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Goldman

6

MEXICAN AND MEXICAN AMERICAN LABOR IN THE 19TH AND 20TH CENTURIES

Any history of Mexican/Chicano labor in the United States must take into account its uniquely binational character.  With the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 after the Mexican-American War and the Gadsden Purchase of 1853, half of Mexico's territory and three-fourths of its natural resources were annexed to form what eventually became the Southwest United States.  Included are Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California (the four major states), Colorado and parts of Utah and Nevada.  The legal political border which follows the Río Grande River for 2000 miles has always had a continuous movement of peoples and resources in both directions: the northern flow of labor power (documented and undocumented); investment capital and tourists flowing south; families and individuals born on both sides changing residences; and constant social and cultural exchange.  In fact the border is so fluid in terms of peoples and cultures that northern Mexico (Tamualipas, Coahuila, Chihuahua, Sonora, Baja California) and the Southwest United States are referred to as the "borderlands," an area of two separate but contiguous nations in which a cultural homogeneity flourishes, but distinct differences also exist.

In actuality, the border area has been characterized as a "unique contemporary example of the contrast between rich and poor nations," or between "developed and underdeveloped" nations.15  Intervention in the Mexican economic process by U.S. investors and companies has been going on since the late 19th century; while starting in the mid-1960s, the legal border has in some ways become a "fiction" characterized by the rise of multinational corporations and a veritable mass exodus of labor-intensive industries from the U.S. into low-wage Mexico.16

Mexicans in the 19th century were largely employed in occupations involving the soil and subsoil.  Juan Gómez-Quiñones has established four general areas of