that unwholesome parochial spirit, that over-exaltation of the little

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community at the expense of the great nation, which produces what has been described as the patriotism of the village, the patriotism of the belfry. Politically, the indulgence of this spirit was the chief cause of the calamities which befell the ancient republics of Greece, the medieval republics of Italy, and the petty states of Germany as it was in the last century. It is this spirit of provincial patriotism, this inability to take a view of broad adhesion to the whole nation that has been the chief among the causes that have produced such anarchy in the South American States, and which have resulted in presenting to us not one great Spanish-American federal nation stretching from the Rio Grande to Cape Horn, but a squabbling multitude of revolution-ridden States, not one of which stands even in the second rank as a power. However, politically this question of American nationality has been settled once for all. We are no longer in danger of repeating in our history the shameful and contemptible disasters that have befallen the Spanish possessions on this continent since they threw off the yoke of Spain. Indeed, there is, all through our life, very much less of this parochial spirit than there was formerly. Still there is an occasional outcropping here and there; and it is just as well that we should keep steadily in mind the futility of talking of a Northern literature or a Southern literature, an Eastern or a Western school of art or science. Joel Chandler Harris is emphatically a national writer; so is Mark Twain. They do not write merely for Georgia or Missouri or California any more than for Illinois or Connecticut; they write as Americans and for all people who can read English. St. Gaudens lives in New York; but his work is just as distinctive of Boston or Chicago. It is of very great consequence that we should have a full and ripe literary development in the United States, but it is not of the least consequence whether New York, or Boston, or Chicago, or San Francisco becomes the literary or artistic center of the United States. There is a second side to this question of a broad Americanism, however. The patriotism of the village or the belfry is bad, but the lack of all patriotism is even worse. There are philosophers who assure us that, in the future, patriotism will be regarded not as a virtue at all, but merely as a mental stage in the journey toward a state of feeling when our patriotism will include the whole human race and all the world. This may be so; but the age of which these philosophers speak is still several aeons distant. In fact, philosophers of this type are so very advanced that they are of no practical service to the present generation. It may be, that in ages so remote that we cannot now understand any of the feelings of those who will dwell in them, patriotism will no longer be regarded as a virtue, exactly as it may be that in those remote ages people will look down upon and disregard monogam[ous] marriage; but as things now are and have been for two or three thousand years past, and are likely to be for two or three thousand years to come, the words ‘‘home’’ and ‘‘country’’ mean a great deal. Nor do they show any tendency to lose their significance. At present, treason, like adultery, ranks as one of the worst of all possible crimes. One may fall very far short of treason and yet be an undesirable citizen in the community. The man who becomes Europeanized, who loses his power of doing good work on this side of the water, and who loses his love for his native land, is not a traitor; but he is a silly and undesirable citizen. He is as emphatically a noxious element in our body politic as is the man who comes here from abroad and remains a foreigner. Nothing will more quickly or more surely disqualify a man from doing good work in the world than the acquirement of that flaccid habit of mind which its possessors style cosmopolitanism.

Americanization of Latino Immigrants

It is not only necessary to Americanize the immigrants of foreign birth who settle among us, but it is even more necessary for those among us who are by birth and descent already Americans not to throw away our birthright, and, with incredible and contemptible folly, wander back to bow down before the alien gods whom our forefathers forsook. It is hard to believe that there is any necessity to warn Americans that, when they seek to model themselves on the lines of other civilizations, they make themselves the butts of all right-thinking men; and yet the necessity certainly exists to give this warning to many of our citizens who pride themselves on their standing in the world of art and letters, or, perchance, on what they would style their social leadership in the community. It is always better to be an original than an imitation, even when the imitation is of something better than the original; but what shall we say of the fool who is content to be an imitation of something worse? Even if the weaklings who seek to be other than Americans were right in deeming other nations to be better than their own, the fact yet remains that to be a first-class American is fifty-fold better than to be a second-class imitation of a Frenchman or Englishman. As a matter of fact, however, those of our countrymen who do believe in American inferiority are always individuals who, however cultivated, have some organic weakness in their moral or mental make-up; and the great mass of our people, who are robustly patriotic, and who have sound, healthy minds, are justified in regarding these feeble renegades with a half-impatient and halfamused scorn. We believe in waging relentless war on rank-growing evils of all kinds, and it makes no difference to us if they happen to be of purely native growth. We grasp at any good, no matter whence it comes. We do not accept the evil attendant upon another system of government as an adequate excuse for that attendant upon our own; the fact that the courtier is a scamp does not render the demagogue any the less a scoundrel. But it remains true that, in spite of all our faults and shortcomings, no other land offers such glorious possibilities to the man able to take advantage of them, as does ours; it remains true that no one of our people can do any work really worth doing unless he does it primarily as an American. It is because certain classes of our people still retain their spirit of colonial dependence on, and exaggerated deference to, European opinion, that they fail to accomplish what they ought to. It is precisely along the lines where we have worked most independently that we have accomplished the greatest results; and it is in those professions where there has been no servility to, but merely a wise profiting by foreign experience, that we have produced our greatest men. Our soldiers and statesmen and orators; our explorers, our wilderness-winners, and commonwealth-builders; the men who have made our laws and seen that they were executed; and the other men whose energy and ingenuity have created our marvelous material prosperity all these have been men who have drawn wisdom from the experience of every age and nation, but who have nevertheless thought, and worked, and conquered, and lived, and died, purely as Americans; and on the whole they have done better work than has been done in any other country during the short period of our national life. On the other hand, it is in those professions where our people have striven hardest to mold themselves in conventional European forms that they have succeeded least; and this holds true to the present day, the failure being, of course, most conspicuous where the man takes up his abode in Europe; where he becomes a secondrate European, because he is over-civilized, over-sensitive, over-refined, and has lost

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the hardihood and manly courage by which alone he can conquer in the keen struggle of our national life. Be it remembered, too, that this same being does not really become a European; he only ceases being an American, and becomes nothing. He throws away a great prize for the sake of a lesser one, and does not even get the lesser one. The painter who goes to Paris, not merely to get two or three years’ thorough training in his art, but with the deliberate purpose of taking up his abode there, and with the intention of following in the ruts worn deep by ten thousand earlier travelers, instead of striking off to rise or fall on a new line, thereby forfeits all chance of doing the best work. He must content himself with aiming at that kind of mediocrity which consists in doing fairly well what has already been done better; and he usually never even sees the grandeur and picturesqueness lying open before the eyes of every man who can read the book of America’s past and the book of America’s present. Thus it is with the undersized man of letters, who flees his country because he, with his delicate, effeminate sensitiveness, finds the conditions of life on this side of the water crude and raw; in other words, because he finds that he cannot play a man’s part among men, and so goes where he will be sheltered from the winds that harden stouter souls. This
emigr
e may write graceful and pretty verses, essays, novels; but he will never do work to compare with that of his brother, who is strong enough to stand on his own feet, and do his work as an American. Thus it is with the scientist who spends his youth in a German university, and can thenceforth work only in the fields already fifty times furrowed by the German ploughs. Thus it is with that most foolish of parents who sends his children to be educated abroad, not knowing what every clear-sighted man from Washington and Jay down has known that the American who is to make his way in America should be brought up among his fellow Americans. It is among the people who like to consider themselves, and, indeed, to a large extent are, the leaders of the so-called social world, especially in some of the northeastern cities, that this colonial habit of thought, this thoroughly provincial spirit of admiration for things foreign, and inability to stand on one’s own feet, becomes most evident and most despicable. We believe in every kind of honest and lawful pleasure, so long as the getting it is not made man’s chief business; and we believe heartily in the good that can be done by men of leisure who work hard in their leisure, whether at politics or philanthropy, literature or art. But a leisure class whose leisure simply means idleness is a curse to the community, and in so far as its members distinguish themselves chiefly by aping the worst not the best traits of similar people across the water, they become both comic and noxious elements of the body politic. The third sense in which the word ‘‘Americanism’’ may be employed is with reference to the Americanizing of the newcomers to our shores. We must Americanize them in every way, in speech, in political ideas and principles, and in their way of looking at the relations between Church and State. We welcome the German or the Irishman who becomes an American. We have no use for the German or Irishman who remains such. We do not wish German-Americans and Irish-Americans who figure as such in our social and political life; we want only Americans, and, provided they are such, we do not care whether they are of native or of Irish or of German ancestry. We have no room in any healthy American community for a German-American vote or an Irish-American vote, and it is contemptible demagogy to put planks into any party platform with the purpose of catching such a vote. We have no room for any people who do not act and vote simply as Americans, and as

Americanization of Latino Immigrants

nothing else. Moreover, we have as little use for people who carry religious prejudices into our politics as for those who carry prejudices of caste or nationality. We stand unalterably in favor of the public-school system in its entirety. We believe that English, and no other language, is that in which all the school exercises should be conducted. We are against any division of the school fund, and against any appropriation of public money for sectarian purposes. We are against any recognition whatever by the State in any shape or form of State-aided parochial schools. But we are equally opposed to any discrimination against or for a man because of his creed. We demand that all citizens, Protestant and Catholic, Jew and Gentile, shall have fair treatment in every way; that all alike shall have their rights guaranteed them. The very reasons that make us unqualified in our opposition to State-aided sectarian schools make us equally bent that, in the management of our public schools, the adherents of each creed shall be given exact and equal justice, wholly without regard to their religious affiliations; that trustees, superintendents, teachers, scholars, all alike shall be treated without any reference whatsoever to the creed they profess. We maintain that it is an outrage, in voting for a man for any position, whether State or national, to take into account his religious faith, provided only he is a good American. When a secret society does what in some places the American Protective Association seems to have done, and tries to proscribe Catholics both politically and socially, the members of such society show that they themselves are as utterly un-American, as alien to our school of political thought, as the worst immigrants who land on our shores. Their conduct is equally base and contemptible; they are the worst foes of our public-school system, because they strengthen the hands of its ultra-montane enemies; they should receive the hearty condemnation of all Americans who are truly patriotic. The mighty tide of immigration to our shores has brought in its train much of good and much of evil; and whether the good or the evil shall predominate depends mainly on whether these newcomers do or do not throw themselves heartily into our national life, cease to be Europeans, and become Americans like the rest of us. More than a third of the people of the Northern States are of foreign birth or parentage. An immense number of them have become completely Americanized, and these stand on exactly the same plane as the descendants of any Puritan, Cavalier, or Knickerbocker among us, and do their full and honorable share of the nation’s work. But where immigrants, or the sons of immigrants, do not heartily and in good faith throw in their lot with us, but cling to the speech, the customs, the ways of life, and the habits of thought of the Old World which they have left, they thereby harm both themselves and us. If they remain alien elements, unassimilated, and with interests separate from ours, they are mere obstructions to the current of our national life and, moreover, can get no good from it themselves. In fact, though we ourselves also suffer from their perversity, it is they who really suffer most. It is an immense benefit to the European immigrant to change him into an American citizen. To bear the name of American is to bear the most honorable titles; and whoever does not so believe has no business to bear the name at all, and, if he comes from Europe, the sooner he goes back there the better. Besides, the man who does not become Americanized nevertheless fails to remain a European, and becomes nothing at all. The immigrant cannot possibly remain what he was, or continue to be a member of the Old-World society. If he tries to retain his old language, in a few generations it becomes a barbarous jargon; if he tries to retain his old customs and ways of life, in a few generations he becomes an uncouth boor. He has cut

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himself off from the Old World, and cannot retain his connection with it; and if he wishes ever to amount to anything he must throw himself heart and soul, and without reservation, into the new life to which he has come. It is urgently necessary to check and regulate our immigration, by much more drastic laws than now exist; and this should be done both to keep out laborers who tend to depress the labor market, and to keep out races which do not assimilate readily with our own, and unworthy individuals of all races not only criminals, idiots, and paupers, but anarchists of the Most and [Jeremiah] O’Donovan Rossa type [an Irish Republican who had moved to New York]. From his own standpoint, it is beyond all question the wise thing for the immigrant to become thoroughly Americanized. Moreover, from our standpoint, we have a right to demand it. We freely extend the hand of welcome and of good-fellowship to every man, no matter what his creed or birthplace, who comes here honestly intent on becoming a good United States citizen like the rest of us; but we have a right, and it is our duty, to demand that he shall indeed become so and shall not confuse the issues with which we are struggling by introducing among us Old-World quarrels and prejudices. There are certain ideas which he must give up. For instance, he must learn that American life is incompatible with the existence of any form of anarchy, or of any secret society having murder for its aim, whether at home or abroad; and he must learn that we exact full religious toleration and the complete separation of Church and State. Moreover, he must not bring in his Old World religious race and national antipathies, but must merge them into love for our common country, and must take pride in the things which we can all take pride in. He must revere only our flag; not only must it come first, but no other flag should even come second. He must learn to celebrate Washington’s birthday rather than that of the Queen or Kaiser, and the Fourth of July instead of St. Patrick’s Day. Our political and social questions must be settled on their own merits, and not complicated by quarrels between England and Ireland, or France and Germany, with which we have nothing to do: it is an outrage to fight an American political campaign with reference to questions of European politics. Above all, the immigrant must learn to talk and think and be United States. The immigrant of today can learn much from the experience of the immigrants of the past, who came to America prior to the Revolutionary War. We were then already, what we are now, a people of mixed blood. Many of our most illustrious Revolutionary names were borne by men of Huguenot blood Jay, Sevier, Marion, Laurens. But the Huguenots were, on the whole, the best immigrants we have ever received; sooner than any other, and more completely, they became American in speech, conviction, and thought. The Hollanders took longer than the Huguenots to become completely assimilated; nevertheless, they in the end became so, immensely to their own advantage. One of the leading Revolutionary generals, Schuyler, and one of the Presidents of the United States, Van Buren, were of Dutch blood; but they rose to their positions, the highest in the land, because they had become Americans and had ceased being Hollanders. If they had remained members of an alien body, cut off by their speech and customs and belief from the rest of the American community, Schuyler would have lived his life as a boorish, provincial squire, and Van Buren would have ended his days a small tavern-keeper. So it is with the Germans of Pennsylvania. Those of them who became Americanized have furnished to our history a multitude of honorable names from the days of the Muhlenbergs onward; but those who did not become Americanized form to the present day an

Americanization of Latino Immigrants

unimportant body, of no significance in American existence. So it is with the Irish, who gave to Revolutionary annals such names as Carroll and Sullivan, and to the Civil War men like Sheridan men who were Americans and nothing else: while the Irish who remain such, and busy themselves solely with alien politics, can have only an unhealthy influence upon American life, and can never rise as do their compatriots who become straight-out Americans. Thus it has ever been with all people who have come hither, of whatever stock or blood. The same thing is true of the churches. A church which remains foreign, in language or spirit, is doomed. But I wish to be distinctly understood on one point. Americanism is a question of spirit, conviction, and purpose, not of creed or birthplace. The politician who bids for the Irish or German vote, or the Irishman or German who votes as an Irishman or German, is despicable, for all citizens of this commonwealth should vote solely as Americans; but he is not a whit less despicable than the voter who votes against a good American, merely because that American happens to have been born in Ireland or Germany. Know-nothingism, in any form, is as utterly un-American as foreignism. It is a base outrage to oppose a man because of his religion or birthplace, and all good citizens will hold any such effort in abhorrence. A Scandinavian, a German, or an Irishman who has really become an American has the right to stand on exactly the same footing as any native-born citizen in the land, and is just as much entitled to the friendship and support, social and political, of his neighbors. Among the men with whom I have been thrown in close personal contact socially, and who have been among my staunchest friends and allies politically, are not a few Americans who happen to have been born on the other side of the water, in Germany, Ireland, Scandinavia; and there could be no better men in the ranks of our native-born citizens. In closing, I cannot better express the ideal attitude that should be taken by our fellow-citizens of foreign birth than by quoting the words of a representative American, born in Germany, the Hon. Richard Guenther, of Wisconsin. In a speech spoken at the time of the Samoan trouble he said: We know as well as any other class of American citizens where our duties belong. We will work for our country in time of peace and fight for it in time of war, if a time of war should ever come. When I say our country, I mean, of course, our adopted country. I mean the United States of America. After passing through the crucible of naturalization, we are no longer Germans; we are Americans. Our attachment to America cannot be measured by the length of our residence here. We are Americans from the moment we touch the American shore until we are laid in American graves. We will fight for America whenever necessary. America, first, last, and all the time. America against Germany, America against the world; America, right or wrong; always America. We are Americans.

All honor to the man who spoke such words as those; and I believe they express the feelings of the great majority of those among our fellow American citizens who were born abroad. We Americans can only do our allotted task well if we face it steadily and bravely, seeing but not fearing the dangers. Above all we must stand shoulder to shoulder, not asking as to the ancestry or creed of our comrades, but only demanding that they be in very truth Americans, and that we all work together, heart, hand, and head, for the honor and the greatness of our common country. Source: The Forum, April 1894.

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198. Ernestine M. Alvarado, ‘‘A Plea for Mutual Understanding between Mexican Immigrants and Native Americans,’’ 1920 Most Mexican immigrants were Catholics. However, in the United States they came into contract with people of other faiths. In the early decades of the twentieth century they were evangelized by Protestant sects. The Young Men’s Christian Association (Y.M.C.A.) a worldwide, nonsectarian Christian group, worked among them. Because of sports facilities, programs, and its advocacy of immigrant rights it attracted Latino youth. During these years, the organization sponsored conferences at which Latinos and others presented papers or participated in discussions to further understanding the plight of the group. The following is a presentation by social worker Ernestine Alvarado.

Those who from the immigration offices behold the masses of men, brown-colored, circumspect, silently awaiting their turn with that air of indifference which reminds us of the oriental peoples, have little idea of the enormous forces of individuality represented in that apparently passive throng, and imagine that they must be treated as human cattle, always generalizing, because no one can dream of detaching the individual from the mass which appears to the observer so uniform. But, when it comes to distributing them for the various kinds of work, then it is found that each one constitutes a separate problem almost without connection with the others. He who knows how to treat them, takes special care in studying them, giving personal attention to each and every one; and only by this method good results can be obtained. The Mexicans who come to the United States are of three types, namely, the aristocracy or leisure class, who come for political, educational, or business reasons; the middle class, who come for political reasons, but more often for study, business opportunities, and professional advancement; and the peon or laboring class who come for economic betterment. I shall confine my paper to the Mexicans of this third class. The Mexicans of the lower class, who constitute the greater part of the immigration element to this country, respond generously when rightly treated. They are intelligent and indefatigable workers when they are put in the right place. They are reliable, serious, of quick comprehension, and at the same time calm and reflective. In our country, and owing to causes against which the revolution is still fighting, those men have received almost no education; many of them do not know how to read and write. It is imperative that they be educated by you. You can make of them a very useful element in your social life and in the prosperity of the nation. They come from Mexico in search of new horizons. They have been told about the prosperity of this country, of the liberty that they may enjoy here, of the big salaries they may obtain, of the practicability and value of your methods, of the low cost of living, and thousands of other things which are growing obsolete. They come seeking that wonderful country wherein they hope to find greater liberty than in their own. The ‘‘enganchadores,’’ men who come down to Mexico in order to bring labor, make golden promises, so beautiful and bright that they are the more deceived; and although the Mexican government does its utmost to enlighten them, warning them against false offers, they have inherited wandering habits from Aztecs and Castilians, and they go out in search of the golden treasure like mythological argonauts. This bold spirit, this adventurous impulse toward the unknown, implies a greatness of soul, an aspiration toward betterment, a character, which must be taken

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into account, and it is ‘‘up to you,’’ citizens of the United States, to take care of these bold dreamers in order that they may find in your country, if anywhere, at least something of what they have dreamed. Up to the present, the majority of these men have returned to Mexico taking with them disappointment instead of fortune. They have complained of being treated like cattle; that no one knew how to understand their personality, their individuality; that they have fallen into hands that intended only to exploit their physical resistance, frugality, and unselfishness. They have rarely found anyone who has wisely opened to them the path of education, a course which would have been a thousand times more profitable and more human. The Mexican has a sentiment of patriotism set in his innermost soul. Its roots are deeply embedded in tradition. Unfortunately, our country is misrepresented and abused nearly everywhere in the United States, in theaters, moving pictures, newspapers, books, and private conversations. Perhaps (I would prefer to believe it so), it is done without ill intention, probably thoughtlessly, but it is done. Mexicans find an antagonistic atmosphere for everything that is Mexican, and this fact necessarily tends to make difficult their uniting with you. You could hardly become friends with one who begins by insulting your mother; and for us Mexicans love for our country is not less than love for our mothers. The best way to attract Mexican immigrants is by educational advantages, not only the education of the immigrants themselves, but also the education of those who are going to be in contact with them. I mean the American people, especially the American workmen. Both American and Mexican workers have a lot to learn from each other. When the time comes that you understand our country, as great as it is unfortunate, you will respect and love those good Mexicans who come to you full of hopes, and then you will know how to treat them in order that those hopes may not be in vain. To found really friendly relations between our two countries, closer contact between American and Mexican labor must be established. But, unfortunately, the Mexican worker finds very often that it is impossible for him to join your workers’ organizations. Mexicans go back to Mexico and carry with them the recollection of the animosity they found here. If ever the American worker has found any animosity in Mexico it has been because of the sentiment brought there by Mexicans returning from the United States. All this also will have to disappear when education has taught your laborers that the Mexican laborer does not belong to an inferior race, and should by no means be discriminated against. Fraternity is an international obligation, a duty of humanity. In order that the United States may make effective the high ideals of democracy and liberty, it is necessary for the American laboring man to learn to treat his less fortunate Mexican brother with sympathy and justice. Source: 1920 annual session of the National Conference of Social Work, p. 264 266.

199. Excerpts from Merton E. Hill, The Development of an Americanization Program, 1928 Merton E. Hill (ca 1882–1970) was principal of Chafee High School in San Bernardino County, California, from 1911 to 1931. Hill was also the founder of Chaffey Community College. During this period, he was at the forefront of more compassionate Americanization programs. He involved the entire

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community, along with church groups, in co-sponsoring conferences on residents of Mexican origin. Hill represents the progressive wing of the Americanization drive. But he was an assimilationist who believed in programs to make Mexicans in the image of the Roosevelt prototype. The following are excerpts from his influential study on Americanization programs, which was originally his PhD dissertation.

One of the most momentous problems confronting the great Southwest today, is the assimilation of the Spanish-speaking peoples that are coming in ever-increasing numbers into that land formerly owned by Mexico and, since 1848, owned by the United States.… The program to be presented … sets up those activities that will bring about the acceptance by aliens of American ideals, customs, methods of living, skills, and knowledge that will make them Americans in fact.… The problem of Americanization involves not only the adults, but their children … any program neglecting a full consideration of the educational needs of the foreign children is destined to fall short of complete success.… These and other problems can be wholly or partially solved; special classrooms adapted to the needs of the foreign element must be provided in the high school plant, in the elementary school buildings, in Mexican camps, and in central buildings within certain camps; a traveling school room on a bus chassis has been provided; teachers must be trained for Americanization work; lessons must be prepared to meet the needs of both children and adults; budgetary provisions must secure sufficient amounts of money … the public must be aroused to a realization of the great and immediate need of making provision for educational, vocational, and sanitation programs that will result in … promoting the use of the English language, the right American customs, and the best possible standards of American life. As the average Mexican adult has had no training in the ‘‘home-owning virtues,’’ it will be necessary to develop lessons regarding thrift, saving, and the value of keeping the money in the banks. As the Mexicans show considerable aptitude for handwork of any kind, courses should be developed that will aid them in becoming skilled workers with their hands. Girls should be trained to become domestic servants, and to do various kinds of handwork for which they can be paid adequately after they leave school. Finally, there should be established in the county … an intensive program of adult education. Funds should be provided … to teach every Mexican the English language, to teach every mother the care of infants, cleanliness, house sanitation, and economical house management including lessons in sewing, cooking, and thrift. The men should be trained in thrift, in gardening, and in the principles of the American government. In order to bring all the Mexican groups up to a higher level, parents and other adults must be taught as well as their children.… Class instruction … must exist for everyone; none should be allowed to escape the educational campaign. Source: Merton E. Hill, The Development of an Americanization Program. The Board of Trustees of the Chaffey Union High School and the Chaffey Junior College, Ontario, California, in co-operation with the County Board of Education of San Bernadino College, 1928, p 3.

200. ‘‘Flood of Mexican Aliens a Problem,’’ 1919 Many Euro-Americans at the turn of the twentieth century believed that their public schools could assimilate the new immigrants. Conferences were held

Americanization of Latino Immigrants

and newspaper articles were printed supporting the role of the role schools as a means of assimilating immigrant children. A few cities opened night schools with classes in English, and taught immigrants the American way. Most, however, saw the influx of immigrants as a public burden, and after World War I, the voice of the racist nativist grew shriller. Americans resented having to pay for the education of immigrants. With thousands of Mexican laborers attracted to work on the vast plantations in Arizona, which grew after the completion of irrigation projects, educating the children that arrived with the workers drew attention. The following article questions the ability of the Arizona schools to assimilate the children of Mexican agricultural workers in the Salt River Valley.

[EXCLUSIVE DISPATCH] PHOENIX, Nov. 2 A remarkable school condition, with possible international aspects, has been developed in the Salt River Valley through the importation of thousands of cotton pickers from northern Mexican States. These pickers are brought in as families, and every individual works. Cases have been known where a single family has earned $100 a week. But the State school laws demand that children of school age shall be in school and make no exception of aliens. There also are strict labor laws that prohibit the employment of children. The labor unions have protested against this phase of the valley cotton industry. The State Board of Education has advised the cotton growers of the law’s scope. In reply uniformly has come report that the country school districts are utterly unable to accommodate the young aliens affected. It has been asserted that almost every district schoolhouse already is filled to overflowing and disinclination is manifested toward the alternative of more bonds for new schoolhouses and more expense for teachers for an alien and almost wholly illiterate class that pays no district taxes, that would have to be provided with textbooks and supplies at public expense and that manifests strong disinclination, anyway, to being taught. Few, if any, of the alien children know a word of English. They are due for return to Mexico at the end of the picking season, which happens to come well within the school year. The matter has been taken up by State School Superintendent, C. O. Case, who has made inspection of a large number of the county’s rural schools. In a number of them, he is reported to have found room for the reception of children of the cottonpicker class. Source: Los Angeles Times, November 3, 1919, p. I3.

201. Excerpt from ‘‘Naturalization Bill Alters Women’s Status,’’ 1921 The 1921 Naturalization Bill proposed extreme measures that were eventually dropped. For example, women who married foreigners lost their U.S. citizenship unless their husbands became citizens, and a woman who married an alien and resided in her husband’s country for two years or lived in another country for five years also lost her citizenship. Children of naturalized parents

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would no longer automatically derive citizenship. Proponents of the bill proposed shutting all immigration down for three years.

Women under the bill no longer would derive citizenship from the naturalization of husbands, but would be required to make individual applications for citizenship. They also would not lose their American citizenship by marrying aliens except when an alien husband cannot lawfully become an American citizen, or when a woman leaves the United States and resides two years in her husband’s country or five years in some other country. Once expatriated, a woman desiring to regain American citizenship would be required to follow the same procedure as any other alien desiring American citizenship. Women aliens also under the bill would no longer automatically become citizens on marrying Americans, but would be required to make application for citizenship after a five years’ residence in this country. Children of naturalized parents under the measure no longer would derive citizenship automatically from the parents, although they would be made eligible to apply for citizenship when between the ages of 18 and 21 and upon proof in open court of their qualification and ‘‘their attachment to the principles of the Constitution.’’ Source: New York Times, January 6, 1921, p. 6.

202. Excerpts from the Immigration Act, 1921 The beginning of the twentieth century saw alarmist calls for closing the borders to further immigration. The Chinese had been restricted since 1882, and, in California, nativist campaigns were directed at the Japanese. On the East Coast, calls went up for the restriction of immigration from eastern and southern Europe as eugenicists produced studies claiming that the ethnic groups were racially inferior to Nordic Europeans. Their languages, customs, and religion differed from the white Anglo-Saxon Protest Americans. Congress passed the 1917 literacy test, which U.S. President Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) vetoed twice, but Congress overrode in 1917. During World War I, Congress enacted laws to deny entry to suspected anarchists; this initiated the Red Scare, specifically prompted by the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. During the Red Scare of 1919 to 1920, thousands were arrested. This fueled an anti-immigrant movement and the Emergency Immigration Act of 1921 was passed to stem the flow of immigrants. This legislation placed a quota on the number of immigrants any one country could send. This quota was three percent per year of that nation’s population residing in the United States, as reported in the 1910 U.S. census. The total number of immigrants that could be admitted in any one year was 357,000.

United States Statutes at Large, Vol. 42, 1921, p. 5 7 IMMIGRATION ACT OF 1921 AN ACT To limit the immigration of aliens into the United States. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That as used in this Act

Americanization of Latino Immigrants

The term ‘‘United States’’ means the United States, and any waters, territory, or other place subject to the jurisdiction thereof except the Canal Zone and the Philippine Islands; but if any alien leaves the Canal Zone or any insular possession of the United States and attempts to enter any other place under the jurisdiction of the United States nothing contained in this Act shall be construed as permitting him to enter under any other conditions than those applicable to all aliens. The word ‘‘alien’’ includes any person not a native-born or naturalized citizen of the United States, but this definition shall not be held to include Indians of the United States not taxed nor citizens of the islands under the jurisdiction of the United States. The term ‘‘Immigration Act’’ means the Act of February 5, 1917, entitled ‘‘An Act to Regulate the Immigration of Aliens to, and the Residence of Aliens in, the United States’’; and the term ‘‘immigration laws’’ includes such Act and all laws, conventions, and treaties of the United States relating to the immigration, exclusion, or expulsion of aliens. Sec. 2. (a) That the number of aliens of any nationality who may be admitted under the immigration laws to the United States in any fiscal year shall be limited to 3 per centum of the number of foreign-born persons of such nationality resident in the United States as determined by the United States census of 1910. This provision shall not apply to the following, and they shall not be counted in reckoning any of the percentage limits provided in this Act: (1) Government officials, their families, attendants, servants, and employees; (2) aliens in continuous transit through the United States; (3) aliens lawfully admitted to the United States who later go in transit from one part of the United States to another through foreign contiguous territory; (4) aliens visiting the United States as tourists or temporarily for business or pleasure; (5) aliens from countries immigration from which is regulated in accordance with treaties or agreements relating solely to immigration; (6) aliens from the so-called Asiatic barred zone, as described in Section 3 of the Immigration Act; (7) aliens who have resided continuously for at least one year immediately preceding the time of their admission of the United States in the Dominion of Canada, Newfoundland, the Republic of Cuba, the Republic of Mexico, countries of Central or South America, or adjacent islands; or (8) aliens under the age of eighteen who are children of citizens of the United States. (b) For the purposes of this Act, nationality shall be determined by country of birth, treating as separate countries the colonies or dependencies for which separate enumeration was made in the United States census of 1910. (c) The Secretary of State, the Secretary of Commerce, and the Secretary of Labor, jointly, shall, as soon as feasible after the enactment of this Act, prepare a statement showing the number of persons of the various nationalities resident in the United States as determined by the United States census of 1910, which statement shall be the population basis for the purposes of this Act. In case of changes in political boundaries in foreign countries occurring subsequent to 1910 and resulting (1) in the creation of new countries, the Governments of which are recognized by the United States, or (2) in the transfer of territory from one country to another, such transfer being recognized by the United States, such officials, jointly, shall estimate the number of persons resident in the United States in 1910 who were born within the area included in such new countries or in such territory so transferred, and revise the population basis as to each country involved in such change of political boundary. For the purpose of such revision and for the purposes of this Act generally,

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aliens born in the area included in any such new country shall be considered as having been born in such country, and aliens born in any territory so transferred shall be considered as having been born in the country to which such territory was transferred. (d) When the maximum number of aliens of any nationality who may be admitted in any fiscal year under this Act shall have been admitted, all other aliens of such nationality, except as otherwise provided in this Act, who may apply for admission during the same fiscal year shall be excluded: Provided, That the number of aliens of any nationality who may be admitted in any month shall not exceed 20 per centum of the total number of aliens of such nationality who are admissible in that fiscal year: Provided further, That aliens returning from a temporary visit abroad, aliens who are professional actors, artists, lecturers, singers, nurses, ministers of any religious denomination, professors for colleges or seminaries, aliens belonging to any recognized learned profession, or aliens employed as domestic servants, may, if otherwise admissible, be admitted notwithstanding the maximum number of aliens of the same nationality admissible in the same month or fiscal year, as the case may be, shall have entered the United States; but aliens of the classes included in this proviso who enter the United States before such maximum number shall have entered shall (unless excluded by subdivision (a) from being counted) be counted in reckoning the percentage limits provided in this Act: Provided further, That in the enforcement of this Act, preference shall be given so far as possible to the wives, parents, brothers, sisters, children under eighteen years of age, and fianc
ees, (1) of citizens of the United States, (2) of aliens now in the United States who have applied for citizenship in the manner provided by law, or (3) of persons eligible to United States citizenship who served in the military or naval forces of the United States at any time between April 6, 1917, and November 11, 1918, both dates inclusive, and have been separated from such forces under honorable conditions. Sec. 3. That the Commissioner General of Immigration, with the approval of the Secretary of Labor, shall, as soon as feasible after the enactment of this Act, and from time to time thereafter, prescribe rules and regulations necessary to carry the provisions of this Act into effect. He shall, as soon as feasible after the enactment of this Act, publish a statement showing the number of aliens of the various nationalities who may be admitted to the United States between the date this Act becomes effective and the end of the current fiscal year, and on June 30 thereafter he shall publish a statement showing the number of aliens of the various nationalities who may be admitted during the ensuing fiscal year. He shall also publish monthly statements during the time this Act remains in force showing the number of aliens of each nationality already admitted during the then current fiscal year and the number who may be admitted under the provisions of this Act during the remainder of such year, but when 75 per centum of the maximum number of any nationality admissible during the fiscal year shall have been admitted such statements shall be issued weekly thereafter. All statements shall be made available for general publication and shall be mailed to all transportation companies bringing aliens to the United States who shall request the same and shall file with the Department of Labor the address to which such statements shall be sent. The Secretary of Labor shall also submit such statements to the Secretary of State, who shall transmit the information contained therein to the proper diplomatic and consular officials of the United States, which officials shall make the same available to persons intending to emigrate to the United States and to others who may apply.

Americanization of Latino Immigrants

Sec. 4. That the provisions of this Act are in addition to, and not in substitution for, the provisions of the immigration laws. Sec. 5. That this Act shall take effect and be enforced 15 days after its enactment (except sections 1 and 3 and subdivisions (b) and (c) of section 2, which shall take effect immediately upon the enactment of this Act), and shall continue in force until June 30, 1922, and the number of aliens of any nationality who may be admitted during the remaining period of the current fiscal year, from the date when this Act becomes effective to June 30, shall be limited in proportion to the number admissible during fiscal year 1922. Approved, May 19, 1921 Source: Historical Documents, http://www.historicaldocuments.com/ImmigrationActof1924.htm.

203. Excerpts from Adolfo Romo v. Tempe School District, 1925 According to Arizona State University historian Arturo Rosales, the ‘‘first successful desegregation court case of Mexicans took place in Tempe, Arizona, in 1925. Mexican families, whose ancestors helped found the city in the 1870s, succeeded in overturning a segregation policy in effect since 1915. However, segregation continued for children of the recently arrived or from poorer families until the 1940s.’’ The following are excerpts of the Superior Court’s ruling in favor of Adolfo ‘‘Babe’’ Romo and other parents who sued the district to admit Mexicans to the 10th Street School in Tempe, Arizona. The parents were supported by local mutualistas (mutual aid societies) such as La Alianza Hispano Americana (the Spanish American Alliance) and La Liga Protectora Latina (the Latin Protective League). In Tempe, not only the schools were segregated, but also the swimming pools.

THE COURT: This is an action brought by the plaintiff Adolfo Romo against the Board of Trustees and Superintendent of School District No. 3 of Maricopa County, comprising the town of Tempe wherein he prays for a writ of mandamus requiring the defendants to admit his four children to the public schools of said district upon equal terms with all other children of school age residing within said school district. The plaintiff in his complaint says that he and his children are of ‘‘Spanish-Mexican’’ descent; that the defendants Trustees of School District No. 3 have entered into an agreement with the Board of Education of the Tempe Normal School of the State of Arizona, whereby one of the two school buildings of School District No. 3, known as the ‘‘Eighth Street School’’ has been set apart, designated and declared to be a ‘‘Normal Training School’’ and its use, insofar as it relates to ‘‘primary or elemental education,’’ shall be restricted to ‘‘Spanish-American’’ or ‘‘Mexican-American’’ children; that the children required to attend said Eighth Street School pursuant to said agreement are taught exclusively by ‘‘student teachers’’; that the plaintiff presented his four children to the defendant, Superintendent of School District No. 3 on September 14th, 1925, and requested their admission to the public schools of School District No. 3, but that said defendant, acting under the orders and directions of defendants Board of Trustees of School District No. 3, refused and still refuses to admit said children to the public schools of said School District No. 3 but required and directed them to report to the authorities of the said Normal Training School pursuant to said agreement; that by reason of the said acts

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of defendants, the children of plaintiff, as well as all other Spanish-American and Mexican-American children entitled to be admitted to the public schools of School District No. 3, are, on account of their race or descent, and without regard to their age, advancement, or convenience, segregated, excluded, and compelled to attend the Eighth Street School taught exclusively by student teachers of the Normal Training School of the Tempe State Teacher’s College. An alternative writ was issued and the defendants filed their return to the writ and answer to plaintiff’s complaint, admitting that plaintiff’s children are entitled to admission to the public schools of School District No. 3, if they reside with him in said district, but deny that said children have been refused admission to said schools; alleging that for purposes of convenience and advantage to the children of SpanishAmerican and Mexican-American extraction and descent, all such children, including the children of [the] plaintiff, admitted to the first six grades of elemental education were located in what is commonly called the Eighth Street School and taught by teachers able to speak and understand the Spanish language; that the course of education in said Eight Street School is the same in every respect and the same character of, surroundings, advantages, and equipment prevail therein, as is maintained by the defendants in any other school in said district, and that teachers of the same grade in ability are employed in said Eighth Street School as are employed in said Tenth Street School.… This action, having come on for trial upon the complaint of the plaintiff herein, the return and answer of the defendant thereto, and having been tried by the court sitting without a jury, and the court having filed its findings of fact herein, and the court having determined as conclusions of law, that the relator is entitled to a permanent peremptory writ of mandamus, as prayed for in the complaint. NOW, upon motion of Edward B. Goodwin and Harold I. Janson, attorneys for said plaintiff: IT IS ORDERED, ADJUDGED, AND DECREED, that the said Adolfo Romo, plaintiff herein, have a permanent peremptory writ of mandamus, and that the same do issue forthwith directed to and commanding the said defendants, William E. Laird, I. H. Daniel and I. F. Waterhouse, as members of, and constituting the Board of Trustees of Tempe School District No. 3, and G. W. Persons, Superintendent of Tempe School District No. 3, Maricopa County, Arizona, upon the pain and peril that shall fall thereon for refusal, that they and each one of them, shall admit the children of Adolpho Romo, namely, Antonio Romo, age fifteen; Henry Romo, age fourteen; Alice Romo, age eleven; and Charles Romo, age seven, on the same terms and conditions to the public schools of said Tempe School District No. 3, Maricopa County, Arizona, as children of other nationalities are now admitted. Done in open court this 5th day of October, A.D. 1925. Joseph S. Jenckes, Judge Source: Excerpt is reprinted with permission of the publisher of Testimonio: A Documentary History of the Mexican American Struggle for Civil Rights, F. Arturo Rosales, ed. Houston: Arte Publico C 2000. pp. 126 127. Press Univeristy of Houston


204. ‘‘Mexican Laborers Drifting over Line,’’ 1921 At the turn of the twentieth century, a scarcity of water endangered further development of the Mesilla Valley in the Arizona and New Mexico; El Paso,

Americanization of Latino Immigrants


rez, Mexico areas. A large number of canals and ditches Texas; and Jua drained off the waters of the upper Rio Grande. Because of this, there was not enough water for the Mexican side, which was guaranteed by ancient water use laws and customs. This crisis brought attention to the need for large-scale irrigation improvements and the more productive use of desert lands. In 1902, Congress passed the Reclamation Act, which was also known as the Newlands Reclamation Act or National Reclamation Act. This legislation funded irrigation projects for arid lands. The following article focuses on the Salt River Valley around Phoenix, Arizona, and the desert valleys of the Imperial and Coachela Valleys of California. Before the completion of these projects, Arizona’s copper mines were the main source of employment for Mexican laborers and workers from other ethnic groups, who came in the tens of thousands. However, when hundreds of thousands of acres of land were reclaimed through irrigation, huge plantations attracted armies of Mexican pickers. Agricultural work also served as an employment safety net for out of work or striking miners. This system was short circuited during economic recessions and depressions when the farms cut back on production. During 1913, and again during the 1920 to 1921 economic recession, thousands of Mexicans were repatriated and, in some instances, deported to Mexico. Companies that recruited them literally dumped them across the border. These quasi-deportation movements were often silent in areas such as the Rio Grande Valley of Texas. In the Salt River Valley, and on lands reclaimed by the 1902 reclamation project, thousands were deported and family members were often separated. The following is a news article reporting the plight of Mexican workers during the 1920 to 1921 recession.

PHOENIX (Ariz.) Over 100 Mexicans a day are reported to be drifting back to their own land on the ending of their employment in the cotton fields. Much cotton remains to be picked, but the supply of money for picking is decidedly limited. Halfpicked fields are common all over the valley though the Department of Agriculture report tells that there has been gathered 90 percent of the cotton that will have been picked by the end of the season. Over 15,000 Mexican pickers were brought north over the borderline, most of them coming to this locality. At first, there was in effect a plan for withholding a part of the money earned, that the laborer might have something with which to return. The Mexicans made loud objection to this and so were paid in full. As a result, most of the men and families now returning are very nearly penniless. They have lived well here for the picking season and are generally well clothed. There will be work for only a few thousand Mexican laborers here before early summer. The situation with regard to Mexican labor is made the worse by the discharge of thousands of men from the low-grade copper mines at Ray, Clifton, Morenci, Ajo, and other places. At Ray, a considerable number of Spanish employees, who had their own separate camp of ‘‘Barcelona,’’ appear to have been dropped from the payrolls even before the Mexicans and their village has become merely an annex to the near-by large Mexican town of Sonora. The Spaniards were good workers, but are said to have included many anarchistic agitators. Within the Salt River Valley, grain and alfalfa are succeeding cotton to a very large extent, every tractor being busy in pulling plows. One trouble in the new

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scheme of readjustment is that about a third of the acreage under the irrigation system is delinquent in payment of the annual water charges and assessments, and is without water, locked off at the headgates. It now is planned that the land owners shall be carried by the water association till the next cropping time. With more water there would be more employment. There is no scarcity of stored water at Roosevelt. Source: Los Angeles Times, January 30, 1921, p. FT13.

205. Excerpt from Bylaws of La Liga Protectora Latina, 1920 La Liga Protectora Latina (The Latin Protective League) was organized in Pheonix, Arizona, in 1915 by Mexican American leaders to assure members their health, accident, and death benefits. It shared members with other mutual aid societies such as La Alianza Hispano Americana (The Spanish American Alliance) (1894) but it was much more involved in political struggles such as campaigning against the 80 percent law, which excluded non-citizens from the workplace (80 percent of the workforce had to be native born Americans). La Liga also sponsored educational programs such as adult education. The following is a copy of its by-laws showing the sophistication of early Mexican American organizations that have been dismissed by some historians.

First chapter. Denomination, address, objective, and principles. Art. 1. This Society was called ‘‘Liga Protectora Latina’’ (Latin Protective League) when it was created and will continue to bear the same name. Art. 2. This Society was organized in Phoenix, Arizona, on February 10, 1915, where it was incorporated and legally authorized to exercise its duties according to the laws of that state on August 30, 1915. Art. 3. Its legal address and primary branch of business will be Phoenix, Arizona, under the government of the Supreme Board of Directors, which will execute its authority over the Branches established or those that will be set up in the State of Arizona, in other states of the American Union, and Latin-American countries where its extension and development will be pursued. Art. 4. The Latin Protective League is a POLITICAL, FRATERNAL, AND EDUCATIONAL Corporation whose objective is to: I. Pursue unity and development of brotherhood between Latinos regardless of nationality. II. Aid members in need in case of illness and if they should die, attend their funerals, and offer a pecuniary death benefit to the member so that it is received accorcling to the ordinances. III. Pay attention to the Legislatures and other departments within the State of Arizona and everywhere else so that laws or dispositions are not issued whose objectives might deprive Latinos of their privileges and rights as citizens or of their individual guarantees sanctioned by the Constitution of the United States and present treaties. IV. Try to defend members of the Institution and people of Latin descent before all officials or courts so that they receive the same treatment and law enforcement as individuals of other races. V. Encourage Latino voters to exercise their political rights by guiding and unifying their vote toward the interests of our race during general elections in order to

Americanization of Latino Immigrants

help citizens of Latin descent or those who are not hostile toward our race obtain positions in the Execurtive, Legislative, and Judicial Branches. VI. Promote intellectual, moral, and economic improvement of Latinos through proper educational systems, English and Spanish classes, by establishing Cooperatives, Savings Banks, and other similar methods. VII. Harmonize the interests of the diverse economic elements by establishing mutual agreement and respect for individual rights, by abstaining from the use of violence and class struggle, and by trying to solve conflicts that may appear with the set of the principles of conciliation and arbitrage. Art. 5. PROTECTlON, EQUALITY, AND JUSTICE are the principles that the Latin Protective League adopts, and condensed in them you will find the objectives that they pursue as they are listed in the previous article. Art. 6. The ‘‘Protection’’ principle forces all League members to wait and help all individuals of the race, especially their comrades in all situations in which that protection is necessary. The manner and cases in which it is necessary to provide protection for the Society will be arranged by the ordinances and regulations. Art. 7. The ‘‘Equality’’ principle indicates that the Latin Protective League advocates the exercise of political rights, including carrying out public tasks of popular election and jury duty by Latinos, as well as the identical treatment in labor fields, political and private fields, and the abolition of laws and practices that try to establish race distinctions which prejudice Latinos or residents of the same origin in the United States. Art. 8. When the Latin Protective League proclaims the ‘‘Justice’’ principle, it intends to obtain for its members, and Latinos in general, unbiased and just decisions in civil trials and the granting of all guarantees that the laws concede a defendant in criminal liability cases. Art. 9. All banners, emblems, badges, correspondence, stamps, and other objects of the Supreme Court and its Branches will have the name of the Corporation inscribed and next to it the following words, ‘‘PROTECTION, EQUALITY, JUSTICE’’ or its initials ‘‘P.E.J.’’ which will be used as the formal closing on the Society’s official and private correspondence as well as between its members. Second chapter. Motto, coat of arms, and the use of social badges. Art. 10. The motto of the Latin Protective League is ‘‘One for all. All for one.’’ It represents the mutual aid and brotherly love as the basis of our Institution. They should also be inscribed in the objectives addressed in the previous article. Art. 11. The Society’s coat of arms will have the shape, allegory, and emblem that are drawn here: All for one. One for all. Source: F. Arturo Rosales, ed., Testimonio: A Documentary History of the Mexican American StrugC 2000. pp. 114 115. gle for Civil Rights. Houston: Arte Publico Press University of Houston
Reprinted with permission of the publisher.

206. Excerpts from Sen. David A. Reed, ‘‘America of the Melting Pot Comes to End,’’ 1924 The following excerpts refer to the national origins, which advocated the policy of employing racial origins or social acceptance of particular immigrant groups as a criterion for admittance to the United States. National origins was

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the mechanism employed to reverse the diluting of the original racial composition of Anglo-American settlers, and to create a more homogeneous population. The notion was influenced by eugenicist Madison Grant’s study entitled, The Passing of the Great Race (1916), which alleged the superiority of the northern European, or Nordic, races. National origins would favor immigration from northern Europe and preserve the founding American racial stock. The excerpt talks about immigrants from the southern part of Europe and the Balkans who were different from northern Europeans. In 1895, they were 8 percent of the foreign born living in the United Stated, but by 1910 their numbers constituted 39 percent. Hence, it was said the melting pot was not working.

This change brought new difficulties in the problem of assimilation. These new peoples spoke strange languages. It was not to be expected that they would readily fuse into the population that they found here. It was natural that they should not understand our institutions, since they came from lands in which popular government is a myth.… MEANS MORE HOMOGENEOUS NATION With the wisdom of such a policy of exclusion there can be no real disagreement. It implies no reflection upon the merit of the excluded peoples. It is merely a recognition of their fundamental dissimilarity from ourselves. Many other nations have adopted similar policies. At the present time, the Asiatics are excluded from Australia, New Zealand, and most of the British colonies in South Africa. At the present time, Japan herself excludes Chinese, Koreans, and Malays for the very proper reason that their people are essentially dissimilar from her own. Source: ‘‘America of the Melting Pot Comes to End,’’ by David A. Reed, Senator from Pennsylvania, New York Times, April 27, 1924, p. XX3.

207. The National Origins Immigration Act of 1924 The National Origins Immigration Act of 1924 was national policy until 1965, when it was changed to favor family preferences. The latter meant that the number of immigrants admitted was no longer based on their racial make-up or on quotas from a specific country, but preference was given to immigrants who had close relatives in the United States. The 1924 act was fundamentally racist and engaged in eugenics. The purpose of national origins was to maintain American ethnicity and character, which the framers of the act considered diluted by immigration. The allocation of quotas in proportion to the 1890 census would preserve Ango-Saxon founding stock of the American nation, according to the act’s supporters, and the U.S. national character would be preserved. The act severely restricted immigration; it blatantly discriminated against immigrants from southern and eastern Europe and excluded Asians. Although there was an intense movement to put Mexicans and other Latin Americans on a quota, this was defeated by the Western Growers Association because it would create labor shortages that would threaten their crops. In

Americanization of Latino Immigrants

order to get enough votes to pass the bill, the framers compromised and did not include Mexicans.

SIXTY EIGHTH CONGRESS. SESS.I. Ch. 185, 190. 1924. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That this Act may be cited as the ‘‘Immigration Act of 1924.’’ Sec. 2. (a) A consular officer upon the application of any immigrant (as defined in section 3) may (under the conditions hereinafter prescribed and subject to the limitations prescribed in this Act or regulations made thereunder as to the number of immigration visas which may be issued by such officer) issue to such immigrant an immigration visa which shall consist of one copy of the application provided for in section 7, visaed by such consular officer. Such visa shall specify (1) the nationality of the immigrant; (2) whether he is a quota immigrant (as defined in section 5) or a non-quota immigrant (as defined in section 4); (3) the date on which the validity of the immigration visa shall expire; and such additional information necessary to the proper enforcement of the immigration laws and the naturalization laws as may be by regulations prescribed. b. The immigrant shall furnish two copies of his photograph to the consular officer. One copy shall be permanently attached by the consular officer to the immigration visa and the other copy shall be disposed of as may be by regulations prescribed. c. The validity of an immigration visa shall expire at the end of such period, specified in the immigration visa, not exceeding four months, as shall be by regulations prescribed. In the case of an immigrant arriving in the United States by water, or arriving by water in foreign contiguous territory on a continuous voyage to the United States, if the vessel, before the expiration of the validity of his immigration visa, departed from the last port outside the United States and outside foreign contiguous territory at which the immigrant embarked, and if the immigrant proceeds on a continuous voyage to the United States, then, regardless of the time of his arrival in the United States, the validity of his immigration visa shall not be considered to have expired. (d) If an immigrant is required by any law, or regulations or orders made pursuant to law, to secure the visa of his passport by a consular officer before being permitted to enter the United States, such immigrant shall not be required to secure any other visa of his passport than the immigration visa issued under this Act, but a record of the number and date of his immigration visa shall be noted on his passport without charge therefor. This subdivision shall not apply to an immigrant who is relieved, under subdivision (b) of section 13, from obtaining an immigration visa. (e) The manifest or list of passengers required by the immigration laws shall contain a place for entering thereon the date, place of issuance, and number of the immigration visa of each immigrant. The immigrant shall surrender his immigration visa to the immigration officer at the port of inspection, who shall at the time of inspection indorse on the immigration visa the date, the port of entry, and the name of the vessel, if any, on which the immigrant arrived. The immigration visa shall be transmitted forthwith by the immigration officer in charge at the port of inspection to the Department of Labor under regulations prescribed by the Secretary of Labor. (f) No immigration visa shall be issued to an immigrant if it appears to the consular officer, from statements in the application, or in the papers submitted

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therewith, that the immigrant is inadmissible to the United States under the immigration laws, nor shall such immigration visa be issued if the application fails to comply with the provisions of this Act, nor shall such immigration visa be issued if the consular officer knows or has reason to believe that the immigrant is inadmissible to the United States under the immigration laws. (g) Nothing in this Act shall be construed to entitle an immigrant, to whom an immigration visa has been issued, to enter the United States, if, upon arrival in the United States, he is found to be inadmissible to the United States under the immigration laws. The substance of this subdivision shall be printed conspicuously upon every immigration visa. (h) A fee of $9 shall be charged for the issuance of each immigration visa, which shall be covered into the Treasury as miscellaneous receipts. DEFINITION OF IMMIGRANT Sec. 3. When used in this Act the term ‘‘immigrant’’ means an alien departing from any place outside the United States destined for the United States, except (1) a government official, his family, attendants, servants, and employees, (2) an alien visiting the United States temporarily as a tourist or temporarily for business or pleasure, (3) an alien in continuous transit through the United States, (4) an alien lawfully admitted to the United States who later goes in transit from one part of the United States to another through foreign contiguous territory, (5) a bona fide alien seaman serving as such on a vessel arriving at a port of the United States and seeking to enter temporarily the United States solely in the pursuit of his calling as a seaman, and (6) an alien entitled to enter the United States solely to carry on trade under and in pursuance of the provisions of a present existing treaty of commerce and navigation. NON-QUOTA IMMIGRANTS Sec. 4. When used in this Act the term ‘‘non-quota immigrant’’ means (a) An immigrant who is the unmarried child under 18 years of age, or the wife, of a citizen of the United States who resides therein at the time of the filing of a petition under section 9; (b) An immigrant previously lawfully admitted to the United States, who is returning from a temporary visit abroad; (c) An immigrant who was born in the Dominion of Canada, Newfoundland, the Republic of Mexico, the Republic of Cuba, the Republic of Haiti, the Dominican Republic, the Canal Zone, or an independent country of Central or South America, and his wife, and his unmarried children under 18 years of age, if accompanying or following to join him; (d) An immigrant who continuously for at least two years immediately preceding the time of his application for admission to the United States has been, and who seeks to enter the United States solely for the purpose of, carrying on the vocation of minister of any religious denomination, or professor of a college, academy, seminary, or university; and his wife, and his unmarried children under 18 years of age, if accompanying or following to join him; or (e) An immigrant who is a bona fide student at least 15 years of age and who seeks to enter the United States solely for the purpose of study at an accredited school, college, academy, seminary, or university, particularly designated by him and approved by, the secretary of labor, which shall have

Americanization of Latino Immigrants

agreed to report to the Secretary of Labor the termination of attendance of each immigrant student, and if any such institution of learning fails to make such reports promptly the approval shall be withdrawn.… EXCLUSION FROM UNITED STATES Sec. 13. (a) No immigrant shall be admitted to the United States unless he (1) has an unexpired immigration visa or was born subsequent to the issuance of the immigration visa of the accompanying parent, (2) is of the nationality specified in the visa in the immigration visa, (3) is a non-quota immigrant if specified in the visa in the immigration visa as such, and (4) is otherwise admissible under the immigration laws. (b) In such classes of cases and under such conditions as may be by regulations prescribed immigrants who have been legally admitted to the United States and who depart therefrom temporarily may be admitted to the United States without being required to obtain an immigration visa. (c) No alien ineligible to citizenship shall be admitted to the United States unless such alien (1) is admissible as a nonquota immigrant under the provisions of subdivision (b), (d), or (e) of section 4, or (2) is the wife, or the unmarried child under 18 years of age, of an immigrant admissible under such subdivision (d), and is accompanying or following to join him, or (3) is not an immigrant as defined in section 3. (d) The Secretary of Labor may admit to the United States any otherwise admissible immigrant not admissible under clause (2) or (3) of subdivision (a) of this section, if satisfied that such inadmissibility was not known to, and could not have been ascertained by the exercise of reasonable diligence by, such immigrant prior to the departure of the vessel from the last port outside the United States and outside foreign contiguous territory or, in the case of an immigrant coming from foreign contiguous territory, prior to the application of the immigrant for admission. (e) No quota immigrant shall be admitted under subdivision (d) if the entire number of immigration visas which may be issued to quota immigrants of the same nationality for the fiscal year already been issued. If such entire number of immigration visas has not been issued, then the Secretary of State, upon the admission of a quota immigrant under subdivision (d), shall reduce by one the number of immigration visas which may be issued to quota immigrants of the same nationality during the fiscal year in which such immigrant is admitted; but if the Secretary of State finds that it will not be practicable to make such reduction before the end of such fiscal year, then such immigrant shall not be admitted. (f) Nothing in this section shall authorize the remission or refunding of a fine, liability to which has accrued under section 16. DEPORTATION Sec. 14. Any alien who at any time after entering the United States is found to have been at the time of entry not entitled under this Act to enter the United States, or to have remained therein for a longer time than permitted under this Act or regulations made thereunder, shall be taken into custody and deported in the same manner as provided for in sections 19 and 20 of the Immigration Act of 1917: Provided, That the Secretary of Labor may, under such conditions and restrictions as to support and care as he may deem necessary, permit permanently to remain in the United States, any alien child who, when under sixteen years of age was

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heretofore temporarily admitted to the United States and who is now within the United States and either of whose parents is a citizen of the United States. MAINTENANCE OF EXEMPT STATUS Sec. 15. The admission to the United States of an alien excepted from the class of immigrants by clause (2), (3), (4), (5), or (6) of section 3, or declared to be a non-quota immigrant by subdivision (e) of section 4, shall be for such time as may be by regulations prescribed, and under such conditions as may be by regulations prescribed (including, when deemed necessary for the classes mentioned in clauses (2), (3), (4), or (6) of section 3, the giving of bond with sufficient surety, in such sum and containing such conditions as may be by regulations prescribed) to insure that, at the expiration of such time or upon failure to maintain the status under which he was admitted, he will depart from the United States.… Sec. 28. As used in this Act (a) The term ‘‘United States,’’ when used in a geographical sense, means the States, the Territories of Alaska and Hawaii, the District of Columbia, Porto Rico, and the Virgin Islands; and the term ‘‘continental United States’’ means the States and the District of Columbia; (b) The term ‘‘alien’’ includes any individual not a native-born or naturalized citizen of the United States, but this definition shall not be held to include Indians of the United States not taxed, nor citizens of the islands under the jurisdiction of the United States; (c) The term ‘‘ineligible to citizenship,’’ when used in reference to any individual, includes an individual who is debarred from becoming a citizen of the United States under section 2169 of the Revised Statutes, or under section 14 of the Act entitled ‘‘An Act to Execute Certain Treaty Stipulations Relating to Chinese,’’ approved May 6, 1882, or under section 1996, 1997, or 1998 of the Revised Statutes, as amended, or under section 2 of the Act entitled ‘‘An Act to Authorize the President to Increase Temporarily the Military Establishment of the United States,’’ approved May 18, 1917, as amended, or under law amendatory of, supplementary to, or in substitution for, any of such sections; (d) The term ‘‘immigration visa’’ means an immigration visa issued by a consular officer under the provisions of this Act; (e) The term ‘‘consular officer’’ means any consular or diplomatic officer of the United States designated, under regulations prescribed under this Act, for the purpose of issuing immigration visas under this Act. In case of the Canal Zone and the insular possessions of the United States the term ‘‘consular officer’’ (except as used in section 24) means an officer designated by the President, or by his authority, for the purpose of issuing immigration visas under this Act; (f) The term ‘‘Immigration Act of 1917’’ means the Act of February 5, 1917, entitled ‘‘An Act to Regulate the Immigration of Aliens to, and the Residence of Aliens in, the United States’’; (g) The term ‘‘immigration laws’’ includes such Act, this Act, and all laws, conventions, and treaties of the United States relating to the immigration, exclusion, or expulsion of aliens; (h) The term ‘‘person’’ includes individuals, partnerships, corporations, and associations; (i) The term ‘‘Commissioner General’’ means the Commissioner General of Immigration; (j)The term ‘‘application for admission’’ has reference to the application for admission to the United States and not to the application for the issuance of the immigration visa; (k) The term ‘‘permit’’ means a permit issued under section 10; (l) The term ‘‘unmarried,’’ when used in reference to any [one] as of any time, means an individual who at such time is not married, whether or not previously

Americanization of Latino Immigrants

married; (m) The terms ‘‘child,’’ ‘‘father,’’ and ‘‘mother,’’ do not include child or parent by adoption unless the adoption took place before January 1, 1924; (n) The terms ‘‘wife’’ and ‘‘husband’’ do not include a wife [or] husband by reason of a proxy or picture marriage. Source: The Statutes at Large of the United States of America, from December 1923 to March, 1925. Vol. XLII, Part 1 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1925), pp. 153 169.

208. Excerpts from Paul S. Taylor, ‘‘The Municipio of Arandas,’’ 1933 University of California agricultural economist Paul S. Taylor (1895–1985), from the 1920s until his death did extensive research on Mexican workers, using oral interviews to form narratives. In the following excerpts, he goes back to the source of Mexican immigration to the United States. In this instance, Taylor shows the migration patterns from Los Altos de Jalisco, Mexico, to the United States and interviews some of the migrants. Jalisco was a major exporter of workers to the United States when Taylor wrote this article. Arandas was in the Los Altos region of the Mexican state of Jalisco, which was in turmoil during the 1920s because it was the center of the Cristero War (1926–1929), a war in which the Mexican government insisted on the separation of church and state and Catholics of the region insisted on the primacy of the Catholic faith. The Cristeros rose under the banner of ‘‘Long Live Christ the King and Blessed Mary of Guadalupe!’’

The Municipio of Arandas is located in the eastern part of the state of Jalisco, in the region known as Los Altos, and elevated above the great central plateau of Mexico. It covers approximately 76 sitios (1,300 square kilometers or 500 square miles). The surface of the municipio is in general divided into two types of country … [the] broken upland of Los Altos which comprises the southern half of the municipio, and the northern portion which is known as El Plano because of its nearly level surface. The altitude of the entire municipio rises generally from the base of Cerro Gordo in the west, toward the east; the greatest elevation, however, is at the summit of Cerro Gordo, on the western extremity, which rises to a height of approximately 23.75 meters. The altitude of the town of Arandas is 1,905 meters. Around the rim of the municipio on all sides a series of cerros [hills] rise above the general level. Across the center, from west to east, lies a cordillera [mountain chain]. It rises in elevation toward the east, and between Cerro de la Campana and the eastern limits of the municipio drops almost precipitously to EI Plan, which in places is probably 100 meters or more below. E1 Plano is interrupted by a series of low hills which rise in a chain across the middle in a slightly northeasterly direction. It is bounded on the northern limits of the municipio by the chain of higher cerros which rise at Caracol in the west and continue beyond the northeastern limits of the municipio. In the northeastern portion of the municipio the streams which flow eastward have cut valleys below the plain and cerros. Arandas has been, and continues to be a source of great population growth.… Not only has Arandas supplied its own population increase, but it has been an

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important source of emigration as well. In large part, this emigration has been stimulated by civil disorders.… during the Cristero [Christ] revolution of 1927 29 … many went to Guadalajara and settled, principally in the barrio of San Juan de Dios, where their descendants still live.… It is noteworthy that not only laborers have emigrated to find work elsewhere, but persons of all occupations have gone, finding employment not only in labor and commerce, but attaining to a notable degree, places of importance in the cultural, professional, and political life of the Republic. The first emmigrants to the United States from the municipio of Arandas left in the early years of the twentieth century. About two decades before … the rail connection from Mexico City to El Paso, which passes through the eastern corner of Jalisco, had been completed, and an increasing stream of Mexican laborers had begun to move northward from the country adjacent to the railroad to take advantage of the employment made available by the new means of transportation. Before many years, the news reached Arandas, and laborers from that isolated region began to join the tide of emigration. The earliest emigrant from Arandas with whom I talked left the town in 1905 … plausibly, he was the first to go from that region. Having heard from prisoners sent north to Sonora to fight the Yaqui Indians, that ‘‘the United States was a good place to work,’’ he and his brother decided to take some of their savings, go to San Francisco del Rincon on the railroad, and entrain for El Paso. Upon arrival at El Paso they were sent by an employment agency to work on the track near Independence, Kansas, at $1.25 per day of 10 hours. After about six months, they returned to Arandas. In 1907, my informant went again to El Paso, accompanied by two friends; this time he was sent by employment agents to Fresno, California, for track work. At least by 1909, and probably earlier, men from the Arandas ranches, distant from roads and towns, were also beginning to go north for seasonal employment as track laborers in the United States. The news of attractive work spread rapidly … the ranchers and small merchants who for many years previous had gone on horseback as far as Aguascalientes, Queretaro, Guadalajara, Guanajuato, and Michoacan to market their produce of butter, tequila (strong alcoholic drink made from mezcal plant), linseed oil, animals, etc., were among the first to carry to the ranches the news of the employment offered by the railroads, and with the return of the first few emigrants to Arandas there was a wave of enthusiasm to take advantage of the wages in the United States. Naturally; for wages in Arandas were from 31 centavos to 36 centavos Mexican.… The attitude toward the United States of those people in Arandas who have not emigrated to work in that country [is not the same as the] … attitude of those who have emigrated. At one extreme is the underlying hatred of the more powerful and richer nation to the north, its very power and riches obviously aggravating the dislike. The antagonism is collective rather than individual, and may be indeed, was accompanied by the utmost and genuine friendliness and courtesy to the individual American. For example a merchant-ranchero who had not been to the United States said: Down in their hearts, the Mexicans do not like the Americans, collectively. Individually, they often like them; those who have seen the Americans in the United States like them better. But the United States took more than half of this country for Texas, California, etc.…

Americanization of Latino Immigrants

I talked in Arandas, [to] a young man who had not been to the United States, [who] volunteered: ‘‘Se ve mal a los Mexicallos en los Estados Unidos [they regard the Mexicans badly in the United States]. They regard them as an inferior race. They fill the jails with them. Do you know that the Mexican students were killed [by the sheriff I Guess] in Oklahoma.’’ Characteristically, another Mexican, though he, too, had not been in the United States, made a defense of Americans: ‘‘The treatment depends on the man.… Some of the Mexicans [who] have come back have told me that they can say nothing bad of their treatment in the United States.’’ Only one of the many returned emigrants of Arandas with whom I talked in Arandas volunteered grievances; he was a mestizo of light complexion: ‘‘Here they treat the strangers very well with respect. But the gente blanca [white people] don’t always treat the Mexicans well. The Los Angeles police treat the Mexicans badly. The officer at the Plaza tells the Mexicans to get out of town when they have no work. He kicks the Mexicans. The majordomos some are bad and some good. They drive the Mexicans too hard, and say, ‘‘If you don’t like it, go.’’ The sullen manner of this man stood out in sharp contrast to the reception accorded one by the other Mexicans of Arandas upon the same and other occasions. My guide … immediately upon the man’s departure, apologizing for the attitude and deprecating the complaint, that the man was a boracho (drinker) and didn’t observe filial obligations by sending money to his father from the United States. A neighbor added that, though he had financially aided the complainant to emigrate to the United States, shortly afterwards the latter had stolen $15 more from him and departed. These explanations were offered in the spirit of statements made repeatedly in very similar language.… In Los Angeles they say the police are pretty bad. They say that at the Plaza an officer called ‘‘Red’’ kicks the Mexicans. Another Mexican of the best type told an experience with the police of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which is only too tragically plausible: Some Mexican fellows who were drunk with whiskey made noise in the street and were shooting into the air. Somebody telephoned the police. I was not with them, but was asleep in bed in my room. The police came to the boarding house to get the whole bunch. They came to my door. I got up in my underwear and opened it. The cops tried to find if I had a gun; I did not. They said, ‘‘Get up and dress.’’ I said, ‘‘What you going to do to me?’’ They said ‘‘Arrest you.’’ ‘‘Why?’’ ‘‘You’re going to find out in jail.’’ At the jail, an officer said, ‘‘What you rob?’’ I told him I didn’t rob, and showed him my number at the steel company. He asked me again what I rob, and because I said I didn’t do anything he hit me across the car with a black jack, and across the head and face [splitting the ear and breaking the cartilage]. Then he threw me into the cell with the others [without giving any attention to the bleeding wound]. In the morning in court the police told the judge I was shooting. The judge asked me what kind of a gun I had. I told him I was asleep in bed and had no gun. The policeman told me to shut up. The judge asked me what was my nationality. ‘‘Mexican.’’ Then he said ‘‘$10 or 30 days.’’ I said … I was working and had money and paid. Then I went to the doctor, who sewed my ear. I couldn’t work for ten days, because I worked in a hot place, putting billets in the furnace. I feel sorry when I was in jail when I do no trouble. My mother lived 52 years here and never was arrested. I am born here, and never was arrested until I went to the United States, and I feel sorry.

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Two Mexicans each admitted that upon one occasion they were at least technically at fault when arrested and fined, but made no complaint of their treatment upon these occasions. Two other returned emigrants, the first of them now a Mexican federal rural school teacher near Guadalajara, described high-handed treatment by farmers in Nueces County, Texas, giving accounts which are entirely plausible and in harmony with complaints made when I talked with Mexicans in that county in 1929: We were supposed to be paid $1.50 a hundred pounds for picking cotton, but we received only $4 or $5 a week in cash. We were paid partly in money and partly in credit at the ranch store, and the prices at the store were high. Some of my friends left.… So they gathered the rest of us in the garage and posted the majordomo at the door with a rifle. Then the owner came with a pistol and threatened to kill any man who left. Soon afterwads the majordomo kicked a boy the son of an attorney in Guadalajara who was lying down because of the effects of heat, sun, and bad water. I protested. Then I left on a train for San Antonio and arrived with ten cents in my pockets. A Mexican there gave me a meal. Yes, in Texas; the Mexicans look too much like niggers. In Flint, Michigan, no. You know, the Mexicans have darker.… In Pittsburgh [Pennsylvania] I go every place. But in Texas, that’s why I was living good and liked it in Pittsburgh.

The treatment of Mexicans in the relations of employer and employee, as in social relations, was also said to be better in the North an observation made frequently by Mexicans in all parts of the United States: ‘‘The treatment is very good in Pennsylvania; bad in Texas. On the frontier are people who exploit labor, who are less educated than those in the rest of the United States. A good percentage in the southern states exploit. I have good impressions of the other states because of the better education of the people of the central and northern states. The complaints made against treatment of Mexicans in the United States thus stressed essentially the same points as those expressed by Mexicans interviewed in the United States. It is significant, however, that in Arandas complaint was made much more vigorously, although in less detail, by persons who had never emigrated than by those who had; the single exception to this has already been noted. In the minds of the returned emigrants, the agreeable aspects of their experience in the United States far overshadowed the disagreeable. Even the young … sustained brutal treatment at the hands of Pittsburgh police told of his experience only after prolonged conversations, and then with humiliation and regret rather than bitterness; he would like to return to live in Pennsylvania all his life.… Source: Paul S. Taylor, A Spanish-Mexican Peasant Community Arandas in Jalisco, Mexico (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1933), pp. 3, 12, 13, 15, 40, 41, 49, 51.

209. Excerpts from Lina E. Bresette, ‘‘Mexicans in the United States: A Report of a Brief Survey,’’ 1929 The National Catholic Welfare Council (NCWC), an annual meeting from 1919 to 1966, of the American bishops was established by Catholic bishops largely in response to Protestant efforts to convert Mexicans. Here sociologist Lina E. Bressette reported on the status of Mexicans in the United States. The

Americanization of Latino Immigrants

report is important because, although the overwhelming majority of Mexicans were Catholics, little was known about them. The following is a brief survey who they were and where they worked. It draws attention to the reaction of nativist groups such as the Klu Klux Klan to their presence.

Mexican labor is becoming an increasingly basic factor in certain lines of industry. Most of the Mexicans who come to the United States work at unskilled labor. They are much in demand for the reason, expressed by many employers, that they are ‘‘not radical,’’ ‘‘easily controlled by those in authority,’’ and ‘‘willing to take orders.’’ In the North, East, South and West, the Mexican is being used. Lumbering, agriculture, mining, grazing, railroad construction, all demand his labor. They furnish the great supply of transient labor for the perishable crops of the Southwest. Much of their work is seasonal and they drift from one occupation to another, from state to state, and between seasons are often idle and unemployed. It is reported that in the Imperial Valley in California each year, Mexican labor picks ‘‘25 tons of raisins, 25 tons of walnuts, 5 million boxes of lemons, and 25 million boxes of oranges.’’ In Texas thousands of acres of Bermuda onions are cared for by the Mexicans. Families are to be found in large numbers in the beet areas of California, Utah, Colorado, Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, Michigan, and Ohio. In three counties of Colorado, 18,000 cared for 110,000 acres of beets, more than two thirds of its entire beet acreage. They travel with the crops and the jobs. Whole families of them may be seen loaded in old and half broken-down Fords going from the oranges to the cantaloupes, then to the grape picking, and then, to the walnuts. From the beet fields they go to whatever work is offered them. In the Southwest they are the principal highway builders and almost exclusively the railroad section hands. They pick much of the cotton in Texas and Arizona, they tend vineyards, citrus orchards, walnut groves and melon fields in California, they care for the sugar beets in Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, and California, they are in the copper mines of Arizona.… The General Secretary of the I.W.W. [Industrial Workers of the World] claims that ‘‘a large number of Mexican workers have joined and are joining the I.W.W., mainly Colorado miners and beet workers of Colorado and other Western states.’’ The Knights of Columbus Welfare Committee of one state denies that the I.W.W. has made much progress, but adds, that ‘‘when representatives of the I.W.W. and other radical groups go into the fields and talk with the Mexicans, who are already conscious of the discrimination against them, about labor unionism, exploitation, inequality, and injustice, they have used the existing bad conditions effectively to attract and secure followers.’’ The chairman of this Committee says a deplorable economic exploitation of the Mexicans and Spanish-speaking people is taking place under the very noses of the Catholics; who ought to be the first to raise their voices in protest and to help introduce reforms for better working conditions. The Knights of Columbus Welfare Committee in Colorado and representatives of the Knights of Columbus, particularly in New Mexico and Texas, and a number of the Bishops have on many occasions spoken against their bad working conditions.… Of course, the walls of prejudice and mistrust are breaking down gradually, and as the two groups come to know each other, there is more mutual esteem. So far, there has been very little intermarriage. In Walsenburg, the Ku Klux Klan has been active, and has done much to drive the two groups apart. Last January, the sheriff and the chief prohibition officer were shot,

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and shortly after that the Klan held a parade. As a result, feeling has been very bitter. Said a leading Spanish American, ‘‘The Klan has made the Spanish Americans a solid group again. We were drifting apart, away from the church, away from our old friends. But this has brought us all together again. But you know this bitter feeling … there’s a fellow in town whom I chummed with at school since we were kids. We sat in the same double desk, went to picnics and parties together. I was at home at his house, and he at mine. When mother made some Spanish dish that he especially liked, we had him over … our wives were friends in the same way. And now he’s leader of the Klan, and ready to knife me in the back at any time. Gosh darn it, it hurts to believe it.…’’ The Spanish population of this section is maintained principally by agricultural activities. In Alamosa, there are railroad shops and a newly established lumber mill, but otherwise the occupation of the people is dominantly agricultural. Many of the Spanish Americans own their farms, small holdings running 80 to 160 acres. They raise grains, potatoes, and peas, and some stock though less sheep than formerly. Many others are agricultural laborers. Housing, educational, and health conditions are largely similar to those among the rural population of Las Animas and Huerfano counties.… Source: Social Action Department, National Catholic Welfare Conference, Washington, D.C., 1929, pp. iii, 16, 17, 19.

210. Excerpt from R. N. McLean and Charles A. Thompson, ‘‘Spanish and Mexican in Colorado,’’ 1924 The Rev. Robert N. McLean (1882–1964) was the associate director of the Presbyterian Board of Missions in the United States. The U.S. Presbyterian Church was heavily involved worldwide in missionary work in countries such as China, Ireland, Puerto Rico, and Mexico. Mexicans in the United States were seen as an extension of those in Mexico where many native ministers were trained and schools established. McLean belonged to the more progressive arm of the Presbyterian Church often advocating for the material well being of Mexicans. In the following article, McLean says the condition of the Spanish-speaking in Colorado was deteriorating. The excerpt describes the work of the contract laborer and the importance of sugar beets in attracting Mexicans. The Immigration Acts of 1917, 1921, and 1924 had severely restricted the labor supply of central and southern Europeans. In 1924, the Great Western Sugar Company in Colorado hired thousands of Mexicans from New Mexico and sent enganchadores, labor contractors, into Mexico to contract over 10,000 Mexicans to fill the void. They were brought into Colorado at a time when sugar production was expanding and there was a lack of housing and other facilities. Church people like McLean were the few voices raised that were pro-immigrant.

Traveling through the beet fields of Colorado, or across the broad grazing lands, one thinks of the state as comparatively level. But if one attempts to cross from one table-land to tableland ‘‘parks’’ they call them one is convinced of the fact that one is indeed upon the backbone of America. Colorado is high so high in fact that only one fourth of the area lies below 5,000 feet, while about two thirds of its surface ranges between 6,000 and 14,000

Americanization of Latino Immigrants

feet. Lots of potatoes are raised in Colorado, but boiled with difficulty in almost every corner of the state. And Colorado is large. Within its borders the Plymouth fathers could have found land to make twelve states the size of Massachusetts. Although it is seventh in size among the states of the Union, its total population in 1920 was only 939,629; this means a little more than nine persons to the square mile. Still it must be remembered that some of the square miles of Colorado are too vertical for anyone even to try to stand upon them. Colorado also is diverse in its topography, as well as in its crops. There are no less than nine clearly defined districts. Beginning with the non-irrigated prairie section in the eastern part of the state, one passes to the broad valley watered by the Arkansas in the southeastern part. Across the La Veta pass, where the road crosses the divide at an elevation of ten thousand feet, one comes to the San Luis valley, where since the early days of the Spanish adventurers, millions of sheep have grazed. Another … over the mountains to the west, and we are in the great San Juan basin, fertile in resources, and needing only adequate transportation facilities to awaken it from slumber. Then there is the valley of the South Platte, the valleys of the Colorado and tributary streams in the central western part, the mountainous mineral districts, and the broad upland grazing lands known as north central and south parks. But whether it be plain, or valley it is always Colorado Colorado with her face set toward the days which are to be. Colorado is diverse also in her population groups; and it is a diversity which is exemplified even among the Spanish people which this survey studies. The earliest Americans of European blood were the Spanish Americans living principally … bordering upon New Mexico. These people have lived in Colorado for fifty or sixty years; in fact they were there when the Anglo-American appeared, and so were really the first settlers. They are descended from immigrants from New Mexico, who though they passed through old Mexico on their way from Spain, did not dwell there for any considerable length of time, and so supposedly kept their blood free from any Indian tinge. Having been born on American soil, these Spanish Americans are citizens. Because they are native to the United States are sometimes referred to by Anglo-Americans as ‘‘native Mexicans,’’ in distinction to the Mexicans born south of the border who are ‘‘old Mexico Mexicans.’’ The Spanish used by these people is in many instances extremely archaic. The expressions upon the lips of the Spanish Americans can be found outside the pages of the writers of Spain’s golden age. The isolation which distances furnished for so many years has been replaced by an isolation of language and blood; and the people have therefore perpetuated many of the … of Spain during her age of gold. The Mexicans are those who were born south of the Rio Grande in the Republic of Mexico, and who have emigrated to the United States, usually within the last five or ten years. They are not American citizens, and usually do not wish to become so. In many cases their skin is slightly darker than that of the Spanish Americans. The Spanish Americans are more phlegmatic, more taciturn than are the old Mexico Mexicans. It is harder to move … them; but they ‘‘stay put’’ better than their neighbors from the south. Also they are very much more ‘‘Catholic’’ in the narrow sense of the word than are the Mexicans. The immigrant Mexicans have seen the effects of unchecked Romanism in governmental affairs. They have learned to identify church and state, and there has resulted a decided reaction against both. Hence,

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while Protestantism makes less apparent headway among the Spanish Americans, the results gained are more permanent. In addition to the descendents of the early settlers there are people of Spanish blood in southern Colorado, Las Animas and Huerfano counties, in the southeastern part of the state, and also lie southeastern end of the mountainous belt. In all, these districts contain about 25,000 persons. The San Luis valley has approximately 5,000 and the San Juan valley to the west between 2,000 and 3,000. For the state, a total of 35,000 is probably a fair estimate. According to the census of 1920, Mexicans were found in fifty-two of the sixtythree counties of Colorado. In eighteen of these counties there was a population of 100 or more Mexicans. Their work as section hands on the railroads probably does more to give them this wide distribution, than any other cause. Their work in the coal mines attracts them in considerable numbers to the eastern edge of the mineral belt, in Weld, Boulder, Fremont, Huerfano, and Las animas counties. But they are found in greatest numbers in the South Platte and Arkansas valleys drawn by the demand for labor for the beet fields. The two industrial centers of Pueblo and Denver also possess a considerable colony of Mexicans. Pueblo has 5,000; Denver a steady population of about 2,000, which is augmented to two or three times that number during the winter, by beet workers who come there after the close of the beet season and remain until the spring work begins. In 1920 the census showed that in the whole state there were 10,894 Mexicans. With regard to the situation at present, it is impossible to give anything more than an estimate. But considering all the industrial and agricultural fields in which the Mexican is now found, the figure suggested by Mr. Jos
e Esparza, the Mexican consul of Denver, of 22,000 25,000, does not appear improbable, if we understand it to include the migratory beet workers. Thus, with 25,000 Mexicans, and 35,000 Spanish Americans, we have 60,000 people of Spanish speech in the state. And there are more to follow. Experimentation as to the adaptability of the soil of the San Luis valley for beet culture is being made. Colorado, the diverse, the gigantic Rocky Mountain state is just coming into her kingdom. Source: New York, Board of National Missions, Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A., 1924, p. vii x.

211. Excerpt from ‘‘Autos Increase Ranch Troubles,’’ 1924 By the 1920s Mexican farm workers dominated the seasonal workforce across the Southwest and Midwest. The workforce was highly mobile. Until this decade the workers depended on farm labor contractors who would line up the jobs and transport workers to disparate ranches. The automobile lessened the Mexicans dependence on their labor contractors. And thus it lessened the control of the farmer over the laborers who could join organizations and strike more easily. The automobile allowed them to take their families with them as they migrated from farm to farm and often from state to state. It aided the dispersal of Mexican communities over a larger range.

Ranchers and fruit men report ownership of automobiles has resulted in independence of the laborers, who formerly came in bands with an English-speaking leader. Now if conditions do not suit them they hop into their faithful car and seek new fields. Source: ‘‘Autos Increase Ranch Troubles,’’ Los Angeles Times, September 25, 1924, p. 6.

Americanization of Latino Immigrants

212. Circular from Imperial Valley Workers Union, ca. 1930 Although there had been attempts at organizing farmworkers in California’s Imperial Valley as early as 1917, the formation of the Imperial Valley Workers Union did not occur until April 1928. As with most labor organizing of Mexicans, this union was initiated by the workers themselves and had very little, if any, support from organized labor. In this case, the Sociedad de Benito Ju
arez, a mutualista (mutual aid society), organized Mexican field workers against the abuses of Imperial Valley growers. In May 1928, the union requested improved working conditions. They wanted ice for their drinking water, picking sacks, material to build out-houses, and workman’s compensation for pickers hurt on the job. The sheriff came down on the Mexican community, arresting wrokers and raiding meetings. The following is a flyer distributed by the union that organized workers from 1928–1930. It shows the odds workers struggled against and what they were fighting for.

~ ATTENTION COMPANEROS Who are they who write those indecent lines? Why do they threaten us to this day and tell us that our families will suffer? Who are the parties who hide their names and who announce the coming of a river full of misfortune? Who are those false speakers who defame our representatives? And, finally, why do they not sign their name? Companeros, we must be on our guard just now. More than ever before. The knaves, the Iscariots betray us, just as they have betrayed Christ. We must pay no attention to those miserable flatterers who thrive at the expense of honest workers of the soil. Give the lie to all such apostates of the working class. Please note and consider: The Imperial Valley Workers Union consists of 2,746 members. It is recognized by the California authorities and, up to this day, we have always respected the law of the country and we appreciate the rights conceded to us as strangers. We ask only for a small increase in the price of each case of melons; we ask for bags to collect them; we ask for ice; we ask that our work be guaranteed in some Bank of this town. Such small increase will give one more piece of bread to our children. We will pay our bills to the dealers who have given us credit and we will more readily obtain our necessities of life. Compa~ neros, we are sure that no workers will arrive from other parts. The melon is here. It is a fact that in seventy-two hours we will pick melons. All respectable people side with us. Our aides are: Reason, Right, and Justice. Only so towns grow and nations become respected; never through the calumny of miserable idlers. Imperial Valley Workers Union Source: Paul Taylor, Mexican Labor in the United States: Imperial Valley (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1930), pp. 49 50.

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213. Excerpts from Devra Anne Weber, ‘‘The Organizing of Mexicano Agricultural Workers: Imperial Valley and Los Angeles 1928–34, an Oral History Approach,’’ 1973 In 1927, the Confederaci
on de Uniones Obreras Mexicanas (Federation of Mexican Workers Union) (CUOM) was founded in Los Angeles to organize and consolidate Mexican workers. CUOM organized to protect rural and urban Mexican American workers against unfair deportation and labor practices. It asked the federal government to further restrict immigration from Mexico. Hence, CUOM adopted the policy of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) that advocated restricting immigration from Mexico. CUOM held that as long as corporate growers had an unlimited pool of cheap labor from Mexico, there would be no success in organizing Mexicans into unions. The only weapon that unions had was the strike, which could not succeed if employers had large numbers of workers who would cross the picket line. In the following excerpts, University of California at Riverside historian Devra Weber reproduces CUOM’s constitution.

A confederation of Mexican unions, Confederati
on de Uniones Obreros Mexicanos (CUOM), was the forerunner of the Mexican Union involved in the El Monte berry strike of 1933. CUOM was organized in 1927 following a meeting of the Federation of Mexican Societies at which a resolution was passed calling upon affiliated mutual aid societies to lend moral and financial support to organizing trade unions of Mexican workers. This confederation of Mexican labor unions was modeled after the Mexican union the Confederaci
on Regional Obrera Mexicana (CROM) and exhibited a similar philosophy, a mixture of radical rhetoric combined with adherence to legal and nonviolent tactics. The declaration of principles and the constitution capture the mixture of rhetoric and tactics. They also give the reader an indication of the tone of the union. That the exploited class, the greater part of which is made up by manual labor, is right in establishing a class struggle in order to effect an economic and moral betterment of its conditions, and at last its complete freedom from capitalist tyranny.… That in order to be able to oppose the organization, each day more complete and intelligent, the exploited class must organize as such, the base of its organization being the union of resistance, in accord with the rights which the laws of this country concede to native and foreign workers. That the corporations, possessors of the national and social wealth, being integral parts of the associates of industry, commerce, and banking, the disinherited class must also integrate by means of its federation and confederation into a single union of all labor of the world. The 1929 constitution added that [Since] the results in the industry are obtained through the efforts of man, the Confederaci
on de Uniones Obreros Mexicanos does acknowledge that the industries must be in the hands of those who are capable of maintaining said industries of production. The militant tone of the union, reminiscent in part of Magonista ideology, is modified by some of its specific principles. To organize all Mexican workers in the United States in unions according to Sindical principles.

Americanization of Latino Immigrants

To establish a solid pact with the American and the Mexican working men that any difficulty in the future may be solved mutually. To establish likewise solid relations with the organized labor of Mexico (Confederaci
on Regional Obrero Mexicana) and to try to stop the immigration of unorganized labor into the United States which is harmful to the working men in both countries. To do away with the exploitation of which Mexican victims in the so-called employment agencies, and to get the unions to constitute their own employment department in which supply and demand can be carried on without a fee so that the workingman’s economical interests may not suffer. To constitute prevision offices with the exclusive object of illustrating to Mexican laborers who for the first time come to the United States as well as those who already reside here, all that is referent to working systems, job revenues, contract forms, interpretations, translations from English to Spanish or vice versa, working men’s insurance indemnization [indemnification], etc., etc. To keep Mexican laborers from being exploited in the so-called commissary stores that still exist in some regions of the United States by submitting in their place cooperative stores in which the working man can get all his needs at just prices. To study and resolve in accord with the Mexican government the best systems of repatriation so that those wishing to go back will form agricultural cooperatives and receive the best guarantees. To negotiate with the Mexican government so that the immigration of Mexican labor into the United States may be regulated. The new union also proposed to: Animate by all possible ways the conservation of our racial and patriotic principles. To promote a strong cultural campaign giving preference to the education of our children, for which we shall build school and libraries as is possible.… To raise a beneficence fund towards helping our indigent countrymen and to build up or help other Mexican societies for the establishment of exclusive Mexican hospitals, orphan asylums, alm houses, etc. Constitute committees of defense which will have competent lawyers, paid by the Mexican colonies themselves so that those with the help of the consulate can effectively defend Mexicans who are put in jails, in many cases by mere ignorance of the law. Although the union pledges to uphold syndicalist principles, ‘‘a revolutionary doctrine by which workers seize control of the economy and the government by the general strike and other direct means,’’ they emphasized they would adhere to the existent legal system which had been devised and operated under a society in which the worker’s inferior role was maintained. It appears that international class solidarity is subjugated to nationalist interests and economic security. By March, 1928, CUOM claimed 2,000 to 3,000 members even though only 200 paid dues.… Source: Devra Anne Weber, ‘‘The Organizing of Mexicano Agricultural Workers: Imperial Valley and Los Angeles 1928 34, An Oral History Approach,’’ Aztlan Journal, University of California Los Angeles, vol. 3, no. 2 (1973), 326 328.

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214. Excerpts from Ernesto Galarza, ‘‘Life in the United States for Mexican People: Out of the Experience of a Mexican,’’ 1929 Ernesto Galarza was, without a doubt, the premier Mexican American scholar in the United States during the twentieth century. He was one of the first Mexican Americans from a poor background to complete college. Galarza did his undergraduate work at Occidental College, his M.A. at Stanford, and a Ph.D. at Columbia University in 1944. Instead of working in higher education, Galarza worked for the Pan American Labor Council until the 1940s, when he returned to the United States to organize farmworkers. Galarza was a prolific writer of children’s books, articles, and academic works. His books were crusades for the interests of workers: Merchants of Labor, about the evils of the bracero program that brought contract workers from Mexico; Barrio Boy, an autobiography; and Spiders in the House, Workers in the Field, about the DiGiorgio Strike of the late 1940s and early 1950s, that was broken by a conspiracy between agribusiness and prominent U.S congressmen. The following are excerpts of one of Galarza’s early papers on Mexicans in the United States in which he summarizes how Mexicans feel. Here is a Mexican American who gives the Mexican side of the equation.

Something must be done in the way of social and economic amelioration for those Mexicans who have already settled in the United States and whose problem is that of finding adjustment. Thus far in the discussion, the Mexicans who have settled more or less permanently here have been taken into account negatively.… For the moment … everyone has presented his side of the case except the Mexican worker himself.… I speak to you today as one of these immigrants.… First, as to unemployment: The Mexican is the first to suffer from depression in industrial and agricultural enterprises.… I flatly disagree with those who maintain that there is enough work for these people but that they refuse to work, preferring to live on charity. On the contrary, it is widely felt by the Mexicans that there are more men than there are jobs.… The precariousness of the job in the face of so much competition has brought home to the Mexican, time and again, his absolute weakness as a bargainer for employment.… He has also something to say as to the wage scale.… The Mexican … recognizes his absolute inability to force his wage upward and by dint of necessity he shuffles along with a standard of living which the American worker regards with contempt and alarm.… The distribution of the labor supply is felt by the Mexican to be inadequate. At present, he has to rely mainly on hearsay or on the information of unscrupulous contractors who overcharge him for transportation.… The Mexican immigrant still feels the burden of old prejudices. Only when there are threats to limit immigration from Mexico is it that a few in America sing the praises of the peon.… At other times, the sentiments which seem to be deeply rooted in the American mind are that he is unclean, improvident, indolent, and innately dull. Add to this the suspicion that he constitutes a peril to the American worker’s wage scale and you have a situation with which no average Mexican can cope.… I would ask for recognition of the Mexican’s contribution to the agricultural and industrial expansion of western United States.… From Denver to Los Angeles and from the Imperial Valley to Portland, it is said, an empire has been created largely by

Americanization of Latino Immigrants

the brawn of the humble Mexican, who laid the rails and topped the beets and poured the cubic miles of cement.… If it is true that the Mexican has brought to you arms that have fastened a civilization on the Pacific slope, then give him his due. If you give him his earned wage and he proves improvident, teach him otherwise; if he is tuberculous, cure him; if he falls into indigence, raise him. He has built you an empire! Source: Ernesto Galarza, ‘‘Life in the United States for Mexican People: Out of the Experience of a Mexican’’ from Proceedings of the National Conference of Social Work, 56th Annual Session, University of Chicago Press, 1929.

215. Excerpts from Emory S. Bogardus, ‘‘The Mexican Immigrant and Segregation,’’ 1930 The following is by University of Southern California sociologist Emory S. Bogardus (1882–1973). In 1915, at the University of Southern California, Bogardus founded one of the first Sociology Departments at a U.S. university. He served as president of the American Sociological Society in 1931. From the Chicago School, he encouraged a host of students to conduct community studies of Mexican communities. This treasure trove of theses and dissertations are in the University of Southern California library. The following excerpts are about living conditions for Mexicans in Los Angeles in the 1920s. Here, Bogardus profiles the town of Santa Ana, which is east of Los Angeles in Orange County.

1. THE MEXICAN COMMUNITY Nearly every city in the southwestern part of the United States has its Mexican community. The native-born portions may range from descendants of families who lived in the area when the given region was a part of Mexico to the young children who are known as second-generation Mexicans. Irrespective of these diversities, a significant observation is the relative uniformity with which a Mexican community may be found as an integral or adjacent part, not only of every American city or town in the Southwest, but of the rural districts as well. Often the Mexican community is the original part of the American city. It may have a history extending back a century or more; it may have stood still as a small Mexican village for decades; and then in the latter part of the nineteenth century, or more recently, have become a center of settlement by American immigrants from the Middle West [Midwest] or from the eastern sections of the United States. Differences in the history of the settlement of the two groups and in culture traits are pronounced and significant; they account for many of the current conflict problems. In S. A., a city of 25,000 [assumed to be Santa Ana], there is first of all the typical Mexican community located ‘‘beyond the railroad tracks.’’ This is relatively large, static, unsanitary. ‘‘Beyond the railroad tracks’’ means a part of town where living conditions are naturally the least desirable and the poorest. The lowest levels of Mexican immigrant culture are found here. An important sidelight is thrown upon this situation by the following observation of a Mexican who feels somewhat deeply on the matter. ‘‘Why did the Mexicans come to this part of town? Because it was low and swampy, and not good, and that is where the Americans want the Mexicans to go to the places where the Americans will not go themselves. The rents also have

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something to do with the situation.’’ Nearly every city of size in the Southwest has an area such as the one referred to here. It is an area of first settlement, which sooner or later becomes the parent of areas of second, and even third, settlements. In S. A. there is an area of second and one of second and third settlement combined. The process of moving out from the area of first settlement is most interesting. The area of second settlement in S. A. was established in part by members of the younger generation residing in the first-settlement region. They grew dissatisfied with the environment and sought a better district in the opposite side of town. Newly married Mexican couples were not content to live ‘‘beyond the tracks.’’ They have settled in a much better part of town and have become so well established there that Mexicans from this district together with Mexicans from the first are starting a third Mexican district. But who are the Mexicans that leave the old district? In the main, they represent families who can afford to live in better houses and pay higher rents. These invade the American community, where they can get larger yards, gas, electric lights, and inside plumbing, and where the streets are paved. They are persons who have developed the desire to live in the type of houses that Americans live in, and in American neighborhoods, if possible. Some of these young married couples want to buy a home like Americans have, preferably a stucco one, for are not ‘‘all Americans moving into stucco houses?’’ As rents become cheaper in some American quarters, there is a tendency for the more wide-awake Mexicans to break into an American community. ‘‘Lower rents in American sections and the desire to put the children into schools with American children have been responsible for much of the shifting in population.’’ Sometimes there is a wholesale migration, due to the activities of subdividers. American real estate men have been active in promoting such plans. 2. SEGREGATION Both the urban and rural Mexican immigrant communities are segregated from American communities. This segregation is partly spatial and partly psycho-social. One of the self-evident results of segregation is the failure of the Mexican immigrant to become an American citizen. It is in this connection that illustrative materials may be presented for the study of the segregation problem. Although there are two million or more Mexicans in the United States, and although many have been in the country many years, the number who have taken out citizenship papers is almost negligible. After those who were born in this country are eliminated, the percentage is still very low. In 1927, only 112 Mexicans became citizens, while in 1926 the number was but 78. In the Belvedere Gardens Mexican community in Southern California, where there are 40,000 or more Mexicans, the total number of registered voters in 1928 was about 250. Many of these belonged to other races. Hence the general impression is supported by the facts the Mexican immigrant is not becoming naturalized. When this situation is charged against the Mexican and to his lack of appreciation of American opportunities, he is likely to refer to the situation in Mexico, where there are many Americans who have lived in that country for many years and who show no higher rate of becoming citizens in Mexico than Mexicans do here. It is claimed that the American in Mexico is profiting by oil and other resources of Mexico but refuses to become a Mexican citizen, and that therefore the Mexicans in our country are simply following the example of

Americanization of Latino Immigrants

Americans in Mexico. It is also pointed out that Mexicans feel that Mexico is in some ways superior to the United States and that the culture of our people is not wholly superior to that of Mexico. An important attitude is expressed by those Americans who claim that since the Mexican immigrants are enjoying the advantages of living in the United States they should become citizens and assume their full responsibility for the problems of the country. Since large sums of money are spent that their children may have an education in this land, since public health aid is theirs, and since many of them are the recipients of assistance, it is asserted that they should put their shoulder to the wheel of American life. It is also claimed that the Americans in Mexico who live there many years and who profit greatly should become citizens in their adopted country. Mexicans sometimes state that they are expecting to return to Mexico, and hence cannot be asked to become citizens here. While it is true that large numbers of those who come are definitely expecting to return, and while many who are here have at least the vague hope of returning to their native land some day, it nevertheless is a fact that large numbers do not return and are actually making no effort toward that end. It is also true that some who go back to Mexico are dissatisfied with the home country after having lived for a time in the United States, and come again to this country, but even then they do not seek citizenship here.… Source: Emory S. Bogardus, ‘‘The Mexican Immigrant and Segregation,’’ The American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 36, No. 1 (July 1930), pp. 74 76.

216. Excerpts from ‘‘Life, Trial, and Death of Aurelio Pompa,’’ 1928 A corrido is a folk ballad popular among Mexicans who, to this day, record popular events, tragedies, and injustices in verse form. This corrido was transcribed by the great Mexican anthropologist Manuel Gamio, who did groundbreaking work on the Mexican in the United States. This ballad was sung by Mexicans in the United States who protested the execution of Aurelio Pompa for the shooting and death of a white foreman who had verbally and physically abused him. Pompa was from Sonora, Mexico. After he was mistreated and beaten by a white foreman, he went home, got a gun, and shot the foreman to death. After mistrials, Pompa was convicted and sentenced to death in 1924. The Mexican community unsuccessfully sought a reprieve.

I am going to tell you the sad story Of a Mexican who emigrated out here Aurelio Pompa, so he was called. Our compatriot who died there, Out there in Caborca, which is in Sonora, The humble village where he was born, ‘‘Come on, mother,’’ he said one day, ‘‘Over there, there are no revolutions. Goodbye, friends; goodbye, Maria,’’ He said to his betrothed very sadly. ‘‘I promise you that I will return soon, So we can get married, God willing.’’

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‘‘Goodbye, Aurelio,’’ said the girl, And she went sobbing to pray. ‘‘Look after him, Virgin Mary, I have a foreboding he will not come back.’’ The priest and his friends Along with his sweetheart went to talk And to beg poor Aurelio Not to leave his native village. Such advice was useless And so were the entreaties of his mother. ‘‘Let’s go, mother, over there is the dollar, And I swear I am going to earn a lot of them.’’ Four years ago in the month of May The two of them went to California And through misfortune on the very same date Died there in prison. A carpenter who was very strong Struck the poor young fellow cruelly, And Aurelio Pompa swore to be revenged For those blows he had received. Filled with rage he told his mother about it And the poor old woman advised him, ‘‘Por Dios, forget it, dear son.’’ And good Aurelio forgave him; But one afternoon, when he was working With three friends at the railroad station The carpenter came by mocking at him And aroused poor Pompa. The three friends advised him To leave him alone and go his way, And then the carpenter, with a hammer, Very offensively threatened him. Then Pompa, seeing the danger, Fired in self-defense With a revolver and face to face As a man he killed him. The case came to court, the jury arrived, And the Yankee people sentenced him. ‘‘The death penalty,’’ they all demanded, And the lawyer did not object. Twenty thousand signatures of compatriots Asked for his pardon from the Governor. All the newspapers asked for it too, And even Obregon sent a message. All was useless; the societies, All united, asked his pardon. His poor mother, half-dead already, Also went to see the Governor.… ‘‘Farewell, my friends, farewell, my village; Dear mother, cry no more.

Americanization of Latino Immigrants

Tell my race not to come here, For here they will suffer; there is no pity here. The jailor asked him: ‘‘Were you Spanish?’’ and he answered, ‘‘I am a Mexican and proud of being so Although they deny me a pardon.’’ This is the story of a compatriot Who four years ago came there And through misfortune on the same date Died in a dreadful way in a prison. Los Angeles, Calif. Source: Manuel Gamio, Mexican Immigration to the United States: A Study of Human Migration And Adjustment (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1971), pp. 104 105.

217. Excerpts from Steve Zuckerman, ‘‘Didn’t Think I Was Great, Fighter Said,’’ 1979 Mexican boxer Bert Colima (1902–1979) was the idol of the Los Angeles Mexican community. In the 1920s, the Los Angeles Times printed almost 1,000 articles featuring him. ‘‘Give it to him, Colima!’’ was the man who built the Olympic Auditorium, which opened in 1925 and was used for Olympic boxing matches in 1932. The home of more than 100 championship boxing matches, with the most exciting featuring Colima, the Olympic Auditorium drew multitudes of Mexicans whose attendance made the Olympic profitable. The following article, written at the time of Colima’s death, is among the most memorable, capturing the essence of Colima and his importance to the Mexican community.

‘‘I wasn’t a great fighter,’’ Bert Colima once said. ‘‘But I made a lot of friends Mexicans, Americans, everybody.… So I figure I came out ahead of the game.’’ … ‘‘He was the greatest Mexican-American boxer ever to appear in California,’’ said Everett Sanders, former state athletic commission member. ‘‘He was the biggest attraction Jack Doyle’s Vernon arena ever had.’’ … It always was a sellout when Colima fought. His fans urged him on, shouting, ‘‘Geeve eet to heem Co-lee-mah.’’ Or they would cry ‘‘Andale, Co-lee-mah, Andale!’’ (‘‘Hurry up, go after him Colima’’).… Colima was born in 1902 in Los Nietos, near Whittier. His real name was Ephraim E. Romero, but he seldom used it and in 1947 he had his name legally changed to that of his mother’s home town, Colima, Mexico. Colima fought 65 times from 1921 1929. He won 56, lost 9, and scored 20 knockouts. Source: Steve Zuckerman, ‘‘Didn’t Think I Was Great, Fighter Said,’’ Los Angeles Times, November 5, 1979, p. 20.

218. The Constitution of the League of United Latin American Citizens, 1929 By the 1920s there was a sizeable middle-class Mexican American community that had been born in the United States. They challenged the political and

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social hegemony of the Mexican elites who had dominated business and even Spanish language newspapers. Mutualistas (mutual aid societies) were the most popular form of organization. With veterans from World War I returning, the second generation Mexican Americans began forming their own issues that were focused on conditions in the United States rather than Mexico. The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) was formed in 1929; it was a middle-class Mexican American group that demanded equal participation in American life. It was in favor of better education, the end of segregation in schools and public facilities, and the abolishment of other forms of racism. It limited its membership to U.S. citizens and fought vigiorously for civil rights. LULAC paid for attorneys who brought lawsuits against school districts and established precedents for the abolition of school segregation. LULAC also secured the right of Mexican Americans to serve on juries. It was important in transforming the community of Mexican origin into a second-generation Mexican American organization.

1. To develop within the members of our race the best, purest, and most perfect type of a true and loyal citizen of the United States of America. 2. To eradicate from our body politic all intents and tendencies to establish discriminations among our fellow citizens on account of race, religion, or social position as being contrary to the true spirit of Democracy, our Constitution, and Laws. 3. To use all the legal means at our command to the end that all citizens in our country may enjoy equal rights, the equal protection of the laws of the land and equal opportunities and privileges. 4. The acquisition of the English language, which is the official language of our country, being necessary for the enjoyment of our rights and privileges, we declare it to be the official language of this organization, and we pledge ourselves to learn and speak and teach same to our children. 5. To define with absolute and unmistakable clearness our unquestionable loyalty to the ideals, principles, and citizenship of the United States of America. 6. To assume complete responsibility for the education of our children as to their rights and duties and the language and customs of this country; the latter, in so far as they may be good customs. 7. We solemnly declare once [and] for all to maintain a sincere and respectful reverence for our racial origin of which we are proud. 8. Secretly and openly, by all lawful means at our command, we shall assist in the education and guidance of Latin Americans and we shall protect and defend their lives and interest whenever necessary. 9. We shall destroy any attempt to create racial prejudices against our people, and any infamous stigma which may be cast upon them, and we shall demand for them the respect and prerogatives which the Constitution grants to us all. 10. Each of us considers himself with equal responsibilities in our organization, to which we voluntarily swear subordination and obedience. 11. We shall create a fund for our mutual protection, for the defense of those of us who may be unjustly persecuted and for the education and culture of our people. 12. This organization is not a political club, but as citizens we shall participate in all local, state, and national political contests. However, in doing so we shall

Americanization of Latino Immigrants

13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25.

ever bear in mind the general welfare of our people, and we disregard and abjure once and for all any personal obligation which is not in harmony with these principles. With our vote and influence we shall endeavor to place in public office men who show by their deeds, respect and consideration for our people. We shall select as our leaders those among us who demonstrate, by their integrity and culture, that they are capable of guiding and directing us properly. We shall maintain publicity means for the diffusion of these principles and for the expansion and consolidation of this organization. We shall pay our poll tax as well as that of members of our families in order that we may enjoy our rights fully. We shall diffuse our ideals by means of the press, lectures, and pamphlets. We shall oppose any radical and violent demonstration which may tend to create conflicts and disturb the peace and tranquility of our country. We shall have mutual respect for our religious views and we shall never refer to them in our institutions. We shall encourage the creation of educational institutions for Latin Americans and we shall lend our support to those already in existence. We shall endeavor to secure equal representation for our people on juries and in the administration of governmental affairs. We shall denounce every act of peonage and mistreatment as well as the employment of our minor children of scholastic age. We shall resist and attack energetically all machinations tending to prevent our social and political unification. We shall oppose any tendency to separate our children in the schools of this country. We shall maintain statistics which will guide our people with respect to working and living conditions and agricultural and commercial activities in the various parts of our country.

Source: O. Douglas Weeks, ‘‘The League of United Latin-American Citizens: A Texas-Mexican Civic Organization,’’ Southwestern Political and Social Science Quarterly, December 1929, pp. 257 278.

219. Excerpts from Robert C. Jones and Louis R. Wilson, ‘‘The Mexican in Chicago,’’ 1931 Not all white Americans were anti-Mexican and many pro-immigrant groups started settlement houses that had roots in the abolitionist movements against slavery. This tradition was strongest on the East Coast and in the Midwest where these traditions and historical memories were most vivid. These areas also saw the greatest immigration to their urban cities. The Southwest had no such tradition and a lot of the Mexican migration was initially to rural areas. Chicago was important to the history of Mexicans because, by the 1920s, a significant number of Mexicans migrated there. Chicago was a city of ethnics with steady migration of European immigrants that fed the city’s growth by building the railroad network, the stockyards, factories, and skyscrapers. In 1889, to ameliorate the exploitive conditions under which these immigrants lived, Jane Addams

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and Ellen Gates Starr co-founded Hull House, one of the first settlement houses in Chicago. At first, its main mission was to give social and educational opportunities for working class people, many of whom were recent immigrants. Social workers and scholars associated with Hull House did studies of the surrounding neighborhood that by the late 1930s had substantial Mexican residents. The following excerpts are from an article describing Mexicans at Hull House.

Through the open windows of a second-story room opposite Hull House on a midsummer Saturday evening come the jazz strains of a gospel hymn being lustily sung in Spanish. If we were to trace this music to its source it would lead us into the midst of a revival meeting of the Pentecostals. There in a crowded room we would find a Mexican evangelist, eyes shining and face flushed by his enthusiasm, leading the singing, while an orchestra made up of a cornet, two drums, three triangles, and a piano beats out the rhythm with a will. But we do not wish to loiter long within doors. There are other interesting things to be seen along South Halsted during this twilight hour. The strange Spanish signs upon the shop windows put us in the mood for exploration, and we turn our steps southward along the Mexican Boulevard. First we pass a restaurant whose brilliantly painted walls are covered by designs reminiscent of that Indian … Cortez and his followers so ruthlessly destroyed in their conquest of Mexico. In the next block we pause before the window of a music store and glance at the display of ukuleles, guitars, violins, and wind instruments. This little shop makes phonographic records of music as played and as sung by Chicago’s finest Spanishspeaking artists. And from here the records may find their way to the portable phonographs in the box-car homes of Mexican railroad workers all over the United States, or even in the little far-away shacks which house the migratory laborers in the sugar-beet fields. Across the street a Mexican woman of middle age, straight black hair caught up in a knot at the back of her head, modestly garbed in a long brown skirt and green silk waist, stands beside her husband. They are looking at the primitive metates in the window of a grocery store those crude, stone ironing boards with their stone rollers for crushing the water soaked kernels of corn into the paste from which the Mexican bakes his thin cakes of unleavened bread, his tortillas. The woman is evidently considering a purchase. A well dressed young Mexican man set him off as a person to be sneered at and hated.… The crowded conditions of housing in smoke-filled neighborhoods together with the low economic level result in ill health among many, especially among the babies. But there is a strain upon the moral health also. This is due to the great proportion of single men and the small number of women in the colonies. The thwarted sex life of the men is all too apt to break across the normal social restraints, and these dangers are aggravated by the fact that many married couples, struggling to make a living, fill their houses with roomers and boarders. There is another phase of this same peril. The Mexican girl finds an entirely different standard of women’s dress prevailing in this country. There is a freedom which in Mexico would have constituted an open invitation to male advances. Often enough, economic necessity itself demands of the girl that she dress in modern fashion if she would win a job. Once persuaded of this, she is apt to go to extremes in her modernity. The men do not understand.

Americanization of Latino Immigrants

THE MEXICAN IMMIGRANT’S REACTION TO THE PROTESTANT MESSAGE Although accurate statistics as to the number of Protestants in Mexico are not available, a good estimate would be that not more than one out of every two hundred of the entire population claimed that faith. In Chicago, however, one Mexican out of about every thirty is a member of a Protestant denomination or sect. What accounts for this difference? First of all, a much larger number of Protestant Mexicans have migrated from Mexico than their percentage of the total population there would indicate. Then, from the time they leave Mexico, the Mexicans are constantly being ministered to both materially and spiritually by the Protestant missionaries in the cotton and beet fields, on the railroads and in the larger industrial centers. Many are won to the new faith. A great protest has risen on the part of the Roman [Catholic] Church against what they call a proselyting movement. It has been said that the Protestants have disorganized the religious life of the Mexicans by showing them supposed weaknesses in the Catholic Church and have offered them nothing in return; that they have ‘‘bought’’ members through their social service and relief work and that since ‘‘the Mexicans are one hundred percent Catholic they are not subjects of missionary endeavor.…’’ It should be remembered, however, that there are very few Catholics in Mexico whose faith has been developed and shaped by systematic instruction and enlightened teaching. The Catholicism of the Mexican is principally a folk Catholicism developed through tradition and which has incorporated within itself a great deal of Indian and Spanish superstition. However beautiful it may be, however blind the devotion, such a faith is inadequate when the individual moves to a new and more complex environment where a multitude of new problems must be met. In Chicago, at least, in spite of occasional prejudice, some blindness, and Ignorance, and at times overzealousness, the service of the Protestant Mexican missions has been to gather up the bewildered, those who are lost and those who are actively striving to find a better way of living. Very few persons whose lives were strongly organized about the Catholic Church have been taken from that church although many have been given a broader view of their faith and a new appreciation of others. The Protestant Mexican Churches in Chicago have made four outstanding contributions to the religious life of the people they are striving to serve: (1) They have furnished a church home for those Mexicans who claim the Protestant faith; (2) They have provided groups where individuals who are seeking a ‘‘better life’’ mutually stimulate each other; (3) They have furnished an organization and standards about which many disorganized individuals have been able to orient their lives; [and] (4) Through competition they have stimulated the Roman [Catholic] Church to action in serving its people, moving it to give greater attention than formerly to the intellectual development of its members and to furnish them with more adequate social life through the Catholic Societies. But let us see what the Mexican himself thinks of the churches and missions with which he comes in contact. Of course, the variety of reactions is as great as the variety of individuals. Many are indifferent.… Epitenio Gonzales is an artist whose life is largely centered around his art and the social settlement in which he has his studio. He is quite indifferent to all forms of

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organized religion, although he still says that he is a Catholic. He says: ‘‘My impression is that a comparatively small number of Mexicans go to church. That is probably due to a number of reasons. I don’t go because I don’t care much about it, and I work so that I stay in bed Sunday morning. I also go to parties and dances Saturday night and stay up late. I think a lot of Mexicans see that the Americans do not go to church so they follow their example. There are a lot more things to do here than in Mexico.…’’ Most of the members of the Mexican Protestant Churches in Chicago belong to the lower middle class. It is difficult for a person of different standards and ideas to find a place in them. Dar
ıo Orozco is a student who has had educational opportunities which place him on an intellectual level superior to that of most of his fellows. He was born and raised a Protestant. On being asked why he was one of the few educated Mexicans who regularly attended a Mexican Mission Church, he answered: ‘‘The reason why I go to the Mexican Church instead of to an American is because I was brought up to believe that I had an obligation to help my countrymen, especially those who have not had as much opportunity as I have had. I know a number of young Mexicans here who are Protestants but who either go to American churches or don’t go to any church. They all have had a better education than the average and some of them are students here. The real reason they don’t come is because they don’t fit in with the other members of the church.’’ Dar
ıo has learned the often difficult way of getting along with his less privileged countrymen on a basis of equality and without condescension. There are no widely differing Mexican Protestant churches in Chicago, so that those belonging to different social classes must work together in close communion with one another or not at all.… Jos
e Mendoza is a quiet, sensitive, mystical man who likes to dream. Although he has been attending the Protestant Church for two years, the beautiful ritual of the Roman Church still has a strong appeal and he sends his children to a Parochial School. ‘‘When I came to Chicago five years ago I don’t know what went wrong with me. At times, I thought that I must be crazy. I was very unhappy and at times I even wanted to take my life. My wife knew that I wasn’t happy and told me to go to the Catholic Church and confess myself. I would go but I wasn’t satisfied. When I heard the church bells ringing, I felt glad but after I had gone to Mass I felt sad again. No one seemed to care about me. Everything was strange and there didn’t seem to be anything which would satisfy me. Finally, one day when I was crossing the street, one of my little boys ran ahead of me. As he was crossing, a taxicab rounded the corner at full speed. It swept my boy off the curb and killed him. It was a terrible blow … It was at the time of the loss of this child that I found the Protestant Church. It was just about then that I heard it rumored where I could find a Protestant Church. I knew that they had the Bible there; and that was what I wanted. I felt that if I could find that Book I could find some satisfaction for my disturbed mind.’’ Source: Comity Commission of the Chicago Church Federation, Chicago, Illinois, 1931, pp. 7, 19 21.

PART XIV Latinos and the Great Depression The Great Depression seriously slowed down industry and commerce in Puerto Rico which was now fully dependent on market forces. To make things worse on September 27, 1932, Hurricane San Cipri
an struck the island killing at least 200 people causing $30 to $50 million in property damage. Puerto Rico’s trade lanes remained important to the defense of the Panama Canal. Strategically located the island also served as a base of operations for invasions in the Caribbean and Central American region. The United States treated Puerto Rico as a colony, appointing military caretakers as governors that traced their careers back to the U.S. Indian Wars and the various interventions in Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central America. By the 1930s, various political parties formed the most powerful was the Coalici
on (an alliance of the Partido Uni
on Republicano and the Partido Socialista), which served the interests of the sugar corporations. (Large U.S. corporations owned a fourth of the land devoted to sugar.) These parties supported the American appointed governor Major General Blanton Winship (1934 1939) whose corrupt administration was responsible for the Ponce Massacre (1937). These conditions produced civil unrest. The year 1930 also saw the emergence of Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos, head of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party, who was involved in strike activity on the island. In 1936 he was arrested after two Nationalists assassinated the chief of police for the murder of four Nationalist party members. Albizu Campos was accused and convicted of sedition. Meanwhile, in 1939 the U.S. Navy purchased 27,000 acres on the Island of Viequez. The next year, Congress passed the Nationality Act, after forty-two years of U.S. rule, that made Puerto Ricans natural born U.S. citizens. Two Puerto Rican communities began to form: in 1926 the New York Times reported that Puerto Ricans formed 90 percent of the 40,000 Spanish-speaking residents between 110 and 116 Streets that was appropriately called El Barrio (East Harlem) led by organizations such as the Porto Rican Brotherhood of America, el Caribe Democratic Club, La Alianza Obrera Puertorique~ na, the Merchants’ Committee, and the Liberty Republican Club. Immigration had slowed during the decade of the 30s to about 18,000, as sweatshops proliferated in El Barrio. The depression slowed migration and caused heavy unemployment in the U.S. weakening pull factors. Employment contractors were not as active, and fewer Puerto Ricans had the funds to emigrate. Still there were 69,967 Puerto Ricans living on the mainland by the end of the decade; 61,463 of whom lived in New York City a dramatic undercount. The voices of these pioneers were growing stronger.

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Cubans also had a presence on the mainland that was distinguishable from their country of origin. The flow of Cubans was small with migration in large part tied to the cigar making industry of Tampa, Florida, acting as a pull factor. From a high of 21,100 Cuban immigrants in the years 1906 1910, only 9,716 entered from 1926 1930. The 1910 census placed the number of Cubans in the United States at over 15,000, just over 4,000 entered during the decade of the 30s as cigar manufacturing collapsed and working conditions worsened. The number of Cubans in the United States is hard to come by; as many as 50,000 to 100,000 were seasonal workers who migrated between Havana, Key West, and Tampa, many of whom worked as migrant workers. Permanent residents lived mostly in Florida and New York with Miami becoming the center of Cuban influence during the decade when exiles fled the dictatorship of General Gerardo Machado. The 1930 census counted 18,500 foreign-born Cubans in the United States but as mentioned this was a huge undercount. Finally, the immigration from other Latin American nations to the U.S. mainland was small. However, there was considerable labor flows within the Caribbean sphere. An estimated 100,000 Haitians and 60,000 Jamaicans lived in Cuba. Some 30,000 Barbadians were in Panama, and more than 30,000 Haitians in the Dominican Republic. Coastal English-speaking communities emerged in Costa Rica and Honduras. A critical number of Puerto Ricans were in Hawaii, and Latin Americans of all nations moved to the Borinquen island. What all of these nations had in common is that they had at one time been invaded or under the control of the United States. These formations were settling down during the decade of the Great Depression.

220. Excerpt from Paul J. Dosal, The Building of El Cı´rculo Cubano, 1902–1918 By 1930, the Puerto Rican and Mexican communities had substantially sized barrios. The largest Puerto Rican mainland community was in New York City in neighborhoods such as Spanish Harlem. The third largest Latino group was Cubans who, in some cases, had been in the United States throughout the last quarter of the nineteenth century. They formed established communities with a bevy of social and self-help organizations that helped them survive economic and personal disasters. El C
ırculo Cubano (the Cuban National Club), a social club, was formed in 1899 by Cuban Spanish War veterans in Ybor City, which was named after cigar manufacturer Vicente Mart
ınez Ybor (1818– 1896) in the 1870s. Along with various mutualistas (mutual aid societies), El C
ırculo has had a continual presence in south Florida. In the early 1900s, Afro-Cuban war veterans also founded the Sociedad la Union Mart
ı-Maceo, a mutual aid-society in Tampa. It co-existed with El C
ırculo, which, at first, welcomed white and Afro-Cubans but soon afterward divided along racial lines. Some Cubans maintain that this segregation was a response to the South’s Jim Crow laws that mandated the separation of the races. The members of both of these organizations worked in Tampa’s cigar factories. These two organizations have survived to this day, but when the Great Depression of the 1930s decimated the cigar industry, members were hard put to keep these groups alive. It was a time when the cigar factory owners threw the lectors who read

Latinos and the Great Depression

to the workers out of the factories and the community fell on bad times. Even so, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration (WPA) used El C
ırculo during the Depression to record Cuban American performers. The significance of El C
ırculo and La Uni
on was that they survived disasters like the Great Depression, kept together by a small group who wanted to preserve their presence as a people. Survival often meant receiving donations from Cuba and the sacrifices of many Cubans.

When the Cuban National Club changed its name to El C
ırculo Cubano in 1902, the club had less than two hundred members and it operated out of the old offices of the Cuban National Club at the corner of 14th Street and 9th Avenue. In 1905, under President Eladio Paula, the Cuban Club began construction of a new and larger clubhouse at the corner of 14th Street and 10th Avenue. The cornerstone of the new building was dedicated in an impressive ceremony on October 31, 1905. Nearly 2,000 people showed up to witness an event of great symbolic importance, as evident by the presence of the consuls of Cuba, Spain, and Italy. However, construction of the club did not actually begin until the summer of 1907, financed by a loan of $14,500. On November 14, 1907, the new building at the corner of 14th Street and 10th Avenue (where the club is currently located) was formally inaugurated in another ceremony with the Mayor, city council, and three foreign consuls in attendance. The red-brick building consisted of two stories facing 10th Avenue with a 1,500-seat theater that was ‘‘comfortable and modern in every detail.’’ The clubhouse also boasted a boardroom, a small library, classrooms, a billiard room, and a cantina, where members came to relax after work. In 1914, the club allowed the wives and children of members to join the club and membership increased from 1,120 in 1914 to 2,625 in 1916. Then, the club’s progress was interrupted. After a theatrical performance on the night of April 30, 1916, a fire started on the stage and nearly consumed the entire building before it was put out. The fire was a great setback to the Cuban Club. Insurance covered only a portion of the losses, which meant that the club had to raise more money to rebuild their institution. Under the leadership of Dr. Alfredo Kohly, the club moved quickly to raise $70,000 to build an even grander clubhouse on the same spot. The club borrowed $35,000 from the Pacific Mutual Life Insurance Company and raised another $10,000 by selling $20 and $5 bonds to its members. In addition, members approved a 10-cent increase in their weekly fees and organized a series of fundraising events to raise the necessary money. At the suggestion of Rafael Mart
ınez Ybor, the Cuban Consul, the club also appointed a committee in Cuba to solicit donations on the island. Thanks to this committee, which included heroes of Cuba’s independence movement like Gen. Emilio Nu~ nez and Fernando Figueredo, the club obtained donations from a number of prominent Cubans, including President Mario G. Menocal, who contributed $1,000. The club contracted with the firm of Bonfoey & Elliott to design a concrete, fireproof building with three stories and a basement. Actual construction was placed with the firm of McCracken and Hyer in Nov. 1916. At 9:30 A.M. on February 25, 1917, the club dedicated the cornerstone at the corner of 10th Avenue (now Palm Avenue) and 14th Street. With Mayor McKay in attendance, Dr. Kohly dedicated a cornerstone in which were placed local newspapers and valuable documents relating to the history of the club.

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When completed in 1918, the neoclassical structure was the most beautiful building in Ybor City, featuring a spacious theater and a magnificent grand ballroom on the top floor. In the basement, members could enjoy a gymnasium, complete with two bowling lanes, a wading pool, lockers, and a shower. On the third floor, there was a small library, classroom, ladies room, and the boardroom. But the crown jewel of the entire building was the stained glass window bearing the Cuban coat of arms, which induced some to call the Cuban Club a ‘‘cathedral for workers.’’ Soon after the building opened, two new crises a flu epidemic and a prolonged labor strike threatened the financial condition of the club, forcing the members to work hard to pay off their debts for another decade. Source: El C
ırculo Cubano de Tampa (Tampa Cuban Club), http://www.cubanclub.org/ index.htm.

221. Excerpts from Oral History Interview of Ferm
ın Souto, ca. 1939 During the 1930s, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) collected oral interviews in its American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers’ Project. It collected dozens of interviews with Cuban Americans that are stored in the Library of Congress and are available in digital form. Some of the interviews are transcribed; most are in audio form. In addition, there are photos, recreating the times. The voices of cigar makers show a very subtle class and racial separation between Cubans who arrived on the island from Spain and then migrated to Florida. There was also a division according to race that is noted in later documents. The following is an excerpt from Ferm
ın Souto, a Cuban immigrant who was originally from Galicia in Spain and migrated to Cuba and then to Florida. The Galicians composed a large part of the Spanish migration to Cuba and then to the United States. Ferm
ın Souto was the secretary of the Centro Espa~ nol de Tampa (Spanish Club of Tampa), which, along with other Cuban American clubs, illustrates the role of mutual assistance organizations in the lives of Latino immigrants. The Centro thrived between World War I and the Great Depression and mostly served Spanish Cubans.

I was born in the little village of ‘‘Perrol de Galicia,’’ Spain in June of [1858?]. I have reached the advanced age of 77 years. My father was a stone-cutter, toiling from sun up until night. My mother was born and raised in the country. I am, therefore a plebeian. My parents were poor people, and in those days a poor man could only look forward to very meager education. This was the education that I acquired. I never obtained a degree or title of any kind. I was especially interested in Universal History and Geography. These were my pet studies. On October 30th of 1870, a friend took me to Havana, Cuba, although usually the people from Galicia (my province) went to Argentina and Uruguay; while the Asturianos and those from the region of Santander went to Cuba. I was then only twelve years of age. This friend put me to work, at that tender age, in a hat factory situated in Monte Street, No. 165. I was very badly treated during the time I worked at this place. Part of my duties consisted in going every day to a coal yard and fetch coal with which to heat the flat irons. The owner of this coal yard was a kind and sympathetic man. I made him a confidante of all my troubles, telling him of the ill treatment I was receiving at the hat factory.

Latinos and the Great Depression

This man had a nephew who owned a variety store in the town of Santiago de las Vegas, some seventeen miles from Havana. One day, to my immense joy, he took me there to work for his nephew. In a comparatively short time I knew everyone in town, and was much esteemed by all. Here I passed the best years of my life. It was the custom of the owner of this variety store to purchase old newspapers at a very low price. With these newspapers he would wrap the different articles that were sold. I remember that I used to dig into this pile of old newspapers, reading avidly every scrap of news I could find. One day, while looking over these newspapers, I came upon a very old number of the ‘‘[Baceta?] de la Havana’’ (‘‘Gazette’’ of Havana) in which I found many interesting articles of the Civil War of the United States, depicting the various battles that had been fought between the North and the South. From then on, I would seek every bit of news from the United States, reading with the keenest interest anything about Washington or Lincoln, in fact anything I could got a hold of that dealt with the United States. I remember well a song in Spanish that once appeared in a newspaper, and which I memorized word for word: (I was then eighteen years of age). SONG TO WASHINGTON I remember when very young a beautiful forehead I saw, A man standing near your image, one day I disclosed, Candid, ignorant, with stuttering lips: ‘‘Who is he?’’ I asked, ‘‘His name I implore.’’ And while with his right your image he showed, With radiant joy, his face to me he turned. With sonorous accents, that pride denoted: ‘‘That is Washington.’’ he said, ‘‘for him I am free today.’’ At about this time I met a cigar maker by the name of Don Federico, who had been in New York for many years. I told him that I was very desirous of going to the United States, but did not know what to do, for although I should be able to save a little money, what was I to do in New York when this money gave out, not even knowing how to speak English. He then told me that the best thing I could do was to learn how to make cigars. In that manner I could easily find work in New York. I, therefore, decided to learn the trade, and come to the United States. When I imparted my decision to the owner of the variety store, he told me that it was pure foolhardiness, that the cigar makers were always needy, and that I should remove such a foolish idea from my head. He took the whole thing hard, but nothing daunted me. I went to see a cigar manufacturer, who was a friend of mine, in Santiago de las Vegas, and he told me that I must pledge myself to work two years as an apprentice. There and then I signed the contract, and bent my energies to the learning of the cigar business. As soon as I left the variety store, the owner closed that store and another branch he had. At the end of the two years I was well versed in the cigar industry. It was about this time that I came across a friend of mine, who had been a co-worker with me at the variety store. He was at that time planning on setting up a general variety store, and asked me if I would go to work with him. I foresaw that this was the very thing

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I needed in order to obtain sufficient funds for my trip to New York. I worked one year and eleven months at this place, during which time I saved everything I could. Another thing that proved favorable to me was that Mr. Diego L
opez Trujillo was established in New York City, operating a small cigar factory. He had been a resident of Santiago de las Vegas, so I procured myself with a recommendation to him. As soon as I reached New York City (the place of my dreams) I was employed by Mr. Trujillo, and my worries for the present were over. One of the first things I did was to become a citizen of my chosen country. My citizenship papers were issued on October 13th, 1886. It was in this same year that I married the daughter of Mr. Diego L
opez Trujillo. We had three children in New York: two daughters and one son. Of these, two died: a girl and a boy. The little girl died of scarlet fever, due to a very crowded … apartment house, which my brother had chosen for me. For several days we were unable to bury her due to a terrible blizzard, and a great amount of snow that had fallen. We had to wait until the railroad tracks between Broadway and Williamsburg to Cypress Hill Cemetery had been cleared. The reader can well imagine the anguish we went through seeing our little daughter in state day in and day out. The boy died when he was teething. Shortly after my marriage, my father-in-law moved his little factory to Key West. There, fortune smiled at his constant efforts, and he built one of the largest factories in Key West. He became immensely rich. In the year 1889, there was a great epidemic of flu in New York City. It spread like wild fire throughout the city. My wife contracted the disease, and as a result her lungs were seriously affected. Due to her condition, I found it impossible to allow her to remain in New York City during the winter months, so I took advantage of an invitation from my father-in-law to come to Key West with my wife and only remaining daughter and pass the winters there, as the climate was very temperate. Upon my arrival in Key West with my wife and little daughter, I found that a strike had been declared in all the cigar factories. The cigar makers were demanding $1.00 increase per thousand on the cigar brands, and also that a Regulation Committee be appointed. Seeing this state of affairs, and realizing that if I remained there I would be living off my father-in-law, I decided to return to New York, and leave my wife and daughter in Key West, until winter was over. On my way to New York, however, I passed through Tampa, and noted that everyone was well satisfied and working hard. Here I found an old friend of mine from New York, Mr. Enrique Pendas of the factory of Lozano Pendas & Co. Talking with him, he showed me the many advantages in Tampa, and prevailed upon me to remain. I, therefore, decided to stay here and work for Mr. Pendas. When winter was over, I went back to Key West for my family, and from there returned to New York City. There, I went to work at the principal factory of Mr. Enrique Pendas which was situated on Pearl Street. Several years afterwards, however, Mr. Pendas removed that factory, and enlarged the one in Tampa. In the winter of 1890, my wife once more took sick, and I hurried her off to Key West. I remained alone in New York, and experienced the severest cold weather that I can remember. I would think of the wonderful winter I had passed in Tampa, and remember that while winter was at its worse in New York, the flowers bloomed here. I felt something akin to homesickness for Tampa, although I had spent only a few months here. One day while looking over the various things of my wife, and which goes to make a home, I decided that I would not remain another day in New York. I, therefore, wrote to my wife saying that I was leaving for Tampa; bade

Latinos and the Great Depression

‘‘good-bye’’ to all my friends in New York, and arrived here in January of 1891. Since then I have remained here for good. I am surrounded here by friends, even the ‘‘paving stones’’ in all Ybor City know me. My wife was finally cured here. She presented me with another son here, who is now 31 years old. My daughter was married here and has three sons. The oldest to working for Lykes Brothers; another one has a poultry market; and the youngest is studying radio. They do not loiter about the streets, smoking cigarettes, and using profane language, like most of the youths of today in Ybor City. They earn what they eat. They have been brought up properly. My son, who was born in Tampa, is married and has three small boys. He works at the factory of Santaella as picker, and is much esteemed there. I worked at the factory of Lozano Pendas & Co., up to the time the factory was consumed by fire. In New York I had been working with Mr. Cuesta, Mr. Ray, Mr. Santaella, and several others. They had been cigar makers. Since then the above mentioned men became great cigar manufacturers in Tampa. When the factory of Lozano Pendas & Co. had been destroyed by fire, I went to work with Mr. Cuesta. He was then part owner of the Cuesta-Ballard & Co. which was situated where … Tampa is today located: corner 22nd Street and 10th Avenue. While working here, the cigar makers requested that I read [a reader at the cigar factory is one who reads novels, stories, newspapers, etc., while the cigar makers are working. It was instructive and educational, yet the manufacturers abolished it. The cigar makers went on strike but lost. It was abolished November 27, 1931]. Later, Mr. Cuesta separated from Mr. Ballard, setting up a cigar factory with Mr. Ray in West Tampa. I went with Mr. Cuesta and worked for him for over twenty years, reading, translating, and making cigars, all within the day’s work. A great friendship sprung between Mr. Cuesta and myself, a friendship that had started in New York. Although he is now very old, feeble, and barely able to get around, he comes to the Spanish Club in his car to see me. As he is unable to get out of the car without help, he usually sends in the chauffeur to let me know that he is here. I then go out and have a nice little chat with him. I was appointed Secretary of the Centro Espa~ nol in the year 1900, and served until 1906. In 1906, I went back to work at the cigar factory. However, in 1916, I was again recalled to the Spanish Club. Since then, I have held this position permanently. I have a brother, now 70 years of age, living at Falls Village, Connecticut. He is a true Yankee, and a great admirer of Mr. Roosevelt. I have always dressed within my means, or in other words, I wear only that for which I am able to pay, not like many who go about dressed like a ‘‘millionaire,’’ without a cent in their pocket and owing money to every store in Tampa. Upwards of $2,000,000 have passed through my hands since I have been Secretary of the Centro Espa~ nol, and although it has never been requested of me, I have placed myself under bond with two companies. Many of our members are unable to pay their monthly fee, as they are not working. However, we do not cast him aside because the effects of the Depression have reached him. We administer medical aid and medicine whenever he is sick. The receipts unpaid of the Club sum up to $2,997. ‘‘The Section de Propaganda,’’ a department of the Club that takes care of investigating all unpaid receipts, paying the receipts of those who are out of work, has paid nearly all of the above sum, and having a balance now of $949.00. My personal opinion of the cigar industry is that it in going from bad to worse. If conditions are not remedied soon in Ybor City, we will soon be in the deplorable condition Key West found itself recently. The machineries for making cigars are at

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the root of all this evil. Over 600 women, who were employed as cigar banders, have been thrown out, due to the cigar banding machine. Countless numbers of cigar makers are today unemployed due to cigar making machines. On the other hand, the cigar manufacturers here try to compete with the manufacturers of the North in the production of cheap cigars. At what cost, however, to the few Cuban and Spanish cigar makers who are working. These expert cigar makers are forced to work with the worst tobacco material obtainable. The manufacturers pay them a miserable wage in order to compete with the cheap cigars, produced by machineries, in those Northern cities. The manufacturers are now purchasing only the small leaves from the lower stem of the tobacco plant, which is nothing but trash. A decent cigar cannot be made from such a small leaf. The purchase of the fine ‘‘vuelta-abajo’’ tobacco has reached such a low level that the government of Cuba is seriously considering the suppression of planting this good tobacco for the coming years. I am reminded of a conversation between a French peasant and an American tourist in France: In his travels the tourist came across the French peasant, who was patiently plowing his field with the help of an ox and an old-time wooden plow. The tourist was greatly astonished at this primitive form of plowing the field, and said as much to the peasant, who replied: ‘‘France consumes all the wheat produced in this country and in its colonies. While there is one bushel left, France will not purchase from any other country. We, therefore, sell the bushel for $1.50, while the United States with all the machineries plowing the fields, cutting and handing the wheat out in bushels, have had to sell as low as 50¢ per bushel. This has never happened in France.’’ I do not wish to be interpreted, however, that I am averse to all forms of machineries. I realize the great step forward that has been taken by means of them. Most machineries have bettered the condition of the people, but others have proven detrimental. Many of my old friends are today in desperate means, and whenever I meet them I send them a cup of coffee, a sandwich or any other thing. Many are the times that they come to my office, and I immediately dig into my pocket and hand them out a dollar. I am earning only a small salary, yet I manage to save whatever I can. Every month I send something to my brother in Connecticut as he has been suffering from the stomach for many years. What salary I earn at the Spanish Club is paid me as bookkeeper, not as Secretary as no official of the Club receives one cent for his services. They render their services for love of the club, and not because of any pecuniary gain. Source: American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936 1940, Library of Congress, http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/wpa:@field(DOCIDþ@lit(wpa112040313).

222. Excerpts from F. Vald
ez, ‘‘Life History of Mr. Pedro Barrios,’’ ca. 1939 Pedro Barrios (1881–1951), a cigar maker and banana loader migrated to the Key West, Florida, area in the mid-1880s from Cuba as a young boy with his family. Barrios was a cigar maker, although for a year he was a reader for the cigar makers, which was an honored position. The other cigar makers paid the reader to read novels, poetry, and political essays to them while they were working. In this interview, Barrios describes the recreation and rhyming that occurred on the off hours of the workers. Barrios is assumed to be of African Cuban heritage.

Latinos and the Great Depression

I was born in the Corro in Havana in 1881. That is to say that I have 54 years. I was brought to Key West when I had 3 years; and came to Tampa from Key West when I had 13 years. I learned the trade of cigar maker from that time; and with the exception of a season I had as reader, I have done nothing (‘‘na mas’’) else but cigars. From four years to this part, I have worked two or three months during the year. From there to here, I worked one month in the water line, and now I am loader of bananas when the ships come in. My childhood and youth slipped by peacefully. I had a father who loved me very much; and died when I had 21 years; and a mother who was very affectionate with me. From then till now, I have done nothing but enjoy myself with baseball and fishing; two of my favorite sports; and I find myself at the age of 54 years ‘‘the life very hurried.’’ … I have very good friends, whom I esteem, and who value me. During the time I was a baseball player there was not what there is today. They were ‘‘ninths’’ (novenas) of pure sports between cigar makers; and there were many players from Havana. Among then was Alfredo Montoto, who helped me considerably. The ‘‘Red’’ of Ybor player, of which Martinez Ybor was president. The ‘‘optimo,’’ our ‘‘ninth’’ which was the ‘‘San Francisco.’’ Afterwards, I have devoted myself to fishing. I always go on fishing trips every week. I was also and am an amateur of ballads. I composed a ballad to the ice creams … I lacked putting on the tune to the time of the guitar. I did not occupy myself with finishing it. The first part of the ballad was thus: Ya se acabo el malestar Ya tengo lo que queria Pues tomo todos los dias Pues tomo todos los dias El helado Tropical. (Translation) Already my anxiety in at an end Already I have what I desired As I drink every day As I drink every day The ice cream Tropical.… Everything came from Cuba, and now-a-days you cannot eat it. In the feasts of Christmas-day, there were many ‘‘rhumbitas’’ … I remember that we formed rhumbas in the house of Puebla. We were one whole week ‘‘rhumbaring.’’ We would come out of the factory, and go to the house of Puebla to continue the rhumba, and thus day after day.… There is also a little song, which many of the children in Ybor City sing: Estaba la p
ajera pinta Sentada on su verde limon Con el pico recoge la rama,

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Con la rama recoge la flor Ay Dios! cuando vera mi amor? Ay Dios! cuando vera mi amor? (Translation) The spotted hen-bird On its green lemon was sitting. With her bill she takes the twig, With the twig she gathers the flower. Oh God! when will I see my love? Oh God! when will I see my love? I do not go to the church ever since I found out that the money-lenders took over the temple. So notice if I have gone to church. This does not mean that I do not have religion. My religion is the following: do good to others. If I know of someone who has nothing to eat, I cannot sit at the table. The anguish of anyone is my anguish; I feel it as much as the one who is suffering it. I do not believe in doing harm to anyone. Neither do I feel animosity against anyone. This is my religion and the one which I impressed on my children. I am not believing in the preachers, who with their little book in the hand, and giving himself many ‘‘strokes of the breast,’’ ‘‘and if it comes to hand’’ they will do harm to the ‘‘most Holy Mary.’’ ‘‘They are all life enjoyers’’ of religion. I remember that at the corner here a poor negro died ‘‘who did not have a place to fall dead.’’ Among several we made a collection, but the preacher did not give ‘‘neither a bit.’’ We were all at the place where he was buried, under a sun that cracked the stones. The preacher stayed at a certain distance under the shade of a tree. When the negro was already buried, he came and said: ‘‘ashes you are, ashes you will be, through the centuries of the centuries, amen.’’ He only said these words. At the same time he clapped on his hat and left ‘‘open for Hiers.’’ If it had been for a rich man, he would have said a sermon of two hours, which would have put one to sleep.… Source: American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936 1940, Library of Congress, http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/AMALL:@field(DOCIDþ@lit (wpa112020210).

223. Excerpts from Victor S. Clark, Porto Rico and Its Problems, 1930 Economist Victor S. Clark’s study of Puerto Rico and its problems in the 1930s was conducted under the auspices of the Brookings Institute. It was one of the most comprehensive studies of Puerto Ricans to date and was laden with racial biases. Nevertheless, it gives insight into Puerto Rico, Puerto Ricans, and why Puerto Ricans were migrating to the mainland. In 1899, Gen. John Eaton (1826–1906), U.S. Commissioner of Education to Puerto Rico, led a campaign to Americanize Puerto Ricans through an English-only policy in public schools. Eaton proposed the teaching of English-only by all teachers, the

Latinos and the Great Depression

preferential hiring of English-speaking teachers, and the examination of high school and normal school candidates in English. Clark approved of this policy and called Puerto Rican Spanish a ‘‘patois,’’ implying that it was a dialect of the uneducated. Previously, in 1908, Clark had produced highly biased and negative studies of Mexicans in the United States.

Nearly one and one-half million people live in Porto Rico, of whom all but a minute minority were born in the Island and are descended from ancestors who have lived there for centuries. The only numerically important additions to this stock since the early Spanish migrations of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were African slaves. These and an indeterminate Indian element, which was absorbed during the first years of settlement, but has probably contributed a trace of blood to a constantly widening circle of descendants, have blended with the original Iberian colonists until it is impossible to draw an exact line between white and colored. A pure negro type is encountered in the port towns and the former slave plantation districts on the coast, while peasants as fair as north Europeans are not infrequently met upon the mountain trails of the interior. As a rule, the propertied and professional classes are white, while the laboring classes, exclusive of the peasant mountaineers, are in varying degrees colored. Soldiers and other temporary sojourners have constantly diluted the African blood of the coast towns since the cessation of the slave trade, and merchants, planters, and civil servants from Spain, and occasionally political refugees from Latin America, have recruited the commercial and official classes. According to the census, in 1920 approximately 73 percent of the population was white and 27 percent colored, but this is hardly more than a statistical guess. Race lines are not as strictly drawn in Porto Rico as on the mainland. Intelligent, educated, and forceful colored men and women are found in all walks of life, where they associate without apparent discrimination with whites. Negroes are numerous in the teaching profession, and colored pupils attend, on terms of equality, public schools and higher educational institutions. An advertisement inserted in an Island paper by a Porto Rican automobile mechanic, residing in an upstate city in New York, for a wife who among other qualifications must be either white or mulatto, illustrates a race attitude of the common people. Nevertheless, race is a potent sociological force in Porto Rico. African slavery drove the poor whites into the mountains, as it did in our Southern States, where isolation and absence of cultural and economic opportunities perpetuated or created a special type, the mountain peasant or ‘‘jibaro,’’ of whom we shall hear abundantly in the following pages. He presents some parallels with the cabin dwellers of the southern Appalachians, but today is succumbing to the influence of good roads, public schools, and commercial agriculture. As yet, however, his economic status is depressed below a normal subsistence level. Generations of civic and spiritual neglect have given him some of the primitive mores of the indigenees [indigenes]. His family ties are often merely consensual, and his children therefore technically illegitimate; but he is not immoral in an anti-social sense. Among the floating laborers of the coast towns and low-land plantations, survivals of slave mores still persist. Family ties, even when normally more formal than in the mountains, are apparently less binding, and result in the type of illegitimacy that is accompanied by a high infant mortality. Both the birth rate and the death rate of

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the colored Porto Ricans, who are relatively more numerous on the coast than elsewhere in the Island, exceed those of the whites. The causes for the high mortality appear to be social and economic rather than physiological. In fact, it is hard to escape the inference, unverifiable though it may be, until more research than hitherto has been devoted to the subject, that whites suffer a climatic handicap, at least as compared with full-blooded blacks, throughout the West Indies. The common people in the country look to the United States for help and guidance with a degree of faith and hope that is na€ıvely childlike. The promise of aid from the United States, their newly gained political democracy, which they are slowly learning how to manipulate, and their increasing acquisition of knowledge through a still inadequate but improving school system, offer their only prospect of escape and that at best seems a long way off. In 1914 and 1926, strikes in the principal cigar factories of the Island failed to win their objective, and are said partly to account for the action of the largest of the tobacco corporations in transferring most of its manufacturing from the Island to the mainland. Waves of labor agitation, marked by strikes, rise and subside as if they were the result of a psychic contagion. In most cases, however, they represent impulsive resistance to some worsening of the condition of the workers and not infrequently accompany one of those general depressions that are liable to affect, from time to time, a relatively small and isolated community whose prosperity is largely dependent upon one or two staple crops. It is not strange, therefore, that they have had little observable effect upon the material condition of the working people. The main accomplishments of the labor movement have been achieved through political action. Moreover, English is the chief source, practically the only source, of democratic ideas in Porto Rico. There may be little that they learn to remember, but the English school reader itself provides a body of ideas and concepts which are not to be had in any other way. It is also the only means which these people have of communication with and understanding of the country which they are now a part. The utility of instruction in English and indeed of education generally has been severely limited by the almost complete lack of books and periodicals among the common people of the Island. The seeds sown by an elementary education, such as that now offered in Porto Rico, can hardly be expected to germinate and fructify into an improving citizenship in a soil devoid of reading matter. Yet so long as private enterprise must be depended upon, publications wait on general literacy. To break through this difficulty, we recommend that the Insular Department of Education undertake the publication and free distribution of a periodical dealing with current events and important practical matters related to health, diet, homemaking, and community life. It should be a first principle in the Department’s management of this periodical that it should be completely exempt from political influence and free from bias. It should be printed in both Spanish and English. The Commission wishes to warn against the assumption that large expenditures for building and equipment are necessary before this work can begin. For automobile repair work a shed, a discarded car which the Government Bureau of Transportation or a garage might furnish from its junk heap, the simplest tools, and a mechanic-teacher would form an adequate starting equipment. The most outstanding objection to be urged against the present work in manual training is the unduly

Latinos and the Great Depression

expensive equipment which is provided for work which at best is inadequate. The criticism of unduly expensive equipment is valid in the case of home economics equipment in some high schools. School equipment should include but little more than the kind of tools with which the students will be obliged to work when they practice their skill in home or shop. In order to acquaint them with better equipment of a sort which they might conceivably acquire, a small margin beyond this might be provided. The length of courses offered in such industrial schools or courses should be governed not by any preconceptions about courses of fixed period of length but by the time necessary for a student to acquire the skill concerned. Source: Clark, Victor S. (Victor Selden), Porto Rico and its Problems. Clark, Victor S. (Victor Selden), 1868 1946, Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1930. pp. 8, 9, 39, 52, 81, 82, 88.

224. Excerpts from Herschel T. Manuel, ‘‘Results of a Half-Century Experiment in Teaching a Second Language,’’ 1952 The battleground between U.S. government administrators who demanded the Americanization of Puerto Rico through English-only programs and Puerto Rican educators who advocated bilingual programs that included instruction in Spanish was set during the 1920s and 1930s. Caught in the crossfire were the children of Puerto Rican parents. The failure to include Spanish contributed to a high dropout rate among Puerto Rican children. Sociologist Herschel T. Manuel (1887–1976) was an education professor at the University of Texas from the 1920s through the 1960s. He conducted important studies on Mexican children and was a strong advocate of bilingual education. Manuel began his study of Mexicans in 1929. He was outraged by the lengths to which many Euro-Texans went to deny these children education. He converted from objectivism to a purposivism, which was describing what was, to reaching for what should, and could, be. The following excerpts show the devastating effects of English-only education on Puerto Rican children.

Administration of the English edition of the tests in the Continental United States makes possible a comparison of achievement in Puerto Rico with achievement in corresponding grades in the States. Table 1 compares the scores of urban Puerto Rican pupils on the Spanish edition with the scores of urban Continental pupils on the English edition. Point scores have been translated into grade scores on the basis of Continental norms. In non-specialized reading the Puerto Rican pupils have at the end of the first grade a somewhat higher score than the Continental pupils. This advantage changes to a deficit in the middle grades, but in the senior high school and first year of college, the pupils in Puerto Rico read about as well as pupils in the States. The scores of Puerto Rican pupils in the specialized reading materials of the natural sciences follow closely Continental norms but are lower in the social studies and in Language Usage. With reference to English it may be said that in the high school the average Puerto Rican pupil reads English at the level of efficiency of a Continental Englishspeaking pupil two and one-half or three grades below the level at which the Puerto Rican pupil is enrolled and that from fifteen to twenty percent of the high school pupils read English as well as or better than the average Continental pupil of the

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Table 1. Median Scores (Spanish) of Puerto Rican Pupils in Comparison with Median Scores (English) of Continental Pupils Continental U.S. Grade Level

General Reading

Natural Sciences

1.8 2.8 3.8 4.8 5.8 6.8 7.8 8.8 9.8 10.8 11.8 12.8 13.8

2.2 2.8 3.6 4.2 5.1 5.7 6.6 7.8 9.1 10.6 12.0 12.3 13.8

7.0 7.8 8.8 9.9 11.1 11.7 12.3 13.8

Social Studies Language Usage

6.6 8.0 8.5 8.9 10.0 10.8 11.7

6.1 6.8 7.8 8.3 8.8 8.8 11.3

Note: The table shows, for example, that at the close of the eighth month of the first grade the Puerto Rican pupils achieved a score (in Spanish) equal to the average score achieved (in English) by Continen tal pupils at the end of the second month of the second grade.

same grade. In Language Usage, on the other hand, fewer than one percent of the high school pupils have scores reaching the medians of Continental pupils. Since the language of every-day life is predominantly Spanish, one can understand that there is much less opportunity for expression in English than there is for reading. These, then, are the measured results of a half-century of effort to teach English to Spanish-speaking pupils. This paper must come to an end with little effort to interpret the results either in terms of the Puerto Rican situation or in relation to the broader problems of language teaching. To a linguist, the results must be evidence of remarkable progress in a job that is inherently difficult the teaching of a language which is little used out of school by most of those who are trying to learn it. The Puerto Rican people themselves may well be proud of their accomplishments. On the other hand, the results lend note of realism to education in the Island. It will be a long time before the desires of the people for English can be completely satisfied. The results bring home to all of us the difficulties of teaching a second language to an entire population. Herschel T. Manuel University of Texas Source: Hershel T. Manuel, ‘‘Results of a Half-Century Experiment in Teaching a Second Language,’’ The Modern Language Journal, Vol. 36, No. 2 (February 1952), pp. 76 77.

225. Excerpts from a Jos
e M. Gallardo Speech, 1947 From 1934 to 1937, Spanish was the sole medium of instruction in Puerto Rican schools. Puerto Rican educator Jos
e M. Gallardo wrote U.S. President

Latinos and the Great Depression

Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) in 1937 saying that he did not want to eliminate the study of English for Spanish-speaking children in public schools but wanted to make it more efficient—conceding that learning English was an important part of American policy. According to Gallardo’s proposal, Spanish would be taught as a first language in the first two grades and English as a second language. After that point, English would become the first language. Gallardo’s letter led to his appointment as commissioner of education for the island in June 1937, and a new school program was adopted with special stress placed on the teaching of English in accordance with the views in the letter addressed to President Roosevelt. Gallardo served in that capacity to 1945. The following excerpt is from a paper presented to the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese in 1946. In it, he lays out his views on teaching English.

As Americans we are interested in the manner in which our country has established the position of the English language vis-a-vis the language of our possessions. We have confronted the issue in three important territories, namely: the Philippine Islands, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico. In all three, at one time or another, the teaching of English has been pushed so aggressively that an impartial observer would be justified in concluding that we were trying to supplant the native language with our American brand of English. All three territories have seen their languages reduced to subjects in the curriculum, with English as the language of instruction in all subject matter, at all levels of instruction. At present, this procedure is not followed in Puerto Rico, although it prevailed in the Philippines while it was an American possession and still prevails in Hawaii. It is interesting to note that the proponents of such a system generally avow that their dual objective is the teaching of English and the preservation of the native language: that is, a true bilingualism.… Puerto Rico, on the other hand, had had four centuries of Spanish civilization, and a population almost entirely Spanish in racial background, psychology, and outlook, when it became an American possession in 1898. This was no land divided into tribes with a variety of dialects, but a well-knit, homogeneous people steeped in a language and culture of which they were fiercely and justly proud. It is obvious that you cannot apply procedures to this situation which may have achieved the desired results in other areas. The avowed policy of teaching English and preserving Spanish has been pursued in Puerto Rico with different degrees of intensity, depending on the individual charged with the task. At this point, it should be explained that the educational system of Puerto Rico is entrusted to an official called the Commissioner of Education, who, although an insular official, is appointed by the President of the United States subject to the confirmation of the United States Senate. Whether he be an American of Anglo-Saxon or of Puerto Rican extraction, he is a functionary of the Federal administration, and his policies are determined by the Chief Executive and by the Federal official in charge of Puerto Rican affairs. Federal intervention has been active and at times outspoken. It reached a ludicrous peak when a letter addressed to the Commissioner of Education rebuking him for his alleged lack of interest in the teaching of English appeared in the press before it reached the hands of the addressee. This letter was provoked by a statement made by the Commissioner before a Senate Committee on the teaching of English in Puerto Rico. He expressed the opinion that absolute bilingualism could not be obtained because the

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English-speaking population of the island was too small to provide adequate opportunities for the spontaneous use of the language in everyday life experiences. One of the motives generally adduced for the teaching of English is the so-called Americanization of the island. I personally feel that the acquisition of the best in American culture and institutions by Puerto Ricans is much to be desired, provided these elements are reinforced by the best elements of Spanish culture. Most Puerto Ricans concur with this view. They crave all that is best and most worthwhile in American democracy. But the process of Americanization does not necessarily involve mastery of the English language. An understanding of the basic principles and ideals of real Americanism can be transmitted in any European language. As Hispanists we know that if any language is adequate for the expression of the noblest aspirations of mankind and respect for human personality, it is Spanish. It is absurd for politicians and professional patriots to argue, for instance, that one cannot understand the Declaration of Independence, which was the work of men inspired in large measure by the writings of French thinkers of the eighteenth century, unless English is the vehicle. Anyone familiar with the island can point to a number of distinguished jurists who, because they were trained under the Spanish regime, do not know English well, and yet have mastered the intricacies of the English common law and constitutional law as well as lawyers trained in American universities. Experience has also shown that linguistic unity, while convenient, is not an essential to the achievement of national unity. Switzerland has developed an admirable modus vivendi among peoples of different national strains and languages. Belgium has withstood terrific onslaughts in spite of three strong languages. In some nations, strong dialects exist in all their vigor side by side with the national tongue. In like manner, language and cultural background should not be a deterrent to the incorporation of Puerto Rico into the American family of states, provided it so desires and provided also that it has shown the proper understanding of the American system of life. Realizing that one of the handicaps to a sound appraisal of the situation was the lack of an objective study, the Commissioner of Education, in 1938, decided to request the aid of a responsible agency, commanding the respect of all factions, both in Puerto Rico and in the United States, to survey the situation. The Committee on Modern Languages of the American Council on Education, which has always been interested in problems of this nature, accepted the challenge. In 1939, Dr. Robert Herndon Fife, Chairman of the Committee, visited the island, accompanied by Dr. Herschel T. Manuel of the University of Texas, who has given much thought and study to problems of bilingual groups in Texas and the Southwest. These gentlemen made a preliminary survey to determine if, by and large, the leaders of different schools of thought considered it advisable to have an outside agency undertake the study of the problem. The consensus was unanimous in favor of the project. The tact and diplomacy displayed by Dr. Fife and Dr. Manuel, as well as their evident fairness and their objective approach to the problem, have earned them the confidence of all Puerto Rican educators. The first step undertaken was the development of measuring instruments. Two series of parallel tests in English and Spanish, at all levels, on ability, vocabulary, reading comprehension, and achievement in the social and natural sciences, were evolved. These tests have been the result of careful and thorough labors by educators from Puerto Rico, Mexico, and areas in Texas where bilingual situations exist.

Latinos and the Great Depression

In 1943, the Spanish series was given to about twelve thousand children in Mexico, the English series to about fifteen thousand children in Texas, and both series to about twenty thousand children in Puerto Rico. The purpose was to establish the validity of the tests and to have objective bases for comparison of results in monolingual and bilingual situations. Besides the testing program, the survey group made an exhaustive study of all the Spanish and English cultural resources of Puerto Rico, as well as an analysis of economic and social factors having a bearing on the problem. The next step will be the interpretation of the findings. On the basis of this study it will be possible to answer many of the question raised about the teaching of English in Puerto Rico objectively, rather than by sophistry, emotionalism, or partisan bias. The report will also have a significant bearing on recent efforts to promote the teaching of English in Latin America. On the political front, the evidence gathered by this study can serve a very useful purpose. Leaders in Washington and Puerto Rico should avail themselves of the objective data furnished by this survey to bring about a linguistic policy, honestly and pedagogically conceived, which will speed the teaching of English and at the same time preserve and enrich the Spanish heritage of Puerto Rico. It is high time to divorce politics from the language question and to resort to statesmanship of a superior order. Only thus can we dignify and honor our country and safeguard the best interests of our fellow American citizens from Puerto Rico. Source: Jose M. Gallardo, ‘‘Language and Politics in Puerto Rico,’’ Hispania, Vol. 30, No. 1 (February 1947), 38, 39, 40, 41, 43.

226. ‘‘Factory Employment in the Needle Trades,’’ 1933 The New Deal passed the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) in 1933 in an effort to stabilize prices, stimulate competition, regulate business, and ensure workers a livable wage. It set industry standards for products, production methods, and wages. Since Puerto Rico was part of the United States it was assumed that the codes applied to Puerto Rican garment workers. Since World War I, the needle industry had doubled on the island. Prior to the war, most needlework was performed in cottages where workers were paid by the piece, and not given an hourly wage. After World War I with the exclusion of cheap European labor, many American sweatshops were transferred to Puerto Rico where there was an abundance of cheap labor. The commercialization of the industry led to a deskilling of the trade and to a decline in quality. The workers worked through agents to avoid the minimum wage or the price set for piecework. The code shifted this production to hourly wages without taking into account the structure of Puerto Rican needlework. The lack of a clear policy and failure of the code to address this increased the threat of strikes. A commission was sent to the island to modify the codes and to address the Puerto Rican situation. The following report speaks to the state of a needle-trade industry in Puerto Rico and the arbitrary application of the American business model on the island.

Before the World War the needle-trade industry in Puerto Rico was of little importance, but since that time it has doubled and in some lines it has trebled in

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value. Even in the present depression, shipments of cotton garments to the mainland increased from 1,382,000 dozen in 1932 to 2,264,000 dozen in 1933. The Cotton Code Authority calls attention to the fact that this development was particularly marked in the last months of the year after the N.R.A. code for the cotton garment industry became effective on the mainland. With this gain in production there has been an increase in employment. The census of 1920 showed roughly 16,000 in the cotton garment industry; the census of 1930 showed 40,000. In each case, it was estimated that not over a fourth of these were employed in factory work, the great majority over 75 percent in 1920 and over 80 percent in 1930 being home workers. The past 18 years have witnessed a great change in the quality of work shipped from Puerto Rico. As most of the garments have grown coarser and cheaper, the work too has become poorer. Eighteen years ago the needlework was fine, but today much of the commercial embroidery is inferior. From the workers’ point of view there is justification for this. In the ‘‘palmy days’’ of 1920 21 22, the home workers often earned as much as $1 a day, occasionally $1.50, but now if they earn 10 cents a day they do well and the time and incentive for nice work are things of the past. With this mushroom development of the needlework industry workers have been recruited who have had little experience and have but slight skill in handling the needle, and the industry has been too busy to train employees. The managers have taken whom they could get, and whereas formerly all the work was done in the towns, it now is scattered in the country districts and hills. The loss in production time in having it so scattered is said to vary in some small lines from 4 to 6 weeks. Thus far in this report, emphasis has been laid on home work in the needle trades, because it seems to overshadow most other lines of women’s employment both in abuses and numbers involved. However, the establishments that are distributing centers for the home work usually have a few inside employees engaged in laundry operations, stamping, examining, sorting, and so forth, and the following is a brief analysis of the current wages of factory workers in the five most important branches of the needle-trade industry. Source: Caroline Manning, ‘‘The Employment of Women in Puerto Rico,’’ Bulletin of the Women’s Bureau, No. 118. (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1934), p. 20.

227. Excerpts from the Memoirs of Bernardo Vega, 1929–1939 Bernardo Vega (1885–?) came to the United States in 1916. Memoirs of Bernardo Vega tell of his journey, Puerto Rico, and his struggles. In these excerpts he discussed the Great Depression years and their impact on the Puerto Rican community in New York. Vega also describes the radical community’s relationship to Cuban exiles and the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) and the war against fascism. Vega’s focus is on the survival of the working class.

In the spring of 1931 we concentrated on an effort that was being made to send an armed expedition to Cuba. A ship and ample military supplies had been purchased, and over 150 volunteers awaited orders to set sail from New York. Our group was defeated, though, when it came time to select the commander of the expedition. I was anything but pleased when Gen. Menocal was named to head the revolt against Machado. It seemed to me that nothing more than replacing one bigwig

Latinos and the Great Depression

with another, and I resigned. But even then I continued to help organize the arm[ed] expedition. The plans were upset by Machado’s spies, who revealed our preparations to the American authorities. Some of the volunteers, including most of the leaders, were arrested. Only thirty-three men made it to the ship, which was anchored outside of United States. The rest never made it. Nevertheless, despite all the problems, the expedition managed to land in Cuba. Machado met it with a sizable army. The revolutionaries fought bravely but were defeated. Three of those who came out alive were members of Flor Roja: Montiel, Alvaro Moreno, and Sabis Vega. On February 3, 1932, the Democratic Party presidential candidate addressed the nation in the first of what were to be well-known fireside chats. The working class, and the American people in general, listening on their radios, were impressed by Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s reassuring words. In simple terms he described what he proposed to do, if elected, to return the country to prosperity. He would launch large-scale public-works projects giving jobs to millions of unemployed people; he would have the government take the initiative in exploiting the vast sources of hydroelectric power; he would bring together the best brains the country had to offer.… That speech, and the many that followed, spread a spirit of optimism across the United States. By that time, 15 million workers were unemployed. New York was one of the cities most seriously affected. The winter of 1932 was particularly harsh, and in the middle of February the whole city was blanketed in snow. Around twelve thousand men were hired by City Hall to clean up the streets. Many Puerto Ricans jumped at the opportunity to make some money, and what a sight it was to see them wrapped up in rags, their necks covered with old newspapers, swinging their shovels and shivering to the bone. On September 29, 1933, the Fusionists nominated a Puerto Rican, M. Vivaldi, to run for the state assembly from the 17th district. The Fusion Party established an Hispanic division, based in Harlem. The leadership included Vivaldi, Enrique Torregrosa, Victor Fiol, Salguero Font, Florencio Ruiz, Antonio Gonzalez, Felix Caro, J. D. Lopez, Miguel Collazo, and Luis Caballero. Meanwhile the trade union struggle of Puerto Rican workers continued to grow, especially among hotel and restaurant workers and in the needle trades. Many of our countrymen were employed in those lines of work, and during the year they held several work stoppages and mass pickets. The Harlem section of the Communist Party put up candidates for the state assembly and city council. These candidates won the support of the Liga Antiimperialista Puertorique~ na, the Centro Obrero Espa~ nol, and several labor unions. Heading up the Fusionist forces, La Guardia carried out an extremely effective electoral campaign. He kept his rivals in the traditional parties constantly on the defensive. He campaigned in the poor neighborhoods and explained what measures he would take if elected mayor. To the surprise of all the local newspapers and to the shame of Tammany Hall, the Fusionists swept the election by a margin of over 200,000 votes. And thus began Fiorello La Guardia’s reign in City Hall. The newly founded Club Hostos quickly became the center of many activities, including classes in Spanish and in Hispanic culture for children and young people, and a vast number of lectures and meetings. Filiberto Vazquez, for example, gave a

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talk on the ‘‘Foundations of the Nationalist Struggle in Puerto Rico,’’ and Max Vazquez gave one on ‘‘Russian Literature Before the Revolution of 1917,’’ which gives an idea of the kinds of topics that were discussed at the club. The Junta Nacionalista also sponsored a number of public events, one of which concerned the Congreso Estudiantil Inter-Americano being held in Costa Rica. The event centered around a report delivered by the delegate of the students from Puerto Rico, Francisco Pag
an Rodr
ıguez. An equally active group was the Liga Antiimperialista Puertorique~ na. The Cuban intellectual, Leonardo Fern
andez S
anchez, one of the most admired orators of the time, came to speak in its hall. The theme of his speech was Puerto Rico, and particularly the relationship between the agrarian problem and sugar production. In May 1933 a famous incident occurred between the [multi]millionaire John D. Rockefeller and Diego Rivera, the Mexican painter. Diego Rivera had contracted to paint a series of murals in Rockefeller Center, for which he was to be paid a small fortune. The artist presented an elaborate plan of the project, which was accepted. But after he had finished his first mural, Rockefeller hit the ceiling when he recognized a picture of Lenin stretching out his arms to clasp hands with a Negro and a soldier. The leading representative of U.S. finance capital demanded that Diego Rivera paint something else; this, in his opinion ‘‘was not a work of art.’’ Diego refused of course. The whole city was talking about the controversy. A huge picketline was organized in front of Rockefeller Center. But the millionaire would not give in. The mural ended up being destroyed by that ‘‘great patron of the arts.’’ Diego Rivera’s principled stand won admiration throughout the world. Meanwhile, the Roosevelt years did not seem to bring many changes in our Island’s fortunes. Our hope that, with the New Deal, governors with somewhat greater intellectual and administrative competence would be appointed were destroyed by bitter reality. The first to receive the appointment, strictly for the support he mustered in Florida during the election campaign, was a certain Gore. No sooner had he taken office than, on a visit to his home state, he declared that ‘‘independence would bring ruin’’ to Puerto Rico. If Puerto Rico were independent, he went on, it would lose free entry of its sugar into the United States. Florida would be the beneficiary, since it would be able to take the Island’s share of the sugar market. For that reason, he extended an invitation to the large landowners in Puerto Rico to move their sugar plantations and mills to Florida. He not only ranted and raved along these lines, but he even went so far as to suggest the massive emigration of Puerto Rican workers to Florida. We protested against that idea in New York, and even got a campaign going in Puerto Rico. Our position caught on, and the hair-brained scheme never got off the ground. Another public act that was to prove damaging to Puerto Ricans was committed by the First Lady, Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt. On her return from a well-publicized trip to Puerto Rico in April 1934, she spoke at a benefit held in her honor by the Women’s Trade Union League in New York. She told of the deep impression the dire poverty she found on the Island had made on her, and went on to say: ‘‘Tuberculosis is widespread everywhere, just as it is in the Puerto Rican community here in New York … I assume that none of you will be hiring any of them in your homes, but however careful we may be in rearing our children, they can still come into contact with one of those sick people in the streets or in the schools. And tuberculosis is an extremely contagious disease.…’’

Latinos and the Great Depression

Those were her words, spoken without malice and with the best of intentions. But the consequences, at least in the short run, could only hurt Puerto Ricans, especially those living in New York. Thousands of us were working in restaurants and cafeterias, and came into contact with food that was served to the public. The chances of finding, and of holding onto, jobs in that kind of work became dimmer than ever. It was even harder on all the Puerto Rican women working as domestics and nursemaids. And so, to add to the usual discrimination, the population was led to fear that our countrymen would infect them with tuberculosis! ‘‘Isn’t that something. Even when they try to do us a favor, they only bring more harm to Puerto Ricans.…’’ That’s what I said to myself, and I decided that we had to do something about it. In January 1938, Puerto Rican dockworkers first in San Juan, and soon in every port on the Island went out on strike. This strike action was of particular historical importance for two reasons: first of all, because the seamen working the ships, organized by the National Maritime Union of the CIO, totally supported the strike; and secondly because new elements, clearly identified with the Partido Comunista Puertorique~ no, played a leading role in the labor movement for the first time. In New York, a strike solidarity committee was formed, made up of Manuel Ortega, Harry de la Cruz, Joaqu
ın Rosado, Aracelio Pag
on, Juan N. Maissonet, Consuelo Marcial, Jose Martinez, Homero Rosado, Juan Emmanuelli, J. Enamorado Cuesta, A. Pacheco Padro, and G. Concepci
on de Grac
ıa. On the initiative of Jos
e Camprubi, the editor of the Spanish daily La Prensa, another effort was made to bring the Puerto Rican organizations together in an alliance that would represent the entire community. Some of those who carried through on the idea were the legislator Oscar Garc
ıa Rivera, J. M. Vivaldi, Caban Soler, Cesar G. Torres, and Laura Santiago. After a series of meetings the Confederaci
on de Sociedades Puertorique~ nas was founded with J. M. Vivaldi as president and Tom
as Gares, Jos
e Santiago, Garc
ıa Angulo, Laura Santiago, and Angel Vidal as vice-presidents. Named to the board of directors were Isabel O’Neill, Vicente Medina, and Gregorio Domenech, among others. The campaign in support of the Spanish Republic and against the arms embargo culminated in a huge rally at Madison Square Garden. The featured speakers were the Spanish leaders Juan Negrin, Jos
e Bergamin, and Carm
en Meana. The gathering approved messages to the President and the Congress of the United States demanding that the embargo be lifted. Aside from what it paid at the door, the audience wound up contributing over $20,000 to the cause. And it is worth pointing out that the Puerto Rican workers did not scrimp in their economic support for the heroic struggle of the Spanish people. Source: Cesar Andreu Iglesias, ed. Memoirs of Bernardo Vega: A Contribution to the History of the C 1984 by Monthly Review Puerto Rican Community in New York. Translated by Juan Flores. Copyright
Press. Reprinted by permission of Monthly Review Foundation. pp. 169, 170, 173, 174, 175, 194.

228. Excerpts from an FBI Document on Pedro Albizu Campos, February 19, 1936 Throughout the 1930s and to the present, the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party was under surveillance by the FBI. Puerto Rican Nationalist Party leader Pedro Albizu Campos (1891–1965), an icon in Puerto Rican history, was under

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continual surveillance. Albizu Campos received a law degree from Harvard Law School, served as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army during World War I, and spent 25 years in and out of prisons for his belief in Puerto Rican independence. He became head of the Nationalist Party, which called for Puerto Rican independence. During the 1930s, he attracted a large following; he was a powerful speaker and would mesmerize crowds. Albizu Campos took part in an islandwide sugar cane strike and laid out the rationale for independence. While in jail, Albizu Campos, with other prisoners, was the subject of human radiation experiments. The following excerpts are from formerly classified FBI documents from reports to J. Edgar Hoover, the director of the FBI at this time. In 1935, Puerto Rican police killed four nationalists for anti-government activities. In 1936, nationalists killed the U.S.-appointed governor of Puerto Rico. Albizu Campos was arrested and tried. He was acquitted but the judge ordered a new trial in which Albizu Campos was convicted of sedition to overthrow the government.

DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE UNITED STATES ATTORNEY District of Puerto Rico San Juan, Puerto Rico January 15, 1936 Via air mail Honorable John Edgar Hoover, Director Federal Bureau of Investigation U. S. Department of Justice Washington, D.C. Dear Mr. Hoover: For approximately ten years there has been in existence in Puerto Rico a political group known an the Nationalist Party which aims to secure the separation of the Island from the United States in order that may become a republic. During approximately the last seven years the leader of that Party has been one Pedro Albizu Campos, who is virtually dictator of all its policies and activities. In recent years Albizu and other members of his Party have caused to be published in the local press numerous articles insulting the United States and its institutions, and endeavoring to incite Puerto Ricans against the United States. Since 1928, the Party has conducted throughout the Island a campaign of public speeches in favor of independence, which constantly harp on the fact that the purpose of the United States is to exploit Puerto Rico and its citizens. In 1932 or 1933, these speeches were supplemented by articles in the weekly newspaper known as ‘‘La Naci
on’’ [‘‘The Nation’’], which was published. In the election of 1952 [sic 1932], this Party obtained approximately 5,000 or 6,000 votes of a total of approximately 400,000. The speeches and activities of this Party have gradually become more flagrant, bolder, and more open. Various physical acts of disorder have been traced to them, although no satisfactory proof thereof been established by the insular authorities charged with the enforcement of federal and insular buildings and private buildings [that] were bombed in San Juan and other places. Under the circumstances of these bombings, I have reason to believe that most of them were instigated by the Nationalist Party.

Latinos and the Great Depression

In October, 1955 [sic 1935], Albizu Campos broadcast by radio a speech insulting students of the University of Puerto Rico. Students thereupon arranged a meeting at the University to make a protest. Local police claimed they had discovered a conspiracy of members of the Party to break up the proposed meeting by gun-play. As a result of the attempt of the police to stop various members of the Nationalist Party from going to this meeting, an armed struggle ensued between the police and the persons they were arresting, which resulted in the police killing several members of the Nationalist Party. At their funeral, Albizu Campos and several of his henchmen delivered orations which come very close to inciting armed insurrection against the United States and its established government here. Following this event, the Party began to publish a weekly newspaper known as ‘‘La Palabra,’’ in which the same campaign of invective and insurrection has been continued. The Party maintains in most of the towns here a sort of militia who wear black shirts to identify themselves and who occasionally gather for drilling. Recently, the Party has set up posters requesting contributions for its so-called ‘‘Liberating Army’’ urging immediate enrollment therein. Albizu Campos is undoubtedly planning to use the coming elections in November 1936 as a focal point for his activities. The situation has reached such a stage that both the Governor of Puerto Rico and the Head of the Bureau of Territories and Island Possessions in the Department of the Interior have consulted me about it. In addition, the present Grand Jury has inquired of me if any action can be taken by them in this matter. Without any detailed investigation thereof, it seems to us that some of the acts committed by Albizu Campos and his followers may well be violative of Title 18, U.S.C.A., Sections, 4, 6, 7, 8, 344, and 345. I therefore believe it urgent that a Special Agent of the [Federal] Bureau of Investigation be sent here at once to make an undercover Investigation of this situation before it becomes even more aggravated. If possible, the man who is sent should read and speak Spanish, and have the appearance of a Latin. I suggest that your agent interview me prior to beginning his investigation. I am sending a copy of this letter to the Special Agent in charge at Jacksonville, Florida. With kind personal regards, Sincerely yours, A. Cecil Snyder United States Attorney ACS/mg. Source: Federal Bureau of Investigation, February 19, 1936. Pedro Albizu Campos, The Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico. Re: Inciting Rebellions or Insurrections. The FBI Files on Puerto Ricans. Subject: Pedro Albizu Campos, File No. 105 11898 Section 1 January 15, 1936 August 1, 1936, http://www.pr-secretfiles.net.


n Feminista Domincana’s Statement 229. Accio of Priniciples, ca. 1931 Acci
on Feminista Domincana (Dominican Feminists for Action) was founded in the Dominican Republic on May 14, 1931. Although many of the groups were

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labeled feminist, they were established to promote so-called family values and were limited to ‘‘good women.’’ This nascent women’s organization had the blessing of Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo. The organization was limited to literate women; 70 percent of Dominicans at the time were illiterate. Hence, the masses were denied participation. In the Caribbean, as in most places, the status of women was critiqued as paternalistic societies came under fire. Better educated, many women became teachers, writers, union leaders, and intellectuals—coalescing to form feminist leagues. The ability to meet as women opened many to more radical forms of action as many were influenced by communist and socialist literature and other political movements.

This group will be made up of women of good conduct, who have reached their eighteenth birthday and who know how to read and write. Its main goal is to tend to the betterment of the intellectual, social, moral, and legal condition of women, as well as to campaign for social defense against alcoholism, prostitution, and narcotic drugs, and the like, to fight for the passage of laws for the protection of mothers, children, adolescents, the aged, and the blue-collar workers. To advocate for the establishment of tribunals for children, to work to instill in women the understanding of the necessity to be frugal and to dissuade them from spending on unnecessary luxuries; to persuade Dominicans not to sell their land to foreigners; to fight so that our traditions are preserved and to sponsor every idea that would mean the advancement and welfare of the Republic. The Acci
on Feminista aspires to enroll in its rank all their compatriots, so that a true feminist union will result, formed by ladies and young ladies who live, some by their rents and incomes, others by teaching, by industry, blue-collar work, students, and so on. One of its principal goals will be to accustom Dominican women to the agreement of thought and of mutual tolerance and protection, at work. The Acci
on Feminista wishes to make mothers truly conscious of their mission; it wishes to prepare mothers to earn a livelihood in a dignified manner for themselves and their families, should the need arise; it wishes [for] even women with means to receive such training so they are prepared to administer their fortune and make them fit to sustain the moral and material equilibrium of the home, because lest we forget, whosoever says balance at home, says balance in the fatherland. Feminism will tend to bring about the happiness of women by preparing them so that they always marry for love, and not of necessity and in a hurry with the first to come for fear of facing the demands of life; it will work so that laws are passed that would support marriage and the stability of the family. Source: Daisy Cocco De Filippis, Documents of Dissidence: Selected Writings by Dominican Women (New York: CUNY Dominican Studies Institute, 2000), pp. 61 62.

230. Excerpts from the Annual Report by Puerto Rican Gov. James R. Beverley to the Secretary of War, July 1, 1933 The Hon. James R. Beverley (1884–1967) served as attorney general of Puerto Rico in the 1930s. He also served twice as acting governor of Puerto Rico. He was born in Texas. He wrote the following to describe conditions on the island after a major hurricane—which today would qualify as a national disaster— caused a great deal of damage to Puerto Rico in 1932, while he was interim

Latinos and the Great Depression

governor. In addition to this natural catastrophe, the agrarian livelihood of Puerto Rico, which by the 1930s had been specialized and commercialized by U.S. companies, was dependent on selling crops in the United States. Hence, Puerto Rico’s economy was again devastated as the U.S. market shriveled up during the Great Depression from 1929 to 1939. This added to the discontent of Puerto Ricans and the popularity of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party.

Sir: Pursuant to law, I have the honor to submit herewith the report of the Governor of Puerto Rico for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1933. The writer ceased in office July 1st, 1933, being succeeded by the Hon. Robert H. Gore; but since the period covered by this report fell wholly within the writer’s administration, this report is being presented by time undersigned, at the request of tile Bureau of Insular Affairs as of July 1, 1933.

HURRICANE OF 1932 The most important event during the year under consideration, from the standpoint of the welfare of the people of Puerto Rico was the terrific hurricane which ripped its way across the northern half of the Island during the night of September 26 27, 1932, laying waste approximately [to] one-half of the Island. This hurricane is known locally as ‘‘San Cipri
an,’’ from the saint’s day upon which it occurred; and while the area covered was not so wide as that covered by the hurricane of September 13, 1928, nor was the estimated wind velocity as high, nevertheless the damage done in the area covered was much more severe than in 1928. The center of the storm entered Puerto Rico between Ceiba and Fajardo and passed in a generally western direction veering slightly north and left the Island somewhere between Dorado and Arecibo, and then continued practically along the coast of the Island past Aguadilla. Warnings of the approach of the storm were received early on the morning of September 26, and all mayors of municipalities and police stations throughout the Island were notified at once in order that preliminary arrangements might he made to safeguard lives and property. A further warning was sent to all police stations and municipalities at four o’clock in the afternoon. At the beginning of the hurricane season the Governor had instructed the mayors to organize emergency committees in each municipality, and to give wide publicity to a plan whereby official information from the Governor’s office as to any hurricane warnings would be communicated to the people by signal flags to be flown from the Cathedral and City Hall in each town. This plan functioned perfectly. I believe it is safe to say that every inhabitant of the Island knew of the hurricane’s approach before noon; certainly no one was caught without ample time to make adequate preparations. During the day, the Governor called a meeting of the Chief of Insular Police, the Adjutant General of the National Guard, the Commissioner of Health, the Commissioner of the Interior, the President of the Senate, the Manager of the Puerto Rican Chapter of the American Red Cross, and a few other prominent citizens, to take preliminary steps for handling any situation which might arise. The National Guard was instructed to be in readiness, the Commissioner of the Interior was directed to mobilize road overseers and workmen in order to reestablish communications

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immediately after the passage of the storm, and the police were given instructions to centralize people in the strongest buildings wherever it was thought necessary. The headquarters for all activities were maintained in the Governor’s office. By 11 o’clock at night, telephone and telegraph communication to San Juan from the eastern end of the Island was out entirely, and the storm was raging in full fury. The climax of the storm reached San Juan shortly after midnight, and by three o’clock in the morning the force of the wind at San Juan had died down considerably. The force of the wind was tremendous, and impossible to describe. At daylight I drove out through San Juan, Hato Rey and Rio Piedras, and along the road toward Caguas, as far as it was opened. The work of the Department of the Interior and of the police in opening roads and restoring communications cannot be praised too highly. Many of these men left their own homes in ruins, their families shelterless, to report for work before daylight and get the lines open. The police were active all during the storm and it is no exaggeration to say that the loss of life would have been much heavier had it not been for their splendid work. The activity of the Department of the Interior can be judged from the fact that shortly after dawn the main road from San Juan toward Caguas was passable to about one kilometer beyond Rio Piedras. At that time, of course, San Juan was completely isolated; it was not known whether the storm had swept the entire Island or not, and the spectacle presented in San Juan, Hato Rey, and Rio Piedras was extremely disheartening. Hundreds of houses were blown away entirely, roads and streets were a mass of debris, all light and telephone poles and wires were down, trees were uprooted everywhere and even strong houses had suffered severely through losing roofs and doorways and windows. The National Guard was ordered into immediate service and distributed over the storm-stricken area. In all of the towns, prisoners and volunteer workers went to work clearing streets. As the day wore on, the injured began to be brought in from the country and reports of the death toll and of the injuries mounted. The Red Cross immediately established feeding stations and, within twenty-four hours, supplies, both medical and food, had either arrived at the principal towns in the stormcovered area, or were on the road. During the day of September 27, the Governor’s Secretary, Mr. Woodfin L. Butte, was directed to take advantage of the offer of the Pan-American Airways and to make a flight over the eastern part of the Island in an attempt to delimit the storm area and determine the approximate percentage of damage to houses and buildings. On the following day, the Governor, with his Military Aide, Lt. William G. Caldwell, made another flight from San Juan westward as far as Mayag€uez in order to determine the damage and limits of the storm in that area. By these two flights, the entire northern half of the Island was covered and information as to the relative situation of the different municipalities was available much more quickly than would it have been possible had we waited for reports brought overland. We were also thus enabled to check up on exaggerated reports which came in from some towns which had been only lightly hit. On September 27, a preliminary citizens’ meeting was called for the purpose of forming a Hurricane Relief and Rehabilitation Commission to cooperate with the Red Cross and to take such other steps as might be considered necessary. At this meeting, Dr. Jose Pad
ın, Commissioner of Education, was selected Chairman of the Executive Committee; Hon. Pablo Berga, Judge District Court of San Juan,

Latinos and the Great Depression

Secretary; and Mr. Frederick King, Treasurer. The other members of the Executive Committee were: Col. George L. Byroade, 65th Infantry, and Chief Justice Emilio del Toro of the Supreme Court of Puerto Rico. Two subcommittees were formed, one on Price Control, the chairmanship of which was given to Hon. Ira K. Wells, Judge of the United States District Court for the District of Puerto Rico, with whom were appointed Mr. Antonio Vicens R
ıos and Hon. Jose Ram
on Qui~ nones, Special Prosecuting Attorney at Large of the Insular Government. The other subcommittee was on Finance. The members of this subcommittee were: Hon. Luis Sanchez Morales, Chairman, Mr. Manuel Gonz
alez, Mr. Frederick King, Mr. Victor Braegger, Mr. Fred. Holmes, Mr. Emilio S. Jim
enez, Mr. Diego Carri
on, Hon. R. H. Todd, Mr. William H. Ferguson, Mr. P. J. Rosaly, Mr. Jaime Annexy, Hon. R. Sancho Bonet, Hon. R. Arjona Siaca, Mr. Enrique Calimano, and Col. Ra
ul Esteves. The Executive Committee and both of these subcommittees did excellent work. Prices of necessities were prevented from rising by the vigorous work of the Committee on Price Control and by the threat of the Governor to publish in every newspaper in the Island the names of every merchant who raised prices during the period of the emergency. The Finance Committee collected the sum of $74,998.09 to aid hurricane sufferers. The Red Cross was designated as the agency in charge of food and shelter relief for the Committee, and the Department of Health was given charge of the care and hospitalization of the injured. All members of the committees and all officers of the Insular Government worked in the closest harmony and with the finest spirit of cooperation. The National Red Cross sent field representatives by air who aided greatly in the immediate emergency. So many persons aided so generously in the disaster relief work that it is impossible to call attention to each one by name. As soon as radio station WKAQ was in shape to operate, the Governor broadcast an appeal to the people in general to make common cause in each municipality for the reconstruction of homes and for the clearing away of debris. Embodied in the radio address was the thought that due to the difficult economic situation in the continental United States, we must not and could not expect to receive such generous aid as we had received after the disaster in 1928. To say that the people of Puerto Rico in general responded to this appeal is to put it mildly, since as a matter of fact they demonstrated a splendid spirit from the very moment the storm ceased. Scarcely had the wind died down when throughout the stormstricken area people were at work everywhere with hammer and saw repairing, so far as they could, the damage caused by the hurricane. Naturally, the poor suffered most in the hurricane due to the flimsy construction of their houses and to the fact that the poor have no reserves against disaster. The Commanding Officer of the United States troops in Puerto Rico was especially active in relief work and placed all of the army supplies in the Island at the disposal of the relief committee and the Red Cross. Dr. Jose Pad
ın was instructed to use the teachers of the Island in a survey to determine the property loss exclusive of damage to crops, and the Commissioner of Agriculture and Commerce, Hon. Edmundo D. Col
on, was instructed to make a survey of the monetary damage to crops. The Insular police took care of reporting the number of persons killed and injured. As a result of the careful estimates made by the Department of Education, it was found that the total value of property loss

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through the storm, exclusive of damages to school houses and government buildings, and also exclusive of damages to crops, reached the total of $14,975,850.06. The Commissioner of Agriculture and Commerce estimated damages to crops at approximately $20,000,000, while the estimated value of public-school property destroyed was $395,745 and the destruction of rented-school property amounted to $196,750; the total estimated damage to the Island of Puerto Rico through the storm thus reaching $35,568,345.06. The dead as an immediate result of the hurricane numbered 257 and over 4,820 persons were injured, many of them seriously. The number of injured who died later as a result of their injuries has not been determined. Forty-nine municipalities were affected in a more or less serious way and according to the report of the Red Cross, 76,925 families were in actual distress for a greater or less[er] period as a result. All money collected by the Relief Committee was turned over to the Red Cross, except a small part used for immediate purchases of relief material. The emergency fund of the Insular Government, created by Act No. 33, approved April 28, 1932, proved its wisdom and worth. On the second day after the hurricane, the Emergency Committee voted $40,000 to be spent by the Red Cross in immediate relief work and later, from time to time, other sums were appropriated for relief work as they were needed. The establishment of this fund was a wise measure and it may be said here in passing that the administration should resist any attempts to dissipate the moneys in this fund or to use the same for any purpose other than emergencies. The total amount used from the emergency fund as a result of the hurricane of September 26 27, 1932, was $164,285.12, including a loan of $50,000 to the Fruit Growers Cooperative Credit Association, which was used for straightening and re-setting citrus trees and for the purchase of fertilizer urgently needed as a result of the storm, and without which it is generally conceded the 1933 citrus fruit crop could never have been properly matured. This $50,000 was a loan and is believed to be amply secured. The final report of the American Red Cross, Puerto Rico Chapter, is attached hereto as Appendix ‘‘A.’’ Some details as to property loss will be found in the tables. This severe hurricane, striking an Island just beginning to recover from the 1928 storm and during a time of worldwide depression had far-reaching effects upon agriculture, banking, and government finance, and especially upon the condition of the laboring classes. Source: James R. Beverley, excerpts from the Thirty-Third Annual Report of the Governor of Puerto Rico (1933), http://newdeal.feri.org/pr/pr12.htm.

231. Eleanor Roosevelt, ‘‘Our Island Possessions,’’ 1934 The Great Depression (1929–1939) devastated the Puerto Rican economy. In order to improve relations, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) made a trip to the Caribbean in the summer of 1934. Mrs. Roosevelt, an involved first lady, as she wrote a regular column in the magazine, Woman’s Home Companion. The following are her impressions of Puerto Rico, describes the poverty and the impact of the Great Depression, the needle-work cottage industry and Mrs. Roosevelt’s opinion that the women received fair wages in the garment factories. But regardless of the first lady’s impressions, needleworkers were far from happy and labor unrest persisted.

Latinos and the Great Depression

Many times I wonder whether the people of the United States have any real interest in our insular possessions. I doubt if many of us even know that we own the Virgin Islands or Puerto Rico or Hawaii. We do realize the Philippines are in our possession chiefly, I think, because we have disagreed so much as to whether they ought to be given their freedom or not; and I think it is generally realized that we control the Canal Zone, particularly since the fleet came through! Occasionally when our navy planes make a flight to Hawaii someone says, ‘‘I suppose we do have some interest in that island in the Pacific.’’ A few people every winter take a trip to Puerto Rico or the Virgin Islands and discover that they do not have to have passports, but even so, few of us fully take in the fact that these islands are a part of the United States of America and that what befalls them and their people is of great interest to us as American citizens. Last winter I took a trip by air, leaving Miami early in the morning, spending a night in Haiti and arriving at three o’clock the next afternoon in the Virgin Islands after stopping only for a few minutes in Puerto Rico. I had been told that the Virgin Islands had been costing our government each year a little more until finally Congress had become convinced that it would be more economical to spend enough to rehabilitate the people and try to make them self-supporting. They have, therefore, begun to work out a real plan. The population of these islands is partly white and partly colored. The last owners were Danish and many of the customs and habits are those inherited from Danish rule and many, many of the people have been accustomed to turning to the government or to the heads of big plantations for complete guidance and care. So the first thing that needs to be done is to build up a sense of self-reliance and initiative. On landing at St. Thomas, which is on the whole the loveliest of these islands, we drove over a road made by C.W.A. [Civil Works Administration] labor to the top of a mountain where we could look down on the sparkling green water of the bay beyond. There are beautiful beaches for bathing on St. Thomas and apparently sharks do not frequent the waters, at least near the shore, for I bathed there the following morning without receiving any warning as to these dread animals. We visited the hospital for children, held a meeting of the women in the school, went to the operative stores which will, I think, be more successful as the workers get better teaching, then drove off to what will shortly be a new hotel. It is being erected in a most charming spot, on top of a steep hill where the old tower known as Bluebeard’s Tower looks across at another hill where Blackbeard’s Tower stands.… Bluebeard’s Tower is being preserved so visitors may walk to the top and get a view of the harbor. The hotel is being built around three sides of a square. The dining room is to have a porch for dining al fresco. I can hardly wait to go down and stay in this hotel and I hope that the methods of travel both by air and by water will shortly be improved so that a trip to St. Thomas will be a pleasant winter holiday, financially within the reach of anyone of moderate means. There are two other islands within easy reach of St. Thomas: St. John where the bay trees grow which once produced the bay rum our fathers used, and St. Croix. We visited St. Croix which has two small towns and some agricultural land, flat and not as interesting, but more productive. Here agricultural and housing experiments are being tried. On the third day of the trip I visited Puerto Rico. If you want to know anything of this island and its people you must spend several days there, and you will enjoy

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all these days and wish you could stay longer for its scenery is beautiful and varied. Mountains, rich valleys, seashore, and plains are all combined in an island one hundred miles long and thirty miles wide. Puerto Rico has a better rainfall than the Virgin Islands and we hope that the frequent hurricanes of the past three years are not going to continue for hitherto she has only suffered occasionally from these. They have done a great deal of harm, practically ruining the coffee plantations and citrus and coconut groves. On this account, many Puerto Ricans have gone from the rural districts into the outskirts of the cities where dangerous slums have been formed. The population of about 1,600,000 people cannot be fed by what is produced on the land no matter what improved methods of agriculture are instituted. We are at last waking up to the fact that a long-term plan must be made for this island and it is at present being worked out, including all the government departments concerned and a committee of Puerto Ricans themselves. There are questions of education and questions of health and economic questions that we could discuss at length, but the industry which largely employs women will probably be of primary interest to the women of our country. This is the needlework industry. In some districts even little girls in the school are never without their needlework. When the women are not doing housework and as soon as a little girl has eaten her lunch between school sessions, this handwork is taken up. To make it more profitable, the women should be taught to work with more exactness and perhaps with greater perfection and detail, although many of them do very beautiful work now. A few of them who work in the factories earn fair wages, but for sewing done in the home they are paid absurdly low wages. For drawing threads and cutting a dozen handkerchiefs out of a piece of cloth, a woman receives one and one-half cents a dozen; for whipping the edges and doing a small embroidered design in each corner, a woman receives three cents per dozen. The finished handkerchief is sold for seven cents a dozen in a retail shop in the United States. The material used is so poor that it will certainly not last as long as would a machine-made handkerchief of slightly better material. Another example is the nightgowns scalloped on neck and sleeves with a hand-embroidered design and hand-sewn seams. A woman receives two dollars a dozen for these and spends two weeks making them. The manufacturer sells them to a distributing agent in United States for somewhere around eight dollars a dozen and you buy them from a department store for one dollar and ninety-five cents each, twenty-three dollars and forty cents a dozen. The standards of living in Puerto Rico are low. The population is increasing rapidly. This island is closely tied to our country the people are constantly coming here to establish themselves and we are sending some of our own people to Puerto Rico to work and live on the island. Therefore, let us take a more intelligent interest in our beautiful possession with its possibilities for a happy people who unfortunately have been buffeted by nature and exploited by man. So women, let us think a little about our future citizens in all these islands and try to bring about, wherever our flag lies, conditions of which we can be proud. Source: Roosevelt, Eleanor. ‘‘Our Island Possessions.’’ In Woman’s Home Companion, October 1934. In Women in World History, a project of the Center for History and New Media, George Mason University, http://chnm.gmu.edu/wwh/modules/lesson16/lesson16.php?s 5.

Latinos and the Great Depression

232. Excerpts from Caroline Manning, ‘‘Employment of Women in Puerto Rico,’’ 1934 On August 28, 1933, 2,000 workers went on strike in the city of Mayag€ uez, Puerto Rico, for better wages, a safe workplace, and the right to unionize. They wanted wages that conformed to U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s (1882–1945) National Recovery Administration (NRA) industrial codes. NRA legislation was passed to promote fair competition, and set minimum wages and maximum hours. The report below was undertaken by the Department of Labor to try to find ways to adapt these codes to the local situations in Puerto Rico. The report found that the manufacturers were undermining the codes and sending work to Puerto Rico and Texas where women doing piece work at home were being paid below the minimum wage. Because they worked through agents it was hard to regulate wages because entire families would work on the production line. Only by working as a family unit could they compete with factories on the mainland.

COMPARISON WITH MAINLAND WAGES Unquestionably, wages are low in Puerto Rico, but on two occasions during the survey employers complained of competition from the mainland. Both had been contracting with New York firms for the manufacture of children’s dresses and both had refused to renew their contracts because they could not compete with homework conditions in Pennsylvania. Another New York manufacturer who still had contracts in Puerto Rico was sending quantities of children’s dresses to Texas, where Mexican women were engaged in the home-work embroidery at earnings not unlike those of the Puerto Rican women. In a recent study of women workers in Texas by the United States Women’s Bureau, about two-thirds (65.2 percent) of the 89 women home workers interviewed for whom an estimate of hourly earnings on infants’ and children’s garments could be computed, averaged less than 5 cents an hour. Twenty-six of these women received less than 3 cents an hour and 10 of them even less than 2 cents. Only 5 women had hourly earnings as high as 10 cents. Not only in home-work embroidery but in factory work are conditions in some parts of the mainland little better than those in Puerto Rico. For example, in a study made by the Women’s Bureau of wages in 1932 33 before the N.R.A. code became effective, 29.5 percent of the women in cotton-dress factories in New Orleans and 19.2 percent of those in Atlanta were earning less than $3 a week. At about this same time, factory wages in the needle trades in Puerto Rico, as shown in the report of the Insular Department of Labor, averaged $3.32.

ASSISTANCE BY MEN AND CHILDREN Although most of the home workers were women, a few young men were scheduled, most of whom were very adept in handling the needle, especially in hemming handkerchiefs. In one family, two brothers were supporting the household in this way when there was no work in the fields. By sewing fast every moment, together

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they were averaging about 2 cents an hour, and by working from sunrise until long after sunset together they earned about 50 cents a day. A considerable number of children (29) were making contracts with the agents and were held directly responsible by the agents for the sewing done in their homes, as if they had been adult workers. Only 6 of these 29 children were enrolled in schools, which left most of them with much free time for sewing, and it was not unusual to find them working 7, 8, 9, and 10 hours a day, frequently prolonging the workday 1 or 2 hours into the evening. The earnings of the children are petty amounts, not unlike those of their elders. Half of the 25 who were able to give definite information about the amount of work done counted on less than 50 cents a week when they were busy, while 9 with the highest earnings usually made from $1 to $1.50 a week. Estimated hourly earnings computed on this basis showed that the majority were earning about 1=2 cent or 1 to 2 cents an hour. Source: Department of Labor, United States Printing Office, Washington, D.C. 1934, pp. 14 15, 20.


ez to President Franklin D. 233. Letter from Pastor Alberto Ba Roosevelt’s Administration, October 11, 1935 This is a letter from Alberto B
aez, a New York Methodist minister, who worked with Puerto Ricans. He wrote to U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882– 1945), who was president from 1933 to 1945, about the needs of the Puerto Rican people and the role that English played. B
aez, the grandfather of folk singer Joan B
aez, was from Monterey, Mexico, and had worked with Puerto Ricans for almost 20 years. He talks about how the Depression devastated the Puerto Rican people who, although they were American citizens often did not know their entitlements as citizens because they did not understand English. Baez recommended that the people serving and supervising Puerto Ricans know Spanish as well as English, which was a rather controversial suggestion at the time.

Dear Sir: I have read your letter with the greatest of interest and delight, because I have been waiting for an opportunity like this to express my opinion about the condition of the community where I have been working for almost 20 years. 2. The problem in this community is unique. The people are Puerto Ricans, American citizens, who never have the privileges of citizens, because they do not speak the language, and do not understand American living. They have been terribly hit by the Depression, helped by the Home Relief and unfortunately greatly spoiled by it also. 3. Their needs? Jobs, in the first place, of course. But strange as it might seem this is not the most important thing. They need to be convinced that they must learn to speak the English language. The older generation will not go to public schools. They must have a teacher who can talk to them in their own language, because their knowledge of it is very, very limited. They need almost to be forced to give more attention to their health. They need sane recreation to take them away from their slums. All this taking into consideration that a great majority do not speak English and are utterly foreign. The people selected to work for them, must understand them and must speak both languages, and one who has the American as well as the Spanish point of view.

Latinos and the Great Depression

4. If anything is ever going to be done for the Puerto Ricans in Brooklyn, and I can be of any help, I will be more than happy to do all in my power, to help better their condition in general. Very respectfully yours, Alberto B. Baez Pastor, First Spanish Methodist Church Source: Franklin Delano Roosevelt Library, President’s Personal File, Entry 21, Box 22, October 11, 1935.

234. Excerpt from a Letter by Mervin J. Sacks, ‘‘Puerto Rican Children; Results of Group Study Here Intended to Apply Locally,’’ 1936 This letter is in response to an article that appeared criticizing a report by Mervin J. Sacks on ‘‘A Study of the Reactions of Puerto Rican Children in New York City to Psychological Tests.’’ According to Sacks, the study attempted to find whether the difficulties in educational, social, and economic adjustments of Puerto Ricans in New York as reported by teachers, social workers, and others were due to a deficiency in intelligence. Sacks, one of the study’s three investigators, insisted that it was not the intention of the researchers to condemn an entire race, and he defended the question that the report raised. The report found that 65 percent of the Puerto Rican students studied scored below the average control group and that steps should be taken to prevent immigration of those of substandard intelligence from all nations and to hold Puerto Rican statehood in abeyance.

We raised these questions: ‘‘Is this New York group of Puerto Ricans representative of children in Puerto Rico?’’ and ‘‘Does Puerto Rico export to New York mostly her lowest strata and worst Mental levels?’’ The fact that 65 percent of our subjects scored below the average of the control group leads to two conclusions: 1. That steps should be taken to prevent the immigration into this country of individuals of subnormal mentality from all nations, since these individuals become an educational, social, and financial burden to the community, as well as the victims of their own inadequacy in our complex environment. 2. That the projected grant of statehood to Puerto Rico should be held in abeyance, pending a thorough and impartial investigation of economic and social conditions on the island, and of the mental qualifications of its inhabitants. Source: Mervin J. Sacks, ‘‘Puerto Rican Children,’’ New York Times, February 19, 1936, p. 18.

235. Excerpt from ‘‘Harlem Relief Is Poor; Misery Caused Race War,’’ 1935 The Chicago Defender reported on an incident in Harlem that broke out after an alleged false report over the shooting of a 16-year-old Puerto Rican. The Defender, a newspaper that was black-owned and militant in its defense of black Americans and other minorities, describes the unrest and attributes the

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causes of confrontations in Harlem to a 55–65 percent unemployment rate and the uneven appropriation of that was one-third that of the relief to Harlem other parts of New York. The mainstream press blamed the discontent on communists but, according to the defender, the real culprit was poverty.

REDS NOT TO BLAME The Harlem disturbance can be laid to economic causes and poor housing conditions, one leader said. The false report that 16-year-old Lino Rivers, a Porto Rican youth, had been killed in S. K. Kress’ 5 and 10 cent store was sufficient to start the fireworks. That the unemployment situation may have had something to do with the outbreak is evidenced by the fact that between 55 and 65 percent of the people of Harlem are jobless and that the relief given Colored people is about one-third of that given in other sections of the city, and as a consequence they live in misery and poverty. The committee was further told that the relief for a family in Harlem is $31 per month lower than for families in other sections of the city. Unless Mayor LaGuardia takes steps to have this situation remedied, it is likely that there will be more riots and perhaps the 650 police on duty this time won’t be sufficient to handle the trouble the next time. Source: Chicago Defender, March 30, 1935, p. 1.

236. Thyra Edwards, ‘‘Social Worker Visits Spanish Loyalist Men,’’ 1938 In the period from 1936 to 1939, the Spanish Civil War consumed progressives; it was a war against fascism. In 1936, the military, led by Gen. Francisco Franco, overthrew the Spanish republican government. Franco’s forces were supported by Nazi Germany and fascist Italy. Americans numbering about 2,800 volunteered to defend the Republic of Spain. They formed a little known, but well-respected, legion called the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. It was an ill-fated war that ushered in a brutal dictatorship. The Lincoln Brigade fought alongside 35,000 other volunteers from other countries, with large numbers of volunteers coming from Latin America. Together with the Spaniards they fought to protect democracy. Labor activist Basil Cueria was one of many Cubans in the United States who volunteered to fight in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade duing the Spanish Civil War. The Chicago Defender was one of the few U.S. newspapers reporting objectively on the conflict that set the stage for World War II.

MADRID, Spain, Feb. 11 Captain Basil Ceuria [Cueria], tall, broad, muscular, dark brown, nearly swung Joaquin Ordoci off his feet in the warmth of his rugged embrace. Ordoci, vice president of the Cuban Federation of Labor, was visiting Cubans in the Spanish trenches. Many of them, as he, exiled from Cuba under the terror of the fascist, Machado. Singly and in groups these Cubans gathered around him, embracing him, clapping him heavily on the back eager and hearty in their greeting.

Latinos and the Great Depression

ANXIOUS TO HEAR STORY None was warmer than Basil Cueria. Race man. Captain of the machine gun company of the 46th division, whose headquarters we were then visiting. And none was more heartily responded to. I, of course was restless for the greetings to end so that I might have an opportunity talk to Cueria and get his story why he came to Spain and how and what he thought of it all, now that he is here. He came in January, he said, and by way of the U.S.A. He is one of hundreds of Cuban trade unionists and liberals whom the Fascist Machado persecuted until they had to flee the country at the risk of their lives. He came to New York in 1933 and began earning his living as a professional baseball player with the Cuban Stars and subsequently with the Havana Red Stars. When Italy invaded Ethiopia he found himself again involved in the struggle against oppression the thing that had forced him to leave Cuba. He became active in the various groups and communities aiding Ethiopia and in these groups found many of his exiled Cuban compatriots including Ordoci. JOINS INTERNATIONAL BRIGADE From Ethiopia, Mussolini advanced into Spain. And Cueria with other Cuban compatriots (there are 200 of them in El Campeseno’s division) made the difficult and devious journey to Spain joining the International Brigade, aiding the Spaniards, despoiled of their regular army, in successfully holding back Mussolini’s advance. Cueria arrived in Spain the 6th of January. By February 11th, after a hurried month of intensive training, he entered the fight on the Jarama front. By the 17th he had advanced to the front line trenches and ‘‘started battering the fascists.’’ Shortly he became a machine gunner in the Lincoln battalion of the International brigade. There on the Jarama front, he says, fighting was at high speed and in a continuous cold rain. ‘‘But I was very enthusiastic,’’ he adds. ‘‘In our trenches we fight fascism. If we’re defeated, the working class of the world is defeated.’’ Source: Chicago Defender, February 12, 1938, p. 12.

237. Arthur Garfield Hays, ‘‘Defending Justice in Puerto Rico,’’ 1937 One of the most infamous days in Puerto Rican history is the Ponce massacre of March 21, 1937. This event occurred during the administration of U.S.appointed Gov. Blanton Winship (1869–1947) who was the military governor of Puerto Rico from 1934 to 1938. Winship, in an alliance with the sugar barons and elite Puerto Ricans, ruled the island. He is generally blamed for the massacre in which the police shot and wounded 100 demonstrators, killing 20—including one woman, and a seven-year-old girl. The Puerto Rican Nationalist Party had organized a march in the southern city of Ponce to protest the prolonged incarceration of Nationalist Party leader Pedro Albizu Campos (1891–1965). They demanded Puerto Rico’s independence from the United States. Winship threw fuel on the fire by revoking the permits for the protest a

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~a’’ short time before the demonstration was scheduled to begin. As ‘‘La Borinquen (the national anthem of Puerto Rico) was played, the demonstrators began to march. The militia ordered a halt and then began to shoot. Police shot and clubbed the horrified marchers, following them to the entrance of their houses as they tried to get away from rioting police. About 150 demonstrators were arrested in what was one of the bloodiest episodes in Puerto Rican history. The following is an account that was written by an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union and appeared in the Nation, a progressive weekly magazine.

In the fall of 1935, five members of the Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico sought to make their way to a meeting which students at the Puerto Rico University were to hold to protest against certain remarks made by Pedro Albizu Campos, the Nationalist leader. The story is that the Nationalists were stopped by the police, that they shot at the police, and that, as a result of the fracas, four of the five Nationalists in the automobile were killed. It was said that they carried bombs and guns. In February, 1936, Col. Riggs, head of the insular police, was assassinated by two Nationalists. The assassins were seized and, while in the hands of the police, were shot. Although Col. Riggs was popular with the Puerto Ricans and was himself a believer in independence, the cold-blooded murder of the two Puerto Rican ‘‘martyrs’’ aroused not only the Nationalists but great numbers of Puerto Ricans who opposed Nationalist methods. Americans thought of the murder of Col. Riggs; Puerto Ricans thought of the murder of the two assassins. Albizu Campos and other Nationalist leaders were charged with conspiracy to overthrow the government of the United States and later, in July 1936, were convicted and sentenced to six years in jail. Gov. Blanton Winship apparently felt it was necessary to deal with the Nationalists with a heavy hand and acted to suppress not only those who were militantly demanding Puerto Rican freedom but also a united front of groups opposed to the conviction of Albizu Campos. Parades and meetings of Nationalists and other protesting groups were prohibited. The Puerto Ricans take seriously their Organic Act guaranteeing the rights of free speech and assemblage, and resentment grew apace. On March 21, 1937, the Nationalists announced that they would hold a parade and meeting in the town of Ponce. A permit was first given by the mayor of the town. At the last moment it was canceled. The insular police commanded by Col. Orbeta, who was acting under orders of the Governor, prohibited the parade as it was about to start. The national hymn of Puerto Rico was played, the crowd cheered, the parade advanced. Suddenly there was shooting, and when it was all over, it appeared that the casualties were 20 killed including those who died later, among whom were two police officers and from 150 to 200 wounded, among whom were 6 police officers. Gov. Winship reported to Washington that several ‘‘divisions’’ of the so-called’’ Army of Liberation’’ had arranged a concentration in the town of Ponce, that a parade was forbidden; that nevertheless the Nationalists insisted upon proceeding; that when the command ‘‘Forward march!’’ was given, a Nationalist fired a shot killing a policeman on the left of the chief of police and another Nationalist fired a shot killing a policeman on the right of the chief of police; that fighting then broke out from all sides as well as from roofs and balconies where Nationalists were stationed, and that casualties resulted. He ended his report by commending the patience and consideration of the police.

Latinos and the Great Depression

The leading citizens of Ponce formed a committee of prominent citizens of San Juan and asked that they make an investigation. The proposed commission consisted of Emilio Belaval, president of the Athenaeum, who acted as secretary; Mariano Acosta Velarde, president of the Puerto Rican Bar Association; Lorenzo Pineiro, president of the Teachers’ Association; Dr. Manuel Diaz Garcia, president of the Puerto Rican Medical Association; Antonio Avuso, editor of the Imparciale [sic]; Francisco M. Zeno, editor of the Correspondencia; and Davilla Ricci, assistant editor of the Mondo. None of the commission were Nationalists. Request was made to the American Civil Liberties Union to appoint the chairman of the commission, and the writer was so appointed. The commission undertook to investigate not only the events of Ponce on March 21 but the general subject of civil rights and liberties in Puerto Rico. Hearings were held at Ponce beginning Friday, May 14, and were thereafter adjourned to San Juan. Evidence as to what happened on March 21 was adduced not only from disinterested eyewitnesses but from a series of photographs which tell the story in incontestable fashion. Photographs show that the ‘‘divisions’’ of the ‘‘Army, of Liberation’’ consisted of about eighty young men wearing black blouses and white trousers, about twelve girls dressed in white as nurses, and a brass band of about six pieces. The Nationalists, known as ‘‘cadets,’’ carried no arms; the girls did not even have Red Cross kits. A photograph shows the scene just before the shooting. About eighteen policemen, armed with revolvers, shotguns, and tear-gas bombs, stood in front of the line of these eighty boys and twelve girls; about twenty policemen armed with Thompson submachine-guns were in the rear; a number of armed police were on the street along the side; a crowd of men, women, and children stood across the way watching the parade. The Nationalists had brought their wives, mothers, and children along to see the parade. The evidence showed that there was no shooting whatever from any roofs or balconies, and this was confirmed by the district attorney of police, Perez Marchand, who made the first investigation and who later retired as district attorney because, according to him, he was not given a free hand in his inquiries. One of the photographs shows a policeman actually firing at the crowd and other policemen drawing their guns, all in menacing posture. The police who were wounded or killed seem to have been caught in a cross fire. The commission unanimously reported that the people of Puerto Rico have properly described the occurrence as the ‘‘massacre of Ponce.’’ I shall never forget the photograph of those cadets whom newspapers have described as ‘‘ruffians’’ and ‘‘gangsters,’’ standing quietly with their hands at their sides waiting to be shot defenseless but not one of them running away. Source: Reprinted with permission from the July 3, 1937 issue of The Nation. For subscription information, call 1-800-333-8536. Portions of each week’s Nation magazine can be accessed at http:// www.thenation.com.

238. Excerpts from the Testimony of Florentino Irizarry before the Tolan Committee on Internal Migration, 1940 The Tolan Committee was also known as the Committee on Interstate Migration of the U.S. House of Representatives. Chaired by Congressman John H. Tolan (1877–1947), a Democrat from the state of California, the committee held

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hearings during 1940. The following excerpt is the testimony of Florentino Irizarry, a Puerto Rican immigrant who worked as a porter, got an education through correspondence school, and ran a failed business. Because of racism, he could not get a job as a teacher. In Puerto Rico, there was no opportunity for him. The significance of this testimony is that it is a candid answer to the question of why Puerto Ricans migrated to the United States. The answer was that they were searching and hoping for a better life.

TESTIMONY OF FLORENTINO IRIZARRY, NEW YORK, N.Y. In 1919, I was pretty near 17 years old and I had finished my public-school education in a small town in the center of the island, and I don’t know how I got the notion that I wanted to further my education. It had come to a standstill there with the eighth grade, so I decided I said that I don’t know where I got the notion but I got it so that I decided to work over there, save some money and buy my way to New York City, which I did, and I landed here in May of 1919. When I came to New York City I found myself in a strange environment. That is to say, I had realized that I had a language handicap in the first place, my education of the eighth grade being just enough to give me a notion about common ordinary words, but not sufficient to carry on a conversation with anybody. Since my notion in coming here was primarily to further my education, I began to cast around for a suitable school, but I could not find it, and then my notion of school disappeared for a while and I got a job as a porter and general utility man in a hotel here. That employment I kept from 1919 to 1921. In 1921, we had a depression here and I was laid off my job. I took the opportunity then to go back to the island and see my folks, and investigate conditions there, and I stayed there for about 7 months and I tried to get some sort of a job. In the meantime, here, I had studied through a correspondence school, and I thought I would be able to be a teacher in a school down there in a small town, but I failed. Therefore, 7 months afterward, I again came to New York City, and again I became a hotel porter in a different hotel. I worked there until 1924. Then, in 1926, I found my way to high school, from which I graduated in 1930. In the meantime, finding that my hotel work conflicted with my education, I decided to save some money and go in a business of my own. Accordingly I opened up a small grocery store of my own and stayed there, in the meantime furthering my education.… [He became a lawyer but times were bad.] So that put an end to my legal career and me out of business, too, and then, because times were very bad, I could not get any credit to continue so I decided to give up in desperation, and after that well, after that I had to go into relief. I had already completed something like 90 points of college work, but in spite of this preparation I could not get anything else but pick-and-shovel work, and I worked 21=2 years as a laborer, that is, 1 year first on relief and afterward they put me as a laborer and there I worked for 21=2 years. To be exact, I was in college and I had been doing very well, but my professors noticed that I was not doing so well after working 2 years as a laborer. I was absent too many times and my work was bad and my marks were worse, so one day my Latin professor asked me, ‘‘What is the matter with you? Look, you have a splendid record, and here all of a sudden you are sinking down,’’ and so well, then I told him the story of how

Latinos and the Great Depression

I had to go out and work and travel to school 21=2 hours, and I was not getting sufficient food and things like that so he gave me a letter, and he went to the Spanish Department to get another letter of recommendation. In all, I got about four letters of recommendation, so I came down to the W.P.A. [Works Progress Administration] offices, and in a week’s time I found myself a teacher. I had the educational qualifications, however. [He was forced to withdraw his application. He was asked if it was under pressure.] I should not say ‘‘pressure’’; what I mean to say is that when I went there and asked for a job, although they were employing people as teachers, with only high school and 2 years of undergraduate work at that time, then a man interviewed me who said he could not give me a class unless I had a degree. Now, I did not report that to some responsible agency because somehow or other I was out of contact with the workaday world. When a man does what I did for 15 years I have known nothing but books, books, and odd jobs, in order to support myself. Naturally, when a man in my position is confronted with a practical problem he is a failure, and that is what happened to me. Well, when I was told that I could not get a clerk’s or a teacher’s job, I asked for a W.P.A. laboring job, so that when I said I used pressure, I meant that I had to resort to something other than my own personal qualifications and my ability. So it is my belief that I sit here as a representative of the Puerto Rican who came here in the early wave of 1919, and probably not so much to get away from Puerto Rico as to satisfy a longing for educational opportunities. At the age of 16 my father had a piece of land and I had not worked in my life, and did not know what life was like, but I was more of the visionary, of the dreamer type. And so I came here, because first of all, knowledge in itself was seductive to my mind and there was lurking in my mind the idea that, if a man was hardworking and willing and capable, somehow or other there must be a way for him in life, either in Puerto Rico or New York City. Well, so you see, that lurked in my mind; but primarily I came here to seek an education and to work, but I did not come here because I was bad off over there. Then I had no consciousness of what being well-off in life meant. And I came here to work for the first time in my life. REASONS FOR PUERTO RICAN MIGRATION All right. Of course, it would be an injustice to say that the Puerto Rican comes here for anything but the fundamental problem that has caused man to migrate throughout the ages. We come here because Puerto Rico does not afford the opportunities for working and developing a fuller life such as a man conceives he is born for. We have 29 high schools in Puerto Rico, teaching us what the larger and fuller life means in European civilization; that is, we have a concept of what life should be, and then we find that it is not that. We want work and can’t get it. We find that the small island is in the hands of two or three centralized corporations, whose only ideal in life seems to be profit, regardless of human welfare, and we are confronted with the problem that we either get away from the island or we starve there or well, yes, practically starve. In the great majority of cases, we get out or starve. Now, the Puerto Rican is naturally a lover of his own native land and I am quite sure in my contacts here with the Puerto Rican element, and my own personal experience, we know that we create a problem here in New York City. For example, we

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know that through language handicaps, through race, through different cultural traditions, we are not an ‘‘assimilable’’ element, and we know that as conditions are today we are distinctly a problem for the city, and for its welfare organizations. We know that in many cases we are looked down upon, we know too that in many more cases we are not wanted, and we know, too, that we have a piece of land of our own that we love, you see, and we prefer to stay here rather than go there; and why? Because we are responding to the elemental urges of human nature; that is, food, primarily, and then of course all the other corollaries of human life. Take the problem, for example, of education. Now, in Puerto Rico education is free and it is not. It is true that we have 29 high schools in the island but if a student finishes public school and then he wants to get a high school education, well, in the first place, he has to pay for his books, and secondly the number admitted is very limited because they have not the facilities, so that the whole problem boils down to this: That unless one belongs to the middle class of people, to the people who have anything, any standing in life, you are not going to get your high school education. And as for college opportunities, well they are nonexistent. That is to say, we have a university and a college but of course those are paying institutions and are only for the ‘‘toppers,’’ but take a man like me today I have a B.A., completed in 1939 in the College of the City of New York, and I am now working for my master’s, and now that could not have been done in Puerto Rico, and well, you see, then, why I am here. Source: Testimony of Florentino Irizarry, New York, U.S. Congress. House Select Committee to Investigate the Interstate Migration of Destitute Citizens. Interstate Migration Hearings (Washington: GPO, 1940 41), p. 122, July 29, 1940 Tolan Committee Hearings. http://newdeal.feri.org/ tolan/tol02.htm.

239. Excerpts from the Testimony of Antonia Arana before the Tolan Committee on Internal Migration, 1940 The Tolan Committee was also known as the Committee on Interstate Migration of the U.S. House of Representatives. Chaired by Congressman John H. Tolan (1877–1947), a Democrat from the state of California, the committee held hearings during 1940. Antonia Arana was married with three children. In Puerto Rico her husband had worked on a farm. He came to the United States and sent for the family. She candidly described her life on the island and the mainland. She refuted the myth that life was cheaper in Puerto Rico. She gave her reasons for coming to the United States. In testifying, she and others were hoping that government cared about the plight of the destitute immigrant and would do something to ameliorate their suffering.

TESTIMONY OF ANTONIA ARANA, NEW YORK, N.Y., REASON FOR MIGRATION TO UNITED STATES … Mrs. ARANA.

Because I became tired of the living conditions in Puerto Rico, living so poorly, and so, since I got these letters from my family telling me about things over here, I decided to come here and make some headway.

Latinos and the Great Depression

Mr. SPARKMAN. Mrs. ARANA.

Mr. SPARKMAN. Mrs. ARANA. Mr. OSMERS. Mrs. ARANA.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. PARSONS. Mrs. ARANA. Mr. PARSONS. Mrs. ARANA. Mr. PARSONS. Mrs. ARANA. Mr. PARSONS. Mrs. ARANA. Mr. PARSONS. Mrs. ARANA. Mr. PARSONS. Mrs. ARANA.

Mr. PARSONS. Mrs. ARANA. Mr. PARSONS. Mrs. ARANA. Mr. PARSONS. Mrs. ARANA.

