I heard from a Catholic friend today who spends a lot of time doing charitable work with the poor in his city. Given where he lives, that often means Mexican immigrants. He's pretty conservative in his faith, but thinks political conservatives are wrong-headed and mean-spirited about immigration. I tell you that so you'll have some context for the remark I'm about to report.
He said that in his charity work, they're seeing lots of Mexican immigrant families shattered by the experience of living in America. Mostly men leaving their wives and children, but a startling number of women leaving their husbands and children. His theory is that the strength of the Mexican family is true ... but only in Mexico. When they immigrate here, to a vastly different culture and lose their cultural reference points, many immigrants can't handle the freedom. He said they're seeing so many become unmoored from the kinds of traditions and restraints that probably kept them sound in Mexico, but which many of them cast aside once they get to America.
Though my friend would no doubt disagree with her views on immigration, that conversation he and I had put me in mind of Heather Mac Donald's point in this essay, excerpted here:
The illegitimacy rate among Hispanics is high and rising faster than that of other ethnic groups; their dropout rate is the highest in the country; Hispanic children are joining gangs at younger and younger ages. Academic achievement is abysmal.Conservatives pride themselves on reality-based thinking that rejects utopian theories in favor of facts on the ground. Yet when it comes to immigration, they cling, against all contrary evidence, to the myth of the redeeming power of Hispanic family values, the Hispanic work ethic, and Hispanic virtue. Even more fanciful is the claim that it is immigrants’ children who constitute the real value to American society. The children of today’s Hispanic immigrants, in fact, are in considerable trouble.
Without doubt, many Latinos are upwardly mobile. But a significant portion of their children are getting sucked into street life, as a trip to almost any urban high school and some conversations with almost any Hispanic student will verify. In the field, the conservative fact-finder would learn that teen pregnancy is pervasive and that Hispanic boys increasingly regard fathering children as the prerequisite to becoming a “playah.”
Conservatives have never shrunk from pointing out that dysfunctional behavior creates long-term poverty among inner-city blacks. But when Hispanics engage in the same behavior, they fall silent. From 1990 to 2004, the number of Hispanics in poverty rose 52 percent, accounting for 92 percent of the increase in poor people. The number of poor Hispanic children rose 43 percent, reports Washington Post columnist Robert Samuelson. By contrast, the number of poor black children has declined 17 percent since 1990. The influx of dirt-poor Mexicans drives the Hispanic poverty increase, of course, but their behavior once here doesn’t help.
I would love to see an academic study, if one exists, that either confirms or disproves what my friend has observed in his charity work among Mexican immigrants. Do any of you readers have any leads?
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I’m probably dealing a crude stereotype, but I take exception to the assertion that Mexican family values are very much like our own. In contrast to traditional modern family values based on mutual love, respect, and affection, Mexicans have traditional pre-modern family values based on power i.e. male authority and rigid church prescribed gender roles. Discussing Mexican families in his seminal text Distant Neighbors: Portrait of the Mexicans, Alan Riding says about Mexican men “The father is the undisputed figure of authority who has little respect for - or communication with - his wife. He expects to be served royally at home, but he spends much of his time and money drinking with friends or visiting his mistress. He pays minimal attention to his children, although he carries great importance to having a male firstborn who carries his name....”
rigid church prescribed gender roles
Not quite--even if the Christian tradition talks about the headship of the husband, this does not mean the wife is reduced to the role of a servant. That's a result of original sin, and predates Christ and Christianity.
Steve Sailer's observations on Mexican culture after picnicing with a Latino crowd last July:
http://www.vdare.com/sailer/070722_picnic.htm
http://isteve.blogspot.com/2007/07/mexican-machismo.html
The New Yorker had a long article on this phenomenon -- back in 1996. Here is the abstract:
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/1996/03/25/1996_03_25_052_TNY_CARDS_000375729
A REPORTER AT LARGE about Juan Guerrero, 20, of Mexican decent living in Sunnyside, Washington, and about Hispanic youth gangs... He was born in Zacatecas, in central Mexico, but grew up in Sunnyside, Washington. Sunnyside is a town of about 11,000 in Yakima Valley, a rich farm belt in central Washington... His parents are members of the United Farm Workers of Washington State, a union founded in 1987 which was waging a bitter organizing struggle at a group of farms including the one where the Guerreros work... Tells how he had started getting in trouble, mainly for fighting, in his early teens & was eventually thrown out of school & tells about his formidable reputation as a streetfighter... Tells about his girlfriend, Mary Ann Ramirez, who had borne a girl out of wedlock... The great majority of Mexicans and Mexican-Americans in the valley are poor and uneducated, a few have made the trek from the fields into the middle class... In the late nineteen eighties, the Yakima Valley gained a reputation as a regional drug-trafficking center... Writer interviews Don Vlieger, a "gang expert"... If present trends continue, 50 years from now, according to the journalist Earl Shorris's study "Latinos," there will be a "Latino underclass of enormous size"-- perhaps 25 or 30 million people... Tells how Juan was sent to jail, how Mary Ann was sent to jail, and how Juan became an unwed father with another girlfriend...
quote roger:
"’m probably dealing a crude stereotype, but I take exception to the assertion that Mexican family values are very much like our own. In contrast to traditional modern family values based on mutual love, respect, and affection, Mexicans have traditional pre-modern family values based on power i.e. male authority and rigid church prescribed gender roles. Discussing Mexican families in his seminal text Distant Neighbors: Portrait of the Mexicans, Alan Riding says about Mexican men “The father is the undisputed figure of authority who has little respect for - or communication with - his wife. He expects to be served royally at home, but he spends much of his time and money drinking with friends or visiting his mistress. He pays minimal attention to his children, although he carries great importance to having a male firstborn who carries his name....”
Posted by: roger | April 10, 2008 10:54 PM"
Roger well said. I love the Mexican men and culture, but also hate them/it because of the culture-wide acceptance of the cheating male.
My career field is dominated by Mexican males. Everyday I see, hear, and witness much of what you've pointed out. One of my co-workers told me, laughingly, that "...lot of Mexican men have 3 or 4 families..." . Virtually all of my colleagues believe that extra-marital families/affairs etc, are perfectly acceptable and justifiable, even EXPECTED. They don't pursue married women as readily as single women because of an unspoken "honor code" , plus they don't want to tangle with a husband.
The wives and sanchas are jealously lorded over and the wives will never/rarely leave.
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