Unmeltable Latinos: The American Museum of Immigration, the Smithsonian's 'A Nation of Nations' and Latin American Immigration

The field of Latina/o history is healthy and dynamic. Slowly, historians are transforming course offerings in universities and colleges across the country. Latina/o historians guide the field of US history as presidents of the... [ view full abstract ]

The field of Latina/o history is healthy and dynamic. Slowly, historians are transforming course offerings in universities and colleges across the country. Latina/o historians guide the field of US history as presidents of the OAH, the AHA, and the ASA. National associations select Latina/o history books for awards. Recently, President Obama recognized the pioneering Vicki Ruiz for her contributions to humanity. Still, the field has been slow to change popular memory. In 2015, republican presidential candidates call for the expansion of draconian immigration policies. Chanting anti-immigrant slogans and encouraging nativist hysteria only helps candidates rise in the polls. Today, publishing academic books is not enough. Latina/o scholars have long been pioneers in preserving marginalized and erased histories. They are now pushing the field by creating new pathways for bringing histories to the public. This panel will describe the urgent need for Latina/o scholars to engage the public humanities as a critical site for social change.

In preparation for the country’s bicentennial anniversary, the Smithsonian proposed to create an exhibit that reinterpreted American history as immigration history. At the same time that the National Park Service planned to open an immigration museum at the base of the Stature of Liberty. Both public history projects promised to be inclusive, but both failed to include the complex and nuanced histories of Latinos. Monica Pelayo, will chronicle the institution’s failures demonstrating that the institutions were more interested in interpreting immigration under a nationalist melting pot model that favored European immigration over all others.

2015 marked the 50th anniversary of the Delano Grape Strike, an event that led to the creation of the United Farm Workers union. Commemorations were held in California, none more contentious than the three days in the San Joaquin Valley in September. The celebration turned into an awkward debate about the role of Filipinos in the founding of the movement, the union’s position on immigration, and questions about Cesar Chavez’s decisions in the 1970s and 1980s. Matthew Garcia will explore the contesting narratives of the movement, specifically how the memories of the veterans are often in conflict with one another or are betrayed by archival evidence. Garcia suggests pathways navigating the net terrain opened up by this confrontation so as to preserve a productive conversation about arguably the most important movement and organization in Latina/o and US 20th Century history.

2015 also marked the centennial of a peak of anti-Mexican violence in the Texas-Mexico borderlands. From 1910 to 1920, vigilantes, U.S. soldiers, and Texas Rangers killed thousands of innocent Mexicans in one of the least remembered, and yet largest episodes of racial violence in American history. Monica Martinez will discuss the collaborative effort Refusing to Forget that will result in a multiyear series of historical marker unveilings and an exhibit “Life and Death on the Border, 1910 – 1920” at the Bullock Museum in January 2016. In addition, she will outline the challenges of reckoning with the past in a context of continued violent state policing practices on the Texas-Mexico border.