is
Confronting “America”
As a child Elsa Chavez confronted a “moral” dilemma. She wanted
desperately to enjoy the playground equipment close to her home
in El Paso’s Segundo Barrio. The tempting slide, swings, and jungle
gym seemed to call her name. However, her mother would not let
her near the best playground (and for many years the only playground) in the barrio. Even a local priest warned Elsa and her
friends that playing there was a sin—the playground was located
within the yard of the Rose Gregory Houchen Settlement, a Methodist community center.!
While one group of Americans responded to Mexican immigra-
tion by calling for restriction and deportation, other groups
mounted campaigns to “Americanize” the immigrants. From Los
Angeles, California, to Gary, Indiana, state and religious-sponsored
Americanization programs swung into action. Imbued with the ideology of “the melting pot,” teachers, social workers, and religious
missionaries envisioned themselves as harbingers of salvation and
civilization.2 Targeting women and especially children, the vanguard of Americanization placed their trust “in the rising generation.” As Pearl Ellis of the Covina City schools explained in her
1929 publication, Americanization Through Homemaking, “Since
the girls are potential mothers and homemakers, they will control,
in a large measure, the destinies of their future families.” She continued, “It is she who sounds the clarion call in the campaign for
better homes.”?
33
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A growing body of literature on Americanization in Mexican
communities by such scholars as George SAnchez, Sarah Deutsch,
Gilbert Gonzalez, and myself suggest that church and secular programs shared common course offerings and curricular goals. Perhaps taking their cue from the regimen developed inside Progressive Era settlement houses, Americanization projects emphasized
classes in hygiene, civics, cooking, language, and vocational education (e.g., sewing and carpentry). Whether seated at a desk in a
public school or on a sofa at a Protestant or Catholic neighborhood
house, Mexican women received similar messages of emulation
and assimilation. While emphasizing that the curriculum should
meet “the needs of these people,” one manual proclaimed with
deepest sincerity that a goal of Americanization was to enkindle “a
greater respect ... for our civilization.”
| Examples of Americanization efforts spanned the Southwest
and Midwest from secular settlements in Watts, Pasadena, and
Riverside to Hull House in Chicago. In addition, Catholic neighborhood centers, such as Friendly House in Phoenix, combined
Americanization programs with religious and social services. Protestant missionaries, furthermore, operated an array of settlements,
health clinics, and schools. During the first half of the twentieth
century, the Methodist Church sponsored one hospital, four boarding schools, and sixteen settlements/community centers, all serving
a predominately Mexican clientele. Two of these facilities were located in California, two in Kansas, one in New Mexico, and sixteen
in Texas.> Though there are many institutions to compare, an
overview, by its very nature, would tend to privilege missionary
labors and thus, once again, place Mexican women within the
shadows of history. By taking a closer look at one particular project—the Rose Gregory Houchen Settlement—one can discern the
attitudes and experiences of Mexican women themselves. This _
chapter explores the ways in which Mexican mothers and their
children interacted with the El Paso settlement, from utilizing selected services to claiming “American” identities, from taking their
babies to the clinic for immunizations to becoming missionaries
themselves. |
Using institutional records raises a series of important methodological questions. How can missionary reports, pamphlets, newsletters, and related documents illuminate the experiences and atti-
tudes of women of color? How do we sift through the bias, the
self-congratulation, and the hyperbole to gain insight into women’s
lives? What can these materials tell us of women’s agencies within
Ruíz, Vicki. From Out of the Shadows: Mexican Women In Twentieth-Century America.
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Confronting “America” 4 35 &
and against larger social structures? I am intrigued (actually obsessed is a better word) with questions involving decision-making,
specifically with regard to acculturation. What have Mexican
women chosen to accept or reject? How have the economic, social,
and political environments influenced the acceptance or rejection
of cultural messages that emanate from the Mexican community,
from U.S. popular culture, from Americanization programs, and
from a dynamic coalescence of differing and at times oppositional
cultural forms? What were women’s real choices and, to borrow
from Jiirgen Habermas, how did they move “within the horizon of
their lifeworld”?® Obviously, no set of institutional records can pro- |
vide substantive answers, but by exploring these documents
through the framework of these larger questions, we place Mexican
women at the center of our study, not as victims of poverty and superstition as so often depicted by missionaries, but as women who
made choices for themselves and for their families.
As the Ellis Island for Mexican immigrants, El Paso seemed a
__ Jogical spot for a settlement house. In 1900, El Paso’s Mexican
community numbered only 8,748 residents, but by 1930 this population had swelled to 68,476. Over the course of the twentieth
century, Mexicans composed over one-half the total population of
this bustling border city.’ Perceived as cheap labor by Euro-American businessmen, they provided the human resources necessary for
: the city’s industrial and commercial growth. Education and economic advancement proved illusory as segregation in housing,
employment, and schools served as constant reminders of their
second-class citizenship. To cite an example of stratification, from |
1930 to 1960, only 1.8 percent of El Paso’s Mexican workforce
held high white-collar occupations.®
Segundo Barrio or South El Paso has served as the center of
Mexican community life. Today, as in the past, wooden tenements
and crumbling adobe structures house thousands of Mexicanos
and Mexican Americans alike. For several decades, the only consistent source of social services in Segundo Barrio was the Rose Gregory Houchen Settlement House and its adjacent health clinic and ©
hospital.
