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Perspectives on Midwestern Chicana/o History University of Minnesota February 1999
About the Author: Dennis Nódin Valdés Dennis Valdés, an Associate Professor at the University
of Minnesota, Twin Cities, earned both his Bachelor and Master's
degrees in History from Central Michigan University in Mt. Pleasant;
he earned his Doctorate in History at the University of Michigan
in 1978.
SUGGESTED CITATION Valdés, Dennis, N. (Ph.D.) "Region, Nation, and World-System: Perspectives on Midwestern Chicana/o History" JSRI Occasional Paper #20. The Julian Samora Research Institute, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, 1999. Introduction Chicana and Chicano paradigms and the Midwest During its youth in the late 1960's and early 1970's, Chicana/o historical scholarship emphasized its distinctive history and geography. It paid cursory homage to our indigenous roots among the Aztecs in Central Mexico, but initiated serious investigation in early 19th Century Texas, New Mexico, and California, prior to the mass migration of English-speaking people from the United States. (Acuña, 1972; Meier and Rivera, 1972; Vigil, 1980) The choice had important political and interpretive implications. Acknowledging ancient roots and a geography comprising former Mexican territory permitted Chicana/o scholars to challenge U.S. historians who portrayed the flow of history from east to west, and portrayed Mexicans, if they portrayed them at all, as the last of the immigrants. It emphasized incorporation as a result of military conquest, in contrast with Europeans, who were voluntary immigrants. Legal and political mechanisms imposed on Mexicans without consent deprived them of a land base and resulted in widespread downward mobility, while the dominant political culture continued to restrict Mexicans who entered the U.S. in the 20th Century. The focus on conquest and the Southwest also drew attention to the creation and proximity of the United States-Mexican border, which further distinguished Mexicans from individuals of European, African, and Asian backgrounds. The political border was considered influential in the formation and maintenance of a distinct Chicana/o identity and history. In effect, the distinct chronology and geography provided unity to a group of scholars with often divergent perspectives. Key features of this interpretation of Chicana/o history did not apply to Mexicans in the Midwest, whose continuous presence dates only from the turn of the twentieth century. The early Midwesterners were overwhelmingly immigrants who lived and worked among their European predecessors and more recently-arrived African Americans. With roots mostly in the interior of Mexico, they did not share a collective memory of United States conquest or the concomitant loss of ancestral lands. Finally, the United States-Mexican border had little immediate meaning, located more than one thousand miles away from most Mexicans in the Midwest. I was born in Detroit, and the borderlands I knew best during my youth straddled the United States and Canada. The political border dividing the two nations was marked by the Detroit River, easily crossed by tunnel or bridge to reach Windsor, Ontario, located immediately to the south. Neglect in general and theoretical literature on Chicana/o history has prompted Midwestern Mexicans to complain that Chicana/o Studies displays a similar lack of consideration that Anglo-dominated academia showed toward Chicanas/os in the Southwest a generation ago. The exclusion is replicated even in recent overviews and bibliographies, where reference to extant Midwestern literature is sparse and often lacking entirely (Gutiérrez, 1993; Ríos-Bustamante, 1993; González and Fernández, 1993; I. Garcia, 1996; Griswold, 1997). In this essay I examine interpretive historical frameworks adopted by 20th Century scholars on Midwestern Mexicans, including the literature of the Chicana/o generation. While placing the authors in their contemporary contexts, I simultaneously discuss how a world-systems perspective, which is not new in Chicana/o historical scholarship, permits opportunities to address important theoretical issues in the field. "Mexican Folk" in the Industrial Heartland When Mexicans arrived in the Midwest in large numbers in the early 20th Century, academics adopted preconceived notions about their place in society. Scholars based their views on the applicability of cultural models of assimilation, the experiences of European immigrants, and the memory of world conquests during a previous century of industrial capitalist expansion. They shared assumptions that the United States, a modern, democratic and industrial nation, offered superior economic, social and political incentives for capable individuals from poorer, underdeveloped countries who sought a better life. They did not agree, however, on the capacities of Mexicans as compared with Europeans, or on the propriety of encouraging assimilation. Some considered Mexicans as capable and meritorious of assimilation as Europeans, while others vehemently disagreed. The debate among Midwestern