Querida Chucho,
Today, you are a man. You have reached your eighteenth birthday and are now ready to face the world. It seems like just yesterday you were in your Aztec feather headdress and playing in the yard while I tended the corn. Now you strut around with your amigos in your zoot suits, looking like you are causing trouble but are just having fun with your friends. I long for the days of my adolescence, where everything was simpler. Now you have to deal with the racism that is permeating through our barrio. A racism that inundates your school system and causes your little sister and her friends to endure a kind of pain that I did not have to encounter until I was much older and jaded. Being forced to attend a school held in a barn and receiving sub par education at the hands of misguided young teachers trying to force our children into a certain mold through their "Americanization" programs, while being blind to the fact that assimilation is the only true way for our children to adhere to the standards set by the gringos.
My dear Chucho, I see your friends falling prey to the hatred that pervades this world. I see them wielding knives and causing trouble around the barrio. But my dear Chucho, I believe that I have not only raised you right but that you have something intrinsic in your heart and that you will strive to achieve some sort of hope for the future.
Mi nino, your grandfather came to this country with not even a peso in his pocket to secure a better life for his family, and that included you. And I am so proud of you. You wear your American-ness on your sleeve but never forget your Mexican roots. You understand that no matter how far your life takes you from this barrio you grew up in, Belvedere, California, you will never forget where you came from.
Chucho, I wish you the best of luck in your future. You will always be faced with racism and hatred, but the times are changing. You and your generation are utilizing your intrinsic agency and practicing resistance and subsequently conquering disadvantages. Never again will you represent victimization. You are a child of the Chicano generation, and you deserve to succeed.
Best,
Tu Padre

QUESTIONS:
(1) How does the Mexican American assimilation process compare to the struggle that many Blacks endured during the postbellum and pre-Civil War era?
(2) Sanchez attributes the failure of the Americanization programs to the fact that they did not have the chance to develop enough to even begin to solve the "Mexican problem." Do you think that if they had the time to develop, they would have succeeded in their endeavors?
(3) In certain landmark anti-segregation cases, schools that intentionally segregated Mexican children were deemed illegal because Mexicans, due to the Spanish blood running to their veins. Yet they were still treated with discrimination in daily life, with signs in Texas reading "No Blacks, Mexicans, or dogs allowed." Therefore, did color even matter in pre-Civil Rights America, or was it just the imposed social class that mattered?