Mexican American History Essay

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For many years, unjust treatment of Mexicans and Mexican Americans has occurred in the United States. Over the years, people like Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, and Emma Tenayuca have fought to improve civil rights and better treatment for farm workers. The textbook that I have been reading during the semester for my Chicano History class, Crucible of Struggle: A history of Mexican Americans from Colonial times to the Present Era, discusses some of the most important issues in history that Mexicans and Mexicans Americans have gone through. Some of these problems from the past are still present today. Not all of the racial problems were solved, and there is a lot to be done. I have analyzed two different articles about current historical events that have connections between what is happening today and what had happened in Mexican American History. The first article I read, titled Border Gridlock Alien Commuters Travel Hours to U.S. Farm Jobs, written by John Carlos Frey, published March 25th, 2014 by NBC News, talks about Norma Cortez, a farmworker who is one of tens of thousands of workers that works in the agricultural fields of Yuma, Arizona. Her job consists of packaging heads of lettuce for shipment across the United States for such brands as Dole Foods and Church Brothers. Norma commutes everyday from Mexicali, Mexico to Yuma, Arizona, which typically takes her seven hours. She has to wait a few hours to cross the border, and two more hours to get to her job in a bus. Everyday, more than 1,000 people line up to cross the border to work in the fields, and 8,000 to 10,000 join the line during the day (Frey, 2014). Norma travels everyday with his husband, Roberto, and another group of people in a bus. Both have a green card to... ... middle of paper ... ...ave not been changed. The repetition of racial problems still remains the same. A lot of the problems in the past can be seen in the present, but in a different perspective. We still see similar racial problems from the past that are still happening today. In the past, farmworkers were abused by getting paid a low wage, not having any health insurance or any other benefits, and working in dangerous conditions, something that we still see happening today. In the past, Mexicans and Mexican Americans were deported to their country, leaving their families behind and without having any places to live in their hometowns, something that we also still see happening today. There is a lot to be done; human rights need to be respect without any racial discrimination. Humans right for Mexican and Mexican American have been improved, but there it a lot to be done.

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