World War II had a dramatic impact on Americans, including Mexican Americans in Arizona. It challenged families and communities to make sacrifices during wartime. Mexican Americans served in large numbers and with distinction in the war, and after it ended they sought to defend their rights as Americans, and to eliminate the discriminatory behavior and acts that kept them within ethnic boundaries. The segregation at Tempe Beach, the “brilliant star in Tempe’s crown,” and its “No Mexicans Allowed” policy, initiated in 1923, was one of them. Another ethnic boundary was the segregated housing policy for veterans established by the City of Phoenix in 1946. In Tempe and Phoenix, the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) Council 110, led by Placida Garcia Smith, and the American Legion Thunderbird Post 41, led by Ray Martinez, were at the front lines in the fight against racism and discrimination in the 1940s. Mexican Americans confronted public elected officials over racist practices and policies of exclusion, and utilized the court system to provide them equal justice under the law. They exercised their right to seek equality after years of segregation, and to secure their civil rights as Americans. Their actions are examples of American-style civic activism, a devotion to the United States and the ideals of freedom and democracy. The search for that freedom and holding the government accountable to its laws and ideals are what drove LULAC Council 110 and American Legion Thunderbird Post 41 as they organized and agitated for the civil rights of Mexican Americans in Tempe and Phoenix during the 1940s.

This project examines the impact factors such as parent involvement and teacher support have on Mexican American students' decisions about higher education.

This dissertation analyzes Fort Worth's Mexican community from 1960 to 2000 while considering the idea of citizenship through representation in education and politics. After establishing an introductory chapter that places the research in context with traditional Chicano scholarship while utilizing prominent ideas and theories that exist within Modern Imperial studies, the ensuing chapter looks into the rise of Fort Worth's Mexican population over the last four decades of the twentieth century. Thereafter, this work brings the attention to Mexican education in Fort Worth beginning in the 1960s and going through the end of the twentieth century. This research shows some of the struggles Mexicans encountered as they sought increased representation in the classroom, on the school board, and within other areas of the Fort Worth Independent School District. Meanwhile, Mexicans were in direct competition with African Americans who also sought increased representation while simultaneously pushing for more aggressive integration efforts against the wishes of Mexican leadership. Subsequently, this research moves the attention to political power in Fort Worth, primarily focusing on the Fort Worth city council. Again, this dissertation begins in the 1960s after the Fort Worth opened the election of the mayor to the people of Fort Worth. No Mexican was ever elected to city council prior to the rise of single-member districts despite several efforts by various community leaders. Chapter V thus culminates with the rise of single-member districts in 1977 which transitions the research to chapter VI when Mexicans were finally successful in garnering political representation on the city council. Finally, Chapter VII concludes the twentieth century beginning with the rapid rise and fall of an organization called Hispanic 2000, an organization that sought increased Mexican representation but soon fell apart because of differences of opinion. In concluding the research, the final chapter provides an evaluation of the lack of Mexican representation both in Fort Worth education and in the political realm. Furthermore, the finishing chapter places Fort Worth's Mexican situation within the context of both Chicano history as well as identify some key aspects of the history of modern empire. This investigation poses pertinent questions regarding the lack of Mexican representation while African Americans end the century well-represented on the school board, in education jobs, and on the city council.

A preliminary theoretical framework for analyzing the role of the press in the public process of defining important social issues and labeling of politically marginal minorities is developed. This theory employs the concept of newsworthiness and stresses the effect of the social organization of news work as a factor in press gatekeeping and agenda setting. It is the object of our research to demonstrate that the "objective" perspective of the news media is, in actuality, a biased one which is imbalanced and slanted towards representation of dominant group interests. Two cases, illegal Mexican immigration, and the 1984 Ferraro-Bush campaign, are analyzed to determine how reporting practices result in imbalanced coverage. Our empirical analyses of news content on these issues will show that a favorable rate of access to the press for dominant group, rather than minority group representatives exists. As a result, news coverage of undocumented Mexican workers and the 1984 woman vice-presidential candidate was imbalanced.

This study seeks to examine the influence of key cultural values like machismo, familism, traditionalism, and religiosity on self-efficacy in reducing HIV risk among Mexican-origin IDUs. The purpose of this examination hinges on the importance of including cultural concepts/values not only to facilitate process, but also to add a cultural dimension to an HIV/AIDS intervention that may facilitate attitudinal and behavioral change as well. The findings suggest that culturally innovative approaches can facilitate HIV/AIDS risk reduction among male Mexican-origin drug injectors. The importance of key cultural values like machismo is underscored by its association with HIV risk reduction for both sexual and injection related risks. Intervention programs must identify strategies to incorporate cultural values in their research and evaluation of intervention efficacy. Culturally innovative approaches hold the promise of substantially reducing HIV risk behaviors among Hispanic drug injectors, and may hold promise for other populations affected by HIV/AIDS as well.

The area of ethnic market segmentation has received little attention from practitioners or academicians of marketing since most minority groups immigrating to the United States have gradually assimilated the cultural norms and values, and thus the market behavior, of the American society as a whole. Preliminary investigation, however, indicates that Mexican Americans are an exception. To discover whether Mexican Americans represent a true ethnic market segment of economic significance, this study examines and analyzes several aspects. First, to determine whether Mexican Americans represent a true ethnic segment, the following aspects of their cultural norms, perceptions, and values are investigated: their distinct and unique identity, the continuity and consistency of their adoption and use, and the degree of their influence. Second, to determine whether Mexican Americans constitute an ethnic market segment, grocery shopping behavioral patterns are examined. Third, to ascertain whether Mexican Americans represent a substantial ethnic market segment in terms of the number of consumers and the amount of money spent, relevant demographic and socioeconomic characteristics are presented and analyzed. Fourth, the impact of an economically significant ethnic market segment on marketers and marketing institutions is assessed. Due to the nature of this study, emphasis is placed on the collection of primary data, which has been obtained through personal interviews with 115 consumer respondents and eighteen grocery store owners and managers. Secondary data, gathered from reports of the Bureau of the Census, various periodicals, journals, and books, are used to establish cultural, demographic, and socioeconomic trends.

