Trinidad Gonzales

1848 The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo is signed, ending the war between the United States and Mexico, and granting U.S. citizenship rights to Mexicans.

1897 In the In re Ricardo Rodriguez hearing, the Know Nothing Party attempts to have Mexicans reclassified as Native American, non-Caucasian, and therefore ineligible for citizenship. The judge rules in favor of Rodriguez, noting that the Republic of Texas and the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo granted Mexicans U.S. citizenship.

1910 The Mexican Revolution begins, leading to thousands of Mexican refugees fleeing to the United States.

1910-1911 The lynchings of Antonio Rodríguez in Rockspring, Texas, and Antonio Gómez in Thorndale, Texas, create an international incident.

1911 El Primer Congreso Mexicanista (the First Mexicanist Congress) is held in response to increased violence against Mexicans and Mexican Americans.

1915 The Texas Revolt and matanza (massacre) occur, constituting the last Mexican revolt against the United States undertaken to achieve equal rights.

1917 The United States enters World War I; Mexicans and Mexican Americans serve in the U.S. military.

The Mexican Revolution’s military phase comes to an end.

1918 Texas Rangers, U.S. Army personnel, and vigilantes kill 11 Mexican men in what becomes known as the Porvenir Massacre.

1919 José T. Canales, the only Mexican American in the Texas state legislature, sponsors a bill to investigate the Ranger force. As a result of the passage of this bill, the state forms the Joint Committee of the Investigation by the Senate and House of the Texas Rangers.

1921 Mexican consulates create the Comisíon Honorífica Mexicana (Mexican Honorable Commission) and the Cruz Azul (Blue Cross) to provide civil protections and health care services for Mexican immigrants.

The Orden Hijos de America (Order of the Sons of America) is formed to provide civil rights protection to U.S. citizens of Mexican origin.

1927 Various Mexican American civil rights organizations and leaders meet, in what becomes the Harlingen Convention, to form a statewide civil rights organization for U.S. citizens of Mexican origin. The convention ends in failure because of members who do not support a U.S. citizenship requirement for membership. As a result, a new organization is created, the League of Latin American Citizens (LLAC).

1929 A second attempt is made to form a statewide civil rights organization in Corpus Christi, Texas. At that meeting the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) is formed, composed of members from the Orden Hijos de America, the Knights of America, and the League of Latin American Citizens.

1930 The U.S. Census Bureau creates a separate “Mexican” racial category in order to reclassify Mexicans as non-Caucasian. LULAC and the Mexican government successfully lobby the U.S. government to abandon the use of a Mexican racial category for the next census.

1930, October The Texas Court of Appeals rules, in Independent School District v. Salvatierra, that Mexican and Mexican American children can be segregated for pedagogical reasons. However, the court officially recognizes for the first time the legal principle that Mexican and Mexican American children are Caucasian and cannot be segregated based on their racial background.

1931 The California Assembly passes a bill reclassifying Mexicans and Mexican Americans as Indian in order to legally segregate them in schools. However, as a result of intense political pressure following the ruling in Alvarez v. Lemon Grove, the state senate rejects the bill.

1931, March In Alvarez v. Board of Trustees of the Lemon Grove School District (Alvarez. v. Lemon Grove), a California court rules that it is unconstitutional under California statute to segregate Mexican and Mexican American children; the court also rejects the school district’s attempts to justify its segregation policy as educational.

1935 In the In re Timoteo Andrade immigration hearing, the California Joint Immigration Committee successfully lobbies to have Andrade classified as an Indian by the Bureau of Immigration case officer and federal judge. However, pressure from LULAC, the Mexican government, and the U.S. State Department gets the decision reversed.

1940 To avoid having Mexican immigrants possibly classified as Indians and denied citizenship, the U.S. State Department lobbies the U.S. Congress to pass the 1940 Nationality Act, including Section 303, which states that descendants of indigenous people who reside in the Americas can become U.S. citizens.

The 1920s represented a formative time for the development of organizational capabilities for Mexican American civil rights efforts. Although the fight for Mexican American civil rights began in various forms immediately after the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848), several civil rights organizations were unified with the formation of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) in 1929. LULAC was the most important civil rights organization to represent the interests of Mexican Americans from the 1930s through World War II.

