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ANGLOS AND MEXICANS By David Montejano The University of Texas at Austin Occasional Paper No. 3 August 1992
Abstract Dr. Montejano explores the implications of the United States' declining place in the capitalist world-system for the recently achieved political accommodation between Chicano middle class politicians and the Anglo business and political establishment in the Southwest. Will a possible future of economic stagnation bring with it a renewal of the ethnic/class conflict and repression that characterized Anglo-Mexican relations in the decades before WWII? Or will enlightened leadership from the Anglo and Mexican American communities work out mutually beneficial policies to prevent the growth of a Chicano underclass? These two scenarios are discussed by Dr. Montejano. This is a revised version of a paper presented on November 6, 1989, for the Institute's colloquia series at Michigan State University.
About the Author: Dr. David Montejano is an historical sociologist and an associate professor in the Department of History at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of the prize-winning work entitled Anglos and Mexicans in the Making of Texas, 1836-1986, published by the University of Texas Press. This paper is based on a speech. Table Of Contents
My comments today reflect an ongoing self-discussion about the conclusion of my recently published history of Mexican-Anglo relations in Texas. I argue that although we live in a "time of inclusion" that this current "integrative climate is not an unchanging condition" and that "social forces. . .can move a society in several different directions." [1] I wish to expand on these observations, and explore the various possible futures we may face and make. I would like to provide a context for my suggestions about the future by relating an anecdote about a research trip I took a few months ago to a small town in the State of Zacatecas, Mexico. This was a research trip I undertook to assist some lawyers who were representing families of eighteen Mexican workers who died in a railroad boxcar (in 1987) in a West Texas desert. This led me to a very remote, seemingly inaccessible village, by the name of El Saucito, which is not on any map, and which lies several kilometers away from any paved road. One of the major features of this village, besides its seeming isolation, were the many pigs that lay in the dirt streets. They dominated the roads and seemed to have a peaceful coexistence with the goats and the cows. As a matter of fact, one of the widows I interviewed asked me if there were as many cars in the United States as there were pigs in El Saucito. In any case, after I had finished my interviews, I couldn't find my way out, not because I was lost, but because most of the roads were impassable. It was a question of finding a road that the car could actually maneuver through. That was my situation for about ten minutes until I saw a Coca-Cola truck leaving the community. As I followed the Coca-Cola truck, I was struck by the realization that this truck signified the larger ties this community had with a world economic system, very much as the deaths of their young men in that West Texas desert also signified these larger ties. As the truck passed the crumbling walls of an abandoned silver mine that lay outside of town--a silver mine dating back to Colonial times--I was further struck by the fact that this seemingly remote, inaccessible village had been part of a world system for centuries. This recent experience provides a framework for my comments today about future ethnic relations in the Southwestern United States. In previous work, I have argued that Texas was "bigger" than the modern world system, meaning that a "provincial" or microscopic approach was necessary in order to understand complex variations in Mexican-Anglo relations. This does not mean, of course, that "local" ethnic relations--of Los Angeles, San Antonio, or northern New Mexico, for example--exist isolated or divorced from national and international pressures. Indeed, in order to understand the general contours or limits of ethnic relations, one must look at the "global" or telescopic panorama of social change. Certainly any reasoned speculation about the future must consider the changing global network of relations that affect us directly, even if largely with "invisible" hands. I refer specifically to the much-discussed "decline" of the United States in the capitalist world system. What impact might this have on ethnic relations in the U.S., and specifically in the Southwest? Before I talk about the general contours of that future, let me describe the present situation of Mexican-Anglo relations in the Southwest. The current ethnic situation is one of political integration, which I define as the granting of effective citizenship to the Mexican American. After 1970, significant Mexican American electoral activity was no longer confined to New Mexico [which had historically has served as an "internal colony" or "commonweal" if one prefers, for the annexed Mexican people]. Mexican Americans have become significant players in California and Texas state politics--and thus, in