Thesis Ph. D. Michigan State University. Chicano/Latino Studies, American Studies 2013.

I examine in this dissertation the historical significance of Texas Mexican agricultural labor and the formation of Latino communities across the southern United States in the latter twentieth century. Their primary destinations chosen for work, as well as their experiences in those locations, established patterns of migration and settlement followed and faced by subsequent flows of Latino workers. The lives of Texas Mexicans are, thus, critical to understanding the process of Latino migration and settlement in the region. I utilize the term Tejano Diaspora to help understand the northward movement and eventual settlement of agricultural workers from their home communities in South Texas. This framework also situates Tejano labor migration as a consequence of forced displacement and reflective of a larger systemic phenomenon between the United States and Mexico. In turn, this dissertation expands and complicates most extant writings on Latinos in the New South that remain limited to the contemporary period and neglect the historical presence of Texas Mexicans as part of the literature. In this examination, I focus on four distinct localities that serve as individual chapters in this dissertation: South Texas, the Mississippi Delta states of Arkansas, Mississippi, and Tennessee, then South Florida, and, finally, North Carolina. These geographies represent the primary destinations chosen by Tejano workers in chronological order, and were also principal centers for agricultural production. To undertake this task, I conducted extensive archival research at various local, state, and federal repositories across the country, and I utilized the interlibrary loan system to review related newspaper articles from the region. In addition, I conducted seventeen select oral history interviews for this project.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF t.p. (ProQuest, viewed on Sept. 8, 2014)

Thesis Ph. D. Michigan State University. History 2016

Marriage in New Mexico, and indeed in all of colonial Spanish America, was significantly influenced by Spanish ideals of faith, honor, virtue and race. While it has long been argued that such ideals were handed down to the American colonies from the Iberian Peninsula unaltered, more recent scholarship asserts that the honor code, rather than a monolithic concept to be either accepted or rejected, was contextually determined and significantly influenced by socio-economic milieus and geo-political circumstances. The contingent nature of the honor code and its influence on the institution of marriage clearly emerges in an investigation of colonial New Mexico, a region that for its peripheral position in the Viceroyalty of New Spain has suffered from a lack of deep historical analysis.Using prenuptial investigations, prenuptial disputes and deflowerment cases from the Archives of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe conducted between 1681 and 1730, as well as administrative records from the Archivo General de Indias, I challenge current assumptions regarding what constituted an appropriate marriage partner in this remote/distant area of the Spanish Borderlands. The "voices" I capture from these investigations allow me to analyze concerns regarding free will, sexuality, legitimacy, honor, and race, and how these informed marriage choice in colonial New Mexico fifty years after the Pueblo Revolt of 1680. Moreover, by examining the mechanisms Spanish colonists used to contract their preferred marriages-sometimes despite familial opposition-I challenge current assumptions regarding the importance of free will, what constituted an appropriate marriage partner in this remote area of the Spanish Empire, and detail the ways the inherent flexibility of the sistema de castas was manipulated in this region to buttress the cultural hegemony of the Spanish Empire.

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Thesis Ph. D. Michigan State University. Chicano/Latino Studies 2012.

First and foremost, this dissertation focuses on the relationship between labor and migration in the development of the City of Oxnard and La Colonia neighborhood. Labor and migration on the Oxnard Plain have played an important part in shaping and constructing the Mexican working-class community and its relationship to the power structure of the city and the agri-business interests of Ventura County. This migration led to many conflicts between Mexicans and Whites. I focus on those conflicts and activism between 1930 and 1980.Secondly, this dissertation expands on early research conducted on Mexicans in Ventura County. The Oxnard Plain has been a key location of struggles for equality and justice. In those struggles, Mexican residents of Oxnard, the majority being working-class have played a key role in demanding better work conditions, housing, and wages. This dissertation continues the research of Tomas Almaguer, Frank P. Barajas, and Martha Menchaca, who focused on class, race, work, leisure, and conflict in Ventura County.Thirdly, this dissertation is connected to a broader history of Mexican workers in California. This dissertation is influenced by important research conducted by Carey McWilliams, Gilbert Gonzalez, Vicki Ruiz, and other historians on the relationship between labor, migration, and activism among the Mexican working-class community in Southern California. This dissertation's primary goal is to expand the history of Mexican workers in Ventura County, which has been an understudied area within Chicana/o and labor history.And finally, this dissertation focuses on highlighting the social history of farm workers, families, union organizers, and community organizers who struggled for a better quality of life for the Mexican working-class community of Oxnard, California.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF t.p. (ProQuest, viewed Jan. 21, 2013)

In this dissertation I argue anti-colonial thought in Michigan’s Chicano Movement was a response to a domestic/migrant colonial discourse that operated on a local and state-wide level. Between 1962 and 1967 Mexican-Americans and other Latinos lobbied Michigan’s elected officials to gain the rights of industrial workers for seasonal agricultural workers. Their efforts were stymied by growers and the Michigan Farm Bureau. The MFB and its allies reinforced their opposition with a domestic/migrant colonial binary that defined all Mexican-Americans as foreigners and justifiably colonized. By 1968 Chicano anti-colonialism emerged in Michigan to counter this colonial discourse through organizing, literature and art. I contend that the development of anti-colonial thought amongst Chicanos in Michigan demonstrates that Mexican-Americans experienced colonialism not only in the immediate aftermath of the Mexican-American War or in former Mexican territory. This dissertation demonstrates the viability of a different history wherein colonialism was not contained in the Southwest as a short-lived exception to American liberalism. By situating Michigan Chicano Movement anti-colonialism as a response to a locally based colonial discourse I emphasize the ways in which a critique of American imperialism was central to the Chicano Movement nationwide. Furthermore Michigan Chicanos and Chicanas experienced multiple forms of colonial domination. They were not only workers excluded from the public sphere of benefits and rights but also lived as families whose private sphere was compromised. In addition to racializing Chicanos as foreigners the domestic/migrant colonial binary gendered Chicano families as dependent, needy and ultimately female. Chicano anti-colonialism also presented a gendered narrative whose history has often been seen as synonymous with patriarchy. Instead I argue that Chicana and Chicano uses of anti-colonial ideals, especially la familia de la raza, included more liberatory possibilities.

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Thesis Ph. D. Michigan State University. History 2013.

"A comparative study that spans two continents to investigate the intersections of intellectual and working class history in the small mining towns of Clifton - Morenci, Arizona and Kimberley, South Africa. Although formal unions were not open to men in these two areas, workers employed an understanding of citizenship rights and national identity to create and maintain solidarity in the workplace. Their stories provide a new understanding of how workers constructed agency outside of traditional labor unions, and their narratives touch on many fields of history including political, social, gender, and cultural." – From abstract.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF t.p. (viewed on Oct. 17, 2013)