and other mainstream academics centered on Anglo conformity versus cultural pluralism. The former supported their arguments with popular social and scientific notions, including Social Darwinism and Eugenics. They were influenced by the political realities of imperialism, particularly European conquests in Africa and Asia, and the United States' conquests of Spain and Mexico during the 19th Century, which shaped their notions of racial superiority. Yet most denied that the U.S. fit within the imperialist family of nations. The conviction of inherent United States superiority over Mexico was shared by Europeans, conservative and radical alike, including Karl Marx. In an 1854 letter to Frederick Engels, he viewed the United States conquest and acquisition of Mexican territory positively, contrasting what he considered superior traits of Americans to inferior Mexicans:
Such expressions make understandable the reluctance of many Chicana/o scholars to adopt the leadership or conclusions of Marx's self-anointed followers a century later. By the 1920's, adherents of eugenics and other bias theories occupied posts in the most prestigious academic institutions in the nation, including Ivy League schools like Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, and the Universities of Wisconsin and Michigan in the Midwest. Few had conducted investigations or claimed expertise on immigration from Mexico. Yet like contemporary "experts" at the end of the 20th Century they considered their credentials sufficient to participate in the public debate on immigration restriction, based largely on their views regarding capacity of Mexicans to assimilate. Their arguments supporting restriction assumed inherent Mexican biological and cultural deficiencies. (U.S. Congress, 1927: 1904) A noteworthy 1930 study by sociologist William Albig suggests that such opinions conformed to dominant popular culture in the Midwest. In his study of attitudes toward Mexicans by European immigrants in Flint, Mich., consistent with other Midwestern studies, he found very negative attitudes, despite nuanced differences by age, gender and formal schooling. A 19-year-old male student claimed that: "They're dirty as hogs. I don't know how they get along. I used to work in an A&P store. They always bought good food, what they did buy, when they had money. The women are pretty dumb, they never do learn to talk." A 17-year-old girl asserted: "I think they're all awful. I've heard that when the Mexican men get mad at their wives they just leave them and exchange wives for a month or so. The people of the neighborhood think they're all bad about things like that, anyway. I'm glad we're going to move." A 20-year-old immigrant woman who had recently moved from Detroit reported: "I keep away from the whole district now as much as possible. I don't like it, and I wish we'd move. I dislike the Mexicans very much." (Albig 1930; 64-65). Albig found that among adult men, few considered Mexicans economic competitors, in contrast with a majority of women and younger adults. He observed that, "young adults were, in general, much more critical of divergent customs than were the elders," and that women expressed more negative views than men. A woman interviewee stated, "Once we were going to sell the house, and a family wanted it, but wouldn't buy it because of the Mexicans next door." Another Flint woman asserted: "We moved because of the Mexicans and negroes. There was Mexicans next door." The study suggested that as southern and eastern European immigration - predominantly male in its early phases - became more evenly balanced by gender, prejudice increased. Albig also found that the most educated individuals were the most prejudiced. The data implied that schooling and Americanization, touted in popular culture and among educators as the most effective means of upward mobility and a better life in the U.S., were themselves major contributing factors in heightening prejudice against Mexicans. Academic hostility toward Mexicans was not accidental (Albig, 1931: 63-70). Several contemporary Midwestern works manifested racial bias theories. In a 1926 study, sociologist Ruth Camblon claimed that Chicago Mexicans were overwhelmingly descendants of Indians, who possessed physical, biological, and cultural traits including "mysticism," and accounted for why, "the Mexican lacks physical resistance. His inherited lack of heath habits or scientific health standards, combined with his migratory life make him peculiarly susceptible to disease" (p. 211). Mexicans' racial background also accounted for their being "honest, gentle, industrious, self-abnegating, and religious. They accept their misfortunes sadly, but quietly." Camblon feared that as greater numbers of Mexicans came to Chicago in response to the lure of economic incentives, "we shall be faced with these acute problems in increasing numbers." She grasped the shifting tide of opinion that had created the "Mexican Problem" that would soon pervade academic and popular thought (Camblon, 1926: 208-211). Paternalism was also rampant in the Midwestern scholarship, including the work of geographer Earl