HispanicVista Columnists

Are We There Yet?  exican Americans in the Age of Hispanics

By Felipe de Ortego y Gasca

In 1965, Joyce Carol Oates published an unusual and provocative short story entitled "Where are you going? Where have you been?" It’s the story of an adolescent girl struggling to define her personal identity in a world where identity seems to be prefigured by externalities–advertising, peer-pressure, family expectations. In pursuit of her personal identity the young woman, Connie, is lured (erotically, some critics have said) by Arnold Friend [An old friend] identified by some critics of the story as the Devil who appeals successfully to her need to define herself as the person she believes she is, can be, or ought to be. Like so many of Joyce Carol Oates’ pieces the story ends without resolution, open-ended.

It strikes me that Oates’ story can be a useful point of departure in interpreting recent Mexican American history–1980 to the present. For indeed, the story of Mexican Americans is open-ended, perhaps dendritic in its paths to the future. This is to say there is not just one path for a Mexican American future, but as many paths as there are Mexican Americans. It becomes difficult to talk about any group as if it were monolithic.

Joyce Carol Oates’ story suggests that to ascertain where one is going one needs to know where one has been. Historically, Mexican Americans have been defined by externalities–mostly by stereotypes and caricature, monodimensional cardboard figures in a drama played out principally against the vast stretches of the American Southwest, a drama directed by Anglo Americans.

Technically speaking, Mexican American history began on February 2, 1848 with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo by which more than half of Mexico’s territory was ceded to the United States along with some 150,000 people (low estimate) to 3 million people (high estimate). The actual number is difficult to ascertain, suffice to say the heritage of Mexican Americans stretches back into the origins of the country that swallowed them up. It’s easy enough to see where Mexican Americans have been. Harder to ascertain is where they are going.

From 1848 to the present, we can taxonomize the Mexican American presence as follows: (1) Early Mexican American Period (1848-1912), essentially the period of transition for the "conquest" generation; (2) Later Mexican American Period (1912-1960), the period of Americanization; and (3) Contemporary Period (1960-Present), the period of Parity and Participation (including the Chicano Movement).

During the Early Mexican American period (1848-1912), Mexican Americans had little choice about their futures. While many Mexicans, now Americans, embraced the presence of Anglo Americans in the territories that had recently been Mexico and prior to the Spanish, many Mexican Americans did not go gently into the good night of American "occupation" as Rodolfo AcuZa tells us in Occupied America.

Nevertheless, they went into the 20^th century with all the baggage they were forced to carry by Jim Crow laws of the Southwest. Interestingly, New Mexico and Arizona did not become states of the Union until 1912 when Senator Albert Beveridge of Indiana saw that the demographics of the territories favored Anglo Americans. This period was essentially one of transition for Mexican Americans, going from being Mexicans to being Americans. Part of that effort began in 1896 with formation of Alianza Hispano Americana in Tucson, Arizona, an organization designed to expedite the transition of Mexicans to becoming Americans.

The Later Mexican American period (1912-1960) gave impetus to the Americanization process for Mexican Americans who quickly determined the value of being Americans first then Mexicans. Hyphenated Americanism was to be eschewed. But in 1929 the Americanization process for Mexican Americans ran smack into the exclusionary practices of the American mainstream. Thus came into being the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) whose creed was to learn English and become good American citizens.

World War II altered the character of the United States and its citizens, including Mexican Americans. An already sizable group (those who came with the wrested Mexican lands) augmented by an influx of some 2 million between 1910 and 1930, Mexican Americans constituted a significant group by 1940. They responded to the colors during World War II in numbers disproportionate to their size in the population, such that by the end of the war they had won more Medals of Honor as a group than any other American ethnic group.

Like other veterans, Mexican Americans who had fought for American democracy expected to participate in the fruits of victory. An incident at Three Rivers, Texas, soon disabused them of that expectation. A Mexican American veteran was denied burial in the municipal cemetery. Furious, Mexican American veterans responded with formation of the American G.I. Forum (an Hispanic association of ex-G.I.’s) which resolved the Three Rivers conflict and exemplified the strength of solidarity in the quest for Mexican American civil rights.

