Mexican Immigrant Life and Americanization in the 1920’s

In his book, major Problems in Mexican American History, Zaragosa Vargas describes the Mexican Immigrant let from 1917-1928. He begins by assessing the Protestant religious experience for a Mexican in the archean 1920s, and then describes Mexican life in both Colorado in 1924 and Chicago in 1928. After defending Mexican Immigrants in 1929, he includes an outline of an Americanization program, followed by an anecdote of a Mexican immigrant in the 1920s.Vargas uses these documents to depute the evolvement of Americanization of Mexicans from a club goal to a societal demand. Vargas begins with the Mexican Immigrant experience in the early 1920s, and describes it closely as a community exteriorise spearheaded by the Church and called for the aid of volunteers. The children learned and studied incline in school, so the programs focused mostly on courses in English for the wives and mothers of the community. These English courses consisted mostly of vocabulary for familiar and most frequently seen objects.Sunday schools resulted from this process, and in turn made way for the development of night schools, clinics, an employment bureau, and a boys and girls club. In Colorado in 1924, Mexicans played a respectable role in society as not hardly a decent part of the population, but also the labor force. Spanish-Americans took a notable part in politics, and were involved in many occupations that include mostly agriculture, mining, and steel works. The recreation was also important to Spanish-American life in Colorado the somewhat newly developed buildings were a source of community for many.Mexicans in Chicago in 1928, Vargas argues, lived a very different lifestyle and endured different hardships than the Mexicans in the Southwest. They were a much smaller part of the community, consisting of small, well-defined neighborhoods and several smaller less defined colonies. These Mexicans lived in the poorest houses in these neighborhoods, and most buildings guaran teed poor living conditions for these families. Employment only came certain times during the yr when demand for labor was high, and it was the Mexicans who suffered most when certain industries reduced labor.In the haggle of Anita Edgar Jones, They are the last to arrive and the first to be laid dispatch (Vargas). Mexican Life in Chicago during this time period served as a temporary solution for many families as they moved from late(a) arrivals to a more desirable place with better opportunity as they became more established and stabilized. Some neighborhoods were poorly organized for recreation, and even lacked communicatory employees at their community or recreation centers.Communities also lacked a Spanish-speaking priest, which is evidently different from early Americanization programs implemented in the Southwest in the early 1920s. After addressing and defending most of the problems of Mexican Immigration in 1929, Vargas moves on to an outline of a typical Americanization program in 1931, where the Mexican Immigrant experience evolved from a community project that supported and encouraged Mexican culture, to a list of demands and requirements for Mexican and Spanish Americans to be acceptable members of society.Vargas uses these documents to image the progression of assimilation of Spanish Americans and Mexican immigrants into American society in the 1920s. The life of a Mexican Immigrant during this time was very taxing, and these Americanization programs were used as a tool to attempt to create a society that operated beneath certain ideologies and values. As a result, this created an even stronger division between cultures, and prevented assimilation of the two groups.