Mexican Americans And The Environment

Mexican Americans have traditionally had a strong land ethic, believing that humans must respect la tierra because it is the source of la vida. As modern market forces exploit the earth, communities struggle to control their own ecological futures, and several studies have recorded that Mexican Americans are more impacted by environmental injustices than are other national-origin groups. In our countryside, agricultural workers are poisoned by pesticides, while farmers have lost ancestral lands to expropriation. And in our polluted inner cities, toxic wastes sicken children in their very playgrounds and homes. This book addresses the struggle for environmental justice, grassroots democracy, and a sustainable society from a variety of Mexican American perspectives. It draws on the ideas and experiences of people from all walks of lifeÑactivists, farmworkers, union organizers, land managers, educators, and many othersÑwho provide a clear overview of the most critical ecological issues facing Mexican-origin people today. The text is organized to first provide a general introduction to ecology, from both scientific and political perspectives. It then presents an environmental history for Mexican-origin people on both sides of the border, showing that the ecologically sustainable Norte–o land use practices were eroded by the conquest of El Norte by the United States. It finally offers a critique of the principal schools of American environmentalism and introduces the organizations and struggles of Mexican Americans in contemporary ecological politics. Devon Pe–a contrasts tenets of radical environmentalism with the ecological beliefs and grassroots struggles of Mexican-origin people, then shows how contemporary environmental justice struggles in Mexican American communities have challenged dominant concepts of environmentalism. Mexican Americans and the Environment is a didactically sound text that introduces students to the conceptual vocabularies of ecology, culture, history, and politics as it tells how competing ideas about nature have helped shape land use and environmental policies. By demonstrating that any consideration of environmental ethics is incomplete without taking into account the experiences of Mexican Americans, it clearly shows students that ecology is more than nature study but embraces social issues of critical importance to their own lives.

"The book looks to long-established traditions of environmentalist thought alive in Mexican American literary history over the last 150 years"--Provided by publisher.

Mexican Americans have traditionally had a strong land ethic, believing that humans must respect la tierra because it is the source of la vida. As modern market forces exploit the earth, communities struggle to control their own ecological futures, and several studies have recorded that Mexican Americans are more impacted by environmental injustices than are other national-origin groups. In our countryside, agricultural workers are poisoned by pesticides, while farmers have lost ancestral lands to expropriation. And in our polluted inner cities, toxic wastes sicken children in their very playgrounds and homes. This book addresses the struggle for environmental justice, grassroots democracy, and a sustainable society from a variety of Mexican American perspectives. It draws on the ideas and experiences of people from all walks of life—activists, farmworkers, union organizers, land managers, educators, and many others—who provide a clear overview of the most critical ecological issues facing Mexican-origin people today. The text is organized to first provide a general introduction to ecology, from both scientific and political perspectives. It then presents an environmental history for Mexican-origin people on both sides of the border, showing that the ecologically sustainable Norteño land use practices were eroded by the conquest of El Norte by the United States. It finally offers a critique of the principal schools of American environmentalism and introduces the organizations and struggles of Mexican Americans in contemporary ecological politics. Devon Peña contrasts tenets of radical environmentalism with the ecological beliefs and grassroots struggles of Mexican-origin people, then shows how contemporary environmental justice struggles in Mexican American communities have challenged dominant concepts of environmentalism. Mexican Americans and the Environment is a didactically sound text that introduces students to the conceptual vocabularies of ecology, culture, history, and politics as it tells how competing ideas about nature have helped shape land use and environmental policies. By demonstrating that any consideration of environmental ethics is incomplete without taking into account the experiences of Mexican Americans, it clearly shows students that ecology is more than nature study but embraces social issues of critical importance to their own lives.

Known as “The Salad Bowl of the World,” California’s Salinas Valley became an agricultural empire due to the toil of diverse farmworkers, including Latinos. A sweeping critical history of how Mexican Americans and Mexican immigrants organized for their rights in the decades leading up to the seminal strikes led by Cesar Chavez, this important work also looks closely at how different groups of Mexicans—U.S. born, bracero, and undocumented—confronted and interacted with one another during this period. An incisive study of labor, migration, race, gender, citizenship, and class, Lori Flores’s first book offers crucial insights for today’s ever-growing U.S. Latino demographic, the farmworker rights movement, and future immigration policy.

Climate change is an issue that has been generating a significant amount of discussion, research, and debate in recent years. Climate change continues to evolve at a rapid rate and continues to have a wide array of effects on everything from temperature to plant life. Beyond the negative environmental impacts, climate change is also proving to be a detriment to society with increasingly violent natural disasters and human health effects. It is essential to stay up to date on the latest in emerging research within this field as it continues to develop. The Research Anthology on Environmental and Societal Impacts of Climate Change discusses the varied effects of climate change throughout all areas of life and provides a comprehensive dive into the latest research on key elements of society that are affected by the rapidly increasing clime. Covering a range of topics including reproduction, plants and animals, and energy demand, it is ideal for environmentalists, policymakers, environmental engineers, scientists, disaster and crisis management personnel, professionals, government officials, practitioners, upper-level students, and academics interested in emerging research on the numerous impacts of climate change.

Through the dedicated intervention of LULAC and other Mexican American activist groups, the understanding of civil rights in America was vastly expanded in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Mexican Americans gained federal remedies for discrimination based not simply on racial but also on cultural and linguistic disadvantages. Generally considered one of the more conservative ethnic political organizations, LULAC had traditionally espoused nonconfrontational tactics and had insisted on the identification of Mexican Americans as "white." But by 1966, the changing civil rights environment, new federal policies that protected minority groups, and rising militancy among Mexican American youth led LULAC to seek federal protections for Mexican Americans as a distinct minority. In that year, LULAC joined other Mexican American groups in staging a walkout during meetings with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in Albuquerque. In this book, Craig A. Kaplowitz draws on primary sources, at both national and local levels, to understand the federal policy arena in which the identity issues and power politics of LULAC were played out. At the national level, he focuses on presidential policies and politics, since civil rights has been preeminently a presidential issue. He also examines the internal tensions between LULAC members? ethnic allegiances and their identity as American citizens, which led to LULAC?s attempt to be identified as white while, paradoxically, claiming policy benefits from the fact that Mexican Americans were treated as if they were non-white. This compelling study offers an important bridge between the history of social movements and the history of policy development. It also provides new insight into an important group on America?s multicultural stage.

This volume represents a first attempt at holistically classifying and mapping ecological regions across all three countries of the North American continent. A common analytical methodology is used to examine North American ecology at multiple scales, from large continental ecosystems to subdivisions of these that correlate more detailed physical and biological settings with human activities on two levels of successively smaller units. The volume begins with an overview of North America from an ecological perspective, concepts of ecological regionalization. This is followed by descriptions of the 15 broad ecological regions, including information on physical and biological setting and human activities. The final section presents case studies in applications of the ecological characterization methodology to environmental issues. The appendix includes a list of common and scientific names of selected species characteristic of the ecological regions.