next on "american history tv," a discussion about the role, contributions, and voting trends of latino americans in u.s. political history. from purdue university, this is about an hour and a half. >> hi, i'll be guiding our conversation this afternoon. our panel today is entitled making the case for latino political history. a theme that is arguably central to the idea of remaking american political history. this is not to say that no one has ever thought of or written about latinos in politics and history. in fact, the conversation to come follows in the footsteps of many major works and scholars. but instead, this is about rethinking about what political historians pay attention to. in an earlier panel this

morning, an essential question was asked about the segregation of american political history in which there is a real barrier to what organizations and individuals are labeled as political or diplomatic actors. in a similar vein, this panel seeks to shift the conversation toward a decemb discourse that s latinos as central rather than peripheral to the development of modern american democracy. forged in the fire of 19th century warfare, boosted by constant mass migration throughout the 20th, latinos have been part and parcel of modern america's social fabric. with well over 150 years of history in the united states, latinos have made an indelible mark on u.s. politics. be it in the early legislative histories in the southwest territories, as founders of longstanding civic and political organizations, in the protest

movements in the 1960s, or '70s, or as voters, latinos have made u.s. politics their own. yet in reading the major synthetic works of american political history or examining a syllabus for a course on the subject, we are hard-pressed to find much representation of latino experiences and politics at all in mainstream political history. it seems as though this conference is as auspicious an occasion as any to make the case for latino political history. traditional political history narratives based on the presidential synthesis based on the earlier generation of historians have largely emphasized elite white men as the movers and shakers of american politics. newer works have complicated the predecessors and we have seen a more critical approach to race and formal politics. however, race and politics in our field is often shorthand for black politics. although much has been done to illustrate the essential importance of african-americans in political history, little has been done to move beyond the black/white racial binary and

incorporate latinos into the mainstream narrative of u.s. history including urban history, labor history, immigration and studies of the welfare state. in the context of city politics, for example, urban histories on cities such as chicago, new york, and los angeles are some of the best examples we have for any analysis of latino politics. what about the national? and more importantly, where is political history in this intellectual conversation? today's panel is a rallying call for political historians to rethink our intellectual engagement or lack thereof with what is now the largest community of color in the united states. in calling for a new research agenda of nuanced capascious and comprehensive latino political history, we must ask what research has been done, is currently on the table or is yet to be pursued. is there such a thing as latino political history? if so, what does it look like? what does mainstream political history stand to lose by not

including latino actors and institutions? how would incorporating latinos into the discourse of american political history change the field and the larger narrative? today we will discuss some of the most pressing issues concerning the role of latinos in the american political past. joining us today and making the case for latino political history are some of the leading voices in this nascent field. on my far right, an historian of latino history with a teaching focus on the american west, migration and immigration and comparative studies in race and ethnicity. she's the author of "the history of spanish in the united states," a political history of the spanish language in the united states from 1848 through world war ii, with some discussion of the following decades and present day concerns. "an american language" was published in 2018 by the university of california press. she is an associate professor in

the department of history at princeton. next, an historian of latinas and latinos in the united states, american border lands and comparative ethnic racial politics. his first book, "standing on common ground," was published in 2013 by harvard university press and focused on the arizona sonora border land since world war ii. he is now completing a book about hispanic conservatism to be published in 2020 which echo press, an imprint of harper collins. he is the director of northwestern university's latina and latino studies program. to my right, an historian and teacher whose interests center on the politics of ethnicity in the united states of america. in his forthcoming book, "the rise of the latino vote: a history," examines how elected officials and party insiders attempted to forge mexican-americans, puerto ricans, and cubans into a nationwide political constituency, a process that

proved pivotal to defining and institutionalizing latina and latino identity in the united states. it is due out in december of this year by harvard university press. very exciting. he achieved the role of assistant professor of history and coordinator of social sciences education at western carolina university. finally, i'm a ph.d. candidate in the department of history at princeton where i focus on 20th century u.s. politics. my current projects explore the history of the democratic national committee as well as latino political organization. i'm also a new host for the new books and latino studies podcast. i'm both the organizer and moderator of today's roundtable discussion. we'll try to cover as much ground as possible during our short time here and we'll save time at the end for questions from the audience. and with that said, we should get started in making the case for latino political history. and so i think the first question i would like to open up

to the panel is, what is latino political history in your view? and what is the most interesting issue in this field for you? issue in this field for you? and we can start with professor losano. >> thank you for organizing this and bringing us together on this important topic. i really see latino political history as a broad category that includes many different fields and ties together issues that have been and remain important to the national politics of the united states. so while many political histories stay more recent and focused on immigration, in my view latino political history begins in the 19th century and includes larger national debates over land ownership and land use in what is currently the u.s. southwest but other regions in florida or places along what became the midwest, even, southern midwest. i think it is crucial to tie what have largely been considered as regional or local stories into the larger formation of the nation. as i've shown in my book, which thank you for plugging, "an american language," the political history of mexican-americans includes how those who became u.s. citizens

following the u.s.-mexican war through the treaty of guadalupe participated in the u.s. political system and how they supported the implementation of the political system in california, colorado report and especially new mexico. by participating in politics in spanish, many also became devoted and patriotic u.s. citizens. that includes being recognized by and participating in both major political parties. there's a lot more work to be done about their political involvement and the ways that those political parties kind of recognized that they were there, right? they were the ones that were supporting their newspapers in spanish. they were the ones giving the money and funding to make sure they were involved in the political process. in the 20th century, latino politics has revolved largely around increasing latino political representation, immigration, civil rights. it's really only in the 20th century, i would argue, that latino political history is an appropriate name, right?

