Mexican-Americans Mexicans Have a Long

Mexican-Americans

Mexicans have a long history in California. Unfortunately, it cannot be said that it was an easy and rewarding one. Since the time the European-Americans first began coming to this Western state in large numbers in the 1850s, the life of the Mexican-American has not been an easy one.

At the end of the 1800s and into the 1900s (and some still exist today), a large number of immigrant Mexicans lived in "barrios," where they shared a common language and culture. As time went on, new arrivals were discriminated against and moved to the barrios for safety. Increasing numbers of people crowded into these "neighborhoods," which were deteriorated and unhealthy conditions and high crime (Kowalkski, 2004).

The government sponsored "Americanization" programs in the barrios to teach English and other skills. However, the education for Mexicans, as for a number of other diverse groups, was poor and most often segregated. In 1855, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Paul K. Hubbs announced that "the education of all others, whether negro or mongol [sic] or Indian... must depend upon the benevolent care of our citizens or upon their own capacity to pay for it." After 1870, most minority children in California went to segregated schools, which were usually underfunded with substandard upkeep, inconsistent teachers, and negativism from the white community (Moore, 2003).

The Mexicans who came to the United States between 1900 and 1945, especially those living in Los Angeles or the barrios, experienced both "uprootedness" and transplantation that led to the creation of a Chicano society (Urban History Review, 1999). They were encouraged to become part of the society, but relegated to the bottom segments of the working class. Those who bought a home did not experience social mobility but permanence in a working class barrio. This further bolstered ethnicity. Thus, these Mexican immigrants were not assimilated into American culture, but encouraged to consider themselves "true" Mexicans. The Depression deported one-third of Mexicans to minority group ghettos. In these ghettos, they asserted left-wing politics, labor unionism and the start of street gang activities, such as the Zoot Suit riots (Urban History Review, 1999).

At the end of World War II, the soldiers who returned home were embraced by the nation unless, in many instances, they were soldiers of color (Menchaca, 1995). In many Western cities, Mexican-origin veterans were treated as foreigners in their own country even though they fought against the Nazi philosophy of Aryan superiority and protection for the United States. Segregation was also the norm, and they were not permitted to rent or buy homes outside the barrios. Schools, restaurants and other public places continued to be segregated.

Within the labor force, Mexicans also continued to be discriminated against and were offered only work in farm labor. The veterans were told to accept the same jobs and social conditions as before and received no rewards for having fought for U.S. democracy. In 1998, the Center for the Study of Latino Health and Culture at UCLA convened several middle-aged Latinos to discuss the Latino society in California while they were growing up. Born in the 1940s and 1950s, they remembered a much more segregated and exclusionary society than the one today, and the hurt remains: They described growing up in a situation in which being Latino was simply not validated. "Back then [1950s]... who cares? You're just a Mexican, you're a 'beaner,' you know, you're a 'greaser'" (Hayes-Bautista, 2004, p. 14).

The Mexicans born after the war had a very different experience than their parents and grandparents. The children of the postwar era were mostly children of U.S.-born Mexicans and grew up in barrios populated almost completely by the U.S.-born residents (Hayes-Bautista, 2004, p. 19)

Much did not change for the Mexicans from the 1940s to 1960s, with discrimination and segregation continuing to be the norm. Many school districts continued to send children to Mexican schools, based on the theory that the students were such slow learners they would hold back white student levels. In 1944, the parents of nine-year-old Sylvia Mendez' moved to the largely non-Hispanic white community of Westminster in Orange County and tried unsuccessfully to enroll her in the neighborhood school. This school was a source of community pride and the ramshackle Mexican school was located adjacent to a dairy farm (Hayes-Bautista, 2004, p. 24). Her father won the case, but only by a loophole.

Similarly, until the mid-1960s, real estate developments were routinely segregated, normally in the form of a "restrictive covenant" attached to the property deed. It stipulated in Los Angeles, for example, that "No portion of the herein described property shall ever be sold, conveyed, leased, occupied by, or rented to any person of an Asiatic or African race... Nor to any person of the Mexican race" (ibid).