Founded in 1912 on the corner of Tays and Fifth in the heart of |
, the barrio, this Methodist settlement had two initial goals: (1) provide a Christian roominghouse for single Mexicana wage earners
and (2) open a kindergarten for area children. By 1918, Houchen offered a full schedule of Americanization programs—citizenship, cooking, carpentry, English instruction, Bible study, and Boy
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Scouts. The first Houchen staff included three Methodist missionaries and one “student helper,” Ofilia [sic] Chavez.? Living in the
barrio made these women sensitive to the need for low-cost, accessible health care. Infant mortality in Segundo Barrio was alarmingly high. Historian Mario Garcfa related the following example:
“Of 121 deaths during July [1914], 52 were children under 5 years
of age.”!°
Houchen began to offer medical assistance, certainly rudimentary at first. In 1920, a registered nurse and Methodist missionary
Effie Stoltz operated a first aid station in the bathroom of the settlement. More important, she soon persuaded a local physician to
visit the residence on a regular basis and he, in turn, enlisted the
services of his colleagues. Within seven months of Stoltz’s arrival, a
small adobe flat was converted into Freeman Clinic. Run by volunteers, this clinic provided prenatal exams, well-baby care, and pedi-
atric services and, in 1930, it opened a six-bed maternity ward.
Seven years later, it would be demolished to make way for the construction of a more modern clinic and a new twenty-two-bed maternity facility—the Newark Methodist Maternity Hospital. Health
care at Newark was a bargain. Prenatal classes, pregnancy exams,
and infant immunizations were free. Patients paid for medicines at
cost and, during the 1940s, $30 covered the hospital bill. Staff
members would boast that for less than $50, payable in installments, neighborhood women could give birth at “one of the best
equipped maternity hospitals in the city.”!!
Houchen Settlement also thrived. From 1920 to 1960, it coordinated an array of Americanization activities. These included age
and gender graded Bible studies, music lessons, Campfire activities, scouting, working girls’ clubs, hygiene, cooking, and citizenship. Staff members also opened a day nursery to complement the
kindergarten program. In terms of numbers, how successful was
Houchen? The available records give little indication of the extent
of the settlement’s client base. Based on fragmentary evidence for
the period 1930 to 1950, perhaps as many as 15,000 to 20,000
people per year or approximately one-fourth to one-third of El
Paso’s Mexican population utilized its medical and/or educational
services. Indeed, one Methodist from the 1930s pamphlet boasted
that the settlement “reaches nearly 15,000 people.”!?
As a functioning Progressive Era settlement, Houchen had
amazing longevity from 1912 to 1962. Several Methodist missionaries came to Segundo Barrio as young women and stayed until
their retirement. Arriving in 1930, Millie Rickford would live at the
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Confronting “America” 4 37 &
settlement for thirty-one years. Two years after her departure, the
Rose Gregory Houchen Settlement House (named after a Michigan schoolteacher) would receive a new name, Houchen Community Center. As a community center, it would become more of a
secular agency staffed by social workers and at times Chicano activists.'3 In 1991 the buildings that cover a city block in South El
Paso still furnish day care and recreational activities. Along with
Bible study, there are classes in ballet fé6lklorico, karate, English,
and aerobics. Citing climbing insurance costs (among other reasons), the Methodist Church closed the hospital and clinic in December 1986 over the protests of local supporters and community
members.!4
From 1912 until the 1950s, Houchen workers placed Americanization and proselytization at the center of their efforts. Embracing the imagery and ideology of the melting pot, Methodist
missionary Dorothy Little explained:
Houchen settlement stands as a sentinel of friendship . . . between the people of America and the people of Mexico. We assimilate the best of their culture, their art, their ideals and they in
turn gladly accept the best America has to offer as they . . . become one with us. For right here within our four walls is begun
much of the “Melting” process of our “Melting Pot.”!®
The first goal of the missionaries was to convert Mexican women to
Methodism since they perceived themselves as harbingers of salva-
tion. As expressed in a Houchen report, “Our Church is called El
Buen Pastor. . . and that is what our church really is to the people—it is a Good Shepherd guiding our folks out of darkness and
Catholocism [sic] into the good Christian life.” Along similar lines,
one Methodist pamphlet printed during the 1930s equated
Catholicism (as practiced by Mexicans) with paganism and superstition. Settlement’s programs were couched in terms of “Christian
Americanization” and these programs began early.'°
Like the Franciscan missionaries who trod the same ground
three centuries before, Houchen settlement workers sought to win
the hearts and minds of children. While preschool and kindergarten students spoke Spanish and sang Mexican songs, they also
learned English, U.S. history, biblical verses—even etiquette a la
Emily Post.!” The settlement also offered various after-school activities for older children. These included “Little Homemakers,”
scouting, teen clubs, piano lessons, dance, bible classes, and story
hour. For many years the most elaborate playground in South El
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Paso could be found within the outer courtyard of the settlement.