earlier histories of political participation and activism by individuals who may now call themselves latino were conducted almost entirely in isolation. so while ethnic mexicans, puerto ricans, and cubans may have been cognizant of one another, and even supportive of one another's efforts, there's little evidence to suggest they saw their struggles as one in the same. for me it's the potential misnomer of latino political history that yields one of the interesting historical questions or issues at this time. how does a latino political entity come to be? we've had a good start with books like "making hispanics," but there's much more to uncover about this process and about where we are today in the ways that we look at the latino population. so your work, i'll plug your future dissertation, hopefully will answer some of those questions. >> hello, everyone. i would largely echo a lot of

what rosina said. a couple of things in particular, a story of latino politics and political history would stretch back to the 19th century and include a whole range of issues like land ownership. so that to me suggests the necessity to have a kind of broad vision of what it means. and also the need to integrate latino and american political history. i think kind of including in a much larger story of american politics. i did think the title of the panel, "making a case for latino political history," is a little curious, just because my first response was like, why not? why wouldn't you have latino politics in american political history? and it was curious to me that, you know, there is a need to make a case for it or something.

and it made me wonder about the longer history of american political history, that has maybe excluded it, that would necessitate its inclusion or necessitate our panelists making a case for it. i do think there must have been some chasm in the beginning of american political history whenever we date that to, and latino history that necessitates us bringing those things together now. so they did evolve as two separate things, and now maybe there have been recent evolutions in american political history at large that make the field more hospitable to thinking about including things like latino history. the main two things i wanted to highlight is just the difference between latino political history and a history of latino politics. and i think, you know, latino political history, as i understand it, is in a large degree concerned with partisan political behavior and the involvement of latinos in the

democratic party or the republican party or a third party for latinos in texas in the 1970s, and then the history of latino politics would be a much longer struggle for inclusion in american political life. political life, i don't just mean in terms of the parties but recognition, civil rights, access to property and jobs and education. i would think of all of those things as part of the history of latino politics, a part of latino history and american :añ history for an a long time. i do think within american political history and the history of latinos in the united states, histories of the involvement of latinos in partisan politics over a long period of time is largely

lacking. i think that there are individual books, i think the bread and butter of the field of latino history as a field for a long time has been community studies. and i'm thinking of -- well, we'll talk about books in a minute but studies of texas and california. i think in those places, historians have looked at someone like edward roybal, who -- for whom it was important to register latino voters in los angeles in the mid-20th century. that's a story that gets told, but it's not part of a much longer history of the involvement of latinos in partisan politics. i think that that is one major direction that the field of latino history will move in soon, i hope. and as it does so, i think the story of latino political history and its involvement in american political history more broadly will come together more.

>> and i think a lot of what i'll say reinforces some of that too. so when think about about what most interests me in latino political history, i'm reminded of two things that the san antonio attorney and activist albert pena jr. said in 1963. this is as he was speaking to a convention of texas political activists. first, while insisting on his people's americanism, pena demanded that mexican-americans would at last proudly organize themselves as a distinct minority block. he said irish in boston and the negros could do it, so could the mexican-american people of the united states. second, pena said the price of their vote would be two things. recognition and representation. so for me, pena's remarks reveal that latino political history and latino politics developed simultaneously as a vast project of ethnic soul searching and communal identification,

processes that were for specific reasons unique to latinos as they unfolded, but also as a search for political inclusion that raised questions about patronage, jobs, access, status, that were timeless and broadly applicable. in the first matter, to pena's call to an unabashedly ethnic politics raised questions well beyond texas. latino history invites us to ask really big questions like how have latinos sought to harmonize their diverse local and state histories, national origins, and other self-understandings to create durable forms of ethnic and pan ethnic solidarity, and organizations capable of wielding power across the vast spans of the nation's latino political communities? or to put it another way, how have people attempted to mobilize individuals who claimed descent from 16th century spanish explorers to new mexico, puerto rican migrants to the south bronx in the 1950s, salvadorian refugees to washington, d.c. in the 1990s? and these questions are i think

linked to the second half of pena's remarks, that quest for recognition and representation, because latino politics emerged in an unequal dialogue with elites who most often thought of it as a need to fulfill a destiny of a group nationwide in spoke. but a question has to be requested about how these party elites, including u.s. presidents, used their ability to reward or withhold to influence the larger construction of the latino political community. and as that dance of validation between latinos seek to go reimagine their community to cope with economic, social, and political challenges and

pressures and the necessity of aligning that with an ever-changing set of candidates, ideologies, and programs that i find so important in latino political history. >> and so i think there are a lot of interesting themes that we've all heard from you three regarding pan ethnicity and the complications that brings, the earlier, 19th century origins of latinos in the united states and their political engagement from the get-go. i think all of us would like to hear about your specific interventions in this historical endeavor. could you tell us about your most recent work in the field of latino political history or the

history of latino politics and how it's going? we'll start with you. >> and as jaime mentioned, my first book is called "the rise of the latino vote: a history," due to be published in september. in it i examine how mexican-americans, puerto ricans and cubans came to be seen and to some degree see themselves as a single political constituency and in some cases, a people. and i explain that the latino vote was not simply the inevitable consequence of immigration, field, demographic growth, and nor was the emergence of an accepted pan ethnicity of american life, the product of a top-down imposition from washington bureaucrats who created an hispanic category. rather, the book shows that how over a couple of decades beginning in 1960, a network of political activists from grassroots activists up to u.s. presidents, really, spanish-speaking americans, as they first called them, to a single constituency. the book shows how the architects of latino politics devised new programs and platforms, built relationships with each other, and

elaborated -- again, elaborated ideas about what their people's common needs were that were at once kind of reflective of conditions on the ground but also that constituted new senses of group identity. i chose how they formed new organizations and devised new ways of distributing power among their populations that were really quite unequal as to size. and it shows how they product ively mined the ambiguity in whether they were a coalition building effort or whether they were seeking to transcend their national origins and seeking to create a new community. it was this relentless and creative action and thorough repudiation of color-blindness on the part of self described latino democrats and hispanic republicans alike that drew both their parties, liberals and conservatives, into this consensus that spanish-speaking americans, later hispanics,

later latinos, constituted a statistical population and electoral bloc. in so doing, these activists and their elite patrons transcended the nation's black and white binary and pushed the united states firmly into the age of multicultural politics. in the show i show even as they constructed the latino vote, summoning it into existence, a national political community and identity, the process also worked to undermine the coherence and stability of that latino political identity. as i indicated earlier, the makers of the latino vote were dependent on national party elites to support this project but powerful interests often sought more to control rather than to empower the constituency. no surprise there, right? party leaders dutifully spoke of a hispanic political unification but when it came down to it, they were far more willing to divide or rank or exclude latino

constituencies from one another as they were to promote their solidarity. and the shifting of ideological orientations and electoral strategies of party elites often exposed or exacerbated hierarchies latent in the embryonic latino community. while there was a burgeoning latino vote accepted as fact, independent latino power was a much more elusive thing. >> we went this way with the first question, so we can go this way now. so i'm finishing a book right now about the history of hispanics in the republican party and republican hispanics.

