El Malcriado Citizenship Summary

The large-scale conversion of Mexicans from landowners into cheap labor begins with Manifest Destiny: the belief that Anglo-American settlers were superior human beings destined by God to claim the west and remake it in their own image. The fulfillment of this ‘destiny’ lead Anglo settlers to dispossess many Mexicans of their land and by 1848, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed relinquishing the land (and the people if they chose to identify themselves as U.S. citizens) to the United States. Irrespective of their legal recognition as citizens, their skin color precluded them being seen as such. Despite being in their native land, de facto segregation meant they were excluded from nearly every aspect of meaningful citizenship.
3). While the dominant culture helps to shape how nationhood and belonging are defined, individual and cultural meanings of citizenship are defined by inclusion and participation. The United Farmworker’s of America Union (UFW) empowered farmworkers to participate in society and demand recognition via unity and non-violent action. The UFW trade journal, El Malcriado described the vision of their civil rights movement as follows:
The only way that poor farmworkers can ever beat the rich growers, and to make the rich ranchers pay good wages is if all farmworkers get together in one big union….We are now stronger than ever….. We are now gaining unity through our union a union just for farmworkers, where farmworkers elect their leaders, where the leaders are also farmworkers (UFW 1966,
The immigrants were then referred to as ‘good neighbors’ from Mexico and the program was called the ‘bracero’ program, from the Spanish word ‘brazo’ or ‘arm’ suggestive of the English idiom ‘helping hand’. Despite the kinder rhetoric, the benevolence ended there. The workers had no say in where or with whom they worked or how much they would be paid. And the program continued long after the war because their work helped to keep domestic agricultural wages