The early 1900's. In 1900, the total Mexican-American population was estimated to be between 380,000 and 560,000. The early 1900's saw a sharp increase in the number of Mexican immigrants as economic conditions in Mexico worsened. In 1910, the Mexican Revolution broke out. This conflict plummeted Mexico into years of political and economic chaos. The revolution also sparked a tremendous wave of immigration that continued until the 1930's.
Between 1910 and 1930, more than 680,000 Mexicans came to live in the United States. During the 1920's, Mexicans accounted for more than 10 per cent of all immigration to the United States. Most Mexicans fleeing the Mexican Revolution settled in the Southwest, where they took jobs in factories and mines or on railroads, farms, and ranches.
In 1917, the United States entered World War I (1914-1918), and thousands of Mexican Americans volunteered for service in the U.S. armed forces. The wartime economy also provided new opportunities for Mexican Americans. Some were able to move into better-paying, skilled occupations in construction and in the war industries.
Despite these gains, Mexican Americans continued to suffer discrimination in jobs, wages, and housing. To fight these conditions, they organized labor unions and took part in strikes to obtain higher wages and better working conditions. Mexican Americans also formed civic groups to deal with their problems. In 1929, the major groups merged to form the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC).
Immigration restrictions and growing discrimination. In 1917, the United States passed a law requiring all adult immigrants to be able to read and write at least one language. In 1924, the U.S. Bureau of Immigration established the Border Patrol to control illegal immigration across the Mexican-U.S. border. Strict enforcement of the 1917 adult literacy law led to a decline in Mexican immigration in the late 1920's. This decline continued through the Great Depression--the economic hard times of the 1930's--when only about 33,000 Mexicans entered the United States.
The 1930's brought heightened discrimination against Mexican Americans. Many people viewed them as a drain on the American economy because they held many low-paying jobs while other, "true" Americans went unemployed. In response to such angry views, the U.S. and Mexican governments cosponsored a repatriation program that returned thousands of Mexican immigrants to Mexico.
The program was intended to encourage people to return voluntarily to Mexico, but thousands were deported against their wishes. Many of these immigrants had lived in the United States for more than 10 years. Their American-born children were U.S. citizens. In some cases, adults who were deported were U.S. citizens who were mistakenly or intentionally forced to leave their country. In California especially, many Mexican Americans were placed in detention camps, where they were mistreated by government officials. Of the approximately 3 million people of Mexican descent living in the United States in 1930, about 500,000 had been repatriated by 1939. The repatriation program created much anger and resentment among Mexican Americans. Family relationships were often strained because young people who had been born in the United States did not want to go to Mexico.
In addition to the humiliation of repatriation, Mexican Americans suffered other forms of discrimination. Many restaurants refused to serve Mexican Americans. Public swimming pools, rest rooms, drinking fountains, and theaters were often segregated. Mexican-American schoolchildren were often forbidden to speak Spanish in schools and were sometimes punished severely for doing so.
Effects of World War II. During World War II (1939-1945), more than 300,000 Mexican Americans served in the U.S. armed forces. Their courage and determination helped them earn proportionally more military honors than any other ethnic group. Many Mexican-American veterans returned from the war with new-found skills. Unwilling to go back to living with the pressures and barriers of discrimination, they formed a number of social, political, and service organizations, including the Mexican American Political Association (MAPA) and the American GI Forum of the United States. Such organizations have helped Mexican Americans fight poverty, lack of education, and discrimination.
World War II had renewed the demand for immigrant labor. In 1942, the U.S. and Mexican governments developed the bracero program. Under the program, Mexican braceros (day laborers) could enter the United States legally for seasonal agricultural work and for work on U.S. railroads. Bracero programs were in effect from 1942 to 1947 and from 1951 to 1964. The programs provided almost 5 million Mexicans with temporary work in the United States. The braceros often worked under harsh conditions for unsympathetic employers, but they took the work because they were unable to find jobs in Mexico.
