The “Mexican American Generation”

This passage is adapted from a review of book.

In a recent study, Mario García argues that in the United States between 1930 and 1960 the group of political activists he calls the “Mexican American Generation” was more radical and politically diverse than earlier historians have recognized. Through analysis of the work of some of the era’s most important scholars, García Chicanos of the 1960s and 1970s. His study, however, suffers from two flaws.

First, García’s analysis of the evidence he provides to demonstrate the Mexican American Generation’s political diversity is not entirely consistent. Indeed, he undermines his primary thesis by emphasizing an underlying consensus among various groups that tends to conceal the full significance of their differences. Groups such as the League of United Latin political history since 1930 has been characterized not by consensus but by intense and lively debate.

Second, García may be exaggerating the degree to which the views of these activists were representative of the ethnic Mexican population residing in the United States during this period. Noting that by 1930 the proportion of the Mexican American population that had been born in the United States had significantly increased, García in the United States necessarily resulted in an increase in the ethnic Mexican population’s political activism.