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shouted. "Join the strike. We also have to eat and we also have family." One of those who joined the strikers, Lydia Ramos, described the tre-mendous sense of solidarity she felt: "We didn't know what union it was or who was organizing or nothing. We just knew that there was a strike and that WE were not going to break a strike." Asked why not, she answered: "Well, we believe in justice. So I want everything that's good for me and I want everything that's good for somebody else. Not just for them . : . but equality and justice. If you're going to break some-body's strike, that's just going against your beliefs." In the end the strikers won a compromise wage rate of 7 5 cents per hundredweight.38

The strikes reflected a deep discontent and disappointment Chicanos felt in El Norte. Many felt they had been driven "crazy from working so much" and "squeezed" by their bosses until they had been left "use-less." Juan Berzunzolo, for example, had come here in 1908 and worked on the tracks of the Southern Pacific and in the beet fields of Colorado. " I have left the best of my life and my strength here," he said, "sprinkling with the sweat of my brow the fields and factories of these gringos, who only know how to make one sweat and don't even pay attention to one when they see that one is old."3 9

The Internal Borders of Exclusion

Included as laborers, Mexicans found themselves excluded socially, kept at a distance ' horn Anglo society. Like Caliban, they were isolated by the borders of racial segregation. Their world was one of Anglo over Mexican. Even on the large cattle ranches of Texas where Mexicans and Anglos lived together and formed loyalties and sometimes even friend-ships, integration did not mean equality. J. Frank Dobie, for example, described one of the workers on his family's ranch. This "old, faithful Mexican" had been employed on the ranch for over twenty years and he was "almost the best friend" Dobie had. "Many a time 'out in the pasture' I have put my lips to the same water jug that he had drunk from," he remembered fondly. But Dobie added: "At the same time neither he nor I would think of his eating at the dining table with me."40

Racial etiquette defined proper demeanor and behavior for Mexicans. In the presenpe of Anglos, they were expected to assume "a deferential body posture and respectful voice tone." They knew that public buildings were considered "Anglo territory," and that they were permitted to shop in the Anglo! business section of town only on Saturdays. They could patronize Anglo cafes, but only the counter and carry-out service. "A

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group of us Mexicans who were well dressed once went to a restaurant *i in Amarillo," complained Wenceslao Iglesias in the 192.0s, "and they ') told us that if we wanted to eat we should go to the special department ,j where it said 'For Colored People.' I told my friend that I would father die from starvation than to humiliate myself before the Americans by eating with the Negroes." At sunset, Mexicans had to retreat to their barrios.41

In the morning, Mexican parents sent their children to segregated schools. "There would be a revolution in the community if the Mexicans wanted to come to the white schools," ameducator said. "Sentiment is bitterly against it. It is based on racial inferiority... ." The wife Jof an Anglo ranch manager in Texas put it this way: "Let him [the Mexican] have as good an education but still let him know he is not as good as a white man. God did not intend him to be; He would have madeithem white if He had." For many Anglos, Mexicans also represented a threat to their daughters. "Why don't we let the Mexicans come to the white school?" an Anglo sharecropper angrily declared. "Because a damned greaser is not fit to sit side of a white girl." 4 2

In the segregated schools, Mexican children were trained to become obedient workers. Like the sugar planters in Hawaii who wanted to keep the American-born generation of Japanese on the plantations, Anglo farmers in Texas wanted the schools to help reproduce the labor force. "I f every [Mexican] child has a high school education," sugar beet grow-ers asked, "who will labor?" A farmer in Texas explained: "If I wanted a man I would want one of the more ignorant ones Educated Mex-icans are the hardest to handle It is all right to educate them no higher than we educate them here in these little towns. I will be frank. They would make more desirable citizens if they would stop about the seventh grade."43

