Mexican Americans are Americans of full or partial Mexican heritage. In 2019, Mexican Americans comprised 11.3% of the US population and 61.5% of all Hispanic and Latino Americans. In 2019, 71% of Mexican Americans were born in the United States; they make up 53% of the total population of foreign-born Hispanic Americans and 25% of the total foreign-born population. The United States is home to the second-largest Mexican community in the world, behind only Mexico. Most Mexican Americans reside in the Southwest, with over 60% of Mexican Americans living in the states of California and Texas.
Mexican American history, or the history of American residents of Mexican descent, largely begins after the annexation of Northern Mexico in 1848, when the nearly 80,000 Mexican citizens of California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico became U.S. citizens. Large-scale migration increased the U.S.' Mexican population during the 1910s, as refugees fled the economic devastation and violence of Mexico's high-casualty revolution and civil war. Until the mid-20th century, most Mexican Americans lived within a few hundred miles of the border, although some resettled along rail lines from the Southwest into the Midwest.
Leo Ralph Chavez is an American anthropologist, author, and professor, best known for his work in international migration, particularly among Latin American immigrants.
Mixtec transnational migration is the phenomenon whereby Mixtec people have migrated between Mexico and the United States, for over three generations.
In 2006–2007, millions of people participated in protests over a proposed change to U.S. immigration policy. These large scale mobilizations are widely seen as a historic turn point in Latino politics, especially Latino immigrant civic participation and political influence, as noted in a range of scholarly publications in this field. The protests began in response to proposed legislation known as H.R. 4437, which would raise penalties for illegal immigration and classify illegal individuals and anyone who helped them enter or remain in the US as felons. As part of the wider immigration debate, most of the protests not only sought a rejection of this bill, but also a comprehensive reform of the country's immigration laws that included a path to citizenship for all illegal immigrants.
Foreign nationals (aliens) can violate US immigration laws by entering the United States unlawfully or lawfully entering but then remaining after the expiration of their visas, parole, TPS, etc. Illegal immigration has been a matter of intense debate in the United States since the 1980s.
The Health Initiative of the Americas is a Latino program focusing mainly on migrant and immigrant health issues. It is part of the School of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley (UCB).
The Migration and Health Research Center (MAHRC) is a collaborative effort between the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of California, Davis that promotes research and knowledge of migrant health issues.
Xóchitl is the Hispanicized version of "xōchitl," the Nahuatl word for flower is a given name that is somewhat common in Mexico and among Chicana/os for girls. The name has been a common Nahuatl name among Nahuas for hundreds of years. It was recorded on an early-16th century census of the Aztec people in the villages of Huitzillan and Quauchichinollan, where it was found to be the tenth most common name among boys. In a 1590 census, the boys name Xōchipepe was recorded, as well as the girls names of Ēlōxōchitl (magnolia), Miyāoaxōchitl, and Xīlōxōch (calliandra), which all draw from Xochitl.
Francisco Xavier Alarcón was a Chicano poet and educator. He was one of the few Chicano poets to have "gained recognition while writing mostly in Spanish" within the United States. His poems have been also translated into Irish and Swedish. He made many guest appearances at public schools so that he could help inspire and influence young people to write their own poetry especially because he felt that children are "natural poets."
Lourdes Gutiérrez Nájera is an American cultural anthropologist. She is a tenured Associate Professor at Fairhaven College of Interdisciplinary Studies teaching in the American Cultural Studies curriculum. Her prior experience includes her work as assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology at both Dartmouth College and Drake University. She is a member of the Latin American Studies Association, American Anthropological Association, and Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social. Her research is published in journals and books such as Beyond El Barrio: Everyday Life in Latina/o America. Other publications include reviews of scholarly work. Her academic accomplishments and research pertain to the field of Latinx national migration, indigenous communities in the United States and Mexico, and the U.S.-Mexican borderlands.
Rubén G. Rumbaut is a prominent Cuban-American sociologist and a leading expert on immigration and refugee resettlement in the United States. He is Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Irvine.
