Naturalizing Mexican Immigrants : A Texas History

CHAPTER 3. Ricardo Rodriguez and the People's Party in the 1890s

During the 1890s a growing political movement in Texas sought to bar people of Mexican origin from obtaining U.S. citizenship. The movement was led by the People’s Party but was strongly supported by Republicans and some Democrats. Few Democratic politicians formed alliances with the People’s Party, and many who did were motivated by nativist or Populist ideals. The most fervent Democratic allies came from voting districts in west or South Texas, where the voting constituencies were ethnically mixed. In many of these districts it was difficult to get elected without the support of Mexican voters, and some politicians considered this fact a nuisance , one that had to be eliminated. Other Democratic politicians, however , supported the People’s Party simply because they held nativist views and did not believe Mexicans of Indian descent were rational, responsible citizens. The political alliance that formed to disenfranchise voters of Mexican descent began in the Texas legislature and then moved into the courtrooms before culminating in the federal court ruling In re Rodriguez (1897). What transpired went beyond Texas politics, however, and became one of the most important and formative moments in Mexicans’ naturalization history , as the Populist alliance attempted to bar all people of Mexican descent from obtaining U.S. citizenship. I use government archives, platforms of the parties’ state conventions, news articles, and legal records to document the political movement launched against Mexicans. By examining newspaper accounts I also reconstruct the reaction of the community of Mexican origin to the public hostility expressed against them. CHAPTER 3 Ricardo Rodriguez and the People’s Party in the 1890s 110 Naturalizing Mexican Immigrants The Election of 1894 and the Twenty-Fourth Texas Legislature: The Anti-Immigrant Agenda Begins By the early 1890s the People’s Party was enjoying widespread support and some success, although it had failed to gain the governor’s seat in 1892. In preparation for the upcoming election, the leadership of the People’s Party began to forge a closer alliance with the Prohibition Party, which at that time was gaining a following in conservative communities across Texas. The parties shared two goals: ending alien ownership of property in Texas and reducing the influence corporations held over the state government. In 1894 the parties coordinated their state conventions to facilitate the attendance of their members at both. The two conventions, held in Waco, were scheduled for consecutive weeks in mid-June, so that when one convention ended the next would begin within a few days. This enabled the executive committee of the People’s Party to meet with the leaders of the Prohibition Party to coordinate their political planks for the upcoming November election (Winkler 1916: 332–336). When the state conventions ended, the leadership of the People’s Party was divided on how close their alliance with the Prohibition Party should be. They had common goals, yet the positions taken by the Prohibitionists were considered extreme and politically naive. The executive committee of the People’s Party was prepared to work together but was unwilling to endorse most of the Prohibitionists’ planks against the manufacture, consumption, and sale of liquor. It feared such a prohibition would alienate many voters and negate all possible gains they might make within the German communities (Bryan 1896). Their fears were well grounded as it turned out because during the Prohibition Party’s state convention of June 28 the party outlined an extremist platform that could well have alienated many voters. The party adopted several articles that the People’s Party was uncomfortable with, among them banning the sale, manufacture, and consumption of liquor, ending all immigration to Texas, and revising federal naturalization laws in order to require immigrants to have resided in the United States for ten years before becoming eligible to apply for citizenship (Winkler 1916: 307, 335–337). Unlike the People’s Party, which was targeting only Mexicans, the Prohibitionists alleged that all immigrants were a detriment to the welfare of the state, in particular Germans because they manufactured liquor and thereby contributed to the social ills associated with its consumption (Gould 1973). According to them, liquor, immigration , and poverty were interrelated because immigrants manufactured alcohol and wastefully consumed it. They believed that only by obstructing Ricardo Rodriguez and the People’s Party 111 immigrants’ path toward citizenship would Texans be able to combat the impact of their degeneracy. Although the Prohibition Party was seen as...