Ethnic Mexicans in Rural California

One of the main questions to tackle for week 2 is how does the ethnic Mexican community become such a large part of the agricultural labor force?

Early Migration

Early Mexican Migrants, 1900s via academics.utep.edu

In the late 1700s until the late 1800s the United States primarily used Asian migrants as a major source of labor. Chinese bachelors in particular and later Japanese laborers filled most of the positions for cheap labor, particularly in agriculture. However, increasing xenophobia and violence against Asian communities eventually pushed the federal government to restrict Asian migration. The passage of the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act barred legal Chinese migration and later in 1924 the Johnson-Reed Act created a quota system and barred all legal migration from Asia altogether.

Chinese Laborers, 1880s source unknown

With the systematic removal of almost the entire Asian immigration, there was a lack of cheap labor. It is at this time that we see Mexicans move into the position of a significant labor force in the US. There is a number of pull factors that entice them to move north.

Pull Factors

One is obviously the wages. Where they would earn 12 cents a day in the rural areas of Mexico, they could get paid anywhere from 50 cents to 2 dollars in the US.

There was also a diversity of industry in terms of mining, railroads, and the largest industry agriculture which meant there would ample jobs.

Finally there was the close geographic proximity, which easily fills the labor demand. The railroad system that went into Mexico opened up the opportunity for travel.

Push Factors

There were also a number of  factors pushing ethnic Mexicans out of Mexico. The presidency of Porfirio Diaz from 1884-1991 was fairly corrupt.

Porfirio Diaz via Aurelio Escobar Castellanos, Archive

Diaz nationalized the land and eliminated the small farm system, called ejidos. An ejido is a small parcel of land that a person owns. Under Diaz, ejidos were eliminated. The system shifted to large land holdings and the former small farm owners were forced into becoming laborers.

Along with the loss of their land, there was also a shortage of resources, food and such. The large land holdings were created to grow crops to export so not enough food was produced to sustain Mexican nationals. Also this boosted the cost of living (less resources equals more demand, more demand causes prices to rise).

Mexican Rebels via latinamericanstudies.org

Then in 1910 the Mexican Revolution broke out. The violence that spurned from it was one of the major stimulus’ for people to leave, land was ravaged/ decimated in some areas. The revolution also meant the end of Porfirio Diaz’ corrupt regime, but the outcome also resulted in political unrest with little to no direction for the country.  

The development of the railroad system opens up Mexico and boosted migration in both a good and bad way. It opened up opportunities for modernization. Diaz was the one who created the national railroad system in hopes to unify the nation and modernize the economy. However, Mexico really did not have the funding to construct it so Diaz sought help from American investors, which in turn “Americanized” the economy.

The railroads opened up the access of rural communities into more urban areas of Mexico and also travel to the US as well as access to material goods. But the system also closed off towns/ villages/ communities. For the communities where the railroad did not even touch them it was like they were isolated. There is whole other economic and to some extent political world that is happening where those communities are excluded.

The choice to move, leave home, almost always had attached to it the idea of returning. Circular migration was how ethnic Mexicans decided to shift north. This is in opposition to Eastern and Southern European migration, which is known more as chain migration. Chain migration is the idea that some people come to the US and then send for family and community member later. European immigrants were more likely to stay permanently and/or if they did return to their countries of origin it was not easy to come back. 

For ethnic Mexicans, because of the close proximity they were able to go and come back. What changes this pattern is the shift in US federal policies, which begin to restrict open migration after the influx of migration during the Mexican Revolution. A “brown scare” begins and ethnic Mexicans are looked at with a suspicious lens as the US begins to view them as “other.” And yet at the same time the agriculture industry relied on ethnic Mexicans for their main labor source by the 1920s.

Development of Colonias

As more Mexicans settle in the US we began to see the development of communities within rural areas. Usually, agriculture laborers populated the outskirts of already developed towns and the communities were usually called colonias. The term literally means colony, but it was a general reference to a community with a distinct Mexican demographic. Also, the community generally remitted earnings to family and friends back in Mexico. Use the rural community as a place to generate income and extract wages and earnings.

