A Century of Chicano History: Empire, Nations, and Migration

Abstract

Chicana/o history has witnessed a number of historiographical debates that date back to its emergence in the 1960s. Paradigms and periodization once again emerge as important themes in González and Fernández’s A Century of Chicano History. The authors challenge current historiographical trends concerning the formation of the Chicana/o community, structure and agency, the importance of gender as a category to analyze labor and Bracero programs, and the ideological forms of colonialism—both past and present—deployed in Mexico as part and parcel of U.S. empire building. They especially believe that scholars need to reconsider the role of early U.S. imperialist activities in Mexico during the nineteenth century. The origins of U.S. domination in Mexico can be traced to the last three decades of the nineteenth century, a period that signaled the economic subordination of that country to U.S. capitalism (p. 29). Consequently, “the rise of the Chicano national minority was not an event marginal to U.S. history; quite the opposite, it was central to the construction of a U.S. neocolonial empire” (p. 59). The cozy relationship between Porfirio Díaz and U.S. capitalists spurred Mexican migration. The coming of the railroads, the exploitation of minerals, and the sprouting of an agricultural economy in the Southwest further facilitated this trend. The formation of the Chicano community in the United States, therefore, “reflects Mexico’s economic subordination in the face of U.S. hegemony and the limitations placed on its national sovereignty by that domination” (p. 29).This monograph challenges current Chicana/o historiography in focusing on Mexican migration to the United States during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, arguing that the bulk of the Chicano community in the U.S. is descended from these migrations. That is, the nonmigrant community residing primarily in the American Southwest is a small percentage of the overall Chicano community, one composed predominantly of more recent migrations beginning in the late nineteenth century. Thus, with the exception of New Mexico, “the small number of Mexicans annexed by the conquest are inconsequential compared to the much larger number of late nineteenth-century Mexican migrants to the region” (p. 13). Most scholars argue for a continuity of Chicano history from 1848 to the present and overlook the impact of later Mexican migrations on the formation of Chicano/a communities. In the words of González and Fernández, most Chicana/o historians “nearly unanimously emphasize a continuity of Chicano history from that point to the present” (p. 11). But by comparing the periods of increased Mexican migration with those of increased American investment in Mexico, it is easy to see how the creation of the Chicano community is due to immigration. As such, “Rather than the commonly held belief that the Mexican American War of 1848 led to the construction of the Chicano minority, this study proposes that the origins of the Chicano population evolved from economic empire led by corporate capitalist interests with the backing of the U.S. State Department”(p. 59).González and Fernández also incorporate some important ideological and cultural components in their economic interpretation. Two chapters are worth noting: “The Ideology and Practice of Empire: The United States, Mexico, and Mexican Immigrants” and “Denying Empire: The Journal of American History on the Ideological Warpath.” In the American imaginary of Mexico and Mexicans, as viewed through the extensive production of travel literature in the nineteenth century, the authors see something similar to the “Orientalism” that Edward Said described in his pathbreaking postcolonial study of the East in the European imaginary. This knowledge was employed alongside U.S. economic policy and later combined with Americanization programs imposed upon the Chicano community. As a result, the “interconnections of the Chicano historical experience with the economic and political hegemony exerted by the United States over Mexico and of the ideology that that domination inspired need to be placed on the research agenda” (p. 93)A few experts in Latin American history will probably see the residual elements of an earlier dependency theory model, while postcolonial critics will perhaps read this interpretation as another effort to impose European categories of analysis à la Marx. These points aside, however, A Century of Chicano History will more than likely stimulate a healthy level of discussion within Chicana/o studies itself and should be required reading for scholars of U.S., Latin American, and borderlands history.