The next generation of Mexican Americans contributed to the war efforts and started businesses, while new bracero immigrants renewed ties to Mexico and impeded efforts to organize in the fields.
Veterans. The wartimes demonstrated the patriotism of many Mexican-origin families in the U.S. who sent several sons to WWII and during the Korean Conflict in this period, even when still treated with hostility at home. It was one result of events in the 1940s and 1950s that created a growing community in barrios andcolonias of men and some women with skills and opportunities that made many leaders. Women took jobs in the factories and canneries. We feature vignettes of those who served and returned to become recognized community leaders, along with those who were recognized and those who lost their lives. One indication of continued alienation was the establishment of separate veterans’ groups, like Post 8900 in Fresno. Another war, the Korean Conflict, took volunteers and draftees off again, many widening their visions, sharpening their organizing skills for work when they returned, and made aware of the need for education and the GI Bill that could assist them.
The Bracero Program 1942–1962. Work that pulled migrants from Mexico into the fields and railroads was a second camino to the valley. Described as SOLDADOS DEL CAMPO and SOLDADOS DEL FERROCARRIL, they replaced U.S. workers who left for the war. Many overstayed or returned, a second augmentation of the Mexican-origin population that many families trace to their beginning history in the Valley. The labor camps for the braceros joined the existing and often inadequate “housing” for those who worked in the fields, often with their families. These conditions and efforts to improve them were documented especially by activists, authors, and photographers like Ernesto Galarza, George Ballis, and Ernesto Lowe.
Sabor del Valle, Becoming Mexican American. We illustrate the third seed of change by focusing on the many ways the newer generations demonstrated their growing biculturalism, especially through music and U.S. popular culture. Community groups forming in this period organized around business and cultural celebrations. They were moving from the division of mexicanos and americanos, born here as second and third generation away from Mexico and feeling both–Mexican American. They listened to Frank Sinatra and later Elvis, but also Javier Solís and the musicians touring the valley dance halls, symbolized centrally by the Rainbow Ballroom in Fresno. Ethnomusicologist Manuel Peña, himself a former member of the popular group Beto García y Los GGs, summarized the history of these groups and their music in his study “Sabor del Valle (Flavor of the Valley),” which he called the “Golden Years of Mexican Music in the Fresno Region.” Meanwhile U.S. popular culture began slowly at first to “discover” performers like Prez Prado and Richie Valens and groups played to a bicultural audience with a variety of styles. Dick Clark’s Bandstand was popular and slowly integrating. In Tulare County, the popular local bands were often composed of Mexican and Black musicians, with resulting discrimination against them. In movies and television, Mexican roles and themes were few and stereotypical, providing some interest and curiosity to a group of people that all but a few had ignored. Taken together, the two and three cultures were on a slow path to becoming mainstream from boleros to rock and roll. That is the special Valley “flavor.”