A Historical and Regional Overview of Latinas in the United ... - CUNY

Introduction: A Historical and Regional Overview
Mother and infant, 1949. Courtesy of
Lee (Russell) Photograph Collection,
The Center for American History,
The University of Texas at Austin,
Neg. no. 13918-EF12.
fornia, twenty-four led by the Cannery and Agricultural
Workers Industrial Union. The Los Angeles garment
workers’ strike (1933), the San Antonio pecan shellers’
strike (1938), and the California Sanitary Canning
Company strike (1939) provide examples of urban activism
in the Southwest. In southern California cannery
activists such as Carmen Bernal Escobar negotiated
significant wage increases and benefits as members of
the United Cannery, Agricultural, Packing, and Allied
Workers of America (UCAPAWA/FTA).
Like the daughters of European immigrants, young
Mexican women experienced the lure of U.S. popular
culture. Considerable conflict emerged between daugh-
An employee of La Malinche Tortilla Factory, Corpus Christi,
Texas, 1949. Courtesy of Lee (Russell) Photograph Collection,
The Center for American History, The University of Texas,
Austin, Neg. no. II DF-6.
4
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ters and parents because teenagers wanted to dress
and perhaps behave like their Euro-American peers at
work or like the heroines they encountered in movies
and magazines. Evading traditional chaperonage became
a major pastime for youth. Stories of ditching the
dueña (chaperone) resonate in the memories of Latinas
who came of age between the two world wars.
While youth experienced the lure of Hollywood, a
considerable number faced the specter of deportation.
From 1931 to 1934 more than one-third of the Mexican
people in the United States (more than 500,000) were
either deported (summarily taken off the streets and
transported across the border) or repatriated (leaving
on their own, frequently under the threat of deportation),
even though most were native U.S. citizens. Discrimination
and segregation in housing, employment,
schools, and public recreation further served to remind
youth of their second-tier citizenship. A resident of the
San Joaquin Valley of California put it this way: “I remember
. . . signs all over that read ‘no Mexicans allowed.’
”
Operating small neighborhood businesses, the Mexican
American middle class at times made common
cause with their working-class customers, but in other
instances they desired social distance. Members of the
League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) did
both simultaneously. Envisioning themselves as patriotic
“white” Americans pursuing their rights (the other
white group), LULACers restricted membership to
English-speaking U.S. citizens. Taking a page from the
early NAACP, LULAC stressed the leadership of an “educated
elite” who would lift their less fortunate neighbors
by their bootstraps. From LULAC’s inception
women participated in numerous grassroots service
projects and quickly assumed leadership positions in