and since about the 1960s, i guess it's first important to say that, as ben and i are both calling these voters hispanics because at least in my case for sure, this is what republicans call themselves for all kinds of reasons that we can get into, but i know that that's not exactly the -- you know, the current fashion within academia, to call them hispanics. i wanted to say at least why i'm doing that. so for me, the main questions were, you know, why, why do hispanics vote for republicans. as i've explained my project, this is the first question i'm always asked, why, because it is a bit of a curiosity to many people. and so i've wanted to explain why, and whenever that question is asked of me, it's always with a very surprised tone that donald trump could have won as much as 30% of hispanic votes, or in the 2018 midterms, ted cruz or rick scott or even ron desantis in florida could have won 40% or upwards of the hispanic vote.

it's always expressed as a surprise followed by some attempt to maybe undercut those numbers by calling into question the differences between the exit polling versus what might be a more accurate polling of latino communities. so it's always expressed as a surprise. and i think part of my answer is that it shouldn't be a surprise, because if you look at the republican party and hispanic voters over the past 50 or 60 years, especially since the real action of richard nixon in 1972, the percentage of hispanics that have voted for the republican party has been around a third, consistently. so over a 50-year period, the republican party has built an hispanic voting base of about a third of hispanic voters. that fluctuates a little bit, but not a lot.

and if you compare that with african-american voters at the same time period, the -- if you, you know, graph these things, they're going in exact opposite directions. at the same time that the african-american support for the republican party plummets and has consistently remained single digits or low double digits for the past 50 years, hispanics have shot upward. and there's a relationship between those two facts, i think. so i've wanted to explain the long development of the hispanic base, republican base. i also wanted to kind of correct what i have come to see as two misunderstandings about republican hispanics. the first is that their conservatism must be motivated by their catholicism and traditional family values, their views of abortion and marriage, for example. i'm not denying that that's part of it. but i think if we kind of hang

all of hispanic conservatism on that, we're missing a whole bunch. and catholicism is more complicated than just conservatism. there's kind of social justice motivated branch of catholicism, thinking just of the liberation theologists, for example. catholicism is trickier than just conservatism. the other thing is, well, they must be cubans, they must be cuban exiles. that also lets us off the hook a lot, it really just allows us to dismiss -- well, we can't dismiss florida because it's always a critical swing state, and we can't dismiss it. but it allows us to ignore lots of other strains of hispanic conservatism that are just as important. and i think i knew this story from the fact that it was more complicated than just

catholicism among cubans from my grandpa, who is a mix of panamanian, colombian, and filipino. and, you know, lives in tucson, arizona, which is a predominantly mexican-american place. and he served in the military and became a citizen because of his service in the military. and voted for reagan for the first time because he was a miner, silver miner in tucson, arizona, or outside of tucson, arizona when reagan was running in 1980 and was promising to put more money back in his paycheck, so my grandfather voted for a republican for the first time in 1980. and he kind of defied at least those two ideas. he's not cuban, he's catholic but never observes his faith, you know, i don't know when the last time he went to church was. so i knew from my grandpa at least that there were other kinds of hispanic conservatives beyond cubans or catholics. when writing my first book, i

wrote about a department store owner and wrote a chapter about him. he was staunchly catholic for sure. he checked that box, but he wasn't cuban. his kind of political upbringing was more about arizona's territorial politics, early statehood politics, he was friends with barry goldwater, he was a businessman. he didn't have a union in his store because he thought all his employees were so happy that they didn't need a union. he hated cesar chavez because he thought he was a communist and a rabble rouser. these two individuals led me down the path of wondering what the wider world of hispanic republican partisan identity is like. those two things, wanting to answer the question of why and, you know, i think historicizing that question and looking at how political identity has developed over a long period of time is

important because it will help us stop scratching our heads and grasping in the dark for all of these reasons that hispanics would vote for a republican. and then i think wanting to complicate these two main ideas about cuban nationality and catholicism as being the two things that republican identity among hispanics is all about. those were the things that kind of led me down this path. >> well, i'm at the beginning of my second book project, and it comes partly out of my first book project but also out of a larger sense, when i teach comparative race and ethnicity to graduate students, there's a lot of discussion about native americans in the 19th century border lands and what it's like for them. and then they kind of disappear in a lot of the 20th century literature, especially in a comparative sense. and so part of my desire with this book is to trace that longer history, but to do it

also by looking at it in terms of the ways that the federal government and state governments had jurisdiction over those individuals who were either native american or who were mexican-american, because they have very different timetables in terms of citizenship, they have different relationships to both the federal government and the state government. that's in a nutshell where i'm going with my second project. if people have more questions, i can answer it. i'm currently finishing an article i can talk a little bit more about, that examines the language minority extensions to the voting rights act in 1975. and it uses a broad range of documents that include congressional records, the papers of mexican-american legal defense and education fund as well as the puerto rican prldf and commission on civil rights. aside from offering a comparative political history of mexican-american and puerto rican lobbying strategies in front of congress, this research uncovers the ways that congress was working through the categories of latinos into the political life of the u.s.

