Takaki Chapter 7- Foreigners in Their Own Land

Question One:  On page 174 there is the quote “passports or no passports” describing the American migration into Texas while it was occupied by Mexico.  This is still going on today however instead of the American migration to Mexico, it’s the Mexican migration into America.  What are the differences between these two migrations? 

           

The Americans moved into Mexican Texas to expand the country, and to grow crops there.  There was a lot of land in Texas and there was very little governmental rule over the now state.  It was very easy for the American to cross into Texas without passports or questioning so many did.  It was still considered to be well off if you were a land owner and there you could host large areas of land without question.  I think the main difference between these two migrations is the direction of the flow.  This history of the expansion of the country given by Takaki, displays America’s motivations only for the benefit of the white man.  So during this chapter the benefit of the white man was to move into Texas and eventually claim it as America, and currently the benefit of the white man are to keep the Mexicans out of jobs.  Even though there may not be many differences  between these two migrations other than time period, it is clear that these two migrations seem to have many common factors. 

 

 

Question Two:  In the middle of the chapter Takaki starts to describe the movement of the southern border between Mexico and the U.S. and mentions that the U.S. government allowed some Mexicans to stay and become American citizens.  What hardships did the Mexicans who chose to stay in their native land face?

 

            The Mexicans who stayed felt alienated.  As Takaki puts it, they became aliens in their native lands.  In Texas and in California, the languages used there switched from Spanish to English and many of the Spanish speakers didn’t learn English.  The changes could really be seen in California when the Americans moved in.  The majority of the population in California was Mexican, and even though it was under American rule, they controlled the elections when they were united.  However, once gold was discovered Americans rushed into the land and soon outnumbered the Mexicans.  Takaki shows the white men who moved into the land as being greedy of the riches that California possessed.  They even imposed a tax on Spanish speaking people, even those who were American citizens, charging a large sum of money for that time as a mining tax.  This was a way to further alienate the Mexican people from their rights as citizens. 

 

Question Three:  By the 1900s what kind of jobs did the Mexicans occupy? 

 

            They started to take the jobs that were hard work and the jobs that many Americans didn’t want.  They first started to work the lands by using their system of irrigation, which Takaki described as transforming the land of Texas from scrubby brush, to lush and green.  Soon after, they took on the job of constructing the railroad between Texas and Mexico.  It was hard to get the white men to work on the railroad for such low wages which is why Mexicans took over the job.  This wage duality between the labor costs of white men and Mexican men ended up sticking for a very long time.  Even though they accepted the unfair wages, they also took great pride in their work and in their heritage and often held strikes against their employers for fair wages.