Growing numbers of newcomers. The mid-1900's saw a great influx of Hispanic people into the United States. These new arrivals included not only Mexicans, but large numbers of Puerto Ricans and Cubans, too.
Mexican immigration to the United States--both legal and illegal--climbed steeply during the 1950's. The U.S. government developed a program to curb illegal immigration. The program was highly publicized in order to encourage undocumented immigrants to leave voluntarily. It resulted in the deportation of a total of 3,800,000 undocumented immigrants. It did little, however, to control illegal immigration, which continued to increase from the 1960's through the 1980's.
Puerto Rican migration. The mid-1900's also brought the first great wave of people from Puerto Rico. This island had been a U.S. possession since 1898, and its people had been U.S. citizens since 1917. As citizens, Puerto Ricans may enter the United States without restriction. Between 1940 and 1960, more than 545,000 Puerto Ricans came to the U.S. mainland to look for jobs. By 1960, almost 70 percent of Puerto Ricans living on the mainland had settled in East Harlem in New York City. New York City has continued to have the largest Puerto Rican population of any mainland U.S. city, with about a third of all Puerto Ricans on the mainland living in the city.
For many years, Puerto Ricans have remained one of the poorest groups in the United States. Unemployment among Puerto Ricans is about 50 percent higher than it is among the general population, and the poverty rate is almost four times higher.
Cuban immigration to the United States picked up sharply during the late 1950's, as a result of increasing political turmoil in Cuba. Until the mid-1950's, only a few thousand Cubans came to the United States each year. But during the late 1950's and early 1960's, the number of Cuban immigrants increased dramatically. In 1959, Cuban revolutionary Fidel Castro came to power. He announced the restructuring of Cuban society. Many middle- and upper-class Cubans found Castro's plans threatening to their way of life. Between 1959 and late 1962, about 200,000 anti-Castro Cubans immigrated to the United States.
In October 1962, commercial air flights between Cuba and the United States were suspended. Nonetheless, about 50,000 Cubans entered the United States between late 1962 and 1965. Many of these people sailed secretly from Cuba in small boats, some of which were apprehended by the Cuban navy before they reached the United States. In 1965, the United States and Cuban governments agreed to set up an airlift between Cuba and Miami. The airlift brought about 250,000 Cubans into the United States between 1966 and 1973.
Until 1994, the United States welcomed Cuban immigrants as victims of an oppressive regime. Many of the first Cubans to flee Castro's dictatorship in the early 1960's were from wealthy families and were well educated. The U.S. government granted asylum to these people and offered federal help to qualified applicants in finding homes and in making job contacts. Most later Cuban immigrants were relatives of the first group or were poor people looking for work.
A major influx of Cuban immigrants was the arrival in 1980 of the Marielitos. Numbering about 125,000, the Marielitos were a group that the Cuban government wanted out of Cuba. They included many unskilled workers, criminals, and mentally ill people. These people were put aboard boats at the Cuban port of Mariel and sent to Miami. The U.S. government allowed the Marielitos to enter the United States, though U.S. officials had not expected such large numbers of people and were at first unaware of the presence of criminals on board the boats. Some of the criminals were placed in U.S. prisons. Many of them were rehabilitated and released. A few were returned to Cuba.
In 1994, thousands of Cubans set out for southern Florida on small boats and rafts to escape poverty in Cuba. But soon after the influx began, U.S. President Bill Clinton announced the United States would not accept any more of the refugees. This policy was designed to avoid the cost of settling large numbers of refugees in Florida. Many of the Cubans were stopped at sea by U.S. ships and taken to a U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay on Cuba's coast.
Nearly two-thirds of all Cuban Americans live in Florida. More Cuban Americans live in Miami than in any other U.S. city. Large numbers of Cubans also live in suburban towns outside Miami and in Tampa, on Florida's west coast. Although the Little Havana section of Miami remains the center of the Cuban-American population, many Cubans have now moved into the city's more affluent neighborhoods. Some of Miami's most successful businesses are owned and operated by Cuban Americans. New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago also have significant Cuban populations.
