Leaders of the Mexican American Generation: Biographical Essays
368
Leaders of the Mexican American Generation: Biographical Essays
368eBook
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Overview
Leaders of the Mexican American Generation explores the lives of a wide range of influential members of the US Mexican American community between 1920 and 1965 who paved the way for major changes in their social, political, and economic status within the United States.
Including feminist Alice Dickerson Montemayor, to San Antonio attorney Gus García, and labor activist and scholar Ernesto Galarza, the subjects of these biographies include some of the most prominent idealists and actors of the time. Whether debating in a court of law, writing for a major newspaper, producing reports for governmental agencies, organizing workers, holding public office, or otherwise shaping space for the Mexican American identity in the United States, these subjects embody the core values and diversity of their generation.
More than a chronicle of personalities who left their mark on Mexican American history, Leaders of the Mexican American Generation cements these individuals as major players in the history of activism and civil rights in the United States. It is a rich collection of historical biographies that will enlighten and enliven our understanding of Mexican American history.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781607323372 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University Press of Colorado |
| Publication date: | 09/01/2015 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 368 |
| File size: | 4 MB |
About the Author
Anthony Quiroz is professor of history at Texas A&M University–Corpus Christi. He is the author of Claiming Citizenship: Mexican Americans in Victoria, Texas.
Read an Excerpt
Leaders of the Mexican American Generation
Biographical Essays
By Anthony Quiroz
University Press of Colorado
Copyright © 2015 University Press of ColoradoAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-60732-525-3
CHAPTER 1
José de la Luz Sáenz
Experiences and Autobiographical Consciousness
EMILIO ZAMORA
Portions of this essay appeared in my introduction to Sáenz's edited and translated diary, published by Texas A&M University Press in 2014 as The World War I Diary of José de la Luz Sáenz.
Introduction
José de la Luz Sáenz, according to Alonso Perales, was "one of our most distinguished and honest leaders in the United States of America." Sáenz certainly stands out for his highly regarded civil rights work during the first half of the twentieth century as well as for his association with other equally remarkable leaders, some of whom also appear in this anthology. He is best known as a cofounder of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) and the author of a World War I diary, Los méxico-americanos en La Gran Guerra y su contingente en pro de la democracia, la humanidad y la justicia. Researchers have begun to acknowledge Sáenz's contributions to civil rights history as a member of an emerging group of largely upwardly mobile and US-born leaders from Texas. His political cohort, the so-called Mexican American generation, grew up at the turn of the century, set in motion a new form of ethnic politics in the 1920s, and sustained it at least until the early 1960s as a prominent cause for equal rights in the larger social movement. Although Sáenz played a central role in the emergence of this group, researchers have not yet thoroughly examined his biography.
This essay examines the life and work of Sáenz from experiential and autobiographical approaches. It recounts selected formative experiences to orient the reader on his trajectory from the poor rural experience of his youth to a teaching career and a life as a socially engaged adult. Recounting his experiences establishes a frame of reference to understand the sociohistorical context for his intellectual and political development, his place in the protest community, and his assessment of his life and political work. The judgments that Sáenz made over select experiences reflected his autobiographical consciousness, or self-awareness. His salient life experiences and configuration of self appear in three major autobiographical accounts: a World War I diary published in 1933 and two unpublished manuscripts, one authored in 1940 and another in 1944. The following sections that address his biography are based primarily on his 1944 manuscript, "Yo, Omnia Mea Mecum Porto," and his war diary. Subsequent segments address Sáenz's autobiographical consciousness, mostly in "Yo," the war diary, and his 1940 text Realismo Misterioso: Estudio Psico-Teosófico.
