Felix Longoria Wake Summary

Despite most Americans associating the word “immigrant” with Mexicans, there is a whole wide spectrum to the word “immigrant”. Not only did Mexicans and other Latino groups come to the U.S. to find jobs, but Central Americans also came to the U.S. to escape the chaos that was occurring in their home countries. The Tattooed Soldier by Hector Tobar, illustrates these aspects of power, difference and inequality by describing the story of Antonio Bernal traveling to the U.S. to escape his death by a Guatemalan death squad only to find himself in the same city as the killer of his wife and son. Throughout the novel we see how the discrimination against race, class, gender, and sexuality make it difficult for those who migrate to the U.S. in

The author of Honor and the American Dream, Ruth Horowitz, takes us to Chicago’s Chicano community of 32nd Street in the

The impact of one single speech can essentially affect the entire world. Granted, there are different degrees of impact felt: those present at the speech, those who watched/heard the actual speech from somewhere else, those who heard some things about it from someone else, and so on and so forth. As the speaker’s message experiences a sort of ripple affect, it calms and becomes less and less dynamic. The main point, or gist, of the speech endures but potentially valuable details; those pertaining to the speaker himself, the location, the timing, current social, political, and economic climates, flake off. Understanding the context

During the 1970’s, Mexican Americans were involved in a large social movement called the "Chicano movement." Corresponding with the great development of the black civil rights movement, Mexican Americans began to take part in a series of different social protests in which they demanded equal rights for themselves. Composed mainly of Mexican American students and youth, these activists focused on maintaining a pride for their culture as well as their ethnicity to fuel their political campaign. Left out of this campaign initially though were Mexican immigrants.

In the film “Mi Familia,” we follow the story of the Mexican-American Sánchez family who settled in East Los Angeles, California after immigrating to the United States. Gregory Nava and Anna Thomas introduce the story of this family in several contexts that are developed along generations. These generations hold significant historical periods that form the identity of each individual member of the family. We start off by exploring the immigrant experience as the family patriarch heads north to Los Angeles, later we see how national events like the great depression directly impact Maria as she gets deported, although she was a US citizen. The events that follow further oppress this family and begins separate identity formations. These

During the Mexican Revolution, Mexico as a nation torn in many directions, people gave up simple farming lives to take up arms against causes that many of them did not fully understand. Gender roles during the period in Mexico were exceptionally degrading towards women. Having little more rights than slaves and treated as trophies or property more than human beings, women role in society was nothing near that of a man’s. In The Underdogs, Mariano Anzuela highlights the issue of gender roles by continuously illustrating the punitive role of women and their mistreatment. Augmenting Anzuelas work with citations from Oscar Lewis and Stephanie Smith will paint a picture of the degrading gender roles for women during the Mexican Revolution. Highlighted points brought up by Azuela are how men speak with and treat women, women’s place in society, and general disregard for women’s feelings.

The formation of segregated barrios and the development of a wealth of community-provided services showed that Mexican-Americans were not content to be marginalized by the United States. Instead, they were embracing an empowering new sense of self-determination and referring to themselves as “Mexicanos or as members of a larger, pan-Hispanic community of La Raza.” At this time La Raza referenced individuals of the Mexican “race”, whether they were in Mexico or in the United States, and was particularly important in the United States, where race was more important than citizenship. In the late 19th and early 20th century United States, race was determined by purity of blood, and there were only two races—white and black. White meant the individual had “pure blood” (European blood); black meant that the individual’s blood included indigenous or African influences. Being white meant being able to exercise one’s constitutional rights and being treated as a normal member of society’s dominant group. Being black meant that, regardless of whether he or she was a citizen, the individual would face discrimination similar to that which I described earlier. When the Spanish conquerors mixed with the people of Latin America, forming the mestizo, or mixed race, population that now composes most of the region, they removed themselves from a “white” classification in the United States. Thus, by engaging with the concept of La Raza, which connotes a mestizo race and population, Mexican-Americans rejected the binary nature of race in the United States and embraced what made them different—their indigenous-mixed blood and the cultural heritage that accompanied it. While the abuse directed towards Mexican-Americans may have

The book Felix Longoria’s Wake is the account of the death of Felix Longoria a soldier that caused controversy and outrage in Mexican-American activism.

     The author of Mexican Lives, Judith Adler Hellman, grapples with the United States’ economic relationship with their neighbors to the south, Mexico. It also considers, through many interviews, the affairs of one nation. It is a work held to high esteem by many critics, who view this work as an essential part in truly understanding and capturing Mexico’s history. In Mexican Lives, Hellman presents us with a cast from all walks of life. This enables a reader to get more than one perspective, which tends to be bias. It also gives a more inclusive view of the nation of Mexico as a whole. Dealing with rebel activity, free trade, assassinations and their transition into the modern age, it justly

What’s the difference between a young Hispanic girl and a soldier in the Vietnam War? It sounds like a bad joke with an even worse punchline, but though there may be many true answers to this question, there are more similarities than one might imagine. These similarities can be observed in Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street and Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried and their main characters, Esperanza and O’Brien, respectively. Both novels divided into non-chronological stories, both involve characters who feel stuck in their situations, and both realize the importance of returning for the people they left behind.

I, Daniel Garza, am terrified. Every night I have the same nightmare- vigilantes dragging me by the hair into the streets where they torture and kill me in daylight. Why, you may ask? Well, dear reader, I am a Unionist living in Texas, a confederate state during the Civil War. So far, no one knows of my “betrayal,” but I fear that one day, someone will, and my body will end up hanging from a tree.

Amongst the legacies of the Mexican-American War are the creation of government for both the U.S. and Mexico and having long standing effects on both its citizens. The long term effect of the war inside the United States, repercussion to the Latino, Chicano, Central America communities was felt through the displacement from their own

Central to this family–centered culture was the Roman Catholic Church, a trademark of these peoples’ Spanish heritage. Alas, though these immigrant pioneers were brothers and sisters of the one true apostolic church in a predominantly Protestant Texas, they were still just Mexicans in the eyes of the Anglo St. Mary’s Catholic parish. Duron still has trouble understanding the discrimination at the pews as she remembers that whenever she went to mass ”they let the Mexican people on one side and the white people on the other side”, segregating the congregation right down the middle. The Chavez siblings actually recalled that the priest of St. Mary’s would occasionally give the Mexicans mass in a basement “hidden in the bottom” of the church whenever all the Anglos had left.

The work is calling for all of America to wake up and see the problems we still face with institutional racism by illustrating the horrors of slavery, racism, and the everlasting struggle to achieve equality. The work invokes despair and heartache for the battle being fought by people of color for their basic human rights and anger for the cruelty of the racist. It is debatable that this work could be related to the present movement of Black Lives Matter, which is also in

Thirty years ago (1987), Gloria Anzaldúa published "Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza." The editor notes the revolutionary and controversial aspect of the book, first because of its context and second because of the historical moment in the USA: the sociopolitical environment that Hispanic, queers and people of color had to endure. Though in 2017 many organizations thrive