This study examines the manifold ways in which fifteen women of Mexican heritage actively participated in the secular, spiritual, and social spheres to improve conditions for themselves and their community in Douglas, Arizona during the first half of the twentieth century. Using interviews, newspapers, US census reports, ephemera, and secondary sources, it highlights the women's agency and the various ways they employed critical and innovative approaches to break through the economic, personal, and structural borders imposed by a corporate and industrial smelter town created by Phelps-Dodge and Company and the Calumet and Arizona Company. In this dissertation I ask, and seek to answer questions such as: why did these women of Mexican heritage choose to settle in Douglas; why did those who were born there remain; and what did this newly established town offer the women in this study that perhaps more established cities in the southwestern United States did not? Because Mexicanas are invisible in the archives and in the historical chronicles of Douglas Arizona, this dissertation employs an interdisciplinary methodology designed to highlight their actions and their contributions to their communities, city, and nation. Influenced by Chicana theorist Gloria Anzaldua, I seek to recover history, and what she refers to as la facultad, by relying on the words of the women and their families to offer answers and insight. Despite the challenges of living in the borderlands in a time of limited access to economic and social resources, these women's contributions to history confirm that Mexicanas were not passive subalterns.

No description available.

abstract: Familism values have been shown to have a multitude of benefits for Mexican American youth. Understanding different pathways of the adoption of familism values from adolescence and young adulthood, and predictors of these pathways, is critical. The current study assessed different classes of change in familism values across five waves from fifth grade to young adulthood, and fifth-grade predictors of these profiles, among a sample of 749 Mexican American youth. Univariate and growth mixture modeling was used to determine classes of familism change and found two classes—one class that showed small, insignificant declines across adolescence that accelerated into young adulthood and one class that showed significant declines across adolescence that stabilized and increased into young adulthood. The three-step procedure was then used to examine the following fifth-grade predictors of familism classes: family conflict, family cohesion, harsh parenting, parental acceptance, economic hardship, and perceived ethnic discrimination. Family conflict and perceived ethnic discrimination were significant predictors of familism class membership. Greater family conflict predicted a greater probability of being in the class of significant declines in familism across adolescence that stabilized and increased into young adulthood. Greater perceived ethnic discrimination predicted a greater probability of being in the class of small, insignificant decreases across adolescence that accelerated into young adulthood. Gender moderated the impact of family cohesion. For females, greater father-reported family cohesion predicted a greater probability of being in the class with significant declines during adolescence that stabilized and increased into young adulthood. For males, greater father-reported family cohesion predicted a greater probability of being in the class with slight, insignificant declines in adolescence that accelerated into young adulthood. Youth nativity moderated the impact of maternal acceptance. For youth born in the U.S., greater mother-reported acceptance predicted a greater probability of being in the class of slight, insignificant declines across adolescence that accelerated into young adulthood. For youth born in Mexico, greater mother-reported acceptance predicted a greater probability of being in the class of significant declines in familism across adolescence that stabilized and increased into young adulthood. Limitations and implications for prevention and future research are discussed. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Psychology 2019

To better understand the impact of type 2 diabetes, the relationship between ethnicity, specifically Mexican/Mexican American ethnicity, and the disease must be further investigated. This study specifically examined the cognitive impact of type 2 diabetes. Data from the 2014 Health and Retirement Study was used to compare the cognitive functioning of non-Hispanic White (n = 10,658) and White Mexican/Mexican American (n = 847) individuals, age 50+ years, with and without type 2 diabetes. Serial 7's and immediate and delayed recall—hypothesized to be more negatively affected by type 2 diabetes and Mexican American status—was compared controlling for age, education, and depression. A multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) indicated significant main effects for race/ethnicity (F(3,11496) = 11.15, p < .001) and diabetes status (F(3,11496) = 3.15, p < .024), with Mexican Americans and those with diabetes having worse cognitive performance. There were significant effects for all covariates. A step-wise multiple regression indicated that education, age, depression, race/ethnicity and diabetes status accounted for a combined 28.4% of variance in a cognitive performance composite. Implications for assessment and treatment are discussed.

This dissertation reassumes the research and literary analysis conducted in my Master's thesis "Family Ideal and Real: The Change of the Image of the Family in Selected Works of Mexican American Authors" and extends its scope. As an interdisciplinary work, it examines the connections between history, sociology, and literature. Family as one of the central values in the Mexican American community, started to be oficially celebrated as such during the Chicano Movement, in the 1960s and 70s. However, the family was viewed as warm and nurturing by some people, and as strict and rigid by others, and this dichotomy is represented also in literature. After opening the dissertation with a discussion of Charles Taylor's and Will Kymlicka's view of multiculturalism, I move on to the analysis of the Mexican American family and address several statistics, which describe and analyze the position of Mexican American minority in society and also the Mexican American family, focusing especially on the common stereotypes and supporting them or refuting them with research studies on the specific topics. The literary section of the dissertation analyzes three segments of Mexican American literature: literature by Chicana authors, autobiographical narratives, and children's literature; and assesses the representation...