Elsa Chavez eventually got her playground wish. She and her
mother reached an agreement: Elsa could play there on the condition that she not accept any “cookies or koolaid,” the refreshments
provided by Houchen staff. Other people remembered making similar bargains—they could play on the swings and slide, but they
- could not go indoors.!® How big of a step was it to venture from the
playground to story hour?
Settlement proselytizing did not escape the notice of barrio
priests. Clearly troubled by Houchen, a few predicted dire consequences for those who participated in any Protestant-tinged activities. As mentioned earlier, one priest went so far as to tell neighborhood children that it was a sin even to play on the playground
equipment. Others, however, took a more realistic stance and did
not chastise their parishioners for utilizing Methodist child care
and medical services. Perhaps as a response to both the Great Depression and suspected Protestant inroads, several area Catholic
churches began distributing food baskets and establishing soup
kitchens.”
Children were not the only ones targeted by Houchen. Women,
particularly expectant mothers, received special attention. Like the
proponents of Americanization programs in California, settlement
workers believed that women held a special guardianship over their
_ families’ welfare. As head nurse Millie Rickford explained, “If we
can teach her [the mother-to-be] the modern methods of cooking
and preparing foods and simple hygiene habits for herself and her
family, we have gained a stride.”°
Houchen’s “Christian Americanization” programs were not
: unique. During the teens and twenties, religious and state-organized Americanization projects aimed at the Mexican population
proliferated throughout the Southwest. Although these efforts varied in scale from settlement houses to night classes, curriculum
generally revolved around cooking, hygiene, English, and civics.
Music seemed a universal tool of instruction. One Arizona schoolteacher excitedly informed readers of The Arizona Teacher and
Home Journal that her district for the “cause of Americanization”
had purchased a Victorola and several records that included two
Spanish melodies, the “Star Spangled Banner,’ ‘The Red, White,
and Blue,’ ‘Silent Night,’ . . . [and] ‘Old Kentucky Home.””?!
Houchen, of course, offered a variety of musical activities beginning with the kindergarten rhythm band of 1927. During the 1940s
and 1950s, missionaries provided flute, guitar, ballet, and tap
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Confronting “America” 4 39 %
lessons. For fifty cents a week, a youngster could take dance or mu-
sic classes and perform in settlement recitals.22 Clothing youngsters in European peasant styles was common. For instance, Alice
Ruiz, Priscilla Molina, Edna Parra, Mira Gémez, and Aida Rivera
represented Houchen in a local Girl Scout festival held at the
Shrine temple in which they modeled costumes from Sweden, Eng-
land, France, Scotland, and Lithuania.?3 Some immigrant traditions were valorized more than others. Celebrating Mexican heritage did not figure into the Euro-American orientation pushed by
Houchen residents.
In contrast, a teacher affiliated with an Americanization program in Watts sought to infuse a multicultural perspective as she
directed a pageant with a U.S. women’s history theme. Clara Smith
described the event as follows:
Women, famous in the United States history as the Pilgrim, Betsy
Ross, Civil War, and covered wagon women, Indian and Negro
women, followed by the foreign women who came to live among
us were portrayed. The class had made costumes and had learned
to dance the Virginia Reel. ... They had also made costumes with
_ paper ruffles of Mexican colors to represent their flag. They prepared Mexican dances and songs.?4
Despite such an early and valiant attempt at diversity, the
teacher did not think it necessary to include the indigenous heritage of Mexican women. Indeed, stereotypical representations of
the American Indian “princess” (or what Rayna Green has termed
“the Pocahontas perplex”) supplanted any understanding of indigenous cultures on either side of the political border separating
Mexico and the United States.
Like Americanization advocates across the Southwest, Houchen settlement workers held out unrealistic notions of the American
Dream as well as romantic constructions of American life. It is as if
the Houchen staff had endeavored to create a white, middle-class
environment for Mexican youngsters complete with tutus and toe
shoes. Cooking classes also became avenues for developing particular tastes. Minerva Franco, who as a child attended settlement
programs and who later as an adult became a community volunteer, explained, “I'll never forget the look on my mother’s face when
I first cooked ‘Eggs Benedict’ which I learned to prepare at
Houchen.”*° The following passage, taken from a report dated February 1942 outlines, in part, the perceived accomplishments of the
settlement:
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Sanitary conditions have been improving—more children go to
school—more parents are becoming citizens, more are leaving
Catholicism—-more are entering business and public life—and
more and more they taking on the customs and standards of the
Anglo people.?’
Seemingly oblivious to structural discrimination, such a statement
ignores economic segmentation and racial/ethnic segregation. Focusing on El Paso, historian Mario Garcia demonstrated that the
curricula in Mexican schools, which emphasized vocational education, served to funnel Mexican youth into the factories and build-
_ ing trades. In the abstract, education raised expectations, but in
practice, particularly for men, it trained them for low-status, lowpaying jobs. One California grower disdained education for Mexicans because it would give them “tastes for things they can’t acquire.”2® Settlement workers seemed to ignore that racial/ethnic
identity involved not only a matter of personal choice and heritage
but also an ascribed status imposed by external sources.??