Your husband is making about the same money here that he made there. Can you live as well here as you could there? But my sister works also, and the money she earns is spent on the family. With the additional salary of a sister working, making another $12 a week, that combines and makes the household income more. You all live together as one household? Yes, sir. May I ask how much it cost to bring you and your three children here? Well, my passage I had half tickets for both children and that is one passage for the children and one for me; that is $57 altogether. Any other questions? Are you working yourself? Not now. Had you been trained in any particular work in the island before you came here? No. You are listed here as a textile finisher. I worked 2 or 3 days in a week, and that is all. How much did you make per week? Well, I’d say I used to work 2 or 3 days a week at $1 a day. About how many days, average days, in a year, did you work, receiving $1 a day? I do not understand your question. How many days a month did you average working in the island before you came to the mainland? That answer was wrong; I meant here. I did not work in the island at all. I got married immediately after graduation from school. Where did you learn the textile finishing? Here in this country. Since you came here? Yes. You had no experience in the island before you came? No, sir. Finishing does not require much experience.

LIVING CONDITIONS IN PUERTO RICO Mr. PARSONS. Mrs. ARANA.

What were your living conditions in the island when you say your husband was making $50 per month? Well, the salary he was making was spent for food and we had just two rooms and no furniture of any kind and the condition

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Mr. PARSONS.

Mrs. ARANA.

of everything was dreary and shabby and having been a highschool graduate I had better notions of living. Well, with the standard of living existing as low as it did, in the island, I should think that $50 a month would be the equivalent of at least $100 or more per month here; is that true? No; that is not true. Prices are almost on the same level, if not higher, because the man pays there $15 for a suit of clothes, and it is so bad that it tears away in 6 months, and if he came to New York and paid $22 or $22.50 it might stand 2 years, so practically they are paying three times the price here. (Whereupon the witness was excused.)

Source: U.S. Congress. House. Select Committee to Investigate the Interstate Migration of Destitute Citizens. Interstate Migration Hearings (Washington: GPO, 1940 41), p. 130, July 29, 1940, http://newdeal.feri.org/search details.cfm?link http://newdeal.feri.org/tolan/tol05.htm.

240. Excerpts from Congressman Vito Marcantonio, ‘‘Five Years of Tyranny,’’ 1939 New York Congressman Vito Marcantonio represented East Harlem from 1935 to 1950. His constituents included Italians, Puerto Ricans, and African Americans who supported his controversial politics. He pushed for civil rights legislation before it was popular. Marcantonio gave this speech before Congress on August 14, 1939, in which he outlined the grievances against the administration of the military governor of Puerto Rico, Blanton Winship (1869– 1947), who he blamed for the Ponce Massacre of 1937 when police shot down 20 peaceful demonstrators. Marcantonio presented these charges to Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes several months before he gave the speech. This has become one of the most important documents in Puerto Rican history.

Ex-Governor Blanton Winship, of Puerto Rico, was summarily removed by the President of the United States on May 12, 1939. I had filed charges against Mr. Winship with the President during two visits that I had with him, and subsequently, on April 27, 1939, I wrote a letter to the President filing additional charges in support of my request for the removal of Mr. Winship. During my visits at the Executive Office of the President of the United States, I informed him of many acts of misfeasance as well as nonfeasance, among which were the tyrannical acts of the Governor, in depriving the people of Puerto Rico of their civil rights, the corruption and rackets that existed, and were made possible only by the indulgence of the governor, and the extraordinary waste of the people’s money.… My written, as well as oral, charges were transmitted by the President to Secretary Ickes, of the Department of the Interior. The Secretary of the Interior, by code, wired Mr. Blanton Winship to return to the United States. In response to this wire, Mr. Winship came here and visited the Secretary of the Interior. The Secretary of the Interior demanded that Mr. Winship resign. Mr. Winship flatly refused to resign, and stated that inasmuch as he was a

Latinos and the Great Depression

Presidential appointee, he would not resign until he had had an opportunity to appeal to the President. After various unsuccessful efforts, Mr. Winship finally saw the President, and pleaded that he be permitted to remain Governor of Puerto Rico on the ground that his resigning while he was under fire might be misinterpreted. What the President told Mr. Winship I do not know. I do know, however, that he made a very unfavorable impression on the President. When Mr. Winship left the White House with the bravado which is characteristic of a swivel chair general, he invited friends of his and newspapermen to visit him in Puerto Rico in September of 1939, thereby giving the impression that he would remain as Governor. On May 11, 1939, I took the floor in the House of Representatives, objecting to exempting Puerto Rico from the provisions of the wage-and-hour amendment, and in that speech I made an attack on Mr. Winship, and revealed that I had made charges against him, and stated specifically that the charges were being investigated by the Department of the Interior at the request of the President of the United States. The following day, the President made the announcement that Admiral William D. Leahy would succeed Mr. Winship as Governor of Puerto Rico. Up to and including the time that this terse announcement was made, Mr. Winship had not resigned. Even a school child knows that the announcement of one’s successor before one has resigned is tantamount to dismissal. Blanton Winship was dismissed by the President of the United States. He devoted all of his time since he was kicked out as Governor to two tasks: first, to that of self-glorification; and second, to further damage the best interests of the people of Puerto Rico. In the second category, his activities were in keeping with his 5 years of terror in Puerto Rico. He acted the part of a slimy lobbyist, and fought by means fair and foul to have the wage-and-hour law amended so that the sugar companies could continue to pay 12 1/2 cents an hour instead of 25 cents an hour, and thereby gain $5,000,000 a year; so that the exploiters of labor in Puerto Rico could continue to pay the intolerable wages they have been paying, a wage system which was made possible under his regime, so that the system of abysmal wage slavery could be perpetuated in Puerto Rico. Up to the very closing days of Congress, this kicked-out governor fought to have Puerto Rican workers removed from the protection of the wage-and-hour law. He made a frantic appeal to the Speaker, Hon. William Bankhead, to suspend the rules and recognize someone who would offer the amendment which would have removed Puerto Rico from the provisions of the wage-and-hour law. This was done after he, together with his stooge and personal lobbyist, James J. Lanzetta, had made all efforts and failed to have the Barden and other amendments considered by the House, which not only would have affected the workers of Puerto Rico but would have also exempted 2,000,000 workers in the United States from the protection of the Fair Labor Standards Act. The welfare of 2,000,000 workers in the United States meant nothing to Blanton Winship or his appointee. The sacrificing of 2,000,000 workers in the States and the sacrificing of labor’s welfare in the States, as well as in Puerto Rico, meant nothing to these gentlemen who were hell-bent on doing the bidding of the financial and industrial corporations of Wall Street that have kept the workers of Puerto Rico in the tentacles of imperialism and wage peonage. I take this occasion to praise the patriotism and statesmanship of our Speaker, Hon. William Bankhead, who treated the dismissed and disgraced ex-Governor of Puerto Rico with a flat and patriotic ‘‘no.’’ This ‘‘no’’ was

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given after I had spoken to the Speaker, who had promised me that there would be no suspension of the rules, or the considering of any legislation that would exempt Puerto Rico from the provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act, at this session of Congress. In the face of these activities, treacherous and detrimental to the people of Puerto Rico, I felt that I should no longer remain silent. I felt that I should not permit this ex-Governor or his stooges to any longer use the prestige of his office which he so disgraced, to the benefit of the exploiters of the Puerto Rican people. I would be derelict if I did not tear off the cloak of virtue in which this destroyer of liberty, protector of grafters, and exploiter of the people of Puerto Rico had enshrouded himself. Therefore, Mr. Speaker, here is his record: In his 5 years as Governor of Puerto Rico, Mr. Blanton Winship destroyed the last vestige of civil rights in Puerto Rico. Patriots were framed in the very executive mansion and railroaded to prison. Men, women, and children were massacred in the streets of the island simply because they dared to express their opinion or attempted to meet in free assemblage. Citizens were terrorized. The courts became devoid of any prestige because of the evil influence exerted upon them by politicians who acted with the connivance and consent of Mr. Winship. American workers were persecuted and shot down whenever they sought to exercise their right to strike, or to organize and protest against the abominable wages that were paid to them by Mr. Winship’s pals. The insular police were militarized and transformed from an honest police organization to an organization of provocateurs and murderers, such as existed in the darkest days of czaristic Russia. Nero played the fiddle while Christians were massacred in the days of ancient Rome. Winship drank cocktails and danced in the Governor’s palace while the police ruthlessly killed and persecuted Puerto Rican citizens. The following are just a few cases illustrative of Winship’s Neroism. Neither time nor space permits me to give a full history, or the list of victims, of which the American people know very little or nothing at all. On Palm Sunday, March 21, 1937, in Ponce, the second largest city in Puerto Rico, the police forces fired with machine guns, rifles, and pistols into a crowd of marching Nationalists. Seventeen were killed, more than 200 wounded. The Nationalists were going to hold a meeting and a parade in Ponce on March 21. The mayor, Tormes, issued a permit. One hour before the time set for the parade, and when the demonstrators were ready to march, the mayor canceled the permit on frivolous grounds. As Winship pointed out in a statement issued after the massacre, the parade was called off by the mayor at the request of Gov. Blanton Winship and Police Chief Col. Orbeta. Gov. Winship went out of San Juan. Col. Orbeta went to Ponce and concentrated there a heavy police force, among which he included all the machine gunners. For many days, the government had been planning action in Ponce. Chief of Police Guillermo Soldevilla, with 14 policemen, placed himself in front of the paraders; Chief Perez Segarra and Sgt. Rafael Molina, commanding 9 men, armed with Thompson machine guns and tear-gas bombs, stood in the back; Chief of Police Antonio Bernardi, heading 11 policemen, armed with machine guns, stood in the east; and another police group of 12 men, armed with rifles, placed itself in the west. The demonstrators, at the order of their leader, and while ‘‘La Borinque~ na,’’ the national song, was being played, began to march. Immediately, they were fired upon

Latinos and the Great Depression

for 15 minutes by the police from the four flanks. The victims fell down without an opportunity to defend themselves. Even after the street was covered with dead bodies, policemen continued firing. More than 200 were wounded; several were killed. Men, women, and children, Nationalists and non-Nationalists, demonstrators, and people passing by, as well as the people who ran away, were shot. They were chased by the police and shot or clubbed at the entrance of their houses. Others were taken from their hiding places and killed. Leopold Tormes, a member of the legislature, told the reporters how a Nationalist was murdered in cold blood by a policeman, after the shooting, in his own arms. A 7-year-old girl, Georgina Maldonado, while running to a nearby church, was shot through the back. A woman, Maria Hernandez, was also killed. Carmen Fernandez, aged 33, was severely wounded. After she fell down, a policeman struck her with his rifle, saying, ‘‘Take this; be a Nationalist.’’ Maria Hernandez was a member of the Republican Party, and while running away, was clubbed twice on her head by a policeman. Dr. Jose N. Gandara, one of the physicians who assisted the wounded, testified that wounded people running away were shot, and that many were again wounded through the back. Don Luis Sanchez Frasquieri, former president of the Rotary Club in Ponce, said that he had witnessed the most horrible slaughter made by police on defenseless youth. No arms were found in the hands of the civilians wounded, nor on the dead ones. About 150 of the demonstrators were arrested immediately afterward, several of them being women. All the Nationalist leaders were also arrested. They were a released on bail. More than 15,000, as was reported by El Mundo, a Puerto Rican newspaper, attended the funerals at Ponce, and more than 5,000 at Mayag€ uez. The above is not a description of the Ponce events by a Puerto Rican Nationalist. It is from a speech of Rep. John T. Bernard, of Minnesota, in Congress and appeared in the Congressional Record of April 14, 1937: ‘‘Does not this bring to mind the Boston Massacre in 1770 and the shooting of Russian peasants by the czar in 1905? Remembering the events of Easter Week in Dublin, 1916, do not you agree with Jay Franklin, Washington commentator for the Stern papers, that Puerto Rico is the Ireland of the Caribbean?’’ April 16 is a legal holiday in Puerto Rico. It is the anniversary of the birthday of Jose de Diego, former speaker of the House of Delegates, noted orator, poet, jurist, and outstanding advocate of independence. Every year, the Nationalist Party celebrates a mass, a demonstration, and a meeting in his honor. Wreaths of flowers are deposited on his tomb. Another demonstration and a meeting are held to honor Manuel Rafael Suarez Diaz, a martyr to the cause of independence. Flowers are deposited on his tomb also. In 1937, a few weeks after the Palm Sunday massacre, the city manager of San Juan, under Winship’s pressure, denied permits for these meetings and demonstrations. As was even reported in the New York newspapers, although the ecclesiastical authorities gave authorization to hold the Mass on the 16th, the Cathedral was closed, and policemen posted at its doors. The cemeteries were closed and the Puerto Rican people forbidden to go in groups larger than two to deposit flowers on the graves of the patriots. Gen. Winship again mobilized the Regular Army and National Guard, subject to call. Arthur Garfield Hays, attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, went to Puerto Rico and investigated the Palm Sunday massacre, and his conclusion as

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reported in the report of the American Civil Liberties Union was as follows: ‘‘The facts show that the affair of March 21 in Ponce was a massacre.’’ Governor Winship tried to cover up this massacre by filing a mendacious report.… However, the photographs that were brought to Secretary Ickes by a committee consisting, among others, of former Congressman Bernard of Minnesota, and myself, photographs of children shot in the back and of police wantonly firing on unarmed people from four sides, could not be ignored. What did the tyrant do? Instead of ceasing the terror, he continued it; and immediately had arrested the friends of people who had been killed, on charges of conspiracy to commit murder. Two trials were held. The first trial resulted in a mistrial, and in the second trial the defendants were acquitted. In the meantime, the reign of terror continued. While the victims of the Ponce massacre were being tried for murder, the police forces were given a free hand to continue the orgy of murder. (Here, as well as in the next omission indicated below, Congressman Marcantonio described in detail a number of killings by the police.) An indignant public opinion forced the Government to convene the grand jury, which … bitterly assailed the practices of the police and tried to determine the responsibility, if any, of the Governor.… They left the door open for further inquiries. Gov. Winship got the law (providing for investigation and indictment of public officers, including the Governor, by a grand jury) repealed soon afterward. So that at the time of the Ponce massacre, denounced in this House by Congressman John T. Bernard on April 14, 1937, in the brilliant and moving speech which appears in the Congressional Record of that date, page 4,499, and to which I referred above, the district judges of Ponce denied a petition made by prominent citizens of that community, who represented every sector of public life, when they asked for the convening of a grand jury to investigate the case. As the law now stands, the citizens are helpless when the aggression originates with the top public officials, because the prosecutors are appointed by and are to a great extent responsible to the Governor. A frame-up ‘‘a la Medici’’ was something at which Mr. Winship would not stop. Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos, a Harvard graduate and leader of the Nationalists, together with several of his followers, were indicted under a post Civil War statute of a conspiracy to insurrect against the Government of the United States. They were framed at the Governor’s palace. Mr. Rockwell Kent, famous American artist, describes what took place at a cocktail party in the Governor’s palace immediately after the first trial, and I quote from his letter to Sen. Henry F. Ashurst, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, dated May 2l, 1939: I was present in San Juan during the progress of the first trial of Albizu Campos for treason, and I was a guest of Gov. Winship’s at a cocktail party on the terrace of his residence a few hours after the conclusion of that first trial through a disagreement of the jury. The party was a large one and the guests were mainly Americans, tourists and residents of San Juan, and upper-class Puerto Ricans. There was naturally a great deal of talk about the trial, and much of this talk centered about Judge Cooper, who had presided. The comments were heatedly pro-government; and in my hearing condolences upon the miscarriage of justice were repeatedly voiced to the judge. These were received without rebuke. At that party, a Puerto Rican friend of mine introduced me to a Mr. Cecil Snyder as the prosecuting attorney in the Campos case. We three withdrew for conversation to a corner of the terrace. My

Latinos and the Great Depression

friend complimented Mr. Snyder upon his brilliant summing up and deplored the judge’s failure to bring in a conviction. Mr. Snyder assured him that he had already received a dispatch from Washington telling him to go ahead with a new trial and that the Department of Justice would back him until he did get a conviction. Mr. Snyder drew a paper from his pocket and handed it to my friend, saying, ‘‘This is to be my next jury. What do you think of them?’’ I recall that my friend was familiar with the name and position of all but one of those listed, and that he assured Mr. Snyder that they could be counted upon for a conviction. This appeared to agree with Mr. Snyder’s own knowledge. The jury of the second trial of Albizu Campos contained several men whose connections were identical with those in the list submitted to my friend by Mr. Snyder. How the prosecuting attorney could determine in advance who would compose his next jury, I don’t know. I do state as a fact that Mr. Snyder said, ‘‘This is to be my next jury.’’ I have subsequently given this information all possible publicity. The defense counsel at the Ponce trials asked me to come to Ponce to testify to what I knew about Federal prejudice. I was accompanied on the plane by the Federal marshal of San Juan. He spent literally hours of the trip attempting to persuade me not to go to Ponce, not even to leave San Juan. He urged me to put myself under his protection, to stay with him at the Condado Hotel, to meet his friends, who, he said, were the people I ought to know in Puerto Rico, and to avoid association with friends of the defendants. He warned me that my life would be in danger from the moment I set foot in Puerto Rico. From the moment of my arrival in Puerto Rico I was viciously attacked in the government-controlled evening paper. Before my appearance on the witness stand, it was published that Cecil Snyder and the prosecuting attorney of Ponce, after a session together of some hours the night before, had agreed that I should not be permitted to testify. It was rumored in Puerto Rico that if I did testify, I would be immediately arrested. A suggestion as to the origin of these rumors is contained in a statement attributed to Cecil Snyder and published in a recent issue of Ken. I was not permitted to testify, although the entire matter of my testimony was put into the record by the defense counsel. You will recall that the Ponce trials resulted in the acquittal of all the defendants. As a result of these experiences my own feeling is, naturally enough, one of serious distrust of Federal Law enforcement in Puerto Rico. Sincerely yours, Rockwell Kent The trial took place, and by a prejudiced jury, by jurors who had expressed publicly, bias and hatred for the defendants, Campos and his colleagues were railroaded to jail. Mr. Speaker, these innocent men languish in Atlanta Penitentiary today because they were convicted by a fixed jury, a jury representing the economic interests of Wall Street in Puerto Rico. They did the bidding of Blanton Winship. An idea of what took place in the jury room is contained in the following letter to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt by Elmer Ellsworth, one of the jurors who convicted Campos: (The letter, written in support of a petition for clemency, concludes …) I cannot refrain from saying that my associates on the jury seemed to be motivated by strong, if not violent, prejudice against the Nationalists and were prepared to convict them, regardless of the evidence. Ten of the jurors were American residents in Puerto Rico and the two Puerto Ricans were closely associated with

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American business interests. It was evident from the composition of the jury that the Nationalists did not and could not get a fair trial. Very sincerely yours, Elmer Ellsworth This frame-up is one of the blackest pages in the history of American jurisprudence. The continuance of this incarceration is repugnant to our democratic form of government; it is repugnant to our Bill of Rights and out of harmony with our goodneighbor policy. There is no place in America for political prisoners. As long as Puerto Rico remains part of the United States, Puerto Rico must have the same freedom, the same civil liberties, and the same justice which our forefathers laid down for us. Only a complete and immediate unconditional pardon will, in a very small measure, right this historical wrong. When we ask ourselves, ‘‘Can it happen here?’’ the Puerto Rican people can answer, ‘‘It has happened in Puerto Rico.’’ Source: Congressional Record of August 14, 1939. Website of Piri Thomas, http://www.cheverote. com/reviews/marcantonio.html.

PART XV Mexican Americans and the Great Depression The 1930s should have been a building decade for people of Mexican extraction in the United States. The 1930 U.S. Census reported that 56.6 percent of the 1,422,533 were U.S. born (the total is grossly undercounted). By the end of the 1920s, 51 percent of the Mexican population lived in urban areas versus 56 percent of the total population. The movement to the cities frightened Americans and touched off anti-Mexican drives which in some places ended with the Klu Klux Klan burning their crosses. The 1930 census legitimized the racist nativist hysteria by listing Mexicans and Mexican Americans as a separate race. The Great Depression of the 1930s was a struggle for survival for most people of Mexican origin in the United States. Like for most, the challenge was how to find food, shelter, and clothing. From 1929 to 1932, an estimated 13 million workers lost their jobs; unemployment rose nationally to 15 million. By 1933, Los Angeles was the favored port of entry for Mexicans where general unemployment hit 41.6 percent. White ‘‘Americans’’ began to search for what at one time was called ‘‘Mexican work.’’ They felt Mexicans were taking jobs away from them. The California legislature passed the 1931 Alien Labor Law, which forbade contractors from using alien workers for highway construction, school and government office buildings, and other public projects. Politicos clamored to cut down on even public education for Mexicans and to quarantine them in separate schools (which Mexican Americans fought). This led to a massive repatriation (a.k.a. deportation) of at least 600,000 Mexicans an estimated sixty percent of whom were minors born in the United States. White government officials said Mexican immigrants composed the majority of the California unemployed. Nativist blamed the Mexican for taking jobs from white men not taking into account that it was desperate white workers flooding California from the Midwest who were the majority of the unemployed. Although little has been written about the repatriation in Texas, we must remember that Texas was a former confederate state with a history of anti-Mexican hysteria. In 1915, driven by the revolt a couple of dozen Mexicans, white residents of South Texas forced the mass exodus of thousands of Mexicans from the valley. Professor Robert McKay estimates that as many as half the Mexican residents of the lower Rio Grande valley abandoned their homes in 1915. According to Professor McKay, over half the Mexicans and Mexican Americans deported in the 1930s were from the Lone Star state. The repatriation was brutal and often the result of being hounded out of the country or starved out. The repatriation began in 1929 and, although it was mostly local campaigns, it took its cue from a federal deportation campaign that began the year before.

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Deportation raids were carried out in urban and rural areas. In the Midwest, Chicago, and Detroit were very active, literally starving families into leaving. Families were given one-way railroad tickets and dumped at the border. The Mexican government was complicit in these campaigns, hoping to reincorporate its citizens. However, in many cases cultural conflicts resulted since many of the children had been born and raised in the United States and were not accepted by their compatriots on the Mexican side who had also been negatively affected by the depression. For those who were left behind, survival depended on one’s citizenship status. President Roosevelt’s New Deal gave almost no support to Mexican nationals who had to depend on their families or organizations for help. They were excluded from work programs and Social Security and the terms of the National Labor Relations Act. Some Mexican Americans benefited from the New Deal and worked for the Civilian Conservation Corp (CCC) and the Works Progress Administration (WPA). The Farm Security Administration (FSA) built camps for migrant farm workers in California. However, racist nativist often blurred the lines between those who were native born and foreign born. Many Mexican origin folk were very mobile during these years. The railroad industry had used Mexicans as a source of low-cost labor. Mexican workers traveled the railways in search of work. Others used cars or were herded into trucks. They moved their families along the disparate highways into the Midwest and Northwest and to California. They survived in shelters made of ‘‘burlap, canvas, or palm branches.’’ The diasporas of the New Mexicans and Texans were especially noteworthy. Many New Mexicans had lived in the northern mountains of their state and Colorado since the eighteenth century enduring severely cold winters. The depression accelerated the uprooting of the New Mexicans as they moved in almost every direction. At the same time, Tejanos moved west and into the Midwest generally following the crops. This section gives voice to those who survived la crisis, as the Great Depression was called, as they struggled against racism and the economic collapse of the time. They joined unions. Mexicanas who had left their homes in larger numbers to join the work force took a leadership in organizing industries such as the needles trade. The documents contextualize these voices and the times.

241. Excerpts from David Washburn, ‘‘Oral History Interview with
n,’’ November 5, 2002 Ned Dura The Great Depression began in 1929 and raged for most of the 1930s. Everything seemed to crash; in the first three years unemployment rose to 25 percent—even higher among minorities. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882–1945) launched a huge revitalization of the U.S. economy called the New Deal (1933–1940). Part of his plan was to initiate programs to put Americans to work in government projects so that the money would stimulate the market and bring back prosperity. The New Deal was like an alphabet soup of new programs such as the Civilian Conservation Corps—the CCC as it was known. The program recruited thousands of unemployed, unmarried young men between the ages of 18 to 26 and sent them to CCC camps to work on public projects. For six months they received $30 a month, $25 of which was sent to their families. After the six-month duration many could reenlist. Although

Mexican Americans and the Great Depression

policy prohibited discrimination, blacks and other minorities encountered numerous difficulties in the CC. The program was very important to Mexican Americans since many assumed they were non-citizens and discriminated against them. Ned Dur
an was one of these Mexican American youths. Born in Colorado, he left high school to enroll in the CC; his older brother worked for the Works Progress Administration (WPA). The following interview with Dur
an was taken by the Bancroft Library of the University of California at Berkeley and it memorializes the times. Dur
an would later serve in the armed forces during World War II.

I was born in Longmont, Colorado, and I was raised and reared in Walsenburg, Colorado. And then from there, my mother was working in a department store, and I had a step dad, and he was real abusive, so my mother left him. And I had another step dad, and we had a farm in a little place they call North La Veta. That’s off about eight miles west of Walsenburg. And he had a farm, he had his sheep. He had ten thousand head of sheep between him and his brothers, and I was reared there, and I worked as a I was a kid then, but they used to have us in lambing season, and I used to go to the mountains and stay with the shepherd, and in the summertime, out in the mountains, that’s where they used to send the sheep, you know? Mountains, from after lambing season, and that was where I stayed from June until about October, come down from the mountains and the lambs were already pretty big so they could be sold. So that’s what I’ve done mostly, and naturally worked on the farm, planting and hay season. Then from there I went during the Depression, in 1936, I went to the CC [Civilian Conservation Corps] camps. I stayed there; I was in Mesa Verde National Park first, eighteen months, got out and I went back again, and I spent another one in the Rocky Mountain National Park in Estes, Colorado. And from there, moved to Grand Junction Monument. And then from there, we went to I quit again, and I went back again to the CC camp six months later, and we were at Lincoln Park in Grand Junction. And then from there, they told me I couldn’t join the CC camps anymore. During that time, it was a help for the family. We used to get thirty dollars a month, paid, and our family used to get twentytwo dollars, used to get about eight dollars for yourself. That was doing, helping the family. A lot of these CC camps, well, it took us out of trouble too, let’s face it, you know? And then from there, I couldn’t join the CC camps again, so I joined the army in 1940. I joined the First Cavalry Division in El Paso, Texas.… Dur
an:

Dur
an:

I went to Washington School right off in town, and I went as high as the fifth grade there, and then from there, I went to the farm and we had to go to the school in the farm, which was a one-room school, and the teacher had to teach from first to eighth grade. And I went to high school from there. And, in high school, I only went as far as the tenth grade, and then for on account of, like I said, the Depression, that’s when I went to the CC camps. My mother didn’t know that I had gone to the CC camps. She heard from me from about a week later, where I was at [laughs]. But I was helping them anyway, you know? The best way I could.… Oh, my siblings, well, my brother, my oldest brother, was working as a supervisor in the what-do-you call-it, WPA [Works Progress Administration]. And my other brother worked out here in Nevada. But, when

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Washburn: Dur
an: Washburn: Dur
an:

Washburn: Dur
an:

Dur
an:

they came back, my sisters, they were all there, my two sisters, and I was reared with one of them, the youngest one, and the other one too, she was the oldest one, and then we came. My brothers, after the war, they used to be coal miners, they worked in the coal mines. That’s coal mining country where I was from, Walsenburg; there are a lot of mining camps around there. So you had how many siblings? I had two brothers and two sisters. Two brothers and two sisters. And did all of you guys work to support your family as you were growing up? Well, my brothers did work, you know? My mother worked … she was the first postmistress in a little town called Garcia, Colorado. She was a postmistress there. And then when I was growing up in Walsenburg, she was working for a department store, called Katz Department Store, selling clothes, stuff like that. She always worked pretty well. And my brothers were all miners then. And then during the war, they came down here and worked at the shipyards. So the mines really kept a lot of people employed? Kept people alive there, yes, coal mines. And then I think they closed them. I don’t know when they closed them. I don’t remember now. But they don’t dig for coal anymore there … there were all people of different nationalities. Like, they’re all miners, you know? Slavs, and Italians, and Latins in there and all that. And they got along fine. We got along fine. It was a regular different people got along fine, they never had anything wrong with them, nothing like that, because fact is, the people, some of them, there were Hispanics that were policemen, Hispanics that were judges. So, it makes us all one thing then. Melting pot, in other words, it was all mixed. But we got along fine. Naturally, us young kids, we used to get in a fight with each other, that’s true, you know? We’d fight, but we never fought like they do it now. If you got beat up by a boy, then it was all right, you took it like a man. But they don’t do it like that now; you get beat up, you’re liable to get shot. [Describing the town] … Like a regular town, they had all kinds of restaurants, and they had bars. And most of them were making the market mostly was from the sheep, or market from the farms that was there, that’s all. Just a small, five thousand people is not a very big town, you know? They were all there, and that’s all I can tell you about that, that I know of. That I remember, anyway.… We’d speak Spanish in the house, speak Spanish outside, too. All of us used to speak Spanish, you know. But mostly us kids, mostly what we used to speak was English. In the house, we used to that’s why we can’t speak the real Spanish. I had to take Spanish in high school to learn, and that’s Castilian Spanish. And the Spanish we speak now, it’s a slang of

Mexican Americans and the Great Depression

Dur
an:

Washburn: Dur
an:

Washburn: Dur
an:

whatever we don’t understand a lot of words that Mexico speaks about, words, things that we didn’t know anything about or we just knew them in broken Spanish. Like, in Mexico now they say the railroad track, ‘‘carro ferrocarril’’ and we used to say just ‘‘troque.’’ Bus, ‘‘bus.’’ The bus. See? And they have a different name for that. Like a truck, they have a different way to say truck too. So a lot of the words that they come over here and ask us, now do we have this, or we have that what is it? Am I right? [Why he went to CC camp] … There wasn’t any money during the Depression, and the decision I made was that we didn’t have anything, no money; I had to take care of everything. Obviously, I didn’t take care of everything, but I was disgusted about the thing of no money, no nothing. We were lucky to get fifty cents. One of my brothers what he was doing, he was working at a barber shop, shining shoes, and he used to give me fifty cents once in a while, something like that. I was lucky if I had fifty cents during the Depression right there. See? And school everybody got I says, ‘‘Nah, I’m going to the CCs.’’ So how did you find out about the CC camps? It stands for Conservation Corps, right? There were people that asked if you wanted to join during that time. Fact is, Roosevelt is the one who started that Civilian Conservation Corps for kids to keep us out of the streets, which was a good deal. We went over there, we worked at erosion work. Fact is, what I did in the CC camps, I would work in the kitchen as a cook, you know, cooking. I was an officer’s orderly; I used to set their own tables in the morning, for the officers and the foremen. Because they had foremen that went out to take the gangs out to work on the field. And the foremen used to stay there, and the officers; they were army retired officers in charge. They used to pay me eight dollars a month more to take care of their mess hall, and feed them, putting the tables out, and food for them and everything. I was getting eight dollars a month extra, which was something my family was getting. Because during the Depression now, my step dad and his brothers, they all lost the whole ten thousand head of sheep. That’s when they went broke. They lost them all, they lost everything. How did they lose them? Well, the Depression, everything broke down. I don’t know how they lost them, because I don’t remember a thing, but they didn’t have anything, you know? Fact is, there was such a big company and they used to call them, its name was Regillo. Used to call it the Regillo Livestock Company. And they lost all that, and the money they had. I used to see their ledger, when I was a kid. But they lost everything, so the only thing they had was just the farm. That’s another reason that I went to the CC camps, to help them out. First they were getting

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Dur
an:

twenty-five dollars a month. I was only getting five in this camp, which I needed just to buy my cigarettes and stuff like that. And then they raised it to eight dollars, and they got twenty-two. And then in the CC camps, like I say, I was working extra to make extra money for myself. I was getting eight dollars a month from the officers. First I stayed eighteen months [at the camp], and then I stayed six months in another camp, six months in another, six months in another, off and on. You know? Because I’d get out, and I didn’t want to work outside. And once you get out, you have to wait six months in order to rejoin a CC camp. So I went up by Mesa Verde, the Rocky Mountains I went to three camps, three different camps, for about three years or so, see? Because I even lied about my age the first time I went. I wasn’t even eighteen. I lacked a few months before I joined the CC camps. And there was a guy ahead of me, and they asked him, ‘‘When were you born?’’ He said, ‘‘I was born May, 1917,’’ or no, ‘‘I was born in August,’’ and it was in May, and they said, ‘‘You can’t go, you’re not eighteen.’’ So then they looked at me. I went in there and they asked me, ‘‘When were you born?’’ ‘‘April 10, 1917,’’ I said. See, I lied; I was born in September. I couldn’t have gone either, see?

Source: Ned Duran, ‘‘Conversations with Ed Duran,’’ transcript of an oral history conducted on November 5, 2002. David Washburn. Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 2002. Courtesy, The Bancroft Library. http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/ ROHO/collections/pdfs/duran ned.pdf.

242. Excerpts from an Interview with Jos
e Flores, 1940–1941 Jos
e Flores, a Mexican American youth, and members of his family, were migrant farm workers during the Depression. Flores was interviewed by the Works Progress Administration (WPA) as part of their program of recording the oral histories of many survivors of the Great Depression. From the interview, it is evident that Flores was either born in the United States or had lived here most of his life. In 1937, the Department of Agriculture created the Farm Security Administration (FSA) to help poor farmers. One of the agency’s functions was to set up emergency migratory labor camps to alleviate the horrible conditions in which migrant workers often lived. This agency gave assistance to the rural poor and migrant agricultural workers like Flores. In this interview, Flores—who was 20 years old at the time—spoke about the Mexican family, discrimination against Mexicans, and life in the FSA camp near Moorpark, California.

Q.

Most of the young people around here were born here … [referring to the Mexican people]? A. Yes, most of them were born here. Q. They consider themselves American don’t they? A. Yes they do … they don’t think there are getting benefits of Americans. For example, when they go to the theatre there is always a middle aisle and two

Mexican Americans and the Great Depression

Q. A.

Q. A. Q. A.

A.

side aisles. They are not permitted to sit in the middle aisle. They got to sit on the side aisles … this is because they are Mexicans. How about the schools? The schools always … have them [Mexicans] separate. If [they have] enough Mexicans around [they] have a separate school. … in our camp there used to be about a hundred children going to [the] American school in 1931. [They] decided to get rid of Mexican greasers and they would build a school for … the Mexican people.… Even though there wasn’t a need…? [There was] no need for another school … they only wanted to get rid of them.… [Did] the young people worry about it? They don’t seem to worry much about it, it just happens and there is not much they can do about it … about changing the situation. I am referring to discrimination against Mexican people in this part of the country. Going to happen and can’t do much about it. [Asked about trouble at the Moorpark Fiesta; Moorpark is in Ventura County, California] It has always been a fact that every year that Mexican boys fight with American boys and usually officers come around and instead of jailing both parties involved in the fight they pick up the Mexicans. [This reinforces] the idea that they should come back next year … [and the idea that] they got a raw deal.… In Los Angeles they got together to form clubs … [they confronted discrimination]. Getting together helps a lot.

Source: Jos
e Flores. El Rio, California. Voices from the Dust Bowl: The Charles L. Todd and Robert Sonkin Migrant Worker Collection, 1940 1941. Call Number AFS 5145a1Digital ID AFCTS 5145a1, http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?toddbib:2:./temp/~ammem FL8W.

243. ‘‘Another Case of Racial Prejudice,’’ 1936 Prior to the Depression, Chicago was the capital of the Mexican community in the Midwest, with more than 25,000 Mexicans and Mexican Americans in the city. This group included families but also had large numbers of single men. They worked on railroads, in meatpacking plants, and at steel mills. The community was comprised not only of workers, but of a growing middle class. The Depression hit this community hard and by the end of the 1930s, about 16,000 Mexicans remain; thousands had been repatriated or deported to Mexico. An ethnically divided city, Chicago had a tradition of ethnic divisions that was worsened by the Depression, and this led to racially motivated incidents. The following article, which appeared in the Chicago Defender, describes an incident that occurred when police reacted to a 26-year-old Mexican man and a 21-year-old white woman talking to each other. The Chicago Defender was unique in protecting the interests of minorities. An African-American newspaper founded in 1905 by Robert Sengstacke Abbott, the Defender used bold headlines and red ink and spoke out against lynching, racism, and segregation. It published articles on injustices to groups other than black Americans. In the following article, the Defender chastised the bigotry and injustice

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of the arrest and trial of two young people of different races who were just talking to each other.

Eleanor Swimmer, 21, white, a student of respectable attainment and supposed to have been born free, and George Rojas, 26, Mexican, also presumably free-born, were sitting on top of the retaining wall along the Illinois Central railroad embankment eating peaches. As we understand the law, it is no crime to eat peaches but, with a widely divergent opinion, along comes Policeman Daniel Lahey. Whose ancestors, judging by his surname, did not come over in the Mayflower. Now here is the story: The policeman immediately began to see red. It was a white woman in company with a Mexican. He arrested them and took them into the Municipal Court on a charge of disorderly conduct: viz, eating peaches in public. The case was called before his Hon. Judge Harold P. O’Connell. Attorneys for the white woman and the Mexican, for some reason or other, and probably well founded, asked for a jury trial. Twelve American citizens, not quite so deep seated in racial hatred could find no crime committed by an intelligent white woman and an intelligent Mexican eating peaches together. As a result they were discharged. Intelligent and civilized people must view with alarm some of the decadent ideals of America’s system both in its everyday life and its judicial procedure. The whole scheme smacks of hypocrisy, chicanery, and littleness. It made our whole set-up look like a debauchery of civilization. It is all pretense, hate, prejudice, and bigotry built upon political and social idiosyncrasies which are not conducive to the perpetuation of real American ideals. Could a Communistic government be any worse than our pretended democracy? Source: Chicago Defender, October 17, 1936, p. 16.

244. Robert N. McLean, ‘‘The Mexican Return,’’ 1932 The Presbyterian Church and the United Presbyterian Church were very active among Mexican Americans and Spanish-speaking peoples in the southwestern United States. Evangelization efforts began in the 1800s. Presbyterian mission work among Mexican Americans was described as difficult because it was among ‘‘poor and illiterate people.’’ The missionaries were often confronted with an ecclesiastical bureaucracy and limited funds. Like Catholic missionaries, they were paternalistic. Robert N. McLean (1918–1932) was a superintendent of the missions, taking over from his father, Robert McLean, also the head of the missions and a renowned missionary. The Presbyterians began missions in Mexico around 1872. The Presbyterian Church USA (Northern Presbyterian Church), the Presbyterian Church US (Southern Presbyterian Church), the Associate Presbyterian Church (ARPC), and the Congregationalist Church in the United States built on work of previous missionaries, many of whom were recruited from the ranks of the missions in Mexico. The Mexican Revolution (1910–1920) hastened the Mexicanization of the church, which expanded its work in the 1920s on both sides of the border. In the following article, which appeared in The Nation, a progressive weekly magazine, McLean advocates for the interests of the Mexican population and criticizes

Mexican Americans and the Great Depression

the massive repatriation of Mexicans and the passage of laws to exclude Mexicans from employment on public works projects. He reminds the reader why Mexicans came here in the first place.

The train was ready to go. Hand upon throttle, the engineer leaned from his cab. Behind him were ten plush-upholstered day coaches, loaded with six hundred Mexicans who were ‘‘going home.’’ The windows were filled with brown faces, some sad, some eager; along the sides of the cars were little groups of country relief agents and workers from various churches and community houses, who under one pretext or another had succeeded in crashing the gates. Outside, a massed wall of humanity pressed against the iron fence. For one who was going, ten had come to say goodbye. It was just like the other trains which had been leaving Los Angeles on Thursday mornings like the others but different, because inside the red-plush coaches were different people with different stories of suffering, hunger, and heartache. ‘‘All aboard!’’ sang the conductor, and the train began to move out of the station. As one car rolled by, a mother was seen comforting a little girl of about ten. And then these words, spoken in perfect English, floated through the window: ‘‘I don’t want to go to Mexico! All my friends are in Brooklyn Avenue school, and I want to stay here!’’ But the train gathered momentum and swept out of the yards. The press has had much to say during the past few months about the Mexicans who have gone home, but little has been said about the thousands of United States citizens who have been carried away by their parents to a land which they have never seen. Nor have we faced the fact that many of the parents who are taking these United States-born children out of the country, have been here so long that in their habits and ways of living they are far more ‘‘American’’ than Mexican. The Mexican labor invasion of the United States and the subsequent return is one of the largest, most interesting racial movements in all history. In a time of economic stress such as the present we lose all sense of perspective. We forget why the Mexican came and why he has tarried so long, and we are blind to the injustices which are forcibly uprooting him from communities where he has cast his lot, built his home, and begotten his children. All we can see at such a moment as this is bread lines. And men of dark complexion are holding jobs which ‘‘white’’ men ought to have. In August of 1931, a new law went into effect in California which makes it practically impossible for a contractor to employ Mexicans upon a public job. That, of course, means the bulk of the cement work and the work with pick and shovel jobs which have been the recognized portion of the Mexicans for a dozen years. Even if the law permitted the employment of the ‘‘bronze’’ laborer, so strong is the social pressure now being exerted that few employers would care to defy it. At least one paving concern has temporarily gone out of business because it cannot carry on without Mexicans and the law will not permit them to be used. In one California community a contractor took refuge in the town hall in order to escape from a mob infuriated because he was using Mexican labor. Even in times of economic strain and stress the foreign laborer is entitled to a square deal. Back of the lines of race and blood there are certain facts which merit consideration. The Mexican laborer came to this country to render a particular contribution at a time of particular need. The war depleted for a time our labor supply,

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while speeding up our industries. We had less labor and we needed more. Bursting shells on the fields of France proclaimed copper king. The large companies operating in southeastern Arizona, the greatest copper producing district of the world, worked their mines to the utmost, leasing mineral land they could not work to other operators. Mexicans poured into Bisbee, Douglas, Miami, Globe, Ray, Jerome, and Morceni [Morenci], and have been there ever since. At about the same time, large areas of new citrus plantings began to come into bearing, and Mexicans by the thousand came to California to pick oranges. It was of prime importance during the war that transportation should not be interrupted, and Mexicans came over to man the section gangs and tamp the ties. Mexicans have been tamping ties on the railroads of the Southwest ever since, and have spread out along other lines into the North and East. The Mexican laborer came because we invited him and because we could not get along without him. But it might be thought that after the national emergency was passed and our soldiers had returned from France, the Mexicans could have gone home. Not so. A number of new factors conspired not only to hold here the Mexicans already arrived, but to draw hundreds of thousands of their friends and relatives. First must be mentioned the new irrigation projects. The Roosevelt dam, the Elephant Butte, the Yuma project, the extension of the ditches in the Imperial Valley all brought vast new acreages under cultivation. The lower Rio Grande valley almost overnight changed from a desert into a garden, and hands beckoned across the river for help to work the crops. The Salt River valley of Arizona, feeling the miraculous touch of water, grew long staple cotton and called for Mexicans to pick it. When the bottom fell out of the cotton market, the growers quickly switched to lettuce and kept their Mexicans to ‘‘chop’’ it. In the Imperial Valley of California the lettuce acreage grew, until last season a total of eleven thousand cars rolled out of the valley to Eastern markets. Vying with lettuce, cantaloupes demanded Mexican labor, and during last May and June it took 21,400 cars to haul the melons to our breakfast tables. There is a common impression abroad that one American can do the work of three Mexicans. But no race can compete with the Mexicans in picking cantaloupes. Even the Japanese employ them, and the growers say that only a Mexican seems to have that sixth sense which tells when a cantaloupe is ready for the crate. During the time of our agricultural expansion, the growers of oranges, grapes, cotton, melons, and winter vegetables not only invited the Mexicans, but even bid actively and acrimoniously among themselves for the amount of Mexican labor which was available. And whenever anyone suggested that the supply was beginning to exceed the demand and that perhaps society was paying a stiff price for its Mexican labor in the social costs involved, the growers sped their representatives to Washington to lobby against the various bills which were successively introduced to put Mexico upon a quota basis. One cannot say or write anything about the Southwest without eventually bumping up against the fact that Los Angeles has grown. But while it grew from a city of less than half a million at the close of the war to over a million in 1930, it was compelled to build new houses and school buildings, lay new sewers and water mains, and pave hundreds of miles of new streets. Often it was in such a hurry about it that the streets were paved before the sewers were laid, but the work had to be done in a hurry and Mexicans did it. While the Mexican laborer was needed in both agriculture and industry, we were glad to have him hold the job in which he was employed.

Mexican Americans and the Great Depression

We were perfectly willing that he should do our dirty work for us. We became ‘‘labor conscious.’’ We developed the phrase ‘‘the work no white man will do"! Americans could not stand the heat of the desert, and so Mexicans tamped the ties and built the bridges. Americans would not pick cotton unless they were ‘‘cheap white trash’’ and so the Mexicans did it. Americans would not labor in the heat with pick and shovel, and so Mexicans speedily filled the ranks of all the labor gangs. Americans would not ‘‘chop’’ lettuce all morning and then spend all afternoon trying to find out whether it was the grower or the contractor who was supposed to pay them. And so it was the Mexican laborers who jumped on the trucks at dawn and drove out to the lettuce fields to chop until noon. We developed a racial superiority toward certain types of labor, which came to be thought of as Mexican jobs. Thus the ‘‘bronze’’ man became the hewer of wood and the drawer of water in the Southwest. Simultaneously the large employers contrived to maintain the labor reservoir at a high level. It paid to keep the Mexicans both numerous and hungry. Some day, perhaps, somebody with a flare for statistics will try to evaluate the contribution which the Mexican laborer has rendered in the building of an empire in the Southwest. He has done all the common work on practically every one of California’s two hundred crops. He has maintained the lines of transportation. Every industry has been dependent upon him. And as is always the case with the common laborer, he has put much in and taken little out. Today, under the strain of economic adversity, we forget that during these years the Mexican has become part of our community life. We forget that his children have been born here and educated in our schools. We forget that by the sweat of his brow he has earned a place in our economic life. We are sending him home. There is little gratitude in out hearts. But the most amusing thing about it all amusing were it not so tragic is the attitude taken by our own border immigration service toward this army of Mexican laborers. When we needed them we forgot our own laws, closing our eyes while Mexicans crossed the line. There were not enough men to patrol the border, there were no funds for deportation, and anyway the crops were perishing for want of pickers. As one official said, ‘‘I just have to shut my eyes to keep from crowding them off the sidewalk when I come down to work in the morning.’’ It has been estimated that seven out of ten who came over between 1919 and 1929 came illegally; and most of them found it so easy to come that they are unconscious of any wrongdoing. Hundreds say naively: ‘‘I just crossed the bridge and nobody asked me any questions.’’ Now the line is practically closed to the common laborer, and our reinforced border patrol, with plenty of money for deportations, is running up and down roads stopping Mexicans and asking dramatically: ‘‘How in the world did you get across the line?’’ And unless they can prove a legal domicile they are deported or told that they will be deported if they do not go of their own accord. In all this we have done little law-making. We have, indeed, armed our border service with a new law which makes it a felony for a foreigner to enter illegally. Otherwise our laws are as they were. They have been changed only by interpretation. But always more laws have been made by interpretation than by legislation. Briefly, then, the Mexicans who are going home may be divided into five classes. First, there are those who are being deported and Mexican deportations have reached as high as half of all those in the country. Second, there are those who are going because they have been told they will be deported unless they go voluntarily.

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Third, there is the great class made up of those who know they are here illegally, and who tremble every time there is a knock at the door or an American speaks to them upon the street. Composing the fourth class are those whose way is being paid to the border by county relief agencies, which often make their grants of relief dependent upon the promise to return to Mexico at some later date. And the fifth class is made up of those who have long been out of work, and having sacrificed their homes for a fraction of what they are worth, are using the proceeds to go back to Mexico in the hope that things may be a little better and in the conviction that they cannot be any worse. During the first ten months of 1931, the number returning to Mexico outnumbered those entering the United States by 75,337. Just what effect will this mass movement have upon the Southwest? And what will be its effect upon Mexico? Nobody expects the present depression to last forever. And when it is over the ‘‘white’’ man who has wrenched the pick and the shovel from the hands of the Mexican laborer, in order to drive the wolf from the door, will drop them and turn to other pursuits. Again there will be ‘‘work no white man will do.’’ And when that time comes, unless we are willing to let our crops rot in the fields, we shall either beg the Mexicans to come back or import Negroes, Filipinos, and Porto [Puerto] Ricans. We shall find then that we have exiled both producers and consumers. And what about Mexico? Is anyone so simple as to believe in this period of world depression that Mexico is able to absorb an army of new laborers every month? What are they doing? What of the man who barefoot and with his belongings done up in a blanket left his ancestral village ten years ago a village where life moves placidly along as it did in the seventeenth century? When he returns driving a second-hand car, will he drop back quietly into the niche from which he came? And if not, into what niche will he fit? What will the Americanized Mexican do to Mexico? Source: Reprinted with permission from the August 24, 1932 issue of The Nation. For subscription information, call 1-800-333-8536. Portions of each week’s Nation magazine can be accessed at http://www.thenation.com.

245. ‘‘Deportations Continue,’’ 1931 The Excelsior, Mexico City’s leading newspaper, as well as other Mexican newspapers, criticized the massive repatriation programs that sent Mexicans who had been working in the United States back to Mexico. Promoters of the ship–Mexicans-back-to-Mexico-movement ignored the fact that most Mexicans had been born in the United States—never considering U.S.-born Mexicans to be Americans. The nativists developed a siege mentality, saying Mexicans had invaded the United States and were taking American jobs and using public resources such as charity and schools. Some even blamed the Mexican for the Depression. Their answer was to ship Mexicans back to Mexico. Local governments supported by subsidies from the federal government began programs for repatriating immigrants to Mexico. The United States had repatriated Mexicans in 1913 and 1921, but this time the number of Mexicans affected was huge with over 600,000 loaded on trains and shipped back. The massive deportations caused hardships and, as expressed in the Excelsior article, they were demeaning to Mexicans in the United States and Mexico.

Mexican Americans and the Great Depression

Thousands of deportees have arrived during the last week through the border port of Nogales, presenting a pitiful and pathetic spectacle, for many of them are hollowcheeked from hunger. The problem of the deportees is a dreadful one and the people of this state are becoming quite alarmed for it is assuming the aspect of a national calamity, urgently requiring the intervention of both the State and Federal authorities. It is merely that thousands of Mexicans are being thrust or, rather, swept out of the United States without stopping to consider whether it is just in every case. Many of them went to the United States under contract with the notoriously famous labor contract companies … but now that, due to the crisis, they have started a readjustment of all foreign employees and labor in that country, they have broken their contracts and, under the protection of the authorities themselves, are casting them off on Mexico. If these actions alone are shameful from a legal and humanitarian point of view, it is still worse when an entire country is lacking in the most elementary practices of international law. Another exceedingly serious aspect of the mass deportation of Mexicans is the lack of consideration shown for marriage contracts. Upon being deported to Mexico, Mexicans are separated from their wives, if the latter are Americans. Notwithstanding the protests and even entreaties of the unfortunate Mexican husbands, or wives if the husband is an American, the authorities in question show no consideration and separate husbands and wives under the pretext, it itself, an insult, that Mexicans live in a manner irreconcilable with Yankee customs. Neither labor nor marriage contracts are respected, Mexicans being separated from their wives as if they were animals. In view of the desperate situation of the deportees, and since it is impossible to help them in the manner desired, meetings are being held between the authorities and inhabitants of the towns with a view to studying the problem in question, which is exceedingly serious even for those having work or a means of livelihood. The farmers of the [region of the] Yaqui River and especially those in the municipality of Cajeme (Ciudad Obregon) have agreed to give temporary employment to deportees in distress passing through that town and desiring to work for five or six days, by permitting them to substitute for the regular workmen who can easily spare a few days for them without prejudice to themselves. Source: Translated copy of article from Excelsior, May 11, 1931, National Archives, Record Group 85, File No. 55739/674. In George C. Kiser and Martha Woody Kiser, eds., Mexican Workers in the United States Historical and Political Perspectives (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1979), pp. 36 37.

246. Excerpts from Independent School Dist. et al. v. Salvatierra et al., 1930 Jes
us Salvatierra and other parents of Mexican children in Del Rio, Texas, a small town on the Rio Grande, represented by the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) challenged plans of the Del Rio School Board to increase the segregation of Mexican students in its schools in 1930. The parents got an injunction from a lower court to stop the segregation of their children. However, an appellate court reversed the lower court decision and

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said that the segregation was unintentional and reasonable. It held that the segregation of Mexicans from students of ‘‘other white races’’ for arbitrary or malicious reasons would not be permitted. But in this case the separation was acceptable for pedagogical reasons. Mexicans were segregated because English was a special challenge, and segregation was permitted. The Supreme Court refused to review the decision and the decision justified segregation on linguistic grounds. The following excerpts provide portions of the appellate decision.

On January 7, 1930, the board of trustees of the independent school district embracing the city of Del Rio, ordered an election to be held within the district on February 1, 1930, to determine if the district should issue and sell its bonds in the sum of $185,000, ‘‘for the purpose of constructing and equipping public free school buildings of material other than wood and the purchase of the necessary sites therefore in said school district,’’ and authorizing the levy and collection of taxes to pay off said bonds. At the ensuing election, the proposition was adopted, and in due course the bonds were issued and sold. The validity of the election and of the issuance and sale of the bonds is not in question in this appeal. The district owns, and its school buildings are located upon, a unit of land, oblong but irregular in shape, with an apparent approximate length of 1,200 feet. At the time the bond issue was voted there were four school buildings and a school athletic field upon this property, located as follows, from east to west: The high school, two elementary schools, the athletic field, and the third elementary school, designated the ‘‘Mexican’’ or ‘‘West End’’ school, consisting of two rooms. The program adopted by the trustees as a result of the bond issue provided for the construction of a new senior high school building, and remodeling and enlarging the elementary schools. The ‘‘West End’’ school, constructed of brick and tile, was to be enlarged by adding five rooms, including an auditorium of the same material. It developed upon the trial, that the West End building had been used for housing and teaching children exclusively of Spanish or Mexican descent who are in elementary grades up to and including the ‘‘low third.’’ The district superintendent and one of the principals undertook in their testimony to explain the causes and purposes of this classification, or, as it amounts to, segregation. It was explained that as much as or more than half of those pupils go each autumn with their families to other localities where they engage in picking cotton or other farm work until the school terms are well advanced. Other pupils, entering at the beginning of the term, have thus progressed materially into the year’s work, and it is the theory of the school authorities that the latecomers will be handicapped in their morale and work if allocated with those having from one to four months’ advantage over them in attendance, training, and progress. The superintendent testified as follows in elaboration of this situation: ‘‘Well we had a peculiar situation as regards people of Spanish or Mexican extraction here. We found a great percentage of those people are at work in cotton fields and on ranches, and some of them go entirely out of the district in the fall season, that is, return in the fall and enter school late and in considerable numbers, and where you have already organized your classes on a basis of a certain size which represents the most efficient instruction possible you are greatly hampered if a great number of people continue to drop in. The worst situation we have is in the first,

Mexican Americans and the Great Depression

second, and third years, but it’s bad all throughout the elementary grades. Classes normal in size at the beginning of the school year, because of that influx later in the season, become so large you can’t manage them and of course they are retarded from the standpoint of enrollment, and there is a difference in ages in the same grades between children of Spanish or Mexican descent and those of Anglo-Saxon parentage. Partly for that reason and the language difficulty with which the overwhelming majority of children are hampered I directed that all the first three grades be set aside into the new two-room building and into the vocational agricultural building. I made that provision for the first three grades and organized on that basis. ‘‘I was not actuated by any motive of segregation by reason of race or color in doing what I said I did. The whole proposition was from a standpoint of instruction and a fair opportunity of all children alike. That was the only consideration I had in the matter. There are decided peculiarities of children of Mexican or Spanish descent which can be better taken care of in those elementary grades by their being placed separately from the children of Anglo-Saxon parentage, because the average Spanish-speaking children know English as a foreign tongue, and consequently when you put him in a class with English-speaking children and teach him according to the method of teaching English-speaking children he is greatly handicapped, and we have that handicap extending clear up into high school in all content subjects, such as English and History, and where they come along together in the same grade we find again and again the children are handicapped because they are slow in reading English and read it with difficulty, and as a consequence fail in considerable numbers in English and History. Now, in mathematics they are very apt where the language difficulty does not obtain, and often make more progress than the American children. In other words, the child of Spanish or Mexican extraction in Mathematics is liable to progress more rapidly than the children of American extraction, age being the same he will progress about the same degree; but the situation we have here is different, and that brings another aspect into the question. The truth is that most of these Spanish-speaking children, by reason of the fact that they attend school only a part of the year, are more greatly retarded, and I find from a check-up we made again just yesterday that the difference in age in the given grade between the Anglo-Saxon child and the Spanish or Mexican child is anywhere from two to four years.’’ The superintendent further testified: ‘‘Yes, I have stated that I placed the first three grades of Mexican children over in this two-room building that was completed during the summer. My purpose in doing that was simply to instruct that group according to their own peculiar needs. To develop a curriculum in English that would enable them to cope in competition on equal terms with children in higher grades when they reached those classes. I never thought of denying any child or children in those elementary grades now being schooled in the two-room building, or do I contemplate denying to them any educational advantages or facilities which are accorded to the children of AngloSaxon extraction. No, indeed, I don’t contemplate denying them any such privilege. As a matter of fact, that is the best equipped and most pleasant elementary school situation we have. No, I wouldn’t say those children are being given privileges or advantages which the children of Anglo-Saxon extraction are not being given, but they are better housed than any we have in the same grades; and we have competent teachers for that peculiar class of students. By reason of their being there and

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by reason of their having teachers of that character, I think they have better opportunities because of the fact that their teachers are specialized in the matter of teaching them English and American citizenship. It’s my plan not only to do that but to develop certain other talents they have. I have noticed that the Spanish-speaking children are unusually gifted in music, above the American children, and I believe that phase of their talents ought to be developed, and I so stated to the ParentTeachers Association of the Latin-American Association. And if our plan of operation is unhampered, we contemplate giving them facilities for development of this musical talent; and in art, on an average, I find they are superior to the American child in this talent, and I believe their work should include art and a good deal of handicraft work at the first grade. By nature I feel they are endowed with special facilities for this work. I want to develop that art talent just as fast as we can get a faculty that can carry on. ‘‘Yes, I testified a while ago relative to some of the Mexicans going off to the cotton fields and the other places and coming in late and attending only part of the year, and presumably that was one reason why I wished to make separate provision for them. Yes, there are other children, American English-speaking children who come in late, but a very small percent[age] of them. No, I did not send any of those English-speaking children who came in late over to the school where I sent the Mexican or Spanish-speaking children, because there were so few there was nothing to worry about with them. I only sent the Spanish-speaking children over there, those who came in late. Yes, it’s true, generally the best way to learn a language is to be associated with the people who speak that language. ‘‘My observation as to the association is that it does not have the value on the playground generally attributed to it. While it is true that the children mingle to a certain extent on the playground, yet there is a tendency on the part of both groups to stay to themselves and to speak their language to each other. I have observed that all along from the first grade and on through the high school, you see them gather up into little groups. On the other hand, when it comes to teaching the child, if you teach a child in English and devise a special curriculum to meet his needs from the fact that he is of another language you will accomplish far more than on the playground with the sort of social intermingling that takes place there. Yes, as a matter of fact the boy on the playground would naturally be interested in the games they were playing, and to some extent they would naturally be thrown together in the playing of those games. Yes, for the purpose of playing those games it would seem that it would be incumbent upon Spanish-speaking children to learn English in order to participate in the games.’’ ‘‘And that could not be accomplished by an act of segregation then where they spoke their mother tongue, could it? ‘‘My view is the other method of teaching will give a better method of the language because the child is required to use it constantly, and he is checked up by an American teacher with a view to removing all trace of accent, and he is forced continually throughout the day to speak it. ‘‘No, that would not be prohibited in the schools, and if the children’s language needs were the same as the language needs of all children in the room it would work out well, but the needs are different, and consequently I find it advisable to devote twice as much time to teaching English to the Spanish-speaking child in the first three grades in order to develop in him the necessary facilities and use of the

Mexican Americans and the Great Depression

language so that he can cope on equal terms with American language. So far as mentality is concerned there is no perceptible difference in the mentality of children of Spanish or Mexican descent and those of children of Anglo-Saxon parentage, but there is a little difference in temperament and a difference in certain talents. But when it comes to mentality, which I said a while ago, that is if children in a certain grade are much more mature in years than the average of children in that grade their mentality will be different, and consequently they will need a different method of instruction. This illustrates that point. You take a child of AngloSaxon parentage and a child of Latin-American parentage, say in about the fifth grade, and put them in a classroom together to study English, the American child just takes the history away from the Latin-American child, and the Mexican child will sit back for the most part dumb and helpless. Where they take it away from the child they take it in English, but we are required to teach in English. In a subject like mathematics the average Mexican child is more mature in age and more readily learns mathematics, but in that situation we have such an age difference the LatinAmerican child takes the whole thing away from the American child and he is handicapped. I have been told that it is true that a Mexican child will reach the puberty stage sooner than an American child, and that people originating in torrid climates will mature earlier; its owing to the climatic conditions.’’ It is apparent from the record that, unless prevented by this litigation, the school authorities will continue this segregation in the West End building as now constructed and extend it to the proposed enlarged structure when it shall be completed and equipped. It should be added that this segregation or classification is restricted to the lower grades, and does not extend to higher grades, where all the scholastics mingle in play and work indiscriminately, in the same rooms and on the same playgrounds. The complaint of appellees seems to relate only to the segregation of those pupils who were allocated to the West End building and thereby excluded from other buildings or rooms in which children of other races are taught corresponding grades. At the instance of Jes
us Salvatierra and several other individual tax-paying patrons of the school district, the trial court granted an injunction restraining the district and school superintendent, quoting from appellants’ brief, ‘‘(a) from letting or entering into any contract for the construction or erection of the addition to said two-room building, which when completed, would be used as a means for the purpose of segregating the children of plaintiffs and others similarly situated, from children of Anglo-Saxon parentage of like ages and educational attainments, and (b) from segregating the children of plaintiffs and others similarly situated from children of Anglo-Saxon parentage of like ages and educational attainments within the school district.’’ The litigation rests upon appellees’ contention that the acts and conduct of appellants are designed to effect, and do actually accomplish, the complete segregation of the school children of Mexican and Spanish descent (in certain elementary grades) from the school children of all other white races in the same grades, thereby excluding the one from the classrooms of the other, and denying to them the right and privilege of mingling with those of the other races in the common enjoyment of identical school facilities, instruction, associations, and environment. There seems to be no contention at least no such contention is sustained by the record that the Mexican children are not given facilities equal in comfort and convenience, and

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instruction equal in efficiency, to the facilities and instruction given all other races. The complaint seems to be restricted solely to the charge that all scholastics of Spanish and Mexican descent are not allocated indiscriminately, without reference to race, with all other scholastics in corresponding grades; in short, that a separate school is being maintained exclusively for Mexican children in the three grades mentioned. The problem presented in the Del Rio schools is one peculiar to that section of Texas bordering upon the republic of Mexico. Naturally, and in fact, the population of this section is in many communities and counties largely of Spanish and Mexican descent, who may be designated, for convenience of expression in this opinion, as the Mexican race, as distinguished, for like convenience, from all other white races. In some communities the former predominate, in others the latter; in many, as in Del Rio, the two are approximately evenly divided as to numbers. It is to the credit of both races that, notwithstanding widely diverse racial characteristics, they dwell together in friendship, peace, and unity, and work amicably together for the common good and a common country. Racial dissensions, if any occur, are so rare and slight as to escape public notice, and we look in vain into the law books for evidences of such dissensions. It is a matter of pride and gratification in our great public educational system and its administration that the question of race segregation, as between Mexicans and other white races, has not heretofore found its way into the courts of the state, and therefore the decision of no Texas court is available in the disposition of the precise question presented here. And, while the courts will not hesitate in any proper proceeding to protect the races in the enforcement of their common rights and privileges, they will nevertheless carefully avoid improvident interference with the local governmental agencies upon whom rest the immediate power and duty to promote and preserve peaceful and friendly relations between all races in the several communities. It should be perfectly obvious that where, as at Del Rio, the races are approximately evenly divided in numbers, the classification and allocation of the scholastics of both races through the public elementary and grade schools sometimes present difficult and delicate problems, calling for the exercise of justice and equality towards all races, no less than the sure application of pedagogical wisdom and experience. In each such locality specific methods and rules, or the application thereof, may differ because of peculiar conditions, but in none of them should this liberty of discretion or administration be exercised in derogation of the letter or spirit of the constitutional or statutory rights, privileges, or immunities of the citizen or his children, of whatever race; or, in short, to effectuate an arbitrary segregation of the races, or unjust discrimination against any race or the individual members thereof. It cannot be gainsaid that under familiar constitutional and statutory provisions the local school boards of this state have the power to manage and regulate the schools of their respective districts, to administer the affairs of those schools in such manner as in their judgment may most certainly accomplish the wholesome objects of our public educational policies. This discretion extends to the power to locate and construct the district schools upon such sites, and in accordance with such plans and specifications, as in their judgment seem best suited to the purposes of those policies. So is it the peculiar duty and prerogative of school authorities to so plan the methods of instruction and so classify and group the pupils as to bring to each one

Mexican Americans and the Great Depression

the greatest benefits according to his or her individual needs and aptitudes. This is of the very essence of the science of teaching. In that field, those in whom these duties are inherent have, of necessity, the widest discretion, with which neither the courts nor any other department of government may interfere, so long as those acts are lawful, or that discretion not clearly abused. It may also be said that in the performance of these intricate and delicate duties it is inevitable that cases will arise, as incidents, in which the sensibilities of given pupils or their parents will become ruffled over acts of fancied or even real discrimination. Such incidents will not warrant the courts in enjoining or destroying the system, but, if for any reason the patrons are dissatisfied with the determination of any of these matters which are purely administrative, they may complain thereat to the local board, and, if overruled, to the county superintendent, whose decision may be questioned only through the specific channels prescribed by statute.… It is only when the school authorities go clearly beyond their administrative powers that the courts may directly interfere. It is a prerogative of the courts to determine in a proper proceeding what those powers are, and whether or not those authorities have exceeded them. If by this process it is determined that the school authorities have transgressed those powers, the courts will in a proper proceeding condemn and enjoin the actions. But, on the other hand, if it appears that those authorities are but exercising the discretion incident to those powers, those complaining will be relegated to the remedy prescribed in the statutes … and authorities there cited. In this case the school board, through its superintendent, has effectuated, and intends in the future to continue, the segregation of the Mexican children in the first, second, and third grades, giving therefor the reasons set out at length in the testimony of the superintendent. This court cannot say that either reason given by the superintendent for the segregation complained of is unreasonable, if impartially applied to all pupils alike, or that it does not evince a careful study of the practical problem confronting him, or a sincere effort to solve that problem in such manner as to secure the greatest benefits to the school children of the district. To the extent that the plan adopted is applied in good faith as to those brought within the projected classification, with no intent or effect to discriminate against any of the races involved, it cannot be said that the plan is unlawful or violative even of the spirit of the Constitution. And whatever may be the effects or incidents of the general plan as working an unlawful discrimination in any given case, the courts cannot be justified, by reason thereof, in condemning the whole plan, nor may they lay down arbitrary tests and rules by which it must be operated so as to prevent such discriminations. We may go no further than to enjoin acts of unlawful discrimination in specific cases when such acts are proven in a proceeding brought by those having a legal right to maintain the action. In this case this court can say no more than that the school authorities have no power to arbitrarily segregate Mexican children, assign them to separate schools, and exclude them from schools maintained for children of other white races, merely or solely because they are Mexicans. An unlawful discrimination will be effectuated if the rules for the separation are arbitrary and are applied indiscriminately to all Mexican pupils in those grades without apparent regard to their individual aptitudes or attainments, while relieving children of other white races from the operation of the rule, even though some of them, as for instance those who tardily enter the terms, may be subject to the classification given the Mexican children. To the

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extent that the classification is arbitrarily imposed upon those of one race, but relaxed in its application to those of the other races so as to exclude the latter from its operation, it constitutes an unlawful racial discrimination. These conclusions bring us back to the question of remedy. No court may lay down a set of rules by which the school board and faculty shall grade, classify, and assign the pupils, for such are purely administrative functions inherent in the local school authorities and wholly foreign to the prerogatives of the judiciary. Those rules, by whatever authority promulgated, must be more or less flexible and adjustable to the peculiar needs of each school, grade, and class, as well as to the instructional needs of the individual pupils. Only the school authorities there on the ground as each pupil is presented for admission, may properly, reasonably, justly, or effectively grade, classify and assign the applicants. In this case the record shows only two specific instances where it is claimed Mexican children were entitled to, but were denied, entry into classrooms other than those to which they had been assigned those incidents occurred at a former term, are closed, and the school authorities, denying knowledge thereof, or responsibility therefore, negative any intention or purpose of permitting a repetition of them. So there is nothing before this court there was nothing before the trial court except the general complaint that the Mexican children of the first, second, and third grades are being unlawfully segregated into a separate school and excluded from other schools in which other white children are taught in the same grades. There is no attempt to show that any particular individuals or groups among those children were or are or will become eligible or entitled to admission into other schools or rooms, or that they will be denied such admission upon their qualification therefor, or that children of other races housed in other schools or rooms should be assigned to the West End school; or that they will not be so assigned if and when they become eligible therefore. The school board has made no order, general or specific, touching the matter in controversy, and, so far as the record shows, have no such order in contemplation. Such matters of administration as grading, classification, and assignment of pupils have been entrusted, as would be expected, to the superintendent, subject to veto by the board, although so far the board, fully cognizant of the policy and acts of the superintendent in these matters, has acquiesced therein with full approval of those acts and that policy. It is obvious, for that matter, that the board could make no rational arbitrary rule or order governing that policy in detail, any more than a court could do so, by injunction or otherwise. The function of the courts extends no deeper into such administrative affairs than to prevent the school authorities from exceeding their powers so as to work a forfeiture of the private rights, immunities, and privileges of the citizens or their children, and this function may be invoked by individuals against only specific, tangible acts resulting, or threatening to result, in injury and damage peculiar to the suitor, as distinguished from a public wrong such as that complained of here. ‘‘We think it a principle established by the overwhelming weight of authority in the courts of all countries subject to the common law that no action lies to restrain an interference with a mere public right, at the suit of an individual who has not suffered or is not threatened with some damage peculiar to himself.… For a special damage resulting from the invasion of a right enjoyed by a party in common with the public, the law affords him a remedy by private action, but if the damages he

Mexican Americans and the Great Depression

suffers are only such as are common to all, the action must be brought by the lawfully constituted guardian or guardians of the public interest.’’ … Since it is not shown in this case that the school authorities are at this time enforcing unlawful segregation against any particular child or children, or intends to do so, or that the individual complainants are suffering or threatened with injury and damage peculiar to themselves, no right of action is open to them, at least in so far as they complain of the alleged policy of the school authorities in so classifying the scholastics as to effect an unlawful segregation of the children of the Mexican race generally. It is urged by appellees, comprising a group of individuals, that any taxpaying citizen may seek injunctive relief against the unlawful expenditure of public funds by a governmental body, and this may be true. By this process they seek in this action to restrain the school board from contracting for the addition of five rooms to the West End School building and from pledging any of the proceeds of the bond issue for such purpose. But, as has been held in this opinion, the matter of locating and constructing school buildings is an administrative function of the board, and may not be questioned except in the manner and by the processes prescribed by the statutes, as already pointed out; and, where the board has exercised its discretion in such matters, its action thereon is final and conclusive, at least as against an attack by the process here invoked. So is it claimed that the board intends to put the proposed structure to the unlawful use of inhibited race segregation. Appellants deny this, and it will not be presumed, for the purpose of restraining them against the threatened action, that they as public officials will violate the law, exceed their powers, and divert the public facilities to unlawful uses and purposes. If and when they do so, the courts will restrain them in a proper proceeding invoked by appropriate authority. The judgment is reversed and the injunction dissolved, at the cost of appellees. Source: Independent School Dist. et al. v. Salvatierra et al. No. 8515 Court of Appeals of Texas 33 S.W.2d 790, 1930 Tex. App. Lexis 1007, October 29, 1930, Decided.

247. ‘‘What Was the Lemon Grove School Desegregation Case All About?,’’ 1931 In the early 1900s, Lemon Grove, California, acquired its name when large citrus groves were planted and citrus became the area’s major industry. It attracted large numbers of Mexican workers who formed a colonia (colony or enclave). In January 1931, Lemon Grove Grammar School Principal Jerome Green, acting under instructions from school trustees, turned away Mexican children at the schoolhouse door. The Mexican parents refused to accept inferior schools and the ‘‘Lemon Grove Incident’’ resulted in one of the first successful school desegregation court decisions in the history of the United States. The following document provides an analysis based on the transcripts of the Superior Court case and The Lemon Grove Incident, a 1985 documentary produced by KPBS Television in San Diego, California.

During the labor struggles in the Imperial Valley, the children of Mexican immigrants throughout Southern California were increasingly segregated into separate

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classrooms called Americanization schools. It is not known how widespread segregated schools were in metropolitan San Diego. In semi rural regions of San Diego it is probable that segregation prevailed. One notable challenge to the Americanization school came from the Mexican immigrant parents living in Lemon Grove, a rural hamlet near San Diego where the main employers were citrus growers. This has come to be known as the Lemon Grove Incident, thanks to the research of Robert Alvarez, Jr. and the documentary film [The Lemon Grove Incident] produced by Paul Espinosa. This was the first successful legal challenge to the segregation of Mexicanos in the public schools in the United States. On July 23, 1930, the Lemon Grove school board began to discuss what to do with the more than 75 Mexican students who were attending the local grammar school. It was decided to build a separate school for them but no notice was given to the parents of the Mexicano students. On January 5, 1931, the principal of the Lemon Grove Grammar School, Jerome T. Greene stood at the door of the school and directed the incoming Mexican students to go to the new school building, a wooden structure that came to be called ‘‘La Caballeriza’’ (the barn). Instead, the students returned home and thereafter their parents refused to send their children to the separate school. This became known in the press as the ‘‘Mexican student strike,’’ but in reality it was their parents who, with the support of the Mexican consul in San Diego, decided to oppose segregation of their children. They formed a group called El Comit
e de Vecinos de Lemon Grove and asked the Mexican consul, Enrique Ferreira, for advice. Ferreira put the parents in touch with Fred C. Noon and A. C. Brinkely, two lawyers who had worked for the consul in the past and from there they filed a writ of mandate to prevent the school board from forcing their children to attend the segregated school. They chose a student, Roberto Alvarez, to be the plaintiff in the class action suit. The San Diego district attorney argued that the new school was appropriate because it was in the Mexican neighborhood and large enough for all the students; that most of the students were below grade level in their knowledge of English; and that they would receive better instruction in this Americanization school. Incidentally, they suggested that American students would benefit by not having contact with Mexican students. On February 24, 1931, Judge Claude Chambers began hearing the case. Fred Noon, the Mexican parents’ lawyer called ten witnesses to the stand to challenge the school board’s contention that the Mexican children were educationally backward. Most of the students had been born in the United States and spoke English. At least one student spoke no Spanish at all. In the interrogatory, Judge Chambers dramatically revealed the injustice of the differential treatment of Mexican students: Judge Chambers:

When there are American children who are behind, what do you do with them? Answer: They are kept in a lower grade. Judge Chambers: You don’t segregate them? Why not do the same with the other children? Wouldn’t the association of American and Mexican children be favorable to the learning of English for these children? Answer: (silence)

Mexican Americans and the Great Depression

In the final arguments, the judge was convinced that there was no reason to segregate the Mexican children and that the separation would probably hurt them academically in terms of learning the English language and customs. He ruled against the Lemon Grove school district and ordered them to reinstate the children in the regular school. While it was a victory for Mexicano students, the judge had held that their segregation violated state law which allowed for the segregation of African and Indian children. Thus the logic underlying the verdict did not challenge racial segregation, and it would remain for later court cases to outlaw that kind of injustice. The Lemon Grove case was the first legal victory of Mexicanos to challenge their separation in the school system. Unfortunately the case did not set a precedent in other districts and segregation continued outside of Lemon Grove. Nevertheless, the dramatization of the incident in the documentary film ‘‘The Lemon Grove Incident’’ served to educate new generations about the struggles of their ancestors to achieve justice. Source: San Diego Mexican & Chicano History, R. Griswold, 1998. http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/ dept/mas/chicanohistory/chapter07/c07s02.html.

248. Excerpt from Norman Humphrey, ‘‘The Migration and Settlement of Detroit Mexicans,’’ 1943 Mexicans had been recruited to work in Michigan since at least the 1880s, mainly as seasonal labor in the sugar beet fields. The Michigan Sugar Company, which had plantations and processing plants in Clinton, Gratiot, Lapeer, Saginaw, and Tuscola Counties, recruited them. Many Mexican workers had been born in Texas. In the 1920s, the auto and steel companies also recruited large numbers of Mexican workers, and the number of Mexicans in the midwest increased as immigration restrictions stemmed the flow of European ethnics. The depression hit this community hard and many Americans partially blamed Mexicans for the hard times. Americans wanted to save money on public services (such as public school education for immigrant children) that were provided to Mexicans by sending them back to Mexico. This was so, although many ‘‘repatriated’’ to Mexico had been born in Texas. The following article by Wayne State University Professor Norman Daymond Humphrey (1911–1955) focuses on Mexicans in Detroit in the 1930s.

With the onset of the depression of the ’30s, the number [of Mexicans in Detroit] declined. At first the Mexican consul, Ignacio Batiza, attempted to institute a relief program in Detroit for his charges; but eventually a repatriation program began to take form. On October 10, 1931, sixty-nine Mexicans left Detroit, and it was significantly the Detroit Department of Public Welfare in cooperation with the Mexican government that made their return possible. Regarding the group which left, Batiza said: ‘‘The Mexican colony of Detroit is young. The majority of the 15,000 Mexicans have not been in the United States more than five years. They have not yet adapted themselves to the American ways and have beer hit hard by the current depression.’’ He estimated that five-sixths of the 50,000 Mexicans had gone from the area by the end of 1932, ‘‘more than half of whom returned to Mexico.’’ Actually, by the end of 1932, 1,500 Mexicans had been

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sent from Michigan, and lesser numbers went back from other nearby states. Most of these removals were made as voluntary repatriations. The motives for returning to Mexico were primarily economic. Unable to find employment in Detroit, the breadwinner who was willing to return felt certain that he would obtain agricultural work in Mexico. The Mexican government offered to supply repatriates with land and with the tools to work it. Such were the main incentives operating on the Mexican to return to the homeland. In addition to this force pulling the immigrant, there was a strong force pushing him out which took one form in hostility manifested toward him by relief workers. The exact Mexican population of Detroit at any one time is difficult to ascertain. The most accurate figure is that of the Federal Census which in 1930 enumerated 6,515 Mexicans in Detroit. The official estimate of the Detroit Board of Education Statistical Bureau for 1934 (the estimate including all Mexican children whether born in the United States or in Mexico) stated that 278 families were enumerated and that the total population was 1,946 persons. In the same year Consul Batiza placed their number at 4,000. Source: Humphrey, N. D. 1943. The Migration and Settlement of Detroit Mexicans, Economic Geography, Vol. 19, No. 4. pp. 360 361.

249. Edna Ewing Kelley, ‘‘The Mexicans Go Home,’’ 1932 This is a very important article on repatriation to Mexico by Edna Ewing Kelley. Texas, the Lone Star State, dips into the heart of Mexico. Texas was hit hard by the Great Depression and to curb expenses for public services (such as public education of immigrant children) it deported a great number of Mexicans to Mexico. The article was one of the few contemporary pieces on the repatriation published in an academic journal. The study of repatriation remains a neglected area of investigation. Indications are that there was a substantial Mexican repatriation from Texas—probably more Mexicans were returned to Mexico from this state than from any other state.

During the past year streams of Mexicans from Texas … Oklahoma, Arkansas, and the Middle West, have flowed back over prairies and across the Rio Grande into the homeland, Old Mexico. Two thousand Mexicans have joined in this home-coming trek through Texas; and fifty thousand have returned to Mexico through Southern California within the year. A Mexican family carrying all its wordly goods in a rusty, battered Model T Ford is a common sight on the highways of the Southwest. The shabbily dressed, swarthy man with bright, determined eyes guides the rattling car toward the Mexican border. Beside him sits his wife, gay with a red shawl or green scarf tied over her shiny black hair, contentedly holding the fat, brown-skinned baby on her lap, with the next-to-the-baby tucked in between them; and the other children, shy but alert as little rabbits, are stowed away at random, their faces peering out from among bed springs and baggage. The inevitable mongrel dog accompanies the travelers, sometimes trotting happily along beside the car. Any roadside clump of trees or stream crossing offers a night’s lodging for the wayfarers; the family beds down at dusk, rises at dawn for a breakfast of frijoles and coffee, and sets forth eagerly on another lap of the homeward journey.

Mexican Americans and the Great Depression

The largest single group which has crossed the Rio Grande during this great migration was a party of twenty-five hundred Mexicans which arrived at Laredo on a weekend in November 1931. The party was under the supervision of Consul General Eduardo Hernandez Chazaro of San Antonio, and traveled in trucks and automobiles lent them by the San Antonio Mexican colony. They made a fiesta of the trip, although one man died and six babies were born while the party was en route. Because of the entrance of this company, the Nuevo Laredo port of entry recorded during 1931 the repatriation of more Mexicans than any other single port, according to the statement from the office of Immigration Chief Gomez. But the steady southward movement continued through the winter undiminished; ten thousand Mexicans crossed the border during December 1931. The journey was made as easy as possible for them by the Mexican Government. As a gesture of welcome to its returning sons and daughters, it waived customs formalities and provided free transportation into the interior over national railways. In some instances, not only was transportation arranged, but food was also furnished to needy Mexicans until they were able to reach the homes of friends or relatives. This tremendous exodus has relieved the Southwest, especially Texas, of its Mexican immigration problem. When American prosperity went on the rocks of disaster, the ensuing slump shut down the influx of labor from below the Rio Grande as suddenly and sharply as an automatic spring snaps down the lid of a box. The great republic of the north was no longer inviting to Mexicans. Then Mexico began to call her children who were already in the United States. It was not difficult to entice them back, for they had only been sojourning in this country. Most of them had come merely to seek their fortunes. Among the communities of the Southwest they had lived in segregated districts, accepting unobtrusively the privileges of schools, churches, and government, but in no permanent sense becoming citizens of the United States. The Mexican Government, which had grown increasingly stable since the revolution of 1929, could stand behind its offer of homes and jobs to returning Mexicans. Government lands, both irrigated and non-irrigated, were opened free of taxes to settlers. On October 6, 1930, the San Martin dam in the state of Nuevo Leon was completed and formally opened by Gen. Plutarco Calles in the name of the President of the Republic. By the spring of 1931, twenty thousand families had already moved into the vast agricultural region that had been opened for cultivation by the construction of the dam. Almost two hundred thousand acres were ready to be prepared for planting, and it was estimated that one hundred thousand farmers and workmen could be supported by the products of the newly irrigated region. This land was sold on easy terms by means of the deferred-payment plan to many of the Mexicans who were returning from the United States. These Mexicans, having worked on farms in our country, eagerly seized the opportunity offered them by the Mexican Government to buy at a nominal cost fertile, irrigated land, and settle upon it. In March 1931, another large agricultural area was formally opened to the homecoming Mexicans. The fertility of this land, located in the municipality of Villa Juarez in the south-central part of the state of Tamaulipas, has been materially increased by the recent completion of the El Mante irrigation project. Water for the system is supplied by the Rio Mante, which has its source in a spring in the Sierra Cucharas, and whose minimum flow is about two thousand gallons per second. Because of the relative regularity of the flow, no storage dam was constructed; the

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irrigation system consists simply of a series of intakes and canals. The total area served is more than forty thousand acres. Many Mexicans who had farmed in the United States settled on this land to raise crops that were suited to the soil, including corn, rice, sugar cane, alligator pears, lemons, tangerines, guavas, cherries, mangoes, oranges, bananas, peppers, onions, and tomatoes. Another agricultural area in Mexico which has been converted by irrigation from an arid waste into a rich grain and fruit producing region is the Tecozautla Valley, where ten thousand young orange trees have been distributed free among small farmers who are beginning the cultivation of the land. In order to encourage the newly returned Mexican farmers to raise corn, beans, and other basic crops, President Ortiz Rubio issued a decree on November 17, 1930, authorizing the Secretary of the Treasury to deposit one million pesos in the Agricultural Credit Bank for use in farm loans. These loans, which were to be for periods of one year, eighteen months, and three years, were secured by crops, farming implements, and farm improvements, respectively, and were made only to farmers engaged in the cultivation of the crops specified. This available money was of inestimable value to the Mexican farmers who had come home penniless. Besides the inducements held out to the farmer, the Mexican Government offered work to the unskilled laborer. The Department of Agriculture had undertaken the reforestation of denuded areas throughout the Republic, and set aside the week of February 18, 1931, as National Arbor Week, in which to begin an enthusiastic campaign for tree planting. Almost all municipal reforestation commissions established nurseries, and more than a hundred and fifty thousand forest, fruit, and ornamental trees were distributed by the Bureau of Forestry, Game, and Fisheries. Arrangements were made to open a national nursery which would be large enough to provide for the cultivation of six hundred thousand trees, and in Ameca, Jalisco, the agrarian community planted a nursery of sixty thousand mulberry cuttings and a large number of fruit trees. The Department of Agriculture also set out many young trees along the new highways. All this meant work, and the Mexican Government used the appeal to draw her laborers home. Furthermore, there were extensive archeological undertakings in Mexico that called for untrained labor. When one learns that the archeological map of Mexico indicates more than twelve hundred sites, one can easily realize the gigantic and costly task that faces the Bureau of Archeology. It is of great importance to present and future archeology that the groups of ruins be guarded against vandalism and be cleared of vegetation. Apart from the labor of protecting the ruins, the Government is conducting excavations and restorations at the Pyramid of Tenayuca in the Valley of Mexico, is continuing work on the ‘‘Road of the Dead’’ at Teotihuacan, and is initiating an extensive program of excavation and conservation on the ruins at Monte Alban in the state of Oaxaca. But the greatest amount of work offered the returning Mexican has been in road construction. In 1925, the National Highway Commission of Mexico was created, and charged with the tremendous task of covering Mexico’s 767,000 square miles with a network of modern roads. For the last six years this work has been pushed to the limit of the Government’s resources. At the end of 1930, a total of almost sixty million pesos had been expended, with the result that several thousand miles of highway had been provisionally opened to traffic, 380 miles had been surfaced, and 372 miles had been paved. The cost of building the national highways has been defrayed by a special tax on gasoline.

Mexican Americans and the Great Depression

Four national highways are under construction, one of them being the Mexican division of the Pan-American Highway. This road is in two sections, one running from Nuevo Laredo to Mexico City, and the other from Mexico City to the Guatemalan frontier. Work on this road has been pushed as rapidly as possible; six thousand men have been employed on one section alone, and in May 1931, it was provisionally opened to traffic because of the need for communication and for the transportation of materials and machinery to be used in constructing a permanent surface. The second highway connects the port of Vera Cruz on the Gulf Coast with Acapulco on the Pacific Coast. The total length of this road is approximately 580 miles. Another coast-to-coast highway is being built in the northern part of the Republic from Matamoras to Mazatlan, covering a distance of 757 miles and passing through the important cities of Monterrey, Torreon, and Durango. Work on the fourth main trunk-line, connecting Mexico City with Guadalajara, is being prosecuted with vigor. Despite unfavorable economic conditions, the Federal Government plans to complete these highways before 1933. The Government officials, realizing the importance of continuing road construction in order that labor may be furnished Mexico’s returning citizens, revised the 1932 national budget to provide the necessary funds. Se~ nor Vicente Cortes Herrera, Chairman of the National Highway Commission, has announced that instead of the eight million pesos originally assigned to the road construction program for 1932, other Federal expenditures have been lessened so that the Mexican Government may spend eighteen million pesos on its road building. Besides using homes and jobs as inducements to her children, Mexico has worked out labor laws that are attractive to the Mexican laborer. In 1931, a new Federal labor code went into effect. With the passage of these new laws, almost every possible phase of the employer employee relation has been covered and a unified and advanced social-economic policy adopted for the whole country. Significant among the regulations promulgated is a provision requiring the employment of Mexican citizens in ninety percent of the positions on both technical and regular staffs of every enterprise, and the use of the Spanish language in the issuance of orders and instructions to employees. As a further protection to the Mexican laborer, foreign immigration into Mexico has been restricted. An order issued by the Secretary of the Interior on July 14, 1931, which became effective sixty days after the date of promulgation, requires that a foreigner with a capital of less than ten thousand pesos shall be classified as an immigrant worker and shall be denied entrance into the country, except in a few specified cases. Those having the required capital must convince the Mexican Government of their intention to invest this capital in commerce, industry, or agriculture in a way which will provide an income sufficient to support them and their families. These laws are significant because they reflect the policy of Mexico’s leaders, especially of the intellectuals who are determined to keep Mexico’s individuality intact. ‘‘Mexico for Mexicans’’ is the slogan below the Rio Grande. The present character of the country is uniquely and vividly a continuation and development of customs and institutions of almost immemorial antiquity. At the time of the Conquest, Mexico had the highest civilization on the North American continent; and it has as a whole never broken away from its indigenous culture and attempted to start life anew with transplanted European elements. Mexico’s intellectuals see the value of keeping the native character of their country unchanged, and are exerting every

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force and influence in this direction. A recent issue of the Bulletin of the Pan-American Union contains a statement from Se~ nor Aureliano Esquivel of the Department of Public Education, in which he announces that all textbooks used in the schools of Mexico at the present time were written by Mexican educators. ‘‘This fact,’’ he goes on to say, ‘‘is of particular satisfaction to the Department, since as recently as 1923 the majority of the textbooks used in Mexico’s schools were of foreign origin.’’ It was for the purpose of keeping Mexico Mexican that a strong protest against an American school in Mexico City was voiced recently by the educational leaders of Mexico, on the grounds that this school was endeavoring to Americanize Mexican children. They declared that Mexico does not want a jazz civilization, and they believe that through control of the schools they can have some success in preventing encroachments of the civilization of the United States upon their land. Many Mexicans have long resented the intrusion of American culture, capital, and political influence. Mexico’s natural resources have been exploited by foreign capital to such an extent that a spirit of suspicion toward American capitalists has grown up in the hearts and minds of the Mexican people. Formerly politicians played the American string for the purpose of gaining personal power though fortunately there has not been so much of that sort of thing since the late Dwight Morrow established a firmer feeling of friendship and good will between the American and Mexican people. But it is increasingly evident that the future development of Mexico will come through the efforts of her own citizens. In natural resources, she is one of the richest countries in the world. Her lands, oil, silver, copper, and forests represent untold wealth, only awaiting development. Yet with all her abundance of raw materials, waterpower, and cheap labor, she is industrially poor, for she has few factories to utilize her raw materials. Last year Mexico exported to Rochester, silver for making photographic supplies, coffee to Baltimore, nitrates to Wilmington for the manufacture of explosives, rubber to Akron, and oil, wheat, goat skins, and Indian corn to Texas. Yet in Texas alone Mexico spent during the year sixty million dollars buying back her raw materials made into commodities that must eventually be manufactured in Mexico, including leather, shoes, meal, flour, butter, cheese, gasoline, lubricating oil, and automobile tires. There are many indications that Mexico is beginning to grope after economic independence, for although mining and agriculture have long been Mexico’s predominant industries, manufacturing is slowly advancing. For some time Mexico has maintained a protective tariff and in general has followed a policy of protection of local industry; and although the larger industries represent investments of foreign capital, the significant fact remains that the principal increase in manufacturing in Mexico during the last few years has been in small plants financed by native capital. For instance, in 1931 Gen. Plutarco Calles, Secretary of War, was made president of a company of leading businessmen of Mexico, called the (Compa~ nia Hulera Mexicana, S. A.), organized for the purpose of exploiting the process invented by Julio Tellez, a Mexican, for making synthetic rubber from petroleum. After a year’s testing, the value of this commercial substitute for rubber was proved, and a small factory was opened for the manufacture of automobile tires from the synthetic product. This venture is prophetic of Mexico’s future: more and more, as time goes on, her own people will capitalize her resources. It is true that Mexican laborers in the United States are being driven out by the scarcity of employment; but they are also being drawn home by the new industrial policies of modern Mexico. There is

Mexican Americans and the Great Depression

perhaps no more significant trend in North America than this economic awakening of the Mexican people, with all its cultural and political consequences. Source: ‘‘The Mexicans Go Home’’ by Edna Ewing Kelley first appeared in Volume XVII, No. 3, April 1932, Southwest Review. pp. 303 311.

250. Excerpts from ‘‘New ‘Jim Crow’ Bill Denounced,’’ 1931 California allowed the segregation of Asians, Africans, and Native Americans until World War II. However, according to the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848), Mexicans were supposed to have the rights of full citizenship and consequently supposedly white. In the aftermath of World War I, as Mexicans became more numerous and lived in urban areas, nativism increased and the number of segregated Mexican schools doubled. About this time, the Mexican American community began to more vigorously challenge segregation in the courts. In 1931, California Assemblyman George Bliss, as a school board member in Carpinteria, California, attempted to segregate Mexicans by classifying them as Indian. The following excerpts castigate Bliss as leading educators challenged nativists.

Prominent educations here joined yesterday in whole-hearted denunciation of Assembly Bill No. 433, introduced in the present Legislature by Assemblyman Bliss of Santa Barbara, legalizing the segregation of children of Mexican blood in the California public school system. The Bliss bill is an amendment to the present State school law and its apparently innocuous character enabled it to pass the Assembly with only cursory examination. The measure would permit the establishment of separate schools ‘‘for Indian children, whether born in the United States or not, and for children of Chinese, Japanese, or Mongolian parentage.’’ The amendment consists in the insertion of the words, ‘‘whether born in the United States or not.’’ Under a ruling by the AttorneyGeneral, this would make the law apply to all children of Mexican blood, whether American-born or not since practically all Mexicans are of part-Indian ancestry. The bill is now before the Senate Committee on Education.… [According to J. L. Van Norman, chairman of the Los Angeles City Board of Education,] ‘‘The Mexican children are not a problem in our schools at all. Their presence there is not even an issue. We are glad to have them in the classroom and educate them to the proper American ideals. Source: ‘‘New ‘Jim Crow’ Bill Denounced,’’ Los Angeles Times, April 4, 1931, p. A1.

251. Miriam Allen Deford, ‘‘Blood-Stained Cotton in California,’’ 1933 In October 1933, the largest agriculture strike in California history until that time occurred as 18,000 cotton pickers and their families led by the Cannery and Agricultural Workers Industrial Union (CAWIU) called a strike after planters offered them 60 cents per hundred weight of cotton picked. Eighty percent of the strikers were Mexicans. The growers, assisted by police, formed armed vigilante squads and shot down 11 strikers, killing 3. They intentionally starved at least nine children to death. The strike was broken by government intervention, which resulted in the growers settling at paying 75 cents per hundred

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weight. The Nation a progressive weekly magazine, was one of the few publications to give fair coverage to the strike as mainstream newspapers labeled it a Communist revolt, which it was not. The following document describes the strike.

Three Mexicans murdered in cold blood; nine helpless children starved to death; 113 men and women under arrest on charges ranging from rioting to criminal syndicalism, not counting eight ranchers indicted for murder that is the record of California’s cotton pickers’ strike, which was officially settled after it had raged through six counties of the lower San Joaquin Valley for more than three weeks. Somewhat similar is the record of many strikes in many places, but there are ramifications of the cotton pickers’ strike that are decidedly unusual. This is probably the first strike on record in which one of the demands of the strikers was higher pay for the bosses. The reason for this is that everyone, including the strikers, grants that the growers cannot at present afford to pay more than the sixty cents per hundred pounds which was offered. The pickers went on strike for a dollar a hundred; the compromise on which settlement was made was seventy-five cents. The differences, the growers were given to understand, would be made up by a grant of a million dollars from the Federal Land Bank at Berkeley; but when the growers had grudgingly accepted the higher rate, they were calmly informed by George Creel, the NRA [National Recovery Administration] regional director, who, with Timothy Reardon of the State Industrial Board, had been chiefly instrumental in bringing about the compromise, that he did not mean they would get any more money he meant that they had already received a federal loan of a million dollars in the past! This is sad news for the growers, who are just about on their last legs now after years of depression. Most of them are in pawn to the gin operators and the finance companies, the real villains in the piece, who financed the picking in advance on the basis of a sixty-cent rate. Three-quarters of the $9,000,000 crop was contracted for before it was ripe, at seven to eight cents a pound most of it, it is said, on orders from Japan, in itself a significant statement. The few independent growers who held out because they were economically better fixed are now getting from ten to twelve cents a pound. The new textile code allows fifteen cents a pound for raw cotton. It is easy to see that the California cotton growers are not going to buy any Rolls Royces this season. However, no sympathy need be wasted on them. Their treatment of the strikers and of the strike organizers has been execrable. It is easy, of course, to understand their psychology that of the economically depressed poor white who lynches a Negro because he dare not attack the owner of his miserable farm. The cotton growers, faced with their first chance in years to make even a bare living, desperate and unnerved and just beginning to hope again, suddenly found themselves confronted with stubborn resistance from the submissive Mexican peons they had imported to do the grinding work of picking, which relatively few white workers will attempt. They could do nothing but grumble at the gin operators and the finance companies, but here was a chance for a real catharsis. The striker was the scapegoat. The growers and their law-enforcement officials fell upon him viciously. When they had turned the beautiful southern San Joaquin into a shambles, they blandly blamed the Communists that is, the Cannery and Agricultural Workers [Industrial] Union. The pickers, they said, really wanted to work and were delighted to receive sixty cents a hundred pounds a wage at which at the best a full-grown man can earn

Mexican Americans and the Great Depression

about $1.20 a day, out of which he must take the cost of his picking sacks; an entire family of husband, wife, and small children (all of whom usually work) can earn no more than $2 (The average family wage under the sixty-cent scale was $7.20 a week!) The only reason they walked out and stayed out, said the growers, was that they were afraid of the organizers. Long before there was any actual bloodshed, it was being deliberately planned at growers’ meetings in Kings and Tulare counties. There and in Kern County deputies so called practically all of them ranchers or members of ranchers’ families were being sworn in by the hundred, and all were heavily armed. An independent grower accused a prominent member of the ‘‘Protective Association’’ hastily formed by the ranchers of having urged that the members arm themselves and end the strike by violence. And then, on the same day, Pedro Subia was shot to death at a struggle on a ranch near Arvin, Kern County, and Dolores Hernandez and Delfino Davila were murdered at Pixley, Visalia County. The only unusual feature of the shooting of Subia was that nine of his fellow strikers, including one woman, were arrested for his murder, the charge being that one of the strikers, Alonzo Andrews (all those arrested were Americans in this case), had killed him while attempting to attack a deputy sheriff who was endeavoring to disperse the crowd. There was plenty of testimony that the strikers were unarmed, and Andrews was not even present at the affray. On investigation, the Kern County grand jury refused to return murder indictments, and the nine are now held on charges of rioting. In the Pixley killings, there could be no question of who did the shooting. Both the strikers and the growers had been holding all-night meetings, in separate places. At dawn, the meetings broke up and the two factions met face to face. The strikers were returning to their camp; they were entirely unarmed, even as to pick-handles or stones. There was some altercation, and then a young rancher yelled, ‘‘Let them have it, boys!’’ A volley of shots followed, and Hernandez fell dead. The killing of Davila was even more atrocious. He approached with his hands up, was shot, and fell, wounded, on his face. As he lay there helpless, growers pumped lead into his back. Davila was the Mexican consular representative at Visalia. Then the armed ranchers ambushed themselves behind their cars, but there was no retaliation. The pickers had nothing to retaliate with. Eleven growers were indicted for murder by a very apologetic, reluctant, and slow-moving grand jury made up of their fellow ranchers. Eight are now held without bail, three having provided an alibi. The heart and soul of the cotton pickers’ strike was Pat Chambers, Communist organizer, who had been active in the earlier strikes of peach and grape pickers. Under the name of John Williams he is now in jail in Visalia on two criminalsyndicalism charges, bail having been fixed at $10,000. There have been rumors of attempts to lynch him. When Creel and the State’s fact-finding committee Archbishop Hanna of San Francisco, Professor Ira B. Cross of the University of California, and President Tully C. Knoles of the College of The Pacific endeavored to negotiate with the strikers and asked for spokesmen, the strikers insisted unanimously that they had no spokesmen that nobody could speak for them but Pat Chambers. Nothing could induce them to change their minds. It was a deliberate piece of tactics to keep official attention focused on Chambers and thus save his life. The strikers’ largest tent colony, after they were evicted from their cabins on such ranches as had any, was at Corcoran, where nearly 4,000 persons twice the

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population of the town itself were huddled in the space of two city blocks, without water or sanitation. Typhoid, dysentery, pink-eye, and diphtheria broke out. Children died from lack of food. Just before the settlement, federal relief was secured; after the compromise it was withdrawn, and no credit will be extended for food until after the picking of one bag of cotton. Gov. Rolph refused repeated appeals for the State militia, saying county officials should be able to handle the situation officials notoriously in sympathy with the growers, using tear-gas on strikers, and looking the other way up to the point of actual murder. Now the State Highway Patrol is in charge and martial law practically exists. The growers are sore because they feel they were fooled about that million-dollar subsidy. The rains have started and the cotton will brown. Some pickers, mostly Negroes, have been imported from Texas and more are on the way. The strikers say they will not return unless the union is recognized, their comrades are released from prison, and all armed forces are withdrawn from the area. The growers will not dream of granting any one of these demands. As Sheriff Buckner of Kings County puts it, ‘‘The situation is still full of dynamite.’’ Source: Reprinted with permission from the December 20, 1933 issue of The Nation. For subscription information, call 1-800-333-8536. Portions of each week’s Nation magazine can be accessed at http://www.thenation.com.

252. Excerpts from Ella Winter, And Not to Yield: An Autobiography, 1963 The 1933 San Joaquin cotton strike that involved 18,000 cotton pickers in the San Joaquin Valley of California attracted intellectuals such as journalist Ella Winter (1898–1980) and African American poet and author Langston Hughes, who were horrified by the violence and gross constitutional violations that took place during the strike. Winter was married to muckraking reporter Lincoln Steffens. Winter and Steffens formed a circle of activists who supported human rights causes. The following is an excerpt from her autobiography where she describes the Corcoran Camp during the October 1933 cotton strike. Corcoran was one of five makeshift camps populated by strikers after they were evicted from cabins provided for the workers and their families by the growers. A grower tactic was to starve out the strikers. They shot down and killed three strikers and starved to death at least nine children.

It was dark when the car showed up at Camp Corcoran the tent city the size of a block which those thousands of cotton pickers squatted to sit out their strike. A few people stood about a makeshift gate. Was this the entrance? Someone came to our car.… We stumbled along in almost pitched darkness among tents, people, burning oil stoves, refuse, wretched and smell[s] as in the shack towns, smells of greasy cooking, stale fish, damp clothes, and sewerage. An occasional dim lantern lit up the mud we struggled through; there were small muffled sounds that gave the feeling of a crowded city, though we could not see the crowds. A sick baby wailed and I had a sense, in the darkness, of people waiting, waiting.… ‘‘Viva la Huelga!’’ (Long live the strike!) Came a cry out of the blackness. We stopped outside the dirty evil-smelling tent … a figure brought a swaying lantern, by whose murky yellow beam we could just make out a bunch of bedding, a broken chair, some gaping children. A frowsy woman came out with a bundle, a tiny

Mexican Americans and the Great Depression

wizened baby whose face was almost black black as I had seen them in Vienna; his tiny eyes gazed unseeing.… ‘‘The baby’s dead!’’ Mexicans stood around unmoving, wondering, I supposed, who these strange people were, commiserating all of a sudden with a wretchedness they had always lived in. Source: Ella Winter, And Not to Yield: An Autobiography (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1963), pp. 196 197.

253. Excerpt from Oral History Interview of Eduvigen
ndez about Mexican American Life in Navarette Herna Morenci, Arizona, ca. 1996 Eduvigen Navarette Hern
andez (1918–2005) was a resident of Morenci, Arizona, a mining camp mostly comprised of Mexicans. Morenci, along with Clifton and Metcalf, Arizona, were considered Mexican camps, that is, most of the miners were of Mexican extraction. Because it was a Mexican camp work conditions were worse than in other camps—Mexican miners got paid less. They lived in segregated housing, and their children attended segregated schools. Even the showers miners used were segregated until after World War II. The camp was the scene of historic strikes and a major source of revolutionaries before and during the Mexican Revolution of 1910–1920. The following excerpt, an interview with a Mexican American who lived through the Great Depression in Morenci, provides her recollections of life in that area.

My name is Eduvigen Navarette Hernandez. [I was born on October 21, 1918] in Eagle Creek, about seven miles from the pump going down from Morenci. It was seven miles from the pump but from Morenci to the pump, I do not know how many miles it was. Maybe another seven miles to the pumps which were on the river. We lived there until they took away the ranches and we came to live in Morenci. It was only when school was open that we used to come to Morenci at Newtown. Always, we lived in Newtown. There my grandparents lived, and almost all my family lived in Newtown. [When I was a child], I lived on the ranch all the time and only when school was in session, did we live in Morenci. On Fridays, we went back to the ranch after school was out. We had a house in Newtown. [My parents were named] Maximo Navarette and Josefa Marquez Navarette. My father came from Gila, New Mexico; my mother from Las Cruces, New Mexico. That is where she was born. They came by wagon train pulled by horses. They [my grandparents] brought my mother and all their children from Las Cruces. They came to Sanchez [Arizona]. In Sanchez, my mother started school. Then they went to Eagle Creek where they got that place and they stayed to live there at that ranch. Then my mother married my father. My father came from Gila to the ranches, to a ranch that had many horses. He used to train them because they were broncos. There is where they [mother and father] met and got married. He went to another ranch further below from my grandparents and he got a ranch that was the ranch that we had. It was the biggest ranch of all the ranches on Eagle Creek. He was the last one to leave when the company took their water away. The company took their water away and all of them started to sell their ranches and my father was the last one. He had lots of livestock, cows.

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I worked in the WPA. I sewed mattress ticking. Inside we put little strings because we filled them full of cotton. We tied the strings, then we stuffed them with more cotton in another row and tied the strings. That is what I was doing. They gave them [the mattresses] to the poor people. In Morenci where the white school was, underneath in the bottom floor was where they had the sewing. It was at that time when they were giving [things]. Other people sewed clothes, different clothes. Some sewed the sleeves, others sewed the sides, others put the buttons on. They put us to do different things. At that time that I started working in the WPA, my father was alive but he was very sick. After that he had a stroke. That is when he died, in 1941. My mother just stayed at home. She was very sick. I was the one who cleaned the house and ironed and helped my mother wash clothes. My other two sisters, Concha and Carmina, washed the dishes, cleaned the kitchen, and helped my mother in the kitchen. Source: In the Shadow of the Smokestack, An Oral History of Mexican Americans in Morenci, Arizona, http://www.elenadiazbjorkquist.net/interviewees.html.

254. Excerpt from Oral History Interview with Valent
ın S. Herrera about Mexican American Life in Morenci, Arizona, ca. 1996 Valent
ın S. Herrera (1920–?) was a longtime resident of the mining camps of Clifton-Morenci-Metcalf, Arizona, which have been among the world’s top producers of copper from 1880 to the present. The Morenci camp was isolated, which contributed to a strong feeling of place among the residents. It was a Mexican camp that had been built by the labor of Mexicans from Chihuahua in the early 1870s. During the Great Depression (1929–1940), the mining camps came to a standstill and many miners and their families were forced to move out—either they were repatriated or sought work elsewhere. Those who stayed behind scraped together an existence. Some fifty years later, Herrera tells of his resourcefulness and his family’s experiences during the Great Depression.

THE DEPRESSION In [the Depression] I lived there in Duncan. My father did not work. We worked on the ranches, picking cotton, potatoes. They used to plant a lot of potatoes in those years. I worked little jobs here and there where I found them. My mother died, I think in 1928. They gave relief and my father went to get relief but he had four horses and because he had four horses he was not entitled. (laughs) There were jobs, WPA. I worked in the WPA. Quico Alvidrez was in charge and I would go and go but he would never give me a job. I guess I was not old enough yet. He went on vacation and they put an Americano from Morenci in charge. I applied and he hired me. I think I worked two or three pay periods and Quico Alvidrez returned and as soon as he got back, threw me out [of the program]. You worked 11 days per month and they paid you $44. I think I worked three weeks. I think he got angry because the gabacho [pejorative term for a White male, nonHispanic put me in. I do not know. I did not go to the CC camp. In the WPA I worked on that road there by the Apache Grove. They made the highway, there on the cut just before you go up the hill. I helped make that cut using just a pick and

Mexican Americans and the Great Depression

shovel. You worked only 11 days and got $44. That way everybody could work. Everybody got a chance. I never saw much difference. I ate. (laughs) I helped a lot of people that is why they help me. Manuel [my brother] and I were alone in the house. We both worked in Carlyle, where I told you we worked in the mine. We rented a house there in the town. It had three bedrooms, the house. It was a green house. We would come from Carlyle and stay here [Duncan] on the weekend. Five days we stayed in Carlyle. We had a house there. We camped there. That night we came home; I took a bath, got cleaned up and went to the movies. I got out about ten o’clock at night. It was in the winter and it was so cold, even the ice shimmered! There was a fence by the house and there were some trees. They were big mulberry trees. I walked along the path in the dark without a light. A little kid cried. It was a woman and a man. They were young; they were not old. I asked them what they were doing. They were hobos. That is how people traveled during the Depression. I said, ‘‘It’s too cold. There’s going to be a bad freeze and that child is gonna be cold. I’ll tell you what. You guys go with me. I live just a little piece from here. I got an extra room where you can get out of the cold.’’ I did not know if it was her husband. I still think to this day that he was a tramp that tagged along with the lady. (laughs) Her name was Mary, I think. I showed them the room. I always had a sack of potatoes and flour, hundred pounds. Lard, everything. We had food. I asked them, ‘‘Have you eaten?’’ The little boy was crying from hunger. (laughs) I said to them, ‘‘If you want, there is potatoes, food. There is lard. There is flour. If you want to and you’re hungry, if you guys haven’t eat, you go ahead and make something to eat.’’ She got the frying pan, the big cast iron frying pan I used to use, and flour and she made biscuits. I was seventeen or so, it had not been long since I got out of school. There was a bed there and they slept there. The next morning, we got up. Manuel and I did not have to go to work. He [the man] left. He told us he was going to the mine to look for work. He never returned. She stayed there [with us] broke. She did not have a penny. There she stayed with her child. We left her there [in our house] alone and went to work at Carlyle. She stayed with us for months. She did not have anything, poor lady except what we gave her. She was from Oklahoma. When the work in Carlyle ended, they cut us back and that is when we decided to go to Phoenix. We had already sent her [to Oklahoma]. She had already left. We went to Phoenix and we were there when she returned to Duncan. She went straight to the house and knocked on the door. By then Quica [my sister] lived there. She was married to Lencho. She told them, ‘‘They don’t live in Duncan. They live in Phoenix or someplace.’’ The little boy was not even a year old. I had lots of cans of milk. I bought cases of it. We drank milk in our coffee. We would leave her there in the house and we would stay over there the whole week in Carlyle. She already knew [our schedule]. She earned her money because she knew we would come on Friday and dinner would be ready. All the others in my family had gone to California. They lived in El Centro. Manuel and I did not go because we worked in Carlyle. I do not know if that woman is still alive. The little boy would be about sixty years old or more. It was about 1938. We respected her. We would go to the movies often. We paid a dime for the movies. A nickel for the popcorn, I think. We used to go every day when we

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were off. She would stay there alone. She was not old. She seemed old to us but she probably was about 25 years old. This is how I bought food during the Depression. I would buy a sack of potatoes. They planted a lot of potatoes there in Duncan. I would go to pick them and they would give you half a sack of the second pick. I would choose them at midday when we stopped to eat and got half a sack of only good potatoes. It would be ready. When I took my sack home, I took only number one potatoes. The next day, another one. Sometimes we had two or three sacks of potatoes. Paulo used to hang out with us and his father had a pickup, an old one, Model A. We used to go pick potatoes and I got half a sack of good potatoes. Then Manuel and I put it together and it was a full sack. Paulo Magallanes. On Saturday, we would load up the little truck and go to Lordsburg and sell it. Number one potatoes! Two dollars a sack! They bought it from us. There in Duncan, everybody burned wood. Many were lazy. They did not have firewood. When I lived there, I had the horses there to one side of the house in a corral a little further than from here to the highway [about eighty feet]. I had the horses, the wagon, everything. When I did not have anything else to do. When I did not have to go to work, I would get up at six in the morning if I felt like it. I would eat breakfast and I would put together two sandwiches in bread. I used to make biscuits. I would put them in my pocket and a container of water. I would put the harnesses on the horses and I would hitch them to the wagon. You know where the cemetery is in Duncan? By that cemetery, I would go up to the countryside. There were a lot of little mesquite trees, dried up. I would hit them with a hatchet and they would come out by the roots. I went alone and cut wood. I would come back to the house about three in the afternoon. If I got hungry while I was there, I ate the sandwiches I took. I would come back with the wagon full of firewood. I would get home and those that did not have firewood would buy it from me for two quarters the bucket. I have always looked for ways to make it. I had to eat! In Glendale when I got to Phoenix, there was a street there and there was a big grocery store belonging to Jews. On this side of the store was a pool hall. In front of the pool hall was a big tree. That mulberry (points to a large tree in the yard) is small. It was thick like this (demonstrates with his arms not meeting). Huge! It was dry. It had been [that way] for a long time. When I got there, the guy from the pool hall wanted to cut it down. I told him I would do it. I asked for two hatchets and a saw, a big one to cut trees. I told the guy, ‘‘The tree is mine. All the firewood is mine. Get me the hatchets and the saw and a lot of long rope.’’ The people saw me as very young and they said to me, ‘‘It’s going to fall on top of the pool hall.’’ (laughs) I said, ‘‘It will fall where I want it to fall. You do not know me. I am used to do work. I will cut down that tree and it will fall where I want it to.’’ I got the rope and I climbed up like a monkey to the top and tied the rope. I crossed the street where there was another big tree and I tied the other end to it. On this side, I cut with the saw to about the middle and then I cut with the hatchet. Afterwards I changed to the saw, Manuel and I. It had to fall to the other side. The rope was pulling it. When it was almost ready to fall, I gave notice to the cops to block the street. There were not many cars, but so no one would come along and get hurt. There it went! (laughs) It fell where I wanted it on top of the street. It was so dry that it splintered. Right away the people gathered. There was no firewood. A dollar a bucket! We sold all of it! We worked until it got dark. (laughs)

Mexican Americans and the Great Depression

All of the branches that broke off, I cut small with the hatchet. Only the trunk was left. We cut it in big pieces. No one could steal it in the night, it was too heavy. The next day we came and cut it into pieces and we sold all of it. I taught Richard [my son], he has learned a lot from me. ‘‘When you want to cut a tree. You make it fall where you want it to fall, not where it wants to fall. Look, this way I have cut many trees. I taught him how. When his father-in-law died, there was a tree that was next to the house and was hitting it. It was a big tree. She [his mother-in-law] wanted it cut but her sons did not know how. Richard was there. They laughed at him, even Evelyn [his wife]. They said, ‘‘It will fall on top of the house.’’ Richard said, ‘‘No, my father showed me how to work. My father knows the works and he knows what he taught me.’’ He did it like I showed him. I learned everything working on the ranches, watching. Source: In the Shadow of the Smokestack, An Oral History of Mexican Americans in Morenci, Arizona, http://www.elenadiazbjorkquist.net/interviewees.html.

255. Excerpt from Oral History Interview of Mar
ıa Mannelli Ponce about Mexican American Life in Morenci, Arizona, ca. 1996 Mar
ıa Mannelli Ponce (1922–?) was a resident of Morenci, Arizona. She came from a miner’s family, and was born in the mining camp of Miami, Arizona. Her family was from Jalisco, Mexico. Her father met her mother in Morenci when he migrated there. Her paternal great grandfather was an Italian named Mannelli who moved to Mexico. Her father was born in Mexico and her mother was born in Morenci, Arizona, where he went to work in the copper mines. Her family lived El Espinazo de Diablo—in a barrio where the house had no electricity or running water. They were Catholics and attended a school designated for Mexicans. In the following excerpt she discusses why her parents were not sent back to Mexico during the 1921 repatriation and how they survived the 1930s. It was a time when there was no welfare—that is, government assistance for those in need.

THE DEPRESSION My father wasn’t affected by the copper slump in 1921. I think he continued working. They didn’t send him back to Mexico. My parents felt sorry for them (the ones sent back). They came here to work and there was no more work and they sent them back. They used to talk about being sorry for them. I don’t know why they kept him there. Maybe because he was lighter skinned. In the Great Depression, my mom was a widow. That’s when she started working. She was born in Morenci. I knew one family in particular who went to Mexico, but I don’t remember their names. I guess it was down below the PD Store and the train came in there and people were loaded. I remember the train. It was just like those boxes, those trains that carry … boxcars, that’s what they were like. They carried their bundles, their mochilas [knapsacks]. They didn’t even have suitcases. They just had maybe a big s
abana [sheet] or something to hold their belongings. They had to leave their houses, everything. There were plenty of empty houses. They just left them there. They didn’t have time to sell them. We lived in the same house after my father died until we bought

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your grandmother’s (Josefa Lim
on’s) house. I don’t know when, it was so many years ago. My mother did housework for Americanos. Those were the only ones who could afford it. In our time, there was no welfare then. Once in awhile, I remember they used to give us some food and shoes to go to school and a set of clothing to go to school. That was about it. She felt bad because she could hardly make it to feed us and dress us up. No help from the family because they were in the same place. Everybody had their own kids to take care of. The next-door neighbor would come and ask her, ‘‘Do you have a little bit of beans that I can borrow?’’ and my mother would share it with her. It was an awful time, you better believe it. My mother worked for the WPA. She used to go to houses and take care of the people. In fact she took care of your Aunt Carlota. She was paid by the WPA. When Roosevelt formed the project, the WPA, she would go to houses like when your aunt was sick. She would take care of her, cook, and clean the house. The government paid her. She would get $44 a month. Then after that, at school, the ladies used to go and make blankets and clothing to give to the poor, needy people. They would do it at school, at that white building (Fair Play School). Downstairs they had a room where they would sew. They would make blankets to give to the people, dresses for the kids for school. They provided jobs for the women and clothing for the ones that needed. They were very, very happy about FDR. He was one of the best presidents we ever had. When he passed away, I got a picture of him. Two presidents I really cried for, Kennedy and him when they died. The men went to the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) camps where they used to build fences. Not for the girls. We had to go to school so we had no job. But the ladies, the grown-up women like my mother, they had jobs. My husband went to the CCC camps. My mother didn’t buy from the PD Store. The only ones that could buy from the PD were, well, if you had money you could, but mostly it was the ones that worked for PD Company. I used to buy after I got married. My husband was working for the PD, then I could buy from the PD. I got married in 1947, they had coupon books.’’ Source: In the Shadow of the Smokestack, An Oral History of Mexican Americans in Morenci, Arizona, http://www.elenadiazbjorkquist.net/interviewees.html.

256. Excerpts from Bruce Johansen and Roberto Maestas, El Pueblo: The Gallegos Family’s American Journey, 1503–1980 These excerpts are from an account of the Gallegos family as they migrated over four centuries from New Mexico to Colorado to the Yakima Valley of Washington. After the Spanish Conquest of New Mexico in 1598, Native American and Spanish settlers coexisted and often mixed. In an effort to shield the large haciendas on the southern part of the Rio Grande, Spanish authorities encouraged the settlement of communal villages. However, with the coming of the Euro-American and the commercialization of agriculture, these villagers were displaced and forced to migrate. Initially, some went to work in the mines of southern Colorado, others to Arizona, accelerating the Mexican diaspora throughout the Southwest and Northwest. The following excerpt is from one of few stories linking New Mexico with the Northwest that has been preserved.

Mexican Americans and the Great Depression

In the early 1930s, Antonio went to work in a sawmill near Amalia [New Mexico] and saved his wages. He sensed that hard times’ were coming to the highland valleys. At the sawmill the family lived in a rickety shack built by the company. During the winter, the shack swayed in the cold mountain winds as snow sifted through the cracks in the walls. Plummeting demand for wood products closed the mill in 1932. The economic life of the area was gradually slowing to a halt. The cash economy in and around Amalia collapsed in the early 1930s. Antonio, who saw it coming, had stocked food large bags of corn and beans, along with other staples. He put the rest of his savings into a small piece of land next to one he owned, making the beginnings of a farm, the means of survival during the winter of the Depression. Many days, neighbors came to the Gallegos table for a meal, and no one left the family’s adobe house hungry. Following the election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt in November 1932, life in the valley began to improve, slowly. Agents of the government bought cattle that ranchers could not sell, slaughtered them, and distributed the meat on basis of need. This practice provided a market for the cattle and food for the people at a time when the economy had literally stopped. By 1935, Antonio was making a relatively good living on the farm, and he became the first man in the valley to own an automobile. Antonio became a leader in the valley. Many springs, he was elected ditch boss, supervising the cleaning of the vital irrigation canals. Even in his later years, after he moved to Pueblo, Antonio insisted that ditches on his property be cleaned. It was a rite of necessity. The river formed a fork at the property owned by Lazaro Martinez, the man who had gone to the mountains to avoid the draft call during World War I. Lazaro lived with his mother, and word in the village was that those five years in the mountains had done something to his mind. Lazaro one spring refused to clean his section of the ditch, an action which could have deprived many people of water. At first, Antonio tried to talk Lazaro into doing his duty for the community. Lazaro refused. Antonio stepped across Lazaro’s fence and advanced at him. Lazaro lifted a shovel and hit Antonio across the neck with its business end. They fell to the ground, wrestling, as other people sprinted over the fence. After Lazaro had been subdued, Antonio returned his shovel and told him to clean the ditch. With a little help from his neighbors, he cleaned it. Ditch cleaning was only part of the annual cycle of work which sustained the family and neighbors. In their fields, Antonio, Maclovio, and Isaque (born in 1931) planted, tended, and harvested alfalfa, pinto and horse beans, radishes, turnips, and other crops. They cared for fifteen to twenty head of cattle as well as horses, chickens, and a few pigs and goats. In the traditional pattern of the mercedes [land grants], Antonio used the 80 acres he owned, as well as large parts of the 287,000-acre grant that was open to all for grazing, wood gathering, hunting, and other needs. The thick walls of an adobe house sheltered the family from the bitterly cold winds of winter. Water came from a well near the house. With hard work and experience sharpened by generations of farming, the family wrested a decent life from the thin, rocky soil of the highland valley, despite the short growing season. Snow fell into May many years, returning in early autumn, riding frigid winds out of the mountains. Many of the farmers of the valley even managed to produce surpluses, which were carried in mule-drawn wagons over a rocky dirt road to a rail siding at Costilla, a dozen miles down the valley to the west.

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Antonio’s sons and daughters remember their childhood on the farm as a time of unparalleled freedom. Maclovio, who followed his father like a shadow, learned to handle a rifle and ride a horse before he learned to read. If the family needed meat, Antonio or one of the young boys went into the mountains and shot a deer no licenses, no questions. Hunting was a matter of survival, not sport. When he wasn’t hunting, Maclovio might be caring for the animals or riding his horse, Rodo, across the high plains, listening to the wind sing in his ears. Each boy had a horse, and each remembers his horse’s personality. Rocio was a wild Indian horse full of spots, a fighter long after he had been nominally broken. Tomas, born in 1935, was Antonio’s fourth child, following Maclovio, Isaque, and Juanita. Tomas had a good hand with animals, and was chosen by Antonio to herd the goats. Roberto was born in 1940. By the time he was four or five years old, he jumped out of bed as soon as the sun painted shadows on the mountains. Grabbing his saddle, bridle, and riding clothes, Roberto mounted his horse, Tuerta, who was blind in one eye, but lean and fast as any horse in the valley. He rode for hours at a time among jagged, snow-capped peaks, casting his eyes on their slopes, smothered in pine, gazing into valleys thick with juniper. By the age of eight, Roberto was delivering calves and helping with spring planting. According to the dictates of necessity, school came after work on the farm. All the children managed to complete seven or eight grades in Amalia’s one-room school, but only after helping the rest of the family with the chores of survival. Looking at his school books for the first time, Roberto saw drawings of people with blond hair and pale complexions. He asked his mother what had happened to them. Had they been painted that way? The farmhouses were widely dispersed, and children walked to school, often remembering the experience more for the long walk through snow-bound countryside than for what they learned once inside the small school building. During the late 1930s land-speculation fever reached the Amalia Valley. The 175 families in the area had piled up $55,000 worth of back taxes, and state law was amended to forbid deferred payment. Without payment the families’ land, some 128,000 acres, would be sold at auction for back taxes, as so much land in surrounding valleys had been sold in past decades. Thomas B. Campbell, described in the newspapers as ‘‘the Montana wheat king,’’ was waiting to pick up the land at the bargain price of something less than 50¢ an acre. During 1941, Campbell made a bid for the land, and rumors circulated that he would use the valley for a vast sugar-beet farm. According to the August 7, 1941, edition of the Taosano and Taos Review, Campbell planned to bring to it ‘‘the latest scientific farming machinery.’’ The beets, according to that report, would be processed at a refinery to be built in Costilla. The valley families organized quickly to meet the threatened expropriation, obtaining political support from New Mexico Sen. Dennis Chavez. They set up the Rio Costilla Livestock Association and applied to the Farm Security Administration for a loan which would allow them to repurchase their own land from the state for back taxes. Roosevelt’s Farm Security Administration (FSA) was sensitive to the economic trends that were destroying many small farms in New Mexico and elsewhere in the nation. In a report recommending approval of the loan, the FSA stated: ‘‘The trend of agricultural resources falling into hands of large commercial operators is not

Mexican Americans and the Great Depression

regarded as conducive to a sound agricultural economy, or a virile citizenship.’’ The report urged that government at all levels ‘‘assist in the acquisition of land resources for the resident populations who are dependent on those resources for a livelihood.’’ With the loan, and aid from the FSA, the families paid their back taxes and forestalled Campbell’s dream of agricultural empire. At this time, according to FSA statistics, the average valley farm consisted of just over fourteen acres, three planted in corn, three in beans, and the rest in oats, alfalfa, and other feed grains, as well as a family garden. The average valley family owned one cow, two horses, and two sheep, as well as two or three hogs and eight chickens. Antonio Gallegos’ farm was larger than most. Nearly everything the farms produced was consumed within the valley. Cash expenditures for families of five to six persons each averaged only $323 a year, including $264 for family expenses, $49 for farm operating costs, and only $10 for capital improvements. While the Gallegoses and other families had plenty of labor, they lacked the cash resources with which to buy machinery, fertilizer, and other goods on which agriculture outside the valley was becoming increasingly dependent. The FSA again recommended that the people of the Amalia Valley be given loans and grants to allow purchase of the necessary equipment. An FSA report noted that the valley farmers had been able to survive before they were deprived of grazing land, which was taken by large commercial enterprises or locked up in national forests. The invasion of corporate farming had forced the small farmer to the margin of subsistence, according to the FSA report: farmers ‘‘had sunk from one low level to another in their efforts to maintain themselves.’’ This report, accompanied by a detailed history of the area as well as a survey of its soils and geology, was part of a last, ultimately futile, effort to forestall the destruction of a centuries old way of life. After Roosevelt’s death, the program languished, and the farms continued to decline. Between 1940 and 1950, about 20 percent of northern New Mexico’s small farmers, almost all of them Chicanos, left the state, seeking work in the coal mines or on the corporate farms and ranches which had taken over so much of the land that once had belonged to the people of the valleys. Between 1950 and 1960, another 24 percent of the remaining farmers in the high valleys brought in their last crops and out of necessity joined the mobile underclass that migrated from corporate farm to corporate farm. In time, the Gallegos family, too, would join the ranks of what has been called America’s only Indian reservation on wheels. Source: Bruce Johansen & Roberto Maestas, El Pueblo: The Gallegos Family’s American Journey, C 1983 by Monthly Review Press. Reprinted by permission of Monthly 1503 1980. Copyright
Review Press. pp. 72, 74, 75, 78, 80.

257. Excerpt from Ted Le Berthon, ‘‘Why It’s Hard for Mexicans to Become Americans,’’ 1932 In 1932, Los Angeles Bishop John Cantwell began the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine (CCD) to teach refugees of the Mexican Revolution. Bishop Cantwell had appointed Fr. Leroy Callahan, pastor of San Antonio de Padua in East Los Angeles, to head up the missionary work with Mexican immigrants. A reporter interviewed Fr. Leroy Callahan who noted that there was a conflict between younger- and older-generation Mexicans that interfered with the

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process of making ‘‘American citizens out of young Mexicans.…’’ Callahan admitted that the younger generation generally rebeled against the older but that this was more profound with Mexican parents resenting the second generation ‘‘going American.’’ The lengthy article raises the concern that Americanization a la American education was furthering the alienation between child and parents. According to Callahan, the Mexican was a ‘‘true patriot’’ who wanted to return to Mexico after making a fortune. Hence, unlike European ethnics, he did not come to stay. Callahan blamed the alienation that began when a Mexican child started school and act as an interpreter for the parents, thus developing an independent—and even superior—attitude toward his or her parents. Although Callahan did not raise questions regarding competition between Catholics and Protestants for the hearts and minds of Mexican youth, this was also a factor. The Catholic Youth Organization (CYO) set up sports activities for youth to counter the influence of the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) and its sports programs.

Candidly, I think much of the mischief, however, is caused by sincere teachers who, out of a quite justifiable pride in Americanism, convey to the plastic Mexican child the impression that to be an American one must not only like all the things, but only the things, that Americans like. The implication, of course, causes the youngster to want to discard everything that is Mexican. This, I believe, is a mistake although a sincere mistake. For the Mexican youth’s love for a new country need not require the destruction of an old love. Source: ‘‘Why It’s Hard for Mexicans to Become Americans.’’ Ted Le Berthon. Los Angeles Times, August 28, 1932, p. K7.

258. Allan Turner, ‘‘A Night That Changed San Antonio: Woman Recalls Leading Labor Riot in 1939,’’ 1986 The Great Depression took more Mexican women out of the household. Many joined unions as Chicana or Mexican American women organizers across the country revolted against oppressive conditions. One of the best known was Emma Tenayuca, a native-born San Antonian who was one of few Mexican Americans to graduate from high school. By the mid-1930s, she was involved in organizing striking Mexican workers of both genders. Although she was abruptly replaced by professional union organizers, she was an early leader in the pecan shellers’ strikes of San Antonio which included 12,000 pecan shellers. Right-wing forces in the city saw her as a Soviet agent, and indeed she was a member of the Communist Party. A devout Catholic, she joined the Communist Party because of the racism and inequality in Texas. There were threats on her life; she was beloved by the workers. The following article recreates the 1939 riot in San Antonio that broke out while Tenayuca was speaking to labor activists inside the Municipal Auditorium. After this point, Tenayuca was blacklisted and driven from the city. Since this incident, Tenayuca has become an icon in Mexican American history. The following article was based on an interview with Tenayuca and captures the tensions of the times.

SAN ANTONIO Night fell, and the depression-era patriots, armed with a truckload of bricks, came to save America from Red agitator Emma Tenayuca.

Mexican Americans and the Great Depression

Five thousand strong, they boiled up Martin Street toward Municipal Auditorium, where several dozen communists vainly struggled to rationalize the latest dictum from Josef Stalin: the Soviet-German Non-Aggression Pact of 1939. Bricks flew like curses as the leaders of the mob a Catholic priest, a Jew, and a Lebanese immigrant whipped the throng to a frenzy. Tenayuca, though only 22 [years old] that sweltering August night, had already earned the hatred of a sizable portion of the community. For years she had been involved in labor activities on the city’s desperately poor Hispanic West Side. She had led strikes, been jailed, shepherded delegations of the unemployed to City Hall and most annoyingly proudly proclaimed her allegiance to the Communist Party. Although communist activities stirred bitter controversy, they never spawned violence until party members received permission from liberal Mayor Maury Maverick, Sr., to use a small meeting room in Municipal Auditorium. ‘‘It was crazy,’’ recalled George Bartholomew, former Chronicle photo editor who was then working as a San Antonio newspaper photographer. Bartholomew was knocked unconscious in the melee. ‘‘They had brought up a flatbed truck loaded with bricks,’’ he said. ‘‘I was running up to it to get a photograph of it, thinking a photo with the license plate would help investigators. That’s the last thing I remember. ‘‘I was a lot in sympathy with Emma. Hell’s bells, she was a frail little girl fighting for the poor Mexicans. I was trying to protect her. I don’t think the community as a whole gave a damn she was just a little pebble in a great big ocean. But those leading this mob kept waving the hammer and sickle and the red flag. They yelled communist long enough to start a fire, and, by God, they did.’’ More than 20 people were injured, at least 14 of them policemen. After breaking windows, the mob stormed the building to slash auditorium seats. Fire hoses ended the riot. But the riot shattered illusions, ended hopes, and crippled political careers. Almost 50 years have elapsed since that night a night in which, some thought, San Antonio was plucked from the grip of revolution. It was a night that changed the city. Today, the San Antonio communist menace lives only in the troubled dreams of retired generals. Cheap labor reigns. And last week, Henry B. Gonzalez, the city’s septuagenarian congressman, punched out a detractor who dared call him a communist. It was a night that changed lives. Tenayuca grew disenchanted with communism, enrolled in college and became a teacher. Though well informed and opinionated, she has lived in relative obscurity since her return to the city in the early 1960s. Her husband, Homer Brooks, a sometimes communist [and] gubernatorial candidate, went to sea. Maverick, a New Deal Democrat who had become mayor in 1939 after a term in Congress, never again held elective office. ‘‘The First Amendment that’s why my father authorized use of the auditorium,’’ said Maverick’s son, attorney Maury Maverick, Jr. ‘‘The constitution doesn’t exclude communists from the right of free speech. My father spent his life fighting for the Bill of Rights.’’ But Maverick, Jr. who later was among four state legislators voting against a bill to outlaw the Communist Party in Texas added: ‘‘I’ve got no rosy-hued glasses on

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about this thing. I’ve got a cocklebur under my saddle for the Communist Party. My father sent word to the party leaders that if they used the auditorium, it would ruin him. They met there anyway.’’ For days, strange autos circled ominously around the Maverick home. Tenayuca and her husband received death threats. The senior Maverick, an astute political veteran, often expressed dismay that the riot had been led by ethnic and religious minorities. ‘‘He was seriously depressed and he was not a bitter or remorseful kind of guy. He always warned me that the destruction of freedom of speech could come from any direction from the majority or from the minority.’’ Maverick, Sr., described the outburst as the worst display of Nazism in the nation. Weeks later, in routinely declaring ‘‘dog week,’’ Maverick still troubled by the riot observed even dogs let other dogs bark. Tenayuca said: ‘‘It was just a very bad time to organize a communist meeting. Coming right on the heels of the non-aggression pact, there was a lot of anger in this country. You could almost expect this type of reaction.’’ Almost half a century has elapsed since that night a night that has taken its place in San Antonio folklore. Most of the principals Maverick, Sr., the priest, the police chief are dead. But Emma Tenayuca remembers. Tenayuca, who now lives in a tidy bungalow a short distance from Mission San Jose on the city’s South Side, was only a child when her father took her to the Hay Plaza a social and political gathering spot on the western edge of downtown. ‘‘There was always someone at the plaza making a speech or talking or discussing or reading the latest papers,’’ Tenayuca said. ‘‘I was aware of a large number of people who came there and were contracted to work in the fields. I became aware that this was where they brought their problems to. There were cases where they weren’t being paid, of incidents of beatings. ‘‘I remember this and it’s still quite vivid that once I was there with my grandfather and a man from some place in the Valley was there with his family. He told the story of having worked at this particular farm, and, after the crop was harvested, he and his family had been awakened about 2 o’clock in the morning and the farmer and his sons were armed with shotguns. Yes, they put them off the land without paying them. I was very disturbed about this. There was a little collection taken up for the family.’’ In 1920, San Antonio’s population stood at 202,000 up from 119,000 a decade earlier. Slightly more than 40 percent were Hispanic. Among those recent arrivals were thousands of Mexicans who had fled the Mexican Revolution. Tenayuca’s family, however, had been in the country much longer. Her mother’s family the Zepedas arrived with the first wave of Spanish settlers at the end of the seventeenth century. Her father’s family was Indian. ‘‘My father was interested in one method of livelihood, and that was farming, being independent. Before he met my mother, he had already struggled along and bought that place. Mother was the first one to move into that place. It was not the happiest marriage. There was quite a bit of difference between my mother’s background and my father’s background, and my father was always regarded as Indian not quite acceptable to Mother’s family,’’ Tenayuca said. Tenayuca was one of 11 children, the second-oldest girl. She and her sister were reared by her maternal grandparents in the strictest of Catholic homes.

Mexican Americans and the Great Depression

‘‘I had a lot of catechism before I went to school. I learned my prayers in English and Spanish. Certain customs were followed in the house. There was grace observed. It was not just a question of prayers; it was a question of sitting down and really thanking God and being grateful that we had something to eat and that we weren’t sick and were able to eat.’’ In keeping with her devout Catholic upbringing, Tenayuca at age 12 sought admission to a convent. ‘‘They told me to come back when I was 14, and by then I was no longer interested. But, for a time, the life of a nun appealed to me.’’ Although exposed to politics, Tenayuca said the awareness of poverty was kept at bay. ‘‘I knew some youngsters were not dressed as well as I was and possibly did not eat as well,’’ she said. ‘‘I knew that they traveled in trucks. But I was aware of injustices. There always was some politicking here. I remember going to the West Side on this occasion with my father. There was a park, a big gathering place for political campaigns. The speakers afterward handed out sandwiches but they didn’t contain meat. Each had a $5 bill inside.’’ ‘‘There was a certain section of Anglo-Americans who maintained power, handing out a certain number of jobs. I don’t think I remember a Mexican-American mayor, but there always was a Mexican deputy sheriff, policeman, fireman. These were political jobs. My father had nothing but disdain for them and I shared his disdain.’’ Citing wages as low as $2 a week, excessive penalties for defective work, and inadequate sanitary facilities, between 300 and 400 female workers walked off the job at the Finck Cigar Co. in early August 1933. The strike lasted about four weeks, with dozens of young women, wearing pink ribbons bearing the words ‘‘Starvation Bound,’’ picketing the company’s West Side factory. The strike was brought to a close when company president Ed Finck agreed to comply with National Recovery Administration wage standards of $9 a week for rollers and bunch makers and $7.50 a week for strippers. The strike made front-page headlines daily as rumors of violence grew. The news stories spoke of the strikers ‘‘laying siege’’ to the plant, and stories were told of the throwing of animal feces on women who attempted to cross the picket lines. Auto windows were smashed and police under the direction of Police Chief Owen Kilday stationed as many as 15 officers at the plant. The strike proved a training ground for Tenayuca. ‘‘The workers just got tired,’’ Tenayuca said. ‘‘They were angry. There was a system in which they rolled the cigars by hand at that time and the foreman would come say these are rollovers, rolled improperly, put them over by the side and the workers wouldn’t be paid for them. So, this was a spontaneous strike, mostly women. ‘‘We had at the time a sheriff, Albert West, and he had his picture taken with a brand new pair of shiny boots and made the statement that he was going out on the picket line and kick those women. Yes, definitely, I saw that picture myself. So I went out on the picket line. There were some other kids in high school who went, but I was the only one who went a second or third time.’’ Today, the cigar factory remains in operation under the direction of Bill Finck, a man Tenayuca describes as ‘‘a devout Catholic a member of my tribe.’’ Finck, a former state legislator and county treasurer, recalled his father ‘‘wasn’t too enthusiastic about her (Tenayuca).’’

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Contrary to the assertions of the strikers, Finck said, his father was ‘‘a very intelligent man. Everyone liked him. He loved the cigar business. He was a helluva good tobacco man not a fat, old greedy businessman by any means. He would have been better off shutting this plant down. He didn’t make that much money. Liberata Fernandez born in 1916, as was Tenayuca was among cigar workers who declined to join the strike. ‘‘I just thought it was better to work,’’ she said. ‘‘We just didn’t want to be in any trouble. Fernandez, one of several current employees who had opposed the strike, has worked at the company continuously since age 13. As the depression deepened, Tenayuca became increasingly involved in radical activities, drifting into a leadership role in the Workers Alliance, a communistdominated organization for the unemployed. Through the mid-1930s, she organized workers around such issues as the use of immigration authorities to intimidate disgruntled Hispanic workers. At its height, the Workers Alliance claimed approximately 10,000 members in San Antonio. In July 1937, Tenayuca was among five Workers Alliance members arrested for disorderly conduct when police dispersed hundreds who had gone to the Works Progress Administration headquarters in the Gunter Hotel building to protest the layoff of 30 workers. Tenayuca was acquitted. But days later, police raided the Alliance’s Travis Street office, wrecking furniture, ransacking files, and beating up a couple of hapless party workers. ‘‘You and your men should be granted a pay increase due to your attitude toward the Workers Alliance difficulty,’’ Justice of the Peace Bat Corrigan telegraphed Police Chief Kilday. ‘‘I suggest that we do our best to eliminate these foreign agitators and give the Americanized radicals all the works possible.’’ Gov. James V. Allred, though, warned that the Texas Rangers would be sent to San Antonio if such incidents continued. And the American Civil Liberties Union [ACLU] called for the impeachment of Kilday, Police Commissioner Paul Wright, and Mayor C.K. Quinn for the raid. ‘‘San Antonio has established a new low in lawlessness,’’ ACLU Chairman Harry Ward wrote Allred. The stage was set for the fury that was to come. By the mid-1930s, San Antonio had become one of the nation’s pecan shelling capitals, with as many as 20,000 men, women, and children most of them Hispanic working in dimly lit, ill-heated, unsanitary processing plants throughout the West Side. In St. Louis and other major nut processing centers, much of the tedious work had been mechanized. But, in San Antonio, where thousands of workers flooded the job market, cracking, picking, and cleaning were performed by hand. That arrangement was far cheaper than installing machinery. In December 1934, a National Recovery Administration investigator found workers in 14 shelling plants averaging $1.29 for a 34.8-hour week. The work was seasonal fall to spring and informal. Laborers disgruntled by working conditions, or by the smallness or toughness of the nuts, would frequently move to other sheds. ‘‘They were sweatshop conditions,’’ recalled Ruben Munguia, Sr., who worked as a sheller in the winter of 1934 35. ‘‘Guys worked long hours, from 6 A.M. to 8 or 9 P.M. for pennies.’’

Mexican Americans and the Great Depression

Munguia, 67, owner of a San Antonio print shop and uncle of San Antonio Mayor Henry Cisneros, typified the sheds as being 20 feet wide and 40 to 60 feet long. ‘‘There would be benches running the full lengths of the walls and tables like picnic tables, benches with no backs.’’ Each shop housed 100 or more workers, and, until 1936 when a city ordinance required running water in such facilities, sanitation in them was minimal. ‘‘Workers could talk,’’ Munguia said, ‘‘but they had to keep working diligently. You had to to make any money at all. Try it yourself. Go home and see how many pecans you can shell in an hour. See how little it is.’’ A WPA study of the period found hunger and sickness rampant on the West Side. In 1938, more than 72 percent of the tuberculosis deaths in the city were among Mexican-Americans, even though the group accounted for only about 40 percent of the population. Infant mortality during the first year for Mexican-Americans stood at 120 per 1,000 live births; the rate for blacks, 68 per 1,000 live births; for nonHispanic whites, 36. One-sixth of children aged 8 to 9 in pecan shelling families had never completed the first grade. On Jan. 31, 1938, agents for the monolithic Southern Pecan Shelling Co. announced that shellers’ wages would be cut to 5 cents a pound for pecan pieces and 6 cents a pound for halves down one cent from the previous rate. On Feb. 1, 6,000 pecan workers many of them members of the Workers Alliance hit the bricks, electing Tenayuca honorary strike chairman. On the second day, the number of strikers had increased to 10,000. Days after the strike began, Tenayuca and two other strikers were in jail. Six hundred indignant strikers appeared at the jail to call for her release. Three hundred strikers were arrested on Feb. 7; by the time the strike ended a month later, 1,000 workers had been arrested on such charges as obstructing the sidewalk, disturbing the peace and unlawfully assembling. Tear gas was used to rout strikers six or seven times during the strike’s first two weeks. ‘‘I did not interfere with a strike,’’ Police Chief Kilday later told a commission investigating the strike. ‘‘I interfered with a revolution.’’ ‘‘There was very little support from Mexican organizations here, though, because I was a communist,’’ Tenayuca recalled. ‘‘You read where Chief Kilday said he was stopping a revolution. There was no revolution. People were hungry and he didn’t know. He had never been hungry himself. He was a devout Catholic but there have been many changes in the church since then.’’ Munguia remembered: ‘‘The Catholic Church was the only group fighting communism back then per se. Hundreds of people followed her (Tenayuca) and even more would have followed her like Joan of Arc except that she was tainted by Communism. Myself, I never really believed she was a communist.’’ There was no question of Tenayuca’s allegiances in the minds of others, however. And the CIO, under whose United Cannery and Agricultural Processors and Agricultural Workers of America the San Antonio Pecan Shellers Union was chartered, received intense pressure to relieve Tenayuca of her leadership role. At first, Tenayuca said, she resisted. Then, convinced that stepping aside would aid the strike, she acquiesced. ‘‘I knew we had not developed the leadership to take care of the negotiating. I knew that I was a good organizer, but when it came to

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negotiating, that was something else,’’ she explained in a 1983 article in the Texas Observer. ‘‘She was a little girl with no financial backing,’’ Munguia said. ‘‘She had no clout and the biggies did. It was almost natural that she would be shoved aside.’’ Tenayuca continued working with strikers in secondary roles until a settlement splitting the difference in wages was reached in March 1938. The contract was supplanted the following year, though, when the National Fair Labor Standards Act mandated a 25-cent-an-hour minimum wage in the pecan shelling industry. Thousands of shellers were left jobless when shop owners suddenly found installation of automated equipment economical. ‘‘After the Municipal Auditorium riot, she just dropped out of sight,’’ Munguia recalled. ‘‘You’d still see her name on the list of labor organizations but she hadn’t done very much.’’ Tenayuca recalled her confusion and dismay over the Stalin-Hitler non-aggression pact marked the beginning of her disenchantment with the Communist Party. ‘‘That was one of the weaknesses of the party following a line,’’ she said. ‘‘I don’t think there was a communist in the country who wasn’t puzzled … I decided I would never join a political party again.’’ The riot left her stunned. Initially, she found employment as an office worker. ‘‘I maintained good relations with a number of people in the labor movement, but, eventually, I felt what the mischief! I went to California.’’ Enrolled in San Francisco State University, Tenayuca obtained degrees in English and education. In 1968, she returned to San Antonio, teaching in a succession of Catholic schools before joining the Harlandale Independent School District. She retired in 1981, but has continued to work as a substitute teacher. She has also worked with a variety of labor and Hispanic-advocacy programs. She remains a socialist. ‘‘I did not consider all my work here in vain. I was quite young I hadn’t started formulating theories or developing any ideas or doing any amount of writing that could be influential. If there should be any criticism against any of these people, let me say this: We were fighting against poverty, starvation; fighting against the high infant death rate, disease, and misery. Believe me, I think I’m very sure I’d do the same thing again.’’ Source: Allan Turner, ‘‘A Night That Changed San Antonio/Woman Recalls Leading Labor Riot in 1939,’’ Houston Chronicle [2 Star Edition], Dec 14, 1986, p. 1.

259. Philip Stevenson, ‘‘Deporting Jes
us,’’ 1936 In 1936, Jes
us Pallares, founder of the 8,000-member coal miners union, Liga Obrera de Habla Espa~ nola (The League of Spanish-Speaking Workers), was deported back to Mexico as a so-called undesirable alien. Pallares was from Chihuahua, migrating to the United States to work as a miner. In 1923, he participated in the Dawson, New Mexico strike. The following article describes Pallares’ deportation, a favorite device of management to break unions.

On June 29, Jes
us was deported as an undesirable alien. Jes
us Pallares is a skilled miner and an accomplished musician. He has spent twenty-three of his thirty-nine

Mexican Americans and the Great Depression

years in the United States. For nineteen years he worked here, supporting his family of the remaining four years, two in childhood were spent in school, the last two on relief. Born in the state of Chihuahua, Mexico, Jes
us joined the Madero revolution at the age of fifteen, fought four years, and mustered out in 1945 with part of his lower jaw missing. He entered the United States legally and obtained work as a miner. As miners’ standards went, Jes
us did well. He was an exceptional worker. There never was a time when he could not get a job. On the whole, he got along with his bosses. In 1923, during an unorganized strike at Dawson, New Mexico, when anarchists among the men wanted to blow up the tipple in answer to company violence, Jes
us convinced them of the anti-labor effect of such tactics, and prevented catastrophe. Labor’s best weapon, he contended, lay in solidarity of organization. The onset of the Depression, 1930, found him working for the Gallup-American Coal Company, a subsidiary of the Guggenheim giant, Kennecott Copper. In 1930, Gallup was unorganized. So when Jes
us found himself being paid but irregularly for his prospecting work on a new entry, he kicked as an individual and like individual protestors in all depressed coal fields, was promptly fired. Jobs were scarce now. For the first time Jes
us was up against it to support his wife and four children. But after several months of unemployment he obtained work at Madrid, New Mexico. Madrid is typical of thousands of marginal and sub-marginal coal camps. The town is company owned. The miners’ homes are sagging, rotting shacks. Floors slant, roofs leak, plaster has fallen, doors lack panels, paint, and kalsomine have peeled away. The shacks can hardly have cost $100 per room to build fifty years ago. Yet today they rent for about $60 per room per year. Miners live in company houses ‘‘or else.’’ Payment is chiefly in scrip, good only at the company store, and there is a company coal racket whereby miners who get about eighty cents a ton for loading coal are charged $3 a month for fuel winter and summer. The prices for powder and caps are exorbitant, and the miners are docked every month for an Employees Fund of which the company steadfastly refuses to give any accounting. At first Jes
us got by in Madrid. But as bad times got worse, his earnings shrank. The summer of 1933 brought wholesale layoffs and misery. The company, in order to nullify Section 7-a of the NIRA, established a company union. Jes
us joined, only to discover that the union concerned itself with the boss’s problems rather than the miners’. In Gallup the miners had defeated the company union, organized independently, gone on strike, and won substantial gains. So Madrid, too, sent for organizers. But Madrid was tougher to organize than Gallup. The company was forewarned by the Gallup struggle. And the entire town, including the streets, were company property. Union organizers ran great risks in entering Madrid at all. Yet enter they did, thanks to Jes
us and others who smuggled them in on the floors of cars, covered with blankets and bags of groceries. To this, the company replied by spying on the union through its ‘‘lapdogs’’ (anti-unionists). Jes
us was elected local union organizer. But the union’s demands remained a dead letter. Jes
us and his aides decided to ask the aid of the federal government in enforcing Section 7-a. When the company prohibited all union meetings in Madrid, the unionists walked four miles to Cerrillos for meetings, passed resolutions, drew up petitions, framed protests, and sent them to the coal board, to Gen. Johnson, to Sen. Cutting, to the state Labor Commissioner. From the coal board came a promise of a hearing if the miners would withhold their strike and wait. And wait they

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did weeks and sent more telegrams and waited more weeks. Not until the tailend of the busy season February, 1934 did T. S. Hogan, chairman of the Denver District Coal Board, arrive in Madrid for an ‘‘impartial’’ hearing. The affair was a farce. Jes
us, attempting to present the case of his fellow union members, was repeatedly interrupted, not only by Superintendent Oscar Huber and his faithful lapdogs, but also by government representative Hogan, who refused to recognize Jes
us as the leader and spokesman of the majority. By patience and persistence, in spite of organized heckling, Jes
us did manage to cover the question of the coal-code wage-scale, even forcing an admission from Huber that code rates were being violated. ‘‘Now about the house-rents,’’ Jes
us continued. But he got no further. At that point, Huber asked for the floor, adroitly changed the subject, and that sorest of all points with the Madrid miners house-rents was never mentioned again! Results of the Hogan hearing were zero. Grievances went unredressed. Union meetings continued to be prohibited. A new coal code went into effect, only to be violated even more flagrantly by the company. Plainly, the men must either strike or lie down. They struck in the slack season. The strike failed. Jes
us was marked for riddance. Under the NRA he could not be fired for union activity. He finished work in his ‘‘room’’ in the mine and was assigned a new location. His eighteen years’ experience told him that he could make at best sixty-seven cents a day here and the mine was then working only one day a week while his rent alone amounted to $3 per week. Yet the boss refused him any better location. Then a fellow worker offered to share his place with Jes
us. It showed a good seam of coal, and both could make a living there. Jes
us asked the superintendent’s permission to accept this offer. ‘‘No. Take the place assigned you, or none,’’ Huber said. The alternative was peonage progressive indebtedness to the company. Jes
us refused. His fifth child was expected shortly. His savings went for food. Arrears on his rent to the company piled up. He was told to vacate his house or be evicted. He stayed put; the child arrived. Asked by a fellow miner, ‘‘What is it, boy or girl?’’ Jes
us replied: ‘‘I think it’s Bolshevik!’’ Soon after the birth, Jes
us was charged with ‘‘forcible entry’ of his house. The ‘‘court’’ was the company office, the justice of the peace a company employee. Superintendent Huber, furious that Jes
us had made a public hearing necessary, clung like Shylock to his pound of flesh. Evicted, blacklisted as a miner, Jes
us moved to Santa Fe and for the first time in his life went on relief. The family of seven lived in one room, on two cents per meal per person the starvation standard still current in New Mexico’s relief. Jes
us protested his eviction to NRA Compliance Director J. J. Dempsey today a New Deal Congressman. Dempsey refused to act and passed the buck to Hogan of the coal board. Hogan did not even bother to reply. Jes
us then appealed to the National Labor Board. Chairman Garrison wrote to Hogan urging him to act. Hogan disregarded even this. He never acknowledged Jes
us’s letters. The native New Mexicans, a Spanish-speaking peasant people, had never been successfully organized. Yet they were half the population of the state. If organized in their own interest, instead of the interest of the railroads and mines, they could be a force to help themselves out of their 300-year-old bondage. At least they could end racial discrimination in relief. So in the fall of 1934, Jes
us began organizing for the

Mexican Americans and the Great Depression

Liga Obrera de Habla Espanola (Spanish-Speaking Workers League), which concerned itself specifically with the problems of the Spanish-American rank and file. In November, there had been a few hundred members. By February, 1935, the Liga had grown to some 8,000. The politicos were frightened out of their wits. Jes
us was elected organizer for the whole district, serving without pay and hitch-hiking to organize the most remote hamlets on his days off from FERA [Federal Emergency Relief Fund] work. In January, the Democratic state legislature had hatched a criminal-syndicalism bill which would have made it a felony punished by fourteen years’ imprisonment to be seen in public with a copy of The Nation or any printed matter advocating ‘‘any change in industrial ownership.’’ The bill passed the House with only two dissenting votes. Sen. Juan Sedillo, opposition leader, had given up all hope of defeating it. The steering committee, itself a majority of the Senate, had unanimously recommended its passage. On the morning that it was to be passed, 700 members of the Liga Obrera, carrying placards of denunciation in two languages, swept past astonished police at the Capitol, filled the Senate galleries, and demanded the defeat of this fascist gag legislation. Senators took one look and changed their votes. To the acute chagrin of its big-business sponsors, the bill was beaten. This time Jes
us had won the enmity not merely of one coal company but of the organized rulers of New Mexico. On April 23, 1935, he was arrested while at work on his FERA job and jailed on deportation charges. After three weeks’ confinement, a secret hearing was held in an attempt to prove Jes
us active in ‘‘communistic’’ organizations. N. D. Collear, federal immigration inspector, acted not only as an initiator, investigator, and prosecutor, but also as judge and jury, and even as court interpreter! To the amazement of Jes
us, he found his opening remarks at the Hogan hearing of the year before cited as ‘‘evidence’’ against him. Jes
us had said: ‘‘We have been most patient.… Mr. Hogan, I hope you come here to bring us full justice, if justice exists for the working man. If you cannot see that we get it, we shall find other ways of getting it for ourselves.’’ Obviously Jes
us referred to the strike which had been postponed at Hogan’s request. At the deportation hearing it was offered as evidence of ‘‘communistic’’ activity! Here is an item from the testimony of a Madrid lapdog: Q. A.

Have you ever heard him make inflammatory speeches about the government? No, not exactly he urges the Mexicans to fight for their rights.

On such trumpery charges, Jes
us was held for deportation under $1,000 bond pending a review of the case. The bond was promptly furnished, and Jes
us was a ‘‘free’’ man as free as a labor organizer can be in a vigilante-ridden state as free as an alien can be who faces deportation and separation from his American-born children. He continued his task of organizing the Liga Obrera so successfully that the rulers of New Mexico redoubled their efforts to be rid of him. After all, the government’s case against Jes
us was weak, involving only trade-union activity a constitutionally guaranteed right. Could he not be provoked into open violence? As a leader in the Liga Obrera, Jes
us often accompanied delegations to the local relief office presenting cases of discrimination or deprivation. Recently, a worker in

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that office has disclosed in a sworn affidavit the methods employed against Jes
us ‘‘in an effort to create reasons for his deportation.’’ Says Esther Cohen, formerly of the New Mexico ERA [Emergency Relief Administration]: Attempts were made by my office to intimidate Pallares by withholding relief and by inventing reasons by which he could be removed from relief jobs which were the only types of employment open to him. He was repeatedly called into my office where threats were made to starve his family in order to involve him in an argument which the relief agency hoped would give rise to violence on his part, which in turn would give sufficient reason for a complaint to the Labor Department. Such violence never took place, even though situations were carefully prepared in advance such as the placing of a hammer on the supervisor’s desk within his easy reach. Nevertheless a complaint was made to Washington on the vague and flimsy basis that Pallares was a ‘‘troublemaker.’’ I gave Pallares’s case history to Mr. Colyear [N. D. Collear], the immigration officer from Washington, who stated that he found no data therein which would incriminate Pallares to the extent of seriously considering deportation. He wondered if it would be possible to extract some information from Pallares himself by any means available which would further the plan to get him out of the way. Towards this end Pallares was once again called into the office and this time a stenographer was placed where he could not see her and Colyear was also listening behind the closed door where Pallares could not see him. Again threats were made to ‘‘starve out’’ his ailing pregnant wife and six American-born children to whom he was passionately devoted, if he did not admit that he was interested in organizing his friends into an unemployed council. At the hearing on his case before the Labor Department’s Board of Review last spring, Jes
us was represented by an attorney for the American Committee for the Protection of Foreign Born. Among the papers on file in the case, two remarkable documents came to light, the existence of which had hitherto been kept secret. The first was a letter to Secretary of Labor Perkins from Gov. Clyde Tingley of New Mexico, urging that Jes
us’s deportation be ‘‘expedited’’ on the extraordinary grounds that the Liga Obrera was ‘‘the New Mexico branch of the Communist organization.’’ But the Governor, fully aware of how preposterous this charge was, and how unethical his interference in a federal judicial question, had been cautious enough to mark his letter ‘‘Personal and Confidential.’’ The second document was a telegram to the Immigration Bureau in Washington, so incautious as to be worth quoting in full: Having trouble with Jes
us Pallares on strike in this county. I understand he is under bond on account of the strike at Gallup, New Mexico, where the sheriff of that county was killed last spring. He is an alien from Old Mexico. We must act at once to save trouble and maybe lives in this county. Francisco P. Delgado, Sheriff [of San Miguel County] In four sentences, the telegram managed to utter five deliberate falsehoods or innuendoes: 1. The sheriff’s trouble was not with Jes
us but with the strikers at the American Metals Company’s mine at Terrero, New Mexico, who embarrassed him by their accurate shouts of ‘‘Scab!’’ 2. Jes
us was not on strike did not even live in the sheriff’s county. 3. Jes
us was under bond for deportation, not for strike activity in Gallup or elsewhere. 4. At the time of the death of Gallup’s sheriff, Jes
us was living 230 miles away in Santa Fe was totally unconnected with the event. 5. The

Mexican Americans and the Great Depression

deportation of Jes
us could not possibly save ‘‘trouble and maybe lives’’ so long as the sheriff insisted on breaking the strike by armed force and violence. Curiously enough, two truths did creep into the sheriff’s wire: first, that Jes
us was indubitably ‘‘an alien from Old Mexico’’; second that ‘‘we’’ that is, New Mexico officials and the Bureau of Immigration were acting in concert to railroad Jes
us out of the country. And they have had their way. Jes
us is deported. Source: Reprinted with permission from the July 18, 1936 issue of The Nation. For subscription information, call 1-800-333-8536. Portions of each week’s Nation magazine can be accessed at http://www.thenation.com.

260. Excerpts from Audrey Granneberg, ‘‘Maverick’s San Antonio,’’ 1939 The following excerpt is a portrait of Mexican San Antonio, which aside from El Paso and Los Angeles, was the favorite port of entry for many Mexicans in the 1930s. San Antonio had a rich history with much of the Tejano political and organizational elite residing there. It was a city with a substantial middleclass Mexican American population as well as a large working class community of some 100,000 residents.

In many ways, San Antonio is still a Mexican city. Its gracious homes on the North Side are predominantly of Spanish-style architecture. Its South Side adobe houses and West Side shacks are reminiscent of any Mexican town. A myriad of delicate balconies adorn its downtown buildings and overhang the banana tree lined banks of the lazy river, which loops under fifty bridges through the middle of town. But its most distinctive feature is its 100,000 Mexican residents, with their primitive living standards. The average ‘‘Anglo-American’’ (as San Antonians call Americans of European stock) will tell you: ‘‘If you paid the Mexicans more than 10 cents an hour they’d work only two or three days and then quit, because they would have enough money for beans and tortillas for a week.’’ PECANS AND POLITICS The Mexicans of San Antonio add to the color and quaintness of the city. They also present a desperate social and economic problem for which no answer has as yet been found. Nearly all are poverty stricken and a majority of the 20,000 Mexican families are dependent on government aid. One result is that the general level of wages in San Antonio is lower than in all but a few cities in the Deep South, according to figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The bulk of the nearly 40 percent of San Antonio’s population that is Mexican lives in the area west and a little south of the business section. A visitor walking westward along West Commerce or Dolorosa Street will gradually feel more and more like a foreign tourist unless he reads and speaks Spanish. Close to colorful Santa Rosa Street and Produce Row is the district where San Antonio’s vice is officially segregated (for the convenience of the Army boys, and over the continuous protests of the Mexican families who have to live there). Here also is found the highest rate of crime and juvenile delinquency in the entire city. Extending far beyond this and covering miles of the West Side is one of the foulest slum districts in the world. Floorless shacks renting at $2 to $8 per month are

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crowded together in crazy fashion on nearly every lot. They are mostly without plumbing, sewage connections, or electric lights. Open, shallow wells are often situated only a few feet from unsanitary privies. Streets and sidewalks are unpaved and become slimy mudholes in rainy weather. The shocking results of the slum conditions can be seen in terms of high disease and death rates. San Antonio has the highest tuberculosis rate of any large city in the United States. In 1937, there were 310 deaths from tuberculosis per 100,000 population among the Mexicans, 138 among the Negroes, and 56 among the AngloAmericans. The infant death rate was 144 per 1,000 live births among the Mexicans, 105 among the Negroes, and 51 among the native white Americans. Many of these deaths were due to diarrhea and enteritis. The Negroes of San Antonio, as can be guessed from the comparative death and disease rates, are better off economically than the Mexicans. They comprise only 8 percent of the population and have access to enough jobs in domestic service and common labor to make most of them fairly secure. Mexican families with incomes of more than $300 a year are in the upper stratum and are considered well off. Cotton pickers earned only 40 to 50 cents per hundred pounds in Texas last year, and not all Mexicans who wanted to could find jobs in cotton, for two reasons. Mechanization the increasing use of tractors and cotton choppers has taken many jobs; and cotton acreage has decreased, due to the AAA [Agricultural Adjustment Act] crop control program and to low cotton prices. Sugar beets, the other main source of migratory agricultural jobs for the Mexicans, are also being cultivated and harvested by machine and by local labor in the northern states to an increasing extent. In San Antonio, the industry employing the most Mexicans, pecan shelling, is just now emerging from a prolonged shutdown. Under the old system of hand shelling, from one to twelve thousand Mexicans were employed at various seasons of the year. An average pecan sheller could earn about 5 cents an hour or $2.50 per week. In February 1938, a wage cut was announced and several thousand Mexican pecan shellers were on strike. The operators claimed they could not afford to pay even $2.50 a week. The picket[er]s were tear-gassed, beaten with pistols and baseball bats, and more than a thousand of them were thrown into jail. The strike was finally arbitrated and ended in a compromise. Again in October 1938, when the Fair Labor Standards Act went into effect, the San Antonio pecan shelling industry closed down. In December, a special hearing was held to determine whether the industry required a temporary exemption from the 25 cents an hour minimum wage provision. The operators had asked for a sixmonth period of exemption during which they would gradually install machinery. They called this a ‘‘learning period,’’ but the canny wage-hour examiner proved that the Mexicans could learn to shell pecans in the mechanized plants within a few hours or days. The hearing degenerated into an attempt to convince the principal pecan operator white-haired, distinguished-looking Julius Seligmann that San Antonio, being part of the United States, should pay an American level of wages. The industry’s petition for exemption was denied, and machines were installed by Seligmann. Under this new, partly mechanized system, only two or three thousand workers will need to be employed the year round, but they will earn 25 cents an hour, an increase in wages of 500 percent. The attitude of the community at large toward the stranded Mexicans is a mixture of indifference and resentment. ‘‘They ought to be sent back to Mexico,’’ is a

Mexican Americans and the Great Depression

commonly offered solution for unemployment. But most Mexicans cannot legally be deported. Many are citizens and most of the rest have children born in the United States. Until the appearance of Maury Maverick in San Antonio politics, the Mexican vote had usually been controlled by the politicians who happened to be in power by the artless device of paying $1.50 each for the Mexicans’ poll taxes. Few Mexican workers could afford this sum on their meager earnings, and when some good angel paid it for them they usually voted ‘‘right.’’ Maverick obtained a few Mexican votes in 1932, when he was elected tax collector as the reform candidate of the Citizens’ League, and more in 1934, when he was elected to Congress. After he had served one term in Washington, the Mexicans accepted him as a friend, and in 1936, the West Side gave him a majority. This was the first time the Mexican vote had ever been captured by an opponent of the machine, and during the city campaign, just over, the West Side was frantically wooed by all factions for its bloc of votes. Source: Audrey Granneberg, ‘‘Maverick’s San Antonio,’’ Survey Graphic, July 1939, http://newdeal.feri.org/texts/367.htm.

261. William S. Taylor, ‘‘Some Observations of Marginal Man in the United States,’’ 1940 William S. Taylor was an African-American educator. Early on, African American educators became interested in what was happening with Latinos and Mexicans. The following article describes the problem of assimilation of the ‘‘marginal man’’ in American society. The excerpts describe the Mexican community in Texas in 1940 and how Mexicans fit into this marginalization. Taylor also dissects the different classes of Mexicans in the Lone Star state as well as in Chicago, Illinois.

CLASSES OF MEXICANS In Mexico one finds that the important racial element is the European Spaniard. It is interesting to note that there are three important classes of Mexicans: (1) Whites of Spanish descent; (2) mestizo, the middle class; and (3) Indians, the lowest class. Attempts at assimilation by Mexican social leaders have caused a change from caste to class. There are many classes of mixed blood, e.g., the Indian and European, the Negro and Indian, and the Negro and white (mulatto). The writer has attempted to present a historical background of the various culture strains so that a sympathetic understanding might be had by the reader for what is to follow.

MEXICANS IN AUSTIN AND SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS The Mexicans in and about Austin, and San Antonio, more or less follow the same culture patterns as do their native fellows that live about urban centers in Mexico. A stranger visiting either Austin, or San Antonio for the first time will be

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peculiarly interested in the dress, language, and general characteristics of the Mexicans met upon the streets. The writer has lived in Austin, Texas, i.e., in 1926 through 1938, when he was employed at Samuel Huston College as director of physical education. Here, he has had many opportunities to drive over to San Antonio, a distance of eighty-one miles. The native Mexican life is more picturesque around San Antonio due to its proximity to the Mexican border. Without a doubt, the most important fact in the life of the Mexican, is racial isolation. The long preponderance of Spanish culture can be attributed to this fact. The birth and death rate of the Mexican indicate a primitive community, having very low vitality. Some of the factors affecting the Mexicans are: (1) undernourishment and indifference; (2) racial tendencies; and (3) a prevalence of vices by the Indian. Attempts at assimilation as has been heretofore stated, has caused a change from caste to class. The highest class is called white, the middle class is called mestizo, and the lowest class is called Indian. The dominant religion among those who are not pagans is the Catholic religion. The Mexican families are patriarchal. This fatherly worship as it were, seems more or less intuitive. True clans still persist as safe foundation stones. The father is respected and obeyed implicitly by the members of the household. Delicious Mexican foods like enchiladas, hot tamales, tortillas, chile con carne, and frijoles, make up the better portion of the national diet. The typical Mexican dress has disappeared from the sidewalks of Austin. This is true of the higher classes even in San Antonio, but not so with the peon and the Indian. A hat of plaited straw, with the big brim curving, and mounting to a highpeak is called a sombrero. The Mexican’s hat is his pride and joy, so to speak. His hat carries his money, his lunch, and his cigarettes. His costume is similar to that of a cowboy, which is found all over Mexico, especially among the ranchero. The women of the upper classes wear dresses designed in France for the most part. Many women of the middle class can be seen wearing the mantilla up and down Red River Street in Austin, and on Commerce Street in San Antonio. The mantilla is a beautiful silk scarf, three to four yards in length, and about a yard wide. The peon women wear anything from calico to just plain rags. Labor is more or less upon the guild plan, i.e., basically patriarchal. The industrial and agricultural workers are for the better part Indians and half breeds. The Mexican workers on the cotton farms and in the mills are poorly paid. The writer has seen the greasy, peon type of Mexican walk right into a drug store, sit down at the soda fountain with his dirty overalls, and wait his turn to be served. The attendant shows by his facial expression that he despises serving him, yet he knows that he must not discriminate against this man of dark color because he is a Mexican. A Negro in a white man’s drug store in Texas would not dare to sit down, and he had better not ask for a soda. The dominant white class of Mexicans are readily taken into the white man’s culture. The middle class, or mestizo, more or less herd together like the Indian. Color of the skin is an important factor as to their choice of assimilation. If the skin is white, or nearly white, the Mexican will partake of the white man’s culture. If the skin is brown, yellow, or dark brown, he may elect to stay among his own group as the case is most of the time. On the other hand he may mingle with the Negro, especially if the Negro involved is a pretty girl.

Mexican Americans and the Great Depression

MEXICANS IN THE MAXWELL STREET DISTRICT, CHICAGO Unlike their fellows who live close to native soil, the Mexicans living on the west side of Chicago have adapted themselves to their man-made environment. The writer spent several hours on Easter Monday, 1937, in observing this district. Quite a number of the Mexicans and Negroes have intermarried. The type of family life is that of the emancipated family. In this area one sees the typical ‘‘touch-an-go’’ sort; living in cramped quarters, a kitchenette- apartment affair; the interest of both the wife and husband outside of the home; home meaning a place to rest one’s weary bones at night; in most cases the type of family that feels itself free from all neighborhood and community ties. This type of family more or less leads a ‘‘hand to mouth’’ existence. There are hardly any children if any. The husband if he will work, finds employment as a day laborer, stockyard hand, shoe shiner, stevedore, presser, and as a waiter. Usually it is the wife who is the bread winner. In many instances she is employed as a domestic, i.e., cooking, washing, ironing, and housekeeping, all for one salary if she works in a private family. Of course there are those that are exceptions to this rule. The writer has noticed a goodly number of the Mexican women working as waitresses in public restaurants, and as store keepers in small retail stores. What do these observations show? They clearly manifest that the Maxwell district is a poorly organized community. The life currents are all dammed up which makes for stagnant institutions. These poor people have not a chance at assimilation, for the poorer they are, the weaker is community cohesion. Along this line Bogardus states: ‘‘Whatever increases distance between groups weakens assimilation and lessens unity.’’ It is in the finely organized community where is found abundant and joyous life. Here is where one gives and shares. Source: William S. Taylor, ‘‘Some Observations of Marginal Man in the United States,’’ The Journal of Negro Education, Vol. 9, No. 4 (October 1940), pp. 606 608.

262. Excerpt from Luisa Moreno, ‘‘Non-Citizen Americans of the Southwest: Caravan of Sorrow,’’ March 3, 1940 Luisa Moreno (1906–1992), the first Latina to serve on the executive committee of the United Cannery, Agricultural, Packing and Allied Workers of America (UCAPAWA) was born into a wealthy Guatemalan family. Moreno crossed group lines and worked largely among Mexican workers. At first she worked in New York’s garment industry before joining UCAPAWA. In 1938, El Congreso de los Pueblos de Habla Espa~ nol (the Congress of SpanishSpeaking Peoples) held its first national conference. The principal organizer was Luisa Moreno. Who traveled throughout the United States and generated considerable interest in the conference, which was held in Los Angeles. Representatives came from all over the United States: Spanish and Cuban cigar makers from Tampa, Florida; Puerto Ricans from Harlem; steelworkers from Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Indiana; meat packers, miners, and farm workers from many localities; and elected officials from New Mexico. The congress was broadly based—representatives included workers, politicians, youth, and educators. The Congreso claimed over 6,000 members from 1938 to 1940. On

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March 3, 1940, Moreno addressed the Panel on Deportation and Right of Asylum of the Fourth Annual Conference of the American Committee for the Protection of the Foreign Born in Washington, D.C. She entitled her speech, parts of which follow, ‘‘Caravan of Sorrow.’’

Long before the ‘‘Grapes of Wrath’’ had ripened in California’s vineyards a people lived on highways, under trees or tents, in shacks or railroad sections, picking crops cotton, fruits, vegetables, cultivating sugar beets, building railroads and dams, making barren land fertile for new crops and greater riches … [they had been brought] by the fruit exchanges, railroad companies, and cotton interests in great need of underpaid labor during the early post-war period … [she condemned] today the Latin Americans of the United States are alarmed by an ‘anti-alien’ drive … These people are not aliens. They have contributed their endurance, sacrifices, youth, and labor to the Southwest. Indirectly, they have paid more taxes than all the stockholders of California’s industrialized agriculture, the sugar companies, and the large cotton interests, that operate or have operated with the labor of Mexican workers. Source: Supreme Council of the Mexican American Movement Papers, Urban Archives, California State University Northridge.


n and Lupe Marshall 263. Excerpts from Testimonies of Max Guzma about Violence during Steelworker Strike, 1937 As the Depression dragged on, workers’ conditions deteriorated. They had low wages, and almost no benefits. Nevertheless, the emergence of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) gave industrial workers hope. In 1937, workers at the Republic Steel Company, the Youngstown Sheet and Tube Company, and several other steel companies went on strike. It was called the ‘‘Little Steel Strike’’ because these were the smaller of the steel corporations. Republic Steel refused to follow the lead of U.S. Steel (big steel) by signing a union contract. The Steel Workers Organizing Committee (SWOC) of the CIO called the strike. On Memorial Day 1937, thousands of steel workers and their families rallied in front of the Republic Steel mill in South Chicago. Amid the demonstrators were Max Guzm
an and Guadalupe (Lupe) Marshall, who were among a contingent of Mexican strikers. Many Mexican women had their children with them. Unexpectedly, Republic Steel representatives attacked the demonstrators, and police shot and killed ten demonstrators.


TESTIMONY OF MAX GUZMAN (The witness was sworn by Sen. La Follette.) Sen. La Follette. What is your full name? Mr. Guzm
an. Max Guzm
an. Sen. La Follette. How do you spell your last name? Mr. Guzm
an. G-u-z-m-a-n. Sen. La Follette. Where do you live? Mr. Guzm
an. 8927 Commercial.

Mexican Americans and the Great Depression

Sen. La Follette. Mr. Guzm
an. Sen. La Follette. Mr. Guzm
an. Sen. La Follette. Mr. Guzm
an. Sen. La Follette. Mr. Guzm
an. Sen. La Follette. Mr. Guzm
an. Sen. La Follette. Mr. Guzm
an. Sen. La Follette. Mr. Guzm
an. Sen. La Follette. Mr. Guzm
an. Sen. La Follette. Mr. Guzm
an. Sen. La Follette. Mr. Guzm
an. Sen. La Follette.

Mr. Guzm
an. Sen. La Follette. Mr. Guzm
an. Sen. La Follette. Mr. Guzm
an. Sen. La Follette. Mr. Guzm
an. Sen. La Follette. Mr. Guzm
an. Sen. La Follette. Mr. Guzm
an. Sen. La Follette. Mr. Guzm
an. Sen. La Follette.

Chicago? Chicago, Ill. What is your occupation? Steelworker. Where have you been employed? Republic Steel Corporation. How long have you worked there? I worked since 1927 in the same mill. Are you a member of the Steel Worker’s Organizing Committee? Yes, sir. Were you present at the mass meeting in the yard near Sam’s Place on Sunday? I was. Were you in the parade? Yes. I was carrying a flag, a flagbearer. Look at the exhibit 1413 and tell me if you can identify yourself in that picture? Yes. I am to my right, right here, where I am looking. You are the one that is carrying the flag, to the right of the picture? Yes, sir. But on the left hand of the column as it marched toward the police? Yes, that is right. Did you see anybody in the crowd as you were marching down there, at any time, who had any clubs, gas pipes, branches of trees, stones, bricks, rocks, or other missiles or weapons? No, I didn’t. Look at Exhibit 1400. Can you tell from the position of those flags which one you were carrying? Yes. The one further away from the picture? Yes, that is right. But you see that some of the men in that picture had branches of trees and sticks, do you not? Yes. You say you did not see them? I did not see any when we started marching. Well, did you see any during the time you were marching down there? No. Did you have any conversation with any of the police in the line? Yes, I did. State the conversation that you had with them.

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Mr. Guzm
an.

Sen. La Follette. Mr. Guzm
an.

Sen. La Follette. Mr. Guzm
an. Sen. La Follette. Mr. Guzm
an. Sen. La Follette. Mr. Guzm
an.

Sen. La Follette. Mr. Guzm
an.

Sen. La Follette. Mr. Guzm
an.

Sen. La Follette. Mr. Guzm
an. Sen. La Follette. Mr. Guzm
an. Sen. La Follette. Mr. Guzm
an.

Sen. La Follette.

Just when we got to the line of the policemen, there was a plainclothes man, and he talked in a low tone, slow. He say, ‘‘Lucky you are carrying that flag or you would have been shot.’’ That is what he told me. Then I explained to him that we were just peaceable demonstrators in a parade, and that we wanted to go through, and if they will escort us by, to see that nothing would happen, and they can march alongside of us. That is all the conversation I had with the police. And did you hear any other remarks before the trouble started? Someone from the back say, when the police told me, he say, ‘‘You should have a permit to go by,’’ and then somebody from the back, I don’t know who, he said, ‘‘This is a strike, and we have a right to picket peacefully.’’ That is all the remarks I heard. Did you see any missiles, bricks, or anything thrown at the police? No, sir. Did you hear any profanity from the crowd toward the police? No, not that I heard. What happened next? Well, as we were talking to the police there, meaning we were, some of us were talking to them, when we got to the line there, the crowd spread out, and the people all seemed well spread, and then the shooting started, and then I went down. Why did you go down? The policeman on the front clubbed me down as soon as the first shots fired, and I went down and I remained down. They all passed the policemen passed where I was lying, and then, when I was just about to pick myself up, another policeman grabbed me by my jacket and took me in the patrol wagon. Do you know whether you were struck more than once? Yes, I was struck on the head on the first blow. Then when they picked me up they struck me twice on the shoulders once on each shoulder. How many people were in the patrol wagon? When I entered the patrol wagon there was only one other. How many were in it at the time it started away from the field? There were about, say, about 10 or 11. I couldn’t say. Any seriously wounded with you? Yes, there was about five of them that I remember that were pretty bad, and the other ones were, oh, Guiseppe, another, Mr. Fisk, he wasn’t wounded bad, not at all. He was not bleeding, and the rest of them were, almost every one of them, bleeding. Now, at any time during this event did you see any of the marchers resisting or striking or attacking or throwing anything at the police?

Mexican Americans and the Great Depression

Mr. Guzm
an. Sen. La Follette. Mr. Guzm
an.

Sen. La Follette. Mr. Guzm
an. Sen. La Follette. Mr. Guzm
an. Sen. La Follette. Mr. Guzm
an. Sen. La Follette. Mr. Guzm
an.

Sen. La Follette. Mr. Guzm
an. Sen. La Follette. Mr. Guzm
an. Sen. La Follette. Mr. Guzm
an.

No, sir. Where did they take you in the patrol wagon? Well, they took a long way around. We were on Avenue 0 all the way to Hegewisch, and then back to the Irondale, and then to the East Side police stations. That is about … say about 5 miles out of the way, where the first police station is located. How long would you say it took to get there? Well, I say, at least, it took a half hour to the first station. Had any of the people in the wagon with you, who were injured, received any medical attention up to that time? No. Any first-aid attention? No. I myself gave a handkerchief to a fellow that was bleeding very bad. Do you know whether or not any of these people who were more seriously injured received medical attention later? Yes. We were put in cells, and then the police came around in about 20 minutes or half an hour after, and the ones that were very serious they took them to the hospital, and I didn’t want to go right away, and another fellow didn’t go right away. Then we asked to be taken to the hospital anyway. How long were you held at the South Chicago police station? From Sunday night till Wednesday morning, till about 9 o’clock. Did you have any interviews with any of the police or any of the city or county officials? Yes. I gave my statement to the police. And state, to the best of your knowledge and recollection, the questions they asked you and your answers. Well, they asked me where was I born, and what was I doing at the place of the meeting, and where was I employed. I told them; and if I was married, I told them also; and if I was a citizen of the United States. I told them. And they asked how long I was married. I told them, told them 9 years, and when I told them 9 years I gave my age as 26 years old they said ‘‘Well, did you have to lie to get your license?’’ I say, ‘‘Yes.’’ ‘‘Why did you do that?’’ ‘‘Well, I wanted to get married. That is about all,’’ I said. They said, ‘‘Did you ever have any run-in with your wife before you got married, and going around with her do anything?’’ ‘‘Well,’’ I say, ‘‘I think that is a little out of the question.’’ They told me, ‘‘Well, all we wanted to know, if you had run around in any way. We are not going to tell anybody about it.’’ I said, ‘‘Well, anyway, that is a personal question I wouldn’t like to answer.’’

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Sen. La Follette. Mr. Guzm
an.

Sen. La Follette. Mr. Guzm
an. Sen. La Follette. Mr. Guzm
an. Sen. La Follette. Mr. Guzm
an. Sen. La Follette. Mr. Guzm
an. Sen. La Follette. Mr. Guzman. Sen. La Follette. Mr. Guzm
an. Sen. La Follette. Mr. Guzm
an. Sen. La Follette. Mr. Guzm
an.

Sen. La Follette. Mr. Guzm
an. Sen. La Follette. Mr. Guzm
an.

And then they asked me if I had any weapons, guns, or knives, or what did I do with them? I told them I did not have any. Then they told me I was a communist. I told them no, that I don’t even know what the word communist meant, and they said when they finished with my statement, they said, ‘‘Where is the gun you were carrying? Did you have any fight with the police? Did you do any shooting?’’ I said, ‘‘No, I didn’t. I didn’t carry any gun, or you would have found it on me’’ something like that. That is about all this thing. Did they attempt to threaten you or intimidate you in any way? Well, the only thing they did, when they asked me if I was a citizen of the United States, I told them that I was not, that I was raised in this country, but that I was not born here; so they told me as long as I was not a citizen of the United States they could send me back to Mexico any time they felt like it. Did you ask to talk to any friends or relatives while you were confined in the police station? Yes, I did the same Sunday night. I asked to be allowed to talk to my wife, but I was not permitted to. You were not permitted to? No, sir. Did any of the other prisoners ask for similar privileges, to your knowledge? Yes, they did. Was it granted to them? No. When were you brought into court? Wednesday morning at 9 o’clock. Do you know what bond was set in your case? Yes, $500. Then finally my wife or a friend of mine arranged for $500 cash bond, so I went out. And after the court hearing where did you go? Were you put back in jail again? Yes, put back in the cell, waiting room. And what happened then? Well, they took us to the county, and they had our fingerprints taken again, and then they started calling me out around 6 o’clock in the evening, and I didn’t know I was going out, and that is when they released me. The bond was already set. Did you have to sign any kind of statement before you left? Well, just a doctor, physical examination. And what was the purpose of that statement, did you understand? No, I didn’t. The only thing, the doctor examined me and gave me and O.K., and he asked me to sign, so I did.

Mexican Americans and the Great Depression

Sen. La Follette. Sen. Thomas. Mr. Guzm
an. Sen. Thomas. Mr. Guzm
an. Sen. Thomas. Mr. Guzm
an. Sen. Thomas. Mr. Guzm
an. Sen. La Follette.

Let a copy of this witness’ subpoena be inserted in the record. How long have you been in America? Seventeen years. Seventeen years? Yes, sir. Is your wife a Mexican? She is a Mexican. She was born in the United States. She is an American citizen, then? Yes, that is right. Mrs. Marshall.

TESTIMONY OF MRS. LUPE MARSHALL (The witness was sworn by Sen. La Follette.) Sen. La Follette. What is your full name, please? Mrs. Marshall. Lupe Marshall. Sen. La Follette. How do you spell your first name? Mrs. Marshall. L-u-p-e. Sen. La Follette. And how do you spell your last name? Mrs. Marshall. M-a-r-s-h-a-l-l. Sen. La Follette. What is your occupation? Mrs. Marshall. At the present time, a housewife and volunteer social worker. Sen. La Follette. Could you speak a little louder, please? Mrs. Marshall. At the present time, I am a housewife and volunteer social worker. Sen. La Follette. Where do you work as a volunteer social worker? Mrs. Marshall. Throughout Chicago. Sen. La Follette. Have you any connection with Hull House? Mrs. Marshall. Yes, of some sort. Sen. La Follette. Are you a member of any labor organization? Mrs. Marshall. I am not. Sen. La Follette. Did you go to the strike meeting at Sam’s Place on Sunday, May 30? Mrs. Marshall. Yes, I did. Sen. La Follette. How did you happen to go there? Mrs. Marshall. I am very much interested in studying and doing research work among the Mexican people, relative to their attitude within the organized labor movement. Sen. La Follette. Well, are there many Mexicans employed normally at the Republic Steel plant? Mrs. Marshall. I do not know how many Mexicans are employed in the steel plant, at the Republic plant, but I do know that there are 5,000 Mexican families in South Chicago. Sen. La Follette. What time did you get to the meeting? Mrs. Marshall. About 3:15. Sen. La Follette. Was speaking going on when you arrived there?

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Mrs. Marshall. Sen. La Follette. Mrs. Marshall. Sen. La Follette. Mrs. Marshall.

Sen. La Follette. Mrs. Marshall. Sen. La Follette. Mrs. Marshall. Sen. La Follette.

Mrs. Marshall.

Sen. La Follette. Mrs. Marshall. Sen. La Follette. Mrs. Marshall. Sen. La Follette. Mrs. Marshall. Sen. La Follette. Mrs. Marshall. Sen. La Follette. Mrs. Marshall. Sen. La Follette. Mrs. Marshall. Sen. La Follette. Mrs. Marshall. Sen. La Follette. Mrs. Marshall.

Yes, there was. Did you join the marchers? Yes, I did. Where were you in the parade when it started? At the side. I was speaking to a young writer that was with me, that had invited me to go to that meeting, and he was busy with his notes, and I didn’t know just where I should be in order to get the best account of the thing, and I joined a group of women that seemed to be going toward the front. And as the parade went on across the prairie, what position did you occupy in relation to the head of the column? Right near the front. Near the front? Right near the front. And anytime during the time when you were standing there, or before the parade started, or during the time that they marched across the prairie, did you see any of the marchers armed with sticks, stones, pieces of gas pipe, or any other missiles or weapons? No, I didn’t. What I did see, though, was that as I walked back and forth, trying to find a place, to place myself, I heard a man behind me yell at another in an angry tone, ‘‘Drop that stone. We don’t want that stuff here.’’ Now, when the crowd of marchers got down so that they contacted the police line, where were you? I was right at the front. I was right next to one of the flags. Will you look at Exhibit 1358 and see if you can find yourself there? Yes, I do. I find myself. Where are you? I am to the left of the marcher that is carrying the flag, to the right facing the picture. Now, how many other women did you see in this march, would you say? Oh, there were many women. You say ‘‘many’’ how many would you say you saw, yourself? Oh, you mean right in the picture here? No, not in the picture. I mean in the crowd of marchers approximately. Oh, I would say about 200 women. Did you see any children? Yes, I did. How many? I couldn’t say how many, but while the meeting was going on, there were children running around buying ice cream and popsicles there in the.…

Mexican Americans and the Great Depression

Sen. La Follette. Mrs. Marshall. Sen. La Follette. Mrs. Marshall.

Sen. La Follette. Mrs. Marshall. Sen. La Follette. Mrs. Marshall. Sen. La Follette. Mrs. Marshall.

Sen. La Follette. Mrs. Marshall. Sen. La Follette. Mrs. Marshall. Sen. La Follette. Mrs. Marshall.

Sen. La Follette. Mrs. Marshall. Sen. La Follette. Mrs. Marshall. Sen. La Follette. Mrs. Marshall.

Did you see any children in the march? Yes, I did. Some of the women that were in the group that I joined had children with them. What was the general character of the crowd, would you say? Jubilant. As the march proceeded, that is what made me join the group of women. They were singing, and some of the fellows were kidding each other and patting themselves on the back as we went along. Did you hear any remarks made which indicated that the objective of the parade was to storm the plant? No, I didn’t. Or to work injury upon the workers who had not come out on strike? No, I didn’t. Did you hear any remarks indicating hostility toward the Chicago police? No. The only remark that can be construed as such would be one remark that came from the speakers, from one of the speakers, in which they referred to the police as being part of the city; the police were to protect the city, and it seemed as if in this case they were protecting the company instead of the workers that were on strike. Now, you were near the front line. Did you have any conversation with any of the police prior to the difficulty? Yes, I did. Who did you talk to? I talked to the officer that testified here on this chair, addressed by the Chair as ‘‘Higgins,’’ Officer Higgins. And what was the substance of your conversation with Officer Higgins? I did not address him. He addressed me. From my recollections the marchers did not reach the police, but the police advanced toward us in a running step, when we were about 15 or 20 feet away from them, and the people in back of us kept marching, and the police came toward us, so that we were pressed together, the police and the marchers, and I could touch Officer Higgins with a paper which I was carrying under my arm, and as soon as we approached, he called me a vile name the women around us called us a vile name, told us to get back. Had anything been said to Officer Higgins? No, we had just come in contact when he addressed us. Did you hear any other conversation? Yes, I did. Tell me all that you can remember. I couldn’t see the individual that was carrying the flag on the other side of me, but I heard some conversation in a serious tone,

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Sen. La Follette.

Mrs. Marshall. Sen. La Follette. Mrs. Marshall. Sen. La Follette. Mrs. Marshall. Sen. La Follette. Mrs. Marshall.

and I thought it was the leader of the marchers that was addressing some official on the other side. He said something about picketing and going in front of the plant. I heard, also from the back, snatches. Somebody hollered, ‘‘Mayor Kelly said it is all right to picket.’’ Others said, ‘‘We have got our rights.’’ But the confusion was such that it was really difficult to catch the whole phrase of what was going on. Some of the officers further to my left as I was facing them seemed to be addressing the men. I heard something about ‘‘Get back! Get back!’’ And as these things were being said, the officers kept going like this with their clubs [indicating an up-and-down motion]. They were swinging their clubs like this [indicating] in front of our faces. I want to ask you one other question, before you go any further. In your hearing, did any of the people in the crowd of marchers use any vile or abusive language toward the police? No, they did not. Did you see any of them threaten or make any threatening gestures toward the police? No, they did not, not those that I could see in my immediate vicinity. Did you see any shower of missiles or rocks or bricks? No, I didn’t. Now tell us what happened next? As I was addressing one of the officers in front of me, Mr. Higgins had moved away somewhat. The police were closing in, closing their ranks and crowding us, pushing us back all this time, and I said to one of the officers in front of me, I said, ‘‘There are enough of you men to march alongside of these people, to see that order is kept.’’ And he answered me, ‘‘Like hell! Like hell! Like hell! Like hell there are!’’ There is an officer that was directly in front of me that had his gun out, and I recognized him in the picture in another scene, that he laughed real sarcastically in my face, and said something about sending these [blanks] back. He said a vile word there. And this happened so suddenly that it seems that I was still talking to these officers in front of me, when I heard a dull thud toward the back of the … of my group, and as I turned around there was screaming and going on in back, and simultaneously a volley of shots. It sounded more like thunder. I heard that, and I couldn’t … for a minute I couldn’t imagine what was happening. I had seen this man with his revolver out, but I couldn’t believe that they were shooting, so I turned around to see what was happening, and the people that were standing in back of me were all lying on the ground face down. I saw some splotches of blood on some of the fellows’ shirts. I tried

Mexican Americans and the Great Depression

Sen. La Follette. Sen. LaFollette. Mrs. Marshall. Sen. LaFollette. Mrs. Marshall. Sen. La Follette. Mrs. Marshall. Sen. La Follette.

Mrs. Marshall. Sen. La Follette. Mrs. Marshall. Sen. La Follette. Mrs. Marshall. Sen. La Follette. Mrs. Marshall. Sen. La Follette. Mrs. Marshall. Sen. La Follette. Mrs. Marshall. Sen. La Follette.

Mrs. Marshall. Sen. La Follette. Mrs. Marshall.

Sen. La Follette. Mrs. Marshall. Sen. La Follette.

Mrs. Marshall.

to run, but I couldn’t; the road was closed by these people there, and I didn’t want to step on them, so I sort of held back. Give picture ‘‘Q’’ a number. Can you recognize yourself in that picture, Mrs. Marshall? Yes, I can. Where are you? I was walking or running, rather, around the people that had fallen in back of me. Now, will you look at Exhibit 1418. Do you see that picture? Yes, I do. Now, looking at those two pictures, Exhibits 1424 and 1418, look at 1424, the one shown you first. Then look at 1418, and tell me whether you can tell which one of those pictures was taken first. 1418 was taken first. 1418 was taken first? First. And 1424? Now, in your opinion, 1418 was taken after 1424? No, 1424 was taken after 1418. Now, will you look at 1414, and tell me when do you think that picture was taken in relation to the others? This picture was taken before I was aware of what had happened. Then you think that 1418 was taken first? Is that correct? Yes, and then 1424. Is the officer you are talking about in 1414, the one you think you saw in the moving picture? The officer that has the gun. Then these people were shot down from around you, as shown in 1414, and piled up in this heap, before you even knew what had happened? Yes, sir. And by the time 1418 had been taken you had turned around to look at the people who had been with you? I had been knocked down by a club. My head had been broken open, and I was raising myself up from the heap of these people 1418. And in 1424 you had recovered sufficiently and are fleeing; is that correct? Yes. Now, did you see any policeman come near this group of people who had fallen in a heap, as is shown in all of these ‘‘stills’’ and as is shown in the moving picture, at any time before you left the scene? Well, I was somewhat dazed, and all I was aware of was that I wanted to get away from these people and walked back to where

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the field seemed to be clear. There were not so many policemen over on that side. Sen. La Follette. Now, Officer Higgins testified that you dropped a bag of pepper out from under your arm. He testified at least that a woman did. Mrs. Marshall. He said it looked like me, but he was not sure. Sen. La Follette. Officer Higgins, will you come forward, please. Source: U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on Education and Labor, Violations of Free Speech and Rights of Labor: Hearings Before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Education and Labor … 75th Cong., 1st session, June 30 July 2, 1937, Part 14, ‘‘The Chicago Memorial Day Incident,’’ pp. 4941 4949. Excerpt is reprinted with permission of the publisher of Testimonio: A Documentary History of the Mexican American Struggle for Civil Rights, F. Arturo Rosales, ed. Houston: Arte P
ublico Press University of Houston,
C 2000. pp. 249 256.

PART XVI Latinos, World War II, and the Aftermath Many changes in the world today can be traced to World War II. In the United States the war brought about a huge transference of people within the country and marginally opened up employment opportunities for Latinos in industries that had previously been restricted for them. As Latinos became better educated their demands for equality grew louder. Globally the war divided the world into pro-U.S. and pro-Soviet spheres as well as into the have and have not nations. Most of the latter prior to the war had been controlled by the capitalist west (which included the United States). The Americas were firmly believed to be in the American sphere politically and economically. The end of the war brought ideological changes to this hegemony as nationalism swept the Third World. This war gave minorities in the United States a greater awareness of their second class status. The colonial status of Puerto Rico was obvious, and this would lead to the island receiving self-governing commonwealth status in 1952. The wars also encouraged the massive movement of Puerto Ricans, first as members of the armed forces and second by the migration of large numbers of workers in response to labor shortages caused by the war. The migration continued after the war, and from 1946 through 1950 30,000 Puerto Ricans arrived on the mainland annually. The Korean War added to the pull of Puerto Ricans to the mainland slowing down during the recession of 1953 and 1954 but picking up once more after the recession as 27,000 islanders arrived annually through 1960. The readings memorialize the reaction of white Americans to the increased visibility of Boriquen in their midst as they struggled to form an identity. In 1950 there were officially 301,375 Puerto Ricans in the United States. New York City continued to be the capital of mainland Puerto Ricans during the decade and by 1960 their population would number 887,662 nationally 615,384 lived in New York City. This new generation built on the struggles of the pioneers (pioneros), who had arrived in the four decades before the war, forming barrios in the Atlantic Street area of Brooklyn, El Barrio in East Harlem, and sections of Manhattan as the Lower East Side, the Upper West Side, Chelsea, and the Lincoln Center area. They began to move into the South Bronx. This first wave had largely been brought to the mainland by labor contractors. The great migration took place from 1946 to 1964 when new migrants moved into the already established barrios. This population spilled over into localities outside the city in New York and New Jersey. The migration was made possible by low air rates between the United States and Puerto Rico, the fact that Puerto Ricans were American citizens, and because there was a considerable gap in wages and

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opportunities between the two locales. They moved to the textile and garment industries of New York, the electronic plants of Illinois, the foundries and tanneries of Wisconsin, and the steel mills in Ohio, Indiana, and Pennsylvania. They also worked as migrant laborers in the East and Midwest. Stresses and strains accompanied this migration characterized by the attacks of racist nativist who termed it an invasion. Meanwhile, the island was stressed by migrations of other nationalities from the region ruled by petty dictators many of whom were propped up by the United States. The high expectations of a better life encouraged by the war were dashed in Latin America leading to the growth of the nationalist movements that challenged the American hegemony. In response, the United States sought to establish an ideological hegemony over the region, as many youth were motivated by anti-capitalist ideologies. This increased American intervention with Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central America because of their proximity becoming the front lines.

264. Excerpt from Anne Quach, ‘‘From the ‘Bulge’ to the Halls of Academia,’’ 2004 Noting the presence of minorities was not common in World War II. For the most part, they did not count. Inductions into the Army of selective service registrants on December 31, 1945, offer a glimpse. They included 13,311 Chinese, 20,080 Japanese, 1,320 Hawaiians, 19,567 American Indians, 11,506 Filipinos, and 51,438 Puerto Ricans. A similar breakdown is not available for the Navy. Many of those from the island served in the 65th Infantry Regiment or the Puerto Rican National Guard. Those from the mainland of the United States served in regular units of the military, often subject to the same racial discrimination as black Americans that was widespread in the United States at the time. Puerto Rican women also served and were restricted to nursing or clerical positions, few became officers. Puerto Rican units participated in campaigns in Italy and France and fought at the Battle of the Bulge. The following interview was with Frank Bonilla in 2001, a renowned Puerto Rican Studies scholar, and a founder of Puerto Rican Studies at the City University of New York. He tells about his experiences on the European front during World War II and the impact that the war had on his life.

Frank Bonilla planned to attend college after graduating from high school, but within two weeks of graduation he was drafted into the Army to fight in World War II. After his experiences in Europe, including action in the Battle of the Bulge, Bonilla returned from military service more determined than ever to gain a college degree. He began a pursuit of academic excellence eventually holding faculty appointments at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, and the City University of New York that has served him his entire life. Born in New York City in 1925, Bonilla grew up in East Harlem, a community populated by a wide assortment of ethnic groups and cultures. He said that it was not unusual for children to speak a second language in the neighborhood. ‘‘We had very good teachers,’’ Bonilla said, ‘‘but they were also, in many ways, racist.’’ His mother had graduated from high school in Ponce, Puerto Rico, and then emigrated to the United States hoping to attend college. His father had been a cigar

Latinos, World War II, and the Aftermath

maker in Puerto Rico and had served with the U.S. Cavalry during World War I, later becoming a paraplegic from a service-related injury. His parents met on the boat that brought them to America. In 1943, Bonilla graduated from Morris High School in the South Bronx (New York City) and was soon drafted. He had no reservations about being drafted; he believed that the United States was on the right side in the war and that it was his duty to serve. Prior to graduating from Morris H.S., where he spent his junior and senior years, Bonilla attended a Franciscan high school in Illinois where he had been elected president of his class. There he took courses in classical Greek and Latin as well as in Spanish, French, and German. Because of his strong academic background, Bonilla was assigned to one of the Army’s training units, a weapons platoon. He was trained as a mortar gunner and assigned to the 290th Infantry, which later fought at the Battle of the Bulge. He was in the front lines for a month during this major battle. In the course of this campaign, Bonilla sustained an injury and had to be moved to a hospital in Paris. After being hospitalized for three weeks he was reassigned to a replacement depot in France. While at the depot, Bonilla was invited to join the 65th Infantry Division, a Puerto Rican unit based near Frankfurt, Germany. He was delighted to join and was designated a company clerk. Once Bonilla had joined, however, he discovered that there was a divide among the soldiers. The Puerto Ricans who had immigrated to the mainland were seen as ‘‘American Joes.’’ Puerto Ricans from the island considered themselves ‘‘pure’’ Puerto Ricans, according to Bonilla. ‘‘We were American GI Joes to them and not Puerto Ricans,’’ Bonilla said. He recalled that the Puerto Rican soldiers [from the island] paid little if any attention to the playing of the ‘‘Star Spangled Banner.’’ Bonilla at first thought that these soldiers were being disrespectful, especially since they stood at attention whenever ‘‘La Borinque~ na,’’ the Puerto Rican anthem, was played. ‘‘The soldiers in the regiment, although proud to be U.S. citizens, felt that they were a Puerto Rican army, not a U.S. army,’’ Bonilla said. ‘‘These men had a select unit pride because they had had more time overseas and in combat areas than the American units.’’ In December 1945, the 65th was recalled to Puerto Rico, where it received a tremendous welcome on arrival. In fact, according to Bonilla, the ship carrying the Puerto Rican troops had to anchor at sea for an extra night so that the organizers could complete the welcoming reception. Subsequently, Bonilla was transferred to Fort Dix, N.J., where he was discharged from military service. He received many medals, including a Bronze Star. ‘‘The military experience helped to consolidate my sense of being Puerto Rican and also a sense of wanting to study and be a scholar,’’ said Bonilla. Soon after his return to New York City, Bonilla took advantage of the GI Bill of Rights and enrolled in the College of the City of New York where he graduated in 1949 with a B.A. cum laude. He went on to become a research assistant at the Bureau of Applied Social Research at Columbia University, a position that was funded by International Public Opinion Research (IPOR), a private entity that contracted to conduct academic and commercial research. While working for IPOR he began his extensive travels throughout Central and South America. At the same time, he pursued an M.A. in Sociology at New York University, which he earned in 1954.

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Bonilla received a John Hay Whitney Fellowship in 1954 to begin study at Harvard University in the Department of Social Relations and a Doherty Foundation Fellowship in 1956 to complete his studies there. He received a Ph.D. in Sociology in 1959. Upon his return to New York, Bonilla, together with other young social activists, formed the Puerto Rican Hispanic Leadership Forum, and later Aspira, to respond more effectively to the needs of Puerto Ricans in New York. In 1960, Bonilla joined the American Universities Field Staff (AUFS) to collaborate on a research program carried out on behalf of UNESCO [United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization] and the Economic Commission for Latin America conducting surveys in Argentina, Chile, Mexico, and Brazil. In 1961, he became a regular Field Staff Associate in Brazil filing reports on social, economic, and political events and following up with lecture tours of the seven U.S. academic campuses that belonged to AUFS. Bonilla joined the Political Science Department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as an associate professor in 1963 and served concurrently as a senior staff member in the Center for International Studies also at MIT. During this period (1963 67), he carried out an extensive program of research into Venezuelan politics in collaboration with the Center for Development Studies of the Central University of Venezuela (CENDES). He was appointed full professor in 1969. In 1969, Bonilla was also program adviser in social science to the Ford Foundation and resident in Brazil from 1968 70 as visiting professor in political science at the Universidade Federal de Minais Gerais. From 1969 72, he was professor of political science at Stanford University and senior associate in the Institute of Political Studies. In 1973, he joined the City University of New York (CUNY) as professor of political science (Ph.D. program) and director of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies, an institution that he was instrumental in forming. He was appointed professor of sociology (Ph.D. program) at CUNY in 1977 and Thomas Hunter Professor of Sociology at Hunter College in 1986, where the Center for Puerto Rican Studies (Centro de Estudios Puertorique~ nos) now makes its home. Although Bonilla stepped down as director of the Center in 1993, he continued to help coordinate the Inter-University Program for Latino Research (IUPLR), a national consortium of 10 university-based research centers that focus on Latino concerns. When Bonilla retired in 1995, he moved to California where he continued to follow his interests in globalization and immigration at both the University of California at San Diego and the University of California at Riverside. Source: Anne Quach, Frank Bonilla Narratives Volume 4, Number 2, Spring 2004, Latinos & World War II, University of Texas. Interviewed in La Jolla, Calif., on Sept. 5, 2001, by Mario Barrera. http://utopia.utexas.edu/explore/latino/narratives/v4n2index.html.

265. Excerpt from Juan de la Cruz, ‘‘Combat Engineer Fernando Pagan Went from Normandy to Belgium and Germany, Where a Sniper Nearly Killed Him,’’ 2003 As a result of the 1917 Jones-Shafroth Act that conferred citizenship on Puerto Ricans, Puerto Ricans were required to serve in the military. More than 53,000 Puerto Ricans served in the U.S. Army during World War II. Many joined the

Latinos, World War II, and the Aftermath

military to escape poverty that had been worsened by the Great Depression. The following is an excerpt of an interview with Fernando Pagan, a World War II veteran. The interview shows the motivation of Latino youths to go into the army—for many it was an escape.

Fernando Pagan was a jack-of-all-trades during his childhood in Puerto Rico. At the age of 12, he shined shoes every Sunday in Carolina, Puerto Rico. On Saturdays he sold clothes and was paid $2 and given breakfast. Later, he worked as a dishwasher in a restaurant. As a child, young Fernando lived with his father and moved frequently between San Juan and barrios [in] San Antonio and Carolina, all in Puerto Rico. Later, he also worked as part of the Civilian Conservation Corps at Camp Drum, near Water Town in the northern part of New York. He built roads and was paid $30 a month for his labor. Pagan recalled that he and a young man from the Dominican Republic were the only Latinos. Pagan remembered talking to him in Spanish, although they would also practice some English. Pagan, like so many others, recalled as if it were yesterday that he was working at Billy the Oyster restaurant when he heard word of Pearl Harbor attack. A year later, in December 1942, Pagan received his draft notice. ‘‘They sent me a token … for the subway,’’ Pagan said. He was ordered to report to New Jersey in December of 1942 where he was given a medical exam. He was then sent for basic training a week later and placed in the Engineering Department. After going to such places as Nashville, Tenn., New Orleans, and Virginia Beach, Va., for more training, he and the other troops arrived in Liverpool, England, in 1943. He remembers having to waterproof the trucks with clay so that water wouldn’t seep into them. In Germany and France, Pagan worked in the construction of bridges such as the Infantry Fort Bridge, Balley Bridge, and Panthon Bridge. Pagan was then sent to a small village for six months in preparation for the Normandy Invasion on June 6, 1944. He arrived in Normandy on June 10, four days after D-Day. He remembers the horrible scenes he witnessed upon arrival to Europe. ‘‘I saw dead paratroopers dangling from the trees,’’ Pagan said. ‘‘I saw mutilated corpses … they didn’t have time to take them away.’’ His unit, Company A, 293 Combat Engineering Battalion, was in charge of building bridges for vehicles to cross rivers and embankments, and it was also in charge of transporting the troops. Pagan’s battalion had two boats that they used to help the troops cross the rivers when there were no bridges. He recalled that they would transport 10 soldiers at a time and cross the river multiple times until all the troops had crossed. His battalion arrived in Paris where Pagan and his assistant were left behind while the battalion continued its way to Belgium, which had been occupied by the Germans. Pagan remembers that they celebrated together with the French people. During ‘‘mail call,’’ as the soldiers called it, Pagan received letters from his family. He and his fellow soldiers enjoyed the company of girls in Belgium, who were grateful to have been liberated. Pagan stayed in Germany for six months and he remembers it was forbidden for them to talk to the Germans.

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While in Germany, Pagan recalled a time when he came very close to death. ‘‘I was shot by a sniper and my truck saved me,’’ he said. ‘‘I was a driver.’’ His truck had a mounted machine gun, Pagan said. The mount had a metal piece that was about a quarter of an inch. Pagan said the bullet hit the metal piece, saving his life. After serving about eighteen months in Europe, he returned to the United States in 1945. After his discharge, Pagan joined the ‘‘52 20 Club,’’ a government program so nicknamed because veterans could receive a $20 unemployment stipend for up to 52 weeks under the GI Bill. Pagan later used the GI Bill to take a course in upholstery. However, he only took the course for three months because he said holding nails in his mouth didn’t suit him. Instead, he chose to get a taxi driver’s license in 1947. Then, in 1950, he became a bartender in his neighborhood bar, earning $50 a week until 1955. He then worked at a nearby restaurant, Pablo’s, until 1965 and yet another restaurant, Red Lion, for two years. Pagan traveled to his native Puerto Rico for vacation in 1967. Thanks to a friend back New York, he contacted someone at the Hotel Condado. He was employed at the hotel as a waiter for only three days before becoming a bartender there full time. ‘‘We used to hang out there and the owner saw I was a serious guy, you know, calm,’’ Pagan said. ‘‘He asked me if I wanted to work there and bartend. I said yes.’’ Pagan married three times; he had one daughter, Denise, during his first marriage. He did not have children during his second marriage. In 1983, Pagan married Ruth Pagan; the couple has one daughter, Eunice. Source: Juan de la Cruz, ‘‘Combat engineer Fernando Pagan went from Normandy to Belgium and Germany, where a sniper nearly killed him.’’ Latinos & Latinas & World War II, University of Texas, Austin. Interviewed at his home in San Juan, Puerto Rico, on Feb. 20, 2003, by Doralis P
erez Soto. http://utopia.utexas.edu/explore/latino/narratives/08pagan fernando.html.

266. J. Brooks Deton, Jr., ‘‘Negro Fate in U.S. Tied to Puerto Rico Freedom,’’ 1943 A large part of the Puerto Rican population was of dark complexion and, correspondingly, they suffered the same discrimination as African Americans. The Chicago Defender, a leading African American newspaper published in the United States since 1905 to advocate for the interests of black people, drew the correlation between white supremacy in the United States and the occupation of Puerto Rico. The following article criticizes the U.S. military presence on the island as well as the paranoia of any type of infiltration. In short, it was obsessed with communism. The article draws a parallel between southern politicos on the mainland and American attitudes and policies toward Puerto Rico.

‘‘The fate of the Negro, the Jew, the laboring classes, in fact most of America’s minorities will be decided by what happens to Puerto Rico.’’ How could occurrences in a little sub-tropical island outpost 1,150 miles from Florida affect the condition of minorities here at home? Absurd! No, not quite! The link between freedom for Puerto Rico and freedom for the Negro is understandable. I didn’t realize Puerto Rico’s significance either some seven weeks ago when a silverwinged Pan American clipper finally rested its big, sleek, bird-like frame on the military airport of Puerto Rico’s capital, San Juan.

Latinos, World War II, and the Aftermath

LEARNS TRUTH There amidst the island’s squalor, poverty, and disease where month-old babies die when half-grown because emaciated mothers cannot nourish them properly; where greedy, powerful sugar corporations have gobbled up the richest, most fertile land, leaving 85 percent of the masses landless and destitute; where disease-ravaged cripples plaintively beg to eke out an existence, I learned this truth. There I saw a struggle in progress. Not just between Puerto Ricans those like Munoz Marin and members of the Popular Party who have tried to change these conditions, and representatives of the sugar interests who have fought to keep them like they are but a struggle in which reactionary Americans have entered and in which they are fighting bitterly, relentlessly. I found that Puerto Rico is merely another battleground of the continuing struggle for reactionaries in resisting every social and economic advance the masses make. I found that the same Americans who rant and rave against the Negro, the Jew, and labor here at home are the ones who are determined to choke off any improvement in Puerto Rican conditions. AFRAID OF INFILTRATION Why should American interests be so intent in strangling reforms within the island? Because they are afraid that some of them might eventually infiltrate into the United States jeopardizing their vested interests. That’s the reason Congressman Doummengeaux (Dem. La.), a member of the Bell investigating group, gave a Puerto Rican leader for his vicious attack on the reform program. It’s the reason Representative Crawford (Rep. Mich.) gave when a resolution into Congress to repeal the reform laws passed by the insular legislatures. At no time did they argue as to the need of these laws in Puerto Rico. They were merely concerned with their probable effect on American economy. It must be remembered that Rep. Doummengeaux is from Louisiana and another member of the committee, Rep. McGhee, is from Mississippi. Crawford is a vest pocket edition of another Michigan reactionary, Clare Hoffman. Why are Doummengeaux and McGhee so concerned? They come from the south. And Puerto Rico’s economy resembles that of the south: both are agricultural areas; both have one-crop economies, the south cotton, Puerto Rico, sugar; and both viciously exploit their landless workers. We call them tenant farmers and sharecroppers in the south. In Puerto Rico they’re aggregados. GOOD FOR DIXIE If Puerto Rico’s law providing for land redistribution were allowed to be successful, wouldn’t some bright young economists get an idea that it should be tried in Dixie? And what would happen to Reps. McGhee and Doummengeaux if Negroes and poor whites became respectable landowners? They’d vote! And these cohorts of infamy would lose their power and their jobs as congressmen. No wonder McGhee is reported to have said during a recess between hearings of the Bell committee, ‘‘I hate the New Deal and all it stands for.’’ Don’t that sound just like Rankin or Tabor or Bilbo. You can count their votes in advance on any bill like anti-poll tax, anti-lynch, or anti-strike legislation.

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Crawford’s pet peeve was the insular law which provided for the establishment of a Development Authority. It’s the organization the Puerto Rican legislature created to provide a banking institution to develop new industries in the island. Crawford wanted to kill it because it meant government in industry and no reactionary wants that to happen, even when private funds are not available. For over a year and a half stories supposedly emanating from the island have viciously attacked Gov. Rexford Guy Tugwell, who has been made to appear as a tyrant ruling without the consent of the people; as the most hated man in the island. REPORTS NOT TRUE I traveled the length and breadth of Puerto Rico, up in the verdant peaked mountains by horseback along trails which no auto could travel, down in sugar cane-covered valleys and in quaint, picturesque Spanish-type cities. Everywhere I went I talked to the workers. I found that relatively few of them knew Tugwell, but they all knew President Roosevelt and Munoz Marin, their own local leader, both of whom enjoy a popularity unrivaled by anyone else on the island. And Gov. Tugwell is the President’s appointee. It’s Marin’s program he’s helped to execute. In fact, Tugwell was appointed as governor after the controversial reform laws were passed. Gov. T. Swope of Pennsylvania was governor at that time, and it was he who signed these bills, making them law after the insular legislature passed them. My own impression is that Tugwell has sought no personal glory himself. That he’s been loyal to his chief to the ideals that were originally incorporated in the New Deal program. That he’s been self-effacing and he’s tried to carry out the program agreed to by a majority of the insular legislators. He is hated, however, by one group of islanders and continental Americans alike. In the island, the sugar interests talk as if he’s something akin to the black plague. At a party one of their representatives refused to even stay in the same room with him. Here at home, anyone who hates the New Deal philosophy hates Tugwell. He’s been too close to it. To destroy him is a step in killing social legislation. This is the reason then for stories grossly misrepresenting his position in the island. Remember, Puerto Rico is a battlefront. It’s just another area in which the big American fight the underdog vs. entrenched power continues. We can’t afford to lose there anymore than we can on the home front. Source: Chicago Defender (National Edition), July 31, 1943, p. 7.

267. Excerpts from Elena Padilla, Up from Puerto Rico, 1958 The following excerpts are from a book that gives an ethnographic view of Puerto Ricans living in an East Harlem slum during the post-World War II years. It depicts its subculture and the stratification of the community based on time of arrival, use of Spanish or English, skin color, hair texture, age, sex, education, and rural or urban origin, etc. The book is a classic, showing the cultural and racial conflict Puerto Rican youth encountered.

Among Puerto Ricans … the terms ‘‘Hispano’’ and ‘‘Latino’’ are used and preferred to ‘‘Puerto Rican’’ for self-identification.…

Latinos, World War II, and the Aftermath

In the past, Hispanos or Latinos were a small minority of intellectuals and middle-class professionals from Puerto Rico, Spain, and Latin America who lived in New York. By 1950, the Spanish-speaking socially mobile persons of lower-class origins, who now considered themselves in a higher social position than the recent lower-class migrants from Puerto Rico, were calling themselves Hispanos. More recently, the term has been extended to include all Spanish-speaking persons who reside in New York, regardless of their social and economic class. In Puerto Rico, a Puerto Rican is someone born on the island, which is his country. He may be a member of the upper, the middle, or the lower class; he may come from either country or city; he may be a farmhand, a farmer, or a banker; he may be a millionaire, a salaried employee, or a wage earner. But whatever else he is, he is Puerto Rican and is not regarded as a member of an ethnic or minority group. In New York, the terms ‘‘Hispano’’ and ‘‘Latino’’ have been substituted for that of ‘‘Puerto Rican,’’ because the latter, in more ways than one, has become a ‘‘bad public relations’’ identification for New York Puerto Ricans. It is associated with unfavorable pictures of the behavior and respectability of Puerto Ricans, which are not necessarily true or real. Even when used in Spanish and by Puerto Ricans themselves, it may convey an assumption of undesirable characteristics of the persons referred to.… When referring to friends, or to persons considered ‘‘decent and respectable,’’ the term ‘‘Hispano’’ is preferred by Eastville Puerto Ricans. Recently arrived migrants soon learn that they are to call themselves Hispanos and drop their identification as Puerto Rican. They will probably not deny their country, but will resort to the linguistic subterfuge of Hispano to protect themselves from being characterized in a derogatory manner. They will tend to emphasize their particular home towns and municipalities in Puerto Rico, for to be accepted among Hispanos, it is important to know something specific about one’s past and where one came from.… One of the common forms of relating personally … is by initiating a conversation in which one identifies oneself as Hispano, in the sense of Puerto Rican, and by establishing this clearly. This particular approach to personal relations suggests three major social features of the Puerto Rican group. First, that being Puerto Rican and referring to oneself as Hispano is an entree for social relationships, and second, that the participants in the relationship have to establish the authenticity of their being Puerto Rican by showing some particular knowledge of the island, such as being conversant with a specific municipio, town, or city, and then a particular street there. Thus the identification is narrowed down to a level that no foreigner can reach.… Third, the identification also calls for establishing that one belongs to a particular family. One’s status must be defined and acceptable if a personal relationship of any continuity is to be formed. Hispanos classify themselves into three major groups with reference to life-experience and time spent in New York City. Those who have lived here for many years (los que llevan muchos a~ nos aqu
ı) are the first. Those who grew up in this country, including the second generation, nacidos y criados (born and brought up), and those born in Puerto Rico who come to New York in early childhood comprise the second. Recent migrants, those who have come in the last several years from Puerto Rico, and who are referred to in derogatory terms … as ‘‘Marine Tigers’’ are the third. (Marine Tiger was the name of one of the Liberty ships, which made a number of trips between San Juan and New York after the war, bringing many thousands of

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Puerto Ricans to the States. It lent its name to the new ‘‘greenhorns,’’ and the name has continued to stick.) Source: From Up from Puerto Rico, by Elena Padilla.
C 1958 Columbia University Press. Reprinted by permission of the publisher. pp. 32 35.

268. Julia de Burgos, ‘‘Farewell in Welfare Island,’’ 1953 Second only to music, poetry expresses the Puerto Rican soul. Poets were, and are, revered by the common folk. One of the most esteemed poets is Julia de Burgos (1914–1953) who, like many Puerto Rican literary personae, participated in political causes in New York and on the island. She was raised in a poor section of Carolina in Puerto Rico in a barrio called Santa Cruz. Although she was poor and from a family of 13 children, she excelled in school and graduated from the University of Puerto Rico at the age of 19. She got involved in the movement to liberate Puerto Rico from the United States and, in 1936, she joined the Daughters of Freedom, the women’s branch of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party (Partido Nacionalista de Puerto Rico). This was the independence party headed by Pedro Albizu Campos (1891–1965), a Puerto Rican nationalist. The poem is one of nostalgia. Burgos longs for Puerto Rico and, in 1953, she disappears, later found dead on a sidewalk in Harlem in New York City. Welfare Island is one of her last poems.