i think ben and i will have some things to talk about, especially because i'm more of a 19th century historian, but my language interest in my first book led me here and then i kind of got hooked. 20th century historians, in the late 20th century, it's just a deluge of documents. so i'm enjoying it but it's very different for me. congress is really looking to extend language rights in the 1970s, mid-1970s, to increase voting participation of latino citizens, at the same time that more restrictive immigration legislation against mexican-americans were being pushed through congress and being encouraged. while immigration was often dominating the media and that kind of continues today, the voting rights act extension offers evidence that the federal government also saw latinos as citizens too and were supportive of extending their voting rights and over civil rights as well.

by looking into that and also there's a separate case that's kind of happening at the same time, it doesn't come into play completely until 1978 but it's starting to be discussed in 1975, which is to allow interpreters into bilingual courtrooms, to allow courtrooms to become bilingual in having interprets in there as well, to figure out what would allow for language minorities participation which includes american indians. they separate alaska natives so those two are separate, and asian-american, a broad category for language, right, as well as initially latinos, specifically meaning mexican-american and puerto rican. >> i'll plug my work since rosina mentioned it earlier. >> do it. >> my current dissertation is about the institutional history of the dnc. and unlike the representation of african-americans in the national democratic party, it's not until the 1970s where you even have conversations within the organization to think about

hiring some sort of latino outreach representative. so it's shocking to think it wasn't until the late 1970s where you have conversations about national democratic outreach to latinos. if we look at these kind of national institutions or party organizations, it's like jerry said earlier, there is serious lack in the scholarship, even the basic facts of presidential elections and latinos. and before then, of course -- and this will be my segue into the next question, before the 1970s, of course, the engagement between the dnc or presidential elections was very touch and go, and interpersonal politics, and you see that in garcia's "viva kennedy," his history of the viva kennedy clubs that sprouted

up mostly in texas but in other places like chicago and california, where you have independent-led and quasi formal relationships with the national party, fundraising for jfk. so there is some work. and i think that influences my perspective on things in seeing an evolution of latinos and the national democratic party. and so that leads me to my next question. what are some of the key texts that have informed your approach to the history of latinos in u.s. politics? and thinking about that, maybe jerry can start, this is a way we can discuss how we as professional historians can diversify our syllabi.

>> i have lots of different answers to this. i mean, in one way, every book written in the field is an important touchstone for me, because i think all of them in one way or another pick up on parts of this story. but at the same time, nothing picks up on -- i wouldn't point to any single thing as a political history of latinos writ large. but, you know, i think of the 1987 book, "anglos and mexicans in the making of texas," there's politics beyond that. from the texas revolution to early efforts by the democratic party or democratic party machine bosses in texas trying to recruit or buy in many cases the votes of mexican workers. so there are moments of politics. i think also of -- for me, i conservatism or -- although it's

not expressed in this way david gutierrez's book "walls and mirrors," the kind of political divides between mexican immigrants -- well, basically it's about mexican-americans' views of mexican immigration. that's politics but he doesn't kind of frame it as political history. the groups that's mostly writing about are groups like lulac, the league of united latin american citizens, that kind of mutual aid society, early civil rights organization founded in corpus christi in 1929. so that's politics. but none of these books talk about their actors in political terms as members of the republican party or the democratic party. they're engaged in politics, but they're -- you know, lulac is a good example. i don't know that there has been an historian that has written about the political history of lulac. lulac has been engaged in all

kind of things, but among lulac's leadership, some are republicans, some are democrats. they're often taken by historians to be a kind of conservative democratic organization where, you know, they -- at least it was an early requirement that all of their, you know, members speak english, that they be american citizens, that they pledge allegiance to the flag. so lulac is a good example of a group whose identity in political terms has been debated as, well, their politics are conservative or they're moderate democrats. but we don't know about their -- you know the political leanings of their individual members. so i look at, you know, all of the books out there about lulac as examples of how lots of histories of latino politics have been written but not of latino political history.

for me specifically, when it comes to republican hispanics, there are some -- i don't know that i could point really to a scholarly text until the one that's coming out in september written by ben that deals with republican hispanics a lot. but there are a lot of republican hispanics who have written memoirs that are really interesting, like linda chavez, who was in the reagan administration, she was nominated to be george w. bush's i think labor secretary, but had to withdraw her nomination when it was discovered that she had employed an undocumented immigrant. so she wrote really two kind of memoirs, one is called "out of the barrio" in 1991, that's a really good place to look for, you know, conservative latino positions on language issues, on affirmative action, primarily that's kind of her hobby horse, i would say. and then she wrote a second

memoire after she had to withdraw her nomination called "an unlikely conservative or how i became the most hated hispanic in america." that's good. a guy, a kind of ad man named lionel sosa who kind of organized reagan's media campaign for hispanics wrote a book called "the americano dream." the chairman of the cabinet committee on opportunities for spanish speaking people in the nixon administration, henry ramirez, wrote a fascinating memoir of his time in the white house called "a chicano in the white house." i spent some time in my first remarks talking about how i'm using the term "hispanic" and i find it fascinating that he chose to call his book "a chicano in the white house," he had interesting ideas about identity politics. if you wanted to assign something about conservatism among hispanics, i would look at some of those memoirs rather

than a scholarly text. >> so i've been influenced a lot about the coalition literature, so i'm thinking about "blue texas," sonia lee's work on puerto ricans and african-americans in new york city. a handful of essays by george j. sanchez about how politics worked in los angeles. and these works were influential to me for two reasons. they introduced us to a world of urban multiracial organizing in post-war america that's fascinating in its own right. it's particularly so because these unique communities were the ones that brought forth the people who would become the leaders of latino politics in the united states, people like henry gonzalez in san antonio. these folks are respectively the first mexican-american elected to the congress from california in the 20th century, texas, the

first puerto rican congressman ever. what's really interesting about these folks is that they're elevated to positions of prominence by multiracial coalitions operating locally. but when viewed from the national level, they become the basis of a latino block, first beginning to crystallize in viva kennedy. so appreciating the deeply embedded coalitional experiences and traditions of these latino political leaders does other work. it suggests to us the importance of coalition as a concept employed by latinos in their dealings with each other. and in the making of latino politics during the '70s and beyond. it's often assumed and latino leaders bore some responsibility here that the emergence of latinos as a national constituency was a reflection of these groups, mexico-americans, puerto ricans, and cubans, recognizing their natural and preexisting ties. but what was more natural, blacks and puerto ricans living

