History Theses and Dissertations

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Somos de Allá y de Aquí: Tejano Sojourners, Mexican Immigrants, & the Creation of a Familiar Mexican Place in Independence, Oregon, 1950-2000
(University of Oregon, 2024-08-07) Ochoa, Victor; Weise, Julie
As Mexican Americans from southern Texas, who called themselves Tejanos, and Mexican immigrants migrated to Independence, Oregon, in the mid-to-late 20th century, memory became a way to familiarize a foreign place. In the 1950s and 1960s, a few Tejano families migrated from the Lower Rio Grande Valley and replicated a sense of home in the migrant stream that would follow them as they settled in Independence. By the 1970s, Mexicanos arrived to a Tejano community who labeled them as a threat to their home. The flames of diasporic strife were fanned in the 1980s and 1990s when the national debate on immigration became racially charged. However, through engaging in a constant struggle to validate their citizenship in Independence, Tejanos and Mexicanos would blossom into a unified community. By the 2000s, this unity would come to mobilize ethnic Mexicans to cement their place in Independence’s historical memory. Although these efforts proved successful, the memories of ethnic Mexicans are quickly becoming shelved. Thus a new effort is required to expand the accessibility of this memory into the heart of Independence.