Hispanic Americans: Colonization, Immigration, and Ethnic Enclaves

1. Hispanic Americans: Colonization, Immigration, and Ethnic Enclaves Chapter Seven Lesson 11

2. Introduction • Before Jamestown was founded, the ancestors of some Hispanic groups were already in North America. • Hispanic Americans are more than 16% of the total population. • Estimates are that by 2050, nearly 1 out of every 3 Americans will be Hispanic. • Hispanics are partly an ethnicgroup and partly a racialgroup. • As is the case with all American minority groups, labels and group names are important. A recent survey shows that only about 25% of Hispanic Americans use “Hispanic” or “Latino” to describe themselves. Most (51%) identify themselves by their family’s country of origin and 21% think of themselves as “American.”

3. Foreign-Born by Country of Origin

4. Mexican Americans • Mexicans were conquered and colonized in the 19th century and used as a cheap labor in many areas of the dominant group economy in the Southwest. • By the dawn of the 20th century, Mexican Americans resembled Native Americans in some ways, southern African Americans in other ways. • The most crucial difference was the proximity of the sovereign nation of Mexico, which facilitated constant population movement across the border continually rejuvenating Mexican culture and the Spanish language even as they were attacked and disparaged by Anglo-American society.

5. Mexican Americans • The overwhelming majority of Mexican Americans are Catholic. • Mexican Americans place more value on family relations and obligations. • These cultural differences have served as the basis for excluding Mexican Americans from the larger society, however, they also have provided a basis for group cohesion and unity that has sustained common action and protest activity.

6. Mexican Americans • Since the early 1900s (and especially since the 1960s) the Mexican American experience has been largely shaped by fluctuating immigration that can be explained by conditions in Mexico, the varying demand for labor in the low-paying, unskilled sector of the U.S. economy, and by changing federal immigration policy. • Uneven foreign economic development and the 1910 Mexican Revolution • WWI and European and Asian immigration restrictions • Depression and repatriation • WWII, the Bracero Program, and “Operation Wetback” • 1965 Immigration Act and family preferences • Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1984

7. Legal Immigration from Mexico1905-2011

8. Mexican Americans • Throughout much of the 20th century, Mexican Americans have been limited to the less desirable, low-wage jobs, and split labor markets have been common. • The workforce has often been further split by gender, with Mexican American women assigned to the worst jobs and receiving the lowest wages in both urban and rural areas. • Mexican Americans were excluded from political, educational, and legal institutions of the larger society by law and by custom. • Discrimination in the criminal justice system and civil rights violations have been continual grievances of Mexican Americans throughout the century.

9. Mexican Americans • Organized local resistance and protest stretch back to the original contact period in the 19th century. • Regional and national organizations made their appearance early in the 20th century and were integrationist and assimilationist in nature—LULAC. • Mid-20th century labor organizing and WWII brought about new organizations that changed the focus from assimilation per se, and worked to address a broad array of community problems and to increase political power—Community Service Organization and the American GI Forum.

10. Mexican Americans • The 1960s Chicano movement was guided by Chicanismo. • The movement questioned the value of assimilation and increased awareness of the continuing exploitation of Mexican Americans, illustrated through adoption of Chicano as the group name. • The movement produced important organizations and leaders: • Reies Lopez Tijerina and Alianza de Mercedes (1963) • Rodolfo Gonzalez and Crusade for Justice (1965) • Jose Angel Gutierrez and La Raza Unida (1973) • Cesar Chavez and United Farm Workers

11. Mexican Americans • Jessie Lopez and Dolores Huerta were central figures in the movement to organize farm workers and worked closely with Cesar Chávez. • However, Chicanas encountered sexism and gender discrimination within the movement. • Chicanas helped to organize poor communities and worked for welfare reform. • Continuing issues include domestic violence, child care, the criminal victimization of women, and the racial and gender oppression that limits women of all minority groups (Amott & Matthaei, 1991, pp. 82–86; see also Mirandé & Enriquez, 1979, pp. 202–243).