national politics. At the state legislative level, Mexican-American elected officials today represent significant chunks of the Southwest, an unthinkable proposition in the 1950s and 1960s when the Mexican-American electorate was routinely described as "a sleeping giant." The current political integration was not just the result of an "awakening," the acquisition of a "national consciousness" by an emerging minority. [2] Such integration was fundamentally the result of shifting class politics during the post-World War economic boom. An Anglo-urban business elite and the sizable Mexican American middle and skilled working classes have emerged as significant actors. The integrative situation of today, I argue, basically reflects an inter-ethnic understanding forged by organizations from these ethnic class groups. The negotiation essentially involves support for pro-growth policies by middle class Mexican Americans in exchange for the extension of civil services and political opportunities by an Anglo business elite. Political integration, then, does not signify the "structural" or "economic" assimilation [or any other kind of assimilation] of the Mexican American people. In fact, a controversial question in the current public policy literature concerns whether or not a significant "underclass" exists among Mexican and African Americans. [3] The notion of integration I am speaking of derives its "meaning" historically, that is, when contrasted to the segregation that characterized white-nonwhite relations during the first half of the 20th century. In fact, on the eve of World War II, segregation was a formidable solution to the Negro problem of the South and the Mexican problem of the Southwest. According to C. Vann Woodward, the United States and South Africa were following parallel paths. Sometime around WWII, they diverged, for reasons that are still unclear. [4] Let me say a few words about that segregation and its downfall, so that you can understand what I mean by integration, and then I will talk about various scenarios for the future. On the Demise of Segregation | A Global Focus: The United States in Decline | A Southwestern Focus: A Dissolving Consensus? | Conclusion | End Notes While the segregation of Mexican American communities was most apparent in the urban centers of the Southwest --Denver, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Tucson, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, not to mention countless other cities-- its rationale and political orientation was grounded in the agricultural developments of the region. The "barriozation" or "siege" of Chicano urban communities in Southern California was intimately associated with the rise of agribusiness in the countryside; here the interests and practices of growers made social segregation "natural," so that it appeared to be created "not with a fist," as Ruth Tuck put it. [5] In the agricultural valleys of the Southwest, many of them created by the Reclamation Act of 1902, a newcomer grower elite shaped the contours of a new farm society according to their economic interests and cultural notions. Happily these coincided when it came to the subject of organizing farm laborers of color. The exclusion of agricultural workers from the provisions of the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, which thus crippled their ability to organize unions and "bargain collectively," was not just a matter of labor control but of race control as well. We need a detailed comparison of the ways growers organized labor across the Southwest--whether spearheaded by private grower labor agencies as in California, or by state agencies as in Texas--but it is already clear that this task was essentially a "racial" one. Even in California where the ethnic farm labor force varied according to changing immigration law and grower preference, the association of ethnicity and class was most stark: farm laborers were Filipino, Hindu, Mexican, Japanese, and for a short time during the Great Depression "Okies," while growers were "Anglo," including such "white" ethnic groups as Italian, Armenian, and Greek. The point is that this ethnic complexity was organized and segregated along class and color lines: in the usual case, with "white" ethnic growers and their families living on one side, and "brown" ethnic workers and their families living on the other. The "fistless" segregation of California valley towns, of Ruth Tuck's mind, reflected the natural and logically neat association of color, culture, and class. [6] The gradual demise of segregation in the Southwest as beginning with the outbreak of World War II, which abruptly upset the labor practices Anglo growers had developed to immobilize the Mexican farmworkers. Soldiers and factory workers of all "nationalities" were needed to fight the war, and international diplomacy with Latin America required that the most embarrassing customs of Jim Crow be set aside, if only momentarily. As importantly, the labor shortages of the war period forced farmers to turn to machines and a government-supervised guestworker program known as the Bracero Program. After the war, the trend towards corporate ownership of farms accelerated mechanization as well