Cuban Americans face many of the same problems that trouble other minority groups, though to a lesser degree. In the 1980's, the level of educational achievement among Cuban Americans matched the national average. The unemployment and poverty rates of Cuban Americans are much lower than those of other Hispanic groups.
Recent Hispanic immigrants. People from Latin America continue to immigrate in large numbers to the United States. In the 1980's, Hispanics accounted for more than a third of all legal immigration to the United States. For many, the United States represents opportunities unavailable in their homelands. Most desire to work hard to improve the lives of their families.
From the 1970's to the early 1990's, large numbers of Hispanic immigrants came from war-torn countries in Central America, including El Salvador and Nicaragua. Many of these immigrants were children and teen-agers whose parents had been killed or had disappeared. Some U.S. citizens felt that Central Americans fleeing military conflict should be granted political asylum in the United States. However, the U.S. government maintained that most of these immigrants had been motivated by economic, not political, concerns. Therefore, they were not entitled to the special treatment given political refugees under U.S. immigration law. Many of the immigrants from Central America were placed in large detention camps until they could be relocated or returned to their homelands.
Hispanic Americans today
A rapidly growing minority. A high rate of immigration and a high birth rate have combined to make Hispanic Americans one of the fastest-growing minority groups in the United States. Between 1980 and 1990, the Hispanic population of the United States increased five times faster than the total population. Many experts predict that Hispanics will be the nation's largest minority group by the mid-2020's.
Some non-Hispanics in the United States fear that the country's rapidly growing Hispanic population will not adopt the language, customs, and viewpoint of the dominant, English-speaking culture. Some of these people fear that their way of life will be replaced by the "foreign ways" of Hispanic Americans. Others worry that a large Spanish-speaking minority will become a permanent underclass, locked out of economic advancement by a lack of fluency in English. Many historians and sociologists discount such fears. They point to the many immigrant groups that have become part of American culture. They also note that except for recent immigrants, most Hispanic Americans can speak English.
Nevertheless, language has become an increasingly controversial issue in some states with large Spanish-speaking populations. By the early 1990's, about 20 states had passed laws making English the states' official language. Some people support the passage of an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would make English the official language of the United States.
An increased demand among Hispanic Americans for Spanish-language media led to the development of two national Spanish-language television networks. In addition, more than 370 U.S. radio stations broadcast in Spanish in the 1990's--about seven times the number of Spanish-language stations in operation during the 1960's. The number of Hispanic newspapers, magazines, and journals published in the United States also increased dramatically.
Political developments. Hispanics are among the fastest-growing U.S. minority groups. But their political influence has increased at a much slower pace.
Until the 1960's, discrimination at the polls discouraged many Hispanics from registering to vote. Some states required the payment of a poll tax before a person was allowed to vote. The tax was intended to keep Hispanics, blacks, and other minorities--many of whom were too poor to afford the tax--from voting. In areas with large Hispanic populations, voting district boundaries were often drawn to scatter the Hispanic voters over several districts. This practice, called gerrymandering, held down the percentage of Hispanic voters within any one district.
Expanding influence. During the 1960's, four Mexican Americans won election to Congress and became champions of civil rights. They were Senator Joseph Montoya of New Mexico and Representatives Eligio de la Garza and Henry B. Gonzalez of Texas and Edward R. Roybal of California. In 1965, Congress enacted the Voting Rights Act, which outlawed the poll tax.
President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed several Hispanic Americans to high government posts during the 1960's. For example, Vicente T. Ximenes became chairman of the President's Cabinet Committee on Mexican-American Affairs. Johnson made Hector P. Garcia a member of the United States delegation to the United Nations and appointed Raul H. Castro United States ambassador to El Salvador.
