El Norte

by Carrie Gibson

  For those remaining in the United States, discrimination continued. The situation was so serious that in the early 1940s the Mexican ambassador Francisco Castillo Nájera was forced to write about incidents on a regular basis to the secretary of state, Cordell Hull. One letter cited complaints from people in Azusa (then Azuza), California, where “discrimination has been shown against Mexicans by the owners of the theater and pool of the town in question.” Mexicans were not allowed to use either. The Mexican consulate’s attempts to stop this were fruitless, and Nájera described the reasons set out by the mayor as not “sufficient to justify humiliating treatment for Mexicans.” Local discrimination was now an international issue.42 In denying the charges of racism leveled against the state, the governor of California, Culbert L. Olson, wrote to the U.S. secretary of state, Sumner Welles, in 1941, claiming, “I safely say there does not exist any sentiment of racial prejudice against the Mexican population of California as such.” He went on to assert that the “very large Mexican population” in Southern California “has received equal consideration” with regard to state policy and the law.43

  With the onset of the Second World War, good relations between the United States and its southern neighbor took on a new level of importance, in geopolitics and economics, as there was an immediate need for workers. Relations and security along the border were deemed crucial as well. Some people feared that without the help of Mexicans, Axis troops would be able to land in Mexico and attack the United States from the south.44 Some border communities went out of their way to demonstrate their patriotism or support for the United States in this period. For instance, in Sonoran border towns there were celebrations on the Fourth of July.45

  Although hundreds of thousands of Mexican-Americans were volunteering for the war, anti-Mexican rancor continued to flare. Los Angeles was the starting point of a series of attacks that would spread throughout other big cities in 1943; their targets were Mexicans or Mexican-Americans who were members of a youthful subculture: the pachucos. These California teenagers had their own language, Caló, which drew from Spanish and English, and angered adults and officials who used both languages; they were stumped by its vocabulary.46 In the same way that Caló was considered to be slang, the pachucos were likewise considered to be thugs. Anglos and even middle-class Mexican-Americans often described the boys and young men as gang members, and if that indeed was the case, then they would be branded “criminals” whether or not they had ever been arrested. Some of the young men were Mexican, but many were Mexican-American U.S. citizens.47

  The pachucos came to public attention in 1942, when members of the 38th Street gang were put on trial for the murder of José Díaz, whose body was found in an abandoned quarry. In the hunt for suspects, some six hundred Mexican-Americans had been rounded up and questioned.48 During the trial in what became known as the Sleepy Lagoon case, an overexcited press referred to the men as “baby gangsters.” In the end, twenty-two men—all but one of Mexican origin—were indicted. Five were charged with assault, and twelve convicted of first- or second-degree murder and imprisoned. A Sleepy Lagoon Defense Committee was formed for their appeal and by 1944 the convictions were reversed and the cases were dismissed, owing to lack of evidence.

  Pachucos, male and female, now in the public spotlight, faced criticism over their sartorial signature: the zoot suit, which incorporated high-waisted trousers that flared out around the knee before tapering down to the ankle, accompanied by a broad-shouldered jacket, and topped with a wide-brimmed hat. Female zoot-suiters wore a similar oversize jacket, but with a short skirt and heavy makeup.49 This was, in many ways, simply the vanity of youth and the rebellion of adolescence, but a significant segment of the Anglo community did not find this peacockery pretty, chastising pachucos for using excessive fabric during a time of shortages and rationing.50

  On the evening of June 3, 1943, a fight broke out between some sailors and young Mexican-Americans. The genesis of the disagreement is disputed, but there was no mistaking what began the following night, as some two hundred sailors and marines hailed a flotilla of taxis and set off in search of pachucos.51 Known as the Zoot Suit Riots, the ensuing brawls between the servicemen and the Mexicans lasted for more than a week. Men in zoot suits were the targets, though others who looked “Mexican,” and even black men in regular clothing, were beaten up, as enraged sailors jumped out of the cabs and grabbed men on the street or even yanked them off buses. Those wearing the suits were often stripped of them in public, and left almost naked, lying on the street. The police did little to quell the fracases, which caused fear and panic throughout the city, especially in Mexican neighborhoods, leaving hundreds battered and humiliated.52 Vicente Morales had been enjoying music by the Lionel Hampton Band at the Orpheum Theatre on June 7 when a group of white sailors began shoving and insulting him. Morales recalled that “about eight sailors got me outside of the theater and they started beating me up. It happened so fast, I passed out. I woke up with a cracked rib, a broken nose, black and blue all over.”53

