National Latin Heritage, Essay Example

By its very definition, a culture is born from the people of a shared ethnicity and/or territory, and usually over a lengthy passage of time. Internal issues arise within every culture, as class distinctions and economics compose gradations, and social and political confrontations arise. This is the standard and shifting evolution of a culture.

However, the culture transplanted to different soil faces vast and different challenges, and the Mexican-American population in the United States strikingly underscores this. This culture stands apart from other Latin societies so integrated, and in ways both advantageous to the Mexican-American and daunting in their power to hinder advancement. Social justice in the United States for the Mexican-American remains an unreliable and often grudgingly ceded right.

The obvious and seemingly great advantage for Mexican-Americans taking a place in the US is the adjacent border of the nations. This is deceptively influential in easing a cultural integration, for the incoming populace is not viewed as necessarily alien. They are and have been neighbors, and for hundreds of years, and the casual trade engaged in by both sides must breed familiarity. Simply put, Mexicans entering America have never done so as utter strangers.

At the same time, however, this proximity has had long-term effects in essentially blocking a socially correct integration of the Mexican community. As immigration issues have long been complicated, and often prohibitive, to the Mexican desiring citizenship here, illegal entry has been a controversy for decades. This has had the side effect of placing the Mexican in a disparaging light, in terms of achieving social justice on the most basic levels. A powerful element of mistrust lies within Americans encountering Mexicans in their towns and neighborhoods, assumptions of illegal entry are drawn, and a criminality automatically is associated. This imbues the average Mexican-American with a ‘second-class citizen’ status, usually whether that citizenship is legal or not.

The same border access contributes to a national chauvinism, in terms of other Americans feeling threatened. Currently wrestling with an economy as precarious as that of the Great Depression, Americans are typically reverting to a fiercely protective and insular view of what constitutes proper standing in the country, particularly as regards employment. In better times Mexican-Americans suffered only the abuse of being socially seen as a cheap and readily available work force, glad to do the jobs unfit for other citizens. However, in times when there is no job security for workers traditionally at the highest corporate levels, this ‘good-natured’ condescension vanishes. Everyone is a rival for the available job, American values of embracing the immigrant are set aside, and blatant racism is brought forth in this survivalist atmosphere.

Social justice encompasses both legal and societal treatment, and each influences the other. The Mexican in the United States today faces challenges greater than those of European immigrants in the 19^th century, for skepticism and fear greet him, as earlier arrivals were seized upon by a younger nation desperately in need of a strong boost to the population. What will eventually enable Mexican-Americans to succeed and achieve true social justice is a determination to both hold to their own culture while complying fully with United States expectations and laws. This is the strategy that worked for past generations of bulk immigrations. It has never been easy, fast or painless, but it takes hold through tenacity.  As Mexican-Americans adapt, so too will other Americans, and social justice become a matter of course.