Takaki Chapter 7

1. The Mexican, Spanish, and Mestizo people were already in Texas and California before the Americans discovered the west. Many of the first settlers in the western region of the United States were from Spain and Mexico. After time many people were considered to be “mestizo” a mixture of Indian or negro and Spanish. One reason that these people settled in California and Texas was because the Sapnish government promised them equipment and food. But not many Spanish settlers went to these areas and after time Mexico became independent and then controlled the land. Some of the people who owned land in the west were given it because of service for Spain or Mexico in past wars. There were really no drives or motivations for them to immigrate to the California Territory. On the other hand, the Americans went to California for one purpose, to take it away from Mexico and continue their manifest destiny.
2. The title of this chapter, “Foreigners in their Native Land” pretty much summarizes the entire chapter. The Spanish who owned the land for around seventy years or were in the blink of an eye foreigners as Americans took it over and didn’t recognize them as equal. A governor in California during the flock of Amreican’s to the west commented, “We find ourselves threatened by hordes of Yankee immigrants who have already begun to flock into our country and whose progress we cannot arrest.” Takaki also says, “Suddenly, they were “thrown among those who were strangers to their language, customs, laws and habits.” Then after the Califorina gold rush they were the minority and were forced to make many concessions through tough American laws. So in a short time span they went from wealthy rancheros to poor laborers and were treated as foreigners.
3. The Social Construction in Takaki’s seventh chapter, was how the Americans acquired and then constructed a society where the natives that had already lived in Texas and California, became a minority and had a hard time re-establishing the life that they had lived previously. They had been rich land owners before, but their land was taken by them with harsh taxes and then became poor and had to work as laborers to the “superior” Anglo Americans. The Mexican Americans were forced to work for white landowners on their farms and ranches, work on the railroads, and work in mines. When they did do the same jobs as white Americans they were paid worse wages. Takaki writes, “In Southern California…75 percent of the Mexican workers were crowded into low blue-collar occupations such as service and unskilled labor, compared to 30 percent of the Anglos. So the Socially Constructed society became the Anglo Americans at the top and the Mexican, African, Asian, and Native Americans all together at the bottom.
4. The Mexican American laborers fought for their rights in labor by continuing to go on strike wanting better pay and working conditions. Takiki writes, “Mexican members of the United Mine Workers won strike demands for a pay increase and an eight-hour day.” Eventually the Mexican and Japanese laborers joined in the cause together as they established the Japanese-Mexican Labor Association (JMLA). Labor rights were the thing that mattered the most to these people as the union declared, “Many of us have family, were born in the country, and are lawfully seeking to protect the only property that we have-our labor.” The Mexian Americans organized mutualistas, organizations that allowed the Mexicans to take a stand together. These organizations helped members who were in desperate need of additional finances. Takaki sums them up nicely when he writes, “Mutualistas reflected a dynamic Mexican-American identity-a proud attachment to the culture south of the border as sell as a fierce determination to claim their rights and dignity in “occupied Mexico.”
5. An example of race would be the mestizos. They were a mixture of Indian or Negro with Spanish. An example of ethnicity would be Mexican Americans. This ethnicity consisted of different races such as the Spanish, the mestzos, or Indians that lived in Texas and California. The difference is that an ethnicity can consist of several races. Such as the Mexican American ethnicity.