LULAC, Mexican Americans, and National Policy [1 ed.] 9781603445986, 9781585443888

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LULAC, Mexican Americans, and National Policy

Number Four: Fronteras Series Sponsored by Texas A&M International University José Roberto Juárez, General Editor

LULAC, Mexican Americans, and National Policy by Craig A. Kaplowitz

Texas A&M University Press College Station

Copyright © 2005 by Craig A. Kaplowitz Manufactured in the United States of America All rights reserved First Edition

The paper used in this book meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, Z39.48-1984. Binding materials have been chosen for durability. o

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kaplowitz, Craig, A., 1970– LULAC, Mexican Americans, and national policy / by Craig A. Kaplowitz. p. cm. — (Fronteras series ; no. 4) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1-58544-388-3 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. League of United Latin American Citizens—History. 2. Mexican Americans—Civil rights—History—20th century. 3. Mexican Americans—Politics and government—20th century. 4. Mexican Americans—Government policy. 5. United States—Ethnic relations. 6. United States—Social policy. I. Title. II. Series. E184.M5K37 2005 322.4'089'6872073—dc22 2004019330

To the memory of Hugh Davis Graham

Contents

Acknowledgments Introduction

ix 3

Chapter 1.

A League of American Citizens

11

2.

Immigrants, Citizens, and Stakeholders

36

3.

The Paradox in Domestic Policy

62

4.

Stepchildren of the Great Society

91

5.

Between Chicanos and Republicans

122

6.

Policies for the Spanish Speaking

156

Conclusion

186

Notes

207

Index

249

Acknowledgments

T

he research for this project is grounded in the presidential libraries and the LULAC papers. An archival researcher is only as good as the archivists on whom he or she must rely, and I am pleased to acknowledge the help I received on this project at the Truman Library, the Eisenhower Library, the Kennedy Library, the Johnson Library, the Nixon Presidential Materials at National Archives II, the Ford Library, and the Benson Latin American Collection Rare Books and Manuscripts Room at the University of Texas at Austin. Allen Fisher at the Johnson Library and William Joyner at National Archives II deserve special mention. I have worked on this manuscript while affiliated with three institutions, and each has provided financial and scholarly support. At Vanderbilt University the department of history, the department of political science, and the graduate school all supported the project financially. The graduate faculty served as stellar examples of scholar-teachers. In particular I thank Thomas Schwartz, Marshall Eakin, Elizabeth Rose, and Larry Griffin, who read the entire manuscript and offered questions and suggestions. At Middle Tennessee State University, the history department chaired by Thad Smith offered valuable support for travel to conferences to try out early versions of these arguments. Many revisions were written while I was part of the MTSU history department, and I thank my colleagues there for their interest and hospitality. Most recently, Judson College provided needed funds for travel to tie up loose ends as publication approached. I have been pleased to call Judson home while making final revisions. Additional financial support came from the Eisenhower World Affairs Institute, which allowed for a full year of research, thinking and writing. I also received travel grants from the Lyndon Baines Johnson Foundation, the John F. Kennedy Foundation, the Gerald R. Ford Foundation, and the Organization of American Historians. Early version of these arguments were presented at the meetings of the Organization of American Historians, the Southern Historical Association, and the Journal of Policy History. I thank William Issel, Emilio Zamora, and Time Borstelmann for their careful reading and comments. Parts of chapters 4 and 5 appeared in the Journal of Policy History. I thank the journal and its anonymous reviewers. John David Skrentny, Gareth Davies, Steven H.

acknowledgments

Wilson, Heather Parker, and Carlos Kevin Blanton responded to inquiries or shared unpublished work. For their hospitality during research trips I thank Mike and Thomassen Davis, Karen Hodges and Howard Korn, and Ann and Lindsay Waters. At Texas A&M University Press, Mary Lenn Dixon has supported this project for a long time. Bard Young made countless helpful suggestions to clean up my prose, and Jennifer Ann Hobson saw the project through to publication. I also thank the Press’s anonymous reviewers, whose comments proved invaluable in thinking through the final version of this manuscript. My father, Allan J. Kaplowitz, read the manuscript and offered valuable editorial suggestions. He and my mother, LaQuita, have supported my education and career pursuits without hesitation, and I thank them. My wife, Emily, has supported my work on this book, in spirit and in practice, even though she does not find recent American policy history as compelling as I do. That she thinks this work is interesting means the world. Our boys, Jackson and Graham, have little interest in this book right now—they are more interested in playing tag and having me read other books to them. For that I am grateful. Finally, this book would not have been written without the late Hugh Davis Graham. As a mentor, Hugh excelled. I left meetings with him always eager to get back to my desk and write. As an example of a scholar and teacher, he set the bar high. He gave selflessly of his time and his own research, modeled careful thought and precise expression, transitioned effortlessly from advisor to colleague, and was a pleasure to be around. This book is dedicated to his memory.

x

LULAC, Mexican Americans, and National Policy

Introduction

T

his book is about ethnic identity and the development of civil rights policy. More specifically, it examines the expansion of civil rights protections from a focus on racial minorities in the American Southeast to language and cultural minorities of the Southwest. That expansion is an important, and often overlooked, element in the rights revolution of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Mexican Americans gained specific federal remedies for discrimination based not on racial but on linguistic disadvantage. They demanded those remedies not because of a refusal by policy makers to apply civil rights policies to Mexican Americans as a racial minority, but because the Mexican American groups most involved in national policy through the 1960s refused to be treated as a racial minority. They insisted that Mexican Americans could not be lumped together with African Americans for remedies to disadvantage. That argument required a new paradigm, for although civil rights legislation prohibited discrimination based on national origin as well as race, creed, and in some cases sex, for all practical purposes the world of civil rights policy was black and white. This book explores how policy makers and Mexican Americans came to agree to open up that binary. The fruits of those agreements include federal bilingual-bicultural education programs, voting rights protections for language minorities, inclusion in affirmative action programs, and the presence in the federal bureaucracy of agencies and administrators devoted to Mexican American, and Latino, interests. These policies changed the letter (and, according to some, the spirit) of civil rights legislation to include groups defined by language and culture rather than by race. From the vantage point of the early twenty-first century these measures are controversial. In fact, earlier on they became some of the most bitterly contested issues of the culture wars of the 1980s and 1990s: bilingual education versus the English-only movement, language-minority voting materials and “minority-majority” congressional districts, and eventually affirmative action for Hispanics and a separate ethnic category on the census and other identification forms. We have become accustomed to clearly marked party differences on these issues. Ironically, the early versions of the remedies for language minorities were only reluctantly accepted, if accepted at all, by the Democratic presidents of the 1960s.

3

introduction

Both John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson sought to plug Mexican Americans into existing programs for the poor and disadvantaged rather than to develop distinct programs for ethnic groups with a claim to disadvantage. Furthermore, Republican presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford accepted and at times endorsed such policies, firmly establishing them in national policy. The substantial, if cautious, bipartisan support for civil rights protections for language minorities during the 1960s and 1970s reveals the expanding logic of civil rights policy. The landmark civil-rights legislation of the 1960s was designed specifically to remedy the statutory discrimination faced by African Americans in the South—legal segregation and limited voting rights that made a mockery of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.1 The door opened by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act the following year led to legislation and policies to aid language/ cultural minorities elsewhere (particularly in the Southwest) who faced similarly abysmal rates of unemployment, education, and poverty but were not singled out by statute because of race. Women used the inclusion of “sex” in the 1964 act to gain coverage, and by the early 1970s the rights revolution encompassed groups seeking protections for the disabled, the aged, gays and lesbians, and other ethnic or language minorities. This book began as a straightforward policy study, an examination of the debates and deliberations among policy makers as they compromised with one another and with Mexican American groups to hammer out policies. Early in the research it became clear from presidential archives that, up through at least the Nixon administration, a few Mexican American organizations played the most prominent role in dealings with presidents and White House advisors, in particular the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) and the American G.I. Forum. Both groups had a long history, the G.I. Forum going back to the first years after World War II and LULAC back to the earliest years of the Great Depression, and together both are recognized by scholars as the leading front of the Mexican American civil-rights struggle of the 1940s and 1950s. But the existing scholarship did not follow these organizations through the challenges of the 1960s and 1970s. Considerations of the latter period focus almost exclusively on the Chicano movement and the challenge it posed to traditional organizations and politicians; in addition, those considerations tend toward caricatures of LULAC, eventually rendering it irrelevant to the history of Mexican Americans during the period.2 These works generally accept the characterization of LULAC leveled by Chicano activists that LULAC was an organization of “Tío Tacos”—the Mexican American equivalent of “Uncle Tom”—because it endorsed the American political and economic systems and accepted Anglo middle-class norms of behavior and belief. These criticisms may be

4

introduction

valid, but the scholarship tends simply to assume their validity in order to move on to study of the Chicano movement.3 Of course, good reasons abound to study the Chicano movement. Chicano activists captured media attention, brought Mexican American civil rights into the national consciousness, mobilized the community in ways that LULAC and the other older organizations never did, and became part of the Democratic left that toppled the party establishment and captured the nomination for George McGovern in 1972. While the importance of the Chicano movement is unquestioned, we have an incomplete view of Mexican American policy origins if we fail to recognize the role of older, more conservative organizations in the federal policy process. While historians of Mexican American civil rights tend to accept the view that LULAC and other older groups were Tío Tacos, in fact LULAC asserted a unique Mexican American identity through the 1960s and early 1970s to make claims on national policy makers and American society.4 From the perspective of community organizing or Chicano identity formation or labor activism, a study of LULAC may well offer little of interest when compared to a study of other groups and movements of the era. In fact, in the only institutional biography of LULAC, political scientist Benjamin Márquez finds LULAC largely irrelevant to the political mobilization of the late 1960s.5 This should come as no surprise, for LULAC did not lead a social movement. It was an organization of elites within the Mexican American community—economically middle-class, socially conservative on many issues, and opposed to the rhetoric and tactics of the Chicano movement. Those characteristics made LULAC suspect to many who pressed for the rights of minorities in the late sixties, but, as evidence in presidential archives attests, they caused many federal policy makers to privilege LULAC as perhaps the most reasonable of the vocal Mexican American organizations. President Lyndon Johnson in particular was notorious for choosing the minority leaders with which he preferred to deal, and both his and Richard Nixon’s teams checked with LULAC, among chosen groups, in forming their policies. The privileged status accorded LULAC makes it that much more important to understand the organization’s part in the national discussion of Mexican American rights. If policy makers were predisposed to accept LULAC as, in their view, the most reasonable group with which to work, then understanding the decisions those policy makers made requires that we understand what they heard from LULAC. Over the course of the research for this book, it became clear that a study focused on an older, more moderate Mexican American organization would help round out the literature on Mexican American civil rights and would augment our understanding of American policy development. This study combines an examination of LULAC’s efforts to gain civil

5

introduction

rights protections for Mexican Americans with policy makers’ responses to the entrance of LULAC, and Mexican Americans in general, into the federal policy arena. Its primary policy focus is on presidential policy makers—that is, presidents and their advisors in the West Wing—and only secondarily on bureaucrats, members of Congress, and the courts. This focus is desirable for two reasons. First, the civil rights era was one of presidential initiative in the federal response to demands for change from minorities and their allies. Second, LULAC’s particular strengths as an organization were most influential at the national level when they were focused on the White House. LULAC’s status as a civil rights leader, in the making of social policy, rose and fell with the relative authority of the president. By focusing on LULAC and presidential policy making, we can best examine change over time and the shifting dynamics of the policy system as it engaged this cultural/linguistic minority. While some of the most militant Mexican Americans promoted an identity as a racial minority, language-minority policies were necessary, in part, because some of the most respected Mexican American organizations rejected racial-minority status for Mexican Americans but still insisted on particular remedies in order to counter disadvantage. That combination of strategies was perhaps most true of LULAC. The more conservative of those groups insisted that Mexican Americans are white (that is, in the language of the day, not colored) and refused to fold into the larger civil-rights movement for fear of being lost under the broad aegis of racial minorities, their unique needs overlooked. LULAC leaders rejected both a race-minority self-identity and the militantism of the Chicanos, instead committing themselves to the American political and economic systems while emphasizing the responsibilities as well as the rights of American citizens. While this position reflected various combinations of self-identity, prejudice, and pragmatism, it required particularist remedies for Mexican Americans. As one exasperated presidential aide complained, Mexican Americans simply would not settle for “warmed over black programs.” Herein lies a paradox. LULAC claimed an identity for Mexican Americans as white and explicitly rejected status as a racial minority; yet the group recognized that Mexican Americans faced discrimination and disadvantage that rivaled that of African Americans. They were different from and similar to blacks. In the midst of negotiating this tension, LULAC tried to gain federal protections in a policy environment that saw things, literally, in black and white. As whites, they could not accept policies designed for racial minorities. As a group suffering discrimination, they needed to tap into the national willingness to address group disadvantages. Ultimately, they demanded that the system recognize ethnic minorities outside the racial classification that dominated policy. They demanded policies for problems that were distinct from those of blacks. At the same time, changes in the pol-

6

introduction

icy environment influenced LULAC’s expectations of the system, altered the policy implications of being an ethnic minority in America, and shifted the balance of power among Mexican American organizations. The organizations that rejected a race-minority classification for Mexican Americans had reputations and preferences that appealed to policy makers and politicians inside the beltway but that by the late 1960s were at odds with the communitymobilization efforts of the Chicano movement. This story reflects an ethnic community with diverse interests and commitments negotiating the relationship between identity and citizenship in a changing policy environment. By considering LULAC’s interaction with presidential administrations beginning in the 1940s, we can examine changing attitudes about ethnicity and federal policy across the watershed years of the civil rights movement. Terminology used to describe the Mexican heritage population has changed a number of times during the period covered by this study and has varied according to self-identification and identification by others. Throughout this project Mexican American refers to American citizens of Mexican descent, whether born in the United States or naturalized. Mexican refers to citizens of Mexico who live in the U.S. but are not citizens, as well as to Mexicans who enter the U.S. to work but plan to return to Mexico. The context will make the usage clear. Both Mexican Americans and Mexicans are described as people of “Mexican heritage,” a term that I specifically use as inclusive of both groups. Anglo is used here as it has traditionally been used by Mexican Americans in the Southwest to refer to all non-Hispanic whites, including Germans and other non-British people. The term Chicano has become common usage to refer to Mexican Americans, but here it refers specifically to members of the varied movements of the 1960s and early 1970s that emphasized a new Chicano identity and were marked by nationalism and militant rhetoric. Over the years, the terms Hispanic, Spanishspeaking, and Spanish-surnamed resulted from efforts to combine Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, and others from Latin America into one group. These terms were employed both by policy makers and Spanishspeaking leaders when referring to all groups; usage here reflects the term(s) used by those involved in the story. When making my own points, I occasionally use the currently accepted Latino. In the first distinct part of this study, chapters 1 and 2 serve to bring focus on the Mexican American identity articulated by LULAC. This identity was not static, and in fact, through the 1940s and 1950s, increasingly tended toward an ethnic identification. Chapter 1 briefly surveys the history of Mexican Americans in the United States and discusses the origins and early development of LULAC. As an organization of middle-class professionals and merchants committed to the American political and economic mainstream, LULAC worked both to aid Mexican Americans in self-improvement

7

introduction

and to obtain equal opportunities, particularly in education and employment. Their arguments for equal access to public facilities and schools rested on their insistence that Mexican Americans were white, and therefore not subject to the segregation laws that separated white and colored. This insistence would run throughout LULAC’s history, with significant implications for its tactics in the struggle for federal Mexican American policy. Chapter 2 examines LULAC’s shifting ethnic identity through the 1950s by examining the effects of the most important national issue of that decade for Mexican Americans—postwar immigration and foreign labor policy. A U.S.-Mexico agreement to import Mexican laborers and a substantial rise in undocumented immigration resulted in an influx of Mexicans into the southwestern United States through the 1940s and 1950s. Through the 1950s, while they still wanted to cut off the flow of immigrants, LULAC leaders began to sympathize with Mexicans who had a vested interest in life in the United States because of family ties or long-time residence. They articulated an identity for Mexican Americans that cut across both ethnicity and class to include notions of citizenship and commitment to the United States and that combined their status as white Americans with a renewed pride in their cultural heritage. Chapter 3 serves as a hinge at the center of the book, connecting LULAC’s efforts in establishing Mexican American ethnic identity with its activism in the domestic-policy arena. LULAC leaders interested in federal aid for Mexican Americans faced a paradox. National leaders considered minority issues to be matters of race; that is, civil rights issues were black issues. LULAC leaders continued to insiste that Mexican American were not a racial minority. They also believed that Mexican Americans faced significant obstacles to equal opportunity—discrimination, segregation, and a language barrier, to name a few. The general civil-rights and poverty programs of John Kennedy’s New Frontier and Lyndon Johnson’s early Great Society emphasized a color-blind constitution and a “raise all boats” model for poverty relief, and LULAC took part in programs that funded poverty programs at the local and state level. LULAC leaders negotiated the paradox of ethnicity by accepting the liberal doctrine of equal opportunity and its general programs while at the same time maintaining a distance from racial minorities—a support-but-not-join attitude toward the black civil-rights struggle—all in an effort to gain federal attention to the problems of Mexican Americans as a disadvantaged group. Chapters 4 through 6 make up the book’s second half and focus on the domestic policy issues that most engaged Mexican American groups from the mid-1960s through 1975, and on LULAC’s position within the Mexican American lobby and how its argument of ethnic identity led it to advocate policies in a shifting environment. Chapter 4 examines LULAC’s growing

8

introduction

frustration with the Great Society after 1965. The federal government’s increased focus on African American civil rights raised expectations, but it also angered Mexican Americans who felt they did not receive equal attention from federal programs and agencies. LULAC and Mexican American leaders grew more vocal in their calls for particular programs to remedy the distinct problems of Mexican Americans but could offer no substantive policy proposals. As the Johnson administration failed to follow through on commitments, the paradoxical balance that LULAC had maintained before 1965 became increasingly unstable. Without a new model for federal remedies for Mexican Americans, the existing race-based model of the post-1966 period would be the only option. LULAC might have to give up either the commitment to white status or the goal of federal policies targeted specifically to Mexican Americans. Chapter 5 considers the Chicano challenge to LULAC’s careful balance of Mexican and American identity and traces the emergence of Republicans in Mexican American federal policy. Chicano nationalism threatened not only LULAC’s self-identity for Mexican Americans, but also Richard Nixon’s hopes of fragmenting the Democratic coalition and forging one of his own in the face of a Democratic Congress. His particular focus on attracting Mexican Americans led Nixon to consider fairly dramatic policy innovations and to protect Mexican American policies from budget cuts. The pressure on the administration from groups such as LULAC, and on Congress and executive agencies from Chicano activists, presented an effective, if unplanned, combination for the preservation of Mexican American policies under this Republican administration. Chapter 6 considers the triumph of Mexican American policy in the form of bilingual education mandates and language-based voting-rights protections. These victories occurred during a shift in American politics toward administrative policy making. As courts, congressional committees, and administrative agencies gained power and authority through the early 1970s, the influence of groups that targeted the presidency faded. With the demise of the Nixon administration following Watergate and the rise of Gerald Ford’s caretaking presidency, the importance of professional lobbying organizations and specialized legal teams increased dramatically. LULAC had to negotiate this new policy environment. Both Chicano and moderate Mexican American leaders, including those in LULAC, united behind the issues of bilingual education and language-based voting rights, which led Congress to pass legislation in support of both, with bipartisan support. In LULAC’s estimation, those policy victories restored the balance to the paradox of ethnic identity, in that Mexican Americans could receive federal remedies under the category of the linguistically disadvantaged. But the new environment nevertheless left LULAC in an uncertain position.

9

introduction

An underlying theme through all chapters is the changing nature of the American political and policy system. From the New Deal through the 1960s, U.S. presidents gained increasing authority and power over implementation, and in many ways creation, of national policy. The threat posed by an “imperial presidency” became increasingly clear through the Vietnam and Watergate years, and the resulting shifts in the policy environment altered the grounds from which Americans made claims on their government. These shifts had important ramifications for LULAC and its longstanding approach to policy influence. What follows, then, is a case study of the relationship between ethnic identity, on the one hand, and a policy system in transition, on the other. The study takes the long view across the postwar and civil rights eras to examine one organization’s experience in dealing with policy makers, primarily those in the White House. In LULAC’s argument Mexican Americans are distinct from Anglos, in that they require policies to remedy disadvantage as a group, and are also distinct from blacks, whose policies remedy racial disadvantage and do not necessarily solve Mexican American problems. LULAC leaders insisted that Mexican Americans suffer from, and require remedies for, a distinct disadvantage. The following chapters focus on how the national policy system engaged that argument.

10

1 A League of American Citizens

T

he story of national Mexican American civil-rights policy has its origins in the years leading up to World War II. The history of Mexican Americans, of course, reaches back much further, but developments that would give shape to Mexican American efforts and policies through the civil rights era can be dated to the 1920s and 1930s. Mining and agriculture in the Southwest, which had been encouraged by technology and the railroads for over a generation by 1920, increased the population of both Anglos and Mexicans and brought big business and capital to the region, realigning any accommodation that had been achieved in the days of rancheros. The Mexican Revolution of 1910–1920 also contributed to changes in the region, pushing political refugees across the border and reawakening among Anglos the memory of the Alamo and U.S.-Mexican antagonism. The nation-building efforts of the Progressive Era promoted America’s civic nationalism, the idea of America as a place in which the inalienable rights of every human being is recognized and protected and in which hard work and determination are rewarded. But as Gary Gerstle has written, American civic nationalism “has contended with another potent ideological inheritance, a racial nationalism that conceives of America in ethnoracial terms, as a people held together by common blood and skin color and by an inherited fitness for self-government.”1 The tension between these two “nationalisms” animates much of the story of twentieth-century America; certainly the history of civil rights policy is the story of using the power and authority of the state, increasingly the national government, to mollify the tension. But as Gerstle’s history makes clear, the growing federal power used to promote justice during the Progressive Era (or any era) could also deny or ignore justice. Progressive efforts led too easily into the restrictionism and hostility to newcomers and minorities, characteristic of the 1920s. While Mexicans remained free of legal restrictions on immigration, thanks to southwestern employers who desired their labor, anti-immigrant attitudes shaped their reception in American society. Although they could be found at the many ends of the railroad lines by the start of World War II—especially in the Great Lakes region and the Pacific Northwest—Mexican Americans resided overwhelmingly in the Southwest, isolated from the centers of national power and largely ignored by

11

chapter 1

national policy and politicians. Through the 1920s, their efforts to improve conditions focused on the local and state level. For Mexican Americans, national efforts would await the consolidation of self-help groups into sizable organizations reaching beyond local origins across state and regional lines. They would also await a national polity responsive to the claims of disadvantaged minorities and with a sufficiently strong executive to spur on or to circumvent the traditionally cumbersome Congress. The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) was a creation of Tejanos (Texas Mexican Americans) and emerged from the particular history of South Texas; nevertheless, its influence in American national policy came through its reputation as a trans-regional organization that spoke as the voice of Mexican Americans across the Southwest and the nation and that engaged issues of national policy.

Mexican Americans in the Southwest The history of the West has shifted from the story of the steady occupation of “virgin land” by whites from the East to one of a “legacy of conquest” in which races, cultures, and genders met, negotiated, and struggled.2 Similarly, the history of the region now known as the American Southwest is far more complex than generally thought. What became the four states of California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, while sharing common characteristics, has had diverse geographies, populations, and histories.3 Even within Texas—and of particular importance for the history of LULAC—regional differences between Central, South, and West Texas shaped the Mexican American experience. The story of LULAC begins in South Texas but spreads across the state and region quickly. For roughly fifty years after the annexation of Texas in 1845, residents of the area maintained what David Montejano has termed a “peace structure.”4 The old Mexican elite families, hoping to defend their long-standing land claims, to some extent accommodated and cooperated with new Anglo authorities. While the influx of Anglos into the new state brought competition and antagonism between the older residents—both Anglo and Mexican—and the newcomers, continued reliance on the open-ranch system allowed for accommodation to the changing social dynamics of the region. The first new settlers followed the established practice of large ranching estates and also maintained the paternalistic rancher-worker relationship. As the number of Anglos increased, Mexican land ownership decreased, and disputed property claims and competition bred conflict between new Anglo residents and Mexican elite families. As the old elite families began to lose their positions and their land, new Anglo settlers took over. For the individual families that lost their position, both Anglo and

12

league of american citizens

Mexican, this proved unfortunate. But for the Anglo population at large, this shift in power represented one Anglo elite being replaced by another. For Mexicans in the region, this shift represented a changing dynamic: as new Anglos gained positions of power, Mexicans lost such positions, and were relegated as a group to the status of sharecropper or laborer.5 While this loss of power by Mexican elites was smoothed somewhat by the maintenance of the open-ranch system, the final years of the nineteenth century brought change. For a variety of reasons, the ranching industry began to collapse. However, many of the technological changes of the late nineteenth century, most significantly new irrigation techniques, gave the arid Southwest a new lease on life as an agricultural region, and landhungry farmers from the Midwest began to move into the Southwest. This infusion of farmers brought with it a focus on new business methods, replacing the largely paternalistic rancher-hand relationship with a wagebased owner-worker relationship. To old prejudices against Mexicans, represented by admonitions to “remember the Alamo,” were added new ones that considered the Mexican a wage laborer, largely unskilled, lazy, and dirty. Once Mexican elite families no longer held positions of power, it became easy for Anglos to relegate Mexican Americans, who appeared ignorant of modern business practices, to an inferior social and economic class.6 The influx of Anglo farmers eager to make Texas a profitable agricultural region led to political and social changes that aggravated prejudices against Mexicans. In some areas, particularly areas close to the Mexican border, Mexican sojourners had little interest in American politics. However, Anglo politicians realized the potential of the Mexican vote to help secure lasting power, and Mexicans and Mexican Americans in some places became an important political resource. As Mario García has shown for El Paso, “American politicians, representing El Paso’s business and professional class, supported through public jobs and patronage certain Mexican American politicos in return for their ability to organize and deliver Mexican votes.” In these cases Mexicans were both “economically invaluable” and “a major political resource,” although the benefits generally accrued to the Americanized middlemen, who received jobs and some political representation, rather than to the majority of Mexican-heritage residents.7 Somewhat in contrast to that political picture, however, Mexican Americans, at least in the new agricultural regions of South Texas, tended to support the interests of the ranchers, both Mexican and Anglo, who offered the security of the old paternalistic relationship. In these areas the new class of commercial farmers undertook an effort, largely successful, to disfranchise Mexican Americans in areas of their greatest concentration.8 Among the social implications of the changes at the turn of the century was an altered relationship between employer and worker (generally, Anglo

13

chapter 1

and Mexican). In the new world of wage labor, farmers expected Mexicans to engage in “sojourner pluralism.”9 These cheap laborers were welcomed to the United States with legal sanction (and, in many cases, extralegal sanction) but were expected to return home when the job ended. Increasingly, Anglos considered all workers of Mexican heritage to be temporary laborers. In the Winter Garden area of southwest Texas, where Lyndon Johnson briefly served as principal of a Mexican American school, one local Anglo quipped, “We don’t want them to be associated with us, we want them for their labor.” Throughout the region, segregation became more prevalent as growers hired more Mexican workers: custom-segregated churches, restaurants, cemeteries, and schools.10 To keep that source of labor, farmers cooperated to enact laws or to follow policies that limited competition, such as restrictive labor contracts or laws to keep non-Texans from recruiting farm workers in Texas. With their mobility limited with regard to farm jobs, some Mexicans migrated to cities to escape the harsh working conditions and limited options of Texas agriculture. The industrialization of southwestern cities, encouraged by the railroads, provided sufficient jobs to encourage Mexicans and Mexican Americans to move to growing urban areas. For example, in the 1900 El Paso city directory, 29 of 834 railroad employees had a Spanish surname, compared with 1,010 of 2,753 employees in 1920. Furthermore, shops, factories, construction companies, and other urban enterprises employed Mexicans and Mexican Americans through the first decades of the twentieth century. In San Antonio, Mexicans and Mexican Americans made up 25 percent of the city’s population in 1900, 30 percent in 1910, and 37 percent in 1920 and worked in a variety of the city’s growing industries. In Houston, the Mexican-heritage population grew from six thousand to fifteen thousand between 1920 and 1930. That increase of 150 percent was greater than the city’s population growth as a whole during that boom decade. By 1940, Houston had twenty thousand Mexican and Mexican American residents.11 Even though workers of Mexican descent provided much of the labor that built the urban centers of the Southwest, the large numbers of new residents led some communities to plan the separation of Mexican residential areas. In others, agencies and individuals simply refused to rent or sell housing in new suburbs to the Spanish surnamed. The Mexican neighborhoods resulting from this form of discrimination suffered more than their share of health problems.12 Because they depended more on local circumstances, with no state laws requiring separate facilities for people of Mexican heritage, the restrictions facing Mexicans and Mexican Americans were not as rigid as those for blacks in the Deep South. For example, one study noted that segregated schools were “desirable, but not absolutely essential,” resulting (in general) in a less rabid racism than that aimed at blacks in Mississippi or

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Georgia. But those restrictions could be oppressive nonetheless, and in fact the local, less institutionalized source of discrimination could be more difficult to identify and combat.13 In that environment, education became a growing concern. State educators in Texas sought to use the public schools to socialize Mexicans to become good Americans. They hoped to instill the English language along with the values of patriotism, hard work, and personal hygiene. That effort emphasized a wholesale exchange: Mexicans must give up their native language and culture and adopt “American” traits. As state superintendent of public instruction Annie Webb Blanton stated in 1923, addressing those Texas Mexicans born in the United States, “If you desire to be one with us, stay, and we welcome you; but if you wish to preserve, in our state, the language and customs of another land, you have no right to do this.” To accelerate the Americanization of students, the state adopted an English-only provision, which stipulated that English would be the only language of instruction in the public schools (other states having passed such laws against German and Italian). Through the early 1920s the state also worked out a policy to reach into private and parochial schools by holding their students to public-school standards, except when the student attended “a private or parochial school which shall include in its course a study of good citizenship, and shall make the English language the basis of instruction in all subjects.”14 Anglo private schools had nothing to fear from the legislation. With the passage of the English-only law, state officials apparently thought their job complete. When combined with the Texas compulsory education law, the English-only provision meant that, in theory, all school children in Texas would be educated in English and would learn to be good citizens. The attitude of state school officials toward Mexican and Mexican American schoolchildren was patronizing, but they at least sought to educate all Texas schoolchildren. At the local level, however, problems facing Mexican American children proved more serious. Even though no laws prohibited Hispanic children from attending public schools, and in fact the compulsory education law required it, many local school districts managed to circumvent the laws and refused to educate Mexicans. Historian Guadalupe San Miguel, Jr., has found three main ways that local school officials offered Mexican American children inadequate education. First, they either refused to enforce the compulsory education laws or were lax about them. This practice was most evident in rural areas, where a stable work force proved more desirable than an educated citizenry. Second, they misappropriated state education funds. Local school administrators counted Mexican American children among their school age population because the number of school age children in a district determined state funding for schools, regardless of enrollment. They would include in their

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count children of migrant farming families who for much of the school year would be living elsewhere. School officials then made little or no effort to enroll the Mexican and Mexican American children, or provided meager funds for a Mexican school, thus increasing available funds for the Anglo schools. Finally, local school officials overtly segregated Mexican American children from Anglo children. Some argued that the irregular attendance of children of migrant farm laborers disrupted classes for regularly attending children; Mexican American children were therefore taught in separate classrooms. Others insisted that poor knowledge of English among Mexican American schoolchildren made educating them together with Anglo children a disadvantage for all involved. The hypocrisy of this last argument was apparent when Hispanic students fluent in English were placed in segregated classes with Spanish-speaking children, but these justifications proved sufficient to keep the state at bay.15 As Gilbert González suggests, although “there were no laws that mandated the practice of segregation, educators did invoke the state power granted to school administrators to adapt educational programs to the special needs of a linguistically and culturally distinct community.” The result, in many cases, was segregation of students in Mexican schools or Mexican classrooms.16 Local and state circumstances were most significant for the Mexican American experience during the early twentieth century, but national and international developments had important implications as well. The industrial and technological change that reshaped the Southwest along with the rest of the country has already been considered. Furthermore, quick victory in the Spainish-American War at the turn of the century ushered in an era of nation building that continued through the 1910s and generally included Americanization efforts. Political cartoonists drew Uncle Sam coming to the rescue of Latin America and portrayed Latin Americans as children needing to be cleaned up with American help. Jane Addams’s Hull House, the settlement house that ministered so importantly to the needs of poor immigrant families at the turn of the century, also assumed neighbors should gradually adopt American middle-class values and tastes and offered cultural programs to that end. Israel Zangwell popularized the notion of America as a melting pot in his famous play. Americanization and nativism peaked during World War I, as sauerkraut became “Liberty Cabbage” and dissenting voices became suspect (and illegal). The culmination of this trend came after the war, as Congress saw fit to restrict immigration through legislation.17 The National Origins Act of 1924 limited new arrivals to the United States to 2 percent of the foreign-born of a given nationality based on the 1890 census. That act favored “old immigrants” from northern and western Europe at the expense of “new immigrants” from southern and eastern Europe. The law also excluded migrants from Asia, reinforcing existing limits

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to Chinese and Japanese immigration. But the demand of southwestern farmers for cheap agricultural labor proved strong enough to convince Congress to place no restrictions on arrivals from the Western Hemisphere. The demand for workers pulled, and the lingering effects of the Mexican Revolution pushed, many thousands of Mexicans to the United States. Immigration from Mexico peaked during the 1920s, when almost five hundred thousand documented immigrants crossed the boarder. In 1924, alone, eighty-nine thousand documented immigrants arrived from Mexico. Latin Americans (primarily Mexican Americans, but also including Puerto Ricans, Cubans, and others) were the fastest growing ethnic minority in the United States.18 The resulting status for Mexican Americans—owing to limits on immigration from Europe and Asia and to the increasing demand for labor in the Southwest—made this minority the focus of those Americans especially concerned about foreign influence in America. As Carey McWilliams noted in his path-breaking study North from Mexico, during the 1920s American scholars and writers flooded their books and journals with concerns about “the Mexican problem.” McWilliams saw much of this focus encouraged by “the whole apparatus of immigrant-aid social work,” involving social agencies and Americanization organizations that had to identify a target population after the National Origins Act of 1924 eliminated much of their “clientele.”19 The Latin American exemption from the restrictive immigration legislation resulted from the influence of southwestern employers rather than from a more favorable view of Mexicans, as compared with eastern Europeans and Asians, among white Americans. Indeed, during debate over the proposed 1924 act, nativists and labor unions (for different reasons) opposed the exemption for Latin American immigrants, sometimes with forecasts of the collapse of the American way of life should the exemption be approved.20 As Clare Sheridan has argued, both restrictionists and immigration advocates proffered negative views of Mexican Americans to justify their positions: Pro-immigration groups considered Mexican workers a “safe” source of labor because they were docile, they could easily be deported, and because few of them desired naturalization. Antiimmigrant forces argued that the very characteristics that made Mexicans desirable laborers were liabilities for citizenship. They raised the specter of a permanent Mexican presence in the United States not as citizens, but as a peon caste injurious to national character.21 Included in the national discussion of immigration and American culture, Mexicans and Mexican Americans continued to enjoy the welcome of

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southwestern employers (although to placate some critics Congress criminalized illegal entry for immigrants from the Western Hemisphere a few years later) while they also continued to face an ambivalent or hostile American civic culture.

Middle-Class Mexican Americans and the Rise of LULAC Rural Mexicans and Mexican Americans through the 1920s remained dependent on local farmers for employment and income and faced a national culture indifferent or hostile to their presence. They had no means, certainly little political influence, by which to improve their working conditions and their children’s education or to achieve desegregated public facilities. As Mexican Americans moved into the cities, however, a young middle class of Mexican American businessmen and professionals emerged to serve the growing Mexican American population. The importance of a developing middle class in this context cannot be underestimated. In his synthesis of the immigrant experience in America, historian John Bodnar discusses the rise of an urban middle class among ethnic groups in the early twentieth century. Urban immigrant communities, rather than being homogeneous ethnic enclaves, were often as diverse as the country from which they came. “While most immigrants remained ordinary workers, the world of the urban immigrant was not only a working class world but one which included self-employed shopkeepers, fraternal officials, and other businessmen who fostered fragmentation by separating themselves from their humble moorings or mobilizing separate aggregations of newcomers to sustain their own power and prosperity.”22 Most often, the sectors of the economy open to ethnics included small artisan shops, family groceries, and the like. These businessmen relied on kinship ties and mutual assistance as much as on a drive for profit. Nevertheless, Bodnar concludes that a social distance often emerged in ethnic communities between workers and entrepreneurs, who were the first to move to new neighborhoods, often expanding their client base to decrease their dependence on the ethnic community. These middle-class ethnics were often torn between their ties to community and their frustration with other ethnics who did not exhibit the progressive ideals with which they associated their own advance. Bodnar posits a community that struggled with the desire for mutual assistance and cooperation on one hand, and with the business class mentality of growing American cities on the other. According to historian Richard García, the Mexican American middle class in San Antonio developed “a sense of a statusconsciousness as well as of its Mexican American ethnicity—a consciousness that reflected its dual Mexican and American historical and ideological

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reality, but that was not class conscious in a Marxist sense.”23 Because opportunities for ethnics were limited, and government services still largely nonexistent, ethnic groups such as Mexican Americans relied on internal group protection against unemployment, sickness, and death. Fraternal and mutual aid organizations developed, usually led by middle-class members of the group. These businessmen generally did not abandon those in the working class but maintained the ties of ethnic solidarity while promoting the value of Americanization, strengthening both their position as leaders of the ethnic community and, they hoped, the standing of the group as a whole in the new urban American setting. This pattern of middle-class mobility and community affiliation fits with that identified by Alan Knight in post-revolutionary Mexico, where reformers invoked and celebrated indigenismo, the cultural and social world of the Indian peasants in Mexico, even while working to “civilize” them for the good of the whole. As Knight observes, many of the Mexican Americans arriving in U.S. cities around 1920 were political refugees from the Mexican Revolution and as newcomers might have had more reason to invoke ethnic heritage and culture while trying to shape the Mexican American community to fit (Mexican and American) middle-class standards.24 The influx of immigrants from Mexico and the heightened nativism of Anglos created a delicate situation for Mexican Americans, particularly those of the middle class. They were not sojourners, but citizens and residents who had achieved at least a modestly successful business in the urban areas of the Southwest and who intended to stay in the United States. As Bodnar suggests, they had benefited from the new business environment of American cities. Yet they also continued to face discrimination. By the 1920s this contradiction encouraged a generation of middle-class Mexican Americans toward calling for full inclusion in American society. Mexican American mutual aid societies (mutualistas), which had existed in local communities for decades, had called for an end to discrimination but never combined that call with efforts at integration into American political and social institutions. The older generations tended to identify more with Mexico than with the United States and had little desire to enter the mainstream of American life. For example, mutualistas often named themselves after Mexican heroes or Mexico itself, as in Houston’s Benito Jaurez mutualista and its Mexico Bello (Beautiful Mexico) social club. Such groups kept ties with Mexican officials, receiving them when on business in Houston, and celebrated Mexican holidays.25 George J. Sánchez also finds a relationship between Mexican leaders and the older Mexican American organizations. He notes the attention that reformers in Mexico paid to the Mexicanheritage community in Los Angeles. Elites in Mexico, who promoted nationalism after the Mexican Revolution in an attempt to control the mestizo

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and Indian populations, also explicitly targeted the Los Angeles Mexicanheritage community to create a Mexican national identity across national boundaries.26 Up to the 1920s, such organizations focused on issues of work, sickness and death, and social affairs and encouraged members to cling to their primary identity as Mexican—at times a political identity but more often an ethnic or cultural one.27 The calls for change came from a more Americanized generation during the 1920s, many of whom had some access to Anglo education and some of whom had fought for the United States in World War I. According to historian Mario García, these middle-class Mexican Americans believed that they “had to learn the culture, language, and political system of the United States in order to effectively wage their political struggles and to integrate into the system.” They also hoped to make the Mexican communities into Mexican American communities.28 As a result of this emphasis in the years during and after World War I, new fraternal organizations rose up alongside the older Mexican American mutual-aid societies. Perhaps the first of these was the Order Sons of America (OSA), founded in 1921 in South Texas. The OSA was a nonpartisan group, but it sought a political agenda that included the right for Mexican Americans to serve on juries, to sue Anglos in court, and to use public facilities. Its efforts to raise the consciousness of Mexican Americans included voter registration drives and citizenship classes, not only to raise the quality of the Mexican American population but also to show Anglos that Mexican Americans were worthy of equality. Political scientist Benjamin Márquez notes that by “stressing American citizenship and the mastery of English, the [OSA] sought to reassure Texas Anglos that Mexican Americans could be trusted to be loyal and upstanding citizens.”29 Another important early organization was the Sons of America, formed in San Antonio in 1921. The Sons undertook many of the same activities as the OSA and pursued the common goals of raising Mexican Americans’ consciousness of their rights and responsibilities as citizens and of gaining equal rights. This group apparently suffered from internal personal rivalries, and several organizations splintered off during the 1920s.30 By the end of the decade, leaders of several Mexican American organizations recognized the advantages of a united front, and in early 1929 twentyfive delegates and 150 nonvoting members attended a convention in Corpus Christi. The convention agreed to unite the represented groups and form a new statewide Mexican American organization. In naming the new organization, members searched for a label that would not alienate either Anglos or Mexican Americans and would emphasize their determination that Mexican Americans were Americans first and foremost. They settled on “League of United Latin-American Citizens.” A few years later the organization dropped the hyphen to accentuate further

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the Americanness of members. According to the organization’s newspaper, the LULAC News, there existed only one kind of citizen in the United States “and that is the American citizen, and all other words used to describe that citizen of the United States are merely descriptive, participating of the qualities of an adjective and not of those of a noun.”31 The name reflected the goals of the organization, which included a commitment to “develop within the members of our race, the best, purest, and more perfect type of true and loyal citizen of the United States of America.”32 In the words of historian Guadalupe San Miguel, Jr., LULAC “proposed to integrate the community into the political and social institutions of American life,” a change “from self-help and protective to assimilative activities.” Rather than retreat into ethnic isolation, the organization sought to encourage Mexican Americans to “practice their citizenship by participating in the dominant political, economic, and social institutions of the land.”33 The founding generation of LULAC already participated in those dominant institutions. They were members of what political scientist O. Douglas Weeks, an observer of LULAC’s forming convention, called a “class of prosperous, educated citizenry whose living conditions and attitudes compare favorably with American standards.”34 The early leadership clearly fits the middle-class model suggested by Bodnar. The founders came from the business and professional classes, and initial members included businessmen, merchants, doctors, and lawyers, many of whom had come to America during the Mexican Revolution or belonged to elite Mexican American families. The experiences of the first four LULAC presidents, all founding members, serve as examples of the middle-class roots of LULAC. Ben Garza had worked as a waiter and in the shipyards of Corpus Christi, Texas. After World War I he purchased a restaurant with several partners. The restaurant prospered, and Garza and a friend bought out the other partners. He eventually branched out into real estate, became a leader in the Order Sons of America, and was elected LULAC’s first president. LULAC’s second president, San Antonio native Alonso Perales, was born in 1898 in Alice, Texas. He was educated at a preparatory school in Washington, D.C., George Washington University, and the National University School of Law. After serving in World War I, Perales practiced law in Texas, served as assistant to the U.S. ambassador to the Dominican Republic in 1922, and was legal advisor to the U.S. electoral mission to Nicaragua in 1928. LULAC’s third president, Manuel C. González, was born in Hidalgo, Texas, in 1899. He attended the University of Texas at Austin and became an attorney. González served as the head of the Knights of America and worked as legal advisor to the general counsel of Mexico in San Antonio. Judge J. T. Canales of McAllen, Texas, was a leading educator in South Texas. His LULAC presidency emphasized education for Mexican

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American children and developed the LULAC Scholarship Fund to help Mexican American students attend college.35 These leaders had a stake in American society. They formed LULAC after personal success in the fields of business, law, and education to help other Mexican Americans achieve the benefits of life in America. In addition, they sought to prove to Anglos that Mexican Americans could be productive citizens and could fulfill the responsibilities of citizenship. This emphasis on citizenship led to one of the most controversial decisions made by the group: LULAC’s founders limited membership to United States citizens. This approach differed considerably from past Mexican American organizations, which had sought a united ethnic front and the assistance of the Mexican consulate by combining all people of Mexican heritage under one group. The decision to restrict membership was difficult but seemed the most pragmatic way to aid the entire Hispanic population of the Southwest. LULAC members believed that only as American citizens could they effectively press for reform in politics and society. Additionally, some members feared that the different political goals of Mexican nationals, many of whom expected to return to Mexico, would hamper the organization and confuse Anglos as to the group’s intentions. By excluding noncitizens from membership, LULAC fully cast its lot with American society and distanced itself from reliance on the Mexican government for political protection.36 As we will see in more detail in later discussion, LULAC’s long-term goal was to encourage and assist as many Mexicans as possible to become American citizens and to participate in the political system, thus strengthening the Mexican American voice. But the decision to restrict membership placed LULAC firmly within the American camp and defined the Southwest as primarily a political space. Recent work by David Gutiérrez on the borderlands—the American side of the border, the Mexican side of the border, and the “third space” of the borderlands in which residents do not consider themselves essentially a part of the United States or Mexico—brings into sharper relief the importance of the political statement that LULAC made in identifying and working for American solutions to the problems of the borderlands.37 Despite the insistence on U.S. citizenship for it members, LULAC leaders did not restrict their activity to issues that affected only citizens (as we will discuss below and in chapter 2), and offered real benefits through the organization. In particular, historian Richard García notes LULAC’s role in helping to forge a new mentality, one that could change “the ‘homeless mind’ of the immigrant generation into a ‘Mexican American mind’” that could provide a basis from which to fight for civil rights.38 LULAC leaders thus accepted Americanism, liberalism, and patriotism and reinforced (although they did not create) a division within the Mexicanheritage community in the United States. Their efforts would be on behalf

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of all people of Mexican heritage, but only American citizens would be plotting their course of action. The founders further distanced themselves from Mexico when they made English the official language of the organization. Like the question of citizenship status for members, this step came not simply as a rejection of all things Mexican but as a practical measure. Actually, LULAC leaders called for bilingualism, arguing that Mexican Americans must, without forgetting their Spanish, become competent in the dominant language of the political and social institutions of the land. Speaking English would assist Mexican Americans in gaining equality, as well as in performing the responsibilities and obtaining the rights of citizenship. It was not a rejection of the use of Spanish. In fact, through the 1930s the LULAC News published bilingual editions to attract new members and to promote bilingualism. The organization also allowed some chapters to recruit and even conduct meetings in Spanish.39 In addition to questions about membership and language, the first LULAC leaders established a structure for the organization. LULAC’s central governing body, the Supreme Council, consisted of two elected delegates from each local council. The Supreme Council would elect the president general and vice president general at its annual meeting, while the treasurer and secretary of the president’s home council would hold the corresponding national office. The Supreme Council had final say on all matters of policy, including the creation of new local councils. Local councils would elect their own officers, and all officers and members had to subscribe to an oath to be loyal American citizens, to follow the laws of the United States, and to teach their children to be “good, loyal, and true American citizens.” The group stirred interest among Mexican Americans, and by the end of 1929 LULAC had eighteen councils, primarily in southern Texas. By the early 1930s the organization began to spread across state borders, appointing organizers in New Mexico.40

The s in America: LULAC’s First Decade LULAC’s founding coincided with the emerging national awareness of the economic calamity that had been developing since the end of World War I. Farmers had been hit particularly hard and earlier than most other sectors of the economy. Overproduction and lower prices on the world market combined with drought across the “dustbowl” to strike every part of American agriculture. Subsequent crises in industry and other sectors of the economy required innovative responses, and the New Deal of President Franklin Roosevelt brought ideas and changes that have had a long life, collectively referred to as “New Deal Liberalism.”

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Located in Texas and the Southwest through the 1930s, LULAC councils were far from the centers of national political and economic power, but changes in the American system during the decade would have significance for the policy world that LULAC would enter after World War II. Although the Civil War had seen a rise in federal authority, the decades following the war saw many constraints on national public policy. States remained the most active governments, and even at that level many legislatures met infrequently and briefly and state executives had small budgets and small staffs (and some lacked a veto). At the federal level, Congress was the most significant branch but was slow and inefficient. Presidents were weak, with small executive staffs and limited control over departments. Among the most significant changes of the turn of the twentieth century, according to historian Peter Argersinger, was the “creation of nonpartisan commissions and regulatory agencies, staffed by experts committed to an overarching public interest.” A concurrent change was the growth of the role of the president, under the exuberance of Theodore Roosevelt and his successors, which resulted in executive control over the processes of administration.41 These Progressive Era changes resulted from concerns over industrialization and the power of corporations and represented an important, but only initial, aggrandizement of the executive branch. The crisis of the 1930s further challenged and changed assumptions about the national government’s role in society. Amid the freewheeling experimentation of New Deal programs, a common thread or organizing principle, according to historian David Kennedy, was security. “Job security, life-cycle security, financial security, market security—however it might be defined, achieving security was the leitmotif of virtually everything the New Deal attempted.”42 With the government actively seeking to provide security for Americans, the long-term expectations of government regarding security shifted. According to Alan Brinkley, by the late 1930s reformers turned from an older Progressive faith in using regulation to create an ideal society (temporary regulation to make regulation obsolete) toward an expectation that there would be a continuous role for the state to control conflict and create stability. Some continued to focus on regulation, but by the end of the decade a new focus emerged—fiscal policy on the part of the federal government to promote individual consumption rather than to assist production. By the post–World War II era, it was the government’s responsibility to maintain full employment and to enhance purchasing power through welfare programs as much as to stabilize the economy through regulation of business.43 Rather than simply regulate big businesses to ensure fair prices for consumers, as Teddy Roosevelt preferred, or keep businesses small to foster competition, as Woodrow Wilson preferred, the New Deal mixed the older regulation with new programs to protect the security of in-

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dividual workers, epitomized by the Social Security Act and the protection of worker’s rights to organize and bargain collectively in the National Labor Relations Act (commonly known as the Wagner Act). And to carry out this program Franklin Roosevelt orchestrated a reorganization of the executive branch that, in the words of political scientist Sidney Milkis, “cleared the way for unprecedented political responsibility and policy development to be centralized in the White House.”44 The new Executive Office of the President would become the driving force behind policy development—particularly on civil rights, an issue Roosevelt dealt with only obliquely—until imploding under the double burden of Vietnam and Watergate a full generation later.45 The New Deal ushered in the idea of an economic bill of rights, and its focus was not on social change or civil rights. But much of the New Deal did have social implications, including its funding of the arts and conservation programs as well as its small steps toward civil rights, such as the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, which reversed the policy of forced assimilation of Native Americans. Policies for African Americans faced particularly difficult obstacles, including southern Jim Crow laws, northern ghettos, poll taxes and white primaries limiting their electoral influence. Particularly vexing was the filibuster and seniority system that kept Congress in the control of southern Democrats, whom Roosevelt needed in order to pass his economic programs. Nevertheless, the New Deal did result in important changes or signs of changing times: New Dealers joined with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People to gain equal treatment for blacks under New Deal relief and recovery programs; the number of black federal employees tripled; Roosevelt appointed over a hundred blacks to administrative posts; the president met with a “black cabinet” of unofficial advisors; and he created a committee on fair employment practices. Most significantly, the New Deal raised black expectations of the federal government’s actions, with important consequences for the future.46 In addition to the prevalent concerns it forced on all people on the margins, the Depression presented unique concerns to Mexican Americans, namely whether to repatriate to Mexico or to chance involuntary repatriation. Most repatriation programs, generally run by cities and states with large Mexican-heritage populations and with the cooperation of the Mexican government, were formally voluntary, but “encouragement” to leave could take many forms. America’s tendency to fail to distinguish between Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans meant that citizens of the United State were among those forced to board a train for Mexico. Children of immigrants—many of them citizens by virtue of birth in the United States—likewise were sent to Mexico, for the first time, with their repatriated parents.47

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For Mexican Americans who stayed in the U.S., the New Deal offered somewhat less than it offered blacks, particularly in terms of recognition of problems and a voice in designing solutions. Indeed, scholars of Mexican American history are divided over the results of the New Deal. George Sánchez finds increased union activity among Mexican Americans during the 1930s, particularly a dressmakers’ strike of 1933, a result of efforts to achieve the New Deal promises regarding wages and hours and the right to bargain collectively—part of Roosevelt’s National Industrial Recovery Administration. In Sánchez’s view, the New Deal encouraged political participation, ethnic cooperation, and involvement with the Democratic party—important changes in attitude for the future struggle for civil rights. Sánchez finds evidence that in Los Angeles the party tried to connect local union advances with Roosevelt’s national policies. He also finds an increase in naturalization requests between 1934 and 1936, suggesting that Mexicans perceived a changed atmosphere in the U.S.48 Other scholars of the Mexican American urban experience, particularly in the cities of the Midwest, tell a similar story. While Mexican Americans often lost jobs first and were replaced by Anglos, they joined and worked for unions through the 1930s, gaining a sense of the possibility for change within the system.49 For agricultural workers in California, Devra Weber finds far fewer gains. Her study of cotton-farm workers suggests that exemption of agricultural employees from New Deal legislation, such as social security and the National Labor Relations Act, limited workers’ expectation for change and that Mexican and Mexican American ambivalence toward the state discouraged much reliance on outside assistance. She concludes that the New Deal actually weakened the position of the cotton-farm workers in California by institutionalizing their position relative to farm owners.50 New Deal agencies did provide funds for projects in Mexican American neighborhoods. For example, the National Youth Administration (NYA) awarded a $100,000 grant to restore the old Mexican quarter in San Antonio. The city also received funding from the Federal Housing Authority, as did Austin (a segregated project proposal submitted by Congressman Lyndon Johnson). LULAC petitioned for grants and received funding for projects, in particular a grant from the Works Progress Administration for a new recreation center in Albuquerque. LULAC actually took over sponsorship of the NYA in Albuquerque in 1939. Overall, LULAC became part of the New Deal coalition, supporting its bills and efforts. This is not to say that LULAC leaders accepted blindly everything the New Dealers proposed and set in motion. The organization could support the New Deal and still criticize the exclusion of farm workers from the Social Security and National Labor Relations acts.51 Still, as Richard García argues, the decade of the 1930s and the New Deal response contributed one important element in LULAC’s

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emerging Mexican American identity. Members of the organization had chosen American individualism, in the Jeffersonian tradition, but mixed with it “a sensitivity and an affinity to the Rooseveltian New Deal conservative revolution of pragmatic liberalism with its emphasis on pluralism, statism, centralization, and its sense of humanism.”52 The crisis of the 1930s brought important changes to the American policy system, but those changes focused on the economic bill of rights of urban workers and the middle class. Without significant attention to civil rights or the plight of agricultural workers, the New Deal had a limited impact on Mexican Americans. The changes of the decade would be important for the postwar civil-rights struggle, but through the 1930s Mexican Americans as a whole had an ambivalent relationship to the U.S. government and the New Deal. Help could come in the form of grants, if groups had the information and resources necessary to apply, or in the right to bargain collectively, if one could join a union. In most cases, Mexican Americans continued to work at the state and local level if they hoped to improve their circumstances. For the newly created League of United Latin American Citizens, part of that work included forming its identity and ideology.

LULAC: Early Ideology and Activity LULAC spent its first decade, in the words of Benjamin Márquez, “consolidating the group, engaging in political and community activities, and debating the fine points of the group’s philosophy.”53 The major thrust of that philosophy was to create good, active American citizens. But Mexican Americans would never be productive citizens as long as they faced discrimination that limited the opportunities of individuals. According to LULAC, discrimination had two sources. First, many Anglos considered Mexican Americans to be second class citizens, at best, and throughout Texas kept Mexican Americans in subservient positions. Second, LULAC leaders placed some blame on Mexican Americans for failing to deserve equality. As beneficiaries, to some extent, of the American free enterprise system, many LULAC leaders and members believed in and promoted the qualities of an “American character” that they believed were partly responsible for their success, including individualism, a strong work ethic, and faith in progress. The organization held up successful middle-class Mexican Americans as models of the good American citizen. Mario García identifies a composite picture of such models: “American born, rising from poor backgrounds to achieve education, veterans of World War I or World War II, high school or college graduates, and professionally either a lawyer, teacher, physician, or government employee. In all, LULAC equated Americanism with middle-class success and believed that true leadership could emanate only from the middle class.”54

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To some Mexican nationals and Mexican Americans, as well as to some scholars, LULAC essentially adopted Anglo conceptions of respectability. David Montejano suggests that the “standards that the league expected of its exclusive membership were the highest standards of respectability— speak English, dress well, encourage education, and be polite in race relations. . . . In other words, the race ideas of Anglos—ideas of cleanliness, of beauty, of respectability—constituted much of the cultural ground on which segregationist policies were discussed and debated.”55 LULAC leaders would not have disagreed with such an assessment but would have objected to the pejorative tone that many such arguments assume (and perhaps to the argument that all such characteristics were simply Anglo). They reasoned that as members of the larger American society, a certain amount of acculturation was necessary and acceptable. Despite the complaints, then and now, that LULAC sold out, the organization was clear in its appreciation for its Mexican heritage and culture. Alonso Perales, founding member of LULAC, wrote in June 1929 that members of the new organization “solemnly declare once and for all to maintain a sincere and respectful reverence for our social origin of which we are proud” and that “our efforts to be rightfully recognized as citizens of this country do not imply that we wish to become scattered nor much less abominate our Latin heritage, but rather on the contrary, we will always feel for it the most tender love and the most respectful veneration.”56 Mario García argues that “LULACers, despite the insistence of later Chicano scholars to the contrary, hoped to achieve some functional balance between mainstream Anglo-American culture and the culture derived from their Mexican roots.”57 Their idea resembled not so much the melting pot of assimilation into American society as another idea gaining currency through the 1920s, a cultural pluralism such as that advocated by Horace Kallen.58 Efforts at Americanization, if not simply a rejection of ethnic identity, do reveal an awareness of class interests among LULAC leaders. The accommodation strategy offered by LULAC reinforced the virtues of middleclass status. LULAC sought not to revolutionize the American system, but rather to fine tune it to be more accessible to people of all backgrounds. In fact, they argued that discrimination was ultimately un-American, in that it worked against the functioning of a free-enterprise system. In the same vein, LULAC defended American capitalism against its foreign enemies during the 1930s, denouncing both fascism and Communism as antithetical to Americanism. As Márquez notes, “Because of their privileged yet precarious position, LULAC’s membership had a stake in reforming rather than remaking American society. As a consequence they would be found proclaiming loyalty to the United States and its government even at a time when racism against Mexican Americans was rampant.”59

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In LULAC’s view, the most able members of every ethnic group, in a society free of discrimination, would rise to high levels of achievement, while those lacking the proper qualities would remain near the bottom of the scale. The problem for Mexican Americans, in LULAC’s opinion, was that they were held back by discrimination against the group as well as by a lack of initiative within the group. This belief led LULAC both to encourage Mexican Americans to prove the stereotypes false and to reform society so that it offered all individuals an equal opportunity to achieve, based on individual merit. Councils undertook programs as local circumstances warranted, but several standard practices emerged. Among the wide array of specific efforts undertaken by LULAC councils ran three main thrusts of activity: community education and encouragement, desegregation of public facilities, and improved education for Mexican American children. First and foremost, LULAC leaders concerned themselves with spreading the word. Because their ideology relied heavily on individual initiative, LULAC leaders refused to claim that Anglo prejudice was the exclusive cause of Mexican American disadvantage. Instead, they encouraged Mexican Americans to take advantage of what opportunities they had and to make themselves into citizens that the rest of society would have to respect. To this end, they traveled around Texas in groups called Flying Squadrons to organize new chapters and to promote the organization and its goals. They offered citizenship and English-language classes, held food and clothing drives, and worked with Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts. Through a combination of education and community service LULAC sought to promote the organization and to turn Mexican communities into Mexican American ones.60 LULAC also advocated participation in the political process. To avoid being labeled political agitators, the organization specifically avoided any overtly partisan activity. The group’s founders repeatedly denied that LULAC was a political organization, and any LULAC member elected to public office became a “passive” member to prevent LULAC from becoming a political club.61 The organization did, however, encourage its members to become active in politics on an individual basis. The goal was to replace the old machine politics—in which the Mexican American vote was, as they saw it, largely a commodity to be purchased—with a new, more democratic politics in which Mexican Americans voted as good citizens rather than as dutiful servants. LULAC went so far as to organize poll tax committees to encourage and help citizens pay the required taxes rather than lose the power of the ballot.62 While socializing the Mexican American population in the ways of mainstream America, LULAC also challenged the discrimination that society imposed on Mexican Americans. Custom and local practice, without the official imprimatur of state laws, determined segregation of public fa-

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cilities for Mexican Americans, a civil rights challenge different from that faced by African Americans in the South. If segregation and discrimination were less systematic against Mexican Americans, offering perhaps more room to maneuver based on local circumstances, they also could be more difficult to pin down. Mexican Americans had no Plessy v. Ferguson court case or state Jim Crow laws to target at the regional and national level, to rally around, to draw to national attention, to use in making claims on society at large. For Mexican Americans living in areas of particularly harsh discrimination, the lack of national or state laws could make fighting for change more difficult, even if it allowed those living in other areas more opportunities than blacks had in the South. Local LULAC councils worked to end discrimination based on local circumstances. As O. Douglas Weeks of the University of Texas noted in 1929, “The general status of the Mexican-American in each community is different, and the method of attack [against segregation] must, on that account, be altered to suit each situation.”63 The LULAC approach to desegregation was consistent: while willing to use legal action in the courts if necessary, LULAC leaders preferred to negotiate face-to-face to bring about change. William Flores, LULAC national president in 1944–45, remembered of the El Paso LULAC method of fighting discrimination: Now when we knew that we were on the right track and we knew that we had a good complaint, whether it was school or anything else, we then would see the big shots—they were actually politicians, that’s what they were. And we went to them, a committee went to see them, and presented our facts and said, “We can prove our charges;” and they could fix it up just as easy as that. . . . We threatened many times, “We’ll go to the papers with this charge here if you won’t listen to us. But I know that you can correct it.” And they promised to correct it and they did so; and we were satisfied.64 Throughout the 1930s LULAC used this preferred method to desegregate public facilities, such as theaters, swimming pools, restaurants, and hospitals.65 In these desegregation efforts, LULAC emphasized that Mexican Americans were not a racial minority but were in fact white. This insistence resulted in part from self-identity and in part from pragmatism. Texas law segregated blacks and whites but did not specify segregation of Mexicans. LULAC lobbied for a white classification so Mexican Americans could vote in the Democratic primary elections. The organization did not lobby Congressman Lyndon Johnson in support of repealing the poll tax (Johnson was going to vote against repeal in any event) out of fear that they might lose that classification.66 In several Texas cities the LULAC councils objected to

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any attempt to label Mexican Americans as “colored.” Thus, in Wharton County, LULAC protested when officials returned poll tax receipts marked “colored” to Mexican Americans; in Corpus Christi LULAC fought the designations “American” (AM), “Mexicans” (M), “English-speaking Mexicans” (EM), and “Coloreds” (C) in the city directory. These objections did not question segregation itself, only the segregation of (white) Mexican Americans based on race status. LULAC did not necessarily protest the segregation of Mexican Americans who did not live up to an “American” standard, but rather opposed efforts to lump all Mexican Americans into an inferior category, particularly a “colored” category, based only on Mexican heritage. They bought into the racial nationalism identified by Gerstle, accepting the racial hierarchy that placed whites at the top and thus contributing to the subjugation of nonwhites in society.67

Educating Mexican American Children Education, of all issues of discrimination and equal opportunity, was the most important issue for LULAC during its first decades. A number of obstacles impeded the education of Mexican American children. First, many children worked to contribute to the family’s income. In particular, migrant farming families traveled seasonally, and children missed large portions of the school year. School facilities in agricultural areas operated according to farmers’ needs for cheap labor, and farm children received only sporadic schooling. Furthermore, several studies during the 1920s found that Texas Mexicans, and agricultural workers in particular, remained indifferent to public education. By the late 1920s, however, particularly in small towns and cities, Mexican Americans began to complain about the poor education afforded their children. Most children of Mexican heritage faced at least some form of school segregation, and parents began to seek enforcement of compulsory school laws and equal educational facilities for their children.68 LULAC leaders saw education as a key to an active citizenry and took the lead in working for equal education for Mexican Americans. They started at home, working to increase the faith and interest in education among the Mexican American population. LULAC hoped to increase local Mexican American pressure on school authorities to provide better education, rather than to attack local schools directly and be viewed as an agency of outside agitation. To this end, members undertook public information campaigns to change what they viewed as the Mexican American community’s problematic characteristics: an absence of education and a lethargic attitude. Guadalupe San Miguel, Jr., quotes one early LULAC member who suggested that some of the inadequate educational opportunity for Mexican Americans “is the result of the Latin American, who does not demand his

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rights nor does he try to find solutions to these problems which serve as obstacles for his children.” LULAC members considered mastery of English as vital both in obtaining and in fulfilling the rights and responsibilities of citizenship. As one suggested, “If you talk English, you will think and act like Americans.” By speaking to parent groups, starting parent-teacher associations, and establishing a scholarship fund for promising Mexican American students, LULAC promoted the use of English in the home and the value of education for Mexican American children. In addition, LULAC rejected the view that Mexican Americans were passive victims in the face of Anglo oppression. As one LULAC leader asserted, “If we, the Mexican American and the Mexican citizens raised in the United States, are to occupy the honorable place that we merit, it is indispensable to educate ourselves.”69 While spreading the word to the Mexican American community, LULAC members also worked on a second approach to equal education—to change the prevailing practices of discrimination that resulted in inferior education for Mexican Americans. Some Mexican Americans in the early years of the century had favored separate schools for their children as advantageous both to learning English and to maintaining their Mexican culture. The newer generation of Mexican American leaders, however, viewed segregation as an impediment to education and to the self-respect of Mexican American children. Through a variety of means they sought to convince local school officials to educate Mexican American children with other white children. First, LULAC leaders used their standard practice of negotiation with local leaders to bring change. If negotiation failed, they encouraged community pressure, investigated and documented charges brought by parents, brought evidence to the attention of higher authorities, and publicized the differences between facilities for Mexicans and those for Anglos. LULAC took these actions against the most egregious cases of discrimination and realized that good pedagogy might require the teaching of Mexican-heritage children separately from others for a time. Students who could not understand English, for example, could gain from separate English instruction through the second or third grade. When such practices continued well beyond the early grades, when schools assigned Mexicanheritage students to separate classes without regard for their English capability, or when schools treated Mexican-heritage students in ways different from their treatment of other white groups, then LULAC took action. As one parent noted, segregation “may be all right, on account of language. But the Bohemian and German and other non-English-speaking children go to the American school, and some Mexicans want their children to go there.” LULAC agreed, and could not abide by segregation based only on Mexican heritage. Such segregation implied a racial distinction that LULAC refused to recognize. R. de la Garza, a founding member of LULAC, best expressed this view in an editorial in the LULAC News in 1931: “Let them segregate our 32

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children in the first grades until they have learned enough English to hold their own with other whites. If some of them are unclean, let them be placed in different schools until they have learned to be clean. But we must battle segregation because of race prejudices” (emphasis in original).70 When negotiation and local pressure proved insufficient to convince school districts to allow Mexican-heritage children to attend the same school as Anglos, LULAC took legal action. Its first legal challenge to segregation came in 1930, only one year after the founding of the organization. In Independent School District v. Salvatierra, LULAC lawyers helped Jesús Salvatierra and several parents who sought an injunction to prevent the Del Rio, Texas, school district from using bond monies to build new school facilities.71 The parents argued that the new buildings would perpetuate the segregation of Mexican American children, who attended their own school through the third grade. They claimed that the school separated the children based on race, in violation of the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The local superintendent of schools argued that the school district separated the Mexican American children for instructional purposes. Migrant children, he suggested, arrived at school late in the fall, after the harvest. These children would be at a disadvantage if placed in classes already in progress. Similarly, he insisted that non-English-speaking children, regardless of age, benefited from their own school, where they could learn English at their own pace and develop their “innate talents.”72 His arguments did not convince the local trial court, which found the school district guilty of discrimination. The Texas court of appeals, however, overturned the decision. The appeals court agreed that school districts could not segregate Mexican American children because of their heritage, but decided that the Del Rio school district segregated the children for educational reasons. The state supreme court refused to hear the case on appeal, but the decision retained at least some aspects of a moral victory. The Texas courts considered segregation of Mexican Americans illegal, but only if such segregation resulted from prejudice rather than pedagogy. This half-victory in the courts was time consuming and expensive. The young organization, which was founded in the opening year of the Great Depression, had insufficient funds to litigate consistently, and LULAC did not undertake another court case for over fifteen years. LULAC would most often return to its local, negotiation-based struggle against discrimination.73

Conclusion LULAC’s first decade, filled with depression and the coming of war, provided a difficult environment in which to develop an ideology and method for a new Mexican American organization. Nevertheless, during the 1930s 33

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LULAC experienced rapid growth. From nineteen councils located primarily in South Texas in 1929, the organization grew to thirty-seven by 1932 and on the eve of World War II had over eighty councils located in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and Kansas. After the war, the organization would experience a surge both in membership and activity and would extend its reach beyond Texas and the Southwest to engage national policy issues. The philosophy and tactics LULAC developed in its first decade foreshadowed the approach it would develop to deal with issues of federal policy. This middleclass organization would continue in its loyalty to the American freeenterprise system and in its emphasis on the responsibility of the individual, even while insisting that Mexican Americans received unfair treatment in the mainstream of American society. At its inception, LULAC was somewhat ambivalent in placing blame for Mexican Americans’ second-class status. Anglos treated Mexican Americans as inferior, but from their middleclass perspective LULAC leaders believed that many Mexican Americans were behaviorally inferior as well. LULAC also articulated its opposition to characterizing Mexican Americans as anything other than white. Leaders founded their early efforts at desegregation on the lack of statutory grounds for segregation of (white) Mexican Americans, and this insistence would continue throughout the postwar period. While resistance to racial classification persisted, however, the group’s leaders never demanded a complete rejection of Mexican heritage. They nevertheless implored Mexican Americans, already steeped in their Mexican heritage, to learn the language, customs, and norms of the larger American society. The group’s leaders never claimed that all Mexican Americans were equally worthy of inclusion in the American mainstream. Worthiness had to be earned by the individual, and for LULAC the criteria remained distinctly middle-class. Without rejecting Mexican heritage, LULAC during its first decade leaned away from that heritage and toward Anglo middleclass values as a prerequisite to joining the American mainstream. LULAC had relatively few opportunities to express its views on national issues. During its first decade it remained a regional, and primarily Texas, organization. Furthermore, the national policy environment did not fix its gaze on Mexican Americans or the Southwest. In its general approach to the economic crisis, however, the New Deal did attract the allegiance of Mexican Americans. Much like blacks, Mexican Americans received little specifically from the New Deal but expressed gratitude for efforts to help the poor, a large number of whom in the Southwest were of Mexican heritage. LULAC received funds to carry out New Deal projects, and Mexican Americans became Democratic voters. And, perhaps most significant, the American political system shifted in a way that would last through the 1960s. The rise of Franklin Roosevelt, and the increased power residing in the executive

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office of the president, had little impact on civil rights during the 1930s. But the policy initiative had shifted to the presidency, and future chief executives would wield that power in support of American civic nationalism, and at the expense of American racial nationalism. Those who gained the ear of the president and his advisors would gain important advantages in the policy stream.