as the displacement of farm workers and of family farmers. In California, where such displacement of family growers had begun earlier in the 1920s, the growth of corporate farm ownership was also evident. [7] In short, the bottom of the segregated farm order fell out as farm workers and small farmers moved to the cities. Such changes in the rural class structure made the segregated order a hollow shell. On the other hand, a new urban business elite emerged as the dominant economic and political force in the region. Although as conservative as the Jim Crow farmer, this new elite did not require rigid labor controls in order to survive. On the contrary, urban businessmen wanted labor stability and domestic market development, which meant that they were willing to pay their Mexican workers more than subsistence wages and willing also to tolerate some upward mobility. Nonetheless, in spite of some concessions to middle class Mexican Americans, the Anglo business elite did not easily abandon Jim Crow practices until forced to by pressure from below and outside. The first such movement from below came immediately after World War II, and again after the Korean Conflict, as Mexican American veterans insisted on equal rights. Moreover, the GI Bill of Rights, especially its educational benefits, and employment in the growing "military-industrial complex" (to use Dwight Eisenhower's phrase) acted as a significant impetus to the formation of a skilled working class and middle class among urban Mexican American communities. These developments, in turn, made the Anglo business elite more responsive as Mexican Americans leveraged their position as workers, voters, and consumers to secure concessions and "rights." The result was a desegregation of the cities in the greater Southwestern border region in the 1950s. Thus in recent memory--certainly in our memory as children, teenagers, and young adults--there has been a rather evident urban-rural contrast in Anglo-Mexican relations throughout the Southwest--a partial desegregation in the cities, and a thorough segregation in the farm areas. This contrast helps explain why in 1975, at a time when Chicanos were assertingly newly-earned power in San Antonio, Texas, a sheriff in a farming community only 17 miles away could take a handcuffed Mexican American prisoner into the woods, shoot him in the back, and claim that he had tried to escape. As long as the Mexican-American activists in the urban areas and the rural areas worked separately, Jim Crow segregation in the farm areas remained intact and stigmatized all Mexican Americans in the region as second-class citizens. Such coordination, however, did take place in the mid-1960s and laid the basis for the farm worker strikes in California and Texas and a renewed land grant struggle in New Mexico. These actions, in turn, ignited a broad civil rights mobilization among all classes of the Mexican American community--businessmen, professionals, college and high school students, factory workers, and even the street youth. This constituted the second movement from below to put pressure on the racial order. The immense pressure from below, of unprecedented intensity and geographic scope, along with class structural changes, laid the basis for a politics of inclusion. The Chicano movement developed along several different fronts, and eventually dissipated due to external and internal pressures. Among the external pressures were the "big stick" of police repression and the "carrots" of reform. Among the internal factors were inexperience, inadequate analysis, lack of internal democracy, and the failure to build "counter-hegemonic" institutions. The Chicano movement was complex and much assessment still needs to be done. One significant event was the formation of the United People's Party, known as La Raza Unida, a populist, nationalist political party that was organized to challenge the control of Jim Crow Democrats in Texas. It should not come as a surprise, given the stark segregation of the farm areas, that the greatest victory of La Raza Unida came in the heart of the farming country in the Winter Garden area around Crystal City, Texas. Likewise in California, one of the most effective and enduring organizations proved to be the United Farm Workers led by Cesar Chavez. The passage of the California Agricultural Labor Relations Act in 1975 signaled, despite the shortcomings of the legislation, the extension of labor rights of "urban workers" to agricultural labor; it was also another sign of the changing political status of the Mexican American in California. In the long run, perhaps one of the most successful movement goals was a partial opening of the universities to Chicano youth, which in turn has led to an expanded and confident Mexican American middle class. As a matter of fact, when we look at statistics on the size of the "white collar" Mexican American segment, we find that for Texas it basically has grown from 10 percent (of the total number of Mexican Americans gainfully employed) in 1950 to about 34 percent in 1980. In California, the middle class Mexican American segment grew from 9 percent in 1950 to 24 percent in 1980. Thus, there has been an expansion to the point