Americanization programs have come under a lot of criticisms
from historians over the past two decades and numerous passages
and photographs in the Houchen collection provide fodder for sarcasm among contemporary readers. Yet, to borrow from urban theorist Edward Soja, scholars should be mindful of “an appropriate
interpretive balance between space, time and social being.”2° Although cringing at the ethnocentrism and romantic idealizations of
“American” life, I respect the settlement workers for their health
and child care services. Before judging the maternal missionaries
too harshly, it is important to keep in mind the social services they
rendered over an extended period of time as well as the environment in which they lived. For example, Houchen probably
launched the first bilingual kindergarten program in El Paso, a program that eased the children’s transition into an English-only first
grade. Houchen residents did not denigrate the use of Spanish and
many became fluent Spanish speakers. The hospital and clinic,
moreover, were important community institutions for over half a
century?!
Settlement workers themselves could not always count on the
encouragement or patronage of Anglo El Paso. In a virulently nativist tract, a local physician, C. S. Babbitt, condemned missionaries, like the women of Houchen, for working among Mexican and
African Americans. In fact, Babbitt argued that religious workers
were “seemingly conspiring with Satan to destroy the handiwork of
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Confronting “America” 4 41 &
God” because their energies were “wasted on beings . . . who are
not in reality the objects of Christ’s sacrifice.”32 Even within their
own ranks, missionaries could not count on the support of Protestant clergy. Reverend Robert McLean, who worked among Mexi-
cans in Los Angeles, referred to his congregation as “chili con
carne” bound to give Uncle Sam a bad case of “heartburn.”33
Perhaps more damaging than these racist pronouncements was
the apparent lack of financial support on the part of El Paso area
Methodist churches. Accessible records reveal little in terms of lo-
cal donations. Houchen was named after a former Michigan
schoolteacher who bequeathed $1,000 for the establishment of a
settlement in El Paso. The Women’s Home Missionary Society of
the Newark, New Jersey, Conference proved instrumental in raising funds for the construction of both Freeman Clinic and Newark
Methodist Maternity Hospital. When Freeman Clinic first opened
its doors in June 1921, all the medical equipment—everything
from sterilizers to baby scales—were gifts from Methodist groups
across the nation. The Houchen Day Nursery, however, received
consistent financial support from the El Paso Community Chest
and later the United Way. In 1975, Houchen’s Board of Directors
conducted the first community-wide fund-raising drive. Volunteers
sought to raise $375,000 to renovate existing structures and build
a modern day care center. The Houchen fund-raising slogan
“When people pay their own way, it’s your affair . . . not welfare”
makes painfully clear the conservative attitudes toward social welfare harbored by affluent El Pasoans.*4
The women of Houchen appeared undaunted by the lack of local support. For over fifty years, these missionaries coordinated a
multifaceted Americanization campaign among the residents of Segundo Barrio. How did Mexican women perceive the settlement?
What services did they utilize and to what extent did they internalize the romantic notions of “Christian Americanization>”
Examining Mexican women’s agency through institutional
records is difficult; it involves getting beneath the text to dispel the
shadows cast by missionary devotion to a simple Americanization
ideology. One has to take into account the selectivity of voices. In
drafting settlement reports and publications, missionaries chose
those voices that would publicize their “victories” among the Spanish speaking. As a result, quotations abound that heap praise upon
praise on Houchen and its staff. For example, in 1939, Soledad
Burciaga emphatically declared, “There is not a person, no matter
to which denomination they belong, who hasn’t a kind word and a
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442 &% From Out of the Shadows
heart full of gratitude towards the Settlement House.”*> Obviously,
these documents have their limits. Oral interviews and informal
discussions with people who grew up in Segundo Barrio give a
more balanced, less effusive perspective. Most viewed Houchen as
a Protestant-run health care and after-school activities center
rather than as the “light-house” [sic] in South El Paso.*°
In 1949, the term Friendship Square was coined as a description for the settlement house, hospital, day nursery, and church.
Missionaries hoped that children born at Newark would participate
in preschool and afternoon programs and that eventually they and
their families would join their church, E] Buen Pastor. And a few
did follow this pattern. One of the ministers assigned to El Buen
Pastor, Fernando Garcia, was a Houchen kindergarten graduate.
Emulating the settlement staff, some young women enrolled in
Methodist missionary colleges or served as lay volunteers. Elizabeth Soto, for example, attended Houchen programs throughout
her childhood and adolescence. On graduation from Bowie High
School, she entered Asbury College to train as a missionary and
then returned to El Paso as a Houchen resident. After several years
of service, she left settlement work to become the wife of a Mexican Methodist minister. The more common goal among Houchen
teens was to graduate from high school and perhaps attend Texas
Western, the local college. The first child born at Newark Hospital,
Margaret Holguin, took part in settlement activities as a child and
later became a registered nurse. According to her comadre, Lucy
Lucero, Holguin’s decision to pursue nursing was “perhaps due to
the influence” of head nurse Millie Rickford. According to Lucero,
“The only contact I had had with Anglos was with Anglo teachers.