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2 Immigrants, Citizens, and Stakeholders

I

n 1942, LULAC held its national convention in Albuquerque, where the organization dedicated a new community center. This meeting received special attention, not only from the usual parties, such as Mexican Americans and local and state government officials, but also from the federal government’s war machine. The Office for the Co-ordination of InterAmerican Affairs (OCIAA) planned to record part of the proceedings for later broadcast to South America and Mexico. The Albuquerque Journal noted that, in the interest of solidifying U.S.–Latin American relations, “the Government has recognized the work of the organization and is cooperating in the program to cement and broaden inter-American relations.” LULAC had spent the 1930s working to raise the level of education and civic responsibility of Mexican Americans and during the war had heightened its emphasis on good citizenship and American values. The OCIAA saw an opportunity to promote among Latin American neighbors the major themes of the LULAC convention, including “hemispheric solidarity, the war effort, civilian defense, social and economic betterment and education.” Tom Martin of the Office of Civilian Defense had praised LULAC’s achievements in improving relations between Latin American nations and the southwestern United States. The OCIAA interest in the convention is one of the earliest examples of national, and international, attention to the work of LULAC. As early as 1942 the war office recognized LULAC as an organization of Latin Americans that could be a shining example to America’s southern neighbors.1 That same year, 1942, the United States entered into a labor agreement with the Mexican government. Because the Depression had lowered wages and the demand for workers, the domestic labor supply could fulfill demand, ending the welcome that Mexican laborers had experienced during the 1920s. But the war effort increased the demand for workers to unprecedented levels and employers in the Southwest successfully lobbied the government to bring contract labor from Mexico. The U.S. and Mexican governments agreed to a temporary, emergency labor program, popularly known as the Bracero Program, in August 1942. This influx of contract laborers, and the simultaneous flood of undocumented labor that crossed the border as the economy soared, presented a challenge to domestic workers, many of whom

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were poor Mexican Americans and longtime resident Mexicans. The influx also presented a challenge to middle-class Mexican American members of LULAC, whose vision for Mexicans living in the United States was to become citizens, to speak English, to vote, and to raise their children to be good Americans. The “social and economic betterment and education” lauded at the 1942 convention was, from LULAC’s viewpoint, put at risk by a potential flood of Spanish-speaking Mexicans who had no desire to settle in America and become citizens. At perhaps LULAC’s finest hour in its thirteen year history, when it was trumpeted as an example of American values throughout Latin America, the organization sensed the gathering of forces that could reverse much of the progress that had been made. The influx of Mexican nationals to work in the United States presented LULAC with a new problem. Labor from Mexico had been unwanted during the 1930s, LULAC’s first full decade, and many of those Mexicans who did cross the border were returned by regular repatriation efforts. There was little need for LULAC to take a stand on immigration issues. But with the war came the workers, and Mexican Americans had to reconsider their own identity in relation to these new arrivals. LULAC, although not a major player in the debates over and formulation of federal policy on the Bracero Program and illegal immigration, would nevertheless enter the federal policy arena, gain the attention of America’s policy makers, and articulate a view of Mexican American identity. Labor from Mexico presented LULAC leaders with two related decisions. First, how would they relate to these new arrivals? Would they unite along ethnic lines and defend the right of these workers to contract their labor and try to improve their lives through jobs in the United States? Or would they identify primarily along class lines, feeling no responsibility to defend people unlike themselves in education and occupation? Second, how would they present their case to policy makers? How would these middle-class, professional, English-speaking American citizens seek policy changes from the federal government regarding peasant and working-class, unskilled, Spanish-speaking Mexican nationals? Their choices marked an evolution in LULAC ideology regarding the rights of those Mexican immigrants committed to life within the political boundaries of the United States, even as they revisited their own ethnic identity in the face of immigration from Mexico.

The War Years For many Americans World War II ushered in a new optimism, a period of what historian James Patterson identifies as “grand expectations.”2 For racial and ethnic minorities the war experience contrasted grand expectations about the future with the stark realities of the present. Segregation in

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the armed forces and continued discrimination in education and employment, including the new wartime industries, contrasted sharply with the struggle for the “four freedoms” that President Roosevelt had promised.3 Yet some improvements instilled hope. A. Philip Randolph’s threat to organize a March on Washington pressed President Franklin D. Roosevelt to ban discrimination in federal contracting and to create a national Fair Employment Practices Commission (FEPC), an early sign of the potential effectiveness of organized action by minorities. In 1944, the Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional the white primary in Texas, thereby eliminating a major pillar of Southern segregation. In general, the wartime demand for labor gave many the opportunity to earn decent wages. Experience in the wartime labor force and in combat, along with increased income and mobility, provided evidence of the capabilities of minorities and gave them reasons to hold, along with other Americans, grand expectations.4 For Mexican Americans, as for other minorities, the war experience, both within the armed services and in the culture at large, highlighted the contrasts of life in America. Mexican Americans served with distinction in the U.S. armed forces. For example, seventeen infantrymen with Spanish surnames won the Congressional Medal of Honor, and many more garnered medals and honors throughout the war.5 Along with the pride and recognition that came from valiant service to the country, however, the war years also revealed the difficulty of the struggle ahead. In particular, two events of the early 1940s in Los Angeles reflected the concerns that Anglo society developed about Mexican American youth and brought the issue of Mexican American culture to national attention. “Pachuco” gangs represented a subculture among second-generation Mexican American youth, known primarily for their favored attire—the zoot suit. In August 1942, twenty-two members of a Mexican American gang were arrested on charges stemming from the death of José Díaz, a Mexican American youth. Los Angeles police insisted that Díaz died as a result of gang warfare, and the allwhite jury convicted seventeen gang members. Critics of the convictions called the episode, which became known as the Sleepy Lagoon case, a highly irregular trial based on circumstantial evidence. The next summer American servicemen in Los Angeles went on a ten-day spree of assaults on Mexican American youth. Those attacks became known as the Zoot Suit Riots, and the Mexican American teens were largely blamed in the local and national press. The press used these episodes as examples of the barbarity of Mexican American culture and raised questions about the loyalty of this ethnic group during the war.6 The war experience combined with discrimination and the booming economy, just as those factors did within the African American community, to create a new cadre of leaders among Mexican Americans—what histo-

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rian Mario García has termed the “Mexican American Generation.” García identifies the rise of a new brand of Mexican American leader who could use the economic and political opportunities opened by the war to attack the legacy of discrimination faced by Mexican Americans and who worked to create a “secure identity for Americans of Mexican descent” while shaping the Mexican population into a group of American citizens aware of their rights and responsibilities and determined to achieve both.7 One of those responsibilities was to serve the country in time of need. In this respect members the League of United Latin American Citizens fulfilled their obligations. LULAC nearly halted its activities during the war. Indeed, the ranks of local chapters were decimated by members leaving for service. Many LULAC leaders emphasized the need for Mexican Americans to prove their loyalty by serving their country and trumpeted the high numbers of Mexican American volunteers for the war. For example, early LULAC leader George Garza stated that the organization “gave unreservedly of its manpower to the service of its country.” Even the national office lost its leadership when Ben Osuna, elected national president in June 1942, left for Officer Candidate School that August.8 Councils nevertheless continued to hold ceremonial meetings to express support for the war effort and to carry on routine business, and the organization continued to hold the national convention. While the efforts of LULAC slowed and active membership dropped during the war years, the public relations arm of the U.S. war machinery agreed with Garza and recognized the organization’s support for the war effort as a good example for the Mexican American and Latin American people.9 Soon after the war, the ranks of LULAC councils swelled with returning veterans. In his identification of these new recruits, political scientist Benjamin Márquez agrees with García’s analysis. Márquez describes them as “Mexican American veterans immersed in the ideals of freedom and equality.” He argues that a younger generation of Mexican American leaders shaped by “a conflict that promised political equality and democracy for all people” became the force behind the postwar activity of LULAC.10 Anglo suspicions, evident during the war in the Zoot Suit Riots and Sleepy Lagoon case, continued after the war and were even directed at Mexican American veterans. In response to discrimination and segregation against Mexican Americans in uniform, especially in Veterans Administration hospitals, Dr. Hector García of Corpus Christi, himself a veteran and LULAC member, formed the American G.I. Forum. García’s forum was organized to help all veterans, but his particular interest in Mexican Americans who served, and his willingness to speak out on Mexican American affairs in general, resulted in a largely Mexican American membership. Often working together on projects, LULAC and the G.I. Forum would become the two major Mexican American organizations gaining national

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attention for the problems of Mexican Americans, at times competing for recognition as the primary organized voice of the community. These two groups offered Mexican Americans their most sustained advocacy through the 1960s.11 The renewal of significant immigration from Mexico, a result of the booming economy of the war and postwar years, exacerbated the fears and suspicions harbored by Anglos. Immigration had been of little concern to most Americans during the 1930s; employers had adequate supplies of cheap domestic labor and local enforcement agencies and the Border Patrol repatriated thousands of Mexican laborers during the Depression.12 As a result of increased wartime demand for workers and increasing wages, immigration soared during and after the war, as employers in the Southwest sought cheap workers in a highly competitive labor market. The increase in Mexican immigration, and the resulting displacement of domestic workers, brought the issue to national attention. Employers in the Southwest pressed the federal government to strike a deal with Mexico to import workers, and Americans began to debate the relative merits and liabilities of importing workers from other countries. In this context, LULAC became considerably more vocal at the national level, speaking out on immigrant labor issues and fashioning a perspective on ethnicity, citizenship, and federal government responsibility that would carry over into its efforts for Mexican American civil rights in the years to come.

Braceros Between 1900 and 1930, the average annual gross flow of Mexican immigrants to the United States was between 60,000 and 100,000. Most of those immigrants were seasonal laborers attracted to agricultural jobs. This figure does not represent permanent migration; the return flow to Mexico has been estimated at between 42,000 and 70,000 annually. Instead, the figure is more a reflection of the need for seasonal migrant laborers that developed among United States employers. The Great Depression lowered demand, which was easily filled by American migrants from the dust-bowl areas of the Midwest. But World War II drew many workers into military service or to the more prosperous defense industries, and as the labor supply dwindled and as wartime demand increased, growers looked across the border for workers. Under pressure from agricultural interests, a committee composed of members of the War Manpower Commission and the Departments of Labor, Agriculture, State, and Justice developed a plan to recruit Mexican workers. Shortly after Mexico declared war on the Axis powers in June 1942, the two nations entered negotiations for a bilateral contract-labor program. Mexico’s interest in such an agreement stemmed from its desire to have a say in

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the working conditions of its citizens in America and also from its desire to be seen as contributing to the war effort. The agreement, which went into effect on August 4, 1942, called for the protection of contracted laborers’ civil rights and working conditions while in the United States. It also stipulated that these workers, commonly called braceros, would not be used to displace or lower the wages of domestic workers.13 As government policy, this program developed through administrative maneuvering as a temporary wartime necessity. Funding for U.S. responsibilities at first came from emergency funds at the president’s disposal. Congress did not enact legislation for the Bracero Program until after the executive agreement was renewed in April 1943; thereafter, it extended the wartime program almost yearly, with some fine-tuning amendments, through 1947.14 The enactment of the Bracero Program in 1942 marked a clear political victory for agricultural interests. Groups opposed to the program, particularly labor, generally accepted it as inevitable in the face of the powerful agricultural lobby and because they proved unwilling to be seen as hindering the war effort by opposing a source of labor.15 The program technically provided for worker welfare and explicitly stated that labor shortages had to be confirmed by the U.S. government before braceros could be contracted in any given area. In addition, Mexico blacklisted Texas, the state with the worst reputation for abuse of Mexicans and Mexican Americans. Under the rules of the program, no contracted workers could be sent to employers in the Lone Star state.16 LULAC’s initial response to the agreement was not favorable. Reflecting some of the concerns expressed by the Mexican government, LULAC leaders opposed the program on the grounds that employers mistreated Mexican workers. At its 1942 national convention LULAC called on Mexico and the United States to discontinue the importation of laborers because of exploitation suffered at the hands of employers. Two years later, when the pro-employer press in Texas tried to discredit reports of discrimination and segregation in hopes of ending the blacklist, LULAC reaffirmed its opposition to imported labor “because of the fact that the conditions complained of in said Resolution [of 1942] still exist, and the same exploitation, discrimination, and segregation is still being practiced against the Mexican people in Texas.” The conditions consisted of employers ignoring provisions of the bracero agreement, including minimum wages, basic health care, and a guaranteed length of contract.17 Given LULAC’s early opposition to the Bracero Program during the war and, at the same time, their focus on mistreatment of the bracero, a fair question arises: What was LULAC’s interest in defending the bracero? The program of contract labor, they argued, should not be extended to Texas because employers treated braceros poorly. But as an organization of middle-

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class citizens, mostly in business and the professions, LULAC had no clear interest in the conditions of bracero workers. LULAC’s prewar efforts to desegregate schools and to end discrimination in public facilities and jobs had followed the pattern of traditional interest-group elites, in that the leaders had material interests in common with those for whom they spoke; such discrimination affected middle-class Mexican Americans, like LULAC members, just as it affected poor Mexican Americans and Mexican noncitizens.18 In the stand that LULAC took to protect braceros, they had no similar material interests. Ethnic solidarity seems an obvious answer, but LULAC leaders had few good things to say about poor Mexicans who either wanted to return to Mexico someday or refused to follow LULAC’s prescribed path to self-improvement.19 LULAC’s postwar opposition to the Bracero Program, to be considered shortly, reveals a concern that the program lowered wages for domestic workers and threatened LULAC’s vision of a progressing Mexican American population. During the super-patriotic war years, however, they focused on the plight of the bracero as the more noble, more “American,” grounds for opposing the contract labor program. Even so, LULAC’s wartime opposition to the program was a bold move, given that an organization of Mexican Americans might be considered subversive in opposing a program that contributed to the war effort. LULAC leaders recognized that possibility, and even while they opposed the emergency labor measure, they sought to strengthen the group’s reputation by proclaiming the organization’s support for the war effort. They even briefly considered changing the organization’s name to League of United Loyal Citizens.20 Their efforts and their strong record of civic activity and conservative goals paid off. Generally speaking, the U.S. war machine viewed LULAC as a shining example for the Western Hemisphere. In effect, LULAC succeeded in maintaining its opposition to the Bracero Program on the basis of “unAmerican” treatment of workers while protecting its patriotic reputation. LULAC’s wartime opposition to the program was, in part, an attempt to maintain the status quo. Mexico had already denied braceros to Texas employers, and LULAC leaders wanted Mexico to continue that policy. Therefore, they highlighted the persistence of oppressive working conditions. The easiest way to keep braceros out of Texas, and perhaps to influence Mexico to reconsider the program in general, would be to convince the Mexican government that exploitation and discrimination continued. The wartime labor program had enough momentum to continue through 1947, but then Congress, as the country wound down from the wartime economy, allowed the statutory basis for government recruitment of workers to lapse. In its place the politically strong farm bloc achieved one of its most coveted goals—direct employer recruitment of Mexican work-

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ers. The wartime program had made the government of the United States the technical “employer” of braceros and ultimately responsible for guaranteeing the conditions of contracts. Between 1948 and 1951, when the government had no basis for claiming wartime necessity,21 growers in the Southwest contracted braceros directly, and without any higher authority overseeing treatment of workers. With the outbreak of hostilities in Korea, however, wartime necessity arose once again, and with pressure from Mexico to reestablish government accountability for contract enforcement, Congress enacted Public Law 78 in July 1951. That law returned authority to the U.S. government, ultimately to the secretary of labor, for administration of the Bracero Program, a step that laid the foundation for the Bracero Program for the next decade. By 1951, the Bracero Program was no longer a temporary policy but, rather, a permanent part of U.S.-Mexico relations.22 Like its wartime arguments, LULAC’s postwar arguments expressed concern for the treatment of imported laborers. But the permanence of the program and the relaxation of the blacklist on Texas in the late 1940s ultimately led group leaders to insist that imported Mexican labor was detrimental to American citizens of Mexican descent. The organization’s newspaper, the LULAC News, took the position that LULAC had no opposition to the program if carried out properly; if in fact a shortage of domestic labor existed in a particular region, then employers should be allowed to recruit workers. But, the News continued, in most cases employers used braceros to lower wages and working conditions of domestic workers, thus impoverishing Mexican Americans to the advantage of Mexican citizens. This LULAC could not abide.23 When the program came up for renewal, as in 1958 when Secretary of Labor James Mitchell reevaluated it, LULAC opposed it on the grounds that braceros “destroyed the bargaining power for better wages of our American citizens of Mexican descent.”24 Ironically, as LULAC pointed out, the government guaranteed conditions in bracero contracts that it did not guarantee for its domestic workers. LULAC raised this inconsistency as part of its larger economic argument in opposition to the Bracero Program, highlighting the detrimental effects that braceros had on domestic laborers and their families. The organization insisted that the American government had no business recruiting workers from Mexico if that practice could have such an impact on American citizens.25

Civil Rights for White Americans Although the Truman administration showed little concern for the effects of braceros on Mexican Americans, it did raise expectations about possibilities for domestic policy. When Harry Truman took over the presidency in 1945, many liberal Democrats shuddered. They feared that their high

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hopes for liberalism in the aftermath of war were threatened and had no idea that Truman would carry on the New Deal legacy of his predecessor. In fact, Truman surpassed the Roosevelt legacy on civil rights. He began desegregation of the military, accepted a strong civil-rights plank in the 1948 Democratic platform, and established a President’s Committee on Civil Rights (PCCR) to study the civil rights problems of minorities and to suggest remedies. The committee’s report, “To Secure These Rights,” raised the hopes of civil-rights groups across the country. The committee specifically identified Mexican Americans as one minority group in need of study. To collect information about Mexican Americans, the PCCR requested reports from two prominent Mexican American scholars. LULAC member Carlos Castaneda, professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin and former regional director of the wartime Fair Employment Practices Commission, provided the PCCR with his views on job and wage discrimination against Mexican Americans. George Sánchez, also a professor at the university and a former national president of LULAC, studied the educational opportunities of Mexican American children and reported on segregation and discrimination in schools. Castaneda offered an economic interpretation of the discrimination faced by Mexican Americans. He insisted that Mexicans, citizens and noncitizens alike, were offered only the least-skilled and lowest-paying jobs, regardless of ability or performance. Such limited employment opportunities led to poor living conditions, inadequate nutrition, lack of skills, and little education. Castaneda believed that such conditions reinforced one another; Mexican Americans received the worst jobs because Anglos considered them inferior (in dress, education, hygiene), and they appeared to be inferior because they occupied the lowest rung on the economic ladder.26 He believed that decent jobs and wages would correspond to improved living standards and education and would erode all evidence for maintaining the stereotype of Mexicans as unemployable, dirty, and ignorant. This argument followed a fundamental LULAC ideology, which strove to convince Anglos that Mexican Americans could be equal members of society and also required Mexican Americans to improve themselves to prove the stereotypes false. The ideology was implicitly anchored in the notion that the problem began with a prejudice. George Sánchez made more explicit the connection between discrimination and group stereotypes. The former LULAC president argued that Mexicans and Mexican Americans faced many of the same problems as poor people in general, but with an added handicap of having “customarily been looked upon as a race apart.” Sánchez’s report helps flesh out Castaneda’s assertions: he suggested that Mexican Americans exhibit characteristics—“cultural-racial or natio-racial,” according to Sánchez—that lead

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Anglos to consider them distinct. From that distinction, he argued, comes the discrimination that leads to economic and educational disadvantage. Sánchez believed that Mexican Americans were in a particularly vulnerable position. He pointed out that Texas law considered Mexican Americans white (as LULAC had argued since its inception). Therefore, they did not have a technical, legal claim to “separate but equal” facilities. In this regard, Sánchez argued that, under law, Mexican Americans were more vulnerable than blacks. But rather than claim race-minority status to gain “separate but equal” protection, Sánchez insisted that Mexican Americans were white. In his letter, the terms white and Mexican appear in quotation marks, while Negro does not—signifying that he accepted the separation of blacks into a racial category but did not recognize as valid the distinction between whites and people of Mexican heritage.27 The PCCR’s request for a sociological grounding concerning Mexican Americans was promising, but LULAC leaders grew concerned that the administration nevertheless found it convenient for purposes of policy development to include Mexican Americans as one among other racial minorities. In 1948, LULAC national president Raoul Cortéz encouraged Truman to prevent federal agencies from characterizing Mexican Americans as anything other than white. Cortéz, a long-time resident of San Antonio and owner of radio station KCOR, one of the first Spanish-language radio stations in the United States, advanced to the LULAC presidency in 1948 after serving as regional LULAC governor in 1947. Cortéz wrote to Truman to complain that some agencies informally used the classification “Mexican,” even though official federal records had no such classification. The LULAC president argued that the term was only appropriate for citizens of Mexico, as an indication of nationality. As for race, Cortéz insisted that “there is no ‘Mexican’ race. The citizens of Mexico, as well as citizens of the United States who are of Mexican ancestry, belong to the Caucasian race.”28 Dr. Hector García, who headed a LULAC committee that studied conditions in Texas school districts, used the same arguments with the U.S. Civil Rights Commission. In May, 1948, García insisted that school districts in Texas should not be allowed to segregate Mexican American children because “the Constitution of Texas and of the United States of America gives us the right as white Citizens, to go to the same schools with the rest of the white Citizens.”29 García, like Sánchez, did not question the segregation of blacks but, rather, called for schools to allow Mexican American children to attend class with other white children. LULAC also reentered the court system. In 1946, in Méndez v. Westminister School District, LULAC financially supported a class-action suit by Gonzalo Méndez and other Mexican Americans against several Orange County, California, school districts.30 The districts denied Mexican Ameri-

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can children admission to Anglo schools, even though California law prohibited segregation of children of Mexican heritage. The schools argued that they segregated the children because of difficulties with language, but the fact that they continued the practice through the eighth grade made their claims suspect. Both the federal district court and the appeals court ruled that the schools violated California law and the equal-protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The plaintiffs never argued that the Mexican schools were unequal, only that segregation of Mexican Americans was illegal. In their rulings, the courts allowed for separate classes in the early grades to allow for language instruction but emphasized the negative effects of segregation (foreshadowing the Supreme Court’s decision in the Brown v. Board case of 1954).31 The Méndez decision led LULAC into a similar case in Texas in 1948. In Delgado v. Bastrop Independent School District, the district court decided that Mexican American students could only be segregated in early grades for English instruction, and then only after being scientifically tested to determine a language difficulty.32 LULAC continued in the courts its argument that Mexican Americans were white and deserved equal access along with other white Americans.

Wetbacks While LULAC leaders argued against the segregation of their children based on race, they continued to oppose immigrant laborers based on citizenship status. When, in 1942, Mexico barred Texas from importing braceros, the state’s growers turned to undocumented laborers, commonly called wetbacks. Wetbacks proved more vulnerable than braceros because they lacked even the meager protections offered by the U.S.-Mexico agreement, and their presence in Texas made conditions even worse for Mexican American farm laborers. The second stage of the Bracero Program, between 1948 and 1951 when employers directly contracted laborers, coincided with a dramatic increase in undocumented immigration.33 According to Manuel García y Griego, the United States responded to the increase in illegal immigration in two ways. First, the government tried mass legalization of migrants between 1948 and 1951, exemplified by what became known as the “El Paso incident” of 1948. Second, it combined mass deportation with legalization, as in 1954 under the banner of “Operation Wetback.” In between, new and more restrictive immigration laws, although not targeted specifically at Mexicans, increased the authority of enforcement officials to deport undocumented Mexican immigrants. LULAC proved outspoken in response to these measures and through them further articulated a self-identity, both in relation to the influx of Mexican nationals and in relation to the federal government. The El Paso incident, as an example of the use of legalization to deal

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with the wetback issue, resulted from an agreement between the United States and Mexico in 1947. The governments agreed to the “drying out” of some wetbacks, that is, the contracting of undocumented laborers on the spot, rather than requiring the worker to return to Mexican soil, to be recruited by an employer who would pay transportation costs back to the United States. Between 1947 and 1950, more braceros were “dried out wetbacks” than were recruits from the interior of Mexico.34 Mexico preferred recruitment from its interior to prevent large-scale internal migration to its northern border, which would result in a concentration of employable workers in a region unprepared for them. When the United States pressured Mexico in 1948 to allow recruitment of braceros near the border, Mexico compromised, establishing a recruiting center in Mexicali and in some interior cities of northern states. The pressure by Texas growers and the concentration of Mexicans waiting to cross the border proved too strong, however, and between October 13 and 18 the Immigration and Naturalization Service opened the border at El Paso to thousands of immigrants. The agency allowed the Mexicans to cross the border, then arrested and “paroled” them to local farmers to work the harvest.35 LULAC’s response was immediate and unequivocal, led by national president Cortéz. On October 18, 1948, Cortéz called on President Truman to demand the immediate deportation of Mexicans in the United States illegally. Most likely at the urging of the national office, leaders of individual councils also contacted the White House to oppose the actions of the Border Patrol.36 The common thread of this correspondence pointed to the effect illegal immigration had on the socioeconomic condition of Mexican Americans. LULAC’s purpose, Cortéz informed Truman, was to “uplift the economic and social standards of Americans of Latin American descent.” This proved difficult, he argued, when the influx of illegal immigrants willing to work for paltry wages forced Mexican American families to migrate to find adequate work. Cortéz emphasized a theme of long-standing interest to LULAC when he noted that the opening of the border would uproot many families and thus interfere with the education of their children. Robert Meza of LULAC Council #1 in Corpus Christi argued that immigration represented a “retrogression of progress for the already overburdened Nomadic Native born and naturalized Americans of Latin American extraction” who simply wanted to settle down to a good job. First and foremost, the LULAC leaders argued, actions at the border burdened American citizens. Future generations of Mexican Americans were threatened by migrants who were not citizens, felt no loyalty to America, and would most likely return to Mexico. If the needs of Mexican Americans proved insufficient to change policy, Meza went further to a general argument about the effects of illegal im-

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migrant labor on America. Not only did the opening of the border harm Mexican Americans, it also hurt all of America by eroding the confidence of Latin American neighbors. He noted that the Latin American press reported incidents of discrimination against Americans of Hispanic descent, and some Latin American governments, most notably Mexico, encouraged the American government to remedy such situations. The continuation of policies that ignored the needs of Mexican Americans, Meza implied, would force Latin American nations to question America’s commitment to its ideals. With the need for non-Communist allies, particularly in the Western Hemisphere, the maintenance of good relations with Latin American nations was no small matter. Not relying solely on the limited political influence Mexican Americans held at the national level, Meza expanded the detrimental effects of the program to America’s international prestige.37 In their response to the El Paso incident LULAC leaders did not explicitly argue that the immigrants caused problems for the group’s members. Their explicit argument rather concerned the blow that wetback labor dealt the poor Mexican American family. Competition from Mexican nationals willing to work for paltry wages (by American standards) required Mexican American families to move from region to region to find work and, additionally, had a particularly deleterious effect on the schooling of young Mexican American children. Certainly LULAC leaders felt compassion for those families and considered the importation of laborers—particularly the unilateral abrogation of a bilateral agreement to provide cheap labor to Southwest employers—a travesty. But implicit in their concern was an argument about the future of LULAC. The group’s leaders did not insist that immigrants pouring in through the open El Paso port threatened their constituents (members) directly,38 but their argument does express a concern over the future of the educated Mexican American population. LULAC’s future might very well have been threatened by those immigrant workers. The goal of an educated, respectable, voting, English-speaking Mexican American citizenry depended on families whose children received an education— both in the command of English and, from LULAC’s viewpoint, in the values and sense of responsibility befitting an American citizen. To this end LULAC leaders urged the government to take seriously its New Deal commitment to a decent level of welfare for its citizens, that is, to limit the deleterious effects of the unbridled self-interest of growers in the Southwest. They sought federal action to protect the farm jobs and wages that braceros took from domestic workers. LULAC’s reaction to the El Paso incident was so strong that the administration tried to justify its actions to Cortéz. Correspondence with administration officials over the next couple of months proved frustrating for the LULAC president. Commissioner of Immigration Watson Miller and

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Attorney General Tom Clark defended the action of the Border Patrol and insisted that the Department of Justice and the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) sought to uphold the nation’s immigration laws to the fullest extent.39 Cortéz expressed “amazement” at the justifications for the El Paso incident. He accused the INS of acting as an employment agency for large agricultural interests in the Southwest and of ignoring its responsibilities as an agency of the federal government charged with deporting “aliens who are illegally in this county.” Miller blamed Mexico for the incident, claiming that its failure to set up a recruitment center at the border resulted in thousands of Mexicans lining up to cross. Faced with such numbers and with employer pressure, the INS allowed enough to cross to fill the demand for labor. But he assured Cortéz that the agency would prevent those laborers from wandering to other regions in search of work. This did not mollify Cortéz, who believed that the INS essentially forced “conditions of involuntary servitude upon these aliens” by threatening deportation if they did not continue to labor for the “employers to whom the Immigration Service itself has arbitrarily assigned them.”40 Miller had missed the point. LULAC had opposed the Bracero Program from its inception because it would bring Mexicans to the Southwest to work temporarily for one employer, which all too often resulted in the exploitation of the worker and the displacement of the local labor force. For the INS to undertake a similar operation without the sanction of the Mexican government and without even the meager protections officially provided under the Bracero agreement made exploitation more certain. With this understanding Cortéz described the El Paso immigrants as “workers without rights or standing and without protection of either the Mexican or United States Governments, and bordering on conditions of peonage.” He believed the INS had overextended its authority and broadened its own mission to include serving as an employment agency for growers. Cortéz called for the immigration commissioner to reel in the agency, to carry out its stated purpose—to ensure that immigration to the country followed established procedures.41 For all of the concern expressed for the plight of the immigrants, LULAC based its case on its view of Mexican American interests. Cortéz lamented the “disastrous effect” that illegal immigrants had on the millions of permanent residents in the Southwest—American citizens of Mexican extraction. In January 1949, he teamed with two fellow LULAC members, San Antonio attorney Gus García and University of Texas professor and former national LULAC president George Sánchez, to present Truman with a statement on the “‘Wetback’ problem of the southwest.”42 The statement addressed and expanded the arguments made by Cortéz and other LULAC leaders in the aftermath of the El Paso incident, and served to articulate a

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position on illegal foreign labor in the Southwest. The influx of large numbers of undocumented immigrants, they argued, created competition for employment. Because immigrants worked for paltry wages, resident families were forced to become migratory laborers in search of work. The effect on these “resident ‘Mexicans’” was significant, “breeding ignorance, misery, disease, disillusionment, and despair among our 3,000,000 Spanishspeaking Americans.” Cortéz, García, and Sánchez moved back and forth in their characterization of the laborers they defended. The three LULAC leaders noted in their January 1949 letter, as Cortéz had in his October 1948 letter, the citizenship status of those displaced by Mexican laborers. But the letter also acknowledged that many were not citizens and at times referred to them as “resident ‘Mexicans’” rather than Mexican Americans. The authors certainly believed, as LULAC had from its formation, that the strongest claims for governmental action would come from citizens who could vote. But they also believed that at times they needed to speak up for the Spanishspeaking noncitizen.43 The most consistent distinction these LULAC leaders made was not between American citizen and noncitizen, but between those who had a vested interest in the United States and those who did not. Cortéz, García, and Sánchez drew a sharp contrast between the “Spanish-speaking people of the Southwest” and the “Mexican aliens” who had recently entered the United States illegally. In their view the influx of illegal immigrants who would work for a season and then return to Mexico contributed nothing to Mexican Americans or to the larger community of the Southwest, other than cheap labor that benefited a few large-scale agricultural interests. In this way they extended the effects of the wetback problem to all Mexican Americans, not just to the poor. These workers not only threatened the immediate employability of poor Mexican Americans, but also indirectly threatened the vision that LULAC leaders had for the future. As Cortéz argued in his October letter to Truman, migrant families could not adequately educate their children. In light of LULAC’s efforts before the war, migratory labor also made it difficult to instill the middle-class values that LULAC desired for Mexican Americans. If thousands of resident families had to move to find employment, “to live in slums, in extreme ill-health, in ignorance, and in a squalor that is spiritual as well as physical,” Cortéz, García, and Sánchez asked, “What does this promise to the coming generations, to the citizens of tomorrow, to the assimilation of a rapidly increasing number of ‘Mexicans,’ to the Four Freedoms, to the American Way?”44 Illegal immigration threatened the very society LULAC leaders sought to create, one where all Mexican Americans would share a faith in the American political and economic system, work hard as law-abiding citizens, and achieve success in the American economic and political mainstream.

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Cortéz, García, and Sánchez also made more clear the connection between immigrant labor and LULAC members—middle-class Mexican Americans. Whereas the immediate LULAC reaction to El Paso concentrated on the negative effects on poor Mexican American families, by 1949, leaders described the indirect effects on all Mexican Americans. They argued that Mexican Americans had been subject to discrimination since the United States annexed the Southwest in the 1840s. Their failure to assimilate resulted primarily from Anglo discrimination. Even though some Mexican Americans had achieved “every conceivable variety of status and accomplishment, the rule is one of socio-economic underprivilege, of ‘racial’ discrimination.”45 Some faced discrimination as inferior but could not improve themselves because of the influx of immigrants driving down wages and increasing competition for jobs. While Cortéz and the others did not experience the same material needs as those workers, they structured their arguments to appeal to concerns about the status of Mexican Americans and the future of LULAC. If the socioeconomic oppression and discrimination faced by Mexican Americans was not enough cause for action, Cortéz and his colleagues identified additional dangers posed by Mexican aliens to the American way of life. They argued that national security could be compromised by the importation of “anyone with ulterior motives”—such as efforts “to undermine organized labor, to maintain a caste system, to manipulate government, and even for subversive action against the government of the United States.” They played to contemporary concerns over Communist infiltration, concerns that were growing throughout the postwar period and that culminated in the early 1950s in new restrictive immigration laws. LULAC went on record in opposition to wetback labor but, nevertheless, expressed some ambivalence about resident noncitizens. At times LULAC leaders’ correspondence emphasized the citizenship status of Mexican Americans, but at other times they spread their umbrella of advocacy over resident noncitizens, especially among the poor families of the Southwest. When policy makers considered new immigration legislation, threatening longtime residents with deportation, LULAC leaders more clearly defined their position.

New Immigration Laws LULAC leaders continued in their concern over the arrival of laborers from Mexico, but policy makers in Washington became preoccupied with other immigration issues. In the context of the Korean War and concerns over national security, Congress considered new immigration legislation. Passed over President Truman’s veto, the McCarran Act of 1950 was a general secu-

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rity measure that gave authorities greater freedom to ferret out potential subversives among immigrants and to carry out internments during emergencies, similar to the measures suffered by Japanese Americans during World War II.46 Congress also passed, again over Truman’s veto, the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1952. This measure, commonly referred to as the McCarran-Walter Act, recalled the restrictive immigration laws of the 1920s and reinforced a national quota system that heavily favored northern and western Europeans. The act was not aimed at Mexican Americans or Mexican immigrants and placed no restrictions on immigration from the Western Hemisphere. But one primary goal of the act was to protect America from immigrants who sought to undermine democracy. To that end the act granted immigration authorities expanded powers to deport unnaturalized aliens living in the United States, even longtime residents with close family members who were citizens. Basically, any alien who had entered the United States since 1924 was subject to deportation regardless of character, length of residence, employment status, or relationship to citizens. This provision concerned Mexican American leaders, particularly those more radical than LULAC and who came under fire for subversive activity in the era of McCarthyism.47 LULAC also viewed the new legislation with suspicion. Although leaders consistently opposed the influx of Mexican nationals who took jobs from Mexican Americans, they also expressed concern for some immigrants. The distinction made in the aftermath of El Paso, between the Spanish-speaking people of the Southwest and Mexican nationals with nothing invested in America, gained greater articulation in LULAC’s opposition to the new immigration act. In 1953, delegates to the national convention condemned the new legislation as an “oppressive and unjust law towards minorities.”48 Delegates made it clear that their main concern was for those with family members in the United States, specifically the spouses of American citizens and the parents of members of the armed forces—those with a vested interest in America and close ties to American citizens. LULAC’s resolution called on the attorney general and the president to devise a way for deportable aliens who were parents of members of the United States Armed Forces to legalize their status without returning to Mexico.49 In July, 1954, the LULAC News declared LULAC’s unequivocal condemnation of wetback labor but also declared its opposition to McCarran-Walter as imposing an unnecessary hardship on Americans of Mexican descent. The organization called for revision that would allow undocumented Mexicans who were established residents of the United States to become legal without having to return to Mexico, and again suggested that Congress grant exceptions for those aliens who were parents of members of the armed forces “upon the showing of good moral character.”50 In effect, LULAC argued for a se-

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lective “drying out” process, by which the United States would legalize those Mexicans with a vested interest in America and deport those with no such commitment.51 While primarily concerned with the needs and interests of Mexican Americans, LULAC extended its efforts to those who wished to stay in America, while excluding those who merely migrated for a temporary job and who sent their earnings home to Mexico. LULAC’s primary allegiance, then, was not simply to those of common ethnicity or class but, rather, to those who shared a commitment to the United States. LULAC leaders would become frustrated with those longtime residents who did not wish to become naturalized citizens, clearly evincing the long-term LULAC goal of creation of an active citizenry; they nevertheless preferred those longtime residents to temporary immigrants. Over time, they believed that they could educate and persuade long-term residents to become naturalized. Because LULAC leaders encouraged all Mexican Americans toward the middle-class American mainstream, reflecting their own aspirations, that goal was essentially self-serving. But it is important to note that their vision did not include all people of Mexican descent, nor did it exclude all who were outside middle-class or citizenship status. LULAC leaders’ acceptance of Mexicans who shared a commitment to life in the United States reflected a reconsideration of their own ethnicity. Through the 1950s they began to articulate a new appreciation for their Mexican heritage. For example, national president Albert Armendáriz in 1954 insisted that “our culture and background are [as] virtuous [as] the culture and background of our European or any other neighbors.” Armendáriz considered whether Mexican Americans must give up every vestige of their heritage in order to be good Americans: Can you truthfully state that it is impossible to be a true American with all your soul, a lover of this great country and its ideals, and at the same time love frijoles, and chili and tacos. . . . I do not believe so, for America derives its greatness from integrated Americans such as the Irish who wear their Green and dance their beautiful dances on St. Patrick’s Day; the Germans with their resplendent bonfires at Easter-time, the Italian with his Pizza and his beautiful songs.52 Armendáriz recognized that the constant influx of immigrants, braceros, and wetbacks made complete assimilation impossible. His embrace of Mexican heritage marked a significant turn for LULAC back toward the Mexican elements of being a Mexican American. That turn enabled LULAC to fight for those committed to life in the United States even while it continued to oppose wetbacks.

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Operation Wetback The Truman administration recognized the worst abuses of the Bracero Program, and in June of 1950 the president created a commission with the mandate to study the problems associated with the use of migratory labor. Truman used the commission’s findings to call for a curb on the use of wetback labor. In particular, he highlighted the need to enforce the guarantees included in bracero contracts. At the same time, he insisted that such guarantees were useless if illegal labor continued to flow across the border. The administration thus endorsed legislation to punish anyone who “harbored or concealed” wetbacks. But the strength of the growers and their allies in Congress proved too strong. Truman did not call for legislation that would make the employment of wetbacks illegal—only the vague offenses of “harboring” and “concealing” wetbacks would be punishable. Even such tame proposals could get nowhere in the face of the grower-friendly Congress. Furthermore, the experience at El Paso suggested that the administration would not use administrative agencies to stem the flow of undocumented workers across the border without a clear mandate from Congress.53 There was little reason to suspect that the election of Dwight Eisenhower in 1952 would result in more aggressive agency behavior. Eisenhower’s seeming passivity as president and his reluctance to use federal power, particularly in the field of civil rights, gave little indication that he would respond to Mexican American concerns.54 Furthermore, a Republican administration could reasonably be expected to heed the cries of largescale growers across the Southwest. But public opinion against wetbacks rose sharply in the early 1950s. For example, the New York Times published a number of articles on the problems associated with Mexican labor and began to editorialize in favor of more stringent legislation and enforcement of immigration laws. According to these articles, migrant workers’ health problems were becoming a major problem for the country, the use of foreign labor perpetuated “archaic economic relationships,” and the relatively open border served as a potential entry point for Communists and others bent on subversive activity.55 While the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) under Truman seemed to cater to the needs of growers by allowing thousands of undocumented Mexicans across the border, under Eisenhower the agency gained a reputation for working vigilantly against the influx of illegal immigrants, for which the president and the attorney general received credit. Significantly supportive of that reputation was the 1954 move to deport illegal aliens living in the Southwest, a plan termed “Operation Wetback.” At first Eisenhower and Attorney General Herbert Brownell had no interest in upsetting the status quo. But in the face of public demands, the

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calls from the press, and the insistence of California governor Earl Warren that something be done about immigrant labor, the president’s advisors suggested at least careful study of the problem.56 Brownell embarked on a tour of the Southwest in August, 1953, and returned with a new outlook. Perhaps recalling the uproar of both American citizens and the Mexican government after the El Paso incident, the attorney general chose to concentrate on that aspect of the Southwest labor problem subject to unilateral action— the traffic in wetback labor. On June 9, 1954, Brownell announced two initiatives against wetback labor. First, the administration would draft legislation to be introduced in Congress to discourage growers from hiring undocumented workers. Such legislation, however, had little chance of passing a conservative Congress.57 The second initiative offers an interesting example of the Eisenhower administration using the administrative presidency to bypass a reluctant Congress.58 The Border Patrol would undertake a massive roundup of illegal immigrants for deportation. Eisenhower’s friend and retired general Joseph Swing, newly appointed Commissioner of Immigration, reorganized the patrol into special units using advanced technology and military-style operation. During the summer of 1954, Swing oversaw a widespread roundup of illegal workers—beginning in California, moving across the Southwest into Texas, and even reaching into areas of the Midwest. By the end of the project in September, over 84,000 Mexicans had been apprehended in California, and over 140,000 in Texas. The INS further claimed that publicity of the raids encouraged hundreds of thousands of Mexicans to return to Mexico of their own accord rather than risk deportation.59 The removal of wetbacks was generally popular across the country, and even growers in California lent their support to the operation by agreeing to contract braceros to replace wetback labor. Growers in Texas, however, opposed the roundups, refused to cooperate, and promised their best efforts to frustrate the operation. In their quest for allies, agency officials contacted the leaders of both LULAC and the American G.I. Forum, the two influential Mexican American organizations in Texas, to inform them of the raids and solicit their support. Both responded favorably.60 The LULAC News ran stories in support of the operation to drum up support from its members. In July the News first reiterated its opposition to wetbacks, directly blaming them for the “serious health, economic and social conditions in South Texas.” It then went on to credit the INS for its careful planning of the roundups to undermine the opposition of growers. The News informed its readers that “interests which have long tolerated and benefited from the exploitation of the wetback may be soon raising a hue and cry in an attempt to discredit, confuse and minimize the value of the round-up by the Border Patrol within the next few weeks.”61

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Allegations of brutality by the Border Patrol surfaced during Operation Wetback, and in fact the INS had anticipated that growers would use such stories to try to raise opposition to the roundup. In his letter to the LULAC and G.I. Forum leaders, the INS district director in San Antonio wrote that opponents would not hesitate to embarrass the INS to stymie the operation.62 LULAC remained skeptical of allegations of brutality, convinced that they originated from interests intent on employing illegal laborers. The News instead argued that the Border Patrol was a reliable service, made up of well-trained men with a high sense of duty, and expressed its confidence that the operation would be carried out with a high regard for private rights. The history of South Texas clearly taught that Anglos often mistreated Mexicans and Mexican Americans, and there were no guarantees that abuses would be avoided during the roundup. But in the charged atmosphere of Operation Wetback, and in light of the outspoken opposition of growers intent on frustrating the raids, isolated incidents could easily brand the entire operation as brutal and weaken the efforts of the Border Patrol. Forced to choose between the Border Patrol and growers, LULAC sided with the federal government, which had responded to their concerns about wetback labor. The LULAC News insisted that “incidents, if any occur, should be carefully analyzed before hasty judgment is passed and harmful criticism is made.”63 LULAC went so far as to characterize its support for Operation Wetback as in the best interests of deported workers, because farm work effectively turned them into animals. In August the News described the experience of workers as they “roved over the southwestern and western states in boxcars, cowering at the approach of law enforcement officers in the freight yards, beaten into animalistic torpor by hunger and cold.” The News even waxed romantic about the workers, characterizing them as noble men only trying to improve themselves, but who end up beaten and broken by the exploitation of farmers and the process of deportation. “Many came from Mexico equipped with vigor and a desperate determination to earn enough for a better life. They have returned as broken men with strength spent and exhausted by the senseless struggles of a life revolving around slavish, ill-paid labor, and the degradation of jail and prison cells.” The LULAC News insisted that while talk of the brutality of Operation Wetback might lead some to oppose the roundups as detrimental to Mexicans, the outspoken opponents were in fact employers of wetbacks—men with questionable concern for the welfare of their laborers. LULAC went on record in support of Operation Wetback “as a means of sparing the wetbacks further sufferings and exploitation in that endless Odyssey that leads to an economic nowhere.”64 Of course, while detrimental to the immigrant, wetback labor also contributed to the economic and social problems in

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Texas and the Southwest. Competition for labor at the cheapest price resulted in lowered wages and living standards, which took its toll on the poor Mexican American families forced to migrate. In addition to its support for Operation Wetback, LULAC supported the anti-wetback bills advocated by Attorney General Brownell. Introduced in the U.S. Senate in June 1954, the Illegal Employment of Aliens Bill would make it illegal to employ illegal aliens knowingly, and the Illegal Transportation of Aliens Bill would allow for the seizure of any vehicle used to transport illegal aliens into the country. The significance of the Brownell legislation lies in the target. Previous efforts at controlling illegal labor, such as Operation Wetback, targeted the workers themselves. Brownell’s bills targeted those who employed the laborers and those who owned the trucks that transported them rather than the workers. In the 1950s such laws were almost certainly doomed to failure, given the powerful friends that growers had in Washington.65 The bills did indeed fail, but LULAC’s support for the bills marks a significant step. All of LULAC’s previous efforts had been to keep the wetbacks out by greater vigilance at the border and stronger deportation efforts to stop the supply. With support for employer sanctions, however, LULAC began its support for stemming the demand through laws that would punish Americans for encouraging the wetbacks. For the federal government this represented an expansion of role, from activity long within its realm—protection of the border—to less clearly established activity— determination of whom an employer can and cannot hire.

The End of the Foreign Labor Problem? During the late 1950s, Operation Wetback appeared to have succeeded. Apprehensions of Mexicans crossing the border, the traditional gauge of illegal immigration, dropped off significantly after the summer of 1954.66 It appeared that the wetback problem had been solved, at least for the near future. The number of braceros, however, increased steadily through the late 1950s and early 1960s, largely because employers had been persuaded or coerced to replace wetbacks with braceros. As the fear of a wetback invasion began to dissipate, the tide began to turn against the Bracero Program. Organized labor, LULAC and the G.I. Forum, and religious and social organizations had all opposed the Bracero Program for years but could not overcome the political power of the growers. During the 1950s that inability was at least in part due to President Eisenhower’s distance from the issue. His secretary of labor, James Mitchell, used his authority under P.L. 78 to oversee the implementation of the program, but his sympathy for braceros was countered by the Department of Agriculture, which sided with the growers. Eisenhower refused to negotiate the chasm between the two de-

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partments. Amendments to the bracero legislation during the late 1950s did increase the authority of the secretary of labor, but opponents could not overcome supporters to prevent renewal of P.L. 78.67 While the Eisenhower administration proved to be of little help to the Mexican American and labor groups opposed to the importation of labor from Mexico, the Kennedy administration was their first ally in the White House. Shortly after taking office in 1961, Kennedy received a report from the President’s Committee on Migratory Labor (PCML). The PCML had its origins in the Eisenhower administration. In August, 1954, President Eisenhower, at the request of the secretary of labor, appointed an interdepartmental committee on migratory labor. Not until November, 1960, did he formally establish the committee by executive order. According to the report issued to Kennedy, James Mitchell had been the only high level official in the Eisenhower administration with any intention of protecting migrant laborers. His efforts to improve the recruitment regulations of the U.S. Employment Service, to include agriculture in minimum wage legislation and to reform the Bracero Program were ignored by the PCML under Eisenhower.68 In response to public and political pressure, the PCML report of January, 1962, advocated active leadership on the part of the Kennedy administration. The report did not insist on abandonment of the Bracero Program but did recommend that conditions be placed on renewal of the Bracero agreement.69 On the immigrant labor question the committee affirmed a position that Kennedy had already advocated, to require amendments to any extension of P.L. 78 that would provide the secretary of labor increased authority to prevent “adverse effect to domestic farm workers.” The committee hoped to help the White House “tighten the administration of the Mexican Farm Labor Program.”70 If Congress would not end the Bracero Program, the president and the administrative agencies could trim the program to eliminate its worst offenses. The committee, and the administration, favored a middle road. Opponents of the program wanted to end bracero recruitment altogether, while supporters sought unrestricted recruitment. The administration believed that a need for workers in the Southwest did exist to some extent and sought a program that would allow the agriculture industry to prosper while sharing the wealth with all parts of the agricultural community.71 In typical Kennedy fashion, this restatement and application of a-rising-tidelifts-all-boats theory would accomplish in agriculture what we, as a Nation, have already accomplished in most other sectors of our economy—the restoration of respect and dignity, based on good wages, good working conditions, steady employment, educational opportunities, and

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the extension of public health and welfare services to the men, women and children who labor for hire in American agriculture.72 The administration committed itself to amendments in the bracero labor agreement as a condition for renewal, amendments that would give the secretary of labor wide ranging powers to determine working conditions for migrant workers. LULAC and other anti-bracero groups could support the White House position. The long uphill battle in the face of powerful farm lobbies convinced LULAC leaders that increasing the power of the secretary of labor was their best chance to improve the working conditions of both braceros and domestic workers. While long opposed to the importation of bracero labor, the organization recognized that the amendments to P.L. 78 could go a long way to improve the plight of migrant laborers.73 The 1963 extension of P.L. 78 proved to be its last. The extension barely passed Congress, and opposition continued to mount. To gain renewal, congressional supporters of bracero labor promised no further extensions and remained true to their word. Increased mechanization of farms and the tightened administration policies resulted in a decrease in the number of braceros contracted in the 1960s, until in 1963 and 1964 fewer than one hundred thousand Mexicans were employed on U.S. farms. Mexico also relaxed its pressures to continue to program.74 This final passage established 1964 as the expiration date for the twenty-year-old Bracero Program.

Conclusion From World War II to the early 1960s, LULAC confronted a new problem— the mass influx of Mexican nationals to work temporarily in the Southwest. This immigration forced LULAC leaders to consider their relationship both to these new immigrants and to the federal government. As an organization of American citizens they simply could have taken a position based on their legal rights. As Mexican Americans they could have closed ranks and served as advocates for all people of Mexican heritage. As fairly prosperous members of the middle class they could have refrained from speaking out on behalf of poor migrant workers. The response of LULAC to immigrant labor, legal and illegal, charts the organization’s developing idea of Mexican American identity, as well as its notion of who should be included for possible membership in that community. LULAC leaders gradually articulated opposition to imported labor based on its detrimental effects on American residents of Mexican descent. They maintained their commitment to helping Mexican Americans—that is, citizens—gain the equal opportunities, equal protections under the law, equal rights and responsibilities that American

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rhetoric promised to its citizens. To do so, they continued to limit LULAC membership to American citizens. But the group also spoke out on behalf of long-term residents or those with family ties in America—those who would most likely feel some responsibility to the United States. Thus, defining LULAC as an essentially ethnic- or class-based organization ignores the enormously complex negotiations of identity during the postwar years. LULAC’s position of support for Mexican American citizens was not one of simple altruism. Restricting their support to those with a vested interest in America was self-serving. LULAC leaders accepted much of white, middle-class America’s notions about what constitutes good citizenship. By doing so, they held Mexican Americans to a specific standard; if they did not meet the criteria now, they should be working to meet them in the near future. By molding a Mexican American community into its own image, LULAC sought to homogenize Mexican Americans. While the group did not want to lose all vestiges of its Mexican heritage, but rather to blend the best of its private culture with the best of the civic culture of the United States, LULAC strove for one Mexican American community. Those who did not conform to the expressed standards of behavior or attitude, however, deserved no place in the higher reaches of American society. An examination of immigration issues that arose during the war and postwar years highlights LULAC leaders’ ideals for the Mexican American community. Such examination also highlights LULAC leaders’ expectations of the federal government. They made explicitly economic arguments to bring a halt to the importation of labor, both legal and illegal, by drawing on the idea of an “economic bill of rights” articulated during the New Deal. The administration of Franklin Roosevelt had called for an expanded understanding of the rights afforded to the American people. In response to the late nineteenth-century emphasis on the rights of the individual, which resulted in exploitation by the few of the many, Roosevelt endorsed an “economic constitutional order” by which the government would guarantee a minimum level of welfare for Americans.75 Harry Truman continued this argument, in the specific context of migratory labor, when he insisted that the conditions of the bracero agreement be enforced so as to protect “honest to goodness jobs which will offer a decent living so that domestic workers, without being forced by dire necessity, will be willing to stay in agriculture and become a dependable labor supply.”76 LULAC, by relying on economic arguments, worked within an established model, calling on the federal government to protect those rights to which it had committed itself during the Great Depression. But LULAC had additional motives for those arguments. Unlike traditional interest group elites, LULAC leaders had few material interests in common with the domestic migrant workers for whom they spoke. The middle-class, profes-

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sional leaders and members of LULAC were not directly threatened, at least not economically, by braceros or wetbacks. But they recognized that their goal of full acceptance in the American mainstream was hampered by stereotypes of and discrimination against those of Mexican descent. They believed that economic improvement of the Mexican American population would serve to destroy the stereotype of Mexicans as lazy and unproductive, thus reducing the discrimination that afflicted both poor and middle-class Mexican Americans. LULAC’s call for enforcement of the economic rights of migrant laborers—the right to work for decent wages in reasonable working conditions—went beyond a simple economic argument. Protection of economic rights would allow all Mexican Americans and Mexicans committed to life in the United States to live stable, productive lives, to educate their children, and to become good Americans. LULAC leaders adapted the arguments for enforcement of an “economic constitution” to their desire for social change. While they did not share directly the material needs of the braceros and migrant workers for whom they spoke, their ties both of ethnicity and citizenship drove their call for government action. At times those ties would lead them to advocate a departure from traditional governmental action, as when they endorsed legislation to give the federal government unprecedented authority to determine whom private employers could hire. The tension between LULAC’s commitment to the existing models of the American governmental and economic system, on the one hand, and its efforts to improve the condition of Mexican Americans and long-term residents, on the other, foreshadowed a tension that would develop as LULAC entered the domestic policy arena.

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3 The Paradox in Domestic Policy

I

n 1944, the Swedish social scientist Gunnar Myrdal published An American Dilemma, a study of race relations in the United States. Myrdal argued that the American dilemma stemmed from the discontinuity between the reality of racism and the rhetoric of the “American Creed” that all men are created equal. He posited that white Americans could not continue to subjugate American blacks because the Constitution, the laws, and the American Creed all stood against the effort and because blacks would become less passive and would increasingly demand change.1 Myrdal’s conclusions about the willingness and capacity of whites to recognize the need for change in race relations proved overly optimistic; indeed, later critics would identify racist assumptions within An American Dilemma itself. Nevertheless, in the late 1940s many prominent white and black intellectuals agreed with Myrdal’s speculations, and the book serves to exemplify the rise of racial issues to national political and intellectual prominence in America.2 World War II brought increasing attention to the “race question” in America, in part because the battle against the Nazis highlighted the contradictions between the fight against racism and the reality of life in America for blacks and in part because blacks mobilized for change. The threat by A. Philip Randolph to stage a “March on Washington” to protest job discrimination in 1941, swelling membership ranks of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and repeated calls for the “Double V”—victory over Nazism abroad and racism at home—combined to make race a potent policy and political issue after the war. Through the 1950s the race issue continued to grow in prominence. African American organizations such as the NAACP and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, together with leaders such as Thurgood Marshall (with his successful argument in the Brown v. Board decision in 1954) and Martin Luther King, Jr., placed organized and articulate pressure on national political leaders. The emergence of demonstration and protest tactics against racial subordination—such as those pursued in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1957, after Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a city bus and those employed in 1960 by black students at North Carolina A&T at the local Woolworth lunch counter in Greensboro—gained national attention and built further pressure for a national response. Finally,

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the harsh reaction (on national television) of defiant southern leaders, particularly those of Governor Orval Faubus of Arkansas toward school desegregation and of Birmingham Police Chief “Bull” Connor toward nonviolent black demonstrators, angered Americans across the country and provoked wide support for federal action to counter the race-based discrimination faced by American blacks in the South.3 As Americans increasingly thought in terms of black and white, LULAC leaders faced a vexing paradox. The nation began to pay serious attention to the needs of minorities, but “minority” nearly always meant “black.” That issue is something Myrdal also struggles with in An American Dilemma, in which he considers both Canadian and Mexican immigration as an increase to the white population of the United States.4 For Myrdal, blacks were the only group suffering from America’s dilemma. In part this paradox resulted from LULAC’s own arguments, since LULAC had long insisted that Mexican Americans are white. At the same time, however, it recognized through day-to-day experience that the white majority viewed Mexican Americans as different. The importation of braceros and the immigration of Spanishspeaking Mexicans to the Southwest made LULAC leaders aware that cultural traits would continue to set them apart as long as large numbers of Mexicans entered the United States. LULAC’s insistence on whiteness might work as a technicality to gain inclusion for Mexican Americans in Texas schools, but that insistence would not help to open doors to equal opportunity throughout society. Mexican Americans also suffered from America’s dilemma. As the success of the black civil-rights movement reinforced the black-white dichotomy in national and political discourse, the judicial and legislative victories of blacks forced LULAC to reconsider its position vis-àvis the federal government and to reconsider the significance of members’ Mexican heritage.

Combating Disadvantage: The Little School of the  LULAC leaders consistently argued that Mexican Americans are white and therefore not subject to laws segregating the races. That argument was not simply tactical; long after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 rendered state and local segregation laws illegal, LULAC leaders continued to claim white status for Mexican Americans. From the perspective of LULAC leaders, however, the quantitative reinforcement of Mexican culture through immigration continually emphasized a distance between Mexican Americans and the white American mainstream. As LULAC national president Albert Armendáriz noted in 1954, complete integration was “doomed to failure; for we have a unique situation amongst us, in that there is a constant influx of immigrants, braceros and wetbacks too that make the process of integration

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a perpetual one.” LULAC had staked out a position on immigration that protected those with a vested interest in the United States. A position based simply on class interests and the goal of assimilation would have excluded noncitizens and, therefore, countless non-English speaking Mexicans and would have advocated elimination of Mexican cultural heritage. Armendáriz recognized as much when he noted, on the one hand, that “a sudden stoppage of this immigration would find us fully and completely integrated within a single generation. . . .”5 A position based exclusively on ethnic ties, on the other hand, would have resulted in an embrace of all immigrants seeking economic opportunities in the United States, much like the ethnic solidarity exhibited by Mexican American groups in the 1980s and 1990s. LULAC leaders chose neither—or, rather, both. Their ethnic sympathies blended with their own sense of Americanness to support those Mexicans who sought to establish a life in the United States and, potentially, to participate in the civic culture. In turn, they pursued their class interests through LULAC programs, trying to turn uneducated Mexicans and Mexican Americans into productive American citizens (and LULAC members) through citizenship classes, education programs, and personal hygiene clinics. LULAC could not stem the flow of immigrants but instead, as Armendáriz insisted, “must be satisfied with plugging along in our efforts to decrease poverty amongst us, to terminate inertia and complacency so prevalent in our midst, to interest the indifferent, and by education and edification decrease our identification as beings foreign to this country.”6 In other words, Armendáriz wanted to build up the resident Mexican and Mexican American majority into the LULAC model of citizenship, which would challenge the notion that being of Mexican heritage was incompatible with being an American. LULAC leaders, while arguing that Mexican Americans were white, also accepted the fact that they were culturally distinct from the Anglo majority. In the mid-1950s LULAC’s President Felix Tijerina believed that poor education among Mexican Americans explained the reluctance of Anglos to accept his people. According to Tijerina, the major cause of Mexican American children’s poor school performance was lack of English proficiency. Personal experience bolstered Tijerina’s perspective. His parents had migrated to Sugar Land, Texas, in the early 1900s. He dropped out of school at age nine to work in the cotton fields, moved to Houston in his early teens, and could find work only as a busboy; he could not be a waiter because he could not speak English. Tijerina’s story, as recounted in the Saturday Evening Post in 1961, reads like a Horatio Alger tale.7 Recognizing his linguistic disadvantage, Tijerina read menus and catsup bottles to cobble together a basic English vocabulary, then took night classes at a high school,

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bought English texts, and worked diligently to learn the language. By the time he became LULAC national president in 1956 he owned a successful restaurant chain in Houston with seventy employees and a gross income of $500,000. Tijerina identified his inability to speak English as his greatest obstacle as a young man, and he determined to use his office to improve the educational attainments of Mexican American children. Based on his own experience and discussions with Texas school officials, he believed that Mexican American children failed first grade in substantial numbers because they could not understand English. Most of the children who adequately learned the language did so too late to avoid repeating first grade.8 Mexican American students already had the right not to be segregated in Texas schools. Sitting in a class with other white children, however, did not necessarily benefit Mexican American children who did not understand English. These children gained little from lessons in school. They had to repeat first grade, often several times, contributing to feelings of inferiority and frustration that, as Tijerina believed, contributed to the high dropout rate among Mexican American students.9 To prevent such a result, Tijerina set out to teach Mexican American children a basic English vocabulary before they entered the public schools. In 1957, school officials in Ganado, ninety miles from Houston, granted permission to use a classroom during the summer. Seventeen-year-old high school student Isabel Verver volunteered to teach the first class, and lessons focused on roughly four hundred English words, a basic vocabulary to help Mexican American children communicate with their teachers and other children in school. The lessons used Spanish, English, and visual clues. For example, a teacher would show an apple, say its name in Spanish, then say its name in English. This approach used a combination of Spanish and English rather than simple immersion in English, but nevertheless aimed at teaching children sufficient English to participate in school. The first class opened in May, 1957, when Verver began teaching three Mexican American students a list of four hundred basic English words. From that first class came the name of the program—the Little School of the 400. Early success in Ganado encouraged Tijerina to open another class that summer in Edna, a town south of Houston. According to education historian Guadalupe San Miguel, Jr., by the end of the 1957–58 school year “only one of the sixty children who had participated in the first Little School could not pass the first grade. This was a definite indication of success, since at that time 80 percent of Spanish-dominant children repeated the first grade at least once.”10 The success of the Little School encouraged not only Tijerina, but also Texas state school officials. Although the LULAC president initially financed the Little School on his own and then acquired funds from the LULAC budget, significant expansion required greater resources. In 1959, the Texas state

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legislature approved House Bill 51, which set up a state-financed preschool program modeled after the Little School of the 400. Local schools could receive up to ninety percent of the cost of running a preschool program for non-English speaking students. The state program remained voluntary, and LULAC undertook a publicity program to inform and encourage parents and school officials to create preschool classes. State legislators did not require that teachers be bilingual but noted the obvious fact that facility in the children’s native language should prove useful. More significantly, they prohibited teachers in the program from punishing students for speaking their primary language. Both of these provisions were significant departures from past treatment of language-minority children in Texas.11 The Little School of the 400 represented an effort by Felix Tijerina and the LULAC leadership to move beyond formal equality under the law to bring about equality in fact for Mexican American children. LULAC had proved successful through the postwar years in gaining recognition of Mexican Americans as white, and courts agreed that schools in the Southwest could not segregate Mexican American children as nonwhite.12 LULAC based its advocacy of Texas House Bill 51 on two arguments. First, the school districts would save money because fewer students would have to repeat first grade. Second, students would gain self-confidence and remain in school longer if taught English in an environment that recognized their linguistic and cultural differences from other students.13 Those arguments proved effective in the context of the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board in 1954, which relied heavily on socialscientific arguments about the effects of segregation on a student’s self-image and confidence.14 Schools could not legally segregate Mexican American students because of race but could (and often did) segregate, punish, or humiliate them because of their inability to speak English. As a remedy, LULAC established a program to teach Mexican American children English to eliminate the disadvantage and persuaded Texas state legislators to fund similar programs across the state. Tijerina identified minimal Englishlanguage proficiency as a disadvantage and worked, at first through LULAC and then through both LULAC and the state, to go beyond de jure equality and strike at the obstacles to de facto equality, and in the process to get the state to recognize and compensate for the cultural differences between Mexican American and Anglo children.15 The Little School effort represented one element of a larger push by national LULAC leaders to alter the organization’s role in the Mexican American community. By the late 1950s LULAC had achieved much of its postwar policy agenda, which included basic equality under law for Mexican Americans.16 In the face of the agreement by the Texas State Department of Education and the state courts that Mexican Americans are white, the

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legal obstacle to equality fell. Many members of local LULAC chapters, particularly the older members, believed that de jure equality was all that Mexican Americans needed from government and that additional self-help efforts and hard work would bring deserving Mexican Americans to places of prominence in society and the economy. They were not alone in that assessment. Sympathetic scholarly attention to the problems of minorities in the late 1950s and early 1960s suggested that educational, political, and civil rights conditions for Mexican Americans in the Southwest were improving through the 1950s, and that the remaining problems were not reachable through legislation.17 LULAC had worked hard during the 1940s and 1950s to achieve legal equality and to bring an end to the Bracero Program and undocumented labor. As courts agreed that schools could not segregate Mexican American children as a racial minority, as the Bracero Program became increasingly unpopular, and as the nation dealt with an immigrant labor population through Operation Wetback, some regular members of LULAC lost enthusiasm for the activism of the national LULAC office. As political scientist Benjamin Márquez argues in his study of the incentive structure for LULAC members, the “World War II veterans felt that their job was done and that it was time to withdraw to personal and family concerns.”18 Those satisfied with the achievements of the 1950s became less interested in the activity of the national office. Some failed to continue active membership in the organization. In the immediate postwar years LULAC grew remarkably, and by the early 1960s the national office had granted charters to four hundred councils. By 1963, however, only 142 remained on LULAC’s roster. Many of the members who remained concentrated on local council projects such as education and social events. Those members hoped for local councils to continue public service and education programs but saw no need for significant activism on the part of the national office. The emerging national leadership during the late 1950s and early 1960s, however, hoped to increase LULAC’s influence on and participation in policy developments at the national level. They were part of a shift in Mexican American reform efforts that focused on the state and national political arena rather than on local action. The New Deal, World War II, and the G.I. Bill had increased a new generation of leaders’ faith in the national government. Funding during the Depression for projects in the barrios and civil rights talk in the midst of the Cold War had convinced many in and outside of LULAC that the path to improvement lay in voting, winning elections, and getting appointed to influential positions in the policy-making bureaucracy. Two new organizations reflect this change. The Mexican American Political Association (MAPA) of California, established in 1959, and the Political Association of Spanish-Speaking Organizations (PASSO) of Texas, established

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in 1961, were explicitly political groups dedicated to getting Mexican Americans active in politics and elected to office. These two groups were more strident in their rhetoric and more aggressive in tone than LULAC or the G.I. Forum, but their involvement in the political process demonstrated that their dedication to the American civic culture was just as strong.19 LULAC’s leaders also reflected this shift of focus from local desegregation efforts toward increased political action and policy influence. They actively encouraged rising new leadership to join LULAC. George J. Garza, former national president of LULAC, wrote in 1955 that one phase of LULAC’s work, the “eradication of discrimination and segregation, is rapidly coming to a close,” but he concluded that “ahead lies an even greater phase” of “consolidating and extending LULAC’s successes.” He insisted that LULAC “is today at a decisive point in its illustrious history.”20 As a younger generation of leaders sought national prominence for Mexican Americans and hoped to move beyond formal legal equality to social and economic equality, LULAC offered itself as the logical group through which they should work—the nation’s largest and most well-known Mexican American organization. In their quest to harness the enthusiasm of the civil rights era, the new generation sought leadership positions in such places as the national offices of LULAC and the American G.I. Forum and strove to gain influence with politicians and policy makers. Their experience during the 1960 campaign led them to believe they could gain political influence at the national level, and they sought to take the model they developed in Texas to Washington, D.C.

Mexican Americans and John Kennedy’s “Rising Tide” The rise within LULAC of a cadre of leaders committed to greater activism began during the late 1950s, when the prospects for federal attention to Mexican American problems were quite low. President Dwight Eisenhower accepted the New Deal expansion of federal responsibility that he inherited,21 but he strongly opposed an activist executive branch of government, particularly without prior congressional initiative. He stepped forcefully into the civil rights arena only when the chain of command appeared threatened, as when recalcitrant governor Orval Faubus of Arkansas flouted federal authority in Little Rock in 1957.22 The Eisenhower administration showed little interest in Mexican Americans, beyond getting their support for Operation Wetback. LULAC’s growing reputation as a responsible, patriotic civic organization, however, and recognition of the high number of potential voters among Mexican Americans in the Southwest gained the attention of Republicans and led Eisenhower to recognize LULAC by presidential message in 1959.

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Through the 1950s, LULAC leaders had become more adept at working through the party system in Texas to reach ears in the White House, and in early February, 1959, they sought presidential recognition of “LULAC Week,” scheduled for the third week in February. LULAC enlisted the aid of Texas Republican State Executive Committee Chairman Thad Hutcheson, who recommended to the White House that the president endorse a LULAC Week proclamation. Hutcheson noted that LULAC was a “national association of Latin American citizens which, we believe, enjoys a favorable reputation for good citizenship and proper promotion of the interests of Latin American citizens.” In addition, LULAC national president Felix Tijerina was an Eisenhower supporter and had “assisted actively” in the presidential campaigns of 1952 and 1956. In other words, LULAC carried weight with Mexican Americans beyond the borders of Texas (although Hutcheson was most concerned with LULAC’s influence within those borders), worked through the system rather than through protests and demonstrations, and elected a Republican to its highest office. Hutcheson believed “that the significance to a large number of our Latin American citizens would justify careful consideration of Mr. Tijerina’s request.”23 The Eisenhower White House still considered Mexican American affairs to be an element of foreign policy and sought the advice of the State Department. Department official Homer Gruenther approved of a presidential message of recognition because the issue at hand “politically is very potent.” As evidence, Gruenther offered the observation that there were over two million Latin American citizens in Texas and over eleven million in the United States, and the president of this most prominent Latin American organization was a devout Eisenhower man.24 On February 13 the president sent a telegram congratulating LULAC and all Latin American citizens for their “enterprising spirit and skills,” which “have contributed substantially to the greatness of our country,” and mentioned specifically LULAC efforts in education, good citizenship, and social welfare.25 Administration officials decided that LULAC merited a message from the president, rather than from a staff member, because of its potential importance to the Republican party.26 The move by Republicans in Texas and Washington was purely symbolic but nevertheless offered LULAC more recognition than it had received from the Democrats under Truman.27 The administration of John F. Kennedy would offer Mexican Americans more recognition than any previous presidency had provided. Kennedy actively campaigned for the Mexican American vote, particularly during the primaries in an effort to defeat Texan Lyndon Johnson. Johnson had the support of some important Mexican American leaders, including Dr. Hector García, founder of the American G.I. Forum. But Johnson’s long affiliation with conservative Democrats in Texas hurt him; he had long cultivated

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LULAC leaders but refused to get too close during his early years in Congress because LULAC fought for desegregation, an issue that could halt Johnson’s career as long as he represented conservative white Texans.28 Some Mexican American Democrats favored Adlai Stevenson, committed liberal and the party’s nominee for the two campaigns against Eisenhower. With the popular general no longer a candidate, some hoped that 1960 was Stevenson’s time. For example, Lyndon Johnson had to win over Stevenson supporter Albert Peña, Jr., by promising to include a Mexican American on the Texas delegation to the Democratic primary in Los Angeles and to maintain a strong civil-rights plank in the Democratic platform. Still other Mexican Americans early on took to John Kennedy. Kennedy’s efforts were aided by the work of Carlos McCormick, a law student at George Washington University who took leave to work on Kennedy’s campaign. Born in Southern California and residing in Arizona, McCormick gained responsibility for public relations with Spanish-speaking voters.29 Kennedy won the nomination with his youth, vigor, anti-Communism, and organization. He also won over much of the Mexican American community, by virtue of several features of his appeal. First, Kennedy was a Democrat and emphasized his connection to Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal, which had gained Mexican American support through its aim to help those hit hardest by the Depression. Second, Kennedy focused much of his foreign-policy attention on Latin America, noting that hopeless poverty makes Communism attractive. He would fight Communism, in part, by working to improve conditions for the people of Latin America and by improving U.S–Third World relations. Third, Kennedy’s liberalism, particularly his sympathy for the poor and attention to poverty, attracted many who saw in the barrios dire poverty and disadvantage. Other factors that contributed include Kennedy’s Irish heritage (his family had been an immigrant minority), his large family, his wife who could speak Spanish, and his Catholicism. Mexican Americans did not discuss Kennedy’s Catholicism explicitly as a reason for their support—it did not appear in speeches or flyers in support of the candidate—most likely because religion was a controversial issue in the campaign. Furthermore, they did not wish to highlight their own Catholicism, which to many Texans was one more thing that made Mexican Americans different from the mainstream of their society. Finally, Hector García attributed Kennedy’s success among Mexican Americans in Texas to his campaign efforts in the neighborhoods, as compared to Johnson’s focus on the Mexican American political leaders in hopes that they would turn out the delegates.30 Once Kennedy won the nomination, Johnson as the vice-presidential candidate strengthened the ticket in Texas. Soon Viva Kennedy clubs emerged across the state, across the Southwest, and even into the Midwest, which

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had some of the most active chapters. Local leaders organized and led these clubs: members of the G.I. Forum and LULAC in Texas; MAPA members in California; political activists in New Mexico, Arizona, and Colorado; labor leaders and Democratic organizers in the Republican states of the Midwest.31 The Kennedy-Johnson ticket won the 1960 election over Richard Nixon and Henry Cabot Lodge by a slim margin— Kennedy actually receiving less than 50 percent of the popular votes cast but winning a substantial margin in the electoral college. But Mexican Americans gave the New Englander 85 percent of their votes across the Southwest, and 91 percent in Texas.32 Kennedy promised, after eight years of the Eisenhower presidency, to “get America moving again,” and that message, for Mexican Americans as well as for millions of other Americans, was an attractive offer.

