Racial Oppression Anti Latino Immigration 1840-1936

ANTI-LATINO IMMIGRATION 1840-1936
Name
Institution
The history of anti-Latino immigration can be traced back to events after the Mexican-American war. Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo-the military commander of California-signed a treaty which signaled the end of the war in 1848.It also ceded more than a third of the Mexican territory to the United States including California, Texas, Colorado, Nevada, Utah and New Mexico. With this new land came new citizens who were eventually granted citizenship. Companies in America like Southern Pacific railroad disregarded immigration laws that banned importation of contracted labor by employing hundreds of Mexicans to build their tracks cheaply. Also, the booming economic activities in the new America attracted more Hispanic migrants. The political upheavals in Mexico forced further immigration into the US.
Anti-Latino immigration refers to any prejudicial treatment of immigrants of Hispanic origin be it by language, color or culture. With the influx of Hispanic immigrants into the US, resentment and hate grew CITATION Ron12 \l 1033 (Ronald L Mize, Grace Pena Delgado, 2012). This was mainly on the perception that they were ‘stealing’ jobs reserved for native whites. They were regarded as a threat to the white culture and political integrity. This fear made the natives lash out against the Hispanic immigrants.
This came in form of Latinos being barred from white establishments, movie theatres and recreational centers. Another facet of the US anti-Latino discrimination was segregation in schools. The Latino laborers were to take their children to ‘Mexican’ schools beginning in the 1870s. The schools lacked sufficient teachers or basic supplies and provided only vocational studies. They justified this by asserting that the Latino kids were dirty and disease ridden. They claimed that they were not entitled to study in ‘English-speaking...