Then I met Miss Rickford and I felt, “Hey, she’s human. She’s
great.” At a time when many (though certainly not all) elementary
schoolteachers cared little about their Mexican students, Houchen
residents offered warmth and encouragement.?’
Emphasizing education among Mexican youth seemed a com-
mon goal characterizing Methodist community centers and
schools. The Frances De Pauw School located on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, for example, was an all-girls boarding school.
Frances De Pauw educated approximately 1,800 young Mexican
women from 1900 to 1946 and a Methodist pamphlet elaborated
on its successes. “Among [the school’s] graduates are secretaries,
bookkeepers, clerks, office receptionists, nurses, teachers, wait-
resses, workers in cosmetic laboratories, church workers, and
Christian homemakers.” While preparing its charges for the workaRuíz, Vicki. From Out of the Shadows: Mexican Women In Twentieth-Century America.
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Confronting “America” 443 &
day world, the school never lost sight of women’s domestic duties.
“Every De Pauw girl is graded as carefully in housework as she is
in her studies.”2* With regard to Friendship Square, one cannot
make wholesale generalizations about its role in fostering mobility
or even aspirations for mobility among the youth of Segundo Barrio. Yet it is clear that Houchen missionaries strived to build selfesteem and encouraged young people to pursue higher education.
Missionaries also envisioned a Protestant enclave in South El
Paso; but, to their frustration, very few people responded. The set-
tlement church, El Buen Pastor, had a peak membership of 150
families. The church itself had an intermittent history. Shortly after its founding in 1897, El] Buen Pastor disappeared; it was officially rededicated as part of Houchen in 1932. However, the construction of an actual church on settlement grounds did not begin
until 1945. In 1968, the small rock chapel would be converted into
a recreation room and thrift shop as the members of El Buen Pas-
tor and El Mesias (another Mexican-American church) were
merged together to form the congregation of the Emmanuel United
Methodist Church in downtown El Paso. In 1991, a modern gymnasium occupies the ground where the chapel once stood.*?
The case histories of converts suggest that many of those who
joined El] Buen Pastor were already Protestant. The Dominguez
family offers an example. In the words of settlement worker A.
Ruth Kern:
Reyna and Gabriel Dominguez are Latin Americans, even though
both were born in the United States. Some members of the family do not even speak English. Reyna was born . . . in a Catholic
home, but at the age of eleven years, she began attending the
Methodist Church. Gabriel was born in Arizona. His mother was
a Catholic, but she became a Protestant when . . . Gabriel was
five years old.*°
The youth programs at Houchen brought Reyna and Gabriel together. After their marriage, the couple had six children, all born at
Newark Hospital. The Dominguez family represented Friendship
Square’s typical success story. Many of the converts were children
and many had already embraced a Protestant faith. In the records I
examined, I found only one instance of the conversion of a Catholic adult and one of the conversion of an entire Catholic family.*!
It seems that those most receptive to Houchen’s religious messages
were already predisposed in that direction.
The failure of proselytization cannot be examined solely within
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444 % = From Out of the Shadows
the confines of Friendship Square. It is not as if these Methodist
women were good social workers but incompetent missionaries.
Houchen staff member Clara Sarmiento wrote of the difficulty in
building trust among the adults of Segundo Barrio. “Though it is
easy for children to open up their hearts to us we do not find it so
with the parents.” She continued, “It is hard especially because we
are Protestant, and most of the people we serve . . . come from
Catholic heritage.”** I would argue that the Mexican community
played an instrumental role in thwarting conversion. In a land
where the barrio could serve as a refuge from prejudice and discrimination, the threat of social isolation could certainly inhibit
many residents from turning Protestant. During an oral interview,
Estella Ibarra, a woman who participated in Houchen activities for
_ over fifty years, described growing up Protestant in South El Paso:
We went through a lot of prejudice . . . sometimes my friends’
mothers wouldn’t let them play with us. . . . When the priest
would go through the neighborhood, all the children would run
to say hello and kiss his hand. My brothers and I would just stand
by and look. The priest would usually come . . . and tell us how we
were living in sin. Also, there were times when my brother and I
were stoned by other students . . . and called bad names.*?
When contacted by a Houchen resident, Mrs. Espinosa admitted
to being a closet Protestant. As she explained, “I am afraid of the
Catholic sisters and [I] don’t want my neighbors to know that I am
not Catholic-minded.” The fear of ostracism, while recorded by
Houchen staff, did not figure into their understanding of Mexicano
resistance to conversion. Instead, they blamed time and culture. Or
as Dorothy Little succinctly related, “We can not eradicate in a few
years what has been built up during ages.”** Their dilemma points _
to the fact historians Sarah Deutsch and George Sanchez have
noted: Americanization programs in the Southwest, most of which
were sporadic and poorly financed, made little headway in Mexican
communities. Ruth Crocker also described the Protestant settlements in Gary, Indiana, as having only a “superficial and temporary” influence.» Yet even long-term sustained efforts, as in the
case of Houchen, had limited appeal. This inability to mold consciousness or identity demonstrates not only the strength of com-
munity sanctions, but, more significant, of conscious decisionmaking on the part of Mexican women who sought to claim a place
for themselves and their families in American society without abandoning their Mexican cultural affinities.
