Hispanic and Asian American
104
population, and therefore Mexicans were never seen as a threat.
3
Tejanos faced discrimination in
certain Texas districts as American dominance continued to undermine Tejano political
participation. After 1846, few served in state offices. Indeed, no Hispanic held federal office
until 1960. One attempt to exclude Mexicans from voting came in 1896 in the case of In re
Rodriguez.
4
Ricardo Rodríguez filed his intention to become a citizen with the Bexar County clerk in San
Antonio, Texas. Anglo attorneys filed suit to deprive Mexicans of their right to vote by making
it impossible for Mexicans to become naturalized citizens. Thirty-five-year-old Rodríguez had
immigrated from Guanajuato, Mexico, in 1883 and had settled in San Antonio. One of the
attorneys described him as “a pure-blooded Mexican, having . . . dark eyes, straight, black hair,
chocolate brown skin, and high cheek bones.”
5
The Nationality Act of 1790 held that only “free
white persons” were entitled to become naturalized citizens. After the Civil War and the
enactment of the Fourteenth Amendment, the law was amended to include persons of African
ancestry.
6
If the court ruled that Mexican immigrants of Indian ancestry were ineligible for
citizenship, one-third of the Mexican voters of Bexar County would be disenfranchised.
7
While courts had ruled on the ineligibility of Chinese, Hawaiians, and mixed-race Indians to
become citizens, no court had ruled on the eligibility of Mexicans until the Rodríguez case in
1897.
8
Since no court decisions or departmental regulations had defined “Mexican race,”
inspectors on the U.S.-Mexico border generally listed light-skinned immigrants as belonging to
the “Spanish race,” and those with dark skin who appeared to be mixed with Indian ancestry as
belonging to the “Mexican race.” It was understood that “Spanish” was a marker of whiteness
and that “Mexican” meant “mixed blood” or Indian.
9
Court briefs on the Rodríguez case focused almost exclusively on the racial status of Mexicans
who could not pass as “Spanish,” which rendered them, like Asians and Indians, ineligible for
citizenship. Judge Maxey of the federal district court, however, drew a distinction between tribal
Indians living in the United States and Mexican citizens, regardless of their Indian heritage,
desiring to become naturalized U.S. citizens, and he cited the terms of the Treaty of Guadalupe
Hidalgo. Maxey acknowledged that, “if the strict scientific classification of the anthropologist
should be adopted, he [Rodriguez] would probably not be classed as white.” However, Maxey
ruled that regardless of Rodriquez’s racial status “from the standpoint of the ethnologist,”
Mexican citizens were “embraced within the spirit and intent of our laws upon naturalization.”
10
3
Chandler Davidson, Quiet Revolution in the South: The Impact of the Voting Rights Act, 1965-1990 (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1994), 235-36.
4
Ibid., 236; “Tejano Politics,” at http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/view/TT/wmtkn.html, The
Handbook of Texas Online, accessed on June 9, 2003.
5
In re Rodríguez, 81 F. 337, 345 (1897).
6
Naturalization Act of 1790, Chap. 3, Sec. I; Naturalization Rev. Stat. of 1870, Sec. 2169.
7
Mexican immigrants were entitled to vote after filing their intention to become naturalized citizens. Arnoldo De
León, In Re Ricardo Rodríguez: An Attempt at Chicano Disenfranchisement in San Antonio, 1896-1897 (San
Antonio: Caravel Press, 1979), 1-2.
8
Other cases included In re Ah Yup, 1 F. Cas. 223 (1878), In re Camille, 6 F. 256 (1880), In re Kanaka Nian, 21
Pac. 993 (1889), In re Saito, 62 F. 126 (1894). See also Ian F. Haney López, White by Law: The Legal Construction
of Race (New York: New York University Press, 1996), and Martha Menchaca, Recovering History, Constructing
Race: The Indian, Black, and White Roots of Mexican Americans (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001), 282-85.
9
In addition to In re Camille, see In re Burton, 1 Alaska 111 (1900); In re Para, 269 F. 643 (1919); Elk v. Wilkins,
112 U.S. 94 (1884); and Paul S. Taylor, “Mexican Labor in the United States: Migration Statistics,” University of
California Publications in Economics, vol. 6 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1929): 242-44.
10
In re Rodríguez, 354-55.