that between one-fourth to one-third of the Mexican American working population has essentially a white collar occupation today. Conversely, the "unskilled" in Texas declined from 51 percent in 1950 to 29 percent in 1980. In California, the "lower class" declined from 37 percent in 1950 to 15 percent in 1980. [8] In short, the context for Mexican-Anglo relations, when examined through the lens of class analysis, has been transformed from that of a segregated order that bound Anglo growers and Mexican farm workers through the mid-20th century, to a present-day integration based on an understanding between the Anglo urban business elite and middle class Mexican Americans. The understanding is based on a trade-off: the Anglo business elite desires political support for its developmental plans while the Mexican American middle class desires political entry and opportunities. San Antonio's Henry Cisneros, the first mayor of Mexican extraction since Juan Seguin in the 1840s, clearly represents this present-day alliance between Anglo businessmen and middle class Mexican Americans. That essentially is the argument that I lay out in the latter part of my book: that, not only in Texas but also in the greater Southwest, we see that what we have today is this inter-ethnic understanding. Now while this more or less means that we have a form of "political integration," meaning that Mexican Americans have access to the political arena (few structural obstacles, such the poll tax, at-large elections, etc.), we cannot assume that this is a stable or permanent condition. What I want to do now is sketch out for you some dynamics that will affect this "inter-ethnic" understanding in the near-future and certainly will affect the next generation. We have to look at two general factors. The first concerns the changing global arena, that is, with the fact that, by all accounts, the United States today is in a period of relative economic decline. The second factor has to do with a changing demography of the Southwest, that within the span of a generation the Mexican-origin population will form a plurality, if not a majority, of the region's total population. On the Demise of Segregation | A Global Focus: The United States in Decline | A Southwestern Focus: A Dissolving Consensus? | Conclusion | End Notes A Global Focus: The United States in Decline Having described the present integrative climate in terms of an emergent alliance between prominent Anglo and Mexican class groups, we can now push this analysis up another notch and argue that this "integration" of the post-World War II period was also made possible because the United States was a rising world power. Indeed, this ascendancy as a world power, secured with World War II, brought with it an unparalleled wealth and political confidence that made Jim Crow social policies seem irrelevant and even backward. The ideology of democracy, honed in the fight against Hitler and Aryan supremacy and further developed in the Cold War fight for non-aligned Third World nations, provided the cultural base for challenging race segregation. In other words, the demise of race segregation occurred in the context of the United States' rise as a world power. The converse, that race tensions and conflict increase during periods of decline (as argued by a score of social scientists), also appears to be a convincing thesis. This question of a relative decline of the United States has been discussed so extensively that it has been dubbed the "declinist school." Let me just focus on one proponent, the work of historian Paul Kennedy, who has argued in his best-selling book The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, that the United States today faces the dilemma of all great powers, that of preserving a reasonable balance between the nation's global defense requirements and its technological and economic bases of power. As Kennedy puts it, "The United States runs the risk of what might be called imperial overreach. The tension between maintaining defense, maintaining consumption, and investment is the dynamic that underlies the rise and fall of the great powers." [9] Kennedy is pointing out the dilemma of all great powers: that a strong military posture throughout the world provides for the emergence of new economic centers that in turn undermine the economic standing of their military protectors. In the present day of a pax americana, we are clearly talking about the rise of Japan and other Asian countries and Western Europe. What makes Kennedy's book especially interesting is that it provides the view of a national security advisor, one who is concerned about the nation's external interests. What are these external interests? He desires that the United States maintain a strong military posture, as well as a strong economic posture in the world arena. As a matter of fact, his general advice to American statesmen over the next few decades is to recognize that the United States is in a period of relative decline,and that American statesmen manage affairs so that the relative erosion of the United States position takes place slowly and smoothly. When Kennedy turns to Latin America, he notes some especially troubling challenges to the