The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the U.S.-Mexico War (1846-1848) and granted Mexicans living on newly acquired U.S. territory the right either to become U.S. citizens or to retain their Mexican citizenship. If a person did not announce a choice between U.S. and Mexican citizenship within a year of the signing of the treaty, then the individual automatically became a U.S. citizen. During the 19th century, however, only Caucasians were granted the right to become U.S. citizens. African Americans were not allowed to become citizens until the passage of the 14th Amendment in 1868, and most Native Americans were not granted Page 316  |  Top of Articlecitizenship until passage of the 1924 Indian Citizenship Act. Asian Americans who had been born in the United States were granted citizenship based on the Fourteenth Amendment, but Asian immigrants were largely restricted from becoming citizens because they were not considered Caucasian until the 1952 McCarran-Walter Act eliminated racial criteria for citizenship. Thus, the granting of citizenship to Mexicans after 1848 meant they were considered Caucasian by the federal government—an important racial distinction for accessing equal rights.

The officers of the Denver council of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), 1954. (Ira Gay Sealy/The Denver Post via Getty Images)

Mexican Americans’ Caucasian status thus afforded them legal protections that prevented the de jure (legal) segregation and discrimination that other racial minority groups suffered. However, de facto (in practice) segregation and discrimination were widely used against Mexican Americans. As a result, discrimination against Mexicans and Mexican Americans took distinct and complex forms from the late 19th century to the mid-20th century. In particular, attempts were made to reclassify Mexicans and Mexican Americans as Indians in order to justify segregation based on de jure arguments. The reclassification effort came to an end with Section 303 of the Nationality Act of 1940, which stated that immigrant descendants of Western Hemisphere indigenous groups could become U.S. citizens ( Gross, 2008 ; López, 2006 ; Lukens, 2012 ).

The first effort to reclassify Mexican immigrants as Indian occurred in connection with Ricardo Rodriguez’s attempt to become a U.S. citizen in San Antonio in 1896. During his final appeal in front of a federal court, the Know-Nothing Party, a group that embraced an anti-immigrant platform, intervened, arguing that because Rodriguez acknowledged his Indian heritage, as a non-Caucasian he could not become a citizen. The intent behind the Know-Nothing Party intervention was to have all Mexican Americans reclassified as Indian in order to deny them the right to vote. Judge Thomas S. Maxey ruled, in In re Ricardo Rodriguez (1897), that because the Republic of Texas (1836-1846) and the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo recognized Mexicans as citizens, they were considered Caucasian. Judge Maxey’s decision frustrated those seeking to have Mexicans and Mexican Americans racially reclassified ( Lukens, 2012 ).

During the late 19th century and the first decade of the 20th century, anti-Mexican violence increased, including lynchings that received state and binational attention. The lynchings of Antonio Rodríguez at Rocksprings (1910), and of Antonio Gómez at Thorndale (1911), prompted the first statewide gathering of Mexicans and Mexican Americans in Texas to discuss issues of civil rights: the Primer Congreso Mexicanista (First Mexicanist Congress) at Laredo in 1911. The meeting attracted mutual aid societies such as the Orden Caballeros de Honor (Order of the Knights of Honor), Mexican consuls, and journalists. The Grand Liga Mexicanista de Beneficencia y Protección (Great Mexican League for Protection and Well-being) was nominally formed during that meeting, but an actual organization never materialized. It would be 18 years before the first successful civil rights organization was started (Limón, 1974; Montejano, 1987; Orozco, 2009 ).

A few years after this meeting, the Texas Revolt of 1915 exploded as frustration grew over increased civil rights violations, especially the execution of prisoners by law enforcement officers in Hidalgo County during July of 1915. The revolt, which represented the last use of political violence to achieve the restoration of equality for Mexicans and Mexican Americans, failed by October. During the months from July to October, Texas Rangers, vigilantes, local law enforcement, and some U.S. soldiers killed about 300 innocent Mexicans and Mexican Americans in what became known as the matanza (massacre).