in harlem organizing together, or puerto ricans in harlem organizing and finding allies in rural mexican-americans. moderates and liberals envision coalition as a search for common issues they could work on. bilingual education, equal action towards the war on poverty. leftists had a different perspective, they often viewed it as the basis of achievement of separate objectives such as puerto rican independence. this is an approach that the great radical labor organizer valentin, called together but not scrambled. latino coalitions varied as to structure. sometimes they were sort of one

to one, that is, mexican-americans are a group and puerto ricans are a group and so each gets one vote. sometimes coalitions distributed power more in reflection of their population numbers. and yet even as latinos are really pursuing i think what are coalitions among each other, they're still working on alliances with african-americans, indigenous and poor whites. i think this double coalition is an exciting proposition to interrogate in that literature that looks at the '40s, the '50s, and the '60s, looking at the foundations of what are the next steps. >> great. well i echo that. you guys took a lot of mine, so that's good. i think that another place to look really is within labor histories themselves and to remember that immigrants are not coming without a political history of their own, right? so they're active, they're becoming activists in their home countries.

they're bringing that activism into the united states. so there's numerous books that show this. one, and i'm blanking on his name right now but it's a biography, kind of all the people that surround someone who is not only talking about revolution in mexico but he and the others are writing a radical newspaper and making pointed critiques of what's happening in texas, what's happening to workers all throughout the united states as well. deborah webber is another whose work shows similar, that individuals are coming and you see them holding up signs during the great depression, knowing the whole alphabet soup we try to get our students to learn, those spanish-speaking immigrants knew what they meant. they also were pushing for those rights and to be included in those federal resources. labor rights or civil rights by vargas is another example of this sweeping 100-year history that shows the political

activism of both immigrants and mexican-americans in the labor sector and the ways that unions organizing kind of fed their politicization as well. you guys mentioned "blue texas." another new book that's important is "city of inmates," kelly hernandez's work that kind of -- it doesn't kind of. it does look into the incarceration and the creation of an incarceral state. it has the origins of immigrant attention that has been wonderful for my students. they enjoyed reading that particular chapter and getting a sense what have it looked like and why individuals were being held near los angeles. another book that is probably a little bit too long to assign to classes but a great place to kind of give a sense of just how long the history is in new mexico in particular in the

political parties is "politica" it's about an 800-page book that only covers the 19th century, the mid- to late 19th century, but talks about how they created both the democratic and republican parties, the ways they operated in different elections. it has chapters, sometimes three chapters on the same election, you can see the ways in which they're modeling that u.s. government system, largely in spanish but also just that political -- there's a reason that new mexico is an outlier, right? there's a reason they continue to have governors and senators who have spanish surnames and who are of mexican-american origin. another one that's kind of more in the legal field is "manifest destinies." she does write in a historic way. my students have found it incredibly useful in terms of what it means to have double colonization, to have mexican-americans be citizens. you can see her evinfluence in

second group project. you can see the influence, over a group they had already colonized. the native americans are colonized by mexican-americans who are then colonized by the u.s. >> i think the book you were mentioning about the return of comrade -- >> yes. >> it's claudio llamas. >> yes. >> i want to go back to something jerry brought up, which is the contentious nature of naming protocols and self-identity. what is the politics of names and what latinos call themselves or maybe they weren't even -- didn't even consider themselves latinos. you mentioned "a chicano in the white house." do you have a sense of the evolution of self-identification in politics? i think this brings up one of the biggest conflicts in writing latino political history which is, does that concept of latino

politics even make sense. if it's how benjamin was just talking about, you have this oftentimes balkanized set of communities where it's puerto ricans and mexicans. it's very separate groups that are, you know, united conveniently in coalitions, but maybe not as unified as we may assume as historians or in public memory. >> do you mind if i start on this? even though he asked you. >> me? >> yes. >> oh, it's open. >> because i want to go back to the 19th century, and so i feel like being an historian, i would like to go first. so this is something that's not new. in the 19th century, you would see it within each of the communities that were in what became the u.s. southwest. so in texas, they were tejanos, in new mexico they were nuevo

americanos. in california they were califonios. if they talking about themselves as a larger group, they were the whole spanish speaking americas. they weren't part of the united states at that point. so that's one of the things that

that something that undergrads pushing for the name, change not that i am opposed to it as all, it's part of my open-mindedness, you can call it whatever you want, they would be mad at me if i just dismissed, it cast aside the importance of that decision so easily right now. but as a historian, undergrads don't necessarily know this, or who haven't studied it as much as we, have these kinds of name changes happen all of the time. i don't want to get hung up on any particular name. i mean, some groups choose mexican, part of that has to do with where they are located. if they are in south california or the southwest maybe they

will go with the fund, a group that modeled itself on model death, and the and double acp, they chose the puerto rican defends and fun because that's where they are located. mix in introduced the term hispanic on the census, the term on the census in 1930 was mexican. that was the first time mexican it was designated as a separate category of american, i guess. spanish speaking was an important term in the sixties. latin. there are so many names, they have some kind of meaning, and the meaning can have political violence is but i also don't

know that any one of these names is tied closely or exclusively with a particular partisan identity. i don't know. chicago yes is thought of a more activist identity from the sixties and seventies, so i am not sure that it is tied, any of the names are tied closely to the identity. i give you a whole bunch of nonsense, but i don't place a whole bunch of emphasis on the different names. >> it's just always shifting. it's just always shifting. i think in the early part of the sixties, naming is one of the stumbling blocks for organizations from different people in the southwest that are primarily composed of mexicans getting together. there's a reason why they

called the kennedy eight kennedy because they had john kennedy and could not come up with a name. that was a valuable thing, and when the kennedy rain and did they thought who are weak? mexican american activists really flattered because of all the regional names that were explained to you, they had at least wanted some political orientation, or socialization, so mexican americans probably adapted that name in california, but that was too much for a lot of texan activists. so in some sense, at certain times, names were a way of not talking about actual real political differences and technical differences and ideas about aggressiveness, and how ethnic to be. i think that the names also speak to who is try to be the leader of this vast population.