Foreign Relations and Cultural Difference John Kennedy’s promise to “get America moving again” had particular resonance for foreign policy. Kennedy decried the missile gap that appeared to give the Soviets superiority in nuclear weapons, chided the Eisenhower administration for its stagnant international leadership, and sought to establish friendly relationships with Third World nations. Relations with Latin America had deteriorated since Franklin Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor Policy, and the nation’s ardent anti-Communist policy gave the United States a reputation as a counterrevolutionary bully ready and willing to support right-wing dictators who opposed even democratic revolutions. Kennedy’s Alliance for Progress (AFP) sought to take Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor Policy one step further, to create a partnership with Latin American nations that would include economic assistance, land and tax reform, and the promotion of democratic principles throughout the Western Hemisphere.33 The great exception to better U.S.–Latin American relations, of course, was Cuba, where Fidel Castro had taken control of the government prior to Kennedy’s election and grew increasingly friendly with the Soviet Union. The momentum behind a plan to overthrow the Cuban dictator, begun under Eisenhower, captured Kennedy and resulted in the Bay of Pigs fiasco shortly after he took office. Kennedy redeemed himself by confronting the Soviets during the Cuban missile crisis, but the antagonism toward Cuba threatened some of Kennedy’s advances toward Latin America. The focus drawn by Castro, Communism, and problems in Latin America encouraged Mexican Americans to remind Kennedy of promises he had made during the campaign. In exchange for support during the primaries and through the campaign, Robert Kennedy, who ran the campaign, promised Viva Kennedy leaders that the new president would appoint Mexican Americans

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to significant posts in the foreign service. John Kennedy reinforced this pledge with suggestions in several speeches during the campaign.34 Mexican American leaders eagerly anticipated calls from Kennedy staffers looking for candidates for appointments. As the inauguration approached without the expected calls, leaders began pressing the new president to make good on his promise. For example, in 1960, outgoing national LULAC president Hector Godínez called for Kennedy to appoint Mexican Americans in “positions of good will” in Latin America, a call echoed by the El Paso Times.35 The Times suggested El Paso mayor Raymond Telles as a prime candidate. When Kennedy appointed Telles as United States Ambassador to Costa Rica in February, 1961, the New York Times noted that he was “the first U.S. citizen of Mexican descent to be elected mayor of a major Texas city” and that “his new post is the highest ever assigned to a citizen of Mexican ancestry.”36 Encouraged by this early success, Mexican Americans continued to press for appointments. But Kennedy’s record in appointments did not live up to his grand promises during the campaign, and leaders in the Mexican American community continued to apply pressure. By the summer they began to complain of being ignored. In particular, those Mexican Americans who had been most active on the president’s behalf—the Viva Kennedy activists—complained that of the four Spanish-surnamed appointments to the foreign service, only one, Telles, had been a Viva Kennedy man.37 Throughout the summer and fall of 1961, Mexican American leaders kept up the pressure by making particular arguments about Mexican American language and culture. In September newly elected LULAC national president Frank Valdez reminded Kennedy of the importance of using Latin Americans in the diplomatic services to South America, “where the ethnic background and the language are one and the same.”38 In 1962, William Elizondo, president of the influential LULAC Council #2 in San Antonio and outspoken supporter of Kennedy, expressed his high regard for the work of Raymond Telles as ambassador. Elizondo insisted that the “type of ‘grass-roots’ knowledge of the people of Latin-American descent, which Mr. Telles has, is essential in handling future incidents which might arise in Costa Rica.” He further argued that an ambassador to a Latin American nation should understand the people of the nation in which he serves, particularly their “habits, traits, characteristics and most of all their emotionalism.”39 Elizondo joined the call for greater inclusion of Mexican Americans in government positions by emphasizing the distinct cultural traits of Mexican Americans. The full LULAC organization followed this reasoning, as Elizondo noted in his letter, when it passed a resolution favoring the appointment of Mexican Americans to positions representing the United States in Latin American nations, as they “have an insight to their problems and generally

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know how they think.”40 Telles, a former LULAC member, reinforced this idea when he spoke at the national LULAC convention in 1963 and urged more Latin Americans to work on inter-American relations. In the efforts against Communism, he argued, it was important for all Americans to recognize their part in the fight. Even though LULAC members might not have names like Jones, Smith, and Brown, Telles insisted, they did have “equally American names,” like García, González, and Valdez.41 While discussing the merits of Kennedy’s domestic program, Telles placed special emphasis on the Alliance for Progress, presumably to foster the connection that many Mexican American leaders were making between their unique background in culture and language, on the one hand, and, on the other, the needs of America’s foreign service. LULAC was not alone in this tactic. In 1963, American G.I. Forum president Ed Idar, Jr., called for more Mexican American appointments, “particularly in the Foreign Service in American embassies and consulates in the South and Central American area.”42 J. Carlos McCormick, who would soon work for the Democratic National Committee, also made a special appeal for Mexican American appointments to posts in inter-American relations. McCormick served as executive secretary for the recently formed Political Association of Spanish Speaking Organizations (PASSO), a political organization that emerged from the Viva Kennedy clubs after the 1960 presidential campaign.43 McCormick emphasized the unique qualifications of Mexican Americans to serve their country in posts in Latin America, as they “can best advance the task of mutual understanding” because of their experience as “heirs of two great cultures.”44 Kennedy had used such language in his campaign when he promised to appoint Mexican Americans to government jobs in the foreign service and the AFP, and his assistants used it as well, as when Lawrence O’Brien acknowledged to the G.I. Forum that Mexican Americans were “uniquely qualified” to be of service to the United States in Latin America.45 And Kennedy’s record on appointments of Mexican Americans did, as a result, improve on that of previous presidents. Among the assignments given Spanish-speaking Americans under Kennedy were positions with the Agency for International Development in Nicaragua, Ecuador, and Argentina; in the State Department in Togo, Costa Rica, and Peru; and with the Peace Corps in the Dominican Republic, Chile, and Venezuela. Some of these appointments were Puerto Rican, but most were Mexican Americans from the Southwest.46 Although not primarily concerned with foreign affairs, LULAC certainly threw its weight behind the American way of life during the years of the Cold War. LULAC and the G.I. Forum in particular emphasized their loyalty to the nation and supported U.S. efforts in Korea and later in Vietnam. Nevertheless, foreign relations never dominated the group’s agenda.

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Studies suggest that Mexican American leaders, like most Americans, are more knowledgeable about and more interested in domestic issues, and LULAC’s arguments focused on getting Mexican Americans appointed to government positions more than on winning the Cold War.47 For federal policy makers in the 1950s and 1960s, however, the equation was reversed. The Cold War provided an important incentive among American leaders for civil rights reform. Recent studies suggest that the need to project a positive image of American race relations abroad provided a major incentive for the most significant civil-rights victories between the late 1940s and the late 1960s.48 The argument that appointments of Mexican Americans could help U.S.–Latin American relations during the Cold War resonated in a receptive environment. Winning those appointments resulted from a change in LULAC’s public pronouncements. The organization had argued for a generation that Mexican Americans are white and downplayed the significance of the difference between Mexican Americans and Anglos. In their argument for appointments in Latin America, however, LULAC leaders and others highlighted the cultural differences between Mexican Americans (and Americans from Latin American nations) and other Americans. During the 1950s the reality of Mexican American cultural distinctiveness forced LULAC leaders to accept as unlikely the total cultural, as well as political and economic, assimilation of Mexican Americans. While insisting that Mexican Americans are white, and denying any racial basis for discrimination, LULAC leaders simultaneously tried to use what difference they would admit—cultural distinction—as it became an advantage in gaining positions in mainstream American society, namely government appointments. They could best serve their nation because of their unique cultural distinctions, and they sought appointments to positions for which they could argue they had an advantage over other white Americans. This shift represented a significant step for LULAC, one that would have implications for the way it dealt with civil rights issues into the next decade.

Federal Housing Programs and Organizational Survival Domestic policy excited Kennedy less than foreign relations, but the president did have a domestic agenda designed to deal with the “newly discovered” problem of poverty in America.49 In particular, the advisors and aides that Kennedy brought with him to Washington represented a young, educated, liberal elite eager to make a difference. Richard Goodwin, a young speechwriter and later advisor to the president, recalled his enthusiasm when Kennedy called on him shortly after the inauguration—not with an assignment to write a proposal or draft a speech, but with a “direct order”

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to “do something” about the underrepresentation of minorities in the Coast Guard detachment that Kennedy had noticed at the inauguration.50 The enthusiastic new advisors drafted numerous domestic initiatives for Kennedy, among them an increased minimum wage, health insurance for the elderly, federal aid to public schools, aid to depressed areas, federal housing legislation, and a Department of Urban Affairs. Historian James Giglio calls Kennedy’s domestic program “terribly traditional” in that it “sought to consolidate and extend the great Democratic gains of the past.” 51 This program followed the lines of Franklin Roosevelt’s Economic Bill of Rights of 1944 and the legislative program of Harry Truman during his presidency, which sought to gain participation for those Americans not taking part in the success of the American economy of the postwar years. Kennedy’s early domestic program, based on his axiom that a rising tide lifts all boats, in the words of historian Allen Matusow “derived ultimately from the complacent assumptions of the corporate liberalism of the 1950s.” 52 The program sought not to bring about fundamental changes but to include all Americans in the booming postwar economy. One of Kennedy’s most desired legislative victories, one that reflected his administration’s domestic policy, was a bill for federal housing legislation. Despite Republican opposition, the bill passed in June, 1961. The Housing Act of 1961 extended urban renewal, public housing, and housing for the elderly and for college students, and it also provided low-interest loans for construction of housing for middle-income families—those whose income was too high to qualify for public housing but who could not afford to purchase their own home.53 LULAC leaders seized on this program as a means to help both middle-income Mexican Americans—members or potential members of LULAC—and the organization as well. Under the act the Federal Housing Authority (FHA) would insure 100 percent of the cost of a housing project if a nonprofit organization undertook construction. Based on a forty-year mortgage in 1962, the FHA insured the loan at an interest rate of just over 3 percent. Following passage of the Housing Act, LULAC developed interest in a housing project under the presidency of Frank Valdez in 1962, as a means not only of helping middle-income Mexican Americans find housing but also as a means of providing income and real estate holdings for the organization. A native of San Antonio, Valdez’s interest in the housing program was natural. After graduating from the University of Texas at Austin in 1952, he started his own architectural firm. The firm designed the federal office building in San Antonio, and Valdez became a city leader, serving on the boards of the Urban Renewal Agency, the San Antonio Planning Commission, the local public broadcasting television station, and the San Antonio Symphony.

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Kennedy’s housing program came at a crucial time for LULAC, because by then the organization was in sore need of new sources of operating income. By the early 1960s the older generation of members that believed LULAC had achieved its goals balked at paying dues to enable the national office to become more active. The local councils controlled by these members organized social events and undertook some community projects but offered little to attract new members from among increasingly activist Mexican American youth. As a result of the differing attitudes toward the future of LULAC, membership and activity began to decline. At precisely the time that membership began to drop, however, interest among LULAC leaders for increased activism began to rise, and, along with that interest, the need for new operating revenues grew.54 LULAC still relied on membership dues, which members paid to their local council and a portion of which the national office appropriated for the LULAC News, operating expenses, and national programs. In response to decreasing membership and nonpayment of dues by derelict councils, the national leadership in 1963 increased annual dues from six to nine dollars per year. Instead of solving the financial burden, raising dues only worsened the problem by fostering resentment among local council members, and some councils reported difficulty in attracting new members or even keeping the old ones. For example, in November, 1963, past national president Hector Godínez advised President Paul Andow that LULAC was on the verge of losing several California councils. According to Godínez, the new higher dues “are not and will not be accepted by the membership in the states of LULAC for many reasons.”55 According to the Illinois state director, “morale is approaching a new low . . . primarily because of the dues burden being doubled overnight.”56 Local members in Illinois did not notice any significant improvement in the services they were receiving and wondered what the national office did with their dues. The state director attributed the difficulty LULAC experienced in expanding in Illinois to the high dues charged by the national organization. As political scientist Benjamin Márquez notes, through the early 1960s rank-and-file LULAC members wanted more benefits and activities in support of solidarity—“those socially derived rewards created by the act of association, such as fun, camaraderie, status, or prestige”—to offset the felt loss of purposive benefits—“those derived from advocating a particular cause or ideological orientation.”57 With a need for extra income, but resistance from local councils to raising dues, LULAC national leaders sought other sources of income. One option was simply to use the LULAC organization to enter private business. LULAC considered a low-cost group insurance policy for members and their dependents, both to offer current members a service and as “some added incentive for drawing new membership.”58 According to Guillermo

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Villarreal of the LULAC Life Insurance Committee, the life insurance business “is a money making proposition and it would be of great benefit to LULAC in increasing its capital, increasing its membership, and in offering a good service to its members.”59 The statement reveals a hierarchy of goals, with profit at the top, new membership next, and service to existing members at the bottom. A few months later Villarreal made the primary goal even more clear when he wrote to national president Paul Andow that owning “a Capital Stock Life Insurance Company would be the best way in which LULAC can derive a profit.” While the organization would face some obstacles, such as the initial $25,000 outlay for a charter and the need for experienced employees, the committee nevertheless viewed the investment as one sure to produce profit for LULAC, either for the long term by operating the company over a number of years, or for the short term by organizing the company, creating new business, and selling within a few years.60 The insurance business was potentially lucrative but also filled with risk. The money LULAC would have to pour into a company before it began to earn profits made leaders uneasy. Other possibilities for profit, with much less risk, came from Kennedy’s federal housing program. By the end of 1963, LULAC had undertaken two construction projects, one in El Paso and one in San Antonio, at a total cost of more than $3 million.61 Valdez continued to oversee the housing programs and to report on progress to the membership. His justification for the housing program of course counted the benefits to Mexican Americans who needed housing, but his primary interest, it seems, was the income LULAC could derive. In his 1963 report on the projects he noted that “this is one of the few ways, while I was national president, that we found we could create an income as well as assets for the organization. What other way can an organization such as LULAC own a project worth $1,600,000.00 without investing any money. In two years of research we found no other way.”62 Valdez viewed the housing program as an excellent opportunity to earn revenues with “little or no investment on the part of LULAC.”63 LULAC pursued projects in several Texas cities, most notably in El Paso, where it became the operator of Villa Del Norte apartments through the LULAC Home Committee, Inc.64 In presenting such investments at the national convention, LULAC leaders highlighted both the revenue available and the benefits for Mexican Americans, particularly those of the middle class. Albert Armendáriz, former national president and member of the LULAC Home Committee, did not deny the primary goal of the housing program: “The whole project was conceived as a fund raising means for the LULAC Home.”65 Kennedy’s housing program drew the national office closer to federal programs and agencies and demonstrated the potential for federal funding and cooperation. If the national office could shake free from the

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need to finance programs through dues, reducing pressure (and dependence) on the rank-and-file membership, LULAC could become a more influential organization on the national stage. At the time, the availability of federal funds for organization projects remained a goal distinct from LULAC’s success in using the cultural heritage of Mexican Americans to obtain government appointments. Connecting the two would have to await the end of the decade.

Civil Rights and a Challenge from the Left John Kennedy introduced housing and other New Frontier legislation but was a reluctant warrior on civil rights. As senator he had concentrated on foreign relations and had no reputation on civil rights prior to his bid for the presidency. Events would conspire, however, to thrust this president into the center of a national civil-rights debate. The Greensboro sit-ins, which gained headlines before the 1960 campaign began in earnest, kicked off several years of consistent grassroots pressure for national attention to the Jim Crow laws of the southern states. For example, white crowds at the University of Mississippi blocked integration of “Ole Miss” when James Meredith tried to register; Governor George Wallace stood in the doorway at the University of Alabama to prevent registration of black students; three young men disappeared in Mississippi while working to register black voters; Martin Luther King, Jr. led the infamous march in Birmingham, where Police Chief Bull Connor turned fire hoses and police dogs on men, women, and children; hundreds of thousands of people, black and white, attended the March on Washington and heard King describe his dream of a nation where ability, rather than skin color, determined one’s place in society. Mounting pressure and violent reaction forced Kennedy to take limited steps despite the president’s reluctance to use federal power in the South, which he feared (correctly) would alienate southern Democrats from the national party.66 With no likelihood of legislation passing Congress, controlled by a conservative coalition of Republicans and southern Democrats, Kennedy used what executive powers the president controlled in domestic affairs— those of implementation. Kennedy took three basic actions that cautiously furthered civil rights, even as protesters and voter registration volunteers suffered under the white backlash in the South. First, Kennedy appointed blacks to positions of influence, including Thurgood Marshall to the federal bench. Second, he allowed his brother to reinvigorate the Justice Department, particularly the Civil Rights Division. Third, he used the executive order to allow for some executive action in the face of a reluctant Congress. With executive order 10925, Kennedy created a special Committee on Equal

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Employment Opportunity (CEEO) and placed Vice President Lyndon Johnson as chair.67 The chairmanship of the CEEO would be one of Johnson’s most difficult tasks as vice president. He found himself caught between two sides, neither of which could be satisfied with an interagency committee with limited authority but with a politically powerful mandate—to ensure that federal contractors and the government itself work to eliminate racial discrimination in employment. For some, the committee’s voluntary program allowed companies (mostly defense contractors) to pledge action and then simply do nothing, secure from federal intervention. Others complained that the committee crusaded too much and that Johnson was turning against his own by chasing contractors in the Jim Crow South.68 That complaint reveals the object and focus of the committee and of the civil rights focus in general through the early 1960s—blacks in the South. Meetings with officials from across the departments and agencies expanded the definition of oppressed groups beyond African Americans to include Puerto Ricans, Mexican Americans, Asian Americans, and American Indians. Those groups had gained “official” minority status by convincing federal bureaucrats that they deserved inclusion on lists used to monitor civil rights issues.69 Despite its claims to be working for the civil rights of those different groups, however, the administration and the committee focused attention almost exclusively on African Americans. As an administration summary of civil rights progress for 1961 made clear, action on the civil rights front focused on aiding African Americans struggling to gain equal civil rights. Every reference in the summary to action taken by the administration referred to the problems of “Negroes”; not one reference of real action referred to any other minority group.70 The government’s attention to black civil-rights issues resulted from the protest and demonstration tactics of black civil-rights organizations. By the 1960s blacks increasingly fought the Jim Crow system of segregation through high-profile civil disobedience—sit-ins, marches, and boycotts. That approach startled leaders of the large Mexican American groups such as LULAC and the G.I. Forum (as well as leaders of older black organizations such as the NAACP and the Urban League). LULAC and the American G.I. Forum refused to endorse overt tactics of that kind. When the struggle for equality consisted of equal educational opportunity through the courts and through negotiation with state and local leaders, LULAC and black civil-rights groups fought for much the same thing. But LULAC leaders were ambivalent about how to respond to the new black efforts for civil rights. The national leadership and most members could appreciate the struggle of blacks to end the discrimination they faced. LULAC expressed moral support for African Americans struggling in the South, and they en-

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dorsed the Kennedy administration’s general civil-rights program of the early 1960s. At the 34th national convention in 1963, LULAC commended Kennedy’s civil-rights efforts, including a vague reference to the work of the attorney general to protect the rights of minority groups “under existing law.” The organization also endorsed the president’s 1963 civil-rights bill— the core proposal that would become, under Lyndon Johnson, the Civil Rights Act of 1964.71 Those assertions of support put LULAC in the national fight for civil rights, but nowhere near the front lines. Not everyone in LULAC was reluctant to more fully join the fray. A few more radical LULAC councils, led by Minnesota councils, sought a more emphatic statement of support for blacks than did the national leadership. Throughout the end of 1963, the councils from Minnesota tried to secure financial assistance for blacks in Birmingham. The nation had seen the protests led by Martin Luther King, Jr., and the violent response by Birmingham police under Bull Connor, and the Minnesotans believed the time ripe for LULAC to join the morally powerful campaign. Minnesota State Director Joe Zamarripa insisted that the Minnesota councils had good experiences allying themselves with other minority groups, a tactic that had resulted in gains for Mexican Americans, primarily in appointments to state offices.72 Zamarripa believed that the struggle for civil rights required unity among all minorities in the face of Anglo opposition. Fellow Minnesota LULAC member Joe Lucero echoed his state director’s arguments. He accused Mexican Americans of being “anarchists” for their refusal to join with other groups. He also insisted that LULAC could only gain by cooperating with other minority groups and pleaded “for an end to our isolation.” Lucero called this proposal both “idealistic and practical.”73 Coalition building would join together common goals of equality and opportunity and would work more effectively than isolated activity. The calls for cooperation that emanated from the Minnesota councils appear to have been a logical progression of the national leadership’s new emphasis on federal policy and national prominence. Because LULAC national leaders criticized local councils for their unwillingness to press further for real equality for Mexican Americans and disagreed that LULAC’s job ended as soon as states recognized their equality under law, the Minnesota councils had reason to believe that the LULAC leadership would join the larger civil-rights struggle. The response of the national leadership to these requests shows the limits of its activism and the resiliency of traditional LULAC positions. Leaders dismissed any effort to assist the blacks in Birmingham—beyond statements of moral support—as too “political in nature” and thus outside the goals and purposes of LULAC. “Political behavior” seems to have been defined as any action that might damage LULAC’s reputation with the major political parties. Overt action on behalf of blacks

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in Birmingham would anger conservative Democrats in the South and also Republicans preparing for the 1964 elections. Furthermore, LULAC leaders concluded that “money from our treasury shall not be used to aid other organizations,” primarily because that money was needed for solving “our own problems.”74 They were willing to be active in pressing legal claims for Mexican Americans—because they were white, they could not legally be segregated in schools, for example—and in calling for both parties to address the needs of the Mexican American community. They had even begun to use their cultural distinctiveness as a potential advantage, as when arguing for the need for Mexican American ambassadors to Latin American nations. Tying its movement to that of another group, however, would entangle LULAC in debates and associate it with causes that might not address the needs of Mexican Americans. The split within LULAC suggests the split between two emerging civilrights ideologies. One, to which the Minnesota LULACs adhered, was a grassroots, social-movement perspective on fighting the system and breaking down the barriers to equality for all minorities. From that perspective the most pragmatic and ideologically consistent means of achieving desired ends was to form alliances across racial, ethnic, and class lines. The other, the traditional LULAC perspective to which the national leadership clung, was that of working within the political and economic system to bring about change for Mexican Americans. Leaders might bemoan the indifference of local members to national issues but could not go as far as the Minnesota chapters wanted. LULAC might extend its support beyond the Mexican American population to Mexicans committed to life in the United States, but the organization remained unwilling to become a subunit of another, explicitly racial movement and join forces with blacks.75 Theirs was not a grassroots social movement, but rather an effort by group elites to obtain more recognition for their group. Assisting blacks in Birmingham, either financially or through significant spending of political capital in support of their methods, would divert attention and money from Mexican American issues. LULAC existed to aid Mexican Americans, and with limited money and time to devote to their own problems—which, although in some cases similar, they did not consider identical to the problems of blacks—efforts on behalf of other groups would take away from LULAC’s ultimate purpose.76

Recognition Won, Lost, and Won Again One element of that ultimate purpose was to gain recognition of LULAC as the voice of Mexican American interests. LULAC national presidents and other national officers regularly pursued the big payoff—a presidential ap-

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pearance at a LULAC function. The appearance of important government officials at LULAC and Mexican American events and meetings lent legitimacy to LULAC on a national level. While Eisenhower’s aides had realized the potential voting power of Mexican Americans and arranged for a presidential message to LULAC, the Kennedy administration, while doing little in particular for Mexican Americans beyond informing them of general federal programs and appointing a number to federal posts, offered greater recognition to LULAC and Mexican Americans than any previous administration. Mexican Americans made great strides during the early 1960s to become recognized as a significant voting group (the purpose of the Viva Kennedy clubs and PASSO), and the LULAC national office developed into a strong interest group as the voice of the Mexican American middle class. LULAC had long solicited presidential visits through direct correspondence with the White House, but they also learned to use indirect channels, appealing to Texas members of Congress to use their influence to gain recognition for the organization. Among LULAC’s most vocal proponents in Congress were Senator Ralph Yarborough and Congressman Henry B. González. LULAC also had the support of PASSO, of Los Angeles city councilman and future congressman Ed Roybal, and of J. Carlos McCormick, by then an assistant in the State Department. Most of the effort by these leaders on behalf of LULAC, at least in the early 1960s, involved lobbying for presidential or other high-official attendance at LULAC functions, largely to gain recognition and prestige for LULAC and for Mexican Americans in general.77 Among the best organized and most politically astute members of the Mexican American community, LULAC leaders believed they could gain for Mexican Americans legitimacy and respect in the eyes of Americans from all regions. The administration chose LULAC as an early audience for Kennedy’s position on the Bracero Program when Secretary of Labor Arthur Goldberg attended a LULAC banquet in August, 1961. William Elizondo, president of LULAC’s influential San Antonio council, praised Goldberg’s address and was impressed that Goldberg, Assistant Secretary Jerry Hooeman, and Director of Information John Leslie all attended the banquet.78 LULAC was clearly moving up the line of important administration representatives. Government and party officials provided important recognition, but LULAC still sought the big prize. In late 1963, the quest for a presidential appearance finally paid off. LULAC member John Herrera sought Carlos McCormick’s aid to get President Kennedy to attend a LULAC ball in honor of Texas State Director Joe Garza. Not only would the president’s attendance ensure the success of the event, which was also a fund raiser for a LULAC scholarship fund for college students, but Kennedy would also have the opportunity to meet the national and state leaders of LULAC, most of whom,

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according to Herrera, were members of Viva Kennedy clubs. Kennedy’s attendance would be particularly timely, as Herrera informed McCormick, because of increased Republican efforts in the state, suggesting the political benefits of a presidential visit.79 McCormick, working for the Democratic National Committee (DNC) in 1963, based his recommendation for Kennedy’s attendance at the ball on the fact that LULAC “is a very important group in Texas, and we will be needing their help next year.”80 Of course, as former executive director of PASSO, McCormick sought greater recognition for Mexican American organizations, and LULAC was the most prominent and most respectable of the era. But his appeal from the office of the DNC suggests that he also believed that party considerations strengthened the chances of a favorable response by the president. As had become standard procedure in the Kennedy administration when Mexican American issues arose, the president’s appointment secretary, Ken O’Donnell, sought the advice of the vice president’s office. Johnson special assistant, George Reedy, affirmed the significance of LULAC and identified it as “the largest and the oldest of such organizations” and one of “considerable standing.”81 Kennedy’s schedule that fateful November took him through Texas, and the Kennedy team accepted LULAC’s invitation from among the roughly one thousand the president received for the evening. Both the president and first lady spoke (she in Spanish) to the LULAC State Director’s ball in Houston on November 21, 1963. Also in attendance were Vice President and Lady Bird Johnson, Texas Governor John Connally and his wife, and twenty members of the state and federal congresses. Kennedy’s talk focused on U.S. policy toward Latin America and, in praising Garza’s efforts in Texas and LULAC’s national educational programs, on the administration’s goal of preparing America’s young people for the future. The visit was brief but made an enormous impact on LULAC leaders. Past national president Frank Valdez considered the president’s attendance at the ball the crowning event in the national attention afforded LULAC by the Kennedy administration. “Certain actions of national consequence,” such as the Kennedy appearance, “to me is recognition of our organization,” which LULAC had never before received. Valdez saw a window of opportunity for the organization to make a greater impact on the national scene and was adamant that “this recognition can and should be made to work for us.”82 The assassination of John F. Kennedy the following day cut through the excitement that surrounded the president’s visit. Director of publicity Ken Flynn canceled the November issue of the LULAC News because it “did not seem proper . . . to publish a newspaper filled with news of social activities, on the day of mourning.” The issue would be replaced by a special edition devoted to Kennedy’s attendance at the LULAC ball in Houston the evening before his death.83 The blow was particularly hard for those who

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had attended the ball, who had finally received the presidential recognition they believed they had long deserved. LULAC and Mexican Americans in general lost the president who had campaigned for their votes, appointed them in unprecedented numbers to government posts, and honored them with his presence. As Ken Flynn noted, Kennedy was the first U.S. president to be named an honorary member of LULAC and the first “ever to confer with LULAC members, for that matter.”84 As disappointing as it was, Kennedy’s death brought to the presidency someone much more familiar with Mexican American issues. Texan Lyndon Johnson had extensive personal experience with Mexican Americans.85 He could hardly have built a political career in Texas without exposure to their concerns and problems. Johnson’s first job after college was teaching Mexican American children in Cotulla, Texas, and he frequently referred to his days there as both teacher and principal to show his knowledge of the struggles of minorities and to express his determination to do something to help them. In 1949, shortly after being elected to the Senate, Johnson arranged for Félix Longoria, a Mexican American veteran, to be buried in Arlington National Cemetery after the Three Rivers, Texas, funeral home refused to bury him. The event reinforced Johnson’s knowledge of the troubles that faced Mexican Americans in Texas—Three Rivers reminded him of Cotulla—and gave the senator national exposure on a civil rights issue.86 Johnson’s experience with Mexican Americans, as much as his experience with blacks, shaped his stand on segregation and discrimination and prepared him for his role as facilitator of the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1960, which he steered through the Senate with consummate skill despite the reluctance of his southern colleagues to sign off on civil rights legislation. Finally, as vice president, Johnson served as chairman of Kennedy’s Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity, a position in which he faced the dissatisfaction of Mexican Americans in California who complained that the committee neglected other minority groups to focus on the needs of African Americans. This president knew the Mexican American community and had personal relationships with several prominent members of both LULAC and the G.I. Forum. Concerns about Johnson from the 1960 campaign melted away as the new president welcomed Mexican Americans to the Democratic coalition that he hoped to leave as his legacy.

Civil Rights Under Johnson—Providing Equal Opportunity Johnson’s civil-rights activity carried over from Kennedy’s. In fact, much to the chagrin of his southern congressional colleges, Johnson was determined to push Kennedy’s languishing civil-rights bill through Congress. Johnson emerged as both more adept at legislative bargaining and more committed

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to the colorblind model of civil rights than his predecessor. As chair of Kennedy’s CEEO, Johnson insisted that “justice is an individual thing.” His committee sought equal employment opportunities for all, and as Johnson’s executive chairman Hobart Taylor, Jr., insisted, this “commitment applies not to any single minority group but to all Americans.”87 The language reveals the hope that a generalist policy would adequately address the disadvantages found in American society without having to resort to particular remedies for particular groups of Americans. According to this position, no one should be prevented from achieving the American dream because of race, color, creed, or national origin. The goal of government should be to ensure that members of minority groups “are receiving full opportunity to contribute on the basis of individual merit and without any discrimination because of their national origin.”88 This goal of a general solution to particular problems of oppressed groups was, for Johnson, the most viable solution to America’s discrimination problem. Johnson’s approach represented the traditional liberal position on civil rights, that a colorblind model served to eliminate discrimination based on race or national origin and allowed the American meritocracy to function properly.89 The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and its accompanying Voting Rights Act of 1965 flowed from the national moral outrage at the Jim Crow South. The Civil Rights Act attacked discrimination based on race, creed, color, national origin, or sex and therefore included discrimination against Mexican Americans. But thanks to the efforts of LULAC, the G.I. Forum, and others, Mexican Americans faced little of the systematic, legal discrimination that oppressed blacks in the Deep South, discrimination that most titles of the civil rights legislation addressed. Johnson’s addition of Title VII—prohibition of discrimination in employment, not present in Kennedy’s initial proposal and to be enforced by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission—offered Mexican Americans a potential new weapon in their struggle for equality. Protection against job discrimination would allow more Mexican Americans to rise out of the ranks of migrant laborers and field workers and would create a more stable and sizable Mexican American middle class, a result that LULAC in particular desired. But the target of the act was undoubtedly the Jim Crow South.90 Mexican Americans supported the Civil Rights Act but did not offer testimony at hearings on the legislation and received little attention during debates and deliberations, either in the White House or in Congress. The act outlawed legal segregation that had already largely been dismantled (in law) for Mexican Americans. Its most potent implications for Mexican American federal policy would not be evident for nearly a decade, when it would become the basis for a government mandate for local school districts to provide equal educational opportunity for non-English speaking children.

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A Great Society for Mexican Americans Johnson often told the story of teaching Mexican American children in Cotulla, at times while promoting the War on Poverty or aid to education, at times while suggesting his sympathy for the oppressed or the down-andout. Eager to help, and eager to secure his place in history, Johnson took the mantle from Kennedy and tried to make it his own, in social welfare as much as in civil rights. Johnson announced, in a speech at the University of Michigan, that “we have the opportunity to move not only toward the rich society and the powerful society, but upward to the Great Society.” His host of legislative proposals and victories followed and expanded the outlines of Kennedy’s limited program, promoting general policies to help the poor, the elderly, children, and those denied voting rights.91 The administration hoped to extend the Great Society to Mexican Americans and believed that the major problems Mexican Americans faced could be solved through familiarization with federal programs. In May, 1965, Johnson aides arranged a meeting for the president with leaders of the Mexican American community. Special assistant Louis Martin, who worked primarily as liaison to the black community, arranged for the Mexican American leaders to meet with cabinet secretaries and administration officials to discuss “administration programs that can be of particular assistance to the Mexican-Americans.” Martin hoped to save the administration time and effort by alerting these leaders to what the government was already doing. Johnson aide Lee White agreed and advised Johnson to discuss “administration programs that can be of particular assistance to the MexicanAmericans.” White suggested that the president discuss several programs with Mexican Americans to show the administration’s efforts: poverty programs (such as the Job Corps, Project Head Start, Neighborhood Youth Corps); housing (rent supplements, low-rate mortgages for middle-income families); education (funds targeted to low-income school districts, preschool program, funds for state and community education projects); voting (efforts to get the poll tax declared unconstitutional, registration drives); and equal employment opportunity (appointments, the Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity, the Civil Service Commission). White advised Johnson to make further reference to his early experience as a principal in Cotulla, where the president learned the “shameful and wasteful toll that needless bias and prejudice take on human pride and dignity.” Johnson appealed to the Mexican American leaders to “tell your people when you go home” that the administration, and the EEOC, “will do something about the problem of job opportunity for Americans of Mexican ancestry— throughout the nation.”92 The goal was to plug Mexican Americans into the programs that the administration had already established to fight poverty and discrimination. 86

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Mexican Americans received national attention and new programs and had a local boy in the White House, and LULAC leaders responded favorably to the administration’s program. National president William Bonilla even tapped Executive Director Carlos Truan for chairman of LULAC’s own “war on poverty.” Truan and Bonilla believed the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 to be a boon for LULAC, in that it would open up federal funding for programs that would help the organization continue its long record of service to the Mexican American people. The federal act committed the government to eliminating poverty by providing equal opportunities for all Americans through job training and programs to combat poverty.93 In a perfect example of the general Great Society approach, the OEO offered LULAC more than the Civil Rights Act, so much, in fact, that elements of conservatism within the Mexican American community feared too much federal involvement in daily life under the Great Society. Through the LULAC News Truan defended the Economic Opportunity Act in a January 1965 article in which he claimed that the goal of such a program “has been the back-bone of the ‘Aims and Purposes of LULAC’ since our organization was founded in 1929.” While LULAC had done an admirable job throughout its history, the act would allow the organization to “make an even greater contribution” to the Mexican American people. Addressing the concerns of conservatives, Truan emphasized the local control of Great Society programs: “We know the problems of our communities. You know the kinds of programs that are needed—in education and training and health and welfare services.” The act would empower local people and help LULAC do better what it had done for decades. The unprecedented role for the federal government was radical, but the implementation and results would be, he argued, traditional.94 The LULAC News also published reports from members of Congress and the administration, such as an article by Senator Paul Douglas (DIllinois), who suggested that the Great Society sought to solve the problems of urbanization and poverty, exacerbated in many quarters during that period of national growth and development. He invited his readers to join the president and to “go forward as an enlightened, modern nation.” Similarly, an article by Sargent Shriver of the Office of Economic Opportunity, the coordinating office for the Great Society, promoted the Job Corps, VISTA (Volunteers In Service To America), and Project Head Start.95 As LULAC leaders had requested, the Great Society provided federal funding and oversight but also flexibility for recipients of federal funds to adapt the programs to their needs. The shining example of the Great Society for Mexican Americans was Operation SER, a job training program originally conceived by two LULAC members. Roberto Ornelas and George Roybal, both employees of the Navy, consulted with Navy officials in 1964 to improve job training and placement of Mexican Americans in the service. 87

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With the cooperation of the Navy and LULAC president William Bonilla, they developed a pilot project in Houston that would connect employeehungry industries with Mexican American workers in need of training and jobs. The program fit well with the Great Society emphasis on local efforts to aid the disadvantaged. The idea for Operation SER, and the groundwork laid with the cooperation of the Navy and the local and national LULAC office, led to administration recognition of the program and funding of a two-year demonstration project. In June, 1965, Johnson sent Secretary of Labor Willard Wirtz to a LULAC convention in Houston, where he signed a contract to fund Operation SER with Sargent Shriver’s Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO). Labor and the OEO provided over $350,000 for the program, which would open job training centers in Texas, California, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico. To ensure maximum effectiveness, and minimum competition among Mexican American groups, LULAC and the G.I. Forum jointly administered the program across the Southwest. Operation SER—the Spanish verb for to be and also an acronym for Service, Employment, and Redevelopment—provided guidance, remedial education, and relocation services to the Spanish-speaking, while also serving as a recruitment aide for private industry and state and federal governments. In addition, a regional skills bank would maintain an inventory of workers according to skill level. Significantly, Johnson aides recognized that “conventional” job-training programs failed to reach large numbers of Mexican Americans, and they described Operation SER as a “specialized service, bilingual and culturally oriented” in its attempt to draw Mexican Americans in the Southwest into the mainstream programs already offered by the federal government.96 Thus, while the administration and LULAC viewed Operation SER as a local program following the Great Society formula of federal funding for locally designed and administered programs, that program foreshadowed a turn toward more particular remedies for specific disadvantaged groups. The small steps necessary to draw Mexican Americans into the mainstream of antipoverty policy were designed in recognition of the “special needs” of Mexican Americans, based on language and culture. The implications of this recognition for federal antidiscrimination policy were not immediately apparent; it was the general approach of the New Frontier and Great Society that drew LULAC into federal domestic policy.

Conclusion Between 1960 and 1965 LULAC made great strides in its leaders’ goal of making the organization a nationally prominent voice for the Mexican American community. It had received a United States president, sent members to

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be ambassadors in America’s foreign service, obtained projects under federal housing legislation, and developed and ran a federal jobs program for Mexican Americans. It remained the largest and best-known Mexican American organization, with a leadership committed to increased cooperation with the federal government in order to undertake projects to bring Mexican Americans into the American mainstream. In addition, that cooperation would provide LULAC with needed revenue, which might eventually allow the national leaders to run the national office relatively free from interference by local councils uninterested in national policy. While they struggled against that challenge from the right, LULAC leaders also spurned one from the left, when the Minnesota councils tried to change the fundamental purposes of the organization by aligning it with the black civil-rights movement. The early 1960s represent an important time of transition for LULAC in its organization, funding, and scope of activity. Not least, the early decade brought to LULAC a new view of ethnicity and federal policy. The policy changes of the early 1960s led LULAC leaders to reconsider their ethnicity in relation to the state, much as the immigration of Mexicans throughout the Southwest during the 1950s forced them to reconsider their ethnicity in relation to the newcomers. From the start of the Kennedy administration, LULAC leaders promoted the cultural heritage of Mexican Americans to gain a niche within the federal government, especially positions in the foreign service. That strategy marked a significant departure for LULAC, which now willingly highlighted cultural difference. By 1965, that strategy had helped gain for Mexican Americans a jobs program, sponsored by the Department of Labor and the Office of Economic Opportunity, that recognized and worked with the linguistic and cultural disadvantages that made equal-employment opportunities difficult for Mexican Americans. That strategy did not represent a simple willingness among LULAC leaders to portray Mexican Americans as a racial minority, or to blur the lines between race and ethnicity by allying themselves with the black civilrights movement. They maintained their commitment to white status while expressing cautious support for, but not uniting with, the black struggle for civil rights. They engaged national programs targeted generally at the poor, not specifically at racial minorities. In this way they were able to negotiate their paradox of ethnicity. They believed that Mexican Americans were white but also had distinct traits that resulted in disadvantage and deserved federal remedy, even in a nation in which “minority” meant “black.” They adopted the liberal doctrine—that equal opportunity for the individual is good, that general programs to help individuals are the best approach. During the early 1960s those beliefs served them well but also allowed them to avoid some difficult questions. LULAC’s experience with the Little School of the 400 suggested that equal treatment is not always the same as a fair

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chance—children could sit in regular classrooms but not understand the language and, thus, learn little. What did equality of opportunity mean for Mexican Americans fluent only in Spanish? What if the rising tide did not lift all boats, or lift all boats equally? Should it be expected to lift all boats equally? LULAC leaders had little reason to raise these questions before 1965, for their success in the national arena seemed to have maintained both sides of the paradox.

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L

yndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law on August 6, 1965. The act represented the high-water mark of the Great Society legislation. When combined with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, it completed the one-hundred-year-old promise of Reconstruction to force the United States through federal law to treat its citizens equally. These watershed civil-rights laws worked remarkably; the strict formal segregation in public facilities and in state law began to crumble overnight, and by 1967, more than half of all voting-age blacks in the Deep South were registered to vote. That percentage had been in single digits at the beginning of the decade. The civil rights and antipoverty laws of the Great Society also contributed to rising expectations among other American minorities, much as the growing economy of the 1960s contributed to rising expectations among the population as a whole. That economic growth allowed Johnson to continue the goals of American liberalism: to eliminate the segregation of blacks in southern society, to expand opportunity throughout the nation through a growing economy, and to continue general programs to aid the poor and disadvantaged—all while cutting taxes.1 Five days after Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act a riot broke out in Watts, a predominantly black neighborhood in Los Angeles. Beginning as a routine police pull-over of a car driven erratically, it quickly developed into a mob scene after an officer apparently handled the driver’s mother roughly. With calls such as “Just like Selma” coming from the growing crowd and officers trying to disperse the onlookers, frustrated urban blacks threw the first rocks and bricks of what would become six days of riots, looting, and beatings. Violence spread across forty-five square miles and cost roughly $200 million in damage. Thirty-four people died and 4,000 were arrested. Watts was only one of a number of riots in urban areas across the North, Midwest, and West over the next several years. Expectations may have risen along with Johnson’s fortunes as president, but the landmark civil-rights legislation did not address the growing frustrations or satisfy the growing rights-consciousness of blacks outside the South.2 Although a march in the south organized by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee popularized the slogan “black power,” the phrase is more closely identified with northern urban groups, such as the Black Panthers and followers of Mal-

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colm X, that challenged the passive nonresistance legacy of the southern movement.3 As the administration scrambled to prevent further rioting, it gave the impression that it only responded to groups that caused trouble, resulting in resentment from groups such as LULAC and the other non-protesting Mexican American organizations. The race riots of the late 1960s and the administration’s response to them challenged the general antipoverty approach of much of the Great Society. Mexican Americans of varying political persuasions became convinced that they would gain the attention of Washington only if they caused a crisis. And they became convinced, as the administration targeted federal funds to riot-torn cities, that Mexican American needs would be addressed only through particular remedies focused on the specific needs of Mexican Americans, as distinct from blacks and from Anglos. Beginning in 1965, the Johnson administration faced an unraveling of the liberal coalition it had ridden to such extraordinary success in the 1964 election. Its efforts to usher in the Great Society engendered calls for specific programs from an array of groups, making it nearly impossible to satisfy all requests. The course pursued by the administration, however, contributed to its inability to fulfill its promises. Circumstances—at least partially of his own making, both domestically and in the morass of Viet Nam—frustrated Lyndon Johnson’s efforts to respond to the demands of Mexican Americans and others and led him to abandon the pursuit of a second full term. As James Patterson suggests, “The first twenty months of the Johnson years stand as a shining but relatively brief era in the postwar history of American liberalism.”4

Discontent with the Great Society Mexican Americans managed to gain from domestic federal policy when policy makers turned their attention to poverty and education. Statistics from the 1960 census, the source for most data on the Mexican American community during that era, provided evidence of low levels of education, employment, and income for Mexican Americans, when compared with other groups in the nation.5 For example, in 1960 Anglos (non-Hispanic whites) over fourteen years old had completed a median of twelve years of schooling, while Spanish-surnamed Americans had completed 8.1 years and nonwhite Americans (including, but not exclusively, blacks) completed 9.7. Over 27 percent of the Spanish-surnamed had fewer than five years of schooling, while only 3.7 percent of Anglos and 15.1 percent of nonwhites (14.1 percent of blacks) spent so few years in school. At the other end of the spectrum, only 5.6 percent of the Spanish-surnamed attended college, while 22.1 percent of Anglos and 11.7 percent of nonwhites (10.1 percent of blacks)

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had some college experience. Although median family or household income for the Spanish-speaking of the Southwest was 65 percent that of Anglos, higher than the 56 percent for nonwhites, large Mexican American families accounted for much of that advantage. Median income per person in each family for the Spanish-surnamed was 47 percent that of Anglos, compared to 51 percent for nonwhites. The unemployment rate for Spanishsurnamed, urban males in the Southwest was 8.5 percent in 1960. Anglos had an unemployment rate of 4.5 percent and nonwhites 9.1 percent.6 Early on in the Great Society approach, such numbers fueled government attacks on poverty and discrimination. The shape of those attacks, in the words of historian Gareth Davies, “reaffirmed the central and traditional objective of extending opportunities for individual initiative.”7 The focus on individual initiative demanded general grants to improve society; the administration argued that its programs would be good for all Americans and were not categorical programs focused on any one group, such as the poor or inner-city blacks. The goal was to increase the size of the pie.8 Johnson’s Great Society, following and expanding Kennedy’s plans for the New Frontier, provided federal funds for programs undertaken by states, localities, and community organizations to aid the poor, as well as funds for the arts and humanities, public television, the environment, and other programs of benefit to society. Those governmental agencies and organizations had the responsibility to create programs and to seek funding for implementation. Under this model, Mexican American policy consisted of the government informing Mexican American organizations of the opportunities for funding. In its early application LULAC had been successful in obtaining federally insured housing projects and a job placement program for Mexican Americans.9 The system worked well as long as all groups had equal opportunities for federal aid. By the mid-1960s, however, federal attention began to shift from broad-based, general programs to particular remedies for African Americans. Until the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, federal attention to civil rights targeted a clear moral and legal injustice peculiar to blacks in the South—Jim Crow laws. LULAC leaders assumed, as did policy makers and leaders of the black civil-rights movement, that destruction of those laws would be a just and efficient policy. The abolition of de jure segregation would allow blacks to emerge from whatever de facto segregation continued to plague them. General Great Society programs would then help all disadvantaged, both blacks formerly held down by Jim Crow laws as well as other poor Americans, to help themselves. That model suffered a blow when riots erupted in the Watts and cities in the North and Midwest experienced similar uprisings. The Johnson administration moved quickly from civil rights crusading to crisis management, and increasingly

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targeted its programs toward blacks and toward cities and neighborhoods with high concentrations of blacks.10 As the government responded to the crisis, Mexican American leaders believed they had become a second-class minority. The New York Times recognized growing discontent in the aftermath of the Watts riot. The paper reported that the “stepped-up public and private aid being channeled into the Negro community as a result of the Watts riots has stirred sharp resentment among a much larger minority group in Los Angeles—the MexicanAmericans.” Many Mexican Americans in the city, according to a Times survey, “feel it has ‘now become fashionable to hire colored people’ and reject Mexican-American applicants.” Furthermore, Mexican Americans reportedly would not patronize the downtown federal and state employment offices because they believed that blacks received the first chance at all jobs.11 Discontent was not limited to Mexican Americans living in riot-torn cities. In March 1966, Dr. George Sánchez, former national LULAC president and professor at the University of Texas at Austin, complained directly to Franklin Roosevelt, Jr., chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, that Mexican Americans were largely left out of the major areas of government activity. Sánchez had spent his long career working for Mexican American rights and had gained a reputation as a specialist on education in the Southwest. According to Sánchez, the federal government simply paid little attention to the problems of Mexican Americans. He made special reference to education and employment but suggested that in no area of federal activity did the Mexican Americans receive adequate attention. The professor wondered, in light of the statistics in the 1960 census that showed the conditions of Mexican Americans at least as depressed as those of blacks, why the federal government’s efforts focused almost entirely on African Americans to the exclusion of Mexican Americans.12 While Sánchez complained that the government simply overlooked Mexican Americans, Dr. Hector García, founder of the American G.I. Forum and friend of President Johnson, feared a more insidious explanation. In February, 1966, García informed Johnson that he believed that members of the administration were “ignoring your directives” on using equalemployment-opportunity policies to aid Mexican Americans. He requested that Johnson appoint a Mexican American to the White House staff to whom he and others could address their concerns. Implicit in García’s demand that “this person has to be a qualified American of Mexican origin” was his belief that no one in the administration knew much, or cared much, about Mexican American problems. In his reply the president expressed distress at García’s charge and directed García to discuss the matter with his assistant Jake Jacobsen. Johnson noted that Jacobsen hailed from Austin and concluded that he “has an understanding of problems such as yours.”13

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Johnson heard García’s request and directed a member of his staff to work with the G.I. Forum leader but ignored García’s desire for a Mexican American appointee. Even at its high point the successes of the Great Society left room for discontent. In May, 1965, LULAC members of Texas commended the equalopportunity program of the Navy for its job-placement program in Houston (which would become Operation SER). However, the resolution, addressed to President Johnson, commended the Navy program in light of the poor efforts of the general federal equal-employment program. In the context of high unemployment and underemployment of Mexican Americans in the Southwest, “the Federal Government’s Equal Employment Opportunity Program had offered no solution to this deplorable situation.” Mexican Americans had to devise a program through the Navy, which commendably offered its assistance. The administration chose to read the resolution only as approval of the Navy program, but dissatisfaction with the general federalemployment effort was clear.14 If LULAC’s backhanded compliment regarding Operation SER registered implicit criticism, Alfred Hernández did not hesitate to make explicit his frustration with the Great Society. While Sánchez cited employment and education statistics and García focused on the behavior of Johnson’s aides, Hernández criticized the administration for the low number of Mexican Americans appointed and hired to federal jobs. In March 1966, the LULAC president noted the “outstanding appointments” of the administration, including those that “President Johnson has given to members of the Negro race.” Hernández called for an increase in the appointments of people with Spanish surnames and refuted the charge that few Mexican Americans were qualified to fill government posts. “We do have gifted people,” he insisted, “but we are being denied our fair share in government employment.”15 By government employment, Hernández meant positions in federal departments and agencies, positions that would provide Mexican Americans with some say over policy creation and implementation. He quoted statistics from a 1966 study of minority group employment in the federal government to prove his point. Mexican Americans, according to Hernández, made up 1.3 percent of employees in the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, and only .8 percent in grades GS 9–18, the highest paying positions. Other federal departments had similar percentages of Spanishsurnamed employees. However, those numbers are partially misleading. For example, Hernández admitted that in the southwestern states Mexican Americans made up 10.5 percent of OEO employees,16 the percentage of Mexican American employees in federal jobs rising considerably once the southwest was isolated for statistical purposes. In general, 10 percent of federal employees in the Southwest in 1966 had a Spanish surname. Blacks in

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those states accounted for 10.2 percent of the total. California was the worst state for Mexican Americans. They made up 4.7 percent of federal employees (8.2 percent of the total labor force), compared to 13.3 percent for blacks (5.4 percent of total labor force). Texas, however, had a high percentage of Spanish-surnamed federal employees, 17 percent (while representing 11.9 percent of the labor force), compared to 8.4 percent for blacks (12.3 percent of the labor force).17 The negative comparison to blacks for overall government employment was not as widespread as the nationwide statistics suggested—true in some states, exaggerated or misleading in others. But Hernández in particular complained not only about overall numbers but also about the paucity of high-level appointments for Mexican Americans—policy-making jobs in Washington rather than Post Office jobs in Houston or San Antonio. The Johnson administration made high-profile appointments of blacks, and Hernández wondered why Mexican Americans received no similar recognition. He saw in appointments what Sánchez saw in education statistics: the federal government ignored the problems of Mexican Americans in the Southwest. According to Hernández, “We are ‘Stepchildren’ in this ‘Great Society.’”18

LULAC and the Mexican American Coalition Once LULAC leaders became disenchanted with the Great Society, they had to decide how to respond. The rise of a new, more activist national leadership offered new options for the organization. The legal gains of the 1950s and early 1960s may have led some of the Mexican American generation to conclude the job was finished, but they energized others to dream of greater change for the community. The New Frontier and Great Society certainly encouraged the idea that federal programs could help organizations such as LULAC fulfill their goals. Additional catalysts for change include the organizing of farmworkers in California by César Chávez and the 1963 election of an all-Mexican city council in Crystal City, Texas.19 The importance of getting the attention of leaders, through nonviolent but provocative means such as walkouts and marches, became increasingly evident from the black civil-rights struggle. Leaders in the Mexican American middle class became more willing to consider such tactics, particularly when government attention seemed to heighten in the wake of riots and destruction. In the new context of urban violence, peaceful marches to bring public awareness to minority demands seemed much less controversial. For LULAC this attitude emerged most significantly with election of Alfred J. Hernández as national president in 1965. Hernández was born in Mexico City and became a naturalized citizen while serving in the United States Army during World

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War II. Following the war, he attended college and law school on the G.I. Bill, settled in Houston to practice law, and participated in the Houston chapter of LULAC. Affectionately called “Judge” after serving briefly as local judge in his adopted city, he worked his way up through the various offices available in LULAC—secretary and president of the local Houston council, state director for Texas, and national legal advisor.20 After achieving the organization’s highest office, Hernández gained a reputation as LULAC’s most activist national president. At times he used the LULAC name to lend prestige to causes that made many old-time members uncomfortable. For example, Hernández joined in a march of farm workers through central Texas demanding better working conditions and more substantial pay. The march brought criticism from some LULAC members who were angry at him for lending the LULAC name and reputation to a political cause. The disgruntled members could not muster enough support to oust Hernández as president, but the episode revealed the continuing rift in the organization between those content with LULAC’s goals and tactics of the past and those anxious for the organization to continue to expand the struggle for civil rights for Mexican Americans.21 Hernández may have been more open to confrontation than previous leaders, but he also headed the organization during a time different from the earlier years of the organization’s development. In the context of riots, urban violence, black power, raised expectations, and simmering frustration among Mexican Americans across the Southwest, Hernández argued that without significant steps to improve conditions the Mexican American community would erupt, much as the black community had done. Hernández employed what Arnoldo De León calls a “‘moderate’ version of social activism.”22 To avoid such an eruption, Hernández supported means that were more dramatic than previous LULAC efforts but that seemed necessary to avoid more radical efforts at charge. The inability of the discontented membership to remove Hernández from office, along with his success in winning reelection as president, suggests that by 1966, the forces for increased activism had significant influence in the organization. On the national level, Hernández believed that the federal government did not take Mexican Americans seriously. Such treatment was possible, according to Hernández, because Mexican Americans were not a “political threat.”23 He was not alone in that assumption, for it was popularized by writers through the mid-1960s. For example, Helen Rowan, writing for the Atlantic Monthly, quoted an unidentified federal official who described Mexican Americans as “the most disorganized ethnic group in the country.” When Rowan noted, more politely, that Mexican Americans “have not been able to organize into an effective political bloc,” she identified a common assumption about Mexican American organizations and

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leaders.24 Hernández encouraged his fellow LULAC members to show their numerical strength at the polls (“something the politician understands and fears”), to “flood” their representatives and senators with letters, and to begin a concerted effort to organize a Mexican American voting bloc.25 But while bloc voting could be encouraged, LULAC was not the group to organize it. The organization’s constitution prevented it from being overtly political—LULAC would not endorse candidates, for example—and suggestions from Hernández that the constitution be amended to allow LULAC to take an explicitly political stance went nowhere.26 The national office had accrued a great deal of power but not enough to change the fundamental nature of the organization. If Hernández could not change the LULAC constitution to make the organization openly political, he could use his office to create a coalition with other Mexican American groups. Uniting the efforts of the major Mexican American organizations in Texas—LULAC, the G.I. Forum, PASSO—with the California-based organizations—Mexican American Political Association (MAPA), Community Service Organization (CSO), and Latin American Civic Association (LACA)—would become one of his favorite themes, and he considered LULAC’s cooperation with these other organizations one of the greatest accomplishments of his administration. Some collaboration had occurred before, as when LULAC and the G.I. Forum co-sponsored Operation SER, and when LULAC, the G.I. Forum, MAPA, CSO, and state agencies cooperated to form a War on Poverty Corporation to win federal funds for poverty programs.27 But in 1966, Hernández wanted to link LULAC with other Mexican American organizations not simply to cooperate on a program funded by federal dollars, but to gain for Mexican Americans a fair share of federal attention from policy makers.

The Walkout Mexican American leaders continued to voice general complaints about the Great Society and the government’s inattention to their problems. Chief among their specific targets was the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). The EEOC, created by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, had authority to investigate complaints of job discrimination based on race, creed, color, or national origin and to advise the attorney general to bring suit in court to remedy such discrimination. The commission had been plagued by debates over its function and authority prior to passage of the civil rights legislation. Liberals sought maximum efficiency for the commission by investing it with cease-and-desist authority, effectively granting quasi-judicial power to investigate complaints, take testimony under oath, issue judgments, and declare remedies. Conservatives countered by insist-

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ing that the commission engage only in information gathering and dissemination, making it in essence an advisory commission with only the power of persuasion. The final product, achieved after considerable wrangling in Congress, was a commission authorized only to respond to individual complaints, to seek conciliation, and to advise the attorney general to bring suit in court, thus allowing the cumbersome judicial process to hold final say with regard to equal employment on a case-by-case basis. This development angered the black civil-rights lobby, which viewed a prosecutorial role for the commission as the only efficient way to address discrimination in employment. To prove that a case-by-case process would be unacceptably inefficient, the NAACP undertook a campaign to inundate the commission with complaints, lodging over 1,300 in the commission’s first three months in operation. The commission faced further problems from disagreements over its budget after passage and from Johnson’s failure to name any commissioners until the summer of 1965.28 The administration’s lag in getting the commission off the ground led many civil-rights leaders to conclude that the EEOC was low on Johnson’s list of priorities. Mexican American leaders, well aware that they played second fiddle to the black civil-rights lobby, faced an additional concern. Combined with the slow development of an enforcement apparatus for Title VII was a lack of attention to Mexican American concerns by almost all of the government’s equal-employment efforts. The sole exception was the equalemployment program of the Navy, which developed the Operation SER demonstration projects in Texas and, by all accounts, ran a successful jobplacement program for Mexican Americans.29 But with regard to the government’s implementation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which outlawed discrimination in private employment, Mexican American leaders accused the EEOC of catering to African American employment discrimination and ignoring Mexican American problems. General programs and money might be available for community organizations through the Great Society, but they believed that advances in employment for Mexican Americans would not occur if the practice of discrimination continued to restrict them to the least-skilled and lowest-paying jobs, especially if even the EEOC ignored their problems.30 Commission chair Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr., acknowledged that Spanish-speaking Americans suffered from some of the most severe problems of employment, housing, and education in the nation, and he publicly committed the commission to finding better ways of implementing Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.31 He followed that announcement with plans for a regional conference of the EEOC in Albuquerque to gather recommendations from Mexican American leaders on how the EEOC could better assist their ethnic group. The invitation list, developed in consulta-

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tion with the few Mexican American members of Congress, included the national presidents of the “four major organizations” (LULAC, the G.I. Forum, PASSO, and MAPA), the governors of the five southwestern states, and regional representatives of industry, labor, and the Catholic Church.32 After the difficult start for the commission, Roosevelt appeared to have made an effort to improve the EEOC’s reputation. He worked to identify the concerns of Mexican Americans and planned a conference to get their recommendations on how to address them. Several months before the Albuquerque conference Roosevelt attended meetings of Mexican American organizations in both Corpus Christi and San Antonio, and the EEOC followed with meetings in Los Angeles and Oakland in mid-March.33 Some Mexican American leaders, however, felt the commission treated them with something less than full respect. At a regional meeting in California in midMarch, EEOC executive director Herman Edelsberg essentially claimed that Mexican Americans were to blame for their own problems. He accused Mexican Americans of being “disorganized, distrustful and jealous of other minorities.” The fact that only twelve of the commission’s more than three thousand complaints came from Mexican Americans could be explained, he insisted, by Mexican Americans’ distrust of agencies.34 The San Francisco MAPA leaders vehemently disagreed and considered the discrepancy to be representative of government inattention to their problems. Outraged at Edelsberg’s accusations, the MAPA delegation walked out of that meeting and wrote Roosevelt to complain that “such a misinformed person . . . could be the Director of such an important Commission.”35 Things got worse for the commission. On March 27, just one day before the Albuquerque conference convened, the Southern California delegation accused the EEOC of discrimination for its failure to have a Mexican American among its members. As the nation’s second-largest minority, the delegation suggested, Mexican Americans deserved at least one position on the five-member commission. Furthermore, the fact that only twelve complaints from Mexican Americans reached the EEOC suggested to the delegation that the commission was not reaching the Hispanic community, a problem they felt could be resolved only by installing someone in high authority who would be familiar with that community and its problems. In a press release issued before the start of the conference, the Californians indicated they would attend the Albuquerque conference “at the government’s invitation,” but without assurance that a post on the EEOC would be reserved for a Mexican American they feared the trip “will be a waste of time.”36 Roosevelt later recalled that the press release from the Southern California delegation was the only sign of trouble prior to the Albuquerque meeting. California Mexican Americans had a reputation for being more militant than others, and the chairman saw no reason to expect problems at the conference. 100

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On March 28, 1966, barely an hour after the conference convened, Mexican American delegates staged a walkout. Representatives of each of the four major Mexican American organizations rose, in turn, each to lodge a complaint against the EEOC. LULAC national president Alfred Hernández began by noting that none of the EEOC commissioners was of Mexican descent, even though Mexican Americans represented the country’s secondlargest minority. He believed that Mexican American “employment problems are severe and complex. Yet we have no one on the Commission with any insight into them.” Next, Dr. Miguel Montes of the Latin American Civic Association (LACA) accused the EEOC of discrimination when he complained that the commission’s Washington staff employed only one Mexican American compliance officer. He estimated that the commission’s size and budget should allow for at least twenty Mexican Americans on staff. Albert Peña of PASSO wondered when the commission would investigate the approximately eight hundred southwestern companies that had no Mexican Americans among their six hundred thousand employees. Finally, Augustín Flores of the American G.I. Forum accused the EEOC of failing to reach out to the Mexican American community and of being incapable of meeting the particular needs of Spanish-speaking Americans. After voicing these complaints the leaders marched out of the conference room followed by most of the Mexican American delegates.37 For these leaders the Albuquerque conference itself was indicative of the problems they sought to overcome. The walkout symbolized their frustration with the federal government, not just the EEOC, and the complaints they registered against the commission reflected their view of the problems faced by Mexican Americans in general. After leaving the conference, the Mexican American delegates convened in another room on the University of New Mexico campus to draw up resolutions to send to President Johnson. Some of the resolutions reflected their belief that general equal-opportunity programs would not remedy the problems of Mexican Americans. For example, the first resolution demanded that a Mexican American “with full understanding” of the “unique” employment problems of the Hispanic community in the Southwest be appointed to the EEOC. The leaders believed that the membership of the EEOC understood civil rights policy and the practice of racial discrimination in employment but not discrimination against Mexican Americans. Mexican Americans faced problems of language and culture that blacks did not, and the only way to shape policies to remedy those unique problems was to appoint a Mexican American who understood them. Only then could another resolution be fulfilled, that the commission’s program be “reoriented” and that “new procedures” be implemented to reach the Mexican American community.38 According to the delegates, the federal government not only failed to understand Mexican American problems but also neglected or ignored 101

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Mexican Americans. They cited the fact that only one EEOC commissioner, Richard Graham, made the trip to Albuquerque. Graham was an engineer who had been a company executive in Wisconsin and head of the Peace Corps program in Tunisia. Little in this Republican’s background suggested any familiarity with the concerns of Mexican Americans, and the fact that he was the only commissioner present only fueled dissatisfaction with him. One resolution therefore demanded that the commission send “knowledgeable” representatives to any future meetings on Mexican American issues. The leaders also suggested that the commission’s failure to place regional offices in the Southwest was another indication that they favored blacks and were neglecting Mexican Americans. Finally, because they felt excluded from the civil rights apparatus that had developed since the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the leaders demanded they be allowed full participation in the upcoming White House conference on civil rights and in all other federal civilrights proceedings. In addition to the claims that the EEOC ignored Mexican American concerns and failed to understand the unique needs of Mexican Americans, the walkout leaders charged the EEOC and the federal government with discrimination. They demanded that the commission eliminate the “current ethnic imbalances” on its staff and that all agency hiring practices be examined and “affirmative action be taken to rectify present imbalances” against Mexican Americans and other “ethnic” minorities. Indicative of this problem was the fact that they had been left out of the conference planning process, even though Roosevelt had claimed that much of the conference would be “determined by the conferees.” The Mexican American leaders claimed they attended the conference “under conditions imposed upon us” by the EEOC, another example of the indifference, and even discrimination, they faced.39 The EEOC held regular meetings across the country to gather information and address particular communities, and neither the conference nor the walkout made front page news in the national newspapers. Protests and demonstrations of various kinds were common fare by early 1966, and the African American civil-rights movement had used the tactic for years, in much more explosive environments. Early calls for black power in Mississippi caught the attention of the media at about the same time. Among the civil rights protests covered by the popular press, the walkout in Albuquerque was particularly peaceful and orderly. From the point of view of the national press, stalking out of a meeting with a government agency differed from confronting Bull Connor and the Birmingham police force; the EEOC was a captive audience and did not fight back. Perhaps more significant than the specific complaints registered against the EEOC was the method used to express those complaints. The criticisms

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leveled at the commission and at the administration (but not specifically at Johnson) at Albuquerque were not unprecedented. Mexican American leaders had expressed similar sentiments before, through letters and resolutions. The real significance lay in the unity of Mexican American groups and the tactics chosen to express that unity. Never before had discontent with the federal government been so publicly stated. Never before had the leaders of the major Mexican American organizations—all loyal to the administration and supportive of the Great Society—combined their voices in common complaint. And never before had such moderate Mexican American organizations, particularly LULAC and the G.I. Forum, engaged in demonstrations against the federal civil-rights apparatus. While demonstrations were common among the black civil-rights movement by the mid-1960s, the Mexican American groups that led the Albuquerque walkout had long opposed such tactics. LULAC in particular had a long history of eschewing public protest. While expressing sympathy for the goals of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the black civil-rights movement, LULAC made no secret of its disagreement with King’s chosen methods. For LULAC and the other organizations to use a walkout to make a point marked a new willingness to use public protest; it marked, as well, a turning point in the relationship between Mexican American organizations, including LULAC, and the federal government. Thus, while studies of Chicano history often minimize the role of LULAC and the other moderate organizations, the walkout is generally considered one of the most significant events of the early Chicano movement.40 Although the demonstration itself was not considered newsworthy, the Albuquerque walkout was important as a model. Now the administration had to contend with a group willing to use public gestures to express discontent. No longer could LULAC be expected simply to pass resolutions at annual meetings and wire them to the White House. Instead, Johnson, and the Democratic party, had to deal with organizations that would take public action. Hernández believed that the Albuquerque walkout created for Mexican American leaders a unity that they had not previously enjoyed, a unity that made it difficult for the administration to ignore Mexican American issues. Through the cooperation of “the leadership in our ethnic group,” LULAC and the other Mexican American organizations could become important players in Washington, at least in shaping policies that affected Mexican Americans in the Southwest.41 While national newspapers never covered resolutions passed by LULAC at its annual meetings, the New York Times ran a report of the walkout at Albuquerque.42 The administration now had a problem. In the aftermath of the walkout the Johnson administration responded to Mexican American concerns with a new vigor. Through 1965, the Great Society had simply tried to plug Mexican Americans into general programs to fight discrimination and

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poverty. From 1966 to the end of his administration, Johnson and his advisors grappled with how to satisfy Mexican Americans specifically. Unfortunately for the president, he also had to struggle to preserve the strength of the Democratic coalition in the face of war, riots, and reaction. In this context the Albuquerque walkout presented Johnson with, in the words of the U.S. News and World Report, “another civil-rights headache” when the president could least afford it.43

The Johnson Response Mexican Americans’ willingness to use the tactics of protest—to oppose the administration and to unify their efforts—together with their demand for inclusion in the upcoming White House conference on civil rights, raised the possibility that they might cause a scene if excluded. In May the administration learned that Mexican American leaders had, in fact, made plans to protest the White House conference. At a meeting in Los Angeles in April, called the “Mexican American Unity Conference,” leaders initially planned their response to the conference. Judge Hernández of LULAC, Augustín Flores of the G.I. Forum, Albert Peña of PASSO, the state president of MAPA, and representatives of over a dozen state or local organizations concerned with Mexican American issues at first planned a march on Washington to protest their exclusion from the White House conference. They abandoned the plan for fear that it would be interpreted as “anti-Negro,” and settled for sending a telegram to the president, signed by all the delegates, urging a meeting to include Mexican Americans.44 To make peace, Johnson aide Joseph Califano invited Mexican American leaders to a dinner at the White House on May 26, only weeks before the White House conference on civil rights in June. Johnson hoped to dispel any notions of protest by assuring them of his interest in their problems and allowing them to discuss their problems with his domestic policy staff. In attendance were Alfred Hernández of LULAC, Augustín Flores and Hector García of the G.I. Forum, Bert Corona of MAPA, Roy Elizondo of PASSO, and Robert Ornelas of the equal opportunity office of the Department of Defense.45 The evening was part tour, part propaganda, and part substantive discussion with Califano and other Johnson aides. The president joined the meeting for about an hour and asked for each leader to offer thoughts on the problems of Mexican Americans. Hernández spoke first, raising the issue of the EEOC and noting his disappointment that there was no Mexican American commissioner. Johnson dodged this issue by stating that one of his secretaries, Mrs. Boozer, was a Mexican American, was as close to Johnson as anyone could be (after all, she opened his mail everyday), and would be attentive to any correspondence that Mexican Ameri-

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cans directed to the White House. Johnson had brought her to the meeting, and as he introduced her he told the leaders to call her anytime or to send her their letters and “she’ll bring them right to me.” As Califano remembers it, the guests were “agog.” Bert Corona even asked for a photograph of the secretary so he could better publicize her existence among Mexican Americans.46 Later in the evening the president invited the leaders to the White House living quarters and gave a “grand, bombastic, uproarious tour,” according to Califano, including an offer to bounce on the bed that Abraham Lincoln slept in. Amidst the tour, the drinks, and the films shown in the White House theater, the Mexican American leaders periodically erupted into shouts of “Viva LBJ.”47 Their response is understandable. As lawyers and businessmen from Texas, California, New Mexico, and Arizona, these men were not accustomed to life inside the beltway, to lunches around the Capitol, or to regular meetings with high-powered officials, much less to social gatherings with the most powerful politician in the nation. They were impressed, as Johnson hoped they would be. Johnson’s famed attempts to impress and intimidate proved more effective than usual on Washington outsiders, and he used it to full effect with the Mexican American leaders. It is impossible to tell the extent to which the leaders gave Johnson their own treatment. But the Johnson treatment seemed to have worked. Shortly after the dinner meeting the leaders informed the administration of their “enthusiasm,” “high hopes,” and “confidence” that Johnson would address Mexican Americans concerns.48 That White House meeting achieved its short-term goal—to impress Mexican American leaders with Johnson’s concern for their problems and to forestall any outcry at their exclusion from the White House conference on civil rights. In exchange for temporary contentment, however, Johnson made a promise that would come back to haunt him. To appease Mexican Americans left out of the conference, Johnson conceded to a future White House conference on Mexican American problems. The president hinted in a press conference on April 1 that he might hold a conference for Mexican Americans if they so desired and made clear his willingness on May 22, just before the dinner meeting at the White House. When asked at a press conference if Mexican American leaders would be part of the upcoming White House conference on civil rights, Johnson stated that they would not, but “we will be glad to have one of the same type for their [Mexican Americans’] problems.”49 Mexican American leaders, conscious of playing second-fiddle to blacks, welcomed the offer of a conference devoted solely to their needs. At the White House meeting they further discussed a Mexican American conference; in fact, Hernández reported to his fellow LULAC members that the conference was the main issue at his meeting with Johnson’s advisors.50 The

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two issues that would dominate relations between the administration and the major Mexican American groups were set at the White House dinner: the White House conference, which Johnson would come to avoid at all costs, and a Mexican American commissioner to the EEOC, which became famous for its revolving doors and unstable commission seats. Those two issues would work in tandem to frustrate both Mexican American leaders and administration officials and would exemplify the efforts Johnson would make to try to appease Mexican Americans while maintaining control of a threatened Great Society.

