Copyright by Jennifer Rose Nájera 2005

The Dissertation Committee for Jennifer Rose Nájera Certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation:

Troublemakers, Religiosos, or Radicals? Everyday Acts of Racial Integration in a South Texas Community

Committee:

Martha Menchaca, Supervisor

Richard Flores

José Limón

Angela Valenzuela

Emilio Zamora Troublemakers, Religiosos, or Radicals? Everyday Acts of Racial Integration in a South Texas Community

Jennifer Rose Nájera, A.B.; A.M.; M.A.

Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

The University of Texas at Austin December 2005

Dedication

To my parents, Joe and Rose Najera, and to the Mexican origin people of La Feria whose stories had not been told.

Acknowledgements

The process of conceptualizing, researching, and writing this dissertation has challenged me both professionally and personally in that this project has been almost as much auto/ethnography as it has been historical ethnography. While it is has always been my intention to produce a written work that I could share with the community of La

Feria, I have also written this dissertation for myself. It is a history of the town where my mother was born and lived the earliest years of her life after our family emigrated from

Mexico. While it has, at times, felt like opening old wounds to write about practices of segregation, it is my hope that also writing about integration may help to heal those wounds.

I would first and foremost like to thank the people of La Feria, who so generously welcomed me into their community as a prodigal daughter, scholar, fellow traveler, and friend. I appreciate the openness with which they allowed me into their lives and shared with me their stories. I am especially grateful to the parish community of St. Francis

Xavier and to the members of the La Feria Community of Shalom for their support.

I am grateful to the Social Science Research Council for an International

Migration Fellowship that allowed my thirteen-month stay in La Feria to conduct fieldwork. I also extend my appreciation to the Department of Chicano/a Studies at the

University of California, Santa Barbara for a dissertation writing fellowship. The Center for Mexican American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin has also provided me financial support through the latter part of my dissertation writing process.

As a student in the Anthropology Department at the University of Texas at

Austin, I have been in a unique position to examine Borderlands Anthropology, under the tutelage of three Chicano/a anthropologists. I am grateful to Martha Menchaca, my dissertation chair, who offered her expertise and meticulous attention that helped to shape and, ultimately, focus this project. I am also grateful to Richard Flores and José Limón for their encouragement and theoretical prodding. Emilio Zamora and Angela

Valenzuela, Chicano/a scholars in the departments of History and Education, respectively, have similarly offered their encouragement and expertise at various moments during the dissertation journey.

I must also acknowledge my peers at the University of Texas who have provided this project critical insight and its writer needed encouragement and support. To Olga

Lydia Herrera, Verónica Yvette Martínez, Laura Padilla, Virginia Raymond, and Cristina

Salinas—las girlfriends—I offer my heartfelt thanks and appreciation. I would also like to thank Gilberto Rosas and Faedah Totah for their keen anthropological perspectives and help in shaping this project. This dissertation would not exist if not for all of you.

Finally, I want to thank my family—Joe, Rose, Sandra, and Paul Najera—for helping me to keep my “chin up” through the most difficult moments of my academic journey. For their unconditional love and support, and for always believing in me.

Preface: Fotografía La Feria

It is a bright and heavy afternoon in late August. The South Texas sun streams brutally through the car windows, defying the air conditioner on its full setting. I am driving with my mother and my Aunt Lupita along an isolated country road north of La

Feria. We are looking for the house where they spent most of their childhood years, where my grandpa earned two dollars a day working sun up to sun down for a local

German farmer. They lived in a small house on his property, a house neither of them has seen for decades.

"It's down that road," my mom tells us, "pero se me hace que allí es private property."

"No, it’s not private property," I tell her. I’ve lived in La Feria now for a year and have done some investigating into the matter. "It just looks that way because it's a dirt road."

I make a difficult U-turn on the caliche road and will my car down the path that will take us to their house. We drive slowly down the road, partly because we are not sure where we are going and partly because small, sharp rocks impede our smooth passage. We creep by the main house on our left, which they tell me used to look much

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nicer thirty years ago. On our right a cluster of dilapidated wood frame houses looks abandoned. I notice, then, that there are clothes hanging out to dry in some of their yards.

"I think that's it."

"Is that it?"

They remember that the house was white, but it seems that layers of paint from the houses in that cluster have chipped and faded away, probably several times throughout the years.

"Yes, that's it. Look there's the diche. And the porch where we used to sit."

I make another difficult U-turn on the narrow road, and we pass the houses again.

The second time we drive by, my aunt notices the old barn. It is still a tall, imposing building, but the wood is now a gray color and the structure looks as if the next hard rain would take it down.

"That's where my dad would go to milk the cows and feed the pigs after he would work all day in the sun," my aunt tells me as she fumbles in her bag for her camera.

"Slow down. I'm going to take a picture."

"Why do you want to take a picture?" my mom asks, not even trying to conceal the exasperation in her voice.

"Because," my aunt insists, "I want to take a picture.”

“I don’t know why you want to remember this place. These are just like oppressing memories.”

“I want to take a picture. I dream about this house. I have to take a picture so that

I won't dream it any more."

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***

Although she has lived in California for the past forty years, having married and raised three children there, my mother is originally from the Rio Grande Valley. She was the first of her siblings to be born in the United States, the four elder daughters all born in

Mexico. Poverty and hunger were the push factors that propelled my family’s migration from a ranch in Guanajuato to the rancho outside of La Feria, Texas during the mid-

1940s. They lived and worked as a generally poor, farmworking family in South Texas for twenty years.

My mother’s family left to pick cotton and grapes in California the day after she and her sister graduated from La Feria High School. It was the same every summer.

They packed only what they needed for the next few months, piled clothes and kitchen utensils and children into their Ford and headed west. The summer of 1965, however, was different from other summers. Five of my aunts, including my mother and my Aunt

Lupita, joined my grandfather working in the fields that year and, with the money they earned, the family was able to buy a house in California. They never returned to live in

La Feria.

Thirty-five years later, my mother and I drive to the Valley. She had been back once before in 1985 for her twenty-year high school reunion, but this would be my first time. The first time that I would see where she was born, where she had gone to school, church, dances. After a year of graduate study in Austin, I had yet to make the connection between the stories that she told me about growing up on the Texas border and the capital city where I lived. As we traversed the long miles from Austin five and a

half hours to the border region in South Texas, it occurred to me that I had yet to experience her Texas.

The sun sets wide and warm, coating the highway with an orange glow as we drive through Harlingen. Ten minutes later, as the light of day begins to dim, we exit the expressway and head along Main Street into town. To our left is a Chevron/McDonald's complex and a Dairy Queen—all new additions to the town, according to my mom.

Farther along the road, we notice a fairly large local grocery store, El Centro, as well as a

Church's Chicken, a couple of taco stands, a beauty shop, and a small auto shop.

We turn right and enter a residential area. My mother drives me by Sam Houston

School, where she attended elementary school. "Esta era la escuela mexicana," she tells me. "And here, this is where Emilio's store used to be. Todo esto era el pueblo mexicano." The houses in the area are modest but generally well maintained, some with manicured lawns and bright flowers. There are some empty lots with overgrown grass and junk, and there were several other houses that seem fairly run-down. Parked cars on either side of the road further crowd the neighborhood’s narrow streets.

My mother continues to drive while indicating to me where various things used to be. All along here there used to be packing sheds. Aquí era el cotton gin. She navigates us to the small green house that her family built in the neighborhood they called Colonia

La Bonita. It does not look like a very sturdy house. It is small, wood-framed and still green, though the paint is chipping away. See that addition? My dad built that. Her street in La Bonita now faces a new-looking junior high and high school. That didn't used to be there.

We head south and cross the railroad tracks. She drives me by the Catholic

Church, St. Francis Xavier, where they would attend Mass. There is a new Catholic church, twice its size, down the street.

We drive back around until we hit South Main Street. South Main Street looks incredibly preserved. One can imagine that the storefronts look the same now as they did thirty years ago. There are restaurants and a bakery as well as numerous shops, including a dollar store and a gas station. We turn again into a residential area and my mother tells me, "Ésto era el pueblo americano." It occurs to me all at once what she meant earlier when she referred to the other side of the railroad tracks as el pueblo mexicano. It took new meaning in opposition to her current reference to el pueblo americano. She was literally distinguishing for me where the Mexicans lived from where the Anglos

("Americans") lived. The streets running through el pueblo americano were much wider, the houses bigger, the lots more expansive. The difference in space from one side of the railroad tracks to the other is staggering.

We finish our tour of town, noting her old high school, which has since been converted to an elementary school, and the American Legion Hall, where she and my aunts used to grace the dance floor.

Later that evening, we head back to the rancho where she and her family had once lived. We meet her padrinos, now in their eighties, who live in the same house they lived in years ago. We spend the evening with their memories of my grandparents and my aunts, listening to the buzz of fireflies enjoying the evening as the heat begins to wane.

I start to think more about La Feria and what it was like when my mother’s family left in 1965. She and my aunts had always told me stories about how the town used to be segregated, but it did not occur to me until we drove around town that day what segregation meant, even just geographically. I begin to wonder about the process of desegregation in the town. I also wonder who now lives in el pueblo mexicano and who lives in el pueblo americano. I am familiar with the images of the National Guard forcing southern schools to allow black children passage, but understood considerably less about the experience of Mexicans in the Southwest. How did racial integration occur in La

Feria? How had Mexicans and Anglos reconciled their history? These questions led me to conceptualize my dissertation research as a historical ethnography of La Feria, Texas.

My choice of La Feria as a field site was born of the desire to explore more deeply my own family history. Though I was born and raised in California, my historical imaginary was filled with my mother's stories of life in Texas—their life on the ranch, their segregated schools, their summer migrations, and work in the fields. Though I had never set foot in the Rio Grande Valley, I imagined La Feria for years, nostalgic for it as my mother and aunts had been. This dissertation is, in many ways, the picture that I am taking for myself. Much like my Aunt Lupita, I am taking a picture of this place so that I won't have to dream it any more.

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Troublemakers, Religiosos, or Radicals? Everyday Acts of Racial Integration in a South Texas Community

Publication No.______

Jennifer Rose Nájera, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2005

Supervisor: Martha Menchaca

This dissertation is an historical ethnography that traces the process of racial integration in La Feria, Texas. It understands La Feria as a part of the larger U.S. imagined community, critically assessing its internal boundaries of membership and belonging as they are manifested through practices of Mexican segregation. In this study, I argue that Mexican origin people must re-imagine their community and its internal boundaries in order to promote racial integration. This dissertation demonstrates that the process of racial integration occurred unevenly over a period of three decades. Drawing from theories of cultural citizenship, it demonstrates that through everyday practices— which range from the overtly political to the more quietly subversive—Mexicans successfully transformed local institutions such as the schools, the Catholic Church, and the school board to become more racially inclusive. This work suggests that Mexican origin people used not only their racial positionalities, but also their class, gender, and political affiliations to push forward the process of racial integration. Finally, it

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demonstrates the increasing significance of socioeconomic class and immigration status among the Mexican origin population in the contemporary period.

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Table of Contents

List of Maps...... xvi

List of Figures...... xvii

List of Illustrations...... xviii

Chapter 1 Introduction ...... 1

Chapter 2 Tracing and Conceptualizing the History of a Community...... 43

Chapter 3 Making Trouble: The Role of Mexican American Teachers in the Desegregation of La Feria Schools ...... 73

Chapter 4 Las Comunidades de Base...... 118

Chapter 5 PALs and the Emergence of the New Radical Mexicans: Shifting School Board Politics in the Mid-1990s ...... 152

Chapter 6 Claiming Space in Local and National Imagined Communities ...... 190

R eferences ...... 221 Vita...... 228

List of Maps

Map 1: Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas...... 4 Map 2: City of La Feria...... 6 Map 3: City of La Feria with Schools...... 9 Map 4: City grid of present-day La Feria delineated to show area of historical town site ...... 66

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List of Figures

Figure 1: Anglo Student Enrollment, 1950-1970...... 81 Figure 2: Spanish-Surname Student Enrollment, 1950-1970...... 82 Figure 3: La Feria School Board Election Results, 1984-1995...... 166

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List of Illustrations

Illustration 1: Street Scene of La Feria, 1920...... 53 Illustration 2: Mexican Cemetery in La Feria, c. 1920...... 69 Illustration 3: Busing Students Across the Highway, 1972 ...... 108 Illustration 4: New School Board Members Elected, 1994...... 167 Illustration 5: Letter to the Editor...... 174

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Chapter 1: Introduction

My dissertation is a historical ethnography that traces the process of racial integration in La Feria, Texas. My research demonstrates that, despite legislation that mandated desegregation in the 1960s, the racial integration of Mexican origin people into traditionally Anglo-dominated social, economic, and political spheres occurred unevenly in practice. I show that integration was oftentimes a hotly contested process, dependent upon the everyday actions of individuals as well as the collective actions of groups within

La Feria. Furthermore, my research shows that characteristics such as class, gender, religion, and/or political affiliation facilitated the process of racial integration. It will demonstrate the heterogeneity of the Mexican origin community in La Feria and how its members used their different positionalities to further micro- and macro-political agendas. I have chosen to use the concept of community as a theoretical tool by which to understand the process of racial integration. I argue that community is not just a place or a group of people with common interests; it is malleable, forged dialectically through institutions as well as grassroots action. I argue that, through the latter half of the twentieth century, racial integration can be understood as part of the process of community building.

Despite the absence of a federal or Texas state mandate, Mexican origin people frequently faced de facto racial segregation. They experienced segregation in a similar manner to Blacks and other people of color in the United States, though there were exceptions made based on factors such as socioeconomic status, language ability, and

white skin color. Because of the lack of legal precedent and the inconsistent manner by which Mexicans were segregated, desegregation was difficult to enforce. Indeed, despite court cases that abolished the legal practice of segregation across the country in the

1960s, many facilities—such as local schools—remained segregated until the 1970s. The uneven nature of segregation led to an uneven process of racial integration for Mexican origin people in La Feria. For this reason, rather than focusing on the policy makers and the court cases that mandated desegregation, my work will show how integration occurred in practice.1 My work details how Mexicans and Anglos struggled with the process of integration and the ways they were forced to negotiate power relations in different public spheres. While in some cases the process of integration was of an overtly contested and political nature, other cases revealed that integration occurred through subtle changes in everyday practice. It is important to note that race as it intersected with gender, language, and socioeconomic status, among other social characteristics, provided the impetus for community change and racial integration. When looking at the agents of change in the various chapters, it is clear that these individuals and groups used their multiple positionalities to push forward more complete racial integration in the town.

I have chosen to use the concept of community to frame my discussion of racial integration in La Feria. In various instances in my dissertation the term “community” will be used to describe the physical space of La Feria as well as the people who occupy that space. However, I also recognize it as a concept and, ultimately, a theoretical tool.

1 For the purposes of my dissertation, I distinguish desegregation as the policy and integration as the practice. 2

My dissertation will demonstrate that “community” holds—and has historically held— multiple meanings to residents of La Feria. I argue that the manner by which people imagine community not only reflects their positions in it, but may also determine their positions. Furthermore, I will argue that we may understand community as a process, shaped by institutions as well as local people’s social actions. I will return to a discussion of community later in this chapter. For now, I will assert that these theoretical understandings of community help us to understand how Mexican origin people in La

Feria contributed to the process of racial integration through individual and collective social actions.

Map 1. Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas Adapted from:

Setting

I arrived in La Feria to begin my fieldwork in the middle of July 2002, during the height of what would be a long South Texas summer. I settled into an apartment at the eastern edge of town, in a residential area that was probably developed from its rural roots in the 1980s. It was now a firmly middle class neighborhood, with many related families living next to each other, their children playing and riding bikes through the streets late into the afternoon.

La Feria is located at the western corner of Cameron County in the lower Rio

Grande Valley. Like many Valley towns, La Feria's economic beginnings were in farming and agriculture (Galarza 1964; Goldfarb 1981; Valdés 1991). Although some of that industry does still exist on the outskirts of town, most residents work in other sectors of the local economy. The local school districts, where people work as teachers as well as paraprofessionals,2 are some of the largest employers in the area. The health care industries in neighboring Harlingen, McAllen, and Brownsville are other major employers for people in town. Many young people are also employed in law enforcement – the Department of Public Safety, the Border Patrol, and Customs – which is a competitive job sector offering competitive wages and benefits to its employees.

Other than that, there are several locally owned small businesses both in and out of town where people seek employment.

City leaders recognize La Feria as a bedroom community. Most people work out of town, but choose to make their homes in La Feria. Like many neighboring Valley

2 Paraprofessional refers to white-collar jobs that do not require a college degree. 5

towns, the rhythm of life in La Feria is slow-paced and easy-going. People are generally friendly and tend to know each other at least by sight. Among the older families in town, however, one hears complaints that it is possible to go to the post office nowadays and not know anyone. This is probably the result of La Feria’s rapid population increase over the past fifteen years. From 1990 to the year 2000, census data reveals that the town population grew from 4,360 to just over 6,000 (U.S. Census 2000). This is a significant increase considering the fact that it had taken thirty years, from 1960 to 1990, for the city’s population to grow from 3,000 to 4,360 (Government Service Agency 1999). In other words, over the past ten years the town grew more than it had in the previous thirty years. Newcomers to the community are often from other Valley towns, although some are even from San Antonio and other, mainly Texas, cities. The census reveals that the racial composition of the town is currently about seventy percent Mexican origin and thirty percent Anglo. People say that La Feria is a good community because of its low crime rate3 and reputable school system.4

3 The police blotter section in the local newspaper reveals crime in La Feria is typically petty theft. 4 La Feria schools score consistently well on state tests and the facilities are in good condition. The district typically maximizes available grants to renovate and construct new schools in town. There is, however, a latent understanding – especially among young people – of the presence of drugs in the high school. Furthermore, La Feria, like other towns in the Rio Grande Valley has a high rate of teenage pregnancy. 6

Map 2. City of La Feria Source: Adapted from: Yahoo! Maps.

There are two major roads that bisect La Feria. The first is the expressway, the relatively new Highway 83, which lies on the north end of town. The other is the old

Highway 83, a two-lane road that crosses through the middle of town, running parallel to the railroad tracks. These thoroughfares connect La Feria with the rest of the cities in the

Lower Rio Grande Valley. Both new and old highways run their course from

Brownsville in the south to McAllen, northwest.

North of the railroad tracks, between the new expressway and Old Highway 83, lies the old pueblo mexicano. Though La Feria is no longer segregated into Mexican and

Anglo "towns," this segment of the city is still commonly referred to as either "el pueblo mexicano" or "el barrio mexicano," most likely because the majority of its residents are still of Mexican origin. Near the expressway on North Main Street, there are several newly opened chain fast food restaurants, including McDonalds, Burger King, Dairy

Queen, Domino's Pizza, and Church's Chicken, all brightly illuminated long after most downtown businesses have closed their doors for the day. Farther into town along North

Main Street, there are several locally owned businesses, including El Centro, the main grocery store in town, two taco stands, a couple of 99 cent stores, Maria's Beauty Salon, and a few small auto and tire shops.

West of North Main Street is the residential area of el pueblo mexicano.

Conditions in the neighborhoods north of the tracks are crowded, with houses occupying small lots and a grid of narrow streets. The development of this historically "Mexican" neighborhood is largely uneven. On a single street one might find a newly constructed or remodeled brick house alongside a wood-framed home with no hot water, an abandoned lot with overgrown grass filled with junk down the road. Residents have explained to me that this is because there are families who own houses and have lived in el pueblo mexicano for years and have attained middle class status, but do not want to move to another part of town. On the other hand, because of the modest conditions of many of the

homes and available renting options, the properties are also appealing to working class families who perhaps cannot afford repairs and care upkeep for their homes as needed.

On the north side of town there are three schools—one elementary school and the town's junior high and high schools. The junior high and high schools are fairly new facilities located right off the expressway. The oldest of these three schools is Sam

Houston Elementary School, which currently serves students in pre-kindergarten and kindergarten. Prior to 1972, Sam Houston was the Mexican School in La Feria, serving only Mexican students from kindergarten through fourth grade. With the desegregation of La Feria schools in 1972, the school district reorganized the schools so that all La

Feria students – both Mexican and Anglo – in pre-school and kindergarten attended Sam

Houston, all first through third graders attended Roosevelt Elementary, fourth graders at

C.E. Vail Elementary, etc. Because of the small size of the town, this proved to be an effective way to "desegregate" the school system. I will return to this subject later in the dissertation.

There are two major churches on the north side of town. One is a Mexican

Baptist church, which offers only Spanish-speaking services. The other is a newly built, non-denominational Protestant church called the La Feria Christian Center. It is a large facility, part of which is rumored to have been built over a property that was once a crack house. The pastors of this church are Mexican American and cater their services to

Spanish-speaking, mostly Mexican origin, Christians.5

5 The year after I completed my fieldwork, this church began to offer English-language services. 9

Along the railroad tracks on the south side of town, there has also been uneven development. There is a new post office, dollar store, car wash, and gas station, as well as a day care and a barber shop on one of the last residential streets before the railroad.

However, there are also several abandoned packing sheds and canneries as well some cantinas that have been there for as long as many residents remember.

Map 3. City of La Feria with schools. Source: Adapted from Yahoo! Maps

South of Old Highway 83 and the railroad tracks is the old pueblo americano, or

American Town. South Main Street – the main drag – in La Feria typically buzzes with activity during the day. A sign that welcomes visitors to La Feria as well as its city and school district offices are located just south of the railroad tracks. A hardware store that has existed nearly since the town's inception still graces Main Street, along with a pharmacy, whose history is almost as long. There are two restaurants, which always host a respectable lunch hour crowd from the local schools and businesses. A daycare, glass shop, flower shop, the office of the local newspaper, a State Farm insurance office, and a convenience store are also part of the business sector along South Main Street. Other businesses and the major churches – Baptist, Methodist, and Catholic – lie mainly within a two-block radius of the downtown area, as do the local library and public park. Most of these businesses close early. By seven o'clock in the evening, the windows along Main

Street are dark, and most people seem to have settled into their homes for the evening.

South Main Street is flanked on both sides by residential areas that used to be almost exclusively Anglo.6 The housing lots on the south side of town are typically twice as big as the lots on in the old pueblo mexicano. The streets on this side of town are wider and typically have more of a landscaped quality, with several small, grassy, park- like areas. Although many of the homes in the old pueblo americano are also mainly modest wood-framed houses, there are far fewer in need of repair and it is unusual to find abandoned or junk-filled lots. The newer housing developments in La Feria have been

6 I say "almost exclusively" because there has always been a class of Mexicans, usually designated by wealth, but sometimes by skin color, who have been allowed access to Anglo social, economic, and political spheres. 12

exclusively constructed on the south side of town, on the peripheries where the old townsite housing ends. Many of these new housing developments boast expansive brick homes on large lots in tranquil neighborhoods, marketed toward middle or upper middle class town residents.

Also located within the neighborhoods on the south side of the railroad tracks are the town's remaining three elementary schools, including one that was just constructed and open for instruction in the 2003-2004 school year. There is also, as I mentioned earlier, a public park with a pool and baseball diamond. There is also a newer park-like

Sports Complex with a walking trail, two baseball diamonds, basketball courts, and toys for children, as well as open fields for soccer or football.

In addition to those who live within La Feria's city limits, a percentage of La Feria residents live "in the country," the rural areas on the outskirts of town. On more than one occasion, I heard residents remark that as soon as anybody made a little bit of money, they rushed out to buy or build a house in the country. This rings true when driving along some of these country roads. Several houses built in the country are expansive brick homes on several acres of land, which people use for animals or farming; many live in the country to enjoy the ample space not available within the city limits. Interestingly, many people who cannot afford to live in town also live in the country, where there are fewer housing and zoning regulations. A house, for example, that would be considered unsafe for habitation within city limits is exempt when located in the country. Both rich and poor, then, make their homes in the country outside of La Feria.

The designations pueblo mexicano and pueblo americano do not hold the same weight as they did in La Feria prior to the 1970s. Mexican origin people now reside on both sides of the railroad tracks. The Anglo population, however, resides predominantly on the south side of town, though their children may attend school on the north side. La

Feria is a predominantly working class or working middle class town, with few exceptions. Business owners and professionals in town are both Anglo and Mexican origin, but the working class is predominantly Mexican.

While La Feria previously has not been the subject of ethnographic study, there have been other ethnographies focused on South Texas and the Rio Grande Valley. The following section will help to situate this study within the larger discipline of anthropology as well as other relevant regional ethnographic and cultural studies.

Literature Review

The discipline of anthropology traditionally has studied the cultures of communities around the world. Communities under study were typically located in so- called developing regions and usually subject to impending colonization. Anthropologist

Renato Rosaldo has argued that during anthropology's "classic period," roughly from

1921 to 1971, anthropologists depicted the cultures they studied as "sufficiently frozen to be … object[s] of 'scientific' knowledge" (1993:31). He maintains that ethnographies of this period portrayed the colonized as "members of a harmonious, internally

homogeneous, unchanging culture" (31).7 The danger within these "objective" representations lay in the fact that when described in this way, the community under study "appeared to 'need' progress, or economic and moral uplifting" (31). Rosaldo argues that these classic norms of study and representation within anthropology began to erode in the early 1970s, during the period of intense national civil rights and global social justice movements. Anthropology entered a more reflective moment, one that led to a remaking of social analysis, which included rethinking anthropological theory and ethnographic writing, as well as including interdisciplinary perspectives from fields such as history, political science, and literature, among others.

As anthropology debated the ethical imperatives of its studies and depictions of colonized people, it began to question the classic timelessness of the cultures studied.

Many anthropologists of the classic period wrote ethnographies in the "ethnographic present," which Rosaldo defines as the "distanced mode of writing that normalized life by describing social activities as if they were always repeated in the same manner by everyone in the group” (1993:42). Indeed by the late 1970s, anthropologist Johannes

Fabian (1983) argued that the idea of the timeless native, reflected in the "ethnographic present" mode of writing, had serious repercussions on the people of these communities.

He argued that anthropologists had represented native peoples as if they existed in a vacuum of time, unchanging and representative of humankind in its most primal and un-

7 Early women anthropologists were notable exceptions as they tended to write less “objective” texts. Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead grappled with portrayals of women’s often subordinate positions in various communities (Behar and Gordon 1995:17). Zora Neale Hurston and Ella Cara Deloria, students of Franz Boas struggled to represent Black and Native American communities as early native anthropologists (Behar and Gordon 1995:17-19). 15

evolved social state. Fabian argued that when communities were denied their temporality, the people who inhabited them would never cease to be marked as Other.

Critics of classic anthropological norms called—and continue to call—for anthropologists to study the historical conditions that gave rise to communities as they exist, the current national and global projects of imperialism affecting local communities, and the everyday power struggles that occur within local communities.

South Texas Ethnographies and Cultural Studies

South Texas has been visited by anthropologists several times over the past four decades. There have been those anthropologists whose concern has been to recover and construct knowledge about the ways of life of the various indigenous groups that occupied Texas before and during Spanish colonization (Newcomb 1961; Salinas 1990;

Spicer 1962). Also recovering and tracing the racial heritage of the region of South

Texas, Menchaca (2001) delineates the racial background not only of those indigenous groups that had already settled in Texas, but also that of the colonizers themselves, who were often mestizo, indigenous, and afromestizo.

The Mexican Americans of South Texas by William Madsen (1973) and Arthur

Rubel’s Across the Tracks (1966) are two classic anthropological texts written in the modern period. Both of these books emerged from a research project conducted from

1957–1961 in Hidalgo County. Funded by the Hogg Foundation for Mental Health,

William Madsen served as the principal investigator for the project; Arthur Rubel was his student. I would like to suggest that although these works have some positive worth, they

are also representative of the texts associated with the Fabian (1983) critique in that they perpetuate stereotypes about Mexican origin people and fail to recognize their unique position within a racially stratified South Texas society.

Madsen states that the purpose of his book project is to describe the socio-cultural conditions of Mexican Americans living along the South Texas border and to "provide some insight into the stresses of acculturation in Hidalgo County" (3). The book then proceeds to discuss various aspects of Mexican American life and culture. He devotes chapters to culture conflict, cultural values and behaviors, socio economic class and family organization, as well as five chapters dedicated to religion and folk healing. He ends his book with a discussion of the Mexican American community's progress (or lack thereof) in education and politics.

To his credit, Madsen's book is probably one of the first to meticulously explore and categorize folk religious and healing processes. Despite this contribution to the field of health and medical anthropology, Madsen unfortunately posits a culture of poverty8 argument about Mexican Americans in South Texas. He categorizes them as deeply religious, but also extremely fatalistic. He further argues that Mexicans do not want to go

"too far" (in life?) for fear of arousing the wrath of God and that they generally accept life to be "sad, but beautiful" (19). This representation of Mexicans is, on one hand, an attempt to explain their place in the working class strata of American society. On the other hand, it places the blame squarely on the Mexican American community. If they

8 Although Madsen does not use the term "culture of poverty," he does prefigure Tejano/a culture within said trajectory. 17

would only adopt a more "American" attitude, a Protestant work ethic, if you will, they could be just as successful as their Anglo counterparts. It also absolves Anglos of complicity in the social stratification of the town.

In addition to this representation of Mexicans as fatalistic, Madsen further pathologizes them. The men, unsurprisingly, are represented as over-aggressive, domineering sexual predators while the women are submissive and resigned to their roles as inferiors within the family and society in general. He asserts that, outside of the family unit, there is an extreme amount of jealousy; Mexicans do not like to see each other succeed. Because of this jealousy, he asserts that Mexican Americans employ a number of "leveling techniques," including gossip, ridicule, and witchcraft against one another

(24-25).9

A student of William Madsen, Arthur Rubel, presents a more sympathetic view of

Mexican Americans in South Texas in his book, Across the Tracks (1966). In his account of the social life of Mexican Americans in South Texas, Rubel does acknowledge the segregation of Mexicans from Anglos in South Texas at the time of his study. As implied in the title of his book, many South Texan towns are divided by the railroad tracks into two communities—one Anglo and the other Mexican. He devotes the first chapter of his book to the ways by which life on each side of the tracks differs. Interestingly, though he mentions increased possibilities for Mexicans to live on the other side of the tracks, he concludes that cultural differences continue to divide Anglos and Mexicans regardless of

9 The data in Madsen’s ethnography are missing relevant documentation. It is not clear in his text how many interviews he conducted, nor do we know who conducted the interviews and made observations. 18

the side of the tracks where they reside (24). Like Madsen, however, Rubel does not propose to seek answers to why these differences persist on both sides of the tracks; he problematically focuses his study on cultural deficits in the Mexican American community.

Perhaps the most glaring absence in each of these texts is an analysis of the power structure in these communities. Both Madsen and Rubel conceive their studies in an historical void. They do not address the violent acquisition of the South Texas territory from Mexico nor do they acknowledge the legacy of discrimination and forced segregation of Mexicans to inferior areas of town as well as inferior job opportunities

(Montejano 1987). Neither addresses the existent power structure of the towns they study in South Texas, the contemporary exploitative labor practices, or the contemporary discrimination, which was still extremely prevalent when they conducted the research for their studies (Foley 1988).

Though divergent from Rosaldo’s characterizations of classic ethnographies in that these books do not portray the natives as living happily and harmoniously, they certainly do paint pictures of communities in need of “progress” and economic/moral uplifting. Furthermore, these ethnographies could also be used to justify discriminatory treatment of Mexicans because of these alleged cultural deficits. Madsen’s and Rubel’s texts soon came under fire from Chicano intellectuals for their distortions. Chicano scholars such as Octavio Romano-V (1968; 1970) who was, interestingly, part of

Madsen’s research team, and Américo Paredes (1978) cited the problematic issues within these ethnographies. Romano-V's critiques of these texts are charged with allegations of

racism. Paredes makes what Rosaldo (1985) later calls "a more devastating critique," citing various instances of Madsen’s and Rubel's language deficiencies and misinterpretations of Mexican slang and jokes. Paredes further points to the fact that in these supposedly politically disorganized and apathetic Mexican communities, a

Chicano/a political takeover was to occur only a few years later. Not only did these critiques call into question the validity of Madsen’s and Rubel’s ethnographies, they begged alternative representations of South Texas Mexicans. Nevertheless, Chicano/a communities had grown wary and distrustful of social scientists and their research agendas (Alvarez 1995; Romano-V 1968).

In the wake of this critical storm, anthropologist Douglas Foley also had assembled a research team for a study in South Texas. Interestingly, Foley chose to write a community history rather than a contemporary ethnography. From Peones to Políticos

(1988) traces the economic transformation of a South Texas town from a "semifeudal cotton sharecropping economy … to a wage labor economy based on migrant labor"

(1990:13). Foley found that Anglos who relied on Mexican labor historically had dominated the town’s economy. Every aspect of the town's social life was characterized by these power relations, from segregation in the schools to the crowds shopping downtown on Sundays. With shifts in the economic system and, more specifically, with the rise in the number of migrant laborers, some Mexicans were able to pool their resources and improve their economic standing. These economic changes, coupled with the Civil Rights Movement, led to an explosion of racialized political conflict in the

1970s.

Foley's book is a vast improvement over previous studies of South Texas in that it not only looks at the depressed social and economic position of Mexicans in South Texas, but also explores the roots of those conditions. It explores race relations within the context of power and how these social relations continued to shift throughout history.10

Perhaps because of the stigma of social science, contemporary anthropologists often have chosen to demonstrate an alternative understanding of the social situation of

Mexicans in South Texas through an exploration of folklore and expressive culture.

Américo Paredes had already published With His Pistol In His Hand (1958) when

Madsen’s and Rubel’s texts emerged. Paredes' book presents a study of the corrido of

Gregorio Cortés, a Texas Mexican border hero. In addition to being an integral contribution to Mexican American folklore studies, Paredes' text also serves as precursor to Mexican American anthropologists who theorize resistance through Mexican

American expressive culture. Manuel Peña’s Música Tejana (1999) and José Limón’s

Dancing With The Devil (1994) follow in this trajectory, exploring the musical production and dance of Mexican South Texas, respectively. Both explore the relationship between the organic cultural production of the community and its position within the exploitative capitalist economy. Paredes, Peña, and Limón theorize music and dance in the Texas Mexican community as resistance to the Anglo economic and social hegemony.

10 From this fieldwork, Foley also wrote Learning Capitalist Culture (1990), which explores the ways that social inequalities among Mexican and Anglo students are reproduced in the school system. 21

My study returns to the classic notion of a community study without the classic norms. It recognizes “community” as both a real place and a concept shaped by institutions and the everyday actions of its members. This dissertation demonstrates the malleable nature of the community of La Feria by tracing its process of racial integration from the mid-1960s through the 1990s.