It has to be from here, right this instance, my cry into the world. Life was somewhere forgotten and sought refuge in depths of tears and sorrows over this vast empire of solitude and darkness. Where is the voice of freedom, freedom to laugh, to move without the heavy phantom of despair? Where is the form of beauty unshaken in its veil simple and pure? Where is the warmth of heaven pouring its dreams of love in broken spirits? It has to be from here, right this instance, my cry into the world. My cry that is no more mine, but hers and his forever, the comrades of my silence, the phantoms of my grave. It has to be from here, forgotten but unshaken, among comrades of silence deep into Welfare Island my farewell to the world. Goldwater Memorial Hospital, Welfare Island

N.Y.C., February 1953

Source: ‘‘Goodbye Welfare Island’’ from Song of the Simple Truth: The Complete Poems of Julia De C 1996 by Julia de Burgos. Published by Curbstone Press. Distributed by ConsorBurgos, copyright
tium. pp. 357 358.


n, How to Know the Puerto Ricans 269. Excerpt from Jes
us Colo Puerto Ricans produced an incredible number of intellectuals during this period. Jes
us Col
on (1901–1974), born in Cayey, Puerto Rico, is known as the

Latinos, World War II, and the Aftermath

Father of the Nuyorican Movement, a group of Puerto Rican poets, artists, musicians, and artists who lived in New York City. Like so many early intellectuals he had links to the cigar industry. On the island of Puerto Rico, he was hired as a lector and a reader to read stories and current events to the workers. This occupation educated and politicized Col
on who became a socialist. Migrating to New York, he got involved with left-wing politics and wrote a column for the Daily Worker. His best known work is A Puerto Rican in New York, which describes New York and the Puerto Rican community during the post-World War II years. The following excerpt is a humorous account on how to recognize a Puerto Rican in New York.

One of the questions that we are most frequently asked is: ‘‘How can I get to the Puerto Ricans?’’ This is not a strange question to ask in a city like greater New York with more than 600,000 Puerto Ricans living, working, and struggling along with the rest of our city’s inhabitants. This is a question that is crying for a correct answer, not only in our city, but in many other great cities throughout the nation where the Puerto Ricans have gone to live. We have to admit from the start that we have no complete answer to open the door to the Puerto Ricans’ houses, minds, and hearts. We have to confess that every day we are adding to that answer by our personal experience, by our going around with our American friends or by listening to what others have done or have failed to do in winning entrance to a Puerto Rican home and from there, to their confidence, friendship, and love. This, of course, is something that cannot be gotten in one day or in a number of weeks. Sometimes it takes months. Sometimes it takes years. So, please excuse us if, in presenting what we have learned ourselves or added to our knowledge from the experience of others, we might sound at times a little critical, preachy, or even sermonizing. The theme lends itself to committing such errors. The first thing we must realize is that the Puerto Ricans have been exploited for hundreds of years. That strangers have been knocking at the door of the Puerto Rican nation for centuries, always in search of something, to get something, or to take away something from Puerto Ricans. This has been done many times with the forceful and openly criminal way of the pirate. Pirates with such tragically ‘‘illustrious’’ names as Cumberland and Drake. In one of those pirates’ assaults around the middle of the seventeenth century, the bells of the cathedral in San Juan, Puerto Rico, were stolen and sold by one of their buccaneer ships in a little town known as New Amsterdam, just being built along the shores of the Hudson River. So, in the words of one of my Puerto Rican friends, when one of those 200 percent Americans asks us why do Puerto Ricans have to come to New York? We can answer: ‘‘We come to take back our bells.’’ After the Spanish grandees, the French and English pirates and many others came to deprive us of whatever of value we have in our Puerto Rican land. Many came with the iron fist often hidden in the velvet glove. Many with the unctuous ‘‘love’’ and missionary ways of the do-gooders who come to ‘‘help’’ us. And we always had to listen to the chant that what was being done was ‘‘for our own good.’’ Then came the imperialists: the pirates of the ‘‘American Century.’’ So when you come to knock at the door of a Puerto Rican home you will be encountered by this feeling in the Puerto Rican sometimes unconscious in himself of

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having been taken for a ride for centuries. He senses that 99 persons out of 100 knock at his door [are] because they want something from him and not because they desire to be his friend a friend solving mutual problems that affect them both. That is why you must come many times to that door. You must prove yourself a friend, a worker who is also being oppressed by the same forces that keep the Puerto Rican down. Only then will the Puerto Rican open his heart to you. Only then will he ask you to have a cup of black coffee with him in his own kitchen. Before you come to understand a person, to deserve a people’s love, you must know them. You must learn to appreciate their history, their culture, their values, their aspirations for human advancement and freedom. There is much you can learn by speaking to the Puerto Ricans every time you get a chance at work or in the casual contact of everyday life. We must always be ready to learn from the colonial people. They have much to teach. We do not have to elaborate the point to readers of this column. Their grueling struggle against economic, political, and social oppression has steeled the colonial world and taught its people many a way to combat imperialism and war. We colonial people have also much to learn from the working class of the imperialist countries. But if you want to open that door, don’t assume a know-it-all attitude and superior airs just because you were born in the United States. This ‘‘superiority’’ attitude of the imperialist exploiters is unfortunately reflected sometimes in the less developed members of our own working class. You can acquire much information by reading what is published about the Puerto Ricans in our papers and in the progressive weekly and monthly publications. There are some books with much valuable factual information and many incorrect conclusions. We have to be careful about such books. Source: How to Know the Puerto Ricans by Jes
us Col
on. International Publishers, 2nd edition (June 1982).

270. Excerpts from ‘‘Puerto Ricans Fought for Independence in WWII,’’ 2005 There were tensions in Puerto Rico before and during World War II. During the Depression, the United States suppressed labor unions and Puerto Rican nationalists who demanded sovereignty. On March 21, 1937, at Ponce, Puerto Rico, police attacked a march commemorating the abolition of slavery in 1873. The attack left 19 people dead and more than 100 wounded. After this point, the United States tightened control over the island and increased its military presence in preparation for World War II. This presence was greatly resented by Puerto Ricans. However, even some independistas lost hope of independence as the Popular Democratic Party, led by Luis Mu~ noz Mar
ın (1898–1980), accommodated American hegemony. Although many Puerto Ricans joined the U.S. military as a means of escaping from the poverty and limited opportunities of Puerto Rico, there were nationalists who considered the U.S. military presence an affront and refused to support the war effort. Julio Pinto Gand
ıa, the past president of the Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico, refused induction. The U.S. government dropped charges against him because he would have been tried in Puerto Rico by a Puerto Rican jury. The following passage explains the reasons for Gand
ıa’s refusal to serve.

Latinos, World War II, and the Aftermath

As Washington prepared to enter World War II, claiming to defend ‘‘democracy’’ against fascism, the FBI stepped up its spying and harassment against Puerto Rican independence fighters, both on the island and in New York.… Even as its central leaders were in jail, the Nationalists launched a vigorous campaign against the war and for ‘‘disobedience against the imperialist draft law.’’ After that bill came into effect in 1940, the party issued a statement declaring, ‘‘We are ardent defenders of democracy and are willing to give our lives for it at any time that it may be necessary. But one must ask: What democracy are we going to defend in Puerto Rico? Is it the democracy that keeps dozens of our most noble men in jail, including Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos … Is it the democracy that, without due process, murders citizens in the police stations? Or is it the democracy that swept the streets of Ponce with its machine guns, wounding more than 200 people and murdering 20 men, women, and children?’’ If Puerto Rico is not granted independence, the statement continued, ‘‘we are not willing to serve in any way to defend something that is nonexistent in our country.… Hence, Puerto Ricans must ignore any imperialist requirement of the draft imposed in our country.’’ Ram
on Medina, one of the interim presidents of the Nationalist Party while Albizu was in prison, gave a speech on March 2, 1941, stating that the war ‘‘is based simply on an imperialist conflict over the domination of the world.’’ According to historian Ch
e Paralitici in his book No quiero mi cuerpo pa’ tambor: El servicio militar obligatorio en Puerto Rico (I don’t want my body as a drum: the draft in Puerto Rico), Medina called it ‘‘a world war among thieves’’ and said that ‘‘it was not a matter of allying with one imperialist power to fight another one … but of fighting against all the imperialists.’’ In their intransigent opposition to the imperialist war, the Nationalists spoke for a vocal minority of Puerto Ricans. The Popular Democratic Party (PPD), led by Luis Mu~ noz Mar
ın, which had moved away from its official pro-independence stance toward accommodation with imperialism, backed Washington’s war effort. It absorbed many reformist elements in the independence movement.… During the war, 65,000 on the island were drafted into the U.S. armed forces. Many protested the Jim Crow segregation they encountered in the U.S. Army, which classified Puerto Ricans as either ‘‘Negro’’ or ‘‘nonwhite.’’ Puerto Rican residents of the island of Vieques got a taste of the ‘‘war for democracy’’ when they were evicted from their land by the U.S. Navy beginning in 1941. It would take six decades of struggle to finally remove the U.S. military from that island, which was used for target practice and war maneuvers. Over the course of World War II, scores of Nationalist Party youth resisted the draft and were prosecuted and sentenced to jail, including the party’s top leaders. As a new Nationalist leadership took their place, they too were arrested for leading resistance to the imperialist war three successive leaderships. During the war, Albizu Campos was visited by U.S. State Department officials who promised to release him and other Nationalists from prison on condition that they suspend all pro-independence activity during the war. The Puerto Rican patriots unanimously refused the degrading ‘‘offer.’’ Albizu served out his sentence. In June 1943, he was paroled from the Atlanta prison and moved to New York, but he refused to accept the terms of parole, saying the U.S. government was not his. He was not permitted to return home until 1947.

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The Nationalists were not the only ones jailed for opposing the imperialist war. In 1941, the Roosevelt administration framed up and convicted 18 leaders of the Minneapolis Teamsters and the Socialist Workers Party on charges of conspiracy to overthrow the U.S. government ‘‘by force and violence’’ the first use of the Smith ‘‘Gag’’ Act. The Militant, championing the fight for Puerto Rico’s independence, backed the campaign to free the jailed Nationalists. In its June 16, 1945, issue the socialist paper interviewed one of those facing prosecution, Julio Pinto Gand
ıa, former secretary general of the Nationalist Party. ‘‘I do not evade anything,’’ Pinto Gand
ıa told the Militant. ‘‘I simply refuse to fight as a slave of an imperialist power. I will fight as much as is needed, but only for the freedom and independence of my people. I know there are many young men from Puerto Rico in the U.S. Army.… They think they are fighting for freedom and democracy. But they will learn … that kind of fight begins at home.’’ Source: ‘‘Puerto Ricans Fought for Independence in WW II,’’ The Militant, Vol. 69/No. 38, October 3, 2005.

271. Excerpt from ‘‘Puerto Rican Girls to Get Jobs Here,’’ 1948 Because of the distance and expense involved, few Puerto Ricans came from the island to the U.S. at their own expense. So, from the beginning, many were brought over as contract laborers to work in menial jobs. Due to the shortage of labor in occupations such as household work after the end of World War II, American companies began recruiting Puerto Rican women to work in the United States as maids. Puerto Rican women had worked with men in agriculture before this time. In order to make them more attractive to U.S. employers, training classes were set up to teach them basic English words such as ‘‘vacuum cleaner.’’ The following is an excerpt from the New York Times on the recruitment of Puerto Rican maids. Mrs. Frances Phillips was the manager of New York State’s household employment offices of the State Employment Service.

Thirty women between the ages of 18 and 35 now are taking a special threemonth course in Caguas, a town near San Juan, the capital of Puerto Rico, it was explained in Mr. Corsi’s office in 80 Centre Street. The curriculum was set up by Puerto Rican authorities after consultation with Miss Frances Phillips, manager of the household employment offices of the State Employment Service. Source: ‘‘Puerto Rican Girls to Get Jobs Here,’’ New York Times, January 30, 1948, p. 18.

272. Excerpts from Edwin Maldonado, ‘‘Contact Labor and the Origins of Puerto Rican Communities in the United States,’’ 1979 The increase of Puerto Ricans leaving the island was dramatic during and after World War II. In 1941, about 1,000 left Puerto Rico, a number that thereafter doubled annually. By 1945, 14,800 left the island, and in 1946 to mid-1947, 25,000 left. The stimulus was widespread unemployment with 80,000 jobless in Puerto Rico. On June 1, 1947, the New York Times reported that 75 percent of Puerto Rican immigrants in the United States mainland did not find the Promised Land and were unable to adjust. In February of that year, the New York

Latinos, World War II, and the Aftermath

Times reported that Puerto Rican families were breaking up because of a lack of housing. Homeless youths, ages 16 to 20, were reported to be on the increase. It was not uncommon for 12 to 15 Puerto Ricans in East Harlem to be living in a single room. New Yorkers blamed the low price of airfare for bringing Puerto Ricans to the Big Apple. White Nativists called for a stemming of Puerto Rican immigration, which after the war was flowing at the rate of 2,000 to 3,000 immigrants a month. In the context of this influx, racism increased, especially in New York, the destination for 90 percent of the islanders. Nativists claimed that Puerto Ricans were putting a strain on the schools and social services. They blamed parents for undoing the work of the schools by speaking Spanish to their children. In this post-World War II era, there were from 160,000–600,000 Puerto Ricans in New York City. The following excerpt reports on a survey performed by Columbia University on Puerto Ricans in New York City and the recruitment of contract workers.

In the autumn of 1947, the New York daily press started a campaign against the continuing influx of Puerto Ricans into that city. The government of Puerto Rico commissioned a survey by Columbia University and an investigation by the Department of Labor from which was framed a Statement of Motives on December 5, 1947 with respect to emigration. This statement, among other things, said that the Puerto Rican government ‘‘neither encourages nor discourages’’ migration to the United States or any foreign country. The government did, however, state its obligation to cooperate with municipal agencies in the United States to ease the adjustment of Puerto Ricans who, as American citizens, had every right to migrate to the states. Also, Puerto Ricans who wished to migrate would be guided to those areas where their labor was needed so as not to depress wages. While the Puerto Rican government enunciated a policy neither encouraging nor discouraging migration, it still considered migration an effective way of relieving unemployment and overpopulation. Although Puerto Ricans as a group chose the United States as the primary area of resettlement, the government of Puerto Rico, over a period of years, discussed with officials in Washington and among themselves the feasibility of colonizing Puerto Ricans in Latin America. This interest waned in the post World War II period as agricultural and industrial employment opened up in the United States. Not only would the Puerto Rican government turn its attention to working with mainland employers, but as colonies began to expand in the cities, other Puerto Ricans would make the decision to come to the mainland. These workers were often the advance-guardsmen who settled in urban communities on the mainland and made it possible for other Puerto Ricans to learn of these cities and leave the Island for the states. Whether it was industrial workers contracted to work in such places as Lorain, Ohio in 1947 and in Gary, Indiana in 1948, or agricultural contract laborers who drifted into cities such as Milwaukee, Wisconsin or Buffalo, New York looking for higher wages, these workers provided the nucleus from which ethnic communities arose on the mainland.… Contract labor and the creation of communities in the United States was not a phenomenon peculiar to Puerto Ricans. The ethnic composition of the South Chicago, Illinois community is a product of labor recruitment by the nationally based steel corporations in that area. The first rolling mills along the Calumet River were constructed and manned by Native Americans, Scandinavians, and German immigrants. By the end of the nineteenth century, the steel mills began to recruit Poles,

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and Slovenes were brought in during the first decade of the twentieth century. During World War I, another ethnic group was added to the South Chicago community when the steel mills found it necessary to recruit Mexicans to fill the heavy demand for wartime labor. The recruiting of labor in Puerto Rico began as early as the United States occupation of the Island after the Spanish-American War. At that time, agents from Hawaii came to Puerto Rico to recruit cane field labor. The plantation system introduced into Hawaii in the nineteenth century demanded a dependable labor supply and part of native resistance to conquest was a refusal to work under harsh conditions. As an alternative, foreign workers were recruited. The first big wave consisted of Chinese; the second of Japanese; the third of Filipinos and smaller groups of Portuguese, and later Puerto Ricans, Koreans, Spaniards, and Russians followed. For this trip, over a thousand Puerto Ricans were recruited.… The recruitment of several hundred Puerto Rican men and women for domestic and foundry work in Chicago created a storm of controversy. By the middle of 1946, a private Chicago Employment Agency, Castle, Barton, and Associates, in agreement with the Insular Department of Labor, established an office on the Island for the purpose of recruiting migrant workers for the Chicago area. Two types of work were offered: general household service and unskilled foundry work. The employment agency offered contracts which guaranteed a full year of work. In a report issued in November of 1946, the problems of the workers contracted for work in Chicago were brought out. The Department of Labor did not require proof of age and several of the girls were under sixteen. Many of the workers were allowed to leave without health certificates and some were later returned after failing to pass health examinations given by the Chicago Hardware Foundry Company. The report noted that the Department of Labor undertook no responsibility for supervising conditions under the contracts. The Commissioner of Labor visited the men at the Chicago Hardware Foundry Company and was aware of the conditions there. When forty-six of the men wrote to him complaining of the conditions, he replied that they had entered into the contracts voluntarily and that the Department of Labor would take action only in case of explicit violation of the contracts. The workers were transported to Chicago in cargo planes. They were charged $150 for the trip and $60 for agency fees. The girls were charged half this amount, with the remainder being paid by the employer. The regular passage rate from San Juan to Chicago at that time was $131.80 and no tax was paid if the tickets were purchased in Puerto Rico. The workers were allowed only twenty pounds of luggage while on regular passenger flights fifty-five pounds were allowed.… The contract provided that the girls received $60 per month as well as room and board. From this was deducted $10 per month to pay for the girl’s share of the trip from Puerto Rico and $8.33 toward the return trip. The wages paid the girls was substantially below the prevailing wage for similar work in Chicago. No limitations were set in the contract for hours to be worked and some girls complained of working at least fifteen hours per day. The agency would transfer girls from one employer to another without explanation and sometimes with less than a day’s notice. At least eighteen girls at the time of the report were unable to continue under these conditions and had broken their contracts and left their employer. The foundry workers received $.88 per 1=2 hour with time and a half for overtime over forty hours a week. This was the rate established for common labor by the

Latinos, World War II, and the Aftermath

contract between the Chicago Hardware Foundry Company and the United Steelworkers of America. After the many deductions, though, a standard paycheck of $35.40 would shrink for some of the workers down to one dollar for a week’s work. The men were housed in four old passenger coaches on company property. Three of the coaches were wooden and were heated by coal stoves placed six inches from uninsulated walls. Two lightweight blankets were provided for each man and most of the men lacked warm clothing. When the men first arrived, their food consisted of cornflakes and milk for breakfast, soup and three slices of bread for lunch and three slices of bread for dinner. A one-day strike protesting the food resulted in some improvements. Men who were injured or ill were charged for their full living expenses and one man who injured his back was hospitalized for seven days and informed later that his hospital bills amounted to one hundred dollars and would be deducted from his wages. The case was investigated by the United Steel Workers of America to determine whether the Illinois Workmen’s Compensation Act had been violated. The condition of the Chicago workers was carried in the Puerto Rican newspapers. There were charges of mistreatment from some quarters and justification from the recruiting agency. Sen. Vicente G
eigal Polanco went to Chicago at the behest ~oz Mar
ın, then President of the Puerto Rican Senate, to get a first-hand of M
un account of this episode. As a result, legislation was drafted which tried to curb the worst abuses of the contract labor system. Source: Excerpts from Edwin Maldonado, ‘‘Contact Labor and the Origins of Puerto Rican Communities in the United States,’’ International Migration Review XIII: (1979), 103 114.

273. Lucius C. Harper, ‘‘The Puerto Rican in Our Midst,’’ 1951 Although New York was the principal port of entry for Puerto Ricans, small numbers of immigrants moved to Chicago from New York in the 1930s. By the late 1940s, they moved into Milwaukee, Wisconsin, after being recruited to work in the tanneries. The movement into Chicago was predictable; the city had many factories, office buildings, and homes. Private employment companies heavily recruited Puerto Ricans to work in these sectors. In Chicago, Castle, Barton, and Associates recruited Puerto Rican men to work as laborers in the foundries and placed Puerto Rican women in households. Most single men and women soon sent for family members once they established stable jobs and residences. The Chicago Defender, a leading African American newspaper published in the United States since 1905 to advocate for the interests of black people, noted the growing presence of Puerto Ricans and introduced them to their readers. The following article reaches out to the newcomers.

The next time you meet a Puerto Rican and you will be meeting more of them right along there are a few things you might remember about him. First of all, he is a United States citizen by virtue of an Act of Congress passed some thirty odd years ago, and he has all the rights and privileges of any other citizen. Secondly, the beautiful island he comes from is as much a melting pot as the United States itself. Native Indians, Spaniards, Negroes, French, Dutch, and other Europeans, all have made their contribution to the island character. The Puerto

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Rican is a well-stirred mixture; and whether his skin is white or dark brown or one of the many in-betweens he considers himself an equal part of the whole. Puerto Rico is a small but modern land, where the roads and schools and stores and factories are proportionately fewer than here, but they are not unlike our own. Since World War II, many new industries have been started in Puerto Rico and thousands of people have learned new industrial skills. Many thousands more have been and are being trained in vocational and technical schools. But the mainstay of Puerto Rico is agriculture. And there’s the rub. In this little area 100 miles long and 35 miles wide live more than 2,000,000 people. Yet despite their dependence on agriculture, only about half the land is arable. This is the reason 350,000 Puerto Ricans have entered the States in the past six years. It’s the reason many more of them will probably come in the next six years. Make no mistake about it. The pleasant young man with the wide and friendly smile didn’t bring his pretty wife and his three lively children to the mainland because he wants to see baseball games and hear snappy music. He has plenty of that at home and much more besides. He has a warm, vacation climate that has never brought him snow. He doesn’t know what winter clothes are. He feels the softness of the trade winds and watches the breezes stir the palm trees he listens to the kind of music he loves, and he’s a happy man. Happy that is, except for one allimportant thing. He can’t make a decent living in his island paradise. So he comes to the States and he brings with him a lot of energy and ambition, a lot of ability to learn, and determination. And he brings a happy, generous spirit. We have everything to gain from his coming here and a lot to learn from him, just as he has a lot to learn from us. The thousands of Puerto Ricans who have come to New York, Chicago, and other cities in the past three years will likely be followed by many more. It will be happier for all of us if we accept each individual for what he himself is and for what he can do, rather than try to label him ‘‘black’’ or ‘‘white’’ or ‘‘rural and dumb’’ or ‘‘city and slick.’’ Because we’ll be meeting Puerto Ricans of every degree of skill from the common laborer to the doctor and the engineer. Some of them will be ‘‘country boys.’’ Others will be city people with a different set of manners and customs. We’ll get the most from them if we give them our friendship and understanding. Source: Chicago Defender, December 8, 1951, p. 11.

274. Excerpt from B. L. Donaldson, ‘‘Trouble in Paradise: The Miami Hotel Strike,’’ 1955 Miami, because of its location, attracted many Latino immigrants. Its climate also attracted thousands of tourists from the icy Northeast section of the United States. Miami grew to a city of 50,000 with 400 hotels in the 1950s. Tourists were the backbone of the economy. Along with the tourists, the city attracted low-skilled workers for construction, gardening, maid service, and a host of other jobs. Many of these low-end jobs were held by African Americans, Cubans, and Puerto Ricans who earned barely subsistence wages. In the 1950s, the Hotel and Restaurant Employee and Bartenders International sought to organize these workers. The following article excerpt talks of the difficulty encountered in union organizing in Florida because of right-to-work laws

Latinos, World War II, and the Aftermath

that stacked the deck in favor of management. In the ensuing strike described in the excerpt below, the courts issued an injunction against picketing.

An estimated 3,000 hotel employees have struck to back up the union’s demand for recognition and the right to negotiate contract for them, but the courts have repeatedly ruled against the union, and picket lines have now been temporarily banned at all but two hotels. This situation has come about chiefly because Florida is in what the union describes as a legal no man’s land. Florida is one of the eighteen states that have adopted ‘‘right-to-work’’ laws, which means that everyone has the right to work whether he is a union member or not. The law makes it difficult to void anti-picketing injunctions, for there is no working definition of what constitutes a strike. Source: B. L. Donaldson, ‘‘Trouble in Paradise: The Miami Hotel Strike,’’ The Nation, July 16, 1955, pp. 50 52.

275. Langston Hughes, ‘‘Simple Says Puerto Ricans Must Have Poro in Their Blood,’’ 1953 African American writer and poet Langston Hughes (1902–1967) was not only a leader in the black community but in the human rights movement in the United States. In the mid-1940s he became a regular columnist for the Chicago Defender, an African American newspaper. Previously, he had defended the cause of Mexican farmworkers and had written scathing indictments against gross violations of the civil rights of African Americans. The following article is an example of his witty observations on the changing complexion of Chicago when Puerto Ricans were becoming more numerous—it builds bridges between the black and Puerto Rican communities.

‘‘How come some of these colored Puerto Ricans have got such good hair?’’ asked Simple, as a couple of brownskin Puerto Ricans passed. ‘‘It must be their Spanish blood,’’ I said. ‘‘Then why don’t my Indian blood work the same way, daddy-o?’’ Maybe you haven’t got enough Indian blood.’’ I said. You mean to offset my colored blood which is really powerful? But them Puerto Ricans have got colored blood too, and it is not powerful enough to curl their hair up like mine.’’ ‘‘Did you say, curl?’’ ‘‘I said, curl,’’ said Simple. ‘‘Straight as them Puerto Ricans’ hair is, they must be related to Madam Walker or Rose Meta on their grandma’s side, else they are born with Poro in their blood. Where do Puerto Ricans come from, anyhow, speaking all Spanishified and everything which if Puerto Rico belongs to the United States, they ought to speak English.’’ ‘‘Puerto Rico used to belong to Spain,’’ I said, ‘‘and we won it from the Spaniards in the Spanish-American War.’’ ‘‘Which I know our white folks regret,’’ said Simple, ‘‘because when they won they lost.’’ ‘‘Why do you say that?’’ ‘‘Because all them colored Puerto Ricans is coming up here flooding the USA with colored blood and they got enough Negroes in the USA already with us so I known they do not want any more.’’

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‘‘Puerto Ricans are not classed as Negroes,’’ I said. ‘‘The only reason they is not is because they speak some other lingo. Some of them is dark as me.’’ ‘‘But you’ve already remarked on the difference in their hair.’’ ‘‘White folks pays no attention to hair. Look at some of our New Orleans Creoles, handsome mens and goodlooking womens, pretty as a picture with hair like Moses, yet Jim Crowed right on. But Americans do not Jim Crow Puerto Ricans.’’ ‘‘I expect they do down South,’’ I said. ‘‘They don’t up North,’’ contended Simple. ‘‘Them Puerto Ricans go anywhere they want to in New York. But just let me, born here, try and the man at the door says ‘Whoa! No go! No-ooo-ooo!’ And I am stymied just because I do not speak Spanish. I think I am going to night school and learn me one term of it you know five or six lessons. Then I am going to walk right up to the Stork Club and say, ‘‘Speegingee spagody aw dee ouse.’ And they will let me right in, though I be the color of Josephine Baker.’’ ‘‘My dear fellow,’’ I said, ‘‘you are not quite the color of Josephine Baker.’’ ‘‘She’s pushing me,’’ said Simple. ‘‘But with my new language, that will make no difference. I will jump on a train and run down to Baltimore or Washington and register at the biggest hotels there by just saying, ‘Bendos Kneeous, s’il vous play!’’’ ‘‘I fear you are mixing up both French and Spanish.’’ ‘‘Them white folks would not know the difference,’’ said Simple. ‘‘They would not be cultured like me. Besides I would walk in with so much dignity, acting so much like a gentleman that they would not know who I were. And I would sail up to the desk like royalties with out crowns in our suitcase.’’ ‘‘You would be sailing under false pretenses,’’ I said. ‘‘Instead of trying to pass for something you are not, you would do better to demand your rights for what you are, a pure American Negro.’’ ‘‘I been demanding my rights all these years as a pure American Negro and ain’t got them yet,’’ said Simple. ‘‘So what’s wrong with demanding them now in Spanish?’’ ‘‘You can answer that question yourself,’’ I said. ‘‘The answer is, I don’t speak Spanish,’’ said Simple. Source: Chicago Defender (National Edition), November 21, 1953, p. 11.

276. Citations for Valor: Fernando Luis Garc
ıa, Pablo Ram
ırez, and Pedro Rodr
ıguez, ca. 1951–1952 In July 1950, some 20,000 Latinos were serving in the armed forces. During the three years of the Korean War, 148,000 Latinos volunteered or were drafted. Approximately 60,000 Puerto Ricans served in Korea. The number of Puerto Ricans could have been higher since mainland statistics were often not counted. Many of them fought in the historic all-Latino 65th Infantry Regiment. Members of 65th Infantry fought in temperatures 35 or 40 degrees below zero. The casualties were heavy. The unit was unique as it had been organized soon after the United States took control of Puerto Rico in 1899. The 65th Infantry unit participated in nine major battles in Korea. In December 1950, Chinese troops caught the U.N. forces off-guard as thousands of Chinese

Latinos, World War II, and the Aftermath

soldiers crossed the 38th Parallel into South Korea. The 65th helped prevent a disaster by staying behind and preventing the Chinese from annihilating U.S. Marines as they retreated. Throughout the conflict, numerous Puerto Rican soldiers were cited for bravery. Among them were Pvt. Fernando Luis Garc
ıa (1929–1952), Lt. Pablo Ram
ırez, and Sgt. Pedro Rodr
ıguez. The following are copies of their citations, and proof that they won the Borinquens’ rights with their blood.

MARINE PFC FERNANDO LUIS GARC
IA (1929–1952) BORN IN PUERTO RICO MEDAL OF HONOR CITATION: Private First Class Fernando L. Garcia Rank and organization: Private First Class, U.S. Marine Corps, Company I, 3d Battalion, 5th Marines, 1st Marine Division (Rein.). Place and date: Korea, September 5, 1952. Entered service at: San Juan, P.R. Born: October 14, 1929 Utuado, Puerto Rico Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty while serving as a member of Company I, Third Battalion, Fifth Marines, First Marine Division (Reinforced), in action against enemy aggressor forces in Korea on September 5, 1952. While participating in the defense of a combat outpost located more than one mile forward of the main line of resistance during a savage night attack by a fanatical enemy force employing grenades, mortars, and artillery, Private First Class Garcia, although suffering painful wounds, moved through the intense hail of hostile fire to a supply point to secure more hand grenades. Quick to act when a hostile grenade landed nearby endangering the life of another Marine, as well as his own, he unhesitatingly chose to sacrifice himself and immediately threw his body upon the deadly missile, receiving the full impact of the explosion. His great personal valor and cool decision in the face of almost certain death sustain and enhance the finest traditions of the United States Naval Service. He gallantly gave his life for his country.

PABLO RAMIREZ SILVER STAR General Orders # 92 - 11 APRIL 1951 Second Lieutenant Pablo Ramirez, 0954382, Infantry, Company ‘‘A,’’ 65th Infantry, 3d Infantry Division, United States Army. On 1 February 1951, Lieutenant Ramirez led his platoon in an assault on Hill 449 in the vicinity of Kalgok, Korea. In the initial phase of the assault, an enemy mortar barrage killed one of the men of the platoon and wounded two others. The platoon was disorganized by the terrific barrage, but Lt. Ramirez immediately reorganized his men and continued the attack on the hill in spite of the mortar and small arms fire. He discovered two wounded men and evacuated them. Upon reaching a third man, he was killed by a second mortar barrage. The bravery and gallantry displayed by Lt. Ramirez was an

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inspiration to his men and exemplifies the highest traditions of the military service. Entered the military service from Puerto Rico. PEDRO RODRIGUEZ Organization: Headquarters 3d Infantry Division G.O. # 196 - 17 June 1951 1st Citation: Master Sergeant Pedro Rodriguez, RA6674697, Infantry, Company ‘‘F,’’ 65th Infantry, 3d Infantry Division, United States Army. On 24 March 1951, near KopiDong, Korea, Sgt. Rodriguez, acting as platoon leader in the absence of a commissioned officer, was leading his unit to secure Hill 476, when the enemy opened fire from a well-camouflaged machine gun nest. Although he did not know the exact location of the gun, Sgt. Rodriguez ordered one squad to fix bayonets and assault the general area from which the fire was coming. After the enemy weapon fired again, Sgt. Rodriguez charged the position, yelling and shooting his rifle demoralizing the enemy and causing him to flee in haste, taking his gun with him, but leaving ammunition and rations behind. The gallantry and extreme devotion to duty displayed by Sgt. Rodriguez reflect great credit upon himself and the military service. Entered the military service from Puerto Rico. PEDRO RODRIGUEZ Organization: Headquarters 3d Infantry Division G.O. # 261 - 8 July 1951 2nd Citation: Master Sgt. Pedro Rodriguez, RA6674697, Infantry, Company ‘‘F,’’ 65th Infantry, 3d Infantry Division, United States Army. On 31 March 1951, near ChoksongMyon, Korea, Company ‘‘F’’ was attacking Hill 398, defended by a firmly entrenched enemy supported by mortars. At some distance from the top of the hill, the lead platoon was halted by intense machine gun fire and fragmentation grenades, suffering several casualties. When Sgt. Rodriguez received the order to move his platoon to assist the stalled unit, he ran forward and led his troops in a furious assault, causing the enemy to retreat hastily, thereby relieving the besieged lead platoon. Continuing his charge, Sgt. Rodriguez pursued the fleeing enemy and covered by friendly machine gun fire, he personally searched the area to rout any enemy troops which might have been left behind. The aggressive leadership and personal gallantry exhibited by Sgt. Rodriguez reflect the highest credit upon himself and the military service. Entered the military service from Puerto Rico. Source: Courtesy of Medal of Honor Recipients, Hispanics in America’s Defense, http://www. neta.com/1stbooks/medal2.htm; GetNet, Korean War Educator, http://www.koreanwar-educator. org/topics/silver star/p silver star citations r.htm.

277. Central Intelligence Agency Document on Guatemala, 1954 World War II unleashed a global drive for democracy and self-determination. In October 1944, Guatemala established a democratic government. President Jacobo Arbenz (1913–1971) was elected for the period from 1951 to 1957

Latinos, World War II, and the Aftermath


Are
valo (1904–1990). Guatemala had one of the to succeed Dr. Juan Jose few constitutionally elected democracies in Latin America. Arbenz was a reformer and his reforms alienated the church, the landowners, and the United Fruit Company. He abolished all forms of slavery, required workers to be paid, and called for a redistribution of land. Almost a million Guatemalans earned from 14 to 40 centavos a day; 2.2 percent owned 70 percent of the arable land. Arbenz set out to reform this through moderate redistribution of land. This led to a Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz, because the CIA determined his government was communist influenced. The United States claimed the right to determine which governments were communist and who should be overthrown. The CIA collaborated with Nicaraguan dictator Anastacio Somoza to support a disgruntled general named Carlos Castillo Armas. The codename was Operation PBFORTUNE, and was authorized by President Truman in 1952. The following redacted excerpts are from a declassified CIA document.

SECRET CIA HISTORICAL REVIEW RELEASE AS SANITIZED 1997 CIA and Guatemala Assassination Proposals 1952 1954 CIA History Staff Analysis Gerald K. Haines June 1995 In the early 1950s, the Central Intelligence Agency directed covert operations aimed at removing the government of Jacobo Arbenz Guzman from power in Guatemala. Included in these efforts were various suggestions for the disposal of key Arbenz government officials and Guatemalan Communists. The Agency drew up lists of individuals for assassination, discussed training Guatemalan exiles for assassination teams, and conducted intimidation programs against prominent Guatemalan officials. This brief study traces, in a chronological manner, the injection of assassination planning and proposals into the PBFORTUNE covert operation against the Arbenz government in 1952 and into the PBSUCCESS operation in 1954. It attempts to illustrate the depth of such planning and the level of involvement of Agency officials. It also attempts to detail where the proposals originated, who approved them, and how advanced the preparations for such actions were. Finally, the study examines the implementation of such planning and the results i.e., in the end, the plans were abandoned and no Arbenz officials or Guatemalan Communists were killed. The study is based almost exclusively on Directorate of Operations records relating to PBFORTUNE and PBSUCCESS.… Although most high-level U.S. officials recognized that a hostile government in Guatemala by itself did not constitute a direct security threat to the United States, they viewed events there in the context of the growing global Cold War struggle with the Soviet Union and feared that Guatemala could become a client state from which the Soviets could project power and influence throughout the Western Hemisphere.… PBFORTUNE Following a visit to Washington by Nicaraguan President Anastasio Somoza in April 1952, in which Somoza boasted that if provided arms he and Guatemalan

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exile Carlos Castillo Armas could overthrow Arbenz, President Harry Truman asked DCI [director of central intelligence] Smith, to investigate the possibility. Smith sent an agent, codenarned SEEKFORD, to contact Guatemalan dissidents, about armed action against the Arbenz regime. After seeing his report [ ] Chief of the [ ] Division of the Directorate of Plans (DP), proposed to Deputy Director of Central Intelligence Allen Dulles that the Agency supply Castillo Armas with arms and $225,000, and [ ] the Nicaragua and Honduras furnish the Guatemalans with air support. Gaining Department of State support, Smith, on 9 September 1952, officially approved [ ]’s request to initiate operation PBFORTUNE to aid Guatemalan exiles in overthrowing Arbenz. Planning for PBFORTUNE lasted barely a month, however, when Smith terminated it after he learned in October that it had been blown.… In addition to monitoring events in Guatemala, the Agency continued to try to influence developments and to float ideas for disposing of key figures in the [ ] government [ ] in 1953 proposed not only to focus on sabotage, defection, penetration, and propaganda efforts with regard to Guatemala, but to eliminate [ ] [ ]. According to [ ]’s draft memorandum, after creating a story that [ ] was preparing to oust the Communists, he could be eliminated. His assassination would be ‘‘laid to the Commies’’ and used to bring about a mass defection of the Guatemalan Army. A Western Hemisphere Division memo of 28 August 1953, also suggested possibly assassinating key Guatemalan military officers if they refused to be converted to the rebel cause. In September 1953, [ ] also sent [ ] an updated plan of action which included a reference to ‘‘neutralizing’’ key Guatemalan military leaders.… By the fall of 1953, U.S. policymakers, including CIA officials, were searching for a new overall program for dealing with Arbenz. The Guatemalan leader had moved even closer to the Communists. He had expropriated additional United Fruit Company holdings, legalized the Guatemalan Communist Party, the PGT, and suppressed anti-Communist opposition following an abortive uprising at Salami. In response, the National Security Council authorized a covert action operation against Arbenz and gave the CIA primary responsibility.… Although assassination was not mentioned specifically in the overall plan, the Chief of [ ] at [ ] requested a special paper on liquidation of personnel on 5 January 1954. This paper, according of the [ ] chief, was to be utilized to brief the training chief for PBSUCCESS before he left to begin training Castillo Armas’ forces in Honduras on 10 January 1954. A cable from [ ] the following day requested 20 silencers (converters) for .22 caliber rifles. Headquarters sent the rifles. The [ ] chief also discussed the training plan with the agent SEEKFORD on 13 January 1954, indicating that he wanted Castillo Armas and the PBSUCCESS [ ] officer to train two assassins. In addition, he discussed these ‘‘assassination specialists’’ with Castillo Armas on 3 February 1954. The idea of forming assassination teams (‘‘K’’ groups) apparently originated with Castillo Armas in 1952. Adapting Castillo Armas’ concept, the [ ] chief routinely included two assassination specialists in his training plans.… While Agency paramilitary and psychological warfare planning both included suggestions which implied assassination proposals, these proposals appear never to have been implemented. The [ ] chief had sought to use Castillo Armas ‘‘K’’ group scheme but there was no State Department or White House support. Such was also the case when the subjects of assassination emerged in high-level Agency and interagency planning discussions.…

Latinos, World War II, and the Aftermath

On 16 June 1954, Castillo Armas’ CIA-supported force of armed exiles entered Guatemala. While these forces advanced tentatively in the hinterland. [ ] Guatemala City on 16 and 17 June met with a leading Guatemalan military commander, in the hopes of convincing him to lead a coup against Arbenz. In these discussions, the military commander hinted be would like to see [ ], killed. The [ ] frustrated by the continued inaction of the Guatemala military commander, told him that if he wanted them killed he should do it himself. Despite the Guatemalan military commander’s vacillation, a [ ] cable indicated that he remained convinced that [ ] had to be eliminated. CONCLUSION CIA officers responsible for planning and implementing covert action against the Arbenz government engaged in extensive discussions over a two-and-a-half-year period about the possibility of assassinating Guatemalan officials [ ]. Consideration of using assassination to [ ] purge Guatemala of Communist influence was both of the extreme international tensions in the early Cold War years. The Agency did not act unilaterally, but consulted with State Department officials with responsibility for policy toward Latin America. In the end, no assassinations of Guatemalan officials were carried out, according to all available evidence. Cold War realities and perceptions conditioned American attitudes toward what political weapons were legitimate to use in the struggle against Communism. It would be over two decades after the events in Guatemala before DCI William Colby prohibited any CIA involvement in assassination and a subsequent Executive Order banned any U.S. government involvement in assassination. Source: Document 1, ‘‘CIA and Guatemala Assassination Proposals, 1952 1954,’’ In CIA and Assassinations: The Guatemala 1954 Documents, by Kate Doyle and Peter Kornbluh. National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 4, http://www.gwu.edu/nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB4/ index.html.

278. Excerpt from ‘‘Woman Terrorist Freed of ‘Intent,’’’ 1954 Puerto Rican Nationalists had attempted to force a plebiscite on Puerto Rican independence from the beginning of the U.S. occupation. Repression of Puerto Ricans’ desires to end U.S. occupation led to police brutality toward the nationalists, the imprisonment of Pedro Albizu Campos (1891–1965) and others, and the Ponce Massacre of 1937, during which police shot down 19 people and wounded over 100. In 1950, two nationalists, Oscar Collazo and Griselio Torresola, made a failed attack on Blair House where President Harry Truman was temporarily staying while repairs were made to the White House, in an attempt to assassinate him. Three secret service men were wounded, Torresola was killed and Collazo was captured. Two years later, Nationalists Lolita Lebr
on, age 34; Rafael C. Miranda, age 25; Andr
es Figueroa Cordero, age 29; and Irving Flores Rodr
ıguez, age 29, led a failed attack on Congress. Five members of Congress were shot and wounded in the House of Representatives chamber in 1954, when these Puerto Rican nationalists fired 25 shots. A note was found on Lebr
on saying: ‘‘Before God and the world my blood claims for the independence of Puerto Rico. My life I give for the freedom of my country.’’

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n They also protested the imprisonment and torture of Albizu Campos. Lebro received a sentence of 16 years and eight months in prison. The rebels were charged with assault with intent to kill. The following excerpt establishes that the incident occurred and describes the attack.

Mrs. Lebr
on was one of four Puerto Rican nationalists who fired a volley of shots in the House chamber. Five members of Congress were wounded. Her companions, Rafael Cancel Miranda, Andres Figueroa Cordero, and Irving Flores Rodriguez, were found guilty yesterday of assault with intent to kill and assault with a dangerous weapon. They face a possible prison sentence of 125 years. Attorneys for the defendants said tonight they would file a motion for a new trial for the men on the ground they could not be convicted on both counts. Source: ‘‘Woman Terrorist Freed of ‘Intent,’’’ New York Times, June 18, 1954, p. 15.

279. Dan Wakefield, ‘‘Puerto Rico: Rebels Find a Welcome,’’ 1957 In the 1950s, in the midst of the Cold War with the Soviet Union, the United States considered Cuba and Puerto Rico as essential to its defense of the Caribbean and Central America. Part of the U.S. policy was to maintain control by supporting dictators. However, in the aftermath of World War II, there were popularist movements in Latin America where the people demanded democracy and an end to dependence on the United States. Puerto Rico stood at the crossroads of these political upheavals of the Caribbean and Latin America during the 1950s. Political exiles held court in San Juan, Puerto Rico, planning their revolutions. The two most notable revolutionary hot spots were Cuba and Santo Domingo. Cuban dictator Ruben Fulgencio Batista Zald
ıvar (1901– 1973) was a friend of the United States. He joined the Cuban Army and rose to the rank of sergeant, emerging as the strongman. Batista was in and out of the presidency. By the 1950s, the Cuban people tired of his corruption and promotion of Havana as the sin capital of the hemisphere. During the decade, Fidel Castro led a revolt against Batista that lasted a half dozen years, successfully ending in 1959. Castro was favored by many Puerto Ricans. Another U.S. favorite was Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo who ruled the Dominican Republic for 31 years. With support of the United States, Trujillo ruled until his assassination in 1961. Before and after the revolts, political and economic refugees fled to the United States and Puerto Rico. The following article talks about revolutionary movements to overthrow these dictatorships.

San Juan, Puerto Rico In a makeshift meeting hall above a caf
e in San Juan’s suburbs, a small, enthusiastic audience sat before the flag-draped pictures of Jos
e Mart
ı and Fidel Castro dead and living symbols of Cuban freedom and cheered a series of speakers who denounced the dictatorial regimes of Batista and Trujillo. The audience, generously sprinkled with the special apparel of political exiles, dark glasses, was made up of men and women from three different Caribbean countries who are joined in a fraternal, informal community of opposition to the current neighboring dictators.

Latinos, World War II, and the Aftermath

The Cubans and Dominicans are exiles from their native countries, and the Puerto Ricans are their sympathetic hosts. The Puerto Ricans, proud of their own democracy, are pleased to have their island serve as a port in the extended dictatorial storms, and the exiles find much popular support here, as well as official protection. There is also mutual support and camaraderie between the exile groups, of different countries. The meeting above the caf
e was staged to raise funds for Cuba’s 26th of July Movement, which organizes outside support for Castro; it was attended not only by Cubans and Puerto Ricans, but also by the leaders of the main Dominican party in exile. This mutual sympathy is part of a long tradition in the Caribbean in fact, it is one of the few existing inter-island traditions. For, despite their geographic proximity, the countries of this area have had surprisingly little contact, political or social. One of the few has been that between the exiles and their temporary hosts. Since all the countries in the region have experienced the problems of either colonial rule or home-grown dictatorship or both, the people are immediately sympathetic to neighbors fighting the same sort of battle. Before the rise of Batista, the Cubans used to turn out to cheer the Dominican exiles leaving or returning from Havana on their perennially abortive attempts to overthrow Trujillo. Now the Cubans have a dictator of their own, and the Dominicans sit in San Juan and cheer the representatives of Fidel Castro, who stop through to raise funds to fight Batista. The Puerto Ricans have had a happier recent history, but they don’t have to go too far back to find reasons for sympathizing with neighbors fighting dictatorship. When the Spanish took over the island on the second voyage of Columbus, Ponce de Leon and his merry men nearly managed to exterminate the entire native Indian population of the island in two generations, brought Negro slaves from Africa, and went on to rule for four centuries. It was not until 1897 that Puerto Rico managed to gain a home-rule government from Spain; and it was one year after that hardearned triumph that America captured the island from the Spaniards and Puerto Rico was right back where it started from as a colony. The country has made another, shorter rise now to self-rule, working it out of the Americans in little more than half a century (1898 1952). Democracy is popular today in Puerto Rico in both idea and practice. The Castro men who came here to organize the 26th of July Movement said they had received more wide-spread support in Puerto Rico than anywhere else they had been. Their meeting in San Juan was attended by some of the outstanding leaders of the Puerto Rican Government and trade-union movement. More important, it was also attended by a man from the Puerto Rican security police who took names of people not known to him and who asked questions of Francisco Javier Guilliani, leader of the Dominican Populist Party, the largest political group in exile from Trujillo. The interest of the island security police in these affairs is not prompted by government disapproval, but rather by the fact that the exiles and their friends are in constant danger from agents of the dictators. Trujillo has a large delegation of agents in San Juan, centered in the Casa Dominicana billed as a ‘‘cultural center’’ for Dominicans away from home and not only the exile leaders, but their Puerto Rican sympathizers, are often threatened and sometimes attacked by Trujillo’s men. That the threats are not to be taken lightly is proved by the long history of ‘‘extra-territorial’’ assassinations of Dominicans who oppose Trujillo. The recent,

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highly publicized disappearance of Dr. Jesus de Galindez from New York City is only one in a series of deaths and kidnappings of men who spoke or worked against the Dominican dictator. Sergio Bencosme, one of the first outstanding Trujillo opponents, was murdered in New York; Mauricio Baez, a trade-union leader who spoke against Trujillo at an inter-American labor conference, was murdered in Havana; Andres Requena, a newspaperman who wrote a book attacking the Trujillo regime, was shot and killed in New York; Manuel Jos
e Hern
andez, leader of another antiTrujillo movement, was stabbed and killed in Havana. Dr. Jes
us de Galindez is one of a long line of assassins’ victims. It is one of the continual sources of suspicion and distrust of the U.S. Government among the people of the Caribbean that it proclaims democracy and gives diplomatic and financial support ($250,000 a year in Point Four funds, plus military aid) to a dictatorial regime with this record of slaughter a record which does not even touch on the massacres and individual killings on Trujillo’s own island. No Dominican exile has yet been killed in Puerto Rico, but that can be credited more to the work of the island security police than to any lack of enterprise on the party of Trujillo’s agents. This June, a Dominican-born man named Rafael Rivera Rosas went one night to the office of Dominican exile leader Francisco Guilliani and was beaten up and knifed by four attackers. The next day a note was delivered to Guilliani that read: ‘‘If this was not death for him, it will be death for you, Mr. Guilliani.’’ Hector Landr
on, a Puerto Rican radio news broadcaster, interviewed some Dominican exiles on his program and spoke in sympathy with their cause, and the next day received a phone call threatening his life if he continued such broadcasts. The Rosas attack, which capped growing reports of threats and attacks by Trujillo agents, prompted a statement from Puerto Rico’s Governor Munos [sic] Mar
ın: The alleged activities and attacks, carried out by persons said to represent a foreign government, against residents of our country should deeply concern everyone in Puerto Rico. Commonwealth police have strict orders to investigate those acts with the utmost energy. We cannot tolerate the extension to the peaceful and democratic life of Puerto Rico of dictatorial power from other countries.

There has been no public reaction to all these incidents from the U.S. Government. According to recent news dispatches, a U.S. Congressional committee is coming here to investigate communism, which is about as lively a movement in the Commonwealth as existentialism is in Dubuque, Iowa. But the committee will no doubt diligently search for Communist threats to Puerto Rican security, while Trujillo’s men move unnoticed all around them, threatening life and limb of those who oppose the dictator. Francisco Guilliani has been to Washington to ask for Congressional opposition to the current Dominican tyranny, but his only real support has come from Rep. Charles Porter of Oregon, who has asked the United States to cut its aid Trujillo. The other officials Guilliani saw including such noted liberal Senators as Jacob Javits were ‘‘privately sympathetic’’ but would go no further, Guilliani said. In the meantime, Guilliani attends to the exiles. As head of the Dominican Populist Party, he is the leader of some 3,000 Dominican exiles now living in Puerto Rico. He is the man most often contacted by Dominicans who come to

Latinos, World War II, and the Aftermath

San Juan in escape from Trujillo, and he helps them find apartments and jobs and get established here. But Guilliani is concerned with political as well as ‘‘domestic’’ action. He leads a weekly picket line outside the Dominican Embassy here on Saturdays, makes broadcasts to the Dominican Republic and sends in news and literature of his own party’s promises and activities. His aim is not so much to draw people out of the Dominican Republic, but to establish a sympathetic following within it for his party and its stated principles of democratic politics. The Populist Party has never attempted any military attack on Trujillo’s regime, and they say that they are planning none. Guilliani has little hope of an uprising within the tight military control that Trujillo has imposed upon his country with the help of U.S. arms aid and a national budget that devotes 55 percent of its total to the military. ‘‘We will just have to wait till Trujillo dies,’’ Gilliiani says. ‘‘Then we will return, and with the help of our followers inside the country, set up a democratic government and democratic elections before another dictatorship starts.’’ But the waiting strategy is not shared by all the exiled Dominicans. The smaller, elite Dominican Revolutionary Vanguard Party, which also has headquarters in San Juan, is led by Horacio Ornes, who has already made one assault on Trujillo’s regime with a revolutionary invasion force. When asked if he intends to lead another, Sr. Ornes a tall, handsome, mustached man who could easily play the movie role of a Latin revolutionist smiles broadly and says ‘‘Who knows?’’ The Ornes party is composed mainly of professional men and intellectuals doctors, lawyers, writers, professors, and former Trujillo diplomats. ‘‘One of the best ways of getting out of the country,’’ Ornes explains, ‘‘is to join the diplomatic corps.’’ Trujillo’s state department has a long list of diplomats including Ornes who defected after being assigned to posts outside the country. But defection is always dangerous, whether it be from the diplomatic corps or merely from Dominican civilian life to civilian life in another country with affiliation to an exile party. Dr. Tancredo Mart
ınez, one of the top officers of the Ornes party, became the most recent in the list of Dominican exiles assassinated abroad when he was shot down this September in Mexico City. The Cuban exiles have had much less trouble from their home dictator’s agents abroad than the Dominicans have had from theirs. One of the representatives of Fidel Castro who had come to Puerto Rico to help organize the 26th of July Movement said that Batista’s agents, once outside the country, are just as afraid as the exiles they spy on. ‘‘Batista’s spies know that our friends and brothers are with Castro in the Sierra Maestra, and that some of us have been there too. Bastista’s men know how we feel, and when they get outside the country and meet us on equal terms they know they are in just as much danger from us as we are from them.’’ Compared to Trujillo, Batista is still a novice at the dictator business, and his agents are no doubt suffering a cultural lag in the conduct of extra-territorial intrigue. But the greatest threat that hangs over all the exiles, whether or not they are ever approached by a dictator’s agent, is one that is seldom articulated. This is the possibility that when the great day finally comes and the dictator is overthrown, the man or party the exiles have lived and worked for may turn out to be just another dictator. It has happened often enough in the past, and the two Dominican exile parties both suspect that, if the other came to power, the result would be the

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establishment of another dictatorship. The leaders do not come right out and say so, for they all are bound for the moment by the common cause against Trujillo. But Ornes and Guilliani claim that the other’s party would be ‘‘less democratic’’ than his own if it were ever returned to power. In the case of the Cubans, all hope and faith rest with the young man leading the revolutionary forces from the ranges of the Sierra Maestra Fidel Castro. His followers are confident of his good intentions, although he has no program except the immediate one of getting rid of Batista. The Cubans working for Castro at home and in exile seem to have the kind of faith in his ‘‘democratic ideals’’ that is held by Hacinto V
azquez, a young man who represents the 26th of July Movement in Puerto Rico. When asked of some proof of Castro’s democratic ideals, V
azquez cited the fact that the revolutionary leader was always referred to and has asked to be referred to, as ‘‘Dr. Castro,’’ when he might well have assumed the title of ‘‘General’’ or ‘‘Commander’’ of the revolutionary forces. On such thin threads hangs the hope of the exiles, and that of the mass of their countrymen still at home in our neighboring island dictatorships. Source: Reprinted with permission from the November 23, 1957 issue of The Nation. For subscription information, call 1-800-333-8536. Portions of each week’s Nation magazine can be accessed at http://www.thenation.com.

280. Excerpts from Fidel Castro, ‘‘The Revolution Begins Now,’’ January 3, 1959 Cubans have always been enamored with history in their search for the truth. After his failed coup in 1953, Cuban leader Fidel Castro (1926–) addressed the court and based his defense on Cuban history. He summed up by saying: ‘‘I know that imprisonment will be harder for me than it has ever been for anyone, filled with cowardly threats and hideous cruelty. But I do not fear prison, as I do not fear the fury of the miserable tyrant who took the lives of 70 of my comrades. Condemn me. It does not matter. History will absolve me.’’ Upon achieving victory in 1959, Castro again turned to history and gave his reasons why he would not compromise with Gen. Eulogio Cantillo (1914–), who had been head of the army of Cuba’s bloody dictator Fulgencio Batista. Cantillo had led what has been labeled as a phony junta against Batista and he formed a government and called for a cease fire and a laying down of arms. Castro refused and said that he would not sell out the Cuban Revolution as Gen. Calixto Garc
ıa had done in 1898 when he allowed the United States to dictate the terms of the peace and occupy the island, adhering to its demands that Cubans lay down their arms. This time, there would be no compromise. Castro tells why.

PEOPLE OF SANTIAGO, COMPATRIOTS OF ALL CUBA We have finally reached Santiago de Cuba. The road was long and difficult, but we finally arrived. It was rumored that they expected us in the capital of the Republic at 2 P.M. today. No one was more amazed by this than I, because I was the first one to be surprised by this treacherous blow, which would place me in the capital of

Latinos, World War II, and the Aftermath

the Republic this morning. Moreover, I intended to be in the capital of the Republic that is, in the new capital of the Republic because Santiago de Cuba, in accordance with the wishes of the Provisional President, in accordance with the wishes of the Rebel Army, and in accordance with the wishes of the people of Santiago de Cuba, who really deserved it, Santiago will be the new capital of Cuba. This measure may surprise some people. Admittedly, it is new, but the revolution is characterized precisely by its newness, by the fact that it will do things that have never been done before. In making Santiago de Cuba the provisional capital of the Republic, we are fully aware of our reason for doing so. This is no attempt to cajole a specific area by demogogic means. It is simply that Santiago de Cuba has been the strongest bulwark of the revolution, a revolution that is beginning now. Our Revolution will be no easy task, but a harsh and dangerous undertaking, particularly in the initial phases. And in what better place could we establish the Government of the Republic than in this fortress of the Revolution. So that you may know that this will be a government solidly supported by the people of this heroic city, located in the foothills of the Sierra Maestra because Santiago de Cuba is a part of the Sierra Maestra Santiago de Cuba and the Sierra Maestra will provide the two strongest fortresses for the Revolution. However, there are other reasons that motivate us, and one is the military revolutionary movement, the truly military revolutionary movement which did not take place in Colombia.… Our Revolution will go forward nonetheless and this time cannot be over the power. It will not be like 1895 when the Americans came and took over, intervening at the last moment, and afterwards did not even allow Calixto Garcia to assume leadership, although he had fought at Santiago de Cuba for 30 years. Nor will it be like 1933, when the people began to believe that the revolution was going to triumph, and Mr. Batista came in to betray the revolution, take over power, and establish an 11-year-long dictatorship. Nor will it be like 1944, when the people took courage, believing that they had finally reached a position where they could take over the power, while those who did assume power proved to be thieves. We will have no thievery, no treason, no intervention. This time it is truly the revolution, even though some might not desire it.… The Republic was not freed in 1895, and the dream was frustrated at the last minute. The Revolution did not take place in 1933 and was frustrated by its enemies. However, this time the Revolution is backed by the mass of the people, and has all the revolutionaries behind it. It also has those who are honorable among the military. It is so vast and so uncontainable in its strength that this time its triumph is assured. We can say and it is with joy that we do so that in the four centuries since our country was founded, this will be the first time that we are entirely free and that the work of the first settlers will have been completed.… The men who fell in our three wars of independence now join their efforts to those of the men who fell in this war, and of all those who fell in the struggle for freedom. We can tell them that their dreams are about to be fulfilled and that the time has finally come when you, our people, our noble people, our people who are so enthusiastic and have so much faith, our people who demand nothing in return for their affection, who demand nothing in return for their confidence, who reward men with a kindness far beyond anything they might deserve, the time has come, I say, when you will have everything you need. There is nothing left for me to add, except, with modesty and sincerity to say, with the deepest emotion, that you will

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always have in us, in the fighters of the Revolution, loyal servants whose sole motto is service to you. On this date, today, when Dr. Urrutia took over the Presidency of the Republic, Dr. Urrutia, the leader who declared that this was a just Revolution on territory that has been liberated, which by now is the whole of our country, I declare that I will assume only those duties assigned to me, by him. The full authority of the Republic is vested in him. And our arms bow respectfully to the civil powers of the Civilian Republic of Cuba. All I have to say is that we hope that he will fulfill his duty because we naturally feel assured that he will know how to fulfill his duty. I surrender my authority to the Provisional President of the Republic of Cuba and with it I surrender to him the right to address the people of Cuba. Source: Fidel Castro, The Revolution Begins Now, January 3, 1959, http://lanic.utexas.edu/la/cb/ cuba/castro/1959/19590103.

PART XVII Mexican Americans, World War II, and the Aftermath World War II accelerated the Mexican Americans move to the city; by 1940 about 60 percent lived in cities, ten years later 70 percent did, and by 1960 it hovered at 80 percent. Meanwhile, the U.S. greening of Americas led to the uprooting of massive numbers of peasants as agriculture was commercialized south of the border. This corresponded to a time of dramatic population growth in Mexico. In 1940 the total number of Mexicans stood at just under 20 million, increasing to just over 26 million ten years later, and to 35 million by 1960. In this context, the U.S. Mexican origin population had taken a hit during the repatriation of the 1930s. The repatriation and deportation of 600,000 Mexicans saw the second and third generations of Mexicans assume a large portion of the total. By 1940, half of the second generation was adolescent whereas 70 percent of their parents’ generation was 30 to 65 years old. A shift was occurring and ten years later half of the second generation was 20 or more. In 1930, 55 percent of the Mexican immigrant population could not speak English. Twenty years later 39 percent were partly unable to speak English. Most Mexicans lived in the Southwest. But they were moving to other parts of the country in response to labor shortages. Mexico served as a bottomless surplus labor pool where labor could be gotten at will. Some Chicano historians call this shift the making of the Mexican American Generation. World War II accelerated the reformation of the Mexican family. According to historian Robin Scott, from 375,000 to 500,000 Mexicans served in the armed forces. In Los Angeles, Mexicans made up one-tenth of the population and one-fifth of the war casualties. The induction of a disproportionate number of Mexican males removed male role models. The city also took its toll as more families had to rely on female head of households where the mother assumed the additional burden of working and raising the family alone. Youth during these years sought new identities in urban cities identifying with barrios and friends. Because they were different, society alienated and isolated them and often made them scapegoats for their frustrations. The documents in this section focus on the war years as Mexican Americans dealt with high expectations that the war would bring about equality. It measures their contributions and how they contributed to society despite intense racism. The end of the war marked a new sense of global presence on the part of the United States that affected Mexican and other Latinos not only in the United States but in their mother countries. The dependence on American markets and political subordination added to instability and migration within the Caribbean and Central America and to the United States. The Cold War the U.S. fear of Soviet aggression fostered

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a policy of the support of dictators. Domestically it led to the witch hunts of Senator Joseph McCarthy. In the face of this, Mexican Americans strengthened old organizations and formed new ones. They sued to end school segregation, to ensure G.I. benefits, joined labor unions, registered voters and protested the ill-treatment of braceros and the massive round up of undocumented workers who were pejoratively called wetbacks. Again during the Korean War (1951 1953) Mexican Americans made the ultimate sacrifice, fighting in the cold of Korea. Again a disproportionate number served in the armed forces. The old Catch-22 raised its ugly head. You could be exempted from the draft if you were enrolled in higher education. The median years completed for Mexicans in the Southwest in 1950 was 5.4 years; in California 7.8 years and in Texas 3.5 years.

281. Excerpt from Franklin D. Roosevelt, Executive Order 8802, June 25, 1941 The exact number of Mexican Americans in the Armed Forces in World War II is estimated up to 500,000. They won 17 Medals of Honor during World War II. After World War II, Gen. Douglas MacArthur (1880–1964) described the 158th Regimental Combat Team, known as the ‘‘Bushmasters’’ (i.e., the deadly Bushmaster snake found in Panama) and comprised mostly of Mexican Americans and Native Americans from Arizona, as ‘‘the greatest fighting combat team ever deployed for battle.’’ Partly to appease African Americans, on the eve of World War II, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882–1945) signed Executive Order 8802 prohibiting government contractors from engaging in employment discrimination based on race, color, or national origin. It was the first presidential action ever taken to prevent employment discrimination by private employers holding government contracts. It applied to all defense contractors; unfortunately it contained no enforcement authority. Rather than upset the white community, the Fair Employment Practices Commission did little more than hold hearings, as the segregation and the exclusion of African Americans, Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and other minorities continued. In the case of Mexicans and Puerto Ricans, they had to statistically prove racism even when it was obvious.

June 25, 1941 WHEREAS it is the policy of the United States to encourage full participation in the national defense program by all citizens of the United States, regardless of race, creed, color, or national origin, in the firm belief that the democratic way of life within the Nation can be defended successfully only with the help and support of all groups within its borders; and WHEREAS there is evidence that available and needed workers have been barred from employment in industries engaged in defense production solely because of considerations of race, creed, color, or national origin, to the detriment of workers’ morale and of national unity: NOW, THEREFORE, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the statutes, and as a prerequisite to the successful conduct of our national defense production effort, I do hereby reaffirm the policy of the United States that there shall be no discrimination in the employment of workers in defense industries

Mexican Americans, World War II, and the Aftermath

or government because of race, creed, color, or national origin, and I do hereby declare that it is the duty of employers and of labor organizations, in furtherance of said policy and of this order, to provide for the full and equitable participation of all workers in defense industries, without discrimination because of race, creed, color, or national origin; And it is hereby ordered as follows: 1. All departments and agencies of the Government of the United States concerned with vocational and training programs for defense production shall take special measures appropriate to assure that such programs are administered without discrimination because of race, creed, color, or national origin; 2. All contracting agencies of the Government of the United States shall include in all defense contracts hereafter negotiated by them a provision obligating the contractor not to discriminate against any worker because of race, creed, color, or national origin; 3. There is established in the Office of Production Management, a Committee on Fair Employment Practice, which shall consist of a chairman and four other members to be appointed by the President. The Chairman and members of the Committee shall serve as such without compensation but shall be entitled to actual and necessary transportation, subsistence, and other expenses incidental to performance of their duties. The Committee shall receive and investigate complaints of discrimination in violation of the provisions of this order and shall take appropriate steps to redress grievances which it finds to be valid. The Committee shall also recommend to the several departments and agencies of the Government of the United States and to the President all measures which may be deemed by it necessary or proper to effectuate the provisions of this order. Franklin D. Roosevelt The White House, June 25, 1941 Source: Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library, http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/odex8802.html.


l, ‘‘El Soldado Raso,’’ 1943 282. Felipe Vald
es Lea ‘‘El Soldado Raso’’ was a popular song during World War II often sung nostalgically by young Mexican American soldiers as they went into battle. It was recorded by popular Mexican singer Pedro Infante in 1943. The song asks the Virg
en Morena, the brown Virgin Mary, to take care of the soldiers’ mothers while they are at war. If they die, it should be remembered that Mexicans are brave and are not afraid to die. The song is ironic since while risking their lives fighting for democracy in Europe and the Pacific, many Mexicans in the United States went to segregated schools, could not eat at certain white-only diners, and swam in pools on days that were not reserved for white people.

BUCK PRIVATE (EL SOLDADO RASO) I am going as a buck private, I am going to the front lines with brave boys who leave beloved mothers, who leave sweethearts crying.

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Crying on their farewell. I am leaving for the war content, I got my rifle and pistol, I’ll return as a sergeant when this combat is over; The only thing I regret: leaving my mother alone. Brown Virgin, send me your blessing, never allow heaven to steal her from me My lovely Guadalupe will protect my flag and when I find myself in combat, far away from my land, I will prove that my race knows how to die anywhere. I leave early tomorrow as the light of day shines here goes another Mexican who knows how to gamble his life, that gives his farewell singing: singing to his motherland. Brown Virgin, I entrust my mother; take care of her she is so good, take care of her while I’m away. Source: Rodolfo F. Acu~ na, Occupied America: A History of Chicanos (New York: Longman, 2000), p. 265. Translated by Guadalupe Compe
an.

283. Katie Gibson, ‘‘Guardsman Credits Japanese Prisoner of War with Saving His Life,’’ September 11, 2001 The Arizona National Guard was activated by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882–1945) on September 26, 1940. Largely comprised of Mexican Americans and Native Americans, the Arizona units mostly fought in the Pacific. The 158th Regimental Combat Team became known as the ‘‘Bushmasters,’’ named after the deadly Bushmaster snake native to Panama. The unit was praised by Gen. Douglas MacArthur (1880–1964). They fought in the Philippines and the jungles throughout the Pacific. Their motto was cuidado (take care). William Henry Todd joined the National Guard in 1940 at the age of 16, largely to escape poverty. His father was white and his mother Mexican. He was raised in Arizpe, Mexico and Nogales, Arizona, by a single mother after his parents divorced. He later became an engineer. The following article is representative of the stories of border youth at the time.

For William Henry Todd, enlisting in the National Guard and serving during World War II transformed him from a child to a man.

Mexican Americans, World War II, and the Aftermath

‘‘The Army was a school for me. It taught me many things,’’ said Todd. ‘‘When I joined the National Guard, I didn’t have anything … to call my own. ‘‘For the first time in my life, I was standing on my own two feet,’’ he said. Todd spent the first 12 years of his life living in Arizpe, Mexico, and other towns in the Sonoma River Valley. His father was Anglo, hence his last name. His mother, Mar
ıa Luisa Urt
ız, was a native of Mexico. In Mexico, it’s customary to take both the father’s and mother’s last names. Todd’s parents divorced when he was five, and he lived with his mother. His older siblings, Robert and Clara, moved from the United States, where they lived with their dad, to Mexico after their father died. At the age of 7, William met his siblings for the first time. His mother supported her family with a variety of jobs. His father, a self-taught man, had practiced professional dentistry, which he taught to Todd’s mother. For a period, she offered her dentistry skills door-to-door. Despite their poverty and even a Christmas without toys, Todd said his mother was ‘‘very capable and always had some food to make. It wasn’t always suffering.’’ In 1935, his mother decided to move the family to the United States. As luck would have it, she won a racehorse in a raffle. She sold it and spent the money to move the family to Nogales, New Mexico. In Nogales, 12-year-old William Henry was placed in the first grade, though he’d completed the fourth grade in Mexico. ‘‘I knew not one word in English,’’ he offered by way of explanation. He learned English by parroting his teacher’s words. By 1940, he completed the eighth grade. Todd enlisted in the Arizona National Guard February 28, 1940, at the age of 16. In written correspondence with the Project [U.S. Latinos and Latinas & WWII Oral History Project], Todd explained that the National Guard paid enlistees a $2 incentive to those who recruited another person. Robert Todd received $2 when his brother William enlisted. ‘‘He gave 25 cents to the new recruit,’’ Todd wrote. ‘‘[I] jumped on the chance to be a ‘big man’ and was very glad to receive 25 cents.’’ Upon enlisting, William Todd was put into Company A, 158th Regimental Combat Team, of the 45th Division. This group would later be called the Arizona Bushmasters after service in Panama. Todd trained to be a radio operator. He and his regiment were ordered to active duty by presidential declaration of national emergency on September 18, 1940, and moved to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and on September 1940, to Camp Barkeley, near Abilene, Texas. On December 7, 1941, Todd remembers he was out of camp on a pass at a wooden skating rink, when a worker at the rink asked him, ‘‘Hey soldier, you want to hear some news?’’ ‘‘I didn’t even know where Pearl Harbor was,’’ he said. The full impact of the news came to him hours later, when he saw kids selling newspapers with headlines screaming ‘‘WAR.’’ He returned to a Camp Barkeley in turmoil. In early January, Todd was shipped to Panama, arriving there by ship from the Port of New Orleans. His regiment’s duty was to protect strategic areas in Panama, and the locks along the Panama Canal from Japanese attacks. Todd was assigned to a rifle platoon while in Panama, going into the jungle for days, living off peanuts and raisins.

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In January 1943, Todd found himself sailing in a barge somewhere in the Pacific. For 30 days, the ships zigzagged endlessly to avoid detection from Japanese submarines. The regiment disembarked in Brisbane, Australia, and spent a couple months training, there. After a couple days, Todd contracted malaria and was sent to Townsville, Australia, to recuperate. A month later, Todd returned to his unit at Kiriwina Island in the Trobriand Islands, in northern New Guinea. The regiment was moved to French Fen, in New Guinea, where the 158th Regimental Combat Team was formed. The new regiment became known as the Bushmasters. In his first battle, the regiment was ordered to eliminate a group of Japanese across a corn field. When they advanced, ‘‘all hell broke loose.’’ Upon reaching the end of the field, the men came under heavy machine gun fire. ‘‘I was very scared but nothing was going to make me weaken,’’ Todd said. ‘‘I was very determined.’’ The next morning, he was an experienced combat soldier. ‘‘We came out and nothing had happened to me,’’ he said. ‘‘I was an experienced soldier. I felt indestructible.’’ After that victory, Todd’s unit fought in the Battle of Lone Tree Hill, May 26 through May 29, 1944. The unit was nearly surrounded, but they maneuvered in enough time to fool the enemy. At the Battle of Slaughter Hill in May 1944, in Comfier, Dutch New Guinea, his unit faced mass suicide attacks. Only one man from Todd’s unit was killed, compared to 201 Japanese. When fighting ended, he was among a group assigned to count the dead. Two Japanese soldiers were captured, one named Ogata, whom Todd would come to know as a friend. Ogata, like many Japanese soldiers, was appreciative of the American troops’ medical aid and food. Ogata helped the American troops talk the Japanese into surrendering peacefully and helped them to understand the U.S. troops did not want to kill them. He believes Ogata saved his life when Ogata prevented a Japanese man, resisting capture, from throwing a hand grenade at Todd. ‘‘Ogata jumped on him and convinced him that we were there to help,’’ Todd said. Todd had Ogata’s full name and address on a note but has since lost the note. The day his regiment moved out was the last time he saw Ogata. If he could see Ogata again he ‘‘would want to hug him hard. I don’t think there’s anything I could say to him.’’ ‘‘Ogata was a very educated and honorable Japanese soldier,’’ he said. When they met, Ogata expressed he didn’t want to return to Japan because he’d dishonored his family by being captured. ‘‘To me, he was not an enemy and was not a disgrace to his race.’’ They went on to assault Luzon in the Philippines on January 11, 1945. They were heavily engaged there, fighting many battles until opposition lessened in May 1945. Todd was discharged May 25, 1945, three months before the war’s end and after 40 months [of] serving overseas. The day before his discharge, he learned his brother, Robert, had been killed in action. Sgt. Robert L. Todd had served as a gunner in a B-17 in the European theater. William’s brother-in-law, Robert Downing, was shot down in a B-17 over Germany and was a prisoner of war for over a year until he was rescued after the war.

Mexican Americans, World War II, and the Aftermath

Life after the war was difficult for Todd at first. ‘‘I didn’t know what to do with myself,’’ he said. ‘‘I was a ship without a rudder.’’ He knew he wanted to become a mechanical engineer and, in 1946, enrolled at the University of Arizona. He was among the first group of veterans to enroll there. He received his degree in engineering in 1957, and worked for various entities, including Douglas Aircraft Co. in Long Beach, California, (later known as McDonnell Douglas), Aerojet General, North American Aviation, and United Electrodynamics. Todd married Helen Mancillas in 1947. Together they had four children before divorcing in 1965. A second marriage, to Ana Lavin, ended in divorce in 1985. Today, Todd lives in Colon
ıa la Industr
ıa de Kino, Sonora, Mexico. He still meets with other Bushmasters annually. The regiment’s last reunion was in 2005. Source: Katie Gibson, ‘‘Guardsman credits Japanese prisoner of war with saving his life,’’ U.S. Latinos and Latinas & WWII Oral History Project, http://utopia.utexas.edu/explore/latino/ narratives/05Todd William.html.

284. Excerpts from Richard Santillan, ‘‘Saving Private Jos
e: Midwestern Mexican American Men during World War II,’’ 2001 The following passage is from Professor Richard Santillan’s article on Mexican veterans in the Midwest. The contracting of Mexican workers continued during World War II. They were not only in agriculture but were brought to cities such as Chicago to work primarily as railroad track laborers and found their way to other industries as well. Large numbers of braceros (guest workers) were brought into the Midwest to work on farms. What is forgotten is that the migration into the region had been substantial before the war and many Mexicans who were second generation were subject to the draft and to military recruitment. Santillan tells the story of some of these veterans.

Louis S
anchez of Dodge City, Kansas, joined the Army Corps of Engineers. In June of 1943, Louis was 20 years old when the war called him. He learned to build bridges, and found out very quickly that the Marines don’t land first the engineers do. He noted that due to their bilingual abilities and their Hispanic surnames, several of the Mexican American soldiers were treated very well by the local European villagers. His wife’s two brothers were killed in the war. Augustine Rocha from Kansas City, Missouri, stated that many Mexican American men saw action very quickly. During World War II, he saw action on D-Day and at the Battle of the Bulge: I left Camp Shanks, New York as an infantry replacement on Friday, May 13, 1944, and landed in Liverpool, England, in time for the invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944. Crossing the short distance between England and France took all night and part of the next day. We were on an English ship and faced murderous fire from the German Air Force.

Many Midwest Mexican Americans fought at the D-Day invasion. Robert V
asquez from Kansas City fought with the Second Infantry Division from Normandy to central Europe and earned five battle stars. Paul Ybarra of Wellington, Kansas, landed on Omaha Beach on D-Day as part of a reinforcement unit for the first waves

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that had taken heavy losses. He said that as they landed, they saw countless bodies either floating in the water or covering the entire beach. Mr. Ybarra said there was no time to stop because of the intense firepower by the Germans. A few days later, they met deadly fire from the enemy and, in the confusion, American planes accidentally killed most of the men in his unit. Because his unit was almost depleted, Mr. Ybarra served as the head scout, a position designed to draw fire from the enemy in order to pinpoint their location. Mr. Ybarra was seriously wounded and spent nearly a month in the hospital. For his actions, Mr. Ybarra won the Purple Heart with cluster, the Bronze Star with cluster, and the Gallantry in Battle Medal. After his recovery, he went back to the front lines and was wounded again while coming to the aid of a wounded comrade. He was sent back to the hospital for 30 more days. Mr. Ybarra also had two brothers who served in World War II, and he noted that his parents were extremely proud to have three silver stars posted on their window. In 1994, France presented Mr. Ybarra and other American veterans a medal commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Normandy invasion. Charles ‘‘Chuck’’ Garc
ıa from Omaha, Nebraska was born in Jackson City, Nebraska, in 1921. After graduating from high school in 1940, he married and moved to East Chicago, Indiana, looking for work at Inland Steel Company. In 1943, he reported to the military and trained as an aircraft engine mechanic. He was assigned to the 839th Bomb Squadron, 487th Bomb Group, 3rd Bomb Division, 8th Air Force, and sent to England. During his overseas tour, he flew 35 missions and was awarded several medals, including the Air Medal with three oak leaf clusters, four Bronze Battle Stars, and the Distinguished Flying Cross. Mr. Garcia returned to the United States with the rank of Staff Sargeant, and helped train new pilots and combat crews. He later had five sons who served in Vietnam with one being killed in action. Santor ‘‘Smilin’ Sandy’’ S
anchez [was] born in Joliet, Illinois, and raised by his grandmother. During the Depression, he worked for the Civilian Conservation Corps after high school. At the age of 18, Mr. S
anchez enlisted in the Army Air Force and was trained as a gunner on a B-17 Flying Fortress bomber. He flew many bombing missions, sometimes two on the same day, between the fall of 1943 and the spring of 1944. He was entitled to stop after flying 25 missions but volunteered to fly until he had flown 44 missions. He flew more combat missions than any other American flyer. During his missions, he shot down half a dozen Nazi fighter planes and received a chest full of ribbons and medals, including the Distinguished Flying Cross, Silver Star, Soldier’s Medal, and Air Medal with 10 oak leaf clusters. The Soldier’s Medal was won for his bravery when he jumped inside a run away airplane and saved it from crashing into a hanger. The 8th Air Force had even named a flying fortress the ‘‘Smilin’ Sandy S
anchez’’ with the hero’s caricature painted on the fuselage. He was the first American flyer to be honored with such a tribute. After his combat tour of duty, he was stationed in the United States and then decided to return to the front lines and flew an additional 22 missions for a grand total of 66. Mr. S
anchez’s last letter home to his grandmother arrived on March 13, 1945. Two days later, his plane was lost over Germany. Four of the crew bailed out and became prisoners of war. In October of 1945, Mr. S
anchez was officially declared dead. His body was never recovered. Alfred Serrato of Chanute, Kansas, served under Gen. George Patton with the 3rd Army Tank Corps. Mr. Serrato was in constant combat for nearly 37 days as a

Mexican Americans, World War II, and the Aftermath

tank rifleman-scout before he was seriously wounded. In 1993, he received his belated Purple Heart fifty years after being shot. Pete Zamorano of Wichita, Kansas, also served with the 3rd Army Tank Corps under the command of Gen. George Patton. Mr. Zamorano landed on Omaha Beach one month after D-Day, his unit driving deeper and deeper into Europe against intensified German resistance. In one fierce battle, his tank was hit. As Mr. Zamorano climbed out of the tank he was wounded. In another bloody battle, he saved the life of another soldier whose tank had been seriously damaged. For his wartime deeds, Mr. Zamorano received several medals, including one bronze star with cluster and the Purple Heart with cluster. In 1996, the mayor of Saint Lo, France presented medals to the American men who had liberated his town, including Mr. Zamorano. Source: Richard Santillan, ‘‘Saving Private Jos
e: Midwestern Mexican American Men during World War III,’’ California Polytechnic Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies. Fall 2001 pp. 20 23. California State Polytechnic University, Pomona http://www.csupomona.edu/jis/2001/Santillan.pdf.

285. Excerpt from Leigh E. Smith, Jr., ‘‘El Paso’s Company E Survivors Remember Rapido River Assaults,’’ 1995 The story of the U.S. Army’s Company E from El Paso, Texas, was first told by Raul Morin in Among the Valiant: Mexican Americans in WWII and Korea (1963). Many Mexican Americans claimed that Company E, which had a majority of Mexican Americans, was purposefully sent on suicide missions by white Texas officers. Morin described a dispute between Sgt. Gabriel Navarrete and his superior officer. Navarrete led a patrol across the Rapido River in Italy to test the strength of the Germans. Navarrete was badly wounded and reported that trying to ford the river would be disastrous. Navarrete pleaded that ‘‘his boys’’ not be sent on the suicide mission. They were from the same El Paso barrios and the consequences of so many dead would fall on these poor communities. Navarrete warned Battalion Commander Major Landley that if Company E was sent on this suicide mission he would come looking for him. His commander disregarded his advice. On January 21, 1944, E Company spearheaded the crossing of El Rapido and 1,700 men were killed including much of Company E. Navarrete went looking for the major, as he had promised. Wanting to avoid a racial incident, the U.S. Army transferred Navarrete out of the unit. Although he was recommended for a Medal of Honor, this medal was not awarded.

The 36th Infantry Division consisted of men from Texas and the surrounding southwestern states. One unit of the 36th was Company E, 2nd Battalion, 141st Infantry Regiment. Comprised of Hispanic-American soldiers from El Paso and the surrounding area, this company alone lost more than half its men in a controversial World War II battle. Two El Pasoans, Manuel ‘‘Manny’’ Rivera, Jr., and Ricardo Palacios, Jr., were members of Company E when it shipped overseas in April 1943, and were involved in the ill-fated battle. During the Italian campaign, 5th Army Commander Gen. Mark Clark needed a diversionary attack to prevent the Germans from attacking the main Allied invasion forces landing at Anzio. They planned an assault across the Rapido River in the

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Cassino Valley in the central part of Italy. The 36th Division was one of the primary units involved, and in less than 48 hours, more than 1,700 men from the division were killed. Rivera, in the weapons platoon of Company E., says, ‘‘the unit breakdown for an infantry company in the 1940s was three or four rifle platoons and a weapons platoon armed with .30-caliber light machine guns and 60-millimeter mortars,’’ he says. ‘‘I ended up as the weapons platoon sergeant. Rivera was responsible for attaching his weapons section to a rifle platoon that was going to attack. Palacios was one of the rifle platoon sergeants. ‘‘Whenever we needed help from the weapons platoon, we got it,’’ recalls Palacios. Prior to the actual assault, two reconnaissance patrols tried to determine the Germans’ strength. In order to travel light and be as quiet as possible, Rivera said, ‘‘We couldn’t take anything but a blanket, a shovel, and a few cans of C or K rations and our weapons.’’ The patrol leader, another El Pasoan, Gabriel Navarrete, led the patrol across the river. A mortar shell exploded near Rivera and Navarrete, wounding both seriously, as well as several others. ‘‘Navarrete and I put the wounded in a boat,’’ recalls Rivera, ‘‘and since Navarrete was hit in the shoulder, I said, ‘You go in the boat and I’ll swim the river.’’’ Rivera swam back to the American side of the river and told the company commander, Capt. John Chapin, who was later killed in the assault, that the patrol had failed. Rivera went to the hospital and was treated for his wounds. He rejoined the outfit later, just prior to the battle for Rome, and discovered that several of his friends had been captured or killed during the Rapido River assault. Rivera said, ‘‘If you didn’t get wounded, if you didn’t get killed, if you weren’t captured, you weren’t at the river.’’ Ricardo Palacios participated in the actual attack, and he recalls what happened: ‘‘The night before the assault on January 21, 1944, I went to a meeting with other platoon sergeants and Capt. Chapin to hear about the assault, and where we would meet if we were successful. You could tell everyone was pretty uptight after the reconnaissance had failed.’’ After the unsuccessful crossing attempt, the combat engineers constructed a pontoon bridge to try the crossing again. ‘‘The Germans let as many cross as possible,’’ Palacios said, ‘‘and then they opened up on us with machine guns, mortars, and artillery. The only thing we could do was stay there, dig our foxholes and wait for daylight.’’ When morning came, those on the German side of the river who were not already dead were captured, including Palacios, who was a POW [prisoner of war] for 16 months. After the Rapido River assault, Company E regrouped and received replacements to fill the badly depleted squads. The unit fought in the Cassino area and then was pulled off the front line for a brief rest. It went back into action at Anzio, and Company E and the 36th Division fought on and liberated Rome from the Germans. After leaving Italy, the division landed in Southern France to take pressure off the Normandy landings. Rivera was once again wounded in France but stayed with the unit until it reached the Rhine River. When remembering the Rapido River assault, both Rivera and Palacios agree: ‘‘All the guys that were there deserve the Silver Star medal. The heroes are not here. They’re over there, the ones that were left behind. There’s no such thing as a living hero.’’

Mexican Americans, World War II, and the Aftermath

‘‘They were brave men Capt. Chapin and all the others,’’ Rivera says 50 years later. Rivera was awarded the Silver Star, two Bronze Stars, two Purple Hearts, and several other campaign medals. His decorations and pictures of him and Company E hang in his living room. The recognition of his unit has gone unnoticed for years. A small baseball field on Delta Street, across from the Youth Center, was named for the unit, and is the only reminder that Company E, 141st Infantry Regiment, 36th Infantry Division, composed mostly of local Hispanic boys, served with honor in Europe. Source: ‘‘El Paso’s Company E Survivors Remember Rapido River Assault.’’ Smith, Leigh E. Borderlands Spring 1995, Vol. 13: 6 þ 7. http://www.epcc.edu/nwlibrary/borderlands/13 el paso company e.htm.

286. Excerpt from Leigh E. Smith, Jr., ‘‘Company E Survivor Recalls Days as Prisoner of War,’’ 1995 During World War II, Company E of the 141st Regiment of the 36th Texas Infantry Division was called the Mexican Americans’ company. It was made up almost entirely of Mexican Americans from the El Paso, Texas, area. Only their officers were white. In nearly a year of combat in Italy and France, the 141st Infantry Regiment sustained heavy casualties as 1,126 were killed, 5,000 were wounded, and over 500 were missing in action. The all-Mexican company earned 31 Distinguished Service Crosses, 12 Legion of Merits, 492 Silver Stars, 11 Soldier’s Medals, 1,685 Bronze Stars, as well as numerous commendations and decorations. The following article is based on an interview with Ricardo Palacios, Jr., who survived the Rapido River crossing below Monte Cassino in Italy. Palacios was later taken prisoner of war. The following interview with Palacios addresses the bravery of Mexican Americans in World War II, which is often left out of contemporary histories and documentaries of the war.

On the night of January 21, 1944, Ricardo Palacios, Jr., prepared to cross central Italy’s Rapido River in assault boats with his platoon, members of Company E, 141st Infantry Regiment, and 36th Infantry Division. The boat crossing failed, so the company pulled back and waited for the engineers to build a pontoon bridge. The bridge consisted of small rubber pontoon boats tied together with wooden planks over the tops and rope rails for the men to use as they walked across. The bridge was about 36 inches wide. The Germans were waiting for them, however, and casualties were heavy. ‘‘I remember getting up early the next morning to see what was going on. All I could see was a lot of pieces of bodies scattered all over from both sides,’’ Palacios said. The survivors were now on the enemy side of the river and were rounded up by German soldiers. Palacios remembers: ‘‘The first time I heard a German officer say ‘Auf Stehen,’ I thought I better get up. I had a bar of chocolate in my back pocket. That was the first thing he went for the chocolate bar. I knew he was an officer because you can distinguish them, very sharply dressed, even in combat. ‘‘He looked at me and said, ‘Amerikaner Hund.’ I didn’t know what he was saying. He had fire in his eyes. You knew he was mad. Later on, I asked him at the POW camp what ‘Amerikaner Hund’ meant. He said, ‘American Dog. You’re a

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dog.’’’ January 21 will always remind Palacios of the day he became a prisoner of war. That day he also turned twenty-one years old. Palacios continues, ‘‘Right after they took the chocolate bar, two other sergeants from the unit and I were brought over to a wall near the white house. A couple of German soldiers were pointing machine pistols at us and a German sergeant gave them an order. I said to myself, ‘This is it. They’re going to shoot us.’ I closed my eyes as they brought the machine guns up to aim, and I heard a loud noise. One German had slapped his leg so it would sound like a gun shot. I opened my eyes and they were laughing. They were young soldiers like us, nineteen or twenty years old. They thought it would be funny. It’s a helluva feeling,’’ he says. When Palacios was captured, he was moved from place to place and put with other Americans who were captured at the river. He recalls encountering three friends from the unit. ‘‘I met up with Edwardo Lalo Romo, Raul Caracena, and Eduardo Carre
on, all from El Paso. We saw each other at the first camp. We were really happy to see each other.’’ Palacios was interned in several POW camps including Stalag II B and a sub-camp of Dachau. ‘‘I remember having nothing to eat until we reached Dachau POW camp near Munich,’’ he said. His final destination was Stalag III B prison camp near Buchenwald, where he arrived in March 1945. Palacios recalls the processing and interrogation vividly: ‘‘You come from Mexico?’’ a German soldier asked. ‘‘No sir.’’ ‘‘You don’t understand English? I can get somebody in Spanish.’’ ‘‘I understand English, I understand Spanish.’’ ‘‘Your parents come from Mexico?’’ ‘‘Yes sir. But I was born in the United States.’’ The Germans who interrogated Palacios and his fellow Hispanic prisoners could not believe these men were in the American army. They assumed that since El Paso is so close to the Mexican border, the Mexican Army had joined the American Army in the fighting. The Germans were always very efficient when keeping records of prisoners. They wrote everything down, took fingerprints and photographs and kept all the information on a prisoner card issue to each prisoner. Palacios was able to obtain his card when fellow prisoners ransacked the administration building of the camp after the Germans deserted it to escape the Russian advance. He keeps it in a plastic folder along with postcards he wrote to his mother while he was imprisoned. Palacios weighed 130 pounds when captured. When he was freed, he weighed only 98 pounds. On April 22, 1945, Palacios and the other prisoners of Stalag III B were liberated by Russian soldiers. Shortly after, he was returned to American troops in Hidelshiem, Germany. ‘‘After Hidelshiem, we were taken to Camp Lucky Strike near Le Havre, France. We stayed there for about two weeks where we were examined, debriefed, and nutritionally rehabilitated. I was given a seven-day leave to London where I really enjoyed myself. Later I was sent back to the United States to a POW rehabilitation center in Santa Barbara, California, where I adjusted to civilian life and was discharged from the Army.’’ Source: ‘‘From the Editors,’’ Smith, Leigh E. Borderlands Spring 1995, Vol. 13: 2. El Paso Community College Local History Project, http://www.epcc.edu/ftp/homes/monicaw/borderlands/13 el paso company e.htm.

Mexican Americans, World War II, and the Aftermath


n: The Pied Piper of 287. Ruchika Joshi, ‘‘Mr. Guy Louis Gabaldo Saipan,’’ 2000 Guy Gabald
on (1926–2006), a Mexican American from East Los Angeles, captured more enemy soldiers than the legendary World War I hero Sgt. Alvin York who killed 20 Germans and captured 132 in 1918, for which York received the Medal of Honor. At the Battle of Saipan, Gabald
on left his cover and infiltrated the enemy persuading over 1,000 Japanese soldiers and civilians to surrender. Gabald
on learned Japanese as a child in East Los Angeles, where two Japanese American brothers had befriended him. Gabald
on often visited their home and eventually moved in with them until, at age 17, he joined the Marine Corps. Gabald
on says he stopped counting how many people he took prisoner in Saipan during World War II. But through his fellow soldiers, in a 1962 episode of the television program, This Is Your Life, his fellow soldiers credited him with single-handedly capturing over 1,500 Japanese soldiers and civilians who surrendered to him. His success at taking prisoners was so extraordinary, he wrote in a self-published autobiography, that his commanders allowed him to become one of the only, if not the only Marine Corps private, to work solo. The U.S. Marines’ decision to award him the Silver Star instead of the Medal of Honor angered Gabald
on. Although the Navy upgraded his citation to the Navy Cross after the release of the film Hell to Eternity (1960), which was about his exploits. The movie, however, failed to mention that Gabald
on was a short Mexican American. It cast a popular tall, blonde, blue-eyed actor (Jeffrey Hunter) to play the lead role. Gabald
on accused the Marines of racism against Mexican Americans. The Marine Corps countered that it had awarded a Medal of Honor in World War II to a Hispanic. Gabald
on said, ‘‘although the man indeed deserved the medal, the Marine’s father was of Portuguese descent and his mother was Hawaiian.’’ The following article is based on an interview by the University of Texas at Austin with Gabald
on in the year 2000 for its Oral History Project called U.S. Latinos and Latinas and WWII.

GROWING UP Born in 1926, Mr. Gabald
on was raised in Boyle Heights, a neighborhood of East Los Angeles. The fourth of seven children, he recalls a happy childhood. ‘‘They say we were poor,’’ he said last summer in an interview. ‘‘I didn’t know that we always had beans and tortillas.’’ His father worked as a welder and a machinist for the Pacific Freight Express at the time and his mother stayed home looking after the children. His life of adventure began when he was only 10 years old. Shining shoes on the mean streets of downtown L.A., Mr. Gabald
on made almost $1 a day which was considered a lot back then. He shined shoes from Skid Row to Main Street to Broadway and Hill. His parents were only vaguely aware of what he was doing during the day. ‘‘It was a different era and I don’t think parents were worried so much about a 10-year-old kid going out and maybe staying out all night,’’ he said.

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It was almost natural then that Mr. Gabald
on was taken under the protective wing of local policemen. Usually he would be asked by them to keep a watchful eye on rough characters doing the rounds on Skid Row. Never once was he mistreated by the cops at that age. ‘‘Sometimes they would buy me an ice cream or give me a candy or something. I enjoyed it very much,’’ he said. He was a carefree 10-year-old with unlimited access to the world. There were times when he’d walk in to the bars on Main Street, run errands for bar girls, and make a nickel or so. Once in a while, if he was lucky, he would even be able to grab a beer. The bottom line was that he was street smart and this instinct would hold him in good stead during World War II. A JAPANESE FOSTER FAMILY Growing up in a tiny house, Mr. Gabald
on spent much of his time on the streets. Boyle Heights’ diverse population, which included Jews, Russians, Armenians, Chicanos, and Mexicans, was harmonious. He was 12 when he met two Japanese American brothers: Lyle and Lane Nakano. All three of them were around the same age and went to the same school. Mr. Gabald
on was drawn to the Nakano boys because they excelled in school work, were honest, and never got into trouble with the law. Fascinated by their tradition and customs, he began spending a lot of time at their home and eventually moved in with them. He was a surrogate son for the Nakanos in a manner of speaking and Mr. Gabald
on’s parents didn’t object to this. ‘‘Perhaps they thought it was good for me,’’ he said. Staying with the Nakanos was the turning point in his life. He learned to speak Japanese from the first-generation parents. This would be a powerful weapon during the war. It was around this time that he started getting in to trouble. The tough crowd in Boyle Heights distracted him from his Japanese foster brothers and he began to indulge in nefarious activities: he and his buddies sneaked cigarettes, went ‘‘joyriding’’ in stolen cars, and generally were mischievous. Things started getting out of hand and one day, Mr. Gabald
on was caught by the cops and sent to prison for two weeks. His mother went to court and pleaded with the judge to release him with the assurance that she would send him to New Mexico with relatives. NEW MEXICO WITH GRANDFATHER Mr. Gabald
on’s 80-year-old paternal grandfather lived alone in the cold country up in New Mexico, between Gallop and Grants. He was a tough old man who used to run a bar in a place called Tinakha, between Grants and Gallup, near Enscription Rock. Nearly blind, he owned and looked after a large plot of land, with cattle and horses, a little Palomino mare that he gave to Mr. Gabald
on, a shotgun, and a .44 that he kept close to his bed. Mr. Gabald
on found the gun-keeping strange, but soon found out why it was necessary. It was around 2:00 A.M. and young Gabby heard noises in the bar. He walked up to the door and through the crack, he saw his grandfather dealing cards with a bunch of tough Mexicans. ‘‘It was like something out of a John Wayne western you could smell the spittoons and the chewing tobacco!’’ he said, marveling at the scene.

Mexican Americans, World War II, and the Aftermath

Grandfather Gabald
on had some pretty rough characters coming in at odd hours no wonder he’d make sure that the shotgun was loaded. In the meanwhile, his Uncle Sam, who was a postmaster at San Raphael, would drive with young Gabald
on to Grants every morning to pick up the mailbags. Often he’d be allowed to drive and before he was 13, he got his driver’s license. After spending a few months in New Mexico, Mr. Gabald
on was back in Boyle Heights with the Nakanos. He stayed with them for almost seven years until the war broke out in 1941 and the Japanese family was sent to an internment camp. JOINING THE MARINE CORPS Lyle and Lane Nakano enlisted in the Army and served in the 442nd and were sent to the European front. Mr. Gabald
on joined the Marine Corps. Recruit training qualified him to be a mortar crewman, Japanese translator, and scout observer. After rigorous amphibious training, a year later, he was made Marine private in the Second Marine Division in the Saipan-Tinan Operation in the South Pacific. The date was June 15, 1944 and he was 18 years old. On July 6, Mr. Gabald
on left on one of his evening patrols, and entered an area near Saipan’s northern cliffs. It seemed fairly deserted at the time, but before daybreak, he realized that hundreds of enemy infantry were moving onto the flats and gathering for an assault. By this time, he was cut off from any path of retreat, and any attempt to show himself would have resulted in a quick and noisy death. He remained under cover and listened as thousands of Japanese troops and some civilians drank sake and noisily prepared for the largest banzai charge of the campaign. This tragic and unsuccessful charge ended late that evening, with most of the remaining Japanese returning to their cliff-side positions. On July 7, 1944, the battle to secure the Japanese-occupied island of Saipan peaked in one of the largest banzai charges of the Pacific War. This charge, which lasted over 15 hours, brought the total losses for this bloody World War II campaign to over 30,000. Mr. Gabald
on crept to the edge of the cliffs, where he quickly captured two guards. It was then that he embarked on the most dangerous of his many ventures. After talking to the two men, he convinced one of them to return to the caves below. This was a personal moment of truth for both of them. If the soldiers below were too ‘‘worked up,’’ then everyone involved would face immediate death, and a disgraceful one at that for the two guards. A short while later, a Japanese officer and some of his men walked slowly up from the caves and sat down in front of Mr. Gabald
on. Within an hour, hundreds of Japanese infantry accompanied by some civilians began surrendering en masse; the gamble had paid off. This climactic morning did not end his prisoner-taking days. By the time he was machine-gunned in an ambush, he single-handedly captured over 1,500 soldiers and civilians from the most fanatically inclined army in the world! Decades later, stories of the ‘‘Pied Piper of Saipan’’ continued to be told and retold within the Marine Corps, although they were considered by many to be some of the great ‘‘fish stories’’ of World War II. The same morning, American Marine reconnaissance patrols edged their dangerous way forward to map out Japanese lines. As one patrol approached the sea cliffs which line the north side of the island, they were greeted by a rare sight. On the flats at the top of the cliff, was a single American Marine surrounded by hundreds of

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Japanese troops, many of them still armed. One might have thought that this Marine was experiencing his last moments on Earth. But as they watched, it became obvious that this lone Marine was actually ordering his hundreds of ‘‘prisoners’’ into smaller groups, even as more Japanese streamed quietly up from their oceanside caves. Eventually, 800 Japanese soldiers and civilians surrendered on this one morning, an astonishing number considering that the battle for Tarawa, a few months earlier, had produced only 146 prisoners from a total garrison of nearly 5,000. By the time of his July 8 ‘‘bagging’’ of 800 prisoners, he had already become famous on Saipan for his capture of hundreds of die-hard enemy troops using a brisk combination of fluent ‘‘street’’ Japanese and point-blank carbine fire, according to his autobiography. Source: U.S. Latinos and Latinas & WWII Oral History Project, University of Texas, Austin. http://utopia.utexas.edu/explore/latino/narratives/3gabaldonguy.html.

288. Rachna Sheth and Sandra Taylor, ‘‘God’s on My Side; I Wonder Why,’’ Interviewed at His Home in El Paso by Robert Rivas on July 7–10, 2003 Over 350,000 Chicanos served in the armed services during World War II and won 17 medals of honor. They suffered casualties beyond their numbers, and many believed that World War II was the Mexican Americans’ opportunity to prove themselves good Americans and ameliorate the intense racism suffered by the group. However, after the war, racism continued. The University of Texas has initiated an oral history project to document the U.S. military service of Chicanos during World War II that includes women and men as well as their families. The following is an interview with Philip James Benavides who spent 31=2 years in a Japanese prison camp.

Philip James Benavides had a dream when he joined the United States Marine Corps in the summer of 1941: he wanted to make music. But within three and a half years, particularly after three months of torture in a Japanese prison camp, he had lost those physical abilities that had made him a standout musician since childhood. Although Benavides had sustained relatively minor injuries, their effects permanently left him unable to function as a musician. The physical torture he endured during his captivity left him unable to control his lips and fingers as they were needed to play the French horn. He also lost much of his hearing because of the years of loud noises on the battlefield. ‘‘It did the job,’’ Benavides said. ‘‘I was unable to function again as a musician … I could listen to music and I would usually be half a tone behind the rest of them … I was getting completely tone deaf so I just gave (music) up completely.’’ Philip Benavides was born on May 1, 1921, in Austin, to Manuel Benavides, a traveling musician, and Guadalupe Estrada Benavides. His father died when Philip was only 4, the second youngest of 12 children. Mrs. Benavides then began working as a housekeeper; and one of her clients, Joseph Koenigseder, was a teacher at the Austin School of Music. Mrs. Benavides arranged to have Koenigseder provide free music lessons for young Philip in exchange for laundry services. Young Philip graduated from St. Edwards High School in Austin in 1941 and began studying at St. Edwards University, where he received paid tuition to pursue

Mexican Americans, World War II, and the Aftermath

priesthood. But in June 1941, Koenigseder took him to Houston for an audition with the Marine Corps Band. Five months later, Benavides found himself on a train headed to Camp Pendleton, San Diego, to begin five months of basic training. ‘‘That’s how I came about joining the Marine Corps to go into the band,’’ he said. Upon completing basic training, he was assigned to the band at the San Diego Marine Corps Base, and was given the rank of corporal. After serving aboard the U.S.S. Essex and being given further training, Benavides, then a corporal, was sent to Auckland, New Zealand, for his first assignment in June 1942. In New Zealand, his unit performed in parades. But soon, his duties as a bandsman became secondary, when his band was called upon to act as first-aid corpsmen and medics in the summer of 1942. The Marine bandsmen were to alleviate the shortage of Navy corpsmen during the early stages of the Battle of Guadalcanal. Band members in the military have as a secondary job to help medics however possible, a fact which the Marine Corps in particular is proud of. All Marines are first infantrymen and undertake another field of expertise in a secondary role. Benavides said that he never anticipated being involved in nursing wounds and serving as a stretcher-bearer. ‘‘We did first-aid duty to the best of our knowledge sometimes it wasn’t good enough,’’ he said. ‘‘We weren’t trained in it … we did anything we could to stop the bleeding, ease the pain … on the job training.’’ Circumstances forced the 9th Marine bandsmen into combat as they headed back to the frontlines to replenish supplies and to retrieve the wounded and the dead. ‘‘(There’s) no way to put it in words,’’ Benavides said. ‘‘It was unbelievable. The more we battled … I guess you could say you got used to it.’’ Once the Navy pulled out of Guadalcanal, survival became more than dodging enemy fire. Food was so scarce that one meal a day was considered lucky. Hungry and tired, the Marines would eat anything they could scrounge up, including roots and grubworms. In keeping with the American’s island-hopping strategy, Benavides was sent back to New Zealand, then back to Guadalcanal, then to New Georgia, in the Solomon Islands, in the spring of 1943. The military operation was constructed to secure Munda Airfield; Benavides’ division arrived to bolster the inexperienced 45th Army Division. But a month into the operation, Benavides contracted malaria and was sent back to Auckland to recuperate. On November 1, 1943, Benavides’ unit landed in Bougainville. As battle ensued, he was on his way to retrieve casualties when a Japanese mortar exploded nearby. ‘‘I only remember flying through the air, and trying to protect myself,’’ he said. ‘‘These banyan trees grow with these huge roots. I hit one of the roots … and that’s the last thing I remembered for three days.’’ Benavides recalled a doctor saying his eye was partially out. Since then, he has lost all of the vision in his left eye and he covers it up with an eye patch. After four weeks of recuperation, Benavides was sent into battle again this time to the Battle of New Britain in December 1943. One day, while Benavides was on patrol with 11 others, they returned to their campsite to find that the unit had evacuated the area and Japanese were there. The Japanese immediately took him and the other men as prisoners. ‘‘That’s where my torture started,’’ Benavides said. ‘‘They were trying to find out what I knew about what the next move was going to be.’’

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For three months, Japanese soldiers tortured him with electric shocks, by beating his legs, back, and face with bamboo sticks, and by forcing him to stay submerged to his neck in a leech-infested pond. In March 1944, the Japanese heard noises in the jungle and knew that Allied Forces would soon be arriving. The Japanese began shooting the American prisoners. One Japanese officer put his pistol to Benavides’ head and pulled the trigger twice. Nothing happened. Benavides, having lost his will to live, showed the Japanese soldier that the gun’s clip was not in. The officer snapped his clip in and, again, shot twice. Still nothing happened. ‘‘I was thinking, ‘God’s on my side, I wonder why,’’’ Benavides recalled. When the Australian Allies arrived, they rescued Benavides and the four other surviving prisoners of war. Those POWs were sent home on a hospital ship. The ship arrived in San Francisco just before Christmas 1944. The Golden Gate Bridge completely covered with people welcomed the soldiers back home with a shower of white carnations, flags, and roses. ‘‘The ship slowed … to give us all a chance to really get the full impact of what had happened,’’ Benavides said. ‘‘One of the most beautiful things that ever happened to me.’’ Benavides was treated for his eye injury and, later, for post-traumatic stress disorder. He was honorably discharged from the Marines on April 20, 1945, and later received a Bronze Star, a Purple Heart, and a World War II Victory Medal, among others. But life was still difficult for the first three years out of the Marine Corps. ‘‘After I left the Corps, I was so discouraged and so out of it, I didn’t care if I got a medal or not,’’ Benavides said about his decorations. ‘‘I just did my duty like it was supposed to be done.’’ Benavides married Isabel Dominguez in 1946, with whom he had six children, including one child from her previous marriage. The relationship ended in divorce 10 years later. He lived in El Paso with his second wife, Maria Uranga, whom he married in 1961, until her death in 1984. Together they had four children. He now lives with two of his children, Mary and Armando. Benavides feels that God kept that pistol from discharging when he was a POW so that he could live to take care of Armando, who suffers from Downs Syndrome, and Mary, who is epileptic. After the war, Benavides worked mostly as a mechanic and moved to El Paso in 1967 for job opportunities. Benavides hopes that 150 years from now, people will see that the Chicanos did their duty in World War II. ‘‘I know there are areas in the United States where our people are looked down on, so we have to fight,’’ he said. ‘‘Not with guns and knives, but with our cabezas [heads].’’ Source: Rachna Sheth and Sandra Taylor, ‘‘God’s on My Side; I Wonder Why,’’ U.S. Latinos and Latinas & WWII Oral History Project, University of Texas Austin, http://utopia.utexas.edu/ explore/latino/narratives/08benavides philip.html.

289. Elizabeth Wilder, ‘‘Liberty and Fraternity for Europe, Then Back to Racist Kansas,’’ 2003 World War II was supposed to have been fought for democracy—to end the racism of German dictator Adolf Hitler (1889–1945). Diego Campa worked

Mexican Americans, World War II, and the Aftermath

for the Santa Fe Railway and, like so many Mexican Americans, became a soldier to escape racism. He left Kansas and went into the army hoping that the war would end the racism prevalent in his hometown of Florence, Kansas, and to see the world. He went to Europe, fought in France and Germany. He returned to his wife and two children after the war, hoping that things had changed, but they had not—even the Catholic Church was segregated. However, he continued trying to make a better life for his wife and, eventually ten children, by working for the railroad. Campa was interviewed in 2003 about his experiences during World War II.

Diego Campa wanted nothing more than to live a simple American life while retaining his Mexican culture. Within the cocoon of his family and friends, there were lively celebrations of the Mexican culture. But outside even in his church there were constant reminders that Mexicans were not always considered true Americans by mainstream society. He was born Nov. 3, 1922, in Florence, Kansas. His parents, Perfecto and Benita Campa, came to America in 1913, from Irapuato, Mexico. Life as a Mexican American was hard in Kansas. The Mexican American community was small and his parents worked hard to provide for their family. At the age of 16, Diego dropped out of high school to work; the racism he experienced at school is one of the factors that drove him to the working world. ‘‘I hate to say it, but even the Catholic Church had us separate,’’ Campa said. ‘‘The white boys had regular seats for their schooling, but we had to sit on the porch.’’ He soon found that working life was not much easier than school. But after performing railroad maintenance, young Campa found he could not escape the racism against Mexican Americans. He worked for Santa Fe Railroad for four years in Florence, Kansas. It was there that Campa met the love of his life. ‘‘I met her at a dance,’’ Campa recalled. ‘‘I thought she was real pretty. We danced together all night and then we snuck off when her mom wasn’t looking.’’ He married Ventura Lujano in September 1942, and was only able to enjoy married life for five months until he was drafted into the Army. Campa remembers being excited when he was drafted, but that his family and wife felt differently. ‘‘I always wanted to go into the military,’’ Campa said. ‘‘The only time I ever got out of Florence is when the Army took me. That’s when I started seeing the country.’’ Campa was assigned to the 166th Combat Engineering Battalion and was sent to the European theater. One of his hopes was to feel more equality in military life than there was in Florence. But he soon found out that this was not true: He found himself face-to-face with racism in his Army life. Campa remembers the white soldiers always getting ahead of the Hispanic soldiers when standing in line, always receiving preferential treatment from their superiors, and no Hispanics ever standing up for themselves. ‘‘You feel different; like you’re not wanted there, which is true,’’ said Campa. ‘‘They’d (the white soldiers) come up and tell you ‘You better talk English so we can understand you!’’’ Campa found his place in the Army among other Mexican American and Latino soldiers. He found comfort in the letters he received from his wife and mother.

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Campa missed Florence and was disappointed because the Army had not turned out the way he expected it to be. ‘‘I didn’t like it, but I got used to it,’’ Campa said. Although Campa’s time in the Army and overseas was tough, it gave him the opportunity to see the world. He was in France, in the Ardennes, and in Germany. Campa attributes most of his knowledge to the things he learned in the Army. ‘‘We learned demolition; how to put mines together, take them apart,’’ Campa said. ‘‘You learn a lot of things in the Army.’’ Campa was discharged on October 24, 1945, after serving his country since February 1943. The young soldier returned to Florence, Kansas, but found that life there was very different than he remembered it before he entered the Army. Campa, his wife, and two children moved to Newton, Kansas, 28 miles southwest of Florence, to start their new life. Life after the war came as a surprise to Campa. He wasn’t sure what to expect but he knew the war had changed him in many ways. ‘‘I always thought whoever goes into the war, doesn’t come back,’’ Campa said. ‘‘So I never really thought about what my life would be like after the war.’’ Campa returned to work at [the] Santa Fe Railroad. He had 10 children, who live in Newton and Wichita, Kansas. He retired November 3, 1982, a soldier who had a life a full one. Source: Elizabeth Wilder, ‘‘Liberty and Fraternity for Europe, Then Back to Racist Kansas,’’ Narratives, Spring 2004. U.S. Latinos and Latinas & WWII Oral History Project, University of Texas Austin, http://utopia.utexas.edu/explore/latino/narratives/08 PDFs/campa diego.pdf.

290. Excerpts from Beverly Beyette, ‘‘Ralph Lazo Remembers Manzanar,’’ 1981 The following is the story of Ralph Lazo (1924–1992), 16, who did not think it was right to take his Japanese American friends to concentration camps and elected to go with them. He lived at Manzanar which is in the Owen’s Valley of California. Manzanar was in a desolate portion of the state where the water had been diverted to Los Angeles. During World War II Manzanar was a concentration camp for Japanese and Japanese American residents. Lazo was horrified at this injustice and registered as an American born Japanese and voluntarily went to Manzanar for two years. The Japanese American community produced a docudrama, Stand Up for Justice, based on this profile of courage.

If there was a moment of truth, an instant in which Ralph Lazo had determined that he would go with his Japanese-American friends to internment camp, perhaps it was during a wartime winter day in 1942 when he was helping a neighbor at an ‘‘evacuation sale.’’ … Lazo, a Mexican-American, was stunned. The Temple Street neighborhood in which he’d grown up was a multi-ethnic mix of Basques, Jews, Japanese-Americans. He’d played basketball on a Filipino Community Church team.… Now, by government order, his friends were to be taken away from their homes, forced to sell or abandon their property. ‘‘It was immoral,’’ says Lazo, ‘‘it was wrong, and I couldn’t accept it.’’ [Lazo elected to go to the camp with his Japanese friends …]

Mexican Americans, World War II, and the Aftermath

He did not have to lie, to tell officials that he was of Japanese ancestry. ‘‘They didn’t ask,’’ he says. He grins. ‘‘Being brown has its advantages.’’ … For the next two years, Lazo would live at Manzanar, the relocation camp behind barbed wire fences in the dusty, desolate Owens Valley. There he would graduate from high school (Manzanar class of ’44), play football, emcee Saturday night dances in the rec hall, learn to speak a little Japanese.… [Lazo remembered …] It was a good day ‘‘There was this great feeling of having shared a common experience …,’’ says Lazo. ‘‘I had to be careful, not for me I can take care of myself but for my children.’’ … The heros [sic], he’ll tell you, are the men, women and children who were imprisoned behind that barbed wire, who lived there with dignity.… No Germans or Italians were ever evacuated. But on the premise that there was a real threat of a Japanese invasion of the West Coast, the mass evacuation of persons of Japanese ancestry was begun that March. Source: Beverly Beyette, ‘‘Ralph Lazo Remembers Manzanar,’’ Los Angeles Times, April 2, 1981, p. H1.

291. Excerpt from the Citizens’ Committee for the Defense of Mexican-American Youth, ‘‘The Sleepy Lagoon Case,’’ 1942 In 1942, Los Angeles newspapers began a hate campaign against Mexican youth in the city of Los Angeles. Dozens of Mexican youth were rounded up and 22 were indicted. Seventeen were tried in a mass trial in what would become known as the Sleepy Lagoon trial. The trial took place in the midst of wartime hysteria and racism toward so-called Zoot Suiters or pachucos—a euphemism for Mexican American adolescents. There were gross violations of due process with the defendants denied the right to seek counsel during the trial. It was the largest and most sensational civil rights trial in Mexican American history. After months of testimony, most of the defendants were convicted and sent to San Quentin Prison. The Sleepy Lagoon Defense Committee was formed by progressive actors, journalists, and labor leaders. The committee raised funds for the defendants’ defense, and the committee funded the appeal and aroused public opinion through education and publicity programs. In 1944, a state appellate court overturned the original judgment. Chicano director Luis V
aldez later produced, wrote, and directed a play and then a movie on the trial. The following is an excerpt from a pamphlet published by the committee.

On the night of August 2nd, 1942, one Jos
e D
ıaz left a drinking party at the Sleepy Lagoon Ranch near Los Angeles, and some time in the course of that night he died. It seems clear that D
ıaz was drinking heavily and fell into a roadway and was run over by a car. Whether or not he was also in a brawl before he was run over is not clear. On January 13th, fifteen American-born boys of Mexican descent and two boys born in Mexico stood up to hear the verdict of a Los Angeles court. Twelve of them were found guilty of having conspired to murder D
ıaz, five were convicted of assault. [They were convicted in part by the racist expert testimony of L.A. Deputy Sheriff] Ed Duran Ayres [who] continued to argue their ‘‘biological’’ guilt. He said:

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Voices of the U.S. Latino Experience The Caucasian, especially the Anglo-Saxon, when engaged in fighting, particularly among youths, resort to fisticuffs and may at times kick each other, which is considered unsupportive, but this Mexican element considers all that to be a sign of weakness, and all he knows and feels is a desire to use a knife or some lethal weapon. In other words, his desire is to kill, or at least let blood. That is why it is difficult for the Anglo-Saxon to understand the psychology of the Indian and for the Latin to understand the psychology of the Anglo-Saxon or those from Northern Europe.

[The committee countered:] President Roosevelt said, in Monterrey [Mexico], ‘‘In the shaping of a common victory our people are finding that they have common aspirations. They can work for a common objective. Let us never lose our hold upon that truth.’’ If Ed Duran Ayres is right, then President Roosevelt lied, then the United Nations is a lie, and the people of Latin America are not our Allies but strangers and enemies, and unity, in the nation or in the hemisphere, cannot be. Source: The Citizens’ Committee for the Defense of Mexican-American Youth, ‘‘The Sleepy Lagoon Case,’’ Los Angeles, California, 1942, pp. 1, 15 17.

292. Excerpts from Anthony Quinn, The Original Sin: A Self-Portrait, 1972 Anthony Quinn (1915–2001), undoubtedly the greatest actor of Mexican ancestry in the United States, was born in Chihuahua, he was a two-time Academy Award winner, he earned Oscars for his roles in Zorba the Greek and Viva Zapata. His grandfather was an Irish immigrant to Mexico and his mother was Mexican. He put his career in jeopardy by supporting the Sleepy Lagoon defendants. They were the 22 Mexican American youths who were indicted for the alleged murder of Jos
e D
ıaz (17 stood trial). The leader of the Sleepy Lagoon defendants was Henry Leyvas whose mother was Quinn’s mother’s god child. These excerpts are from his autobiography and they give the reader a window into the lives of Mexican Americans during the war years. These excerpts also express the culture conflict that Quinn experienced as told to his therapist.

‘‘Here it is. It tells about your being born in Mexico during the revolution.’’ [The psychiatrist says.] ‘‘Yes. April twenty-first, 1915.’’ ‘‘It goes on to say that your mother and father both fought on the side of Pancho Villa. Correct?’’ ‘‘Yes, I suppose so.’’ ‘‘Why do you say it like that?’’ ‘‘I mean the period is all mixed up. I’m sorry. Yes, they did fight with Pancho Villa.’’ The doctor nodded. ‘‘I’m afraid all I know about the Mexican Revolution is what I saw in the picture Viva Villa with Wallace Beery. Was Villa like that?’’ ‘‘I thought Beery was great in the part, but I don’t think he caught the burning intensity of Villa.’’ ‘‘What do you mean?’’ Then I told him an anecdote related to me by my father, about when Villa rode to the top of the hill and saw the Pacific Ocean for the first time. He had stared at

Mexican Americans, World War II, and the Aftermath

the ocean’s immensity for many minutes without saying a word. Then he’d reined his horse and started back down the hill. His lieutenant, riding behind him, said, ‘‘Quite a sight, eh, jefe?’’ ‘‘It’s too small to quench my thirst,’’ Pancho had said over his shoulder. ‘‘That’s quite a remark,’’ said the doctor. ‘‘When did your father tell it to you?’’ ‘‘When I was a kid.’’ ‘‘And it stayed with you all these years?’’ ‘‘Yes.’’ ‘‘Do you feel the ocean is too small to quench your thirst, Mr. Quinn?’’ ‘‘Yes.’’ If there had been any doubt in the doctor’s mind about my being sick, I felt it had been dispelled by my answer. To hell with him. Let him earn his money, I thought. The man had a good poker face, however, and went on examining the clippings. ‘‘It goes on to say here that your father was an Irish adventurer and your mother an Aztec princess.’’ I had to laugh out loud. He looked up. ‘‘Why do you laugh? Isn’t it true?’’ ‘‘My father was part Irish, that part is true. But I was laughing at the Indian princess crap.’’ ‘‘My wife and I thought it was very romantic when we read it.’’ ‘‘I guess that’s what Paramount Pictures publicity wanted you to feel. They didn’t think it was romantic enough for my mother to be plain Mexican.’’ ‘‘Why was that?’’ ‘‘What the hell, Doc, you live in Los Angeles. You know what most people here feel about Mexicans.’’ ‘‘I don’t. I’ve only been here a couple of years, Tony. May I call you Tony?’’ The question about Mexicans irritated me. He had begun to look like a rednecked Texan already. ‘‘Sure, if I can call you by your first name.’’ He roared with laughter. ‘‘You can call me anything you want and that isn’t all you’re going to call me before you’re through.’’ ‘‘Well, being a Mexican in Southern California is not exactly an open sesame. For years they used to have signs at dance halls and restaurants: ‘No Mexicans allowed.’ Mexicans were lazy, thieves, greasy; they were either Zoot Suiters or pachucos, marijuana smokers.…’’ ‘‘He started coming around when I began acquiring things I thought would please him. [His other self or alter ego] The first time I saw him was when I bought the jazzy house on Sunset Boulevard. He was standing on the lawn one day wondering what the hell I was doing with such a mansion. It was during the war and big houses were going a begging so I thought what the hell, I’ll buy it. The boy began to make me feel guilty about it so I used to let people use it to raise money for good causes. The only time I ever saw the son of a bitch smile approvingly was the night I gave a party to raise funds for the ‘Sleepy Lagoon’ case. That night the kid and I walked around the garden like real pals.’’ ‘‘What was the ‘Sleepy Lagoon’ case?’’ ‘‘Around 1944 or 1945, twenty-two Mexican boys were being tried for murder. It seems there had been a party in East L.A. and it had ended in a rumble, which

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wasn’t unusual at those parties. Some kids from another gang had tried to crash, there had been this fight, and one boy had been killed. Twenty-two Mexican boys were rounded up and now they were being tried for murder. Certain groups in Los Angeles were up in arms; they felt the kids’ were being railroaded. They called it another Scottsboro case, where a group of Negroes had been found guilty of rape in the South. The case was becoming a political football. Some Los Angeles papers were saying that Mexicans had bad Indian blood in them which made them violent. They were fermenting a great deal of anti-Mexican feeling. ‘‘I was making a war picture at Camp Pendleton at the time and one Saturday, after I’d finished work, some marines who were working with us came and asked if I wanted to join them. They were going up to Los Angeles to ‘beat up some Mexicans.’ Those poor misguided bastards. They were trying to tell me they considered me one of them. I guess my name being Quinn, they never thought I was Mexican. I got into a fight with the asshole who had invited me. He was a big bruiser. I guess luckily someone pulled us apart. ‘‘One day I got a call at the studio from my mother. She asked if I had read about the ‘Sleepy Lagoon’ case. Christ! Even my mother was caught up in it. I said of course, the papers talked of nothing else. ‘‘‘One of the boys’ names is Leyvas.’’’ ‘So?’ ‘‘‘You wouldn’t remember her but when we first arrived in Juarez from Chihuahua she was the first person to help us. We were starving and she made us some scrambled eggs.’ ‘‘I had to laugh thinking how Mother remembered the menu. She went on. ‘Anyway, she called this morning and was crying. It seems that everything points to the fact that her son will go to the electric chair.’ ‘‘‘Yes, I know,’ I said. ‘It looks like he was the ringleader.’ ‘‘‘I promised her that you would get him off,’ my mother announced. ‘‘‘You what?’ ‘‘‘They have no money, Tony. They can’t afford a good lawyer. All she wants is for her son to get a fair trial. All these years she’s never asked for a favor in return.’ ‘‘‘Mama, I can’t become involved in a murder case. Jeez, you’ve read the papers. Everybody who has come to the defense of the kids is being called a Communist. That’s all I would need. Mama, we could be run out of the country!’ ‘‘‘Maybe we wouldn’t be in the country if it wasn’t for Trini Levas.’ ‘‘‘Why, because she fed us some scrambled eggs?’’’ ‘Perhaps she saved our lives.’ ‘‘‘Christ, Mama, how much do we have to pay for those goddamned scrambled eggs? All right, I’ll give you a thousand dollars. You can give it to her. That should be more than enough payment for those eggs.’ ‘‘‘No, Tony. She doesn’t want the money. She wants her son.’’’ I argued. I pleaded for her to let me off the hook. She wouldn’t. ‘‘That night I called a friend of mine. He and his wife, Goldie, were good people. They were always fighting for causes. Whether it was the lettuce strikers, the dock workers, or the ‘Sleepy Lagoon’ case. ‘‘I told them I would like to help the boys. What could I do? He said there was a committee being formed for their defense. I could help them raise money. ‘‘I had had no experience with such things so I took the direct approach. I went to actors and directors that I knew and asked for cash. Most of them responded

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generously. Some were afraid they would be implicated politically. One famous star who had made his reputation playing gangster parts turned me down flat. He said the whole movement for the defense of the kids was being run by ‘Reds.’ ‘‘I began making speeches at ladies’ club luncheons. The papers picked up the news and one day I was called in by Darryl Zanuck, at whose studio I was then under contract. He told me that my involvement was endangering the investment they had in my pictures. ‘‘‘Darryl, you have been one of the most courageous men I’ve ever seen in this business,’ I told him. ‘You’ve made pictures like The Ox-Bow Incident, Grapes of Wrath, Gentleman’s Agreement. You’ve never been afraid. Why do you want me to run scared now?’ ‘‘I explained the circumstances that had caused me to become involved. Now that I was in it, I said, I had begun to realize there were some ugly forces working against the boys. ‘‘He nodded and said, ‘A hell of an expensive plate of scrambled eggs!’ ‘‘When I walked away, I didn’t know whether I would be dropped by the studio. I wasn’t. I have always been proud to know that some people in my business stand for more than mere self-interest. Darryl Zanuck certainly proved it that day. ‘‘Soon after, there was a big benefit party at my house in Beverly Hills. We charged a huge entrance fee and some of the most famous people in Hollywood came to entertain, all for the cause. ‘‘That night as I went about the garden welcoming the guests, ‘the boy’ walked beside me. I had never seen him so happy. It was the first time in years he seemed to approve of me. I thought he’d leave me alone after that. He didn’t.’’ The doctor had listened patiently. Once or twice I’d seen him scribble on the papers he kept on me. ‘‘Tony, would you mind discussing your political views with me someday?’’ I must have given him a strange look because he threw back his head and laughed. ‘‘I am not a representative of the Un-American Activities Committee.’’ The pains they had caused friends of mine kept me from joining in his laughter. ‘‘No, Doc, I have nothing to hide. Let me say at the outset that I wouldn’t give a damn if you were from the Un-American outfit. Sometimes I almost wished they had called me. To tell you the truth, I think ‘the boy’ hoped they would. He always prods me to stand up and be counted. I have never been a Communist. I have never attended a cell meeting and, believe it or not, I was never proselytized or asked to join any so-called subversive movement. I was pro-labor for humanitarian reasons. I was anti-Fascist and anti-Nazi because they preached racial and nationalistic superiority, which was diametrically opposed to my philosophy.… My wife and I are looking for a farm to buy, and when we saw your charming house my wife let out a scream, ‘‘There it is, exactly the house we are looking for.’’ ‘‘The woman looked agape, first at me and then over toward my wife, sitting in the car. Then she turned and saw the tire tracks that had destroyed her beautiful, neat field. ‘‘Tomorrow,’ I jumped in, ‘I will send some workmen to hoe and replant the field.’ ‘‘‘What’s your name?’ she asked, beginning to soften. ‘‘‘Anthony Quinn,’ I smiled. ‘‘‘Could it be that you’re Irish?’ she asked, with a faint brogue.’’ I nodded. ‘My grandfather was from Cork.’

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‘‘‘Was he now?’ she smiled. ‘Me and my husband come from Killarney.’ ‘‘‘Is that a fact?’ ‘‘‘Well,’ she said finally, ‘won’t you and you dear wife come to the house and join us for a spot of tea?’ ‘‘During tea, the lady scoffed at my offer to have her field fixed. She assured us that she had three very able-bodied Mexicans working for her who would fix it in no time. Katie shot me a warning glance and I made no comment. She promised us that if she ever thought of selling we would be the first to hear about it. As we left her house, she said that she was sure that I could charm a snake, like all good Irishmen.’’ The doctor enjoyed the story. ‘‘Is it true, Tony? I mean, are there moments when you can tell that you’re being Mexican or Irish?’’ ‘‘Yes.’’ ‘‘Which is easier to live with?’’’ ‘‘The Irish, but then nobody ever called me a dirty mick. I never had to take a beating because I was Irish. I only had the shit kicked out of me because I was Mexican. So I decided to be it most of the time.’’ ‘‘What do you suppose your life would have been like if you’d spent more time charming your way through life, rather than fighting it the way you do?’’ ‘‘Christ only knows. Anyway, it had all been decided back there when I was a kid and fought against the Irish kids on the banks of the Los Angeles River, on the side of the Mexican boys.’’ ‘‘Do you ever wonder about your Irish parentage?’’ ‘‘Yes, often. I have a picture of my grandfather. He’s a blond version of my father. When I was a kid I would stare at him for hours. I wanted to love him so much. I made up all sorts of stories about him, then I’d stop myself because I wondered if he could love his dark grandson.’’ ‘‘And now?’’ ‘‘I love him very much, but I’m still afraid. I wonder if he approves of me.’’ ‘‘Don’t you think he would be proud of all you’ve done?’’ I laughed. ‘‘Doctor, the kid doesn’t think I’ve done a damn thing. I don’t know if Father and my grandfather would agree with him.’’ ‘‘What about your mother’s father? How do you feel about him?’’ ‘‘Fuck him. He’s one ghost I’ve killed and buried. He didn’t have the balls to acknowledge his responsibility.’’ The doctor made an imaginary cross in the air. ‘‘One down, and how many ghosts to go?’’ ‘‘An army.’’ ‘‘Don’t you feel we’re getting rid of some of them?’’ ‘‘Yes, some of them have lost by default. They’ve died on me.’’ The doctor started to tidy up his desk. I got up to put my jacket on. ‘‘When are you supposed to leave for Europe to start your new picture?’’ ‘‘In a week or ten days.’’ ‘‘Well, we have to win the war soon, don’t we? Where the hell do we find the bomb to blow up all the ghosts?’’ As we headed down the hall, the doctor repeated that we’d have to work hard. He felt it would be dangerous for me to go to Europe in the middle of therapy. He explained that there were postoperative complications that could develop from mental

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therapy, just like those from any major operation. He walked me to my car. ‘‘The man you’re going to play, Paul Gauguin, was a driven man himself, wasn’t he?’’ ‘‘Yes, poor bastard; but at least he made it.’’ ‘‘Did he think he’d made it?’’ Source: Anthony Quinn, The Original Sin A Self-Portrait (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1972), pp. 10 11, 81 84, 293 294.

293. Excerpts from Octavio Paz, The Labyrinth of Solitude: Life and Thought in Mexico, 1961 Not everyone had a flattering opinion of Mexican American youth during the 1950s. At the extreme, the Euro American saw the pachuco, the Zoot Suiter, as a mongrel who was neither Mexican nor American. The pachuco was a grotesque image of Mexicans. The Nobel Prize laureate poet Octavio Paz (1914–) shows that white Americans were not the only people delving in stereotypes. The following is an excerpt from The Labyrinth of Solitude.

When I arrived in the United States I lived for a while in Los Angeles, a city inhabited by over a million persons of Mexican origin. At first sight, the visitor is surprised not only by the purity of the sky and the ugliness of the dispersed and ostentatious buildings, but also by the city’s vaguely Mexican atmosphere, which cannot be captured in words or concepts. This Mexicanism delight in decorations, carelessness and pomp, negligence, passion and reserve floats in the air. I say ‘‘floats’’ because it never mixes or unites with the other world, the North American world based on precision and efficiency. It floats, without offering any opposition; it hovers, blown here and there by the wind, sometimes breaking up like a cloud, sometimes standing erect like a rising skyrocket. It creeps, it wrinkles, it expands and contracts; it sleeps or dreams; it is ragged but beautiful. It floats, never quite existing, never quite vanishing. Something of the same sort characterizes the Mexicans you see in the streets. They have lived in the city for many years, wearing the same clothes and speaking the same language as the other inhabitants, and they feel ashamed of their origin; yet no one would mistake them for authentic North Americans. I refuse to believe that physical features are as important as is commonly thought. What distinguishes them, I think, is their furtive, restless air: they act like persons who are wearing disguises, who are afraid of a stranger’s look because it could strip them and leave them stark naked. When you talk with them, you observe that their sensibilities are like a pendulum, but a pendulum that has lost its reason and swings violently and erratically back and forth. This spiritual condition, or lack of a spirit, has given birth to a type known as the pachuco. The pachucos are youths, for the most part of Mexican origin, who form gangs in Southern cities; they can be identified by their language and behavior as well as by the clothing they affect. They are instinctive rebels, and North American racism has vented its wrath on them more than once. But the pachucos do not attempt to vindicate their race or the nationality of their forebears. Their attitude reveals an obstinate, almost fanatical will-to-be, but this will affirms nothing specific except their determination it is an ambiguous one, as we will see not to be like those around them. The pachuco does not want to become a Mexican again; at the same time he does not want to

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blend into the life of North America. His whole being is sheer negative impulse, a tangle of contradictions, an enigma. Even his very name is enigmatic: pachuco, a word of uncertain derivation, saying nothing and saying everything. It is a strange word with no definite meaning; or, to be more exact, it is charged like all popular creations with a diversity of meanings. Whether we like it or not, these persons are Mexicans, are one of the extremes at which the Mexican can arrive. Since the pachuco cannot adapt himself to a civilization which, for its part, rejects him, he finds no answer to the hostility surrounding him except this angry affirmation of his personality. Other groups react differently. The Negroes, for example, oppressed by racial intolerance, try to ‘‘pass’’ as whites and thus enter society. They want to be like other people. The Mexicans have suffered a less violent rejection, but instead of attempting a problematical adjustment to society, the pachuco actually flaunts his differences. The purpose of his grotesque dandyism and anarchic behavior is not so much to point out the injustice and incapacity of a society that has failed to assimilate him as it is to demonstrate his personal will to remain different. It is not important to examine the causes of this conflict, and even less so to ask whether or not it has a solution. There are minorities in many parts of the world who do not enjoy the same opportunities as the rest of the population. The important thing is this stubborn desire to be different, this anguished tension with which the lone Mexican an orphan lacking both protectors and positive values displays his differences. The pachuco has lost his whole inheritance: language, religion, customs, beliefs. He is left with only a body and a soul with which to confront the elements, defenseless against the stares of everyone. His disguise is a protection, but it also differentiates and isolates him: it both hides him and points him out. His deliberately aesthetic clothing, whose significance is too obvious to require discussion, should not be mistaken for the outfit of a special group or sect. Pachuquismo is an open society, and this in a country full of cults and tribal costumes, all intended to satisfy the middle-class North American’s desire to share in something more vital and solid than the abstract morality of the ‘‘American Way of Life.’’ The clothing of the pachuco is not a uniform or a ritual attire. It is simply a fashion, and like all fashions it is based on novelty the mother of death, as Leopardi said and imitation. Its novelty consists in its exaggeration. The pachuco carries fashion to its ultimate consequences and turns it into something aesthetic. One of the principles that rules in North American fashions is that clothing must be comfortable, and the pachuco, by changing ordinary apparel into art, makes it ‘‘impractical.’’ Hence it negates the very principles of the model that inspired it. Hence: its aggressiveness. This rebelliousness is only an empty gesture, because it is an exaggeration of the models against which he is trying to rebel, rather than a return to the dress of his forebears or the creation of a new style of his own. Eccentrics usually emphasize their decision to break away from society either to form new and more tightly closed groups or to assert their individuality through their way of dressing. In the case of the pachuco there is an obvious ambiguity: his clothing spotlights and isolates him, but at the same time it pays homage to the society he is attempting to deny. This duality is also expressed in another, perhaps profounder way: the pachuco is an impassive and sinister clown whose purpose is to cause terror instead of laughter. His sadistic attitude is allied with a desire for self-abasement which in my opinion constitutes the very foundation of his character: he knows that it is dangerous to

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stand out and that his behavior irritates society, but nevertheless he seeks and attracts persecution and scandal. It is the only way he can establish a more vital relationship with the society he is antagonizing. As a victim, he can occupy a place in the world that previously had ignored him; as a delinquent, he can become one of its wicked heroes. I believe that the North American’s irritation results from his seeing the pachuco as a mythological figure and therefore, in effect, a danger. His dangerousness lies in his singularity. Everyone agrees in finding something hybrid about him, something disturbing and fascinating. He is surrounded by an aura of ambivalent notions: his singularity seems to be nourished by powers that are alternately evil and beneficent. Some people credit him with unusual erotic prowess; others consider him perverted but still aggressive. He is a symbol of love and joy or horror and loathing, an embodiment of liberty, of disorder, of the forbidden. He is someone who ought to be destroyed; [he] is also someone with whom any contact must be made in secret, in the darkness. The pachuco is impassive and contemptuous, allowing all eight contradictory impressions to accumulate around him until finally, with a certain painful satisfaction, he sees them explode a tavern fight or a raid by the police or a riot. And then, in suffering persecution, he becomes his true self, his supremely naked self, as a pariah, a man who belongs nowhere. The circle began with provocation has completed itself and he is [ready] now for redemption, for his entrance into the society that rejected him. He has been its sin and its scandal, but now that he is a victim it recognizes him at last for what he really is: its product, its son. At last he has found new parents. The pachuco tries to enter North American society in secret daring ways, but he impedes his own efforts. Having been off from his traditional culture, he asserts himself for a [moment] as a solitary and challenging figure. He denies both society from which he originated and that of North America. When he thrusts himself outward, it is not to unite with what binds him but rather to defy it. This is a suicidal gesture because the pachuco does not affirm or defend anything except his exasperated willnot-to-be. He is not divulging his most intimate feelings: he is revealing an ulcer, exhibiting a wound. And that is also a grotesque, capricious, barbaric adornment. A wound that laughs at itself and decks itself out for the hunt. The pachuco is the prey of society, but instead of hiding he adorns himself to attract the hunter’s attention. Persecution redeems him and breaks his solitude: his salvation depends on his becoming part of the very society he appears to deny. Solitude and sin, communion and health, become synonymous terms. If this is what happens to persons who have long since left their homeland, who can hardly speak the language of their forebearers, and whose secret roots, those that connect a man with his culture, have almost withered away, what is there to say about the rest of us when we visit the United States? Our reaction is not so unhealthy, but after our first dazzled impressions of that country’s grandeur, we all instinctively assume a critical attitude. I remember that when I commented to a Mexican friend on the loveliness of Berkeley, she said: ‘‘Yes, it’s very lovely, but I don’t belong here. Even the birds speak English. How can I enjoy a flower if I don’t know its right name, its English name, the name that has fused with its colors and petals, the name that’s the same thing as the flower? If I say bugambilia to you, you think of the bougainvillea vines you’ve seen in your own village, with their purple, liturgical

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flowers, climbing around an ash tree or hanging from a wall in the afternoon sunlight. They’re a part of your being, your culture. They’re what you remember long after you’ve seemed to forget them. It’s very lovely here, but it isn’t mine.’’ … Yes, we withdraw into ourselves, we deepen and aggravate our awareness of everything that separates or isolates or differentiates us. And we increase our solitude by refusing to seek out our compatriots, perhaps because we fear we will see ourselves in them, perhaps because of a painful, defensive unwillingness to share our intimate feelings. The Mexican succumbs very easily to sentimental effusions, and therefore he shuns them. We live closed up within ourselves, like those taciturn adolescents I will add in passing that I hardly met any of the sort among North American youths who are custodians of a secret that they guard behind scowling expressions, but that only waits for the opportune moment in which to reveal itself. I am not going to expand my description of these feelings or discuss the states of depression or frenzy (or often both) that accompany them. They are all apt to lead to unexpected explosions, which destroy a precarious equilibrium based on the imposition of forms that oppress or mutilate us. Our sense of inferiority real or imagined might be explained at least partly by the reserve with which the Mexican faces other people and the unpredictable violence with which his repressed emotions break through his mask of impassivity. But his solitude is vaster and profounder than his sense of inferiority. It is impossible to equate these two attitudes: when you sense that you are alone, it does not mean that you feel inferior, but rather that you feel you are different. Also, a sense of inferiority may sometimes be an illusion, but solitude is a hard fact. We are truly different. And we are truly alone. This is not the moment to analyze our profound sense of solitude, which alternately affirms and denies itself in melancholy and rejoicing, silence and sheer noise, gratuitous crimes and religious fervor. Man is alone everywhere. But the solitude of the Mexican, under the great stone night of the high plateau that is still inhabited by insatiable gods, is very different from that of the North American, who wanders in an abstract world of machines, fellow citizens, and moral precepts. In the Valley of Mexico man feels himself suspended between heaven and earth, and he oscillates between contrary powers and forces, and petrified eyes, and devouring mouths. Reality that is, the world that surrounds us exists by itself here, has a life of its own, and was not invented by man as it was in the United States. The Mexican feels himself to have been torn from the womb of this reality, which is both creative and destructive, both Mother and Tomb. He has forgotten the word that ties him to all those forces through which life manifests itself. Therefore he shouts or keeps silent, stabs or prays, or falls asleep for a hundred years. The history of Mexico is the history of a man seeking his parentage, his origins. He has been influenced at one time or another by France, Spain, the United States and the militant indigenists of his own country, and he crosses history like a jade comet, now and then giving off flashes of lightning. What is he pursuing in his eccentric course? He wants to go back beyond the catastrophe he suffered: he wants to be a sun again, to return to the center of that life from which he was separated one day. (Was that day the Conquest? Independence?) Our solitude has the same roots as religious feelings. It is a form of orphanhood, an obscure awareness that we have been torn from the All, and an ardent search: a flight and a return, an effort to re-establish the bonds that unite us with the universe.

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Nothing could be further from this feeling than the solitude of the North American. In the United States man does not feel that he has been torn from the center of creation and suspended between hostile forces. Source: Labyrinth of Solitude and Other Writings, by Octavio Paz. Copyright
C 1985 by Grove Press, Inc. Used by permission of Grove/Atlantic, Inc., pp. 12 20.

294. Excerpts from Senate Journal of April 16, 1945, Containing Report Joint Fact-Finding Committee on Un-American Activities in California State Sen. Jack B. Tenney (1898–1970) headed the Committee on Un-American Activities in California (1935–1977). The Tenney Committee was the forerunner of the infamous House Committee on Un-American Activities of the U.S. Senate chaired by Sen. Joseph McCarthy (1908–1957). According to Tenney, anyone who did not agree with him was a Communist. Tenney started out as a liberal and was associated with the musicians’ union. He wrote the song ‘‘Mexicali Rose.’’ The following excerpts are from hearings on the pachucos (Zoot Suiters) and the Mexican American community attempting to tie them into the Communist Party and to absolve constitutional violations against them. The following are excerpts of testimonies and reports of Los Angeles Police authorities.

PACHUCO CRIMES [Transcript reads] O. B. Horrall, Chief of the Police Department of the City of Los Angeles, testified that it was the policy of his department to make an arrest whenever a violation of the law occurred. Carrying concealed weapons is a violation of the law and many Mexican boys were arrested for this offense. Chief Horrall stated that the first pachuco, or ‘‘Zoot Suit,’’ disturbances began early in 1941. He stated that the boys were divided into a number of gangs who clashed from time to time. He had heard of the Citizens’ Committee for the Defense of Mexican American Youth and its activities and had been informed that some of the people connected with the organization were members of the Communist Party. It was the Chief’s opinion that the organization was a Communist Party ‘‘front.’’ He believed that the Committee for the Defense of Mexican American Youth, and similar organizations, inflamed racial prejudices, and in the pachuco, or ‘‘Zoot-Suit,’’ problem, had contributed to the conflagration by constantly stirring and fomenting antagonisms through hysterical activities. He categorically denied charges made by Al Waxman in the Eastside Journal, Charlotta Bass in the California Eagle and the Communist publication, The Peoples’ Daily World that the police had been brutal in handling participants in the riots. He testified that no specific case of brutality on the part 160 of the police had come to his attention, but, on the contrary, that during the disturbances, 10 or 15 police officers had received serious injury. Chief Horrall’s testimony, in part, follows (Com. Tr., Vol XIX, pp. 4443 4445). By Senator Tenney: Q.

Do you believe these disturbances were principally due to racial prejudice and discrimination?

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A.

Q.

A. Q. A.

Q. A. Q. A.

Q. A.

I have to go back a ways in answering that question to give at least, for me to express my opinion, because the thing goes back a ways, that’s what I meant to say, Mr. Tenney. First, you might answer that yes or no, if you can. The question again is: Do you believe racial prejudice and discrimination was the basic cause for this disturbance? I do not. Now, go ahead and modify in any way you want. These disturbances, of course, started with the Latin-American gang situation, which was among themselves, up until approximately a year ago; that is, there were fights between different gangs, different members of the gangs, and were confined almost entirely to themselves. However, about a year ago we had a little difficulty down at San Pedro, wherein they got mixed up with the sailors down there. That was the first I knew of where they got outside of their own gangs. Then we had another disturbance here about three or four months ago in Venice, where there was reported that an attempt was made to break up a USA dance down there, and then this latest, which, according to the reports I have, started in the north end up here around the 1700 block on North Main Street as, apparently, the result of some of the sailors making advances to some Mexican girls or talking to them. I don’t know whether it went any farther than that, and it started the difficulties, and then there was retaliation back and forth between this particular group up there and the sailors until it reached the place where it got some publicity in the papers, and that was what caused the gangs to congregate downtown that night and brought the crowd all out. However, some people have chosen to call it riots; I don’t think it should be classified as that. And the feeling in general among them was one of fun and sport rather than malice. Quite a few of the boys had their clothes torn off, but the crowds weren’t particularly hard to handle; they were large, but we had no difficulty in breaking them up; they would go a couple of blocks away and form there. There were no attacks made on policemen. Another point I would like to make: While there were a great many service men in those crowds and quite a few civilians, and many of those crowds were led from place to place by civilians, not service men, and in some instances those individuals were reported to be of Latin-American extraction. Now, were arrests made, chief, strictly for protection of those people? There were quite a few which were taken in for their own protection. Does that account in any sense for the amount of people that were arrested? In those cases no one was booked, but for their own protection they were taken into the station and kept there until such time as they could safely be allowed on the street. Did you find any Axis or fifth column [a subversive faction] what you might term Axis or fifth column-influence? Nothing that I could prove. Repeatedly I heard claims that there were subversive influences connected with this, but I have no proof of that.

Mexican Americans, World War II, and the Aftermath

Q.

Of course, in the opinion of the committee, the subversive influences could be from either the Communist side or the Axis. A. I have heard both. Q. The Communist committees have claimed Axis fifth column influence, and we have investigated as to the Sinarquista [Mexican fascist] end. You have no independent knowledge of fifth column activity? A. No, only the report [that] the Sinarquistas did have some influence in it. We were never able to find out whether they did or not.’’ [Transcript reads] Captain Contreras, of the sheriff’s office, testified (Committee transcript, Volume XIX, pp. 4563 4565): They have a situation out in East Los Angeles, of course, they have a large Mexican population, and there is about 30 to 40 thousand Mexicans live there, and they have about 300 so-called hoodlums out there in gangs, various gangs. [Testimony] Q.

Did you through your office or with the assistance of the sheriff’s department in general make any survey of the so-called Zoot Suit problem? A. We have. Q. Do you have the data available? A. I have some of it, sir. There was on the night of June 18th, 10 or 15 arrests made of boys ranging from 17 to 19 years old. Each one of these were charged with failure to disperse, inciting a riot at the time of arrest, and the following weapons were found in their possession: two steel bars, one large truck wrench, three tire irons, three iron wrenches, one hammer, one auto crank, four pieces of two-by-four lumber, one gallon milk bottle, one large Seven-Up bottle. The arresting officers said when the gangs were being surrounded they started throwing their weapons. Subject Moreno was identified by the officer as being one of the gang who had a half-gallon milk bottle with the bottom broken off, and was leading the gang. We had from time to time 10 to 15 arrests in that part of the County, and the cases are still pending, most of them.… [Transcript reads] Officer Meredith John Layman told the committee that he and his partner, Officer Trout, had received a radio call in Venice during the period of the Zoot Suit disturbances. Arriving in the vicinity of the pier in Venice, the officers were approached by a Mexican who asked whether or not they were policemen. Upon replying in the affirmative the Mexicans told the officers that there was a fight in progress on the end of the pier. It was after nightfall and at this time the entire coast area was blacked out. Stepping to the end of the pier, the officers were suddenly assaulted by five or six young Mexicans, all, except one, of whom were wearing ‘‘Zoot Suits.’’ The exception was wearing a soldier’s uniform. One was armed with a pair of brass knuckles while two others wielded black-jacks. Officer Layman suffered an injury over the left eye which required two stitches and his teeth were driven through his lips. His testimony, in part, follows (Com. Tr., Vol. XIX, pp, 4500 4502).

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COMMUNIST AGITATION [Transcript of previous testimony reads] The Communist press, Communist spokesmen, loud-mouthed Communist sympathizers and fellow travelers charged the Sinarquistas with the responsibility for the riots, alleging that the Sinarquistas were controlled and directed by ‘‘subversive Fascist Fifth-Columnists.’’ The committee invited a number of the most vehement of these accusers to present facts and data substantiating their charges. By concerted action, all of those invited to appear before the committee declined to accept the invitation. The committee thereupon issued subpoenas for each of them. The transcript of testimony, as digested in the 1943 Report of the Committee, clearly indicates that the individuals questioned had no proof of their charges and that the campaign had been one of racial antagonism and agitation. The Communist Party press, pursuing the party line of racial agitation, continually fed the fires of racial antagonism by charging that Mexican youth in the United States [were] being subjected to police brutality, race-discrimination, segregation, and humiliation. Communist-inspired and -dominated organizations were created for the alleged defense of the Mexican minority. Meetings were organized in Mexican districts in Los Angeles where trained rabble-rousers orated of police brutality against minority groups, of the unfair treatment of the Mexican and Negro population and of racial discrimination and segregation. In the October 3, 1942, issue of the Commmist Party West Coast publication, People’s Daily World, it was charged that the Sinarquistas were sewing their seeds in fertile soil among the young girls and boys brought up an the east side of Los Angeles. The issue of October 5, 1942, blamed the ‘‘Zoot Suit’’ phenomenon on the economic system. The October 8, 1942, issue of the People’s Daily World charged that the Mexican youth were being subjected to Fascist pressure. The issue of October 14, 1942, stated that a ‘‘Fascist Fifth Column’’ was working unseen among the Mexican youth of Southern California. The People’s Daily World for October 20, 1942, carried an article by Communist La Rue McCormick in which she declared that Nazi agents were operating in the Mexican communities of the City of Los Angeles, corrupting Mexican youth, and inciting racial antagonism. Two days later the People’s Daily World announced that the Los Angeles C.I.O. Council and the Spanish-Speaking People’s Congress were demanding that an investigation be made of the Sinarquista movement. On October 24, 1942, the People’s Daily World reported that Communist La Rue McCormick, on her own initiative, had organized a committee of 14 to defend the Mexican youth of Southern California, and to expose the fifth-column elements that were using the Mexican youth as dupes. Mrs. McCormick, representing the SpanishSpeaking People’s Congress, was announced as the Secretary of the new organization. On October 26, 1942, an article in the People’s Daily World reported Philip M. Connelly of the C.I.O. as charging the metropolitan newspapers of Los Angeles of fomenting racial antagonism and agitation. Mr. Connelly was quoted as stating that ‘‘Crime waves are turned on and off by newspapers like water in a spigot, and when the city editor is short of news, he orders police reporters to round up attack cases and if the sheriff’s office is not deliberately participating in the fraud it is being duped.’’

Mexican Americans, World War II, and the Aftermath

It should be obvious from the foregoing that the Communist Party had launched an intensive campaign through the medium of its press. Similar articles appeared in the People’s Daily World on October 28, 1942, November 2, 1942, November 17, 1942, November 19, 1942, November 30, 1942, December 4, 1942, and December 10, 1942. In addition to this intensive press campaign; a flood of handbills, pamphlets, and mimeographed material, both in English and in Spanish, inundated the City and County of Los Angeles. Students of Communist Party technique were aware immediately of the objectives of the Communist Party editorial barrage. In accentuation, stimulation, and furtherance of the ‘‘class struggle,’’ the Mexicans of Southern California were to be impressed with their ‘‘minority status.’’ They were to be indoctrinated with hatred for the police, for bourgeois law and order, and punishment for crime was to be ‘‘smeared’’ as racial discrimination, intimidation, and police brutality. All bourgeois institutions in Southern California were to be held up as institutions of oppression, hostile to dark skinned minorities, intent upon their impoverishment and destruction. Having created the conflagration, the Communist Party would then appear upon the scene as the rescuing firemen; the only stalwart and courageous champions of the oppressed and persecuted.… Clyde Shoemaker was a member of the district attorney’s office in Los Angeles County when the Sleepy Lagoon murder case was brought to trial. Mr. Shoemaker testified June 23, 1943, and his testimony, in part, follows (Com. Tr., Vol. XIX, pp. 4536 4555).… Mr. Combs [asks]: Q. Now, Mr. Shoemaker, summing up the impressions which you gained as a result of the events leading up to the Sleepy Lagoon case and which occurred during the trial of the case and which occurred immediately thereafter, tell the committee what your opinion is concerning the influence exerted by Communist organizations such as this Committee for the Defense of Mexican American Youth. A. Well, from my familiarity with the nature of the assaults that had been made prior to the Sleepy Lagoon case, and I had been consulted both by the sheriff and the police in regard to a number of cases occurring earlier in 1942, and then my familiarity with the facts and circumstances surrounding the so-called Sleepy Lagoon case, I’m satisfied in fact, I think there is no doubt about it that there is no Axis influence in the case whatsoever, or any of the cases, never the slightest evidence of any efforts by any of the Axis powers or any of the agents of the Axis powers to incite any of these people to commit any of these depredations we never found any evidence at all in that direction. On the other hand, we found that probably the group, the hoodlums that made up these gangs, an aggregate of some 300 out of the total Mexican colony of nearly 300,000, we found the better elements in the Mexican community, the respectable people, all the law-abiding Mexican citizens, heartily approved our prosecution.… If you want to go back and look at the leading Mexican newspaper I think it is called La Opinion I don’t think you will find any criticism in that newspaper of that prosecution or of the police or the sheriff in regard to that case, or any similar case. You’ll find that the better elements in the community, both Mexican, colored and white, all believe in law enforcement with respect to those matters, and upheld the law enforcement agencies. But this group of radicals, whatever you call them now, when you call them Communists, I want to refer to them as our own breed of Communists, I don’t blame Russia and I don’t want to confuse our Communists with

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those people, that is, they are only a breed, whether you call them Socialists or Socialist radicals or Socialist revolutionaries, they speak a language which in the courtroom always sounds the same. They attack the police officers, they attack the law enforcement, they put the policemen on trial, the law enforcement agencies they put everybody on trial except the defendant, and their methods with respect to glorifying these defendants, their methods of attacking the police, of attacking the district attorney, ridiculing the court in open court, ridiculing the processes of the court in open court in the presence of these defendants, with the courtroom full of their friends. [Transcript reads]

NEW COMMUNIST ‘‘FRONT’’ Organizations with new names and familiar personnel came into being overnight. The Citizens Committee for the Defense of Mexican American Youth soon became the most prominent of the new agit-prop (agitation propaganda) committees. Offices were opened and maintained in the Wilcox Building at Second and Broadway in the City of Los Angeles, where the influence and domination of Mrs. La Rue McCormick, a registered and admitted member of the Communist Party, guided the work and propaganda. Philip Connelly, then State President of the C.I.O.; Al Waxman, publisher of the Eastside Journal, Leo Gallagher, National Lawyers’ Guild; Bert Corona, Warehousemen’ s Union; Jerome Posner, Amalgamated Clothing Workers’ Union; Jessie Armenza, Laundry Workers’ Union; Gregg Bemis, International Workers’ Order; John Bright, Council of Pan-American Democracy; Josephine Fierro, Spanish People’s Congress; Herbert Ganahl, National Lawyers’ Guild; Dorothy Comingore, Screen Artists’ Guild; Minnabell Cline, Screen Office Employees’ Guild; Oscar Fuss, C.I.O. Legislative Director; Rose Harmon; Mrs. Will Rogers, Jr.; Guy Nunn, Minorities Group Division of the War Production Board; Carey McWilliams, State Director of the Department of Immigration and Housing; Roger Cardona, President of the Victory Youth Club; Stewart Neil and Charlotta Bass, publisher of the California Eagle, were some of the sponsors of this new Communist front organization. Source: Senate Journal of April 16, 1945. State Senate of California. 161 162, 171, 173 175, 181 183.

295. Excerpts from People v. Zammora, The People, Respondent v. Gus Zammora et al., Appellants, October 4, 1944 The following are excerpts is an excerpt from the appeal of the Sleepy Lagoon Defendants (1942); twenty-two Mexican American youth who were put on trial for the murder of Jos
e D
ıaz at a party. The appellate court found that there was no evidence linking the defendants to the murder and that the split verdicts contradicted the charge of conspiracy. It found that the trial judges caustic remarks and ruling were prejudicial. The second district court sent the case back to the trial court, charging that the rights of the defendants had been violated because they were denied access to counsel. However, the supporters of the Sleepy Lagoon defendants were horrified that the appellate court denied that racism had played a part in the actions of the court, the prosecutor or the

Mexican Americans, World War II, and the Aftermath

police. The case was never retried and the defendants never had the opportunity to prove their innocence. They had been convicted of felonies and never had an opportunity to how their day in court. The following excerpts are from the appellate decision.

In an indictment returned by the Grand Jury of Los Angeles County, 22 defendants were jointly charged, in count I, with the crime of murder and, in counts II and III, with the crime of assault with a deadly weapon with intent to commit murder. After the entry of ‘‘not guilty’’ pleas as to all counts of the indictment, trial was had before a jury, resulting in the acquittal of five defendants on all three counts. Of the remaining defendants, five were acquitted of the murder charge, but were convicted of minor offenses necessarily included in the remaining two counts. The other 12 defendants were convicted on all three counts; three being found guilty of murder in the first degree and nine of murder in the second degree. This appeal [66 Cal. App.2d 174] is prosecuted by the last mentioned 12 defendants, against whom verdicts of ‘‘guilty’’ were returned.… We are persuaded that there is no substantial evidence to support the claim that when the defendants left the vicinity of Vernon and Long Beach Avenues they had ‘‘murder in their hearts’’ or even that they had then formed any intent to go to the Delgadillo home … the evidence, … strongly supports the theory that some of the defendants were intent upon meeting the ‘‘Downey boys’’ and engaging in a fist fight with them in retaliation for the attack made upon some of the defendants earlier that night as ‘‘Sleepy Lagoon.’’ … the evidence does not reflect any unanimity of purpose.… defendant Leyvas and some of his codefendants entered upon the Delgadillo premises, they demanded to know the whereabouts of the ‘‘men who had beaten them up.… As we shall … point out, the jury, by their verdicts, rejected the theory of the prosecution that the defendants had engaged in a conspiracy; and we think rightly so in the light of the evidence presented to which we subsequently shall refer.… Jose Diaz was found lying unconscious in the dirt outside the fence south of the Delgadillo premises, and later died. There is no evidence as to his whereabouts or actions during the ‘‘free for all’’ fight involving the defendants. People’s witnesses testified that he was seen leaving the Delgadillo premises, accompanied by two other guests who were not produced as witnesses, several minutes before the arrival of any of the defendants.… the prosecution [contends] that appellants had conspired together to commit murder, assaults with intent to commit murder, assaults with a deadly weapon and assaults by means of force likely to produce great bodily injury; that the objective and common design of such conspiracy was to wreak vengeance upon and against the so-called ‘‘Downey boys’’ who had allegedly assaulted some of the appellants earlier on the night in question; and that, in furtherance of such common design of revenge, and, as a natural and probable consequence of such common design and conspiracy, [66 Cal. App.2d 202] one or more members of such unlawful combination committed all of the crimes charged in the indictment. However, our examination of the record in this case convinces us that there is a complete lack of material and relevant evidence from which the jury could properly find or infer that appellants formed a conspiracy of the kind and type … that they combined together with the avowed purpose of committing murder does violence to the factual situation presented by the record herein. There is also a total lack of evidence to show that any of the appellants murdered Diaz, and only the unsatisfactory evidence … we are not directed to any evidence in the record which identifies any of the appellants with the murder of Diaz.…

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In its instructions, the court advised the jury fully and elaborately on the law of conspiracy, but left it to the jury ‘‘to determine whether or not there was a conspiracy.…’’ The court also instructed the jury that all persons concerned in the commission of a crime, whether they directly and actively committed the act constituting the offense or aided and abetted in its commission, or advised or encouraged its commission are principals in any crime so committed, and equally guilty thereof. The diversified verdicts returned by the jury indicate that they did not proceed upon the contention advanced by the prosecution that the crimes charged were committed in furtherance of a conspiracy, but considered the activities of each appellant under the alternative theory submitted to them by the court, and returned verdicts based solely upon what the jury concluded was the conduct of each [66 Cal.App.2d 203] appellant acting individually, separately, and apart from any criminal combination or conspiracy.… We are satisfied that the trial judge injured materially the defense of appellants by the character of rebukes he administered in the presence of the jury when, in most instances, not even a mild rebuke was deserved. Defense counsel was held up to the jury as one who, in an endeavor to present a defense, would resort to unethical and even iniquitous practices. Imputations upon the good faith of counsel made in the presence of the jury, can unjustly injure the cause of a defendant and thereby deprive him of that fair and impartial trial to which everyone is entitled.… [it is] an indisputable fact that every remark made by the trial court tending to disparage either party to a cause or counsel has more or less effect upon the jury, unskilled as a rule in court proceedings and, we think it may fairly be said, ever ready to accept any intimation from the court as to what their verdict should be.… [The defendants were denied access to counsel and seated in separate sections of the court] ‘‘Mr. Shibley: If your Honor please, I still make the request, and I do wish to make a showing in the record here, that it is relatively impossible for me to conduct my defense of my defendants without being able to consult with them and sit [66 Cal.App.2d 228] with them, and talk with them during the presentation of the prosecution’s case. I am also going to say this for the record: That the defendants in the position in which they are seated are seated in a column of seats in very much the fashion as prisoners in a prisoners’ box, and the jury are looking at them all the time sitting in that prisoners’ box. And I say, for the record, that seated as they are, the purpose of it or, at least, the effect of it is to prejudice these defendants in the minds of the jury. And I am going to cite your Honor’s action in having them seated there and in refusing them the right to consult with counsel during the trial and talk with their attorneys during the trial in the courtroom, as misconduct, and ask the jury be admonished to disregard the fact that they are seated in the place that they are, and ask your Honor to point out to the jury the fact they are seated there does not impute that they are guilty or that there is any suspicion that they are guilty of a crime.’’… From the foregoing, it is obvious that, under the court’s rulings, it was impossible for counsel to leave their table, consult with their clients in another part of the courtroom, and at the same time protect the record and listen to the testimony being given. Likewise, it was not possible for the defendants to call matters to the attention of their counsel while witnesses were testifying, or call attention to claimed inaccuracies in the testimony or to suggest to counsel questions for crossexamination.… The right to be represented by counsel at all stages of the proceedings, [is] guaranteed by both the federal and state Constitutions, includes the right of conference with the attorney, and such right to confer is at no time more

Mexican Americans, World War II, and the Aftermath

important than during the progress of the trial. A defendant in a criminal case is not required to leave his defense in the hands of his counsel because the Constitution guarantees him the right ‘‘to appear and defend in person and with counsel.’’… there is no ground revealed by the record upon which it can be said that this prosecution was conceived in, born, or nurtured by the seeds of racial prejudice. It was instituted to protect Mexican people in the enjoyment of rights and privileges which are inherent in every one, whatever may be their race or creed, and regardless of whether their status in life be that of the rich and influential or the more lowly and poor.… The judgments and orders denying motions for a new trial, from which this appeal was taken, are, and each of them is, reversed, and the cause remanded. Source: People v Zammora, 66 Cal. App. 2d 166, Crim. No 3719. Second Dist., Div. One. Oct. 4, 1944.

296. Excerpts from Westminster School Dist. of Orange County et al. v. Me
ndez et al., 1947 The following is an excerpt from the decision of the U.S. Appellate Court on one of the most important segregation cases in Mexican American history. This case, filed in 1945, was spearheaded by Gonzalo M
endez, a native of Mexico, and his wife Felicita M
endez, a native of Puerto Rico. The controversy came to a head when the M
endezes tried to enroll their children in the Westminister Elementary School. They refused to receive an inferior education for their children; the community filed a suit against four Southern California school districts on behalf of 5,000 Mexican American families who demanded equal protection under the 14th Amendment. The case later served as legal precedent for Brown et al. v. Board of Education of Topeka et al. that ended de jure segregation and established that separate was not equal.

NO. 11310 UNITED STATES CIRCUIT COURT OF APPEALS, NINTH CIRCUIT 161 F.2d 774; 1947 U.S. App. LEXIS 2835 April 14, 1947 The court found that the segregation as alleged in the petition has been for several years past and is practiced under regulations, customs, and usages adopted more or less as a common plan and enforced by respondent-appellants throughout the mentioned school districts; that petitioners are citizens of the United States, of Mexican ancestry, of good moral habits, free from infectious disease or any other disability, and are fully qualified to attend and use the public school facilities; that respondents occupy official positions as alleged in the petition. In both written and oral argument, our attention has been directed to the cases in which the highest court of the land has upheld state laws providing for limited segregation of the great races of mankind.… It is argued by appellants that we should reverse the judgment in this case upon the authority of the segregation cases … because the Supreme Court has upheld the right of the states to provide for segregation upon the requirement that equal facilities be furnished each segregated group. Appellees argue that the segregation cases do not rule the instant case. There is argument in two of the amicus curiae briefs that we

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should strike out independently on the whole question of segregation, on the ground that recent world stirring events have set men to the reexamination of concepts considered fixed. Of course, judges as well as all others must keep abreast of the times but judges must ever be on their guard lest they rationalize outright legislation under the too free use of the power to interpret. We are not tempted by the siren who calls to us that the sometimes slow and tedious ways of democratic legislation [are] no longer respected in a progressive society. For reasons presently to be stated, we are of the opinion that the segregation cases do not rule the instant case and that is reason enough for not responding to the argument that we should consider them in the light of the amicus curiae briefs. In the first place we are aware of no authority justifying any segregation fiat by an administrative or executive decree as every case cited to us is based upon a legislative act. The segregation in this case is without legislative support and comes into fatal collision with the legislation of the state. The State of California has a statewide free school system governed by general law, the local application of which by necessity is to a considerable extent, under the direction of district and city school boards or trustees, superintendents, and teachers. Section 16601 of the California Educational Code requires the parent of any child between the ages of eight and sixteen years to send him to the full-time day school. There are some few exceptions, but none of them are pertinent here. There are no exceptions based upon the ancestry of the child other than those contained in Secs. 8003, 8004, Calif.Ed.C. (both repealed as of 90 days after June 14, 1947), which includes Indians under certain conditions and children of Chinese, Japanese, or Mongolian parentage. As to these, there are laws requiring them in certain cases to attend separate schools. Expressio Unius Est Exclusio Alterius. It may appropriately be noted that the segregation so provided for and the segregation referred to in the cited cases includes only children of parents belonging to one or another of the great races of mankind. It is interesting to note at this juncture of the case that the parties stipulated that there is no question as to race segregation in the case. Amicus curiae brief writers, however, do not agree that this is so. Nowhere in any California law is there a suggestion that any segregation can be made of children within one of the great races. Thus it is seen that there is a substantial difference in our case from those which have been decided by the Supreme Court, a difference which possibly could be held as placing our case outside the scope of such decisions. However, we are not put to this choice as the state law permits of segregation only as we have stated, that is, it is definitely confined to Indians and certain named Asiatics. That the California law does not include the segregation of school children because of their Mexican blood, is definitely and affirmatively indicated as the trial judge pointed out, by the fact that legislative action has been taken by the State of California to admit to her schools, children [of] citizens of a foreign country, living across the border. Calif.Ed.C. §§ 16004, 16005. Mexico is the only foreign country on any California boundary. It follows that the acts of respondents were and are entirely without authority of California law, notwithstanding their performance has been and is under color or pretense of California law. Therefore, conceding for the argument that California could legally enact a law authorizing the segregation as practiced, the fact stands out unchallengeable that California has not done so but to the contrary has enacted laws wholly inconsistent with such practice. By enforcing the segregation of school children of Mexican descent against their will, and contrary to the laws of

Mexican Americans, World War II, and the Aftermath

California, respondents have violated the federal law as provided in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution by depriving them of liberty and property without due process of law and by denying to them the equal protection of the laws. It may be said at this point that the practice of California law in California State Courts, and this may be so but the idea is of no relevancy. Mr. Justice Douglas made this point clear in the case of Screws v. United States, supra, when he said that the Fourteenth Amendment does not come into play merely because the federal law or the state law under which the officer purports to act is violated. ‘It is applicable when and only when someone is deprived of a federal right by that action.’ And it is as appropriate for us to say here, what Mr. Justice Douglas said in a like situation in the cited case, ‘We agree that when this statute is applied (in our case when Sec. 41(14) of 28 U.S.C.A. is applied) it should be construed so as to respect the proper balance between the states and the federal government in law enforcement.’ Punishment for the act would be legal under either or both federal and state governments. United States v. Lanza, 260 U.S. 377, S.Ct. 103, 71 L.Ed. 270, 48 A.L.R. 1102. However, since the practice complained of has continued for several consecutive years, apparent to California executive and peace officers, and continues, it cannot be said that petitioners violated Mr. Justice Douglas’ admonition in taking their action in a federal court. In the view of the case we have herein taken the contention that the Findings of Fact do not support the Conclusions of Law and the Judgment is wholly unmeritorious. The pleadings, findings, and judgment in this case refer to children of ‘Mexican and Latin descent and extraction,’ but it does not appear that any segregation of school children other than those of Mexican descent was practiced. Therefore, we have confined our comment thereto. If the segregation of all children of Latin descent and extraction in addition to those of Mexican descent were included in the practice and the plan, its illegality would, of course, be upon the same basis as that herein found. In addition, however, the impossibility of there being any reason for the inclusion in the segregation plan of all children of Latin descent and extraction and the palpable impossibility of its enforcement would brand any such plan void on its face. Affirmed. Source: Westminster School Dist. of Orange County et al. v. Mendez et al. No. 11310 United States Circuit Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit, 161 F.2d 774; 1947 U.S. App. Lexis 2835.

297. Telegram from U.S. Senator Lyndon B. Johnson to Hector Garc
ıa, 1948 The story is a familiar one. Three years after the end of World War II Pvt. Felix Longoria’s body was returned to Three Rivers, Texas, which had only one funeral home. The mortuary caused an uproar by refusing to allow Longoria’s body to lay in state. Simply, he was a Mexican and ‘‘the whites would not like it,’’ and white people would object to a Mexican using the same funeral home. Dr. Hector P. Garc
ıa (1914–1996), a Corpus Cristi, Texas, physician, and his newly formed American G.I. Forum protested the indignity, and scores of Mexican American veterans joined the American G.I. Forum. The controversy attracted politicos such as newly elected U.S. Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson who

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averted serious confrontations by having Longoria’s body buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Washington, D.C. However, the insult infuriated Mexican American veterans, who vowed never again. The following is a telegram sent by Sen. Johnson to Dr. Garc
ıa proposing the compromise.

WESTERN UNION JAN 11 49 DA494 WM09 W.SND165 LONG GOVT PD¼SN WASHINGTON DM 11 537P.¼ DR HECTOR P GARCIA, PRESIDENT 1549 JAN 11 PM 4 59 AMERICAN GI FORUM¼CORPUS CHRISTI TEX¼ RETEL. I DEEPLY REGRET TO LEARN THAT THE PREJUDICE OF SOME INDIVIDUALS EXTENDS EVEN BEYOND THIS LIFE. I HAVE NO AUTHORITY OVER CIVILIAN FUNERAL HOMES, NOR DOES THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT. HOWEVER, I HAVE TODAY MADE ARANGEMENTS TO HAVE FELIX LONGORIA BURIED WITH FULL MILITARY HONORS IN ARLINGTON NATIONAL CEMETERY HERE AT WASHINGTON WHERE THE HONORED DEAD ON OUR NATIONS WARS REST. OR, IF HIS FAMILY PREFERS TO HAVE HIS BODY INTERRED NEARER HIS HOME, HE CAN BE REBURIED AT FORT SAM HOUSTON NATIONAL MILITARY CEMETERY AT SAN ANTONIO. THERE WILL BE NO COST. IF HIS WIDOW DESIRES TO HAVE HIM REBURIED IN EITHER CEMETERY, SHE SHOULD SEND ME A COLLECT TELEGRAM BEFORE HIS BODY IS UNLOADED FROM AN ARMY TRANSPORT AT SAN FRANCISCO, JANUARY 13. THIS INJUSTICE AND PREJUDICE IS DEPLORABLE. I AM HAPPY TO HAVE A PART IN SEEING THAT THIS TEXAS HERO IS LAID TO REST WITH THE HONOR AND DIGNITY HIS SERVICE DESERVES¼ LYNDON B JOHNSON USS¼ Source: Telegram from U.S. Senator Lyndon B. Johnson to Hector Garcia, 1948. Hector Garcia, Justice for My People, http://www.justiceformypeople.org/selected writings.html. Dr. Hector P. Garcia, Special Collection & Archives, Texas A&M University Corpus Christi, Bell Library.


enz, ‘‘Racial Discrimination: 298. Testimony of Jos
e de la Luz Sa A Number One Problem of Texas Schools,’’ 1948 Jos
e de la Luz S
aenz (1888–1953) was a prominent Mexican American school teacher in South Texas. He was raised in Alice, Texas, and, earned a teacher’s certificate prior to World War I. In 1918, although married, S
aenz volunteered for service in the armed forces, serving in the 360th Regiment Infantry of the 90th Division from Texas. He served in France and Germany. S
aenz kept a diary of his military experiences which, in 1933, he published under the title Los m
e xico-americanos en la Gran Guerra y su contingente en pro de la democracia, la humanidad, y la justicia (San Antonio: Artes Gr
aficas). Historian Emilio Zamora wrote that S
aenz’s diary links World War I’s ‘‘rhetoric of democracy’’ with the Mexican American civil rights struggle. Indeed, S
aenz remained active in the cause of his people until he died. He

Mexican Americans, World War II, and the Aftermath

was one of the founders of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) and worked as an educator. The following excerpt talks about racial discrimination against Mexicans in the schools that had existed historically in the Lone Star State and had worsened with the growth of the number of Mexicans. World War II had not improved education for Mexican children.

Someone had to start it. We are glad that someone was the proper party. Our school superintendents of the Lower Rio Grande Valley have talked, and talked in earnest, toward correcting a transcendental evil or problem. Transitory children of migratory working people have been a problem in our regulated public free schools. Problems, because we have wished that every child should have an education here in Texas. The truth is that in many cases these unfortunate children have never demanded any school at all. All they ask is to be with their parents and [to have] free access to work which is for the good of many other children. They are not to be blamed. They are victims of inevitable circumstances prevailing at their homes or in their country. Let us thank our God for our advantages. Here they are the square peg in the round hole. In our public standardized schools, these children retard the regular advance of classes, with their meager irregular attendance. The school work is planned for a nine-month period and children attending four of five months cannot do the work in a satisfactory manner. Poor attendance on the part of these children, and selfishness and narrow-mindedness on the part of other children and parents have created the well known and much disgusting discriminating racial problem, known in Texas as the ‘‘Mexican Child Problem in Texas Schools.’’ Other states have this problem and may call it whatever they wish. Causes and results are the same. Summing up the whole situation, it has given us in the Valley of the Lower Rio Grande the retarding undemocratic segregated schools for children of Mexican extraction. In other sections of Texas these schools are still worse. The finished product from such schools has been stubborn and malicious misunderstanding between Anglo Americans and Mexican Americans. Administrative and pedagogical reasons may have a right place in the problem, but the main and true reason can be traced to historical and racial prejudice fostered in the minds of children at school and in their homes. Much of this cause is fading away, but the segregated schools remain to keep alive, as long as they continue to exist, hatred, remorse, and just resentment on the part of offended parties. Many persons claim that there are not segregated schools, only ‘‘separate schools.’’ These are the same. A great number of our children never go beyond these segregated schools. Can you imagine what is the result? Those who never go beyond them either accept in their minds the pernicious notion of ‘‘inferiority complex’’ or lose faith and trust in American ideals and the American people. Those who go through high school, and even taste college, learn from first-hand information that ‘‘intellectual superiority’’ does not exist just because of the color of the skin. Very little credit has been rendered us for fighting for flag and country. We have done this. We are doing it. We shall keep doing it. Till when? How? We have done this, not because we might be contented with ‘‘democracy, liberty, equality, and justice’’ as practiced toward so many of our race in Texas, but because we are intelligent enough to know the things that man must fight for. Do not take our loyalty for servilism. Parallel to providing schools for transitory children is the problem of providing a high school, here in our country, for colored children and a university for colored

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students and colored GI’s who are demanding it. In our city we do not think it wise to construct a high school to accommodate half a dozen colored children, or in the state to construct another university for colored students. A room and a few teachers in our school (and theirs) will solve that problem. Why should McAllen taxpayers be burdened with more taxes to support racial prejudice? Colored citizens travel on passenger trains and buses, work as cooks in homes and hotels, and daily we see them riding in the same cars with white people as chauffeurs, etc. Why not do the same in educational institutions? And even in American Legion Posts? Are they not Americans? Have they not done their part in fighting for flag, country, and our democratic public free schools? Should there be those who are blind to justice? Think first that we are now living in a new postwar world where compulsory readjustment is unavoidable. We destroyed or are trying to destroy Hitler’s racial theory. Why not do the same thing with Bilbo and his imitators here in Texas, or in any other part of our union? This is the right thing to do if Christian civilization and democratic principles mean anything to us. To educate transitory children is an altruistic, democratic, and American policy. Give us a chance to contribute our part in this meritorious program. We are worth very little, but allow us to place at disposal for this cause, should our spare time be deemed of value, our thirty-seven years experience dealing with and trying to contribute toward the solution of the problem of ‘‘Mexican children in Texas public free schools.’’ Source: Luz Saenz, ‘‘Racial Discrimination: A Number One Problem of Texas Schools,’’ in Alonso S. Perales, Are We Good Neighbors? (San Antonio, TX: Artes Graficas, 1948), pp. 34 36.

299. Excerpts from Fair Employment Practices Act Hearings, March 1945 Historian Carlos Casta~ neda (1896–1958) worked for the Fair Employment Practice Commission (FEPC) during World War II. Born in Tamaulipas, Mexico, raised in Brownsville, Texas, and later attended the University of Texas where he received his Ph.D. in 1932. During World War II, Casta~ neda took a leave of absence from the University of Texas History Department to serve as regional director of the President’s Committee on Fair Employment Practice. In 1946, he became professor of Latin-American history, a position he held until his death. During this tenure, he was a prolific writer. The following excerpt is his testimony before the Senate Committee on Education and Labor in which he profiles the groups telling the committee members of discrimination against Mexicans.

BEFORE A SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND LABOR, UNITED STATES SENATE Seventy-Ninth Congress First Session on S. 101 A bill to prohibit discrimination in employment because of race, creed, color, national origin, or ancestry and S. 459 A bill to establish a fair employment practice commission and to aid in eliminating discrimination in employment because of race, creed, or color

Mexican Americans, World War II, and the Aftermath

March 12, 13, and 14, 1945 Statement of Dr. Carlos E. Casta~ neda, special assistant on Latin-American problems to the chairman of the president’s committee on fair employment practice, before the Senate Committee on Labor and Education in the hearings held September 8, 1944, on S Bill 2048, to prohibit discrimination because of race, creed, color, national origin, or ancestry. For more than twenty years I have been interested in the problems arising from the various forms of discrimination against the Spanish-speaking people of the Southwest. I have been an active member of the League of United Latin-American Citizens, Loyal Latin-American Citizens, the Catholic Association for International Peace on its Committee on Inter-American Relations, the Southwestern Committee on Latin-American Culture, the Inter-American Bibliographical and Library Association, and other national and international associations interested in the promotion of better relations and understanding between Anglos and Latin-Americans. I was appointed Senior Fair Practice Examiner in Region X, comprising the states of Texas, New Mexico, and Louisiana, on August 23, 1943, and was made Acting Regional Director in charge of the Dallas Office until December 17, 1943, when I was made Special Assistant to the Chairman on Latin-American problems, in which capacity I have served the Committee since that time.… In the investigation of complaints filed with the President’s Committee on Fair Employment Practice involving discrimination against Spanish-speaking LatinAmerican citizens of Mexican extraction and Mexican nationals, I have visited the states of Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas and I have had an opportunity to study conditions at first hand. I have gathered statistics that reveal the magnitude of the problem insofar as it affects what is the largest underprivileged minority group in the Southwest. In the State of Arizona, according to the 1940 census, there is a total population of 449,261, of which about 30% are persons of Mexican extraction. Of the 160,000 Spanish-speaking persons of Mexican extraction, only 24,902 are foreign-born Mexican nationals. The mining industry in Arizona normally employs between 15,000 and 16,000 men. The percentage of Mexicans, that is American citizens of Mexican extraction in the main, is over 50% on an average and in many mining centers it runs as high as 80%. In round figures, there are between 8,000 and 10,000 persons of Mexican extraction employed in the mining industry in Arizona. Their employment is restricted, however, very largely to common labor and semi-skilled jobs and even the urgent need of manpower as the result of the war has not broken down the prejudice which bars large numbers of skilled laborers from promotion in order that they might be utilized at their highest skill and thus contribute more fully and more efficiently to the total war effort. The total population of California, according to the 1940 census, is 6,907,387. The number of persons of Mexican extraction according to the same census is 457,900, of which 134,312 are foreign born, or Mexican nationals. In the Los Angeles area, with a population of 1,673,000, the persons of Mexican descent number about 315,000, or approximately 20%. As late as the summer of 1942, more than six months after Pearl Harbor, only 5,000 persons of Mexican extraction were employed in basic industries. This figure was ascertained in a survey conducted by the CIO [Congress of Industrial Organizations] in November 1942, among whose membership there are over 10,000 Mexican Americans.

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Equally revealing as regards the failure to utilize more fully the Mexican labor supply along the West Coast of California are the figures given in a study made by the War Manpower Commission as late as April 13, 1943. Out of the 315,000 persons of Mexican extraction, only 10,000 were being employed in the Southern California shipyards, 2,000 in the San Diego aircraft industry, and 7,500 in the Los Angeles aircraft industry, making a total of 19,500 employed in essential war industries in the area included between Los Angeles and San Diego. Much better utilization was being made of Mexican labor in the San Francisco area where, with a total population of some 30,000 persons of Mexican extraction, 8,000 were engaged in basic war industries. In percentage, 22% of the Mexican-Americans were being employed in San Francisco, while only 6% had found employment in basic war industries in the Los Angeles and San Diego area. The failure to utilize the available Mexican labor supply in California, traceable in a good measure to prejudice, was not limited to essential and war industries. In an institute sponsored by the Los Angeles City and County Schools and the Southern California Council of Inter-American Affairs to discuss the problem of ‘‘What is the Vocational Future of Mexican-Americans,’’ held on February 19, 1944, Mr. Sid Panush, Personnel Examiner for the Los Angeles County Civil Service Commission, stated that out of 16,000 employees, about 400 were of Mexican extraction; that is, a 20% of the total amount. Mr. John F. Fisher, Director for the Los Angeles Civil Service Commission explained, at the same time, that out of the 16,500 civil service employees in the city government about 450 were of Mexican extraction, which makes the percentage the same as that in the County. The population of Colorado, according to the 1940 census, is 1,123,296. The number of foreign-born Mexicans is given as 6,360. In the southern part of Colorado, where the larger portion of the Mexican Americans reside, many of them descendants of the first settlers in the area, there are approximately some 50,000 Spanish-speaking Latin-American citizens of Mexican extraction. In Denver, in Pueblo, and in Trinidad itself these Mexican-Americans are restricted in their employment to common labor jobs in the main. The number of Mexican Americans employed in the steel industry, in Civil Service jobs, in military installations and in other war and essential industries, is less than 6% of the available Mexican labor supply. Mexican Americans have been refused employment in clerical and office positions, and they have been denied promotion and upgrading in accord with both seniority and ability in private industry and by military installations in the area. In the State of New Mexico, with a population of 531,818, there are 8,875 foreign-born Mexicans according to the 1940 census. The number of Mexican Americans is about 40% of the total population. In the southwestern corner of the state there is a large mining area between Santa Rita and Silver City. Investigation of complaints by Mexican American citizens in this area has shown that from 40 to 60% of the men employed by the mining companies are of Mexican extraction; that they are barred from promotion into certain departments and that they are refused upgrading into skilled jobs because of their national origin. Texas, with a population of 6,414,824, has approximately 1,000,000 MexicanAmericans. According to the 1940 census there were 159,266 foreign-born Mexican nationals in the state, or about 1/6 of the total number of Spanish-speaking persons of Mexican descent were Mexican nationals. Less than 5% of the total number of persons of Mexican extraction in Texas are employed at the present time in war and essential industries. Such industries as have given employment to Mexican labor

Mexican Americans, World War II, and the Aftermath

have restricted them to common or unskilled labor jobs largely, regardless of their ability, training, or qualifications. In the oil, aircraft, and mining industries, in the numerous military installations, in the munitions factories and shipyards, and in the public utility corporations, such as gas, light, and transportation companies, their employment has been limited and their opportunities for advancement restricted. The prevalent idea or belief among employers for the various industries, personnel managers, officials of military installations, and various government agencies in the Southwest is that the Mexican American is incapable of doing other than manual, physical labor; that he is unfit for the type of skilled labor required by industry and the crafts. Back of this belief is prejudice. Mr. A. O. Anderson, Personnel Department, Lockheed Aircraft Corporation, has stated that in the company’s two Los Angeles plants, 10 to 15% of the employees are Mexican Americans; that 80% of these are women; that they work principally in detailed assembly, general assembly, and riveting. He added, ‘‘Mexican American women workers have shown that they are capable of adapting themselves to difficult job conditions more readily than others; that this is, they are less bothered by physical discomfort, fumes, and varying temperatures. We have many Mexican Americans who now perform some of the more complicated assembly jobs and others who assumed supervisorial responsibilities.’’ This statement, repeated by all those who have had the courage to give the Mexican American an opportunity to work at other than manual jobs, shows that the Mexican American can be integrated into American industry and that the failure of the Mexican American to enter the ranks of industry has been largely due to prejudice. This fact is borne out of Mr. Floyd L. Wohlwend, Member WMC Management-Labor Committee and Personnel Officer in the California Shipbuilding Corporation, one of the largest employers in the Southwest, who stated, ‘‘Generally speaking, our Mexican workers for the most part have come to us in recent months … They just lately began to filter in and our majority of Mexican employees have come in the last 18 months … The Mexican-Americans are not only capable, but the variety of jobs at which they can be utilized is limitless if employers, managers, and general management simply will make a point of using them … Production records indicate that they have an equal aptitude with other groups or other individuals … They are definitely on a par … there is no difference.’’ That the Mexican American, if given an opportunity, is capable of performing any job in industry was affirmed by Mr. Robert Metzner, President, Pacific Sound Equipment Company, who stated that his company had begun to employ Mexican Americans in 1942, as the result of the increasing shortage of labor in the Los Angeles area. He declared that, ‘‘As the result of training, Mexican Americans qualified for skilled jobs, inspectors, both Class A and Class B, radio repairmen, machinists, turret lathe operators, spot welders, and leadmen.’’ When the Mexican American asks for equal economic opportunities he is not asking for a favor or privilege. Dr. C. D. Trillingham, Superintendent of the Los Angeles Schools, stated their case well when he said during the Institute at Los Angeles on February 19, 1944, ‘‘We are not being asked to grant something to the Mexican American out of our benevolence if you please, but to grant them that to which they are entitled along with us, certain inalienable rights as human beings.…’’ The belief held by some that certain racial or national groups have different mechanical aptitudes, a conviction that is at the bottom of the prejudice held against Mexican Americans, is completely unfounded in fact. Mr. Richard Iba~ nez, Member of the City

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Council of Upland, California, who is also a member of the Board of Governors of the California Housing Association, was merely repeating what is well known by students of anthropology, when he said, ‘‘Anyone who has taken an anthropology course knows that the Gods gave their skills equally to those of dark skin and light skin.’’ The urgent need of manpower, in view of the increasing shortage of labor, forced industry to give the Mexican American an opportunity, but not without the greatest reluctance and misgivings. Wherever he has been given an opportunity he has shown the ability to learn and produce with the same efficiency as members of any other group. To what extent has the President’s Committee on Fair Employment Practice enabled war and essential industries to utilize more extensively this neglected pool of labor and given an opportunity to the ready and willing Mexican American to contribute more fully to the war effort is shown by the following statistics on cases involving Mexican Americans handled by the President’s Committee on Fair Employment Practice during its first year of operation. In Region X, comprising the States of New Mexico, Texas, and Louisiana, 124 complaints were filed and docketed. These included complaints against oil companies, shipyards, public utility companies, Government agencies, military installations, mining companies, and chemical plants. These different agencies and industries had either refused employment to qualified workers, or denied them proper classification and adequate upgrading in accord with their seniority, experience, and ability, or paid them a differential wage scale because of their national origin. Of the 124 complaints, without having to recur to a public hearing, through interviews and conferences with employers, 68 were settled; that is, 54.9%. The settlement of these complaints resulted not only in the correction of the individual complaint but in bringing about a relaxation of general discriminatory policies which resulted in the fuller utilization of available Mexican labor by the industries and agencies involved. The 124 complaints filed, represent about 37% of all the cases docketed in Region X involving other minority groups. In Region XII, comprising the states of California, Nevada, and Arizona, out of 279 cases filed and docketed, involving discrimination, 63 or 22.6% were complaints by Mexican nationals and Mexican Americans. Some of these have been settled, but the majority are still being processed. Bill S 2048, being considered by your Committee to prohibit discrimination in employment based on race, creed, color, national origin, or ancestry will enable three million Mexican American citizens throughout this country, from California to New York and from Illinois to Texas, to secure equal economic opportunities in employment in the post-war era. The President’s Committee on Fair Employment Practice is a war agency, designed to secure equal participation in the total war effort by all Americans regardless of race, creed, color, or national origin. During its short period of operation it has done much to integrate Mexican Americans in war and essential industries and in Government employ. Mexican Americans have generously responded to their responsibility in the present world struggle for the victory of the democracies. They have unstintingly made the last sacrifice on a worldwide battlefront in order that all peoples may enjoy the blessings of freedom and peace. Equal economic opportunities, the right to work and earn a decent living on a par with all other persons regardless of race, creed, color, national origin or ancestry, is a basic principle of American democracy which will be safeguarded by the establishment of such an agency as Bill S 2048 proposes.

Mexican Americans, World War II, and the Aftermath Source: ‘‘Fair Employment Practices Act Hearings before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Education and Labor, U.S. Senate, 79th Cong., 1st Sess. on S. 101,’’ in Alonso S. Perales, Are We Good Neighbors? (San Antonio, TX: Artes Graficas, 1948), pp. 92 98.

300. Testimony of Frank Paz before the Fair Employment Practices Commission (FEPC), 1945 (Testimonies represent people in disparate regions) Frank Paz, president of the Spanish-Speaking People’s Council of Chicago, was an activist in Chicago during the 1930s and 1940s working out of Hull House, a settlement house founded by Jane Addams in 1889. Hull House was Chicago’s first and the nation’s most influential settlement house. It worked with immigrants, at first with European ethnics, and by World War II, with Mexicans. Hull House continued to be active on Halsted Street until the 1960s, when it was displaced by the University of Illinois’ new urban campus. The following testimony gives a glimpse of the life of Mexicans in Chicago during the war years and indicates that a network of Mexican American and Latino activists and organizations existed at this time. One of the senators questioning Paz was Sen. Dennis Ch
avez of New Mexico—the first senator of Mexican American heritage in the United States.

Mr. Paz:

My name is Frank Paz. I am a resident of Chicago, Ill. and a member of Hull House in Chicago. I am also the president of the SpanishSpeaking People’s Council of Chicago, interested in the establishment of a permanent FEPC. Sen. Chavez: How much of a population, of Spanish or Mexican extraction, is there in Chicago? Mr. Paz: In the Chicago area there are 45,000 Spanish-speaking people, residents of the Chicago area. Sen. Chavez: And is that in Cook County alone or does it extend into Indiana? Mr. Paz: I would include in those 45,000 people, part of Indiana as well as the southern part of Wisconsin, including Milwaukee. Mr. Chairman, I am interested as well as the other people residing in the Chicago area of Spanish extraction in the passage of Senate Bill 101, for the simple reason that we are interested fundamentally in the principles of American democracy. In American democracy there is no room or place for racial discrimination. Our people, as other speakers have already said, do not want any special privileges. All they want is the right to enjoy full citizenship. I will tell you the relation of the people living in the Chicago area with the Southwest. In Chicago, of the 45,000 people that live there, they are primarily occupied in three industries in the railroad industry, in the steel mills, and in the packing industry. But just as they are occupied primarily in these three industries, they also find employment in very peculiar jobs in these respective industries. In the railroads, the overwhelming majority of those employed find employment only as section hands. Very few find employment in the higher skilled trades. And it is ironical, when there are thousands and thousands of Mexican American workers

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on the railroad today, that one of our railroads in Chicago is bringing in, within 5 weeks from now, 150 workers from Mexico to work as skilled laborers as electricians, as pipe fitters, steam fitters, millwrights, and so forth. Yet they refuse to give [this] opportunity to these people who are residents of the Chicago area and the overwhelming majority of them citizens of this country. These people who are coming here from Mexico are coming on a temporary basis, so that when the contract is finished, they will go back to their country. But we, who will remain as part of this country, are not given the opportunity to use our skills to the fullest. Let me give you a couple of instances of how Mexicans are discriminated against. In one of our steel mills there is a man who has been working there for over 20 years. His name is Ram
on Mart
ınez, and his address is 8817 South Buffalo Avenue. At this mill he works in the yard and most of the Mexicans that are employed in the mills work in the yard which means that they have to work outdoors during the heat of the summer and the cold of winter and in rainy weather. The other group works in the coke plant where they burn the coke and extract the poisonous gas. Also there is a group employed as chippers, and now and then you may see but as a rule you do not people employed in the departments. This Ram
on Mart
ınez was put in charge of a gang of workers in the yard because they were Mexicans and he could speak their language. He was supposed to be a foreman and he discovered that he was making $50 a month less than the wages paid to the average foreman in the same capacity as he was working. He went to the proper authorities in the plant and asked why he was receiving much less money than the others. The answer was that he was not a citizen of the United States. True, at that time he was not. He was interested enough in his country to acquire his citizenship, and after he acquired his citizenship, he went back and said that he was a citizen of the United States and still he was not receiving the normal wages of other foremen. Excuse Number 2 given to Mr. Mart
ınez was that he had not a high school education. Mr. Senator, you as well as everyone else here knows that the average education of a foreman is not necessarily that of a high-school graduate. Nevertheless, this man was interested enough to go to evening school and he received a high school diploma. Again he went and asked for the same wages as the other foremen. The answer was that he had to be there a longer period of time than he had been there. That is in the steel industry. Sen. Ch
avez: Mr. Paz:

Was that case reported to the FEPC, do you know? We had a meeting with Mr. Williams of the Chicago area, where Mr. Mart
ınez related his case. Whether the FEPC will follow through on that, or not, I do not know.

Then there is a man by the name of Garc
ıa Herrera, 728 West Fourteenth Place, who works in a packing plant, in the car shops. He has been working there for the last 20 years. That is a mechanics shop and he works there as a helper and has done so for 20 years. He was interested enough to go to evening school and learn welding. As a welder he applied for that position. Up to now that position has been refused to him ‘‘because they have no room.’’ Yet ironically enough he has trained many of the younger men, not of Mexican descent, who have come to the car shops to be trained for higher skilled jobs. These are some of the incidents that have happened.

Mexican Americans, World War II, and the Aftermath

Today in Chicago we have a crisis in streetcar transportation. There are signs all over the city asking for workers to work in the streetcars. A boy and I say a boy because he is only 22 or so, by the name of Villar, decorated with the Purple Heart, discharged, honorably discharged, from the United States Army after three years and 3 months of service in the Pacific he was one of the very first to arrive in the Pacific, Guadalcanal, and other islands applied for a position with this streetcar company and the answer was, ‘‘Our policy up to now has been not to discriminate, but our experience has been that you are from a minority group and we don’t know whether that would work so well if you were to work in the street railway industry.’’ Sen. Ch
avez:

Just a minute. Mr. Ross, will you kindly come forward, please? I don’t know whether you heard this last incident described or not? Mr. Ross (Chairman, Fair Employment Practice Committee): I heard a good deal of it but I didn’t hear where it was. Mr. Paz: In Chicago. Sen. Ch
avez: Here is a boy who was given the Purple Heart and as I understand it that is only given after you suffer the agonies of the damned in combat against the enemy who was refused a job by the streetcar company in Chicago because he happened to belong to [a] minority racial group. The boy is an American. I wish you would make a note of that and look into it for the committee. Mr. Ross: I will, Senator. Mr. Paz: Therefore, Senator, we are interested in this bill for only one reason, for the equality of opportunity that this bill will make possible for the people to find employment, not to be deprived of work due to their national origin, race, or religion. I believe that this bill is fundamentally American. I believe in the principles of democracy that give an opportunity for all to achieve their proper place. I believe that this bill will not only tend to improve the conditions and relations on a more sincere level between this country and the 20 other republics of this hemisphere but it also implies that in this country we will find the true path to democracy and discrimination is unAmerican, undemocratic, and un-Christian. Sen. Ch
avez: Thank you, Mr. Paz. Mr. Paz: Thank you. Source: ‘‘FEPC Hearings,’’ in Alonso S. Perales, Are We Good Neighbors? (San Antonio, TX: Artes Graficas, 1948), pp. 111 114.

301. ‘‘Discrimination Here Shocks Visiting Valley Teacher,’’ Letter from Ava I. Humphreys to the Editor of the Valley Morning Star, Harlingen, Texas, July 1947 This is a letter from a South Texas white schoolteacher on discrimination toward Mexicans in Texas schools. There were many white teachers who also complained about conditions in the schools of white Texas. This was especially true of teachers

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who were recruited from outside the state. In this letter, the teacher asks for the Euro-American society that controls the school boards to treat Mexicans fairly.

Editor, The Star: I took 40 of the 7th and 8th grade pupils near the close of school to Harlingen for a skating party. I was shocked, humiliated, and very unhappy to have to tell the pupils after talking to the manager of the skating rink that he did not let LatinAmericans on the floor to skate under any circumstances. This situation must be faced by square-minded and liberal thinking people. Latin-Americans are a very fine race that respond beautifully to good treatment and fair dealings. I do know many Latin-American pupils and most of them come from very fine homes. Their parents are very civic minded and they want their children to be fine American citizens and enjoy some of the finer things of life that probably they did not have while growing up, just like a lot of Anglos. There were Latin-Americans on the bus that had lost members of their family in World War II. They died on various battlefields so that we could enjoy life in a land of plenty while many other countries today are starving to death. It seems to me that they inherited, as Latin-Americans, the right to fight our wars but not to enjoy the freedom for which they fought. Did it ever occur to you that when these people are run over, receive underpaid salaries, etc., that the Anglo is setting the standard of living for himself? When the depression hits, and it always does after a war, your family will receive their low wages and will be glad to get it and will drop to a low standard of living. It is also undemocratic to segregate them in schools, and by helping them better themselves, you will help to make this wonderful Texas a better place to live. It is my prayer that the Anglos will be awakened to the way they treat these people socially. I wish that all churches, Boy Scouts, and other civic organizations would try to do more to gain a better understanding of them. The United States will be trading with these Latin-American countries and it would certainly be to an advantage to any progressive person to understand them and to be able to speak their language. Ava I. Humphreys Edcouch, Texas July 1947 Source: ‘‘Discrimination Here Shocks Visiting Valley Teacher,’’ in Alonso S. Perales, Are We Good Neighbors? (San Antonio, TX: Artes Graficas), 1948, pp. 235 236.

302. Excerpt from Interview with Hector P. Garc
ıa, Founder, American G.I. Forum, 1992 Hector P. Garc
ıa (1914–1996) was a medical doctor from Corpus Christi, Texas. He spent his life working to better conditions for Mexican Americans. He witnessed segregated schooling, limited professional opportunities, and poverty for Mexican Americans living in the United States. As a child he picked cotton and other crops. Garc
ıa was the founder of the American G.I. Forum. Here he talks about his childhood and the founding of the forum.

Q: A:

Why did your father feel it necessary to emigrate from Mexico? We were born in Mexico during the time of the Mexican Revolution. So by this time, one of his brothers had emigrated to Mercedes, Texas, and started his

Mexican Americans, World War II, and the Aftermath

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business. The situation in Mexico was not only very unstable, but dangerous. Especially, in nothern Mexico where we came from things were pretty bad and pretty wild. We didn’t emigrate to come and work over here, we emigrated on a business venture with my brothers and sisters and father and mother. You say that you didn’t know what discrimination was until you got to the University of Texas. What was it about your growing up before you went to the University of Texas that you didn’t know what discrimination was? Was it an all-Mexican town? We lived across the tracks in Mercedes. See, it was an accepted fact [at] that time that all the Mexican students would go to the segregated schools. And nobody knew the difference, that it was unconstitutional. We went along and at school our main job was to get a good education. In other words, we were not fighting discrimination and segregation because we did not know that it really existed. It was an accepted fact that in South Texas we were divided by the railroad tracks. Mercedes was no different. We accepted the fact that we went to the segregated schools. But at the University in Austin we found out also that there was discrimination against the Jewish people and also there were very few blacks. In fact, the blacks hardly attended the University of Texas schools ’til much later. How did you know that there was only one Mexicano admitted to the University of Texas Medical School every year? Was that official policy? One Mexicano out of one hundred applicants, and out of one hundred people who went to school there was only one Mexicano. I was the one for that year. My brother, Dr. Jos
e Antonio Garc
ıa was the one in his year. Dr. Clotilde Garc
ıa, my sister, was one in [her] year. So it’s an accepted fact that I know a lot of our own men that wanted to apply to medical school. They did apply but they didn’t get in. When the Three Rivers incident thing happened with Pvt. Longoria, you already had a sense of what that injustice was before that event happened? Oh, yes. We learned when we went to World War II. We went to fight a Nazi System [in] which they thought the German was superior to anybody else. And of course we knew about some of the Jewish people being put to death. And the Germans were not accepting anybody except Aryan Germans as firstclass citizens. We come back here and get involved in the Longoria case out of Three Rivers in 1948. We had segregated schools, segregated campuses, segregated hospitals. The hospital had segregated wards for Mexican American patients. As a doctor, I could not put a patient in the hospital because the socalled Mexican American wards were filled up, and although the Anglo ward would have one patient, they would not allow me to put a Mexican patient with the Anglo. Do you have a sense that [the] episode of Three Rivers set the stage for the political awakening of Mexican Americans in the state? Do you think it was that important? I think that was a catalyst for our people and not only Mexican American people, but also Anglo people to realize the fact of the extent and seriousness

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of the injustices. Of a man who died for his country in World War II in the Philippines, being refused the use of the chapel. So he brought us up to the knowledge that we were denied the rights and the Anglo people began to see also the fact that it was an injustice. So I think it was a catalyst to start moving Mexican American people and to try to achieve first-class citizenship. And then try to erase all of those things both in discrimination and segregation and violation of our rights to eliminate them, to achieve what we wanted to achieve which was first-class citizenship. When all that was happening, were you aware that you were part of a historic event? Oh no, I was merely trying to do my duty. I was still working in medicine. And I decided, like the rest of the people, that it was a great injustice. I didn’t consider it an organized plan and I didn’t consider it a historical event. It was a single event at that time of trying to bury Felix Longoria with full military honors: first, if possible, in Three Rivers, Texas; if not, in Arlington National Cemetery in Washington D.C. But is it a fair statement to say that your previous military experience and your training as a doctor to be compassionate toward people, did all those things come together to create a very unique opportunity for you as an individual? I certainly think the fact that I had been involved as an officer of the United States Army, the fact that I was a doctor, which showed me compassion for my people. All of those things gave me the ability to organize the American G.I. Forum. Not only locally, but citywide, nationwide. Which is an organization made up of American veterans of Mexican origin. We’re now fighting for their civil rights after we have fought for our military rights in World War II. I felt capable of handling the situation. Now the fact also that our people had received military training made it very easy for me to organize them into a national organization because sure, we didn’t have the education, we only had the military experience. When you were involved in all these things the gaining of medical care for Mexican American veterans, and the educational lawsuits and the poll tax did you get a sense that you were involved in a moment to uplift a whole community, a whole population? Did you think in those terms? Once I got started, involved in matters concerning education, civil rights, hospitalization, the real estate restrictions I got a feeling we were moving our Mexican American people way ahead of their time faster than I ever thought. I thought unless we move this way, it will take us 50 years to achieve what we achieved within the American G.I. Forum in less than 10 years. I knew we were pushing a people ahead of time. And was that a feeling that you and people like Gus Garc
ıa and James Deanda and the others was that something you all talked about? Or was it each person acting individually? We called people like Gus Garc
ıa and Dr. George I. S
anchez and Jimmie Deanda and Cris Aldrete … we would talk about these things. And we realized what we were doing. Within the structure of this group of people who were

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knowledgeable. Our mentor, our director really was George I. S
anchez from the University of Texas. Our legal brain as far as arguing was Gus Garc
ıa. Our legal brain as far researching was Carlos Cadena from San Antonio. I was more or less the catalyst in all those movements. The American G.I. Forum was the ‘‘roots’’ group of people trying to work together to get this thing moving. So all of us together, we knew what we were doing. We worked together, although we didn’t have a master plan or an idea. We only moved in the direction where things were happening that demanded our action. Did you ever consider political life? People got the impression or idea that I would eventually seek a political office, and I felt that if I ever sought a political office, that would prove to them that I was only doing this for political satisfaction or getting some money for politics, which I never intended. I made up my mind I would not run for any political position, either for pay or no pay, because then you get involved in stopping the movement which I was trying to do on a voluntary basis. A movement of love and faith and respect, a movement that would convince me to work with the Constitution of the United States and state of Texas. When did you first begin to have such a love for those two Constitutions? How did that happen? Well, I studied history at the university level. Consequently, because I certainly did not know about being a natural-born citizen here, I had to learn the Constitution to become a citizen. When I became a citizen, that’s when I learned about the Constitution. I knew all the rights, all the things that it gave us. And then, of course, I also served on the United States Commission on Civil Rights. I did a lot of studying then, and my belief in the Constitution became stronger. What about when you started winning some of those legal cases? Did that reinforce your understanding and belief in the Constitution? When we started winning a lot of the legal cases, my belief in the Constitution got stronger. In fact, for instance, the Minerva Delgado case in 1948 … the Constitution says that you could not segregate us … the courts decided you could not segregate us because of our origins because the Constitution always said in Texas that you could not have separate schools for the Mexican Americans. It was there all the time. Even today, I still have an abiding [faith in] the Constitution of Texas and the United States. It’s important that you have the voting rights act, the civil rights act, which enforces very, very much all our efforts.

Source: Hector P. Garc
ıa, Founder, American G.I. Forum Conducted in 1992. Courtesy of KERA-TV, Sallas, Texas. http://www.justiceformypeople.org/interview hgarcia.html.

303. ‘‘Election of Roybal—Democracy at Work,’’ from Remarks of Rep. Chet Holifield in the House of Representatives, 1949 The Community Service Organization (CSO) began organizing in Boyle Heights, California, in 1947, working for immigrants’ rights and against

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police brutality, conducting leadership training, and encouraging voter participation. CSO spearheaded voter registration drives that led to the election of Edward Roybal in 1949 to the Los Angeles City Council. Roybal initially ran for this position in 1947, but he came in third. In 1949, Roybal was ready to run again, and he won becoming the first Mexican American since 1887 to win a seat on the Los Angeles City Council. CSO had chapters throughout California and trained organizers that included Dolores Huerta, C
esar Ch
avez, and Tony Rios. Roybal became a legendary figure in Mexican American politics. The following excerpt is from comments made before the House of Representatives by Rep. Chet Holifield, in whose congressional district the grassroots election of Roybal to the Los Angeles City Council took place. Roybal’s election gave hope to the Mexican American World War II GI generation that they would see an end to racial injustices.

Congressional Record Proceedings and Debates of the 81st Congress, First Session Extension of Remarks of Hon. Chet Holifield of California in the House of Representatives Tuesday, August 9, 1949 Mr. Holifield: Mr. Speaker, it is not commonly known, but within the city of Los Angeles and its immediate environs is located the second greatest Mexican American population center in the world. Mexico City, Mexico, is the No. 1 population area in this respect. We are proud of the contribution which American citizens of Spanish and Mexican descent have made to the cultural, social, educational, and political life of our community. Within my congressional district many thousands of these good citizens reside. One group in my district which has organized and achieved a highly respected position among my constituents is the Community Service Organization. I want to compliment them on the active leadership they are taking in assisting their fellow citizens integrate themselves into every phase of our community. In the recent Los Angeles City councilmanic elections, one of our highly respected American citizens of Mexican ancestry, Edward R. Roybal, was elected to the important position of city councilman of the Ninth District, which is located in my congressional district. Mr. Roybal was supported not only by Spanish-speaking citizens but by other good American citizens of Jewish, Negro, Japanese, Italian, and Philippine descent. In fact, people of all races and religions joined together to elect this fine young man to one of our most respected civic positions. The election of Edward R. Roybal proves that the people of my district respect the intrinsic worth of the individual; it also proves that the majority of the people of my district are willing to rise above the prejudice, intolerance, and bigotry which precludes an individual from leadership because of his racial origin or his religious affiliation. I am proud that the people of my district really believe in democracy. I am proud that they have demonstrated their belief by joining together and electing this worthy young man to public office. I am confident that Edward R. Roybal will acquit himself with great honor to the citizens of all races and religions, who have shown

Mexican Americans, World War II, and the Aftermath

their trust and confidence in him by electing him to this position of leadership in our community. Mr. Speaker, under leave to extend my remarks, I include in the Record, an editorial which appeared in the Los Angeles Daily News of July 1, 1949, on the subject matter of my remarks: THE LATIN ONE-EIGHTH Today something new is being added to Los Angeles’ city government. When Edward R. Roybal takes office today as Ninth District city councilman, he becomes the first local citizen of Mexican-American ancestry to win councilmanic stature in more than 70 years. Roybal’s election also says that after nearly a century of civic silence, Los Angeles’ Spanish-speaking citizens who constitute the city’s numerically biggest minority have raised their voices clearly and unmistakably. The estimated 250,000 residents of Mexican American descent those who comprise the Latin one-eighth of metropolitan Los Angeles and make it the largest Spanish-speaking city outside of Mexico are learning to make use of the most effective channel open to democracy’s cultural minorities the ballot. Through this channel they may succeed in drawing the attention of the rest of the community to the needs of their neglected neighborhoods. More importantly, the rising political consciousness of this Latin one-eighth promises the beginnings of a valuable bridge-building job. During the modern years of Los Angeles’ emergence as the third city of the Nation, a gulf has separated most Mexican American citizens from the rest of the community. This gulf has been caused by many things: by language, by custom, by educational and economic factors. It’s a gulf that isn’t going to be bridged overnight. But a start toward bridging it at its most strategic point can be made and is being made at the precinct polling place. For it is here citizens begin to achieve social recognition and municipal attention on a par with that accorded other segments of the population. It is here citizens start to become responsible co-participators in the life stream of the community and Nation. What happened May 31 in Los Angeles’ populous East Side ninth councilmanic district was no accident. Councilman Roybal received more than 20,000 out of a total of approximately 35,000 votes cast because 2 years ago a civic-minded group known as the Community Service Organization set about to accomplish a task of social engineering among residents of the East Side. In 6 months’ time prior to the 1948 elections, the community service group registered 15,000 Spanish-speaking residents and many other thousands from the Jewish, Negro, Japanese American, Italian, Filipino, and Anglo neighborhoods of Los Angeles’ most cosmopolitan area. What followed was a great upsurge of intergroup cooperation which rolled up a total of 138,132 votes for Richard Iba~ nez as candidate for judge of Superior Court Office No. 2 and gave to Jos
e Ch
avez nearly quadruple the 1946 votes cast for him in the fifty-first assembly district contest. Neither candidate was elected; but the way was paved, nevertheless, for strengthened future effort, as the Roybal election testifies. On May 31, 1949, the Ninth District registered 7 percent more votes than any other district in the city. The Community Service Organization is the local project of the Chicagofounded Industrial Areas Foundation [IAF]. Established 10 years ago in the stockyards neighborhood by Bishop Shiel, head of Chicago’s Catholic Charities, and

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G. Howland Shaw, former Assistant Secretary of State, the foundation went to work with adults in slum communities to solve the problems of juvenile delinquency. Most notable IAF innovation was the Back-of-the-Yards Neighborhood Council, a small, tightly knit citizens’ group dedicated to neighborhood improvement. In East Side Los Angeles, the community service people are furthering the Backof-the-Yards objectives. And they seem to be proving, by orderly, democratic methods, that it’s possible for any people, regardless of race, religion, or national origin to tear down the ripped and twisted remnants of the old barbed barriers of hostility and prejudice, walling off citizens of various religious and ethnic backgrounds proving it’s possible for people to go forth arm in arm and become sharing partners in all the manifold, rich experiences that make up the thing we call the democratic process. Yes, something new has been added to Los Angeles’ civic life. The municipal household has a brighter, more up-to-date look. And the local precedents shattered by Roybal’s election indicate democracy is stepping steadily forward on the home front that the distance of caste and culture is shrinking to fit the shrunken world. Source: Congressional Record, Proceedings and Debates of the 81st Cong., 1st Sess.

304. Excerpt from ‘‘Texans Combat Red Propaganda,’’ 1950 Half of the two thousand mile border with Mexico was along Texas. Discrimination was so bad there that in 1943 that Texas Governor Coke R. Stevenson established Good Neighbor Commission to monitor and ameliorate the abuses. The reason was that Mexico was refusing to send braceros (guest workers) to Texas and it was hurting the image of American democracy. Mexico lifted the ban in 1945 but abuses continued and the Commission continued to try to ameliorate conditions. Some Texans blamed the communist for stirring up trouble. The article talks about the continuing racism toward Mexicans in Texas and indicates the growing militancy of the Mexican American community in fighting for their rights.

AUSTIN, Tex., Sept. 30 (AP) Joe M
arquez and Roberto Robles had had a long trip from Chihuahua City, Mex., to the cotton farm in Central Texas. At 4 o’clock they wanted to quit and cook supper. The farmer wanted them to stay and pick a few more pounds to make full bale of cotton. They could not make themselves understood nor could they understand the farmer. Roberto got excited and got close to the farmer’s face. The farmer got excited, too, and grabbed hold of Roberto’s shirt. The story came out in a Mexican paper under the headline ‘‘Mexicans Are Treated Like Animals in Texas.’’ The Texas Good Neighbor Commission saw the story. They asked a man in the community who spoke Spanish fluently to see what it was all about.… They were just tired after their trip from Chihuahua and could not make themselves understood. They are making about $10 a day picking cotton and are sorry about the whole misunderstanding.… ‘‘We have no way of proving such stories are Communist inspired,’’ said Neville Penrose, Ft. Worth oilman who is chairman of the Texas Good Neighbor Commission.

Mexican Americans, World War II, and the Aftermath

‘‘We do know that Communist elements in the Mexican press play up cases of discrimination out of all proportion to the original incident.’’ … Source: ‘‘Texans Combat Red Propaganda,’’ Los Angeles Times, October 1, 1950, p. A26.

305. Los Braceros, ‘‘Testimony from a ‘Bracero,’’’ 1951 On August 4, 1942, the U.S. and Mexican governments instituted the bracero program that supplied Mexican ‘‘guest workers’’ to work on railroads and agriculture in the United States. It was intended to be a temporary program. The program pulled thousands of impoverished Mexicans north. Many abandoned their rural villages and headed to designated towns close to the border. More than four million Mexican laborers eventually came to the United States under this program. It caused what the New York Times called on April 23, 1951, a ‘‘pathetic stampede, marked by hunger, sickness, repeated violence, and several deaths …’’ It was fraught with injustices. The United States insisted on recruiting close to the border, thus straining the infrastructure of Mexican cities such as Hermosillo Sonora, where potential braceros waited in the hot sun to be called. Once in the United States braceros were often mistreated and accused of being strikebreakers. The following is an item from the Farmworkers’ website describing the experiences of Jes
us Campoya Calder
on who came to the United States as a bracero in the 1950s and eventually made his home in the San Diego, California area. The account memorializes the experiences of millions of Mexicans who came as braceros.

Jes
us Campoya Calder
on from San Diego, Chihuahua was one of the thousands of ‘‘braceros’’ who worked in the fields of New Mexico and Texas. To apply, the candidates had to travel to Chihuahua City, to the ‘‘trocadero,’’ next to the railroad station. The ‘‘trocadero’’ was run by American officers. The main area in the ‘‘trocadero’’ was a line of windows. The first step for the applicant was to be approved at the initial interview in the first window. The applicant would then pass to the second officer for a more extensive interrogation regarding his work experience and show the palms of his hands to the officer. Once approved, he would be sent to the third window to sign his contract and to have his picture taken. A few days later, the workers were transported from Chihuahua City to the border. The ‘‘braceros’’ waited several days in Ciudad Ju
arez until their permits were stamped by immigration officers. From El Paso, they were transported to the processing center in Fabens, situated in the El Paso Lower Valley. At the center, they were sprayed with a white powder in order, ‘‘to kill the Mexican fleas,’’ or so they were told by a gringo. That evening they ate bread and baloney. ‘‘After several days without food, the sandwich tasted like glory …’’ Campoya said. Afterwards, the farmers arrived to select ‘‘their’’ workers, which were needed in their farms. ‘‘In the farms we would do anything, although our permit was to pick cotton only.’’ They would pick cotton during the day, but in the evenings and on Sundays they would repair fences or paint the farmer’s house. However, they were only paid for the cotton picked from 6 A.M. to 5 P.M. The picker received $2.10 for 100 lbs. of cotton. The best cotton picker (usually from Coahuila) made about 300 pounds each day. A good picker made $31.40 on a good week. ‘‘Sounds low, but then a pair of authentic Levi’s pants cost $1.98.…’’

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Once a week, they were taken to the ‘‘big town’’ to buy groceries and cigarettes. Some also used this opportunity to send their money back home. ‘‘Because I did not trust the bank, I saved all my money myself. I worked four months, seven days a week, at least 12 hours every day and I took home almost $300 dollars.’’ ‘‘Those were very good days.’’ Source: Jes
us Campoya, ‘‘Testimony from a ‘Bracero’’’ The Farm Workers Website, http:// www.farmworkers.org/testmony.html. Courtesy of Carlos Marentes, The Bracero Project.


lez, ‘‘Step-Children of a Nation: 306. Excerpts from Isabel Gonza The Status of Mexican-Americans,’’ 1947 Although historically there have been virulent anti-immigrant groups in the United States, there have also been organizations that have sought to protect immigrants. Settlement houses were set up in northern cities to help African American immigrants adjust to cities. In 1889, Hull House in Chicago was the first settlement house for immigrants. The Quakers founded the American Friends Service Committee in 1917, and to this day this organization is involved with the protection of immigrants. After World War I, anti-foreign sentiments grew to hysterical proportions as the Russian Revolution transformed Russia into a Communist state. The Great Depression fanned nativism as many activists in the United States were threatened with deportation. Roger Baldwin of the American Civil Liberties Union initiated the American Committee for Protection of Foreign Born (1933–1982) to defend the rights of immigrants. Some members of the committee were Communists, others were not. Central was the protection of constitutional rights regardless of race, color, nationality, and creed. The end of World War II saw a resurgence of anti-immigrant hysteria. Many labor union leaders were threatened with deportation, among them Mexican American and Latino organizers. Much of the hysteria was fueled by the Cold War. The enormity of the Mexican repatriations of the 1930s weighed on the minds of many pro-immigrant groups that established chapters in places such as Los Angeles, where there was a huge Mexican population. At the federal level, anti-union and anti-immigrant laws were passed such as the McCarran Internal Security Act (1950) and the McCarran-Walter Immigration Act (1952), which the American Committee for Protection of Foreign Born fought. Because of this, the committee was placed on the U.S. attorney general’s subversive list and its tax exempt status was revoked. In the 1950s, much of its work revolved around the protection of Mexican immigrants. The following is an excerpt from an American Committee for the Protection of the Foreign Born pamphlet authored by Isabel Gonz
alez of Colorado on deportations brought against Mexican American union leaders for union activities.

There are approximately five million people of Mexican origin in the United States. Of these, some three and one half million are American citizens who live principally in the West and Southwest. The other million and a half are non-citizens, and constitute the largest group of non-citizens in the country. Why is it that so many Mexicans in the United States have failed to become citizens? Is it because they do not wish to enjoy the privileges of citizenship; or is it because they do not feel a loyalty to the United States; or is it because, as some say, the Mexican people are too ignorant to meet the qualifications for citizenship?