United States national interest. He points out that if a major international debt crisis is to occur anywhere in the world, it will most likely begin in this region, with very serious consequences to the global credit system, and especially to American banks. Indeed, argues Kennedy, the Polish crisis of the USSR--the crisis that set off a chain of events that ultimately led to the collapse of the Warsaw Pact and of the USSR itself--would "seem small by comparison" with a Mexican crisis: There is simply no equivalent in the world for the present state of Mexican-United States relations. Mexico is on the verge of economic bankruptcy and default. Its internal economic crisis forces hundreds of thousands to drift illegally to the north each year. Its most profitable trade with the United States is becoming a brutally managed flow of hard drugs, and the border for all this sort of traffic is still extra-ordinarily permeable. [10] Unfortunately, this one ominous paragraph contains all that Kennedy has to say about Mexico and Mexican-United States relations, which are obviously critical issues for understanding the future of the Southwest. Kennedy, in fact, pays very little attention to American domestic politics, and he only pays attention to this domestic issue when it relates to national security--when he talks, for example, about the loss of "political will" following Vietnam, or when he talks about the impact of slow economic growth on American political consensus. He explicitly states, however, that the lack of class politics in the United States since the 1930s has been helped by this country's overall growth during the establishment of the pax americana. Moreover, argues Kennedy, the lack of class politics in the United States has been helped by the fact that one-third of American society, the poorest one-third of American society, has not been mobilized to become regular voters. In other words, limited democracy has been a good thing; "too much" democracy may be a bad thing. Finally Kennedy refers, in an ominous note with explicit racial overtones, to the high birth rates of American minorities: Given the differentiated birth rate between the white ethnic groups on the one hand, and the Black and Hispanic groups on the other, and given the loss of millions of relatively higher earning jobs in manufacturing and the creating of millions of poorly paid jobs in services, it may be unwise to assume that the prevailing norms of the American political economy would be maintained if the nation entered a period sustained economic difficulty. [11] In other words, the forthcoming decline will portend serious difficulties--difficulties of a racial nature--in preserving the American political consensus. "It may be unwise," to emphasize Kennedy's note of warning, "to assume that the prevailing norms of the American political economy would be maintained." On the Demise of Segregation | A Global Focus: The United States in Decline | A Southwestern Focus: A Dissolving Consensus? | Conclusion | End Notes A Southwestern Focus: A Dissolving Consensus? What, then, does this mean for the Southwest and for the United States in general? Specifically what does it mean for the inter-ethnic consensus that makes for integration? Kennedy may be weak in outlining the implications of his global analysis for domestic politics, but in the Southwest, there exists an abundance of commentators and analysts who have painted very explicit scenarios. Bruce Babbit, former governor of Arizona, for example, observed in November, 1983, that "the Southwest is being Hispanicized," that "in the War of 1848, we annexed the Southwest and now the Mexicans are taking it back." According to him, the border is becoming more and more a juridical figment, that it has dissolved in real terms. The Southwest today points to new realities: to problems of population pressure, to massive movements of peoples across uncontrolled borders, to the problems of birth control and cultural levels in education. In fact, notes syndicated columnist Georgie Anne Geyer, if these ominous problems are not dealt with rationally and creatively, we will have "our own very Lebanon right here." [12] Another ex-governor, Richard Lamm of Colorado, has issued similar warnings in a more strident tone. Speaking of Blacks and Hispanics, Governor Lamm argues that these two groups contribute to extraordinary crime, joblessness, and illiteracy rates. In his view, "We are heading for an America in which we will have two angry, under-utilized and under-educated, frustrated, resentful, jealous, and volatile minority groups existing unassimilated and unintegrated within our borders." [13] Governor Lamm's policy recommendation essentially reflects a lifeboat perspective: that, given the failure of the American melting pot, we must regain control of our borders and our inner cities. Actually, Governor Lamm's alarmist rhetoric reminds me of the public hysteria that surfaces every time this country enters a period of economic difficulty. In the 1920s and 1930s there surfaced several expressions of such hysteria, and I detail many of these in my work; for example, there was one account that calculated that to equal the descendants of one Mexican