Conceptualizing Community

It was my everyday interactions with residents of La Feria that sparked my interest in the idea of community. Time and again I would hear people invoke the word

“community.” Long-time Anglo residents would talk to me about how the community had changed—usually for the worse—since they were young. Relatively new Mexican

American residents spoke to me about praying for the needs of the community. At times it was clear that people were speaking of specific sub-communities within La Feria – the

Mexican origin community, the business community, the Catholic community, and so on.

Unless otherwise specified, when I would hear peoples’ stories, opinions, and declarations about community, I generally assumed that they were talking about La Feria as a geographical place, including the people who resided within its boundaries. Upon listening to their stories more closely, however, it became clear that when talking about the larger “community” of La Feria, people were defining membership in different ways, often making implicit exclusions and inclusions. I began to wonder how community was constructed in the minds of La Feria residents. How was membership implicitly defined?

Familiar with the history of segregation and the process of racial integration, I began to

question how the scope of membership in the community had been challenged and broadened over the years.

Though I define community as the people and the geographical space of a city, like La Feria, I also theorize community as an imaginary developmental process of inclusion and exclusion. By imaginary I use Benedict Anderson’s theorization of imagined community, which I will elaborate upon in the following section. I see community functioning on two levels. First, community is imagined in the minds of its members. These communal imaginings are, at times, disciplining and exclusionary, but also extremely significant to understanding power relations between groups of people.

Though dominant groups usually determine the scope of membership in an imagined community, subjugated groups are able to challenge the scope of belonging and forge the re-imagination of a community. Second, I understand community as a developmental process, dialectically shaped by institutions and everyday individual and collective actions. I will demonstrate in this dissertation that membership in a community changes over time. In this dissertation I will argue that community is thus malleable in the minds of its members and in the way that it is enacted on a local level. I have chosen this concept of community as a critical lens to more deeply understand the process of racial integration in La Feria, Texas.

Imagining La Feria

So completely segregated were the two towns that, in effect, “there was an Anglo world and a Mexicano world…” -David Montejano,

Anthropologist Ana Tsing reminds us “not to assume that 'community' inspires a homogeneous form of consciousness,” but rather to listen for “multi-stranded conversations in which there [is] never full agreement" (1993:8). It is important to note that some voices in the conversation of community carry more weight than others. David

Harvey asserts that “for the wealthy… ‘community’ often means securing and enhancing privileges already gained. For the marginalized, it all too often means ‘controlling their own slum.’” (2002:191). Harvey elucidates an important point about how power shapes people’s understandings and experiences in their community. Consider the following historical recollections of two women, one Anglo and one Mexican American, both long- time residents of La Feria. These women's narratives clearly reflect the way their class and racial positions affect how they imagine La Feria as a community during the 1930s and 40s.

Through the course of my fieldwork, I interviewed an 80-year old Anglo woman—Arlene Walters—who communicated to me her fondness for the La Feria of the

1930s and 40s. Though she lived on the outskirts of town, Mrs. Walters remembered that families would congregate on weekends around Main Street, where they would socialize and catch up on the latest town gossip. She recalls that life was simpler then. The town was much smaller and there was a closeness in the community that one no longer sees.

She recalled that many residents of town were poor farmers but that nobody dwelled on or felt burdened by their poverty; all the families she knew made do with what they had.

In her narrative, this woman made general references to Mexicans who worked as field hands or housekeepers. She felt that her family and all the other Anglo farmer families she knew treated Mexicans fairly and that they all got along. She maintained that she was considerably disturbed that there is now so much contention in the newspapers about how badly Mexicans were treated, speculating that perhaps this mistreatment was more prevalent in big cities.

Mrs. Walters's memories of La Feria in the 1930s and 40s reflect an understanding of community shaped by her race and socioeconomic position. She does not question that Anglos occupied positions of power over a Mexican working class. She remembers that, as members of a farming community, everyone was poor, but does not imagine that, as farmhands of those poor farmers, Mexicans probably found themselves in more dire economic situations. When she asserts that everyone got along, including

Mexicans and Anglos, she speaks from a position of privilege. As a young Anglo woman, Mrs. Walters neither saw nor experienced racial discrimination in La Feria because she was never its target. The following narrative provides a counterpoint to Mrs.

Walters's understanding of the community of La Feria in the 1930s and 40s.

Isabel Moran, a Mexican American woman in her 80s, also lived in La Feria during the 1930s and 40s. Mrs. Moran lived on the north side of the railroad tracks, in el pueblo mexicano, where her grandfather owned a restaurant. Because of her family's relative economic stability they, unlike many residents north of the tracks, did not have to

migrate or work in the fields. She remembers festivals, parades, and dances on the

Mexican side of town. She recalls the segregation of the town, noting that there was only one Mexican family she knew of who lived on the south side of the tracks and one

Mexican-owned business in La Feria. She recalls separate cemeteries for Anglos and

Mexicans. She remembers the struggles in school for Mexican girls to participate in drum corps, how her husband had to fight to be admitted to the Rotary Club, and the difficulties they faced enrolling their children in the "American" (read: Anglo) elementary school when her family eventually moved to the south side of town. “En todo había discriminación,”11 she told me. Mrs. Moran's historical community narrative stands in stark contrast to Mrs. Walters' memories of La Feria in the 1930s and 40s as a simpler time and place without complication or strife.

Although she was not as economically disadvantaged as many other Mexicans in

La Feria, Mrs. Moran's racial position affected her experience and understanding of the community. She fondly remembers the festivities and celebrations in el pueblo mexicano, but was acutely aware of the discrimination they faced when crossing the tracks. She clearly recalls the struggles that she and her family faced interacting with

Anglos and Anglo-dominated institutions. Even as a member of an economically stable

Mexican family, Mrs. Moran frequently encountered discrimination within the town.

Mrs. Moran's narrative points to the fact that Mexican and Anglo communities were actually very distinct during this early period of the town's history. I do not assert that there is one way Mexicans understood and imagined their community and one Anglo

11 Translation: In everything there was discrimination. 26

understanding/imagining. Even within their own racially-bound communities, factors such as gender, class, and/or political affiliation shape people’s communal imaginings.

Furthermore, I do not wish to argue that one of these women offered a more true understanding of La Feria in the 1930s and 40s. On the contrary, I would like to suggest that these women’s narratives – one Anglo and one Mexican – offer a dialectical understanding of La Feria’s social, political, and economic characteristics in the early

1900s.

Finally, Mrs. Walters’ and Mrs. Moran’s narratives illustrate the fact that there are meaningful sub-communities within the larger community of La Feria. In their cases, we could most clearly see Anglo and Mexican origin sub-communities. Throughout this dissertation other sub-communities will emerge, such as the Spanish-speaking community, the Mexican immigrant community, the Catholic community, the Mexican

Catholic community, and certain political communities. These sub-communities are not mutually exclusive; in fact, several people dwell in multiple spheres. Nevertheless, these sub-communities are significant in that they offer their members social and political support. Furthermore, this dissertation will show how these sub-communities often have functioned in conjunction with each other to challenge and change the larger community of La Feria. For the remainder of this dissertation, when I use the general term

“community,” I refer to the larger geographical area of La Feria and its inhabitants.

Otherwise I will make specific reference to specific sub-communities in my discussion.

Rethinking Community

In the section that follows, I will present a theoretical framework to better understand how Mrs. Walters’ and Mrs. Moran’s imagined La Feria relates to the manner by which the larger nation was imagined. Within academic literature, perhaps the most broadly recognized work about community is Benedict Anderson’s Imagined

Communities (1981). In this text, Anderson links the idea of community to projects of nation-building, proposing that a heterogeneous group of people who live in a particular geographical area become nations through the establishment of imagined communities.

He argues that “[the nation] is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion” (1991:6). Anderson asserts that the rhetoric of the nation is conceived in such a way that it reaches even the smallest towns within the boundaries of the nation-state. Members of the farthest reaches of the national borders consider themselves part of the nation, imagining that their fellow citizens hold common values and interests. Furthermore, Anderson argues that the nation is imagined as a “community” because “regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship" (1991:7). He proposes, then, that not only do citizens of a nation perceive that their fellow citizens share the same values and interests, they also believe that, as citizens, they are equal to each other, perhaps sharing the same inalienable rights as bestowed upon them by the nation.

In this dissertation I will argue that from its inception, the United States has posed racial limitations on the scope of belonging to the national community. Early racist attitudes toward Blacks and Native Americans posited them as racially inferior and therefore justifiably subordinate to American whites; Black labor was exploited and

Native American land was appropriated as part of the nation-building project (Takaki

1990). Moreover, scholars have argued that the United States constructed an American identity largely in opposition to “foreign” or “ethnic” Others (Oboler 1995; Takaki 1990).

Though these attitudes and actions were specific to Blacks and Native Americans, the ideology of racial superiority fueled U.S. expansionist projects toward Mexico and translated to negative perceptions of the Mexicans who occupied those lands (de Leon

1983; Oboler 1995; Takaki 1990). Even while the nation was expanding its national boundaries, scholars have argued that the internal boundaries of the national community were defined in racial terms (Oboler 1995). Only whites were to enjoy the full privileges of citizenship; people of color were deemed outside the national community and thus second-class citizens.

Racist national attitudes and the imagining of America as a “white” nation were reflected and institutionalized through segregation in both broad legislative terms and local practice. Suzanne Oboler argues that segregation was the institutionalization of the internal—racial—boundaries of the national community (1995:43). I will discuss the underpinnings and characteristics of Mexican segregation in more detail in my second chapter. For now, allow me to suggest that if practices of segregation reflected the internal boundaries of the American imagined community, then the process of racial

integration represented a kind of re-imagining of those racialized internal boundaries. In this dissertation, I will argue that, in order to facilitate the process of racial integration,

Mexican origin people in La Feria first needed to re-imagine the ways they could belong to their community.

Community as Process

I agree with David Harvey when he asserts that community must be seen as a

“process of coming together not as a thing” (192, emphasis mine). Examining community as a process is not a new idea to anthropology. Even before critiques of classic norms emerged in the late 1960s, anthropologist Meyer Fortes brought forth the idea that social systems are akin to living organisms that go through processes of development. He argued that the reproduction of any domestic group was dependent upon a group’s social capital, which he defines as "the total body of knowledge and skills, values and beliefs, laws and morals, embodied in the customs and institutions of a society" (1958:2). Fortes was unique in his assertion that social systems—or, for the purposes of my argument, communities—were processual in nature. However, like many of his contemporaries, he promoted the belief that communities reproduced themselves over time, remaining unchanged. It has been the purpose of my project to examine how the community of La Feria has changed over time. I have argued that the social capital to which Fortes refers is transformed over generations, and that with these transformations in people’s knowledge, skills, values and beliefs, comes community transformation.

Nevertheless, I think that Fortes provides an instructive model by which to understand the process of community.

Fortes argues that both domestic and politico-jural domains simultaneously affect every member of a society (1958:12). He states:

This has a direct bearing on the internal structure of the domestic group. The differentials in this structure are in part inherent in the procreative relationship and spring from the requirements of child rearing. But their character is also decisively regulated by politico-jural norms (12).

In this passage, Fortes essentially argues that the internal structure of a domestic group is determined by what happens in people’s homes (in the domestic sphere) as well as what is determined by larger institutions. This model helps us to understand how individual actors/activists as well as larger institutional forces shape community. I assume a similar position to Fortes in theorizing community as a process, dialectically shaped by institutions and the actions of individuals and groups on a grassroots level.

I have also chosen to use some of the theoretical tenets of cultural citizenship in order to more fully understand how micropolitical actions are able to challenge and change the larger community of La Feria. The article “Constructing Cultural

Citizenship,” by William Flores and Rina Benmayor, is instrumental in defining cultural citizenship. The article refers to cultural citizenship as the “range of social practices which, taken together, claim and establish a distinct space for Latinos in this country”

(1997:1). The social practices to which they refer can be construed as “a broad continuum … ranging from everyday life activities to broad social drama” (13). I will demonstrate in my dissertation that such social practices promote change and,

specifically, have aided in the process of racial integration in La Feria. Through everyday actions as well as more focused grassroots political organizing, Mexican origin people in La Feria have shifted racial attitudes and created a new “space” for themselves in La Feria.

Latino cultural citizenship scholars understand that “space” is not merely a physical location, but rather a “multiplicity of socio-material concerns. Space is a physical location, a piece of real estate, and simultaneously an existential freedom and a mental expression” (Gottdiener in Flores & Benmayor 1997:15). As illustrated in this dissertation, Mexican origin people in La Feria are clearly struggling for equality that would include a more egalitarian distribution of resources. However, their actions often begin at a micropolitical level. I argue that the space they claim, as represented in each ethnographic chapter of this dissertation, leads, little by little, to racial integration. As such, space is construed differently in each chapter. Chapter three shows how Mexican

American teachers instill in their Mexican students the idea that they have the potential to occupy new social, economic, and political spaces in the community. Chapter four demonstrates how Mexican Catholics create cultural space for themselves within the local parish. In the final ethnographic chapter, space is construed as political representation on the school board. Empowerment, in these cases, begins from the point of “constructing, establishing and asserting human, social and cultural rights,” not necessarily civic rights (Flores and Benmayor 1997:12). Nevertheless, while the motivation is often simply to create a space where they feel a sense of belonging, the

social practices enacted by Mexican origin people in La Feria carry the potential to restructure and reorder society (15).

While theories of cultural citizenship present an instructive way to understand the potential political impact of the everyday actions of individuals and groups, it is important to understand these social practices within a larger context of the nation-state and civil society. Anthropologist Aihwa Ong warns that cultural citizenship cannot be

“unilaterally constructed” because immigrant and minority groups are not able to “escape the cultural inscription of state power and other forms of regulation that define the different modalities of belonging” (Ong 1996:738). She asserts that cultural citizenship should be understood as "being-made" by dominant power structures and "self-making" through agency and resistance. While Ong’s framework is effective in understanding how people construct national and cultural identities, it falls short of explaining how these dialectically constructed identities enact social change. For the purposes of this dissertation, I maintain that community, shaped by state and local institutions as well as individual and collective social practices, is a more effective theoretical lens by which to understand the process of racial integration in La Feria.

On a final note, I understand the recent critique of community that suggests its limitations as an organizing principle. In her book, Against the Romance of Community,

Miranda Joseph argues that people often use the term “community” in a way that is divorced from the social and political forces that shape it. She asserts that people invoke community as an unequivocal good, absolving themselves of their obligations to understand its disciplining nature and the way it serves to reproduce social hierarchies.

Having noted the “conservative, disciplining, and exclusionary” (xviii) politics of community, Joseph persuasively argues, “to invoke community is immediately to raise questions of belonging and power” (xxiii).

Generally, I agree with Joseph’s argument that communities can and do discipline their members and, in various instances, reproduce internal hierarchies in particular social, political, and historical contexts. These unequal power relations surrounding the discourse of community do not dissuade my interest in community as an organizing principle. On the contrary, the idea of community strikes me as a dynamic way to understand social organization. As I have stated before, Anderson argues that people imagine their nation as a community because “regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation … the nation is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship"

(1991:7). I would like to suggest that it is this ideal of horizontal comradeship that inspires people to challenge hierarchies. I believe that the idea of community gives people something to which they can aspire. Joseph herself notes in her text that community inspires the “strongest of passions” (xxx) and David Harvey states that concepts such as community “have become foundational… in the quest for alternative forms of social change” (192). My research has shown that people are willing to fight for a communal ideal. Specifically, Mexican origin people have used the idea of community to challenge the racialized terms of belonging in La Feria.

Methodology

My interest in the community of La Feria was initially shaped by both personal and professional understandings. As I have already recounted, my mother’s family emigrated from Mexico to Texas. My mother was the first of her family born in the

United States, and she was born in La Feria. As first generation Mexican Americans, the family lived and worked under the yoke of segregation in South Texas. They left La

Feria in 1965, before Mexican Americans had gained equal footing with their Anglo counterparts. I knew the stories about the discrimination they had faced as poor Mexican farm workers in South Texas. I did not know, however, what happened after they left.

As a scholar, I wanted to investigate and understand how the segregationist structures that governed the town were dismantled. On a more personal level, I was also deeply motivated to conduct a community study in La Feria simply because I wanted to know my mother’s community. I wanted to know where my family had worked. I wanted to see the house they had built, the schools they had attended, the paths they had tread.

These romantic interests also fueled my desire to study the community of La Feria.

This dissertation is based on thirteen months of fieldwork conducted in La Feria,

Texas from the beginning of July 2002 through the end of July 2003. This work included an exploration of both historical and contemporary data, drawing from both written

(published and unpublished) and oral sources, as well as from my observation and participation in community events.

I entered the town with the strong belief that central to my study should be an examination of the historical conditions that have led to contemporary community

development and formation. To this end, I explored the local newspaper, The La Feria

News, and, when editions of The La Feria News were unavailable, The Valley Morning

Star, the local newspaper of neighboring Harlingen. These papers gave me a general sense of the town's history from its beginnings through the end of the period of segregation, the late 1970s. Furthermore, I examined School Board minutes and City

Council minutes, and conducted a survey of La Feria High School yearbooks from 1947 through 1980. These published sources gave me a sense of the general economic and social trends La Feria has experienced over time.

I also conducted twenty-five formal qualitative interviews, ranging from one to two hours each, in addition to dozens of informal interviews and conversations with town residents.12 Within the set of interviews, I conducted general oral history interviews with four long-time residents of La Feria—two Anglo and two of Mexican origin. I felt that an oral history component of the town's past was important, especially to recover the narratives of Mexican origin people in the region, whose stories typically have not been documented in published sources. While I was able to record some of these interviews, to assure the comfort of the people who granted me interviews, I often did not tape record the interviews, but rather took notes. To distinguish interview transcriptions from non- recorded narrative constructions, I have chosen to present them with distinct styles within the text. Transcriptions are single spaced and inset while non-recorded narrative

12I have assigned pseudonyms to the people who granted me interviews in order to protect their privacy. Exceptions are elected officials and those whose real names have been published in town documents. 36

constructions are double spaced and abide by the same margins as the rest of the document.

I argue that the written and oral sources complement each other and that using both types of sources help to corroborate facts, granting me a more in-depth understanding of La Feria's history. Also within my qualitative interviews were nine interviews with some of the first Mexican American women to be employed by the La

Feria Independent School District. Their stories provided me a more in-depth knowledge of the roots and process by which the local schools were desegregated.

In order to understand contemporary social relations as well as community development, I used various anthropological methodologies, including participant observation and conducting qualitative interviews with town members. I attended school board, city commission and other community-wide meetings; football games, rallies, town and church festivals, local club meetings, church meetings, and prayer groups; and other local and private events and festivities. I devoted quite a bit of time to teaching high school catechism as well as participating in a community development organization called the La Feria Community of Shalom. Drawing my cues from conversations that I had with people in town, I chose to conduct qualitative interviews with individuals to gain more specific and in-depth knowledge of the community's past and present trajectory.

My research methods, though in many ways standard in anthropological practice, weighed more on the side of participant in the participant-observer equation. As a catechist, I became involved in teaching religious education to high school students.

Furthermore, I was trained as and became one of the founding members of the La Feria

Community of Shalom, a non-denominational, faith-based program concerned with rebuilding and renewing community life. The La Feria chapter is part of a larger, international initiative sponsored by the General Board of Global Ministries of the United

Methodist Church. These are two specific ways in which I became very active in the life of the community, standing far from the portrait of the detached anthropologist. During my thirteen months in La Feria, I gained an appreciation for its people and became invested in addressing the problems of the community as well as maximizing its many strengths.

Chapter Summaries

As a historical ethnography, this dissertation evaluates the racial integration of

Mexican origin people in La Feria as part of the developmental process of community building. As stated earlier, I theorize community as a dialectical process shaped by institutions as well as the social actions of individuals and groups. Each ethnographic chapter of this dissertation will contribute to a deeper understanding of how community is developed in La Feria. While I will delineate the influence of dominant institutions in community building, the ethnographic chapters of this dissertation take more of a cultural citizenship approach, evaluating how the social actions of Mexican origin people have led to more visible and viable spaces for the Mexican population in La Feria. I argue that these micropolitical actions contributed to the process of racial integration in La Feria, ultimately transforming the way the community is imagined and enacted over time.

The purpose of this project is not to construct a comprehensive narrative of La

Feria’s history. Instead, this dissertation provides ethnographic snapshots of the town during different time periods beginning in the 1960s and continuing to the 1990s. I have chosen moments in the town's history that show the community on the brink of change.

Sometimes the social change that I document is quiet; at other times, it is more dramatic.

In all cases, however, the stories will show how Mexican origin people who had previously been excluded from community discourses made space for themselves in the community—ideologically, culturally, and politically.

Chapter two will provide an early historical background for La Feria as well as demonstrate how, as Anglos began to populate La Feria, the community was imagined as

Anglo, marginalizing Mexican origin residents. It will give a brief overview of the region before it was annexed by the United States and briefly discuss the early period of

Anglo colonization. This chapter will demonstrate how a de facto racially segregated social order evolved in 1920s and 30s La Feria. In this chapter I will demonstrate how national racial attitudes served as the underpinnings for the de facto segregation of

Mexicans in South Texas. Each subsequent chapter will present a moment in the town’s history when individuals and/or groups have promoted racial integration through individual and/or collective action.

In chapter three, I discuss how community is constructed and challenged in La

Feria schools, drawing from oral history interviews conducted with the first mexicana teachers and teacher aids hired in the district. Unlike previous literature about the desegregation of Mexican American students that has focused on policy makers and

advocacy groups, I shift the narrative focus to women who were engaged on the ground level—in the schools and classrooms—in the process of integration. I argue that these women were instrumental to re-imagining the roles Mexican origin children could assume in the community, challenging low expectations of Mexican students as well as providing them with the educational tools necessary to strive for racial equity with their

Anglo counterparts. In this way, these first Mexican teachers and teacher aids helped to set the foundation for racial integration in the schools. This was a significant shift in the town; educating La Feria’s Mexican origin people enabled them later to become teachers, policy makers, and other types of professionals.

Chapter four examines the ways by which the comunidades de base forge a cultural space for Mexican origin people within another important institution in the community, the Catholic Church. Comunidades de base are small home groups of the

Catholic Church formed by local Mexican and Mexican American residents of La Feria for religious education and cultural religious revival. After years of having been marginalized within the Church, Mexican origin people found in the comunidades de base a safe haven to promote their ethnic religious identities, creating a sense of cohesion among local Mexican Catholics. This ethnic cohesion led to the introduction of various practices of Mexican religión popular within the local Catholic community, celebrating traditions such as las Posadas, el Día de la Virgen de Guadalupe, las Vías Cruces, and others, which continue even to this day. These practices have been significant in broadening the ways by which Mexican origin people can participate in the Church community. Furthermore, these public practices, which occur within different

neighborhoods in La Feria, heightened the visibility of Mexican origin people in town, forcing people to recognize the real bicultural nature of the community.

In chapter five, I shift the discussion to more contemporary political shifts within the community. This chapter traces a shift in local School Board politics as well as the development of a short-lived civic organization called the La Feria Parental Awareness

League (PAL). It shows how local citizens organized to represent a different sector of the community on the local School Board. With the idea that not all members of the community had access to the School Board, the entity that shaped school policy, members of the PALs educated themselves about civic processes and became elected

School Board officials themselves. The resulting shift in School Board politics was a significant turning point in La Feria because it redefined who had access to shape school policy. It mobilized La Feria residents not only to run for office, but to vote and participate in the electoral process that would ultimately give them a say in what occurred in their children's schools. This increased involvement and participation again broadened the scope of who was granted full membership within the community, changing the organization of a significant power structure in La Feria.

Chapter six serves as the conclusion and suggests the ways that Mexican origin people continue to create space for themselves both in their local communities and in the nation as a whole. This chapter suggests avenues for further research, noting the need for more work that would explore the social relations between Mexican Americans and

Mexican immigrants and examining how these groups position themselves in relation to

the nation, especially through their military involvement. This chapter illustrates that the process of community building—on local and national levels—is ongoing.

Feminist scholars Biddy Martin and Chandra Mohanty maintain that "community is the product of work and struggle, inherently unstable and contextual" (1986). My research gives testimony to the struggle involved in community building, showing how

La Feria has undergone social and political, ideological and practical shifts over the past forty years as it has struggled with the process of racial integration. It is my intent to show the "inherent instability" of community by tracing the process of integration in the town's history, critically observing how it has been subject to change based on macro and micro level structural forces as well as through grassroots collective and/or individual actions.

Chapter 2: Tracing and Conceptualizing the History of a Community

The purpose of this chapter is to present a Mexican perspective of the history of the Lower Rio Grande Valley and, in particular, La Feria. It is not my intention to provide a comprehensive history of La Feria in this chapter or in this dissertation. My intention is to paint in broad strokes an historical portrait of Mexican South Texas, showing an early Spanish/Mexican presence, the effect of Anglo migration on the established Mexican society, and some of the underpinnings of regional segregation. I assert that this regional history occurred within the context of U.S. nation building projects, which were fueled by racist attitudes that positioned people of color (Blacks, Native Americans, and Mexicans) outside of the scope of the imagined national community. Understanding segregation as the institutionalization of these national racial attitudes, I will present some of the characteristics of Mexican segregation in La Feria as it occurred in practice. This brief historical sketch will point to some of the political, economic, and social conditions that led to the segregation of Mexican people in La Feria. In understanding some of the ideological underpinnings and characteristics of Mexican segregation in South Texas we may better understand how the process of racial integration – the dismantling of a segregationist social structure – occurred in La Feria. This chapter contributes to the broader arguments of my dissertation in several ways. First, it demonstrates that the way community is imagined locally reflects the way the national community is imagined. This chapter thus connects race relations in South

Texas to national discourses about race and citizenship. This chapter suggests that segregation was the manifestation of the way the national community was imagined as a way of determining its internal boundaries. Finally, it demonstrates that much of the

segregation Mexicans experienced occurred outside the legal realm; segregationist practices were largely de facto, not necessarily de jure. I suggest that because of the extra-legal manner in which Mexican segregation occurred, racial integration was highly contingent upon the social actions of individuals and groups within a given community

(for the purposes of this dissertation, the community of La Feria).

Origin Myths

She asks me what I know about the history of La Feria. I tell her that I know some general history about Mexicans in South Texas, but am still learning about La Feria history in particular. I tell her that I’m trying to conduct some oral history interviews and that I have read the book—The Bicentennial History of La Feria by Eddie McNail.

She reacts to my mention of the book with a look bordering on disgust. She says to me, They like to make it seem as if the Anglos were the ones who founded La Feria.

Then she asks, Do you know what the oldest house in La Feria is?

The Longoria House? I reply, trying out my newfound knowledge of local history.

That’s right, she says, The Longoria House. It was Mexicans who first lived here.

The above vignette from my fieldwork illustrates the attitudes of a contemporary woman acutely aware of the strong Mexican roots of South Texas. Her commentary reflects a thinly veiled resentment of Anglo-dominated histories that gloss over the way

Anglo settlers had usurped land from Mexicans and come to dominate the social,

political, and economic terrains of South Texas. By extension, Anglos have also controlled how the history of South Texas has come to be told. The genesis in these

South Texas histories usually occurs when Anglos arrive. In these narratives they are the first settlers, the first to bring so-called civilization to the region.

The politics of writing history are evident. Chicana historian Emma Pérez asserts that “history… is the story of the conquerors, those who have won” (1999:xv). Anglos, who successfully acquired the northwestern part of Mexico, have written the history of

Texas from the perspective of the victors, while the Mexican perspective has largely been suppressed (Alonzo 1998; Montejano 1987). In tracing the local history of La Feria, I have drawn from Eddie McNail’s book, The Bicentennial History of La Feria.

Researched and written before 1975, McNail makes use of oral history interviews from long time La Feria residents, recalling events as far back as the early 1900s. Although

McNail’s text is useful in revealing many local historical firsts and “facts,” she very much represents an Anglo perspective of La Feria history. Though McNail makes reference to early Spanish settlers of the region, such as José de Escandón, Rosa María

Hinojosa de Ballí, and local La Feria inhabitants such as the Longoria family, she designates the early Anglo settlers as the forefathers of La Feria. Furthermore, throughout her history, McNail never makes reference to the segregation that was prevalent in La Feria, alluding only briefly in her narrative to the “Mexican School.”

These are significant omissions when recounting the history of La Feria considering the strong historical memory of segregation in the minds of Mexican origin residents.

I agree with Montejano, who argues that Texas history has largely been constructed through a romantic and dramatic lens. He argues that a popular and romanticized version of southwestern history has “taken the place of explanation and interpretation” (1987:1). Anglos have used a heroic historical narrative to suppress an often violent and oppressive history forged between Mexicans and Anglos, especially in

South Texas. He asserts that history has important sociological implications that are obscured in the absence of alternative perspectives. Bearing this in mind, I have attempted to represent a counterbalance to the Anglo version of history, using key texts and interviews that focus on the Spanish and the Mexican historical experience in South

Texas and La Feria.

Land Grants and Spanish/Tejano Settlers

These were the first Texans: worthy settlers who fought the savage Indians and suffered misery… - Herminia Ballí Chavana

The area encompassing present-day La Feria was part of the Nuevo Santander

Spanish colony in the middle of the 18th century. The first inhabitants of this region, located on Mexico’s northern frontier, were indigenous peoples. Scholars have asserted that Maya, Otomie, and Nahoa, Karankawa, and Coahuiltecan Indians occupied Nuevo

Santander at different points in time before the extensive Spanish colonization in the mid-

1700s (Alonzo 1998; Chavana 2002; Menchaca 2001; McNail 1975). Spain had been unsuccessful at its colonization efforts since 1575, when Don Luis Carvajal y de la Cuera failed to incorporate the area with New Spain and to Christianize the Indians (Chavana

2002). Finally, in the middle of the 18th century, King Carlos IV proposed to “colonize, establish, christianize [sic] and protect the future dwellers the ‘Tamaulipecos’ in Nuevo

Santander” (2002:52). The viceroy chose Colonel José de Escandón to lead the colonization effort into Nuevo Santander.

In 1747, Escandón submitted his plan for settlement to the royal attorney. It was to include fourteen settlements—two on the gulf coast and twelve in what is now the

Mexican state of Tamaulipas. He envisioned that the frontier be settled by frontiersmen who would be able to handle the terrain as well as defend themselves against Indian attacks. Escandón anticipated that 436 families would settle the region (Alonzo

1998:29). As an incentive for people to settle the frontier, the king offered settlers free land grants, supplies, food, and exemption from taxes for the first five years of settlement, as well as military protection in case of Indian attacks (Chavana 2002:52).

By the end of 1748, Escandón founded the first town in Nuevo Santander, christened Santa Maria de Llera (Alonzo 1998:29). Seven years later, in 1755, Escandón believed the colonization of Nuevo Santander to be complete and wrote a report on the status of the province, making note of the difficulties and successes these early settlers had faced (Alonzo 1998:34). Among the difficulties early Spanish settlers faced were frequent rains and flooding as well as droughts. The temperamental weather patterns made town infrastructure difficult to maintain and, of course, posed challenges to the production of agriculture, including livestock (Alonzo 1998:20-21; Chavana 2002:63-65).

Furthermore, the settlements were targets of frequent Indian attacks (Alonzo 1998:24).

In order to protect settlers against these attacks and to ensure the development and

survival of these early settlements, Escandón forbade new settlers from dispersing to the countryside (43). Early residents thus maintained homes both in town and in the country.

As a result, in addition to towns, ranchos in outlying areas were common among Spanish settlement patterns in Nuevo Santander (43).

Escandón laid the foundations for settlements from Laredo south to Matamoros, establishing several villages, missions, and military forts (Chavana 2002:52-53). In

1767, satisfied that the Spanish settlers had secured their roots, the lands of Nuevo

Santander were then divided into portions, or porciones, for distribution among the first settlers of the region (Alonzo 1998:38). Land was not distributed to settlers equally; rather, it was based on “merit” and “seniority” (Alonzo 1998:36). Merit was measured by service in civilian, military, or community service, while seniority referred to the length of time settlers’ families had lived on the frontier (36).

Among the prominent military and civic leaders of Nuevo Santander was Captain

Juan José Hinojosa de la Garza. Hinojosa petitioned the Spanish Crown for a land grant, but because of the bureaucracy that lengthened the time period in which land grants were distributed, Hinojosa died before the land grant was made legal. On July 4, 1776, Rosa

Hinojosa de Ballí made a claim and application for the land grant that had been designated for her father. The Llano Grande grant, which included the area now encompassing Progreso, Mercedes, and La Feria, was awarded to Rosa Hinojosa de

Ballí’s husband, José María Ballí, who had also been involved in the Spanish military as a sergeant (Chavana 2002:53,67). José María Ballí died in 1788 and the grant was then

given to his widow, Rosa Hinojosa de Ballí (Chavana 2002:67; Government Service

Agency 1999).13

Like other settlers of the Nuevo Santander colony, the Ballí family developed their land with several farms and ranches whose headquarters were on the La Feria grant

(Alonzo 1998; Government Service Agency 1999; McNail 1975). Historian Armando

Alonzo has argued that, under both Spanish and Mexican governance, ranching and commerce were the basis of the economy of the Lower Rio Grande Valley (1998:67). He asserts that Hispanic settlers took advantage of the open land available to them and utilized their long history and knowledge of ranching to raise stock (67). Indeed, the

Ballí family, who had come to dominate the region surrounding the present-day city of

La Feria, used their land to graze large herds of cattle, sheep, and goats (Chavana

2002:53). Furthermore, they cultivated crops including beans, corn, squash, and sugar cane (56).

José María Ballí and his wife, Rosa Hinojosa de Ballí, lived in Reynosa but spent much of their time at their La Feria ranch, which was called “El Rancho de la Soledad”

(Chavana 1998:32-33). The couple had three sons, one of whom, José Nicolás, studied and was ordained a priest in Spain in 1795. According to one historical account, when

José Nicolás returned from his studies abroad, his mother celebrated his homecoming with a religious fiesta, inviting neighbors and friends. “She threw real pesetas (silver coins) from the balcony to the people who were celebrating. They jumped with joy and

13 The greater Ballí family owned seven land grants that composed much of the land in the Rio Grande Valley, including the Llano Grande, La Feria, Las Mestenas, Ojo de Agua, El Melado, San Salvador del Tule, and Padre Island land grants (McNail 1975). 49

shouted Feria! Feria! Feria! (meaning loose coins).14 That is how the rancho obtained its name ‘La Feria’” (Chavana 2002:33). The Ballí family then built a chapel for their son, the first chapel on the northern side of the Rio Grande, so that he could minister to the people and baptize “babies and Indians” (33).