  The Mexican consul in Los Angeles alerted the ambassador in Washington and a minister in Mexico City about the riots. Likewise, the American consul in Monterrey, Henry S. Waterman, hurried to effect damage control after the editor of El Porvenir ran a story with the headline “Attack Against Mexicans in Los Angeles by Sailors and Soldiers.” Waterman later told the secretary of state that he had tried to explain to the editor that the targeted young men were “usually hangers-on at dance halls, pool rooms and worse, and were usually considered ne’erdo-wells,” insisting that the suits “were worn by many of the shiftless young men, without regard to racial origins.” In Los Angeles, Waterman claimed, some of the zoot-suiters just happened to be of Mexican origin.54 Waterman blamed the Associated Press for “having sent out such a distorted account of the riots, making them appear as a racial riot.”55

  The Mexican and Spanish-language press in the United States covered the riots as well. Some reports were unsympathetic to the victims, with old class and color prejudices on display.56 La Prensa more or less blamed the young men, claiming that the pachucos were “a real affront to our country.”57 Another paper, El Nacional in Mexico City, wrote that the “sowers of hate will not destroy the Good Neighborliness, nor divert either of the two countries in their common effort against the Axis.”58 Not everyone in Mexico was convinced by the official U.S. interpretation of the riots, and students at the National Autonomous University of Mexico held a demonstration to protest the poor response by Mexico’s government. A flyer was distributed that blamed the riots on “Hearst interests, the Ku Klux Klan, United States imperialists, Fifth Columnists of all kinds, and those interested in bringing about a victory for Hitler.”59 Other U.S. authorities, in wartime mode, claimed the riots must have been provoked by a “foreign” agent and used them as a pretext to target communists, who in turn blamed the fascists.60 Similar riots erupted across the country, as zoot-suiters were attacked as far away as Philadelphia and New York. No servicemen were charged for the attacks in Los Angeles, but around five hundred Hispanic men who had been assaulted were rounded up and faced charges such as vagrancy. California journalist Carey McWilliams later noted that the riots “left a residue of resentment and hatred in the minds and hearts of thousands of young Mexican-Americans.”61

  LIKE CUBANS AND Puerto Ricans in New York and Florida, Mexicans living in the United States around the turn of the century also formed social and mutual-aid societies, called mutulistas.62 Groups such as the Arizona-based Alianza Hispano-Americana (La Alianza) spread throughout the Southwest. By the 1930s, in addition to offering their members practical services, such as health care, these organizations also started to take up civil rights struggles, while at the same time often espousing loyalty to the very nation that was discriminating against them. For instance, the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), which was founded in 1929 and led by Bernardo (Ben) Garza, pledged to be loyal to the United States and encouraged members to le
arn English.63 Membership in LULAC was at first restricted to U.S. citizens, as its leaders felt that including too many immigrants might undermine their efforts to secure gains for the entire community.64 This “Mexican-American generation,” as they were later called, placed great value on their U.S. citizenship and in general played down their “Mexicanness,” willing to become active in politics with the expectation that they would have access to more extensive rights and economic opportunities than their parents did.65