father in three generations, it would take 14,651 Anglo fathers at a three-child rate. This is the kind of statistical hysteria that surfaces, and Governor Lamm is certainly guilty of that kind of rhetoric. These views, however alarmist or strident, should not be discounted, for they reflect a definite political response to the changing demographics of the United States, and of the Southwest in particular. The English-only movement, the anti-immigration sentiment, the anti-affirmative action sentiment, and so on, all of these manifest a conservative "lifeboat reflex" that threatens to undermine the existing political consensus in the Southwest. Now a liberal response, one more in keeping with the character of the present inter-ethnic consensus, is certainly possible. In fact, a recent publication, a book entitled The Burden of Support: Young Latinos in an Aging Society, by David Hayes-Bautista, Werner Schink, and Jorge Chapa, using basically the same facts as Governor's Lamm, argue for a very different policy response. Essentially Hayes-Bautista et al. note that by the year 2030, the Latino population in California--and they take California as an example of what is going to be happening generally in the Southwest--will equal the Anglo population, even if we assume no additional immigration. [14] The natural growth of the Latino population alone will lead to a new social division in California [and in the Southwest] along generational ethnic lines. Approximately seventy percent of the wage earning work force will be Latino. Given these two simultaneous trends--the aging of a well-educated Anglo baby boom generation and the growth of a much younger, less educated latino population--our near future promises to be one of considerable challenge. Hayes-Bautista et al., propose two possible scenarios. On the one hand, they propose a worst case scenario which essentially is a very grim repressive portrait of a society on the brink of anarchy. The image I receive from reading Hayes-Bautista et al. is much like the movie Bladerunner. Here are some excerpts from their text just to give you an idea. Again, this is an "end of the century" scenario of a young undereducated Latino population essentially supporting a well-educated, retired Anglo generation. They point out: Visible police protection was demanded, and when not provided by public entities, privately retained security forces filled the gap. In urban areas, the remaining elderly Anglos adopted all sorts of security measures, huddling behind high, tamper-proof fences, with gate guards, canine patrols, entry and exit checks, and thick grills on windows to protect them. [15] The young Latino population begins to see its predicament as one of exploitation. Huge portions of their paychecks were eaten up to fund Social Security programs for the elderly; this alone accounted for nearly forty percent of payroll taxes. In addition, federal income tax rates were high to cover the increasing costs of other elderly programs as well as the continuing costs of expensive military systems. Thus, in spite of high payroll taxes, the young workers saw little in the way of benefits returned to them. The school system was failing, and expenditures for roads, water systems, and public buildings had dwindled to almost nothing: By the turn of the century, it had become common to see unpaved roads in the Latino sections of town and to find hoses and electrical lines snaking along the ground, sometimes for miles, to provide water and electricity in areas where no other form of service was available. [16] In time, the young Latino community calls for mass demonstrations to protest their living conditions. Incendiary literature called on the younger generation to rebel, to refuse to pay taxes. Strikes broke out in assembly plants, security walls were set afire and toppled, and the sale of guns soared in the elderly areas: The younger Latinos painted the elderly as parasites, who had enjoyed all the benefits of society when those benefits were free and now continued to tax the workers to maintain their style of living without a thought to the damage it was doing to them. The elderly painted the younger Latinos as parasites, as foreigners who were soaking up benefits that should go to the elderly, as non-Americans who were threatening to dilute American culture as crime-ridden, disease-ridden, and lawless people. [17] Hayes-Bautista, et al., conclude, "Civil revolt was only months away." Thus ends their grim scenario, essentially a portrayal of ethnic conflict along generational lines. But Hayes-Bautista, et al., also provide another scenario--a best case scenario that can be realized if we make the necessary commitments to education and affirmative action policies. The conditions that make for this best case parallel, interestingly enough, the factors I have identified as contributing to the demise of segregation in the Southwest. The first important factor is the emergences of an assertive Mexican American middle class. The Affirmative Action programs of the 1970s and 1980s, as Hayes-Bautista, Schink, and Chapa put it, produced a group of educators, physicians, attorneys, administrators, planners, and business people---in other words, a