This historical study examines the career of George I. Sanchez, New Mexican educator, who led many political and educational battles in New Mexico and Texas to improve educational opportunities for Spanish-speaking children. Archival materials from the State Records' Center of New Mexico, the papers of Senator Bronson M. Cutting, the Rockefeller Foundation Archives, the papers of President Lyndon Baines Johnson, Sanchez's private papers, unpublished materials at the University of Texas in Austin, oral history, and published materials were used in this study. The author used oral history and archival materials to gather much of the information for this work. The author extends special thanks and appreciation to Mrs. George I. Sanchez for making Sanchez's private papers available for study. The author also wishes to thank Dr. Hector Garcia, Senator Ralph Yarborough, Judge Carlos Cadena, Tom Sutherland, Arthur Campa, J. W. Edgar, Ed Idar, Jr., John Silber, and Connie Sprague, Sanchez's daughter, for their help.

Mexican Americans, the largest Hispanic subgroup in the United States, tend to underuse mental health services. Grounded in Andersen's behavioral model of health services use, the purpose of this nonexperimental study was to examine the likelihood of birth country, education, income, and insurance predicting which respondents would report seeking mental health services to treat depression. The Mini International Neuropsychiatric Interview was used to diagnose depression in 203 Mexican Americans whose data was archived from the primary study. This archived data was analyzed within this study. The results of the 2 x 2 chi-square tests of independence indicated a significant association between a person's birth country and the likelihood that a person will seek mental health treatment, with U.S.-born participants more likely to seek mental health treatment than foreign-born participants. There were no significant bivariate associations found between education, income, or insurance and seeking mental health treatment. The full model containing the 4 independent variables was statistically significant per the results of the binary logistic regression analysis. This finding indicates that the model reliably distinguished between respondents who reported seeking and not seeking mental health treatment. The results of the binary logistic regression analysis indicated education was the only independent variable that made a uniquely significant contribution to the model, with participants with 12 years or more of education more likely to seek mental health treatment. The implications for positive social change include the potential to provide communities and health care providers knowledge of the factors that influence whether Mexican Americans with depression access mental health.

Mexican immigrant students are entering American schools in great numbers. Many of them come to high schools with a good educational background, but there is little knowledge about them and about the factors that contribute to their incorporation into social life in the United States. While the drop out rate of Mexican-American students in high school has remained the highest among all ethnic groups, recent immigrants are pressuring schools to meet their needs immediately. Failure to respond adequately to their needs may result in an increase in the already high drop out rate and a perpetuation of the cycle of poverty among the Mexican-American population. The purpose of this study was to examine the factors that contribute to the incorporation of Mexican immigrant high school students to United States society. The design of the study is a qualitative multiple case study with a phenomenological perspective. Five Mexican immigrant high school students were selected according to specific criteria. Data was collected through in-depth, open-ended interviews, observations, and documentation. Special consideration were given to the role played by the high school in promoting the academic success of Mexican immigrant students and the contribution of native culture to the process of incorporation into United States society. This study makes contributions to knowledge about Mexican immigrant high school students that can help educators improve the services needed by this fast growing segment of the population. / text

"Mexican Americans Write Toward Justice in Texas, 1973 - 1982" examines literature produced in the course of struggles for justice conducted by Mexicans, Mexican Americans, and their allies, the origins of this literature, and its effects. Three areas -- police brutality, exploitation of farmworkers, and inequitable, inadequate public education - troubled Mexican Americans activists across the political spectrum. Additionally, many people were appalled by U.S. treatment of immigrants. The poetry and plays of Nephtalí De León, Heriberto Terán, Gil Scott-Heron, Carlos Morton, and an activist teatro in Houston exemplify a long tradition of cultural production that simultaneously mourns and organizes in response to violence against Mexicans in Texas. The Texas Farmworker Union (TFWU) newspaper, El Cuhamil , documents the cacophony of voices participating in farmworker mobilizations for social justice in Texas. El Cuhamil also reorients the narratives about farm worker organizing from a U.S.- centered "civil rights" perspective to a Mexican-centered one. Two U.S. Supreme Court decisions arising from Texas, San Antonio v. Rodríguez (1973) and Plyler v. Doe (1982), illustrate how federal courts began to retreat from the engagement with social justice that had characterized much civil rights jurisprudence between roughly 1946 and 1973. These decisions also reveal the contradictions at the heart of constitutional equal protection at its "best" or most effective. This dissertation seeks to understand how Mexicans and Mexican Americans tested a variety of rhetorical strategies - U.S. citizenship, Aztlán, the international working class, Catholic universalism, and human rights - to articulate their needs and desires and make claims in popular culture, labor organizing, and the law. I situate these writings historically and in U.S. Southwestern literature, Mexican American literature, U.S. civil rights jurisprudence, and Mexican intellectual traditions. A subsidiary contribution of this dissertation is its tentative exploration of the distinct trajectories of Mexican Americans in what is now the Texas Plains and Panhandle. The alienating sense of "nothingness" that some people attribute to this region derives from the conditions under which Anglo settlement began in the 1880s. Modernity, here, did not alter or overlap with the modes of production that preceded it, but violently obliterated them. / text