Mexican Americans, World War II, and the Aftermath

Could it be, however, that obstacles are placed in the way of Mexicans who seek citizenship; or could it be because their depressed status of the Mexican people as noncitizens bears profits for certain economic interests? Could it be also that the U.S. Government has helped some economic interests in their search for cheap labor to lure Mexicans into this country only to suppress and terrorize them once they are here? Anyone who has tried to assist a Mexican immigrant in the preliminaries to citizenship is well aware of the difficulties involved. It is no accident that the bulk of naturalized citizens in the U.S. are those who entered after 1924, when regulations for entry were enforced and some sort of orderly accounting maintained. A large number of quasi-immigrants who remain unnaturalized, even though they have spent their lives in the U.S. and speak perfect English, quite frankly admit that they remain alien because they have neither the finances nor the courage to tackle the job of proving that they entered legally. Even the older immigrant, after he has given you all the customary reasons about having a ‘‘hard head’’ for the learning of English and history, is likely to settle on the difficulty of proving entry as the main deterrent. They often remember some ‘‘paisano’’ who tried to become a citizen and will tell you: ‘‘Look at Juan Mart
ınez. He was going to be a citizen. And where is he now? Back in Juarez and his wife and children starving here.’’ Humberto Silex, of EI Paso, Texas, former regional director of the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers of America, CIO, is a leader of the Mexican American people of the Southwest. He has devoted his life to advancing the economic status of Mexican Americans, seeking to eliminate discrimination and defending their democratic rights as residents and citizens of the United States. Born in Nicaragua in 1902, Humberto Silex entered the United States legally in 1920. He is married to a legally resident alien of Mexican birth and is the father of seven American-born children. In 1946, the Department of Justice attempted to deport Mr. Silex on the basis of a 30-minute visit he made to Mexico for lunch one day in 1945. The attempt to deport Humberto Silex was defeated. Now the Justice Department is trying to prevent Mr. Silex’s naturalization, for which he filed in 1942. Hearings on Mr. Silex’s petition for citizenship were held in the Federal District Court in El Paso, Texas, on October 9, 1947, and a decision is expected shortly. Refugio Ram
on Mart
ınez, of Chicago is a member of the staff of the United Packinghouse Workers of America, CIO. Born in Mexico in 1903, Mr. Mart
ınez entered the United States legally in 1924. He is married to an American citizen and is the father of two American-born children. In 1947, the Justice Department started deportation proceedings against Mr. Mart
ınez on the ground that, from 1932 to 1934, he was a member of the Communist Party of the United States. (More than 100 other legally resident non-citizens face deportation on this same charge. A test case will be taken to the United States Supreme Court, which has never ruled on this question. We maintain that non-citizens are entitled to the protection of the Bill of Rights, to freedom of speech and belief, and cannot be deported because of their political opinions. After he was ordered deported, Mr. Mart
ınez requested that the hearings in his case be reopened since he was not represented by counsel at his original hearings. No date has as yet been set for the new hearings. The 1947 National Convention of the United Packinghouse Workers of America pledged full support to Mr. Mart
ınez in his fight against deportation. Jack Freeman, Chicago attorney, is representing Mr. Mart
ınez in his deportation case. (Humberto Silex and Refugio Ram
on Mart
ınez are two of the more than 100 foreign-born Americans who

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are being defended by the American Committee for Protection of Foreign Born. Additional information concerning these cases as well as ways in which you can help fight the attempt to deprive the foreign born of their constitutional and democratic rights can be obtained by writing to the American Committee for Protection of Foreign Born, 23 West 26th Street, New York 10, N.Y. Source: Isabel Gonzalez, ‘‘Step-Children of a Nation: The Status of Mexican-Americans’’ (New York: American Committee for the Protection of Foreign Born, 1947), pp. 3, 12 14.

307. Excerpts from Rudy M. Lucero, ‘‘E Company Marines Remembered’’ ~ez on July 28, 1990, ‘‘the disAccording to anthropologist Carlos V
elez-Ib
an proportion of Mexicans fighting and dying in wars continued through Korea and Vietnam. ‘‘E’’ Company of the 13th Infantry Battalion, United States Marine Corps Reserve of Tucson, Arizona, was composed of 237 men of whom 80 percent were Mexicans when the company was called to active duty on July 31, 1950, and two months later landed as part of an invasion force in Inchon, Korea.’’ They shipped these young Chicanos and others overseas with a scant two to three weeks of training, learning how to fire M-1 rifles and machine guns aboard ship with only two weeks of basic training in Japan. Ten of the 231 Tucsonense Chicanos who fought in Korea lost their lives. The following testimonies of members of Company ‘‘E’’ memorialize the participation of Mexican Americans in the Korean conflict—a contribution that is often forgotten.

David Arrellano: ‘‘I was born in Tucson and raised in Barrio Pascua. My parents came from Guadalajara and we were a family of seven. My childhood was nice I would go out with the boys, jump into the irrigation ditch, and go swimming. Around the house, I would help clean and I would chop wood.’’ Juan C. Alvarez: ‘‘I grew up in the downtown barrio neighborhood … My father, Cypriano Alv
arez, was born in Cananea, Sonora, Mexico … served in the Army with the 32nd Infantry (Spearhead) Division as a corporal in World War I … retired from the Southern Pacific where he was a switchman here in Tucson.’’ Arnulfo ‘‘Nufi’’ Borboa: (He later fought in Vietnam.) ‘‘I grew up in the barrio El Hoyo west of the Southwest railroad tracks, close to the Santa Cruz River. The river was our source of firewood for cooking and for firing up the laundry tub. Every time it flooded, it would deposit another load for us. On wash day, every one of us kids ‘turned to,’ chopping wood and keeping the fire going.…’’ Of boot camp he said, ‘‘I suspect our platoon had it rougher than most because we were 80 percent Chicanos, undisciplined and smart alecky.’’ Harold Don: ‘‘My parents were born in Canton, China …’’ they operated a grocery store at the corner of Riverside and St. Mary’s Road in Tucson … ‘‘I grew up in Barrio Hollywood, which was predominantly Mexican … across the Santa Cruz River, which was then the boundary of the city limits. The unpaved streets and the riverbed were my playgrounds. Across the street on St. Mary’s Road there was a brick yard where clay was excavated for making bricks. The enormous holes would fill with water during the rainy season and became swimming pools for the neighborhood kids. The city dump was located on the city side of the river, which also provided a search-of-adventure playground. Then the many trees growing along the

Mexican Americans, World War II, and the Aftermath

riverbank were the made-to-order Tarzan jungle. Since a great deal of my time was occupied helping with the store I would build model airplanes during my breaks.… I recall that just about every house in the neighborhood had its own well and outhouse.’’ Don is more candid than the rest: ‘‘Like the rest of us, I expected to be trained in California and then be sent home on leave before going overseas. We didn’t realize our government had allowed the Marines to get so undermanned that it required the lst and 2nd Divisions plus the Marine Reserves to bring the Marines to the strength of one full division.’’ Don’s description of the war is equally candid about suffering, heroism, and dead comrades. They mustered him out in January of 1952: ‘‘I came home on my first bus ride, by a southern route. The sign on the bus read ‘‘Whites in front, blacks in the back,’’ so I sat in the middle. At the bus depots there were rest rooms for blacks and rest rooms for whites not wanting to offend anyone, I floated my kidneys all the way to Texas.’’ Oscar ‘‘Challo’’ Franco: ‘‘The day that my buddy, Edward G
omez (who won the Medal of Honor) was killed, we were on the push. I knew Dog Company had been hit bad and we were called forward. We got into a hot firefight and we were losing men … G
omez was my foxhole buddy … Going up Hill 749, he had thrown back a grenade that had landed among us. Then he shot at three Chinese that charged at us. When they threw that grenade at our gun emplacement, G
omez picked it up, pulled it into his stomach, spun his body away from the gun and fell on it. He saved my life!’’ He continued, ‘‘Once before, G
omez had been wounded and when he was awarded the Purple Heart, I had taken a picture of him. He made a comment then, ‘Well, this isn’t the million-dollar wound (the one that would send you home alive), but it’s better than the $10,000 one.’ (That’s the one where your next of kin collect the insurance money.) We used to talk about visiting each other when we were done with the war. He would come to Tucson and I would go to Omaha. Being raised in Omaha, his Spanish was not too good so I used to read his mother’s letters to him. He learned a lot of Spanish from me. He knew the words to that Mexican song Quiza, quiza, quiza.… Then I was released and sent home. Even today, I am not completely over being shell shocked. Any sudden noise will make me jump. I landed in the hospital two to three times after I got back in 1952.’’ Nostalgia for the barrios was captured in Lalo Guerrero’s song ‘‘Viejo Barrio’’ (Old Neighborhood) as corporate planners bulldozed these neighborhoods: ‘‘Viejo barrio, old neighborhood, There’s only leveled spaces … Viejo barrio, old neighborhood … They say we were poor, but I never notice that. I was happy in my world, In that neighborhood I loved.’’ Source: Oral Histories of the E-Company Marines Remembered by Rudy M. Lucero, http:// parentseyes.arizona.edu/ecompany/oralhistories.html.

308. Carey McWilliams, ‘‘Nervous Los Angeles,’’ 1950 Carey McWilliams (1905–1980) was best known for a strong commitment to progressive causes. He wrote the first history on Mexicans in the United States, titled North from Mexico (1949) and wrote extensively about social issues in California. McWilliams headed the Sleepy Lagoon Committee, which protected 22 Mexican American youths who were unjustly indicted for murder, wrote about the condition of migrant farmworkers, and the internment of Japanese Americans. McWilliams edited The Nation magazine from 1951 to

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1975, and wrote numerous muckraking books on agriculture. In the 1950s, McWilliams grew concerned when anti-Mexican hysteria was renewed in Los Angeles. Los Angeles newspapers whipped up their readers with stories about Mexican American ‘‘hoodlums,’’ and stereotyped Mexican youths as gang members who traveled in wolf packs.

I. THE ‘‘WOLF-PACK’’ CRUSADE Los Angeles, May 24 The Los Angeles press has launched another of its lurid campaigns against juvenile ‘‘hoodlums,’’ with special emphasis on Mexican American delinquents. These ‘‘crusades’’ are always started when there is a dearth of sensational local news and when racial tensions have predisposed people to hunt for scapegoats. The agitation whipped up in 1942 reached such a pitch of intensity that the Coordinator of InterAmerican Affairs sent emissaries to plead with the press to stop featuring Mexican names in ‘‘crime’’ news. The press was most accommodating: thereafter Mexican Americans were simply identified as ‘‘pachucos’’ and ‘‘Zoot Suiters,’’ and a year later Los Angeles was disgraced by the ugly Zoot Suit riots. In any given period, a certain number of acts of juvenile hoodlumism will be committed in a city the size of Los Angeles. It is always possible, therefore, to make it appear that juvenile crime has shown a spectacular increase simply by beginning to feature reports of it. In the middle of April, the local press began to carry stories of gang assaults. But ‘‘gangs’’ are a rather thread-bare phenomenon. And so they soon became predatory ‘‘packs’’ striking down their victims in dark alleyways and unlighted parking lots. Each newspaper used its own special formula. One showed savage cartoons of ‘‘wolf packs,’’ with the foam of madness dripping from their fangs; another invented the term ‘‘rat packs,’’ and described bedraggled boys who fought like ‘‘rats’’ and possessed other ‘‘rat-like’’ characteristics: You would have imagined that a hundred or more juvenile rowdies had organized an attack on the community. In point of fact, the community had organized an attack on the youthful gangs by means of slanted news stories, ‘‘let’s-not-be-soft’’ editorials, and news photographs which showed all too clearly excellent police cooperation in obtaining shots calculated to arouse public feeling. Of course the names of the youngsters arrested, and certainly of those whose pictures were displayed, just happened to suggest that juvenile delinquency is a Mexican American cultural trait. The press of Los Angeles, mindful of the unfortunate role that it played in the Zoot Suit riots of 1943, has not been guilty of designating the participants as Mexican Americans. But it has not hesitated to mention their Spanish names or to publish editorials headed ‘‘Hoodlumism Is Not a Racial Problem.’’ By elaborately disclaiming any bias, these editorials have clearly implied that hoodlumism was identical with Mexican American status. Particular arrests and incidents have been handled in an interesting fashion. For example, the Los Angeles Daily News of May 6 featured a story under the headline ‘‘12 Jailed in New Attacks of L.A. Rat Pack.’’ The names of those arrested in the first incident described were all of Spanish origin. There is nothing improper about giving the names of individuals arrested by the police, but the same edition of the same paper carried another story, not quite so prominently featured, with the mild head: ‘‘Beverly Hills Boys Held in Vandalism.’’ These little darlings had merely

Mexican Americans, World War II, and the Aftermath

driven through the streets of Beverly Hills in a station wagon, shooting out the windows of sixteen store buildings with an air gun. When Beverly Hills boys indulge their destructive impulses, they are presented as ‘‘vandals’’; when Mexican American boys commit similar acts they are ‘‘wolves’’ and ‘‘mad dogs’’ and ‘‘rats.’’ Moreover, the Beverly Hills vandals were not identified by name but merely described as ‘‘over-privileged youths,’’ and ‘‘sons of prominent families.’’ By contrast the other boys were named and were indiscriminately labeled ‘‘warped-minded little weaklings,’’ ‘‘rats who in typical fashion swarm out of hiding,’’ and so on. The cause of the current acts of juvenile delinquency is not mysterious. The youngsters of many underprivileged groups, always first to be hit by hard times, are beginning to feel the economic squeeze which has thrown 180,000 people out of work in Los Angeles. With their parents unemployed, they are painfully poor, and since they in turn find it increasingly difficult to get part-time jobs they swarm about the city streets with nothing to do, frustrated in all their desires. The epithets applied to them convey to these youngsters a perfectly clear suggestion of the way they are regarded by the dominant groups. Like a person suffering from acute paranoid delusions, the community has picked up a club and knocked down a handy victim, and now complains bitterly that it has been attacked. The present outburst, however, is unique in a number of respects: the Mexican American community through the Community Service Organization has promptly and intelligently protested; at [least] one newspaper, the Los Angeles Mirror, has declined to join wolf pack; and Chet Huntley, KNX’s influential and enlightened news commentator, has been doing a fine job in undercutting the press campaign. Source: Reprinted with permission from the June 10, 1950 issue of The Nation. For subscription information, call 1-800-333-8536. Portions of each week’s Nation magazine can be accessed at http://www.thenation.com.


pez-Stafford, A Place in El Paso: 309. Excerpt from Gloria Lo A Mexican-American Childhood, 1996 El Paso, called the Gateway City, was the major port of entry for Mexicans from the early nineteenth century to this day. In the following excerpt, Gloria L
opez-Stafford, a retired social worker, describes her experiences as a young girl in El Paso’s Segundo Barrio and Five Points area in her memoir. The reading gives an insight to the problems faced by a young Mexican in the legendary el Segundo Barrio, the second war of El Paso during the late 1940s. They could still feel the sting of the legacy of the Alamo.

PROLOGUE, 1949 ‘‘Remember the Alamo!’’ The banner slogan was draped across the blackboard of my social studies class in El Paso, Texas. The black letters jumped off the white background. The slogan on the banner was appropriate because the elementary school was named after Sam Houston, first president of the Republic of Texas. The colors were the colors of the school.

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It was September and we were going to the auditorium to see the movie, The Battle of the Alamo. Texas history was the course of study for the year and the whole week before the film we made salt maps of the state. I was very proud of my carved Ivory Soap model of the Alamo. I had compared it to the other kids’ models before recess and after shaving off more of the soap mission, it looked better and more like the others. I did not want to be different since I was particularly sensitive to laughs and pokes. I wanted it to look as good as Michael’s because his was carefully carved and it looked like the mission I had seen in Ysleta, Texas. That year, my class at Houston School was about half Anglo and half Mexican. It would become predominantly Mexican American in the 1970s because of the Mexican population’s moving up from the south side and pushing the Anglos to the east side and west side. Houston Elementary was in Five Points, which in the 1940s and 1950s was predominantly Anglo, Syrian, and Mexican. The area was named for the intersection of five streets that were in the center of the city at the time. It was partly residential and partly a business district. The Battle of the Alamo was an old film, very dark and gray. The battle brought together small, overdressed Mexican men and big white men dressed in buckskins. As you probably know, the battle was fierce and it was won by a villain named Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna. He was portrayed as a small ruthless man who made martyrs of the Anglos that day at the Alamo. There were 187 Anglos killed and 600 Mexicans killed. After the film was over, the dark shades on the windows were lifted and the lights turned on. I felt uncomfortable as I looked around the auditorium, a huge creamcolored room that had pictures of American presidents on the walls. George Washington’s head and shoulders were on top of some clouds. On this afternoon, no one said anything. The film had a quieting effect on all the kids. I avoided the looks of my friends because I couldn’t understand my confused feelings. I felt sick. I was painfully aware of being Mexican. And it wouldn’t be the last time that year. We started down the hall to our classroom. Some kids shoved when the teacher was not looking. I didn’t want to be pushed or to have to push back. I walked back quietly until my friend Linda ran up to me. Linda’s family was from Monterrey and she didn’t live far from me. ‘‘Gloria, who did you cheer for?’’ she asked in a quiet tone. I looked at her and looked around before I answered. ‘‘The Mexicans,’’ I replied softly. Linda shrieked, ‘‘Me, too,’’ her pigtails framing her face as she jumped with joy. Her wide smile showed the milk teeth she still had. I stared at them as if seeing them for the first time. Her joy did not make me feel any better. ‘‘Just be quiet, Linda,’’ I said as I pushed her. Her enthusiasm left her face as she realized that I was annoyed at her. She jerked away and scooted up in line to get away. When we were back in the classroom, the teacher stood in front of the room directly beneath the banner. She was a slender, very white woman with sky blue eyes. Those eyes were red and wet just then. I became concerned. What could be the problem? I watched her as she blotted her nose with a lace handkerchief. She forced a smile. ‘‘The men at the Alamo were heroes true Texans,’’ she said in a soft voice. She was quiet for a while.

Mexican Americans, World War II, and the Aftermath

‘‘Did they all come from Texas?’’ asked Amad. ‘‘No, but they were real Texans that day,’’ the teacher whispered. I could tell emotion filled her chest. ‘‘The Mexicans did not fight fair,’’ Michael protested. ‘‘Don’t let that bother you, Michael,’’ the teacher reassured him. ‘‘As you will learn, later we beat them at San Jacinto.’’ ‘‘Yeah. And Texas is for Texans,’’ yelled a voice from the back of the classroom. I didn’t turn around to see who was speaking; I didn’t care. Even though I was born in Mexico, I had been a Texan since I was two years old. I am also a Mexican. Joe pushed me from behind and uttered a chant of mockery. My friend Jos
e across the aisle slugged him. He gestured to Joe with his fists to leave me alone. The teacher told us to open our textbooks to the section on the battle. She dreamily called out the names of the heroes in a tone like Padre Luna’s when he recited the saints’ names during mass. Her voice became low and harsh when she spat out the name of Santa Anna just the way Padre Luna’s did when he uttered Judas’ name during Lent. I looked down at the gum wrapper whose silver paper I was removing. I felt both angry and sad; I felt bad. All the Mexicans in the classroom were quiet. I wondered how they felt. The teacher held her head high and said in a musical voice, ‘‘Remember the Alamo!’’ Angry and confused, I put my head down so that no one could see me cry. But, I am getting ahead of my story. Houston School was located in the middle of the city. It was not in the Segundo Barrio, the Second Ward, the place I want to tell you about first. It wasn’t that far away really, but as you will see, it was for me. Source: Gloria L
opez-Stafford, A Place in El Paso: A Mexican-American Childhood (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996), pp. 3 5.

310. Excerpt from Beatrice Griffith, American Me, 1954 American Me describes the social life of Mexican Americans in the post World War II era, particularly those in Southern California. Beatrice Griffith was a social worker in the Mexican American community. In her book, American Me, Griffith interwove personal stories showing the shameful and ruthless exploitation of Mexican labor, flagrant injustice, and discrimination. The following is one of the stories from the book, which has long been out of print. The title, American Me, also was used by Mexican American actor and director Edward James Olmos in a 1992 film about prison life. The significance of American Me is to remind people that Mexican Americans are U.S. raised.

We go every July from Los Angeles to pick the fruits in the summer hills of Hanford. We lived in tents and would get up early in the grey morning when it was cold. Then we all ate outdoors over a little fire. Everybody getting up from their tents and talking and calling to each other and cooking the beans. Then we go to work and stand on our feet from seven in the morning until six at night. Gee, man, I would get so tired. You know, in the fruits you dream, sleep, walk, breathe, and talk apricots yellow and big and soft all around you. You pick ’em, you dump ’em, you squash ’em, you peel ’em, you cut ’em, you count ’em. Everything is apricots. How many you pick? How many you peel? How much buckets or trays? Always it is

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to eat and smell apricots. Cause apricots is pennies and sometimes they are silver dollars after you pick them a long time. Now we get lots more money in the fruits cause there is a war, and now can go to the carnival with rich money like the boss of the ranch. This day I tell you the boss came and paid the checks. Man, it was great. To all the working people and kids he paid them. My father and mother and me and my brother gots a hundred dollars for working three weeks, would you believe it? When I saw that check I told my mother she was fooling. The boss was just playing a game. But she said it was real money, and when I heard that I jumped up crazy I guess. I told her that check was a lot of school dresses. She said that in that check was a couch that made a bed at night for my father and brother who are tired to sleep on the little iron bed by the washing machine. And it was clothes for my brother and my father, and in it was a car. Would you believe it? A little broken car was in that check? And sure it was. Oh, I tell you, all was happy that night for getting money and lots clothes and food and stuff in that check. At this camp was my new boy friend, Mokey. He was clean and handsome, not too tall just right for me with a big smile and a handsome nose. He always looks like a movie actor in his Levis. And he walks with a swing real sure, like the Negro baseball player at school who never hurries, just reaches out and grabs the ball so slow he count the stitches on them. It was Mokey who helped Freddie and my cousin Ramon fix a good shower for us when we got to camp. They took some rubber hose and put it up high, then spread branches to spray from the water. Then they made it private with boards, and we had a shower. Sure, there was a little hole down by our legs and the boys used to look in and sing and yell. This night of getting paid was excitement, Jijola! All the kids call from the tents about going to the carnival near Fresno. My old aunt who remembers the little Jamaicas in Mexico, and who is with a young heart still, comes to our fire to talk over the war, and her boy who is a prisoner in Bataan, and the long fights and revolutions of the Mexicans, with my father. My aunt is a very beautiful woman with smooth brown skin and a proud face. She knows everything, all things in the heart of a girl. She had eight with five in the grave behind the adobe house on the hill. It is like all those dead girls were making her heart sweet with their wants of living in their dark graves. She brought my father a little bottle of her old, old wine this night, and he goes with her and my mother to sit by the fire, where others from the fields are sitting and eating under the trees in the night. My cousin Ramon from Hanford has a little truck that’s green and cute named Benito, that will take us to town. To get to this truck and Ramon, Mokey and me walk through the fields to the long dusty road. In the fields was sometimes little rabbits and birds, and there was always haystacks all bunched to jump on real quick and run. With Mokey, he loved those rabbits and sometimes would catch one and rub it soft on his face. Always it was like that. Sometimes he look at a little black fly, so careful how his wings is made, and his head put on by God. And he looks so long at the plants to see their little veins and how is a leaf put on that his sister tell him, ‘‘What you see in that plant, a picture of a pretty girl, a blondie maybe?’’ Then Mokey tell her to go lay an egg and a big one. Walking across the fields into the dark hills far away with Mokey was keen. He took my hand and said, ‘‘I wish Felix and Frankie could see this sky. Man, they knew this country, they worked this country.’’

Mexican Americans, World War II, and the Aftermath

‘‘Mokey, you know lots, what makes wars anyway? All my brothers too are gone to war and they weren’t mad at anybody except the cops.’’ I looked at him but he only shake his head. ‘‘Lucy, I don’t know. Sister at church says wars is from all the people’s sins. But my mother says it’s the big heads make ’em, and the little people slave ’em. I tell her, wars just don’t happen. It’s from the people bumping and pushing and getting mad at each other, I guess. Maybe they’re afraid.’’ He stopped and cut two sunflowers, then he stuck each one in my braids. ‘‘Now let’s run, I’ll race you to the truck,’’ and so we did. Inside the truck without much paint was lots [of] kids already. Everybody was happy and singing and calling to everybody, pushing and laughing. All the kids sit tight in the truck cause it goes to pieces lots of times and the sides all fall down. You always hit hard when you drive cause the tires go flat sometimes. Then Ramon and the boys stuff rags into the tires when they go flat so we ride lots of hitting together. Manuel, he’s my cousin they call Jitterbug S
anchez, cause he’s a good dancer, his picture is in the paper for the prize fight, well Manuel brings his good guitar to sing some ranchero songs and some songs for love. All sing ‘‘Soldados Rasos,’’ and are happy for smiling and yelling, cause all are happy for living, I guess. When we come onto the long highway that goes to Hanford this night I tell you about, two policemen in their white car stopped the truck because they see us Mexicans inside. But my cousin Ramon, who’s been to high school and who is smart knowing all about maps and what means a filibuster and the United States Congress, says to that cop, ‘‘This is a free country aint’ it? We can sing in this little truck if we want can’t we? The man who says Mexicans can’t sing for breaking the law in this truck doesn’t know his country.’’ So the cops, seeing my cousin was smart said, ‘‘Oh, wise guy, huh? Okay, let’s see your draft cards. All of you.’’ But only my cousin had a card from the draft, only he was eighteen. The cops look hard at his draft card and then tell us, ‘‘Okay, cholos, go on,’’ And so we go down the long bright highway into the streets of the town. Lots of people and kids were holding hands and walking down the streets. Little cars from the ranches and fruit camps passed us, some fast with only one light, some honking horns, but everybody was laughing and calling. Mokey waves his arms and says some dirty words to the car in back of us that gives us a big bump. The boys all pile out to look, then pile in again when they see it was nothing. Pretty soon we come to the carnival. You know it’s the place before you get there cause the music comes right through the trees and houses and into our truck. And you can see high up in the pink sky the Ferris wheel going swing around the stars. And the voice of the ticket man you can hear a little, just like the radio from the boss’s house in the night on the ranch. Only sometimes you cannot hear it with the crickets, like it went around the posts and cars and barns to get to us who were listening. At the carnival everything was excitement, and all the kids pile out. First thing I see is my cousin Danny. My cousin Danny, I tell you, was fun like Cantinflas in the Mexican movies. The flying baskets with skirts and legs swinging in the sky stopped, and Mokey and me got in a gold basket. Adelita and Manuel sit in a red one, and soon the music begin and we are whizzing in the sky with all the stars falling around and down down to the ground. Then we jerked up high almost to a pink cloud, and

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Mokey held me tight, with the air whirring around us like a dive bomber. There was little screams coming from around like they was whistles that got stuck, but it was only the girls liking the hugging I think. When we got out from the gold basket Mokey and me was still hugging like in the movies. All the peoples and tents and music and little screams was going around dancing in my head like a jitterbug. Up the streets some kids was riding on the merry-go-round and yelling and laughing to catch the gold ring from the horses and lions. Mokey and me watched Felix showing how strong he was from working and getting hard muscles in the hay fields that summer. He hit the wood block bang with the big hammer, and hit it so hard the little bell at the top in the dark would ring. The other guys was laughing and making fun of him showing off big for Theresa, him that didn’t know she was going steady with two marines. The tin woman in the next show was laughing too, but always she is laughing. Whenever you walk or ride in that carnival, or down the near streets, you hear her big laugh, in the night or day, you always hear it. Across the carnival street, behind the wire fence, was the place where the little green and yellow and red automobiles go bump and crash around the big floor with music and fun. In one of the automobiles was an old man with red hair waving his arms and bumping the other autos like a borrachito. He had a white duck he won in the carnival and waved that duck over his head like a flag I think. Pretty soon down the carnival street come all the kids singing and laughing and shouting. All their arms was around each other like a chain. In the middle was Danny with his arms full of Kewpie dolls. Danny was always like the miracle man in the circus. Always he could go to a carnival with nothing but poor money, some pennies and nickels, and come home with hams and ducks and alarm clocks and Kewpies. Only never before tonight was there so many Kewpies. He gave a Kewpie to Mokey for some tickets to ride the little automobiles. Then he yelled us, ‘‘Come on, let’s have a race!’’ We all piled in the cars, red, green, yellow all the cars that was empty gets full. Danny put all his Kewpie dolls around him and piled some more in the other cars. Then the race began. Que suave! Man it was swell. My heart was pumping up and down like some jumping beans. I got scared bumping so many cars and my heart went black and my ears go clank … clank, but it was fun. Danny banged my car, Mokey hit him, then Manuel and Adelita and Ramon and Rosie all was banging cars and yelling. Everybody got bumped, nobody got hurt and the music was loud like in the circus. The American kid bumped Mokey and laughed, and Mokey bumped him back. Then they was bumping, laughing and pushing, each car a little faster and a little harder. Pretty soon then the American guy looked away, and Mokey gave him a hard bump. Then they was getting mad for reals. The American kid called him, ‘‘Dirty Mexican, I’ll fix you!’’ Mokey tell him, ‘‘Who do you think you are, calling me dirty Mexican?’’ The guy banged him hard and say, ‘‘Well, I’m me, American me. That’s who I am!’’ So Mokey banged him hard on the head with a pink Kewpie and yell him, ‘‘Yeah? Well I’m American me too. American inside, but Mexican on top!’’ Danny throws a Kewpie to Mokey who jumps high in his car to catch it. Then all the kids begin to make trouble for purpose, all bunching and popping out of the

Mexican Americans, World War II, and the Aftermath

cars to fight and hit. Danny throws us all his Kewpies, and the fight was on hard. The Kewpies was going over the cars hitting kids, busting on the floor with broken pieces getting smashed and run over. Everybody was mad with anger falling down and busting like a bomb in that place. The Kewpies was going zoom like big bullets. The cars was driving hard and spinning and bumping. Adelita’s car she whirled in a circle, round and round. The air was thick and hot with kids. Some stand up in their cars the better to hit. The cars all jammed up in bunches. Everybody was all mixed up and tangled, hitting hard, zam the next one to him. The manager or somebody cut off the electricity. Ramon yells, ‘‘Cops coming!’’ Then it was a fight to get out that door with everybody running and tripping and getting socked. The American kids beat it out first, running through all the carnival people to where their cars was parked. We got in our truck, but before Ramon got the engine started everything was all mixed up again, with the American kids and us all yelling and hitting and pulling hair and getting socked. But we finally got going and drove bumping down the street by the popcorn man and the carnival people. Some of those kids was hanging on the truck but we banged their hands and they let go. Ramon drove fast going down that big road in our truck. Danny turned off the lights so the cops wouldn’t see our truck and we rode into the very night across the fields to the highway. Like Danny, Mokey’s hands was bloody and his clothes was torn, and his breath was breathing hard but he put his arms tight around me in that little ride. It was quiet in the dark with the trees and fields and hills. Only could we hear the kids whispering and the car going fast like the wind, and the loud crazy laughing of the tin woman at the carnival following us down the road into the mist to our tents across the black fields. Soon we would be in bed in our tents by the camp in the fruits, and I would put my head from under the tent and Mokey put his from his tent in the dark and stars, and we would talk and talk so long, our heads by the dark ground. All swell, until our mothers say, ‘‘Quit your talking and long gossip.’’ And then we would go to sleep in the warm tent for morning to wake us to move on to pick the prunes. But now, this little minute, I was sitting tight close to Mokey. I ask him, ‘‘Mokey, knowing about pushing and bumping and hating and all that, doesn’t keep people from getting mad, huh?’’ Mokey hugs me tighter. Then he kissed me soft soft, the first kiss. For Mokey knows that to be a gentleman means always please the lady for what she wants. Source: Beatrice Griffith, American Me (New York: Pennant Books, 1954); Antonia Castaneda Shular, Tomas Ybarra-Frausto, Joseph Sommers, eds., Literatura Chicana (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: 1972), pp. 250 255.

311. Excerpts from Herna
ndez v. Texas, 1954 Hernandez v. Texas (1954) is a cornerstone civil rights case. Pete Hern
andez, a Mexican agricultural worker, was convicted of the murder of Joe Espin
oza in Jackson County, Texas. Hern
andez’s attorney motioned to quash the indictment based on the fact that there had not been a Mexican American on a jury

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ndez could not get an impartial trial. in Jackson County for 25 years thus Herna The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled against Hern
andez, holding that Mexicans were white, thus not a special class. The court rejected the argument that Mexican Americans were a ‘‘special class’’ who came under the protection of the Fourteenth Amendment. The defendant’s attorneys took the case to the U.S. Supreme Court. The brilliant Gus C. Garc
ıa (1915–1964) was among the team of attorneys who represented Hern
andez. Garc
ıa argued that the Fourteenth Amendment guaranteed protection not only on the basis of race, Caucasian and Negro, but also class. The administrators of the process of jury selection in Jackson County had introduced discrimination because of exclusion based on class. Texas responded that the Fourteenth Amendment covered only whites and blacks, and that Mexican Americans are white. The Supreme Court held that the protection of the Fourteenth Amendment went beyond the racial classes such as white or Negro. It struck down the two-class theory and extended protection to Mexican Americans who were a definable community. The following is the summary of the case and its finding.

Summary: Defendant, a person of Mexican descent, sought reversal of his murder conviction on the ground that he had been denied equal protection of the laws in that persons of similar ancestry had been systematically excluded from service as jury commissioners, grand jurors, and petit jurors, in the county in which he was convicted, although there were such persons in the county fully qualified to serve. The state court affirmed the conviction, ruling that the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment contemplated only two classes, Negro and white. Warren, Ch. J. [Chief Justice], speaking for a unanimous Court, reversed the conviction, holding, first, that the state court had erred in limiting the protective scope of the equal protection clause to the white and Negro classes; second, that defendant had established that persons of Mexican descent were a distinct class in the county in which he was convicted; and, third, that evidence that persons of such descent had never been selected for jury service, notwithstanding the presence of a substantial number of those persons in the county, many of whom were qualified, was sufficient to show a violation of the equal protection clause. A person of Mexican descent who seeks a reversal of his conviction of crime in a state court on the ground that persons of similar ancestry had been purposefully discriminated against in the selection of jury commissioners and of grand and petit jurors in the county in which he was convicted has the burden of proving that persons of Mexican descent constitute a separate class in that county, distinct from ‘‘whites.’’ That persons of Mexican descent constitute a separate class, distinct from whites, in a particular county, and are, consequently, entitled to the aid of the courts in securing equal treatment under the laws, is sufficiently shown by evidence that in such county persons of Mexican descent rarely participate in business and community groups; that, for many years, children of Mexican descent were required to attend a segregated school for the first four grades; that at least one local restaurant prominently displayed a sign announcing ‘‘No Mexicans Served;’’ and that on the courthouse grounds there were two men’s toilets, one unmarked, and the other marked ‘‘Colored Men’’ and ‘‘Hombres Aqui.’’

Mexican Americans, World War II, and the Aftermath

The petitioner established that 14% of the population of Jackson County were persons with Mexican or Latin-American surnames, and that 11% of the males over 21 bore such names. The County Tax Assessor testified that 6 or 7 percent of the freeholders on the tax rolls of the County were persons of Mexican descent. The State of Texas stipulated that ‘‘for the last twenty-five years there is no record of any person with a Mexican or Latin American name having served on a jury commission, grand jury or petit jury in Jackson County’’.… The parties also stipulated that ‘‘there are some male persons of Mexican or Latin American descent in Jackson County who, by virtue of being citizens, householders, or freeholders, and having all other legal prerequisites to jury service, are eligible to serve as members of a jury commission, grand jury and/or petit jury.’’ Source: Hernandez v. Texas, No. 406, Supreme Court of the United States, 347 U.S. 475; 74 S. Ct. 667; 98 L. Ed. 866; 1954 U.S. Lexis 2128.

312. Catherine Lavender, ‘‘Salt of the Earth (1953),’’ 1998 Salt of the Earth (1953) was a movie made at the height of the McCarthy witch-hunt era; it was the only U.S. made film to be blacklisted in the United States. Filmed by blacklisted filmmakers, director Herbert J. Biberman and writer Michael Wilson, it is based on a 1950 strike by zinc miners in Silver City, New Mexico. It is about social injustice. Characters such as Ram
on and Esperanza Quintero, a Mexican American miner and his wife, grow as a consequence of struggle. When an injunction against the male strikers comes down preventing them from picketing, the women take over the picket line, leaving the men to housekeeping duties. It has a strong treatment of the gender question. The following article places the strike in a historical context.

THIS IS THE REAL LIFE STORY OF NEW MEXICAN MINERS Films entertain but they also contain a message for viewers. Sometimes that message is explicitly stated, and at other times it is given through metaphor and allegory. These messages are a product of the time in which the film is made and are central to the meaning of the film. Films, then, can be read on the level of the story being told (the narrative of events) or on the level of the message being conveyed. The filmmaker hopes that the audience will react to the film and will leave with something to think about. In order to examine the narrative and the internal message of Salt of the Earth, it is necessary to understand the Cold War context in which the film was made and seen by its original audience. One of the greatest changes facing Americans after the end of World War II was the nation’s unprecedented position as a leader in world affairs. Many hoped that America’s new industrial and military might would be used to build a better, more secure post-war world. The Soviet Union also emerged from the war as a world leader, and one which, although it had been allied with the United States during the war, many U.S. leaders viewed with suspicion. Many Americans believed that Russian Communists were dedicated to the overthrow of capitalism and democracy and were intent on world domination. The Soviet Union, a nation twice invaded by the West in the twentieth century, also viewed the United States with suspicion, believing that it posed an ongoing threat

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to its security. To counter further invasion, it sought to dominate bordering nations in Eastern Europe and to build its military might. Both nations engaged in acts that collectively raised tensions, generating a ‘‘cold war’’ between them. Americans responded with rising concern to each Communist ‘‘victory’’ the extension of Soviet governance over Eastern Europe, captured spies, the development of a Soviet atomic bomb, the successful 1949 Chinese Communist revolution. The House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) charged that Communist agents and spies were actively subverting American life, the American economy, and government. Most states, and many public and private institutions such as colleges and universities, joined the federal government in requiring loyalty oaths and establishing loyalty review boards. Many of these abrogated the constitutional rights of those under suspicion. Among the industries most affected by the hysteria was the film industry. By 1947, HUAC had charged ten screenwriters Communists, former Communists, and liberals who came to be known as the ‘‘Hollywood Ten,’’ with contempt of Congress for the refusal to name prominent Communists in Hollywood. Hollywood moved to remove the ‘‘blemish’’ of communism from its reputation; in late 1947, fifty motion picture executives devised a ‘‘black list’’ of suspicious people who would be prevented from taking jobs in the industry. No studio would hire a blacklisted writer, actor or actress, director, or producer. Unable to find jobs, a number of blacklisted film artists formed their own production company in 1951. They were looking for good stories when told about a strike by Local 890 of the Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers Union against the New Jersey Zinc Company in Bayard, New Mexico. The local was composed largely of Spanish and Mexican Americans. The Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers Union had been expelled from the CIO in 1950 for alleged Communist influence. The movie was to be the story of the miners fighting against a giant company, of Chicanos and Anglos, and of miners and their families. The miners were to play themselves, and it was to be filmed on site. The crew was made up of blacklisted technicians, and only two professional actors would appear in the film: blacklisted Will Geer (the Sheriff, and who later went on to play the Grandpa on The Waltons on television), and Mexican actress Rosuara Revueltas (Esperanza). The final result, The Salt of the Earth, was a controversial film. Not only was the film about striking miners, whom the general public viewed to be either Communists or communist influenced, but the story focused on a Chicano community at a time when attitudes about Chicanos were changing. Throughout the Great Depression, official attitudes toward Mexican immigration and trans-border migration had grown increasingly hostile, as Anglos clamored in the depressed economy to take jobs that had traditionally belonged to Mexican immigrants. Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, the movement towards closing the porous border at the Rio Grande had culminated in ‘‘Operation Wetback’’ in 1953, a government program designed to find and deport illegal Mexican aliens. These tensions were made more complex by the fact that many ‘‘Mexican American immigrants’’ had, in fact, been on their lands longer than those lands had been a part of the United States, becoming U.S. citizens by virtue of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo that ended the Mexican American War in 1848. Source: Catherine J. Lavender on ‘‘Salt of the Earth’’ (1953), The College of Staten Island of the City University of New York. http://www.library.csi.cuny.edu/dept/history/lavender/salt.html.

Mexican Americans, World War II, and the Aftermath

313. Excerpts from Lyle Saunders and Olen E. Leonard, The Wetback in the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas, 1951 By the 1950s, Americans had whipped themselves into a frenzy, crying that they had lost control of their borders, and calling for massive deportation of Mexicans. Operation Wetback (1953–1955) began in California and Arizona and coordinated 1,075 Border Patrol agents along with state and local police agencies. It was headed by the commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, Gen. Joseph May Swing, an Eisenhower appointee, and a crony of Ike from his army days who promised to get tough on the ‘‘wetbacks.’’ In 1953, Attorney General Herbert Brownell, who was charged with protecting civil rights, suggested that shooting a couple of ‘‘wetbacks’’ would dissuade them from coming across the U.S. border. Between 1953 to 1955, over 1 million Mexican Americans a year were deported and many more were frightened into leaving. Mexican Americans denounced it as a reign of terror. The following excerpt is from Lyle Saunders and Olen E. Leonard’s study of undocumented workers in the Rio Grande River a couple of years before the operation, and documents the building hysteria and varying points of view of the undocumented.

Once he has crossed the river, the wetback faces an uncertain future. What will happen to him is largely dependent on the kind of people he comes in contact with and what their attitudes toward him are. If he is very lucky, he will meet an employer who will hire him at wages much higher than he could earn in Mexico. He will work for a few months, regularly sending a share of his earnings to relatives or friends on the other side. And, in time, he will return to his own country, where he may live for six or eight months on his accumulated savings. If he is very unlucky, he will be apprehended almost immediately by U.S. Border Patrol Inspectors and taken to one of their detention stations in the Valley. There, he will be detained for a day, questioned, written up on official forms, and finally sent to Edinburg, where he will remain in the county jail until the next session of the District Court in Brownsville. There, if his bad luck holds, he may be sentenced to from sixty days to a year in a federal prison. If, on the other hand, his luck is average, he will work a little while, earn a little money, enter into limited relationships with local citizens, and ultimately be permitted to return voluntarily to Mexico, neither much better nor much worse off for his experiences. There are, in broad terms, four categories of people with whom the wetback is likely to come in contact. They are: employers, native Spanish-speaking people, Anglos in general, and public officials. That is to say that the kind of relationships established with anyone on this side of the river and the kind of treatment received by the wetback from any individual or group on this side will be determined largely by two sets of factors; the ethnic affiliation of the person or group with whom he interacts (i.e., whether they are ‘‘white’’ or ‘‘Mexican’’) and the nature of the relationships entered into (e.g., employer employee, immigration official alien; landlord renter; storekeeper customer, etc.). These four broad categories are not mutually exclusive, nor are they the only possible ones which might be used in describing the roles and attitudes and practices affecting the Spanish-speaking population of the Valley, both wetback and citizen. It enables the rationalization of the raw, sometimes vicious, sometimes paternal exploitation of wetback labor with the

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statement that ‘‘they never had it so good in Mexico’’; it justifies the hiring of aliens in preference to citizens with the explanation that local citizens won’t do agricultural work. It minimizes the often difficult position of the wetback by calling attention to great opportunities he enjoys there that presumably are not available to him in Mexico. It justifies the $2.00 and $2.50 a day wetbacks are paid in the Valley by comparing them to the five or ten pesos they might earn daily at home. It lends credence to the feeling that ‘‘A Mexican who has become Americanized is ruined’’ meaning that he then wants adequate wages, decent working conditions, and other privileges enjoyed by American citizens. It provides a reason for residential, recreational, and other types of segregation, and at the same time allows the admission to the select society of the ‘‘whites’’ of a few Spanish-speaking citizens whose membership in old families, business skills, economic standing, or ability to compete successfully are such as to make it difficult to group them with the wetback or ‘‘the lower class Meskins [pejorative distortion].’’ The complete story of the development of Valley attitudes toward the wetback and the association of those attitudes with the native Spanish-speaking population would be long and difficult. Something of their general nature, however, can be depicted in an account of three fairly typical interviews on the matter in the Valley. The first was with a Valley politician, a current member of the Texas legislature. His statement was as follows: The local situation is not so bad. It works out to just about the best advantage of everyone. The farmers need labor; the wetbacks need work; and the local Spanish-speaking people have a gypsy spirit which makes them want to travel. They just can’t resist going north each year, and it is fortunate that there are wetbacks around to take their place. Then, too, the local Spanishspeaking people are tending to leave agriculture. They don’t like the hard work. They are beginning to want to get white-collar jobs. A few of them are going to school where they are being trained for non-agricultural work. So again, it is a good thing there are wetbacks around.

Relations in the Valley between English-speaking and Spanish-speaking people are good. The people eat together and visit together. They don’t intermarry much. Although there is no discrimination in the Valley, of course there is segregation in a few things, but that is for hygienic, not racial reasons. Spanish-speaking people live in their own part of town and have their own businesses. They prefer it that way. They are excluded from swimming pools and barber shops. The exclusion from pools is because it is not possible to tell the clean ones from the dirty, so we just keep them all out. We just can’t have all those dirty, possibly diseased people swimming with our wives and children. Recently a group of Mexicans here working on food-handling jobs were found to be suffering from syphilis. One had a leg that was just a mass of sores. Mexicans are excluded from barber shops because of the fact that some of them have lice in their hair or scalp diseases. Another resident whose attitudes reveal other aspects of the local stereotype of the Spanish-speaking group is quoted at length below. He is an employee of the Texas Employment Commission and has a Master’s degree awarded on the basis of a thesis written on education in Mexico. This academic work and the fact that he had lived for 35 years in the Valley gave him, he thought, deep insight into the ‘‘nature’’ of the local people. The Mexicans are creatures of impulse. They don’t think with the cold, hard-headed logic of Anglos, but always act hastily in accordance with emotions and without considering consequences. Mentally they are all children. Oh, there are a few exceptions, of course, but I am

Mexican Americans, World War II, and the Aftermath talking about the lower class Mexicans. They have behind them five hundred years of burden bearing and animal-like living and just can’t adjust to civilization in the way a white man does. They are extremely lazy and won’t work, even for 50 or 60 cents an hour. The City of Edinburg has to hire wetbacks because it can’t get citizens who will work steadily on the job. All the governmental agencies have to hire them (wetbacks) if they want to get any work done. Good Mexicans, however, are the best people in the world. They are hard working, docile, and very loyal. One of them will do anything for you. But the majority aren’t worth much. Mexican children don’t get any training and they are allowed to do just about what they please. I’ve seen them in public places, doctors’ offices, bus stations, and the like, where I wanted to get up and smack them one kicking their parents, yelling, tearing things up, and the parents sitting calmly letting them do it. By the time they are twelve they all carry knives. They’ll cut up anybody. They’re just creatures of impulse. Human life doesn’t mean a thing to them. Of course they’re all cowards. Even a Mexican’s dog won’t attack a white man. By the time they’re grown up something happens to them. They develop a strong loyalty to their family. If a man has six or seven kids working, he takes their pay arid sits in the shade all day claiming he is ‘seek.’ That’s what a Mexican lives for to get a bunch of kids that he can put to work so that when they are ten or twelve he can retire. A grown man, even if he’s married, has to ask his father’s permission to do anything. And anyone of them is likely to quit a good job at any time just to come back and be with his family. They have no sense of responsibility. I (Texas Employment Commission) got twelve Edinburg boys jobs in a Boeing plant in California during the war. None of them had ever made $10 a week in his life before, and at Boeing they were paid $300 a month. But in a couple of months they were all back. Just because their mother got a cold or somebody in the family died they quit a good job and came running home. The working class of Mexicans are all dirty. And they have a smell, a peculiar Mexican smell. Sometimes I have to back away from this counter they smell so bad. It hurts my nose if I stay close. It is a different smell from that of dirty Anglos or Negroes. It’s a sort of sour, acid smell. A Negro, now, smells like a goat, but the Mexicans smell even worse. About 80% of them have lice in their hair, the women especially. They believe that lice help them have babies, and the one thing a Mexican woman lives for is to please her husband by presenting him with a baby every ten or eleven months. One of the main forms of recreation of Mexican women, especially those who live on farms or in small towns where there isn’t much to do, is to sit around picking lice out of each other’s hair. Sometimes when a Mexican woman is brought into the hospital at Edinburg, her friends or relatives smuggle in some lice to replace those the nurses take out of her hair when they clean her up. Mexicans don’t want to learn English and don’t want their kids to know it. They keep the kids in school until they reach the third grade and then yank them out and put them to work. If a family has enough of them working, the father can retire and take things easy. They ought to be forced to learn English. We ought to have a law saying no one could work unless he learned English. Of course, those that do know English aren’t much better off. They don’t get any better jobs than the others. Around here Mexicans get paid about 20% lower than whites for the same kind of work. They just have no sense of responsibility and can’t do good work. They have to be supervised all the time. Housemaids get $10 $12 a week for about 48 hours. Some women pay less. And they have to watch the Mexicans all the time to see that the work is done right. Good Anglo secretaries get about $150 $250 a month; the average is around $167. Good Mexican secretaries, even those who have the advantage of being bilingual, get $100 $150. The difference lies in the fact that the Mexican girls just aren’t capable of holding the better jobs.

A third illustration of the attitude of Valley Anglos toward ‘‘Mexicans’’ (whether alien or citizen) is a report of a conversation with a Valley farmer, a man who has owned a large acreage located west of Mission. Our research group had been his guests at dinner and afterwards we were discussing the perennial topic of conversation in the Valley the wetbacks. Our host began:

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Voices of the U.S. Latino Experience The wetback comes into the Valley because the local people won’t work. They’re all inherently lazy and they just can’t be persuaded to work, especially in agriculture. They lack initiative and ambition; they are content to go north and earn some money during the summer and then return here and live on it the rest of the year. They’ve been spoiled by too many advantages; too many welfare, educational, and other services. If you give a man something for nothing, you ruin him. And the local Mexicans know they can get services whether they work or not. As soon as you begin to Americanize a Mexican he’s no longer any good. He just won’t work any more.

Why is it, we asked, that all the people we see doing hard work in the Valley are Mexicans? That’s town work, he said, yard work, filling station work, construction work, and stuff like that. But hard work, we asked, it is hard work, isn’t it? Yes, but for that they get six or eight dollars a day. Would they work in agriculture for six or eight dollars a day? They might. What would they work for in agriculture? I don’t think they’d work at any wage. Would they work for, say, $15 a day? Yes. Ten dollars a day? Yes. Eight dollars a day? Yes, they would. Five dollars a day? No. Then they would work if the wages were from five to eight dollars a day? No, they won’t work in agriculture. We had a few working on our farm. They wouldn’t do an honest day’s work. When we leased the farm, the man we leased to had to let them go and get wetbacks. Wetbacks are good workers. We get a lot of them. Some of them have been with us for years. There are a couple of places on our farm where they cross over. They come by the hundreds. They’ve worn a sort of road up from the river. They come in a pitiful condition, with nothing, and we give them work at good wages, much better than they’d get in Mexico. I’ve got four boys working on my farm who have been with me for five years. Their home is about forty miles across the border and they go back every once in a while. But they always return. They’re clearing a bit of land for themselves there. They’re hardworking boys. And very dependable. One time their father came over. He told me that if his boys didn’t do what they were told, just to let him know. We’ve got some other families on the farm that have been there a long time. Source: Lyle Saunders and Olen E. Leonard, The Wetback in the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas (Austin: University of Texas, 1951), pp. 65 69.

314. Excerpts from Patricio Morgan, Shame of a Nation: A Documented Story of Police-State Terror against Mexican-Americans in the U.S.A., 1954 The McCarran-Walter Act (1952), required all members of the American Communist Party, among other groups, to register with the attorney general. Passed in the McCarthy-era of repression when Democratic Sen. Pat McCarran (1876–1954) from Nevada led the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee. In 1950, he sponsored the McCarran Internal Security Act. Association with groups that had been placed on a list of subversive organizations by the U.S. attorney general warranted placing the foreign born under suspicion and surveillance. In 1952, McCarran joined Democratic Pennsylvania Congressman

Mexican Americans, World War II, and the Aftermath

Francis Walter to offer amendments to immigration laws. While the bill ended blanket exclusion of immigrants based on race, it was insidious in other respects. Strict quotas were placed on immigrants from ‘‘undesirable’’ regions such as Asia. Leftists were made special targets and anyone with progressive ideas could be denied entry to the United States. Those already here were subject to summary deportation. Leftists, or those determined to have radical ideas, and who were naturalized citizens, could be denaturalized and deported. President Harry S. Truman vetoed the McCarran-Walter Act but it was passed over President Truman’s veto. This excerpt from Patricio Morgan’s A Documented Story of Police-State Terror Against Mexican-Americans in the U.S.A. documents the campaign against Mexican Americans. Deportation proceedings were brought against labor activists, many of whom were Mexican Americans. Pressure was brought on them to inform on friends who were suspected of being leftist and even widows were pressured to inform the Federal Bureau of Investigation of dead husbands’ associates. The following excerpts provide narratives of a sampling of cases.

These are the men, and women, the children who are exploited and mistreated by profit-greedy employers, who are haunted and hunted by U.S. authorities armed with the club of deportation, now reinforced by the onerous McCarran and WalterMcCarran Laws. These laws have abolished the statute of limitations and create retroactive grounds for deportation, though the U.S. Constitution prohibits the making of such ex-post-facto laws. These laws themselves legalize many of the practices used illegally for many years past against Mexican Americans by the Justice Department and its Immigration and Naturalization Service. U.S. immigration officials, however, continue to disregard the few protections still maintained under the present laws, in their deportation moves against people of Mexican citizenship. The Los Angeles Committee for Protection of Foreign Born, drafting a bill to remove these inequities, points out the special legislation is necessary to prohibit the lawless behavior, the terror, the police-state raids of U.S. immigration authorities against Mexican workers and their families. Mrs. Josefina Yanez, executive secretary of the Committee’s Eastside Branch, declared recently: ‘‘The role of the immigration authorities their dragnet operations wherein they swoop down upon fields, factories and entire communities is so well-known and feared in any Mexican community that the word[s] ‘Los Federales’ (the Federals) strikes terror not alone to the noncitizen but to Mexican American citizens of the first, second, and third generations.’’ Among the Mexican-born Americans now being defended against the McCarran Act deportation by the Los Angeles Committee [for Protection of Foreign Born], seven have been in this country for well over 40 years; three have lived in the United States for more than 30 years; three others have lived here over 20 years. Seventeen have U.S.-born families, including sons, daughters, and grandchildren in every branch of the U.S. Armed Forces. Twenty-two of them are trade unionists, members of the CIO Steelworkers Union, the AFL Laborers Union, CIO Packinghouse Workers Union, Independent

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International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union, CIO Steelworkers Union, Railroad Brotherhood Unions, and others. Steelworker, machine operator, packinghouse worker, tool grinder, railroad worker, furniture worker, sheet metal worker, moulder, shoe worker, laborer, fruit picker, fruit packer, agricultural worker: the roster of Los Angeles’ Mexican-born deportees is adequate proof that the Walter-McCarran Law is aimed straight at the heart of American labor. With this law, under pretext of hunting ‘‘illegals’’ and ‘‘subversives,’’ immigration service officers serve as a terroristic police force in Mexican communities, as a strike-breaking, union-busting force in the fields, shops, and factories. It is not easy, under the ever-changing U.S. immigration laws, to prove U.S. citizenship or legal permanent residence status. Not everyone has proof at hand, of his place of birth, or evidence of legal entry. Furthermore, against those who have such evidence there still remains the charge, under the McCarran and Walter-McCarran Laws, of former membership in the Communist Party, the Workers Alliance and its Unemployed Councils of the early Depression ’30s. Proof of these ugly facts is shown in four typical case histories of Los Angeles’ Mexican-born deportees: Justo Cruz, 66, is a skilled machine operator in a Santa Ana County woolen mill. He came to the United States with his family as a young man of 19 years. His father and mother died here. His two children were born here. Justo Cruz helped build the railroads of this country; he worked in the fields and orchards, tilling and harvesting the million-dollar crops of the big U.S. growers. In the 1933 Depression, when agricultural workers if they found work at all were paid as low as eight cents an hour, 75 cents for a sunrise to sundown day, Justo Cruz, with thousands of other impoverished workers, joined the Workers’ Alliance. Together with members of the Alliance’s Unemployed Councils, Justo Cruz fought for relief for the jobless, against arrests and evictions, for the social security and unemployment insurance that is taken for granted by every U.S. worker today. The Workers’ Alliance (a product of the Depression ’30s, no longer existent today) and other organizations which fought for jobs and to get living wages and working conditions; to end discrimination against minorities, including Mexican citizens and noncitizens, now have been declared ‘‘subversive’’ by the U.S. Attorney General. Membership, when Cruz and other workers joined the Alliance in the early ’30s, was perfectly legal. Today, retroactively under the Walter-McCarran Law, it is a ‘‘crime,’’ punishable by deportation if a noncitizen or a naturalized citizen; by fine and prison sentences if a U.S.-born citizen. Acting under the Walter-McCarran Law and its predecessor, the McCarran Act, U.S. immigration officers first went to Cruz’ employer and tried to get him fired from his job. His employer replied: ‘‘If business gets so bad that I have only two men working in the mill, one of them will be me. The other will be Justo Cruz.’’ Failing in this, the immigration department authorities arrested Cruz. He was taken to Terminal Island, the immigration department’s Los Angeles detention center. There he was kept on $5,000 bail. But Justo Cruz, and three others from Orange County arrested at the same time, had learned how to fight in those Depression years. As a member of the Orange

Mexican Americans, World War II, and the Aftermath

County Community Chest in Santa Ana, as a member of the Mexican Festival Association and the Funeral Benefit Society in the Santa Ana Mexican community, Cruz had become known throughout California as a leader. He fought against segregation of Mexican children in the Orange County schools. When his townsmen learned of his arrest, they rallied to free him. Together with the Los Angeles Committee for Protection of Foreign Born they managed to raise the staggering sum of $16,000 bail for Cruz and the other three victims. The Committee’s panel of lawyers fought through the hearings wherein the same U.S. Immigration Service whose officers had harassed, arrested, and imprisoned him now served as prosecutor, judge, and jury. These officials scorned the facts of Cruz’ long and honorable residence (45 years) in this country; his contributions to the U.S. as a hard working laborer and skilled workman. They ignored the hardship which Cruz’ deportation would cause his two motherless U.S.-born children, both tubercular and depending for their very lives on their father’s earnings and care. Justo Cruz, on December 18, 1952, was ordered deported to Mexico. Delegations of trade unionists, nationality groups, and community leaders voiced protests and attorneys went to the U.S. Bureau of Immigration Appeals, fighting to win a stay of deportation. Though again ordered to surrender for deportation on January 28, 1953, Justo Cruz is still here. Application for suspension of the deportation order now rests with Attorney General Herbert Brownell who has authority under the hardship clause of the Walter-McCarran Law to grant Cruz a permanent stay. Hear now the story of Maria Cruz, widow of Jesus Cruz who was deported last year only to die in Mexico. Mrs. Cruz, now 51, was brought with her mother and older sister to the U.S. by her father at the age of five and has lived here continuously. She is the mother of two children already made fatherless through deportation and death. A son, Joseph, is one of our nation’s heroes, who won the much-prized Oak Leaf Cluster as a U.S. Air Force gunner who distinguished himself in many hazardous missions over Germany in the thick of the fighting of World War II. Her second son, Carlos, 14, is in junior high school. Both are U.S.-born citizens. Maria Cruz has broken no laws. She entered this country legally, paid the small crossing fee, and was registered with her mother and sister as required. When the Walter-McCarran Act became law, she registered as demanded and, again meticulously obeying U.S. law, always carried her registration card with her. When her registration card was stolen by a purse snatcher, as a law-abiding, legal resident, she reported it to the police and to immigration authorities. When she asked for a substitute card, she was seized by the U.S. immigration authorities. ‘‘Just a couple of questions, so that you can get your registration card back,’’ they falsely told her. Instead they questioned her, harassing her for three solid hours while exhibiting her dead husband’s picture. The questioning summed up to demands that she act as a stool pigeon against her own husband and against his friends and associates. Four months later, Federal agents came to her home and arrested her. Only her well-decorated son’s angry protests stopped a matron from the immigration office from inflicting further insults by searching her for ‘‘weapons and narcotics.’’

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Maria Cruz, honorable, respected, legal and law abiding resident of the United States for the past 46 years, was held in Terminal Island on trumped up charges, including ‘‘illegal entry’’ and a newly thought-up charge since her original questioning ‘‘membership in the Communist Party.’’ This latter charge, it appeared from the questioning, was based on the fact that she had once belonged to the CIO Cannery Workers Union and had been active in that union in the early days of CIO organization in California. While at Terminal Island, Mrs. Cruz whose soft, dark eyes spark with anger at indignities against others, talked with penniless young Mexican women, who had come to seek jobs in this country and were being held for $500 bail by immigration authorities. They told her of the rude, pawing hands of immigration officers in the corral at San Ysidro, hands which had insultingly ‘‘covered our whole bodies while the officers called us ugly, dirty names.’’ No matron was on duty, they declared, at the border detention center. She also talked to a Canadian woman, married to a U.S. citizen and who had lived here for 26 years. Her son is now serving in the U.S. Navy. Yet this woman, too, was held for deportation under terms of the Walter-McCarran Law. Should Maria Cruz be deported, her U.S.-born sons would be orphaned, with the same alternative exile from their land, the United States, the country that one brave son has heroically fought for. Agapito Gomez, now 46, has lived in this country since he was 21. He worked for the Santa Fe and Southern Pacific Railroads as a section hand for the sum of 31=2 cents per day, living in the miserable boxcar quarters that the multi-million dollar companies think good enough for thousands of Mexican workers that labor on their right-of-ways. Later, he worked at grueling, back-breaking labor, picking celery, cabbage, and cauliflower on the fertile truck farms around Downey, Norwalk, Montebello, and Gardena. His pay was 10 cents an hour, $7.50 weekly. Agapito Gomez believed he belonged here. He had a permit card showing permanent residence and the right to stay. His wife, Sophia, is U.S.-born, his two children, Georgia and Albert, were born here. It was not easy to save on the $35 per week he made as a farm laborer in the costly war years of the early ’40s. But Sophia and Agapito saved and stinted and finally bought a little house. Later, by dint of more hard pinching, they bought another with a big yard for the children. When, during World War II, the United States needed manpower and industry opened its doors to minority labor, Gomez went into a steel foundry. He became a crane helper and joined the union, the United Steelworkers of America, CIO. Then came the McCarran Act. The witch hunt began. Honored families of the Southwest; permanent, legal residents; parents of U.S. native-born children were pilloried because they had once belonged to a relief organization or had joined in early efforts of the CIO to organize workers in field and factory. Gomez was one of these. On December 17, 1951, two immigration service agents came to Agapito Gomez’ Norwalk home. They wanted names: names of his fellowunionists, names of organizations, and accounts of his past activities. When Agapito Gomez refused to become an informer, they took away his prized permit card.

Mexican Americans, World War II, and the Aftermath

These men, sworn to uphold the Constitution and the country’s laws, did not tell Gomez his rights, including the right against illegal search and seizure of property, and the basic right of counsel. Nine months later, they returned. This time they arrested Gomez, took him to Terminal Island, held him on $500 bail. His wife appealed to the Los Angeles Committee for Protection of Foreign Born, which services deportees. Two days later, bail was obtained for his release. The panel of attorneys which works with the Committee filed motions with the Bureau of Immigration Appeals and in the Federal Courts for a stay of the deportation order, pending court review. On November 29, 1958, Gomez was again arrested and ordered to surrender for immediate deportation. Again, attorneys obtained a restraining order, this time in the Federal District Court in Washington, D.C. Agapito Gomez is now temporarily free on $1,000 bail, pending judicial review. Also living under threat of deportation and separation from his wife, his friends, and the land which he has called his own for over 40 years, is another Mexican trade unionist, Jos
e Noreiga. Noreiga, now 57 years old, came to this country when he was 25. As a construction worker in Texas and California and, later, as a longshoreman at the Los Angeles harbor, he learned the importance of unions to the worker. In 1928, Noreiga joined the longshore union, then the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA). Arrested, with hundreds of other strikers in the maritime strike of 1923, Noreiga served a short jail sentence and, returning to the docks, found himself blacklisted. He went to San Bernardino, worked in a packing shed and during the depths of the Depression was responsible for raising thousands of dollars in food contributions for needy workers and their families. Noreiga returned to the docks in 1937, and again went on strike in the maritime struggle along the Pacific Coast which culminated in the formation of the International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union (ILWU). During the war years, he continued maritime work as an active member of the Wilmington unit of Warehousemen’s Local 26. His harassment by immigration officers started in 1952, with interrogations at his home. A year later, his Coast Guard Port Security Pass was taken away, which meant that areas in which he could work were limited. In February of this year, he was arrested and held at Terminal Island detention center on $2,000 bail. As with Justo Cruz, Mrs. Maria Cruz, Agapito Gomez, and many others, objectives of the immigration officers were made plain in the questioning of Noreiga. His union activities; his work in the San Bernardino community among ‘‘Hooverville’’ dwellers, impoverished victims of the great Depression; the books he read, made him suspect with U.S. immigration officers. They even questioned the presence on his wall of a picture of the great Mexican liberator, Benito Juarez, who can be compared to Washington in our country. Fellow-members of the Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union rallied to Noreiga’s defense. A Jose Noreiga Defense Committee was formed in Local 26. Aim of this Committee was not alone to stop the deportation of fellow trade unionists, but to fight for total repeal of the Walter-McCarran Law.

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Letters, speakers, appeals for funds for legal aid; delegations, petitions, and wired protests to the U.S. Immigration Service and to California congressmen, showed efforts of organized and continuing determination to stop deportations and to win for Noreiga and others the right to stay here. The Los Angeles Committee for Protection of the Foreign Born, through its panel of attorneys, is also carrying the Noreiga case to the highest courts to prove that participation in union organization, in the Workers Alliance and political organizations of their choice which helped men fight for an extra pound of beans for their hungry children during the Depression is not a crime as Walter, McCarran, McCarthy and other police-state advocates profess. On the contrary, such action is a privilege guaranteed by the United States Constitution to every resident of the U.S. The terroristic raids, the wholesale arrests, the mass deportations of Mexican workers and their families in the United States today can be compared with only two other periods in U.S. history. Source: Patricio Morgan, ‘‘Shame of a Nation: A Documented Story of Police-State Terror against Mexican-Americans in the U.S.A.’’ (Los Angeles: Los Angeles Committee for Protection of Foreign Born, 1954), pp. 37 47.


ez, 315. Excerpts from the Testimony of Albert Ba Greenbrae, California This is from an interview with Albert B
aez (1912–2007), the father of popular folk singer Joan Baez. Born in Puebla, Mexico, Baez moved to the United States as a toddler because his father, a Methodist minister, got a job working in a Latino parish in Brooklyn, New York. Albert Baez became a physicist but he was a pacifist and refused work in war industries, working instead for United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) during the 1960s. In the following excerpt he talks about his life and gives a glimpse into the life of an upper-middle-class Mexican immigrant who migrated to the United States. For historical reasons, the document is important because of the connection with his daughter Joan, a leading folk singer and activist in the 1960s.

After receiving my Ph.D., I got a job with the Cornell Aeronautic Lab.… My interest in war and peace began there.… My father was a Methodist minister. Now, coming from Mexico, that’s strange. My grandfather had established a school in Puebla called Instituto Metodista Mexicano. Its main purpose was to train ministers. [His grandfather] converted to Protestantism. Protestantism I’m talking more than seventy-six years ago was a liberating idea for some of the Mexicans, because Catholicism as it was then practiced was often a very narrow approach to religion.… My father fell in love with the director’s daughter, Talia Valderama. The director, my grandfather, Pedro Flores Valderama … sent all his kids to the United States to learn English.… My mother went to Texas, and among other things she learned stenography and telegraphy, which in those days would be like someone getting involved in computers today. She had been to the States and had returned when she and my father met. Eventually they did go to Texas, Alice, Texas, where my father set up a church among Mexican Americans, a Methodist church. But it was stoned by the other

Mexican Americans, World War II, and the Aftermath

Mexicans, who didn’t want these Protestants in their midst.… [The family] went to Brooklyn on the free passes supplied by my tio, Fernando Carrera.… Brooklyn … was completely alien for my father. It turns out that an American woman heard about my parents. She started inviting Spanish-speaking people to her house on Sundays and then invited my father to act as minister. After a while, my father went to the local Methodist church in Brooklyn, I remember it was on Clark Street at the comer of Henry, near what is now called Columbia Heights. My father went to the minister of the church and said, ‘‘Here’s a group of Spanish-speaking people, they need a place to worship, would you let us use your church on Sunday afternoons?’’ In less than a year, the Spanish congregation exceeded the American congregation, and that began a forty-year career for my father in Brooklyn. When I was seven, my mother was pregnant again, and she wanted to go back to Mexico to have her baby.… My sister and I went back with my mother and spent a whole year with my grandfather … in retrospect, it gave me the feeling that I had grown up in Mexico, even though I had only spent the first two years of my life and then this year, but … I just felt somehow linked with Mexico. I still feel it. So several advantages accrued from all this. One was that I never forgot my Spanish.… Many years later, I think it might have been in California, someone asked me about my background and I said, ‘‘I’m Mexican.’’ My kids began saying, ‘‘We’re Mexican.’’ But then someone said to one of my kids, ‘‘Oh, don’t say you’re Mexican, say you’re Spanish.’’ Now I didn’t feel that stigma at all in Brooklyn. Brooklyn was a melting pot, everybody came from somewhere. Source: In Marilyn P. Davis, American Dreams: An Oral History of Mexican Immigration to the United States (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1990), pp. 248 258.

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PART XVIII Latinos in the 1960s The 1960s were crucial to Latinos living in the United States. Because of their isolation they were not fully part of American society and were separate nationalities within a dominant nationality that affected their identity. The large scale migration of Puerto Ricans, Boricua, Borinquen, or borincano brought about differences within the community; although 95 percent identified as Puerto Rican the second generation often had different priorities. A slightly different pattern emerged; in the decade of the 50s 470,000 Boricua migrated to the United States slowing down in the 1960s to 214,000. In 1940, 88 percent of Puerto Ricans lived in New York City; by 1970, 59 percent lived there. The population of the island was 2.3 million versus 892,513 on the mainland that meant the second generation assumed a greater role in forming a mainland Puerto Rican identity. The younger generation lived and struggled amidst African Americans and other Latinos. Television and the radio played a big part in their lives. Puerto Ricans still felt the presence of the island but English was now more prevalent. Though Puerto Ricans had always been militant, the size of youth groups such as the Black Panthers would be more dramatic. As a result of the Cuban Revolution many Cubans joined the Puerto Rican community, although most early Cubans migrated to the Miami area. Even though large sectors of this migration were middle-class and white, many were working class and were victims of the racist tradition toward Latinos. Trickles of other Latinos escaping a worsening economic situation in Latin America came to the United States hoping to live the life portrayed in the movies and in trade magazines. Not only Caribbean folk came but larger numbers of South Americans. As with the Puerto Ricans, the larger younger generation was attuned to domestic issues such as poverty, the lack of equal education, the civil rights movement, and the Vietnam War. In places like Milwaukee, they came together in the flurry of protests during 1968. The 1960s highlighted the civil rights traditions of the Puerto Rican and Mexican communities. History took on new importance Pedro Albizu Campos died on April 21, 1965. His body was taken to the Old San Juan Cemetery by over 75,000 Puerto Ricans. The New York chapter of the Young Lords Organization (YLO) was founded on July 26, 1969, to fight for the rights of the Puerto Rican community. Latinos coalesced and joined the wave of protests of that and following years. The Cuban American community for the most part diverged from these interests. Their focus was Cuba and they joined conservatives in the United States who supported their political agenda and interests. However, they remained united with other Latinos on cultural and linguistic issues. Most retained their Latin American identity.

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Dominicans were not strangers to the United States. Small numbers had trickled in since the nineteenth century and there was a recorded number in New York City in the 1930s. Larger numbers migrated to the United States in the 60s when economic and political unrest push them to areas such as the United States. The United States had invaded and then occupied the Dominican Republic from 1916 to 1924 and in 1965. They did not come in larger numbers because of distance and the cost of transportation. Unlike Puerto Ricans they were not citizens and were not brought in large numbers to the United States by labor contractors. Dominicans were important in forming the musical fusion of Caribbean beats along with the Puerto Ricans and Cubans. Events were also shaping up in Central America that would bring in large numbers of Nicaraguans, Salvadorans, and Guatemalans.


n-Muntaner, ‘‘Feeling Pretty: 316. Excerpts from Frances Negro West Side Story and Puerto Rican Identity Discourses,’’ 2000 As with most people living in the United States, the question of identity has been important to Latinos and Puerto Ricans in particular. Although Puerto Ricans use the term Latino in the cultural sense, they generally identify themselves as Puerto Rican, Boricua, Borinquen, or borincano, which comes from the Ta
ıno name for the island. The Ta
ıno Indians were the first inhabited Puerto Rico. In the 1960 Census, over 95 percent identified as Puerto Rican. Immigration to the U.S. mainland slowed down—during the decade from 1950 to 1960, 470,000 Boricua left the island; in the 1960s only 214,000 would leave. There were other patterns affecting identity: in 1940, 88 percent of mainland Puerto Ricans lived in New York City; by 1970 only 59 percent lived there. In the 1960s, Puerto Ricans were the second largest Spanish-speaking group in the United States, second only to Mexican Americans. Nearly 2.3 million Puerto Ricans living on the island and 892,513 on the mainland. In the 1960s the second generation of immigrants to the mainland was now larger. More and more youth were influenced by Black Americans and they attempted to construct an identity for the U.S. Boricua community. Other Spanish-speaking people lived amongst them but they had not reached a critical mass and remained ‘‘more immigrant,’’ looking to their home country for identity. While Puerto Ricans continued to look to the island they were building a unique group identity. Over time many had become Nuyoricans. The Puerto Rican island itself was at the meeting point of the English-speaking and Spanish-speaking Americas and was greatly affected by the anti-colonial rhetoric of the day. Part of this identity discourse was portrayed in movies and through expressions of racism in the greater society. This discourse would influence other Spanish-speaking groups sharing physical and, finally, cultural space, which saw the fusion of Puerto Rican music with other Caribbean peoples, especially with the Cubans and Dominicans. Many Latinos credit the music with helping maintain the disparate groups’ identity and unity. New York was the center of much of this fusion, although in the 1960s Chicago had begun to rival it. The following excerpts are from a critical review of West Side Story, a Broadway musical that was also a 1961 film criticized by Puerto Ricans and other Latinos because it used a white actress in the main role and

Latinos in the 1960s

stereotyped Puerto Ricans. West Side Story was billed as a Puerto Rican Romeo and Juliet in which the white guy gets the girl.

There is no single American cultural product that haunts Puerto Rican identity discourses in the United States more intensely than the 1961 film, West Side Story, directed by Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins. Although neither the first nor last American movie to portray Puerto Ricans as gang members (men) or as sassy and virginal (women), hardly any Puerto Rican cultural critic or screen actor can refrain from stating their very special relationship to West Side Story. Jennifer L
opez, the highest paid Latina actress in Hollywood today, recalls that her favorite movie was West Side Story. ‘‘I saw it over and over. I never noticed that Natalie Wood wasn’t really a Puerto Rican girl. I grew up always wanting to play Anita [Rita Moreno’s Oscar-winning role], but as I got older, I wanted to be Mar
ıa. I went to dance classes every week.’’ Journalist Blanca V
azquez, whose editorial work in the publication Centro was crucial in creating a space for critical discourse on Latinos in media, comments: ‘‘And what did the ‘real’ Puerto Rican, Anita, do in the film? She not only was another Latina ‘spitfire,’ she also sang a song denigrating Puerto Rico and by implication, being Puerto Rican.… I remember seeing it and being ashamed.’’ For Island-born cultural critic Alberto Sandoval, the film became pivotal in his own identity formation: ‘‘‘Alberto, I’ve just met a guy named Alberto.’ And how can I forget those who upon my arrival would start tapping flamenco steps and squealing: ‘I like to be in America?’ As the years passed by I grew accustomed to their actions and reactions to my presence. I would smile and ignore the stereotype of Puerto Ricans that Hollywood promotes.’’ Without a touch of irony, Leonard Bernstein has written about the extent to which he researched Puerto Rican culture in New York before writing the score: ‘‘We went to a gym in Brooklyn where there were different gangs that a social organization was trying to bring together. I don’t know if too much eventually got into West Side Story, but everything does help.’’ The ‘‘superficiality’’ of the way that Puerto Ricans were represented in the book made one of the original West Side Story producers, Cheryl Crawford, insist that ‘‘the show explains why the poor in New York, who had once been Jewish, were now Puerto Rican and black.…’’ When someone said the piece was a poetic fantasy, not a sociological document, she replied, ‘‘You have to rewrite the whole thing or I won’t do it.’’ Hence, if West Side Story was never intended to be ‘‘real’’ and doesn’t feel real to Puerto Rican spectators, what accounts for its reality effects? For many Puerto Rican spectators who identify with the narrative, West Side Story is a morality play about ‘‘our’’ everyday problems: racism, poverty, and the destructiveness of violence. An example of this pedagogical reading is exemplified by Actor’s Playhouse, a Miami-based theater group that recently staged the musical to a group of ‘‘at risk’’ young adults who were mostly Latinos. The purpose was ‘‘to show them the devastating consequences of associating with gang members who use violence as their primary way of solving differences. This benign view of the film, however, was not shared by the government officials who pulled West Side Story out of the Brussels World’s Fair ‘‘on the grounds that it was bad publicity for America.’’ Hence, far from the homogeneous reading some critics have given the film as a piece of racist propaganda against Puerto Ricans, West Side Story endures in part due to the many discursive uses and ‘‘real’’ identifications it allows.

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Several key discourses and histories of Puerto Rican American representation coalesce in this text. First, the film although not an entirely predictable Hollywood musical … perseveres in a long tradition of representing Latinos as inherently musical and performative subjects, ready to wear their sexualized identity for a white audience at the drop of a hat. Consistent with this history, the ‘‘Puerto Rican music’’ found in West Side Story is an American-made fusion of a wide range of rhythms with no discernible or specific national origin. In this sense, despite West Side Story’s dramatic elements, Latinos are doing exactly what they are expected to do, particularly at a time of significant racial and social unrest in the United States: singing and dancing the night away. Source: Frances Negr
on-Muntaner, ‘‘Feeling Pretty: West Side Story and Puerto Rican Identity Discourses,’’ Social Text 63, Vol. 18, No. 2, Summer 2000, pp. 84 85. Reprinted with permission of Duke University Press.

317. Al Burt, ‘‘Miami: The Cuban Flavor,’’ 1971 In the case of most revolutions, the elites leave the country. It happened to the Mexicans in 1913, when massive numbers left Mexico after the overthrow of Mexican dictator Porfirio D
ıaz (1830–1915). After Fidel Castro took over Cuba in 1959, many wealthy Cubans, many of whom were supporters of Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista (1901–1973), sent thousands of Cuban children to the United States in the early 1960s in a U.S.-sponsored operation known as Pedro Pan. Operation Peter Pan (Operaci
on Pedro Pan) was initiated by the U.S. government, the Roman Catholic Church, and anti-Castro Cuban dissidents from December 26, 1960, to October 23, 1962. The mass exodus of 14,000 unaccompanied children from the Caribbean island nation was touted as a save-the-children operation that would take youngsters away from Communists. These children were followed by thousands of political refugees. While Cubans migrated to New York and elsewhere, their capital became Miami, which was about 90 miles from Cuba and shared the same climate. The first wave of immigrants comprised professionals, the better educated, and mostly white people. They received government support and were soon able to dominate the city’s life. Miami became the exiles’ center of antiCastro activity. The following Nation article discusses Cuban Americans in the 1960s and the formation of a Cuban American community.

Miami, more renowned in the past for a brassy exterior than a loving heart, is undergoing a Cuban transplant that may change that image. The city has been Latinized, and there is, loose on the streets and in the bistros, the famous quality that prompted tourists visiting pre-Castro Cuba to marvel at what ‘‘good’’ people Cubans were. Last spring, a Cuban exile robbed a secondhand clothing store, beat up a woman clerk (also Cuban), took $20, and fled into a Cuban neighborhood. He did not find the cover he expected. In minutes, the word spread and 300 angry Cubans gathered to help the pursuing police. When the man was dragged out of a vacant rooming house, the Cubans cheered and applauded. Then, emotionally carried away, they charged upon the robber. Police hustled him into their car, but some of the crowd beat on the roof and windows until it pulled away. That incident tells much about the Spanish-language community (some 90 percent Cuban) in the Miami area. It numbers an estimated 318,000 in a city

Latinos in the 1960s

population of 1.3 million and is expected to reach 428,000 within five years. The instincts of this group are winningly human, but its brakes could be improved. In the case of the clothing-store robber, he offended the Cuban sense of honor, not for stealing but by beating a woman. He had to be caught and punished and the Cubans were eager to help with both jobs. In all human affairs, the Cubans’ multifaceted impact on Miami has ranged from the beautiful to something less. They have given Miami a flavor it lacked. Their gift for living whether they are rich or poor, seems both more festive and more real than the native style. Theirs is a mixture of pleasure seeking, understanding for human frailty, pride, devotion to church and family that are being lost in the computer age. Practice may fall short of the ideals, but human weaknesses are shrugged off, when not enjoyed. To the motorist on the street with a flat tire or with a stalled car, or in any number of other fixes that focus notice on the individual in distress, the Cuban can be a cheering sight. The chances are that he will be more sympathetic than the native, more willing to inconvenience himself for the sake of a stranger. The Cubans have done well in most areas business, education, politics with the major exception of their efforts against Fidel Castro, the man who sent them into exile. While most everything else they have touched has prospered (their annual earning power is estimated at nearly $600 million), the anti-Castro movements have foundered. In the peak days of 1964, there were more than 300 active and militant anti-Castro exile groups in Miami, but they have dwindled to a handful. Those that are left still picket, demonstrate, and protest, but they also tend to bicker among themselves. With a few heroic exceptions, their efforts have sputtered out on the shores of Florida rather than in Cuba. The Cubans cluster, perhaps because their orientation toward tradition is not understood in the larger community. They stress inherited custom and law and order. Police say that, except in traffic offenses, they are more law-abiding than the average Miamian. The exile community has been embarrassed, though, by increasing involvement of a few Cubans in narcotics traffic, particularly cocaine. After some forty Cubans had been arrested in Miami as part of a nationwide attack on drug smuggling, one federal narcotics officer announced that there was a Cuban Mafia. He described it as exceptionally violent. Most Cubans will tell you that the one great political lesson of their lives was taught them by Castro. To them, it was a lesson of betrayal and it has left them highly suspicious of liberal thought and devoted to a kind of evangelical anti-communism. In a local election, some Cubans grumbled because one candidate had a travel agency that did business with Aeroflot, the Russian airline, and that another was unsuitable because a peace symbol hung on his office wall. The John Birch Society and similar conservative groups have recruited among Cubans with some success, limited, however, because most Cubans believe in a cradle-to-grave government care that enrages conservatives. During the early days of the Cuban influx, when droves of uprooted professionals and technicians were trying to find outlets for their skills, a ‘‘clandestine’’ system of service developed. A wide variety of unlicensed or nonunion Cubans, from barbers to carpenters to doctors, quietly peddled their trades at bargain prices to fellow Cubans in need. Today, the signs of Cuban success are numerous. Rather than Miami’s downtown core degenerating into a shell of empty stores and ‘‘for rent’’ signs, as has happened in other cities, Cubans have moved in. There and in nearby

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neighborhoods they have created Little Havana, not as boisterous and attractively sinful as pre-Castro Havana but with a touch of the same style. A walk down the Tamiami Trail, or through parts of the southwest section of the city, has the smell and flavor of Cuba. Street conversations are in Spanish; the signs are in Spanish; the food, coffee, and businesses are Cuban; the people read Spanishlanguage newspapers and listen to Spanish-language radio stations or watch Spanishlanguage television. An estimated 6,000 Cuban businesses now operate in the area (current hard times may eliminate some), producing everything from hand-rolled cigars to shoes to boats and furniture. The Cuban labor force numbers more than 65,000 and is expected to reach 100,000 in less than five years. Some 35,000 Cuban children go to public schools. Cuban doctors (nearly 600 are now licensed in Florida) abound in the hospitals. This vast bilingual pool has helped attract thirty regional Latin American offices to serve international corporations. Even so, some Cubans still complain that they have difficulty making the telephone operator at the fire station or police station understand them when they speak Spanish. The situation is being corrected. One exception to the general rule of successful relocation, an exception to be found, perhaps, in any American community today, is the behavior of Cuban youth. To the despair of their parents and grandparents, many are adopting North American ways. It becomes a generation gap of extraordinary width, for as older Cubans try to maintain traditions at home, many of the young spend their time outside the home trying to acquire new customs. An outstanding example has been a young Cuban football player at the Univer
sity of Florida, Carlos Alvarez (refugee vintage: 1960). A sophomore pass receiver,
Alvarez was chosen on most of the all-American teams. He was an instant hero. But when he became a U.S. citizen, let his hair grow stylishly long, and criticized the
war in Vietnam, some Cubans felt that Alvarez was abandoning his heritage. It is odd that, though the United States is conducting one of the most unusual refugee operations in history an airlift which has brought 230,000 Cubans to this country many Americans are not even aware of it. Until 1962, regular commercial flights were available from Cuba. After they were curtailed, some refugees arrived by small boat and via legal transit through Spain and Mexico. But most of those now in Miami have come since 1965, when President Johnson inaugurated the airlift as a humanitarian gesture to unite families separated by the revolution. These have received U.S.-paid transportation, federally supervised food and health care, plus their own welfare system, and job settlement. It works as follows. Twice each day, a U.S. plane takes off from Miami International Airport, flies to Cuba, and returns home with a load of refugees. In Miami, this is called the Freedom Airlift. The arrivals, as might be expected, are both tearful and joyous, and moving even to a non-Cuban spectator. The planes bring in some 800 new Cubans each week, or between 3,000 and 4,000 a month. Some 230,000 have been flown from Cuba since the flights began in December 1965. The United States charters the planes for $800,000 a year, and welcomes the refugees to these shores with a welfare program that will cost U.S. taxpayers $112 million in 1971. It is a program unique in this era, when more than 20 million refugees are shuffling across various borders, searching for a place to survive. But, of course, what the Cubans have done with this U.S.-subsidized new start may also be unique.

Latinos in the 1960s

Castro has challenged the propaganda aspect of the airlift by declaring that if the United States made a like offer to people in northeast Brazil, as one example, the same outpouring would result. Others have suggested that the offer might also empty Harlem. Nor does there seem much doubt that the Haitian refugees who try to flee to the Bahama Islands, and are refused permission by U.S. authorities there to continue on to the United States, would welcome such an opportunity. Jamaican migrant workers who cut sugar cane in Florida and must return home at the end of the season (some try to ‘‘escape’’ and stay) would be receptive. The examples could go on and on, for the immigration quota of 120,000 for the Western Hemisphere has a long waiting list. In local politics, Cubans have yet to realize their potential, partially because many have not yet become citizens but also because exile politics and the yearning for home have diverted their attention. So far, their influence has been mostly vocal, but that is sometimes considerable, because Cubans are skilled, through their anti-Castro experiences, in the arts of propaganda. However, politicians already are looking ahead to the day when the exiles may be 20 percent or more of the registered voters in the Miami area. That would give them a political edge over the black community, which is already 50,000 smaller. Cuban views seldom mesh with those of the blacks, who have the same ambitions and feel much more frustrated. To Cubans, the blacks often seem suspiciously liberal. Rivalry between the two minorities is spurred by feelings among the blacks that the Cuban is a Johnny-come-lately who walked in (with white complexion, for the most part, and with better education) and skimmed the cream off whatever opportunity there was in Miami. Blacks have grumbled that Cubans were better received and that the federal umbrella of assistance extended to Cubans has been broader than that extended to them. In some cases, this argument is more emotional than factual, but certainly the Cubans did benefit from a crash program of help and did find open arms in the community. For example, blacks do not have a job resettlement program enabling them to move to other parts of the country, as do the Cubans. The program was designed to spread the Cuban influx to the rest of the country. Federal officials cite a 70 percent resettlement figure. Nevertheless, the Cuban population in the Miami area has increased 100,000 in the last three years as the airlift has brought in from 105,000 to 120,000. These figures indicate that many resettled Cubans become dissatisfied in colder climates and return to Miami. An unemployed but employable Cuban male head of family can still get $100 a month welfare, but the U.S. citizen in similar circumstances gets nothing. A riot in the Miami black community during the 1968 Republican National Convention brought on a presidentially appointed commission to study the causes. It found that black resentment toward Cuban welfare was one factor. Studies are now under way to determine exactly what welfare differences exist so that they may be corrected. A recent county survey disclosed that the 1969 median income for blacks was $5,350; for Cubans, $6,550. By 1985, the Cuban income was projected to rise to $9,400; the blacks, $7,800. Other complicating factors are a housing shortage, questions about the security screening given arriving Cubans, and crowding in the schools. Apparent inequities in welfare caught the eye last summer of William Clay, a young black Congressman from East St. Louis, and so angered him that, as a member

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of a House Subcommittee on Labor, he began a movement that almost ended not only the airlift but the Cuban Refugee Program as well. Rep. Clay contended there should be one welfare system for all. In a letter dated May 20, he asked President Nixon ‘‘to take immediate action to terminate the Cuban airlift operation and make a public announcement of our future posture toward Cuba and its citizens.’’ This did not go over well at the White House, where the prevailing attitude has been a desire to ignore Cuba (Vice President Agnew has called U.S. policy one of ‘‘benign neglect’’). Exiles, once enthusiastic about candidate Nixon, have been openly disappointed about his failure as President to move against Cuba. Not wishing to estrange them still further, Nixon preserved the airlift. But though Clay made no headway with the Administration, he continued the argument. ‘‘No longer can this policy be couched or obscured in ‘refugee’ terminology,’’ he said. ‘‘The real refugees of Cuba left in the early 1960s when they had to flee for sanctuary. They were the ones who opposed Castro politically and who faced oppression and mistreatment at the hands of the Castro regime.… Though the United States does not recognize Castro, our government volunteers to handle his social and economic problems. Our policy to solve these problems is at the expense of and detriment to American citizens.…’’ Clay’s attempt to stop the airlift came to a vote in the House and failed by 45 to 40 (attendance was not at its best that day). He vowed to continue the fight. One of his opponents, Rep. Otto Passman of Louisiana, made his feelings clear with this comment: ‘‘There is a lot of jealousy growing up because these Cubans are willing to work and it embarrasses some of those people who would rather live on a handout.’’ The common complaint about the airlift, as publicized by Clay, was gently and humorously explored in the 1969 movie, Popi. In it, a Puerto Rican slum dweller in New York City, working at three jobs, decided that the only way he could give his two sons a better life was to pass them off as Cuban refugees arriving in Miami. Then, the United States would be moved to help. In any case, the airlift will eventually wind down because Cuba stopped accepting names for the waiting list in May 1966. A State Department official has estimated that the present list will require another four or five years of the airlift. Also waiting in Cuba is an impatient group of 800 Americans and their families. When arrangements were made in 1965 to take care of Cubans who wished to leave, these Americans were forgotten. Cuba does not permit them to be part of the airlift, and only a few have been allowed to leave on special flights to Mexico. The United States sends some $15,000 a month in interest-free subsistence loans to those still in Cuba who need help. Meanwhile Miami, already brimming with Cubans, gets a fresh batch every day on the airlift. They arrive to find a page out of their past coming alive again. Source: Reprinted with permission from the March 8, 1971 issue of The Nation. For subscription information, call 1-800-333-8536. Portions of each week’s Nation magazine can be accessed at http://www.thenation.com.

318. ‘‘Confidential Cabinet Meeting Decisions,’’ October 6, 1960 Plans to sterilize Puerto Rican women took shape as early as 1900 as EuroAmerican nativists grew concerned about the growth of ‘‘less desirable’’

Latinos in the 1960s

races. Sterilization was a program pushed by powerful financiers and industrialists who were influenced by social Darwinism. They believed that heredity, among other factors, determined intelligence. In the United States, they pushed for antimiscegenation laws and the sterilization of the ‘‘feeble minded.’’ American social scientists and politicos were concerned with the growth of the island population, even though it was substantially below that of other Caribbean nations. William Moran, director of the U.S.-Puerto Rican Reconstruction Administration, testified before a 1965 U.S. Senate Population Crisis Hearing that the driving force behind the introduction of massive birth control programs in the colonial government’s maternal child health services during the 1930s was unemployment and the Depression. One hundred and sixty private hospitals were open to exclusively or primarily deal with sterilizations. As a consequence, it was reported that by the mid 1960s just over a third of the Puerto Rican women of child bearing age had been sterilized—two-thirds were in their early 20s—most of them were poor. Sterilization programs were condoned by President John F. Kennedy’s program for Latin America known as the Alliance for Progress. The following document is puzzling since these programs were well known and occurred since at least the 1930s. October 6, 1960, in a meeting between Puerto Rico’s Gov. Luis Mu~ noz Mar
ın and his cabinet Mu~ noz Mar
ın was informed that some companies favored by the government would hire women only if they agreed to undergo surgical sterilization. The governor acted surprised and ordered a complete investigation. One does not get a sense of moral outrage. But the document does tie sterilization to economic policies of colonial government.

Prepare statistics on the government revenue collected by taxes with revenue from the decade of 1930 40, and also the savings resulting from when the Republicans lowered the salaries of teachers and other public functionaries. Compare the 1940 budget made by the PER with the 1941 budget made under the PPD. Sierra will write an explanation on the diverse methods of collecting statistics about unemployment and how the system used in Puerto Rico differs from that used in the United States. Sierra will send facts about unemployment among 4th year graduates. Cancio will report on the laws that cover sterilization. [Department of] Health will report on what has been the practice and regulation of this issue [sterilization] and the ways to provide information on contraceptives, specifically on who to give it to. The Department of Justice should prepare legislation prohibiting job discrimination against un-sterilized women. [Department of] Justice will prepare an amendment to the Law about electoral funds so that rich candidates cannot spend their own funds in excess of $300. Agriculture will send many facts to refute the allegation that the PPD has abandoned and persecuted agriculture. Moscoso will send statements of experts to the sugar industry claiming negligence on the part of Puerto Rican sugar producers in not dedicating more funds to investigation efforts.

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Following are some of the issues that arose or were mentioned in debate: 1. The argument of the PER that they did not have sufficient funds in their 8 years of governing. The Governor indicated that the PER has been using this argument as an excuse for what happened during their time in government. The counterarguments are they had more money in special funds than they claim, and furthermore, they didn’t collect what they could have from personal income taxes. He asked for statistics on the government revenue collected through said taxes and also about the savings resulting from when they lowered the salaries of teachers and other public functionaries. As a demonstration of the way in which one could govern favoring economic development and protecting the poor, he mentioned that it would be interesting to compare the revenue made in 1940 by the PER and the 1941 revenue under the PPD. 2. Unemployment Ferr
e alleges that there are currently 90,000 unemployed, and the Governor asked about the certainty of that number. Sierra said that allegation was false, and explained the many ways of collection statistics on unemployment and how the system used in Puerto Rico differs from the system used in the United States. The Governor asked him to write an explanation on this topic. He also asked Sierra for facts about unemployment among 4th year graduates, because he had the impression that these young people had the least opportunities for work, and for that reason, they emigrate. 3. Sterilization The Governor asked Moscoso about the allegation of Ferr
e that some of the industries of Cayey refused to employ women that were not sterilized. Moscoso informed him that the Industrial Association has proposed to respond to Ferr
e in the newspapers. Independently of what the Industrial Association does, the Governor asked Cancio for a report on sterilization laws, and Salud for a report on the practice and regulation on this issue. Salud should also report on ways to gain information on. Source: ‘‘Cabinet Meeting Decisions’’ (Puerto Rico). October 6, 1960. Women in World History, http://chnm.gmu.edu/wwh/modules/lesson16/lesson16.php?menu 1&s 12.

319. Excerpt from Harriet B. Presser, ‘‘Puerto Rico: The Role of Sterilization in Controlling Fertility,’’ 1969 Sterilization was a controversial policy. Many Puerto Ricans claim it was a form of genocide, particularly when required by employers as a hiring prerequisite. Also claimed is that the overpopulation of the island was a result of the American occupation, and its failure to level the playing field socially, economically, and politically between the Puerto Rican population and the influx of industrialists from the United States. By most accounts, sterilization in Puerto Rico as a method of birth control began in the early 1930s as a result of an incessant campaign trumpeting that the island was overpopulated. In San Juan, several physicians in the hospital encouraged the practice of sterilization among their patients. In the late 1940s, an island-wide study revealed that about 7 percent of the women had been sterilized. Six years later this figure

Latinos in the 1960s

climbed to over 16 percent of the women in Puerto Rico. The following is an excerpt from a 1969 study on sterilization practices in Puerto Rico.

We have estimated that about one third of all Puerto Rican mothers aged 20 to 49 in 1965 were sterilized. This is twice as high as the estimate of its prevalence in the mid-1950s. Sterilized women in the 1965 sample became sterilized early in the reproductive span: the median age at time of sterilization is 26 and, for women in stable first marriages, the median number of years married when sterilized is 6. Over half of the sterilized women had only 2 or 3 births. The widespread prevalence and early timing of sterilization suggested that the impact of sterilization on fertility was substantial. Source: Studies in Family Planning, Vol. 1, No. 45 (September 1969), p. 8.

320. Excerpts from Jorge Duany, ‘‘Caribbean Migration to Puerto Rico: A Comparison of Cubans and Dominicans,’’ 1992 The Cold War dominated U.S. politics (1945–1989) and demands to invoke the 1823 Monroe Doctrine (warning that the Americas were for Americans and that the United States would not tolerate a foreign presence) were common during the 1960s. Americans clamored for intervention in Cuba and other states that were believed to be under the influence of the Soviet Union. After the failed 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion when U.S.-sponsored Cubans invaded Cuba, the Soviet Union placed missiles in Cuba to protect Cuba from further planned attacks by the United States. This encouraged two schools of thought in the United States justifying intervention: the old rationale was that intervention was justified by the Monroe Doctrine—the United States was protecting the Americas from Europe; the other concept was based on self-defense. Aside from Cuba, U.S. strategists were concerned with the Dominican Republic. The assassination of Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo (1891–1961) in 1961 left the United States without a reliable ally while nationalism among Dominican students was sharply on the rise. Juan Bosch (1909–2001) was a politician, writer, and educator. He was the first democratically elected president after the assassination of Trujillo. However, Bosch was overthrown in 1963 by the military and conservatives who called him a Socialist. Two years later, the constitutionalists in support of Bosch launched a counterrevolution to overthrow the dictatorship. The United States intervened in the civil war and dispatched 42,420 troops to the island in Operation Powerpack (1965), preventing Bosch from taking the office to which he was constitutionally elected. The United States said it thought that Bosch’s party was full of Communists, something that was never proven. The United States claimed that Bosch exercised a charismatic influence on young people. U.S. intervention led to the out migration of Dominicans and that impacted Puerto Rico. The following excerpts review the movement of Dominicans to Puerto Rico as a consequence of U.S. intervention.

Large numbers of people have moved from one Caribbean territory to another since the late eighteenth century. During the Haitian Revolution (1791 1803), more than 30,000 Haitian refugees settled in Cuba … the triumph of Fidel Castro’s Cuban Revolution in 1959 and the assassination of Rafael Leonidas Trujillo, the dictator of the Dominican Republic, in 1961 [saw another exodus].… These events

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set into motion a complex series of socioeconomic forces leading to the migration of more than a million Cubans and half a million Dominicans to the United States over the past three decades.… The vast majority of Dominicans moved to Puerto Rico after 1961 and especially after the 1965 civil war in the Dominican Republic. According to the census, 82 percent of all Dominicans residing in Puerto Rico migrated between 1965 and 1980. Thus, the Dominican population of Puerto Rico doubled from 1970 to 1980.… Although relatively few in number, Caribbean immigrants are a highly visible segment of Puerto Rico’s population. This visibility results from the extreme concentration of Cubans and Dominicans in the island’s major urban centers. Source: Jorge Duany, ‘‘Caribbean Migration to Puerto Rico: A Comparison of Cubans and Dominicans,’’ International Migration Review, Vol. 26, No. 1 (Spring 1992), pp. 46, 47, 50, 52.

321. Classified U.S. State Department Documents on the Overthrow of Chilean President Salvador Allende, 1973 When Henry Kissinger (1923–), the U.S. secretary of state from 1973 to 1977, was U.S. National Security Advisor in 1970, he said of the fair election of Chilean President Salvador Allende, ‘‘I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go Communist due to the irresponsibility of its people.’’ President Richard M. Nixon directed the CIA to prevent Allende’s inauguration through a military coup which failed because of Allende’s popular support. After the failed coup, Chilean Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ren
e Schneider (1913–1970) was assassinated, and many believed that the assassination was directed by Washington, D.C. However, Allende took office as scheduled and immediately initiated reforms, including the nationalization of great estates, which were turned over to peasants and small farmers. A military coup d’
etat directed by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) took place in 1973, in which Allende was either assassinated or committed suicide while defending his Socialist government. The right-wing military officers then initiated a reign of terror, assassinating cabinet ministers, placing the universities under martial law, and banning opposition parties. The military rounded up thousands of Chileans who were tortured and killed. The names of many of the victims had been provided by the CIA. The overthrow of Allende ushered in a long period of terror. As a result, many Chileans left their country to come to the United States. The following are two declassified documents that prove U.S. complicity in the overthrow of Allende.

NAVY SECTION UNITED STATES MILITARY GROUP, CHILE CASTILA 141-V VALPARISO, CHILE 1 October 1973 SITREP #1 dated 26 February 1973 reported, ‘‘Chile is a revolution looking for a place to happen … elastic of people’s patience will snap with a bang!’’ Prediction became reality on 11 September. On that day of destiny for Chile, the Armed Forces and National Police, acting in close coordination, staged a coup d’etat against

Latinos in the 1960s

President Allende’s Marxist Government. Less than eight hours after the initiation of the coup, Allende was dead and a three-year experiment in Marxist joined him in the grave. There are few mourners for Allende or Marxism visible in Chile today. DEAD END STREET The Armed Forces decision to forcefully remove the Allende Government from power was made with extreme reluctance and only after the deepest soul-searching by all concerned. Even to we sideline observers, it was obvious the Chilean Military were extremely reluctant to destroy over 100 years of prideful tradition in support of their country’s constitution without exhausting every other avenue of solution. Unfortunately there were no other avenues of solution. Chile was on a dead end street. Their rate of inflation was the worst in the history of the world, terrorists and weapons were being illegally introduced into Chile by the CUBANS for USE AGAINST CHILEANS, food resources were near total exhaustion, a nationwide transportation strike had paralyzed the country, numerous other professions were striking in sympathy with the transportation workers, the Armed Forces had been systematically infiltrated by saboteurs who carried not patriotism for Chile in their hearts, but rather fidelity to world Marxism, Chile’s children had not been to school for over two months … and so goes the incredible litany of tragedy that was Chile under Allende’s Marxism. What perhaps history will ask in retrospect, is not ‘‘Why the overthrow of the Allende Government by the Armed Forces,’’ but rather ‘‘Why the Armed Forces waited so long?’’… CHILEAN PAUL REVERE My first responsibility was to warn the other U.S. families [Vi~ na] to stay undercover and secondly, if possible, got an advisory type radio message off to the Panama Canal from whence evacuation help for U.S. dependents would come if deemed necessary by the U.S. Ambassador. Moving about the city even in military uniform, driving a diplomatic auto and flashing a Chilean Navy I.D. card wasn’t easy. Roadblocks had been established at all key intersections, most were armed by nervous young soldiers/sailors with semi-automatic weapons, round in chamber and weapon OFF safe. They had been briefed to expect a violent combat reaction from Marxists forces and itchy trigger fingers were the rule rather then the exception. In my appointed rounds I used back alleys and side streets where possible where not, maximum discretion coupled with an extremely friendly ‘‘Buenos Dios’’ in my best Irish brogue, managed to reach all but one American family before Russian Roulette game with roadblocks ran out of luck. Apparently final roadblock didn’t ‘‘sabe’’ my Irish-Spanish. However, I clearly understood their pointed signals with Grease Guns, which in any language translated into: ‘‘Get going, Gringo.’’ The hour was 0710. ISSUE IN DOUBT Chile’s coup d’etat was close to perfect. Unfortunately, ‘‘close’’ only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades; consequently there were problems. H-hour was not in cement countrywide for 0600, but as often happens in such people-controlled operations, someone doesn’t follow the script. For reasons too labyrinth to explain here, H-hour in Santiago was slipped to 0830.

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Original plan called for President Allende to be held incomunicado in his home until the coup was a fait accompli. H-hour delay in Santiago permitted Allende to be alerted at 0730. Allende immediately dashed to the Moneda (palace) under escort of a heavily armed personal security force, Grupo de Amigos Personales [Group of Personal Friends] (GAP). At the Moneda he had access to radio communications facilities which permitted him to personally implore ‘‘workers and students, come to the Moneda and defend your Government against the Armed Forces.’’ The hour was 0830. Allende’s hope was to surround the Moneda with thousands of Chilean students and workers on the supposition the Armed Forces would not shoot their way past unarmed citizens. A somewhat similar ploy had worked during the coup d’etat ‘‘rehearsal’’ on 29 June 1973. It didn’t work this time. Military had all roads to Santiago blocked. Lid was on TIGHT inside city. Anyone on streets not wearing right color jersey stood an excellent chance of getting shot. Allende managed to personally broadcast two ‘‘MAYDAY’’ type messages. The first, at 0830, sounded strong and confident as he summoned the workers and students. The second at 0945 sounded morose, almost as if he was preparing the eulogy for his dying government. It was his last broadcast as the Air Force soon located and rocketed his antennae. The hour was 1015. PATRICK J. RYAN Lieutenant Colonel, USMC DEPARTMENT OF STATE BRIEFING MEMORANDUM SECRET NODIS TO: The Secretary FROM: ARA Jack B. Kubisch Chilean Executions On October 24 the Junta announced that summary, on-the-spot executions would no longer be carried out and that persons caught in the act of resisting the government would henceforth be held for military courts. Since that date, 17 executions following military trials have been announced. Publicly acknowledged executions, both summary and in compliance with court martial sentences, now total approximately 100, with an additional 40 prisoners shot while ‘‘trying to escape.’’ An internal, confidential report prepared for the Junta puts the number of executions for the period September 11 30 at 320. The latter figure is probably a more accurate indication of the extent of this practice. Our best estimate is that the military and police units in the field are generally complying with the order to desist from summary executions. At least the rather frequent use of random violence that marked the operations of these units in the early post-coup days has clearly abated for the time being. However, there are no indications as yet of a disposition to forego executions after military trial. The Chilean leaders justify these executions as entirely legal in the application of martial law under what they have declared to be a ‘‘state of siege in time of war.’’ Their code of military justice permits death by firing squad for a range of offences, including treason, armed resistance, illegal possession of arms, and auto theft. Sentences handed down by military tribunals during a state of siege are not reviewable by civilian courts.

Latinos in the 1960s

The purpose of the executions is in part to discourage by example those who seek to organize armed opposition to the Junta. The Chilean military, persuaded to some degree by years of Communist Party propaganda, expected to be confronted by heavy resistance when they overthrew Allende. Fear of civil war was an important factor in their decision to employ a heavy hand from the outset. Also present is a puritanical, crusading spirit a determination to cleanse and rejuvenate Chile. (A number of those executed seem to have been petty criminals.) The Junta now has more confidence in the security situation and more awareness of the pressure of international opinion. It may be a hopeful sign that the Junta continues to stall on bringing to trial former cabinet ministers and other prominent Marxists people the military initially has every intention of standing up before firing squads. How the military leaders proceed in this area from now on will be influenced to some degree by outside opinion, and particularly by ours, but the major consideration will continue to be their assessment of the security situation. The Junta has announced that state of siege measures will remain in force for at least another eight months, but they have relaxed the curfew somewhat, removed on-the-spot executions, placed some restrictions on searches, and promised that persons charged with civil offenses committed before the coup will be prosecuted under standard civil procedures. Although the traditional parties are well represented on the commission charged with drafting a new constitution, there is growing apprehension among them that the Junta’s ‘‘anti-political’’ orientation will close off normal political activity for a long time to come. Again ruling out any timetable for turning Chile back to the civilians, Junta President Pinochet reinforced these fears by placing much of the blame for the country’s present state on politicians in general. Source: Peter Kornbluh, Chile and the United States: Declassified Documents Relating to the Military Coup, National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 8, September 11, 1973, In National Security Archive, George Washington University, http://www.gwu.edu/nsarchiv/ NSAEBB/index.html.

322. Excerpts from Antonia Pantoja, Memoir of a Visionary: Antonia Pantoja, 2002 Due to factors such as the brutal suppression of the Puerto Rican nationalists during the 1930s and 1950s and the growth of the middle-class, the number of Puerto Ricans demanding independence from the United States declined. Many seemed resigned to remaining a colony within the United States. However, encouraged by the anti-colonial rhetoric of the time, many Puerto Rican youth took up the cause of independence and considered nationalists such as Pedro Albizu Campos (1891–1965) and Lolita Lebr
on (1920–) role models and martyrs to the cause of freedom. Both had been imprisoned for their political beliefs and actions. Because they did not compromise their ideals, young Puerto Ricans identified more with the nationalists than with Puerto Rico’s accommodationist former governor, Luis Mu~ noz Mar
ın (1898–1980). Within this context, the status of Puerto Rico was debated. Moreover, the 1960s saw a surge in the second-generation Puerto Rican in the United States, and while inspired by Campos, Lebr
on, and love for the island, their issues focused on the mainland. The following excerpts are from the memoirs of Antonia Pantoja

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(1922–2002). Pantoja was the founder of one of the 1960s premier organizations for the empowerment, education, and leadership development of Puerto Rican youth, ASPIRA, a non-profit agency with offices in six states. The organization took its name from the Spanish word aspira, which means aspire. Pantoja was a Puerto Rican activist in the 1960s, and she is still remembered today. The following excerpts from her memoirs show the link between the ‘‘younger generation’’ of Puerto Ricans in the 1960s and their beloved island.

Our family was one of the many families that grew up poor in Puerto Rico, surrounded by a society where privilege, abundance, and opportunities existed for others. The families of Barrio Obrero, a workers’ community, survived and enjoyed the benefits of a strong internal social structure of belonging and respecting one another. The struggles of living in this community, under these circumstances, affected me in both positive and negative ways. I was born in Puerta de Tierra, a slum of the Old San Juan city. San Juan is a walled city, and the wall had two doors: Puerta del Mar, which still exists, and the door to the land, Puerta de Tierra. These doors in the wall were made for people to escape in case an invader would win a battle and the inhabitants had to escape either by sea or by land. The land door does not exist anymore because the wall was demolished on that side as the city grew. Today, there is only a small piece of the wall where the door used to be. The people left behind as San Juan grew were poor families that rented railroad-type apartments in houses made of wood. I must have been two or three years old when we left Puerta de Tierra and moved to Barrio Obrero. We were a poor family in a poor neighborhood. In Barrio Obrero, the streets were numbered from 1 to 17. Avenida Borinquen, the main avenue, had a plaza from streets 12 to 15. As you traveled away from Avenida Borinquen toward the water, called El Cafio, the land became muddy, and when it rained, the waters flooded over the banks. The people who lived between Avenida Borinquen and Avenida A had sturdy houses. The first four houses were made of cement and the rest were made of wood. Houses below Avenida A did not have inside toilets or showers. They had outhouses. Barrio Obrero was built as a housing project for workers and their families who had lived in overcrowded areas. Other homes were built in the muddy areas by homeless, poorer people who had moved from rural areas. Families living in Barrio Obrero did not pay rent. They paid taxes at the end of the year. This left us with the basic expenses of food, clothing, transportation, and medical care. In our family, we had a generous contributor to the food supply. We had a prolific breadfruit tree that fed us for years. You could add oil, vinegar, and codfish flakes to the breadfruit when there was money to buy luxuries. This tree was particularly important to us when Grandfather lost his job and after he died. Barrio Obrero was a good neighborhood to grow up in. We all knew each other. There was a spirit of belonging, and we identified with one another. We knew of other neighborhoods, like Sunoco, but we always felt more united and proud of our own community. For other people, we were just a poor neighborhood, but we knew that we were more. Famous people were our neighbors. The Cortijos, a well-known family of musicians, lived in Barrio Obrero. Our neighbors were carpenters and cement workers who worked in the local factory. Racial identity was not a major issue among the members of my neighborhood. We were a people of many colors and many shades. Some had straight hair; some

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had kinky hair, like mine; others had red or blond hair. This mixture was typical of the poor Puerto Rican neighborhoods. Although I would be considered a grifra (the name given to a person who has kinky hair, but has features associated with a Caucasian background), my mother was a black person with Negroid features, as were my grandmother and grandfather. In the new home in Barrio Obrero, we had a place where we could have meetings. On some evenings, many men friends and coworkers of my grandfather would come to the house. They spoke loud, banged on the table, and used vulgar and dirty words and phrases. They were all workers who lived in the neighborhood. I would be put to bed and prohibited from coming to the parlor. However, I would get up and sit by the entrance of the living room to watch and listen. I was not allowed to participate or be seen. These men were angry at the tobacco factory owners. They wanted to get paid more money for their work. They wanted to form what was called a sindicato, a workers’ union. My grandmother would bring coffee and large serving dishes full of serenta, slices of potatoes, tomatoes, yautfa, yuca, avocado, rings of white onions, red sweet peppers, and sliced codfish. I did not realize that my work would be of such future historical importance to my community and to the city. It was only when I became the executive director of ASPIRA that I began to realize that our work would change the lives of many Puerto Rican youths and their families. As I write this book today, I continue to learn about the full impact of the work that we have had. With the experience that the Forum gained in creating its first institution, the board began an examination of new problems that it could address. At the same time, a new public policy was announced by the federal government to designate funds for assisting the poor in establishing instruments for their own empowerment. Our board felt that we had the experience, knowledge, and philosophical understanding to work on a project that could address the community’s poverty. We were an institution that had worked before anyone ever mentioned the War on Poverty. We had worked, placing our time, intelligence, energy, and personal funds together, to develop the organization. We had tested experience. We felt called upon to establish a citywide effort to assist all the existing Puerto Rican organizations in our community to develop the best War on Poverty effort in the city of New York. This commitment led the Forum to embark on its second project, the Puerto Rican Community Development Project in 1964. ASPIRA, THE MOST IMPORTANT WORK OF MY LIFE If you asked me, ‘‘What was the most important and impacting work that you have ever done?’’ I would reply, ‘‘The founding of ASPlRA.’’ ASPlRA occupies a very special place in my heart. Trying to tell the story will be very difficult. Don Miguel de Unamuno, the Spanish philosopher and novelist, once said that a sheet of paper is dead and incapable of transmitting the emotions one wishes to convey. My words are clumsy in English and may be unable to capture the feelings that I wish to transmit. I will try, however. The idea for a youth project began out of the early work of PRACA [Puerto Rican Association for Community Affairs] and its youth conferences. The conceptualizing of the idea continued throughout my education as a social worker and during [my] association with Puerto Rican youths while working at the Union Settlement

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House. The ideas lived in my mind and on pieces of paper, the full implementation did not come about until Dr. Horne supported the effort through the Commission on Intergroup Relations. This … period actually spans over seven years, ending in 1961. As I reflect on it now, I had begun to consider many theories of group work and development when I was a student at the New York School of Social Work, but I had not begun to think of program ideas. When I graduated from the School of Social Work, I went out of my way to find a job in the Puerto Rican community commonly called ‘‘EI Barrio’’ in East Harlem. I could not be employed in a Puerto Rican agency, since they were non existent. I opted for the best substitute in selecting the Settlement House on 104th Street between Third and Second Avenues. I was employed as the director of the adult program. There were only two Puerto Ricans on the staff. Although situated in the heart of EI Barrio, the Settlement House did not attract many Puerto Ricans because they did not speak English. While working at the Settlement, I continued to share an apartment with Helen, but we had moved to a small unit in a renovated apartment building on 97th Street, between Lexington and Third Avenues. While we lived there, I found myself relating more and more to the Puerto Rican community. Helen would accompany me to some of the activities, but most of the time I would attend alone. Our lives began to go in separate directions. After a big disagreement, we separated our lives, and I continued to live in the apartment until I applied to buy a cooperative apartment at La Salle and 125th Street. The meetings of PRACA could now be held comfortably in my new apartment, since it was big and beautiful. My house became the center of activity for the younger professionals in the Puerto Rican community. I began to be considered the center of the group. The original idea that I presented to Dr. Horne was called ‘‘New Leaders in New York.’’ It was to organize youths into clubs that would become the vehicles to encourage them to find their identity, learn leadership skills by working on problems that their communities suffered, complete high school, and enter college to pursue a career that would allow them to give back to their community. The idea had germinated in my mind as a result of various experiences that I had when I arrived in New York. The idea began to haunt my thoughts after having heard discussions from Puerto Rican high school students who attended the youth conferences that PRACA was holding. These conferences were organized and held by the youths themselves, who were the leaders and speakers telling us how powerless and insignificant they were made to feel by their classmates and teachers. The students discussed their fear of speaking in their classes, their shame because of their native language, their fear of the gangs from other ethnic groups, and their fear of the police. I was deeply concerned about what I was hearing. The implementation of my ideas would not come easily. I had to pursue many different persons and approaches before I could succeed. At the Settlement House and through the activities of PRACA, I had become more deeply committed to a program of action that would change the lives of these young people. As I would walk to my job in EI Barrio, I would see a group of Puerto Rican teenagers standing in front of the Settlement, engaging in what seemed to me a strange ritual: taking turns spitting. I would say, ‘‘Good afternoon.’’ There would be no answer. One early evening as I prepared to visit the adult club meeting, I noticed a young man leaning against the wall in front of the door to my office. He seemed to be a member of the group that I had seen spitting in front of the building. I said hello and he responded.

Latinos in the 1960s

I seized the opportunity to ask if he was a member of the youth program on the fourth floor. He replied no, but said that he had come to speak with me if I had the time. When I said that I had the time, he sat down and opened with a barrage of questions, one right after the other. What was my position in the Settlement House? Since I had an accent, was I a Puerto Rican? Did I go to school in New York? I answered the questions as he asked them. Then I asked one question, ‘‘What is the game that I see you and your friends playing outside? The spitting?’’ ‘‘It’s a contest. Whoever spits the farthest, wins.’’ ‘‘Wins what?’’ I asked. ‘‘Wins nothing.’’ We continued to talk about the fact that he lived in the Bronx, but came to East Harlem to visit his friends. He worked in a shoe factory downtown. His name was Eddie Gonzalez, and he was seventeen years old. He was one of fourteen children. He had dropped out of school to help support his family. The Gonzalez family was on welfare, but he had to supplement their income, since sixteen members needed his help. Eddie confessed that he was sorry that he had dropped out of school, but he considered it too late to return. I shared my experiences of going to night school and using vocational services to plan to complete college. I encouraged him to consider that he was young enough to return to school to complete his high school education at night and still continue to help his family. He argued that he was too old to return to school. I shared my experiences of attending night school with many adults who were his age or older. I invited Eddie to join the group called HYAA. Later on, Eddie did complete his education and left his own impact on the city of New York by helping a whole generation of Puerto Ricans to obtain leadership positions in the labor unions. He developed a union leadership institute at Cornell University. The experience with Eddie propelled me into writing the project for leaders of the new immigrants in the city. My idea was to pick up youth and provide a way for their ‘‘hanging out together’’ (the clubs), following a behavior that was natural to their age group. In the clubs, they would learn about their culture and the country of their parents, and also learn how to survive in the school and the neighborhood. The club would provide opportunities to develop feelings of self-worth and appreciation for their culture as they learned leadership skills to work in their communities. The clubs would substitute for the gangs that were already becoming popular protective groups for Italian, Polish, and black youths. I worked on my idea of developing youth clubs by researching how the Jewish community had developed its youth programs. I also studied the literature on youth gangs and their origins. This information was becoming available through the city’s newly organized agency, the Youth Board, an agency that had been formed to work mission, objectives, and a work plan. Everyone agreed that this new leadership program should not become a service agency; instead, in form and methods, it should be a movement. However, we all were wise enough to understand that it had to render some service if it was to be successful in raising funds. The very important act of naming the project engaged the group in discussions that clearly indicated a philosophical position and a profound understanding that to work with youth we had to impart values, optimism, and the decision to succeed. We wanted an upbeat name, one word to express belief in one’s self. The word aspira was finally selected. It was chosen because to aspire is upbeat. We all wished the

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meaning would be ‘‘I will aspire and I will attain.’’ The Spanish command form ASPIRA, of the verb aspirar, was perfect. We made fast progress in organizing ASPIRA. Dr. Horne’s introduction to Mr. Sol Markoff, executive director of the New York Foundation, went a long way toward making our proposal more fundable. Horne introduced me to four other foundations. A couple of board members and I met with representatives of these foundations to present and defend the proposal. We were all novices in such matters, but we were able to obtain interviews with five funding sources: the New York, the Field, the Hofueimer, the Rockefeller Brothers, and the Taconic Foundations. Sol Markoff became our mentor and our facilitator during these interviews. All five foundations approved requests for funding. In fact, after a few months of functioning, we approached the Taconic Foundation. They suggested that I increase the amount requested, and funded us for three consecutive years, pending the positive evaluation of each year’s work. In the autumn of 1961, we received letters from the five foundations accepting our proposals and assigning funds. The Forum board called a meeting to discuss what to do, since we now had funds to start the project, but no one had ever had the experience of administering an institution. At the meeting, they all concluded that I should resign my position with the city of New York to come and direct ASPIRA. I postponed an answer until I had spoken with Dr. Horne. He agreed with the board: I should leave the Commission and become the first executive director of ASPIRA. He acknowledged that it was risky to leave the security of city employment, but he said that I was the only person who could get ASPIRA going. It must be understood that I had never directed an institution, but with the help of all my friends, I took the job. And I learned on the job as problems emerged and needed to be resolved. The physical work and good social times were accompanied by long and arduous hours of discussion and decisions. We wanted to develop a program that would work with youths in groups because we believed that that way, it would be economically feasible to reach large numbers of young people. I had been a group worker, and I also knew that the adolescents would be most influential on each other. We planned for the groups or clubs to be organized in schools, in churches, on street comers, in billiard parlors, or wherever young people congregated. The youths would be asked to organize their own ASPIRA clubs, and by following a list of eight required steps, they would be accepted into a federation of clubs. Once the groups completed the eighth step, they would be initiated through a ceremony called areyto. The idea of the areyto had been borrowed from a ceremony of the native Ta
ınos (the original inhabitants of the island of Puerto Rico who used the ceremony to celebrate their leaders). From the beginning, ASPlRA adopted three major objectives in working with youth: 1. To organize a youth movement in the Puerto Rican community that would learn leadership skills, problem identification, and problem-solving skills, and to work through the clubs and the club federation in resolving the problems of the Puerto Rican community of New York. 2. To help club members study the history and the culture of Puerto Rico, as well as the history of their parents’ immigration to New York, and to use this knowledge to develop a commitment to and positive identification with their community, in order to strengthen their participation in the life of their community.

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3. To stay in high school, to graduate, and to identify a field, profession, or area of work in which the youths could earn a livelihood and acquire the skills to work as a leader in the community. The federation bylaws spelled out the number of youths allowed in each club, the naming of the club, the community projects to be selected for the club’s work, the selection of career study areas, the assignment of a staff person, and the training and responsibilities of personnel to work with youth. Our planning went very well. However, immediately upon opening our doors for service, a series of internal problems with the board and members of the community emerged. The members of our board had never served before on the board of directors of an institution. The Puerto Rican community of New York had never had an institution that offered services with a staff and formal offices. So, neither the board nor the community knew how to relate to their new institution. An example of the kind of problem that I had to resolve with my own board came very early in the life of ASPlRA. At one of the early board meetings, the chairperson requested monies to establish a bar for the meetings. I would not approve the expenditures of grant funds for purchasing rum, beer, gin, ice, cheese, crackers, lemons, or mixers. I added that the idea was a good one, however, and I placed $20 as my donation to support the idea of the bar. I requested that board members do the same. I further requested that a proposition be introduced for a vote that would establish the policy that funds donated to ASPIRA could not be spent on activities or items for the benefit of the board, because it violated our tax-exempt status. A long and heated discussion followed with the board finally approving a policy that established the board’s respect for donated funds and our responsibility to use funds only for the objectives of the specific donation. Even though I felt good about the end result of this first struggle, I was upset because it resulted in a tense relationship between the chair of the board and myself. Problems that we encountered as we began to be known in the community were created by our community’s lack of knowledge and experience in relating to an institution and in the feelings of some community members that felt they had a privileged status because they knew members of the board. For example, members of the community who considered themselves ‘‘important’’ would bring or send their children to request scholarships without belonging to or working in the clubs. In other instances, board members would send relatives or friends to obtain jobs for which they had no skills or for jobs that did not exist. The examples were numerous, but they always reflected a desire to obtain special privileges or resources. These problems and complaints were discussed at our board meetings, and were at times used by others to say that ASPIRA was not serving the community. I held firm in refusing to compromise our funding obligations and our mission and philosophy. As ASPIRA became better known, these problems diminished. The most serious and destructive problems came from other youth and educational agencies and from non-Puerto Ricans. Very serious examples of these were hate letters, tapes, and recordings sent to me personally and to ASPIRA. Threats of violence were received whenever there was a news article announcing our receipt of a grant. I opened a file on these letters, following the advice of the police. Other less violent attacks came from people in the audiences at conferences where I was invited to speak. Members of the audience would angrily ask why we were segregating our youths into separate clubs and why we Puerto Ricans needed help in

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adjusting to the city when other newcomers had to make it on their own. Other youth-serving agencies attacked the idea of our setting up a separate new agency instead of bringing the funds and our youths into already existing programs. Fortunately, no physical attacks were ever made, only threats. From these experiences, I learned how to handle myself and to deflect the attacks. Sometimes I would respond directly and harshly. Other times, I thought it best to throw the questions back to those who challenged our work. By far, the most difficult opposition came from the Board of Education, which wrote to ASPIRA saying our counselors would not be allowed to counsel the students because they were not licensed. I wrote back stating that we did not want the licensed counselors of the Board of Education to counsel our children because their advice was destructive to our youths’ future. In the end, this was a function of ASPIRA that the board could not control, since our educational planning and counseling was conducted in the clubs at ASPIRA’s offices. Later on when we had many clubs, they met at schools, but by then ASPIRA had enough strength to overcome the Board of Education’s protests. One of the really destructive acts of the Board of Education was not to allow the organizing of ASPIRA clubs in schools with high enrollments of Puerto Rican students unless a teacher was present at all times. This was fought vehemently by ASPIRA at the Board of Education level because it involved the attendance of teachers in meetings after school hours, for which they were not compensated. ASPIRA collected information on other student organizations, such as Hillel, NAACP [National Association for the Advancement of Colored People], Catholic and Protestant clubs, and other ethnic youth clubs, such as the Irish, Spanish, and Italian clubs. ASPIRA was able to win recognition for its clubs, but the issue of the presence of a teacher advisor to be present at all meetings remained. The youths were able to convince some teachers to fulfill this requirement. The club programs grew to be very impressive in membership size, number, and impact. The ASPIRA Club Federation became a very powerful organization with very successful programs. The most notable ones were the summer leadership study trips to Puerto Rico, the annual conference to evaluate and plan the federation program, the Areyto Leadership Initiation Ceremony, the Annual Graduation Dance, and the Annual Colleges and Universities Fair. The important fact about the model of the work in clubs was that it was invented by the youth. About two weeks after we opened the offices on West 72nd Street in Manhattan, a young woman came in and asked if she could meet with the director. I received her and she proceeded to tell me, ‘‘I am a high school student in Brooklyn. I read in the newspaper that ASPIRA is organizing Puerto Rican youths in high schools. I came to inform you that I already have organized my own club in our high school. We met and decided that I should come to find out how you will work with us We are ready.’’ ‘‘We think that in order to make a reality of the idea that Aspirantes have the strength to be a force in the fight for the rights of Puerto Rican students and adults, the clubs should be organized into a federation of clubs called the ASPIRA Club Federation (ACF). On the blackboard, they drew a scheme showing the relationship of each club to the federation and the relationship of the ACF to the ASPlRA board of directors. It was a delight to see the youths already becoming a force for change, seeing themselves as joining the strength of loose clubs to a body that could influence the board of ASPlRA. I presented their scheme to the board of directors,

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since it included the proposal that the ACF elect three members to the board of directors of ASPIRA! The proposal was accepted, and today in New York and in the ASPlRAs in other states, the ACF elects five members to the board of directors of the agency. The ACF in New York also proposed to the staff of ASPIRA that an association of parents of club members be organized. The expectation was that the ASPIRA Club Federation could be an instrument of power for the Aspirantes, to be exercised against the power of the overall society when it used its strength to oppress the youth. This principle was tested in a demonstration staged in front of Gov. Nelson Rockefeller’s house. The ACF was protesting the City University of New York [CUNY] raising its admission requirements. The governor had approved these ‘‘higher’’ standards. The CUNY tuition-free colleges were the institutions that most of the college-bound Puerto Rican high school graduates attended. Most Aspirantes planning to attend CUNY held jobs after school while in high school in order to contribute to their families’ income and in order to buy clothing and books for themselves. The announcement of the higher required grade point so late in the school year gave them no opportunity to raise borderline averages. The ACF and the parents’ association mounted a picket of a three-ring line consisting of a man, a woman, and a student, symbolizing a mother, a father, and their child. The picket was led by parents holding a casket they borrowed from one of the Puerto Rican funeral parlors. On the casket, they placed a very large sign that said, ‘‘Rockefeller, you killed the future of high school Puerto Rican youth who worked all year to attend CUNY and now cannot make it.’’ The picket line circled the block where Gov. Rockefeller had his New York City home. The press and television covered the orderly picketing, chanting, and marching. The mounted police were there the whole time to keep order. We, the ASPlRA staff, were deployed at key spots across the street from the picketing to prevent provocateurs from causing trouble. A student and a parent were spokespersons to the press and television. Leaflets explaining the situation were distributed. It was a successful demonstration. The governor’s office asked ASPIRA, the ACF, and the parents’ association to meet and give them a list of the affected students. All students affected entered college the next autumn. The reader will understand why ASPIRA became the most important work of my life. In terms of numbers, ASPIRA of New York alone, from 1963 to 1999, can easily be shown to have touched the lives of approximately 36,000 young people from Puerto Rican and other Latino groups. This is a conservative estimate, using the number of thirty clubs a year with twenty members each and we know some years we had many more clubs, and some were larger. But numbers do not tell the complete story. So I must tell you about the principles, the values, the philosophy upon which we, the founders, built the model of service. The most important of these has been the grounding of ASPIRA in the knowledge and value that people are born, grow up, and develop fully and best in a community. We believe that the uprooting of our children from their community has been deadly to their ability to learn and to their sense of worth. The immigrant family did not have the supportive environment of an extended family, neighborhood, and friends. Human beings live in families and in communities because they need these for their survival and development of their full potential. I challenge this society to test these statements and to find out if these are the reasons why our youths have so many problems in the United States. A second principle upon which ASPIRA was founded is that there is a continuous developmental chain that prompts the emergence and maintains the growth of

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leadership from one generation to another. In order to provide a community with those leaders, it needs to identify and solve its problems and to guide the group through good and difficult times. That leadership emerges in a continuum through the contact and education of potential leaders from one generation to another. The potential leaders must have the opportunity to challenge and take over the mantle of leadership from older, established leaders. Potential leaders must engage in the educational process that affords them the opportunity to learn history, new technology, and skills that will help them to identify problems and learn how to solve them. Leaders, new and old, must engage in the development, nurturing, and demonstration of ethical commitment to their communities. Another important pillar in the founding of ASPlRA was the need to establish an institution that would insure that the youth of our community would be educated to acquire the knowledge and skills available to grow fully to their maximum potential. We also hoped to insure that they could occupy positions at all levels of the institutions of the society and earn a living, but also contribute to the needs of their family, their community, and the total society. The challenge we imposed on ourselves was to invent a model that would operate on those principles, values, and philosophical commitments. We succeeded in doing so. Today, there are Aspirantes who went through the process and are in leadership and professional positions throughout the city of New York and in many other cities across the country. They work in corporations; in city, state, and federal agencies as top leaders; in universities; in social and educational agencies at top-level positions as scientists, entrepreneurs, and artists. Some have returned to serve as staff or board members of ASPlRA in various states. They make real the commitment that they pledged while they were members of a club. Many of the Aspirantes are engaging in organizing new agencies to deal with community problems. Others have played central roles in organizing ASPIRAs in other states. Today, there are seven ASPlRAs: in Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Florida, and Puerto Rico. They are served by a national office in Washington, D.C. I left ASPIRA of New York in 1966. For several weeks, I drove across the United States to see the rest of the country. The real and most important reason for my trip was to disconnect myself from the organization. I wanted very much for the board to select a new director without any input from me. I had been in the position since 1961, and I felt that it was time to leave. I was the only director that the board and staff had ever known. We had learned together and grown together as a family. I was leaving the agency to take a teaching position at the Columbia School of Social Work, my alma mater. I was leaving the agency in the hands of Yolanda S
anchez, the program director who had been my student, while a new director was being selected. Louis Nu~ nez was the assistant director of the institution. In these two persons, I believed that there was significant experience and sense of continuity to move forward. I also had decided to leave because my philosophy of leadership has always been that the top person must step down to open up opportunities for new people. In spite of my convictions that I was making the right decision for myself and the agency, I felt sad because I was leaving friends and an organization that had become a big part of my life, and its people had become family to me. Since leaving ASPIRA, I have been fortunate to have visited all of the affiliates and to attend conferences, participate in the inauguration of new centers, and in

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graduations at their schools. I am most satisfied and feel a great sense of pride to know that the work that we began in 1961 continues and has made an impact on the lives of thousands of young people. Whenever I travel to give speeches, receive awards, or attend conferences, I always meet Aspirantes who share their accomplishments with me and thank me for having made the resources of the institution available. I have heard their wonderful stories as I travel from one end of the country to the other. I hear these stories from faculty, elected officials, businessmen, artists, scientists, writers. Without a doubt, I feel enormously proud as I refer to all these people as ‘‘the children that I had.’’ When I hear of the problems of any affiliate, it pains me in a very personal way. Over the years, I have heard negative comments and criticism of ASPIRA. From time to time, I am told that individuals have used an affiliation with ASPIRA to advance their own careers. With regard to those who have claimed a relationship to the founding of the institution, I can only say that many persons supported our efforts, including Puerto Rican teachers, community leaders, and aspiring political figures. I wish to acknowledge the support of the community in our work. For those who have used positions on the board or staff for personal advancement, I have nothing to say. Criticism is difficult to accept. ASPIRA has been accused of ‘‘creaming,’’ by serving students who are already bound for college while not maintaining sufficient activities to reach and motivate the truly needy. I know that, over time, the ASPlRAs may have yielded to the obligations of funding sources and reshaped their original objectives. I have always directly criticized the pattern of fundraising that obligates an institution to one major source of funding or to a governmental funding base that too frequently controls and alters the original mission of an institution. Also, I have always been clear that it is vital to maintain the base of ASPlRA as a Puerto Rican entity, although other populations are served. Over the years, I have been asked to meet with ASPlRA students. While I lived in Puerto Rico, they would visit me yearly as part of their annual trips. I have always been asked questions regarding the origins, mission, and objectives of the institution and the relevance of maintaining an institution that is Puerto Rican. I have not always felt that my insistence on maintaining certain founding principles has been well received by new boards, but I have been consistent in my position that ASPIRA is not simply a service entity. It is supposed to be a movement with a national network that acts as an advocate for youths and their community. The ASPIRA bilingual education consent decree, won at court, was one of the major efforts that grew out of this tradition. Many Young Lords Party members and leaders in ‘‘the student revolts’’ developed or reinforced their sense of cultural identity and affiliation as members of ASPlRA clubs. Members of the first graduating clubs of ASPIRA entered college and formed the pivotal base of movements for Puerto Rican Studies programs at universities. The charge that ASPlRA was founded as a conservative social service entity is simply not true. I challenge any critic to review the original documents to determine the true nature of our intent and our commitment to social change. Source: Excerpt is reprinted with permission of the publisher of Memoir of a Visionary: Antonia C 2002), Pantoja, by Antonia Pantoja (Houston: Arte P
ublico Press University of Houston
pp. 24 25, 93 109.

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323. Excerpt from Bernard Weinraub, ‘‘War Hits Home in Death of Bronx Soldier,’’ 1966 The Puerto Rican Nationalists as well as Puerto Rican youth were critical of the war in Vietnam, seeing the struggle of the Vietnamese people as a struggle for liberation. The Vietnamese had been a colony of France and when the French left, the United States assumed the role of occupier. Many of these nationalists drew parallels between the status of Vietnam and that of Puerto Rico. This discontent with the war was fanned by early casualties and the feeling that Puerto Ricans were dying in disproportionately high numbers. In 1966, the body
of Angel Rafael Luna, a young Puerto Rican soldier, was returned from Vietnam to New York and then to Puerto Rico. He was the first soldier to die from the South Bronx. He was 22 years old. The following excerpt is from an article that memorializes the event and the suffering of the Puerto Ricans, as well as their contributions.

Mrs. Luna began trembling. ‘‘Has my boy been killed?’’ she said. ‘‘Yes,’’ the major replied. Mr. Luna ran into the apartment and phoned his son-in-law, Jos
e Rangel, a postman who lives two blocks away, ‘‘Angel esta muerto, Angel esta muerto,’’ he gasped. ‘‘Ay, Dios, Ay, Dios.’’ By the time Mr. Rangel arrived, the major had gone he apparently spoke no Spanish and the Lunas speak little English. A doctor was called for Mrs. Luna and neighbors began arriving.… Mrs. Luna said she wanted her son buried where he was born, in Barranquitas, P. R. She had saved several hundred dollars for his college education he had graduated from Theodore Roosevelt High School but the money will be used, instead, for the plane fare to the funeral.… Source: Bernard Weinraub, ‘‘War Hits Home in Death of Bronx Soldier,’’ New York Times; December 23, 1966, p. 27.

324. Excerpt from ‘‘Badillo Scores Young Lords for Attack on Puerto Rican,’’ 1970 Undoubtedly the most militant group in the Puerto Rican community during the Sixties was the Young Lords. Many members were former gang kids who found a cause. Indeed, in the Puerto Rican communities gang activities declined as youth became political. They had a purpose. They participated with groups such as the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) (1962– 1969), which was a national student organization that personified the New Left. SDS was popular on college campuses where they led opposition to the Vietnam War and called for the democratization of higher education. The Young Lords were also active in other leftist groups. They confronted many groups that attempted to party build and control their own agenda. The New York Young Lords lived and worked in El Barrio in East Harlem. The organization itself began in Chicago and then spread to other cities. Its aim was to unite Spanish-speaking people against oppression. They engaged in activities such as cleaning up the streets. In Harlem in 1970 they led an 11-day occupation of an East Harlem church. They were arrested singing, ‘‘Que Bonita

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Bandera,’’ a Puerto Rican folk song. Not everyone was enamored with the Lords. In the following excerpt, former Bronx Borough president Herman Badillo (1929–) criticized their tactics.

Former Bronx Borough president Herman Badillo scored members of the Young Lords yesterday for throwing eggs and tomatoes at Puerto Rico’s Gov. Luis Ferre in Sunday’s Puerto Rican Day parade here. ‘‘We have the right to dissent in this country,’’ Mr. Badillo said, ‘‘and I have fought hard all my life to protect that right. But the Young Lords, of all people, should realize that it is possible to sit down and solve problems without violence.’’ Source: ‘‘Badillo Scores Young Lords for Attack on Puerto Rican,’’ New York Times, June 9, 1970, p. 83.

325. Excerpt from Jos
e Yglesias, ‘‘Right On with the Young Lords,’’ 1970 The Young Lords emerged as the leading Puerto Rican youth organization of the late 1960s. Its direct action and defense of the barrio attracted idealistic Puerto Rican youth. The following excerpt describes an uprising against New York officials over the lack of sanitation services in East Harlem.

Suddenly in East Harlem last summer people began throwing garbage and wrecked furniture into the middle of the streets. Traffic was stopped frequently, midtown businessmen avoiding the clog of the East River Drive found themselves inside stifling cars in an area whose residents looked upon their discomfiture with little sympathy.… The Mayor’s office got the message and a 24-hour pickup of garbage was begun. For a while, El Barrio, that part of Harlem where the first Puerto Rican migrants settled, was cleaner than anyone remembered. With this ‘‘garbage riot,’’ the Young Lords first made their presence felt in New York.… The rush thereafter by young Puerto Ricans to join the Lords … was so great that the organization had to close its rolls temporarily and take steps … to prevent police and F.B.I. agrents fiom infiltrating.… ‘‘We believe armed self-defense and armed struggle are the only ways to liberation.… We want a socialist society.’’ Source: ‘‘Right On with the Young Lords,’’ New York Times, June 7, 1970, p. 215.

326. Excerpt from Linda Ocasio, ‘‘Portrait of an Organizer: Edgar deJesus,’’ 1996 In the 1960s, the Young Lords was transformed from a street gang into a political organization in Chicago. In prison, Jos
e ‘‘Cha Cha’’ Jim
enez, one of the seven founders of the Young Lords street gang, met Fred Hampton and other Black Panther Party members. The Black Panthers were organized to promote civil rights and to defend the African American community. They were militant, dressing in uniforms, and like the U.S. military, wore berets
nez found common ground with the which in their instance were black. Jime Panthers. Upon his release from prison, Cha Cha transformed the Young Lords into a politically conscious organization committed to the liberation of

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the Puerto Rican people. They believed in political control of the community and the responsiveness of its institutions to it. Chapters spread to New York and elsewhere. The following is an excerpt of a portrait of Edgar deJesus, a Young Lord organizer.

When Edgar deJesus was growing up in East Harlem in the late 1960s, he was surrounded by the sights and sounds of a generation awakening to its own power. The Young Lords, a group of young Puerto Ricans committed to seizing the day on behalf of a community, commandeered a local church as the site for a children’s breakfast program. It was the beginning of a community offensive that demanded respect and better services for the residents of the neighborhood known as El Barrio. ‘‘The offensive was happening in front of our faces,’’ deJesus recalls. ‘‘It focused everyone on poverty.’’ Seared into his memory are the discussions that erupted over the dinner table or on the street about the causes of poverty. ‘‘It’s illogical to have poverty in the richest country in the world,’’ he remembers thinking. ‘‘It was the simple concept of why is there a division of rich and poor.’’ DeJesus also recalls his father, a hotel waiter and shop steward, arguing vigorously in defense of the trade union movement as crucial to the economic stability of Latino families like his own. DeJesus, now 40, is the assistant manager and director of organizing for the NY/ NJ Regional Joint Board of the Union of Needle-trades, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE). The 350,000-member union was formed in July 1995 by a merger of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU) and the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union (ACTWU). It is not only in his official UNITE capacity that deJesus is influencing the labor movement; he is also a member of the New York City Hispanic Labor Committee in East Harlem and the AFL-CIO Labor Council on Latin American Advancement. Through his participation in these advisory bodies, deJesus has helped articulate a northeast Latino perspective on NAFTA and issues of trade that provided an important counterpoint to the pro-NAFTA drumbeat of the Clinton Administration and Latino business leaders. ‘‘Eddie managed to build a very solid roundtable of Latino unionism, including Puerto Ricans, Cubans, and Dominicans,’’ says Hector Figueroa, an analyst with Service Employees International Union (SEIU). ‘‘He has made unions more sensitive to the needs of Latinos, especially in the Northeast, which tend to be overlooked.’’ Figueroa also credits deJesus with helping to reconnect the labor and civil rights movement, an alliance that has unravelled in the 33 years since Martin Luther King, Jr., marched on Washington D.C. with black and white union leaders at his side. ‘‘Eddie makes a contribution on a national agenda. He moves the labor movement, not just the Latino issues within the labor movement,’’ says Figueroa. DeJesus also has ties with the Puerto Rican movement: he is a board member of the Institute for Puerto Rican Policy and a former vice president of the National Congress of Puerto Rican Rights. For deJesus, his stint as a teenage Puerto Rican activist lit the fire for a lifelong commitment to social justice. ‘‘I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for that experience,’’ he says. His experience is significant for the U.S. labor movement, as it seeks to reenergize itself, in part by addressing the issues of minority communities that it had ignored in the past.

Latinos in the 1960s

By the time Eddie joined with the Young Lords in 1973 1974, the group had splintered and evolved into the Puerto Rican Revolutionary Workers Organization, a Marxist-Leninist group. That group eventually crumbled, fueled by paranoia and mistrust, which deJesus and others now attribute to deliberate government subversion a fate common to radical left political groups in the 1970s. ‘‘From 1975 to 1976 was the most demoralized period in my life,’’ deJesus says. After dropping out of Brooklyn College, he took refuge in family, marrying his high school sweetheart, Yolanda. Together they went to work in a bookbinding factory on 10th Avenue in Manhattan. In addition to what he observed on the streets of East Harlem, deJesus had another influence shaping his political and organizing principles: his father. ‘‘My father was my first teacher of trade unionism,’’ deJesus says. ‘‘My father made it clear, that if it weren’t for the union, we wouldn’t have anything.’’ The evidence was all around him: Puerto Rican families who had a least one parent in a union stayed together and were financially stable, whether they lived in East Harlem, the Bronx, or the Lower East Side. However, deJesus’ first experience with a union was not what he expected at all. At the bookbinding factory he joined with coworkers to decertify a Teamsters local that was not representing the Latino workers. ‘‘They were disgruntled with the union and the union reps,’’ he recalls. The experience gave him a chance to put into practice his beliefs about what a union should do for its members. ‘‘I was seeing in reality what I had theorized about,’’ he says. Later, he and his wife moved on to a metal factory; she did clerical work for a jewelry workers union and he became a metal spinner. By 1980, much of the fury that had splintered the Puerto Rican movement began to fade for deJesus, and he started contacting activists that he had lost touch with in Chicago and Canada. He reconnected to the Puerto Rican movement through the National Congress of Puerto Rican Rights, where he established a labor task force. Through the task force, he published for two years a newspaper called El Obrero Boricua (The Puerto Rican Worker). ‘‘We became the more activist Latino voice of the labor movement,’’ he says. At that time he was also working with the Workers Education Center in Manhattan, which melded radical politics with labor-rights awareness. In 1985, he completed a study of Puerto Rican workers in New York City. DeJesus began to draw the attention of older Latino labor leaders, including Edward Gonzalez, a onetime organizer for the ILGWU who taught at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations. ‘‘He looked at my work with the task force and put me into labor law courses at Cornell,’’ deJesus recalls. Gonzalez also did something more. He introduced deJesus to trade union veterans. ‘‘They were not radicals, just basic trade unionists who spent all their lives building unions,’’ deJesus recalls. ‘‘That was probably the beginning of my left politics merging with my trade unionism in practice.’’ After two years at Cornell, deJesus headed the school’s Puerto Rican Latino Studies program for trade unionists. From there, he worked as an organizer, business agent, and eventually administrator for the Capmakers Union Local 2 of ACTWU. Today he oversees organizing for the New York/New Jersey region of UNITE from his office in Union City, NJ. And the Latino communities he works with are not just Puerto Ricans, Cubans, and Dominicans. In the textile mills of Passaic and Paterson, Colombian and Peruvian workers predominate, and with them comes a more militant legacy of activism, deJesus observes: ‘‘They’re used to the state negotiating with unions

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and general strikes. There, negotiations are done region or statewide. Here, it’s done factory by factory.’’ In addition to reaching out to the Latino community in all of its diversity, DeJesus says strengthening the link between labor and the civil rights movement is a continuing effort. Recalling the 1963 March on Washington, he has a tone of wistfulness as he lists some of the unions that linked arms with Rev. King: the UAW, AFSCME, and the Steelworkers. ‘‘I’m waiting for that to happen with the Latino labor movement,’’ he says. Source: Linda Ocasio, ‘‘Portrait of an Organizer: Edgar deJesus,’’ NACLA Report on the Americas, Volume 30, Number 3 (November/December 1996), p. 27.

327. Young Lords, ‘‘Young Lords Party: 13 Point Program and Platform,’’ 1969 The Young Lords, later Young Lords Organization, became the Young Lords Party. It was a Puerto Rican nationalist organization that became increasingly militant and formed a party to carry out the principles of the organization, which was the liberation of all oppressed people, especially the Puerto Rican people, called Borinquen in the Ta
ıno language of the first inhabitants of the island. Evolving from a youth gang, it fought urban renewal that was evicting their families. They fought police abuses and led demonstrations for better public services. The following document is the Party’s platform, the principles to which it adhered.

THE YOUNG LORDS PARTY IS A REVOLUTIONARY POLITICAL PARTY FIGHTING FOR THE LIBERATION OF ALL OPPRESSED PEOPLE. 1. WE WANT SELF-DETERMINATION FOR PUERTO RICANS, LIBERATION ON THE ISLAND AND INSIDE THE UNITED STATES. For 500 years, first Spain and then United States have colonized our country. Billions of dollars in profits leave our country for the United States every year. In every way we are slaves of the gringo. We want liberation and the Power in the hands of the People, not Puerto Rican exploiters. QUE VIVA PUERTO RICO LIBRE. 2. WE WANT SELF-DETERMINATION FOR ALL LATINOS. Our Latin Brothers and Sisters, inside and outside the United States, are oppressed by amerikkkan [American] business. The Chicano people built the Southwest, and we support their right to control their lives and their land. The people of Santo Domingo continue to fight against gringo domination and its puppet generals. The armed liberation struggles in Latin America are part of the war of Latinos against imperialism. QUE VIVA LA RAZA! 3. WE WANT LIBERATION OF ALL THIRD WORLD PEOPLE. Just as Latins first slaved under Spain and the Vanquis, Black people, Indians, and Asians slaved to build the wealth of this country. For 400 years they have fought for freedom and dignity against racist Babylon (decadent empire). Third World people have led the fight for freedom. All the colored and oppressed peoples of the world are one nation under oppression.

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NO PUERTO RICAN IS FREE UNTIL ALL PEOPLE ARE FREE! 4. WE ARE REVOLUTIONARY NATIONALISTS AND OPPOSE RACISM. The Latin, Black, Indian, and Asian people inside the U.S. are colonies fighting for liberation. We knew that Washington, Wall Street, and City Hall will try to make our nationalism into racism; but Puerto Ricans are of all colors and we resist racism. Millions of poor white people are rising up to demand freedom and we support them. These are the ones in the U.S. that are stepped on by the rulers and the government. We each organize our people, but our fights are the same against opposition and we will defeat it together. POWER TO ALL OPPRESSED PEOPLE! 5. WE WANT COMMUNITY CONTROL OF OUR INSTITUTIONS AND LAND. We want control of our communities by our people and [control of] programs, to guarantee that all institutions serve the needs of our people. People’s control of police, health services, churches, schools, housing, transportation, and welfare are needed. We want an end to attacks on our land by urban removal, highway destruction, universities and corporations. LAND BELONGS TO ALL THE PEOPLE! 6. WE WANT A TRUE EDUCATION OF OUR CREOLE CULTURE AND SPANISH LANGUAGE. We must learn our history of fighting against cultural, as well as economic genocide by the yanqui [Yankee]. Revolutionary culture, culture of our people, is the only true teaching. 7. WE OPPOSE CAPITALISTS AND ALLIANCES WITH TRAITORS. Puerto Rican rulers, or puppets of the oppressor do not help our people. They are paid by the system to lead our people down blind alleys, just like the thousands of poverty pimps who keep our communities peaceful for business, or the street workers, who keep gangs divided and blowing each other away. We want a society where the people socialistically control their labor. VENCEREMOS! [We shall overcome] 8. WE OPPOSE THE AMERIKKKAN [AMERICAN] MILITARY We demand immediate withdrawal of U.S. military forces and bases from Puerto Rico, Vietnam, and all oppressed communities inside and outside the U.S. No Puerto Rican should serve in the U.S. Army against his Brothers and Sisters, for the only true army of oppressed people is the people’s army to fight all rulers. U.S. OUT OF VIETNAM, FREE PUERTO RICO! 9. WE WANT FREEDOM FOR ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS. We want all Puerto Ricans freed because they have been tried by the racist courts of the colonizers, and not by their own people and peers. We want all freedom fighters released from jail. FREE ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS! 10. WE WANT EQUALITY FOR WOMEN, MACHISMO MUST BE REVOLUTIONARY … NOT OPPRESSIVE. Under capitalism, our women have been oppressed by both the society and our own men. The doctrine of machismo has been used by our men to take out their frustrations against their wives, sisters, mothers, and children. Our men must support their women in their fight for economic and social equality, and must recognized that our women are equals in every way within the revolutionary ranks.

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FORWARD, SISTERS, IN THE STRUGGLE! 11. WE FIGHT ANTI-COMMUNISIM WITH INTERNATIONAL UNITY. Anyone who resists injustice is called a Communist by ‘‘the man’’ and condemned. Our people are brainwashed by television, radio, newspapers, schools, and books to oppose people in other countries fighting for their freedom. No longer will our people believe attacks and slanders because they have learned who the real enemy is and who their real friends are. We will defend our Brothers and Sisters around the world who fight for justice against the rich rulers of this country. VIVA CHE! 12. WE BELIEVE ARMED SELF-DEFENSE AND ARMED STRUGGLE ARE THE ONLY MEANS TO LIBERATION. We are opposed to violence the violence of hungry children, illiterate adults, diseased old people, and the violence of poverty and profit. We have asked, petitioned, gone to courts, demonstrated peacefully, and voted for politicians full of empty promises. But we still ain’t free. The time has come to demand the lives of our people against repression and for revolutionary war against the businessman, politician, and police when a government oppresses our people, we have the right to abolish it and create a new one. BORICUA IS AWAKE! ALL PIGS BEWARE! 13. WE WANT A SOCIALIST SOCIETY. We want liberation, clothing, free food, education, health care, transportation, utilities, and employment for all. We want a society where the needs of our people come first, and where we give solidarity and aid to the peoples of the world, not oppression and racism. HASTA LA VICTORIA SIEMPRE! Source: The Young Lords Party, 13-Point Program and Platform, Palante, Young Lords, The Original Program and Platform of the Young Lords (October 1969), http://younglords.info/resources/ platform old.html.

328. Excerpts from Young Lords, ‘‘The Ideology of the Young Lords Party,’’ 1969 The Young Lords was a Puerto Rican street gang that began in Chicago, then spread to New York and other U.S. cities. The Young Lords evolved into the Young Lords Party, a militant revolutionary organization in the late 1960s and 1970s. Although freedom from oppression was their main focus, the Young Lords also worked locally to create a better environment for people living in the barrios through efforts like a free-breakfast program for school-aged children. The Young Lords helped raise the consciousness of the barrios of New York, Chicago, and elsewhere by promoting a more proactive agenda to bring democracy to the people. Its grito or cry was Power to the People Panther Power to the Black Panther Party Young Lord Power to the Young Lords

The following excerpts focus on the ideology of the organization.

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INTRODUCTION This is the beginning of the ideology of the Young Lords Party. What is ideology? It is a system of ideas, of principles, that a person or group uses to explain to them how things operate in the world. Our ideology was developed out of the experiences of almost two years of struggling everyday with our people against their oppression. The systematic ideas and principles in this pamphlet are guiding us as to the best way to lead the liberation struggle of the Puerto Rican nation. These are not fixed, rigid ideas, but constantly developed as we constantly work to serve and protect the people. There are certain principles that are fixed and unchangeable to us, through. First, is collective leadership, not individual leadership. One individual can never see the whole of a problem. Only collectives of people, working together, can solve problems correctly. Second, we can understand nothing unless we understand history. One of the problems of the Puerto Rican and amerikkkan [American] revolutionary movements is that they have not done systematic, scientific study of their history and so do not yet understand the countries that they wish to liberate. Third, a revolutionary must be one with the people, serving, protecting, and respecting the people at all times. ‘‘Wherever a Puerto Rican is, the duty of a Puerto Rican is to make the revolution.’’ GLORIA GONZALEZ, FIELD MARSHAL.… ON HISTORY & DIALECTICS The Young Lords Party has always believed in the correct studying of our history, the history of the nation. Puerto Ricans are told we have no past, not as good as the oppressor’s past. So finding out the truth is a good thing. See, the game that the amerikkkan enemy runs is to tell us that we ain’t got no history, no roots, no tradition, no nothing. In this way, we are made to feel as though we have just popped up, and when we move against the enemy, we move blindly. If we had a knowledge of history, we could study the mistakes and successes of those who came before; instead of starting anew, we could begin where the last generation left off. It is time that all Puerto Ricans get down to studying our history. This serves three purposes: 1. We’ll be able to check out what our ancestors did and did not do. Also, we’ll get a sense of our people’s development. In a national liberation struggle like ours, a movement must be built that comes from the people, from our experiences, sorrows, joys. There is a certain way to organize the Puerto Rican nation, as opposed to say, the Polish nation. 2. Studying history allows us to see the enemy’s master plan develop, such as the one being used to control Puerto Ricans. 3. Finding out about our roots gives us a certain pride in the knowledge that we have withstood oppression for so long. We must transmit this righteous pride to all of our people. Let me run something down on history. In school, or in society in general, we are taught that events in history take place because of a few ‘‘great’’ individuals, like

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Napoleon or George Washington (specifically, ‘‘great’’ white males). We are taught that history goes in cycles, that it repeats itself. This is all jive. In the Young Lords Party, we are training ourselves in thinking scientifically, in looking at things from an orderly point of view to arrive at the right conclusion. All Puerto Ricans concerned with their people must begin to see things in a scientific way. Scientific? Well, we learned in school that the way a scientist approaches a problem is by way of a thing called the scientific method. The scientist first say[s], ‘‘What do I want to get out of this thing after I understand it? Where do I want to go? Now what would be the best way of getting through this problem and to my goal?’’ And then the scientist lays out each step, one by one, until the goal is reached. This is the way we must lay out the revolution, using our passion, our feelings, to keep us going, step by step, until we are free. This means that we will become something called ‘‘dialectical materialists.’’ What does this mean? First, take the word dialectics. Dialectics is the study of contradictions. What is a contradiction? We’ve heard about something being contradictory, right? Like say you’re having a discussion with someone, and then they say one thing and you say the opposite. That’s a contradiction, and it must be resolved one way or the other. The both of you could have an argument and walk away, or a unity of thing between you will arise. Contradictions are everywhere, even in nature. Say you have a herd of pigs, the last herd left. Then say there are some people who are starving, and they come across the pigs, a decision has to be made. The people or the pigs. That’s a contradiction. A Puerto Rican in, say, high school who hears their history teacher say ‘‘history repeats itself,’’ will say, ‘‘No good, teacher. History flows, like a river, and the course that river takes depends on how contradictions are resolved. In other words, history is always moving ahead, teacher, going forward, once a contradiction is dealt with (resolved). Sometimes a contradiction is resolved in a way that it only looks as though history repeats itself.’’ That sister or brother would say, ‘‘See, let’s say you have a nation where most of the people are starving, and a few people in power are eating well. That’s a contradiction. It could be resolved either by the people rising against those in power, like in Cuba in 1959, or by those in power taking the country into a war against another country, like the United States in 1941 against Japan (sometimes the rulers of a country go to war so that the people forget their internal problems, like their stomachs).’’ This Puerto Rican would say, ‘‘That’s history, that’s life: you have contradictions, they get resolved, which changes history’s course, and since there are always contradictions, there will always be new changes.’’ Some contradictions are the ones between machismo and male-female liberation, or between capitalism and socialism. The second word is materialism. This means that all of these contradiction[s] occur in the real world, the world we can see around us. Many times, for example, the economic facts of life cause other things to happen. Yet, we are taught in school that the United States went into World War I ‘‘to make the world safe for Democracy.’’ This is a lie. The U.S.A. went into World War I for the same reason it went into the Mexican-American invasion, Spanish-Amerikkkan [American] invasion, Korean, and Indo-China Wars economics. Wealth. As an imperialist country, amerikkka [American] resolves the contradiction of constantly needing more wealth to keep its

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machinery running by going to war to rip off land (Puerto Rico from Spain) and to put people to work at home. (Defense contracts¼factories¼employment¼products¼ consumers). Scientific analysis show that it is materialism, real things, that exist in the world. Part of dialectics is that everything has its opposite, and the opposite of materialism is metaphysics, idealism. Idealism is ideas that have nothing to do with reality. It’s like saying that the reason why flowers grow is because of magic, or why people are here is because man was made from dirt, and woman came from man’s rib. The reason why flowers grow or why people are here is because of certain scientific laws of nature. That is real. That is materialism. With this kind of thinking in mind we can now briefly cover Puerto Rican and Black history. Why? Well, there are contradictions between people and the enemy; these are natural contradictions since it is the enemy that enslaves us. Contradictions with the enemy are antagonistic, non-friendly. These differences are resolved ultimately through war. Then there are contradictions among the people. We have been divided and conquered by the enemy in hundreds of ways housewives against prostitutes, young against old, men against women, Puerto Ricans against AfroAmericans, unionized workers against non-union workers, workers against drug addicts, families against other families, one … against another. Theses contradictions should be kept non-antagonistic and settled among ourselves, as friends so we can unite against the enemy. So, in studying Black and Puerto Rican history, we look at the history of the contradictions between Blacks and Puerto Ricans as differences among brothers and sisters oppressed by the Yankee. Source: Pamphlet entitled ‘‘The Ideology of the Young Lords Party,’’ Palante, Young Lords, The Original Program and Platform of the Young Lords (October 1969), pp. 5, 7 9 http://younglords. info/resources/platform old.html.

329. Young Lords, ‘‘Position on Women’s Liberation,’’ May 1971 In the late 1960s, New York City’s Young Lords developed a unique brand of radical politics that influenced later generations. They were ahead of their time in advocating a brand of nationalism and gender equality. The Young Lords demanded rights for legal abortion and contraception, but called for an end to sterilization abuse. There was intense debate between male and female Young Lords in the evolution of a feminist ideology. The Young Lords Party (YLP) attempted to integrate feminism into their unique nationalist perspective. The following is its stance on Women’s Liberation.

Puerto Rican, Black, Asian, Native American, and other Third World Women (women of color) are becoming more aware of how we have been especially oppressed. Women have historically been at the bottom of the ladder; under capitalism, this has been intensified so that we are oppressed three ways. First, we are oppressed as Puerto Ricans, Blacks, Chicanas, Native Americans, or Asians (Third World People). Second, we are oppressed as women. Third, we are oppressed by our own men who have been brainwashed by this capitalist system into believing a whole set of false, empty standards of what manhood is supposed to be machismo.

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The Third World Woman thus becomes the most oppressed person in the world today. Wherever there is oppression, a movement develops to end that oppression. Third World Women have been and are still being oppressed, and therefore, there is a movement for their liberation. Third World Women have always struggled in many different ways. This struggle, however, should not be confused with the Women’s Liberation Movement. There are many differences differences in the background of the women involved and differences about how best to end the oppression of women. In the Young Lords Party we disagree with the analysis made by the right wing. We feel that the greatest conflict in the world today lies between capitalism (and capitalism’s invasion of other countries, imperialism) and socialism, and people’s drives to bring socialism to their countries, to their lives. We believe that the new society we are talking about will not come about by women separating themselves from men, but through sisters and brothers struggling with one another, working together, to deal with the negative things inside all of us. For sisters, this is feeling that we are supposed to be passive towards brothers, you know, let them run things; with brothers, this is feeling that we are supposed to be superior or better than sisters, you know, acting out those macho roles. The Party knows that Puerto Rican, Black, and other Third World Women make up over half of the Revolutionary Army; in the struggle for the liberation of Puerto Ricans, sisters and brothers must press for the equality of women the women’s struggle is part of the Revolution within the Revolution. What is a man? What is a woman? Nonconsciously [subconsciously], we believe a man is strong, aggressive, hairy, decisive, hard, cold, firm, and intelligent. Nonconsciously [subconsciously], a women is weak, timid, smooth, soft-spoken, scatterbrained, soft, warm, dumb, and loving. Both of these sets of descriptions are a result of the way we have been trained nonconsciously [subconsciously]. From the time that we are born, we are taught by our parents and by the society to be a ‘‘man’’ or a ‘‘woman’’ and to live up to those false characteristics we are supposed to have. These personality traits are part of the way we are supposed to be. See, originally in the Party, we didn’t understand these concepts. We knew that brothers were messing over sisters and we said machismo and male chauvinism must be eliminated. We did not understand that brothers were acting out the roles that this society had assigned to them. Brothers had trouble understanding why some of the ways they related to sisters was wrong because they had been taught to be this way. We said, ‘‘But that’s the way a man is supposed to be.’’ On the other hand, we would criticize our sisters for being passive and allowing men to mess them over. We did not understand that everything in a woman’s experience in this society conditions and prepares us to be shy and timid. Everything in a woman’s experience conditions us to accept leadership from men and to accept our roles as someone who cooks, sews, and takes care of children. The right wing in the women’s movement says men are evil and can’t be changed. Babies are not born oppressors. Therefore, our major enemy is capitalism rather than men. But there ain’t no doubt about it, there are a few rich men who control this planet. They are our enemies. Not because they are men, but because they are capitalists. Some of the rulers are women (and some of them are in the right-wing

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women’s movement). They are also our enemy, not because they are women, but because they are capitalists. There is a center position in the women’s movement. These are liberals, reformers, who merely demand ‘‘more rights for women.’’ There is a left-wing, and the best of these women, are revolutionaries who understand who the real enemy is. But both the center and the left wing made no attempt at stopping the right, or exposing them for what they are pigs, agents and supporters of the enemy. They must do so now. The progressives must see that most of the right wing in the women’s movement are white, and their racism is being reinforced heavily against Third World People, brothers and sisters. We reject those women’s groups that turn their backs on socialism because they say it was created by men, or they reject groups like the YLP [Young Lords Party] who have discipline because, they say, discipline and structure is a man’s thing. We support those groups that are anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, and see the fight for women’s liberation as part of the fight for socialism. All oppressed people together will make the Revolution within the Revolution and end all kind of oppression. UNIDOS VENCEREMOS! FORWARD SISTERS IN THE STRUGGLE! Central Committee YOUNG LORDS PARTY Source: Position on Women’s Liberation (May 1971), Palante, p. 17. http://younglords.info.

330. Excerpt from Peter Kihss, ‘‘‘La Guardia School’ Taking Hispanic Radical’s Name,’’ 1976 Puerto Rican nationalist Pedro Albizu Campos (1891–1965) was not the ordinary radical. He was a devout Catholic who loved his island, his identity, and his flag, which he wanted to fly over a sovereign Puerto Rican nation. For his insurgence he was jailed and spent much of his life in jail during the 1930s and 1950s—some say he was tortured and, like others, poisoned by radiation used in experiments on prisoners. By the 1970s, he was revered and considered a martyr to the cause of Puerto Rican independence. Under Albizu Campos, the Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico became a major force in the fight for independence. But it was also smashed by police infiltration and persecution. Some 10 years after his death, the Puerto Rican community fought to name a New York City elementary school in his memory. It was opposed by those that called him a terrorist, but in the end the community won out. They won the right to name its own heroes. The following excerpt memorializes this event.

The name of Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia is to be removed from a Harlem public school in favor of the name of Pedro Albizu Campos, the Puerto Rican nationalist leader who turned to violence and terrorism in seeking Puerto Rico’s independence.… Mr. Albizu Campos turned ‘‘anti-Yanqui’’ [anti-Yankee] after he encountered discrimination against him as an Army volunteer in World War I. He led the Nationalist Party, whose supporters staged a bloody revolt in 1950, sought to assassinate

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President Harry S. Truman at that time, and shot five members of the House of Representatives in Washington in 1954. Source: New York Times, April 19, 1976, p. 59.

331. Excerpt from Nicholas M. Horrock, ‘‘F.B.I. Releases Most Files on Its Programs to Disrupt Dissident Groups,’’ 1977 COINTELPRO was a contraction for the names of a series of FBI counterintelligence programs formally employed between 1956–1971. Its purpose was to neutralize political dissidents. It came about in response to the reversal of a law that outlawed the Communist Party in the heat of the Cold War. When Congress reversed the policies developed in large part by the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) and Sen. Joseph McCarthy (1908– 1957), the FBI responded by organizing COINTELPRO, a program designed to ‘‘neutralize’’ those who could no longer be prosecuted but were persons who FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover considered dangerous subversives. A ‘‘communist front organization’’ was defined as anyone Hoover called a Communist or a fellow traveler—a person who may not be a Communist but was sympathetic to its goals. The FBI used these programs to conduct surveillance on individuals and organizations, often disrupting the organizations by infiltrating them. Nationalists were discredited. The following excerpt memorializes the release and declassification of COINTELPRO documents—many are available on the Internet today.

The bureau [FBI] had Cointelpros against Yugoslavian groups, Cuban groups, and the Socialist Workers Party, as well as the Puerto Rican nationalists, left-leaning antiwar radicals, black extremist groups, and white militants. There was no clear formula that caused a particular group to become a target, though only one traditional criminal organization was ever involved. Source: Nicholas M. Horrock, ‘‘F.B.I. Releases Most Files on Its Programs to Disrupt Dissident Groups,’’ New York Times, November 22, 1977, p. 26.


n, and Juan Flores, 332. Excerpt from Felix Cort
es, Angel Falco ‘‘The Cultural Expression of Puerto Ricans in New York: A Theoretical Perspective and Critical Review,’’ 1976 Music was and is extremely important to the Caribbean peoples of New York. In the following excerpt, Joe Falc
on, a street musician in New York City from the 1950s to 1970s tells about the influence of Puerto Rican Studies on his music that was, as Falc
on calls it, ‘‘political.’’

I am Puerto Rican. I came to this country in 1952 with my three brothers and one sister. My father and mother were here already working and saving money to send for us. My father, who is dead now, was a mechanic but had to do work in a plastic factory to earn a living. He earned extra money by fixing cars in his improvised shop right on the street. My mother was a seamstress in the garment district, and when she came home she would prepare dinner and afterwards do part-time work sewing women’s hats in a shop that operated out of a small storefront across the street from where we lived.

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In 1969, I was very much influenced by the takeover of City College by a Third World student coalition which was demanding Puerto Rican Studies and other relevant programs geared to their needs. Right then and there and with the direct contact of other musicians such as myself, I realized for the first time that I wanted to play a music that related to today’s realities, not yesterday’s. I was concerned in reaching an audience that related to these experiences. The music that grew out of this experience became hard, violent, and heavy with resistance. It was rarely performed. It just got stored up so when it came out, it sounded more like one big mass noise of incoherent sound. It was a dual process on the one hand it served as a cleansing process and on the other it did away with antiquated patterns and built new ones to take its place. New musical ideas were forged, integrating itself with known popular forms. It renewed the process of music playing and made it vital and important again. Music to me then is more than just performing. It’s studying, organizing around young men and women musicians such as the Lexington Avenue Express Percussion Workshop whose concept is to help develop better learning procedures and healthy attitudes, to learn through the history of music what we, as Third World people, have in common and by nourishing from other musics, we enrich all. That is why the history of this process is the key to knowledge, education, and real proletarian culture. Joe Falc
on, Street Musician New York City Source: Felix Cort
es, Angel Falc
on, and Juan Flores, ‘‘The Cultural Expression of Puerto Ricans in New York: A Theoretical Perspective and Critical Review,’’ Latin American Perspectives, Vol. 3, No. 3, Puerto Rico: Class Struggle and National Liberation (Summer 1976), p. 117.

333. Excerpt from Wayne King, ‘‘4 Nationalists Are Welcomed as Heroes in Puerto Rico,’’ 1979 In 1950, Puerto Rican nationalist Oscar Callazo attempted to assassinate President Harry S. Truman (1884–1972) while the president was staying at Blair House, the vice president’s residence in Washington, D.C. He was arrested, convicted, and served 28 years in prison. Meanwhile, on March 1, 1954, four members of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party led what they considered a revolutionary attack on the U.S. Congress, Lolita Lebr
on, age 34; Rafael C. Miranda, age 25; Andres Figueroa Cordero, age 29; and Irving Flores Rodr
ıguez, age 29, opened fire in the House chamber in the hopes of sparking a rebellion for the liberation of Puerto Rico. They succeeded in wounding five representatives, were tried, imprisoned, and served time. In the context of the 1960s civil rights movement and the anti-colonial wars (most of the Third World had been occupied by European nations and these wars were fought to drive the occupation forces out), the struggle for Puerto Rican independence increased in significance. In 1979, President Jimmy Carter pardoned Puerto Rican nationalists, including Lebr
on, who was released from prison after serving 25 years and remained unrepentant for her actions. When she returned to San Juan, 5,000 people turned out to greet her. Puerto Rican Gov. Carlos Romero Barcel
o (1932–) opposed the release of the nationalists because he considered them terrorists and was afraid of popular reaction when they returned to Puerto Rico and a resurgence of nationalism. The following excerpts document their release and provide comments from Lebr
on and Callazo.

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In an apparent reference to Gov. Carlos Romero Barcel
o, who opposed the release of the nationalists, she [Lebr
on] added: ‘‘The puppets of the Americans who tried to force us to humble ourselves as a condition for our release have failed. We did not humble ourselves.’’ Mr. Collazo called for the unification of all the pro-independence organizations on the island. ‘‘This is not the time for personal quarrels but the time to unite to bring about a free Puerto Rico today, not a century from now.’’ Source: Wayne King, ‘‘4 Nationalists Are Welcomed as Heroes in Puerto Rico,’’ New York Times, September 13, 1979, p. B23.

334. Excerpt from ‘‘Socialism’’ from ‘‘Pastoral Letter of the Nicaraguan Episcopate,’’ November 17, 1979 Liberation Theology, a movement within the Catholic Church to give a political voice to the poor, took place in Latin America from the 1960s through the 1990s. It came about during a time of Church reform and was a reaction to developmentalism, which led to a greater dependence of Latin American countries on U.S. markets. The marketplace, rather than ameliorating the plight of the poor, had worsened it, hastening a decline of small farms. Popular sentiment turned to nationalism that encouraged populist leaders. Progressive priests and ministers encouraged lay participation in the church setting the stage for a movement for basic education and the first base ecclesial communities during the 1960s. The Second Vatican Council was convened by Pope John XXIII in 1962 and brought about sweeping reforms. By the time Pope Paul VI closed the Second Vatican Council in 1965, these changes gave a theoretical justification for activities developed under the auspices of a theology of progress, of authentic secularization, and human advancement. Christian groups were reformed to bring about social and political liberation (freedom). In the definition of liberation theology, religious salvation was not defined by prayer, the next world, or even faith but in the faithful’s relationship to the material world. In Central America, orders such as the Jesuits, Maryknolls, and Franciscans actively formed comunidades de base (base communities) and organized study groups to raise the consciousness of believers. Jesus Christ was a liberator. According to the Theology of Liberation, the mission of Christianity was to bring justice to the poor and oppressed. Rather than discouraging political activism, it encouraged it. Liberation theology acknowledged that the church had been an ally of the ruling elite. Immediately, the new consciousness was at odds with the rich, who blamed the priests for the discontent and protests which led to the fall of Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza (1925–1980). The following article includes a pastoral letter from the Nicaraguan bishop that gives the Church’s stance on socialism. It takes a sharp turn from previous Church policy.

It [is] expressed, at times even with anguish, the fear that the present Nicaraguan process is headed toward socialism. People have asked us, the bishops, what we think about that. If, as some think, socialism debilitates people by usurping their character of being free protagonists of history, if it aims to submit people blindly to the manipulations and dictates of people who arbitrarily exercise power, such a spurious or false socialism we could not accept. Neither could we accept a socialism

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which takes from man the right to have a religious motivation to his life or to express publicly those motivations and convictions, whatever be his religious faith. Equally unacceptable would be to deny to parents the right to educate their children according to their convictions [and] other rights of the human person. If, on the other hand, socialism signifies, as it ought to signify, pre-eminence of the interests of the majority of Nicaraguans and a model of a nationally planned economy that is progressively participatory, then we have nothing to object to. A social plan that guarantees the common destiny of the wealth and resources of the country and permits the satisfaction of the fundamental necessities of everyone and an improvement of the human quality of life seems to us just. Socialism implies a growing diminution of injustices and the traditional inequalities between city and country, between the remuneration for intellectual and manual work; if it signifies participation of the worker in the control of the process, thereby overcoming economic alienation, there is nothing in Christianity which would contradict this process. Rather, Pope John Paul II just recalled to mind in the United Nations the problems caused by the radical separation between work and property. If socialism supposes power [is] exercised from the perspective of the great majority and increasingly shared by the organized people in a manner which leads toward a true transferal of power to the popular classes. Again one will find in the faith only motivation and support. If socialism produces cultural processes that awaken the dignity of our masses and encourages them to assume responsibilities and to demand their rights, then we are dealing with a humanization which converges with the human dignity that our faith proclaims. With respect to the class struggle, we think that one [of the] things [is] the dynamic fact of the class struggle which ought to produce just transformation of societal structures, and another thing is class hatred which is directed against persons and contradicts radically the Christian obligation to conduct oneself by love. Our faith assures us that it is a fundamental Christian obligation to master the world, transforming the land and the rest of the resources for production. In order to permit people to live and to make of this Nicaraguan land a land of justice, solidarity, peace, and liberty, in which everyone will acquire a sense of the Christian announcement of the reign of God. What is more, we have confidence that the revolutionary process will be something original, creative, profoundly national, and in no manner a simple imitation of other processes. With the majority of Nicaraguans, what we aim for is a process that will lead finally toward a fully and authentically non-capitalist Nicaragua, neither dependent nor totalitarian. Translated by James Russell Source: Penny Lernoux, ‘‘The Church Revolutionary in Latin America,’’ pp. 623 624. Reprinted with permission from the May 24, 1980 issue of The Nation. For subscription information, call 1-800-333-8536. Portions of each week’s Nation magazine can be accessed at http://www. thenation.com.

335. Excerpts from ‘‘U.S. Formally Recognizes New Nicaragua Regime,’’ 1979 From the 1930s until the end of 1979, the United States attempted to prop up the government of Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza (1925–1980).

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Somoza was pro-United States and anti-Communist—he also promoted his economic interests and oppressed the poor. When Somoza was about to fall out of power, President Jimmy Carter’s Secretary of State, Cyrus Vance (1917– 2002), spoke about the dangers of ‘‘intervention’’ in the affairs of a country, intimating that Communists were behind the opposition to Somoza. Vance suggested that the Organization of American States (OAS) not intervene in the process of national reconciliation after the overthrow of Somoza. However, the OAS acted independently and condemned Somoza’s ‘‘inhuman conduct’’ that included a 30-year military rule. Clearly, the United States wanted to prevent a takeover by the Sandinistas, as the leftist faction of the guerrillas were called. Somoza claimed that the Sandinistas were getting help from Cuba and Panama, both of whose governments were at odds with U.S. policy in the region. The following excerpts merely documents the fall of Somoza, which began a series of civil wars in the region.

Managua, Nicaragua (UPI) The new revolutionary government in Nicaragua was formally recognized today by the United States, which said it would consider a request to extradite former dictator Anastasio Somoza.… A member of the five-man ruling Junta, Sergio Ramirez, said the new leaders of Nicaragua want to ask Somoza ‘‘many questions’’ because the former dictator ‘‘and his friends’’ drained the national treasury of funds when they left. Source: ‘‘U.S. Formally Recognizes New Nicaragua Regime,’’ Los Angeles Times, July 24, 1979, p. B2.

PART XIX Chicanos, the 1960s, and Heritage The decade of the sixties brought dramatic social change for Mexico. It officially had a population of 35 million 17 million lived in rural areas. The decade saw a further decline of ruralism; by the end of the decade the rural population numbered about 20 million and the urban at 30 million. This trend accelerated and in 1980 24 million lived in rural Mexico and 48 million in urban spaces. By the 70s the annual urban growth rate averaged 4.89 percent while the rural rate was 1.51 percent. The impact of the population shift was blurred by Mexico’s postwar economic boom that brought temporary prosperity. As Mexico’s economy slowed American and Mexican economist blamed Mexicans for having too many babies rather than the commercialization of agriculture and failed policies that expected the marketplace to industrialize the country. The decline of ruralism as Chicano historian Ernesto Galarza (1905 1984) called it had far reaching consequences. Texas bordered the heart of Mexico’s population with four Mexican states that bordered it with six million people. From 1946 to 1964, the United States also experienced an exceptionally high birth rate that has since come to be known as the ‘‘Baby Boom Generation’’; when 76 million babies were born in the United States during this period. From 1950 and 1960 the Spanish-surnamed population in the Southwest increased by 51 percent. Immigration from Mexico accounted for some of the growth. However, Mexican American fertility ran ahead of its Euro-American counterparts. At this point the African American population of 18.9 million outnumbered the Mexican American population by almost five to one. U.S. Mexicans were bunched geographically in the Southwest and to a lesser extent in the Midwest. Texas and California accounted for housing 82 percent of the U.S. Mexican population. The 1960 U.S. census recorded 3,464,999 Spanish-surnamed persons in the Southwest (a dramatic undercount) who earned a per capita income of $968, compared with $2,047 for white Americans, and $1,044 for nonwhites. They lived in deteriorated and overcrowded houses and unemployment was higher among Chicanos than among whites. The median school grade for Spanish-surnamed persons in the Southwest that were 14 years of age and over was 8.1, versus 12.0 for Euro-Americans and 9.7 for other nonwhites. The median school grade attained by Spanish-surnamed in Texas was 4.8. Older Mexican American organizations such as the League of United Latin American Citizens and the American G.I. Forum still protected the interests of the Mexican community. Newer more politically focused organizations such as the Mexican American Political Association in California (MAPA), the Viva Kennedy Clubs, and Political Association of Spanish-Speaking Organizations (PASO) in

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Texas were more visible. Meanwhile, a younger generation of middle class Mexican Americans were becoming more active in these organizations and others demanding better education for Mexican American children. Much of this activity and the focus on education were driven by Mexican American women and C
esar Ch
avez’s farmwork movement that was spearheaded by Chicana organizers such as Dolores Huerta. The decade was dominated by youth and the Black Civil Rights Movement. Educational programs such as the Educational Opportunities Program (EOP) in California and like programs in other regions recruited Mexican American students to the university that gave impetus to the Chicano Youth Movement that lasted from 1968 to 1971. In Texas the youth movement was led by the Mexican American Youth Organization (MAYO). As with most progressives they embraced issues of Black Civil Rights and youth movements while taking up their own identity. By 1969 the word Chicano symbolized the new and more militant approach than that of previous decades. The Mexican American and Chicano movements left a legacy which was carried over into the 1970s. It also created memories such as the School Walkouts (1968) across the country, the Chicano Moratorium of 1970, and La Raza Unida Party victories in Texas. By 1973, it was clear that the United States had lost the Vietnam War. The administration of Richard Nixon (1913 1994) was on the rocks, and he resigned the following year. The end of the war triggered an economic recession and then came the customary racist nativism that made scapegoats of Mexican immigrants who had historically done the work shunned by Euro-Americans. The 1965 amendments to the Immigration Act were not the cause of this migration but it did allow Asians and white Europeans to immigrate in larger numbers. In the decade of the fifties, 53 percent of immigrants were European, 25 percent Latin American, and 6 percent Asian. Economic factors not the 1965 Immigration Act drove Mexican migrations. Before the Act, Mexicans were not on a quota. Indeed, Mexicans were placed on a quota of 20,000 U.S. immigration visas by 1978 which it quickly exhausted. During the 1970s, binational agreements such as the Border Industrial Program, which created a special trade zone along the border, attracted large numbers of Mexican workers to maquila factories in northern Mexico. These factories initiated economic and demographic growth along the border. But these factories were temporary and did little to build an industrial infrastructure in the country. Like the bracero (guest worker) program (1942 1964) it further magnetized the border. This along with the decline of ruralism uprooted millions of Mexicans. The entry of hundreds of thousands of hungry Mexicans into the United States triggered the 1972 California Legislature’s Dixon/Arnett Immigration Bill that sought to punish undocumented immigrants by imposing employer sanctions and other punitive measures. That year CASA (Centros de Acci
on Social Aut
onomo, or Centers for Autonomous [Independent] Social Actions) led by Bert Corona and Soledad ‘‘Chole’’ Alatorre led a march of 10,000 in protest of Dixon/Arnett that set the template for the modern protection of the foreign-born movement among Chicanos. The recessions generated so-called taxpayer revolts that helped shift the tax burden to the middle and working classes. In 1978, California’s Proposition 13 limited taxation to 1 percent of the full value of the property. Eventually wealthy homeowners and business and commercial property owners purchasing property before that date were paying fewer taxes than the poor. It had a devastating impact on the schools where Latino students were becoming the majority.

Chicanos, the 1960s, and Heritage

The final blow was the Bakke case (1978). It ended the notion that American society should be socially and economically leveled through education. Affirmative action programs initiated by President Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard Nixon were scuttled. The notion that civil rights programs had discriminated against white males and was ‘‘reverse racism’’ was legitimated by the courts. This further limited access to education to Latinos and Blacks. The Mexican American voices that follow are heard within the context of this history, and they represent the struggle of that community to bring about entitlements under the U.S. constitution.

336. Excerpts from Jos
e Angel Guti
errez, ‘‘Oral History Interview ~a, Jr.,’’ July 2, 1996 with Albert Pen In 1960 the percentage of the U.S. born population was at an all time high— standing at 85 percent. In 1970, of the 5.3 million Mexican origin people counted by the census 2.3 million were immigrants or first generation. This data suggests that at the start of the sixties the core of the Mexican American population had been around for a considerable length of time and its leadership was more settled than in previous generations. The median age of the Spanish surname population in the Southwest, mostly Mexican in 1960, was 20 years of age versus 30 for the white population that was supposedly a baby boom generation. Mexican American organizations were dominated by the over thirty crowd which sometimes caused generational conflicts during the decade. Albert Pe~ na, Jr. (1917–present) came from this older established group of leaders. He cannot, however, be typed as a member of a particular generation—getting along with both groups. He attended St. Mary’s University on San Antonio’s west side and graduated from the South Texas School of Law in Houston. The first Mexican-American to be elected to the Bexar County Commission, encompassing San Antonio, Texas. He served there for sixteen years until he was defeated in 1972. Appointed Municipal Court he served as Presiding Judge from 1982. The following is an excerpt from an interview with one of Texas’ leading politicos.

My father was from Laredo. He came [when I] … was five years old … from Laredo to San Antonio.… My dad went to the fifth grade.… And I was with the first wave at St. Mary’s. St. Mary’s, under the G. I. Bill of Rights, … the war was over on the fifteenth, 1945, and I enrolled in that same year at St. Mary’s.… The first thing [he was involved in after law school] was the Hondo discrimination case, school segregation case, you know, that was my first case. I was just out of law school in 1951.… I had joined the American G. I. Forum. Dr. Hector Garcia asked me to investigate segregation complaints in Hondo. Up until that time, there was only one, one case, one federal case in, of record. That was the Gus Garcia case and it was written by Gus Garc
ıa and his law partner, I forget who it was. It was before Judge Ben Rice here in San Antonio. And they held that segregation of Mexicanos was unconstitutional, but you could hold them in the first grade until they learned how to speak English. And what happened was that some of these children were being held in the first grade up until, for six years, and so they were, they were segregated. The ideal case was Hondo because there they had two schools. One they called the West Ward School, and if you were Mexicano, you went to the West Ward School up until the seventh grade; the other one was called the Main Plant.

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So, I went down there and I was supposed to talk to a fellow by the name of Max Orta. I arrived in Hondo and knocked on the door and it was one of those typical Mexicano where they had … the window on the front porch and … they wouldn’t let me in. They said, ‘‘What do you want?’’ So I had to talk to them through the door. I told them that I was a lawyer and that I had been asked by the MexicanAmerican G. I. Forum to investigate school segregation. They said, ‘‘You are probably like the rest of them that come down here and investigate and never do anything. You take our money and never investigate us.’’ I said, ‘‘first of all, I am not going to charge you anything and if there is segregation, I will follow through with it.’’ So, finally they let me in and they told me what the situation was. Just poured it out to you. And I did check. They did have two schools. So, the first thing I did, I went and talked to the superintendent and I told him this is what I found and I said, this is unconstitutional and he said, ‘‘Well, I can’t do anything about it. You are going to have to talk to the school board.’’ We didn’t have any money, we didn’t have no MALDEF or we didn’t have any money to go to federal court or probably didn’t know how to get into federal court, but anyway, so I asked for a hearing before the school board and they granted me a hearing. And within a couple of weeks, I would have a hearing, so I did. I had a hearing. I took my client, Max Orta and I sat him down. He was the only Mexicano there and they had brought in a law firm, big law firm in from Houston, to represent the school board. They had about four or five lawyers there, and I was there. I made my pitch and I said, ‘‘I have only one, I have only one witness.’’ I had already told them what I had found. They had two schools. Clearly unconstitutional. And of course, their excuse was that they were teaching them how to speak English. I said, ‘‘the person who made the complaint speaks fluent English, but I have one, only one witness,’’ and they thought I was going to call Max Orta. I called the superintendent. The superintendent came and I said, ‘‘You remember when I visited in your office and I gave you the statistics about what was happening in Hondo and you told me that that was true? You had two schools. One for white and one for Mexicans.’’ He said, ‘‘yeah, that is correct.’’ ‘‘And you told me you couldn’t do anything about it?’’ ‘‘That is correct.’’ And I said, ‘‘well, that is all. You may sit down. I have one witness.’’ ‘‘You don’t have anymore witnesses?’’ The law firms, they wanted to jump on somebody and they didn’t have the, they didn’t have the, they could have asked for a witness, you know. They could have called my Max Orta. Max Orta was pretty smart. I think he could have held his own, but … the superintendent was a good enough witness. He proved my case. ‘‘That is it. This is my case. I have proven my case,’’ and so they say, ‘‘we will let you know and we will let you know what our decision is.’’ So … we waited for a decision, and finally they said that they believed that what they were doing was constitutional and they cited the Garcia case. They said that these people … had not learned how to speak English.… They never had any tests whether they could speak English, Spanish, or German, or anything.… I appealed it then to the State Board [of Education]. The State Board sat on it. We couldn’t get any decision from them and the people in Hondo are getting, they were getting pissed off at me because I was like the rest of them; I wasn’t doing anything. So, I called a meeting of the, a special meeting in Hondo and invited all the Mexicano families and bring all the Mexicano families and we met at the Guadalupe Church and I told them, ‘‘… This is my first case and I am not the best lawyer in the country but, we are going to integrate these schools.’’ This was just before the

Chicanos, the 1960s, and Heritage

fall semester. ‘‘And we are going to go and we are going to enroll our kids in the Main Plant, and we are going to stay there if it takes all day or it takes a week or it takes a month. But we are going to stay there until they enroll our children in the school.’’ And that is what we did.… ‘‘And what is your name?’’ ‘‘My name is, my name is Mr. Albert Fuentes and I want to enroll my daughter here in this school.’’ They say, ‘‘well, you have to go to the West Ward School.’’ So they would get back in line and that is all there is. We stayed there all day and we were singing. I advised them not to be violent, just sing and have a good time and just stay there, just, and right after, this was in the morning, about eight o’clock and about one o’clock, they got the, they received a telegram from Austin, from the State Board saying, integrate. So, we had won our case and what had happened was that some newspaper picked it up and the State School Board called a hurried meeting and decided that, they were told by their lawyers the best thing to do is integrate, because they are going stay there, because this Albert Pe~ na, he is a radical, and I don’t know what else they called me. But he is going to stay there until you integrate them, so that is what they did was that they integrated both schools. They didn’t have enough room for them to all go to West Ward so they went to the West Bay. They integrated the West Ward School and both schools were integrated.… [Through the 1950s Pe~ na was active, elected County Commissioner in 1960. He belonged to the liberal faction of the Mexican American community. That year he got involved with the Viva Kennedy Clubs.] Jos
e Angel Guti
errez: … where did the idea come to form these Viva Kennedy clubs? [After] the [1960 Democratic Party] convention, a fellow by the name of, of Carlos McCormick [head of la Alianza Hispano Americana], where he got the McCormick, I don’t know, from Phoenix, had just been named the, the, the national chairman of the to-be organized the Viva Kennedy clubs.… It was the Kennedy’s idea. But this, Carlos McCormick talked them into it.… So, Carlos McCormick came down to Bexar County and said that he had contacted people throughout South Texas for a chairman of the Viva Kennedy Clubs to be organized. And the majority wanted me to do it.… we organized. We didn’t take any money because we decided that we were not going to accept any money from anybody. We were going to do it on our own. We sold one dollar memberships. You wanted to belong to the Viva Kennedy, you gave us a dollar if you had it. It you didn’t have a dollar, you became a member anyway. I went and I traveled, I traveled throughout South Texas organizing Viva Kennedy clubs. The only group we didn’t organize was El Paso which was too far and they wanted to have their own group there, but we organized every other, every other county in South Texas, including Houston, Austin, and so forth.… he carried Texas by about the, by a small majority, maybe about two thousand, four thousand votes and we received a telegram and I lost it … congratulating Viva Kennedy. And that had it not been for Viva Kennedy, he would not have carried Texas, and if he had not carried Texas, he would not now be president of the United States. So, we got the recognition we want. We did it. We did it without the state group or money or anything, we did it on our own.… I don’t remember exactly, but I know that after, after the Viva Kennedy, … we decided to continue with PASO, Political Association of Spanish Speaking Organizations in Texas, and as a result of that, we met with people from, well, before that we met with people from MAPA, we met some people from New Mexico, all, four or five states.… we came to a Spanish Speaking Organization, but the idea was to, you know, you had

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the G. I. Forum, you had all these groups and they were all non-political, so we wanted a group where they could all become part of a political group. They all agreed on that; and MAPA never changed its name and neither did the people in, I don’t think anybody changed their name.… [Pe~ na remained a force in Texas and San Antonio politics throughout the 1960s, instrumental in the forming the Southwest Council of La Raza and the Mexican American Legal and Education Foundation.] Source: Oral History Interview with Albert Pe~ na, Jr., by Jos
e Angel Guti
errez, CMAS 15, Special Collections, University of Texas at Arlington Library, Arlington, Texas.

337. Excerpts from Time Magazine, ‘‘Revolt of the Mexicans,’’ April 12, 1963 Crystal City, Texas, a small town of 10,000, in the Winter Garden region of Southwest Texas, where the majority was Mexican people. It was chosen by PASO (Political Association of Spanish-Speaking Organizations), a get-out-the-Mexican-vote drive. For it also ran a slate of candidates for the city council. PASO had been born out of the Viva Kennedy Clubs of 1960 that helped elect John F. Kennedy to the U.S. presidency. PASO’s slate of candidates for the city council was successful electing Juan Cornejo, a local Teamsters Union business agent, along with four other Mexican Americans. The electoral coup only lasted two years, but it lit a spark for later successes: In 1969 La Raza Unida Party began its takeover of the city. In 1963, it spawned leaders such are Jos
e Angel Guti
errez (1944–) who founded the Mexican American Youth Organization (MAYO) in 1967, and La Raza Unida Party in 1969. When the Time article was published, it caused a stir among Mexican Americans nationally. The feeling was that the group had finally made it on the national scene. The sleeping giant had awakened and it was going to become a national power group. For them, Time magazine was the big time.

[In] Crystal City stands a statue of Popeye, a symbol of the town’s claim that it is ‘‘the spinach capital of the world.’’ Otherwise, Crystal City (pop. 10,000) is like a lot of other farm towns in South Texas. Mexican Americans outnumber Anglo Americans four to one, but the Anglos run the place.… The revolt in Crystal City was managed by a three-year-old Texas organization called Viva Kennedy during the presidential campaign, now named PASO (short for Political Association of Spanish-Speaking Organizations). Dedicated to the advancement of Mexican Americans. PASO chose Crystal City as a test site for a get-out-the-Mexican-vote drive.… Says Albert Fuentes, the PASO official who led the campaign: ‘‘We have done the impossible. If we can do it in Crystal City, we can do it all over Texas. We can awake the sleeping giant.’’ On Election Day, the Mexicans have learned, all South Texans are equal. Source: Excerpt from Time Magazine, April 12, 1963. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,828075,00.html.

338. Excerpts from the Voting Rights Act, 1965 Blacks and Mexicans had systematically been disenfranchised by poll taxes in Texas which charged people a fee to vote. Moreover, the state administered

Chicanos, the 1960s, and Heritage

literacy tests which purposely excluded Mexicans and African Americans. Further it was impossible to get minorities elected because of gerrymandering that mapped secure white majority districts. Mexican American organizations such as the League of United Latin American Citizens and the American G.I. Forum had sued to no avail. The Black Civil Rights Movement led by Martin Luther King brought new urgency to the issue pressuring Congress to pass the 1965 Voting Rights Act and giving President Lyndon B. Johnson the opportunity to sign it. The poll tax was abolished and the legal mechanism set in place for voting rights.

An Act to enforce the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, and for other purposes. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That this Act shall be known as the ‘‘Voting Rights Act of 1965.’’ … SEC. 2 No voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure shall be imposed or applied by any State or political subdivision to deny or abridge the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color. SEC. 3 (a) Whenever the Attorney General institutes a proceeding under any statute to enforce the guarantees of the Fifteenth Amendment in any State or political subdivision, the court shall authorize the appointment of Federal examiners by the United States Civil Service Commission in accordance with Section 6 to serve for such period of time and for such political subdivisions as the court shall determine is appropriate to enforce the guarantees of the Fifteenth Amendment (1) as part of any interlocutory order if the court determines that the appointment of such examiners is necessary to enforce such guarantees or (2) as part of any final judgment if the court finds that violations of the Fifteenth Amendment justifying equitable relief have occurred in such State or subdivision: Provided, That the court need not authorize the appointment of examiners if any incidents of denial or abridgement of the right to vote on account of race or color (1) have been few in number and have been promptly and effectively corrected by State or local action, (2) the continuing effect of such incidents has been eliminated, and (3) there is no reasonable probability of their recurrence in the future. (b) If in a proceeding instituted by the Attorney General under any statute to enforce the guarantees of the Fifteenth Amendment in any State or political subdivision the court finds that a test or device has been used for the purpose or with the effect of denying or abridging the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color, it shall suspend the use of tests and devices in such State or political subdivisions as the court shall determine is appropriate and for such period as it deems necessary. (c) If in any proceeding instituted by the Attorney General under any statute to enforce the guarantees of the Fifteenth Amendment in any State or political subdivision the court finds that violations of the Fifteenth Amendment justifying

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equitable relief have occurred within the territory of such State or political subdivision, the court, in addition to such relief as it may grant, shall retain jurisdiction for such period as it may deem appropriate and during such period no voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure with respect to voting different from that in force or effect at the time the proceeding was commenced shall be enforced unless and until the court finds that such qualification, prerequisite, standard, practice, or procedure does not have the purpose and will not have the effect of denying or abridging the right to vote on account of race or color: Provided, That such qualification, prerequisite, standard, practice, or procedure may be enforced if the qualification, prerequisite, standard, practice, or procedure has been submitted by the chief legal officer or other appropriate official of such State or subdivision to the Attorney General and the Attorney General has not interposed an objection within sixty days after such submission, except that neither the court’s finding nor the Attorney General’s failure to object shall bar a subsequent action to enjoin enforcement of such qualification, prerequisite, standard, practice, or procedure. SEC. 4 (a) To assure that the right of citizens of the United States to vote is not denied or abridged on account of race or color, no citizen shall be denied the right to vote in any Federal, State, or local election because of his failure to comply with any test or device in any State with respect to which the determinations have been made under Subsection (b) or in any political subdivision with respect to which such determinations have been made as a separate unit, unless the United States District Court for the District of Columbia in an action for a declaratory judgment brought by such State or subdivision against the United States has determined that no such test or device has been used during the five years preceding the filing of the action for the purpose or with the effect of denying or abridging the right to vote on account of race or color: Provided, That no such declaratory judgment shall issue with respect to any plaintiff for a period of five years after the entry of a final judgment of any court of the United States, other than the denial of a declaratory judgment under this section, whether entered prior to or after the enactment of this Act, determining that denials or abridgments of the right to vote on account of race or color through the use of such tests or devices have occurred anywhere in the territory of such plaintiff. An action pursuant to this subsection shall be heard and determined by a court of three judges in accordance with the provisions of Section 2284 of Title 28 of the United States Code and any appeal shall lie to the Supreme Court. The court shall retain jurisdiction of any action pursuant to this subsection for five years after judgment and shall reopen the action upon motion of the Attorney General alleging that a test or device has been used for the purpose or with the effect of denying or abridging the right to vote on account of race or color. If the Attorney General determines that he has no reason to believe that any such test or device has been used during the five years preceding the filing of the action for the purpose or with the effect of denying or abridging the right to vote on account of race or color, he shall consent to the entry of such judgment. (b) The provisions of Subsection (a) shall apply in any State or in any political subdivision of a state which (1) the Attorney General determines maintained on

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November 1, 1964, any test or device, and with respect to which (2) the Director of the Census determines that less than 50 percentum of the persons of voting age residing therein were registered on November 1, 1964, or that less than 50 percentum of such persons voted in the presidential election of November 1964. A determination or certification of the Attorney General or of the Director of the Census under this section or under Section 6 or Section 13 shall not be reviewable in any court and shall be effective upon publication in the Federal Register. (c) The phrase ‘‘test or device’’ shall mean any requirement that a person as a prerequisite for voting or registration for voting (1) demonstrate the ability to read, write, understand, or interpret any matter, (2) demonstrate any educational achievement or his knowledge of any particular subject, (3) possess good moral character, or (4) prove his qualifications by the voucher of registered voters or members of any other class. (d) For purposes of this section no State or political subdivision shall be determined to have engaged in the use of tests or devices for the purpose or with the effect of denying or abridging the right to vote on account of race or color if (1) incidents of such use have been few in number and have been promptly and effectively corrected by State or local action, (2) the continuing effect of such incidents has been eliminated, and (3) there is no reasonable probability of their recurrence in the future. (e)(1) Congress hereby declares that to secure the rights under the Fourteenth Amendment of persons educated in American-flag schools in which the predominant classroom language was other than English, it is necessary to prohibit the States from conditioning the right to vote of such persons on ability to read, write, understand, or interpret any matter in the English language. (2) No person who demonstrates that he has successfully completed the sixth primary grade in a public school in, or a private school accredited by, any State or territory, the District of Columbia, or the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico in which the predominant classroom language was other than English, shall be denied the right to vote in any Federal, State, or local election because of his inability to read, write, understand, or interpret any matter in the English language, except that, in States in which State law provides that a different level of education is presumptive of literacy, he shall demonstrate that he has successfully completed an equivalent level of education in a public school in, or a private school accredited by, any State or territory, the District of Columbia, or the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico in which the predominant classroom language was other than English. SEC. 5 Whenever a State or political subdivision with respect to which the prohibitions set forth in Section 4(a) are in effect shall enact or seek to administer any voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure with respect to voting different from that in force or effect on November 1, 1964, such State or subdivision may institute an action in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia for a declaratory judgment that such qualification, prerequisite, standard, practice, or procedure does not have the purpose and will not have the effect of denying or abridging the right to vote on account of race or color, and unless and until the court enters such judgment no person shall be denied the right

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to vote for failure to comply with such qualification, prerequisite, standard, practice, or procedure: Provided, That such qualification, prerequisite, standard, practice, or procedure may be enforced without such proceeding if the qualification, prerequisite, standard, practice, or procedure has been submitted by the chief legal officer or other appropriate official of such State or subdivision to the Attorney General and the Attorney General has not interposed an objection within sixty days after such submission, except that neither the Attorney General’s failure to object nor a declaratory judgment entered under this section shall bar a subsequent action to enjoin enforcement of such qualification, prerequisite, standard, practice, or procedure. Any action under this section shall be heard and determined by a court of three judges in accordance with the provisions of Section 2284 of Title 28 of the United States Code and any appeal shall lie to the Supreme Court. SEC. 6 Whenever (a) a court has authorized the appointment of examiners pursuant to the provisions of Section 3(a), or (b) unless a declaratory judgment has been rendered under Section 4(a), the Attorney General certifies with respect to any political subdivision named in, or included within the scope of, determinations made under Section 4(b) that (1) he has received complaints in writing from twenty or more residents of such political subdivision alleging that they have been denied the right to vote under color of law on account of race or color, and that he believes such complaints to be meritorious, or (2) that, in his judgment (considering, among other factors, whether the ratio of nonwhite persons to white persons registered to vote within such subdivision appears to him to be reasonably attributable to violations of the Fifteenth Amendment or whether substantial evidence exists that bona fide efforts are being made within such subdivision to comply with the Fifteenth Amendment), the appointment of examiners is otherwise necessary to enforce the guarantees of the Fifteenth Amendment, the Civil Service Commission shall appoint as many examiners for such subdivision as it may deem appropriate to prepare and maintain lists of persons eligible to vote in Federal, State, and local elections. Such examiners, hearing officers provided for in Section 9(a), and other persons deemed necessary by the Commission to carry out the provisions and purposes of this Act shall be appointed, compensated, and separated without regard to the provisions of any statute administered by the Civil Service Commission, and service under this Act shall not be considered employment for the purposes of any statute administered by the Civil Service Commission, except the provisions of Section 9 of the Act of August 2, 1939, as amended (5 U.S.C. 118i), prohibiting partisan political activity: Provided, That the Commission is authorized, after consulting the head of the appropriate department or agency, to designate suitable persons in the official service of the United States, with their consent, to serve in these positions. Examiners and hearing officers shall have the power to administer oaths. SEC. 7 (a) The examiners for each political subdivision shall, at such places as the Civil Service Commission shall by regulation designate, examine applicants concerning their qualifications for voting. An application to an examiner shall be in such form

Chicanos, the 1960s, and Heritage

as the Commission may require and shall contain allegations that the applicant is not otherwise registered to vote. (b) Any person whom the examiner finds, in accordance with instructions received under Section 9(b), to have the qualifications prescribed by State law not inconsistent with the Constitution and laws of the United States shall promptly be placed on a list of eligible voters. A challenge to such listing may be made in accordance with Section 9(a) and shall not be the basis for a prosecution under Section 12 of this Act. The examiner shall certify and transmit such list, and any supplements as appropriate, at least once a month, to the offices of the appropriate election officials, with copies to the Attorney General and the attorney general of the State, and any such lists and supplements thereto transmitted during the month shall be available for public inspection on the last business day of the month and, in any event, not later than the forty-fifth day prior to any election. The appropriate State or local election official shall place such names on the official voting list. Any person whose name appears on the examiner’s list shall be entitled and allowed to vote in the election district of his residence unless and until the appropriate election officials shall have been notified that such person has been removed from such list in accordance with Subsection (d): Provided, That no person shall be entitled to vote in any election by virtue of this Act unless his name shall have been certified and transmitted on such a list to the offices of the appropriate election officials at least forty-five days prior to such election. (c) The examiner shall issue to each person whose name appears on such a list a certificate evidencing his eligibility to vote. (d) A person whose name appears on such a list shall be removed therefrom by an examiner if (1) such person has been successfully challenged in accordance with the procedure prescribed in Section 9, or (2) he has been determined by an examiner to have lost his eligibility to vote under State law not inconsistent with the Constitution and the laws of the United States. SEC. 8 Whenever an examiner is serving under this Act in any political subdivision, the Civil Service Commission may assign, at the request of the Attorney General, one or more persons, who may be officers of the United States, (1) to enter and attend at any place for holding an election in such subdivision for the purpose of observing whether persons who are entitled to vote are being permitted to vote, and (2) to enter and attend at any place for tabulating the votes cast at any election held in such subdivision for the purpose of observing whether votes cast by persons entitled to vote are being properly tabulated. Such persons so assigned shall report to an examiner appointed for such political subdivision, to the Attorney General, and if the appointment of examiners has been authorized pursuant to Section 3(a), to the court. SEC. 9 (a) Any challenge to a listing on an eligibility list prepared by an examiner shall be heard and determined by a hearing officer appointed by and responsible to the Civil Service Commission and under such rules as the Commission shall by

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regulation prescribe. Such challenge shall be entertained only if filed at such office within the State as the Civil Service Commission shall by regulation designate, and within ten days after the listing of the challenged person is made available for public inspection, and if supported by (1) the affidavits of at least two persons having personal knowledge of the facts constituting grounds for the challenge, and (2) a certification that a copy of the challenge and affidavits have been served by mail or in person upon the person challenged at his place of residence set out in the application. Such challenge shall be determined within fifteen days after it has been filed. A petition for review of the decision of the hearing officer may be filed in the United States court of appeals for the circuit in which the person challenged resides within fifteen days after service of such decision by mail on the person petitioning for review but no decision of a hearing officer shall be reversed unless clearly erroneous. Any person listed shall be entitled and allowed to vote pending final determination by the hearing officer and by the court. (b) The times, places, procedures, and form for application and listing pursuant to this Act and removals from the eligibility lists shall be prescribed by regulations promulgated by the Civil Service Commission and the Commission shall, after consultation with the Attorney General, instruct examiners concerning applicable State law not inconsistent with the Constitution and laws of the United States with respect to (1) the qualifications required for listing, and (2) loss of eligibility to vote. (c) Upon the request of the applicant or the challenger or on its own motion the Civil Service Commission shall have the power to require by subpoena the attendance and testimony of witnesses and the production of documentary evidence relating to any matter pending before it under the authority of this section. In case of contumacy or refusal to obey a subpoena, any district court of the United States or the United States court of any territory or possession, or the District Court of the United States for the District of Columbia, within the jurisdiction of which said person guilty of contumacy or refusal to obey is found or resides or is domiciled or transacts business, or has appointed an agent for receipt of service of process, upon application by the Attorney General of the United States shall have jurisdiction to issue to such person an order requiring such person to appear before the Commission or a hearing officer, there to produce pertinent, relevant, and nonprivileged documentary evidence if so ordered, or there to give testimony touching the matter under investigation, and any failure to obey such order of the court may be punished by said court as a contempt thereof. SEC. 10 (a) The Congress finds that the requirement of the payment of a poll tax as a precondition to voting (i) precludes persons of limited means from voting or imposes unreasonable financial hardship upon such persons as a precondition to their exercise of the franchise, (ii) does not bear a reasonable relationship to any legitimate State interest in the conduct of elections, and (iii) in some areas has the purpose or effect of denying persons the right to vote because of race or color. Upon the basis of these findings, Congress declares that the constitutional right of citizens to vote is denied or abridged in some areas by the requirement of the payment of a poll tax as a precondition to voting.

Chicanos, the 1960s, and Heritage

(b) In the exercise of the powers of Congress under Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment and Section 2 of the Fifteenth Amendment, the Attorney General is authorized and directed to institute forthwith in the name of the United States such actions, including actions against States or political subdivisions, for declaratory judgment or injunctive relief against the enforcement of any requirement of the payment of a poll tax as a precondition to voting, or substitute therefor enacted after November 1, 1964, as will be necessary to implement the declaration of Subsection (a) and the purposes of this section. (c) The district courts of the United States shall have jurisdiction of such actions which shall be heard and determined by a court of three judges in accordance with the provisions of Section 2284 of Title 28 of the United States Code and any appeal shall lie to the Supreme Court. It shall be the duty of the judges designated to hear the case to assign the case for hearing at the earliest practicable date, to participate in the hearing and determination thereof, and to cause the case to be in every way expedited. (d) During the pendency of such actions, and thereafter if the courts, notwithstanding this action by the Congress, should declare the requirement of the payment of a poll tax to be constitutional, no citizen of the United States who is a resident of a State or political subdivision with respect to which determinations have been made under Subsection 4(b) and a declaratory judgment has not been entered under Subsection 4(a), during the first year he becomes otherwise entitled to vote by reason of registration by State or local officials or listing by an examiner, shall be denied the right to vote for failure to pay a poll tax if he tenders payment of such tax for the current year to an examiner or to the appropriate State or local official at least forty-five days prior to election, whether or not such tender would be timely or adequate under State law. An examiner shall have authority to accept such payment from any person authorized by this Act to make an application for listing, and shall issue a receipt for such payment. The examiner shall transmit promptly any such poll tax payment to the office of the State or local official authorized to receive such payment under State law, together with the name and address of the applicant. SEC. 11 (a) No person acting under color of law shall fail or refuse to permit any person to vote who is entitled to vote under any provision of this Act or is otherwise qualified to vote, or willfully fail or refuse to tabulate, count, and report such person’s vote. (b) No person, whether acting under color of law or otherwise, shall intimidate, threaten, or coerce, or attempt to intimidate, threaten, or coerce any person for voting or attempting to vote, or intimidate, threaten, or coerce, or attempt to intimidate, threaten, or coerce any person for urging or aiding any person to vote or attempt to vote, or intimidate, threaten, or coerce any person for exercising any powers or duties under Section 3(a), 6, 8, 9, 10, or 12(e). (c) Whoever knowingly or willfully gives false information as to his name, address, or period of residence in the voting district for the purpose of establishing his eligibility to register or vote, or conspires with another individual for the purpose of encouraging his false registration to vote or illegal voting, or pays or offers to pay or accepts payment either for registration to vote or for voting shall be fined not

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more than $10,000 or imprisoned not more than five years, or both: Provided, however, That this provision shall be applicable only to general, special, or primary elections held solely or in part for the purpose of selecting or electing any candidate for the office of President, Vice President, presidential elector, Member of the United States Senate, Member of the United States House of Representatives, or Delegates or Commissioners from the territories or possessions, or Resident Commissioner of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. (d) Whoever, in any matter within the jurisdiction of an examiner or hearing officer knowingly and willfully falsifies or conceals a material fact, or makes any false, fictitious, or fraudulent statements or representations, or makes or uses any false writing or document knowing the same to contain any false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or entry, shall be fined not more than $10,000 or imprisoned not more than five years, or both. SEC. 12 (a) Whoever shall deprive or attempt to deprive any person of any right secured by Section 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, or 10 or shall violate Section 11(a) or (b), shall be fined not more than $5,000, or imprisoned not more than five years, or both. (b) Whoever, within a year following an election in a political subdivision in which an examiner has been appointed (1) destroys, defaces, mutilates, or otherwise alters the marking of a paper ballot which has been cast in such election, or (2) alters any official record of voting in such election tabulated from a voting machine or otherwise, shall be fined not more than $5,000, or imprisoned not more than five years, or both. (c) Whoever conspires to violate the provisions of Subsection (a) or (b) of this section, or interferes with any right secured by Section 2, 3 4, 5, 7, 10, or 11(a) or (b) shall be fined not more than $5,000, or imprisoned not more than five years, or both. (d) Whenever any person has engaged or there are reasonable grounds to believe that any person is about to engage in any act or practice prohibited by Section 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 10, 11, or Subsection (b) of this section, the Attorney General may institute for the United States, or in the name of the United States, an action for preventive relief, including an application for a temporary or permanent injunction, restraining order, or other order, and including an order directed to the State and State or local election officials to require them (1) to permit persons listed under this Act to vote and (2) to count such votes. (e) Whenever in any political subdivision in which there are examiners appointed pursuant to this Act any persons allege to such an examiner within fortyeight hours after the closing of the polls that notwithstanding (1) their listing under this Act or registration by an appropriate election official and (2) their eligibility to vote, they have not been permitted to vote in such election, the examiner shall forthwith notify the Attorney General if such allegations in his opinion appear to be well founded. Upon receipt of such notification, the Attorney General may forthwith file with the district court an application for an order providing for the marking, casting, and counting of the ballots of such persons and requiring the inclusion of their votes in the total vote before the results of such election shall be deemed final and any force or effect given thereto. The district court shall hear and

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determine such matters immediately after the filing of such application. The remedy provided in this subsection shall not preclude any remedy available under State or Federal law. (f) The district courts of the United States shall have jurisdiction of proceedings instituted pursuant to this section and shall exercise the same without regard to whether a person asserting rights under the provisions of this Act shall have exhausted any administrative or other remedies that may be provided by law. SEC. 13 Listing procedures shall be terminated in any political subdivision of any State (a) with respect to examiners appointed pursuant to Clause (b) of Section 6 whenever the Attorney General notifies the Civil Service Commission, or whenever the District Court for the District of Columbia determines in an action for declaratory judgment brought by any political subdivision with respect to which the Director of the Census has determined that more than 50 percentum of the nonwhite persons of voting age residing therein are registered to vote, (1) that all persons listed by an examiner for such subdivision have been placed on the appropriate voting registration roll, and (2) that there is no longer reasonable cause to believe that persons will be deprived of or denied the right to vote on account of race or color in such subdivision, and (b), with respect to examiners appointed pursuant to Section 3(a), upon order of the authorizing court. A political subdivision may petition the Attorney General for the termination of listing procedures under Clause (a) of this section, and may petition the Attorney General to request the Director of the Census to take such survey or census as may be appropriate for the making of the determination provided for in this section. The District Court for the District of Columbia shall have jurisdiction to require such survey or census to be made by the Director of the Census and it shall require him to do so if it deems the Attorney General’s refusal to request such survey or census to be arbitrary or unreasonable. SEC. 14 (a) All cases of criminal contempt arising under the provisions of this Act shall be governed by Section 151 of the Civil Rights Act of 1957 (42 U.S.C.1995). (b) No court other than the District Court for the District of Columbia or a court of appeals in any proceeding under Section 9 shall have jurisdiction to issue any declaratory judgment pursuant to Section 4 or Section 5 or any restraining order or temporary or permanent injunction against the execution or enforcement of any provision of this Act or any action of any Federal officer or employee pursuant hereto. (c)(1) The terms ‘‘vote’’ or ‘‘voting’’ shall include all action necessary to make a vote effective in any primary, special, or general election, including, but not limited to, registration, listing pursuant to this Act, or other action required by law prerequisite to voting, casting a ballot, and having such ballot counted properly and included in the appropriate totals of votes cast with respect to candidates for public or party office and propositions for which votes are received in an election. (2) The term ‘‘political subdivision’’ shall mean any county or parish, except that, where registration for voting is not conducted under the supervision of a county or parish, the term shall include any other subdivision of a State which conducts registration

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for voting. (d) In any action for a declaratory judgment brought pursuant to Section 4 or Section 5 of this Act, subpoenas for witnesses who are required to attend the District Court for the District of Columbia may be served in any judicial district of the United States: Provided, That no writ of subpoena shall issue for witnesses without the District of Columbia at a greater distance than one hundred miles from the place of holding court without the permission of the District Court for the District of Columbia being first had upon proper application and cause shown. SEC. 15 Section 2004 of the Revised Statutes (42 U.S.C.1971), as amended by Section 131 of the Civil Rights Act of 1957 (71 Stat. 637), and amended by Section 601 of the Civil Rights Act of 1960 (74 Stat. 90), and as further amended by Section 101 of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (78 Stat. 241), is further amended as follows: (a) Delete the word ‘‘Federal’’ wherever it appears in Subsections (a) and (c); (b) Repeal Subsection (f) and designate the present Subsections (g) and (h) as (f) and (g), respectively. SEC. 16 The Attorney General and the Secretary of Defense, jointly, shall make a full and complete study to determine whether, under the laws or practices of any State or States, there are preconditions to voting, which might tend to result in discrimination against citizens serving in the Armed Forces of the United States seeking to vote. Such officials shall, jointly, make a report to the Congress not later than June 30, 1966, containing the results of such study, together with a list of any States in which such preconditions exist, and shall include in such report such recommendations for legislation as they deem advisable to prevent discrimination in voting against citizens serving in the Armed Forces of the United States. SEC. 17 Nothing in this Act shall be construed to deny, impair, or otherwise adversely affect the right to vote of any person registered to vote under the law of any State or political subdivision. SEC. 18 There are hereby authorized to be appropriated such sums as are necessary to carry out the provisions of this Act SEC 19 If any provision of this Act or the application thereof to any person or circumstances is held invalid, the remainder of the Act and the application of the provision to other persons not similarly situated or to other circumstances shall not be affected thereby. Approved: August 6, 1965 Source: United States Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/ voting/intro/intro b.htm.

Chicanos, the 1960s, and Heritage


n, ‘‘Statements of Philosophy and Policy as They 339. Marcos de Leo Pertain to the Acculturation and Education of the MexicanAmerican,’’ 1964 By the end of the 1950s, there was considerable political activity among those that some have called the Mexican American GI Generation—veterans of World War II and the Korean War. Angry because the Democratic Party had failed to support Mexican Americans for statewide office in 1958, the next year Mexican American Democrats met at Fresno, California and founded the Mexican American Political Association (MAPA). In 1960, when John F. Kennedy ran for president many MAPA chapters were incorporated into the Viva Kennedy Clubs. After the 1960 presidential campaign, there was an effort to form a nationwide Mexican American political group. However, Texans were not able to agree to join MAPA because of the word Mexican, which they believed would offend Euro-American Democrats. They formed the Political Association of Spanish-Speaking Organizations (PASO). However, the biggest issue for Mexican American activists during the 1960s was the failure of the education system, which many believed could be improved through the political process. According to the 1960 Census, the median [grade completed] in the Southwest for Latinos was 7.1 years; for whites 12.1; in California 8.6 and 12.2 respectively; and Texas 4.8 years and 11.5 respectively. Mexican Americans underscored how whites had benefited from post–World War II programs whereas Mexican Americans were falling further behind. Much of the gap was caused by the stubborn and nativist insistence to teach only in English. The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), which had been formed in 1929, proposed a pre-school program that would teach students 400 words in English. These 400 words would help the transition of Spanish-speaking students, giving them a head start. One of the innovators of the time was Los Angeles school teacher Marcos de Le
on who said that the Mexican was the marginal person who had a hamburger in one hand and a taco in the other. The following piece was not published, but de Le
on handed out thousands to educators in the 1960s as he appeared on countless panels. It was one of the few works on the Mexican American child and addressed the differences between assimilation and acculturation.

I. PRINCIPLES 1. The purposes of education in American Democracy, as defined by the Educational Policies Commission specifying the function of the school are to be implemented as basic principles. II. CONCEPTS 1. To strengthen the underpinnings of these principles and make the acculturative process a smoother and more stable process, the following concepts are offered as imperatives. (a) Accept the reality of the Anglo Saxon and Hispanic ethic as they exist in the Western Hemisphere, meeting and throwing circles of influence over one another in the Southwest, creating a permanent and perpetual historical cultural continuum through the movement of peoples.

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(b) This cultural buffer area forms the framework for the process of acculturation affecting both groups, from which emanates two subconcepts; the culture within a culture concept and the function of the school having to become twofold, i.e., perpetuating the core of values of the cultures of which the school is a functional part. (c) Within this framework any ‘‘long- or short-term goal’’ educational program to be effected has to be based on the values, cultural potential, and educational needs of both communities, together with the needs of all individuals, including ages, abilities, interests, cultural differences, and socioeconomic status. This is the motivation, the ‘‘glue’’ that will hold it together. (d) Embrace a functional theory of culture and its relation to the growth of human personality and how such a person adjusts to a maximum [of] the demands of the two cultures: bilingual in the true sense, and the proud inheritor of both the Anglo Saxon and Hispanic traditions, thus permitting greater social mobility, participation, and acceptance as a useful citizen to his community and the nation. This entails a broader acceptance of the acculturation process as an educational precept.

