Mexican-American Civil Rights Movement
The struggle for human rights for Mexican-Americans in 20th century America is just one of the many examples of humans fighting for their natural rights bestowed upon them at birth. This struggle is nothing new to history and has been going on for generations. Dating back to the period of renaissance humanism and on through the Age of Enlightenment, the idea that a human being was granted a set of uninfringeable rights on the basis of just being a human has become a central theme in many social struggles. In the history of the United States, many groups have struggled to defend their natural rights from oppression. Whether it was women fighting for the right to vote, or the Native Americans fighting for the land that was originally theirs, each group felt threatened, mistreated, and that their rights as a human were being violated. Through each struggle, tough, progress was made. There may not have been an immediate impact, but each group that fought for their natural freedom has paved the way for the generations ahead of them and has helped shape the world that we live in today.
The definition of human rights varies among different sources, but going back in history and looking at one of the front runners in the promotion of natural rights will help to define it better. John Locke’s fundamental argument was that people are equal and invested with natural rights in a state of nature in which they live free from outside rule. Locke's 2nd Treatise on Government argues that the world is naturally orderly and that there must be some sort of original order in place. With the natural order comes the thought that man possesses natural rights that are fundamental and self-evident. He believed that no matter what, humans were born with certain freedoms, most importantly life and liberty: to live, and to live freely. But history has shown that some groups were overlooked and denied these rights.
During World War II, much of the agriculture workforce in the U.S. was sent