Great Pride In Being Mexican American In Texas

By Mike Gonzalez ~

Leftists rub their eyes in disbelief because all the polls tell them that Latino voters are beginning to shift significantly to the right. And there is a survey that tells us why this is happening, at least in Texas.

In fact, the large Mexican American population of this state loves their country—that is to say, the United States—and they do not respond in any way to the stereotype of angry and resentful victims that the left insists they be.

A young cowboy of Hispanic descent shows his colors on the Fourth of July. (Photo: Rich Vintage/E+/Getty Images)

In other words, the left should understand what Texans really feel. Texans don’t make claims, and woke attempts to impress upon them that they are being unfairly treated are not only disgusting and hateful, they are also increasingly futile.

It is clear that the Democrats breed resentment.

Of course, this is nothing new. Mexican Americans in the Southwestern United States have been saying the same thing in independent polls for decades. The left believed that it could dismantle its “false consciousness” with costly “consciousness” programs.

But these are not working. The results of a survey of 608 “Hispanic adults” living in the state of Texas, conducted in February by the Texas Public Policy Foundation, is the best evidence.

When asked if they agree with the statement that “America is a land of freedom and opportunity,” 83% answered yes, while 15% said no.

Respondents also feel extremely proud to be Texans. In fact, 84% respond affirmatively and 69% state that they feel “very proud.” And they feel even more proud to be Americans. To the question “Are you proud or not proud to be an American?” the results were even better, with 87% to 89% affirmative responses.

Trust in government increases with proximity. A total of 58% say they trust the federal government, 62% trust the state government of Texas, and 70% say they trust their local government.

They see Republicans as the educational rights party, and that’s great news for them. And this conviction is supported by more than three-quarters, 78%, who said they supported the type of school choice where the money follows the child, even if the parent puts him or her in a private school.

Another example of bad news for Democrats is that 73% recognize that there is a border crisis. In fact, in the list of issues that they found important for the Texas Legislature to address, border security was tied at No. 1 with immigration reform, and both were just 1 percentage point ahead of education.

These Texans also worry that it’s getting harder and harder to get ahead in life. Some 30% of those surveyed believe that the American dream is less accessible, while 22% say that it is more so.

None of this should surprise anyone who has bothered to study the long-term social patterns of Mexican Americans in Texas. Although the Texas Public Policy Foundation survey referred to “Hispanics,” 85% of those living in Texas are of Mexican origin. Among them there are some newcomers, and others have ancestors who have lived there since the 16th century.

In fact, nationally, Mexicans far outnumber all other groups, making up 61.4% of the 62.1 million people considered “Hispanic” by the U.S. census. These North Americans constitute 19% of the population of the United States; that is, nearly 1 in 5 inhabitants. The figure has far-reaching political implications.

There are many inconsistencies being written about the “Hispanic” vote right now. Americans, as individuals, have their reasons for doing what they do. Now, if we generalize, it is inappropriate to do so without regard to national origin, and even then it should be done by cross-referencing by region.

For example, Cuban Americans in Florida’s Dade County have always favored the Republican vote, and the Democratic Party’s shift to the extreme left has accentuated this earlier trend. However, Cuban Americans in New Jersey have traditionally voted similarly to their neighbors in the same state, electing Democrats such as Sen. Robert Menendez and Rep. Albio Sires.

Mexican Americans in Texas present their own peculiarities, a reality that intensifies for those who live south of the Rio Grande Valley, the heart of Texan culture. They are Texas: Their cultural imprint is visible everywhere, from the language to the clothing, not forgetting the Tex-Mex gastronomy.

And this has been going on for decades, if not a century and a half. In the late 1960s, the Ford Foundation funded UCLA researchers Leo Grebler, Joan Moore, and Ralph Guzman to conduct a study based on interviews with 1,550 residents in Los Angeles and San Antonio.

The researchers returned to the Ford Foundation with bad news. The report stated, in part, that “prejudice has been a common topic of conversation throughout Mexican American communities. In fact, saying that Mexican Americans are a ‘minority’ and insinuating that the population is the victim of prejudice and discrimination has upset many, who prefer not to be distinguished from white Americans.”

As I wrote in my book “The Plot to Change America,” “that survey had found that the lived experiences of Mexican Americans showed that they were not passive victims of structural discrimination, much less racial hatred. They felt that they were masters of their destiny and that they were also responsible for their own failures, something that, according to their own life experience, could be corrected with individual actions (such as dressing and speaking well) and not through group mobilization.”

To anyone who approaches them, it is clear that Mexican Americans are deeply proud of their cultural heritage. This is made very clear by the Texas Public Policy Foundation survey. People who are proud of their heritage tend to want to preserve it, not transform it, and people who want to preserve it, not destroy it, are naturally conservative.

That is, they can vote for Democrats at the local level because the Democratic machinery is very strong, but as we saw in the 2020 elections, there are those who voted massively for Donald Trump, such as the counties of the Rio Grande Valley.

It is very possible that these voters believe that wokism destroys cultural heritage, instead of preserving it, as when they try to impose the absurd term of “Latinx,” destined to erase any gender distinction, when in English the term “Latin” lacks, precisely, gender.

The work of the woke organizations is not to promote the pride of feeling Latino. What they want is for them to feel offended. Actually, it is an incitement to hatred.

Don’t you just believe it? Listen to how the leader of Voto Latino described her work: “The difficulty of my work in Voto Latino is that I am not able to agitate people because many times they are not aware of the enormous damage that the structures in which we have grown up have inflicted on us. But once they start to understand and recognize it, they act and react, fight and run for office.”

For them, the Texas Public Policy Foundation survey is a complete disaster. For us, it confirms what we already knew.

A version of this article first appeared in Spanish at FundacionDisenso.org.

Mike Gonzalez is a senior fellow at  The Heritage Foundation . http://www.heritage.org/  He is a widely experienced international correspondent, commentator and editor who has reported from Asia, Europe and Latin America. He served in the George W. Bush Administration first at the Securities and Exchange Commission and then at the State Department, and he is the author of the book “BLM: The Making of a New Marxist Revolution.”

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Tagged: Latino Voters, Latinos, Mexican Americans, Texas History, The Daily Signal (Mike Gonzalez)

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