Monica Personal Reflective Essay on Mexican Americans

Mexican-American family of 4 kids, all still very young, they are the Gonzales’. The Gonzales’ had their couple of suitcases next to them while standing by a bus stop in the middle of the street in California. Where they waited to get picked up from a free transportation organization that head them to Mexico.

This family was being forced to head to Mexico. The father and the oldest son had barely been able to receive a job at the farm and now they were forced to leave the job and move to Mexico, even though they were residents of the United States. While being here in the United States they had to deal with the Great Depression, where everyone was going chaotic and started to blame immigrants, especially Mexicans, for the economic crisis in the decrease of labor. Their idea of resolving the problem was to take all Mexican’s even U.S citizens back to Mexico.

They also had to deal with a lot of discrimination because of race. Discrimination was in various acts such as new papers that portrayed Mexicans as disloyal foreigners, murders, and Zoot suiters. Young Mexican-American males were often killed in L.A. Discrimination by society also existed. Their three other young kids that weren’t working were discriminated from going to school because of their mulatto descent. So in order for them to get their education they had to attend a “Mexican” school. First they tried to enroll their children in a well academic school but the school now had new boundaries that based themselves on Spanish surnames and phenotypes. The youngest child, Alberto, noticed, “there was many signs in various places that read ‘No Mexicans Allowed’”.

This very humble family that had to go through these drastic times of the great depression, were treated absurd. Society does not value them and because of that they go to extremes to make them feel unappreciated. This family took what they could have, but there are many other Mexican-American families that fought for their rights but unfortunately for them it didn’t go so well. Since court was an injustice place for Mexicans-Americans also. Mexican-Americans now became separated with society. A lot of intimidation and discrimination was being forced upon them.