Mexicans in the Midwest: 1900-1932.

By Juan R. Garcia (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1996. x plus 292pp.).

This long-awaited and important work synthesizes recent literature on the "Mexican Generation" in the Midwest, focusing on its major population centers of Chicago and northwest Indiana, Detroit and the Kansas Cities. The first two chapters examine immigration and patterns of work and settlement. The railroad and sugar beet industries, the earliest major employers, recruited workers with "broken promises" and offered only poor-paying, seasonal jobs, which induced the high labor turnover that created labor pools for other employers. Yet they were responsible for the formation of most early Mexican settlements in the region. Immigration accelerated during World War I and in the 1919 Steel Strike, reaching record levels after the severe depression of 1921-1922. Mills and foundries soon became the major urban employers of Mexicans in the Midwest.

The next two chapters examine housing, and employment for men and women, which were negatively influenced by the intensified race hatred, isolationism, fundamentalism and "100% Americanism" of the "Tribal Twenties." Only about 5 percent of Midwestern Mexicans worked as professionals or in business, while workers understood a hierarchy ascending from agriculture to railroads, meat packing, steel and autos. Higher pay was offset by physical brutality and arbitrary discipline in the factories. Challenging Zaragoza Vargas' view that Midwestern Mexicans were lured by the "American Dream," Garcia suggests that they came north to fulfill a "Mexican Dream" of earning money to ensure a better life for themselves and their families in Mexico. An American Dream was not possible: "They were victims of a society that readily accepted the misguided images it had created of them. Mexicans were only allowed to experience the darker side of the dream." (p. 81) Women worked in domestic and personal service, including casas de asistencia (boarding houses), followed in importance by agriculture, manufacturing, and light industry. Garcia challenges views that conditions for Midwestern Mexicanas were better than elsewhere, suggesting that the family contract system in agriculture perpetuated their subordinate status, while their relative scarcity, "made men even more determined to exercise suzerainty over them." (p. 89) Yet he concludes that Mexicanas were the primary factors in stabilizing the colonias.

The final chapters examine various facets of Midwestern organizational life. Garcia downplays the importance of the Mexican consulate while regarding local leadership which created a Spanish-language press, mutualistas and other groups more positively. Although composed largely of a displaced elite in Mexico who "formed tight-knit circles of self-proclaimed leaders and guardians," (p. 141) they were not elitist. Beyond cushioning workers from economic hardships, mutualistas served important political purposes (confronting discrimination, segregation, and exploitation) and provided social and cultural functions (dances, holiday celebrations, bazaars, public lectures, and sporting events). They embraced Mexican nationalism, in contrast with upper- and middle-class societies of Mexicans in the Southwest, which expected US citizenship. The mutualistas offered social and psychological balm to member and nonmember alike, and challenged the rampant individualism of the 1920s. Other important sites of social and recreational life included pool halls and casas de asistencia, and settlement houses. Concluding with repatriation, Garcia suggests that although more than half the Midwestern Mexican population left the region during the Great Depression, communities stabilized, and ethnic tensions were soon ameliorated.

Dennis N. Valdes University of Minnesota