Three years later, the Porvenir Massacre occurred in December 1918, when Texas Rangers, U.S. soldiers, and vigilantes killed 15 Mexican and Mexican American men who were accused of stealing cattle from Anglo ranchers. Family members of these men fled to Mexico to seek protection from the Mexican military, even though they were U.S. citizens. The Mexican army commander notified Mexican government officials, who notified the U.S. State Department. Texas Governor William P. Hobby was informed of the killings, and disbanded the Ranger company responsible for the atrocity; however, no charges were filed against the Rangers.

José T. Canales, the lone Mexican American state representative, got a bill passed in 1919 to investigate the Texas Rangers. Under this bill, the Texas Senate and House of Representatives created a joint committee to examine alleged Ranger abuses. During two weeks of testimony, the investigation made public for the first time the extensive number of Ranger abuses, including the matanza. The conclusion of the committee’s report noted that the abuses and violation of law were significant, but that such abuses were a result of bad Rangers, and not representative of the Ranger force as a whole. The reported concluded that because those “bad Rangers” were no longer members of the force, no major reform would be recommended ( Orozco, 2009 ).

Although the 1919 Canales Hearings (as they become known) failed to reform the force or have criminal charges filed against Texas Rangers for indiscriminately killing Mexicans and Mexican Americans, it represented a turning point for Mexican American civil rights. For the first time, the State of Texas was forced to make a public accounting of state-sanctioned violence against Mexicans and Mexican Americans. Importantly, that effort was led by the sole Mexican American state representative.

Two changes occurred by the beginning of the 1920s that shaped the decade with regard to Mexican and Mexican American civil rights organizing: the emergence of nationalism and nationalist-citizenship. World War I (1914-1918) and the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920) ushered in both notions for promoting unity among diverse peoples, both within their respective nations and outside their nations. Nationalism refers to the process through which diverse groups of people see themselves as a unified community belonging to one nation. Nationalist-citizenship is a legal status granted by a nation’s government to individuals that allows them access to equal rights, but denies or limits such rights for noncitizens. These two concepts came into conflict because of racial and ethnic divisions in the United States that treated some people as second-class citizens or undeserving of equal protections. Nonetheless, minority groups in the United States embraced nationalism, and expressed pride in being American citizens. In particular, Mexican American civil rights leaders displayed their patriotism through military service, an act they believed expressed loyalty to the United States, and insisted on their community’s right to equal treatment ( Gonzales, 2008 ).

For example, José de la Luz Sáenz volunteered to serve in World War I; the later publication of his war diary made him one of the best-known Mexican American WWI veterans. During his service, he met with other Mexican and Mexican American soldiers to discuss issues of civil rights and their place within U.S. society. As a result of their patriotic service, the men Sáenz met and others would later advocate for equal treatment at home. The earliest Mexican American civil rights organizations founded by some veterans was the Orden Hijos de Page 319  |  Top of ArticleAmerica (Order of the Sons of America or OSA), created in November 1920 in San Antonio, Texas. Unlike the Grand Liga Mexicanista de Beneficencia y Protección, which accepted both U.S. and Mexican citizens, the OSA only accepted U.S. citizens as members. Due to internal divisions, the OSA splintered into several other groups. According to Cynthia Orozco, these groups included “the Order Sons of Texas, Club Protector México-Texano (México-Texano Protective Club), and Order Knights of America” ( Orozco, 2009 ). The OSA and Order Knights of America (OKA) persisted through the decade, whereas the Club Protector dissolved.

Prior to the 1920s, in Texas and elsewhere in the United States, an individual did not need to be a citizen to vote. An immigrant only needed to officially declare the intention to become a citizen in order to register and vote. By 1920, though, Texas required U.S. citizenship to be eligible to vote. The emergence of nationalism and nationalist-citizenship prompted the shift to the citizenship requirement for voting. As a result, the OSA and the splinter groups that emerged from it emphasized citizenship as a requirement for group membership.