Indigenous Mexican Americans or Mexican American Indians are American citizens who are descended from the indigenous peoples of Mexico. Indigenous Mexican-Americans usually speak an Indigenous language as their first language and may not speak either Spanish or English. Indigenous Mexican-Americans may or may not identify as "Hispanic" or "Latino". While some identify as Mexican and Indigenous, others instead solely identify with their Indigenous nation/community/culture.
This is a Mexican American bibliography. This list consists of books, and journal articles, about Mexican Americans, Chicanos, and their history and culture. The list includes works of literature whose subject matter is significantly about Mexican Americans and the Chicano/a experience. This list does not include works by Mexican American writers which do not address the topic, such as science texts by Mexican American writers.
Adela de la Torre is an American professor and university administrator. She has served as the ninth president of San Diego State University in San Diego, California, since 2018. She is the first woman to serve in the role.
Currently, there are over 20 million immigrant women residing in the United States. The American Immigration Council states that the majority of these immigrant women come from Mexico, meaning that the main demographic of immigrant women in the U.S. are Latina. As the fastest growing minority group in America, Latinas are becoming primary influencers in education, economics and culture in American society and the consumer marketplace.
Hometown associations (HTAs), also known as hometown societies, are social alliances that are formed among immigrants from the same city or region of origin. Their purpose is to maintain connections with and provide mutual aid to immigrants from a shared place of origin. They may also aim to produce a new sense of transnational community and identity rooted in the migrants' country of origin, extending to the country of settlement. People from a variety of places have formed these associations in several countries, serving a range of purposes.
Seth M. Holmes is the Martin Sisters Endowed Chair Associate Professor of Medical Anthropology and Public Health at the University of California Berkeley. He also serves as founding co-chair of the Berkeley Center for Social Medicine, co-director of the MD/Ph.D. Track in Medical Anthropology coordinated between UC Berkeley and UCSF and is attending physician in the Department of Medicine in the Alameda County Medical Center. A cultural anthropologist and physician, Holmes focuses on social inequalities, immigration, ethnic hierarchies, health and health care. His work has provided a particularly strong ethnographic critique of behaviorism in medicine.
Patricia Zavella is an anthropologist and professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz in the Latin American and Latino Studies department. She has spent a career advancing Latina and Chicana feminism through her scholarship, teaching, and activism. She was president of the Association of Latina and Latino Anthropologists and has served on the executive board of the American Anthropological Association. In 2016, Zavella received the American Anthropological Association's award from the Committee on Gender Equity in Anthropology to recognize her career studying gender discrimination. The awards committee said Zavella’s career accomplishments advancing the status of women, and especially Latina and Chicana women have been exceptional. She has made critical contributions to understanding how gender, race, nation, and class intersect in specific contexts through her scholarship, teaching, advocacy, and mentorship. Zavella’s research focuses on migration, gender and health in Latina/o communities, Latino families in transition, feminist studies, and ethnographic research methods. She has worked on many collaborative projects, including an ongoing partnership with Xóchitl Castañeda where she wrote four articles some were in English and others in Spanish. The Society for the Anthropology of North America awarded Zavella the Distinguished Career Achievement in the Critical Study of North America Award in the year 2010. She has published many books including, most recently, "I'm Neither Here Nor There, Mexicans"Quotidian Struggles with Migration and Poverty, which focuses on working class Mexican Americans struggle for agency and identity in Santa Cruz County.
Alyshia Gálvez is a cultural and medical anthropologist. She is a professor of Latin American and Latino Studies at Lehman College of City University of New York (CUNY). Gálvez is also the chair of the Department of Latin American and Latino Studies at Lehman College. She is the author of three single-authored books. Her book Patient Citizens, Immigrant Mothers: Mexican Women, Public Prenatal Care, and the Birth-weight Paradox which won the 2012 ALLA Book Award by the Association of Latino and Latina Anthropologists (ALLA).