The Politics of Delay The promise of a conference bought Johnson some time on that issue, but the pressure for an EEOC appointment continued. Richard Graham, who alone among EEOC commissioners faced the Mexican Americans in Albuquerque in March, by April had become “increasingly convinced that this Commission should have a Mexican-American Commissioner.”51 Graham believed the lack of Mexican American representation was among the most important issues facing the EEOC, of greater importance, in fact, than his continued membership on the commission. Johnson may have agreed, for he did not reappoint Graham when his term expired in July (although the reason for Graham’s dismissal is not clear). During the summer of 1966, the president began looking for a qualified Mexican American for the commission, but politics presented a problem. Graham’s seat was empty, as was Roosevelt’s chairmanship, which he had resigned in May to run for the Democratic nomination for New York governor. The commission had one empty seat from each party (the five member commission had to have at least two members from each party), and one of those had to be filled by the new chair. Johnson preferred the chair be a Democrat, refused to promote one of the sitting members, and considered only Anglo males for the position.52 That left only the Republican seat open for a Mexican American. But the Mexican American members of Congress were overwhelmingly Democrats. Most Mexican American leaders—in particular Alfred Hernández and Hector García—expressed loyalty to Johnson, and Mexican Americans voted Democratic in large numbers.53 Furthermore, Republican politicians in the Southwest began to seek the Mexican American vote in the upcoming midterm elections. To appoint a Republican Mexican American to the EEOC would be a difficult political move going into the midterm campaign season. Johnson considered a host of possible appointees, checking the names with trusted members of Congress and Mexican American leaders, but found none to his liking. The president even instructed John Macy, director of the civil service, to try to transfer Aileen Hernandez to another

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agency, which would open a Democratic seat on the EEOC.54 However, Macy could find no open position that fit her qualifications, and nevertheless questioned the political wisdom of transferring a woman from the commission. With few other options, on July 18 Macy suggested a “Spanish-American Republican,” James Fresques, for appointment.55 Califano thought the candidate acceptable, but Johnson, notorious for his delays in appointing EEOC commissioners, held out. As Johnson delayed on the EEOC appointment through the summer of 1966, his aides worked on plans for a Mexican American conference. The Mexican American representatives at the White House dinner in May, according to Alfred Hernández, agreed that the nucleus of the planning group for a conference should be the leaders of the Albuquerque walkout.56 They objected to a conference handed down from above and instead placed themselves at the helm. While Johnson might balk at the notion of allowing those who upstaged his administration in Albuquerque to plan a major conference, the fact was that those behind the walkout represented the nation’s largest and most moderate Mexican American organizations. Many were also his friends. Johnson carefully chose the civil rights leaders with whom he dealt, and these were the men he would naturally prefer on Mexican American issues.57 To help organize the conference, the White House staff obtained the services of David North of the Department of Labor. North’s background as assistant to secretary of labor Willard Wirtz was primarily in farm-labor issues and in labor-management relations. But Louis Martin of the DNC considered North to be “a good hard-nosed, politically astute administrator,” just what the administration needed to handle the Mexican American conference planning.58 The administration needed all the political astuteness it could gather, because the experience of the White House conference on civil rights in June had soured the president on any future conferences. The occasion devolved into a public opportunity to criticize the administration, both on civil rights and his escalation in Vietnam, and Johnson felt badly burned. He grew reluctant to bring any such events near the White House again, a determination that would frustrate Mexican American leaders eager for the president to fulfill his promise of a White House conference for them. The perception that blacks received attention, in this case in the form of a conference, led Mexican American leaders to believe that they had a right to a conference as well. That belief rested on the statistics that showed Mexican Americans suffering rates of unemployment, poverty, and education comparable with blacks. That approach, however, could identify Mexican Americans as a racial minority, something LULAC leaders wanted to avoid. But they had no clear policy proposals that would offer federal remedy outside the existing racial model. Without any clear policies that would satisfy Mex-

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ican Americans, administration officials nevertheless worked toward a conference at the White House and appointments at the EEOC.

The Midterm Elections of  With Johnson reluctant to hold future conferences, administration officials and members of the Democratic National Committee tried to decide how to proceed. In August David North proposed Austin as a tentative site for a conference, clearly reflecting Johnson’s reluctance to hold any more conferences at the White House.59 Johnson would not commit to any formal dates or any formal announcements, and Mexican American leaders grew impatient. Not only was the president dragging out the appointment of a Mexican American to the EEOC, but he refused to solidify plans for the promised conference—one they fully expected at the White House. They began to question the president’s sincerity and to wonder if his promises were only “words of appeasement.”60 Administration officials clearly recognized the restlessness of the Mexican American leaders and that the good will Johnson had created in May was fading.61 The fall of 1966 was a particularly bad time for that good will to fade. The cost of the war in Vietnam grew steadily and forced relatively low budget requests for domestic spending in Johnson’s 1967 budget. Liberal supporters of the War on Poverty resented the limits on social spending, particularly after Johnson insisted that the nation could afford both “guns and butter.” The rise of black power further eroded Johnson’s political strength, as concerned congressional liberals sought increased funds for social programs to regain the confidence of blacks. The combination of Vietnam and black power contributed to a drop in Johnson’s popularity, from 62 percent approval in December, 1965, to 46 percent in May 1966.62 As the November midterm elections approached, Democrats from the Southwest advised Johnson that he needed to take action. Congressman John Young (D-Texas) emphasized “the importance of the Latin-American vote in the current election.” Young feared the inroads of Republicans, particularly John Tower, in the Mexican American community and suggested that the appointment of Mexican American Democrats to a few key posts—the EEOC, the Democratic National Committee, the civil rights section of the Department of Justice, and the president’s staff—could ease the pressures on Democrats in Texas.63 Hector García of the G.I. Forum warned that the administration was losing the support of the Mexican American community and that “even the President’s popularity with the Mexican-Americans is going down.” First on García’s list of solutions was the appointment of a “political Mexican-American” to the EEOC.64 Such an appointment topped LULAC’s list of priorities as well. Alfred Hernández had announced Mexican Americans’ desire for an EEOC com108

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missioner at both the Albuquerque conference and at the meeting with Johnson at the White House, and an October, 1966, LULAC Extra reaffirmed those promises to which LULAC intended to hold the administration.65 Also in favor of appointments for political reasons were Louis Martin of the Democratic National Committee and David North, who compared the high number of blacks in federal positions overseeing programs for blacks with the dearth of Mexican Americans in similar positions. With Martin’s support, North recommended that “half a dozen” departments and agencies appoint people to work specifically on the “special problems” of Spanishspeaking people. He insisted that any such appointees “must be from the Spanish community” and must “carry a resounding title,” both to make progress on these problems and to convince Spanish-speaking leaders of the administration’s sincerity (emphasis in original).66 Amidst political calculations for the midterm elections, North used rhetoric that recognized the uniqueness of Mexican Americans. It fell to Califano to prove the administration’s sincerity, but as Johnson rejected all proposed candidates for the EEOC appointment, Califano had only the embryonic conference plans to showcase. He convinced the president that Mexican American leaders should be called to the White House in small groups to meet with David North to “show some very tangible progress” before the election, and to get a “first hand look” at the Hispanic leaders. This process of browsing would allow the administration, when choosing a dozen or so community leaders to run the conference, to “know who and what we are getting.”67 Johnson approved the idea but objected to Califano’s use of the term “White House Conference” in the proposed press release. The president scribbled across the bottom of the memo, “We are thru with all White House—call them conf[erences] on Mex[ican] Am[erican] Problems.”68 The president was determined to stay in control of the conference and yet distanced himself from it by insisting it be held in the Southwest. The symbolic and political nature of the meetings with David North and the “comic-opera goings-on” of the whole process were not lost on Helen Rowan of the Atlantic, who wrote that in late October 1966 high officials of the Administration found time, despite, or because of, the imminence of the elections, to meet with about sixty Mexican-American spokesmen in “preplanning” discussions of the real conference. . . . A small group with Labor Department leadership and the use of White House stationery—but with offices in neither place—is known to be “doing something” about Mexican-Americans and other Spanish-speaking Americans.69 It is clear from the concerns expressed by Califano, North, Martin, and Congressman Young that the meetings took place because of, and not despite, the imminence of the elections. 109

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As the 1966 elections approached, Johnson and his aides had good reason to be concerned. In addition to the discontent of Mexican Americans and the expected traditional gains by the opposition party in midterm elections, the Democrats were reeling from escalation in Vietnam, riots in the cities, and southern reaction to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Advice thus came from all directions, and Democrats from Texas in particular suggested steps to shore up the support of Mexican Americans, a group whose dissatisfaction with the administration made them vulnerable to Republican infiltration in November. Of particular concern were John Tower’s efforts to gain the support of the Mexican American community in his Senate re-election campaign. Johnson aides kept an eye on Tower’s moves in Texas, particularly his promise to work to get a Mexican American appointed to the EEOC. A group called “Amigo-Crats for Tower” ran campaign ads in LULAC publications that highlighted Tower’s proposal to enlarge the EEOC by two commissioners as a way of adding a Mexican American to the commission.70 The Tower campaign epitomized the Democrats’ problems, particularly in Texas. Their candidate for the Senate, Waggoner Carr, was so conservative that many Democratic voters—including blacks, Mexican Americans, and white liberals—either stayed home or voted for Tower out of protest.71 After his victory, Tower continued to court Mexican Americans by arguing that their support for him would force the Johnson administration to pay more attention to Mexican American concerns. Although he received only 18 percent of the Mexican American votes in his election victory, he nevertheless considered that a “significant minority” that proved that Mexican Americans were “beginning to think independently.” Tower extolled the benefits of a two-party system in Texas and insisted that his victory in November represented “a major victory against the most powerful organization this state has ever seen.” He further promised to continue his efforts to get a Mexican American appointed to the EEOC.72 Republicans made inroads across the Southwest. They never took a majority of the Mexican American vote, but they began to receive numbers of votes potentially sufficient to swing elections, as when Ronald Reagan garnered 22 percent of the Mexican American vote in California’s gubernatorial election in 1966. The Tower victory was most alarming, however, because it occurred in Johnson’s home state of Texas.73

Identifying Mexican American Policy In the midst of debacle—Tower’s victory, struggles over the EEOC appointment, and the “preplanning” sessions for the conference—Johnson’s Task Force on the Problems of Spanish-surnamed Americans issued its re-

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port. Task forces were one of Johnson’s favorite tools in the governing process, and he used them liberally to identify problems and shape solutions that he could then steer through Congress with his great legislative skill.74 Often comprised of top intellectuals and experts, the task forces could propose sweeping legislation and enormous budgets beyond the politically possible, which Johnson and his aides could then shape into a realistic program for action. Despite the model of the Johnson task forces as free wheeling and innovative, the task force on the problems of the Spanish surnamed, which issued its report in November 1966, showed little creativity and made few legislative recommendations.75 In fact, its major proposals called for the appointment of a Mexican American to the EEOC and the holding of a conference.76 Apparently, the conversations between the Mexican American community and the task force tracked similarly with the earlier conversations with the administration, which had been working on the same two issues for months. Quick action on those issues, the task-force members believed, would be most effective in giving Mexican Americans “a feeling of confidence in the Administration which is now lacking.” The bulk of the remaining recommendations called for increased appointments of Mexican Americans to boards and commissions and increased hiring in federal employment. These steps would both increase the number of Spanish-speaking Americans in government—an end politically desirable in itself—but would also bring people familiar with the needs of the Spanish-speaking into federal positions. These appointments and hires would then help implement the other major category of task-force recommendations, helping the federal government to better reach the Spanish-speaking community. These proposals included technical assistance for Mexican Americans seeking grants, better lines of communication with Mexican American communities, and a revision of civil-service testing procedures and salary scales to avoid discriminating against the Spanish speaking.77 The task force’s legislative proposals concerned the more controversial issues of language and culture. Most notably, the task force called for legislation to allow federal funding of bilingual training centers.78 These centers would serve the “educationally disadvantaged because their primary language is not English” through preschool language preparation, remedial education, teacher training, and English instruction for adults. The Bureau of the Budget, watchdog of legislative proposals, approved of the recommended programs but denied the need for new legislation. Budget assistant director Wilfred Rommel insisted that the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA), Johnson’s breakthrough legislation for federal aid to education, already allowed for funding of such centers.79 Approval of bilingual programs, however, was a significant step in itself; a presidential task force

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had recognized language difficulty as a disadvantage and suggested federal remedy. Not surprisingly, the task force suggested legislation, since Johnson’s task forces often sought solutions without considering their political feasibility. More significantly, the Bureau of the Budget and the task force now joined David North and other Johnson aides in recognizing a lack of English proficiency as a disadvantage worthy of federal remedy. The administration began to allocate funds under Title I of ESEA to pay for extra teachers and bilingual programs for schools that served Mexican Americans, and additional funds under Title III for language training centers.80 The White House was already doing many of the other things called for by the task force. For example, in addition to planning for the conference, David North was also working to appoint Mexican Americans to federal jobs and to provide guidance for organizations working on grant applications for federal funds. But he could not avoid pressure from Mexican American leaders for a presidential conference; North grew cynical. In March 1967, when North informed Califano of his activities to help the Mexican American community—appointments, grant proposals, and the like—he complained that he could not keep up such “diplomacy” for long because Mexican American leaders demanded a conference.81 North could not view the other steps as substantive policy; they were diversionary tactics. The practices the administration had recently trumpeted as its best efforts for Mexican Americans, and which the task force had recommended, were now considered to be diplomatic maneuvers to avoid a White House conference at all costs. If the task force recommendations could lead to cynicism, the fact remained that they required little if any legislation to implement.82 While Johnson was undoubtedly pleased that he need not spend political capital to push through Congress legislation for Mexican Americans, he also lost one of his most effective means of gaining attention—winning political battles by passing bills. Johnson’s greatest victories were in the landmark legislation in civil rights and the War on Poverty. With no bills to pass for Mexican Americans, the only way to score points with them would be to hold a conference and to appoint an EEOC commissioner. Why this focus on appointments and a conference? Why not develop substantive policy proposals and lobby for them, as the civil rights lobby did for African Americans? The characteristics of LULAC as an organization offer one explanation for its focus. LULAC was a civic organization funded primarily by membership dues. The national office resided in the hometown of the organization’s national president, which meant that it moved annually as new presidents were elected. The organization had almost no professional staff. The only staff allowances listed in LULAC’s financial statement for fiscal year 1962, for example, consist of just under $1,500 for

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secretarial service.83 LULAC’s leaders had neither the time nor the resources to develop and lobby for an extensive legislative program, as national president Joseph Benetes recognized when he began a drive in the early 1970s to pay a professional staff.84 They worked most efficiently in efforts to secure full-time federal appointments for people familiar with the needs of Mexican Americans, who could then develop necessary programs. In the name of efficiency, this tactic required LULAC and its allies to go straight to the top to request appointments from the president and his closest advisors, rather than to develop and propose policies to low-level administration officials or professional bureaucrats, as useful as those contacts might be. That practice used by LULAC and similar groups serving the needs of Mexican Americans contrasts with that so successfully used by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the coalition Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR), whose professional staffs had time not only to lobby but also to draft bills and develop proposals for programs. In addition to its staff, the LCCR had the advantage of location. Its offices in Washington, D.C., provided close proximity to the center of federal policy making. These leaders could meet regularly with administration officials and bureaucrats and attend meetings, hearings, power lunches, and other events that contributed to a visible presence. LULAC leaders, along with the leaders of the G.I. Forum, PASSO, and MAPA, were more isolated in the Southwest. As part-time organization officials, they traveled to Washington only sporadically, most often for official government meetings (for which the government reimbursed them for travel expenses), and instead of face-to-face meetings relied on letters and wires to communicate with policy makers. They sought appointments to give Mexican Americans a presence inside the beltway and pressed for a national conference to allow them to meet with administration and government officials face to face. Without the time or money available to the black civil-rights groups, LULAC and its allies focused on the highest-profile and least labor-intensive approach— gaining appointments and a conference. If LULAC and the other organizations did not have the resources that the black civil-rights groups could marshal, why not join the civil rights coalition? The LCCR was an umbrella organization, dominated by black civil-rights groups but also including labor, religious liberals, and women’s groups. LULAC considered membership in the LCCR in 1965, and Hernández corresponded with Marvin Caplan of the AFL-CIO and the LCCR.85 But LULAC did not join. Based on Mexican American’s concerns about being forgotten while the government focused on black civil rights, the decision to not join the LCCR was consistent with the arguments that Mexican American leaders put forward throughout the mid-1960s. Despite the LCCR’s argument that Mexican American groups could use the expertise that its

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staff could provide on legislative and administrative issues, LULAC preferred to work with other Mexican American groups without filing into the larger civil-rights movement.86 Mexican Americans, therefore, did not make many legislative demands. At Albuquerque, the walkout leaders demanded appointments and greater agency attention to the particular needs of Mexican American employment problems. LULAC added several requests in July 1966, including continuation and expansion of federal job-training and education programs. But the bulk of LULAC’s requests concentrated on appointments and insisted that Mexican Americans would gain most from the appointments of their own to agencies, boards, and commissions such as the EEOC, the Civil Rights Commission, and the president’s staff. LULAC also continued to demand a conference.87 Presidential aides noted that Mexican Americans primarily wanted to receive their “fair share” of federal attention, which was most recognizable in terms of appointments and a conference. Johnson simply could not avoid either. John Tower’s victory and his promise to work for a Mexican American appointee to the EEOC made the political considerations loom large for the appointment. Fortunately for the Mexican American problem, Republican Aileen Hernandez unexpectedly resigned in October, opening a Democratic seat.88 Still, Johnson worried about the political ramifications of every candidate and refused to commit to one.89 Impatience spread even through the ranks of the administration. In January, 1967, administration aide Doug Nobles facetiously suggested to John Macy that the two of them start a club, to be called “Let’s Show Administration Appreciation of the Loyal MexicanAmerican Groups by giving [LULAC leader] Oscar Laurel a Presidential Appointment.”90 But Johnson continued to hesitate. Every candidate had to be cleared through both the political channels of the DNC and through members of Congress, and also through LULAC and the G.I. Forum. An exasperated Macy made clear the problems of this approach in March, 1967, when he noted to Johnson that “a candidate acceptable to a given group of MexicanAmericans tends to be unacceptable to certain other political forces. On the other hand, a candidate with political support in one State may be unknown to Mexican-American groups in other parts of the Southwest.”91 Then, dating from June 1966, Macy put forth the sixteenth Mexican American name for the appointment. Finally, on March 13, 1967, Johnson approved the appointment of Hector García’s favored candidate, Vicente Ximenes. The decision to appoint Ximenes came down to the fact that he was acceptable to both LULAC and the G.I. Forum. The Forum’s Hector García refused to accept any candidate other than Ximenes, and Alfred Hernández proved willing to accept Ximenes as the EEOC appointee.92 This was an important consideration for yet another political issue—recognition of the

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Mexican American organizations. As Cris Aldrete of the Democratic National Committee pointed out, LULAC recently had been favored by the appointment of its preferred candidate, Reynaldo Garza, as a U.S. district judge. Aldrete feared that to appoint Oscar Laurel, LULAC member and one of the major candidates for the EEOC position, instead of Ximenes would “deal a death blow to the Forum’s prestige and its loyal support to the President and the Democratic Party.”93 While a bit of an overstatement, Aldrete’s point struck a chord with Johnson. Despite the cooperation at Albuquerque, the major Mexican American organizations still had a reputation for competition, and to get maximum mileage out of a political appointment Johnson had to foster good will with both groups. His aides repeatedly checked candidates with Forum and LULAC leaders, and Ximenes proved the one acceptable to both. Johnson decided it better to satisfy both major organizations than to appoint a candidate favored by one or another member of Congress, for the ultimate purpose of the appointment was to appease the organizations and the community, not to curry favor with Congress.

Planning a Conference With the issue of the appointment to the EEOC settled, only the conference remained. Through early 1967, however, a conference could no longer be taken for granted. In January Califano told the president that, depending on reports from David North’s trip across the Southwest, “we will be in a better position to decide whether there should be a conference, when it should be and where it should be held” (emphasis in original).94 When Marvin Watson asked to meet with the president and Califano to discuss Mexican American complaints to members of Congress, he received Johnson’s scribbled note across the bottom of the page, “I’ll have no conference. See me.” An exasperated Califano asked Jake Jacobsen, somewhat rhetorically, “Where in the world do we go from here?”95 In February, 1967, the answer seemed to be to a diversionary tactic. Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare John Gardner, himself opposed to a White House conference as “inevitably risky with groups of this sort,” proposed the creation of a continuing committee on Mexican Americans. According to Gardner the administration could argue that a committee, rather than a “one-shot effort” such as a conference, would continue to work on Mexican American issues and would provide a long-term presence in the bureaucracy. Califano considered the idea one that “may get us off the hook on the Mexican-American Conference.”96 Johnson readily agreed, and Califano began to float the idea among Mexican American leaders. The immediate reaction was not comforting. Aide Harry McPherson reported that Mexican American leaders preferred a conference to an office because they

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believed they would have more influence over the direction of a conference. His discussions suggested that a point of great irritation for Mexican American leaders was continually being handed answers from above.97 Finally, in March, Califano received Johnson’s approval on the latest proposal. Califano suggested that the White House punt the Mexican American problem to HEW, Labor, and the OEO by having Gardner, Wirtz, and Shriver create an interagency committee on Mexican Americans and conduct a conference in the Southwest. The president would ask the committee to make sure that Mexican Americans “get their fair share of Federal programs” and allow them to “both run the committee and run the conference away from the White House.”98 Johnson approved, and by May Califano thought he had a winning combination—a ceremony to swear in Ximenes as EEOC commissioner; a memorandum that announced the formation of an interagency committee, consisting of several cabinet members and chaired by Ximenes, that would assure that Mexican Americans received their fair share of federal programs and that would organize a conference in the Southwest; and release of a report on the progress of Mexican Americans under the Johnson administration.99 The plan would gain for the administration credit for its achievements for Mexican Americans, which consisted primarily of appointments to federal jobs and continued plans for a conference. Louis Martin of the DNC strongly believed that the Democrats had been getting too little mileage out of such appointments and hoped that a White House ceremony would strengthen the party’s relationship with Mexican Americans, particularly given the “divisive political forces” working among the group.100 Johnson, Califano, and Gardner, meanwhile, all hoped that the announcement of the interagency committee would calm the pressures for a conference and that, if absolutely necessary, the committee could hold hearings in the Southwest in lieu of a full-fledged White House conference. But the bait-and-switch did not work. In June, Alfred Hernández wrote Johnson to applaud the appointment of Ximenes and the creation of the committee but also to express his continued interest in a Mexican American conference. To establish the urgency of his desire, Hernández alerted Johnson to his fear that the Republican party was gaining a foothold in the Mexican American community as Mexican Americans became discouraged with the administration and the Democratic party.101 Ximenes, in his first report to Johnson as head of the Interagency Committee on Mexican American Affairs (IACMAA), similarly expressed concerns over the administration’s reputation, citing “dangerous currents of unrest” within the Mexican American community.102 A conference would have to be held, and Johnson acquiesced. However, the IACMAA was now in charge, removing the White House from direct connection with the conference. Ximenes finalized plans

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to hold a two-day meeting in El Paso in late October 1967, with the members of the interagency committee presiding over simultaneous hearings all over town. The occasion would provide Mexican American leaders the opportunity to propose solutions for Mexican American problems. No one knew that the hearings would take place just over one year before Johnson would leave office, his Great Society in shambles, the Democratic party fragmented. Mexican American leaders hoped they could finally make their desires heard and that the administration would implement the solutions they proposed at El Paso, when in reality the bulk of Mexican American federal policy under Lyndon Johnson had already occurred, dominated by struggles over the EEOC appointment and the planning of the conference.

El Paso The meetings in El Paso took place under a cloud of controversy. The administration knew the Mexican American leaders it trusted and those from whom it expected trouble. During 1967, Mexican Americans known for more-strident rhetoric led some observers to believe that they would follow the lead of black-power advocates and pursue open confrontation with the government.103 The lingering effects of the White House conference on civil rights persisted, and the administration carefully screened participants for the cabinet committee hearings. Ximenes called on representatives of the major Mexican American organizations to monitor the sessions and respond to the presentations, and he invited Mexican American scholars, leaders, and activists from across the Southwest. But three Mexican Americans did not attend—Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzales from Colorado, Reies Lopez Tijerina from New Mexico, and César Chávez from California. Tijerina and Gonzales were not invited; Chávez, the leader of the farmworker strikes in California, turned down an invitation from Ximenes because he believed Johnson was not prepared to deal with the issues of migrant agricultural workers. Their absence cast a shadow on the meetings for many of the most liberal civil-rights advocates.104 But the administration would take no chances. Ximenes was a longtime G.I. Forum member, knew the Mexican American leadership, and was immensely loyal to Johnson. He also knew that Johnson wanted suggestions, rather than complaints, to come from the hearings and therefore excluded those most likely to criticize the president or the administration.105 Johnson dispatched Vice President Hubert Humphrey to open the hearings. Humphrey gave what the New York Times called a “rousing speech,” referring to the key themes of Mexican American complaints—that they “have for too long been denied their rightful share in American prosperity” and that they too often have to give up their language and culture.106 Following

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the vice president’s speech, six government officials—Under Secretary of Labor James Reynolds, Secretary of Agriculture Orville Freeman, Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare John Gardner, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Robert Weaver, and OEO director Sargent Shriver— heard the testimony presented by the Mexican American leaders. A common thread permeated the testimony at El Paso. Speaker after speaker referred to the unique problems of Mexican Americans requiring particular programs and policies. Mexican American leaders insisted that their problems produced suffering quantitatively similar to the that of blacks but that their problems were qualitatively distinct. The government, they noted, had taken great strides toward helping blacks overcome discrimination and disadvantage. Now it had to recognize the problems of Mexican Americans and that those problems made them different from blacks and from Anglos. George Roybal, executive director of SER, for example, claimed that the failure of government programs to help Mexican Americans resulted from the “failure of government to understand the Mexican American.” In his testimony Roybal repeatedly referred to the “unique” or “special” problems of Mexican Americans, which included the fact that “Mexican Americans neither think, act, react nor believe the same as the Anglo,” and that “there exist significant differences in behavior, beliefs and preferences between the Mexican American and the Anglo.”107 Roybal suggested as a remedy that the federal government put more resources in the hands of Mexican Americans themselves, as in the funding of Operation SER. Others followed Roybal’s lead in proclaiming the unique problems of Mexican Americans. Miguel Montes of the California State Board of Education called for the use of HEW funds to develop “realistic and relevant programs for children of Mexican or Hispanic descent.” Language and culture differences, according to Montes, resulted in “diverse and special needs” requiring “programs specifically aimed at the target—the Mexican American.” Montes called for more funds to be spent on instructional material relevant to Mexican American students’ experiences, on experiments with bilingual education and instruction in English as a Second Language (ESL), and on adult education. Ed Idar, Jr., former head of the G.I. Forum, called for the Social Security Administration to hire field- and caseworkers who could understand and speak Spanish. Dominga G. Coronado of the ladies auxiliary of the G.I. Forum made the same demand for the OEO. Carlos Truan of LULAC claimed that the success of SER resulted from its “special attention to the culturally-different peoples of the Southwest.” Finally, Alfred Hernández of LULAC testified on Mexican Americans and the Civil Service Commission, which is responsible for federal hiring practices. Hernández highlighted the “great need for bilingual and bicultural investigators” within the commission because the current investigators could not

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properly understand complaints registered by Mexican Americans regarding discrimination. He also called for a division within the commission to deal specifically with Mexican American problems.108 These leaders highlighted the cultural differences and unique problems of Mexican Americans but did so with moderate goals in mind. They were not Chicano nationalists, but rather sought special programs to bring Mexican Americans into the mainstream of American society. For example, Roybal emphasized “comprehensive, individual-oriented” manpower-training programs designed “to draw the Mexican American into the manpower mainstream.” General programs had the right goal, according to Roybal, but failed to reach Mexican Americans. Miguel Montes called for new approaches to education so that “an end product of first class citizens will result.” Montes sought ways to bring Mexican American children into the mainstream and insisted that any changes should not come at the expense of integration. He believed that “what is needed is the development of programs to attack the problem of the Spanish speaking child without isolating him in a program or in schools.” Carlos Truan suggested that the OEO consider a program to offer citizenship classes throughout the Southwest to help Mexican Americans become good citizens. Albert Peña, former leader of PASSO and Bexar County (San Antonio) Commissioner, insisted that “first of all, I’m an American because I was born here. Second, I’m a Texan because I was born in Texas, and third, I’m a Mexican without a mustache because no one will let me forget it.”109 If the administration had not heard the two-part argument that Mexican Americans had been making since the Albuquerque walkout, the El Paso hearings left little doubt. These leaders insisted (1) that Mexican Americans aspired to the economic, educational, and political mainstream and wanted to be good citizens but (2) that they had unique problems that distinguished them both from blacks and from other white Americans. Discrimination in the Southwest combined with language and cultural distinctiveness to leave Mexican Americans at the bottom in the categories of employment, education, and income. They made this argument clearly but offered little in terms of new solutions. They called for more Mexican Americans in positions of power and more federal funding for Mexican American programs, particularly experimental programs to determine how best to solve Mexican American problems, but they did not claim to know how to solve the problems. The solutions offered at El Paso differed little from those proposed by the task force the year before. Most of the suggestions included increased funding for programs in health, education, and manpower training, more appointments of Mexican Americans to policy-making positions, and efforts to shape existing programs to reach Mexican Americans more efficiently.110

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For some the El Paso meeting represented an unprecedented federal interest in the problems of Mexican Americans and promised a better future. Johnson’s speech at the meeting promised work toward solutions for the problems chronicled at the meeting and was interrupted by applause some twenty times. For others the meeting was more Washington posturing, of which they remained skeptical. George Sánchez of the University of Texas declined his invitation because he viewed the El Paso meeting as a consolation prize in place of a White House conference. As an organization, MAPA decided not to attend (although individual members could attend if they desired). Ernesto Galarza, an academic who had long worked to organize Mexican American agricultural workers, criticized the administration’s handling of labor issues along the border. Outside the meeting hall, protesters gathered around Corky Gonzales, Reies Lopez Tijerina, and leaders of the young, activist Mexican American Youth Organization and joined forces in what they dubbed La Raza Unida, the united people. The committee hearings designed to quell Mexican American frustration ironically gave rise to a grass-roots movement to form a national opposition political base. While fulfilling their purpose in part, they offered Johnson little relief from the frustrations of 1967.111

Conclusion The political wrangling over an EEOC commissioner and a conference consumed much of the Johnson administration’s time and energy for dealing with Mexican American problems. When they had the opportunity to offer solutions to the problems of Mexican Americans, from the Albuquerque EEOC meeting in March, 1966, to the El Paso hearings in October, 1967, the leaders of the major organizations insisted on federal appointments and administrative changes. This preoccupation with appointments and the conference, to the near exclusion of pressure for other, arguably more substantive policy objectives, surprised observers and frustrated administration officials. Those two objectives dominated the correspondence between LULAC and its allies and the administration, leading some to conclude that the entire Mexican American civil-rights movement was immature and disorganized. LULAC leaders, however, found themselves in a difficult position. They increasingly viewed Mexican American problems as unique and got administration aides and offices to agree with them. They could not, however, come up with substantive proposals to develop a federal policy that addressed those unique problems. They did not have the staff or the expertise that the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights provided for the black civilrights movement. Furthermore, they refused to join that movement for fear that Mexican American issues would be lost in the shuffle. They focused on

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gaining parity in appointments and a major conference. A Mexican American on the EEOC and in policy-making positions, they insisted, would be able to shape programs to fit Mexican American needs. A conference would provide the opportunity to highlight, in an official dialogue, the unique problems of Mexican Americans and the fact that federal programs must be altered to reach the Mexican American community more effectively. The accomplishments of the Johnson administration were not insignificant for Mexican Americans. While LULAC and the others did not propose innovative solutions, they nevertheless gained acceptance for the idea that their problems were unique. In addition they helped create within the bureaucracy offices and units attentive to Mexican American issues. As Juan Gómez-Quiñones suggests, one of the key changes for Mexican Americans during the 1960s was the growth of “a sector for whom ‘representing’ the community provided a job with status and the possibility for more.” Mexican Americans had jobs “paid or subsidized by the Office of Economic Opportunity, the U.S. Department of Labor, to be both intermediaries and formal leaders.”112 The 1960s represented a transition for Mexican American policy, but not for landmark legislation and court decisions for the group; those would have to await the 1970s. Rather, the 1960s marked an important shift because policy makers accepted the argument that Mexican American problems were unique and required federal remedy and because the administration began to appoint Mexican Americans to positions within the bureaucracy—not necessarily the high-profile political appointments desired most by LULAC and others, but the mid-level positions in the agencies and offices that can be more influential in the long run. From the Mexican American offices and units within the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, the Department of Justice, the Commission on Civil Rights, and the EEOC would come regulations and policies to implement some of the most significant Mexican American policies of the 1970s.

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5 Between Chicanos and Republicans

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n January 30, 1968, on the first day of Tet, the Vietnamese holiday celebrating the new lunar year, National Liberation Front forces attacked the American embassy in Saigon and sites in major cities throughout South Vietnam. U.S. and South Vietnamese forces staged a successful counteroffensive, but the enemy’s surprise attack, which came at a time when Americans believed the war to be nearly over, suggested that the end was not in sight. The Tet offensive in January marked a troubling start to a most turbulent year. The war in Vietnam contributed to Lyndon Johnson’s poor showing in the New Hampshire primary in March. Johnson received only 49 percent of the Democratic turnout, while peace candidate Senator Eugene McCarthy captured 42 percent and won more delegates than Johnson to the Democratic National Convention. With his popularity waning and the war consuming his time, Johnson announced on March 31, at the end of a nationally televised speech about Vietnam, that he would not accept the Democratic nomination for president. The man who so resoundingly won the presidency only four years earlier took himself out of the race as the campaign began. Four days after Johnson’s announcement stunned the nation, an assassin’s bullet killed Martin Luther King, Jr., badly damaging hope for nonviolent racial reconciliation. Urban riots erupted across the country. In Washington, D.C., rioters started over seven hundred fires, and on Chicago’s west side twenty blocks were consumed by riots and fires. All told, after one week more than twenty thousand federal troops and more than thirty thousand national guardsmen had been mobilized to contain the rioting and looting. Forty-six people died, over three thousand suffered injuries, over twenty thousand were arrested, and property damage was estimated at $45 million. Later that month, students at Columbia University registered their frustration with the university administration by seizing five buildings. They held the buildings for six days, after which police ended the demonstration without using much restraint. More than one hundred Columbia students were injured, and police arrested 692 people. In May, black leaders led a Poor People’s March on Washington, an event endorsed by King before his assassination, which escalated minority protest against the faltering Johnson administration. In June, another assassin’s bullet took the life of a national leader committed to racial reconciliation—Robert Kennedy. In August, the Democratic National Convention in Chicago broad122

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cast on national television the antics of protesters in the streets, the harsh response of Chicago police, and the mayhem inside the convention. In November, Republican Richard Nixon narrowly defeated Hubert Humphrey to win the presidency. Nixon faced a difficult task taking over the country after the destabilizing events of 1968. That task was made even more difficult by Democratic control of both houses of Congress.1 Throughout 1968, the nation seemed to experience increasing polarization. In reaction to U.S. policy in Vietnam, to oppression of minorities, and to feelings of alienation, groups aligning against the system became increasingly militant and threatening. Mexican Americans were not at the center of the most publicized acts of defiance—urban riots, the Columbia University uprising, the Chicago Democratic convention; in fact, the lack of riots in the barrios led some militant African Americans to question the Mexican American commitment to the cause of minorities.2 Nonetheless, Mexican Americans rose to national consciousness during 1968. Some Mexican Americans who espoused a nationalist ideology appropriated a slang term, labeling themselves Chicanos, a Mexican-Spanish word derived from an abbreviation of the word Mexicanos and implying aggressive pride in Mexican heritage. Many Chicanos had been active at the state and local level through the early 1960s, but after the El Paso hearings in late 1967 various nationalist groups worked more closely together and achieved more national recognition.3 The rise of Chicanos threatened both the traditional leadership of LULAC—which preferred to bring change through negotiation, lobbying, and working within the system rather than through protest, separatism, and questioning the system—and the incoming Nixon administration, which hoped to break the Democratic coalition by drawing ethnic Americans to the Republican fold. If the Chicano movement threatened the community leadership of groups such as LULAC, it also endeared LULAC to a Nixon administration in search of allies. The Chicano movement built up pressure for change and, when combined with the seeming chaos of the late 1960s, made LULAC and other older groups appear more conservative. That gave LULAC legitimacy with the Nixon administration, and Nixon’s efforts to attract ethnic voters could lead the administration to accept policies that a decade later would be highly controversial. If the Mexican American organizations could unite behind specific policies to aid their communities, the Nixon administration, pushed by a Democratic Congress and pulled by electoral needs, would be likely to pay attention.

New Mexican American Voices The El Paso hearings of 1967 marked a significant moment for politically active Mexican Americans. While the meeting was not a White House conference, nevertheless five cabinet secretaries heard testimony and President 123

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Johnson and Vice President Humphrey had both appeared. It was the most well-represented government meeting ever focused on issues of Mexican Americans. Despite its significance, the meeting did not lack controversy. The fifty Mexican Americans invited to speak, and the thousand or so invited to participate, represented the moderate and conservative leadership of the Mexican American community. Critics of the hearings suggested that the invited participants, in the words of Los Angeles writer Francisca Flores, were “professionals and/or bureaucrats, whose positions on the issues they are to speak on are already well known to agencies if they would only bother to ask for it.”4 The ranks of the critics filled with followers of three Mexican American leaders who were not invited to participate in the hearings: California farm-labor leader César Chávez, fiery preacher Reies López Tijerina, and Chicano nationalist Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzales. Johnson’s experience with the White House Conference on Civil Rights made the inclusion of divisive leaders in the El Paso hearings impossible. While Chávez was suspect in the eyes of the Johnson administration for his unionizing efforts rather than for his ethnic militantism, Gonzales and Tijerina had growing reputations for both inflammatory rhetoric and a willingness to resort to radical means to achieve their ends. Those ends included Chicano nationalism and the creation of a specifically Mexican American political party to challenge prevailing Anglo institutions. Both Gonzales and Tijerina started their activity earlier in the decade, but in the explosive years of the late 1960s they garnered attention for their increasingly strident calls for Chicano nationalism and invited comparisons with militant black leaders such as Stokely Charmichael and H. Rap Brown. The exclusion of these leaders from the El Paso hearings reveals that even among an “out group” such as Mexican Americans, there were insiders and outsiders. As the militant rhetoric of the outsiders increasingly captured the hearts and minds of young Mexican American students and the attention of the news media, the insiders faced a dilemma. Should they distance themselves from those espousing militant rhetoric, or should they work together on common goals and risk being associated with the ideology of separatism? Reies López Tijerina, born in Fall City, Texas, to immigrant parents, was a Protestant fundamentalist preacher in Texas before taking up the cause of land grants in New Mexico. In 1962, Tijerina organized the Alianza Federal de Pueblos Libres to regain the historic claims to land and water rights of local residents. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the war between the United States and Mexico in the 1840s, stated that Mexicans living in areas taken over by the United States would be given citizenship and rights to their land, language, and culture. Tijerina argued that the heirs of Mexicans who received grants from the Spanish and Mexican govern-

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ments before annexation should regain title to those grants. A century of court decisions had made Tijerina’s quest almost impossible to achieve, but the Alianza tapped into long-held resentment over the land-grant issue, and the preacher aroused New Mexicans young and old: at its height the Alianza claimed a membership of twenty thousand. Because efforts through the courts had failed to bring resolution, the Alianza sought to gain attention through more militant means. In October, 1966, Alianza members occupied part of the Kit Carson National Forest, on New Mexico’s northern border, and in June, 1967, they raided the courthouse in Tierra Amarilla, Texas, to perform a citizen’s arrest of a local district attorney. At the courthouse they exchanged gunfire with authorities, fled into the nearby mountains, and were eventually hunted down by the National Guard. Tijerina was tried on charges of kidnapping, assault, and destruction of federal property. He eloquently defended himself at the trial, and his limited role in the courthouse takeover proved insufficient evidence for conviction.5 Tijerina’s emphasis on the long history of Mexican American occupation of the land in the southwestern United States found a parallel in the rhetoric of Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzales in Colorado. Gonzales was born in Denver to migrant farm-workers. He divided his early years between the spring and summer, when he traveled with the family to work in sugar-beet fields, and the fall and winter, when they returned to Denver and he attended school. He became a successful amateur and then professional boxer, which later opened doors for him in both business and politics. Gonzales rose through the ranks of the Democratic party in Denver, ran the Colorado “Viva Kennedy” organization in 1960, and chaired the board of the War on Poverty program in Denver. By 1965, however, he had grown disenchanted with the Democratic party, which he believed simply used him to attract Mexican American voters without offering them much in return, and he resigned his posts. That year he founded the Crusade for Justice, an organization to fight discrimination against Mexican Americans in education, employment opportunities, criminal justice, and housing.6 Gonzales joined Tijerina as inspiration for the growing student movement among Mexican Americans. Through the early 1960s, some Mexican American students participated in organizations such as Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Others worked within the larger Mexican American organizations, such as Junior LULAC councils. By the late 1960s student activism on college campuses became more pronounced, as students formed organizations to deal specifically with Mexican American student concerns. Before the end of 1967, most of these organizations—variously called Mexican American Youth Organization (MAYO) in Texas, United Mexican American Students (UMAS) in southern California, and Mexican American Student

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Confederation (MASC) in northern California—concentrated on recruiting Mexican American students and helping them stay in college.7 But as black power became the cry of SNCC and the Black Panthers, as even the mainstream organizations such as LULAC expressed a growing disenchantment with the established political parties (exemplified by the walkout at Albuquerque), and as Tijerina and Gonzales called for unity and a common identity among Chicanos, students began to demand more.8 The concept of Chicano nationalism and the goal of self-determination shaped their demands. Historian Juan Gómez-Quiñones suggests that Tijerina’s blended appeals to land and language “did much to shape the character of cultural nationalism.” Furthermore, the Alianza’s courthouse standoff with authorities offered the first example of Mexican American armed resistance in the Southwest in over a hundred years, raising the specter of confrontational tactics.9 Gonzales, however, had the most direct impact on the early concepts of cultural nationalism among Mexican American students. Gonzales became an eloquent proponent of Chicano nationalism, insisting that Mexican Americans “unite in a new nation [on] the land that once belonged to us.”10 His rhetoric infused the standard calls for civil rights with a new vision for the future of Mexican Americans. His “Plan for the Barrio” called for “housing that would meet Chicano cultural needs; for education, basically in the Spanish language; for Chicano-owned businesses to be developed in the barrio of Denver . . . and for reforms in landholding, with emphasis on the restitution of pueblo lands owned and developed by the Gringos.” Most significantly, his epic poem I am Joaquin described the subjugation of Chicanos by Anglos, and held out cultural identity as the last hope for Chicanos to achieve self-determination.11 Student groups began to seek a more unified identity, and Gonzales acted on his growing popularity and agreed to host the first national Chicano Youth Conference in Denver in March 1969. At the conference, which was attended by two thousand young people, Chicanos adopted “El Plan Espiritual de Aztlán,” a statement that sought to promote nationalism as a means to develop self-determination for Chicanos, who distinguished themselves from those Mexican Americans seeking greater participation in the American mainstream. Instead, they sought, as Smith College historian Ramon Ruíz wrote in the New Republic in 1968, “to build an identity and to gain a measure of self-respect” and to protect their culture, their language, and their barrios from assimilation.12 Approximately one month later, at a meeting in San Diego, many of the California groups represented at the Denver meeting agreed to change their names to El Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán (MEChA). The organizations would now include in their name the two key words of the more radical Mexican American movement: Chicano, a term appropriated by the students and given new mean-

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ing in self-identification; and Aztlán, the name used by the Aztecs to refer to their place of origin, which Chicanos claimed to be the area of the southwestern United States.13 In Texas, at a statewide meeting of MAYO chapters in May, 1969, leaders decided to take the first step toward an independent Chicano political party—part of El Plan Espiritual de Aztlán. They formed a party to target the 1970 school-board and town-council elections in Crystal City, a city of ten thousand in the Winter Garden section of southwestern Texas. La Raza Unida Party (LRUP) had great success in Crystal City, whose population was 80 percent Mexican American. That success encouraged other communities both in Texas and across the Southwest to establish Mexican American political parties. Texas LRUP leader José Ángel Gutiérrez, a former student founder of MAYO in San Antonio, encouraged antiwhite attitudes in his efforts to organize the party. “We sought to expose, confront, and eliminate the gringo. We felt it was necessary to polarize the community over issues into chicano versus gringos.”14 A reporter for the Nation noted in 1970 that Gutiérrez “makes clear that La Raza Unida intends to gain control of everything in those counties—judgeships, county-commissioner posts, Chamber of Commerce seats, even the Boy Scouts. . . . Ultimately, he hopes to create a Mexican-American island in the middle of Texas, with every lever of economic and political power in chicano hands.”15 Gutiérrez had a pragmatic vision—to organize in areas where Mexican Americans held significant majorities and defeat Anglo candidates at every turn. Within the movement, that pragmatic vision existed alongside the nationalist rhetoric. Some of the more radical activists talked of a forming a Chicano nation in the Southwest. Tijerina and his cohorts, for instance, claimed land for a Mexican American nation in areas of New Mexico. Most Chicanos, however, sought practical gains, such as election of Mexican Americans to political office, attention from policy makers and government officials to the poverty of Mexican and Mexican American communities, appointments to police forces and other government jobs, and education in schools and colleges that was sensitive to their Mexican heritage. Indeed, as Juan Gómez-Quiñones suggests, many of the practical gains that Chicanos sought differed little from the goals of LULAC, the G.I. Forum, and other more conservative groups.16 They differed significantly, however, in their ideology and tactics. In general the Chicano movement considered the American political and economic system to be unsound and worked outside that system, including the use of protest and sometimes violence as tools to bring change. LULAC consistently opposed the separatism and the violence inherent in the radical movements of the 1960s, including the emergent Chicano movement, and the group’s leaders made clear their opposition to the methods of the radical

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student protesters. Even before Chicanos made national headlines, LULAC president Paul Andow (1963–65) explained that the organization prided itself on its reasonable approach to reform. In a message on civil rights Andow insisted that “we have not sought solutions to problems by marching to Washington, sit-in’s or picketing or other outward manifestations. We have always gone to the source of the problem and discussed it intelligently in a calm and collected manner.” LULAC would continue to fight for civil rights but would not partake in a mass movement by Mexican Americans. According to Andow, use of “mass meetings and mass gatherings often times leads to mass hysteria,” which, in turn, produces “emotional and irrational thinking”—not the hallmark of what Andow defines as “clearthinking Americans.” Andow agreed with the proposition that Americans who violate the civil rights of others are clearly in the wrong, but he also insisted that “we do not believe that groups banded together to create chaos and confusion are acting for the general welfare of our nation and it goes without saying that two wrongs can never make a right.”17 As the militant wing of the civil rights movement emerged after 1965, some Mexican American student groups lauded the efforts of Stokely Charmichael and the black-power movement, but LULAC would have none of it. In late 1967, the LULAC News responded to the radical bent taken by Charmichael and the student protesters. The News, calling Charmichael a “puppet for the Communist Conspiracy,” insisted that his movement would “destroy our way of life and any improvements to our way of life by pitting American against American.” In contrast, the News reiterated the LULAC approach to Mexican American civil rights: “We have faith that the wrongs of the past can be corrected” and that “the American free enterprise system is still the best on earth.” Whereas, in LULAC’s estimation, Charmichael and like-minded critics of America opposed the American system, LULAC promised to continue to work “within the framework of constitutional government” to achieve equality for Mexican Americans (and all minority groups).18 Nearly a decade later, former LULAC national president William Flores remembered that during the 1960s LULAC leaders believed that the organization “would do a lot more for our Mexican people if we would continue doing what we did before, instead of riots and this and the other. . . . And I thought that there would be riots, and this and the other, if we continued to be doing like the black people were doing.” According to Flores, LULAC members “don’t like to be parading and saying, ‘I’m Chicano,’ and having the Mexican flag and all that baloney, you know.”19 The group as a whole refused the Chicano identity and resented the media’s tendency to label Mexican Americans as a racial minority. The membership reiterated the group’s longstanding position that Mexican Americans are white, even while in-

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sisting that they faced unique problems as a result of linguistic and cultural discrimination.20 Through the 1960s LULAC leaders refused to align the organization with the militant wing of the civil rights struggle, even as they worked toward many of the same practical ends. As the Chicano movement developed, however, LULAC leaders found it useful to use the protest and potential violence inherent in the activism of students and “Brown Berets” to highlight the need for immediate government attention. For example, in 1966, national president Alfred Hernández, complaining of the lack of federal attention to Mexican Americans, claimed that violence by Mexican Americans might result from the government’s indifference. “God forbid that the smoldering resentment that mounts with the daily frustrations faced by our people reach a violent point . . . [b]ut this office has heard rumblings of unrest in deprived sections of the Southwest where our people live, that might easily erupt” in violence.21 Hernández implied that without a concerted government effort to alleviate the poor conditions of Mexican Americans in the Southwest, violent groups would take control of the civil rights movement. The aftermath of riots in Los Angeles and in eastern and midwestern cities after 1965 showed that the Johnson administration and American corporate leaders responded to violent conflagrations, suggesting that the threat of flare-ups in the Southwest might provoke positive action.22 Hernández hinted that the Chicanos might gain government attention for Mexican Americans; they were certain to capture the attention of the media. Coverage of Mexican American issues in national newspapers and magazines increased markedly as the Chicanos provided exciting headlines and attention-grabbing stories. Between 1966 and 1970, headlines of stories on Mexican Americans went from “The Invisible Minority” to “Brown Power” in Newsweek, from “A Minority Nobody Knows” in the Atlantic to “Chicano Power” in the New Republic.23 The media focused on colorful characters such as Tijerina, Gonzales, and Gutiérrez, who provided pithy quotes and raw material for stories. The increase in coverage helped make Mexican American concerns a national issue, and while LULAC leaders refused to endorse or participate in the tactics of “Chicano power” advocates, they did find the threat of Chicano violence useful both to gain attention and to make themselves appear more reasonable to policy makers. The most radical phase of the Chicano movement was short lived. Tijerina provided early inspiration but served two years in federal prison for violating parole and upon release in 1971 spoke more often of brotherhood and love than he did of revolt and la raza. Gonzales and Gutiérrez both strove to make LRUP successful, first independently and then as cofounders of a national party. But competition between the two limited their leadership, and the party in general suffered from an incoherent ideology: what exactly did

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“self-determination” mean; could one participate in the political system to gain self-determination? Furthermore, an exclusively Mexican American party had more success in small cities in Texas than in large urban areas in, for example, California. LRUP candidates had little success where Mexican American candidates needed voters from other ethnic groups. Finally, the student movement lost momentum as it accomplished its main goals—recruitment of Mexican American students to colleges and universities and the creation of Chicano-studies programs. While the movement for a separate Chicano nation faded rather quickly, discourse about the unique cultural heritage of Mexican Americans had reached a new level, and persisted.24 Chicano activists and their sympathizers prioritized the recognition and retention of cultural identity and thus focused on the uniqueness of Mexican Americans. As LULAC struggled to secure government recognition of Mexican Americans’ special needs, Chicanos had all America reading about the unique problems and cultural heritage of the Southwest.25 In this regard, there are ways in which LULAC and the Chicanos were not as far apart as one might think. Chicanos derided LULAC leaders as “Tío Tacos” who rejected their cultural and racial heritage. Chicanismo celebrated a culture and a racial status different from Anglos, and for them la raza was utterly distinct from whites. LULACers distinguished between culture and race, or between ethnicity and race, but they also insisted that their culture, heritage, and language resulted in unique problems that required specific attention, and particular remedies, from policy makers. The two groups differed in ideology and tactics, but utimately they made similar demands on the civic culture. For a policy maker in Washington, D.C., the groups looked different—one seemed a potential ally, the other a dangerous radical group—but similar policies could address the concerns of both.

MALDEF and Interest Groups for the Spanish Speaking As the Chicano movement presented a new rhetorical challenge to the American political and economic system, and also to the leadership that groups such as LULAC had provided the Mexican American struggle for civil rights, LULAC faced internal problems. By the late 1960s LULAC was in decline as a membership organization. The rank-and-file membership showed little interest in larger issues facing the Mexican American community, and national leaders complained that local councils had become primarily social organizations. Members failed to pay dues to the local groups, which in turn failed to pay their percentage to the national office. Few councils showed much interest in national affairs or continued activism. As Benjamin Márquez concludes, if “LULAC were to address public policy matters it would be at the initiative of the leadership.”26 This was not necessarily a

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limitation on the power or influence of the LULAC national office. LULAC retained its name and its reputation, and even if it could not mobilize the community as Chicanos could—and LULAC was never a social movement organizing the masses—the group maintained legitimacy in the eyes of policy makers. The decline in the activism of LULAC’s membership, a process ongoing for a decade by 1970, did not negate the voice of the national president. In fact, the disinterest of the general LULAC membership, as argued in chapter 3, actually freed the national office to pursue policy issues with little interference or debate within the larger organization. The major problem of decreased membership interest was loss of revenue, membership dues being needed to run the national office and to publish the LULAC News. Whereas during the Kennedy administration LULAC sought federal funds to construct housing projects, thereby assisting the Mexican American community and carrying out its goals despite limited funds, in the late 1960s LULAC also turned to foundations for grants to undertake projects despite limited resources. LULAC had participated in several celebrated court cases for Mexican American civil rights, but the organization actually undertook few lawsuits through the 1950s and 1960s, in part because of the expense involved. While the LULAC national office through the late 1960s focused on federal funds for its projects, San Antonio attorney and LULAC leader Pete Tijerina sought private foundation money to enhance legal defense for Mexican Americans. Tijerina grew tired of seeing his clients face juries with no Spanish-surnamed members, but he knew that they could not afford enough lawsuits to challenge the practice of excluding Mexican Americans from juries. LULAC members, including Tijerina, attended a conference of the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund (LDF) in 1968 and met LDF executive director Jack Greenberg, who arranged a meeting with representatives of the Ford Foundation, a private philanthropic organization that funded the LDF. In May, 1968, President McGeorge Bundy of the Ford Foundation—one of the “best and brightest” of the liberals in the Kennedy cabinet—announced a $2.2 million grant from his organization to establish the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF). The grant provided funds for litigation through MALDEF to make the legal system work fairly for Mexican Americans and for scholarships for the training of Mexican American lawyers. Tijerina became the first executive director, and Mario Obledo, assistant attorney general in Texas and former state director of LULAC, became general counsel. The first office opened in San Antonio, followed quickly by another in California.27 The Ford Foundation expected MALDEF to follow the pattern of the NAACP’s LDF, whose success has been attributed to three main characteristics. First, it recruited lawyers with experience in civil rights law. Second,

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both its location in Washington, D.C., and its network of attorneys kept its office aware of and involved in important test cases, a strategy used to “prime” the Supreme Court in preparation for precedent-setting civil-rights decisions. Finally, the LDF gained the support of other organizations and institutions in its litigation, most notably government lawyers in the Department of Justice.28 The Ford Foundation funded MALDEF to establish similar benefits for Mexican Americans. In that regard, MALDEF provided things that LULAC never could. While LULAC had a reputation for success in the courts, it had always used litigation as a last resort, preferring moral suasion and threats of lawsuits to bring change.29 In addition, LULAC had neither the finances nor the staff of lawyers (particularly lawyers with experience in civil rights law) to establish a series of test cases to make Supreme Court challenges successful in the LDF model. Robert Ornelas, LULAC national president (1968–1970), and other leaders recognized the benefits of the Ford grant and celebrated the creation of MALDEF, both in person at the official announcement in San Antonio and in the pages of the LULAC News. Throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s, LULAC and the American G.I. Forum joined MALDEF in its lawsuits, with MALDEF generally filing briefs on behalf of itself and the other two organizations. MALDEF would come under fire in 1970 for the ethnic nationalism of some of its attorneys, but compared to the Chicano nationalists calling for a return to Aztlán, MALDEF seemed a natural, and necessary, LULAC ally.30 In addition to Chicano nationalists and MALDEF, specialized Mexican American and Spanish-speaking interest groups proliferated after the late 1960s. Historian Juan Gómez-Quiñones attributes this increase to the Chicano movement, suggesting that middle-class Mexican Americans became reinvigorated by the enthusiasm of the students. Furthermore, the early 1970s saw a staggering increase in the number and variety of interest groups petitioning federal, state, and local governments.31 Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, and Cubans, along with countless other Americans, believed that the system worked to benefit those who formed organizations to promote their varied causes. In this context, one or two organizations could no longer claim to speak for the Mexican American population, much less the Spanish speaking.32 To adapt, LULAC proved willing to work with groups that shared part, but not necessarily the whole, of its emphasis for Mexican American federal policy. The election of Alfred Hernández to his third term as LULAC president in 1969 contributed to this willingness. As the president who first moved LULAC into coalition efforts in the Albuquerque walkout, Hernández hoped to move the organization even further into unity with other groups. While LULAC still did not unite with black civil rights efforts, the organization did advocate cooperation with other Spanish-speaking groups, in particular the well-organized and numerous .

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Puerto Ricans.33 Leaders of Mexican American groups expanded their ally base and reached out to other Spanish-speaking groups with similar goals and tactics. The rise of radical Chicanos, the emergence of a bevy of new Mexican American organizations, and the cooperation with Puerto Ricans and in some cases Cubans resulted in a large and unwieldy group of Spanishspeaking Americans—unwieldy particularly for Washington policy makers trying to respond to demands and tap into the electoral muscle of this “awakened minority.”

Republicans in the White House This confusing assortment of Mexican American and Spanish-speaking organizations became even more complex with the election of Richard Nixon in 1968. The Nixon administration produced a mixed record for historians trying to place it in the context of a liberal-conservative paradigm on civil rights. The standard indictment of Nixon suggests a consistent policy of opposing civil rights to augment his southern strategy for reelection in 1972: the nominations of judges Haynsworth and Carswell to the Supreme Court, attempts to slow or halt court-ordered desegregation in the South, opposition to busing to achieve integration, and opposition to increased power for the EEOC. Alternatively, the revisionist interpretation of Nixon recognizes his minority business program, support for the Philadelphia Plan to provide affirmative action for African American construction workers in Philadelphia, expansion of the civil rights enforcement budget, and quiet implementation of school desegregation in the South.34 A third interpretation finds no coherence in Nixon’s contradictory civil-rights policies, and suggests instead that Nixon sought shifting coalitions on separate civil-rights issues.35 This interpretation recognizes the unusual position that Nixon holds in the history of the American presidency. Nixon took office after eight years of Democratic control, a period during which the federal government grew enormously in both size and responsibility. Nixon won in 1968 on a law-and-order campaign that attracted the backlash against the violence and upheavals of the previous three years. But Nixon could not simply roll back the federal programs that developed out of the Great Society. Social welfare remained a concern for many Americans, even if the Great Society approach had become discredited. Furthermore, Nixon at times expressed a desire for social justice and for reversing the common cliché that Democrats break new ground and Republicans come in and manage things better.36 Nixon could not completely repudiate the emphasis of the past administration, but neither could he claim it as his own. His was, according to political scientist Stephen Skowronek, a wildcard presidency.37 Nixon had to create a legacy by attracting disaffected

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members of the existing coalition and by discrediting the dominant ideology he inherited. He approved minority set-asides and attacked busing. Richard Nixon appealed to “middle” Americans tired of protests, who thought the Great Society Democrats had gone too far, who sought law and order. The Chicano movement represented all that Nixon campaigned against, but since 1966 Republicans across the Southwest viewed moremoderate Mexican Americans as potential allies. As the 1968 election approached, Mexican American discontent with the Johnson administration and the state Democratic parties, particularly in Texas, led them to threaten to stay home on election day or to vote Republican if the Democrats continued to take them for granted.38 Both outcomes helped Republicans, and party leaders worked to fan the flames of discontent, while promoting their party’s limited—primarily local—efforts for Mexican Americans. The local and national press noted the appeal that Republicans made to Mexican Americans throughout 1968 and remembered the limited gains among Mexican Americans enjoyed by two key Republicans in 1966, Senator John Tower of Texas and Governor Ronald Reagan of California. Former GOP chairman and Texas representative George Bush drove his party toward adopting a plan to aid Mexican Americans, and, in what became a campaign pledge, vice presidential candidate Spiro Agnew promised Mexican American audiences that Richard Nixon would hold a conference on Mexican American problems if elected.39 The efforts of Republicans to attract Mexican American voters did not pay off in 1968 but did set the tone for Nixon’s first term. In the election Nixon received just over 10 percent of the Hispanic vote. In Texas, where Republicans made perhaps the greatest effort at pulling Mexican Americans away from the Democrats, the Mexican American and African American turnout in the cities helped offset Democratic losses to independent candidate George Wallace in the rural areas, helping the Democrats retain a tight lock on state elective offices.40 The Nixon administration, however, refused to give up on Mexican Americans; they fit into his plans for re-election. Success in the South in 1968 suggested the potential for a party realignment that captivated the Nixon team through the first term, one in which Richard Nixon could create a party of the middle across old Democrat-Republican lines. This realignment would leave Nixon independent of the largest urban centers and create what the president would refer to as the “New American Majority.”41 In addition to the much-celebrated strategy to attract southern white Democrats, the Nixon team embarked on a concerted effort to make the Republican party the new political home of disaffected (and largely Democratic) ethnic Americans. The prospects of attracting Mexican Americans in the Southwest, at least in sufficient numbers to secure Republican victories, seemed rather good because Nixon did not need to win a major-

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ity of Mexican American votes to influence the election. In fact, White House aides estimated that, based on the 1960 and 1968 presidential election patterns, a 6 percent shift in the Mexican American vote could affect the 1972 election results in California, Texas, Illinois, and New Mexico, for a combined 101 electoral votes.42 With only a small shift necessary for possibly significant results, the administration could focus on the portion of the Mexican American community most responsive to the Republican agenda. For Richard Nixon, certainly at first, that agenda included reforming rather than repealing the Great Society. Recent scholarship shows that Nixon was not a rigid ideologue and, in fact, early in his first term sought a wide range of policy options, surrounding himself with advisors of different political views. Most famously, Nixon hired Daniel Patrick Moynihan, whose disillusionment with politicians of the left did not destroy his commitment to liberal social reforms. Moynihan encouraged Nixon to think of himself as a conservative reformer in the mold of Benjamin Disraeli, and his clashes with one of Nixon’s closest early advisors, Arthur Burns, gave the appearance of a Franklin Roosevelt-style White House, in which the president chose from wildly competing policy options, rather than the later Nixon White House in which Robert Haldeman and John Ehrlichman stood as a barricade to all dissent.43 With a variety of voices, Nixon initially charted a course between those to his left and right. The cornerstone of his program was revenue sharing, a plan to return federal monies to states and localities without strings attached. That approach contrasted with the system of categorical grants, which provided monies for specified purposes, often including detailed requirements and regulations, and also with conservative calls simply to reduce the national government’s role by reducing both the requirements and the fiscal influence of Washington, D.C. Speechwriter William Safire, given the job of articulating a philosophical justification beneath Nixon’s policy preference, described the New Federalism as an approach that does not roll back the Great Society but identifies its excesses, sets national standards and minimums, then allows for administration at the level best suited to effectiveness (most often, according to Safire, the local or state level). In the words of historian John Robert Greene, the program amounted to “economic and social containment.” The proposal frustrated those on both the ideological left and ideological right. In fact, there emerged heated opposition within the speechwriting corps.44 But the philosophy appealed to Nixon, who adopted Safire’s formulation. The idea of federal oversight, with standards and minimums, allowing for much-simplified administration and much greater local control, resulted in some policies that seemed odd for a president so rhetorically opposed to the Great Society—for example, cleaning up the messiness of welfare by providing a guaranteed annual income through the Family Assistance Plan. As

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a proposal to appeal to middle America, and to help Nixon negotiate the impossible leadership position, revenue sharing had great promise. Nixon could continue the nation’s commitment to use its wealth to improve opportunities for the disadvantaged while eliminating the excesses of the Great Society by allowing local people to identify and work on local problems in ways that make sense for the local environment. Of course, many complained that making sense in the local environment is what resulted in the need for federal programs to begin with, as local officials cited local environments to exclude minorities from services and opportunities. Such concerns emerged among Mexican Americans when it became clear that revenue sharing threatened one of their most popular jobs programs. Revenue sharing clearly shows Richard Nixon’s willingness to tweak his own programs to bring Mexican Americans into his new American majority and also the extent to which Mexican Americans had succeeded in identifying themselves as a distinct minority with particular needs that deserved particular remedies from the federal government. By the time Nixon had taken office, Mexican Americans had developed the beginnings of a client relationship with some federal agencies, particularly the Department of Labor’s funding-for-jobs programs. As political scientist James Q. Wilson has written, a client relationship exists when a narrowly defined group (in this case Mexican Americans) receives benefits from the government, such as specific programs or funding, that are financed by a much larger group (such as federal taxpayers).45 The recipient group has a much easier time mobilizing and defending its programs than the financing group has in challenging or changing a program. From the standpoint of Mexican Americans, revenue sharing most threatened Operation SER. The program, which offered English communication skills and job training and placement services to Spanish-speaking people, was one of the few federal projects that focused specifically on Mexican Americans and proved effective in its mission. If Republicans instituted the New Federalism, then SER, developed by the Navy and then later funded through the Department of Labor and the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) since 1965 and operated jointly by LULAC and the G.I. Forum, faced the prospect of fighting other manpower-training programs for local and state manpower funds. Mexican Americans pointed out that federal programs were developed precisely because local officials ignored the needs of disadvantaged minorities in the first place. As stated in an editorial in the LULAC News, “Mayors of cities with a Spanish-speaking population have shown an unresponsive attitude” toward those constituents, suggesting trouble for Operation SER under revenue sharing. Edwardo Peña, LULAC national vice president for the midwest, questioned “giving it back to the mayors. That’s where the problem came from.”46

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The popularity of SER forced members of Congress, most notably Republicans from the Southwest, to press the administration for special funds to keep SER operating at least until the program could secure financing through the new revenue-sharing process. Representative John Rhodes (RArizona) complained to the White House of a “situation which is going to hurt us terribly among the Spanish-speaking people, and will perhaps put many programs which should be kept back to the starting point.” He warned Secretary of Labor Peter Brennan that “in our zeal for revenue sharing” Republicans should not abandon federal programs that proved effective and highly popular. Furthermore, Rhodes insisted to John Ehrlichman and Brennan that the administration must explain the changes to organization leaders and assist them in applying for funds from the states. Rhodes told those attending the 45th LULAC Convention that he supported the president’s controversial impoundment of funds and his cutbacks in federal programs, but that he also supported Operation SER and would work to make sure it received funding as circumstances changed.47 Concern about Operation SER made strange bedfellows, as when Republican John Tower joined Democrats Alan Cranston, Edward Kennedy, Warren Magnuson, and George McGovern, among other senators, in a joint letter to Nixon calling for continued funding for SER until administrators could secure funds under the new system.48 Ultimately, SER continued its authorization under the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA) of 1973.49 The administration devised revenue sharing to give states discretion to fund the most effective programs, but problems in the Southwest and the strength of the Mexican American vote led them to make an exception and to protect one manpower-training program that focused on the particular needs of Mexican Americans. As with revenue sharing, the Nixon administration’s efforts to develop minority businesses challenged one of the established relationships between Mexican Americans and a federal program. One element of Nixon’s strategy for the Republican party was to develop and encourage the growth of the business-oriented middle class, particularly among ethnics and minorities traditionally aligned with the Democrats. The Nixon team hoped that if minority group members owned and operated their own businesses they would be more likely to adopt Republican sentiments (not to mention owe their success to the federal aid provided by Republicans, rather than Democrats). One means to this end already existed when Nixon took office. Under Howard Samuels, a Lyndon Johnson appointee, the Small Business Administration (SBA), established in 1953 to protect and encourage small businesses, had begun to focus on minority businesses. To sharpen the SBA focus, Samuels had relied on section 8(a) of the Small Business Act, which authorized the SBA itself to contract with federal agencies to provide goods

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and services and then subcontract with small businesses. After taking office, Nixon took two steps that would increase the SBA’s appeal for Mexican Americans. First, he appointed Hilary Sandoval, a Mexican American, as head of the SBA; second, in March, 1970, he issued Executive Order 11518, which directed the SBA to “particularly consider the needs and interests of minority-owned small business concerns and of members of minority groups seeking entry into the business community.” Neither Nixon’s executive order nor, before him, Johnson’s directives to the SBA defined “minority.” The SBA found a definition in the “official minority” list established by the EEOC after 1965—black, Hispanic, Asian American, and American Indian.50 Whereas Samuels had focused on African American small businesses following the urban uprisings of the late 1960s, it is reasonable to assume that Nixon’s appointment of a Mexican American to head the SBA reflected his desire to shift more attention to Mexican Americans, which could be done with relatively little explanation since both were on the “official” list of minorities used by federal agencies. In another step toward assisting minority entrepreneurs, in March, 1969, Nixon created by executive order the Office of Minority Business Enterprise (OMBE). The OMBE had no authority but from its home in the Department of Commerce would coordinate the business development programs in the federal bureaucracy that targeted “blacks, MexicanAmericans, Puerto Ricans, Indians, and others.” 51 OMBE would help minority organizations navigate the federal bureaucracy and would help existing federal agencies focus attention on minorities. In particular, the Nixon team pushed OMBE to focus more attention on Mexican Americans. As John Skrentny has argued, the administration did so for political rather than philosophical reasons.52 Unfortunately for the administration, it had not realized the extent to which some Mexican Americans had established a client relationship with federal agencies and would question any change in agency responsibility. Mexican Americans had one of their own, Hilary Sandoval, in charge of the SBA. Sandoval resented what he considered the OMBE’s early focus on blacks and also considered his jurisdiction threatened by the new agency. The two agencies for a time engaged in turf warfare, which suggested to Mexican Americans that a focus on African Americans again threatened to overshadow attention to their problems.53 While LULAC leaders were particularly interested in developing a Mexican American middle class of business owners and was one organization specifically targeted by the Nixon administration and the OMBE, implicit in their concern was the fear that the new agency would be run by someone unfamiliar with Mexican American problems, and that the OMBE would follow the lead of so many other federal civil rights efforts and focus almost exclusively on the African Amer-

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ican community. Nixon special assistant Robert Brown tried to reassure the LULAC national office that the OMBE would “complement and enhance” the government’s existing minority programs, including that of the SBA, and that the creation of the OMBE “in no way reduced the jurisdiction of the Small Business Administration.”54 Once an organization or interest group establishes a client relationship, however, any reorganization threatens the flow of services, even if that reorganization is intended to enhance service. The SBA chairman knew Mexican American problems first hand. LULAC had no desire to see his authority limited by a new agency headed by a less-sympathetic administrator. The circumstances forced the administration into damage control and threatened to counter the overtures that OMBE was supposed to make to LULAC and the Mexican American community.55 If Nixon hoped to attract Mexican Americans to the new American majority, he learned he had to make an exception in revenue sharing for Operation SER. He also learned that it would take time and effort to make OMBE acceptable to Mexican Americans who worried about the SBA’s turf. Revenue sharing and the OMBE were creations of Washington, D.C.— neither was called for by LULAC or other Mexican American organizations. But similar dynamics held when the Nixon team dealt with the concerns most often raised by Mexican Americans: appointments to government positions, recognition in the federal bureaucracy, and the fate of the Interagency Committee on Mexican American Affairs. As with any new presidency, the need to make appointments confronted Nixon immediately. Johnson had set the bar fairly high for Mexican American appointments by placing Vicente Ximenes on the EEOC (as well as on the Interagency Committee on Mexican American Affairs) and Hector García on the Commission on Civil Rights. Both men were staunch Democrats, loyal to Johnson and unacceptable to the Nixon administration. It was common practice for replacements to come with a new administration, but these men represented the most high-profile appointments for Mexican Americans. Nevertheless, they were political appointments, and as their terms expired Nixon refused to consider reappointing either one.56 These replacements cost Nixon points with the American G.I. Forum, since both García, the organization’s founder, and Ximenes were influential members. In general, however, Nixon’s appointments during his first term were among his most appreciated actions on behalf of Mexican Americans. In February, 1970, Nixon announced a “Sixteen Point Program” to increase the number of Mexican Americans in appointed positions. The program emerged when the White House came to believe that equal employment opportunities for minorities “were being focused on some minorities and not others.”57 Although not explicit, the reference seems to

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connect the “Sixteen Point Program” to the administration’s belief that efforts to gain Mexican American votes were more likely to pay dividends than efforts to gain African American votes. Perhaps in recognition that little was done for the Spanish speaking before 1971, later accounts of progress on appointments use November and December, 1970, as the base date. Thus, by December, 1970, the administration had appointed twenty-three Spanish-surnamed individuals to positions at or above GS-13. By December, 1971, it had appointed forty-seven and as of April, 1972, had appointed fifty-five. Full-time presidential appointees had doubled between December, 1970, and June, 1972.58 In some cases, the lack of nationally prominent Republican Mexican Americans required appointing Democrats. This contributed to the rocky legacy of the Interagency Committee on Mexican American Affairs (IACMAA). Created by Lyndon Johnson’s executive order and originally designed as a diversionary tactic to avoid a White House conference, the IACMAA had gained the support of Mexican Americans, as much for its presence among cabinet and other administration officials as for its service as a clearinghouse for information and appointments, and they expected it to continue under the new president.59 But Nixon issued no executive order to continue the committee’s existence, and in late 1969 members of Congress initiated legislation to make the agency permanent, to provide appropriated funds, and to change its name to be inclusive of all Spanish-speaking groups.60 Significantly, key Congressional sponsors of the bill included Republicans Barry Goldwater and Paul Fannin of Arizona, George Bush and John Tower of Texas, and George Murphy of California. As a statutory committee, the new Cabinet Committee on Opportunities for Spanish-Speaking People (CCOSS) answered both to the White House and to Congress, thus encouraging congressional oversight of the administration’s efforts for Hispanics. Never willing to share control, Nixon opposed the new role of Congress, but he so lauded the idea of an agency for the Spanish-speaking that some credited Nixon with ardent support, even with requesting Congressional action.61 When Congress passed the bill at the end of 1969, the Nixon team advocated an elaborate (if brief) signing ceremony, and Nixon offered full rhetorical support for the committee in his remarks on signing the bill into law.62 The head of the IACMAA when Nixon took office, Vicent Ximenes, was a Johnson man and, as already noted, unacceptable to Nixon. The administration settled on Martin Castillo as chair, moving him over from the Civil Rights Commission. Moynihan considered Castillo sufficiently loyal to Nixon and also noted that as a Democrat he could be helpful in attracting Mexican Americans to the administration. But he also recognized that Castillo had critics among Republican Mexican Americans and Republican

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members of Congress, even as he took over the IACMAA in mid-1969.63 Through his first year in office Castillo gained a reputation within the White House for seeking too much attention for himself, and staff kept watch on his activities. In October, 1970, John Dean warned that the “Castillo file is getting bigger,” and by January, 1971, Castillo was forced to resign.64 It took the administration nine months to appoint a new chair, with Nixon friend and counselor Robert Finch overseeing the committee in the interim, during which time critics grew frustrated with the committee’s lack of action. Even under Castillo, the CCOSS had never held a formal meeting. Its congressional mandate called for four meetings per year, but as of January, 1971, the committee had yet to meet. Castillo wanted Nixon to be part of the first committee meeting, but White House staff disagreed on the proposal and kept putting off any recommendation for Nixon. The staff’s view of the CCOSS as a political tool, as revealed by their statements regarding a presidential meeting through late 1970, limited their efforts to have the committee meet, much less do substantive work. For example, in light John Dean’s concerns that Castillo was becoming a problem for the administration, Robert Haldeman opposed any meeting that included the president. Kenneth Cole advocated a meeting simply so “our [Republican] candidates who need help with the Mexican-American vote and the Spanish speaking vote can get maximum mileage.” Likewise, domestic policy chief John Ehrlichman signed off on a meeting “now for political reasons.” John Campbell thought a meeting in Texas could be valuable, “given the importance of the Mexican American vote” (emphasis in original). Only Leonard Garment, former Nixon law partner and resident liberal after Moynihan’s departure, seemed to care that any meeting between the president and the CCOSS scheduled before the committee could offer substantive policy proposals would be “a public relations device which of course may have value as such, but which will not get us very far in addressing specific problems.” 65 He advocated postponing a meeting between the president and the committee until the CCOSS had done some work and had something to report. With conflicting views of the usefulness of a meeting, the proposal was continually put off. There is little direct evidence of Nixon’s thoughts on the CCOSS, but there are suggestions that he too grew frustrated with the committee’s lack of progress (political or policy making). In January, 1970, Haldeman reported to the staff that Nixon was “very disturbed” that he had not met with Castillo following the latter’s appointment to head the committee, and that the president wanted to see Castillo more often. The staff understood this to mean, somewhat condescendingly, that Castillo “is another one . . . who should be included in various meetings and also should have an appointment alone with the president every once in a while.” 66 Further, through the summer of

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1971, as members of Congress complained that the CCOSS had no chair, had no clear agenda, and had yet to hold a meeting, Robert Finch reported that a meeting would have to be held because “the president and Congress separately favor” a meeting of the CCOSS and a stronger committee in general.67 Nixon certainly could have forced the matter of the CCOSS on his staff. It seems clear, however, that White House aides had no consensus on the cabinet committee and interpreted its role as primarily, if not entirely, political. When the president finally met with the committee, on August 5, he insisted that he wanted the committee, and the federal agencies represented, to be proactive on behalf of the Spanish speaking. He had in mind middle Americans of his new majority, those who are “family oriented, law abiding people” like the Mexican Americans he knew in Whittier, California. He insisted that the “government has the responsibility—private business does not move as fast in developing opportunities,” and he did not “want this Administration to be one that only responds to those who tear up the place and pound fists.”68 Throughout his comments, Nixon shifted back and forth between what would come to be called color-blind language (“develop opportunities”) and affirmative-action language (“fill slots”). He did so with ease. Nixon clearly wanted something done for the Spanish speaking, before “something is blown up in Los Angeles,” as he told the CCOSS. He provided appointments and protected favored programs from his key policies, but one thing the administration would not provide—something Mexican Americans wanted in particular—was a White House conference. The Nixon administration followed the lead of the Johnson administration and held regional conferences, far from the White House.