12. Mexican Americans • Unlike immigrants from Europe, Mexican Americans tended to work and live in rural areas distant from and marginal to the urban centers of industrialization and opportunities for education, skill development, and upward mobility. • As Chicanos urbanized, they continued to serve as a colonized, exploited labor force concentrated at the lower end of the stratification system. • The flow of immigration kept Mexican culture and the Spanish language alive. • Although some Mexican Americans have acculturated and integrated, a large segment of the group continues to fill the same economic role as their ancestors.

13. Puerto Ricans • Puerto Rico became a territory of the United States after the defeat of Spain in the Spanish-American War of 1898. • As the century wore on, U.S. firms began to invest in and develop the sugarcane industry that decreased opportunities for economic survival in the rural areas and forcing many peasants to move into the cities (Portes, 1990, p. 163). • Movement to the mainland began gradually and increased slowly until the 1940s, when the number of Puerto Ricans on the mainland increased more than fourfold, to 300,000, and during the 1950s, it nearly tripled, to 887,000 (U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, 1976, p. 19).

14. Puerto Ricans • Puerto Ricans became citizens of the United States in 1917, which facilitated their movement. • Unemployment was a major problem on the island. • Puerto Ricans were “pulled” to the mainland by the same labor shortages that attracted Mexican immigrants during and after World War II. • Puerto Ricans moved to the Northeast • Took jobs in the low-wage, unskilled sector of the job market • Concentrated in urban labor markets (Portes, 1990, p. 164)

15. Puerto Ricans • Puerto Ricans are overwhelmingly Catholic, but the religious practices and rituals on the mainland are quite different from those on the island. • Even though skin color prejudice still exists in Puerto Rico, it was never as categorical as on the mainland. • In the racially dichotomized U.S. culture, many Puerto Ricans feel they have no clear place.

16. Cuban Americans • The conditions for a mass immigration were created in the late 1950s when a Marxist revolution brought Fidel Castro to power in Cuba. • The first Cuban immigrants to the United States tended to come from the more elite classes and included affluent and powerful people. • The U.S. government welcomed the new arrivals as political refugees fleeing from communist tyranny. • Many profoundly Americanized Cuban exiles viewed southern Florida as an ideal spot from which to launch a counterrevolution to oust Castro. (Portes, 1990, p. 165).

17. Cuban Americans • Today, Cuban Americans remain one of the most spatially concentrated minority groups in the United States (67% in Florida; 52% in Miami; U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2000s), which has created a great deal of civil disorder over the years. • Cuban Americans rank higher than other Latino groups on a number of dimensions, a reflection of the educational and economic resources they brought with them from Cuba and the favorable reception they enjoyed from the United States (Portes, 1990, p. 169). • The differences run deeper and are more complex than a simple accounting of initial resources would suggest as Cubans adapted to U.S. society in a fundamentally different way than the other two Latino groups.

18. Cuban Americans • Cuban Americans are an enclave minority. • An ethnic enclave is a social, economic, and cultural subsociety controlled by the group itself, located in a specific geographical area or neighborhood inhabited solely or largely by members of the group. • The enclave encompasses sufficient economic enterprises and social institutions to permit the group to function as a self-contained entity, largely independent of the surrounding community.

19. Cuban Americans • The fact that the enclave economy is controlled by the group itself is crucial. • The ethnic enclave provides a platform from which Cuban Americans can pursue economic success independent of their degree of acculturation or English language ability. • The fact that success came faster to Cubans that were less acculturated reverses the prediction of many theories of assimilation. • A final qualification, success has been selective and inequality continues to be a problem for Cuban Americans.

20. Cuban Americans • Cuban Americans are neither the first nor the only group to develop an ethnic enclave, and their success has generated prejudice and resentment from the dominant group and from other minority groups. • Higher-status Cuban Americans have been stereotyped as “toosuccessful,” “tooclannish,” and “tooambitious.” • This stereotype of Cubans is an exaggeration and a misperception that obscures the fact that poverty and unemployment are major problems for many members of this group.