Sullenger. His study of Mexicans in Omaha explained Mexican migration through biology: "The intermarriage of the Spaniards and Indians has produced the migrating Mexicans." He urged greater intervention to help offset cultural deficiencies, including "passive" and "mentally lazy" natures that hindered self-advancement and participation in Americanization programs. He suggested that, "we should not neglect them as is usually done. We should meet them with a kindly attitude and show that we have regard for them," to help them "solve their difficulties" (Sullenger, 1924: 289-293). Scholars who viewed Midwestern Mexicans within cultural pluralist perspectives tended to portray them as the last of the immigrants and potentially good citizens capable of assimilation. Research interest was greatest at the University of Chicago, where the "Chicago School" profoundly influenced sociology, social work, and anthropology. Anthropologist Robert Redfield, best known for his investigations on Mexico, influenced field work on Mexicans in Chicago. He popularized a model depicting Mexicans as representing "folk society," in contrast with modern urban industrial society. In Tepoztlán: a Mexican Village (1930), he wrote: "the folk culture is a fusion of Spanish and Indian elements" comprised of pre-industrial rural and small town people whose local cultures display "relatively small diversity of intellectual interest." A critical problem for Mexican folk culture, he suggested, was the "spread of city ways." As folk people, Mexicans in Chicago encountered "disorganization" and faced a myriad of difficulties in adjustment and "reorganization" to the contrasting setting (Redfield, 1930). Redfield and the "folk" model influenced writings by University of Chicago students and faculty in the 1920's and 1930's. Their assessments of Mexicans in Chicago were generally much more positive than their contemporary counterparts. Sociologist Anita Edgar Jones, in a 1928 essay on Mexicans in Chicago concluded: "On the whole, the Mexicans have been much like the other immigrant groups in many respects, living under hard conditions when necessary and gradually finding their condition improving with their period of American life. The picture may fairly be called an encouraging one" (Jones, 1928, 597). Redfield also collaborated with other scholars, including economist Paul Taylor and anthropologist Manuel Gamio in their massive studies on Mexican immigrants in the United States, which included Chicago and other Midwestern settings (Redfield, 1929). Funded by the Social Science Research Council, they generally conformed with the framework posited by Redfield. Both accepted push-pull models of immigration and discussed conditions in Mexico rather than simply focusing on the United States. They agreed generally that Mexicans, whose folk society was being disrupted in Mexico, were also being lured northward. But in certain ways the two authors differed. Taylor found important regional differences Mexicans faced in Chicago and Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in comparison with the Southwest. He regarded Mexicans as the last of the immigrants and equally as talented and intelligent as recent European arrivals to Chicago, who also came from a folk culture. He concluded that environment rather than heredity primarily accounted for different outcomes among Mexicans and Europeans. But culture and geography were also influential, and Mexicans faced a "greater stress of adjustment" in the urban Midwest than the Southwest. Yet he concluded that the Chicago environment generally offered more favorable opportunities for Mexican immigrants. In the urban Midwest, segregation of Mexicans in work, residence and the schools was less marked, and the impact of prejudice against their darker color as a hindrance to assimilation "is less effective than in the rural West and Southwest," or even Los Angeles (Taylor, 1932: 280). Gamio considered Mexican immigration as a temporary episode in Mexican history and did not focus as specifically on differences between the urban Midwest and the rural Southwest. His overall assessment of immigration was positive: "Although the immigrant often undergoes suffering and injustice and meets many difficulties, he undoubtedly benefits economically by the change," and by learning to work in the modern industrial setting, becomes, "much more efficient than before." Unlike Taylor, Gamio regarded permanent settlement negatively, both because Mexicans faced constant prejudice and because he believed they should return to their homeland and apply their experiences in modern agriculture and industry to Mexico's development (Gamio, 1931, 49). The studies of Taylor and Gamio portrayed Mexican migration as an international phenomenon, emphasizing its Mexican dimensions as much as the United States. Furthermore, they observed that Mexican workers were recruited and formed colonias in almost every state in the union, and were not confined to the Southwest. Gamio also offered a compromise to resolve the public political debates on Mexican immigration to the U.S. that could placate conservatives, progressives, and