ePub The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492; 30th Anniversary Edition by Alfred W. Crosby Jr. in History

Description

A history of the Chicano community cannot be complete without taking into account the United States' domination of the Mexican economy beginning in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; writes Gilbert G. González. For that economic conquest inspired U.S. writers to create a "culture of empire" that legitimated American dominance by portraying Mexicans and Mexican immigrants as childlike "peons" in need of foreign tutelage; incapable of modernizing without Americanizing; that is; submitting to the control of U.S. capital. So powerful was and is the culture of empire that its messages about Mexicans shaped U.S. public policy; particularly in education; throughout the twentieth century and even into the twenty-first.In this stimulating history; Gilbert G. González traces the development of the culture of empire and its effects on U.S. attitudes and policies toward Mexican immigrants. Following a discussion of the United States' economic conquest of the Mexican economy; González examines several hundred pieces of writing by American missionaries; diplomats; business people; journalists; academics; travelers; and others who together created the stereotype of the Mexican peon and the perception of a "Mexican problem." He then fully and insightfully discusses how this misinformation has shaped decades of U.S. public policy toward Mexican immigrants and the Chicano (now Latino) community; especially in terms of the way university training of school superintendents; teachers; and counselors drew on this literature in forming the educational practices that have long been applied to the Mexican immigrant community.