21. Contemporary Hispanic-White Relations • The American tradition of prejudice against Latinos was born in the 19th century conflicts that created minority group status for Mexican Americans. • The level of Latino prejudice has declined, but prejudice and racism against Latinos tend to increase during times of high immigration and competition for jobs and other resources. • Research shows that Hispanic groups’ rates of acculturation increase with length of residence and are higher for the native born (Espinosa & Massey, 1997; Godstein & Suro, 2000; Valentine & Mosley, 2000). • Racial factors have complicated and slowed the process of assimilation for many Latinos. • Cultural differences reflect recent immigration.

22. Contemporary Hispanic-White Relations • Regional concentrations of Latinos in 2000 reflect the legacies of their varied patterns of entry and settlement. • Within each of these regions, Latino groups are highly urbanized. • Hispanics are generally less residentially segregated than African Americans, still their level of segregation actually increased between 1980 and 2000.

23. Contemporary Hispanic-White Relations • Levels of education for Hispanic Americans have risen in recent years but still lag behind national standards. • Lower levels of education are the cumulative results of decades of systematic discrimination and exclusion further reduced, in the case of Mexican Americans, by the high percentage of recent immigrants who bring very modest educational backgrounds. • Given the role that educational credentials have come to play in the job market, these figures support the idea that assimilation will be segmented and suggest that opportunities for upward mobility will continue to be limited.

24. Educational Attainment 2010

25. Contemporary Hispanic-White Relations • The political resources available to Hispanic Americans have increased over the years, but the group is still proportionally underrepresented. • The number of Hispanics of voting age has more than doubled in recent decades, yet the Hispanic community has not had an impact on the political structure proportionate to its size. • With their rapid growth rate, it is clear that the Hispanic voters will have a much greater impact on politics in the future, especially as second- and third-generation children reach voting age (Del Pinal & Singer, 1997, p. 42).

26. Contemporary Hispanic-White Relations • The economic situation of Hispanic Americans is mixed. • The unemployment rates for Hispanic Americans run about twice the rate for non-Hispanic whites, and the poverty rates for the group as a whole are comparable to those of African Americans (Camarillo & Bonilla, 2001, pp. 110-111). • As was the case with African Americans and Native Americans, Latinos are overrepresented in the lowest income categories. • Cuban Americans have the lowest poverty rates and are comparable to national norms. • Mexican American and Puerto Rican families have the higher rates of poverty, especially for female-headed households, and these rates are comparable to the figures for African Americans and American Indians.

27. Contemporary Hispanic-White Relations • The socioeconomic profiles of Mexican Americans and Puerto Ricans reflect their concentration in the low-wage sector of the economy, the long tradition of discrimination and exclusion, and the lower amounts of human capital (education, job training) controlled by these groups. • Cuban Americans, buoyed by a more privileged social class background and their enclave economy, rank higher on virtually all measures of wealth and prosperity. • These figures point to a split labor market differentiated by gender, within the dual market differentiated by race and ethnicity. • Female-headed Latino families are affected by a triple economic handicap: They have only one wage earner, whose potential income is limited by discrimination against both women and Latinos.

28. Contemporary Hispanic-White Relations • As was the case with African Americans and Native Americans, these economic differences are even wider when we consider wealth (savings, property, stocks and bonds, etc.) as opposed to income. • The majority of Hispanic households (57%) are in the “low wealth” category and only about 26% are in “upper-middle” and “high” wealth categories. • While some immigrant groups arrive with abundant resources and high levels of human and financial capital, Hispanic immigrants typically arrive with little education, few skills, and, often, no more wealth than the clothes they wear.

29. Assimilation and Hispanic Americans • As test cases for what we have called the traditional view of American assimilation, Latinos fare poorly as there is no single experience or pattern of adjustment to the larger society. • Their experiences also illustrate some of the fundamental forces that shape the experiences of minority groups: the split labor market and the U.S. appetite for cheap labor, the impact of industrialization, the dangers of a permanent urban underclass, the relationships between competition and levels of prejudice and rejection, and the persistence of race as a primary dividing line between people and groups.