even labor historians who supported restrictive legislation. Rather than create an international political embarrassment by passing legislation, an administrative mechanism could assist Mexicans who wanted to return voluntarily, with the support of the Mexican government. From a world-systems perspective, the debate was predicated on an international world order in which the United States had become the industrial core, with Mexico and the rest of Latin America its periphery. The latter had replaced industrializing rural sectors of Europe as a reserve of cheap labor for United States capitalists, as repatriation confirmed Mexicans' expendability. Second Generation "Problems" With the onset of the Great Depression, scholarship on Midwestern Mexicans took a negative turn. Scholars from the University of Chicago emphasized disruption, which they attributed to the extremely difficult conditions attending to urban life of Mexican folk. In his study of juvenile delinquency among Mexican youth in Chicago, Edward Bauer discussed recent history in South Chicago. Adopting from Redfield, he emphasized the "disorganizing influences of urban society" on Mexican families, compounded by fathers' job losses in the early 1930's. He suggested that economic and social disorder during the Great Depression increased family tension and induced boys to find company with gangs. Yet he concluded that reports on gang activities of Mexican boys were highly exaggerated, while girls were almost never delinquent. He found that the integration of the South Chicago Mexican colony was very low, that adolescents still identified themselves overwhelmingly as Mexicans, and that their close friends were almost all Mexicans, factors that could account for low levels of delinquency. Furthermore, he suggested "They may become culturally assimilated, and at the same time remain in a semi-caste status," like that between Blacks and Whites. He predicted that "unless Mexicans are able to move out of the colony and establish themselves in the larger community the process of assimilation will be much slower than has been the case in ethnic groups of European origin." Assimilation remained more potential than actual for youth of the second generation, he concluded (Bauer, 1938, 1-4, 55; Felter, 1941). Academic portrayals of Mexican immigrants and their children as a problem continued to pervade the literature. The most prolific contemporary Midwestern scholar, sociologist Norman D. Humphrey, wrote a profusion of articles in the 1940's and 1950's based on his University of Michigan thesis and dissertation on Mexicans in Detroit. Ideas popularized by the Chicago school appeared in his writings, including a push-pull explanation of immigration, portrayal of Mexicans as "folk" culture and their difficulties adjusting to modern urban society. Humphrey emphasized cultural factors more heavily, and portrayed the "folk" overwhelmingly as "peons." He frequently offered cultural explanations for economic decisions, including why Mexicans commonly resided in basement and attic apartments, which "being lightless and airless, approximate the adobe huts of the peasant village." Like Taylor, he predicted that Mexicans would prefer the urban Midwest than Texas, suggesting that, "while germinal elements for a Mexican caste are present in the northern states, they are not as developed nor as overt in their expression, as they are in the south," due largely to the small Mexican population (Humphrey, 1944). He concluded that acculturation of Detroit Mexicans tended toward "a merging of Mexican peasant and American working class culture" which involved "the acquisition of relatively superficial layers of American culture and the shedding of equally shallow Mexican elements" (Humphrey, 1946: 433, 437). Dominant Midwestern academic literature tended to view positively those features of Mexican culture that were consistent with assimilation while regarding the rest as a "problem." Sociologist Norman Goldner suggested that in St. Paul, "fathers," or immigrants of the first generation, started and remained at the bottom of the occupational hierarchy, while "sons," who also started at the bottom, "have become occupationally diversified and upwardly mobile" as a result of job training and English language skills. He also suggested a "leveling and democratization of the family" from its former patriarchal form, due to the experience of family labor in the fields and the "competitive-utilitarian urban system." Yet he also acknowledged that despite greater acculturation, schooling, and participation in electoral politics and Anglo organizations, the "sons" felt that Anglos "were prejudiced about twice as often as did the fathers." As Albig found a generation earlier, Anglo prejudice continued to hinder assimilation (Goldner, 1961: 105, 107, 110). Studies extending into the 60's and 70's explicitly adopted models of a culture of poverty to account for the failure of Midwestern Mexicans to assimilate. Carolyn Matthiasson, in a 1968 dissertation concerned with acculturation, asserted that Mexican Americans in Milwaukee "tend to be very suspicious" of outsiders