the mexican political association, the people who established it in california, the head of the founding convention had to explain to the many californians who are politically active white their name would not be reflected in this organization. and that it was so vital for them to overcome the stigmatization attached to the idea of mexican. so the names at different times may be very important in establishing something, but overtime, it becomes a convergence. bureaucratic names, and political names start to kind of a line. please go ahead. go ahead. so jerry mentioned spanish speaking is a bureaucratic, name that was thought to be

very inclusive and avoided a lot of the pitfalls of nationality, but of course it raised the question of if you are mexican widow speak spanish are you still spanish speaking? statisticians try to implement objective methods, you belong to this, group that was a proxy for latino ethnicity. there is a whole set of competing terms operating until at least the mid seventies, and there moves to be a standardization around with tina slash's panic. your, people the once you're studying in your current book, your people. it's intended to reject people generally, which is interesting because in 1964 barry goldwater

had a latino supportive campaign. so latino was a conservative moderate different, points and then became the left liberal symbol. so that's an interesting example. >> the only things that i were going to add was that, i was asked a question about the challenge this naming issue kind of poses perhaps to write latino political history, and two other things. first, i think there is a difference between explaining these 90 days as a historian, and in having that as an identity. i have friends who say, i am a chicano with an x. that means that they spell china with a ex instead of a sea h., that is a indication of

the political meanings. i think that there is a difference between inhabiting the identity and try to explain as a historian. there are a lot of complications to it. i think that is maybe why i don't hang too much meaning on any one of the terms, but try to see them holistically. maybe i'm just confused about my own ethnic or political identity. i'm half white, half mexican. my uncle called me green been well growing up. nice. maybe i'm wrestling with these things on my own, but the other thing that i want to say about them is that i don't think that in any way these kinds of needing considerations are unique to latinos and hispanics. there is black, there is need, go there are different south identifications that black

people have. used there is also collocation and wait which present their own challenges when writing about them. so i do think this question of naming and identity is often posed as one of the challenges to writing latino political history, or the political forestry of hispanics. a question i often asked is, is there such a thing as the latino at hispanic vote? i am not sure that there is a thing called the latino vote or hispanic vote. there are millions of voters and whoever you want to call them, there are millions of them who do vote and to the extent that they do their political behavior is worth explaining, regardless of what you call them. so i don't, it's often post as a challenge to your product. part of me wants to answer that

question by saying well okay where does that get us? if that is where you want to begin end and the conversation that does not help us to understand really. >> i'm looking at the clock. we have so much to talk about. i want to keep open the question about what challenges face the latino community. but i also want to expand to a different question which is what we stand to lose if mainstream political history, by ignoring or not paying attention to the latino voice in the situations? what is at stake here? >> i feel like i've been talking about a lot but i will try to be very quickly. fundamentally, you run the risk of misunderstanding electoral outcomes if you ignore latino politics, all point to four particular elections, the 1917

presidential election, the 1916 presidential election, the 2000, the 2012 presidential election. the 1966 presidential election many analysts after the fact but a lot of weight on texas, which carter won by not many votes. it was in the ten thousands. can't remember how much. the argument afterwards, if ford had even won one out of ten, if one out of ten mexican americans had shifted their vote from carter to forward ford would have lot, won the election. why did he lose? maybe he choked on something. mexican americans to like them after that. maybe it's because reagan was much more popular. certainly the mexican american vote in texas is part of the

story of how texas voted in 1976. in 1996 this was a couple of years after proposition one 87. in the same year as clinton's, yes clinton signed the illegal immigration reform and act, but the bill itself was largely seen as the product of republican house, and latinos, robert ended up winning only 90% of the hispanic vote, which is the lowest of any republican candidate, since ford, and ford also had other things going on with watergate, the aftermath of that etc. 2000, you could look at the gonzales case, it's not all of what was going on in, florida a famous kind of airport case, and i can't remember what it is called.

we will stick with that. it's not the whole story but it's part of the story. in 2012, broke about what was seen to be elected largely because of hispanic americans in swing states. the point is i wouldn't say that latino's are everything. in order to understand american politics over the past 50 years you have to look centrally at latinos, but it is an important part of the story, i don't know why if you're a political story and you wouldn't want to include that part of the story, which helps to explain even electoral politics. i'm sure that there are many other reasons as well. >> i'm thinking political latinos in political history takes as think of political time. to a degree it supports the practice of paying attention to presidential administrations.

presidential campaign is the central ritual. it is the moment where there is an effort of latino organizations, advertisers, and campaigns to southern billeting a vote and point in some direction to the latino communities. and then in the wake is the reckoning, it's whether or not the administration that is elected will recognize latinos importance with the cabinet and supreme court appointment and a commitment to resolving urgent latino issues. at the same time political history among the latino community is pushed by political history. it helps us to re-period eyes a little bit in 20th century u.s. politics. i found, and i think it allows us to see important continue it is between the heyday of the

new deal order and the more conservative, and multicultural pair that follows. the liberal architects of latino politics came in the age of the depression in the shadow of the new deal. it is true but in the 1970s they were practicing the identity politics with a hispanic caucus demanding forms of permanent recognition of their people. but they did that just as much to preserve and update the new deals class based politics and university universalism. it synthesized the democratic's parties commitment to economic security with a new emphasis on cultural security. not replacing one with the other. a closer look reveals that latino political leaders talked about language, culture, and the uniqueness of the latino family life as a means to an end. the and was often pursuing