critical mass of well-educated Latinos with a good understanding of their relation to their communities and their state. [18] These Latino leaders, drawing on their political experiences of the 1960s and 1970s, would inspire the Latino community to strive for excellence while it pressed the state and others for the necessary public expenditures. On the other hand, a second important factor is the re-emergence of the social liberalism of the sixties and seventies, a time of "selfless public service in such organizations as the Peace Corps and VISTA," now rekindled in aging Anglo baby boomers. Through such "enlightened self-interest," both the Latino middle class and the aging Anglo Baby Boomers would realize that the best guarantee of support for the elderly would be an investment in the younger Latino population. Their mutual interests would converge in a policy "aimed at preserving the intergenerational compact through the development of an inter-ethnic compact." [19] Hayes-Bautista, et al., in describing the possible alliance of young educated Latinos and "selfless" aging Anglo baby-boomers, have described in ethnic-generational terms what I have argued in ethnic-class terms: that the politics of inclusion of the 1970s and 1980s was built on an inter-ethnic alliance between the Mexican American middle class and Anglo business class. In view of our probable demographic future, Hayes-Bautista, et al., basically argue that this type of alliance is what could possibly preserve the "inter-ethnic compact" in the coming decades. But their argument rests more on hope, especially in the "selfless" aging Anglo baby boomers, than on any basic material interest. On the Demise of Segregation | A Global Focus: The United States in Decline | A Southwestern Focus: A Dissolving Consensus? | Conclusion | End Notes In light of these two polar assessments, what possible futures await us? In the estimation of Hayes-Bautista, et. al., we have a narrow policy window of some 15-20 years, a generation essentially, to decide in which general direction we wish to travel. [20] The worst-case and best-case scenarios, by reminding us of the indeterminate or "open" nature of the future, force us to keep our perspective: to make us realize that despite the advances of the last twenty years, despite the apparent climate of "integration," that the struggle between inclusion and exclusion continues. Society can be pushed along many different trajectories, and the impetus for one or another path comes not just from the "larger" forces and circumstances I have sketched here today, but from our actions and reactions with regard to these forces and circumstances--to decisions made or not made, to policies formulated or not formulated, to organizations formed or dissolved. Some segments of the Anglo community, as I have mentioned, are campaigning vigorously for "English-only," and for the preservation of "Western Civilization." Other segments are campaigning vigorously against the Voting Rights Act, against Affirmative Action, against immigrant rights, and against "multicultural" education. On the other side of the relation, we still find a large underclass, between twenty to thirty percent of the Mexican American population, deprived of opportunities, apparently frozen in place. This means for the foreseeable future that crime, welfare, unemployment, and a host of urban problems, will continue to be associated with color. Indeed, the future of the Mexican (and African) American underclass will decide whether the "inclusion" of the 1970s was a partial, passing moment or whether it did in fact represent a break from a past history of exclusion. In closing, let me emphasize once more that our possible future will depend in good measure on our response to these foreseeable global and national conditions. The response of intellectuals, of all racial and class backgrounds, to these circumstances will be critical. Educators in particular represent a pivotal group of the ethnic-class alliance (or the ethnic-generational alliance described by Hayes-Bautista, Schink, and Chapa) that has made a "progressive" understanding possible. For Chicano educators, in particular, the worst case scenario may result if we misinterpret the present state of inclusion as a permanent condition and forget that the advances have come against a backdrop of political protests and court battles; if we become complacent, comfortable with our success, and even alienated and separated from our working class community. The result would be an absence of leadership and vision, that would leave the Mexican American community extremely vulnerable to the kind of hysteria and backlashes of the early 1950s. That was a time of reaction to the young civil rights movement, a time of loyalty oaths, job blacklists, book bans, book burnings, of raids on ghettos and barrios, of police roundups of "disloyal" and "foreign" elements, of lynchings and assassinations, in short, of fanatical reaction to desegregation. This pessimistic scenario is not a fantasy: all these things have already happened once, within our parents' lifetime if not within our own. The more optimistic scenario, and of course the one that all of us should work for, would