Writing Assignment #1 After the civil war and the Westward Expansion the U.S. fell into an economic depression. After these events people started realizing how bad in shape the U.S was. There was not enough education, not enough jobs, racism was still going on in some places, child labor was in effect, women were not having equal rights with the men, etc… Realizing how bad in shape the U.S. was, people began to form Progressive movements known as reforms. Reforms were groups of people who worked to get the vote for women’s equality, child labor laws, safe working environments and so on. The changes these reforms were making, they were only aimed for currents citizens. Once Mexican immigrants came into the picture it was very difficult, and the Mexicans weren’t getting treated the same as others. They were what we call Outcast in modern day.
In the essays “The Mexican Problem” by David Montejano, “The Acculuration of Young Mexican American Women” by Vicki L. Cruz; and “Race, Gender, Class and Immage in the Chicana Labor Struggle” by Irene Ledesma. Montejano is explaining how the Mexican immigrants coming to the U.S. specifically in Texas are affecting the U.S. citizen’s (reforms) Progressive movement.. Cruz’s essay is reliving the life of 13 Mexican Female immigrants describing how they lived when they first came to the U.S. and how they acculturated into U.S. territory and soon got along with Americans. Ledesma is talking about how Mexican Immigrants are being treated because of their physical appearances and the struggle they had with jobs because since they’re not American, they can take the American Jobs. He talks about the Chicana strikers and how they demonstrated their power for labor justice.
The authors explain some of the issues Americans had towards Mexican Americans and Mexican Immigrants. For example Cruz states that “The Anglo-American population of El Paso generally viewed immigrants as an alien force.”((Ledesma, p. 395) Immigrants were probably referred to Aliens, because aliens are known to be invaders and take peoples resources. In this case, resources are jobs and land. Since many immigrants were looking for jobs, El Paso’s economy would let the immigrants work in “low, segmented, and stratified jobs.” (Ledesma, p. 395) Since these were only the men, woman never had the chance to work, so they started striking to get justice for jobs. Many Americans such as politicians, educators and concerned citizens were manipulating their people, saying how “Mexicans were the cause of political corruption and fraud, the destruction of homogenous rural communities, labor problems, crime and disease” (Montejano, p. 172). Anglo societies viewed Mexicans as blacks because of the skin color, even though Mexicans were whiter than but not as white as Anglos. Arguments on how Mexicans should be kept out of the industry and in the fields appeared because many saw them as farm laborers only. Although