“Go After The Women” – Americanization and the Mexican Immigrant Woman – George Sanchez

This reading was interesting to me because it looked at Mexican immigration and the associated forced assimilation efforts in the context of Los Angeles, though I imagine similar efforts took place in many cities that of the South that received such a large influx of Mexicans during this time.  In these cities, Mexicans were viewed as a problem, an “other” group that needed to be mixed into broader society appropriately, which meant in menial jobs for little money.

 

The economic advantage that businesses saw in Mexicans as cheap labor was no less racist than those that opposed the immigration all together, thinking that the race as a whole was weaker and inferior to whites, but could be taught to be obedient.  This was in contrast the Americanists, who sought, still in a racist manner, that American society had the duty to make Mexicans fully American, and they were going to do this through assimilating the women of the family.

 

This approach failed for the most part, due not only to the tight families of immigrant groups as they come to a new place, but also because so many of the customs and loyalties to Mexico remained.  Just because they were taught men were taught to work and the women were taught the importance of doing laundry and having less children in the Americanization programs, did not mean they were going to stick.  I thought that this failure was quite severe, but no worse than the failure of the nation to Americanize Indians or other groups, which happened with significantly greater resources.