Mexican Americans

2 Pages 564 Words

Article Critique:
In the essay, LULAC, Mexican American Identity, and Civil Rights, the author Mario T. Garcia discusses the demand for civil rights and the end to discrimination for Mexican- Americans. Garcia of the University of California at Santa Barbara, discusses the efforts of the rising middle class to create an organization. Its purpose is to enable Mexican American to win respect of the Anglo majority and smooth their assimilation into American life. In my opinion, the author wrote this essay to give the history of Mexican-Americans achievements over economic, social and political discrimination.
An increase in the economic struggle began in the 1920’s, following World War I. The advancement of agricultural production and capitalism in south Texas, lead to many problems. Texas-born Mexican American ranchers and farmers, as well as sharecroppers found themselves unable to compete with agribusiness. Garcia says “ In their place or alongside of them, came thousands of Mexican immigrants wage workers to pick the crops produced by the new mode of production.
Garcia discusses many issues faced by Mexican Ameicans such as discrimination in public facilities. “ Desiring to be intergrated as first-class citizens, Mexican Americans in LULAC, likw their middle class Afro-American counterparts in the NAACP, struggled against various forms of racial discrimination…. They did not want to be singled out for discrimination or patronization. All they aspired to was equal acces to the rights enjoyed by other Americans. Lulacers believes that Mexican Americans were entitled to first-class citizenship not only under the Constitution but also under guarantees of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848), which ended the Mexican War...”. For example, in the 1940, LULAC protested in San Angelo over the efforts of a new movie threater to segregate Mexicans along with blacks in the balcony. They boycott the theater until segregation ended...