The Ballí family retained control of the La Feria land grant through the period when Mexico gained its independence from Spain (1810-1821), but later began to sell it in parcels.15 In 1841, Yrineo Longoria bought 24 square leagues of land from Doña Ballí.

This property spanned the northern boundary of present-day Cameron County and extended to the Rio Grande River to the south. It included what are now Santa Rosa, La

Feria, and Bluetown. The Longoria family built one of the earliest ranch houses in La

Feria in 1880 on the corner of what is now Central Park, calling it “Las Enaguas.”

Although that house was destroyed in the 1920s, another house commissioned by the

Longoria family still stands in La Feria today. The Longoria House was constructed in

1909 and today carries a Texas Historical Building medallion (McNail 1973).

Early Anglo Settlers to South Texas

Early settlers of Nuevo Santander had contended with frontier conditions, developing an infrastructure for their communities and local economy. They had to secure their towns against harsh weather as well as conflicts with regional Indians. By the

14 A different historical narrative presents an alternate version of how the town of La Feria received its name. According to McNail (1975), Rosa Hinojosa de Ballí was known to throw annual fiestas at her ranch. The parties grew in fame so that people would often say, “Vamos a la feria (the fair).” 15 I would be remiss not to mention that, especially in the period following the Mexican American War and the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1846, the larger Ballí family began to lose their land to Anglo settlers who used various illegal means, including violence, to steal land (Alonzo 1998; Chavana 2002). 50

time Anglo settlers began to arrive, Hispanic settlers had spent over a hundred years establishing their towns and ranchos. Historian David Montejano (1987) argues that, after the war for Texas independence in 1836 and its subsequent annexation by the

United States in 1845, early Anglo settlers to South Texas incorporated themselves

“peacefully” into the existing social and economic structure of Tejano society.

Montejano (1987) argues that, in the mid-1800s, much of South Texas was socially and economically organized by a peace structure. He explains that this structure enabled the victors to maintain law and order throughout the conquered region without the constant use of force. He argues that

such a peace structure was characterized by two major aspects: one, the subordination of Mexicans to Anglos in matters of politics and authority; and two, the accommodation between new and old elites (1987:34).

This social structure was maintained through various types of Anglo and Mexican social, political, and economic negotiations. In Laredo, he notes, where the peace structure was at its best, there was a tacit racial division of labor. Mexicans would farm and ranch while their Anglo counterparts would run the local commerce; Mexicans had control of city politics while Anglos controlled county politics. Furthermore, this peace structure was solidified by kinship ties. Often Anglo men would marry Mexican women; these strategic marriages allowed landed Mexican elite families to maintain the class privilege afforded to them by property. On the other hand, it was also a “peaceful” way for Anglos to obtain more land. Becoming family, Montejano argues, either through marriage or godparenthood, “served to create an effective authority” that violent measures alone

would not be able to secure. Finally, he suggests that many Mexican elites, particularly in the Lower Rio Grande Valley, learned to get along with Anglos by “'overlooking whatever misfortunes fell on the lower class of Mexicans’” (36).

La Feria’s social relations of that epoch do not fit perfectly into the peace structure model for various reasons. During the mid-1800s, there were not a significant number of Anglos in La Feria to make such a structure necessary or even plausible. Even so, the peace structure model is useful to understand the class division among Mexican origin people in South Texas and the ways their social relations with Anglos differed.

From the onset of Mexican-Anglo social relations, Mexican elites were able to intermingle with Anglos and, because of that, were afforded business and educational privileges that working class Mexicans would not possess for generations to come.

Nevertheless, in the years following the initial Anglo migration to La Feria, these class exceptions became more infrequent.

Illustration 1. Street Scene of La Feria, 1920 Source: The Robert Runyon Photograph Collection, [03014], The Center for American History, The University of Texas at Austin.

The Railroad and the New Social Order

Thus, La Feria was back in the running as a city because town lots and farm land sold rapidly. The story is told that prospective buyers, being brought in by various land companies… became alarmed about the land situation and wired ahead about specific property, fearing it might all be sold before they arrived. - Eddie McNail

Anglo settlement and development around La Feria began in 1907. S.J. “Duke”

Schnorenberg and other developers from Minnesota purchased a six thousand acre strip of land that encompassed La Feria. Two years later, he formed the La Feria Townsite

Company, the same year that a post office was established in La Feria. Schnorenberg built the La Feria Hotel in 1910 on the corner of Old Highway 83. Also in 1910, another early Anglo settler, Bailey Dunlap, established the Cameron County Bank of La Feria.

These modern developments connected La Feria more easily to neighboring town sites and industries, which were also rapidly being populated by Anglo settlers. It was the introduction of the railroad, however, that dramatically changed the structure of La Feria as well as its neighboring Valley towns.

The railroad tracks that run through La Feria are laden with historical, economic, and social significance. The development of the railroads changed both the social and the economic character of many towns in South Texas. The arrival of railroads brought a new kind of industry as well as new people to the region. Prior to the introduction of the railroad, a ranch-based economy dominated the region. Anglos and Mexican elites lived a delicate economic and social balance where they conducted business together and intermarried, many times for the purpose of merging property. The railroad facilitated

the shift from ranching to farming as a primary regional industry. It also brought a new population of Anglos, who did not distinguish between Mexican elites and working class

Mexicanos. The new industry coupled with the new population of Anglos gave rise to racial and class stratified and segregated towns.

The railroad arrived in the Rio Grande Valley (the Magic Valley, as it came to be advertised) in 1904. Financed by leading businessmen in the region, the railroad connected Brownsville with the Corpus Christi terminal of the Missouri Pacific railroad

(Montejano 1987:107). The railway did not take off, however, until it was connected to the San Antonio line in 1909. Once they were firmly connected to outside markets, ranchers began to break up their own land holdings into smaller parcels and sell them to northern colonists (107). Montejano asserts that “with the railroad came farmers, and behind them came land developers, irrigation engineers, and northern produce brokers”

(107). These new settlers were not ranchers and not necessarily interested in maintaining an economy based on ranching. Land speculators saw farming as a more lucrative economic activity because they could buy large amounts of land and sell them in smaller tracts to farmers for profit.

Early Anglo settlers in La Feria recognized the importance of the railroad to the further development of their town. Although the first freight train made a stop in La

Feria in 1910, the nearest station was in Bixby, one mile west. According to one local historian, the only railroad stop made in La Feria was to pick up mail, which was hung on a post; there was no stop made for passengers or freight (McNail 1975:9). After some failed attempts to obtain their own railroad station, some local Anglo residents decided to

take matters into their own hands. Operating heavy jacks to raise the Bixby station off its foundation and rolling it on a makeshift platform down the tracks to La Feria, early

Anglo La Ferians effectively stole Bixby station in 1912 (McNail 1975:9).

The railroad stop in La Feria connected the town with the greater U.S. economy, shifting local industry from ranching to farming. La Feria fit squarely into the larger economic trend in South Texas, which Montejano describes as an “agricultural revolution.” Bearing in mind that the Census during that time period redefined what constituted a “farm,” Montejano argues that the aggregate data indicate a stark shift in the local economy toward farming. He states that the number of farms increased dramatically, while the average farm size decreased. He asserts that this shift indicates the conversion of ranches into farm land as well as the reclamation of unused land in the region for farming. Specifically in Cameron County, in 1910 there were 709 farms with an average size of 770.1 acres. Ten years later there were 1,507 farms averaging 198.6 acres, and by 1930 the 2,936 farms of the region averaged 45.6 acres (1987:109). This dramatic increase in the number of farms in the region confirms the rapid acquisition of land to which McNail refers in the above passage regarding La Feria.

The population growth that La Feria experienced during this period further illustrates its prime position as a rail stop town in the midst of the region’s rapidly expanding economy. In 1915, La Feria city records indicate that the town had a population of 200, one bank, two churches, and weekly newspaper called the La Feria

Leader. By 1925, City estimates place the population between 236 and 825 (Government

Service Agency 1999). Eight years later, in 1933, La Feria was incorporated, boasting a

population of 1,594, along with ninety businesses (Government Service Agency 1999).

Over the span of sixteen years, the town’s population increased eightfold.

It is important to consider who the new immigrants to South Texas of this time period were and the effect they had, not only on the local economies, but also on the culture of the cities they began to inhabit. Montejano argues that the Anglos who were new migrants to the region did not have the same understanding of the social system that the previous Anglo inhabitants had; they did not make a distinction between the laboring and aristocratic classes of Mexicans (115). Because the landed Mexican elite had been losing its political and economic clout since the mid-1800s and because Anglo farmers recruited and employed large numbers of Mexicans as farm laborers, new Anglo residents began to conflate the two previously distinct classes. The effects of this racial and class conflation was perhaps felt most strongly by the old Mexican elite. The following statement by Jovita Gonzalez illustrates this phenomenon.

We, Texas-Mexicans of the border, although we hold on to our traditions, are proud of our race, are loyal to the United States, in spite of the treatment we receive by some of the new Americans. Before their arrival, there were no racial or social distinctions between us. Their children married ours, ours married theirs, and both were glad and proud of the fact. But since the coming of the ‘white trash’ from the north and middle west we felt the change. They made us feel for the first time that we were Mexicans and that they considered themselves our superiors (quoted in Montejano 1987:115).

Interestingly, Gonzalez distinguishes between classes of whites the way long-standing

Anglos distinguished between classes of Mexicans. She makes reference to the “peace structure” of which Montejano writes, noting the so-called ethnic harmony that existed before the influx of new Anglos to the region. For the first time, Gonzalez and other

“Texas-Mexicans” of her class are made to feel like “Mexicans.” The significance of class among the Mexican origin community in Texas lessens and the significance of race at this juncture increases.

Montejano argues that the railroad brought enough Anglos from other parts of the country that White Texans no longer had to admit Mexicans into their social circles.

Intermarriages, which had been common during the early period of Anglo settlement in

Texas, began to decline. Anglos were now able to form their own, racially exclusive societies (1987:92). The delicate political and economic balance of the peace structure, thus, began to more fully erode.

South Texas political, economic, and social society was now open to a completely different kind of social organization, that of segregation. Montejano argues that segregation was the formation of a new society, with new class groups and new class relations (163). Simply stated, farmers were Anglo and their laborers were Mexican. He argues that in those places that retained their character as “ranching” towns, Mexicans experienced less segregation than in farming towns. To Montejano, segregation was largely propelled by a shift in the mode of production. New farm labor societies proceeded on the basis of what he calls “simple racial exclusions” (1987:163). By emphasizing the shift in the political economy from ranching to farming, the subsequent racialized division of labor, and the decline of the Mexican elite in South Texas,

Montejano provides an important basis by which to understand Anglo/Mexican segregation in the region. It is nonetheless important to place these local economic and political shifts within a larger American context.

Nation Building and Race

The late 18th century marked an intense period of nation building for the United

States. Not only was the nation expanding its geographical boundaries west, early U.S. leaders were also forging an American identity. In this sense, early nation building projects involved establishing geographical, external boundaries as well as internal boundaries that determined membership and belonging to the nation. Historian Ronald

Takaki (1990) has persuasively argued that the process of nation building was largely shaped by the relationship of White Americans to Blacks and Native Americans. He asserts that racist attitudes toward Blacks and Native Americans enabled the United

States not only to establish an American identity in White, Anglo Saxon terms, but also to justify exploitation of people of color within the ever-expanding boundaries of the nation (Takaki 1990). I do not argue that Mexican origin people fit into the model Takaki presents of Blacks and Native Americans during this early historical period.

Nevertheless, I find his discussion useful to understanding the national racial tenor leading up to the conquest and annexation of Mexican territory. I would like to join other scholars in arguing that these early racial attitudes shaped the way Whites perceived and treated Mexicans, specifically in Texas (Takaki 1990; Oboler 1995; de Leon 1983).

Racist ideologies were used as a justification for the gross exploitation of Black labor as well as the displacement and slaughter of Native Americans. White Americans often viewed Blacks as either "savage" or "child-like." This popularized a justification for the systematic racist exploitation of Blacks in the labor market. Aside from the

institution of slavery that clearly located Blacks in a caste beneath their White masters,

Black exploitation was also very much present in the free North. In addition to the segregation that they experienced in the North, Blacks were repressed economically as democracy was accessible to White men only (Takaki 1990:111). Takaki argues that greater economic opportunity for Whites meant greater economic proscription for Blacks.

Because they were unable to find work in the skilled sector, Blacks were often forced into menial jobs. He states that the "skilled/unskilled stratification of the labor market had a caste pattern: It located blacks at the bottom of the occupational scale" (111).

Takaki argues that, in the late 18th and 19th centuries, White Americans subscribed to a kind of "metaphysics" of Indian hating. In the popular literature and media of the time, Native Americans were portrayed as either barbaric savages or children who needed to be saved (or killed if saving was not an option). Whites believed that displacing them from their lands was actually for the benefit of Native Americans; Whites were sure that they could make better use of the appropriated areas (81). This mentality enabled expansionists to take over Indian land with a clear conscience. Anglos used similar justifications for the subsequent appropriation of Mexican lands. De Leon argues that

Anglo Americans transferred onto Mexicans “a pseudo-scientific lore acquired from generations of interactions with blacks and Indians” (1983:8). He argues that Anglos viewed Mexicans as having a defective morality, which led to assumptions about their work ethnic, their sexuality, and their intelligence. One of Texas’ first and most famous

Anglo settlers, Stephen F. Austin, declared, before the annexation of Texas, “My object, the sole and only desire of my ambitions since I first saw Texas, was to redeem it from

the wilderness – to settle it with an intelligent honorable and interprising [sic] people”

(quoted in de Leon 1983:3). Austin’s statement belies his sentiment toward those

Mexicans who had already settled the territory as not possessing said intelligence or honorable and enterprising qualities. Texas would flourish only in the hands of Anglo settlers.

Suzanne Oboler (1995) concurs that the U.S. ideology of Manifest Destiny was largely propelled by a belief in the superiority of White Anglo Saxon Protestant

Americans, noting that declarations of racial superiority, especially in the popular media, provided the justification for expansion of the nation’s boundaries (34). She suggests that despite the expansion of the nation’s boundaries, Mexicans, whom the border crosses, are viewed as “foreign” and excluded from the way the national community was imagined

(34). Likewise, if, as Takaki and Oboler argue, an American identity is forged against

Blacks, Native Americans, and “foreign Others,” then those people of color within the nation’s boundaries are viewed as un-American and outside the scope of the national imagined community.

Oboler argues that, especially in the period following the Civil War, the internal boundaries of exclusion and inclusion within the imagined national community were institutionalized through de jure and de facto segregationist practices in relation to previously enslaved African Americans (1995:19). While Mexicans did not have to contend with incorporation into the United States based on a legacy of slavery, they, too, struggled with issues of citizenship and exclusion from Anglo spheres of influence. The

following section will speak to some of the general characteristics of Mexican segregation in the U.S. Southwest, in Texas, and in La Feria.

Across the Tracks: Characteristics of Mexican Segregation

Perhaps the real genesis of Mexican segregation occurs, as Montejano suggests, in the period when the Texas economy shifted from ranching to farming. De Leon asserts, however, that Anglos’ negative racial attitudes toward Mexicans lent themselves to the discriminatory treatment of Mexicans even in the early days of Anglo settlement in Texas

(1983). Montejano himself concedes that one of the central tenets to the effectiveness of the peace structure was that Mexican elites, clinging to their Spanish heritage, turn their heads to the discriminatory treatment of their working class Mexican counterparts. The differences in the way that Anglos treated Mexicans in Texas at this early juncture set the stage for the inconsistent way segregation would be applied to Mexicans in the U.S.

Southwest in general and in Texas in particular.

Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) was perhaps the most powerful legal ruling supporting practices of racial segregation in the United States, legalizing all forms of social segregation including school segregation (Menchaca 1993). In the Plessy ruling, the

Supreme Court granted the states rights to determine who was considered white and nonwhite for the purposes of segregation. Because of the ambiguous racial status of

Mexican origin people, it was often unclear whether they should be treated as white or as

Indian. There were several local and state cases brought to trial to determine the legality

of Mexican segregation; these cases usually sought to determine the racial status of

Mexicans in order to make a ruling (Menchaca 1993).

In Texas, the case of Independent School District v. Salvatierra was the first to evaluate a local school district’s segregationist policies toward Mexican children

(Orozco, “Del Rio ISD v. Salvatierra”). In 1930, Jesús Salvatierra and other Mexican parents hired lawyer John L. Dodson to file a lawsuit against the school district, alleging that Mexicans were being denied the privileges of “other white races.” In May of 1930,

Judge Joseph Jones decided in favor of Salvatierra, granting an injunction (Orozco, “Del

Rio ISD v. Salvatierra”). This ruling was only a partial victory for the Mexican community because it did not challenge the segregation of “non-white” Mexicans

(Menchaca 2001). In fact, González (1990) argues that the Salvatierra case “enunciated the doctrine that Mexicans could not be legally segregated … on the basis of race … that the only basis for separate schooling for Mexicans was educational (language, culture, etc.)” (1990:28). Indeed when the Salvatierra case was taken to the Court of Appeals of

Texas, testimony by the superintendent maintained the rationale for the segregation of

Mexican students was predominantly for pedagogical purposes (Independent School

District v. Salvatierra, 1930). He cited the fact that many Mexican children migrated with their parents to perform farm labor and missed several months of school as well as their English-language difficulties. The superintendent testified to the Texas Court of

Appeals that segregation was to Mexican children’s educational benefit and would address their “peculiar” needs (Independent School District v. Salvatierra, 1930). The

Texas Court of Appeals voided the earlier court’s injunction in October 1930 granting

power to the school district to segregate Mexican students (Orozco, “Del Rio ISD v.

Salvatierra”).

The outcomes of these types of court cases throughout the Southwest were varied, and there was no consistent legal precedent that would establish de jure segregation for

Mexicans in the United States. Even the court cases that ended with a ruling in favor of

Mexican segregation were not consistently applied. Nevertheless, Mexican origin people were segregated from whites all over the Southwest. By the early 1930s, ninety percent of Texas schools and eighty-five percent of California schools teaching Mexican students were racially segregated (Menchaca 1993:598; Montejano 1987:160). Justifications for the segregation of Mexican origin students in the schools included race, but more often relied on arguments about Mexican students’ language ability, hygiene, alleged intelligence deficiencies, and inherent inferiority (Gonzalez 1990; Menchaca 1993;

Montejano 1987; San Miguel 1987). This range of factors led to a degree of inconsistency as to how Mexican origin children were segregated in the schools.

Outside of the schools, Mexican origin people experienced segregation in different ways in various cities and towns throughout the Southwest. Montejano points to the fact that segregation was stronger in towns with farming economies versus those that maintained ranch economies (1987). He contends that Mexicans experienced greater or less segregation based on the local politics of a city or town, often depending on the strength of the farmers and/or merchant class. Menchaca argues that oftentimes skin color was a determining factor in whether or not Mexican origin children were placed in segregated schools (1993). My interviews with La Feria residents reveal that Mexican

origin children whose parents were business owners within the Mexican community were permitted to attend white schools and were often tracked into college prep classes while their more working class counterparts were placed in lower level classes. The degree of segregation also depended on the amount of opposition presented by the local Mexican origin community (Montejano 1987:242)

While it is important to note the inconsistency with which segregation was applied to Mexican origin people in the United States, it is equally important to recognize the prevalence of segregationist practices toward Mexicans throughout the Southwest. In the Rio Grande Valley, the same railroad that facilitated a shift in the local economy toward farming, increased the arm of American influence and industry, and delivered carloads of new Anglos to the region also served to divide Valley towns into two stratified communities—one Anglo and one Mexican. This pattern of two racially divided towns within a town was prevalent throughout South Texas (Foley 1988; Madsen 1973;

Richardson 1999; Rubel 1966). Montejano asserts that the physical characteristics of these two neighborhoods testified to the dramatic social hierarchy between them. He describes, “American neighborhoods of handsome wood frame houses, paved streets, and enclosed sewers stood in sharp contrast with Mexican towns of corrugated tin shacks, dirt roads and outdoor privies” (1987:168). The “American” and “Mexican” towns in La

Feria exhibited these kinds of physical discrepancies.

Map 4. City grid of present-day La Feria delineated to show area of historical town site.

Figure 1 is a map that highlights the areas of La Feria that were part of its original town site. A quick look at this map shows that the housing lots in the residential area north of the railroad tracks are significantly smaller than the housing lots south of the tracks. They are comparable to the lots of the business section along South Main Street.

Unlike those properties, however, which were designed for town people to frequent small business establishments, people were expected to live in the crowded conditions of the

Mexican side of town. The current City planner informed me that the small lots on the north side of town were designated and approved by La Feria’s original city planner for

Mexican residents. Many of the residences on the north side of town were so-called

“shotgun” houses. They were narrow homes with a few large rooms off of one long hallway running through the house; a person could fire a shotgun and the bullet would sail through the hallway without hitting any walls. Each house was conceived to occupy just enough room on the lot to leave five feet from house to property line, so that two homes next to each other would be ten feet apart, the minimal amount of distance to be in compliance with fire safety codes.

Figure 1 shows the residential areas on the south side of the railroad track designated housing lots nearly four times the size of the those on the north side of town.

Not only were residents of the “American” side of town afforded much more space, there was generally better infrastructure in their neighborhoods, including sidewalks, gutters, street dividers, and landscaping. One must also recognize that all of La Feria’s original public buildings, where official City business was conducted, were located south of the railroad tracks, on the Anglo side of town.

Mexican/Anglo segregation manifested itself in a variety of ways in La Feria apart from residential segregation. In 1925 a group of concerned citizens approached the

School Board about the problem of “overcrowding” in La Feria Schools. They demanded of the Board a new Ward School to be constructed north of the railroad tracks where

Mexican children could attend (The La Feria News 3/20/25). By September of 1927, in addition to the La Feria high school, the junior high school, and the grammar school, there was also a Mexican School as well as a Negro School [sic] (The La Feria News

9/2/27). The Mexican School, later to be renamed Sam Houston Elementary School, was for Mexican children enrolled in first through third grades. Although the people who had initially demanded the Mexican school stated that it was to ease the problem of overcrowding, the justification for the construction of the school quickly shifted to helping develop English language skills (Armour 1932). After the third grade, Mexican students were allowed to attend school on the Anglo side of the tracks to complete elementary school, junior high and high school. The number of Mexican students enrolled, however, dwindled in each progressive grade (Armour 1932). I will return to a discussion of that trend in a later chapter.

Illustration 2. Mexican cemetery in La Feria, c. 1920. Source: The Robert Runyon Photograph Collection, [03023], the Center for American History, The University of Texas at Austin.

In addition to school segregation, the La Feria Cemetery, which is now a Texas historical landmark, initially did not allow Mexicans to be buried in its plots. One long- time local Mexican resident shares her memories of the 1920s and ‘30s:

Eran duros esos tiempos. Nunca se me ha olvidado todo lo que hacían [los americanos]. Había un cemeterio donde eran puros americanos. Uno [un mexicano] tenía que ir al Rancho Solis o a la Capilla [para enterar a los muertos]. De que había discriminación!

Those were difficult times. I never have forgotten what the Anglos did. There was a cemetery that was all Anglo. If you were Mexican, you had to go to Rancho Solis or La Capilla to be buried. In all things, there was discrimination!

McNail’s text (1975) confirms this woman’s memory by listing the names of the first families buried in the La Feria cemetery. Despite the fact that Mexican origin people had occupied the region surrounding La Feria since the mid 18th century, none of the first families buried in the La Feria cemetery had Spanish surnames.

A final example of the kind of segregation experienced by the Mexican population in La Feria occurred within local churches. In 1947, The La Feria News announced services at a Mexican Baptist Church for the first time. One longtime Anglo resident recounted to me that the Mexican Baptist Church had started out as a mission of the Anglo Baptist Church, but was soon able to function on its own. This new Baptist church for Mexicans was located on the north side of the railroad tracks. Though the

Baptist church catered to Mexican religious, especially during that early time period, the primary religion of the Mexican population in La Feria was Catholicism. There was never a separate Mexican Catholic church, but parishioners recall segregation within the

sanctuary. The old Catholic church, which has since been converted into a small chapel, was constructed such that there were two long columns of pews facing the altar. Anglos sat in the left section of pews and Mexicans were expected to sit in the right section. In my interviews with Mexican residents, several recounted to me that there was an Anglo usher who would make them feel “very uncomfortable” if they were to sit in the wrong section of pews.16

The above examples illustrate that segregation was a reality for Mexican origin people in La Feria. Oboler emphasizes the fact that after the Plessy v. Ferguson case in

1896, segregation became a reality for nonwhite people in the United States by law and

“by custom” (1995:31). She asserts, “newly and often violently created customary practices frequently came to define [Latinos’] lack of citizenship rights and to shape their experiences more clearly than the ‘law of the land’” (38). In other words, though

Mexican origin people were not legally segregated from Anglos, customary practices of segregation defined their subordinate positions in society in a similar fashion to those minorities who were legally segregated. Furthermore, Oboler suggests that segregation helped to establish the “internal boundaries of the ‘national community’ such that the public self-image of the American nation could be invoked primarily in white-only terms” (1995:31). These internal boundaries set by segregationist practices toward people of color in the United States largely determined the scope of belonging to the imagined community, clearly drawing the lines of inclusion and exclusion.

16 A new Catholic church was constructed in the early 1990s with pews in rows that form the shape of a semi-circle, so that all the parishioners may face each other as well as the altar during the Mass. 71

It is important to understand that, in their quest for racial integration in La Feria,

Mexican origin people were confronting not only local customs, but also national racial attitudes and nation-building projects. The fact that Mexican segregation was not legislated as it was in other states actually made it perhaps more difficult to root out. For years after the Civil Rights movement, Mexicans were still segregated based on allegedly non-racial rationales, such as language ability. The process of racial integration for

Mexican origin people in La Feria had to occur on various levels. In the following chapters, I will detail different moments in the town’s history when Mexican origin residents initiated or contributed to the process of racial integration in La Feria. At times, their actions were subtle and, during other moments, their actions were more dramatic.

They all involved imagining a different way that they could belong to the community and taking steps to broaden the scope of membership, making a viable space for themselves in it.

Chapter 3: Making Trouble: The Role of Mexican American Teachers in the Desegregation of La Feria Schools

The purpose of this chapter is to demonstrate the ways in which the first Mexican American women employed as teachers and teacher aids in the 1960s contributed to the process of racial integration in La Feria, Texas. In this chapter I will examine the school system as a major institution that shaped the terms of Mexican membership in the community. I argue that it promoted a segregated and racially stratified society not only through the literal separation of Mexicans from Anglos but also through the ideas and knowledge transmitted in the classroom. I contend that the school system was—and continues to be—a significant institution because it determined the roles Mexican origin people were able to assume in the community, positioning them as subordinate to Anglos economically, socially, and politically. This chapter will focus on the social actions of the first Mexican origin teachers and teacher aids employed by the La Feria school district. I will demonstrate that these women used their gender and class positionalities to enter the schools as professionals and paraprofessionals. I will argue that within the walls of a segregated school, they used their ethnicity—specifically, their language and cultural understanding—to provide more meaningful educational experiences for their Mexican origin students. This chapter contributes to my larger arguments in several ways. It demonstrates the process of community, illustrating how Mexican American teachers actively re- imagine the scope of belonging in the community, radically asserting to their students that they could assume whatever position they wanted in society – equal to their Anglo counterparts. Furthermore, this chapter demonstrates how the interplay between a local

institution and the everyday actions of Mexican American women promoted social change, specifically racial integration within the community.

In 1925, Anglo residents of the community of La Feria lobbied for the construction of Sam Houston Elementary School on the north side of the railroad tracks for the sole purpose of educating Mexican origin children. Opening its doors during the academic year beginning in 1927, Sam Houston served the Mexican children of La Feria from first through third grade (Armour 1932). It would be nearly four decades, not until the mid-1960s, however, before the school district began to hire Mexican origin teachers and teacher aids. These first Mexican American teachers and teacher aids were all women and were employed to work at Sam Houston Elementary School, the so-called

Mexican school, during the mid-1960s and early 1970s.

María Paredes

In 1966 I started working as an aid for the school. They just called me. The reason they called me was because my two sisters were already teachers there. I was the only one, the only Hispanic they called. There were four of us – three Anglos and one

Hispanic. I guess I was the first aid mexicana.

That's when they started having aids. They had started earlier, but then they called me.

And that principal was the one who told me, "You need to go to college." He was the one. He said, "You go to college and I'll give you a job."

There was a lot of discrimination in those days se me hace a mí.17 The teachers

… not all of them … but I could tell that they did not like the mexicanos. See, at that time, they had all the mexicanos at Sam Houston school and all the americanos were at

Lee.

The teachers were nice; they were friendly, but you could tell… I don't know … with the kids. They never mistreated me; they were nice to me, but with the kids you could tell.

I was the aid for a lot of teachers. I was Mine's aid and the other teachers – Mrs.

Stanley, Mrs. Smith, Mrs. Jones. I used to work with several teachers.

The kids were nice. So many came from Mexico. And they were old! Some were 13 years old in second grade. That's how they used to do it back then.

And then I started going to college at night, part time. It took me seven years to finish.

The superintendent was Mr. Vail. I have to be grateful to him. He was very nice to me. He came to me and asked, "How many hours do you have?" He told me, "I would like you to start teaching. How many hours do you have?" I told him that I didn't have enough hours. I had 87 hours at the time. But he asked me, "Are you taking classes right now?" And I told him, "Yes." And he said, "Well, maybe they'll give you credit for those classes."

So I went and asked my professor if he would give me credit for the classes that I was taking. It was Professor Garza. I think that he was from Ohio or someplace. And he

17 Translation: It seemed to me that there was a lot of discrimination in those days. 75

said, "I'm going to go ahead and give you a grade." He told me that he was going to help me out porque era mexicana.18 He said, "I want you to keep coming to class, but I’m going to give you a grade right now." And I did. I kept going to class, but he gave me the grade.

I started teaching then with 90 hours, with an emergency credential.

I think that all the superintendents were very nice. To us, they were nice. Maybe because we didn't cause any trouble.

Maria Paredes was employed as a teacher aid in 1966 and then later as a teacher for Sam Houston Elementary School, where she worked for 35 years before her retirement from the education system. As one of the first Mexican Americans employed by the district, her oral history narrative offers a unique perspective about both her experiences as an educator and the experiences of Mexican children who attended Sam

Houston Elementary. Maria's reflections reveal her understanding of the distinction she is given, coming from an economically stable and relatively well-educated Mexican family, as she navigated her career path. The superintendent singled her out, actually calling her to work as an aid and then as a teacher, even before she completed all of her academic requirements. She recalls that her Anglo colleagues treated her well, but, at the same time, Maria is acutely aware of the discriminatory treatment of the Mexican origin students at the school. Maria's story, along with the narratives of the other women who were among the first Mexican American teachers and teacher aids in La Feria schools,

18Translation: Because I was Mexican 76

illuminates a perspective not typically considered within the historical narrative of segregation and integration. As relatively middle class women, they entered the highly gendered occupations of elementary school teachers and teacher aids. As Mexican

American women, they were able to navigate and critically evaluate Anglo and Mexicano spheres within Sam Houston Elementary School. I will argue that, using these positionalities, these women served in the everyday process of integration in the classroom.

In order to give historical context to their narratives, in this section I will briefly examine the general history of Mexican education in the Southwest, as well as review some specific information about the education of Mexican children in La Feria from the

1930s through the early 1960s.

The Early Education of Mexican Children

Scholars have argued that the school system has served as the major institution by which to shape young people into "citizens" of the United States. In their article,

"Conflict and Consensus in American Public Education," David Tyack and Elizabeth

Hansot state that historically "the common school was an official agency for defining and creating citizenship in ethnocultural terms" (1981:3). The general consensus among educators has been that public schools should transmit core "American" morals and values to young citizens (1981:7). Both historical and contemporary educational debates have centered around the question of what these American morals and values to be transmitted in the schools should be.

By the 1930s, both state and private agencies subjected Mexican American children to many types of Americanization projects. González (1990) persuasively argues that, from the 1930s through the 1950s, many of these Americanization efforts were born of the belief that Mexican origin people were not as socially evolved as their

Anglo counterparts. The goal of many of these Americanization programs in and outside of the schools was to promote so-called civilization (González 1990; Ruiz 1998).

Programs included English, nutrition, child rearing, hygiene, homemaking, and sewing, as well as other vocational subjects (1990:46). These types of programs were often aimed specifically at Mexican girls, who were seen as future American homemakers and the social carriers of culture (González 1990; Ruiz 1998).

Also central to the project of Americanization was the acquisition of English language skills. San Miguel (1987) states that Americanization programs were based on a curriculum that would "imbue the non-English child with the habits, customs, and ideals for which American stood and particularly to teach her or him the English language" (1987:58). González asserts that several educators throughout the Southwest equated language with culture and felt that Mexican children's learning would be retarded until their use of Spanish had been completely eradicated (1990:41).

At best, these Americanization projects throughout the Southwest had as a goal the assimilation of Mexican children to society as citizens with particular American values and ideals. However, the promotion of these American ideals was undercut by the quality of education that Mexican American children received throughout the

Southwest. San Miguel argues that "assimilationist curricular practices were in contrast

to the exclusionary ones promoted by local school administrators" (1987: 58). At a local level, Mexican students were subject to segregation from Anglo children, frequently attending school in under-resourced facilities. Various authors have described Mexican schools as substandard, often in overcrowded and dilapidated buildings with poor or no recreational facilities. Furthermore, these schools often had inadequate teaching materials, many times utilizing old textbooks unwanted by local Anglo schools (González

1990; Houston 2000; San Miguel 1987). With regard to instructors, González asserts that many teachers in Mexican schools were generally paid less than those who worked in

Anglo schools and that moving from a Mexican school to an "American" school was often viewed as a promotion for teachers (1990: 22).

