I.

Introduction

Mexican Americans, residents of the United States who trace their ancestry to Mexico. Mexican Americans are also known as Chicanos, Xicanos, Mexicanos, La Raza, and Mex-Americans. While the term Chicano has gone in and out of fashion since the late 1940s, it is still the preferred identification for many Mexican Americans. The term Mexican American, on the other hand, is commonly used in government documents, by the mainstream media, and by Mexican Americans in interactions with other ethnic groups.

In the 2000 U.S. census 21.5 million people identified themselves as Mexican Americans. An additional 2 to 3 million illegal immigrants from Mexico are estimated to live in the United States. Mexican Americans constitute the largest group of Hispanic Americans. About 90 percent of the Mexican American population today can be traced to emigration from impoverished rural regions of northern Mexico during the 20th century. The rest trace their roots to 17th- and 18th-century colonists who settled in Mexican territories that are now part of the southwestern United States, including California, Texas, and parts of New Mexico, Colorado, and Arizona. Mexican Americans still live primarily in these southwestern states. Large Mexican American communities have also been established outside the Southwest in a number of big cities, including Chicago and New York City.

Mexican Americans are a multiracial people, joined together by a shared history and culture. Due to Mexico’s long history of interracial marriages, Mexican Americans have a variety of skin colors. The Mexican American population includes whites; Native Americans; mestizos, people of mixed Native American and European descent; and mulattoes, people of mixed African and European ancestry.

II.

Language

The Spanish language serves as an important unifying force in the Mexican American community. Unlike members of many other immigrant groups, most second- and third-generation Mexican Americans have not given up their native language. Both English and Spanish are spoken in close to 70 percent of Mexican American households. English is used in the public sphere, particularly in business and at school. Spanish, known as the domestic tongue, is used in the home, for religious occasions, among family members, and in popular entertainment. Spanish links Mexican Americans to other Hispanic Americans, particularly those from Spanish-speaking countries in the Caribbean and Central America.

The Spanish spoken by most Mexican Americans differs from standard Mexican Spanish. Over the decades, Mexican American Spanish has been so heavily influenced by English that many refer to it as Spanglish, a combination of Spanish and English. Each local Mexican American community incorporates different words from these languages, making its Spanglish unique. Through this peculiar form of trilingualism, combining English, Spanish, and Spanglish, Mexican Americans assert the value of their immigrant heritage. The complex nature of Mexican American language use reflects the community’s hybrid identity. Because Mexico shares a border with the United States, many Mexican Americans travel back and forth between the two countries with relative ease. Mexican Americans live in both countries, and their community spans the international border. The influx of Hispanic immigrants, who continue to speak their native language within their communities, has reinforced the role of Spanish in the United States.

III.

Religion

Most Mexican Americans are members of the Roman Catholic Church. However, a significant number of Mexican Americans, particularly in New Mexico, are Jews of Sephardic background. Spanish settlers first brought Sephardic Judaism, which developed in Spain during the Middle Ages, to New Mexico during the 17th and 18th centuries. The recent rise of Evangelicalism in Latin America has encouraged many Mexicans and Mexican Americans to convert to Protestantism. However, the Roman Catholic Church remains a central institution in the Mexican American community. The teachings of the Catholic Church influence the sexual, educational, and political views of most Mexican Americans. Most Mexican Americans practice the distinctive form of Catholicism developed in their home country. Mexican Catholicism gives great importance to the veneration of saints and the Virgin of Guadalupe, a vision of the Virgin Mary revealed to a peasant in central Mexico in 1531.

IV.

Holidays

Religious holidays, such as Christmas and Easter, are celebrated with a passion matched only on Mexican national holidays. Cinco de Mayo (Fifth of May) is a popular celebration in the Mexican American community. Cinco de Mayo commemorates a Mexican victory at the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862, in which an outnumbered Mexican force defeated a French army attempting to install the Austrian Archduke Maximilian as Emperor of Mexico. Mexican Americans also celebrate Mexican Independence Day on September 16th, honoring the anniversary of the 1810 proclamation in which the revolutionary priest Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla declared Mexico independent from Spain. On El Día de Los Muertos (Day of the Dead), a holiday observed on November 2nd, many Mexican Americans honor the dead and visit the tombs of their deceased friends and relatives. Mexican Americans celebrate these fiestas, or festivals, with traditional Mexican foods made with ingredients such as corn tortillas, beans, rice, and hot chilies.

