David G. Gutierrez. WALLS AND MIRRORS; MEXICAN AMERICANS,
MEXICAN IMMIGRANTS, AND THE POLITICS OF ETHNICITY. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1995. xiii + 320 pp. notes,
bibliography and index.
Historian David Gutierrez's provocative study of Mexican
Americans and Mexican immigrants, Walls and Mirrors, could not
have come at a more timely moment. As immigration again comes to
the forefront of public debate, as the role of immigrants, both
documented and undocumented, again comes under scrutiny,
Gutierrez provides us with a well-researched investigation of the
issues surrounding immigration, but from a different perspective
than most. It is a look at the debate from within the Mexican
American community, and it sheds light on a number of
significant issues. What are the historic links between
immigration, civil rights, and ethnicity? How have Mexican
American organizations and activists strategized politically
vis-a-vis immigration and citizenship during this century? How
have Mexican Americans perceived themselves, their role in U.S.
society, and their relationship to both long-term Mexican
residents and los recien llegados, the recent immigrants. In
WALLS AND MIRRORS, Gutierrez explores the often-shifting contours
of this intriguing , yet largely neglected subject, through his
chronologically-organized study of Mexican American activists and
organizations in Texas and California.
As Gutierrez writes in his introduction, Mexicans and
Mexican Americans have always been aware of the differences
between them, yet few studies have focused on the nature of this
relationship and the forces which have shaped it. Like the
larger society, scholars have often treated Mexican Americans and
Mexican immigrants as if they were all the same, ignoring that
the relationship between the two groups has been fraught with
ambivalence and contradiction. Although over the years, studies
have hinted at the depth of this complex, often contradictory,
relationship, there have been few attempts to delve into its
intricacies. Gutierrez's long-needed study sets out to examine
both the "differences that divided and the commonalities that
bound the two groups together-- the walls and mirrors...." (4)
through a social and political history which examines the ways in
which Mexican Americans organized politically around issues of
immigration.
Using diverse manuscript collections, government
documents, newspapers, and organizational records, as well as
many of the now-classic community, regional, and immigration
studies published in the last two decades, Gutierrez has managed
not so much to present totally new information (particularly in
the early chapters) as to present it within a new context.
Herein lies the importance of this work--Gutierrez has gleaned
from this collection of primary and secondary material a story of
intra-ethnic relations which others have alluded to, but which
few have centered in their analysis of Mexican American and
Chicano history. And although, as Gutierrez acknowledges, only a
small percentage of Mexican Americans participated in the
political organizations highlighted in his study, the
organizations, their work, their strategies and their rhetoric
are still significant. These organizations often provided the
only "voice" for the Mexican American community. Gutierrez's
study is indeed a study of politics-it is particularly effective
in its analysis of political strategies and rhetoric. As a
social history, it tantalized but left the reader wanting to know
more about the ways in which Mexican Americans and Mexican
immigrants dealt with each other in everyday terms, the ways in
which individuals resolved the contradictions and ambiguities in
their relationship.
Accompanying the creation of the "new" ethnic group, Mexican
Americans, following the mid-nineteenth century war between the
United States and Mexico, there emerged a fundamental
contradiction which haunts Mexican Americans still and which
helped shaped Mexican American/Mexican immigrant relations.
While the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848) gave Mexican
Americans "the rights of citizens," it gave them no way to
practice those rights.(38) Facing discrimination, violence and
on-going economic, political and social subordination, the
diverse Mexican population developed a distinct ethnic identity
by the 1850s. Ethnic polarization and ethnic discord, two
conditions whose roots lie in the 19th century U.S. conquest of
Mexico's northern frontier--ethnic polarization and discord--not
only helped define the relationship between Mexican Americans and
Anglo Americans, but as Mexican immigration grew significantly
after 1890, it influenced intra-ethnic relations as well.
Whether Mexican Americans perceived the walls between themselves
and immigrants-- or the mirrors-- had much to do with their
perceptions of how best to confront the ethnic conflict which was
well-entrenched before the beginning of any significant Mexican
immigration.
Although Gutierrez detects an ambivalence in the
relationship between Mexican Americans and Mexican immigrants
during the early period of immigration, 1890-1920, it is during
the 1920s and 1930s that a truly polarized view towards Mexican
immigration and immigrants emerges within the Mexican American
community. As immigration grows in the 1920s, along with an
ever-intensifying anti-Mexican sentiment, Mexican Americans
divide into two camps. One group, according to Gutierrez,
empathizes with immigrants.
This group, characterized by Gutierrez as primarily working
class, often made up of long-term Mexican residents of the U.S.,
sees the mirrors rather than the walls. They make the shared
experience of discrimination primary in shaping their views of
Mexican immigration. The other side, perhaps best exemplified by
the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), gives
primacy to their identity as Americans. As Gutierrez points out,
however, even this position is not without its contradictions,
its ambivalence. The diversity of Mexican communities in the
United States, places where U.S-born Mexicans and Mexican
immigrants could and did live side by side, where the two groups
were linked by threads of friendship, kinship and work made the
ambivalence, and the contradictions, difficult to escape.