The inferior physical structures of Mexican schools in the Southwest underscored the discriminatory treatment of Mexican children within said schools. As I mentioned earlier, Mexican children were subject to an English only curriculum. Although the merits of English immersion as a method for language acquisition have been debated, many Mexican children were further punished for speaking Spanish both in their classrooms and on the playgrounds (Acosta 2003; González 1990). In terms of actual instruction, teachers and administrators typically held lower expectations of Mexican students. The fact that many Mexican children entered school as monolingual Spanish speakers was viewed as a handicap. Furthermore, early intelligence testing promoted the idea that Mexican children were "naturally" the intellectual inferiors of their Anglo counterparts in the school system. These tests rarely took into consideration the limited

resources both at home and at school that left students unprepared to perform well on such examinations (González 1990).

Another problem that Mexican children encountered in their education during the early part of the twentieth century was a lack of enforcement of the compulsory schooling law (Acosta 2003; González 1990; San Miguel 1987). Oftentimes Mexican origin children would miss school in order to work to help support their families. Within agricultural regions this could occur more frequently during that particular area's crop seasons. However, many Mexican families, especially in the Rio Grande Valley, were migrant farm workers during summers in Arizona, New Mexico, and California in order to supplement the meager incomes they earned in Texas. Summer migrations often began before the school year officially ended and lasted well into the fall. These work patterns coupled with the lack of enforcement of the compulsory schooling laws led many Mexican children to miss large period of school instruction and, ultimately, to be retained. It was not infrequent, even through the early 1960s, to see teenage students in

Mexican elementary schools (González 1990).

Circumstances such as these were clear obstacles in the education of Mexican origin students throughout the Southwest. Indeed, several researchers have shown that, prior to the 1970s, Mexican students were far more likely to drop out of school than their

Anglo counterparts (Armour 1931; González 1990; San Miguel 1987). Although the La

Feria School District did not keep statistical information about the performance of their students during this early period based on race, there are a few sources that reveal this trend in the decreased enrollment of Mexican students in La Feria to be true. A survey of

yearbooks reveals a significant drop in Mexican students enrolled from their freshman to senior year in high school (see graph).

Figure 1. Anglo Student Enrollment, 1950-1970

Figure 2. Spanish Surname Student Enrollment, 1950-1970

Those Mexican origin students who did complete their education through high school contended with issues such as tracking and placement in vocational education programs. González (1990) asserts that in the first half of the twentieth century, there were disproportionately high numbers of Mexican children enrolled in vocational training. He states that "in theory and practice [vocational training was for] … students of inferior mental ability" (77). His implication is that the placement of such high numbers of Mexican origin students in vocational training betrayed teacher and administrator attitudes toward these students as intellectually inferior. González argues that, ideally, vocational training should have been for those students who had not been adequately prepared for a college as a stepping stone toward middle class status. The noted problem was that Mexican origin students were placed in vocational training without being given fair preparation or, in some cases, encouragement to pursue higher education.

Although there are no statistics to inform us of how many Mexican origin graduates of the La Feria school system were placed in vocational training, there are a few notable cases that demonstrate attitudes toward Mexican students in the early 1960s.

One such case is that of a young Mexican American woman who graduated near the top of her class from La Feria High School. Despite her rural, working class family background, she was one of the few Mexican origin members of the school's honor society throughout high school and was voted Best All-Around Girl during her senior year. She applied and was accepted to a few colleges in South Texas and received a scholarship to pursue her college endeavors from the local Elks Lodge. However, she

recounted in an interview to me that when she had gone in to see her high school counselor about her future plans, she was encouraged to become a beautician, like other bright Mexican American girls who had graduated before her. This woman went on to graduate from college and ultimately complete her Ph.D., and is now a full professor in the School of Education at the University of Texas at Brownsville.

In sum, prior to the 1960s and 1970s, the educational experiences of Mexican origin children in the Southwestern United States seemed to promote "cross purposes"

(San Miguel 1987). On the one hand, Mexican children were to be inculcated with

"American" ideals, morals, values, and culture, including the rapid acquisition of the

English language. This type of education was a means by which to shape young Mexican students into American citizens. On the other hand, this American education was promoted within segregated Mexican schools, which were typically inferior facilities with poor educational resources. Furthermore, low expectations of Mexican students, lack of enforcement of the compulsory schooling laws, tracking, and vocational training contributed to high dropout rates of Mexican students and a continual funneling of these students into the working class sector. In other words, although Mexican children were educated to be American citizens, at a very early age, they were relegated to second-class citizen status. They were inculcated with ideas about the U.S. imagined community, but they were not granted the same access to it as their Anglo counterparts.

On national and local levels, the policies and practices of Anglo-dominated school systems reflected discriminatory attitudes toward Mexican origin people in the U.S.

Southwest. Furthermore, the educational system played a major role in determining the

social and economic trajectories of Mexican origin people, leading them to subordinate roles in society. I contend that these national attitudes and practices were prevalent in La

Feria from the mid-1920s until the mid-1960s, when the district began to hire Mexican

American teachers and teacher aids for the first time.

This chapter is dedicated to a moment in La Feria's history when the process of racial integration begins to show its first signs in the local school system. It will demonstrate how change in the community occurred through institutional measures and through the everyday actions of individual women. Though the school administration takes the first step toward integration in hiring its first Mexicana teachers and teacher aids, it is actually these women educators who bring to bear the everyday practice of integration, providing a different classroom environment for Mexican origin children and promoting new ideas about what Mexican children could achieve both in the classroom and in the larger community of La Feria. I will show how Mexican American women educators facilitated racial integration by promoting ideas about racial equality, even within the walls of a segregated school.

The Making of Mexicana Educators

It is my contention that while the La Feria school system took the initiative in recruiting the first Mexicana teachers and teacher aids at Sam Houston Elementary

School, the women themselves brought a special kind of cultural capital to the classroom that ultimately facilitated the process of racial integration in the schools and in the community of La Feria.

Women's Personal and Educational Backgrounds

The women who became La Feria's first Mexicana educators were exceptional in that they completed college degrees during a time when it was rare for Mexicans to complete high school, let alone pursue a college education. It is significant to note the common social and economic characteristics of these women to show the factors that contributed to their academic and professional achievements.

As perhaps expected, the first Mexicanas employed at Sam Houston Elementary

School were of a slightly higher socioeconomic status than the majority of the Mexicano community at the time. Three of these teachers were sisters and their family owned a barbershop and a beauty salon on the Mexican side of town (el pueblo mexicano). Two women's parents owned stores in the neighboring towns of Santa Rosa and Mercedes.

Although this factor undoubtedly contributed to their educational opportunities, economic capital was not the only reason for their academic success.

Isabel Treviño's narrative demonstrates that her family was a strong influence on her decision to become an educator.

Isabel Treviño

I come from an education family. There are six girls in my family and out of six, four of us are educators.

My mom was born in Robstown, but then she moved and went to school in Santa

Rosa. At that time, Santa Rosa only had an elementary school. This was back in the twenties. But there was a boarding school in Pharr. So she went to that boarding school

for high school. My mom graduated from there in May of 1931. I have her diploma from there. I have it in a frame.

Then she went to Texas A & I in Kingsville for two years. After two years of college, you could start teaching. So she started teaching and that's when she met my dad. Then they got married and she didn't go to school any more.

My father was from Mexico. All the education he had, he got over there. My father didn't know English. My mother was the one who knew English. But my mom wanted us to speak Spanish at home because of my dad. So when I started school, I didn't know English. I had to go to Beginner's and then first grade. I actually had thirteen years of school instead of twelve. All of us who spoke Spanish had thirteen years instead of twelve.

I started school in Santa Rosa and I graduated from there.

My mom made a point that whatever she had to do, she wanted us to finish our education. Since my dad came from Mexico, he came from a different way of thinking.

Other men would tell him, your daughters are old enough now. They don't have to go to school. They should be working. See, because my dad had a store and we all used to help. We grew up in the store. We would work after school, on weekends, summers.

But my mom wanted us to finish our education and we all graduated from high school.

My oldest sister was first. She went to UT Pan American after she graduated from high school, and she started teaching in Santa Rosa with two years of college. She's the one I was telling you that the school is named after her.

My second sister studied to be an LVN. But then she got married and went to

California. After that, she didn’t work any more.

My third sister graduated from high school and then she went to Texas Women's

University in Denton.

I was next. I also wanted to go to Texas Women's University. But, at the time, I had braces on and the doctor who was fixing my teeth wanted me to stay. Back then, they would check me very often, every few months. That was when they first started putting on braces!

So I went to UT Pan American. But I said, after I get my braces off, I’m going to go to Texas Women's University. But I liked it, so I just stayed on after I got my braces off. I finished at Pan American in 1966.

My youngest sister is also a teacher. She also went to Texas Women's University.

So we come from teachers. Out of six of us, four of us are in education.

Actually, three of us are retired, but one of us is still teaching.

Mrs. Treviño's testimony demonstrates that socioeconomic status alone was not the only factor leading to her completion of a college degree. Mrs. Treviño still had to contend with acquiring English language skills when she started elementary school and spent much of her free time working in her family's store. However, it was her mother's own educational background and commitment to the education of her children that was a driving force in the academic achievement of her daughters despite certain gender expectations of them. Mrs. Treviño had the further benefit of coming from a family of

educators. Her mother had studied to be a teacher and her three older sisters had all graduated from high school and attended college or professional school, two of them becoming teachers themselves.

Other teachers in my study did not follow the same direct trajectory toward college and vocation as educators. Mrs. Morales came to teach at Sam Houston

Elementary through a more circuitous route.

Mine Morales

I graduated in 1948 from Mercedes High School. My parents had a business – a clothing business. And my dad had another job. He worked for the American Beauty

Flour Company.

I have a sister who is older than me, and my dad sent her to beauty school. When

I graduated, my dad decided to send me to business school, to study to be a secretary or a bookkeeper.

Duré allá un año y medio para sacar el diploma.19 But you know, muchas veces you go to school and you end up doing something else.

Humberto [her husband] had been working for a bodega aquí en La Feria y él sigió allí como el bookkeeper.20 I got a job working as a legal secretary in Mercedes for thirty-five dollars a week. We kept on seeing each other and then we got married in

1951. After that, I didn't work.

19 Translation: It took me a year and a half to get my diploma. 20 Translation: Humberto had been working for a packing shed here in La Feria and he kept on working there as a bookkeeper. 89

After we got married, we moved to Los Angeles for a while. A Humberto le hicieron transfer allá. Él fue primer y luego seguí yo. I followed him on the bus. I was already pregnant. I didn't really like it over there and so I decided to come back here to be with my family. Él no más duré unos dos o tres meses allá and then he came back.21

Since I was over here!

We went to Mathis for a year or so and then the same company offered him work aquí en La Feria.

Y yo ya no trabajé, just with the lawyers in Mercedes and I wasn't even there a year. I had three kids and I didn't really want to work. Pero ya cuando estaban más grandecitos, empecé a buscar trabajo.22

Nothing paid very well. Como te digo, allá en Mercedes, they were just paying thirty five dollars a week. Pero tenía una amiga en Mercedes que era maestra23 and she convinced me to go back to school.

So I started going to UT Pan Am part time. It took me six years to finish. I graduated in 1969.

Mrs. Morales' narrative is more typical of the first women employed at Sam

Houston Elementary School. There were other women who had studied to be beauticians or gone to college and studied to pursue different careers. Some completed their degrees while working in the schools. Many took time from their education and careers to marry

21 Translation: They transferred Humberto to Los Angeles. He went out there first and then I followed him… He was only there two or three months and then he came back. 22Translation: I didn't work any more … But when the kids were a little older, I started to look for work. 23 Translation: But I had a friend who was a teacher… 90

and start families. All of them, however, ultimately found themselves committed to teaching children at Sam Houston Elementary School.

The Roots of Institutional Change

It is my contention that the school district's decision to begin hiring Mexican origin teachers and teacher aids was born of particular social and historical conditions both nationally and locally. On the national front, the mid-1960s marked an epoch of social unrest and change. There were massive protests against the Vietnam War as well as the large scale civil rights movement led by Blacks in the southern states. This time period held important achievements for civil rights, with legislative measures enacted to help the nation's oppressed peoples.

Even before many of the massive civil rights movements of the mid-60s, the early

1960s marked a demographic shift in La Feria. According to newspaper reports, increased enrollment in the Mexican elementary school led to a record high overall student enrollment for the school district. That summer, the district initiated a summer language program for Spanish-speaking children to prepare them for entrance to kindergarten. In addition, the local newspaper noted a new weekly column—written in

Spanish—that detailed social events of the local Mexican origin community. As the number of students enrolled in the summer language program swelled, so did the visibility of a burgeoning middle class Mexican community in social clubs, performing social services, and publishing their weddings and other festivities in the local news.

Title I and Title III of the Elementary Secondary Education Act of 1965 were instrumental in promoting educational equity, providing funds for low-income school districts and programs for disadvantaged students. The year after it passed, Title I allowed for the employment of teacher aids in the schools, as well as providing funds to hire more instructors and renovate libraries throughout the La Feria school system. The following year, in 1967, the Head Start Program was implemented in Sam Houston

Elementary School, enrolling one hundred Mexican children at its inception. Further legislative measures, such as the Economic Opportunities Act, provided money for low- income students to attend college, often for the first time.

It is logical that the La Feria School District would seek to employ Mexican origin educators in order to help to run these newly developed programs, which targeted

La Feria's Mexican origin community. However, I propose that administrators at the school district also chose to employ Mexican origin educators in order to avoid the social unrest that was beginning to characterize neighboring towns in the Lower Rio Grande

Valley. During this time period, a Mexican American third political party called La Raza

Unida (LRU) emerged in Texas and elsewhere in the Southwestern States (Acuña 1988;

García 1990; Navarro 2000). LRU's statewide prominence manifested itself most visibly with Ramsey Muñiz's bid for governor of Texas in 1967, but the party also gained political visibility and strength in South Texas, taking control of prominent political offices in Crystal City and the Rio Grande Valley town of San Juan (García 1990;

Navarro 2000). Furthermore, the Chicano activist group MAYO (the Mexican American

Youth Organization) had been successful in organizing a walkout at Edcouch-Elsa High

School in 1968 to protest the no-Spanish rule (Richardson 1999; Barrera 2004). Perhaps even more significant was MAYO's establishment of El Colegio Jacinto Treviño in

Mercedes, Texas, only eight miles west of La Feria, in 1970. The stated mission of El

Colegio Jacinto Treviño was to "develop a Chicano with conscience and skills, [to give] the barrios a global view, [and] to provide positive answers to racism, exploitation, and oppression” (Montemayor, “Colegio Jacinto Treviño”). I maintain that these Chicano/a challenges to the Anglo political establishment were a further impetus for the school district to change the face of its teaching faculty and staff.

I would like to further propose that the school district was deliberate in whom they chose to employ as educators in La Feria. In my interviews with these teachers and other early teachers in the district, many have intimated that the superintendent of schools personally recruited them. One was approached at his family's place of business, two others received phone calls, and another was recruited at her university. The following is a testimony by one of the first Mexican Americans employed at La Feria High School:

After I got my Masters, I went to a Mexican teacher I knew to ask if he knew of any openings in the system. He told me to cut my hair and put on a tie and go see Mr. Green because he was looking for a conservative Mexican to fill the high school counselor position. I did just that and Mr. Green gave me the job.

Although this incident occurred in the early 1970s, I would like to suggest that it is significant in revealing some of the attitudes prevalent in administrative hiring practices.

Although the district may have been aiming to hire "conservative" Mexicans or those who, in the words of María Paredes, did not cause any “trouble,” I argue that the

employment of these early Mexican origin educators resulted in more than just token representation. These new educators entered their classrooms with both cultural capital and social consciousness that would lead to a significant change in the education of

Mexican children.

The Roots of Racial Integration in the Schools

As I have stated earlier, the education of Mexican children in the Southwest and

Texas in particular had been entrenched in inequalities for decades prior to the hiring of the first Mexicana teachers and teacher aids in La Feria. As the first Mexican American educators in La Feria, these women faced a long history of institutional oppression as well as other obstacles in the early years of their employment with the La Feria School

District.

Emilia Treviño

I started teaching here in La Feria in January of 1967—first grade. As far as I remember, I was the only Hispanic there. I had never had a Hispanic teacher in my whole life, so I didn't feel like it was strange to be around a bunch of Anglo teachers. I don't remember feeling like I was special.

I sort of tuned myself to the way they talked and to the way they treated me.

They were all very nice. They treated me real good. Of course, I was going around with

Mr. Treviño at the time and he was already a teacher at the high school.

I remember I was glad to have other Hispanic teachers come in.

I had Anglo aids, too. I had at least two or three—three Anglo aids. I started with one Anglo lady aid who had been there for a long time. She was very nice.

There were ladies that had been there several years and they kind of watched over me. Because you go into a new school district and you learn as you go. Of course, I had my sister in Santa Rosa and she would help me out. But each school district does things differently.

But like I tell you, I never remember having any problems because I was a

Hispanic. They treated me just like the other teachers. And my principal, too. He was an Anglo man—Sterling Prince.

As recounted earlier in this chapter, Mrs. Treviño had come from a family of educators and had an older sister who had already been teaching in the neighboring town of Santa Rosa. She experienced positive treatment by Anglo teachers and aids when first employed at Sam Houston. Interestingly, not all educators in my study experienced the same ease of transition into their positions as teachers as Mrs. Treviño.

Mine Morales

When I was still in school, en ese entonces24 is when they started coming out with the aids. And so I went to the school aquí en La Feria to apply to be an aid. Mr. Green

24 Translation: at this time 95

was the principal at the time and Mr. Vail was the superintendent. Cuando vieron que tenía25 90 hours, they told me, why don't you apply for a job as a teacher? And so I did.

Me dieron una class de retainees.26 Can you imagine? A full class! (laughs)

And me a first-time teacher. Poor kids!

Comoquiera nos dieron los slowest ones. A las americanas27 les dieron los best kids y a nosotros nos dieron los slowest ones.

En ese entonces, en Sam Houston era puros mexicanos.

Cuando empecé yo a trabajar éramos yo y las Quintana… como cuatro o cinco mexicanas. Y de allí fueron entrando más. Pero como te digo, a nosotros nos dieron los slowest kids.28

They had those tests that they do at the end of the year. And from there they rank the kids.

We could tell, you know. El principal era americano, Mr. Prince. El era quien dividía a los kids.

Yo me sentí humillada por las maestras americanas. Bueno quizás porque siempre he sido muy tímida. Pero te hacían menos porque eras mexicano.

En el lounge, we always used to be separate, pero eventually ya nos revolvíamos.

Eso fue ya cuando no eran tantas [americanas]. Se tenía uno que revolver.

25 Translation: When they saw that I had 26 Translation: They gave me a class of retainees. 27 The terms "americano" and "americana" in Spanish are used to refer to Anglo-Americans. 28Translation: In any event, they gave us the slowest ones. They gave the American teachers the best kids and they gave us the slowest ones. At that time, Sam Houston was an all Mexican school. When I started to work there, it was me, the Quintana sisters… like four or five Mexican women teaching. From there more started to enter. But like I tell you, they gave us the slowest kids. 96

Acabé en el '48. Entonces unas amigas mías estaban estudiando para ser maestra.

Eso fue cuando empezó a haber más maestras mexicanas.29

Mrs. Morales' oral testimony stands in contrast to Mrs. Treviño's narrative.

Unlike Mrs. Treviño, Mrs. Morales felt that the Anglo teachers treated her differently because she was Mexican. While Mrs. Treviño remarked that the Anglo teachers were kind to her and that they treated her well, Mrs. Morales felt that these same women would make her feel as if she were less than they were, causing her to feel "humillada." It is difficult to interpret the distinct experiences that these two women had with the Anglo teachers at Sam Houston. In her narrative, Mrs. Treviño suggests that one reason why the teachers may have treated her well was because she was "going around with" Mr.

Treviño, who was employed at the high school. During this early period, Mrs. Morales did not have a connection, so to speak, within the school system.30 Another possible explanation for the differential treatment of the two women could be that Mrs. Treviño entered Sam Houston having already completed her college degree, while Mrs. Morales began to work at the school when she was just shy of the credits she needed to be certified to teach. Finally, I would also like to suggest that their differential treatment by the Anglo teachers at Sam Houston might have been due to the different ways the two

29 Translation: The principal was an Anglo, Mr. Prince. He was the one who divided the kids. I felt embarrassed by the Anglo teachers. Well, maybe it's because I've always been very shy. But they made you feel like you were less because you were Mexican. In the lounge, we always used to be separate, but eventually we started to mix. That was when there weren't so many Anglo teachers. We had to mix. I graduated from high school in 1948. At that time I had some friends who were studying to be teachers. That's when there started to be more Mexican teachers. 30 A few years later, however, Mrs. Morales' husband would be one of the first Mexican Americans in La Feria to be elected to the School Board. 97

women were racialized. Mrs. Treviño is extremely light-skinned and could easily pass for white. Mrs. Morales, on the other hand, is darker skinned and would not necessarily pass in the same way. Though both teachers are fully bilingual and both were raised in

Mexican families, I would like to suggest that skin color may have been a factor in their different treatment by Anglo teachers.

Mrs. Paredes, whose narrative appears at the beginning of the chapter, echoes

Mrs. Treviño's sentiment that the teachers treated her well. Mrs. Paredes is also fully bilingual and Mexican of a coloring in between Mrs. Treviño and Mrs. Morales.

Interestingly, Mrs. Paredes modifies her statement about the good treatment she receives by the Anglo teachers, commenting on their treatment of the students, who were mainly

Spanish-speaking, Mexican immigrant children with working class backgrounds. She states, "There was a lot of discrimination in those days… I could tell that [the Anglo teachers] did not like the mexicanos … The teachers were nice; they were friendly, but you could tell… with the kids. They never mistreated me; they were nice to me, but with the kids you could tell." Mrs. Paredes' statement carries weight because, as a teacher aid, she worked in the classrooms of various teachers at Sam Houston. Mrs. Treviño and

Mrs. Morales perhaps were not subject to the same range of experiences of the treatment of Mexican students at Sam Houston because, as teachers (not aids), they were mostly confined to their own classrooms. Mrs. Paredes, on the other hand, witnessed various classroom settings and varied treatment of students as she moved about to help different teachers.

As these first Mexicana teachers and teacher aids made a place for themselves within Sam Houston Elementary School, contradictions in their treatment by the Anglo staff and administration were apparent. In addition to the different racializing attitudes that shaped their experiences, Mexican teachers and aids were also inconsistently encouraged and discouraged in their teaching endeavors by the Anglo administration. In her statement at the opening of the chapter, Maria Paredes clearly recalls that it was the

Anglo principal of Sam Houston Elementary who told her that she should go to college, guaranteeing her a job at his school if she did. Furthermore, Mrs. Paredes states that she

"ha[s] to be grateful" to the Anglo man who was the superintendent of the La Feria

School District at the time, who actually gave her a job just before she had completed ninety units. Mrs. Paredes remembers these men as instrumental in guiding her career as an educator. The encouragement that she received to pursue a college education was undercut for other Mexican teachers at Sam Houston. Mrs. Morales was frustrated at the beginning of her teaching career at Sam Houston by the fact that, as her first classroom assignment, the administration gave her a group of students who had been retained. In her narrative Mrs. Morales recognizes the action as an inappropriate assignment not only for her, as a first time teacher, but also for the students, who probably needed a teacher better prepared to address their special needs. Furthermore, Mrs. Morales recalls that the principal would test and rank the students, always assigning the high-performing students to the Anglo teachers and the "slowest ones" to the Mexican teachers. "We could tell," she states, asserting that the Mexican teachers at Sam Houston were aware that they were receiving unequal treatment from their principal, who was an Anglo man.

Unfortunately, these discriminatory attitudes were not limited to the Anglo administration and staff. These first Mexican American teachers at Sam Houston also recall negative attitudes about them being held by Mexican parents.

Maria Paredes

I think it made a difference to the parents. Some people still think that the Anglo teachers are better than the mexicanas. They would say, "I don't want my kid with a

Hispanic teacher. I want her with an Anglo." And that would be a mexicana! So sometimes the bolillas31 wouldn't want a Hispanic teacher and sometimes the mexicanas wouldn't either! I know that's true because I hear it. I still hear it!

Mine Morales

We went out of our way to help the kids. Las americanas no.32 They just did what they had to do.

Los mexicanos a veces pidieron que pusieran sus kids con las maestras americanas. I know some mexicanos who did that. But maybe they just wanted que their kids hablaran inglés bien.

Pero ya después, no. Habían personas que nos pidieron a nosotros porque they would see that we went out of our way [to help Mexican children].33

31 Slang term used to refer to Anglo women 32 The Anglo teachers did not. 33 Translation: Sometimes Mexican parents would ask for their kids to be placed with the Anglo teachers … but maybe they just wanted for their kids to speak English well. But afterwards, they didn't do that any 100

Despite the obstacles that these teachers faced in dealing with different—at times, discriminatory—attitudes toward them at Sam Houston from administrators, teachers, and parents, these Mexicana teachers and teacher aids recognized that their presence as

Mexican educators was invaluable to the students at Sam Houston Elementary School.

Emilia Treviño

Since I was teaching the little six-year-olds, I think they felt like they were at home with their mothers. It was their first year away from home and so it was their first teacher who was a Hispanic. I felt them like they were closer.

If you're a little Hispanic child and you've never had any contact with an Anglo and then you see your teacher who's young—I was only twenty-three years old at the time—and also Hispanic and female, I think you feel like – [she exhales, as if sighing relief]. My teacher is someone I can relate to. If I were a little Hispanic girl going to school for the first time and saw that my teacher was a Hispanic, I think that I would feel relieved. I think that's what a lot of Hispanic kids relate to—someone like their mother.

And I hope that I made a difference.

more. There would be people who would request us (the Mexican teachers) because they would see that we went out of our way. 101

In addition to perhaps providing an increased level of comfort for the students, the

Mexicana teachers at Sam Houston Elementary School also offered them a kind of cultural understanding that seemed to be lacking among the Anglo educators.

Maria Paredes

I think the kids liked the Hispanic teachers better. When I was an aid, the kids would be very open with me, especially the twelve- and thirteen-year-olds. They would say, "No me gustan Mrs. X and Mrs. Y [Anglo teachers]; son bien malas con nosotros.34"

I never saw it, but that's what they would tell me. And then they would say, "A Mrs.

Alvarez sí la quiero…"35

I think the kids were happier. Some of the parents were too. I think that the bilingual kids were happier.

I remember cuando los regañaban, agachaban la mirada. De respeto, de vergüenza, agachaban la mirada.36 But the Anglo teachers didn't understand that. They would grab the kids by the chin and say, "Look at me while I'm talking to you! Look at me!"

They didn’t understand that the kids were well-mannered. No como ahora when they'll look at you up at you and say, "What?! Whatever!"

Those kids had respect.

34Translation: They're mean to us. 35Translation: But I really love Mrs. Alvarez. 36Translation: I remember when the children would be scolded, they would look down. Out of respect, out of shame, they would look down. 102

It is most likely increased cultural understanding that led to greater comfort and even affection among Mexican children toward the Mexican origin teachers at Sam

Houston Elementary School. Mrs. Paredes' anecdote about Mexican children looking down while being scolded by teachers was echoed in Mrs. Treviño's interview as well.

Both women recount Anglo teachers' misinterpretation of the simple act of children casting their gaze downward as one of defiance and perhaps unwillingness to face up to their misdeeds. However, both Mexicana teachers realized that, on the contrary, by looking downward while being scolded, Mexican children were not only expressing respect for their teacher, but also shame at what they had done wrong. It is important to note, thus, that when children remarked to Mrs. Paredes that they did not care for their

Anglo teachers because they were "malas" or mean to them, many of these negative experiences could have been born of cultural misunderstandings. Whether cultural misunderstandings or plain mistreatment of Mexican children, I can only speculate.

However, I would like to suggest that students' negative experiences with Anglo teachers at Sam Houston had a similarly negative effect on their educational experiences. On the other hand, the increased comfort Mexican children felt with Mexican origin teachers marked new possibilities for positive educational experiences both at Sam Houston

Elementary School and beyond.

The fact that Mexican teachers fostered positive relationships with their students through cultural understanding was only part of the process that would lead to a better quality of education and increased educational attainment for the school-aged Mexican community of La Feria. These teachers also broke free from the traditional expectations

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that had been placed upon Mexican students. As I have shown earlier in the chapter,

Mexicans were largely viewed as socially and intellectually inferior to Anglos and were educated in a manner that promoted their further funneling into the working class sector.

The first Mexicana educators at Sam Houston, however, had different ideas and expectations for what their young Mexican students could achieve.

Emilia Treviño

I loved the children. I loved going to work in the morning.

Not all children learn the same way. Sometimes you have to explain things in different ways for them to understand. To see their faces when they would say, oh! Now

I know what they're talking about! That was tremendous to me.

I remember so clearly I would tell them, you can grow up to be anything you want to as long as you put your mind and soul to it. You can be president! Even though they're only six!

I would ask them, do you want to grow up like your parents, out in the fields, in the sun? They're doing the best with what they have so you can do better. My mother always said, if you want a better life, education is the way to do it.

Mrs. Treviño's narrative reveals not low expectations for her Mexican students, but a hope for their educational achievement. She recognized the need to employ different strategies in the classroom because "not all children learn the same way." Her

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commitment to their education was fueled by her belief that her students could grow up to achieve absolute parity with anyone else in society; they could even become president.

Mrs. Treviño recognized their working class backgrounds and valorized the hard work that their parents performed, telling her students that their parents' labor could be a stepping stone for them to achieve even more. She believed that education was the means to achieve their dreams.

Demanding Desegregation

In June 1971, representatives from a group of Mexican American activists presented a list of grievances to the La Feria School Board. The representatives, Antonio

Pérez and Pedro Guzman, requested a special meeting to address their grievances and demanded a petition, which, among other things, called for the end of segregation at Sam

Houston Elementary School. The School Board denied the group’s request for a special meeting, instead convening at their regularly scheduled time at the beginning of the following month. In July, the School Board presented justifications for the grievances of the group, called Colonias del Valle, and denied the request to desegregate Sam Houston

Elementary School. Not satisfied with the response of the School Board, Mr. Guzman told the local newspaper that he planned to register an official complaint against the La

Feria School District with the Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) Agency.37

In the spring of 1972, members of the La Feria School Board were grappling with how to respond to the Health, Education, and Welfare Agency. School Board minutes

37 La Feria News, July 8, 1971 105

from that time period reveal meetings of the School Board's policy committee to address issues presented by the HEW, representatives sent to a conference with the HEW, as well as a lawsuit filed against the school district.38 Pressure by the HEW led to the desegregation of Sam Houston Elementary School during the school year that began in

1972. The school district changed its policy so that all students from kindergarten through second grade would enroll at Sam Houston, all third and fourth grade children would report to Lee School, fifth graders would be divided between Lee and Roosevelt

Schools, and all six graders would meet at Roosevelt. Enrollment for the junior high and high schools was to remain the same (The La Feria News 8/10/72, pg. 1).

An early Mexican American educator offers his memories of that time period:

Locally, I don't remember the ins and outs. There were charges brought against the school district of perpetuating educational guidelines that were detrimental to Hispanic children. There was tracking that always placed Anglos in the top two classes and then Sam Houston School for Mexican children. I was always in the top class. I already spoke English when I started school and so I didn't have to spend a year in beginners to learn English. But there were always classes that were puros mexicanos.39 Maybe they were from the wrong side of the tracks. And they probably also had some inferior teachers. In the early 1970s, most of that came to a screeching halt. I'm not sure if it was a lawsuit or if it was a threat of withholding federal funds. But the concept that all first graders had to go to Sam Houston, that was like – gasp – you mean my child has to go to school in the Mexican town?!?!

Whether or not the Anglo community approved was of no consequence because of the guidelines of educational equity that the HEW was to enforce in La Feria. The Anglo community adjusted, placing their children on school buses that shuttled them from the

38 La Feria School Board Minutes, November 2, 1972; La Feria School Board Minutes, November 29, 1972; La Feria School Board Minutes, January 2, 1973; La Feria School Board Minutes, March 13, 1973 39 Translation: only Mexican 106

Anglo side of the tracks to the so-called Mexican side for their early elementary school years. In preparation for the desegregated school year, the School Board instructed the superintendent to contact the Texas Highway Department so that a regular stop light could be installed on West Street and Highway 83 for the safety of the children crossing the highway. This was a precaution that was not taken when Mexican children crossed the highway to attend schools on the Anglo side of town. However, it was indicative of the increased care that would be given to students at Sam Houston Elementary as it was integrated.

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Illustration 3: Busing Students Across the Highway, 1972 Source: The La Feria News, August 10, 1972

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Introducing Bilingual Education

The education of Mexican children at Sam Houston Elementary School received a further boost with the implementation of bilingual education during the academic year beginning in 1974. Irma Dublin, a Mexicana teacher, was director of the bilingual education program for nearly thirty years.

Irma Dublin

When I started working at Sam Houston, there were already four teachers que eran mexicanas. Y las aids casi todas eran mexicanas también. No más habían unas cuantas gringas.40

And I told them, don't get disillusioned, because your kids are going to start doing better on the tests after we started the bilingual program. And they did. Because they understood! When they took the test, that TAAS test or the other one – I can't remember what it's called – they did better and better.

Anyway, I was the bilingual director at La Feria. And I believed in the bilingual education program. And I still do. One of the reasons I quit was because they were saying, oh, we're not going to teach in Spanish any more. They started wanting to change things.

40 Translation: … there were already four Mexican teachers. And almost all the aids were Mexican, too. There were only a few Anglo women left. 109

I tell you, I remember that first batch of kids that I had in bilingual when they graduated from high school. Every single kid that was in that program graduated from high school. And that speaks for itself.

It was fun years. And I enjoyed teaching and being an administrator.

I always give the teachers the benefit of the doubt. But I tell them, you're going to treat these kids as if they're your own. You want them to learn all that they can before they move to the next grade. If they were your kids, you want them to learn as much as they could. I was all about empowerment.

I had Title 7—for bilingual education—for twenty years. We had it from 1975 to

1995. I never asked for a lot of money. I never asked for more than $100,000.

I went to Washington to testify for bilingual education. I also went to Austin because they wanted to do away with bilingual education. And really, ¿qué se hace que sepan en español o en inglés?41 The important thing is that they learn. It was amazing, mijita. The kids taking the tests in the 3rd, 4th, 5th grades [doing well].

I was for the kids. If you're not for the kids, then you don't belong teaching.