In 1947, in a California case (Westminster v. Mendez) seeking to end segregation of Mexican Americans in the schools of California and in 1948 in a Texas case (Delgado v. Bastrop) seeking to end segregation of Mexican Americans in the schools of Texas, Mexican Americans scored major civil rights victories. Both cases were important precedents in the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education.

Toward the end of the 1950's Mexican Americans realized that putting on a gray-flannel suit did not make them fully participating Americans. It was not disenchantment that set in but anger. The honeymoon was over. On the horizon were the lights of Aztlan, rosy-fingered like Homer’s dawn. For Chicanos, Aztlan, mythical homeland of the Aztecs, became emblematic of their future.

The Contemporary Mexican American Period is characterized more by sturm und drang, starting in 1960 with formation of various political groups supporting John F. Kennedy’s campaign for the presidency. While much attention has focused on Cesar Chavez and the United Farmworkers struggle in California, events in Texas at Crystal City in 1963 really sparked the Chicano Movement into being. In what has been termed a political "revolt," Mexican Americans took control of Crystal City, galvanizing Mexican American solidarity.

Not all Mexican Americans became Chicanos, an ideological term used much like one uses the term "Democrat" or "Republican." Perhaps the best way to describe the Chicano Movement is to say that it sprang from an epiphany–an illumination–experienced by Mexican Americans that it was alright to embrace both their Indian heritage and their Spanish heritage as part of their identity. Theretofore, like Mexicans, Mexican Americans tended to shun their Spanish roots; and while not necessarily clutching their Indian roots, they at least nominalized them. To be Chicano was to accept the Spanish father and the Indian mother. Chicanos built a bridge across the chasm of their heritage from which they had been alienated.

In 1966 a little publicized meeting of Chicano activists met at Occidental College in California to map out alternative strategies for the education of Mexican Americans and for creating alternative presses and publishing houses since mainstream presses and publishing houses saw little of worth in Chicano events and literary efforts.

The outcomes of that meeting were El Plan de Santa Barbara (an all or nothing plan for Chicanos to control their education, including establishment of Chicano Studies programs in colleges and universities) and establishment of Quinto Sol Publications which would vigorously publish Chicano writers while announcing a Chicano manifesto of independence from the mainstream. Chicanos would nurture their own writers, readers and outlets. Thus came into being El Grito, the first journal of Chicano thought. The efflorescence of Chicano literature ushered in the Chicano Renaissance (1966-1975).

The countertexts of that renaissance sought to show that like the British antecedents of the United States, the Spanish antecedents of Mexican Americans are an equally important part of the history of the United States.

For example, in the same way that the diary of Sarah Kemble Knight (1666-1727) is an important manifestation of English letters in colonial British America (New England), illuminating for us the details of her trip from Boston to News York, so too the diary of Alvar NuZez Cabeza de Vaca (1490-1556) is an important manifestation of Spanish letters in colonial Spanish America (New Spain), illuminating for us the details of his 8 year trek across Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona.

Properly speaking, American literature does not begin until 1776. But if we can claim the literature of the British colonial period as part (antecedents) of American literature, then we can claim likewise the literature of the Spanish colonial period as part (antecedents) of American literature. I am speaking here not about the literature of Spain nor of Mexico but about the Hispanic literature of what is now the United States. And that is quite a sizable corpus.

II

Much of the history about the Civil Rights Movement in the United States focuses on the black presence and participation in that movement, little is written or exposited about the substantial Chicano presence in that Civil Rights Movement. Little is told about Mexican Americans who marched on Washington, marched to Austin, massed in Los Angeles to protest the Vietnam War in their search for social justice.

Little is told about the segregation of Mexican American children in our public schools, about having kept them back in First Grade when they came to school speaking only Spanish, about corporal punishment when they spoke Spanish in school or on the schoolground, about their segregation in public theaters, their quotas in institutions like the YMCA, not being allowed to eat in public restaurants.