Raised in Realitos
Sáenz was born May 17, 1888 in the South Texas town of Realitos, in present-day Duval County, and died at the Veterans Hospital in Corpus Christi, Texas, on April 12, 1953. He gave special importance to his formative experiences as a youngster in Realitos to explain his life as an adult. The principal autobiographical account that tells of these experiences is "Yo," the 120-page manuscript that he wrote for his son, Eduardo, who once asked him to talk of his years as a child. Sáenz penned "Yo" at fifty-six, when Eduardo was probably in his early teens. He took care to offer fatherly advice to his son, but he mostly spoke in a reflexive, didactic, and moralizing tone on issues like racial discrimination, inequality, identity, human behavior, and basic norms on human rights. His major purpose, in other words, was to recount his life experiences as a way to explain his ideas, values, and civil rights work.
Realitos had been a military outpost in the mid-1700s. It was located along one of the northeastern routes of the Camino Real, approximately fifty miles from the present-day Tamaulipas-Texas border at Mier and Camargo, colonial towns that appeared in the mid-1700s and extended their municipal reach into the area around Realitos and San Diego, the current seat of Duval County. By the 1860s, Realitos had a small population of mostly Mexican families employed by nearby ranchers with familial ties to original Spanish and Mexican land grantees living along the border region. The population grew to 400 in the late 1880s primarily in response to the increased demand for workers to construct the Texas Mexican Railway, connecting Gulf of Mexico trade at Corpus Christi with Mexico-San Antonio commerce at Laredo.
Sáenz's family arrived in the 1860s at a ranch close to San Diego. Marcelina, his widowed grandmother, had worked for a wealthy ranching family from Mier named Hinojosa, and she secured employment at another Hinojosa ranch in Texas. According to Sáenz, she feared that her sons would follow the political example of their grandfather Eugenio. The renowned Texas-born general Ignacio Zaragoza had recruited him on the border to fight in Mexico's momentous Battle of Puebla in 1862. He continued fighting alongside other Mexican patriots in the national cause to oust the French invaders and even participated in an early undetermined political cause against Porfirio Díaz, another hero from Puebla and would-be president of Mexico.
Sáenz recalled that his father, Rosalío, was born on the Mexican border in 1864 and that he practically "became a man" working alongside his mother at the Hinojosa ranch in Duval County. The reference to becoming a man alongside his mother meant that Rosalío began working at a very young age, most probably in the ranch owner's home. Sáenz also stated that his father later worked "like a slave" as a ranch hand and "on halves" as a shepherd for local Mexican landowners, including Hinojosa. His point: that ranchers exploited Mexicans with hard work, long hours, and low pay. Life, however, was not always difficult and uncompromising.
Rosalío, like other Mexicans from the area, built a meaningful life through his close personal relations. Sáenz's endearing story of how his father and mother met and fell in love bears out this other side of life. Cristina and her family were from San Antonio; they arrived by wagon at the Hinojosa ranch in 1880. The Hernández family had selected the ranch as a stopover to earn money for their trip to Mexico. Rosalío and Cristina, both young teenagers at the time, met while working at the ranch. They quickly developed a close relationship. The Hernández family left — never to be seen again — but not before they allowed their daughter to stay behind and marry Rosalío. The young couple moved to Realitos, and Rosalío became a laborer with a Texas Mexican Railway construction crew on the Texas-Mexican Railway. Although Rosalío supplemented his family's earnings by building adobe homes for other poor families in the area, they did not live any better than their neighbors.
The young Sáenz family lived a hardscrabble life that depended on Rosalío's meager earnings. His job took him away for two- to three-week periods, and strong willed and caring Cristina managed their home and raised their eight children with the chickens, pigs, goats, cow, and vegetable patch that she tended. Sáenz recalled that Rosalío had attended primary grades in Mier and taught Cristina to read and write. She used her newfound skills to correspond with Rosalío and school her children. Sáenz remained grateful to Cristina for being his first teacher and for insuring that the family survived recurring financial difficulties. He was especially moved by Cristina's difficulties in giving birth to a large number of children. She lost five of them over an approximately ten-year period. The image of a self- sacrificing mother became deeply etched in the family's memory when she succumbed while giving birth in 1896. Rosalío honored her by naming the child Cristín.