Mrs. Dublin's narrative demonstrates the kind of commitment that Mexicana teachers had toward their students. A strong proponent of bilingual education from its early period, she firmly believed that the Mexican children would learn better in a setting where their native language is used and built upon. She speaks with pride, noting the children's improved test scores on the annual Texas state tests as well as the increased

41Translation: Who cares if they learn in Spanish or English? 110

graduation rate of students who had participated in her bilingual education program.

"Every single kid that was in that program graduated from high school," she recalls.

"And that speaks for itself." So strongly did she believe in the effectiveness of bilingual education, she extended her everyday activism within the schools to the political realm, testifying before politicians in Austin and Washington D.C. When she finally resigned from teaching, it was because of changes the legislature wanted to enact, eliminating and/or limiting the use of Spanish in bilingual classrooms. Mrs. Dublin's anti-racist attitude is clearly noted when she states, "¿Qué se hace que sepan en español o en inglés?

The important thing is that they learn." Unlike historical attitudes that favored English above all else in the education of Mexican children, Mrs. Dublin firmly refutes that sentiment, emphasizing that the truly important thing is that the children learn.

In addition to fighting for increased educational options and opportunities for the

Mexican students at Sam Houston, as the director of bilingual education Mrs. Dublin also encouraged teachers and teacher aids to excel. This is evident in her narrative when she recounts the ways she would encourage her teachers to excel in the classrooms, to treat and teach the children as if they were the teachers' own. Mrs. Dublin herself states that she "was all about empowerment." What is not evident in her narrative, however, is the reputation that she carried among teachers and teacher aids in Sam Houston. Several teachers and other members of the community involved in education had told me that

Mrs. Dublin was known to encourage Mexican women who were employed at Sam

Houston as aids to continue their education and become teachers themselves. From all

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accounts, she carried a firm commitment to promoting the education of the Mexican origin community at all levels.

In 1974, nearly a decade after the school district began to hire Mexican American women to serve as teachers and teacher aids at Sam Houston Elementary School, the cultural tide began to turn in the schools. As Mrs. Dublin stated in her narrative, there was a critical mass of bilingual and bicultural teachers at the newly integrated Sam

Houston. In addition to these teachers, according to a survey of high school yearbooks, the La Feria High School employed a record six Mexican origin teachers during the

1973-1974 school year, a dramatic increase from the one to two Mexican teachers that had been on staff over the previous decade. This demographic shift among teachers in the La Feria school system also coincided with nearby Texas A & I's implementation of the first Master's degree program in bilingual and bicultural education in 1974.42

La Feria high school yearbooks reveal that the demographic composition of the teaching staff was not the only change seen in the schools. At La Feria High School,

Mexican students were more visible in the school’s honor society and as student council members than they had been in previous decades. During the 1973-1974 school year,

Mexican girls held three of the five positions as school cheerleaders for the first time in the history of La Feria High School. Also in that same school year, a group of students formed the Pan American Student Forum, a club that celebrated and promoted Mexican culture. The most visible activity of this club was Mexican folkloric dancing, for which the students were recognized with various competitive awards, but local newspaper

42 La Feria News, May 2, 1974 112

accounts allude to other activities that the group sponsored during the mid-1970s.

Although the graduation rate of Mexican students at the high school did increase around this time period, the increased Mexican social and cultural presence at the high school not only reflected an increased enrollment of students, but also represented the broader political and cultural empowerment of that time period.

Building Community in the Schools

I have argued that institutions as well as local actors and their social practices actively shape community. This chapter has explored the workings of the school system as a powerful local institution that greatly influenced the life trajectories of Mexican children.

The school system has historically been one of America's most powerful institutions, not only reflecting and promoting the dominant values of society, but also determining the social and economic trajectories of young students. I have demonstrated that, prior to the 1960s, the education of Mexican children was entrenched in cross- purposes (González 1990). On one hand, the majority of Mexican children attended segregated schools, often held in inferior facilities with poor resources. I argue that school segregation reflected the institutionalization of an imagined national community that relegated Mexican origin people to second-class citizens status. Despite the fact that

Mexican children were treated unequally in the schools, the curriculum purported to

“Americanize” Mexican students. The process of Americanization inculcated Mexican students with Anglo American values, while simultaneously devaluing Mexican culture

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and language. Furthermore, there were generally lower expectations of Mexican children, who were often funneled into low-level classes and vocational training. Several scholars have argued that the U.S. education of Mexicans led to the production and reproduction of a racialized working class throughout the U.S. Southwest.

The general characteristics of Mexican education in the U.S. prior to the 1960s manifested themselves in the La Feria school system as well. Mexican origin students were treated as racially inferior and not encouraged to further their education. High attrition rates of Mexican origin students from their freshman to senior year in high school indicated the poor state of education for these students.

While legislators and activists worked to end school segregation in the 1960s and

70s, a more subtle, but equally important, ideological shift was also occurring within La

Feria’s Mexican School. I have argued that this ideological shift could be seen in the attitudes and agendas of the first Mexican American teachers and teacher aids at Sam

Houston Elementary School. I have suggested that the school district hired these

Mexican American educators as a strategic way to circumvent some of the "trouble" that had been occurring in other school districts, including walkouts and other forms of protest. María Paredes herself states that the reason the superintendent was "nice" to early Mexican American teachers and teacher aids was because they did not cause any trouble. However, I have argued that these women were indeed troublemakers, troubling the ideological tenets that had long supported the education of Mexican children. In this sense, they also made a significant contribution to the way that Mexicans and, ultimately,

Anglos would imagine their community after the 1960s.

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I have asserted that, through their attitudes and actions, the first Mexicana educators in La Feria were instrumental to broadening the scope of belonging for

Mexican origin people in the community. When Mrs. Dublin states, "I was all about empowerment," she summarizes many of the attitudes of the first Mexican American women educators at Sam Houston Elementary School. Acutely aware of the discriminatory treatment that Mexican students had suffered and were suffering in this segregated elementary school, these early Mexicana educators were determined to provide a different kind of education to their students. Unlike their Anglo counterparts,

Mexican origin teachers and aids entered their classrooms with cultural capital that enabled more meaningful educational experiences for Mexican children. These

Mexicana teachers and teacher aids demonstrated cultural sympathy and understanding that fostered more positive student/teacher relationships. Furthermore, they valorized the cultural and economic backgrounds of their Mexican students by speaking Spanish and later teaching Spanish. Mrs. Dublin demonstrates this linguistic valorization when she states, "¿Qué se hace que sepan en español o en inglés?43 The important thing is that they learn." In sharp contrast to earlier attitudes about Spanish, Mrs. Dublin, as well as other

Mexicana teachers, recognizes Spanish, the language of the majority of the students at

Sam Houston, as just as linguistically valuable as English. She notes that students often performed better on tests and were more likely to graduate from high school with at least an early Spanish language education.

43Translation: Who cares if they learn in Spanish or English? 115

I have argued that bringing this kind of cultural capital into their classrooms was a significant way in which early Mexican American educators were able to affect institutional change. Perhaps more significantly than this, however, was the ideology of social, cultural, and intellectual equality that these women promoted in their classrooms.

I have shown that, historically, schools made only half-hearted efforts to educate

Mexican children, not enforcing compulsory schooling laws and funneling those Mexican children able to progress in their education into vocational-type programs. Schools did not educate Mexican children to be anything different from what they had traditionally been under a subordinating segregationist order until these first Mexican American educators entered the scene. Already having themselves succeeded in attaining higher education, these women actively re-imagined how Mexican children could grow up to contribute and belong to their community. These new educators were teaching Mexican children that, especially through educational attainment, they did not have to settle for positions in the community subordinate to the Anglo population. They taught children that they could be doctors, lawyers, or even presidents of the United States. They taught children that they were equal to Anglos.

It is my contention that through their work in the schools, the first Mexicana teachers and teacher aids laid the ideological groundwork for the racial integration of

Mexicans into the community as full members. While legislators and various Chicano/a organizations fought for an end to the legal practice of segregation in schools, these women promoted integration through everyday practices in their classrooms. I argue the work of these women complemented other civil rights movements at the time, providing

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increased opportunities for Mexican students not only to finish high school, but also to assume equal positions to Anglos in the community. The progress of school racial integration could be seen by the early and mid-1970s. Not only were there an increased number of Mexican students who graduated from high school, these students were actively participating in various social and political organizations, even forming their own organization that celebrated Mexican heritage. Mexican students became more visible in the high school and demonstrated a stronger sense of belonging in the school and, ultimately, in the community.

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Chapter 4: Las Comunidades de Base

The purpose of this chapter is to explore how the formation of comunidades de base within the local Catholic Church helped to promote racial integration within La Feria, Texas. In this chapter I will examine the local Catholic Church as a historically significant institution to the Mexican origin community in La Feria. I will show that, as in other local, secular institutions, Mexican origin people also experienced the reach of segregation within their place of worship. This chapter will demonstrate how Mexican origin people in La Feria organized to promote racial integration within their local parish. I argue that in the mid-1970s, with the help of a Spanish-speaking nun, Mexican origin people in La Feria used small home groups called comunidades de base to both deepen their religious understandings and to create a culturally legitimate space for themselves within the Anglo-dominated Church, introducing such Mexican religious celebrations such as El Día de Los Muertos and Las Posadas. I argue that Mexican origin Catholics empowered themselves as they introduced these popular religious practices, broadening the scope of belonging not only in their local parish, but also in the larger community of La Feria. This chapter contributes to the arguments of my dissertation in various ways.

Though the Catholic Church did not, in any way, mandate segregation, practices within the local Church reflected the racial attitudes of the time. If the national community had been imagined with its minorities at the margins of society as Takaki (1990) and Oboler

(1995) have argued, the manifestation of these attitudes could be seen even in local religious institutions. Though Mexican origin people in La Feria did not experience segregation within their local parish to the same extent as in the schools (in La Feria,

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there was no separate Catholic Church for Mexicans), they were still marginalized, literally ushered to a specific “side” of the church and without a culturally relevant or

Spanish language ministry. In this chapter I will argue that by reviving popular Mexican religious practices, Mexican origin people create space for themselves within the local

Catholic Church. I argue that these practices enabled Mexican origin Catholics in La

Feria to become more full members of the church and, ultimately, the community.

This chapter will provide a brief history of the local Catholic Church and its ministry. I will briefly discuss the ways in which Mexican origin people experienced segregation within the Church in La Feria and then discuss in detail the formation of local comunidades de base. I will argue that comunidades de base, in their tradition as part of liberation theology movements, served to empower Mexican origin people in La Feria.

Religious Frontiers, Borders, and Borderlands

During the time period of desegregation covered in this dissertation (from the early 1960s to the 1990s), the major churches in La Feria were Methodist, Baptist,

Presbyterian, and Catholic, each afforded one edifice in town. I have chosen to focus on the experiences of Mexican origin people in the Catholic Church because it has historically been the predominant religious institution of this population.

During the first half of the nineteenth century, Texas underwent several political upheavals, which affected its Catholic ministry. In chapter two, I indicated that, when

Texas was still Spanish territory, the Ballí family built a chapel on their land so that their son, José Nicolás, who had been ordained a priest, could minister to the inhabitants of the

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region north of the Rio Grande (Chavana 2002:33). This chapel was erected at the end of the 19th century. By 1821, Mexico’s independence from Spain had a chaotic impact on the Catholic Church. Initially supporting Spain, the Church removed many of its clergy from Mexico (Treviño, “Mexican Americans and Religion”); on the other hand, many

Mexicans wanted to expel Spanish bishops and priests from their newly independent land

(Treviño, “Mexican Americans and Religion”). By 1836, when Texas was vying for its independence, there were only two priests responsible for serving all of the state (De

León 1982). Eleven years later, however, in 1847, Texas became part of the Diocese of

Galveston with Father Jean Marie Odin serving as bishop. In 1849, a year after the end of the Mexican American War, the Church sent French missionaries, the Oblates of Mary

Immaculate, to evangelize the Mexicans of South Texas, now a conquered people

(Treviño, “Mexican Americans and Religion”). Despite the scant institutional presence of the Catholic Church in Texas, Mexican origin people developed a tradition of religious self-reliance and a kind of home-centered religiosity (Treviño, “Mexican Americans and

Religion”).

The first Catholic Church in La Feria benefited from the faith practices of one of the town’s early land speculators as well as the French missionaries whose ministry was still prevalent in South Texas. As I discussed in chapter two, the first part of the twentieth century marked a period of intense Anglo settlement in the Rio Grande Valley in general and La Feria in particular. I stated that, in 1907, S.J. Schnorenberg and other developers from Minnesota bought the six-thousand-acre strip of land that encompassed the present-day site of La Feria. Schnorenberg, who was Catholic, donated land for the

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construction of a Catholic Church (McNail 1975; St. Francis Xavier). A wooden mission was constructed on the site, dedicated in 1912, served by the Oblate Fathers, the same order who had been sent to evangelize South Texas in the middle of the 18th century. The

Oblate Fathers served La Feria until 1930 when La Feria attained its status as a parish and was then ministered by diocesan clergy (St. Francis Xavier).44 La Feria’s Catholic

Church received its first pastor, H.J. Schmidter, in 1930. The edifice burned down and was reconstructed in that same year, celebrating its first Mass in the re-constructed church, St. Francis Xavier, on Christmas Eve of 1930 (St. Francis Xavier).

During the first half of the twentieth century, Catholic ministry to Mexicans expanded, but developed separate Anglo and Mexican spheres, as with other public institutions. In 1930 the Missionary Catechists of Divine Providence, an order exclusively of Mexican American women, compelled the Church to expand its ministries

(Treviño, “Mexican Americans and Religion”). The Catholic Church Extension Society and the American Board of Catholic Missions financed much of this expansion, providing money for “Mexican work” during the first half of the twentieth century

(Treviño, “Mexican Americans and Religion”). Furthermore, in 1945, the Bishop’s

Committee for Spanish-Speaking, controlled by San Antonio’s progressive Archbishop

Robert E. Lucey, formed and focused on farm worker advocacy. Despite this work,

Catholic Mexican ministry in Texas was characterized by institutional segregation

(Treviño, “Mexican Americans and Religion”). Some of this segregation resulted from

44 Protestant newcomers to the area worshipped in various town spaces, including a local pool hall and beer parlor and then, later, the one-room school building (McNail 1975). In 1914, Union Church was constructed as a place of worship for the town’s Protestants. A Methodist Church was constructed later that same year; Baptist and Presbyterian churches soon followed (McNail 1975). 121

missions that were established in rural areas to serve Mexicans. For example, shortly after La Feria became its own parish, it started a mission church in Santa Rosa with the support of the Catholic Church Extension Society (St. Francis Xavier). Eight miles north of La Feria, Santa Rosa boasts a higher Mexican origin population than La Feria. Santa

Rosa was, thus, a de facto “Mexican Church.”45 While both Anglos and Mexican origin people worshipped together at St. Francis Xavier, Mexican origin residents revealed their experiences of racial discomfort within a so-called integrated space.

Despite the fact that St. Francis Xavier was not segregated, Anglo members of the congregation clearly dominated the space. Mexican origin Catholics who attended Mass were not free to worship according to their custom. The following narrative illustrates how Mexican Catholic cultural practices clashed with Anglo perceptions of the proper way to worship.

In the early 1940s, during World War II, Mrs. Zamarripa recalls traveling from a rancho just outside of La Feria to attend Sunday Mass at St. Francis Xavier.

“Veníamos a la iglesia, a pie, descalzas, con muy pocos recursos… Me acuerdo que a la iglesia mi mamá nos traíba chiquitas porque mi hermano, se llama Joe Sánchez, fue al invasion… No no más la familia de nosotros. Otras familias también. A la iglesia entraban de rodillas. Entramos de rodillas. Al uso de antes. “Entonces nos criticaban y nos iban y nos levantaban [los americanos]… “Y decian que no quieren que nos hinquen… “Mucha gente iba de rodillas hasta el altar a pagar su manda porque sus hijos estaban en la guerra de la invasión…

45 Similarly, one of my oral history interviews revealed that the Mexican Baptist Church, which began to advertise its services in the local newspaper in September of 1947 (La Feria News), began as a mission of the La Feria Baptist Church. 122

“Entonces los hicieron que se levantaran. Como dando de entender que era ridículo. Que ésto no se hacía así. Entonces ya. Poco a poco ya la gente no se usaba éso.

We would go to church on foot, barefoot, with very few resources… I remember that my mother would take us when we were little because my brother, his name is Joe Sánchez, went to war… It wasn’t just our family. It was other families as well. They would enter the church on their knees. We would enter on our knees. The way it used to be done. Then [the americanos] would criticize us and they would go and pick us up… And they would say that they didn’t want us kneeling… A lot of people would go on their knees to the altar to pay their obligation because their sons were in the war… Then [the americanos] would make them get up. With the idea that what they were doing was ridiculous. That that was not their way. Then it ended. Little by little, people stopped doing it.

The above narrative testifies to the Anglo religious hegemony of the time. Mrs.

Zamarripa asserts that her family, as well as others, expressed their religious devotion traveling by foot to La Feria for Sunday Mass. Expressing this devotion was especially important to them during that time period because many of their sons were fighting in

World War II. In order to pay their religious obligation, the Mexican custom was to enter the church and go to the altar on their knees. While common to Mexican origin people,

Mrs. Zamarripa states that this custom seemed “ridiculous” to Anglo members of the congregation. Rather than let the Mexican members of the congregation worship as was their custom, however, Anglo parishioners would actually pick them up, establishing the boundaries of what was acceptable in the church.

As I have stated earlier, Mexican origin Catholics in Texas had established a tradition of religious self-reliance because of a lack of an institutional presence of the

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Catholic Church. Mexican Catholic customs had survived for nearly a hundred years before the establishment of the church in La Feria. Finally able to pay their religious obligations in an actual building, Mexican Catholics were met with intolerance by Anglo parishioners, who clearly drew the lines of membership to the church, including how members were to behave. Mexican parishioners were ultimately shamed into abandoning their traditional religious practices.

Even though Mexican origin parishioners began to shed their culturally specific religious practices, they were still not granted the full benefits of membership at St.

Francis Xavier in La Feria. Despite the moral tenor a church might provide its members, local Catholic churches were not exceptions to the lines of racial exclusion and inclusion prevalent in other institutions. Mexican origin people experienced race-based discomfort even in their parish. St. Francis was constructed like many Catholic churches before the second Vatican Council. Within the sanctuary there were two long columns of pews facing the altar. Several Mexican Americans commented to me in my interviews and interactions with them that Anglos were seated on the left side of the sanctuary while

Mexicans sat on the right side. Using the same terminology, these Mexican American residents recounted to me that there was an usher who would make them feel “very uncomfortable” if they were to sit on the wrong (read: Anglo) side of the sanctuary. Mr.

Zamarripa, a long-time resident of La Feria, now in his eighties, recounts, “Como ellos, los americanos, habían hecho la iglesia, ellos creían como dueños.” Because the Anglos had built the church, they felt like they owned it. In other words, though the church was

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an integrated space, full membership was extended only to Anglos. Mexican origin people remained marginalized within an integrated guise.

Nevertheless, Mexican origin people were not abandoned in the church. St.

Francis Xavier provided a form of religious education to its Mexican parishioners in

Spanish. One Mexican origin parishioner, Norma, now a very active member of the church, recalls that in the early 1950s, she attended a form of catechism at the church.

Though there were no formal catechism classes as there are today, Norma recalls that one of the town’s prominent Mexican American women46 would meet with Mexican origin

Catholic children to teach them prayers in Spanish.

The 1960s marked a significant period of time for Chicano Catholics in the

United States because of the various movements for social justice and the Second Vatican

Council. While the larger Catholic Church began to reflect an increased cultural sensitivity, individuals within local Texas Catholic churches entered the struggle for social justice for Chicano/as (Cadena 1987; Treviño). In 1966, a Mexican American priest from Houston, Father Antonio Gonzalez, along with Reverend James Novarro and labor organizer Eugene Nelson, led a march from the Rio Grande Valley to Austin, to support striking farm workers and their quest for a minimum-wage law and improved working conditions (Treviño, “Mexican Americans and Religion”). While their demands were not met, the march served to raise political and ethnic consciousness among

46 She and her husband were of a higher socioeconomic standing than most other Mexicans in the town and were known to dwell in both Anglo and Mexican social circles. 125

Mexican Americans in Texas (Treviño, “Mexican Americans and Religion”). A few years later, in October 1969, a group of about fifty priests converged in San Antonio and formed Padres Asociados para Derechos Religiosos, Educativos y Sociales (PADRES), a national activist priests’ organization. Father Patricio Flores, of this organization, was appointed as the first Mexican American bishop in 1970 (Cadena 1987; Treviño).

The early 1970s saw a dramatic push for a stronger Chicano/a Catholic ministry nationally; significant organizations and centers were located in Texas. In 1970 Gloria

Gallardo and Gregoria Ortega, both activist nuns, founded Las Hermanas. Las Hermanas was a national organization of lay and religious Hispanic women dedicated to raising awareness of community needs, promoting social change, and increasing Latino/a leadership, while lobbying the Church to support is organizational goals (Flores, M., “Las

Hermanas;” Treviño). Members of Las Hermanas were actively involved with the

Mexican American Cultural Center (MACC) formed in San Antonio in 1971 (Cadena

1987; Flores, M., “Las Hermanas). Father Virgilio Elizondo, a member of PADRES, was the principal founder of the Mexican American Culture Center. This center (still located in San Antonio) played an important role in developing religious materials for Latinos while simultaneously helping non-Latinos to better serve Spanish-speaking populations

(Cadena 1987). Furthermore, the center connected the religious in Texas to Latin

American liberation theologians who would teach courses and attend meetings at MACC

(Cadena 1987).

Chicano scholar Gilbert Cadena identifies three major lay movements within the

Catholic Church that emerged in the 1970s. The first was the National Pastoral

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Encuentro, meetings organized in 1972, 1977, and 1985 (1987:7). Attended by over two hundred thousand Latinos in its last meeting, Cadena argues that “each encuentro represented a national attempt to address issues that affect Latinos in the Church and in society” (7). The meetings resulted in recommendations that were made to the U.S.

Bishops to aid them in writing a pastoral plan to more fully include Latinos in all aspects of the Church. Cadena continues that perhaps the most significant aspect of the series of encuentros was that it helped Latinos to organize as a “national force” within the Catholic

Church (8). The second lay movement was the development of Mexican American

Catholic organizations that linked parishes to community organizing. Cadena lists

Communities in Public Service (COPS) in San Antonio and the United Neighborhood

Organization (UNO) in Los Angeles as two such groups that used grassroots organizing to keep local politicians accountable to the needs of the Chicano/a community (8).

Finally, Cadena identifies the emergence of comunidades de base as a lay movement that had a significant impact on the Chicano/a community. He defines comunidades de base as “basic Christian communities,” groups that “study the Bible and link the words of scripture to the conditions in which the participants live. The comunidades de base bring together fellowship and engage in consciousness-raising and community action” (8). In his report, Cadena reports that forty percent of Chicano clergy in 1986 reported involvement in comunidades de base in California and Texas (13).

Other reports show that Las Hermanas were also highly committed to the comunidades de base concept (Flores, M., “Las Hermanas”).

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Cadena argues that the aforementioned lay movements along with the establishment of Chicano/a Catholic organizations and centers were contributing factors to a U.S. version of liberation theology. Working from the premise that liberation theology creates theology anew, from the perspective of the poor, he asserts that there were a number of Chicano/a religious and laity that were working to reinterpret

Catholicism to represent and empower the U.S. Chicano/a community (7-8).

Understanding that Chicano/as in the U.S. had long faced social injustices, Chicano/a liberation theologians proposed to seek “the tools to work for social justice within the

Christian gospel” (9). It was in this powerful milieu that the Catholic Church in La Feria began to respond to the needs of its Mexican-origin community.

Surgiendo de la Base

In May 1978 Father Francisco Aguirre, the first Hispanic pastor of St. Francis

Xavier, wrote a letter to Sister Maria Elena Ortiz, the Mother Superior of the

Congregation of Franciscan Eucharistic Missionaries. His letter petitioned that two nuns be sent to La Feria to help with the religious education of La Feria's Mexican Catholic community. During this time period, there was only one house of Mexican origin sisters in the United States, and this house was located in San Antonio. Because the sisters had considered extending their ministry, they decided to visit La Feria to become familiar with the town, its people, and the work they would perform there.

A written narrative of the nuns' experiences in La Feria explains their decision to move to La Feria:

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Conociendo la realidad y la urgente necesidad de evangelizar en especial a los inmigrantes de habla española que son mayoría [sic], se encontraron familias que no hablan el inglés, otras que lo hablan poco, cosa común aquí en el Valle (Pineda 1991).

[They] saw the reality and the urgent need to evangelize, especially to Spanish-speaking immigrants, of whom there are many. They found families who did not speak English and others who spoke only a limited amount [of English], a common characteristic of the [population] in the [Rio Grande] Valley.

After their brief sojourn in La Feria, the nuns returned to San Antonio to make arrangements to establish residence in town. In August of that same year, Sister

Margarita Vargas and Sister Maria de los Angeles Enriquez47 arrived in La Feria, occupying a house designated for them near the parish.

Despite the dramatic changes that had occurred with the Civil Rights Movement and those that had occurred within the Catholic Church, Mexican origin people in La

Feria continued to face everyday acts of discrimination in their local parish. Victoria

Paredes and her family arrived to La Feria in 1978. Their arrival to La Feria was a homecoming; she and her husband were originally from the Rio Grande Valley

(Harlingen and Weslaco, respectively) but had spent the last several years in the

Midwest, where Mr. Paredes attended college. Victoria recounts attending a particular

Sunday Mass at St. Francis Xavier with her husband and their three children in 1979.

Le estaba platicando a Jennifer que cuando yo fui a misa … aquí a St. Francis, nos damos éso a nosotros… Entramos yo y Javier y Alma y Noe … Fuimos y nos sentamos en una banca. Y fue el Señor Harper … y

47 I use the real names of these two nuns because their story is told in both published and non-published accounts of Church history. 129

le tocheó a Javier y quién sabe que le dijo; yo estaba allá (seated on the other side of the pew). Y volteaba Javier y no más dijo que no. Y le dije a Javier, “¿Qué te dijo?” Dijo Javier, “Que no podemos sentarnos aquí, que este lugar, no. Que tenemos que estar en el otro lado.” “Y después ¿que? ¿Te dijo por qué? Y dijo “Que este lugar está apartado.” “Oh,” le dijo, “¿Está reservado o qué?” “No, no más es aparte.” “No, pues no,” dijo Jaime, “No vamos a mover.” Y no nos movimos.

I was telling Jennifer that when I went to Mass, here at St. Francis, they did that to us. Javier, Alma, Noe and I went in. We went and sat down in a pew. And Mr. Harper went and touched Javier and who knows what he told him; I was over there on the other side of the pew. And Javier turned around and just told him, no. And I asked Javier, “What did he tell you?” Javier said, “That we can’t sit here, not in this spot. That we have to be on the other side.” “Why? Did he tell you why?” He said, “That this space is separated.” “Oh,” Javier told him, “Is it reserved?” “No, it’s just separated.” “No,” Jaime said, “We’re not going to move.” And we didn’t move.

Even as late as 1979, Anglo parishioners were trying to enforce a kind of racial segregation within the Catholic church despite all of the gains made for people of color in the United States over the previous fifteen years. Interestingly, they were unable to enforce their practice of racial separation in this case. Victoria Paredes attributes this to the fact that they were outsiders to La Feria and had just come from a college town in the

Midwest, where they had become accustomed to a more “liberal” environment. The

Paredes family’s act of resistance in this instance foreshadowed the social and cultural changes that were about to transpire at St. Francis Xavier. At the same time that this

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incident occurred in church, Sister Margarita and Sister Angeles were beginning their work in the parish and the community. While Sister Margarita was placed in charge of organizing and directing C.C.D. (Catholic Christian Doctrine) classes, Sister Angeles dedicated herself to la pastoral.

Vocation dedicated to la pastoral meant getting to know the needs of the community. Sister Angeles walked through the Mexican neighborhoods in town, knocking on doors and becoming acquainted with the people and their expressed needs.

Sister Margarita Vargas, the nun who worked with Sr. Angeles in La Feria, narrates the work the latter performed in the late 1970s and the early 1980s:

[La Hna. Angeles] se encargaba de visitar casas en los barrios para ver lo que necesitaba la gente. Y la gente expresaba que quería conocer su fé. Compartían sus vidas con ella – todo lo social y religioso. Tenían muchas preguntas. Después del Segundo Congreso del Vaticano, sucedieron muchos cambios en la iglesia. La gente no entendía los cambios.

Sister Angeles was in charge of visiting houses in [Mexican] neighborhoods to see what people needed. And people expressed to her that they wanted to learn more about their faith. They shared their lives with her – everything both social and religious. They had a lot of questions. After Vatican II, there were a lot of changes in the Church. People didn't understand those changes.

Sister Angeles arrived in La Feria at an opportune moment to answer the questions that the Spanish-speaking members of the community had about their faith. Soon they began to organize small home groups to learn more about the practice of their faith. Sister Clara explains:

Les dieron la idea – ¿por qué no formamos pequeños grupos de reflexión bíblica? ¿Cómo estoy viviendo el evangélico que me pide a mí las lecturas de domingo? Entonces invitaban a sus vecinos, amistades de sus vecindades para esos grupos.

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They got the idea – whey don't we form small groups for biblical reflection? How am I living the teachings that the scriptures ask of me on Sundays? So they invited their neighbors and friends of their neighbors for these groups.

These small home groups were organized in Mexican neighborhoods and usually hosted about ten people in a home once a week. Each week, a different family would take their turn to host the group. In different neighborhoods, people would organize days and times to meet, according to their schedules.

Beginning as Spanish-language bible studies in peoples’ homes, the groups were eventually transformed to become comunidades de base with the arrival of another nun from San Antonio. In the spring of 1984, Sister Ana Maria de la Torre arrived in La

Feria from San Antonio, where she had received training at the Mexican American

Cultural Center with Father Marins (Pineda 1991). She reorganized the existing groups and formed new ones, introducing the themes and techniques of comunidades de base. In an interview, Sister Ana Maria maintains that, unlike the comunidades de base prevalent in Latin America, U.S. comunidades de base were related to charismatic rather than liberation theology movements within the Catholic Church.

Members of La Feria’s comunidades de base recognize that perhaps the most distinguishing characteristic between a comunidad de base and a bible study was the

“tema.” In an interview, long-time member of the comunidades de base Antonio Tenorio stated, “El tema ya los transportaba a hacer comunidades de base y no grupo de biblia.

Aunque usaba la biblia, ¿verdad? Pero había que llamarle la comunidad que sea de

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base.”48 Comunidades de base focused on “temas” that would relate the scripture to their lives. According to Tenorio, temas would include issues of alcoholism, spousal abuse, and discrimination. Along a more political vein, Tenorio recalls temas discussing farmworker activist César Chávez, as well as those that encouraged members of the comunidades de base to participate in local, state, and national elections. Though the comunidades de base were not related to a liberation theology movement per se, they still sought to improve social relations within families and communities as well as, in some instances, promote political involvement and social justice.49

As the comunidades de base began to grow in La Feria so did a stronger sense of community among Mexican origin people. Mr. and Mrs. Zamarripa recount to me the impact of the weekly meetings of the comunidades de base on the Mexican origin community and the Catholic Church.

Mr. Z: Lo mejor que tuvo todo [fue que] … tuvimos una comunidad de base aquí en esta casa, la siguiente semana en otra casa, la siguiente en otra casa, y en otra casa. Entonces nos unimos todos. En Arroyo Heights. En Rancho Solis. Comunidades de base en muchas partes.

Mrs. Z: Y de allí nos uníamos y hacíamos una comida para convivir todos. No era para otra cosa. Si nada mas era para convivir.

Mr. Z: Allí sí había mucha unidad.

Mrs. Z: Entonces nos fuimos uniendo más y más. La comunidad de base tuvo que ver con ésta.

48 Translation: The “tema” was what distinguished comunidades de base from bible studies. Though we would use the bible. But we had to call them comunidades de base. 49 In the mid-1980s, members of La Feria’s comunidades de base became involved in helping Central American refugees who were being detained in the Rio Grande Valley. The groups took up small collections and donated clothes and food performing, as Sister Clara said, "muchas obras de misericordia" (many acts of charity). 133

Mr. Z: Y compartíamos y de allí a otros y a otros…

Mrs. Z: Y así fue como fuimos creciendo.

Mr. Z: No no más hacíamos en la pura iglesia, sino en las casas. Salía la gente. Hazte cuenta que la iglesia se le hacía para afuera. A las casas.

Mr. Z: The best thing of all was that we would have a comunidad de base meeting here in this house, the next week in another house, and in another house. Then we became closer. In Arroyo Heights. In Rancho Solis. 50 There were comunidades de base all over.

Mrs. Z: And from there we became close and we would have meals so that we could come together. Just so that we could be together.

Mr. Z: We were very united.

Mrs. Z: Then we became more and more united. The comunidades de base had to do with that.

Mr. Z: We would share with other people.

Mrs. Z: And that was how we began to grow.

Mr. Z: We weren’t just doing this in the church, but in peoples’ homes. People would come out. Imagine the church going outside. To people’s homes.

According to Mr. and Mrs. Zamarripa, the comunidades de base were instrumental in fostering a sense of unity among Mexican origin Catholics in La Feria and its surrounding rural settlements. Though marginalized within the local parish, unable to practice their culturally specific religious practices and literally relegated to a separate side of the church, Mexican Catholics in La Feria found that the comunidades de base

50 Rancho Solis and Arroyo Heights are outlying areas of La Feria that have historically been predominantly Mexican rural communities. 134

were, as Mr. Zamarripa maintained, the church going outside to peoples’ homes. It is significant to note that the church was not just going outside to people’s homes; it was going out to Spanish-speaking, mostly Mexican origin, people’s homes in a way that it never had before.

While it is important to recognize that the comunidades de base were a way by which the local Catholic church extended outward, another notable aspect of the comunidades de base was that they took care of each other. Mr. Tenorio asserts that, in addition to learning about the bible in their meetings, they would also learn about the people in the group with them. If people who attended meetings were struggling with their spouses or their children, the group would support them however they could. If others did not have money to pay utility bills, the group would take a small collection. If someone were to pass away, the group would pay for flowers or take food to the widowed family. They would pray for each other’s needs and provide as much social and material support as possible.

La Feria's comunidades de base were not contained within the town's limits.

