Gabriela González
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- July 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780199914142
- eISBN:
- 9780199345533
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780199914142.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century, Latin American History
This chapter examines how Rómulo and Carolina Munguía were guided by a belief in the power of and potential for individual and social transformations, reflecting their coming of age during an era of ...
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This chapter examines how Rómulo and Carolina Munguía were guided by a belief in the power of and potential for individual and social transformations, reflecting their coming of age during an era of revolution in Mexico and Progressive-era reforms on both sides of the border. In their public endeavors throughout their lives, they sought to rescue Mexican-origin people from social decay and cultural and intellectual abandonment. Over the course of their fifty years of service to the San Antonio community, they nurtured a concern for the plight of el méxico de afuera (Mexicans in the United States), pursuing a reform agenda that underscored their keen awareness of how much sociocultural and institutional systems needed to be modified to achieve true equity in society.Less
This chapter examines how Rómulo and Carolina Munguía were guided by a belief in the power of and potential for individual and social transformations, reflecting their coming of age during an era of revolution in Mexico and Progressive-era reforms on both sides of the border. In their public endeavors throughout their lives, they sought to rescue Mexican-origin people from social decay and cultural and intellectual abandonment. Over the course of their fifty years of service to the San Antonio community, they nurtured a concern for the plight of el méxico de afuera (Mexicans in the United States), pursuing a reform agenda that underscored their keen awareness of how much sociocultural and institutional systems needed to be modified to achieve true equity in society.
Gabriela González
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- July 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780199914142
- eISBN:
- 9780199345533
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780199914142.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century, Latin American History
Introduction: The introductory chapter considers how transborder activists opposed race-based discrimination and sought to “save” la raza by challenging their marginality in the United States. The ...
More
Introduction: The introductory chapter considers how transborder activists opposed race-based discrimination and sought to “save” la raza by challenging their marginality in the United States. The quest for rights itself represented a modernist intervention in a racist society. However, their efforts at redemption were not limited to societal transformations. They also invested much energy into effecting individual and communal changes among Mexican-origin people. Activists such as Malpica de Munguía expressed faith in the tenets of modern society, believing that the best hope for the underprivileged lay in their adaptation to the best aspects of modernity. By lifting them out of their “state of intellectual, moral, and economic abandonment,” activists believed they could redeem la raza.Less
Introduction: The introductory chapter considers how transborder activists opposed race-based discrimination and sought to “save” la raza by challenging their marginality in the United States. The quest for rights itself represented a modernist intervention in a racist society. However, their efforts at redemption were not limited to societal transformations. They also invested much energy into effecting individual and communal changes among Mexican-origin people. Activists such as Malpica de Munguía expressed faith in the tenets of modern society, believing that the best hope for the underprivileged lay in their adaptation to the best aspects of modernity. By lifting them out of their “state of intellectual, moral, and economic abandonment,” activists believed they could redeem la raza.
Gabriela González
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- July 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780199914142
- eISBN:
- 9780199345533
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780199914142.003.0006
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century, Latin American History
This chapter explores how the organizational work of Mexican-origin people in Depression-era San Antonio reflected a diversity of ideas and strategies. Responses to the challenges of racial ...
More
This chapter explores how the organizational work of Mexican-origin people in Depression-era San Antonio reflected a diversity of ideas and strategies. Responses to the challenges of racial discrimination and severe poverty in the city’s Westside ran the gamut from Carolina Munguía’s maternalist and benevolent practices to Emma Tenayuca’s radical reform politics. Tenayuca believed that communism could serve as a means to strengthen labor—by organizing the unemployed so they would have rights. Although Tenayuca married during the height of her political activism, she did not arrange her activities around the mantle of domesticity. As an activist, she turned to the Communist Party and functioned as a worker, not as a mother, which often placed her at odds with gender and class conventions.Less
This chapter explores how the organizational work of Mexican-origin people in Depression-era San Antonio reflected a diversity of ideas and strategies. Responses to the challenges of racial discrimination and severe poverty in the city’s Westside ran the gamut from Carolina Munguía’s maternalist and benevolent practices to Emma Tenayuca’s radical reform politics. Tenayuca believed that communism could serve as a means to strengthen labor—by organizing the unemployed so they would have rights. Although Tenayuca married during the height of her political activism, she did not arrange her activities around the mantle of domesticity. As an activist, she turned to the Communist Party and functioned as a worker, not as a mother, which often placed her at odds with gender and class conventions.
Gabriela González
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- July 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780199914142
- eISBN:
- 9780199345533
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780199914142.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century, Latin American History
This book examines the gendered and class-conscious political activism of Mexican-origin people in Texas from 1900 to 1950. In particular, it questions the inter-generational agency of Mexicans and ...
More
This book examines the gendered and class-conscious political activism of Mexican-origin people in Texas from 1900 to 1950. In particular, it questions the inter-generational agency of Mexicans and Mexican Americans who subscribed to particular race-ethnic, class, and gender ideologies as they encountered barriers and obstacles in a society that often treated Mexicans as a nonwhite minority. Middle-class transborder activists sought to redeem the Mexican masses from body politic exclusions in part by encouraging them to become identified with the nation-state. Redeeming la raza was as much about saving them from traditional modes of thought and practices that were perceived as hindrances to progress as it was about saving them from race and class-based forms of discrimination that were part and parcel of modernity. At the center of this link between modernity and discriminatory practices based on social constructions lay the economic imperative for the abundant and inexpensive labor power that the modernization process required. Labeling groups of people as inferior helped to rationalize their economic exploitation in a developing modern nation-state that also professed to be a democratic society founded upon principles of political egalitarianism. This book presents cases of transborder activism that demonstrate how the politics of respectability and the politics of radicalism operated, often at odds but sometimes in complementary ways.Less
This book examines the gendered and class-conscious political activism of Mexican-origin people in Texas from 1900 to 1950. In particular, it questions the inter-generational agency of Mexicans and Mexican Americans who subscribed to particular race-ethnic, class, and gender ideologies as they encountered barriers and obstacles in a society that often treated Mexicans as a nonwhite minority. Middle-class transborder activists sought to redeem the Mexican masses from body politic exclusions in part by encouraging them to become identified with the nation-state. Redeeming la raza was as much about saving them from traditional modes of thought and practices that were perceived as hindrances to progress as it was about saving them from race and class-based forms of discrimination that were part and parcel of modernity. At the center of this link between modernity and discriminatory practices based on social constructions lay the economic imperative for the abundant and inexpensive labor power that the modernization process required. Labeling groups of people as inferior helped to rationalize their economic exploitation in a developing modern nation-state that also professed to be a democratic society founded upon principles of political egalitarianism. This book presents cases of transborder activism that demonstrate how the politics of respectability and the politics of radicalism operated, often at odds but sometimes in complementary ways.
