No Mexicans, Women, or Dogs Allowed: The Rise of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement

SEVEN. The Mexican American Civil Rights Movement

The Mexican American Civil Rights Movement S E V E N I have noticed that several persons have been named as “Father of L.U.L.A.C.”; but I have kept silent because said organization did not have any Fathers. It was a movement which through the process of evolution developed into LULAC. —J. T. Canales, 1960 Activism in the 1920s and the founding of LULAC signaled a Mexican American civil rights movement. J. T. Canales and Emma Tenayuca and her husband, Homer Brooks, though on opposite sides of the spectrum of capitalism and communism, thought so. In 1939 Tenayuca and Brooks wrote about what they called “the Significance of the Mexican Rights Movement.”1 Despite these references to a movement, historians have hesitated to refer to the Mexican American civil rights movement. In this chapter I will ask whether activism heretofore described indeed constituted a civil rights movement. To answer, it is first necessary to survey social movement theory. I will assess the concept of a “Mexican American civil rights movement” and discuss why a prominent writer on the topic of LULAC, political scientist Benjamín Márquez, did not embrace the use of social movement theory until recently.2 Finally, I explain how and why social movement theory should be applied to 1920s activism. In particular, I will address historical context, collective interests, mobilization, oratory and movement discourse. 1 8 4 Theory and Methodology SOCIAL MOVE MENT S Simply put, a social movement is resistance to the status quo through collective claims, challenges, and actions. A movement can be radical, liberal, or conservative. Theorists have focused on participants, sources of conflict, resources, social structure, historical context, mobilization, ideology, and collective identity. Early social movement theory included the relative deprivation school of the 1960s and the resource mobilization school of the 1970s. Relative deprivation, as described by Mancur Olson and other scholars , centered on individuals and why they participate in a movement.3 This school focused on class as the source of conflict. The 1970s led to the resource mobilization school.4 Its theorists considered social movements a challenge to the status quo and paid more attention to resources, social structure, and historical context. Anthony Oberschall defined mobilization as “the process of forming crowds, groups, associations , and organizing for the pursuit of collective goals” and argued that it must be taken into account.5 Resource mobilization theorists identified race and gender as additional sources of conflict. Likewise, Charles Tilly argued that collective action results from a shifting combination of interests, organization , mobilization, and opportunity.6 In the 1980s “new social movement theorists” including Alain Touraine, Daniel Foss, and Ralph Larkin saw movements as a “natural” feature of daily life and argued that any group with a stake in social change could initiate a movement.7 The source of conflict, they implied, could be class, race, gender, or sexuality. They defined collective action as action resulting from a group that has identified itself with the goal of empowerment during a specific time. Foss and Larkin defined a social movement as the developing collective action of a significant portion of the members of a major social category, involving at some point the use of physical force or violence against members of other social categories, their possession, or their institutionalized instrumentalities, and interfering at least temporarily whether by design or by unintended consequence—with the political and cultural reproduction of society.8 A movement exists, they argued, when “members of a social category usually excluded from history begin to assert themselves as historical actors .”9 They criticized the relative deprivation and resource mobilization The Mexican American Civil Rights Movement 1 8 5 schools because they saw movement participation as rational calculation by individuals or groups seeking to maximize psychological, social, or material profits. They contended that excessive attention had been given to whether a movement was successful; the fact that a challenge took place is more significant . Today’s theorists, however, would argue that violence is not a necessary component. Likewise, Touraine saw a movement as an “expression of collective will” and as “the collective organized action through which a class actor battles for the social control of historicity in a given and identifiable context.”10 Using these theories, I define a social movement as collective organized actions by a significant number of people with a shared identity and outside organizations representing a group (social category) with a collective...