Sister Clara explains how the comunidades de base chose to grow in collaboration with other local parishes. They would go to San Juan, the largest and most well-known

Catholic church in the Rio Grande Valley, to meet with other groups and garner ideas for the further development of their comunidades.

Entonces íbamos a cursos de la diócesis. La Hermana María Macarena de la Torre, Ana María de la Torre tocaba la guitarra. Se llevaban a San Juan, vieron otros grupos y las ideas de otras parroquias. Por ejemplo las posadas no hacíamos aquí… En las comunidades de base se suponen que

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hay que crecer, no encerrarse. Hay que celebrar todos juntos y compartir con otras iglesias.

Then we would go to courses at the diocese. Sister María Macarena de la Torre, Ana María de la Torre played the guitar. They would go to San Juan to see other groups and the ideas of other parishes. For example Las Posadas was something that we didn’t do here. In the comunidades de base the idea is to grow, not to enclose yourselves. The idea is to have everyone celebrate together and to share with other churches.

While some of the initial ideas for las comunidades de base came from Sister Ana Maria, who had received her training at the Mexican American Cultural Center in San Antonio, comunidades de base in the Valley were also working in collaboration with each other for their mutual development. As I stated earlier, the Mexican American Cultural Center was interested in promoting a type of liberation theology that could be applicable in U.S.

Catholic communities; in the Valley, comunidades de base grew more specific, seeking to address the specific regional needs of Mexican origin Catholics.

After a long period of segregation and discrimination, one of the most obvious needs of the Mexican origin Catholic community in the Valley was to become further integrated into the local communities. One of the ways in which comunidades de base facilitated this process was to reinvigorate Mexican popular religious practices. Earlier in this chapter, Mrs. Zamarripa’s narrative illustrated one way that Anglo Catholics in La

Feria shamed Mexican Catholics in La Feria out of their culturally specific religious practices at St. Francis Xavier. Although the Mexican Catholics in La Feria were able to practice their faith by attending church on Sundays, people missed the Mexican Catholic

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celebrations they had practiced in Mexico and in Texas before the Anglo settlements.

Sister Clara explains:

Éso se llama religiosidad popular. La cultura mexicana es muy rica. Los miembros de las comunidades de base son inmigrantes e hijos de inmigrantes. Cuando empezamos ya no celebraban la virgen de Guadalupe, las posadas. La gente decía, nuestros hijos no saben de nuestra cultura. Aquí no tenemos nada. Era el deseo de celebrar lo que ya no se celebraba. Para ellos era su deseo. Les daba tristeza que pasaron [los días festivos] como cualquier día. Querían revivar su cultura.

It's called religiosidad popular (religious practice that comes of the people). Mexican culture is very rich. The members of the comunidades de base are immigrants and children of immigrants. When we began, they no longer celebrated la Virgen de Guadalupe, Las Posadas… People would tell us, our children don't know about our culture. We seem to have nothing here. The desire was to celebrate what was no longer celebrated. It was their desire. It made them sad that their traditional days of festivity would pass like any other day. They wanted to revive their culture.

The sense of loss that Mexican immigrants expressed to the nuns was both cultural and religious in nature; they could still be Catholics, but not in the way that they had once been. Furthermore they would be unable to pass on their culturally specific faith practices to their children. Mexican origin people told the nuns that here, in the United

States, they felt they had nothing. “Nothing” most likely referred to economic as well as political and social clout. Perhaps more painful, however, was the sense that they were also losing their cultural practices.

In order to regain some of what Mexican Catholics of La Feria felt they had lost, the nuns and the members of the comunidades de base began to take charge of reviving some of these Mexican Catholic celebrations. Sr. Margarita recalls that an initial problem they encountered was a lack of material to instruct them on the prayers, refrains,

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and songs that were part of these celebrations. Because they found nothing on this side of the border to help them, they would call on the nuns in Mexico to send them materials.

Although these pamphlets and books were helpful, they were often written in a kind of

Spanish that the local Mexican origin population had difficulty understanding because of its regionalisms or colloquialisms. Nonetheless, the people utilized what they could until they were able to develop their own materials, specific to their region and their type of

Spanish.

With the strong desire of the people to revive Mexican Catholic traditions and with the help of the materials sent from Mexico, celebrations for la Virgen de Guadalupe,

Las Posadas and Las Vías Cruces began to take root in La Feria. One of the largest of these is the annual celebration of Las Posadas. The celebration of Las Posadas is a re- enactment of the biblical journey Joseph and Mary make in Bethlehem looking for a place to spend the night. It recounts how the couple is denied a place to stay at various houses. Finally, they find one person willing to open their doors to them. Mr. Tenorio explains how the posadas transpire in La Feria’s neighborhood:

Tienen dos niños que van a representar a José y a María. Entonces nosotros ya traemos hechos los cantitos, las lecturas bíblicas y esa noche comenzamos en una casa a pedir posada … Se junta de cien, ciento y pico de gente esa noche. Bajan según el tiempo a cuarenta o treinta. Cantamos de casa en casa, vamos cantando o rezando. Y pedimos posada en la primera casa, luego en la segunda y nos responden que no hay posada. Vámonos a la otra… José y María siguen caminando en frente… Lleva la lamparita prendida que lleva José cargando, la virgen la lleva pescada siempre con él. … Toda la gente espera en la última casa porque saben que allí sí les van a abrir y saben que allí ya dan la entrada a los peregrinos.

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Hay muchos niños. Ése es lo que el padre le gusta mucho ver. Muchos niños. Porque … cuando ya terminamos en la última casa, la monjita que está con nosotros les da muchas explicaciones a los niños … y contesta sus preguntas también. … Es parte de la celebración. Cuando viene la piñata y viene todo el convivio allí… Siempre [hay] comida tradicional mexicana. Tamales… Chocolate cuando da el friazo. Nosotros no cancelamos posada. Si está helando o no está helando, Las ocho posadas están en comunidades de base. La novena la hacemos allí en la iglesia. En el salón. Allí reunimos a todas las comunidades y más gente aparte todavía… Allí ya damos regalos para los niños, jueguetitos. [Todos llevan algo]. La gente toda coopera para celebrar.

There are two children who represent Joseph and Mary. At that point, we have our songs and our bible passages ready. And that night we begin at one house to ask for posada (a place to stay). A hundred or more people will gather that night. The number of people will go down according to the day to forty or thirty. We sing going from house to house. We sing and pray. And we ask for posada at the first house, then the second and they respond that they will not give us posada. Then we go to another house. Joseph and Mary continue to walk in front. Joseph carries a small lamp, the virgin always by his side. Everyone waits at the last house because they know that there they will open the doors to us. They know that they will let the pilgrims enter. There are a lot of children. That’s what the priest likes to see. A lot of children. Because when we arrive at the last house, the nun who is with us will explain everything to the children. She answers their questions. It’s all part of the celebration. Then there is a piñata and time to enjoy each other’s company. There is always traditional Mexican food. Tamales. Mexican hot chocolate when it gets very cold. We never cancel the posadas. Even if it’s freezing. The first eight days of posadas are in the comunidades de base. The ninth is at the church hall. We all get together there – the comunidades de base and people from outside of the comunidades de base. There we give gifts to children, little toys. Everyone takes something. Everyone gives something to celebrate.

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The celebration of Las Posadas represents many important aspects of the comunidades de base. First, it is a renewal of a Mexican popular religious practice. Las

Posadas is a celebration the Tenorio family recalled having celebrated in Mexico, but did not find when they arrived in La Feria. In addition to the actual practice of saying prayers and singing while traveling from house to house, the festivities at the last house are decidedly Mexican in nature. The celebration occurs in Spanish. They serve traditional Mexican food. They celebrate with a piñata. Second, the practice of Las

Posadas each year serves to educate new generations about Mexican Catholic culture. It is significant that children are chosen to represent Joseph and Mary. The nun makes a special point to explain the tradition to the children, to answer any questions they might have. Furthremore, the celebration necessitates a large collective effort from the comunidades de base. People need to coordinate which houses the procession will pass by, who will host the parties; people must practice the songs and prayers to lead the procession; they cooperate to make food and bring toys for the children. Finally, Las

Posadas is a perfect example of the church going outside into Mexican neighborhoods.

Mexican origin people had been marginalized within the church building; they created a way for the church to come to them.

Interestingly, by bringing the church out to the neighborhoods, the efforts of the comunidades de base and the nuns who aided their activities resulted in bringing more

Spanish-speaking Catholics into the church. Many Mexican origin people did not attend

St. Francis except for special occasions—baptisms, weddings, Christmas, Easter, etc.

This could have been because many lived in the rural outlying areas of La Feria or

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because of racial discomfort and a sense that they did not “belong” at the church. It might have also been because of their religious apathy. Whatever the reason, las comunidades de base inspired a renewed interest in the church for many Mexican origin people. The number of Spanish-speaking Catholics who attended St. Francis began to grow.

Sister Ana Maria recalls that at a particular church meeting, some Anglo parishioners complained that the Spanish-speaking nuns at the parish had not done as much for the community as their Anglo predecessors. She recounts then that one

Mexican American man, prominent in both the church and the larger community, was indignant defending the nuns, stating that they had brought many new members to the parish. Mr. Zamarripa recalls that, initially, local Anglos did not seem to approve of the activities of the comunidades de base. He maintains, however, that when they saw how many more Mexican people began to attend church, Anglo complaints were quelled.

In this chapter I have thus far argued that the comunidades de base were instrumental in the process of racial integration of the Catholic Church in La Feria. I have argued, first, that they achieved this by increasing solidarity among Mexican origin

Catholics, unifying them primarily by religion and language, as well as a mutual concern for their socioeconomic circumstances. Second, the groups facilitated racial integration by creating a culturally vibrant space for themselves within the Anglo-dominant church, reviving popular religious practices from Mexico and effectively bringing the Church outside to their neighborhoods. It is important to recognize, however, that these

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comunidades were part of larger national and local movements for racial equality within the Catholic Church.

Earlier in this chapter, I made reference to the national and international organizations and movements, both outside of and within the Catholic Church, that aided in struggles for social justice. I illustrated how the early 1970s, in particular, were watershed years for the Catholic Church with the emergence of such radical organizations as PADRES and Las Hermanas. While these organizations and movements definitely set a radical context for the comunidades de base that emerged in La Feria in the late 1970s and early 1980s, I argue that local individuals and groups propelled the most dramatic changes at St. Francis Xavier.

The efforts of church groups as well as individual priests contributed to the involvement of Mexican origin people in the Church and the shifting attitudes of parishioners about race relations. There were several groups, or movements, at St.

Francis Xavier in the 1970s and 1980s; while some specifically targeted the Mexican origin population, others had a more broad demographic focus. According to a parish history, a Guadalupana Society was organized in 1980. Many members of the parish also participated in the Cursillo, Charismatic, and Marriage Encounter movements (St. Francis

Xavier). Long-time parishioner Mr. Zamarripa also recalls the movimiento familiar cristiano (Christian Family Movement) and grupos de oración (prayer groups), as significant movements where people would come together to actively participate in their faith.

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In addition to these movements within the church, new priests facilitated a shift in people’s attitudes within the church. Mr. and Mrs. Zamarripa recall Father Buckholt and

Father Gomez as two priests who began to change the way parishioners thought about each other. Mrs. Zamarripa recounts that it was in their sermons that these priests facilitated change:

En sermones decía… Comenzó él a trabajar sobre éso y a decirnos, a inculcarnos que todos éramos hermanos. Todos éramos hijos de Dios. A Dios no dividia ni color ni raza. Entonces hay ésto en los sermones, ésos fuertes que él ponía…

In his sermons he [the priest] would say… He started to work on this and tell us, to ingrain in us that we were all brothers and sisters. We were all children of God. God did not divide by color or by race. He would put those [themes] in his sermons, those strong [sermons] he would give.

The priests at St. Francis Xavier were in the powerful position of influencing people’s moral positions and attitudes every Sunday at the pulpit. The Zamarripas assert that, little by little, practices in the church began to change. Mr. Zamarripa asserts that the efforts of the priests along with the movements helped to “componer” (repair) things in the church. It is interesting to note his choice of words. Discrimination against Mexican

Catholics and the segregation they experienced within the church had, in a way, broken the Catholic community. Little by little, the community began to repair itself.

Finally, I would like to argue that many of the vestiges of discrimination and segregation that Mexican origin people experienced within the local Catholic Church were both unearthed and put to rest with the construction of the new church. At the groundbreaking ceremony for the new church on December 3, 1992, Norma, whose

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narrative earlier in this chapter recalls catechism that Mexican children received at St.

Francis Xavier, narrates how she came to an understanding of race relations then and now within the church.

One of the things that I always remember is when the priest, which was Father _____, [who] … was here the whole time… On December the third … we dedicated the new church … and they announced how long he had been here. And it was a long time. But I’m sitting there, already as an adult, already married, and already working here at the church… And they said how long he had been here and I’m thinking, why didn’t I ever have a personal conversation with him? You know, like I do now with [the priest now]. And it hit me. And I remember so vividly that we would walk out of church and he would walk. You know how they greet the people? It was in the capilla (the old church), so he would go like half way … and everybody was around him, talking with him. And I always wondered, “Why can’t we do that?” But I don’t think we were ever told not to do that. I just remember seeing all the Anglos… It kind of made me sad because I thought … he was such a good priest and I loved him and everything. And he was the one who married me. That I remember. When we got married, we had one conversation with him. And you know, what he told us was good, but that was the only time I remember just talking to him personally.

While Mr. and Mrs. Zamarripa hold very early memories of the discrimination they experienced within the Catholic Church in La Feria, Norma comes to the realization only as they close the doors to the old church and open those of the new church. Unlike Mr. and Mrs. Zamarripa, who are in their late 70s and early 80s, Norma is in her early 60s, having grown up in the church when the racial order had most likely already been established. Mexican Catholic customs had probably already been suppressed by Anglo members of the congregation. Norma grew up in the church not necessarily questioning why her family sat on a particular side of the church. When asked why she sat there, she

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stated, “That’s where we sit as a family… I thought it was normal.” This normalized set of racial rules was disrupted only by the construction of the new church.

As I stated earlier, the first Catholic Church in La Feria was built by Anglo residents with the land and financial support from one of La Feria’s first land speculators from the Midwest, S.J. Schnorenberg. I would like to suggest that his support, along with that of other Anglo Catholics, set a precedent for Anglo ownership of the church. Norma recalls how ownership of the church was shifted to the larger community of La Feria with the construction of the new church in 1992:

When we moved into the new church, all the confirmation students and everybody was working together. Not just the students but the adults. I could see vividly… On the last day … I remember Father Tom making the comment that this is everybody’s church. This church doesn’t belong to just this people; it belongs to everyone… And I was like, wow. And I think it’s true. I think in the other church we felt like it was their church.

Norma recognizes that moment as a turning point in the church’s history. She sees all the confirmation students as well as the adults—both Mexican and Anglo—working together. She understands what Father Tom is saying when he says that this is everybody’s church. This church will not divide Mexicans from Anglos by an aisle.51 It will not belong to one group. It will belong to everyone.

51 Interestingly, the new church is constructed such that there is a semi-circle of pews facing the altar, not two long columns as it had been at the other church. The other church has since been converted into a small chapel. 145

Sacred and Secular Struggles

Here, in the everyday, common struggle for our survival as a people with a dignity bestowed on us by God, the political and the personal, the economic and the spiritual, the intellectual and the emotional, the sacred and the secular are united. – Roberto Goizueta

In this dissertation, I have argued that the internal boundaries of exclusion and inclusion in the national imagined community were manifested through local practices of segregation. I have further argued that community is a process that is forged by institutions—both national and local—and the social actions of local actors and activists.

While in the previous chapter I focused on how the social actions of Mexican American teachers within the local school system facilitated racial integration, this chapter has examined the role of La Feria’s comunidades de base in the racial integration of another prominent local institution—the Catholic Church.

Despite the fact that St. Francis Xavier was not segregated by church doctrine, it was not exempt from national and local racial attitudes. The internal boundaries of St.

Francis Xavier parish were drawn along racial lines, much as they were in other local institutions. I have argued that the long absence of the Catholic Church in Texas after

Mexican Independence led Tejanos to practice a home-centered and self-reliant kind of religiosity. When Anglos settled La Feria, they established a local Catholic Church with their money and the land that they had purchased. Though the church was supposed to belong to all Catholics, there remained a strong sense of Anglo ownership of that church space from the 1930s until as late as the early 1990s. Anglos made it clear to Mexican

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faithful that their practices were not welcome. Furthermore, the long aisle separating the two columns of pews facing the altar divided the church into two racially distinct areas.

Though the social justice movements in the 1960s and 1970s challenged racial attitudes and the discriminatory treatment of racial minorities in the United States, Anglo racial dominance and forms of segregation persisted in La Feria, specifically within the local Catholic Church. The movements for social justice within the United States as well as Latin American liberation theology exerted an influence on the U.S. Catholic Church.

The establishment of groups such as PADRES and Las Hermanas as well as the Mexican

American Cultural Center in San Antonio helped in the struggle for Mexican American rights – both inside and outside of the church. Nevertheless, Mexican origin people recount their experiences of discrimination and racial discomfort within St. Francis

Xavier even until the late 1970s. It has been my argument in this chapter that, in addition to all of the large-scale movements occurring in other parts of the country, the racial integration of Mexicans in the Catholic Church had to be inspired and propelled by the social actions and practices of local people.

I argue that La Feria’s comunidades de base were instrumental in facilitating the racial integration of the church. The comunidades de base demonstrate how the everyday social actions of people can transform a community. I argue in this chapter that the activities of las comunidades de base enabled Mexican origin people in La Feria to re- imagine and reinvent the community. While the movement was not overtly political, decrying social injustice, it was nevertheless transformative over time. Beginning as weekly bible study groups, the groups were later transformed into comunidades de base,

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incorporating temas that addressed social issues. Their weekly meetings led to a revival of popular religious practices in neighborhoods, ultimately becoming a way for Mexican origin people to create a culturally legitimate space for themselves within the local

Catholic Church. La Feria’s comunidades de base claimed the everyday right to belong as full members of their church, claiming ownership of this institution and of the larger community.

One of the most significant aspects of the comunidades de base was the sense of solidarity that they promoted among the Mexican origin people who were involved. In his article, “Aesthetic Processes and Cultural Citizenship,” Richard Flores asserts that

“enactments and practices that forge a sense of community and belonging, lead to renewed experiences of identity and provide a social space for the formation of collective practice and its concomitant forms of power” (1997:125). The comunidades de base functioned in this way through their weekly meetings. Mr. Zamarripa’s narrative asserts that the best thing that the comunidades de base had to offer was the fact that they would meet in different people’s houses every week, in Mexican neighborhoods in and outside of town. I would like to suggest that people’s homes were an intimate place for people to meet. They shared food and music. They studied the bible and their temas, but were also able to learn about one another. Mr. Zamarripa states, “Nos fuimos uniendo más y más.”

We became more and more united. They were united not only by religion, but also by race, by language and oftentimes, by socioeconomic class. The working class nature of these groups led the members of the groups to pool their resources to help each other out whenever necessary. As Flores indicates, this space of belonging and community led its

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members to collective action. In the case of the comunidades de base, they moved from the intimate spaces of their homes to their neighborhoods as they began to revive some of their popular religious practices.

I would like to suggest that the Mexican popular religious practices revived by the comunidades de base were, at a basic level, a struggle for cultural survival that ultimately was a political struggle. In an essay about Latino popular religious practices, theologian Roberto Goizueta states that “precisely because these practices emerge on the margins of society and the official Church, they are nurtured by the spiritual and intellectual demands of the struggle for survival, by the everyday resistance to vanquishment” (1997:xvii). While the marginalization Mexicans experienced (being ushered to one side of the church) at St. Francis Xavier was painful, many of the members of the comunidades de base also lamented the loss of their culturally specific practices within the Catholic Church. It upset them that they were not able to pass these practices—part of their culture—on to their children. Theologian Orlando Espín asserts that “popular Catholicism stands out as one of the very few social (public and private) spaces that have been able to preserve some high degree of protagonism for Latinos”

(1997:102). In reviving their popular religious practices, they were asserting their right not to disappear, resisting the Anglo religious hegemony. The activities of the comunidades de base and the revival of their popular religious practices were thus political in nature, part of the struggle for cultural visibility and racial integration within the local Catholic Church.

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I would like to argue that the political implications of the activities of the comunidades de base extend beyond the realm of the local Catholic Church. Flores argues that cultural performances, like those of the comunidades de base, “are, no doubt, political affairs – their emergence from specific social conditions and historical events places them squarely in the midst of sociopolitical life” (1997:126). It is important to note that the issue of racial segregation was not of the Catholic Church; it was born of national and, by extension, local racial attitudes. Mexican origin people were marginalized in the Catholic Church much in the same way they were marginalized in other local institutions, such as the local schools. Attitudes toward Mexicans in the community in general had implications for their treatment within the church. For this reason, I argue that shifts in attitudes and challenges to racial hierarchy within the

Catholic Church had implications for the racialized social structure of the town in general. A victory for racial integration in the church was a victory for racial integration in the town in general. Furthermore, if we understand the social actions of the comunidades de base through the lens of cultural citizenship, we may also see that assuming rights within one social sphere (in this case, the Catholic Church) may lead to broader demands for rights. Flores explains:

Collective forms of cultural practice assert social rights, and, when piqued by a set of social, political, economic, legal, or other barriers, the effort to assert social rights can lead to an expanded view of communal action in the civil sphere (1997:150).

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What may begin as a demand for dignity or for cultural recognition opens space for broader demands—desegregation of schools, or political representation on the School

Board. The hierarchical racial structure begins to crumble.

This chapter has illustrated one way in which Mexican origin people remade the segregated community of La Feria. Members of the comunidades de base re-imagine the way that they could belong to the community, broadening the scope of belonging in a significant local institution, one especially significant for Mexican origin people, the

Catholic Church. They achieve this through the revival of popular religious practices that had ultimately been suppressed within the Anglo-dominant church. Challenging the idea that Mexican Catholicism was inferior, members of the comunidades de base renewed their popular religious practices first in their neighborhoods and then in the church itself.

Rather than shun the church for its discriminatory attitudes toward Mexicans, members of the comunidades de base held to the hope of their faith and engaged with the institution.

As Edward Said has said, this type of engagement with a dominant power has the potential to “dispute its hierarchy and methods, to elucidate what it has hidden, to pronounce what it has silenced or rendered unpronounceable” (quoted in Goizueta

1997:xi). The social actions of La Feria’s comunidades de base reflect grassroots critique and resistance. These home group communities not only create cultural space for

Mexican origin people within the local Catholic Church, they challenge national racial attitudes and set the stage for broader racial integration and community transformation.

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Chapter 5: PALs and the Emergence of the New Radical Mexicans: Shifting School Board Politics in the Mid-1990s

The La Feria Parental Awareness League (PAL) is "a community involvement group consisting of individuals who hold a common goal of improving the quality of life for the children of La Feria, Texas. With this in mind, the group strives to promote parental involvement in education, in the community, and in the political process. In addition, it works to promote scholarship awareness and to generate scholarship funds for La Feria students." – "Club announces formation," The La Feria News, March 23, 1995

The superintendent is a difficult man. He's very gruff. He'll tell you to your face that he doesn't like you. But he gets the job done. Did you know that there was a group here in town that formed for the sole purpose of getting Mr. Wenke out of being superintendent? They were called the PALs. They got three or four people elected to the School Board but they haven't done anything to Mr. Wenke. Because they realize that he's good at his job. He gets things done. - Janet, City employee

This chapter details how a grassroots political movement in La Feria changed the power structure of the local school board. This movement coincided with and was influenced by the emergence of the La Feria Parental Awareness League (PAL) in the mid-1990s. I argue that the actions of “new” politicians in La Feria as well as the actions of members of the PALs marked a period of intense local civic engagement that challenged the community’s scope of membership and broadened political access for

Mexican origin people. Furthermore, I will suggest that the political and politicized events surrounding school board elections and the activities of the PALs revealed

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underlying racial tensions in La Feria that had not been quelled despite the fact that there was Mexican American representation on the School Board.

This chapter contributes to the larger arguments of my dissertation in that it illustrates how a major institution (the school board) and the actions of its critics influence and shape the community. Perhaps more than any of the previous ethnographic chapters, this chapter shows the immediate, dramatic impact of grassroots organizing through the actions of those who mounted the first political campaign for positions on the school board in 1994. Nevertheless, I will argue that the activities of the La Feria

Parental Awareness League were equally important to facilitating change in the community. Essentially a civic and social organization, the actions of its members came under intense scrutiny as it promoted awareness of local political processes. In this way, the events covered in this chapter will demonstrate the broad political and social impact of individuals and a grassroots organization on the community.

The early to mid-1990s is not a period of time typically associated with racial integration. In his book, Anglos and Mexicans in the Making of Texas, Montejano (1987) lends the final section to a discussion of racial integration. He points to several indicators that Mexican origin people have been integrated in Texas, including the increased use of

English, intermarriage, and upward class mobility (288). Montejano, as well as political scientist Rodolfo Rosales (2000), note that World War II and the emergence of a

Mexican American middle class as well as the Civil Rights Movement were important developments in the political enfranchisement of the Texas Mexican community.

Nevertheless, the persistence of poverty, low levels of education, and health issues in this

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community call into question the idea that Mexican origin people now have the same access to resources as their Anglo counterparts (Montejano 1987). Expressing neither unilateral optimism nor cynicism, both authors express the complexity of the current social, economic, and political positionings of the Mexican origin community in Texas.

While both authors point to the increased political representation of Texas Mexicans since World War II, they both bring to bear the question of representing the interests of the Mexican origin community. The question of political representation has often taken center stage when considering de facto as well as de jure rights of Mexican origin people.

In a community as small as La Feria, the school board is one of the most prominent local institutions. The most obvious manifestation of its power is that it is the entity that enacts policy that affects children at all levels of the school system.

Furthermore, the school system is also one of the major local employers, not just of teachers, but also of administrators ranging from principals to teacher aids to office assistants and paraprofessionals. Members of the community therefore have a great deal invested in who occupies positions on the board. Perhaps because the school system is such an important institution in La Feria residents’ lives, positions in upper-level administration and on the school board are highly imbued with power. As such, several of the initial civil rights movements in small towns around South Texas actually began or were somehow related to the school system.52

52 Protests in Crystal City and in Edcouch-Elsa are some of the more well-known Mexican-led protests in the 1960s. (Barrera 2004; Montejano 1987) 154

The political movements of the 1960s and 1970s made a significant impact on the

La Feria School Board. Prior to the 1960s, its members were all Anglo males, with the exception of a brief period in the 1950s, when an Anglo woman served a term on the board. Many of the early school board members were professionals and businessmen, though there were also some local farmers who served on the board. During the local spring elections of 1971, the community of La Feria elected its first Mexican origin school board member, Tony Guevara. The following year, Senaido (Sam) Martinez joined Mr. Guevara as the second Mexican American on the school board. These two men served as the Mexican representation on the school board through the end of the

1970s.

Like many of the first Mexican American teachers at Sam Houston Elementary

School, Sam Martinez recounts that his father had owned a small business on the

Mexican side of town in La Feria. Mr. Martinez graduated from La Feria High School in

1947 with no plans to attend college, recounting to me in an interview that, during that time period, Mexicans were not encouraged to pursue a college education.

After I graduated from high school, I went with a crew that was picking cotton in Arizona. I didn't pick cotton, but I was working in the shed, stamping the boxes. I remember when I got back from the summer, my hands were all black. My dad asked me, is this what you want to do for the rest of your life? And I said, no! And my dad said, then go to business college.

At that time, his family could not afford to send him to a four-year college or university; they opted instead to send Mr. Martinez to business college, where he was able to complete his training in eleven months. Mr. Martinez subsequently became a successful

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and respected businessmen in La Feria, where he is known to "walk both sides of the street," retaining ties to both the Anglo and Mexican communities. In 1951, just four years after graduating from high school, Mr. Martinez and his wife purchased a house on the Anglo side of the tracks and were able to send their children to the Anglo schools in

La Feria.

As a member of the school board in the early 1970s, Mr. Martinez recalls that the school board was hesitant to integrate the students but realized that if they wanted to continue to receive federal funding for the schools, they would have to comply with desegregation laws. He further remembers that in his early days as a school board member, it was a struggle to promote integration and to hire more Mexican Americans as teachers and administrators. Ultimately, however, Martinez feels that the school board was successful in enacting a great amount of change and progress toward the full integration of Mexican students and employees within the school system.

I would like to argue that by the end of the 1970s, a fairly stable social and political organization emerged within La Feria, one that included both Anglos and

Mexicans in local power structures. This was apparent in the Mexican and Anglo representation on the school board and throughout the school system. I would like to suggest that this new political structure, which had been born of national, state, and local movements for racial equality throughout the 1960s and 1970s, represented the new way people imagined and enacted their community. I would like to suggest that especially after the Civil Rights Movement, the U.S. was no longer imagined in solely White Anglo

Saxon terms. Struggles for rights and equal opportunities for the nation’s racial

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minorities were waged throughout the country. In chapter three, I argued that in La Feria,

Anglos were forced to make political concessions in the schools little by little.

By 1990, U.S. Census data reveals that the total Hispanic population of La Feria was approximately 82.5%; the White (non-Hispanic) population was 17% (U.S. Census

1990). Mexican Americans enjoyed political representation in the city, as they did statewide, on the school board as well as the city commission. Nevertheless, during this time period, people began to question whether Mexican American politicians were truly representing the needs of all the members of their community. People began to question whether the integrity of the Anglo political structure had yet to crumble.

Consciousness and Cracks in the System

Students attending La Feria schools in the 1990s either did not remember or had not experienced the school segregation of the previous generation. However, in the minds of that older generation, the integrity of the old Anglo-dominated system had yet to crumble. The following narratives demonstrate a growing discontent with the way school board members addressed educational issues and policy.

John Chavez

I had just graduated from high school and was a freshman at UT Pan Am. It was the first day of class for this political science class I was taking. The professor was having us all stand up, say our names, where we were from, our majors, and all that. I said, my name's John; I'm from La Feria. And he said, "Oh, La Feria! The place where

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the good ole boy network is still firmly intact." I didn't get it back then. But then later on, it clicked. They say it in coaching, too. Like if you get a job somewhere, you try to get all of your friends to go work over there with you. It doesn't have to do with race exactly because there are Hispanics who do it too. But it's a bolillo53 mentality, so to speak. They protect their own.

Mague Rubio

I had a student named Herlinda Monte in my class. Her mom was a barmaid. But she was real smart. I wanted her to be in the GT (Gifted and Talented) class. So I talked to the administration and I told them about her. And they said, no, we're sorry, but that class is too full. There's no room for another student. I thought, OK. Well, if it's full, that's fine. But I told them, if somebody drops out or moves, if any space becomes available, I think you should let her in because she's very smart.

A little after that, John Smith's daughter came to our school. His dad was the one who started [one of the major businesses] in La Feria and then it belonged to him. Well, his daughter had been going to private school in Harlingen, but then they decided to start sending her here to La Feria. And they wanted her to be in the GT class.

This little girl was not as smart as Herlinda Monte. They took tests, and Herlinda scored higher on the test than this little girl. But they let her in to the GT class and not

Herlinda. Just because her mom was a barmaid.

53 Regional slang term used to refer to Anglos 158

And I thought, so that's the way it is. From then on, I decided I'm not keeping my mouth shut.

Both John Chavez and Mague Rubio express concerns about a form of nepotism that they saw occurring within the school district. They assert that there was an unspoken network that benefited those who had connections with prominent people within the school system. John Chavez became aware of this power structure while he was a student at UT Pan Am, and then later through his experiences as an educator. Mague

Rubio recognized these practices in her own classroom, where she saw favoritism toward those students whose parents were prominent in the community, leaving those students who did not have such connections at a loss. Chavez identifies this kind of preferential treatment as a "bolillo mentality," making reference to the Anglo power structure that had dominated the town for decades prior.

Alfonso Guillen

One of the issues that concerned us was the TAAS scores. They were ridiculous.

We're talking about a thirty-something percent passing rate, which was "acceptable."

And that was acceptable to the school board. I began to take some graduate courses at

UT Pan Am and I came across a book called The Snapshot. It's a TEA54 publication. In

1993 and prior to that, our school district was in real bad shape in terms of student achievement.

54 Texas Educational Agency 159

When we decided to run [for positions on the School Board], we went out to the neighborhoods to campaign. Everyone would say that we had "real good schools" and

"real good kids." It was sort of like a brainwashing kind of deal. But then I would go out there with the facts—about low TAAS scores. And people started sharing their stories with us. They were like, “Yeah, my daughter graduated in the top ten percent of her class here and failed her first semester at UT Pan Am. And she was trying!”

Mr. Guillen's narrative reflects his gradual realization that despite the La Feria school system’s reputation for academic excellence, students were not performing well on state tests and were experiencing difficulty in college. Mr. Guillen found that though residents of La Feria lauded the quality of the school system, many of their own children had trouble with the academic standards of local colleges despite performing well at La

Feria High School. Perhaps feeling that their children were exceptions to the academic excellence of the school, members of the community continued to boast about the high quality of La Feria schools. Mr. Guillen asserts that the schools, in a way, had

"brainwashed" the people in town to speak about the schools in this way. He felt that this mentality prevented community members from complaining about the state of the local education system or taking their concerns to the school board. Mr. Guillen's narrative and those of John Chavez and Mague Rubio reflect some issues of concern fueling their desire to organize a campaign for new representation on the school board.

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Finding a Horse

One Sunday afternoon I was just minding my own business and I got a call from Mague Rubio asking me if I would go to her house for a meeting that night. When I got there, I didn't really know all of the people who were there. The discussion that night was about electing new people to the school board. -Gloria Casas, La Feria School Board Trustee

The above excerpt from an interview with school board member Gloria Casas represents the experience of many of the first people involved in changing the political representation of the La Feria School Board. Mague Rubio, who was an elementary school teacher at the time, and her husband gathered community members who they believed had the desire and potential to change the school system’s status quo. The

Rubios contacted about seven couples for a meeting at their home one Sunday afternoon in 1994. The group assembled at that meeting discussed their concerns with the school system. As I have stated earlier, two prominent concerns were the issues of nepotism within the school system and the district’s low state test scores. Also of concern was that school board meetings were held in the middle of the day, when many parents were unable to attend. The group felt that these meeting times limited people’s access to the school policy makers. Finally, they also expressed concern about the quality of education that the district provided for low-income students. Many of those present at the meeting had already taken their concerns with these issues to the school board or other areas of the administration, but felt that their complaints had ultimately fallen upon deaf ears.