During 1921, the Mexican consuls from throughout the United States held a convention in San Antonio several months prior to the formation of the OSA. At this meeting they created two organizations for Mexican citizens, one to provide civil rights protection and the other to provide health care benefits. The first organization was the Comisíon Honorífica Mexicana (Mexican Honorable Commission), and the second was the Cruz Azul (Blue Cross). Like the shift in voting requirements to U.S. citizenship, the formation of these organizations represented Mexico’s embrace of nationalism and nationalist-citizenship as organizing components for its policies to protect Mexican immigrants residing in the United States. Prior to the 1920s, the Mexican government through its consuls would provide services for people of Mexican origin regardless of their citizenship status. So, for Mexican Americans who were U.S. citizens, by the 1920s it had become increasingly necessary to create their own civil rights organizations, because both the United States and Mexico required citizenship in order to provide protection or assistance for equal rights ( Gonzales, 2008 ; Orozco, 2009 ).

The second attempt at creating a statewide civil rights organization occurred during what became known as the Harlingen Convention, in 1928. At this meeting, members from the OSA and its splinter groups, as well as Mexican citizens, met to discuss the formation of a unified group. The convention became contentious, however, after it was decided that any new organization could only be composed of U.S. citizens. Attendees who objected to the U.S. citizenship requirement walked out in protest. Although the meeting failed to form a statewide association, a new organization with chapters primarily in the Lower Rio Grande Valley was created: the League of Latin American Citizens or LLAC ( Orozco, 2009 ).

During 1929, members of the OSA, OKA, and LLAC met twice in Corpus Christi to form a unified organization, the League of United Latin American Citizens. At the February meeting, the various organizations’ representatives and attendees agreed to unite, and during the May meeting the group wrote a constitution. LULAC’s constitution emphasized loyalty to the United States by limiting membership to U.S. citizens and making English the organization’s official language. The newly formed group was composed only of men, a common practice at a time when women were just gaining political franchise. Still, Mexican American women would challenge this exclusion through the formation of ladies’ auxiliaries, and were eventually included in the organization by 1933 ( Acosta and Winegarten, 2003 ).

Four major incidents related to Mexicans and Mexican Americans and their racial categorization occurred during the early 1930s. Independent School District v. Salvatierra (1930) was the first case in which Texas courts dealt with the question of public-school segregation of Mexican and Mexican American children. LULAC marshaled its legal and financial resources to help fight the case, but ended up with a mixed ruling. The court affirmed Mexican and Mexican Americans’ Caucasian status and stated that they could not be segregated because of their race, but also held that Mexican and Mexican American children could be segregated for pedagogical (educational) reasons. In other words, schools that could claim to be separating students for their educational benefit could legally continue that practice. The following year, in California, Mexicans and Mexicans Americans were successful in overturning segregation in Roberto Alvarez v. Board of Trustees of the Lemon Grove School District (1931). As in Texas, California law did not allow for the segregation of Mexican and Mexican American children on racial grounds. Thus, the school district tried to justify segregation on pedagogical reasons, arguing in particular that Mexican and Mexican American children were deficient in the English language and needed special or additional instruction. However, the court found the school district’s justification wanting once Mexican and Mexican American pupils demonstrated their English-language proficiency while testifying. Simultaneously, California State Assemblyman George R. Bliss attempted to have the California legislature pass a bill that would reclassify Mexicans and Mexican Americans as Indian. Although the bill passed the California House of Representatives, the state Senate came under intense pressure and did not pass the bill. Its failure was in part a result of the Lemon Grove ruling that Mexicans and Mexican Americans were Caucasian and could not be segregated ( Alvarez, 1984 ; San Miguel, 2000 ).

The third incident arose when the U.S. Census Bureau utilized “Mexican” as a separate racial category for the 1930 census. LULAC, the Mexican government, and other groups successfully argued and litigated to ensure that the Mexican category was abandoned by the 1940 census. However, much like the Know-Nothing

effort during the late 19th century to have Mexicans classified as Indians, the California Joint Immigration Committee (CJIC) attempted to do the same during the immigration hearing of Timoteo Andrade in 1935. The CJIC found a sympathetic judge and Immigration Bureau case manager to support its argument. As a result of the CJIC’s influence, Judge John Knight accepted the bureau case manager’s assessment that Andrade’s responses indicated he was Indian, and therefore could not become a citizen. This decision contradicted the previous Rodriguez ruling.

