History of Mexican Americans

Some firms, like Halleck, Peachy & Billings, gained popular reputations as "friends to the Mexicans" for helping the Californios navigate the new American court system, but most land lawyers used the situation to their advantage, drawing out the cases and charging exorbitant fees for their services.

Pablo de la Guerra, a Santa Barbara landowner, asserted his political influence as a state senator and then lieutenant governor to vocally critique the American legal system, which treated Mexicans as a "conquered and inferior race".

In September of that year, San Elizario District Judge Charles Howard sought to charge collection fees from Mexicans, Tejanos, and Tiguas when they harvested from local salt beds.

In El Paso, which experienced a massive influx of white American migrants to the region after the completion of the Southern Pacific railway line, there was a widespread retrenchment of racial animosity.

[131] For U.S.-born Mexican-Americans, the first decade of the 20th century was defined largely by legalistic discrimination, including the creation of segregated schools for Mexican American children (where they were severely underserved and mistreated),[149][150] mysterious and unexplained "jail suicides", and a significant number of lynchings.

[163] Armed conflict broke out in northern Mexico, led by Madero, Pascual Orozco, and Pancho Villa, and with support from portions of the middle class, the peasantry, and organized labor,[164] Díaz was forced out.

Wealthy landowner Venustiano Carranza formed the "Constitutionalist" political faction, and with military forces under the leadership of Álvaro Obregón, played an important part in defeating Huerta.

[174] The eugenics-influenced Dillingham Commission argued for drastic reductions in the number of immigrants to the United States,[175] while academics such as Charles Davenport claimed racial "deficiencies" were the root of violence and poverty.

[202] In 1917, the U.S. Public Health Service also implemented invasive medical inspections at the border (where men and boys would be stripped naked and examined for "defective" anatomy - including large breasts or small genitalia - and sprayed with chemical agents to be "disinfected").

[271] These segregated camps brought together Mexican American families from various communities, which provided them with the opportunity to organize and discuss many of the main issues of the day, including the harsh working conditions within the agricultural sector.

[324] Women played a hugely important role during World War II, entering the industrial workforce in record numbers to fill crucial manufacturing positions left empty by the departing soldiers.

[330] One of these organizations, the Spanish-American Mothers and Wives Association of Tucson, Arizona, sought to roll bandages, raise money for a veterans center for after the war's end, and write letters to help the boys fight their "internal battle of loneliness".

[330] In late-1942, California Governor Culbert Olson, who was facing a tough re-election battle against future incumbent Earl Warren, sent a memo to Los Angeles County's law enforcement agencies, ordering them to launch a vicious campaign against the city's youth gangs.

[332] Under these orders, the office of the Los Angeles County District Attorney decided to use the August 2, 1942 death of José Gallardo Díaz, a Mexican American youth, as a test case to launch the new war against juvenile delinquency by turning the investigation into a major media event.

[337] Judge Fricke also permitted the chief of the Foreign Relations Bureau of the Los Angeles sheriff's office, E. Duran Ayres, to testify as an "expert witness" that Mexicans as a community had a "blood-thirst" and a "biological predisposition" to crime and killing, citing the supposed human sacrifice practiced by their Aztec ancestors.

[356] For the next ten straight days, the Navy sailors went into Chavez Ravine, Downtown LA, and even East Los Angeles, dragging, beating, and stripping naked every Zoot suited boy out in public - some as young as twelve and thirteen years old.

[370][371] Furthermore, many Mexican American veterans complained about consistently late tuition disbursements, which forced them to drop out of their job training and university programs, and reports of "outright racism within the VA" were common.

The first, Mendez v. Westminster (1947), involved Gonzalo Méndez, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Mexico, and his Puerto Rican wife Felicitas, who joined four Mexican American families to sue four Orange County school districts.

"[400] Ten Mexican Americans were awarded the Medal of Honor for their valor in the Korean War;[400] they included: Joe R. Baldonado, Victor H. Espinoza, Eduardo C. Gomez, Edward Gómez, Ambrosio Guillen, Rodolfo P. Hernandez, Benito Martinez, Eugene Arnold Obregon, Mike C. Pena, and Joseph C.

During his time on council, he took a series of important positions, including: fighting against an ordinance which required communists to register with the police;[416] opposing the tearing down of the Mexican American neighborhood of Chavez Ravine to build Dodger Stadium;[417] and pushing for the establishment of a Fair Employment Practices Commission for the city.

[424] Calling themselves La Raza, Chicano activists sought to affirm Mexican Americans' racial distinctiveness and working-class status, create a pro-barrio movement, and assert that "brown is beautiful.

[243] The bill also created the temporary protected status (TPS visa), lifted the English testing process for naturalization for permanent residents over 55, and eliminated exclusion of homosexuals as "sexual deviants".

[437] Unable to find work in this changing economy, drug markets became the only source of survival for these displaced workers, as the rising prices for crack cocaine became a way for desperate youth to make money.

[438] Traditional American pathways away from a "gangster lifestyle", such as marriage, family, and stable employment, were largely unavailable to these youth, and in many black, Chicano, and immigrant communities, gang influence emerged as "a dominant informal control and socialization force".

[514][515] As a result, many of the neighborhoods' taquerias, bakeries, bars, and auto mechanic shops were replaced with luxury condominiums, organic ice cream stores, international art galleries, and upscale cafes.

In 2015, the activist Bamby Salcedo disrupted the opening session of the National LGBTQ Task Force's annual conference to protest the white LGBT community's continued ignorance regarding violence against transgender women of color.

[555] During the 2018 midterm elections, Trump politicized the Central American refugee crisis, claiming "terrorists" and "gang members" were secretly hiding alongside women and children in order to gain entry into the United States.

[576] According to some scholars, the intense activist energy during the Trump presidency motivated young Mexican Americans to adopt a political identity of "neo-Chicanismo", defined by ethnic pride, cultural heritage and expression, and protecting immigrants' rights.

[586] Shortly before the attack, the terrorist posted his "manifesto" to the online message board 8chan, where he wrote about the "Latino invasion of Texas" and detailed a plan to separate America by race, claiming "white people were being replaced by foreigners.

[601] Activists within the community, however, expressed frustration that in the years leading up to the 2020–21 United States racial unrest, police killings of Latino boys and men had largely been met with sustained national indifference.