Page 55 - Catholic Extension Magazine Winter 2019

23. The Spanish colonists who Mexican-American War. ‘Manifest during the Mexican-American War.
brought faith to the Americas also Destiny’ as well as shifting colonial, The coming of the railroad not long
brought with them their own human nationalistic and expansionist winds after the entrance of Texas into the
circumstances intertwined with the led to constantly shifting borders. United States in 1850 brought more
‘tricks and powers’ of the world. Irish as well a large number of Chi-
They came from the experience of 26. In Latin America there has been nese laborers into our region as part
a nation newly united just as much more fluidity between races through of the project to connect the Atlantic
around Catholicism as a nationalism inter-marriage and more blending of and Pacific oceans. These workers
built on the violent subordination cultures and religions when com- were paid much less than their White
and expulsion of Jews and Muslims. pared to the experience of Native counterparts and received the most
They brought these exclusionary at- Americans and African Americans. dangerous and even deadly assign-
titudes with them to the New World. Yet the attitudes of the Spanish colo- ments. After the railroad was com-
It was in the encounter between the nizers included the erroneous notion pleted, the Chinese workers quickly
Spanish colonists and Indigenous of racial purity based on light skin, a became the target of racist anti-im-
communities that fateful identities belief which in some places contin- migrant legislation and policies like
were co-produced and sinful notions ues today, even in internalized fash- the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882,
of civilized versus uncivilized and the ion. This type of racism collided in one of the first examples of anti-im-
invention of the savage were born. the borderlands with the more overt migrant legislation in US history.
Such notions began a new era of a racism of the United States. This was
‘heart-sick’ world. It was Pope Ben- the racism of the ‘one-drop theory’ 29. After its entry into the United
edict XVI who told us that ‘it is not (whereby one drop of African blood States, Texas saw dramatic mass
possible to forget the suffering and renders all descendants the members migration into the state from White
injustice inflicted by colonizers on of a slave class) used to justify the settlers from other parts of the
the Indigenous populations, whose criminal practice of chattel slavery. country. These settlers brought new
fundamental human rights were often Both the racism that privileges lighter industrial farming practices which
trampled upon’. skin over Indigenous, Ladinos, Mu- cleared desert brush and cacti as
lattoes and Mestizos as well as the well as the expansion of the railroad
24. Few things were more important racism based on hypo-descent used network and impressive economic
in the story of race and the commu- to subjugate African Americans linger growth. But they also brought with
nity in El Paso than Popé’s Pueblo troublingly on the border today. them harsh, prejudicial attitudes to-
Revolt in 1680. The successful revo- wards Mexicans, Mexican Americans
lution resulted in the expulsion of col- 27. Prior to 1835, the area known as and Indigenous in the region as well
onists from New Mexico to Paso del Texas was part of Mexico. American as legalized discrimination against Af-
Norte where the provisional capital immigrants settled in the Mexican rican Americans. In their wake came
of the royal province was established. territory and brought with them ‘Juan Crow’ laws of segregation, the
At this time, Paso del Norte also Black slaves. By 1825 one out of five prohibition of then-common interra-
became home to the Ysleta del Sur American immigrants living in Texas cial marriage, new racial hierarchies,
Pueblo, who have shaped the history was an enslaved African. Historians the dispossession of tribal communi-
of the borderlands ever since. The acknowledge that the most signifi- ties, efforts to disenfranchise Mexi-
suffering, exploitation and divest- cant factor in determining the eco- can residents and a true campaign
ment of culture, language, religious nomic development and ideological of terror. This campaign included
tradition and memory experienced orientation of Texas at the time was the lynching and murder of likely
by the Pueblo peoples at the hands slavery. The 1835 Texas Revolt and thousands of Latinos, terror under-
of colonists and, yes, members and the establishment of the Republic of taken just as much by vigilantes as
leaders of the Church, must be ac- Texas in 1836, were driven, among by official state actors like the Texas
knowledged. The pain and experi- other factors, by the will to protect Rangers, and often in concert. What
ence of estrangement is still experi- the institution of Black slavery after its was it that they feared?
enced by some communities today. abolishment by Mexico in 1829.
30. Just one example of this cam-
25. Rooted in our history, many 28. During this time, many Irish, too, paign of terror was the Porvenir
here can rightly say that we did not arrived to escape the stifling racism matanza, which took place only hours
cross the border but that the border they were subject to in the eastern from El Paso in Presidio County. 15
crossed us. Even the Church in El United States. Many Irish felt more men and boys of Mexican descent
Paso fell at different times under solidarity with Mexicans on account were murdered, with impunity, by
different national flags and under the of their shared Catholic faith and vigilantes, army soldiers and Texas
jurisdiction of the Mexican dioceses shared experience of racial discrimi- Rangers. In that moment of horror,
of Guadalajara, Durango and then nation; the famous San Patricios bat- did not Jesus look through the eyes
under Texas dioceses only after the talion fought on the side of Mexico of those young children at their