Mexicano Historical Heterogeneity, Class Stratification I Cultural Hybridity and Internal Class Stratification II Anglo-Euro American vs. Mexicano-Chicano Value Systems Keywords: • Stratification • Hybridity • Mestizaje • “Spanish Fantasy Heritage” •Protestant Work Ethic •Liberal Individualism •Manifest Destiny •History of violence •Bootstrap model/Meritocracy •Family/Familia •Compradrazgo (“Godfather/Padrino” system) • Structure vs. Agency • Culture of Poverty vs. American Cultural Imperialism • Cultural Erasure vs. Cultural Retention Assimilation = Cultural Erasure During and after the U.S.-Mexican War of 1846-1848, the majority of Anglo Americans viewed Mexico’s “primitive inhabitants” as no better than American Indians, and considered mixed-blood, mestizo Mexican peoples to be lazy, ignorant, cheating, dirty, bloodthirsty, cowardly, inferior “half-breeds.” Anglo-European American versus Mexicano-Chicano Value Systems Assimilation = Cultural Erasure •1855 California “Sunday Law” banned traditional Mexican cultural activities: bullfights, bearfights, cockfights, horse races. •1855 California Vagrancy Act“(Greaser Act) outlawed Mexicans carrying firearms in public, being in town without proof of employment. In the 1910s and 1920s, formal Americanization strategies focused on teaching Mexican women family planning, including the use of birth control, while attempting to wean Mexicanas away from using parteras, or midwives. Although Progressive reformers’ Americanization efforts focused on Mexican families’ diet and health, Mexican men were prepared to become manual laborers, Mexican women, to become domestic servants, seamstresses, laundresses, and service workers. In short, Mexicans should assimilate only into the bottom segment of the American work force as low-paid, yet loyal workers, as part of a dual wage system in which they either accepted lower “Mexican wages,” or else were paid less for doing the same work as whites. The exploitative American economic system was justified by ideologically based assertions of alleged Anglo superiority and Mexican inferiority, while derogatory stereotypes emphasized the “foreignness” of the Mexican population and equated a multifacetd Mexican culture with devalued agricultural and low-wage labor (commoditization). -from Nick Vaca, “The Mexican American in the Social Sciences,” El Grito (1970); according to early twentieth-century U.S. scholars: Mexican Value System Anglo Value System Subjugation to nature Mastery over nature Present oriented Future oriented Immediate Gratification Deferred gratification Complacent Aggressive Fatalistic Non-fatalistic Non-goal oriented Goal oriented Non-success oriented Success oriented Emotional Rational Dependent Individualistic Superstitious Non-superstitious Traditional Progressive Middle-Class Anglo American Culture “Freedom From Want,” by Norman Rockwell 1943 Protestant Work Ethic, a philosophy of life emphasizing hard work, individualism, and frugality: Material success is a sign of God’s blessing, and failure a sign of his displeasure. God will reward with earthly success and spiritual salvation those who work hard and overcome obstacles. Technologically oriented. The industrial revolution showed that humans can control nature, and that machines can master almost any task. Science leads inevitably to progress as the world’s populations advance on the path from savagery to civilization, as epitomized by Northern Europe and North America. The hidden histories of genocide, forced removal, vigilantism and lynch mobs created so-called “virgin land” ripe for the God-given march of progress in the name of white civilization. “Across the Continent: Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way” (1868) “American Progress” (1872) Material advancement via liberal individualism ideally leads to overall group success, as with successive generations of European Americans, but in this rugged Western individualistic system, “fit,” self-sufficient citizens are not dependent on the government. In the United States, every person is supposedly judged by their merits [meritocracy]. Social or economic inequalities must be due to an individual’s own cultural values (it is one’s own fault if one failed to achieve success—some people just didn’t strive hard enough to fulfill their potential). European immigrants assimilated so that their children and grandchildren would experience socioeconomic upward mobility. This is called the “bootstraps model,” because in America, if individuals work hard and adopt the correct American values, they are supposed to be able to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. With a little luck and pluck, every individual can go from rags to riches without any charity or hand-outs. The American dream: every citizen can climb the social ladder if they just work hard enough, persevere, and adopt a “can-do” attitude. All-American Family, Kodak ad, 1963 Traditional Mexican Culture CA rancho family portrait When California became a state in 1850, unlike Anglo women, who were legally considered wards of their fathers and husbands, Mexican women were actually granted considerable legal rights, including the right to enter into legal contracts, form business partnerships, own, acquire, inherit, and manage property-and land-independently of their husbands, defend their property