III. RECOMMENDATIONS 1. The school-community idea be given greater depth in meaning, better purpose in implementation. These two entities have long been geometrical parallel lines: Never meeting to explore and exploit their potential. (a) The creation of a core of counselors to serve as liaison workers between school and community, establish and supervise programs in which the leadership of both school personnel and community are to be utilized to a maximum. Wherever possible, these counselors should be bilingual, especially, where the demand for Spanish exists as the spoken vernacular. 2. To Strengthen Cultural Awareness and Self-Image: (a) Spanish should be taught as early as possible on the Elementary level and coordinated with the English Program and made a ‘‘must’’ or a strong elective for non-academic students in the Junior and Senior High Schools; (b) Units on History, Literature, Art, Music, regional dress, and foods concerning Spain, Mexico, and other Latin American Countries be developed in the present courses in Social Studies, Home Economics, and Art, not only for the purpose expressed above, but also to create a more informed general citizenry. 3. Establish a definite and specific program for compensatory education with the objective of supplementing the normal education effort and preparing the Mexican American child to compete and achieve within the existing education program: (a) Such programs whether in the Elementary, Junior High, or Senior High School should have continuity as determined by (1) ‘‘e’’ under Concepts; (2) stipulations made by Federal and State Authorities. (b) These programs can be extensive and costly as the ‘‘Higher Horizon Program’’ in New York City, or smaller target areas can be selected involving the community, curriculum, guidance, counseling, attendance, and tutorial areas as specific projects. (c) While it is recommendable that such programs be made available for the Elementary, Junior High, and Senior High Schools, it is strongly

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recommended that a great deal of concentrated effort be placed within preschool, the Elementary, and Junior High Schools. 4. The total concept of education as to philosophy and program can certainly be extended and implemented in the area of Adult Education. 5. It is strongly recommended that the potential leadership in the various schools as well as the community be utilized to affect any program within the District. (a) In-service training for teachers and community leaders is recommended, preferably in small groups with the technique of the workshop at its best. (b) Utilize panels, speakers, and seminars for this purpose, correlating any effort with compiled materials in a kit containing historical, sociological, and statistical materials, and recommendations as to philosophy and programs. 6. Develop continuing flexible programs of testing, guidance, and counseling which will permit the discovery as early as possible of the potential and creativeness of each child, the identification and development of the academically able student, the so-called ‘‘slow gifted’’ and the culturally different child, motivating him toward definite educational goals, thus preventing him from becoming misplaced within the school as to ability and interest and thus becoming a drop-out. 7. Expanding and modernizing the vocational program of the comprehensive high school so as to give adequate adaptability to a technological[ly] changing community. 8. In reference to community relations and communications it is urged that bulletins be developed which are more meaningful to the general public and more interesting in format especially when they are intended to be sent home, and that Spanish be used in the appropriate areas. 9. Recruit, hire, and place bilingual teachers, counselors, and administrators who have understanding of the Mexican American child and his community. 10. Consultants should be utilized to the fullest extent to (1) aid school personnel set-up projects; (2) act as consultant for such, for teachers’ in-service training, and in-service training for community leaders. Source: Unpublished manuscript, 1964.

340. Excerpts from National Education Association, Invisible Minority: Report of the NEA-Tucson Survey on the Teaching of Spanish to the Spanish Speaking, 1966 In the 1960s, Mexican Americans continued to live mostly in the five southwest states, with pockets or enclaves in the Midwest and Northwest. By the mid1960s, it was obvious that Mexican children were not receiving educations equal to those of their Anglo peers. In 1966, the National Education Association (NEA) released an important document entitled, Invisible Minority: Report of the NEA-Tucson Survey on the Teaching of Spanish to the Spanish Speaking, that investigated teaching in the five Southwest states. It discussed the problems of the Mexican American, and identified some of the more promising programs. The report advocated the teaching of identity and pride of heritage as a way to motivate students. The significance of the report is that it set the stage for bilingual education programs, validating what Mexican American educators had been claiming for years—that teaching Spanish-speaking children only in English would never work.

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While a majority of the Spanish-speaking people in the Southwest were born in this country and are citizens of the United States, they tend to be regarded both by themselves and others as Mexicans. The term Mexican American would be more nearly accurate. More important than technicalities, however, is how they feel … how they regard themselves. Me. To begin with, I am a Mexican. That sentence has a scent of bitterness as it is written. I feel that if it weren’t for my nationality I would accomplish more. My being a Mexican has brought about my lack of initiative. No matter what I attempt to do, my dark skin always makes me feel that I will fail. Another thing that ‘‘gripes’’ me is that I am such a coward. I absolutely will not fight for something even if I know I’m right. I do not have the vocabulary that it would take to express myself strongly enough. Many people, including most of my teachers, have tried to tell me I’m a leader. Well, I know better! Just because I may get better grades than most of my fellow Mexicans doesn’t mean a thing. I could no more get an original idea in my head than be President of the United States. I don’t know how to think for myself. I want to go to college, sure, but what do I want to be? Even worse, where do I want to go? These questions are only a few that trouble me. I’d like to prove to my parents that I can do something. Just because I don’t have the gumption to go out and get a job doesn’t mean that I can’t become something they’ll be proud of. But if I find that I can’t bring myself to go to college, I’ll get married and they’ll still get rid of me. After reading this, you’ll probably be surprised. This is the way I feel about myself, and nobody can change me. Believe me, many have tried and failed. If God wants me to reach all my goals, I will. No parents, teachers, or priest will change the course that my life is to follow. Don’t try.

This was a paper turned in by a 13-year old girl for an English assignment in the eighth grade of a school in one of the Southwestern states. The assignment was to write about ‘‘Me.’’ The melancholy tone of the essay would suggest that the youngster was a ‘‘loner’’ obscure, unattractive, not very popular. But no. She was attractive, articulate, an honor student, member of the band, outstanding in girls’ athletics, popular among her fellow students, admired by her teachers. ‘‘She never seemed to be a child with a problem,’’ remarked one of the teachers, in some puzzlement, after reading ‘‘Me.’’ The problem can be stated plainly and simply: The young girl who wrote that essay was Mexican American. If she, with all her advantages, felt that her lot inevitably would be failure, how must thousands of other Mexican American children many of them less endowed physically and intellectually view their own prospects? 357 YEARS OF HISTORY To understand the problem fully, we must understand how it came about. The first white people to migrate into what is now the American Southwest were Spanish-speaking. They came by way of Mexico during the period of Spain’s colonial expansion and settled portions of the Southwest even before the founding of the Plymouth Colony. Plymouth was established in 1620, but the first Spaniards settled at Santa Fe, New Mexico, a full 11 years before that in 1609. By 1680, there were some 2,500 Spanish-speaking settlers in what we now call New Mexico. By 1790, there were an estimated 23,000 Spanish-speaking people in the five Southwestern states covered by this study area. Indeed, the white population of the Southwest what

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there was of it was practically all Spanish. New Mexico had the largest concentration. But soon after the 13 colonies gained their independence from England, the migration of English-speaking Americans into the Southwest began. Mexico, its own independence newly won from Spain, encouraged such migration. This vast Southwestern area, stretching from the western border of Louisiana to the Pacific, belonged to Mexico. She was anxious to see it settled and developed, and few Mexican colonists were moving there. So the government of Mexico granted large blocks of land to contractors who would bring in colonists. The response was large and prompt. By 1835, there were 25,000 to 35,000 American farmers, planters, and traders in Texas, and more were on the way. WHAT IS BEING DONE: SOME SPECIFICS Encouraging and exciting programs directed specifically to a more appropriate educational accommodation of children in bi-cultural communities have been developed in some places. The following reports are illustrative of the wide variety of innovative practice the NEA-Tucson Survey Committee observed in the schools selected for visitation. Laredo, Texas Laredo is a Texas border community of some 65,000 population, located on the Rio Grande, just opposite its Mexican counterpart, Nuevo Laredo. Its economic sustenance derives in good part from the pursuits of agriculture and a busy Air Force base. Two school districts serve the metropolitan area of Laredo. The larger of the two in population is the Laredo Independent School District, serving the city of Laredo proper. Far larger in area is the United Consolidated Independent School District. It is larger, in fact, than Rhode Island, taking in no less than 2440 square miles and entirely surrounding the Laredo Independent School District on three sides, with the Rio Grande constituting the fourth side. Located within the far-flung boundaries of the United Consolidated Independent School District are the suburban homes of some of Laredo’s Air Force families and ranches and farms where many Mexican American families live. The district operates three elementary schools and a unique high school, much of which has been built underground. This school was built underground to provide fallout protection in case of a nuclear attack on Laredo Air Force Base, to shut out the disrupting screams of jet planes, and for economy’s sake. An underground school uses less land, is more economical to air condition, requires no shades or blinds or window cleaning and offers no tempting midnight target for vandals with air rifles. The educational program of United Consolidated Independent School District has one strong common denominator: bilingualism. Students, Anglo American as well as Mexican American, are encouraged to become truly bilingual speaking, reading, and writing fluently in both English and Spanish. English instruction and Spanish instruction go side by side. One Year at a Time Federal funds had not yet become available for the Laredo ‘‘biliteracy’’ program (as they were subsequently to become available under the Elementary-Secondary Education Act of 1965). The United Consolidated Independent School District had

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to finance the program itself. And so it started the first year with only the first grade. The next year it expanded to the second grade. It was bilingualism not merely for the Mexican American child but for both Mexican American and Anglo American for all children. Eventually bilingualism will extend through all the grades, including high school. Yet even now the high school reflects the beneficial effects of the bilingualbicultural revolution taking place. Picturesquely displayed at the high school’s main entrance, on equal terms, are the proud symbols of the two neighbor nations the American eagle and the Mexican eagle. They are vividly colored, stylized cutouts made by students and suspended from wire supports. Student artwork is displayed all through the school, and there is stress throughout on the worthiness of each of the two cultures. An unmistakable esprit de corps prevails among the students. They walk proudly. They dress neatly all of them. Bilingualism: A Valid Objective The Laredo program and other similar programs that we observed in our Survey plus our own experiences and independent studies have persuaded us beyond any doubt of the validity of bilingualism. Unhappily, a large majority of Southwestern school districts have no bilingual programs. In a few instances, such programs exist but they are conducted inadequately. Most school districts have yet to discover that bilingualism can be a tool. It can be a tool indeed the most important tool with which to educate and motivate the Mexican American child. It can be the means by which he achieves an affirmative self-concept by which he comes to know who and what he is, takes pride in his heritage and culture, and develops a sense of his own worth. It can be an invaluable asset to him as an adult, economically, intellectually, and socially. One of the proofs of the validity of this approach, it seems to us, is the fact that children born and receiving their early schooling in Mexico or some other Spanish-speaking country generally do better in our schools than Mexican Americans born here. RECOMMENDATIONS FOR DESIRABLE PROGRAMS This, then, might be the time to make some recommendations that the NEATucson Survey Committee believes to be basic in the education of native speakers of Spanish: 1. Instruction in pre-school and throughout the early grades should be in both Spanish and English. 2. English should be taught as a second language. 3. Contemporaneously there should be emphasis on the reading, writing, and speaking of good Spanish, since Mexican American children are so often illiterate in it. 4. A well-articulated program of instruction in the mother tongue should be continued from pre-school through the high school years. 5. All possible measures should be taken to help Mexican American children gain a pride in their ancestral culture and language. 6. Schools should recruit Spanish-speaking teachers and teachers’ aides. Beyond that, a special effort should be made to encourage promising young Mexican Americans in high school and college to consider education as a career.

Chicanos, the 1960s, and Heritage

7. Schools, colleges, and universities should conduct research in bilingual education, train or retrain bilingual teachers, create appropriate materials and, in general, establish a strong tradition of bilingual education. Source: The Invisible Minority. Report of the NEA-Tucson Survey on the Teaching of Spanish to the Spanish Speaking; Department of Rural Education, National Education Association, 1201 Sixteenth Street, N.W., Washington, D.C., 20036, 1966.

341. Ernesto Galarza, ‘‘La Mula No Nacio Arisca,’’ 1966 Every ethnic or racial group in the United States takes pride in the pioneers who made it in the United States despite overwhelming odds. Ernesto Galarza (1905–1984) was such a pioneer. He received a doctorate from Columbia University. Galarza quit a well-paying job the Pan American Union—a group that had organized to promote unity, peace, and economic trade among American nations—to organize farmworkers in the Southwest in the late 1940s. Galarza soon found that this was impossible because of the collusion of the federal officials, local authorities, and large growers. He wrote a series of books exposing their abuse of the use of braceros to break strikes. His career included a crusade for bilingual programs and other policy considerations. He gave the following speech before the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions in Santa Barbara, California—an institute formed by Robert Maynard Hutchinson to bring about democratic reforms. The title in English is ‘‘The mule was not born stubborn … it was made this way.’’ The theme was that Mexicans and blacks were not sullen or resentful because they were born that way but because society made them that way.

When I am asked to take part in conferences or meetings in which the topic is the Mexican American in California, I ask myself: ‘‘Why the Mexican Americans?’’ It may be that our liberal conscience demands that we talk publicly about this sick spot in our society. Nevertheless, we should not think that the presumed Mexican American problem can be reduced, by public discussion, to the dimensions of one state, abstracting it from those of the nation and of the world. Nor should we think that it can be understood by using an intellectual tool that is comfortable and disarming but untenable: the concept of the subculture. My working definition of culture runs like this: A culture is characterized by: a) the uses it makes of its material environment; b) the accepted or tolerated relations between the individuals that compose it; c) the symbols, conventional signs, and utilities of everyday behavior; and d) the values by which the society measures its moral performance. By this rule-of-thumb I see only one culture in the United States: it is the culture of the American people all of them. Thus, I do not think we can legitimately presume that there is a subculture of Mexican Americans which explains their depressed conditions of life, or that there is a subculture of Negroes which explains their economic deprivation these past three hundred years. What the concept of subculture implies, but does not say in so many words, is that alien cultures of a lower grade somehow intruded themselves into the American super-culture. If the Negro family today, for instance, is too often damaged by the

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absentee father, the working mother, and the delinquent youth, it is said to be a characteristic of their subculture. The concept shines most brightly when we talk about the discomforts of American society dilapidated housing, crime, and unemployment. It is upon minorities that these discomforts fall most heavily. It is they, to be sure, who populate the ghettos, but it is our entire society, the American society, that spawns slums and breeds poverty. I am not attempting to lay blame. I am trying to discover connections and relationships. What I see is that, among Negro and Mexican American minorities, what shows up vividly as local color and dramatic contrast are, in truth, cracks and tears in the seamless fabric of American society. It is not the subcultures that are in trouble. It is the American culture itself. And what have been some of the major strikes against Mexican Americans and Negroes? One is the pattern of land ownership, control, and use that has developed in America during the past half century. Out of this pattern came the tractoring-out of the southern sharecropper, the withering of the family farm, and the massive importation of foreign agricultural laborers. The resulting flight from the soil took millions to the cities, which were already suffering from urban cramps. We have begun to call these cities ‘‘ports of entry.’’ The term has happy connotations: it suggests the migrant minority is on its way to better things that is has made connections, not broken them. But, in fact, the minority man finds the port congested with people like himself. They, like him, are becoming obsolete as a result of mechanization, automation, and cybernation American cultural products that are radically altering job requirements, opportunities, and tenure. He finds that those sections of the big city where he has found transient refuge are also becoming obsolete. Here, another American culture concept, acted out with bulldozers, awaits him: urban redevelopment. As soon as a section shows speculative promise, it attracts speculative capital and entire neighborhoods go under. The Mexican American poor move with their anxieties to another place. These and other massive social decisions are not for the Mexican American poor to make, or even take part in. These choices, and the complicated devices by which they are applied, are not even understood by the poor. To understand them, they would need an educational system that would deal factually and critically with them. But the Mexican American, on the average, barely gets through eight or nine years of school, so that even if the high schools and colleges were undertaking the task, which by and large they are not, they would not be reaching the minority man. Mexican Americans in California have made progress since the Forties. They are subject to less ethnic discrimination. They have also begun to climb the lower rungs of the economic ladder. Ninety percent of the people I knew as a boy were farmworkers; now, far more than 10 per cent of us work as professors, journalists, bureaucrats, and so on. This change is only recent, but the process is increasing in scope and pace. With new jobs has come an ability to articulate. Today perhaps we even have too many spokesmen. In any event, the time is past when the Mexican American was not heard from. Now he says what he wants. So far, we have been testing the mechanics of American democracy. Those of us who have climbed two or three rungs up the ladder have had opportunities to learn how Anglo Americans do things how they run political parties;

Chicanos, the 1960s, and Heritage

how they caucus; how they lobby; how they manipulate all of those niceties of political contrivance, some clean and some unclean; how they use them, sometimes for personal benefit and sometimes for the good of the commonwealth. And two general kinds of Mexican American leaders have emerged: those who conclude that the American political system doesn’t have to be tested with values it works for 195,000,000 people and what more could anyone ask; and those of us who are trying to see whether it really works in terms of human values. At the same time, the Mexican American community has lost ground important ground. Our leadership has been dispersed. Political appointments have sent men of distinction to Sacramento, Washington, and abroad. Distance does something to these men: their values and ideas change; politically and ideologically, not just residentially, they are separated from the community. Individuals are entitled to personal satisfaction in life, but, for the community, political dispersal has meant and means political decapitation. Strains have also occurred within the community. Mechanization and automation, in industry, agriculture, and trade services, have thrown many thousands of Mexican Americans out of work. In farming, machines now pick tomatoes, grapes, oranges, and so on. Where the packing houses and canneries used to employ 85,000 people at the peak of production, they now employ around 45,000. Large groups of Mexican American families have had a steady income cut away, and have been forced to disperse and be mobile. These nuclei of community have broken down as a result. Marginal workers have not been helped by the trade union movement. Indeed, the trade union leadership helped destroy the farm labor union we organized in the Forties. We had posed the twin issues of power and exploitation in agriculture, but the union leaders shrank from their responsibility to help farmworkers, leaving thousands to a cruel fate. However, they taught the Mexican American community a lesson: the trade unions cannot be a taproot of our salvation. They are interested only in workers who are continuously employed, even though vast numbers of people are now unemployed and probably always will be. Lose your job, or stop paying union dues, and you are no longer ‘‘sir’’ or ‘‘brother.’’ The disintegration of the Mexican American community is apparent in the numerous ‘‘shoestring’’ and ‘‘doughnut’’ communities in which thousands of Mexican Americans live. The ‘‘shoestrings’’ grow along the banks of irrigation ditches, where water is available and land is cheap; here, displaced migrants have pitched their trailers and shacks, and the profile of their settlements is, a shoestring; the classical example is South Dos Palos. The ‘‘doughnut’’ type is found in the city, in places like La Rana (The Frog) in Torrance. There, as in many other places, Mexican American families settled as farmworkers, but now they are surrounded by progress, and they can only wait to be pushed out by urban redevelopment. This community, one might say, is a hole where poor people live surrounded by people with dough. Among Mexican Americans, the proportion of wasted, discarded, obsolete, or unneeded workers is growing higher. Personal and family anchorage to work they can do and to people they know is becoming more precarious. For these men and women the closest thing to an economic taproot is seasonal hiring in the fields and cyclical employment in the cities. The prevailing mood in the poverty pockets is thus one of puzzlement, insecurity, and resentment. And as insecurity deepens, puzzlement is giving way to the conviction that there is no way out, and resentment is

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heightening to the point where life is fulfilled not by making progress toward a goal but by shooting at a target. The welfare services designed for the Mexican Americans and other minorities, diverse and ingenious as they are, are no answer or substitute, for around them no sense of community can arise, no organization of interests can emerge, and from them no effective action can result. Each social service, gigantic like everything else in America, is institutionalized; and each institution asserts its jurisdiction over a slice of the individual or the family. In the battle of jurisdictions, the human meaning of integration, of integrity, is lost. Vertical integration no longer means a man standing securely upon and belonging to the earth free of mind and responsible of spirit. It has come to mean the putting together of economic components into smooth-running financial and technical mechanisms. The demands of the economy and the palliatives of social welfare are manifestations of the American culture as a whole, not of any supposed subculture within it. They originate in the centers of real power and of effective decision. No program for action with regard to the Mexican American minority, or any other minority, therefore, can be more than a provisional tactic to gain time (if there is much left). What is this provisional tactic? It is the grouping of the poor through organization, around the resources provided by the federal government in various Acts, notably the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964. As a result of this Act, the Mexican American minority, to take it as an illustration, has the legal opportunity to participate in the initiation, planning, and administration of social services that have heretofore been of the hand-me-down type. Local residents are now able to create a cluster of activities around which democratic organization can take form, and within which they will be able to maintain responsible relationships. The politics of power, inescapable in any event, can be reduced to more manageable proportions. But if the federal resources are to be subordinated to local community action, local residents must be provided with organizers responsible to them. I am not talking of organizers who are deft with the gimmickry of community organization, but of those who are skilled in recognizing what the vital interests of poor people really are. These interests will in many respects coincide with the services that the federal government stands ready to finance. When they do, the objective of the local community becomes the preparation of action programs and the organization of the neighborhood around them. Into these programs the Mexican Americans themselves must move. Their training must begin from the moment they take on a role, however modest, in a program. What is the ultimate goal of such action programs? It is simply the re-creation of a human web of relations that will serve to produce a genuine community. Community is all that man has been able to invent to give him at least an approximation to security in his transit through life. I say re-creation deliberately, for there have been times and places in the American past when such relations did exist and did function. But the web of community, these last fifty years, has been strained and rent. If it is to be patched now and perhaps rewoven later, men must do it by their own efforts. I realize that it is only a patching that I am suggesting. It is only the choice of a road, not the end of a journey. But it may be the only road not beset by anger, despair, and violence.

Chicanos, the 1960s, and Heritage

The war on poverty is, at this stage, a mere skirmish. It cannot become a war until Congress appropriates the money to mount a massive attack on unemployment. The problem is not simply to create jobs but to influence the basic decisions, like the allocation of resources, that society makes. Decisions about where the money is to be invested, for instance, are what creates jobs. And to these decisions, the poor are not a party. Discrimination must be ended, in employment and in every other phase of social relations. We must also battle for ‘‘anthropomorphic education.’’ This is a terrible phrase, but what I mean is that schools have to teach children, not systems. Experiments in Los Angeles have proven that one teacher with fifteen pupils and one expert assistant can do a much better job than one teacher with forty pupils and no assistant. Remarkable discovery! We have to press to make that teacher-student ratio universal because it will mean that the status and authority of the upper strata of administrators will be downgraded and the greatest prestige and largest salaries will go to kindergarten teachers. We cannot give an inch in this battle. Private wealth can provide a cutting edge in the reconstruction of communities. It could start projects at those points where the government says ‘‘no’’ and the government can do this without ever really saying ‘‘no.’’ There are a lot of experiments the Congress is not going to finance, and there are areas in which federal funds and services either are a handicap or are useless, anyway. Some indispensable things will never happen if we wait for federal funds. Does the Mexican American community merely want to catch up with the Anglo American culture? The question is important, and we had better be careful before we say ‘‘Yes.’’ My experience in farm labor, in academic work, in politics has taught me a lot of things about the Anglo American culture that I do not like. Its economic system, for instance, produces certain values and behavior that I don’t want to catch up with! Mexican Americans have an opportunity to discriminate between the different values, behavior, and institutions in the pervading culture, and we had better choose wisely. All my life I have heard that the trouble with the Mexican American is that he is too apathetic. As a boy, in Mexico, I lived among people who, viewed from the outside, were extremely apathetic. Nobody was interested in knowing who was going to be the next president of Mexico, or who the military commander of our zone was. Nobody cared about the location of the nearest college or high school. They were interested in tomorrow’s ration of corn. When we came to California, Anglo Americans preached to us about our apathy and scolded us. And I thought: Are we really so? Of course we are not. What is mistaken for apathy is simply a system of self-defense inherited by people with a long history of being kicked around. And if they don’t inherit it, they learn quickly. They learn that they are surrounded by hostile men and forces that will do them in at every turn. They naturally become indifferent and unresponsive. But it is not apathy: it is self-protection. La mula no nacio arisca the mule isn’t born stubborn, he’s made stubborn. In the village where I was born, men carried a money belt tied around their waists, and in it they kept all the money they possessed. They worked with the belt on, and they slept with it; they trusted nobody. As they progressed a little further, they put their money in a sock, which was purchased specially for the purpose; since

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nobody wore socks. Their circle of confidence had increased, but still they hid the sock under the corn crib in their cottage and left their women to protect it. Still a little further along came the piggy bank, which they usually placed on a shelf. Their circle of confidence had expanded further: all the family was trusted, friends too, even strangers who would drop by. Finally there came the sign of maturity: the bank account. Now, not only men were trusted but also a system, run by men who were not seen or even known. These four stages of social evolution illustrate the so-called apathy of Mexican Americans. How can anybody accuse that villager who kept his money in a belt tied around his body of being apathetic? Considering the circumstances, he was a pretty smart Mexican. It is often assumed that Mexican Americans need to be ‘‘emancipated’’; after all, a lot of us used to live in a different culture in Mexico, and survived a feudal economy and society. The mayor of San Francisco remarked once that his city was going to build such a wonderful cultural center that it would make Los Angeles look ‘‘like a little Mexican village.’’ Well, what’s so wrong with that village? I have some good memories of Janco, my birthplace. There were no electric lights there, but in the evening, as the sun went down, people would sit in front of their cottages and talk by the twilight. And when it was dark the kids were sent to bed, and later the young men and women. Then the men would talk, not about small things but important ones. Some nights we heard a rumble of voices, lasting far into the morning. When I would awaken I would go to the yard and count the number of slits made by machetes in the hard-baked earth, and I would know how many men had gathered. It was these men who sparked the revolution in my village. And it was villages like these that started one of the most portentous events in the history of the Americas: the Mexican Revolution. In my yard. I have not really been talking of fundamentals here. Not until the economy provides all men with sufficient incomes; not until mothers can stay home and take care of their children; not until massive investments of money are made in places like Watts; not until urban development becomes a weapon for something other than transferring doughnut communities from one part of the landscape to another, will the job of reconstructing communities have begun. Are Mexican Americans ready? That I don’t know, but some of us intend to find out. Source: Ernesto Galarza, ‘‘La Mula No Nacio Arisca,’’ Center Diary, September October 1966, pp. 26 32.

342. Excerpts from Previously Classified, Sanitized U.S. Department of State Telegram on the Tlatelolco Massacre, Mexico City, 1968 From 1933 and 1980, Mexico quadrupled its population. The fertility rate among Mexican women was 4.6 percent in 1950, and rose to 7.2 percent in 1970. World War II accelerated the modernization and industrialization of the country, displacing peasant farmers who fled to the cities—especially, to Mexico City, which would grow to 15 million by the late 1970s. The growing gap between rich and poor caused unrest among the peasants and workers. As with youth worldwide, more students attended the universities and preparatory schools where they conceptualized poverty. In Mexico City, students were

Chicanos, the 1960s, and Heritage

incensed by a government crackdown on street vendors and efforts of government officials to hide the City’s poverty in preparation of Mexico’s hosting of the 1968 Olympic Games. This touched off a series of demonstrations during the summer of 1968 with sporadic confrontations between the Mexican police and military and the protestors. On October 2, 1968, 10,000 to 15,000 university and high school students gathered in La Plaza de las Tres Culturas at Tlatelolco (in Mexico City) in the rain to listen to student leaders condemn the army occupation of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM)— the largest and most prestigious university in Mexico. An army of at least 5,000 soldiers, and more than 300 tanks and other vehicles, surrounded the plaza and fired without warning at the demonstrators. When the shooting stopped, hundreds of people lay dead or wounded; 2,000 demonstrators were beaten and jailed. Most critics agree that Mexican President Gustavo D
ıaz Ordaz (1911–1979) orchestrated the violence to justify a broad crackdown on demonstrations that he considered embarrassing on the eve of the 1968 Olympic Games. Tales of the massacre outraged Chicano students in the United States. The following previously classified document shows CIA involvement with the Mexican Government before October 2.

FM AMEMBASSY MEXICO TO SECSTATE WASHDC 7106 MEXICO 6234 PASS TO WHITE HOUSE

SANITIZED E.O. 12356, Sec. 3.4 NLJ 95 120 By isp. NARA, Date 10-4-95

1. Mexican govt has solid evidence corroborating public charges of mexico city police chief that communist party engineered july 26 student fracas. Govt evidence also includes indications of soviet embassy complicity (including taunt by a PCM official that security police would find no important documents since they were all in soviet embassy). 2. Mexicans often blame foreign elements for such incidents and PCM lately has stressed its desire to pursue legal means but embassy considers that strong possibility exists moscow has ordered PCM to adopt more militant tactics. One motive may be soviet desire to counter impact on PCM of czech events. PCM paper, La voz De Mexico, after initially carrying favorable articles on czechoslovakia, completely silent on events in last few weeks, linked to this may be desire to strengthen internation discipline of PCM as also suggested by refurbishing and more prompt publication by PCM of international communist journal revista internacional. 3. Moscow and PCM may be seeking to take play away from pro-cuban extremists though elements of complicity also seem present. Pro-soviet and pro-cuban student elements joined in july 26 celebration of cuban anniversary. Revista internacional april issue containing article taking more friendly attitude to cuban tactics has just been issued here and may have been interpreted as signal for stronger tactics by PCM. Fact that cuban ambassador went to merida instead of staying in capital for july 26 fiesta suggests he may have known what was coming though he wanted to avoid any suggestion of cuban involvement. 4. While seeking to avoid direct involvement, soviets may believe that mexican anxiety to avoid any diplomatic contretemps with communist world as olympics

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near gives soviet embassy more room for subversive maneuver. However, they know they risk strong government crackdown on PCM. Statement by mexican police chief who linked recent riots with olympics bound to recall to PCM and moscow president’s warning on may 7 in talk with PCM politburo that government will crack down hard if PCM foments disorder in next few months. But PCM used to crackdowns and moscow may be proceeding by lenin’s old injunction ‘‘better fewer but better.’’ 5. Dept may wish to pass moscow. Freeman Source: Kate Doyle, ‘‘The Tlatelolco Massacre U.S. Documents on Mexico and the Events of 1968,’’ Document 5, July 30, 1968 [Communist Role in Student Protest] U.S. Embassy in Mexico, secret telegram http://www.gwu.edu/nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB99/Doc5.pdf.

343. Excerpts from Eugene Nelson, Jr., ‘‘Huelga: New Goals for Labor,’’ 1967 If the Chicano Movement did not start with C
esar Ch
avez (1927–1993), he certainly made the cause known throughout the United States. Until the 1960s, few white Americans outside the Southwest knew who Mexican Americans were. It was Ch
avez who gave them a national forum. He was born into a farmworker family. After a stint in the Navy, he returned to the San Jose barrio of Sal Si Puedes (Get out If You Can) and became involved with the Community Service Organization (CSO) that was formed in 1947. The CSO was an offshoot of Saul Alinksy’s Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF), which trained community organizers. He rose through the ranks and became the CSO president in the late 1950s. In 1962, he left a well-paying job, and along with fellow CSO organizer Dolores Huerta, began organizing farmworkers. In Delano, California, they founded the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA). On September 8, 1965, Filipino farmworkers initiated the Delano grape strike for
vez combined trade union higher wages. The NFWA supported the strike. Cha tactics with civil rights tactics such as the nonviolent strategies of Martin Luther King, Jr., and India’s Mahatma Gandhi. Ch
avez went on hunger strikes and launched secondary boycotts of grapes to bring attention to la causa, the cause. The following excerpts are from an article by one of the early organizers of the farmworkers’ union.

If the word huelga has not yet appeared in an English language dictionary, along with other Spanish words which have come into common usage in English, it surely will soon. As many Americans must know by now, ‘‘huelga’’ means ‘‘strike.’’ As fewer know, it refers to a certain type of agricultural strike which is also a social movement, interpreted by different people in different ways, and capable at any time of shooting off in new directions which may significantly affect the lives of all Americans. The potentiality is there, despite the fact that at present only a tiny percentage of the American workforce is involved, that these workers are among the most poorly educated of all, and that eventually their number must decline. Even on the surface, the strike and the movement in California, later in Texas, have been exciting and significant. The huelga began in September of 1965 as just another agricultural strike. When about 1,000 Filipino American members of the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee of the AFL-CIO left their jobs in the vineyards of Delano, California,

Chicanos, the 1960s, and Heritage

demanding to be paid the $1.40 an hour that was guaranteed to the last of the Mexican braceros who had been allowed to work in the United States. Delano was also the headquarters of the independent National Farm Workers Association [NFWA], a unique union which was a combination of labor and social service organization, administering to all the major needs of its 2,000 Mexican American members. The NFWA, headed by C
esar Ch
avez, joined the strike against thirty-six grape growers, presenting the uncommon spectacle of an alliance of two unions and two ethnic groups, plus a smattering of Anglos, Negroes, and Puerto Ricans. In corrupt and poverty-stricken Starr County, Texas, where farmworkers earn as little as 40¢ an hour, the movement also exploded last June when 700 melon pickers went out on strike. A subsequent farmworkers’ march to Austin united Mexican American groups throughout the state in the demand for a state minimum wage of $1.25 an hour and union contracts for the striking workers. Gov. John Connally and Atty. Gen. Waggoner Carr refused to meet the marchers at the capitol on Labor Day, and many observers say the rebuff was responsible for Carr’s defeat in the United States Senate race against Republican John Tower. On May 15, the United Farm Workers signed their first recognition agreement with a Texas grower Virgilio Guerra, who will be employing about sixty men in the cantaloupe harvest. Meanwhile, the strike and boycott, launched with the same nationwide machinery that forced Schenley to negotiate, is gaining momentum as the harvest peak nears. There has been new organizing activity among farmworkers in Oregon, Washington, Wisconsin, New Mexico, Arizona, and Florida. About one-tenth of America’s farmworkers were included for the first time this year under the national minimum wage law, starting at $1 an hour. And it is predicted that this year or next farmworkers will be included by Congress in the collective bargaining rights guaranteed other workers under the National Labor Relations Act, thus eliminating the grave injustice largely responsible for their depressed situation in the first place. Source: Eugene Nelson, Jr. ‘‘Huelga: New Goals for Labor,’’ pp. 724 725. Reprinted with permission from the June 5, 1967 issue of The Nation. For subscription information, call 1-800-333-8536. Portions of each week’s Nation magazine can be accessed at http://www.thenation.com.

344. Excerpts from Rub
en Salazar, ‘‘State Calls for Probe of Judge in Latin Slurs,’’ 1969 Rub
en Salazar was a muckraking reporter for the Los Angeles Times who later became the news director for KMEX-TV. He was killed by Los Angeles a sheriff deputy during the August 29, 1970 anti-Viet Nam War demonstration. His voice was heard throughout the 1960s exposing discrimination toward Mexican Americans. The following is part of a blistering attack on San Jose (California) Superior Court Judge Gerald S. Chargin who during the sentencing of a seventeen year old Mexican American youth who allegedly had sex with his 15 year old mentally retarded sister generalized an attack on all Mexicans. Chargin was censured but allowed him to remain on the bench.

‘‘You are lower than animals and haven’t the right to live in organized society just miserable, lousy rotten people.… Maybe Hitler was right. The animals in our

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society probably ought to be destroyed because the have no right to live among human beings.… The judge then went on to say that the girl who is pregnant, ‘‘probably will have a half dozen and three or four marriages before she is 18.’’ … Source: Rub
en Salazar, ‘‘State Calls for Probe of Judge in Latin Slurs,’’ Los Angeles Times, October 3, 1969, p. 3.

345. Remarks of Hon. James G. O’Hara of Michigan about the Proclamation of the Delano Grape Workers for International Boycott Day, House of Representatives, May 10, 1969 Charismatic labor activist Dolores Huerta (1930–) was born in New Mexico and grew up in Stockton at the northwest end of California’s San Joaqu
ın Valley. Huerta had been an organizer with the Community Service Organization (CSO) and worked as a teacher. She left these secure jobs to join labor activist C
esar Ch
avez (1927–1993) to organize farmworkers. Huerta became the most prominent Chicana labor leader in the United States. Huerta was a seasoned organizer who lobbied in Sacramento, California, traveled the country organizing boycott committees, and spoke to workers. Speaking for the farmworkers’ union, Huerta called for an international grape boycott which eventually became an international cause with supporters refusing to eat grapes until the growers signed contracts with the union. The following is a resolution by the Hon. James G. O’Hara of Michigan, which includes the call for the Delano Grape Boycott.

Mr. Speaker, last Saturday, May 10, was proclaimed International Boycott Day by the Delano grape workers. Consumers everywhere were called upon to withhold their patronage from stores selling table grapes. When the Congress enacted the National Labor Relations Act over 30 years ago, agriculture workers were excluded from the provisions [of] this act. In effect, the Congress made second-class citizens of farmworkers by refusing to protect their right to form unions and to bargain collectively with their employers. For the past 7 years, efforts on the part of the grape workers to bargain collectively have been largely ignored by the growers. Without the protection of the law, the workers had nowhere to go but to the public. Two years ago, the farmworkers of California called upon consumers to boycott grapes in an effort to force the growers to recognize the rights of the workers and to bargain collectively with them. The boycott has been more and more effective as the public has become more and more aware of the plight of the farmworkers. By boycotting grapes, consumers tell growers that they will not purchase their product until they know that the workers who harvest it are assured of a just wage, humane working conditions, job security, and other employee benefits taken for granted by most working men and women in America. Mr. Speaker, I insert the proclamation of the Delano grape workers for International Boycott Day at this point in the Record: Proclamation of the Delano Grape Workers for International Boycott Day, May 10, 1969. We, the striking grape workers of California, join on this International Boycott Day with the consumers across the continent in planning the steps that lie

Chicanos, the 1960s, and Heritage

ahead on the road to our liberation. As we plan, we recall the footsteps that brought us to this day and the events of this day. The historic road of our pilgrimage to Sacramento later branched out, spreading like the unpruned vines in struck fields, until it led us to willing exile in cities across this land. There, far from the earth we tilled for generations, we have cultivated the strange soil of public understanding, sowing the seed of our truth and our cause in the minds and hearts of men. We have been farmworkers for hundreds of years and pioneers for seven. Mexicans, Filipinos, Africans, and others, our ancestors were among those who founded this land and tamed its natural wilderness. But we are still pilgrims on this land, and we are pioneers who blaze a trail out of the wilderness of hunger and deprivation that we have suffered even as our ancestors did. We are conscious today of the significance of our present quest. If this road we chart leads to the rights and reforms we demand, if it leads to just wages, humane working conditions, protection from the misuse of pesticides, and to the fundamental right of collective bargaining, if it changes the social order that relegates us to the bottom reaches of society, then in our wake will follow thousands of American farmworkers. Our example will make them free. But if our road does not bring us to victory and social change, it will not be because our direction is mistaken or our resolve too weak, but only because our bodies are mortal and our journey hard. For we are in the midst of a great social movement, and we will not stop struggling ’til we die, or win! We have been farmworkers for hundreds of years and strikers for four. It was four years ago that we threw down our plowshares and pruning hooks. These Biblical symbols of peace and tranquility to us represent too many lifetimes of unprotesting submission to a degrading social system that allows us no dignity, no comfort, no peace. We mean to have our peace, and to win it without violence, for it is violence we would overcome the subtle spiritual and mental violence of oppression, the violence subhuman toil does to the human body. So we went and stood tall outside the vineyards where we had stooped for years. But the tailors of national labor legislation had left us naked. Thus exposed, our picket lines were crippled by injunctions and harassed by growers; our strike was broken by imported scabs; our overtures to our employers were ignored. Yet we knew the day must come when they would talk to us, as equals. We have been farmworkers for hundreds of years and boycotters for two. We did not choose the grape boycott, but we had chosen to leave our peonage, poverty, and despair behind. Though our first bid for freedom, the strike, was weakened, we would not turn back. The boycott was the only way forward the growers left to us. We called upon our fellow men and were answered by consumers who said as all men of conscience must that they would no longer allow their tables to be subsidized by our sweat and our sorrow: They shunned the grapes, fruit of our affliction. We marched alone at the beginning, but today we count men of all creeds, nationalities, and occupations in our number. Between us and the justice we seek now stand the large and powerful grocers who, in continuing to buy table grapes, betray the boycott their own customers have built. These stores treat their patrons’ demands to remove the grapes the same way the growers treat our demands for union recognition by ignoring them. The consumers who rally behind our cause are responding as we do to such treatment with a boycott! They pledge to withhold their patronage from stores that handle grapes during the boycott, just as we withhold our labor from the growers until our dispute is resolved.

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Grapes must remain an unenjoyed luxury for all as long as the barest human needs and basic human rights are still luxuries for farmworkers. The grapes grow sweet and heavy on the vines, but they will have to wait while we reach out first for our freedom. The time is ripe for our liberation. Source: May 17, 1969, Congressional Record, 91st Cong., 1st sess.

346. Excerpts from Salvador B. Castro et al., Petitioners v. the Superior Court of Los Angeles County Salvador B. Castro (1933–), a Korean War (1950–1953) veteran, was a Los Angeles school teacher. When his students walked out of classes in five Los Angeles high schools in 1968, he walked out with them. Castro knew that his students’ grievances and demands were justified, so he felt morally obligated to work with them and walk out in solidarity. According to Castro, a teacher’s job did not stop at the edge of the school yard. Even before the 1968 Blowouts, Castro had been involved in the Viva Kennedy campaign to elect President John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) in 1960, and helped found the Mexican American Education Committee (1964) in Los Angeles, California, to unite Mexican American educators to improve education. Castro was forcefully transferred from Belmont High to Lincoln High after he encouraged Mexican American students to run a slate for student government. At Lincoln, he developed ties with high school and college students from Eastside schools. They met and discussed the inequalities within the Los Angeles schools and the need for bilingual courses and courses that taught them about Mexican culture. Castro helped students formulate demands presented to the school board. District officials ignored the students’ demands. In March 1968, five public schools in East Los Angeles (Roosevelt, Wilson, Lincoln, Garfield, and Belmont), with the help of local Chicano college students, walked out. Castro was arrested and charged with 15 counts of conspiracy to disrupt public schools and 15 counts of conspiracy to disturb the peace. Twelve others, many of whom were Brown Berets (youths who organized as a para-military group to defend the barrios) were also arrested and charged with conspiracy. The charges were dropped in 1972. The following is an excerpt from the court case.

SUMMARY: Defendants, indicted on charges arising out of high school disturbances, petitioned the Court of Appeal for a writ of prohibition to restrain the Superior Court from further prosecution of the charges. At the time of application for the writ, the indictment consisted of three charges. Four of the defendants were charged with the misdemeanor of disturbing the peace and all of them were charged with felonies of conspiracy to violate Ed. Code, § 16701, making it a misdemeanor to willfully disturb any public school or any public school meeting, and conspiracy to disturb the peace and quiet of the neighborhood and persons in the proximity thereof. The court granted the writ as to the two felony charges and denied it as to the misdemeanor charge. Presiding Justice Kaus, who wrote the lead opinion, took the view that the circumstantial evidence relied upon by the prosecution to support the charge of conspiracy to disturb the peace was sufficient under conventional methods of evaluating proof in conspiracy cases, but that, inasmuch as

Chicanos, the 1960s, and Heritage

defendants were engaged in the exercise of fundamental First Amendment rights, stricter standards of proof were called for. Justice Stephens, concurring, did not agree that the position of the prosecution was supported under conventional methods of evaluating proof. He was of the opinion that the evidence relied upon to support the charge was inadequate to be of ponderable legal significance, reasonable in nature, credible, and of solid value. Justice Reppy dissented as to this count. Presiding Justice Kaus, with Justice Reppy concurring, held that prosecution of the charge of conspiracy to willfully disturb a public school or public school meeting should be prohibited on the ground that Ed. Code, § 16701, making such activity a misdemeanor, was overbroad, in that the statutory language encompassed conduct that was protected by the First Amendment. Justice Stephens concurred in the result as to this count but did not agree that the statute was overboard. He took the view that it was unconscionable to create a felony (by charging conspiracy) from the cooperative commission of a misdemeanor which was of such nature that the Legislature had provided that no jail term could be countenanced. The three justices concurred in denying prohibition as to the misdemeanor charge of disturbing the peace, holding that a factual issue was presented as to whether prosecution was barred by a prior dismissal of a similar charge in municipal court. (Opinion by Kaus, P. J. Concurring opinion by Stephens, J. Concurring and dissenting opinion by Reppy, J.) … Petitioners, Salvatore B. Castro, Moctezuma Esparza, Henry Gomez, Frederic Bernard Lopez, Carlos Michael Montez, Carlos Munoz, Gilberto Cruz Olmeda, Ralph Luna Ramirez, Joe Angel Razo, Eliezer Lozado Risco, David John Sanchez, J. Patricio Sanchez, Richard Vigil.… The evidence before the grand jury showed that between March 5 and March 8, 1968, there occurred certain disturbances at four high schools in Los Angeles. Essentially these took the form of a large number of Mexican American students attempting to leave or actually leaving the school grounds and attending protest meetings. The alleged reason for these so-called ‘‘walkouts’’ was a protest against conditions in the schools which were claimed to provide the students with inferior education.… 1. On March 5, at Garfield High School threats and ‘‘obscenities’’ were hurled at police officers and school officials; 2. At Roosevelt High School on March 6, several petitioners caused a chain by which a gate to the school was closed to snap open, permitting about two hundred students to leave the school premises; 3. At Belmont High School … on March 7, garbage cans were tossed down the steps by students and fire alarms were broken. Fires were set in trash cans and fights broke out. Rocks and bottles were thrown. None of petitioners were shown to be directly involved; 4. The next day, again at Belmont, a few rocks were thrown by students and cherry bombs were ignited. Again, no involvement by any petitioner was shown. Apart from the charge contained in Count VIII, these violations are not before us, except to the extent that their commission and the aiding and abetting of their commission by some petitioners is circumstantial evidence of the felonies charged in Counts XV and XVI. The thrust of those counts is simply that petitioners, none of whom was a student at any of the schools affected, planned the walkouts and took certain steps ‘‘overt acts’’ toward the accomplishment of their objective.…

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‘‘In January or February, petitioner Castro had informed the UCLA Chapter of UMAS that high school students were talking about walking out. UMAS passed a motion assuming responsibility as monitors to protect the high school students. Then there were several meetings with petitioner Castro about proposals to be submitted to the Board of Education and the walkouts.… Petitioners Risco, Razo, and Esparza, and possibly Munoz, attended some of these meetings. Signs were made sometime in February for use during the walkouts.…’’ In addition there was offered, against petitioner Castro only, a radio broadcast he made on May 14, 1968. The People’s summary of the broadcasts as follows: ‘‘… Castro outlined the history of the walkouts and indicated that he had asked college students to assist by making signs and monitoring the walkouts. Petitioner Castro received help from California State, UCLA and Valley State. East L.A. College would not endorse the program. An unexpected walkout at Wilson prematurely triggered one at Garfield. Petitioner Castro then advised that the other two schools would have to have a walkout in order to show unity to the Board of Education. He explained that the Lincoln walkout was called for 10:00 and 12:00 was set for Roosevelt. He explained how well the walkout which led to Hazard Park was supervised by the college and high school monitors. ‘‘Petitioner Castro indicated that the kids were angry because the first wave of walkouts had some defects. So the planning for further walkouts began. Intelligence reports about Thursday’s walkouts, availability of signs, and the weather were considered. It was planned that all four schools would walk out about 9:00 A.M. and the students would meet in Hazard Park. He described the plans for Garfield, Roosevelt, and Lincoln High Schools and analyzed what happened at Belmont.’’ It is thus apparent that the People do not even claim direct proof that the walkouts, as planned, were to involve criminal disturbances of the peace. Further, it is evident that there is no direct proof that any of petitioners, except Castro, Risco, Razo, Esparza, and possibly Munoz, were directly proved to have been parties to the planning of the walkouts. What the People do claim, in essence, is: 1. That other petitioners were circumstantially proved to have been participants in the planning of the walkouts by their presence and actions at the walkout sites, whether or not they behaved illegally; and 2. That the illegal nature of the plan may be inferred from the readiness with which some of those who were directly or circumstantially proved to have been planners violated the law.… Just how insensitive a tool the conventional conspiracy approach can be in a case such as the one at bar is illustrated by one of the People’s own arguments in this case. Answering [the] petitioners’ point that any disturbances during the walkouts were spontaneous and unanticipated, which, petitioners urge, is proved by the fact that they recruited monitors from various sympathetic groups at local colleges, the People argue: ‘‘12,300 students were enrolled at the four high schools. Even discounting students who would be normally absent on any given day, monitoring the students would be a tremendous job. Inherent in such a large-scale operation was the certainty of school disruption since total success would leave the schools without students and a partial walkout would result in agitating the non-participants in order to achieve total unity.… Thus, if the student walkout was a violation of law or regulations made pursuant to law, and if the ‘‘chill’’ ran only toward discouraging that, and there was very small

Chicanos, the 1960s, and Heritage

likelihood that it would discourage adult group demonstrations not intended to bring about student walkouts, no sufficient interference with rights of free speech is brought about by the circumstantial evidence rule available in the conspiracy prosecution. Source: Salvador B. Castro et al., Petitioners, v. The Superior Court of Los Angeles County, Respondent; The People, Real Party in Interest Civ. No. 34178 Court of Appeal of California, Second Appellate District, Division Five *9 Cal. App. 3d 675;* 88 Cal. Rptr. 500; 1970 Cal. App. LEXIS 1985, July 17, 1970.

347. Excerpts from Rodolfo ‘‘Corky’’ Gonzales, ‘‘I Am Joaqu
ın,’’ 1967 One of the national Chicano leaders was Rodolfo ‘‘Corky’’ Gonzales (1928– 2005) who was a boxer, a poet, and an activist. In the mid-sixties, Corky founded the Crusade for Justice, a community organization. In 1968, he led the Chicano delegation to Washington, D.C. for the Poor People’s March, a march on Washington organized by civil rights leaders. In March 1969, under his auspices, the National Chicano Youth Liberation Conference was held in Denver, Colorado. The conference produced El Plan Espiritual de Aztl
an (the Spiritual Plan of Aztl
an) that demanded self-determination for Chicanos. Aztl
an was the legendary birthplace of the Aztec tribe and a symbol that Mexican Americans were an original part of the Southwest. Corky believed in direct action and he expressed the aspirations of urban youth. His poem, ‘‘I am Joaqu
ın,’’ expresses the confusion in the Chicanos’ search for identity and hopes of Chicano youth. The following excerpts from this poem were written during the height of youth activism in 1968. At the time, there was a schism between the new and the old generations with the newer generation refusing to compromise. The Chicano Movement, 1968–1973, attempted to resolve the identity crisis by self-identifying and calling themselves Chicano, a pejorative term that had been used by the older generation to refer to low-class Mexicans. Youth took up the term Chicano because it precisely identified those at the bottom strata of society—the very people whose conditions they were trying to improve.

Yo soy Joaqu
ın, perdido en un mundo de confusi
on: I am Joaqu
ın, lost in a world of confusion, caught up in the whirl of a gringo society, confused by the rules, scorned by attitudes, suppressed by manipulation, and destroyed by modern society. My fathers have lost the economic battle and won the struggle of cultural survival. And now! I must choose between the paradox of victory of the spirit, despite physical hunger, or to exist in the grasp of American social neurosis, sterilization of the soul and a full stomach. Yes, I have come a long way to nowhere, unwillingly dragged by that monstrous, technical, industrial giant called Progress and Anglo success.…

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I look at myself. I watch my brothers. I shed tears of sorrow. I sow seeds of hate. I withdraw to the safety within the circle of life MY OWN PEOPLE I am Cuauht
emoc, proud and noble, leader of men, king of an empire civilized beyond the dreams of the gachup
ın Cort
es, who also is the blood, the image of myself. I am the Maya prince. I am Nezahualc
oyotl, great leader of the Chichimecas. I am the sword and flame of Cort
es the despot And I am the eagle and serpent of the Aztec civilization. I owned the land as far as the eye could see under the Crown of Spain, and I toiled on my Earth and gave my Indian sweat and blood for the Spanish master who ruled with tyranny over man and beast and all that he could trample But … THE GROUND WAS MINE. I was both tyrant and slave. As the Christian church took its place in God’s name, to take and use my virgin strength and trusting faith, the priests, both good and bad, took but gave a lasting truth that Spaniard Indian Mestizo we’re all God’s children. And from these words grew men who prayed and fought for their own worth as human beings, for that GOLDEN MOMENT of FREEDOM. I was part in blood and spirit of that courageous village priest Hidalgo who in the year eighteen hundred and ten rang the bell of independence and gave out that lasting cry El Grito de Dolores ‘‘Que mueran los gachupines y que viva la Virgen de Guadalupe.…’’ I sentenced him who was me I excommunicated him, my blood. I drove him from the pulpit to lead a bloody revolution for him and me.… I killed him. His head, which is mine and of all those who have come this way, I placed on that fortress wall to wait for independence. Morelos! Matamoros! Guerrero! all compa~ neros in the act, STOOD AGAINST THAT WALL OF INFAMY to feel the hot gouge of lead which my hands made. I died with them … I lived with them.… I lived to see our country free. Free from Spanish rule in eighteen-hundred-twenty-one. Mexico was free?? The crown was gone but all its parasites remained, and ruled, and taught, with gun and flame and mystic power. I worked, I sweated, I bled, I prayed, and waited silently for life to begin again. I fought and died for Don Benito Ju
arez, guardian of the Constitution.

Chicanos, the 1960s, and Heritage

I was he on dusty roads on barren land as he protected his archives as Moses did his sacraments. He held his Mexico in his hand on the most desolate and remote ground which was his country. And this giant little Zapotec gave not one palm’s breadth of his country’s land to kings or monarchs or presidents of foreign powers. I am Joaqu
ın. I rode with Pancho Villa, crude and warm, a tornado at full strength, nourished and inspired by the passion and the fire of all his earthy people. I am Emiliano Zapata. ‘‘This land, this earth is OURS.’’ The villages, the mountains, the streams belong to Zapatistas. Our life or yours is the only trade for soft brown earth and maize. All of which is our reward, a creed that formed a constitution for all who dare live free! ‘‘This land is ours.… Father, I give it back to you. Mexico must be free.…’’ I ride with revolutionists against myself. I am the Rurales, coarse and brutal, I am the mountain Indian, superior over all. The thundering hoof beats are my horses. The chattering machine guns are death to all of me: Yaqui Tarahumara Chamala Zapotec Mestizo Espa~ nol. I have been the bloody revolution, The victor, The vanquished. I have killed And been killed. I am the despots D
ıaz And Huerta And the apostle of democracy, Francisco Madero. I am The black-shawled Faithful women Who die with me Or live Depending on the time and place.

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I am faithful, humble Juan Diego, The Virgin of Guadalupe, Tonantz
ın, Aztec goddess, too. I rode the mountains of San Joaqu
ın. I rode east and north As far as the Rocky Mountains, And All men feared the guns of Joaqu
ın Murrieta. I killed those men who dared To steal my mine, Who raped and killed my love My wife. Then I killed to stay alive. I was Elfego Baca, living my nine lives fully. I was the Espinoza brothers of the Valle de San Luis. All were added to the number of heads that in the name of civilization were placed on the wall of independence, heads of brave men who died for cause or principle, good or bad. Hidalgo! Zapata! Murrieta! Espinozas! Are but a few. They dared to face The force of tyranny Of men who rule by deception and hypocrisy. I stand here looking back, And now I see the present, And still I am a campesino, I am the fat political coyote I am the masses of my people and I refuse to be absorbed. I am Joaqu
ın. The odds are great But my spirit is strong, My faith unbreakable, My blood is pure. I am Aztec prince and Christian Christ. I SHALL ENDURE! I WILL ENDURE. Source: Rodolfo ‘‘Corky’’ Gonzales, ‘‘I am Joaqu
ın,’’ http://www.escuelatlatelolco.org.


n, 1969 348. Excerpts from El Plan Espiritual de Aztla El Plan de Aztl
an (1969) was adopted at the first National Chicano Youth Liberation Conference in Denver, Colorado, March 1969. It was collectively

Chicanos, the 1960s, and Heritage

written but its main contributor was Chicano poet Baltazar Urista who went by the name Alurista. The plan expressed the growing nationalist consciousness of the Chicano generation. It represented the reaction of youth to generations of discrimination against people of Mexican extraction. Racist nativists have criticized the plan for the use of the word Aztl
an, the place of origin of the Aztecas, which is a historical fact. Aztl
an existed in the territory taken from Mexico through war. Right wing critics say that the plan calls for Chicano control of the Chicano community—their barrios (neighborhoods). Black Americans want to control their neighborhoods and Native Americans wish to remain in control of the few lands that have been left to them. This is why there are ethnic pol
ıticos. Critics also call the phrase, La Raza [The Race] racist because it singles out people of Mexican origin as being special. However, speakers such as President Theodore Roosevelt have expressed the belief that Americans are a special people. No similar charge is leveled at Jewish Americans for supporting Israel or claiming to be the chosen people; Armenian Americans for going to Armenian churches; or Italian Americans for joining Italian organizations.

In the spirit of a new people that is conscious not only of its proud historical heritage but also of the brutal ‘‘gringo’’ invasion of our territories, we, the Chicano inhabitants and civilizers of the northern land of Aztl
an from whence came our forefathers, reclaiming the land of their birth and consecrating the determination of our people of the sun, declare that the call of our blood is our power, our responsibility, and our inevitable destiny. We are free and sovereign to determine those tasks which are justly called for by our house, our land, the sweat of our brows, and by our hearts. Aztl
an belongs to those who plant the seeds, water the fields, and gather the crops, and not to the foreign Europeans. We do not recognize capricious frontiers on the bronze continent. Brotherhood unites us, and love for our brothers makes us a people whose time has come and who struggles against the foreigner ‘‘gabacho’’ who exploits our riches and destroys our culture. With our heart in our hands and our hands in the soil, we declare the independence of our mestizo nation. We are a bronze people with a bronze culture. Before the world, before all of North America, before all our brothers in the bronze continent, we are a nation, we are a union of free pueblos, we are Aztl
an.

FOR LA RAZA TO DO. FUERA DE LA RAZA NADA [OUTSIDE THE RACE NOTHING] Program El Plan Espiritual de Aztl
an sets the theme that the Chicanos (La Raza de Bronze) must use their nationalism as the key or common denominator for mass mobilization and organization. Once we are committed to the idea and philosophy of El Plan de Aztl
an, we can only conclude that social, economic, cultural, and political independence is the only road to total liberation from oppression, exploitation, and racism. Our struggle then must be for the control of our barrios, campos, pueblos, lands, our economy, our culture, and our political life. El Plan commits all levels of Chicano society the barrio, the campo, the ranchero, the writer, the teacher, the worker, the professional to La Causa.

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Nationalism Nationalism as the key to organization transcends all religious, political, class, and economic factions or boundaries. Nationalism is the common denominator that all members of La Raza can agree upon.

Organizational Goals 1. UNITY in the thinking of our people concerning the barrios, the pueblo, the campo, the land, the poor, the middle class, the professional all committed to the liberation of La Raza. 2. ECONOMY: economic control of our lives and our communities can only come about by driving the exploiter out of our communities, our pueblos, and our lands and by controlling and developing our own talents, sweat, and resources. Cultural background and values which ignore materialism and embrace humanism will contribute to the act of cooperative buying and the distribution of resources and production to sustain an economic base for healthy growth and development. Lands rightfully ours will be fought for and defended. Land and realty ownership will be acquired by the community for the people’s welfare. Economic ties of responsibility must be secured by nationalism and the Chicano defense units. 3. EDUCATION must be relative [relevant] to our people, i.e., history, culture, bilingual education, contributions, etc. Community control of our schools, our teachers, our administrators, our counselors, and our programs. 4. INSTITUTIONS shall serve our people by providing the service necessary for a full life and their welfare on the basis of restitution, not handouts or beggar’s crumbs. Restitution for past economic slavery, political exploitation, ethnic and cultural psychological destruction and denial of civil and human rights. Institutions in our community which do not serve the people have no place in the community. The institutions belong to the people. 5. SELF-DEFENSE of the community must rely on the combined strength of the people. The front line defense will come from the barrios, the campos, the pueblos, and the ranchitos. Their involvement as protectors of their people will be given respect and dignity. They, in turn, offer their responsibility and their lives for their people. Those who place themselves in the front ranks for their people do so out of love and carnalismo. Those institutions which are fattened by our brothers to provide employment and political pork barrels for the gringo will do so only as acts of liberation and for La Causa. For the very young there will no longer be acts of juvenile delinquency, but revolutionary acts. 6. CULTURAL values of our people strengthen our identity and the moral backbone of the movement. Our culture unites and educates the family of La Raza towards liberation with one heart and one mind. We must insure that our writers, poets, musicians, and artists produce literature and art that is appealing to our people and relates to our revolutionary culture. Our cultural values of life, family, and home will serve as a powerful weapon to defeat the gringo dollar value system and encourage the process of love and brotherhood. 7. POLITICAL LIBERATION can only come through independent action on our part, since the two-party system is the same animal with two heads that feed from the same trough. Where we are a majority, we will control; where we are a

Chicanos, the 1960s, and Heritage

minority, we will represent a pressure group; nationally, we will represent one party: La Familia de La Raza! Action 1. Awareness and distribution of El Plan Espiritual de Aztl
an. Presented at every meeting, demonstration, confrontation, courthouse, institution, administration, church, school, tree, building, car, and every place of human existence. 2. September 16, on the birthdate of Mexican Independence, a national walk-out by all Chicanos of all colleges and schools to be sustained until the complete revision of the educational system: its policy makers, administration, its curriculum, and its personnel to meet the needs of our community. 3. Self-defense against the occupying forces of the oppressors at every school, every available man, woman, and child. 4. Community nationalization and organization of all Chicanos: El Plan Espiritual de Aztl
an. 5. Economic program to drive the exploiter out of our community and a welding together of our people’s combined resources to control their own production through cooperative effort. 6. Creation of an independent local, regional, and national political party. A nation autonomous and free culturally, socially, economically, and politically will make its own decisions on the usage of our lands, the taxation of our goods, the utilization of our bodies for war, the determination of justice (reward and punishment), and the profit of our sweat. El Plan de Aztl
an is the plan of liberation! Source: El Plan Espiritual de Aztl
an.

349. Excerpts from Chicano Coordinating Council on Higher Education, El Plan de Santa Barbara: A Chicano Plan for Higher Education, 1969 El Plan de Santa Barbara: A Chicano Plan for Higher Education was written by the Chicano Coordinating Council on Higher Education (CHE) that was formed in about 1969 to coordinate the establishment of Chicano Studies programs. The plan represents the synthesis of a three-day conference of educators, students, and community activists on the campus of the University of California at Santa Barbara. It was a 155-page document of proposals for a curriculum in Chicano Studies, the role of community control in Chicano education, and the necessity of Chicano political independence. Written in the form of a manifesto, it called for the implementation of Chicano Studies educational programs throughout California and caused the founding of M.E.Ch.A. (Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztl
an), a Chicano student group. El Plan de Santa Barbara was adopted in 1969.

MANIFESTO For all peoples, as with individuals, the time comes when they must reckon with their history. For the Chicano the present is a time of renaissance, of renacimiento. Our people and our community, el barrio and la colonia, are expressing a new

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consciousness and a new resolve. Recognizing the historical tasks confronting our people and fully aware of the cost of human progress, we pledge our will to move. We will move forward toward our destiny as a people. We will move against those forces which have denied us freedom of expression and human dignity. Throughout history, the quest for cultural expression and freedom has taken the form of a struggle. Our struggle, tempered by the lessons of the American past, is an historical reality. For decades, Mexican people in the United States struggle to realize the ‘‘American Dream’’. And some, a few, have. But the cost, the ultimate cost of assimilation, required turning away from el barrio and la colonia. In the meantime, due to the racist structure of this society, to our essentially different life style, and to the socio-economic functions assigned to our community by Anglo American society as suppliers of cheap labor and dumping ground for the small-time capitalist entrepreneur the barrio and colonia remained exploited, impoverished, and marginal. As a result, the self-determination of our community is now the only acceptable mandate for social and political action; it is the essence of Chicano commitment. Culturally, the word Chicano, in the past a pejorative and class-bound adjective, has now become the root idea of a new cultural identity for our people. It also reveals a growing solidarity and the development of a common social praxis. The widespread use of the term Chicano today signals a rebirth of pride and confidence. Chicanismo simply embodies and ancient truth: that a person is never closer to his/her true self as when he/she is close to his/her community. Chicanismo draws its faith and strength from two main sources: from the just struggle of our people and from an objective analysis of our community’s strategic needs. We recognize that without a strategic use of education, an education that places value on what we value, we will not realize our destiny. Chicanos recognize the central importance of institutions of higher learning to modern progress, in this case, to the development of our community. But we go further: we believe that higher education must contribute to the information of a complete person who truly values life and freedom. The destiny of our people will be fulfilled. To that end, we pledge our efforts and take as our credo what Jos
e Vasconcelos [Mexican philosopher] once said at a time of crisis and hope: ‘‘At this moment we do not come to work for the university, but to demand that the university work for our people.’’ POLITICAL ACTION Introduction For the Movement, political action essentially means influencing the decisionmaking process of those institutions which affect Chicanos, the university, community organizations, and non-community institutions. Political action encompasses the elements which function in a progression: political consciousness, political mobilization, and tactics. Each part breaks down into further subdivisions. Before continuing with specific discussions of these three categories, a brief historical analysis must be formulated. Historical Perspective The political activity of the Chicano Movement at colleges and universities to date has been specifically directed toward establishing Chicano student organizations

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(UMAS, MAYA, MASC, M.E.Ch.A., etc.) and institutionalizing Chicano Studies programs. A variety of organizational forms and tactics have characterized these student organizations. One of the major factors which led to political awareness in the ’60s was the clash between Anglo American educational institutions and Chicanos who maintained their cultural identity. Another factor was the increasing number of Chicano students who became aware of the extent to which colonial conditions characterized their communities. The result of this domestic colonialism is that the barrios and colonias are dependent communities with no institutional power base and significantly influencing decision making. Within the last decade, a limited degree of progress has taken place in securing a base of power within educational institutions. Other factors which affected the political awareness of the Chicano youth were: the heritage of the Chicano youth movements of the ’30s and ’40s; the failure of the Chicano political efforts of the ’40s and ’50s; the bankruptcy of the Mexican American pseudo-political associations; and the disillusionment of Chicano participants in the Kennedy campaigns. Among the strongest influences of Chicano youth today have been the National Farm Workers Association, the Crusades for Justice, and the Alianza Federal de Pueblos Libres, the civil rights, the Black Power, and the anti-war movements were other influences. As political consciousness increased, there occurred a simultaneously a renewed cultural awareness which, along with social and economical factors, led to the proliferation of Chicano youth organizations. By the mid 1960s, MASC, MAYA, UMAS, La Vida Nueva, and M.E.Ch.A. appeared on campus, while the Brown Berets, Black Berets, ALMA, and la Junta organized the barrios and colonias. These groups differed from one another depending on local conditions and their varying state of political development. Despite differences in name and organizational experience, a basic unity evolved. These groups have had a significant impact on the awareness of large numbers of people, both Chicano and non-Chicano. Within the communities, some public agencies have been sensitized, and others have been exposed. On campuses, articulation of demands and related political efforts have dramatized NUESTRA CAUSA. Concrete results are visible in the establishment of corresponding supportive services. The institutionalization of Chicano Studies marks the present stage of activity; the next stage will involve the strategic application of university and college resources to the community. One immediate result will be the elimination of the artificial distinction which exists between the students and the community. Rather than being its victims, the community will benefit from the resources of the institutions of higher learning. POLITICAL CONSCIOUSNESS Commitment to the struggle for Chicano liberation is the operative definition of the ideology used here. Chicanismo involves a crucial distinction in political consciousness between a Mexican American (or Hispanic) and a Chicano mentality. The Mexican American or Hispanic is a person who lacks self-respect and pride in one’s ethnic and cultural background. Thus, the Chicano acts with confidence and with a range of alternatives in the political world. He is capable of developing an effective ideology through action.

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Mexican Americans (or Hispanics) must be viewed as potential Chicanos. Chicanismo is flexible enough to relate to the varying levels of consciousness within La Raza. Regional variations must always be kept in mind as well as the different levels of development, composition, maturity, achievement, and experience in political action. Cultural nationalism is a means of total Chicano liberation. There are definite advantages to cultural nationalism, but no inherent limitations. A Chicano ideology, especially as it involves cultural nationalism, should be positively phrased in the form of propositions to the Movement. Chicanismo is a concept that integrates self-awareness with cultural identity, a necessary step in developing political consciousness. As such, it serves as a basis for political action, flexible enough to include the possibility of coalitions. The related concept of La Raza provides an internationalist scope of Chicanismo, and La Raza Cosmica furnishes a philosophical precedent. Within this framework, the Third World concept merits consideration. POLITICAL MOBILIZATION Political mobilization is directly dependent on political consciousness. As political consciousness develops, the potential for political action increases. The Chicano student organization in institutions of higher learning is central to all effective political mobilization. Effective mobilization presupposes precise definition of political goals and of the tactical interrelationships of roles. Political goals in any given situations must encompass the totality of Chicano interests in higher education. The differentiations of roles required by a given situation must be defined on the basis of mutual accountability and equal sharing of responsibility. Furthermore, the mobilization of community support not only legitimizes the activities of Chicano student solidarity [but is] axiomatic in all aspects of political action. Since the movement is definitely of national significance and scope, all student organizations should adopt one identical name throughout the state and eventually the nation to characterize the common struggle of La Raza de Aztl
an. The net gain is a step toward greater national unity which enhances the power in mobilizing local campus organizations. When advantageous, political coalitions and alliances with non-Chicano groups may be considered. A careful analysis must precede the decision to enter into a coalition. One significant factor is the community’s attitude toward coalitions. Another factor is the formulation of a mechanism for the distribution of power that ensures maximum participation in decision making: i.e., formulation of demands and planning of tactics. When no longer politically advantageous, Chicano participation in the coalition ends. CAMPUS ORGANIZING: NOTES ON M.E.Ch.A. Introduction M.E.Ch.A. is a first step to tying the student groups throughout the Southwest into a vibrant and responsive network of activists who will respond as a unit to oppression and racism and will work in harmony when initiating and carrying out campaigns of liberation for our people. As of present, wherever one travels throughout the Southwest, one finds that there are different levels of awareness of different campuses. The student movement

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is, to a large degree, a political movement and as such must not elicit from our people the negative reason. To this end, then we must re-define politics for our people to be a means of liberation. The political sophistication of our Raza must be raised so that they do not fall prey to apologists and vendidos [sellouts] whose whole interest is their personal career of fortune. In addition, the student movement is more than a political movement, it is cultural and social as well. The spirit of M.E.Ch.A. must be one of hermandad [brotherhood] and cultural awareness. The ethic of profit and competition, of greed and intolerance, which the Anglo society offers, must be replaced by our ancestral communalism and love for beauty and justice. M.E.Ch.A. must bring to the mind of every young Chicano that the liberations of this people from prejudice and oppression is in his hands and this responsibility is greater than personal achievement and more meaningful than degrees, especially if they are earned at the expense of his identity and cultural integrity. M.E.Ch.A., then, is more than a name; it is a spirit of unity, of brotherhood, and a resolve to undertake a struggle for liberation in society where justice is but a word. M.E.Ch.A. is a means to an end. Function of M.E.Ch.A.—To the Student To socialize and politicize Chicano students of their particular campus to the ideals of the movement. It is important that every Chicano student on campus be made to feel that he has a place on the campus and that he/she has a feeling of familia with his/her Chicano brothers, and sisters. Therefore, the organization in its flurry of activities and projects must not forget or overlook the human factor of friendship, understanding, trust, etc. As well as stimulating hermandad, this approach can also be looked at in more pragmatic terms. If enough trust, friendship, and understanding are generated, then the loyalty and support can be relied upon when a crisis faces the group or community. This attitude must not merely provide a social club atmosphere but the strengths, weaknesses, and talents of each member should be known so that they may be utilized to the greatest advantage. Know one another. Part of the reason that students will come to the organization is in search of self-fulfillment. Give that individual the opportunity to show what he/she can do. Although the Movement stresses collective behavior, it is important that the individual be recognized and given credit for his/her efforts. When people who work in close association know one another well, it is more conductive to self-criticism and reevaluation, and this every M.E.Ch.A. person must be willing to submit to. Periodic self-criticism often eliminates static cycles of unproductive behavior. It is an opportunity for fresh approaches to old problems to be surfaced and aired; it gives new leadership a chance to emerge; and must be recognized as a vital part of M.E.Ch.A. M.E.Ch.A. can be considered a training ground for leadership, and as such no one member or group of members should dominate the leadership positions for long periods of time. This tends to take care of itself considering the transitory nature of students. Recruitment and Education Action is the best organizer. During and immediately following direct action of any type demonstrations, marches, rallies, or even symposiums and speeches new

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faces will often surface and this is where much of the recruiting should be done. New members should be made to feel that they are part of the group immediately and not that they have to go through a period of warming up to the old membership. Each new member should be given a responsibility as soon as possible and fitted into the scheme of things according to his or her talents and interests. Since the college student is constantly faced with the responsibility of raising funds for the movements, whether it be for legal defense, the grape boycott, or whatever reason, this is an excellent opportunity for internal education. Fundraising events should always be educational. If the event is a symposium or speech or debate, [it] is usually an excellent opportunity to spread the Chicano Liberation Movement philosophy. If the event is a pachanga [party] or tardeada [festival] or baile [dance], this provides an excellent opportunity to practice and teach the culture in all its facets. In addition, each M.E.Ch.A. chapter should establish and maintain an extensive library of Chicano materials so that the membership has ready access to material which will help them understand their people and their problems. General meetings should be educational. The last segment of each regular meeting can be used to discuss ideological or philosophical differences, or some event in the Chicanos’ history. It should be kept in mind that there will always be different levels of awareness within the group due to the individual’s background or exposure of the movement. This must be taken into consideration so as not to alienate members before they have had a chance to listen to the argument for liberation. The best educational device is being in the barrio as often as possible. More often than not, the members of M.E.Ch.A. will be products of the barrio; but many have lost contact with their former surroundings, and this tie must be reestablished if M.E.Ch.A. is to organize and work for La Raza. The following things should be kept in mind in order to develop group cohesiveness: 1) know the talents and abilities of each member; 2) every semester, [individuals] must be given a responsibility, and recognition should be given for their efforts; 3) if mistakes are made, they should become learning experiences for the whole group and not merely excuses for ostracizing individual members; 4) since many people come to M.E.Ch.A. seeking self-fulfillment, they must be seized to educate the student to the Chicano philosophy, culture, and history; 5) of great importance is that a personal and human interaction exist between members of the organization so that such things as personality clashes, competition, ego-trips, subterfuge, infiltration, provocateurs, cliques, and mistrust do not impede the cohesion and effectiveness of the group. Above all, the feeling of hermandad must prevail so that the organization is more to the members than just a club or a clique. M.E.Ch.A. must be a learning and fulfilling experience that develops dedication and commitment. A delicate but essential question is discipline. Discipline is important to an organization such as M.E.Ch.A. because many may suffer form the indiscretion of a few. Because of the reaction of the general population to the demands of the Chicano, one can always expect some retribution or retaliation for gains made by the Chicano, be it in the form of legal actions or merely economic sanction on the campus. Therefore, it becomes essential that each member pull his load and that no one be allowed to be dead weight. Carga floja is dangerous, and if not brought up to par, it must be cut loose. The best discipline comes from mutual respect, and therefore, the leaders of the group must enjoy and give this respect. The manner of enforcing discipline, however, should be left up to the group and the particular situation.

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Planning and Strategy Actions of the group must be coordinated in such a way that everyone knows exactly what he is supposed to do. This requires that at least rudimentary organizational methods and strategy be taught to the group. Confusion should be avoided, with the different plans and strategies clearly stated to all. The objective must be clear to the group at all times, especially during confrontations and negotiations. There should be alternate plans for reaching the objectives, and these should be explained to the group so that it is not felt that a reversal of position or capitulation has been carried out without their approval. The short- as well as the long-range values and effects of all actions should be considered before actions are taken. This assumes that there is sufficient time to plan and carefully map out actions, which brings up another point: don’t be caught off guard, don’t be forced to act out of haste; choose your own battleground and your own time schedule when possible. Know your power base and develop it. A student group is more effective if it can claim the support of the community and support on the campus itself from other sectors than the student population.

The Function of M.E.Ch.A.—To the Campus Community Other students can be important to M.E.Ch.A. in supportive roles; hence, the question of coalitions. Although it is understood and quite obvious that the viability and amenability of coalition varies from campus to campus, some guidelines might be kept in mind. These questions should be asked before entering into any binding agreement. Is it beneficial to tie oneself to another group in coalition, which will carry one into conflicts for which one is ill-prepared or involve one with issues on which one is ill-advised? Can one sagely go into a coalition where one group is markedly stronger than another? Does M.E.Ch.A. have an equal voice in leadership and planning in the coalition group? Is it perhaps better to enter into a loose alliance for a given issue? How does leadership of each group view coalitions? How does the membership? Can M.E.Ch.A. hold up its end of the bargain? Will M.E.Ch.A. carry dead weight in a coalition? All of these and many more questions must be asked and answered before one can safely say that he/she will benefit from and contribute to a strong coalition effort. Supportive groups. When moving on campus it is often well-advised to have groups who are willing to act in supportive roles. For example, there are usually any number of faculty members who are sympathetic, but limited as to the numbers of activities they will engage in. These faculty members often serve on academic councils and senates and can be instrumental in academic policy. They also provide another channel to the academic power structure and can be used as leverage in negotiation. However, these groups are only as responsive as the ties with them are nurtured. This does not mean, compromise M.E.Ch.A.’s integrity; it merely means laying good groundwork before an issue is brought up, touching bases with your allies before hand. Sympathetic administrators. This a delicate area, since administrators are most interested in not jeopardizing their positions and often will try to act as buffers or liaison between the administration and the student group. In the case of Chicano administrators, it should not be assumed, he/she must be given the chance to prove

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his/her allegiance to La Causa. As such, he/she should be the Chicano’s person in the power structure instead of the administration’s Mexican American. It is from the administrator that information can be obtained as to the actual feasibility of demands or programs to go beyond the platitudes and pleas of unreasonableness with which the administration usually answers proposals and demands. The words of the administrator should never be the deciding factor in students’ actions. The student must, at all times, make their own decisions. It is very human for people to establish self-interest. Therefore, students must constantly remind the Chicano administrators and faculty where their loyalty and allegiance lie. It is very easy for administrators to begin looking for promotions just as it is very natural for faculty members to seek positions of academic prominence. In short, it is the students who must keep after Chicano and non-Chicano administrators and faculty to see that they do not compromise the position of the student and the community. By the same token, it is the student who must come to the support of these individuals if they are threatened for their support of the student. Students must be careful not to become a political lever for others. Function of M.E.Ch.A.—Education It is a fact that the Chicano has not often enough written his/her own history, his/her own anthropology, his/her own sociology, his/her own literature. He/she must do this if he is to survive as a cultural entity in this melting pot society, which seeks to dilute varied cultures into a gray upon gray pseudo-culture of technology and materialism. The Chicano student is doing most of the work in the establishment of study programs, centers, curriculum development, entrance programs to get more Chicanos into college. This is good and must continue, but students must be careful not to be co-opted in their fervor for establishing relevance on the campus. Much of what is being offered by college systems and administrators is too little too late. M.E.Ch.A. must not compromise programs and curriculum which are essential for the total education of the Chicano for the sake of expediency. The students must not become so engrossed in programs and centers created along established academic guidelines that they forget the needs of the people which these institutions are meant to serve. To this end, barrio input must always be given full and open hearing when designing these programs, when creating them, and in running them. The jobs created by these projects must be filled by competent Chicanos, not only the Chicano who has the traditional credentials required for the position, but one who has the credentials of the Raza. Too often in the past, the dedicated pushed for a program only to have a vendido sharp-talker come in and take over and start working for his Anglo administrator. Therefore, students must demand a say in the recruitment and selection of all directors and assistant directors of student-initiated programs. To further insure strong if not complete control of the direction and running of programs, all advisory and steering committees should have both student and community components as well as sympathetic Chicano faculty as member. Tying the campus to the barrio. The colleges and universities in the past have existed in an aura of omnipotence and infallibility. It is time that they be made responsible and responsive to the communities in which they are located or whose members they serve. As has already been mentioned, community members should serve on all programs related to Chicano interests. In addition to this, all attempts

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must be made to take the college and university to the barrio, whether it be in form of classes giving college credit or community centers financed by the school for the use of community organizations and groups. Also, the barrio must be brought to the campus, whether it be for special programs or ongoing services which the school provides for the people of the barrio. The idea must be made clear to the people of the barrio that they own the schools and the schools and all their resources are at their disposal. The student group must utilize the resources open to the school for the benefit of the barrio at every opportunity. This can be done by hiring more Chicanos to work as academic and non-academic personnel on the campus; this often requires exposure of racist hiring practices now in operation in many colleges and universities. When functions, social or otherwise, are held in the barrio under the sponsorship of the college and university, monies should be spent in the barrio. This applies to hiring Chicano contractors to build on campus, etc. Many colleges and universities have publishing operations which could be forced to accept barrio works for publication. Many other things could be considered in using the resources of the school to the barrio. There are possibilities for using the physical plant and facilities not mentioned here, but this is an area which has great potential. M.E.Ch.A. in the Barrio Most colleges in the Southwest are located near or in the same town as a barrio. Therefore, it is the responsibility of M.E.Ch.A. members to establish close working relationships with organizations in the barrio. The M.E.Ch.A. people must be able to take the pulse of the barrio and be able to respond to it. However, M.E.Ch.A. must be careful not to overstep its authority or duplicate the efforts of another organization already in the barrio. M.E.Ch.A. must be able to relate to all segments of the barrio, from the middle-class assimilationists to the vatos locos. Obviously, every barrio has its particular needs, and M.E.Ch.A. people must determine, with the help of those in the barrio, where they can be most effective. There are, however, some general areas which M.E.Ch.A. can involve itself. Some of them are: 1) policing social and governmental agencies to make them more responsive in a humane and dignified way to the people of the barrio; 2) carrying out research on the economic and credit policies of merchants in the barrio and exposing fraudulent and exorbitant establishments; 3) speaking and communicating with junior high and high school students, helping with their projects, teaching them organizational techniques, supporting their actions; 4) spreading the message of the movement by any media available this means speaking, radio, television, local newspaper, underground paper, poster, art, theaters; in short, spreading propaganda of the Movement; 5) exposing discrimination in hiring and renting practices and many other areas which the student because of his/her mobility, his/her articulation, and his/her vigor should take as his/her responsibility. It may mean at times having to work in conjunction with other organizations. If this is the case and the project is one begun by the other organization, realize that M.E.Ch.A. is there as a supporter and should accept the direction of the group involved. Do not let loyalty to an organization cloud responsibility to a greater force la Causa. Working in the barrio is an honor, but is also a right because we come from these people, and as such, mutual respect between the barrio and the college group should be the rule. Understand at the same time, however, that there will initially be

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mistrust and often envy on the part of some in the barrio for the college student. This mistrust must be broken down by a demonstration of affection for the barrio and La Raza through hard work and dedication. If the approach is one of a dilettante or of a Peace Corps volunteer, the people will know it and act accordingly. If it is merely a cathartic experience to work among the unfortunate in the barrio stay out. Of the community, for the community. Por la Raza habla el espiritu. Source: M.E.Ch.A., Pan American University, http://www.panam.edu/orgs/MEChA/st barbara.html.

350. Excerpts from Jos
e Angel Guti
errez, ‘‘Mexicanos Need to Control Their Own Destinies,’’ 1970 The following are excerpts from a speech made on May 4, 1970, in San Antonio, Texas, by Jos
e Angel Guti
errez, (1944–), a founder of the Texas La Raza Unida Party (1970). At the time of the speech he was the newly elected president of the Crystal City school board. Guti
errez was a student of politics. A 1962 graduate of Crystal City High School in Crystal City, Texas, he worked on the takeover of the Crystal City Council in 1963. He earned a bachelor’s, master’s, PhD, and JD from Texas A&M University at Kingsville; St. Mary’s University in San Antonio, Texas; the University of Texas at Austin; and the University of Houston, Law School, respectively. He co-founded the Mexican American Youth Organization (MAYO) in 1967, Mexican American Unity Council (MAUC) in 1968, and La Raza Unida Party in 1970—just to name a few. Guti
errez is a respected scholar, having written numerous books and conducted nearly 100 oral interviews with Tejanos (Mexican Texans) during the 1960s and 1970s. The following speech is important because it explains why Chicanos believed they should have their own political party.

As you know, there is a new political party in Southwest Texas. It’s called La Raza Unida Party. The history of this party is rather interesting. For years the Chicano farmworker has made up the majority of the population in the South Texas counties. But he goes trucking across this country on his summer vacation (laughter), and so he’s never there to vote. Yet this is precisely the time the primaries are held in May. And he is already vacationing in his resort area by the time the runoffs are held in June. So, you see, we are in fact not even able to vote. We have had other problems which we have known about for a long time. For instance, the fact that the Mexicano can’t cope with the culture of the monolingual creatures that abound in South Texas. You see, we’re literate in Spanish, so we can’t recognize the name of John Waltberger on the ballot, but we sure as hell recognize Juan Garc
ıa. (Laughter.) Supposedly in this kind of a democratic society the citizenry is encouraged to participate in the political process but not so in South Texas. Someone asked me recently whether I thought any type of system other than the American political system could work in South Texas. I thought about it for a minute and suggested that the question be reworded because we ought to try the American system first. (Applause.) They accuse me and Mexicanos in Cristal [Crystal City], in Cotulla and Carrizo Springs, of being unfair. One gringo lady put it very well. She was being interviewed

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around April 6, right after the school board elections and before the city council elections. The guy from Newsweek asked her to explain the strange phenomena that were occurring in these counties: a tremendous voter turnout and a tremendous amount of bloc voting. She said, ‘‘Well, this is just terrible! Horrible! A few days ago we elected a bunch of bum Mexicans to the city council.’’ And the reporter said, ‘‘Well, they are 85 percent of this county.’’ And she replied, ‘‘That’s what I mean! They think they ought to run this place!’’ By all these little things you can begin to understand how to define the word ‘‘gringo,’’ which seems to be such a problem all the time. It’s funny, because the Mexicano knows what a gringo is. It’s the gringos themselves that are worried about what the hell it is. (Laughter.) Let me elaborate on it. I’m not going to give you a one-sentence thing on them; I feel they deserve at least two sentences. (Laughter.) The basic idea in using the word ‘‘gringo’’ is that it means ‘‘foreigner.’’ The gringos themselves say, ‘‘It’s Greek to me.’’ So the Mexicano says, ‘‘It’s griego [Greek] to me.’’ That is one explanation of its origins, according to Professor Americo Paredes of the University of Texas. Another is, of course, the traditional one about the United States troops coming into Mexico with ‘‘green coats.’’ The Mexicanos would say, with our own pronunciation, ‘‘Here come the ‘green coats.’’’ And there are other explanations. The word itself describes an attitude of supremacy, of xenophobia that means you’re afraid of strangers. I pick up a fancy word here and there. This attitude is also found in institutions, such as the Democratic Party. It’s in policies like the one that says you can’t speak Spanish in school because it’s un-American. It’s in the values of people who feel that unless Mexican music is played by the Tijuana Brass or the Baja Marimba Band it’s no good. You can’t eat tacos de chorizo [sausage tacos] around the corner for 20 cents. You’ve got to go up there to La Fonda [fancy Angloowned Mexican restaurant] and eat a $3.50 Mexican plate that gives you indigestion. (Applause and laughter.) The formation of this party came about because of the critical need for the people to experience justice. It’s just like being hungry. You’ve got to get food in there immediately, otherwise you get nauseous, you get headaches and pains in your stomach. We were Chicanos who were starved for any kind of meaningful participation in decision making, policy making, and leadership positions. For a long time we have not been satisfied with the type of leadership that has been picked for us. And this is what a political party does, particularly the ones we have here. I shouldn’t use the plural because we only have one, and that’s the gringo party. It doesn’t matter what name it goes by. It can be Kellogg’s, All-Bran, or Shredded Wheat, but it’s still the same crap. These parties, or party, have traditionally picked our leadership. They have transformed this leadership into a kind of broker, a real estate guy who deals in the number of votes or precincts he can deliver or the geographical areas he can control. And he is a tape recorder he puts out what the party says. A beautiful example of this is Ralph Yarborough [Democratic senator from Texas]. The only thing he does for Chicanos is hire one every six years. He’s perfectly content with the bigoted sheriff and Captain Allee [Texas Rangers] and the guys that break the strikes in El Rio Grande City and with (Wayne) Connally [brother of former Texas governor John Connally] and all these other people. Well,

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he gets beaten, and he knows why. The Republicans, the Birchers, the Wallace-ites and all these people went over to support Bentsen in the primaries. Yet I just read in the paper this afternoon that he said, ‘‘As always, I will vote a straight Democratic ticket in November.’’ There is only one other kind of individual who does that kind of work and that’s a prostitute.… Four years ago, when the guy who is now running for commissioner in La Salle County in La Raza Unida Party ran in the Democratic primaries, it cost him onethird of his annual income! That’s how much it costs a Chicano with a median income of $1,574 per family per year. With the third party, it didn’t cost him a cent. On top of the excessive filing fees, they have set fixed dates for political activity, knowing that we have to migrate to make a living. We are simply not here for the May primaries. Did you know that in Cotulla, Erasmo Andrade [running in the Democratic primary for state senator in opposition to Wayne Connally] lost by over 300 votes because the migrants weren’t there? In the Democratic primaries you’re not going to cut it. In May there are only 16 more Chicano votes than gringo votes in La Salle County. But in November the margin is two-and-one-half to one in favor of Chicanos. So you see that what’s happening is not any big miracle. It’s just common sense. The trouble is that everybody was always bothered and said, ‘‘We can’t get out of the Democratic Party. Why bite the hand that feeds you?’’ Well, you bite it because it feeds you slop. (Laughter and applause.) Others say, ‘‘Well, why don’t you switch over and join the Republican Party?’’ Well, let’s not even touch on that one. Why can’t you begin to think very selfishly as a Chicano? I still haven’t found a good argument from anyone as to why we should not have a Chicano party. Particularly when you are the majority. If you want to implement and see democracy in action the will of the majority you are not going to do it in the Democratic Party. You can only do it through a Chicano party. (Applause.) But you see there is another, more important, reason, and that is that Mexicanos need to be in control of their destiny. They need to make their own decisions. We need to make the decisions that are going to affect our brothers and maybe our children. We have been complacent for too long. Did you know that not one of our candidates in La Salle County had a job the whole time they were running, and that they still can’t get jobs? The same thing happened in Dimmit County. In Uvalde this is one of the reasons there’s a walkout. They refused to renew the teaching contract of Jos
e Garc
ıa, who ran for county judge. That’s a hell of a price to pay. But that’s the kind of treatment that you’ve gotten. You’ve got a median educational level among Mexicanos in Zavala County of 2.3 grades. In La Salle it’s just a little worse about 1.5 grades. The median family income in La Salle is $1,574 a year. In Zavala it’s about $1,754. The ratio of doctors, the number of newspapers, the health, housing, hunger, malnutrition, illiteracy, poverty, lack of political representation all these things put together spell one word: colonialism. You’ve got a handful of gringos controlling the lives of muchos Mexicanos. And it’s been that way for a long time. Do you think things are going to get better by putting faith in the Democratic Party and Bentsen? Or that things are going to get better because you’ve got a few

Chicanos, the 1960s, and Heritage

more Chicanos elected to office now within the traditional parties? Do you think that things are going to get better now that the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights has officially claimed that there is discrimination against Mexicanos? They’ve finally found out it’s for real we’re discriminated against! (Laughter.) Do you think that things are going to get better simply because kids are walking out of schools kids who can’t vote, who in many cases can’t convince the community to stand behind them? No, it’s not going to get better. We are going to have to devise some pretty ingenious ways of eliminating these gringos. Yet they don’t really have to be too ingenious. All you have to do is go out there and look around and have a little common sense. It stands to reason that if there are two grocery stores in town and we are the ones who buy from them, then if we stop buying from them they are going to go down. If you talk about transferring the wealth, that’s how you do it.… In 1960, there were 26 Texas counties in which Chicanos were a majority, yet not one of those counties was in the control of Chicanos. If you want to stand there and take that you can. You can be perfectly content just like your father and your grandfather were, con el sombrero en la mano [with hat in hand]. That’s why most of our traditional organizations will sit there and pass resolutions and mouth off at conventions, but they’ll never take on the gringo. They’ll never stand up to him and say, ‘‘Hey, man, things have got to change from now on. Que pase lo que pase [Let whatever happens happen]. We’ve had it long enough!’’ This is what we’ve got to start doing. If you don’t go third party, then you’ve got to go the independent route, because there is no other way you are going to get on the November ballot. And don’t try to put in a write-in candidate. That never works.… The recent elections here in April for school board and city council demonstrated something that many people knew was a fact. It was almost like predicting that the sun is going to come up in the morning; if you can count, you know what the results are going to be. But an interesting factor is going to enter in now. We won in an off year in the nonpartisan races, which means that we were able to elect a minority to these positions. So now the establishment has all summer long to figure out how to stop the Maxicano. This is where we get back to the old tricks and lies of the gringo. They tried the ‘‘outside agitator’’ bit on me but it didn’t work because I was born in Crystal City. So they changed gears. Then they tried the ‘‘Communist’’ one for a while-until they found out I was in the U.S. Army Reserves. (Laughter and applause.) Then somewhere they dug up my ‘‘kill a gringo’’ thing of about a year ago when I said that I would kill a gringo in self-defense if I were attacked.… Another lie is the white liberal approach. ‘‘I like Mexican food. Oh, I just love it!’’ And this is the kind of guy who’s got the molcajete [Aztec mortar and pestle for cooking] sitting as an ash tray in his living room. (Applause and laughter) This kind of character is the one that cautions you, be careful. Don’t be racist in reverse. It’s bad enough that gringos don’t like ‘Meskins’ and ‘Meskins’ don’t like gringos. You have to talk things over. You have to turn the other cheek. You’ve got to be nice. You’ve got to be polite. You can’t use foul language in public. You have to have a constructive program. They ask us, ‘‘What are you going to do for the schools in Crystal City?’’ And when we answer, ‘‘Bring education,’’ they don’t know what the hell we’re talking about.

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You see, that’s another thing about the liberal. They always love to make you feel bad. And oh, my God, we hate to hurt the feelings of a good Anglo liberal, don’t we? Well, hell, tell them the truth! We’ve been hurting for a long time. They think we’ve got education, but we know different. How come we have 71 percent dropouts in Crystal City? It’s miseducation. We ain’t got teachers down there, we’ve got Neanderthals. These are the kinds of problems we are going to be faced with by the time November comes along. But a lot of people ain’t going to buy it. The kids in the schools aren’t going to stand for it. They see what this whole gringo thing has done to their parents, what it’s done to our community, what it’s done to our organizations. And nothing is going to prevent them from getting what is due them. There’s no generation gap in Crystal City. To the old people who are experienced this is nothing new. The older people in Crystal City, who have experienced years and years of humiliation and blows to their dignity, know what’s going on. There was a problem for a while with the 25- to 45-year-olds who were trying to be gringos. But that’s no longer true. You see, those are the parents of these kids, and these kids got their parents straight very early in the game. (Applause.) … You know, civil rights are not just for those under 21. They’re for everybody for grandma, for daddy and mama, and los chamaquitos [children] and primos [cousins] and sisters, and so on. We’ve all got to work together. That means that all of us have to pitch in. And this is why in Crystal City you no longer hear ‘‘Viva La Raza’’ and ‘‘Chicano Power’’ and ‘‘La Raza Unida’’ all over the place. We don’t talk about it anymore because it’s a reality. You see, there la familia Mexicana esta organizada [the Mexican family is organized]. Aztl
an has begun in the southwest part of Texas. (Prolonged applause.) Our actions have made ‘‘La Raza Unida’’ more than just a slogan. Beginning with the walkout, we began organizing and moving in to counter-attack every time the gringo tried to put pressure on the Mexicano. Boycott his store. Point the finger at him. Expose him for the animal that he is. Bring in the newspapers and photographers and the tape recorders. Let the world see it.… So don’t let anybody kid you. We are the consumers, we are the majority. We can stop anything and we can make anything in South Texas if we stick together and begin using common sense. This third party is a very viable kind of alternative. It’s a solution. For once you can sit in your own courthouse and you don’t have to talk about community control because you are the community. And we are not talking about trying to run for Congress because you are sitting on the school board and then four years from now you’re going to run for county judge. That’s not the name of the game either. We are talking about bringing some very basic elements into the lives of Mexicanos like education and like making urban renewal work for Mexicanos instead of being the new way of stealing land. We got screwed once with the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo and now we’re getting it under ‘‘Model Cities’’ and urban renewal. (Applause.) You can be as imaginative as you want and do almost anything you want once you run units of government. I’ll give you an example. Everyone publicizes the fact that the Panthers are feeding kids all over the country. And everybody pours out money at cocktail parties and gets very concerned about little kids eating in the morning.

Chicanos, the 1960s, and Heritage

Well, the gringos in Cristal pulled out another one of their gimmicks and just a few days before the elections they decided to experiment with a pilot program of feeding kids in the morning. It was going to last for six weeks and feed 30 kids. They were going to watch them. They were going to experiment, study, conduct a survey to see if they grew an inch. (Laughter.) Well, right now in Crystal City any kid who wants to eat can eat. Free breakfast in all the schools. You can do that, you see. You can also be very, very friendly to your opposition. You can rule them out of order when they get out of hand. You can slap them on the hand: ‘‘That’s a no no! They can’t hold an illegal’ meeting like they tried yesterday with the school board while I was out of town. They tried to take advantage of the fact that I was out of town to hold a special meeting. But the law says you must give three days’ notice. So the gringos failed in their attempt to hire a principal to their liking. We don’t need to be experts in parliamentary procedure. All we have to do is follow the book and tell them, ‘‘No, no! You can’t do that!’’ (Laughter and applause.) Let me be serious for a few minutes, because I think we have laughed enough. Mario was talking about having a third party in Bexar County by 1972. Good luck, Mario. (Applause.) It doesn’t matter if you don’t agree with MAYO because this thing is no longer just MAYO. The response that we’ve had to this third party in all sections of our communities has been overwhelming. You saw the results. You can count votes just as I did. The third party is not going to get smaller. It’s going to get bigger. You have three choices. First, you can be very active in this thing. For once we are not talking about being anti-Democrat or pro-Republican or pro-Democrat and antiRepublican. We are talking about being for La Raza, the majority of the people in South Texas. So there are a lot of things you can do and be very actively involved in. If you don’t choose that route, you can stay home and watch baseball and just come out and vote. But otherwise stay home. Don’t get in the way. The third thing you can do is lend your support, your general agreement. Often we are too critical of ourselves, and the gringo misunderstands that. He says, ‘‘You’re disorganized, there’s no unity among you.’’ Hell, he can’t understand an honest discussion when he hears one. So, you’ve got these three roles that you can play. Or you can get very, very defensive and say, ‘‘This is wrong, this is un-American because you’re bloc voting.’’ But don’t forget that the Democrats do it too. You can say that this is racism in reverse, but don’t forget that we are the majority. And you can say that this is going to upset the whole situation in the state of Texas because we will never be able to elect a senator, because we’re segregating ourselves and cutting ourselves apart and that this is not what we should be trying to do, that we should be trying to integrate, etc., etc. Well, before you go on your warpath or campaign, come down and tell that to my sheriff. Tell him how much you like him. Or, better yet, move on down the road a bit and tell it to Ranger Allee himself. Build your constituency; build your community that’s how we will be electing three and possibly four congressmen in the very near future. There’s going to be another congressman in Bexar County, and there’s not room for all of them on the North side [Anglo section of San Antonio]. (Laughter and applause.) So we have some very interesting developments coming up.

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To the gringos in the audience, I have one final message to convey: Up yours, baby. You’ve had it, from now on. (Standing ovation.) Source: Jos
e Angel Guti
errez at UCLA, clnet.ucla.edu/research/docs/razaunida/control.htm.

351. Excerpt from Ernesto B. Vigil, The Crusade for Justice: Chicano Militancy and the Government’s War on Dissent, 1999 Ernesto Vigil refused induction into the military forces in 1968 during the Vietnam War. Other Chicanos like Sijisfredo Avil
es (1968) from Chicago who served three years in jail; Rosalio Mu~ noz (1969) from Los Angeles, California; and Sal Baldenegro (1968) from Tucson, Arizona; refused induction. Ernesto had joined the Crusade for Justice (Denver, Colorado) as a teenager in 1968, and was heavily involved in civil rights causes. The following excerpt from his book The Crusade for Justice: Chicano Militancy and the Government’s War on Dissent, gives his side of the story. Vigil helped redefine the words patriotism and valor.

RESISTING THE DRAFT: ‘‘COURTS OF LAW, NOT OF JUSTICE’’ In November 1967, the author dropped out of Vermont’s Goddard College and moved to Philadelphia for a short time. One consequence of leaving college was losing the deferment from military service that college students then enjoyed. I read of the indictment of Dr. Benjamin Spock, a renowned pediatrician, for urging youths to resist the draft, and in January 1968, I mailed my draft card to the Denver office of the Selective Service System. The draft card was accompanied by a poem composed for me by a hippie friend, and a letter I myself wrote on my twentieth birthday. It stated: I hereby submit my draft card as a gesture of my dissatisfaction and disaffection for the social, governmental, and political system of this nation. This is the gesture of a free person with a free will and should be understood as such for it is also a token of my determination to remain so. My country is not my god; I will and must first serve the dictates of my mind, heart, and conscience. There are laws and values that are higher than those of this nation’s government, and sometimes these come from the conscience of one lone individual: they cannot be legislated by politicians, nor enforced by policemen and soldiers. In this belief I now state that I will not fight the war of a power and system that I feel is unjust, hypocritical, deceitful, inadequate, and detrimental to the happiness and best interests of its own people and the people of the other nations of the world.… C 1999. Reprinted by permission of The UniSource: Ernesto B. Vigil, The Crusade for Justice.
versity of Wisconsin Press. p. 73.

352. Excerpts from Herman Baca, ‘‘The Day the Police Rioted! Remembering 32 Years Ago,’’ August 15, 2002 Herman Baca (1943–) has been at the forefront of organizing efforts in the barrio (neighborhood) in National City, San Diego County. He has worked closely with many of the leading figures of the Chicano movement, including

Chicanos, the 1960s, and Heritage


sar Cha
vez, Dolores Huerta, Reies Lo
pez Tijerina, Rodolfo Corky Gonzales, Ce and others. He was a prime mover of the Mexican American Political Association (MAPA), established in 1959 to politically organize Mexican Americans, and later an organizer with La Raza Unida political party during the early 1970s. He was the founder and president of the San Diego-based Committee on Chicano Rights, which focuses on abuses toward undocumented Mexican immigrants. Baca had been at the forefront of the protection of the foreign born. The following passage talks about what he saw on August 29, 1970, during the largest Chicano anti-war protest to that date.

In 1970, I was 27 years of age, married, had two children, and was a printer. I had been politically involved in the Chicano movement for 2 years and was president of the National City chapter of MAPA. My involvement up to that point had been in organizing protests for the boycott of grapes in support of the United Farm Workers [UFW], working on local issues (police brutality, immigration, zoning, youth) and electoral politics.… Chicanos, at that time comprised but 6% of this nation’s population, but made up 20% of the causalities in Vietnam! Young whites started to receive college deferments, and white controlled draft boards begin to draft (in record numbers) poor people, blacks, and especially Chicanos for Vietnam. After five years of war, reality finally hit home. Young Chicanos were dying in obscene numbers, and numerous ‘‘body bags’’ carrying young dead Chicanos were being returned to the homes of grieving families throughout the U.S.… August 29, 1970, finally arrived, we (three other individuals and myself) arrived in Los Angeles on Saturday morning around 7:00 A.M. The first thing I witnessed, was something that I had never seen before. Thousands upon thousands of Chicanos from all over the U.S., some from New Mexico, Texas, Colorado, Arizona, and the Midwest, who had all gathered for a political event. Five hundred to one thousand persons from San Diego attended the demonstration. The demonstration turned out to be the largest protest to be organized by Chicanos in their 130 years’ history as a conquered people in the U.S. I remember that the march started late (around 10:00 or 11:00 A.M.), and that it was a very hot day. As we walked, some people were behind the banner of the Virgin de Guadalupe; others carried MAPA, brown berets, M.E.Ch.A., Crusade for Justice, UFW, etc., banners. We all walked in unity, and I felt that most of us were marching to end a war that was destroying our most precious heritage our youth.… While waiting, I asked a friend if he wanted to go and get something to drink. We journeyed to a liquor store by the park and while there we noticed that some individuals were leaving the store without paying for their merchandise. As we traveled back, I remember pointing out to my friend that hundreds of sheriffs and police officers were stationed across the street on Whittier Blvd. Being naive, both of us though it odd, but not threatening [so we] continued into the park. As we sat down we heard and then saw a commotion coming from the direction where we had just left. We could see that the sheriff and police were starting to line up. Suddenly, without any provocation, the sheriff and police began to advance on the peaceful crowd. At the time, most of the crowd, which was in front of the park, had absolutely no idea or knowledge of what was happening.

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At one point, security (the Brown Berets) rushed forward and attempted to explain to the police that everything was under control. But it was no use; a fullfledged instigated police riot was now under way. The Brown Berets were attacked and beaten. As the police advanced, I witnessed scenes that I will never forget. Before my eyes, hundreds of our people, children, woman, young and old persons were being beaten, tear gassed, maimed, and arrested. The police and sheriff’s deputies appeared to be totally out of control and crazed with a desire to hurt, maim, and kill Chicanos. Many of us remembered the Zoot Suit riots, and it was 1940 all over again! In self-defense Chicanos, witnessing what was happening, and suffering from 130 years of oppression, racism, and discrimination stood up, and fought back. I remember at one point the bright sky suddenly turning black because of the number of objects that were being thrown back at the police. People were throwing bottles, cans, dirt, sticks, and anything they could get their hands on to protect themselves. People were mad and there was fierce hand-to-hand fighting. Young Chicanos were going up to the police, landing one good body blow knowing that the police would immediately club them down. a lot of people were being maced, beaten, and arrested. Source: ‘‘The Day the Police Rioted! Remembering 32 Years Ago!’’ Herman Baca Committee on Chicano Rights. National City, California August 15, 2002. Courtesy Herman Baca Archives, Mandeville Special Collections Library, University of California, San Diego, http://orpheus.ucsd. edu/speccoll/esting/htm;/mss0649a.html.


lez’s 353. Excerpts from Congressman Henry B. Gonza Congressional Speech of April 22, 1969 In the following excerpts, Texas Congressman Henry B. Gonz
alez expresses doubts about the tactics of Chicano youth. Up to this point, Gonz
alez had been considered a liberal and a maverick of sorts. Elected to Congress in the late 1950s, he had sponsored and supported civil rights legislation. However, Gonz
alez disagreed with the confrontational tactics of the Mexican American Youth Organization (MAYO) and labeled them chauvinistic and accused the organization of bigotry. Many Chicano youth responded by labeling Gonz
alez’s statement ‘‘red baiting,’’ pointing out that he had congressional immunity to misrepresent.

I, and many other residents of my part of Texas and other Southwestern States happen to be what is commonly referred to as a Mexican American.… What is he to be? Mexican? American? Both? How can he choose? Should he have pride and joy in his heritage, or bear it as a shame and sorrow? Should he live in one world or another, or attempt to bridge them both? There is comfort in remaining in the closed walls of a minority society, but this means making certain sacrifices; but it sometimes seems disloyal to abandon old ideas and old friends; you never know whether you will be accepted or rejected in the larger world, or whether your old friends will despise you for making a wrong choice. For a member of this minority, like any other, life begins with making hard

Chicanos, the 1960s, and Heritage

choices about personal identity. These lonely conflicts are magnified in the social crises so clearly evident all over the Southwest today. There are some groups who demand brown power, some who display a curious chauvinism, and some who affect the other extreme. There is furious debate about what one should be and what one should do.… I understand all this, but I am profoundly distressed by what I see happening today.… Mr. Speaker, the issue at hand in this minority group today is hate, and my purpose in addressing the House is to state where I stand: I am against hate and against the spreaders of hate; I am for justice, and for honest tactics in obtaining justice. The question facing the Mexican American people today is what do we want, and how do we get it? What I want is justice. By justice I mean decent work at decent wages for all who want work; decent support for those who cannot support themselves; full and equal opportunity in employment, in education, in schools; I mean by justice the full, fair, and impartial protection of the law for every man; I mean by justice decent homes, adequate streets, and public services.… I do not believe that justice comes only to those who want it; I am not so foolish as to believe that good will alone achieves good works. I believe that justice requires work and vigilance, and I am willing to do that work and maintain that vigilance.… It may well be that I agree with the goals stated by militants; but whether I agree or disagree, I do not now, nor have I ever believed that the end justifies the means, and I condemn those who do. I cannot accept the belief that racism in reverse is the answer for racism and discrimination; I cannot accept the belief that simple, blind, and stupid hatred is an adequate response to simple, blind, and stupid hatred; I cannot accept the belief that playing at revolution produces anything beyond an excited imagination; and I cannot accept the belief that imitation leadership is a substitute for the real thing. Developments over the past few months indicate that there are those who believe that the best answer for hate is hate in reverse, and that the best leadership is that which is loudest and most arrogant; but my observation is that arrogance is no cure for emptiness. All over the Southwest, new organizations are springing up; some promote pride in heritage, which is good, but others promote chauvinism, which is not; some promote community organization, which is good, but some promote race tension and hatred, which is not good; some seek redress of just grievances, which is good, but others seek only opportunities for self aggrandizement, which is not good.… Unfortunately, it seems that in the face of rising hopes and expectations among Mexican Americans there are more leaders with political ambitions at heart than there are with the interests of the poor at heart; they do not care what is accomplished in fact, as long as they can create and ride the winds of protest as far as possible. Thus, we have those who play at revolution, those who make speeches but do not work, and those who imitate what they have seen others do, but lack the initiative and imagination to set forth actual programs for progress.… Not long after the Southwest Council of La Raza opened for business, it gave $110,000 to the Mexican American Unity Council of San Antonio; this group was apparently invented for the purpose of receiving the grant. Whatever the purposes of this group may be, thus far it has not given any assistance that I know of to bring anybody together; rather it has freely dispensed funds to people who promote the rather odd and I might say generally unaccepted and unpopular views of its

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directors. The Mexican American Unity Council appears to specialize in creating still other organizations and equipping them with quarters, mimeograph machines, and other essentials of life. Thus, the ‘‘unity council’’ has created a parents’ association in a poor school district, a neighborhood council, a group known as the Barrios Unidos or roughly, united neighborhoods a committee on voter registration and has given funds to the militant Mexican American Youth Organization (MAYO); it has also created a vague entity known as the ‘‘Universidad de los Barrios’’ which is a local gang operation. Now, assuredly all these efforts may be well intended; however it is questionable to my mind that a very young and inexperienced man can prescribe the social and political organizations of a complex and troubled community; there is no reason whatever to believe that for all the money this group has spent, there is any understanding of what it is actually being spent for, except to employ friends of the director and advance his preconceived notions. The people who are to be united apparently don’t get much say in what the ‘‘unity council’’ is up to.… Militant groups like MAYO regularly distribute literature that I can only describe as hate sheets, designed to inflame passions and reinforce old wounds or open new ones; these sheets spew forth racism and hatred designed to do no man good. The practice is defended as one that will build race pride, but I never heard of pride being built on spleen. Source: Congressional Record, 91st Cong., 1st Sess., April 22, 1969, in Mexican American Voices, http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu.

354. Excerpts from MAYO document on Student Walkouts, Crystal City, Texas, 1973 MAYO, the Mexican American Youth Organization, was formed in 1967 as an organization to fight for the civil rights of Mexican Americans. Founded by Jos
e Angel Guti
errez (1944–), Willie C. Vel
asquez (1944–1988), Mario Compe
an, and others in San Antonio, Texas, the organization was dedicated to the planned transformation of the situation Mexicans faced in Texas. MAYO members were key to the formation of La Raza Unida Party, which was organized because neither the Democrats nor Republicans were addressing Chicano issues or running Chicano candidates. Willie Vel
asquez later founded the Southwest Voters Registration and Education Project (1972), which led national registration drives—literally registering hundreds of thousands of Latinos. MAYO led at least 18 school walkouts throughout Texas. The major walkouts were in Crystal City, Kingsville, Edgewood, and Lanier High Schools in
rrez and his wife Luz moved back to Crystal City specifiSan Antonio. Gutie cally to plan a political takeover of the city. The following excerpts are from Guti
errez on the walkouts.

The Crystal City, Texas, school walkouts organized by MAYO in 1969 1970 precipitated other Chicano Movement activity in the Winter Garden District, such as the rise of La Raza Unida Party. Below are the demands that MAYO organizers and their local supporters, known as the Ciudadanos Unidos, wanted school administrators to concede before they would call off the strike and return to classes. The detailed set of demands required that the school board allow greater input from the Chicano community in order to insure, among other things, that students would be

Chicanos, the 1960s, and Heritage

less subject to discrimination and that course content would reflect the needs of the Mexican American majority in Crystal City. WALKOUT DEMANDS Walkout demands were that all elections concerning the school be conducted by the student body. Concerning class representatives, the petition asked that the qualifications such as personality, leadership, and grades be abolished. These factors do not determine whether the student is capable of representing the student body. The students are capable of voting for their own representatives. The representatives are representing the students, not the faculty. All nominating must be done by the student body, and the election should be decided by a majority vote. The present method of electing the most handsome, beautiful, most popular, and most representative is elected [sic] by the faculty. The method of cumulative voting is unfair. National Honor Society the grades of the students eligible must be posted on the bulletin board well in advance of selection. The teachers should not have anything to do with electing the students. An advisory board of Mexican American citizens should be a part of the school administration in order to advise on the needs and problems of the Mexican American. No other favorites should be authorized by school administrators or board members unless submitted to the student body in a referendum. Teachers, administrators, and staff should be educated; they should know our language Spanish and understand the history, traditions, and contributions of Mexican culture. How can they expect to teach us if they do not know us? We want more Mexican American teachers for the above reason. We want immediate steps taken to implement bilingual and bicultural education for Mexican Americans. We also want the schoolbooks revised to reflect the contributions of Mexicans and Mexican Americans to the U.S. society, and to make us aware of the injustices that we, Mexican Americans, as a people have suffered in an ‘‘Anglo’’ dominant society. We want a Mexican American course with the value of one credit. We want any member of the school system who displays prejudice or fails to recognize, understand, and appreciate us, Mexican Americans, our culture, or our heritage removed from Crystal City’s schools. Teachers shall not call students any names. Our classes should be smaller in size, say about twenty students to one teacher, to insure more effectiveness. We want parents from the community to be trained as teachers’ aides. We want assurances that a teacher who may disagree politically or philosophically with administrators will not be dismissed or transferred because of it. Teachers should encourage students to study and should make class more interesting, so that students will look forward to going to class.… There should be a manager in charge of janitorial work and maintenance details, and the performance of such duties should be restricted to employees hired for that purpose. In other words, no more students doing janitorial work. We want a free speech area plus the right to have speakers of our own. We would like September 16 as a holiday, but if it is not possible, we would like an assembly with speakers of our own. We feel it is a great day in the history of the

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world because it is when Mexico had been under the Spanish rule for about three hundred years. The Mexicans were liberated from the harsh rule of Spain. Our ancestors fought in this war, and we owe them tribute because we are Mexicans, too. Being civic-minded citizens, we want to know what the happenings are in our community. So, we request the right to have access to all types of literature and to be able to bring it on campus. The newspaper in our school does not carry sufficient information. It carries things like the gossip column, which is unnecessary. The dress code should be abolished. We are entitled to wear what we want. We request the buildings open to students at all times. We want Mr. Harbin to resign as principal of Fly Jr. High. We want a Mexican American counselor fully qualified in college opportunities. We need more showers in the boys’ and girls’ dressing rooms. Source: ‘‘MAYO document, Jos
e Angel Guti
errez files, Crystal City, Texas, 1973’’ is reprinted with permission of the publisher of Testimonio: A Documentary History of the Mexican American Struggle for Civil Rights, F. Arturo Rosales, ed. (Houston: Arte P
ublico Press University of Houston
C 2000), pp. 387 388.

355. Jos
e Angel Guti
errez, ‘‘Oral History Interview with Viviana Santiago Cavada,’’ 1998 Vivian Santiago was one of dozens of young volunteers that migrated to Crystal City, Texas, in the late 1960s/early 1970s. She had been active in the Mexican American Youth Organization (MAYO), an organization mostly of Chicano college and high school students; La Raza Unida Party, organized to represent Chicano issues and elect Chicano candidates; and other activist groups. In Crystal City she headed the Voluntarios de Aztl
an (Volunteers of Aztl
an) and was elected to the school board. The following are excerpts from an interview taken by Jos
e Angel Guti
errez telling about how Santiago became an activist and got involved in Chicano politics. Viviana is today an attorney.

Ms. Cavada: Father, Jorge Antolin Santiago, … born and raised in Santa Isabel, Puerto Rico … My mother was born and raised in Gonzalez, Texas. My, grandfather on my mother’s side was from the Candelaria clan in New Mexico and Spain, and on her mother’s side it’s Indian, Maya, Plata, Mexico.… I was a school teacher … during the Kingsville … walkout. And what I … [signed] a petition supporting the walkout in Kingsville while I was a teacher … I had a bunch of teachers from, the Eagle Pass Independent School District sign the petition. There were about twenty three teachers … I didn’t think anything of it … we participated in that march [the twenty three teachers] … in Del Rio. We took a whole delegation. But [there was] … an uproar.… I got in trouble with the administration … and they told me that they were not renewing my contract because … this petition I had circulated and sent to Kingsville. I guess they made a big deal about teachers supporting … the walkout.… I got harassed. The … assistant principal called me in, a guy named Masters, a gringo, he says, ‘‘What do you people want anyway?’’ ‘‘And I said, ‘‘‘You people?’’’ So, we got into it and it was not a very nice thing … they did not renew my contract.… It was before the MAYO convention of

Chicanos, the 1960s, and Heritage

December of ’69. I kept on looking for another job everywhere, but it wasn’t until I went to Premont, Premont ISD [Independent School District]. They were interested in hiring me. [She is called back and the superintendent says] ‘‘I’m sorry we can’t hire you.’’ … you know, the thing in Del Rio, all the people, and also the petition, you know, that everybody had signed, all the teachers had signed. And he said, he looked at me and he says, ‘‘Look, I really like you. I really would like to hire you. But,’’ he says, ‘‘Don’t even try to apply in any school district in Texas … You will not get hired.…’’ [Santiago went work with Project SER.] It was a really good program, A jobs … program, but half the board was G.I. Forum, half the board was LULAC.… Willie Bonilla … was on the board … [he] said, ‘‘Don’t go to that MAYO convention or you won’t have a job.’’ So we went anyway. The three of us. And when we came back they got rid of, they got rid of me at this board meeting. And they said, ‘‘Well, the reason that we have to let Viviana go is because she was never really hired.’’ Wait. Back then I was Vivian, OK, Santiago. I did not become Viviana until I went to Crystal City, Texas, and Jos
e Angel named me Viviana. Even though my mother, my grandmother always called me Viviana, my grandparents, my aunts, and uncles, I was Viviana to them.… I went and visited [Bonilla] … in his law office and I said, ‘‘Why are you doing this? Why are you, why are you so against us having gone to the … the MAYO convention?’’ … I had no place else to go. But I really wanted to go to Crystal City and they were asking for Voluntarios de Aztl
an (Volunteers of Aztl
an) [a project run by La Raza Unida]. And I said, ‘‘That’s fine. I can live with.…’’ My car payments back then were thirty five to fifty dollars a month, so I figured I can go do that. I can be teaching at their walkout, you know. I can, you know, I can do anything and, and, and as a Voluntaria (Volunteer) and a minimum of a hundred a month. So, I called you and I said, ‘‘I need at least a hundred a month.’’ And you said, ‘‘Don’t worry about it. We’ll find you a place to stay. You don’t have to pay for your room and board, you know. We’re going to help you out.’’ And so, I went. And it was great. Didn’t get a hundred a month but I did get a place to stay. And the credit union was very lax on my payments, you know. So what I did was I tried to generate my own, my own work, my own income. So, I started writing proposals and finally did get some money in for me. And, and of course, for the community. And that was with the Presbyterian Church, the Women of the Church United came in with a grant. They called it, we called it, the Border Project.… Source: Oral History Interview with Viviana Cavada, 1998 by Jos
e Angel Guti
errez. CMAS No. 66, University of Texas Arlington.

356. Excerpts from H. Joaqu
ın Jackson and David Marion Wilkinson, One Ranger: A Memoir, 2005 Joaqu
ın Jackson’s career as a Texas Ranger, which was controlling Mexicans, stretched from 1966 to 1993. He has been called the icon of the modern Texas Rangers, heralded by white Texans and hated and feared by Mexicans. He followed the legendary and cruel Ranger Capt. Alfred Y. Allee, Sr., who is

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remembered by many Mexicans as a Gestapo captain. The following excerpts from Jackson’s book give insights into La Raza Unida Party and the reaction to its taking power. It puts a human face on the Rangers.

I spent a few days piecing together all the information I could about the crime. When I knew who I wanted and where they’d fled I drove down to inform my captain, who was probably hosing off the latest coat of Chicano militant Jos
e Angel Guti
errez’s urine from the Ranger Company D sign. (These two political adversaries were locked into a dance of mutual scorn and confrontation that included Guti
errez’s pissing on the sign to provoke Captain Allee. It usually worked.) By then I was already mighty fond of Capt. Allee. He’d lived long enough to see the world of South Texas that had spawned him reinvent itself. Toward the end of his career, he couldn’t understand the changes swirling around him. Capt. Allee was sixty-two in 1967 (although no one knew for sure); however, he was still all man and in firm command of his company. After I’d spent twenty-four hours with that man, I would have followed him into hell with a hotdog. I don’t know a single Ranger who served under Capt. Allee and didn’t respect and admire him. But me? I came to love him like the father I lost to the Depression and to the great drought of the 1950s.
THE RECONQUEST OF AZTLAN: AN ANGEL ON MY ASS What I remember most about that warm November evening is the shouting. I hear angry voices threatening me and every other law enforcement and voting official ensconced in the Zavala County courthouse. A mass of Mexican Americans most on foot, but a few idling in battered Chevrolet Impalas and Ford Falcons and a ’50s-vintage Dodge pickup-swirls around us. People who used to be migrant workers have turned into militants. White-haired women, the wind tugging at the scarves around their heads, offer fresh frijoles wrapped in homemade tortillas to their friends to stave off the chill. A few cowboy hats dot the heads of viejos, but I see far more bandanas and baseball caps in that mass of T-shirts and unbuttoned flannels. Beneath their Mexican wedding shirts, some of the young, hard-eyed men have pistols stuffed into their jeans waistbands. If things don’t go right tonight, lots of folks are going to get hurt. Inside the courthouse, Anglos thump their #2 pencil erasers against tally pages as they stare at padlocked precinct boxes. Camel cigarettes burn down. Smoke hangs heavy in the air and black coffee cools in untouched Styrofoam cups. The election officials, along with the entire Mexican American community of Zavala County, know those boxes are crammed full with ballots marked in favor of La Raza Unida Party candidates. I watch the anguished expressions of the Anglo election judges, county commissioners, sheriff, police chiefs, and politicos as they deliberate the dilemma before them in silence. They’re wondering if they can do what they’ve always done. Maybe the storm outside will blow over. Or maybe this is the moment when nearly 150 years of unchallenged Anglo rule of South Texas crumbles. None of us in authority knows how we got here. We all understand very well, however, that we have just stepped into unknown territory, the cusp of change. Staring at those ballot boxes and all those troubled expressions, I understand that we have to make the right

Chicanos, the 1960s, and Heritage

decision or many innocent and not-so-innocent people could die together on the segregated streets of Crystal City. We need to do the right thing. I’m not sure that we’re capable of doing that. Now I hear the amplified voice of one handsome, gifted, resourceful, intensely motivated, and very angry man Jos
e Angel Guti
errez. I don’t know him. We met for the first time this morning soon after the precincts opened. But he’s fairly certain he knows me. To him, I am el Rinche, Mexican slang for a Texas Ranger ever since the war of 1848, the embodiment of Anglo oppression, a man authorized to crack his head wide open if he doesn’t obey the law. In fact, Guti
errez not only knows that I’m mentally and physically able and thoroughly trained to gain compliance by whatever means necessary, he expects me to shove the law aside whenever it suits me and enforce the status quo. For this young Chicano militant, obeying Anglo law lies at the root of his people’s problems. The law is the means by which the American system has excluded an entire ethnic group of citizens. He and his organizers have gone to some trouble to qualify Mexican American candidates for this fall’s ballot and then register thousands of Mexican Americans to vote for them. In other words, they are using the democratic system to gain a voice in how they are governed. But should that effort fail tonight and yet another election be stolen from them, I know their frustration will escalate into outrage, and then violence. The pistols tucked into their pants are just the beginning. There are shotguns and rifles stowed in their vehicles. They are ready to confront violence with violence. This demonstration is not the end of a contested, highly emotional election. It is a gathering of kindling awaiting the first spark of civil war the Texas outbreak of the racial bloodshed we’ve seen in Chicago, Watts, and Montgomery, and throughout the Deep South after Martin Luther King’s assassination. Tonight the battle for civil rights in America has clawed its way to my home. The protestors wave banners that read No hay nada que Dios no pueda realizar (‘‘There is nothing that God can’t make happen’’) and Viva La Raza. They march and shout slogans as they idle in their cars, waiting for us to announce the election’s outcome. And so there I stand, the man who’s always said that politics and law enforcement don’t mix, between the Mexican American people of my jurisdiction, whom I’ve sworn to protect, and their Anglo authorities, whom I’ve sworn to support but who are, the sheriff included, likely about to be voted out of office. Tonight they’re at each other’s throats. The city police officers, who have no riot training, are so outnumbered that it wouldn’t matter if they had mastered crowd control. The sheriff’s deputies suffer from the same limitations, only their situation is further complicated because they are loyal to a boss who’s going to need a new job. Due to numerous escalating confrontations between city and county authorities and the Chicano population of Crystal City, much bad blood flows between them. Many of the Mexican American police officers and sheriff’s deputies are more loyal to their families and their neighbors than to the badge. There is only one neutral law enforcement official only one Ranger. Before this protest escalates into a violent confrontation, I’m going to surprise Guti
errez and every disenfranchised Mexican American Texan he represents. I’m going to expect him and everyone else in this county to abide by the law. Guti
errez didn’t see that coming. No one else did, either. It’s a simple issue, really. And it will change life in this brushy part of the world forever.

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As with most of the broader events that occurred when I was a Ranger, the cause of this clamor reaches back into history. To understand what was happening in 1972, you have to consider the social structure of South Texas that evolved after San Jacinto. It’s no secret that the settlement of Texas involved cultures in perpetual conflict. It seems that neither the Anglos nor Mexican (Tejano) people were blessed with a tolerance of the other’s traits and reputations. Even their table manners appalled one another. Furthermore, open-mindedness was a worthless virtue when it came to survival on the northern Mexican frontier. Resourcefulness and blind determination offered more utility in an era when the daily struggle for survival granted little time for reflecting on the cultural assimilation already in progress around them. Hard lives; tough, aggressive people. Narrow minds. The Anglo pioneers were notorious for setting aside their Protestant teachings when it came to their relationships with people of darker skin. They saw no reason to alter their convictions and prejudices as they crossed the Sabine River into the Mexican state of Coahuila y Tejas. Ignoring the mixed nature of their own ancestry, they quietly subordinated the mestizos upon first encounter. The thousands of Anglos who entered Mexico during the Empresario era without the proper documentation, by the way, were known derisively as ‘‘wetbacks.’’ If nothing else, however, the land ultimately bound these reluctant neighbors to one another. Although there were conflicts and misunderstandings, the first Anglo settlers in Texas lived amicably with the Mexican norte~nos, 108 Tejanos. Until the Texas Revolt of 1836, the social scheme was working peacefully, especially as Anglos discovered that they had little choice but to adopt time-proven Mexican methods of land use and animal husbandry, and their aggressive self-protection against the Plains Indian tribes. Anglo and Tejano fought and died together in the joint revolt against the dictator Santa Anna, who had usurped the Mexican Constitution of 1824. On the other hand, many Texas Anglos (especially those who had lived in Texas the longest and had the most to lose) supported Santa Anna’s regime during the Texas revolution. The Texas War for Independence was a complex, multicultural, regional struggle against an oppressive regime, a remote theater of the civil war already raging between the centralist and federalist factions in Mexico. After San Jacinto, the infant Republic of Texas lured thousands of Anglo settlers in search of cheap land and unbounded opportunity. These people, who had no idea about the value of Mexican culture and no inclination whatsoever to experience it, viewed Tejanos and all Mexicans as a vanquished and inferior race, a shiftless breed entirely capable of what they considered to be the massacres at the Alamo and Goliad. The hard lines thus drawn, Tejanos who had lived in this country for a century or more found themselves excluded from the nation that they had helped to build. This tragic occurrence was compounded after the Mexican War of 1848, when thousands of Mexicans were stranded behind the borders of a new nation that wanted little to do with them. The Mexican Americans of Texas were never slaves, but the social structure forced upon them by the Anglo majority rendered them little more than serfs the condition that had first propelled millions of the Americas’ European immigrants to the New World. Tejanos were politically, socially, and economically sterilized because Anglo Texas society believed they deserved it. Even

Chicanos, the 1960s, and Heritage

more arrogant was the prevailing notion that Mexican Americans were better off in segregated Texas than in Mexico. This wound festered for decades. Anglo and Mexican American alike were born into such a system and generally accepted it. Anglo landowners, farmers, ranchers, professionals, and businessmen who created unchallenged feudal estates in the fertile farm and lush ranch country of South Texas were keen to maintain the status quo. But the Mexican Americans were reduced to poverty, humiliation, institutionalized ignorance, and government-sanctioned apathy. Today, we recognize this as racism. A decade ago, it was known as apartheid. For generations of South Texans, however, it was just the way it was. Lots of folks probably didn’t think twice about it. Those of us with a conscience knew it wasn’t right. But none of us knew what to do about it. In the early 1960s, Jos
e Angel Guti
errez emerged from the barrios of Crystal City with a vision for his people. He told them that the American Southwest had once been Aztl
an, originally homeland of Mesheeca the warrior nation misnamed by the Spanish as the Aztecs. Today geographers and cartographers believe the heart of the Mesheeca’s earliest empire ranged from beyond Texas to somewhere in Utah. Gutierrez’s general concept however, reminded Mexican Americans that their ancestors had been the masters of their domain. He looked around and realized that they didn’t need guns or armies to win this inevitable battle. The secret to reconquering Aztl
an lay in the democratic power to vote. I’ve never come close to agreeing with Guti
errez’s controversial politics, but I can tell you that he’s one of the most interesting men I’ve ever met. I’ll probably argue with him until my last breath, but I’ll always admire him. Jos
e Angel Guti
errez’s father rode with Pancho Villa. The story goes that Jos
e Guti
errez was a young medical student at the outbreak of the Mexican Revolution. Villa basically impressed into service an entire class of reluctant medical students as physicians for his troops. While I couldn’t speculate on medical student Jos
e Guti
errez’s political convictions, it appears that he gradually fell under Villa’s spell and fought against the Mexican Government for close to twenty years. He lived through several battles and several wives, rose in the military and political arenas, and was appointed comandante of Torreon, Coahuila. He earned the trust of Torreon’s citizens, who ultimately elected him as their mayor. At last Villa was murdered, and in 1929, young Dr. Guti
errez was exiled north of the Rio Bravo for the rest of his life. Dr. Guti
errez took his fifth wife, Concepc
ıon Fuentes, and opened a medical practice in Crystal City. A gifted and passionate speaker, he traveled the Rio Grande valley cities lecturing on such topics as ‘‘The Price of Honor’’ and ‘‘The Art of Love.’’ Among the Mexican American community he so often inspired, Dr. Guti
errez was depicted in the flyers that advertised his appearances as ‘‘el pico de oro,’’ the mouth of gold. Dr. Guti
errez’s interests, passions, and loyalty lay across the river in Mexico. Well advanced in age when his fifth wife gave birth to her first and only son, he passed away before the boy reached his thirteenth birthday. ‘‘Make sure they bury me in Mexico,’’ would be among his last words to his child. Jos
e Angel Guti
errez had enjoyed a privileged life as long as his father lived. The community Dr. Guti
errez cared for showed their appreciation in daily gestures few pesos here, fresh tamales there, gracias a su padre heard everywhere. The boy was

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welcomed in Anglo-owned stores and restaurants where no other Mexican American dared set foot. He could even bill his purchases to his father’s account. Young Jos
e Angel was sent, as a learning experience, to wash dishes for twenty cents an hour in the bleak bracero camp operated by the California Packing Corp., which later evolved into Del Monte. He rode the truck to the fields with the migrant workers at four in the morning, seven days a week, observing the bare conditions of the laborers’ clapboard barracks and outdoor privies, the American diet forced on people who detested it, the dismally low wages, and the transience of their mean employment. The workers were not even welcome at the local Catholic mass. After his father passed on, Jos
e Angel Guti
errez was not simply exposed to this life of segregation, he was sentenced, along with all of his kind, to live it. The Jim Crow social structure of Crystal City was typical of its time. The Mexican American community faced three basic employment options: the Del Monte cannery, local ranches, or seasonal work on farms up north. All paid a low hourly wage. Close to a thousand households earned less than $3,000 annually, the poverty level for a family of four at the time. More than half the Chicano families did not have a toilet, and a third had no indoor plumbing. One section of town had no access to city water or sewage. The streets of Anglo neighborhoods were meticulously maintained while the barrio roads were left unpaved. There were Anglo-only days at the public swimming pool when the water was freshest. Those of Guti
errez’s community who wanted to vote for candidates promising change, up until 1966, first had to pay a $1.75 poll tax. For most, the privilege to vote for Anglo Democrats was hardly worth the effort or the expense. This was the ‘‘separate but equal’’ world that bred Jos
e Angel Guti
errez. The Texas public school system would not allow him to speak his parents’ native language. The history and social studies curriculum ignored his ancestors’ contributions. Mexican American kids were excluded from sports teams and cheerleading squads and ‘‘most beautiful’’ elections. Jos
e Angel Guti
errez, son of a revolutionary, had his nose rubbed in all of this. When he came of age, it became his turn to rebel. Guti
errez possessed a number of attributes that served him well when came time to confront Anglo authority. He radiated cunning, resourcefulness, intelligence, and charisma. A tireless worker and a gifted, passionate speaker, he was further armed with the conviction that he was right. Jos
e Angel quickly established himself among Mexican Americans and Anglos alike as a leader con huevos, a force to be reckoned with and, for some, to be feared. Among whites he was considered a militant and even a Communist; for Mexican Americans he was a hero.… Everyone sensed the tension. Before daylight, I was cruising between my home in Uvalde and Crystal City, the epicenter of the burgeoning La Raza Unida Party and the most likely scene of violence in the 1972 county elections. Upon arrival, I idled around each of the six or so voting precincts in Zavala County to make sure everything was in order and that there was no improper electioneering in progress. Things seemed quiet as I made small talk with the chain-smoking election judges and their clerks. They were anxious about how the day would go. It was rumored that some La Raza Unida activists were prepared to shoot it out, but officials remained hopeful that the voting process would run smoothly. As day broke, I felt there was a good chance things would. I left for Sheriff Lewis Sweeten’s office to share a cup of coffee and get his impression of the situation.

Chicanos, the 1960s, and Heritage

I’d had a sip or two of coffee when the call came in from the election judge of Precinct 5 informing us that he had encountered serious problems. Precinct 5 was the Zavala County road administrator’s office, which sat on the west side of Crystal City on Highway 83. Texas bestows election judges with the same powers held by district justices on Election Day only. Generally speaking, when one of these daylong despots cries foul, droves of law enforcement officers come running. On this day, they summoned me. Once I’d connected Guti
errez’s agenda with the incident location, I pretty much got the picture before I ever set foot on the scene. That particular precinct’s election judge’s distinguished appearance would soon prove illusory. I knew this bird, and in my opinion he was an arrogant, loud-mouthed, obnoxious all-service carpet lawyer, businessman, rancher, and renowned redneck. If Guti
errez’s people were worried about election corruption, they had probably stormed the right precinct. I knew enough about both Guti
errez and this jackass election judge to assume that we had the makings of a full-blown riot on our hands. My suspicions weren’t far off base. Across the highway were hundreds of bannerwaving protestors, most of whom were shouting Viva La Raza! At the front door of the precinct, a bilingual brawl was spilling onto the front porch. The Anglo judge was directing his clerks and sheriff’s deputies to carry the still-seated Chicano poll watchers out the door. Guti
errez and his group, including the wellhead-sized bodyguards who were always with him in those days, were shoving them back inside. The poll watchers, knuckles white and faces damned determined, clung to their chairs like bare-bronc riders. No place but South Texas could a county election get as rowdy as this. I love everything about my home state, but politics almost always disintegrates into an ugly, mud-slinging shouting match. Pour racism into the pot and contested elections take on all the characteristics of a blood feud. I don’t remember exactly how I did it probably set off a bomb or something but the first step was to get the brawlers’ attention and shut down all that clawing and caterwauling. This was more or less accomplished, except for the hundreds of folks across the street. They kept on protesting, but they weren’t the immediate problem. The acrimony gave way to an eerie moment as quiet as a mouse pissing on a piece of cotton. As soon as Sheriff Sweeten and I restored order, the election judge began to throw his weight around. He said the poll watchers Richard Diaz, Richard Gatica, Rebecca Perez (whose husband Rey was a fine police officer and would one day be elected district judge), and Luz Guti
errez (wife of Jos
e Angel) would have to go. He claimed that Precinct 5 was too damn small to accommodate any poll watchers of any inclination and still allow people room to vote, which was sort of true. These four La Raza Unida activists would rather nail their feet to the floor than break eye contact with the ballot box. The framers of Texas election law probably envisioned a fair and impartial election judge overseeing the process. Whoever nominated this Hee-Haw henchman hadn’t come close to the ideal. He didn’t just resent Mexican American poll watchers at his precinct; he wanted them hauled off in chains. I could see that the election official was distraught that the word ‘‘arrest’’ didn’t come out of my mouth. The expressions of the Mexican American activists

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darkened also, mainly because I think the presence of a Texas Ranger signaled foreboding and doom. (Especially here, in Zavala County, where in 1963 a Chicano political movement was violently oppressed old-school-style by the Rangers. Things were different now, but local residents didn’t understand that yet.) I didn’t give that crowd the confrontation they wanted either. I’d disappointed everyone right off the bat. Not a good start. When the poll watchers didn’t twitch the first muscle fiber toward getting out of those seats, I began sorting through my options. None of them was any good. I was thinking about ordering everybody to give me enough peace to sort through this mess when out of the pack came Jos
e Angel Guti
errez waving a book, which in his hands is a far more deadly weapon than any other. ‘‘Ranger, can I just show you something?’’ he asked with the book already open to the appropriate passage. ‘‘Sure,’’ I said, and soon my eyes were following a few sentences in the Texas Election Code. Basically, the law provided for two poll watchers to be present at any precinct for each candidate on the ballot. I think close to thirty offices were up for election that year. I looked at the election judge. ‘‘Are you aware of this?’’ I asked him. ‘‘According to the law, they’re entitled to have maybe sixty people sit over the poll, which would be ridiculous here. But they’re only asking for four.’’ Jos
e Angel said nothing while I pursued this line of questioning. It was a rare occasion when the modern, Americanized version of the ‘‘Mouth of Gold’’ would let others talk. ‘‘I’m aware of the law,’’ the judge snapped. I sensed a haughty tone, but I can be more definite when describing the man himself. He was an asshole. ‘‘I’m the election judge. This is my precinct. I don’t want ’em in here and that’s the end of it.’’ South Texas has long been notorious for its dubious elections, especially when Lyndon Johnson and Coke Stevenson squared off for the Senate seat back in 1948. Many historians agree that the election was stolen from Stevenson in Duval County, where dead people not only took a surprising interest in politics, they also voted in alphabetical order. I’d like to think that this sort of thing didn’t go on in Zavala County, but the election judge’s behavior did little to support my hopes. Years later when Guti
errez and I sat together with a couple of college professors and discussed these events, he stated that when La Raza Unida Party members posted poll watchers at the precincts, La Raza candidates won their elections. When they didn’t, La Raza candidates lost. Readers can draw their own conclusions. ‘‘These four people have a right to be here,’’ I said to the judge. ‘‘Are you gonna let them sit over that box or not?’’ More stubborn than he was thick, the election judge shook his head. His refusal was a complete abuse of his ephemeral powers, but what are you going to do? I felt like the next move was an end run around him. I looked at Jos
e Angel and said, ‘‘I tell you what. Let’s go talk to a real judge and see what he’s got to say about all this.’’ I hoped that District Judge Jack Woodley could override the election judge, or at least talk some sense into him. Guti
errez seemed shocked by my suggestion, but he quickly climbed on board, with one caveat. ‘‘We’ve gotta go in my car,’’ he said. He pointed to the mob. ‘‘If I go with you, they’ll think that you arrested me and all hell will break loose.’’

Chicanos, the 1960s, and Heritage

I told the election judge to sit tight and suspend voting long enough for us to return with a final determination. Confident that things would go his way, he seemed happy with that plan. Before much else happened, Jos
e Angel stuck a La Raza Unida pin on my shirt. You don’t ever want to put your hands on a uniformed officer, and I’ve never let anyone touch me without serious repercussions. But this was an act of political symbolism rather than a threat, and I had to admire the man’s gumption. The crowd erupted in victory as I crawled into the passenger seat of his car. El Rinche has been subdued by la Raza. Okay. About then Guti
errez looked at my Ranger badge, noticed my name, and then, as his expression clouded, took in all six foot five of my hopelessly Scotch-Irish features. ‘‘How did you ever get a name like Joaqu
ın’’ he asked me. They always ask. I always tell them. At Sheriff Sweeten’s office we placed a call to District Judge Woodley in Sabinal, whom I quickly aprised of the delicate situation at Precinct 5. Judge Woodley informed me (and later Guti
errez) that he had no authority to override the election judge’s decision determination I question to this day. He nevertheless informed us both that there were civil remedies available to La Raza Unida after the election, an expensive proposition for a grassroots workers’ movement and a long time to wait for a prize legally won. His best advice was to work out some sort of compromise with the election judge. Guti
errez and I climbed back into his car with the unspoken intention to do just that. When we returned to Precinct 5, the mob reignited. Sheriff Sweeten was visiting with the election judge and that party ended, too. I advised the election official that the district judge strongly suggested that we avoid a lot of hassle (not to mention media scrutiny) by allowing the La Raza Unida Party to post just four of the sixty watchers they were entitled to inside his absurd shack. He refused. Two of the four poll watchers were women, and there were a number of students and young children with the mob across the street. I’d have to sit tight on this situation or somebody was going to get hurt. But I could at least try and bluff the son of a bitch. ‘‘Okay,’’ I said. I pointed across the street at six hundred armed and angry protestors. ‘‘You’re on your own.’’ I waved for Sheriff Sweeten and his deputies to follow me, and we all started for the door. ‘‘Wait a minute, Ranger,’’ the election judge said. I took a deep breath and spun on my heel. ‘‘You can tell them they can put two poll watchers in here,’’ he said. ‘‘Can’t have four.’’ ‘‘Are you sure about that?’’ I asked him. ‘‘Can’t have four but they can have two?’’ He nodded. Good enough. I went outside and informed Guti
errez that the election judge had relented, sort of, and I suggested to the activist that he learn in a hurry to like it. Jos
e Angel seemed happy enough and immediately sent in Luz and Rebecca, who were still clamped into their chairs. They dragged themselves inside the precinct for the long vigil. We all knew that the main event would unfold later, when the local officials tallied the election results. But La Raza Unida had won the first, and most important, round. It seemed to me like a minor episode, yet its repercussions have lasted to this day.

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For Anglo office holders, the writing was on the wall. Later that same night, results were phoned in to the district clerk at the Zavala County courthouse, where absentee votes had been counted during the day. Outside stood a big chalkboard with both candidates’ names along with a changing tally of votes. After the election judges count their ballots, the boxes are sealed and padlocked. If there’s a court order in place, a Ranger arrives to pick up the box. I don’t recall if this was the case in 1972. The precinct ballot boxes began to arrive at the courthouse for a second tally and the final figure. La Raza Unida activists hung around. Guti
errez and others, megaphones in hand, blared angry speeches in Spanish. They wanted to see the numbers go up on the board, and I remember thinking God help us if they aren’t what they ought to be. Inside the courthouse all was quiet. Somber-faced election judges and their clerks started to drift in. I knew that Sheriff Sweeten had poked around about the opening for a feedlot manager for Chapparosa Ranch. Other officials would be checking the employment listings in the Uvalde and San Antonio newspapers next Sunday. Jos
e Angel Guti
errez had just orchestrated the conquest of Aztl
an the part of it that he was born in anyway. Politically speaking, Zavala County belonged to La Raza Unida. The last thing the party members demanded was to have the Anglo authorities come out and tell them so to their faces. They hadn’t done that and the crowd was growing increasingly agitated. That’s when I wondered if these officials were thinking about fudging the numbers. I didn’t hear a single person in the courthouse suggest that they do anything of the sort, but they weren’t in a hurry to report the election results either. Every now and then one of them would stare at me as if to evaluate my expression. I hope it sent the right message. I hope I urged them to tell the truth. All the election officials needed to do was take a good look at my badge and consider what that silver cinco peso stands for. Every day of my Ranger career that badge compelled me to reach for the ideal. I expected the same of them. Regardless of their personal opinions and prejudices they didn’t disappoint me. They rose to the occasion and reported the true tally of the votes, knowing that the results would cost them their jobs. I was as proud of them as I was of the underdog Mexican Americans who had just won back their county. After midnight, morose clerks posted the final numbers, and angry demonstrations soon gave way to jubilation. Conservative Texas Democrats were buried alive in a Raza Unida landslide. Chalking the tally on that green board seemed like a small thing, a perfunctory duty. For the Mexican American community of Zavala County, however, it was like the Berlin Wall crashing down. On his way home, Jos
e Angel Guti
errez sauntered up with a grin that I would come to know all too well and invited me over for a drink. I declined, but I don’t think he was disappointed. I would have liked to have had that drink with him. He probably noticed that I was on duty that night. The invitation stands. La Raza Unida’s reign in Zavala County and throughout South Texas proved short-lived. The reasons are complex and maybe beyond a Ranger’s grasp. I suspect that differences arose within the party, fracturing what in 1972 was a solid, unified movement as La Raza Unida battled a common foe. Things dramatically changed. Alliances unraveled the Democrats regrouped. Anglo candidates, however, did not

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recover their hold on South Texas. Mexican American candidates began to run as Democrats and ultimately, strange as it may seem, as Republicans. More Mexican Americans became educated. With education, many moved into the large Texas cities, which funneled them directly into the American middle class and beyond. They changed America and America changed them. There’s an old racist statement in Texas that went something like this: You rarely find a rich Mexican in Texas. As soon as a Mexican makes lots of money, he becomes Spanish. That’s not true anymore. There are many powerful, wealthy, and influential Mexican Americans throughout Texas. An affluent Laredo banker and businessman was the Democratic candidate for governor in 2002, while a schoolteacher named Victor Morales ran in 1996 and 2002 for the U.S. Senate. It was inconceivable that any Mexican American could launch viable campaigns for such high offices when I became a Ranger in 1966. We now celebrate Cinco de Mayo and Diez y Seis. Our children are taught in school about the Mexican contribution to our state. South Texas politicians, authorities, business owners, and law enforcement officials are overwhelmingly Hispanic. Year by year the playing field in Texas becomes more level. But Aztl
an belongs again to La Raza. Mexicans served with the Texas Rangers back in frontier days. The first Mexican American inducted into the modern Ranger service, however, was a friend of mine from Uvalde, named Arturo Rodriguez. Many more would walk in Arturo’s boots. In 2002, almost a quarter of the Rangers are Hispanic. That’s a long way to travel in thirty years, my friends. I can’t wait to see where we are in another three decades. Even Jos
e Angel Guti
errez will be surprised. It’s beyond me to speculate, too. But I can guarantee you two things: we’re all going there together, and it’s going to be something to see. Source: From One Ranger: A Memoir by H. Joaqu
ın Jackson and David Marion Wilkinson, C 2005. By permission of the University of Texas Press. pp. 46, 63 75. Copyright



pez Tijerina, ‘‘A Letter 357. Excerpts from Reies Lo from the Santa Fe Jail,’’ 1969 The activities of Chicano activist Reies L
opez Tijerina (1926–) have to be read in the context of New Mexican history where the question of land still burns, and where many northern villagers say that the United States violated the Treaty of Guadalupe (1848), which set the terms for the incorporation of New Mexico into the United States. The treaty had guaranteed property rights and the legal precedents of Mexican and Spanish laws. At the time of the conquest, the northern part of New Mexico was settled by Pueblo Indians and Mexican villagers who lived on communal lands. Not only did the small farms belong to the villagers, but so did the use of communal lands that included forests and grazing lands. The U.S. occupation changed the land tenure system. Communal villages were privatized and the use of grazing lands and forests was taken from the villagers. Tijerina wrote ‘‘A Letter from the Santa Fe Jail’’ while imprisoned there in 1969. This letter was modeled after Martin Luther King, Jr.’s, famous ‘‘Letter from the Birmingham Jail.’’ Tijerina was one of the more militant Chicano activists of the sixties, leading the struggle to restore Spanish and Mexican land grants to Hispanos and Chicanos guaranteed by

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the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Tijerina founded the Alianza of Pueblos and Pobladores (Alliance of Towns and Settlers) in 1963. A charismatic preacher, he traveled through the land telling how T
ıo Samuel (Uncle Sam) had dispossessed New Mexicans by nationalizing the forests and privatizing their communal lands. T
ıo Samuel had reduced a once self-sufficient people to beggars forced to take food stamps. In October 1966, Alianza members occupied part of the ‘‘Echo Amphitheater Park’’ in the Carson National Forest that belonged to the San Joaqu
ın del R
ıo de Chama grant. The next year Tijerina led a raid on the Tierra Amarilla Courthouse. In March 1968, he led the Chicano contingent of the Poor People’s March in Washington, D.C., one of the final initiatives of black civil rights leader, Martin Luther King, who was involved in the planning of the march but assassinated before it was held. Tijerina was sentenced to two years in a federal prison in 1970 for charges related to the 1967 Tierra Amarilla Courthouse raid. In 1974, he began serving another sentence. The following letter explains his grievances and why he was in jail.

From my cell block in this jail I am writing these reflections. I write them to my people, the Indo-Hispanos, to my friends among the Anglos, to the agents of the Federal government, the state of New Mexico, the Southwest, and the entire IndoHispano world ‘‘Latin America.’’ I write to you as one of the dearest victims of the madness and racism in the hearts of our present-day politicians and rulers. At this time, August 17, I have been in jail for 65 days since June 11, 1969, when my appeal bond from another case was revoked by a federal judge. I am here today because I resisted an assassination attempt led by an agent of the federal government an agent of all those who do not want anybody to speak out for the poor, all those who do not want Reies L
opez Tijerina to stand in their way as they continue to rob the poor people, all those many rich people from outside the state with their summer homes and ranches here whose pursuit of happiness depends on thievery, all those who have robbed the people of their land and culture for 120 years.… What is my real crime? As I and the poor people see it, especially the IndoHispanos, my only crime is UPHOLDING OUR RIGHTS AS PROTECTED BY THE TREATY OF GUADALUPE HIDALGO, which ended the so-called Mexican-American War of 1846 1848. My only crime is demanding the respect and protection of our property, which has been confiscated illegally by the federal government. Ever since the treaty was signed in 1848, our people have been asking every elected president of the United States for a redress of grievances. Like the Black people, we too have been criminally ignored. Our right to the Spanish land grant pueblos is the real reason why I am in prison at this moment. Our cause and our claim and our methods are legitimate. Yet even after a jury in a court of law acquitted me last December, they still call me a violent man. But the right to make a citizen’s arrest, as I attempted to make that day on Evans, is not a violent right. On the contrary, it is law and order unless the arrested son resists or flees to avoid prosecution. No honest citizen should avoid a citizen’s arrest. This truth is denied by the conspirators against the poor and by the press, which they control. There are also the Silent Contributors. The Jewish people accused the Pope of Rome for keeping silent while Hitler and his machine persecuted the Jews in Germany and other countries. I support the Jews in their right to accuse those who contributed to Hitler’s acts by their Silence. By the same token, I denounce

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those in New Mexico who have never opened their mouths at any time to defend or support the thousands who have been killed, robbed, raped of their culture. I don’t know of any church or Establishment organization or group of elite intellectuals that has stood up for the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. We condemn the silence of these groups and individuals and I am sure that, like the Jewish people, the poor of New Mexico are keeping a record of the Silence which contributes to the criminal conspiracy against the Indo-Hispano in New Mexico. As I sit in my jail cell in Santa Fe, capitol of New Mexico, I pray that all the poor people will unite to bring justice to New Mexico. My cell block has no day light, no ventilation of any kind, no light of any kind. After 9 P.M., we are left in a dungeon of total darkness. Visiting rules allow only 15 minutes per week on Thursdays from 1 to 4 P.M. so that parents who work cannot visit their sons in jail. Yesterday, a 22-year-old boy cut his throat. Today, Aug. 17, two young boys cut their wrists with razor blades and were taken unconscious to the hospital. My cell is dirty and there is nothing to clean it with. The whole cell block is hot and suffocating. All my prison mates complain and show a daily state of anger. But these uncomfortable conditions do not bother me, for I have a divine dream to give me strength: the happiness of my people. I pray to God that all the Indo-Hispano people will awake to the need for unity, and to our heavenly and constitutional responsibility for fighting peacefully to win our rights. Already the rest of the Indo-Hispano world Latin America knows of our struggle. It is too late to keep the story of our land struggle from reaching the ears of the Indo-Hispano world. All the universities of Latin America knew about our problems when Rockefeller went there last summer. Will Latin America ignore our cry from here in New Mexico and the Southwest? Times have changed and the spirit of the blood is no longer limited by national or continental boundaries. The Indo-Hispano world will never trust the United States as long as this government occupies our land illegally. The honest policy of the United States will have to begin at home, before Rockefeller can go to Latin America again to sell good relations and friendship. Our property, freedom, and culture must be respected in New Mexico, in the whole Southwest, before the Anglo can expect to be trusted in South America, Mexico, and Canada. This government must show its good faith to the Indo-Hispano in respect to the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and the land question by forming a presidential committee to investigate and hold open hearings on the land question in the northern part of New Mexico. We challenge our own government to bring forth and put all the facts on the conference table. We have the evidence to prove our claims to property as well as to the cultural rights of which we have been deprived. We are Right and therefore ready and willing to discuss our problems and rights under the Treaty with the Anglo federal government in New Mexico or Washington, D.C., directly or through agents. This government must also reform the whole educational structure in the Southwest before it is too late. It should begin in the northern part of New Mexico, where 80% of the population is [sic] Indo-Hispanos, as a pilot center. If it works here, then a plan can be developed based on that experience in the rest of the state and wherever the Indo-Hispano population requires it. Because I know We Are Right, I have no regrets as I sit in my jail cell. I feel very, very proud and happy, to be in jail for the reason that I am. June 8 in Coyote

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could have been my last day on earth. My life was spared by God, and to be honored by that miracle at Coyote will keep me happy for many years to come. I am sure that not one of my prison days is lost. Not one day has been in vain. While others are free, building their personal empires, I am in jail for defending and fighting for the rights of my people. Only my Indo-Hispano people have influenced me to be what I am. I am what I am, for my brothers. Source: Reies L
opez Tijerina Collection, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque.

358. Excerpts from Carlos Montez [sic] et al., Petitioners v. the Superior Court of Los Angeles County, Respondent; The People, August 7, 1970 Carlos Montes, a co-founder of the Brown Berets, a Chicano power movement organization, was one of the leaders of the East Los Angeles school Blowouts, in which students walked out at five high schools in predominately Chicano East Los Angeles in 1968. Montes was active in cases of police brutality and led protests at the East L.A. sheriffs’ station. The Brown Berets were a nationalist organization that was an outgrowth of the Young Chicanos for Community Action that met at the Piranya Coffee House in 1967. Under the leadership of David S
anchez, a young Chicano activist, some of the members of the group evolved into the Brown Berets. They wore the berets as a sign of resistance and their intent to defend the barrio, the Chicano community or neighborhood. The Brown Berets established about 14 chapters throughout the Southwest; their national headquarters was in East L.A. The Los Angeles Police Department and sheriffs targeted the Brown Berets—harassing, infiltrating the group, and arresting members. Montes was framed by these officers and indicted for setting fires at the Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles on April 24, 1969. A California Department of Education conference was taking place there at the time, and Gov. Ronald Reagan was the keynote speaker. Chicano demonstrators disrupted Reagan’s speech and were removed by the police. Meanwhile, during Reagan’s speech, a fire broke out in a linen closet on the tenth floor. The Los Angeles grand jury indicted 10 Chicanos, 6 for arson, burning personal property, burglary, malicious destruction of electrical lines, and conspiracy to commit felonies. The defendants became known as the Biltmore Six. Later testimony revealed that Los Angeles Police Officer Fernando Sumaya had infiltrated the berets and probably provoked many of the incidents. (Sumaya had attempted to infiltrate the student group at San Fernando Valley State and was expelled because of provocations.) Montes fled before prosecution and did not return until 10 years later when he gave himself up. He was tried and acquitted. The defendants sought to quash the original indictment.

Defendants, charged with various felonies, moved to quash the indictment on the ground that eligible persons of their class, namely, Spanish-surnamed Mexican American citizens had been systematically excluded from consideration for nomination to the grand jury. It was stipulated that the trial court could consider the record in another case in which a similar claim was made with respect to the grand jury for the county for the previous year. Thirty-four superior court judges had been called as witnesses by the defendants in that case and 70 were subpoenaed in the instant

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case. Under the rules of court for the county, each superior court judge was entitled to nominate two persons to the grand jury annually. Six witnesses were actually called, one of whom was the judge presiding over the hearing. Based on the number of Spanish-surnamed Mexican American citizens selected as grand jurors for the current year, the court found that statistically, a prima facie case of discrimination had not been made. It ruled that the judges subpoenaed could not be interrogated. The Court of Appeal granted defendants’ petition for a writ of prohibition restraining the trial court from further proceeding in the case without first reopening the hearing on the motion to quash or, alternatively, in its discretion, proceeding to hear the motion de novo. In holding that the trial court erred in refusing to permit interrogation of the judges, the court took the view that failure to make a prima facie case of discrimination statistically did not preclude defendants from attempting to show, as they proposed to do, that, with very few exceptions, the judges of the superior court were by reason of birth, education, residence, wealth, social and professional associations, and similar factors, not acquainted with the qualifications of eligible potential grand jurors of defendants’ class and that they did not make an adequate effort to overcome this alleged deficiency. The prosecution’s contention that defendants failed to make an adequate offer of proof was rejected. Opinion by Kaus, P. J., with Stephens and Reppy, JJ., concurring.) COUNSEL: Oscar Zeta Acosta, Neil M. Herring, Margolis, McTernan, Smith, Scope & Herring and Hugh R. Manes for Petitioners. No appearance for Respondent. Evelle J. Younger, District Attorney, Harry Wood and Arnold T. Guminski, Deputy District Attorneys, for Real Party in Interest.… In May 1969, the Los Angeles County Grand Jury handed down a six-count indictment charging petitioners with a variety of serious felonies. Each petitioner was named in at least one count. Eventually petitioners moved to quash the indictment on the ground that the grand jury had been illegally constituted in that eligible grand jurors of a class to which petitioners belong, namely, ‘‘Spanish-surnamed Mexican American citizens’’ had been systematically excluded from consideration for nomination to the grand jury. At the hearing it was stipulated that the court could consider the record made before another judge in another case, People v. Castro et al., in which a similar claim with respect to the 1968 grand jury had been made by the defendants in that case, some of whom are also petitioners in this proceeding. There is also some overlapping of legal representation. In People v. Castro the defendants had called 34 Los Angeles County Superior Court judges as witnesses to support their contention. Significantly, at the time the motion in the case at bar was heard, the People had already argued in the prohibition proceeding in Castro that the defendants there had not called an adequate number of judges. The reason for calling judges as witnesses on motions such as these is that each judge in Los Angeles County is annually entitled to nominate two persons to the grand jury. (Rule 29 § 2, Rules of Superior Court, Los Angeles County.) … Before the proceedings in the case at bar started on October 7, 1969, the defense had subpoenaed 70 superior court judges as witnesses. They were placed ‘‘on call’’ by the judge who heard the motion. During the ensuing hearing petitioners called six other witnesses, one of whom was the judge presiding over the hearing. One of the

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purposes of calling the judge was to illustrate, as part of an offer of proof on which the court insisted, what questions petitioners intended to propound to the 70 judges under subpoena.… ‘‘The Court finds that for the 1969 Grand Jury, ten persons of Spanish surname have been nominated, of which I believe six or seven were considered as MexicanAmericans. Therefore, it cannot be said that Mexican-Americans or persons with Spanish surnames were excluded from the 1969 Grand Jury. In view of that fact, I will hold that it is immaterial what has preceded the 1969 Grand Jury, as long as the 1969 Grand Jury that indicted these defendants were [sic] properly chosen, and in my opinion they were. The rest becomes immaterial. So the motion to quash will be denied.…’’ The People concede that this finding is based on implied findings that petitioners had established that they were members of a legally cognizable class (Hernandez v. Texas, 347 U.S. 475, 477 478 [98 L.Ed. 866, 869 870, 74 S.Ct. 667]) and that seven members of that class were among the one hundred and eighty-plus nominees for the 1969 grand jury. There is some argument in the record concerning the percentage of the population comprised by the class and some more argument concerning the percentage of members of the class eligible for grand jury service. We have no need to settle these controversies. While it does appear that even if we give the People the benefit of every doubt, petitioners’ class was still underrepresented in 1969, for the purpose of this opinion we readily accept the proposition that the 1969 underrepresentation was insufficient to make out a prima facie case of discrimination. Nor need we decide the extent to which petitioners, in order to make out such a prima facie case from statistics alone, were entitled to rely on the 1959 1968 figures as well as on the 1969 comparison.… We believe that petitioners justly complain that the court’s ruling, in effect, permitted them to call their judicial witnesses only if the statistical evidence made it unnecessary for them to do so.… ‘‘The Court: Well, I will repeat what I said at the start, Mr. Acosta. If I come to the decision that there was discrimination in the nominations for the 1969 Grand Jury, which is the Grand Jury that indicted these defendants, it will then become pertinent as to whether it is an intentional, arbitrary, and systematic exclusion or discrimination over a period of time. Mr. Acosta: Now, is your Honor going to make this decision prior to the calling of any judge witnesses? The Court: Yes.… So far as I am concerned, if there is nondiscrimination of the 1969 Grand Jury, then these defendants were indicted by a validly constituted Grand Jury. Mr. Manes: Well, excuse me a moment, your Honor. How can you reach that decision, your Honor, without having afforded us the opportunity of completing our case? Now, we have yesterday at great length tried to show your Honor that the evidence in its present posture insofar as we are concerned is incomplete because we wanted to rely, in addition to statistical evidence, we wanted to rely upon standards which were used by the selectors selecting and nominating the Grand Jury for 1969. The Court: I think it is a simple proposition. Were there Mexican-Americans or Spanish people with Spanish surnames on the Grand Jury that indicted these people?’’ … Petitioners want us to hold on the basis of the Castro record and the additional evidence which they did produce in this case that the1969 Grand Jury was illegally

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constituted. Obviously, this we cannot do. Had the basic error not been committed, the 70 judges would have testified. Then, depending on the nature of their testimony, the People would have had an opportunity to rebut whatever prima facie case petitioners had made out. If we held now that on the evidence so far adduced the grand jury had been illegally selected and ordered the indictment quashed, we would be depriving the People of a chance to prove their case. The alternative writ is discharged. Let a peremptory writ of prohibition issue prohibiting the respondent court from any further proceedings in the case entitled People of the State of California v. Carlos Montez et al., being its number A-244906, without first reopening the hearing on the petitioners’ motion to quash the indictment and proceeding in accordance with the views expressed in this opinion or, alternatively, in its discretion, proceeding to hear said motion de novo. Source: Court of Appeal of California, Second Appellate District, Division Five *10 Cal. App. 3d 343;* 88 Cal. Rptr. 736; 1970 Cal. App. LEXIS 1845, August 7, 1970.


pez, ‘‘Overkill at the Silver Dollar,’’ 1970 359. Enrique Hank Lo The level of Los Angeles Police Department and Sheriff’s Department deputies violence at the Chicano Moratorium on August 29, 1970, shocked many Chicanos and other progressives. The murder of journalist Rub
en Salazar enraged Angelinos. Around 30,000 peaceful demonstrators against the war in Vietnam marched through East Los Angeles, gathering for festivities at Laguna Park. There were men, women, children, young, and old gathered as police with little or no provocation attacked, clubbing and tear-gassing the demonstrators. Hundreds were arrested and police killed three Chicanos—among them, respected journalist Rub
en Salazar (1928–1970) at the Silver Dollar Caf
e in East Los Angeles. Salazar had been covering the moratorium. The Chicano community called the death of Salazar, the director of news at KMEX, the Spanish language television station, and a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, an assassination. They thought that Salazar had been targeted by the sheriff’s deputies because of a series of articles and news reports critical of police abuse. It was too much of a coincidence that Salazar had been ordered to stay in the Silver Dollar while a missile projectile was fired into the establishment, hitting Salazar in the head. Hank L
opez, a well-known attorney and writer who unsuccessfully ran for California’s lieutenant governor in 1958, penned the following piece on the death of Salazar. It was one of the more eloquent tributes.

It was nearly midnight, and the barrio strangely quiet, quiet with fear. I had just left the Carioca restaurant with a dozen tortillas de ma
ız in a paper bag. I was spending the night before the funeral at my mother’s house, and she’d promised to cook my favorite breakfast of menudo con chile. The tortillas, naturally, were essential. Suddenly, a police car screeched to a stop at the curb. Two cops jumped out and pushed me against the wall, frisking me from top to bottom with rough insolent hands. They said not a word, and neither did I. I was simply not macho enough to protest. A cop like these had blasted the skull of my friend Rub
en Salazar, the Chicano columnist for the Los Angeles Times, in the Silver Dollar Caf
e, and I was frankly afraid to cross them.

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They have also arrested about 300 Chicanos since the police riot that erupted during the East Los Angeles peace rally that Rub
en was covering on the afternoon he was killed. I didn’t want to be ‘‘prisoner 301’’ and, having flown all the way from New York, I certainly didn’t want to miss Rub
en’s funeral. So I accepted the indignity of their frisk with a gut-souring meekness. This is all familiar stuff to anyone who has lived in a Chicano barrio. And when they yanked off my shoes and shook them upside-down, I clamped my mouth to hold back the sour saliva that I’d like to spit in their faces. ‘‘What do you do?’’ one of them asked. ‘‘I’m a lawyer and a writer.’’ ‘‘Oh one of those guys,’’ in a tone suggesting one of those smart-ass spicks. Suddenly noticing the brown paper bag in my hand, one of these guardians of the peace grabbed it and quickly shuffled through the tortillas in an apparent search for marijuana or heroin. Finding none, he gave them back. Later on I threw the tortillas into a trash can they must have had a hundred cop fingerprints on them. They let me go finally a tribute to my meekness, to what I would rather call my old barrio wisdom. The pragmatism of fear. And in my confusion and resentment (or was it again a sense of prudent resignation?), I had not noticed their badge numbers. Nor would I be able to recognize their faces again. I’m afraid all cops’ faces have begun to look alike to me. And that’s tragic, in a way, because two years ago I wrote to Mayor Lindsay and the New York Police Commissioner, commending a police officer who had been extremely kind (fatherly kind) to my 10-year-old daughter when she was injured near our apartment while we were away, the baby sitter having gone astray. He had taken her to a hospital and stayed by her side for five hours. So it’s not in me to be a cop hater. Just below Soto and Brooklyn Avenue, while searching vainly for a cab on those deserted streets, I saw a police helicopter swishing over me like a giant insect, its bright, harsh searchlights probing the dark alleys and back yards of the barrio. I wondered then if the police regard us Mexican-Americans as a community of barricaded criminals. The phrase came easily at that moment because that very afternoon the Times had quoted an expert as saying that the kind of missile that killed Rub
en ‘‘should be used only against a barricaded criminal.’’ Gene Pember, a consultant for the Peace Officers Standards and Training Commission, had told newsmen that the high-velocity tear-gas projectile that pierced Rub
en’s skull should never be used for crowd control, that ‘‘the thing is like a young cannon, really.’’ Such missiles, he said, could go through a thick stucco wall. ‘‘That’s what they are for to penetrate a house or an object behind which a dangerous suspect has barricaded himself. But even then they should never be fired at a person.’’ The 10-inch missile that killed Salazar was fired by a sheriff’s deputy through an open doorway at a point-blank range of 15 feet. The deputy who fired that missile may not have known it was Rub
en Salazar he was shooting, but he certainly knew it was a Chicano. Yet, not once during the entire week following this obvious example of heedless slaughter would Sheriff Pitchess admit that his men might have been even slightly negligent. Sam Houston Johnson once told me that his brother LBJ suffered from a profound inability to say ‘‘I’m sorry’’ to admit any error, however inconsequential. Certainly, a tragic flaw in a human being, and I wonder if the Los Angeles sheriff

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shares that affliction. Far from blaming any of his men, he keeps talking about ‘‘outside agitators.’’ Small wonder that my fellow Chicanos are willing to believe almost any accusation against the police. When the Times subsequently devoted its entire front page to blown-up photos from a community newspaper called La Raza, quoting at length from an article titled ‘‘The Murder of Rub
en Salazar’’ they may have begun to entertain even that suspicion. Earlier that evening (several hours before the cops frisked me), I had attended a rally of Chicanos at the All Nations Auditorium, where I heard their collective rage and frustration my own as well burst from the throats of one speaker after another, the packed listeners periodically stamping their feet and raising clenched fists as a symbol of ‘‘Chicano Power.’’ The speeches were mostly in English, but occasionally resorted to a schizolingual amalgam of English and Spanish to stress a vital point. (‘‘Let’s show los Pinches placas that we’re men que no bastard cop nos puede chingar!’’) Tough barrio language, most of it spoken with the bitterness of long years of resentment, some of it with a hushed, melancholy sense of bitter resignation. When Corky Gonzalez was introduced, a thunder of shoes stomped the floor and a chorus of ‘‘viva Chicano power’’ echoed from the walls, throbbing in my head, sending an expectant chill up my spine. But there was no flaming rhetoric from the much loved leader of the Crusade for Justice no call to arms, no threat of violence. There was instead an urgent plea for Chicano unity, for a grass-roots drive for political power, for a reclaiming of ‘‘the occupied territory of Aztl
an,’’ that portion of the United States that once belonged to Mexico. It sounded more like a psychic takeback than a real one. The muted anger in his voice was spiced with humorous irony when he told the crowd, ‘‘I was busted at the peace rally and charged with suspicion of robbery because I had $325 in my billfold. To the gabacho cops, I guess it’s awful damned suspicious for a Chicano to have that much bread.’’ Clearly moved by Corky’s mesmeric hold on the audience, Rene Anselmo (an Anglo millionaire who owns three TV stations) instantly donated $100 to the bailbond fund for the 300 Chicanos who had been arrested since the riot. By coincidence, Captain Ernest Medina defendant in the My Lai massacre case was in Los Angeles during that same period, seeking donations for his defense from fellow MexicanAmericans. I doubt that he could have raised 2¢; from the people who heard Corky, though I’m told that American Legionnaires in his hometown think him a hero. After the rally, I went to the Carioca bar-restaurant to eat Mexican food. It was also a sentimental gesture. The last time I had seen Rub
en Salazar we had come to this restaurant, mostly to hear the mariachi trio that entertains here. They had played our favorite Adelita and Siete Leguas, songs of the Mexican Revolution that led us into a pleasant nostalgic mood. I had once written that my father was the only private in Pancho Villa’s army, and he was now claiming that his father was the only private, smiling in that gentle way he had, his eyes shining with impish enjoyment. What better basis for a deep and abiding friendship than our mutual conviction that each of our fathers was the only private in that famous rebel Divisi
on del norte? Our conversation became serious after a while. Rub
en was deeply concerned about the laggard pace of bilingual education programs for Chicano children in the early grades. Most educators know that everyone’s greatest, most intense period of

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learning is from birth to the age of 5. For a Chicano, that fast-paced, crucial learning is acquired in Spanish or in a ‘‘pocho’’ combination of Spanish and English. But the day he enters kindergarten a day of intense anxiety even for a child from the most secure Anglo environment that learning tool is snatched away. He’s not permitted to speak the only language he knows. So he sits in frustration, confusion, and fright as the teacher and the ‘‘more advantaged’’ kids talk in alien sounds, making him feel dumb and lost. The experience is repeated hour after hour, day after day, until he’s ultimately defeated. There is no one more fragile than a 5-year-old child on alien turf. The Chicano brings failure to school with him; he has no chance of success, no possibility of the ‘‘reward and reinforcement’’ that child educators feel is indispensable. The high school dropout rate for Mexican-Americans (58 percent in some Chicano ghettos higher than the rate for black students) is a belated symptom of the dropping out that begins on the first day of kindergarten. ‘‘Why can’t they teach our Chicano kids in both Spanish and English?’’ asked Rub
en, fingering an empty glass. ‘‘If they could have genuine bilingual classes Spanish in the morning and English in the afternoon there would be some trace of comforting familiarity between school and their home. They could feel successful in Spanish, capable of learning. They wouldn’t feel dumb, they wouldn’t quit trying as they do now. With a gradual transition in kindergarten and the first two grades, English would be easier.’’ His convictions were an echo of educational theories developed by Dr. Jerome Bruner, director of Harvard’s Center for Cognitive Studies, who has said that ghetto youngsters often face insuperable linguistic and environmental obstacles. Ordering another round of margaritas that evening, we talked of other problems that bedevil Chicano kids. Thinking of the kid-glove treatment used on the Kennedy-Shriver cousins when they were arrested for possession of marijuana, we were both sure that a Chicano or black teenager would have been summarily convicted and sent to a reformatory for at least six months. I told Rub
en of my first encounter with the juvenile court system as a lawyer (I’d had several as a child). A Mexican-American woman had called my office in a state verging on hysteria. Her 13-year-old son let’s call him Ram
on G
omez had been picked up by the police and whisked off in a squad car, but no one at the local precinct station would tell her where he was. Within half an hour we were at the Hollenbeck Station in East Los Angeles, and were informed that Ram
on wasn’t there. No record of his arrest. Then we hurried to the Juvenile Detention Home, where the desk captain said there was no booking on a Ram
on G
omez. But as we were leaving, a young Chicano trustee told us that a boy answering Ramon’s description had been taken from the detention home to the Los Angeles General Hospital. ‘‘He had a bloody bandage on his face.’’ Checking the prison ward at the hospital, we learned two hours later that he’d received treatment for a fractured nose and then been returned to the detention home. When we tried to see him at the so-called home, we were told he couldn’t have visitors nor could I see him in my capacity as his attorney. Angered by this refusal (any adult prisoner can see a lawyer), I went to a bail bondsman, who told me that kids weren’t entitled to release on bail. Then I called several judges, who told me that they couldn’t order his release on a writ of habeas corpus because children weren’t entitled to that constitutional right.

Chicanos, the 1960s, and Heritage

When I finally saw the boy, he told me that he’d been accused of trying to break into a bubble-gum machine. ‘‘I put a penny in there and the gum didn’t come out, so I was shaking it when the police came by. And when I tried to explain what happened, one of them slapped me. Then when I protested, they got me in the car, and one of them started punching my face with his closed fist, calling me a smart-aleck spick. That’s how my nose got busted.’’ The Kafkaesque nightmare continued the next day at Ram
on’s hearing in juvenile court. The judge immediately informed me that I couldn’t act as his lawyer ‘‘because this is not a criminal proceeding.’’ ‘‘Then why are you treating him like a criminal?’’ I asked. ‘‘Why has he been detained in that jail?’’ ‘‘That’s not a jail,’’ he said rather testily, ‘‘It’s only a detention home.’’ Paraphrasing Gertrude Stein, I said: ‘‘It has barred cells like a jail and barred gates to keep those kids inside, and a jail is a jail is a jail no matter what name you give it.’’ But he still wouldn’t let me appear as Ramon’s lawyer, so his mother and I just sat there watching the nightmare proceedings of that quick-justice cafeteria called a ‘‘court.’’ Not only were the juvenile defendants (almost all of them black or Chicano) denied lawyers; they couldn’t face their accusers, they couldn’t cross-examine witnesses against them, they couldn’t object to rank hearsay testimony, they weren’t protected by any of the normal rules of evidence. They were, in fact, unable to invoke any of the constitutional safeguards that are available to known gangsters. And when I asked the judge for a transcript of the hearing after he had sentenced Ramon to six months in a reformatory, his mother pleaded with me not to appeal the case. ‘‘If we raise a big fuss,’’ she said, ‘‘they’ll only make it tougher on Ram
on when he gets out. He’ll be a marked man. We Chicanos don’t have a chance.’’ Rub
en had a film of tears in his eyes when I told him about Ram
on. ‘‘Como son pinches,’’ he said. ‘‘How can they be such bastards with little kids? And think of all the other Ramons who’ve been in the same bag.’’ Ram
on G
omez must be 20 years old by now. He may have been one of the tightmouthed militants in the angry crowd at the All Nations Auditorium on the night before Rub
en’s funeral, listening to one speaker comment on the tear-gassing of children at the peace rally, listening to the bitter irony in Corky Gonzalez’s [sic] voice. He’s heard, as most Chicanos have, that Corky is a marked man, that the FBI probably shadows him from one state to another as he goes from campus to campus, from barrio to barrio, asking his brown brothers to join in common cause. Ram
on knows from personal experience (as do too many Chicanos who have been brutalized by certain cops, by the juvenile court system, by those crime-breeding reformatories), knows with a sickening fear that the police may some day crowd in on Corky, and that tragic violence may result. But quite aside from his own not likely to be forgotten experience with the law, Ram
on knows about inferior ghetto schools with indifferent teachers, about poor substandard housing, about high unemployment in the barrio, about radio and television shows that demean and insult his fellow paisanos. And he must be aware that local and federal government agencies largely ignore the plight of 8 million invisible Mexican-Americans. And he certainly knows that the television networks, national magazines, and news syndicates are generally deaf to the despairing voices of the barrio, although the more strident voices from black ghettos get ample notice.

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Those same news media have been outraged by the alarming increase of cop killers and it is well they should be, for any killing is abhorrent. But they should also know that the phrase is sometimes reversed in the ghetto that Chicanos and blacks and poor whites often talk about killer cops with equal abhorrence. Ram
on and the rest of us Chicanos have been urged to turn a deaf ear to the dangerous cry of the militant, to listen instead to the voices of reason, to the voices of the people like Rub
en Salazar. And though I myself felt slightly less than reasonable when those two cops shoved me against the wall on a dark lonely street, I would certainly agree that our only hope is reason and good will. One must also hope that the police and other authorities will come to realize that reason flows both ways, that this fragile society can ill afford the frightening consequences of the kind of overkill that silenced the most reasonable voice of Rub
en Salazar. Source: Enrique Hank L
opez, ‘‘Overkill at ‘The Silver Dollar,’’’ pp. 365 368. Reprinted with permission from the October 19, 1970 issue of The Nation. For subscription information, call 1-800333-8536. Portions of each week’s Nation magazine can be accessed at http://www.thenation.com.

360. Excerpt from a Statement by Elma Barrera, 1970 There was considerable debate in the Chicano movement on the gender question in the 1970s. The Chicano Movement was nationalist and often held distorted notions of culture. As the movement progressed, many began to question assumptions made by Chicano leaders and themselves. The dialogue was opened by Chicanas but also by the Communist press. The struggle to level gender relations dated back to the influence of Socialist and anarchist theory in the 1860s. Many Mexican women did not accept the traditional role assigned to them. The Women’s Question was raised even within the Partido Liberal Mexicano (PLM) that led the resistance against Mexican dictator Porfirio D
ıaz (1830–1915). The issue of gender equality also was raised during the Mexican women’s suffrage movement of the 1930s. In the 1960s, there was a confluence of more educated women and civil rights. Mexican American women began to question their position within the Mexican American and Chicano movements. Influenced by the civil rights and feminist movements, they began to conceptualize the question of equality vis-a-vis Chicanas. With the emergence of Chicanas, gender equality became an overriding demand. These voices were clearest in leftist forums, and soon spread to mainstream organizations. In 1970, MAPA (Mexican American Political Association) formed a women’s caucus at their annual convention. With varying degrees of success, women’s workshops were formed at most major Chicano conferences. The Chicano Youth Liberation Conferences of 1969, 1970, and 1971 in Denver, Colorado, held women’s workshops. The Comisi
on Feminil Mexicana (Mexican Feminine Commission) was formed at the Mexican American National Issues Conference in Sacramento, California. Meanwhile Texano Chicanas played a major role in the formation of La Raza Unida Party. Elma Barrera, an organizer of a national Chicana conference held in May 1971, in Houston, Texas, made the following statement at a national abortion conference attended by over 1,000 women held in July 1971.

I have been told that the Chicana’s struggle is not the same as the white woman’s struggle. I’ve been told that the problems are different and that … the Chicana’s

Chicanos, the 1960s, and Heritage

energies are needed in the barrio and that being a feminist and fighting for our rights as women and as human beings is anti-Chicano and anti-male. But let me tell you what being a Chicana means in Houston, Texas. It means learning how to best please the men in the Church and the men at home, not in that order. You know, it’s really funny the way that the Church has … grasped onto this ‘‘sinful’’ thing about abortion and birth control. It’s really funny how the laws only apply to the woman and not to the man.… Chicano men … fool around, have mistresses, and yet, when it comes to abortion or birth control with their wives, it’s a sin.… I will take just one minute to read the two resolutions which came out of the Sex and the Chicana Workshop: ‘‘Free, legal abortions and birth control for the Chicano community, controlled by the Chicanas. As Chicanas, we have the right to control our own bodies.’’ And then out of the workshop on Marriage Chicana Style: ‘‘We as mujeres de La Raza recognize the Catholic Church as an oppressive institution and do hereby resolve to break away and not to go to them to bless our union. So be it resolved that the national Chicana conference go on record as supporting free and legal abortions for all women who want or need them.’’

SEX AND THE CHICANA We feel that in order to provide an effective measure to correct the many sexual hangups facing the Chicano community the following resolutions should be implemented: I. Sex is good and healthy for both Chicanos and Chicanas and we must develop this attitude. II. We should destroy the myth that religion and culture control our sexual lives. III. We recognize that we have been oppressed by religion and that the religious writing was done by men and interpreted by men. Therefore, for those who desire religion, they should interpret their Bible, or Catholic rulings according to their own feelings, what they think is right, without any guilt complexes. IV. Mothers should teach their sons to respect women as human beings who are equal in every respect. No double standard. V. Women should go back to the communities and form discussion and action groups concerning sex education. VI. Free, legal abortions and birth control for the Chicano community, controlled by Chicanas. As Chicanas we have the right to control our own bodies. VII. Make use of church centers, neighborhood centers, and any other place available. ‘‘Liberate your mind and the body will follow.’’ ‘‘A quitarnos todos nuestros complejos sexuales para tener una vida mejor y feliz’’ (Let’s cast off all our sexual complexes to have a better and happier life). MARRIAGE—CHICANA STYLE Reaffirmation that Chicano marriages are the beginnings of Chicano families which perpetuate our culture and are the foundation of the movement.

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Points brought up in the workshop: 1. Chicano marriages are individual and intimate and solutions to problems must be primarily handled on an individual basis. 2. A woman must educate and acquaint herself with outside issues and personal problem sexual hangups, etc.). 3. It is the responsibility of Chicanas with families to educate their sons and thus change the attitudes of future generations. 4. Chicanas should understand that Chicanos face oppression and discrimination, but this does not mean that the Chicana should be a scapegoat for the man’s frustrations. 5. With involvement in the movement, marriages must change. Traditional roles for Chicanas are not acceptable or applicable. RESOLUTIONS I. We, as mujeres de La Raza, recognize the Catholic Church as an oppressive Institution and do hereby resolve to break away and not go to it to bless our unions. II. Whereas: Unwanted pregnancies are the basis of many social problems, and Whereas: The role of Mexican-American women has traditionally been limited to the home, and Whereas: The need for self-determination and the right to govern their own bodies is a necessity for the freedom of all people, therefore, BE IT RESOLVED: That the National Chicana Conference go on record as supporting free family planning and free and legal abortions for all women who want or need them. III. Whereas: Due to socio-economic and cultural conditions, Chicanas are often heads of households, i.e., widows, divorcees, unwed mothers, or deserted mothers, or must work to supplement family income, and Whereas: Chicana motherhood should not preclude educational, political, social, and economic advancement, and Whereas: There is a critical need for a 24-hour childcare center in Chicano communities, therefore, BE IT RESOLVED: That the National Chicana Conference go on record as recommending that every Chicano community promote and set up 24-hour day care facilities, and that it be further resolved that these facilities will reflect the concept of La Raza as the united family, and on the basis of brotherhood (La Raza), so that men, women, young, and old assume the responsibility for the love, care, education, and orientation of all the children of Aztl
an. IV. Whereas: Dr. Goldzieher of SWRF has conducted an experiment on Chicana women of westside San Antonio, Texas, using a new birth control drug, and Whereas: No human being should be used for experimental purposes, therefore, BE IT RESOLVED: That this Conference send telegrams to the American Medical Association condemning this act. Let it also be resolved that each Chicana women’s group and each Chicana present at the conference begin a letter writing campaign to: Dr. Joseph Goldzleher, Director c/o SW Foundation for Research & Education San Antonio, Texas

Chicanos, the 1960s, and Heritage

RELIGION I. Recognize the Plan de Aztl
an II. Take over already existing Church resources for community use, i.e., health, Chicano awareness, public information of its resources, etc. III. Oppose any institutionalized religion. IV. Revolutionary change of Catholic Church or for it to get out of the way. V. Establish communication with the barrio and implement programs of awareness to the Chicano movement. C 1971 Source: Mirta Vidal, Chicanas Speak Out! Women: New Voice of La Raza. Copyright
by Pathfinder Press. Reprinted by permission. http://latino.sscnet.ucla.edu/research/docs/chicanas/ vidal.htm.

361. Excerpts from Marjorie Heins, Strictly Ghetto Property: The Story of Los Siete de La Raza, 1972 The Mission District of San Francisco has almost always been a multi-Latino barrio where Mexicans have shared the streets with Central, South, and Caribbean Americans. Consequently, the culture of the area has often differed from that of the rest of California. Caribbean musical sounds were usual and its ideas were more what many Chicanos at the time called Third World. In 1969, two plainclothes policemen approached seven young men while they were moving furniture. An altercation followed and an officer died from a gunshot wound. Swarms of officers went to the building, fired automatic rifles, and flooded the building with tear gas. In Santa Cruz, seven youths were later arrested for murder and attempted murder. All were Central American—four Salvadorans, one Nicaraguan, and one Honduran. They had been involved in the Mission Rebels, a youth group, but had been politicized by the times. At trial, the defendants insisted the police had drawn their guns. Since the police officers were in plain clothes, the young Central Americans did not know these men were police officers. The trial lasted a year and a half, and the seven were acquitted. ‘‘Los Siete’’ Defense Committee helped raise the consciousness of youth while it helped the defendants in their defense. The following is from a book about Los Siete, the seven. It shows the influence of the Chicano Movement in politicizing the Mission District and vice versa.

A little after 10:20 A.M. on May 1, 1969, a police officer was shot to death in San Francisco’s Latin barrio, the Mission District. Newspapers said that the dead cop and his partner had been attacked by members of a ‘‘burglary ring’’ they had staked out; police were seeking an undetermined number of ‘‘Latin hippie-types’’ as suspects. After a week of what the papers called ‘‘the largest manhunt in the history of Northern California,’’ six young Latin Americans were arrested for the murder. About a month later, I got involved in a short-lived underground newspaper called Dock of the Bay. Somebody on the staff mentioned that a new and probably newsworthy radical organization called Los Siete de la Raza had been formed in the Mission District. So on a hot June day I went to a small storefront in the heart of the Mission and spoke to a young man named Ralph Ruiz who was in charge of press relations for the organization. Los Siete de la Raza, Ralph told me, meant ‘‘the seven of the race,’’ or of the Latin American people, and it referred to the seven suspects in the recent cop

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killing, six of whom had been arrested. The new organization had been formed by friends of the seven, to help in their legal defense. I asked Ralph what the seven now under arrest were like. He said they were all ‘‘bad brothers,’’ a compliment in ghetto or barrio language, meaning they were tough. But, he added, they weren’t hoodlums, as the papers had said: several of them had been involved in recruiting other young Latinos for a special Readiness Program.… All six were politically radical. Ralph told me the media had already condemned the six with sensationalist headlines and strict adherence to the police version of the incident. In fact, he said, the two cops involved were a notorious plainclothes … One played the good guy and the other played the motherfucker.’’ It was the ‘‘good guy’’ who had been killed. Ralph said the six were considered heroes in the barrio for having stood up to these two ‘‘pigs.’’ My next stop was the office of the San Francisco Chronicle, the larger of the city’s two dailies, where I bought copies of all the back issues containing articles about the incident. After studying these articles, I understood what Ralph meant: the Chronicle had taken its stories from police announcements and the stories all played on racial stereotypes, leaving little room for doubt that all six Latinos charged with murder were guilty. From the articles and from my talk with Ralph I wrote my first story on Los Siete for Dock of the Bay. I began to follow the pre-trial hearings in the case, and to get to know other people in the Los Siete organization. One of them, Donna James, had attended San Francisco State College, been active in the recent strike there, and finally quit school to work with Los Siete full time. Like Ralph, Donna had known several of the ‘‘brothers,’’ as the six who were arrested came to be called. When, almost a year after the incident, Ramparts Press suggested I write a book on Los Siete, Donna agreed to give me help and advice. The need for such a book was obvious. The police hoped to convict all six in jail and with the help of the dead policeman’s widow had begun a vigorous pro capital punishment campaign. Mayor Joseph Alioto, conscious of the law-and-order reaction which followed the college strikes of 1968 and ’69, had called the suspects ‘‘punks’’ and offered a $5,000 reward for information leading to the capture of each. Responding to these pressures, the city’s mass media steered clear of any in-depth reportage about the lives of the six young men, the conditions in the Mission District which produced their confrontation with the two cops, or the political consciousness which led to the formation of the Los Siete defense organization.… Some of the changes Pinky noticed when he got out of jail had to do with rising political consciousness among La Raza people. A brown movement was beginning, which would replace feelings of hopelessness and inferiority among La Raza with pride and determination to change the conditions of their lives. This movement got its start in 1965 with the struggle of Chicano farmworkers in California’s San Joaquin Valley. C
esar Ch
avez, Dolores Huerta, and other organizers had founded the National Farm Workers Association (later the United Farmworkers Organizing Committee) in Delano, California, and in October 1965 joined with a largely Filipino union to strike against Delano grape growers for higher wages and union recognition. The growers refused to recognize the union and pretended there was no strike. They sprayed pesticides near the strikers, got injunctions against bullhorns and rallies, and imported scabs from skid rows, depressed rural areas, and Mexico.

Chicanos, the 1960s, and Heritage

The workers turned to boycotting Delano’s second largest grape grower, the Schenley Corporation. The strike and boycott captured the imaginations of Chicanos and other sympathetic people across the country. In San Francisco, protesters succeeded in stopping grape shipments when longshoremen refused to cross their picket line. The farmworkers’ symbol, a stylized eagle derived from an Aztec migration myth, appeared on buttons and, as graffiti, on the walls of Mission High. In March 1966, the farmworkers held a pilgrimage through three hundred miles of California’s San Joaquin Valley, from Delano to Sacramento. They marched behind an image of the Virgin of Guadalupe, Mexico’s patron saint, the same saint whose image was carried by Miguel Hidalgo and the Indians of his parish when they began the war for Mexican independence in 1810. ‘‘We are conscious of the historical significance of our pilgrimage,’’ the NFWA (National Farm Workers Association) wrote in its Plan of Delano. It is clearly evident that our paths travel through a valley well known to all Mexican farmworkers … because along this very same road, in this very same valley, the Mexican race has sacrificed itself for the last hundred years.… We are sons of the Mexican Revolution, a revolution of the poor seeking bread and justice.… Across the San Joaquin Valley, across California, across the entire Southwest of the United States, wherever there are Mexican people, wherever there are farmworkers, our movement is spreading like flames across a dry plain. When the farmworkers arrived in Sacramento they learned that Schenley had finally agreed to come to the bargaining table. Eventually, all the wine growers accepted the union. A few years later, the huge table-grape-growing corporations began to give in. The struggle spread to other parts of the country, and to other crops. Among those who marched to Sacramento was a young Chicano from south Texas, Aaron Manganiello. Manganiello was already a veteran of civil rights sit-ins, jazz tours with John Handy’s Freedom Band, and Berkeley’s Vietnam Day Committee. He would eventually have a strong influence on three of Los Siete Mario and Tony Mart
ınez and Nelson Rodr
ıguez and on the political direction of the organization that grew up around their case. (Manganiello was one of the first to emphasize the need for brown radicals to study Marxist literature.) With the growth of the farmworkers’ struggle, Manganiello, like many other politically minded brown people, saw the need for some kind of organized movement in the urban barrios. The Brown Berets were one response to this need. Founded by David S
anchez, who was once elected Los Angeles’s ‘‘outstanding high school student,’’ the Berets combined paramilitary-type training with a desire to establish cultural and political self-determination for La Raza in the Southwest, the area which the Chicano movement calls Aztl
an. In March 1968, the Berets led a massive walkout of Chicano high school students in Los Angeles. They were demanding courses in their cultural history, teachers who lived in their communities, bilingual instruction, an end to corporal punishment, and an end to students doing janitorial work. The walkout spread the name of the Brown Berets across the Southwest, and many young Chicanos began, unofficially, to call themselves Berets. Aaron Manganiello and a friend, Manuel G
omez, convinced the Los Angeles Berets to let them set up an official Northern California branch in Oakland. Chapters soon spread to barrios in dozens of cities throughout the country. The chapters

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varied in their political outlook. Many were strongly ‘‘cultural nationalist,’’ believing that Raza cultural unity was the best basis for organizing; others disagreed, feeling that this perspective was too narrow and could become damaging if an attachment to cultural traditions were to stand in the way of change.… Los Siete de la Raza began as a group of students and ex-students attempting to organize street youth around issues like police brutality. By the time the clinic and legal defense office were established in the spring of 1970, Los Siete was beginning to represent the interests of working families, the basic social unit in the Mission District. Coming out of a movement which consisted of students, radicals, and some street people, this was an essential transition. People within Los Siete were trying to develop the historical understanding and self-discipline they considered necessary attributes of true revolutionaries. In developing this understanding and discipline they had to struggle with anti-intellectualism. As with the Young Lords in New York, members of Los Siete were supposed to read each day; the books were then discussed in political education classes. This reading, in addition to work at the clinic or legal defense, writing for and selling Basta Ya!, raising money, leafleting, public speaking, and, for some, school, jobs, or children to care for, imposed a heavy schedule. As a result, Los Siete remained small, with an increasing number of friends who worked with Los Siete projects but weren’t actually members of the organization. One of the most impressive aspects of Los Siete was the personal changes in many of its members. Although some people left to form new groups, or just to give up politics for a while, those who remained grew more responsible, articulate, dedicated, and mellow. Almost everyone in the group learned to speak convincingly in public, to read carefully and think analytically, and to shoulder responsibility. The women in Los Siete grew stronger and more independent. Like the Young Lords, Los Siete fought machismo in political work as well as in personal relations. This was no easy fight, since some young men who were fairly sophisticated radicals and good workers still wanted their wives or girlfriends to stay home and keep out of political work. Stronger women in the organization made a conscious effort to step aside and let other women take the lead. People in Los Siete were trying to become revolutionaries, which necessarily required defining what ‘‘revolutionary’’ meant for brown people in the United States. Clearly it meant solidarity with wars of liberation such as the war in Indochina; and Los Siete, through Basta Ya!, tried to show people in the Mission that they, the Indochinese, and many guerrillas in Latin America had a common enemy: Yankee imperialism. ‘‘Revolutionary’’ also meant devoted to changing the entire social and economic system. Los Siete members believed partly because of their experience in poverty programs that in the long run reforms were not going to improve conditions for the masses of Latin people. But they realized they were at the beginning of a long revolutionary process. Their immediate goal was not to ‘‘start the revolution then and there,’’ as Bebe Melendez once put it, but to organize, educate, and learn from the people. ‘‘Revolutionary’’ for Los Siete also meant ‘‘internationalist’’; that is, rejecting cultural nationalism in favor of a class struggle which crossed racial and even national boundaries. But despite this opposition to cultural nationalism, Los Siete remained a brown organization. Its precise appeal was its concern for the needs of Latin people

Chicanos, the 1960s, and Heritage

in a predominantly Latin area. Its members felt there was no use combining with other groups to form a multiracial organization until a significant number of brown people had been united around revolutionary demands. It was also important to Los Siete to remain within the brown movement which, despite its fragmented nature and the diversity of its political ideologies, held a tremendous appeal for Chicano and Latin youth an appeal stemming from its proud, assertive new spirit, a spirit so important to people who have been discriminated against and taught they are inferior. It’s hard to say what success Los Siete has had after its first two years. The hostility of the powerful mass media has made its message difficult to spread; Los Siete’s available avenues of communication with its people aren’t nearly so powerful: a small, street-vended newspaper and day-to-day contacts at the clinic or legal defense office with people who often have little time to get involved in politics. But a few events toward the middle of 1971 indicated that people were beginning to make time. Meetings, leafleting, and picketing around a threatened eviction of the clinic in the early summer of 1971 mobilized neighborhood people and developed a strong core of Los Siete partisans. The landlord, who owned a pharmacy on the ground floor of the building, wanted to get rid of the clinic and rent to some ‘‘real doctors with real patients and real money,’’ as he put it, who would send people downstairs to buy at his store. (El Centro de Salud dispensed free drugs whenever possible and so didn’t provide any clients for the drug store.) When the landlord said he wouldn’t renew the lease, Los Siete called meetings with people who had used the clinic, asking them to pass the word and boycott the pharmacy. In the week that followed, the pharmacy lost fifty percent of its business. When the landlord still didn’t give in, picketing was begun. Insisting that community people must fight for the clinic or it wasn’t worth saving, Los Siete resisted the temptation to use outside pressure from friendly doctors or other, mostly white, health professionals. Enough community people responded a number of them housewives to convince the landlord to reconsider after only one day of picketing. The women who had come to the clinic’s defense would hopefully remain organized as a pressure group on health care issues in the Mission. It would seem that after two years, Los Siete was at least moving in the right direction; that more genuine contacts had been made, more trust established, than by radical organizations in the past especially in the Mission District, where political activity has been dominated either by the Democratic Party and its Mexican American friends, or by Office of Economic Opportunity-funded groups which are often full of opportunists. Los Siete is indigenous; it is not being paid by anyone to exist, and its members work mainly from idealistic motives as Tony Herrera put it, ‘‘dedicated heart and soul to serving the people.’’ Source: Marjorie Heins, Strictly Ghetto Property: The Story of Los Siete de La Raza (Berkeley, CA: Ramparts Press, 1972), pp. 11 12, 49 51, 203 206.

362. Excerpts from Robert Kistler, ‘‘Women ‘Pushed’ into Sterilization, Doctor Charges,’’ 1974 Sterilization has its roots in the Social Darwinist Eugenics Movement of the early 20th century when American eugenicists believed that people could be categorized according to intelligence and that the United States could

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genetically engineer its racial composition. The extreme position called for sterilization—a notion that was popular through the 1960s. There is evidence that even that individuals in President John F. Kennedy’s Peace Corp, established in 1961, promoted sterilization programs. Domestically sterilizations were a major problem in the Puerto Rican, Chicano, and Native American communities. The following article documents the existence of sterilizations at one of the nations major doctor training hospitals—the County/University of Southern California facility at Los Angeles. It was a prestigious facility where interns practiced on lowincome patients. A large percentage of these patients were minorities, especially Chicanos and Latinos. Physician Bernard Rosenfeld blew the whistle as the hospital used Latin patients for performing sterilizations without their consent. Often the women were given forms in English at the moment they were in labor. The women filed a $6 million law suit against the hospital. Rosenfeld who had no objection to abortion was horrified at the attitudes of fellow doctors who performed the sterilizations for racial and other reasons that included the fact that sterilization allowed the physicians to perform more complex surgical procedures. The only doctor who supported Rosenfeld and testified that these procedures were taking place was Juan Nieto. Thousands of women, mostly poor and minority were pushed into ‘‘voluntary’’ sterilization, according to Rosenfeld.

Thousands of women most of them from low-income, minority groups have been victimized by unregulated ‘‘voluntary’’ sterilization programs in some of the nation’s most prestigious hospitals, according to evidence compiled by a Los Angeles physician-researcher. Such abuses, the physician charges, historically have found fertile climates in the nation’s giant, core-city teaching complexes such as the Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center, where medicine is high-volume, often impersonal and practiced on patients who are generally poor, frightened and uneducated. It is within the halls of these massive, loosely regulated institutions, according to Dr. Bernard Rosenfeld, that women some while in the throes of childbirth have been cajoled, pressured and sometimes coerced into consenting to surgical sterilization. The operation is permanent and that chances of surgically reversing the procedure at some later date are relatively slight (between 20% and 30%, depending upon which study you believe). [The only physician who would corroborate Resenfeld was Dr. Juan Nieto, 25.] Source: Robert Kistler, ‘‘Women ‘Pushed’ into Sterilization, Doctor Charges,’’ Los Angeles Times, December 2, 1974, p. A1.

363. Excerpts from the Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project, c. 1971 Chicano activism was not confined to California or Texas but prevalent throughout the Midwest and the Pacific Northwest, that included the states of Oregon and Washington. Although not in the Northwest, Utah was part of this grouping. Many of the Chicano activists were children of migrant workers who had come to work in productive agricultural farmlands like those of the Yakima Valley. As students they were inspired by United Farm Workers (UFW) volunteers who drifted into the valleys and college campuses asking students to support the grape boycott. This activism on the campuses in the Northwest

Chicanos, the 1960s, and Heritage

began in the late 1960s with Chicano students making demands similar to their counterparts in the Southwest. University of Washington historian Professor Erasmos Gamboa, a student activist, has documented this history and broken the stereotype that Chicano history was a Texas-California affair. As with Southwest colleges and universities, the University of Washington became known in the late 1960s for student mobilizations against the war in Vietnam, against militarism on campus, and in favor of civil rights. Activism followed a familiar pattern: Chicano students were recruited by the Special Education Program in the fall of 1968, and soon afterward formed the United Mexican American Students (UMAS). The farmworkers were always a model. UMAS built links to the Yakima Valley and the local community. In the Seattle community, they helped found El Centro de la Raza, a clearinghouse for community organizations. All along, they pressed for the recruitment of more Mexican American students and the offering of Mexican American Studies classes. The following are personal testimonies of student leaders at the University of Washington. They represent the experiences of most Chicano and Latino students who made the transformation from first-generation workers to students. They had to endure the racism and alienation of college life and looked to each other for a support network.

PEDRO ACEVEZ Pedro Acevez was born in Wapato, Washington, and grew up in the nearby town of Toppenish. He grew up working on his father’s farm, as well as doing farm labor in Oregon and Washington, before attending Yakima Valley College and Central Washington University. He transferred to the University of Washington in 1969, a move partly made possible by combining scholarships for both groups. Acevez was active in MEChA de UW [Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztl
an at University of Washington], and served as its President for one year. During his first school year, he worked with a number of MEChA students to help channel a spontaneous farmworker walkout in Yakima Valley into a United Farm Workers (UFW) organizing drive. During the 1970 71 school year, he served as a resident advisor on the ‘‘Chicano Floor,’’ or 5th floor, of Lander Hall though fired for returning home during an illness, student protests successfully pushed the UW to reinstate him. Since graduating from the UW in 1975, Acevez has worked as a high school and community college math and science teacher, and currently works for the UW’s Health Sciences Center. RICARDO S. MART
INEZ, MECHA DE UW; JUDGE: SUPERIOR COURT; U.S. DISTRICT COURT Judge Ricardo Mart
ınez was born in the small town of Mercedes in Southern Texas. While in Texas, his family worked in the fields picking cotton, tomatoes, and other crops. When he was six, Martinez’s family moved to Lynden, Washington, another small farming town. His family was one of the first Latino families that decided to stay in this area of Washington instead of living there seasonally as migrant workers. Ricardo Mart
ınez earned a BA from the University of Washington in 1975, and his JD in 1980. While attending the University of Washington, he was a member of Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano/a de Aztl
an (MEChA).

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After earning his law degree, Mart
ınez worked for the King County Prosecutor’s office. In 1989, Martinez began his career as a judge, serving on the King County Superior Court until 1998, and as a U.S. Magistrate Judge for the Western District of Washington until 2004. He currently serves as a United States District Judge for the Western District of Washington having been nominated by President Bush in 2003 and confirmed by the Senate in 2004. Quotes on staying in Washington: ‘‘Why not? Let’s stay here.’’ His parents decided to stay in Washington because they thought moving between migrant farming camps was not good for the children. On MEChA: ‘‘The central theme was the ongoing struggle.’’ All the Chicano groups on campus shared the same goal. On the Chicano Floor: ‘‘Living on the floor in Lander Hall that was designated for Chicano students.’’ ‘‘All students of color come together for the betterment of everyone.’’ The need for all people of color to work together.
BOCANEGRA MECHA; EL CENTRO DE LA RAZA, LA JUAN JOSE RAZA UNIDA PARTY; AMERICAN INDIAN MOVEMENT Juan Jos
e Bocanegra was born in Reynosa, Tamaulipas, Mexico and grew up in Corpus Chisti, Texas. While he was in school in the 1950s and 1960s, Corpus Christi’s public school system was being desegregated ‘‘it was like a big war between Mexicanos and Anglos in that part of the country,’’ he recalled. After attending Texas A&I University [which has since changed its name to Texas A&M University] in Kingsville, TX from 1967 71, Bocanegra moved to Seattle to get a graduate degree in social work from the University of Washington. He has been a prominent Seattle-based activist ever since. During the 1970s, he played an active role in the Chicano movement and broader Third World Peoples’ movements. He helped lead a successful campaign to diversify the UW School of Social Work and create its multi-ethnic practice program. He was active with the group that occupied the Beacon Hill School and founded El Centro de la Raza in 1972. In 1973, Bocanegra moved to Brownsville, Texas for six months to run for City Council for the La Raza Unida Party but was disqualified because he had not established legal residence there. After returning to Seattle, he assumed leadership over the South Seattle Community College Chicano English as a Second Language (ESL) Program after Roberto Maestas left that position to lead El Centro de la Raza. He was also active in the American Friends Service Committee’s Third World Coalition. During the early to mid-1970s, Bocanegra became involved in solidarity work with local American Indian struggles including the American Indian Movement (AIM), Frank’s Landing demonstrations with the Nisqually Tribe, the Puyallup Tribe’s takeover of the Cascadia Center in 1976, and the 1976 Trail of Self-Determination. ~ PCUN; UFW; SEIU LOCAL 6; STITCH REBECCA SALDANA Rebecca Salda~ na’s father was a Mexican immigrant, and she was born and raised in Seattle. While attending Seattle University, Salda~ na became active in farmworker solidarity campaigns, and after graduating became an organizer with Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste (PCUN), a farmworker’s union in Oregon. At PCUN, she coordinated its boycott of NORPAC Foods. Afterward, she was hired

Chicanos, the 1960s, and Heritage

to be a Community Mobilizer for the Fair Trade Apple Campaign for the United Farmworkers of America (UFW) a campaign that applied lessons learned in fair trade coffee campaigns to the domestic agricultural sector. She currently organizes janitors for SEIU Local 6, and is a Board Member of STITCH ‘‘a network of women unionists, organizers, and activists that builds connections between Central American and U.S. women organizing for economic justice.’’ Her father’s family immigrated from Mexico to the U.S. where he became a migrant farmworker. He eventually settled in Seattle, where he found a union job. ‘‘I am a product of my parents.’’ Rebecca describes the influence of her father’s labor union and her mother’s religion on her own political development. ‘‘The Farm Workers of the Urban Area: From organizing farmworkers to organizing janitors.’’ Source: The Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project, http://www.civilrights.washington. edu. Courtesy of Pedro Acevez.

364. Excerpts from Lau v. Nichols, 1974 The demand for bilingual education has been part of the immigrant experience from the beginning. When the Germans arrived en mass they set up Germanspeaking schools, as did Jews and other immigrants. Throughout the earlytwentieth century, Mexicans and other Latinos set up Spanish-speaking classes. It was a proven pedagogical method. In the mid 1960s, President Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) told California Congressman Edward Roybal that when he was a school teacher in an all–Mexican American school, he found the students to be intelligent and that the only thing that held them back was the knowledge of English. The schools held them back until they learned English. Johnson considered it a waste of time and resources—why not teach them courses such as mathematics and history in Spanish and transition them into English instead of keeping them in the same class dooming them to failure? By the 1970s there were many Chinese American students and other immigrant children who were falling through the cracks and they demanded teachers who would address linguistic problems. They built on the Chicano experience and the movement toward bilingual education that came to a head in the mid 1960s. In the 1970s, bilingual education suffered setbacks when a federal judge in Denver decided in Keyes v. School District Number One, 413 U.S. 189 (1973), litigated by the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF), the premier Mexican American legal defense organization, that placing children in bilingual classes violated anti-segregation laws. In 1974, the Supreme Court in Lau v. Nichols ordered federally funded school districts to ‘‘take affirmative steps’’ to give special help to students who did not know English and to open special programs for them. The ruling addressed language-based discrimination. The ruling was made in response to an Asian American suit in San Francisco but it had farreaching implications for the Latino community.

LAU ET AL v. NICHOLS ET AL. CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT No. 72-6520. Argued December 10, 1973 Decided January 21, 1974.

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The failure of the San Francisco school system to provide English language instruction to approximately 1,800 students of Chinese ancestry who do not speak English, or to provide them with other adequate instructional procedures, denies them a meaningful opportunity to participate in the public educational program and thus violates § 601 of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bans discrimination based ‘‘on the ground of race, color, or national origin,’’ in ‘‘any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance,’’ and the implementing regulations of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. Pp. 565 569. 483 F. 2d 791, reversed and remanded. Douglas, 1., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Brennan, Marshall, Powell, and Rehnquist, J.J., joined. Stewart, 1., filed an opinion concurring in the result, in which Burger, C. J., and Blackmun, J., joined, post, p. 569. White, 1., concurred in the result. Blackmun, 1., filed an opinion concurring in the result, in which Burger, C. 1., joined, post, p. 571. Edward H. Steinman argued the cause for petitioners. With him on the briefs were Kenneth Hecht and David C. Moon. Thomas M. O’Connor argued the cause for respondents. With him on the brief were George E. Krueger and Burk E. Delventhal. Assistant Attomey General Pottinger argued the cause for the United States as amicus curiae urging reversal. With him on the brief were Solicitor General Bork, Deputy Solicitor General Wallace, Mark L. Evans, and Brian K. Landsberg. Mr. Justice Douglas delivered the opinion of the Court. The San Francisco, California, school system was integrated in 1971 as a result of a federal court decree, 339 F. Supp. 1315. See Lee v. Johnson, 404 U.S. 1215. The District Court found that there are 2,856 students of Chinese ancestry in the school system, 400 who do not speak English. Of those who have that language deficiency, about 1,000 are given supplemental courses in the English language. About 1,800, however, do not receive that instruction. This class suit brought by non-English-speaking Chinese students against officials responsible for the operation of the San Francisco Unified School District seeks relief against the unequal educational opportunities, which are alleged to violate, inter alia, the Fourteenth Amendment. No specific remedy is urged upon us. Teaching English to the students of Chinese ancestry who do not speak the language is one choice. Giving instructions to this group in Chinese is another. There may be others. Petitioners ask only that the Board of Education be directed to apply its expertise to the problem and rectify the situation. The District Court denied relief. The Court of Appeals affirmed, holding that there was no violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment or of § 601 of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 78 Stat. 252, 42 U.S.C. § 2000d, which exclude from participation in federal financial assistance, recipients of aid which discriminate against racial groups. 483 F. 2d 791. One judge dissented.… We granted the petition for certiorari because of the public importance of the question presented, 412 U.S. 938. The Court of Appeals reasoned that ‘‘Every student brings to the starting line of his educational career different advantages and disadvantages caused in part by social, economic, and cultural background, created and continued completely apart from any contribution by the school system,’’ 483 F. 2d, at 797. Yet in our view the case may not be so easily decided. This is a public school system of California and

Chicanos, the 1960s, and Heritage

§ 71 of the California Education Code states that ‘‘English shall be the basic language of instruction in all schools.’’ That section permits a school district to determine ‘‘when and under what circumstances instruction may be given bilingually.’’ That section also states as ‘‘the policy of the state’’ to insure ‘‘the mastery of English by all pupils in the schools,’’ and bilingual instruction is authorized ‘‘to the extent that it does not interfere with the systematic, sequential, and regular instruction of all pupils in the English language.’’ Moreover, § 8573 of the Education Code provides that no pupil shall receive a diploma of graduation from grade 12 who has not met the standards of proficiency in ‘‘English,’’ as well as other prescribed subjects. Moreover, by § 12101 of the Education Code (Supp. 1973) children between the ages of six and 16 years are (with exceptions not material here) ‘‘subject to compulsory full-time education.’’ Under these state-imposed standards there is no equality of treatment merely by providing students with the same facilities, textbooks, teachers, and curriculum, for students who do not understand English are effectively foreclosed from any meaningful education. Basic English skills are at the very core of what these public schools teach. Imposition of a requirement that, before a child can effectively participate in the educational program, he must already have acquired those basic skills is to make a mockery of public education. We know that those who do not understand English are certain to find their classroom experiences wholly incomprehensible and in no way meaningful. We do not reach the Equal Protection Clause argument which has been advanced but rely solely on § 601 of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 2000d, to reverse the Court of Appeals. That section bans discrimination based ‘‘on the ground of race, color, or national origin,’’ in ‘‘any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.’’ The school district involved in this litigation receives large amounts of federal financial assistance. The Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW), which has authority to promulgate regulations prohibiting discrimination in federally assisted school systems, 42 U.S.C. § 2000d-l, in 1968 issued one guideline that ‘‘School systems are responsible for assuring that students of a particular race, color, or national origin are not denied the opportunity to obtain the education generally obtained by other students in the system.’’ 33 Fed. Reg. 4956. In 1970, HEW made the guidelines more specific, requiring school districts that were federally funded ‘‘to rectify the language deficiency in order to open’’ the instruction to students who had ‘‘linguistic deficiencies.’’ 35 Fed. Reg. 11595. By § 602 of the Act, HEW is authorized to issue rules, regulations, and orders to make sure that recipients of federal aid under its jurisdiction conduct any federally financed projects consistently with § 601. HEW’s regulations, 45 CPR § 80.3 (b) (1), specify that the recipients may not.… ‘‘(ii) Provide any service, financial aid, or other benefit to an individual which is different, or is provided in a different manner, from that provided to others under the program; ‘‘(iv) Restrict an individual in any way in the enjoyment of any advantage or privilege enjoyed by others receiving any service, financial aid, or other benefit under the program.’’

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Discrimination among students on account of race or national origin that is prohibited includes ‘‘discrimination … in the availability or use of any academic … or other facilities of the grantee or other recipient.’’ Id., § 80.5 (b). Discrimination is barred which has that effect even though no purposeful design is present: a recipient ‘‘may not … utilize criteria or methods of administration which have the effect of subjecting individuals to discrimination’’ or have ‘‘the effect of defeating or substantially impairing accomplishment of the objectives of the program as respect individuals of a particular race, color, or national origin.’’ Id., § 80.3 (b) (2). It seems obvious that the Chinese-speaking minority receive fewer benefits than the English-speaking majority from respondents’ school system which denies them a meaningful opportunity to participate in the educational program all earmarks of the discrimination banned by the regulations. In 1970, HEW issued clarifying guidelines, 35 Fed. Reg. 11595, which include the following: ‘‘Where inability to speak and understand the English language excludes national origin-minority group children from effective participation in the educational program offered by a school district, the district must take affirmative steps to rectify the language deficiency in order to open its instructional program to these students.’’ ‘‘Any ability grouping or tracking system employed by the school system to deal with the special language skill needs of national origin-minority group children must be designed to meet such language skill needs as soon as possible and must not operate as an educational deadend or permanent track.’’ Respondent school district contractually agreed to ‘‘comply with title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 … and all requirements imposed by or pursuant to the Regulation’’ of HEW (45 CPR pt. 80) which are ‘‘issued pursuant to that title …’’ and also immediately to ‘‘take any measures necessary to effectuate this agreement.’’ The Federal Government has power to fix the terms on which its money allotments to the States shall be disbursed. Oklahoma v. CSc, 330 U.S. 127, 142 143. Whatever may be the limits of that power, Steward Machine Co. v. Davis, 301 U.S. 548, 590 et seq., they have not been reached here. Sen. Humphrey, during the floor debates on the Civil Rights Act of 1964, said: ‘‘Simple justice requires that public funds, to which all taxpayers of all races contribute, not be spent in any fashion which encourages, entrenches, subsidizes, or results in racial discrimination.’’ We accordingly reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals and remand the case for the fashioning of appropriate relief. Reversed and remanded. Source: 414 U.S. 563 (1974).

365. Excerpt from Manuel A. Machado, Jr., Listen Chicano!, 1978 During the 1960s and 1970s there was a break between old-time Mexican American historians and a newer generation of Chicano scholars who challenged what they considered the myths of history. One of the older scholars was Manuel Antonio Machado, Jr., a history professor at the University of Montana who had grown up in a different generation. A native of Nogales, Arizona, his book Listen Chicano! was meant to be provocative and a slap at the emerging field of Chicano history. The title was a parody on C. Wright Mills, Listen, Yankee (1960). Machado reduced the history of racism toward

Chicanos, the 1960s, and Heritage

people of Mexican origin in the United States to cultural misunderstandings. Machado was of the school that Mexicans should pull themselves up by their bootstraps. He based his chapter on C
esar Ch
avez on conservative author Ralph de Toledano’s Little Cesar.

The Anglo has oppressed you, the Anglo has robbed you, the Anglo has stolen your dignity as a man and as a Mexican. Therefore, rally against the continuation of a system that negates your culture and oppresses your body and overthrow the shackles of Anglo imperialism. Lord save us from the propagandists! Such calls to battle become more and more strident throughout the Southwest and California. The Mexican American is an awakening minority, becoming aware of its potential as a political and economic force, and the imperative of organization makes necessary a resort to demagoguery of the basest sort. The demagoguery of the Mexican American militant attempts to polarize all Mexican Americans into a single ethnic unit and subsequently organize this group into a viable political force. Such a maneuver bases itself upon a series of assumptions that convert the Mexican American into a homogeneous unit in which all members respond in similar if not identical fashion to a given set of stimuli. The first of these assumptions, unfortunately, is that of ethnic homogeneity. It is assumed that the Mexican American comprises a single socio-economic unit. This belief, often held sacrosanct by both Anglos and militant Chicanos, fails to take into account the historical complexity of Mexican American evolution. There exists a patent failure to recognize the vast cultural and economic differences extant within the Mexican American community today. Moreover, the homogeneity myth is fed by the lack of scholarly investigation about the Mexican American. With the exception of some industrious anthropologists who studied family life in Mexican American communities, very little work has been done to analyze the role of the Mexican American in the life of the United States. No generally accepted historical periods exist, and as a result, difficulties arise in an attempt to place this group in perspective. Scholarly investigators instead bare their bleeding hearts and join the hue and cry for Chicano solidarity and Brown Power while at the same time flagellating themselves with mea culpas. Divisions within the Mexican American community further destroy ethnic cohesiveness. Mexican Americans often do not like the term Mexican American. If they are descended from the old stock that participated in the initial settlement of the Southwest and California, Mexican denotes a lower class status. Waves of immigration from Mexico since 1848 exacerbated further the divisions between old families and new arrivals. In addition, as some Mexican Americans progressed up the socio-economic ladder, they blended more and more with the ultimately dominant Anglo culture. Mexican Americans are represented in all levels of society, and their socio-economic positions condition their responses more than any sort of amorphous appeal to ethnicity. As if ethnic solidarity were not enough, the new Chicano militancy declares a racial solidity. Such a declaration negates absolutely the hybridized racial stock that is in fact Mexican. The Mexican American is told that his primary racial stock is Indian and not Spanish. His heroes are Mexico’s Indian heroes. Spanish glory and

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achievement become, for the Mexican American, an ugly story of oppression and subjugation of Mexico’s Indian people. Nonsense! In the last ten years the Mexican American emerged as a power to be reckoned with in the Southwest and in California. In New Mexico, the Mexican American, who comprises approximately 40 percent of the population, received political sops. Dennis Ch
avez for years served as United States Senator from that state. Upon his death, Joseph Montoya went to Washington. In Texas, Congressman Henry Gonz
alez represents San Antonio. Yet, the last decade has seen the Mexican American organize and become a force at the local level. Mexican Americans now sit on school boards in Los Angeles, in Texas towns, and in communities throughout the Southwest. City councilmen in many areas now have Spanish surnames. All of this adds up to an imperative for consideration. Into the breach steps the academician and the bleeding heart liberal, terms that occasionally might interchange without loss of meaning. Awareness by liberal spirits of restlessness in the barrios means that programs and agencies must be organized to compensate for the centuries of wrongdoing by the Anglos. An orgy of selfmortification begins. Suddenly the Mexican American becomes a ‘‘problem’’ to be studied but not necessarily understood. We must, proclaim the suddenly interested academics and liberals, care for our little brown brethren of barrio and field. We must give to them the benefits of the American way of life. We must eliminate those things in their existence that keep them from becoming full and active participants in the American way. In short, we must have ‘‘gringoized’’ Mexicans, fitting into some sort of arbitrary cultural mold. Such ego flagellation becomes, at best, disgusting, for there is no attempt to understand the diverse cultural backgrounds that comprise the somewhat inchoate group called the Mexican American. Instead, the Anglo reformer, like the Chicano militant, grasps at the idea of cultural and racial homogeneity and attempts to force the Mexican American into an arbitrary slot. Admittedly, the vast majority of the evidence on the Mexican American remains to be unearthed. Yet, it shall stay subsumed in archives and statistical tables until a modicum of rationality is restored and visceral, conditioned responses become aberrations instead of accepted hypotheses. In all probability, the best approach to the study of the Mexican American lies in the area of comparative history. The vast majority of the Mexican American population inhabits a strip of land approximately two hundred miles north of the Mexican border in the Southwest and California. This political boundary, however, does not divide sharply the cultures that have fused in that region. As a result, the blending of cultures in the Southwest and in California necessitates analyses of those cultural components that have blended as well as conflicted when diverse cultural groups came into contact with each other. This personalized essay will attempt to suggest some of those elements that need study before the Mexican American can be viewed with any sort of perspective. As a Mexican American, it offends me to receive condescension from Anglo colleagues and associates. Yet, their attitudes are, in a sense, predictable because they have no perspective in which to view the Mexican American. A broadened mind would certainly be more liberal than one that operated on a given set of assumptions. Source: Manuel A. Machado, Jr. Listen, Chicano! (Chicago: Nelson-Hall Inc., 1978), pp. xiii xvi.

