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Mexican Americans - Referat
We´ve heard of some ethnic groups in the USA so far, but one country of origin is much more common among migrants than the others. If you look at these graphs, you should see that the brown one is much higher than the other ones, which represent Asian countries and Germany. As some of you may know, this country is Mexico.
So, I want to give you a short presentation about Mexican Americans in the United States.
My presentation is divided in three parts. I will start with some general facts about Mexican Americans, then I will give you an overview of the history of Mexican immigration to the USA and finally, I will look at today´s situation with Mexicans in the USA.
Like I said, first some general facts about Mexican Americans. In 2017, approximately 37 million Americans of Mexican origin lived in the United States, which corresponds to 11 percent of the total US population. 25 million of them were born in the USA. Most of them live in California, Texas, and Arizona. To illustrate this, I have a small map here, the darker a state, the more people of Mexican origin live there. Around 71% of all Mexican Americans older than 5 speak English as the only language at home or at least very well.
Now, I will explain you some important points in the history of Mexican Americans. In 1846, the Mexican American war started after tensions between both countries. In 1848, after Mexico had lost the war, a peace treaty, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed, which included that a large part of what was formerly Mexico belonged to the United States from then on. Together with the purchase of Mexican territory five years later, the Gadsden Purchase, this ensured that more than half of Mexico was then national territory of the USA.
Here you can see two maps, the left one shows how Mexico and America looked like before the war. The right one shows how both countries looked like after the war, the white states are the ones that were given to the USA. In the red circle, you can see the land that was added by the Gadsden purchase.
The government let the residents of these areas decide whether they wanted to go back to Mexico or become citizens of the united states. About 80 000 people stayed. Originally the treaty included that all former citizens of Mexico could keep their rights to their land, but new laws, changes to the law and legal disputes took away these rights from many of them. These grievances continued into the 1960s, when Mexican Americans tried to gain rights with the Mexican American civil rights movement and the Chicano movement. Chicano is just another word for Mexican American. These civil rights movements produced some reforms, like improved conditions for migrant workers and more Mexican Americans serving as elected officials. Again and again in history, Mexicans in America have been victims of racially motivated violence. The Ku Klux Klan for example saw Mexican Americans as a threat to American values, so that its members persecuted and killed Mexicans. In World War One, Mexican American soldiers were excluded and insulted by white American soldiers, for example because of their poor knowledge of English. In the second world war, however, they received recognition for their bravery. Eleven soldiers of Mexican origin were even awarded the medal of honor. In the following decades, more and more Mexicans came to the united states.
This leads me to my next point, which is the current situation with Mexican Americans. As you surely know, one of Donald Trump´s biggest election promises was to build a wall between Mexico and the USA to prevent illegal Mexican immigrants from crossing the border. He claimed that immigrants coming from Mexico were almost exclusively drug dealers and other criminals. One of the first official duties of Joe Biden was to stop the construction of this wall. He also began restricting the deportation of illegal immigrants and helping them gain citizenship. He has even suggested a reform of the immigration law and wants to improve relations with countries like Mexico after trump had often annoyed them. Even today, racist attitudes pose a danger to Mexican Americans. In 2019 for example, a 21-year-old American drove 9 hours just to kill 22 people in a supermarket in El Paso, a city in Texas. After he was arrested, he said that his aim was to kill as many Mexicans as possible, 8 of the 22 victims were of Mexican origin. Mexican Americans born in the USA today often have a medium to high income, while newly arriving Mexicans are dependent on lower paid jobs. There is a kind of love-hate relationship between white Americans and Mexicans. Many Americans have prejudices against Mexicans but cannot and do not want to do without their cheap labor.
Thank you for listening, are there any questions left?
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