Notes
Prologue
i A note on the use of ethnic identifiers for people of Mexican descent and Latina/os is necessary here. Many years ago, in his important essay, “On Culture,” Chicano historian Juan Gómez Quiñones noted that an ethnic name dance occurs among non-white people in the United States because the ethnic identifiers reflect power, ideology, and identity of the in-group users and outsiders. In colonial Texas, Texian refers to Anglo settlers within Mexican Tejas and those Anglos who advocated for Texas’s independence from Mexico. Mexicanos generally refers to Mexican nationals, but it can also refer to immigrants from Mexico within the United States. Tejanos refers to people of Mexican descent who have lived within Texas long enough to identify it as their homeland. They are generally born and raised in Texas and retain a certain amount of ethnic pride associated with their Mexican heritage. Hyphenated Americans, such as Mexican-Americans (without or without the use of an actual hyphen) are US citizens of Mexican descent who still identify with Mexican culture as part of their heritage. This term became popular in the 1930s during an intense time of Americanization in which it was necessary to assert one’s legal status and nationality in a period in which outsiders or perceived foreigners were being maligned and targeted. Racialization of immigrants, cultural outsiders, and those with different phenotypes than the dominant population has existed throughout the history of European occupation of the Americas (García, 2000). The ethnic name game can be used to build community among people with shared ethnic and linguistic traits. It can also be used to separate, distinguish, and dominate perceived outsiders.
iii See Daniel Morales’s “Tejas, Afuera de México (2021).”
Introduction
i This data is taken from the World Population Review online database: worldpopulationreview.com/us-cities/san-antonio-tx-population.
ii The treaty was later abrogated and Mexico only formally ceded lands north of the Rio Bravo when the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed ending the US-Mexican War in 1848. See Griswold’s The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo for an excellent overview of the aftermath of the treaty.
iii While not strictly adhering to their style of blending history and creative non-fiction, Gay Talese’s Unto the Sons (1992) and Alaina Roberts’s, I’ve Been Here All the While: Black Freedom on Native Land (2021) were inspiring examples of authors who blended historical and literary narrative to tell their family’s story. I would be remiss to neglect mention of authors like Alejandro Morales, Victor Villasenor, Emma Pérez, and Norma Elia Cantu, among others, who masterfully blend history and fiction.
1 Fragments of the past: on family genealogy as a mosaic
i For an excellent overview of Americanization, see Paul’s encyclopedia entry (2018) on this topic provided in the list of References.
ii This poem is titled “El Amor Filial.” A copy of it was found in “Parnasso Lirico Escolar,” a book of school songs and poems compiled by José Zurón. I am deeply grateful to Elena Méndez for identifying the source for me.
2 Becoming Americans: surviving, negotiating, and thriving under acculturation
i Much of this information is derived from three sources: (1) An interview with Zapopan Martinez conducted by her son Joe Martinez, her daughter Dora Martinez, and her daughter-in-law, Lily Martinez circa early 1990s; (2) interviews with my parents conducted circa 2011; and (3) an interview with my aunt Dora, aka Sister Patricia conducted on 11/12/2022 at her retirement home in San Antonio.
ii The Texas State Archives website states that the 1925 drought set an 86-year record for high temperatures and low rainfall in a single year. See also “Major Droughts in Modern Texas: A Cycle of Drought and Flood” (2022).www.tsl.texas.gov/lobbyexhibits/water-droughts
iv Pachucos are Mexican American youth of the mid-twentieth century who participated in a counterculture that embraced zoot suit fashion, jump blues, jazz and swing music, and spoke a caló dialect. Among Mexican Americans it was most common in the Southwest and was widely seen as an idiosyncratic form of rebellion against the constraining conventions of their parents’ generation.
v In the late 1980s when the hotel was closed, they sold furniture to the public. Joe and Mary went and purchased two lounge chairs, had them re-upholstered and they sat in their den for many years.
vi For an advanced discussion of how Mexican American identifier emerged in a time when they were forced to strategize within the Anglo-American binary racial order and with the monoracial imperative, see Daniel G. Reginald’s essay (2022).
viii In Shelley vs. Kraemer Supreme Court Chief Justice Fred Vinson ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause prohibits racially restrictive housing covenants from being enforced. For the last 25 years there has been a statewide effort to abolish language in documents.
x For fuller discussion of Operation Wetback, see Kelly Lytle Hernandez’s work.
3 Coming of age in the Space City: cowboys, astronauts and other specters
ii See Brian McTaggert for the history behind the Astros’ team name.
vi The 1960s marked a period of significant expansion in PAL’s educational programs. Head start pre-school was initiated in 1964. President Lyndon B. Johnson launched the “War on Poverty” in 1963, and federal funds were allocated for PAL and other youth-oriented programs (Phelps, 2014).
vii See Brown Bodies and Police Killings: The Case of José Campos Torres, Jr and Anti-Mexican Violence in Texas in the 1970s for an extensive study of the impact of this event on Houston.
viii See Mario Garcia’s, Mexican Americans: Leadership, Ideology, and Identity, 1930–1960.
Coda
(Re)constructing Memory, Place, and Identity in Twentieth Century Houston
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