WW 2 ended the depression and ushered in an economic boom that lasted into the 1960′s peaking between 1940 to 1947.
According to some historians like Rudy Acuna, WW 2 also clarified many
contradictions in american society. While xicanos earned an outstanding
war record, they were deprived of equal opportunities at home. For
example, although opportunities for americans in general improved such as
in the employment sector as a result of the war economy , very few
mexicanos were able to improve their employment status even in the defense
industry . Those that were fortunate enough to secure employment in
defense industries were usually relegated to entry level positions and few
rose to supervisory positions . The result was that few mexicanos were able
to appreciate the gains in socio-economic status that the majority of
americans realized as a result of this post-economic boom.
And even less so than the bourgeois class. According to R Acuna, the
war made a few capitalists overnight billionaires, subsidized in part by the
federal government to the tune of $100 billion dollars. Almost 50% of
these defense contracts went to six corporations. These industries also
reaped huge profits exploiting workers by freezing wages during the war,
with federal government complicity. In addition to these exclusive and
limited opportunities, mexicanos also encountered deeply entrenched racist
hostility, in part due to the nationalist ideology created and propagated
by the federal government. This nationalist ideology became increasingly
xenophobic and nativist and extended from anti-German and anti-Japanese
to anti-minority and specifically anti-Mexican . In concrete terms, the
ideology affected Japanese American citizens most directly as evidenced by
the forced relocation and internment of over 120,000 Japanese Americans.
Many lost jobs, homes and property as a result. Mejicanos also suffered
the ignominy of this racism. Throughout the Southwest, various
organizations and individuals reported increasing acts of violence. In
smalls towns and large cities, they were victims of police brutality,
border harassment, and vigilante violence.
One of the most obvious expressions of the racism for mexicanos were
the Zoot Suit riots or more accurately the sailor riots in the Chicano East
LA barrio and probably the most concrete example of the political and
psychological persecution suffered by chicanos. Carey McWilliams who has
written extensively on the mexicano experience equated the riots to a mass
lynching.
The riots involved sailors who systematically dragged young chicanos
out of public places in In East LA and beat and stripped them. These acts
of violence against chicanos, although not exclusively as Filipinos and
blacks suffered attacks as well were encouraged by the press, police and
members of the "responsible" LA community. When members of the chicano
community attempted to defend themselves they were arrested. The press ran
articles that perpetuated an atmosphere that encouraged violence against
Zoot Suiters . It took Mexican government intervention pressuring the
State Department to order Navy and Marine officials to end the riots since
LA oficials were unwilling.
Another example of the xenophobic , racist atmosphere that pervaded
during ww 2 was the Sleepy Lagoon Trial, where twenty-two members of a
chicano "gang" were charged with conspiracy to commit a murder. The trial
was described by some historians as a mockery of justice in the way the
youth were treated , the nature of the trial proceedings and particularly
the testimony of one Sheriff Lt. Duran, who testified that chicanos were a
genetically inferior, savage and violent people because of Xicano’s indio
heritage. Essentially, we were culturally inferior hence explaining our
existence in barrios. Duran’s attitude characterized most people’s
attitudes at the time revealing the cultural determinist theory prevalent
at the time.
In response to the conviction of the chicano youth, a Sleepy Lagoon
defense committee was formed but was quickly subjected to police brutality
and federal harassment and labelled communist. Other examples of police
and government authorities strengthening social control of Mexicanos groups
were the FBI infiltration of such mainstream and politically middle of the
road organizations like the League for Latin American Citizens (LULAC) and
the GI Forum , patriotic groups that potentially posed no danger to the
power structure but characteristic of the racist and anti-communist
hysteria that gripped the country at the time and was to become. even more
acute after WW2.
In the midst of these deplorable conditions, chicanos contributions to
the war effort at the war front and domestically was significant, as many
chicanos were inducted and served in the war, as many as 500,00 by some
estimates. They fought in many battles , earning many honors and earned
the distinction of being the most decorated ethnic group in the war. They
also suffered a high percentage of casulties, as high as 25% of the losses
in some of the major battles and 20% of the East LA chicano community.
These figures represent a percentage much higher than the general chicano
population of the country at the time, estimated to be at 10 % in 1940.
