The following factual and statistical paper will be based on the reports of the United States Commission on Civil Rights. The geographical areas discussed will include the states of California, Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas where nearly four of the five million Mexican Americans in this country live.
The Mexican Americans living in the states of California, Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas constitute the largest cultural minority in the Southwest. According to the 1960 census, they number three and one-half million persons. Approximately eight-five percent of these persons were born in the United States. Hence, they are not recent immigrants.
Mexican Americans, for the most part, are poor. More than one half of the rural Spanish surnamed families, or fifty-four percent, and almost one-third of the urban Spanish surnamed families, or thirty-one percent, have annual incomes of less than three thousand dollars, a figure below the poverty line.
They are frequently burdened with a high incidence of unemployment. Those who can find work are generally limited to the unskilled categories of labor. The educational attainment of the Mexican American falls substantially below that of the rest of the population in those regions.
The Mexican American's relationships with law enforcement agencies in the administration of justice is a major problem.
The United States Commission on Civil Rights investigations found widespread discrimination against Mexican Americans by law enforcement officials which ranged from verbal abuse to actual physical violence. Evidence shows that it is a fact of the Mexican American's life to be subjected to unduly harsh treatment by police, to be frequently arrested on insufficient grounds, to receive harassment and penalties disproportionate in severity, compared to those imposed on Anglos for the same acts. The following story exemplifie
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