and social agencies (Matthiasson, 1968: 7). In a 1973 historical study of Chicago Mexicans in the 20's, Mark Reisler, after detailing widespread prejudice and racial antipathy, concluded that only his effort to "preserve his native identity and his hope of returning to the homeland alleviated the despair of the culture of poverty" (Reisler, 1973). During the generation prior to the Chicano movement, a handful works of historical significance written by Mexicans in the Midwest appeared. The unpublished, but influential, studies by Frank X. Pax appeared. Born in Morelia, Michoacán, but residing in Illinois from his youth, he received a degree in engineering at the University of Illinois and was the first president of the Mexican Civic Committee in Chicago. Pax was one of the first individuals in the Midwest to adopt the term "Mexican-American" in his writings, which he used interchangeably with "Mexican." Yet his assessment of Mexicans' Americanization was not positive. He observed, "the status of Mexicans in Chicago is not too good if we examine it from the standpoint of the values of the American way of life" (Pax, 1949: 6). He questioned the value of assimilation, noting that conditions for Chicago Mexicans had not improved in the previous 20 years, even in the unions they had joined enthusiastically. When Mexicans complained about exclusion and lack of upward mobility, he observed, "we get the same old answers: Well, your people are not trained," an excuse he argued was no longer acceptable. Rhetorically, he asked, "Where is the equality of opportunity? Where is the American way of life?" (Pax, 1949: 8-9). "The Mexican in Adrian," the first scholarly article I have located in a professional historical journal on the Midwest written by a Mexican, appeared in 1958. Its author, Reymundo Cárdenas, addressed both identity and the Redfield paradigm. He asserted that, "many of the native born refer to themselves as Latin-Americans, Spanish, or Spanish-Americans to give the impression that they are not of Indian blood." He asserted that Mexican identity was maintained by immigrants, who scoffed at such terms. Cárdenas was more sympathetic to the notion of "folk culture," which he viewed positively and less an impediment to improved material conditions than ill treatment by Anglo-Americans. He emphatically challenged current academic literature that addressed Mexicans as a "problem," suggesting that culture was not responsible, but rather Indian appearances, which prompted Anglo-American discrimination. Mexicans responded by resisting Anglo-American culture. Cárdenas thus concluded that ongoing immigration and discrimination helped maintain a Mexican identity in the Midwest (Cárdenas, 1958: 343-349). In the classic historical work of the generation, Carey McWilliams' North From Mexico, a socialist interpretation that begins with initial contact between native and European in the 16th Century and ends in the middle of the 20th Century. In contrast to early Chicano scholars who claimed inspiration from his text, McWilliams' addressed the Midwest and stories familiar during my youth. He suggested that urban Midwestern colonias could be readily distinguished from the Southwest: "the colony is strikingly similar to that of the typical 'foreign' settlement." Its boundaries were not sharply defined, Mexicans worked and were more likely to socialize among European immigrants, and racial discrimination was less visible than in the Southwest. He asserted that, in Chicago and Detroit, "Mexicans are merely another immigrant group; in the Southwest they are an indigenous people" (McWilliams, 1949: 221). McWilliams attributed the limited Mexican presence in the north at the time to economic and political factors. First, sugar beet and southwestern agricultural employers combined to limit Mexican workers in northern industry. They did not fear that industrial employers would take workers from them, but were more concerned about a political backlash against a large Mexican presence in the north that might halt immigration, which they considered a greater threat to their labor supply. Second, the Federal government decided to restrict Mexican immigration at the onset of the Great Depression through administrative measures that prevented the likely passage of restrictive Congressional legislation. As a result, he concluded, "the doors of Midwestern industrial employment were closed almost as soon as they were opened," and at the time he thought the colonias were destined to disappear (McWilliams, 1949). Although renewed migration upset his prediction, later historians paid little attention to the framework he offered to permit regional comparisons. Furthermore, only a handful of writings by regional Chicana/o historians reached mid-century, which he did two generations ago. The Midwest as Chicana/o History According to Ignacio García, the roots of early Chicana/o historical scholarship appear in the Mexican-American generation, including folklorists and historians like Carlos Castañeda, who addressed Spanish roots and the heritage of Catholicism in Texas. He considered them conventional scholars who "stayed