The Chicano movement. In spite of the success of a growing number of Hispanic Americans, many others became more resentful about their problems. Among Mexican Americans in particular, such feelings found expression in the Chicano, or "brown power," movement, which was founded in the 1960's. Although the origin of the word Chicano is uncertain, some Mexican Americans have considered the term a negative label for their ethnic group. But by founding the Chicano movement, young Mexican Americans gave the term a meaning that suggested ethnic pride.
One of the foremost Hispanic Americans to reflect this new ethnic pride was Cesar Chavez, a labor leader who began to organize California grape pickers in 1962. In 1963, Reies Lopez Tijerina founded the Alianza Federal de Mercedes (Federal Alliance of Land Grants) in New Mexico. This group fought to win compensation for descendants of families whose lands had been seized illegally. Another leader was Rodolfo Gonzales, who founded the Crusade for Justice in Denver in 1965. This group worked to provide social services and to develop job opportunities for Mexican Americans. In 1970, Jose Angel Gutierrez helped establish La Raza Unida, a political party based in Texas.
Despite these events, many Hispanics still felt excluded from the political process. Voter registration continued to lag because many Hispanics believed voting could not effectively change their lives.
Since 1980, Hispanic attitudes toward politics have changed. Voter registration drives added hundreds of thousands of Hispanics to the rolls. Political activists challenged gerrymandering in a number of lawsuits. The federal courts agreed that voting district boundaries had been purposely drawn to split up Hispanic communities. The courts ordered that the district lines be redrawn to better represent established communities. With the new boundaries in place, more candidates supported by Hispanics were elected to office.
In 1980, there were six Hispanic Americans serving in the U.S. Congress. By the late 1990's, that number had increased to 20. In addition, hundreds of Hispanic Americans were elected as state officials, mayors, county and municipal officials, and school board members. These officials included former Miami mayor Maurice Ferre, of Puerto Rican descent, the first Hispanic mayor of a large U.S. city; former mayor of San Antonio Henry G. Cisneros, the first Mexican-American mayor of a major U.S. city; Xavier Suarez, Miami's first Cuban-born mayor; Mayor Federico F. Pena of Denver; and Governor Bob Martinez of Florida. Despite these gains, however, Hispanic Americans still accounted for less than 2 percent of U.S. elected officials in the late 1990's.
In 1988, Lauro Cavazos became the first Hispanic Cabinet member when President Ronald Reagan appointed him secretary of education. Reagan's successor, President George Bush, kept Cavazos in this post. Cavazos remained secretary of education until 1990. Other presidential appointments since 1980 include Katherine Ortega, U.S. treasurer under Reagan; Manuel Lujan, Jr., interior secretary under Bush; Henry G. Cisneros, secretary of housing and urban development under President Bill Clinton; and Federico F. Pena, secretary of transportation and secretary of energy under Clinton. In 1990, Antonia C. Novello became the nation's first Hispanic surgeon general.
Education. For many years, the educational achievements of most Hispanic-American students have not equaled those of non-Hispanic students. Since 1980, Hispanic Americans have made slight gains. In 1980, only 44 percent of Hispanic Americans age 25 and older were high school graduates. The 1990 U.S. census showed that, by 1990, 53 percent of Hispanic Americans age 25 and older graduated from high school. Despite this modest increase, the dropout rate remained almost double the dropout rate of non-Hispanic students.
The number of Hispanic Americans who have completed college has risen slightly since 1980. Still, fewer than 10 percent of Hispanic Americans are college graduates, compared with more than 20 percent of other Americans. With more and more jobs requiring a college degree, Hispanic business and education leaders are concerned about high dropout rates and low college attendance among Hispanic young people.
Discrimination continues to plague many Hispanic-American students. Studies have shown that Hispanic students have often been assigned to classes for low achievers, forced to repeat grades, or classified as mentally handicapped because they do not speak English well or because of other cultural differences. More Hispanic students attended segregated schools in the late 1980's than in the late 1960's.