The seven couples assembled at that meeting concluded that in order to enact the kind of change they wanted to see in school policy, they themselves would have to

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become members of the school board. They chose, amongst themselves, three candidates to run for the three open positions on the school board that year: Gloria Casas, Alfonso

Guillen, and Carlos Ochoa.

On the Campaign Trail

Alfonso Guillen

People in La Feria, up to that point, were not used to campaigning. At that time, no one knew about elections. The La Feria News would announce the school board elections on maybe a two-inch by two-inch square box. They just did the minimal amount to be in compliance with the law. There was no effort made to encourage the community to participate.

And people were intimidated to go to the school with problems.

The Hispanic community is very submissive in La Feria. It was seen as shameful to confront people in authority. I've literally seen grown men lower their eyes when they're shaking an Anglo's hand. You never see a young Anglo lowering his eyes to anyone.

But Mrs. Casas and I didn't have to worry about that, maybe because we're not from here. We were willing to step up and dish it out as well as anybody. We ran with the support of the Rubios, Martinez, Tamez, and Zuniga families. And we just shocked the tarnations out of everybody.

Two significant themes emerge from Mr. Guillen's narrative. The first is his observation that there were still unequal power relations between Anglos and Mexicans

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in La Feria. Mr. Guillen recalls having seen adult Mexican men lower their eyes to

Anglos, but never an Anglo showing the same kind of deference to a Mexican. In one of my later interviews, an Anglo resident, Mr. Lester, echoed Mr. Guillen’s sentiment about race relations in La Feria. Mr. Lester intimated to me that Anglos born in La Feria felt

"like they have some special rights" over Mexicans. I would like to suggest that this type of Mexican deference coupled with the Anglo feelings of entitlement were vestiges of the structure of segregation and remained characteristic of Mexican/Anglo race relations even until the 1990s. I argue that these race relations contributed to a racialized power structure that still favored Anglos, despite its concessions in the 1970s to the Mexican community. Interestingly, neither Mr. Guillen nor Mr. Lester were born in La Feria; both moved to La Feira in the 80s and 90s from other parts of Texas, offering outsider perspectives.

Mr. Guillen's narrative suggests that there was a connection between Anglo dominance in the community and civic participation in school board politics. He states that until the year he, Mrs. Casas, and Mr. Ochoa ran for school board, the elections passed annually without much attention from the community. He expresses his frustration with what he recognized as the deep-seated racial dominance of Anglos over

Mexicans in La Feria. He asserts that Mexican origin people in La Feria, in particular, were afraid to confront what he felt was still an Anglo-dominated power structure—the school board. According to Mrs. Rubio, part of their campaign strategy was to go door to door in an attempt to mobilize more members of the community to vote. She states, "A lot of [Mexican] people thought they were being discriminated against [by the schools]."

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Many of these people, however, did not vote in local elections. She would tell them, "If you're not going to vote, don't complain," suggesting her belief that people’s civic participation could actually change the school system.

Mr. Guillen implies that as natives of other Valley towns (Harlingen and San

Benito, respectively), he and Mrs. Casas were not bound by the same racial attitudes and social constraints as those Mexican origin people born and raised in La Feria. He states that they took their campaigns seriously and exceeded everybody's expectations.

Gloria Casas

That first year we worked so hard going door to door, walking the neighborhoods.

I remember right before elections, I was rushing around, trying to do some last minute errands and I ran into Mrs. Sánchez.55 She was ordering food for the victory celebration that they were planning to have after the elections. I remember she said to me, "Ya, ya.56

You all have put up a good fight." Can you imagine then when we ended up winning? I guess they didn't need that food after all!

Mrs. Casas’ reflections on her first school board campaign demonstrate that, even with the visible campaign she, Mr. Guillen, and Mr. Ochoa had mounted, they were not being taken as serious opponents. The school board incumbents had planned their victory party days before the election took place, unable to conceive of the dramatic shift in

55 wife of a then-incumbent school board candidate 56Translation: Enough, enough. 164

power that was about to take place. In the 1994 school board elections, there were 955 total votes, nearly double the votes that had been counted over the previous decade (see graph). In a landslide victory, the community elected all three candidates who had emerged from the meeting at Mague Rubio's house.

One of the incumbents who lost his position in the election that year was serving as president of the school board at that time. He performed the final duty of his term in office swearing in the new school board members. Afterward, he thanked the trustees, newly elected trustees, and patrons for their assistance and loyalty during his office as president, and then stepped down from his seat, leaving the vice-president to preside in his place.

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Figure 3. La Feria School Board Election Results, 1984-1995.

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Illustration 4. New School Board Members Elected, 1994. Source: The La Feria News, May 11, 1994

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The Rise of PALs

We met a lot during that time period ... When all the election stuff was over, we were kind of sad because we didn’t have a reason to meeting any more. That's when we thought of PALs – the Parental Awareness League. I came up with the name for it because I thought it was important to get the parents of the kids in school involved. And that's how the PALS started. - Gloria Casas, School Board Trustee and former PAL member

At some point, we thought that we had to do something else. We thought, getting elected, that makes us just like the bolillos. So that's why we started the PALs, to educate the community, to help the community. - John Chavez, former PAL member

The PALs was a group of people who got together because they didn't like the way that things were being done in the school district. They thought that a lot of the Mexicans in the administration were kind of … Anglicized. I guess I would be one of those people. - Frank Ramirez, school administrator

The above excerpts from my interviews and conversations with community members and ex-PAL members demonstrate the varied understandings of the function and purpose of the La Feria Parental Awareness League. Their commentaries represent a range of perspectives. While some saw the PALs as a tool for community empowerment, others saw the group as a political machine whose goal was to disenfranchise Anglos and those Mexicans who sided, politically, with Anglos. In this section I will represent the varied perceptions of PALs and show how the group's name became intertwined with local school board politics. Focusing on these attitudes and events provides a critical lens through which to understand race relations in the era after segregation. Furthermore, the politics of this time period will demonstrate the power of grassroots organizing to achieve institutional reform and increased civic involvement.

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Alfonso Guillen

After the campaign, we realized that people had no idea how the community operated, what the school board did. We wanted to empower people to become interested voters, not just encouraged voters. You know, back in the old days, the farmers would take truckloads of their workers to the polls and encourage them to vote for their candidates. We didn't want that. We thought, if only we had some kind of organization where we could do something for the people, to give them a sense of pride in the community, but also that would bring in speakers to educate them. And we did just that. We had the City Manager, the counselor from the high school, the police, Make a

Wish foundation, the AIDS Council.

We started with seven couples, but before we knew it, the organization had grown to twenty-five or thirty couples. We had been meeting at people's houses, but then we started meeting at the American Legion Hall. They let us meet there for free. We would have a dinner; someone would bring a main course and the rest was a potluck. We had an excellent time. And my goodness it paid off!

The organization became known. We started awarding scholarships. We became too good for our own good. After a while Mr. Cobarrubias and Mr. Villalon were also elected to the school board and they were members of PALs. I was worried about the appearance of impropriety because four of us had been elected. At that time, I was president of the school board and I decided to step out of PALs. I didn't want to put into question our integrity as a group.

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John Chavez

Mr. Guillen is the one who had the purest vision of what PALs was, what it was supposed to be. From him to other people, that vision was corrupted.

Alfonso Guillen's testimony, as John Chavez states, reflects the purest vision of the purpose of the La Feria Parental Awareness League. Guillen's testimony powerfully demonstrates a knowledge of local history, recalling how, in times past, Anglo farmers took their Mexican workers to voting polls, encouraging them to vote for the farmers' preferred candidates. Guillen understood the purpose of PALs was not to repeat history, encouraging community members to vote for his political camp. Rather, his vision was to empower members of the community through education. He saw PALs as a means to educate La Feria residents about civic processes as well as social issues, citing the speakers that PALs brought to the community. These speakers included representatives from the city and the local schools as well as regional representatives of national groups such as the Make a Wish Foundation and the AIDS Council. Guillen saw the growth of

PALs and the increased civic and political involvement of group members—two new

PAL members elected to the school board—as a sign of the group's success. Even boasting about the group's success, however, Guillen hints at negative community perceptions of PALs, stating that, as school board president, he stepped out of the group so as not to put into question its organizational integrity.

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John Chavez makes more explicit the community perceptions of PALs and the question of "propriety" to which Mr. Guillen refers in his narrative. Chavez implies that other members of the community held a corrupted vision of the purpose of the PALs, perhaps because there were no Anglo members of the group. This “corrupted” vision played itself out in school board politics over the next five years.

The group assembled at Mague Rubio's house in 1994, which was to become

PALs, knew that they were campaigning against an establishment that had been intact for decades. Whether that establishment was what John Chavez's professor had called "the good ole boy system" or not is debatable. However, it is true that many of the same people had been on the school board for years, sometimes representing a new generation of the same family on the board. Furthermore, though Anglos had never been the majority population in town, they were the majority represented on the school board.

Although this establishment took a serious political blow in the 1994 elections, the war for positions and political clout on the school board had just begun. One of the first changes enacted by the "new" school board was to change meeting times to hours that were deemed more accessible to members of the community. Meetings had previously been held during the middle of the workday. During the same meeting when the new school board members were sworn in, meeting times were changed to six o'clock in the evening, after many people had left work for the day. This action was indicative of the increased public attention that actions of the school board members were beginning to receive.

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As I stated earlier, in the 1994 school board elections, members of La Feria turned out in droves and cast a record number of over 900 votes. The following year, more than

1200 voters participated in the school board elections. That time, the incumbents, who were both Anglo and Mexican, took their campaign strategies more seriously and were re-elected, but only by a fifty-vote margin. Even so, at the next school board meeting, when the incumbents were sworn in again, there was dissent about which members of the board would claim the positions of president, vice-president, and secretary-treasurer. The newer members of the board attempted to claim some of these positions, citing the need for "new leadership" on the board (School Board Minutes, May 1995). Their efforts to assume offices on the board at that meeting were defeated. However, these actions demonstrated that that this new group of citizens who had chosen to participate in school board politics was not going to be content with token representation. They actively sought the political clout necessary to enact change in school policy. Although school board candidates were not officially affiliated with any one political party, it became clear during that time period that candidates were often affiliated with one of two political camps. The first of these camps, which included both Anglos and Mexican

Americans, represented the old establishment, lauded its own political "experience" and praised the state of the existing school system. The other camp, which was composed of only Mexican origin people, often called for "change" and "new leadership" on the school board, and cited the need for improvement in the school system.

During the Spring months—campaign season—over the next five years, the battle for positions on the school board was waged and documented in the local newspaper.

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Whereas in 1994 there was minimal coverage of the school board campaign, there was a noted difference in successive years. Political ads for the various candidates began to appear in the weekly paper. Furthermore, the then editor of the newspaper ran articles covering the campaign, including brief snapshots of the candidates as well as his own editorial slant on the races, which often favored long-time incumbents. Perhaps most significantly, however, there was a barrage of letters to the editor fiercely defending and attacking various candidates. It was in these letters that many of the accusations against

PALs began to surface. An excerpt from one such letter follows:

PAL cofounder Alfonso Guillen says PAL does not support any political candidate – yet current PAL president ______confronted our school board president promising a political battle “like the last election.” Which is it, PAL’s, politics or not? … I have come to the belief that the PAL agenda is deeply political—and many of its key leaders seek to replace top district administrators that do not fall into line (The La Feria News, April 6-12, 1995).

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Illustration 5. Letter to the Editor. Source: The La Feria News, April 1995

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Though members of PALs always maintained that their group was for the specific goal of community building and community education, rumors began to circulate that they were actually pushing politicians and wanting to take control of city politics. These accusations were fueled by the fact that members of the La Feria Parental Awareness

League were indeed running for positions on the school board and on the city commission. Mr. Guillen finally spoke to the accusations in a letter that he wrote to the editor, defending himself and PALs. An excerpt of that letter follows:

I have sat on the sidelines observing the 1995 La Feria School Board campaigns with utter amazement that in 1995 a group of CRONIES [emphasis his] thinks that the community will believe their lies and misinformation. In past letters submitted by Mr. X and Mr. Y an intentional attack on me and the La Feria Parental Awareness League has been launched. Misinformation and lies have been used by CRONIES to try to gain control of people and communities. La Feria is a victim of this deed by these two individuals and their cronies… The few self appointed keepers of ignorance and non-participation that oppose any newcomer from participating in local government are satisfied in seeing election returns of 50, 100, or on a great day 400 community residents vote, a small percentage of the 4,092 registered voters in our voting community… Let us not defeat our town's future by limiting our full potential as a community. Let us allow anyone who believes he or she can help our community to seek office without having the CRONIES defame them and the organizations they belong to. I urge you to seek the truth, confirm rumors, and vote in an informed manner… (The La Feria News, May 4-10, 1995)

In this letter, Mr. Guillen charges two men in particular, both of whom had been on the school board previously or were serving at that time, of purposefully spreading rumors to try to confuse citizens and discourage them from civic participation. This dialogue between political camps escalated with the two men in question bringing a law suit

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against Mr. Guillen for slander. The charges were eventually dropped, but the situation is indicative of the fierce nature of town politics at that time.

Underlying the rumors that the La Feria Parental Awareness League was pushing politicians was the idea that its members were anti-Anglo. When PALs were accused of wanting to take control of the school board, control was coded to mean running Anglos out of town or, at least, out of their administrative positions. Those Mexican Americans who were affiliated with the long-term school board members and administrators also felt that PALs was targeting them. They believed that PAL members labeled them

"Anglicized" and so they, too, were at risk of losing their positions within the school system. This new group of Mexicans who were promoting "change" and "new leadership" were labeled as "radicals" who sought "change for the sake of change."

Earlier in this chapter, I quoted John Chavez stating, "Mr. Guillen is the one who had the purest vision of what PALs was, what it was supposed to be. From him to other people, that vision was corrupted." As an organization that grew to include many

Mexican origin residents of the community, I would like to suggest that the La Feria

Parental Awareness League served different purposes and held different meanings for its affiliated members and other members of the community. The following narratives testify to the nature of the organization in the mid-1990s.

Adam Lester

During that time [the mid-1990s] there started to be a lot more campaigning. I remember [an Anglo] friend of mine saying to me, "Why do they [the new Mexican

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candidates] want to do this? Don't they know that we'll take care of them?" And I was like, "What?! They don't need you to take care of them. They can take care of themselves."

The Hispanic community had blossomed. A lot of them had gotten an education and even though some Anglos had not, they still felt innately better [than the Mexicans].

There were rumors that the goal [of the new candidates] was to get rid of all the Anglos.

The rumor mill caused a lot of panic. People don't think right sometimes; they're not logical.

The PALs wanted to supplement what was happening in the school. They decided that they wanted to become more involved. People misconstrued that. PALs was started by people who had not historically been the leaders of the community.

In reality, there were some people in the group who were rabble rousers, wanting to cause trouble.

John Chavez

There were some people who would come to the group to complain about things that were happening in the schools. We shouldn't have let them. That was our mistake.

We should have told them to take their complaints to the school board. And there were some people in the group who maybe thought that's what the group was for.

The above narratives suggest a couple of major contributors to the rumor mill and panic surrounding the La Feria Parental Awareness League. First, Mr. Lester's testimony

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suggests that local Anglos feared the political—and perhaps even civic—organization of

Mexican origin members of the community. His friend's comment that they (Anglos) were going to "take care" of local Mexicans hearkens back to the historical patrón-peon relationship between Anglos and Mexicans (Foley 1988). Anglo ranchers and farmers had traditionally maintained economic and political power and felt that they used said power to take care of "their" Mexican laborers. Although antiquated, Mr. Lester implies in his narrative that a version of this power structure was still at play in local politics.

However, as he points out, the Mexican origin community had "blossomed," many furthering their education and increasing their civic involvement. These twin developments in the local Mexican origin community threatened the Anglo power structure. The possibility of this power structure falling away and Mexicans actually being able to "take care" of themselves, as Mr. Lester asserted to his friend, led many local Anglos to panic, despite the fact that the town had supposedly been desegregated.

Race-related paranoia was not the only factor contributing to the rumor mill. The second theme emerging from the Lester and Chavez narratives is the idea that there were indeed some members of PALs who were perhaps concerned with politics more than simply with increased civic and social awareness. Mr. Lester refers to these members as

"rabble rousers" who were indeed out to "cause trouble." "Trouble," in this sense, may refer to disrupting the delicate Anglo-Mexican balance of power on the school board.

Chavez concedes that PALs should have been more vigilant about separating their group as a civic organization from the political concerns of the community. He asserts that the

"mistake" they made was in allowing members of the community to take their complaints

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about the school system to PALs. These people were probably aware that there were a few school board members involved in the organization and that approaching PALs was perhaps an informal way to influence school policy. Though the La Feria Parental

Awareness League never purported to promote political agendas, community perceptions of the group as well as conflicting ideas within the organization about its purpose contributed to the so-called rumor mill. I would like to suggest that that the function and purpose of PALs likely existed in the interstices of these differential views.

The rumors circulating about the La Feria Parental Awareness League had a real effect on those members of the community affiliated with the organization. Not only did the politicians of the group have to defend their positions against the rumors in their campaigns, but there were also other citizens who had to contend with forms of discrimination within the school system. One Mexican American teacher in the school district recounted to me that, after having attended only one PAL meeting, she began to note a difference in the way that other teachers and administrators treated her at school.

This differential treatment was most noticeable to her when the administration began to exclude her when forming school committees. Another woman recounted to me that, after becoming involved with PALs as well as some of the political campaigns, the school offices no longer called her to substitute teach for the district. These are examples of how the rumors circulating about the La Feria Parental Awareness League began to have negative effects on the lives of some of its members, particularly those who worked within the school district.

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Despite the rumors and their effects on members of the La Feria Parental

Awareness League, the organization boasted increased numbers and apparently succeeded in promoting increased civic participation. More members of the community did turn out to vote for school board and city elections and there were candidates on the ballots who had not been, as Mr. Lester stated earlier, historical leaders of the community. The five years after the community elected Mr. Guillen, Mrs. Casas, and

Mr. Ochoa to the school board were characterized by heavy politicking and mudslinging.

Nevertheless, in 1998, two new men were elected to the school board, both coincidentally members of the La Feria Parental Awareness League. Their election made the so-called establishment school board members a minority on the board for the first time. A year later, one of the most vociferous Anglo opponents of PALs and a member of the school board, resigned from his position before his term expired. He, along with two other former members of the school board—all Anglos—moved away from La Feria, relocating to other parts of Texas. Some members of town speculate their departure to be a result of having lost power; others say that the men wanted to join their families who lived in other parts of the state. Curiously, the La Feria Parental League also fell apart around this time. Some say that it was because the organization had lost its structural integrity. Others say that it finally crumbled under the rumors that had been plaguing it.

Still other ex-members say that it was internal conflict that led to the group's decline.

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Grassroots Political Movements Reforming Community

In this dissertation I have argued that the internal boundaries of the nation were manifested through practices of segregation. I have asserted that segregation designated the terms of belonging to the U.S. imagined community and, by extension, to local communities. The previous ethnographic chapters have illustrated how local actors and activists have, through their everyday practices, worked to re-imagine and reinvent the way that they belong to the their community, pushing for racial integration. While these chapters have narrated events that occurred during a period historically associated with civil rights movements, this chapter has focused on the events of a later time period. I have argued the struggle for control of the school board and the politicization of the La

Feria Parental Awareness League in the 1990s are extremely significant to understanding the process of racial integration in La Feria.

Despite the fact that Mexicans Americans were present on both sides of the struggle for control of the school board, I have argued that the vestiges of the old Anglo structure were still in place. In order to analyze the racial integration of the school board prior to 1994, I draw from some ideas from post-colonial theory. While it is debatable whether or not a colonial model effectively describes the treatment of U.S. racial minorities by the dominant Anglo culture, it is certainly useful to look at some of the ways post-colonial scholars discuss the nation-state and citizenship to gain insight into this local situation.

As I stated at the beginning of this chapter, the first major shift in representation on the school board occurred in the early 1970s. As in the narratives of some teachers

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and teacher aids in chapter three, local Anglos approached Sam Martinez and asked him to run for a position on the school board. As with the first Mexican American teachers employed at Sam Houston Elementary School, Martinez came from a relatively middle class background and was able to “walk both sides of the street.” Homi Bhabha (1997) suggests that one way the colonized articulate themselves is through mimicry. Initially, the colonized are taught to mimic the colonial power as they are assimilated into a new colonial order. In the case of the first Mexican American employees and elected officials within the school system, mimicry could have been middle class sensibilities or English language ability. However, Bhabha asserts that mimicry may also be a subversive space for the colonized. Although on the surface it satisfies the ego of the colonizer, Bhabha argues that mimicry is a sign of double articulation. It is a "complex strategy of reform, regulation and discipline, which 'appropriates' the Other as it visualizes power' (86).

Through the adoption of a dominant form, the colonized may thus envision power for themselves. I would like to suggest that through a form of mimicry, early Mexican

American leaders were able to use the system to the benefit of the community. It is clear that these first Mexican American school board members were instrumental in employing more Mexican American teachers, counseling Mexican students to go to college, and serving as role models for future Mexican American leaders. I would like to suggest that these early Mexican American leaders fit in to the Anglo power structure and were able to make changes from within the system.

While these changes and moves toward racial integration were significant, by the early 1990s, there were still some troubling issues that led people to believe that the

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school system, and specifically its policy makers on the School Board, was Anglo- dominant. As Mague Rubio stated, she had experience with many Mexican origin people who felt that the schools were discriminating against them. Despite their misgivings with the schools, many of these people did not vote in school board elections. I contend that this is linked to the way Mexican origin people in La Feria related to Anglos, as described in Mr. Guillen’s narrative. According to Mr. Guillen, Mexicans still exhibited a kind of deference to Anglos harkening back to the days before desegregation. He states that Mexicans were afraid to approach the school board with their problems because they perceived it as an Anglo institution, even though there were Mexican school board members, administrators, and teachers. In essence then, even electing new people to the school board would not necessarily debunk the perception that the school system, along with its governing entity, the school board, was an Anglo institution. Along this vein, scholar Benita Parry (1997) critiques Bhabha's ideas about mimicry, stating that although mimicry may be a space of creativity for the colonized, it does not offer a counter- discourse to the dominant culture. As the rumblings of discontent with the school system grew, so did the community's desire for a new discourse, one where they would be allowed a voice.

In this chapter, I have argued that Mexican Americans promoted racial integration in the school system in two ways—through their campaign for and election to positions on the school board and through the formation of the La Feria Parental Awareness

League. The campaign for school board positions was important because the new 1994 candidates had not been, as Mr. Lester said, historical leaders of the community. They

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were not invited to run for office; most had not come from middle class backgrounds unlike previous Mexican Americans elected to the school board. The election of the three new trustees in 1994 signified a kind of broader access to the school board, one that cut more broadly across lines of race and class.

While the 1994 school board elections were important, I have argued that the formation of the La Feria Parental Awareness League was equally if not more important in promoting racial integration in La Feria. The formation of PALs was significant in that it sought to educate and, thus, broaden people’s access to local institutions. The group’s activities, which primarily included potlucks and bringing in speakers from different organizations and local institutions, were relatively innocuous, but its purpose was to provide a counter-discourse to the Anglo rule of town. The Mexican Americans involved in the La Feria Parental Awareness League were no longer content to let their

Anglo counterparts “take care” of them. The emergence of PALs signified that members of the Mexican origin community were ready to take care of themselves, imagining their own positions—political and otherwise—in the community.

I have thus far articulated this chapter as an illustration of the ways in which

Mexican Americans who were not historically part of the middle class pushed for the boundaries of political inclusion to be redrawn. While the intersection of race and class in this chapter is extremely significant, it is also important to note that the La Feria

Parental Awareness League generated fears that were cast in racial terms. Many

“historical” leaders of the community—both Anglo and Mexican American—saw PALs not only as a group that was “pushing politicians,” but also as a group that was decidedly

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anti-Anglo. The real fears were that the PALs wanted remove Anglos from their administrative positions. These racialized fears even extended to Mexican Americans who had historically been leaders of the community; they believed that PALs targeted them as “Anglicized.” Eventually, many residents of La Feria ascribed a racialized political agenda to the La Feria Parental Awareness League. Apparently, fears of a

“Mexican takeover” lay just beneath the surface of the school system. What the La Feria

Parental Awareness League actually was is debatable and perhaps lies somewhere in between community perceptions of them and their perceptions of themselves.

I would like to suggest that even though the La Feria Parental Awareness League was ultimately a short-lived group, its presence as a group of “radicals” had an impact on the community’s civic engagement, even to the present day. Each spring, campaigns for positions on the school board and city commission promote and denounce candidates in local newspapers (both the La Feria and Harlingen papers) and campaign signs brightly adorn highways and front yards. La Feria residents are intensely invested in their candidates. There are still two political camps, but they are now almost all Mexican

American. By demystifying the political process, the Mexican Americans involved in the

La Feria Parental Awareness League broadened access to the school board, chipping away at the some of the last remnants of an historically segregated institution.

***

September 9, 2002

The summer still weighs heavily on La Feria in early September. The sky is thick with gray clouds, which have brought what we imagine will be one of the last storms of

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the season. Sheets of warm rain fall throughout most of the day, forming enormous puddles on the streets, spurring the further growth of long green grass in front of my apartment, and breeding mosquitoes, which will bite with a vengeance when night falls.

A school board meeting is scheduled this evening at six o'clock. I am wary to navigate in the rain the few streets that lead me to school's central office for the meeting.

Because of special scheduling and the beginning of the school year, this will be the third school board meeting I attend in the span of a month. The previous two meetings I have attended have been sparsely attended and the board agendas reflect bureaucratic matters that do not hold too much interest to me. However, as the hour of the school board meeting approaches, a glance out my window reveals the rain clouds to be rolling south and the sun breaks bright yellow and orange through the dull gray of the late afternoon, even as it wanes in the west. I make the half-hearted leap to my car and head to Central

Office.

The number of cars and trucks in front of the school board meeting room surprises me as I park to join them. Entering the school board meeting room, I note significantly more patrons than normal, including several students. I recognize and say hello to a couple of students from the church youth group. Mrs. Casas, president of the Board, calls the meeting to order and after an opening prayer, the pledge of allegiance, and a pledge to the Texas flag, she opens the meeting to a public forum. A La Feria High School student has signed up to speak that afternoon and approaches the podium with a determined look on her young face and a letter in her hand.

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Although I do not know her, most, if not all, of the people present know that her name is Allison Solis and that she is the captain of the varsity cheerleading squad at La

Feria High School. Most of the people present also know to what the contents of her letter refer. She speaks on behalf of the cheerleading squad regarding the purchase of new uniforms for football season, which has already begun. Allison gives the board members background information about the dilemma facing the squad. The squad commissioned an independent contractor to make their two uniforms at a price that proved inexpensive compared to the national cheerleading uniform company. Upon receiving the uniforms, however, many of the girls noted that they were ill-fitting and poorly made. Though they had returned the uniforms to the contractor for tailoring and repair, the uniforms were of such poor quality that they basically began to fall apart, come unsewn at the seams, and so forth.

Allison reported to the board that the varsity squad had voted to have a third uniform made for their games by the national company, which they trusted would produce a quality uniform for them. Though the majority of the squad voted for new uniforms, the cheerleading advisor had overruled their decision and informed them that they needed to make do with the uniforms that they already had made. Allison had to come to the board to ask them to give her squad the authority to order new uniforms, effectively overruling the cheerleading advisor's decision. Stating that it was her senior year and that she wanted the new girls on the squad to have the most positive experience that they could have under her leadership, she asked the board to consider their request to order a third, more quality, uniform for the year.

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The board heard her speak, requested a copy of her letter, and proceeded with the other items on the agenda before breaking into executive session. One of the members of the audience informed me that the board would make their decision about the cheerleading uniforms and send an official letter to the cheerleading squad within the next week or so.

***

The above vignette demonstrates the kind of civic and political engagement made possible by the period of community reformation after the 1994 school board elections and also reflects the legacy of the Parental Awareness League. If the La Feria Parental

Awareness League aimed to promote education civic processes and increased access to structures of local governance, then Allison's case demonstrates the long-term effect that

PALs had on the community. First, Allison approached the school board with knowledge of how the school system of governance functioned. After the cheerleading advisor revoked the decision the squad made to buy new uniforms, Allison knew to approach the school's policy makers, those who could overturn the cheerleading advisor's decision.

Second, by inserting her squad’s concern onto the school board agenda for the evening,

Allison asserted her right to be heard by local policy makers. Ultimately, though the school board decided against Allison's petition on behalf of the varsity squad and the cheerleaders had to make do with their poorly-made uniforms, I contend that her petition signified a victory for the community, aptly representing their access to local policy makers.

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It has been nearly ten years since the new radicals took the school board by storm, and operations within the school system seem relatively peaceful. The Anglo superintendent was never fired, though he did retire at the end of the 2003 school year and was replaced for the first time in the history of the school district by a Mexican

American. Several Anglos and Mexicans who politically aligned themselves with Anglos maintain their positions at the school district's administrative office as well as in the individual schools. Some say that not much has changed in the schools at all. Those involved in the political movement, however, assert that there have been changes. The school board succeeded in obtaining funding for free lunches because of the high numbers of low-income students in the district. State test scores have improved and new academic programs have been implemented. There is some debate as to whether these changes have come as a result of efforts by newly-elected school board members or of those by administrators in the curriculum and development office and teachers. It is the intangible change, however, that seems most remarkable to the new school board members. They have individually asserted to me that the community now has more access to the school board and that the board has become more accountable to the community. The intangible to which they refer is an increased sense of trust between school policy makers and members of the community, who now turn out more frequently to elect them.

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Chapter 6: Claiming Space in Local and National Imagined Communities

The quest for space has largely propelled the processes of racial integration narrated in this dissertation. In chapter one, I drew my definition of space from cultural citizenship scholars who argue that space can be construed as a physical space and/or existential freedom or expression (Flores and Benmayor 1997:15). Each ethnographic chapter illustrates how Mexican-origin people create space in different ways, with the goal of feeling a sense of belonging in their community. I have argued that the quest for space often necessitates reinventing the community from the ground up. In this final chapter I will argue that the quest for space for Mexican origin people is an ongoing process. As their needs and demands change, so too must the communities to which they belong. While this dissertation has discussed the quest for space in terms of racial integration, this chapter will point to ways by which local Mexican origin people continue to create space in new class- and culturally-coded pockets in their local communities. It will end with a discussion of how Mexican origin people imagine space for themselves in the nation through the lens of local military involvement. ***

I intimated to friends that I wanted to go to a football game.

“Come with us,” one of them said. “We’ll have our mom get you a ticket in the reserved section with us.” Their mother was a school board member. They instructed me to be at the stadium early, otherwise I would have to park along the frontage road.

I was overwhelmed at the idea of Texas football. I was dumbfounded that there would be reserved seating at a high school football game. They told me where to enter and how to find the reserved section. It would be roped off. They joked that I would 190

have to show my ticket promptly to the woman monitoring the section entrance; otherwise she would block my entrance. We shared a laugh at the idea of a middle-aged woman fiercely blocking my access to the reserved section.

I arrive late that fall Friday night and do have to park on the frontage road. I approach the brightly lit stadium nervously. There are throngs of people in maroon on the La Feria side, blue and gold on the opposing side, representing the Brownsville-

Lopez Lobos. I climb the stadium steps feeling lost in the crowd; everyone has already taken their seats and is engrossed in the event at hand. I finally spot the roped-off section, which is along the fifty-yard line, and the woman guarding it. I show her my ticket and she lets me pass. I quickly find my friends and their family and am pleased to see that I am sitting between them and another couple I know. The latter couple, an old family friend of my mother and his wife, do not have children in high school. Their youngest graduated from La Feria High School perhaps a decade prior. Though I am surprised by their attendance, I am happy to be surrounded by more familiar faces.

Settling into my seat, I am slightly overwhelmed by the scene around me. The stadium lights positively gleam against the black sky. The baritone of the football announcer resonates, drowning out the traffic along the expressway. The band, loud and rambunctious, beats out rhythms to energize the fans. The cheerleaders, skinny and peppy and silly, yell to the crowd to arouse team spirit. I cannot help but notice as they dance and bounce around the sidelines that all but two of them are Mexican American.

Likewise, the jerseys of the football players are adorned with Spanish surnames—

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Zambrano, Molina, Rodriguez. Their protective gear seems too heavy for their teenaged frames as they plow toward first downs or sacrifice their bodies to prevent them.

Though the sun has set long ago, the air is still heavy and warm. The stadium is full. All but a handful of people are Mexican American. I watch school board members, city commissioners, the mayor, local ministers and priests, and local business owners smiling, shaking hands and speaking amiably with people in the crowd. There are people of all ages, from silver-haired elderly women in wheelchairs to dark-haired toddlers in La

Feria Lion cheerleader uniforms. Most are riveted to the game, yelling in exasperation at the coaches, the players, the referees. A demure lady behind me yells, “Kill him!” in reference to a player from the opposing team running toward the goal. An unidentified man yells to the Catholic priest to “pray harder” for the Lions to win.

We are uncomfortable in our backless bleacher seats; we are exasperated that our team is not performing better; we are hoarse from yelling. We are hot and thirsty—the warm sodas never quench our thirst. We are being bit by merciless mosquitoes hovering around the bleachers despite the fact that in at least every other row, someone is spraying

Off! mosquito repellant.

It is a perfect night.

I quickly become addicted to football games. I buy season tickets—in the reserved section—for remaining games. I am caught up in the romance of it all. High school football in a small town. The games provide a space for the entire town to come together; it gives everyone a common cause. I am enchanted that it is a Mexican

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American space. I wish that my mother could see the Mexican American cheerleaders, the Mexican American star football players. Forty years ago, this would have been unimaginable, but it seems that racial equality has taken root in La Feria.

***

This dissertation has examined the racial integration of Mexicans into traditionally Anglo-dominant social and political spheres in La Feria, Texas. Using the concept of community as a theoretical framework, it has attempted to understand the way the people imagined the community of La Feria as an Anglo town, recreating a space modeled after the idea of the United States as a White Anglo Saxon Protestant nation.

This dissertation has demonstrated how Mexican origin people have had to re-imagine the way that they could belong to the community, as equals to their Anglo counterparts.