Serving the interests of the growers, Anglo educators prepared Mex-ican children to take the place of their parents. "It isn't a matter of what is the best way to handle the education here to make citizens of them," a school trustee in Texas stated frankly. "It is politics." School policy was influenced by the needs of the local growers, he elaborated.:"We don't need skilled or white-collared Mexicans The farmers are not interested in educating Mexicans. They know that then they can get better wages and conditions." A Texas school superintendent explained that not all school boards wanted him to enforce compulsory attendance: "When I come to a new school I always ask the board if they want the Mexicans in school. Here they told me to leave them alone. If I tried to

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enforce the corirpulsory attendance law here the board would get sore at me and maybe cause us to lose our places, so I don't say anything. If I got 150 Mexicans ready for school I would be out of a job." Another Texas superintendent explained why schools should not educate Mexican children: "You have doubtless heard that ignorance is bliss; it seems that it is so when one has to transplant onions.... If a man has very much sense or education either, he is not going to stick to this kind of work. So you see it is up to the white population to keep the Mexican on his knees in an onion patch.. . ." 4 4

Consequently, the curriculum for Mexican students emphasized do-mestic science and manual training. In Los Angeles, they were taught not only manual-labor skills, but also the appropriate attitudes of hard work and disciplined behavior. "Before sending [Mexican] boys and girls out to accept positions," a Los Angeles teacher explained, "they must be taught that, technically expert though they may be, they must keep in mind that their employers carry the responsibility of the business and oudine the work, and that the employees must be pliant, obedient, cour-teous, and willing to help the enterprise."45

There were educators who saw that Mexican children were capable of learning. "The Mexicans have good minds and are earnest students," a teacher stated. "The Mexican children generally are as capable intel-lectually as the Americans, but the Mexicans are poorer than the whites, so the comparison of their present progress in school isn't fair." Some teachers tried to give Mexican children a sense of dignity and self-respect. Ernesto Galarza recalled how his school principal "Miss Hopley and her teachers never let us forget why we were at Lincoln; for those who were alien, to become good Americans; for those who were so born, to accept the rest of us." Galarza and his fellow students discovered "the secrets of the English language" and grieved over the "tragedies of Bo-Peep." Every, morning, the students stood and recited the pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States. In his school, Americanization did not mean "scrubbing away" what made them Mexican. "No one was ever scolded or punished for speaking in his native tongue on the playground." The teachers tried to pronounce their Spanish names. "Be-coming a proud American," Galarza said, "did not mean feeling ashamed of being a Mexican."46

Galarza's experience in school was exceptional, for Mexican children were not usually encouraged to develop self-esteem. "The Mexican chil-dren almost don't receive any education," Alonso Galvan complained to an interviewer in the 1920s. "They are taught hardly anything at the

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schools to which the Mexican children go, and I have heard many teach-ers, farmers and members of a School Board say, 'What do the Mexicans want to study for when they won't be needed as lawyers? They should be taught to be good; they are needed for cotton picking and work on the railroads.' " A Chicano remembered his sixth grade teacher advising him not to continue his education and attend high school. "Your people are here to dig ditches," the teacher said, "to do pick and shovel work. . . . I don't think any of you should plan to go to high school!"47

But Mexican parents did not want their children to become ditch diggers. Isidro Osorio, who had worked on the railroad and in agri-culture, described his hope for his children's future: "What I know is that I have worked very hard to earn my $4.00 a day, and that I am an ignorant laborer, but that is why I want to give a little schooling to'my children so that they won't stay like I am and can earn more so that they won't have to kill themselves working." Similarly, Jesus Mendizabal told sociologist Gamio in the 1920s: " I have three children now; they are quite large and they are all going to school. One of them helps -me a little now working during vacations and at times when he doesn't go to school. I pray to God that He may give me life to go on working, for I would rather die than take them out of school. I want them to amount to something, to learn all that they can, since I didn't learn anything." A boy explained why his parents emphasized the importance of edu-cation: "They want me to go to school so that I won't have to work beets." However, many parents also saw how schooling was creating cultural distances between themselves and their children. "The freedom and independence in this country bring the children into conflict with their parents," explained a mother. "They learn nicer ways, learn about the outside world, learn how to speak English, and then they become ashamed of their parents who brought them up there that they might have better advantages."48 ;