This was different from barrios of the urban sector (such as our reading of Sanchez last week) where the community is almost exclusively Latina/o and whites are the minority. Rural settlements are linked to seasonal agriculture work and the community though segregated still has a mix of both Anglo and Mexican residents.

Residential concentration of ethnic Mexicans in rural areas are attributed to :

1.     agricultural employment

2.     wages and working conditions

3.     cheap housing

4.     community: family and friends

5.     The social phenomena of likes attracting likes (in other words one is attracted to settle in areas where there is a similar demographic to personal identity-ethnicity, race, class, etc)

However, colonias come to represent underclass and exploitative conditions. Often relying on the companies or agricultural owners to provide housing and/or having these communities linked to a particular grower or crop industry often meant there was little to no opportunity for upward social mobility.

1930s Sunkist Advertisement, source unknown

Socioeconomic indicators such as low education achievement, high levels of unemployment, segregated occupations with low earnings, high incidences of poverty became the reality for many colonias.

In  1950 no rural community in California had more than 23%  Latina/o (Mexican) population with the concentrations highest at border towns. By the 1980s and 1990s you see communities with up to 98% Latina/o population, mainly in central California/central valley, which are some of the richest agricultural counties in the state.

Colonias remained disadvantaged in terms of public expenditures for public safety, transportation, community development, health, cultural events, leisure, and public utilities. Little to no civic attention is paid to the thse areas.

Who or What is a Chicana/o?

For the first blog post of this class, I am going to go over the various ethnic terms we use to describe the Mexican/ Mexican-American/ Chicana/o community. 

When thinking about the term Chicana/o how do we define it? What do we think of when we think about Chicanas/os? What sorts of imagery emerges?

Cheech Marin on Being Chicano via YouTube

Generally speaking, Chicana/o is generally interchangeable with Mexican American. In fact, the most common assumption is that Chicana/o means a second generation or US born person of Mexican descent. But the term evolved over time.

Scholars disagree on when the term Chicana/o becomes relevant to understanding identities of the ethnic Mexican community in the US. The first significant moment historically is the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. The treaty was enacted to the end the US-Mexico War 1846-1848 which began because of the annexation of Texas

James Polk, 11th President of the United States

Image via history.com 

James Polk, president of the US from 1845-1849 was a believer in Manifest Destiny. Manifest Destiny is the concept that the US was ordained by the rights of God (as a Christian nation) to expand geographically westward until we claimed all the land from one coast to another. Polk claimed in his Inaugural address that his goal was to eventually take over the territories belonging to Mexico to strengthen the US. Initially the US offered to purchase the land from Mexico for $25 million dollars, but the Mexican Federal government refused.

Texas, which was still a part of Mexico in the 1840s, was a controversial territory at the time. There were a lot of Anglos/US citizens entering the territory from the South. Their desire was to bring slaves/plantation system into the territory and eventually take it over to be ratified as a slave state. However, Mexico abolished slavery in 1829 so legally slaves were not allowed under the Mexican federal government.

The reality was that Mexico was still a young nation, having only won its own independence from Spain in 1821. Mexican national citizens who were living in Texas wanted to become part of the US because they not only saw a lot of benefits economically but also because they were dissatisfied with the newly formed Mexican government. So Texas was annexed in December of 1845.  

The push for war came once the annexation had taken place there were still border disputes. Mexican army sent 2000 soldiers who battled against 70 US soldiers. Killed 16, wounded 5, and captured 49. Each side claimed the other had crossed into their territory. US congress declared war on Mexico. Eventually Mexico lost and the war ended with the Treaty.

The key Treaty terms were:

1) $15 million dollars to the Mexican government in exchange for the territory (originally offered $25 million).

2) The lands, language, and culture of the Mexican people would be respected.

2) Anyone of Mexican citizenship that stayed in the new US territory would be granted citizenship.