claims in court, invest their property and estates, and lend and borrow money. Some Mexican women--even non-widows--owned and ran ranchos, dressed like men, and did masculine work, although such women were exceptions, for in contrast to wealthy land-owners, mid-strata Californio women owned only gardens, orchards, vineyards, small homes, and minor properties in the pueblos, or towns. Critiques of Aztlán theory: •ultimately reinforces the border without questioning the European construct of nationalism. •Rafael Pérez-Torres argues that Aztlán divides rather than unifies; it maintains cultural traditions while promoting assimilation into Anglo American culture --the “paradox” of Aztlán (pp.228-29). Critiques of Aztlán theory: •Invoking ancestry suggests an essentialized and biologically determined nationalism -(220-21). [Race in our blood passes on hereditary traits.] •Aztlán affirms indigenous ancestry while simultaneously erasing the very historical, cultural, and geographic specificity of that ancestry. Contemporary relevance, uses of Aztlán: •Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies. •The leading journal in the field since 1970 •88.3 KUCR, “Radio Aztlán.” •Award-winning Chicano/Latino alternative program broadcasted to the Inland Empire for 25+ years Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzales --Denver, 1966, Founded the Crusade for Justice, which created: •barrio defense committees to get rid of drugs and gangs, and to monitor the police; •economic cooperatives to reduce unemployment in poor Chicano families; •bilingual schools to teach a curriculum of Chicano history, language and culture; •Chicano arts programs foster cultural unity. to Reies “El Tigre” Lopez Tijerina •land grant movement in New Mexico. “Tierra y Libertad! (Land and Liberty!)” •armed raid on county courthouse; citizen’s arrests of Park Rangers, D.A. (1967) “The Chic a no’s re la tions hip to the Unite d S ta te s g ove rnme nt is like tha t of a fos te r c hild to a mothe r. Na tura lly, the de e pe s t love a nd affection of the mother goes to her her natural child. This means that that the foster child goes unnoticed unnoticed or unattended, until its cries force the mother’s attention.” attention.” March 1968, High School Walkouts/Blowouts: •4,000 students walked out of 5 different East Los Angeles high schools. •Eventually more than 10,000 students walked out of 16 Los Angeles high schools. •Throughout the Southwest, high school students took to the streets, igniting a wider movement for educational reform. •LAPD arrested 12 Chicano student leaders and teacher Sal Castro, indicting them on felony conspiracy charges of “disturbing the peace.” •The “East L.A. 13” legal battles dragged on for 2 years, but the case was eventually thrown out on appeal. La Raza Unida Party (The United People Party), 1970 José Ángel Gutiérrez, co-founder of La Raza Unida Party: “It’s OK to take power and direct your own destiny.” Defined revolution as taking control of the political institutions by electing independent, third-party Chicanos to political office. Revolution = fundamental change in political, social, and economic spheres Carlos Muñoz, Jr. and Mario Barrera argue that within La Raza Unida Party the cultural nationalists were concerned with a new, antiassimilationist Chicano identity, but also with voter registration and electoral campaigns, while the radical Marxists were concerned with revolutionary consciousness-raising, but also with multi-racial and internationalist issues. La Raza Unida Party: The RUP’s dilemma: Radical image turned off many Mexican American voters, while efforts to broaden its appeal alienated core constituency base. Few electoral victories outside Texas. After inaugural national convention, internal personal, gender, and ideological differences split the party, and an active campaign by the Democratic Party to destroy it, along with police provocateurs, also accelerated its demise. Inspired a generation of Chicano activists and political leaders and reversed stereotypes of Mexican Americans as apathetic, apolitical, and passive. •Manuel Peña: -Chicano nationalism’s “contradictory goal— to achieve a more successful integration of the Mexican American in the political economy of the United States” while rejecting gabacho culture and revitalizing Chicanos’ ethnic roots. -cultural distance from the Anglo American mainstream with economic emancipation. •George Mariscal: The Chicano Movement’s critique of traditional assimilation models contained a core contradiction: Rather than a total rejection of U.S. society, most Chicano activists and organizations interrogated America’s unfulfilled promises, in order to decide which aspects of the dominant culture to adopt. •Juan Gomez-Quiñones: Movement organizations forwarded “conventional reformist demands and programs,” received resources from established institutions, and emphasized integration of “ethnics” into the system. Radicalism = oppositional politics to fundamentally change the system itself. Reformism = conventional politics to make changes within the existing system. Question: Based on Ignacio Garcia’s definition of traditional liberal politics, was the Chicano movement a radical break from liberalism, or a reformist effort couched in revolutionary rhetoric?
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