Unit III A Radical View of the 20 th Century Chicana/o

1. Unit III A Radical View of the 20th Century Chicana/o

2. What does it mean to be a “nation within a nation”?

3. Today’s Objectives • Contextualize late 19thcentury immigration patterns and the meaning behind ‘racialization’ • Comprehend the relationship between US Empire abroad and domestically • Grasp the significance of early 20th century labor organizations, struggles and activism • Understand basic concepts in intersectional analysis: class, gender, race

4. Racialization • “Under the governments of Spain and the United States, the reproduction of racial inequality was instituted through a legal process [called] racialization. Spain and the United States used their legal systems to confer social and economic privileges upon Whites and to discriminate against people of color.” (Martha Menchaca, 2001).

5. From Immigrants to White-Ethnics • 1880’s – 1920’s: About 23 million Europeans immigrated to the US • Mostly from eastern and southern Europe • European labor facilitated industrialization • Increased U.S. military and political power • Immigration patterns lay the foundation for building a homogenous White Anglo-American identity (whiteness)

6. Justifying Empire • The White Man’s Burden by Rudyard Kipling 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...

7. Treaty of Paris (1898) • US supported Cuban independence movement against Spanish rule... ONLY to establish colonial rule in Cuba and later Puerto Rico, Guantanamo Bay, the Philippines, and other West Indies islands, including the island of Guam. • Opened the way for US intervention in the Caribbean, and eventually led to the building of the Panama Canal.

8. Political Control Conquest Economics Resistance Socialization

9. The Transcontinental Railroad • Completed in 1880 • Effectively linked the West’s resources to Eastern factories • Same year, the Mexican Central Railroad was completed, linking Mexico City to El Paso, Texas • Accelerated the commercialization of agriculture and the decline of subsistence farming

10. Effects of Railroad • The expansion of railroads that linked Mexico and the US was a major factor in the modernization of Mexico. Thus, the uprooting did not cause the building of the railroad; it was the other way around.” (Acuña, 171).

11. Effects of WWI on Mexican-Americans • WWI represented a crucial stage in the assimilation of Mexicans. • Each succeeding generation felt more entitled to American rights and citizenship. • The longer Mexicans stayed in the US, the more they wanted to have constitutional rights.

12. Community A body of people having a common history, political interests and/or values. Individuals sharing common values, who work together to achieve common goals. • Strike Community • Chicana/o Community • Music Community (Metal heads V. Hip Hop fiends, etc) • Cougar Community

13. LULAC (est. 1929) • The League of United Latin American Citizens: • Founding members represented educated Mexican-American elite, and the lower and middle class • Fluent in English and highly urbanized • Involved in Civil Rights Issues (betterment of schools, voter registration drives) • Highly exclusionary to: Mexican nationals and poor-working classes

14. Assimilation • A process in which formerly distinct and separate groups come to share a common culture and merge together socially • As a society undergoes assimilation, differences among groups begin to decrease • LULAC represented a shift in Mexican-American relationship to dominant Anglo-American society. • Integration, not discrimination. Always working through the system for a “piece of the pie”

15. 20th Century CAUSE & EFFECT 1959: Fidel Castro & Che Guevara lead a successful Cuban Revolution 1907: Gentlemen’s Agreement 1914-1917: US enters WWI 1848: Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo 1882: Chinese Exclusion Act 1910-1920: Over 1 million Mexicans migrate to the US 1929-1939: La Crisis Progressive organizations influence the building of a Chicana/o Identity 1910: Mexican Revolution, last 10 years. 1861-1865: US Civil War 1898 – Spanish-American War

16. Questions/Concepts to Consider: • How did “La Crisis” help forge a Mexican-American identity? • Did the federal government’s New Deal Program provide equal benefits and opportunities for communities of color? • How did the struggle for labor and education open ways to question and resist gender roles associated to poor working class women of color in early 20th century?

17. U.S. Federal Repatriation Programs • One million Mexicanas/os and Chicanas/os deported. • 1931, Secretary of Labor Doak successfully argues for Congress to fund deportations. • Public “sweeps” • Building for Society of Mexican Laborers Bombed • Handicapped and injured kicked out of hospitals and deported: some sick and elderly die. • Barrios disappear, banks lose money…

18. “I was pretty defiant. I fought against poverty, actually starvation, high infant death rates, disease and hunger and misery. I would do the same thing again.” Emma Tenayuca, reflecting on the Pecan Sheller’s Strike, fifty years later Emma Tenayuca: Early Chicana Feminist Activism

19. 1930s Overview • Earlier strikes:1903 Arizona miner’s strike; 1912 Ludlow Massacre. • 1930s: Strong mutualistas, Congress of Industrial Workers (CIO), New Deal.

20. Mutualistas • From the time immediately following the Invasion, to the present. • An institution in common with African American communities. Mutualista/Mutual Aid Society: A collective of individuals and families who pay dues and raise funds to provide burial and health insurance for the community. Fundraisers are often culturally based – thus such organizations provide economic security and support cultural pride for their members and the larger community.

21. Congress of Industrial Workers • Congress of Industrial Workers: Founded in 1935: Sought to organize factory and industrial workers (workers in the secondary labor sector). The CIO wrote nondiscrimination clauses into its founding documents, discouraging racial discrimination in their unions. • Primary Labor Sector: Upward mobility. Skilled (sometimes learned on the job) with opportunities for promotion. “Above the table.” • Secondary Labor Sector: Little-to-no chance for promotion. Low-skill or skill not recognized.

22. Emma Tenayuca, Girlhood • Spent Afternoons listening to Magonistas… Magonistas: Followers of the anarcho-syndicalists (and critics of the Díaz government) Ricardo and Enrique Flores Magón -- Mexican nationals who organized workers on both sides of the border. As anarcho-syndicalists, they believed that workers should own the means of production and that workers should run and own their own labor unions. • Attended and graduated high school during U.S. Depression • Participated in socialist reading groups • Participated in Finck Cigar strike (arrested).

23. Finck Cigar Strike and Workers Alliance • Participated at age 17 (1933). • Co-founded the Worker’s Alliance • Protested border patrol abuses and deportations • Fought for a minimum wage and right to strike • Equal rights for immigrant workers • Red baiting – Accusing people (usually with whom you have disagreements) of being communist. In the early twentieth-century conservatives used red baiting to attack labor organizers. • 1937 Raid on WA hall

24. Pecan Sheller’s Strike • 1937, 12,000 Mexican and Chicana/o workers in Texas. • $2.73/week. • 1938 wage cut… • Workers members of United Cannery and Agricultural Packing and Allied Workers of America (CIO). • League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) condemned the strike. • Mexican Consul stepped up to stop deportations.

25. End to Overt Activism • 1939 riot in San Antonio. • FBI harassment and death threats.

26. La Pasionaria By Carmen Tafolla But there she was – raising up her fist for Justice, raising up her voice for truth filled always with a passion for life and for compassion, a passion to empower the people a passion to protect the poor. A fire of heart and tongue. …

27. Critical Intersections • Gender and Class • Labor and Education • Immigration and Empire What was so revolutionary about women like Emma Tenayuca, Manuela Solis Sager, and Luisa Morena and their labor activism in the 1930s? How does the struggle for labor in fact also mean the struggle for education? Explain. How did US treatment regarding Mexican-American peoples differ from people of color abroad? Is racialization a global process? Or only a U.S. phenomenon? Explain.