The impact of the Second World War on Mexican Americans in the Southwest

Seminar paper from the year 2004 in the subject American Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 2,0, Dresden Technical University (Institut Amerikanistik), course: Latinos/as in the U.S., language: English, abstract: The United States are a nation of immigrants. Mexican Americans are part of this country and make up about thirteen million people of Mexican descent these days. This minority group is the second largest ethnic group in the U.S. (Mexican A. /American M. 3-5) Since the U.S. is a nation of immigrants, frictions and conflicts between the different nationalities have never been avoidable in history and will not be in the future. Throughout this paper, the issue of racism and discrimination will always appear and be discussed because I think this is a burning issue which exists still today in the U.S. society. In this seminar paper I am going to analyze the influence of the Second World War on Mexican Americans in the southwest. I chose this topic because the Second World War had an important impact on the people living in the United States and marked a turning point in the lives of the Mexican American population. I will focus on Mexican American soldiers and their experiences they gained in the war and after their service. Furthermore, I am going to examine how Mexican Americans contributed to the war effort and if this had changed anything on their acceptance and acknowledgement among the Anglo society. While thousands of Mexican American soldiers were fighting in the war, their families back home in the southwest gained different experiences. With the help of two incidents that happened during the war years in the southwest of the United States, I want to show in what way Mexican Americans had to suffer unjust treatment and prejudice of the white population. I will also take into consideration the various changes in the labor force as well as the reactions of Mexican Americans towards discrimination. The main sources of the paper where I based my knowledge on and where I received the information necessary to provide a good overview of the situation during the war years, are Meier's and Ribera's books 'Mexican Americans/American Mexicans' and 'Readings on La Raza', which offered a detailed and critic description of Mexican Americans living in the United States. At the end of this paper the reader should have gained an impression on the difficult times of the war period for Mexican Americans, an ethnic minority who always had to fight for acknowledgement and their civil rights.