To some degree, the experience of war, world travel and equal
treatment in the armed services and the education afforded returning
veterans created many of the future leaders of groups like the GI Forum and
LULAC. The GI Forum was in fact created by returning GI’s to address
inequities in the economic, social and political
arenas. Some of the more prominent intellectual
leaders of the period were George I Sanchez , Carlos Castaneda and Ernesto
Galarza themselves veterans of the war. They authored books on the
mejicano experience and sat on federal committes that dealt with issues and
concerns of the Mexican American community, the first Mexican Americans to
do so.
Another example of Mexican American contribution to the war effort was
the work done by La Associacion Hispano American De Madres y Esposa. The
function of the organization was similiar to other patriotic groups raising
war bonds and stamps (as much as $1 million in one year purchased by the
Mexican American community), collecting clothing for the Red Cross and
publishing a newspaper featuring stories of Mexican American soldiers which
served to boost their morale. There many other mexijicano groups doing
similiar work attesting to the patriotism and support of the war effort by
the mexican American community as a whole.
The large participation of mejicanos in WW2 removed them from the
fields and railroads where the majority of them labored resulting in an
acute labor shortage in the agricultural industry and also provided an
impetus to the urbanization of the mejicano . This opened up some
employment opportunities for Mexican American women in the war industries
like textiles, aircraft, shipbuilding and food processing plants according
to Ricardo Romo.
In response to the the labor shortage In the agricultural sector
created by the war, the US government entered into an agreement with Mexico
to supply the much needed labor. Public Law-45 (PL-45) was enacted by
Congress that allowed for the importation of Mexivan nationals and was
commonly referred to as the Bracero Program. The agreement included
provisions that theoretically guaranteed Mexican workers various
protections and rights, like establishing fair wages, protection from
discrimination, regulation of housing and transportation and also had
provisions that provided protection of domestic workers from displacement.
In reality, according to two historians who documented the Braceros
experience, Ernesto Galarza and E. Gamboa. the braceros were paid less
than the prevailing wage, suffered rampant discrimination and racism, poor
living conditions such as poor quality of food, lack of adequate health
care and dangerous work conditions. In sum, although their civil rights
were protected by contract, once in the US growers exploited them with no
legal or administrative relief offered by the federal government. Many
braceros formed labor unions and organizations as they sought to increase
their wages and improve their treatment on and off the job many times at
the risk of violent retribution or deportation.
The Federal government through various mechanisms judicially,
legislatively and through federal agencies like the Immigration and
Naturalization Service (INS) in collusion with the growers also used the
Bracero Program to glut the labor market as a means to depress wages and
used to break strikes as well.
Although the Bracero program was ostensibly created to address the WW2
labor shortage in agricultural industry, it was eventually extended to
1964 with the numbers of imported braceros increasing from 50,000 in 1943
to as many as 450,000 by the mid 1950′s. The program provided agribusiness
and the US government with cheap exploitable labor and was used a tool by
growers to keep organized labor at bay and in a weakened state.
According to Christine Sierra, who has written on Xicano political
development, the importation of Mexican labor has historically served two
strategically important functions: to depress wages and to break strikes.
It also serves agribusinesss interests by driving the small farmer and
tenant farmer from agricultural land thus increasing racial divisions,
creates divisions among workers in labor struggles w/ capital and it has
also contributed to internal splits within the mexican community. Witness
thre political struggles between Cesar Chavez of the UFW and other Xicano
labor and immigrant support groups over the issue of organizing
undocumented workers in the 70′s , ultimately resulting as fetters on
chicano political development at the time.
It finally took Chicano groups ,the AFL-CIO and a Democratic
Administration in the 60′s to end one of capitalism’s cheap labor supply.
In fact, just as recently as 1982 a revival of the Bracero program in the
guise of the Simpson-Mazzoli bill included temporary worker provisions
which provided employers with mexican and foreign labor that essentially
would create a labor force that lacked the basic worker protections
afforded domestic workers and as recent history has shown these laborers
have suffered the same racism , discrimination and hardships that earlier
braceros suffered. Same racist, anti- Mexican and anti-labor policy,
different name.
In the final analysis, despite the tremendous social and economic
transformations wrought by WW2, the socioeconomic status of mexican
americans, the discrimination and racism they suffered, overt and
institutional, remained constant for the most part. These contradictions
are graphically pointed out by R. Acuna–that while the US was involved in
WW2 to free the world from fascism and restore democracy in other parts of
the world, here at home people of color and specifically Xicanos suffered
from political, economic, social and cultural oppression and repression .
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