Ruíz, Vicki. From Out of the Shadows: Mexican Women In Twentieth-Century America.
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Confronting “America” 4 45 &
Mexican women derived substantive services from Friendship
in the form of health care and education; however, they refused to
embrace its romantic idealizations of American life. Wage-earning
mothers who placed their children in the day nursery no doubt encountered an Anglo world quite different from the one depicted by
Methodist missionaries and thus were skeptical of the settlement’s
cultural messages. Clara Sarmiento knew from experience that it
was much easier to reach the children than their parents.*° How
did children respond to the ideological undercurrents of Houchen
programs? Did Mexican women feel empowered by their interaction with the settlement or were Methodist missionaries invidious
underminers of Mexican identity?
In getting beneath the text, the following remarks of Minerva
Franco that appeared in a 1975 issue of Newark-Houchen News
raise a series of provocative questions. “Houchen provided . . .
opportunities for learning and experiencing. . . . At Houchen |
was shown that I had worth and that I was an individual.”4”7 Now
what did she mean by that statement? Did the settlement house
heighten her self-esteem? Did she feel that she was not an individ-
ual within the context of her family and neighborhood? Some
young women imbibed Americanization so heavily as to reject their
identity. In No Separate Refuge, Sarah Deutsch picked up on this
theme as she quoted missionary Polita Padilla: “I am Mexican, born
and brought up in New Mexico, but much of my life was spent in
the Allison School where we had a different training so that the
Mexican way of living now seems strange to me.” Others, like Estella Ibarra and Rose Escheverrfa Mulligan, saw little incompatibility between Mexican traditions and Protestantism.*8
Which Mexican women embraced the ideas of assimilation so
completely as to become closet Mexicans? As a factor, class must
_ be taken into consideration. In his field notes housed at the Ban-
croft Library, economist Paul Taylor contends that middle-class
Mexicans desiring to dissociate themselves from their workingclass neighbors possessed the most fervent aspirations for assimila-
tion. Once in the United States, middle-class Mexicanos found
themselves subject to racial/ethnic prejudice that did not discriminate by class. Due to restrictive real estate covenants, immigrants
lived in barrios with people they considered inferiors.*? By passing
as “Spanish,” they cherished hopes of melting into the American
social landscape. Sometimes mobility-minded parents sought to
regulate their children’s choice of friends and later marriage partners. “My folks never allowed us to be around with Mexicans,” reRuíz, Vicki. From Out of the Shadows: Mexican Women In Twentieth-Century America.
E-book, New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2008, https://hdl.handle.net/2027/heb01892.0001.001.
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446% = From Out of the Shadows
membered Alicia Mendeola Shelit. “We went sneaking around, but
my Dad wouldn’t allow it. We'd always be with white.” Indeed, She-
lit married twice, both times to Euro-Americans.*® Of course it
would be unfair to characterize all middle-class Mexican women
immigrants as repudiating their mestizo identity. Working in a posh
El Paso department store, Alma Araiza would quickly correct her
_ colleagues when they assumed she was Italian.
People kept telling me, ‘You must not be Mexican.’ And I said,
‘why do you think I’m not?’ ‘Well, it’s your skin color. Are you Italian?’ .. . I [responded] ‘I am Mexicana.”*!
Or as a young woman cleverly remarked to anthropologist Ruth
Tuck, “Listen, I may be a Mexican in a fur coat, but I’m still a Mexican.”>2
The Houchen documents reveal glimpses into the formation of
identity, consciousness, and values. The Friendship Square Calen-
dar of 1949 explicitly stated that the medical care provided at
Houchen “is a tool to develop sound minds in sound bodies; for
thus it is easier to find peace with God and man. We want to help
people develop a sense of values in life.” Furthermore, the privileging of color—with white as the pinnacle—was an early lesson. Re-
lating the excitement of kindergarten graduation, Day Nursery
head Beatrice Fernandez included in her report a question asked by
Margarita, one of the young graduates. “We are all wearing white,
white dress, slip, socks and Miss Fernandez, is it alright if our hair
is black?”>3 Sometimes subtle, sometimes overt, the privileging of
race, class, culture, and color taught by women missionaries had
painful consequences for their pupils.
Houchen activities were synonymous with Americanization. A
member of the settlement Brownie troop encouraged her friends
“to become ‘an American or a Girl Scout’ at Houchen.” Scouting
certainly served as a vehicle for Americanization. The all-Mexican
Girl and Boy Scout Troops of Alpine, Texas, enjoyed visiting El Paso
and Ciudad Ju4rez in the company of Houchen scouts. In a thankyou note, the Alpine Girl Scouts wrote, “Now we can all say we
have been to a foreign country.”
It is important to remember that Houchen provided a bilingual
environment, not a bicultural one. Spanish was the means to communicate the message of Methodism and Christian Americanization. Whether dressing up children as Pilgrims or European peas-
ants, missionaries stressed “American” citizenship and values;
yet, outside conversion, definitions of those values or of “our AmerRuíz, Vicki. From Out of the Shadows: Mexican Women In Twentieth-Century America.