The Great Depression of the 1930s, along with the events of
the 1940s, including the introduction of the Bracero Program and
the attendant increasing undocumented migration, leads to further
internal divisions within the Mexican American community
vis-a-vis Mexican immigration. Gutierrez's analysis of these two
decades reveals a fascinating interplay of class, ethnicity,
nationality and identity. While organizations like the then
largely assimilationist-LULAC could call for immigration
restriction on the basis that Mexican Texas faced discrimination
stemming not from anti-Tejano sentiments, but from anti-immigrant
reactions, others like the Confederacion de Uniones Obreras
Mexicanas (CUOM) could call on both governments to halt the flow
of Mexican immigrants while still urging the creation of what
Gutierrez calls a "separate, almost autonomous ethnic Mexican
community" in the Southwest.(104) And, finally, the Congress of
Spanish-Speaking Peoples, founded in 1939, represented yet a
third alternative as it urged all ethnic Mexicans, citizen and
immigrant alike, to work together, asserting that there was no
difference in the conditions faced by the two groups. Any
difference was a matter only of degree.
World War II and the subsequent Cold War further influenced
Mexican American/ Mexican immigrant relations. Renewed ethnic
hostility, as evidenced by California's Sleepy Lagoon case, and
the Zoot Suit riots, along with the creation of the Bracero
Program which brought thousands of temporary Mexican workers into
the United States, and, finally, the sudden growth of
undocumented migration resulted in a paradox.
In response to these kinds of events, Mexican American
organizations like the American G.I. Forum and the National
Agricultural Workers Union renewed their support of more
restrictive immigration laws and the end of the Bracero Program.
At the same time, however, these events also laid the foundation
for "more sympathetic attitudes" toward Mexican immigrants.(178)
By the end of the 1950s, a more sympathetic attitude had taken
root as Mexican Americans as well as long-term Mexican residents
became the targets of anti-immigrant attitudes and actions.(163)
In addition, government actions such as Operation Wetback, a
massive deportation campaign of the early 1950s, led some Mexican
American organizations, including LULAC and the American GI
Forum, to join with the Community Service Organization (CSO) in
beginning to talk about immigrant rights.
By the Cold War, the connection between the civil rights of
Mexican Americans and the rights of immigrants was evident. This
fundamental reassessment, as Gutierrez labels it, on the part of
Mexican American organizations led to further changes of attitude
among Mexican American organizations in the following decade.
With the emergence of the Chicano movement in the 1960s, a
movement asserting cultural and ethnic pride, organizations
began an even more serious reassessment of the connections
between Mexican "immigration, Chicano ethnicity, and the status
of Mexican Americans in the United States."(191) Chicano
activists no longer accepted the view, so often a part of
earlier Mexican American politics, that undocumented immigrants
represented a threat to Mexican Americans. Leading the way was
el Centro de Accion Social Autonoma (CASA), established in 1968
to provide services to undocumented immigrants. CASA, with its
philosophy that Mexican Americans and Mexicans were a people "sin
fronteras" represented the tremendous change. But even moderate
Mexican American organizations began to revise their positions by
the 1970s. As Congress, the country and the Mexican American
community participated in the often-heated debate surrounding
immigration issues in the 1970s, organizations with diverse
philosophies and ideologies began to adopt the view that what
hurt Mexican immigrants could (and often did) hurt Mexican
Americans.
Gutierrez marks the First National Chicano/ Latino
Conference on Immigration and Public Policy, held in San Antonio,
Texas in 1977 as "the culmination of nearly a half century of
Mexican American debate on Mexican immigration."(202) Drawing
together over 2,000 participants from a wide range of
organizations and ideologies, the conference succeeded in showing
"unprecedented" unity among Chicano and Mexican American
activists. This unity was even more remarkable given the
increasing diversity of the population, generationally,
politically and ideologically.
Gutierrez ends his study with a thought-provoking "Epilogue"
which brings the debate forward to the present-- the role of
ethnic political leaders, the debate over controlling the border,
the issues surrounding multiculturalism are brought together in
these final pages. The rhetoric of the current immigration
debate appears unnervingly similar to that of the 1970s, the
1950s, the 1920s , the 1890s. Gutierrez argues that the paradigm
put forth by many U.S. politicians--that undocumented immigrants
have created this nation's problems--is "fundamentally flawed."
Rather than blaming undocumented immigrants, Gutierrez cites the
historic and long-time alliance between business and government
which has worked to "ensure the flow of immigrant workers...for
the maximum benefit of American businesses and consumers,"(211).
Calling on Americans to take responsibility for their own
actions, Gutierrez in many ways echoes the views of those
organizations which saw the situation of Mexican Americans
mirrored in the conditions of Mexican immigrants. In the end,
however, the ambiguity and the contradictions remain in the
relationship between Mexican Americans and Mexican immigrants.
Far from being resolved, Gutierrez argues, Mexican Americans
continue to find themselves "compel[led]...to make decisions
about who they are, how they want to be perceived by others, and
who they want to be as citizens of this society." (216) At a
time when the debates over immigration, ethnicity, and
multiculturalism fill the airwaves, the television newscasts, and
newspaper columns, Gutierrez presents an informative, provocative
and extremely well-researched study of intra-ethnic relations in
the Mexican American community, a study of the walls and mirrors
between Mexican Americans and Mexican immigrants.
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