BiblioVault - Books about San Diego (Calif.)

Becoming Mexipino

Multiethnic Identities and Communities in San Diego

Guevarra, Rudy P

Rutgers University Press, 2012

Becoming Mexipino is a social-historical interpretation of two ethnic groups, one Mexican, the other Filipino, whose paths led both groups to San Diego, California. Rudy Guevarra traces the earliest interactions of both groups with Spanish colonialism to illustrate how these historical ties and cultural bonds laid the foundation for what would become close interethnic relationships and communities in twentieth-century San Diego as well as in other locales throughout California and the Pacific West Coast.

Through racially restrictive covenants and other forms of discrimination, both groups, regardless of their differences, were confined to segregated living spaces along with African Americans, other Asian groups, and a few European immigrant clusters. Within these urban multiracial spaces, Mexicans and Filipinos coalesced to build a world of their own through family and kin networks, shared cultural practices, social organizations, and music and other forms of entertainment. They occupied the same living spaces, attended the same Catholic churches, and worked together creating labor cultures that reinforced their ties, often fostering marriages. Mexipino children, living simultaneously in two cultures, have forged a new identity for themselves. Their lives are the lens through which these two communities are examined, revealing the ways in which Mexicans and Filipinos interacted over generations to produce this distinct and instructive multiethnic experience. Using archival sources, oral histories, newspapers, and personal collections and photographs, Guevarra defines the niche that this particular group carved out for itself.

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Chicano San Diego

Cultural Space and the Struggle for Justice

Richard Griswold del Castillo

University of Arizona Press, 2008

The Mexican and Chicana/o residents of San Diego have a long, complicated, and rich history that has been largely ignored. This collection of essays shows how the Spanish-speaking people of this border city have created their own cultural spaces. Sensitive to issues of gender—and paying special attention to political, economic, and cultural figures and events—the contributors explore what is unique about San Diego’s Mexican American history.

In chronologically ordered chapters, scholars discuss how Mexican and Chicana/o people have resisted and accommodated the increasingly Anglo-oriented culture of the region. The book’s early chapters recount the historical origins of San Diego and its development through the mid-nineteenth century, describe the “American colonization” that followed, and include examples of Latino resistance that span the twentieth century—from early workers’ strikes to the United Farm Workers movement of the 1960s. Later chapters trace the Chicana/o Movement in the community and in the arts; the struggle against the gentrification of the barrio; and the growth of community organizing (especially around immigrants’ rights) from the perspective of a community organizer.

To tell this sweeping story, the contributors use a variety of approaches. Testimonios retell individual lives, ethnographies relate the stories of communities, and historical narratives uncover what has previously been ignored or discounted. The result is a unique portrait of a marginalized population that has played an important but neglected role in the development of a major American border city.

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FAILURE OF PLANNING

PERMITTING SPRAWL IN SAN DIEGO SUBURBS 1

RICHARD HOGAN

The Ohio State University Press, 2003

Filipino American Lives

Yen Le Espiritu

Temple University Press, 1995

Filipino Americans are now the second largest group of Asian Americans as well as the second largest immigrant group in the United States. As reflected in this collection, their lives represent the diversity of the immigrant experience and their narratives are a way to understand ethnic identity and Filipino American history.

Men and women, old and young, middle and working class, first and second generation, all openly discuss their changing sense of identity, the effects of generational and cultural differences on their families, and the role of community involvement in their lives. Pre- and post-1965 immigrants share their experiences, from the working students who came before WWII, to the manongs in the field, to the stewards and officers in the U.S. Navy, to the "brain drain" professionals, to the Filipinos born and raised in the United States.

As Yen Le Espiritu writes in the Introduction, "each of the narratives reveals ways in which Filipino American identity has been and continues to be shaped by a colonial history and a white-dominated culture. It is through recognizing how profoundly race has affected their lives that Filipino Americans forge their ethnic identities—identities that challenge stereotypes and undermine practices of cultural domination."

In the series Asian American History and Culture, edited by Sucheng Chan, David Palumbo-Liu, Michael Omi, K. Scott Wong, and Linda Trinh Võ.

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Memories of a Hyphenated Man

Ramón Eduardo Ruiz Urueta

University of Arizona Press, 2003

Ramon Eduardo Ruiz would be the first to admit that he is not your typical Mexican American. But he has always known who he is.

Historian, author, and intellectual, Ruiz has established himself through such books as Triumphs and Tragedy: A History of the Mexican People and Cuba: The Making of a Revolution, and in 1998 he was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Clinton. Now he turns his pen on his own life to offer a personal look at what it really means to be American by birth but Mexican by culture.

Little has been written by or about persons of Mexican origin who have achieved the academic stature of Ruiz, and his memoir provides insights not found in the more common biographies of labor leaders and civil rights activists. His early life straddled the social worlds of his parent's Mexico and semi-rural America, where his father's success as an entrepreneur and property owner set his family's experiences apart from those of most other Mexican Americans at the time. His parents reinforced in their children an identity as mexicanos, and that connection with his ancestral roots was for Ruiz a lifejacket in the days of acute bigotry in America.

In making an early, self-conscious commitment to a life of the mind, Ruiz became aware of his unique nature, and while not immune to prejudice he was able to make a name for himself in several endeavors. As a student, he attended college when few Mexican Americans were given that opportunity, and he was one of the first of his generation to earn a Ph.D. As an Army Air Force officer during World War II, he served as a pilot in the Pacific theatre. And as an intellectual, he navigated the currents of the historical profession and charted new directions in Latin American research through his prolific writing.

Ruiz's career teaching took him to Mexico, Massachusetts, Texas, Oregon—often as the lone "Mexican professor," and ultimately back to his native California. While teaching at Smith, he exulted in being "free to interpret Spanish American life and culture to my heart's content," and at the University of California, San Diego, he saw the era of campus racial barrier give way to the birth of affirmative action. While at UCSD, he taught hundreds of Chicanos and trained one of the largest groups of Chicano Ph.D's.

Memories of a Hyphenated Man is the story of a unique individual who, while shaped by his upbringing and drawing on deep cultural roots, steadfastly followed his own compass in life. It tells of a singular man who beat the odds as it poignantly addresses the ambiguities associated with race, class, citizenship, and nationality for Mexicans and Mexican Americans.

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