E-book, New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2008, https://hdl.handle.net/2027/heb01892.0001.001.
Downloaded on behalf of California State University, Northridge
Confronting “America” 4 47 &
ican way’ remained elusive. Indeed, some of the settlement lessons
were not incongruous with Mexican mores. In December 1952, a
Euro-American settlement worker recorded in her journal the success of a Girl Scout dinner. “The girls learned a lot from it too. They
were taught how to set the table, and how to serve the men. They
learned also that they had to share, to cooperate, and to wait their
turn.”°° These were not new lessons.
The most striking theme that repeatedly emerges from Houch- —
| en documents is that of individualism. Missionaries emphasized
the importance of individual decision-making and individual ac~ complishment. In recounting her own conversion, Clara Sarmiento
explained to a young client, “I chose my own religion because it was
my own personal experience and . . . I was glad my religion was not
chosen for me.”*®
In Relations of Rescue, Peggy Pascoe carefully recorded the
glass ceiling encountered by “native helpers” at Protestant rescue
homes. Chinese women at Cameron House in San Francisco, for
example, could only emulate Euro-American missionaries to a certain point, always as subordinates, not as directors or leaders. Conversely, Mexican women did assume top positions of leadership at
Methodist settlements. In 1930, Marfa Moreno was appointed the
head resident of the brand new Floyd Street Settlement in Dallas,
Texas. Methodist community centers and boarding schools stressed the need for developing “Christian leaders trained for useful living.”°’ For many, leadership meant ministering as a lay volunteer;
for some, it meant pursuing a missionary vocation.
_. The Latina missionaries of Houchen served as cultural brokers
as they diligently strived to integrate themselves into the community. Furthermore, over time Latinas appeared to have experienced
some mobility within the settlement hierarchy. In 1912, Ofilia [sic]
Chavez served as a “student helper”; forty years later Beatrice Fer- |
nandez would direct the preschool. Until 1950, the Houchen staff
usually included one Latina; however, during the 1950s, the number of Latina (predominately Mexican American) settlement workers rose to six. Mary Lou Lépez, Maria Rico, Elizabeth Soto, Febe
Bonilla, Clara Sarmiento, Marfa Payan, and Beatrice Fernandez
had participated in Methodist outreach activities as children (Soto
at Houchen) and had decided to follow in the footsteps of their
teachers. In addition, these women had the assistance of five fulltime Mexican laypersons.*® It is no coincidence that the decade of
greatest change in Houchen policies occurred at a time when Latinas held a growing number of staff positions. Friendship Square’s
Ruíz, Vicki. From Out of the Shadows: Mexican Women In Twentieth-Century America.
E-book, New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2008, https://hdl.handle.net/2027/heb01892.0001.001.
Downloaded on behalf of California State University, Northridge
448 % From Out of the Shadows
greater sensitivity to neighborhood needs arose, in part, out of the
influence exerted by Mexican clients in shaping the attitudes and
actions of Mexican missionaries.
So, in the end, Mexican women utilized Houchen’s social services; they did not, by and large, adopt its tenets of Christian Americanization. Children who attended settlement programs enjoyed
the activities, but Friendship Square did not always leave a lasting
imprint. “My Mom had an open mind, so I participated in a lot of
clubs. But I didn’t become Protestant,” remarked Lucy Lucero. “I
had fun and I learned a lot, too.” Because of the warm, supportive
environment, Houchen Settlement is remembered with fondness.
However, one cannot equate pleasant memories with the acceptance of the settlement’s cultural ideals.*?
Settlement records bear out Mexican women’s selective use of
Houchen’s resources. The most complete set of figures is for the
year 1944. During this period, 7,614 people visited the clinic and
hospital. The settlement afternoon programs had an average
monthly enrollment of 362 and 40 children attended kindergarten.
Taken together, approximately 8,000 residents of Segundo Barrio
utilized Friendship Square’s medical and educational offerings. In
contrast, the congregation of El Buen Pastor included 160 people.©° Although representing only a single year, these figures indicate the importance of Houchen’s medical facilities and Mexican
women’s selective utilization of resources.
By the 1950s, settlement houses were few and far between and
those that remained were run by professional social workers. Im-
plemented by a growing Latina staff, client-initiated changes in
Houchen policies brought a realistic recognition of the settlement
as a social service agency rather than a religious mission. During
the 1950s, brochures describing the day nursery emphasized that
while children said grace at meals and sang Christian songs, they |
would not receive “in any way indoctrination” regarding Method-
ism. In fact, at the parents’ request, Newark nurses summoned
Catholic priests to the hospital to baptize premature infants. Client
desire became the justification for allowing the presence of Catholic clergy, a policy that would have been unthinkable in the not too
distant past.! Finally, in the new Houchen constitution of 1959,
all mention of conversion was dropped. Instead, it conveyed a more
ecumenical, nondenominational spirit. For instance, the goal of
Houchen Settlement was henceforth “to establish a Christian democratic framework for—individual development, family solidarity,
and neighborhood welfare.”°
Settlement activities also became more closely linked with the
Ruíz, Vicki. From Out of the Shadows: Mexican Women In Twentieth-Century America.
