Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America

Mexican Americans are unique in that they can claim to be some of the earliest settlers on United States soil. Many white Americans have difficulty understanding just how deep Mexican roots are in the American Southwest.

To exemplify the deep roots in this part of the country, Gonzalez focuses on the Canales clan. The Canales’ ancestors first came from Spain to the Americas during the 1640s. In the late 1740s, José de Escandon began colonizing the area around the Nueces River and the Rio Grande Valley, establishing 20 towns and 18 missions and converting 3,000 to Christianity. The colony of Nuevo Santander was self-sufficient, self-contained, and full of fertile lands and livestock. The Canales family settled on both the northern and southern sides of the Rio Grande.

During the 1820s, Anglo Americans arrived in the region in large numbers. Mexican residents felt threatened, as the Anglos started to dispute their land ownership. President Polk engineered the Mexican-American War over the Nueces Strip. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the war, gave the United States the Nueces Strip, and the Rio Grande became the dividing line between the United States and Mexico. In the wake of the treaty, some Mexicans suddenly found themselves living in the United States, in South Texas. These Mexican Americans never crossed the border to enter this country; instead, the borders were redrawn around them. Nevertheless, they were seen as obstacles by white American society and were cheated out of their land and consistently subjected to violence.

Some Mexicans fought back. Juan “Cheno” Cortina, a Canales descendent, led an army of 1,200 Mexicans and declared war on the Anglo settlers, yet he couldn’t stop the eventual Anglo domination. During the 1920s, the area was as segregated as apartheid South Africa. While Mexican Americans were 90% of the population, white Americans controlled most of the land and political power. The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) was formed in 1929, in Corpus Christi, Texas, to break segregation. One of LULAC’s prime focuses was teaching English to Spanish speakers. In the 1930s, during the Great Depression, anti-immigrant hysteria resulted in mass deportations of Mexican Americans. However, the Rio Grande area was largely untouched, as many were able to live off the fertile land and survive.

During World War II, the United States created a bracero program that brought in Mexican workers to meet labor needs; this program lasted until 1965. After the program ended, many workers stayed in the US without authorization, and few white Americans cared about this at the time. Mexican American soldiers who served in the war, much like their Puerto Rican counterparts, were no longer satisfied with the status quo and sought more equality and rights.

Due to multiple waves of migrations by Cubans, it’s difficult to find a single family to serve as representative of the “Cuban experience.” The first wave of Cuban migrants arrived in the US during the 19th century due to the instability caused by the Cuban wars of independence. Some of those migrants bought 40 acres of land near Tampa, Florida, and built the town of Ybor City. They also set up a steamship line that would run between Havana, Key West, and Tampa. This allowed the very wealthy living in Cuba to prosper under the dictators Machado and Batista, unlike the poor, who were devastated by these leaders’ respective reigns.

When Fidel Castro came to Havana on January 1, 1959, he sparked a wave of immigration to the US. These immigrants were very wealthy and brought with them technical skills that made them employable. Because they were fleeing a communist regime, they received federal aid immediately and became the most prosperous Hispanic immigrants:

Thanks to the unique combination of their own skills and federal largesse, the early exiles set about creating the Cuban miracle in Miami. Within a few short years, the sleepy resort along the Biscayne Bay was transformed into a commercial boomtown and a nexus for international trade (111).

Many white Americans warmly welcomed this wave of Cubans.

The 1980s saw a new wave of Cuban migration, known as the Mariel boat wave. This began with the Mariel boatlift, a mass emigration from Mariel Harbor in Cuba that spanned from April to October of 1980. These Cuban migrants were poorer and darker skinned, and their arrivals were captured by television news. Images of destitute Cubans on overcrowded boats alarmed many white Americans and resulted in a backlash against Cuban migrants. Carter lost the 1980 presidential election to Ronald Reagan in part because of the charge that Carter was unable to control immigration.

Gonzalez next focuses on Luis Del Rosario, who arrived in the US in 1979. He was not part of the Cuban elite but came to the US as a result of a program that allowed the resettlement of political prisoners. At first, Del Rosario welcomed the reforms that Castro initiated, which built new homes and new schools. However, in 1968, the government began nationalizing small enterprises, including the foundry that Del Rosario had built with his brother. Del Rosario’s anger at the government did not make him lose faith in the socialist experiment until he began to see living conditions for Cubans unraveling due to massive disorganization and corruption. By the early 1970s, Del Rosario had come to detest the revolution and became involved in subversive activities. He was arrested, and on June 6, 1979, he left Cuba and flew to Miami as part of a political prisoner program.

Del Rosario says he was not like other anti-Castro Cubans, who wanted to reclaim political power. He had no interest in reclaiming land or power. However, he did want Cuba to be free of violence and one-party rule. He also wanted the US embargo to end, so that he could visit relatives who remain in Cuba.