Bøger af Zaragosa Vargas

Latinos in the U.S. are a major political, economic, and cultural force which is changing the national identity of this country. In fact, statistics show that by the year 2100, half of the United States population may be Latino. And two of every three of America's Latinos are Mexican. Mexicans are the oldest settelers of the United States, and they are also the nation's largest group of recent immigrant arrivals. Their population is increasing faster than that of all other Latino groups combined. The growing importance of this minority group, which will be felt strongly in twenty-first century America, calls for a fresh assessment of Mexican American history.

Latinos in the U.S. are a major political, economic, and cultural force that is fast changing the national identity of this country. Mexican Americans, specifically, account for nearly two thirds of this population. Mexicans are the oldest settlers of the United States and the nation's largest group of recent immigrant arrivals. Their population is increasing faster than that of all other Latino groups combined. The growing importance of this minority group--which will be felt strongly in twenty-first-century America--calls for a fresh assessment of Mexican-American history. The second edition of Crucible of Struggle: A History of Mexican Americans from the Colonial Period tothe Present Era includes a new final chapter that examines such issues as increased anti-immigrantactivity after 2006, the crucial role of Latinos in the election of Barack Obama, increased borderenforcement and deportation in the wake of the U.S. Senate's failure to pass amnesty legislation, Latinos and private detention centers, the role of individual states in immigration reform, the surgeof unaccompanied children from Central America, and more.

In 1937, Mexican workers were among the strikers and supporters beaten, arrested, and murdered by Chicago policemen in the now infamous Republic Steel Mill Strike. Using this event as a springboard, Zaragosa Vargas embarks on the first full-scale history of the Mexican-American labor movement in twentieth-century America. Absorbing and meticulously researched, Labor Rights Are Civil Rightspaints a multifaceted portrait of the complexities and contours of the Mexican American struggle for equality from the 1930s to the postwar era. Drawing on extensive archival research, Vargas focuses on the large Mexican American communities in Texas, Colorado, and California. As he explains, the Great Depression heightened the struggles of Spanish speaking blue-collar workers, and employers began to define citizenship to exclude Mexicans from political rights and erect barriers to resistance. Mexican Americans faced hostility and repatriation. The mounting strife resulted in strikes by Mexican fruit and vegetable farmers. This collective action, combined with involvement in the Communist party, led Mexican workers to unionize. Vargas carefully illustrates how union mobilization in agriculture, tobacco, garment, and other industries became an important vehicle for achieving Mexican American labor and civil rights. He details how interracial unionism proved successful in cross-border alliances, in fighting discriminatory hiring practices, in building local unions, in mobilizing against fascism and in fighting brutal racism. No longer willing to accept their inferior status, a rising Mexican American grassroots movement would utilize direct action to achieve equality.

This study of the employment of Mexicans as labourers in the USA between World War I and the Great Depression relates the social and economic experiences of the Mexican workers. It describes the roles of women, the Catholic church and labour unions.