V.

Family Life

The structure of the Mexican American family has undergone drastic changes during the second half of the 20th century. Traditionally, the mother served as the central figure in the family home. Mexican American mothers were expected to be passive in relations with their husbands, but emotionally responsive to the needs of the family. However, many Mexican American women now work outside of the home. The demands of the workplace have forced many mothers to place their children in the hands of relatives or in child-care facilities.

Similarly, the traditional role of the father as the voice of morality and as the main financial provider has undergone a profound change. Since the mid-1970s, many Mexican American families have come to depend on both the mother and father earning income outside the home. This development has led to increased independence for Mexican American women and the erosion of the traditional authority of men within the family. Nonetheless, Mexican American families remain distinctive in many respects. Mexican American families often include many adult family members living in the same household for extended periods of time. Compared to the general American population, relatively few Mexican American marriages end in divorce or separation.

VI.

Public Life

Spanish-language newspapers, such as La Opinión in Los Angeles and La Raza in Chicago, serve a growing readership. Some English-language newspapers, such as The Los Angeles Times, have experimented with Spanish-language editions. Spanish-language radio provides an essential source of information to many Mexican Americans, especially illegal immigrants and farmworkers. Spanish-language television networks, including United States-based networks such as Univisión and Telemundo, reach millions of Mexican American households.

Many Mexican Americans look to Mexico for cultural inspiration. The appeal of outstanding Mexican artists and performers, such as painters Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, actor Pedro Infante, comedian Cantinflas, and singer Juan Gabriel, stretches across the border. In addition, many Mexican Americans are talented and popular U.S. cultural figures among all ethnic groups. Famous Mexican American performers and artists include film actor Edward James Olmos, writer Sandra Cisneros, singer Linda Ronstadt, and the musical group Los Lobos.

Despite a tradition of distrust for politicians, many Mexican Americans have become involved in political affairs since the 1970s, particularly in the Southwest. Many Mexican Americans find inspiration in leaders who have worked to improve the lives of Mexican Americans in the United States, such as Chicano political activists César Chávez and Dolores Huerta. Other Mexican Americans have become leaders in the U.S. government, including Henry Cisneros, former secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and Federico Peña, secretary of the Department of Energy.

VII.

Early History

Beginning in the 16th century, Spain colonized large parts of the southwestern United States, including territories in what are now the states of California, Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, and Arizona. These regions became part of Mexico when that nation declared its independence from Spain in 1810. Settlers from the United States who moved into these territories often clashed with Mexican authorities. The Texas Revolution, an uprising of English-speaking Anglo-Americans, resulted in the establishment of Texas as an independent republic in 1836. The United States annexed Texas in 1845. Subsequent border disputes between the United States and Mexico culminated in the Mexican War (1846-1848). In the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, signed in 1848 at the conclusion of the Mexican War, Mexican dictator Antonio López de Santa Anna sold Mexico’s northernmost territories to the United States for $15 million. Mexicans in these territories became U.S. citizens.

The English-speaking Americans who poured into this region held Mexican Americans in low regard. English-speaking authorities banned the Spanish language in many areas. Many Mexican Americans, who viewed the sale of their lands to the United States as a betrayal, felt allegiance neither to the United States nor Mexico. A myth grew up among Mexican Americans that the Southwest was synonymous with Aztlán, the original homeland of the Aztecs (see Aztec Empire). Such myths allowed Mexican Americans to link themselves to the deepest roots of their Mexican heritage. For many Mexican Americans, this self-definition fostered a desire to secede from the United States and create a self-governing nation in the Southwest.

VIII.

The Early 20th Century

During the early years of the 20th century, Mexican Americans endured harsh living conditions and poverty. Mass migrations from the countryside to such urban centers as Los Angeles and San Antonio only increased Mexican Americans’ sense of alienation from American society. However, between 1912 and 1920, large numbers of rural farmers, known as campesinos, fled to the United States to escape political turmoil in Mexico. Although many Mexicans dreamed of resettling in the United States, the U.S. Congress passed new laws in 1924 that severely restricted immigration. During World War II (1939-1945), the United States established the Emergency Labor Program, popularly known as the Bracero Program. Braceros, whose name derived from the Spanish word brazo (arm), were Mexican manual laborers allowed to enter the United States to replace American workers who had joined the armed forces. Before the program ended in 1964, more than 4 million braceros worked in the United States. Most found employment as agricultural workers in the Southwest.