As Mexicans migrated to El Norte and began attending American schools, they were increasingly viewed as threatening to'Anglo racial and cultural homogeneity. In 1924, legally admitted Mexicans totaled 87,648—equal to 45 percent of the immigrants from southern and eastern Europe. This large share of the immigration reflected the fact that the National Origins Act did not apply to nations in the Western Hemisphere. Consequently, Mexicans continued to come north to meet the demand for labor. To many Anglos, however, this influx represented an invasion, its magnitude so large "as to almost reverse the essential consequences of the Mexican War," making "a reconquest of the

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Southwest more certain . . . than America made the conquest" of the war itself.45

This dramatic change in the racial composition of immigration set off nativist alarms. In an obvious reference to Mexicans as a racially mixed group, Madison Grant warned: "From the racial point of view, it is not logical to limit the number of Europeans while we throw the country open without limitation to Negroes, Indians, and half-breeds." Mexicans were riot only entering the country in great numbers, but they were also increasing rapidly because of their birthrate. The danger was Mexican fecundity, C. M . Goethe declared. "The average American family has three children," he calculated. "Mexican laborers average between nine and ten children to the family. At the three-child rate a couple would have twenty-seven great-grandchildren. At the nine-child rate 72,9 would he produced. Twenty-seven American children and 729 hybrids or Amejfinds!" Another nativist charged that Mexican men con-stituted a miscegenationist threat to white racial purity: " I f the time ever comes when men with a small fraction of colored blood can readily find mates among white women, the gates would be thrown open to a final radical race mixture of the whole population." In a petition to Congress sent in 1927, thirty-four prominent educators demanded the preserva-tion of the nation's genetic purity by including Mexico in the national origins quota system. One of the signatories was A. Lawrence Lowell, president of Harvard University.30

Mexican immigration seemed to threaten not only the genetic makeup of Anglo America but also its cultural identity. Vanderbilt University economics professor Roy Garis urged white Americans to guard against the "Mexicanization" of the Southwest. The region should be the "future home for millions of the white race" rather than the "dumping ground for the human hordes of poverty stricken peon Indians of Mexico." The benefits derived from the "restriction of European and the exclusion of Oriental immigration" should not be nullified by allowing Mexican immigration to create a "race problem" that would "dwarf the negro problem of the South," destroying all that was "worthwhile" in "our white civilization."51

Mainstream magazines and newspapers joined the hysterical denun-ciation of racial and ethnic diversity, aiming barbs at Mexican immi-grants. "The simple truth is that the dilution of the people and the institutions of this country has already gone too far," the Saturday Eve-ning Post editorialized in March r930. "The country is groping, must grope, toward more rather than less homogeneity. We may be obliged

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to absorb great numbers of Porto Ricans, Hawaiians and Filipinos; in-deed, the Philippine problem has already reared its- head in California. With the Mexicans already here, with the as yet unassimilated immi-grants from certain European countries, and finally with the vast and growing negro population, we already have an almost superhuman task to bring about requisite national unity. We are under no obligation to continue to make this country an asylum for the Mexican peon, and we should not do so." Two months later, the New York Times echoed this call for the restriction of Mexican immigration: "It is folly to pretend that the more recently arrived Mexicans, who are largely of Indian blood, can be absorbed and incorporated into the American race."52

The demand for Mexican exclusionresonated among Anglo workers. Viewing Chicanos as a competitive labor force, they clamored for the closing of the border. " I wish the Mexicans could be put back in their country," a white worker declared. "It is economically better for the white man for the races to keep in their own countries." In 1910, the American Federation of Labor's Advocate asked: "Is it a pretty sight to see men, brawny American men with callouses on their hands and empty stomachs — sitting idly on benches in the plaza, while slim-legged peons with tortillas in their stomachs, work in the tall building across the way? Do you prefer the name Fernandez, alien, to the name, James, citizen, on your payroll?" Five years later, the Advocate again denounced the employment of Mexicans at low wages: '•

Cheap labor, yes, at the sacrifice of manhood and homes and all that go to build up and sustain a community.

