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Nation of Nations A Concise Narrative of the American Republic Book Cover Image

Nation of Nations: A Concise Narrative of the American Republic, 3/e

James West Davidson, Historian
William E. Gienapp, Harvard University
Christine Leigh Heyrman, University of Delaware
Mark H. Lytle, Bard College
Michael B. Stoff, University of Texas, Austin

The New Era

Primary Source Documents

A Mexican Laborer Sings of Life in America

Mexican immigrants brought many traditions with them, including music. The corrido is a ballad that chronicles "current happenings." Read the corrido on pages 685 and 686 in the text about life for those immigrants in the 1920s and then answer the following questions.


1		Why did this immigrant come to the United States? Is he a typical immigrant? What was his job in Mexico? What does he do in the United States? What does he think of his new job?



2		Why is he upset with Mexicans who "don't care to speak the language their mother taught them?" Why would they say they are "Spanish," deny "their country's flag," and "pretend to be Saxon?"



3		What upsets the immigrant about young Mexican men and women in the U.S.? Would native-born Americans share his complaints?



4		How do his complaints about his new life in the United States reflect the conflict between traditionalism and modernism in the 1920s? What is his solution?



5		Of what use are such ballads to historians? What can folklore tell us about the past?

2002 McGraw-Hill Higher Education
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