It is this last term that becomes the most salient in terms of defining Chicana/o. One, it is the first time that Mexicans are legally defined as white. Whites or Americans of European descent are the only ones eligible for citizenship in the 1840s, thereby the loophole here is that if Mexicans can become citizens, they can also be legally categorized as white. This later gets solidified in the 1924 Johnson-Reed Act, which created a quota system for immigration to the US. The 1924 act barred all migration from Asia and put a limit on Eastern and Southern European migration, all places seen as “undesirable.” Yet, it disallowed quotas for the Western Hemisphere. Scholars argue the exemption of the Western Hemisphere was due to the fact that most of the labor source for the Southwest was rooted in Mexico and other Latin American countries. This further solidified Mexicans as legally white because in two major pieces of legislation they are allowed a privilege (citizenship in the first, migration in the second) that is being restricted for people of European descent.

But in the case of the 1848 Treaty, some scholars also argue that this is the first notion of a Chicana/o identity. The border quite literally crossed us and creates an idea that there is a mixture, a mestizaje, of culture. So it fosters the beginning of a Mexican-American identity.

The more pronounced notion of Chicana/o as an identity would be a product of the 1960s and 70s civil rights movement where we see the rise of Chicana/o nationalism. Dissatisfaction with the mainstream civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s pushes many groups to push for their own social movement. The mainstream Civil Rights Movement focused largely on changing the legal and social culture of the Southern states treatment toward African Americans. Other ethnic-racial groups feel left out of the agenda and feel their issues are not being understood or addressed.

It is in this moment that Chicana/o as a political identity is formed. Now there not just an ethnic or racial component to the identity term, but it comes to represent a political consciousness. The idea that you would identify as Chicana/o means you are committed to the movimiento or the civil rights movement that represents ethnic Mexicans in the US. So the term shifts, and becomes more about activism and about social political thought. You can be ethnically Mexican and not necessarily be Chicana/o.

Image via multiculturalfamilia.com

So where do these other terms we use to describe Mexican communities: what is Hispana/o,  Latina/o, Tejano, Mexican American, Mexicana/o. Why are there so many distinctions in terms of identity labels? Why make it so complicated?

Mexican or Mexicana/o is used to label someone from Mexico. Someone who roots their culture, language, all their understandings as originating from Mexico will identify themselves this way. Not all Mexicanas/os are necessarily born in Mexico. There are some 1^st generation folks who really consider themselves more Mexican than American. Depending on where they were raised, depending on what the culture was or continues to be at home really determines a persons outlook on how they self identify. This isn’t always the case, there are some that become influenced also by what is outside of the home. 

Hispanic is a government created umbrella category. Arguably related to Hispania or Spain and is supposed to include all people from Spanish speaking countries. But if it includes Spain, which is in Europe, where does Brazil a Portuguese speaking country fit? Are Brazilians Hispanic?

It is also not an ethnic category as we see most of Latin America is ethnically and racially diverse. It is a means to categorize a group for census purposes. Latina/o is used to denote peoples from Latin America. But again, if we are looking at Latinas/os the do groups such as Spaniards qualify as Latin American when we are collecting data (i.e. census) on Spanish-speaking communities?

Both the terms Latina/o and Hispanic are also used by business’ and the government to market to and create programs for this particular group. Some people do also use these terms to define themselves, but these are also particularly complex given that they really have no sort of cultural attachment.

Although it is sometimes hard to think about calling each individual after their specific ethnic origin, they are all really different, culturally, historically, socially. And their experiences in the US do differ. For example Puerto Ricans statistically tend to be more working class, settle in more urban areas, and have achieved less education than other Latina/o groups. Cubans on the other hand statistically tend to be more upper-middle class, vote more conservatively, and have one of the highest educational attainment levels of Latinas/os. And even those statistics are just a generalization as individual communities and individual people do not fit these parameters.

Welcome to my blog for Ethnic Studies 122- Chicana/o Communities.

Mural from Chicano Park, San Diego, CA