1. Mexican Americans and Politics Class 4 January 19, 2006
Laying the Foundations for Contemporary Mexican American Politics … and its Core Debates
Mexican Americans and Politics
Class 4
January 19, 2006

2. Recap Rebirth of Mexican American Politics – 1900
Results from social, economic, and demographic changes of the period
Conversion of ranches to farms
Mexican Americans enter wage economy
Dual societies emerge
Consequences
Mexican Americans racialized
Small Mexican American middle class emerges
Nascent mutualist and fraternal organizations emerge

3. Biggest Change – Large Scale Migration from Mexico
1917—the border takes on meaning
People have to decide which side they live on
U.S.-born Mexican Americans
See differences from Mexico for first time
Majority society ascribes immigrant characteristics to natives
Mexican immigrants
Seek to maintain ties to Mexico
See exclusion both by U.S. society and Mexican Americans
Native response – Depression-era “repatriations” (deportations), particularly from California

4. Questions to Keep in Mind While Viewing The Lemon Grove Incident
What are manifestations of Lemon Grove’s dual society?
What resources can Mexican Americans in Lemon Grove tap in order to organize?
What barriers do they face?
What characteristics to do Anglos ascribe to Mexican Americans?
What is the basis for the court’s ruling?

5. For Next Time
LULAC and the Congress of Spanish-Speaking Peoples offer alternative models for Mexican American civic organizing in the 1930s and 1940s?
What values and understandings do they share?
How do their visions for the future of Mexican American empowerment differ?
What role does each see for immigrants in the Mexican American experience?