expanded welfare state, things like national health care insurance and full employment policies. so political history points in the persistence of liberal policy making in more liberal and ethnic forms. >> agree with everything that has been said. i think i also want to start with, we had a great conversation in the last panel about reaching out to the public and what does that mean. reaching your students in a different way because they in many ways are the public. so what i have noticed when i have been presenting about my book to different audiences is that in variable someone will come up at the end and say i did not realize that there were people speaking spanish that were involved in politics in the 18 forties. i didn't realize that i had it longer history in the country, i keep hearing that we are new

here. it is one way to combat that kind of view that, the perpetual foreigners of mexican americans. i would argue that mexicans and native americans, the fact they are still here. i think that is a good reason to include the comparative politics, and the multi generational mexicans. i think it's a good reason to think about foreign policy and the way things have been uprooting the way they have had. with funding going there, kind of influencing the politics in those regions, and that can also help to understand that those individuals that are here, and the sort of politics they bring and the way that they view the united states itself. >> i think i would add that by simply talking about latinos as

a side note or even a footnote, we make a lot of assumptions about large political blocks. the assumption is there is a block that is natural or preexist. and i think benz and jerry's work, >> talk about your article. >> i'm working on a piece about the election in chicago, there is this wonderful, beautiful narrative that dominates, which is black people registered in record numbers, voted more than ever for this rainbow coalition or mexican americans and puerto ricans also join forces to support chicago's hispanics. deeper dives into latino politics shows that more often

than not division and tensions dominate the political conversation in a lot of ways. that is my personal take and cynical view of latino politics. but when we do not do the deep dive into the processing, we lose the ways in which latinos are actually more complicated and divided then we can see. and so, that is what i'm working on and showing that it wasn't as beautiful coalition as thought. and in general, i think we look at presidential elections today, 20, 30% is a lot, whereas over 90% of african americans vote together. so there is a lot more there to impact, it's not a new development, it is rooted in a history of fraught coalitions,

that aren't just inter ethnic but intra ethnic. in fact i think that we can continue to talk and open it up to questions from the audience. we have two in the back. >> here in the midwest, we talking about latino and presidential politics, and how people think about what is typically american, i'm curious about maybe your own students who have connected these history conferences thanking i am, i wonder if you talk about regionalism and how it plays as well into this discussion. i've had immense conversations about that with some students it's very interesting. >> it's a long history in the

midwest. so the first book that i can think of is the famous book on michigan. whenever i see, there is a recent book on wisconsin with the earliest settlers coming in at the turn of the century. there has been a lot of activism in the farm, emily's book and dissertation really looks into that history. there are a lot of parallels going on with the southwest. i think it's a very important place for the studies to be. also, so the students who do come, i have a feud from oklahoma, people don't realize that we live in oklahoma, she was fourth generation. that is another component of it. the hard part for the politics of that is that they are usually a smaller population, right. so having that political update to have that political discussion, it will usually

come around coalitions, rather than a latino block whether or not that exist as we talked about. >> i am thinking about what i would add to, that i would definitely add something. i think that your last observation about numbers and stuff, i think it really depends on where you. look in chicago, whether there has been a longer tradition, at this little village has a lot of, mexicans this area has a densely populated area, a lot of coalitions. it is there. the kind of political influence, i'm also thinking of mark rodriguez his book about the connections between texans and

farmers in wisconsin, and their political action and labor organizing. wisconsin influencing labor politics both in wisconsin, and texas. there are examples. i think if this was a midwestern history conference, maybe in some ways it is. maybe there are some wind western politics questions, you would be having the same questions, historians in the latino community have been asking for the inclusion of latino's in the history. i don't know how new that argument is in the sense that by this point historians have been doing that for maybe 20 years. , if you wanted a bibliography i'm pretty sure we could have given you a long list. >> i have the latino history

reader. >> in the back first. >> for someone who writes about a natural event in political history, what groups are appropriate to compare latinos with if you're talking about politics? people of color, so i was talking to a distinguished political scientist at stanford. in all of their ways of thinking, i asked are they the new italian americans? this particular distinguished scientist is of italian ancestry and he said they absolutely are. that struck, me as someone who teaches this, those are very different comparisons, they are like african americans, they are like african americans. they were a group that was thought of not quite white, but

now is the fact of very much quite. that would lead into another direction and would help to explain the area that the chairman studies. is that a fruitful comparison? should mexicans be compared to italian americans more often than they are in the literature on the subject, with regards to voting and political ability? they absolutely are the new italian americans. is there a fruitful way of thinking about latinos politically? >> can i try to answer that? >> i am genuinely interested in where you would come out on this. >> i would say that one of the great things about the latino studies and latino history is that in defining the constituency, we can draw from a lot of other disciplines such as sociology, and political

science. i think he should have given you a source for that statement. i would make a comparison with african americans, because that follows the trend of actual political science that focuses on latinos. in african american politics, it is michael dawson's concept of faith. african americans see their life chances as a very integral to the black chances of other people in their race. so the sense that there is this political unity, because what happens to my neighbor or make hasn't can happen to me. more recent work by political scientist at ucla argues that this could although, also apply to italian politics. increasingly people with the same pant ethnic label see an attack on one community as an

attack on us. it's not statistically as strong, but he makes the argument that latino's as a collective, diverse, multi racial, and pan ethnic group see themselves more connected with each other. so i think that would be the political science answer bet he should have said. >> i'm not sure that i agree with that. i haven't read that, but i should. and i will. my quick answer is that i think you can compare latinos to any group you want to compare them to. you would just get the basis for comparing them would differ depending on the group you're comparing them to end the time period. i think just to take a couple of quick examples, i think when latinos are compared with italian americans, it's often a conversation about rates of assimilation and upward mobility of second or third

generation. will mexicans be the next times in terms of assimilation? whatever. if the answer is yes it's usually a argument against political scientists like samuel huntington who says we segregate ourselves in language and we don't integrate, we stay among our own. i think that is the italian american comparison. if you want to compare to african americans you would maybe look at someone like sean bergh, a afro descended puerto rican who moved to new york in the late 20th century, what's he moved to new york he started to identify as a african american and started the greatest collection of african american history and culture. so, you would also look there,

latino self identification around issues of whiteness, and like cubans in florida in the late 19th century who distanced themselves from their because florida is a drum crow state. you can compare them to anyone and everything. i think the issues will change. that's the case for any voting bloc. >> here it is important to be attentive to region and national origin. in the thinking of, at least with respect to the political position of latinos, in save the late sixties and seventies, it really mattered where we were talking about, if you are talking about mexican americans in the southwest, sought after constituency for a law and order public. latinos, mexican americans look and are appeal to, and republicans want to convince themselves they are like white.