Toward a Spanish-Speaking Federal Policy—Bilingual Education In some of its programs for minorities, the Nixon administration followed Johnson’s lead—appointments, bureaucratic presence, and inclusion in general “minority programs” such as OMBE. On other issues Nixon embraced policies that had emerged under Johnson’s presidency but were not associated with the Democrat. The OMBE had been discussed in the 1960s, and Johnson directed the SBA to help minorities; but LBJ never acted on the former, and the latter developed its minority focus late in the Johnson administration. Affirmative action provides another example of how Nixon pursued policies devoloped by Democrats but not associated specifically with Johnson. Kennedy had used the phrase, undefined, in his executive order on equal employment opportunity in federal contracts, and Johnson had given the famous speech at Howard University in 1965 outlining the idea of going further than simple nondiscrimination to rectify a history of

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oppression. But Richard Nixon approved the Philadelphia Plan and its expansion to all government contractors.69 In their efforts for Mexican Americans the Nixon team hoped to gain credit for new initiatives as well as to distance their boss from the Texan. The best example of that effort by the Republicans, and one that shows the lengths to which the Nixon White House was willing to go to create the new American majority, is bilingual education. Under the Republican administrations of the early 1970s, bilingual education—not a top priority for the Mexican American organizations lobbying the White House—became the central element of national policies for Hispanics. Federal bilingual-education legislation originated not in a presidential proposal but in the Senate reelection bid of Senator Ralph Yarborough of Texas. A liberal Democrat in a state controlled by conservative Democrats, Yarborough had won his seat in a special election in 1957. He faced stiff competition from the conservative wing of the party for the Democratic nomination for the 1970 race and sought to solidify his New Deal coalition of poor whites, blacks, and Mexican Americans.70 The senator had long served on the Senate Labor and Public Welfare Committee, which had responsibility for education legislation in the Senate, and had been involved as cosponsor of many of the bills supporting federal aid to education passed by Congress following the Sputnik panic of the late 1950s.71 In 1966 he attended a conference sponsored by the National Education Association (NEA) to promote bilingual education (professional teacher associations were among the first to call specifically and consistently for national bilingual education programs), and George Sánchez, University of Texas professor and former LULAC national president, used his relationship with Yarborough to press the case for bilingual education.72 Educators had ideas about bilingual education, and once introduced to them, Yarborough proved to be a convert. In January, 1967, he introduced a bill to authorize federal aid to school districts that wanted to develop bilingual education programs. From his seat on the Senate Labor and Public Welfare Committee, he got himself appointed chair of a special subcommittee to study the question of bilingual education and promptly announced hearings, to be held first in Washington, D.C., then in Corpus Christi, Edinburg, and San Antonio, Texas, as well as in Los Angeles and New York City (to gain the support of the Puerto Rican community and their senators, Robert Kennedy and Jacob Javits).73 Despite Yarborough’s long-standing support for education, his concern for his own renomination showed throughout his multiple stops in Texas and in his insistence that his bill, S. 428, would focus on the problems of the Spanish-speaking and no other non-English-speaking minority.74 By 1967 the issue had sufficient currency to draw the support of a bipartisan coalition of senators from the Southwest, New York, and New Jersey.75 The

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Mexican Americans invited to testify represented the major organizations thought to have influence with the Mexican American community in the Southwest, including LULAC, the American G.I. Forum, and MAPA. The hearings mobilized a constituency, and those giving testimony on the need for bilingual education were community and group leaders as often as professional educators. Their testimony tended to be anecdotal, as they recounted the difficulties they had had in school and in the larger American society before they became literate in English, and they overwhelmingly supported bilingual education. LULAC had long supported teaching Mexican American children in Spanish so they could more quickly learn English; its “Little School of the 400” served as an early kind of Head Start program, preparing children for school by teaching them key words.76 But federal bilingual education programs were not part of LULAC’s agenda when its leaders met with national policy makers. The overwhelming focus of those meetings was on appointments of Mexican Americans to office and a White House conference on Mexican American problems. Nevertheless, presented with the possibility of such programs, the organization’s leaders enthusiastically endorsed bilingual education before Yarborough’s subcommittee and, as well, emphasized a few of LULAC’s recurring themes with regard to Mexican American federal policy. First, they continued their insistence that Mexican Americans faced unique problems. For example, Carlos Truán, Texas state director of LULAC and former national executive director, referred to the “special cultural needs” and “different cultural heritage” of the Mexican Americans, and National president Alfred Hernández noted their “bicultural and bilingual heritage.” Second, testimony suggested that new, specific programs were needed to solve these unique problems. Truán closed his statement by insisting that the problems of Mexican Americans “are brought about and aggravated by the cultural factors which are a part of their heritage. These things require special programming which will take these circumstances into consideration,” rather than simply plug Mexican Americans into programs designed for other groups. Third, despite the uniqueness of the problems and solutions, the goal of bilingual education was to bring Mexican American children into the mainstream. Truán sought to “help many Mexican-Americans become good taxpayers instead of tax-eaters.” Hernández hoped that instead of “the eventual dropout . . . we can have a proud citizen of the United States qualified by education, endowed by bilingual and bicultural heritage.” He agreed with Yarborough that acquisition of English would help Mexican American children to enter the economic mainstream of American life. LULAC leaders stood united with the other Mexican American organizations and supported bilingual education as a particular program targeted at the special needs of Mexican Americans that would help them ascend the socioeconomic ladder.77 144

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Mexican American leaders provided the testimony from the Southwest, but pressure came from within the administration as well. While the White House had reservations about a separate bilingual education bill, staff workers within the departments and agencies of the executive bureaucracy pressed for a bill from the inside. Lupe Angciano, who had worked on the preplanning of the White House conference on Mexican American affairs, stayed on within HEW and focused her attention on getting support for bilingual education. In addition, foreign-language professionals such as Dr. A. Bruce Garder of the Modern Foreign Language section of the U.S. Office of Education called for bilingual education at conferences and supported such initiatives from within the executive branch.78 With publicity and mobilization by professional-education and teachers’ associations, testimony from Mexican American organization leaders, advocacy from within the bureaucracy, and strong bipartisan support in Congress, the Senate made the bilingual bill Title VII of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) of 1965, as amended in 1968.79 Controversy over a Republican proposal to fund states through block grants rather than school districts through categorical grants overshadowed the bilingual education provisions, which passed unscathed through the Senate and then the conference report.80 The only point of contention was over expanding the legislation to cover speakers of languages other that Spanish, and in that case Congress wanted a larger bill—Yarborough had included only Spanish in his original proposal, but the final bill allowed demonstration projects in other languages. The legislation authorized $15 million for aid to school districts to help educate children of limited English-speaking ability during 1968. The amount increased to $30 million for 1969 and to $40 million for 1970. Furthermore, the act allocated $10 million for graduate fellowships for teachers of students of non-English-speaking backgrounds for each year 1968–79. The money amounted to a fraction of the overall bill, with new authorizations for 1968 of $26 million for bilingual programs out of total new authorizations for education programs of nearly $133 million. For fiscal years 1969– 70, the act allocated $90 million for bilingual education out of over $9 billion in educational authorizations.81 As a first step, however, the Bilingual Education Act provided important symbolic recognition of a federal interest in bilingual education. Congress extended the ESEA for three years in 1970, expanded the bilingual program to cover Indian children in Interior Department or tribal schools, and increased authorization to $80 million for 1971, $100 million for 1972, and $135 million for 1973.82 Actual funding levels never matched the authorizations, however. First, the Johnson administration only grudgingly approved Title VII. The president was under fire on several fronts by 1968, most notably on the war in Vietnam and on the deteriorating economy. He spent no money under the act for 1968 and recommended a minimal funding level for 1969. In addi145

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tion, the administration had initially opposed the legislation as superfluous, based on the Office of Education’s assessment that bilingual education programs could be implemented without new legislation. Similarly, Nixon did not spend what was authorized by Congress, but he had the advantage of Johnson’s early opposition to the bill and stinginess after it passed. It proved relatively easy for Nixon to exceed Johnson’s performance on bilingual education, particularly with expectations low and the economy sinking quickly. Any administration support for the program could be politically potent. While no president could claim responsibility for bilingual education, the Nixon administration sought to make it a strength for the Republican president. It led the list of accomplishments that advisors compiled for the report of the CCOSS. At a time when the committee had little in the way of positive publicity to offer the administration, bilingual education offered some good news, and the Nixon team trumpeted the expansion of the program from 68 to 114 projects and a near tripling of funds, from under $7 million dolars to over $19 million.83 The desired focus of the program was clear in the claim that 94 percent of the 52,000 beneficiaries of federal bilingual education were Spanish-speaking, and that over 90 percent of the $21 million in 1969 went to Spanish-surnamed children.84 The $41 million the Nixon budget proposed for bilingual education for 1973 was far below congressional authorization but nevertheless represented a $6 million increase over 1972, despite budget cuts and the fact that the Office of Management and Budget had serious reservations about the effectiveness of the program.85 In a difficult political and fiscal environment, bilingual education survived and offered Nixon a targeted civil rights program that could also pay off come election day. As Gareth Davies has shown, there are two story lines in the history of bilingual education during Nixon’s first term.86 First, the White House considered bilingual education to be a politically valuable program that could draw the Spanish speaking into the new American majority. Difficulties with the cabinet committee, with the Mexican American conference, and with finding Republican Mexican Americans for office left bilingual education as the most likely stimulus of new Mexican American votes. Second, administrative agencies, particularly the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) in the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, sought to continue the thrust of the Great Society, even under the new Republican administration. Animosity between the administration and HEW grew considerably during the first few years of Nixon’s term, highlighted by the struggle between the White House and Leon Panetta, OCR head, over school desegregation. The president distrusted the department, forced out Panetta, and sought to control as much policy as possible through his Domestic Council headed by Ehrlichman.87 Civil rights advocates and OCR liberals viewed the firing of Panetta as

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evidence of the administration’s civil-rights retreat, while the administration saw it as an effort to regain control of a wayward bureaucracy. The new director of the OCR, Stanley Pottinger, took on an unenviable position; he had to lead an agency committed to further civil-rights gains while appeasing an administration for which civil rights activism could be cause for termination. Davies postulates, convincingly, that the memo Pottinger issued from OCR on May 25, 1970, regarding bilingual education satisfied both the agency stalwarts and the White House.88 Title VII of the ESEA amendments made federal funds available to assist school districts in providing bilingual education for non-English-speaking students but did not require such programs. Pottinger sent his memo to school districts with “more than five percent national origin-minority group children.”89 Pottinger reminded districts that, under OCR guidelines for Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, school districts must not discriminate on the basis of race, color, or national origin. He further explained that OCR considered non-English-speaking children to fall under the “national origin” category, bringing them under protection of Title VI and into OCR’s jurisdiction. Therefore, OCR then considered school districts in violation of Title VI unless they took “affirmative steps to rectify the language deficiency” of children unable to speak and understand the English language. To officials in OCR the connection between national origin and language seemed a logical progression to providing equal educational opportunity. As John Veneman, undersecretary of HEW, told the Washington Post in January, 1972, “Whenever Spanish-speaking students’ performance is shown to be markedly lower, a strong case can be made that they are not receiving an equal education.”90 Teaching children in a language that some understand and others do not was not “equal,” according to Veneman, and Spanish language use and low test scores together could prove the need for remedy. It may be tempting to view the move by OCR to expand its jurisdiction under the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as the effort of civil rights crusaders to sneak around an administration that blocked continued civil rights crusades. For veterans of the 1960s movement, Nixon certainly seemed opposed to civil rights in his efforts to block busing, nominate conservative justices to the Supreme Court, and lure white southern voters. But Nixon was also the president of the Philadelphia plan and of slow but steady integration of southern schools. And on an issue most likely to affect Mexican Americans in particular, the administration could actually view favorably the expansion of federal oversight of education to protect the civil rights of language minorities. The behavior of the administration suggests as much. Pottinger received orders to get prior White House approval for any controversial OCR statements, and he sent his signed memo (which he had inherited from Panetta) to the office of John Ehrlichman. Two weeks prior,

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Nixon had given a speech designed to diminish attention to controversies over busing. In that speech he focused on equal educational opportunities.91 When combined with the administration’s interest in policies for the Spanish speaking, the opportunity to gain points for civil rights efforts without wading into busing made it highly likely that the administration would have been content with the distrubution of the memo. The administration also proved willing to consider going further than the OCR memo. While the OCR guidelines did not require bilingual education to rectify the language difficulties of non-English-speaking children— schools simply had to take some action to help those children—a mandate was not outside the realm of possibility for the politically oriented Nixon administration.92 As he sought ways to attract Hispanics to the Republican ticket in 1972, White House aide Charles Colson noted that budget priorities would prevent the administration from proposing increased funding for bilingual education. A 1972 survey showed high support for bilingual education programs among the Spanish speaking, but with budget constraints Colson needed a hook for the Spanish-speaking constituency.93 He wondered if the administration could take Pottinger’s memo one step further and “require that bilingual education programs be components of any educational institution receiving funds with more than a 10 percent Spanishspeaking service population” (emphasis added).94 Nixon aides pursued the feasibility of a mandate but ultimately concluded that to require school districts to implement bilingual education programs would require new legislation. Under the existing Title VI authority, OCR could require districts to take affirmative action to provide equal educational opportunities—which often resulted in a bilingual component—but it could not demand the implementation of bilingual programs. James Clawson of the White House staff reported that the administration could reach many of the students facing language discrimination without a mandate “if we wish to undertake a massive enforcement effort under existing statues.”95 But Nixon’s team wanted a high-profile announcement that would pay off in November, not a painstaking OCR enforcement effort. The key question, scribbled in the margin of Clawson’s memo, asked simply, “How can we maximize credit w[ith] the Spanish speaking?”96 The administration did not need another desegregation mess. It needed a political payoff. Richard Nixon accepted bilingual education as legitimate, allowed an expanded civil-rights enforcement effort on behalf of language minorities, and considered a significant unfunded mandate to require local school districts to implement bilingual education. He also agreed to insulate bilingual education programs from revenue sharing in education, much as he did with jobs programs. The administration initially proposed to fold federal education funds into block grants to the states rather than to send categor-

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ical grants. The January, 1972, budget proposed for fiscal year 1973 had no line item for Title VII. School districts would apply for education grants without indicating how much would be spent on any given program. Susan Schneider, author of a history of the bilingual education act of 1974, credits two influences that changed the administration’s position on education revenue sharing. First, in response to an April, 1972, survey showing widespread support for bilingual education among Hispanics, the White House asked the CCOSS director Henry Ramirez to devise strategies for that constituency. Prominent among those strategies were programs for bilingual education. Second, as with jobs programs, Republican members of Congress pressed the administration to exempt bilingual education from revenue sharing. In particular, Representative Alphonzo Bell (R-Calif.) agreed to sponsor the administration’s education revenue-sharing bill in the House—if the administration restored independent funding of Title VII. In the administration’s 1974 budget, developed in 1972 and submitted to Congress in January 1973, bilingual education had its own line-item.97 Bilingual education was a congressional creation, begun before Richard Nixon took office. Congress provided money for school districts willing to experiment with new ways of teaching non-English-speaking children. The executive branch under Nixon, however, considerably expanded the role of bilingual education. First, the desire to continue and expand civil rights protections led the Office for Civil Rights to bring limited-English-proficient (LEP) children under the umbrella of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Stanley Pottinger’s 1970 memorandum required schools to take some action to aid LEP students but provided no recommendations for any particular approach. Political needs led the Nixon administration to consider going even further than OCR by mandating bilingual education, but once they realized that such a mandate required new legislation, Nixon advisors backed down. Nevertheless, their willingness to consider a mandate—a significant expansion of federal prerogative over the nation’s schools—and to exempt bilingual education from revenue sharing reveals that Republicans were as receptive as Democrats to the political benefits of increased federal protections and programs designed specifically for the Spanish speaking.

All Eyes on the Election of  The Nixon team wanted to treat Mexican Americans like any other largely Democratic constituency. It tried to provide enough recognition, funding, and programs to minimize demands on the administration, on the one hand, and, on the other, to secure votes. Despite the administration’s efforts to follow and improve upon Johnson’s record in appointing Mexican Americans and in plugging them into programs such as OMBE, administration

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officials learned that Mexican Americans resented being grouped with other minorities and that particular programs would be necessary to satisfy this constituency. How would the administration develop its policies and target its appeal to bring Mexican Americans into a new American majority? It would target groups such as LULAC. However, the Nixon White House would not appeal to Mexican American organizations as Lyndon Johnson’s had. LULAC had much less direct connection with Nixon’s administration than it had with Johnson’s. Nixon’s personal style was much different from LBJ’s, and there existed no prior relationship between LULAC leaders and Richard Nixon (although Nixon did use his upbringing in Southern California as evidence of his awareness of the problems of Mexican Americans). Rather than face-to-face meetings with the president and his closest advisors, Pete Villa, 1972 LULAC national president, attended a White House banquet in honor of President Luís Echeverría Álvarez of Mexico. His predecessor, Paul Garza, worked with the National Economic Development Association to provide scholarships for Mexican American business majors and management trainees, offered testimony at the White House Conference on Aging, and successfully made LULAC a “checkpoint organization” for local efforts through the EEOC.98 In part, these activities, while less energizing than a sit-down with the president, signified the increased opportunities that had emerged for Mexican Americans; a substantial administrative and bureaucratic infrastructure existed to engage Mexican American issues. Despite Nixon’s different personality and style, and the challenges posed by the Chicano movement and LULAC’s own internal problems, the group remained at the top of the list of Mexican American organizations under this president. The Nixon team viewed its policies through the lens of political calculation, and its actions followed the logic of its long-range political strategy, which emphasized the need for Nixon to attract that portion of the Mexican American community most likely to sympathize with Republican policies. The key to that portion, as defined by the administration’s political strategy, consisted of the “national, regional and local organizations and civic leaders” and “upwardly mobile lower-class Mexican-Americans.” LULAC, as “the only national organization with top Mexican-American Republican leadership,” topped the administration’s list of potential allies among Mexican American groups. Because LULAC leaders were politically sophisticated, issue oriented, and willing to support whichever party offered the most, Nixon strategists concluded that LULAC represented “the group to cultivate aggressively.”99 William Marumoto of the “Brown Mafia”—a group given responsibility to attract the Spanish-speaking vote for Nixon—reported in August, 1972, that LULAC and the G.I. Forum were the two Mexican American or-

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ganizations that had been supportive of the administration, and he hoped that “the heads of responsible national Spanish Speaking organizations” would be rewarded for their cooperation (emphasis added).100 Presidential advisors on Mexican American affairs further identified the importance of LULAC in their recommendation that the president attend the 1972 LULAC national convention. Marumoto identified LULAC as the “oldest, best known, largest, and probably most moderate” of the Mexican American organizations. Alex Armendáriz, director of the Spanish-speaking operations for the Committee for the Re-Election of the President (CREEP), called LULAC “the largest organization most closely identified with our target voter.” Henry Ramirez of the CCOSS thought a presidential appearance at a LULAC event would be a “normal follow-through to many of the efforts that have been made in involving LULAC” in national affairs.101 White House strategists considered it unlikely that they could woo the support of the most prominent Chicano leaders—specifically José Ángel Gutiérrez, Corky Gonzales, and Reies Tijerina. These men garnered headlines in the national press, but Republican strategists did not believe that the radical Chicanos represented average Mexican Americans. Instead, they insisted that Gonzales and the others “evoke little support from blue-collar and local community leaders.” To win votes, the administration had to appeal to the leaders who took pride in America, who refused to vote for Democrats simply because they always voted for Democrats, and who represented the positive characteristics the administration associated with Mexican Americans (and, of course, with the Republican party), namely “a very strong family structure, deep religious ties, respect for law and order and authority figures, and a generally conservative political outlook on other than ‘bread and butter’ issues.” However, the administration did think it advantageous to encourage La Raza Unida Party, because any votes the party received would almost certainly be diverted from the Democrat’s total. To this end, Nixon’s reelection team sought the neutrality of La Raza Unida and other militant groups “through overtures of assistance regarding grants of interest to them.”102 Such tactics became a subplot of the Watergate hearings.103 In general, then, the strategy underlying Nixon’s efforts for the Mexican American vote relied on his ability to attract LULAC and the similarly moderate groups, while offering incentives for militant groups to remain neutral between Republicans and Democrats. Policies were designed to attract middle-class potential Republicans. To do this, the administration had to recognize the distinct problems facing Mexican Americans caused by cultural heritage and discrimination, because all Mexican American groups emphasized those problems. Particularly after Nixon’s meeting with the CCOSS, during which he admonished his cabinet members to get something done on Spanish-speaking affairs, administration efforts increased.

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Nixon wanted his team to get off their duffs on a number of issues as the campaign season approached. His efforts on behalf of Mexican Americans paralleled administration efforts through 1971 and 1972 to secure the election and reorient American politics. Nixon had not followed through on warnings, made as early as 1969, that spending cuts were needed to offset inflation, which had been a key issue in the 1970 midterm elections. Nixon understood that the economy, as well as his re-election effort, needed serious attention, and in August, 1971, he announced his “New Economic Plan” to close the gold window and enforce a ninety-day freeze on wages and prices. When “Phase II” of the plan extended the wage and price controls, Nixon actually had some room to use expansionist fiscal and monetary policy. Thus, Nixon ordered his cabinet to spend money in the winter and spring of 1972 to keep unemployment down, since wage and price controls would keep inflation in check.104 Much as Nixon realized the economy needed more attention than he had given it at first, he also realized that Spanish-speaking issues needed more attention. Whereas up to mid-1971 the administration considered the CCOSS a liability as often as an asset, the Nixon team made a concerted effort to improve its work beginning in the summer of 1971, coincident with Nixon’s first meeting with the committee.105 Similarly, the reelection team considered mandated bilingual education in winter 1971–72; the White House gave jobs programs and bilingual-education programs special exemption from revenue sharing; and Nixon made high-level appointments of Spanishspeaking Americans. That the administration’s list of those high-level appointments is dominated by Mexican Americans reflects the Nixon team’s focus on the Mexican American vote more than on the Puerto Rican or Spanish-speaking electorate in general.106 Among these administration efforts, White House aides considered appointments most significant for Spanish-speaking voters—as the history of Mexican American lobbying efforts would attest. LULAC President Pete Villa focused specifically on Nixon’s appointments in his comments to Tricia Nixon Cox at the 1972 LULAC convention. Villa told the first daughter that LULAC admired the president and is “proud of his appointments and look forward to more of them.”107 Alex Armendáriz of CREEP reported that the “single most effective 1972 campaign issue was the increased participation of Spanish speaking Americans in top-level Federal positions.”108 Nixon appointed far more Mexican Americans and Hispanics in general, than any previous president. For groups that made a top priority of greater representation in the Washington bureaucracy, that fact alone brought Nixon much appreciation. While Nixon and his aides had grown frustrated with the cabinet committee, the CCOSS became a visible and popular office among Mexican American leaders. Its assistance with grants and loans, and its work

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in recruiting qualified Mexican Americans for public service, increased its importance in the eyes of moderate Mexican American leaders. In fact, a somewhat cynical administration evaluation of the CCOSS considered its visibility among Spanish-speaking groups as its “one valuable function for the administration.”109 The OMBE gained the qualified support of much of the Mexican American community for grants to organizations, such as money to LULAC to help develop Mexican American business leaders. Charles Colson suggested that the OMBE, the SBA, and Office of Economic Opportunity (which funded SER) simply increase their existing efforts for Mexican Americans for the 1972 election.110 Not least, Colson considered bilingual education to be a key component in drawing the Spanish-speaking vote. These efforts—assistance with grants and funding, employment in federal jobs, appointment to government positions, and bilingual education—along with the spin provided by the “Brown Mafia” and CREEP, paid off for Nixon during the 1972 election. Running against George McGovern, the president won more than 30 percent of the Hispanic vote—an unprecedented percentage for a Republican in a national election, and a considerable improvement over his 10 percent in the 1968 election. In Texas, Nixon won more than 50 percent of the Hispanic vote. The Nixon administration had made a particular impression on LULAC. At the 1972 national convention, after Tricia Nixon Cox received a standing ovation following her comments (partly in Spanish), much talk focused on the new sense of responsiveness from federal policy makers. One attendee stated, “We know now, more than any time in the past, our voice is being heard in Washington.” Former national president William Bonilla, referring to a Department of Labor grant for SER, suggested that “up until four years ago we’d have never had the nerve to go to the President or the Congress with a request for $83 million.” Then he referred to a grant from the Department of Housing and Urban Development for a public housing project. “See what I mean about finally getting some action out of the government?”111 Perhaps most symbolic of Nixon’s advance was the endorsement he received from Alfred Hernández in July 1972, after Hernández’s third term as LULAC national president. Hernández, a longtime Democrat and friend of Lyndon Johnson who campaigned vigorously against Nixon in 1968, came out in support of Nixon against McGovern, based on the record of Nixon’s first administration. Hernández insisted, “This year we will not give our votes away for promises. This is the first time we have had a chance to vote for a president on the basis of his solid record of achievement for Spanishspeaking Americans.”112 The endorsement is ironic, in that the Nixon team advised against Hernández as a potential head of the CCOSS for fear that he was a Johnson man and would not be friendly to the administration.113 Clearly frustrated with the Democrats, Hernández suggested the possibili-

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ties for Republicans if they continued to foster relationships with the moderate Mexican American leadership.

Conclusion Richard Nixon campaigned on simple, clear principles for domestic policy: law and order, a break from the divisive politics of the late 1960s, a focus on “bringing us together.” But the election of 1968 ushered in an era of confusion in American politics, with the ironic result that Republican presidencies oversaw an expansion of civil rights policy and an extension of the regulatory state unimagined during the Johnson presidency. The political confusion of the era is clearly evident in Hispanic policy. As Mexican Americans flexed their growing political muscles and showed signs of a willingness to give their votes to the party that offered the most, Republicans endorsed policies to break up the Democratic coalition and lure Mexican Americans into the fold. Republicans in the White House, pushed by their colleagues from the Southwest, provided exceptions to the New Federalism for Mexican American programs, advocated increased federal aid for bilingual education, and even considered mandated bilingual education for Mexican American children. Adding to the confusion was the unusual position of the Nixon presidency. As a wild-card president, Nixon had considerable room to maneuver on policy choices. His support for the Philadelphia plan and simultaneous opposition to busing represents the most glaring example. Unable to achieve legitimacy either by repudiating or embracing the previous regime, Nixon sought politically expedient alternatives. Thus, he sought Mexican American support for promoting minority business ventures, advanced the cause of bilingual education, and chased votes with symbolic gestures of appointments and proclamations. Mexican Americans had not hoped for much from Richard Nixon in 1968, and they gave him only 10 percent of their vote. But Nixon’s political needs led him to stray from Republican orthodoxy. The archives reveal Nixon’s political ambitions and the belief that the moderate Mexican American groups, particularly LULAC, were the key to gaining votes in the short term and political realignment of Mexican Americans over the long term. LULAC remained a leading Mexican American organization in the eyes of the administration, but it did not play the same role as it had under Lyndon Johnson. Richard Nixon was a more isolated president. He did not know LULAC leaders, or other Texas Mexican Americans, personally. While his administration kept LULAC and other potentially Republican groups in mind as they considered policy, LULAC was not an active participant in the way that its leaders had been during the Johnson years. But by the end of

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Nixon’s first term, leaders of both major political parties had accepted the argument that Mexican Americans faced unique problems because of language and culture. Both parties had grown sensitive to the claim by groups such as LULAC that Mexican Americans are not a racial minority, that their problems could be not solved by simply applying the same programs developed for black Americans. LULAC continued to insist that Mexican Americans required particular remedies to counter the discrimination and disadvantage they faced. That position became more complicated as the Chicano activists gained prominence. They advocated for Mexican Americans a racial identity distinct from the American mainstream, and they did not distinguish between race and ethnicity, as LULAC sought to do. While LULAC rejected the nationalist arguments of the Chicanos, it actually supported many of the same policies, particularly an increased presence for Mexican Americans in policy-making positions and bilingual education for Mexican American children. Nixon’s outreach to LULAC and other middleclass, potentially Republican groups may have bode well for the “silent majority” among Mexican Americans, but the vocal minority among Mexican Americans were joining the ranks of the Chicano movement. With LULAC’s leadership position among politically active Mexican Americans already challenged, changes in the policy environment would compound the problems LULAC would have to face through the early 1970s.

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6 Policies for the Spanish Speaking

R

ichard Nixon won the 1972 election in a landslide. His political team proved highly effective in targeting desired constituencies: the stereotypical Dayton housewife who represented middle America along with the working-class, ethnics (the Spanish speaking and eastern European in particular), and conservatives. Nixon also benefited from the implosion of the Democratic party and the campaign of George McGovern. Democrats suffered through their second troubled convention, which gave the appearance of a party being taken over by radicals. And Nixon was helped by an economic surge through the middle of 1972, which he sought through the spending spree of early 1972 under wage and price controls. As he entered his second term, Nixon appeared to have a strong start toward his new American majority.1 Three developments threatened the success of that new majority. First, Nixon’s earlier success had drawn in part from programs, appointments, and funding outlays for groups, such as Mexican Americans, that suffered cutbacks as the economy worsened through the second half of 1972. Frustration among newly supportive groups threatened the coalition almost as soon as it appeared. Second, the new American majority was a Nixon majority, not necessarily a Republican majority. While Nixon won in a landslide, Americans continued the pattern begun in 1968 of dividing power—one party controlling the White House, the other the Congress, a situation that came to be known as divided governance. Voters who might support Nixon would not necessarily support other Republicans. Third, and closely related to the problem of a Nixon majority rather than a Republican majority, the Watergate scandal eroded Nixon’s power of governance, encouraged top administration officials to ignore domestic policy, and especially discouraged the newest converts to the new American majority. For Mexican Americans, the postelection letdown hit particularly hard. They were one of the most sought after constituencies and had done rather well during Nixon’s first term. But some of their greatest gains—appointments and funding for Spanish-speaking programs—suffered the cutbacks of economic necessity and political calculation after the election. With the crushing victory in 1972, Richard Nixon needed fewer allies, particularly on the margins of the middle. In addition, Nixon had concluded during his

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first term that the country was further to the right than he had thought; the middle was moving, and he determined to move with it. He became much less interested in expensive or “liberal” programs, especially once the Watergate story gained a national following. As the administration sank deeper into the troubled waters of investigation and controversy, only a few domestic programs could remain afloat. Hispanic policy was not one of them. The task of the new president, Gerald Ford, was to strengthen the party’s appeal and to repair the damage done during Watergate. With regard to Mexican Americans and Latinos in general, Ford’s task was particularly daunting; he knew little of the issues and people involved in federal efforts for the Spanish-speaking community. Ford’s commitment to party building, and his moderate stance on policy issues in general, led him to accept policies that within a decade would be unsupportable by most Republicans. Furthermore, even as the new president proved willing to continue Nixon’s outreach to Hispanics, the American political system was in transition. Congress sought to reclaim authority that it had relinquished to the executive branch over the course of decades. In the shadow of Vietnam and Watergate, the initiative on social-policy issues began to shift from the president and White House to administrative and regulatory agencies, congressional subcommittees, and federal courts. This shift opened new avenues for Latino influence through emerging lobby groups and MALDEF, even as it presented a new challenge to LULAC’s role in federal policy for Mexican Americans. The years 1973 and 1975 would see major victories for Spanishspeaking federal policy even as LULAC’s position in the movement, and the traditional arguments it had used to push for such policy, faced significant challenges.

Nixon’s Second Term Richard Nixon had decided to chart a new course prior to the 1972 election. During the preceding summer he instructed his cabinet officials to reverse the order to spend money—the economy simply could not handle continued stimulation from government spending—and the effects of a spending halt would not be felt before the fall election. Signs of the postelection environment were visible during 1972, but the effects of the cutbacks became more apparent after the election. Within hours of Nixon’s victory in November the administration purged over two hundred jobs in executive departments and agencies. During late 1972 the president vetoed nine appropriations bills, and George Schultz announced that the president would impound funds to protect the budget. The administration refused to spend more than $12 billion in appropriated funds, and federal purchases of goods and services actually declined in real numbers.2

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Among those hit particularly hard were programs for the Spanishspeaking, and critics were quick to protest administration actions. Representative Henry B. González (D-Tex.) criticized the administration for promises made before the election that went unfulfilled afterward, particularly the dismissal of Spanish-speaking officials hired prior to the election and the halting of grants to organizations such as SER. González compared the contract SER signed before the election with the telegram sent after the election telling SER not to take on new trainees, hire staff, or purchase equipment. González told the SER Board that “you have been used and you have been deceived and you have been lied to.”3 The congressman was a Democrat with a vested interest in identifying hypocrisy within the Republican administration, but others expressed similar frustrations. In an open letter to President Nixon, sent to the administration and published in the California LULAC newsletter, California state director Fidel González complained that Nixon’s “historic efforts of 1972 were solely for the purposes of insuring re-election” and that many Mexican Americans “believe that they have been duped.” Anne Armstrong, counselor to the president, reported having received similar expressions from nearly twenty organizations.4 Armstrong gained responsibility for Spanish-speaking affairs in early 1973, a result of the troubled history of the Cabinet Committee on Opportunities for the Spanish-Speaking (CCOSS).5 As liaison to both the cabinet committee and to the Spanish-speaking community and charged with providing streamlined oversight of Spanish-speaking affairs, Armstrong worked to keep the president’s attention on the problems of Mexican Americans and others. Mexican Americans generally appreciated her efforts, although some expressed resentment that an Anglo had the most direct responsibility for Hispanic issues.6 Representative of the struggle Armstrong faced was the rejection in late 1973 of her request to have the president attend a meeting of the CCOSS. Armstrong hoped, in light of the “rising anxieties among Hispanics over election rhetoric and post-November actions,” that Nixon would attend the meeting to “quell outside fears of a ‘loss of momentum.’”7 The rejection set the tone for the final two years of the Nixon regime. Spanishspeaking affairs continued to be of interest to the administration, but the president and his top aides were not involved or much interested. Armstrong kept in contact with Hispanic leaders, including a meeting in January, 1974. At that meeting, attended by nearly a dozen Hispanic leaders, including President Joe Benetes of LULAC national, seven of the nine commitments requested of Armstrong involved increased appointments of Hispanics and further meetings with administration officials.8 Top priorities for these leaders remained largely the same: they did not demand specific new programs but rather sought increased internal influence within federal policy-making bodies and further meetings to make their desires known-

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presumably, if history offers any guidance, their desires for more appointments to policy-making positions.

The New American Political System Lack of interest from the Nixon administration following the 1972 election was one of several obstacles that emerged for LULAC. Others included a shifting policy environment and internal organizational problems. The transition in the policy system had begun in the 1960s but reached its peak in the early 1970s. The election of Richard Nixon ushered in an era of divided government, in which the American electorate generally gave the White House to Republicans and Congress to Democrats. This preference coincided with what Hugh Davis Graham describes as “a deep, national shift in the American administrative state, beginning around 1960, away from the consolidation that followed the New Deal and World War II, and toward a regulatory apparatus that paradoxically combined disaggregation with growth and even greater intrusiveness by government.”9 The growth and greater intrusiveness by government resulted from the new model of social regulation. As Graham explains, the traditional regulatory model was economic; agencies such as the Interstate Commerce Commission, the Civil Aeronautics Board, and the Federal Trade Commission oversaw specific areas of market activity, made decisions on a case-bycase basis, and were invested with cease-and-desist authority to halt unfair practices. They operated like a judge in a two-party dispute, siding with one or the other. The new social regulation—including consumer safety, environmental protection, and worker health and safety—was more complex. Congress lacked the expertise in zero-sum policies of such regulation and invested regulatory agencies with the job of fulfilling “elaborate procedural directives” without the benefit of “clear substantive policies with definitions and standards.” The old economic regulatory model was vertical, with agencies overseeing particular industries such as railroads, airlines, banks, and so on. The new social regulation was horizontal, and agencies protected the environment, for example, from actions by a range of industries. Their authority was broad, whereas that of the economic agencies was narrow. Finally, economic regulation led agencies to require offenders to stop offending. Social regulation sought to prevent the offense to begin with. The Occupational Health and Safety Administration, for example, inspected workplaces to prevent injuries before they occurred. Civil rights policy, while initially focusing on the old economic regulatory model (force hotels and schools to stop segregating blacks), through the late 1960s and into the 1970s became more like the new social regulation (affirmative action, bilingual education).10 As a result, the agencies responsible for the new social and civil

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rights regulation used “notice and comment” rule making rather than cease-and-desist orders. They publicly proposed new rules in the Federal Register, accepted comments, held hearings, and issued revised rules. In effect, the agencies acted more like legislators than judges. Significantly, this shift gave increased authority to the least-political institutions of government—regulatory agencies, obscure congressional subcommittees, and courts, which tended to defer to agency expertise. In part, this was by design. Liberal reformers of the Nixon era sought to continue the trend, begun under Lyndon Johnson, of addressing quality-of-life concerns beyond the economic-security focus of the New Deal era. They sought to circumvent executive power and to increase centralized administration by the federal government; that is, they essentially wanted to protect and extend the Great Society despite the new Republican president. But this shift was not simply anti-Nixon. A second goal was to increase participation of “the people” in governmental administration to make government activity more legitimate in the antigovernment environment of the early 1970s. The role of public interest groups and lobby organizations rose significantly, as agencies and subcommittees sought their input.11 The most successful groups, such as MALDEF in the case of Mexican Americans, were often the least representative—organizations run by elites who did not necessarily have mass support. If this description was true of LULAC—and LULAC was certainly an organization of elites that spoke for a particular segment of the population—it was truer of MALDEF, an organization with no members at all, funded by a grant from a private foundation. Some scholars applaud this role for MALDEF, noting that MALDEF helped the Hispanic community overcome such long-standing problems as limited fiscal resources, a lack of skilled leadership, and “a constituency not always attuned to participatory democracy.”12 Others suggest that the gains of a system of elite organizations unaccountable to the community at large may not outweigh the costs to the group’s long-term political influence.13 In either case, as Sidney Milkis has written, “The triumph of administrative policy making, designed to strengthen citizen action, signified a distressing deterioration of representative democracy.”14 The advantage went to special interest groups with oligarchic leadership models funded either by outside sources and thus independent of memberships, or by mass membership drives to which supporters responded by writing a check and not interfering in the operation of the organization. The shift of initiative in social policy, particularly civil rights—from the White House to agencies, subcommittees, and courts—hit LULAC’s leadership model hard. LULAC had traditionally focused its efforts on negotiations with top officials; indeed, the history of LULAC’s engagement with federal policy is primarily one of engaging presidents and White House

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advisors. When the president was on the leading edge of policy innovation, as with antipoverty and civil rights during the 1960s, LULAC was one of the most influential Mexican American organizations. A challenge to the president’s leadership in policy making threatened LULAC’s leadership on behalf of Mexican Americans. That this shift occurred as Nixon came under fire for Watergate, and as an appointed vice president took over for the disgraced president, was particularly troubling.

Internal Problems LULAC also suffered from internal problems through the early 1970s. LULAC remained active in keeping the national office involved in federalpolicy discussions, and 1973 national president Joe Benetes focused particularly on LULAC’s national influence. Benetes, a public relations executive from Phoenix, sought to increase LULAC’s influence and income through a massive membership drive both to attract new and inactive members and to ease the financial burden of an organization dependent on membership dues. Under Benetes the organization invested in a professionally produced LULAC News, in office space and equipment, and in a full-time paid staff in anticipation of increased membership, activities, and income from dues. However, as Benjamin Márquez argues in his study of LULAC membership incentives, the membership drive proved unsuccessful. Márquez blames use of the same reformist ideology that LULAC had employed for years, and he suggests that the message of “integration and equal opportunity” played poorly among the LULAC middle-class membership of the early 1970s, especially when Benetes emphasized the similarities between middle-class Mexican Americans and Anglos.15 If middle-class Mexican Americans are so similar to middle-class Anglos, why get so involved in national politics? Why agitate? What would be gained if such equality were to be achieved? Those who thought more radical steps were necessary joined Chicano groups, which articulated a radically different identity from the Anglo mainstream, emphasized the discrepancies between Anglos and Chicanos, and questioned whether the Anglo world was worth joining. Those more committed to working the system for the good of Mexican Americans worked for MALDEF or for another interest group or in one of the growing number of federal and state agencies or offices that focused on Mexican American issues. Some, of course, became national leaders in membership organizations such as LULAC and the G.I. Forum, but fewer foot soldiers responded to the call to activate local councils and to pay increasing membership dues. Despite Benetes’s efforts, LULAC remained an organization of politically active and ambitious national and state leaders, distanced from a rankand-file membership with limited interest in activism and resentful of paying

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dues to fund the activities of the leadership. LULAC had existed with this tension for at least a decade, but in the early 1970s a more immediate problem emerged. The investments in equipment and staff under Benetes in anticipation of increased membership became liabilities when that increase in membership failed to materialize. LULAC found itself in debt for over $200,000. While the organization claimed a membership of over 240,000, it had insufficient funds to pay even a $10,000 debt settled out of court in 1975. The Internal Revenue Service put a lien on the properties of some of LULAC’s national leaders. Questions over internal controls of financial matters plagued the Benetes administration, as regional and state LULAC leaders requested detailed financial statements from the national office. The financial report at the national Supreme Council meeting in 1974 did little more than summarize the organization’s revenues and expenses, and the organization had no national treasurer.16 A related problem resulted from efforts to attract new sources of funding. In 1974 LULAC received nonprofit status for corporate grants and began to pursue such funding sources. Stipulations related to nonprofit status required separate management of the national organization and the donated funds. The advantage was that LULAC, with funds received from corporate grants, could expand its activity, particularly in education, without an added burden on the membership and on organization finances. The group established the LULAC Foundation in 1974 to solicit and distribute corporate grants to its chosen causes, but the foundation became a bureaucratic nightmare. The costs of fundraising ran high, and the foundation actually ran a deficit through the 1970s. Competition and internal squabbles between the national office and the officials of the foundation became commonplace.17 In addition to corporate grants, LULAC increased its pursuit of government grants. LULAC followed its long interest in education to incorporate the LULAC National Education Service Centers (LNESC) with an initial $2 million grant from the Office of Economic Opportunity in early 1973. These regional centers, located in eleven cities across the country and overseen by a board of directors (made up of a group of LULAC members of good standing), focused on promoting education programs for the Spanishspeaking, on creating interest in education among the Spanish speaking, on granting scholarships for higher education, and on providing counseling services for students. By the end of 1974 the centers had worked with over sixteen thousand students and distributed almost $5 million to over five thousand students. However, divisions emerged within the LULAC structure over the control and direction of the programs. Most significant was the struggle between Benetes, who as national president was technically the grantee in receipt of funds for LNESC, and Tony Bonilla, chairman of the board of LNESC. Bonilla questioned the financial accounting and use of funds in the

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national office and insisted that he would do what was necessary to “assure the success of this program without the arbitrary interference of any LULAC official, regardless of how high his standing.”18 The combination of the failure of the membership drive, the organizational debt, and accusations of improper use of funds led the LULAC Supreme Council to indict Benetes, and the general assembly removed him from office in 1975. LULAC’s internal problems reveal two things relative to its involvement in federal policy. First, the leadership remained more active in reform and advocacy than the general membership, which put pressure on resources and required the move toward government, corporate, and foundation grants. The leadership fought over control as the bureaucracy grew, but they all agreed on the need to seek outside funding to remain active. Second, LULAC retained its name recognition and influence, especially among government agencies but also increasingly among corporations and foundations. It was recognized as a leading Mexican American organization committed to improving the community, and it continued to receive funds even as its membership dropped and its branches fought for control. Benjamin Márquez argues that LULAC was largely irrelevant by the 1970s. That may be true with regard to community mobilization, but LULAC had, for at least a decade by then, been an organization run by a small leadership without much interference from the general membership—beyond the limits of income. Leaders such as Benetes could struggle with others within the LULAC umbrella and come under fire for questionable financial practices and still be the voice of LULAC at a meeting with the president of the United States or in a newspaper article on Mexican American issues. LULAC was still recognized in the policy arena as an influential organization that had to be taken seriously. It was not LULAC’s irrelevance within the Mexican American community that limited its influence in the national policy arena in the mid1970s. Changes in the policy environment required new approaches to Washington, while the LULAC leadership struggled to raise sufficient funds to operate a professional staff and take advantage of those changes. Internal problems limited the organization’s ability to change with the policy system. This became increasingly apparent as Nixon left the White House and handed the reigns of executive power to an appointed vice president.

A Time to Heal: The Ford Administration Gerald Ford took over the presidency determined to restore Americans’ faith in the government. He dubbed his tenure as president “a time to heal” and sought reconciliation and cooperation between the political parties and among the branches of government. Several problems, however, plagued

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his goal. First, Ford enjoyed virtually none of the three-month transition usually afforded a new president. He had been appointed vice president by Nixon after Spiro Agnew resigned and thus never had the national forum of a campaign season with which to develop an agenda for national policy. In fact, he had never campaigned nationally; he had been elected to office only by the voters of Michigan’s Fifth Congressional District. Second, the 1974 midterm elections brought to Washington a cadre of “Watergate babies”— Democrats elected to Congress in reaction against the abuses of the Republican Nixon administration. Ford faced not just a Democratic Congress but one reenergized and committed to regaining some of the congressional prerogatives that had been transferred to the executive branch over the previous decade.19 Third, Ford’s decision to pardon Richard Nixon eroded much of the goodwill Americans felt for the president trying to steer the nation through its greatest constitutional crisis since the Civil War. With the pardon came suspicions that Ford had made a deal to become vice president. President Ford was a largely unknown entity facing a hostile Congress and a skeptical American public. Ford’s career as a Republican member of Congress and minority leader of the House of Representatives trained him to forge compromises and to make deals rather than to execute policy and to sell the American people on it. His loyalties rested with the Republican party, and A. James Reichley, in his study of the Nixon and Ford administrations, identifies Ford as a “stalwart” Republican loyal to the party and its progressive tradition on civil rights, interested in maintaining the status quo, opposed to expansion of the welfare state, but not intent on returning to the status quo ante.20 Loyalty to party included a willingness to work with the opposition. His effectiveness in the House rested in his ability to work with a majority opposition party. As president in 1974 Ford faced a particular challenge, however. He had to work both with aggressive liberal Democrats and with conservative Republicans circling the wagons after Watergate. Ford’s effort to steer a course between the two led, in the words of historian John Robert Greene, “to a feeling that the administration had no rudder.”21 The president failed to articulate a broad vision for where his administration would take America. He admitted in his memoir that if “‘vision’ is to be defined as inspirational rhetoric describing how this or that new government program will better the human condition in the next sixty days, then I’ll have to confess I didn’t have it.”22 Despite the lack of a clear vision for America, Ford remained committed to the outreach politics that Nixon had employed. To stem the hemorrhage from Watergate, the Ford team attempted to broaden the appeal of the Republican party by creating a plausible two-party system for minorities. Disaffection with the Democrats, particularly in the wake of the Mc-

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Govern debacle in 1972, made a second alternative viable. To this end Ford continued Nixon’s pre-1972 move toward minorities. For example, Ford appointed Nelson Rockefeller vice president. The liberal Republican accepted the appointment when Ford promised him control over domestic policy comparable to that of Henry Kissinger over foreign policy. Rockefeller hailed from the liberal wing of the Republican party and would have a significant liberalizing influence on the administration. However, as Greene describes it, domestic policy under Ford became primarily an exercise in crisis management. The president never used the Domestic Policy Council to “organize policy around long-range planning,” but rather responded to one political brush fire after another, relying on the council to “staff out issues” and “make recommendations” on how to manage the latest crisis.23 Additionally, power struggles emerged between those loyal to Ford, those loyal to Rockefellar, and those loyal to Nixon (whom the Ford faithful referred to as “Praetorians,” after the Romans who guarded the emperor), as well as between Rockefeller and Donald Rumsfeld, Ford’s chief of staff.24 The Domestic Policy Council under Rockefeller would not move Republican social policy forcefully to the left, but the vice president and his staff must have influenced some leaning within the administration. Ford still hoped to reach out to disaffected minorities and to forge a coalition of his own for 1976, and to that end he continued the balancing act between electoral needs and party-line policy that Nixon had practiced for the 1972 election. For example, he instructed federal departments and agencies to employ affirmative action, without preferences, for the hiring of minorities.25 He also held a series of meetings with representatives of “special groups” to discuss policy goals and group needs. Among those “special groups” were Spanish-speaking Americans.

The Spanish Speaking Bloc As part of its larger effort to expand the Republican base, the Ford team moved to reverse the neglect of Spanish-speaking issues that occurred during the Watergate years. Nixon’s advisors had recommended a presidential special assistant for Hispanic affairs, in part as a way to end congressional oversight of the CCOSS. Ford’s administration in particular needed help with the Spanish-speaking community, and in 1974 the president created an Office of Hispanic Affairs under the direction of Anne Armstrong and appointed the first special assistant for Hispanic affairs shortly thereafter. The administration turned to Fernando De Baca, who had grown up in Albuquerque and received a degree in public administration from the University of New Mexico. His government service in New Mexico had included the positions of special assistant to the governor, district tax director, and com-

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missioner of the New Mexico State Department of Motor Vehicles. De Baca had then moved into federal employment as special assistant to the chairman of the U.S. Civil Service Commission and as a regional director of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.26 De Baca believed that Nixon had dropped the ball with regard to Hispanics in 1973 and 1974, and he urged Ford to reach out to this growing constituency to regain the momentum Nixon had achieved prior to the 1972 election.27 De Baca soon found, however, that he faced a difficult task in the Ford White House. The previous two presidents hailed from states with large numbers of Mexican Americans—Johnson from Texas and Nixon from California. Both presidents claimed to understand the problems of Mexican Americans and used their backgrounds to claim some affinity with Hispanic voters. Ford came from Michigan. To his credit, he readily admitted his lack of familiarity with Spanish-speaking issues and asked for guidance. This led to an increased workload within the administration for De Baca, who continually had to remind White House and cabinet staff of the existence of Spanish-speaking issues.28 Hispanic organizations would not allow Ford to forget they existed. They had met with Vice President Ford in April 1974, when Nixon could not be bothered. The new president had barely moved into the Oval Office when Hispanic leaders criticized the administration for lack of attention. They had hoped to jump-start the administration and reverse the trend of indifference that had grown through the last two years under Nixon. Eight leaders of major organizations, including Joe Benetes, national LULAC president, Pete Villa, national director of SER and former LULAC national president, and Raúl Yzaguirre, head of the National Council of La Raza (NCLR), combined their voices to provide the Washington Post with an early critique of the Ford administration. This was double the number of organizations that had led the walkout at Albuquerque. They complained that Ford was following Nixon’s lead by ignoring Mexican Americans.29 Furthermore, George Bush, head of the Republican National Committee (RNC), passed to the White House correspondence he received from Ford critics. Of particular concern was the charge that Ford catered to African American leaders but ignored Mexican Americans and other Hispanics.30 Bush emphasized Mexican American resentment in the Southwest that they continued to be left out of efforts to improve the lot of disadvantaged Americans. Although in control of the White House, Republicans were vulnerable in areas of the Southwest and had to take such resentment seriously. Ford’s personal reputation and career record could not by themselves distance his administration from the frustrations caused by Nixon’s final years. To extend the bridges Nixon began building with ethnic Americans, the new president met with his former colleagues in Congress and with

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Spanish-speaking leaders during the first months of his presidency. In those meetings Ford followed Nixon’s approach by highlighting Republican efforts for the Spanish speaking: the OMBE program, efforts to hire Hispanics to government jobs, and his proclamation declaring the week of September 15 “National Hispanic Heritage Week.” Ford also formally introduced De Baca as special assistant for Hispanic affairs. Finally, he noted that in his limited experience with Hispanics he was impressed with their religious devotion and family life—an observation, which Ford left implicit, that suggested an affinity with the Republican party.31 These were goodwill meetings, and little of substance occurred. They served to demonstrate, however, the dynamics of the Spanish-speaking lobby. Even though De Baca complained that no substantive proposals emerged,32 the number of involved groups had grown considerably. In 1966 four organizations led the walkout at Albuquerque, and only a half-dozen Mexican American leaders met with Johnson at the White House. In 1974 representatives of twelve groups, several Hispanic businessmen, and a number of state officeholders attended the meeting with Ford. But as the number of organizations and the influence of the Spanish speaking in general increased, the influence of any one group decreased accordingly. LULAC national president Joe Benetes clearly recognized the dilution of LULAC’s influence. Elected in 1973, Benetes hoped to increase LULAC’s involvement in federal programs and develop a greater role for LULAC in national policy. The LULAC president had requested a meeting with Ford some weeks earlier and was told that he would be invited to participate at the larger meeting of Spanish-speaking leaders. Benetes preferred a smaller gathering, perhaps a group of three to five rather than fifteen to twenty. He did not want to exclude the other groups from participation in federal policy; quite the contrary, he sought to work with a strong Hispanic coalition. But Benetes clearly preferred a two-tiered process, whereby a few top leaders would work with the administration to formulate clear policy objectives, then work with a large coalition to achieve those goals.33 Benetes may have desired to be one of the select few to develop Spanishspeaking federal policy, but he knew that LULAC was no longer one of only a handful of reputable organizations viewed favorably by Washington. LULAC had enjoyed significant success with local and even state issues in Texas and the Southwest, but it had never influenced federal policy makers by itself. Benetes and LULAC had to accept their role as one of the reputable Mexican American organizations within the larger Spanish-speaking coalition. In many ways LULAC followed the path of the NAACP, which lost the initiative in civil rights during the 1960s as new groups came to the fore.34 The NAACP retained an esteemed place in coalition efforts because of its long history and stunning successes, particularly the 1954 Brown v. Board

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Supreme Court decision, and in the triumphal years of civil rights policy transformation between 1954 and 1968. LULAC, too, maintained an esteemed place among policy makers for its long history of fighting for Mexican American rights. However, LULAC never gained the inside-the-beltway experience of the NAACP. It had never been as well connected in national policy-making circles. It had no Brown case of its own, at least not in the national consciousness. Lyndon Johnson knew of LULAC from his experience in Texas, and Nixon appealed to LULAC as the most likely to join the new American majority. But the records of the Ford administration reveal no particular appeal to LULAC among the myriad Spanish-speaking organizations clamoring for attention. At meetings the LULAC president sat as close to the president as any Mexican American leader but curried no special favor among policy makers. Benetes accepted, however reluctantly, this reduced stature for LULAC and supported a major coalition effort among Spanish-speaking groups. In the aftermath of the meeting with Ford in October, 1974, more than fifty Mexican American, Cuban, and Puerto Rican organizations established the Forum of National Hispanic Organizations (FNHO). The group represented a wide range of interests, from general civic organizations such as LULAC and the G.I. Forum, to more particular organizations such as the Chicano Studies Program of the University of Texas at El Paso, the Association of Cuban-American Government Employees, the Puerto Rican Engineers and Scientists Society, and the Association of Psychologists for La Raza.35 The FNHO resembled a Hispanic version of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR). The LCCR represented a breadth of groups united to promote civil rights concerns, among them the interests of African Americans, women, labor groups, and religious organizations. The LCCR, however, had a professional staff in Washington and a substantial budget to carry out its lobbying efforts, while the FNHO represented a loose coalition of organizations whose influence was unproved. Seven years after the Albuquerque walkout, these groups retained a concern that policy makers neglected Hispanics in favor of African Americans, and only a few FNHO members joined the LCCR.36 The FNHO sought the support of other organizations on specific issues, including the broader civil-rights movement and local and state officeholders, so that Washington would hear “from both the Spanish-speaking community and the majority sector.”37 But only Spanishspeaking groups became members, and only Spanish-speaking issues made the FNHO’s agenda. The unity of Hispanic groups represented one of a constellation of circumstances that led the Ford administration to make an exception to the Republican party line promoting the New Federalism—block grants, reduced federal mandates, and less categorical aid. First, hostile Democrats in Congress, assisted at times by Supreme Court decisions, sought to expand 168

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federal protections for the disadvantaged and complete the work begun under Lyndon Johnson. Second, the electoral needs of both President Ford and Republican members of Congress from the Southwest led them to support, or at least acquiesce to, efforts to extend federal protections to the Spanish speaking. Third, the better organized and united Spanish-speaking lobby, now led by MALDEF’s professional staff and including Latinos appointed to positions in the growing federal bureaucracy for Spanish-speaking issues, worked with De Baca to keep their concerns on the minds of policy makers. The combination of these circumstances led to the emergence of two prime issues for Spanish-speaking policy: mandated bilingual education and voting rights for language minorities. Previous efforts at a Spanish-speaking policy revolved around appointments, funding for existing programs, and recognition—relatively cheap and noncontroversial commodities in Washington. Success in those efforts facilitated action on the new demands, which had greater potential for immediate policy payoffs. As with other advances in minority rights after the late 1960s, Congress, agencies, and the Supreme Court led the way. The administration’s response and implementation would determine how deeply these advances became embedded in accepted federal policy.

Mandated Bilingual Education Between 1968, when Senator Ralph Yarborough’s bilingual education bill became law, and 1973, when Congress held hearings on extending the program, an important shift in emphasis had taken place. The priority for many Mexican American education advocates had shifted from desegregation to bilingual education. LULAC had been at the forefront of the older emphasis on desegregation since the 1930s. The goal was to have Mexican American children treated as other children, not singled out or removed from regular classrooms. Limits to that approach became evident when school districts considered Mexican American children to be white, then assigned them to classrooms with blacks to create “integrated” schools. As education historian Guadalupe San Miguel, Jr., has written, when bilingual education became a federal program, and as advocates could hope to gain federal assistance with educational goals in the name of civil rights, “proponents of bilingual education began to transform bilingual education from a minor curricular innovation aimed at teaching English only into a major reform aimed at introducing the non-English languages of lowstatus groups into the public schools.” San Miguel quotes leading Mexican American educator José Cardenas in his observation that “Hispanic interest in desegregation cases . . . has gone beyond pupil assignment plans and into instructional practices.”38 This does not mean that desegregation efforts ceased. In fact, the cause 169

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of desegregation for Mexican Americans reached a legal climax in the 1973 Supreme Court decision in Keyes v. School District No. 1.39 In that Denver, Colorado, case, the Supreme Court ruled that since the Denver school district practiced racial segregation in part of the large urban district, it had to implement a district-wide desegregation plan. The court had already made a similar ruling in Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg in 1971, but in Keyes it extended the reach of desegregation rulings well outside the South.40 Keyes has an additional significance, because the Mexican American population of Denver outnumbered the black population almost two-toone. To sort out the desegregation question, which had been raised by the NAACP on behalf of black parents in Denver, the court considered Mexican Americans part of the minority that suffered segregation rather than part of the majority white population. It did so based on a Civil Rights Commission finding that Mexican Americans did not experience the same benefits from public education that Anglo children experienced; the commission never considered how the Mexican American experience compared to that of blacks. Once blacks and Mexican Americans were combined, the evidence showed that parts of the district had a majority of these minorities, while the rest of the district was overwhelmingly nonminority. As a result of Keyes, Mexican Americans became, legally, an identifiable minority group. Thus the court included Mexican Americans in the city’s desegregation plan. Anglo performance set the standard, a group not reaching that standard was an identifiable minority group. Identifiable minority groups received the same remedy-desegregated schools, which generally meant being bused to schools with larger numbers of Anglos. Other cases would have to consider if attending schools with Anglos solved the problems of struggling Mexican American students; that question was not a desegregation question. The court therefore applied the remedy established for blacks in the Jim Crow South to blacks and Mexican Americans in the urban West, even though three-fourths of Mexican Americans in Denver opposed busing. Perhaps that is why MALDEF took no part in the case until it had already been decided.41 The Keyes decision focused exclusively on desegregation, as the Supreme Court ignored any unique problems that might face Mexican Americans because of language or culture. Congress and the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW), meanwhile, basically side-stepped the segregation question for Mexican Americans and instead focused on language status in shaping Mexican American policies. The Office for Civil Rights (OCR) in HEW never rigorously enforced its 1970 memorandum regarding discrimination against language-minority students; it was known for issuing rulings it did not have the resources to fully enforce.42 But the memorandum clearly connected language ability and civil right protections.