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366. Excerpt from the University of California Regents v. Bakke, 1978 In 1973, Allan Bakke, a 33-year-old Caucasian man, was denied admission to the University of California Medical School at Davis because of his age and a bad interview. His test scores were higher than the specially admitted minority students. Two years later he applied again. He was again rejected even though his test scores were considerably higher than most of the minorities admitted under a special program that reserved 16 out of 100 possible spaces for minorities on the basis that there were not enough black, brown, or Native American medical doctors. Bakke sued, claiming that his rights under the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment had been violated. The court ruled in his favor holding that race could not be a factor in admissions. It said nothing about legacy admissions (i.e., the children of alumni or wealthy donors). The following is an excerpt of the ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Medical School of the University of California at Davis (hereinafter Davis) had two admissions programs for the entering class of 100 students the regular admissions program and the special admissions program. Under the regular procedure, candidates whose overall undergraduate grade point averages fell below 2.5 on a scale of 4.0 were summarily rejected. About one out of six applicants was then given an interview, following which he was rated on a scale of 1 to 100 by each of the committee members (five in 1973 and six in 1974), his rating being based on the interviewers’ summaries, his overall grade point average, his science courses’ grade point average, his Medical College Admissions Test (MCAT) scores, letters of recommendation, extracurricular activities, and other biographical data, all of which resulted in a total ‘‘benchmark score.’’ The full admissions committee then made offers of admission on the basis of their review of the applicant’s file and his score, considering and acting upon applications as they were received. The committee chairman was responsible for placing names on the waiting list and had discretion to include persons with ‘‘special skills.’’ A separate committee, a majority of whom were members of minority groups, operated the special admissions program. The 1973 and 1974 application forms, respectively, asked candidates whether they wished to be considered as ‘‘economically and/or educationally disadvantaged’’ applicants and members of a ‘‘minority group’’ (blacks, Chicanos, Asians, American Indians). If an applicant of a minority group was found to be ‘‘disadvantaged,’’ he would be rated in a manner similar to the one employed by the general admissions committee. Special candidates, however, did not have to meet the 2.5 grade point cut-off and were not ranked against candidates in the general admissions process. About one-fifth of the special applicants were invited for interviews in 1973 and 1974, following which they were given benchmark scores, and the top choices were then given to the general admissions committee, which could reject special candidates for failure to meet course requirements or other specific deficiencies. The special committee continued to recommend candidates until 16 special admission selections had been made. During a four-year period, 63 minority [438 U.S. 265, 266] students were admitted to Davis under the special program and 44 under the general

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program. No disadvantaged whites were admitted under the special program, though many applied. Respondent, a white male, applied to Davis in 1973 and 1974, in both years being considered only under the general admissions program. Though he had a 468 out of 500 score in 1973, he was rejected since no general applicants with scores less than 470 were being accepted after respondent’s application, which was filed late in the year, had been processed and completed. At that time, four special admission slots were still unfilled. In 1974, respondent applied early, and though he had a total score of 549 out of 600, he was again rejected. In neither year was his name placed on the discretionary waiting list. In both years, special applicants were admitted with significantly lower scores than respondent’s. After his second rejection, respondent filed this action in state court for mandatory, injunctive, and declaratory relief to compel his admission to Davis, alleging that the special admissions program operated to exclude him on the basis of his race in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, a provision of the California Constitution, and 601 of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which provides, inter alia, that no person shall on the ground of race or color be excluded from participating in any program receiving federal financial assistance. Petitioner cross-claimed for a declaration that its special admissions program was lawful. The trial court found that the special program operated as a racial quota, because minority applicants in that program were rated only against one another, and 16 places in the class of 100 were reserved for them. Declaring that petitioner could not take race into account in making admissions decisions, the program was held to violate the Federal and State Constitutions and Title VI. Respondent’s admission was not ordered, however, for lack of proof that he would have been admitted but for the special program. The California Supreme Court, applying a strict-scrutiny standard, concluded that the special admissions program was not the least intrusive means of achieving the goals of the admittedly compelling state interests of integrating the medical profession and increasing the number of doctors willing to serve minority patients. Without passing on the state constitutional or federal statutory grounds, the court held that petitioner’s special admissions program violated the Equal Protection Clause. Since petitioner could not satisfy its burden of demonstrating that respondent, absent the special program, would not have been admitted, the court ordered his admission to Davis. Held: The judgment below is affirmed insofar as it orders respondent’s admission to Davis and invalidates petitioner’s special admissions program [438 U.S. 265, 267], but is reversed insofar as it prohibits petitioner from taking race into account as a factor in its future admissions decisions. [Dissenting Opinion] Opinion of Mr. Justice Brennan, Mr. Justice White, Mr. Justice Marshall, and Mr. Justice Blackmun, concurring in the judgment in part and dissenting in part. The Court today, in reversing in part the judgment of the Supreme Court of California, affirms the constitutional power of Federal and State Governments to act affirmatively to achieve equal opportunity for all. The difficulty of the issue presented whether government may use race-conscious programs to redress the continuing effects of past discrimination [438 U.S. 265, 325] and the mature consideration which each of our Brethren has brought to it have resulted in many opinions, no single one speaking for the Court. But this should not and must not mask the central meaning of today’s opinions: Government may take race into

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account when it acts not to demean or insult any racial group, but to remedy disadvantages cast on minorities by past racial prejudice, at least when appropriate findings have been made by judicial, legislative, or administrative bodies with competence to act in this area. The Chief Justice and our Brothers Stewart, Rehnquist, and Stevens, have concluded that Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 78 Stat. 252, as amended, 42 U.S.C. 2000d et seq., prohibits programs such as that at the Davis Medical School. On this statutory theory alone, they would hold that respondent Allan Bakke’s rights have been violated and that he must, therefore, be admitted to the [Davis] Medical School. Our Brother Powell, reaching the Constitution, concludes that, although race may be taken into account in university admissions, the particular special admissions program used by petitioner, which resulted in the exclusion of respondent Bakke, was not shown to be necessary to achieve petitioner’s stated goals. Accordingly, these Members of the Court form a majority of five affirming the judgment of the Supreme Court of California insofar as it holds that respondent Bakke ‘‘is entitled to an order that he be admitted to the University.’’ 18 Cal. 3d 34, 64, 553 P.2d 1152, 1172 (1976). Our Nation was founded on the principle that ‘‘all Men are created equal.’’ Yet candor requires acknowledgment that the Framers of our Constitution, to forge the 13 Colonies into one Nation, openly compromised this principle of equality with its antithesis: slavery. The consequences of this compromise are well known and have aptly been called our ‘‘American Dilemma.’’ Still, it is well to recount how recent the time has been, if it has yet come, when the promise of our principles has flowered into the actuality of equal opportunity for all regardless of race or color. The Fourteenth Amendment, the embodiment in the Constitution of our abiding belief in human equality, has been the law of our land for only slightly more than half its 200 years. And for half of that half, the Equal Protection Clause of the Amendment was largely moribund so that, as late as 1927, Mr. Justice Holmes could sum up the importance of that Clause by remarking that it was the ‘‘last resort of constitutional arguments.’’ Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200, 208 (1927). Worse than desuetude, the Clause was early turned against those whom it was intended to set free, condemning them to a ‘‘separate but equal’’ status before the law, a status [438 U.S. 265, 327] always separate but seldom equal. Not until 1954 only 24 years ago was this odious doctrine interred by our decision in Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (Brown I), and its progeny, which proclaimed that separate schools and public facilities of all sorts were inherently unequal and forbidden under our Constitution. Even then inequality was not eliminated with ‘‘all deliberate speed.’’ Brown v. Board of Education, 349 U.S. 294, 301 (1955). In 1968, and again in 1971, for example, we were forced to remind school boards of their obligation to eliminate racial discrimination root and branch. And a glance at our docket and at dockets of lower courts will show that even today officially sanctioned discrimination is not a thing of the past. Against this background, claims that law must be ‘‘color-blind’’ or that the datum of race is no longer relevant to public policy must be seen as aspiration rather than as description of reality. This is not to denigrate aspiration; for reality rebukes us that race has too often been used by those who would stigmatize and oppress minorities. Yet we cannot and, as we shall demonstrate, need not under our

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Constitution or Title VI, which merely extends the constraints of the Fourteenth Amendment to private parties who receive federal funds let color blindness become myopia which masks the reality that many ‘‘created equal’’ have been treated within our lifetimes as inferior both by the law and by their fellow citizens. [438 U.S. 265, 328] … The threshold question we must decide is whether Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 bars recipients of federal funds from giving preferential consideration to disadvantaged members of racial minorities as part of a program designed to enable such individuals to surmount the obstacles imposed by racial discrimination. We join Parts I and V-C of our Brother Powell’s opinion and three of us agree with his conclusion in Part II that this case does not require us to resolve the question whether there is a private right of action under Title VI. In our view, Title VI prohibits only those uses of racial criteria that would violate the Fourteenth Amendment if employed by a State or its agencies; it does not bar the preferential treatment of racial minorities as a means of remedying past societal discrimination to the extent that such action is consistent with the Fourteenth Amendment. The legislative history of Title VI, administrative regulations interpreting the statute, subsequent congressional and executive action, and the prior decisions of this Court compel this conclusion. None of these sources lends support to the proposition that Congress intended to bar all race-conscious efforts to extend the benefits of federally financed programs to minorities who have been historically excluded from the full benefits of American life.… The history of Title VI from President Kennedy’s request that Congress grant executive departments and agencies authority [438 U.S. 265, 329] to cut off federal funds to programs that discriminate against Negroes through final enactment of legislation incorporating his proposals reveals one fixed purpose: to give the Executive Branch of Government clear authority to terminate federal funding of private programs that use race as a means of disadvantaging minorities in a manner that would be prohibited by the Constitution if engaged in by government. This purpose was first expressed in President Kennedy’s June 19, 1963, message to Congress proposing the legislation that subsequently became the Civil Rights Act of 1964. [438 U.S. 265, 330] Rep. Celler, the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and the floor manager of the legislation in the House, introduced Title VI in words unequivocally expressing the intent to provide the Federal Government with the means of assuring that its funds were not used to subsidize racial discrimination inconsistent with the standards imposed by the Fourteenth and Fifth Amendments upon state and federal action. ‘‘The bill would offer assurance that hospitals financed by Federal money would not deny adequate care to Negroes. It would prevent abuse of food distribution programs whereby Negroes have been known to be denied food surplus supplies when white persons were given such food. It would assure Negroes the benefits now accorded only white students in programs of high[er] education financed by Federal funds. It would, in short, assure the existing right to equal treatment in the enjoyment of Federal funds. It would not destroy any rights of private property or freedom of association.’’ 110 Cong. Rec. 1519 (1964). It was clear to Rep. Celler that Title VI, apart from the fact that it reached all federally funded activities even in the absence of sufficient state or federal control to invoke the Fourteenth or Fifth Amendments, was not placing new substantive

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limitations upon the use of racial criteria, but rather was designed to extend to such activities ‘‘the existing right to equal treatment’’ enjoyed by Negroes under those Amendments, and he later specifically defined the purpose of Title VI in this way: ‘‘In general, it seems rather anomalous that the Federal Government should aid and abet discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin by granting money [438 U.S. 265, 331] and other kinds of financial aid. It seems rather shocking, moreover, that while we have on the one hand the 14th Amendment, which is supposed to do away with discrimination since it provides for equal protection of the laws, on the other hand, we have the Federal Government aiding and abetting those who persist in practicing racial discrimination. ‘‘It is for these reasons that we bring forth Title VI. The enactment of Title VI will serve to override specific provisions of law which contemplate Federal assistance to racially segregated institutions.’’ Id., at 2467. Rep. Celler also filed a memorandum setting forth the legal basis for the enactment of Title VI which reiterated the theme of his oral remarks: ‘‘In exercising its authority to fix the terms on which Federal funds will be disbursed … Congress clearly has power to legislate so as to insure that the Federal Government does not become involved in a violation of the Constitution.’’ Id., at 1528. Other sponsors of the legislation agreed with Rep. Celler that the function of Title VI was to end the Federal Government’s complicity in conduct, particularly the segregation or exclusion of Negroes, inconsistent with the standards to be found in the antidiscrimination provisions of the Constitution. Rep. Lindsay, also a member of the Judiciary Committee, candidly acknowledged, in the course of explaining why Title VI was necessary, that it did not create any new standard of equal treatment beyond that contained in the Constitution: ‘‘Both the Federal Government and the States are under constitutional mandates not to discriminate. Many have raised the question as to whether legislation is required at all. Does not the Executive already have the power in the distribution of Federal funds to apply those conditions which will enable the Federal Government itself to live up to the mandate of the Constitution and to require [438 U.S. 265, 332] States and local government entities to live up to the Constitution, most especially the 5th and 14th amendments?’’ Id., at 2467. He then explained that legislation was needed to authorize the termination of funding by the Executive Branch because existing legislation seemed to contemplate the expenditure of funds to support racially segregated institutions. Ibid. The views of Reps. Celler and Lindsay concerning the purpose and function of Title VI were shared by other sponsors and proponents of the legislation in the House. Nowhere is there any suggestion that Title VI was intended to terminate federal funding for any reason other than consideration of race or national origin by the recipient institution in a manner inconsistent with the standards incorporated in the Constitution. The Senate’s consideration of Title VI reveals an identical understanding concerning the purpose and scope of the legislation. Sen. Humphrey, the Senate floor manager, opened the Senate debate with a section-by-section analysis of the Civil Rights Act in which he succinctly stated the purpose of Title VI: ‘‘The purpose of title VI is to make sure that funds of the United States are not used to support racial discrimination. In many instances the practices of segregation or discrimination, which title VI seeks to end, are unconstitutional. This is clearly so

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wherever Federal funds go to a State agency which engages in racial discrimination. It may also be so where Federal funds go to support private, segregated institutions, under the decision in Simkins v. Moses H. Cone Memorial Hospital, 323 F.2d 959 (C. A. 4, 1963) [cert. denied, 376 U.S. 938 (1964)]. In all cases, such discrimination is contrary to national policy, and to the moral sense of the Nation. Thus, Title VI is simply [438 U.S. 265, 333] designed to insure that Federal funds are spent in accordance with the Constitution and the moral sense of the Nation.’’ Id., at 6544. Sen. Humphrey, in words echoing statements in the House, explained that legislation was needed to accomplish this objective because it was necessary to eliminate uncertainty concerning the power of federal agencies to terminate financial assistance to programs engaging in racial discrimination in the face of various federal statutes which appeared to authorize grants to racially segregated institutions. Ibid. Although Senator Humphrey realized that Title VI reached conduct which, because of insufficient governmental action, might be beyond the reach of the Constitution, it was clear to him that the substantive standard imposed by the statute was that of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. Senate supporters of Title VI repeatedly expressed agreement with Sen. Humphrey’s description of the legislation as providing the explicit authority and obligation to apply the standards of the Constitution to all recipients of federal funds. Sen. Ribicoff described the limited function of Title VI: ‘‘Basically, there is a constitutional restriction against discrimination in the use of Federal funds; and Title VI simply spells out the procedure to be used in enforcing that restriction.’’ Id., at 13333. Other strong proponents of the legislation in the Senate repeatedly expressed their intent to assure that federal funds would only be spent in accordance with constitutional standards. See remarks of Sen. Pastore, Id., at 7057, 7062; Sen. Clark, Id., at 5243; Sen. Allott, Id., at 12675, 12677 [438 U.S. 265, 334]. Respondent’s contention that Congress intended Title VI to bar affirmativeaction programs designed to enable minorities disadvantaged by the effects of discrimination to participate in federally financed programs is also refuted by an examination of the type of conduct which Congress thought it was prohibiting by means of Title VI. The debates reveal that the legislation was motivated primarily by a desire to eradicate a very specific evil: federal financial support of programs which disadvantaged Negroes by excluding them from participation or providing them with separate facilities. Again and again supporters of Title VI emphasized that the purpose of the statute was to end segregation in federally funded activities and to end other discriminatory uses of race disadvantaging Negroes.… The conclusion to be drawn from the foregoing is clear. Congress recognized that Negroes, in some cases with congressional acquiescence, were being discriminated against in the administration of programs and denied the full benefits of activities receiving federal financial support. It was aware that there were many federally funded programs and institutions which discriminated against minorities in a manner inconsistent with the standards of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments but whose activities might not involve sufficient state or federal action so as to be in violation of these Amendments. Moreover, Congress believed that it was questionable whether the Executive Branch possessed legal authority to terminate the funding of activities on the ground that they discriminated racially against Negroes in a manner violative of the standards contained in the Fourteenth and Fifth [438 U.S.

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265, 336] Amendments. Congress’ solution was to end the Government’s complicity in constitutionally forbidden racial discrimination by providing the Executive Branch with the authority and the obligation to terminate its financial support of any activity which employed racial criteria in a manner condemned by the Constitution. Of course, it might be argued that the Congress which enacted Title VI understood the Constitution to require strict racial neutrality or color blindness, and then enshrined that concept as a rule of statutory law. Later interpretation and clarification of the Constitution to permit remedial use of race would then not dislodge Title VI’s prohibition of race-conscious action. But there are three compelling reasons to reject such a hypothesis. First, no decision of this Court has ever adopted the proposition that the Constitution must be color blind. See infra, at 355 356. Second, even if it could be argued in 1964 that the Constitution might conceivably require color blindness, Congress surely would not have chosen to codify such a view unless the Constitution clearly required it.… It is inconceivable that Congress intended to encourage voluntary efforts to eliminate the evil of racial discrimination while at the same time forbidding the voluntary use of race-conscious remedies to cure acknowledged or obvious statutory violations. Yet a reading of Title VI as prohibiting all action predicated upon race which adversely [438 U.S. 265, 337] affects any individual would require recipients guilty of discrimination to await the imposition of such remedies by the Executive Branch. Indeed, such an interpretation of Title VI would prevent recipients of federal funds from taking race into account even when necessary to bring their programs into compliance with federal constitutional requirements. This would be a remarkable reading of a statute designed to eliminate constitutional violations, especially in light of judicial decisions holding that under certain circumstances the remedial use of racial criteria is not only permissible but is constitutionally required to eradicate constitutional violations. For example, in Board of Education v. Swann, 402 U.S. 43 (1971), the Court held that a statute forbidding the assignment of students on the basis of race was unconstitutional because it would hinder the implementation of remedies necessary to accomplish the desegregation of a school system: ‘‘Just as the race of students must be considered in determining whether a constitutional violation has occurred, so also must race be considered in formulating a remedy.’’ Id., at 46. Surely Congress did not intend to prohibit the use of racial criteria when constitutionally required or to terminate the funding of any entity which implemented such a remedy. It clearly desired to encourage all remedies, including the use of race, necessary to eliminate racial discrimination in violation of the Constitution rather than requiring the recipient to await a judicial adjudication of unconstitutionality and the judicial imposition of a racially oriented remedy. Third, the legislative history shows that Congress specifically eschewed any static definition of discrimination in favor of broad language that could be shaped by experience, administrative necessity, and evolving judicial doctrine. Although it is clear from the debates that the supporters of Title VI intended to ban uses of race prohibited by the Constitution and, more specifically, the maintenance of segregated [438 U.S. 265, 338] facilities, they never precisely defined the term ‘‘discrimination,’’ or what constituted an exclusion from participation or a denial of benefits on the ground of race. This failure was not lost upon its opponents. Sen. Ervin complained:

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‘‘The word ‘discrimination,’ as used in this reference, has no contextual explanation whatever, other than the provision that the discrimination ‘is to be against’ individuals participating in or benefiting from federally assisted programs and activities on the ground specified. With this context, the discrimination condemned by this reference occurs only when an individual is treated unequally or unfairly because of his race, color, religion, or national origin. What constitutes unequal or unfair treatment? Section 601 and Section 602 of Title VI do not say. They leave the determination of that question to the executive department or agencies administering each program, without any guideline whatever to point out what is the congressional intent.’’ 110 Cong. Rec. 5612 (1964). See also remarks of Rep. Abernethy (Id., at 1619); Rep. Dowdy (Id., at 1632); Sen. Talmadge (Id., at 5251); Sen. Sparkman (Id., at 6052). Despite these criticisms, the legislation’s supporters refused to include in the statute or even provide in debate a more explicit definition of what Title VI prohibited. The explanation for this failure is clear. Specific definitions were undesirable, in the views of the legislation’s principal backers, because Title VI’s standard was that of the Constitution and one that could and should be administratively and judicially applied. See remarks of Sen. Humphrey (Id., at 5253, 6553); Sen. Ribicoff (Id., at 7057, 13333); Sen. Pastore (Id., at 7057); Sen. Javits (Id., at 5606 5607, 6050). Indeed, there was a strong emphasis throughout [438 U.S. 265, 339] Congress’ consideration of Title VI on providing the Executive Branch with considerable flexibility in interpreting and applying the prohibition against racial discrimination. Attorney General Robert Kennedy testified that regulations had not been written into the legislation itself because the rules and regulations defining discrimination might differ from one program to another so that the term would assume different meanings in different contexts. This determination to preserve flexibility in the administration of Title VI was shared by the legislation’s supporters. When Sen. Johnston offered an amendment that would have expressly authorized federal grantees to take race into account in placing children in adoptive and foster homes, Sen. Pastore opposed the amendment, which was ultimately defeated by a 56 29 vote, on the ground that federal administrators could be trusted to act reasonably and that there was no danger that they would prohibit the use of racial criteria under such circumstances. Id., at 13695. Congress’ resolve not to incorporate a static definition of discrimination into Title VI is not surprising. In 1963 and 1964, when Title VI was drafted and debated, the courts had only recently applied the Equal Protection Clause to strike down public racial discrimination in America, and the scope of that Clause’s nondiscrimination principle was in a state of flux and rapid evolution. Many questions, such as whether the Fourteenth Amendment barred only de jure discrimination or in at least some circumstances reached de facto discrimination, had not yet received an authoritative judicial resolution. The congressional debate reflects an awareness of the evolutionary [438 U.S. 265, 340] change that constitutional law in the area of racial discrimination was undergoing in 1964. In sum, Congress’ equating of Title VI’s prohibition with the commands of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, its refusal precisely to define that racial discrimination which it intended to prohibit, and its expectation that the statute would be administered in a flexible manner, compel the conclusion that Congress intended the meaning of the statute’s prohibition to evolve with the interpretation of the

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commands of the Constitution. Thus, any claim that the use of racial criteria is barred by the plain language of the statute must fail in light of the remedial purpose of Title VI and its legislative history. The cryptic nature of the language employed in Title VI merely reflects Congress’ concern with the then-prevalent use of racial standards as a means of excluding or disadvantaging Negroes and its determination to prohibit absolutely such discrimination. We have recently held that ‘‘When aid to construction of the meaning of words, as used in the statute, is available, there certainly can be no ‘rule of law’ which forbids its use, however clear the words may appear on ‘superficial examination.’’’ Train v. Colorado Public Interest Research Group, 426 U.S. 1, 10 (1976), quoting United States v. American Trucking Assns., 310 U.S. 534, 543 544 (1940). This is especially so when, as is the case here, the literal application of what is believed to be the plain language of the statute, assuming that it is so plain, would lead to results in direct conflict with Congress’ unequivocally expressed legislative purpose. [438 U.S. 265, 341] … Properly construed, therefore, our prior cases unequivocally show that a state government may adopt race-conscious programs if the purpose of such programs is to remove the disparate racial impact its actions might otherwise have and if there is reason to believe that the disparate impact is itself the product of past discrimination, whether its own or that of society at large. There is no question that Davis’ program is valid under this test. Certainly, on the basis of the undisputed factual submissions before this Court, Davis had a sound basis for believing that the problem of under representation of minorities was substantial and chronic and that the problem was attributable to handicaps imposed on minority applicants by past and present racial discrimination. Until at least 1973, the practice of medicine in this country was, in fact, if not in law, largely the prerogative of whites. In 1950, for example, while Negroes [438 U.S. 265, 370] constituted 10% of the total population, Negro physicians constituted only 2.2% of the total number of physicians. The overwhelming majority of these, moreover, were educated in two predominantly Negro medical schools, Howard and Meharry. By 1970, the gap between the proportion of Negroes in medicine and their proportion in the population had widened: The number of Negroes employed in medicine remained frozen at 2.2% while the Negro population had increased to 11.1%. The number of Negro admittees to predominantly white medical schools, moreover, had declined in absolute numbers during the years 1955 to 1964. Odegaard 19. Moreover, Davis had very good reason to believe that the national pattern of underrepresentation of minorities in medicine would be perpetuated if it retained a single admissions standard. For example, the entering classes in 1968 and 1969, the years in which such a standard was used, included only 1 Chicano and 2 Negroes out of the 50 admittees for each year. Nor is there any relief from this pattern of underrepresentation in the statistics for the regular admissions program in later years. Davis clearly could conclude that the serious and persistent underrepresentation of minorities in medicine depicted by these statistics is the result of handicaps under which minority applicants labor as a consequence of a background of deliberate, purposeful discrimination against minorities in education [438 U.S. 265, 371] and in society generally, as well as in the medical profession. From the inception of our national life, Negroes have been subjected to unique legal disabilities impairing access to equal educational opportunity. Under slavery, penal sanctions were

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imposed upon anyone attempting to educate Negroes. After enactment of the Fourteenth Amendment, the States continued to deny Negroes equal educational opportunity, enforcing a strict policy of segregation that itself stamped Negroes as inferior, Brown I, 347 U.S. 483 (1954), that relegated minorities to inferior educational institutions, and that denied them intercourse in the mainstream of professional life necessary to advancement. See Sweatt v. Painter, 339 U.S. 629 (1950). Segregation was not limited to public facilities, moreover, but was enforced by criminal penalties against private action as well. Thus, as late as 1908, this Court enforced a state criminal conviction against a private college for teaching Negroes together with whites. Berea College v. Kentucky, 211 U.S. 45. See also Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896). Green v. County School Board, 391 U.S. 430 (1968), gave explicit recognition to the fact that the habit of discrimination and the cultural tradition of race prejudice cultivated by centuries of legal slavery and segregation were not immediately dissipated when Brown I, supra, announced the constitutional principle that equal educational opportunity and participation in all aspects of American life could not be denied on the basis of race. Rather, massive official and private resistance prevented, and to a lesser extent still prevents, attainment of equal opportunity in education at all levels and in the professions. The generation of minority students applying to Davis Medical School since it opened in 1968 most of whom [438 U.S. 265, 372] were born before or about the time Brown I was decided clearly have been victims of this discrimination. Judicial decrees recognizing discrimination in public education in California testify to the fact of widespread discrimination suffered by California-born minority applicants; many minority group members living in California, moreover, were born and reared in school districts in Southern States segregated by law. Since separation of schoolchildren by race ‘‘generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone,’’ Brown I, supra, at 494, the conclusion is inescapable that applicants to medical school must be few indeed who endured the effects of de jure segregation, the resistance to Brown I, or the equally debilitating pervasive private discrimination fostered by our long history of official discrimination, cf. Reitman v. Mulkey, 387 U.S. 369 (1967), and yet come to the starting line with an education equal to whites. Moreover, we need not rest solely on our own conclusion that Davis had sound reason to believe that the effects of past discrimination were handicapping minority applicants to the Medical School, because the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, the expert agency charged by Congress with promulgating regulations enforcing Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, see supra, at 341 343, has also reached the conclusion that race may be taken into account in situations [438 U.S. 265, 373] where a failure to do so would limit participation by minorities in federally funded programs, and regulations promulgated by the Department expressly contemplate that appropriate race-conscious programs may be adopted by universities to remedy unequal access to university programs caused by their own or by past societal discrimination. See supra, at 344 345, discussing 45 CFR 80.3 (b) (6) (ii) and 80.5 (j) (1977). It cannot be questioned that, in the absence of the special admissions program, access of minority students to the Medical School would be severely limited and, accordingly, race-conscious admissions would be deemed an appropriate response under these federal regulations. Moreover, the

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Department’s regulatory policy is not one that has gone unnoticed by Congress. See supra, at 346 347. Indeed, although an amendment to an appropriations bill was introduced just last year that would have prevented the secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare from mandating race-conscious programs in university admissions, proponents of this measure, significantly, did not question the validity of voluntary implementation of race-conscious admissions criteria. See ibid. In these circumstances, the conclusion implicit in the regulations that the lingering effects of past discrimination continue to make race-conscious remedial programs appropriate means for ensuring equal educational opportunity in universities deserves considerable judicial deference. See, e. g., Katzenbach v. Morgan, 384 U.S. 641 (1966); UJO, 430 U.S., at 175 178 (opinion concurring in part).… We disagree with the lower courts’ conclusion that the Davis program’s use of race was unreasonable in light of its objectives. First, as petitioner argues, there are no practical means by which it could achieve its ends in the foreseeable future without the use of race-conscious measures. With respect to any factor (such as poverty or family educational background) that may be used as a substitute for race as an indicator of past discrimination, whites greatly outnumber racial minorities simply because whites make up a far larger percentage of the total population and therefore far outnumber minorities in absolute terms at every socio-economic level … For example, of a class of recent medical school applicants from families with less than $10,000 income, at least 71% were white.… Of all 1970 families headed by a [438 U.S. 265, 377] person not a high school graduate which included related children under 18, 80% were white and 20% were racial minorities. Moreover, while race is positively correlated with differences in GPA and MCAT scores, economic disadvantage is not. Thus, it appears that economically disadvantaged whites do not score less well than economically advantaged whites, while economically advantaged blacks score less well than do disadvantaged whites.… These statistics graphically illustrate that the University’s purpose to integrate its classes by compensating for past discrimination could not be achieved by a general preference for the economically disadvantaged or the children of parents of limited education unless such groups were to make up the entire class. Source: U.S. Supreme Court, University of California Regents v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265 (1978), 438 U.S. 265, Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, Certiorari to the Supreme Court of California, No. 76 811, Argued October 12, 1977, Decided June 28, 1978.

367. Excerpts from Celeste Durant, ‘‘California Bar Exam—Pain and Trauma Twice a Year,’’ 1978 The basis of affirmative action is to level the playing field. President Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) initiated economic programs to help minority groups make it in society. He felt that there could not be political and social equality without economic opportunity. President Richard M. Nixon (1913–1994) also supported affirmative action programs believing that a prosperous middle class would vote Republican. Universities and colleges supported affirmative action because they wanted diverse campuses and educated professionals that would serve all Americans. Law schools and medical schools still give preferences to applicants from rural communities that have a shortage of

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professionals. In the late 1970s, at the time of the Bakke decision, which held that race could not be used as a factor in admitting students, in primary care medicine, there was one white doctor practicing medicine for every 700 whites; the ratio for blacks was 1:3,800; for Native Americans, 1:20,000; and for Latinos, 1:30,000. At this same time, the United States ranked 18th among industrialized nations in health care, primarily because of the low quality of care received by minorities—today, in 2007, the United States ranks 37th. The rationale for admitting minority students to medical school was that as doctors they would return to their communities to practice medicine.

California has about 60,000 lawyers a ratio of one lawyer for every 385 people. In San Francisco, the attorney Mecca for the state, the ratio is one lawyer for every 100 citizens. In Los Angeles County, the ratio is one for every 363.… Although there are no exact figures, it is estimated that only between 1% and 2% of the state’s lawyers are members of minority groups. According to statistics gathered by the Third World Coalition, a group of minority law school students and faculty members in the state, only 28% of the black and Spanish-named applicants passed the Bar on the first try, compared to a rate of 61% for all applicants in 1975, the most recent year for which data are available. The coalition says also that as of 1975, there was one Anglo lawyer for every 530 Anglos, one Asian lawyer for every 1,750 Asians, one black lawyer for every 3,441 blacks, one Spanish-surnamed lawyer for every 9,482 Spanish-surnamed persons and one American Indian lawyer for every 50,000 American Indians. Source: Celeste Durant, ‘‘California Bar Exam Times, August 27, 1978, p. C1.

Pain and Trauma Twice a Year,’’ Los Angeles

368. Excerpts from an Interview with Ernie Cort
es, Jr., 2002 The Alinsky Institute was founded by Saul Alinsky (1909–1972). Community organizer and founder of the Industrial Areas Foundation, Alinksy began organizing in Chicago in the 1930s. He started an institute to train grassroots organizers. Alinsky was extremely influential in the Mexican American community, helping found the Community Service Organization (1947) in California.
sar Cha
vez and influenced organizers such as Jose
Angel It, in turn, trained Ce Guti
errez. Ernesto Cort
es Jr., educated at Texas A&M, dropped out of a graduate program in economics at the University of Texas at Austin to help organize Chicano workers in Texas. Wanting to perfect organizing to a science, he moved to Chicago and studied at the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF). In 1974, Cort
es returned to San Antonio where he helped organize the Communities Organized for Public Service (COPS). This civic organization lobbied for essential city services like public sewer, drainage and other public infrastructure for inner-city neighborhoods. COPS was organized though the parish councils of a coalition of interdenominational San Antonio churches. Cort
es helped organize twelve IAF groups in Texas and similar groups—such as the United Neighborhood Organizations (UNO)—in Los Angeles, California. In the transcript that follows, Cort
es describes his involvement in these and other groups, and his philosophy of organizing people to bring about change.

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DT:

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[Introduction] It’s April 12th, year 2002. We’re in Austin, Texas, and visiting with Ernie Cort
es, who’s been involved with organizing and inspiring people to be involved on environmental issues, public health issues, educational fronts, through groups such as COPS [Communities Organized for Public Service], Valley Interfaith, and many others that he’s helped build.… Growing up in San Antonio, you saw a lot of things that didn’t seem to be quite they way they were supposed to be, so it’s hard to say how you develop those kind of interests. The environmental concerns came to me, frankly, out of concern for public health questions, toxicity of water, concern about lack of sewage, impact on health of air quality, and this whole analogy that I like to use, which is not mine originally, but the coal miner’s canary, that the environment is like the coal miner’s canary. And, so we have to kind of be concerned, about the environment, not only because, for it’s own sake, but because of its impact on the quality of human life, or even the viability and the sustainability of human life. It comes from me all kinds of places, the Book of Genesis gives us from early on, believing that, that means that we have dominion or responsibility, or stewardship over the Earth and that means we have to, that means quality of life for other, all living creatures, species. So, I don’t know where it came from my parents, my church, my school, my community.… I never trained with [Saul] Alinsky, per se, I went to the Industrial Areas Foundation, which is Alinsky’s training institute, I met Mr. Alinsky, but I never really worked with him that closely. The guy I worked with at the IAF was Ed Chambers, who was the National Director of Industrial Areas Foundation and worked, built IAF organizations in Chicago and [Rash Shash Shaneer] other places. But long before I went to IAF, I knew … [its] concerns about civil rights issues and I learned an incredible amount of, [things about] issues relating to public health, in organizing farmworkers, and working with the farmworkers in organizing Red River Valley and learning about the impact of pesticides. How [pesticides have an impact] on human beings, on farmworkers, in particular. And, also, on us, from eating, thinking about, you know, the impact of eating foods which have been laced with pesticides, and the dangers of the carcinogenic impact that they have. So, it was not, I mean, it was, there was a lot of other things that were going on, in the sixties when I grew up and was going to school, which affected how I saw the world, so IAF was, was not, didn’t shape my interest in those issues. When I went to IAF, it was to learn how to do something about those concerns, not, not to understand those concerns. Are there some writers … people there, alive or dead, people you met or didn’t meet, that might’ve helped influence you. I can’t point to a particular writer who influenced my thinking about environmental questions.… I’ve read enormous numbers of reports about things like impact of chemical … petrol chemical products, … When, … in Houston area, learning about … the quality of water in the Rio Grande River and the impact of … dumping pollutants from whether it’s steel plants, or lead plants,

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or etc., … it’s hard to say any particular writer shaped my thinking about issues in environment and public health. It seems that one of the techniques that you have for organizing people, or at least understanding why people want to organize themselves, is because you listen to them.… Can you … give some examples of when you went down to the Valley and you helped put together [a] farmworkers community down there, and how you might have learned from them? In the Valley I was with the Valley Interfaith … in organizing that organization … I [conducted] … hundreds of relational meetings, one-on-one meetings, listening sessions, … having conversations with people who are leaders and potential leaders and found out about their concerns, about everything from the burning of toxic waste off the coast of Brownsville, [to] the concerns that people had about the food chain, the impact of burning there was a chemical waste management corporation … [it] was gonna … burn toxic waste and they were concerned about that.… We began to organize around that particular issue, but then there also the question of a lack of sewers in the colonias, … questions of asbestos in the paint in schools, which is making kids sick, molding, … which is contributing to absenteeism and enormous visits to doctors.… We would meet with people … connected with clinics in the Rio Grande Valley … [the people] would talk about the impact of Third World diseases, … because of the lack of sewers, secondary sewage systems that existed. In El Paso, the same kind of concerns came up, meeting with people with the public health systems and the hospitals.… Before I began organizing, … I was on the Board of Managers at the Bexar County Hospital District and … [I] began to hear about [the] kind of impact that things like lead paints [had, and] through a process of conversations and listening to lots and lots of people, you find out … that they really care … [and] want to do something about [it]. What they lack is power. And they lack someone to teach them how to act on their concerns.… [Their demands are] very specific and concrete so that they can do something about [these concerns].… Can you give me an example of your work with COPS [Communities Organized for Public Service]? … The organization got heavily involved … in the whole question of … degradation of the water supply, by trying to limit development over the sensitive areas of the recharge zone … it had to do with just zoning questions, and … making sure that there were the adequate safeguards. [COPS] got involved in elections, they got involved in fights over the kind and quality of development.… unfortunately Texas and San Antonio are notoriously, … lax and, and unvigilant, lacking in vigilance and diligence in dealing with … these safeguards … [mobilizing people] requires an outraged [community which is] effectively organized and mobilized … to make sure the public officials do what they’re told.… The organization … got involved in fairly significant fights to clean up the toxicity around Kelly Air Force Base … forcing Kelly to do some major cleanups in the areas around the base.… The organizations

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that we build, the IAF organizations are political organizations, … they don’t pretend to be faith-based organizations … However, … they operate and they act on their … values … And their values are shaped by their faith, traditions, whether it be Catholicism, Judaism, Islam, the different forms of … different Christian traditions, Baptist, Episcopalian, Methodists, etc. So … they bring to the table a commitment and an understanding and a hope for realization of these two sets of values … The values of a free and open society, the political values which come out of understanding the seminal and and meaningful documents of our tradition: the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights … various important statements, the Emancipation Proclamation, Northwest Ordinances, which kind of affirm and and reaffirm, you know, our commitment to certain things which are real important to us … Freedom of expression. So, there is this kind of … secular faith, that is part of our tradition and part of what makes us tick and makes us, and … animates us, and gives us some energy. This faith in … democratic traditions and institutions. At the same time, … [there is the] understanding and that commitment and that tradition is also connected to and challenged by and agitated by, hopefully, and shaped by commitment to the values of Judaism and Christianity, particularly those which have to do with concern for the stranger and the Exodus, the stories that come out of the Exodus tradition. A fear of God, as over against the Pharaoh, a fear of God as over against secular authorities, which means a disposition to to take the kinds of risks that are, you know, that are, that are, conceptualized, and and the stories of the Exodus traditions, whether it be the midwives who refused to yield the Pharaoh’s beckon beckoning, or or the prophetic tradition, where the prophets go after the muckety-mucks, as I call them, the powerful people, the the king … and the land owners who control the institutions … dispossessing people of their land and of their work and of their very lives … So, … there is a strong, powerful tradition which animates and shapes and motivates people, gives meaning to their lives and we draw heavily upon, and are nourished by, particularly in in battles which require patience and and constant vigilance and constant endurance. We draw heavily upon those traditions and the resources of those traditions to sustain us over time.… Justice takes on many different dimensions and many different understandings, … there is the kind of justice which comes out of the biblical traditions. The word mishpot comes to mind, which has to do with the concrete realization of certain ideals, in certain municipal institutions, which have to do with the fact that no one should be left out, no one should be deprived of the means to participation in … the prosperity of the community, and that’s, in the prophetic tradition, this notion of mishpot meant that no matter who you were that you were not to be, no one could take away from you the tools that were necessary [for life] your house, your … farm implements, … In order to be able to participate in the shared prosperity of the community. Even so, … if

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you owed money to a money lender, if you owed money to a landlord, and even though that debt was legitimate if it meant, in order to pay the debt, if it meant losing your capacity to have shelter, your capacity to own, to make a livelihood, that justice would not allow that to happen, and so therefore it is incumbent upon the people who ran these municipal courts to not deprive you of that, and to and to rule in your favor … against the powerful interest of people who were … the economic power players of that particular lot and community. And so that understanding, that tradition is something which animates us, and frankly, it is reflected in the populace tradition in Texas … The Homestead Exemption comes out of that understanding, and the notion of a safety net comes out of that understanding that … there’s a level below which people should not ever fall and so you may have an enterprise economy with risk taking and dynamism and etc. and winners and losers, but there’s a there’s a level below which people never fall. And, so therefore, that we never deprive people of certain basic things, which are important for their humanity.… Adam Smith and The Wealth of Nations said that … a just society is one where a working person can appear in public without shame, without being humiliated, … that meant for, in his time, being able to have a decent shirt, pair of shoes.… [It] was important for the people who ran that society to understand that everyone should have the access to those things which are necessary to appear in public without feeling humiliated, and so, then the question for us is, … in the year 2002, … what is necessary for a person to be in public without shame? And I always argue, it’s more than just clothes, it’s also access to health care, it’s access to education, it’s access … to running water, … shelter. In 1949, the Republican controlled Congress, … led by Sen. Robert Taft, passed a Housing Act … of 1949 [that] said that every American, no matter who he or she is … should be given, and should be provided with a decent home and a suitable living environment. An Israeli scholar by the name of [Avishai] Margalit, wrote a book called A Decent Society and he said that there’s a difference between a civilized society and a decent society and a just society. A civilized society is where the people of that society are nice to each other and kind and sensitive.… But you can have a civilized society which is not a decent society because that civil [and] decent society requires that the institutions of that society do not humiliate adults. So you could have a society where the institutions humiliate adults … which treat adults as second-class citizens, even though people are nice to each other.… In South Texas … with Mexicans, … and in San Antonio … institutions … denied people the right to participate. You had institutions which treated adults as second-class citizens to be seen and not heard. That is not a decent society … So, in order for there to be a decent society, those institutions, whether it be the school, the workplace, the universities, have got to make it possible for people to feel that they are first-class citizens. They have a right to be heard, a right to participate, a right to deliberate. Now, in order for it to be just, it means that they have to have access … to

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the resources of that society which are necessary in order for them to maintain a decent standard of living, health care, education, full employment, which enables them to participate, again, in, we call the shared prosperity, or what the Hebrew community would call the shalom of the community.… San Antonio was not a decent society because there were and it certainly was not a just society because you had whole communities which were left out of access to public facilities, that did not have flood control in their communities. When it rained, … people couldn’t go out. Their homes were flooded, … ipso facto unjust society.… It was not a decent society because when they tried to participate, … there was a resistance to their participation. And it took the organizing of COPS in order to open up … the institutions, whether it be the political institutions, etc. to enable them to participate. The same thing is true in the Rio Grande Valley, when you have people who live in whole colonias and hovels, who don’t have water, who don’t have access to sewer.… Then, clearly, you know, that community is not just. If, when you pay people less than a decent standard of living, when you pay people poverty wages and when you subsidize, you know, and give corporate welfare … to developers … who sustain poverty wages, then it’s clearly you have an unjust system, and in order to change that unjust system, you’re going to have often times, you have to create or enable institutions to develop capacity, and that means, in the process of making it just, you make it decent as well.… BM: COPS is Communities Organized for Public Service, O.K., which is an IAF organization in San Antonio. COPS Metro Alliance, it’s made up of about 60 different institutions, congregations, unions, neighborhood groups. All across San Antonio, particularly, in the beginning stages, in the South and West and East sides, in the older areas. Now, it’s much much more expanded and in a much more metropolitan scope, and so it includes areas all over the city of San Antonio, from Helotes on the Northeast, or the Northwest side, excuse me, to congregations on the Southeast side, and so it’s a broad coalition of institutions, an organization of organizations whose purpose is to develop capacity to teach people effectively how to participate in the political, social, and cultural life of the community. EC: [Cort
es describes the IAF network] … One of the greatest leaders of the COPS organization was a priest named Albert Benavides [who] unfortunately drowned in 1984. In Valley Interfaith, you have people like Carmen Anaya, Father (inaudible), Estella Sosa-Garza, O.K. In El Paso, in La Pisa organization. You have enormous numbers of people in Dallas Area Interfaith, Rev. Gerald Britt, here in Austin, Regina Rogaolf. You have a whole range of leaders Jewish, from Jewish congregations to Roman Catholic churches, school leaders, school principals like, Claudia Santa Maria, parent leaders like Lourdes Sanmaron, … who’ve been developed and and they’ve learned through action and reflection, through research actions, through relational meetings, through house meetings, … all across the state of Texas they’ve developed skills and understanding and wisdom … about public and social

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life.… Most of them, all of them, had curiosity and imagination and, but they didn’t look like they were smart, they didn’t look like they were effective, they didn’t look like they were people who could could be significant.… Over the course of a year and out of the thousand, you find … 50, 60, 75 [emerge] who’s got enough talent, and then they go back and look for people among the other people that you met with and so that you begin to create this kind of collaborative group of leaders … who you mentor and you guide and you teach and you develop, and they, in turn, go out and do the same for others.… The challenge of this work is … not to organize the community, but to find the people who are going to do the organizing, to find the people who got the energy, the imagination, the curiosity, the talent to do that kind of work, and so that then you then mentor and guide and teach and put them in different situations and develop their capacity to act and develop their capacity to gain recognition and significance. And, so therefore, organizing them becomes really the teaching of these skills and these insights, and and helping people understand and interpret their experiences, tell their stories in creative and effective ways, tell their stories to news media, tell their stories to political figures, tell their stories to corporate leaders, so that they begin, they begin to create a different kind of conversation.… A different understanding of what is essential to the life of that particular community, whether it is about schools, health care, jobs, etc.… The role of time horizon for a corporate executive is the quarter.… The role of a time horizon for a politician is the next election. The role of a time horizon for for a hospital, or educational bureaucrat is the budget cycle. But, the role of a time horizon for a grandmother is a generation, because she’s concerned about what happens to her grandchildren. So, the difficulty is finding people who understand the role of time horizons … And, when you have, you know, kind of a faddish, kind of instantaneous kind of … society where people, again, expect immediate results, … it’s hard to get people to think about what is the role of a time horizon.… [in getting diverse people to work together] If they just want to be comfortable, they feel good, then you just kind of connect to people that you know and feel good about.… If you want to have power, then you got to go beyond just your identity, politics. You got to go beyond your comfort zone and take some risks with people that you don’t know very well, that you don’t feel so comfortable with, that you can’t make small talk with.… The question then is how to teach people how to engage and how to have a conversation with somebody whose background they don’t know anything about or they never went to school with or they don’t know what to talk about and they feel awkward at first.… And get them over those feelings of awkwardness, or hostility, or fear, or anger, or whatever it is that comes to mind, because people, we’re taught, we’re taught to be fearful, we’re taught to be, to be dismissive, we’re taught to to basically, to be hostile, … to be other, whether that otherness is sexuality, whether the otherness is religion, whether the

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otherness is race, whether the otherness is faith … you try to teach people what we call relational power, … and the difficulty is that people operate out of … unilateral power, which is zero sum ‘‘I win, you lose.’’ … So, that the gains we get are going to come only at your expense. Well, if you teach people, no, now wait a minute, there is a different way of thinking about this, … there is a concept of relational power which means we can both win.… But that means, by expanding the pie. We can both win by creating more capacity.… If we don’t allow … other people to play the prisoner’s dilemma on us … where they isolate us or separate us, [i.e.] the prisoner’s dilemma; I do it to you before … you do it to me. Rather than … teaching people to know about each other’s stories, their histories, their backgrounds, their fears, their anxieties.… So, on the basis of that, we can act on small things and develop some trust and some understanding of reliability and develop what Hannah Wren … calls public friendship, the friendship that emerges among colleagues, or people who fight together, argue, dispute with each other, but always maintain their relationship. And, so to teach people how to do that is the critical thing. Now, we did this in Dallas, … where people like Gerald Britt, an African American minister, coalitioned Dallas Area Interfaith and organized and, with Latinos and people from the … Anglo community, which is not really accurate.… But, you know, Lutherans, and … Methodists, and other Protestant denominations on behalf of after school programs and got the Dallas School Board to vote.… Latinos and African Americans to come together when they had been divided around these after school programs. So the question is, how … can they begin to come together? They were able to recently get bond election passed.… [The] process [was] of [holding] individual meetings, house meetings, research actions, teaching people how to negotiate with each other, teaching them that they could get things for their schools, for their communities … if they collaborated and worked together, and negotiated. I’ll work for you on your issue, but you got to work for me on my issue. When you’re trying to organize people, … I hear about the house meetings and the things, yet your organizing in communities where you have multiple adults having to work multiple jobs to make ends meet and the constraints of … the people who need to do and say the most are, by the very institutions that are oppressing them, have the least time of all the commodities to do it. How do you convince them to put in the two hours, four hours, of it’s not their own child who’s sick, or it’s not actually touching them personally, how is [it] made to be worth their time? It’s worth their time because, the ones you start off with, because they want certain kinds of, because they’re not satisfied with the life as it is. And so, even though, … it may not directly, immediately impact their child, or immediately impact their community, … it impacts them and the quality of their life as they see it.… You find enormous capacity on the part of people to find dimensions of their lives.… I organize ours around a particular

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problem, … cleaning up a ditch, etc. But once that was done, they left.… Or, you organize them around getting a new school. And, once they got the school, they were out. The question [or alternative] to build an organization like COPS, or Metro Alliance, or Valley Interfaith, or Apeaso, [where] you have to find people who want more than that. They want more than just their house fixed, they want more than just a new school, they want more than just a lot, they want those things to be sure, and it has to be about those things, otherwise they won’t stay in it. But they also want something else. And those something elses are quite intangible. But they’re just as important to them, and they have to do with their ability to understand the world, they have their ability to find meaning in their lives, have to do with their meaning ability to deal with relationships and to understand relationships and and to understand what the human condition is all about … and all the questions that plague all of us and have plagued all of us from time immortal.… DT: Sounds like those are special people. EC: An optimist is somebody who who looks, who just kind of looks beyond reality, O.K., in my humble opinion. Hanna Wren put it this way, she said that in order for things to change you need anger and humor. She said, hope, unfortunately in her terms, which I’m going to use optimism, jumps over reality.… And so, you don’t engage reality. Anger teaches you how to engage reality, … and humor situates you in a context so that you don’t take yourself too seriously and notwithstanding your appropriate anger and so therefore, you can have perspective.… So that combination of hope and anger, that synthesization of it … forces you to engage the world as it is, at the same time situates you in … geological time. So that you don’t take yourself too seriously.… And, therefore, don’t burn yourself out. That gives you hope, and that’s what I mean by hope, … is that understanding of the world as it is, and not recognizing the challenges and the daunting nature of what we are trying to strive for, we can still recognize the possibilities.… The role of the organizer [is to combine] anger and humor and perspective, that maturity to know that anger is not hatred and and not outrage.… DT: How [do] you keep activists from burning out? Did they come to some sort of mature outrage, some kind of anger that they can sustain, that’s a cold anger that doesn’t consume them? EC: Well, I hope it is. I don’t know if I can keep anybody from burning out, I mean, I can keep myself from burning out, and if it helps me, I point out to people what sustains me, and what gives me energy and what gives me the capacity to go on. But, they have to figure that out for themselves. Now, I’ll be more than happy I am more than happy to work with people to help them figure that out. But, everybody’s different.… Not everybody does enjoys what I enjoy. And so, part of the job that I have is to try help people figure out what is it that makes sense to them? What is it that is meaningful to them; where is the joy in their life. Because you can’t do this work if you can’t find some joy in it. If you don’t find meaning in it, if you don’t find

Chicanos, the 1960s, and Heritage

significance in it, over time, I mean, because it’s not enough, I don’t think, O.K., to rectify a situation. It’s not enough to, you know, even do things that are important, big, I mean, we to make it possible for people to have a living wage job, that’s very significant, very important. To make it possible for people to have water that didn’t have it, that’s very important. But after a while, it you know that’s not enough. And so but people have to figure out what is what else is it that will sustain them in this work.… We try to teach them these kind of things early on, that a lot of them just would not listen. That you just can’t you can’t just exhort and scold people. It doesn’t do any good, it just gets their back up. Now I’m not trying to say I don’t believe in confrontation, I’m not trying to say I don’t believe in tension. I think, unfortunately, that that’s the law of change, you know. That all change comes about either through pressure or threat.… That there is no nice way to get change. What I’m talking about is if you’re going to get people to act in such a way that they’re willing to bring about pressure, if they’re willing to create the tension, then they gotta under they gotta have some sense of power. And if they’re always involved in institutions where they’re being told, being told what to do by experts, after a awhile, that’s not good they’re not gonna sustain themselves in those kinds of organizations.… We teach, you gotta be selective. You gotta pick and choose your fights. And you gotta pick and choose fights which help you build an organization. So you gotta ask yourself, how does this fight, how does this issue gonna help us build the organization. And then, the activist will say, Yeah, but you’re not dealing with this issue, and this issue, and this issue, and all these things. But they all demand immediate concern, we just can’t deal with every single one of them at the same time, it just won’t happen.… And that’s part of the tragedy of life, sometimes the best solution gets in the way of a good enough solution and so sometimes you gotta learn, so that’s what I mean by learning how to understand politics.… It’s really about learning how to negotiate when you don’t have that much power, and learning that sometimes you gotta take, you know, victories, and build for the future. And even though all those victories look like big, huge defeats.… Or so you’re in a situation where, yeah, the other guy wins, … we’re not gonna stop development over the Aquifer.… But, we don’t have the power to do it right now. So, what do we do then? Well, we try to build, we try to get some concession, some victories, teach our people that at the same time we won, … that there is still a larger issue out there which we haven’t dealt with, and haven’t addressed, but we gotta be able to organize and build capacity if we’re gonna deal with that issue. I don’t know if I’m being clear or not.… So you don’t give up on the fight and you teach it, and you don’t pretend that there’s not a serious problem out there. But you also recognize that we don’t have the power to deal with that problem right now. So we gotta build some more power. This victory we got here today was good, it’s significant it’s important and meaningful. But, is it the solution? No. [Does] it solve the problem? No. Is it do the other side,

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are they still doing some horrible things? … Then, why are we negotiating with these people? Because we gotta live in the world as it is. And we gotta learn, that if we’re gonna be successful, O.K., we’re gonna have to figure out a couple of things. One is how to build our organization. Two is turn yesterday’s adversaries into today’s allies, or tomorrow’s allies.… The way to organize around people with environmental concerns is to teach them how they effect public health. And I think that the more effective way to do this is to talk about questions of health and quality of life and viability … Because otherwise you allow those people who don’t care about it to kind of paint you in a picture … [They] stereotype you as people who are quaint and tree huggers or whatever … it appears to become the province of very self-absorbed, very comfortable people, who’ve gotten theirs and don’t want anyone else to share in the bounty. They’ve got their nice home viewing the ocean and they don’t want anyone else to have you know, to disturb their view.… And so you become relegated to people who become self-absorbed and narcissistic. And I think that’s the biggest danger. For people who are concerned about the environment, is they gotta figure out a way in which it effects the lives, the quality of lives of people who are in minority communities and low-end communities. The average state, you know, guy who, basically, is just trying to make a buck for his family, O.K. Alright. [End of Interview with Ernie Cort
es.] Source: Ernie Cortes (EC) Interviewers: David Todd (DT) and David Weisman (DW); April 12, 2002; Austin, Texas REELS: 2185 and 2186, LaRed Latina of the Intermountain Southwest. http://www.texaslegacy.org/m/transcripts/cortesernietxt.html.


lez on Willie Vela
squez, 369. Interview with Antonio Gonza Southwest Voter Registration Education Project, 2004 In 1974, William C. Vel
asquez, or ‘‘Willie’’ as everyone called him, founded the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project (SVREP). SVREP became the largest and the most successful national Latino voter registration project. Prior to SVREP’s founding, the disparate voter registration projects lacked coordination and research components. Willie, with the help of a professionally trained staff, conducted voter registration drives in 200 cities and Indian reservations. He followed up these drives with extensive polling. Willie was a native of San Antonio, he had been active in La Raza Unida Party, led a farmworkers’ strike in south Texas, and contributed to the election of Chicano elected officials. In registering Chicanos and Latinos to vote, he wanted to give them the option of being good citizens and bring about positive changes through the election of Latino elected officials. Willie Vel
asquez died of cancer at the age of 44. The following interview is with one of the SVREP presidents since Willie’s unexpected death.

Willie Vel
asquez was the charismatic leader behind the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project (SVREP). For 20 years, beginning in the 1960s, he took his cue from African Americans working to secure their full civil rights and applied

Chicanos, the 1960s, and Heritage

their tactics to La Raza, the Mexican Americans in his native Texas, and throughout the Southwest. SVREP did not have the high profile of the politically strong La Raza Unida Party or the mainstream organizational pull of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), but its impact at the ballot box, through the election of more people of color, has been lasting and is still playing out. The work might have ended in 1988, the year Willie Vel
asquez suddenly died. But the mission continued. In 1994, Antonio Gonz
alez, 48, took over as president. In the crowded Pico de Gallo restaurant in San Antonio, Gonz
alez spoke with special correspondent Joe Nick Patoski about how the institution has survived in the absence of the man who founded and personified it. What’s the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project and the William C. Vel
asquez Institute? Gonz
alez: Southwest Voter Registration Education Project is a nonprofit, nonpartisan [organization] that is dedicated to increasing political participation among minorities, particularly Latinos, throughout the United States. The William C. Vel
asquez Institute is another nonpartisan, nonprofit, organization that is dedicated to policy and research towards supporting effective governance by Latino voters and Latino-elected officials and leaders sort of a spinoff of the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project. Tell us about Willie Vel
asquez. Gonz
alez: Willie Vel
asquez was a radical youth from San Antonio of workingclass origin who was a student at St. Mary’s University, which was a hotbed of political activism at that time. The Chicanos were influenced by the black Civil Rights Movement, by Martin Luther King, [Jr.,] particularly by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, by Malcolm X, and by their own homegrown heroes in Mexican American politics, which had a history, particularly in Texas and New Mexico, that antedated the Civil Rights Movement. Willie was one of the founders of La Raza Unida, an independent LatinoChicano third political party that was successful in many places in South Texas. He left Raza Unida [around 1970] to create Southwest Voter. It was finally founded in 1974. It was a tough row to hoe, getting it funded. Latinos’ numbers were declining in political participation until around the time Southwest Voter was founded. The numbers since have gone up consistently and dramatically. Hispanics have been the fastest-growing group in registration in voting in America since 1980, measured by every presidential election, without exception. Willie’s contribution was to create the vehicle for that and to believe that we could stimulate this. What was the initial impact of SVREP? Gonz
alez: Southwest Voter Registration Education Project and Willie Vel
asquez are key elements in the transition of the condition of the U.S. Latino community from utter and complete powerlessness to where we are today, which is having some power, but not enough. Clearly, we have changed our condition from being outside the power. Willie Vel
asquez’s context was the era of powerlessness. That’s why people were militant and protesting, organizing third parties. They were utterly excluded by policies, practices, barriers, laws, and institutions. Vel
asquez led the charge. He opened those doors. Willie died in 1988. He had just begun to reinterpret Latino politics. I remember Willie beginning to agitate that we had to equip ourselves to govern because we

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were winning. When Southwest Voter started, there were about 1,300 Latinoelected officials in the country and about 2.3 million Latino voters. Ten years later, we nearly doubled the number of Latino-elected officials to about 2,500 and nearly 4 million Latinos were registered to vote. Willie’s whole team was a group of intellectuals, so they would think about these things. Willie agitated to create the capacity to train candidates and train elected officials and come up with new policy strategies, do opinion surveys, the sort of things that 20 years later we all do. Willie saw the Latino community governing. Henry Cisneros was mayor of San Antonio and on Mondale’s short list for vice president. The Hispanic caucus of Texas was very powerful. Tony Anaya was governor of New Mexico. How did the Institute come about? Gonz
alez: Willie was wrong [to think] that we had broken through and were in a condition of exercising power. It certainly wasn’t true across the country, though it was true in Texas and New Mexico. That’s why he created the institute, which was called the Southwest Voter Research Institute. We renamed it after Willie died to honor him. The institute started polling and doing international work to take delegations of Latino-elected officials and leaders to Central America. Willie went to Nicaragua and El Salvador. He was interested in revolutions. Willie was a global thinker. That was the later stage of Willie’s career and lifework, pondering ‘‘how do we govern?’’ Willie saw the immigration reform in 1986, but he didn’t get to see the big wave. None of us predicted the impact it was going to have in speeding up our political empowerment. Was his death a surprise? Gonz
alez: Totally. He was only 44. He got sick and a month later he died. I was a member of his staff. I’d been there for four years. I came in 1984, and I was involved with the ’84 presidential campaign. Then I worked on special projects an immigration bill, the ’87 Texas Legislature, and an international project called the Latin America Project. How did you deal with the sudden loss of your charismatic leader? Gonz
alez: I’m from California. When Willie died, I was sent back to California to help [keep] us from collapsing. We were on the verge of bankruptcy. We had the test of fire. Willie had a number two named Andy Hernandez, who had been with Southwest Voter from the beginning. Fortunately, he was there and was able to step in. He had 14 years of experience with the organization, so he became the president when Willie passed away. We weathered everything that happens when you lose your charismatic superstar. We had to retool the fundraising and reassure the leadership. People thought we were going to disappear. We had a tough couple of years. How did you keep on going? Gonz
alez: We had a hard-core group of staff who basically dedicated themselves to Willie’s memory and said, ‘‘Not on our watch. We’re not going to be recorded in history as the group that couldn’t make it after Willie died.’’ It took a lot of hard work. The hardest part was figuring out how to raise money without the superstar doing it. [Before,] Willie would pick up a phone and we’d get money. We had to reestablish relationships with foundations, start raising money from corporations and unions who used to give us nothing, zippo.

Chicanos, the 1960s, and Heritage

Willie enjoyed the largesse. He was the darling of the New York liberals. When he went away, they went away. We had to go to our base. For at least a couple of years there was goodwill, meaning, ‘‘We’ll do this for Willie. We’ll help Southwest for Willie.’’ By the 1990s, we were able to get into ‘‘the self-interest cycle,’’ meaning people have a self-interest in seeing the Hispanic vote grow. Once we got past the ’92 election, people saw Southwest Voter was going to make it. So they came back. Andy Hernandez stepped down as SVREP president in 1994. What happened after that? Gonz
alez: I was surprised when he stepped down. You know, I don’t think Andy ever reconciled himself to being Willie’s successor and being the head of Southwest Voter without Willie because they were like brothers. [Willie’s death] was a personal tragedy for him. I was sort of in position because I was [Andy’s] number two, although more focused on the Vel
asquez Institute, which had grown quite a bit and had a big international program. Andy sort of popped it on me. I didn’t really have a choice. He said, ‘‘I’m leaving, you’re in.’’ The board said, ‘‘Yeah, that’s right.’’ Been there ever since. How did you lead the organization out from under Willie’s shadow, when SVREP had been so much about him? Gonz
alez: I will tell you, it’s the reverse. Southwest Voter now is much bigger than Willie ever was. This year we’ll quintuple the budget of Willie’s biggest year. We do work in many more states. We’re in 16 states, with partnerships that get us into 26 states. When Willie was alive and the Institute and Southwest were together, they raised $1 million. When they were separate under Andy, he raised about $2 million. We’ll do $5 million, maybe $6 million, between the two organizations this year. We’re clearly the preeminent Latino vote organization, bar none, registering and turning out people. We’re going to hit 10 million [registered voters] this year. We were two-and-a-half million when Willie started. We’re at eight-and-a-half million now, and we’ll hit 10 million [by the fall 2004 elections], maybe nine-and-a-half, 9.3 it depends. Our challenge is to keep Willie’s memory alive. We’re going to pay a lot of attention to that this year. It’s our 30th anniversary. There’s a book coming out about Willie in April: The Life and Times of Willie Vel
asquez (Arte Publico Press) by Juan Sep
ulveda. We’re going to push to create a Willie Vel
asquez archive. We’re preparing to start the process to build a building, maybe a statue, in his honor on the West Side here in San Antonio. There’s a Vel
asquez education building at St. Mary’s University and Vel
asquez mural. There’s a Vel
asquez [Walk]. There’s Vel
asquez schools. We’re going to do more because Willie is not known to the younger generation. What are top priorities for the project? Gonz
alez: We’re setting up voter registration campaigns. We have active projects right now in Little Havana, Kendall, Hollywood, Tampa, and Plant City in Florida; in Hobbs and Las Cruces, New Mexico; four different ones in Maricopa County [Phoenix] in Arizona it’s a big county and setting up in Tucson and Casa Grande. Seattle, Yakima Valley, the Tri-City area of Washington state, and about 20 more on the drawing board. We’ve still got to get into Albuquerque, got to get into Santa Fe. We’re shaking and baking. We’ve got offices of people moving all around. We’re setting up the coalitions, contracting organizers. There’s training going on in

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Albuquerque next weekend, and then two weeks after that, trainings in Miami-Dade and in Tucson. We have to set up 300 of these. Our partners are setting up another 150. The Vel
asquez Institute is on a separate but complementary track, getting into the field in April with a national opinion survey. Through our leadership program, we’re sending a religious delegation to Cuba. Through our community development program, we’re conducting a solar retrofitting initiative with Hispanic businesses in urban Southern California as a policy response to the energy crisis. Energy’s very expensive. Through our international program, we do Cuba, Central America. We have a drug policy reform initiative. We’re co-sponsoring a national conference in Houston. We have a major research project going in anticipation of the Voting Rights Act [of 1965] reauthorization fight. It’s a longitudinal study looking at 30 years of census data. We’re seeking to measure the level of social, economic, and political inclusion of native-born Latinos. There’s a debate being argued from these neoconservative academics and Latino academics. They say voting rights is a black-oriented program and Latinos are not excluded like African Americans are. Therefore, the Voting Rights Act should not apply to Latinos, because Latinos are inevitably on a path of social, political, and economic inclusion. It’s just a matter of time and overcoming our own cultural barriers; that there are really no substantive barriers to inclusion. We obviously disagree. And so we have to demonstrate that, based on the data on Latinos. We’re looking specifically at native-borns because foreign-borns do show increased inclusion, because they become citizens. So it’s a false positive when you look at immigrants. You had a golf tournament? Gonz
alez: We do golf tournaments, we do annual banquets six of them: Miami, Houston, San Antonio, Phoenix, Los Angeles, and the Bay Area. We’re doing a small-dollar endowment that we’re launching this year where it’s basically working folks. We’re going to sign up ten thousand $1,000 donors from our network, where they give us $30 a month over three years. It’s like dues, but it goes into an endowment. You have to figure out something for each sector. What do we have? We have a lot of working folks. So that’s that sector. And we have a professional sector; you have golf tournaments and fundraisers. Fundraisers include your corporate donors. We have a lot of people in anticipation of the money. Willie had to ask five people. It got harder. So you spend more time raising money, but we raise a lot more. You can’t ask for a better situation. Both parties say they have to have your vote to win. And when your vote is big enough to make a difference, and when you look like you’re going to have the resources to mobilize the infrastructure to make a difference, issues that matter to our community are going to bubble up because we have these other things in place. This is the kind of context and scenario that I live for. And it’s one that Willie lived for. He didn’t get to see it, but a generation after his passing, it’s here today. Source: An interview with Antonio Gonz
alez, President of the Southwest Voter Education Project, June 2004. Voices of Civil Rights, AARP, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR), and the Library of Congress, 2004. http://www.voicesofcivilrights.org/civil3 gonzalez.html.

Chicanos, the 1960s, and Heritage

370. Excerpt from Enriqueta Va
squez and the Chicano Movement, 2006 Enriqueta V
asquez is a leader who has lived with the Chicano community and participated in most of its struggles to attain equality. She coedited El Grito del Norte, a newspaper in New Mexico, where she wrote about social and economic injustice. Enriqueta was not limited to Chicano issues and expressed solidarity with the Vietnamese and Cuban people. She also sought to bring about needed change within the Mexican American community by writing about racism, sexism, imperialism, and poverty. She introduced these questions in a logical but firm manner and was respected because for her commitment to progressive thought.

LOS POBRES Y LOS RICOS A while back, I attended a meeting where I heard a man speak about his experience in Washington on the Poor People’s March. It was good to hear one of our Raza stand up and speak for the Raza and our life here and the way of the poor. During the discussion there was a lady present (Raza) that spoke up and said, ‘‘I am not poor, I work.’’ Here was a person who has a nice home (mortgaged), two cars (mortgaged) and many beautiful useless things (also mortgaged). If this woman’s husband was to become sick and hospitalized for a few months and she was not able to work, you would end up with human beings who would lose all of their material wealth and find themselves quickly changed from ‘‘wishfully middle class’’ to the ‘‘poor class.’’ The picture would be changed, but fast.… What would they be? Let us first of all forget the idea that we will never be poor and by all means let us never look down on the poor. For that matter, the poor are often times better people in that, because they do not have money, they know what to do with themselves and their time. Those with money and things are useless and have no real purpose in life. Take away their money and livelihood (I don’t wish this on anyone) and you would find them jumping out of windows. Now we come to the question, just what is it that we want? Do the poor want money? Do we want to be like the Anglo? What do we really value? Just looking at the different government machines, I believe that probably the Department of Defense has the provisions for life that the poor people need. Do you know that they take care of their armies from cradle to grave? The entire family of a soldier is taken care of. Now, why can’t everyone in this country have this? Isn’t this an abundant economy? We have food surplus. Anytime they want, they can solve the job problem by cutting the working hours in half. Really, the amount of money spent for the people of this country is very little. A drop in the bucket in comparison with that which we spend in war killing little people in little countries. Asking for a share of the wealth is not asking too much. We should also unite with our people, all of us. This stuff about ‘‘I made it, you can too,’’ does not sound good to me. It sounds too much like the higher-up talking to the down-there. This competitive (playing one human against the other) way of life is what the ‘‘Americano’’ has given us. They build their lives around competition. And if you don’t know what I mean, just watch that lousy TV and see what advertising is all about. They can make you want more fancy junk you don’t need than you would ever believe. They have a way of making you build your lives

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around things and this, Hermanos, is what it is all about. The Anglo society is built on a value system of things, not humans. Once you begin to value things more than humans, it is like an alcoholic that craves more and more and there is no end to satisfying the thirst that wants more. The Raza in the Southwest is not asking for things so much as being ourselves. Being human. We want our history back. We want our language and culture to be our way of life. We refuse to give in and submit to a hypocritical way of life. This Southwest was built on Indian, Spanish, and Mexican history, not English. Our cities, our mountains and rivers were explored and settled by Indians and Spaniards, not pilgrims and wagon masters. The first cattle raisers, cowboys, and farmers were Raza, we weren’t waiting here to be saved by the great white fathers. In Mexico, the Indians had big beautiful cities, they had mathematicians and astronomers and they weren’t waiting to be ‘‘civilized.’’ We want to be treated with the dignity that is ours. In matters of jobs, law enforcement, and business we are now second-rate citizens. In 1968, U.S. defense spending constituted 46.0% of federal outlays, or $81.9 billion versus $96.2 billion on non-defense expenditures. See Harold W. Stanley and Richard G. Niemi, eds., Vital Statistics on American Politics, 4th ed. (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly P, 1994), 361. The only place where we are first-rate citizens is in the draft call and I sure don’t consider it a compliment to be part of a useless machine. Let’s all stop and look at ourselves for what we are. Let’s wake up and help each other. Let’s look at the issues, let’s look at our country, let’s look at our communities, let’s look at ourselves and our families, let’s look at our law enforcement agencies, and let’s look at this thing called justice. Let’s not sit back and give up. We need YOU now. The time is NOW. Let’s all stand up, beautiful people. Let’s all stand up. LA RAZA UNIDA. Despierten mis hermanos, no nos podemos permitir perdernos en la rueda de la vida hip
ocrita con precios anglos. Para que triunfe nuestra cultura e historia tenemos que hablar y gritar y cantar nuestra historia. La tierra es de nosotros. Defiendanla, ella no se vende ni se compra. Es de nosotros. Wake up, my brothers and sisters, we cannot loose ourselves in the hypocritical wheel of life with Anglo prices. In order for our culture and history to triumph, we must speak out, yell, and sing about our history. The land is ours. Defend it, it is not to be sold or bought. It belongs to us. October 5, 1968 Translated by Herminia S. Reyes. Source: Excerpt is reprinted with permission of the publisher of Enriqueta Vasquez and the Chicano Movement, by Enriqueta Vasquez. Edited by Lorena Oropeza and Dionne Espinoza. Houston: C 2006. pp. 8 10. Arte P
ublico Press University of Houston


371. Excerpts from Elizabeth Mart
ınez, ‘‘A View from New Mexico: Recollections of the Movimiento Left,’’ 2002 Elizabeth ‘‘Betita’’ Mart
ınez, Chicana activist, author, and educator, is best known for her 1990 book 500 A~ nos del Pueblo Chicano/500 Years of Chicano History: In Pictures. She is currently working on a similar volume focusing on Chicanas. Mart
ınez was active in the civil rights movement as a member of

Chicanos, the 1960s, and Heritage

the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). She worked as a United Nations researcher on colonialism in Africa. In 1968, she joined the Chicano movement in New Mexico, where she coedited the newspaper El Grito del Norte from 1968–1976 and cofounded the Chicano Communications Center, a barrio-based organization. In 1982, she ran for governor of California on the Peace and Freedom Party ticket. In 1997, she cofounded and still directs the Institute for Multi Racial Justice in San Francisco and is active in the anti-war movement involving the Iraq War.

If ever there has been a chapter of the U.S. left with deep cultural roots in every sense, it is the movimiento of New Mexico. The roots include social relations, economic traditions, political forms, artistic expression, and language everything that defines peoplehood. They are Native American, Spanish, and Mexican mestizo (mixed), and they go back centuries. Migrant workers of the last 150 years have played a crucial part, but ‘‘immigrant’’ does not describe the totality of those roots. Unlike any other area except southern Colorado, the movimiento in Nuevo Mexico evolved within the framework of a long, popular struggle against U.S. colonization and for land that is to say, nothing less than the means of production. Its origins lie in the colonization of First Nation peoples like the Pueblos and the Dine (Navajo) in what became Nuevo (later New) Mexico and their long resistance to occupying forces. In 1680, some of the Indians joined with Mexican workers in Santa Fe and drove out the Spanish for twelve years. The land struggle that came much later, waged by Spanish-speaking mestizo people and sometimes armed as well as underground, could be called nationalist. But if we do so, we should not equate it with the nationalism of many other U.S. movement groups. It was not primarily cultural, not exclusionary of other peoples, not ‘‘mi Raza primero’’ (my people first). And whether or not we call that land struggle consciously left, it directly or indirectly encouraged militant leftism including Marxism during the movimiento years. New Mexico had remained a territory for over fifty years after the war on Mexico. It did not become a state until 1912, when its Spanish-speaking, Catholic majority had given way to an Anglo majority that made white easterners much less nervous. Before and after that date, Mexicans carried out underground actions against Anglo landowners, mainly in rural areas of the north. Cutting Anglo fences and burning barns were common forms of protest against the continuing land robbery. After arriving in 1968, I soon learned to respect names like Las Gorras Blancas (White Caps) a longstanding underground resistance group, and La Mano Negra (Black Hand), reputed to be headed by a woman at that time. Resistance nourished by historical, cultural, or religious tradition was also strong. Examples could be found in the Penitentes (a semisecret religious organization), dances and plays performed on certain holidays reenacting key moments in the area’s colonial history, the curanderos who cured with herbs not usually known to outsiders, along with other expressions of a long isolated, necessarily self-sufficient society from building with adobe bricks, to cultivating a unique variety of chilies for cooking. A spirit of collectivity and interdependence ran strong in all this. Politically, northern New Mexico presented an almost classic example of European colonialism. Anglos stood at the top holding economic and political power

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while ‘‘Hispanos’’ formed a control or buffer class that included teachers, judges, police, and other local officials, leaving the majority of Mexicans at the bottom. That colonial reality defined the anti-imperialist project and its class contradictions. The Alianza Federal de Mercedes emerged in the 1960s to initiate a new, militant stage in the land struggle, making national news with its 1967 armed takeover of the courthouse in the mountain village of Tierra Amarilla to protest state repression. Alianzistas, led by Reies L
opez Tijerina, organized to win back communally held land that had been distributed to their ancestors in grants by Spain (which had seized it from indigenous peoples). Their Spanish colonial ancestry, which preceded Mexico’s rule, made them probably the only group in the United States today who can call themselves ‘‘Hispanic,’’ or Hispano, with some accuracy. In the 1960s and early 1970s, Alianzistas sympathized with the struggles of other peoples of color, like African Americans (the Alianza welcomed visiting SNCC leaders twice), Puerto Ricans, and Palestinians. Of all the possible alliances with Native Americans at home, the Alianza is best known for supporting the long Taos Pueblo struggle to get back their sacred Blue Lake lands. The worldview of Alianza’s constituency impoverished, dispossessed, small landowners could be very conservative. They were not radical in the sense of consciously seeking to restructure the entire society as opposed to achieving justice in one area, recovery of land ownership that the United States had promised to respect under the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. At the same time, their goal could hardly be met without that restructuring, any more than the U.S. government was likely to ‘‘give it back to the Indians.’’ For some Alianzistas and supporters, who saw that their poverty could not be ended without systemic change, their worldview could certainly be called revolutionary nationalism. The anticommunist influence of McCarthyism could be found among a few Alianzistas, who equated the word with dictatorship. However, Tijerina himself did not take virulent anticommunist positions. His conservatism in other areas was notable, for example, having an almost entirely male Alianza leadership and expressing male supremacist attitudes. (On the unofficial level, many Alianza women were respected for their wisdom, strength, and leadership in ways similar to what I had found in rural Mississippi in 1964.) The overall attitude in northern New Mexico toward socialism or communism was not negative. One or two Alianza supporters whom I met had even tried to get to Cuba and join the revolutionary forces there in the late 1950s. A sprinkling of old left members could be found like Vicente Vigil, who became a columnist for the newspaper El Grito del Norte (Cry of the North). Organizers in the land grant and other movements received frequent support from a small but sturdy number of Anglo socialists and Communist Party (CP) members or sympathizers in New Mexico. We can also recall the 1951 Silver City strike against Empire Zinc, inspired by proletarian goals with help from committed CP organizers, and made into the movie Salt of the Earth. Years later some of the strike leaders did support work for the Chilean resistance after the 1973 coup, which reflected an ongoing radical tradition. El Grito del Norte, a newspaper I co-founded with movement attorney Beverly Axelrod, began in 1968 as a vehicle to support the Alianza. It soon expanded to cover the Chicano movement in urban areas, workers’ struggles, and Latino political prisoners, along with a broad spectrum that ranged from the black liberation

Chicanos, the 1960s, and Heritage

movement to Mexican student protest to radical whites. At the same time, El Grito encouraged nationalist consciousness and cultural self-respect among Chicanos as sources of strength in sparking a movement, especially among youth. The paper never abandoned its focus on the land struggle in New Mexico, and linked it with contemporary land struggles in Hawaii, Japan, and Third World countries, thus internationalizing it. This combination of what could be called liberatory or revolutionary nationalism with internationalism made El Grito very unusual among the dozens of more nationalist Chicano movement newspapers that covered the Southwest and inspired activists. El Grito’s favorable coverage of Vietnam, Cuba, and China left no doubt that it was pro-Socialist. It sent reporters to all those countries. We also sent a reporter and photographer, along with a carload of supporters, to Wounded Knee during the long, armed American Indian Movement occupation in 1973. All this did not seem to limit the paper’s popularity, at least not in the north. Probably we were helped by the fact that the 1967 Tierra Amarilla courthouse raiders were our friends and one, Jose Madril, an editor with El Grito. Nobody messed with those guys! We did encounter some harassment from the police in Espa~ nola, where our office was located, for example when they detained Antonio Cordova who had photographed them tear-gassing people at a demonstration. With a predominantly female set of regular columnists, writers, artists, photographers, and production workers like Jane Lougee, Tessa Martinez, Adelita Medina, Kathy Montague, Sandra Solis, Rini Templeton, Valentina Valdes, and Enriqueta Vasquez, together with myself as managing editor, the paper made its feminism clear. This continued a cultural tradition in which numerous Mexican women journalists played a major role during national struggles like the 1910 [Mexican] revolution. El Grito also sought to encourage and train young Chicanas in putting out a paper. One of the main successes here was a series on Vietnam written by grassroots organizer Valentina Valdes, who had to read a book on Vietnam the first time with a dictionary and then read it again for background. Another example: Adelita Medina and Sandra Solis started the publication Tierra y Libertad, in Las Vegas, New Mexico, after having been trained at El Grito. In Albuquerque, the Black Berets also followed an internationalist approach. They adopted principles and a program sometimes modeled on the Black Panthers, for example, its breakfast program, that made it less strictly nationalist than Brown Beret groups in Texas and California. The Black Berets also founded the Bobby Garcia Memorial Clinic, committed to the idea that health is a human right, not a privilege. Their main leader, Richard Moore, and others went to Cuba on the Venceremos Brigade. The Berets and El Grito were partners, sharing news, analysis and sometimes members like reporter Antonio Cordova, who along with Beret Rito Canales, was assassinated by police in 1972. In the early 1970s, El Grito began looking for a new strategy and tactics, both for the newspaper and the movimiento in general. To do this, we ceased publication of the paper in 1973, and some of us moved to Albuquerque. With other local activists we launched the Chicano Communications Center (CCC) as a multimedia, educational barrio project. Soon after, the CCC established a formal alliance called CLARO (Chicano League Against Racism and Oppression) together with the Bobby Garcia Memorial Clinic and the Cafioncito Wood Cooperative based in a

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land grant area just outside the city. CLARO had a central committee for decisionmaking; it set up a study program on Marxism and contemporary socialism, attended by CLARO people. In 1974, self-identification with the Socialist vision reached a high point. That was the year Richard Moore went to Cuba with another Beret leader, Joaqu
ın Lujan. Marvin Garc
ıa of Ca~ noncito went with a group to China. A major meeting took place to discuss strategy in the face of what we saw as heightening repression. Over fifty seasoned activists came from all over the state. In a dialogue about our longrange goals, someone asked what was socialism. I explained some basic points and added it was a stage on the way to communism but not the final goal, communism. At that point a Chicana cried out, ‘‘Well, in that case, we’re Communists!’’ and everyone clapped to my and others’ amazement. Also in 1974, another group that wanted to focus on mass organizing started and linked up with CLARO. Its name: MAO (Movement Against Oppression). Happily, this name did not mean CLARO had decided there were two equally destructive imperialisms or spend time on endless battles over that and other lines. This was largely because of New Mexico’s relative isolation from the national left mainstream, an isolation that proved both a blessing and, over time, a limitation. The Socialist Workers Party (SWP), did exist but in very small numbers, although some members commanded personal respect. The major, crucial exception to that isolation was travel to Cuba, going back to El Grito and now the Venceremos Brigade. Richard Moore served on the Brigade’s National Committee and went to Cuba every year through the 1970s. That experience is why he could say, as he did recently, ‘‘we didn’t pull any punches about being for socialism then. We might use slightly different language with grassroots folk but the ideas were there. We were not afraid of saying so.’’ It didn’t hurt that Richard was a big, tough-talking guy whose politics came more from the street than books. It also didn’t hurt that we had two beloved, world-famous Latino revolutionary heroes. Emiliano Zapata, whose portrait provided the logo for El Grito’s masthead, had raised the cries that echoed all over northern New Mexico: ‘‘Tierra y libertad’’ and ‘‘Tierra, Pan y Justicia!’’ (Land and Liberty; Land, Bread and Justice). The other was Ernesto ‘‘Che’’ Guevara, whose image adorned many public spaces including the waiting room of the Tierra Amarilla clinic started by movimiento activists. Those two icons symbolized the Chicano movement culture all over the Southwest. If a certain male domination is creeping into this description of our work, then the contributions of various women must be noted. Nita Luna’s theatrical genius generated a teatro group for the CCC that rocked Albuquerque, especially with her play about the Watergate scandal. Luci Rios, factory organizer and poet, along with Susana and Cecilia Fuentes, Susan Seymour, Ruth Contreras, and others not only got much of the CCC’s work done but were also leading sisters. It was also in 1974 that some CLARO members, mostly from the CCC, received a series of visitors from national Marxist-Leninist formations to see about possibly affiliating with one of the groups as a way of sharpening our strategy. The only formation to attract serious interest was the August Twenty-Ninth Movement (ATM), founded in 1974 and named after the historic August 29, 1970, Chicano Moratorium against the Vietnam War, in Los Angeles. ATM had emerged from the Labor Committee of the La Raza Unida Party (LRUP) in Los Angeles, which was well to the left of most LRUP chapters. It had a primarily Chicano membership rather than

Chicanos, the 1960s, and Heritage

the almost all-white leadership of most other national formations that visited, and it included local activists personally known to the CCC. What followed was the kind of destructive experience often found on the U.S. left during these party building years when vanguardism and sectarianism ruled the day. ATM’s politics, set forth in such publications as ‘‘Fan the Flames: A Revolutionary Position on the Chicano National Question’’ and its ‘‘Unity Statement,’’ followed the tendency of denouncing the Soviet Union as revisionist, hailing the leading role of China and Albania, and pledging to unite with all genuine (that tricky word!) Marxist-Leninists. For the Chicano movement, ATM adopted Stalin’s definition of a nation and affirmed Chicanos were a nation not just a national minority, as other left formations believed. That position was a major reason, I was told later, why ATM rejected the bilingual book published in 1976 by the CCC, 450 Years of Chicano History in Pictures (reprinted later as 500 Years of Chicano History). The book did not declare Chicanos to be a nation; the CCC people were not yet convinced of it. That alleged crime and others apparently compelled ATM members, who took over the CCC, to have the entire second printing of the book shredded in 1976. ATM in New Mexico also severely undermined the struggle of the Ca~ noncito land grant group, and a labor struggle. Soon after the ATM takeover, the CCC dissolved. Later, members of ATM in northern California expressed concern privately that New Mexico’s ATM included one or more government infiltrators. Many activists in New Mexico believe to this day that such infiltration explains the destruction of 500 Years of Chicano History. That appears to be true. At the same time, as anyone who participated in the New Communist Movement of the 1970s knows, the cause might have been garden-variety vanguardism, or a power play to eliminate the influence of certain CCC leaders. The CCC itself was not free of vanguardist tendencies, as shown by its Maoist-style ‘‘campaign against liberalism’’ or its attempt to fulfill cadre-type demands that at one point included meeting to discuss whether, given the needs of the revolution, one member could get pregnant (as she wished). Our dogmatic imposition of cadre demands ran against the barrio culture and longtime styles of organizing. In short, ATM’s actions were destructive yet not incomprehensible for the times. In this way, New Mexico’s leftism shared qualities with leftism elsewhere. Those qualities, it must be added, included unlimited commitment to La Causa, great personal self-sacrifice, and a spirit of willingness to die if the revolution needed that. Today, the left tradition can be seen in New Mexico, for example, in the battle against environmental racism where the enemy is so clearly capitalism. The SouthWest Organizing Project of Albuquerque (SWOP) and the Southwest Network for Environmental and Economic Justice (SNEEJ), with headquarters in that city, confront capitalism and imperialism constantly. Richard Moore of the Black Berets was cofounder of SWOP and coordinates SNEEJ. In the homeland of the atomic bomb and crucial military bases, New Mexican radicals also confront militarism firsthand on many levels including environmental racism. Chicanos/as and other Latinos in New Mexico, as elsewhere, have a long way to go to develop a strategy and tactics for social transformation. Learning from the past is our first crucial step, and calls for much more analysis than this brief essay. A reason to be hopeful for Chicano left politics across the Southwest is that the fear of being labeled Communist has diminished, especially among urban youth,

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even though people may not be consciously Socialist or even anticapitalist. One example comes to mind. In 1970, I visited North Vietnam as the first Chicana/o organizer to do so. On returning, I tried to talk other antiwar Chicano activists into going, as I had been invited to do by the Vietnamese. With one exception, they were too worried about the effect of such a trip on their grassroots community organizing. They couldn’t afford to be labeled red. I do not think that would happen today. More and more Chicanos, especially youth, are recognizing that the revolution, of which many speak so passionately, has to be won through anti-imperialist struggle, not with an exclusively or primarily nationalist agenda. Also, Latinos who have come here from Central America, and other arenas of long struggles against U.S.-supported repression, understand imperialism only too well. They are less fearful of the Communist label (setting aside the policies of particular, often sectarian groups). There are also Chicanos/as committed to moving beyond the ‘‘Chicanismo’’ of the movimiento years, which was often culturally nationalist, sexist, lacking in any class analysis, and defined by its worship of Corky Gonzales, Jos
e Angel Guti
errez, C
esar Ch
avez, and Reies L
opez Tijerina. ‘‘Beyond Chicanismo,’’ a project based on community college campuses in Denver, is setting a bold example with their demand for Chicano Studies to be focused differently. If their politics are not overtly Marxist or Socialist, they are radical and internationalist. Another trend that has grown strong today is indigenismo, embraced by those who identify with the cultures and struggles of the indigenous peoples of the Americas. Its adherents emphasize indigenous expressions of spirituality and respect for all living creatures. At best, they uphold indigenous concepts of communal interdependence and collectivity rather than private property, commodification, and individualism. Philosophically, this puts indigenismo a short distance from communism. The idea that Marxism is a white philosophy which somehow prevailed through the years of adoration for Cuba and Che, China and Mao, Vietnam and Ho Chi Minh, and Guinea-Bissau and Cabral, to mention only a few folks of color who found Marxist theory relevant is not dead. In insisting on an ideology that incorporates a critique of racism, sexism, and heterosexism, as it should, some Latinos reject Marxism because it ‘‘ignored’’ those other -isms. Or, perhaps more often, because of ‘‘all those crazies’’ sectarian left formations that claim to speak in its name. Radical Chicano youth today may not embrace the centrality of class or use what they call ‘‘old’’ words like socialism to define the new society. But they still want to go to Cuba, and they do go. They are far less sexist than their predecessors. Their anger is more profound than that of youth forty years ago, their grasp of the fundamental politics of the United States does not take as long to develop. Their rage comes more quickly; it goes from hip to hop. Source: Elizabeth Mart
ınez, ‘‘A View from New Mexico: Recollections of the Movimiento Left,’’ Monthly Review, July August 2002.

PART XX Latinos, 1980–Present In 1980 the Latino population was divided with Mexicans in the Southwest, Midwest, and Northwest, and Puerto Ricans in New York and Chicago. Cubans lived mostly in Miami and the Northwest. However, by 2008 the Latino population had spread out and the generalizations that were near true in 1980 no longer applied. Los Angeles, New York, and Miami were still important but now Latinos moved to the suburbs and headed elsewhere. Places like Dallas, Houston, Phoenix, and Sacramento became ports of entry for new immigrants. Atlanta had 24,000 Latinos in 1980; 20 years later it had 268,851; Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina, went from 5,670 in 1980 to 93,868 in 2000. By 2005, 42 million Latinos lived in the United States. Table 2 shows the numbers of Latinos in the United States. With the exceptions of the Mexican, Puerto Rican, and Cuban most came in sizeable numbers after 1980. Worthy of repetition is that the island of Puerto Rico is part of the United States. The 2000 U.S. Census reported that Puerto Rico’s population was 3.8 million with an estimated 3.4 million Puerto Ricans living on the U.S. mainland. Not only because of their numbers and duration in the United States did Puerto Ricans and Cubans dominate the cultural icons of these concluding decades but also because of the vitality of those communities. Central American migration is traced to the bloody civil wars. From 1980 to 1992 some 72,000 people were killed in El Salvador in a war in which the United States supported the right wing military government at a tune of over a million dollars a day. This caused migration of between 500,000 and one million Salvadorans whose population today numbers over a million in the United States there were less than 10,000 Salvadorans before 1960. Although a number of Dominicans had come to the United States during the mid-1960s as U.S. troops invaded the island, most came after 1980. The 1980 census reported 69,147 Dominican-born persons in the United States. The 1980s saw a swift entry of Dominicans and ten years later 506,000 persons of Dominican descent Dominican-born lived in the United States. Almost 90 percent settled in the Northeast, mostly in New York. Like in the case of most immigrants, the voices of these groups remained outside the United States. They were still very much involved with their countries of origin. They sent remittances to Central America in 2004 that amounted to $7.8 billion U.S. dollars. El Salvador accounted for $2.5 billion; $2.6 million were sent to Guatemala. There is a dependency on these remittances without which those countries

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Table 2. Latinos at Mid-Decade Detailed Hispanic Origin: 2005

Mexican Puerto Rican Cuban Salvadoran Dominican Guatemalan Columbian Honduran Ecuadorian Peruvian Nicaraguan Argentinean Venezuelan Panamanian Costa Rican Chilean Other Central Americans Other South Americans Bolivian Uruguayan Other Spanish/Hispano/Latino Spaniard (self identified)

Number

%

26,784,268 3,794,777 1,462,593 1,240,031 1,135,756 780,191 723,596 466,843 432,068 415,352 275,126 189,303 162,762 141,286 111,978 105,141 99,422 89,443 68,649 51,646 3,003,648 362,424

63.9 9.1 3.5 3.0 2.7 1.9 1.7 1.1 1.0 1.0 0.7 0.5 0.4 0.3 0.3 0.3 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.1 7.2 0.9

Home Country Population

109 million 4.0 11.0 7.0 9.4 13.0 44.4 7.5 13.8 28.7 5.7 40.3 26.0 3.2 4.1 16.3

9.1 3.5

Source: Pew Hispanic Center 2005.

would suffer economic, political, and social collapses. However, the voices of these nationalites within the United States are growing louder as their populations demand quality within the United States forming their unique voices within this country.

372. Excerpts from Bjorn Kumm, ‘‘The Loyola Opposition: El Salvador’s Rebel Priests,’’ 1978 Even before the fall of Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza (1925–1980) in 1979, there were movements within El Salvador for reforms. Many priests, especially the Jesuits, were at the forefront of championing land redistribution and demanding more democracy. A landed oligarchy of 2 percent of the population with links to United States businessmen controlled or owned 60 percent of the land. El Salvador was one of the 10 poorest Latin American countries with a third of its population living in poverty. The oligarchy considered the clergy Communists and declared war on them. The excerpts below tell of the involvement of the church during the late 1970s, especially that of the Jesuits and Fr. Rutilio Grande Garc
ıa, S.J. They were at the forefront of liberation theology that essentially taught the peasants that their rewards should be in this

Latinos, 1980 Present 929

life, God did not want them to suffer injustices, and they should act as a community to bring about justice. Fr. Grande, with two other Salvadorans, was assassinated in 1977. This assassination changed Archbishop Oscar Romero (1917–1980), who began to publicly speak out against injustice and demand an investigation into the murder of Fr. Grande. Romero was later assassinated while passing out communion.

In El Salvador, there is a head-on collision between the government, controlled by rich coffee planters, and the Catholic Church, which is today the country’s only effective legal opposition. Catholic priests are unlikely revolutionaries or at least they were in the Latin America of earlier days, when peasants knew their station and the churchmen considered it their main task to provide the sacraments.… In those days, too, the Church was a trusted ally of the landlords, the oligarchs.… In the past decade, after Pope John XXIII’s ‘‘Populorum Progressio,’’ the Second Vatican Counci1, and the 1968 meeting in Medellin, Colombia, of Latin American bishops, things have changed a great deal … in El Salvador.… ‘‘There are priests in this country who talk as if they were Fidel Castro,’’ says Ernesto Rivas Gallont, secretary general of the Salvadorean Association of Industries (and in his spare time honorary consul of Rhodesia and South Africa). ‘‘The priests are telling the peasants that everything should be distributed equally.… They side with the peasants. They consider us the bad ones.’’ … [The oligarchy] with the help of the army has build up a paramilitary organization, called Orden, in Spanish, means ‘‘order’’ … They are given some military training (the government hesitates, however, to give them guns) and told to keep tabs on possible revolutionaries in their areas especially union organizers and Catholic priests. One of the Salvadorean priests murdered last year … Fr. Rutilio, certainly was no Gild-eyed revolutionary. He had spent his formative years at seminaries in Europe and Central America, often in great spiritual anguish, since he did not consider himself a good Christian.… In the early 1970s [Rutilio] … found that his task in the area almost amounted to missionary work, preaching the gospel all over again to peasants who had been left on their own by the priests, except that they were regularly squeezed for money.… ‘‘The peasants around Aguilares are living under medieval conditions,’’ said Fr. Rutilio. ‘‘They are serfs under their landlords. The wealthy coffee farmers of El Salvador have ceased being Christian. It is not our Lord they are praising when they get up in the morning. They cross themselves in the name of their lord, Coffee. And when they have prayed to their lord Coffee, then they pray to their lord Sugar.’’ Prophetically, Fr. Rutilio referred to the landowners in the Aguilares area as the ‘‘brothers Cain.’’ … Six months after he and his colleagues started there in the parish, a major strike hit the sugar plantations, organized by two radical peasant organizations with Catholic links. [Fr. Rutilo was shot down].… the Jesuits were preaching the need for the peasants to organize. A couple of months after Father Rutilio’s death, the army moved in force to occupy Aguilares and expel the remaining Jesuits. Aguilares was kept under occupation for eight, days.… Archbishop [Oscar] Romero is an intensely private man who suffers a great deal from the public stand he has been forced to take during the past two years. He says

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that he would prefer to make his protest by withdrawal, by keeping absolutely silent. But circumstances do not permit. The death of Fr. Rutilio, his close friend, seems to have been the turning point for the Archbishop, who has literally become the voice of the opposition in El Salvador. Every Sunday morning at eight o’clock the giant cathedral in the country’s capital is so packed that the congregation spills out onto the sidewa1ks. The former cathedral burnt down a few years ago, under mysterious circumstances, and the present structure is hardly impressive, looking like a great unfinished hangar. The government has been contributing toward a new building, but the Archbishop seems uninterested in architecture. ‘‘He does not consider it his task to erect buildings,’’ says a Catholic nun in El Salvador. ‘‘What the Archbishop is really doing is building the people.’’ Every Sunday morning, the sermon of the Archbishop, the unwilling leader of El Salvador’s opposition, is broadcast from the Catholic University station.… ‘‘We are seeing the ugly face of our history,’’ preaches the Archbishop, ‘‘It is not the Church which is sowing the seeds of violence. Violence is the fruit of unjust laws.… If the Church is trying to change things and at the same time trying to maintain its identity, keeping true to Christ, this is not communism, it is Christian justice. Our Savior taught us that you must lose you. ‘‘But,’’ adds the Archbishop bitterly, ‘‘these men who are ruling us do not want to lose anything at all.’’ Archbishop Romero thinks it is, likely that the government will intervene and slap ban on his sermons. However, until he is silenced he will go on preaching and presenting to the public the testimonials of peasants who were evicted from their houses and their bits of land during their clashes between Orden and the peasant organizations. Making their way over the mountains, the roads being blocked by the army, hundreds of peasants and their families reached the Archbishop’s office in a seminary in San Salvador. It is doubtful that they will ever be able to go home. They will add themselves to the hundreds of thousands of slum dwellers in the capital. ‘‘The clashes in the countryside, in effect, help the landowners to modernize agriculture, as well as rid themselves of agitators,’’ says an observer. ‘‘The coffee men made lot of money during the past few years’ coffee boom. They need fewer workers on the land, and the population is increasing steadily. But they might need them in the towns, as cheap labor for their new tax-free industries geared for exports. Our oligarchs have always been able to adapt to new circumstances.’’ ‘‘For a little while, the Salvadorean oligarch was running scared. Many members of the leading families (they are popularly known as ‘‘the fourteen,’’ but are in fact somewhat more numerous) moved to Miami where a number of them have bought expensive condominiums. Now they are returning. They still worry about the Church and its revolutionary priests, but heartened by the growing presence of U.S. financed Protestant missionaries. ‘‘The Protestants are true Christians,’’ says Alfonso Qui~ nones Mesa, a leading Salvadorean oligarch and once his country’s ‘‘coffee ambassador’’ to London. ‘‘They do not mix religion with politics.’’ Source: Bjorn Kumm, ‘‘The Loyola Opposition: El Salvador’s Rebel Priests,’’ pp. 738 740. Reprinted with permission from the December 30, 1978 issue of The Nation. For subscription information, call 1-800-333-8536. Portions of each week’s Nation magazine can be accessed at http:// www.thenation.com.

Latinos, 1980 Present 931

373. Excerpts from Maura I. Toro-Morn, ‘‘Yo Era Muy Arriesgada: A Historical Overview of the Work Experiences of Puerto Rican Women in Chicago,’’ 2001 The 2000 census counted 113,055 Puerto Ricans in Chicago—they were 15 percent of the city’s Latino population. Puerto Ricans lived in barrios scattered throughout the city. Where they lived was greatly affected by Chicago’s history of gentrification, which is a big word meaning poor neighborhoods are starved of public funds and allowed to deteriorate through overcrowding and increased crime. This blight becomes a pretext for leveling the area and building new housing for middle-class buyers. Increasing the value of real estate is another way of getting rid of the poor. As the price of property goes up, absentee owners are encouraged to sell to more affluent buyers at prices the residents cannot afford. More often than not, developers are in collusion with elected officials. Together, they designate wards to be redeveloped or cleared. Local government uses the power of eminent domain, the power to condemn property for the public good, to get rid of the residents. When residents fight back, developers burn them out. In Chicago, Puerto Ricans, Mexican Americans, and other Latinos were constantly shifted to make way for so-called progress. Mexicans were moved out of the Near Westside to make way for the University of Illinois at Chicago Circle; Puerto Ricans were moved out of Lincoln Park to make way for Yuppies (young upwardly mobile professionals) who were white middle class buyers. It did not happen by accident; the political machine always intended to lure middle class whites back to the city because they paid more taxes, and development kept the city financiers happy. By the 1960s, sizeable Puerto Rican neighborhoods had formed in Lincoln Park, West Town, and Humboldt Park. Chicago’s first Puerto Rican barrio was along Division Street near Humboldt Park, which Borique~ nos called la Division. By 1995, ‘‘La Divisi
o n’’ was also called ‘‘Paseo Boricua.’’ It had a population of close to 10,000 souls—two-thirds of whom were Puerto Rican. It was home to the working poor. Most Puerto Rican men and women had not moved into the middle-class—60 percent worked in manufacturing industries, as laborers, and in the service sector. The following excerpts describe the experiences of Puerto Rican women in Chicago and how they adapted to factory work there. Chicago’s rhythms were different from Puerto Rico or New York.

After I got to Chicago my husband didn’t want me to work, but I wanted to work. I wanted to work because you can meet people, learn new things, and one can also leave the house for a while. I saw all the women in the family, his sisters and cousins, working and earning some money, and I wanted to work too. They used to tell me that I should be working. But I had four children, and who was going to take care of them? (Rita, 72 years old, Puerto Rican migrant in Chicago). When I started working at Zenith I started welding. I lied to them, I told them that I knew how to do it but I didn’t … The lady next to me was Italian. I told her I really needed this job, that I had three kids. I told her that I was really interested in learning how to do the job, if she showed me I could learn faster. Within six months I was line inspector, within another six months I was spot checker, and within another six months, I was quality control operator. (Nellie, 52 years old, Puerto Rican migrant in Chicago) …

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The U.S. colonization of Puerto Rico transformed (and continues to transform) the work and migration experiences of Puerto Rican men and women. Historically, Puerto Rican women became part of a labor force that since the United States occupation has shifted from island to mainland to meet the needs of an expanding capitalist and patriarchal system. In Puerto Rico, feminist scholars have documented that Puerto Rican women were integrated into a gender-segregated market closely related to the needs of the U.S. colonial capitalism. Research conducted in Puerto Rican communities in the Northeast shows that, as in Puerto Rico, Puerto Rican migrant women were a source of cheap labor for New York City’s needle and garment trades. Puerto Rican women migrants in the Northeast were also subject to gender and racial discrimination at work and were excluded from participating in labor unions.… The first large group of Puerto Rican women workers that migrated to Chicago were [sic] recruited to resolve the shortage of domestic workers that existed in the city in the 1950s. Gender ideology figured prominently in the migration of Puerto Rican women as domestic workers. In Puerto Rico, the government campaigned to move low-skilled single women to the United States as a way to deal with the unemployment and population problems in the Island. Government officials rationalized the migration of young single women as domestic workers by subscribing to the ideology that Puerto Rican women were inherently suited for domestic work. In Chicago, employers relied on racial stereotypes to pay women salaries that were significantly lower than the going rate for domestic work and made women work long hours without days off. Some contract workers broke their contracts and sought employment in the booming industrial sector, which was also in need of low-skilled labor. These early migrants provided information and resources to other Puerto Rican men and women about employment opportunities in Chicago. As a result, since the 1950s Chicago has become a viable destination for Puerto Ricans migrating to the United States in search of work opportunities.… In the 1980s, in keeping with changes in the global economy, many factories closed their operations to relocate to more profitable places in the Caribbean and Central America. Ironically, industries closed their operations in Chicago to open plants in Puerto Rico, thus further cementing the links between Chicago and Puerto Rico. Puerto Rican families in Chicago were hit hard by lay-offs, unemployment, and plant closings. Many families were not able to recover economically and slipped into poverty, a problem that hit the Puerto Rican community hard in the 1980s.… [Meanwhile], in the 1970s and 1980s, Puerto Rico lost to Mexico and other Caribbean countries its comparative advantage as a source of cheap labor, thus leading to rising unemployment and underemployment. Between 1970 and 1985, the overall unemployment rate in Puerto Rico almost doubled to 21 percent. Men and women were affected differently by these shifts. Although men experienced losses in their share of employment, they seemed to have gained in their share of total employment because of the growth of employment in the public sector. But in general, increasing unemployment and declining employment opportunities pushed Puerto Rican families to become dependent on federal welfare programs for survival. Others have resorted to the informal sector, also known as chiripeo, as a way to survive. There is a gender dimension to chiripeo, as both men and women engage in this kind of work; however, men’s chiripeo includes fruit and vegetable vending, among a range of other activities, whereas women’s work include domestic work, and jewelry making, among other characteristic activities.…

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Typically, the recruitment process proceeded as follows: private citizens in Chicago contacted the agency, filled out a contract request for a domestic worker and paid $210.00 for each employee’s transportation as well as a service fee to the employment agency. By signing the contract request, potential employers also agreed to sign a blank employment contract to be delivered to the Department of Labor in Puerto Rico for the signature of the domestic servant and approval of the Commissioner of Labor. In a chart attached to the employer contract, the employer described the desired age, height, weight, and sex of the prospective servant and type of services needed from the domestic worker. Another way employers sought to hire domestic workers was by making informal requests to the U.S. government. For example, a prospective employer in Washington, D.C. wrote in a letter to the Department of the Interior, with the following request: ‘‘Boy, how I would like to get a good couple without children, if possible the man to do yard and furnace work and drive my car and the woman to do the cooking.’’ The migration of Puerto Rican women as domestic workers is important because it links Puerto Rico and Chicago in distinctively gendered ways.. First, there is the government campaign to move low-skilled single women to the United States as a way to deal with the unemployment and population problems in the Island. Government officials rationalized the migration of young single women as domestic workers by subscribing to the ideology that Puerto Rican women were inherently suited for domestic work. In addition, employers accepted a cult of domesticity that elevated the status of women as mothers and homemakers, yet they made demands on domestics that hindered them from carrying out these responsibilities in their own households. In moving to Chicago as domestic workers, the productive and reproductive spheres of women’s work not only intersected in the migration process, but, more importantly, linked Puerto Rico and Chicago in distinctively gendered ways. The migration of the domestics is also important because it led to the migration of other working class families, a topic I address in the remainder of this paper. Finally, the hiring of Puerto Rican women as domestic workers needs to be seen within the larger history of contract labor to the United States; how the United States had relied on Puerto Ricans as a source of cheap labor also requires attention.… Working-class Puerto Rican families in Chicago responded to their dire economic circumstances by sending every working age member in the household out to work.… Josefa describes the demands of industrial employment on women and the relative ease with which women were able to come in and out of work: Shortly after I got here from Puerto Rico I started working. I started working in a steel factory. We made some car parts.… Men did part of the work and threw it our way and we cleaned it. At the beginning, I cut my hands. They paid me 85 cents an hour. I worked 40 hours a week and sometimes we had to work Saturdays. In that company I worked for 3 or 4 years.… After that I worked in another factory. I stopped working there because I started losing weight and feeling ill. After that I went to General Electric.…

The other side of the economic restructuring can be found in the progress made by Puerto Rican women in the white collar sector … the number of women employed in white collar jobs increased from 12.9 percent in 1960 to 63.6 percent in 1990. In particular, the number employed as clerical workers increased from 8.1 percent in 1960 to 32.6 percent in 1990. In this respect, as shown earlier in this paper, some Puerto Rican women have been able to take advantage of the jobs in the white collar sector, but

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most of the changes have taken place in sectors that do not pay well, such as clerical work, and that do not offer much opportunity for advancement. In addition, lack of educational opportunities and discrimination continue to prevent women’s movement into higher-paying, higher status jobs. The growth in the number of Puerto Rican women employed in the white collar sector is connected to the migration of middle class and educated Puerto Ricans to the city, a movement that started in the 1980s. In the late 1980s and 1990s, as the city’s economic landscape changed, the city began to attract middle-class and educated Puerto Ricans to work in the service sector and in newly developed sectors of the economy. For example, the Puerto Rican Planning Board in San Juan estimates that in the 1990s, about 5,000 Puerto Ricans migrated to Chicago yearly to find jobs in high-tech fields, education, and health care. In my own work, I found that a large segment of the families that migrated to the city in the 1980s were educated women lured by employment and educational opportunities in the city. More recently, the Chicago Tribune has confirmed that the migration of educated Puerto Ricans to Chicago continues unabated. For example, Marisol Inesta-Miro and her husband John Lopez-Haage came to Chicago with their three children when they were recruited by Lucent Technologies in Naperville. (Marisol described her situation to a Chicago Tribune reporter as follows: ‘‘There were not too many opportunities back in Puerto Rico.… A lot of our friends doctors and artists also have moved to the States.’’ So Marisol and her family relocated from Puerto Rico to the Chicago suburb Naperville, a pattern that has always fostered a great deal of resentment and tensions between barrio residents and middle-class migrants. In addition, as the community matured, second- and third-generation Puerto Ricans have entered the labor market, thus adding a new chapter to the history of Puerto Rican workers in the city of Chicago. This new generation of workers continues to solidify the transnational labor links that exist between Chicago and Puerto Rico.… Source: Maura I. Toro-Morn, ‘‘Yo era muy arriesgada: A Historical Overview of the Work Experiences of Puerto Rican Women in Chicago,’’ CENTRO: Journal of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies Volume 13, Number 2, Fall 2001, pp. 26, 27, 30, 31, 32, 39.

374. Excerpts from Silvia M. Unzueta, ‘‘The Mariel Exodus: A Year in Retrospect,’’ 1981 From April 15 to October 31, 1980, more than 125,000 Cubans departed from Cuba’s Mariel Harbor and landed in South Florida. The United States had broken diplomatic relations with Cuba in the early 1960s and imposed an economic boycott on the island prohibiting Americans from trading with or visiting Cuba. This created an economic hardship and Cubans were barely able to buy necessities. They were forced to rely on the Soviet Union for aid. With growing hunger on the island, many Cubans sought to immigrate to the United States. In 1980, about 10,000 Cubans sought to gain asylum in the Peruvian embassy. Cuban leader Fidel Castro announced that anyone who wanted to leave could leave. With cooperation of Cuban-Americans, a boatlift got under way. It caused almost immediate strains with the United States, negatively impacting President Jimmy Carter as thousands of Cuban refugees landed in Florida. There were accidents as some over-crowded boats capsized and 27 migrants died.

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The massive arrival caused problems for local government agencies. While earlier migrations of Cubans had been largely white and middle class, the Marielitos, as they were called, had a larger proportion of Cubans of African origin. Critics accused Castro of emptying out the prisons and sending a large number of homosexuals and convicts. This said more about the critics since regardless of their color or sexual orientation, most Marielitos were only seeking economic stability. The record below shows efforts of Dade County, Florida officials to incorporate the Marielitos and provide them with medical and social services.

Before their [Marielitos] arrival, the population of Dade County was 35% Hispanic, 16% Black American, and 49% White (Reference: Metro Dade County Planning Department, 1979). The Black Americans are about equally divided between those from the [Caribbean] Islands and those from the Deep South. After their arrival, the Hispanic population increased by a half of a percent. More than most other metropolitan areas, Dade County was a city of descendants of immigrants or immigrants themselves. The exodus of over 125,000 Cuban men, women, and children started when more than 10,800 Cubans moved into the grounds of the Peruvian Embassy in Havana, on April 4, 1980, after the Cuban Government guards were removed from the Peruvian Embassy. The word quickly spread throughout the island. The removal of the guards was Castro’s response to a dispute between the Cuban and the Peruvian Governments, when the previous week a small group broke into the Embassy seeking asylum. At that time, no one predicted that the removal of the Cuban militia guard from the Embassy was to be interpreted as anything but ‘‘teaching a lesson,’’ to Peruvian authorities. Instead, in less than twenty-four hours, over 10,800 Cubans jammed into the Embassy grounds seeking political asylum. Dramatic photographs of crowded men, women, and children in trees, and on the Embassy roof without water, food, and basic necessities hit the world press, creating embarrassment, and pressure for their release. After extensive third country negotiations and humanitarian requests from all over the world, the Cuban Government agreed to allow the departure of Cubans holding the Embassy. Peru, Spain, and Costa Rica, along with the United States, agreed to give refuge to the 10,800 Cubans seeking political asylum. During these negotiations, spontaneous demonstrations of support by Cuban Americans throughout the United States, other countries, and the world press, helped to highlight the incident and eventually helped to achieve the release of approximately 1,500 of the 10,800 originally in the Embassy. Upon the arrival of the initial group in San Jose, Costa Rica, and Madrid, the Cubans shared with the world media, the horrors lived while at the Embassy. This exposure generated a negative opinion for the aging Cuban Revolution. A few days later, in a skillful and talented show of strategy, Fidel Castro announced the opening of the Port of Mariel and invited Cuban Americans to come to Mariel, Cuba, and pick-up their relatives who wanted to leave the island. The announcement was well-received by the Cuban American community which immediately began what appeared to be an endless flotilla through the Florida Straits. After a few weeks, it was evident that the Cuban Government had no intention of fulfilling their promise. Instead, some individuals released from jails and mental institutions became part of the human flow that constituted the Mariel exodus. The ‘‘human avalanche’’ reached unprecedented numbers. During the month of May, 88,817 Cubans arrived. This figure constitutes the largest number of Cubans that arrived in any single previous year.

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During May, a number of other factors converged to create a very special situation. President Carter stated that: ‘‘We will continue to provide an open heart and open arms to refugees seeking freedom from Communist domination.’’ That statement was qualified less than a week later. Decisions surrounding the handling of the Mariel exodus became entangled in the national political scene. In Dade County, the initial processing and housing of refugees was skillfully handled by a handful of local, state, and federal officials under the coordination of Metropolitan Dade County Government. At Tamiami Park, a twenty-four hour processing center was set up where more than 1,500 Cubans were scrutinized by Immigration and Naturalization Service, fingerprinted, X-rayed, and released to family, friends, and supportive others. Food, clothing, and shelter were generously donated by individuals, local business, and civic groups. The processing and housing operation involved more than 1,500 volunteers daily, who worked day and night in a unique and heart warming show of care and goodwill. The Tamiami Park opened its doors on Monday, April 21st and operated until the evening of Friday, May 9th, when the process was moved to an old hanger near Opa-locka Airport. That same month, a state of emergency was declared by the President and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was put into action. FEMA is the arm of the federal government responsible for coping with natural disasters and emergencies. FEMA’s efforts were plagued by a lack of staff with knowledge of the language and culture of the people arriving, changes in personnel, policy inconsistencies, lack of clear direction, and clashes among various federal agencies. A Cuban-Haitian Task Force was appointed in an effort to guide federal efforts during the emergency. Although many errors were committed and several criticisms of the federal management had been voiced throughout this process, many individuals were served because of the work and dedication of workers and volunteers. FEMA’s presence, however, attempted to bring the needed federal dollars and the recognition of the exodus as a national emergency. Meanwhile, the Cuban Government had turned what had been a negative internal situation for them into a serious emergency for some of us in the United States. The masses of humanity continued arriving in Key West and other parts of Florida. In Cuba, one of the results of Mariel was alleviating serious internal administrative and political problems, and exporting a high-risk population to its political rival, the United States. The exodus freed jobs, houses, and prison space for the Cuban establishment, and these were critically needed in the island. The departure of dissidents and other marginal persons relieved Cuba from explosive internal pressure. At this time, still in May, another phenomenon took place: FEMA opened four refugee camps in Florida, Arkansas, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin: 1. Eglin Air Force Base in Northwest Florida, housing 10,025. This was the first camp, a city of tents. 2. Indiantown Gap, in Pennsylvania, with a population of 19,094 Cuban refugees. 3. Ft. McCoy, in Wisconsin, housing 14,243. 4. Ft. Chaffee in Ft. Smith, Arkansas, with 19,060 refugees.… Life in camp began another chapter in the lives of these new immigrants. Physical and psychological abuse, beatings, and rapes were happening along with riots as the weeks went by and many Cubans remained tangled-up in the red tape of federal

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bureaucratic management. At one point in the month of June, more than 62,000 Cubans were in the four camps.… Most of those without relatives and who had broken away from their sponsors or ‘‘padrinos’’, gravitated to areas of high Hispanic populations. California, New York, New Jersey, and Florida became primary targets where homeless Cubans sought refuge. In the Miami, Dade County area … The Orange Bowl was opened by the City of Miami in the second week of June. On June 20th, Metro Dade County obtained a special allocation from Washington to feed refugees breakfast and one hot meal a day.… Up to 800 Cubans were housed in Tent City at one time, and more than 4,000 lived there during the two months it was open. Tent City remained open until September 30, 1980.… Although no conclusive figures are available, individuals familiar with the Mariel population place the number of non-Whites as high as 30% to 40%, and males making up approximately 60% to 70% of the population. The average educational level is estimated to be between the 6th and the 9th grade, with few of the arrivals being able to communicate in any language but Spanish. Perhaps the most serious problem this group faces is a lack of attachment to family and friends outside of Cuba. This lack of a support system has often inhibited effective resettlement efforts.… Dr. Jose Szapocznik, Director of CAMP, Cuban-American Adolescent Management Program, University of Miami, Department of Psychiatry, Spanish Family Guidance Center, which provided services to Cuban unaccompanied minors, reports their total in the camps at 672. Of those, more specific information was obtained on 549 cases; of these.… 55 or 10% were females; 43% were non-white; 18% have been or were in a marital or paired relationship; 12% reported coming directly from jail; 50% reported having been in jail at some point of their lives; and 59% reported having some relative in U.S., but only about half of these could give any portion of an address.

Parental occupation and education was reported to be: 70% labor/agricultural, 20% skilled labor, and 10% professional.

Szapocznik reports that a large portion of the interviewees appeared to have poor adjustment to school. Sixty-five percent stated that they had stopped going to school. The rough literacy assessment turned up approximately 8% illiteracy rate. Six of the 55 female minors stated that they thought or knew that they were pregnant at the time of the interview. Fifty-six, or almost 10% of the respondents reported sexual abuse, venereal disease, or multiple sexual problems in their recent or distant past. Clinical judgments of a series of psychiatric symptoms and conditions reported the following characteristics: 47% had experienced behavioral problems in Cuba, 14% had experienced hallucinations,

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Much has also been said about the percentage of homosexuals in those arriving from Mariel. However, no data is available as to the actual number of homosexuals in the Mariel population.… Legally, the individuals coming in the Mariel Flotilla have been granted the new administrative category of ‘‘entrant.’’ This technicality rendered them ineligible for assistance available through the U.S. Refugee Act of 1980. Many experts believe that the denial of refugee status to these people greatly contributed to the many problems encountered at all levels. It was through the Fascell-Stone Amendment to the Refugee Act of 1980, that special funding was authorized, and in the form of cash assistance, reached the entrants during the latter part of February 1981.… CRIMINAL JUSTICE The increase of criminal activity has been one of more item often blamed on the Mariel refugees. As of December 26, 1980, Unzueta reports that of 163 Cubans charged and/or convicted felons housed in Dade County’s main jail, 103 or 63.9% are Mariel refugees, 11 or 6.8% are Cuban ex-political prisoners, and 47 or 29.1% are Cuban Americans. Mariel refugees represented 9.8% of individuals in the main jail. In the Women’s Detention Center, where females either charged or convicted of felonies or misdemeanors are housed, Unzueta reports 8 or 4.6% Cuban American women along with 8 or 4.6% Mariel Cuban females and 7 homosexual Mariel males. Mariel refugee women represent 4.6% of the total females, while Mariel homosexual men represent 4.0% of the total individuals housed in the Women’s Detention Center on December 26, 1980. The increase in criminal activity has impacted heavily on the entire Dade County judicial system. Source: Document 0033 Cuban Information Archives. http://cuban-exile.com/doc 026-050/ doc0033.html.

375. Excerpts from Chip Berlet, The Hunt for Red Menace: How Government Intelligence Agencies and Private Rightwing Counter Subversion Groups Forge Ad Hoc Covert Spy Networks That Target Dissidents as Outlaws, 1987 In 1979, the Salvadoran military responded to student protests by installing a military junta. The following year saw the rise of extreme right wing Salvadoran Maj. Roberto D’Aubuission and the Republican Nationalist Alliance (ARENA). The military received a boost with the election of Republican President Ronald Reagan (1911–2001) who gave over a million dollars a day to the Salvadoran military to fight rebels who were demanding democratic elections. Meanwhile, D’Aubuission’s death squads (i.e., military units assigned to assassinate dissidents and church people), with the support of the U.S. Central

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Intelligence Agency (CIA), killed thousands. Hundreds of thousands of Salvadorans came to the United States in response to the civil wars in their country in the 1980s and early 1990s. The Salvadoran civil war lasted 12 years, from 1980 to 1992, costing El Salvador 75,000 lives. The United States spent between $4 billion and $6 billion in El Salvador alone. The peace accords of 1992 between the Salvadoran Government and the rebels gave a place in the nation’s politics to both the conservative ARENA party and the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) rebels. While in the United States, many of the exiles helped set up organizations that would bring peace to their country. Because many of these organizations supported the rebels, they came under intense surveillance. The following article discusses government infiltration of the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES) that was based in New York City. It was a national activist organization with chapters in major cities in the United States. It supported the FMLN and the progressive social movement in their home country. It was founded in 1980 and sought support in the United States for the guerrilla army.

The genesis of the FBI probe of CISPES was a complex network of groups and individuals with a common counter-subversive worldview: The underlying theories which prompted the FBI investigation of CISPES were developed at the start of the Cold War, and reflect the same discredited view of subversion that the American public finally rejected to end the McCarthy period. Individuals and groups who hold this discredited view of subversion played influential roles in shaping the policies of the Reagan Administration in this area, and then in some cases moved on to become consultants and staff members in Administration and Congressional posts. These same groups and individuals then set out to rebuild a private counter-subversion network among conservative and rightist groups with the goal of assisting the government, and specifically the FBI, in investigating subversion. The results of their investigations were published in a range of newsletters and journals in articles which frequently cross-cited each other and often traced back to unsubstantiated charges of Communist subversion made by persons testifying before congressional witch-hunting committees. Young conservatives from colleges and universities were recruited and trained to participate in monitoring and analyzing the activities of alleged subversive groups through a network of interlocking conservative institutions based in Washington, D.C. Information and documents collected by private right-wing groups were provided to government law enforcement agencies that would otherwise be prevented from obtaining the information by constitutional and legislative restrictions. This biased and unverified information was then used to justify criminal investigations of dissidents in general and the anti-interventionist CISPES in particular. Many activists involved in Central American issues became aware of hamhanded snooping by Federal Bureau of Investigation agents in the early 1980s. In 1986, the Center for Investigative Reporting in California used the federal Freedom of Information Act [FOIA] to obtain FBI files which suggested a large-scale probe into CISPES. In 1987, testimony by a former FBI informant, Frank Varelli, also suggested a broad attack on CISPES by the FBI. Varelli later told reporters of the involvement of other governmental and private right-wing groups in targeting CISPES.

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Some 1,300 pages of additional FBI files released in 1988 by New York’s Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), on behalf of CISPES, reveal in sharp detail the extent and nature of the FBI probe into CISPES. More importantly, the files show that the FBI, to justify its actions, accepted as fact a right-wing conspiratorial worldview which sees dissent as treason and resistance to oppression as terrorism. The first FBI investigation of CISPES was launched in September of 1981 to determine if CISPES should be forced to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Among the documents used by the FBI to justify this CISPES probe, according to Congressional testimony by FBI official Oliver ‘‘Buck’’ Revell, was a 1981 article by a former FBI informant and ongoing right-wing private spy John Rees. The Rees article appeared in Review of the News a magazine published by the paranoid ultra-right John Birch Society. This FBI investigation was terminated without indictments in December of 1981. A second FBI investigation of CISPES began in March of 1983. It was premised on the right-wing conspiracy theory that CISPES was a cover for ‘‘terrorist’’ activity. To justify this view, the FBI relied not only on reports from its informant Varelli, but also in part on a conspiratorial analysis contained in a report written by Michael Boos, a staffer at the right-wing Young Americas Foundation. This FBI ‘‘counterterrorism’’ investigation was terminated without indictments in 1985. The FBI relying on the malicious musings of paranoid right-wing ideologues to justify probes of the anti-Administration CISPES is rather like the IRS assigning Jerry Falwell to audit the financial records of the American Civil Liberties Union. THE TERRORIST-BAITING OF CISPES The June 1984 report on CISPES by Michael Boos, the staff member at the Young Americas Foundation, was titled: ‘‘Group in Nation’s Capitol to Aid Left-Wing Terrorists.’’ In the report, Boos wrote that the D.C. Chapter of CISPES would ‘‘soon launch a fundraising campaign to provide direct military assistance to the Soviet-supported Marxist terrorists seeking to overthrow the recently elected government in El Salvador.’’ This conclusion was reached when Boos made the Kierkegaardian assumption that the shoe factory CISPES planned to help build in El Salvador would not really benefit civilians, but would secretly make and repair boots for rebel soldiers and thus constituted military aid for ‘‘Soviet-supported Marxist terrorists.’’ Boos wrote his report after attending a public CISPES meeting in Washington, D.C. According to a spokesperson at the Young Americas Foundation, Boos was apparently engaging in a freelance information-gathering activity not directly connected with his staff position. Boos filed his report with the right-wing newsletter American Sentinel, and sent an unsolicited copy to the FBI. The FBI promptly distributed it to 32 of its field offices and apparently sent it to other federal agencies as well. It is ironic that the Boos report on CISPES for American Sentinel was revealed in the FBI documents on CISPES since the Young Americas Foundation is only a minor player in the right-wing information network. The [Young Americas] Foundation primarily is involved in recruiting college students into the conservative anti-Communist movement. Boos, while at Young Americas Foundation, circulated a newsletter reporting on campus activists, but it too is not influential in right-wing circles. The Young Americas Foundation is a haven for aging former members of the right-wing campus-based Young Americans for Freedom (YAF). While it was started

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by a former YAF staffer, the [Young Americas] Foundation is not formally tied to that group. They are certainly right-wing ideological soul-mates, however, and they cooperate closely. The [Young Americas] Foundation once sent out a fundraising mailing calling former Sen. George McGovern ‘‘anti-American,’’ and claimed ‘‘our classrooms are full of teachers and textbooks that tear down our system of republican government and free enterprise while glorifying communism and socialism.’’ The American Sentinel, the newsletter which published the Boos report on CISPES (without attribution) is, however, one of the core right-wing outlets for red menace diatribes. The Sentinel frequently touts its relationship to law enforcement. The Sentinel raised funds to send its blacklist-style report to ‘‘723 FBI offices and local police departments,’’ pledging to keep track of ‘‘the liberals, the left-wingers, the radicals and the Communists.’’ PARANOID THEORIES AND THE FBI PROBE OF CISPES That the views of the paranoid right wing find safe harbor at the FBI is supported by the documents they released under the FOIA concerning the probe of CISPES. As Alicia Fernandez of the Center for Constitutional Rights explained in an article appearing in the Movement Support Network News: ‘‘In order to justify its investigation, the FBI utilized two rationales: it posited the existence of a covert program and it resurrected a 1950s favorite, the concept of a ‘front group.’ These two notions were extremely useful. By positing a covert program, FBI headquarters was able to reason away the lack of findings in investigations conducted by the field offices. ‘‘When a field office reported that assiduous investigation had revealed that a local CISPES chapter pursued only such projects as teach-ins, slide shows, and pickets, headquarters would remind the field office of the ‘covert program.’ This, headquarters explained, was known to only a few CISPES members, but represented CISPES’ true intentions and activities. Thus headquarters would caution the field office not to be deceived and urge it to dig deeper. The deeper the field office dug, with no results, then clearly, reasoned the FBI, the deeper they needed to dig. ‘‘When field offices cabled headquarters to inform it that they had located no CISPES chapter but had found a Central American solidarity committee, or a Latin American human rights group, or a sanctuary church, headquarters would recommend aggressive investigation and explain that CISPES operated through ‘fronts,’ in which respectable people were duped for its ‘terrorist purposes.’ ’’ In this way, any group which ever worked with CISPES or shared members became a potential ‘‘front.’’ ‘‘The very logic of these rationales increased the pressure to expand the hunt for fronts and intensify the search for covert activities,’’ Fernandez points out. The FBI probe of CISPES involved 52 of the 59 Field Offices of the FBI. Dossiers were compiled on hundreds of other organizations which intersected in some vague way with CISPES during the course of the investigation. Margaret Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights called the FBI probe of CISPES a ‘‘sweeping and intrusive investigation … the FBI utilized wiretaps, undercover agents, and informants in addition to the type of intensive physical surveillance that is normally reserved for investigation of serious crimes.’’ According to Ratner: ‘‘The investigation, which was begun in 1981 to determine if a violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act existed, was quickly turned into a ‘Foreign

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Intelligence/Terrorism’ inquiry, even though no basis for such existed. The new category, however, allowed the FBI to utilize ‘special techniques,’ that are considered illegal when applied to domestic investigations. It allowed the FBI to avoid strictures developed to remedy the abuses that came to light in the post-Vietnam protest era.’’ Ratner charges that ‘‘the investigation was used as one of the pretexts for the harassment and surveillance’’ being reported by those who oppose the Reagan administration’s foreign policy. FBI director William Sessions, however, defended the CISPES investigation as a legitimate probe into criminal activity. But one FBI agent assumed a more sinister motive for the CISPES investigation in a memo which warned: It is imperative at this time to formulate some plan of action against CISPES and, specifically, against individuals [deletion] who defiantly display their contempt for the U.S. government by making speeches and propagandizing their cause while asking for political asylum. New Orleans is of the opinion that the Departments of Justice and State should be consulted to explore the possibility of deporting these individuals or at best denying them reentry after they leave.

Among the many groups named in the CISPES FBI files were: Central American Solidarity Committee, Clergy and Laity Concerned, Church of the Brothers, Chicago Interreligious Task Force, Fellowship of Reconciliation, Friends Religious Society, Maryknoll Sisters, National Education Association, Southern Christian Leadership Conference, United Steel Workers Union, and the United Auto Workers Union. Also named in the files were a number of individual churches, colleges, religious orders, community organizations, women’s groups and political groups. The following excerpt from the Pittsburgh FBI field office file on the local CISPES affiliate, the Central American Mobilization Committee (CAMC), showed the ideological framework which forms the basis of the FBI investigation: The membership of the CAMC and its affiliated groups appears generally to be of two type groups: the ‘‘core’’ membership and the ‘‘affiliate’’ membership. The ‘‘core’’ membership consists of individuals with strong Communist or Socialist beliefs who have a history of being active in Communist or Socialist political organizations, some since the Vietnam War era. The ‘‘affiliate’’ membership, on the other hand, consists in large part of local college students relatively new to the political scene. It has at least one female high school student member. Some of these younger ‘‘affiliate’’ members appear to be politically unsophisticated in that they know little of current international events save what they read or hear at their political meetings. Pittsburgh has noted at least two of these members or affiliates both were young females.

The CISPES FOIA revelations came on the heels of charges by former FBI informant Frank Varelli that he was pressured into inventing information to show that CISPES was tied to terrorists. Varelli told a Congressional subcommittee in 1987 that his reports were designed to provide an excuse for the FBI to intimidate critics of Reagan’s Central America policies. According to Varelli, ‘‘The FBI led me to believe that CISPES was a radical ‘terrorist’ organization.… Ironically, never once during the next three years of my association with CISPES did I encounter anything even close to the picture painted by the FBI. The CISPES organization was peaceful, nonviolent, and devoted to changing the policies of the United States towards Central America by persuasion and education.’’

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Varelli sued the FBI, alleging they refused to pay him $65,000 in back pay. Varelli was terminated as an informant when the FBI agent controlling him carelessly lost in a car burglary files containing secret information that might have blown Varelli’s cover. Source: Chip Berlet, The Hunt for Red Menace: How Government Intelligence Agencies and Private Rightwing Counter Subversion Groups Forge Ad Hoc Covert Spy Networks that Target Dissidents as Outlaws. Revised. Cambridge, MA. Political Research Associates, [1987] 1993. http://www.publiceye. org/huntred/Hunt For Red Menace-12.html.

376. Testimony of Peter Kornbluh, ‘‘Congressional Inquiry into Alleged Central Intelligence Agency Involvement in the South Central Los Angeles Crack Cocaine Drug Trade,’’ October 19, 1996 The civil wars in Central America created push factors that drove many Central Americans to the United States during the 1980s and 1990s. In the United States, the nation was divided: one camp condemned U.S. intervention while the other said that it was necessary to stop communism. When Nicaraguans elected the Marxist Sandinistas, CIA involvement was stepped up as it funded and aided the Contras—right-wing Nicaraguan counter-revolutionaries that sought to overthrow the Sandinistas. Seeking to limit U.S. involvement, Congress passed the Boland Amendments in 1982 and 1984, aimed at limiting U.S. government assistance to the Contras. However, this did not stop the involvement of the CIA, which switched to covert actions. Congressional investigations revealed that the United States sold arms to Iran in exchange for the release of hostages taken by Iranian militants in 1979. The profits from arms sales went to the Contras. Further investigations suggested that the Contras received more money through other illegal programs that were coordinated by Col. Oliver North of the National Security Council. President Ronald Reagan (1911–2001) denied knowledge of the affair—even though it was clear his administration circumvented the provisions of the Boland Amendments. Vice President George H. Bush (1924–) and William J. Casey (former director of the CIA, who died in May 1987), were implicated but not charged with violating the Boland Amendments. The following formerly classified redacted document shows that on February 10, 1986, North was informed by his liaison Robert Owen that a plane being used to run materials to the Contras was previously used to run drugs proving U.S. complicity in trying to overthrow the constitutionally elected Sandinista Government. The turmoil throughout Central American was the principal reason for immigration to the United States, and it formed the politics of many of the refugees when in the United States.

Testimony of Peter Kornbluh Senior Analyst National Security Archive

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October 19, 1996 Congresswoman Juanita Millender-McDonald, members of the Black and Hispanic Caucus, and the Select Committee on Intelligence, I want to thank you for affording me the opportunity to both testify at, and be witness to, this important hearing. The name of my organization, the National Security Archive, sounds like the type of government agency that might be involved in this scandal. I can assure you that we are not. We are a public interest documentation center, specializing in obtaining the declassification of internal national security documentation and making it available to Congress, to journalists and to concerned citizens to enhance the public debate over foreign policies that are conducted in our name but often without our knowledge. The Archive which is nonpartisan and does not take a position on legislation often deals with documents that are classified TOP SECRET for national security reasons but that, in truth, have no real bearing on the security of our nation. Today, however, I am happy to have the opportunity to share with you declassified White House documents which indeed address a real and present danger to the national security of this country, to the security of our cities, of our households, and to the health, well-being and personal security of each and every citizen in this room the scourge of drugs. Let me say at the outset that I cannot speak to, nor provide evidence for, the allegations that are stated and implied in the San Jose Mercury News stories. Internal U.S. government documents on the early years of the contra war that might shed light on the issues reported by Gary Webb have not been declassified. Hopefully, public pressure brought on the CIA, the Justice Department, the National Security Council and the Drug Enforcement Agency will result in the release of those documents. But I can and will address the central premise of the story: that the U.S. government tolerated the trafficking of narcotics into this country by individuals involved in the contra war. To summarize: there is concrete evidence that U.S. officials White House, NSC and CIA not only knew about and condoned drug smuggling in and around the contra war, but in some cases collaborated with, protected, and even paid known drug smugglers who were deemed important players in the Reagan administrations obsessed covert effort to overthrow the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Exactly two years ago this weekend, this issue came up during Oliver North’s failed run for Virginia’s U.S. Senate seat. The Washington Post ran an article which I have included in your packet suggesting that North had failed to give important information on the contras and drugs to the DEA. In response, Mr. North called a press conference where he was joined by Duane Clarridge, the CIA official who ran the contra operations from 1981 through mid 1984, and the former attorney general of the United States, Edwin Meese III. Mr. North called it a ‘‘cheap political trick … to even suggest that I or anyone in the Reagan administration, in any way, shape or form, ever tolerated the trafficking of illegal substances.’’ Mr. Clarridge claimed that it was a ‘‘moral outrage’’ to suggest that a Reagan Administration official ‘‘would have countenanced’’ drug trafficking. And Mr. Meese stated that no ‘‘Reagan administration official would have ever looked the other way at such activity.’’ The documentation, in which Mr. North, Mr. Clarridge and Mr. Meese all appear, suggests the opposite. Let me review it here briefly:

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1. KNOWLEDGE OF DRUG SMUGGLING Oliver North’s own diaries, and internal memoranda written to him from his contra contact, reveal explicit reports of drugs trafficking. On April 1, 1985, Oliver North was informed by his liaison with the contras, Robert Owen, that two of the commanders chosen by the FDN to run the southern front in Costa Rica were probably, or definitively ‘‘involved with drug running.’’ On July 12, 1985, Oliver North was informed that the contras were considering the purchase of arms from a supplier in Honduras. The $14 million that the supplier had used to finance the guns, ‘‘came from drugs.’’ On August 9, 1985, Oliver North was informed that one of the resupply planes being used by Mario Calero, the brother of the head of the largest contra group the FDN, was ‘‘probably being used for drug runs into [the] U.S.’’ On February 10, 1986, North was informed by his liaison Robert Owen that a plane being used to run materials to the contras was previously used to run drugs, and that the CIA had chosen a company whose officials had a criminal record. The company, Vortex Aviation, was run by Michael Palmer, one of the biggest marijuana smugglers in U.S. history, who was under indictment for ten years of trafficking in Detroit at the same time as he was receiving more than $300,000 in U.S. funds from a State Department contract to ferry ‘‘humanitarian’’ aid to the contras. In not one of these cases, Congresswoman Millander-McDonald, is there any record of Oliver North passing this important intelligence information onto proper law enforcement or DEA officials. Out of the tens of thousands of documents declassified during the Iran-Contra investigations, there is not a telephone message slip, not a memo, not an e-mail, nor a letter. We also know that Mr. North, who you remember thought it was a ‘‘neat idea’’ to use the Ayatollah Khomeini’s money to fund the contras, was predisposed to use drug monies to fund the contras when they ran short of cash. In 1984, during a drug sting the DEA was attempting against leaders of the Medellin Cartel, he asked two DEA agents if $1.5 million in cartel money aboard an informants plane could be turned over to the contras. The DEA officials just said no. 2. PROTECTION FOR DRUG SMUGGLERS The case of Jos
e Bueso Rosa demonstrates the lengths to which high White House and CIA officials were willing to go to protect an individual who fit the classic definition of a ‘‘narco-terrorist.’’ General Bueso Rosa was involved in a conspiracy to import 345 kilos of coke into Florida street value $40 million. Part of the proceeds were to be used to finance the assassination of the president of Honduras. I think most people in this room would agree that a major cocaine smuggler and would-be international terrorist such as General Bueso Rosa should be locked up for life. But because this general had been the CIA’s and the Pentagon’s key liaison in Honduras in the covert war against Nicaragua, North, Clarridge, and others in the Reagan administration sought leniency for him. As North put it in an e-mail message U.S. officials ‘‘cabal[ed] quietly to look at options: pardon, clemency, deportation, reduced sentence.’’ The objective of our national security managers was not to bring the weight of the law down on General Bueso, but to ‘‘keep Bueso from …

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spilling the beans.’’ By the way, he ended up serving less than five years in prison in a white collar ‘‘Club Fed’’ prison in Florida. 3. COLLABORATION WITH DRUG SMUGGLERS It is the documentation on U.S. relations with another Latin American general, General Manuel Noriega in Panama, that most clearly demonstrates the shameless attitude of the highest U.S. national security officials toward major drug smuggling into our cities. General Noriega is currently serving 40 years in prison for narcotics trafficking. All of us in this room remember that General Noriega’s involvement with the Medell
ın Cartel was so significant that President Bush ordered the U.S. military to invade Panama to arrest him, at the cost of American lives, Panamanian lives and hundreds of millions of dollars. The 1989 invasion of Panama was codenamed Operation Just Cause. But in 1986, when U.S. officials had the same evidence of Noriega’s career as the Cartel’s man in Panama, the Reagan administration appeared to have another kind of ‘‘Just Cause’’ with Gen. Noriega. Shortly after the New York Times published a front page story titled ‘‘Panama Strongman Said to Trade in Drugs, Arms, and Illicit Money,’’ General Noriega contacted Oliver North with a quid pro quo proposal: help him ‘‘clean up his image’’ and he would have his covert agents undertake major sabotage operations against economic targets inside Nicaragua. Instead of telling Noriega that he should rot in jail as most everybody in this room would have done Oliver North supported this quid pro quo proposal; indeed North even wanted to pay General Noriega one million dollars, yes, one million dollars in money diverted from the sale of arms to Iran, to carry out these sabotage operations (which the contras would have then taken credit for). In one of the most striking, and candid, electronic mail messages ever written inside the White House, North wrote to his superior, National Security Adviser John Poindexter that ‘‘You will recall that over the years Manuel Noriega and I have developed a fairly good relationship.… The proposal sounds good to me and I believe we could make the appropriate arrangements.’’ And Admiral Poindexter authorized North to jet off to London to meet secretly with Noriega and work out the details on U.S. help to ‘‘clean up his image’’ and collaboration in the covert war. As Poindexter declared in his electronic response: ‘‘I have nothing against Noriega other than his illegal activities.’’ RECOMMENDATIONS Representative Millender-McDonald and other members of the panel, this is but some of the documented evidence we have of the attitudes and actions of high U.S. officials toward narcotics trafficking and traffickers during the covert war against Nicaragua. While these records do not address the issue of who knew what, when, here in California, they do demonstrate a rather shocking pattern of government behavior that demands an accounting. The key question, it seems to me, is how that accounting can, and should take place over both the short and long term future. Allow me to conclude with several brief recommendations:

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First, members of Congress should call on the President to authorize his Intelligence Oversight Board to conduct a six month inquiry into the questions of official knowledge, tolerance, and complicity in drug trafficking during the covert operations against Nicaragua during the 1980s. With all due respect to the inspector general of the Justice Department and the CIA, an internal investigation is not likely to result in the public disclosure of information required to lay this scandal to rest. The Intelligence Oversight Board is a far more independent body, and far more likely to conduct a thorough investigation that can be declassified along with supporting documentation for a public accounting. Second, while you, and other Representatives patiently wait on CIA director John Deutch to complete his internal review, you should demand that the CIA immediately declassify a previous internal investigation and report that the agency completed in 1988. This report is already known to exonerate the CIA of wrongdoing. But declassifying it, and all the files on which it was built, is likely to give us a far greater sense of CIA awareness of contra/drug operations, and the action or inaction of Agency officials in the face of this awareness over the course a many years. If the CIA doesn’t have anything to hide, it should have no problem releasing this documentation. Its refusal to do so up till now, I suggest to you, should set off the alarm bells throughout the halls of Congress. Third, a number of files should be released by the Justice Department immediately. Those include files that were not turned over to the Senate Subcommittee chaired by John Kerry in 1987 and 1988, particularly the files related to the socalled Frogman case in San Francisco. Similarly the Justice Department should release its never-filed indictment against Norwin Meneses and all of the supporting prosecution files that went into drafting that indictment, as well as all records relating to why that indictment was never filed and is now locked away in a vault in San Francisco. Fourth, all DEA investigative records on Meneses and Danilo Bland
on should be declassified immediately. In the case of Bland
on, the DEA must also release the files on his informant status, including documentation on the deliberations to make him a high-paid informant. The U.S. intelligence community just devoted considerable resources to addressing the scandal of the CIA paying a known torturer and assassin in Guatemala as an informant. Having a major California drug dealer on the U.S. payroll as an informant strikes me as demanding at least as an equal accounting. Finally, let me say that although the National Security Archive takes no position on legislation, I would personally hope that the political and social organization and mobilization that has been generated by public concern and the commitment of individuals like Rep. Millender-McDonald, Rep. Maxine Waters, Senator Barbara Boxer and others, will address the broader debate over the future of covert operations and intelligence reform. When you think about it, all of the CIA’s major covert wars in Indochina, in Afghanistan, and in Central America have had as their byproducts drug trafficking and addiction. As the issue we are addressing here today suggests, all too often, covert operations conducted against some obscure enemy abroad have returned home to haunt the very people whose security they are ostensibly designed to protect. This scandal provides an opportunity and a challenge for the American public to protect themselves from their protectors so that five, ten, or twenty years from

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now, we will not be sitting again in this gymnasium attempting to redress future crimes of state. Thank you. Source: National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 2, http://www.gwu.edu/ nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB2/pktstmny.htm.

377. Excerpts from Brittmarie Janson P
erez, ‘‘Political Facets of Salsa,’’ 1987 What is amazing is that after over 100 years of colonial rule, Puerto Ricans have maintained their language and traditions, as have most Spanish-speaking Caribbean people. Many people attribute this in part to salsa music and dance that binds youth together. Salsa is a product of many Latin and Afro-Caribbean dances. For instance, Mambo has a pattern of six steps danced over eight counts of music. Whereas Mambo moves generally forward and backward, Salsa moves more from side to side. It creates a mood. There are Cuban, New York, Los Angeles, Dominican, Columbian, and of course Puerto Rican styles. Caribbean music takes 80 percent of its roots from Africa, and it is part of a nightclub life that brings youth together. The following essay excerpts discuss the political aspects of salsa.

Late at night, in a discotheque in a Latin American country whose political system is dominated by the military and is not particularly known for its respect for human rights, a crowd is dancing salsa, a generic term covering Caribbean dance music. The song is Willie Col
on’s ‘‘El General.’’ It starts with a roll of drum beats and a sarcastic description of the general getting up in the morning to put on his uniform and dictate orders to the president. A thrill of fifes follows and a [stentorian] shout: ‘‘To the right!’’ The verse describes citizens as delighted not to have a free press and a dangerous democratic system with its tricky politicians. The military gazette is very enjoyable and it is reassuring to have a regime which puts men with strange ideas behind bars. In the discotheque, the crowd continues dancing. The next stanza says the general is rumored to be about to retire: What will happen to the country and the people without him? ‘‘For a long time I’ve wanted to thank you,’’ is the refrain, ‘‘goodbye and thank you, my general.’’ By this time, one of the dancers is consciously aware of the lyrics and wondering, ‘‘what kind of a song are we dancing to?’’ It is a long song which thanks the general in the name of those who are no longer there, the desaparecidos [disappeared]. A chorus which starts by asserting that there is no censorship in the country cleverly turns the refrain into a denouncement: Censura! This is followed by the sounds of an execution. Someone orders: ‘‘Aim … Fire!’’ A spatter of shots is heard followed by a military march and the ominous sound of a siren. Over a megaphone, a male voice with a Chilean accent announces a curfew. The next stanzas are loaded with hypocritical thanks to the jefe supremo for all he has done for the people, for what he did for Pablo Pueblo, who came home from the factory to find his family missing. ‘‘In the barrio we all toast the general with rum and cold beer, waiting for the day he can rest,’’ the lyrics add. Addressing the general, the song continues: ‘‘Either you retire or they retire you, but what a glorious day that will be. How happy I am that you will go.… Goodbye little general, tyrant of my life.’’

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The song is a dramatic composition with bold sound effects and elements in the verse with which people from many parts of Latin America can identify. A proper semiotic analysis is impossible here; only a few examples can be given. A general who dictates orders to the president is compatible with many past and present regimes in Caribbean countries. The missing, the desaparecidos, are a characteristic of dictatorships, but the term is most closely connected with the Argentine and Chilean experiences. The general’s early rise and his work routine are reminiscent of Paraguayan radio newscasts which often start with such reports. The apologia for not having a democratic system is a standard one for military regimes in Latin America. This song, which was brought to my attention by the dancer just referred to, is not unique. There is a trend in many contemporary salsa recordings to include one or two topics, such as poverty and injustice in Latin America or the oppression of Latin Americans living in the United States, and to present them as a product of corrupt regimes, U.S. imperialism, or capitalism. Denouncements of electoral fraud, government censorship and officially-sanctioned drug trafficking are among the themes dealt with in salsa by Panamanian composer and singer Pedro Altamiranda. The proclamation of nationalist causes is seen in the work of other composers from the Caribbean region. The range of issues is broad but the one whose social and political implications is rarely addressed is machismo. The question of why ‘‘El General’’ could be played under the particular circumstances just described is a fascinating one, but because the permissibility of aesthetic protest is heavily dependent on the country and the prevalent political climate, it will not be broached here. Instead, I want to explore two broader questions: why salsa, an eminently danceable genre, is being used as a medium for powerful political messages; and whether commercial, ideological, and technological impingements threaten salsa’s survival. 2. THE GENRE Politics has rarely been absent from Latin American music Mexico’s politicised [politicized] corridos are well known. Puerto Rican composers voiced their independentist concerns in a few boleros, also a Latin American dance genre. The highly committed nueva canci
on latino americana has been amply documented. Salsa differs from these, however, in that it is a large-scale capitalist commercial production, a consumer product aimed at all of Latin America and Hispanics residing in the United States but which, nevertheless, contains critiques of capitalism from various viewpoints. The salsa of socio-political themes is not the type of protest song sung in demonstrations, rallies, or overtly political contexts. It is protest embedded in everyday life: songs heard over the radio or record player, and music danced to at parties and in nightclubs or discos. The public is in a passive, recipient situation in contrast with, for instance, the U.S. blacks of the civil rights movement who sang ‘‘We Shall Overcome’’ in active resistance. This recipient relationship in popular music, between the product and the consumer, should not be over emphasized, however, since in the end it is the individual who, in accepting or rejecting a song, has the last say as far as commercial success is concerned. The birth of salsa was the product of an eminently political event: the Cuban Revolution of 1959 and the OAS [Organization of American States] boycott of the

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island which ensued. Until that time, Cuba was the undisputed centre of Caribbean or Afro-Antillean music. Commercial production of popular music in Cuba for export was brought to an end by these events and many prominent Cuban musicians, composers, and singers emigrated to the United States, where New York still had sufficient big bands to be able to assimilate the influx. But the final end of the big band era was in sight by the time the Beatles swept the entire continent in 1964. U.S. recording companies had stopped production of Cuban music several years before. Yet New York was the mecca of Latin American artists as well as the centre of large-scale migration, not only from Puerto Rico but from all Caribbean Basin countries. Marginalized in the new land and consigned to an inferior status not unlike that of U.S. blacks many of the emigrants were black the
emigr
es settled in ghettos of their own, the barrio, adjacent to slums such as Harlem. In New York, the musical outcome was the emergence of barrio music and musicians, of small ensembles which played for their barrio brethren and incorporated into their music the sounds and daily problems, the cacophony and violence of the urban slum. The musical roots of these compositions which were in part a quest for affirming ethnic identity were eminently Cuban or Afro-Antillean. The clave, a rhythmic time-line of 312 or 213 over two beats, became the pattern not only for the re-interpretation of already existing Caribbean music, but also for new compositions. The use of traditional instruments such as congas, maracas, g€ uiros, bongos, the piano, plus trumpets and trombones which were emphasized to translate the sound of the barrio was retained as an ideological affirmation of the Caribbean heritage. The new music was heavily indebted to the highly syncopated Cuban son [sound or musical style]. In the following years, a most interesting phenomenon occurred: although salsa was still not identified as such, the genre which started in New York was rapidly taken up in the big cities of the Caribbean in a spontaneous process, unconnected with fashion or commercial promotion. Possibly this was because the need for cultural identification felt by the Latins in alien New York was basically the same as that of Caribbean barrio inhabitants; both lacked a musical expression to represent them at a time when radio stations were playing the Rolling Stones and television stations were dominated by canned U.S. serials. By the early 1970s, salsa reached its first stage of maturity in New York and the recording industry made its influence felt. Barrio music was given a label, salsa, and actively promoted. The salsa boom which followed had its apex in 1974, fuelled by a recording enterprise, Fania, which came to dominate the salsa market. But the boom was double-edged. It gave employment to many Latin American musicians but the enterprise’s efforts at ‘‘crossing over’’ into the broader U.S. and European markets had negative effects. In general terms, ‘‘crossing over’’ means validating an economically, politically, or racially subordinate culture before a hegemonic culture. In this case, the goal was commercial: to invade the lucrative big markets with salsa. For this effort to be successful, however, the enterprise’s executives deemed it necessary to modify the genre. For the salsa industry to become really big-time and surpass the confines of the Latin consumers market, Fania’s managers felt that they had to change salsa’s image radically. From being the music of the barrio, associated with poverty, delinquency, and marginality, it had to be polished and approximated to the overwhelming U.S. pop culture.… The salsa boom would increase sales but eventually it killed the music’s feeling and indeed its reason for being. Fania started producing supermarket music which

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insistently and desperately denied the true essence of salsa and became a Caribbeantype music disguised for ‘‘gringo’’ consumption. An example of such music is Rhythm Machine released by Fania with CBS in 1977. Productions such as these were rejected by the Latin public. The boom was exhausted in New York by 1979, at which time Venezuela and Puerto Rico took up the slack. But the demand for new recordings resulted in very poor quality, overnight productions which did not satisfy the public. Salsa seemed to be on its way out.… However, in keeping with Raymond Williams’ theory of the flux of dominant, emergent, and residual elements in the cultural hegemonic process, an emergent trend arose within salsa itself the product of an emergent, oppositional, and coopted element which was to give new life to the genre in the nick of time. The downward slide of commercial salsa was dynamically broken by what I here term socio-political salsa.… 3. IDEOLOGY As already noted, from its earliest days, barrio music contained a number of compositions which in sound and themes provided a meta-commentary on poverty, delinquency, oppression, and domination. These themes were, to a large extent, submerged during the salsa boom but once that boom waned they returned to prominence through the contributions of Willie Col
on, Catalino Curet Alonso, and Rub
en Blades. These, and other figures, each deserve more individual attention than they can be given here. I have chosen to focus on Rub
en Blades, who has played a stellar role in the introduction and popularisation of socio-political themes in salsa and whose co-production with Col
on, Siembra (Planting), became the best selling salsa record in 1979, when the end of the boom was in sight.… A Panamanian composer and singer, lawyer, and film star who emigrated to New York in the early 1970s, Blades appears to have a two-fold mission. On the one Hand, his musical compositions are directed at Latin America in an effort to give Latin Americans an identity and to raise their political consciousness. Ideologically, he has identified with the left in Latin America and the left has identified with him. On the other hand, Blades seeks to represent Latin America in the non-Latin world, to validate the Hispanic presence and seek its rightful place in the order of things, particularly in entertainment. He contrasts in these efforts with Pedro Altamiranda, who is also a Panamanian, has a Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of Paris, and whose socio-political songs seek to capture the language and lifestyle of his fellow countrymen. Altamiranda is strictly focused on his country. He has described himself politically as ‘‘oppositional and anti-militaristic’’ and has refused offers to enter into the glossy international entertainment world. This, however, is the world in which Blades is eminently successful. In his quest to give Latin Americans an identity and to unify them ideologically, he has been triumphant and has become the idol of Latin American leftists and the public in general. His songs have dealt with the predicaments of the common man in Hispanic America as well as of Latin Americans living in the United States. His most overtly political album, Buscando America (Searching for America), was released in 1984, after Blades had done a stint with various salsa artists and recording companies in New York, and had become the first Latin American artist to be signed by a U.S.

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mainstream label, Elektra Asylum.… The songs deal with themes such as emigration because of political repression (‘‘Caminos Verdes’’ ‘‘Green Roads’’); the assassination of Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero (‘‘El Padre Antonio y el Monaguillo Andres’’ ‘‘Father Anthony and the Acolyte, Andres’’); his search for unity, identity, and social and economic justice in America (‘‘Buscando America’’ ‘‘Searching for America’’); the secret police (‘‘GBDB’’); difficult decisions in everyday life (‘‘Decisiones ‘‘Decisions’’); and missing persons in dictatorships (‘‘Desapariciones’’ ‘‘Disappearance’’). Previously recorded songs which gained him his outstanding position in sociopolitical salsa include ‘‘Pablo Pueblo’’ (‘‘Paul People’’), to which Willie Col
on referred in ‘‘El General,’’ ‘‘Pedro Navaja’’ (‘‘Peter, the Switchblade’’), and ‘‘Juan Pachanga’’ (‘‘Juan, the Playboy’’). In his second objective, to make the Latin American presence felt in the international entertainment world (or ‘‘crossing over,’’ which is the subject of his second film, Crossover Dreams, released in 1985), Blades has been no less successful. He has received extensive media coverage in the U.S., been featured on the cover of New York magazine (19 August 1985) and Current Biography (May 1986), and been written up in other publications too numerous to mention. His U.S. television appearances have included interviews on the Johnny Carson Show and 60 Minutes. He has been on several world tours, appeared as an opening star in a concert given by Joe Jackson in Baltimore in 1984 and at the Olympia Music Hall in Paris in May 1986. As an actor he has appeared in two films and is in two more scheduled to be released in 1987: Continental Divide, directed by Michael Apted and co-starring with Richard Pryor, and The Milagro Beanfield War, directed by Robert Redford. His unqualified success in crossing over (he himself dislikes the term and prefers to use ‘‘convergence’’) may ultimately jeopardize his other role, that of addressing Latin America. To be lionized in the heart of capitalism, starring in Hollywood productions, and being selected as one of the ten sexiest men of the year by Playgirl may place him in the situation of playing a discrepant role.… That is to say, his loyal Latin American constituents may ask how, if he represents oppositional sectors, can he be so applauded by the culture which dominates them? In the United States he has announced his intentions of putting Colombian Nobel Prize winner Gabriel Garcia Marquez’ stories to music and to compose an album entirely in English, singing calypso under a new name, not his own persona but in that of an alter ego, ‘‘Panama Blades’’.… In a Panamanian television interview, he announced that he would record a two-album series of songs for Panama and by Panamanians and omitted mention of his plans to make the English-language record.… Blades has explained his cinematographic efforts to his constituents who may some day become his real constituents as he has announced at various times that he may enter into the Panamanian political arena in the following terms: Right now, I am in the United States helping to end the stereotype of the Latin in the United States and also helping the 20 million Latins who live in that country for many reasons but generally because of the opportunities it affords. [I am in the United States] also for economic reasons, to make my life more possible to maintain once I return to Panama. [The latter] because in situations where you are economically controlled, money is freedom. That will give me an opportunity when I return to Panama not to have to ally myself with discredited groups and to see in what way I can do my work here.…

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Blades’ situation has been discussed here because it is relevant within the framework of Williams’ previously cited work. More will be said about this in a moment. Within salsa, the success of Blades’ socio-political songs has attracted a large number of imitators. Some songs, such as Willie Col
on’s ‘‘El General’’ are of the same quality as Blades’ own best productions, while others, such as the work of Pedro Altamiranda, is [sic] of an entirely different nature and follows different aims. But there are many imitators of a vastly inferior quality, characterised by trite themes and virtually inaudible lyrics. Oscar D’Leon, for example, a Venezuelan salsa star, recently released an album which contains two socio-political themes, one on the errant street boy and another on poverty, which are wholly lacking in originality, feeling and clarity. In the end, commercial enterprises and imitators may kill off the authenticity and attractiveness of socio-political salsa. In other words, again, what was once a brave ideological and artistic effort may be co-opted by commercialism. The question which now arises is: What is going to happen to salsa? Such important figures as Willie Col
on and El
ıas L
opez have commented on its current problems.… If its themes are played out, are there other resources that can prevent this genre from falling into the musical fossil pit of tangos, boleros, and other past Latin American genres which are heard today only for reasons of romantic nostalgia? If one looks to either ideology or technology to rescue the genre, there is little cause for optimism for the following reason: ideology is constraining technology. 4. TECHNOLOGY The very affirmation of ethnic identity in the face of a dominant, hegemonic culture led early and later salsa composers and arrangers to eschew electronic music and rely for the most part on traditional instruments with which they were more comfortable. It was believed that the purity of Latin music would be lost to a technology which was essentially capitalistic. But the use of traditional Caribbean instruments and the cautious introduction of electronic music into salsa have resulted in a sound which is anachronistic from the viewpoint of today’s stereophonic record players, equipped as they are to transmit sounds which are far beyond the range of these instruments, particularly in the bass. In the opinion of informed individuals whom I have interviewed, salsa simply cannot compete in sound with rock music. The model for those who advocate change is the Miami Sound Machine, a group of musicians of Cuban origin who seem to have been successful in the crossover quest. They were recent guests at the unveiling of the Statue of Liberty, have played for President Reagan in Miami and in festivals in Chile, Peru, Costa Rica, Mexico, and a number of other Latin American countries.… Although retaining a Latin beat, the Miami Sound Machine is contemporary in its use of electronic instruments. Its clientele in Latin America is formed by a younger generation more in tune with rock, computers, and arcade games than with the legacies of the past. On the other hand, this musical group is [an] anathema to the nationalist left. This war of ideology embedded in technology is felt at another level, that of composers. Tille Valderrama, a Panamanian composer and arranger who has a degree from Berklee Music College in Boston, expresses the frustration felt by some contemporary composers in Latin America. He feels that salsa is becoming obsolete because of the strictures of those who dominate its commercial production (as, for example, in their insistence on keeping the clave rhythm for the sake of the dancers

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who, if the rhythm were changed, might reject it). Additionally, they eschew the richness of what Valderrama calls the American drum set and are extremely hesitant to use electronic music. The whole issue has become ideological: to use electronic music or to change the rhythm is felt to be as much a betrayal of the culture as what Fania enterprises did to the original salsa. If Blades uses electronic music or changes the rhythm it is accepted. If other composers do it, it is ideological treason. 5. CONCLUSIONS We can see, therefore, that the history of salsa has been one of fluctuation between emergence and co-optation by capitalism. I have not said ‘‘by the dominant culture’’ because that is what the whole issue of ‘‘crossing over’’ involves. Whether or not salsa or the issues raised in socio-political salsa will be accepted by the public who are part of the hegemonic cultures is very open to question. It may depend on the success of the efforts of Blades or someone else, or upon the emergence of yet another saving lifeline. What seems to be clear is that the whole process of the dominant culture’s absorption of emerging or oppositional elements is very complex. On the one hand, there are purely commercial efforts to exploit emergent trends. On the other, one sees individuals from emergent trends or subordinate cultures seeking validation through inclusion in the dominant stream. Crossing over may be done with a number of intents and poses a thorny problem. An artist may seek to have his ethnic group represented in the world’s entertainment field and be very successful in doing so. On the other hand, he may run the risk of losing his constituency for failing to represent them ideologically. The whole process of the emergent being absorbed by the dominant may thus be seen as an active one on the part of both sides with certain qualifications and intents on the part of both rather than as a one-way path in which the dominant makes use of and manipulates the subordinate, emergent, or oppositional. Another question concerns the use of an eminently danceable genre to transmit powerful political messages. It is here suggested that in the Caribbean and regions influenced by the Caribbean cultures, dance music is a privileged genre. Not only do the cultures which make up this region fall roughly within what one calls oral or residually oral culture.. but there is a strong African heritage whose musical traditions, e.g., the heavy use of drums and syncopation, may also privilege dance music as an aesthetic communicative genre … explains: As far as the Caribbean is concerned, far from entailing a sacrifice to dance, music always entailed an emphasis on dance. It is not a question of falling into the mediocre classification of making music to dance to; it is simply that music, with all its virtues, innovations, and variations, has dance implicit in it. In this part of the world there is no sense in making music that is not danceable.

As far as salsa is concerned, it is not difficult to conceive of a political message being successfully transmitted when heard at home, over the radio or record-player; it is much more difficult to assess its effectiveness in a social context, when a crowd is enjoying itself drinking and dancing. There is more than one way to approach this subject. One can draw on Maurice Bloch, who declares ‘‘you can’t argue with a song,’’ because it involves abandonment

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of the freedom of natural discourse, and no argument or reasoning can be communicated.… In this particular context, the implications might be that the recipients of socio-political salsa receive and accept the message without question. Alternatively, a view held by several research assistants and record salesmen is that people go along with the music and either do not listen to the words, or listen to them selectively. The implication here is that the political effect upon listeners is slight. However, both the dancer who brought ‘‘El General’’ to my attention and the large number of Blades’ followers seem to indicate that some individuals do listen to the lyrics and others, being ideologically attuned to a particular trend or identifying with a particular genre, are indeed highly conscious of the lyrics, even when dancing. Lastly, one may think of the recipients of the messages of socio-political salsa in terms of Freudian psychoanalytic theory: In the same way tunes that come into one’s head without warning turn out to be determined by and belong to a train of thought which has a right to occupy one’s mind though without one’s being aware of its activity. It is easy to show then that the relation to the tune is based on its text or origin.… From this perspective one could imagine that there is ideological penetration of the listener who, whether he listens to the lyrics or not, is unwittingly having his consciousness raised. The answer to this question may include all three of these opinions. It is hard to argue with a song and song therefore has a great deal of force. Many people do not pay attention to the lyrics, but it is possible that the lyrics may penetrate their subconscious. Other people identify with the lyrics or with a particular ideology and for them the song has the greatest force. Additionally, if we are dealing with a culture in which dance is not only a comfortable but indispensable and traditional component, the fact that a political message is embedded in a dancing song should not affect these various conditions of receptiveness just discussed. Source: Brittmarie Janson P
erez, ‘‘Political Facets of Salsa,’’ Popular Music, Vol. 6, No. 2, Latin America (May 1987), pp. 149 159.

378. Excerpt from ‘‘Joint Resolution, Deploring the Actions of President Clinton Regarding Granting Clemency to FALN Terrorists,’’ 1999 Thirty-five House members, and 34 Republicans co-sponsored a resolution denouncing the decision of U.S. President Bill Clinton (1946–) to offer clemency to 16 members of the Puerto Rican nationalist group Fuerzas Armadas Liberaci
on Nacional Puertorique~ na (FALN) or, in English, the Armed Forces of National Liberation, that allegedly set off 130 bombs in New York and Chicago in the 1970s and early 1980s. They had been given sentences ranging from 35 to 90 years. They had served between 14 to 19 years in prison. FALN, commonly known as the Macheteros, operated in the United States during the 1970s and 1980s. The group was dedicated to the independence of Puerto Rico and claimed responsibility for numerous bombings and robberies.

Whereas there is a militant terrorist organization that claims responsibility for the bombings of approximately 130 civilian, political … (Placed on Calendar in Senate)* Mr. Lott (for himself, Mr. Coverdell, Mr. Brownback, and Mr. Hagel) introduced the following joint resolution; which was read the first time.

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JOINT RESOLUTION Deploring the actions of President Clinton regarding granting clemency to FALN terrorists. Whereas the Armed Forces of National Liberation (the FALN) is a militant terrorist organization that claims responsibility for the bombings of approximately 130 civilian, political, and military sites throughout the United States; Whereas its reign of terror resulted in 6 deaths and the permanent maiming of dozens of others, including law enforcement officials; Whereas 16 members of the FALN were tried for numerous felonies against the United States, including seditious conspiracy; Whereas at their trials, none of the 16 defendants contested any of the evidence presented by the United States; Whereas at their trials none expressed remorse for their actions; Whereas all were subsequently convicted and sentenced to prison for terms up to 90 years; Whereas not a single act of terrorism has been attributed to the FALN since the imprisonment of 16 terrorists; Whereas no petitions for clemency were made by these terrorists, but other persons, in an irregular procedure, sought such clemency for them; Whereas on August 11, 1999, President William Jefferson Clinton offered clemency to these 16 terrorists, all of whom have served less than 20 years in prison; Whereas the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Federal Bureau of Prisons, and 2 United States Attorneys all reportedly advised the President not to grant leniency to the 16 terrorists; Whereas the Federal Bureau of Prisons reportedly based its decision in part on the existence of audio recordings indicating that some of the 16 have vowed to resume their violent activities upon release from prison; Whereas the State Department in 1998 reiterated two longstanding tenants of counter terrorism policy that the United States will: ‘‘(1) make no concessions to terrorists and strike no deals; and (2) bring terrorists to justice for their crimes’’; Whereas the President’s offer of clemency to the FALN terrorists violates longstanding tenants of United States counter terrorism policy; Whereas the President’s decision sends an unmistakable message to terrorists that the United States does not punish terrorists in the most severe manner possible under the law, making terrorism more likely and endangering to every American; and Whereas the release of terrorists is an affront to the rule of law, the victims and their families, and every American who believes that violent acts must be punished to the fullest extent of the law: Now, therefore, be it Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That President Clinton should not have granted clemency to the FALN terrorists and that in doing so he has made deplorable concessions to terrorists, undermined national security, and emboldened domestic and international terrorists. Source: SJ 33 PCS, Calendar No. 274, 106th Cong., 1st Sess. S. J. RES. 33, September 9, 1999.

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ndez and Francisco 379. Excerpts from Ramona Herna L. Rivera-Batiz, ‘‘Dominicans in the United States: A Socioeconomic Profile,’’ 2003 The Dominican Republic shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti—the western half of the island. Puerto Rico is its eastern neighbor. The Dominican Republic has approximately 5.5 million people. Of the 169,147 Dominicanborn residents in the United States at the time of the 1980 census, only 6.1 percent had come to the United States before 1960. More than a third came during the decade of political instability in the Dominican Republic during the 1960s; 56 percent arrived in the 1970s. During the 1980s, Dominican immigration soared as more than 250,000 Dominicans were legally admitted to the United States. While Dominicans are relatively small in numbers in relation to other Latin American nationalities, their numbers are growing and they are active in profiling the community. The following excerpts are from one of the many self-studies done by that community.

SUMMARY OF FINDINGS This research report presents the first detailed study of the socioeconomic status of the Dominican population of the United States. Using information recently provided by the 2000 U.S. Census of Population, the study concludes that: (1) The Dominican population in the United States rose from 520,121 in 1990 to 1,041,910 in 2000, making it the fourth-largest Hispanic/Latino group in the United States, after Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and Cubans. It is estimated that, at current population growth rates, the Dominican population will overtake the Cuban population before the year 2010, making it the third largest Hispanic/Latino population in the country. (2) The major source of Dominican growth continues to be immigration. Between 1990 and 2000, close to 300,000 Dominicans migrated to the United States on a net basis. (3) Besides substantial immigration, the Dominican population born in the United States rose sharply in the 1990s. There were 394,914 Dominicans born in the U.S. residing in the country in 2000. This constitutes one out of every three Dominicans. (4) The largest concentration of Dominicans continues to be located in the state of New York, but there has been a significant spread to other states in the last decade. The state of New York was host to 617,901 Dominicans in 2000; followed by New Jersey, with 136,529; Florida, with 98,410; Massachusetts, with 69,502; Rhode Island, with 24,588; Pennsylvania (13,667); and Connecticut (12,830). There were also budding Dominican communities in almost every region of the country, from Alaska to Hawaii. (5) New York City continues to dominate the location of Dominicans in the United States. The Dominican population of New York rose from 332,713 to 554,638 between 1990 and 2000. Dominicans are currently the second largest Hispanic/Latino population of New York, following Puerto Ricans. But the Puerto Rican population in the City declined substantially in the last decade. If current

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population growth trends continue, Dominicans will overtake Puerto Ricans as the largest Hispanic/Latino population of the City within the next ten years. (6) The greatest concentration of Dominicans in New York continues to be in Manhattan, where one out of every three Dominicans in the City resided in 2000. But just as the population has spread throughout the country, Dominican New Yorkers have also spread throughout the City. The Dominican population in the Bronx is now almost as large as that in Manhattan, with 32.7 percent of all Dominicans. There has also been substantial growth in Queens, Brooklyn, and Staten Island. (7) The expanding Dominican population outside New York City has reduced the proportion of Dominicans in the City from 73.4 percent in 1980 to 65.1 percent in 1990 and 53.2 percent in 2000. Following New York City, there are major Dominican populations in the City of Lawrence (Massachusetts), where 22,111 Dominicans reside, the City of Paterson (New Jersey), with 19,977 Dominicans, Providence (Rhode Island), with 19,915 Dominicans, and Boston (Massachusetts), with 19,061 Dominicans. The cities of Jersey City, Passaic, Perth Amboy, and Union City in New Jersey also have substantial Dominican populations, as do the City of Yonkers in New York, and Miami in Florida. Many other cities all over the country have smaller, but rapidly growing Dominican populations. (8) The mean annual per-capita household income of the Dominican population in the United States was $11,065 in the year 1999. This was about half the percapita income of the average household in the country that year. It was also significantly lower than the per-capita income of the Black/African American population and even slightly lower than the income of the average Latino household. (9) There is substantial variability in the socio-economic status of Dominicans in various parts of the United States. Among the most populous states, Dominicans in Florida had the highest per-capita household income, equal to $12,886 in the year 1999. By contrast, Dominicans in Rhode Island had the lowest average per-capita income, equal to $8,560 in the year 1999. (10) In New York City, the average per-capita income of Dominicans was below the average for the United States. The poverty rate of 32 percent among Dominican New Yorkers was the highest of the major racial and ethnic groups in New York. The overall poverty rate in New York in 1999 was 19.1 percent, while it was 29.7 percent for the overall Hispanic/Latino population. (11) A high proportion of Dominican families in poverty consist of femaleheaded families, with no spouse present. In 2000, as much as 38.2 percent of Dominicans in New York lived in this type of family, compared to 22.1 percent for the overall City. Close to half of Dominican female-headed families in New York City were poor, more than twice the poverty rate for other households. (12) Despite the low relative socioeconomic status of Dominicans in New York City, their income displayed significant growth in the 1990s, rising by close to 16 percent in the decade (adjusted for inflation). The overall increase of per-capita income in the City in the decade was 9.2 percent, but both the Black/African American population and the overall Hispanic/Latino population in the City had lower income growth rates. The White population in the City displayed a growth of over 20 percent in per-capita income. (13) The labor force participation rate of Dominicans is lower than that for the rest of the population. In 2000, it was approximately 64 percent for men and 53.1

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percent for women. The figures for the overall U.S. workforce are 72.7 percent and 58.5 percent, for men and women, respectively. (14) The unemployment rate of Dominican women and men in 2000 greatly exceeded that of the overall labor force in the United States. In 2000, Dominican men had an unemployment rate of 7.8 percent, compared to an overall unemployment rate of 3.9 percent for men in the country. Among women, the Dominican unemployment rate was 10.7 percent in 2000, compared to 4.1 percent in the country overall. (15) Despite the comparatively high unemployment rates of Dominicans, these rates declined sharply between 1990 and 2000. In New York City, for instance, the male and female unemployment rates among Dominicans were 15.7 percent and 18.4 percent, respectively, in 1990. These dropped to 8.9 percent and 13.1 percent by 2000. (16) The comparatively high unemployment rates of Dominicans in New York City are connected to a painful long-term switch in the employment of the Dominican labor force from manufacturing to other sectors. In 1980, close to half of the Dominican workforce was employed in manufacturing. This declined to 25.7 percent in 1990 and to 12.4 percent in 2000. (17) The Dominican labor force is very young and mostly unskilled. Only 17.3 percent of Dominicans in the United States have managerial, professional, and technical occupations, about half the proportion for the overall United States. As a result, the average earnings of Dominican men and women are substantially lower than those of other workers in the nation. (18) The overall educational attainment of Dominicans in the United States is among the lowest in the country. In 2000, 49 percent of Dominicans 25 years of age or older had not completed high school and only 10.6 percent had completed college. By contrast, less than 20 percent of the American population had not completed high school in 2000, and 24.4 percent had finished college. (19) But the educational situation of Dominicans varies enormously when decomposed by immigrant status. Although the educational attainment of Dominican immigrants is very low, the situation for U.S.-born Dominicans is sharply different. (20) The Dominican second-generation in the United States has educational indicators that suggest a remarkable acquisition of human capital over the last 20 years. This differs from the overall situation of U.S.-born Hispanics/Latinos, whose educational indicators are substantially worse than those for Dominicans. In 2000, close to 60 percent of all Dominicans born in the United States with 25 years of age or older had received some college education, with 21.9 percent completing a college education. By contrast, among U.S.-born Mexicans, only 13.3 percent had completed college, and 12.1 percent of U.S.-born Puerto Ricans had finished college. (21) The explosive increase of the educational attainment of U.S.-born Dominicans is reflected in the experience of Dominican New Yorkers. For U.S.-born Dominicans in New York, the proportion who attained some college education rose from 31.7 percent in 1980 to 42.8 percent in 1990, and to 55.1 percent in 2000. (22) Dominicans have school enrollment rates that are higher than those for other minority groups. In New York City, Dominican high school retention rates are substantially higher than for the overall Hispanic/Latino population, and for women, they approach the average New York City high school retention rate.

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(23) There were 111,553 Dominican children enrolled in the New York City public school system. This constitutes 10.4 percent of the New York City school student body in 2000. Among public college students in New York City, 8.5 percent are Dominicans, exceeding the proportion among Puerto Ricans, which was 7.7 percent in 2000. This report presents a mixed picture of the Dominican population of the United States. On the one hand, Dominicans have among the lowest per-capita income in the country, comparatively low labor force participation rates, high unemployment rates, and low earnings. On the other hand, Dominican income and employment indicators did improve significantly in the 1990s, and the Dominican second-generation appears to be accumulating vast amounts of human capital, increasing its educational attainment very rapidly. Therefore, despite facing considerable challenges in its remarkable growth during the last twenty years, the prospects for the future look bright for Dominicans in the U.S. Source: Ramona Hern
andez and Francisco L. Rivera-Batiz, ‘‘Dominicans in the United States: A Socioeconomic Profile 2000,’’ Dominican Research Monographs, Dominican Studies Institute, City College, City University of New York, November 2003.

380. Excerpt from Roberto Suro and Audrey Singer, ‘‘Latino Growth in Metropolitan America: Changing Patterns, New Locations,’’ 2002 Since the Ford Foundation funded the University of California at Los Angeles 1960 census study of Mexican origin people, statistics have become an obsession and an important tool in defining the needs of Latino communities. The Pew Foundation, a public interest charitable fund, established a Hispanic Center housed at the University of Southern California, which generates important data. The Pew Research Center is a self-styled ‘‘fact tank’’ based in Washington, D.C. that provides reports on the issues, public opinion, and trends in the United States and the world. The Pew Hispanic Center has issued the most important studies on Latinos in the past decade. Its 2002 research showed that there were 10 million second-generation Latinos—29 percent of all Latinos. There were 11 million ‘‘third generation’’ Latinos—31 percent of all Latinos. The U.S. Census Bureau projects that by the year 2025, the Latino population will jump from 35 million to 61 million. It will compose 18 percent of the total U.S. population. The following excerpt follows this growth in urban centers.

FINDINGS An analysis of the U.S. Hispanic population across the 100 largest metropolitan areas finds that: The Hispanic population is growing in most metropolitan areas, but the rate and location of increase varies widely. Four distinct patterns of growth can be discerned. Established Latino metros such as New York, Los Angeles, Miami, and Chicago posted the largest absolute increases in Latinos between 1980 and 2000. However, new Latino destinations like Atlanta and Orlando charted the fastest growth rates, despite their historically smaller Hispanic bases. Metros with relatively larger Latino bases, such as Houston, Phoenix, and San Diego, meanwhile, became fast-growing

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Latino hubs during the past 20 years, with population growth averaging 235 percent. Small Latino places, such as Baton Rouge, posted much lower absolute and relative growth than the other locales. Fifty-four percent of all U.S. Latinos now reside in the suburbs; the Latino suburban population grew 71 percent in the 1990s. In 1990, the central-city and suburban Hispanic populations in the 100 largest metros were nearly identical, but during the next decade suburban growth so outpaced central-city growth that by 2000 the suburban Hispanic population exceeded the central-city population by 18 percent. New Latino destinations saw the fastest growth of Latino suburbanites. Hispanic men outnumber Hispanic women by 17 percent in new Latino destination metros where the Latino population grew fastest. By contrast, in slower growing metros with large and well-established Latino communities, more Hispanics live in family households and gender ratios are more balanced.… Source: Roberto Suro and Audrey Singer, ‘‘Latino Growth in Metropolitan America: Changing Patterns, New Locations,’’ Center on Urban & Metropolitan Policy and The Pew Hispanic Center, July 2002.
C 2002 Pew Hispanic Center, a Pew Research Center project, www.pewhispanic.org.


maso Serrano Lo
pez, Mayor-Elect of the 381. Letter from Da Municipality of Vieques to President William J. Clinton, November 10, 2000 Vieques Island, population 8,602 in 1990, is 55 square miles and nearly 6 miles off eastern Puerto Rico. Since the 1940s, Vieques was occupied by U.S. military installations. The U.S. Navy used it for target practice. This military occupation rankled land-hungry Puerto Ricans. In 1999, the U.S. Navy admitted using depleted uranium shells on at least one occasion. Puerto Ricans linked this to a high cancer rate on the island. Meanwhile, Vieques native David Sanes was killed by a bomb dropped during bombing exercises. This touched off a series of protests with mass civil disobedience in 2002, during which a large number of celebrities were arrested. Finally after intense confrontations, the Navy agreed to evacuate the island, which was accomplished in 2003. The following is a letter from the mayor of Vieques to U.S. President William Jefferson Clinton (1946–).

November 10, 2000 The Honorable William J. Clinton President of the United States The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20500 Dear President Clinton: My name is D
amaso Serrano L
opez and I am the Mayor-elect of Vieques, Puerto Rico. I won Tuesday’s election with 63.8% of the votes, for a four-year term as Mayor of Vieques. My campaign focused on achieving the immediate and permanent cease and desist of all military activities in Vieques, which is the primary goal and demand of our people. At the same time, the candidates in the general election in Puerto Rico who support that same goal and demand, won in Tuesday’s elections, among them the

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Honorable Sila Calder
on, Governor-elect of Puerto Rico, and the Honorable An
ıbal Acevedo Vil
a, elected as Resident Commissioner to the U.S. Congress. The demand that the U.S. Navy must leave Vieques without dropping one more bomb, of any kind, has been the popular will of the people of Puerto Rico in general, and of Vieques in particular, before you issued your Directives on Vieques, and after you issued those Directives. President Clinton, now the will of the elected representatives of Puerto Rico, in the Mayoralty of Vieques, in the Governorship of Puerto Rico, in our Representative in the U.S. Congress, in the Puerto Rico Senate and House of Representatives, and in the majority of the mayoralties in Puerto Rico, concerning Vieques is the same as the will of the people of Puerto Rico in general and of Vieques in particular: That the U.S. Navy must be ordered out of Vieques now, without dropping one more bomb, of any kind. We are calling on you to respect that demand and that, before you leave office ten weeks from now, that you issue an Executive Order implementing that demand. It was foreseeable that your Directives on Vieques would be changed by a Republican U.S. Congress, especially in an election year. That is why we insisted that you issue the Executive Order that we are demanding once again. You still have some time to do what’s right, and the urgency of our plight is accentuated by the fact that the Republicans will control Congress once again. If you don’t issue this Executive Order, your Directives (drastically modified by this Congress and with no guarantee that they will be respected by the next Congress) will be used to say that there is no alternative site to Vieques, that Vieques is indispensable and that the Navy hasn’t found another site. Meanwhile, bombing will continue in our island of close to 10,000 people. The only incentive for the Navy to seriously find an alternative site is if they are ordered to stop bombing in Vieques. Mr. President, on Election Day, during a radio interview with reporter Amy Goodman, you urged the American people to vote for the Gore-Lieberman ticket, for First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton as Senator from New York, and for John Corzine as Senator from New Jersey. In so doing, you told the American public the following: ‘‘Now, the Republicans in Congress broke the agreement, and instead of giving the Western part of the island to Puerto Rico, gave it to the Interior Department to manage. If I can’t find a way to give that island, the western part of the island back to the people of Puerto Rico, and to honor the agreement that the government of Puerto Rico itself made with the support of the local leaders, including the mayor of Vieques, then the people of Puerto Rico I think have a right to say the Federal Government broke its word, and the training has to stop right now.’’ That encouraging statement, Mr. President, gives us hope that you will not once again let our people fend for ourselves once again before a Republican Congress, especially since you will leave office shortly. It is easy to blame the Republican Congress for what they have done, and may foresee ably do, regarding Vieques. But the constitutional authority to ‘‘stop the training right now’’ lies with you, President Clinton. If you fail to do so, the responsibility for the continuing suffering of our people and the disrespect towards the will of our people and our elected representatives, is solely yours. I respectfully and emphatically call on you, President Clinton, to heed the will of our people and our elected representatives and issue an Executive Order ordering

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the immediate and permanent cease and desist of all military activities in Vieques. Please call me in Vieques, or call Flavio Cumpiano in Washington, D.C., to set up a meeting or a conference call in order to provide you with whatever information or assistance we can give, or answer whichever questions you may have, in order to resolve this critical situation and accomplish this essential demand. Sincerely, D
amaso Serrano L
opez Source: In Vieques Protestors Spread Message Atop Statue of Liberty, http://www.endex.com/gf/ buildings/liberty/solnews/solyah110700.htm.


n, Jennifer Kates, and Liberty 382. Excerpts from Regina Arago Greene, Latinos’ Views of the HIV/AIDS Epidemic at 20 Years: Findings from a National Survey, 2001 Latinos in the United States are affected by HIV/AIDS in a greater proportion than their representation in the U.S. population. They are the second highest in the nation, by race/ethnicity. In 2006, there were approximately 1.2 million people living with HIV/AIDS in the United States, including about 200,000 Latinos. As the largest and fastest growing ethnic minority group in the United States, the problem will increase. Although Latinos represent approximately 14 percent of the United States they accounted for 19 percent of the AIDS cases diagnosed in 2005. The following report is a major study of the devastating epidemic of HIV in the Latino community, which until recently was ignored.

Latinos, who now comprise the largest and fastest growing ethnic minority in the United States, continue to be disproportionately affected by HIV/AIDS. Although they represent approximately 14% of the U.S. population, Latinos accounted for 19% of new AIDS cases reported in 2000. The AIDS case rate (per 100,000) among Latino adults (30.4) was almost four times that for whites (7.9), and AIDS is now the fourth leading cause of death for Latinos between the ages of 25 and 44. The epidemic’s effect on different subgroups of Latinos is also striking. For example, the AIDS case rate among adult Latinas is 13.8 per 100,000, more than six times the rate for white women (2.2). And although Latino youth represent approximately 14% of U.S. teenagers, they accounted for 20% of new AIDS cases reported among those ages 13 19 in 2000. In addition, in a recent study of young men who have sex with men (MSM), HIV prevalence (the proportion of people living with HIV in a population) for young Latinos was 6.9, compared to 3.3 for whites. Finally, there is growing evidence that the HIV/AIDS epidemic is increasingly concentrated in lowincome communities in which people of color are often disproportionately represented. Such communities generally are faced with multiple other health and social issues and limited resources with which to respond to the epidemic. UNDERSTANDING THE VIEWS OF LATINOS The disproportionate impact of HIV on Latinos, as well as the continued growth of the Latino population in the United States, point to the need to understand their views and knowledge of the epidemic. Such views can play an important role in how community leaders, health officials, and other policymakers

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target educational information and design programs that best meet the needs of this community. This report, based on a national survey, examines Latinos’ views of HIV/AIDS, including differences between Latino subgroups. Where data are available, analyses of changing attitudes over time are also provided. The survey indicates that Latinos are concerned about the epidemic and that attitudes toward HIV/AIDS vary significantly by race and ethnicity, with Latinos expressing more concern and urgency about the epidemic than the public overall. In addition, views within the Latino population vary significantly by income, education, language, and age. Although the sample size in this survey does not allow for comparisons of views by national background (i.e., Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, etc.), such distinctions are also important given the role ethnic identity and culture play in individuals’ beliefs and attitudes.… More than one-third of Latinos (37%) say AIDS is a more urgent health problem for their local community today than it was a few years ago. While the proportion of Latinos who believe this to be the case decreased since 1997 (52%), it is still significantly greater than the proportion of whites (18%). Moreover, almost seven in ten (69%) Latinos say AIDS is a serious problem for people they know, including 54% who say it is a ‘‘very serious’’ problem. The proportion saying AIDS is a serious problem for people they know has declined from 76% in 1995 and 81% in 1997. Nearly four in ten (38%) Latinos also say they know someone who has HIV/AIDS or has died of AIDS. Latinos (38%) are as likely as whites (42%), but less likely than African Americans (57%) to report knowing someone who is living with HIV/ AIDS or has died of AIDS. Latinos also express concern about the impact of HIV/AIDS in their own lives, with a majority (53%) saying they are either ‘‘somewhat’’ or ‘‘very’’ personally concerned about becoming infected with HIV. Personal concern among Latinos has fluctuated over the past five years from 51% in 1995 and 64% in 1997. Personal concern among Latinos (53%) is much greater than that expressed by whites (33%), as is concern among African Americans (56%). More than four in ten (43%) Latinos say that their concern has grown in the past few years (compared to 18% of whites and 35% of African Americans).… THE FACTS ABOUT HIV/AIDS Most Latinos understand that a person can become infected with HIV through unprotected intercourse (98%), sharing an IV needle (96%) and having unprotected oral sex (88%); however, as with the general public, misperceptions about the risk of contracting HIV through casual contact persist. For example, 37% of Latinos say that a person can become infected with HIV through kissing; an additional 8% of Latinos do not know whether or not kissing poses a risk of infection. According to the CDC, casual or close-mouth kissing poses no risk of transmission, and even open-mouth kissing in the absence of open wounds or sores in the mouth is considered a very low-risk activity. Nearly three in ten (29%) Latinos incorrectly believe that touching a toilet seat poses a risk for infection or do not know whether this poses a risk. Among Latinos, men (27%) are twice as likely as women (13%) to believe that a person can become infected this way. One in four (24%) Latinos thinks that sharing a drinking glass used by someone with HIV/AIDS poses a risk

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for infection or do not know whether this activity poses a risk. In general, Latinos, as well as African Americans, are more likely than whites to say that these activities pose a risk for infection. Source: ‘‘Latinos’ Views of the HIV/AIDS Epidemic at 20 Years’’ (#3184), The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, November 2001, pp. 2, 4 and 8. This information was reprinted with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. The Kaiser Family Foundation, based in Menlo Park, California, is a nonprofit, private operating foundation focusing on the major health care issues facing the nation and is not associated with Kaiser Permanente for Kaiser Industries. http:// www.kff.org/hivaids/3184-index.cfm.

383. Excerpt from ‘‘3 Who Survived Sinking Won’t Be Deported,’’ 1999 Elizabeth Gonz
alez of Cardenas, Cuba, took a raft from Cuba to Florida in late November 1999 with her young son, Eli
an, and 12 others. The raft capsized, killing most of the passengers and Eli
an Gonz
alez’s mother. Eli
an and two others survived. Eli
an had a father in Cuba; however, Eli
an was placed in the temporary custody of relatives who allowed anti-Castro forces to create the ‘‘Cult of Eli
an.’’ When his father came to claim his son, the Cuban-American community mounted a campaign to keep him from returning. A federal court finally ruled that the father had custody of the child and the Justice Department forcefully took Eli
an from the cousins and returned him to his father. The following excerpt memorializes when and by whom Eli
an was rescued at sea. This is a major event in the history of Cuban Americans.

Miami, Nov. 26, (AP) A 5-year-old Cuban boy and two adults who floated to Florida on inner tubes after their boat sank in the Atlantic Ocean will be allowed to stay in the United States, an official with the Border Patrol said today. The boy, Eli
an Gonz
alez, was picked up by fisherman on Thursday morning, shortly after a man and a woman washed up on the beach at Key Biscayne. Source: ‘‘3 Who Survived Sinking Won’t Be Deported,’’ New York Times, November 27, 1999, p. A11.

384. Attorney General Janet Reno’s Statement Regarding the
n Gonza
lez, April 22, 2000 Removal of Elia On November 25, 1999, Eli
an Gonz
alez, a five year old Cuban was found by two fisherman, floating in an inner tube in the Atlantic Ocean off Fort Lauderdale, Florida. His mother and ten other people drowned when their raft, which was headed to the United States from Cuba, capsized. The only other
n was placed in the custody of survivors were a boyfriend and girlfriend. Elia his paternal great-uncle, L
azaro Gonz
alez and L
azaro’s daughter, Marisleysis Gonz
alez. The Miami Cuban community heralded it as a miracle. Juan Miguel Gonz
alez, Elian’s biological and legal guardian, petitioned the U.S. government for the return of his son to Cuba. The Miami Cuban community blocked this petition claiming it was not his dead mother’s wishes that Eli
an be returned to a Communist dictatorship. Juan Miguel came to the United States, and after a legal battle, the court granted him custody. The problem was that the Cuban

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lezes would not surrender him, so the Justice Departcommunity and the Gonza ment raided their home and gave Eli
an back to his father, who took him back to Cuba. Attorney General Janet Reno explains why they had to raid the Gonz
alez home on April 22, 2000. The controversy caused a split within the Latino community. The following is a press release by U.S. Attorney General Janet Remo explaining why the government seized Eli
an.

Good morning. Earlier this morning, federal agents in Miami upheld the rule of law and began to reunite Eli
an Gonz
alez with his father. As I speak, Eli
an is safe and on a plane headed from Homestead Air Force Base to Andrews Air Force Base where he will be reunited with his father for the first time in 5 months. When the two are reunited, they will remain together in the United States throughout the appeals process while the injunction is in place. And, in accordance with the Court of Appeals ruling, we will take every step necessary to ensure that Eli
an does not leave the country while the Court of Appeals injunction is in place. We have been to great lengths to resolve this case in the least disruptive manner possible. Up until the last [moment], we tried every way we could to encourage L
azaro Gonz
alez to voluntarily hand the child over to his father. Unfortunately, the Miami relatives rejected our efforts leaving us no other option but the enforcement action. Eli
an Gonzalez is a child who needs to be cherished he needs to have quiet time, private time, to be with his father. And that is what this case is still all about the bond between father and son. Juan Miguel Gonz
alez wants to be with his son and that is what has happened now. More than three months ago, the INS determined that only Juan Miguel Gonz
alez could speak for his son on immigration matters. From that moment, I could have taken action to return Eli
an to his father. But I did not. Instead I gave the Miami relatives a chance to challenge my decision in federal district court. They did and the court sided with the government. It ruled that this was a federal case and that the INS was right to say that the father speaks for the child. Two weeks ago, a state family court turned away the Miami relatives as well. In a strongly worded opinion, the judge said not only that the matter belonged in federal court, but that a 6-year-old boy is far too young to make life altering decisions on his own. That same week, I traveled to Miami to try to encourage the family members to work out a resolution. The relatives in Miami said all they wanted was a meeting with Juan Miguel Gonz
alez, before turning over the child. But when I arranged that meeting, they still refused to produce Eli
an. Every step of the way the Miami relatives kept moving the goal posts and raising more hurdles. That is why I finally directed the relatives to turn over the child 9 days ago. That deadline carried great significance. When L
azaro Gonz
alez didn’t comply, parole and care was revoked. That means that for the past 9 days, L
azaro Gonz
alez has not had lawful custody of Eli
an. When the INS places an unaccompanied child into the care of an adult, that adult is required to abide by the directives of the INS. To maintain as the Miami relatives did that the INS somehow lacks authority over the immigration parole of a minor in the U.S. simply ignores the law.

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So this morning I commenced an operation with the paramount concern being the well-being of Eli
an and the safety of the agents and others. After negotiating through the night, I informed the parties that time had run out. At that moment, I gave the go-ahead for the operation. After I had already set the operation in motion, the intermediaries called back to offer one more counteroffer. I indicated that I was willing to continue to engage in dialogue, but time had run out. I did until the final moments try to reach a voluntary solution. Law enforcement personnel on the scene were authorized to, and did, make the final call as to when to enter the Gonz
alez home. Eight agents were in the house during the operation. They were there for three minutes. During that time, a female agent picked up Eli
an, and spoke to him in Spanish. The agents then took Eli
an to Watson Island where they boarded a helicopter bound for Homestead Air Force Base. There he [Eli
an] was examined by a doctor to make sure there were no injuries. At that point, he was boarded onto a U.S. Marshal’s plane headed to Washington D.C. where his father is anxiously waiting for his son. This has been a very emotional case for everyone involved. The most important thing is Eli
an is safe and that no one is seriously hurt. As we all await the outcome of the appellate process, I think it is important for us all to accept Eli
an’s long over-due reunion with his father. It is time to heal the wounds that have divided this community that is so dear to me. Let us give him and his father the space, the calm, and the moral support they need to reconnect and reaffirm their bond between father and son. Source: Press Release, Attorney General Janet Reno, U.S. Justice Department, April 22, 2000, http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/2000/April/225ag.htm.

385. Excerpts from Roberto Suro, ‘‘Counting the ‘Other Hispanics’: How Many Colombians, Dominicans, Ecuadorians, Guatemalans, and Salvadorans Are There in the United States?’’ May 9, 2002 Because of the size and length of time in the United States, communities of Mexican and Puerto Rican origin often eclipse other Latino groups, most of whom came in critical numbers after 1980. The identification of these groups is complicated by the broadness of categories such as Latino and Hispanic that often do not distinguish the disparate nationalities. Due to distance, fewer working class Columbians, for instance, migrated to the United States; it was simply too far and too costly to migrate in large number from there. Even in the case of Central Americans, there were class and racial differences among the refugees. They had different interests depending on their social class. The Salvadoran community was mostly working class, but a large portion was first generation so their focus was in its home country. There were also generational differences, and by the second generation, they focused more on U.S. problems. They were concerned with problems similar to those of second generation Mexican Americans. Some Nicaraguans and Hondurans were middle class with interests similar to those of the Cuban refugees. Middle-class Nicaraguans and Hondurans played

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a greater role in defining the issues in their communities and were often influential in Republican circles. The later pressured national Latino organizations to support conservative agendas. The Pew and Mumford Centers, academic public interest research foundations, did an excellent job sorting these out. The following report by the Pew Hispanic Center at the University of Southern California, which describes recent Latino immigrants.

Among the key findings using these new estimates: ¥ The number of Dominicans may have actually increased by some 80 percent between 1990 and 2000 to more than 938,000 nationwide. The Census 2000 count of 764,495 Dominicans yielded an increase of only 47 percent over 1990. In the New York City metropolitan area, the Dominican population may be 25 percent larger than the count in Census 2000. ¥ The population with origins in El Salvador apparently increased by 65 percent nationally to more than 932,000, compared to a Census 2000 count of 655,155, which would have marked an increase of only 16 percent. The Salvadoran population in the Los Angeles metropolitan area is some 60 percent larger in the alternative estimate than the Census 2000 figure. ¥ The alternative estimates indicate that Mexican population may have grown by 60 percent nationwide to more than 22 million rather than the Census 2000 count of 20.6 million, which produced a growth rate of 54 percent since 1990. ¥ In Florida, where the Latino population is increasingly diverse, the Central American population is nearly 55 percent larger in the alternative estimate than the Census 2000 figure and the South American population is 37 percent larger. ¥ Finally, the new estimates indicate that the unexpected results of Census 2000 are largely the result of changes in the questionnaire from the 1990 Census rather than a dramatic shift away from self-identification by national group in favor of pan-ethnic labels such as ‘‘Hispanic’’ or ‘‘Latino.’’

The Census 2000 count of the ‘‘other Hispanic’’ national origin groups first aroused curiosity and then controversy because the results did not seem consistent with what was already known about immigration flows from those countries. For example, according to Census 2000, the number of persons identifying themselves as Salvadorans had grown by 90,084 for an increase of 15.9 percent since the 1990 census (see Table 3). The Hispanic origin question does not distinguish individuals by nativity or immigration status, and so that number should include native-born U.S. citizens, who identify themselves as being of Salvadoran descent, as well as both legal and illegal immigrants from El Salvador. However, according to the Immigration and Naturalization Service [INS], 215,798 Salvadorans were admitted as legal permanent residents of the United States between 1991 and 2000. All legal immigrants need not necessarily reside here, and many may have been counted in the 1990 Census because they were living here before being admitted for legal residence. Nonetheless, the increase in the INS figures is so much larger than the increase in the census figures 240 percent bigger that the difference suggests a significant deficit in the census count. In Table 3, the same disparities with INS figures are also apparent in the counts for other national origin groups in the ‘‘other Hispanic’’ category. While the growth rates between the 1990 and 2000 censuses for those national origin groups seemed low, the number of Hispanics not identified with any national group

Latinos, 1980 Present 969

Table 3. Selected Hispanic or Latino Origin Groups in the United States, Census 2000 Supplementary Survey (C2SS), 2000

Dominican Republic Central American Guatemalan Honduran Nicaraguan Panamanian Salvadoran South American Colombian Ecuadorian Peruvian Other Hispanic or Latino

Estimate

Lower Bound of Estimate

Upper Bound of Estimate

912,501 2,271,912 520,233 306,667 238,149 117,719 932,117 1,663,329 572,032 337,746 271,698

855,043 2,169,770 467,877 267,150 204,743 96,698 857,339 1,583,994 529,109 292,351 244,163

969,959 2,374,054 572,589 346,185 271,555 138,740 1,006,895 1,742,664 614,955 383,141 299,233

3,298,111

3,185,901

3,410,321

increased by an extraordinary 223 percent between the two census counts, nearly four times the growth rate of the Hispanic population as a whole.… Source:
C 2002 Pew Hispanic Center, a Pew Research Center project, www.pewhispanic.org. May 9, 2002, pp. 2, 6, 11.

386. Mireya Navarro, ‘‘Puerto Rican Presence Wanes in New York,’’ 2000 In the year 2000, 57 percent of Latinos in New York State lived in the borough of the Bronx, and 319,000 were Puerto Ricans. This was a drop from the 1990 census when the Puerto Rican population of the Bronx was 349,115. The 2000 Census counted 7 million Puerto Ricans living on the island and the mainland; 3.6 million were living in the United States. Despite over a hundred years under the American flag, Puerto Ricans still retained the Spanish language and a unique culture. Even though they had fought in at least six major U.S. wars, problems persisted. New York City’s Board of Education’s Chancellor reported in 2000 that 15 percent of all New York City public school students are in English as a Second Language (ESL) programs, and of them 26 percent are Latinos. Some 60 percent of all incoming Puerto Rican patients to the local hospital had a problem communicating in English. Of concern to some was that with the declining numbers came a decline in political influence. The article shows that hegemony of Puerto Rican numbers in New York City was waning. And it gives a more extensive analysis of the impact of this loss of numerical hegemony.

A stretch of 116th Street in East Harlem increasingly marked by Mexican restaurants and Dominican bodegas nonetheless still bears the name ‘‘Luis Mu~ noz Marin Boulevard’’ after the first native son governor of Puerto Rico. On the blocks around ‘‘El Barrio,’’ Puerto Rican music still wafts out of certain storefronts.

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And Maria Mart
ınez, 62, hangs no fewer than three Puerto Rican flags from her apartment window and fence. ‘‘The truth is,’’ she likes to say with a bit of Puerto Rican defiance, ‘‘we got here first.’’ These days, though, it is hard to resist the sense that Ms. Martinez is hanging her flags with as much a feeling of nostalgia as pride.… In certain ways, city planners say, the trend reflects a traditional immigration pattern: the dispersion of groups from the city to the suburbs and other parts of the country as they make economic headway. But unlike most traditional immigrant groups who came to New York during the early part of the 1900s, more than a third of Puerto Ricans leaving the city have moved to Puerto Rico, including significant numbers of people born in the States.… In the 1900s, the percentage of Puerto Rican households in the city living at or below the poverty line increased despite a strong local economy, to a rate greater than that of any other group. According to the most recent data, about 40 percent of New York’s Puerto Ricans qualified as poor, a figure considerably higher than that of African-Americans and worse than the average rate for all Hispanics.… The number of Puerto Ricans in the United States has grown over the last decade or more, up from 27 million in 1990 to 31 million, according to the Census Bureau’s latest count in 1997. But in New York City, the Puerto Rican population fell by more than 96,000 residents in roughly the same period, to 800,000 in 1998. While Puerto Ricans have moved out, however, the city’s broader Latinization has increased, its boroughs filling with Central Americans, South Americans, Dominicans and Mexicans. City planners estimate that in about 10 years, Puerto Ricans will be replaced by Dominicans as the city’s largest ethnic group by place of origin.… Retirees and successful younger people have also been drawn back to Puerto Rico, where the unemployment rate of 12 percent today is half what it was in the 1980s. Hildamar Ortiz, a lawyer who left New York with her 14-year-old daughter in 1996, said she moved partly to honor her late father’s dreams of retiring in Puerto Rico. But she said she had always wondered what it would be like to be Puerto Rican in Puerto Rico.… After a half century, Puerto Ricans in New York have succeeded in carving out electoral districts and Latino studies programs in universities. They have won bilingual education and civil rights battles and congressional, state and municipal posts. They have created a wide array of organizations, from cultural institutions to nonprofit agencies that now increasingly serve other Latinos. ‘‘Puerto Ricans have to be acknowledged as the front line that opened doors for every Latino that came after them,’’ said Susana Torruella Leval, director of El Museo del Barrio, the Puerto Rican and Latin American art museum. Source: Mireya Navarro, ‘‘Puerto Rican Presence Wanes in New York,’’ New York Times, February 28, 2000, p. A1.


pez Springfield and Elizabeth Herna
ndez, 387. Consuelo Lo ‘‘Women and Writing in Puerto Rico: An Interview with Ana Lydia Vega,’’ 1994 Ana Lydia Vega (1946–) is a Puerto Rican-born writer who incorporates the history of Puerto Ricans into her prose about everyday life and culture. She is

Latinos, 1980 Present 971

the recipient of both the Premio Juan Rulfo (1982), an international literary prize given by the Cervantes Institute in Paris, and the Premio Casa de las Am
ericas (1981), an annual prize given by the House of the Americas in Cuba. She is a postmodernist, and her writing often deals with gender and sexuality. She is the author of Virgenes y martires (1983), Encancaranublado y otros cuentos de naufragio (1987), Pasion de historia y otras historias de pasion (1987), and El tramo ancla (1988). The following is an interview with her where she discusses Puerto Rican literature.

SPRINGFIELD: Let’s begin, Ana Lydia, with a broad question. Why do you write? VEGA: It’s something I’ve been doing since I was a little girl. My father never had a formal education, he never went to school. He was jibaro [peasant] from Coamo, an improvisator of d
ecimas who always socialized with other oral troubadours. He always performed oral poetry. In time, he taught himself to write; then, he wrote down his poems. I was raised in this environment of listening to oral poetry improvisations and after reading my father’s d
ecimas, I yearned to do the same thing. It was a process of imitation. Perhaps, I wanted to gain my father’s approval. He always said that the one who inherited his poetic gift was me. Thus it was that I began to write d
ecimas and poetry. I wrote strictly poetry until high school. Then, I began to write short stories and other things. Writing was an integral part of my life. I never decided to write nor did I have any specific reason for doing so. I simply did it, like people who sing from childhood onwards. SPRINGFIELD: I’d like to ask you about feminism. How has it affected your way of writing? VEGA: A lot. First of all, I believe that everything we are affects our writing. My being Puerto Rican shows up in my writing. If I’m black, it will be in my writing. If I am a woman, it will be there, too. All that we are is in our writing, and it frames the perspective from which we write, whether one is aware of it or not. It doesn’t have to be something conscious. I believe that the experiences that I have had as a woman since my infancy, my experiences with repression, this constant negotiation with a male-dominated world, leaves an imprint on one’s self. One does not have to know feminist theories to be a feminist in practice, to arrive at some positions that frame what one chooses to write about. I think that my ‘‘feminism’’ is more practical than theoretical. It is more a response to decisions I have made in my life than to theoretical readings in feminism. While in the university, I read feminist theories; but my feminism grew out of decisions and positions that are lived experiences. SPRINGFIELD: I believe that your writing and Rosario Ferre’s works are changing the attitudes of many young people.

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VEGA:

I think that at least we are getting through to young people. I don’t know if we are transforming them. I don’t think that I have as much faith in literature as you do. However, many young people come up to me to show me their writing and say ‘‘what you have been writing touched me, made me think of this and that.’’ I have received lots of comments like this and, I suppose, many other women writers have as well. I believe that our function at this historical moment in Puerto Rico is to create ‘‘role models’’ that didn’t exist before. There were women writers. From the nineteenth century, there have been many. Twenty-five novelists, at least. But these women writers never gained recognition at the national level. They never arrived at what we call ‘‘literary power.’’ They were always marginalized. They had to publish their works themselves and circulate them among friends. They don’t appear in the important anthologies of different eras. Only men appear. I think that Rosario Ferre cracked open ‘‘the closet.’’ Her first publication was seen as scandalous. Here was the daughter of an ex-governor, a rich woman who broke with the conventions of her class. When she published, she immediately gained national attention. This broke down the barriers. This and the feminist struggles of the 1960s began to change popular consciousness. In turn, it allowed a group of women writers to gain legitimacy in the sense that they appeared in anthologies, achieved critical attention, and reached more readers than men who were publishing then. To me, it is interesting that literature written by women at this time received more popular endorsement than the works of contemporary male writers. SPRINGFIELD: Another reason for the popularity of women writers is that there are more women reading. VEGA: Yes, definitely. In general, there are more people reading. You have to remember that in the 1940s, Puerto Rico had a high rate of illiteracy. It was comparable to that of Haiti, for example. Ours is a country that experienced a cultural revolution in the sense that access to schooling and to the universities created a reading audience that flourished in the 1970s and 1980s. There were many women in this audience because there were more women than men in education, in the universities. While more men have been the victims of wars, crime, and unemployment, women have been improving their status through education. This is one of the factors. Another is that women’s writing, after the 1960s, is more closely related to life, to the daily life of ordinary people. People can more readily identify with this literature than with a literature that treats, for example, the greatest national problems, the traditional, classical, political problems, the nationalist struggles, the

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relationship with the United States, etc. People are a bit saturated with this kind of literature. They want to see in literature written by women a reflection of their own lives, a reflection of what is actually happening to them. They want a literature that is more personal. That’s what I think. Humor, too. I think that women writers have worked more with humor, with parody, with irony. Rosario, Carmen Lugo Filippi, Magali Garcia, for example. That’s what people like. Not a ‘‘somber’’ literature, traditional, patriarchal literature, but one that is humorous, although it may also be patriotic. I think that contemporary Puerto Rican women’s writing also has a wider ironic distance. People like that because it responds to our era, a time when no one believes in ideologies anymore. Irony, thus, is a necessary posture. There are other reasons; but I think that these are the most important: a larger reading public, a greater number of women readers, and a stronger identification between the reader and the stance taken by women writers. SPRINGFIELD: There are many critics who say that women’s writing emerges from a collective voice. Perhaps, your voice is communal. VEGA: That may be so. But I believe that women’s literature is more ‘‘demythifying.’’ Women have always been seen as marginalized. Throughout their lives from early childhood on, women fight against this marginalization and against repression. One ends up by not identifying with the dominant power. One cannot identify with it because one does not have access to it. You have to identify with those sectors that are marginalized, like you. And from this point of view, we can speak of ‘‘the collective voice.’’ Along with this comes irony and aggressive linguistic styles. Women’s lives, to be sure, are always more collective because we’re mothers, we take care of children, we tend to our parents when they’re ill, we are neighbors. Men don’t have this kind of life one that is integrated with the community. Their lives are more public but not necessarily more communal. Women’s lives are more private, but perhaps, more collective. SPRINGFIELD: Let’s extend the word ‘‘communal.’’ Among women writers today is there much communication? Do you discuss what you are doing, teaching, and trying to develop? VEGA: Yes, a lot. But I must add that this is not only going on among women but with men, too. There is a small group of close friends who are writing today among whom I may mention Juan Antonio Ramos, Edgardo Sanabria Santaliz, Kalman Barsy, and those whom I mentioned earlier: Rosario, Magali, Carmen. We’re all good friends. We call one another on the phone, we go to one another’s book openings, we present together at colloquiums and

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congresses, and we get together at the hotels where we are staying. We share ideas. I think that there is a great deal of communication. SPRINGFIELD: And what about those who are writing in the United States? I am thinking of Judith Ortiz Cofer, whose poetry is extraordinary. VEGA: I don’t know her personally, although I have read some of her work. We are now beginning to establish communication with those over there. Until recently, there never were meetings held between writers from here and those from there. We knew one another, but only from a distance. For instance, we knew Pedro Pietri, Miguel Algarin, and Tato Laviera, from the 1960s and 1970s. But we knew them little and only a few. And they only knew a few of us, mostly writers of the 1950s Rene M
arquez, Pedro Juan Soto the ‘‘Classics.’’ A few activities, one at Rutgers, brought together some of the writers from there and some from here. Afterwards, Manuel Ramos Otero, who was at Lehman College, put together another. That was about three years ago. Recently, in Mayaguez, the most important one took place. Aurora Levins Morales, who, to me, is very interesting, came. There was a lot of communication. On one hand, it was conflictive because the writers from there have a lot of resentment. They feel rejected there and rejected here. And they’re right. It has been that way. But I think that that is changing some because of the communication that now exists between New York and San Juan. That’s not the way it was before. Before, there were two totally separate universes. At the Mayaguez conference, where we stayed at the same seaside hotel, we talked a lot. We learned that they felt ill-at-ease for writing in English. Before they came, they were fearful because they thought that as Spanish is now the official language, English would be the ‘‘death sentence’’ for them as Puerto Rican writers. But we told them ‘‘no,’’ that this (the official use of Spanish) is part of a process that is politically and historically indispensable in establishing a Puerto Rican identity. But within this process, they have a place. We told them that what is most important is the content of their work, not the language in which it is written. We now see that even though they are writing in English, many of the themes are the same. We are part of the same literature. The group of writers at this last conference came to the conclusion that they are an integral part of Puerto Rican literature. Now, we write to one another, we call one another up on the telephone. SPRINGFIELD: We were talking about your recent book, Falsas Cronicas del Sur [False Chronicles from the South]. It’s a little different from your previous work.

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VEGA:

Well, it is and it isn’t. You see, I have always been fascinated with history. In fact, when I was at the university, I had to decide whether to study Languages or History. I chose Languages because it offered more opportunities to travel. But I always loved History and continued to read it. I’m a frustrated investigator. In this book, I continued a course that I had initiated in my early work. In Virgenes y M
artires, there is a story about Haiti called ‘‘Puerto Principe Abajo’’ [‘‘Down There in Port-au-Prince’’] that deals with history. Another, ‘‘Ahi Viene Mam
a Yona’’ [‘‘Here Comes Mama Yona’’], deals with the history of Puerto Rican nationalism. In the second book, Encancaranublado, you’ll find a lot that has to do with the history of the Caribbean. And in the long short story, ‘‘Sobre Tumbas y Heroes’’ [‘‘About Tombs and Heroes’’] which is about the Grito de Lares, there is a search for the hidden history, a special theme of mine. The only difference is that now the complete book deals with this. It isn’t written history but oral history, the history people told me about these towns, especially Arroyo, where my mother comes from. It’s about how they see history, lived history or told history. SPRINGFIELD: That is very ‘‘communal’’ because you are gathering the ideas people have about history, while, concurrently, using your own narrative voice. VEGA: Exactly. In the first stage, I take oral testimonies. Secondly, I go to the library to verify data. Then, I recreate what people have told me, using my literary imagination. The public imagines the rest in the fourth stage.
HERNANDEZ: Why the title, Falsas Cronicas del Sur? VEGA: Because they are chronicles. A chronicle is a reflection of a period one has lived through. They are always ‘‘false’’ because the oral tradition imparts a new history each time one tells it. If I were to interview five elderly people, each would tell me a different ‘‘history.’’ And when I go to the library, the written historiography tells other versions, as well. Everyone tells a history in light of his or her own vision, social class, sex, or position. Everything that you are frames your perspective of history. And that constantly changes. Just as I, too, relate history, this history will change in the process of writing it. It’s inevitable because I am viewing it from my position as a university professor. So, I thought that the most honest thing to do was to call it ‘‘false chronicles.’’ The book sets out to question what is history. History is a story told by people as they see it. There are data that are fixed. We know, for example, that Susan Morse (Samuel Morse’s daughter) lived in Puerto Rico for forty years. We know that she married Edward Lind. But the way in which people tell the life of Susan Morse and Edward Lind changes constantly. I changed it, as well.

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SPRINGFIELD: This sounds like detective work. You read a lot of detective stories, don’t you? VEGA: It’s my ‘‘drug.’’ I constantly read detective and horror stories. I’m very morbid. Ha! But I also think that it has a lot to do with my fascination for investigative work which means gathering data in order to arrive at a conclusion.
HERNANDEZ: I am interested in your narrators. In the opening tale, the primary narrator is a foreigner, Miss Florence. You move on to an uppermiddle class narrator from Ponce, and finally, to one of the ‘‘common’’ people. I’d like to know what you had in mind. VEGA: To begin with, I related the Lind-Morse family tale from a foreigner’s viewpoint to illustrate the situation faced by an emerging Creole class in the nineteenth century, a time when an awareness of a distinctly Puerto Rican culture was just beginning to appear. In the southern region of the island, 3/4 of the landowners the people with money were foreigners. They weren’t even Spanish. There were very few Spaniards controlling the economy in this region. It was very international. There were British, Dutch, Danes people from all over Europe as well as those who came via the Caribbean Islands. There was a lot of circular movement within the Caribbean. There were North Americans, too. This world fascinated me, especially the town of Arroyo, an international emporium of great wealth based on the exploitation of sugar. I said to myself, ‘‘this world where everything is foreign, where everyone is foreign, must have created special difficulties for the emergence of the Creole, of Puerto Rican consciousness.’’ It appeared to me that in the character of Susan Morse’s son, Charles, who commits suicide, we have a tragic figure. I knew because I had carried out research and had received correspondence from Mr. Overman, a descendant of this same family that Charles had a great deal of conflict with his father over the issue of slavery. He seemed to be the ideal person through whom I could express this tragic sentiment of the Creoles in an environment dominated by foreigners. I thought to myself, ‘‘what better way to tell the tale than through the eyes of a foreign woman? This also allows me distance.’’ If I had told it from Charles’ point of view first, it was impossible because he committed suicide, and secondly Charles was part of the same problem: he was controlled by these terrible contradictions. He couldn’t reflect on them as one could who was more distanced from the situation. I also wanted to tell the tale from a woman’s point of view because another theme that I wanted to treat in this tale was the theme of slavery, not only the enslavement of blacks but also of women in the patriarchal world of haciendas.

