“You never forget the Bracero experience,” former bracero Aurelio Marin commented, perfectly summarizing the triumphs, tribulations, and turbulence of America’s highly-controversial and highly-impactful Mexican Farm Labor Program Program, commonly known as the Bracero Program, which started in 1942 to supply able-bodied Mexican laborers to U.S. industries suffering shortages at the outset of World War II. […]
Tag Archives | Tejanos
La Colonia Mexicana: Mexican Americans in Houston
By Houston History Magazine on December 2, 2011 in Arts & Culture, Communities, Houstonians, Politics, Race & Ethnicity, Religion
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 […]
Lydia Mendoza: Houstonian and First Woman of Tejano Music
Lydia Mendoza was born in Houston Heights on May 21, 1916, to parents who had fled the Mexican Revolution. Rising to fame in the 1930s in the Southwest United States, Mendoza became known as the Queen of Tejano and the first icon of Mexican American pop culture. Despite her popularity at the time, discrimination against […]