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In 1974 the policy received a boost when the Supreme Court validated OCR’s coverage of language-minority students under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. In Lau v. Nichols, a class-action suit filed on behalf of nonEnglish-speaking Chinese students in San Francisco, the court found that “there is no equality of treatment merely by providing students with the same facilities, textbooks, teachers, and curriculum; for students who do not understand English are effectively foreclosed from any meaningful education.”43 MALDEF, LULAC, and the American G.I. Forum filed a brief, as did the Nixon administration, in support of the Chinese children. Administration officials Robert Bork and Stanley Pottinger argued before the court on behalf of the plaintiffs. The Supreme Court rejected the constitutional argument that language instruction is a right protected under the U.S. Constitution; but it accepted the statutory argument requiring language instruction under the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In his opinion Justice Douglas used the 1970 OCR memorandum (issued by Pottinger) to require the San Francisco school district to provide special assistance to the Chinese children. The finding required no proof of intent to discriminate; the impact on the schoolchildren was sufficient to prove discrimination and require remedy. The court did not specify how the school district should help the students and, in fact, recognized that several approaches might satisfy Title VI requirements.44 In this respect, the court preferred to validate the move by OCR to bring language-minority students under civil rights coverage rather than to delve into specific pedagogical issues. Local school districts could still choose how to remedy the civil rights violations, while the court and the OCR required only that some remedy be employed to protect students’ rights. This use of the Constitution and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, John Skrentny has argued, conflated race and language, rendering them equal for purposes of finding discrimination, thus taking civil rights policy for the Spanish-speaking in new directions.45 The largest population to benefit from Lau would undoubtedly be people of Mexican heritage. The Nixon administration supported the cause of language minorities, giving it a track record for civil rights to counter its reputation from the busing controversies and Supreme Court nominees. The shift in emphasis from desegregation to bilingual education had different implications for LULAC, the G.I. Forum, and similar organizations. Those older groups began relinquishing their accustomed leadership of initiatives in education on behalf of Mexican Americans, an issue that they had championed for decades. As courts, subcommittees, and agencies became the locations of the fight, and as professional advocacy groups and education experts emerged to lobby, draft lawsuits, and negotiate deals, LULAC and the G.I. Forum most often lent their names and prestige to the cause without playing a major role. For

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example, while several leaders of LULAC were invited to offer testimony at the 1967 hearings on bilingual education, when Congress began to consider renewal of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) and the bilingual-education program in 1973, professional educators and experts from Chicano studies departments at major universities and from the federal offices and agencies created by the initial legislation dominated the witness lists. Gone were the representatives of civic organizations such as LULAC and the G. I. Forum, groups with a long-standing interest in education for Mexican Americans but with no education experts among their leaderships. As San Miguel notes, between 1950 and 1960 there were fifteen desegregation cases filed, all by either LULAC or the American G.I. Forum. For the thirteen cases filed between 1969 and 1971, neither LULAC nor the G.I. Forum was the principal initiator.46 After years of insisting that federal policy makers acknowledge the unique problems of Mexican Americans, LULAC was largely unable to lead the policy debates of the early 1970s that engaged Mexican Americans on such terms. The shift to specialized interest groups and professional lobbies, along with its own internal problems, limited LULAC’s effectiveness. The group could join briefs written by MALDEF lawyers, thus contributing its name and prestige to the cause, but was no longer in a position to shape or criticize the direction of Spanish-speaking policy. That direction continued to move toward federal influence over educational practices. Under Lau school districts still had discretion over pedagogy, but the climate was changing. The arguments over instruction of language-minority students had changed since the 1968 Bilingual Education Act and the 1970 OCR memorandum. A few witnesses at the 1967 hearings had noted the advantages of bilingual-bicultural education for all students (a pedagogical argument), but congressional intent and most of the testimony focused on bilingual education as a means to remedy discrimination (a civil rights argument). By 1973, when Congress began to consider renewal of ESEA and the bilingual education program, the pedagogy of bicultural education had moved to the forefront of much of the testimony. Those hearings highlighted two main, and opposing, arguments in favor of bilingualbicultural education. The first argument, which followed the logic of Brown v. Board in considering the effect of segregation on student self-esteem, insisted that children whose cultural heritage remained irrelevant to classroom instruction develop feelings of inferiority and are likely to drop out of school before graduation. As a practical measure, bicultural education would improve the performance and attendance of cultural-minority children. By implication, staying in school ultimately would result in better acculturation to the mainstream of American life.47 The second argument rested on the cultural nationalism of the Chicano movement. Supporters of this argument saw no reason for a child of an Hispanic cultural

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background to be educated under the assumptions of any other cultural heritage. Proponents of this position desired schools that would reinforce Spanish-speaking children’s language and culture, in some cases whether or not the children ever entered into the mainstream or, in fact, ever learned English. Both positions made the pedagogical claim that schools should use a bilingual-bicultural approach rather than English as a Second Language (ESL) to teach non-English-speaking children, because ESL programs generally followed immersion techniques and rarely incorporated a student’s native language.48 The Supreme Court, in Lau v. Nichols, did not specify a remedy for the Chinese children in San Francisco, but the decision drove both Congress and the administration to reconsider national-education and civil rights policy. Congress, which had already held hearings on renewal of the ESEA, passed the Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974. Focused primarily on the issue of busing for desegregation, the Equal Educational Opportunities Act included an amendment from the floor that essentially codified the 1970 OCR memorandum and the Lau decision, thus requiring school districts to help overcome any language barriers that might prevent students from participating equally in educational programs. Like Lau, it did not specify a remedy but, rather, “afforded affirmative relief ” to students who were “effectively harmed by English-only instruction, regardless of whether they were victims of intentional discrimination.” This effectively extended the OCR memo and the Lau decision to all schools, whether or not they received federal funds.49 Congress also approved the Bilingual Education Act of 1974, which amended Title VII of the ESEA. This act reflected new philosophies among supporters of bilingual education. The new act had three important developments in bilingual education law. First, in addition to maintaining the federal role in bilingual education through demonstration programs, the act also provided for federal funding of teacher education, curricula building, and research. Second, while the act retained the goal of transition to English, it also allowed for the goal of linguistic and cultural maintenance in these programs. Third, the act defined bilingual education; federally funded programs must include native language instruction and cultural enrichment.50 The act also eliminated the poverty focus, thus opening the programs to all students. Lau v. Nichols also gave HEW some leverage in its continuing struggle with White House critics of bilingual education. While different positions existed within HEW—some favored transitional bilingual education while others advocated cultural maintenance—both supported bilingual education, though the Office of Management and Budget continually opposed it. Prior to Lau, the Nixon administration proposed a simple one-year extension of Title VII as an exception to revenue sharing on education.51 In the

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context of Lau and of the Watergate crisis engulfing the White House, HEW undersecretary Frank Carlucci and OMB officials wrangled over Carlucci’s upcoming congressional testimony. Ultimately, OMB could not continue to oppose any federal role in bilingual education, but it did manage to reduce budget requests. In the final analysis Carlucci’s testimony put the administration behind bilingual education, at least to a greater extent than its previous position of simple extension of Title VII, while admitting that the administration would not meet all the financial costs of bilingual-bicultural education. And, as was Carlucci’s own preference, the administration supported transitional bilingual education rather than cultural maintenance.52 Gerald Ford took over the office of the President on August 9, 1974. Within two weeks he signed H.R. 69, the Education Amendments of 1974, which included a new Title VII, the Bilingual Education Act of 1974. OMB had urged a veto, arguing that bilingual education had not been found effective and that the bill allowed Congress to intervene internally in the Office of Education. HEW recommended signing the bill into law, and Ford sided with the department. He did not mention bilingual education in his signing statements and included among his reservations congressional involvement in the administration of laws and increased funding during a time of inflation.53 In his meeting with Spanish-speaking leaders, Ford admitted his ignorance of many of their concerns, and the unanimity of Mexican American and Spanish-speaking organizations gave him few options if he hoped to engage them during his administration. Congress and the presidency had to reconsider their positions in the wake of Lau v. Nichols, but the most significant effect of the case was the emboldened efforts of the OCR. While Congress and the Supreme Court refused to specify pedagogical remedies, the OCR moved into education policy making in the name of civil rights enforcement.54 In 1975, the OCR issued a memorandum to help school districts comply with Lau.55 The guidelines, developed by a task force of bilingual educators, lawyers, and representatives of language-minority groups (but not leaders of LULAC or the American G.I. Forum) restricted to three the programs that school districts could use to comply with Lau: transitional bilingual education (TBE), bilingual-bicultural education, and multilingual-multicultural education. All three used the child’s native language in instruction. TBE was to be applied only until the child could function in English, while the other two continued in order to make children “fully functional” in two or more languages or cultures. The guidelines considered any one or combination of these three methods acceptable, but they explicitly rejected ESL because it did not use the student’s native language. The OCR had a dual commitment. It wanted to enforce the Lau decision through bilingual education, and it also wanted to continue desegregation Both TBE and bilingual-bicultural programs,

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however, often entailed separating children based on English-language proficiency. The OCR therefore outlawed ESL and let school districts decide how best to use the three acceptable methods to comply with the goals of both desegregation and the Lau decision.56 To enforce the guidelines the OCR stepped up its own enforcement effort. During 1975–76, the OCR investigated more than three hundred districts under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act for their neglect of the needs of non-English-speaking children. During 1973–74, OCR had investigated only seventy-two. In addition, federal courts used the OCR guidelines to develop their own remedies in suits filed against school districts under Title VI.57 HEW officials believed they were logically extending the protection of minorities called for by Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. HEW could expand the meaning of Pottinger’s 1970 memo, and Congress could expand the federal role in bilingual-bicultural education. Expansion was possible because support came from across the spectrum of Spanish-speaking groups, and Congress was justified by the Supreme Court. Ultimately, an administrative agency (OCR) under the Republican administrations of Nixon and Ford mandated particular education remedies for the Spanish speaking (along with three other chosen language-minority groups). LULAC had long supported bilingual education, but elements of the new emphasis could contradict the organization’s larger goals. Some proponents of bilingual-bicultural programs cared little if Mexican American students joined the mainstream of American society. The new emphasis on pedagogy opened the way for federal policy to be used as a means of cultural retention rather than as a remedy for past exclusion or a gateway to active participation in the political and economic mainstream. Several factors, however, combined to continue LULAC’s support for bilingual-bicultural programs even as proposed by professional educators. First, LULAC, MALDEF, and the American G.I. Forum faced a potential contradiction in their support for bilingual education as a remedy for past discrimination, since bilingual education only for non-English speakers could work against desegregation if schools placed students in special classes or programs to teach them English. Over the years, Mexican Americans had confronted many schools that defended segregation on the basis of language ability. To protect desegregation efforts and also assist non-English-speaking students, the organizations accepted bilingual-bicultural education within the curriculum as a whole, rather than in special classes such as ESL that kept Mexican American students separate from regular classes. The concern for desegregation helped these groups to accept pedagogical stipulations to prevent school districts from using language ability to segregate Mexican American children. In addition to preventing resegregation, some elements of the argument for bicultural education simply struck a chord with LULAC leaders.

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The history of the education of Mexican Americans in Texas was one of intimidation and humiliation for students who spoke little English. At best, Spanish-speaking students fell behind others and had to repeat first grade until they had acquired sufficient English skills to pass. At worst, teachers punished students for speaking Spanish, even on the playground. In some schools the poor performance of Spanish-speaking children relegated them to classes for the mentally retarded.58 In their 1967 testimony before Senator Ralph Yarborough’s subcommittee, LULAC leaders described their own experiences in Texas schools, where they were humiliated for speaking Spanish and for their Hispanic heritage.59 Federal recognition of the validity of a student’s cultural heritage resonated with these men. Cultural retention programs might, in some cases, work against LULAC’s stated ideological goals of inclusion in the mainstream, but bilingual-bicultural programs also might counter the denigration of Mexican heritage that LULAC leaders had experienced in their own schooling. Furthermore, one of the statistics that most troubled LULAC leaders was the high dropout rate for Mexican American schoolchildren. If the proponents of bicultural education were right, students would be more inclined to stay in school if the curriculum acknowledged their cultural heritage. If students stayed in school, they would learn more (including English) and stand a better chance of contributing to, and functioning in, the American mainstream. For their primary goal of keeping students in school, LULAC leaders could believe that a school that promoted cultural retention might be better than one that punished it. LULAC also continued to support federal efforts in bilingual education because it was loath to do anything that might weaken the federal commitment to Mexican American issues. In addition to accepting bicultural programs because they might keep Mexican American students in school, LULAC leaders hoped to fund their own programs through Title VII of the ESEA. Opposition to bicultural programs might provide the administration or members of Congress the opportunity to weaken the federal commitment to government funding under Title VII. Through the early 1970s Jake Rodriguez, the executive director of LULAC’s promotional effort for the Texas preschool program (the descendant of the Little School of 400), continued to pursue Title VII money to publicize the Texas preschool program. Furthermore, LULAC’s nonprofit corporations, most notably the LNESC, depended on federal money for their operations. LNESC obtained funding from the OEO to help Mexican American students pursue postsecondary education, including counseling and financial aid services.60 The fiscal crisis of the early 1970s made all government funding precious, and any weakening of support for federal aid to education for non-English-speaking students held potentially disastrous consequences for LULAC’s operations.

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Richard Nixon had considered mandated bilingual education for political purposes, which fit the wild-card president’s confusing civil-rights positions. Gerald Ford’s White House was largely on the sidelines of the maneuvers regarding the Lau decision. That was largely the result of the increased authority of agencies and offices, as the OCR expanded the government’s civil-rights protections for language minorities, including unprecedented influence over educational practices in the classroom. The Ford administration accepted mandated bilingual education because the support of groups such as LULAC and the American G.I. Forum alongside that of MALDEF and Chicano advocates gave it little choice. If groups most likely to vote Republican, such as LULAC leaders and members, had opposed the expansion of bilingual-bicultural education policy, the Nixon and Ford administrations and Republican members of Congress would have had less reason to support or even accept the policy. Their goal was to attract Mexican Americans to the Republican fold, and they supported policies they deemed useful for that purpose. The rise of the Chicano nationalists, and LULAC’s vehement reaction against the nationalism and separatism called for by Corky Gonzales and José Ángel Gutiérrez, might suggest that LULAC leaders would oppose, or at least fail to support, bilingual education as a means maintaining culture and language. Put in such stark terms, they might well have. But the complexity and ambiguity of bilingual-education issues, the failure of legislators to define terms clearly, the varied uses to which bilingual education could be put, and the history of education discrimination in Texas and the Southwest all combined to assure LULAC’s support for bilingual education and for a strong federal role in its funding and implementation. In eight years the federal government had gone from having no bilingual education policy to having one that emphasized voluntary experimental programs financed with federal funds, to a court-supported, Title VI–regulated, OCR-enforced bilingual-bicultural program, with the burden of proof placed on school districts to show that their policies (if not bilingual/bicultural) sufficed to remedy discrimination against the culturally disadvantaged—defined differently over time but generally as those for whom English was a second language (regardless of the student’s facility in English). Advocates of cultural retention viewed these developments as a victory. Given its history of working for educational advantages for Mexican Americans, LULAC could hardly avoid viewing these developments as a long-awaited success. But changes in the policy stream and the specialization in the advocacy of education resulted in a LULAC that followed and supported the cause, but which did not have the position of leadership on Mexican American issues or the influence with federal policy makers to which it was accustomed.

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Voting Rights When Ralph Yarborough introduced a bilingual education bill in Congress in 1967, few could foresee the implications for federal policy that would emerge by 1975. The bill had a relatively easy ride, overshadowed by larger debates over the federal role in education. Similarly, when Congress began debating extension of the Voting Rights Act in late 1974, the major political question was whether to extend its most controversial provisions to the entire nation, not whether to cover the Spanish speaking. President Johnson had signed the original voting rights law in 1965, after he drove the Civil Rights Act through Congress and resoundingly defeated Barry Goldwater in the 1964 presidential election. Johnson turned his attention to voting rights, stating in his 1965 State of the Union message that he would oppose “every obstacle to the right and the opportunity to vote [emphasis added].”61 The administration set out to draft legislation to counter the discriminatory voting practices in southern states, including literacy tests and other devices, and to allow for both temporary federal intervention and an eventual return to normal federal-state relations. Furthermore, any proposal had to prove acceptable to a coalition of liberals and non-southern conservatives and to pass constitutional muster.62 While officials in the Justice Department debated early drafts of the bill, violence against blacks in Selma, Alabama, where Martin Luther King, Jr., was leading protests against black disfranchisement, led Johnson to hasten the drafting of the bill for introduction in Congress. The final bill, sent to Congress two days after Johnson addressed a joint session on May 15, contained two controversial sections to end voting rights discrimination. Section 4 lifted all educational requirements for voting in states and counties that had used a literacy test and in which less than 50 percent of the votingage population had cast ballots in the 1964 presidential election. That automatic trigger, which did not mention race, applied to all or parts of Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia. Section 5 precluded those states or counties from changing their election laws (and thus subverting section 4) without the approval of either the liberal federal district court for the District of Columbia or the U.S. Attorney General. The automatic trigger, however, did not apply to fourteen non-southern states that had literacy requirements for voting.63 The Voting Rights Act of 1965, approved by a vote of 328 to 74 in the House and 79 to 18 in the Senate, clearly targeted voting discrimination against blacks in the South, without addressing other forms of discrimination throughout the nation. Only the most egregious violations of voting rights could justify such unprecedented federal intervention in state and local voting practices. Johnson and Congress wanted a particular fix for a particular problem.

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The Voting Rights Act initially had a five-year authorization. When the act came up for renewal in 1970, some conservatives sought to expand the special provisions to the entire nation to make the act widely unpopular and, thus, to hasten its demise. To enhance their “Southern Strategy,” the Nixon administration sought to ban literacy tests nationwide and not just in states covered by the automatic trigger. This would remove the stigma from the South as the only covered region, appease southern conservatives indignant over federal intervention, and enhance the civil rights protection of the act to all fifty states. It also sought an end to the preclearance provision, by which covered states had to gain federal approval for changes to their voting laws. Nixon successfully cobbled together a coalition in the House to support his preference for voting rights, but he could not do so in the Senate, which replaced the House’s bill with a five-year extension of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and a national ban on literacy tests.64 The original act and its 1970 extension made no claim to remedy disfranchisement among any minority other than southern blacks. In fact, the 1965 debates explicitly eliminated coverage of Native Americans in Alaska. In only one case did the original voting rights act address the needs of a nonblack, non-southern minority. The Senate in 1965 added an “American flag” provision, sponsored by New York senators Robert Kennedy and Jacob Javits, to enfranchise Puerto Ricans in New York who were illiterate in English but had completed at least six years of education in a school “under the American flag,” meaning Puerto Rican schools that taught students in Spanish.65 By the time the act came up for renewal in 1974, however, Mexican Americans and other Latinos had joined together around the priority of expanding the Voting Rights Act to cover language minorities—evidence of Mexican American (indeed, Latino) unity on a clearly articulated policy. The Voting Rights Act was now set to expire in 1975, and Congress had to reauthorize the act to continue its coverage. Black civil-rights groups, particularly the NAACP and the LCCR, began a campaign for a simple fiveyear extension of the act. MALDEF, however, viewed an opportunity to expand coverage to the Spanish speaking based on language discrimination. Beginning as early as 1973 by publicizing among Mexican American and Hispanic organizations the upcoming reauthorization, MALDEF encouraged them to demand the act’s expansion to Spanish-speaking groups, as it did at a 1973 meeting of the FNHO.66 MALDEF staff solicited individuals through contacts in Texas to testify before congressional committees. President and general counsel Vilma Martinez offered her own testimony, as did Joe Benetes of LULAC, Antonio Morales of the G.I. Forum, and Ricardo Zazueta of SER, among others. Their testimony addressed only indirectly the key problem in expanding the Voting Rights Act to cover the Spanish speaking: Latinos are not indisputably a racial minority, and the Voting Rights

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Act grounded its provisions on the Fifteenth Amendment guaranteeing the right to vote regardless of “race or color,” not language.67 Benetes, for example, continued the argument that Alfred Hernández had used in the 1960s when he insisted that Mexican Americans are “stepchildren of the Great Society.”68 He noted that the benefits of the original Voting Rights Act accrued solely to blacks, while once again policy makers ignored Mexican American needs. According to Benetes, the “Voting Rights Act has proved to be more than a worthwhile device for correcting historic irregularities in the voting patterns of the South, but it ignores the basic voting problems and irregularities of the Mexican Americans.”69 Martinez likewise identified the unique needs of the Spanish speaking. She argued that language was the key to discrimination against Mexican Americans and referred to the Lau decision to make her case. But Martinez also insisted that bilingual education “does not begin to meet the depth and breadth of the problems that Mexican American citizens are facing in trying to vote in this country.” Of course, bilingual education did not solve problems of gerrymandering and other procedural barriers to the vote. However, Martinez made the remarkable claim that bilingual-bicultural education programs too often failed to teach sufficient English to help Mexican Americans vote in English-only elections.70 Bilingual education might remedy discrimination in schools, and might keep students in schools longer, but did not necessarily solve the language barrier Mexican American faced if they managed to enter the polls. Therefore, she argued, specific voting remedies were justified and necessary. The testimony offered by Benetes and Martinez reinforced two common Mexican American arguments—that federal policy neglected Mexican Americans in favor of African Americans and that existing federal efforts for Mexican Americans remained inadequate because they did not sufficiently address their particular needs. What made the two common arguments distinctive by 1975, however, was that Mexican American leaders registered these complaints with regard to a specific policy with significant potential payoffs. The activity organized by MALDEF brought the language-minority issue before Congress, which proved amenable to considering expansion of the act. While the committees that heard testimony from Hispanic groups seemed particularly friendly, others in Congress and in black civil-rights organizations had to be convinced. Civil rights leaders split over efforts to cover the whole country with voting rights legislation. Some, such as Jesse Jackson, wanted a national voting-rights law to fight discrimination nationwide. They viewed coverage of only the South as hypocritical. More pragmatic leaders, such as Clarence Mitchell, knew that Congress passed voting-rights legislation precisely because it only covered the South. Mitchell feared that any proposal beyond simple extension might give opponents a

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chance to prevent renewal, and he therefore supported a simple five year extension.71 With the eventual approval of civil rights organizations and strong support of the committees, both houses of Congress passed bills extending and expanding the Voting Rights Act. The new bill got around the issue of race by protecting language minorities and including the Fourteenth Amendment as a basis for its protections, thus recognizing the arguments of LULAC and others that Mexican Americans are a distinct minority—disadvantaged and in need of federal remedies, but not in the same way as African Americans. The bill also contained another change. Because the states with large numbers of Spanish speakers had no literacy tests—one of the necessary conditions to trigger VRA coverage—Congress needed to devise a new trigger. English-only election materials became the equivalent of a fraudulent literacy test. A state that fit three criteria—more than 5 percent of its voters speakers of a covered language, a low voter turnout, and election materials only in English-endangered the voting rights of its language-minority population and triggered federal supervision of its elections. This provision brought under the section 5 preclearance provision all of Texas, Arizona, and Alaska, and parts of California, Colorado, Florida, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and South Dakota. MALDEF’s work had paid off in Congress, but the bill still had to clear the White House. On the one hand, President Ford wanted to establish good relations with minority groups and other interests. In addition, the presidency had been weakened by Vietnam and Watergate-not only institutionally but also as a result of the liberal Democratic “Watergate babies” elected in the 1974 midterm elections. The initiative was clearly with Congress and the courts. On the other hand, Ford was well aware of the weakened executive and was not reluctant to use the power he retained. Knowing that he was unlikely to get Congress to consider his own agenda items, Ford used a veto strategy to return bills to Congress. Ford used the veto sixty-six times, the third most of any president (and Ford only served part of one term).72 The president would not sign a bill of which he disapproved simply because his office was weakened. At first the administration supported a simple five-year extension of the Voting Rights Act. Ford actually supported nationwide coverage under the special provisions of the act and had sponsored a bill to that effect as a member of Congress, but the politics of civil rights prevented the president from taking a strong stand on national coverage. Once Congress added the language provisions, the administration considered the pros and cons; support for the expansion would score points with the Spanish-speaking community but would bring many new areas under coverage. Conservatives and local politicians in those states would not be pleased.73 As the House took up expansion, Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Stanley Pottinger and

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the Justice Department expressed concerns about the weakness of the evidence used to prove obstacles to Mexican American voting. Pottinger, who had issued the memo in 1970 to cover language-minority children under the 1964 Civil Rights Act, told the Senate subcommittee that “in light of the other remedies available and in light of the stringent nature of the special provisions, the Department of Justice has concluded that the evidence does not require expansion based on the record currently before us. In other words, that record is not compelling.”74 That view was the opinion Pottinger offered the subcommittee. It was not strong enough to lead Pottinger to oppose expansion should Congress pass the bill. When the House passed H.R. 6219 Pottinger offered the White House no substantive opposition to Title II, which contained the provision to cover language minorities. He raised no questions with the White House about the constitutionality of the provision, and noted to others in the administration that it “would be of great symbolic value to Mexican-Americans and Puerto Ricans.” He posited that Congress must determine the need for such a provision, and if upon examination Congress found such a need then the administration should accept it. The president would defer to Congress and accept its leadership in this civil rights matter. The House did recognize such a need. The bill passed by a final vote of 341 to 70. Ninety-five of 138 Republicans voted for the bill, as did 65 of the 96 representatives from covered states.75 The administration also received a clear and consistent message from Mexican American community, which Fernando De Baca relayed and reiterated.76 As the Senate took up voting rights in July 1975, Ford decided to outline a new position on the bill. Ford implicitly accepted the House expansion of coverage to non-English-speaking citizens, but his position was not as emphatic as De Baca or the Hispanic organizations had hoped. The president made clear that he would accept either the House bill that included Title II or a simple extension of the act. The expansion of coverage to language minorities, in fact, served a larger purpose for Ford, as it opened the question of expanding coverage even further. In a letter to Senator Hugh Scott, the president stated that in “light of the House extension of the Voting Rights Act for ten years and to eight more States, I believe this is the appropriate time and opportunity to extend the Voting Rights Act nationwide.” To avoid the appearance of trying to kill the bill, Ford made clear that his first priority was to secure the continued enforcement of the temporary provisions of the act. But he encouraged Scott and his colleagues to consider amendments that would cover the entire nation.77 The voting rights extension made it through the administration and, subsequently, through Congress, and it included language minorities in the provisions originally intended to combat a history of racial discrimination

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in the South. Opposition came primarily from conservatives in those states that would come under cover of the act. Proposed amendments and maneuvers by members of Congress sought generally to allow covered states to escape coverage, rather than to oppose coverage of language minorities in principle.78 Few voiced concerns that would become common later—that making the absence of minority-language voting materials a violation of individual civil rights would be a slippery slope with ever-increasing justifications for an ever-increasing number of groups to seek federal intervention in elections. Almost alone among administration officials, Fred Slight, who had been working on Spanish-speaking affairs under presidential advisor Anne Armstrong, wondered in April, 1975, about the implications of providing this special coverage to Spanish-speaking Americans. As he surveyed the bills developing in the House, Slight worried that “the ‘non-existence of bilingual printed material’ is set forth” as one criterion to trigger federal intervention in elections. Slight wondered where the coverage would end: Would an individual’s rights be abridged if a certain number of polling officials were not bilingual or if ballots and voting materials were not printed in languages other than English? Slight saw the contradiction between the voting-rights provisions and the Republican emphasis on the New Federalism, revenue sharing, and the return of decision making to the states. His concern was not with providing voting materials in Spanish, but rather the question of where the established principle might lead once it became a matter of individual civil rights.79 Such concerns seemed to matter little as Congress passed H.R. 6219. The administration held a signing ceremony and invited national organization leaders who, in De Baca’s words, played a “visible and significant” role in the passage of the bill.80 In his remarks at the ceremony, De Baca suggested that the nation could find no better way to enter the bicentennial than “by assuring the equal participation of American language minorities in the electoral process for the future.”81 As with bilingual education, languageminority voting rights have been the focus of accelerating rhetoric, as controversies over majority-minority districts and federal oversight of states have increased. But little controversy existed at first, as Mexican Americans and Hispanic groups united behind the policy and as the politicians of both parties sought purchase with Spanish-speaking voters. The expanding logic of civil rights policy merged with political need and systemic change to nurture these two bedrock issues of federal policy for the Spanish speaking.

Conclusion The story of mandated bilingual education and language-based voting rights focuses much more on Congress, the courts, and administrative agencies

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than it does on the White House. It also focuses much more on MALDEF and newer Mexican American advocacy groups than it does on LULAC and its old allies. By 1972, LULAC’s greatest contribution to Mexican American civil-rights policy had been accomplished. It demanded that policy makers recognize Mexican American problems as distinct both from other white Americans and from African Americans and that they develop particular remedies for those problems. LULAC’s strength was in persuasion and negotiation directly with top officials and advisors. Once the initiative on civil rights policy shifted to subcommittees, agencies, and the courts, LULAC was at a disadvantage. As a membership organization with volunteer leadership and no professional staff, LULAC depended largely on dues to finance the activities of its national office. LULAC sought to get Mexican Americans appointed to agencies and boards, to contribute policy makers who knew the problems of the community and who could develop policies to address them (and, of course, to provide significant positions for its own leaders, who were among the most likely Mexican Americans to be appointed to such jobs). By 1970, LULAC’s success in gaining foundation funding to create MALDEF meant that LULAC would take a back seat, just as bilingual education and voting rights became national issues. As the rights revolution shifted, the fortunes of LULAC followed those of the White House. LULAC’s strongest potential for influence rested with the presidency. The president from 1973–75, Gerald Ford, was comparatively weak, and LULAC’s strengths were not as effective in the new policy environment. Thus LULAC fell in behind MALDEF, as the distinctions between the older and newer Mexican American organizations blurred and as the practical policies that all groups sought became almost identical, despite differing ideologies and tactics. Although the authority of the president over civil rights policy was perhaps diminished during the mid-1970s, the president retained significant power to speak and to act. Ford, with a liberal tilt to his advisors and a vice president committed to a progressive Republican social policy, accepted and continued the Nixon program in the areas of bilingual education and voting rights, areas of program expansion congenial to the Democratic majority in Congress. The Republican support for Mexican American and Spanish-speaking policies was made possible by the near unanimous agreement of Hispanic organizations on policy priorities. As sympathetic members of Congress introduced legislation or pressed for policies, particularly for voting rights and bilingual education, Hispanic organizations rallied. Their support for these two initiatives cannot be underestimated. Both the Nixon and Ford administrations recognized divisions within the Hispanic community, including the competition between militant Chicanos and the moderate civic organizations within the Mexican American community.

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The united stand and lobbying efforts, now led by the active and experienced MALDEF, made acceptance of Spanish-speaking policies necessary for these Republican presidents. That united stand represented the greatest victory for Mexican American civil-rights policy, even as it represented the greatest challenge to LULAC’s leadership model. With similar policy objectives, the distinctions between the traditional LULAC position, on the one hand, and that of the Chicano tendency within MALDEF and many of the other organizations, on the other, became less significant. Many voices blended together into a relatively united lobby, and the lines between racial and cultural discrimination became blurred. LULAC could continue the fight with its view of Mexican American racial identity and disadvantage, even while its allies in the Spanish-speaking bloc could fight for the same policies from a different racial self-identity. The programs that would become the most controversial—voting rights and bilingual education—covered areas that LULAC had long supported. Education and the vote represented, in LULAC’s view, two of the most important ways Mexican Americans could become responsible citizens. They also represented the best means for Mexican Americans to help themselves. For these reasons, LULAC throughout its history worked for education and the vote: it held voter registration drives, paid poll taxes, offered English and citizenship classes, started the Little School of the 400. Furthermore, both bilingual education and voting rights coverage established in federal policy the category of the linguistically and culturally disadvantaged. By definition, these policies did not remedy the disadvantages of racial minorities but of language minorities. LULAC continued to call for Mexican American inclusion in the economic and political mainstream of American life, and the federal government recognized that Mexican Americans, along with other non-English-speaking groups, faced unique problems that required federal remedies. Through bilingual-education policies and the expansion of voting rights coverage, then, LULAC leaders were able to negotiate the paradox of their ethnic identity, to achieve federal remedies as a linguistic, rather than as a racial, minority.

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B

y 1975 the key ideological, legislative, and bureaucratic elements of Mexican American and Latino civil-rights policy were in place. Policymakers of both parties, high elected officials and low-level appointed ones, generally accepted the argument that Spanish-speaking Americans face discrimination and/or disadvantage that require federal remedy. They also recognized that Mexican Americans resented being grouped together with blacks for common remedies; Mexican American leaders insisted that their problems are uniquely linguistic and cultural and therefore require tailored policies. Those policies revolved around language, and by 1975 American civil-rights enforcement in education and voting rights had a language component. In education, the OCR in HEW, using Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and buffeted by the Supreme Court and Congress, used bilingual education as the standard for its guide to schools. The Spanish speaking also came under the protection of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) in 1975, which assumed voting procedures conducted only in English to be discriminatory and, when combined with low registration or turnout, sufficient to trigger federal oversight. Thus, in addition to the act of commission on the part of the white South to exclude black (and many poor white) voters through a literacy test or other device, the law was amended to rectify an act of omission by requiring, primarily in the Southwest, voting materials in languages other than English. These specifically Spanish-speaking civil-rights policies came together with more general policies of the late 1960s and early 1970s to form a broad array of civil rights protections for Mexican Americans, most notably the inclusion of Hispanics in the affirmative action programs begun under Richard Nixon, as well as the immigration reforms established by the Immigration Act of 1965.1 In addition to civil rights reforms were a number of additional projects and programs. Among these were educational demonstration projects, such as federally funded bilingual education programs (Title VII of the ESEA), language-specific jobs programs such as SER, recruitment efforts to bring Mexican Americans and the Spanish speaking into federal employment, and a bureaucracy—increasingly staffed by members of the client groups—to implement these policies. By 1975, then, the key elements of Spanish-speaking federal policy were in place; develop-

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ments in and debates over policies for Mexican Americans and Latinos after 1975 generally would be based on the foundation of the policies that already existed by that year. Of those developments and debates, this conclusion will highlight two before drawing some conclusions from the study of LULAC and national civil-rights policy. Mexican Americans acquired bilingual education requirements and voting rights protections in a much less confrontational policy environment than the one that faced African Americans and their allies over the civil rights legislation outlawing Jim Crow. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 technically covered Mexican Americans as a national-origin group,2 and exclusion from public facilities, schools, and employment could be remedied through the procedures outlined in the legislation. That is why Mexican American leaders were so concerned about neglect from the EEOC, the most recognized of the agencies responsible for policing the country under the new legislation. The traditional model of civil rights enforcement focused on exclusion: remedies required offenders to stop excluding minorities from their classrooms, restaurants, hotels and workforces. But Mexican American policies such as bilingual education and voting rights for language minorities relied on a different model of civil rights enforcement. Those policies developed in the same vein as affirmative action for blacks and other minorities: rather than requiring offenders to stop doing something, it required some additional action on behalf of the disadvantaged group. In other words, bilingual education and language-based voting protections required schools and voting officials to provide additional services for language minorities, such as voting materials in multiple languages, dual-language school classes, and curricula sensitive to particular minority cultures. In effect, officials had to treat language minorities differently from how they treated others. As with other policies requiring affirmative action on behalf of disadvantaged groups, these policies became more controversial as they developed. By the late 1960s, the idea of enforcing nondiscrimination had become commonly accepted; segregated lunch counters or movie theaters were not acceptable according to most Americans. This was a positivesum game. There were benefits for the groups discriminated against and no real costs to anyone else. And society as a whole, as Martin Luther King, Jr., had argued, became better. But controversy soon followed policies perceived to be zero-sum policies that gave special privilege or advantages to some groups at the cost of others. Preferences in hiring and college admissions, tax dollars spent to maintain minority languages and cultures, and redistricting to create majority-minority voting districts all came under fire in the late 1970s and 1980s. The result was heightened controversy that contributed to the “culture wars” and political polarization after 1975.

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Bilingual Education After  As a bill enacted to fund demonstration projects that would teach youngsters in a language they could understand, the Bilingual Education Act evoked little controversy. Even through the first half of the 1970s—when the OCR argued that the Civil Rights Act covered language-minority status, and when the Supreme Court endorsed that view in Lau v. Nichols—bilingual education elicited little national response. Beginning in the mid-1970s, however, the combination of three developments resulted in a reaction against bilingual education that grew as heated as any of the culture wars of the 1980s and 1990s: an increased advocacy of bilingual education for language and cultural maintenance; the requirement by OCR that schools provide bilingual education or shoulder the burden of proof for another approach; and early evaluations that offered little conclusive evidence of benefits derived from bilingual education. In 1975 the OCR issued guidelines to help schools comply with the court’s decision in Lau v. Nichols. These Lau Remedies required bilingual education unless schools showed that another approach proved as effective in teaching students of limited English proficiency (LEP). That by itself moved the OCR beyond the Supreme Court in Lau v. Nichols, which had followed OCR’s May 25, 1970, memo to require that schools do something for LEP children. The Lau Remedies moved further beyond the Court in their requirement that schools provide bilingual education to students based on their “primary or home language” rather than on their ability to speak English. The Court issued its ruling in Lau to remedy problems for students who could not understand English; OCR disregarded English ability. Students who spoke a language other than English at home (which might reflect their parents’ English language ability more than their own) or whose first language was not English should be taught using bilingual education. The purpose of bilingual education for these students was not made clear. In addition, OCR suggested that schools that wished to be found in compliance with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act use bicultural education as well.3 In addition to the OCR civil-rights enforcement, bilingual education also developed and attracted criticism through the ESEA’s Title VII demonstration projects. The 1974 bilingual education legislation did not require bilingual education for maintenance, but its language did allow for it, as well as for transition to English. Furthermore, while a school could implement bilingual education by teaching all students in more than one language, schools more often provided separate bilingual classrooms for LEP students. Surveys of Title VII programs in the mid-1970s offered troubling snapshots for those concerned about desegregation for Mexican American students. In 1974, the National Education Task Force de la Raza found that

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88 percent of students in bilingual education classrooms it surveyed were Mexican American, while 8 percent were Anglo and 3 percent were black. In 1976, the General Accounting Office found that most students in the sixteen projects it surveyed dominantly spoke English, again raising the question of why those students needed bilingual education.4 One answer came from John Molina, director of the Office of Bilingual Education in HEW. In May 1976, Molina identified the purpose of bilingual education as the attempt “to preserve the student’s native culture as well as to introduce him to the English language and its culture.” 5 Molina represented an administration that supported transitional bilingual education to move students to English, not maintenance of Spanish, and he admitted that his preference for maintenance was his own. But such comments from administrators and early evidence from surveys such as those above suggest that maintenance was more prevalent than the language of the policy suggested. Prominent educators, scholars, and other leaders began to question bilingual education, including sociologist Nathan Glazer; Albert Shanker, head of the American Federation of Teachers; New York City Principal Howard Hurwitz; and reporters and columnists for the Washington Post and other papers and news outlets.6 Concerns included the proper role for schools or for bilingual education, the hiring of Spanish-speaking teachers at the expense of non-Spanish speakers, defunding of education programs for blacks, and fragmentation within schools. The question of continued segregation of students confronted the Mexican American community. MALDEF made its preference clear when, at the remedy stage of the Keyes decision, it sought to protect the bilingual education programs that already existed in Denver while officials figured out how to integrate black and Mexican American schools with Anglo schools.7 The most important early critique of bilingual education programs came from a study commissioned by the U.S. Office of Education. Issued in April, 1977, the report by the American Institutes for Research (AIR) raised questions about many of the assumptions behind national bilingualeducation policies. In particular, the AIR found that when it compared Hispanic students in Title VII programs with Hispanic students in regular classrooms, the Title VII students performed worse in English and better in math, and neither group exhibited a better attitude toward school. Both groups were in the bottom fifth in English performance and the bottom third in math.8 The report did not necessarily mean that Title VII was a failure, but neither did it show that students taught in their native language performed better or enjoyed increased self-esteem and enthusiasm for school, as advocates had suggested. The report essentially fueled criticism of the programs at a time when Congress and the Carter administration increased the federal commitment to bilingual education.9

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The Carter administration requested $135 million for fiscal year 1978, nearly one-third of the total federal spending on the program up through 1977. But some administration officials expressed concern over the direction of the program. Joseph Califano, who had supported bilingual education since serving as an aide to Lyndon Johnson, publicly criticized the federal role as directionless. Carter himself insisted that he wanted “English taught, not ethnic culture.” The importance of the Mexican American and Hispanic lobbying organizations, and the political nature of federal bilingual education policy, can be seen in the advice Carter received from Senator Edward Kennedy and Vice President Walter Mondale. Both suggested allowing the programs to continue, including cultural maintenance. Mondale suggested that since bilingual education was one of the few programs Hispanics had, the administration should “let them run their own program.” Kennedy, as reported through Assistant Education Commissioner Marshall Smith, admitted that federal officials did not really know how to help language-minority children, “so why not do it in a way that advocacy groups can feel good about.”10 Carter accepted the status quo on Title VII, and he and Congress agreed to increase federal funds for bilingual education every year. In 1978 Senators Alan Cranston and Edward Kennedy allowed amendments to Title VII that eliminated language and cultural maintenance as an acceptable use of federal funds, thus shifting Title VII programs strictly into transitional bilingual education. On the civil rights front, the secretary of the new Department of Education, Shirley Hufstedler, published the Lau Remedies in the federal register, something required of such regulations but which had not been done in 1975, when they were first issued. The publication brought a new round of criticism, this time aimed at the civil rights side of bilingual education. But the distinction between the demonstration projects and the civil rights provisions was difficult to make, and many people simply tossed the OCR civil rights regulations in with the federally sponsored Title VII programs and nourished a general hostility toward bilingual education. Congress postponed implementation as official regulations until 1981, effectively punting the question to the next administration. Under Ronald Reagan, Secretary of Education Terrel Bell, who as commissioner of education had issued the Lau Remedies in 1975, now reversed course, scrapped the requirements of the remedies, and returned to the requirements of the OCR memo of May 25, 1970. Schools had to do something for LEP students, but OCR would not dictate what they had to do. As governor of California, Reagan had signed the state’s first bilingual education law, but as a new president in 1981 he denounced bilingual education as part of the governmental problem he had campaigned against. In addition to overseeing a return to the 1970 memo standards in civil rights

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enforcement, Reagan cut civil rights enforcement funding in general and cut federal funding for Title VII by 20 percent. But he came to recognize the political importance of bilingual education. With Title VII provisions set to expire in 1984, and a new, stronger bill drawn up by the National Council of La Raza and the National Association of Bilingual Educators, Reagan and Vice President George Bush campaigned through the Southwest in favor of bilingual education. By the time Reagan left office, he and Congress had worked out a compromise bill. In exchange for his signature, Congress agreed that up to 25 percent of federal funding could be used for education of LEP students in English (such as immersion or the “English as a second language” approach). Furthermore, students would leave the program after three years, with exceptions allowed based on individual evaluation. Bilingual education supporters view Reagan’s two terms as a catastrophe, but in 1988, after eight years as president, Reagan agreed to sign a bill that guaranteed that at least 75 percent of all federal funding for Title VII would be for bilingual education programs.11 Although bilingual education in national policy was not seriously threatened, its fate at the state level became hotly debated in the 1980s and 1990s, particularly in California. Bilingual education and English-only efforts have had success in California’s “proposition culture,” in which voters can put items of state policy on the ballot for an upor-down vote by the voting population. In 1986 Californians made English the official state language in Proposition 63, and in 1998 they ended the use of bilingual education in California schools through Proposition 227.12

The Voting Rights Act After  After the VRA of 1965 was expanded to cover language minorities in 1975, Latinos did see more members of their group elected to office. At the national level, a sufficient number of Latinos sat in Congress for Representative Edward Roybal (D-Calif.) to organize the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. The caucus, in turn, reached out to state and local officials to create the National Association of Latino Elected Officials (NALEO).13 Some scholars point to 1975 as the beginning of Latino participation in American national politics because of the dearth of elected officials prior to coverage by voting protections.14 The VRA of 1965 set out to eliminate obstacles to voting; the focus was on access to the polls rather than on the election of candidates. By 1969, however, the Supreme Court, in Allen v. State Board of Elections, recognized that southern states might go a long way to undermine the act and eliminate the effect of black votes.15 The court accepted the plaintiff’s argument that, whereas the language of the original act focused on registration and voting, southern states were enacting changes—such as moving from district to at-large elections and annexing overwhelmingly white suburbs—in order

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to dilute the votes of blacks. Earl Warren’s decision brought such changes under the preclearance provision of section 5 of the act. Any such changes had to be approved by Washington, whereas before, only changes to actual voting procedures such as registration and polling places required preclearance.16 The Allen decision prevented post-1965 changes to election practices but did nothing to challenge vote-dilution practices already in place. And while voter registration of covered minorities, particularly blacks and Mexican Americans, reached substantial percentages of voting-age population, the number of elected officials from minorities was nowhere near proportionate to the voting population. For example, the Commission on Civil Rights reported in 1981 that Hispanics (primarily Mexican Americans) made up 21 percent of the Texas population but just over 6 percent of its elected officials. Registration and access to polls, however, was not the problem; over 60 percent of Hispanics were registered in Texas, within 10 percent of the Anglo registration rate.17 Numbers like these fueled challenges to local election discrimination, but the language of the VRA and court decisions of the time made such challenges difficult.18 Decisions in the same vein as Allen, combined with the election of Ronald Reagan (which promised the appointment of conservatives to the federal bench) and a generally more conservative tilt in national policy, galvanized the civil rights lobby and encouraged Congress to amend, as well as extend, the VRA in 1982. Most importantly, Congress amended section 2 of the act, which had basically restated the Fifteenth Amendment’s prohibition on voting discrimination. As amended, section 2 prohibited voting practices that have a discriminatory effect rather than practices that are created with discriminatory intent. The legislation followed the results-oriented model of affirmative action policies in civil rights enforcement, making proof of discrimination, and thus claims to remedy, much easier. The Supreme Court developed a test to identify dilution of minority votes based on results under the new section 2.19 A group that was not proportionately represented in government could argue that the system discriminated against them. The VRA denied that it guaranteed a right to proportional representation, but the direction both of legislation and of court decisions leaned the other way. The controversy came in the implementation of the new test, particularly by election officials and states that wished to comply with the law and avoid lawsuits. The catalyst was the 1990 census, after which congressional districts would be redrawn. Under the 1982 amendments and their judicial interpretation, states began redrawing their congressional districts so to create new majority-minority districts, that is, districts made up primarily of a minority population. These “safe” minority districts resulted in more elected official from minorities, but they also resulted in some strangely configured districts that suggested the overriding concern in drawing the

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district was race. Furthermore, conservative and Republican officials recognized that the creation of majority-minority districts clustered minority voters in a few districts, thus emptying other districts of predominantly liberal and Democratic voters. With this realization, Republicans assisted minority leaders in drawing majority-minority districts, to the consternation of white liberals and Democrats.20 The controversy over majority-minority districts has not reached the fevered pitch of debates over bilingual education. As an issue, it has less dayto-day relevance to average Americans and has also created a coalition of minorities and conservatives, neither of which is likely to complain about the practice. In any event, voting rights are difficult to oppose, particularly for politicians. Much of the controversy has been debated by scholars who question how effective the VRA has been in furthering minority influence in the American political system. The act has certainly increased the number of elected officials from minorities. However, some scholars question the wisdom of removing minority influence from other districts, thereby leaving the majority of elected officials largely free of minority constituents. Some advocate “influence districts” in which candidates for office could not win without minority support, but in which minorities would also need allies across racial and ethnic lines.21

The Mexican American Lobby On both of these issues (bilingual education and voting rights) Mexican American organizations played an increasingly important role in policy developments. In particular, as these issues were debated and developed in the courts, agencies, and congressional subcommittees, the importance of lobby groups became more pronounced. Although Mexican American organizations retained a reputation for infighting—and they had no lasting umbrella organization—the coalition of MALDEF, LULAC, NCLR, the American G.I. Forum, and others consistently monitored and extended these policies in the face of increasing challenges.22 As they continued their emphasis on Latinos as distinctly disadvantaged and argued the need for federal remedies by comparing their rates of unemployment, education, and poverty with those of blacks, there was less emphasis on the divisions between the Chicano and LULAC/middle-class perspectives on Mexican American racial identity. They continued to fight for coverage of Mexican Americans under policies such as affirmative action that were initially designed for, and generally thought to serve, racial minorities. They gained such coverage because federal bureaucrats accepted Mexican American claims of disadvantage and made Hispanics one of the four official disadvantaged groups in federal civil-rights consciousness, a categorization that blurred racial and ethnic classification.23

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To further these policies, LULAC continued to seek recognition of Mexican Americans in the highest reaches of the federal government. In 1979 LULAC national president Ruben Bonilla pressed President Jimmy Carter for appointments, now aiming at the Cabinet level. LULAC also lobbied for better statistics on the Mexican American population, both from cabinet departments such as Agriculture, Commerce, Labor, and HEW and also from the census.24 As early as 1974 LULAC national president Joe Benetes joined MALDEF’s Mario Obledo and others to testify before Congress in favor of changes to the census to ensure better statistical data on Mexican Americans. In particular, Benetes hoped to overcome the tendency to undercount Mexican Americans. He argued that federal officials in charge of such programs as bilingual education allocate funds based on group size. With a proper count of Mexican Americans, Benetes reasoned, more money would be available for such programs and Mexican Americans would get their fair share.25 Insisting on more accurate counting of Mexican Americans, as a group distinct from Anglos and other Americans, reversed one of LULAC’s oldest efforts. In 1930, the group complained that the census included a category for “Mexicans” and successfully lobbied for removal of the category and a return to counting Mexican Americans as members of the American majority. In general, LULAC and Mexican Americans supported Jimmy Carter, the Spanish-speaking Democrat from Georgia. On civil rights, Carter’s two primary achievements were not legislative but bureaucratic. He appointed more minorities, including Latinos, than any previous president, going far beyond previous tokenism by Democrats and Republicans alike. He also reorganized the civil rights enforcement apparatus in ways that strengthened the independence of the EEOC, the OCR, and the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs. In addition, he continued the shift to administrative policy making and an equal-results model of civil rights enforcement.26 But Carter found himself in what political scientist Stephen Skowronek considers the impossible leadership position.27 Carter faced serious pressures, from liberals to pick up the Great Society where Lyndon Johnson had left off and from conservatives and his own inclination to refine the Democratic approach to America’s problems. He hoped to retain the Great Society commitment to improving American life and improving social justice for the poor and disadvantaged, while eliminating the excesses of the Great Society that resulted in backlash and polarization. His struggles to be a “new Democrat,” even while the old Democrats (and Watergate babies) controlled Congress and Republicans waited for his administration to implode, resulted in frustration during four years in office.28 Ronald Reagan took over from Jimmy Carter at about the same time that LULAC elected its most activist national presidents in a generation.

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Brothers Ruben and Tony Bonilla and Mario Obledo served from 1979 to 1985, and all placed LULAC firmly against the Reagan administration and its policies on the economy, civil rights, and foreign relations.29 These leaders attacked Reagan, marched with César Chávez, publicly cooperated with black civil-rights organizations, and in general fell in with the Democratic left of the 1980s.30 Interestingly, in 1985 LULAC elected Oscar Moran, who not only staunchly supported Reagan but won reelection twice. Moran halted the organization’s attacks on the president, with no significant reaction from the membership; indeed, LULAC elected to three terms this man who had political preferences diametrically opposed to those of his three predecessors. Benjamin Márquez explains this as the tendency of LULAC members to vote based on local loyalty and candidate personality, rather than on the national stance of the organization. LULAC membership through the 1970s actually increased, but rank-and-file members were no more involved in the group’s national activities. In one sense, this continued the national leaders’ flexibility to act nationally without interference from the membership; but since national leaders depended on the membership for election to office, LULAC’s membership structure still hindered the effectiveness of the national office. LULAC leadership continued to seek independence from the funding constraints of its membership structure, and through the late 1970s and 1980s received significant grants from corporations to augment its government and foundation grants. Even as membership increased through the 1970s, income in 1979 from outside funding doubled income from membership dues. That reflected a common trend for the most prominent Mexican American organizations. MALDEF, in particular, had always been funded primarily through foundation and corporate grants. The advantage of that kind of funding was the freedom it allowed the organizations to carry out their activities. One disadvantage was that it evoked criticism of the organizations for accommodating their program to the desires of corporate sponsors rather than to community needs.31 Nevertheless, LULAC leaders proved able to act on national issues, largely independent of the membership (once they got elected). They cooperated with MALDEF, NCLR, the American G.I. Forum, and others to hold onto the policy gains they had made by 1975: bilingual education, voting rights, affirmative action. Interestingly, LULAC leaders assailed the Reagan administration during the early 1980s, at a time when Reagan won the greatest percentage of the Latino vote for a Republican since the New Deal.32 Mexican Americans had reached a maturity in dealing with the social regulation model of civil rights enforcement. A small cadre of leaders could run organizations, offer testimony, lobby agencies and subcommittees, and issue policy papers and press releases with little or no involvement of large, unwieldy memberships. Their gains proved effective in winning more offices

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for Latino public officials and gaining coverage for Latinos in federal policies such as affirmative action and bilingual education. But their approach, and the systemic shifts in the American political system, has raised questions about how well these organizations represent the desires and needs of the Mexican American population.33

LULAC, Mexican American Identity, and Civil Rights Policy These developments through the late 1970s and 1980s continued and enhanced the gains Mexican Americans had made in federal policy by 1975. This is not to say that the policies were sufficient to solve the problems of Mexican Americans, nor is it to say that they were necessarily those best designed to solve those problems. It is to say that Mexican Americans had gained sufficient currency in Washington to be recognized as an identifiable minority group (along with other Spanish-speaking Americans) and to get legislation signed into law and regulatory rules put in place to address in particular ways two fundamental rights that America promises its people: voting rights and education. Furthermore, Mexican Americans had helped create a new notion in national policy, that the promise of American life— obtained through education and voting—could be threatened not only on account of race but also on account of language and culture. This was an important shift from the civil rights legislation of the 1960s, which listed national origin as a protected characteristic but which paid limited attention to the problems of any group other than southern blacks. Ten years after that breakthrough legislation for blacks, Latinos gained their legislative equivalent. Like the African American experience, the fight for civil rights protections brought together Mexican American groups with diverse interests and philosophies. More conservative groups such as LULAC called for the same policies as those demanded by Chicanos. Although they often supported the same proposals for different reasons, the united front gave lawmakers and politicians few alternatives if they hoped to satisfy this growing minority group. Unlike the African American story, which saw a breakdown of unity after legislative success as different philosophies drove groups to use different tactics and voice different demands, there was more harmony among Mexican American groups after the policy victories than before. The most radical phase of the Chicano movement passed rather quickly but left in its wake a strengthened Chicano identity— a racial identity for Chicano activists, but an identity embracing such shared ethnic traits as a common homeland, history, language, and culture that could appeal to more conservative Mexican Americans as well. In addition, as LULAC joined its voice with other organizations to gain policy preferences, it began to use rhetoric and arguments that reveal the lasting influence of the Chicano movement.34 196

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At the same time that Mexican American organizations achieved a measure of cooperation, the policy gains they had achieved ignited a backlash. This could only have served to reinforce their cooperation to defend the challenged programs and policies. As with the black civil-rights lobby after 1972, the goal after 1975 became, primarily, protection of the status quo. From the 1960s through the early 1970s, and in particular during the Nixon administration from 1968–72, Republicans hoped to attract Mexican American voters. LULAC and some of the other more moderate Mexican American organizations, made this hope credible. They were among the most conservative Mexican Americans, longtime Democrats who had grown dissatisfied with their treatment by the Democratic Party and who would consider overtures from others willing to address their concerns. By the 1980s, political polarization over affirmative action and group remedies reduced Republicans’ willingness to protect such programs, while unity among Mexican American organizations left a void where LULAC had formerly offered Republicans an entrée into the community. Republicans continue to seek the Mexican American vote, but generally only on Republicans’ terms. They focus on family values, American individualism, tax relief and other issues to appeal to conservative social values in the community rather than negotiate over affirmative action and such policies as bilingual education and voting rights, as did the Nixon administration. In his study of Mexican American politics, political scientist Peter Skerry suggests that Mexican American political leaders have become so tied to the Democratic party’s ethnic politics that both major parties can effectively ignore the needs of the community. Democrats offer Mexican Americans positions in the party and support their candidacies; with no serious threat from Republicans, these candidates adopt the Democratic agenda—even though it may not reflect the desires or needs of the Mexican American community at large—and are hamstrung when Democrats fail to address Mexican American issues.35 This was not always so, as the study of Mexican American policies during the 1960s and early 1970s makes evident. The polarization of the 1980s and 1990s and the uncertain future of programs such as bilingual education will not be well understood until we better understand the origins of Mexican American policy and national politics. In particular, we need to understand better the complex dynamics within the Mexican American community and the way the community was received within a policy environment in transition. Although the differences among Mexican American organizations continued to blur through the 1970s as they worked more closely together, that cooperation came late, and one of the most striking elements of the Mexican American civil-rights struggle was the diversity within the community. Much of the attention, both at the time and in the written histories, has focused on the Chicanos.36 They proved best at mobilizing a commu197

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nity, creating a movement, announcing a radical message, and explicitly reshaping Mexican American identity. They expressed hostility to the mainstream that LULAC had always valued, and they reacted against the bourgeois values that LULAC espoused. It is too simple to say that Chicanos were pro-Mexican heritage and that LULAC was pro-American (and therefore anti-Mexican). Neither Chicanos nor LULAC could deny the dual identity and tensions inherent in an ethnic community, although the most radical Chicanos tried. Rather, Chicanos and the more moderate groups such as LULAC placed the equilibrium of the elements of their identity in different places. LULAC continued to value the ideals of American ideology, while Chicanos contributed to the environment of intense critique of that ideology.37 Chicanos were more suspect of that mainstream and sought to avoid what they considered compromising with it. This study of LULAC, with its long view of the group’s civil-rights efforts, expectations of government, and shifting ethnic identity, offers a case study of a leading Mexican American civil-rights organization to understand better the variety of Mexican American engagement with national policy makers. To this end, this book may be viewed in two parts. The first part of the book, roughly chapters 1 through 3, more fully examines the Mexican American identity developed and articulated by LULAC. That identity developed among the social and economic elites within the Mexican American community. Tensions confronted LULAC members because of their commitment to both elements of their Mexican American identity. The Mexican element included a language and cultural heritage that marked them as distinct from the Anglo mainstream, but that element nevertheless also included a self-identity as American and white. The question was how to balance these elements of identity. Similar tensions confront all Americans to some degree. As descendants of immigrants, Americans have historically shaped their identity through the lens of ethnic affiliations. As Michael Walzer reminds us, “American” is, in essence, a political adjective. Yet it is not simply political. A Mexican American is not simply culturally Mexican and politically American. Rather, according to Walzer, the effects of the compound are doubled, and such an individual is culturally Mexican American and politically Mexican American. Being Mexican is shaped by experience in America, while being American is shaped by Mexican heritage.38 Studies of immigration show that immigrants and succeeding generations grapple with how closely they will identify with their ethnic heritage. The tension is less pronounced for Americans who descend from the oldest immigrant groups from northern Europe, particularly the Englsih who acted as arbiters of the majority culture for centuries. Other immigrant groups, such as the Irish and Germans, faced substantial discrimination but have achieved considerable choice in how closely they identify with their

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ethnic heritage, with few consequences. The tension is most acute for groups considered to be racial minorities, African Americans, Asian Americans, and Mexican Americans among them. Individuals from these groups have had less choice, in the sense that others quickly identify them as members of a minority ethnic or racial group with little regard for their self-identity. They are generally placed into one bloc of the standard racial pentagon: white, black, Hispanic, Asian, Native American. Thus, their choices in selfidentity—whether more general (American, southerner, New Yorker) or more specific (Mexican, Vietnamese, Choctaw)—are limited in the public spheres of American life. These tensions of ethnic identity in America are most acute, then, for those easily identified as an ethnic or racial minority, but for all descendants of immigrants the potential for tension exists. Both American and ethnic identity make claims while Americans negotiate between the two.39 As Walzer points out, America is not accurately described by the slogan “from many, one.” Rather, Americans are one and many at the same time. LULAC emerged in the late 1920s, at a time when widespread nativism pressured immigrants to change their names, learn English, and assimilate. LULAC’s middle-class members recognized discrimination as based on Mexican culture and in response downplayed their Mexican heritage. The tendency for Mexicans to maintain close ties to Mexico and its language and culture led LULAC members to lean heavily toward Anglo, middle-class values to strike some balance. They claimed a commitment to their Mexican heritage, but their emphasis on American values suggested a distance from Mexican culture. Furthermore, LULAC emphasized white status and the potential of some Mexican Americans, through hard work and individual merit, to fit the middle-class model of citizenship and therefore deserve acceptance in the American mainstream. They argued, in effect, that some Mexican Americans really were not very different from the American majority, despite some (undesirable) traits that made some distinct. The process by which immigrant groups “became white” has received increased attention over the past decade.40 As David Roediger has suggested, ethnics found it useful to shift the argument—which they could not win— from Who is foreign? to the more ambiguous Who is white?41 Roediger emphasizes the internalization of white identity by immigrant groups, rather than the simple use of that identity to gain advantage. But the legal advantage for Mexican Americans cannot be overlooked, as Jim Crow laws resulted not only in humiliating segregation of public facilities but also different schooling opportunities. Roediger is correct to suggest the internalization of whiteness; and while his scholarship focuses on European immigrants, Roediger’s suggestions are particularly important for immigrant groups, from places such as Mexico, with a long history of racial distinctions based

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on varying quantities of European (Spanish) and Indian or Mestizo blood. Ultimately, tactical considerations existed alongside incentives to internalize white identity, and LULAC’s insistence on whiteness was certainly a combination of self-identity, political calculation, and prejudice. And despite much treatment similar to that of African Americans, the technical legal differences allowed white identity to be a potential bulwark against legal discrimination. The Mexican American experience thus adds a layer to Roediger’s observation, made about Europeans, that “even similar experiences of oppression could cause new immigrants to grasp for the whiteness at the margins of their experiences rather than concentrating on the ways in which they shared much in daily life with African Americans.”42 Whiteness studies have focused needed attention on whiteness as a racial category and on the social and political pressures that contributed to the adoption of white identity. Less attention has been paid to how the policy environment could encourage becoming less white.43 This is not to say that policy preferences for racial or ethnic minorities balance out the history of discriminatory policies in America. But they are an important element in the changes both in policy and in racial and ethnic identity of the late 1960s and 1970s and need to be considered as seriously as earlier pressures to become white. By following LULAC across the civil rights era we can consider both social and policy pressures to accept minority status, whether as a racial or cultural minority. Involvement with the immigration issues of the 1940s and 1950s softened some of the harshest elements of LULAC’s stance. LULAC began to insist that members could be both American and Mexican without hampering their responsibilities or limiting their rights as citizens. Furthermore, as the government cracked down on undocumented immigrants, LULAC defended the interests of not only the middle-class or of American citizens but of all those committed to life in the United States. To a greater degree than ever before, LULAC by the 1960s blended ethnic affiliation with commitment to America. As Walzer’s explanation would suggest, experience with immigration policy (as Mexican Americans) shaped LULAC’s views of Mexican American identity and shifted its definition of the community to which it would lend its voice. The organization’s leaders, by the late 1950s, more readily admitted and justified the desirable traits that made Mexican Americans different from other Americans (traits similar in kind to those that made Irish or Italian Americans distinct), even as they continued to insist that many Mexican Americans were really not that different. LULAC’s move toward increased ethnic identity carried it through the civil rights era. By the time friendly administrations entered the White House, LULAC insisted that Mexican Americans could engage the civic culture as Americans and also be as Mexican in culture as they wanted. In fact,

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by 1960 they hoped their Mexican cultural heritage could benefit the nation and help some Mexican Americans to land prestigious jobs in the foreign service in Latin America. LULAC leaders no longer insisted that Mexican Americans were Americans just like everyone else. Now their unique combination of Mexican and American identities made them an asset to the nation. Changes in the Mexican American community, particularly the increased immigration during the postwar years, contributed greatly to LULAC’s developing ethnic identity. Just as important, it seems, were changes in the civil rights policy environment. The foreign service opened new doors for the Mexican American elite, but the persistence of poverty, poor educational attainment, and low-skill employment left major problems still unaddressed by the federal government during the early 1960s. LULAC was less quick to promote Mexican American distinctiveness when seeking federal remedies for poverty. This is true at least in part because no remedies existed to address ethnic distinctiveness. As an organization of elites, LULAC won federal grants to establish programs of self-help for the Mexican American community and cooperated with the G.I. Forum on Operation SER to provide federally-funded job training and placement services for Mexican Americans. Operation SER recognized the language problems that Mexican Americans faced but remained part of the general Great Society antipoverty effort. But the emphasis of the New Frontier and Great Society on equal opportunity only worked as long as all believed they had an equal opportunity. Blacks lost faith in the general approach first, as the landmark civil-rights legislation of 1964 and 1965 failed to address the lack of opportunities in cities outside the South. When the federal government focused on African Americans in response to unrest in black communities, Mexican Americans began to believe that they were being ignored. They insisted that if the government gave African Americans particular attention, it should also give particular attention to Mexican Americans. LULAC, however, could not accept for their constituents the basis on which blacks received new policies; LULAC leaders refused to claim disadvantage as a racial minority. It is at this point that LULAC complicates things for scholars who conflate race and ethnicity. The group maintained a white racial identity while promoting an ethnic identity as a minority to claim the need for federal remedy (being unable at first use an ethnic identity to make Mexican Americans eligible for federal remedy because such remedies did not yet exist). LULAC sought federal attention similar to what African Americans received because of race. Race had become the criteria for gaining certain federal remedies, and LULAC recognized that language and culture led many Americans to treat Mexican Americans as if they were a racial minority. The distinction was important for LULAC, and it should be important for us if

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we want to understand the development of policies for linguistic and cultural minorities. Furthermore, we err if we dismiss LULAC’s position as antiquated or as the view of a tiny few among millions of Mexican Americans. As late as the 1990s, surveys show that significant percentages of the Mexican American population held views similar to those LULAC articulated during the 1960s and early 1970s.44 LULAC was certainly an organization of elites, but their commitments and notions of Mexican American identity were not out of line with many in the Mexican American community. This brings us to the second main part of this study, roughly chapters 4 through 6, in which LULAC insisted on national attention to the unique ethnic needs of Mexican Americans in a charging civil rights policy environment. The major civil-rights advances of the mid-1960s suggest a national commitment to equality, but the implications of those advances were not settled. Whereas during the early 1960s LULAC used the advantages of Mexican Americans’ particular ethnic heritage to gain federal attention (for instance, appointments to the foreign service), after 1965 it emphasized the disadvantages resulting from that heritage. Whereas Presidents Kennedy and Johnson at first wanted to include Mexican Americans in the general antipoverty programs—and later Johnson sought to lump them into policies designed for racial minorities (blacks)—LULAC insisted on a distinct identity, not black or (Anglo) white but something new. In doing so, they acted on a desire that, in its own way, is particularly American.45 To this end, in March 1966 LULAC cooperated with other Mexican American organizations to protest the EEOC meeting in Albuquerque because the commission largely ignored the special needs of Mexican Americans. In this endeavor they followed the civil rights tactic of protest to gain attention, albeit through a particularly civil protest aimed at a federal agency. At the El Paso hearings in October 1967, LULAC and others highlighted the bilingual-bicultural characteristics of Mexican Americans to argue for the need for a federal effort on their behalf. Through the last two years of the Johnson administration, Mexican Americans succeeded in getting policy makers to acknowledge their language and cultural disadvantages, but they offered no specific policy proposals. Instead, LULAC leaders and their Mexican American allies called generally for more money, more appointments, and more attention, and to some extent they received all three. But they did not receive, in their estimation, equality of opportunity for Mexican Americans. That frustration with the Democrats during the Johnson administration opened the door to Republican insurgence among Mexican American voters. If LULAC’s approach to Mexican American civil rights changed through a developing ethnic identity and through a more responsive environment of civil rights policy, the political climate also changed, as Mexican

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Americans became more outspoken on national issues. Beginning in 1966 and continuing through the Nixon and Ford administrations, Republicans sought opportunities to pry Mexican Americans, along with other ethnic Americans, from the ranks of Democratic voters. The importance of conservative Mexican American groups for this process should not be underemphasized. The existence of organizations such as LULAC, which extolled middle-class values and sought full participation in the economic and political mainstream (a “silent majority”?), suggested to Republicans that efforts for Mexican Americans might pay handsome dividends. Those Republicans at times encouraged, at other times merely preserved, the trajectory of increased federal attention to the problems of Mexican Americans. They did not significantly oppose the new policies, as they did with issues more closely identified with blacks, such as busing. This proved to be a short window of opportunity, and by the late 1970s many Republicans opposed bilingual education and language-minority voting rights. But during the key years of developing policies for Mexican Americans, 1966 to 1975, Republicans made gains at the expense of Democrats, even while they accepted new civil rights protections and the creation of a newly protected group in national policy—language minorities. The story of LULAC and the origins of Mexican American civil-rights policy reveals an additional shift in the policy environment of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Systemic changes of that period resulted in loss of influence for membership organizations. LULAC was a national organization with councils in more than thirty states by the early 1970s, but its leadership resided in the Southwest. As a civic organization, it remained largely dependent on membership dues and had little money with which to hire staff, much less draft policy proposals and lobby agencies and congressional subcommittees. LULAC leaders relied on their ability to negotiate with top officials to influence policy. The organization had relied on that model since the early 1930s, when they went straight to school officials or community leaders before resorting to publicity or court action. LULAC took that leadership model into the federal policy arena, and it worked through the Great Society, when known organizations could get funding for projects and organization leaders could occasionally meet at the White House. Lyndon Johnson’s familiarity with LULAC and the G.I. Forum and his penchant for identifying leaders with which he preferred to deal reinforced that model. LULAC was never a player in the complex game of inside-the-beltway interest group politics. By the late 1960s, an increase in federal regulations, stemming from the development of civil rights policy, resulted in an increase in the authority of administrative agencies, and gave an advantage to Washington professionals. In addition to developing networks to deal with civil rights policy, public-

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law litigation also became a major civil rights tactic. Favorable decisions in the courts, won from judges sympathetic to expanded civil-rights protections, led to new remedies enforced by agencies whose appropriations came from congressional committees. The success of the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund in public-law litigation led the Ford Foundation in 1968 to sponsor MALDEF, thus adding a weapon to the Mexican American struggle for civil rights. LULAC welcomed the creation of MALDEF, but the rise of both public-law litigation and interest-group lobbying challenged the LULAC model of negotiating directly with top officials. In the context of a new emphasis on client politics for civil rights, professional lobbyists and professional educators, many of whom supported the Chicano movement, established networks with federal agencies, particularly with the Office of Education and the OCR in HEW, while LULAC continued its appeal to elected officials. When Richard Nixon captured the White House in 1968, America entered an era of divided government, wherein one party controls Congress while the other party controls the presidency. The usual result in that circumstance is limited gains for either party as both try to block the successes of the other. In such an environment, policy networks among interest groups, administrative agencies, and congressional oversight committees, along with sympathy from federal courts, tend to drive policy development.46 The new Chicano lobbyists captured the attention of the media, the civil rightsminded officials and bureaucrats in federal agencies, and liberals in Congress. They pressed for bilingual-bicultural education and advantageous voting rights policies—particularly electoral redistricting to create “majority minority” districts—and found receptive ears among liberals. LULAC also supported bilingual education and voting rights enforcement. These new language-oriented laws were sufficiently vague to allow LULAC to view them as in line with long-standing LULAC goals: Spanishlanguage instruction and classroom-confidence building for non-Englishspeaking children, and language assistance to allow Mexican Americans to take advantage of the power of the ballot. LULAC’s support for these measures remained an important element contributing to the Nixon and Ford administrations’ acquiescence on these policies, for determined White House opposition might have derailed one or both. Nixon came to the presidency as a wild card; he appealed to the backlash against the excesses of the Great Society, but he also had no clear mandate to roll back its agenda. His administration had a good deal of leeway and used it to attract Mexican Americans, LULAC in particular, from the New Deal coalition by supporting bilingual education programs, at one point even considering a federal mandate for bilingual education. During the early 1970s, then, both political branches of government, the Republican White House and the Democ-

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ratic Congress, had Spanish-speaking constituents or clients pressing for bilingual-bicultural education and voting-rights protection. The political necessity of elected officials combined with the civil rights goals of enforcement agencies to secure the development of both policies. The importance of this period leading up to 1975 is vital to an understanding of the shifting policy system of these years. Some scholars suggest that real gains for Mexican Americans in national political life came only after 1975, when the VRA made possible an increase in the number of Mexican American elected officials.47 Without diminishing the significance of the VRA, this study suggests that such a view adheres to a narrow definition of political influence. In the changing policy environment of the late 1960s and early 1970s, the increasing importance of agencies and subcommittees raised the influence of career bureaucrats and congressional staffers. With offices created to focus on Mexican American and Spanish-speaking concerns, with appointments accumulating in this subpresidency, and with potential political payoffs for politicians who paid attention to Hispanic issues, Mexican Americans gained important means of influence that made the VRA and other policy initiatives viable.48 The history of LULAC’s involvement in federal policy to 1975 is one of an increasing identification with ethnic heritage. But LULAC’s identity placed limits to how far the move toward Mexican identity could go. LULAC tended to compare the Mexican American experience to that of European immigrant groups, such as the Irish, the Germans, and the Italians, who successfully entered the American civic culture but retained an affection for their cultural heritage. Despite the similarities, however, LULAC leaders also recognized the major difference between the earlier immigrants and Mexican Americans; proximity to Mexico resulted in an exceptionally strong Mexican cultural influence in the United States. To protect the balance between Mexican and American identities in the face of such persistence, LULAC advocated federal policies unavailable to, or unsought by, European immigrants. Policies to assist non-English-speaking Americans in education and voting, LULAC believed, would help Mexican Americans achieve full participation in the political and economic spheres of American life. Those policies would also allow Mexican Americans to maintain their selfidentity as white Americans of Mexican heritage while receiving federal assistance to help with their particular disadvantages. By 1975, LULAC achieved its goal of particular federal remedies to address the unique problems of Mexican Americans. LULAC was not a social movement but a community-based organization led by elites. New voices, those of the Chicano lobbyists and MALDEF’s professional staff, combined to replace LULAC’s leadership model and to overcome its preferred balance of Mexican and American identities. The

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implications of federal policy for the Spanish speaking by the 1970s tilted away from the LULAC emphasis and toward cultural retention as other organizational models became politically more effective for continued advances in civil rights. The new policies became well established, but within two years of the 1975 voting rights amendments a backlash emerged. The Reagan years in particular saw a growth of strident rhetoric and partisan battling over bilingual education, language-minority rights, and other expanded civil-rights protections for Hispanics. By the 1990s, however, some Mexican Americans began to claim, as some did during the 1960s, that the Democrats were taking them for granted. In light of the quarter century of partisanship and disagreement that followed the new policies of the early 1970s, we would do well to understand more clearly the complex origins of Mexican American civil-rights policies.

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Notes

introduction 1.

For the origin and implementation of the landmark civil rights legislation, with a focus on the intent of policy makers, see Hugh Davis Graham, The Civil Rights Era: Origins and Development of National Policy, 1960–1972 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990).

2.

In the most oft-cited works on Mexican American history, LULAC is rarely mentioned in more than two or three scattered sentences for the period after 1965. See, for example, Juan Gómez Quiñones, Chicano Politics: Reality and Promise, 1940–1990 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1990); Mario Barrera, Beyond Aztlán: Ethnic Autonomy in Comparative Perspective (New York: Praeger, 1988); Rudolfo Acuña, Occupied America: A History of Chicanos, 4th ed. (New York: Longman, 2000); F. Chris García and Rudolph O. de la Garza, The Chicano Political Experience: Three Perspectives (North Scituate, Mass.: Dunbury, 1977).

3.