It has focused its attention on the processual nature of community; La Feria has been shaped and reshaped by its institutions and the social actions of its residents. Rather than concentrate on civil rights movements or their resulting legislation, this dissertation has focused on how Mexican origin people, through their everyday actions, have fostered racial integration in the schools, the Catholic Church, and in local politics. Because

Mexican origin people experienced mostly de facto and not de jure segregation, I have argued that these everyday practices—both small and large—were necessary to dismantle local structures of segregation.

In chapter one, I introduced the concept of community as a theoretical framework for this dissertation, arguing that community can be understood as both imagined and as a process shaped by institutions and everyday individual and collective actions. I have

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drawn from Benedict Anderson’s idea that the nation has been constructed as an imagined community (1991), and I have followed historian Ronald Takaki’s persuasive argument that from its beginning, the United States was imagined with the ideological underpinnings of Anglo superiority (1990). I have argued that Anglo settlers of La Feria understood themselves as part of the larger U.S. imagined community and that they, too, subscribed to the idea of Anglo superiority over other races, specifically Mexicans. With economic and political clout, Anglos built a society in South Texas that was based on a system of racial exclusions (De Leon 1983; Montejano 1987). I have argued that ideas of

Anglo racial superiority, and the practices of racial segregation that followed, were the overt manifestations of the way the national community had been imagined (Oboler

1995). In South Texas, the major institutions in La Feria, in many ways, belonged to

Anglo residents; Mexicans were marginalized community members.

Nevertheless, this dissertation has also argued that community can be understood as a process, shaped by macro- and micro-level institutions as well as the everyday actions of individuals and groups. In the ethnographic chapters of this dissertation I have chosen to represent different local institutions and demonstrate the ways in which practices of racial segregation became normalized. While courts throughout the first part of the twentieth century debated the complex legality of segregating Mexicans, who were both “white” and “non-white,” Mexican segregation was normalized through everyday practice and manifested itself in different ways. Some of these practices were overt, such as the establishment of a separate school for Mexican origin children. In other cases, the terms of segregation were subtle. In La Feria’s Catholic Church, for example,

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while Mexicans were allowed to worship alongside Anglos, they were ushered to a particular side of the sanctuary. On the La Feria School Board, Mexican origin people were represented—as a minority—on the board, but were all of a particular social class and had been sanctioned by Anglo school board members. In some ways, these local institutions were flexible in their segregationist practices, making exceptions for certain

Mexican origin people for reasons such as higher socioeconomic standing, historical leadership in the Mexican origin community, or perhaps lighter skin color. Despite these occasional exceptions, the majority of Mexican origin people raised in La Feria have vivid memories of their experiences of segregation within various local institutions.

While I argue that institutions are instrumental to community formation, this dissertation has focused on how the everyday social actions of La Feria residents shape community and, thus, facilitate racial integration. Examining the social actions of local actors is particularly important to understanding the racial integration of Mexicans in La

Feria because of the fact that segregation was not necessarily enforced by law, but rather by custom. Focusing on the period between the mid-1960s and the mid-1990s, I have explored the ways by which Mexican origin people took initiative to change these segregationist customs.

I have argued that a first, important step to this process has been the ability of

Mexican origin people to re-imagine the way that they could belong to the community.

This re-imagining of social and political positioning could be considered radical in certain circumstances, considering the racial hegemony held by Anglos both locally and nationally. Each ethnographic chapter of my dissertation has demonstrated the ways

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Mexican origin people have re-imagined their positionalities, creating cultural space for themselves in the community. The first Mexican American teachers imagined that their students had the potential to be doctors and lawyers, positions almost exclusively assumed by Anglos in town up to that point. Members of the comunidades de base created a culturally relevant religious space for themselves, first outside of the Catholic

Church, then eventually moving their practices inward from the margins. Finally, members of the La Feria Parental Awareness League imagined that they, too, as non- historical leaders of the community, could have a real voice in school board politics.

More than re-imagining community, I have demonstrated in this dissertation how

Mexican origin people used its internal heterogeneity to promote racial integration. In each ethnographic chapter, heterogeneity is illustrated by the different positionalities of

Mexican origin people who work to promote racial integration. In the chapter that looks at the ideological shifts at Sam Houston Elementary School, the women involved not only use their positions as Mexican origin people, but are also able to use their class status and gendered roles as teachers and teacher aids to achieve racial integration. In the chapter about the cultural and racial integration of the local Catholic Church, members of the comunidades de base clearly struggle for racial equality in the Church as Mexican origin people, but they also use their class positions, language, and cultural religious affiliation to achieve their goals. Finally, in the chapter about school board politics, members of the La Feria Parental Awareness League organize not only by race, but also by political affiliation to destabilize what they perceive to be an Anglo-dominated school board and administration. In this way, I would like to suggest that racial integration was

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achieved at moments when racial interests intersected with gender, language, religion, class, and political affiliation.

Finally, this work illustrates the impact of the everyday social practices of

Mexican origin people on transforming the community. I have focused on how the everyday practices of local people facilitated the process of racial integration. In order to understand the micro-political nature of these everyday practices, I have drawn from cultural citizenship scholars who assert that a broad range of social practices (from everyday life activities to social drama), taken together, serve to create space for Latinos in the United States (Flores and Benmayor 1997). In this dissertation, I have demonstrated a range of practices that changed the social and political structures of La

Feria. Some of the practices have been quiet, like the encouragement Mexican American teachers provided to their Mexican origin students to excel in school. Other practices have been more dramatic, such as the political movement mounted against the perceived

Anglo-dominant school board. All of the practices I have written about in this dissertation functioned to wear away a social order that had historically been Anglo- dominant. Understanding these everyday social practices within the context of the larger historical conditions in which they occurred (e.g., the Civil Rights Movement, the

Chicano/a Movement, liberation theology movements, etc.) demonstrates how local activism reflected changing ideas about the terms of belonging to the U.S. imagined community.

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Integration

I return to the first trip I made to La Feria with my mother in August 2000.

Driving around town that day, she noted the many changes that had occurred since her family left in 1965. It was while we watched the local evening news, however, that these changes became dramatically apparent. As in any local broadcast, there were local crime stories as well as coverage about local politics; health updates and feature stories about everyday living. Through the course of the broadcast, reporters interviewed Valley politicians, doctors, firefighters, lawyers, and neighborhood residents. In this cross- section of Rio Grande Valley residents, Mexican origin people were visible at all levels of society, occupying positions that would have been difficult to imagine in the mid-

1960s. The Valley seemed to me then, as it did at my first La Feria football game, the picture of racial integration.

In this section, I would like to complicate the picture of racial integration by discussing the contemporary significance of race and class to this community, positing implications for future research. I would like to argue that as the racially segregated structure of local institutions began to crumble, socioeconomic class status and national origin within the greater Mexican community in La Feria have become more significant both locally and nationally. I would not be so naïve as to suggest that racial discrimination against Mexicans no longer exists; however, in the Rio Grande Valley, where the majority of people are of Mexican descent, discrimination is more often based on factors such as socioeconomic status and nationality. I suggest that this type of discrimination coupled with the certain privileges that the emerging Mexican American

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middle class enjoys can be a source of tension within the greater Mexican origin community. Nevertheless, it is interesting to note that across boundaries of class and national origin, there are moments of affinity and cultural cohesion. The final part of this section will suggest the new ways by which Mexican origin people are incorporated into the U.S. national community.

***

During a visit with an old friend of my mother, I meet a Mexican immigrant woman. My mother’s friend introduces us, telling the woman that I am writing a history of La Feria. They point out to me some important historical sites in town. They mention the Henry Tichenor Mansion in La Feria. It looks like a southern plantation home. It gleams white; pillars adorn its façade. There are palm trees and bright flowers all over the block upon which it sits. The woman, who has lived in La Feria for the past twenty years, remarks that she has heard a “mexicano” now owns the property, a hint of pride in her voice.57

I enjoy my conversation with my mother’s friend and this woman. She is personable and funny. We get along well, talking and laughing into the evening.

Eventually she reveals to me that her son plays football for the La Feria Lions.

I feel my face light up. I tell her how I love high school football in the Valley.

How much more exciting it is than in California. That I go to every game. It occurs to me all of a sudden that I have never seen her at any of them.

57 The mansion is actually still owned by the Tichenor family, though there is talk about turning it into a museum. 199

¿Va usted a los games? I ask her.

She tells me that she goes to every game.

I am puzzled for a few seconds before I feel a pang of guilt. She probably does not have a school board member getting her tickets in the reserved section.

A few weeks later, my friends and I make plans for the upcoming away game.

One of them comments, “I don’t think that they have reserved seating there.”

I catch knowing looks, but don’t exactly understand what I’m supposed to know.

They tell me that it’s not a big deal. It’s just annoying sometimes because people will sound their loud, hand-held horns and throw confetti that will sometimes land in your drink. Just louder. More messy.

I have lived in La Feria for a few months now and feel that I have come to know several people. I attend school board and city council meetings; I teach catechism and attend Mass on Sundays; I frequent local business establishments and attend every football game. It is a small town, after all, and people are very open and welcoming to me.

At the away game, where there is no reserved seating, I am surprised to find myself in sea of unfamiliar faces. These unfamiliar faces are also La Ferians, Lion fans, dressed in maroon and gold and unabashedly cheering for the team. There is as much, if not more, team spirit in among this “un-reserved” crowd of fans. My friends are right. It is louder in this section. People do throw confetti into our drinks.

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While teenagers in the reserved section seem more “preppy,” in their Abercombie and Fitch ensembles, I notice that here I see more alternative types. Different clothes.

Different hair and makeup. Teenagers who speak Spanish.

I am shocked to see a couple of pregnant teenaged girls, La Feria Lion t-shirts stretched across their bellies, carefully navigating their ways through the bleachers. I have heard that teenage pregnancy is a problem in La Feria, as it is in many Valley towns. I remember a conversation with a town advocate for these teenage mothers. She told me that one of the biggest obstacles she faces is convincing people that teenage pregnancy is a problem at all. Many community members deny its existence.

I wonder if these people are sitting in the reserved section at the football games.

Investigating the issue, I find out that school board members have priority for the purchase of their seats and that those residents interested in reserved seats must buy their tickets for the season all at once. While many people can spend four dollars a week on a football game, not as many can pay for season tickets all at once.

I start to think about the reserved section of the football stadium and wonder if such a thing existed forty years ago. If so, I am positive that it would have been filled with Anglo residents. Now it is filled with high-profile residents, business owners and politicians, most of whom are Mexican American. I wonder about the composition—not just racial—of the people who are not sitting in the reserved section.

***

The above vignette implies that the Mexican immigrants do not enjoy the same privileges as their Mexican American counterparts when it comes to enjoying a favorite

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town pastime. While many studies treat the Mexican origin community as a homogenous entity with a common culture, within the past couple of decades, differences within the

Mexican origin community related to immigrant generation and socioeconomic status have become especially significant. I would like to suggest that there is a need for more nuanced studies of the Mexican origin community, especially taking into consideration the social relations between Mexican Americans and Mexican immigrants. Several scholars have called for more studies that examine the social relations between Mexican

Americans and Mexican immigrants (Gutierrez 1995; Ochoa 2004; Zavella 1997).

Ochoa (2004) argues that much of the existing scholarship about interactions between

Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans has largely focused on the labor market.

She contends that scholars tend to separate Mexican Americans from Mexican immigrants in their work, focusing either on the experiences of Mexican Americans as an ethnic minority in the United States or on the experiences of documented and undocumented immigrants. I agree with Ochoa that it is important to understand how individual Mexican Americans as well as entire Mexican American communities have reacted to the presence of Mexican immigrants in their neighborhoods and places of work.

Perhaps the more obvious fact that the above vignette signifies is the increasing significance of class within the Mexican origin community. It is important not to assume that those people who cannot afford to sit in the reserved section of the football games are all immigrants; there are several Mexican American families represented in that section, as well. These class tensions within the Mexican American community are apparent in

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chapter five of this dissertation. The first Mexican American members of the school board elected in the 1970s enjoyed a higher socioeconomic status than the majority of the

Mexican origin community and were most likely considered good liaisons between the

Anglo and Mexican sub-communities of La Feria. Members of the La Feria Parental

Awareness League in the 1990s were historically not leaders of the community. Also true was the fact that they had not historically been middle class. I would like to suggest that not only political, but also class differences fueled some of the social tensions surrounding the era of La Feria’s Parental Awareness League.

It is not my intention to argue that class now holds more significance than race when considering the Mexican origin community. I do argue, however, that now that some of the structures of segregation have fallen away, scholars may now look more closely at the intersections of race and class within the community of La Feria as well as the broader population of Mexicans in the U.S. We can see how Mexican origin people racialize each other and are racialized by others based on class. In chapter five, the incumbent school board members and the high-ranking school officials were perceived as

“Anglicized” because of their political position, but also because of their higher socioeconomic status. As a participant observer working with high school students in La

Feria, I similarly heard allegations that Mexican boys or girls would “act white,” “talk white,” or “dress white.” A “white” or “Anglicized” Mexican is an interesting racial category in and of itself because it implies that there is an authentic “Mexican” way of acting, talking, or dressing. The idea of cultural authenticity versus cultural assimilation begs further study to illuminate contemporary processes of racialization.

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I have thus far suggested the divisions among Mexican origin people because of their diverse internal demographics. Despite its heterogeneity, the Mexican origin community in the Rio Grande Valley and in La Feria in particular definitely experiences moments of solidarity. In this chapter I have illustrated the sense of pride a Mexican immigrant expresses at the idea that a Mexican person might own the La Feria mansion, as well as the community, as a whole, rooting for the same Mexican-dominant football team. One might also see this solidarity in other chapters of my dissertation when

Mexican American women instill in their mainly immigrant students the idea that they can achieve parity with Anglos or when members of las comunidades de base fight to pass down their popular religious practices, such as Las Posadas, to American-born generations of Mexican Catholics.

I have suggested that the Rio Grande Valley is an interesting site for ethnographic research because of the fact that it is home to a range of people from recent immigrants from Mexico to those whose family has resided in Texas since before annexation. I have also asserted that it is an interesting location to observe the growing class heterogeneity of the Mexican origin community. Romantic cultural notions aside, I would be remiss not to discuss the material reality of many residents of the Rio Grande Valley.

At the Margins of the Nation

Much of this dissertation has dealt with the ways in which Mexican origin people have, through micropolitical actions, created space for themselves in the community of

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La Feria, often challenging national racial ideologies. In this final section I will interrogate the ways that Mexican origin people are creating and claiming a space for themselves in the nation through their military involvement. I argue that the military broadens economic and educational opportunities for Mexican origin people and fosters a sense of patriotism and belonging to the nation. I would like to suggest that military involvement leads Mexican Americans and Mexican immigrants alike to establish and exercise their citizenship in complex ways that beg further study.

***

Several large trucks and modest cars fill the high school parking lot across from the football stadium. But tonight we experience an unusually cold and windy spring evening instead of a damp, warm one beneath the stadium lights where, just five months ago, we cheered the La Feria Lions to football victories. This evening, anxiety rather than excitement colors the mood of the people assembled. I walk alone from the back of the parking lot, trying to wrap my light jacket a little more tightly around myself when I see Janie, the director of religious education at St. Francis Xavier, also walking alone toward the stadium.

"Hi, Miss Jennifer," she greets me as I catch up to her, grateful to have someone to sit with at the rally.

On March 19, 2003, the President of the United States invoked legislative authorization for the use of military force against Iraq (White House 2003), and by March

25th there had already been U.S. POWs taken, including a young man from Mission,

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another small Valley town just forty minutes northwest of La Feria. In the Lower Rio

Grande Valley, high numbers of low-income Mexican origin young men and women enlist in the armed services to increase their economic and/or educational opportunities.

The Mission POW was Mexican American, son of Mexican immigrants. His mother spoke through a translator to a slew of media, who broadcasted across the nation the anguish she felt at having her son missing. Her statements to the media and pictures of her tear-streaked face were especially poignant in the Valley, where many parents feared that their children, also young working class Mexican Americans, could be taken hostage as well.

The same day I read about the POW from Mission in the local newspaper, I received a phone call from Sunny Philip, La Feria's City Manager. His call was to invite me to attend a planning meeting for a rally to support the troops from La Feria who had been deployed to the Middle East. At the meeting I was greeted by several familiar faces from the community—people who were active at church, in local businesses, civic organizations, and/or government. Sunny announced to the group that the city government was aware of at least thirty young men and women from La Feria who had been deployed to the Middle East and that they were still collecting the names of others from the community. While making clear that neither the city government nor he would take a pro- or anti-war stance, he said that the city government proposed to organize a rally that would show support for local troops and their parents and/or spouses. He asked the group of about twenty people assembled at the meeting that day for ideas and help to put together the rally for the following week. While the organization of the rally began to

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take shape, so did other ideas about how to show support for the troops. These ideas a weekly prayer meeting at the flag pole in front of the city offices as well as tying yellow ribbons on all of the lamp and street sign poles along Main Street.

The mayor expressed his interest in having the rally as soon as possible, expressing his firm hope and belief that the war would be over soon. With all of their assignments made, the people assembled at the meeting drifted out of the room with purpose, talking about the rally, whose son or daughter they knew who had been deployed, and the war in general. I noticed a few people surrounding a woman who had been seated toward the back of the room with her husband. Her eyes were red and swollen from crying as those around her inquired about her son, who was serving as a mechanic following a convoy in Iraq.

Janie and I enter the stadium as we would for a football game and are welcomed by several small groups of people. The Girl Scouts hand out yellow ribbons while the

Boy Scouts give small American flags. There is a group of older men, who I believe to be veterans, distributing fliers for a prayer vigil later that week at the Iwo Jima Memorial in Harlingen. There are other people ushering parents of soldiers to special seating on the track, while the rest of us look for a place to sit in the bleachers. Jane and I take our yellow ribbons, flags, and fliers and sit in the center section of the stadium's home side.

The high school band is already assembled, sitting on the track, facing the right of the stadium bleachers. Families of troops are seated on the left side, while the mayor, members of the city commission, and a few other prominent members of the community

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are seated in the center. Television crews from Channel 5 and Channel 4 have cameras and news anchors at either end of the track as well, already filming the crowd of nearly

200 people who have come to the rally.

Although people in the bleachers are talking and greeting each other, the atmosphere is decidedly hushed and people are huddling together for greater warmth from the evening's cold. When everyone appears to be settled into their seats, Bishop

Ortiz from the non-denominational La Feria Christian Center opens the rally with a prayer for those assembled and those abroad. We stand as the band begins to play the

Star Spangled Banner and members of the community raise the American flag over the stadium. We place our hands over our hearts and say the Pledge of Allegiance before sitting again.

Mayor Cantú introduces the event, clarifying that this rally is not in support of the war, but rather in support of the troops. He then presents the speaker of the evening, a decorated soldier currently employed at Harlingen's Marine Military Academy. The speaker describes his own experiences in previous wars and military operations across the globe. He speaks of the important roles that our soldiers play in these endeavors and how many of them demonstrate incredible courage. He encourages the crowd to stand together for the troops and their families. He implicitly defines "standing together" as supporting our country and our president, with the understanding that war is only used as a last resort. While his speech generates ambivalent feelings for me, others applaud him when he finishes speaking, waving their small American flags as they do so.

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Just after the representative from the Marine Military Academy steps down, the news anchor from Channel 4 takes the microphone and announces to the audience that it has just been confirmed that one of the women who had been a POW in Iraq has been recovered. Everyone begins to cheer more loudly. Maybe there is hope for those Valley

POWs, too.

Hope. Earlier that day I had agreed to run an errand for a friend. She asked me to go to the local glass shop, because the owner had found a poem she hoped someone could read at the rally, if it wasn't too late to fit it into the program. The poem, entitled "If I

Don't Return," was long and sad, speculating about the life the soldier had left behind and the life that would inevitably go on without him were he not to return. I took the poem from her and delivered it to the city office that same afternoon. The city employee in charge of the program told me that it was already set and there would not be time to read the poem. Also, she told me, they probably would not want to read it because it was so sad. The rally is intended to be uplifting, to give people hope.

During the last part of the program, the mayor takes the microphone once again and announces that he is going to read the names of all of the young men and women from La Feria who are serving in the military. Some have been deployed, while others wait to see if and when their time will come. Though at the planning meeting the week before, the city had names of thirty military enlistees, at the time of the rally, they had collected over eighty names. Mayor Cantú asks the parents of the troops to please stand when he reads the name of their son or daughter and asks those whose names are not on

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the list to report them to the city secretary, who positions herself near the bleachers with a pad and writing utensil.

He read the names of soldiers, both Anglos and Mexicans, one at a time. The parents stand when he reads the name of their soldier. Many clutch framed 8x10 pictures of their sons and daughters in military uniform. Some parents press two large framed photographs to their chests. Names are listed. The audience applauds with something like conviction after each name is read. Janie, who has mostly been quiet sitting next to me, comments on those names she recognizes from high school religious education classes. More names. He was one of our seniors last year. He graduated just last year.

More names.

After the mayor has read the eighty plus names that the City has collected, the

City Secretary hands him a list with another fifteen to twenty names. Mostly Spanish surnames, but Anglo names as well. There are more than a hundred young people from

La Feria, a town with a population of just over six thousand, deployed or poised to be deployed with their regiments to the Middle East to fight the war.

The rally ends in applause with the high school band playing cheerful patriotic songs as the audience descends from the bleachers with a sense of relief. People walk to their cars and trucks in the parking lot still huddled closely together to shield themselves from the evening chill. People leave with affirmation, fear, and hope.

***

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Poverty and Limited Opportunities

Depressed economic and educational circumstances give context to the strong military involvement of young people in the Valley. Despite my discussion of the growing Mexican American middle class in this region, as a general demographic,

Mexican origin people remain economically marginalized in relation to the nation as a whole. Poverty is the material reality of many residents of the Rio Grande Valley, eighty- seven percent of whom are Hispanic. Located in Cameron County, La Feria usually fairs better than towns in Hidalgo, Willacy and Starr counties. Nevertheless, the 2000 Census reveals that the Valley has a per capita income of $19,617 and a poverty rate of 35.7%

(Sethi and Arriola 2002). Mexican origin people nationwide have a lower poverty rate of

23.5% (Ramirez 2004). The Valley suffers a double-digit unemployment rate (12%), compared to the state average of 6.2% (Sethi and Arriola 2002). A contributing factor to the poverty and unemployment of the region is the average educational attainment of the

Valley; just over forty-seven percent of persons over the age of twenty-five graduated from high school (Sethi and Arriola 2002). When considering this data, it is important to note that these reports do not differentiate between Mexican Americans and Mexican immigrants.

By joining the military, Mexican Americans and Mexican immigrants create economic and educational opportunities for themselves. While some enlistees cite the desire to “get out” of the Valley (Castillo 2004), others use the military as a springboard by which they may establish or affirm a middle-class existence for themselves, either becoming career military or using the G.I. bill to fund their education. Perhaps most

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notably, Lieutenant General Ricardo Sánchez, a working class Mexican American from the Rio Grande Valley, exemplifies how the military can facilitate social mobility.

Sánchez’s college education was financed by an ROTC scholarship, and he ultimately decided to make his career in the military (Limón 2004). He ascended to the rank of lieutenant general and was in command of all ground troops in Iraq in the early stages of the current war (Limón 2004).58 While his success story is in many ways exceptional, it is not uncommon in the Valley to see economic stability among Mexican American veterans from World War II, Vietnam, and the first Gulf War. The military provides a way by which Mexican origin people may claim economic and educational space for themselves.

Claiming Citizenship and Its Rights

While I have thus far argued that military involvement is a way by which

Mexican origin people in the Valley create economic and educational opportunities for themselves, it also proves to be a way for Mexican origin people to claim allegiance and a space of belonging to the imagined community of the nation. An analysis of several human interest stories published in one of the major newspapers of South Texas, The San

Antonio Express News, reveals that military involvement is often a way for Mexican

Americans to express their patriotism and to assert their belonging in the United States

58 Lieutenant General Sanchez’s story of ethnic mobility is riddled with complexities about imperialism, nation, and ethnicity, some of which are discussed in Limón’s article “Translating Empire: The Border Homeland of Rio Grande City, Texas” (2004). 212

(Castillo 2004; Jaffee and Dorsett 2005; Stroud and Sebastian 2005).59 An illustrative case from one such story is of a family who had emigrated from Mexico, whose children were born in the United States. The mother of this family, whose son was critically wounded in Iraq, asserts plainly that her son’s decision to enlist was part of the family’s assimilation, stating that her children “always felt American.” She continues, “They made it ‘ours.’ Our country. Our war” (quoted in Castillo 2004). This rhetoric reveals a real sense of belonging to the nation. These soldiers do not see themselves as marginalized in the nation; they “feel American” and enlist to defend a country that they feel is “theirs.” This strong sense of ownership and belonging to the nation is interesting considering that many of the soldiers whose stories appear in these articles are sons and daughters of recent immigrants.

While military involvement can be construed as a way by which Mexican

Americans affirm their American citizenship, for immigrants, it is a route by which to establish citizenship. In 2002, President Bush issued an executive order to expedite naturalization for “aliens and noncitizen nationals serving in an active-duty status in the

Armed Forces of the United States during the period of the war against terrorists.”60 A

59 The sense of belonging fostered by the military is by no means a new phenomenon. Shortly after World War II, hundreds of veterans from Texas organized the G.I. Forum under the leadership of Hector P. Garcia (Allsup, “GI Forum”). This organization fought for the rights of Mexican American veterans such as benefits, hospital care, and fair representation on draft boards. Perhaps the most significant early cause of the G.I. Forum was in 1949 when the director of a funeral home in Three Rivers, Texas refused to allow a service to be held in his chapel for Private Felix Longoria, who was killed in World War II. The G.I. Forum organized protests and ultimately gained the support of then-senator Lyndon B. Johnson, who arranged for Longoria to be buried in Arlington National Cemetery. This incident marked the G.I. Forum as a significant civil rights organization (Allsup, “GI Forum”). Despite the fact that segregation was still prevalent in the twenty to thirty years after World War II, Mexican Americans who served in the military felt a strong sense of belonging and entitlement within the U.S. imagined community. 60 http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/07/20020703-24.html 213

recent article stated that during this most recent war in Iraq, the number of resident aliens enlisted in the military has remained steady at around two percent, but that the rate of naturalization has grown substantially (Zoroya 2005). This is an interesting statistic because it suggests that immigrants are not solely using their military involvement to provide economic security. They are taking advantage of the opportunity, as expedited naturalization may ensure, to become American citizens. I would like to suggest that citizenship, both in legislative theory and practice is an increasingly valuable commodity for Mexican origin people living on the border. Future research is needed to explore the contemporary cultural expediency of American citizenship.

Ambivalence on the Border

Claiming citizenship and/or the rights associated with citizenship is significant when considering how Mexican origin people claim a space in the U.S. imagined community. The claims to nation and citizenship that I have illustrated in the above paragraphs might paint a picture of linear progression toward assimilation within the U.S.

It is important to recognize, however, that beyond the rhetoric and claims to citizenship,

Mexican origin residents of the Rio Grande Valley continue to demonstrate ambivalence about their ties to the nation. Despite their military involvement and increasing claims to citizenship, Mexican immigrants in the Valley retain connections to their native country.

For those who are not serving in the military, Operation Iraqi Freedom has led many

Mexican Americans and immigrants alike to grapple with their patriotism.

214

Mexican immigrants, including those from the Rio Grande Valley, have been visible actors in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Despite their U.S. military service, these

Mexican immigrants demonstrate complex connections to their native countries. By July

2004, the Washington Post reported that seventeen Mexican-born troops had been killed in Iraq as well as thirteen others born in the United States of Mexican parents (Sullivan

2004). It is interesting to note, however, that some of the families of these military casualties request that their dead be buried in Mexico. A notable case occurred during the summer of 2004. The family of Lance Corporal Juan Lopez Rangel, a Mexican-born,

U.S. marine, requested that he be buried in his hometown of San Luis de la Paz in

Guanajuato with full U.S. military honors (Sullivan 2004). Mexican soldiers interrupted the U.S. military burial ceremony, disputing the presence of foreign troops carrying weapons on Mexican soil. The arms were non-working and ceremonial, but that did not prevent a brief altercation between Mexican and U.S. troops at the funeral of this

Mexican-born U.S. soldier (Sullivan 2004). It was an interesting conflict that was perhaps representative of the tensions between the two national allegiances of the Lopez

Rangel family. Their son died supporting an American cause and was subsequently granted posthumous U.S. citizenship. Nevertheless, the family desired for their son to be laid to rest in Mexico, their country of origin; they requested that the U.S. military cross the border to perform the military burial rites. The position of Mexican immigrants with

U.S. military ties complicates the issue of citizenship and belonging to the nation.

The war has provoked strong opinions and feelings in the Valley because of the large number of Valley residents who are enlisted in the military or who are veterans.

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While many Valley residents assert that military involvement reflects an aspect of assimilation and patriotism for Mexican origin people, I would like to suggest that the symbols of war in this region reflect people’s ambivalence about the war and complicate their patriotic positionings. It bears mentioning that when the U.S. initiated its military strike in Afghanistan, I was in Austin, and immediately aware of the American flags flying in front of houses and displayed on cars around the city. Two years later, when our military strike in Iraq began, I was in La Feria and, more than American flags, I noticed a proliferation of yellow ribbons. American flags are a fairly clear symbol of nation and patriotism to the nation. Yellow ribbons, on the other hand, represent a support of the troops. I found it interesting that in the Valley, most people’s instinct was to display a symbol that represented support for the local troops and not necessarily the nation. Though American flags are definitely present, yellow ribbons are more prevalent.

After many observations and conversations with Valley residents, it became clear to me that many bearers of yellow ribbons do not support the U.S. initiative in Iraq. In fact, during the planning for the rally in support of La Feria troops, the planning committee emphasized that the event would not be pro-war, rather, it would be pro-troops. Despite the sometimes vague distinction between the two, it is an important distinction because it reflects the ambivalence of Mexican origin people toward the projects of the nation. This is not to say that they do not see themselves as “American,” but the Valley’s military involvement during this war provides an interesting lens through which to examine the way Mexican origin people see themselves in relation to the nation.

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In this chapter, I have alluded to the ways that Mexican origin people are currently creating space for themselves in their local communities and in the nation, suggesting avenues for further research. Most notably I have argued that the social relations between Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans be explored as well as the way Mexican Americans and immigrants position themselves in relation to the nation, especially in light of their military involvement. Now that the era of overt racial segregation has passed, it is important to explore and analyze more nuanced power structures, those organized by class, immigrant generation, and gender, as well as those still affected by race. In terms of local actors, the “ethnic” identity of Mexican origin people in the Valley begs to explored and the numerous ways there are to “be Mexican.”

Finally, the issue of nation has become ever more important in the Valley, whose residents continue to be drawn into the nation’s projects—the war in Iraq, but also the increasing militarization of the border.

This work has traced the uneven process of racial integration in La Feria, Texas from the 1960s through the 1990s. Using community as a theoretical lens by which to understand this process, it has shown how the interplay between institutions and grassroots action led toward increased racial integration. My work has focused on the individuals and groups in La Feria whose micro-political, everyday actions promoted changes in local racial ideologies, cultural practices, and political processes. Mexican origin people in La Feria and in the Rio Grande Valley as a whole have succeeded in

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transforming their local communities through everyday acts, challenging their marginalized position within the U.S. imagined community.

As an historical ethnography, this work has utilized the concept of community to understand the process of racial integration in La Feria, Texas. Drawing from scholars such as Benedict Anderson (1991), Ronald Takaki (1990), and Suzanne Oboler (1995), I have asserted that, while the external boundaries of the U.S. imagined community were established through war and western expansion in the 19th century, the internal boundaries of the U.S. imagined community were established through practices of racial segregation. Indeed, the Anglo settlers of La Feria in the early part of the twentieth century imagined and created a segregated community with separate Anglo and Mexican spheres within the same city limits. Local institutions mirrored this racially stratified social and political organization. I have argued that in order to facilitate racial integration, Mexicans in La Feria had to first re-imagine the way that they could belong to their local community, as equals to their Anglo counterparts. I assert that this re- imagining was an important first step to the process of racial integration.

This work has also analyzed community as a developmental process, arguing that institutions and everyday individual and collective actions dialectically shape community.

My dissertation has shown that despite national legislation that mandated desegregation in the 1960s, the racial integration of Mexican origin people into traditionally Anglo- dominated institutions occurred unevenly in practice and was highly contingent upon the actions of local people. In order to more fully understand the impact of everyday actions,

I have drawn from theories of cultural citizenship that explain how peoples’ everyday

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practices can transform the institutions that ordinarily structure their lives. The ethnography in my dissertation has demonstrated how the practices of Mexican origin people, which range from the everyday to the politically organized, collectively served to transform segregated institutions in La Feria. My study has shown that racial integration was oftentimes a hotly contested process, dependent upon the agency exerted by individuals and groups who organized to reform the community.

In this dissertation I have argued that by reforming their local communities to be more racially inclusive, Mexican origin people simultaneously expanded the inclusiveness of the larger U.S. imagined community. I have argued that local communities racial attitudes and structures of the nation. I have asserted that practices of segregation in the early part of the twentieth century precluded full membership as citizens for Mexican origin people nationally and locally. I have argued that by challenging local ideas about membership and belonging in the community, Mexican origin people were also challenging the way that they were positioned within the larger nation. By imagining themselves as full members of their local communities, they were claiming their citizenship—membership, belonging, and rights—to the U.S. imagined community.

I would like to suggest that although the legacy of segregation and discrimination still haunts the community’s memory, Anglos and Mexicans in La Feria enjoy parity in several different realms. While race and class conflicts continue into the new millennium, these conflicts are now coded in more nuanced terms. The region remains at the geographic margins of the nation, on the border of another nation—an area where

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recent immigrants live alongside families of the region’s original Spanish settlers with class distinctions just as broad. In this sense, residents of the border continue to traverse local ethnic identities, challenging and changing their positions within the U.S. imagined community.

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Vita

Jennifer Rose Nájera was born in Bakersfield, California on November 4, 1975, the daughter of Joe and Rose Najera. After graduating from Highland High School, Bakersfield, California, in 1993, she entered Stanford University. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree in Cultural Anthropology and her Master of Arts degree in Education from Stanford in June 1997 and June 1998, respectively. During the following years she was employed as a social science researcher at the Stanford Medical Center and as a Spanish teacher in Mountainview, California. In August 1999 she entered the Graduate School of the University of Texas at Austin.

Permanent address: 3612 Crest Drive, Bakersfield, California 93306 This dissertation was typed by the author.

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