within the mainstream of their departments and their field" (García, 1996). While many were, a small number, including Castañeda, engaged in writing and political activism that set them sharply apart from their Anglo-American peers. As a member of LULAC, Castañeda worked with the Fair Employment Practices Commission during World War II, investigating employment discrimination against Mexican Americans while providing information for lawsuits that challenged the dominant racial order in Texas (Daniels, 1991, 146-184; Perales, 1948). He also contributed Mexican perspectives to Anglo-dominant Texas history (Castañeda, 1970). Folklorist Américo Paredes' contemporary scholarship was tumbling paradigms. In addition to his better-known works on folklore, his 1939 Poem, "A Sandino" (To Sandino), a tribute to Augusto Sandino, represented an indictment of United States imperialism in Nicaragua and a challenge to contemporary hegemonic historical scholarship (Flor y Canto, 1975). Two years earlier, prominent Latin Americanist Charles E. Chapman of the University of California published the influential text, Republican Hispanic America: A History. He depicted Sandino's actions as "depredations of a bandit" who was afraid to confront the Marines in open battle. Chapman asserted that, "when roads were impassable" in the rainy seasons, he would hide in the woods, but during the dry season he fled to Mexico to avoid capture. Chapman refused to acknowledge that Sandino, vastly outnumbered as he challenged the leading military power of the hemisphere, was engaged in guerrilla activities, or that he found widespread support among neighboring countries, including Mexico. He concluded that, "the intervention in Nicaragua has accomplished at least one thing, however. It has pretty well banished the fears Central America once had of impending United States conquests. It merely behooves the Nicaraguans to avoid 'chronic wrongdoing' - to Europeans and Asiatics, at any rate - and their country is safe" (Chapman, 1937). Paredes challenge was explicit is his challenge to the view of Sandino as bandit in the woods:
Ignacio García's assessment relies on cultural pluralist perspectives, an important but not unchallenged trend in contemporary scholarship, whose current practitioners have been most interested in the middle class "Mexican American Generation." Their most prolific writer, Mario García, considers the most influential activist scholar of the generation, Ernesto Galarza, a "semi" intellectual (Garcia, 1989: 231). Chicana/o scholars recall that Galarza was a labor organizer and author of books, articles, and poetry, who engaged in what he acknowledged as "action-oriented" research. His history of the bracero program, Merchants of Labor, (1964) intent on influencing public policy, offered sympathetic politicians information and arguments that helped them abolish the program. Galarza's socialist writings provided an international vision and a clear understanding and familiarity with conditions among Mexican braceros in the Midwest. Many consider him - rather than assimilationist - the Mexican American scholar who most influenced the subsequent generation of Chicana/o historians. Another influential trend in Chicana/o historical literature, influenced by a narrow geography, adopted internal colonial models, which had gained great popularity in the late 1960's and early 1970's. They were influenced by McWilliams and Galarza, by writers including Oliver Cox and Franz Fanon, and by a number of proponents of internal colonialism. The work was also inspired by anti-colonial struggles against imperialism in the 20th Century. As its early proponents soon discovered, the internal colony suffered from major theoretical drawbacks including a static approach to change, and Midwestern historians found it particularly not applicable, except in agriculture (Willson, 1977). Southwestern historians soon discarded the internal colonial as well, usually without abandoning their early historical and geographical assumptions (Almaguer, 1989; Saragoza, 1987). Lack of inclusiveness of the earliest consciously Chicano writings soon prompted additional challenges. Chicana historians, influenced by feminism, preferred a chronology dating from 1519, which stressed the conquest of Native American women by European men. In addition to its gendered reading, the date also drew attention to mestizas and mestizos ignored by cultural pluralist models which portrayed Mexicans from a European immigrant viewpoint; or internal colonial models, which stressed indigenous cultural elements not compatible with Europeans and their descendants. Meanwhile, postmodernists influenced by Michel Foucaut, Jacques Derrida, and others, added even more diverse peoples and offered possibilities for addressing contemporary dilemmas stemming from historical discourse. But even the new writings offered few theoretical openings for Chicana/o geographic spaces outside the Southwest. Midwestern Chicana/o historical literature commonly accepted
"last of the immigrant" analogies, often with caveats,
or rejected them outright without clearly suggesting alternatives.