The CJIC celebrated the decision but LULAC, the Mexican government, and the U.S. State Department worked together to have Judge Knight reverse his ruling through an appeal. The Immigration Bureau reassigned the original case officer who had recommended that Andrade be denied citizenship, because of his support for the CJIC effort, and replaced him with a new case officer who would help Andrade. The issue at hand was the common understanding by Mexicans of their indigenous ancestry through the process of mestizaje (racial mixing). Mexicans generally understood their heritage to be part Spanish and part indigenous. Whereas mestizaje is an important component of Mexican national identity, in the United States race theories deemed mixed ancestry to be a sign of inferiority, and people of mixed blood are generally classified as non-Caucasian. During the appeal process, the new case officer noted the common expression of mestizaje as a response by Mexicans, and included Andrade’s mother’s testimony which indicated that her son’s ancestry was white. With the new testimony, the added pressure from the State Department, and the need to maintain friendly foreign relations with Mexico, Judge Knight reversed his decision ( Lukens, 2012 ).

To prevent any future possibility of Mexicans and Mexican Americans being considered non-Caucasian, the U.S. Congress passed Section 303 of the Nationality Act of 1940, which allowed descendants of indigenous people from the Americas to become citizens. With the passage of that law, anti-Mexican and anti-Mexican American forces could no longer seek to reclassify them as non-Caucasian. However, those who had anti-Mexican prejudices continued to engage in various forms of de facto discrimination in public accommodations, schools, and housing. Not until the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Hernandez v. Texas (1954) would the U.S. government recognize Mexicans and Mexican Americans as a distinct class who had endured a history of discrimination. However, the 1954 Court decision did not racially reclassify them. It would not be until the Court recognized Mexicans and Mexican Americans as an ethnic minority group, in Cisneros v. Corpus Christi Independent School District (1970), that they were no longer simply considered a class of Caucasians, but an ethnic group composed of one or more races ( Gross, 2008 ; López, 2006 ; Lukens, 2012 ; San Miguel, 2000 ).

In the 1920s and 1930s, Mexicans and Mexican Americans, and particularly their civil rights organizations like LULAC, clearly sought to assert their legal status Page 323  |  Top of Articleas white in order to claim their rights in the United States and avoid legal segregation. Because LULAC used a strategy of asserting whiteness in order to claim rights and avoid segregation, historians debate whether LULAC espoused racist beliefs against African Americans. In particular, two historians, Neil Foley and Carlos Blanton, disagree with each other on this point. Foley (2010) argues that because of the use of the whiteness strategy, LULAC and its leaders avoided creating political alliances with African American organizations such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). By asserting that Mexican Americans should not be discriminated against because they were white, they essentially condoned or at least remained silent on the issue of whether African Americans should be racially segregated. Blanton rejects Foley’s claims in his biography of George I. Sánchez (2014), in which he examines Sánchez’s interaction with African Americans and their civil rights organizations, such as the NAACP. In particular, Blanton notes how both groups interacted during the case of Mendez v. Westminster School District of Orange County (1946). In that case, the NAACP submitted a brief in support of Mexican and Mexican American children, and later built on the social science legal strategy utilized to show the psychological damage that school segregation created and fostered among students. The subject of Mexican American and African American political relations is a new area of research that continues to expand ( Blanton, 2014 ; Foley, 2010 ).

In the 1950s, LULAC continued its interest in educational equity for Mexican American students by establishing the “Little School of the 400,” a preschool program aimed at preparing Mexican American children for school with 400 English vocabulary words. The schools sought to help Spanish-speaking children overcome the language barrier that disadvantaged them when they entered elementary school. The first school was established in Ganado, Texas, in 1957, but soon schools appeared in several other Texas towns as well. Although the program did not secure ongoing funding, it did lay the groundwork for educational legislation that created preschool programming for non-native English-speaking children and received support from the Johnson administration in Washington, D.C. ( Kreneck, 2010 ). LULAC’s “Little School of the 400” is credited as being a model for HeadStart early childhood education funded by the federal government around the country.