Cheap labor — at the cost of every ideal cherished in the heart of every member of the white race, utterly destroyed and buried beneath the greedy ambitions of a few grasping money gluttons, who would • not hesitate to sink the balance of society to the lowest levels of animalism, if by so doing they can increase their own bank account.

True Americans do not want or advocate the importation of any people who cannot be absorbed into full citizenship, who cannot eventually be raised to our highest social standard... , 5 3

Clearly, race was being used as a weapon by the American Federation of Labor: Mexicans not only constituted "cheap labor" but were re-garded as incapable of becoming fully American. During the 1920s, the American Federation of Labor pressed for the restriction of Mexican immigrants. Samuel Gompers condemned their employment in industry

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as "this great evil," and urged Congress to apply the national origins quota system to nations in the Western Hemisphere. Based on 2 percent of the Mexican-born persons residing in the United States in 1890, a quota would have allowed only 1,500 Mexicans to enter the country annually. In 1928, the vice president of the California State Federation of Labor told the Senate Immigration Committee: "We have a great virgin country, and if we do not remain on guard it is not going to be our country... . Do you want a mongrel population consisting largely of Mexicans and Orientals?"54

But the employers of Mexican labor needed them as a source of cheap labor "We have no Chinamen; we have not the Japs," they argued.' The Hindu is worthless; the Filipino is nothing, and the white man will not do the work:''' Anglo growers appealed to white workers, promising to elevate them fas managers over Mexican laborers. Describing a racial hierarchy of white brains over Mexican brawn, a spokesman for the beet-growers declared that whites should not have to do the dirty and degrading work:

I do not want to see the condition arise again when white men who are reared and educated in our schools have got to bend their backs and 'skin their fingers to pull those little beets. . . . You can let us have the only class of labor that will do the work, or close the beet factories, pecause our people will not do it, and I will say frankly I do not want them to do it. . . .

If you are going to make the young men of America do this back-breaking work, shoveling manure to fertilize the ground, and shoveling beets, you! are going to drive them away from agriculture. . . . You have got to give us a class of labor that will do this back-breaking work, and we have the brains and ability to supervise and handle the business part of it.

Here was an echo of Charles Crocker's declaration that whites should be elevated into the foremen of Chinese laborers.55

While employers insisted on maintaining their access to Mexican labor, they shared the exclusionists' disdain for racial diversity: they, too, did not want the Mexicans to stay permanently. "While the Mex-icans are not easily assimilated," an immigration commission stated, "this is not of very great importance as long as most of them return to their native land after a short time." The strategy was to bring Mexicans

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here so long as their labor was needed and then return them to Mexico as soon as the demand diminished.56

The Great Depression drastically reduced the need for labor. Already on the economic edge of survival, Chicanos experienced massive layoffs and deepening poverty. Hunger haunted their homes, and starving chil-dren could be heard crying for food:

In these unhappy times depression still pursues us; lots of prickly pear is eaten for lack of other food.