Sáenz expressed equally profound respect for his older sister Marcelina, who inherited her mother's responsibilities after her death. She began caring for the children when she was eleven, mostly without adult supervision, because Rosalío's railroad work continued to take him away from home. Despite her young age, Sáenz's sister maintained Cristina's household routine and continued to care for the children long after their mother had passed. When not under the direct charge of his sister or father, Sáenz spent much of his preteen life with one of the local "gangs" of shoeless and rambunctious youngsters who were largely left on their own to lord over the area with rough play, exhilarating escapades, and tested relationships. Sáenz often had to depend on his wits to survive the frequent taunts from other boys and the dangers of the natural and "wild-like" surroundings that he frequented. He also remembered that some unfriendly and even cruel adults sometimes unwittingly taught him of life's adversities and the need to take care of himself and his loved ones. Family love and support, close reliable friends, and caring adults, on the other hand, provided Sáenz a happy and rewarding life in Realitos.
Rosalío married Petra Rámos in 1898, but not before the children, especially Marcelina, had grilled Rosalío on the conflict that could occur between her and his new wife. She had been like a mother to her siblings for six years and had become very protective of them. After some extended discussions, the children consented to the marriage. They demanded, however, that Marcelina continue her motherly duties and that Petra concern herself primarily with her own children and Rosalío. His children, especially Marcelina, had been raised to be willful and independent partly because of Rosalío's work-related absences. He also must have encouraged them to be self-sufficient because he allowed them to have a say about his second marriage and even agreed to their conditions. The arrangement apparently worked because the children and their new mother eventually made peace and, according to Sáenz, lived a happy life together.
Sáenz's world began to change in another way soon after Petra joined the family. His father convinced a railroad supervisor to hire Sáenz to guard the storage depot with the workers' food and cooking utensils. The job required that he fend for himself against wild animals and the occasional malicious traveler who tried to take advantage of the eleven- year-old youngster. The experience reinforced his self- reliant and independent spirit, but the job ended quickly, possibly because the Texas Mexican Railway completed construction in 1899 or 1900. When Sáenz reached twelve, the age of early manhood in the working-class world of South Texas, he accompanied his father and older brother on the migratory trail that took them by horseback to "the outside world" of San Diego, Beeville, and González. Taming horses; clearing the land of brush and hardwood trees with a pick, ax, and shovel under an unrelenting sun; and picking tall cotton plants with sacks that grew heavier with every passing hour taught Sáenz the meaning of hard work. He also claimed to have learned that Anglo farmers continually exploited the large Mexican workforce and disregarded the difficulties that the long work hours and low pay visited on their lives.
Moving Up to Alice
Rosalío made a decision in 1900 that greatly influenced Sáenz's life. He moved the family to his new source of employment in Alice, a small town located approximately thirty miles northeast of Realitos. The local railroad station provided more than permanent employment and improved earnings for Rosalío. Alice also offered Sáenz better schooling opportunities. Sáenz excelled at Alice High School, but he seemed more interested in telling stories about mean-spirited Anglos than about his accomplishments. A case in point involved an Anglo teacher who made an anti-Mexican remark to the students, which provided Sáenz the opportunity to demonstrate his sense of pride and strength of character. The teacher had complained that "if I had known that I was going to teach English to the Mexicans, I would not have come from so far away." Sáenz responded by refusing to answer the teacher's questions to the class. According to Sáenz, everyone understood that his behavior was an outright affront because he was the highest achieving student at the time and was more than capable of engaging the teacher.
When a school inspector from a major unnamed university visited the school, Sáenz took the opportunity to further embarrass the teacher by volunteering to recite an oration by a famous person before the assembled teachers and students. He impressed everyone with his performance. The purportedly humbled teacher congratulated Sáenz, and even befriended him years later, suggesting that he had learned his lesson. Although Sáenz may have exaggerated the teacher's changed demeanor and his own defiance, he was clear about his early resolve to challenge persons "who in the grand scheme of things deny us our equal rights and the opportunities to life and progress accorded to all human beings." His point was that his youth was fraught with racism and that combating it prepared him for civil rights work as an adult.