One of the earliest programs designed to improve public education for Hispanic students was bilingual education. Since 1968, the U.S. government has funded bilingual programs for students who do not speak English as their first language. In most bilingual programs serving Hispanics, students are taught in Spanish in such basic subjects as mathematics and science. Meanwhile, they study English as a second language. When they are ready, they transfer to classes taught only in English. The goal is to prevent students from falling behind in basic subjects while they master English.
Since it began, bilingual education has been highly controversial. Critics voice concern that bilingual programs do not help students learn English thoroughly, or that the programs encourage students to rely too much on Spanish. Supporters argue that bilingual education has never received enough support. They claim that lack of funding and lack of college-level teacher-training programs have hindered such education. Studies of the effectiveness of bilingual education have found either positive effects or no effect upon the educational achievement of students.
Hispanic leaders support the hiring of more Hispanic teachers for Spanish-speaking students. Such teachers tend to be more sensitive to the linguistic and cultural background of Hispanic students. Leaders also call for improvements in English-language courses and counseling services for Hispanic students. Some schools have developed dropout prevention programs, career guidance programs, and multicultural education programs aimed at providing better educational opportunities for Hispanic students.
Many educators believe that more funding for school loans and more flexible college admissions requirements are needed to raise college attendance levels among Hispanics. College scholarships are offered by several Hispanic-American organizations, including the American GI Forum of the United States, the League of United Latin American Citizens, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, and the National Council of La Raza.
Employment. Low education levels, poor English skills, discrimination, and the continued immigration of unskilled workers have contributed to high unemployment among Hispanic Americans. Since the early 1970's, the unemployment rate among Hispanics has been about 50 percent higher than among non-Hispanics. The median income of Hispanics has also been consistently lower than that of non-Hispanics.
By 1990, 28 percent of Hispanic families lived in poverty, while about 13 percent of non-Hispanic families were impoverished. Public funding to help the poor find jobs was cut during the 1980's, worsening employment problems in the Hispanic community.
Although Hispanic Americans experienced many economic problems in the 1980's, the number of Hispanic-owned businesses increased during the period. By the end of the decade, Hispanic-owned companies represented more than 2 percent of all U.S. firms.
Immigration. Immigration rates among Hispanic groups in the United States have varied widely. Emigration from Mexico has remained steady since the 1950's. In the 1980's, Mexicans continued to form the largest group of legal immigrants to the United States. Unknown thousands of people from Mexico also enter the United States illegally each year. An estimated 21/4 million undocumented Mexican immigrants were living illegally in the United States during the early 1990's.
The migration from Puerto Rico reached its height in the 1940's and 1950's. But many Puerto Ricans still come each year to seek jobs or to settle near relatives.
Cuban immigration has dropped dramatically from the levels of the 1960's and 1970's. In 1986, President Reagan announced that only long-term political prisoners in Cuba and close relatives of Cuban Americans would be allowed to enter the United States. He also stated that U.S. visas would no longer be granted to Cubans seeking to enter the United States from other countries.
During the 1980's, Congress struggled to find a way to stop the flow of thousands of people who enter the country illegally each year. After years of study and debate, Congress finally passed the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, which became effective in 1987. The act was one of the most sweeping efforts to halt illegal immigration in U.S. history.
Unlike the repatriation programs of the 1930's and 1950's, the new law did not call for mass deportations. Instead, it offered legal status to undocumented immigrants who had lived continuously in the United States since before Jan. 1, 1982. The law enabled 3.1 million previously illegal immigrants--most of them Hispanics--to obtain legal status. It also allowed temporary agricultural workers to enter the United States during harvest season. The law also imposed penalties on employers who knowingly hired undocumented immigrants. Several studies have shown, however, that many employers find the law difficult to understand and even harder to apply. Some people questioned the effectiveness of the act, pointing out that it even may have encouraged the unlawful entry of relatives of those who obtained legal status.
Contributor: Homer D. C. Garcia, Ph.D., Prof. of Sociology, Baylor Univ.