The history of discrimination and prejudice against Mexican Americans runs parallel to the history of discrimination and prejudice of Blacks in the United States. Only in 1969 did Pete Gallego (Sr) lea8d a successful drive to integrate the public schools of Alpine, Texas, 16 years after the Supreme Court ruled segregation unconstitutional in the United States.

Between 1960 and 1980 the agenda of the Chicano Movement prevailed in Mexican American circles. Chicano Studies programs sprang up everywhere, though not all have survived. Bilingual education is now a reality, though under attack by English language fundamentalists. There are more Mexican American professionals, though not nearly enough for their numbers in the population. Still they are optimistic.

As a social force, the Chicano Movement seems to have all but disappeared from the public arena. There are no more stellar figures like Cesar Chavez, Reies Lopez Tijerina, Corky Gonzalez or Jose Angel Gutierrez. They served important roles in their time. But the Chicano agenda has been moved and seconded off the table. At the moment there seems to be no consensual agenda for Mexican Americans.

There are names like Raul Yzaguirre, president of the national Council of La Raza in Washington, DC. Some of the Mexican American representatives to the U.S. Congress have a public following. But by and large, there are no public voices like those I mentioned who speak with conviction and authority for Mexican Americans. That may be a good sign. Good in the sense that Mexican Americans may have come of age, putting aside their expectations of a group redeemer astride a white horse. This does not mean, however, that the Chicano Movement has passed into history. On the contrary, it’s still with us in contemporary form.

At the end of Ray Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles, the father, his son and daughter are staring into one of the Martian canals after the news that the earth has been annihilated. The young boy asks when they will see the Martians. The father tells them to look into the water of the canal. There on the glazed surface of the still water, the three of them see their reflections. There are the Martians, the father says.

When I was Dean of the Hispanic Leadership Institute in Phoenix (1986-1990), a joint enterprise of Arizona State University and Valle del Sol, a community-based organization, my exhortation to students of the Institute was to look in the mirror if they were looking for a leader. Perhaps that’s where Mexican Americans are at the moment–they are all leaders, staring down at the glazed waters of Martian canals.

III

I started this disquisition with a reference to a provocative story by Joyce Carol Oates in which Connie, the central figure of the story, comes to a malicious end in her pursuit of a personal identity. Connie’s demise occurs because she runs headlong to be where she thinks she wants to be without stopping to consider where she’s been.

Luring her, Arnold Friend said "in a half-sung sigh that had nothing to do with her brown eyes but was taken up just the same by the vast sunlit reaches of the land behind him and on all sides of him, so much land that Connie had never seen before and did not recognize except to know that she was going to it" [in American Short Stories (5^th Edition,1990) by Eugene Current-Garcia and Bert Hitchcock, 644]. Like the kiss of the spiderwoman, the land embraces us in a kiss promising something other than what we get. All is not serene in Camelot.

Not too long ago when I was still teaching at Texas State University–Sul Ross, a young Mexican American woman on campus came to me, her eyes brimming with tears, to ask my advice about an Anglo professor she said has been harassing her. I asked her if he did this to anyone else. No, she said, only her. I realized immediately how the presence of an Ombudsman on campus could help this student. But there is no Ombudsman on campus, perhaps for the same reasons the University faculty rejected earlier this year a multicultural course in the core curriculum.

Later, at lunch at a local restaurant my wife and I sat down and ordered sandwiches at 12:10. Engrossed in conversation, we hadn’t realized how much time had elapsed. At 12:50 we still did not have our sandwiches, though at that moment the waitress brought the kind of sandwiches we had ordered to a table across from us to patrons who had barely sat down 10 minutes earlier. Confronting the manager, I was told apologetically that the orders had somehow got crossed, but that our sandwiches were coming right up. With considerable anger I said I hoped that the delay with our sandwiches was not because of my brown face. And that I could understand this kind of treatment if the restaurant were a Denny’s. One hates to have one’s racial antennas up all the time.