The strategy was influenced by chronology, for at least 80% of
published historical literature on the Midwest examines the "immigrant"
generation from the turn of the century to 1933. Interpretive frameworkers adopting European immigrant analogies include Gilbert Cárdenas' tribute to Oscar Handlin's classic, The Uprooted, "Los Desarraigados," ("The Uprooted"). Cárdenas suggests that, "[T]he predominant industrial and other manufacturing related employment and the urban settlement of Mexican immigrants to the Midwest more closely parallel the European immigrant pattern than the earlier patterns of immigration in the Southwest." He further argues that the European immigrant analogy is plausible for the second generation of agricultural workers who traveled each year between Texas and the Midwest: "In many respects, this seasonal labor parallels the movement of European immigrants from the Atlantic Coast to the Midwest" (Cárdenas, 1976: 159-160). Meanwhile, Valerie Mendoza accepts a cultural pluralist paradigm that Mexicans sought a better life and that their desires were largely achieved, despite discrimination (Mendoza, 1994). Vargas agrees that they "held expectations for a better life in the North that were shaped by the culture of consumption and new patterns of leisure activities." He also accepts the view that life was better in the Midwest than either Mexico, where folk society was being disrupted by capitalist intrusion, or Texas, where Mexicans were compelled to accept "second-class status" (Vargas, 1994: 4, 10). The authors agree that despite the hostility they faced as newcomers, racism was less of a hindrance in the Midwest, and that Mexicans could more nearly achieve the status of Europeans. By contrast, Arturo Rosales argues that neither European immigrant nor Southwest-based models can be applied to the Mexican urban experience in the early 20th Century Midwest. European-based perspectives fail because Mexican encountered distinct patterns of discrimination and racism. Southwest-focused models are not applicable because of two factors. First, "the colonized legacy was not as acute and possibly nonexistent." Second, regional origins in Mexico differed. Immigrants to the Southwest tended to come from settings closer to the border, while those who came to the Midwest originated primarily from the Mexican interior. The border people more closely approximated the "folk" culture, while those from the interior were more "Hispanized" and thus better able to adapt, Rosales argues. He adds that, "the symbolism of the hispanic southwest and its established Mexicano populations did not compete or mingle with the Mexican immigrant cultures in the development of the colonias" of the Midwest (Rosales, 1976). Midwestern Chicana/o historical scholarship addressing a chronology later than 1933 remains limited. The most influential urban literature stems from articles by Kerr based on her dissertation, which challenge linear assimilationist historical perspectives. Her important article, "Mexican Chicago," argues that assimilation appeared likely at the end of the 1930's. But it was aborted in subsequent years as a result of rising anti-foreign sentiment in dominant political and popular culture stemming from World War II, the Zoot-Suit Riots and renewed migration to Chicago, capped by Operation Wetback in 1954 (Kerr, 1979). In a more recent essay, Edward Escobar argues on behalf of the applicability of several features of internal colonialism in the Midwest, particular with reference to labor, namely occupational stratification of Mexican workers, their function as a reserve labor force and as a "buffer during times of economic distress" (Escobar, 1987). While many former adherents of internal colonial models have abandoned them, others consider neo-colonialism too important to ignore (Saragoza, 1987; Acuña, 1988). Those who retain an interest in colonial models saw the links, like Américo Paredes 60 years ago, between international and national factors, and the relationship between Mexico and the United States. Several realized the utility of world-systems analysis and did not abandon it after the initial wave of enthusiasm in the 1970's and early-1980's (Almaguer, 1974; Review, 1981). World-systems models have influenced my Midwestern writings since "Perspiring Capitalists," (1981) which examined international dimensions of class formation. Al Norte and other essays on agricultural workers simultaneously discussed international and regional variations in the division of labor. They suggest that a neo-colonial relationship between core and periphery was not a consequence of unequal development, but rather a function of modern industrial capitalism. The core and periphery are symbiotic, appearing simultaneously in different contexts throughout the world. In the case of the 20th Century Midwest, a core-periphery perspective suggests how hired agricultural labor became associated primarily with Mexicans, and how in a relational sense Texas functioned as a semi-periphery between the primary source of production in the Midwest and reproduction in Mexico. World-systems analysis transcends a narrow political economy, as Immanuel Wallerstein has argued, offering a framework to enhance understanding of aspects of culture and identity. He suggests that racial distinctions can be depicted as a function of the axial division of labor between a core and its periphery (Wallerstein, 1991). Conclusion Academics began to produce works of historical interest and value shortly after initial Anglo-Mexicano contacts, and their writings provided information and interpretive frameworks for early Chicana/o writings, the challenges to which marked the birth of a conscious Chicana/o history, which has been constantly challenged from within. Cultural pluralist perspectives have numerous drawbacks, and in the case of the Midwest, continue to focus on assimilation as "incipient." To study Chicana/o