“Seeing how badly they treated Mexicans back in the days of my youth I could have started a rebellion. But now there could be a cultural understanding so that without firing one bullet, we might understand each other. We [Mexicans] were, and we are not, as they still say, ‘undesirables’ or wetbacks. They say we come to this land and it’s not our home. Actually, it’s the other way around.”
_quoted in the Los Angles Times, December 9,1984
Pedro J. Gonzalez became a hero and a symbol of Mexican cultral pride. His life reflects some of teh difficulties faced by minority groups during the New Deal era.
California Edition / Mc Dougal Littell / The Americans Recontruction to the 21st Century
I connect with the reading. Because my father lived in that time, as a young man. He remembers Mexican Americans were discriminationed. My husbund too remembers as growing up in Santa Paula they were discriminationed. They had different stores they went to durning lunch time to get some snacks. The movie theater down on Main St.. People sat on different sides of the movie theater.
