Below is a detailed book review I had to do for my Latino History (HIST507) course at Adams State University. This was one of five primary text books we had for the course. The book is a good intro to the subject, but it is not written in a way to make you want to keep turning the pages. It was actually hard to get through because of this. 3 stars out of 5 or a C.
Sanchez, George J. Becoming Mexican American: Ethnicity, Culture, and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles, 1900-1945. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, USA, 1993.
In recent years there has been much debate
over immigrants crossing the border from Mexico, but most in politics do not
seem to understand the complexity of this issue from a historical perspective.
Ever since the US took over lands that had once been part of Mexico, there has
been a push/pull on immigrants from both sides of the border. Back in 1993,
George Sanchez took a close look at immigrant life during the time period of
1900-1945 to help give some perspective as to why people were coming to the US
from Mexico and why they decided to stay or return home. Becoming Mexican American: Ethnicity, Culture, and Identity in Chicano
Los Angeles takes a look at these complex topics in a way that allows
readers to see how history, culture, and economics has shaped them into what
they have become in the modern era. It is this type of information that is
needed to understand why people came to the US and why even in present times
the flow continues.
Sanchez takes a dive into the deeper
movement of what immigration looked like for Mexicans and how the rail roads
helped with their movement. The center of this migration was the family and the
reasons most people crossed the border in either direction related to family
reasons. Most either crossed to work and send money home or they crossed with
their families hoping for a better life. He even points out that the decision
for someone to go was a family decision because of how important the family is
to Mexican culture.[1]
The experiences of the workers in the different industries and how unions
played into this gives a different look at the economics of migration. These
experiences are supported by the oral history examples that Sanchez chose to
present. Many people wonder why after the workers developed skills in the U.S.
that they were not able to return to Mexico and use the same skills there.
Sanchez addressed this in several ways, but one of the most meaningful was when
he used the words from a common women who had returned to Mexico, “Surely many
have learned useful skills there, but what good does that do here when they
come back without anything, no tools, no work, nothing at all, not even to eat.”[2] It is these personal
stories and perspectives that help bring alive all the data and other sources
he uses.
Trying to talk about Mexican culture is a
complicated subject since Mexico has always been a mix of different peoples and
cultures. Joseph Rodriguez talks about some of these complexities and how the
Mexican identity is actually an ‘invention’ that tries to take a whole bunch of
different characteristics and set a cultural average.[3] This is important to take
into account when looking at the data and personal experiences that Sanchez
presents. He does go into some detail about how a person’s region of origin could
shape why they left Mexico and how their return to Mexico could be impacted.
Vicki Ruiz believes that even though there has been “a florescence of
scholarship on the Spanish borderlands…historians frequently give both the
region and the era no more than a passing glance.”[4] Sanchez tries to tackle
this issue focusing on the immigration to show how dynamic this area actually
is and the impact it has had on both U.S. and Mexican history.
At the government level and that of mass
media, the focus on border immigration is just on the mass movement of the
people, but they have lost their individuality. This is why Sanchez’s social
historical approach is important. For many of the points he tries to make in
his book, he presents specific personal stories as examples of what people were
living with and how it shaped their lives. He stresses how it was these social
factors that shaped the larger movement of people and the impacts that this
movement had on both sides of the border. Sanchez could have chosen this
approach to the subject due to his own personal background. One of his early
degrees was in sociology and he has been active in diversity issues both
professionally and personally.[5] Even though his other
degrees in are in history, most of his work focuses on the interactions of
different cultures.[6]
This background allows him to be a part of many different disciplines which
also includes an anthropological approach to history. This is a move away from
the classic approach to history that focuses on major events and people. Even
though female voices can be heard in Sanchez’s book, the narrative feels that
it comes from the masculine perspective. This could be because he is a Latino
male that is not known for specializing in the female perspective even though
he has done some work with gender studies.[7] He could be a little too close to the subject
that he is trying to present and his own gender could be impacting his research
with bias.
Sanchez’s social historical
(anthropological) approach can also be seen in his choice of source material. One
of the key resources that Sánchez uses is oral history. This allowed him to not
just do the classic history approach, which focuses on major people, but
allowed him to bring in the voice of the common people. There is a lot of
debate over how reliable oral history is since supposedly memories can change
and that it is unreliable. It does seem like this is changing at present with
more people starting to trust it a bit more. The key thing is not using it has
the only source. Sánchez does not only rely these oral histories, but he uses
them to fill in the personal stories that are missing in his other resources.