Sáenz's account of the racist teacher set the stage for one of his most far-reaching statements on race thinking and Mexican-Anglo relations:
Some people do not know us as a race, do not care to understand us, and consequently will never be in a position to appreciate whatever value there may be in our potential ethnical qualities. Thus, mistakes have been made in rendering judgment as to our true worth. This is and has been the principal cause for the historical and racial prejudice that has existed in Texas and some other States of our Union. Many of our fellow citizens yet through mere aberration of theirs deny the fact, but a finger will never cover the sun.
High school teachers Nat and Alice Benton also left a deep impression on Sáenz — not for insulting and dismissive behavior, but for their acts of kindness and encouragement. Even under such positive circumstances, however, race loomed large over Sáenz's relations with Anglos. Nat stood out in Sáenz's autobiography as a kind and caring school principal because he advised Sáenz and his Mexican classmates to be patient and restrained with racist Anglo teachers and students. Nat may have been more concerned with preventing racial tensions from escalating into embarrassing and disruptive conflict than helping Mexican youth, but Sáenz credited him for his understanding and goodwill. Alice, Nat's wife and a fellow teacher, took a bolder approach to the racial tensions that weighed heavily in Sáenz's life. She reportedly told Sáenz that he was more American than "the Anglo enemy of my people," meaning that he was a descendant of the original inhabitants of the American continent, and Europeans — including Spaniards but especially Anglos — disregarded his history and placed themselves above indigenous communities and their Mexican descendants.
Sáenz appeared taken aback by Alice's response, although he was also impressed that she described racial tension in broad terms. He had previously summoned the more moderate view of Nat to validate his reasoned approach to racial conflict; now he recalled the unvarnished opinion of Alice to proclaim his more defiant and broader understanding of race relations. Sáenz may have implied deep-seated racism by casting race relations in such broad terms, but he also wanted to appear measured in describing his formative years in Alice. Obviously concerned that he might leave the impression of unrelenting racism and overpowering feelings of racial resentment, Sáenz expressed gratitude to the community of Alice for supporting their "official" school and, with a touch of irony, thanked Alice High for preparing him for the profession that gave him "the pleasure of fighting for bettering the lot of my people."
Mexican teachers also appeared in Sáenz's autobiographical account. He made special note of Pablo Pérez and Eulalio Velázquez. Pérez taught Mexican history, arithmetic, language arts, and literature in a private Mexican school, all in Spanish. Sáenz apparently studied with Pérez only briefly, but he held his teacher in high regard. On several occasions in his autobiography, as well as in other writings, Sáenz lamented that he had not received enough instruction in Spanish and that his command of the language could have been better; but he was grateful to have learned much from such an accomplished teacher as Pérez. Velázquez, a publisher, accountant, and teacher, may have played an even more important role in Sáenz's development.
Velázquez had built a reputation as a successful businessman, teacher, and journalist while in Laredo. He moved to Alice in 1903 and continued to publish his popular newspaper, El Cosmopólita, from the first floor of a building that he constructed soon after his arrival. The second floor housed his private coeducational elementary school, and he offered night classes for adults on agriculture and business. Sáenz did not attend the school, but he joined several of Velázquez's students who sought him out. Velázquez encouraged them to use his private library and guided them in their readings on Mexican history and historical figures like Benito Juárez, the famed Zapotec Indian who served as the lead justice and president of the Supreme Court, the president of Mexico, and the head of Mexico's nationalist cause against French intervention in the 1860s. Velázquez may have inspired Sáenz and his friends to organize a public celebration in honor of Juárez in 1906. Velázquez, no doubt impressed with the students' interest and abilities, assisted them in preparing the program with additional reading materials on oratory and patriotic celebrations. Sáenz's memory was especially clear when recounting the importance of the public program.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Leaders of the Mexican American Generation by Anthony Quiroz. Copyright © 2015 University Press of Colorado. Excerpted by permission of University Press of Colorado.
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