Beyond faddish styles fashioned on American models particularly for consumption by the younger population, cross border popular culture is prominently expressed in the Tex-Mex-culture: musica nortena, language, symbols, and youth movements. Among the most recent of these movements to become popular after the mid-1970s is el cholismo, the most massive youth phenomenon that emerged among the poor population in the northern part of the country. Cholos represent a major cultural paradox, for they import their national symbols from the Chicano and Mexican barrios in the United States. Many of these symbols had given voice to cultural resistance in the Chicano movement and among Mexican-born youths throughout the United States; they were redefined and integrated into the speech, graphic arts, and symbolism of cholos in Mexico.
On the other side, important sectors of the Mexican-born population in the United States resist emotional and cultural isolation by consuming cultural products made in the U.S. Mexicans in the United States are also culturally strengthened by further immigration of Mexicans to that country and by relationships formed with populations on the border . In these cultural interactions, as in the consumption of Mexican cultural products , and in the immigrants’ implication in social and political processes in Mexico or in transnational processes such as undocumented migration, relationships between the Mexican and the Chicano populations in the United States are shaped by what happens south of the border .
In the crucible of the border, culture is subjected to a process of purification that refines and redefines the dominant traits of Mexican national culture and combines them with other popular forms, regional expressions, and emerging identities. However, the various collective identities find themselves penetrated and influenced by proximity of the United States. The presence of the United States takes various forms, and its cultural products are also redefined by the life experience of the social groups who use them.
Religion
In 1519, Fernando Cort s set out from Cuba to explore the coastline of Central Mexico followed by Francisco V squez de Coronado who explored northward in 1540 and came in the hopes of discovering “un nuevo M xico” -a New Mexico- perhaps even richer and more magnificent than the Mexico discovered by Fernando Cort s twenty-one years earlier. The first European settlement in what is now the Southwest occurred in 1540, a full three hundred years before the “Westward Movement” that has become ingrained in our consciousness.
Over the course of the succeeding three centuries, Spaniards would migrate to the vast reaches of the northern frontier of New Spain as missionaries, soldiers, merchants, farmers, and ranchers, and they would plant the seeds of a rich Hispanic culture in this part of the New World.
Perceptions of Spanish activities in the New World historically have tended to reflect a negative image, maintaining that the Spanish conquerors and settlers were unusually cruel to the Indians. This image was frequently reinforced in England and the Protestant countries of Europe by the publication of travel narratives with engraved illustrations that emphasized scenes of torture, maiming, and hangings.
But one of the strongest forces for the protection and religious training of the Indians was the Catholic missionary. From the very beginning of Spanish colonization of the Indies through the late eighteenth century, thousands of priests representing Dominicans, Franciscans, Jesuits, Augustinians, and other orders labored to convert the natives to Christianity. One of the most notable among these was Fray Bartolom de las Casas, whose untiring efforts in the early sixteenth century served as the catalyst for the reform laws.
The missionaries, most notably the Jesuits and Franciscans, also served to advance new Spain’s frontier northward into Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California. Often accompanied by military presidios and civilian settlements, the missions served to indoctrinate Native American populations in the ways of Spanish culture.
Today Mexico s population is 89 % Roman Catholic , about 6% is Protestant but still there is a strong influence of the ancient indigenous traditions, which were adapted to the Catholicism. The religious situation in the border region is marked by a variety of religious groups. With growing percentages of Hispanic population, the intolerance of Catholicism of the Anglo-Saxon-Protestants has not diminished, but loosen importance.
6. Conclusions and outlook
In order to improve the social and economic situation in the Border region both the U.S. and the Mexican government have to enforce the yet existing development actions and introduce new measures. Among the most important and urging are:
? Improve the general acceptance of the population of Mexican origin and the Mexican immigrants.
? Stress ethical and humanitarian objectives by giving priority to refugees fleeing from persecution.
? Take advantage of the structural and economic differences by setting up U.S. assembling lines in Mexico and service-business in the U.S.
? Restructure provisional work programs that open the U.S. to temporary workers who take jobs that U.S. residents don t want, while guaranteeing the basic rights of these workers to organize and receive worker benefits such as unemployment compensation.
? Give political and social assistance to the Mexican government to stress the needed reforms of the Mexican political and economic reforms.
? Protect the most vulnerable economic sectors from an influx of low-wage competition.
? Lower legal immigration flows to sustainable levels.
? Protect the basic human rights of all U.S. residents, legal or not.
Working on the remaining problems the Border region will develop into a central area of industrial and economic success. For Mexico the northern border states will become the key to high technology from the northern NAFTA members. For the U.S. the border states in Arizona, New Mexico and Texas may take up with their neighbor states in the west and east in economic development by taking advantage of the benefits which offer Mexico to them.
7. Bibliography
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http://www.azteca.net/aztec/war/Mexican-American-War.html
? Making of America, Online Publications
http://www.umdl.umich.edu/moa/
? US Immigration and Naturalization Service
http://www.ins.usdoj.gov/index.html
? Code Of Federal Regulations 8 (Aliens and Nationality)
http://194.94.39.76/seminare/migration-s97/material/US INS.CodeOfFederalRegulations8/index.htm
? NORMAN MATLOFF’S IMMIGRATION FORUM
ftp://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/pub/Immigration/Index.html
? Distant relations
http://www.zonezero.com/magazine/distant/ingles.html
? Culture, Migration & Madness on Both Sides of the R o Bravo
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? The Azteca Web Page
http://www.azteca.net/aztec/
? Transterritorial, The Spaces of Identity and the Diaspora
http://universes-in-universe.de/artnexus/no25/zayaeng.htm
? HUMAN INTERACTION IN THE TEXAS MEXICO BORDERLANDS
by Oscar J. Mart nez, Ph.D. University of Arizona
http://www.humanities-interactive.org/Borderstudies/bodtxt.htm
? BORDER STUDIES Texas – Mexico Border
Texas Humanities Resource Center
http://www.humanities-interactive.org/borderstudies/exhibitindex.html
? Cross-Border Links: Where the Action Is
IRC U.S.-Mexico Borderlands Project
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? CHICANO ART , A Resource Guide
The California Ethnic and Multicultural Archives, University Library, University of California, Santa Barbara http://www.library.ucsb.edu/speccoll/cema/introar2.html
? Aspekte der “Immigration Reform”-Debatte in den U.S.A.
Prof. David Kramer, Ph.D. Alice-Salomon-Fachhochschule Berlin
http://194.94.39.76/seminare/migration-s97/T_13.html
? SUMMARY RESULTS FROM THE LATINO ETHNIC ATTITUDE SURVEY
http://www.azteca.net/aztec/survey/index.html
? The Population-Environment Report
A Publication of Sabal Palm Grove Sanctuary, National Audubon Society by David Berger
http://www.txinfinet.com/mader/ecotravel/border/aud94.html
? THE FEDERATION FOR AMERICAN IMMIGRATION REFORM
http://www.fairus.org/
? U.S. Census bureau
http://www.census.gov/
? People of California
http://www.ca.gov/s/history/people.html
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http://www.bidc.state.tx.us/Mexico.htm
? Instituto Nacional de Estatistica , Geografia e Informatica, Mexico http://www.inegi.gob.mx/homeing
? TED Case Studies- Rio Grande Case http://www.american.edu/projects/mandala/TED/RIOGRAND.HTM