Mexican Migrant Workers and Lynch Culture Essay

Over the past couple decades the number of undocumented immigrants involved in American agriculture has increased by the hundreds. They have dominated the fields on the west coast and have been put to work in some very harsh conditions. Many people in the US believe that these men, women, and even children are occupying jobs that legal citizens could have. We realize that even though much of our agriculture these days is harvested by modern technologies, a big part of the agriculture’s economy is made up of labor intensive from people, such as harvesting grapes, strawberries, pistachios, raspberries, etcetera. As we dig deeper into this topic we will realize why our agricultural

The United States has a long history of employing laborers from other countries. In 1850, Before Mexicans were prevalent; Chinese workers were hired in California

In the December of 1835, during the Texas Revolution, the Alamo was occupied by two hundred Texan soldiers located near the present day in San Antonio. The Alamo was a church in the middle of San Antonio. William Travis and James Bowie were the commanders who were prepared to defend the Alamo from the Mexicans who wanted it back. Unfortunately, the Texan soldiers were outnumbered to secure the Alamo from General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna by thousands of his soldiers. The battle was only for thirteen days and Santa Anna slaughtered everyone except for a few such as a widowed wife named Susanna Wilkerson Dickinson, her infant daughter Angelina, and the one person who witnessed the final assault and survived named Joe. For the Texans, the battle of the Alamo is an "image of brave resistance and a rallying cry in their battle for freedom." This urged more Texans to join the military and lead the following fight to triumph against Mexico. The battle cry “Remember the Alamo!” within Texas culture was a symbol of “Patriotic sacrifice.”

How would you discuss the worldviews and value systems of Indigenous peoples prior to European contact/invasion? How did these worldviews impact all aspects of life (science, agriculture, language, spirituality, etc.) for indigenous peoples?

Knowing that the Texans were not obeying Mexico’s laws, the Mexican President sent Antonio López de Santa Anna to fight and stop the revolting Texans. “Santa Anna gained his earliest military experience fighting for the Spanish army

Many California farms were corporate-owned. They were larger, and more modernized that those of the southern plains, and the crops were unfamiliar. Many farmers from the Great Plains ended up picking cotton and grapes for wages as low as 0.75 $ a day.

More than a century of prejudice against one of the largest minority residing in the United States that continues today. To these days Hispanics are targets of discrimination and are not offer equal opportunities in jobs and education. The roots of discrimination go back to the end of the Mexican War when thousands of Mexicans became American citizens overnight. The sign of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo not only transfer land to the United States but also the people that live there before it became territory of the United States. These people began to suffer from discrimination in their owl land. Their sons and daughters did not have better luck because even thought they were born in the United States therefore they are American citizens

Many Mexican Americans have been able to accomplish their own versions of the American dream by attending a 4-year college, owning businesses, and taking on political and public service careers. However, Mexican Americans and Mexican immigrants continue to face the hardships that their ancestors went through in the 20th century. The ethnic Mexican experience in the United States has been a difficult one for Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans of the first generation. Two key factors that continue to shape the lives of Mexican Americans and Mexican immigrants are labor laws and the citizenship process. Focusing on the research, statistics, and information provided by Mai Ngai “The Architecture of Race in American Immigration”, Natalia Molina’s, “In a Race All Their Own": The Quest to Make Mexicans Ineligible for U.S. Citizenship”, and George J. Sanchez, “Becoming Mexican American” will provide the cause and effect of labor laws and citizenship laws that made an impact on the lives of Mexicans during the 20th century.

