Title: A Civil Rights History: Latino/Hispanic Americans |
Headings: A Civil Rights History: Latino/Hispanic Americans
A Civil Rights History: Latino/Hispanic Americans
Content: The Americans — or Anglos, as they would become known — pressed ahead with their quest to occupy the land from coast to coast. In 1846, they incited a conflict with Mexico, which evolved into the Mexican-American war. The final result was the U.S. annexation of about half of Mexico’s territory for a payment of $15 million. In 1898, still in an expansionist mood, the U.S. invaded Puerto Rico and Cuban, adding them, Guam and the Philippines to American territories from the Spanish-American War. Since then, Spanish-speaking minorities — from Mexico, Puerto Rico, Cuba, other parts of Central and South America — have continued to grow in the U.S. through immigration. And they have taken on the struggle to gain civil rights, and political and economic equality, that’s marked so much of U. S. history. Throughout the first half of the 20th century, for example, the American government seemed to be of two minds regarding immigration. In 1942, as millions of young men went off to war, the United States needed cheap labor. The government instituted the bracero program, which admitted thousands of Mexican nationals to the U.S. under contracts to work in agriculture and other seasonal jobs. Some called the program “legalized slavery.”