By 1960, LULAC had expanded and established more than 150 councils (chapters) in Mexican American communities around the country, in places as distant as Davenport, Des Moines, and Fort Madison, Iowa, to San Bernardino and Santa Ana, California. The organization succeeded in drawing the attention of national leaders like President John F. Kennedy and Vice-President Lyndon B. Johnson, who attended the Houston Council’s gala in November 1963.

In 1973, the organization branched out to provide educational services and leadership training to students by creating the LULAC National Educational Service Page 324  |  Top of ArticleCenters. These have been formed in cities like Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Miami, Florida. In 2017, councils exist in places like Portland, Oregon; Columbus, Ohio; and Little Rock, Arkansas.

Alonso S. Perales was at the forefront in crafting the intellectual foundations for a Mexican American identity that sought to harness the best of both American and Mexican cultural beliefs. Born in Alice, Texas, in 1898, Perales attended public school in Alice, and Draughn’s Business College in Corpus Christi. After serving in World War I, he moved to Washington, D.C., and continued his studies at the Preparatory School in Washington and George Washington University. He received his B.A. from National University and later earned a law degree.

During the 1920s and 1930s, Perales served in 13 diplomatic missions to different Latin American countries. In 1924, he, along with J. Luz Saenz (another LULAC founder), lectured to Mexican communities about civil rights. During these lectures and advocacy, Perales began fleshing out his ideas about being Mexican American. Mexican citizens living in the United States had a ready political and legal resource for their civil right concerns from the Mexican government, and he noted that Mexican Americans would not have such a resource unless they sought to be fully recognized as United States citizens. Like other World War I veterans, he believed military service provided proof of loyalty to the nation, and that such proof should result in equal treatment. In this time period, Mexican Americans were still viewed as foreigners who threatened United States society. As result of those continued racially biased views, Perales argued for the development of a Mexican American identity founded on pride of heritage, both American and Mexican; patriotism to the United States; belief in God; being educated; and embracing human rights and progress. The linchpin holding this identity together was citizenship.

By 1927, Perales, Saenz, and José Tomas Canales organized the Harlingen Convention to form a statewide Mexican American civil rights organization. Under their leadership, the convention limited the new organization to United States citizens. Half the delegation left in protest. Although a statewide organization failed to materialize, the League of Latin American Citizens was created. In the aftermath of the division, those who objected to the citizenship requirement attacked Perales, Saenz, and Canales for creating unnecessary internal divisions within the Mexican-origin community. Perales responded by stressing the need for Mexican Americans to be viewed first and foremost as loyal Americans to ensure their civil rights. Eventually, the League of Latin American Citizens, along with the Order Sons of Page 325  |  Top of ArticleAmerica and Order Knights of America, united to form LULAC in Corpus Christi in 1929. Perales was central to shaping its ideology and constitution based on patriotism and citizenship.

After serving as president of LULAC from 1930 to 1931, Perales continued his activism by writing to both English- and Spanish-language newspapers concerning issues of racism and segregation for the rest of the decade. These writings and other essays are included in his book, En Defensa de Mi Raza (1936). His second book, Are We Good Neighbors (1948), is a collection of testimonies about civil rights abuses against Mexican Americans throughout the state of Texas. In 1941, Perales worked with Texas state representatives to write Racial Equality Bill No. 909, a law that would have outlawed discrimination in public facilities. However, the bill failed to pass in the legislature. The Spanish government awarded Perales the rank of Commander in the Spanish Order of Civil Merit in 1952 to recognize his efforts to secure civil rights for Spanish-speaking people. He died May 9, 1960, in San Antonio, Texas.

The Spanish-language newspaper El Paladin reported on the February 22, 1929, Corpus Christi convention that led to the formation of the League of United Latin American Citizens. What follows is a translated excerpt of its coverage found in the Oliver Douglas Weeks Collection at the University of Texas League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) Archive. Weeks wrote the first scholarly article about the formation of LULAC during 1930.

As we said in our last edition last Sunday there was carried to completion in the Salon Obreras of this city the Convention organized by various Institutions of identical ideals in order to unite themselves and form a single nucleus which, more numerous and more substantial, might at once and for all clearly define the present as well as the future situation of individuals born in this country, but of Latin descent.

