I illustrate this approach by revisiting two historical figures from Texas: Sara Estela Ramírez (1881-1910), a teacher, journalist, feminist, and member of a Mexican exiled group called the “intellectual precursors of the Mexican Revolution,” and José de la Luz Sáenz (1888-1953), a teacher, World War I veteran, and a principal co-founder of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), the leading civil rights organization in Mexican American history. Both figures provide insightful examples of how Mexicans navigated the complex issues of values and patriotism.
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| Sara Estela Ramírez & José de la Luz Sáenz |
In The World of the Mexican Workers in Texas, I examine Ramírez's advocacy for the cultural values of mutuality, reciprocity, and altruism popular in Texas civic life during the early 1900s. At a time when modern infrastructure was sparse, communities across Texas Mexicans in Texas formed mutual aid societies, or benevolent organizations, that provided essential services, such as widow funds, unemployment insurance, and language training to their largely working-class members.
These self-help organizations were vital in offering support and fostering collective solidarity in families, communities, and other social groupings throughout the state. Other Black, Anglo, and immigrant communities also experiencing general distress associated with labor exploitation, poverty, disdain, and discrimination established benevolent organizations, including masonic orders, religious confraternities, immigrant societies, and unions. I identify four key features of these organizations:
1. They broadcast foundational collectivist values in their communities.
2. They sponsored mutualist activities like constructing churches and schools, and sponsoring community events.
3. They adhered to strict codes of moral conduct that created upstanding, and self-respecting leaders in their communities.
4. Their embrace of philosophical justifications offered by public intellectuals from Laredo like Ramírez mirrored similar observations by other working-class leaders like Thomas Hickey and E. O. Meitzen from Central Texas and the Reverend G. G. Hamilton in the northern part of the state.
Ramírez's 1909 keynote speech at the 20th anniversary of La Sociedad de Obreros, Igualdad y Progreso, one of the largest and popular binational organization from Laredo, offers a compelling example of the philosophical justifications behind the multi-ethnic self-help movement and the cultural values that sustained it.
She framed the Golden Rule as a secular ethical framework for understanding mutuality, reciprocity, and altruism, arguing that nature (or God, if you prefer) compels us to recognize the equal worth in others and to commune with them for the sake of the whole. Free will, however, often diverts us from fulfilling our earthly and eternal purpose in life. Compassion and caring unity, however, will prevail in the end, when we realize that our inherently divine purpose always require adherence to the moral laws of nature which elevate the human condition, place us on the path to both moral and social progress (especially in time of need), and ennoble us as caring and compassionate human beings.
The moralistic values of these early organizations have been integral to the development of our society—as Mexicans, as Texans, and as a nation.
Over time, they have converged with the almost purely rationalist principles embedded in the nation’s founding documents and manifest in the structure of modern institutional life. This convergence helps explain why union organizers have long proclaimed that “in unity there is strength,” why national leaders continue to call us to engage the ongoing project of perfecting the republic, and why religious leaders consistently advocate for a shared moral purpose grounded in the recognition that everyone has equal worth (under the law or in the eyes of God, whichever you prefer) and that we have the ethical obligation to pursue this idea.
Mutuality, reciprocity, and altruism, which first emerged as moral guides within self-help organizations, the most popular form of organization in Texas during the latter part of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, have since permeated contemporary society—manifesting to varying degrees as genuine, even philanthropic, expressions of vital collective action.
I have also examined theme of patriotism in the life of José de la Luz Sáenz from Realitos and the author of a World War I diary entitled The Mexican Americans in the Great War (San Antonio: Artes Gráficas, 1933), the only war diary published by a Mexican veteran and possibly the only one of its kind published by a Texan. His wartime reflections provide a nuanced perspective on what we might now, from the comfort of our secure homes, celebrate as an exalted sense of duty and responsibility to the nation. Society, after all, often accords veterans the status of patriots because they have given so much to the nation, including their lives as sacrifices on the battlefields.
Sáenz, however, reveals that the soldiers who served with him in the 20th Texas-Oklahoma Division rarely self-identified as patriots. They most often perceived themselves as victims of circumstances beyond their control and lamented their service as an everyday experience in the horrors of war. They seldom spoke of patriotism as a motivating force or engaged in self-adulation, despite the exhortations of many of their officers and politicians back home during and especially after the war. Instead, they conveyed a sense of disillusionment and resignation.
Sáenz clearly suggests that labeling servicemen as patriots without truly understanding their military service and how they wished to be remembered constitutes a disregard for their sacrifice and a misuse of the concept of patriotism.
Our discourse on patriotism, therefore, should encompass the full narrative, including the responsibility of a supposedly grateful nation to its idealized veterans. This is particularly pertinent for the Mexican doughboys in Sáenz’s diary, who served honorably in the 90th Texas-Oklahoma Division but saw no appreciable change in their lives as Mexicans at the homefront in Texas.
They enlisted in impressive numbers, contributed to the preservation of democracy in Europe, and shed their blood on the battlefields of France. Sáenz notes that many of the soldiers, including himself, had hoped that the experience of “foxhole democracy” and their demonstration of fidelity would improve their marginalized condition in Texas. They were profoundly disappointed. Despite their significant wartime contributions and LULAC’s emphasis on their sacrifices, which promoted an amplified form of patriotism in their twentieth-century social justice campaigns, society often failed to recognize them as patriots or accord them the respect they deserved.
As with Ramírez, Sáenz represents a distinct historical trajectory and intellectual perspective that coexisted alongside competing viewpoints; thus, neither figure should be seen as representing the entirety of Mexican American history. For example, some Mexican Americans—much like individuals in other ethnic and social groups—adopted more individualistic approaches to civic life or radical departures from the conventional approach to domestic politics.
In contrast to Sáenz’s appeals for Americanization and the articulation of a collective ethnic identity, others responded to national calls for unity with skepticism, questioning the sincerity of American institutions and, in some cases, evading the military draft.
As suggested earlier, the textbooks that colleagues and I have published offer the committee and the governor an inclusive treatment of the past that they may want to use in their deliberations. The latter one, Mexican Americans of Texas: A History of Tradition and Struggle, is especially important.
This pioneering work is the first textbook on Mexican American history published for our schools in accordance with the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS), our state’s standard curriculum for our public schools. It spans from the Indigenous past to the present and includes a comprehensive learning system featuring timelines, periodization schemes, definitions, concepts, and classroom activities.
Organized around key themes, the book highlights the integral role of Mexican Americans in shaping both Texas and American history, reinforcing the idea that Mexican Americans are inextricably linked to broader narratives. Their contributions to the history and culture of the United States and Texas are undeniable and must be shared widely if we are to call ourselves a Democratic society. 