Utilities were cut off:

No light is seen in the houses > nor does water flow from the tap; the people are in tatters and in a deplorable state.51

Rendered superfluous as laborers and blamed for white unemploy-ment, Mexicans became the targets of repatriation programs. "I f we were rid of the aliens who have entered this country illegally since 1931," a Los Angeles County supervisor declared, "our present unemployment problem would shrink to the proportions of a relatively unimportant flat spot in business." Hungry Mexicans were sometimes granted? tem-porary relief by welfare agencies only if they promised to return to Mexico at public expense. "Many Mexican immigrants are returning to Mexico under a sense of pressure," reported sociologist Emory Bogardus in 1933. "They fear that all welfare aid will be withdrawn if they do not accept the offer to take them out of our country." Forced to leave, many Mexicans crossed the border with a bitter song on their lips:

And so I take my leave, ~ may you be happy. Here ends the song, but the depression goes on forever.SB ;

Employers pushed repatriation efforts as private charities and gov-ernment agencies provided railroad transportation for tens of thousands of Mexicans to their "homeland." In Santa Barbara, Mexicans were

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literally shipped" out from the Southern Pacific depot. "They [the im-migration officials] put all the people . . . in boxcars instead of inside the trains," a witness recalled. "They sent a lot of people from around here too A big exodus They were in here illegally but the moral part of it, like separation and putting them in boxcars I ' l l never forget as long as I live." Many of the "repatriates" were children who had been born in the United States. The Los Angeles Chamber of Com-merce estimated that 60 percent of the "repatriated" children were Amer-ican citizens "without very much hope of ever coming back into the United States."5?

Repatriation was an employment program for whites — a way to remove a surplus Mexican laboring population and preserve the few remaining jobs for white workers during the Great Depression. Alto-gether, about 400,000 Mexicans were "repatriated." Even as they sup-ported repatriation, however, employers viewed the action as temporary. "The Los Angeles industrialists confidently predict that the Mexican can be lured back, whenever we need him," observed Carey McWilliams. Indeed, the distance between Mexico and the United States depended on whether there was a demand for labor. In 192.6, a representative for the farmers had stated: "We, in California, would greatly prefer some set up in which our peak labor demands might be met and upon the completion of our harvest these laborers returned to their country." The border existed pnly when Mexican labor was not needed.60

The Barrio: Community in the Colony

For many Mexicans, the border was only an imaginary line — one that could be crossed and recrossed at will. Unlike the migrants from Europe, Africa, and Asia, they came from a country touching the United States. Standing on the border, migrants had difficulty knowing where one country began and the other ended. Mexicans had been in the Southwest long before the Anglos, and they would continue to emigrate despite repatriation programs. In El Norte, there were jobs and also commu-nities.

Indeed, over the years, Chicanos had been creating a Mexican-American world in the barrios of El Norte. In their communities, they did not feel like aliens in a foreign land as they did whenever they crossed the railroad tracks and ventured uptown into the Anglo world. Though their neighborhood was a slum, a concentration of shacks and dilapi-dated houses, without sidewalks or even paved streets, the barrio was

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home to its residents. The people were all compatriots. They had come from different places in Mexico and had been here for different lengths of time, but together they formed "the colonia mexicana." "We came to know families from Chihuahua, Sonora, Jalisco, and Durango," re-membered one of them. "Some had come to the United States even before the revolution, living in Texas before migrating to California. Like our-selves, our Mexican neighbors had come this far moving step by step, working and waiting. . . ." 6 I

In El Norte, Chicanos were recreating a Mexican community and culture. They celebrated national holidays like the Sixteenth of Septem-ber, Mexican Independence Day. "We are Mexicans," declared a speaker at one of the celebrations, "almost all of us here . . . by our fathers or ancestors, although we are now under a neighboring nation's flag ,to which we owe respect. Notwithstanding, this respect does not prevent us from remembering our Mexican anniversary." The celebrations, Er-nesto Galarza recalled, "stirred everyone in the barrio" and gave them the feeling that they were "still Mexicans." At these festive occasions, there were parades in the plazas attended by city and county officials as well as Mexican consuls. The entire town became a fandango. Colorful musicians strolled, and people danced in the streets. Excited crowds shouted, "Viva Mexico!" and sang Mexican songs as fireworks exploded and muchachos (kids) listened to stories about Mexico told by the vje-jitos (old ones). Bands played the national anthems of both countries. The flags and the colors of the United States and Mexico were displayed together — red, white, and blue as well as red, white, and green.62