Latinos, 1980 Present 977


HERNANDEZ:

The enslavement of all women stands out: slaves, servants, wives it was really appalling. VEGA: It was terrible for all women. Black women were raped and impregnated by patriarchs. ‘‘Traditional’’ women suffered constant betrayal in terms of men’s promiscuity with enslaved Africans. They were all prisoners like Susan who came from New York where there was intellectual life that she could no longer have while confined to the hacienda.
HERNANDEZ: I see this in Miss Florence. VEGA: Yes. I wanted to show how an independent woman who had her own career as a tutor, who came from England where feminism was developing at the time (although it was the Victorian Era) could, within the institutions of slavery, fall into a state of psychological bondage. What we see, then, is this process within Miss Florence to liberate herself. SPRINGFIELD: Can we say that you address internalized sexism in your feminist perspective? VEGA: Yes, all forms of oppression. It may have different names: racism, sexism, classism. It all comes from being oppressed by a dominant class.
HERNANDEZ: We see this in the case of Charles who falls in love with a mulatta. VEGA: Yes. Everyone told me about the tragic tale of his love for a Creole mulatta. In a way, it relates to Charles’ search for Puerto Rican roots. He experimented with this when he went to Paris, to Oller’s studio. I invented this part of the tale. Charles had been in Paris studying art. I visited the house where he lived in the artist’s section. I checked the Diccionario Puertorrique~no and I found that Oller, during this same era, was in Paris, where he had his studio. I thought, ‘‘well, why couldn’t Charles have visited Oller’s studio?’’ And there he could have experimented with this evasive ‘‘Puertoricanness’’ that he couldn’t get a handle on but that he felt.
HERNANDEZ: And Dr. Fouchard? VEGA: I included Dr. Fouchard because I found out that the French, in this world of Arroyo, were very involved with abolitionist causes. You know that in the nineteenth century, the French were liberal thinkers. Betances, a Puerto Rican patriot, for instance, frequented Paris. There were numerous French abolitionists; and I wanted to place them in history. I also wanted to break with the view that all foreigners were at one with the dominant slaveholders. There was also a foreign sector of liberals that worked against these interests. It seemed chevere [cool] to establish a romantic intrigue between him and Miss Florence; but in my symbolic treatment, Miss Florence is torn between her own feelings,

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SPRINGFIELD: VEGA: SPRINGFIELD: VEGA:

SPRINGFIELD: VEGA:

SPRINGFIELD:

VEGA:

loyalties to an oppressive system in which she lives and from which she receives her wages and her romantic outlook toward the patriarchal figure. On the other hand, there is the attraction of liberal ideas that are represented in Dr. Fouchard. She is caught in the middle, divided by both. And at the end, we are left with the possibility that they might find one another. This is not developed because I did not want to have a closed ending; I wanted an ambiguous ending where you wonder what’ll happen to Miss Florence, where you try to imagine an ending yourself. I wanted at the same time to parody and to break from the nineteenth century narrative model in women’s writing which one finds in writers like the Brontes. I wanted to alter that narrative by leaving it open. Those narratives always left everything resolved, everything was nicely tied up at the end. You knew exactly what would happen. And there’s always a marriage at the end. Not here. Here, you have all the options. What are you working on now? I am beginning a project tentatively titled ‘‘Chiripas.’’ The ‘‘chiripa,’’ you know, refers to the work people do to survive while unemployed. In English, it’s called ‘‘odd jobs.’’ I am investigating all the strange ‘‘chiripas’’ in Rio Piedras. There is a large Dominican colony in Rio Piedras, for instance, that lives off ‘‘odd jobs.’’ There is a student colony that also depends on them. Rio Piedras offers access to public transportation, to the public market. I’m going to use the same methods that I used in Falsas Cronicas del Sur. I want to carry out interviews, research the experiences that people relate to me, and write about them within the context of ‘‘subterranean’’ employment. Then, will you be interviewing Dominicans? I interviewed a man who came in a small boat from Santo Domingo. He told me about the trip. It was horrible. I interviewed some of the chauffeurs of carros p
ublicos [public cars] who are a gold mine when it comes to telling tales about themselves and about others. I really enjoy the world of carros publicos; I’ve ridden in a lot in them. You hear good stories and you also get to rejuvenate your use of language. It adds to the creative process. Talking of creativity, you have taught Francophone Caribbean literature for several years. Has it affected your way of writing or your oral literary trajectory? It has to have influenced my writing. I believe in the theory that everything that excites one’s passion and forms part of one’s identity has to influence what one writes. While writing, I am not conscious of this. What it has clearly influenced, however, is my thematic content.

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SPRINGFIELD: This has to do with your search for roots, for interconnections. VEGA: Yes. I use themes that treat Puerto Rico’s relationship with the rest of the Antilles. In many of my stories, I deal with Haitians, with Dominicans. One story with a Dominican character was very popular in Santo Domingo. And, you know, our works are rarely known there because our books don’t circulate well. They aren’t sent anywhere but to the U.S.A. Nevertheless, Dominicans who have read the book here have made photocopies of it, they’ve lent it out, and everyone knows this short story. When I go to literary events in Santo Domingo, people ask me to read the Dominican’s story. And, do you know, that people there always tell me that no one, or almost no writers, are dealing with the theme of immigration. SPRINGFIELD: That’s awful because that is the reality in which they now live. VEGA: So, when I write about it, they are interested because it reflects part of their reality and they don’t find it in their contemporary literature. There are Caribbean writers whom I feel passionate about. I like Maryse Conde a lot. I have always liked Aime Cesaire. And there are Haitian writers who fascinate me like Jacques Roumain, who wrote Gouverneurs de la Rosie. Also, I wrote my doctoral thesis on Haiti’s King Cristophe in Antillean theatre and in Black theatre in the United States. This has allowed me to become quite familiar with the black world, which is well represented in my work, too. You see it in my last book, in the world of the hacienda, in my treatment of slavery. My generation wanted to return to our African roots that have always been hidden by the dominant class in Puerto Rico. We are the children of Jose Luis Gonz
alez and Isabelo Zenon who wrote two books that launched new views on our African roots. Most of the writers of the 1970s and the 1980s, in one way or another, have tried to emphasize this. Because, for us, it has been a fascinating discovery. We were brought up ignorant of all of it, ignorant of history, because in school, history ended with 1898, and you knew nothing of what happened afterwards. And what you knew of history before 1898 was that Columbus discovered Puerto Rico and that Spanish governors ruled over it. But you knew nothing about the internal history of Puerto Rico, of the resistance movements, of anything. We learned nothing of this. On the other hand, you learned absolutely nothing about our African heritage because it was ‘‘taboo.’’ It was completely concealed. So, I thought that in order to achieve our own personal liberation, it was mandatory to begin the process here, in the search for the hidden history, a search for our roots, and to underscore these roots as well. SPRINGFIELD: I would like to know about slaves who fled Puerto Rico for other islands. I am not sure when slavery ended on St. Thomas, which

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VEGA:


HERNANDEZ: VEGA:

SPRINGFIELD: VEGA:

SPRINGFIELD: VEGA:

SPRINGFIELD: VEGA: SPRINGFIELD:

was Danish, or St. Croix, or whether Puerto Rican slaves were able to escape there before slavery was finally abolished in 1873. That’s fascinating. What we do know is that they went to Haiti. There are lots of testimonies about those who fled to Haiti. Do you know what really fascinates me, something that I would like to write about someday? When Haiti declared its independence it was like the Cuba of its time it had a plan to liberate all the slaves in the Caribbean. It sent secret agents into all the islands to agitate, to raise uprisings, and to organize. In Guillermo Baralt’s Esclavos Rebeldes, we learn of a Haitian called Chaulette, who came to Puerto Rico on this mission but who later disappeared. We hear nothing more of him. I kept thinking of Chaulette and of how I would like to write about his clandestine life in Puerto Rico among the haciendas. It would be a type of adventure story directed at juvenile readers. It would be a great project, but it would involve a lot of research. You’ll need lots of sabbaticals to finish it. That’s the problem. Did you know that for twenty years in the university, I have only had two sabbaticals: one that I had about eight years ago and the one that I am about to take now. The first one wasn’t for creative writing. That wasn’t allowed then. This is the first I’ll have for creative writing. And what do you think about homophobia in the writing community? I think that themes of homosexuality are very infrequently treated. You find it in the work of Manuel Ramos Otero, a militant for gay rights who was always open. But besides the work of Luz Maria Umpierre and maybe a few of the Newyorican writers, you really don’t find it. The topic is very suppressed, very ‘‘taboo.’’ Do you think that this will continue? No, I think that it has to come out because there has been an evolution in the thinking of people about gay rights. Someday, among some writers who are now beginning to write, this will take off. I am interested in this theme. Sometime, I would like to write about it. I told a gay friend recently that the best friends I have had in my life have been gay men. I think that there is a relationship between gay men and women that is unique because you do not feel threatened by these men. You feel completely at ease and you can communicate well. You can share confidences and you can even have a kind of platonic love. And lesbians? My lesbian friends are like any of my friends; their preferences don’t enter into the picture nor do mine. But there are many women here in Puerto Rico who fear lesbians.

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VEGA:

Yes, but that is a very medieval mentality. They think that lesbians are going to rape them or something. Absurd, ridiculous thinking! I believe that this mentality is changing. People are beginning to realize that that way of thinking, this fear, is ridiculous. The problem that I see today relates to AIDS. At a time when people are becoming more liberated from these dreadful fears, it has brought distrust once again. Don’t you agree? Even though in Puerto Rico, AIDS has more to do with drug addiction. There have been studies. It has been statistically proven. The problem of drugs is severe. Well, I have always wanted to put a gay man into my stories in such a way that would be very positive; he would be a perfect friend. There are lots of interesting things about gay men. They are very ‘‘artsy.’’ They are congenial. I think that ultimately, the younger generation of Puerto Rican writers will treat this theme. It’s inevitable. It’s inevitable. And it’s good. SPRINGFIELD: Thank you very much. Source: Consuelo L
opez Springfield, and Elizabeth Hern
andez, ‘‘Women and Writing in Puerto C Charles H. Rowell. Rico: An Interview with Ana Lydia Vega. Callaloo 17:3 (1994), pp. 816 825.
Reprinted with permission of The Johns Hopkins University Press.

388. Excerpts from John R. Logan, ‘‘The New Latinos: Who They Are, Where They Are,’’ 2001 The Lewis Mumford Center was established at the University of Albany in 1988 to conduct urban research both comparative and historical in scope. John R. Logan, a professor at Brown University, who has conducted extensive studies of the 2000 Census through the Center. The excerpts below focus on new Latino immigrants—those arriving en masse in the United States since 1980. This is one of the first studies to separate out the groups via the 2000 U.S. Census. As pointed out in the report, there are differences in the groups that delineate obstacles to their receiving equal protection.

As the Hispanic population in America has grown in the last decade (from 22.4 million to 35.3 million), there has also been a shift in its composition. The fastest growth is not in the traditionally largest Hispanic groups, the ones who arrived earliest in the largest numbers (Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, or Cubans), but among New Latinos people from the Dominican Republic and a diverse set of countries in Central American (such as El Salvador) and South America (such as Colombia). Based on Census 2000 and related sources, the Mumford Center estimates that the number of New Latinos has more than doubled since 1990, from 3.0 million to 6.1 million. Cubans are still the third largest single Hispanic group in the United States, at 1.3 million. But there are now nearly as many Dominicans (1.1 million) and Salvadorans (also 1.1 million). There are more New Latinos than Puerto Ricans and Cubans combined, and these new groups are growing much more rapidly. The New Latinos bring a new level of complexity to the rapidly changing complexion of ethnic America. This report reviews what we now know about this

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important minority: who they are (in comparison to the better known Hispanic groups) and where they live. For those who wish further information about specific metropolitan regions, population counts are now available through the web page of the Lewis Mumford Center. WHO ARE THE NEW LATINOS? An outstanding characteristic of the New Latinos is their diversity. Not only do they come from many different countries. More important is that they have a wide range of social and economic backgrounds, some better prepared for the U.S. labor market than any of the older Hispanic groups, and others much less successful. Our best information about their backgrounds is from the Current Population Survey; in order to maximize the size of the sample on which they are based, our figures here are pooled estimates from the CPS conducted in March 1998 and 2000. Nativity and year of entry. Puerto Ricans are considered by definition to be born in the United States. The majority of Cubans are foreign-born (68%), though relatively few of those entered the country in the last ten years (27%). They mainly represent a pre-1990 immigration stream. In contrast, only about a third of Mexican Americans (36%) were born abroad, but nearly half of their foreign-born members are recent immigrants (49% in the previous ten years). The New Latino groups are like Cubans in having a majority of foreign-born, ranging from 63% of Dominicans to over 70% for Central and South Americans. But they are like Mexicans in that they represent the most recent wave of immigration generally 45 50% of their foreign-born arrived in the last ten years. Education. Mexicans are the least educated of the older Hispanic groups, with an average education of only 10.2 years (for those aged 25 and above). Puerto Ricans average 11.4 years, and Cubans 11.9 years. The New Latino groups range both below the Mexicans and above the Cubans. Salvadorans and Guatemalans have the least education (below 10 years). But Hispanics from most South American origins are better educated than Cubans, averaging 12.6 years. Income. Compared to Puerto Ricans and Mexicans, Cubans in the United States have always been regarded as economically quite successful. The mean earnings of employed Cubans are above $13,500, compared to about $10,000 for Puerto Ricans and $8500 for Mexicans. Only 18% of Cubans fall below the poverty line, compared to 26% of Mexicans and 30% of Puerto Ricans. Among the New Latinos, Dominicans stand out for their very low income: mean earnings below $8000 and more than a third in poverty (36%). The major Central American groups are roughly equivalent to Puerto Ricans in average earnings, though they are less likely to fall below the poverty line. On the other hand, Hispanics from South America do considerably better, and on average they earn more and have lower poverty rates than do Cubans. Unemployment and public assistance. Levels of unemployment among Hispanic groups are generally consistent with what we found to be their average earnings. New Latinos from the Dominican Republic have higher than average unemployment and they are the group most likely to be receiving public assistance (above 8% in both respects they are less successful than Puerto Ricans). Those from South America have the lowest levels of unemployment and are even less likely than Cubans to receive public assistance.…

Latinos, 1980 Present 983

Counting the New Latinos The New Latinos are hard to count in Census 2000. Up to now a single ‘‘Hispanic question’’ on the census has served reasonably well to distinguish Hispanics from different national origins. In the last two decennial censuses people who identify as Hispanic were asked to check one of three boxes (Mexican, Puerto Rican, or Cuban), or to write in another Hispanic category. In Census 2000, unlike in Census 1990, no examples of other categories were provided to orient respondents. Probably for this reason an unprecedented number of Hispanics in 2000 gave no information or only a vague identification of themselves (such as ‘‘Hispanic’’ or ‘‘Spanish’’). These people, 6.2 million or 17.6% of all Hispanics, have been counted in census reports as ‘‘Other Hispanics.’’ This is nearly double the share of Other Hispanics in the 1990 census, and a very large portion of them is New Latinos. The result is a severe underestimate of the number of New Latinos. National studies that rely solely on the Hispanic origin question of the decennial census find only modest growth for such major sources of Hispanic immigration as El Salvador (þ16%) and Colombia (þ24%). States and metropolitan areas where New Latinos are particularly concentrated are dramatically affected by this problem. In the State of California, for example, the census estimated the number of Salvadorans in 1990 as 339,000; ten years later the estimate is only 273,000. In Miami the census counted 74,000 Nicaraguans a decade ago, but only 69,000 in 2000. It is implausible that these New Latino groups actually fell in this period of intensified immigration. We conclude that their number has been understated as a result of the large Other Hispanic count in Census 2000. Another reason to be wary of the Census 2000 estimates is that they diverge so widely from the results of other studies conducted by the Bureau of the Census.… The estimates of the number of Central and South Americans are very different in these three sources: 3 million in Census 2000 (which classed 17.6% as Other Hispanic), a million more in the Census 2000 Supplemental Survey conducted at the same time (based on a sample of nearly 700,000 and which classed only 9.6% as Other Hispanic), and almost another million in the March 2000 Current Population Survey (with a sample of about 120,000 and only 6.1% Other Hispanic). In this report we present improved estimates of the size of New Latino groups, compared to relying solely on the Hispanic origin question in Census 2000. Our procedure uses the Current Population Survey, which has the advantage of being conducted in person or by telephone, as the basis for determining what is the percentage of Hispanics who ‘‘really’’ should be classified as Other Hispanic. We then apply this target to Census 2000 data at the level of census tracts. Where the census has an excessive number of Other Hispanics, we allocate them across specific national origin groups according to a pre-established formula. Details of the procedure for 1990 and 2000 are documented in the Appendix to this report.

New Latinos in the United States, 1990 and 2000 [Table 4] provides a detailed breakdown of the Hispanic population at the national level (not including Puerto Rico) in 1990 and 2000. There are very large disparities between these and the Census counts from the Hispanic origin question, especially in 2000.

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In absolute numbers, the Mexicans are the group most affected by our reallocation of Other Hispanics, increasing by 2.4 million from the Census count. In proportion to their number, however, it is the New Latinos for whom the figures are most changed. Taken together the Mumford estimates show that New Latinos more than doubled their number, compared to an increase of about a third reported by the Census Bureau. We calculate more than 350,000 additional Dominicans and Salvadorans, 270,000 additional Colombians, and 250,000 additional Guatemalans. ¥ By all estimates, Mexicans are by far the largest Hispanic group, about two-thirds of the total and still growing rapidly. The Mumford count is now over 23 million, an increase of 70% in the last decade. ¥ Puerto Ricans and Cubans remain the next largest Hispanic groups, but their expansion is now much slower, up 35% and 23% respectively since 1990. ¥ The largest New Latino groups are Dominicans and Salvadorans, both of whom doubled in the last decade and have now reached over 1.1 million. ¥ There are now over a half million Colombians (nearly 750,000) and Guatemalans (over 600,000) in this country. And three other groups are quickly approaching the half million mark: Ecuadorians, Peruvians, and Hondurans.

States with the Largest New Latino Populations There are growing numbers of New Latinos in most states, but about three-quarters of them are found in just five states: New York, California, Florida, New Jersey, and Texas.… The Mumford Center webpage provides more detailed breakdowns for all 50 states, including both 1990 and 2000 and both Mumford estimates and counts from the Census Bureau. ¥ New York State has the most New Latinos (close to 1.4 million, up from 800,000 in 1990). About half (650,000) are Dominicans, who have had a noticeable presence in New York City since the 1950s. Close to half a million are various South American countries, a much newer immigrant stream. Puerto Ricans were once the predominant source of Hispanic immigration. Now they account for barely more than a third of the state’s Hispanics, and they are outnumbered by New Latinos. ¥ California has almost as many New Latinos as New York (also close to 1.4 million), though they are greatly outnumbered by Mexicans. The largest share over a million are from Central America, including especially El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua. ¥ Florida’s Hispanic population is well distributed among many national-origin groups. The Cubans are by far the best known of these at a national level (and they are still the largest, with nearly 900,000 residents statewide). Yet their growth has been slower than other groups, and nearly an equal number now are New Latinos (850,000), weighted toward South American origins. There are also over half a million Puerto Ricans and close to 400,000 Mexicans. ¥ Because of its proximity to New York, New Jersey’s Hispanic population might be expected to mirror that of its neighbor. It is similar, in that Puerto Ricans still are about a third of them (385,000). And Puerto Ricans are now outnumbered for the first time by New Latinos (over 500,000). The difference is that a much smaller share in New Jersey is Dominican; about half of the state’s New Latinos are from South America. ¥ Finally, Texas now has 400,000 New Latinos, more than doubling since 1990. As is true of California, the largest share is from Central America, especially El Salvador. They are barely noticeable statewide, next to 6 million of Mexican origin. But as will be shown

Table 4. Estimates of the Hispanic Population in the United States, 1990 and 2000 Mumford Estimates

Hispanic total Mexican Puerto Rican Cuban New Latino groups Dominican Central American Costa Rican Guatemalan Honduran Nicaraguan Panamanian Salvadoran

Census Hispanic Question

1990

2000

21,900,089 13,576,346 2,705,979 1,067,416

35,305,818 23,060,224 3,640,460 1,315,346

3,019,780 537,120

Growth

1990

2000

61% 70% 35% 23%

21,900,089 13,393,208 2,651,815 1,053,197

35,305,818 20,640,711 3,406,178 1,241,685

61% 54% 28% 18%

6,153,989 1,121,257

104% 109%

2,879,583 520,151

3,805,444 764,945

32% 47%

1,387,331

2,863,063

106%

1,686,937

279,360 142,481 212,481 100,841 583,397

627,329 362,171 294,334 164,371 1,117,959

125% 154% 39% 63% 92%

1,323,830 115,672 268,779 131,066 202,658 92,013 565,081

27% 68,588 39% 66% -12% 0% 16%

372,487 217,569 177,684 91,723 655,165

Growth

Latinos, 1980 Present 985

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Mumford Estimates 1990

Other Central American South American Argentinian Bolivian Chilean Colombian Ecuadorian Paraguayan Peruvian Uruguayan Venezuelan Other South American Other Hispanic

Census Hispanic Question 2000

68,772 1,095,329

181,228 2,169,669

399,788 199,477

742,406 396,400

184,712

381,850

1,530,568

311,353 1,135,799

Growth

98% 168,991 70,545 117,698 86% 99% 14,492 107% 30,010 149,309 97,969 26%

1990

2000

64,233 1,035,602

103,721 1,353,562

378,726 191,198

470,684 260,559

175,035

233,926

1,922,286

290,643 6,211,800

Growth

31% 100,864 42,068 68,849 24% 36% 8,769 34% 18,804 91,507 57,532 223%

Voices of the U.S. Latino Experience

Table 4. (continued)

Latinos, 1980 Present 987 below they are most heavily concentrated in Houston, where they are about a sixth of the Hispanic population.… The New Latino population lives almost entirely within metropolitan regions.…

Some parts of the country deserve special attention: ¥ The entire region surrounding New York City including the New York, Nassau-Suffolk, Newark, Jersey City, Bergen-Passaic, and Middlesex-Somerset-Hunterdon metro areas is the most important focal point for New Latino immigration. The New York PMSA alone has over 1.1 million, and the surrounding and largely suburban metro areas add another half million. Dominicans are about half of these in the New York PMSA. Central Americans (especially Salvadorans) are more than half of the New Latinos in suburban Long Island. In Northern New Jersey, many specific groups are present, but a plurality is South American. ¥ Los Angeles-Long Beach is the center for New Latino immigration in Southern California, where it has a mostly Central American flavor (300,000 Salvadorans, nearly 200,000 Guatemalans). In nearby metro areas (Riverside-San Bernardino and Orange County) New Latinos are also plentiful, but they tend to be dwarfed by the huge and growing Mexican population. ¥ In Miami and neighboring Fort Lauderdale there are about 600,000 New Latinos. They are about evenly split between Central and South Americans in Miami, and more tilted toward South Americans in Fort Lauderdale. ¥ Washington, DC is the next great center for New Latino growth (over 300,000). About two-thirds are Central American (130,000 Salvadorans) and one-third South American. ¥ Finally, Houston has 200,000 New Latinos, of whom the largest share is Salvadoran (90,000).

NEW LATINOS: PRESENT AND FUTURE The scale of immigration from less traditional Hispanic sources brings new and less known groups into the United States. Within ten years, we need to become as aware of Dominicans, Salvadorans, and Colombians people with very different backgrounds and trajectories as we are of Puerto Ricans and Cubans. Because they are so highly concentrated in a few regions, and often in a fairly narrow set of neighborhoods within those regions, each group has special local significance in those places. There are two ways in which accurate knowledge about New Latino groups is most critical. One is in the realm of political representation. Public officials and leaders of political parties need to be aware of changes in their constituencies. Although political redistricting is not required to take into account the internal composition of the Hispanic population, surely some choices about where to draw lines, whom to support for public office, and what issues to highlight in public policy initiatives will depend on whether the constituency remains more Mexican, Puerto Rican, or Cuban, and to what extent it is becoming Dominican, Salvadoran, or Colombian. The other is in the provision and targeting of public services. Particularly since so many services are now provided through non-profit organization, often seeking to serve specific ethnic populations, it is important for public officials to know who are the clients in a given locale. Again, whether the client base remains more Mexican, Puerto Rican, or Cuban, and to what extent it is shifting toward one or more of the New Latino groups, should reasonably be expected to affect judgments about how to serve the Hispanic community.

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The serious inadequacies of the Hispanic origin question in Census 2000 require that alternative estimates be made available. Undercounted can too easily translate into underserved. The Mumford Center offers one approach. Our procedure makes maximum use of publicly available data, it can be replicated, and it offers usable figures at the level of individual census tracts. We encourage others to assess the plausibility of these estimates and to seek better methods of estimation. In particular, we encourage the Bureau of the Census to use the whole range of data that it has on hand for this purpose. Information from the Supplemental Survey or the long form of Census 2000 on country of birth and ancestry, taken together with the Hispanic origin question, would allow the Bureau to create a new composite variable for a large sample of the population. This new composite variable would provide an excellent estimate of Dominican, Central American, and South American populations for the nation and for many states and large metropolitan regions clearly better than our adjustment procedure. Such data would also make possible a substantial refinement of our tract-level estimates. We urge the Bureau to begin consideration of these and other ways in which the resources of the decennial census could be more fully applied to understanding the composition of America’s Hispanic population. Source: Excerpt from John R. Logan, 2001. ‘‘The New Latinos: Who They Are, Where They Are.’’ Lewis Mumford Center. http://www.s4.brown.edu/cen2000/HispanicpPop/HspReport/HspReport Page1.html.

389. Excerpts from Roberto Suro and Jeffrey S. Passel, ‘‘The Rise of the Second Generation,’’ 2003 The Pew Hispanic Center, a public interest ‘‘fact’’ tank, conducts frequent surveys of the Latino population in the United States. It receives funding from The Pew Charitable Trusts, although it categorizes Latinos as Hispanics, its work has been invaluable in placing a face on the individual Latino peoples. It has conducted a wide range of studies which topics are kept up to date. The following excerpts deal with the changing patterns in the second generation Latino. This is important information in tracking attitudes and ties to the old countries. For example, the children of two second generation Latino parents will have slightly different outlooks than one born of a foreign born and a native born parent. The probability of the child speaking Spanish will be higher in the latter case than the former.

Since the 1970s, immigration has represented by far the fastest and the largest source of Hispanic population growth, and, as a result, the first generation the foreign born has become more numerous than the second or the third-plus generations those born in the United States of U.S.-born parents. This demographic equation is now rapidly changing. Consequently, the effects of Hispanic population growth on the nation are shifting in important ways. Most simply, the largest impact over the past 30 years has been measured in the number of Spanish-speaking immigrants joining the labor force. However, in the current decade and for the foreseeable future there will be very sizeable impacts from the number of native-born Latinos entering the nation’s schools and in the flow of English-speaking, U.S.educated Hispanics entering the labor market. Between 2000 and 2020, the number of second-generation Latinos in U.S. schools will double and the number in the U.S. labor force will triple. Nearly one-fourth of labor force growth over the next 20 years will be from children of Latino immigrants.…

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Between 1970 and 2000 the Hispanic population grew by 25.7 million and immigrants accounted for 45 percent of that increase while the second generation accounted for 28 percent.… As a result, in 2000 the first generation totaled 14.2 million people, or 40 percent of the Latino population, while the second generation counted 9.9 million, or 28 percent. The third plus generation numbered 11.3 million and made up 32 percent of the Hispanic population.… The growth of the second generation accelerated in the 1990s and reached 63% for the decade, up from 52 percent in the 1980s, surpassing the growth due to immigration (55 percent in the 1990s and 78 percent in the 1980s) even as the nation experienced a record influx from Latin America. This pattern was the legacy of the high levels of immigration in the 1970s and 1980s. Young adults have dominated most migrant streams in modern times, and that is certainly true of Latino immigrants who are concentrated in the child-bearing years. The median age of first generation Hispanics in 2000 was 33.4 years old compared to 38.5 in the non-Hispanic white population overall. Fertility rates are higher among Latino immigrants than in any other segment of the U.S. population. In 2000 the fertility rate was 3.51 births per woman for first generation Hispanics compared to 1.84 for non-Hispanic whites overall. It was higher even than the fertility rates among black (2.53) and Asian (2.60) immigrants.… Using a mid-range estimate of immigration flows, the Hispanic population will grow by 25 million people between 2000 and 2020. During that time the second generation accounts for 47 percent of the increase compared to 25 percent for the first.… Moreover, the second generation more than doubles in size, increasing from 9.8 million in 2000 to 21.7 million in 2020. At that point the second generation outnumbers the first generation which totals 20.6 million.… The rise of the second generation will have immediate consequences for the nation’s schools. The number of second-generation Latinos aged 5 to 19 years old is projected to more than double from 2000 to 2020, growing from 4.4 million to 9.0 million people.… About one-in-seven of the new students enrolling in U.S. schools over these 20 years will be a second-generation Latino. Source:
C 2003 Pew Hispanic Center, a Pew Research Center project, www.pewhispanic.org, October, 2003, pp. 2, 3, 5, 7.

390. Excerpts from John R. Logan, ‘‘Choosing Segregation: Racial Imbalance in American Public Schools, 1990–2000,’’ 2002 The Lewis Mumford Center, housed at the University of Albany, State University of New York, has studied urban trends since the late 1980s. In the following excerpts from his study, sociologist John R. Logan statistically analyzes the extent of segregation in the public schools, and the possible implication for Latinos. Despite the fact that 1954s Brown v. the Board of Education was to put an end to de jure segregation, it has increased dramatically among Latinos.

After a period in which desegregation efforts were widespread in American public schools, the average level of segregation has hardly changed in the last ten years, and in some places there is clearly a rollback of progress made before 1990. In many metropolitan regions, desegregation evident in the 1989 90 school year has given way to substantial increases of black white segregation. In most of these, Supreme Court action in 1991 that relaxed the criteria for rescinding desegregation orders has freed

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Table 5. Isolation Experienced by Hispanic Students in Top 50 Metro Areas 1999 Rank

1989 Rank

1 2 3

1 2 3

4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42

4 5 8 7 9 6 10 12 11 13 18 14 16 15 17 20 19 30 27 24 22 28 31 25 29 34 35 21 23 32 36 26 37 45 39 33 38 46 42

Area Name

Laredo, TX McAllen-Edinburg-Mission, TX Brownsville-Harlingen-SanBenito, TX El Paso, TX Las Cruces, NM Salinas, CA Corpus Christi, TX Los Angeles-Long Beach, CA San Antonio, TX Miami, FL Orange County, CA Jersey City, NJ Visalia-Tulane-Porterville, CA Ventura, CA Fresno, CA Bakersfield, CA Albuquerque, NM Chicago, IL Houston, TX Tucson, AZ Riverside-San Bernardino, CA Merced, CA Phoenix-Mesa, AZ New York, NY San Diego, CA Dallas, TX San Jose, CA Austin-San Marcos, TX Denver, CO Modesto, CA Hartford, CT Bergen-Passaic, NJ Fort Worth-Arlington, TX San Francisco, CA Newark, NJ Stockton-Lodi, CA Las Vegas, NV-AZ Oakland, CA Philadelphia, PA-NJ Boston, MA-NH Orlando, FL West Palm Beach-Boca Raton, FL

1999 Segregation

1989 Segregation

97.6 96.6 95.3

95.4 95.0 93.9

88.7 81.6 80.2 75.6 75.5 73.9 73.2 71.1 69.0 68.9 67.6 66.4 65.8 62.1 61.3 60.4 59.6 58.5 57.8 57.1 56.6 56.0 55.1 54.8 51.9 50.5 50.1 50.0 48.8 48.4 46.2 45.3 44.1 42.2 38.1 37.5 35.7 31.7 30.0

83.6 75.2 69.9 74.1 68.9 74.3 67.5 60.5 63.2 58.7 56.5. 58.5 57.3 57.4 60.1 52.6 54.2 43.2 44.6 46.2 49.6 44.3 42.4 45.8 43.9 39.7 37.1 51.7 48.2 41.8 36.1 44.6 32.4 17.1 25.8 39.9 28.3 15.0 18.5

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Table 5. (continued) 1999 Rank

1989 Rank

43 44

49 40

45 46 47 48 49 50

44 41 43 47 48 50

Area Name

Salt Lake City-Ogden, UT Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, FL Washington, DC-MD-VA-WV Nassau-Suffolk, NY Sacramento, CA Portland-Vancouver, OR-WA Fort Lauderdale, FL Atlanta, GA

1999 Segregation

1989 Segregation

29.0 28.9

12.4 20.3

27.5 26.6 25.6 24.7 24.1 19.9

18.4 18.6 18.4 14.4 12.9 9.3

school officials to pull back their previous steps to achieve racial balance. Consciously or not, Americans in these regions are increasingly making a choice for segregation. New national data for 1999 2000 show that segregation from whites has edged upwards not only for black children, but also for Hispanic and Asian children. At the same time, they reveal that segregation places black and Hispanic children, on average, in schools where two-thirds of students are at or near the poverty line.… The average white child attends a school that is over 78% white. Only 9% of other children in this typical school are black, 8% Hispanic, and 3% Asian. Though children often do not attend a neighborhood school, the racial composition of schools attended by white kids closely matches that of their own neighborhood. In sharp contrast, the average black child’s school is more than half black (57%). Hispanic children also are in majority Hispanic schools (57%). And Asians, despite being only 4% of the elementary population, are in schools that average 19% Asian. Each minority group’s exposure to white children is declining. In 1989 90, 32% of the average black child’s schoolmates were white; that has dropped to 28% in 1999 2000. Similar drops were experienced by Hispanics (from 30% to 25%) and Asians (52% to 46%).… Hispanic children are less segregated than black children (D ¼ 58 in 1999 2000, compared to 65 for blacks). [The standard of segregation is the Index of Dissimilarity (D) which captures the degree to which the two groups are evenly spread among schools in a given city.] However the trend is in the same upward direction, and varies in a similar way across metropolitan regions.… Hispanic segregation dropped by a point (from 52 to 51) in regions where Hispanics are less than 5% of the elementary population. But it increased by 3 points (from 57 to 60) in regions where they are more than 20% of the total. These 20% plus regions are where more than 3 out of 4 Hispanic children live.… Another important factor for Hispanics is their rapid population growth, more than a 50% increase in the last decade, almost equaling the number of black elementary children in metropolitan public schools (about 3.6 million for each group). As their numbers grow, they become more highly concentrated: the average Hispanic attended a school that was 53% Hispanic in 1989 90, increasing to 57% Hispanic in 1999 2000. Unlike African Americans, there has been little court action

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regarding Hispanic school segregation. As a result, it is uncommon to find a metropolitan region in 1989 90 where school segregation was lower than neighborhood segregation.… Overall trends in Hispanic-white segregation are provided in the following tables. These are the indices for the metropolitan region as a whole, and they include data for the 50 metropolitan regions with the largest number of Hispanic elementary school children in 1999 2000.… [Table 5] provides the values of the Hispanic isolation index. The highest values are extreme: the average Hispanic child in the Texas metropolitan regions of Laredo, AcAllen, and Brownsville is in a school that is more than 95% Hispanic. But in a majority of these metropolitan regions isolation is above 50%, and even where it is relatively low, it is increasing as the Hispanic population grows.… Source: Excerpts from John R. Logan, ‘‘Choosing Segregation: Racial Imbalance in American Public Schools, 1990 2000.’’ Lewis Mumford Center for Comparative Urban and Regional Research, University at Albany. Revised March 29, 2002, pp. 3, 4, 11, 14. http://www.s4.brown. edu/cen2000/SchoolPop/SPReport/page1.html.

391. Excerpts from John Ross, ‘‘Mexicanizing the Mara,’’ 2004 John Ross, a premier columnist for the Texas Observer, a progressive Texas magazine, describes the migration of Central Americans through Mexico, and the problem that they have with gangs who try to shake them down. The political instability in the sending countries (i.e., country that the immigrant came from), has worsened since the United States exportation of gangs as well as the growth of the drug trade. Since the twenty-first century, drug cartels have used Central America, Mexico, and the Western Caribbean as the main corridor for transporting 92 percent of the South American cocaine destined for the United States; drug trade routes are shifting through the nations in these areas. This has coincided with a U.S. policy of deporting Central American gang members who, for the most part, migrated to the United States as war refugees during the 1980s and 1990s civil wars. They were raised in the United States since infancy and were recruited into gangs while in the United States. Many deported youth continued gang affiliation in Central America and became involved in drug traffic. Central Americans did not have the resources to stop either the violence or the traffic. Mara Salvatrucha was the name of one of the largest of the Los Angeles Salvadoran street gangs involved in this activity.

Angel and William had set out the week before from the slums of San Pedro Sula, Honduras, and gotten as far as the Guatemalan-Mexican border on thumb and hoof. ‘‘One night, we had to walk until it was light out. We were too scared to stop,’’ confesses William, who claims to be 18 but looks four years younger. Now the boys were determined to reach Houston, where Angel’s cousin has promised them jobs. From Tecun Uman, Guatemala, the U.S.A. is a kind of dreamland basking in the golden sunlight with a fortune to be made at the end of the red, white, and blue rainbow or at least that’s the way it’s depicted in the mural painted inside the Casa de Los Migrantes. The Catholic-run Casa, a run-down hacienda fronting a rutted jungle path that leads to a bend in the slow-moving Suchiate River, is an obligatory pit stop for tired travelers heading north. It’s also an invaluable trading post for news of the dangers that lie ahead and the two boys’ eyes grew wide as they considered

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the advice of a grizzled border vagabond: ‘‘Watch out for your partners; don’t even trust your cuate (pal),’’ he warned ominously. ‘‘The coyotes will take your money and then sell you to the Migra. They’ll take you to where the train leaves, but watch out! The Mara Salvatrucha owns that train and if they catch you up there without paying, they’ll throw you right off.’’ Then he explained how every week migrants are found dead and dying along the track, separated from their limbs, having lost their grip on a hand-rail or else been tossed bodily from the east-bound freight, the ‘‘Mayeb,’’ by the dread Salvatruchas for not anteing up the cuotas fast enough. Angel and William seemed to shudder in the tropical heat at the mere mention of the much-feared Salvador-based gang that rules in this no-man’s land between Mexico and Guatemala. Yet, despite the lurid warnings, they were among 50 or so very young men and women who lined up at the Casa’s big doors by 6 P.M., itching to get on the road north. First, they would wade or swim the Suchiate (more affluent travelers coast across on inflated inner tubes). Then they’d make a beeline for the railroad tracks to catch the evening freight running east out of Ciudad Hidalgo and Tapachula through Chiapas, Tabasco, and Veracruz up to the south Texas border, a route their fathers and mothers and big brothers had followed during the wars in Central America and after the calamitous 1999 Hurricane Mitch, from which the region has not yet recovered. But in between here and there, as the Casa mural so graphically illustrates, there would be many obstacles ‘‘both the Mexican and Gringo Migras, border walls and fences, death in the desert’’ not to mention the Salvatruchas. At dusk, the indocumentados are strung out all along the train track near threadbare settlements, darting figures camped in the hobo jungles along the right-of-way, ready to leap aboard when ‘‘El Gusano de Hierro’’ (‘‘The Steel Worm’’) lumbers slowly past. Suddenly, a panicked cry goes up. It’s hard to tell whether people are yelling ‘‘Migra’’ or ‘‘Mara!’’ Dull thuds can be heard in the thick underbrush from which tall men with clubs emerge, but their identities are indistinguishable in the moonless dark and my taxi driver wants to leave at once. Maybe they are the Maras beating up on the migrants for chump change, he conjectures. More likely they are agents of Mexico’s immigration police. Mexican immigration authorities deport 100,000-plus undocumented migrants back across the Suchiate to Tecun Uman each year (in 2003, the totals were 146,000), all of whom are deposited across the bridge in Guatemala regardless of where they actually came from. Last year, half of the complaints Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission [Comisi
on Nacional de Derechos Humanos] (CNDH) received from Central American migrant workers and their advocacy groups along the southern border accused the National Immigration Institute (INM) of brutality, extortion, and other crimes against the travelers. The Mexican Migra has such a bad rap that the government has had to invent a second police agency, the Beta-Sur units, to provide some security for the workers. Jos
e Andr
es almost made it to Texas. He and his road mates had gotten all the way to Monterrey, a hundred miles from the border, but the hotel owners turned them in when they tried to beat the bill. Now he was borrowing money to call his people back in Honduras. Despite his bruises, he would start out again tonight. ‘‘If the police catch me again, I’ll only get a beating,’’ he said. ‘‘But the Maras could kill me.’’ Yet he appeared undaunted; he had his chimba (lead pipe, the Salvatrucha weapon of choice) hidden out in the jungle beyond the Casa walls and was prepared

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to use it. ‘‘They will think I am one of them,’’ he laughed, flashing a small tattoo on his inner lip as he walked off. Salvatrucha psychosis is thriving along Mexico’s southern border. Tabloid headlines tout the gang’s notoriety in big black letters. The Tapachula hotel where I stayed had 24 hour-a-day video cameras in the hallways to keep the Maras out of my room. The Chiapas state police has formed an inter-agency taskforce codenamed ‘‘Operation Steel’’ to keep the gangbangers in check. Last year nearly 700 suspected Maras were caught. Immigration authorities tend to be alarmist about the Salvatrucha invasion, estimating that 25 to 50 members cross into Mexico each day. The INM has detected Salvatrucha presence in eight states and the Federal District. The agency estimates a total of 5,000 members are in M
exico, 3,000 of them grouped in 200 bands hunkered down in squatter colonies around Tapachula, a sort of tropical Tijuana where anything ‘‘stolen cars, kilos of cocaine, pounds of human flesh’’ seems to be for sale. But xenophobia is a condition of life in this border region and any undocumented kid picked up on the hard road north is apt to be counted into the mix. The Mara Salvatrucha was born on the mean streets of California in the late 1970s and ’80s as refugees from the blood letting in Salvador streamed into the state, seeking sanctuary. Forced to defend themselves from long-established Mexican youth gangs, the older kids organized new arrivals into a respected fighting force that was as much into heavy metal music and stoner drugs as rumbling with the Mexicans. The etymology of the name is open to question. Presumably, the ‘‘Salva-’’ prefix refers to the members’ country of origin but it could also mean ‘‘save yourself’’ in Spanish. ‘‘Trucha’’ is a trout, the slippery fish whose agility in navigating troubled waters is a characteristic of these hardened youths’ lives. ‘‘Mara’’ is Salvadoran slang for a group of friends but may borrow attitude from the ‘‘Mara Bunta,’’ a particularly virulent Central American ant army. In the Salvatrucha lexicon, the ‘‘mara’’ is a tattoo, mandatory ID for members. By the ’90s, with the war in El Salvador winding down, the Salvatruchas began to drift home. Some, doing time in California prisons, were deported directly back to a country they barely remembered. Others were sent back by their families to keep them out of trouble. They coalesced in a post-war El Salvador where chaos reigned and everything was up for grabs. Recognizing themselves as ‘‘jomies’’ (‘‘homeboys’’), the Maras strong-armed their way into the street rackets, pushed dope, and were accused of dozens of kidnappings for ransom. Half the homicides in El Salvador were pinned on them. In 2002, the Salvadoran legislature passed an anti-Mara law; the crackdown soon spread to Honduras and Guatemala, where the Salvatruchas have branch offices. The Salvadoran police’s Operation ‘Mano Duro’’ (Hard Hand) collared 5,000 suspect’ truchas in its first hundred days. Then the Maras started to turn up horribly dead, decapitated and eviscerated on the city streets. The police attributed the butchery to the gang’s brutal nature. But the truth may be more diffuse. Some victims were found cruelly disfigured by tortures such as being hung up by their thumbs, a practice emblematic of the work of military and police death squads during a war that took 100,000 lives before a peace agreement was signed in 1992. ‘‘Homies United,’’ a California group that seeks to rehabilitate repentant Maras, sees the hand of the ‘‘Sombra Negra’’ (Black Shadow), purportedly a death squad composed of ex-soldiers. But whoever is responsible for the killings, the clean-up campaign is scattering the Salvatruchas. According to a recent piece in the Mexican daily La Jornada, the

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Salvatruchas are sandblasting off their tattoos and swimming north again for their own safety. Today, the Maras are an international conglomerate with functioning organizations in three Central American countries, Mexico, and the United States, including such unlikely locations as Somerville, Massachusetts; Dodge City, Kansas; and Nashville, Tennessee (where Salvadoran labor built a new football stadium for the Titans). The Mareros divide roughly into three tribes ‘‘the Mara Salvatruchas (MS)’’ or original gangsters; the M-13s or ‘‘Calle 13s’’ (‘‘M’’ is the 13th letter of the alphabet); and the ‘‘M-18s,’’ once part of the network of cliques that gathered in the 18th Street Gang, Los Angeles’s largest, with an estimated 20,000 members. Each of the Salvatrucha clicas is governed by a council of ‘‘Macisos’’ (‘‘tough guys’’) and lives by a lethal code that does not tolerate traitors and informers; internal strife is dealt with harshly. Initiation in the M-13s consists of a brutal 13-second beating with lead pipes. Elaborate gang hand-signals and face tattoos are Salvatrucha ‘‘trademarks’’ some add a tattooed teardrop for every kill and others a cross to body tattoos. Removing a tattoo is considered a grave violation of the Mara code although, as gang members travel north, they reportedly remove them to avoid police detection or else engrave them on interior body surfaces like Jose Andres [had]. Because of heavy Mexican immigration controls that try to keep the Maras bottled up in Chiapas, the Mexican-Guatemalan border has become a temporary concentration point for the Salvatruchas. Sleepy border towns during the day, Ciudad Hidalgo and Tecun Uman (a city with an unusually large number of one-legged men begging on its dusty streets) turn violent in the dark, with whorehouses and cantinas running full blast. Maras who take up residence in the squatter colonies along the Tapachula border soon become role models for impoverished farm kids, wannabe ‘‘M-13s’’ and ‘‘M-18s’’ who decorate schoolhouse walls with gang graffiti, do house burglaries, beat on hapless migrants, and occasionally tangle with each other. Meanwhile, the true-blue Salvatruchas are moving on to more fertile fields the moment they are able to get away from the border, a phenomenon that has made its way into Latin American literature. Rafael Ram
ırez Heredia’s new novel, La Mara, is a magic realist tale featuring a drag queen who controls the traffic across the Suchiate with the assistance of brutal Salvatrucha lieutenants. Ram
ırez researched Mara lore in Tecun Uman, Honduras, and Salvador. The real dimensions of the Salvatrucha phenomenon are grossly underappreciated, according to Ram
ırez. ‘‘There are 300,000 hungry kids coming north to this border every year,’’ he writes. ‘‘Every one of them is a potential Mara.’’ Source: John Ross, ‘‘Mexicanizing the Mara,’’ Texas Observer, June 18, 2004.

392. Excerpts from Stacey Chapman, ‘‘Yo Soy Boricua, Pa’ que Tu Lo Sepas! (I’m Boricua, Just So You Know!): An Interview with Rosie P
erez,’’ June 12, 2006 Dancer and actress Rosie P
erez was born in Brooklyn of Puerto Rican parents. She started dancing with Soul Train when she was spotted by a producer while dancing at a night club. Later Spike Lee saw her in another club and cast her in Do the Right Thing (1989). P
erez worked as a choreographer on In Living

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Color and was nominated for an Oscar in 1993 for her performance in Fearless. P
erez is one of dozens of Puerto Rican entertainers and sports heroes from Puerto Rico and the mainland. P
erez has a strong sense of identity and has been vocal in defense of the rights of Puerto Ricans and other Latinos. She starred in the 2006 documentary film Yo Soy Boricua! Pa’ Que Tu Lo Sepas! (I’m Boricua, Just So You Know!) and has made documentaries on AIDS awareness. The following is an interview with P
erez regarding her motivations in making the 2006 documentary.

Rosie P
erez: I wanted to do a motion picture narrative piece and the places where I went kept telling me that, this isn’t true. I was like, ‘‘What do you mean it isn’t true?’’ ‘‘Well, it didn’t happen.’’ I said, ‘‘What do you mean it didn’t happen?’’ ‘‘They went voluntarily.’’ I was like, oh my God and I just couldn’t believe it! I said, ‘‘Why were there sterilization clinics placed in factories?’’ ‘‘Well?’’ That was the response. I said, ‘‘Well, if they’re major corporations and they’re placing sterilization clinics in factories, and the factories are only hiring predominately women, you don’t think that there’s something funny about that? ‘‘Well’’ I said, ‘‘There’s legislative Act 136 that passed and says sterilization should be practiced on the poor and the malfunctioned people who are not able to raise children and educate them in a proper manner. That’s a government legislative act passed! There’s nothing funny about that?’’ ‘‘Well, uh.’’ Those things did happen. Nobody wanted to make that movie, and I just couldn’t believe it. So, I kept pressing on and doing other projects, but it was always on the back of my mind. Then this ex-boyfriend of mine called me up and said, ‘‘You know, I hear you’re doing the Puerto Rican Day parade. I hear your people all the way over here in Brooklyn, all the way across the river. Y’all are so damn loud! What the hell are y’all so damn loud about?’’ I said, ‘‘Cause we’re proud.’’ He goes, ‘‘What the hell you guys got to be proud about?’’ Ha, ha, ha. I hung up the phone on him.… I called my agent that day, and I said I got it. I’m going put all of those things to rest. I’m going to prove it. I’m going to spell it out, and I’m going to tell our whole (Puerto Rican) history. I’m going to wrap it around with people’s personal stories, because I was so touched by those women that were interviewed. I said I’m going show how political policy can affect people. My co-director, Rory Kennedy, called me in her office, and said, ‘‘Listen, I feel that you need to be a character in the movie.’’ I said, ‘‘Oh hell no! No, hell no! Oh, No No No!’’ And um, she’s like, ‘‘I really think you should be, and if you want to be a viable director and make this movie something special, you have to let go and just be in it.’’ And um, I think I told her off. And then finally I gave in.… I really like the Young Lords section. Pablo Guzman was a former Young Lord, and it’s interesting to see that you got into that. I really like that part of the film.… I always had an affection for it, because I remember my cousin Titi, God rest her soul. I remember the day when I was a little girl, and she came barreling into the house one day. ‘‘Mami mami, oh my god, you should have seen these Puerto Ricans. They’re walking in the street, and they had these berets, and everything. I told you, and now they’re on TV. I told you. They’re gonna be on the news tonight.’’ She was always so fascinated by them, and I was fascinated by her. So I always remember that.… I have [other issues like] my AIDS activism. We just protested in front of the UN yesterday. Got minimal news coverage, which is sad.

Latinos, 1980 Present 997 Source: Stacey Chapman, ‘‘Yo Soy Boricua, Pa’que Tu Lo Sepas!’’ (I’m Boricua, Just So You Know!): An Interview with Rosie P
erez, June 12, 2006. http://www.blackfilm.com/20060609/ features/rosieperez.shtml.

~a, ‘‘The Inquiring Mind and 393. Rodolfo F. Acun Miguel Estrada,’’ 2002 There are differences within the Latino community as to class and consequently the interests of the group. For example, some of the exiles that have arrived since 1980 are middle class and do not understand the civil rights history in this country. Their views differ from those of working-class Latinos. The Puerto Rican community, for instance, is five times as large as the Cuban American community and has a lower median age and income. Mexican and Central Americans have large first-generation groups and a median age of around 25 whereas the median age among Cubans is 40. Moreover, status of Latinos in Los Angeles and New York differ from Miami where there is still a Cuban American political and social hegemony. Not every Latino supports the Cuban American anti-Cuban government politics. And not every Latino supports the other Latinos’ views of their native countries. What binds them culturally should not necessarily be confused with what binds them politically where class and race interests are more important than art or music or language. The following article deals with attorney Miguel Estrada (1961–), a Honduran American whom President George W. Bush (1946–) sought to appoint to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals. The appointment met with strong opposition by progressives and many in the Latino community because of his ultra-conservative views and history of supporting right-wing organizations.

The hearings on the nomination of Miguel Estrada, 41, to the Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, District of Columbia, are nearing a close. But despite the high stakes involved in selecting the wrong person to the federal bench, Latino moderates and liberals have remained quiet, seemingly oblivious to its consequences. A bad appointment would rank on a par with the impending war in the Middle East. Right-wing Latino organizations and Republicans have stepped into the void and accused Democratic members of the Judiciary Committee of racism for preventing a vote on the nomination of Miguel Estrada. If confirmed, Estrada would be in line for the U.S. Supreme Court, something the Latino community considers a barometer of its political influence. It would follow the historical tradition of the appointment of Jewish, African American, and women justices who were expected to represent more than just their own interests. By raising the race card, conservative forces have made race an issue which is unfortunate. In a previous article I posited that Estrada, Honduran-born and raised, could not be called a U.S. Latino if we apply the test of the civil rights movement and ask who is an oppressed minority. I would have to agree with African American Harvard sociologist Orlando Patterson that by stretching the definition of Latino and qualifying anyone with a Spanish surname to entitlements, giving affirmative action a bad name. In the case of Estrada, he has no record that indicates or suggests that he identifies with the working Latino community. This does not make him a bad person nor

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is he unique. Many Latin Americans from privileged backgrounds come to the United States and do not understand the civil rights histories of Mexican Americans and Puerto Ricans. The truth be told, Estrada comes from a privileged background. His family in Honduras did not relate to the issues of working-class Latinos there. Instead of addressing the question of what comes under the definition of a definable or disadvantaged minority, I have received angry letters from Hondurans accusing me of being divisive and even anti-Honduran. These critics suggest that because a person is a Honduran American or a Cuban American, this automatically makes them Latinos and should be supported by members of that fantasy heritage. What in fact is divisive is supporting Estrada based on his surname and it has opened this Pandora’s box. Does it mean that if Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, the world’s third-richest man, were to take up residence in the United States, he would be a Latino entitled to affirmative action? Let us not play games; there are millions of upper- and middle-class Latinos who immigrate to this country who, like Estrada, have received good educations in their own country and do not relate to poor immigrants or U.S.-born Latinos. It is easy for them to become Republicans and associate with organizations such as the Federalist Society who pursue right-wing policies that are damaging to Latinos. Reacting to the claims of Estrada’s supporters that he is a Latino Horatio Alger, a Latino who turned adversity into opportunity by going from rags-to-riches, I have delved into his background. He came to this country at 15, and two years after immigrating to the United States, Estrada took the SAT in English and was accepted to Columbia University in New York, from which he graduated magna cum laude. A remarkable feat. More amazing since his supporters infer that he knew no English at the time he immigrated to this country. What contributed to this phenomenal accomplishment? Well, these questions have not been asked or answered by the media and the Department of Justice or Estrada’s supporters. My independent sources reveal: Estada’s father is a lawyer and owns land in the south of Honduras. He is wealthy but does not appear to be a latifundista. His father does not have a notoriously bad reputation such as links to military or conservative politicians. Estrada is not a working-class Honduran by any means who through hard work made it in this country. According to a fellow Honduran, Estrada ‘‘is a middle- to upper-class Honduran, from urban professional background, and probably was already highly educated before he came here.’’ Given this background, Estrada probably grew up learning English in elite private schools. These facts would not be important if his supporters had been honest and forthcoming. It is a disservice to many poor immigrant children who have to attend ghetto schools and live below the poverty line to use Estrada as a role model. Class is the defining factor in academic success in America. Hence it is intellectually dishonest to claim that Bush nominated Estrada solely on his qualifications. George Bush would not have nominated Estrada if he were not a Latino and an ultraconservative. Further, Estrada is not uniquely qualified. There are literally scores of lawyers who have graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School, and who, unlike Estrada, have published. For example, Clinton nominated Jorge Rangel (Harvard Law

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Review) from Corpus Christi, Texas, for the Court of Appeals. Rangel was not confirmed. Moreover, there are thousands of Latinos who have graduated from premier law schools; Harvard is not the only good law school in the U.S. So, beyond his law school transcript, what makes Estrada so eminently qualified? The problem is that because Estrada was never a judge, he lacks a paper trail establishing his views, forcing critics to make assumptions based on what could be called circumstantial evidence. Estrada is known to be a conservative, but he has made few public comments expressing his legal views. Lacking a public record, his associations take on greater importance. For instance, Estrada is a partner at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, a Los Angeles based law firm that represented President George W. Bush before the Supreme Court during the contested 2000 election. Estrada also worked for then-Solicitor General Kenneth Starr during George W. Bush’s father’s administration and was a law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy. As mentioned, Estrada is a member of the Federalist Society, an ultra conservative group formed at the University of Chicago in 1983 with Antonin Scalia, the future Supreme Court justice, and Robert Bork as faculty advisers. Because of these associations, members of congress want to take a closer look at the record. Estrada could eventually become a Supreme Court Justice. So the Senate Judiciary Committee has requested internal memos written by Miguel Estrada from 1992 to 1997 while working in the Office of the Solicitor General, a branch of the Justice Department. This branch is charged with arguing cases before the Supreme Court. Disingenuously the Bush administration has claimed executive privilege and prudence, in other words, Bush claims confidentiality, something denied to former President Bill Clinton. Given the slimness of Estrada’s public record, and the testimony of a former supervisor that Estrada advocates extreme positions that aligned with ideological biases more than Constitutional reasoning, raises a ‘‘red flag.’’ What is Bush trying to hide? Since Estrada has never served as a judge on a lower court, the memos would offer an opportunity to see how he would analyze cases as a judge. Although my own superficial findings did not uncover any connection with the Honduran-Bush Family and the funding and support of the Contras [Nicaraguan counter revolutionaries], it is disconcerting that the media ignored the possibility. The confirmation fight of U.N. ambassador John D. Negroponte, who served as ambassador to Honduras from 1981 85, was sent to the senate at the same time as Estrada’s nomination. Given Negroponte’s secret arming of Nicaragua’s Contra rebels, the CIA-backed Honduran death squad, and the Iran-Contra deal, this should have been an area of inquiry. It is unfair to the nation and Estrada to leave these issues in the limbo of speculation. What makes all of this so unpleasant is the silence of Latino civil rights organizations. I would have expected Latino Civil Rights organizations and Latino politicos to be proactive, opposing this nomination until more was known about Estrada. The Hispanic Congressional Caucus has rolled over. The truth be told, the only reason that we are entitled, is that large sectors of our community are poor and oppressed. Our entitlements are not based on our surnames. Source: Rodolfo F. Acu~ na, Urban Archives, September 2002, California State University at Northridge.

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394. Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA), ‘‘Guatemala’s Cursed Armed Forces: Washington’s Old Friend Is Back in Town,’’ March 16, 2006 Guatemala, a country of 10 million people, is the largest Central American nation. Sixty percent of Guatemala’s population is Mayan Indians. From the Spanish colonial period, it has been a leader in the region. In the twentieth century, American corporations, such as the United Fruit Company, have invested heavily in that country, and thus Guatemala has suffered from U.S. involvement and U.S. support of military regimes. For the past 30 years, the Guatemalan military has brutally suppressed popular movements among the indigenous people resulting in the deaths of more than 150,000 people. Much of the U.S. support for the Guatemalan military has come under the guise of the war on drugs. The following is a report by the Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA), an independent, non-profit, non-partisan, tax-exempt research and information organization that has been in existence since 1975. The state of Guatemala is important because political instability is a major factor in sending immigrants to the United States. According to the 1990 Census there were 268,779 Guatemalans in the United States—225,739 were foreignborn. In 2000, there were 463,502 Guatemalans. Migration does not happen by accident.

One can be forgiven for arguing that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who demonstrably is losing the war in Iraq, is now trying to achieve an easy win in Latin America, where he is presiding over the rehabilitation of what he sees as the Latin American military’s sense of honor. But the murderous reputation of that institution was established not due to invention or superficial judgment, but because of the fact that during the 1970s and 1980s, tens of thousands of innocent civilians were tortured and murdered throughout the region at the hands of local armed forces. Under such conditions, restoring one’s good name is no easy task. But due to Rumsfeld’s spirit of generosity, all has been forgiven at the Pentagon. At the cost of tens of millions of dollars, it has been staging periodic ministerial meetings with Rumsfeld’s counterparts from throughout the hemisphere since 1995, as well as funding the successor to the infamous School of the Americas at Fort Benning. Furthermore, the Secretary of Defense has made an on-site visit to seemingly obscure Paraguay, ostensibly to thank the local leaders for the possible U.S. usage of the Mariscal Estigarribia airstrip, and for allowing U.S. national guardsmen to rotate into the country. In addition, Rumsfeld has facilitated the sale of F-16 fighter jets to Chile, the major military sale from the U.S. to Chile since the end of the Pinochet era, in a deal first arranged by Lockheed lobbyist Otto Reich, and which could ultimately spark an open arms race between Chile and hostile neighboring countries like Peru, Bolivia, and Argentina. Guatemala’s newly appointed defense minister, General Francisco Bermudez, is currently in Washington D.C., for a four day visit that began on March 13. On his agenda is an appointment with the Secretary of Defense. In that meeting, Rumsfeld is expected to address the matter of a renewal of U.S. military aid to Guatemala, and possibly the construction of a DEA [Drug Enforcement Administration] base in the Guatemalan rainforest to help combat drug trafficking in Central America. The

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relatively high visibility of Bermudez’ visit is not adventitious, but represents a longstanding Rumsfeld policy of upgrading ties with some of Latin America’s most reprehensible and unsavory military establishments, who during the 1970s and 1980s savaged their nations’ constitutions and citizenry, including in Chile, Argentina, El Salvador, and, perhaps most of all, Guatemala. THE GUATEMALAN MILITARY: PRESENTE Bermudez’s visit comes as a follow up to last October’s defense conference, ‘‘Security and Economic Opportunity,’’ which took place in Key Biscayne, Florida. At that reunion, Rumsfeld met with Central American defense ministers and representatives from different branches of the region’s armed forces. It was during this gathering that the then-Guatemalan defense minister, General Carlos Aldana, called for the creation of a Central America peacekeeping force, which putatively would promote political stability, as well as provide emergency relief to civilians after natural disasters such as hurricanes. Secretary Rumsfeld said the talks were a ‘‘unique moment in the Americas.’’ But, what Rumsfeld didn’t say out loud, was that by attempting to revive the Latin American military, he could be putting to risk the very civil governance whose creation is at the heart of what he says is his Iraq policy. It was ironic to hear Guatemalan military officers discussing political stability. The armed forces of that Central American nation have long had a reputation for their covert behavior and unqualified brutality, whether they were overthrowing de facto governments almost at will, setting up infamous death squads, staging massacres of indigenous communities in Guatemala’s highlands in their ‘‘beans and bullets’’ crusade, and torturing tens of thousands of civilian victims. Dating back to 1960, it is estimated that almost 200,000 civilians have been put to the sword by the Guatemala military, as part of Washington’s ‘‘Cold War’’-abetted national security hemispheric policy. The country’s 1960 1996 civil war, which featured unspeakable cruelty, has been sometimes referred to as the ‘‘silent Holocaust,’’ for its mindless slaughter. Unfortunately, the end of military rule and civil war did not bring about a new era featuring highly professional, law-abiding, loyal-to-the-nation armed forces. Nor has the Guatemalan government had the temerity to implement some of the most important of the requirements listed by the country’s ‘‘Truth Commission’’ in 1999. Despite the Guatemalan military’s notorious reputation for drug trafficking, contrabanding, and harsh treatment of the indigenous population, the U.S. is once again involving itself in the internal affairs of the country, extending a growing amount of military aid in exchange for the country’s participation in the ‘‘war against drugs.’’ In that war, Washington’s best friend in Central America is the Guatemalan military, closely followed by the Salvadoran and Honduran armed forces. Ironically, the DEA will remind you that in recent years, the Guatemalan military particularly its G-2, was the prime drug trafficking cartel in the country. WASHINGTON’S DRUG STRATEGY At the same time, the Boston Globe’s Indira Lakshmanan (‘‘Cocaine’s New Route,’’ November 30, 2005), cited interviews with senior Guatemalan officials who said that they would ask for stepped-up U.S. military cooperation and a permanent

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DEA base in the country’s dense jungle bordering Mexico. This will not make Mexico City, nor that country’s military, particularly happy in having the U.S. as its neighbor, not once, but twice. Such activities could also mark a return to the early 1990s, when the DEA had a fleet of helicopters stationed in Guatemala for purposes of surveillance and interdiction. Since then, ‘‘enforcement efforts have shifted to other areas,’’ leaving a dearth of resources for enforcement in Central America. This was revealed by DEA director of operations Michael Braun, in his November 9 testimony before a Congressional subcommittee. The Boston Globe article also mentions that Guatemalan convictions of traffickers, whether private citizens or officials, are rare. None of the 16 alleged Guatemalan traffickers wanted in the United States have been extradited in the last dozen years since warrants against them were issued, allegedly because of delays in that country’s judicial process, noted Michael P. O’Brien, the DEA’s representative in Guatemala. The most striking example of this new counter-drug relationship occurred last year, when Rumsfeld declared that the U.S. will lift its ban on military aid to that country’s armed forces. In March 2005, Washington gave $3.2 million to initiate a modernization process of Guatemala’s military capacities. Assistance had been withdrawn in 1990, after it was learned that Guatemalan military forces had been involved in the killing of U.S. citizen Michael Devine. Rumsfeld’s repeated expressions of concern for Americans fighting in Iraq apparently doesn’t easily transfer to the fate of U.S. nationals Michael Devine in Guatemala or Lori Berenson in Peru. The alleged murderer of Devine, in fact, was Col. Julio Roberto Alpirez, who attended the School of the Americas and was reportedly on the CIA’s payroll for many years. While the case remains unsolved, the Bush administration has apparently decided to overlook this, as well as the cold-blooded murder of tens of thousands of Guatemalans during the civil war, in favor of more pressing issues like the war on drugs and Washington’s need to erect a thin line of allies to fend off the seepage of the ‘‘pink tide’’ to the north. MILITARY VS. THE WORLD Washington was very active in creating the monster that is the Guatemalan military and which terrorized the country during the 1960 1996 Guatemalan conflict. It is ironic, but not entirely surprising, that the U.S. which has always been fully knowledgeable regarding the face of the Guatemalan beast now praises the country’s ersatz democracy and begins anew to pour money into its corrupt leadership, this time with the help of the newly authorized Millennium Account, which is the White House’s new slush fund to fund pro-U.S. personalities and projects throughout Latin America. This is a way to tell President [Oscar] Berger (1946 ) ‘‘thank you’’ for his support on issues like CAFTA [Central American Free Trade Agreement]-DR. Guatemalans deserve a military that they can be proud of, but that does not seem likely to be a fact of life in the immediate future. At best, they will have to wait another generation, when a new group of military officers come to power, who might just be disgusted enough with what their predecessors have done to bring the desperately needed positive change to their pariah institution. Source: http://www.coha.org/2006/03/16/guatemala%e2%80%99s-cursed-armed-forces-washington% e2%80%99s-old-friend-is-back-in-town.

PART XXI Chicanas/os and Mexican Americans in Contemporary Society If Mexican Americans were a nation, they would constitute the fourth largest nation in Latin America behind Mexico, Columbia, and Argentina and in a dead heat with Peru and Venezuela with populations approaching 30 million. The dramatic growth has been in great part driven by the Mexican immigration of the 1980s and 90s. In 2004 Mexicans accounted for 29 percent of the 34 million foreign-born persons living in the United States. They themselves numbered 28 million. And just over 41 percent of Mexicans were first-generation immigrants. Along with other Spanish-language immigrants they listened to Spanish-language radio and television media. The television giant Univisi
on had a market capitalization of $10 billion and variety shows such as Don Francisco’s Sabado Gigante, broadcast throughout Latin America and Europe. In 1980, the U.S. Census counted 8.8 million Mexican origin residents of the United States in just two states, California and Texas. Illinois and Arizona together contributed another 9 percent, to account for 82 percent of the total MexicanAmerican population. Of Mexican Americans counted in the 1980 census, 74 percent were native born. By 1990, the Mexican-American population is projected to increase to 14.5 million. Meanwhile, the increase of Latinos along with the enforcement of the 1965 Voter Rights Act brought about the election of more Mexican Americans and Latino elected officials. This created an illusion of power and a shift away from the civil rights history forged by the Mexican American, Chicano, and Puerto Rican movements. Heroes such as C
esar Ch
avez were replaced by the ‘‘beautiful people,’’ who appeared on magazine covers. The deindustrialization of the economy brought bad times to many Americans in the 1980s. Light industry replaced well paid jobs in heavy industry. Attracted by jobs that Euro-Americans would not take, the foreign-born population increased from 9.6 million in 1970 to 22.8 million twenty-four years later. Mexican immigrants were 43 percent of documented immigrants from Latin America in 1988 joined by waves of Central Americans driven from their homes by civil wars. At least 300,000 Salvadorans and 50,000 Guatemalans lived in Los Angeles alone by the mid 80s. Nativists responded in Californian by passing the ‘‘English Is the Official Language’’ proposition in 1986. That same year Congress passed the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), which included employer sanctions, stronger border enforcement, and amnesty for undocumented immigrants. By the end of the decade, some 2.96 million had applied for amnesty (about 70 percent were Mexican). As the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, the United States began building its own walls between it and Mexico. In 1990, the Defense Department built an

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11-mile fence in the San Diego area as part of this war on drugs. Two years later, the Army Corps of Engineers announced plans to place scores of floodlights along a 13-mile strip of border near San Diego to ‘‘deter drug smugglers and illegal aliens.’’ President Bill Clinton launched ‘‘Operation Gatekeeper,’’ sealing the western San Diego County border and forcing undocumented immigrants to cross the suicidal terrain to the east. Trade union membership declined nationally, with overall private sector union participation falling below 15 percent. In contrast, the new immigrants flocked to labor unions. They brought a militancy that converted the historical anti-immigrant policies of the labor internationals to a pro the foreign born advocacy. They filled the ranks of the Hotel and Restaurant Employees Union (HERE), the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU), and Justice for Janitors and fought back. The struggle took on a historic dimension when on May 15, 1990, 150 armed officers attacked janitors and their supporters a police riot that resulted in 40 arrests and 16 injuries, with two women having miscarriages. The protection of the foreign born became a priority among Mexican American and Latino activists. Casa Aut
onoma-Hermandad General de Trabajadores (CASAHGTC) and La Raza Unida in Texas were training grounds for these activists many of whom became elected officials and union organizers. In California tens of thousands turned out to protest Proposition 187 (1994) that denied immigrants public services, Proposition 209 (1996) that killed affirmative action, and Proposition 227 (1998) that abolished bilingual education. The perfect storm occurred when the ‘‘[Jim] Sensenbrenner Bill,’’ H.R. 4437 (2005), passed the House of Representatives. A million marchers took to the streets in Los Angeles and hundred of thousands in the streets of cities across the country in spring 2006. Among other things the bill would have made living here without documents a felony. Nativists called for the deportation of the 12 million undocumented workers and their families the cost would be at least $230 billion or more to deport 9 million. During the 1990s Mexican origin peoples spread through the United States. However, Los Angeles had 4.2 million Latinos; Harris County, Texas that includes Houston and the Chicago areas with over a million each. The median age of Mexicans was just over 24 years well behind the national median of 36 years. Latinos nationally was 25.9, almost ten years below the national median of 35.3. Although the secondgeneration Mexican-Americans are much more likely to have completed high school than Mexican immigrants, they still lag behind Euro-Americans. At least one-fourth of second- and third-generation Mexican Americans had not completed high school. Poverty still took its toll with poor housing and bad schools being the rule in predominately Mexican and Latino neighborhoods. Lastly, the American labor offers limited opportunities to the unskilled. What is missing is the stairway to the middle class followed by European immigrants as they worked in well paying heavy industry. And although Mexican Americans had one of the highest work participation records among American residents they were perceived in a national poll in 1990 as being second only to blacks as to being lazy and living off welfare. As mentioned, the Mexican American community was larger than Ireland (4.5 million), Israel (6.5 million), Sweden (9 million) and Norway (4.6 million) combined in terms of numbers. Because many Mexicans had been in the United States before the 1848 takeover, the community developed long term institutions and an identity. In terms of organizations, it had the largest network of any of the Latino

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groups, as well as a tradition of fighting for civil rights. Because of the struggle of the Mexican American and then the Chicano generations, Mexican and Latino immigrants were able to assimilate into an environment where there were entitlements for them to go to school and equal access to many institutions. For example, the number of Latino university students was negligible in 1968, but because of intense struggle, thousands were attending universities in the twenty-first century but it must be remembered, it was not given to them. There was also a greater acceptance of Mexicanas and Latinas who in greater numbers were elected to public office and headed trade unions and other organizations. The struggles of the late 1960s had politicized the community and many of the feminist leaders came out of the activist core. Finally, Chicano Studies had evolved as a field of study with major university accrediting Chicano studies departments and programs. In recognition of the equality of women, the name of the National Association for Chicano Studies was changed to the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies (NACCS). The feminist movements of the past had a profound influence on Mexican American and immigrant women. By 2007 the voices in these communities were diverse. They were not only in Los Angeles, San Antonio, and Chicago but also in the Yakima Valley and the Deep South. By the year 2020 it is estimated that there will be 60 million Latinos in this country; by 2080 160 million.

395. Excerpts from David Reyes, ‘‘GI Forum Address,’’ 1980 Congressman Edward R. Roybal (1916–1905) was the dean of Chicano politicos—a legend in his time. In 1980, he responded to the hype of the Decade of the Hispanic, the popular notion among Many Mexican Americans that the Sixties had been the decade of African Americans and that the 1980s would be the Decade of the Hispanic. They had arrived at the gates of the promised land and the economic and political fruits of the nation belonged to Latinos. Roybal was the head of the Hispanic Caucus in Congress and from a generation where Mexican Americans were called greasers and could not swim in public swimming pools except for designated days. The following article reports on his speech before the American G.I. Forum, the leading Mexican American veterans organization that had been around since the mid-1940s, took issue with the decade of the Hispanic questioning the thesis that had arrived and if their organizations were making a difference in the lives of poor Mexicans and others in the United States. It was an important admonition coming from a respected politico of the old school.

ANAHEIM Rep. Edward R. Roybal (D-Los Angeles) said Wednesday that many of the nation’s 12- to 16-million Latinos still occupy the lowest rungs of the economic ladder despite claims that the 1980s would be better. ‘‘We have been told over and over again that the 1980s will be the decade of the Hispanics,’’ the California Democrat told 300 American GI Forum members attending their 32nd annual convention here. ‘‘But we all remember that we were told the same thing at the start of the … the ’70s. ‘‘The real answer, my friends,’’ Roybal told the predominantly Mexican-American audience, ‘‘is that we have no clout.’’

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He said Latinos are found at the lowest levels of education, health and income, and ‘‘our senior citizens live in poverty and deprivation.’’ Roybal made the statements on opening day of the American GI Forum convention. The 20,000-member organization was originally founded by a group of MexicanAmerican veterans in Texas. The convention is expected to draw at least 2,000 participants to the Anaheim Convention Center.… Source: David Reyes, ‘‘GI Forum Address,’’ Los Angeles Times, August 7, 1980, p. OC A1.

396. Excerpts from Judy Aulette and Trudy Mills, ‘‘Something Old, Something New: Auxiliary Work in the 1983–1986 Copper Strike,’’ 1988 On April 7, 1982, Phelps Dodge, the world’s largest copper producer, announced the lay-off of 3,400 workers in Texas and Arizona. The next year, it took a hard line in negotiations with the United Steelworkers, and the union agreed to a freeze of members’ wages for three years, only asking for Cost of Living Adjustments (COLA). The other copper corporations agreed to these terms, but Phelps Dodge refused to settle. The hard line of Phelps Dodge forced Morenci, Clifton, Ajo, and Douglas, Arizona, miners to walk out. Law enforcement supported Phelps Dodge. Firings and evictions followed as the Arizona Criminal Intelligence Systems Agency flooded the camps with undercover agents. In August 1983, Phelps Dodge announced that Morenci strikers would be permanently replaced by strikebreakers. Injunctions limiting picketing and demonstrations at the mine were enforced and Arizona Gov. Bruce Babbitt sent military vehicles, tanks, helicopters, 426 State Troopers, and 325 National Guardsmen in Morenci to break the strike. The strike grew bitter as women took over the picket lines. In October 1984, the company held an election to vote for a union or not. Only the 1,055 replacement workers and the 1,345 union members could vote. The National Labor Relations Board, controlled by Republicans, rejected appeals from the unions to halt decertification. Overnight, the area went from being overwhelmingly Mexican to overwhelmingly white; overwhelmingly Democratic to Republican. The following article excerpts describe the role of women during the strike.

The MMWA [Morenci Miners Women’s Auxiliary] was formed nearly forty years ago as part of the community support network for copper miners and their unions. The copper miners were regularly drawn into strikes when their contracts came up for renegotiation, and the auxiliary was reactivated for each of those strikes. In 1983, the auxiliary was once again reactivated to support the strike against Phelps Dodge … Although still committed to this aspect of the auxiliary in the 1983 86 strike, members prided themselves on being an important political organization. In contrasting the ‘‘new’’ auxiliary with the old, [Fina] Rom
an told us that, ‘‘the membership is different now. We don’t just do what the auxiliary used to do.… When Gov. Babbitt sent in the National Guard and the police to suppress the people who were fighting for an equitable contract, then it became political.… MMWA members also participated in work that is not associated with the ‘‘traditional female role,’’ and they were especially animated when they spoke about this.

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The maintenance of a picket line in Clifton is the most important example of what the women saw as the new political work of the auxiliary. The unions maintained an official picket line in Morenci at the gate of the mine. The impact of this line was limited because Phelps Dodge obtained legal restrictions on the pickets and made it physically difficult to picket by removing a picket shack and moving in piles of dirt to make it impossible to gather many people in this area.… Auxiliary members also worked to bring the strike to the attention of people outside of Arizona [criss-crossing the country, speaking to labor and community groups].… As one member put it: Women are more aggressive when they see something harming their kids.… When the strikebreaker or scab, he’s taking her husband’s jobs away, taking the food away from your kids, taking the shoes off their feet, I think women are the first to respond to that.… They’re seeing the destruction of the family, and they are going to come out with tooth and claw. Source: Judy Aulette and Trudy Mills, ‘‘Something Old, Something New: Auxiliary Work in the 1983 1986 Copper Strike,’’ was originally published in Feminist Studies, Volume 14, Number 2 (Summer, 1988): 251 268, by permission of the publisher, Feminist Studies, Inc.

397. Memo from John Tanton to WITAN IV Attendees, October 10, 1986 The major issue for Mexican Americans and other Latinos during the 1980s and into the next century was immigration. Pro-immigrant groups faced a lobby of well-financed foundations. The following memo is from John Tanton, a physician, who was the founder of anti-immigration groups such as the Federation of American Immigration Reform (FAIR) and U.S. English, and published the Social Contract Press, a quarterly devoted to anti-immigrant pieces. In 1986, Tanton signed a memo that caused an uproar. He charged that Latino immigrants brought a culture of political corruption to the United States, and were unlikely to become good citizens. He stated that the power of whites was being diluted by Latinos. Tanton laid out an agenda for anti-immigrant groups and called for an investigation of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF). He drew a picture of two Americas—the white property owners and the propertyless blacks and Hispanics. For many, the Tanton memo raised the question of racism within the ranks of the anti-immigrant organizations, something that was vehemently denied. Some members of English Only resigned in protest, but most tacitly agreed.

TO: WITAN IV Attendees FROM: John Tanton DATE: October 10, 1986 Here is a set of questions and statements that I hope will help guide our discussion of the non-economic consequences of immigration to California, and by extension, to the rest of the United States. These are not highly polished; I ask your indulgence. These notes are based on reading Bouvier’s and related papers, on the WITAN III Meeting, and my own thinking over several years on the topic of assimilation and the character of American society. The assignment of subtopics to the main categories is a bit arbitrary; many of them could be moved around.

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I. POLITICAL CONSEQUENCES 1. The political power between the states will change, owing to differential migration [in] six immigrant-receiving states. The heartland will lose more political power. 2. Will the newcomers vote Democratic or Republican, liberal or conservative, and what difference does it make? A lot, if you’re one or the other. 3. Gobernar es poblar translates [to] ‘‘to govern is to populate’’ (Parsons’ [Thomas Malthus] paper, p. 10, packet sent May 8). In this society where the majority rules, does this hold? Will the present majority peaceably hand over its political power to a group that is simply more fertile? 4. Does the fact that there will be no ethnic majority, in California, early in the next century mean that we will have minority coalition-type governments, with third parties? Is this good or bad, in view of the European and other experiences? 5. Shall illegal aliens be counted in the census and used to apportion congressional and statehouse seats, thereby granting them political power? 6. Is apartheid in Southern California’s future? The demographic picture in South Africa now is startlingly similar to what we’ll see in California in 2030. In Southern Africa, a White minority owns the property, has the best jobs and education, has the political power, and speaks one language. A non-White majority has poor education, jobs, and income, owns little property, is on its way to political power and speaks a different language. (The official language policy in South Africa is bilingualism the Blacks are taught in Zulu and related tongues.) In California of 2030, the non-Hispanic Whites and Asians will own the property, have the good jobs and education, speak one language and be mostly Protestant and ‘‘other.’’ The Blacks and Hispanics will have the poor jobs, will lack education, own little property, speak another language and will be mainly Catholic. Will there be strength in this diversity? Or will this prove a social and political San Andreas Fault? 7. Illegal aliens will pay taxes to the Federal Government; their costs will mostly be local. 8. The politicians are way behind the people on these issues. This brings to mind the story told of Gandhi: he was sitting by the side of the road when a crowd went by. He said, ‘‘There go my people. I must get up and follow them, for I am their leader!’’ 9. Griffin Smith’s point from the Federalist Papers: It was argued that the colonies would make a good nation, as they shared a common culture and language. Nineteen eighty-seven is the celebration of the adoption of the Constitution, 1988 its ratification, and 1989 the setting up of the first Federal Government. Can we tie into these discussions?

II. CULTURAL 1. Will Latin American migrants bring with them the tradition of the mordida (bribe), the lack of involvement in public affairs, etc.? What in fact are the characteristics of Latin American culture, versus that of the United States? See Harrison’s Washington Post article in the September 3 packet. 2. When does diversity grade over into division? 3. Will Blacks be able to improve (or even maintain) their position in the face of the Latin onslaught?

Chicanas/os and Mexican Americans in Contemporary Society

4. How will we make the transition from a dominant non-Hispanic society with a Spanish influence to a dominant Spanish society with non-Hispanic influence? 5. Do ethnic enclaves (Bouvier, p. 18) constitute resegregation? As Whites see their power and control over their lives declining, will they simply go quietly into the night? Or will there be an explosion? Why don’t non-Hispanic Whites have a group identity, as do Blacks, Jews, Hispanics? 6. Note that virtually all the population growth will come from immigrants and their descendants. 7. Is there a difference in the rates of assimilation between Asians and Latins? 8. Should something be said about the competing metaphors of the salad bowl and the melting pot? 9. What exactly is it that holds a diverse society together? Gerda’s paper said that in our case, it was a common language. 10. Is assimilation a function of the educational and economic level of immigrants? If so, what are the consequences of having so many ill-educated people coming in to low paying jobs? 11. We’re building in a deadly disunity. All great empires disintegrate, we want stability. (Lamm) 12. Enclaves lead to rigidity. (Hardin) 13. The theory of a moratorium: the pause in immigration between 1930 1950, combined with the assimilating experience of fighting side-by-side in the trenches in World War II, gave us a needed pause so that we could assimilate the mass of people who came in the early years of the century. Do we again need such a pause? 14. Concerning the moratorium, here are some phrases that could be used: ‘‘The pause that refreshes.’’ ‘‘A seventh inning stretch.’’ ‘‘Take a break, catch-up, eliminate a backlog, take a breather.’’ 15. Perhaps mention should be made of Pacific Bell’s move to install completely separate Spanish and Chinese language phone systems in California (see May 27 packet). 16. Novak’s term ‘‘unmeltable ethnics’’ is probably better than some of the others that have been suggested. Similarly, ethnicity is a more acceptable term than race. It should also be noted that 50% of all Hispanic surname people on the census forms designate themselves as White. So perhaps we should speak of Hispanic Whites and non-Hispanic Whites, to further diffuse the issue. Is Anglo a better term that White? Language is very important here. III. CONSERVATION AND DEMOGRAPHY 1. What will be the effect on the conservation movement, which has drawn its support in the past from other than the minorities, and which has relied on the political power of the majority to pass legislative measures? As the people that groups like the Sierra Club represent go into opposition (minority political status), will many of the things they’ve worked for be lost because the new majority holds other values? 2. Can homo contraceptivus compete with homo progenitiva if borders aren’t controlled? Or is advice to limit one’s family simply advice to move over and let someone else with greater reproductive powers occupy the space? 3. What are the consequences to California of the raw population growth that is coming, the ethnic change aside?

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4. What is the conservation ethnic [sic] of the Asian and Latin American newcomers? Will they adopt ours or keep theirs? 5. The Sierra Club may not want to touch the immigration issue, but the immigration issue is going to touch the Sierra Club! (To mention just one group.) 6. On the demographic point: perhaps this is the first instance in which those with their pants up are going to get caught by those with their pants down! 7. Do you agree with Teitelbaum’s statement, ‘‘International migration has now become an important point of intersection between the different demographic profiles of developing and developed countries’’? (Fear of Population Decline, p. 134 see also pp. 111 115.) IV. JURISPRUDENCE 1. What are the consequences for affirmative action of the ethnic change coming along? Will the non-Hispanic Whites (NHW) have a limited number of spots in professional schools, etc. proportionate to their numbers? Or will affirmative action go beyond this (as it does now in Malaysia) to cut spots to below their proportionate share, to enable other groups to ‘‘catch-up?’’ 2. Anything to be said about drugs and the border? 3. Will we get more of the Napoleonic Code influence, and does it make a difference? 4. What do we demand of immigrants or more correctly, what should we demand of them: a. Learn our language. b. Adopt our political ideals. c. Assimilate and add their flavoring to our stew.

V. EDUCATION 1. What are the differences in educability between Hispanics (with their 50% dropout rate) and Asiatics (with their excellent school records and long tradition of scholarship)? 2. Where does bussing fit into the picture? Keep in mind that by 1990, over 50% of all the people under 15 years of age will be of minority status. They will also be heavily concentrated in certain geographic areas. 3. The whole bilingual education question needs to be mentioned. VI. RACE/CLASS RELATIONS 1. What will be the fate of Blacks as their numbers decline in relationship to Hispanics? As they lose political power, will they get along with the Hispanics? Relations are already heavily strained in many places. 2. What happens when we develop a new underclass, or a two-tiered economic system? Especially if the two groups can’t speak the same language! (See Bouvier and Martin Chapter 5.) 3. Is resegregation taking place, in the Southern part of the state in particular?

Chicanas/os and Mexican Americans in Contemporary Society

4. Phil Martin’s point: In agriculture, the Whites and Asiatics will own and manage, but will not be able to speak to the Hispanic field workers. They will need bilingual foremen. Does this sound like social peace? Or like South Africa? Keep in mind the poor educational level of the field hands. VII. THE ECONOMY I don’t think we should dwell much on the economy: I think we should try to make our contribution by talking about the non-economic consequences of immigration. Nonetheless: 1. Do high levels of immigration cut back on innovation (Bouvier, p. 27)? 2. Does it reduce the tendency and need of employers to hire current minority teens (Bouvier, p. 27)? 3. Is there a downward pressure on labor standards in general (Bouvier, p. 28)? 4. Phil Martin’s point on the colonization of the labor market. (Chapter 5.) VIII. RETIREMENT 1. Since the majority of the retirees will be NHW, but the workers will be minorities, will the latter be willing to pay for the care of the former? They will also have to provide the direct care: How will they get along, especially through a language barrier (Bouvier, p. 40)? 2. On the other hand, will the older and NHW groups be willing to pay the school taxes necessary to educate the burgeoning minorities? 3. The Federal Government may have to pay for the care of the elderly in schools will it? IX. RELIGIOUS CONSEQUENCES This is the most difficult of all to tackle, and perhaps should be left out. Nonetheless: 1. What are the implications of the changes for the separation of church and state? The Catholic Church has never been reticent on this point. If they get a majority of the voters, will they pitch out this concept? 2. Same question for parochial schools versus public schools. 3. Same question for the topic of abortion/choice, birth control, population control. 4. Same question for the role of women. 5. Will Catholicism brought in from Mexico be in the American or the European model? The latter is much more casual. 6. Keep in mind that many of the Vietnamese coming in are also Catholic. 7. Is there anything to be said about the Eastern religions that will come along with the Asiatics? X. MEXICO AND LATIN AMERICA (CHAPTER 7, BOUVIER & MARTIN) Perhaps the main thing to be addressed here is whether or not shutting off the escape valve will lead to revolution, or whether keeping it open can avert it.

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XI. ADDITIONAL DEMOGRAPHIC ITEMS Teitelbaum’s phrase, ‘‘A region of low native fertility combined with high immigration of high-fertility people does not make for compatible trend lines!’’ Finally, this is all obviously dangerous territory, but the problem is not going to go away. Who can open it up? The question is analogous to Nixon’s opening of China: he could do it, Hubert Humphrey could not have. Similarly, the issues we’re touching on here must be broached by liberals. The conservatives simply cannot do it without tainting the whole subject. I think the answers to many of these questions depend on how well people assimilate. This, in turn, depends heavily on whether the parent society has made up its mind that assimilation is a good thing (we’re confused on this point now), whether it works at assimilating newcomers (as Canada and Australia do by following them longitudinally), whether the people coming want to assimilate (not all of them do), and, even if all the factors are favorable, whether the numbers are small enough so as not to overwhelm the assimilative process. Good luck to us all! Source: John Tanton to WITAN IV Attendees, October 10, 1986. Intelligence Report Summer 2002 Southern Poverty Law Center, http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?sid 125.

398. Excerpt from a Summary of the Immigration Reform and Control Act (Simpson-Mazzoli Act), 1986 The 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act was a defeat for nativists committed to the ideals of National Origins, strict quotas for immigrants from— according to restrictionists—the least desirable nationalities. It kept Third World immigrants, with the exception of Latin Americans, out of the country. But the act was only a partial loss for nativists because, for the first time, Latin Americans immigrants were put on a quota. As non-white immigrants poured into the country beginning in the 1970s, nativists sent up an alarm and pressured politicos to pass anti-immigration laws. The most obvious immigrant was the Mexican whose undocumented immigration accelerated in the 1970s. By the mid-1980s the nativists gathered momentum as right-wing think-tank foundations married this issue with campaigns against bilingual education, English only, and affirmative action. These nativist forces made immigration restriction a political wedge issue. In Congress, legislators such as Sen. Alan Simpson from Wyoming and Congressman Peter Rodino of New Jersey sponsored nativist bills in their respective chambers. In 1986, Congressman Romano Mazzoli of Kentucky had replaced Rodino in the House of Representative as co-sponsor, and the Simpson-Mazzoli Act, also known as the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), passed amendments to the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952. Anti-immigrant forces won: those knowingly employing undocumented workers would face financial and other penalties, and additional funds would be used for border patrol. The law also provided amnesty for undocumented residents who had been in the country for a certain period of time. The following are excerpts from that important law that gave documents to 2.7 million immigrants.

Chicanas/os and Mexican Americans in Contemporary Society

SUMMARY AS OF: 10/14/1986 Conference report filed in House. (There are 4 other summaries) (Conference report filed in House, H. Rept. 99 1000)

IMMIGRATION REFORM AND CONTROL ACT OF 1986 Title I: Control of Illegal Immigration Part A: Employment Amends the Immigration and Nationality Act to make it unlawful for a person or other entity to: (1) hire (including through subcontractors), recruit, or refer for a fee for U.S. employment any alien knowing that such person is unauthorized to work, or any person without verifying his or her work status; or (2) continue to employ an alien knowing of such person’s unauthorized work status. Makes verification compliance (including the use of State employment agency documentation) an affirmative defense to any hiring or referral violation. Establishes an employment verification system. Requires: (1) the employer to attest, on a form developed by the Attorney General, that the employee’s work status has been verified by examination of a passport, birth certificate, social security card, alien documentation papers, or other proof; (2) the worker to similarly attest that he or she is a U.S. citizen or national, or authorized alien; and (3) the employer to keep such records for three years in the case of referral or recruitment, or the later of three years or one year after employment termination in the case of hiring. States that nothing in this Act shall be construed to authorize a national identity card or system. Directs the President to monitor and evaluate the verification system and implement changes as necessary within 60 days after notifying the appropriate congressional committees (within two years for a major change). Prohibits implementation of a major change unless the Congress provides funds for such purpose. Authorizes related demonstration projects of up to three years. Limits the use of such verification system or any required identification document to enforcing this Act and not for other law enforcement purposes. Directs the Attorney General to establish complaint and investigation procedures which shall provide for: (1) individuals and entities to file written, signed complaints regarding potential hiring violations; (2) INS investigations of complaints with substantial probability of validity; (3) Department of Justice initiated investigations; and (4) designation of a specific INS unit to prosecute such violations. Sets forth employer sanction provisions. Provides for a six-month period of public education during which no employment violation penalties shall be imposed. Provides for a subsequent 12-month period during which violators shall be issued warning citations. Defers enforcement for seasonal agricultural services. Provides, at the end of such citation period, for graduated first- and subsequent-offense civil penalties, injunctive remedies, or criminal penalties (for pattern of practice violations). Subjects violators to graduated civil penalties for related paperwork violations. Directs the Attorney General to provide notice and, upon request, an administrative hearing in the case of a disputed penalty. States that: (1) judicial review of a final administrative penalty shall be in the U.S. court of appeals; and (2) suits to collect unpaid penalties shall be filed in U.S. district courts.

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Makes it unlawful for an employer to require an employee to provide any type of financial guarantee or indemnity against any potential employment liability. Subjects violators, after notice and hearing opportunity, to a civil penalty for each violation and the return of any such amounts received. States that such employer sanction provisions preempt State and local laws. Requires the General Accounting Office (GAO) to submit to the Congress and to a specially created task force three annual reports regarding the operation of the employer sanction program, including a determination of whether a pattern of national origin discrimination has resulted. States that if the GAO report makes such a determination: (1) the task force shall so report to the Congress; and (2) the House and the Senate shall hold hearings within 60 days. Terminates employer sanctions 30 days after receipt of the last GAO report if: (1) GAO finds a widespread pattern of discrimination has resulted from the employer sanctions; and (2) the Congress enacts a joint resolution within such 30-day period approving such findings. Amends the Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act to subject farm labor contractors to the requirements of this Act, beginning seven months after enactment. Directs the Attorney General, in consultation with the Secretary of Labor and the Secretary of Health and Human Services, to conduct a study of the use of a telephone system to verify the employment status of job applicants. Requires related congressional reports. Directs the Comptroller General to: (1) investigate ways to reduce counterfeiting of social security account number cards; and (2) report to the appropriate congressional committees within one year. Directs the Secretary of Health and Human Services, acting through the Social Security Administration and in cooperation with the Attorney General and the Secretary of Labor, to: (1) conduct a study of the feasibility of establishing a social security number validation system; and (2) report to the appropriate congressional committees within two years. Makes it an unfair immigration-related employment practice for an employer of three or more persons to discriminate against any individual (other than an unauthorized alien) with respect to hiring, recruitment, firing, or referral for fee, because of such individual’s origin or citizenship (or intended citizenship) status. States that it is not an unfair immigration-related employment practice to hire a U.S. citizen or national over an equally qualified alien. Requires that complaints of violations of an immigration-related employment practice be filed with the Special Counsel for Immigration-Related Unfair Employment Practices (established by this Act) within the Department of Justice. Prohibits the overlap of immigration-related discrimination complaints and discrimination complaints filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Authorizes the Special Counsel to: (1) investigate complaints and determine (within 120 days) whether to bring such complaints before a specially trained administrative law judge; and (2) initiate investigations and complaints. Permits private actions if the Special Counsel does not file a complaint within such 120-day period. Sets forth related administrative provisions. Makes it illegal to fraudulently misuse or manufacture entry or work documents.

Chicanas/os and Mexican Americans in Contemporary Society

Part B: Improvement of Enforcement and Services States that essential elements of the immigration control and reform program established by this Act are increased enforcement and administrative activities of the Border Patrol, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), and other appropriate Federal agencies. Authorizes increased FY [fiscal year] 1987 and 1988 appropriations for: (1) INS; and (2) the Executive Office of Immigration Review. Obligates increased funding in FY 1987 and 1988 for the border patrol. Directs the Attorney General, from funds appropriated to the Department of Justice for INS, to provide for improved immigration and naturalization services and for enhanced community outreach and in-service personnel training. Authorizes additional appropriations for wage and hour enforcement. Revises the criminal penalties for the unlawful transportation of unauthorized aliens into the United States. Authorizes a $35,000,000 immigration emergency fund to be established in the Treasury for necessary enforcement activities and related State and local reimbursements. Permits the owner or operator of a railroad line, international bridge, or toll road to request the Attorney General to inspect and approve measures taken to prevent aliens from illegally crossing into the United States. States that such approved measures shall be prima facie evidence of compliance with obligations under such Act to prevent illegal entries. Expresses the sense of the Congress that the immigration laws of the United States should be vigorously enforced, while taking care to protect the rights and safety of U.S. citizens and aliens. Requires INS to have an owner’s consent or a warrant before entering a farm or outdoor operations to interrogate persons to determine if undocumented aliens are present. Prohibits the adjustment of status to permanent resident for violators of (nonimmigrant) visa terms. Title II: Legalization Directs the Attorney General to adjust to temporary resident status those aliens who: (1) apply within 18 months; (2) establish that they entered the United States before January 1, 1982, and have resided here continuously in an unlawful status (including Cuban/Haitian entrants) since such date; and (3) are otherwise admissible. Authorizes similar status adjustment for specified aliens who entered legally as nonimmigrants but whose period of authorized stay ended before January 1, 1982. (States that in the case of exchange visitors, the two-year foreign residence requirement must have been met or waived.) Prohibits the legalization of persons: (1) convicted of a felony or three or more misdemeanors in the United States; or (2) who have taken part in political, religious, or racial persecution. Requires an alien applying for temporary resident status to register under the Military Selective Service Act, if such Act so requires. Directs the Attorney General to adjust the status of temporary resident aliens to permanent resident if the alien: (1) applies during the one-year period beginning with the 19th month following the grant of temporary resident status; (2) has established continuous residence in the United States since the grant of temporary resident status; (3) is otherwise admissible and has not been convicted of a felony or three or more misdemeanors committed in the United States; and (4) either meets

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the minimum requirements for an understanding of English and a knowledge of American history and government, or demonstrates the satisfactory pursuit of a course of study in these subjects. (Authorizes an exemption from such language and history requirement for individuals 65 years of age or older.) Specifies circumstances in which the Attorney General may terminate an alien’s temporary resident status. Permits travel abroad and employment during such period. Authorizes the filing of status adjustment applications with the Attorney General or designated voluntary or governmental agencies. Directs the Attorney General to work with such agencies to: (1) disseminate program information; and (2) process aliens. Provides for the confidential treatment of application records. Establishes criminal penalties (fines, imprisonment, or both) for: (1) violations of such confidentiality; and (2) false application statements. Provides for application fees. Waives numerical limitations, labor certification, and other specified entry violations for such aliens. Permits the Attorney General to waive other grounds for exclusion (except criminal, most drug-related, and security grounds) to assure family unity or when otherwise in the national interest. Requires the Attorney General to provide an alien otherwise eligible but unregistered who is apprehended before the end of the application period, an opportunity to apply for the legalization program before deportation or exclusion proceedings are begun. States that such alien shall be authorized to work in the United States pending disposition of the case. Provides for administrative and judicial review of a determination respecting an application for adjustment of status under this Act. Makes legalized aliens (other than Cuban/Haitian entrants) ineligible for Federal financial assistance, Medicaid (with certain exceptions), or food stamps for five years following a grant of temporary resident status and for five years following a grant of permanent resident status (permits aid to the aged, blind, or disabled). States that programs authorized under the National School Lunch Act, the Child Nutrition Act of 1966, the Vocational Education Act of 1963, chapter 1 of the Education Consolidation and Improvement Act of 1981, the Headstart-Follow Through Act, the Job Training Partnership Act, title IV of the Higher Education Act of 1965, the Public Health Service Act, and titles V, XVI, and XX of the Social Security Act shall not be construed as prohibited assistance. Continues assistance to aliens under the Refugee Education Assistance Act of 1980 without regard to adjustment of status. Requires the Attorney General to disseminate information regarding the legalization program. Establishes procedures for the status adjustment to permanent resident of certain Cuban and Haitian entrants who arrived in the United States before January 1, 1982. Updates from June 30, 1948, to January 1, 1972, the registry date for permanent entry admissions records. Authorizes FY 1988 through 1991 appropriations for State legalization impact assistance grants. Permits States to spend unused funds through FY 1994. Prohibits offsets for Medicaid and supplemental security income costs. Bases State amounts on the number of legalized aliens and related expenditures. Permits States to use such funds to reimburse public assistance, health, and education costs. Limits reimbursement to actual costs.

Chicanas/os and Mexican Americans in Contemporary Society

Title III: Reform of Legal Immigration Part A: Temporary Agricultural Workers Separates temporary agricultural labor from other temporary labor for purposes of nonimmigrant (H-2A visa) worker provisions. Requires an employer H-2A visa petition to certify that: (1) there are not enough local U.S. workers for the job; and (2) similarly employed U.S. workers’ wages and working conditions will not be adversely affected. Authorizes the Secretary of Labor to charge application fees. Prohibits the Secretary from approving such petition if: (1) the job is open because of a strike or lock-out; (2) the employer violated temporary worker admissions terms; (3) in a case where such workers are not covered by State workers’ compensation laws, the employer has not provided equivalent protection at no cost to such workers; or (4) the employer has not made regional recruitment efforts in the traditional or expected labor supply. Provides with regard to agricultural worker applications that: (1) the Secretary may not require such an application to be filed more than 60 days before needed; (2) the employer shall be notified in writing within seven days if the application requires perfecting; (3) the Secretary shall approve an acceptable application not later than 20 days before needed; and (4) the employer shall provide or secure housing meeting appropriate Federal, State, or local standards, including making provision for family housing for employees principally engaged in the range production of livestock. Provides that for three years, labor certifications for specified employers shall require such an employer to hire qualified U.S. workers who apply until the end of 50 percent of the H-2A workers’ contract work period. Requires the Secretary, six months before the end of such period, to consider the advisability of continuing such requirement and to issue regulations (in the absence of enacting legislation) three months before the end of such period. States that employers shall not be liable for specified employment penalties if H-2A workers are dismissed in order to meet such 50 percent requirement. Permits agricultural producer associations to file H-2A petitions. Provides for expedited administrative appeals of denied certifications. Prohibits the entry of an alien as an H-2A worker if he or she has violated a term of admission within the previous five years. Authorizes permanent appropriations beginning with FY 1987 for the purposes of: (1) recruiting domestic workers for temporary labor and services which might otherwise be performed by nonimmigrants and agricultural transition workers; and (2) monitoring terms and conditions under which such individuals are employed. Authorizes permanent appropriations beginning in FY 1987 to enable the Secretary to make determinations and certifications. Expresses the sense of the Congress that the President should establish an advisory commission to consult with Mexico and other appropriate countries and advise the Attorney General regarding the temporary worker program. Establishes a special agricultural worker adjustment program. Provides for permanent resident adjustment for aliens who: (1) apply during a specified 18-month period; (2) have performed at least 90 man-days of seasonal agricultural work during the 12-month period ending May 1, 1986; and (3) are admissible as immigrants. Sets forth adjustment dates based upon periods of work performed in the United States. Authorizes travel and employment during such temporary residence period.

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Authorizes applications to be made inside the United States with the Attorney General or designated entities and outside the United States through consular offices. Provides for confidentiality and limited access to such information. Establishes criminal penalties for false application information, and makes an alien so convicted inadmissible for U.S. entry. Exempts such admissions from numerical entry limitations. Permits waiver of exclusion (except for specified criminal, drug offense, public charge, Nazi persecution, and national security grounds) for humanitarian or family purposes, or when in the national interest. Provides for a temporary stay of exclusion or deportation (and authority to work) for apprehended aliens who are able to establish a nonfrivolous claim for status adjustment. Provides for a single level of administrative appellate review of such status adjustment applications. Limits such review of the order of exclusion or deportation. Defines ‘‘seasonal agricultural services’’ as the performance of fieldwork related to growing fruits and vegetables of every kind and other perishable commodities as defined in regulations by the Secretary of Agriculture. Directs the Secretaries of Agriculture and of Labor, jointly before each fiscal year (beginning in FY 1990 and ending in FY 1993) to determine whether additional special agricultural workers should be admitted because of a shortage of such workers in the United States. Sets forth factors to be considered in making such determinations. Authorizes associations and groups of employers to request additional admissions due to emergency or unforeseen circumstances. Authorizes groups of special agricultural workers to request decreased admissions due to worker oversupply. Requires the Secretaries to make request determinations within 21 days. Sets forth numerical limitations for such admissions beginning with FY 1990. Provides for the deportation of newly admitted special agricultural workers who do not perform 60 man-days of seasonal agricultural work in each of the first two years after entry. Prohibits naturalization of such workers unless they have performed 60 man-days of such work in each of five fiscal years. Treats temporary agricultural workers and special agricultural workers as ‘‘eligible legalized aliens’’ for purposes of Federal assistance to State and local entities for specified costs associated with such workers during their first five years in the United States. Establishes a 12-member Commission on Agricultural Workers to review the special agricultural worker provisions, the impact of the legalization and employer sanctions on agricultural labor, and other aspects of agricultural labor. Requires a report to the Congress within five years. Authorizes appropriations. Terminates the Commission at the end of the 63-month period beginning with the month after the month of enactment of this Act. States that specified agricultural workers shall be eligible for legal assistance under the Legal Service Corporation Act. Part B: Other Changes in the Immigration Law Increases the annual colonial quota from 600 visas to 5,000 visas. Includes within the definition of ‘‘special immigrant’’: (1) unmarried sons and daughters and surviving spouses of employees of certain international organizations; and (2) specified retirees of such organizations (‘‘I’’ status) and their spouses.

Chicanas/os and Mexican Americans in Contemporary Society

Grants nonimmigrant status to: (1) parents of children receiving ‘‘I’’ status while they are minors; and (2) other children of such parents or a surviving ‘‘I’’ status spouse. Authorizes the three-year pilot visa waiver program for up to eight countries providing similar benefits to U.S. visitors. Requires such visitors to the United States to: (1) have a nonrefundable roundtrip ticket; and (2) stay in the United States for not more than 90 days. Authorizes an additional 5,000 nonpreference visas in each of FY 1987 and 1988 with preference being given to nationals of countries who were adversely affected by Public Law 89 236 (1965 immigration amendments). Includes the relationship between an illegitimate child and its natural father within the definition of ‘‘child’’ for purposes of status, benefits, or privilege under such Act. States that for suspension of deportation purposes, an alien shall not be considered to have failed to maintain continuous physical presence in the United States if the absence did not meaningfully interrupt the continuous physical presence. Prohibits for one year the admission of nonimmigrant alien crew members to perform services during a strike against the employer for whom such aliens intend to work. Title IV: Reports Directs the President to transmit to the Congress: (1) not later than January 1, 1989, and not later than January 1 of every third year thereafter, a comprehensive immigration-impact report; and (2) annual reports for three years on unauthorized alien employment and the temporary agricultural worker (H2A) program. Directs the Attorney General and the Secretary of State to jointly monitor the visa waiver program established by this Act, and report to the Congress within two years. Directs the President to submit to the Congress an initial and a second report (three years after the first report) on the impact of the legalization program. Directs the Attorney General to report to the Congress within 90 days regarding necessary improvements for INS. Expresses the sense of the Congress that the President should consult with the President of Mexico within 90 days regarding the implementation of this Act and its possible effect on the United States or Mexico. Title V: State Assistance for Incarceration Costs of Illegal Aliens and Certain Cuban Nationals Directs the Attorney General to reimburse States for the costs incurred in incarcerating certain illegal aliens and Cuban nationals convicted of felonies. Authorizes appropriations. Title VI: Commission for the Study of International Migration and Cooperative Economic Development Establishes a 12-member Commission for the Study of International Migration and Cooperative Economic Development to examine, in consultation with Mexico and other Western Hemisphere sending countries, conditions which contribute to unauthorized migration to the United States and trade and investment programs to alleviate such conditions. Requires a report to the President and to the Congress within three years. Terminates the Commission upon filing of such report, except that the Commission may function for up to 30 additional days to conclude its affairs.

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Title VII: Federal Responsibility for Deportable and Excludable Aliens Convicted of Crimes Provides for the expeditious deportation of aliens convicted of crimes. Provides for the identification of Department of Defense facilities that could be made available to incarcerate deportable or excludable aliens. Source: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d099:SN01200:@@@L&summ2 m&|TOM:/bss/ d099query.html.


vez,’’ c. 1990 399. ‘‘In Memory: Remembering C
esar Cha C
esar Ch
avez (1927–1993) is the best-known Chicano/Mexican American civil rights leader. He is the symbol of David taking on Goliath—a small Chicano man taking on the large and powerful agribusiness. As head of the farmworkers he earned $5.00 a week—working over 100 hours a week in an effort to bring social, political, and economic justice to the most underpaid and exploited sector of the U.S. economy. The death of C
esar Ch
avez in 1993 was a huge loss for the millions who labor on U.S. farms and vineyards and for working people of all colors. Ch
avez was more than a labor leader, he was an icon, and immediately after his death there were campaigns to name streets in his honor and to have a national holiday designating his birth
vez said, ‘‘Once social change begins, it cannot be day. In 1984, Cha reversed. You cannot uneducate the person who has learned to read. You cannot humiliate the person who feels pride. You cannot oppress the people who are not afraid anymore.… And [as] you cannot do away with an entire people, you cannot stamp out a people’s cause. Regardless of what the future holds for our union, regardless of what the future holds for farmworkers, our accomplishments cannot be undone.’’ The following document from the C
esar E. Ch
avez Foundation provides a compilation of Ch
avez quotations from throughout his lifetime. Ch
avez was not only leader but also a teacher.

‘‘People who have lost their hunger for justice are not ultimately powerful. They are like sick people who have lost their appetite for what is truly nourishing. Such sick people should not frighten or discourage us. They should be prayed for along with the sick people who are in the hospital.’’ ‘‘The love for justice that is in us is not only the best part of our being, but it is also the most true to our nature.’’ ‘‘Preservation of one’s own culture does not require contempt or disrespect for other cultures.’’ ‘‘If you are going to organize and ask for commitment, you cannot go to the most desperately poor. They are not likely to take action. If you stand on a man’s head and push it into the dirt, he may not even see the heel of your boot. But if his whole face is already above ground, he can see your heel and he can see freedom ahead.’’ ‘‘Years of misguided teaching have resulted in the destruction of the best in our society, in our cultures, and in the environment.’’ ‘‘If you really want to make a friend, go to someone’s house and eat with him … The people who give you their food give you their heart.’’ ‘‘Our very lives are dependent, for sustenance, on the sweat and sacrifice of the campesinos [farmworkers]. Children of farmworkers should be as proud of their parents’ professions as other children are of theirs.’’

Chicanas/os and Mexican Americans in Contemporary Society

‘‘What is at stake is human dignity. If a man is not accorded respect, he cannot respect himself, and if he does not respect himself, he cannot demand it.’’ ‘‘Non-violence, which is the quality of the heart, cannot come by an appeal to the brain.’’ Non-violence is a very powerful weapon. Most people don’t understand the power of non-violence and tend to be amazed by the whole idea. Those who have been involved in bringing about change and see the difference between violence and non-violence are firmly committed to a lifetime of non-violence, not because it is easy or because it is cowardly, but because it is an effective and very powerful way.’’ ‘‘We cannot seek achievement for ourselves and forget about progress and prosperity for our community … Our ambitions must be broad enough to include the aspirations and needs of others, for their sakes and for our own.’’ Source: C
esar E. Ch
avez Foundation. ‘‘In Memory: Remembering C
esar Ch
avez,’’ http:// multinationalmonitor.org/hyper/issues/1993/05/mm0593 02.html.

400. Jorge R. Mancillas, ‘‘At UCLA, the Power of the Individual— Chicano Studies: The Hunger Strike Was a Morally Justifiable, Politically Reasonable Use of the Tactic,’’ 1993 Throughout the 1980s, Chicano and Chicana students at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) sponsored workshops on how to establish a Chicano Studies department. They formulated plans and a rationale for having a department rather than a program, which was what UCLA proposed. This campaign intensified under the leadership of Marcos Aguilar, Minnie Fergusson, and Bonnie D
ıaz. Finally, in 1993, believing that all procedures had been exhausted, led by Marcos and Minnie, nine Chicanas and Chicanos began a two-week hunger strike that was supported by Latino students throughout the Los Angeles Basin. The strike was vehemently opposed by white administrators and faculty members, as well as a number of Chicano and Latino faculty members. When the strike successfully concluded, UCLA historian Robert Dalleck alleged that the university negotiated with a gun to its head. Dalleck stated that the compromise, ‘‘happily ends the threat to the protesters’ health. But it diminishes UCLA’s integrity, inflames social tensions, and contributes to what historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., has aptly described as ‘the disuniting of America.’’’ The following article by Jorge Mancillas, a UCLA Biology professor at the time who became part of the hunger strike and later was denied tenure, explains why he joined the hunger strike and the significance of this action.

When on the misty morning of Tuesday, May 25, a group of students and I began a hunger strike in front of Murphy Hall at UCLA, we announced that ours was not a symbolic act. We knew that we would either succeed or we would die. We did not die, and now people feel free to criticize us. Our action has been characterized in many ways, from inspiring to irresponsible, from courageous to suicidal, but to us, it was above all an act of faith and an assumption of responsibility. We had faith in the substance and moral force of our argument. An interdepartmental program in Chicano Studies, taught by professors from traditional departments as ‘‘community service’’ could not fill what has become an urgent necessity in light of the racial strife tearing our society apart.

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The hunger strike was decided on and led by a large, multiracial group of students; some participated in it, others organized its logistics and support activities, and others who represented us in negotiations. In a city where so many adults focus on the infantile pursuit of ‘‘fun,’’ these young people displayed the highest sign of maturity: the willingness to assume responsibility for the solution of our social and educational problems. The young people who led me into that tent displayed more maturity than many of my elders, and I was willing to follow their lead. In spite of our success, we have been criticized for our use of ‘‘too heavy a tactic,’’ the use of maximal action for an issue of smaller magnitude that ‘‘was solvable by other means.’’ This reveals a complete ignorance of history and political strategy. Gandhi used the same tactic, but he did not gain India’s independence through a hunger strike. He used the tactic at specific moments within the struggle, in a given context and to achieve defined, measurable goals. Our hunger strike had a successful outcome because we used it in support of a morally sustainable cause, at the crest of a movement and to focus other ongoing efforts, when other methods had been exhausted. Most important, we applied it in the pursuit of an objective achievable within the time frame of the limits for human survival. Ours was a morally justifiable, politically reasonable, intelligent use of the tactic. It is ironic that our action was compared to ‘‘putting a gun to someone’s head.’’ At a time when guns are continuously [sic] pointed at heads and triggers pulled in the streets of our cities because of lack of understanding between people of different backgrounds, we resorted to a nonviolent approach. Our efforts were aimed at enriching the academic curriculum for all UCLA students, regardless of their major. Upon graduation, they must not only have technical expertise in their chosen fields; they also must understand the realities of the world in which they will work. Our society is being torn apart by tension, confrontation, and violence because of the pursuit of the politics of self-interest. Our message was that we must embrace a different approach, and be willing to give of ourselves, whatever is necessary our lives if need be for the collective interest, for the common good. We must pursue life, liberty, and happiness for all of us, not for some of us at the expense of others. We must leave behind the ‘‘trickle down’’ approach to empowerment, the belief that all will benefit in a given community if an individual representative climbs the ladders of economic and political hierarchies. We must give democracy its true meaning and all become participants in the steering of our common economic and political destiny. The most powerful message of our hunger strike is the illustration of the power of the individual: A small group of individuals with no political power, wealth, or influence was able to play a significant role in influencing the course of events. All it takes is clarity of mind, strength of convictions, and determination. We may have made many mistakes, and will probably make more. But as Edward R. Murrow once said, ‘‘No one makes a bigger mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do a little.’’ Each of us can do more than we realize. Each of us alone, can only do a little. Together, we can make history. Source: Jorge R. Mancillas, ‘‘At UCLA, the Power of the Individual Chicano Studies: The Hunger Strike Was a Morally Justifiable, Politically Reasonable Use of the Tactic,’’ Los Angeles Times, June 11, 1993, p. 7.

Chicanas/os and Mexican Americans in Contemporary Society

401. ‘‘Declaration of War,’’ December 31, 1993
rcito Zapatista de El Despertador Mexicano (the Mexican Awakener) is the Eje Liberaci
on Nacional (Zapatista Army of National Liberation—EZLN) newspaper representing the Zapatistas. This newspaper issued the following proclamation in response to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The EZLN opposed globalization, or neoliberalism, arguing that it severely and negatively affected the peasant way of life of its indigenous support base by accelerating the demise of small village farms. It marked the Mexican government’s abrogation of the Mexican Constitution of 1917 and the destruction of indigenous ejidos, communal lands. NAFTA also accelerated the migration to the United States as more peasants were uprooted because their property was privatized. The following is a declaration of war printed in El Despertador Mexicano on the day the North American Free Trade Treaty was to go into effect.

DECLARATION OF WAR [from a photocopy of the original] Lacandona Jungle, December 31, 1993

Today We Say Enough Is Enough! TO THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO: MEXICAN BROTHERS AND SISTERS: We are the product of 500 years of struggle: first against slavery, then during the War of Independence against Spain led by insurgents, then to avoid being absorbed by North American imperialism, then to promulgate our constitution and expel the French Empire from our soil, and later the dictatorship of Porfirio D
ıaz denied us the just application of the Reform Laws, and the people rebelled and leaders like Villa and Zapata emerged, poor people just like us. We have been denied the most elemental preparation so that they can use us as cannon fodder and pillage the wealth of our country. They don’t care that we have nothing, absolutely nothing, not even a roof over our heads: no land, no work, no health care, no food, no education. Nor are we able to freely and democratically elect our political representatives, nor is there independence from foreigners, nor is there peace nor justice for ourselves and our children. But today, we say ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. We are the inheritors of the true builders of our nation. The dispossessed, we are millions, and we thereby call upon our brothers and sisters to join this struggle as the only path, so that we will not die of hunger due to the insatiable ambition of a 70-year dictatorship led by a clique of traitors who represent the most conservative and sell-out groups. They are the same ones who opposed Hidalgo and Morelos, the same ones who betrayed Vincente Guerrero, the same ones who sold half our country to the foreign invader, the same ones who imported a European prince to rule our country, the same ones who formed the ‘‘scientific’’ Porfirista dictatorship, the same ones who opposed the Petroleum Expropriation, the same ones who massacred the railroad workers in 1958 and

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the students in 1968, the same ones who today take everything from us, absolutely everything. To prevent the continuation of the above, and as our last hope, after having tried to utilize all legal means based on our Constitution, we go to our Constitution, to apply Article 39, which says: ‘‘National Sovereignty essentially and originally resides in the people. All political power emanates from the people and its purpose is to help the people. The people have, at all times, the inalienable right to alter or modify their form of government.’’ Therefore, according to our Constitution, we declare the following to the Mexican Federal Army, the pillar of the Mexican dictatorship that we suffer from, monopolized by a one-party system and led by Carlos Salinas de Gortari, the supreme and illegitimate federal executive who today holds power. According to this Declaration of War, we ask that other powers of the nation advocate to restore the legitimacy and the stability of the nation by overthrowing the dictator. We also ask that international organizations and the International Red Cross watch over and regulate our battles, so that our efforts are carried out while still protecting our civilian population. We declare now and always that we are subject to the Geneva Accord, forming the EZLN as the fighting arm of our liberation struggle. We have the Mexican people on our side, we have the beloved tri-colored flag, highly respected by our insurgent fighters. We use black and red in our uniform as a symbol of our working people on strike. Our flag carries the following letters, ‘‘EZLN,’’ Zapatista National Liberation Army, and we always carry our flag into combat. Beforehand, we reject any effort to disgrace our just cause by accusing us of being drug traffickers, drug guerrillas, thieves, or other names that might by used by our enemies. Our struggle follows the Constitution, which is held high by its call for justice and equality. Therefore, according to this declaration of war, we give our military forces, the EZLN, the following orders: First: Advance to the capital of the country, overcoming the Mexican Federal Army, protecting in our advance the civilian population and permitting the people in the liberated area the right to freely and democratically elect their own administrative authorities. Second: Respect the lives of our prisoners and turn over all wounded to the International Red Cross. Third: Initiate summary judgments against all soldiers of the Mexican Federal Army and the political police who have received training or have been paid by foreigners, accused of being traitors to our country, and against all those who have repressed and treated badly the civilian population, and robbed, or stolen from, or attempted crimes against the good of the people. Fourth: Form new troops with all those Mexicans who show their interest in joining our struggle, including those who, being enemy soldiers, turn themselves in without having fought against us, and promise to take orders from the General Command of the EZLN.

Chicanas/os and Mexican Americans in Contemporary Society

Fifth: We ask for the unconditional surrender of the enemy’s headquarters before we begin any combat to avoid any loss of lives. Sixth: Suspend the robbery of our natural resources in the areas controlled by the EZLN. To the People of Mexico: We, the men and women, full and free, are conscious that the war that we have declared is our last resort, but also a just one. The dictators have been waging an undeclared genocidal war against our people for many years. Therefore we ask for your participation, your decision to support this plan that struggles for work, land, housing, food, health care, education, independence, freedom, democracy, justice and peace. We declare that we will not stop fighting until the basic demands of our people have been met by forming a government of our country that is free and democratic. JOIN THE INSURGENT FORCES OF THE ZAPATISTA NATIONAL LIBERATION ARMY! General Command of the EZLN December 31, 1993 Source: ‘‘Join the Insurgent Forces of the Zapatista National Liberation Army!’’ General Command of the EZLN, December 31, 1993, El Despertador Mexicano, December 31, 1993, Zapatistas Documents of the New Mexican Revolution, Courtesy of Robert McCaa, Professor, Department of History, International Projects Coordinator, Minnesota Population Center, University of Minnesota. http://www.hist.umn.edu/~rmccaa/la20c/index.htm.

402. California Proposition 187: Illegal Aliens. Ineligibility for Public Services, 1994 Jean Stefancic and Richard Delgado in their 1996 book, No Mercy: How Conservative Think Tanks and Foundations Changed America’s Social Agenda analyze the conservative right’s rise to power in the United States. The conservative sector out-organized progressive and civil rights groups in influencing the country’s political, social, and education agendas. They have formed conservative think tanks and foundations that systematically affected a conservative revolution. Their method was to fund a variety of issue-oriented studies and programs. Not by accident, well endowed right-wing groups funded anti-immigrant programs and leglislation such as English Only, California’s Proposition 187 (which denied public services to undocumented immigrants when passed in 1994), and race and eugenics studies aiming to prove that intelligence could be racially determined. Attempts were also mounted to water down affirmative action, restrict welfare, manipulate tort reform, and slow campus multiculturalism. Campaigns against immigrant and minority groups such as Latinos were a win–win situation because undocumented immigrants were poor and they could not vote. California’s ‘‘Prop 187’’ was called Save Our State (SOS), which was, according to racist nativists, a long-overdue distress signal. The number 187 is also the numeric code for the crime of murder, which is used by law-enforcement to designate when this type of crime is in progress. Two-thirds of Latino voters voted against the proposition and an equal proportion of white Americans voted for it. The successful passage of Proposition 187 backfired because many Latinos saw it as a racist attack on the entire community and voted against Republicans. The

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following is a voter analysis of the proposition. Although it passed, much of Proposition 187 was stricken down by the courts. Nevertheless, Proposition 187 was the prototype for similar bills in other states.

PROP 187: ILLEGAL ALIENS. INELIGIBILITY FOR PUBLIC SERVICES The Way It Is Now: About 1 in 5 Californians were born in another country. Most of these 7 million people have become citizens or have official approval to be here. There are about 1.6 million illegal immigrants in California who are not authorized to be here. They are also called illegal aliens. It is against the law to hire an illegal immigrant, but many find jobs anyway. Illegal immigrants are not eligible for programs like welfare, but can get emergency and prenatal health services. A child born in California to illegal immigrants is a citizen and has the same rights as other citizens. What Prop 187 Would Do: ¥ Stop state and local agencies from providing any public education, health care, or other social services to illegal immigrants except for emergency health care. ¥ Government agencies and schools will have to verify the legal status of anyone receiving services. They are required to report anyone suspected of being an illegal immigrant. ¥ Make it a felony to make or use a false ID that tries to get around this law. Note: part of Prop 187 may be overruled by a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that all children must be allowed to go to public school.

What It Will Cost: ¥ About $200 million per year would be saved from not providing health and social services to illegal immigrants. ¥ It could cost about $100 million to set up the systems needed to check everyone’s legal status, especially for schools who have never had to check this before. After that, it might cost $10 20 million per year to verify status. ¥ There is a risk of losing up to $15 billion in federal funds for Medi-Cal, AFDC, and education because of conflicts with federal privacy laws.

Pros: ‘‘Prop 187 will stop the services that are attracting illegal immigrants across our border. A lot of California’s population growth is because of illegal immigrants.’’ ‘‘We don’t have enough money to provide important services to legal citizens. We cannot afford to offer services to illegal immigrants.’’ ‘‘The federal government is not doing a good job of stopping illegal immigration. Prop 187 takes action instead of waiting for the Feds.’’ Cons: ‘‘Prop 187 runs against state and federal laws and the Constitution. The answer to illegal immigration is to tighten our borders and crack down on employers who hire illegals.’’

Chicanas/os and Mexican Americans in Contemporary Society

‘‘Prop 187 does not send illegal immigrants home. It will pull 400,000 students out of school and leave them on the streets.’’ ‘‘Prop 187 will make California a police state and increase racism. People will be suspected as illegal based on how they look and talk.’’ Source: California Voter Foundation, 1994, http://www.calvoter.org/archive/94general/easy/ meas/187.html.

403. Glynn Custred and Tom Wood, ‘‘California’s Proposition 209,’’ 1996 California voters approved Proposition 209 in 1996. This legislation prohibited California institutions from discriminating on the basis of race, ethnicity, or gender. In reality, its purpose was to protect white males, and it set the stage for copycat efforts to abolish affirmative action. Unlike Proposition 187, which passed in 1994 and refused public services to undocumented immigrants, Proposition 209 had allies in the civil rights and women’s movement. It passed by a margin of eight percentage points, which was not overwhelming. The ‘‘Yes on 209’’ Campaign outspent opponents 3–1. Like 187, it was heavily funded by right-wing foundations and think tanks. The result was that it drastically cut minority enrollment in higher education. The following document provides the text of this initiative.

Following is the text of the California Civil Rights Initiative, Proposition 209 on the November 1996 ballot, which was passed on November 5th by 54 percent of California voters. (a) The state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting. (b) This section shall apply only to action taken after the section’s effective date. (c) Nothing in this section shall be interpreted as prohibiting bona fide qualifications based on sex which are reasonably necessary to the normal operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting. (d) Nothing in this section shall be interpreted as invalidating any court order or consent decree which is in force as of the effective date of this section. (e) Nothing in this section shall be interpreted as prohibiting action which must be taken to establish or maintain eligibility for any federal program, where ineligibility would result in a loss of federal funds to the state. (f) For the purposes of this section, ‘‘state’’ shall include, but not necessarily be limited to, the state itself, any city, county, city and county, public university system, including the University of California, community college district, school district, special district, or any other political subdivision or governmental instrumentality of or within the state. (g) The remedies available for violations of this section shall be the same, regardless of the injured party’s race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin, as are otherwise available for violations of then-existing California anti-discrimination law. (h) This section shall be self-executing. If any part or parts of this section are found to be in conflict with federal law or the United States Constitution, the section shall be implemented to the maximum extent that federal law and the United

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States Constitution permit. Any provision held invalid shall be severable from the remaining portions of this section. Source: California Civil Rights Initiative, Proposition 209, State of California.

404. Ron K. Unz and Gloria Matta Tuchman, ‘‘Initiative Statute: English Language Education for Children in Public Schools,’’ 1998 California passed Proposition 227, abolished bilingual education, in 1998. States like Arizona mimicked California with similar legislation in the year 2000. This attack on bilingual education was disheartening since bilingual education was a fundamental part of the Latino and Mexican American civil rights struggle. The California model was aimed at banning bilingual education for virtually all children learning English as a second language. Arizona’s English-only schools initiative was called Proposition 203. Like the California measure, it was spearheaded by Ron Unz, a Silicon Valley millionaire. It mandates English language achievement tests for all Arizona students, regardless of their English proficiency. The following is a copy of the California model.

SECTION 1 Chapter 3 (commencing with Section 300) is added to Part 1 of the Educational Code, to read: CHAPTER 3. ENGLISH LANGUAGE EDUCATION FOR IMMIGRANT CHILDREN Article 1. Findings and Declarations 300. The People of California find and declare as follows: (a) WHEREAS the English language is the national public language of the United States of America and of the state of California, is spoken by the vast majority of California residents, and is also the leading world language for science, technology, and international business, thereby being the language of economic opportunity; and (b) WHEREAS immigrant parents are eager to have their children acquire a good knowledge of English, thereby allowing them to fully participate in the American Dream of economic and social advancement; and (c) WHEREAS the government and the public schools of California have a moral obligation and a constitutional duty to provide all of California’s children, regardless of their ethnicity or national origins, with the skills necessary to become productive members of our society, and of these skills, literacy in the English language is among the most important; and (d) WHEREAS the public schools of California currently do a poor job of educating immigrant children, wasting financial resources on costly experimental language programs whose failure over the past two decades is demonstrated by the current high drop-out rates and low English literacy levels of many immigrant children; and

Chicanas/os and Mexican Americans in Contemporary Society

(e) WHEREAS young immigrant children can easily acquire full fluency in a new language, such as English, if they are heavily exposed to that language in the classroom at an early age, (f) THEREFORE it is resolved that: all children in California public schools shall be taught English as rapidly and effectively as possible. Article 2. English Language Education 305. Subject to the exceptions provided in Article 3 (commencing with Section 310), all children in California public schools shall be taught English by being taught in English. In particular, this shall require that all children be placed in English language classrooms. Children who are English learners shall be educated through sheltered English immersion during a temporary transition period not normally intended to exceed one year. Local schools shall be permitted to place in the same classroom English learners of different ages but whose degree of English proficiency is similar. Local schools shall be encouraged to mix together in the same classroom English learners from different native-language groups but with the same degree of English fluency. Once English learners have acquired a good working knowledge of English, they shall be transferred to English language mainstream classrooms. As much as possible, current supplemental funding for English learners shall be maintained, subject to possible modification under Article 8 (commencing with Section 335) below. 306. The definitions of the terms used in this article and in Article 3 (commencing with Section 310) are as follows: (a) ‘‘English learner’’ means a child who does not speak English or whose native language is not English and who is not currently able to perform ordinary classroom work in English, also known as a Limited English Proficiency or LEP child. (b) ‘‘English language classroom’’ means a classroom in which the language of instruction used by the teaching personnel is overwhelmingly the English language, and in which such teaching personnel possess a good knowledge of the English language. (c) ‘‘English language mainstream classroom’’ means a classroom in which the students either are native English language speakers or already have acquired reasonable fluency in English. (d) ‘‘Sheltered English immersion’’ or ‘‘structured English immersion’’ means an English language acquisition process for young children in which nearly all classroom instruction is in English but with the curriculum and presentation designed for children who are learning the language. (e) ‘‘Bilingual education/native language instruction’’ means a language acquisition process for students in which much or all instruction, textbooks, and teaching materials are in the child’s native language. Article 3. Parental Exceptions 310. The requirements of Section 305 may be waived with the prior written informed consent, to be provided annually, of the child’s parents or legal guardian under the circumstances specified below and in Section 311. Such informed consent shall require that said parents or legal guardian personally visit the school to apply

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for the waiver and that they there be provided a full description of the educational materials to be used in the different educational program choices and all the educational opportunities available to the child. Under such parental waiver conditions, children may be transferred to classes where they are taught English and other subjects through bilingual education techniques or other generally recognized educational methodologies permitted by law. Individual schools in which 20 students or more of a given grade level receive a waiver shall be required to offer such a class; otherwise, they must allow the students to transfer to a public school in which such a class is offered. 311. The circumstances in which a parental exception waiver may be granted under Section 310 are as follows: (a) Children who already know English: the child already possesses good English language skills, as measured by standardized tests of English vocabulary comprehension, reading, and writing, in which the child scores at or above the state average for his grade level or at or above the 5th grade average, whichever is lower; or (b) Older children: the child is age 10 years or older, and it is the informed belief of the school principal and educational staff that an alternate course of educational study would be better suited to the child’s rapid acquisition of basic English language skills; or (c) Children with special needs: the child already has been placed for a period of not less than thirty days during that school year in an English language classroom and it is subsequently the informed belief of the school principal and educational staff that the child has such special physical, emotional, psychological, or educational needs that an alternate course of educational study would be better suited to the child’s overall educational development. A written description of these special needs must be provided and any such decision is to be made subject to the examination and approval of the local school superintendent, under guidelines established by and subject to the review of the local Board of Education and ultimately the State Board of Education. The existence of such special needs shall not compel issuance of a waiver, and the parents shall be fully informed of their right to refuse to agree to a waiver. Article 4. Community-Based English Tutoring 315. In furtherance of its constitutional and legal requirement to offer special language assistance to children coming from backgrounds of limited English proficiency, the state shall encourage family members and others to provide personal English language tutoring to such children, and support these efforts by raising the general level of English language knowledge in the community. Commencing with the fiscal year in which this initiative is enacted and for each of the nine fiscal years following thereafter, a sum of fifty million dollars ($50,000,000) per year is hereby appropriated from the General Fund for the purpose of providing additional funding for free or subsidized programs of adult English language instruction to parents or other members of the community who pledge to provide personal English language tutoring to California school children with limited English proficiency. 316. Programs funded pursuant to this section shall be provided through schools or community organizations. Funding for these programs shall be administered by the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, and shall be disbursed at the

Chicanas/os and Mexican Americans in Contemporary Society

discretion of the local school boards, under reasonable guidelines established by, and subject to the review of, the State Board of Education. Article 5. Legal Standing and Parental Enforcement 320. As detailed in Article 2 (commencing with Section 305) and Article 3 (commencing with Section 310), all California school children have the right to be provided with an English language public education. If a California school child has been denied the option of an English language instructional curriculum in public school, the child’s parent or legal guardian shall have legal standing to sue for enforcement of the provisions of this statute, and if successful shall be awarded normal and customary attorney’s fees and actual damages, but not punitive or consequential damages. Any school board member or other elected official or public school teacher or administrator who willfully and repeatedly refuses to implement the terms of this statute by providing such an English language educational option at an available public school to a California school child may be held personally liable for fees and actual damages by the child’s parents or legal guardian. Article 6. Severability 325. If any part or parts of this statute are found to be in conflict with federal law or the United States or the California State Constitution, the statute shall be implemented to the maximum extent that federal law, and the United States and the California State Constitution permit. Any provision held invalid shall be severed from the remaining portions of this statute. Article 7. Operative Date 330. This initiative shall become operative for all school terms which begin more than sixty days following the date at which it becomes effective. Article 8. Amendment 335. The provisions of this act may be amended by a statute that becomes effective upon approval by the electorate or by a statute to further the act’s purpose passed by a two-thirds vote of each house of the Legislature and signed by the Governor. Article 9. Interpretation 340. Under circumstances in which portions of this statute are subject to conflicting interpretations, Section 300 shall be assumed to contain the governing intent of the statute. Ron K. Unz, a high-technology entrepreneur, is Chairman of One Nation/One California, 555 Bryant St. #371, Palo Alto, CA 94301. Gloria Matta Tuchman, an elementary school teacher, is Chair of REBILLED, the Committee to Reform Bi-Lingual Education, 1742 Lerner Lane, Santa Ana, CA 92705.

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Voices of the U.S. Latino Experience Source: Ron K. Unz and Gloria Matta Tuchman, ‘‘Initiative Statute: English Language Education for Children in Public Schools,’’ 1998, Center for Multilingual, Multicultural Research, University of Southern California, http://www-rcf.usc.edu/~cmmr/Unz text.html.


n Draws Ire 405. Patrisia Gonzales and Roberto Rodr
ıguez, ‘‘Aztla of Anti-Immigrants,’’ 1998
n is the legendary ancestral home of the Nahua peoples, one of the main Aztla cultural groups in Mesoamerica. According to legend, the Nahua people were from an area that some have located in Utah. Nativists claimed that Chicano folklore appropriated the name for that portion of Mexico that was taken by the United States after the Mexican-American War of 1846. Far from appropriation, it was adopted at a time of intense racism when Chicanos and other Latinos made demands for human and civil rights. Aztl
an was a reminder to racist nativists that Chicanos and Latinos were in North America long before the nativists who told them to go back to where they came from. Accordingly, Chicanos had a historic right of being in the United States. However, nativists persisted with the claim that Aztl
an was a symbol for nationalism and meant Chicanos wanted to reconquer the Southwest, a claim that has no basis in fact. In the following article, two respected Chicano columnists and scholars discuss Aztl
an and give historical evidence of its existence.

About once a week, someone calls us ‘‘Aztlanistas.’’ It’s supposed to be some sort of McCarthy-type insult. Aztl
an, according to our accusers, is another Quebec. Accordingly, we’re also accused of supporting the ‘‘separatist’’ organization, MEChA, or Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztl
an a national student organization that promotes education and defends the rights of Chicanos/Mexicans and Central and South Americans. We find their work honorable and their philosophy misunderstood. Aztl
an as a 1960s political idea sought to reclaim the original homeland of the indigenous Mexica or Mexican/Chicano people. Thirty years ago, Aztl
an was symbolically represented by the lands lost by Mexico when the United States warred on its neighbor in 1846. A generation later, a new idea of Aztl
an is emerging, particularly among the young members, that they’re part of a pan-indigenous spiritual nation, not necessarily part of a geopolitical entity. As an anonymous Xicana from Michigan wrote to us last year: ‘‘Aztl
an is everywhere I’ve ever walked.’’ While some still cling to the 1960s expression of Aztl
an, its new adherents are not nationalist, nor do they support patriarchal ideas that relegate women to supporting roles. Many are women who spell Chicana with an X, symbolizing their indigenous roots. Theirs is not a separatist movement. Aztl
an has re-emerged in response to this population, Mexican/Latinos, being dehumanized to the point where today many of this country’s problems are attributed to them. This feeling of being under siege has created a spirit of unity and a spiritual kinship with people from all of the Americas. To some, the idea of Aztl
an indeed sounds like Quebec’s separatist movement. Yet, this population did not elect to be designated and treated by the government as a permanent lower caste of minorities and aliens. Nor have they chosen to be segregated by corporations as the ‘‘Hispanic market.’’ Interestingly, this ‘‘segmentation,’’ because it involves hundreds of billions of dollars, is not seen by mainstream society as separation, but rather as part of the American way.

Chicanas/os and Mexican Americans in Contemporary Society

For those who have been marginalized, viewing themselves as part of a spiritual nation is both dignified and liberating. Many view themselves as partaking in a process of selfidentity, not bound by government or corporate definitions, which they see as contributing to the systematic eradication of their culture. Many consider the U.S. Census Bureau’s designation of this population as ‘‘white’’ a throwback to an era of shame and a continued effort to obliterate the Indian or African within them. To outsiders, the aforementioned ideas may seem unintelligible, but they aren’t. All it takes is a little knowledge to understand why this population gets angry when the government and school textbooks erase their history. They view the ripping away of their roots as the first step toward their delegitimization and as lending credence to the idea that they’re foreigners. For many, Aztl
an is simply about bringing a dignity to themselves at a time when they perceive a full-scale attack against their culture via an encirclement of forced assimilation policies. And the irony is that these policies which manifest themselves in national movements against immigration, affirmative action, bilingual education and ethnic studies, plus the militarization of the U.S./Mexico border are essentially fueling that quest for dignity. Having a MEChA background should be a source of pride, not consternation. For example, not long after Norma Ch
avez led a six-mile march on behalf of the United Farm Workers Union in 110-degree heat in El Paso, Texas she was elected to the state House of Representatives in 1996. And Antonio Villaraigoza, Joe Baca, and Gilbert Cedillo MEChA members at UCLA in the 1970s are now California Assembly members. Villaraigoza, the speaker of the assembly, who is being honored at this year’s national MEChA conference at UCLA this month, runs one of the nation’s most powerful state bodies. And yet, he’s been derided by foes as undeserving of the post because he was once a MEChista. Antonia Hernandez, president and general counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (and former MEChA member), will be keynoting the conference. All are examples of human beings who have not betrayed their principles and who today carry on their human rights battles in halls of power. There’s no dishonor in that or in believing in Aztl
an. Source: Patrisia Gonzales and Roberto Rodr
ıguez, ‘‘Aztlan Draws Ire of Anti-Immigrants,’’ Universal Press Syndicate, Week of April 10, 1998. Column of the Americas.

406. Excerpts from Rakesh Kochhar, Roberto Suro, and Sonya Tafoya, ‘‘Report: The New Latino South: The Context and Consequences of Rapid Population Growth,’’ 2005 Although the overwhelming majority of Mexican immigrants has been concentrated in the Southwest, by the 1990s, Mexican and other Latino immigrants were moving heavily into the American South. This migration was encouraged by the modernizing of the southern economy and a shortage of labor that was of crisis proportion. This encouraged Latino immigrants, both documented and undocumented, to fill the gap. The 1990s saw the Latino population in the South increase more than 200 percent. Some counties experienced more than 1,000 percent growth. It has been estimated that some 80 percent of those immigrants are undocumented. The following excerpts concern the growth of the Latino immigrant population in the South.

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The Hispanic population is growing faster in much of the South than anywhere else in the United States. Across a broad swath of the region stretching westward from North Carolina on the Atlantic seaboard to Arkansas across the Mississippi River and south to Alabama on the Gulf of Mexico, sizeable Hispanic populations have emerged suddenly in communities where Latinos were a sparse presence just a decade or two ago. Examined both individually and collectively, these communities display attributes that set them apart from the nation as a whole and from areas of the country where Latinos have traditionally settled. In the South, the white and black populations are also increasing and the local economies are growing robustly, even as some undergo dramatic restructuring. Such conditions have acted as a magnet to young, male, foreign-born Latinos migrating in search of economic opportunities. While these trends are not unique to the South, they are playing out in that region with a greater intensity and across a larger variety of communities rural, small towns, suburbs, and big cities than in any other part of the country. Understanding the interplay of Hispanic population growth and the conditions that attended it helps illuminate a broad process of demographic and economic change in the South and in other new settlement areas as well. To varying degrees, communities scattered from New England to the Pacific Northwest are also seeing surging Hispanic populations. The South, different in so many ways for so much of its history, now offers lessons to the rest of the country. Most of the Latinos added to the population of the new settlement areas of the South are foreign born, and their migration is the product of a great many different policies and circumstances in the United States and their home countries. But there is a local context as well, and it is different in the new settlement areas of the South than it is in states such as California and New York, where migrants join large, well-established Latino communities. Given its distinctive character, Hispanic population growth in these parts of the South will also have distinctive impacts on public policy, and those impacts have only just begun to be felt. This report focuses on six Southern states Arkansas, Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee that registered very fast rates of Hispanic population growth between the censuses of 1990 and 2000 and continue to outpace the national average in the most recent census estimates.… This report also examines 36 counties in the South that are experiencing especially rapid Hispanic growth. Some of these counties contain metropolitan areas such as Atlanta, Georgia; Birmingham, Alabama; and Charlotte, North Carolina; that registered huge increases in their Hispanic populations for example, Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, which includes Charlotte, was up 500 percent. But other counties are predominately rural or contain smaller cities. Their total population in 2000 ranged from fewer than 37,000 (Murray County, a carpet manufacturing community in northwest Georgia) to almost 900,000 (Shelby County, Tennessee, home to Memphis). Thirty-six of these counties, all with an increase in their Hispanic population of 200 percent or more, had enough statistical information available to be studied in detail for this report. And in every case, the Hispanic population was relatively small before it surged. Fewer than 7,000 Hispanics were counted in Mecklenburg in 1990, but by 2000 there were nearly 45,000. Gordon County, Georgia, had just 200 Latinos in 1990 and saw its Hispanic population soar to more than 3,200 by the 2000 census.… Several features distinguish the kind of Hispanic population growth taking place in the new settlement areas of the South: its speed, its relation to the growth of

Chicanas/os and Mexican Americans in Contemporary Society

other population groups and the characteristics of the Latinos settling there. In the six southern states with the fastest Latino growth, the Hispanic population quadrupled between 1990 and 2000. That rapid growth reflects the fact that the Latino numbers started quite small, but it represents an extraordinarily quick demographic change nonetheless. And Latinos are not the only group that is growing. In most areas of the South experiencing very rapid Latino growth from a very small base, the numbers of whites and blacks are also increasing, albeit at slower rates. That is not the case in many other parts of the country, where the non-Hispanic populations are static or declining. Finally, the Latino population added to the new settlement areas of the South is younger, more immigrant, and more male than the Hispanic population overall. This has all the characteristics of labor migration in its early stages.… Aside from its speed, Hispanic population growth in these six states is distinctive because it occurred against a backdrop of simultaneous growth in the rest of the population. In other words, although Latinos are a rapidly growing presence in these six states, they are only one factor in an overall pattern of population growth, and in fact they are a relatively small factor in the broader picture. Both whites and blacks contributed greater numbers to the total population increase in these six Southern states, and this trend has held steady since at least 1990. These states are drawing not just Latinos but others as well, and very fast Hispanic population growth is for the most part happening in places where the whole population is growing robustly. The total population of these six southern states grew by nearly 5.2 million between 1990 and 2000, and Hispanics made up only about 900,000 or 17 percent of that increase. Meanwhile, growth in the white population (2.3 million) accounted for 45 percent of the total increase and added numbers of blacks (1.3 million) accounted for 26 percent. Thus, even if not one Latino had been added to the population of this region, it still would have experienced notable growth. This picture of rapid Latino growth amid overall growth distinguishes these southern states both from the nation as a whole and from California, New York, New Jersey, and Illinois, states that have large, well-established Latino populations.… Mexico is the country of origin for more Hispanic immigrants in the United States than all other nations put together, accounting for 64 percent of all Latino immigrants. That dominance is even stronger in the six new settlement states in this study, where those born in Mexico make up 73 percent of foreign-born Latinos.… Recent data also suggest that some new settlements in the South may be drawing a relatively larger share of migrants from regions of Mexico that have only recently begun sending large numbers of immigrants when compared with the traditional settlement states of California, Illinois, New Jersey, and New York.… The growth in the employment of Hispanic and non-Hispanic workers in the new settlement states and counties was well in excess of the nationwide rate. Data from the decennial censuses show that total employment in the U.S. for Hispanic workers increased by 48.6 percent between 1990 and 2000. However, the increase in employment of Latinos in the six new settlement states was much higher than the nationwide rate. The smallest increase was in Alabama, but even so, the employment of Latino workers there increased by 244 percent. The largest increase, 495 percent, occurred in North Carolina. In the six new settlement states combined, Latino employment was 349 percent higher in 2000 than in 1990. The employment of non-Hispanic workers increased by 14.9 percent in the six Southern states. This was well above the national average growth of 9.1 percent for non-Hispanics in the

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1990s. Georgia led the way for non-Hispanic workers as their employment increased by 19.8 percent in that state. However, the new South was more critical to the growth in jobs for non-Hispanic than for Hispanic workers. While the percentage increases in the employment of Latinos are astounding, the absolute increases in number are more modest. In the six southern states combined, the total increase in Hispanic employment was just over 404,000, and that accounted for less than 10 percent of the nationwide increase of 4.4 million in Latino employment. All together, these six states added jobs for 1.9 million non-Hispanic workers between 1990 and 2000. That amounted to 20 percent of the nationwide increase of 9.7 million in non-Latino employment. Overall, more than 80 percent of the new jobs created in these states in the 1990s were filled by non-Hispanic workers and fewer than 20 percent by Hispanics. The Hispanic share of new jobs was much higher on a nationwide basis as Latinos captured 31 percent of the 14 million new jobs created nationally between 1990 and 2000.… Hispanic workers in diverse counties are also likely to be found in management, professional, and related occupations but their representation in these occupations (13.2%) in diverse counties was below their national average (16.1%) in 2000. Similarly, Latinos were far less likely (6.9%) than the national norm (13.7%) to be found in office and administrative-support occupations in diverse counties. These tendencies are, no doubt, a reflection of the fact that Latinos in the new South are far more likely to be foreign born than in the rest of the country. White and black workers are also far more likely to be found in white-collar occupations in diverse counties in comparison with other counties. In fact, 40.1% of whites could be found in management, professional, and related occupations alone in the diverse counties, well above their national average of 31.6% in 2000. Conversely, white workers were less likely than the national average to be employed as construction or production workers in diverse counties.… Nationally, Latinos were earning 61 percent as much as whites in 2000. The situation was approximately the same in manufacturing oriented counties, as Latinos earned 64 percent as much as whites in manufacturing counties and 58 percent as much in transition counties. But the median income of whites in diverse counties is significantly higher than in the other counties $34,100 versus $26,000 or less in the other county groups. This reflects the far greater opportunities in white-collar occupations for white workers in diverse counties. Consequently, Hispanic workers earned only 47 percent as much as white workers in diverse counties in 2000.… C 2005 Pew Hispanic Center, a Pew Research Center project, www.pewhispanic.org. Source:
Prepared by the Pew Hispanic Center for presentation at ‘‘Immigration to New Settlement Areas,’’ July 26, 2005, pp. i ii, 1, 6, 13, 25, 33 34.

407. Excerpts from Stuart Silverstein, ‘‘Racial Issues Lose Urgency, Study Finds; UCLA Survey Shows That a Record High Percentage of College Freshmen Believe Discrimination Is No Longer a Major Problem in the U.S.,’’ 2005 In a 2005 University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) survey, freshman Karina Hern
andez said she did not recall ever having been discriminated against as a Latina; she was not particularly concerned with the issue of race and

Chicanas/os and Mexican Americans in Contemporary Society

ethnic relations. The UCLA survey found 22.7 percent of freshmen believed that racial discrimination no longer is a major problem. Race did not seem to matter as much as in the previous generation. This was reflected in other national surveys. The following excerpts provide a summary of the UCLA survey. The survey is interesting because raises the questions of whether racism exists in our present day society or if we just don’t recognize it. It is not as blatant as in the 1940s when Mexicans were called greasers and were not allowed to use public facilities or in the 1960s when greater numbers were drafted into the army and fewer attended institutions of higher learning. What form does racism take today?

[National survey results found that:] ¥ Freshmen were more polarized politically. Students describing themselves as ‘‘middle of the road’’ remained the biggest group, at 46.4%, but that percentage was the smallest in more than 30 years and was down from 50.3% in 2003. Liberals accounted for 26.1% and conservatives 21.9%. Students describing themselves as ‘‘far left’’ climbed to 3.4%, and those as ‘‘far right’’ rose to 2.2% both record highs. ¥ A record high 47.2% of freshmen said there was a very good chance that they would have to get a job during the year to pay for college expenses, versus a low of 35.3% in 1989. ¥ Students who reported frequently being bored in class during their last year of high school climbed to a record 42.8%, up from 40.1% a year earlier and from a low of 29.3% in 1985.

The survey titled ‘‘The American Freshman: National Forms for Fall 2004’’ was conducted by the Cooperative Institutional Research Program, a unit of UCLA’s Higher Education Research Institute. The findings were based on responses to a four-page questionnaire filled out last summer and fall by 289,452 entering freshmen at 440 four-year colleges around the country. The margin for error is 0.1% for the national results and 0.3% for the California results. Source: Stuart Silverstein, ‘‘Racial Issues Lose Urgency, Study Finds; UCLA survey shows that a record high percentage of college freshmen believe discrimination is no longer a major problem in the U.S.,’’ Los Angeles Times, January 31, 2005, p. 3.

408. Testimony of Mar
ıa Elena Durazo before the Subcommittee on Employer–Employee Relations, Committee on Education and the Workforce, U.S. House of Representatives, July 21, 1999 The highest-ranking officer in the Los Angeles Federation of Labor is the secretary/treasurer. The first Mexican American to hold this position was Miguel Contreras, who died in 2005. Under Contreras’ leadership the County Federation had been more proactive in promoting the political interests of Latinos. His wife, Mar
ıa Elena Durazo, a long-time leader of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees (HERE) International Union, was elected to her late husband’s former post in 2006, making her the most powerful Latina in Los Angeles. She is a strong advocate of immigrant rights, and as a youth had been active in Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano/a de Aztl
an (MEChA), student

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groups, and the Centro de Accion Social Autonoma (Center for Autonomous Social Action—CASA), an organization for immigrant rights. Both MEChA and CASA trained a generation of political, civil, and labor leaders. At the time of her testimony before Congress in 1999, Durazo was the president of the Hotel Employee Restaurant Employees International Union. The following document gives us an insight into one of the Mexican American community’s leading figures and how she helped build the union.

My name is Mar
ıa Elena Durazo, V.P. at large of the HERE International Union and I am also the elected President of HERE Local 11 in Los Angeles, California. My parents are immigrants from Mexico and our family of 10 children worked in the fields of California as migrant farmworkers until I was in high school. I started in the labor movement as an organizer in the garment sweatshops with the then ILGWU [International Ladies Garment Workers Union]. I got hired as an organizer at Local 11 in 1983 and for 4 years I witnessed a Union deteriorate right before my very eyes. The leadership of that Local had a policy of exclusion. Seventy percent of the members are immigrants from Mexico and Central America. The meetings were held in English only; the publications were sent out in English only, and members rarely attended meetings. The office closed down at 4 P.M. the time most members were getting off their shifts. As a result of their exclusion, the members had no voice in their Union and on the job. They had no training to know their rights. The Union was weak because the members did not participate, and therefore the Union did not have the ability to negotiate fair contracts. In 1987, I led a rank and file effort to change the leadership and direction of our Union. We were inexperienced and we had a very weak Union of which the employers took full advantage. During the internal election period, charges were made back and forth about the campaigning. The incumbent asked for the [HERE] International Union to step in and a Trusteeship was declared. Needless to say I was angry and skeptical; I suspected that the International Union was only intervening to save the incumbent from being kicked out. One thing was sure: I was unwilling to give up on our goals that our members participate in the decisions of the Union because those decisions impact their lives and that employers treat the members with respect, whether they are dishwashers or front desk clerks, or housekeepers. As it turned out, the International assigned some of their best staff, former organizers with C
esar Ch
avez and the United Farm Workers Union. The International Union started making the changes we fought for: ¥ Shop steward system to train the rank and file on their rights; ¥ Worker participation in negotiating contracts with their employers; and ¥ All meetings and publications were bilingual (Spanish and English).

Congress and President Reagan had just signed the IRCA [Immigration Reform and Control Act], which created opportunities for members to legalize their status. The International Union gave the local $100,000 to assist our members through the amnesty process. While Western Regional Director, President John Wilhelm twice negotiated our citywide hotel contract covering more than 4,000 members, we won historic

Chicanas/os and Mexican Americans in Contemporary Society

collective bargaining agreements, the best wage increases in decades; we won a prepaid legal plan with a panel of attorneys to provide free legal services to members, and we protected free family health insurance. In 1989, the Trusteeship ended, I ran for President, and our entire slate won. I was fortunate that the International continued to provide staff and resources for several years until we could get back on our feet, and learn how to run the Local. We have built our health, welfare, and pension funds to make major improvements; we quadrupled the pension benefits from the miserable level it had been at for 25 years. President Wilhelm taught us to work hard to establish partnerships with employers and we have succeeded. We also learned that we must fight back if that partnership is rejected and if our members’ livelihood is threatened. In 1996, I am proud to have been elected the first Latina to the National Executive Board of HERE. Today, Local 11 is a strong, financially viable Union, with a strong presence in Los Angeles; specifically we are known for standing up for issues of concern to the Latino community. We are also known in the broader circles of business and political leadership in the city to promote responsible economic development that includes the needs of workers. Under both Democratic and Republican mayors, I have been appointed to serve on key City Commissions and Boards. I have learned that it is easier to tear down than to build. During the last 12 years we have worked hard to rebuild this Local. Cooks, dishwashers, and housekeepers participate in negotiating their own contracts and their co-workers vote on whether or not to accept those contracts. Our monthly meetings have grown in numbers because we work hard to make sure the members participate in our Union’s daily activities and because our meetings are held in both Spanish and English. The overwhelming majority of our new hires for positions as organizers and Union representatives come from the membership. We have monthly training for shop stewards and committees. We are vibrant. We depend on the participation of our members to make decisions about what is important to them and their families. There is no doubt in my mind that without the help and resources of our International Union, and the training we received personally from President Wilhelm, we would not have gotten this far. Source: http://edworkforce.house.gov/hearings/106th/eer/ud72199/durazo.htm.

409. Linda Lutton, ‘‘Old-Time Chicago Politics Aren’t Dead Yet— Just Ask ‘Chuy’ Garc
ıa,’’ 1998 Before entering politics, Jes
us Garc
ıa was a community activist and prominent member of the Centro de Accion Social Autonoma (Center for Autonomous Social Action—CASA). A native of Durango, Mexico, Garc
ıa, like so many Mexicans in Chicago, arrived in Chicago at an early age. In 1986, he was elected as alderman and committeeman for the 22nd Ward as one of the city’s first Mexican American aldermen. He became an Illinois state senator in 1992, representing the Pilsen and Little Village Districts, which were heavily Mexican American. It surprised his supporters that Garc
ıa lost his state senate seat in 1998. He had gotten his first office as a supporter of Chicago reformer, Mayor Harold Washington. Garc
ıa became the executive

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director of the Little Village Community Development Corporation (LVCDC). The following article discusses his loss and was written at the time of Garc
ıa’s state senate defeat.

Jes
us ‘‘Chuy’’ Garc
ıa looked like a shoo-in. The incumbent Illinois state senator had a long history of work in the Latino neighborhoods he represented; he had 14 years of legislative experience, first on the Chicago City Council and then in the state Senate; he was respected at home and had won a reputation nationally and even internationally as a dedicated progressive and an advocate for the poor, labor, and immigrants. ‘‘He’s the most admired Mexican American candidate in the entire state,’’ says Cook County Clerk David Orr, a fellow progressive who served with Garc
ıa on the City Council during Mayor Harold Washington’s administration in the mid-’80s. ‘‘He’s been a good organizer, he’s never a guy with a big ego, he’s always willing to help other people … a wonderful record, well liked, well respected in my mind, he’s really one of the most outstanding elected officials in the state.’’ He lost anyway. Garc
ıa and his supporters are still reeling from his defeat by a no-name candidate Antonio ‘‘Tony’’ Mu~ noz, a Chicago cop with no legislative or community experience in the Democratic primary last March. Garc
ıa admits that his campaign made some strategic mistakes, but he’s also clear about the biggest factor in his defeat. ‘‘There is a machine in this town,’’ he says. ‘‘It’s a new type of machine … but it still does what the old machine was capable of doing.’’ That old machine reached its height under Richard J. Daley, who served as mayor from 1955 until he died in 1976. Daley controlled 40,000 city jobs as well as nearly all 50 aldermen and Democratic committeemen. Gary Rivlin wrote in Fire on the Prairie that Daley’s Cook County Democratic Party central committee ‘‘ran city government just as the Communist Party’s politburo ran the Soviet Union.… It was no wonder that people outside the city’s borders looked on Chicago with awe and horror. It was home to not only the last of the great big-city machines but also the most awesome of them all.’’ Just as ward committeemen and aldermen were beholden to Daley, they had armies of precinct workers beholden to them. It was at the ward level that patronage jobs and favors were passed out: Knocking on doors and bringing out the vote for the machine slate on Election Day could get you a promotion and perks; losing your precinct could mean having to join the unemployment lines. Daley’s death and the internal fight over who would succeed him weakened the machine in the late ’70s and early ’80s, but the organization took its first real hit when Harold Washington won the Democratic mayoral primary in 1983, beating Mayor Jane Byrne and Richard M. Daley, Richard J.’s son, who split the machine vote. Washington was an African American, progressive reformer who promised to be ‘‘fairer than fair.’’ A coalition of blacks, Latinos, and progressive whites swept him to victory, and he became Chicago’s first black mayor, serving until he died in 1987. Richard M. Daley was waiting in the wings; right after his father’s death he had been mentioned as a possible heir to the mayoral throne. Washington’s death, and the almost immediate dissolution of his progressive coalition, offered the younger Daley his chance. He was first elected as mayor in 1989. Since then, Garc
ıa says, ‘‘We’ve witnessed probably the most rapid consolidation of power that any large city has experienced within the last 40 or 50 years. The influence that the Daley group exerts is vast: City Hall, County Board, the agencies CTA, Park District, Board of Education they control it all. And we’ve witnessed the evolution of

Chicanas/os and Mexican Americans in Contemporary Society

the machine from relying on the precinct captain to deliver, to relying on direct mail and utilization of the electronic media to stay in power. The precinct captains aren’t that key anymore, but they still decide races like mine. They can still produce.’’ Daley has paid particular attention to Latinos; who are Chicago’s fastest growing and soon-to-be largest ethnic minority. As one Chicago Tribune political reporter noted in 1994, ‘‘The old line ‘regular polls’ are grooming some younger talent. These emerging new players are Hispanic, predominantly Mexican-Americans, and the mutual hope is that a white Latino coalition can maintain hegemony over Chicago.’’ The Latino arm of the Daley machine proved in the Garc
ıa race that oldtime machine tactics haven’t been shelved quite yet. ‘‘Patronage is alive and well in the city of Chicago even though [we] have Shakman,’’ says Miguel del Valle, a progressive state senator from Chicago’s Northwest Side and the only other Latino in the Illinois Senate. The Shakman decree is the federal court ruling that prohibits patronage hirings and firings. ‘‘Someday people will understand that this administration in many respects functions the way that the old administrations functioned,’’ del Valle says. Garc
ıa gave the machine plenty of reasons to pick him as a target. While the mayor has been able to win over or eliminate nearly all of his opposition more than a third of the current City Council was originally appointed by Daley Garc
ıa has been steadfast in pursuing a progressive agenda. He’s been consistently critical of Daley’s development policies for the city, protesting the upscale development of near-downtown neighborhoods that is displacing long-time and poor residents. His name also has been on the short list of potential challengers to Daley in the upcoming February 1999 mayoral elections. ‘‘Chuy is about neighborhoods and he’s about people and he’s therefore a threat,’’ says Alton Miller, Harold Washington’s second-term press secretary and biographer. Miller says Garc
ıa was ‘‘absolutely the target of a machine attack. Anytime anybody raises his head a little bit higher, the Daley folk want to knock it down. He was and is a real threat to their long-term aims, because … he’s a person who’s going to be out there blowing the whistle and keeping people mindful of what the real priorities are.’’ But it wasn’t just the old Daley machine that took out Garc
ıa. A newly organized Latino wing of the machine, the Hispanic Democratic Organization (HDO), made up of Latino leaders loyal to Daley and an army of Latino patronage workers, joined forces with white ethnic machine bosses to bridge a generation and ethnic gap and bring out the vote for Mu~ noz. Most HDO members are city workers who got to their positions by politicking and understand that’s how they’ll get promoted as well. While they may like Garc
ıa, they’re fundamentally concerned about getting what’s theirs, and they believe that the way to do that is to support those in power and wait for the perks. The combination of new and old that the machine put together for the primary does not bode well for other Latino progressives. Topping the hit list: 22nd Ward alderman and Garc
ıa prot
eg
e Rick Mu~ noz (no relation to Tony) is up for re-election in February. Garc
ıa-mentored state Rep. Sonia Silva won the primary by just 55 votes and in November faces a Republican challenger with Democratic machine ties. U.S. Rep. Lu
ıs Guti
errez is also vulnerable. If these three were replaced with machine Latinos it would almost completely wipe out independent Latino voices in public office. And Daley’s Latinos have proven a loyal bunch: In an analysis of key City Council votes, for instance, Illinois Politics concluded that ‘‘Hispanic aldermen provided near unanimous support for the mayor, with only nine dissenting votes out of 157 cast by the seven Latinos.’’ The First District on Chicago’s Southwest Side has

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a greater number of immigrants than any other district in Illinois. It is an odd mix of old white ethnic neighborhoods parts of Daley’s home ward are in Garc
ıa’s district and the largest, most concentrated Mexican and Mexican American neighborhoods in the Midwest. March 17 was an Election Day that brought back memories of the way things used to be. Old machine veterans and their well-taught Latino brethren brought out the works for Mu~ noz: campaigning city workers, job promises and city services galore. Despite a cold rain that fell all Election Day, the streets of the district had the air of a fiesta. There were so many precinct workers out that in some places they stretched from one polling place to another, like part of a long parade snaking through the district. ‘‘This was probably the most effective mobilization of the city county patronage army in a long time,’’ Garc
ıa says. ‘‘I don’t think I’ve seen it like this in my 14 years in elected office.’’ Precinct workers were 10 deep. City building inspectors, off-duty cops, and community policing volunteers huddled around polling places. Mu~ noz campaign workers wore yellow City-issued raincoats and warmed themselves beside portable Streets and Sanitation heaters. City trucks drove slowly down streets with loads of brand-new garbage cans. If it hadn’t been for the rain, voters in one precinct would have had to practically step over city workers laying new sidewalks outside the polling place. Weeks before the election, campaign workers went door to door and made phone calls asking residents if they needed a tree cut down, new garbage cans, a street light turned on, and encouraging them to vote for the machine slate. People who had filed applications for employment with the city received anonymous phone calls and were told not to vote for Garc
ıa. City services were so critical to the Munoz campaign that even Mu~ noz seemed duped by the tactic. When Spanish-language TV news asked him what he planned to do in the Senate, he answered in English he doesn’t speak Spanish that he’d make sure residents got their city services, sounding more like he’d just clinched an appointment as a ward superintendent rather than the Democratic nomination for the state Senate. Going up against the machine should have been nothing new to Garc
ıa. He came of age at a time when the political consciousness of Latinos and blacks in the city was being jolted awake. By his mid-twenties, he was involved in some of the strongest anti-machine, progressive neighborhood organizing going down in Chicago. In the late ’70s and early ’80s, Garc
ıa and other progressive Latinos built what would prove to be the most efficient independent political organization in the city and began to form coalitions with their progressive minded African American neighbors, a formula that eventually led to Harold Washington’s victory. Garc
ıa spent much of his time before the March primary stumping for two candidates for state representative in his district. ‘‘There wasn’t really a campaign focusing on my re-election,’’ he admits. Garc
ıa lost by 960 votes out of nearly 13,000 cast, his support dropping in every ward, including two of the most heavily Latino wards. ‘‘We took our eye off of the formula that’s enabled us to get elected against great odds, to get re-elected, and then to expand,’’ Garc
ıa says. ‘‘That was framing the election as a fight between the neighborhood versus power brokers who want control the machine. That’s how we first got elected, that’s how we got re-elected, and this last time that wasn’t the message that we had out there. As a matter of fact, the message was pretty vague.’’ Garc
ıa’s supporters had no reason to think that their candidate would lose. ‘‘Our voters were asleep on Election Day, and that’s why we lost,’’ says Garc
ıa. ‘‘If we had felt threatened, and if we would have communicated that to our

Chicanas/os and Mexican Americans in Contemporary Society

volunteers and to our voters, we would have had higher turnout. We didn’t. They stayed home.’’ It’s hard to fault him for being overconfident. The machine looked almost desperate. No one had heard of Tony Mu~ noz. He had no legislative experience and didn’t speak Spanish. But Garc
ıa ran headlong into a recurring problem for the left: While he was debating immigration and Welfare reform issues, gentrification and neighborhood development, the machine was passing out city services and counting votes. ‘‘We see things politically,’’ says Larry Gonz
alez, Garc
ıa’s press secretary. ‘‘[But] people just say, ‘Hey. These guys came and they gave us something.’’’ Garc
ıa has blamed his defeat on the traditional machine wards, arguing that voter turnout among whites was higher than in previous elections while Latino turnout was lower. Why would whites be any more likely to vote for someone named Mu~ noz than for someone named Garc
ıa? ‘‘They did their precinct captain a favor,’’ says Richard Barnett, who’s been involved in independent politics in Chicago’s black community for the past 44 years. ‘‘Years ago, the precinct captain used to go around and tell the people in his precinct, ‘Could you do me a favor?’ In 1964, we elected a dead man for Congress, we sure did. Because the people did their precinct captain a favor.’’ As is his custom, Daley never officially endorsed Mu~ noz. But witnesses say his choice in the race and the importance he put on it was obvious to everyone from Springfield lobbyists to his Latino underlings. ‘‘This mayor has a reputation for being hands-off and for staying out of ward races and other kinds of races,’’ del Valle says. ‘‘What people don’t realize is that there’s this roving band of City Hall Latino patronage workers who will go wherever they’re are assigned. This last time around, they were assigned to concentrate on defeating Sen. Garc
ıa.’’ The ‘‘roving band of Latino patronage workers’’ is the HDO. HDO has been registered as a PAC in Illinois since 1993, with the avowed purpose of promoting ‘‘the goals and ideals of the Hispanic Community through the exercise of the right to vote.’’ HDO’s top guns have expensive City Hall jobs (head of the Mayor’s Office of Inter governmental Affairs, commissioner of Human Services, deputy commissioner of Streets and Sanitation, director of personnel at Human Services, etc.) and refuse to comment on the group’s structure or activities. Mu~ noz was apparently a founding member of the group, but denies it has any political purpose, despite its name. ‘‘It’s just a bunch of guys who get together, that’s all,’’ he says. ‘‘We basically talk. We’ve had picnics and stuff.’’ Insiders paint a picture of a large group of mostly city workers, 85 percent Hispanic. ‘‘HDO’s 1,500 strong,’’ says one Mu~ noz campaign worker at the Streets and Sanitation outpost where he’s employed. ‘‘You’re looking at that many city employees from various departments. When issues come up as far as services, we can touch bases on just about every department Streets and Sanitation, whatever. When I knock on your door you can be sure of one thing: That when I ask you for the vote, 90 percent of the time you’re gonna go my way.… I got a lady here last night called me, ‘Someone dumped a load of tires in my alley, what do I have to do to get ‘em out?’ First thing I’m gonna do this morning is make sure a truck goes over there. The people won’t forget that.’’ HDO’s win against Garc
ıa will likely strengthen the organization significantly. The group took a huge bite out of Garc
ıa’s base in the Latino community. ‘‘The fact that they beat Chuy means more attention is going to be given to them from the administration,’’ says one political consultant who’s worked against HDO on the North Side. But he doesn’t think Garc
ıa-allied politicians up for re-election in the near future should throw in the towel just yet. ‘‘I think you’re going to witness a backlash to Chuy’s loss,’’ he says.

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‘‘There’s a growing ‘Remember Chuy’ type of fever.’’ It’s unclear how many voters actually rejected Garc
ıa for his politics. A conservative block of Chicago Latino voters definitely exists: To them it may not be important that a candidate speaks Spanish they may speak only English themselves. Bilingual education and immigrant rights are not on their list of priorities. They have no intention of allying themselves with blacks and are most concerned with getting what’s theirs. As one Latino machine precinct captain puts it, ‘‘If you’re not supportive of the people that are in power, then you can just about count yourself out as far as getting that piece of the cake.’’ But despite the media talking about ‘‘a message from Latino voters,’’ it would seem impossible to deduce voter opinion on Garc
ıa’s politics in an election where city services and job promises played a bigger role than what either candidate thought about any given political issue. For del Valle and Garc
ıa, the loss of the Senate seat to a machine candidate is a shot at the heart of the fight for Latino selfdetermination, political representation, and democracy. ‘‘The irony here is that it’s the same individuals we went to court to fight to gain Latino political representation when we had nothing,’’ del Valle says. ‘‘These days, it’s not that they’re electing someone who is non-Latino, but they’re still around, determining which Latino.’’ ‘‘That’s what you wind up with in machine politics control,’’ Garc
ıa says. ‘‘The cost that you pay is the ability to control your representatives and to make them work for you. What differences are there between the mayor and his allies? There can’t be differences. If there are differences you negotiate through jobs, contracts, things of that sort. It’s about keeping total control of elected officials. And it’s about eliminating opposition that may get complicated. And I guess that complication is the swing factor. If Latinos aren’t under control, it makes governing risky and uncertain. It makes it democratic.’’ Adds David Orr: ‘‘Fighting for democracy in a place like Chicago I’m not gonna compare it to a place like Guatemala but it’s a struggle. It’s not like Wisconsin or Minnesota. If people forget that for a moment, that’s when these kinds of things can happen.’’ Source: Linda Lutton, ‘‘Old-Time Chicago Politics Aren’t Dead Yet Just Ask ‘Chuy’ Garc
ıa,’’ In These Times, October 4, 1998, p. 17.

~a, ‘‘Latino Leaders Take a Holiday,’’ 1999 410. Rodolfo F. Acun Police and Mexican American relations have always been contentious, especially between Los Angeles police and civil rights leaders. Since before the Sleepy Lagoon Case of 1942—when almost two dozen Mexican American youths were rounded up and tried for the murder of Jos
e D
ıaz—Mexican Americans have complained about disparate treatment at the hands of police. Another landmark case was the Bloody Christmas case of 1951 when seven young Chicanos were beaten to a bloody pulp by 50 police officers. The pattern continued in the 1950s as Los Angeles police and deputy sheriffs attacked a peaceful crowd of 30,000 protestors on August 29, 1970, and beat the members of the crowd, killing three. The so-called Ramparts case of 1999 deserved equal billing. On September 8, 1999, Los Angeles police officer Rafael P
erez, 32, was caught stealing a million dollars’ worth of cocaine from police evidence locker facilities. P
erez made a plea bargain to rat out corruption within the Los Angeles Police Department. He was in a special police unit that was supposed to be combating gangs in Rampart district, just west of

Chicanas/os and Mexican Americans in Contemporary Society


rez told a tale of bogus arrests, perjured testimony, and the downtown L.A. Pe planting of weapons on unarmed civilians. In all, P
erez implicated about 70 officers in wrongdoing. The following article criticizes Mexican American elected officials for not displaying moral outrage at the police and raises the question of whether this was because a great many residents in the Ramparts Division were of Salvadoran extraction. Would the elected officials have acted different if the victims had been Mexican American voters?

The other day, a TV-media reporter asked me why Latino politicians and leaders had been so silent on what was happening in the Ramparts Division. I was at a loss for words, realizing that I myself had said absolutely nothing about this blatant abuse of police power. In stark contrast to the silence of Latino leaders, the brutal beating of Rodney King by four LAPD officers touched off a torrent of moral outrage that paralyzed the city. As a result, Mayor Tom Bradley convened what became known as the Christopher Commission that, after extensive hearings, produced small reforms. The fallout, however, proved so devastating that Chief of Police Daryl F. Gates was forced to resign and, for the first time in recent history, the city brought in a chief from outside the department. In testimony before the Christopher Commission, late Asst. Chief Jesse A. Brewer stated, ‘‘We know who the bad guys are. Reputations become well known.…’’ Police authorities promised to weed out the bad cops. Yet the election of Richard Riordan as mayor wiped out hard-fought gains of the community. His lawand-order rhetoric energized the police. And, although the police continued knowing who the bad cops were, they kept the bad apples in the barrel. Given that the Rodney King beatings were outrageous, the events surrounding the Ramparts Division of the Los Angeles Police Department pale it. Indeed, if they had happened in any other community in L.A., Black and white leaders would have been rightfully up in arms. In contrast, Latino leaders have allowed police officers with the power to kill or destroy lives to hide behind a wall of secrecy. What happened at the Ramparts Division is part of ‘‘L.A.’s Dirty Little War on Gangs.’’ Its particulars became known in September 1999 when LAPD officer Rafael A. P
erez spilled the beans after being caught stealing eight pounds of cocaine from police evidence lockers. He turned whistle blower: In return for a plea bargain agreement, P
erez implicated fellow officers. What unfolded was a story of police brutality, perjury, planted evidence, drug corruption, and attempted murder. Much of the narrative revolves around the anti-gang unit, known as CRASH (Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums). In July 1996, CRASH raided an apartment house on Shatto Place in the heart of the MacArthur Park district of Los Angeles, near the old headquarters of the American Civil Liberties Union. Its target was the notorious 18th Street Gang, L.A.’s biggest and admittedly most violent gang. LAPD’s finest assaulted the building in warlike fashion, killing one gang member and wounding another. Although the LAPD’s own report showed that police fired all the shots, the cops who staged the raid claimed the gang bangers were armed. Two pistols, believed to have been throw downs, were found on the scene. A survivor, Jos
e Perez initially denied having a gun. He later pleaded guilty to assault. Jos
e P
erez [no relation to Rafael P
erez] later explained that he pleaded guilty to avoid a long prison sentence;

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he had no gun at the time of the raid. As usual, a department investigation found nothing wrong. The story did not end there. Officer Rafael P
erez, labeled a rogue cop by the media, triggered an internal investigation and the FBI looked for civil rights violations. So far, over a dozen Ramparts Division police have been fired or relieved of duty. In another case, in 1996, P
erez and his partner Nino Durden, shot Javier Ovando, leaving him paralyzed and in a wheelchair for life. Ovando was allegedly unarmed when he was shot. The officers then planted a semiautomatic rifle on the unconscious suspect and claimed that Ovando had tried to shoot them during a stakeout. Their testimony put Ovando away for 23 years for assault. Because of what has come out, Ovando has been freed from prison. He has filed notice of a $20 million suit against the city, P
erez and other cops. He was allegedly the dealer through whom P
erez and Durden sold their drugs. After spending more than two years behind bars, Rub
en Rojas, 30, is expected to have his drug conviction overturned because authorities now believe it was based on fabricated evidence and false testimony by P
erez. They arrested Rojas on March 5, 1997, after P
erez and Durden allegedly watched him sell rock cocaine to two men near Marathon and Dillon streets. They allegedly saw Rojas make two sales before calling for backup. After the arrest, P
erez planted powder cocaine in Rojas’ front pants pockets. Rojas pleaded no contest. He said: ‘‘I was informed that I was facing 25 years to life by my defense counsel and that there was no way I could have won my case because I was up against a police officer …’’ Rojas claimed the police officers framed him after he told the officers that he did not know the whereabouts of a gang member. (The real motive appears to have been that Rojas was seeing a girl friend of Officer P
erez.) Because of P
erez’s whistle blowing, Los Angeles District Attorney Gil Garcetti has been forced to release at least three prison inmates jailed by the Ramparts Division. The DA admits that another forty cases could be reversed because of false testimony by police. Investigators are looking into allegations involving the Ramparts Division, ranging from illegal shootings and drug dealing to excessive use of force and ‘‘code of silence’’ offenses. The reaction of Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan is predictable. His spokespersons said that the mayor had complete confidence that LAPD Chief Bernard Parks would implement the reforms passed after the 1991 King beating. There is no need for an oversight commission. Just a couple of rotten apples. Ironically, it was this mayor who called for an entire reshuffling of the Los Angeles Unified School District and instigated the crude coup of Superintendent Rub
en Zacar
ıas because the ‘‘code of silence’’ was too imbedded within the culture of the school system. Apparently, there is one standard for teachers and another for police officers. One only has to look at Los Angeles’ media coverage and compare it with its treatment of the Rodney King uprisings to realize the disparate treatment of the incidents. All of this is, however, predictable. What is not, is the reaction of Latino politicians and leaders who are mute in the face of this gross violation of L.A.’s civil rights. From a historical perspective, Ramparts ranks with the Sleepy Lagoon case of 1942 and is more heinous than the Blood Christmas beatings of the early 1950s. While I know that term limits have forced Latino pol
ıticos constantly to play musical chairs, and I realize that the community itself is so anti gangsters as to intimidate pol
ıticos, we cannot afford to be silent. The pol
ıticos’ silence is almost

Chicanas/os and Mexican Americans in Contemporary Society

sanctioning a situation like that which occurred in Brazil a few years back. In 1993, a death squad of off-duty Rio de Janeiro police officers executed eight children as they slept on the steps of the Candelaria Church in downtown Rio. Three years later, they were still shooting children in Brazil. On Rio’s Ipanema Beach, an 11-year-old street kid was found dead, hanging by the neck, a sign around his neck that read: ‘‘I had to be killed because I didn’t go to school. I was worthless to society and my only expectation as a grown up was to be a criminal.’’ Some 85 percent of Brazilians polled supported the police even after a police officer shot an apprehended youth three times, point-blank, in the back of a head at a shopping center. I guess that I naively believed that Chicanos, having experienced the civil rights struggle of the sixties, would be different. Most of us have experienced injustice and know its meaning. We are also bright enough to know that the problem is more systemic than a couple of bad apples. Perhaps we should inspect the barrel. For us to remain silent is so much worse than for others; more is expected of us. Source: Rodolfo F. Acu~ na, ‘‘Latino Leaders Take a Holiday,’’ December 12, 1999. In Urban Archives, California State University, Northridge.

411. David Bacon, ‘‘Crossing L.A.’s Racial Divide: City Could Elect Its First Latino Mayor in More Than a Century,’’ 2001 Like so many of his contemporaries, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa was active in MEChA (el Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano/a de Aztl
an), a nationwide Chicano student organization fighting for equal treatment on college and university campuses. He was later a member of the Centro de Acci
on
noma (Center for Autonomous Social Action—CASA) that Social Auto defended the rights of undocumented immigrants. He worked as an organizer for the United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA), a teachers’ union, and was elected to the California Assembly where he became Speaker. He was later elected to the Los Angeles City Council before being elected L.A. mayor in 2005. The following document describes Villaraigosa’s unsuccessful run for mayor of Los Angeles in 2001.

Fifty years ago, Bert Corona had a dream. Latinos in California the field workers and factory hands, the kids in school forbidden to speak Spanish could win real political power. Transforming the excluded and marginalized into power-brokers in the state with the largest population in the country seemed a task so gargantuan that only a visionary like Corona social radical, labor militant, Chicano activist, and father of the modern Latino political movement could consider it achievable. Yet on June 5, Antonio Villaraigosa, one of Corona’s disciples from the heady days of the ‘60s, may be elected mayor of Los Angeles. Villaraigosa learned politics in that era, becoming a community activist in an early left-wing immigrant rights organization founded by Corona, the Centro de Accion Social Auton
oma [Center for Autonomous Social Action] (CASA). From those radical roots, Villaraigosa went on to get a law degree at Los Angeles’ People’s College of the Law, a unique project creating community lawyers from community activists. He worked as an organizer for the city’s huge teachers’ union, United Teachers Los Angeles. And he began running for office. Villaraigosa eventually became speaker of the State Assembly, one of California’s most powerful political positions.

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The June 5 election is a runoff, pitting Villaraigosa against James Hahn. Both are Democrats, itself a notable change in a city governed for eight years by Republican Richard Riordan. If Villaraigosa is elected mayor, he’ll be the first Latino in that position in more than a century. The election is partly the story of changing demographics. Los Angeles has the largest urban population of Mexicans outside of Mexico City, and racial minorities in California now make up a majority of the state’s population. Most of this demographic shift is due to immigration, and the state is home to as many as half of the nation’s undocumented residents. But the changing population only provides a base. And in California, it took former Gov. Pete Wilson to transform it into a formidable voting force. In 1994, Wilson won re-election by betting his political future on Proposition 187, which sought to exclude the undocumented from schools and medical care. It was a Pyrrhic victory. Proposition 187 passed, but in the election’s wake, thousands of immigrants became citizens with the express intention of never again being excluded from the political process. They then set out to administer a punishment to the Republican Party from which it’s still reeling. Democrats today control both houses of the state legislature, and a Democrat sits in the governor’s mansion. The new immigrant vote has become the decider in race after race, especially in Los Angeles. But having a Spanish surname alone isn’t enough to get elected in Los Angeles. Although minorities make up 60 percent of city residents, they account for only 39 percent of its voters 14 percent are African American, 20 percent are Latino, and 5 percent are Asian American. Class issues are increasingly the glue holding together a new progressive coalition, bringing together progressive whites with a new generation of leaders in minority communities. ‘‘I think the big issues are economic,’’ says Kent Wong, director of UCLA’s Labor Center. ‘‘People are voting for things like a living wage, affirmative action, and an economic development policy that promotes growth based on good jobs, and which pays attention to underserved communities.’’ The city has become a hotbed of labor activity. In the past five years, Los Angeles has seen major strikes and organizing drives by immigrant janitors and hotel workers. While immigrants have been the most visible part of that upsurge, African American and Asian American union members have been very much a part of labor’s rise. The Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, which elected its first Latino secretary, Miguel Contreras, five years ago, has put these issues on the political agenda. In a series of bruising electoral fights, it has built up a core of precinct walkers and phone callers, and used them effectively to win upset victories for pro-labor Latinos against more conservative ones, like Hilda Solis, who beat longtime Congressman Marty Martinez last November. The Villaraigosa campaign is the biggest test yet for the federation because it has to be won citywide, involving a larger labor turnout than ever before. ‘‘It was a very big risk for the labor movement to step out front and endorse Villaraigosa in the primary,’’ Wong says. ‘‘But it has a lot of boldness and daring, and it has built up an incredible ground operation involving hundreds and hundreds of people each weekend.’’ Unlike Villaraigosa, who has been a high-profile community activist and legislator, Hahn has been a quiet member of an old guard his father helped build. He has been an elected official for 16 years, first as controller and then as city attorney.

Chicanas/os and Mexican Americans in Contemporary Society

Hahn’s father, Kenny, was a county supervisor for 40 years, during the era when Mayor Sam Yorty was notorious for racist scare attacks directed at white voters. Hahn was a leading white liberal who stood up for the African American community in South Central Los Angeles. People definitely remember Kenny Hahn, but few voters can point out initiatives taken by his son. In the local press, the Villaraigosa Hahn battle is being portrayed as a conflict between blacks and Latinos. ‘‘But there’s a whole political realignment taking place here,’’ says Anthony Thigpenn, chairman of Agenda, a South Central community organization, and a leading activist in the Villaraigosa campaign. ‘‘It’s happening in the African American community, like everywhere else, and many of us are looking to be part of it.’’ Karen Bass, executive director of South Central’s Community Coalition, says that Latinos and African Americans have more issues in common than ones that divide them. ‘‘Ninety percent of the kids in the criminal justice system and in foster care are African American and Latino,’’ she says. ‘‘The most important factor here is that we’re neighbors.’’ In the first election, while Hahn got a majority of black votes, Bass says Villaraigosa still won 26 percent in South Central precincts, while rolling up big majorities in heavily Latino neighborhoods. She predicts the African American vote for Villaraigosa will go higher in the runoff as people become more familiar with him. ‘‘Villaraigosa has a long record, not just supporting the issues important to all of Los Angeles’ locked-out communities, but leading many of the efforts to put them into practice,’’ Wong adds. ‘‘If he becomes mayor, those communities will have access to power. The ability to turn our issues into real policy will increase dramatically.’’ Source: David Bacon, ‘‘Crossing L.A.’s Racial Divide: City Could Elect Its First Latino Mayor in More Than a Century,’’ In These Times, June 11, 2001, p. 5.

412. Dane Schiller, ‘‘Castro Upholds Family’s Involvement Tradition,’’ 2001 In Los Angeles there is a link between MEChA (the Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano/a De de Aztl
anAztlan), a national Chicano student organization, CASA (Centro de Accion Social Aut
onoma or Center for Autonomous Social Action), a pro-immigrant rights organization, and the LRS (the League of Revolutionary Struggle) a national Marxist organization, all of which have been active from the early 1970s to the time of this writing. A high proportion of their membership became union organizers, civic leaders, and politicians. The same can be said of La Raza Unida Party of Texas, the Chicano political party of the 1970s that ran statewide candidates in Texas. Many of today’s heads of old-time Mexican American organizations, school board members, judges, and politicos were once members of the Raza Unida. The following is the story of Rosie Castro, who in the 1970s ran unsuccessfully for a seat on the San Antonio, Texas, City Council. Conceding defeat, she told everyone that she would be back and 30 years later she was—to witness one son sworn in as state senator and the other as a member of the city council.

A recent Harvard Law School graduate was sweeping a crowded field Saturday to take the reins of City Council District 7. Julian Castro, 26, who watched election

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returns from his West Side home, appeared to be easily defeating five other candidates, garnering about 60 percent of the vote. Although the post would be his first elected office, Castro has long been groomed for politics by his mother, a wellknown grassroots activist. She unsuccessfully ran for a council post 30 years ago but has remained active in politics. ‘‘My victory is the product of hard work of many people,’’ said Castro, who was born and raised in the district, which covers the West and Northwest sides. ‘‘We had an excellent early vote return and even better Election Day results,’’ he said. Castro was trailed by Fred Rangel, a business consultant, and John Coleman, a retired Air Force officer. Others in the race were Raul Quiroga Jr., Michael Gonzales, and John Garc
ıa. Surrounded by about 80 supporters, Castro vowed to bring a bold brand of leadership to the district and carry on the style of Ed Garza, who has served two terms. Castro ran on a platform of preserving the character of neighborhoods, enhancing accountability at City Hall and bringing more aviation and technology jobs to San Antonio. ‘‘I’d be ready for a mini-vacation, but I’ll be back at the law office Monday,’’ said Castro, a business litigation attorney with the Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld law firm. Rosie Castro, his mother and unofficial campaign manager, said her son will carry on the family’s tradition of political involvement. ‘‘I’m excited,’’ she said. ‘‘That was 30 years ago we lost, but today, my son has won City Councilman District 7. ‘‘I’m real confident he will be an excellent representative,’’ she said. She said her son, who spent about $30,000 on the race, has the tools to find innovative solutions to problems. She pointed to his coast-to-coast experience, including graduating from Harvard in 2000 and earning a bachelor’s degree from Stanford University. Castro, whose twin brother Joaqu
ın served as his treasurer, was a White House intern in 1994. Coleman, who planned to call and congratulate Castro, said he got in the race too late. His contributions of less than $800 were no match for Castro’s war chest, he said. ‘‘It is unfortunate I didn’t start earlier,’’ Coleman said. ‘‘I think I could have won this thing.’’ Source: Dane Schiller, ‘‘Castro Upholds Family’s Involvement Tradition,’’ San Antonio ExpressNews (Texas), May 6, 2001, p. 18A.

~a, ‘‘Lessons from Vietnam,’’ 2003 413. Rodolfo F. Acun The Vietnam War was still fresh in the minds of many Chicanos as the United States invaded Iraq in 2003. They were critical not only on the wisdom of starting a war in an area that was explosive, where Sunnis and Shiites and Kurds, had centuries-long grievances against each other. Soon the debate turned to who would fight and who pay for the war. With the schools in shambles in minority neighbourhoods across the nation, many speculated that education would suffer even more as resources were shifted to the war. California, with the largest Latino population, would be heaviest hit. California had one in eight ‘‘Americans,’’ but only two of 50 senators. It paid $1.8 trillion in taxes. New York, also with a large Latino population, paid $145 billion in taxes. A large share of these contributions went to paying for the war. The following article raises the question of the burden of the war—an issue among Latino activists that rivaled immigration.

A lesson learned from Vietnam is that Americans will not tolerate too many body bags; the latter caused a revolt of middle-class white youth in the sixties and

Chicanas/os and Mexican Americans in Contemporary Society

bought down at least two presidencies. Another lesson was that fear of the Communist bogeyman lasts only so long. It should, therefore, not be surprising that the proposed length of President George Bush’s ‘‘war on terrorism’’ has begun to worry some Pentagon officials. Americans are conditioned to pay on credit; though they expect quick results, especially if their sons and daughters are those who are killed. Not surprisingly, military recruiters have turned to the most vulnerable sector of society Latinos for long-term solutions. They are easy targets since most Americans have the notion that Latinos are lawbreakers and should be grateful for the opportunity to be Americans, even if it means dying for that privilege. Recruiting Latinos as soldiers has become like shopping for organ transplants in Third World countries. The market is unlimited; there is a huge pool of Latinos willing to transport themselves to the United States and fight for Uncle Sam. So, Americans who have more important things to do like Vice President Richard B. Cheney can go on with their lives. No one would deny that things are desperate in Mexico. Rumors that if immigrants volunteer for U.S. military service they will automatically be eligible for citizenship draw the hungry masses. Eager recruits flood the American Embassy and consular offices with inquiries. I am certain that there would also be a similar flood of ‘‘volunteers’’ if there was an offer of $10,000 for a kidney. Tales of over-zealous recruiters in San Diego tracking youths in Tijuana high schools fan these rumors. At least five Mexican-born soldiers have been killed in Iraq. A Pew study shows that Latinos are relatively underrepresented in the military when compared to their numbers in the civilian workforce; yet they are overrepresented in combat units, comprising 9.49 percent of the enlisted personnel, but 17.74 percent of those directly handling guns. Of the 60,000 immigrants in the U.S. military about half are non-citizens. More than 6,000 Marines are non-citizens, with the largest group, 1,452, from Mexico. The practice of recruiting non-citizens as mercenaries is not a new phenomenon. Since the Republican takeover of Congress in 1995, the military has pushed the schools to give it wider access to student records for recruitment purposes. The 1996 Solomon Amendment denied federal funding to institutions of higher learning that prohibited or prevented ROTC (Reserve Officers’ Training Corps) or military recruitment on campus. ROTC targets Latino serving institutions (universities that have more than 25 percent Latinos). Under Bill Clinton, Secretary of the Army Louis Caldera set in motion the Hispanic Access Initiative by which ROTC targeted Latinos and forced universities to hand over personal data to recruiters. President George W. Bush’s ‘‘No Child Left Behind Act’’ pretends to benefit Latinos and other minorities by closing the education gap between rich and poor. Instead the Act tracks minorities into the military, insuring that fewer go to college. It violates students’ privacy. Section 9528 of the act is ‘‘ARMED FORCES RECRUITER ACCESS TO STUDENTS AND STUDENT RECRUITING INFORMATION.’’ Upon request, school authorities hand military recruiters the names, addresses, and telephone numbers of high school students. The U.S. military spends between $8,000 and $11,000 to recruit a single soldier; a figure that is climbing as the war takes more casualties. Recruiters are active in

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the barrios. Many recruiters in the Los Angeles area advocate the lifting of restrictions on enlisting undocumented Latinos. Among young people ages 18 24, Latinos are a prime recruiting market, Latinos make up 14.3 percent of the nation’s youth, but only about 10 percent of new recruits. I believe in affirmative action. But this is carrying things too far. I wish that the universities would be as zealous in protecting Latino students. The same people who are pushing to get more Latinos into the military are the same people who want to push them out of school. Source: Rodolfo F. Acu~ na, September 12, 2003, Urban Archives, California State University Northridge.

414. David Bacon, ‘‘Los Angeles Turns Out for Amnesty,’’ 2000 The struggle over immigration into the United States continued into the twenty-first century. In 1986, Congress passed IRCA (the Immigration Reform and Control Act), which gave several million undocumented Latinos amnesty, the right to apply to stay in the country permanently. It was supposedly a compromise bill, which criminalized the act of knowingly hiring an illegal immigrant and established fines and other penalties for those employing undocumented workers. The theory was that drying up jobs would reduce undocumented immigration. The law established a one-year amnesty program for undocumented immigrants who had already worked and lived in the United States since January 1982. An estimated 2.7 million undocumented workers were legalized. IRCA did not stop the flow of undocumented immigrants that today are estimated to be as many as 12 million. The reasons are continued poverty in Mexico and Central America, a decline in peasant farming, and political instability—all of which the United States has played a part in creating. Residents without documents have been active in pursuing other amnesty programs that would stabilize their status in the United States. This culminated on May 1, 2006, in a march of close to a million people in Los Angeles and millions more throughout the country. The following is an article by activist photographer and freelance writer David Bacon describing a huge 2000 pro-immigrant march in which undocumented workers demanded amnesty. The importance of the march was that desperate poor people were demanding human rights. The quotations are those of participants in the march.

Los Angeles (6/12/00) Immigration amnesty for people crossing the border without papers is hardly a new idea in California. In fact, the first one came with San Francisco’s earthquake and fire of 1906, which destroyed the records keeping track of immigrants brought from China to work on the railroads. ‘‘A hundred years ago my grandfather and his brother crossed the Mexican border into California illegally, buried in a hay cart,’’ Katie Quan remembers her parents telling her. They had to sneak in, because after the rails were laid, the door to further immigration from China was slammed shut. ‘‘The Chinese Exclusion Act, passed in 1882, brings bitter memories for Chinese Americans to this day, because it barred Chinese, and only Chinese, from entering the U.S.’’ When the fire burned down San Francisco’s City Hall, it destroyed the immigration records of the city’s Chinese residents. The whole community became undocumented. And when everyone was undocumented, anyone could say they had arrived legally and had their papers go up in flames. Quan’s father became a legal resident

Chicanas/os and Mexican Americans in Contemporary Society

as a result. Other immigrants brought relatives from China, claiming they were ‘‘paper sons,’’ whose documents had perished in the fire. ‘‘That is the way a very high percentage of Chinese Americans came to the U.S., including my mother’s family,’’ Quan says. Quan, a former garment union leader, now works at the Center for Labor Research and Education at UC Berkeley. She recalled her family’s history in one of a series of hearings held to gather support for the AFL-CIO’s recent proposal that the country needs a new amnesty. As the hearings, which started in March, moved across the U.S. from New York to Atlanta, Chicago, Silicon Valley, Portland, Salinas and Fresno, the crowds turning out to back the demand swelled. Amnesty has immense support among immigrants, a fact impossible to ignore last Saturday in Los Angeles when over 16,000 people poured into the L.A. Sports Arena, chanting Que queremos? Amnistia, sin condiciones! ‘‘What do we want? Unconditional amnesty!’’ Thousands more gathered outside, unable to get in through the doors. The last immigration amnesty was contained in the Immigration Reform and Control Act, passed in 1986. It allowed about three million people, who came before January 1, 1982, to gain legal status. But those who’ve arrived without documents since then have been trapped in the same illegal status the law fixed for those who came before. The Urban Institute estimates there were as many as 5 million undocumented people in the U.S. just before that amnesty. Afterwards, it dropped to 2 3 million. But by 1992, it was rising again to 2.7 3.7 million. Today, most estimates place the number around 6 million, but no one really knows. Fear of deportation makes undocumented people hesitant to be counted. Neither sending the National Guard to patrol the high metal fence in Tijuana, nor beefed-up raids in immigrant communities, have been able to halt this flow of people. Nor has anti-immigrant legislation, from California’s Proposition 187 to the immigration reform acts passed in 1986 and 1996. California’s experience is no different from Western Europe and Japan. And when the AFL-CIO changed its position on immigration this February, it recognized that continued immigration reflects a new world reality. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees estimates that over 80 million people today live outside their countries of origin, with the U.S. home to only a small percentage. Because of growing economic inequality on a global scale, people increasingly leave and seek survival elsewhere when they cannot feed their families at home. The AFL-CIO’s reversal in position has shifted the political climate around immigration in Washington D.C. dramatically. Suddenly a handful of immigration bills have been introduced, ostensibly intended to legalize at least some people. Just a year ago, even discussion of limited amnesty was considered laughable among beltway lobbyists. ‘‘It’s really obvious that the change by the labor movement has made a whole new discussion possible,’’ says Victor Narro, a staff attorney at the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights in Los Angeles. ‘‘Now we have a labor movement that’s on the side of immigrants, rather than one bent on trying to stop immigration, as we had in 1986.’’ At that time, the AFL-CIO argued against immigration amnesty, and for employer sanctions, that section of the law which makes it illegal for undocumented immigrants to work.

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When the AFL-CIO announced at its October convention here that the old attitude needed to be changed, it set up a hearing process to advise immigrant workers of their rights, to gather testimony about how immigration law has undermined those rights, and to forge a new labor/community/religious coalition to change the law. In addition to unions, the L.A. hearing was sponsored by ten churches and community organizations, from the Hermandad Mexicana Nacional (the National Mexican Brotherhood) to the Catholic Archdiocese, each kicking in at least $2,500 to help pay for the huge event, and bringing bus loads of people to fill the arena. ‘‘Labor can open some doors,’’ says Miguel Contreras, secretary of the Los Angeles County Labor Federation, ‘‘but we need community allies and a grassroots base. We have to build a rank-and-file movement for amnesty, and this huge turnout shows not only that it can be done, but that politicians who want the Latino vote had better take note.’’ ‘‘We really need amnesty,’’ says Mateo Cruz, a day laborer who marched into the sports arena with 2,000 other workers from L.A.’s street corners, mobilized by the Union of Day Laborers. ‘‘People hire us and don’t pay us. Three years ago I worked for 40 days cleaning restaurants for a contractor, and when I finally told him I couldn’t go on being put off about my wages, he called the police and threatened to have me deported. I was humiliated and handcuffed. Not having papers makes bosses and police treat you really badly. I filed a complaint for my wages with the Labor Commissioner, and after 2 years I’m still waiting. Many day laborers won’t even do that, because they’re afraid that if they make trouble they’ll be picked up by the migra [Border Patrol].’’ Inside the sports arena, a procession of workers recounted similar experiences to a panel of union leaders. Mar
ıa S
anchez described the way managers at the Palm Canyon Hotel in Palm Springs fired a number of workers after they joined the Hotel and Restaurant Employees Union. When forced to rehire them, the hotel suddenly decided to check their immigration status and refused to put them back to work. The workers, both documented and undocumented, responded by staying off the job until everyone was rehired. ‘‘I lost my house and my car. I sold some of my possessions so I could survive,’’ Sanchez declared. ‘‘But we woke up. We gained selfconfidence. I know that I have value and that I have rights!’’ Carmen, a seventeen-year old farmworker from the Central Valley, broke down in tears as she stood before thousands of strangers, admitting that her lack of legal status kept her from going to college. ‘‘We can’t even move [to a bigger house] because we don’t have a Social Security number to put down a deposit and turn on utilities … Even if we could afford a nice home, we can’t rent one because we are undocumented. ‘‘Our future depends on a new amnesty,’’ she cried out. Ofelia Parra, a worker in Washington state’s apple-packing sheds, described the mass termination of 700 undocumented workers in the midst of a Teamsters Union organizing drive, at the demand of the Immigration and Naturalization Service. The drive was broken. ‘‘We’ve had to accept jobs at lower wages. I earned $7.51/hour at the packing plant, and now I earn minimum wage,’’ she said. ‘‘We contribute to this society just like the people who have papers. We need an amnesty so we can work in peace and organize to improve conditions.’’ In Los Angeles, in an election year, the demand for amnesty has clear political repercussions. According to F
abian Nu~ nez, the county labor federation’s political

Chicanas/os and Mexican Americans in Contemporary Society

director, one million of California’s 1.1 newly registered voters are Latino, and 44% of them are new immigrants. ‘‘Before 1986, a lot of these people were undocumented themselves, so they know what amnesty means and how important it is,’’ he explains. Politicians like Assemblyman Gil Cedillo and past Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa were not only partly elected with those votes, but are former immigrant rights activists themselves. Contreras emphasizes that L.A. labor doesn’t see immigration law in a vacuum. ‘‘Amnesty is a means to an end the elimination of poverty and a better redistribution of wealth. L.A. is a county in crisis. Fifty wealthy families have assets of $60 billion, more than the wages of 2 million of the city’s lowest-paid workers, who are mostly immigrants. But in the midst of this crisis, we also have a crisis of leadership. Elected officials see amnesty as too controversial. This hearing is a signal to them that amnesty is important to this community. It’s a message to all of L.A.’’ It’s also a message that puts the Clinton administration in Washington into a quandary. It seeks to appear Latino-friendly on the one hand, while not appearing to ease up on the immigration enforcement program it’s touted for seven years on the other. To at least partly solve this problem, a meeting was convened in Washington in mid-April by Henry Cisneros, past Secretary of Housing and Urban Development and mayor of San Antonio, now CEO of the Spanish-language TV network Univision and a Democratic Party heavyweight. The meeting sought to craft a compromise short of a general amnesty and the repeal of employer sanctions the bedrock AFL-CIO positions. Instead, Cisneros joined Republican Jack Kemp in urging participants to support lifting the cap on the recruitment of foreign high-tech workers. In return, they predicted, pro-immigrant groups could get some limited reforms. Those include extending to Haitians and other Central Americans the liberal procedures Cubans and Nicaraguans have for getting asylum, allowing late applicants for the last amnesty to receive one now, moving the registry date for amnesty forward from the old one of January 1, 1982, and removing a provision which forces undocumented workers to return to their countries of origin, often separating their families for years, just to apply for legal status. The number of people eligible for legalization under these proposals depends on the new registry date, but no one denies it would be far short of the 6 million undocumented people currently in the country. Some immigration activists, while acknowledging the importance of those reforms, are wary of the deal, fearing it will cut short the effort to achieve a broader amnesty. In Silicon Valley, reservations were voiced for another reason. The computer industry’s scheme to recruit more foreign high-tech workers, the H-1B visa category, is a form of contract labor tying workers’ immigration status to their employers. If a contract worker is fired, they not only lose their job, but can lose their right to stay in the U.S. as well. ‘‘I was hired by a software company in Los Angeles that sponsored my visa,’’ Kim Singh, a former H-1B worker, told the AFL-CIO’s Silicon Valley hearing. ‘‘In every paycheck the company would deduct 25% of my salary. When I questioned this practice, I was told that I would get this money when I left. But I never got it.’’ At another company in Torrance, Singh’s H-1B co-workers labored seven days a week with no overtime. A third company in Silicon Valley rented an apartment for Singh and three other contract workers for $1,450/month, and then deducted $1,450 from each of their paychecks.

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While Singh was able to change jobs and eventually obtain a normal visa, ‘‘other programmers stayed at the company because the employer had their passports and they were intimidated.’’ ‘‘Why aren’t the companies training workers here for those jobs?’’ asks Linda Chavez-Thompson, AFL-CIO executive vice-president. While H-1B workers are paid considerably more than the minimum wage, ‘‘it still is like the old bracero program,’’ she asserts. ‘‘Companies use this program to keep workers in a position of dependence. And because they’re often hired under individual contracts, U.S. labor law says they don’t even have the right to organize.’’ Eliseo Medina, executive vicepresident of the Service Employees International Union, was at the Cisneros meeting, and says the AFL-CIO doesn’t support the H-1B program. But both political parties are competing to woo the huge campaign contributions flowing from the computer industry, and in Congress there’s overwhelming support for giving Silicon Valley employers the workers they want. Other industries are not far behind. Employers around the country complain they can’t get their labor needs supplied with just citizens, or legal residents already here. Growers have bills in Congress to expand their ‘‘guest worker’’ program, and remove restrictions protecting workers. The garment industry and others dependent on immigrants also want contract labor. Last year in Nebraska, the INS itself conducted its largest workplace enforcement program ever, intended to build support for these programs. After driving over 3,000 undocumented workers from the state’s meatpacking plants, INS Midwest director Mark Reed stated in an interview that ‘‘we depend on foreign labor, and we have to face the question are we prepared to bring in workers lawfully? If we don’t have illegal immigration anymore, we’ll have the political support for guest worker [contract labor programs].’’ The political problem for labor, as defined by its political strategists in Washington, is that some employer support is necessary to get a pro-immigrant bill through Congress. But if the price for that support is a chain of contract labor programs, instead of an immigrant workforce legalized by amnesty and freed from employer sanctions, immigrant workers could wind up more chained than ever. ‘‘I’m not convinced there is a labor shortage,’’ says Medina, one of the main AFL-CIO leaders pushing for the new immigration policy. ‘‘We don’t support lifting the cap on H-1B. If companies were willing to pay fair wages, they’d have all the workers they want. ‘‘What we do need,’’ he continues, ‘‘is workplace enforcement of worker protection laws, instead of employer sanctions. We want a general amnesty, covering all the people who are here now. In addition, many Mexicans would rather stay at home, but companies pay starvation wages in the maquiladoras, and wind up creating the very conditions forcing people to come here. So as long as people continue coming, we need to deal with that. One idea is a rolling date, so that people who have been here a certain amount of time could apply for amnesty. The AFL-CIO hasn’t adopted this yet so far we’re just talking.’’ Despite its limitations, Medina called the Cisneros meeting ‘‘a good first step,’’ because it brought together a widely disparate group of employers and unions, political conservatives and immigrant rights advocates. ‘‘This is the time to be bold,’’ urges John Wilhelm, president of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union. ‘‘I’m not against incremental steps, but we have to push amnesty and get rid of sanctions. In the

Chicanas/os and Mexican Americans in Contemporary Society

legislative process we’ll wind up bargaining, and what we get will depend on how strong our coalition is. But if someone had told me 3 4 years ago that we’d be taking this position today, I’d have thought they were out of their minds.’’ That describes pretty well the experience of at least one speaker at the L.A. forum, the grandfather of the immigrant rights movement, Bert Corona. In one of the most emotional moments of the huge rally, Corona was helped across the stage, in steps made haltingly by his age, and given credit for years spent trying to convince the labor movement that defending immigrants was in its best interest. Corona started campaigning against employer sanctions and immigration raids in the 1960s, long before the 1986 law was passed. He got a cold shoulder from the AFL-CIO’s former leaders in Washington. During those years, a rally like Saturday’s hearing would have been inconceivable. Corona would certainly never have been an honored guest. ‘‘There is no mine, no bridge, not a row in the fields nor a construction site in all the United States that hasn’t been watered with the tears, the sweat, and blood of immigrants,’’ Corona reminded the huge crowd in Spanish. ‘‘We demand an amnesty for the workers who have made the wealth of this country possible. Amnesty is not a gift, but a right, for those who have contributed so much, and should be free of any conditions reinforcing the hard exploitation of our past. It means achieving real equality.’’ Source: David Bacon, ‘‘Los Angeles Turns Out for Amnesty,’’ June 12, 2000. http://dbacon.igc. org/Imgrants/14LAAmnesty.htm.

415. Testimony of Commissioner Richard M. Estrada, U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform, ‘‘Agricultural Guest Worker Programs,’’ December 7, 1995 A notion that has been picking up momentum in the United States is that an immigration reform bill must have a provision for a guest worker program. The fact is that without Mexican and other Latino labor, U.S. agriculture would suffer huge losses. Already the United States is buying vegetables from China to offset the diminishing supply. In 1942, the United States entered a similar contract to bring workers to the United States as temporary guest workers. The program ended in 1964 and was fraught with corruption and abuses. This renewal of the bracero program of World War II vintage was the cornerstone of President George Bush’s immigration policy. The rationale is that in this way, Mexican workers could be contracted for temporary periods and returned to their country of origin once their labor was no longer needed. The following is the 1995 testimony of the deceased and ultra conservative columnist Richard M. Estrada, who argued against the bracero program because of its abuses and the lack of provisions enabling workers to, in time, become permanent residents. He saw worker conditions as the same as rented slaves. Estrada’s testimony seems as relevant in 2007 as it did then. Estrada frames his argument against the guest worker program in terms of ‘‘unfree’’ labor. Free labor has the right to organize and gain from the fruits of its labor; unfree labor has no rights.

FREE VS. UNFREE LABOR I oppose new or expanded agricultural guest worker programs because they represent ‘‘unfree’’ labor.

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Doubtless, some will immediately object to the use of this term because all the workers in question would presumably come to America willingly. Despite uncertainty about the circumstances under which guest laborers in such programs are selected, let us concede for the sake of argument that all guest workers do in fact come willingly. One must still insist that the absence of slavery does not imply the presence of freedom. As commonly understood, the term free labor also implies that an individual can sell his or her labor on the open market to whomever will contract for it. It is in this regard that guest worker programs are, by definition, unfree labor arrangements or, at the very least, not totally free labor arrangements. To be specific, the agricultural guest worker is explicitly obligated not to sell his or her labor anywhere else but to the agricultural employer who sponsors entry. Employers tend to prize guest workers for their abilities, true. But they also value them because they have no options and are, therefore, more malleable. (Employers tend to prefer the term ‘‘disciplined.’’) This basic characteristic is the ugly underbelly of any and all agricultural guest worker programs: the foreign worker is virtually indentured to the agricultural employer, with an important exception. Unlike indentured servitude as practiced in America in the eighteenth century, the guest worker has no expectation based in the legal provisions of his or her entry that he or she will be able to become a free laborer in America. In addition, guest worker programs tend to have no worker protections. When it comes to housing and health care, uneducated and often illiterate guest workers, who often do not speak English and who have little or no disposable income, are left to fend for themselves. There are thousands of such people roaming the agriculturebased communities of America today. Reasonable and honorable people may disagree about guest worker programs in general, but the specific practice of providing no meaningful worker protections in this manner is unacceptable. It is wrong. It is immoral. Finally, Congress should consider that the ‘‘bracero’’ guest worker program was implemented in 1942 under extremely unusual conditions. With millions of nativeborn rural workers suddenly called off to war, turning to foreign labor through a temporary guest worker program was justified. Even so, the fact that it took more than twenty years to end the bracero program, long after the end of the Second World War, should give Congress pause about reintroducing it. Cheap, unskilled foreign labor has proven to be an opiate to agricultural employers. Congress should dispense it sparingly, if at all. Source: U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform, http://www.utexas.edu/lbj/uscir/120795.html.

416. Enrique C. Ochoa and Gilda L. Ochoa, ‘‘Governor’s Comments Reveal the Depth of Sexism and Racism,’’ 2006 Mexican Americans and Latinas had, like almost everything else in society, been commoditized at the turn of the twenty-first century. As a ‘‘product,’’ they were categorized and stereotyped. The following is an article by Professors Enrique C. Ochoa and Gilda L. Ochoa from California State University Pomona and Pomona College, respectively. This article was written in

Chicanas/os and Mexican Americans in Contemporary Society

response to a 2006 remark by California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger that Latinas were sexually ‘‘hot.’’

There is nothing new about Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s description of state Assemblywoman Bonnie Garc
ıa as ‘‘very hot’’ because of her ‘‘black blood’’ and ‘‘Latino blood.’’ Even Garc
ıa’s claims that the governor’s comments are just an inside joke and that she is ‘‘a hot-blooded Latina’’ are not surprising. It was just two years ago that Mexican President Vicente Fox made similar offensive comments about African Americans. These ‘‘jokes’’ or ‘‘slips of the tongue’’ are part of the enduring legacy of gendered racism that is woven into the fabric of society. And their ramifications are real. Schwarzenegger’s comments are reminiscent of beliefs that were rampant through the early 1900s. These beliefs equated status in society with genetic, innate differences between groups. Northern Europeans were assumed to be biologically superior to all other groups including Southern and Eastern Europeans, blacks, Native Americans, Asian Americans and Latin Americans. Such genetic determinism helped to justify 250 years of enslavement of African Americans, attempts at cultural genocide against Native Americans, and segregation and U.S. imperial expansion. Schwarzenegger’s remarks also echo dominant thinking throughout the nineteenth century where the ‘‘mixing of blood’’ was negatively perceived. The first Anglo Americans who came to what is now the Southwest perpetuated the belief that Mexicans in the region were inferior to Anglos precisely because of their mixed heritage. Such biological thought fueled attempts to maintain ‘‘white racial purity,’’ and with the exception of Vermont, all U.S. states introduced legislation banning interracial unions. Not only should Schwarzenegger’s comments be seen in the context of this enduring history of racism, but they also suggest the specific ways that most perceptions have interacted with sexism to justify the denigration, sexualization, and exploitation of women of color. During the period of U.S. invasion and domination of Mexico and Central America, popular music and travel literature written by Anglos stereotypically cast Latinas as sexually promiscuous, available, or ‘‘hot blooded.’’ At this time, Asian women were similarly depicted as sexually immoral. As with African Americans during slavery, these characterizations of women of color had significant ramifications. They justifies kidnapping and rape, and for Chinese women, they resulted in the Page Law in 1875, where women were excluded from immigrating to the United States until 1943. Despite attempts to forget this history, its manifestations run deep, and Schwarzenegger’s comments reveal the insidious ways that such beliefs continue to shape public consciousness and institutional practices. Central to the anti-immigrant movement today is the mistaken belief that Latinas’ sexuality leads to too many children and an overuse of public services. In the current War on Terror, Middle Eastern women are often viewed as repressed victims of a backward culture that need to be saved by a superior U.S. culture. Communities of color have long challenged these discriminatory attitudes and actions. History is replete with examples, from African American resistance to slavery, Asian American struggles for citizenship, to the civil rights movements of the 1960s and 1970s. By teaching their children counter-histories, maintaining their

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cultures and languages, and fostering solidarity within their communities, women of color have engaged in multiple forms of resistance. The recent immigrant-rights marches are part of the contemporary ways that Latinas/os are countering antiimmigrant movements and white supremacist ideologies. We should not let this moment pass as an isolated slip. Political leaders should be held accountable for their statements. Source: Enrique C. Ochoa and Gilda L. Ochoa, ‘‘Arnold’s Latina Slip Must Spark Dialogues,’’ [Valley Edition], Los Angeles Daily News, September 12, 2006. p. N13.

417. Excerpts from Roberto Suro, Sergio Bendixen, and Dulce C. Benavides, ‘‘Billions in Motion: Latino Immigrants, Remittances, and Banking,’’ 2002 Latin Americans working outside their countries sent $60 billion home in 2005, an estimated $45 billion sent by Latino immigrants in the United States. Most studies suggest that without these remittances there would be serious upheavals in Mexico and Central America where these remittances represent a significant portion of these countries’ revenue. The Pew Hispanic Center at the University of Southern California, ‘‘a fact tank’’ focusing on Hispanic issues, has written several reports on money sent back to Mexican and Central American home countries whose economies would have collapsed without this support. Remittances in Mexico bring in more money than the tourist industry— second only to oil revenues. Such remittances are one of the major sources of revenue for these countries, which do not receive much money from the United States during a time that the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the 2004 Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) have worsened the economic plight of working people in these countries.

Until recently, the money management practices of Latino immigrants in the United States aroused little attention outside their own communities. That changed as the remittance flow doubled in size during the second half of the 1990s. Although the size of the average remittance transfer is miniscule $200 to $300 in the world of international finance, the cumulative sums have now captured the attention of government policymakers and bankers in the United States and Latin America. Remittances to Latin America and the Caribbean totaled $23 billion in 2001, according to estimates by the Multilateral Investment Fund.… In 2000, remittances to Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua nations that receive almost all their money transfers from the United States totaled some $10.2 billion. This year, that figure could reach $14.2 billion or more, a flow of $39 million a day. By 2005, the sum, which does not capture all remittances to Latin America, will go beyond $18 billion, according to projections by the Pew Hispanic Center.… Across the United States in communities with large Mexican immigrant populations, a scenario that would have been unthinkable not long ago is now playing out on a regular basis: In a strip mall storefront, on a school parking lot, or in the offices of a community organization, a Mexican ‘‘mobile consulate’’ sets up shop. Matriculas are available on the spot. But that is not all. Often, there is someone there who helps the new recipients of the ID card apply for an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN). This nine-digit identifier issued by the Internal Revenue

Chicanas/os and Mexican Americans in Contemporary Society

Service (IRS) looks like a social security number, but there are important differences. While a social security number is available only to citizens or people lawfully admitted to the United States, getting the taxpayer number does not require a showing of legal status. Also on the scene is an account manager from a local bank that has decided to accept the matricula and the taxpayer number as valid identification. In just minutes, an unauthorized Mexican immigrant can overcome the documentation barriers and be on his or her way to opening a bank account. U.S. banks are moving aggressively to capture a greater share of the remittance market, and they are getting encouragement, even assistance, from both the U.S. and Mexican governments. In principle, these developments should increase competition and, hence, lead to lower fees, greater investments in technology, and a more efficient remittance flow. In principle, engagement with banks, credit unions, and other financial institutions should produce benefits beyond the remittance flow for both the senders and receivers. However, ensuring these outcomes will require specific efforts by all the parties involved to overcome some substantial obstacles. The results of this study and the initial success achieved by banks that have targeted Latino immigrants clearly indicate that a large segment of the remitting population is willing, even eager, to explore new methods of sending money home. But this study also shows that familiarity, convenience, and simplicity have kept remitters going back to the old methods, chiefly wire transfer services like Western Union … even when they are concerned that they are paying excessive transaction fees and foreign exchange costs. This study also shows that there is a widespread wariness of banks among remitters, especially when it comes to managing a household’s month-to-month or week-to-week finances, primarily because of minimum balance requirements and the fees charged. These findings suggest that a wholesale move by remitters to banking channels will only take place if banks can match or surpass the services provided by wire transfer firms at significantly reduced costs. And, given the intimate family connections between remittance senders and receivers, the convenience, reliability, and safety of the services provided in Latin America will have to meet or exceed those currently available there. In effect, U.S. banks will need to guarantee competitive pricing and quality of service at both ends of the remittance transaction. This will involve more than simply putting an effective product on the market and letting it go head-to-head with existing products. This study and others show that most remittance senders and receivers do not currently have bank accounts of any sort and probably never have. Banks, therefore, must successfully convince two populations Latino immigrants in the United States and their families in Latin America to trust their money to institutions that are unknown at best and might actually be viewed with some suspicion. Substantial challenges also face the remitters. The reliance on cash, the lack of knowledge about fees, and the minimal efforts put into investigating alternatives for remittances ending that were reported by participants in this study all bespeak low levels of financial literacy. Failure to understand the fundamental workings of a bank account, such as the need to keep track of a balance, can spell disaster for the neophyte in the form of bounced checks, cancelled accounts, and the rapidly mounting fees that result. Such problems prove the undoing of many an American college student every year and could prove all the more daunting to a Latino immigrant trying to manage international money transfers. In addition to learning the basic rules of managing a bank account, remitters will have to change some deeply imbedded behaviors in order to make effective use of U.S. banks. Fixed transaction fees are

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already emerging as a standard feature of some of the new remittance products. For example, Bank of America’s Safe Send charges $10 or $15 per deposit, up to a maximum single deposit of $500 [de]pending on the type of account, each time a remitter in the United States deposits money into an account that the recipient can draw on with an ATM card in Mexico. A remitter who sticks to old habits of repeatedly moving small amounts recall that the average is now $200 to $300 will pay far more than one who accumulates funds and makes a single transfer for the maximum amount. Similarly, such programs allow subscribers to make a minimum number of withdrawals without a fee. Safe Send, for example, allows one free ATM withdrawal for each deposit. Thus, the recipients will have to change their behavior as well to minimize costs in programs that favor a small number of transactions. If Latino immigrants were to break the financial cycle of living from month-tomonth, paying off bills, and then sending what remains home, they would reap benefits that go beyond economizing on the costs of remittance. The habit of accumulating money in a bank account is the first step toward full engagement with the U.S. financial system. There are a variety of potential benefits, including reduced banking costs, interest-paying savings accounts, the responsible use of credit, and, ultimately, financial practices that are rewarded by the tax system, such as home ownership and retirement savings accounts. If remittances are the point of entry for such engagement in the U.S. economic structure, the long-term benefits for the Latino immigrant population, and for the nation as a whole, could be quite substantial. Newcomers start out as remitters, but many settle here, become permanent residents, and start families as parents of U.S.-born children. Remitters will need help in accomplishing this evolution. Currently, some banks offer financial literacy training to new customers. For example, the North Shore Bank of Brookfield, Wisconsin, has mounted registration drives with Mexican consular officials to get matriculas for immigrants and sign them up for bank accounts. Every new customer is offered … free training on the skills necessary to manage checking and savings accounts. Some Latino groups, such as the National Council of La Raza (NCLR) through its network of 270 affiliate organizations around the country, have made financial literacy training a major priority. NCLR has determined that the most successful programs have the following elements: (1) they use materials tailored to a specific audience, like recently arrived immigrants; (2) they are tied to a specific product or service; and (3) they are delivered by groups or individuals well known and trusted by the target community.… Greatly expanding these efforts is essential to ensuring that the remitters’ engagement with the financial industry is a success. Indeed, failure to adequately educate Latino immigrants who open bank accounts could produce unnecessary setbacks for all concerned.… C 2002 Pew Hispanic Center, a Pew Research Center project, www.pewhispanic.org. Source:
Report produced in cooperation between The Pew Hispanic Center and The Multilateral Investment Fund, pp. 2, 16, 17, 18.