There are a few important exceptions to this general trend. For example, Mario T. García includes LULAC in what he calls the “Mexican American generation” of leaders that emerged from the formative experiences of the Great Depression and World War II. He argues that this generation, far from being simple assimilationists, struggled to reconcile their ethnic identity with their American citizenship and set the stage for the gains of the 1960s. David Gutiérrez, in his study of Mexican Americans and Mexican immigrants, reveals the subtleties and ambivalence within the Mexican American community, including LULAC and the American G.I. Forum, when faced with heavy immigration from Mexico. Ignacio García’s recent book on the “Viva Kennedy” movement among Mexican Americans treats with care and respect this generation of civil rights leaders, even though the author identifies his disagreement with their tactics and ideology. None of these works, however, considers the role of the older organizations in domestic policy across the civil rights years. Gutiérrez does cover the entire era but focuses on issues of immigration; the other studies do not follow their subjects across the watershed of the civil rights era. See Mario T. García, Mexican Americans: Leadership, Ideology and Identity, 1930–1960 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1989); David G. Gutiérrez, Walls and Mirrors: Mexican Americans, Mexican Immigrants, and the Politics of Ethnicity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995); Ignacio M. García, Viva Kennedy: Mexican Americans in Search of Camelot (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2000).

4.

Mario García’s Mexican Americans identifies and describes this cultural identity argument but limits its analysis to the formative period up through the 1950s.

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notes to pages 5–15

5.

Benjamin Márquez, LULAC: The Evolution of a Mexican American Political Organization (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993).

chapter 1 1.

Gary Gerstle, American Crucible: Race and Nation in the Twentieth Century (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2001), 4.

2.

Henry Nash Smith, Virgin Land: The American West As Symbol and Myth (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1950); Patricia Nelson Limerick, Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West (New York: W. W. Norton, 1987).

3.

Manuel G. Gonzales, Mexicanos: A History of Mexicans in the United States (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), chapter 4.

4.

David Montejano, Anglos and Mexicans in the Making of Texas, 1836–1986 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987), 34–41.

5.

Montejano, Anglos and Mexicans, 50–74; Armando C. Alonzo, Tejano Legacy: Rancheros and Settlers in South Texas, 1734–1900 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1998), 251–53.

6.

Alonzo, Tejano Legacy, 198–200; Montejano, Anglos and Mexicans, 105.

7.

Mario T. García, Desert Immigrants: The Mexicans of El Paso, 1880–1920 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1981), 155. See also Arnoldo De León The Tejano Community, 1836–1900 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1982), chapter 2.

8.

Montejano, Anglos and Mexicans, 143–48.

9.

Lawrence H. Fuchs, The American Kaleidoscope: Race, Ethnicity, and the Civic Culture (Hanover: Wesleyan University Press), 110–27.

10.

Julie Leininger Pycior, LBJ and Mexican Americans: The Paradox of Power (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1997), 10–15.

11.

M. García, Desert Immigrants, 65–72; Richard A. García, Rise of the Mexican American Middle Class: San Antonio, 1929–1941 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1991), 27–31; Arnoldo De León, Ethnicity in the Sunbelt: Mexican Americans in Houston (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2001), 23, 45; Mario Barrera, Race and Class in the Southwest: A Theory of Racial Inequality (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1979), 86–87.

12.

Montejano, Anglos and Mexicans, 167–68; M. García, Desert Immigrants, 127–46; R. García, Rise of the Mexican American Middle Class, 27–28, 38–41.

13.

John Burma, “The Civil Rights Situation of Mexican Americans and Spanish Americans,” in Race Relations: Problems and Theory, ed. Jitsuichi Masuoka and Preston Valien (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1961), 155–67; Gómez-Quiñones, Chicano Politics, 42, 76–80. Studies suggest that cities outside the Deep South, particularly with two or more substantial minority populations, tended to have more openings in their discriminatory systems even for blacks. See Kenneth Mason, African Americans and Race Relations in San Antonio, Texas, 1867–1937 (New York: Garland, 1998) as compared with Black Dixie: Afro-Texan History and Culture in Houston, ed. Howard Beeth and Cary D. Wintz (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1992).

14.

Cited in Guadalupe San Miguel, Jr., “Let All of Them Take Heed”: Mexican Americans

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notes to pages 16–21

and the Campaign for Educational Equality in Texas, 1910–1981 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987), 32, 36. 15.

San Miguel, Jr., “Let All of Them Take Heed,” 54–58.

16.

Gilbert G. González, Chicano Education in the Era of Segregation (Philadelphia: Balch Institute Press, 1990), 13. See also M. García, Desert Immigrants, 110–22.

17.

Michael H. Hunt, Ideology and U.S. Foreign Policy (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1987), 68, 86–88; Gerstle, American Crucible, chapters 1–3; Otis L. Graham and Elizabeth Koed, “Americanizing the Immigrant, Past and Future: History and Implications of a Social Movement,” The Public Historian 15, no. 4 (fall 1993): 24–45.

18.

John Higham, Send These to Me: Immigrants in Urban America, rev. ed. (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984), 54–57; Leo Grebler, Joan W. Moore, Ralph C. Guzmán, The Mexican-American People: The Nation’s Second Largest Minority (New York: Free Press, 1970), 65–66.

19.

Carey McWilliams, North From Mexico: The Spanish-Speaking People of the United States (New York: Lippincott Company, 1949), chapter 11.

20.

Matt S. Meier and Feliciano Ribera, Mexican Americans/American Mexicans: From Conquistadors to Chicanos, rev. ed. (New York: Hill & Wang, 1993), 125–27; Rudolfo Acuña, Occupied America: A History of Chicanos, 4th ed. (New York: Longman, 2000), 213–15.

21.

Clare Sheridan, “Contested Citizenship: National Identity and the Mexican Immigration Debates of the 1920s,” Journal of American Ethnic History 21, no. 3 (spring 2002): 3–35.

22.

John Bodnar, The Transplanted: A History of Immigrants in Urban America (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985), 117–18.

23.

R. García, Rise of the Mexican American Middle Class, 53.

24.

Alan Knight, “Racism, Revolution, and Indigenismo: Mexico, 1910–1940,” in The Idea of Race in Latin America, 1870–1940, ed. Richard Graham (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990), 71–113.

25.

De León, Ethnicity in the Sunbelt, 31–34.

26.

George J. Sánchez, Becoming Mexican American, chapter 5.

27.

For accounts of early mutualistas, each with its own focus, see Roberto R. Calderón, “Union, Paz, Y Trabajo: Laredo’s Mexican Mutual Aid Societies, 1890s” and Emilio Zamora, “Mutualist and Mexicanist Expressions of a Political Culture in Texas” in Mexican Americans in Texas History, ed. Emilio Zamora, Cynthia Orozco, Rodolfo Rocha (Austin: University of Texas State Historical Association, 2000).

28.

Mario T. García, Mexican Americans: Leadership, Ideology, and Identity, 1930–1960 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1989), 27–29; R. García, Rise of the Mexican American Middle Class, 254–56.

29.

Benjamin Márquez, LULAC: The Evolution of a Mexican American Political Organization (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993), 15–16.

30.

M. García, Mexican Americans, 29.

31.

LULAC News, Apr., 1940, cited in M. García, Mexican Americans, 35.

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notes to pages 21–25

32.

LULAC Constitution, cited in O. Douglas Weeks, “The League of United LatinAmerican Citizens: A Texas-Mexican Civic Organization,” Southwestern Political and Social Science Quarterly 10 (Dec., 1929): 264. LULAC members often used the term “race” to describe people of Mexican heritage, just as they used it to describe those of Italian, Irish, or German heritage.

33.

San Miguel, Jr., “Let All of Them Take Heed,” 69–71.

34.

Weeks, “The League of United Latin-American Citizens,” 258.

35.

Alonso Perales, LULAC: Fifty Years of Serving Hispanics (Corpus Christi, Tex.: Baldwin Printing Co., 1978), 76–78; Carolyn Hernández, “LULAC: The History of a Grassroots Organization and Its Influence on Educational Policies, 1929–1983” (Ph.D. diss., Loyola University of Chicago, 1995), 51–53. The Knights of America was one of the Mexican American organizations that merged to form LULAC.

36.

M. García, Mexican Americans, 31–32; San Miguel, Jr., “Let All of Them Take Heed,” 70; Weeks, “The League of United Latin American Citizens,” 270–71.

37.

David G. Gutiérrez, “Migration, Emergent Ethnicity, and the ‘Third Space’: The Shifting Politics of Nationalism in Greater Mexico,” Journal of American History 86, no. 2 (Sept., 1999): 481–517.

38.

R. García, Rise of the Mexican American Middle Class, 316–17.

39.

Márquez, LULAC, 23; M. García, Mexican Americans, 32, 44–45.

40.

Weeks, “The League of United Latin-American Citizens,” 266–67; Cynthia E. Orozco, “Regionalism, Politics, and Gender in Southwestern History: The LULAC Expansion into New Mexico From Texas, 1929–1945,” Western Historical Quarterly 29, no. 4 (winter 1998): 459–83.

41.

Peter H. Argersinger, “The Transformation of American Politics, 1865–1910,” in Contesting Democracy: Substance and Structure in American Political History, 1775–2000, ed. Byron E. Shafer and Anthony J. Badger (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2001), 135, 136.

42.

David M. Kennedy, Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929–1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), chapter 12 (quote from p. 365).

43.

Alan Brinkley, “The New Deal and the Idea of the State,” in The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order, 1930–1980, ed. Steve Fraser and Gary Gerstle (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1989), 85–121.

44.

Sidney M. Milkis, The President and the Parties: The Transformation of the American Party System since the New Deal (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 144.

45.

For the creation and significance of the Executive Office of the President, see Fred I. Greenstein, “Change and Continuity in the Modern Presidency,” in The New American Political System, ed. Anthony King (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute, 1978), 45–53; and Milkis, The President and the Parties, chapter 6.

46.

Kennedy, Freedom from Fear, 377–80; Harvard Sitkoff, A New Deal for Blacks: The Emergence of Civil Rights as a National Issue (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978).

47.

Francisco E. Balderrama and Raymond Rodríguez, Decade of Betrayal: Mexican Repatriation in the 1930s (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995). See also Mark Reisler, By the Sweat of Their Brow: Mexican Immigrant Labor in the United

210

notes to pages 26–31

States, 1900–1940 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1976); and Emilio Zamora, The World of the Mexican Worker in Texas (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1993). For an interesting discussion of the New Deal as recording and reviving Hispanic folk crafts, in an effort to “preserve” and “improve” Hispanic village life, see Suzanne Forrest, The Preservation of the Village: New Mexico’s Hispanics and the New Deal (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1989). 48.

George J. Sánchez, Becoming Mexican American: Ethnicity, Culture, and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles, 1900–1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), chapter 10.

49.

Zaragosa Vargas, Proletarians of the North: A History of Mexican Industrial Workers in Detroit and the Midwest, 1917–1933 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), chapter 5; Juan R. García, Mexicans in the Midwest, 1900–1932 (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1996), chapter 9; R. García, Rise of the Mexican American Middle Class, chapter 2.

50.

Devra Weber, Dark Sweat, White Gold: California Farm Workers, Cotton, and the New Deal (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994).

51.

Pycior, LBJ and Mexican Americans, 26–38; Cynthia E. Orozco, “Regionalism, Politics, and Gender in the Southwest History: The LULAC’s Expansion into New Mexico from Texas, 1929–45,” Western Historical Quarterly 29, no. 4 (winter 1998): 459–83.

52.

R. García, Rise of the Mexican American Middle Class, 301.

53.

Márquez, LULAC, 17. This discussion of LULAC’s ideology is drawn from Márquez, LULAC, 17–38, and M. García, Mexican Americans, 25–46.

54.

M. García, Mexican Americans, 37.

55.

Montejano, Anglos and Mexicans, 232.

56.

Quoted in R. García, Rise of the Mexican American Middle Class, 260.

57.

M. García, Mexican Americans, 43.

58.

Horace M. Kallen, Culture and Democracy in the United States (New York: Boni & Liveright, 1924); For a thoughtful analysis of Kallen, which leads into his own answer to the question of his title, see Michael Walzer, “What Does It Mean to Be an American?” Social Research 57, no. 3 (fall 1990): 591–614.

59.

Márquez, LULAC, 20.

60.

R. García, Rise of the Mexican American Middle Class, 272–73.

61.

Weeks, “The League of United Latin-American Citizens,” 266.

62.

M. García, Mexican Americans, 40–42; R. García, Rise of the Mexican American Middle Class, 266–72.

63.

Weeks, “The League of United Latin-American Citizens,” 270.

64.

Oscar J. Martínez, interview with William Flores, Nov. 26 and Dec. 4, 1975, folder 18, box 3, Flores office files, LULAC papers, Benson Latin American Collection, University of Texas, Austin.

65.

M. García, Mexican Americans, 46–53.

66.

Pycior, LBJ and Mexican Americans, 34, 39.

67.

Márquez, LULAC, 31–34. For a study of the process of Mexican Americans “becoming white” in Texas, see Neil Foley, The White Scourge: Mexicans, Blacks, and Poor Whites in Texas Cotton Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997).

211

notes to pages 31– 41

68.

González, Chicano Education, 94–112; San Miguel, Jr., “Let All of Them Take Heed,” 64–67.

69.

San Miguel, Jr., “Let All of Them Take Heed,” 73–74.

70.

M. García, Mexican Americans, 54–55; San Miguel, Jr., “Let All of Them Take Heed,” 75–76.

71.

Independent School District v Salvatierra, 33 SW 2d 790 (Tex Civ App, 4th Dt 1930), cert. denied, 284 US 580 (1931).

72.

Carolyn Hernández, “LULAC,” 60–62; M. García Mexican Americans, 55–56.

73.

San Miguel, Jr., “Let All of Them Take Heed,” 80–81; Hernández, “LULAC,” 64–69.

chapter 2 1.

Clippings from Albuquerque Journal and Albuquerque Tribune, folder 3, Benjamin Osuna collection, LULAC papers, Benson Latin American Collection, University of Texas at Austin (hereafter cited as LULAC).

2.

James T. Patterson, Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945–1974 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996).

3.

John Morton Blum, V was for Victory: Politics and American Culture During World War II (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976), 182–207.

4.

Patterson, Grand Expectations, 15–31.

5.

L. H. Gann and Peter J. Duignan, The Hispanics in the United States: A History (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1986), 60–64. See also Raul Morin, Among the Valiant: MexicanAmericans in World War II and Korea (Alhambra, Calif.: Borden, 1966).

6.

David G. Gutiérrez, Walls and Mirrors: Mexican Americans, Mexican Immigrants, and the Politics of Ethnicity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 123–26.

7.

Mario T. García, Mexican Americans: Leadership, Ideology, and Identity, 1930–1960 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1989), 2.

8.

Benjamin Márquez, LULAC: The Evolution of a Mexican American Political Organization (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993), 39–40.

9.

See clippings from Albuquerque Journal and Albuquerque Tribune, folder 3, Benjamin Osuna papers, LULAC.

10.

Márquez, LULAC, 40–41.

11.

Carl Allsup, The American G.I. Forum: Origins and Evolution (Austin: Center for Mexican American Studies, University of Texas at Austin, 1982).

12.

See chapter 1.

13.

The U.S. Employment Service (USES) had to certify that a shortage of domestic labor existed in a given area before employers could obtain contract laborers. The Mexican government was responsible for bringing potential braceros to recruitment centers, where the USES would select the fittest candidates. The Immigration and Naturalization Service would then document and transport those selected to contracting centers near the border, where they were recruited by prospective employers (Richard B. Craig, The Bracero Program: Interest Groups and Foreign Policy [Austin: University of Texas Press, 1971], 36–46; Manuel García Y Griego, “The Importation of Mexican

212

notes to pages 41– 43

Contract Laborers to the United States, 1942–1964: Antecedents, Operation, and Legacy,” in The Border That Joins: Mexican Migrants and U.S. Responsibility, ed. Peter G. Brown and Henry Shue [Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1983], 50, 56). 14.

For a study of the power of government agencies in creating and interpreting immigration policy, see Kitty Calavita, Inside the State: The Bracero Program, Immigration, and the I.N.S. (New York: Routledge, 1992).

15.

Craig, The Bracero Program, 46–48.

16.

Memo, James L. Sundquist to Roger W. Jones, Mar. 30, 1950, whcf-of, box 1234, President’s Commission on Migratory Labor 401–2 (1950) folder, Harry S. Truman Library, Independence, Mo. (hereafter cited as HSTL); Craig, The Bracero Program, 51; Calavita, Inside the State, 23–25. While the bilateral agreement prohibited recruitment for work in Texas, employers in the state did not go without Mexican labor. The INS at times legalized undocumented workers on the spot, in Texas as well as in other states, effectively bypassing the international agreement and the spirit, if not the letter, of congressional legislation for the Bracero Program.

17.

“Resolution No. 6,” June 24, 1944, folder 6, box 1, Presidential Files of William Flores, LULAC.

18.

Examples of traditional interest-group elites include farm, labor, business, and veterans. See James Q. Wilson, “New Politics, New Elites, Old Publics,” in The New Politics of Public Policy, ed. Marc K. Landy and Martin A. Levin (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), 260–61.

19.

Márquez, LULAC, 23–25.

20.

Letter, R. J. Long to A. Álvarez, Sept. 15, 1943, folder 1, box 1, Presidential Files of William Flores, LULAC. The new name was not available for corporate use in Texas without consent of the League of Loyal Americans of San Antonio.

21.

Until 1951, the statutory authority for the wartime labor program was found in the ninth proviso of section 3 of the 1917 Immigration Act. From 1942–1947 Congress enacted supplementary legislation for the funding and operation of the program, which allowed it to continue even after the war had ended. After this legislation was allowed to expire in 1947, the 1917 act was once again the only authority for the program, and wartime necessity could not be claimed again until the Korean conflict. See Craig, The Bracero Program, 53.

22.

Craig, The Bracero Program, 65–100; Juan Ramón García, Operation Wetback: The Mass Deportation of Mexican Undocumented Workers in 1954 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1980), 19–35; García Y Griego, “Importation of Mexican Contract Laborers,” 49–70; memo, James L. Sundquist to Roger W. Jones, Mar. 30, 1950, whcf-of, box 1234, President’s Commission on Migratory Labor 401–2 (1950) folder, HSTL. The Texas blacklist was relaxed in the late 1940s, in part because the Texas government and business community worked to improve conditions and the state’s reputation, in part because the United States pressed Mexico to relax its blacklist during negotiations for program renewal.

23.

LULAC News, Feb., 1954, p. 25.

24.

LULAC News, July, 1958, p. 8.

213

notes to pages 43–48

25.

Among the protections in bracero contracts were payment of prevailing wages, length of contract, and payment of transportation by employers (memo, Sundquist to Jones).

26.

Letter, Carlos E. Castaneda to Robert K. Carr, May 9, 1947, Records of Temporary Committees, Commissions, and Boards—President’s Committee on Civil Rights, box 3, Mexican-American folder, HSTL.

27.

For example, Sánchez parenthetically noted, “Some communities have three schools— for ‘whites,’ for Negroes, for ‘Mexicans’” (letter, George I. Sánchez to Robert K. Carr, May 6, 1947, Records of Temporary Committees, Commissions, and Boards—President’s Committee on Civil Rights, box 3, Mexican-American folder, HSTL.

28.

Letter, R. A. Cortéz to President Truman, Aug. 6, 1948, whcf box 1402, League, P-Z folder, HSTL.

29.

Letter, Hector P. García to Civil Rights Commission, May 5, 1948, whcf-of, box 1509, 596 Miscellaneous folder, HSTL.

30.

64 F Supp 544 (SD Cal 1946), aff’d 161 F 2d 774 (9th Cir 1947).

31.

Carolyn Hernández, “LULAC: The History of a Grass Roots Organization and its Influence on Educational Policies: 1929–1983” (Ph.D. diss., Loyola University of Chicago, 1995), 71–77; M. García, Mexican Americans, 56–57.

32.

Civil Action No. 388, U.S. District Court, 1948 (WD Tex, June 15, 1948); Herández, LULAC, 77–80.

33.

This increase was partly responsible for the continuation of the Bracero Program. Officials, both in Mexico and the United States, hoped that by providing braceros they could persuade growers to discontinue the use of undocumented workers (Craig, The Bracero Program, 60–64; memo, James L. Sundquist to Roger W. Jones, Mar. 30, 1950, whcf-of, box 1234, President’s Commission on Migratory Labor 401–402 [1950] folder, HSTL).

34.

García Y Griego, “The Importation of Mexican Contract Laborers,” 65. During the years 1947–1949 74,600 braceros were recruited from Mexico and 142,200 deportable Mexican laborers legalized. During fiscal year 1950, only 19,813 braceros were recruited and 96,239 legalized. Bracero contracts became an inexpensive way to protect against deportation of farm hands. Deportation threats led to legalization of workers rather than abandonment of wetback labor and reliance on the formal bracero process.

35.

New York Times, Oct. 17, 1948, p. 33; Oct., 19, 1948, p. 16; Oct. 21, 1948, p. 14; Oct. 26, 1948, p. 35. The Departments of Labor, State, and Justice had considered the option of opening the border, but the decision to act was made within the INS and the USES, not by high-ranking administration officials. See Peter N. Kirstein, Anglo Over Bracero: A History of the Mexican Worker in the United States from Roosevelt to Nixon (San Francisco: R & E Associates, 1977), 67.

36.

Telegram, R. A. Cortéz to President Truman, Oct. 18, 1948; Robert Meza to President Truman, Oct. 19, 1948; W. Y. Herrera and Frank A. Martínez to President Truman, Oct. 19, 1948; José Leál and Jesse Carrizales to President Truman, Oct. 19, 1948; Raúl Pérez to President Truman, Oct. 20, 1948—all located in whcf-of, box 1232, 407-D Mexican Agricultural Workers (1948–Aug., 1949) folder, HSTL.

37.

See correspondence in whcf-of, box 1232, 407-D Mexican American Agricultural Workers (1948–Aug., 1949) folder, HSTL.

214

notes to pages 48–54

38.

LULAC leaders did believe that stereotypes of Americans of Mexican descent were influenced heavily by stereotypes about Mexican nationals, which LULAC leaders generally believed to be true. But they seem to have considered it politically advantageous not to make this argument explicitly in response to the El Paso incident, instead emphasizing the problems faced by poor Mexican American families (whose children might grow up to be LULAC members with the proper upbringing).

39.

Letter, Watson B. Miller to R. A. Cortéz, Oct. 26, 1948, smof-Philleo Nash, box 16, Wetbacks folder, HSTL; Letter, Tom C. Clark to R.A. Cortéz, Dec. 1, 1948, whcf-of, box 685, O.F. 133-A 1948 folder, HSTL.

40.

Letter, R.A. Cortéz to Tom C. Clark, Nov. 4, 1948, smof—Philleo Nash, box 16, Wetbacks folder, HSTL.

41.

Calavita, Inside the State, 29–30; Kirstein, Anglo Over Bracero, 142–46; Letter, R.A. Cortéz to Tom C. Clark, Nov. 4, 1948, smof—Philleo Nash, box 16, Wetbacks folder, HSTL.

42.

Letter, R. A. Cortéz, Gus C. García, and George I. Sánchez to President Truman, Jan. 27, 1949, smof—Philleo Nash, box 16, Wetbacks folder, HSTL.

43.

This is why LULAC restricted its membership to American citizens. See chapter 1. Naturalization rates for Mexicans were the lowest for any immigrant group. For example, during the 1950s the naturalization rate for Mexican immigrants ranged from 2.5 percent to 5 percent, while rates for all other immigrants ranged from 26 percent to 33.9 percent (Leo Grebler, Joan W. Moore, and Ralph C. Guzmán, The MexicanAmerican People: The Nation’s Second Largest Minority [New York: The Free Press, 1970], 558).

44.

Letter, R. A. Cortéz, Gus C. García, and George I. Sánchez to President Truman, Jan. 27, 1949.

45.

Ibid. It is significant that in describing the discrimination they faced, LULAC leaders put the word “racial” in quotes. They denied that they were a separate race but recognized that Anglos commonly considered them as such.

46.

Keith Fitzgerald, The Face of the Nation: Immigration, the State, and the National Identity (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1996), 200.

47.

Gutiérrez, Walls and Mirrors, 161; David M. Reimers, Still the Golden Door: The Third World Comes to America, 2d ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), 20–22.

48.

For LULAC leaders the term “minority” did not confer racial status but reflected how they were recognized by others. Thus they could argue that they, and other ethnic Americans, were white and still to be considered a minority.

49.

LULAC News, Aug., 1953, p. 35.

50.

LULAC News, July, 1954, pp. 12–13.

51.

Gutiérrez, Walls and Mirrors, 164–67.

52.

LULAC News, May, 1954, p. 3.

53.

New York Times, Apr. 8, 1951, p. 38; July 14, 1951, p. 1.

54.

For nearly his entire eight years in office, Eisenhower made little effort to reach out to the Mexican American community. In the last year of his administration the president

215

notes to pages 54–57

did, at the suggestion of his advisors, send a presidential message to LULAC, recognizing the group’s growing political influence. See chapter 3. 55.

For example, in 1949 the infant mortality rate for twenty-eight border counties in Texas was 79.5 per 1000 live births, compared to 46.2 for all of Texas and 32 for the United States as a whole; the tuberculosis rate was 112.9 per 100,000 for the twentyeight counties to 76.4 for Texas; the dysentery rate for those counties was 1554.1 compared to 312 for the state (New York Times, June 3, 1951, p. 30). The average cash earnings of farm workers in 1949 was reported to be just over $500, while the earnings of factory workers averaged $2,600. Furthermore, migrant workers averaged fewer than one hundred days of work per year and were not covered by any social legislation (New York Times, Apr. 8, 1951, p. 38; Jan. 11, 1953, p. 37). The New York Times also compared the careful screening of sailors, scientists, and others under the McCarran Act with the “aliens breaching the border at will,” as many as five thousand per day. While these “hordes” were mostly “guileless laborers,” the paper noted that they could be infiltrated by “subversive foreign agents” fairly easily (New York Times, Jan. 12, 1953, p. 1; Jan. 13, 1953, p. 26).

56.

Warren was under pressure from county officials to find some way to reimburse them for the high police, hospital, and welfare costs they associated with the influx of Mexican laborers (J. R. García, Operation Wetback, 157).

57.

New York Times, Aug. 18, 1953, p. 16.

58.

The “administrative presidency” was developed under Roosevelt and the New Deal and was intended to allow the president and his administrative agencies to father the cause of programmatic liberalism in the face of a stubborn Congress. See Sidney M. Milkis, “The Presidency, Policy Reform, and the Rise of Administrative Politics,” in Remaking American Politics, ed. Richard A. Harris and Sidney M. Milkis (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1989), 146–87.

59.

J. R. García, Operation Wetback, 157–83, 228. According to García, there is no corroborating evidence for these high estimates of voluntary repatriation.

60.

J. R. García, Operation Wetback, 209–10.

61.

LULAC News, July, 1954, p. 4.

62.

J. R. García, Operation Wetback, 210.

63.

LULAC News, July, 1954, p. 4.

64.

LULAC News, Aug., 1954, pp. 1–2. It is not clear that wetbacks were on an odyssey that led to an “economic nowhere.” One reason Mexico continued to support the bilateral labor agreements was that bracero contracts eased the high unemployment in the Mexican economy. In addition, Mexico believed that braceros sent significant sums back to their families, again helping the Mexican economy. Finally, as is common today, many Mexicans returned regularly for work in the United States—either seasonally or immediately upon being deported. These facts suggest that employment as bracero or wetback labor was not as horrible, by Mexican standards, as LULAC believed from its middle-class American perspective. See Richard Craig, The Bracero Program, 13–19.

65.

Employer sanctions continue to be unpopular in Congress. Sanctions were attempted in the 1986 immigration law reforms but failed because of the political strength of growers.

216

notes to pages 57– 65

66.

Of course, one reason is that after the end of Operation Wetback the Border Patrol had fewer resources and acted less vigilantly than at the peak of the raids.

67.

Craig, The Bracero Program, 150–64.

68.

“Background Information,” n.d., whcf-subject file, box 203, EX FG 723 President’s Comte on Migratory Labor folder, John F. Kennedy Library, Boston, Mass. (hereafter cited JFKL).

69.

Ending the Bracero Program was still politically difficult. Kennedy’s narrow victory over Richard Nixon in the 1960 election limited his influence with Congress. In addition, and most importantly according to Richard Craig, Mexico advocated renewal of the program. Craig, The Bracero Program, 185–88.

70.

Letter, Arthur Goldberg to President Kennedy, Jan. 17, 1962, and “Statement of Policy, Recommendations and Directives of the President’s Committee on Migratory Labor,” n.d. (both located in whcf-subject file, box 203, EX FG 723 President’s Comte on Migratory Labor folder, JFKL).

71.

Craig, The Bracero Program, 182–85; “Statement of Policy, Recommendations and Directives.”

72.

“Statement of Policy, Recommendations and Directives.”

73.

Folder 3, Andow office files, LULAC.

74.

Craig, The Bracero Program, 177–97.

75.

Sidney Milkis, “The Presidency, Policy Reform, and the Rise of Administrative Politics,” 149–51.

76.

New York Times, July 14, 1951, p. 1.

chapter 3 1.

Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and American Democracy (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1944).

2.

Walter Jackson, Gunnar Myrdal and America’s Conscience: Social Engineering and Racial Liberalism, 1938–1987 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990); James T. Patterson, Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945–1974 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 20–22.

3.

A good place to begin is with Harvard Sitkoff, The Struggle for Black Equality, 1954– 1992, rev. ed. (New York: Hill & Wang, 1993).

4.

Myrdal, An American Dilemma, 159.

5.

LULAC News, May, 1954, p. 3. See Chapter 2 for the changing views of citizenship and ethnicity with regard to immigration.

6.

LULAC News, May, 1954, p. 3.

7.

Louis Alexander, “Texas Helps Her Little Latins,” Saturday Evening Post, 234 (Aug. 5, 1961): 30ff.

8.

For a recent, perceptive biography see Thomas H. Kreneck, Mexican American Odyssey: Felix Tijerina, Entrepreneur and Civic Leader, 1905–1965 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2001).

9.

The median years of school completed by Spanish-surnamed persons in the Southwest in 1950 was 5.4 years, in 1960 7.1. For Anglos, the median years for 1950 and 1960

217

notes to pages 65–68

were 11.3 and 12.1, respectively (Leo Grebler, Joan W. Moore, Ralph C. Guzmán, The Mexican-American People: The Nation’s Second Largest Minority [New York: Free Press, 1970], 150). For conditions in Mexican American education during the 1950s, see Guadalupe San Miguel, Jr., Brown, Not White: School Integration and the Chicano Movement in Houston (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2001) and “Let All of Them Take Heed”: Mexican Americans and the Campaign for Educational Equality in Texas, 1910–1981 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987). 10.

Kreneck, Mexican American Odyssey, chapters 8 and 9; Carolyn Hernández, “LULAC: The History of a Grass Roots Organization and Its Influence on Educational Policies, 1929–1983” (Ph.D. diss., Loyola University of Chicago, 1995), 84–93; San Miguel, Jr., “Let All of Them Take Heed,” 140–46 (quote on p. 146).

11.

Kreneck, Mexican American Odyssey, 243–48; San Miguel, Jr., “Let All of Them Take Heed,” 147–56; Carolyn Hernández, “LULAC,” 95.

12.

See chapter 2.

13.

San Miguel, Jr., “Let All of Them Take Heed,” 147–48.

14.

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 US 483 (1954).

15.

To combat the argument that the state program was unconstitutional because it helped a specific group, Tijerina suggested that any non-English speaking child— Mexican American, German, Polish, etc.—be eligible.

16.

For Mexican American success under the law, if not in practice, see David Montejano, Anglos and Mexicans in the Making of Texas, 1836–1986 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987), 275–77.

17.

John Burma, “The Civil Rights Situation of Mexican Americans and Spanish Americans,” in Race Relations: Problems and Theory, ed. Jitsuichi Masuoka and Preston Valien (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1961), 155–67.

18.

Benjamin Márquez, LULAC: The Evolution of a Mexican American Political Organization (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993), 61–63 (quote taken from p. 62).

19.

Ignacio M. García, Viva Kennedy: Mexican Americans in Search of Camelot (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2000), 6–7, 17, 29–32, 67–69; Juan GómezQuiñones, Chicano Politics: Reality and Promise, 1940–1990 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1990), 67–74; Lawrence H. Fuchs, The American Kaleidoscope: Race, Ethnicity, and the Civic Culture (Hanover, N.H.: Wesleyan University Press, 1990).

20.

Letter, George J. Garza to William Flores, Apr. 15, 1955, General Correspondence 1954– 1959 folder, Flores collection, LULAC Collection, Benson Latin American Library, University of Texas, Austin, Texas (hereafter cited as LULAC).

21.

Fred I. Greenstein, “Change and Continuity in the Modern Presidency,” in The New American Political System, ed. Anthony King (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute, 1978), 58–61; Sidney M. Milkis, The President and the Parties: The Transformation of the American Party System Since the New Deal (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 161–69.

22.

Sitkoff, The Struggle for Black Equality, 28–31; Robert Fredrick Burk, The Eisenhower Administration and Black Civil Rights (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1984), 174–203.

218

notes to pages 69–72

23.

Letter, Thad Hutcheson to Wilton B. Persons, Feb. 6, 1959, whcf-ppf, box 824, League of United Latin American Citizens folder, Dwight D. Eisenhower Library, Abilene, Kansas (hereafter cited as DDEL). Tijerina did sufficient work on Eisenhower’s campaign to receive a letter from the president-elect thanking him for his efforts (Kreneck, Mexican American Odyssey, 180–81).

24.

Memo, Homer H. Gruenther to Frederic Fox, Feb. 12, 1959, whcf-ppf, box 824, League of United Latin American Citizens folder, DDEL.

25.

Telegram, President Eisenhower to Felix Tijerina, Feb. 13, 1959, whcf-ppf, box 824, League of United Latin American Citizens folder, DDEL.

26.

Some administration officials recommended a staff letter instead of a presidential message, but because of Hutcheson’s intervention the communication was upgraded. The importance of party became clear the next year, when the request for presidential recognition of LULAC Week came through Senator Lyndon Johnson and the Democratic party. In that case, LULAC received a letter from Special Assistant Frederic Fox rather than a telegram from the president. See handwritten note, Frederic Fox to Edward McCabe, Feb. 15, 1960, and letter, Frederic Fox to Felix Tijerina, Feb. 15, 1960 (both located in whcf-ppf, box 824, League of United Latin American Citizens folder, DDEL).

27.

Despite Truman’s efforts for civil rights in general, and the administration’s and PCCR’s identification of Mexican Americans as a group facing discrimination, as late as 1948 Truman aides could not identify LULAC. Rhetoric about civil rights for Mexican Americans, including correspondence with LULAC leaders, did not yet result in consistent recognition of LULAC as an organization. See the note attached to telegram, R.A. Cortéz to President Truman, Nov. 4, 1948, whcf-of, box 1402, League, P-Z folder, Harry S. Truman Library, Independence, Missouri (hereafter cited as HSTL).

28.

Julie Leininger Pycior, LBJ and Mexican Americans: The Paradox of Power (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1997), 39.

29.

I. García, Viva Kennedy, 33–45.

30.

Pycior, LBJ and Mexican Americans, 111–18; I. García, Viva Kennedy, 55–59; Richard Santillan and Carlos Muñoz, Jr., “Latinos and the Democratic Party,” in The Democrats Must Lead: The Case for a Progressive Democratic Party, ed. James MacGregor Burns et al. (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1992), 176.

31.

I. García, Viva Kennedy, 88–106.

32.

Mark R. Levy and Michael S. Kramer, The Ethnic Factor: How America’s Minorities Decide Elections (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1972), 228.

33.

James N. Giglio, The Presidency of John F. Kennedy (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1991), 45, 232–36; Edwin M. Martin, Kennedy and Latin America (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1994); Stephen G. Rabe, The Most Dangerous Area in the World: John F. Kennedy Confronts Communist Revolution in Latin America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999).

34.

I. García, Viva Kennedy, 44–49.

35.

Ruth B. Knorr, “Latin American Citizens,” Christian Century, 77 (Dec. 14, 1960): 1482.

36.

New York Times, Feb. 24, 1961, p. 8.

219

notes to pages 72–75

37.

“Kenney Patronage, Latin American Policies Under Fire,” Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report 19 (June 23, 1961): 1042–43; Gómez-Quiñones, Chicano Politics, 91–94.

38.

Letter, Frank M. Valdez to President Kennedy, Sept. 8, 1961, whcf-name file, “Valdez, Frank M.,” John F. Kennedy Library, Boston (hereafter cited JFKL).

39.

Letter, William Elizondo to President Kennedy, Jan. 8, 1962, and letter, Lawrence F. O’Brien to William Elizondo, Feb. 26, 1962 (both located in whcf-name file, “Elizondo, William,” JFKL).

40.

Letter, William Elizondo to President Kennedy, Jan. 8, 1962, whcf-name file, “Elizondo, William,” JFKL.

41.

“Minutes of 34th National Convention,” folder 3, Andow office files, LULAC.

42.

Letter, Ed Idar, Jr. to President Kennedy, July 31, 1963, and letter, Lawrence F. O’Brien to Ed Idar, Jr. (both located in whcf-subject file, box 364, HU 2, Sept. 1, 1963 folder, JFKL).

43.

On PASSO, see I. García, Viva Kennedy, chapter 6.

44.

Letter, J. Carlos McCormick to President Kennedy, Mar. 30, 1961, whcf-name file, “McCormick, J. Carlos,” JFKL.

45.

Letter, Ed Idar, Jr. to President Kennedy, July 31, 1963; letter, Lawrence F. O’Brien to Ed Idar, Jr.; both located in whcf-subject file, box 364, HU 2 Sept. 1, 1963 folder, JFKL.

46.

LULAC News, Apr., 1965.

47.

Rodolfo O. de la Garza, “U.S. Foreign Policy and the Mexican American Political Agenda,” in Ethnic Groups and U.S. Foreign Policy, ed. Mohammed E. Ahrari (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1987), 101–14; Latinos and U.S. Foreign Policy: Representing the “Homeland”? ed. Rodolfo O. de la Garza and Harry P. Pachón (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000).

48.

Mary L. Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000); John D. Skrentny, The Minority Rights Revolution (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap, 2002); Doug McAdam, “On the International Origins of Domestic Political Opportunities” in Social Movements and American Political Institutions, ed. Anne Costain and Andrew McFarland (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1988); Thomas Borstleman, The Cold War and the Color Line: American Race Relations in the Global Arena (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001).

49.

Among the most influential studies of the time drawing national attention to poverty, see Michael Harrington, The Other America: Poverty in the United States (New York: Macmillan, 1962) and John Kenneth Galbraith, The Affluent Society (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1958). Scholars are divided on Kennedy’s commitment to his domestic agenda. Most agree that his top priority was the Cold War and foreign relations but disagree as to his follow through and success with domestic issues. See James N. Giglio and Stephen G. Rabe, Debating the Kennedy Presidency (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003).

50.

Richard Goodwin, Remembering America: A Voice from the Sixties (New York: Harper & Row, 1988), 3–5.

51.

Giglio, The Presidency of John F. Kennedy, 97.

220

notes to pages 75–79

52.

Allen J. Matusow, The Unraveling of America: A History of Liberalism in the 1960s (New York: Harper & Row, 1984), 97.

53.

Giglio, The Presidency of John F. Kennedy, 104.

54.

Márquez, LULAC, 55–59, 71–72, 117–18.

55.

Letter, Hector Godínez, Nash García, Ray Villa to Paul Andow, Nov. 26, 1963, folder 2, Andow office files, LULAC.

56.

Report of the State Director to the Supreme Council, Apr. 11, 1964, folder 2, Andow office files, LULAC.

57.

Márquez, LULAC, 5, 61–63.

58.

Resolution, 34th National LULAC Convention, folder 3, Andow office files, LULAC.

59.

Letter, Guillermo Villarreal to Paul Andow, Apr. 10, 1964, folder 2, Andow office files, LULAC.

60.

Letter, Guillermo Villarreal to Paul Andow, Nov. 27, 1963, folder 2, Andow office files, LULAC.

61.

See documents in “LULAC Housing Projects, 1962–1963,” folder 8, Andow office files, LULAC.

62.

Park South Village, report, Sept. 19, 1963, folder 8, Andow office files, LULAC.

63.

Report, Frank M. Valdez to LULAC National Supreme Council Meeting, Nov. 29, 1963, folder 2, Andow office files, LULAC.

64.

LULAC set up a nonprofit corporation, under the leadership of LULAC officers and former officers, as part of the federal requirements. “Villa Del Norte,” July 8, 1962; “Report by Frank M. Valdez”, Sept. 19, 1963; “Report on Park South Village,” Nov. 29, 1963; all located in folder 8, Andow office files, LULAC.

65.

The LULAC Home would serve as the organization’s national headquarters and house the group’s archives. It represented a program by the national office that many local council members proved reluctant to support financially. Minutes of 34th National LULAC Convention, folder 3, Andow office files, LULAC.

66.

Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954–1963 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988); Matusow, Unraveling of America, 60–96; Carl M. Brauer, John F. Kennedy and the Second Reconstruction (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977).

67.

Hugh Davis Graham, Civil Rights and the Presidency: Race and Gender in American Politics, 1960–1972 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 33–34. For a generally sympathetic assessment of Kennedy’s civil rights efforts, which concentrates on the constraints he faced and the executive-action approach, see Brauer, John F. Kennedy and the Second Reconstruction. Kennedy’s efforts to increase the federal role in education, while limited during his presidency, laid the groundwork for significant civil rights efforts within the decade. See Hugh Davis Graham, The Uncertain Triumph: Federal Education Policy in the Kennedy and Johnson Years (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984).

68.

Robert Dallek, Flawed Giant: Lyndon Johnson and His Times, 1961–1973 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 23–38; Graham, Civil Rights Era, chapter 2.

221

notes to pages 79–84

69.

Minutes of White House Meeting, April 14, 1961, whcf-subject file, box 358, EX HU Human Rights, Jan. 20, 1961–May 10, 1961 folder, JFKL; Skrentny, Minority Rights Revolution, 101–104.

70.

Sum.mary of Civil Rights progress, Jan. 20, 1961–Oct. 31, 1961, whcf-subject file, box 358, EX HU, Nov. 16, 1961—Dec. 31, 1961 folder, JFKL.

71.

Minutes, 34th National LULAC Convention, July, 1963, folder 3, Andow office files, LULAC.

72.

Minnesota State Report, n.d., folder 2, Andow office files, LULAC.

73.

Minutes, Supreme Council Meeting, Nov. 30, 1963, folder 2, Andow office files, LULAC.

74.

Handwritten notes, Resolution #6, folder 3, Andow office files, LULAC.

75.

LULAC was not alone in its reluctance to join forces with blacks. Economic competition between working-class Mexican Americans and blacks combined with racial differences in Los Angeles to prevent local Mexican American leaders from joining a struggle by city blacks to gain civil rights from the city council and local businessmen in 1963. The Mexican Americans joined with blacks only after they realized that black gains could come at the expense of Mexican Americans, when, for instance, employers began to fire Mexicans to hire blacks to ease the pressure brought by the protesting group (New York Times, Aug. 9, 1963, p. 10; Aug. 10, 1963, p. 8; Aug. 11, 1963, p. 70.

76.

Minutes, 34th National LULAC Convention, July 7, 1963, and copy of proposed resolution #4 (both located in folder 3, Andow office files, LULAC); minutes, Supreme Council Meeting, Nov. 30, 1963, folder 2, Andow office files, LULAC.

77.

See, for example, letters in whcf-name file, “League, L-Z,” JFKL.

78.

Letter, William Elizondo to President Kennedy, Aug. 10, 1961, whcf-name file, “League, L-Z,” JFKL.

79.

Letter, John J. Herrera to J. Carlos McCormick, Sept., 1963, whcf-subject file, box 554, EX Law-Lasz folder, JFKL.

80.

Letter, J. Carlos McCormick to Kenneth O’Donnell, Oct. 4, 1963, whcf-subject file, box 554, EX Law-Lasz folder, JFKL.

81.

Memo, Kenneth O’Donnell to Walter Jenkins, Oct. 9, 1963, and letter, George E. Reedy to Kenneth O’Donnell, Oct. 22, 1963 (both located in whcf-subject file, box 554, EX Law-Lasz folder, JFKL).

82.

Arnoldo De León, Ethnicity in the Sunbelt: A History of Mexican Americans in Houston (Houston, Texas: Mexican American Studies Program, University of Houston, 1989), 165–66; report from the State of Texas, Nov. 26, 1963, folder 2, Andow office files, LULAC; letter, J. Carlos McCormick to Fred Holborn and attachment, Oct. 29, 1963, whcf-subject file, box 554, EX Law-Lasz folder, JFKL; report, Frank M. Valdez to LULAC National Supreme Council Meeting, Nov. 29, 1963, folder 2, Andow office files, LULAC.

83.

Report, Ken Flynn to Paul Andow and Supreme Council, n.d., folder 2, Andow office files, LULAC.

84.

Report, Ken Flynn to Paul Andow and Supreme Council, n.d., folder 2, Andow office files, LULAC.

222

notes to pages 84–92

85.

For Johnson’s early career with Mexican Americans in Texas, see Pycior, LBJ and Mexican Americans, chapters 1–4; Robert A. Caro, The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Path to Power (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982), 168–71, 276, 718–23; Caro, The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Means of Ascent (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990), 180–90, 264–65, 281, 304–17.

86.

Pycior, LBJ and Mexican Americans, 68–73. For the Longoria affair, see Patrick J. Carroll, Félix Longoria’s Wake: Bereavement, Racism, and the Rise of Mexican American Activism (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2003).

87.

Letter, Hobart Taylor, Jr., to Rodolfo Las Ramos, May 24, 1963, office files of W.D. Taylor, box 426, Spanish Speaking—problems of folder, LBJL.

88.

Press release, “Vice President Reports on Minority Group Employment,” May 1, 1963, office files of W. D. Taylor, box 426, Spanish Speaking—problems of folder, LBJL. Johnson emphasized national origin in this context because he was responding to accusations that the PCEEO only concerned itself with discrimination against blacks. This theme will be taken up further in chapter 4.

89.

See John David Skrentny, The Ironies of Affirmative Action: Politics, Culture, and Justice in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), especially chapters 2 and 3.

90.

For the formation of the Civil Rights Act, see Hugh Davis Graham, The Civil Rights Era: Origins and Development of National Policy, 1960–1972 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), especially chapter 5.

91.

See Matusow, The Unraveling of America, part 2, and Gareth Davies, From Opportunity to Entitlement: The Transformation and Decline of Great Society Liberalism (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1996).

92.

Memo, Lee White to President Johnson, May 28, 1965, and “Suggested Remarks, Mexican-American Leaders,” June 1, 1965 (both located in office files of Horace Busby, box 53, Mexican American leaders folder. LBJL).

93.

For a discussion of the Economic Opportunity Act and its foundation in traditional liberalism, see Davies, From Opportunity to Entitlement, chapter 2.

94.

LULAC News, Jan., 1965.

95.

LULAC News, Apr., 1965.

96.

Suggested Statement by the President, n.d., whcf-subject file, EX PR 18–2 Oct. 13, 1965– July 5, 1966 folder, LBJL; LULAC News, June, 1966, p. 2; LULAC News, July, 1966, p. 8.

chapter 4 1.

James T. Patterson, Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945–1974 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), chapter 18; Allen J. Matusow, The Unraveling of America: A History of Liberalism in the 1960s (New York: Harper & Row, 1984), part 2.

2.

Adam Fairclough, Better Day Coming: Blacks and Equality, 1890–2000 (New York: Viking, 2001), 295–96; Jerry Cohen and William Murphy, Burn, Baby, Burn! The Los Angeles Race Riot, August 1965 (New York: Dutton, 1966); U.S. Riot Commission Report, Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1968); Matusow, Unraveling of America, part 3.

3.

Fairclough, Better Day Coming, chapter 14.

223

notes to pages 92–96

4.

Patterson, Grand Expectations, 589.

5.

The Census Bureau used the 1960 census to identify people in the Southwest with Spanish surnames, then compiled their statistics into a rough measure of Mexican American conditions. The insistence that Mexican Americans be considered white left most other government reports of the early-to mid-1960s with only two categories—white and nonwhite, with no way to measure ethnic groups. See Helen Rowan, The Mexican American: A Paper Prepared for the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights—1968 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1972), 5.

6.

Leo Grebler, Joan W. Moore, Ralph C. Guzmán, The Mexican-American People: The Nation’s Second Largest Minority (New York: Free Press, 1970), 18, 19, 143.

7.

Gareth Davies, From Opportunity to Entitlement: The Transformation and Decline of Great Society Liberalism (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1996), 34.

8.

Robert Dallek, Flawed Giant: Lyndon Johnson and His Times, 1961–1973 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 74.

9.

See chapter 3.

10.

Hugh Davis Graham, The Civil Rights Era: Origins and Development of National Policy, 1960–1972 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), chapters 7, 9, 10; John David Skrentny, The Ironies of Affirmative Action: Politics, Culture, and Justice in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), chapters 4–5; Davies, From Opportunity to Entitlement, chapters 3–4.

11.

New York Times, Oct. 17, 1965, p. 82. See also “Another Civil-Rights Headache-Plight of Mexican-Americans,” U.S. News & World Report, June 6, 1966, pp. 46–48. Significantly, the New York Times report revealed that Mexican Americans considered blacks, but not themselves, to be “colored people.”

12.

A copy of Sánchez’s letter was obtained and reported by the LULAC News, Apr., 1966, p. 2.

13.

Letter, Hector García to President Johnson, Feb. 1, 1966, and letter, President Johnson to Hector García, Feb. 12, 1966 (both located in whcf-subject file, box 43, EX HU 2–1 Employment, Sept. 30, 1965–Apr. 12, 1966 folder, Lyndon Baines Johnson Library, Austin, Texas (hereafter cited LBJL).

14.

Letter, Belen Robles to President Johnson, May 15, 1965, and letter, Arthur G. Perry to Belen Robles, May 24, 1965 (both located in whcf-subject file, box 45, Gen HU 2–1 Employment May 8, 1965–Nov. 11,. 1965 folder, LBJL).

15.

LULAC News, Mar., 1966, p. 1.

16.

The Mexican American: A New Focus on Opportunity: Testimony Presented at the Cabinet Committee Hearings on Mexican American Affairs (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1967), 227–32.

17.

Minority Group Employment in the Federal Government, U.S. Civil Service Commission, 1967, cited in Grebler, et. al., The Mexican-American People, 225.

18.

Hernández used this phrase often. See, for example, LULAC News, Mar., 1966, p. 1.

19.

Arnoldo De León, Ethnicity in the Sunbelt: A History of Mexican Americans in Texas (Houston: Mexican American Studies Program, University of Houston, 1989), 166–75. For a recent biography of Chávez, see Richard Griswold del Castillo and Richard A.

224

notes to pages 97–103

García, César Chávez: A Triumph of Spirit (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1995). For the Crystal City elections, see John Staples Shockley, Chicano Revolt in a Texas Town (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1974). 20.

LULAC: Fifty Years of Serving Hispanics (Corpus Christi, Tex.: Baldwin Printing Co., 1979).

21.

Marilyn D. Rhinehart and Thomas H. Kreneck, “The Minimum Wage March of 1966: A Case Study in Mexican American Politics, Labor, and Identity,” Houston Review 11 (1989): 27–44; Benjamin Márquez, LULAC: The Evolution of a Mexican American Political Organization (Austin: University of Texas Press 1993), 68–69.

22.

De León, Ethnicity in the Sunbelt, 171.

23.

LULAC News, Mar., 1966.

24.

Helen Rowan, “A Minority Nobody Knows,” The Atlantic Monthly (June, 1967): 48. See also “Another Civil-Rights Headache,” 46–48; “Pocho’s Progress,” Time, Apr. 28, 1967, pp. 24–25.

25.

LULAC News, Mar., 1966.

26.

Hernández floated the idea in his presidential message in Apr., 1966, which provoked an angry response in the June issue. See LULAC News, June, 1966.

27.

LULAC News, Mar., 1966; May, 1966; June, 1966.

28.

Graham, Civil Rights Era, 129–34, 145–52, 177–80, 189–90.

29.

See, for example, letter, Belen Robles to President Johnson, May 15, 1965, whcf-subject file, box 45, Gen. HU 2–1 Employment May 8, 1965–Nov. 11, 1965 folder, LBJL.

30.

See LULAC News, Mar., 1966, p. 1; LULAC News, May, 1967, p. 1.

31.

Roosevelt’s announcement of efforts for the Spanish speaking was reprinted in LULAC News, Jan., 1966, p. 2.

32.

Letter, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr., to President Johnson, Apr. 7, 1966, whcf-subject file, box 46, EX HU 2–1/MC, Aug. 1, 1965– folder, LBJL.

33.

Letter, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr., to President Johnson, Apr. 7, 1966, whcf-subject file, box 46, EX HU 2–1/MC Aug. 1, 1965– folder, LBJL.

34.

Memo and attachment, Carlos Rivera to Marvin Watson, Mar. 30, 1966, whcf-subject file, box 380, EX FG 655 Dec. 7, 1965–May 31, 1966 folder, LBJL. The attachment is a copy of new coverage of the story in The Voice, Mar. 18, 1966.

35.

Memo, Carlos Rivera to Marvin Watson, Mar. 30, 1966.

36.

Press release, Southern California Delegation, Southwest Equal Employment Conference, Mar. 27, 1966, located in memo, Carlos Rivera to Marvin Watson, Mar. 30, 1966.

37.

Memo, Carlos Rivera to Marvin Watson, Mar. 30, 1966; New York Times, Mar. 29, 1966; Albuquerque Journal, Mar. 29, 66, A1-A2.

38.

Memo, Carlos Rivera to Marvin Watson, Mar. 30, 1966 and attached press release, Mexican American delegates, Mar. 28, 1966.

39.

Memo, Carlos Rivera to Marvin Watson, Mar. 30, 1966 and attached press release, Mexican American delegates, Mar. 28, 1966.

40.

Armando B. Rendon, Chicano Manifesto (New York: Macmillan, 1971), 1; Juan

225

notes to pages 103–107

Gómez-Quiñones, Chicano Politics: Reality and Promise, 1940–1990 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1990), 109. 41.

LULAC News, May, 1966, p. 1; Dec., 1966, p. 1.

42.

New York Times, Mar. 29, 1966. The Albuquerque Journal ran the story on its front page. See Mar. 29, 1966, A1-A2.

43.

U.S. News and World Report, June 6, 1966, p. 46.

44.

Memo, Edward C. Sylvester, Jr., to Clifford L. Alexander, Jr., May 3, 1966, whcf-subject file, box 22, EX HU2/MC Apr. 14, 1966–May 24, 1966 folder, LBJL.

45.

Memo, Joseph Califano to President Johnson, May 23, 1966, special files—diary backup box 35, Appointment file May 26, 1966 folder, LBJL. It seems likely that Ornelas was present not primarily as a LULAC leader, which he was, nor as a trusted advisor on Mexican American issues, which he also was, but rather as a symbol of the Johnson administration’s record in giving Mexican Americans valuable positions in government.

46.

Joseph Califano, The Triumph and Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson: The White House Years (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991), 136; President’s Diary for May 16, 1966, special files-daily diary box 6, Daily Diary, May 16–31, 1966 folder, LBJL.

47.

Califano, The Triumph and Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson, 136–37.

48.

LULAC News, May, 1966, p. 1; Dec., 1966, p. 1; letter, Augustine A. Flores to President Johnson, June 7, 1966, whcf-subject file, box 24, Gen HU2/MC Aug. 1, 1966–Dec. 31, 1966 folder, LBJL.

49.

New York Times, Apr. 1, 1966, p. 18; May 22, 1966, p. 44.

50.

LULAC News, May, 1966, p. 1; Dec., 1966, p. 1.

51.

Letter, Richard Graham to Bill [Moyers], Apr. 14, 1966, whcf-subject file, box 380, EX FG 655 Dec. 7, 1965–May 31, 1966 folder, LBJL.

52.

Graham, Civil Rights Era, 201–202.

53.

Mark R. Levy and Michael S. Kramer, The Ethnic Factor: How America’s Minorities Decide Elections (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1972), 73–94.

54.

Memo, John Macy for the record, Sept. 1, 1966, office files of John Macy box 782, EX General (EEOC) 1 of 4 folder, LBJL. Hernandez was her name by marriage. She was born Aileen Clarke in New York City, to Jamaican immigrant parents.

55.

Memo, John Macy to President Johnson, July, 18, 1966, whcf-subject file, box 380, EX FG 655 June 1, 1966–Sept. 12, 1966 folder, LBJL.

56.

LULAC News, May, 1966, p. 1; Dec., 1966, p. 1.

57.

The administration tended to deal with LULAC and the G.I. Forum, bypassing other organizations whose leaders Johnson did not know (Gómez-Quiñones, Chicano Politics: Reality and Promise, 1940–1990 [Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1991], 95). For a discussion of Johnson’s relationship with civil rights leadership, see Steven F. Lawson, “Mixing Moderation with Militancy: Lyndon Johnson and AfricanAmerican Leadership,” in The Johnson Years, Volume Three: LBJ at Home and Abroad, ed. Robert A. Divine (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1994), 82–116.

58.

Memo, Louis Martin to Harry McPherson, Aug. 9, 1966 and memo, Harry McPher-

226

notes to pages 108–10

son to Joseph Califano, Aug. 10, 1966 (both located in whcf-subject file, box 23, EX HU2/MC June 7, 1966–Oct. 12, 1966 folder, LBJL. 59.

Memo, David North to Joseph Califano, Aug. 18, 1966, whcf-subject file, box 23, EX HU2/MC June 7, 1966–Oct. 12, 1966 folder, LBJL.

60.

See the front-page story of the LULAC Extra, Oct., 1966, copy located in whcf-subject file, box 4, EX HU2 Sept. 1, 1966–Nov. 8, 1966 folder, LBJL; letter, Alfred Hernández to President Johnson, Nov. 7, 1966 and letter, José Pacheco to President Johnson, Jan. 26, 1967 (both located in whcf-subject file, box 24, Gen HU2/MC June 16, 1966–July 31, 1966 folder, LBJL).

61.

See memo, David North to Larry Levinson, Dec. 14, 1966, office files of Harry McPherson, box 11, Mexican Americans folder, LBJL; letter, Joseph Califano to Albert Piñon, Sept. 16, 1966 and memo, Vice President Humphrey to Joseph Califano, Sept. 5, 1966 (both located in whcf-subject file, box 23, EX HU2/MC June 7, 1966–Oct. 12, 1966 folder, LBJL).

62.

Davies, From Opportunity to Entitlement, 105–30.

63.

Letter, John Young to President Johnson, Oct. 13, 1966, whcf-subject file, box 4, EX HU2 Sept. 1, 1966–Nov. 8, 1966 folder, LBJL.

64.

Letter, Hector García to John Young, Oct. 7, 1966, whcf-subject file, box 4, EX HU 2, Sept. 1, 1966–Nov. 8, 1966 folder, LBJL; memo, Marvin Watson to President Johnson, Dec. 12, 1966, whcf-subject file, box 380, EX FG 655 Sept. 13, 1966–May 10, 1967 folder, LBJL.

65.

LULAC Extra, Oct., 1966, pp. 1–2, copy located in whcf-subject file, box 4, EX HU 2, Sept. 1, 1966–Nov. 8, 1966 folder, LBJL.

66.

Memo, David North to Joseph Califano, Sept. 8, 1966, whcf-subject file, box 23, EX HU2/MC June 7, 1966–Oct. 12, 1966 folder, LBJL. North spoke of both Mexican Americans and Puerto Ricans, who wanted to be included in any conference on the problems of Spanish-speaking Americans.

67.

Memo, Joseph Califano to President Johnson, Sept. 24, 1966, office files of Joseph Califano, box 6, Latin American Conference folder, LBJL. The administration had little knowledge of the Mexican American community leaders outside of the leadership of the major organizations and wanted to choose wisely when it came time to include them in conference planning.

68.

Memo, Joseph Califano to President Johnson, Sept. 24, 1966, office files of Joseph Califano, box 6, Latin American Conference folder, LBJL.

69.

Helen Rowan, “A Minority Nobody Knows,” The Atlantic (June, 1967): 51.

70.

LULAC Extra, Oct., 1966, p. 6, copy located in whcf-subject file, box 4, EX HU 2, Sept. 1, 1966–Nov. 8, 1966 folder, LBJL.

71.

New York Times, Nov. 9, 1966, p. 27.

72.

Memo, James Falcon to Jake Jacobsen, Dec. 2, 1966, whcf-subject file, box 43, EX HU 2–1, Apr. 13, 1966–Dec. 16, 1966 folder, LBJL; New Republic, June 20, 1970, p. 17.

73.

Republicans gained similar percentages of the Mexican American vote across the Southwest in 1966, including 23 percent for the Republican gubernatorial candidate in Texas, 24 percent for the Republican senatorial candidate in Colorado, and even

227

notes to pages 111–14

thirteen percent for archconservative Barry Goldwater in the senatorial election in Arizona (Levy and Kramer, The Ethnic Factor, 232–40). 74.

Paul K. Conkin, Big Daddy from the Perdenales: Lyndon Baines Johnson (Boston: Twayne, 1986), 209–12.

75.

Report of the Task Force on Problems of Spanish Surname Americans, office files of James Gaither, box 327, Spanish Americans folder, LBJL.

76.

A third recommendation for immediate action called for a solution to the problem of green-card commuters crossing the U.S.-Mexico border daily for work. The task force made no recommendation on this issue because the matter was under consideration by the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

77.

Testing procedures, according to the report, were designed for an English-speaking culture and needed to allow for a limited familiarity with that culture. Federal guidelines required that salaries for federal employees match their salaries in the private sector, which made it difficult for Spanish-speaking Americans from the Southwest to move to the more expensive Washington, D.C., area.

78.

Memo, David North to Joseph Califano, Nov. 25, 1966, and attached report, office files of James Gaither, box 322, Material on Spanish American Conference on Mexican American Education folder, LBJL.

79.

Memo, Wilfred Rommel to James Gaither, Dec. 19, 1966, office files of James Gaither, box 322, Material on Spanish American Conference on Mexican American Education folder, LBJL.

80.

Draft letter to Senator Edward Roybal, May 9, 1967, whcf-subject file, box 4, EX HU2 Feb. 4, 1967–May 31, 1967 folder, LBJL.

81.

Memo, David North to Joseph Califano, Mar. 21, 1967, office files of Joseph Califano, box 6, Latin American Conference folder, LBJL.

82.

The Budget Bureau report admitted that if local school districts refused to use federal funds for bilingual programs, the administration might want an amendment to the ESEA to authorize another means of providing such instruction (memo, Wilfred Rommel to James Gaither, Dec. 19, 1966, office files of James Gaither, box 322, Material on Spanish American Conference on Mexican American Education folder, LBJL).

83.

Statement of Income and Expenses, San Antonio National Office, June 19, 1962 to June 25, 1963, folder 3, Andow office files, LULAC.

84.

When asked in an interview why LULAC was not better known nationally, Benetes replied, “Because we’ve never before had a full time paid staff to coordinate and publicize our efforts . . . volunteers don’t have the time or the money to do the same job as a professional staff.” LULAC News, Oct., 1973.

85.

See correspondence in the papers of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, 1:70, Participating Organizations: LULAC 1965 folder, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (hereafter cited LCCR).

86.

LCCR, 1:135, Mexican-American groups folder. LULAC’s position on remaining independent paralleled a similar stand taken in 1964, when a vocal minority sought to align LULAC with the SCLC and Martin Luther King, Jr. See chapter 3.

87.

Letter, Belen Robles to President Johnson, July 12, 1966, and attached resolutions,

228

notes to pages 114–16

whcf-subject file, box 24, Gen HU2/MC June 16, 1966–July 31, 1966 folder, LBJL; LULAC Extra, Oct., 1966, copy located in whcf, box 4, EX HU2 Sept. 1, 1966–Nov. 8, 1966 folder, LBJL; letter, Alfred Hernández to President Johnson, Nov. 7, 1966, and letter, José Pacheco to President Johnson, Jan. 26, 1967 (both located in whcf-subject file, box 24, Gen HU2/MC June 16, 1966–July 31, 1966 folder, LBJL. 88.

Memo, John Macy to President Johnson, Oct. 12, 1966, whcf-subject file, box 381, EX FG 655/A Nov. 23, 1963–June 2, 1967 folder, LBJL.

89.

Memo, John Macy to President Johnson, Oct. 14, 1966, office files of John Macy, box 203, Dr. Hector García folder, LBJL; memo, John Macy for the record, Dec. 10, 1966, office files of John Macy, box 889, Latin Americans (2) folder, LBJL.

90.

Memo, Doug Nobles to John Macy, Jan. 28, 1967, office files of John Macy, box 889, Latin Americans (2) folder, LBJL. Laurel soon was appointed to the National Transportation Safety Board.

91.

Memo, John Macy to President Johnson, Mar. 10, 1967, office files of John Macy, box 889, Latin Americans (2) folder, LBJL.

92.

Ximenes was not Hernández’s first choice (he was, after all, a former G.I. Forum national chairman), but Hernández agreed not to oppose his appointment and was most concerned that the appointment be announced soon (memo, Jake Jacobsen to President Johnson, Mar. 18, 1967, office files of John Macy, box 889, Latin Americans [2] folder, LBJL; memo, Cris Aldrete to Marvin Watson, Apr. 3, 1967; memo, Jake Jacobsen to Marvin Watson, Apr. 3, 1967; memo, Marvin Watson to President Johnson, Apr. 3, 1967 [all located in whcf-subject file, box 380, EX FG 655 Sept. 13, 1966–May 10, 1967 folder, LBJL]).

93.

Memo, Cris Aldrete to Louis Martin, Mar. 20, 1967, and memo, Louis Martin to Marvin Watson, Mar. 20, 1967 (both located in whcf-subject file, box 380, EX FG 655 Sept. 13, 1966–May 10, 1967 folder, LBJL).

94.

Memo, Joseph Califano to President Johnson, Jan. 16, 1967, office files of Joseph Califano, box 6, Latin American Conference folder, LBJL.

95.

Memo, Marvin Watson to President Johnson, Feb. 3, 1967, and memo, Joseph Califano to Jake Jacobsen, Feb. 3, 1967 (both located in whcf-subject file, box 23, EX HU2/MC Oct. 13, 1966– folder, LBJL).

96.

Memo, [John] Gardner to President Johnson, Nov. 2, 1967, and memo, Joseph Califano to President Johnson, Feb. 13, 1967 (both located in office files of Joseph Califano, box 6, Latin American Conference folder, LBJL).

97.

Memo, Harry McPherson to President Johnson, Feb. 17, 1967, office files of Harry McPherson, box 11, Mexican Americans folder, LBJL.

98.

Memo, Joseph Califano to President Johnson, Mar. 7, 1967, office files of Joseph Califano, box 6, Latin American Conference folder, LBJL.

99.

Memo, Joseph Califano to President Johnson, Nov. 5, 1967, office files of Joseph Califano, box 6, Latin American Conference folder, LBJL.

100.

Memo, Louis Martin to Jim Jones, Apr. 4, 1967, whcf-subject files, box 381, EX FG 655/A Nov. 23, 1963–June 2, 1967 folder, LBJL.

101.

Letter, Alfred Hernández to President Johnson, June 13, 1967, whcf-subject file, box 386, Gen FG 687 Interagency Committee on Mexican American Affairs folder, LBJL.

229

notes to pages 116–25

102.

Memo, Vicente Ximenes to President Johnson, July 14, 1967, whcf-cf, box 39, FG 687, Inter Agency Committee on Mexican American Affairs folder, LBJL.

103.

Gómez-Quiñones, Chicano Politics, 101–18; Ramón Ruiz, “Another Defector from the Gringo World,” New Republic, July 27, 1968, p. 11; “Brown Power,” Newsweek, Mar. 25, 1968, p. 37.

104.

Julie Leininger Pycior, LBJ and Mexican Americans: The Paradox of Power (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1997), 203–14; Philip Darraugh Ortego, “The Minority on the Border,” The Nation, Dec. 11, 1967, pp. 624–27. Ortego considered the absence of Chávez and Tijerina as equivalent to “considering the Negro problem without consulting Martin Luther King, Jr., or Roy Wilkins.” The growing influence of these more radical Mexican Americans is discussed more fully in chapter 5.

105.

Memo, Vicente Ximenes to President Johnson, Jan. 25, 1968, whcf-subject file, box 7, EX HU 2, Jan. 19, 1968–Feb. 29, 1968 folder, LBJL.

106.

New York Times, Oct. 28, 1967, p. 10.

107.

A New Focus on Opportunity, 53.

108.

Ibid., 109, 130, 177, 200, 227, 232–33.

109.

Ibid., 54, 111, 201, 211.

110.

Memo, Vicente Ximenes to President Johnson, Jan. 25, 1968, whcf-subject file, box 7, EX HU 2, Jan. 19, 1968–Feb. 29, 1968 folder, LBJL.

111.

Julie Leininger Pycior, “From Hope to Frustration: Mexican Americans and Lydon Johnson in 1967,” Western Historical Quarterly 24, no.4 (Nov., 1993), 468–94.

112.

Gómez-Quiñones, Chicano Politics, 96.

chapter 5 1.

Allen Matusow, The Unraveling of America: A History of Liberalism in the Sixties (New York: Harper & Row, 1984); James T. Patterson, Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945–1974 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996); Todd Gitlin, The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage (New York: Bantam Books, 1967); David Farber, Chicago ’68 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988); Harvard Sitkoff, The Struggle for Black Equality, 1954–1992, rev. ed. (New York: Hill & Wang, 1993).

2.

Rudolfo Acuña, Occupied America: A History of Chicanos, 4th ed. (New York: Longman, 2000), 334–35.

3.

See Carlos Muñoz, Jr., Youth, Identity, Power: The Chicano Movement (London: Verso, 1989) and Ignacio M. García, Chicanismo: The Forging of a Militant Ethos among Mexican Americans (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1997).

4.

Philip Darraugh Ortego, “The Minority on the Border: Cabinet Meeting in El Paso,” The Nation, Dec. 11, 1967, pp. 624–27 (quote taken from p. 624). This selectivity did not insulate the Johnson administration from criticism. Nixon advisors described the El Paso hearings as “a disaster” for Johnson when they considered how to hold their own hearings on Mexican American problems. See memo, Stephen Hess to John Ehrlichman, Sept. 18, 1969, whcf—office files of Robert Finch, box 16, Garment, Leonard file on Spanish speaking (3) folder, RNPM.

5.

Juan Gómez Quiñones, Chicano Politics: Reality and Promise, 1940–1990 (Albuquerque:

230

notes to pages 125–30

University of New Mexico Press, 1990), 115–18; John, C. Hammerback, Richard J. Jensen, and José Ángel Gutiérrez, A War of Words: Chicano Protest in the 1960s and 1970s (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1985), 11–14; “‘Tío Taco’ is Dead,” Newsweek, June 29, 1970, pp. 22–28. 6.

Gómez-Quiñones, Chicano Politics, 112–14; Hammerback, et. al., A War of Words, 54– 57; Ramón Eduardo Ruiz, “Another Defector from the Gringo World,” New Republic, July 27, 1968, 11.

7.

At first school groups came up with their own names, and gradually changed their names to foster some unity with other school groups with which they had contact. The geographical distinctions above represent general trends, and groups from various geographical areas adopted each of the names.

8.

Carlos Muñoz, Jr., Youth, Identity, Power, 51–64.

9.

Gómez-Quiñones, Chicano Politics, 115; Muñoz, Jr., Youth, Identity, Power, 58.

10.

Quoted in “‘Tío Taco’ is Dead,”, 27.

11.

Hammerback, et. al., A War of Words, 56–68. Quotes taken from 56–58.

12.

Ruíz, “Another Defector from the Gringo World”; Gómez-Quiñones, Chicano Politics, 123–24; Muñoz, Jr., Youth, Identity, Power, 75–78.

13.

Muñoz, Jr., Youth, Identity, Power, 77–80.

14.

Quoted in John Staples Shockly, Chicano Revolt in a Texas Town (South Bend, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1974), 124.

15.

“‘Tío Taco’ is Dead,” 27.

16.

Gómez-Quiñones, Chicano Politics, 142.

17.

“Civil Rights ‘Quid Pro Quo,’” n.d., folder 24, Andow office files, LULAC Collection, Benson Latin American Library, University of Texas, Austin, Texas (hereafter cited LULAC).