The religion of the Chicanos was a uniquely Mexican version of Catholicism, a blending of a faith brought from the Old World and beliefs that had been in the New World for thousands of years before Columbus. For the Mexicans, God was deeply personal, caring for each of them through their saints. In their homes, they decorated their altars with santitos, images of saints dear to them. They had a special rela-tionship with the Virgen de Guadalupe: according to their account, she had visited a poor Indian and felt a particular concern for the people of Mexico. " I have with me an amulet which my mother gave to me before dying," a Mexican told an interviewer. "This amulet has the Virgin of Guadalupe on it and it is she who always protects me." Their Virgin Mary was Mexican: many paintings and statues represented her as dark in complexion.63

What bound the people together was not only ethnicity but also class. "We were all poor," a Mexican said, "we were all in the same situation."

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The barrio was a "grapevine of job information." A frequently heard word was trabajo (work), and "the community was divided in two — the many who were looking for it and the few who had it to offer." Field hands, railroad workers, cannery workers, construction laborers, and maids came back to the barrio after work to tell one another where the jobs were and how much they paid and what the food and living quarters were like.64

In the colony, unskilled workers from Mexico were welcomed, tor they had come from the homeland. "These Mexicans are hired on this side of the Rio Grande by agents of the larger farms, and are shipped in car load lots, with windows and doors locked, to their destination," a local newspaper reported. "After the cotton season the majority will work their way back to the border and into Mexico." But the barrio offered these migrant workers a place to stay north of the border. "Beds and meals, if the newcomers had no money at all, were provided — in one way or another — on trust, until the new chicano found a job." Aid was given freely, for everyone knew what it meant to be in need. "It was not charity or social welfare," Ernesto Galarza explained, "but some-thing my mother called dsistencia, a helping given and received on trust, to be repaid because those who had given it were themselves in need of what they had given. Chicanos who had found work on farms or in railroad camps came back to pay us a few dollars for asistencia we had provided wkeks or months before."65

In the barrio, people helped each other, for survival depended on solidarity and mutual assistance. For example, Bonifacio Ortega had dislocated his arm while working in Los Angeles. " I was laid up and had to be in the hospital about three months," he recalled. "Fortunately my countrymen helped me a lot, for those who were working got some-thing together every Saturday and took it to me at the hospital for whatever I needed. They also visited me and made me presents." Ortega's arm healed, < nd he returned to work at a brickyard. "We help one another, we fr-ilow countrymen. We are almost all from the same town or from the nearby farms. The wife of one of the countrymen died the other day and we got enough money together to buy a coffin and enough so that he could go and take the body to Jalisco."66

Moreover, the barrio was a place where Mexicans could feel at home in simple, day-to-day ways. Women wearing rebozos, or traditional shawls, were seen everywhere, just as in Mexico. There were Mexican plays and carpas — acrobats and traveling sideshows. Stands and cafes offered tamales and other favorites such as frijoles, tortillas, menudo

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(tripe stew), and dulces made with piloncillo (Mexican sugar). Cantinas and bars were places to hang out and drink beer. Mercados stocked Mexican foods like chorizo (sausage), while panderias baked fresh bread. Shopping in the tiendas was familiar. "In the secondhand shops, where the barrio people sold and bought furniture and clothing, there were Mexican clerks who knew the Mexican ways of making a sale."67

:

