Mexican Americans Across Generations: Immigrant Families, Racial Realities

3. Cultural Maintenance: A Pot of Beans on the Stove

64 | 3 Cultural Maintenance A Pot of Beans on the Stove Our lives represent, in C. Wright Mills’ (1959) phrase, the “intersection of biography and history.” While we may be only dimly aware of the historical currents that are shaping our lives, we can rest assured they are. —Doug McAdam, Freedom Summer Racialization is an ideological process, an historically specific one. —Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States When I arrived at the Benavidas home in the Oakland hills, my respondent’s wife, Melissa, gave me a tour of the front portion of the home, saying her husband would join us in a minute. The house was immaculately decorated, boasting art on the walls from Spain, Mexico, and Ecuador, as well as southwestern art hand crafted by Melissa’s father. As Melissa ushered me into the kitchen, she laughed, saying tongue in cheek, “Not to be a stereotypical Mexican family or anything, but we’ve got to get the beans on!” We both laughed. She followed up with, “Well, really, we usually do have a pot of beans in the house.” We already see a contrast between the Rosenberg family and the Benavidas family; the Benavidases are immersed in Latino culture in the form of art decorating the home and the pot of beans on the stove. To complement the last chapter on “thinned attachment,” this chapter presents an alternative model of assimilation into U.S. society: “cultural maintenance.” In contradistinction to the thinned attachment families, the cultural maintenance families have preserved many elements of Mexican culture while still making Cultural Maintenance | 65 swift adjustments to U.S. culture. While families in both models have assimilated in terms of structure (mainstream schools and occupations), economics , and civic participation, they vary in their levels of adoption of U.S. culture and continued adherence to Mexican culture. This chapter argues that the same factors that influence a thinned attachment outcome–namely, marriage , gender ideologies, and religion–when configured differently, can produce a cultural maintenance outcome. The “cultural maintenance” trajectory of assimilation occurs most often when racial/ethnic in-marriage, Catholicism , and traditional (or transitional) gender ideologies persist in the second generation. Cultural maintenance helps us rethink assimilation theory by adding an understanding of the way retaining cultural values from a sending country can help rather than hinder acclimation to and success in a new national environment.1 While socioeconomic status does not noticeably vary between the two groups, the thinned attachment and cultural maintenance models diverge in several ways (see table 3.1). Marriage (endogamy versus exogamy) at the second generation is a primary influence, causing families to branch toward either cultural maintenance or thinned attachment. Cultural maintenance families have far higher intramarriage rates, more traditional gender ideologies , and higher rates of participation in civil rights activism, and they are also more often practicing Catholics than their thinned attachment counterparts . Family memory and personal traits also vary: cultural maintenance families display strong adherence to family history, are more often Spanishsurnamed , and possess darker skin tones and more non-European features than do thinned attachment families.2 Table 3.1 Points of Divergence Thinned Attachment Cultural Maintenance Marriage Exogamous Endogamous Gender Ideologies Transitional/Egalitarian Traditional/Transitional Religion Catholic or Nonpracticing/ Converted Catholic Spanish English monolingual to Bilingual Bilingual Personal Traits Spanish surname or Non; European phenotype or Non Spanish surname; NonEuropean phenotype Social Context (Peers) Heterogeneous/ White Heterogeneous/Mexican 66 | Cultural Maintenance This chapter highlights the Lopez family, who experienced the Chicano Movement as a watershed moment wherein racial consciousness peaked, and the Benavidas family, who were committed to their Mexican identity prior to the 1960s. As we shall see, historical context heavily influences the way people understand themselves racially. First-generation immigrants confronted Americanization, deportation, and recruitment programs whereas the second and third generations experienced the civil rights movement and the affirmative action eras, respectively. The Importance of Historical Era in Biography and Identity First Generation, Juan Lopez: Americanization, Deportation, and Bracero Programs The Lopez family illustrates a “bumpy” process of assimilation (Gans 1992a): influenced by the sociopolitical context of their respective adulthoods , the first generation is assimilationist whereas the second and third generations emphasize cultural maintenance. Juan, the 84-year-old who immigrated with his family as a child in the early 1920s, is staunchly assimilationist in outlook except for his desire for his children to marry coethnics. His 57-year-old son, Marcus, was...