… Prof. Luz Saenz took the floor, and he said, “it is time that we unite or on the contrary we shall be lost, and not only we, but—what is sadder—our descendents [sic]. Separated we shall be no more than dispersed forces easy to overcome. All we citizens of Latin origin have before us today arduous and diffucult [sic] problems which did not exist yesterday, and tomorrow, we shall certainly encounter other problems more complicated yet. In my constants [sic] journeys across the State of Texas, the State which without doubt gives the least guarantees to Latinamerican Page 326  |  Top of Article[sic] individuals, I have seen not a few injustices, and I have become convinced of the necessity that exists of forming one single union of all those elements which like us fulfill all their duties toward this country, and who on the other hand are not recognized in their rights as citizens.… And now not only in peace but in war we have taken up arms in its defense, and when we have returned with the scar of a wound or the grief of having left in the fields over there across the sea hundreds of our dead brothers, we have met with the fact that all our forces were lost in the abyss of inicuous [sic] racial prejudice, and we continue being the same.”

Sr. Jose G. Gonzales followed thanking them for the opportunity given to give his opinion and saying, “I truly praise the noble and interesting work which these organizations represented here have been doing. Always attentive to this grave racial problem which the Latins originate in this country, I have sometimes come to doubt whether the day will come when it can be solved satisfactorily. Like those who have preceded me in this course of deliberations, I see that we form a conglomerate without a country, without prerogatives, and what is ever more sad, with very few hopes of obtaining a betterment of this deplorable condition of parias [sic].… [I]n my deep preoccupations, in my moments of painful meditation, I have found the idea that only a general union well understood can save us from the complete shipwreck of our citizenship, and now that opportunity presents itself to carry this out, I suggest the appropriateness of doing it. Perhaps this union will serve to give a country to our children, who otherwise each time they thought of us would say: They lived parias [sic], and they left us this sad inheritance.”

Source: Excerpt from El Paladin, February 22, 1929, translated (1930). Oliver Douglas Weeks Collection at the University of Texas League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) Archive.

The LULAC News was the official publication for the League of Latin American Citizens. In volume 4, number 4, July 1937, the newspaper published an editorial requesting more women’s support.

First let’s take stock of our duties and then set to strengthen them.

It seems like we are allowing ourselves to soften, to abandon our Aims and Purposes, to escape responsibility whenever possible, we are growing to abhor the very words DUTY and UNITY.

Our inactive Councils at present are so many and the reorganization of all inactive men’s Councils and the necessity of more and more Ladies Councils is of such magnitude—one so intricate in its complexities and so baffling in its contradictions that Lulacs need every iota of help. And this time we are challenging the women to come to the rescue.

Sisters Lulacs our brothers need a good big dose of competition. Competition in every field of human relationships is a great stimulant leading to the practice and the acquisition of skills and habits of consideration for other people.

Out of seventy one men’s Councils, 26 Men’s councils were represented. Out of 15 Ladies Councils 4 were represented at the Last annual Convention at Houston this year. This means that 57 Councils in the League are dormant and that the Treasury General is out of $1140.00 worth of dues. Just think all we could have accomplished with that money.

Now that our brothers have given the women a chance to show them what we can do, let all the Ladies Councils that are active now try and revive the Dormant Ladies Councils and the Ladies Organizers and the Governors to join our League so that we may prove to our brothers that we can accomplish more than they can.

Brothers get busy for you are going to have to work fast in order to catch up with your sisters. Sisters let’s give them a race bearing in mind that they are 71 to 15.

The League of United Latin American Citizens belong to the Latin American race and it’s up to the Latins to join it in order to educate our race and make better American Citizens out of every Latin American.

Source: League of United Latin American Citizens, LULAC News 4 (4), July 1937; El Paso, Texas. Retrieved from texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth221898/ (University of North Texas Libraries, “The Portal to Texas History,” texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Houston Metropolitan Research Center at Houston Public Library).

See also: Election and Appointment of Latinos in the 21st Century ; Mendez v. Westminster ; Texas Revolt