In the early evenings, as the sun began to set, the people sat outside their homes, as they had on the other side of the border in their Mexican villages. The air still carried the smells of suppertime — ' 'tortillas baking, beans boiling, chile roasting, coffee steaming, and kerosene stenching." The men "squatted on the ground, hunched against the wall of the house and smoked. The women and the girls . . . put away the kitchen things, the candiles turned down to save kerosene. They listened to the tales: of the day if the men were in a talking mood." They spoke in two) lan-guages — "Spanish and with gestures." An old man talked about a time called "Before the Conquest." The Indian tribes had their "own kings and emperors," he said. "Then the Spaniards [came], killing the Indians and running them down with hunting dogs. The conquerors took the land along the rivers where there was water and rich soil, flat and. easy to farm. On these lands the Spaniards set up their haciendas, where the Indians were forced to labor for nothing or were paid only a few centavos for a hard day's work."6 8

Feeling homesick, the people sometimes took out their cedar boxes to display memorabilia from Mexico — a butterfly serape worn to cel-ebrate the Battle of Puebla, tin pictures of grandparents, and "bits of embroidery and lace" made by aunts still in the homeland. They "took deep breaths of the aroma of puro cedro, pure Jalcocotan mixed with camphor." A song in Spanish floated in the air:

i I loved a little country girl She was so shy She couldn't even talk to me I would tak- her hand And she would sadly cry Now go away My moth' r will be scolding me.69

As darkness descended, the people complained about how they were not allowed to feel at home north of the border: "They [Anglos] would rant at public meetings and declare that this was an American country

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and the Mexicans ought to be run out." "You can't forget those things. You try to forget because . . . you should forgive and forget, but there is still a pain in there that another human being could do that to you." Someone argued: " I haven't wanted to, nor do I want to learn English, for I am not thinking of living in this country all my life. I don't even like it here." A voice agreed: "They talk to us about becoming citizens, but if we become citizens we are still Mexicans. They look at our hair, and listen to our speech and call us Mexicans." Rejection in the new country reinforced a return mentality.70

An old man insisted on keeping his Mexican ties: " I have always had and now have my home in El Paso, but I shall never change my [Mexican] citizenship in ispite of the fact that [here] I have greater opportunities and protection." Another admitted ambivalence: " I want to go back to Leon because;it is my country and I love Mexico. But I like it better here for one can work more satisfactory. No one interferes with one and one doesn't have to fear that there will be or won't be revolutions."71

As the night air became chilly, the barrio people pulled their serapes and rebozos around their shoulders. They talked about this land as "occupied" Mexico and the nearness of the border. After arriving in Nogales, Arizona, a young Mexican boy was happy to be finally in the United States. "Look at the American flag," his mother said. As he watched it flying over a building near them, he noticed a Mexican flag on a staff beyond the depot down the street. "We are in the United States," his mother explained. "Mexico is over there." But no matter where they were in the United States, the border was always close to their hearts. Mexican Americans who were citizens by birth were often reminded that they were still Mexicans. By "nationality" my son is "American,"; a father explained, but he is "Mexicano" "by blood." A local Mexican newspaper criticized some Mexican Americans for not celebrating the Sixteenth of September: "To these Agringados' [Amer-icanized Mexicans] who negate that they are Mexicans because they were born in the United States, we ask: what blood runs through their veins? Do they think they are members of the Anglo-Saxon race who only happen jto have dark skins because they were born on the border! What nonsense! (Que barbaridad!)" A song chimed:

. . . he who denies his race Is the most miserable creature. . . . A good Mexican Never disowns

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The dear fatherland Of his affections.71

Soon night fell and the hunched figures blended into the darkness

ttIT!"6 TV, P X ^ S ° * e P e ° p l e C O n t i n u e d t o s « in front of then homes. The stars were brighter above Mexico, someone com-mented, and there were more of them. St, yes, another added, and there were coyotes howling nearby. Much was different in El Norte But as m their old villages the streets in the barrio had no lights, and now only

mad VTS;°Uld b l h ef r7 " W h e n t h e ^ P u l l e d o n 4 « r cigarettes, they

made ruby dots in the dark, as if they were putting periods in the low toned conversation. The talk just faded away, the men went indoors, the doors were shut. . . there was nothing on the street but the dark " 7 3

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