No Mexicans, Women, or Dogs Allowed: The Rise of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement

331 Pages·2009·3.26 MB·English

by  Cynthia E. Orozco

NO ME XIC A NS, WOMEN, OR DOG S A L LOW E D
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NO MEXICANS, WOMEN, OR DOGS ALLOWED
The Rise of the Mexican American
Civil Rights Movement
CYNTHIA E. OROZCO
UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS PRESS, AUSTIN
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COPYRIGHT © 2009 BY THE UNIVERSIT Y OF TEX AS PRESS
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
First edition, 2009
Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to:
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University of Texas Press
P.O. Box 7819
Austin, TX 78713–7819
www.utexas.edu/utpress/about/bpermission.html
The paper used in this book meets the minimum requirements of
ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (R1997) (Permanence of Paper).
LIBR ARY OF CONGRESS C ATALOGING-IN-PUBLIC ATION DATA
Orozco, Cynthia.
No Mexicans, women, or dogs allowed : the rise of the Mexican American civil
rights movement / Cynthia E. Orozco. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978–0–292–72109–8 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978–0–292–72132–6
(pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Mexican Americans—Civil rights—History—20th century. 2. League
of United Latin American Citizens—History. 3. Order of Sons of America—
History. 4. Civil rights movements—United States—History—20th century.
5. Mexican Americans—Civil rights—Texas—History—20th century.
6. Civil rights movements—Texas—History—20th century. 7. Mexican
Americans—Texas—Social conditions— 20th century. 8. Mexican American
women—Texas—Social conditions—20th century. I. Title.
E184.M50775 2009
973′.0468720764—dc22
2009020110
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FOR MY PARENTS, AURORA AND PRIMITIVO,
AND MY SON/DOG, BUDDY, AND IN MEMORY OF
JOHN SOLÍS, M. C. GONZÁLES, ADELA SLOSS-VENTO,
MARÍA L. HERNÁNDEZ, AND EMMA TENAYUCA.
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CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ix
INTRODUCTION 1
PART ONE Society and Ideology 15
ONE The Mexican Colony of South Texas 17
TWO Ideological Origins of the Movement 40
PART TWO Politics 63
THREE Rise of a Movement 65
FOUR Founding Fathers 92
FIVE The Harlingen Convention of 1927:
No Mexicans Allowed 120
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SIX LULAC’s Founding 151
PART THREE Theory and Methodology 181
SEVEN The Mexican American Civil Rights
Movement 183
EIGHT No Women Allowed? 196
CONCLUSION 221
APPENDICES 231
NOTES 241
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 299
INDEX 309
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book is about the origins of the most important U.S. civil rights orga-
nization for people of Mexican descent. Mexican American men founded the
League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) in Corpus Christi,
Texas, in 1929. I began this book in a Chicano history class with Professor
Víctor Nelson Cisneros at the University of Texas at Austin in 1978.
I grew up in Cuero, Texas, a town of European Americans, Mexican
Americans, Mexicans, and African Americans. Cuero lies at the pinnacle
of historical sites associated with Texas independence and anti-Mexican
sentiment—Gonzales, Goliad, and San Antonio. Thirty miles from Gonza-
les, we heard the refrain “Come and take it”; thirty miles from Goliad (La
Bahía), we learned of the massacre; and seventy miles from San Antonio, we
were instructed to “Remember the Alamo.”
In the 1960s and 1970s de jure racial segregation and de facto segregation
were in effect according to race—“white,” “Mexican,” and “black.” Slavery
had thrived in Cuero, and a third of the population was African American in
1900. My neighborhood consisted of Mexican Americans, whites, and Afri-
can Americans, including the son of a slave.
When my Mexican immigrant parents moved from South Texas to
Cuero in the 1950s they found extensive racial discrimination. In the 1920s
my mother immigrated from Nuevo León, Mexico, to Mercedes, Texas,
where a schoolteacher whipped her hands with a rubber hose because she
spoke Spanish. She has self-identifi ed mostly as a Mexican American, while
my father died with a Mexican identity, rejecting U.S. citizenship and refus-
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