Of The Mexican Experience In Tomas Almaguer's 'Racial Fault Lines'?

“The conquest of Western America through the U.S.-Mexico War of 1846-48 forged a new pattern of racialized relations between conquerors, conquered, and the numerous immigrants that settled in the newly acquired territory” (1). In the novel, “Racial Fault Lines” by Tomas Almaguer I am going to identify the Mexican experience in nineteenth-century Anglo California and how it differed significantly from that of other racialized groups.

The conflict between European Americans and Mexicans was a struggle between Mexican rancheros and Anglo capitalists who bitterly contested control of the state’s best farm lands. Guided by Protestant values and a commitment to white supremacy, these free-labor advocates sought to rapidly undermine the society Mexicans had created in California (73). By the late 1860s the Mexican ranchero class was no longer the dominant economic force in the country. Once the Spanish race obtained the land by conquest, it secured it from all the people that showed little appreciation for its worth (90) (and soon constructed an anachronistic status designation were race became the key organizing principle)

Mexicans were Christian people and White immigrants were not as alarmed by their religious practices as they were by the repulsive practices on California Indians or “pagan idolaters”. Mexican Catholics were at least a God-fearing people and therefore seen as more closely approximating European-American notions of civility. Their culture was welcomed and adopted through the Catholics Church’s “Americanization” program which included an introduction to bilingual parochial schools, orphanages, hospitals, and newspaper publications