As the population of Latin America and the Caribbean raised in 1995 with a 190 percent increase (Gonzalez 199), the job markets in Mexico are becoming scarce and competitive. The living conditions of residents in provincial towns like in Cheran, “whose timber-based economy is in tatters” (Martinez 9) are greatly affected. Mexican immigrant workers are forced to cross the border and find a greener pasture in the United States, because “in 1994, Mexico was crippled by a profound-and-prolonged-economic crisis” (Martinez 8). With the huge influx of Mexican immigrant workers coming to the States in search for better jobs, the US citizens are concerned about the economic impact: jobs, government and public services. However, the Americans’ concern that the immigrants are draining the nation’s resources, is a sweeping statement, it is based on a myth. There are many recent studies that the immigrant’s population living in the United States helps the economy. Similarly, the Mexican government and immigrant families are grateful for their immigrant workers for lifting the ailing economy and the status of immigrant families. Immigrant workers, legal or illegal, are positively reshaping the economy of sending and receiving countries through these major myths.

With the increase in salary many Mexicans would feel the money made would be enough to support their family, and live a more comfortable life. The growth of immigrants sparked around the 1970’s, and continued to grow as decades passed. According to the pewhispanic.org the immigrant population had a seventeen fold increase from the decades before. (seven hundred sixty thousand immigrants were currently in the United States in the nineteen seventies.) Even with the increase in salary Mexican americans were still unsatisfied, and believed they deserved more money, more respect, and less racial segregation. The leader of the United Farm Workers movement Cesar Chavez helped organize boycotts and strikes against the farm owners, and got others to stop buying grapes; this severely hurt the grape growing business. Not only did the increase in salary encourage others to immigrate to the United States, but better working conditions did as well. With more immigrants entering the United States, many Mexicans would find themselves to be illegally in the US. Chavez was strongly against those who were in the US illegally and would refuse to help them. Though these people were not receiving the UFW benefits, it encouraged them to apply for citizenship.

The farm workers’ rights issues were also a major matter that the Mexican-American Civil Rights Movement dealt with along with the other issues. Mexican-American migrant farm workers had to endure the harsh working conditions while traveling from farm to farm in the United States in search for work. While working, the farm workers tended to be exploited by farm owners while also receiving low wages that kept them below the poverty level (Ramirez). Due to certain

Mexican Americans also shared problems of poverty and discrimination with African Americans. According to Healy, Mexican Americans, like African Americans, have been viewed as cheap, unskilled agricultural labor that has been methodically excluded from mainstream America. Unlike most immigrants from Europe, who lived in urban areas, Mexican Americans and African Americans were prone to live and work in rural parts of the United States. Because both groups lived in less urban areas they had limited resources for education, skill development and economic opportunities. At the same time, however, Mexican Americans

Before the Nationality Act of 1965, many migrants came from the mid region of the United States to California for economic prosperity. In the 1930’s, during and after the Great Depression, the Mid states of America went through severe dust storms and droughts known as the Dust Bowl. Resultantly, the dust storms destroyed the ecology and agriculture of the land itself. This caused farmers to be financially in debt due to not being able to make money. The debt and poor land quality led many people to lose their property and

The Plan de San Diego provided an excuse to both Anglos and Hispanics to settle scores and seize opportunities. The authors unveil how the backlash resulted in a wave of racism and the deaths of some three hundred Mexican nationals. Harris and Sadler bring light to little known historical events which seem to still affect relationships and feelings between both sides of the warring parties. For example, they suggest The Plan de San Diego was probably devised by supporters of Mexican rebel, Venustiano Carranza, in his homeland and not the town of San Diego, Texas. His motive was to divert the attention away from his rival Pancho Villa.

In the Preface of Major Problems in Mexican American History Zaragosa Vargas writes, "Nearly two thirds of Latinos in the United States are of Mexican descent, or Chicanos- a term of self definition that emerged during the 1960's and early 1970s civil rights movement. Chicanos reside mainly in the Southwest, the Pacific Northwest, and the Midwest. Their history begins in the precolonial Spanish era, and they share a rich mestizo cultural heritage of Spanish, Indian, and African origins. The Chicanos' past is underscored by conquest of the present-day American Southwest first by the Spanish and then by the United States following the Mexican American War" (xv). When one thinks of a Chicano one thinks of the Mayans and Aztecs, the conquests,