In May 1957, Maria Jimenez arrived in Houston, having just left her native Coahuila in Mexico to reunite with her father. Her family settled in a small Magnolia Park home near Maria’s school, Franklin Elementary. There, as a first grader, she experienced her first dose of anti-Mexican sentiments. Within the halls, classrooms, and playgrounds, school […]
Both Houston and UH provide opportunities unavailable in other cities and universities. Much more diverse than Boston and surpassing Los Angeles and New York City, the Houston metropolitan area currently ranks number one as the most ethnically diverse region in the nation.
By Jesus Jesse Esparza In 1836 newcomers from the United States along with their Tejano (Texas Mexicans) allies, took up arms against the Mexican government and successfully seceded from that nation. Following the Battle of San Jacinto, which ended the Texas Revolution, Texians (Anglo Texans) ordered Mexican prisoners to clean the swampland on which Houston […]
The Chicano Movement of the 1960s and 1970s was essentially a grassroots community insurrection and rebellion against a stifling racism and oppression that strangled the Latino and Black communities of Houston and Texas in that time, and a determination to fight and defeat it. We sought to bring the Mexican American out of second-class citizenship […]
The impetus for the Mexican American Studies Program at the University of Houston came from the Mexican American Youth Organization (MAYO), a student group that began pressuring the University to establish Mexican American Studies in 1970. In the spring of 1971, a committee of faculty and MAYO representatives developed a proposal and the program became […]
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