Mexican-American adults and adolescents in general have been reported to have high levels of anxiety symptomatology. In our study of a tri-ethnic sample of 2528 junior and senior high school students, the Youth Self Report (YSR) version of the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) and a sociodemographic questionnaire was used to assess the anxiety symptoms of Hispanic youth. We compared the ratings on anxiety symptoms, using Achenbach's anxiety subscale on the YSR, between two populations. The anxiety levels of youth in coastal southeast Texas (Galveston County) were compared to the anxiety levels of youth in the lower Rio Grande Valley. We found that Mexican-Americans of the Lower Rio Grande Valley scored higher on anxiety symptoms than the tri-ethnic population of Galveston County. Other factors associated with higher anxiety scores for Mexican-American youths included being born outside the US, linguistic fluency, father absent from the home, mother's education, and household size. Multiple regression analyses showed that socio-economic status (SES), family composition, and linguistic fluency had a greater relative impact on anxiety symptomatology than all other factors, both for the total sample as well as for the Mexican-American sample. These results parallel previous findings, with Mexican-American adults, which suggest either higher risk for anxiety symptomatology or a culturally related bias in the reporting of such symptoms.

Marital quality is a broad measurement of perceptions of satisfaction, happiness, and stability by partners in an established relationship. Marital quality has been relatively understudied among Mexican Americans, a population that warrants the inclusion of cultural constructs in any model concerning relationship outcomes. Therefore, acculturation differences between Mexican American couples were conceptualized as a distal context for understanding marital quality. Traditional gender role values and communication style (warmth and hostility) were included as proximal contexts. Data from Conger’s California Families Project were utilized; results indicated that while most measures of acculturation did not impact marital quality, language use interacted with gender roles values and communication style to influence husbands’ marital quality. Warmth, hostility, and traditional gender role values all exhibited a significant direct influence on marital quality for both husbands and wives. Potential explanations and recommendations for future directions are discussed.

The following study is a secondary data analysis of data collected in the first wave of the California Families Project investigating the impact that discrimination in academic settings may have on academic outcomes of Mexican American youths. Primary socialization theory offers a conceptual framework of competing socialization influences bearing particular relevance in understanding the role of discrimination in Mexican American youths. The present investigation also seeks to clarify the protective role of various parenting practices in regarding academic achievement. Three hundred sixty-five Mexican American families were surveyed and results indicated that discrimination significantly predicted negative academic self-efficacy and poorer academic performance in crystallized measures of ability (i.e., verbal skills) but not a performance-based task (i.e., visuospatial skills and processing speed). Findings suggested that the influence of parenting in mitigating discrimination for fifth graders is limited.

Thesis advisor: Usha Tummala-Narra / Sexual violence is a common experience among women in the United States that can have a number of negative sequalae, including heightened feelings of shame (Feiring & Taska, 2005; Smith et al., 2018). While literature has started to document the effects of shame on some aspects of survivors’ lives (Bhuptani et al., 2019; Kim et al., 2009), less is known about how shame is experienced by survivors in their daily lives. Mexican Americans constitute a notable segment of the U.S. population and are affected by unique contextual factors such as their immigration history, cultural values, religious experiences, and acculturation processes. Yet, there is limited literature examining the experiences of Mexican American survivors of sexual violence. Using Campbell and colleagues’ (2009) ecological model and a mujerista research paradigm (Bryant-Davis & Comas-Díaz, 2016), this study sought to develop a qualitative understanding of the experience of shame among 1.5 and 2nd generation Mexican American women who are survivors of sexual violence, while considering how cultural values and beliefs shape their experience of shame across ecological levels. Twelve 1.5 and 2nd generation Mexican American survivors of sexual violence participated in semi-structured interviews for this qualitative descriptive study. Conventional content analysis of the data yielded eight broad domains: (1) influence of immigration and cultural context on shame; (2) impact of shame on mental health; (3) relational impacts of shame; (4) impact of shame on daily functioning; (5) impact of shame on disclosure; (6) marianismo increased feelings of shame after sexual violence; (7) healing from shame; and, (8) challenges to healing from shame. Results indicate that the effects of shame are pervasive for survivors across multiple areas of their lives (i.e., mental and physical health, relationships, academic and professional lives), religious and cultural messages foster a context of shame for survivors, and survivors’ healing process is shaped by their bicultural context. Limitations and theoretical implications of these findings are discussed, along with implications for culturally responsive clinical practice and future research directions. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2021. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Counseling, Developmental and Educational Psychology.

Research shows Mexican Americans typically have better cardiovascular health than European Americans, despite being relatively economically disadvantaged. Given research indicating the importance of relationship quality on one's health, the present study examined whether certain relationship orientations (e.g. communal or exchange) were more prevalent in different ethnic groups and if these orientations could help explain this Hispanic Paradox. 582 adults were recruited from the community. Participants were primarily European American (40%) and foreign-born Mexican Americans (55%). A cross-sectional designed was used where participants wore 24-hour ambulatory blood pressure (ABP) monitors and completed self-report measures of relationship satisfaction and relationship orientation. Results indicated that, contrary to predictions, European Americans tended to have more of a communal relationship orientation compared to foreign-born Mexican Americans. As expected however, communal orientation was predictive of higher relationship satisfaction, β = .29, SE = .07, p < .001, 95% CI [.15, .43], and while higher relationship satisfaction predicted lower systolic blood pressure, R2 = .02, β = -.16, SE = .07, p < .05, 95% CI [-.31, -.01], when ethnicity was added into the model this relationship was eliminated and foreign-born Mexican Americans had higher ABP compared to European Americans, β = 4.72, SE = 2.25, p < .05, 95% CI [.29, 9.14]. While there were these important differences, communal and exchange orientations had minimal direct or indirect effects on ABP. Even though communal and exchange relationship orientation don't seem to give us any more information to unravel the Hispanic Paradox, there are important ethnic differences in how we engage in marriage relationships and future research may consider other approaches to examine the health effects of these differences.