418. ‘‘An Interview with Sub-Comandante Marcos of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation,’’ 1995 Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos (1957–), is the spokesperson for the Ejercito Zapatista de Liberaci
on Nacional (Zapatista Army of National Liberation—EZLN), a revolutionary army in Chiapas, Mexico. Marcos wears a mask

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to conceal his identity. The EZLN has pursued a nonviolent revolution and has garnered the sympathy of the world while he holds Mexican officials at bay. The Zapatistas are fighting for the rights of the Mayan people to preserve their culture and way of life. The 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which opened the Mexican economy to U.S. industries and promoted the privatization of the Mexican economy, threatened Mayan villages, prompted the destruction of communal lands, and hastened the commercialization of agriculture. In the following interview, Marcos explains why the Mayans revolted against the Mexican government. This message has been the movement’s greatest defense and has attracted worldwide support up to this time in history.

San Cristobal Mexico He is among the few whose face is covered and is armed with a machine gun. He is not indigenous. While he speaks, he pulls a pipe from a pouch, puts it in his mouth through the opening of the Ski mask, but does not light it. He expresses himself with the clarity of the intellectual accustomed to communicating with the poor. He is surely Mexican, but it is not possible to identify the accent. A young woman with Asian eyes in a black mask stands next to him throughout the interview. Comandante Marcos, you occupied San Cristobal on January 1st, 1994, who are you? We are part of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation and we demand the resignation of the federal government and the formation of a transitional government which convenes free and democratic elections in August 1994. We want that the major demands of the peasants of Chiapas be met: food, health, education, autonomy, and peace. The indigenous people have always lived in a state of war because war has been waged against them and today the war will be in their favour. Whatever the case, we will have the opportunity to die in battle fighting instead of dying of dysentery, as the indigenous people of Chiapas usually die. Do you have relationships with some political organisation of peasants? We have no such relationships with any open organisation. Our organisation is exclusively armed and clandestine. Were you formed out of nothing? Improvised? We have been preparing ourselves in the mountains for ten years; we are not an improvised movement. We have matured, thought, learned, and made this decision. Do you have racial and ethnic demands? The Committee of Directors is made up of indigenous Tzotziles, Tzeltles, Choles, Tojolabales, Mames, and Zoques, all of the major ethnic groups of Chiapas. They all agree, and apart from democracy and representation, they demand respect, respect which white people have never had for them. Above all, in San Cristobal the residents, insult and discriminate again them as a daily occurrence. Now white people respect the Indians because they see them with guns in their hands. How do you think the government will respond? We do not worry about the response of the government. We worry about the response of the Mexican people. We want to know what this event will provoke, what will move the national consciousness. We hope something moves, not only in the form of armed struggle, but in all forms of struggle. We hope this will put an end to this disguised dictatorship.

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Don’t you have confidence in the PRD as an opposition party in the next elections? We don’t distrust the political parties as much as we do the electoral system. The government of Salinas de Gortari is an illegitimate party, product of fraud, and this illegitimate government can only produce illegitimate elections. We want a transitional government and that the government hold new elections but with a capacity that is genuinely egalitarian, offering the same opportunities to all political parties. In Chiapas, 15,000 Indians per year die of curable diseases. It is a statistic of the same magnitude that the war produced in El Salvador. If a peasant with cholera comes to a rural hospital, they will throw him out so that no one will say there is cholera in Chiapas. In this movement, the Indians who form part of the Zapatista Army want to first dialogue with their own people. They are the real representatives. Excuse me, but you are not an Indian. You must understand our movement is not Chiapaneco. It is national. There are people like me, others who come from other states, and Chiapanecos who fight in other states. We are Mexicans, that unifies us, as well as the demand for liberty and democracy. We want to elect genuine representatives. But now are you not afraid of heavy repression? For the Indians, repressions exist for the past 500 years. Maybe you think of repression in terms of the typical South American government. But for the Indians, this kind of repression is their daily bread. Ask those who live in the surrounding communities of San Cristobal. What development would you consider a movement? We would like others in the country to join this movement. An armed movement? No, we make a broad appeal which we direct towards those who are active in civil, legal, and open popular movements. Why did you choose January 1st to attack San Cristobal? It was the Committee of Directors which decided. It is clear the date is related to NAFTA, which for the Indians is a death sentence. Once it goes into effect, it means an international massacre. What do you believe the international response will be? Are you not afraid the United States will intervene like it has in other parts of Latin America? The U.S. used to have the Soviet Union as a pretext, they were afraid of Soviet infiltration in our countries. But what can they make of a movement which claims social justice? They cannot continue to think we are being manipulated from the outside, or that we are financed by Moscow gold, since Moscow no longer exists. The people in the U.S. should be aware that we struggle for those things that others struggle for. Did not the people of Germany and Italy rebel against a dictatorship? Does the rebellion of the Mexicans not have the same value? The people in the U.S. have a great deal to do with the reality which you can observe here, with the conditions of misery of the Indians and the great hunger for justice. In Mexico, the entire social system is based upon the injustice in its relations with the Indians. The worst thing that can happen to a human being is to be Indian, with all its burden of humiliation, hunger, and misery. This is a subversive movement. Our objective is the solution of the principal problems of our country, which necessarily intersect with problems of liberty and democracy. This is why we think that the government of Salinas de Gortari is an

Chicanas/os and Mexican Americans in Contemporary Society

illegitimate government which can only convene illegitimate elections. The solution is a call to all citizens and to the House of Deputies and Senators and to comply with their patriotic duty and remove Salinas de Gortari and all his Cabinet and to form a transitional government. And the transitional government should call elections, with equal opportunity for all political parties. Based on that, the compa~ neros say other demands can be negotiated: bread, housing, health, education, land, justice, many problems, which within the context of indigenous people, are very serious. But the demands for liberty and democracy are being made as A call to all the Mexican Republic, to all the social sectors to participate, not with guns, but with the means which they have. We have been isolated all these years, while the rest of the world rebelled against dictatorships or apparent dictatorships and this was viewed with logic. In this country, however, a series of dictatorial measures were being adopted and no one said anything. We believe there is an international consensus that only the Mexicans were missing, who have suffered under an absolute dictatorship by the Party and now by one person, who is Carlos Salinas de Gortari, now through Luis Donaldo Colosio. I think that at the international level they will see that a movement with demands like these is logical. There is not in the movement of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation an ideology perfectly defined, in the sense of being Communist or Marxist-Leninist. There is a common point of connection with the great national problems, which coincide always, for one or the other sector, in a lack of liberty and democracy. In this case, this sector has used up any other method of struggle such as the legal struggle, the popular struggle, the economic projects, the struggle for Sedesol [La Secretaria de Desarrollo Social, federal office in charge of local development of indigenous people], and it ends following the only method which remains, the armed struggle. But we are open to other tendencies and to other forms of struggle, in the enthusiasm to generate a genuine national and revolutionary movement which reconciles these two fundamental demands, liberty and democracy. On these grounds a movement can be formed which will create a genuine solution to the economic and social problems of each sector, whether indigenous or peasant, workers, teachers, intellectuals, small business owners of the small and medium-sized industry. The repression on the indigenous population has been present for many years. The indigenous people of Chiapas suffer 15,000 deaths per year, that no one mourns. The great shame is that they die of curable diseases and this is denied by the Department of Health. We expect a favourable reaction from Mexican society toward the reasons which give birth to this movement because they are just. You can question the method of struggle, but never its causes. Source: Revolutionary Democracy. Vol. I, No. 2, September 1995, http://www.revolutionarydemocracy. org/rdv1n2/marcos.htm.


pez, ‘‘The Dense, Impenetrable 419. Suzanne Lo Adobe Ceiling,’’ 2003 In 2004, in the United States, white women earned 73 cents for every dollar earned by a white man; Asian women, 68 cents; African American women, 64 cents, Native American women, 58 cents, and Latina women earn 51

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cents per dollar. Latina girls left high school at a much higher rate than any other group. The major factor was teenage pregnancy but close seconds were marriage, gender roles, stereotyping, family demands, and economic status, as well as attitudes of teachers. These stereotypes continued even after many had made it through college. The article talks to leading Chicana professionals about the operation of an adobe ceiling that has limited their upward mobility. It interviews Cencilia Burciaga who experienced discrimination at various universities.

While White women are said to encounter a glass ceiling that prevents them from progressing in their careers, Latinas face a more formidable barrier an adobe ceiling an obstacle far more challenging to overcome because a glass ceiling at least provides a vision of what lies ahead, said a higher education leader in California. ‘‘With a glass ceiling, you are allowed to see the next level,’’ said Cecilia Preciado Burciaga, former associate vice president for student affairs at California State University at Monterey Bay (CSUMB). ‘‘At least you can see through it and practice for the promotion. But an adobe ceiling is dense, impenetrable, and it doesn’t allow you to see to the next level. I would like that luxury to see what’s next. Once Latinas do break through it, they are often surprised by the personal and professional costs.’’ Burciaga, who has a master’s degree in sociology policy studies from the University of California at Riverside, has spent the last few years developing her theory about the adobe ceiling and has spoken about the subject at public forums. This summer, during a speech at Pima County Community College District in Tucson, Ariz, she shared her thoughts on the ceiling and what it takes to break through it. The event had many co-sponsors: the International Women’s Film and Speaker Series of the Dean’s Interdisciplinary Education Grant, the Crossing Border Speaker Series of the Dean’s Minority Education Grant both funded through the community college, the Arizona Association of Chicanos for Higher Education, Desert Vista Campus, the CSUMB foundation, and its Equal Employment Opportunity Affirmative Action Office. Burciaga, 57, has 28 years of administrative experience in higher education. She served on the White House Commission on Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans (1994 2001) and has been named one of the ‘‘Top 100 Most Influential Latinas of the Century’’ by Latina magazine. She speaks of the adobe ceiling from personal experience. Burciaga recently won a discrimination lawsuit she’d filed against CSUMB with two other Latinas. As part of the settlement, she agreed to leave the University early this year, but CSUMB paid $1 million in damages shared among the defendants and an additional $1.5 million for scholarships to Salinas County area students. University officials said they could not comment, as part of the settlement terms of the lawsuit. ‘‘Our population deserves more respect,’’ said Burciaga, adding that she was surprised to have encountered the adobe ceiling at Monterey Bay because more than half of the population in the area is Latino. Burciaga said she worked for 20 years at Stanford University where she also encountered the adobe ceiling. She climbed through the ranks and held a variety of positions while at Stanford, including director of the Office of Chicano Affairs, associate dean, and director of development in the Office of the Vice President for

Chicanas/os and Mexican Americans in Contemporary Society

Student Resources. When she joined Stanford in 1974, the student body was just 2 percent Mexican American, and there were few Chicano faculty or staff. She worked diligently to increase the numbers of Latinos on the campus so she ‘‘wouldn’t be the only one there.’’ By 1992, the student body had grown to 11 percent Chicano, and the faculty was increasingly diverse, for which Burciaga said she feels she could take some credit. When she was at Stanford, her staff recruited more women and minorities into the University’s PhD programs. In an interview with the Christian Science Monitor, Burciaga said that she did not find open resistance to affirmative action at Stanford, but she did have to fight against apathy. ‘‘It is the faculty that hire faculty,’’ she said in that interview. ‘‘They know best how to find their own animals. That means faculty members have got to want it.’’ In the 1970s, she worked for the U.S. Civil Rights Commission and was named by then-President Jimmy Carter to a National Advisory Committee for Women and on the International Commission on the Observance of International Women’s Year. ‘‘Cecilia is one of the people I look up to,’’ said Mickie Solorio Luna, California state president of LULAC [League of United Latin American Citizens]. ‘‘She’s always in the trenches.’’ While Latinas and White women face different types of ceilings in the workplace, their home lives widen the gap between the two even further. Anglo women can escape the glass ceiling once they leave their workplace at the end of the day because their spouses, parents, and siblings often enjoy the benefits of being part of the ‘‘elite culture,’’ said Burciaga. Latinas, on the other hand, have families who are all generally part of the ‘‘non-power’’ group. Burciaga said she believes that the personal and social connections Anglo women enjoy through marriage or through their parents and siblings help them get through the glass ceiling but Latinas lack those familial connections, making the adobe ceiling virtually impenetrable. Another aspect of the glass ceiling analogy is the saying that Anglo women also encounter a sticky floor in their efforts to advance their careers, but Burciaga said the sticky floor provides traction. Latinas encounter a dirt floor under their adobe ceiling, a floor that she said allows Latinas to be swept away. ‘‘It’s so true what she said,’’ said Luna. ‘‘We’re on a slippery floor. We’re pushed aside, pushed out the door. Latinas always fight for equality for everybody else. We don’t get recognition. Latinas are very humble, and we don’t ask for recognition.’’ Burciaga’s theory is backed by numbers. A recent study on corporate America by the Hispanic Association on Corporate Responsibility (HACR) found that Hispanic women are grossly underrepresented. They hold only 0.3 percent of all board seats and represent 0.08 percent of all executive officer positions in Fortune 1,000 companies. Of 141 Hispanic board members at Fortune 1,000 companies, only 21 are women, and of 110 Hispanic executive officers, only eight are women. ‘‘Hispanic women, in particular, have encountered a ‘concrete ceiling’ in corporate America,’’ said HACR President and CEO Anna Escobedo Cabral. ‘‘Even though there are more Hispanic women professionals and the number of businesses owned by Hispanic women is one of the fastest growing sectors, Hispanic women continue to be excluded from contributing as board members and executive officers of the largest companies in the nation.’’

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Burciaga said she feels that Latinas not only encounter the adobe ceiling and dirt floor in corporate America but also in higher education. Anglo women are making strides in becoming college presidents and vice presidents, and she said it is important they not forget their Latina hermanas as they create leadership teams for their institutions of higher education. ‘‘This is an opportunity for them to manifest deeper change in the women’s movement,’’ said Burciaga. ‘‘The question is ‘are they diversifying their leadership teams any more than Anglo males?’’’ Burciaga expressed concern that the women’s movement in general failed to clearly convey the message to women that their advancement carried a responsibility to bring about positive change for all women in the workplace. All women have a responsibility to younger women to help them move forward because any progress that has been made by the women’s movement is always at risk and those freedoms can be lost, she said. But, Burciaga said Latinas must also be more proactive in advancing their own careers, in highlighting their professional successes, a skill that traditionally has been difficult for many Latinas to carry out. ‘‘I tell Latinas not to believe in the good tooth fairy, that if we’re good, someone will put a promotion under our pillows,’’ said Burciaga. ‘‘Part of our culture is not to be boastful. We’re not comfortable with self-promotion. It is important to learn to talk about your accomplishments in a way that is not offensive. To not talk about your accomplishments is deadly.’’ Amalia Mesa-Bains, director of the Institute for Visual and Public Arts at CSUMB, said she is optimistic about the future for young Latinas. Older Latinas have been striving to develop a model that provides a balance between the family demands of Latino culture and the demands of professional career. Younger Latinas struggle with the Anglo version of having to choose between family and professional aspirations to be successful and the model evolving among Latinas brings the two aspects together. ‘‘I think the young girls are going to kick in the ceiling,’’ said Mesa-Bains. ‘‘They are very connected to the goals of the [Latino] community. The unique model we have created for them springs from our family-based and community-based experience. I see us at the adobe ceiling, and I see us finding an opening. We want to open the adobe ceiling, but we do not want to forget the adobe itself.’’ Burciaga said she feels she is making a contribution, chipping away the adobe ceiling Latinas encounter by filing her lawsuit, mentoring young women, speaking out about the adobe ceiling, and pushing her career forward. ‘‘Cecilia stood her ground for what she believes in, and she never felt sorry for herself,’’ said Luna. ‘‘She made a difference and gained the respect from everybody around her. I hope other women will learn from this and stand up for younger women.’’ Mesa-Bains, co-chair of the Chicano-Latino Faculty and Staff Association at CSUMB, praised Burciaga for her heroic efforts to bring about change at the University. ‘‘We need to recognize the heroism of someone who is willing to sacrifice her own career to force a university to live up to the vision it espouses and to commit the resources necessary to realize that vision.’’ Burciaga hopes other Latinas are working with her on drilling through the adobe ceiling. Having a network of Latinas to rely on helps make the process of breaking

Chicanas/os and Mexican Americans in Contemporary Society

through the adobe ceiling easier, she said. She praises the network of Latinas she relies on and has befriended over the years, saying that they show her that there is a peephole of light and hope through the adobe ceiling. ‘‘Too often we work alone, but we must come together to conquer,’’ Burciaga said. ‘‘I have made a commitment to keep chipping away.’’ Luna said she too believes that if Latinas keep chipping away, eventually the walls will come down. Burciaga is a first-generation Chicana of parents who were natives of Jalisco, Mexico. She and her late husband, Jose Antonio Burciaga, a poet and artist, have two children, Mar
ıa Rebeca and Jos
e Antonio. Source: Suzanne L
opez, ‘‘The Dense, Impenetrable Adobe Ceiling,’’ The Hispanic Outlook in Higher Education, Vol. 13, No. 10, February 24, 2003 March 9, 2003, pp. 16, 17.

420. Chip Jacobs, ‘‘Return of the Native,’’ 2005 Probably the person most responsible for the California Latino Political Revolution, the election of a critical number of Chicanos to the California State Legislature and the Los Angeles City Council, was Richard Alatorre. Alatorre was elected to the California Assembly and Los Angeles City Council during a time in the early 1980s when there were no Mexicans on those bodies. He served on reapportionment committees in the state legislature, made deals, and was always controversial. However, he always kept East Los Angeles in his heart, and although the deals were often in his interests, they rarely went against the interests of the area. Alatorre, along with State Sen. Richard Polanco, who was chair of the Legislature’s Latino Caucus for a 12-year reign and tripled its membership, molded a new generation of Latino politicos that became a force in California politics. The following article, based on an interview with Alatorre, explains the process in which Latinos are a third of the Los Angeles City Council and a majority of the Democratic Party Caucus in the California Assembly.

The 200 folks squished into the VIP lounge of the Henry Fonda Music Box Theater were grinning and yipping as the early poll results blinked on the big screens. It was primary night, March 3, and the Antonio-Villaraigosa-for-Mayor bandwagon resembled a Winnebago. A Motown band crooned, the liquor went fast, and if you noticed it, off to the side of the victory buzz, a gaggle of small-town mayors, party operatives, and various believers were embracing a dark-eyed legend many were afraid to be seen with a few years ago. Richard Alatorre was touchable again. ‘‘He was getting hearty hugs, unsolicited, and people wanted their picture with him,’’ recalls Don Justin Jones, a Democratic activist from Pasadena who has known Alatorre since the 1960s. ‘‘There’s a saying, ‘You don’t shake hands with a dead man or he’ll pull you down with him,’ and the establishment was treating Richard like the long-lost prince of the city. You know he was happy when he was calling people, ‘Babe.’’’ Had a few things gone differently, it might’ve been Richard Jos
e Alatorre taking the oath as Los Angeles’ first Latino mayor in modern times, not the slick, cherubicfaced Villaraigosa (should he unseat Jim Hahn May 17). Had Alatorre not tried to house a little girl who lost her mother nine years ago, some grand building might now bear his name.

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Destiny, however, had other ideas. His storybook ascent from barrio kid to Hispanic political royalty collapsed in soap-operatic disgrace in 2001 with a graft conviction and drug allegations. He was banished to the Siberia of house arrest, his legacy tarnished no matter the heartfelt tributes from senators and do-gooders. Should Villaraigosa need a primer on toughness, the man who has been his unofficial campaign consigliere can go one better. He knows history can be viciously ironic. In 1992, in a recession-flattened, riot-torn Los Angeles, it was Alatorre, the mainstream Democrat, whom the conservative Richard Riordan most feared as his opponent in the mayor’s race. It was Alatorre who masterminded the district reapportionment that enabled Villaraigosa to win Alatorre’s old seat that he has used to challenge Hahn. And it was Alatorre, along with County Supervisor Gloria Molina, his longtime nemesis, who hoed the path for a fresh crop of Mexican American politicians. One of them was Richard Alarc
on, the defeated mayoral candidate and Valley Councilman who liked stressing he was no Alatorre (read: corrupt). Having jogged through hell and back, Alatorre is in his salad days now happier, healthier, and holier, those close to him say. The impatient snarls that seemed to bubble from a tormented soul what writer Hunter S. Thompson once called a politician’s inner werewolf surface less often. At 63, he is a family guy and elder statesman, both felon and community icon, living sorry for the shame he caused yet convinced that he was hunted. ‘‘I don’t condone what I did, but I did it out of desperation,’’ Alatorre explains, slitting his eyes at Camilo’s Bistro, one of his Eagle Rock hangouts. ‘‘I made a mistake and paid for it. It was a very humiliating experience for my family and friends and the institutions that I was part of. It made me assess the role I’d played in things. ‘‘For five years, I had to wake up wondering what the next story was coming up,’’ he adds. ‘‘Because of what happened, I’m the sum of the end of my career, when things were bad. I’ve got that asterisk on my resume that overshadowed 28 years of work.’’ That episode now seems like yesterday and never-happened. Peers don’t worry anymore if they’re being taped when they call him. A grayer, chubbier Alatorre gets warm smiles at City Hall. Politicians frequently call him for advice, or to help settle feuds. He’s also not skating fast over the thin ice of insolvency anymore. Working quietly, tooling around in his steel-gray Jaguar, he consults for the Affordable Housing Development Corp., the Los Angeles Port Police, the city of Alhambra, and others. Clients chase him, though he refuses to lobby because of disclosure rules that once got him in hot water as a politician. ‘‘I’m making more money than I ever have,’’ Alatorre confirms. ‘‘But I’m not trying to chase the buck. All I want is to support my family and live as privately as humanly possible.’’ Alatorre, unlike the impeached Bill Clinton or a defrocked televangelist, took his lumps old school: he suffered quietly. Sequestered at home, calling in to his probation officer, he didn’t court votes or campaign dough. He’s learned to make beds, empty the garbage, and enjoy the peace of not having to attend endless meetings. There was no image-revival campaign, no weepy appearance on Oprah, even if he believed that the media had unfairly portrayed him as a sleazebag. ‘‘I wasn’t going to let reporters know I had little respect for them driving me out of town,’’ he says.

Chicanas/os and Mexican Americans in Contemporary Society

THE NATURAL Before he died, Jos
e Alatorre left his son with a nugget: Use your head to make a living, because ‘‘you aren’t any good with your hands.’’ Young Richard embraced that advice, becoming student body president at Garfield High and part-time collection agent for a Whittier Boulevard jewelry store a job that taught him when to intimidate people and when to back off. He was an outgoing teenager, slightly rebellious, sure to attend Mass to check out the girls or pray that his jump shot fell during basketball season. ‘‘I was the typical Catholic hypocrite,’’ Alatorre chuckles. (Today, he’s hard-core devout.) At Cal State Los Angeles, Alatorre majored in sociology and then got his master’s in public administration from USC, no small feat. While teaching college courses, he happened one day to run into East L.A. Assemblyman Walter Karabian, who knew potential when he saw it. He gave the kid a staff job. Itching to be the man, Alatorre soon ran and won the assembly seat vacated by David Roberti. His timing sparkled, and he nuzzled in with a fun-loving set of heavy-hitters led by Speaker Willie Brown and his lieutenant, Mike Roos. Brown so liked Alatorre’s preternatural cunning that he gave him the committee chairmanship overseeing juiced gambling and liquor interests. Picketing with Ch
avez, as Alatorre did in 1966 to protest farmworkers’ conditions, fed the soul. Working at the state capital during the Chicano era on pesticide regulation and rent control fed his conviction that the little guy needed protection. But it wasn’t heaven. Being in Sacramento meant he saw little of his two sons, who were living in Alhambra with his divorced first wife, Stella. He was terrified of flying, and distances required he do it constantly. He had a few harrowing experiences, including one occasion when the plane’s nose cone blew off. To soothe his nerves, he drank. Tired of flying and jonesing to put his stamp on local politics, he ran for L.A. City Council in 1985. He won, oiled by special interest money, joining the flamboyant Nate Holden, the stately John Ferraro, and erudite Zev Yaroslavsky at the Council horseshoe. In a portentous act, he paid a record $142,000 settlement to the City Attorney’s office for failing to disclose contributors. Alatorre savored the pothole politics that Brown had laughingly warned him he’d come to despise. He was the king of a fiefdom that ran from Boyle Heights to the Glendale border. In that district’s volatile immigrant neighborhoods and yuppified hills, everybody recognized his swarthy, rutted complexion and sandpaper voice. Mayor Tom Bradley also found his Council point man in Alatorre, even if the two couldn’t be any different personality-wise. Alatorre proved to be masterful at three-dimensional thinking and lining up votes without an excess of silky oratory. Yaroslavsky, now a Westside supervisor, felt a kinship with Alatorre because they both grew up in the same destitute area and understood tough personalities. Their similarities made for some electric combat. ‘‘I judge people in politics by whether their word was good and whether you can depend on them hunkered down in battle, and yeah, I could trust him,’’ Yaroslavsky said. ‘‘The thing about him that I always appreciated, even though we don’t always agree … he always was the real deal. He cares about people on the margins.… I’m

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not going to defend what he did, [but] when I was up against him, I knew I was in the fight of my life.’’ By the 1990s, Yaroslavsky’s portrait was the general impression of Alatorre: a fighter and even a bully. He’d holler at building officials who weren’t moving fast enough to get repairs done. He’d sometimes unload on his own staff, exploding like a volcano while aides were left quivering. Alhambra Mayor Daniel Arguello was part of Alatorre’s assembly staff from 1977 to 1982. He remembers him for his odd mix of tenderness, agile thinking, and combustibility. ‘‘As a boss, he was the most fun I’ve ever had, and there were other times when I wanted to kick in the door,’’ Arguello remembered. ‘‘I’d worked for Tom Bradley, and his control was his presence. When Richard Alatorre was angry, everybody knew it.’’ This explosiveness, Alatorre now believes, was evidence of buried emotions. He was a ‘‘dry drunk’’ who missed his dad terribly. He couldn’t uncork his feelings. He regretted what kind of father he’d been. Here he was out at ribbon-cuttings, defending the LAPD, shepherding a budget deal, and yet lost inside. ‘‘People had this impression that I was ruthless, or had no blood in my veins,’’ Alatorre said. ‘‘I gave nothing up about my emotions, so they said I was mean, cutthroat, backstabbing. You hear that time in, time out, and you become hardened. You become isolated if you’ve never taken stock of yourself. I didn’t realize that I was bleeding internally.’’ LITTLE HOUSE IN EAGLE ROCK The world would find out about his hemorrhaging maybe before he did. In 1997, this reporter wrote a lengthy story in the L.A. Weekly about Alatorre’s connections to Samuel Mevorach, an Arcadia-based real estate operator who’d bedeviled L.A. housing officials with his dilapidated properties. Among Mevorach’s holdings was the Wyvernwood Apartments, a sprawling, once-tidy Boyle Heights complex that had degenerated into blistered, crime-infested units coated with dangerous flaking lead paint; a number of children were poisoned from it. Feeling the heat from inspectors, Mevorach needed Alatorre’s sway to grease a $91-million, city-subsidized sale of the property. Alatorre unluckily needed Mevorach just as much as the slumlord needed him. The previous year, Belinda Ramos, the sister of Alatorre’s third and current wife, Angie, had died of colon cancer. Ramos left behind an adorable, seven-year-old girl whose father was named Henry Lozano. An older man, Lozano was chief of staff to a Democratic congressman and staunchly aligned with Gloria Molina’s political machine. Ramos’ dying wish was for Melinda to live with the Alatorres. Melinda loved them, and they loved her back. Two months later, the Alatorres decided to sell their Monterey Hills condo and relocate to an Eagle Rock house with a yard and floor plan roomier for a child. About this same time, Lozano, who hadn’t had much involvement with Melinda, got upset when the little girl didn’t want to spend time with him. Lozano’s next move was to initiate a custody fight. It exposed a lot more than parenting techniques.

Chicanas/os and Mexican Americans in Contemporary Society

Soon, the Los Angeles Times began writing about how the Alatorres had financed their move into the Spanish-style house. The paper found that Mevorach had given Alatorre tens of thousands of dollars under the table and arranged a sham lease on the condo. Stories about money exchanges at greasy restaurants, bagmen, and mysterious new roofs tied to one of Alatorre’s political contributors had a Raymond Chandler feel. When those articles subsided, Alatorre’s alleged coke use snatched Times headlines. By 1998, it was unclear whether Alatorre would survive the onslaught. The judge overseeing the ongoing custody fight ordered a surprise drug test, and Alatorre was found to have coke in his system despite his proclamation he was clean. The same judge who’d once praised the Alatorres for their care of Melinda ordered her out of their presence. Alatorre’s credibility, the judge scolded, had been ‘‘totally shredded.’’ He’d ignited the biggest ethics scandal to hit L.A. since the final term of the Bradley administration. Bradley’s plunge began when it was revealed that he was a paid adviser to a bank doing business with the city. Alatorre’s crisis, by comparison, gave the public an excruciating glimpse into his narcotics use and personal relationships. Alatorre had once vowed he wouldn’t wind up like Bradley had a broken man sadly walking away from a job after overstaying his welcome but suddenly Alatorre was lunch meat in a media feeding frenzy. So many television news crews clogged his new front porch that a fence had to be installed. FBI agents pried into his affairs, with the District Attorney’s office not far behind. Supposed friends shunned him, unaware of his sinking health or tattered finances. Family members were sucked into the chaos, as well. For Angie Alatorre, who’d stood by her husband during the squall, having Melinda removed was the low point. She’d felt guilty that it was her side of the family that had caused her husband’s spiral. The drugs, however, were his doing. ‘‘The only time I’’ got angry ‘‘was when we lost Melinda because of Richard’s really dumb behavior and the judge sent her to go to my mother’s for a week,’’ she recalls. ‘‘I told (Richard) that if we didn’t get her back, ‘I’ll never forgive you for this.’ I didn’t have to say anything else for him to know things had to change.’’ The next year, Alatorre stunned his backers when he announced he would not seek re-election. He knew that while he’d probably win the election, it’d be a nasty contest that’d cut deeper into his kin. The fact that Melinda was too young to understand the fireworks above her was a blessing they didn’t want to exploit. RIDDEN TO THE GROUND Today, private-citizen Alatorre looks healthier than the public one, who often slouched enigmatically at meetings in his fine suits. Darrell Alatorre, Richard’s youngest son, said many people disbelieve him when he says how vibrant his dad has become. With the pressure off, he has time for chatty lunches, USC football games, walks around the Rose Bowl, and doting on Melinda, now a high school junior. Just don’t give his dad a home fix-it project because he is all thumbs, Darrell Alatorre laughs. The late-1990s, conversely, was a wagon-circling time the Alatorre clan would rather forget. The grand jury hauled lots of frightened people before it. Darrell Alatorre lost business clients worried about the stigma. His older brother, Derrick,

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relocated his family out of the area to relieve the pressure. Alatorre tried reassuring his family he was okay, but he wasn’t sleeping well or looking good. The stress contributed to a ruptured diaphragm requiring surgery in 1997 and 1998. Two years later he got prostate cancer. Today he’s healthy. ‘‘I didn’t worry about his sanity. I worried about his health!’’ Darrell Alatorre says. ‘‘Did I see fear in his eyes? Did he ever break down? Yeah, a couple times. Is that a picture a son wants to see in his father? No! The whole ordeal he went through was bullshit, though there was some truth to his past addiction. I remember asking him during the custody battle why he was doing all this, and he said, ‘Mijo, Melinda has nowhere else to go.’’’ Meanwhile, as the subpoenas and the stories about him flew, his friends and colleagues were puzzled. Why wasn’t he fighting back? His inner circle was baffled that he wasn’t holding a press conference to defend himself or announce a libel suit from accusations that many of them believed were untrue or sensationalized. Alatorre was a lot of things, but passive wasn’t part of the package. The Times, among other charges, had accused Alatorre’s cronies of paying him off through his wife’s event-planning business and charities. Where was the context about why they’d wanted the house, his backers asked. Where were the questions about why Richard was abusing? And where was the lowdown on Mevorach, who’d copped a deal with the feds, telling them that Alatorre had ‘‘extorted’’ him for cash when Mevorach had been currying Alatorre’s favor for years? Darrell Alatorre says he was ready to take on the Times when a writer friend at the paper tipped him off that it’d budgeted $500,000 for stories about the family and had hired private investigators to dig up dirt. A reporter who worked on the stories says there was no such budget item for these stories and no investigators were retained. ‘‘I couldn’t believe it,’’ Darrell Alatorre said. ‘‘It seemed such an astronomical amount of money. Later, I’d never seen the paper so demonize somebody.’’ Angie Alatorre says she and her husband’s longtime confidante Lou Moret didn’t always agree on tactics, but they thought their man should counterpunch. Moret, though, found that Alatorre just wanted out, and didn’t believe blood-smelling reporters with preconceptions about ethnic politicians would listen to him. ‘‘He didn’t think he took money for anything more improper than anyone else had,’’ says Moret, who ran Alatorre’s 1972 and 1974 Assembly campaigns. ‘‘He knew he’d been treated differently, and partly that’s because he’s Mexican and partly because of his reluctance to sell his viewpoint, philosophically. That’s how the cookie crumbles.… Richard wasn’t forced out. He wasn’t defeated. He wasn’t recalled.… But for the L.A. Times, he was an easy target.’’ For his part, Alatorre says it wasn’t until he left office and reflected back that he realized his spin into coke, self-doubt, and silence had been building for 30-odd years. Early on April 15, 1964, Alatorre’s first son, Derrick, was born at a Boyle Heights hospital. Ten hours later, the ecstasy crumbled when Richard’s father suffered a heart attack while painting a crib for his infant grandson and died. For Jos
e’s boy, the loss was ironic, wrenching, and most of all, lasting. Jos
e Alatorre, stove repairman and seventh-grade dropout, had always preached hard work and keeping personal problems private. While stoic, he prized ideals. If the national anthem were [sic] playing on TV, he’d make young Richard stand, though he didn’t always.

Chicanas/os and Mexican Americans in Contemporary Society

In passing away so abruptly, Jos
e never saw his string-bean son, then 21, mature from a student leader with a 60-hour-a-week job to one of the nimblest minds in a mostly white state legislature. Nor was he around to dispense wisdom when Richard’s weaknesses roared. ‘‘I never knew how much I blamed my dad for dying,’’ Alatorre confides. ‘‘It forced me to become something I wasn’t ready to be. I had to become head of a household, but I was still a kid. I had no constructive outlet for being hurt later in life. You don’t stuff things down in your soul and expect be happy.’’ Alcoholics Anonymous helped open his eyes, and he accepted that his addictive personality had shown even at age 14, when he chug-a-lugged some wine. By his 20s, liquor quieted his rage. He finally quit in 1988 after getting treatment, not allowing himself to lapse when the graft investigations revved up. It was the drug all over L.A. cocaine that he sought. (Drugs, it’s worth noting, are the one subject Alatorre refuses to detail except to say stories about him snorting at City Hall or with a buddy looking for city contracts were mostly false.) ‘‘Through AA, I now understand I am a grateful alcoholic,’’ he says. ‘‘We’re not normal. A normal person can have one drink and not 10 to 15. I know that if I took one drink, the run would be on.… I had so much happening in my life then, when the [stories hit], I didn’t know I was powerless.’’ Nor, some say, did he realize his baggage was slowly entombing him. ‘‘He started locking out friends who would’ve told him, ‘Don’t do that! What the f is wrong with you?’’’ Moret adds. ‘‘He became a refugee. He wasn’t making the right decisions. He got in trouble because he’s an addict. Even when he was drinking, it wasn’t because he liked it. It wasn’t wine or fine Scotch he used. It was Seven-and-Seven. Who drinks that?’’ THE AL CAPONE TREATMENT Thick pride may have also contributed to his troubles. By 1996, Alatorre’s machinations to funnel government work to Hispanic-run ventures struck many as heavyhanded, as did his connections to the East Los Angeles Community Union, Corboda Corp., and various MTA contractors seeking a piece of a $1-billion rail line through his district. Newly elected Council members didn’t fear him as others once had. In what turned out to be his last campaign, a political novice forced him into a runoff. ‘‘He didn’t want to give his detractors the pleasure of seeing the mighty stag taken down,’’ says Jones, the Pasadena activist. ‘‘He didn’t want to let folks in on the pain, and maybe that got him into trouble. Fidel Castro said in his famous speech: ‘You can find me guilty, but history will absolve me.’ When you look back at this period, people will appreciate that Richard didn’t cry when his enemies kicked him in the ass, but I guarantee you that his boots were full of blood.’’ Even after he left office, the bloodletting continued. When Alatorre was lined up with consulting work typical for ex-politicians with the L.A. Department of Water and Power and the Compton Community College District, the Times wrote about it, and officials nixed what could have been $70,000-a-year in income. A $114,000-ayear post with a state unemployment insurance board ended, too, when Alatorre settled with the Justice Department. His legal-defense bills topped $100,000, and to pay them he had to bust open his IRA and pay a $100,000 penalty for early withdrawal. This somewhat undercuts the

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notion he’d been stashing away money as a guy-on-the-take, as detractors suspected; there were no secret bank accounts. Because he’d always spent what he made, Alatorre says he ‘‘didn’t have the luxury of not working’’ and launched his consulting business. Dine with him and you glean four things: His cell phone never stops jangling, he wolfs bacon like air, and he can spice cuss words into the most delicate topic. The other f-word ‘‘felon’’ he doesn’t use. The idea that he is one scalds him. It just doesn’t seem to obsess him. If he has any satisfaction about his demise, it’s that a four-year, federal-led investigation of his links to people trying to buy his influence did not result in a major corruption charge. Instead, he pled to not disclosing $42,000 in illicit income on his ethics commission and tax filings. Some call this the ‘‘Al Capone’’ treatment: nailing a high-profile figure on a relatively incidental charge. No other big fish was nabbed, either. ‘‘By prosecuting me, I was making somebody’s career,’’ Alatorre says. ‘‘We ran the city me, Zev [Yaroslavsky], and John Ferraro when Bradley was in trouble. Even the Times said that. But certain people did not feel like I was the kind of guy who should be mayor, and what’s ironic is that I never wanted that.’’ Maybe not, but that doesn’t mean he’s short on ideas about how to get it. Still very much on his game, Alatorre will unleash a torrent of expletive-laden opinion about this year’s race. And if he’s really talking to Villaraigosa as much as he says he is, current Mayor Jim Hahn’s ears are burning. ‘‘Jimmy is like the T-ball mayor. I go back to when Jimmy first ran for City Controller, and I had the distinct impression he fell into politics. It’s not where his gut is,’’ Alatorre says. ‘‘Jimmy is a very honest guy. It’s just that he’s always around the edges on issues. If you asked his ex-aides, they’d say he’s lazy. He doesn’t live and breathe politics like his sister [Councilwoman Janice Hahn] does. [Former Gov.] Gray Davis was evil. He was driven. Jimmy isn’t driven. He’s just blah.’’ Alatorre does sees promise in Villaraigosa, saying, ‘‘I recognize Antonio’s shortcomings, but he has the best chance of getting done what L.A. needs,’’ adding: ‘‘We need someone who will work well with the City Council and Sacramento, someone who will get L.A. the goodies.’’ For instance, he notes that Hahn hasn’t even taken advantage of L.A.’s respected police chief, William Bratton, to get more cops or anti-terrorism money. ‘‘Bratton likes the notoriety here, but he’s so far up Jimmy Hahn’s butt, and Jimmy is so far up his, neither of them can see.… If I were mayor, I’d go put my arm around President Bush and say how much I liked his dad if it got us resources.’’ That is the kind of thinking that got results, and both the residents who recognize him strolling down Garfield Avenue and the powerful remember. Sympathy is another thing. ‘‘Richard Alatorre was clearly the smartest guy on the City Council when I was there; I admire and love him, but I don’t feel sorry for him,’’ says former Mayor Richard Riordan, now California’s Secretary of Education. ‘‘Judge him as he is today. [After all], we forgive murderers.’’ The family’s saga has ended better than any of them could have imagined four years ago happily. Alatorre has work aplenty and time with his family. Melinda, now a spunky teenager, worships ‘‘pops,’’ as protective of him as he is of her. Henry Lozano is a non-factor in their lives. The family even reads the Times.

Chicanas/os and Mexican Americans in Contemporary Society

There probably won’t be a beach house he had dreamed about as a young man, but c’est la vie. ‘‘I wake up in the morning,’’ he adds, ‘‘happy to be alive.’’ Source: Chip Jacobs, ‘‘Return of the Native,’’ Los Angeles City Beat, April 7, 2005 http://www. lacitybeat.com/article.php?id 1887&IssueNum 96. Courtesy of Chip Jacobs, http://chipjacobs.com/a returnof.html.

421. Excerpts from Erica Frankenberg, Chungmei Lee, and Gary Orfield, ‘‘A Multiracial Society with Segregated Schools: Are We Losing the Dream?’’ The Harvard Civil Rights Project originally produced the following report. Since then, Professor Gary Orfield has moved this project on segregated schools to the University of California Los Angeles. This project brings with it countless reports on the state of Latino education and the progress, or lack of it, that it has made since Brown v. the Board of Education (1954) that did not end segregation in the United States. In 2005, Latino students were more segregated than in 1954. And segregation was worsening. The effects of segregation are devastating in that schools in minority areas are invariably inferior to those in white middle-class areas. The school buildings are older and not maintained with the same care, and the teachers are less experienced and less qualified. The following original Harvard study is on the state of Latino education in the twenty-first century. It is important because without this and similar data it would be difficult to change education for the better. It establishes needed guideposts.

The growth in the Latino student population is happening throughout the country. Although the four primary states in [Table 6] with Latino enrollments greater than 150,000 in 2000 are in the West, there are also two states in the South, two in the Northeast, and one in the Midwest. Florida, for example, has had the highest rate of growth in Latino student enrollment in the last thirty years with an unparalleled increase of 614%; Illinois shot up 304% during the same time period. With an increase of almost 2 million since 1970, California has had the largest absolute change in Latino enrollment, a 270% increase. Unlike black students who have been the focus of hundreds of desegregation orders and Office for Civil Rights enforcement efforts, Latinos have remained increasingly segregated, due, in part, to demographic changes in the population and limited legal and policy efforts targeted to increasing desegregation for Latinos. Latinos were not included in most desegregation court orders due to their small presence in most Southern districts during the 1960s. As a result, Latino students have, until recently, consistently been more isolated from white students than the average black student [see Table 7]. Currently, the average Latino student goes to school where less than 30 percent of the school population is white.… The percentage of Latino students in predominantly minority schools has steadily increased since the 1960s and actually exceeded that of blacks in the 1980s. In the last decade, with the dismantling of desegregation orders and the resegregation of blacks, the level of black segregation is now comparable to that of Latinos: seven out of ten black and Latino students attend predominantly minority schools. The

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Table 6. Growth of Latino Enrollments, 1970 2000 States

California Texas New York Florida Illinois Arizona New Jersey New Mexico Colorado

1970

2000

706,900 565,900 316,600 65,700 78,100 85,500 59,100 109,300 84,281

2,613,480 1,646,508 533,631 469,362 315,446 297,703 201,509 160,708 159,547

Enrollment Change (1970 2000)

Percent Change (1970 2000)

1,906,580 1,080,608 217,031 403,662 237,346 212,203 142,409 51,408 75,226

269.7 190.9 68.6 614.4 303.9 248.2 240.9 47.0 89.3

Source: DBS Corp. 1982; 1987; 2000 2001 NCES Common Core of Data Public School Universe.

Table 7. Most Segregated States for Latino Students, 2000 2001

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

New York California Texas New Mexico Rhode Island Illinois New Jersey Arizona Florida Connecticut Maryland Massachusetts Pennsylvania Nevada Georgia Colorado Louisiana Virginia Kansas Washington

13.3 13.3 16.6 17.4 20.0 25.5 25.8 28.2 29.3 29.6 31.1 35.2 35.3 39.1 44.5 46.0 47.8 49.6 52.7 55.3

Rank % Whites in School of Typical Latino

Rank % of Latinos in 90 100% Minority Schools

Rank % of Latinos in Majority White Schools

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

New York Texas California New Jersey Illinois Florida Pennsylvania Connecticut Arizona Rhode Island New Mexico Maryland Massachusetts Wisconsin Colorado Georgia Indiana Louisiana Michigan Nevada

58.7 46.9 44.0 40.7 40.0 30.0 27.6 27.1 25.6 25.4 24.8 21.1 18.8 16.7 15.2 12.6 11.2 10.3 10.3 8.3

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

Source: 2000 2001 NCES Common Core of Data Public School Universe.

New York California Texas New Mexico Illinois New Jersey Rhode Island Arizona Florida Connecticut Maryland Massachusetts Pennsylvania Nevada Georgia Colorado Louisiana Virginia Delaware North Carolina

18.4 21.0 22.5 27.5 28.7 28.8 30.5 32.6 32.7 35.7 36.0 39.6 40.3 41.9 45.8 46.3 48.8 49.5 52.4 52.7

Chicanas/os and Mexican Americans in Contemporary Society

percentage of Latinos in predominantly minority schools is slightly higher than that of blacks (76% for Latinos, 72% for blacks). More Latinos than ever before are also now in intensely segregated schools (90 100% minority), rising from 462,000 in 1968 to 2.86 million in 2000, an increase of 520% in a little over 30 years. After a low of 23% in the late 1960s, the percentage of Latinos attending these schools has consistently increased to reach an unprecedented 37% in 2000.… Source: Erica Frankenberg, Chungmei Lee, and Gary Orfield, ‘‘A Multiracial Society with Segregated Schools: Are We Losing the Dream?’’ The Civil Rights Project, University of California at Los Angeles, January 2003, p. 32 33, 44, 52. http://www.civilrightsproject.ucla.edu/research/ reseg03/resegregation03.php.

422. Pew Hispanic Center, ‘‘Fact Sheet: Latinos and the War in Iraq,’’ January 4, 2007 The Pew Hispanic Center at the University of Southern California continues as the premier think tank on Latino-related studies. The following study examines the attitude of Latinos toward the war in Iraq. This study shows that two out of three Latinos believe that U.S. armed forces should be brought home. Unlike in other wars, the Latino population has been critical, with more Latinos disapproving of the war than has the general population. It is significant because in past wars Latinos, especially Mexicans and Puerto Ricans, believed that they had to pay society with their blood. The report is important because it memorializes why Latinos are against the war.

Two out of every three Latinos now believe that U.S. troops should be brought home from Iraq as soon as possible and only one in four thinks the U.S. made the right decision in using military force, according to a new survey by the Pew Hispanic Center. Hispanics have generally expressed more negative views toward the war compared with the rest of the population. The latest survey, however, shows an even stronger opposition on the part of Latinos, especially when it comes to keeping troops in Iraq. Two-thirds of Hispanics (66%) now favor bringing troops home as soon as possible, up from 51% in January 2005 [see Table 8]. Conversely, the share of Latinos who favored keeping troops in Iraq until the situation there has stabilized has declined from 37% to 19%. Native-born Hispanics are generally more supportive of the war than their foreign-born counterparts. But in the latest survey, the native born are almost as adamant about bringing troops home as the foreign born (62% vs. 68% respectively). The general public also is more inclined to bring the troops home, but not to the same extent as Hispanics. A survey of the general population by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press in December found that one in two Americans (50%) favored bringing troops home as soon as possible, up from 41% in January 2005. The changing attitude toward the war is also evident in the answer to a basic question: Do you think the U.S. made the right decision or the wrong decision in using military force against Iraq? Since 2004, a third or more of Latinos responded that using military force was the right decision. In the latest survey, only 24% of

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Table 8. Do You Think the U.S. Should Keep Military Troops in Iraq until the Situation Has Stabilized, or Do You Think the U.S. Should Bring Its Troops Home As Soon As Possible? January 2005

Keep troops in Iraq Bring troops home Don’t know/ no answer

December 2006

Total Latino

U.S. Born

Foreign Born

Total Latino

U.S. Born

Foreign Born

37 51

47 46

29 55

19 66

28 62

15 68

12

6

15

15

10

17

Latinos agreed with that assessment [see Table 9]. That is down from 39% in April/ June 2004 and from 31% in August/October 2006. By comparison, 42% of the general public believes the U.S. made the right decision in using military force, according to the survey by the Pew Research Center. The Pew Hispanic Center survey was conducted by telephone from December 5 to 20, 2006, among a nationally representative sample of 1,006 Hispanics age 18 and older. The sample was drawn using a stratified Random Digit Dialing methodology. Interviews were conducted by bilingual interviewers in English or Spanish, according to the respondents’ preferences. The results for the full sample have a margin of error of þ/ 3.1%. All fieldwork was conducted for the Center by International Communications Research of Media, PA. LATINO ATTITUDES ON THE WAR IN IRAQ The Pew Hispanic Center has regularly tracked Latino public opinion on the war in Iraq since February 2003. As with the rest of the American public, Hispanic views on the war have shifted over time, often in direct response to developments in Iraq. The quick end to the first phase of combat produced a spike, for example, but the subsequent violence and the mounting casualties in 2003 eroded support among Hispanics. The capture of Saddam Hussein in mid-December 2003 rallied Hispanic public opinion, but not to the levels seen shortly after the war started. Since then, Latino views on the war have been marked by increased pessimism. This fact sheet uses three questions that have been asked in surveys to track how the perception of the war in Iraq has changed among Latinos in the U.S. While support for keeping troops in Iraq has eroded across the board, the decline has been especially steep among Latinos. In January 2005, a majority of Hispanics (51%) were in favor of bringing troops home, compared with 41% among the general population. In the latest survey, twothirds of Latinos (66%) were in favor compared with half (50%) among the general population. Fewer than one in five (19%) of Hispanics now favor keeping troops in Iraq, a decrease from 37% in January 2005 and 50% in January 2004, when the question was asked in a slightly different way. The Pew Research Center survey in December

Table 9. Do You Think the U.S. Made the Right Decision or the Wrong Decision in Using Military Force Against Iraq? April June 2004

Right decision Wrong decision Don’t know/ no answer

January 2005

August October, 2006

December 2006

Total Latino

U.S. Born

Foreign Born

Total Latino

U.S. Born

Foreign Born

Total Latino

U.S. Born

Foreign Born

Total Latino

U.S. Born

Foreign Born

39 48 13

50 42 8

32 51 17

37 51 12

48 46 5

28 54 18

31 56 12

40 52 7

26 59 16

24 50 26

40 42 18

15 55 30

December 2003

Very well Fairly well Not too well Not well at all Don’t know/no answer

January 2004

December 2006

Total Latino

U.S. Born

Foreign Born

Total Latino

U.S. Born

Foreign Born

Total Latino

U.S. Born

Foreign Born

16 26 32 17

15 33 35 14

17 21 30 19

30 32 24 9

25 46 21 6

33 23 25 11

8 11 26 42

11 17 33 34

6 7 23 46

9

4

13

5

2

8

13

5

17

Chicanas/os and Mexican Americans in Contemporary Society

Table 10. How Well Do You Think the U.S. Military Effort in Iraq Is Going?

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2006 found that among the general population 44% were in favor, down from 54% in January 2005. Described another way, the share of Latinos who favored keeping troops in Iraq declined by 18 percentage points between January 2005 and December 2006. Among the general population, the drop was 10 percentage points. Even among Latinos who said the U.S. made the right decision in using military force against Iraq, 43% still supported bringing troops home as soon as possible. Native-born Latinos were roughly split on this question in 2005. However, in the latest survey, the native-born have significantly swung in favor of bringing troops home. Almost two in three (62%) are now in favor of withdrawal, up from 46%. A solid majority of foreign-born Hispanics (55%) were in favor of bringing troops home in 2005 and that share has now increased to more than two-thirds (68%). Support for bringing the troops home is stronger among those with lower incomes and lower levels of education. Three out of four (75%) Latinos with household incomes of $25,000 or less favored this option, as did 72% of those with a high school education or less. By comparison, among those with household incomes of $75,000 or more, 42% supported bringing troops home. And among Hispanics with college degrees or higher, 57% favored this option. Perceptions of the war in Iraq vary depending on nativity, with foreign-born Hispanics in general more disapproving. In 2004 and 2005, for example, a plurality among native-born Latinos believed the U.S. had made the right decision in using military force. Even as attitudes toward the war turned negative, 40% of native-born Latinos still felt this way in the two surveys taken in 2006. Among foreign-born Hispanics, however, a majority has said using military force was the wrong decision and that number has pretty much held steady since 2004. The latest survey also shows an increase in the number of Latinos who express uncertainty on this question. About one in four said they did not know whether the U.S. had made the right decision or the wrong decision or they simply refused to answer, an increase from 12% in the survey conducted between August and October 2006. The uncertainty is more prevalent among foreign-born Hispanics. Hispanics by a wide margin believe that the U.S. military effort is faring poorly in Iraq. More than two-thirds (68%) said it was either going not too well or not well at all [see Table 10]. Latinos are generally of a mind with the American public in this negative assessment of the military effort in Iraq. In the December 2006 Pew Research Center poll of the general population, 64% of Americans agreed that the military effort was going not too well or not well at all. But while relatively few Hispanics (19%) said the military effort was going either very well or fairly well, in the general population almost a third (32%) cast the military effort in a positive light. This question was asked of Latinos in December 2003, after a period when American casualties were high and the war was not going well and then again a month later, in January of 2004, shortly after the capture of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. As with the rest of the American public, the capture produced a significant spike in support among Latinos. A majority (52%) said in January 2004 that the U.S. military effort was going either very well or fairly well, up from 42% just a month earlier. Today, two years later, only about one in five Hispanics agree with this assessment.

Chicanas/os and Mexican Americans in Contemporary Society C 2007 Source: Fact Sheet, Latinos and the War in Iraq, Pew Hispanic Center, January 4, 2007,
Pew Hispanic Center, a Pew Research Center Project, www.pewhispanic.org. http://pewhispanic. org/factsheets/factsheet.php?Factsheet ID 27.

423. Jorge Mariscal, ‘‘They Died Trying to Become Students—The Future for Latinos in an Era of War and Occupation,’’ 2003 Jorge Mariscal is a professor of literature at the University of California at San Diego. Mariscal is a Vietnam Veteran and has written frequently on the topic of the war in Iraq. Like many Latino and Chicano academics he is concerned about the military targeting Latinos for military recruitment. In the following article, Mariscal says why he is against the war, basing much of his opinion on his own war experience.

With the U.S. assault on Iraq moving from the invasion to the occupation phase and the saber rattling continuing to echo out of the Pentagon, it is time to reflect on where the Latino community in the United States finds itself within the larger context of the New World Order. Like many working class youth, Latinos and Latinas who buy into the vision of military service as a short cut to college or job training are simply looking for a way to grab a piece of the American Dream. But the reality of that dream continues to be relatively distant for the Chicano/Mexicano community. More specifically, alternatives to military service available to Mexicano youth are significantly fewer than for other groups. Until this fact is understood, the fundamental injustice of Mexican and Chicano youth dying to ‘‘liberate’’ Iraq (or any other developing nation) cannot be fully grasped. One of the more remarked-upon facts during the early days of the war was the number of Spanish-surnamed soldiers and marines killed or missing in action. The sense that Latino communities were disproportionately sacrificing their youth once again, as they had in Viet Nam, was widespread. Media outlets began to comment on the fact that Latinos in the military are over represented in combat and supply units (especially in the Army and Marines) and thus more likely to see hazardous duty. The American public learned that thousands of non-citizens were now in the U.S. military (approximately 3% of enlisted personnel, a third of whom are from Latin America). The Bush administration had established a fast track naturalization process for foreign recruits in July 2002, as part of the ‘‘war on terror.’’ Instead of waiting three years before applying for citizenship, green-card holders in the armed forces who entered after September 11, 2001, could apply immediately for citizenship. Such offers are often granted in limited form during periods of ‘‘military hostilities.’’ (At the time of this writing, John McCain, Ted Kennedy, and eight other senators introduced a bill that would reduce permanently the waiting period from three to two years and provide benefits for non-citizen spouses of non-citizen soldiers killed in action.) Although the Bush Executive Order contained no guarantees that citizen status would be granted or even expedited, the rumor that automatic citizenship was being granted for military service began to circulate in Latino communities both here and abroad. The number of permanent resident enlistees jumped from 300 a month before the fast track reform to 1,300 a month. Mexican nationals reportedly flooded consulates attempting to volunteer.

1083

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Voices of the U.S. Latino Experience

Both citizen and non-citizen recruits most often enlist as a way to get an education, seduced by the recruiters’ promise of technical training or money for college contingent upon an honorable discharge. For the permanent residents who found themselves in Iraq, their circuitous path to college carried them from Latin America to the U.S. to Baghdad, al-Nasiriyah, and Mosul. Some of them will not be attending classes as they and their families had hoped. Instead they died in the line of duty and subsequently received posthumous citizenship amidst much fanfare and flag waving. Many in Latino communities, including some parents of the fallen soldiers, sought refuge in traditional patriotic sentiments. The father of Colombiano Diego Rinc
on, an Army private killed in a suicide bombing, was quoted as saying, ‘‘The only thing that keeps me going now is to make sure that he’s buried as an American. That will be my dream come true’’ (USA Today, 4/9/03). Writing on the HispanicVista.com website about the death of Guatemalan national Jos
e Guti
errez, Gil Contreras wrapped himself in the flag, ‘‘honor,’’ and ‘‘Semper Fi’’ before criticizing Chicano and Chicana antiwar protestors for complaining too much. The subtitle of Contreras’s article made the cynical assertion that Latino casualties proved that ‘‘Latinos can be more than gang members and criminals.’’ Not unlike assimilationists from earlier periods, Contreras apparently prefers dead heroes to living and productive citizens. For other Latinas and Latinos, the bestowal of posthumous citizenship was bitterly ironic. Did Mexican or Central American immigrants have to die to win the approval of the majority of American society? Or as an old Chicano ballad from the Viet Nam war put it: ‘‘Now should a man/Should he have to kill/In order to live/ Like a human being/ In this country?’’ If Latinos were good enough for military service (so much so that the military academies continue to employ affirmative action policies), why were they not good enough to receive a decent education? Finally, how could one reconcile the fact that foreign nationals from Latin America were fighting with the U.S. military in Iraq at the same time that armed vigilante ‘‘ranchers’’ hunted Mexican workers along the Mexico-Arizona border for sport? Despite the fact that Latino communities were divided on the issue, initiatives for expedited citizenship began to proliferate. Two senators from Georgia, where the Latino population increased by 299.6% during the decade of the 1990s, introduced a bill that would make posthumous citizenship automatic. Leaders in the Catholic Church made similar recommendations. Little was said about the fact that posthumous citizenship was a purely symbolic gesture with no rights or privileges accruing to the deceased person’s family (last week, Rep. Darrell Issa [R-Ca] proposed automatic citizenship for the surviving spouse and children of non-citizen soldiers killed in battle and given posthumous citizenship). WHY LATINOS AND LATINAS ENLIST ‘‘Why should you consider getting an education in the Navy?’’ [cut to aerial shot of aircraft carrier] ‘‘This is one of your classrooms.’’ U.S. Navy television ad, April 2003. On one level, Latino and Latina GIs are no different from other poor youth drawn into the web spun by military recruiters. It has been widely reported that former POW Jessica Lynch, the daughter of a poor family from Appalachia, joined because she wanted to be a teacher. According to his former mentor, the young

Chicanas/os and Mexican Americans in Contemporary Society

man from Guatemala, Jos
e Guti
errez, joined the Marines to get an education. Twenty-one year old Francisco Martinez Flores, killed when his tank fell into the Euphrates, enlisted so that he could go to college and become a stockbroker or an FBI agent, according to his friends (Betsy Streisand, ‘‘Latin Heroes,’’ U.S. News and World Report, 4/14/03). In short, what motivated these young people to enlist was less the defense of ‘‘our freedom’’ or ‘‘honor’’ than it was simply to increase their access to a decent education and a better life. The myth that the primary mission of the armed forces is education was given a boost by former Secretary of the Army Louis Caldera during the Clinton years. Throughout the 1990s, the Army was not meeting its enlistment quotas. Caldera and Pentagon planners realized that Latinos were the fastest growing population in terms of young people of military age, and they began to pitch the Army’s program offering to pay for GED certificate training (roughly equivalent to a high school diploma). The goal, according to Caldera, was to increase access to the ‘‘Hispanic market’’ as a major recruiting pool. Aircraft carriers became ‘‘classrooms.’’ The promise of education sat in an uneasy relationship to other more traditional messages having to do with what the Pentagon perceived to be Latino ‘‘machismo.’’ The racializing undertones of this approach cannot be ignored. An article in the ArmyLink News pointed out that many of the surnames on the Viet Nam Memorial were Spanish and that three soldiers captured during the Kosovo conflict were of Mexican descent. The author’s conclusion? ‘‘By these and many other measures, Hispanics are one of America’s more martially inclined ethnic groups’’ (Sydney J. Freedberg, Jr., ‘‘Not Enough GI Jos
es,’’ ArmyLink News, August 1999). Some recruiters reported that even those Mexican American recruits who ‘‘tested out of the infantry’’ (i.e., scored high enough to qualify for other military jobs) opted to enter the infantry anyway (this despite a 1999 Rand study that explained low numbers of minorities in Special Operations units because of their ‘‘preference for occupations with less risk’’). Caldera himself claimed that Hispanics were ‘‘predisposed’’ to military service even as he argued that the Army provided the ‘‘best education in the world.’’ And so the Pentagon launched a massive publicity campaign targeting the Hispanic market. ‘‘$30,000 for college’’ claimed the glitzy ads although the fine print did not point out that very few veterans would ever see such amounts of money. Nor was it mentioned that longitudinal studies show that people who go directly to college earn more money over the length of a career than those who enter the military first. ‘‘Education’’ became the recruiter’s buzzword because the Pentagon had learned from studies contracted out to the Rand Corporation and other think tanks that Latino and Latina recruits joined the military primarily in search of ‘‘civilian job transferability.’’ With the possible exception of careers in law enforcement, however, small arms expertise and truck driving did not translate well into civilian success. Military service does not close the economic gaps separating the majority of Latinos from the rest of society but potentially widens them. CHICANOS/MEXICANOS AND THE LACK OF OPTIONS According to the September 2002 Interim Report of the President’s Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans, ethnic Mexicans in the United States fall below every other Latino group ‘‘on almost every social and economic indicator.’’ First-generation Mexican immigrants, who make up 54%

1085

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Voices of the U.S. Latino Experience

of all legal Latin American immigrants, have significantly reduced life chances than their U.S.-born Mexican American counterparts. High school drop-out rates of around 30% for U.S.-born Mexican Americans are bad enough, but the rate more than doubles to 61% for new immigrants. Although Mexican Americans do better in the field of education than their recently arrived counterparts, when their educational achievement is compared to every other Latino subgroup they lag behind. Among all Latinos over the age of 25, for example, only 10.8% of ethnic Mexicans hold a bachelor’s degree or higher compared to 13.9% for Puerto Ricans and 18.1% for Cuban Americans (2002 Interim Report). Although Latinos have a high rate of participation in the labor force, over 11% of Latino workers live in poverty. About 7% of Latinos with full-time jobs were still living below the poverty line in 2001 (compared to 4.4% of African Americans and 1.7% for whites). Among all private sector employees in the U.S., 41.5% are considered blue collar, but 63.5% of all Latinos hold blue-collar jobs (U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission 1998). In 2002, 61% of all workers in agricultural production were Latinos, the vast majority of Mexican descent. While nearly 11% of non-Hispanic whites earn more than $75,000 a year, only 2% of all Latinos earn as much. Among all high school graduates who attend graduate and professional programs, Latinos make up only 1.9% (compared to 3% Black, 3.8% Whites, and 8.8% Asian). One could elaborate further this bleak picture of what the future holds for Latino communities. The paucity of good union jobs and the decline in public funding for cultural workers only adds to the sense of diminished opportunities. Is it any wonder, in the face of these daunting material conditions, that young Latino and Latina faces are filling the lowest ranks of the military in the lowest-tech occupations? As they do so, the pipeline of Latino and Latina teachers, doctors, and other professionals continues to dry up, a fact that will have devastating consequences for our communities for decades to come. So Latino blood now flows in the ancient waters of the Tigris and Euphrates. A historical irony of stunning proportions that the spirits of the descendants of the great indigenous civilizations of Mesoamerica now mingle with those of the heirs of ancient Mesopotamia. What can we say of the young Latino men who sacrificed their lives in Iraq? That they fought without knowing their enemy, played their role as pawns in a geopolitical chess game devised by arrogant bureaucrats, and died simply trying to get an education; trying to have a fair shot at the American Dream that has eluded the vast majority of Latinos for over a century and a half; dying as soldiers who just wanted to be students. Source: Jorge Mariscal, ‘‘They Died Trying to Become Students The Future for Latinos in an Era of War and Occupation,’’ CounterPoint, Hispanic Vista, April 28, 2003.

Index Abasolo, Mariano, 10 Abbott, Robert Sengstacke, 569 Abolitionists, 511; Nicaragua, 245 46; Texas annexation, 83 85; Whitman, Walt, 94 95 Abolition of slavery, 30, 1003; Cuban independence, 265 68; Mexico, 37 38; Spanish colonies, 298 Abortion, 783 85, 877 78 Abraham Lincoln Brigade, 548 49 Absentee ownership, 459 Access to council, 698 701 Acci
on Feminista Domincana, 537 38 Acculturation, 807 9 Acevedo Vil
a, An
ıbal, 962 Acevez, Pedro, 885 Activists: Albiz Campos, Pedro, 535 37; California cotton picker strike, 594 95; Chicano migrant workers, 884 85; deJesus, Edgar, and Puerto Rican Rights, 777 78; Espionage Act of 1917, 414; foreign-born protection, 1004; Garc
ıa, Jes
us ‘‘Chuy,’’ 1039 44; Iraq invasion and Latino, 1050 52; McCarran-Walter Act, 740 46; New York City Puerto Rican, 533 35; Pacific Northwest students, 884 87; Pallares, Jes
us, 610 15; Pantoja, Antonia, 764 73; Spanish Civil War, 5 48 49; women workers and organizing, 604 10. See also Community organizing; Labor organizing Acu~ na, Rodolfo F., 997 99, 1044 47, 1050 52 Adams, John Quincy, 15 Addams, Jane, 511 Adobe ceiling, 1065 69 Adolfo Romo v. Tempe School District, 483 84

Adoptions, 365 66 Adult education, 478 Affirmative action, 887, 893 903; bar examination discrimination, 903 4; California abolition, 1027 28 AFL-CIO, 1053 57; immigration reform, 1053 54 African Americans, 50, 618 19, 733 34, 791; Black Panther Party, 775; Caribbean people kinship, 428 32; Cuban exiles and, 755 56; emigration to Latin America, 225 26; Puerto Ricans, 649 50, 749, 750; Puerto Rico, 636 38; school segregation, 991 African culture: Haiti, 6, 428 32; Puerto Rico, 317 19 Africans: Cuban slave population, 255; Puerto Rico, 317 19 Afro-Cubans, 516, 523 Aggression: Euro-Americans in Texas, 25; slavery and U.S. expansionism, 100 101; U.S. territorial expansionism, 95 100; U.S. war against Mexico, 88 Agnew, Spiro, 756 Agricultural labor: automobiles, 500; California cotton strike, 591 95; guest workers in Texas, 720; Hawaii plantations and Puerto Rican, 319 20; Mexican immigrant education, 478 79; Mexicans and, 572 73; Puerto Rican emigration to Hawaii, 454 55; Puerto Rico, 316 17, 545 46; repatriated Mexicans, 588; Spanish Americans in Colorado, 498 500; U.S.-Mexico guest worker program, 720 21; water and Arizona labor shortages, 484 86 Agricultural workers: Chinese Exclusion Act, 353; guest worker programs,

1088

Index Agricultural workers (continued) 1057 58; organizing in Imperial Valley and Los Angeles, 502 3 Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee, 821 Agriculture: commercialization in Puerto Rico, 319 20; Mexican, 337; Mexican immigrant employment, 370 71; Mexican immigrants in U.S., 395 98; Puerto Rico, 464; Puerto Rico farmers, 316 17; Puerto Rico population and, 422 23; railroads and Mexican, 343 45; Rio Grande River, 149 Alabama, 1034, 1035 Alamo, 56 60, 63 67, 68, 337, 727 29 Alatorre, Darrell, 1073 74 Alatorre, Jos
e, 1074 75 Alatorre, Richard, 1069 Alatorre, Soledad ‘‘Chole,’’ 792 Albizu Campos, Pedro, 535 37, 549 51, 560, 561, 643 Alcaraz, Ram
on, 102 5 De Aldama, Juan, 10 Alianza Federal de Merceds, 922 Alianza Hispano-Americana, 390 92, 483, 486 Alianza of Pueblos and Pobladores, 866 Alice, Texas, 150 Alien and Sedition Acts, 414, 467 Aliens: Mexicans in Arizona schools, 478 79; mutual aid societies, 486; women naturalization status, 479 80 Alinsky, Saul, 820, 904 Alinsky Institute, 904 Alioto, Joseph, 880 Allee, Alfred Y., Sr., 855 56 De Allende, Ignacio, 10 Allende, Salvador, 760 63 Alliance for Progress, 757 Alliance of Towns and Settlers, 866 Alliance Party, 459 Alpirez, Julio Roberto, 1002 Altamiranda, Pedro, 949, 951 Alurista, 830 Alvardo, Atilano, 164 Alvardo, Ernestine M., 476 77
Alvarez, Carlos, 754 Alv
arez, Juan C., 724 American-born Spaniards, 11 American Civil Liberties Union, 549, 559 60, 722 American Committee for Protection of Foreign Born, 722 24

American Council on Education, 530 American Federation of Labor, 291 92, 412, 502 3 American Friends Service Committee, 722 American GI Forum, 703, 714, 793 94, 797 American Historical Association, 418 American Indian Movement, 886, 923 Americanism, 468 75 Americanization: bilingual education, 527 28, 530 31; Latino immigrants, 467 514; Mexicans and, 477 78; Puerto Ricans, 459 61, 524 25; resistance to, 603 4; schools, 584; U.S. language policy, 455 57 American Me (Griffith), 729 33 American Sentinel (newsletter), 941 Amnesty for undocumented immigrants, 45, 1004, 1012, 1038, 1052 57 Anarchists: Capetillo, Luisa, 333 36; cigar makers unions, 291; gender relations, 876; Mag
on, Ricardo Flores, 377, 384 89; Mexicans, 485, 690; mine workers strike, 412; Red Scare, 480; Romero Rosa, Ram
on, 317 Anarchy: American genius, 409; border region, 166; constitutional government, 23; Haiti, 431; Mexican government, 26 27; Mexican independence, 12; Nicaragua, 243, 447; races and, 92 93; social order from, 388; South American, 470; Spanish republics, 249; Texas independence, 52, 55; United States, 474 Anglo-Americans, 150, 195 97 Anna, Santa, 104 Annexation: California, 340; Cuba by U.S., 235 42, 253 54; Mexican citizenship rights, 338 43; Santo Domingo by U.S., 268 71; Texas, 61 62, 74 75, 81, 82 83, 85 87; U.S.Mexican border, 115 48 Anti-Americanism, 589 90 Anti-capitalism, 661 62 Anti-Castro dissidents, 752, 965 Anti-Castro programs, 754 55 Anti-Catholicism, 75 Anti-colonialism: Monroe Doctrine, 27 29; Puerto Rico, 750, 787 Anti-communism: Cuban exiles and, 753; Somoza, Anastasio, and U.S., 790 Anti-foreign-born attitudes, of Americans, 467

Index 1089 Anti-immigrant forces, legislation and, 1012 Anti-immigrant groups, Tanton, John, agenda for, 1007 12 Antimiscegenation, 757 Anti-war protests, 848 50 Apache, 123 Arag
on, Regina, 963 65 Arana, Antonia, 554 56 Arandas, Mexico, 493 96 Arbenz, Jacobo, 652 Ar
evalo, Juan Jos
e, 653 Argentina, 274 Arizona, 107, 116, 121 22, 140, 423; adoptions by Mexicans, 365 66; bilingual education abolition, 1028 31; Bisbee deportation, 412 13; border closure and, 737 40; depression life in Morenci, 595 99; employment discrimination, 707; Mexican agricultural labor, 572; Mexican Americans in, 366 67; mine auxiliary workers strike, 1006 7; miner strike, 360 65; New Mexico statehood, 394; Plan de San Diego, 409 10; Puerto Rican workers, 454; race war in, 407 8; Romo v. Tempe School District, 483 84; schools and Mexican aliens, 478 79; Urrea, Teresa de, 350 53; water and Mexican labor shortages, 484 86 Arizona National Guard, 666 69 Arkansas, 423 26 Arkansas River, 16 Armed forces: Guatemala-U.S. relations, 1000 1002; Latinos in Iraq, 1079 83; Mexican American service, 663 65; Spanish in Mexico, 10. See also Military service Armed Forces of the National Liberation (FALN), 955 56 Armijo, Manuel, 74 Army Appropriations Act, 328 29 Army of Liberation and Freedom (Cuba), 226 Arrellano, David, 724 Arson, 868 71 Ashurst, Henry F., 560 61 ASPIRA Club Federation, 764 73 Assassinations: CIA operations, 653 55; Dominican extra-territorial, 658; Truman, Harry S, attempted, 655 Assimilation, 487 88; Americanism, 468 75; Arizona schools, 478 79;

bilingualism, 455 57; immigration policies and, 1012; Mexican Americans, 149, 1005; Texas, 149, 618 Atchison, Topeka, and Santa F
e Railroad, 344 Atlantic-Pacific canal, 218 19, 220, 250 Atrocities, 105 7; Tlatelolco massacre, 818 19 August Twenty-Ninth Movement (ATM), 924 25 Aulette, Judy, 1006 7 Austin, Maud Mason, 350 53 Austin, Stephen F., 25 27, 29 30, 53 56, 73 Austin, Texas, 617 18 Austin Colony, 29 30 Automobiles, 500 Autonomist Army of Central America, 443 Avil
es, Sijisfredo, 848 Ayres, Ed Duran, 683 84 Aztl
an, 830 33, 856 65, 878 79, 1032 33 Babbitt, Bruce, 1006 Baby Boom Generation, 791 Baca, Herman, 848 50 Baca, Joe, 1033 Back-to-Mexico movements, 179; Retes, Manuel, 180 81 Bacon, David, 139 43, 1047 49, 1052 57 Badillo, Herman, 774 75 B
aez, Alberto, 546 47, 746 47 B
aez, Buenaventura, 268 71 B
aez, Joan, 746 Baez, Mauricio, 658 Bailey, Benjamin B., 136 Baja, California, 173, 249 50, 384 Bakke, Allan, 893 903 Bakke case. See Regents of the University of California v. Bakke Baldenegro, Sal, 848 Baldwin, Roger, 722 Bancroft, Hubert Howe, 173 Bandits, 149; California Rangers, 143 46; Cortina, Juan N., 149 51; MexicanTexas cross border, 162 65; Murrieta, Joaqu
ın, 139 43; social, 149; V
asquez, Tiburcio, 146 47 Baneneli, Juan, 104 5 Banking, international remittance market, 1061 62 Bank of America, 1062 Barbadians, 516

1090

Index Barcel
o, Antonio R., 440 Barcel
o, Carlos Romero, 787 88 Barrera, Elma, 876 79 Barrios: Chicano control, 831; Chicano Movement campus organizing, 841 42; San Francisco, mission district, 879 83 Barrios, Pedro, 522 24 Bartlett, James, 115, 120 21 Bartlett, James Russell, 117 18, 118 20 Baseball, 523 Batista Zald
ıvar, Ruben Flugencio, 656, 659 60, 752 Battle of Alamo, 727 29 Battle of Buena Vista, 104 5 Battle of Cerro-Gordo, 105 Battles of Palo Alto and Le Resaca, 103 4 Bay of Pigs Invasion, 759 Beers, George A., 148 Belize, 219, 234 Bell, Horace, 143 46 Bell, Josiah, 25 27 Benavides, Dulce C., 1060 62 Benavides, Philip James, 678 80 Bencosme, Sergio, 658 Bendixen, Sergio, 1060 62 Benedict, Margaret Hill, 455 57 Berenson, Lori, 1002 Bermudez, Francisco, 1000 1002 Bernard, John T., 559, 560 Bernstein, Leonard, 751 Berthier, Alexandre, 2 Bertlet, Chip, 938 43 Betances, Ram
on, 254 Betancourt, Sostenes, 186 90 Beveridge, Albert, 311 16 Beverley, James R., 538 42 Bexar County, Texas, 41 48, 56 58, 795. See also San Antonio, Texas Beyette, Beverly, 682 83, 682 883 Biberman, Herbert J., 735 Bigler, John, 138 39 Bilingual education: abolition, 1003, 1028 31; ASPIRA, 773; Galarza, Ernesto, 813 18; Lau v. Nichols, 887 90; National Education Association report, 809 13; New Mexico constitution, 395; Puerto Ricans, 527 31; segregated schools, 575 83 Bilingualism, 455 57 Biltmore Six, 868 71 Birth control, 756 58, 877 78, 883 84

Bisbee deportation, 407, 412 13 Black Civil Rights Movement, 792, 797 Blackmore, William, 195 97 Black nationalism, 225 26 Black Panther Party, 749, 775 Black Puerto Ricans, 317 19 Blacks, 134 35, 796 97 Black Warrior (ship), 235 Blades, Rub
en, 951 53 Bland
on, Danilo, 947 Bliss, George, 591 Blood Christmas, 1044, 1046 Bocanegra, Juan Jos
e, 886 Bogardus, Emory S., 505 7 Boland Amendments, 943 Bol
ıvar, Sim
on, 21 24 Bonaparte, Napoleon, 2 6 Bonilla, Frank, 632 34 Boos, Michael, 940 Border: closure and immigrant status, 737 40; Cortina, Juan N., activity on U.S.-Mexican, 151 52, 162 65; crossing toxic bath protest, 418 20; Euro-American interests south of, 215 71; fencing of U.S., 1003 4; fighting, 151 62, 162 65; GuatemalanMexican, 992 95; Mexican-U.S. conflict, 165 68; Mexico-Texas, 149 72; Mexico-U.S., 115 48; Rio Grande and U.S. Mexican, 123 24; steeling across, 163 65; U.S. claims, 95 100; U.S.-Mexican, 115 48; U.S. westward expansion, 25 Border Patrol, 737 40 Border raids: Garza Rodr
ıguez, Catarino Erasmo, 345 48; Mag
on, Ricardo Flores, 384, 386 87; Ochoa, V
ıctor L., 348 Border Industrial Program, 792 Borders, 1 24; Mexican boundary map, 120 21; Mexican-U.S. fortification, 162 65; Mexico-U.S., 81; U.S.Mexico treaty, 107 8 Bordoa, Arnulfo, 724 Boricua/Borinquen/Borincano, 749, 750 Borinquen Indians, 318 19, 423 Borrajo, Antonio, 168, 169 72 Bosch, Juan, 759 Bourgad, Pierre, 169 72 Bowie, James, 62 64, 67 Boycotts, 820 21 Bracelo, Antonio R., 459

Index 1091 Bracero program, 1057 58 Braceros. See Guest workers Bravo, D. Nicolas, 105 Brayer, Herbert O., 195 97 Brazil, 6 Breckenridge, John C., 253 Bresette, Lina E., 496 98 Brewer, Jesse A., 1045 Brookings Institute, 524 Brown, Richard Maxwell, 133 Brown Barets, 849, 868 71, 881 82 Brown Berets, 824 Brownell, Herbert, 736 Brown-stone Rubbers’ Society, 290 Brownsville, Texas, 123 24, 152 62, 173 Brown v. Board of Education, 701, 895, 989, 1077 Bryan, Samuel, 395 98 Bryson, Eugene, 288 Buccaneering, 233 Buchanan, James, 127, 217 18, 235, 241 42 Bueso Rosa, Jos
e, 945 46 Bulwer, Henry Lytton, 219 Buonaparte, Mirabeau, 70 Burciaga, Cencilia, 1066 69 Bureau of Immigration Appeals, 743, 745 Bureau of Military Justice, 168 69, 169 72 Burgos, Julia de, 640 Burt, Al, 752 56 Burton, Henry S., 183 Bush, George W., 997 99, 1051 52, 1057, 1083 Business: Haiti occupation and, 436 37; Mexico under D
ıaz system, 381 83 Caldera, Louis, 1051, 1085 Calder
on, Francisco Garc
ıa, 408 9 Calder
on, Sila, 962 Calhoun, John C., 89 94 California, 107, 108, 116, 121; agricultural worker organizing in Imperial Valley and Los Angeles, 502 3; Alatorre, Richard, and politics in, 1069 77; bar examination discrimination, 903 4; border closure and, 737 40; Chicano studies programs, 833; citizenship rights and annexation of, 340; discrimination and affirmative action, 1027 28; employment discrimination, 707 8; English-only instruction requirement, 1028 31; farm worker

unionization, 820 21, 822 24; illegal alien public services ineligibility, 1025 27; immigration, 1003 4; immigration control legislation, 792; Imperial Valley Workers Union, 501; Japanese internment camp, 682 83; justice, 180; land grant claims validation, 197 200; land title evidentiary standards, 200 204; Lemon Grove school desegregation, 583 85; lynching and mob rule, 133 34; Mexican agricultural labor, 572 73; Mexican labor and, 571 74; New Latino population, 984; P
erez, Eulalia, 173 79; Plan de San Diego, 409 10; Puerto Ricans in, 457 59; Quinn, Anthony, life in, 684 89; school desegregation, 701 3; segregation of Indians, 591; social life in southern, 729 33; Spanish language newspapers, 173; squatterism, 204 5; unemployment, 563; U.S. territorial expansionism, 95 100; V
asquez, Tiburcio, 146 47, 148; vigilantism in, 134 35 California Land Act, 200 204 California Land Commission, 197 200 California Rangers, 138 39, 139 43, 143 46 California Senate Committee on UnAmerican Activities, 693 98 California State University, Monterey Bay, 1066 67 Californios, 183 Callahan, Leroy, 603 4 Callazo, Oscar, 787 88 Camos, Pedro Albizu, 515 Campa, Diego, 680 82 Campbell, Thomas B., 602 3 Campobello, Nellie Francisca Ernestina, 383 84 Campos, Pedro Albizu, 749, 763, 785 86 Campoya Calder
us, 721 on, Jes
Camprubi, Jose, 535 Canada, 1 Canales, Jos
e Tom
as, 149 51 Canals, 218 19; inter-ocean, 321 22; Nicaragua, 250 Cannery and Agricultural Workers Industrial Union, 591 94 Cantillo, Eulogio, 660 Cantwell, John, 603 4 Capetillo, Luisa, 333 36

1092

Index Capital: formation in Mexico, 337; slaves as, 29 Capitalism, salsa and, 949, 954 Captaincy General of Guatemala, 1 Carbajal, Jos
e Mar
ıa Jes
us, 123 24 Cardis, Louis, 168, 169 72 Caribbean, 421 65, 749; African culture, 6; union of nations in, 437 39; U.S. and, 215 71 Caribbean Americans, 879 Caribbean culture, 948 55, 978 80 Carlos Montez v. Superior Court of Los Angeles County, 868 71 Carr, Waggoner, 821 Carrigan, William D., 132 33 Carrillo, Antonia Garoia, 165 Carroll, Henry K., 316 17 Carter, Jimmy, 787, 790, 934 Cartography, 13 14 Casa Aut
onoma-Hermandad General de Trabajadores, 1004 Cass, Lewis, 127 28, 226, 227 Casta~ neda, Carlos E., 706 10 Castes, Mexican, 11 Castillo Armas, Carlos, 653 55 Castle, Barton, and Associates, 647 Castro, Fidel, 560, 656, 657, 659, 660 62, 755, 759, 929 Castro, Julian, 1049 50 Castro, Rose, 1049 Castro, Salvador B., 824 27 De Castro Rivera, Ram
on, 318 19 Castro v Superior Court of Los Angeles, 824 27 Catholic Church, 17 18, 606 7; antiCastro dissidents, 752; Chicana, 877 79; Chicana agenda for, 877 79; Cristero War, 493; El Salvador, 928 30; ethnic change in U.S., 1011; Mexican, 513; Mexicans in U.S., 496 98; Mexico under D
ıaz system, 379; New Mexico statehood, 394; socialism, 788 89; Spanish Americans in Colorado, 499 500 Caughey, Joseph, 133 Cavada, Viviana Santiago, 854 55 Cedillo, Gilbert, 1033, 1055 Census, 1033; Cuban population, 262; Cubans in U.S., 516; Dominicans, 760, 957; Guatemalans in U.S., 1000; Hispanic population of U.S., 981 88, 1034 35; immigration restrictions,

480 81, 488; Latino education, 807; Latinos born in U.S., 918; Latinos in U.S., 927 28, 968 70; Mexican-born population, 396; Mexicans born in U.S., 563, 586; Mexicans in Colorado, 500; Mexicans in U.S., 791, 793, 960, 1003; non-white voters, 805; Puerto Ricans, 931; Puerto Rico, 422 23, 525, 532, 750; Western states, 707 8 Center for Constitutional Rights, 940, 941 Center for Investigative Reporting, 939 Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, 813 Central America: civil war refuges and gangs, 992 95; civil wars, 927 28; colonialism in, 218 19; filibuster objectives, 240; Gage travel, 1 2; inter-ocean canal, 322 25; liberation theology, 788; Los Angeles cocaine trade, 943; remittances from U.S. immigrants, 1060 62; slavery and William Walker, 246 48; union of nations in, 437 39; U.S. and, 215 71, 422; U.S. imperialistic policy, 408 9; U.S. intervention, 443; U.S. slave immigration to, 225 26; Walker, William, filibustering, 242 46 Central American Free Trade Agreement, 1060 Central American Mobilization Committee, 942 Central Americans, 879 83, 970, 981; amnesty/asylum legislation, 1055; as New Latinos in U.S., 982; in U.S., 967 69 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 652 55, 760, 819, 938 39, 943 Centro de Accion Social Autonoma (CASA), 1038, 1047, 1049 El Centro de la Raza, 885 Centro Espa~ nol de Tamapa, 518 Ceuria Basil, 548 49 Chafee High School, 477 Chamberlain, Samuel E., 106 7 Chambers, Claude, 584 Chambers, Pat, 593 Chanute, Alfred Serrato, 670 71 Chapman, Stacey, 995 96 Chargin, Gerald S., 821 Ch
avez, C
esar, 820 21, 822 24, 904, 1020 21, 1038 Ch
avez, Dennis, 602, 710 11, 892 Ch
avez, Jos
e, 719

Index 1093 Ch
avez, Norma, 1033 Chavez-Thompson, Linda, 1056 Cherokees, 70 71, 93 Chiapas, Mexico, 994, 1062 65 Chicago, Illinois, 774; fair employment practices, 710 11; Garc
ıa, Jes
us ‘‘Chuy,’’ 1039 44; Latino communities, 750; marginalization of Mexican Americans, 619; Mexican life in, 511 14; prejudice against Mexican Americans, 569 70; Puerto Rican contract labor, 645 47; Puerto Rican women in, 931 34 Chicago Defender (newspaper), 547 48, 548, 569 70, 636 38, 649 Chicago Hardware Foundry Co., 645 47 Chicana: El Grito del Norte, 923; New Mexico movement, 920 26; sterilization programs, 883 84 Chicano Communications Center (CCC), 921, 923 25 Chicano Coordinating Council on Higher Education, 833 42 Chicano League Against Racism and Oppression (CARLO), 923 24 Chicano Moratorium, 871 76 Chicano Movement, 820 21, 830 33; Brown Barets, 868 71; gender and, 876 79; higher education studies plan, 833 42; neighborhood politicization in San Francisco, 879 83; V
asquez, Enriqueta, 919 20 Chicanos, 791 926; contemporary society, 1003 86; historiography and racism, 890 92; La Raza Unida Party, 854 55; miners strike, 736; Pacific northwest activism, 884 87; political parties for, 842 48; World War II service, 678 80 Chicano studies, 833 42, 1004, 1021 22 Chicano Youth Liberation Conferences, 876 Chicano Youth Movement, 792 Chihuahua, Mexico, 121 22, 127 28, 205, 398 407, 720 Chihuahua City, Mexico, 721 Child labor, 545 46 Children: Arizona schools and migrant, 479; bilingualism in U.S., 455 57; California cotton picker strike, 591 92, 594 95; deportation from U.S., 563; intelligence testing of Puerto Rican, 547; Mexican repatriation, 571;

naturalization status, 479 80; Ponce massacre, 559; songs, 523 24; Spanish language-based education, 809 13 Chile, 760 63, 948 49 Chileans, 135 37 China, 422 Chinese, 134 35, 255, 480, 591 Chinese Americans, 1052 53 Chinese Exclusion Act, 353 55, 454, 1052 Choctaws, 93 Christianity, 273, 294 96, 336 Cigar makers, 289 93, 516 17, 518; Barrios, Pedro, 522 24; Key West, factories, 281 87; Puerto Ricans in New York, 451 54; Souto, Ferm
ın, life as, 518 22; strikes, 289 91 Cigar Makers Union, 452 El C
ırulo Cubano, 516 18 Cisneros, Henry, 1055, 1056 Citizens’ Committee for the Defense of Mexican-American Youth, 683 868, 693, 696 98 Citizenship: acquisition, 603 4; Mexican immigrants, 722 24; Mexicans in Los Angels, 506 7; Mexicans rights in U.S., 338 43; proof, 742; Puerto Ricans, 332 33, 453, 634; rights and annexed territory, 338 43; rights in Texas Republic, 338 39; rights of families and deportation, 564; women’s naturalization status, 479 80 City University of New York, 771 Ciudad Hidalgo, Mexico, 995 Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), 564 68, 596 97 Civil rights: Ch
avez, C
esar, 1020 21; Crystal City, Texas, student walkouts, 852 54; deJesus, Edgar, 776; electoral success, 1003; Estada, Miguel, judicial nomination, 997; Hern
andez v. Texas, 733 34; McCarran-Walter Act deportation, 740 46; Mexican American education, 704 6; Mexican American veterans, 715 17; Mexican immigrants and, 722 24; Mexicans in U.S., 180 81; movements in 1960s, 792; New Mexico constitution, 394 95; Puerto Rican and African American, 649 50; Puerto Rico, 556 62; Seattle history project, 884 87; Voting Rights Act, 796 806; women’s, 273 75, 333 35; World War I veterans, 415 16

1094

Index Civil Rights Act of 1964, 896 903 Civil rights movement: Latino generational differences, 749; Young Lords, 775 78 Civil wars: central America, 927; Guatemala, 1001; refugee and U.S. gangs, 992 95 Civil War (Spain), 548 49 Civil War (U.S.), 101, 151, 467 Claims: California land grant validation, 197 200; land grant evidentiary standards, 200 204; land grants and community set asides, 194 95; Mexican American War, 110 11; of Mexicans against U.S., 133 34 El Clamor (newspaper), 179 Clappe, Amelia Knapp Smith, 134 35 Clark, Edward, 62 Clark, Victor S., 369 77, 524 27 Clay, Henry, 61, 115 17 Clay, William, 755 56 Clayton, John M., 219 Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, 218 19, 220 Clerical workers, 933 34 Cleveland, Grover, 294 Clifton, Arizona, 360 65 Climate, 225 26 Clinton, Hillary Rodham, 962 Clinton, William J., 955 56, 961 63, 999, 1051, 1055 El Clmora P
ublico (newspaper), 180 81 Club Hostos, 533 34 Coahuila, Mexico, 123 Coahuila Tamaulipas, Mexico, 205 Coahuila y Tejas, Mexico, 30 37, 194 Cocaine, 943 48 Cochran, Robert E., 67 COINTELPRO, 786 Cold War, 663 64; CIA in Guatemala, 653 55; CISPES probe by FBI, 939; FBI political activist files, 786; Latinos, 631 62; migration to Puerto Rico, 759; miner strike film, 735 36; Puerto Rico, 656 60 Colima, Bert, 509 Collective bargaining, 1039 College, 554, 705; anti-communist programs, 736; ASPIRA, 770 74; attendance, 766 67; Chicano studies, 926; conservatives at, 40, 939; Dominicans, 959 60; goals, 812 13, 814; law school, 903 4; Mexican Americans, 818; military service,

632, 1051, 1054, 1083 85; New Left, 774; New York City access, 771; professor immigration, 490; student activists, 884 85; students beliefs, 1036 37 Coll y Cuchi, Cayetano, 439 42 Colombia: African culture, 6; Congress of Angostura, 21 24; inter-ocean canal, 322 25; revolution, 321 22 Colombians, 967 69 Col
on, Jes
us, 447 51, 640 42 Col
on, Willie, 948, 951, 953 Colonialism: anti-, 27 29, 750, 787; Chicano, 835, 844; Cuba and British, 218; New Mexico, 921 22; Puerto Rico, 461 64, 631; slavery and Spanish, 30; Spanish, 294 95; U.S. and Great Depression, 515 Colonies: border, 1; European powers, 234 35; independence recognition by U.S., 264 65; Puerto Rico as U.S., 423; Treaty of Paris, 307 10; unification of Spanish, 22 Colonists: Mexican views of U.S., 65 67; slavery and Texas, 25 26 Colonization: Coahuila and Texas, 30 37; Mexican resentment in Texas, 149; Nicaraguan Isthmus canal, 250; Texas land grants, 205 Colorado, 107; employment discrimination, 708; land grants types and law, 195 97; Plan de San Diego, 409 10; Spanish and Mexicans in, 498 500 Colorado River, 122, 337 Columbia University, 645 Combat, 664 65 Comisi
on Feminil Mexicana, 876 Comisi
on Nacional de Derechos Humanos (Mexico), 993 Commerce: Nicaragua and U.S., 249 50; Puerto Rico, 422 23; U.S. imperialism and, 315; U.S. neutrality and, 223 24 Commission on the Northern Frontier Question (Mexico), 162 65 Committee for Protection of Foreign Born, 740 46 Committee in Solidarity the People of El Salvador (CRISPES), 938 43 Committee on Chicano Rights, 849 Communism, 570; CIA in Guatemala, 653 55; feminist organizing, 538; Puerto Rico, 568; Young Lords

Index 1095 Organization platform, 780; Zapatista Army of National Liberation, 1065 Communist Party, 448, 604 10, 786, 922 26; California labor strike, 593; Harlem, 533 35; immigrant deportation, 740 46; Mexico, 819 20; Puerto Rico, 535; Zoot Suiters, 693, 696 98 Communist press, 876 Communists, 685 87; agricultural strike, 592 93; Bosch, Juan, 759; Cubans exiles and, 752; film industry and, 735 36; Harlem, New York, racial tensions, 547 48; immigrant protection, 722 24; Mexican guest-worker militancy, 720 21; Puerto Ricans and, 533 35 Communities Organized for Public Service, 904 14 Community control, Young Lords Organization platform, 779 Community land grants, Treaty of Guadeloupe Hidalgo, 193 97 Community organization, 820 21; Cuban in New York City, 516 18; Mexican American, 1003 4; miners in Arizona, 360 65; Puerto Rican, New York City, 515 Community organizers, deJesus, Edgar, 776 78 Community organizing: Chicano Movement campus, 836 42; Cort
es, Ernie, 904 14; Mart
ınez, Elizabeth, 921 26; Movimiento Left in New Mexico, 920 26; Pacific northwest Chicano, 884 87; Puerto Ricans, New York City, 533 35, 768 73; San Diego, 848 50; San Francisco radical political, 878 83 Community Service Organization, 718, 719, 820, 904 Compe
an, Mario, 852 Compromise of 1850, 115 17 Conde, Pedro Garc
ıa, 117, 120 Confederaci
on de Uniones Obreras Mexicanas, 502 3 Congressional Medal of Honor, 664, 675 78 Congress of Angostura, 21 24 Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), 743 44 Congress of Spanish-Speaking Peoples, 619 20

Congress of the U.S., 107, 111, 115; land grant claims, 194, 195; Nicaragua covert operations, 947; Panama Canal, 331; Puerto Rico, 462 Congresso Mexicanista, 390 91 Connally, John, 821 Connor, Edward, 139 Conscientious objectors, 848 Conservation, ethnic change, 1008 Conservatives: anti-immigrant activism, 1025; CISPES probe by FBI, 939 40; Cuban Americans, 749; Cuban exiles and, 753; Dominican Republic, 759; Estada, Miguel, judicial nomination, 997 99; Latino voters, 1044 Constitutional rights, denial in court, 698 701 Constitution of Chihuahua, 121 Constitution of Dominican Republic, 269 Constitution of New Mexico of 1912, 394 95 Constitution of Texas Republic, 338 39 Constitution of the U.S., 4, 180 81, 893 903; citizenship rights and annexed territory, 338 43; Mexican immigrants and, 722 24; slavery, 253 54 Constitutions: Coahuila and Texas, 30 37; Mexican independence, 17; Spanish America, 23 24 Construction: Mexican immigrant employment, 373 74; repatriated Mexicans, 588 89 Consular agents, 127 28 Contract labor: computer industry H-1B visa, 1055 56; Puerto Ricans, 644 47 Contras, 943, 999 Contreras, Miguel, 1037, 1048 Coolidge, Calvin, 443 47, 461 64, 464 65 Copper mines, 360 61 Cordero, Andres Figueroa, 787 C
ordova, Vincente, 70 71 Corella, Joaqu
ın, 123 Corona, Bert, 792, 1047, 1057 Coronation of Iturbide as Emperor, 26 Corral Acosta, Panciano, 243 Corrido, 507 Corruption: Cuban revolution, 656; Los Angeles, California, police, 1044 47; Mexico under D
ıaz system, 379 83 Cort
es, Ernie, Jr., 904 14 Cortez, Greogio, 367 69

1096

Index Cortina, Juan N., 149 51, 151 52, 165, 368 Corzine, John, 962 Cosslet-Batt, Jill L., 138 39 Costa Rica, 1 2, 219, 244, 324, 516 Cotton growers strike, 591 95 Cotton pickers, 485 86 Council on Hemispheric Affairs, 1000 1002 Coup d’etat, 760 63 Courts, squatters in California, 183 86 Crabb, Henry, 127 28 Crawford, Cheryl, 751 Crawford, Fred L., 637 38 Creole, 11 12; class, 976 78; culture, 779 Crime against humanity, 318 19 Criminal justice, 938 Cristero War, 493 Crockett, David, 64, 68 El Cronista (newspaper), 186 Cross-border fighting: Cortina, Juan N., 151 62; Mexican commission on, 162 65 Cross-border steeling, 163 65 Crusade for Justice, 827, 848 Cruz, Juan de la, 634 Cruz, Justo, 742 43 Cruz, Maria, 743 44 Crystal City, Texas, 796, 842, 852 55, 854 55 Cuba, 790, 819 20, 924, 926; Allende and, 761; annexation by U.S., 275 79; Democratic Party platform, 253 54; independence aid from U.S., 294 96; independence and U.S. occupation, 310 11; independence movements, 273 306; independence recognition, 296 97; insurgent invasions, 220 25; Maceo, Antonio, fighting and death, 300 302; Mariel exodus, 934 38; Menocal, Mario, 302 6; Monroe Doctrine assertion, 327 28; Ostend Manifesto, 235 40; plantation slave conditions, 254 56; Platt Amendment, 328 29; Puerto Ricans and, 464 65; Puerto Rico and revolutionary movements, 656 60; purchase scheme, 250 53; racial attitudes, 279 81; Revolution, 660 62, 749, 752 56, 949 50; salsa and, 949 50; sovereignty and U.S. policy, 226 35; Spanish Galacians in, 518 19; Treaty of Paris, 307 10; United States policy, 421; U.S.

imperialism, 287 89; U.S. interest in, 215 17; U.S. imperialism, 311 16; Vega, Bernado, 532 35; Walker, William, filibustering, 240 42 Cuban Americans: conservatism of, 749; Gonz
alez, Eli
an, and, 965 67; population in 1980s, 927 28; U.S. politics and, 997 Cuban Army of Independence, 300 Cuban Cigar Manufacturers’ Association, 290 Cuban National Club, 516 18 Cuban Refugee Program, 756 Cuban refugees: exiles in Miami, 752 56; Gonz
alez, Eli
an, rescue/repatriation, 965 67; post-Revolution migration, 749 Cuban Revolutionary Party, 299 Cubans: American stereotypes of, 276 79; amnesty/asylum legislation, 1055; cigar makers labor organizing, 289 93; exiles in Miami, 752 56; Great Depression in Florida, 516; Key West worker rights, 280 81; migration to Puerto Rico, 759 60; in New York City, 516 18; U.S. population, 982 Cuban War for Independence, 294 Cuidad Juarez, Mexico, 149 Cullom, Shelby Moore, 323 Cultural centers, 1 Cultural nationalism, 882 83 Culture, 813 18; African, 6, 317 19, 428 32; Caribbean, 786 87, 948 55, 978 80; creole, 779; land and, 193; Latin American immigration and U.S., 1008 9; Macado, Manuel A., racism and historiography, 890 92; Mexican American, 817 18; Puerto Rican salsa, 948 55; salsa, 948 55; subculture, 813 18; West Side Story musical drama, 751 52; writing, 970 81 Cumpiano, Flavio, 963 Cur
et Alonso, Catalino, 951 Current Population Survey (Census Bureau), 982 Curriculum: bilingual education, 395, 773, 813 18, 887 90, 1004, 1028 31; English as second language, 969, 1028; English fluency, 793 95; English requirement, 1028 31; language of instruction, 529 31; studies programs, 634 Custred, Glynn, 1027 28

Index 1097 Daily living: Key West, Florida, cigar maker, 523 24; Mexicans in U.S., 504 5; Puerto Ricans and U.S., 452 54; Puerto Ricans in New York City, 447 51 Daley, Richard J., 1040 Daley, Richard M., 1040 42 Dance, 948 55 Dar
ıo, Rub
en, 329 31 Dartiguenave, Philippe Sudre, 433 34 D’Aubuission, Roberto, 938 Davis, Edmund J., 151 Day care, 878 ‘‘The Day of the Dead’’ (newspaper article), 179 DDT baths, 418 20 Dearborn, Henry, 8 9 De Arguello, Jos
e, 200 De Arguello v. U.S., 200 204 Death squads, 994, 1001, 1047; CIA and Guatemalan, 654 Declarations of independence: Haiti, 6 8; Mexico, 10 13; Texas, 62 65 Defense contractors, 664 65 Deford, Miriam Allen, 591 94 DeJesus, Edgar, 776 78 Delano, California, 821 Delano Grape Workers for International Boycott Day, 822 24 Delany, Martin R., 225 26 Delaplaine, L. S., 427 28 Delgado, Richard, 1025 Del Rio, Texas, 575 83 De Mier y Ter
an, Manuel, 38 41 Democracy, 23, 71, 807; Bol
ıvar, Sim
on, 21 22; Congress of Angostura, 21 24; corruption, 383; free elections, 1024, 1044; Galarza, Ernesto, 813 18; Guatemala, 652 55; imperial, 408; Mexicans, 394; Nicaragua, 249; revolutionary, 1024, 1064 65; Roybal, Edward R., 717 20; school segregation, 704 6; slavery in U.S., 253 54; UCLA student hunger strike, 1022; U.S. government and Caribbean, 658; Young Lords Organization, 780 Democratic Party, 533, 807, 843 44, 864 65; Guti
errez, Jos
e Angel, politics in, 795 96; platform of 1860, 253 54 Demographics. See Fertility; Population Demonstrations: Echo Amphitheater Park, 866; Los Angeles student walkouts,

824 27; Ponce massacre, 549 51; Reagan, Ronald, speech, 868 71; Rodr
ıguez, Antonio, lynching, 389 90; Salazar, Rub
en, murder, 871 76; Tlateloloco massacre, 818; undocumented amnesty, 1052 57 Dent, Julia, 88 Denton, J. Brooks, Jr., 636 38 Denver, Colorado, 830 Department of Commerce, 369 77 Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, 889 90 Department of Justice, 947 Department of State, 818 19 Deportation, 491 92, 619 20; agricultural labor shortage, 573 74; Bisbee, Arizona, strikers, 412 13; border closure and, 737 40; Espionage Act of 1917, 413 15; forced mass, 563 64, 574 75; gang member and drug trafficking, 992 95; McCarran-Walter Act campaign, 740 46; Mexican immigrants and, 722 24; Mexicans from Bisbee, 407; Pallares, Jes
us, 610 15; recession and Mexican labor, 485 86; union organizing and, 722. See also Repatriation Desaparecidos, 948 49 Desegregation: Lemon Grove, California, school, 583 85; Romo v. Tempe School District, 483 84 El Despertador Mexicano (newspaper), 1023 Dessalines, Jean Jacques, 6 8 Detroit, Michigan, 585 86 Deutch, John, 947 Devine, Michael, 1002 ‘‘El Dia de Muertos’’ (newspaper article), 179 Dialectics, 781 83 D
ıaz, Jos
e, 683 84, 698 701, 698 702 D
ıaz, Porfifo, 337, 349 50, 377 83, 389 90, 392 94; Garza Rodr
ıguez, Catarino Erasmo, 345 48; Mog
on, Ricardo Flores, 384; Urrea, Teresa, 350 53 D
ıaz Ordaz, Gusavo, 819 Dictatorships, 948 49; Cold War Caribbean, 656 60 Diego, Jose de, 559 DiGiorgio Strike, 504 Discrimination: adoptions by Mexicans, 365 66; affirmative action and reverse, 893 903; Arizona race riots, 407 8;

1098

Index Discrimination (continued) California affirmative action, 1027 28; Civilian Conservation Corp, 565; college student beliefs, 1036 37; constitutional color-blindness, 899 901; government contracting prohibition, 664 65; language-based, 887; law school, 793 94; Los Angeles public schools, 824 27; Mexican American employment, 706 10; against Mexican Americans, 796 97; Mexican American subculture, 813 18; against Mexican immigrants, 476 77; Mexican immigrants in U.S., 395 98; Mexican miners in Arizona, 360 65; Mexicans in Texas and Illinois, 617 19; Mexicans miners in Arizona, 595 99; Puerto Ricans and U.S., 452 54, 636 38; schools in Texas, 704 6; sexual and genetic determinism, 1059 60; in Texas schools, 713 14; U.S. military services, 632 Discrimination in education: English fluency requirement, 793 95; Latina women and professionals, 1066 69 Dissent, Young Lords in New York City, 775 Dissents, FBI files on, 786 Disturnell, John, 120 21 Disturnell Treaty map, 115, 117 18 Diversity, New Latinos in U.S., 982 Dixon/Arnett Immigration Bill, 792 Dobie, J. Frank, 150, 151 Doctors, 893 903, 904; birth control experimentation, 878; sterilization program, 883 84 Domengeaux, James R., 637 Domestic workers, 644, 931 33; Puerto Rican women, 644 Dominica, 124 26 Dominican Feminists for Action, 537 38 Dominican Populist Party, 657 Dominican Republic, 268 71, 516, 656 60, 927, 981; feminists, 538; U.S. occupation of, 432 37; U.S. invasion, 750 Dominican Revolutionary Vanguard Party, 659 Dominicans, 927, 968, 969, 970; migration to Puerto Rico, 759 60; as New Latinos in U.S., 982; nineteen sixties, 750; population in U.S., 981, 984; socioeconomic profile in U.S., 957 60; Vega, Ana Lydia, writing on, 978

Don, Harold, 724 25 Donaldson, B. L., 648 49 Dorsal, Paul J., 516 18 Douglas, Stephen, 253 Douglas, Walter, 412 13 Downey boys, 698 701 Draft resistance, Chicano, 848 Dropout rates, Latina, 1066 Drug Enforcement Agency, 945, 1000 1002 Drug trafficking, 945 46; Central American contra funding, 943 44; gang member deportation and, 992 95; GuatemalaU.S. relations, 1001 2 Duany, Jorge, 759 60 Dunn, W. M., 168 69 Durant, Celeste, 903 4 Durazo, Mar
ıa Elena, 1037 39 Durley, Williamson, 83 85 Eaton, John, 524 Echenique, Maria Eugenia, 273 75 Economic conditions: cigar industry, 520 22; Dominicans in U.S., 957 60; farm worker supply, 484 86; Great Depression, 515; Harlem, New York, 547 48; immigrant remittance and stability, 1060 62; land grants and New Mexico, 195 97; Mexican immigration, 485 86, 570 74, 792; Mexican repatriation, 585 86, 587 91; Mexico, 337; Puerto Rico, 331 32; U.S. in 1960s, 791. See also Employment Economic development: Puerto Rico, 459 61; railroads and Mexican, 343 45; sterilization/birth control and Puerto Rican, 757 58 Economic opportunity, Latino military enlistment, 1085 86 Economic policy: deindustrialization, 1003; immigration and, 1011; Merchants War between Mexico and U.S., 123 24; Mexican protectionism, 590 91 Ecuador, 22 Education: access, 749, 791 96, 1085 86; Americanization program, 477 78; ASPIRA Club Federation and, 770 73; attainment, 526 27, 664, 791, 807; Chicano plan for higher, 833 42; English instruction requirement, 1028 31; ethnic change, 1010; Grado, Pedro, 390 92; higher, 833 42; Iraq war enlistment and service,

Index 1099 1084 85; Le
on, Marcos de, on, 807 9; Mariel exodus characteristics, 937 38; military service, 1085 86; New Latinos in U.S., 982; New Mexico constitution, 395; Puerto Rican migration, 553 54; racial discrimination in, 893 903; segregation of Mexican Americans, 575 83; Spanish language-based education, 809 13; Texas Mexicans, 844 46. See also Bilingual education; Schools Educational Opportunities Program, 792 Edwards, Thyra, 548 49 Ej
ercito Zapatista de Liberaci
on Nacional (EZLN), 1023 25, 1062 65 Elections: Castro, Julian, San Antonio, Texas, 1049; Chicago, Illinois, politics, 1040 44; La Raza Unida Party, 856 65; Madero, Francisco, 392; Mexican Americans, 1003; Mexican Americans in Texas, 796; New York City, 533; Puerto Rican Nationalist Party, 536 37; Roybal, Edward, 717 20; Villaraigosa, Antonio, 1047 49 ‘‘El General’’ (song), 949 Elites, 181 82, 190 92 Ellsworth, Elmer, 561 62 El Paso, Texas, 119, 120 21, 149, 369 77, 419 20, 727 29 El Salvador, 1 2, 927 28; civil war and U.S. gangs, 994; Committee in Solidarity the People of, 938 43; liberation theology in, 928 30 Emancipation: slaves in Mexico, 38; of women, 273 75 Embargoes, Cuba, 258 59 Emergency Immigration Act of 1921, 480 Emigration: to Sonora, 180 81; to Texas with salves, 29 ‘‘Emigration to Sonora’’ (circular), 180 81 Employers: guest worker programs, 1058; immigration control sanctions, 792, 1055 Employment: Arandas, Mexico, immigration, 493 96; contractors, 331; deindustrialization, 1003; immigrant admission, 492 93; immigrant rights, 1037 39; Mexican laborers, 396 98; of Mexicans and repatriation, 571 74; needle trades, 531 32; New York City, 534 35; Puerto Rican migration, 552 56; sterilization/birth control policies,

757 58; undocumented workers, 737 40, 1012; women, 644 Employment discrimination, 706 10; Chicago, Illinois, 710 11; government contract prohibition, 664 65; immigrant laborers, 396 98 English Americans, 22 23 English language, 38, 95, 887; education, 1028 31; Mexican American speaking, 663; as official language, 1003; Puerto Ricans, 455 57, 526; school fluency requirement, 793 95; as second language, 969, 1028 31 English Only, 1025 English-only education, 524 25, 527 31 Enrique de la Pe~ na, Jos
e, 67 68 Equal opportunity, 709 10 Equal Protection Clause, 888 89, 893 903 Equal rights, 179 80 Espionage Act of 1917, 413 15 Estrada, Miguel, 997 99 Estrada, Richard M., 1057 58 Ethnic change in U.S., 1007 12 Ethnic politics, 569 70, 831, 890 92 Eugenics, 467, 487 88 Eugenics Movement, 883 84 Euro-Americans, 8 9; aggression in Texas, 25; Calhoun, John C., view of, 93 94; Caribbean and, 215; Central American and, 215; Chileans in San Francisco, 135 37; Coahuila and Texas colonization, 31; Cortina, Juan N., attack, 152; de Mier y Ter
an on, 38 40; destiny, 13; fighting with Mexicans, 151 72; filibustering against Mexico, 127 28; land entitlement, 193; manifest destiny, 71 73; Mexican American War volunteers, 105 7; Mexicans contrasted with, 48 51; Murrieta, Joaqu
ın, 140 43; racial attitudes toward Mexicans, 128; racism, 114, 149; squatters in California, 183 86; Texas, 62 63, 70, 81; westward expansion, 25; Whitman, Walt, view of, 94 95 Europe: America and, 13 14; Monroe Doctrine, 27 29 Excelsior (newspaper), 574 Exceptionalism, 81, 93 95 Executions: Alamo prisoners, 68; in Chile coup d’etat, 762 63; Crockett, David, 68; Howard, Charles, 169 71; Ojinaga,

1100

Index Executions (continued) Mexico, mass, 405 6; Pompa, Aurelio, 507 9; San Antonio, Texas, 43 47 Exiles: Cuban, 749, 752 56; Puerto Rico, 656 60 Expansionism, U.S., 118, 313 14 Ex patriot communities, 281 87 Explorers, 13 Extradition treaties, 167 68 Fair Employment Practices Act, 706 10 Fair Employment Practices Commission, 664, 706 10 Fair Labor Standards Act, 610, 616 Falc
on, Angel, 786 87 Fall, Albert B., 416 17 Falsas Cronicas del Sur (False Chronicles from the South) (Vega), 974 78 Families: adoption by Mexican, 365 66; Americanization and Mexican, 603 4; Chicana movement, 877 78; Coahuila and Texas colonization, 32 33; deportation and citizenship, 564; mass deportations of Mexicans, 575; reformation of Mexican American, 663; Ronstadt, Federico Jos
e Mar
ıa, 355 60 Fania Records, 950 51 Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLA), 939 Farmers, 316 17, 459, 600 603 Farm Security Administration, 564, 568 Farm Security Administration (FSA), 602 3 Farm workers, 880 82; Ch
avez, C
esar, 1020 21; grape boycott support, 822 24; Imperial Valley Workers Union, 501; strike, 591 95, 820 21 Fascism, 548 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), 535 37, 786, 939 43 Federal Emergency Management Agency, 936 Federal Writers Project, 518 Federation of American Immigration Reform, 1007 Federation of Mexican Workers Union (CUOM), 502 3 Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Councils, 291 Feminism, 461, 876 79, 923; Capetillo, Luisa, 333 35; Dominican, 537 38; Echenique, Mar
ıa Eugenia, 273 75; Mexican American, 1005; political

leaders, 1005; Puerto Rican gender segregation, 932; Vega, Ana Lydia, on, 971, 977; Young Lords, 783 85 Fernandez, Alicia, 941 Fernando VII, King of Spain, 12 Ferre, Luis, 775 Fertility, 1008; Cuba, 216; immigration policies and, 1012; rate, 791, 818, 989; sterilization programs, 758 59; U.S. and Latino, 791 Fife, Robert Herndon, 530 Figueredo, Fernando, 517 Figueroa, Alfredo, 138 Figueroa, Andr
es, 655 56 Figueroa, Hector, 776 Figueroa Cordero, Andr
es, 655 56 Filibusterers, 123, 124, 215; Crabb, Henry, expedition execution, 127 28; Cuba and, 220 25, 226 35; Nicaraguan Isthmus canal, 250; Walker, William, 249 50. See also Spies Filisola, Vincente, 70 Fillmore, Millard, 117, 220 25 Films, 735 36; P
erez, Rosie, documentary, 995 96; West Side Story, 750 51 Finance, 1061 62; Latino immigrant remittances, 1060 62; Mexico under D
ıaz system, 382 83 Finck, Bill, 607 8 Flag burning, 389 90 Flag of U.S., 427 28 Flores, Jos
e, 568 69 Flores, Manuel, 70 71 Flores Rodr
ıguez, Irving, 655 56 Florida, 25, 313; Cuba, 235; Cuban clubs, 516; Cuban community in, 281 87, 516; Mariel exodus, 934 38; New Latino population, 984; Puerto Rican independence, 534; U.S. acquisition, 14 16 Florida Purchase Treaty, 14 16 Florida (ship), 267 Folklore, Aztl
an in Chicano, 1032 Folk songs, 368 69 Foraker Act, 421 Foraker Law, 440 Ford, J. S. (Rip), 151 Foreign Agents Registration Act, 940 Foreign assistance, 259 62 Foreign-born population: New Latino and U.S. Hispanics, 982; protection of, 1004; U.S. Hispanic population growth, 988 89

Index 1101 Forsyth, John, 127 28 Foundry workers, 645 47 Fourteenth Amendment, 340 42, 701 3, 733 34 Fox, Vicente, 1059 France: Central American inter-ocean canal, 322 25; Cuba acquisition by U.S., 230 32; Cuba purchase by U.S., 237; Dominica and, 124 26; Haitian independence, 6 8; Louisiana Purchase, 4 6; occupation of Mexico, 181 82; Panama Canal, 322; San Ildefonso Treaty, 2 4; Sonara and, 124 26 Franco, Francisco, 548 Franco, Oscar, 725 Frankenberg, Erica, 1071, 1077 79 Freedom Airlift, 754 55 Free men, 254 Freemont, John Charles, 205 El Fronterizo (newspaper), 179 Fruit Growers Cooperative Credit Association, 542 Fuentez, Albert, 795, 796 Fuerzas Armadas Liberaci
on Nacional Puertorique~ na (FALN), 955 56 Fugitives: Cortinas, Juan N., 151 53; slave laws, 116 Funeral homes, 703 4 Fusion Party, 533 Gabald
on, Guy Louis, 675 78 G
abdara, Manuel, 123 Gadsden, James, 121 22 Gadsden Purchase, 124 26 Gadsden Purchase Treaty, 121 22, 123 Gage, Thomas, 1 2 Galacians (Spanish), 518 Galarza, Ernesto, 504 5, 791, 813 18 De Galindez, Jes
us, 658
Galindo, Ygnacio, 165 Gallardo, Jos
e M., 528 31 Gallegos, Antonio, 601 3 Gallup-American Coal Co., 610 15 Gamboa, Erasmos, 885 Gamio, Manuel, 507 Gand
ıa, Julio Pinto, 642 44 Gang members, West Side Story, 751 Gangs, 852; drug trafficking and deportation, 992 95; Los Angeles, California, 725 27; police, 1045 47; Young Lords, 774, 775 76; young Lords Organization, 780

Garc
ıa, Bonnie, 1059 Garc
ıa, Charles ‘‘Chuck,’’ 670 Garc
ıa, Fernando Luis, 651 Garc
ıa, Gus C., 733 Garc
ıa, Hector P., 703 4, 714 17, 793 Garc
ıa, Jes
us ‘‘Chuy,’’ 1039 44 Garment industry, Puerto Rico, 531 32, 544, 545 46 Garza, Ed, 1050 Garza Rodr
ıguez, Catarino Erasmo, 345 48 Gasoline baths, 418 19 Gatell, Rafael George, 427 28 Geary Act, 353 55 Geer, Will, 736 G
eigal Polanco, Vicente, 647 Gender: Chicano Movement, 876 79; earning power, 1065 69; equality, 783 85; miner strike film, 735 36; social roles and, 274 75 Generational differences, Puerto Rican community and, 749 Genetic determinism, 1059 Genocidem, sterilization programs, 758 59 Georgia, 1036 Germany, 673 74 Gibson, Katie, 666 69 Gila River, 108 9, 117 18, 337 Glaevecke, Adolfo, 163 Goldfinch, Charles W., 150, 151 Gold rush, 135 37, 144 45 Goldzleher, Joseph, 878 Gomez, Agapito, 744 45 G
omez Baez, M
aximo, 288 89, 294 96, 310 11 Gompers, Samuel, 291 93 Gonzales, Epimenio, 513 Gonz
ales, Henry B., 850 52, 892 Gonzales, Juan, 205 7 Gonzales, Patrisia, 1032 33 Gonzales, Rodolfo ‘‘Corky,’’ 827 30 Gonzales v. Ross, 205 14 Gonz
alez, Antonio, 914 18 Gonz
alez, Edward, 767, 777 Gonz
alez, Eli
an, 965 67 Gonz
alez, Elizabeth, 965 Gonz
alez, Gloria, 781 Gonz
alez, Isabel, 722 24 Gonz
alez, Jose Luis, 979 Gonz
alez, Juan Miguel, 965 67 Goodman, Amy, 962

1102

Index Good Neighbor Commission, 720 Gordon, Charles, 300 302 Gore, Robert H., 539 Government contracting discrimination, 664 65 Grac
ıa, Gregoria N., 170 72 Grado, Pedro, 390 92 Granada (ship), 245 Grande Garc
ıa, Rutilio, 928 29 Granneberg, Audrey, 615 17 Grant, Diego, 64 Grant, Madison, 488 Grant, Ulysses S., 88, 100 101, 256, 268 Grape boycott, 820 21, 822 24 Great Britain: Caribbean and Central American control, 220 25; Central America, 218 19; Central American inter-ocean canal, 322 25; ClaytonBulwer Treaty, 218 19; Cuba, 216, 217 18, 230 32, 237; Haitian independence, 6; Monroe Doctrine, 27; Texas annexation, 81 Great Depression, 515 62, 563 631 Great Western Sugar Co., 498 Green, Jerome T., 583 84 Greenwood, Robert, 148 Gremio de Tabaqueros, 290 91 Griffith, Beatrice, 729 33 Gringo, 843 44 El Grito de Dolores (The Shout for Independence), 10 11 El Grito de Lares (Cry of Lares), 254 El Grito del Norte (newspaper), 919 24 Gruening, Ernest H., 432 37 Guadeloupe Mountains, 165 68, 168 Guam, 307 9 Guant
anamo Bay, 328, 421 Guatemala, 1 2, 652 55, 927 28, 995; military-U.S. relations, 1000 1002 Guatemalans, 984 Guenther, Richard, 475 Guerrero, Vicente, 16, 37 38 Guest workers, 721 22, 1057 58; militancy in Texas, 720; World War II service, 669 Guilliani, Francisco Javier, 658 59 Gut
ıerrez, Jos
e Angel, 793 96, 842 48, 852, 854 55, 857, 859 65, 904 Gut
ıerrez, Jos
e Bernardo, 42 48 Guti
errez, Lu
ıs, 1041 Guzman, Pablo, 996

Haiti, 6 8, 268 71; self-determination and race, 428 32; Vega, Ana Lydia, on, 975, 978 79 Haitian refugees, 755, 759 Haitian Revolution, 759 Haitians, 516 Hammerstein, Oscar, 291 Hanna, Julio, 299 Harding, Warren G., 443 Harlingen, Texas, 713 14 Harper, Lucius C., 647 48 Harris, Charles H., 409 10 Harrison, Benjamin, 275 Hawaii, 312, 315, 423, 516, 529; Puerto Rican workers, 319 20, 454 55 Hawaii Sugar Planters Association, 454 55 Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty, 322 Hay-Herr
an Treaty, 321 22 Hays, Arthur Garfield, 549 51, 559 60 H-1B visas, 1055 56 Heins, Marjorie, 879 83 Heintzelman, Samuel P., 151 62 Hereditary, 22 23 Hermosillo, Mexico, 721 Hernandez, Antonia, 1033 Hern
andez, Eduvigen Navarette, 595 96 Hern
andez, Elizabeth, 970 81 Hern
andez, Pete, 733 34 Hern
andez, Ramona, 957 60 Hern
andez v. Texas, 733 34 Heroes, 14, 48, 303, 725, 1068, 1084; Alamo, 67, 240, 728; American, 72; Angel, Jos
e, 861; Bernardo, Jos
e, 924; Bol
ıvar, Sim
on, 21; Chicano, 880, 915; Cortez, Greogio, 368 69; Cuban, 286, 517; Guevara, Ernesto ‘‘Che,’’ 924; Gut
ıerrez, Jos
e Bernardo, 42; Latino, 1003; Mart
ı, Jos
e, 275 76; Mexican American, 891 92; Mexican War of Independence, 16 17; Morelos, Jos
e Mar
ıa, 42; Puerto Rican nationalists, 785, 787 88; World War II, 670, 672, 675; Zapata, Emiliano, 924 Herrera, Jos
e Joaqu
ın de, 82 83 Herrera, Valentine S., 596 99 Hidalgo y Costilla, Miguel, 10 11 Hill, Lon C., 416 17, 418 Hill, Merton E., 477 78 Hinojosa, Gilberto, 415 16 Hispanic Caucus, 1005 Hispanic Democratic Organization, 1041, 1043

Index 1103 Hispanic demographics and immigration, 1007 12 Hispanic identification, 983 History, 890 91; dialects, 781 83; Haiti, 431 32; Vega, Ana Lydia, on, 975 HIV/AIDS, 996 Hobsbawm, E. J., 147, 149 Holifield, Chet, 718 19 Home life, Mexican immigrant, 376 77 Homosexuality, Puerto Rican literature, 979 80 Hondurans, 967 69; Estada, Miguel, judicial nomination, 997 99 Honduras, 1 2, 516 Hoover, J. Edgar, 786 Horrock, Nicholas, 786 Hospital sterilization programs, 883 84 Hotel and Restaurant Employee and Bartenders International, 648 49, 1004, 1037, 1054, 1056 Hotels, Miami strike, 648 49 Hotel workers, 1038 39 House Committee on Interstate Migration, 551 56 House Committee on Public Land, 185 86 House Committee on Un-American Activities, 735 36, 786 House of Representative, 169 72 House of Representatives, 197 200; Puerto Rican nationalists attack, 655 56, 787; Roybal, Edward R., 1005 6 House Select Committee on Intelligence, 944 House Subcommittee on EmployerEmployee Relations, 1037 39 Housing, Chicago middle class and Latino, 931 Houston, Sam, 58 60, 61 62, 70 Houston, Texas, 876; New Latino population, 987 Howard, Charles, 168 72 Huelga. See Strikes Huerta, Dolores, 820, 822 Hughes, Langston, 594, 649 50 Hull House, 511 14, 710 11, 722 Humboldt, Alexander von, 13 14 Humphrey, Hubert H., 897 98 Humphrey, Norman, 585 86 Humphreys, Ava I., 713 14 Hunger strikes, 1021 22 Hurricane relief, 538 42

Hurricane Relief and Rehabilitation Commission, 540 42 Hurricane San Cipri
an, 515 Hutchinson, Robert Maynard, 813 ‘‘I Am Joaqu
ın’’ (Gonzales, poem), 827 30 Ickes, Harold L., 556 Identity: Central American, 438 39; Cuban Americans, 749; East Harlem Puerto Rican youth, 638 40; Hispanic Census category, 983; immigration and national, 468 75; Latino nationality and, 749; Mexican American, 850 52; Nicaraguan national, 443; Puerto Rican, 633; Puerto Rico, 440 42; racial in Puerto Rico, 764 65; salsa and ethnic, 953; West Side Story and Puerto Rican, 751 52 Ideology: Aztl
an, 1032 33; Chicana movement, 924 25; Chicano liberation, 835 36; cigar maker union, 291; manifest destiny, 71 73; Marxism, 926; nationalism and U.S. hegemony, 631 32; salsa and, 951 55; Young Lords Organization, 780 83 Iglesias, Santiago, 459 Illegal aliens, public services, 1025 27 Illegal immigration, 574 Illinois: Garc
ıa, Jes
us ‘‘Chuy,’’ 1039 44; marginalization of Mexican Americans, 619 Immigrants: Americanization, 467, 468 75; Americanization of Latino, 467 514; bilingual education abolition, 1028 31; bilingualism in U.S., 455 57; Bryan, Samuel, on Mexican, 395 98; definition and quota, 490 91; deportation and protection, 722 24; Hull House, 511 14; Iraq military service, 1051 52; Latinos in U.S., 968; Latinos since 1980, 981 88; Mexicans in Arizona schools, 478 79; Miami, Florida Latino, 648 49; protection, 476, 722; Puerto Ricans, 524 27; Puerto Ricans in New York City, 447 51, 451 54; Puerto Rican workers, 423 26; remittances home, 1060 62; repatriation, 563 64, 570 74, 585 91, 722 24; Mexicans from Detroit Michigan, 585 86; rights, 1037 39; Ronstadt, Federico Jos
e Mar
ıa, 355 60; Spanish Galacians, 518 22; toxic bath protest,

1104

Index Immigrants (continued) 418 19; U.S.-Mexico guest worker program, 721 22; U.S. treatment of Mexican, 476 77; U.S. economic change, 1003; YMCA and Latino, 476. See also Deportation Immigration: amnesty demonstration, 1052 57; from Arandas, Mexico, 493 96; bilingual education, 887; of Caribbeans in Great Depression, 516; Chinese Exclusion Act, 353 55; Chinese to Cuba, 255; ethnicity, 1008 9; EuroAmericans to Texas, 62 63; Hispanic population growth, 988 89; Latino and U.S. population, 927 28; literacy requirement, 411 12; Mariel exodus, 934 38; Mexican Revolution, 398; Mexicans in Chicago, Illinois, 511 14; Mexicans in Los Angels, 506 7; Mexicans in U.S. policy, 369 77; of Mexicans to Southern states, 1033 36; national origins and U.S. law, 488 93; Puerto Rican, New York City, 515; Puerto Rican agricultural workers, 454 55; Puerto Ricans to California, 457 59; Puerto Rico, 317 19; Puerto Rico unemployment, 644 47; quotas and restrictions, 480 83; of slaves to Latin America, 225 26; U.S. melting pot termination, 487 88; U.S. racist xenophobia, 337 Immigration Act, 411 12, 792 Immigration Act of 1891, 362 Immigration Act of 1921, 480 83 Immigration and Nationality Act, 1012 Immigration and Naturalization Service, 968, 1056 Immigration Commission, 397 Immigration laws, McCarran-Walter Act, 740 Immigration policy, reform legislation, 1012 20 Immigration Reform and Control Act, 1003, 1012 20, 1038, 1052, 1053 Immigration status, resident alien proof, 742 Imperialism: Beveridge, Albert, and U.S., 311 16; Cuba annexation by U.S., 235 40; EZLN declaration of war on, 1022 25; Mart
ı, Jos
e, on U.S., 287 89; Monroe Doctrine, 27, 443; Teller Amendment, 296 97; U.S. Latin American policy, 408 9

Imperial Valley, California, labor union organizing, 501 3 Imperial Valley Workers Union, 501 Income: Cuban exiles and African American, 755; farm family, 603; Latino and white worker, 1033 36; New Latinos in U.S., 982 Independence: Cuba, 256 268, 310 11, 328; Guatemala, 1; Haiti, 6 8; Latin America, 21; Latin American, 307; Mexico, 10 13, 16, 18 21; Monroe Doctrine, 27 28; Puerto Rican, 534, 535 37, 549 51; Texas, 51 70 Independence movements, 273 306; Cuba, 215 16; Plan de San Diego, 409 10; Puerto Rican, 215, 254, 642 44, 655 56, 763 73, 787; Treaty of Paris, 307 8 Independent School Dist. et al. v. Salvatierra et al., 575 83 Independistas, 273 306 Indian-European mixed ancestry, 11 Indian nationalism, 11 Indians: bribery by U.S., 9; Cherokee revolt against Texas, 70 71; cross-border raids, 122; Gadsden Purchase Treaty, 121 22; Mexican population, 337; property rights, 111 12; U.S.-Mexico border, 89 94, 110 Indigenous citizens, 7, 22 Indigenous peoples, 1 2 Industrial Areas Foundation, 721, 820, 904 14 Industrial development, Puerto Rico, 422 23 Industrial Worker of the World (I.W.W.), 413 Industry, U.S. intervention in Nicaragua, 446 47 Infante, Pedro, 665 Infant mortality, 609, 616; Puerto Rico, 316 17 Institute for Multi Racial Justice, 921 Insurgents: Cortina, Juan N., 151 62; Ejercito Zapatista de Liberaci
on Nacional, 1062 65; El Paso, Texas, salt trade conflict, 166 68; King, Ricardo, 164 65; Maceo, Antonio, in Cuba, 300 302; Menocal, Mario, 302 7 Insurrection movements, Cuba, 220 25 Insurrections, Cuba and Manuel de Quesada, 256 68

Index 1105 Intelligence, immigrant stereotypes, 467 68 International and Great Northern Railroad Co., 205 International Association of Descendants of Joaqu
ın Murrieta, 141 International Brigade, 549 International finance, immigrant remittances, 1060 62 Internationalism, 882 83 International Ladies Garment Workers Union, 1004 International law, U.S. mass deportation of Mexicans, 574 75 International Workers of the World (I.W.W.), 497 Internment camps, 682 83 Inter-ocean canal, 321 22, 322 25 Interventions: Central America and U.S., 943; U.S. in Dominican Republic, 759 60 Invasions: Dominican Republic by U.S., 750, 927; Iraq, 1050 52 Iran, 943 Iraq, Chicano/Latino military service, 1083 86 Iraq invasion, 1050 52 Iraq war, Latinos and, 1079 83 Irizarry, Florentino, 551 54 Isolation, Latinos in U.S., 749 Iturbide, Agust
ın de, Emperor, 1, 16 21, 26 27; widow, 50 51 Jackson, Andrew, 15 Jackson, H. Joaqu
ın, 855 65 Jacobs, Chip, 1069 77 Jamaica, 21 Jamaicans, 516, 755 Japan, 411 12 Japanese, 480, 666 69, 675 78 Japanese Americans, 682 83 Japanese immigrants, 397, 591 Javits, Jacob, 658 Jefferson, Thomas, 4, 9, 13 14, 235, 313 Jesuits, 928 Jim Crow, 591 Jim
enez, Jos
e ‘‘Cha Cha,’’ 775 Joaqu
ın de Herrera, Jos
e, 82 83 Johansen, Bruce, 600 603 Johnson, Chauncy, 60 61 Johnson, James Weldon, 428 32 Johnson, Lyndon B., 703 4, 754, 797, 872, 887, 903

John XXIII, Pope, 788, 929 Jones, John B., 169 70 Jones, Robert C., 511 14 Jones Act, 421 Jones-Shafroth Act, 634 Joshi, Ruckika, 675 78 Ju
arez, Benito, 256 Judges, 821 22 Junta, Mexican provisional, 18 19 Junta Nacionalista, 534 Juries, 733 34 Jurisprudence, ethnic change, 1008 Justice: crime against humanity, 318 19; criminal, 821 22; jury impartiality, 733 34; Murrieta, Joaqu
ın, 138 43; Pompa, Aurelio, 507 9; Ram
ırez, Francisco, 179 80; San Francisco race riot, 137; squatters in California, 183 86; V
asquez, Tiburcio, 147; vigilantes and racism, 132 35. See also Social justice Juvenile delinquents, 725 27 Kanellos, Nicol
as, 173 Kansas, 680 82 Kates, Jennifer, 963 65 Kemp, Jack, 1055 Kennedy, John F., 757, 884, 896 Kent, Rockwell, 560 Kentucky, 53 56, 116 Keyes v. School District Number One, 887 Key West, Florida, 281 87, 289, 522 24 Kihss, Peter, 785 86 King, John H., 169 72 King, Martin Luther, 820, 865 66 King, Ricardo, 164 65 King, Rodney, 1045 46 King, Wayne, 787 88 Kinney County, Texas, 205 14 Kipling, Rudyard, 320 21 Kissinger, Henry, 760 Kistler, Robert, 883 84 Klu Klux Klan, 497 98 Knights of Columbus, 497 Know-nothingism, 475 Kochhar, Rakesh, 1033 36 Kohly, Alfredo, 517 Korean War, 631, 650 52, 664, 724 25 Kornbluh, Peter, 943 Kubisch, Jack B., 762 63 Kumm, Bjorn, 928 30

1106

Index Labor: Chinese in U.S., 353 55; discrimination and Mexican American, 706 10; guest workers as unfree, 1057 58; Mexican immigration and agricultural, 396 98 Labor camps: migrant workers, 568 69; Puerto Ricans in U.S., 423 26 Labor conditions: cigar makers, 289 93; contract labor, 645 47, 1055 56; Cubans in Key West, 281 87; Cuba plantation slaves, 255 56; emigration to Hawaii, 454 55; Imperial Valley, 501; labor camps, 423 26; miner strike in Arizona, 360 65; mutual aid societies, 390 92; Puerto Rico, 557 58 Laborers, 571 74 Labor organizing: agricultural workers in Imperial Valley and Los Angeles, 502 3; cigar makers, 289 93; deJesus, Edgar, 776 78; deportation and Mexican Americans, 722 24; immigration reform mobilization, 1053 55; Imperial Valley Workers Union, 501; Miami, Florida, 648 49; Pallares, Jes
us, 610 15; Tenayuca, Emma, 604 10 Labor supply: Cubans in Miami, Florida, 754; immigration, 1011; immigration amnesty, 1055 56; Mexicans and agricultural, 572 74; Mexico-U.S., 337; Puerto Rican contract, 644 47; Puerto Rican emigration, 454 55; Puerto Rican women, 644; second generation Latinos, 988 89; Southern states and Mexican/Latino immigration, 1033 36; water in Arizona, 484 86 Labor unions: Acci
on Feminista Dominicana, 538; anti-immigrant activities, 722; Bisbee, Arizona, strike, 412 13; California cotton picker strike, 591 94; Cuban cigar makers, 289 93; Espionage Act of 1917, 413 15; farm workers, 820 21; immigrant advocacy, 1003; immigrant rights, 1037 39; Imperial Valley Workers Union, 501; member deportations, 741 43; miners in Arizona, 360 61, 363 65; Puerto Ricans in New York City, 777; Seattle history project, 884 87; sensitivity to Latinos, 776 La Guardia, Fiorello H., 533 La Guardia School, 785 86

La Liga Protectora Latina, 483, 486 87 Lamar, Mirabeau B., 74 75 Land, 193 213; Coahuila and Texas colonization, 32 37; Mexican property rights, 183 86; ownership under D
ıaz, 380 81; policy and community grants, 193 95; speculation in Amalia Valley, 602 3; tenure system, 865 Land grants: California claims validation, 197 200; Quer
etaro Protocol with Mexico, 113 14; squatterism in California, 204 5; Texas, 81, 205 14; Treaty of Guadeloupe Hidalgo, 193, 197 98, 198, 865 68; U.S. Southwest, 19; validity evidence, 200 204, 205 14; validity of Mexican, 111 12 Landr
on, Hector, 658 Landrones, 315 Land surveys: California land ownership, 197 200; New Mexico land grants, 196; U.S.-Mexican border, 115 48 Lane, William Carr, 117 18, 118 20 Language, 1 Language of instruction: California, 1028 31; fluency requirement, 793 95; Puerto Rico, 527 31; Spanish, 441. See also Bilingual education Las Cruces, New Mexico, 173 Latina: earning power of, 1065 69; Iraq war enlistment and service, 1084 85; Schwarzenegger, Arnold, sexist remarks, 1058 60; women and professionals, 1066 69 Latin America: Dar
ıo, Rub
en, 329 31; Haiti and, 6; immigration and political stability, 1011; independence movements, 273 306; migration to U.S. from, 749; nationalism and ideology, 632; nationalism and U.S. occupation, 307 36; Roosevelt, Theodore, intervention policy, 325 28; unification, 21; U.S. imperialism, 408 9 Latinos: bilingualism in U.S., 455 57; Cubans in Key West, 281; Great Depression and, 515 62; immigrant Americanization, 467 514; immigration to Southern states, 1033 36; Iraq war an, 1079 83; Iraq war enlistment and service, 1083 86; military service and Iraq invasion, 1051 52; music and identity of, 750; 1980s, 927 1002; 1960s, 749 90; Puerto Rican youth

Index 1107 and other, 749; remittances home by, 1060 62; segregation in schools, 1077 79; U.S.-born second generation, 988 89; U.S. population growth and immigration, 988 89; vigilantism against, 134 35; World War II and 1950s, 631 62 Latino unionism, 776 Latin Protective League, 483 Lau v. Nichols, 887 90 Lavender, Catherine, 735 36 Law: Mexico adoption of Spanish, 18 21; New Mexico land grants, 195 97; Spanish America, 22 24; Texas Republic, 73; women in Argentina, 274 Law enforcement: Brown Berets, 868 71; Cuban exiles in Miami, 752 53; Los Angeles, California, violence, 871 76; Mexican Americans and, 821 22 Law school, 793 94, 903 4 Lawyers, 903 4 Lazo, Ralph, 682 83 League of Revolutionary Struggle (LRS), 1049 League of Spanish-Speaking Workers(Liga Obrera de Habla Espa~ nola), 610 15 League of United Latin American Citizens, 415, 509 11, 575, 704 League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), 705 Leaves of Grass (Whitman), 94 95 Le Berthon, Ted, 603 4 Lebr
on, Lolita, 655 56, 763, 787 88 Lebr
on, Ram
on, 454 55 Ledger (San Antonio newspaper), 41 48 Lee, Chungmei, 1077 79 Lee, Fitzhugh, 300 Lee, Robert E., 151 62 Lee, Spike, 995 Legal system, property rights, 195 200 Lemon Grove, California, 583 85 Le
on, Marcos de, 807 9 Leonard, Olen E., 737 40 Letona, Jos
e Mar
ıa de, 63 ‘‘A Letter from the Santa Fe Jail’’ (Tijerina), 865 68 ‘‘Let There Be Justice’’ (newspaper article), 179 80 Leval, Susana Torruellla, 970 Lewis, William H., 169 Lewis and Clark expedition, 14

Lewis Mumford Center, 968, 981, 984, 985, 989 Lexington Avenue Express Percussion Workshop, 787 Liberation movements: Puerto Rico, 787; Young Lords Organization, 778 79, 783 85 Liberation theology, 788 89, 928 30 Liberty: capacity for, 93 94; land association with, 193; U.S. imperialism, 312 13 Liberty, Greene, 963 65 ‘‘Life, Trial, and Death of Aurelio Pompa’’ (Gamio), 507 9 Liga Antiimperialista Puertorique~ na, 533 34 Lincoln, Abraham, 83 85, 88 89, 95 100, 183 Listen Chicano! (Machado), 890 92 Literacy, 411 12; Mariel exodus characteristics, 937 38; Puerto Rico, 526 27; Vega, Ana Lydia, on Puerto Rican, 972 Literacy Act, 411 12 Literature, Vega, Ana Lydia, on Puerto Rican, 970 81 Little Village Community Development Corporation, 1040 Livermore, Abiel Abbott, 101 2 Living conditions: Haiti, 429 32; Mexican Americans in Los Angeles, 505 7; Port-au-Prince, Haiti, 429; Puerto Rican in U.S. labor camps, 423 26; Puerto Rican migration, 554 56; Puerto Rico, 459 61, 636 38; Puerto Rico field laborers, 316 17 Loaiza, Jos
e Mar
ıa, 133 34 Logan, John R., 981 88, 989 92 Longoria, Felix, 703 4, 715 16 L
opez, El
ıas, 953 L
opez, Enrique ‘‘Hank,’’ 398 407, 871 76 L
opez, Jennifer, 751 L
opez, Mart
ın, 398 407 L
opez, Narciso, 220, 226 35 L
opez, Suzanne, 1065 69 L
opez-Stafford, Gloria, 727 29 Lorano Pendas & Co., 291 Los Angeles, California, 143 46, 179, 398, 824 27; Alatorre, Richard, 1069 77; Castro, Salvador B., 824 27; cocaine trade, 943 48; gangs and drug trafficking, 992 95; hotel and restaurant

1108

Index Los Angeles (continued) workers, 1039; immigration amnesty demonstration, 1052 57; labor union organizing, 502 3; law enforcement violence, 871 76; living conditions, 505 7; Mexican American youth in, 725 27; Montez, Carlos, prosecution, 868 71; New Latino population, 987; pachuco crimes and communist, 693 95; police-Mexican American relations, 1044 47; Roybal, Edward R., 717 19; Sleepy Lagoon trial, 683 86, 698 701; social life, 729 33; Spanish language newspapers, 173; sterilization programs, 883 84; Villaraigosa, Antonio, mayoral election, 1047 49 Los Siete Defense Committee, 879 83 Louisiana, 217, 233, 250 Louisiana Purchase, 4 6, 96 Louisiana Territory, 2 4, 4 6, 25, 115 L’Ouverture, Toussaint, 6 Love, Harry, 138 39, 139 43, 186 Lovelace, Edward, 25 27 Lucero, Rudy M., 724 25 Ludlow Massacres, 407 Luis de Urquijo, Mariano, 2 Lumber industry, 373
Luna, Angel Rafael, 774 Lutton, Linda, 1039 44 Lynchings, 179; Cortina, Juan N., 152; Cubans in Florida, 283 84; Mexicans, 180 81; of Mexicans, 132 35; Rodr
ıguez, Antonio, 389 90; Texas, 409, 416 17 MacArthur, Douglas, 664, 666 Maceo, Antonio, 300 302 Machias (U.S. gunboat), 322 Madero, Francisco, 392 Maestas, Roberto, 600 603 Mag
on, Ricardo Flores, 377, 384 89, 392, 409 10, 416 17 Maids, 644 Maldonado, Edwin, 644 47 Mambo, 948 Mancillas, Jorge R., 1021 22 Mandin, Constant, 365 66 Manifest Destiny, 71 73, 314 16; Cuba and Central America annexation, 240 42 Mannelli Ponce, Mar
ıa, 599 600 Manning, Caroline, 545 46 Manuel, Herschel T., 527 28, 530

Manzanar, California, 682 83 Maps: Mexican boundary, 120 21; Mexico and, 14; Mexico-U.S. border, 115, 117 18 Maras, 992 95 Mara Salvatrucha, 993 95 Marcantonio, Vito, 556 62 March
an, Rafael F., 423 26 Marcos, Subcomandante, 1062 65 Marianas, 307 Mariel exodus, 934 38 Mariscal, Jorge, 1083 86 Maritime rights, 223 24 Markoff, Sol, 768 Marriage: Chinana movement, 877 78; mass deportations of Mexicans, 575 Mart
ı, Jos
e, 273, 299, 305, 310 11, 656; interment, 297 98; Key West worker rights, 281 87; on racism, 279 81; stereotypes of Cubans, 275 79; U.S. imperialism, 287 89 Martial law, 762 63 Martin, Phil, 1011 Mart
ınez, Elizabeth ‘‘Betita,’’ 920 26 Mart
ınez, Maria, 970 Martinez, Mariano, 366 67 Mart
ınez, Ram
on, 712 Mart
ınez, Refugio Ram
on, 723 Mart
ınez, Ricardo S., 885 86 Mart
ınez, Tancredo, 659 Martinez Nadal, Rafael, 459 Marxism, 761, 924 26 Marxist terrorist groups, 940 Marx-Lennist groups, 777 Mary Lowell (ship), 266 67 Mason, James, 235 Matamoros, Texas, 149, 151 62, 345 48 Material dialectics, 782 83 Maverick, Maury, 605, 615 17 Maxey, Thomas, 338 43 Maya people, 1063 65 Mazzoli, Romano, 1012 McCarran, Pat, 740 McCarran Internal Security Act, 722 McCarran-Walter Act, 740 McCarran-Walter Immigration Act, 722 McCarthy, Joseph, 693 McClellan, George B., 105 6 McCormick, Carlos, 795 McGehee, Danile R., 637 McKay, Robert, 563 McKinley, William, 296

Index 1109 McLean, Robert N., 498 500, 570 74 McLeod, J. D., 60 McWilliams, Carey, 150 51, 725 27 Medellin Cartel, 945 Medical education, 893 903 Meese, Edwin, III, 944 45 Men: Capetillo, Luisa, on, 333 35; citizenship status and wives, 479 80; military service by Mexican American, 663 64; Puerto Rican stereotypes, 751; social roles and, 274 75 Menchaca, Jos
e Antonio, 62 65 M
endez, Gonzalo, 701 3 Mendoza, Jose, 514 Menese, Norwin, 947 Menocal, Mario G., 302 6, 517 Mercado, Manuel, 287 Mercedes, Texas, 714 15 Merchants: Cuba and U.S., 216; social conditions in New Mexico, 128 29; U.S. border expansion, 8 9 Merchant shipping, Caribbean and Central American, 220 25 Merchants War, 123 24 Mesa-Bains, Amalia, 1068 69 Mesilla dispute, 120 Mesilla Valley, 118 20, 121 22 Mestizos, 11 Metropolitan regions: Latino population in U.S., 960 61; school racial segregation, 989 92 Mevorach, Samuel, 1072 Mexican American Democrats, 807 Mexican American Education Committee, 824 27 Mexican American GI Generation, 807 Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF), 794, 887, 1007 Mexican American National Issues Conference, 876 Mexican American organizations, 791 92; voting rights, 797 Mexican American Political Association (MAPA), 807, 876 Mexican Americans: Alamo legacy, 727 29; automobiles and farm workers, 500; Chicago, 569 70; Chicano Movement, 835 36; Colima, Bert, 509; in Colorado, 499 500; contemporary society, 1003 86; Crystal City, Texas, student walkouts, 852 55; deportation,

736; employment discrimination, 706 10; exclusion and antiCommunist campaign, 740 46; Great Depression, 563 631; Hill, Lon C., 418; Hill, Lon C., on violence against, 416 17; historiography and racism, 890 92; Korean War, 724 25; La Liga Protectora Latina, 486 87; League of United Latin American Citizens, 509 11; life in U.S., 504 5; living in Los Angeles, 505 7; marginalization, 617 19; marginalization in Austin, Texas, 617 18; New Mexico constitution, 394 95; Plan of San Diego, 409 10; political ambitions, 850 52; Quinn, Anthony, life of, 684 89; school desegregation, 483 84; school segregation, 575 85; Sleepy Lagoon trial, 683 86; Spanish language-based education, 809 13; as subculture, 813 18; U.S. born population, 793; U.S. politics and, 997; U.S. population, 982; as U.S. raised, 729 33; vigilantism in Arizona, 366 67; voting rights, 796 97; World War II, 663 749; World War I veterans, 415 16 Mexican American Unity Council, 851 52 Mexican-American War, 81 114, 337 Mexican American Youth Organization (MAYO), 792, 842, 850, 852 54 Mexican Central Railroad, 343 45 Mexican Cession, 235 Mexican Construction Co., 344 Mexican Feminine Commission, 876 Mexicanism, 689 93 Mexican Liberal Party, 377 Mexican Revolution, 343; Campobello, Nellie, 383 84; Plan de San Diego, 409 10; Presbyterian missionaries, 570 71; San Luis Potosi Plan, 392 94; Texas Rangers, 409 10; Villa, Pancho, 398 407 Mexican revolution, property rights, 12 13 Mexicans, 970; Americanization, 477 78; Arizona race riots against, 407 8; attitude to Americans, 155; Bisbee deportation, 412 13; in California, 140 43; citizenship, 109; civil rights traditions and nineteen sixties, 749; emigration from Arandas, 493 96; employment and U.S. immigration, 369 77; EuroAmerican racial attitudes toward, 128;

1110

Index Mexicans (continued) Euro-American racism, 114; EuroAmericans and Joaqu
ın Murrieta, 140 43; Euro-Americans contrasted with, 48 51; fighting with EuroAmericans, 151 72; forced repatriation, 563 64; guest worker program, 1057 58; guest workers in Texas, 720; Hull House, 511 14; immigrant, 376 77; immigrant protection, 722 24; immigrants in Chicago, Illinois, 511 14; immigrants to U.S., 395 98; immigrant treatment in U.S., 476 77; laborers and Southwestern U.S. growth, 571 74; land, 193 213; life in U.S., 504 5; lynchings of, 132 35; miners in Arizona, 595 99; miner strike in Arizona, 360 65; missionaries and social conditions, 128 29; mutual aid societies in U.S., 345 48; panchuco stereotype, 689 93; population in 1980s, 927 28; population in U.S., 984; property rights, 111 12; Puerto Rican labor and, 454; repatriation, 571 74; repatriation from Detroit Michigan, 585 86; repatriation from Texas, 585 91; return movements, 179 81; schools and alien, 478 79; social banditry and racism against, 149 51; Spanish-language newspapers, 173 92; status in Texas Republic, 73; Tejano, 41; Texas Republic, 75 79; toxic bath bordercrossing protest, 418 19; undocumented immigration, 1012; U.S. flag burning, 389 90; in U.S., 496 98; U.S. citizenship acquisition, 603 4; U.S. labor shortage, 353; U.S. military service and Iraq, 1051; V
asquez, Tiburcio, 146 47; water and Arizona labor shortages, 484 86; working class stereotype, 739. See also Californios Mexicans in U.S.: California Rangers, 143 46; V
asquez, Tiburcio, 147 Mexico, 307, 589 90; citizenship, 109; Coahuila and Texas colonization, 30 37, 37; Cortina, Juan N., pressure on, 162 65; economic development, 337; filibustering against, 127 28; French occupation, 181 82; Gadsden Purchase Treaty, 121 22; immigration and political stability, 1011;

independence, 10 13, 16, 18 21, 41 48; independence and U.S. westward expansion, 25; labor union organizing, 502 3; land grant policy in, 193 95; Mag
on, Ricardo Flores, 384 89; mapping of, 14; Mart
ı, Jos
e, 288; Maya rights and EZLN, 1062 65; Presbyterian missionaries, 570 71; Quesada, Manuel de, 256; remittances from U.S. immigrants, 1060 62; returning Mexicans from U.S., 575, 587 91; salt deposit border conflict, 165 68; slave trade abolition, 30; social conditions in, 377 83; Spanish Army in, 10; Texas annexation, 82 83, 85 87; Texas slavery, 100 101; Treaty of Cordova and Empire of, 18 21; Treaty of Velasco, 68 70; undocumented migrants and gangs, 993 95; U.S. border claims, 97 100; U.S. mass deportations to, 574 75; U.S. war damage compensation, 107; Walker, William, filibustering expeditions, 249 50; war claims against U.S., 110 11; war with U.S., 81 114 Mexico City, 123, 818 19 Mexico Liberal Party, 384 Miami, Florida, 290; Cubans exiles, 752 56; Latino immigrants, 648 49; New Latino population, 987 Miami Sound Machine, 953 Michigan, 585 86 Michigan Sugar Co., 585 86 Middle class: Chicago Puerto Rican housing and, 931; housing, 931; new immigrants, 997; tax burden, 792 Midwest, 632 Migrant workers, 568 69, 603; Arizona schools, 479; Chicano activists, 884 85; Puerto Rican, 331 32; school segregation, 576 77; women in Chicago, 931 34 Migration: Central American to U.S., 927; Latino community differences and, 749; Puerto Ricans to U.S., 551 56, 552 54, 631 32, 644 47; to Puerto Rico, 759 60; Puerto Rico to U.S., 421 Military: El Salvador, 938; Espionage Act of 1917, 414; Guatemala-U.S. relations, 1000 1002; in Puerto Rico, 961 63; Puerto Rico and U.S., 316; Salvadoran student protests, 938

Index 1111 Military recruiting: Iraq, 1051 52; U.S. naturalization, 1083 86 Military service, 848; Bonilla, Frank, 632 34; immigrants in Iraq, 1051 52; Iraq, 1083 86; Latino education access, 1085 86; Pagan, Fernando, 634 36; Puerto Ricans, 426, 633, 642 44; Saenz, Jos
e de la Luz, 415 16; 65th Infantry Regiment, 650 52 Millender-McDonald, Juanita, 944, 945, 946 Mills, C. Wright, 890 Mills, Trudy, 1006 7 Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 647 Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers Union, 736 Mineral resources, Sonora, 125 Mine workers: Cold War strike film, 735 36; Pallares, Jes
us, 610 15; strike by auxiliary, 1006 7 Mining: Arizona race riots, 407 8; auxiliary workers strike, 1006 7; in Depression, 566; Mexican immigrant employment, 372 73, 397 98; Park, Joseph, 360 65; Spanish Americans in Colorado, 500; strike in Arizona, 412 13 Minority groups, school segregation, 991 Minority professionals, 904 Minute Men (vigilante group), 132 Miranda, Rafael C., 655 56, 787 Missionaries: Presbyterian, 570 71; social conditions in New Mexico, 128 29; U.S. intervention in Nicaragua, 443 Mission Rebels, 879 83 Mission San Gabriel Arc
angel, 173 79 Mississippi River, 4 Missouri Compromise, 115 Mobilization, immigration amnesty, 1053 57 Mobs: Arizona vigilantism, 366 67; Downieville, California, 133 34; EuroAmerican, 167; orphan adoption in Arizona, 365 66 Mochado, Manuel Antonio, Jr., 890 92 Monaghan, Jay, 135 37 Monarchy, 26 27 Mongolians, 591 Monroe, James, 15, 27 29, 235 Monroe Doctrine, 27 29, 218 19, 296, 329, 408 9; Cold War, 759; Cuba, 233 35; French claims, 124 26; military rights, 435 37; Roosevelt,

Theodore, corollary, 325 28; Sandino, Augusto C
esar, 443 Monterde, D. Mariano, 105 Montez, Carlos, 868 71 Montoya, Joseph, 892 Moore, Richard, 924, 925 Morales, Victor, 865 Moran, William, 757 Morelos, Jos
e Mar
ıa, 11 13 Morenci, Arizona, 595 600 Moreno, Luisa, 619 20 Morgan, J. P., 322, 323 Morgan, Patricio, 740 46 Morin, Raul, 671 73 Mosquito Coast, 219 Movimento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztl
an (MEChA), 833, 885 87, 1032 33, 1037 38, 1047, 1049 Mu~ noz, Rick, 1041, 1042 Mu~ noz, Rosalio, 848 Mu~ noz, Tony, 1043 Mu~ noz Mar
ın, Luis, 459 61, 642, 643, 658, 757 58, 763 Murder: California cotton picker strike, 591 94; Cardis, Louis, 168 69; D
ıaz, Jos
e, case trial, 698 701; Salazar, Rub
en, 871 76; San Francisco, Mission district, 879 83 Murders, Mexicans by vigilantes, 132 35 Murrieta, Antonio Rivera, 139 43 Murrieta, Joaqu
ın, 138 46; wife, 186 90 Music: Caribbeans in New York City, 786 87; Latino identity, 750; politics and Caribbean salsa, 948 55; Ronstadt, Federico Jos
e Mar
ıa, 358 60 Mutual aid societies: Alianza HispanoAmericana, 390 92; Cuban, 290; Imperial Valley Workers Union, 501; La Liga Protectora Latina, 486 87; League of United Latin American Citizens, 509 11; Mexicans in U.S., 345 48; miners in Arizona, 360 65; Ochoa, V
ıctor L., 349; Romo v. Tempe School District, 483 Mutual protection, 390 92 Nahua people, 1032 National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies, 1005 National Association of Colored People (NAACP), 428

1112

Index National Autonomous University of Mexico, 819 National Catholic Welfare Council (NCWC), 496 National Chicana Conference, 876 78 National Chicano Youth Liberation Conference, 830 33 National Council of La Raza, 1062 National Education Association, 809 13 National Farmer Workers Association, 820 21, 880 81 National Highway Commission of Mexico, 588 Nationalism: Brown Berets and cultural, 881 82; Chicano, 831 33, 835 36; gender and Young Lords, 783 85; Latin American, 307; Mexican American, 850 52; Mexican Indian, 11; Puerto Rican, 440, 559 60; U.S. military service and Puerto Rican, 642 44; U.S. ideological hegemony, 631 32; Young Lords Organization platform, 779 Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico, 785 86 Nationalists: FBI files on Puerto Rican, 786; Pantoja, Antonia, and Puerto Rican, 763 73; Puerto Rican, 787 88; Vietnam War and Puerto Rican, 774 Nationality: Hispanic population in U.S., 983; Latinos in U.S., 749; U.S. immigration law, 488 93 Nationality Act, 515 National Labor Relations Act, 564 National Maritime Union, 535 National Origins Immigration Act of 1924, 488 93 National Reclamation Act, 395 National Security Archives, 944 Native peoples, 11 13; Boricua Indians, 749, 750; Borinquen Indians, 318 19; Indians, 9, 70 71, 89 94, 110, 111 12, 121 22, 122, 337; indigenous citizens, 7, 22; indigenous peoples, 1 2; land and, 193; Maya people, 1063 65; Mexico, 337; Nahua people, 1032; P
erez, Eulalia, 173 79 Nativism: American, 337; bilingualism and U.S., 455 57; immigration policies, 467 68; U.S. and Mexican forced deportation, 574 75 Nativists: anti-immigrant activism, 1025; Aztl
an and, 1032; immigration, 1003;

Immigration and Nationality Act, 1012; immigration restrictions, 480; Puerto Rican immigration, 645; sterilization of Puerto Rican women, 756 57 Naturalization: of Mexicans, 341 43; U.S. foreign military recruits, 1083 84; women’s status, 479 80 Navarrete, Gabriel, 671 73 Navarro. Jos
e Antonio, 41 48, 60 Navarro, Mireya, 969 70 Needle industry, 531 32, 545 Needle workers, 542, 544 Negr
on-Muntaner, Frances, 750 52 Negroponte, John D., 999 Neighborhoods, 721; Chicago, Illinois, 512, 619, 719 20, 931, 1040 44; Chicano, 831, 848 49, 852, 868, 877, 883; Communities Organized for Public Service, 904; Cuban, 752 54; ethnic control over, 831; Los Angeles, California, 675 77; Mexican, 505 6, 724 25; New Latinos, 987, 991; New York City, 516 18, 632, 776; Puerto Rico, 450 51, 764 65, 767, 931 Nelson, Eugene, Jr., 820 21 Neruda, Pablo, 138 Neutrality: Cuba filibusters, 241 42; Cuba insurgency, 258; Spanish seizures of U.S. ships, 266 67; U.S. West Indies policy, 223 24 Nevada, 107 New Deal, 531, 534, 564 New England, 181 82 New Granada, 321 22 New Jersey, 631, 984 New Jersey Zinc Co., 736 Newlands Reclamation Act of 1902, 395, 485 New Latinos, 981 88 New Left, 774 New Mexicans, 564 New Mexico, 4, 25, 74 75, 107 9, 108, 115, 116, 117 18, 118 20; citizenship rights and annexation of, 340; constitution of 1912, 394 95; employment discrimination, 708; farmers migration to Northwest, 600 603; land grant policy in, 194; land grants types and law, 195 97; mine strike film, 735 36; Movimiento Left in, 920 26; Ochoa, V
ıctor L., 348 50; Otero, Miguel Antonio, 190 92; Pallares, Jes
us, labor

Index 1113 organizing, 610; Plan de San Diego, 409 10; salt deposit border conflict, 165 68; social conditions, 128 29; Treaty of Guadeloupe Hidalgo, 865 New Orleans, 242 46 New Panama Canal Co., 323 24 New Republic (magazine), 461 64, 464 65 New Spain, 1, 13, 17, 25 26 Newspapers, 725 27; Garza Rodr
ıguez, Catarino Erasmo, 345 48; Ochoa, V
ıctor L., 348; Spanish language, 173 92 New York City, 291, 746 47, 872; Campos, Pedro Albizu, elementary school, 785 86; Caribbeans in New York City, 786 87; cigar maker life, 520; Cuban community, 516 18; Dominicans in, 750, 957 60; East Harlem Puerto Rican youth, 638 40; Harlem conditions, 547 48; New Latino population, 987; Nuyorican Movement, 640 41; Pantoja, Antonia, 766 73; Puerto Rican communities, 515; Puerto Rican experience in, 447 51; Puerto Rican presence in, 969 70; Puerto Ricans, 546 47; Puerto Ricans in, 451 54, 631, 640 42, 749, 750; Puerto Ricans migration to, 644 47; radical politics in, 533 35; salsa developing, 950; schools, 632 33; Spanish independence movements, 299; Welfare Island, 640; Young Lords, 774 75 New York Daily Times (newspaper), 128 29 New York Foundling Asylum, 365 66 New York Puerto Rican Movement, 447 New York State, 984 New York Times (newspaper), 165 68 Nicaragua, 1 2, 219, 249 50, 324; Contras, 943, 999; filibustering, 240 46; Sandanista government, 943 48; socialism, 788 89; U.S. intervention, 443 47 Nicaraguans, 967 69, 1055 Nieto, Juan, 884 90th Division, American Expeditionary Force, 415 16 Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, 701 3 Nixon, Richard M., 756, 792, 903 No Child Left Behind Act, 1051 No Mercy: How Conservative Think Tanks and Foundations Changed America’s Social Agenda (Stefancic and Delgado), 1025 Noreiga, Jos
e, 745 46

Noriega, Manuel, 946 North, Oliver, 943, 944 45 North American Free Trade Agreement, 1023, 1060, 1063 North Carolina, 423 26, 1034, 1035 North Shore Bank of Brookfield, 1062 Nuecces River, 81, 101 Nueces River, 88 89 Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, 587 Nuevo Leon, Mexico, 123 Nu~ n
ez, Emilio, 517 Nu~ nez, Louis, 772 Nuyorican Movement, 640 41 O. Henry, 129 32 El Obrero Borica (newspaper), 777 Ocasio, Linda, 775 78 Ochoa, Enrique C., 1058 60 Ochoa, Gilda L., 1058 60 Ochoa, V
ıctor, 348 50 O’Donnoju, Juan, 18 21 O’Hara, James G., 822 24 Ojinaga, Mexico, 405 6 Oligarchy, 928 30 Olmos, Edward James, 729 Olympic Games, 1968, 819 20 158th Regimental Combat Team (Bushmasters), 664, 666 69 141st Infantry Regiment, U.S. Army, 671 74 On
ıs, Luis de, 15 Operation Just Cause, 946 Operation Mano Duro, 994 Operation PBFORTUNE, 653 55 Operation Pedro Pan, 752 Operation Powerpack, 759 Operation Wetback, 737 40 Oral histories, 568 Oregon, 884 87 Oregon Territory, 85 Orfield, Gary, 1077 79 Organization of American States, 790 Organizations: Americanization in Puerto Rico, 461; immigrant rights advocacy, 476; League of United Latin American Citizens, 510 Organizing. See Community organizing; Political activism Ornes, Horacio, 659 Orozco, Dario, 514 Orphanages, 365 66 Orta, Max, 794

1114

Index Ortero, Miguel Antonio, II, 173 Ortiz, Hildamar, 970 Ort
ız de Dom
ıguez, Josefa, 10 Ostend Manifesto, 235 40, 241 O’Sullivan, John L., 71 73 Otero, Miguel Antonio, 190 92 The Other Side: Or Notes for the History of the War between Mexico and the United States (Alcaraz), 102 5 Owen, Robert, 943, 945 Pachuco. See Zoot Suiters Padilla, Elena, 638 40 Palacios, Ricardo, Jr., 671 73, 673 74 Pallares, Jes
us, 610 15 Palmer, Michael, 945 Panama, 22, 329, 790, 946, 952; canal treaty, 321 22; Gage travel, 1 2; interoceanic communication, 224 25; Monroe Doctrine assertion, 327 28 Panama Canal, 321 22, 329, 331, 408, 422, 437, 447; Great Depression, 515; Puerto Rican labor and, 331 32; Puerto Rican military service, 426 Panama Canal Co., 322 Panama Railway, 322 Pan American Labor Council, 504 Pantoja, Antonia, 763 73 Park, Joseph, 360 65 Parker, Foxhall A., 221 Parma, Duke of, 2 4, 5 Partido Comunista Puertorique~ no, 535 Pasadena, California, 204 Passel, Jeffrey S., 988 89 Passman, Otto, 756 Pastors, Coahuila and Texas colonization, 36 Paula, Eladio, 517 Paz, Frank, 710 13 Paz, Octavio, 689 93 Peace and Freedom Party, 921 Peasants in Mexican economy, 337 Pecan shelling, 608 10, 615 17 Pelliza de Sagasta, Josefina, 273 Pe~ na, Albert, Jr., 793 Peonage, 377 83 People’s Daily World (newspaper), 696 97 People v. Gus Zammora, 698 701 P
erez, Eulalia, 173 79 P
erez, Janson, 948 55 P
erez, Rafael, 1044 47 P
erez, Rosie, 995 96

Pershing, John, 152 Pew Charitable Trusts, 988 Pew Hispanic Center, 960, 968, 988, 1060, 1079 83 Pew Research Center, 960 Phelps Dodge, 1006 7 Philippines, 320, 529; Treaty of Paris, 308 9; U.S. imperialism, 311 16; white man’s burden, 320 Pico, Antonio Mar
ıa, 197 200 Pico, Pio, 180 81 Pierce, Franklin, 226 Pike, Zebulon, 13 Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroete, 886 87 Plan de San Diego, 409 10 El Plan Espirtual de Aztl
an (The Spiritual Plan for Aztl
an), 830 33 Plan of Iguala, 16 18 Plan of San Luis Potosi, 392 94 Plan of the Three Guarantees, 16 18 Plantation crops, 215 16 Plantations: Cuban slavery, 254 56; Puerto Ricans on Hawaiian sugar, 320 Platt, Orville H., 328 Platt Amendment, 328 29, 408, 421 PLM. See Mexico Liberal Party Poindexter, John, 946 Poinsett, Joel, 48 Police: Albizu Campos, Pedro, 536 37; Cuban exiles in Miami, 753; Los Angeles, California, 868 71; violence, 871 76; Mexican Americans and, 821 22; P
erez, Rafael, and Los Angeles, California, 1044 47; Puerto Rican, 550 51; racial prejudice, 570; riot by San Diego, 848 50; San Francisco, Mission district violence, 879 83; Zoot Suiters and violence, 693 95 Political activism: Chicanos, 834 35, 842 48; communist organizing in San Antonio, Texas, 205 6; Cort
es, Ernie, 904 14; Crystal City, Texas, 796; student walkouts, 852 55; La Liga Protectora Latina, 486 87; Mexican American education, 807 9; Movimiento Left in New Mexico, 920 26; 1960’s, 796; Pacific northwest Chicano, 884 87; El Plan Espirtual de Aztl
an, 830 33; San Francisco, Mission District, 879 83; tactics, 850 52; Tijerina, Reies L
opez, 865 68;

Index 1115 Vietnam War, 848 50. See also Activists; Community organization Political Association of Spanish-Speaking Organizations (PASO), 795 96, 807 Political conditions: Central American unification, 437 39; Cuba, 421; de Mier y Ter
an on, 38 41; Mexican Americans in Texas, 796; Mexico, 377 83; Texas independence, 51 53; Texas revolution, 40 41 Political consciousness, salsa recordings, 948 49 Political consciousness organizations: Young Lords as, 775 78; young Lords Organization, 780 Political parties, 515; Chicano, 842 48; Puerto Rico, 459; Young Lords Organization platform, 778 80 Political platforms, Young Lords Organization, 778 80 Political power: Hispanics in U.S., 1005 6; immigration and, 1008; Villaraigosa, Antonio, and Los Angles, California, 1047 49 Political prisoners, 779 Politics: diversity in Latino, 997 99; Mexican American subculture, 813 18 Polk, James K., 61, 85 87, 88 89, 95, 112 13, 117 Poll tax, 796 97 Pompa, Aurelio, 507 9 Ponce massacre, 549 51, 556, 558 59, 642 44 Poor People’s March on Washington, 866 Popi (film), 756 Popular Democratic Party, 642, 643 Population, 981; Aztl
an segment, 1032 33; Caribbean immigrants, 516; Chicago, Illinois, 710; conservation and, 1009 10; Cuba, 216, 298; Cubans, 516, 755; Cuban slavery, 254 56; Dade County, Florida, 935; deportation/repatriation, 663; Dominicans in U.S., 957 60; Haiti, 431; Hispanic immigration and demographics, 1008 10; immigration quotas, 480; Indians in Mexico, 337; Latino, 927 28; Latino immigrants, 981 88; Latino national groups, 967 69; Latinos in U.S. metropolitan areas, 960 61; Los Angeles, California, 721; Mariel exodus

characteristics, 937 38; Mexican American, 563 64, 707 8, 791, 1003 4; Mexican growth, 818; Mexican immigration, 396; Mexicans, 362, 586; Mexico, 791; MexicoTexas border, 149; minority doctors and lawyers, 904; Pew Hispanic Center research, 988; Puerto Ricans in U.S., 631 32, 645, 749, 750, 931, 969 70; Puerto Rico, 254, 298, 422 23, 544; San Antonio, Texas, 606, 609; Southern states and Mexican immigration, 1033 36; Spanish Americans in Colorado, 499 500; Spanish colonial, 262 64; Texas mixed, 39; U.S. born Mexican American, 793 Port-au-Prince, Haiti, 428 30 Porter, Charles, 568 Porter, William Sydney, 129 32 Portugal, 27 28 Portuguese, 1 Poverty: El Salvador, 928; immigration amnesty, 1055; Latino generational differences, 749; Mexican Americans, 1004; New Latinos in U.S., 982; Puerto Ricans in New York City, 970 Powers, Jack, 205 Presbyterian Church, 498, 570 71 President’s Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence, 1085 86 Press, Chicano movement and gender, 876 Presser, Harriet B., 758 59 Priests, 46, 928 30; adoptions by Mexicans, 365 66; Callahan, Leroy, 603 4; Grado, Pedro, 390 92; Mission San Gabriel Arc
angel, 173 78 Prisoners of war: execution at Alamo, 68; Japanese in World War II, 666 69; Mexican independence, 46 47; Santa Fe New Mexico, 74; Texas revolt, 69; Texas war of independence, 59 60; women, 47; World War II Mexican American, 673 74 Privatization, 337 Professionals, Cuban exiles and, 753 54 Professional schools, 893 904 Pro-immigrant groups, 511 14 Property rights: after Mexican-American War, 111 12; California Land Commission, 197 98; Mexican revolution, 12 13; Quer
etaro Protocol with

1116

Index Property rights (continued) Mexico, 113 14; to slaves, 29; squatterism in California, 204 5; squatters in California, 183 86; Texas annexation, 81 82; Treaty of Guadeloupe Hidalgo, 865 68; U.S. intervention in Nicaragua, 443 47 Property titles, New Mexico grant confirmation, 195 97 Proposition 187, 1025 27, 1048 Proposition 209, 1027 28 Proposition 227, 1028 31 Protectionism, Mexican, 589 91 Protection of the foreign born, 849 Protection of U.S. interests, intervention in Nicaragua, 444 47 Protestant Churches, Mexicans and, 511 14 Protestants, 123, 930; immigrant protection, 476; Spanish Americans in Colorado, 500 Protests: cigar maker union import tariff, 291 93; Latino generational differences, 749; Salvadoran military and student, 938; Young Lords in New York City, 775 Provocateurs, 868 Public assistance, 982 Public debt, 82 Public health: HIV/AIDS and Latinos, 963 65; toxic bath border-crossing protest, 418 19; tuberculosis, 534 35, 609, 616 Public lands: squatters in California, 205; Texas annexation, 82; Texas-Mexican land grants and, 206 14 Public schools, bilingual education abolition, 1029 Public services: illegal alien ineligibility, 1025 27; immigrant denial of, 1004 Public works: Coahuila and Texas colonization, 36; employment of Mexicans, 571 74 Pueblo Indians, 865 Puerto Rican Association for Community Affairs (PRACA), 765 66 Puerto Rican Club of San Francisco, 457 59 Puerto Rican Hispanic Leadership Forum, 634 ‘‘A Puerto Rican in New York’’ (Col
on), 640 41 Puerto Rican League of California, 457 59

Puerto Rican literature, 970 81 Puerto Rican National Guard, 426 27 Puerto Rican Nationalist Party, 440, 515, 535 37, 549 51, 640, 642 44, 787 Puerto Rican nationalists: attacks on U.S. officials, 655 56; FBI files, 786 Puerto Rican Revolutionary Workers Organization, 777 Puerto Ricans, 647 48, 664; African Americans, 649 50; American citizenship, 332 33; ASPIRA, 763 73; bilingual education, 528 31; as born in U.S., 982; Clark, Victor S., report, 524 27; communities, New York City, 515; Cubans and, 464 65; East Harlem youth, 638 40; emigration to Hawaii, 454 55; English-only education, 527 28; Hughes, Langston, on, 649 50; identity, 750 52; labor camps, 423 26; migration, 422, 551 56, 631 32, 749; New York City, 447 51, 546 47, 640 42, 969 70; Nuyorican Movement, 640 41; Panama Canal construction work, 331 32; population in 1980s, 927 28; races and social classes, 427 28; radical politics, 533 35; Roosevelt years, 534 35; 65th Infantry Regiment service, 650 52; sterilization, 756 58; U.S. politics and, 997; Vietnam War and, 774; women in Chicago, 931 34; World War II service, 632; World War I service, 426 Puerto Rican Separatist Party, 299 Puerto Rican Union Party, 440 Puerto Rico, 215, 312; agricultural and population, 422 23; Clinton FALN member clemency, 955 56; colonial status, 631; field laborer living conditions, 316 17; garment industry, 531 32; Great Depression, 515; hurricane relief work, 1932, 538 42; independence movements, 273 306; Marcantonio, Vito, on, 556 62; minority treatment and, 636 38; music, 786 87; Navy bombing exercises, 961 63; New York City radicals, 533 35; Pantoja, Antonia, 763; P
erez, Rosie, documentary, 995 96; Ponce massacre, 549 51; rebellion, 298 302; Roosevelt, Eleanor, 542 44; salsa and politics, 948 55; sterilization clinics, 996; sterilization programs, 756 58,

Index 1117 758 59, 883 84; Treaty of Paris, 307 10; United States hegemony, 421; U.S. Cold War policy, 656 60; U.S. Latino population, 927; Vega, Bernado, 532 35; women’s employment, 545 46 Quach, Anne, 632 34 Quan, Katie, 1052 53 Quarantine requirements, 418 20 Queretaro, Mexico, 10 Quer
etaro Protocol, 113 14 Quesada, Manuel de, 256 58 Quinn, Anthony, 684 89 Race, 337; Americans as mixed, 22; Central America Americanization, 245 46; Cuba purchase by U.S., 239; equality, 395; Euro-American exceptionalism, 93 95; Haiti self-determination, 428 32; jury selection, 733 34; land claims adjudication, 214; Mexican independence, 11 13; national origins immigration law, 488 93; Nicaraguan and U.S. interests, 249; politics, 783 85; Puerto Ricans, 525, 649 50; Puerto Rican social class and, 427 28; Puerto Rico, 764 65; school imbalances and choice, 989 92. See also African Americans; White race Race consciousness, 831 33 Race relations: ethnic change, 1010 11; Plan de Iguala, 17 18; U.S.-Mexico border, 89 94 Race riots: Arizona, 407 8; California, 133 37 Race war, 280 81 Racial attitudes: Alamo legacy, 727 29; American particularness, 468; of Americans, 337 43; Arizona vigilantism, 366 67; California cotton pickers strike, 592; eugenics and immigration, 487 88; Euro-Americans toward Mexicans, 128, 140 43; gringo, 843 44; lynchings of Mexicans, 132 33; marginalization of Mexican Americans, 617 19; Mart
ı, Jos
e, on, 279 81; Mexican Americans pride, 850 52; Mexican American youth violence, 693 98; New York, City, 746 47; police and Mexican Americans, 821 22; Pompa, Aurelio, 507 9; Puerto

Rico, 318 19; Rio Grande Valley, 738 40; San Francisco, Mission district, 879 83; segregation in California, 591; subcultures, 813 18; V
asquez, Tiburcio, 148; white man’s burden, 320 21 Racial tension: Harlem, New York, 547 48; Rodr
ıguez, Antonio, lynching, 389 90 Racism: of Americans to Puerto Ricans, 459; anti-immigrant activism, 1025; anti-immigrant agenda, 1007; back-toMexico movements, 180 81; biological guilt, 683 84; Chicago, 569 70; Chinese Exclusion Act, 353 55; Cubans and, 749; employment and U.S. immigration policy, 369 77; Euro-American, 106 7, 114; EuroAmericans toward Mexicans, 132 35; funeral homes, 703 4; Macado, Manuel A., historiography, 890 92; Mart
ı, Jos
e, on, 279 81; Mexican Americans and, 851 52; Mexican assimilation in Texas, 149; murder trial proceedings, 698 701; mutual aid societies, 390; New England, 181 82; pachuco Mexicanism, 689 93; political power and, 843 44; Puerto Rican identity, 750; Puerto Rico, 464 65; Schwarzenegger, Arnold, 1058 60; stereotypes of Cubans, 276 79; U.S. immigration policies, 337; World War II and, 663 64; World War II service, 678 80; World War II veterans, 680 82; World War I veterans, 415 16; youths in Los Angeles, 729 33 Radical organizations, 878 83; Acci
on Feminista Domincana, 537 38; CISPES probe by FBI, 939 43; Citizen’s Committee for the Defense of Mexican American Youth, 698; cocaine trade, 943 48; DeJesus, Edgar, 777; Ejercito Zapatista de Liberaci
on Nacional, 1062 65; FBI files on, 786; links among Chicano, 1049; Mart
ınez, Elizabeth, 921 26; New York City, 533 35; Puerto Rican nationalist, 787; Young Lords Organization platform, 778 80 Radicals: Mexican American youth, 697 98; Mog
on, Ricardo Flores, 384 89; Tenayuca, Emma, 604 9 Radio, 749

1118

Index Railroads, 185 86; Chinese labor, 353; Mexican immigrant employment, 370 72; Mexican labor, 564; Mexican laborers, 396 97; Spanish Americans in Colorado, 500; U.S.-Mexico guest worker program, 721 22 Ram
ırez, Francisco, 179 80 Ramirez, Pablo, 651 52 Ramirez, Sergio, 790 Ranching, Great Depression, 567 Rancho de las Pulgas, 200 204 Ratner, Margaret, 941 42 La Raza, 831 33; Chicana organizing, 877, 878, 880, 881; organizing for, 836, 842 La Raza Unida Party, 852, 856 65, 876, 886, 914 20, 924 25, 1003, 1049 Reagan, Ronald, 868 71, 938, 943 Reannexation. See Annexation Rebels: El Salvador, 939 43; Mexican bandits, 149 Reclamation Act, 485 Reclamation of land, 396 98 Reconstruction period, 151 Red Cross, 540 41 Red River, 16 Red River Valley, 8 9 Red Scare, 480 Reed, David A., 487 88 Refugees: Cuba and U.S. anti-Castro, 754 55; Mara Salvatrucha, 992 95; Mariel exodus, 936 38; Mexicans, 337 Regeneraci
on (newspaper), 386 87 Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, 796, 893 903 Rej
on, Manuel Crescion, 114 Religion, 50, 524; Americanization, 472 74; Chicana agenda for, 877 79; Cristero War, 493; ethnic change, 1011; manifest destiny, 71 73 Remittances by immigrants, 1060 62 Reno, George, 302 6 Reno, Janet, 965 67 Repatriation: employment opportunities, 570 74; Kelley, Edna Ewing, 585 91; Mexican Americans, 722 24; Mexicans, 563 64, 585 86 Republican Nationalist Alliance (El Salvador), 938 Republican Party, 844, 1048 Republic of the Rio Grande, 123 24 Requena, Andres, 658

Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC), 1051 Resident aliens, 722 24, 742 Ress, John, 940 Restaurant workers, 1038 39 Retes, Manuel, 180 81 Return-to-Mexico movements. See Backto-Mexico movements Revell, Oliver, 940 Reverse discrimination, 796, 893 903 ‘‘Revolt of the Mexicans’’ (news article), 796 Revolution: Castro, Fidel, proclamation, 660 62; Colombia, 321 22; Cuba, 216 17, 656, 660 62, 749, 752 56, 949 50; Haiti, 431 32, 759; Mexico, 12 13, 343, 383 84, 392 94, 398 407, 409 10, 570 71; Nicaragua, 444 47; Plan de San Diego, 409 10; San Luis Potosi Plan, 392 94; Texas, 38 41 Revolutionaries: Betances, Ram
on, 254; miner strike in Arizona, 595; Ochoa, V
ıctor L., 348 50; Urrea, Teresa, 350 53; Villa, Pancho, 398 407 Revolutionary activity: Albizu Campos, Pedro, 537; Cuban, 290; Garza Rodr
ıguez, Catarino Erasmo, 345 48; Los Siete in San Francisco, 882 83; Maceo, Antonio, in Cuba, 300 302; Mag
on, Ricardo Flores, 384; Mart
ı, Jos
e, 287 89; Menocal, Mario, 302 7; Ochoa, V
ıctor L., 348 50; Plan de San Diego, 409 10; Vega, Bernado, 532 33 Revolutionary Committee of Puerto Rico, 254 Revolutionary movements/organizations: Ej
ercito Zapatista de Liberaci
on Nacional, 1022 25; Puerto Rico, 787; Puerto Rico and, 656 60; Puerto Rico and Cold War, 656 60; Young Lords Organization, 780 83 Revueltas, Rosuara, 736 Reyes, David, 1005 6 In re Ricardo Rodr
ıguez, 338 43 Rice, Ben, 793 Right-to-work laws, 648 49 Rio Bravo, 81 Riodan, Richard, 1046, 1048, 1070 Rio Grande City, 158, 161 Rio Grande River, 4, 81, 88 89, 95 98, 101, 115, 116, 117, 118 20, 121 22,

Index 1119 123 24, 149, 337, 484 86, 736; U.S. border claims, 95 100 Riots: anti-immigrant, 467; Harlem, New York, 547 48; Ponce massacre, 549 51; Rodr
ıguez, Antonio, lynching, 389 90; San Antonio, Texas, 604 10; San Diego, California, police, 848 50; toxic bath protest, 418 20; Zoot Suiters and police, 693 98 Rippy, Fred, 150 Rivas, Robert, 678 80 Rivera, Diego, 534 Rivera, Manuel ‘‘Manny,’’ 671 73 Rivera-Batiz, Francisco L., 957 60 Rivera Rosas, Rafael, 658 Robbins, Jerome, 751 Roberts, Sam, 136 37 Robinson, William Wilcox, 204 5 Rocha, Augustine, 669 Rockefeller, John D., 534 Rockefeller, Nelson, 771 Rodino, Peter, 1012 Rodr
ıguez, Antonio, 389 90 Rodr
ıguez, Irving Flores, 787 Rodriguez, Pedro, 652 Rodr
ıguez, Ricardo, 338 43 Rodr
ıguez, Roberto, 1032 33 Rodr
ıquez, Ambrosio, 58 60 Rodr
ıquez, Jos
e Mar
ıa, 56 62 Rojas, George, 570 Rojas, Rub
en, 1046 Romero, Oscar, 929 30 Romero Rosa, Ram
on, 317 19 Romo v. Tempe School District, 483 84 Ronstadt, Federico Jos
e Mar
ıa, 355 60 Roosevelt, Eleanor, 534 35, 542 44 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 529, 533, 546, 564, 664 65, 684 Roosevelt, Theodore, 322, 324, 325 28, 329 31, 331, 408, 468 75, 831 Rosales, Arturo, 483 Rosenfeld, Bernard, 883 84 Ross, John, 992 95 Ross, Malcolm, 712 13 Roybal, Edward, 887 Roybal, Edward R., 717 19, 1005 6 Ruiz, Ralph, 879 80 Ruiz de Burton, Mar
ıa Amparo, 173, 181 86 Rumsfeld, Donald, 1000 1002 Runaway slaves, 9, 83 85, 107 Ruralism, 791

Russia, 27 Ryan, Patrick J., 760 62 Sabine River, 15 16 Sacks, Mervin J., 547 Sadler, Louis R., 409 10 S
aenz, Jos
e del la Luz, 415 16, 704 6 Saipan, 675 78 Salazar, Rub
en, 871 76 Salda~ na, Rebecca, 886 87 Salinas de Gortari, Carlos, 1064 Salsa, 948 55 Salt deposits, 165 68, 168 72 Salt of the Earth (movie), 735 36 Salt River, 485 Salt War, 165 72 Salvadorans, 967 69, 981, 984 Salvatierra, Jes
us, 575 83 ‘‘Salvatrucha,’’ 994 San Antonio, Texas, 41 48, 63 67, 75 79, 123 24, 168 72, 615 17, 852; Battle of, 56 58, 60; Castro, Julian, 1049 50; Chicano voter registration, 914 18; Guti
errez, Jos
e Angel, politics in, 793 96; labor riot, 604 10; marginalization of Mexican Americans, 617 18; Mexican Americans in, 615 17 San Antonio River, 47 S
anchez, David, 881 S
anchez, Louis, 669 S
anchez, Santor ‘‘Smiling Sandy,’’ 670 S
anchez, Yolanda, 772 S
anchez Navarro, Jos
e Juan, 65 67, 74 Sandanistas, 790, 943 San Diego, California, 174, 848 50 San Diego, Texas, 409 Sandino, August C
esar, 443 Sandoval, Alberto, 751 San Elizario, Texas, 168 72, 170 72 San Francisco: Mission district, 879 83; race riot against Chileans, 135 37 San Francisco, California: Puerto Rican Club, 457 59; Spanish language newspapers, 173 San Francisco Vigilante Committee, 134 35 San Jacinto, 58 60 San Jose, California, 146 47, 186 90 San Luis Potosi Plan, 392 94 San Pascual, California, 204 Santa Anna, Antonio L
opez de, 51, 52, 55, 57 60, 65 67, 67 68, 68 69, 143

1120

Index Santa Clara, California, 188 Santa Fe, New Mexico, 74 75, 173 Sante Fe Bridge, 419 20 Sante Fe Railroad, 681 82 Santillan, Richard, 669 71 Santo Domingo, 6, 268 71 Saunders, Lyle, 737 40 Saunders, R. M., 217 18 Schiller, Dane, 1049 50 Schneider, Ren
e, 760 Scholarship, 890 91 Schools, 632 33; Americanization, 467, 473; Campos, Pedro Albizu, elementary, 785 86; Crystal City student walkouts, 852 55; desegregation, 483 84, 583 85, 701 3; discrimination, 704 6, 713 14; English as Second Language enrollment, 969; Los Angeles, California, 824 27, 868 71; Mexican immigrants, 478 79; naming for Campos, Pedro Albizu, 785 86; Puerto Ricans and New York City, 770 71; Puerto Rico, 441, 527 31; racial imbalance and choice, 989 92; segregation, 575 83, 591, 1077 79 Schwarzenegger, Arnold, 1058 60 Scott, Robin, 663 Seaman’s Union, 452 Seattle, Washington, 884 87 Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project, 884 87 Sebree, Victor, 345 48 Second generation Latinos, 988 89 2nd Illinois Volunteer Regiment, 106 7 Second Industrial Revolution, 467 Second Vatican Council, 788, 929 Sedition Act, 414 15 Segregation: among Cubans, 516; funeral home, 703 4; Indians in California, 591; League of United Latin American Citizens, 510; Lemon Grove school, 584 85; living conditions in Los Angeles, 506 7; Mexican children, 467 68; Mexicans in Texas, 738 40; Mexicans miner strike in Arizona, 595 99; Mexicans unconstitutionality, 793 94; school racial imbalance, 989 92, 1077 79; schools, 568 69, 575 85, 701 3; Texas schools, 704 6; Three Rivers, Texas, 714 Seguin, Juan Nepomuceno, 57, 60, 61, 62, 64 65, 73, 75 79

Self-defense, 233; Cuban, 759; Young Lords, 775 76 Self-determination: Brown Berets and, 881 82; Chicana, 878; Haiti race and, 428 32; Young Lords Organization platform, 778 Self-government: capacity for, 93 94; U.S. imperialism, 313 Selva, Salom
on de la, 437 39 Seminole Indians, 14 15 Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs, 291 93 Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, 323, 416 17 Senate Committee on Judiciary, 560, 999 Senate of U.S, 197 200 Senate Population Crisis Hearing, 757 Separatists organizations, Movimento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztl
an, 1032 Serrano L
opez, D
amaso, 961 63 Service Employees International Union, 1056 Sessions, William, 942 Settlements, Coahuila and Texas colonization, 35 36 Settlers, Euro-Americans in New Spain, 25 26 Sevier, Ambrose, 117 Sexism, 926; Schwarzenegger, Arnold, 1058 60 Sexuality, 877 78 Sheth, Rachna, 678 80 Sibley, John, 8 9 Sibley, Samuel Hopkins, 9 Sierra Club, 1009 10 Silex, Humberto, 723 Silicon Valley employers, 1055 56 Silva, Sonia, 1041 Silver City, New Mexico, 735 36 Silverstein, Stuart, 1036 37 Simpson, Alan, 1012 Simpson-Mazzoli Act, 1012 20 Singer,. Audrey, 960 61 Singh, Kim, 1055 56 65th Infantry Regiment, 426, 632, 633, 650 52 Slave revolts, Haitian, 6 8 Slavery, 62, 979; abolition decree, 30; abolition in Mexico, 37 38; African and Haitian independence, 6; Austin Colony petition, 29 30; Compromise of 1850, 115 17; Cuba, 256 257; Cuba

Index 1121 acquisition by U.S., 229; Cuba and U.S., 215 16; Cuba annexation by filibusters, 240 42; Cuba purchase by U.S., 237; Democratic Party platform, 253 54; Grant, Ulysses, view, 100 101; Mexican-American War, 101 2; in Mexican Republic, 26; Mexico under D
ıaz system, 377 83; Nicaragua, 245 46, 249; Puerto Rico, 318 19; Spain and Cuban independence, 265 68; Texas annexation, 83 85; U.S. emigration to Latin America, 225 26; Walker, William, extension of, 246 48 Slaves, 9, 307; Coahuila and Texas colonization, 36 37; Cuban plantations, 254 56; Puerto Rico, 298; Spanish trade, 1 Sleepy Lagoon Case, 1044 Sleepy Lagoon Committee, 725 Sleepy Lagoon trial, 683 86, 697 701 Slidell, John, 250 53 Smith, Leigh E., Jr., 671 73 Smith Act, 644 Snyder, A. Cecil, 535 37 Social banditry, 149 Social class: California politics, 1048; creole, 976 78; Cuban cigar makers, 518; ethnic change, 1010 11; middle class, 792, 931, 997; Puerto Ricans, 427 28; races and Puerto Rican, 427 28; stratification, 638 40; working class stereotype, 739. See also Working class Social clubs, 516 Social conditions: Arandas, Mexico, immigration, 493 96; Californios, 183 86; historiography and racism, 890 92; Los Angeles, 1850’s, 143 46; Mexicans in Texas, 796; Mexicans in Texas Republic, 73, 75 79; Mexican youth in California, 689 93; Mexico, 48 51, 377 83; Mission San Gabriel Arc
angel, 173 79; Murrieta, Joaqu
ın, 139 43; New England, 181 82; New Mexican elites, 190 92; New Mexico, 128 29; Puerto Rico under U.S., 462 65; San Jose California area, 186 90; subculture, 813 18 Social Darwinism, 756 57, 883 Social evolution, 817 18 Socialism, 922 26; Capetillo, Luisa, 335 36; Catholic Church and Nicaraguan,

788 89; Young Lords Organization platform, 779 80 Socialist Party, 452, 459 Socialists, 876 Social justice, 179 80, 735 36, 904 14; Catholic Church and El Salvador, 929 30; Cubans in Key West, 281 87; Grado, Pedro, 390 92; Mart
ınez, Elizabeth, 921 26; Mexican Americans and, 850 52; Puerto Ricans in New York, 451 54; Puerto Rico, 556 62; V
asquez, Enriqueta, 919 20; women, 273 Social order: Capetillo, Luisa, 335 36; Cubans in Key West, 285 87; Mexican revolution, 11 13; San Francisco, 880; U.S.-Mexico border, 89 94 Social relationships, East Harlem Puerto Rican youth, 638 40 Social Security, 564 Social status, Dominicans in U.S., 957 60 Social stratification, youth, 638 40 Sociedad de Benito Ju
arez, 501 Sociedad la Union Mart
ı-Maceo, 516 Society: marginalization of Mexican Americans, 617 19; Mexican Americans in, 919 20; Southern California, 729 33; West Side Story musical drama, 751 52; women’s role in, 274 75 Society of Mutual Aids of Craftsmen and Daily Laborers of Havana, 290 Socioeconomic status, 890 92 Sociopolitical songs, 948 49, 951 55 ‘‘El Soldado Raso’’ (song), 665 66 Somoza, Anastasio, 443, 653 54, 788, 789 90 ‘‘Song of Myself’’ (Whitman), 94 Songs, 523 24 ‘‘Song to Washington’’ (lyrics), 519 Sonora, 121 22 Sonora, Mexico, 123, 124 26, 140, 180 81, 355 60; filibustering against, 127 28; Walker, William, filibustering expeditions, 249 50 Sonora Railroad, 344 Soul
e, Pierre, 226 35, 235 South America: migration to U.S. from, 749; U.S. slave immigration to, 225 26 South Americans, 970, 981; New Latinos in U.S., 982 Southern Pacific Railroad Co., 185 86

1122

Index Southern States: Cuba, 215 17; Cuba annexation, 253 54; Mexican immigration, 1033 36; slavery and William Walker, 246 48 Southwest Council of Las Raza, 851 52 Southwestern U.S., 927; Aztl
an, 1032 33; U.S. territorial expansionism, 95 100 Southwest Voters Registration and Education Project (SVREP), 852, 914 18 Souto, Ferm
ın, 518 22 Soviet Union, 631, 759, 819 20, 934 Spain, 1, 518; Adams-On
ıs Treaty, 15; Army in Mexico, 10; cigar tariff treaty, 292 93; Civil War, 548 49; Cuba, 216 18, 220 40, 250 53, 257 268; independence movements, 273 306; land grant policy in, 193 95; Mexican independence, 11; Monroe Doctrine, 27 28; Puerto Rico independence, 298 99; San Ildefonso Treaty, 2 4; support for Republican forces, 535; Texas, 9; Treaty of Cordova, 18 21; Treaty of Paris, 307 10 Spaniards in U.S., 285 Spanish America, 442 Spanish American Alliance. See Alianza Hispano-Americana Spanish Americans, 22; in Colorado, 498 500; League of United Latin American Citizens, 509 11; workers and racism, 497 98 Spanish-American War, 325 Spanish Inquisition, 11 Spanish language, 73, 887; Mexican American speaking, 663; in Miami, Florida, 754; New Mexico, 395; newspapers, 173 92; Puerto Rican children, 455 57; Puerto Ricans, 527 31; Puerto Rico schools, 441; school segregation, 575 83; teaching in U.S. schools, 809 13; Texas Mexicans use of, 349 Spanish language education, 779 Spanish language newspapers, 345 48 Spanish-speaking groups, 750 Spanish-Speaking People’s Council of Chicago, 710 13 Spies, 8 9, 13 Spirituality, 350 53 The Spiritual Plan for Aztl
an, 830 33 ‘‘Spot Resolutions,’’ 88 89 Springfield, Consuelo L
opez, 970 81

Squatters, 193; California, 204 5; EuroAmericans in California, 183 86 St. Domingo, 239 Stalin, Josef, 925 Standard of living, Mexican immigrant, 376 77 Starr, Ellen Gates, 512 Starvation, 591 92, 594 95 Statehood: New Mexico, 394 95; Puerto Rico, 439 42 Stefancic, Jean, 1025 Stereotypes: Americanization programs, 467 68; criminal justice system, 821 22; of Cubans, 276 79; of Latina, 1058 60; Mexican immigrant, 374 77; Mexicans in Texas, 738 40; pachuco, 689 93; toxic baths at border crossings, 419 20; West Side Story film musical, 750 52; working class Mexicans, 739 Sterilization clinics, 996 Sterilization programs, 756 58, 758 59, 883 84 Stevenson, Coke R., 720 Stevenson, Philip, 610 15 Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 273 Strikes: Bisbee deportation, 412 13; California cotton picker, 591 95; cigar makers, 289 91; Cold War film, 735 36; farm workers, 820 21; Mexican labor union organizing, 501 3; Miami hotel, 648 49; mine auxiliary workers strike, 1006 7; miner in Arizona, 595; miners in Arizona, 360 65; Pallares, Jes
us, deportation, 610 15; UCLA Chicano student hunger, 1021 22; women in San Antonio, Texas, 607 10 Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), 921 Students: Crystal City, Texas, walkouts, 852 55; intelligence testing of Puerto Rican, 547; isolation by metropolitan areas, 990 91; Los Angeles, California, school walkout, 868 71; Mexican American, 791, 792; Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztl
an (MEChA), 833; Pacific Northwest activists, 884 87; segregation of Latino, 1077 79; strike at UCLA by Chicano, 1021 22; Tlateloco massacre of, 818 20; walkouts in Los Angeles high schools, 824 27

Index 1123 Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), 774 Study programs, 505; Bonilla, Frank, 634 Suarez Diaz, Manuel Rafael, 559 Subculture, 638 40, 813 18 Subversive organizations: CISPES probe by FBI, 939 43; Ejercito Zapatista de Liberaci
on Nacional, 1062 65 Sugar, 215, 217, 254 56, 320 Sumaya, Fernando, 868 Supreme Court of U.S., 200 204, 205 14, 733 34, 887 Suro, Roberto, 960 61, 967 69, 988 89, 1033 36, 1060 62 Sward, Frederick W., 269 70 Sweatshops, 290, 291 Swimmer, Eleanor, 570 Swing, Joseph May, 736 Szapocznik, Jose, 937 Tafoya, Sonya, 1033 36 Taft, William Howard, 332 33 ‘‘Tamales’’ (O. Henry, poem), 129 32 Tamaulipas, Mexico, 123, 151 Tampa, Florida, 283 84, 290; cigar maker life, 520 21 Tanneries, 647 48 Tanton, John, 1007 12 Taxes, California land ownership, 199 200 Taxpayers: identification numbers, 1060 61; revolt California, 792 Taylor, Paul S., 493 98 Taylor, Sandra, 678 80 Taylor, William S., 617 19 Taylor, Zachary, 88 89, 100 101, 220 Teaching: bilingual, 887 90; using Spanish language, 809 13 Teamsters Union, 1054 Technological change, 953 54 Tecun Uman, Guatemala, 995 Teenage pregnancy, 1066 Tehuantepec Inter-ocean Railroad, 344 Tejanos, 284, 842 Television, 749 Teller, Henry M., 296 Teller Amendment, 296 97, 328 Tenayuca, Emma, 604 10 Tennessee, 1034 Tenney, Jack B., 693 98 Ten Year’s War, 300

Territory: Coahuila and Texas, 30 37; Cuba acquisition by U.S., 226, 229 32; Cuba acquisition by U.S., 235 40; Cuba annexation, 253 54; FrenchSpanish San Ildefonso Treaty, 2 4; Louisiana Purchase, 4 6; MexicanAmerican War, 95 100; Mexican citizenship rights in annexed, 338 43; Texas expansion by U.S., 40 41; U.S. annexation of Santo Domingo, 268 71; U.S. presence in Cuba, 329; U.S. acquisition, 239; U.S. acquisition of Cuba, 235 40; U.S. imperial expansionism, 313 14; U.S. westward expansion, 25 79 Terror, Chile coup d’
etat, 760 Terrorism: CISPES, 940 41, 942; against Mexicans in Texas, 133 Terrorists: Clinton clemency of FALN members, 955 56; Puerto Rican nationalist, 655 56 Texanco Chicanas, 876 Texas, 4, 25, 118 20, 149 72, 239, 856 65, 886; Austin Colony slavery petition, 29 30; border fortification, 162 65; Chicano political party in, 842 48; Chicano voter registration, 914 18; citizenship rights and annexation of, 338 43; Coahuila and Texas colonization, 30 37; discrimination in education, 704 6; employment discrimination, 708; Good Neighbor Commission, 720; insurrection support, 53 56; land grants, 205 14; marginalization of Mexican Americans, 617 19; Mexican-American, 81 114; Mexican-Americans in, 796; Mexican forced repatriation, 563 64; Mexican guest-worker militancy, 720; Mexican independence, 41 48; Mexican sympathy Euro-Americans in, 41; mine auxiliary workers strike, 1006 7; New Latino population, 984 85; Plan de San Diego, 409 10; repatriation of Mexicans from, 585 91; revolutionary conditions, 38 40; Rodr
ıquez memoirs of early, 56 62; Sabine River border dispute, 15 16; salt deposit border conflict, 165 68; school discrimination, 713 14; Sebley spying on, 8 9; segregated funeral homes, 703 4; slavery abolition in Mexico, 37 38;

1124

Index Texas (continued) slavery and, 115 17; Spanish language newspapers, 173; student walkouts, 852 55; trial impartiality, 733 34; U.S. recognition of independence, 264; U.S. annexation, 61 62, 81 83; U.S. territorial expansionism, 95 100; violence against Mexicans, 416 17; war of independence, 51 70 Texas A&M University, 904 Texas annexation, Mexico-U.S. hostility, 82 83, 85 87 Texas La Raza Unida Party, 842 Texas Mexicans, 165 Texas mixed, 39 Texas Pacific land grant, 185 86 Texas Rangers, 132 34, 149 51; Cortez, Greogio, 367 69; Garza Rodr
ıguez, Catarino Erasmo, 345 48; Jackson, Joaqu
ın, 855 65; violence against Mexicans, 416 17; Webb, Walter Prescott, 418 Texas Republic, 68 79; laws, 73; U.S. annexation, 74 75 Texas revolt, 70 71 ‘‘The Labyrinth of Solitude: Life and Thought in Mexico’’ (Paz), 689 93 Third World, 215, 879; City University of New York activism, 787; immigration controls, 1012; nationalism, 631; U.S. military service and Iraq, 1051 52; women and Young Lords Party, 783 85 Third World Coalition, 886, 894, 904 13th Infantry Battalion, 724 25 Thompson, Charles A., 498 500 Three Rivers, Texas, 714 Tierra Amarilla, New Mexico, 866 Tigerino, Miguel, 153 Tijerina, Reies L
opez, 865 68, 922 Tijuana, Mexico, 149 Tlatelolco, Mexico, 818 19 Todd, William Henry, 666 69 To
ıno Indians, 423 Tolan, John H., 551, 554 Tolan Committee, 551 56 De Toledano, Ralph, 891 Tomochic, Mexico, 349 50 Toro-Morn, Maura I., 931 34 Torres, Carmelita, 418 19 Trade, 1 2, 315 Transcontinental Treaty of 1819, 14 16 Travis, William B., 67

Treaties: Adams-On
ıs, 14 16; Cordova, 18 21; Gadsden, 121 22; Louisiana Purchase, 4; San Ildefonso, 2 4; Texas annexation by U.S., 81 83; TexasU.S., 68 70 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, 81, 107 11, 111 12, 115, 121, 124 26, 185, 591, 736, 865 68, 922; California Land Commission, 197 98; California property title, 198; citizenship rights, 338 43; land transfer and ownership, 193; negotiations, 112 13; New Mexico constitution, 394 95; New Mexico land grant law, 195 97; Quer
etaro Protocol with Mexico, 113 14 Treaty of Paris, 307 10, 319 20, 328, 421 Treaty of Velasco, 68 70, 81 Trials: jury impartiality, 733 34; Sleepy Lagoon case, 698 701 Tribal groups, 1 Trinity River, 42, 47 Trist, Nicholas, 112 13 Trujillo, Rafael Leonida, 538, 656, 657 59, 759 Truman, Harry S., 653, 655, 787 Tuberculosis, 534 35, 609, 616 Tuchman, Gloria Matta, 1028 31 Tucson, Arizona, 355 60 Tugwell, Rexford Guy, 638 Tulier, Severo, 316 17 Turner, Allan, 604 10 Turner, John Kenneth, 377 83 26th of July Movement, 657, 659 293rd Combat Engineering Battalion, 635 36 Tyler, John, 89 Ugarte, Manuel, 335 De Unamuno, Miguel, 765 Underground railroad, Texas annexation, 83 85 Undocumented immigrants: amnesty demonstration, 1052 57; public services ineligibility, 1025 27 Undocumented migrants, gangs, 992 95 Undocumented residents, immigration reforms, 1012 Undocumented workers, 664; border enforcement, 737 40 Unemployment: Harlem, 547 48; New Latinos in U.S., 982; Puerto Rican, 758; Puerto Rico migration, 644 47

Index 1125 Unification of Latin America, 21 Union City, New Jersey, 290 Unionist Party, 459 La Uni
on Occidental Mexicana, 349 Union of Cigar Makers, 290 91 Union of Day Laborers, 1054 Union of Needle-trades, Industrial and Textile Employees, 776 Union of Workers of the Branch of Tabaquer
ıas, 290 Union Settlement House (New York City), 765 66 United Cannery and Agricultural Processors and Agricultural Workers of America, 609, 619 20 United Farmer Workers, 821 United Fruit Co., 322, 653 United Latin American Citizens, 797 United Mexican American Students, 884 United Neighborhood Organizations, 904 United Packinghouse Workers of America, 723 United Presbyterian Church, 570 71 United Provinces of Central America, 1 2 United States, 1; Adams-On
ıs treaty, 14 16; Allende, Salvador, 760 63; annexation of California, 340; annexation of Cuba, 275 79; annexation of Puerto Rico, 423; annexation of Santo Domingo, 268 71; anti-Castro refugee operations, 754 55; Caribbean-Central American policy, 421 22; Central American inter-ocean canal, 322 25; citizenship of Puerto Ricans, 332 33; Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, 218 19; colonialism in Puerto Rico, 461 64; Cuba, 310 11; Cuba acquisition, 235 40; Cuban filibusters, 220 25; Cuban independence, 257 268, 294 96, 296 97, 328 29; Cuban policy, 759; Cuba policy, 226 35; Cuba purchase, 250 53; Dominican Republic intervention, 759 60; Dominicans socioeconomic profile, 957 60; Espionage Act of 1917, 413 15; expansion in Central America, 242 46; expansion in Texas, 40 41; filibustering against Mexico, 127 28; flag burning, 389 90; Gadsden Purchase Treaty, 121 22; government contracting discrimination prohibition, 664 65; HIV/AIDS and

Latinos, 963 65; immigration quotas and restrictions, 480 83; imperialism, 287 89, 311 16, 408 9; Indo-Hispanso land right violations, 865 68; interocean canal, 321 22; intervention in Nicaragua, 443 47; interventions in Latin America, 307; invasion of Dominican Republic, 750; jingoism, 468; land entitlement, 193; Latin American nationalism, 632; Latino immigrants since 1980, 981 88; Latino national communities, 967 69; Latino population in 1980s, 927 28; Louisiana Purchase, 4 6; manifest destiny, 71 73; Mariel exodus to, 934 38; mass deportation of Mexicans, 574 75; melting pot termination, 487 88; Menocal, Mario, 302; Mexican American population, 563 64, 1003; Mexican border fortification, 162 65; Mexican immigrants, 395 98; Mexican life in, 504 5; Mexican railroad construction, 343 45; Mexican views., 65 67; minority social status, 631; Monroe Doctrine, 27 29, 325 28; nineteen sixties and Latinos, 749 90; occupation of Haiti and Dominican Republic, 432 37; occupation of Nicaragua, 443; post-World War II, 663 64; Puerto Rican economic development, 459 61; Puerto Rican military service, 642 44; Puerto Rican service in World War I, 426; Puerto Rico language policy, 455 57; Puerto Rico occupation, 316; Puerto Rico statehood, 439 42; racial attitudes, 337 43; San Ildefonso Treaty, 2; Somoza, Anastasio, government, 789 90; Texas annexation, 61 62, 74 75, 81 83, 85 87; Texas independence, 51; Texas Republic, 68 70; Texas territory, 8 9; treatment of Mexican immigrants, 476 77; undocumented amnesty, 1052 57; Vietnam and Iraq invasion, 1050 52; war claims against Mexico, 110 11; war with Mexico, 81 114; westward expansion, 25 79; Zavala journey, 48 51 United West Indies Corp., 436 University of California, Davis, 893 University of California, Los Angeles, 1021 22, 1036 37

1126

Index University of California, Santa Barbara, 833 University of California Regents v. Bakke, 893 903 University of Southern California, 505 University of Texas, 715 University of Washington, 885 87 Unz, Ron K., 1028 31 Unzueta, Silvia M., 934 38 Upper Rio Grande Valley, 173 Urista, Baltazar, 831 Urrea, Teresa de, 350 53 U.S. Army, 681 82; Cortina, Juan N., 151 62; 158th Regimental Combat Team (Bushmasters), 666 69; 141st Infantry Regiment, 36th Infantry Division, 673 74; Puerto Rican military service, 426 U.S. born children, 743 44 U.S. Boundary Commission, 115, 117 18, 119 20, 120 21 U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform, 1057 58 U.S. Court of Appeals, District of Columbia, 997 U.S. Immigration Department, 369 77 U.S. Marine Corps, 677 80; intervention in Nicaragua, 443 4477; Korean War, 724 25; Reserve, 724 25; 65th Infantry Regiment, 650 52 U.S. marshals, 151, 152 U.S.-Mexico Boundary Survey Commission, 118 U.S. native born Hispanics, 988 89 U.S. Navy, 515; bombing exercises, 961 63; Puerto Rico, 423 U.S. Puerto Rican Reconstruction Administration, 757 U.S. Rangers, 152 U.S. Senate, 268 71 U.S. Steel, 620 Utah, 107, 116, 884 87 Valderrama, Tille, 953 Valdez, F., 522 24 Vald
ez Le
al, Felipe, 665 66 Vance, Cyrus, 790 Vanderbelt, Cornelius, 249 Varamend
ı, Jos
e Martin de, 62 63 Varelli, Frank, 939, 940, 942 Vasquez, C Antonio, 76 77 V
asquez, Enriqueta, 919 20

V
asquez, Robert, 669 70 V
asquez, Tiburcio, 146 47, 148 V
azquez, Blanca, 751 V
azquez, Hacinto, 660 Vega, Ana Lydia, 970 81 Vega, Bernado, 451 54, 532 35 Velasco, Emilio, 165 Vel
asquez, William ‘‘Willie’’ C., 852, 914 18 ~ez, Carlos, 724 V
elez-Ib
an Venezuela, 22 23, 299, 421; African culture, 6; Monroe Doctrine assertion, 327 28 Veterans: deportation, 743; discrimination against Mexican American, 715 16; employment discrimination, 712 13; Korean War, 724 25; Midwest Mexican American, 669 71; Puerto Rican, 426; segregated funeral homes, 703 4; Todd, William Henry, 666 69; World War I and Mexican American, 415 16 Vieques, Puerto Rico, 961 63 Vietnam War, 848 50, 850 52; Chicano/ Latino in Iraq, 1083; Iraq invasion and, 1050 52; Puerto Rican nationalists, 774 Vigil, Ernesto B., 848 Vigilantes: adoptions by Mexicans, 365 66; California cotton picker strike, 591 94; Mexicans and, 132 33; San Francisco, 134 35, 137 Vigilantism, Arizona, 366 67 Vigne, Paul, 333 Villa, Pancho, 398 407, 684 85 Villaraigosa, Antonio, 1033, 1047 49, 1055, 1069 70 Vincent, Theresa, 365 66 Violence: Albizu Campos, Pedro, 536 37; California cotton picker strike, 591 95; California squatters, 205; communists and Mexican American youth, 693 98; against Cubans in Key West, 283 87; Harlem conditions, 547 48; Los Angeles law enforcement officials, 871 76; Pompa, Aurelio, 507 9; Ponce massacre, 549 51, 558 60; racial guilt in, 683 84; San Francisco, Mission district, 879 83; in Texas against Mexicans, 416 17 Virgin Islands, 543 Virginius (ship), 256, 266 67 Viva Kennedy, 796

Index 1127 Viva Kennedy Clubs, 795, 807 Volcanoes, 1 2 Volunteers: American for Texas, 46, 53 56; Mexican American War, 105 7 Voter registration, 852; Vel
asquez, Willie, 914 18 Voting, 617; officials, 856 65; rights, 796 806. See also Elections Voting Rights Act, 796 806, 1003 Wages: Civilian Conservation Corp, 567; coal mining, 612; guest workers, 721; Mexican laborers, 397; Mexicans in Rio Grande Valley, 739 40; pecan shelling, 608 10, 616; Puerto Rico needle trades, 531 32; women in Puerto Rico, 545 46 Wakefield, Dan, 656 60 Walker, William, 240 50 Walter, Francis, 740 War Department, 168 69, 169 72; Puerto Rico, 423 War of Ten Years, 290 Wars: Mexican-American, 81 114; Mexican independence, 16 18, 41 48; Texas independence, 51 70; Whitman, Walt, support for, 94 95 The War with Mexico Reviewed (Livermore), 101 2 Washburn, David, 564 68 Washington, D.C., 987 Washington, Harold, 1039, 1040 Washington State, 884 87 Water supply, 484 86 Webb, Clive, 132 33 Webb, Gary, 944 Webb, Walter Prescott, 150, 416, 418 Weber, Devra Anne, 502 3 Weinberger, Harry, 384 89 Weinraub, Bernard, 774 Welfare Island, 640 Weller, John B., 117 Western Federation of Miners, 412 13 Western Growers Association, 488 89 West Indies: Treaty of Paris, 307; U.S. slave immigration to, 226 Westminster School Dist. of Orange County v. M
endez, 701 3 West Side Story (film musical), 750 52 Westward expansion, 25 79 Wetbacks, 736 37. See also Undocumented workers

White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) ideal, 467 ‘‘The White Man’s Burden’’ (Kipling poem), 320 21 White race, 239, 733 34; adoptions by Mexicans, 365 66; burden of, 320 21; marginalization of Mexican Americans, 617 19; Mexicans as, 338 43; Puerto Ricans, 427 28; racism and, 279 81; Rodr
ıguez, Antonio, lynching, 389 90; supremacy, 636 38. See also Euro-Americans Whites: employment in California, 563; Hispanic demographics and immigration, 1007 12; income and Latino earnings, 1033 36; Puerto Rico, 317 19; rioting against Mexicans, 407 8; unwillingness to work, 574; West Side Story, 750 52 White women, 570 Whitman, Walt, 94 95, 320 Who Would Have Thought It (Ruiz de Burton), 181 82 Wilder, Elizabeth, 680 82 Wilhelm, John, 1038 39, 1056 57 Wilkinson, David Marion, 855 65 Williams, Raymond, 951 Wilmot Proviso, 115 Wilson, Louis R., 511 14 Wilson, Michael, 735 Wilson, Pete, 1048 Wilson, Woodrow, 411, 480 Winship, Blanton C., 432, 515, 549 51, 556 62 Winter, Ella, 594 95 Wise, Robert, 751 Woll, Adri
an, 60 61, 79 Women: Acci
on Feminista Domincana, 537 38; birth control and sterilization, 757 58; Capetillo, Luisa, on, 333 35; Chicano movement, 876 79; cigar industry mechanization, 522; citizenship status of immigrant, 479 80; earning power of, 1065 69; Echenique, Maria Eugenia, on, 273 75; employment, Puerto Rico, 545 46; labor organizing among working, 604 10; liberation, 783 85; lynching of Mexican, 134 35; Mariel exodus characteristics, 937 38; Mexican immigrant, 376 77; P
erez, Eulalia, 173 79; prisoners, 47; Puerto Rican, 644, 646, 751,

1128

Index Women (continued) 931 34; in Puerto Rico, 461, 544; racial prejudice and white, 570; rights, 779 80; Rodr
ıguez, Antonio, lynching, 389 90; Ruiz de Burton, Mar
ıa Amparo, 181 86; stereotype, 739; sterilization, 756 58, 758 59, 883 84; strikes, 607 10, 1006 7; toxic bath border-crossing treatment, 418 20; Urrea, Teresa, 350 53; Vega, Ana Lydia, on, 970 81; white, 570; World War II and Puerto Rican, 632; writers, 972. See also Feminism Women’s Trade Union League, 534 Wood, Natalie, 751 Wood, Tom, 1027 28 Workers: discrimination against alien, 486; Mexican immigrants, 369 77; needle trades Puerto Rico, 531 32; repatriated Mexicans, 587 91 Workers Alliance, 608 9, 742 Working class: anti-imperialism, 642; Central/South American in U.S., 967 69; Cuban exiles, 749; Estada, Miguel, judicial nomination, 998; farm workers union organizing, 501; Great Depression, 533; immigrant aid programs, 512; Mexican stereotype, 739; migration, 993; new immigrants, 997; survival, 532 33; tax burden, 792 Working conditions: agricultural labor, 573 74; guest worker programs, 1057 58; immigrant status, 1056; New Mexican coal mines, 611 12; nut shelling in San Antonio, Texas, 608 10; Puerto Rican women, 931 Working poor, 931 Works Progress Administration (WPA), 517, 518, 553, 564 65, 568 69, 596 97, 600 World War I: Cuba, 302; mine workers strike, 360; Puerto Ricans service in, 426 27, 441 42; Saenz, Jos
e de la Luz, 415 16 World War II, 663 749, 1009; Bonilla, Frank, service, 632 34; guest worker programs, 1058; Latinos, 631 62; Mexican Americans combat valor, 669 71; Puerto Rican nationalism, 642 44 Writing, 970 81

Xenophobia, 337 Yarborough, Ralph, 843 44 Yaroslavsky, Zev, 1071 72, 1076 Ybarra, Paul, 669 70 Ybor, Rafael Mart
ınez, 517 Ybor City, Florida, 289 91, 291, 520 21 Yglesias, Jos
e, 775 York, Alvin, 675 ‘‘Yo Soy Boricua, P
a que Tu Lo Sepas!’’ (I’m Boricua, Just So You Know) (film), 995 96 Young Americas Foundation, 940 41 Young Chicanos for Community Action, 868 Young Lords Organization, 749, 773, 882; Badillo, Herman, on, 774 75; ideology, 780 83; P
erez, Rosie, documentary, 996; program/platform, 778 80; women’s liberation, 783 85 Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), 476 Youngstown Sheet and Tube Co., 620 Youth: Chicano anti-Vietnam War protests, 849 52; Chicano Movement, 830; East Harlem Puerto Rican, 638 40; Los Angeles, California, 725 27; Los Angeles social life, 729 33; Mexican in California, 689 93; Vega, Ana Lydia, on, 970 972; Zoot Suiters, 683 84 Youth movements: Pantoja, Antonia, 766 73; Young Lords, 774 85 Zammora, Gus, 698 701 Zamorano, Pete, 671 Zapata, Emiliano, 392, 924 Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN), 1023 25, 1062 65 Zavala, Lorenzo de, 48 51 Zavala County, Texas, 856 65 Zenon, Isabelo, 979 Zoot Suiters, 683 84, 689 98, 725 27 Zoot-Suit Riots, 150 51, 850 Zorro. See Murrieta, Joaqu
ın Zorros, 284 Zuckerman, Steve, 509 Zyklon B, 419

About the Editors ~ is Professor of Chicano Studies at California State UniverRODOLFO F. ACUNA sity, Northridge.
is an independent scholar. GUADALUPE COMPEAN