E-book, New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2008, https://hdl.handle.net/2027/heb01892.0001.001.
Downloaded on behalf of California State University, Northridge
Confronting “America” 4 49 &
Mexican community. During the 1950s, Houchen was the home of
two LULAC chapters—one for teenagers and one for adults. The
League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) was the most
visible and politically powerful civil rights organization in Texas.
Carpentry classes—once the preserve of males—opened their
doors to young women, although on a gender-segregated basis.
Houchen workers, moreover, made veiled references to the “very
dangerous business” of Juarez abortion clinics; however, it appears
unclear whether or not the residents themselves offered any contraceptive counseling. During the early 1960s, however, the settle-
ment, in cooperation with Planned Parenthood, opened a birth
control clinic for “married women.” Indeed, a Houchen contracep-
tion success story was featured on the front page of a spring
newsletter. “Mrs. G ____, after having her thirteenth and fourteenth children (twins), enrolled in our birth control clinic; now for
one and one half years she has been a happy and non-pregnant
mother.”°* Certainly Houchen had changed with the times. What
factors accounted for the new directions in settlement work? The
evidence on the baptism of premature babies seems fairly clear in
terms of client pressure, but to what extent did other policies
change as the result of Mexican women’s input? The residents of
Segundo Barrio may have felt more comfortable expressing their
ideas and Latina settlement workers may have exhibited a greater
willingness to listen. Indeed, Mexican clients, not missionaries, set
the boundaries for interaction.
Creating the public space of settlements and community centers, advocates of Americanization sought to alter the “lifeworld” of
Mexican immigrants to reflect their own idealized versions of life in the United States. Settlement workers can be viewed as the narrators of lived experience as Houchen records reflected the cognitive
construction of missionary aspirations and expectations. In other
words, the documents revealed more about the women who wrote
them than those they served. At another level, one could interpret
the cultural ideals of Americanization as an indication of an attempt at what Jiirgen Habermas has termed “inner colonization.”©
Yet the failure of such projects illustrates the ways in which Mexi-
can women appropriated desired resources, both material (infant
immunizations) and psychological (self-esteem) while, in the main,
rejecting the ideological messages behind them. The shift in
Houchen policies during the 1950s meant more than a recognition
of community needs; it represented a claiming of public space by
Mexican women clients.
Confronting Americanization brings into sharp relief the conRuíz, Vicki. From Out of the Shadows: Mexican Women In Twentieth-Century America.
E-book, New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2008, https://hdl.handle.net/2027/heb01892.0001.001.
Downloaded on behalf of California State University, Northridge
450 & From Out of the Shadows
cept I have termed cultural coalescence. Immigrants and their chil-
dren pick, borrow, retain, and create distinctive cultural forms.
There is no single hermetic Mexican or Mexican-American culture,
but rather permeable cultures rooted in generation, gender, region,
class, and personal experience. Chicano scholars have divided
Mexican experiences into three generational categories: Mexicano
(first generation), Mexican American (second generation), and
Chicano (third and beyond).®* But this general typology tends to
obscure the ways in which people navigate across cultural boundaries as well as their conscious decision-making in the production
of culture. However, people of color have not had unlimited choice.
Race and gender prejudice and discrimination with their accompa-
nying social, political, and economic segmentation have constrained aspirations, expectations, and decision-making.
The images and ideals of Americanization were a mixed lot and
were never the only messages immigrant women received. Local
mutualistas, Mexican patriotic and Catholic pageants, newspapers,
and community networks reinforced familiar legacies. In contrast,
religious and secular Americanization programs, the elementary
schools, movies, magazines, and radio bombarded the Mexican
community with a myriad of models, most of which were idealized,
stylized, unrealistic, and unattainable. Expectations were raised in
predictable ways. In the words of one Mexican-American woman,
“We felt that if we worked hard, proved ourselves, we could become
professional people.”®’ Consumer culture would hit the barrio full
force during the 1920s, exemplified by the Mexican flapper. As we
will see in the next chapter, even Spanish-language newspapers
promoted messages of consumption and acculturation. Settlement
houses also mixed in popular entertainment with educational programs. According to historian Louise Aio Nuevo Kerr, the Mexican
Mothers Club of the University of Chicago Settlement “took a field
trip to NBC radio studios in downtown Chicago from which many
of the soap operas emanated.”
By looking through the lens of cultural coalescence, we can begin to discern the ways in which people select and create cultural
forms. Teenagers began to manipulate and reshape the iconogra-
phy of consumer culture both as a marker of peer group identity
and as an authorial presence through which they rebelled against
strict parental supervision. When standing at the cultural crossroads, Mexican women blended their options and created their
own paths.
Ruíz, Vicki. From Out of the Shadows: Mexican Women In Twentieth-Century America.
E-book, New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2008, https://hdl.handle.net/2027/heb01892.0001.001.
Downloaded on behalf of California State University, Northridge
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Ruíz, Vicki. From Out of the Shadows: Mexican Women In Twentieth-Century America.
E-book, New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2008, https://hdl.handle.net/2027/heb01892.0001.001.
Downloaded on behalf of California State University, Northridge
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