Below is a detailed book review I had to do for my Latino History (HIST507) course at Adams State University. This was one of five primary text books we had for the course. The book is a good intro to the subject, but it is not written in a way to make you want to keep turning the pages. It was actually hard to get through because of this. 3 stars out of 5 or a C.
Sanchez, George J. Becoming Mexican American: Ethnicity, Culture, and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles, 1900-1945. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, USA, 1993.
In recent years there has been much debate over immigrants crossing the border from Mexico, but most in politics do not seem to understand the complexity of this issue from a historical perspective. Ever since the US took over lands that had once been part of Mexico, there has been a push/pull on immigrants from both sides of the border. Back in 1993, George Sanchez took a close look at immigrant life during the time period of 1900-1945 to help give some perspective as to why people were coming to the US from Mexico and why they decided to stay or return home. Becoming Mexican American: Ethnicity, Culture, and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles takes a look at these complex topics in a way that allows readers to see how history, culture, and economics has shaped them into what they have become in the modern era. It is this type of information that is needed to understand why people came to the US and why even in present times the flow continues.
Sanchez takes a dive into the deeper movement of what immigration looked like for Mexicans and how the rail roads helped with their movement. The center of this migration was the family and the reasons most people crossed the border in either direction related to family reasons. Most either crossed to work and send money home or they crossed with their families hoping for a better life. He even points out that the decision for someone to go was a family decision because of how important the family is to Mexican culture.[1] The experiences of the workers in the different industries and how unions played into this gives a different look at the economics of migration. These experiences are supported by the oral history examples that Sanchez chose to present. Many people wonder why after the workers developed skills in the U.S. that they were not able to return to Mexico and use the same skills there. Sanchez addressed this in several ways, but one of the most meaningful was when he used the words from a common women who had returned to Mexico, “Surely many have learned useful skills there, but what good does that do here when they come back without anything, no tools, no work, nothing at all, not even to eat.”[2] It is these personal stories and perspectives that help bring alive all the data and other sources he uses.
Trying to talk about Mexican culture is a complicated subject since Mexico has always been a mix of different peoples and cultures. Joseph Rodriguez talks about some of these complexities and how the Mexican identity is actually an ‘invention’ that tries to take a whole bunch of different characteristics and set a cultural average.[3] This is important to take into account when looking at the data and personal experiences that Sanchez presents. He does go into some detail about how a person’s region of origin could shape why they left Mexico and how their return to Mexico could be impacted. Vicki Ruiz believes that even though there has been “a florescence of scholarship on the Spanish borderlands…historians frequently give both the region and the era no more than a passing glance.”[4] Sanchez tries to tackle this issue focusing on the immigration to show how dynamic this area actually is and the impact it has had on both U.S. and Mexican history.
At the government level and that of mass media, the focus on border immigration is just on the mass movement of the people, but they have lost their individuality. This is why Sanchez’s social historical approach is important. For many of the points he tries to make in his book, he presents specific personal stories as examples of what people were living with and how it shaped their lives. He stresses how it was these social factors that shaped the larger movement of people and the impacts that this movement had on both sides of the border. Sanchez could have chosen this approach to the subject due to his own personal background. One of his early degrees was in sociology and he has been active in diversity issues both professionally and personally.[5] Even though his other degrees in are in history, most of his work focuses on the interactions of different cultures.[6] This background allows him to be a part of many different disciplines which also includes an anthropological approach to history. This is a move away from the classic approach to history that focuses on major events and people. Even though female voices can be heard in Sanchez’s book, the narrative feels that it comes from the masculine perspective. This could be because he is a Latino male that is not known for specializing in the female perspective even though he has done some work with gender studies.[7] He could be a little too close to the subject that he is trying to present and his own gender could be impacting his research with bias.
Sanchez’s social historical (anthropological) approach can also be seen in his choice of source material. One of the key resources that Sánchez uses is oral history. This allowed him to not just do the classic history approach, which focuses on major people, but allowed him to bring in the voice of the common people. There is a lot of debate over how reliable oral history is since supposedly memories can change and that it is unreliable. It does seem like this is changing at present with more people starting to trust it a bit more. The key thing is not using it has the only source. Sánchez does not only rely these oral histories, but he uses them to fill in the personal stories that are missing in his other resources. His other sources included secondary sources in the form of government publications, books, articles, and other papers. Then his primary sources, besides the oral histories, were from different newspapers including ones that focused on Latino culture/issues, music and other reports from the time frame that his book covers. All of these sources combined make a strong base of information for the book. The one thing that could have made his primary sources stronger would have been if he would have had personal letters or some other type of first person document. Some type of first person/personal document that could have directly supported the oral history. From the book notes, he seemed to blend the different types of resources to support his positions/arguments. Sanchez even writes on the sources he used for a book, but his focus is on the naturalization records which he choose to use to dispel perceptions that these records are not useful when studying Mexican immigrants.[8]
Becoming Mexican American for the most part had a very strong academic reception. Most of its reviewers thought that the humanist approach to the history of immigration was what was needed to breathe a new life into the subject. The previous historical views of Chicano culture as being static or of a resistance to American culture. Dennis Valdes saw Sanchez’s approach showing that instead culture was “a site of invention and creativity,” a force of evolution that is as alive as the people that are a part of it.[9] By addressing culture this way it could be seen as an innovative approach to history, but not at cost to creditability. Edward Escobar on the other had while acknowledging the diversity approach taken goes on to say that Sanchez “sometimes distorts known facts and solid historical analysis” and then goes into detail with examples of this.[10] Still being new to this in depth of a study on Latino history I would not have caught these issues reading this book. From Sanchez’s writing and resources I felt that he had presented a strong work, even if I felt that it was a bit disorganized. Escobar on the other hand thought that there was not enough sufficient evidence provided and that immigrant reactions were lacking in key areas.[11] These issues could help to shape what significance this book has in the field of history.
