The Tejano Diaspora: Mexican Americanism and Ethnic Politics in Texas and Wisconsin (review)

In this elucidating study, Marc Simon Rodriguez looks at transnational migration between Texas and Wisconsin, arguing that the diaspora of migrant farm laborers influenced activist politics in both Crystal City (as well as other South Texas areas) and Wisconsin. For him, the political coup of 1963 in Crystal City (led by Los Cinco) had ramifications for politics in Wisconsin as migrants carried lessons learned from the failed revolt and applied them constructively to their activism in the Midwest. But the politics of Wisconsin also ebbed south to Texas, as became evident by the early 1970s when many of Crystal City’s former residents returned with knowledge gained in the north and applied it to the Crystal City Raza Unida Party (RUP) experiment. In explaining such trans-regional politics, Rodriguez sets RUP activism in “its local, national, and migrant contexts.” (127)

Rodriguez makes the connection between Wisconsin Tejano activism and 1960s Crystal City by citing numerous cases of ex-migrant workers energetically engaged in Wisconsin politics. Jesús Salas, a migrant from Crystal City, received his education in Wisconsin. Salas led the farm workers’ “March to Madison” in August 1966 for the purpose of highlighting problems that plagued field hands. Salas subsequently founded the independent local union Obreros Unidos (OU) and undertook the task of organizing migrant workers entering Wisconsin from Texas (OU ceased to exist by 1970). Jesús Salas was similarly engaged in shaping Milwaukee’s United Migrant Opportunity Services, Inc. (UMOS), a service agency originally established under the Office of Economic Opportunity. After 1968, when ex-farm workers with roots in South Texas (and especially in Crystal City) and leaders from OU successfully gained community control of UMOS, Jesús Salas served as director.

Conversely, Rodriguez connects Crystal City to Wisconsin by noting how Cristaleños living in the Midwest answered the call to participate in the Chicano Movement when it burst forth in their old home town. Various Cristaleños, who during the late 1960s had been engaged in labor organizing or who had acquired organizing experience as employees of various anti-poverty programs, traveled south from Wisconsin in 1970 and years following to help implement RUP’s political agenda in Crystal City. The aforementioned Jesús Salas returned to “Cristal” in 1975 to oversee economic improvement projects underway in Zavala County.

This provocative treatment of the Tejano diaspora holds significance on a number of counts. It suggests innovative approaches for understanding that communities can have common experiences despite the distances that separate them. As Rodriguez indicates, the Tejano migrant stream produced (as can international currents) regional ties, at times with the same players shaping the politics at both ends of the disapora. The outcome in different regions cannot always be the same, Rodriguez cautions, for Chicano leaders experienced measureable success in reaching their goals in Wisconsin and not in Texas. A racialized society in the Lone Star State hampered movement objectives, whereas the greater ethnic tolerance of the Midwest allowed Tejanos to exert stronger political influence. These conclusions expand on the growing scholarship on interstate migration blazed by historians such as Dionisio Valdes.