they are family oriented, against welfare dependency, patriotic members of the silent majority. the very same republicans view puerto ricans as a racially ambiguous disenchanted, disillusioned, pro wall fair, dependent constituency. one that is at odds with the white ethnics of new york city, who they which to court. so place matters, national origin matters, so definitely with cubans, the way that i would think about it is how our people understood in relation to each other at particular times in the political system. >> you haven't said a lot about gender. one of the reasons why political scientists answered as they did is because they

tend to think of latino voters as patriarchal more so than the average voter, whatever that means today. so the issue of female and male rules and relations in the latino community. my question for you is is that accurate perception? >> i was good to say is the opposite. i have heard that latino males vote how their wives vote. >> i asked this because i was asked to speak to a latino, the latino state troopers of ohio. these are highway patrolmen, mostly men, i think roughly 70% of the voters were for donald trump. they were very patriarchal. but they are only one segment. so i'm wondering, place also matters. midwest is more patriarchal than california or new york. i don't want to complicate the

story too much. but there is regrettably a panel of gender, i want both. i wish the two of you were both up there talking about this together. thank you by the way for doing this. don't be discouraged that there aren't more people. >> not to give you buyers remorse but this one is going to be on c-span. you could have waited for the gender panel. >> it's not the same experience. >> you get the real live experience here. that's right. i've heard the opposite here. one of my characters, fernández was one of the first latinos to run for president, he said he learned fiscal conservatism at the -- knees of his mother. the mother's role is just as important so i don't know. >> i have stories from the 19 fifties were the men who were married were americans but english coming from the states.

they were marrying mexican american women and their children don't know english. so they were learning spanish, that is why spanish remained in the system for so long. so definitely, i think it depends on time and place, but that is the other thing. people who usually hereby story in terms of language are often comparing to the german, because it was so powerful particularly. >> the thing about the state to persist so interesting. another challenge in addition to the pan ethnicity, and individual groups versus collectives, one of the things that i have often wondered and don't know the answer to empirically is how much latino voters resemble other voters in a particular place, or in a particular field. what did not state troopers vote like? maybe they also voted for donald trump. the county that they were in

voted for trump at 70%. latinos in place in relation to other groups. yes. >> i want to thank you guys. this has been fantastic. i taught asian american history in the 1960s and 1970s. asian americans in historical time, there are parallels, what i have learned from talking to some folks that work in the federal government, one person in particular told me whatever the lid tina's said we followed a step behind them. i thought the it was interesting asian americans try to, that the latino politics set up a model for them to follow. so anyway, i am very sad about all of this. i also wanted to ask a

question. i'm researching history and looking at papers of members of congress who are latino, asian americans no matter where they live, the congress person could be from hawaii or california, you can pull the citizens and they are writing to these members of congress or people in positions of power in federal government asking for help us a fellow asian american. this is a very curious thing to me, i'm wondering if this is something that you have seen in your research. all this expectation placed on people who look like them or from similar communities, and what they could offer to hispanics or latino's? >> absolutely. this goes back a very long time. the first thing that came to mind was antonio, the

congressman from puerto rico. everybody from the island wrote him asking for help and whatever the problems were. i think the parallels in the period, it's clear that there is an effort to put people in positions, put latinos and asian americans to a lesser degree in visual positions in cabinet agencies, with the vastly expanded federal government. those people seem to be the representative, the representation of latinos in society. but also a conduit in programs, i think it is because there was so much a expectation in the beginning that the programs would be geared about african americans. it made it important to believe that there was some of that could advocate them. whether that could deliver very

much as a different story. the president certainly used the henry ramirez of the world, a latino person was appointed as a liaison. >> you also see that in local politics. or state politics, where national latino politicians traveled to areas of the country with latinos, but no local congressman, or mayor, or any latino figure of their race. a good example is the governor of new mexico, he campaigned for washington because chicago had no latino elected officials in 1983.

and so, they do a lot of leg work because, i am sure the cases could be similar for the first women of color in congress, she becomes a big figurehead for asian america's the wanted to see more representation. the other thing is i have a friend of mine, she is coming to princeton as a post stop in political science. she works on pan ethnics. asian americans deal with in the contemporary period, a lot of the same challenges, were so many of the countries in so many different languages, that is a different problem for a nation politics. the issue of politics is very similar in both groups. >> very similar, there are some interesting connections between latino americans and asian

americans in the 17th century. the head of nixon's chief mafia, the point representative of to cut those in many ways. he tells stories in the watergate testimony he is the interesting figure. he is also interesting figure in california. finally there is a graduate student in california named vivian yan who is working on asian american conservatism. i'm sure she would like to learn more about your work. >> that is a great comparison. it's the chinese that lead to, they were considered the first undocumented in many ways. and so there is this flip, so that is an interesting point as well. there are put percent i would mention that hasn't been mentioned yet is dennis, he is traveling to arizona and he is

the only senator that represents the entire group. that's a really interesting way to think of the regional story to become a national story, and vice versa. following these important figures. >> do you see them going internationally? he was sent to mexico for pan-african reasons. >> maybe in the forties, fifties, sixties i am still working on the seventies and eighties, but i am certain there is a lot there. >> i think with that we can close the panel, but i would like to thank everyone who spoke and thank you for your questions and for coming. >> thank you. (applause)

thank you all for coming, when i will be chairing this roundtable today. i will give you a brief overview of what we're going to talk about, and we will introduce our group and we will get started. so 15 years ago, oh -- do i need to, there we go is that better? thank you. there are a switch is on the mics.