The Mexican American community remained poor and alienated from mainstream America. Mexican American discontent and Anglo-American prejudice led to sporadic violent conflicts during the 1940s. In the controversial Sleepy Lagoon Incident of 1942, Los Angeles police rounded up hundreds of young Mexican Americans in connection with a killing in a city park. Although 12 Mexican American youths were convicted of murder, their sentences were later overturned. One year later, the Zoot Suit Riots, a week-long clash between off-duty U.S. military personnel and Mexican American youths identified by the distinctive suits they wore, occurred in the same city. Fear of a rebellious Mexican American minority spread throughout the Southwest.

IX.

The Chicano Movement

During the 1960s the efforts of Mexican American political activists, labor union organizers, educational reformers, and student leaders gradually coalesced into a broad-based campaign to secure civil rights and economic opportunity for the Mexican American community. This campaign became known as the Chicano movement. Led by charismatic political figures, such as César Chávez, Dolores Huerta, Reies López Tijerina, and Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzáles, the Chicano movement initially worked to organize farmworkers and orchestrate boycotts against exploitative produce companies. Students, housewives, and urban workers soon joined La Lucha (The Struggle). Using the tactics of civil disobedience, Chávez and his colleagues brought the miserable situation of large portions of the Mexican American population to the nation’s attention. They sponsored marches, hunger strikes, and litigation, all of which were closely followed by the news media. In 1969 the movement published El plan espiritual de Aztlán (The Spiritual Plan of Aztlán), a document outlining a plan to achieve Chicano independence from the United States. The movement also formed a short-lived political party, La Raza Unida (The United People), to support Chicano candidates and causes.

The Chicano movement succeeded in establishing a strong political consciousness in the Mexican American community. The movement also helped attract the world’s attention to the situation of Mexican Americans. However the movement failed to achieve its most radical objectives, political autonomy and self-determination for the Mexican Americans. Despite the achievements of the Chicano movement, the socioeconomic situation of Mexican Americans had improved very little by the end of the 1970s.

Despite political setbacks and poverty, the Mexican American community grew rapidly. Legal and illegal immigrants continued to cross the border from Mexico into the United States. Many immigrants were impoverished campesinos who spoke only Spanish. During the 1980s, rising anti-immigrant sentiment resulted in a backlash against Mexican Americans, particularly in California. In the late 1980s and early 1990s many U.S. states passed laws designating English as the sole official language. These laws were widely seen as targeting Hispanics, especially Mexican Americans. In 1994 and 1995 the Mexican economy collapsed, prompting many middle-class Mexicans to seek opportunity in the United States. Increased immigration from Mexico led to the imposition of tighter border controls and calls for more restrictive immigration policies in the United States.

X.

Contemporary Issues

Poverty continues to be a serious problem for the Mexican American community. Untrained illegal workers often work for less than the minimum wage and without benefits, such as health insurance and vacations. Many Mexican American young people do not graduate from high school. In East Los Angeles and other impoverished urban neighborhoods, many young Mexican Americans are involved with gangs, illegal drugs, and crime. Yet many more Mexican American youths are also succeeding in academics and other areas, becoming the first in their families to attend college, and entering rewarding careers.

Population experts predict that Hispanic Americans will become the largest minority group in the United States early in the 21st century, and Mexican Americans will constitute a substantial proportion of this group. Many new immigrants are following economic opportunities to regions of the United States that previously had very small Mexican American populations, such as Alaska, Maine, and Hawaii. As the Hispanic community grows, its political influence steadily increases. Mexican Americans increasingly affect decisions made by the national governments in Washington, D.C., and Mexico City. Many American politicians now speak to Mexican American constituents in Spanish and take part in parades through Mexican American neighborhoods, such as La Villita (Little Village) in Chicago and East Los Angeles.

Mexican Americans have begun to use their political power to influence legislation in the United States. Mexican Americans have organized lobbying efforts and public demonstrations in opposition to attempts to drastically restrict immigration into the United States. They have formed coalitions with other minority groups to support threatened bilingual education programs. The Mexican American community has also helped defend affirmative action programs designed to increase the presence of minorities in the workplace and in educational institutions.

Mexican Americans are gaining new influence in Mexico as well. In 1997 the Mexican Congress passed a law permitting Mexican Americans to establish dual citizenship in the United States and Mexico. Mexican Americans, and other Mexicans living abroad, may soon be able to vote in state and local elections in Mexico.