have us understand that we have to extend effective citizenship to our communities. I am not just talking about a political franchise, but an educational franchise as well. We need to understand that we must remain organized in order to fight to maintain the rights and opportunities won in the 1960s and 1970s, so that there will be no such thing as a permanent Chicano or Black underclass. In other words, we must remain rooted in our communities so that as the world economic system changes, and Latin America, Africa, and Asia rise from the burden of underdevelopment, we will be there present and prepared to serve as ambassadors of good will and understanding. On the Demise of Segregation | A Global Focus: The United States in Decline | A Southwestern Focus: A Dissolving Consensus? | Conclusion | End Notes 1. David Montejano, Anglos and Mexicans in
the Making of Texas, 1836-1986 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987),
p. 306. This paper basically extends my argument in Chapter 13, "A
Time of Inclusion," pp. 288-307. Also see Montejano, "Is Texas
Bigger than the World-System? A Critique from a Provincial Point of View,"
Review 4, no. 3 (Winter 1981), pp. 597-628. 2. The theme of "awakening" was
a popular one in the literature of the late 1960s. A classic statement is
contained in Leo Grebler, Joan Moore, and Ralph Guzman, The Mexican American
People (New York: Free Press, 1970), pp. 3-11. In this regard, one should
note the interesting dissent of Joan Moore from her co-authors in her article
"Colonialism: The Case of the Mexican American," Social Problems
17, no. 4 (Spring 1970). 3. On the African American underclass, see
arguments by William J. Wilson, The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City,
the Underclass, and Public Policy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1987) and Ken Auletta, The Underclass (New York: Random House, 1982); on
the Mexican American underclass, see Jorge Chapa, The Increasing Significance
of Class: Class, Culture and Mexican American Assimilation (Ph.D. dissertation,
University of California, Berkeley, 1988) and "The Question of Mexican
American Assimilation," LBJ School Public Affairs Comment, Spring 1989. 4. C. Vann Woodward, The Strange Career of
Jim Crow, 2d rev. ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1966). 5. Tuck concluded that segregation must be
the result of Mexican "passivity." See Ruth Tuck, Not with the
Fist: A Study of Mexican-Americans in a Southwest City (New York: Harcourt,
Brace & Co., 1946); also Albert Camarillo, Chicanos in a Changing Society:
From Mexican Pueblos to American Barrios in Santa Barbara and Southern California,
1848-1930 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979) and Rodolfo Acuna,
A Community Under Siege: A Chronicle of Chicanos East of the Los Angeles
River, 1945-1975 (Los Angeles: Chicano Studies Research Center Publications,
University of California, Los Angeles, 1984). 6. See Larry Trujillo, "Race, Class,
Labor, and Community: A Local History of Capitalist Development," Review
4, no. 3 (Winter 1981), pp. 571-596. 7. Of note here are the life-long political
efforts of agricultural economist Paul S. Taylor to enforce the "forgotten"
federal limitations of 160 acres in agricultural valleys "reclaimed"
through federal projects and subsidies. See, for example, The Yodeler, Sierra
Club Newsletter, San Francisco Bay Chapter, December 1978. See also the
classic work of Carey McWilliams, Factories in the Field (Boston: Little,
Brown & Co., 1934). 8. Montejano, Anglos and Mexicans, p. 298;
Jorge Chapa, "Are Chicanos Assimilating?" Institute of Governmental
Studies, University of California, Berkeley, Working Paper 88-8, June 1988. 9. Kennedy is not a Marxist, even though
this argument is one that has essentially been popularized by Marxists such
as Immanuel Wallerstein and others. Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the
Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict From 1500 to 2000, New
York: Random House, 1987, p. 515. 10. Kennedy, Rise and Fall, p.517 11. Kennedy, Rise and Fall, p. 531 12. Governor Babbit is quoted by Georgie
Anne Geyer, "States Conduct Own Foreign Policy," Houston Post,
November 10, 1983. 13. Richard D. Lamm, "Two Volatile Groups
Threaten to Boil Over Melting Pot," Albuquerque Journal, September
23, 1985, p. A5. The "lifeboat" argument is elaborated in detail
in Richard D. Lamm and Gary Imhoff, The Immigration Time Bomb: The Fragmenting
of America (New York: Truman Talley Books, 1985). 14. David E. Hayes-Bautista, Werner O. Schink,
and Jorge Chapa, The Burden of Support: Young Latinos in an Aging Society,
Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988. 15. Hayes-Bautista, et al., Burden of Support,
p. 5 16. Hayes-Bautista, et al., Burden of Support,
p. 7 17. Hayes-Bautista, et al., Burden of Support,
p. 9 18. Hayes-Bautista, et al., Burden of Support,
p.147 19. Hayes-Bautista, et al., Burden of Support,
p. 148 20. Hayes-Bautista, et al., Burden of Support,
p. 145 On the Demise of Segregation | A Global Focus: The United States in Decline | A Southwestern Focus: A Dissolving Consensus? | Conclusion | End Notes |
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