  Military service had been seen as another way to express this growing civic engagement. In the Second World War, some five hundred thousand people of Hispanic origin served in the U.S. military, although records often did not categorize them as such.66 Most such soldiers were placed in white units, but because some military units were based on a geographical area, there were also Hispanic units, such as the Puerto Rican Sixty-Fifth Infantry Regiment.67 Mexican-Americans composed the largest group of recruits, followed by Puerto Ricans.68 Mexican nationals who lived in the United States were also drafted into the U.S. Army, with some fifteen thousand serving during the war. Some people crossed the border knowing they would be drafted, though a few ran the other way when they found out they were not exempt from military service.69 The Selective Service Act of 1940 had required all male foreign nationals to register, though those from neutral countries could, theoretically, be exempted from service.70 Some confusion developed over the issue of nationality, but the Mexican government clarified that, since Mexico was an ally, its citizens were free to enlist in the U.S. Army, and the two nations signed a military agreement in 1943.71 Once the war was over, Mexican nationals who had served were allowed to be naturalized as U.S. citizens—but they had to prove they had entered the United States legally. Without documentation, they would be denied citizenship and associated veterans’ benefits, though the draft boards often failed to explain this.72

  Fighting in the war led to an increased feeling among Hispanic people of being stakeholders in U.S. society. After returning from the war, the soldiers wanted a share of the prosperity, and a stronger push for equality and civil rights began. One such serviceman was Hector García, who was born in Mexico in 1913 but whose family fled during the revolution. García was, in many ways, the face of middle-class Mexican-Americans. His family crossed over at Matamoros and later settled in Mercedes, Texas. As an officer in the Army Medical Corps, he served tours in North Africa and Europe, where he met his future wife, Wanda Fusillo, in Italy. He had also studied medicine and trained to be a physician. Upon his return to the United States, he set up a practice in Corpus Christi in 1946.73 Like many other Hispanic veterans, García was disappointed by the prejudice he had encountered in the army. He also noticed that other former Hispanic servicemen were not taking full advantage of their military benefits, including those in the GI Bill, and that some were not receiving them at all.74 This motivated García to organize other ex-servicemen, and the result was the American GI Forum (AGIF), with García as its first president. It, too, embraced a language of patriotism, as its name attests.75

  The organization came to national attention with the case of Private Felix Z. Longoria, who had been killed in the Philippines. His body had been sent back to Three Rivers, Texas, where the Anglo-owned Rice Funeral Home—the only one in the small town—refused to bury him because he was “Mexican.” The AGIF mobilized the public, organizing a rally of one thousand people in Corpus Christi. García lobbied then senator Lyndon B. Johnson, who arranged for a burial with full military honors in Arlington National Cemetery in 1949.76

  The question of legal whiteness continued to plague Mexican-Americans, despite the efforts of organizations like LULAC to ensure that Mexicans were officially considered “white.”77 Nativist groups called on the government to make “Mexican” a category, which it did in the 1930 census, although this classification was removed a decade later. In the end, the 1940 Nationality Act extended citizenship to “descendants of races indigenous to the Western Hemisphere,” but the ruling did little to change wider public opinion about the “whiteness” or otherwise of Mexicans and other Hispanic people.78

  Many Mexicans and Mexican-Americans in the Southwest were also forced to confront Jaime (sometimes Juan) Crow. Texas was a place, as one commentator described it, where “Jim Crow wears a sombrero.”79 Through a number of informal means, the southern system of discrimination seeped into the Southwest. There might have been nothing on the law books, but certain conventions led to rampant discrimination. The Mexican-American author and campaigner Alonso Perales kept a running list in the 1940s of places in Texas that denied service to Mexicans. One entry, about Midland, gives some indication of what Mexicans faced:

  Mexicans are segregated and obligated to use a balcony in the section reserved for Negroes at the Yucca, Ritz and Rex Theaters. Mexicans are denied service in restaurants. At the Ritz Café there is a sign which reads: “No Mexicans Admitted Here.” Five American soldiers of Mexican descent were denied service at said café due to their Mexican origin. The local police are very unjust with persons of Mexican extraction. … Mexicans are segregated at all the elementary schools. Persons of Mexican descent are not permitted to enter the Catholic Church during the hour of religious services for Anglo-Americans.80