His other sources included secondary sources in the form of government
publications, books, articles, and other papers. Then his primary sources,
besides the oral histories, were from different newspapers including ones that
focused on Latino culture/issues, music and other reports from the time frame that
his book covers. All of these sources combined make a strong base of
information for the book. The one thing that could have made his primary
sources stronger would have been if he would have had personal letters or some
other type of first person document. Some type of first person/personal
document that could have directly supported the oral history. From the book
notes, he seemed to blend the different types of resources to support his
positions/arguments. Sanchez even writes on the sources he used for a book, but
his focus is on the naturalization records which he choose to use to dispel
perceptions that these records are not useful when studying Mexican immigrants.[8]
Becoming
Mexican American for the most part had a very strong academic reception. Most
of its reviewers thought that the humanist approach to the history of
immigration was what was needed to breathe a new life into the subject. The
previous historical views of Chicano culture as being static or of a resistance
to American culture. Dennis Valdes saw Sanchez’s approach showing that instead
culture was “a site of invention and creativity,” a force of evolution that is
as alive as the people that are a part of it.[9] By addressing culture this
way it could be seen as an innovative approach to history, but not at cost to
creditability. Edward Escobar on the other had while acknowledging the
diversity approach taken goes on to say that Sanchez “sometimes distorts known
facts and solid historical analysis” and then goes into detail with examples of
this.[10] Still being new to this
in depth of a study on Latino history I would not have caught these issues
reading this book. From Sanchez’s writing and resources I felt that he had
presented a strong work, even if I felt that it was a bit disorganized. Escobar
on the other hand thought that there was not enough sufficient evidence
provided and that immigrant reactions were lacking in key areas.[11] These issues could help
to shape what significance this book has in the field of history.
This
book is very relevant in today’s world because it returns the story of
immigration to the common people and humanizes what they go through. Instead of
just seeing immigration has a problem, the book breaks the issue into different
parts that people can look at to understand why people migrate and what
influences their decisions. One of the things that Sanchez talks about that I
think is not really being talked about today is the Mexican government’s role
in the movement. At one point the Mexican government was happy that their
unemployed was moving out of the country which would help them, but then they
switched later on where they wanted the workers to return or keep them from
leaving.[12]
This push pull was not just a onetime deal, but came in cycles. As people move
north from countries even further south to the Mexico/US border in modern
times, the non-response from the Mexican government to stop it could actual be
a part of this cycle as well. Looking at the past patterns that Sanchez
presents could help modern politicians to understand the motives of both the
Mexican government and the people that are standing at the border. At the same
time, after reading Escobar’s review I feel that this book should still be read
with some caution and should only be one of many resources that a person should
look at when trying to understand Mexican immigration.
Bibliography
Escobar, Edward. “Review: ‘Becoming
Mexican American: Ethnicity, Culture and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles,
1900-1945.” The Journal of American
History 81, no. 4 (1995): 1772 -1773. Accessed September 6, 2020.
Purdue
University Press. “George Sanchez.” http://www.thepress.purdue.edu/contributors/george-sanchez. Accessed:
09/06/2020.
Rodriguez, Joseph A. "Becoming Latinos: Mexican
Americans, Chicanos, and the Spanish Myth in the Urban Southwest." Western Historical Quarterly 29, no. 2
(Summer 1998): 165-85. Accessed
August 25, 2020.
Ruiz,
Vicki L. "Why Latino History Matters to U.S. History." The Japanese Journal of American Studies 20 (2009): 7-26. Accessed August
25, 2020.
Sanchez,
George J. Becoming Mexican American
Ethnicity, Culture, and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles, 1900-1945. New
York, NY: Oxford University Press, USA, 1993.
University of Southern California.
“Profile: George J. Sanchez.” https://dornsife.usc.edu/cf/faculty-and-staff/faculty.cfm?pid=1003672. Accessed:
09/06/2020.
Valdes, Dennis. “Review: ‘Becoming
Mexican American: Ethnicity, Culture and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles,
1900-1945.” The Hispanic American
Historical Review 77, no. 1 (1997): 92-93. Accessed September 6, 2020.
[1] George J. Sanchez, Becoming Mexican American Ethnicity,
Culture, and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles, 1900-1945 (Cary: Oxford
University Press, USA, 1993) 35.
[2] Sanchez, 217.
[3] Joseph A. Rodriguez,
"Becoming Latinos: Mexican Americans, Chicanos, and the Spanish Myth in
the Urban Southwest," Western Historical Quarterly 29, no. 2 (Summer
1998): 168, accessed August 25, 2020.
[4] Vicki L. Ruiz, "Why Latino
History Matters to U.S. History," The
Japanese Journal of American Studies 20 (2009): 8, accessed August 25,
2020.
[5] “Profile: George J. Sanchez,” https://dornsife.usc.edu/cf/faculty-and-staff/faculty.cfm?pid=1003672. Accessed: 09/06/2020.
[6] “George Sanchez,” http://www.thepress.purdue.edu/contributors/george-sanchez. Accessed: 09/06/2020.
[7] “Profile: George J. Sanchez,” https://dornsife.usc.edu/cf/faculty-and-staff/faculty.cfm?pid=1003672. Accessed: 09/06/2020.
[8] Sanchez, 275.
[9] Dennis Valdes. “Review: ‘Becoming
Mexican American: Ethnicity, Culture and Identity in Chicano Los Angles,
1900-1945.” The Hispanic American
Historical Review 77, no. 1 (1997): 93, accessed September 6, 2020.
[10]
Edward Escobar. “Review: ‘Becoming Mexican American: Ethnicity, Culture and
Identity in Chicano Los Angles, 1900-1945.” The
Journal of American History 81, no. 4 (1995): 1773, accessed September 6, 2020.
[11] Escobar, 1773.
[12] Sanchez, 19, 49, 113, 216.
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