history as a regional history of the West or the Southwest has important drawbacks. Many cultural models posit decline in the late 19th Century and contradictorily adopt an assimilationist, cultural pluralist path for Chicana/o history in the early 20th Century. Furthermore, Chicana/o communities have not been confined to the Southwest, and in the late 20th Century are proliferating in the Pacific Northwest, the Great Plains, the Southeast, and Atlantic States. Authors including Gilberto López y Rivas argued a generation ago on the utility of studying Chicana/os as a national minority (López y Rivas, 1973). Comparative regional perspectives make it possible to counter facile generalizations, including a long-popular view that the Midwest offered superior opportunities over Texas, a view which scholars, social workers, teachers, and many parents accepted, based on a cultural pluralist logic. If the Midwest had been superior, why did so few Mexicans remain? Taylor's view of a successful conspiracy by agriculture fails to account for trends in the late 20th Century. But Redfield's model, emphasizing the dialectic between better material conditions accompanied by the disorganizing influence of the urban setting, would offer a more promising avenue for discussion. Furthermore, if the Midwest were superior, why were Mexicans so slow to develop a middle class and why did the numbers remain relatively small a century after the appearance of the first large communities? A global perspective suggests a framework to address aspects of Chicana/o history, particularly in the contexts of Mexican history and international relations transcending the United States-Mexican border. While residents of Texas or California may claim to be more Chicana/o, Midwesterners are more Mexican. As Humphrey, Cárdenas, and others have long observed, even during the so-called Mexican American Generation most Midwestern Mexicans identified themselves as Mexicana, Mexicano, or Mexican, which continues to be the most popular self-identifiers (Davalos, 1993). International, or world-systems frameworks can incorporate the intersections of gender, class, and race. The 1519 date which challenges racialized and gendered paradigms by focusing on mestizas, as well as mestizos, still neglects our African roots. A World Systems perspective, which does not negate 1519, permits an examination of the complexities of race during the long 16th Century. It also allows an examination of different types of colonialism framed within a global historical context. The United States and Mexico were colonies from the moment of European conquest until the late 18th and early 19th Centuries, respectively. With political independence, less formal neo-colonial features continued, as the European core was losing its hold on the Americas. The U.S. conquest of Mexico marked an important shift in the direction of economic and political power between the two countries. The relationship was strengthened in the late 19th Century as the U.S., rather than England or France, gained political sway and economic domination. As part of the industrialization process, Mexicans were first hired by corporations to work on the railroads, in mining and agriculture, not in the United States, but in Mexico. Many employers, including Hearst, Guggenheim, and the Santa Fe railroad, tapped labor sources with which they were familiar in Mexico. They also followed the railroads into the Mexican interior to intensify the transfer of labor, a logical choice given the availability of transportation, dense populations and an available labor reserve. The network of labor migration later expanded and contracted in response to local, regional and international factors. Ford carried the relationship between the two countries a step farther when he experimented with automobile manufacturing in Mexico. He hired Mexican students to help him establish an industrial empire, but they had slim possibilities to achieve status equivalent to what they had in Mexico, further demonstrating limited applicability of assimilationist models. But the project lured Mexicans to the Midwest as industrial workers, who were an expendable labor reserve for employers in the core. In wartime, the network of migration was renewed, expanding unevenly in the second half of the 20th Century. In contemporary history, nation-based models claim that Mexican migration has caused declining wages among United States workers. Rapid out-migration should contribute to increasing wages in Mexico, yet relative and absolute wages of Mexican workers has declined in both countries. As current investigators seeks frameworks to account for geography, chronology, and other issues of interest in the new Chicana/o history, they challenge, adopt, and modify old methodologies and facile generalizations. In their search, they are not confined to the latest trends and ideas. Investigators as diverse as Gamio, Taylor, Cárdenas, and Paredes were discussing and debating about Mexicans as in regional, national, and world-systems contexts long before the articulation of the field. We can find new insights and understandings of the past in predecessors often overlooked or discarded. References Abbott, Edith. The Tenements of Chicago 1908-1935. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1938. Albig, William. "Opinions Concerning Unskilled Mexican Immigrants." Sociology and Social Research, 15 (1930): 62-72. Almaguer, Tomás. "Historical Notes on Chicano Oppression: The Dialectics of Racial and Class Domination in North América." Aztlán, 5 (Spring and Fall, 1974): 27-56. ______. "Ideological Distortions in Recent Chicano Historiography: The Internal Colonial Model and the Chicano Historical Interpretation," Aztlán 18 (1989). Anderson, Esther. "The Beet Sugar Industry of Nebraska as a Response to Geographic Environment." Economic Geography, 1 (October 1925): 372-386. 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