18.

LULAC News, Oct., 1967, p. 3.

19.

Oscar J. Martínez, interview with William Flores, Nov. 26, 1975 and Dec. 4, 1975, folder 18, box 3, William Flores collection, LULAC.

20.

See the resolutions passed at the 1968 national convention, published in LULAC News, July, 1968, pp. 2–3.

21.

LULAC News, Mar., 1966, p. 1.

22.

As discussed in chapter 4, Mexican Americans were indignant that policy makers focused on the black community in Watts, to the exclusion of the Mexican American residents of the area. See New York Times, Oct. 17, 1965, p. 82. For an excellent discussion of the crisis-management policies of both policy makers and corporate leaders in the wake of African American rioting, see John David Skrentny, The Ironies of Affirmative Action: Politics, Culture, and Justice in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996).

23.

Newsweek, Aug. 29, 1966, p. 46; Mar. 25, 1968, p. 37; Atlantic, June, 1967, pp. 47–52; New Republic, June 20, 1970, pp. 16–18.

24.

I. García, Chicanismo, discusses the ethos that has survived the most radical political phase of the Chicano movement.

231

notes to pages 130–33

25.

Muñoz, Jr., Youth, Identity, Power, 95–97, 122–25; Gómez-Quiñones, Chicano Politics, 133–46.

26.

Márquez, LULAC, pp. 70–72 (quote from p. 72).

27.

Karen O’Connor and Lee Epstein, “A Legal Voice for the Chicano Community: The Activities of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, 1968–82,” Social Science Quarterly 65 (1984): 245–56; New York Times, May 2, 1968, p. 38; LULAC News, Apr./May, 1968, p. 1.

28.

Jack Greenberg, Judicial Process and Social Change: Constitutional Litigation (St. Paul: West, 1977) and “Litigation for Social Change: Methods, Limits, and Role in Democracy,” Records of the New York City Bar Association, 29 (1974): 9–63; Richard Kluger, Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black Americans’ Struggle for Equality (New York: Knopf, 1976). For a discussion of the LDF model in the context of MALDEF, see Karen O’Connor and Lee Epstein, “A Legal Voice for the Chicano Community.”

29.

Guadalupe San Miguel, Jr., “Mexican American Organizations and the Changing Politics of School Desegregation in Texas, 1945–1980,” Social Science Quarterly 63 (Dec., 1982): 709–10; Oscar J. Martínez, interview with William Flores.

30.

O’Connor and Epstein note that widely reported “anti-gringo” statements by MALDEF staffers in 1970 brought the Ford Foundation under fire for its support of Chicano groups. The foundation sent in outside evaluators to assess the need for changes in MALDEF’s operations. See O’Connor and Epstein, “Legal Voice of the Chicano Community,” 249n.5; Carolyn Hernández, LULAC: The History of a Grass Roots Organization and its Influence on Educational Policies, 1929–1983 (Ph.D. diss., Loyola University of Chicago, 1995), 99–106.

31.

Jeffrey M. Berry, The Interest Group Society, 2d ed. (Glenview, Ill: Scott, Foresman & Company, 1989), 16–34.

32.

The term “Spanish speaking,” or “Spanish-speaking,” became popular during the Nixon years. It was used by policy makers and group leaders alike, the former in trying to make sense of a complicated array of groups calling for remedies, the latter in trying to create the largest possible presence with which to confront policy makers. The term reflected the one thing contemporaries believed Mexican Americans and other Latinos shared: a cultural or linguistic disadvantage rather than one strictly defined by racial discrimination.

33.

LULAC News, July, 1969, p. 2. Hernández was willing to work with any Spanishspeaking group to “voice a protest, an objection or promote a positive program, so long as this program would enhance the position of the Mexican-American in our Nation [emphasis added].” See also Resolution No. 7, passed by the LULAC National Convention, cited in LULAC News, July, 1968, p. 2.

34.

Recent works that emphasize Nixon’s lack of interest in, or opposition to, civil rights include Tom Wicker, One of Us: Richard Nixon and the American Dream (New York: Random House, 1991); Stephen E. Ambrose, Nixon: The Triumph of a Politician (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989); Herbert S. Parmet, Richard Nixon and His America (Boston: Little, Brown, 1990). The most emphatic revisionist history of the Nixon administration is Joan Hoff, Nixon Reconsidered (New York: Basic Books, 1994), 77–114.

232

notes to pages 133–37

A nuanced look at Nixon’s civil rights record that remains sympathetic is Dean Kotlowski, Nixon’s Civil Rights (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001). 35.

See Hugh Davis Graham, “Richard Nixon and Civil Rights: Explaining an Enigma, Presidential Studies Quarterly 26 (winter 1996), 93–106; which further develops the view of Nixon in The Civil Rights Era: Origins and Development of National Policy, 1960–1972 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), part 3.

36.

A. James Reichley notes that Nixon at times talked of “sweeping away” the Johnson programs, but at other times clearly wanted to be associated with social progress. See his Conservatives in an Age of Change: The Nixon and Ford Administrations (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1981), especially 55–58.

37.

Steven Skowronek, The Politics Presidents Make: Leadership from John Adams to George Bush (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993).

38.

Newswire release, “President Johnson Better Not Tuck Away Those Votes Early,” cited in LULAC News, July, 1967, p. 12.

39.

Dallas Morning News, Mar. 17, 1968; Corpus Christi Caller, Mar. 25, 1968, p. 1; New York Times, Oct. 22, 1929; Stan Steiner, “Chicano Power,” New Republic, June 20, 1970, pp. 16–18.

40.

New York Times, Nov. 10, 1968, p. 50.

41.

John Robert Greene, The Limits of Power: The Nixon and Ford Administrations (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992), 24–25; for an articulation of one vision of the new majority by a Nixon campaign staffer, see Kevin P. Phillips, The Emerging Republican Majority (New Rochelle, N.Y.: Arlington House, 1969).

42.

Long Range Strategy: Hispanics, n.d., Presidential Materials Review Board Review of Contested Documents, White House Special Files—Staff, Frederic V. Malek, Documents from Boxes 1–4, folder 1 of 1, Cabinet Committee on Opportunities for the Spanish Speaking (1 of 2) (1967; May, 1969–Feb., 1972), Richard M. Nixon Presidential Materials Staff, National Archives at College Park, Md. (hereafter cited as RNPM), 25.

43.

Greene, Limits of Power, 29, 31, 48–50; Reichley, Conservatives in an Age of Change, 68–78.

44.

Greene, Limits of Power, 32–34; for Safire’s account, see his Before the Fall: An Inside View of the Pre-Watergate White House (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1975), 220–28.

45.

James Q. Wilson, American Government: Institutions and Policies (Lexington, Ky.: D.C. Heath, 1992), 426–51.

46.

LULAC News, Mar./Apr., 1973.

47.

Letter, John Rhodes to John Ehrlichman, Feb. 22, 1973 and letter, John Rhodes to Peter Brennan, Feb. 22, 1973 (both located in whcf-subject file, box 8, EX LA 2 Mar. 1, 1973–Mar. 31, 1973 folder, RNPM); LULAC News, July, 1974.

48.

Letter, John Tower et. al. to President Nixon, Apr. 24, 1973, whcf-subject file, box 8, EX LA 2 Apr. 1, 1973–Apr. 30., 1973 folder, RNPM.

49.

CETA itself represented a compromise between the Democratic Congress and Republican administration. Democrats insisted on authorization for public-sector jobs to fight unemployment, and in turn gave Nixon funding for local prime sponsors to develop manpower-training programs. See Grace A. Franklin and Randall B. Ripley, CETA: Politics and Policy, 1973–1982 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1984).

233

notes to pages 138–40

50.

John D. Skrentny, The Minority Rights Revolution (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 2002), 144–48 (Executive Order 11518 quoted from p. 148). In 1973 the SBA issued new regulations stating that it would automatically presume that applicants who identified themselves as black, Hispanic, Asian American or American Indian suffered disadvantage. In following years the list of presumed disadvantage grew, but not in ways that are easily understandable. See Hugh Davis Graham, Collision Course: The Strange Convergence of Affirmative Action and Immigration (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002).

51.

Graham, Civil Rights Era, 314; Dean Kotlowski, “Black Power—Nixon Style: The Nixon Administration and Minority Business Enterprise,” Business History Review 72 (Autumn 1998): 412–19.

52.

Skrentny, Minority Rights Revolution, chapter 5, especially 155–56.

53.

Graham, Civil Rights Era, 314–16.

54.

Letter, Robert J. Brown to Belen Robles, Apr. 18, 1969, whcf-subject file, box 7, Gen FG 21–17, Office of Minority Business Enterprise folder, RNPM.

55.

LULAC was among the “national business development organizations” the administration specifically hoped to benefit through OMBE. See Memo, Abraham S. Venable to the Secretary of Commerce, Feb. 9, 1970, whcf-subject file, box 7, EX FG 21–17, Office of Minority Business Enterprise (1 of 2), 1969–71 folder, RNPM.

56.

Congress had not confirmed García by the time of Nixon’s election, and the new administration withdrew his name. García sat on the CRC until Congress recessed and the administration’s appointee, Manuel Ruiz, Jr., took his seat. See Letter, Peter M. Flanigan to Peter O’Donnell, Nov. 19, 1969, whcf-subject file, box 1, Gen FG 90 Commission on Civil Rights (1969–70) folder; press release, Jan. 12, 1970 and memo, Harry Flemming to President Nixon, Jan. 7, 1970 (both located in whcf-subject file, box 1, EX FG 90/A [1969–70] folder; letter, David Parker to Vicente Ximenes, Feb. 2, 1971 and memo, Len Garment to Hugh Sloan, Feb. 1, 1971 (both located in whcf-confidential file, box 23, [CF] FG 190 Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (1971–74) folder; memo, Peter Flanigan to the President, Apr. 22, 1971, President’s Office Files, Handwriting File, box 10, Apr. 16–30, 1971 folder, RNPM.

57.

Memo, Ken Cole to The President, Aug. 29, 1972, President’s Office Files, Handwriting File, box 18, Aug., 1972 folder, RNPM.

58.

These appointments had doubled from eight to sixteen. See Memo, Ken Cole to The President, Aug. 29, 1972, President’s Office Files Handwriting File, box 18, Aug., 1972 folder, RNPM. See also memo, Bill Marumoto to Fred Malek, Nov. 18, 1971, whcfoffice files of Robert Finch, box 46 (4), Rayburn Hanzlick File Cabinet, Committee on Opportunities for Spanish Speaking (1 of 4) folder, RNPM.

59.

See Chapter 4.

60.

Public Law 91–181 (83 Stat. 838). Johnson’s committee involved Puerto Ricans and Cubans, but its title reflected Johnson’s focus on Mexican Americans. The inclusion of other Spanish-speaking Americans in the new committee’s title did not offend most Mexican American organizations. In fact, LULAC called for the committee to be renamed to make it explicitly inclusive. See LULAC News, July, 1968, p.2.

234

notes to pages 141– 43

61.

Memo, Martin Castillo to Herb Klein, Dec. 17. 1969, WHCF-Subject File CCOSSP, box 1, “Ex FG 145: Interagency Committee on Mexican American Affairs/Cabinet Committee on Opportunities for the Spanish Speaking” folder; letter, Chet Holifield and Frank Horton to President Nixon, June 21, 1971, WHCF-Subject File CCOSSP, box 1, “Ex FG Jan. 1, 1971–Dec. 31, 1972” folder, RNPM;

62.

Memo, Martin Castillo to Herb Klein, Dec. 17, 1969, memo, Hugh Sloan to Ken Cole, Dec. 19, 1969, memo, John Ehrlichman to Dwight, Dec. 19, 1969 (all located in WHCFSubject File CCOSSP, box 1, “Ex FG 145: Interagency Committee on Mexican American Affairs/Cabinet Committee on Opportunities for the Spanish Speaking” folder, RNPM); Richard Nixon, “Statement on Signing the Bill Establishing the Cabinet Committee on Opportunities for Spanish-Speaking People,” Dec. 31, 1969, Public Papers of the Presidents: Richard Nixon, 1969, 1048–49.

63.

Moynihan to Staff Secretary, Nov. 8, 1969, Finch papers, box 16, “Garment-Leonard— File on Spanish speaking” folder, RNPM.

64.

Handwritten note on memo, Hugh Sloan for the President, Oct. 21, 1970, and handwritten note on memo, Hugh Sloan to Ken Cole, Sept. 29, 1970 (both in whcf-subject file, box 1, Ex FG 145: CCOSSP, “EX FG 145 Jan. 1, 1971–Dec. 31, 1972” folder, RNPM.

65.

Handwritten note on memo, Hugh Sloan to Ken Cole, Sept. 29, 1970; memo, Hugh Sloan to John Ehrlichman, Oct. 15, 1970; memo John Campbell to Dwight Chapin, Oct. 16, 1970; memo, Hugh Sloan for the President, Oct. 21, 1970, all located in whcfsubject file, box 1, “EX FG 145 Cabinet Committee on Opportunities for Spanish Speaking Jan. 1, 1971–(Dec. 31, 1972)” folder, RNPM.

66.

Memo, Dwight Chapin to Hugh Sloan and Stephen Bull, Jan. 7, 19, whcf-subject file CCOSSP, box 1, “Ex FG 145: Interagency Committee on Mexican American Affairs/ Cabinet Committee on Opportunities for the Spanish Speaking” folder, RNPM.

67.

Schedule proposal, July 28, 1971, whcf-subject file, box 1, “EX FG 145 Cabinet Committee on Opportunities for Spanish Speaking Jan. 1, 1971–(De. 31, 1972)” folder, RNPM.

68.

Draft Minutes of Cabinet Committee Meeting on Spanish Speaking, Aug. 5, 1971, Finch, box 16, “Grassmuck, George L.—CCOSS” folder, RNPM.

69.

Graham, Civil Rights Era; Skrentny, Ironies of Affirmative Action.

70.

Hugh Davis Graham, The Uncertain Triumph: Federal Education Policy in the Kennedy and Johnson Years (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984), 155. Yarborough lost the 1970 nomination to Lloyd Bensten.

71.

A brief biography written as propaganda for the 1970 election devotes an entire chapter to Yarborough’s efforts to increase federal aid to education. Education and health care are the only two policy issues to receive their own chapters. See William G. Phillips, Yarborough of Texas (Washington, D.C.: Acropolis Books, 1969), 91–107.

72.

Skrentny, Minority Rights Revolution, 190; Julie Leininger Pycior, LBJ and Mexican Americans: The Paradox of Power (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1997), 187.

73.

U.S. Senate Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, Hearings before the Special Subcommittee on Bilingual Education of the Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, 90th Cong., 1st sess. (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1967) (hereafter cited as Hearings, 1967).

235

notes to pages 143–46

74.

See, for example, the exchange between Yarborough and Harold Howe II, Johnson’s commissioner of education, in Hearings, 1967, esp. 35–39. See also Rachel F. Moran, “The Politics of Discretion: Federal Intervention in Bilingual Education,” California Law Review 76 (Dec., 1988): 1259–60; and Graham, Uncertain Triumph, 156.

75.

For the sponsorship of the bill, see Hearings, 1967, p. 2. Cuban Americans, who were more united and more politically potent than either Mexican Americans or Puerto Ricans, already received federal support for bilingual schooling. Their representatives in Congress had no need to cosponsor a bilingual education bill. See William Mackey and Von Nieda Beebe, Bilingual Schools for a Bicultural Community: Miami’s Adaptation to the Cuban Refugees (Rowley, Mass.: Newbury House, 1977). I am grateful to Gareth Davies for bringing this fact to my attention.

76.

See chapter 3. I have seen many references by LULAC leaders to the “Little School” as the model for Head Start but have not found any evidence to support the claim.

77.

Hearings, 1967, pp. 244–47, 399–403.

78.

Pycior, LBJ and Mexican Americans, 184–87; Skrentny, Minority Rights Revolution, 189–92.

79.

Public Law 90–247.

80.

For the controversy over block grants, see Graham, Uncertain Triumph, 149–59; Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report, Dec. 22, 1967, pp. 2614–17.

81.

Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report, Dec. 22, 1967, pp. 2614–17.

82.

Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report, Apr. 10, 1970, p. 948. The funding came out of a total authorization of $25 billion for ESEA extension for three years.

83.

Memo and attachment, Ken Khachigian to George Grassmuck, Nov. 17, 1970, whcfoffice files of Robert Finch, box 21, Spanish speaking confidential folder, RNPM.

84.

Memo, Lee E. Wickline to Thomas Purvis, Oct. 21, 1970, whcf-office files of Robert Finch, box 21, Spanish speaking confidential folder; Spanish Speaking Programs, Key Scoring Points, n.d., whcf—office files of Anne Armstrong, box 71, (Counselor Armstrong Briefing Book 1973–74) (1 of 2) folder, RNPM; Nixon Administration Accomplishment Report for Hispanic Americans, First Draft, July 5, 1974, whcf—office files of Anne Armstrong, box 21, Hispanic Americans folder, RNPM.

85.

Memo, James B. Clawson to Ken Cole, Jan. 28, 1972, whcf-subject file, box 4, EX HU 2 Equality, Jan. 1, 1972–Feb. 29, 1972 folder, RNPM. HEW was more optimistic about the program, citing examples of increased attendance and above-average performance on standardized tests, when Spanish-speaking children were tested in Spanish. See memo, Lee E. Wickline to Thomas Purvis, Oct. 21, 1970, whcf-office files of Robert Finch, box 21, Spanish speaking confidential folder, RNPM.

86.

Gareth Davies, “The Great Society After Johnson: The Case of Bilingual Education,” Journal of American History 88, no. 4 (Mar., 2002), 1405–29.

87.

For the controversy that led to Panetta’s ouster, see Kotlowski, Nixon’s Civil Rights, 28– 34, Reichley, Conservatives in an Age of Change, 181–86; and Leon Panetta and Peter Gall, Bring Us Together: The Nixon Team and the Civil Rights Retreat (New York: Lippincott, 1971). For the Domestic Council see Reichley, Conservatives in an Age of Change, 239–42.

236

notes to pages 147–51

88.

The OCR records have not been provided to the National Archives, thus internal deliberations and views must be pieced together based on more circumstantial evidence.

89.

Memo, J. Stanley Pottinger to School Districts with More Than Five Percent National Origin-Minority Group Children, May 25, 1970, whcf-subject files, box 4, EX HU 2, Equality folder, RNPM.

90.

Washington Post, Jan. 21, 1972, p. 2.

91.

Rowland Evans, Jr. and Robert D. Novak, Nixon in the White House: the Frustration of Power (NY: Random House, 1971), 145; Skrentny, Minority Rights Revolution, 216.

92.

The most common alternative to bilingual education was instruction in English as a Second Language (ESL), which does not employ the student’s native language and simply teaches children English as quickly as possible.

93.

Susan Gilbert Schneider, Revolution, Reaction, or Reform: The 1974 Bilingual Education Act (New York: las Americas, 1976), 101–102.

94.

Memo, Charles W. Colson to John Ehrlichman, Dec. 20, 1971, whcf-subject files, box 4, EX HU 2, Equality Jan. 1, 1972–Feb. 29, 1972 folder, RNPM. Colson also noted that the administration’s parochial-school project would help the Spanish speaking because Catholic schools—the main beneficiaries of the project—normally had a bilingual component to their curriculum.

95.

Memo, James B. Clawson to Ken Cole, Jan. 28, 1972, whcf-subject files, box 4, EX HU 2, Equality Jan. 1, 1972–Feb. 29, 1972 folder, RNPM.

96.

In warning against a massive enforcement effort, Clawson reminded the staff that “the across the board approach to enforcement is how we got into the school desegregation mess.”

97.

Schneider, Revolution, Reaction, or Reform, 100–102. This budget, at $269 billion overall, represented a real decline over the previous budget of $283 billion (Matusow, Nixon’s Economy, 219).

98.

LULAC News, June, 1972; June, 1971.

99.

Long Range Strategy: Hispanics, n.d., Presidential Materials Review Board Review of Contested Documents, whsf-staff files, Frederick V. Malek, documents from boxes 1– 4, folder 1 of 1, CCOSS (1 of 2) (1967; May, 1969–Feb., 1972), RNPM.

100.

Memo, Bill Marumoto to Dave Parker, Aug. 9, 1972, whcf—office files of Robert Finch, box 46, Rayburn Hanzlick File Cabinet Committee on Opportunities for the Spanish Speaking (1 of 4) folder, RNPM.

101.

See memos attached to memo, Ray Hanzlik to Dave Parker, Mar. 28, 1972, whcf— office files of Robert Finch, box 46, Rayburn Hanzlick File Cabinet Committee on Opportunities for the Spanish Speaking (1 of 4) folder, RNPM. Despite the recommendations, Nixon sent his daughter Tricia to the convention in his stead.

102.

Long Range Strategy: Hispanics; memo, Alex Armendáriz to Ann Armstrong, Mar. 29, 1973, whcf—office files of Robert Finch, box 46, Rayburn Hanzlick File Cabinet Committee on Opportunities for the Spanish Speaking (1 of 4) folder, RNPM.

103.

For example, the CCOSS also came under fire when it was reported that one of its employees received his job in exchange for efforts to influence and report on La Raza’s activities regarding the election (New York Times, May 15, 1974, p. 30).

237

notes to pages 152–58

104.

Matusow, Nixon’s Economy, chapter 7. This practice would have disastrous long-term inflationary consequences but worked reasonably well, politically, in the short run.

105.

Memo, Ray Hanzlik to H. R. Haldeman, Feb. 8, 1973, whcf-office files of Robert Finch, box 46, CCOSS (1 of 4) folder, RNPM.

106.

Of fourteen line items, twelve note the appointment of a Mexican American, while the other two refer in general to the Spanish speaking. See Bill Marumoto to Fred Malek, Nov. 18, 1971, whcf-office files of Robert Finch, box 46, Rayburn Hanzlick file CCOSS (1 of 4), RNPM.

107.

News clippings in the Edward Morga collection, box 1, folder 8, “National Convention 1972,” LULAC.

108.

Memo, Alex Armendáriz to Ann Armstrong, Mar. 29, 1973, whcf—office files of Robert Finch, box 46, Rayburn Hanzlick File Cabinet Committee on Opportunities for the Spanish Speaking [1 of 4] folder, RNPM.

109.

For CCOSS efforts to help Hispanic organizations, see Cabinet Committee on Opportunities for Spanish Speaking People General Statement of Accomplishments During Fiscal Year 1973, June 21, 1973, whcf-office files of Anne Armstrong, box 10, Spanish-Speaking Americans folder. For the assessment of the CCOSS, see memo, Ray Hanzlik to Anne Armstrong, Mar. 5, 1973, whcf-office files of Anne Armstrong, box 71, Spanish-speaking (Mar., 1973–Mar., 1974) folder, RNPM.

110.

Memo, Charles W. Colson to John Ehrlichman, Dec. 20, 1971, whcf-subject files, box 4, EX HU 2, Equality Jan. 1, 1972–Feb. 29, 1972 folder, RNPM. Colson suggested encouraging the formation of Hispanic-controlled banks and placing Spanish-speaking officers in “key Spanish-speaking areas” among his recommendations. See also José de la Isla, “The Politics of Reelection: se habla espãñol,” Aztlán 7, no.3 (fall 1976), 427–51.

111.

News clippings in the Edward Morga collection, box 1, folder 8, “National Convention 1972,” LULAC.

112.

New York Times, July 28, 1972, p. 12. See also José de la Isla, “The Politics of Reelection,” although de la Isla questions Nixon’s success in gaining the Spanish-speaking vote because the president won “only” thirty percent.

113.

Memo, A. F. Rodríguez to Fred Fielding, Jan. 28, 1971, whcf-office files of Robert Finch, box 22, Spanish-speaking White House Conference folder, RNPM.

chapter 6 1.

Theodore H. White, The Making of the President, 1972 (New York: Atheneum, 1973); Allen J. Matusow, Nixon’s Economy: Booms, Busts, Dollars, and Votes (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1998).

2.

Matusow, Nixon’s Economy, chapter 7.

3.

LULAC News, Jan./Feb., 1973.

4.

Letter, Fidel Gonzáles, Jr., to President Nixon, Mar. 29, 1973; Lulaction, Feb.–Mar., 1973; memo, Anne Armstrong to David Parker, April 10, 1973, all located in whcf HU, box 17 (Ex HU 2–2 Employment Jan. 1, 1973–Dec. 31, 1973) folder, RNPM.

5.

See chapter 5.

238

notes to pages 158–64

6.

Carl Allsup, The American G.I. Forum: Origins and Evolution (Austin: Center for Mexican American Studies, University of Texas at Austin, 1982), 154.

7.

Schedule proposal, Anne Armstrong to President Nixon, Dec. 11, 1973; memo, Terrence O’Donnell to Anne Armstrong, Dec. 17, 1973; both located in whcf-subject files, box 1, EX FG 145 CCOSSP Jan. 1, 1973–(Aug. 9, 1974) folder, RNPM.

8.

Memo and attachment, Fred Slight to Anne Armstrong, Feb. 4, 1974, whcf-confidential file, box 35, (CF) HU 2-Equality (1971–74) folder, RNPM.

9.

Hugh Davis Graham, The Civil Rights Era: Origins and Development of National Policy, 1960–1972 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 222.

10.

Graham, The Civil Rights Era, 219–36; and “The Civil Rights Act and the American Regulatory State,” in Legacies of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, ed. Bernard Grofman (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2000), 43–64.

11.

For the changing policy environment, see Sidney Milkis, “Remaking Government Institutions in the 1970s: Participatory Democracy and the Triumph of Administrative Politics,” Journal of Policy History 10:1 (1998), 51–74; and The New American Political System, ed. Anthony King (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute, 1978). The president himself engaged in administrative policy making to get around untrusted cabinet officials and congressional reluctance to go along with his preferences. See Richard P. Nathan, The Administrative Presidency (New York: Macmillan, 1986).

12.

Maurilio Virgil, “The Ethnic Organization as an Instrument of Political and Social Change: MALDEF, a Case Study,” Journal of Ethnic Studies 18, no. 1 (1990): 5–31 (quoted on 16).

13.

Peter Skerry, “The Ambivalent Minority: Mexican Americans and the Voting Rights Act,” Journal of Policy History 6, no. 1 (1994): 73–95.

14.

Milkis, “Remaking Government Institutions in the 1970s,” 68.

15.

Benjamin Márquez, LULAC: The Evolution of a Mexican American Political Organization (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993), 74–76.

16.

Márquez, LULAC, 76; Frank Galaz to Joe Benetes, Jan. 6, 1975, box 1, folder 4, Benetes files 1974–75, LULAC papers.

17.

See, for example, correspondence in box 4, folder 14, Benetes files 1973–74, LULAC.

18.

Carolyn Hernández, “LULAC: The History of a Grass Roots Organization and Its Influence on Education Policies, 1929–1983” (Ph.D. diss., Loyola University of Chicago, 1995), 113–22; for the conflicts within LULAC see materials in box 4, folder 14 of the Joe Benetes papers 1973–74, LULAC. See particularly “Bylaws LNESC,” n.d., and letter, Tony Bonilla to Joe Benetes, Apr. 19, 1974.

19.

See James Sundquist, The Decline and Resurgence of Congress (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1981); Arthur M. Schlessinger, Jr., The Imperial Presidency (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1989).

20.

A. James Reichley, Conservatives in an Age of Change: The Nixon and Ford Administrations (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1981), 22–26.

21.

John Robert Greene, The Presidency of Gerald R. Ford (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1995), 191.

239

notes to pages 164–68

22.

Gerald R. Ford, A Time to Heal (New York: Harper & Row, 1979), 263.

23.

Reichley, Conservatives in an Age of Change, 296–311 (Ford quoted on p. 308); Greene, The Presidency of Gerald R. Ford, 83–85. Some of Ford’s limited use of the council may be attributed to the long confirmation process. The Senate took four months to confirm Rockefellar, and between the nomination and the confirmation Ford seems to have cooled on heavy, overt reliance on Rockefellar in domestic policy.

24.

Robert T. Hartmann, Palace Politics: An Inside Account of the Ford Years (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1980), 303–15.

25.

Memorandum for Heads of Departments and Agencies, Mar. 6, 1975, whcf-subject file, box 2, HU 2 Feb. 1, 1975–Mar. 9, 1975 folder, Gerald R. Ford Library, Ann Arbor, Michigan (hereafter cited as GRFL). In areas of great controversy, such as busing to desegregate schools, Ford proved more equivocal, approving busing for specific cases of intentional discrimination but opposing it in general as unwarranted federal intervention. See Greene, The Presidency of Gerald R. Ford, 85–90; Lawrence J. McAndrews, “Missing the Bus: Gerald Ford and School Desegregation,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 27 (fall 1997): 791–804.

26.

Biographical sketch of the Honorable Fernando E. C. De Baca, n.d., Fernando De Baca files, box 8, De Baca—Biographical Sketch folder, GRFL.

27.

Briefing Outline, Office of Hispanic Affairs, May 15, 1975, Fernando De Baca files, box 12, Office of Hispanic Affairs folder, GRFL.

28.

Meeting with Hispanic-American Members of Congress and Major Administration Appointees, Sept. 4, 1974, whcf-subject file, box 1, HU 2 Sept. 1, 1974–Sept. 30, 1974 folder; Record of Proceedings, Forum of National Hispanic Organizations, May 23, 1975, Thomas Aranda files, box 8, Hispanic Organizations folder, GRFL.

29.

Washington Post, Sept. 22, 1974, p. 15.

30.

Memo, George Bush to Dean Burch, Sept. 6, 1974; letter, John C. García to George Bush, n.d.; both located in whcf-subject file,, box 1 EX HU 2, Sept. 1, 1974–Sept. 30, 1974 folder, GRFL. García also complained that a “gringo”—Anne Armstrong, White House liaison to the Spanish speaking—could not adequately represent the needs of Hispanics in Washington.

31.

Meeting with Hispanic-American Members of Congress and Major Administration Appointees, Sept. 4, 1974, whcf-subject file, box 1, HU 2, Sept. 1, 1974–Sept. 30, 1974 folder, GRFL; memo, Fernando De Baca to Anne Armstrong, Nov. 5, 1974, whcfsubject file, box 2, EX HU 2, Nov. 1, 1974–Dec. 9, 1974 folder, GRFL.

32.

Memo, Fernando De Baca to Anne Armstrong, Nov. 5, 1974, whcf-subject file, box 2, EX HU 2, Nov. 1, 1974– Dec. 9, 1974 folder, GRFL.

33.

Letter, Joe Benetes to Fernando De Baca, Dec. 4, 1974, Fernando De Baca files, box 2, LULAC—League of United Latin American Citizens (1) folder, GRFL.

34.

Adam Fairclough, Better Day Coming: Blacks and Equality, 1890–2000 (New York: Viking, 2001), 234–37; Steven F. Lawson, Running for Freedom: Civil Rights and Black Politics in America Since 1941 (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1991), 82.

35.

See membership list in Thomas Aranda files, box 8, Hispanic Organizations folder, GRFL. According to Fernando De Baca, the group formed after the meeting with Pres-

240

notes to pages 168–73

ident Ford in Sept., 1974, as a means of more clearly articulating Hispanic concerns to the administration. 36.

LCCR membership lists identify, among major Mexican American organizations, only MALDEF and the G.I. Forum as members through the early 1970s.

37.

See Record of Proceedings, Forum of National Hispanic Organizations, May 23, 1975, Thomas Aranda files, box 8, Hispanic Organizations folder, GRFL.

38.

Guadalupe San Miguel, Jr., “Conflict and Controversy in the Evolution of Bilingual Education in the United States—An Interpretation,” Social Science Quarterly 65 (1984): 505–18 (quoted on p. 506); “Mexican American Organizations and the Changing Politics of School Desegregation in Texas, 1945 to 1980,” Social Science Quarterly 63 (1982): 701–15 (Cardenas quoted on p. 711).

39.

Keyes v. School District No. 1, Denver, Colorado, 413 U.S. 189 (1973).

40.

Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, 402 U.S. 1 (1971). See Gary Orfield, Must We Bus? Segregated Schools and National Policy (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1978), 14–19.

41.

New York Times, June 22, 1972–June 24, 1973; Orfield, Must We Bus?, 198–206. The Times used the terms “black,” “Chicano,” and “white” and considered blacks and Chicanos to make up the “minority” group. Self-identification of the Mexican Americans in Denver and the significance of the case for Mexican American civil rights policy were not noticed.

42.

Rachel F. Moran, “The Politics of Discretion: Federal Intervention in Bilingual Education,” California Law Review 76 (Dec., 1988): 1267–68.

43.

Lau v. Nichols, 414 U.S. 563, 566 (1974).

44.

For the efforts of the community and the San Francisco school district to develop a remedy, see L. Ling-Chi Wang, “Lau v. Nichols: History of a Struggle for Equal and Quality Education,” in Chinese Immigrants and American Law, ed. Charles McClain (New York: Garland, 1994), 422–46.

45.

Moran, “The Politics of Discretion,” 1268–70; John D. Skrentny, Minority Rights Revolution (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap, 2001), 223–35.

46.

San Miguel, Jr., “Mexican American Organizations,” 709.

47.

This argument most closely resembled Brown when advocates called for bilingualbicultural education for all students. It differed from Brown when they called for Spanish-speaking students, but not others, to receive instruction in their native language, thus demanding different treatment for minority students (bilingual education) rather than similar treatment for all children (through integration).

48.

U.S. Senate Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, Hearings before the Subcommittee on Education of the Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, 93d Cong., 1st sess., Oct. 31, 1973 (hereafter cited as Hearings, 1973). The shift in advocacy is discussed in San Miguel, Jr., “Conflict and Controversy” and “Mexican American Organizations”; a legislative history of the Bilingual Education Act of 1974, which resulted from the hearings, can be found in Susan Gilbert Schneider, Revolution, Reaction or Reform: The 1974 Bilingual Education Act (New York: las Americas, 1976).

49.

Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974, Public Law 93–380, 88 Stat. 515; James Crawford, Bilingual Education: History, Politics, Theory and Practice, 3d. ed. (Los An-

241

notes to pages 173–80

geles: Bilingual Education Services, 1995), 58–59; Moran, “The Politics of Discretion,” 1271; Skrentny, Minority Rights Revolution, 226. 50.

Schneider, Revolution, Reaction or Reform, 147.

51.

See chapter 5.

52.

U.S House Committee on Education and Labor, Bilingual Education Act, Hearings on H.R. 1085, H.R. 2490, and H.R. 11464 (Testimony of Frank Carlucci, Under Secretary, DHEW), 93rd Cong., 2nd sess., 1974; Schneider, Revolution, Reaction or Reform, 102–104.

53.

Schneider, Revolution, Reaction or Reform, 139–44.

54.

Congress required bilingual-bicultural education in the demonstration programs specifically funded under the Bilingual Education Act, but did not specify a remedy to ensure “educational access” under the Equal Educational Opportunity Act.

55.

Office for Civil Rights, Task-Force Findings Specifying Remedies Available for Eliminating Past Educational Practices Ruled Unlawful Under Lau v. Nichols (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1975).

56.

OCR, Task-Force Findings; Moran, “The Politics of Discretion,” 1280–83. Moran suggests that the OCR avoided pedagogy by allowing schools to choose some combination of the three acceptable methods. But by outlawing ESL and placing the burden of proof on school districts to justify any attempt to satisfy Lau without bilingual education, it effectively mandated an educational approach.

57.

Betsy Levin, “An Analysis of the Federal Attempt to Regulate Bilingual Education: Protecting Civil Rights or Controlling Curriculum?,” Journal of Law and Education, 12 (Jan., 1983): 29, 37.

58.

Guadalupe San Miguel, Jr., “Let All of them Take Heed”: Mexican Americans and the Campaign for Educational Equality in Texas, 1910–1981 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987), 103–104; Mary Ellen Leary, “Children Who Are Tested in an Alien Language: Mentally Retarded?” New Republic, May 30, 1970, pp. 17–18.

59.

U.S. Senate Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, Hearings before the Special Subcommittee on Bilingual Education of the Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, 90th Cong., 1st sess. (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1967).

60.

Carolyn Hernández, “LULAC,” 113–19; Benjamin Márquez, LULAC: The Evolution of a Mexican American Political Organization (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993), 74.

61.

Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Lyndon Johnson, 1963–1968, 1:5.

62.

Graham, Civil Rights Era, 166–69.

63.

Steven F. Lawson, Black Ballots: Voting Rights in the South, 1944–1969 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1976), 307–13; Graham, Civil Rights Era, 170, 347.

64.

Dean Kotlowski, Nixon’s Civil Rights (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001), chapter 3; Graham, Civil Rights Era, 349–62.

65.

Graham, Civil Rights Era, 173.

66.

Record of Proceedings, Forum of National Hispanic Organizations, May 23, 1975, Thomas Aranda files, box 8, Hispanic Organizations folder, GRFL.

67.

Abigail M. Thernstrom, Whose Votes Count?: Affirmative Action and Minority Voting Rights (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987), chapter 3.

242

notes to pages 180–88

68.

See chapter 4.

69.

U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights of the Committee on the Judiciary, 94th Cong., 1st sess. (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1975), 756–89, 802 (hereafter cited Hearings, 1975).

70.

Hearings, 1975, pp. 763–766. See also Thernstrom, Whose Votes Count? 43–62.

71.

Memo, Ken Cole to President Ford, Dec. 13, 1974, James Cannon files, box 39, Voting Rights, Nov., 1973–Apr., 1975 folder, GRFL; Hearings, 1975, pp. 46–49. Mitchell requested that any amendments beyond extension be covered in separate titles, which could be rejected or found unconstitutional without threatening the entire act.

72.

John Robert Greene, The Limits of Power: The Nixon and Ford Administrations (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992), 207–208.

73.

Memo, Jerry Jones to Ken Cole, Jan. 13, 1975; draft memo, Jim Cannon to President Ford, Apr. 22, 1975, James Cannon files, box 39, Voting Rights, Nov., 1973–Apr., 1975 folder, GRFL.

74.

Hearings, 1975, pp. 543–44. Thernstrom quotes this passage on p. 55.

75.

Memo, June, 10, 1975, J. Stanley Pottinger to James Cannon, James Cannon files, box 39, Voting Rights, June, 1975 folder, GRFL.

76.

Memo, Fernando De Baca to James Cannon, July, 3, 1975, Fernando De Baca files, box 5, Voting Rights Act (1) folder; letter, Fernando De Baca to Manuel Fierro, June 4, 1975, whcf-subject file, box 9, EX HU 2–4, Voting folder, GRFL.

77.

Letter, President Ford to Hugh Scott, July 18, 1975, James Cannon files, box 39, Voting Rights, July 18–Aug. 6, 1975 folder, GRFL. The administration released the letter to the press on July 23.

78.

Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report, 33 (Aug. 2, 1975): 1666–67.

79.

Memo, Fred Slight to John Borling, Apr. 30, 1975, Theodore Marrs files, box 26, Spanish Speaking People (2) folder, GRFL.

80.

Memo, Fernando De Baca to Richard Parsons, Aug. 1, 1975, Fernando De Baca files, box 5, Voting Rights Act Signing Ceremony folder, GRFL.

81.

Remarks of Fernando De Baca, Aug. 6, 1975, whcf-subject file, box 9, EX HU 2–4, Voting folder, GRFL.

conclusion 1.

John D. Skrentny, The Minority Rights Revolution (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 2002), chap. 4–7; Hugh Davis Graham, Collision Course: The Strange Convergence of Affirmative Action and Immigration Policy in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), chap. 4. The Immigration Act of 1965 was an effort, basically by the same liberals that fought for the Civil Rights Act, to eliminate the discriminatory nationalorigin quotas of previous U.S. immigration laws. Betty K. Koed, “The Policies of Reform: Policymakers and the Immigration Act of 1965” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Santa Barbara, 1999).

2.

The Voting Rights Act did not, so long as Mexican Americans were not technically a racial minority group. The Act prohibited obstacles to voting based on race or color only.

3.

Office for Civil Rights, Department of Health, Education and Welfare, “Task Force

243

notes to pages 189–92

Findings Specifying Remedies Available for Eliminating Past Educational Practices Ruled Unlawful Under Lau v. Nichols,” (The “Lau Remedies”) Summer 1975; Noel Epstein, Language, Ethnicity, and the Schools: Policy Alternatives for Bilingual-Bicultural Education (Washington, D.C.: Institute for Educational Leadership, 1977), 14–15; New York Times, 9/5/75, 31. 4.

Epstein, Language, Ethnicity, and the Schools, 22–23.

5.

Susan Gilbert Schneider, Revolution, Reaction, or Reform: The 1974 Bilingual Education Act (New York: Las Americas, 1976), 12.

6.

Colman B. Stein, Jr., Sink or Swim: The Politics of Bilingual Education (New York: Praeger, 1986), 40; Skrentny, Minority Rights Revolution, 337.

7.

Epstein, Language, Ethnicity, and the Schools, 29–30.

8.

American Institutes for Research, Interim Report, Evaluation of the Impact of ESEA Title VII Spanish/English Bilingual Education Programs (Palo Alto, Calif., Feb., 1977).

9.

For critical evaluations of the bilingual education programs, see Epstein, Language, Ethnicity and the Schools; Malcolm N. Danoff, Evaluations of the Impact of ESEA Title VII Spanish/English Bilingual Education Programs (Palo Alto, CA: America Institutes for Research, 1978) and Iris Rotberg, “Some Legal and Research Considerations in Establishing Federal Policy in Bilingual Education,” Harvard Education Review 52 (May 1982), 148–68. For a favorable view offered in response, see Jonathan D. Haft, “Assuring Equal Educational Opportunity for Language Minority Students: Bilingual Education and the Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1974,” Columbia Journal of Law and Social Problems 18:2 (1983), 209–93.

10.

Stein, Sink or Swim, 40–41.

11.

James Crawford, Bilingual Education: History, Politics, Theory, and Practice 3d ed. (Los Angeles: Bilingual Educational Services, 1995), 81–98; Stein, Sink or Swim, 42–43, 71–78.

12.

Rudolfo Acuña, Occupied America: A History of Chicanos 4th ed. (New York: Longman, 2000), 411–13, 452–56.

13.

Rodolfo O. de la Garza, “‘And then there were some . . . :’ Chicanos as National Political Actors, 1967–1980,” Aztlán 15:1 (spring 1984), 1–24. de la Garza offers a mixed assessment of the effectiveness of the Caucus and its members.

14.

Rodney E. Hero, Latinos and the U.S. Political System: Two-Tiered Pluralism (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992).

15.

Allen v. State Board of Elections, 393 U.S. 544 (1969).

16.

Chandler Davidson, “The Voting Rights Act: A Brief History,” in Bernard Grofman and Chandler Davidson, eds., Controversies in Minority Voting: The Voting Rights Act in Perspective (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1992), 27–34; Abigail M. Thernstrom, Whose Votes Count?: Affirmative Action and Minority Voting Rights (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987), 18–29.

17.

U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, The Voting Rights Act: Unfulfilled Goals (Sept., 1981).

18.

Most notably, in 1980 the U.S. Supreme Court held that plaintiffs had to prove that election officials intended to discriminate against a protected minority group. City of Mobile v. Bolden, 446 U.S. 55 (1980).

244

notes to pages 192–95

19.

Thornburg v. Gingles, 478 U.S. 30 (1986). For the 1982 amendments see Laughlin McDonald, “The 1982 Amendments of Section 2 and Minority Representation,” in Grofman and Chandler, Controversies in Minority Voting, 66–76, and Thernstrom, Whose Votes Count? chapters 5 and 6.

20.

Robert J. McKeever, “Race and Representation in the United States: The Constitutional Validity of Majority-Minority Congressional Districts,” Journal of American Studies 33:3 (1999), 491–507; Angelo Falcon, “Time to Rethink the Voting Rights Act?” Social Policy 23:2 (fall–winter 1992), 17–22.

21.

Carol M. Swain, “The Voting Rights Act: Some Unintended Consequences,” Brookings Review 10:1 (winter 1992), 51; Peter Skerry, “The Ambivalent Minority: Mexican Americans and the Voting Rights Act,” Journal of Policy History 6:1 (1994), 73–95; McKeever, “Race and Representation”; Falcon, “Time to Rethink the Voting Rights Act.”

22.

Juan Gómez-Quiñones emphasizes the diversity and disagreement among the organizations, but goes on to identify the common issues they fought for, including bilingual education, political participation for Latinos, economic development, and affirmative action. See his Chicano Politics: Reality and Promise, 1940–1990 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1990), 181–84. Current efforts of these organizations may be found at their websites. www.lulac.org, www.agif.org, www.maldef.org, www.nclr.org.

23.

David A. Hollinger discusses the effects of the ethno-racial pentagram, which includes the four minority groups (black, Latino, Asian, and Native American) and whites. See his Postethnic America: Beyond Multiculturalism (New York: Basic Books, 1995). For the development of the four “official” minority groups in federal policy, see Skrentny, The Minority Rights Revolution.

24.

LULAC News, June, 1976; Sept., 1979.

25.

U.S. House Committee on the Post Office and Civil Service, Hearings before the Subcommittee on the Census and Statistics of the Committee on the Post Office and Civil Service, 93d Cong., 2d sess., May 28, June 11–12, 1974, pp. 58–78. For a study of the politics of the census, including the significance of an undercount, see Peter Skerry, Counting on the Census? Race, Group Identity, and the Evasion of Politics (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 2000).

26.

Hugh Davis Graham, “Civil Rights Policy in the Carter Presidency,” Gary M. Fink and Hugh Davis Graham, eds., The Carter Presidency: Policy Choices in the Post-New Deal Era (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1998), 202–23.

27.

Stephen Skowronek, The Politics Presidents Make: Leadership From John Adams to Bill Clinton (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap, 1997).

28.

Craig Allan Kaplowitz, “Struggles of the First ‘New Democrat’: Jimmy Carter, Youth Employment Policy, and the Great Society Legacy,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 28:1 (winter 1998), 187–206; for recent interpretations of Carter’s presidency across a range of political and policy areas, see Fink and Graham, eds., The Carter Presidency.

29.

For civil rights policy during the Reagan administration, see Nicholas Laham, The Reagan Presidency and the Politics of Race (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1998) and Hugh

245

notes to pages 195–97

Davis Graham, “The Politics of Clientele Capture: Civil Rights Policy and the Reagan Administration,” Neal Devins and Davison M. Douglas, eds., Redefining Equality (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 103–19. For recent interpretations of Reagan’s presidency, see W. Elliot Brownlee and Hugh Davis Graham, eds., The Reagan Presidency: Pragmatic Conservatism and its Legacies (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2003). 30.

Benjamin Márquez, LULAC: The Evolution of a Mexican American Political Organization (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993), 89–94; LULAC News, Aug., 1981, May– June, 1982.

31.

Isidro D. Ortiz, “Chicana/o Organizational Politics and Strategies in the Era of Retrenchment,” David R. Maciel and Isidro D. Ortiz, eds., Chicanas/Chicanos at the Crossroads: Social, Economic, and Political Change (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1996), 108–29; Márquez, LULAC, 95–100; Gómez-Quiñones, Chicano Politics, 181.

32.

Richard Santillan and Carlos Muñoz, Jr., “Latinos and the Democratic Party,” James MacGregor Burns, William Crotty, Lois Lovelace Duke, Lawrence D. Langley, eds., The Democrats Must Lead: The Case for a Progressive Democratic Party (Boulder, Co.: Westview Press, 1992), 173–84.

33.

The Latino National Political Survey conducted in the early 1990s, while certainly not conclusive on this point, does raise questions about how the solid stance of the major Mexican American organizations, including LULAC, compares with the ambivalence of the Mexican American population as a whole on many of these issues. See Rodolfo O. de la Garza, Louis DeSipio, F. Chris García, John García, and Angelo Falcon, Latino Voices: Mexican, Puerto Rican, and Cuban Perspectives on American Politics (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1992). Peter Skerry offers a critique of the political strategy of Mexican American and Democratic Party elites, and of the trends in the new American political system, that he argues may actually reduce the political influence of Mexican Americans. See his Mexican Americans: The Ambivalent Minority (New York: The Free Press, 1993).

34.

Ignacio M. García, Chicanismo: The Forging of a Militant Ethos Among Mexican Americans (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1997) explores the lasting ideological effects of the Chicano movement, even among non-Chicanos. Gómez-Quiñones, Chicano Politics, makes a similar point, although it is somewhat mixed in insisting that the lead organizations among Mexican Americans became more conservative during the late 1970s, while also touting the lasting impact of the Chicano movement. See in particular pp. 181–84.

35.

Skerry, Mexican Americans; Raul Yzaguirre, “Our Place at the Table,” Hispanic 10, no. 6 (June, 1997), 40.

36.

The most notable exception to this trend, which takes non-Chicano identities seriously and which leads the way toward a more nuanced understanding of Mexican American, and indeed ethnic, history, is David G. Gutiérrez, Walls and Mirrors: Mexican Americans, Mexican Immigrants, and the Politics of Ethnicity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995). Also, in his survey of Mexican American history, Manuel G. Gonzales pays careful attention to the diversity within the Mexican Amer-

246

notes to pages 198–204

ican community. See his Mexicanos: A History of Mexicans in the United States (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999). 37.

Philip Gleason notes that the period of increased ethnic identification, after the mid– 1960s, coincided with attacks on American ideals in the wake of Vietnam and racial crisis. LULAC could experience increased ethnic identity and still remain committed to American ideals; ethnic identity did not necessarily result in rejection of American civic culture. For Chicanos, the two went hand-in-hand. Gleason, “American Identity and Americanization,” Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980), 31–58.

38.

Michael Walzer, “What Does it Mean to Be an ‘American’?” Social Research 57:3 (fall 1990), 591–614.

39.

The element of choice for the individual in how much, and with which groups, to affiliate is crucial to what David Hollinger has termed a “postethnic America.” This view requires an optionalist approach to ethnicity, rather than an primordialist one that considers ethnicity to be an immutable characteristic, about which one has no choice. Hollinger, Postethnic America; Gleason, “American Identity and Americanization.”

40.

A survey of the literature on whiteness studies across disciplines can be found in Shelley Fisher Fishkin, “Interrogating ‘Whiteness’, Complicating ‘Blackness’: Remapping American Culture,” American Quarterly 47:3 (Sept., 1995), 428–65; More critical, but still sympathetic, is Peter Kolehin, “Whiteness Studies: The New History of Race in America,” Journal of American History 89, no. 1 (June, 2002), 154–73.

41.

David Roediger, Towards the Abolition of Whiteness (New York: Verso, 1994).

42.

Ibid, 190.

43.

As an exception to this tendency, Steven Wilson considers how the dismantligh of Jim Crow laws affected the legal claims made by Mexican Americans in Texas, arguing that they had to abandon white status to make legal claims based on the equal protection clause through Brown v. Board of Education. Steven H. Wilson, “Brown Over ‘Other White’: The Federal Judiciary and Racial Classification of Mexican-Americans in the Twentieth Century,” manuscript in author’s possession.

44.

The most extensive survey information comes from the Latino National Political Survey. Published results with interpretation can be found in Rodolfo O. de la Garza, Louis DeSipio, F. Chris García, John García, and Angelo Falcon, Latino Voices: Mexican, Puerto Rican, and Cuban Perspectives on American Politics (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1992).

45.

For a consideration of various recent approaches to understanding immigration and American identity, see Gary Gerstle, “Liberty, Coercion, and the Making of Americans,” and responses, Journal of American History 84:2 (Sept., 1997), 524–75.

46.

Anthony King, ed., The New American Political System (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute, 1978); Richard A. Harris and Sidney M. Milkis, eds., Remaking American Politics (Boulder, Col.: Westview Press, 1989); Marc K. Landy and Martin A. Levin, eds., The New Politics of Public Policy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995).

247

notes to page 205

47.

Political scientist Rodney Hero, for example, argues that America has a two-tiered political system, and that minorities such as Latinos are forced to be clients of the government, rather than participate in “real” politics through getting members of their respective groups elected. Such a view misses the significance of the changes to the American regulatory system during the early 1970s; in many ways, increased bureaucracy and administrative policy making meant that client relationships with federal agencies and congressional committees paid off more handsomely than relationships with elected officials through more traditional notions of democracy. See Rodney E. Hero, Latinos and the U.S. Political System.

48.

For a study of how issues get on the national agenda, and the importance of nonelected officials in providing policy alternatives when windows of opportunity open, see John Kingdon, Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies (Boston: Little, Brown, 1984).

248

Index

administrative policymaking: 9, 157, 159–61, 183–85; and bilingual education, 175; Mexican Americans, 193–96; and voting rights, 181–83 affirmative action, 3–6, 142, 159, 165, 186–87, 195, 197 African Americans: and civil rights, 9, 62–63, 93, 170, 196, 201; federal appointments of, 95–96, 109; and Mexican American policies, 10; and minority business programs, 138–39; and the New Deal, 25; in 1960 census, 92–93; and voting rights, 178–80 Agnew, Spiro, 134, 164 Albuquerque, New Mexico, 26, 36, 99–104, 107, 114–15, 120, 166–67, 202 Aldrete, Cris, 115 Allen v. State Board of Elections, 191 American G.I. Forum, 4, 39, 68–69, 161, 168, 201, 203; and administrative policymaking, 193–96; and Albuquerque walkout, 101, 103; and bilingual education, 171–72, 175, 177; and the Chicano movement, 127; and civil rights tactics, 79, 98, 113; and El Paso hearings, 118; and federal appointments, 73, 114, 139; and Lyndon Johnson, 84, 104– 106; and MALDEF, 132; and Operation SER, 88; and “Operation Wetback,” 55–57; and revenue sharing, 136; and Viva Kennedy clubs, 71 American Institutes for Research (AIR), 189 Andow, Paul, 76, 128 Angciano, Lupe, 145 Anglo, 7, 10, 12–13, 92–93 Argersinger, Peter, 24 Armendáriz, Albert, 53, 63–64, 151–52 Armstrong, Anne, 158, 165, 183 Bell, Alphonzo, 149 Bell, Terrell, 190

Benetes, Joseph, 113, 159, 161–63, 167–68, 179– 80, 194 bilingual education, 3, 9, 111, 143–49, 159, 185– 87; after 1975, 188–91, 195, 197, 203; as federal mandate, 169–77. See also Bilingual Education Act Bilingual Education Act: of 1968, 145, 188, 172; of 1974, 173–74. See also Elementary and Secondary Education Act Black Panthers, 91 Blacks. See African Americans Blanton, Annie Webb, 15 Bodnar, John, 18–19 Bonilla, Ruben, 194, 195 Bonilla, Tony, 162, 195 Bonilla, William, 87, 88, 153 Border Patrol, U.S., 49, 55–56 Bork, Robert, 171 Bracero Program, 36, 40–43, 57–59 Brinkley, Alan, 24 Brown, H. Rap, 124 Brownell, Herbert, 54–55, 57 Brown v. Board of Education, 66, 167–78, 172 Budget, Bureau of the, 111, 112 Bundy, McGeorge, 131 Burns, Arthur, 135 Bush, George H. W., 134, 140, 166, 191 Cabinet Committee on Opportunities for the Spanish-speaking (CCOSS), 140–42, 146, 149, 151–53, 158, 165. See also Interagency Committee on Mexican American Affairs Califano, Joseph, 104–105, 109, 112, 115–16, 190 Campbell, John, 141 Canales, J.T., 21 Cardenas, José, 169 Carlucci, Frank, 174 Carmichael, Stokely, 124, 128 Carr, Waggoner, 110

249

index

164, 194; and bilingual education, 149; and election of 1968, 134; and Mexican Americans, 3, 34, 151, 197, 202–203; and voting rights, 193

Carter, Jimmy, 189–90, 194 Castaneda, Carlos, 44 Castillo, Martin, 140–41 Catholicism, 70 Chávez, César, 96, 117, 124 Chicano movement, 4–5, 7, 123–30, 133, 150; and administrative policymaking, 193– 96, 204; and Albuquerque walkout, 103, and bilingual education, 172–73, 177; and LULAC, 155; and Mexican American civil rights, 184–85, 196–98; and Mexican American identity, 9, 161, 198 Civil Rights Act of 1964, 4, 63, 80, 85, 186–87; and bilingual education, 147, 149, 171, 175; and equal employment opportunity, 91, 93, 98–99, 102, 110 Clark, Tom, 49 Clawson, James, 148 Cold War, 73 Cole, Kenneth, 141 Colson, Charles, 148, 153 Committee for the Re-election of the President (CREEP), 151–52 Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity (CEEO), 78–79, 84, 85 Communism, 51 Comprehensive Employment and Training Act of 1973 (CETA), 137 Congress, 115, 137, 140, 159, 164, 204; and bilingual education, 145–46, 149, 170, 172, 174, 184, 189, 191; and voting rights, 178–79, 181–84 Congressional Hispanic Caucus, 191 Corona, Bert, 104–105 Coronado, Dominga, 118 Cortéz, Raoul, 45, 47–51 Cox, Tricia Nixon, 152 Cranston, Alan, 137, 190 Crusade for Justice, 125 Crystal City, Texas, 96, 127 Cubans, 132–33, 168. See also Latinos

Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, 87 Edelsberg, Herman, 100 education: census data on, 92–93; federal aid for, 111, 143; of Mexicans and Mexican Americans in Texas, 15–16, 31–33. See also bilingual education, Little School of the 400 Ehrlichman, John, 135, 137, 141, 146–47 Eisenhower, Dwight, 54–58, 68, 82 Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA), 111–12, 145, 147, 172, 186. See also Bilingual Education Act Elizondo, Roy, 104 Elizondo, William, 72, 82 El Paso, Texas, 14; hearings at, 117–20, 123, 202; border incident at, 46–55 English as a Second Language (ESL), 118, 173–75 Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974, 173 Equal Employment Opportunities Commission (EEOC), 85–86, 94, 111, 138, 150; and Albuquerque walkout, 98–104; appointments to, 106–12, 114–15, 120–21; after 1975, 187, 194, 202 Flores, Augustín, 101, 104 Flores, Francisca, 124 Flores, William, 30, 128–29 Ford, Gerald, 4, 9, 163–65, 184, 203; and bilingual education, 174, 177; and Latinos, 157, 165–69; and voting rights, 181–83 Ford Foundation, 131 Forum of National Hispanic Organizations (FNHO), 168, 179 Freeman, Orville, 118

Davies, Gareth, 93, 146 De Baca, Fernando, 165–69, 182–83 de la Garza, Rudolfo, 32 De Leon, Arnoldo, 97 Delgado v. Bastrop Independent School District, 46 Democratic Party, 103, 110, 114–16, 123, 156, 159,

García, Gus, 49–51 García, Hector, 39, 45, 69–70, 94–95, 108, 114, 139 García, Mario, 13, 20, 27, 28, 39 García, Richard, 18, 22, 26 García y Griego, Manuel, 46 Garder, A. Bruce, 145

250

index

186; of undocumented workers, 46–59; during World War II, 40 Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), 47, 49, 54–56 Independent School District v. Salvatierra, 33 Interagency Committee on Mexican American Affairs (IACMAA), 139–41. See also Cabinet Committee on Opportunities for the Spanish-speaking

Gardner, John, 115–16, 118 Garment, Leonard, 141 Garza, Ben, 21 Garza, George, 39, 68 Garza, Joe, 82–83 Garza, Paul, 150 Garza, Reynaldo, 115 Giglio, James, 75 Glazer, Nathan, 189 Godínez, Hector, 76 Goldberg, Arthur, 82 Goldwater, Barry, 140 Gómez-Quiñones, Juan, 121, 126, 132 Gonzales, Rodolfo “Corky,” 117, 120, 124–27, 129, 151, 177 González, Fidel, 158 González, Gilbert, 16 González, Henry B., 82, 158 González, Manuel, 21 Graham, Hugh Davis, 159 Graham, Richard, 102, 106 Great Society, 86–88, 91–96, 103–106, 160, 201, 204; legacy of, 133, 135, 194 Greenberg, Jack, 131 Greene, John Robert, 135, 164, 165 Gutiérrez, David, 22 Gutiérrez, José Angel, 127, 129, 151, 177

Jackson, Jesse, 180 Jacobsen, Jake, 94, 115 Javitz, Jacob, 143 Johnson, Lyndon, 4–5, 8, 14, 30, 84, 160, 166, 194; and Albuquerque walkout, 101, 103; and bilingual education, 145–46; and civil rights, 93–94, 79–80, 84–85, 202; and El Paso hearings, 117, 120, 124; and federal appointments, 94–96, 99, 106–110, 112, 121, 139; and LULAC, 168; and Mexican Americans, 5, 69–71, 104–106, 110–11; political problems of, 92, 108, 110, 122; and voting rights, 91, 178. See also Great Society Kennedy, David, 24 Kennedy, Edward, 137, 190 Kennedy, John: and civil rights, 4, 8, 78–80; domestic policy of, 74–78; and LULAC, 82–84; and Mexican Americans, 69–74, 202; and migratory labor, 58–59 Kennedy, Robert, 71, 122, 143, 179 Keyes v. School District No. 1, 170 King, Martin Luther, Jr., 103, 122, 178 Knight, Alan, 19

Haldeman, Robert, 135, 141 Health, Education and Welfare, U.S. Department of: and bilingual education, 145–49, 170, 173–75; and Mexican American employment, 95, 121. See also Office for Civil Rights Hernandez, Aileen, 106, 114 Hernández, Alfred, 113–14, 116, 118, 129, 144, 180; and civil rights tactics, 95–104, 132; and Lyndon Johnson, 104–10; and Richard Nixon, 153 Herrera, John, 82–83 Hispanic. See Latino Housing Act of 1961, 75 Hufstedler, Shirley, 190 Humphrey, Hubert, 117, 123–24 Hurwitz, Howard, 189 Hutcheson, Thad, 69

La Raza Unida Party (LRUP), 120, 127, 130, 151 Latin America, 72–73 Latin American Civic Association (LACA), 98, 101 Latinos, 3, 7, 132–33, 140, 184, 186–87, 195, 206; and administrative policymaking, 193–96; and bilingual education, 146, 148, 189–90; and Ford administration, 165–69; immigration to U.S., 17; and voting rights, 179, 183, 191–93. See also Cubans, Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans Laurel, Oscar, 114–15 Lau Remedies, 188–90 Lau v. Nichols, 171, 173–74, 188

Idar, Ed, Jr., 73, 118 immigration, to U.S.: legislation on, 16–18, 52,

251

index

Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR), 113, 120, 168, 179 League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), 4–6, 23, 51, 60, 66–68; and administrative policymaking, 160–61, 172, 177, 184–85, 193–97, 203–206; and bilingual education (federal), 169, 171–72, 175–77; and Bracero program, 41–43, 49, 59; and civil rights tactics, 79–81, 92, 96–104, 112– 14, 120; and education, 31–33, 63–68, 89; and “El Paso incident,” 47–51; and federal appointments, 71–74, 81, 95, 108–109, 114; and Ford administration, 166–68; funding (external), 162, 176, 195; and Great Depression, 23–27; and Great Society, 87–90, 93; housing program of, 75–78; and immigration, 48, 52–53, 55–57; internal problems of, 76, 130–31, 161–63; and Johnson administration, 84, 104–10; and Kennedy administration, 69–71, 81–84; and Mexican American identity, 6–8, 34, 37, 44–46, 50– 51, 59–61, 63, 74, 89–90, 155, 181, 184, 198– 202; and Nixon administration, 150–55; origins of, 7–8, 12, 20–23, 27–31, 34; and Reagan administration, 195; and U.S. foreign policy, 48, 51; and World War II, 36, 39–41. See also Little School of the 400 Little School of the 400, 63–66, 89, 144, 176 Longoria, Félix, 84 Lucero, Joe, 80 LULAC Foundation, 162 LULAC National Education Service Centers (LNESC), 162, 176 McCarran Act of 1950, 51–52 McCarthy, Eugene, 112 McCormick, J. Carlos, 70, 73, 82–83 McGovern, George, 5, 137, 153, 156 McPherson, Harry, 115 McWilliams, Carey, 17 Macy, John, 106, 114 Magnuson, Warren, 137 Malcolm X, 92 Márquez, Benjamin, 5, 20, 27, 28, 39, 76, 130, 161, 163 Martin, Louis, 86, 107–109, 116 Martinez, Vilma, 179–80 Marumoto, William, 150–51 Matusow, Allen, 75

Méndez v. Westminster School District, 45–46 Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF): and administrative policymaking, 157, 160, 184–85, 193–96, 204–205; and bilingual education, 171, 175, 177, 189; and civil rights tactics, 169, 170; funding of, 195; and Nixon administration, 149–55; origins of, 131–33; and presidential election of 1960, 69–71; and voting rights, 179–81 Mexican American Political Association (MAPA), 67, 98, 100, 113, 120 Mexican Americans, 3, 5, 7, 51, 132–33, 170; and administrative policymaking, 193–96; and bilingual education, 144, 189–90; census data on, 92–93, 194; and civil rights tactics, 92, 96–104, 123; and Democratic Party, 70; education in Texas of, 31–33, 65–66; and El Paso hearings, 117–20, 124; as ethnic minority, 100–102, 119, 121, 130, 155, 181, 184– 87, 193, 196, 198–200, 205; and federal appointments, 72–74, 95–96, 113, 139; and Ford administration, 157, 168; history in Southwest, 11–20; and Johnson administration, 86, 105–107; and New Deal, 25– 27; and Nixon administration, 134–39; 151–52, 156–59; and Republican Party, 68; task force on, 110–12; and U.S. foreign policy, 48; and voting rights, 179–80, 183, 191–93; and World War II, 38–39. See also Latinos Mexican American Youth Organization (MAYO), 120, 125, 127 Mexican Revolution, 19, 21 Mexicans, 7, 11–18, 17, 19. See also immigration, to U.S.: of undocumented workers Mexico, 13, 40–42, 47, 59 Meza, Robert, 47 midterm elections of 1966, 108–10 Milkis, Sidney, 25, 160 Miller, Watson, 48 “minority-majority” voting districts, 3, 193 Mitchell, Clarence, 180 Mitchell, James, 43, 57–58 Molina, John, 189 Mondale, Walter, 190 Montejano, David, 12, 28 Montes, Miguel, 101, 118, 119 Morales, Antonio, 179

252

index

Moran, Oscar, 195 El Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán (MEChA), 126–27 Moynihan, Daniel Patrick, 135, 140 Murphy, George, 140 mutualistas, 19 Myrdal, Gunnar, 62–63 National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), 25, 99, 113, 131, 167, 179, 204 National Association of Bilingual Educators, 191 National Association of Latino Elected Officials (NALEO), 191 National Council of La Raza (NCLR), 166, 191, 193–96 National Economic Development Association (NEDA), 150 National Education Association (NEA), 143 National Education Task Force de la Raza, 188 National Origins Act of 1924, 16–18 Native Americans, 138, 179 New Deal, 23–27, 34, 67, 70, 159, 204 New Frontier, 93, 96, 201 Nixon, Richard, 4, 9, 154, 157–59, 164, 166; and administrative policymaking, 204; and bilingual education, 143–49, 171, 173–74, 177, 184; and CCOSS, 140–42, 158; domestic priorities of, 136–39; and federal appointments, 139–42; and LULAC, 5, 168; and Mexican Americans, 134–35, 197, 203; and presidential elections, 71, 123, 149–54, 156–57; and voting rights, 179, 184 Nobles, Doug, 114 North, David, 107–109, 112, 115 Obledo, Mario, 131, 194–95 O’Brien, Lawrence, 73 Office for Civil Rights (OCR), 146–49, 170–77, 188, 194, 204 Office for the Coordination of Inter-American Affairs, 36 Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO), 87– 89, 118, 121, 162, 176 Office of Education, 174, 204 Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, 194 Office of Hispanic Affairs, 165

Office of Management and Budget, 138–39, 142, 146, 149, 153, 167, 173–74 Office of Minority Business Enterprise (OMBE), 138–39, 149, 167 Operation SER, 87–89, 98–99, 118, 136–37, 153, 158, 186, 201 Operation Wetback, 46, 54–57, 68 Order Sons of America (OSA), 20–21 Ornelas, Roberto, 87, 104, 132 Osuna, Ben, 39 Panetta, Leon, 146–47 Patterson, James, 37, 92 Peña, Albert, 70, 101, 104, 119 Peña, Edwardo, 136 Perales, Alonso, 21, 28 El Plan Espiritual de Aztlán, 126–27 Political Association of Spanish-Speaking Organizations (PASSO), 67, 73, 98, 101, 104–106, 113 Pottinger, Stanley, 147–49, 171, 181 presidential election: of 1960, 69–71; of 1968, 123; of 1972, 149–54, 156–57 President’s Commission on Civil Rights (PCCR), 44 President’s Committee on Migratory Labor (PCML), 58 Puerto Ricans, 132–33, 138, 168, 179. See also Latinos Ramirez, Henry, 149, 151 Reagan, Ronald, 110, 134, 194, 190–92 Reichley, A. James, 164 repatriation, 25. See also Operation Wetback Republican Party, 116, 123, 159, 184, 194; and bilingual education, 149; and elections, 110, 134, 156; and Mexican Americans, 9, 68, 151, 166, 197, 202–203; and minority business programs, 137; presidential elections, 134, 156; and voting rights, 193 revenue sharing, 135–37 Reynolds, James, 118 Rhodes, John, 137 Rockefeller, Nelson, 165 Roediger, David, 199–200 Roosevelt, Franklin, 24–25, 34, 60, 70, 75 Roosevelt, Franklin, Jr., 94, 99–100, 102, 106 Roosevelt, Theodore, 24 Rowan, Helen, 97, 109

253

index

Roybal, Edward, 82, 87, 191 Roybal, George, 118, 119 Rumsfeld, Donald, 165 Safire, William, 135 San Antonio, Texas, 14, 18, 20 Sánchez, George, 19, 26, 44–45, 49–51, 94, 120, 143 Sandoval, Hilary, 138 San Miguel, Guadalupe, Jr., 15, 21, 31, 65, 169, 172 Schneider, Susan, 149 Schultz, George, 157 Scott, Hugh, 182 Shanker, Albert, 189 Sheridan, Clare, 17 Shriver, Sargent, 87–88, 116, 118 Skerry, Peter, 197 Skowronek, Stephan, 133, 194 Skrentny, John, 138, 171 Sleepy Lagoon Case, 38 Slight, Fred, 183 Small Business Administration (SBA), 137–39 Sons of America, 20, 21 Spanish-speaking. See Latino Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), 91, 125–26 Swann v. Charlotte Mecklenburg, 170 Swing, Joseph, 55 Task Force on the Problems of Spanishsurnamed Americans, 110–11 Telles, Raymond, 72–73 Texas: and Bracero program, 41; and education, 65–66; and Mexican American employment, 96; and midterm elections of 1966, 110; and voting rights, 181, 192 Tijerina, Felix, 64–66, 69 Tijerina, Pete, 131 Tijerina, Reies Lopez, 117, 120, 124–27, 129, 151 Tower, John, 108, 110, 114, 134, 137, 140 Truán, Carlos, 87, 118–19, 144 Truman, Harry, 43–44, 51–52, 60, 69, 75

Valdez, Frank, 72, 75, 77, 83 Veneman, John, 147 Verver, Isabel, 65 Vietnam, 107–108, 110, 122–23, 157 Villa, Pete, 150, 152, 166 Villarreal, Guillermo, 76–77 Viva Kennedy clubs, 70–73, 83, 125 Voting Rights Act of 1965, 4, 85, 93, 110, 178–83, 186–87, 205 voting rights, 3, 9, 191–93, 197, 203 Wallace, George, 134 Walzer, Michael, 198–99 War on Poverty, 86–88, 108 Warren, Earl, 55 Watergate, 156, 157, 161, 164 Watson, Marvin, 115 Watts riots, 91, 93, 94 Weaver, Robert, 118 Weber, Devra, 26 Week, O. Douglas, 21, 30 wetbacks. See immigration, to U.S.: of undocumented workers White, Lee, 86 White House Conference on Civil Rights, 104, 107, 124 Wilson, James Q., 136 Wilson, Woodrow, 24 Wirtz, Willard, 116 World War I, 20 World War II, 37–39, 40, 62, 67, 159 Ximenes, Vicente, 114–17, 139–40 Yarborough, Ralph, 82, 143, 145, 169, 176, 178 Young, John, 108, 109 Yzaguirre, Raúl, 166 Zamarripa, Joe, 80 Zazueta, Ricardo, 179 Zoot Suit Riots, 38

254