  A steady stream of complaints about this sort of treatment also emanated from the Mexican government. The charges made against towns in the Southwest were serious enough for U.S. authorities to commission a confidential report on Texas and New Mexico, undertaken by the American consul general William P. Blocker in 1942. Blocker traveled to various cities and towns and concluded that “there is a certain amount of truth to the protests made by the Mexican Consuls in regard to the prohibiting of certain classes or groups of people from acquiring lands or homes in given localities.” According to Blocker, smaller towns had more discrimination but believed “these problems have been fairly well adjusted in large cities.”81

  He also acknowledged the role of civil rights groups but thought their battles came from positions of weakness. He wrote that the Latin American “does not feel himself to be an equal to a north American, he either feels himself superior or inferior—the latter prevailing,” which underscored the “activities of the so-called welfare societies, such as the Lulacs and the League of Loyal Americans.” Blocker, using many of the tropes of the time, felt Hispanics exhibited “a battle of temperament between the Indian blood mixed with the Moor and the Castilian, a combination of which is conceded by eminent psychologists as mistaking kindness for weakness and in some cases, courtesy for timidity. These people are exceedingly individualistic and emotional, coupled with having plenty of sensitivity.”82 His recommendations at the end of the report included trying to change Anglo attitudes in smaller towns through programs of talks and lectures; demanding that law enforcement treat Mexicans with more respect; and using civic organizations such as Rotary Clubs to help forge improved links between communities.83

  At one point, the Mexican government became so frustrated that in June 1943 it enacted a temporary ban on Mexicans going to work in Texas.84 These workers, along with LULAC and similar organizations, were trying to pressure the state into legislating for better treatment of Mexicans. A month earlier, the Texas legislature had passed a resolution, “Caucasian Race—Equal Privileges,” which entitled “all persons of the Caucasian Race” equal access to all public places. It made a point of saying that “our neighbors to the South” were Caucasians and as such should not be victims of discrimination, especially at a time when they were working together with the United States to fight Nazism.85 Mexico did not feel that the legislation had any teeth and so instead pushed forward with its ban. The Texas farmers quickly reacted, needing people to work in their fields. A bill was introduced in 1945 to resolve the matter, stipulating equal access to goods and services for Mexicans, as well as a fine of up to $500 for any violation of this rule, though by the time the bill passed, it had been watered down in the Texas senate so as to offer little,
if any, protection from discrimination.86

  The situation barely improved after the war. In Corpus Christi, Hector García received notes from fellow citizens about their everyday experiences of prejudice. One, from Rosie Escobar in 1951, recounted how she went to eat at a restaurant she had previously visited in Big Spring, Texas, but this time the waiter presented her with a card that said, “We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone.” She tried a different place and was given another card, this time in inept Spanish, that told her, “Nosotros no podemos sirvir a gente de color o Mexicanos en al Barra.” Escobar told García that after the refusals “I really had a red color on my face … here at this city of Big Spring is lots of Discrimination for our Latin-American People.” He told her to send the cards to him, to add to his growing dossier.87

  Following the deportations of the 1930s, the California growers’ lobby and other farmers’ groups had to clamor for Mexican labor again by the start of the Second World War. There were sharp demands for food, and the war had reduced the number of men available to work. The response was the establishment in 1942 of the bracero program (from brazos, the Spanish word for arms).88 It was intended to grant seasonal visas and streamline the processing of migrant workers. By 1943, seventy-six thousand braceros toiled in fields throughout the United States, and by 1945 the number had risen to three hundred thousand.89

  Some Mexicans found the conditions of the visa troublesome and just crossed the border without papers, as workers had done in the 1920s. After the war, however, the government tightened up its immigration laws. The 1952 McCarran-Walter Act made it a crime to bring in or harbor an undocumented worker; in part this was intended to keep out suspected communists—this being the height of the “red scare”—or anyone else involved in subversive activity.90 The anti-immigration chorus grew louder at this time as well. Mexican workers continued to arrive, however. After Cárdenas’s presidency ended in 1940 the country’s economy moved away from land distribution and the ejido system, so while the cities and urban classes prospered, rural communities fell behind. Between 1940 and 1960, the number of landless people who had worked in agriculture rose by 60 percent; this forced many to seek bracero contracts, or simply to cross the border and take their chances.91