This book is very relevant in today’s world because it returns the story of immigration to the common people and humanizes what they go through. Instead of just seeing immigration has a problem, the book breaks the issue into different parts that people can look at to understand why people migrate and what influences their decisions. One of the things that Sanchez talks about that I think is not really being talked about today is the Mexican government’s role in the movement. At one point the Mexican government was happy that their unemployed was moving out of the country which would help them, but then they switched later on where they wanted the workers to return or keep them from leaving.[12] This push pull was not just a onetime deal, but came in cycles. As people move north from countries even further south to the Mexico/US border in modern times, the non-response from the Mexican government to stop it could actual be a part of this cycle as well. Looking at the past patterns that Sanchez presents could help modern politicians to understand the motives of both the Mexican government and the people that are standing at the border. At the same time, after reading Escobar’s review I feel that this book should still be read with some caution and should only be one of many resources that a person should look at when trying to understand Mexican immigration.
Bibliography
Escobar, Edward. “Review: ‘Becoming Mexican American: Ethnicity, Culture and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles, 1900-1945.” The Journal of American History 81, no. 4 (1995): 1772 -1773. Accessed September 6, 2020.
Purdue University Press. “George Sanchez.” http://www.thepress.purdue.edu/contributors/george-sanchez. Accessed: 09/06/2020.
Rodriguez, Joseph A. "Becoming Latinos: Mexican Americans, Chicanos, and the Spanish Myth in the Urban Southwest." Western Historical Quarterly 29, no. 2 (Summer 1998): 165-85. Accessed August 25, 2020.
Ruiz, Vicki L. "Why Latino History Matters to U.S. History." The Japanese Journal of American Studies 20 (2009): 7-26. Accessed August 25, 2020.
Sanchez, George J. Becoming Mexican American Ethnicity, Culture, and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles, 1900-1945. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, USA, 1993.
University of Southern California. “Profile: George J. Sanchez.” https://dornsife.usc.edu/cf/faculty-and-staff/faculty.cfm?pid=1003672. Accessed: 09/06/2020.
Valdes, Dennis. “Review: ‘Becoming Mexican American: Ethnicity, Culture and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles, 1900-1945.” The Hispanic American Historical Review 77, no. 1 (1997): 92-93. Accessed September 6, 2020.
[1] George J. Sanchez, Becoming Mexican American Ethnicity, Culture, and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles, 1900-1945 (Cary: Oxford University Press, USA, 1993) 35.
[2] Sanchez, 217.
[3] Joseph A. Rodriguez, "Becoming Latinos: Mexican Americans, Chicanos, and the Spanish Myth in the Urban Southwest," Western Historical Quarterly 29, no. 2 (Summer 1998): 168, accessed August 25, 2020.
[4] Vicki L. Ruiz, "Why Latino History Matters to U.S. History," The Japanese Journal of American Studies 20 (2009): 8, accessed August 25, 2020.
[5] “Profile: George J. Sanchez,” https://dornsife.usc.edu/cf/faculty-and-staff/faculty.cfm?pid=1003672. Accessed: 09/06/2020.
[6] “George Sanchez,” http://www.thepress.purdue.edu/contributors/george-sanchez. Accessed: 09/06/2020.
[7] “Profile: George J. Sanchez,” https://dornsife.usc.edu/cf/faculty-and-staff/faculty.cfm?pid=1003672. Accessed: 09/06/2020.
[8] Sanchez, 275.
[9] Dennis Valdes. “Review: ‘Becoming Mexican American: Ethnicity, Culture and Identity in Chicano Los Angles, 1900-1945.” The Hispanic American Historical Review 77, no. 1 (1997): 93, accessed September 6, 2020.
[10] Edward Escobar. “Review: ‘Becoming Mexican American: Ethnicity, Culture and Identity in Chicano Los Angles, 1900-1945.” The Journal of American History 81, no. 4 (1995): 1773, accessed September 6, 2020.
[11] Escobar, 1773.
[12] Sanchez, 19, 49, 113, 216.
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