Treatment Of Mexican Americans: Quixote’s Soldiers
Quixote’s Soldiers is local history by the David Montejano of the Chicano Movement. David Montejano wrote about the residents in the San Antonio, the political and social lives of people in the city who were blacks, Mexican Americans, and the Anglos Business elite and the entrenched Anglo social governed the San Antonio, Texas segregated city.[1] Substandard local and regional housing and experiencing flooding during some seasons in the barrios of the south sides and west sides of Mexican Americans where gang warfare regularly happened and broke out in the sides. The farmworkers of Texas from the south were striking through the city, and they later form and set off a social movement, which transformed the barrios and later brought the old Anglo oligarchy down. David Montejano uses a wealth of highly readable and intriguing account of this turbulent period in Quixote’s Soldiers.[2] The wealth came from untapped sources that were previously used (congressional papers of Henry B. Gonzalez). The narrative was later divided by David Montejano into three parts; college students politicized social workers and activists mounted and mobilized barrio youth, dynamic of the evolution Chicano movement, and analyzing the success and the failures of the political movements.
Firstly, David Montejano recounts how the student activists, social workers, and politicians mobilized barrio youths. They are amounting legal, an aggressive challenge to the Mexican American and Anglo political elites.[3] The young people were willing to participate in all the activities that will lead to change, whether forcefully or after an agreement. After gaining US citizenship in the first 100 years, most of the Mexican Americans did have their lands and lost their lands due to and because of the American laws which were unfamiliar to the land grabbers and swindlers. Ranch owners who were wealthy before their lands were taken away from them become farmworkers within generations because of loss of status. Southern whites who were increasing in numbers after the civil war started moving to the south of Texas.[4] It later brought the deep south and rigid racial curation, which applies to both the Mexican Americans and the lacks.
Secondly, David Montejano tries to oversee and look at the evolution dynamics emergence and the Chicano movement of the distinctions and clear gender. People who were a gang and the women in the area were trying and struggling to be recognized as active politicians. Chicano tries to give a sense of the growing unrest in the Mexican American increasing population; there were Chicano movement evolution and the powerful mass action.[5]
It mostly highlights and talks about the struggles in the fields by the farmworkers, homeland quest where it was the movement beginnings (profiling Reies Lopez Tijerina and the land grant movement in New Mexico in 1966 and 1967), the taking back of the schools, and fighting for the political power (La Raza Unida Party). Chicano helps when documentaries in the filmmakers succeed because film footage and photo archives are made excellent, and the actual participants can be interviewed easily.
Lastly, Montejano analyzes the success and the difficulties the movement went through, which were their failures in the political movement. There was a strike by a great depression that completely hit Mexican who is migrating really hard. Because of the lack of basic food, the US workers, Mexican Americans, and the Mexicans affected them because of the lack and the job crisis and shortage of basic food. Still, they were later affected by the deportation.[6] The hostility to the workers who migrated led to unemployment in the US, and it gave the government the hardest task to create some employment opportunities for them. Many people were able to have temporary stability in the camps labeled migrant work camps; they were established by the US Farm Security Administration or FSA.[7]
The camps were to provide medicine, food, and housing for the families of the migrant farm families and protect from any external interference or attack. There also provide beneficial activities that are unexpected, bringing together farm families in which the community becomes united and work together. Mexican American civic organizations were prominent in the post-war and strengthened the community. They include the Mexican American Legal Defence and Educational Fund (MALDEF) and the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC). Mexican migration had the greatest benefit. It contributed to the growth of Latin American, which positively affects Americans’ lives every day. The government findings and projections indicate that 25 percent of the US population by the next two generations will be of the origin of Latin American. The literature, clothing, architecture, language, food, and the music were really being influenced and contributed to the increasing and the growth of the Mexican American and Latin populations.[8]
The Mexican Americans had a right to a just and fair system and to be in authority because the movement aimed and preached loving your neighbors and brotherhood. It helped them to be united. He helps to define awareness of the growing education from the people who were not believed could be educated one day, labor activism increment, and the community’s needs. It trained and make the new generation wise, political activists, youths, and leaders. It helps to bring the national stage of different issues and concerns important in the community to the Mexican American.
He shows how the needy could be assisted and help and all the appropriate measures and procedures on how it should be done without affecting current features in the community. The ties and the bond people with one another in the community and what should be done to help solve their issues. For example, the growing population of Mexican immigrants had been a social problem. It was seen as something negative that led to the elimination of Mexican American lives, but it was easily managed and controlled.[9]
Bibliography
Espinoza, Dionne. “Quixote’s soldiers: a local history of the Chicano Movement, 1966–1981.” (2011): 78-81.
Escobar, Edward. “Book Review: Quixote’s Soldiers: A Local History of the Chicano Movement, 1966-1981.” Pacific Historical Review 81, no. 1 (2012): 129.
Gutiérrez, David G. Walls and Mirrors: Mexican Americans, Mexican immigrants, and the politics of ethnicity. Univ of California Press, 1995.
Rubel, Arthur J. “Across the Tracks, Mexican-Americans in a Texas City.” (1966).
[1] Espinoza, Dionne. “Quixote’s soldiers: a local history of the Chicano Movement, 1966–1981.” (2011): 78-81.
[2] Rubel, Arthur J. “Across the Tracks, Mexican-Americans in a Texas City.” (1966).
[3] Gutiérrez, David G. Walls and Mirrors: Mexican Americans, Mexican immigrants, and the politics of ethnicity. Univ of California Press, 1995
[4] Espinoza, Dionne. “Quixote’s soldiers: a local history of the Chicano Movement, 1966–1981.” (2011): 78-81.
[5] Escobar, Edward. “Book Review: Quixote’s Soldiers: A Local History of the Chicano Movement, 1966-1981.” Pacific Historical Review 81, no. 1 (2012): 129.
[6] Rubel, Arthur J. “Across the Tracks, Mexican-Americans in a Texas City.” (1966).
[7] Escobar, Edward. “Book Review: Quixote’s Soldiers: A Local History of the Chicano Movement, 1966-1981.” Pacific Historical Review 81, no. 1 (2012): 129.
[8] Espinoza, Dionne. “Quixote’s soldiers: a local history of the Chicano Movement, 1966–1981.” (2011): 78-81.
[9] Espinoza, Dionne. “Quixote’s soldiers: a local history of the Chicano Movement, 1966–1981.” (2011): 78-81.