Anti-Mexican sentiment
Anti-Mexican sentiment is prejudice, fear, discrimination, xenophobia, racism, or hatred towards Mexico, its people, and their culture.
Its origins in the United States date back to the Mexican and American Wars of Independence and the struggle over the disputed Southwestern territories.
That struggle would eventually lead to the Mexican–American War in which the defeat of Mexico caused a great loss of territory.
In the 20th century, anti-Mexican sentiment continued to grow after the Zimmermann Telegram, an incident between the Mexican government and the German Empire during World War I.
William D. Carrigan and Clive Webb estimate that between 1848 and 1928, at least 597 Mexicans were lynched,[7] of which 64 in areas that lacked a formal judicial system.
[9] Law enforcement conducted a considerable amount of these murders; therefore, the malefactors seldom stood trial for lynching Mexican people.
Mexicans were lynched for various reasons such as job competition, speaking Spanish too loudly in a public setting, romantically advancing towards white women, reminding the Anglo system of the cultural difference, and much more.
[14] The Mexican community (most having been on their land since before the Mex/American war and granted citizenship after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed) has been the subject of widespread immigration raids.
During the Great Depression, the US government sponsored Mexican Repatriation programs, which were intended to pressure people to move to Mexico, but many were deported against their will.
The worst of the riots occurred on June 9, 1943 during which 5,000 servicemen and residents gathered in Downtown Los Angeles and attacked Mexicans, only some of whom were zoot suiters.
That helped lay the foundation for the landmark Brown v Board of Education, a case that ended racial segregation in the public schools.
The Hernandez v. Texas ruling declared that illegal Mexicans and other cultural groups in the United States are entitled to equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment of the US Constitution.
The three were kidnapped, stripped, hogtied, and had their feet burned before they were cut loose and told to run back to Mexico.
The three made it back across the border to Agua Prieta, Sonora, where the local police notified the Mexican consulate in Douglas, which lodged formal complaints against George Hanigan and his two sons.
[28] George Hanigan died of a heart attack at the age of 67 on March 22, 1977, one week before he and his sons were scheduled to go on trial.
[44] His white fiancée and the mother of his two children, Crystal Dillman, was quoted as saying of the four teenagers, "I think they might get off, because Luis was an illegal Mexican and these are 'all-American boys' on the football team who get good grades, or whatever they're saying about them.
"[45] Brandon Piekarsky, 17, and Derrick Donchak, 19, received sentences of 7 to 23 months for their roles in the murder of 25-year-old Mexican immigrant.
[47] In 2008, Rodolfo Olmedo, a Mexican, was dragged down by a group of men shouting anti-Mexican epithets and bashed over the head with a wooden stick on the street outside his home, the first of 11 suspected attacks that year motivated by anti-Hispanic bias in the neighborhood of Port Richmond, Staten Island.
[52] Organizations including neo-Nazi, white supremacist, American nationalist, and nativist groups have all been recently known to intimidate, harass, and advocate the use of violence against Mexicans.