I cite these two instances as examples of where contemporary Mexican Americans are–how far they’ve come. In Spanish, Mexican Americans describe these kinds of incidents with the expression: nos ven cara de mejicano (they see us as Mexicans).

Speaking of "seeing us as Mexicans," in 1973 I would have become the first Chicano to head a Texas state university had the board of regents of a particular South Texas school accepted my nomination from the search committee as the prime candidate. Instead of following protocol, the regents chose the number three person on the list of candidates.

In 1992 I would have been the first Chicano to head a Graduate School of Library and Information Sciences had the vice-President for Academic Affairs at a Texas woman’s university accepted my nomination from the search committee (after an extended second year search) as the only qualified candidate for the post. Instead the Vice-President chose to reject my nomination and installed a white male by fiat (ignoring all the rules of affirmative action).

As I have written elsewhere, "at some point, like the Mexican Americans who organized LULAC in 1929 and as I have sought to show by the last illustrations, contemporary Mexican Americans will run smack into mainstream discrimination. And like Pastor Niemollor of Germany who did nothing when the Nazis came after the Jews only to discover that there was no one left to protest when the Nazis came after him, Mexican Americans need to speak up at the first signs of injustice, no matter who the victims are."

IV

The arduous work of civil rights is still being carried out by mainstay Mexican American organizations like LULAC and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF), by the Southwest Voter Education Fund, by organizations like COPS (Citizens Organized for Public Service) in San Antonio, by organizations like TACHE (Texas Association of /Chicanos in Higher Education), and by organizations like HACU (Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities).

In the age of Hispanicity, however, Mexican American voices are not always heard. In a 1983 confrontation with the Secretary of he Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, the Secretary cut short a meeting he was holding with a group of concerned Hispanics when one of them deigned to ask what Hispanic initiative the Smithsonian was contemplating. A week later, the Smithsonian hired to head its Hispanic initiative a young Guatemalan woman who was studying in the United States. Adding insult to injury, she called me for my advice on how to handle a 16^th of September event the Smithsonian wanted to host. In a similar vein, in 1984 a Peruvian woman teaching in a New England school was hired to head the Hispanic Division of the Library of Congress. For events relating to Mexican Americans she called on all but Mexican Americans for advice.

In the age of Hispanicity, the American power structure believes that all Hispanics are alike. That, say, a Cuban American can be sensitive and understand the Mexican American experience. That Mexican Americans are just like Puerto Ricans. The single most important hurdle for Mexican Americans to overcome in the 21^st century is the question of identity. Many Mexican Americans still don’t know who they are. That comes as no surprise, considering that they are still absent from textbooks and the curricula of most schools.

The works which give me pause about the status of contemporary Mexican Americans are Hunger of Memory by Richard Rodriguez and Out of the Barrio by Linda Chavez. Both are works of alienation in the guise of inclusiveness by dysphoric Mexican American writers. Many Mexican Americans applaud the points of view of these two works. It does not surprise me that many Mexican Americans find comfort in whatever niche they have found or made for themselves in the American mainstream.

Group effort in the form of organizations and social pressure creates progress for Mexican Americans. One would hope that it were otherwise, that progress for all Americans would come from the values we say we believe in. For Mexican Americans the foreseeable future is not grim--just testy.

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Dr. Felipe de Ortego y Gasca, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus of English Language and Literature. Retired Tenured Faculty, Texas State University System--Sul Ross
English, Linguistics, Journalism, Information Studies, Bilingual Education, Chicano Studies

Dean Emeritus, Hispanic Leadership Institute, Arizona State University
Chair Emeritus, The Hispanic Foundation, Washington DC

Email: felipeo@usawide.net

Visiting Scholar and Lecturer in English and Bilingual Studies
Texas A&M University at Kingsville, TX Email: p-ortego@tamuk.edu

Copyright © 2005 by the author. All rights reserved.