Mexicanist Congress
The Mexicanist Congress, known as El Primer Congreso Mexicanista, was a significant political gathering that took place in September 1911 in Laredo, Texas. Organized primarily by Jovita Idar and her family, it was a response to the rampant anti-Mexican discrimination prevalent in the U.S. during that time. The Congress aimed to address pressing issues including social inequality, economic status, educational opportunities, and labor rights for Mexican Americans. It also led to the establishment of two important organizations: the Great Mexican League for Benefit and Protection and the Mexican Women's League.
The Congress was notable for its inclusive approach, inviting representatives from various Mexican American societies and organizations, and it coincided with cultural events such as Mexican Independence Day. Jovita Idar emerged as a prominent leader, particularly in advocating for education and social reforms. The Mexicanist Congress is recognized as one of the first organized movements of its kind for the Mexican American community, laying groundwork for future advocacy, including the Chicanismo movement of the mid-twentieth century. Its influence is still acknowledged in discussions about Mexican American identity and rights today.
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Mexicanist Congress
The Mexicanist Congress, formally known as the First Mexicanist Congress and widely referred to by its Spanish name, El Primer Congreso Mexicanista, was an organized Mexican American political movement that convened in Texas in September 1911. It was organized by a leadership group that included the renowned educator, journalist, and social activist Jovita Idar.
Formed to address grievances and potential remedies to rampant anti-Mexican discrimination in the United States, the Mexicanist Congress sought to tackle a variety of issues related to social and economic inequality, educational opportunity, and labor rights. It also established the Great Mexican League for Benefit and Protection, known in Spanish as the Gran Liga Mexicanista de Beneficencia y Protección. The Great Mexican League for Benefit and Protection was among the first of many such organizations founded in the southern and southwestern United States between 1915 and 1930.
Background
During the first decade of the twentieth century, anti-Mexican racism and discrimination were pervasive in areas of the United States with sizable Mexican American populations. The 2020 Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) documentary Jovita Idar: Mexican American Activist and Journalist, which aired as part of the broadcaster’s American Masters series, noted that signs with the statement “No Negroes, Mexicans, or Dogs Allowed” were commonplace in shops and other places of business in southern Texas at the time. People of Mexican origin were also subjected to lynching and other forms of brutality by White mobs in Texas and other border-adjacent areas of the southern United States. In 1911, a fourteen-year-old boy was murdered by a lynch mob in Thorndale, Texas, prompting Idar and other Mexican American community leaders to take organized social action. Their efforts led directly to the Mexicanist Congress of September 1911.
Idar was born in Laredo, Texas, in 1885. Texas had been part of Mexico prior to joining the United States. Because of this, people of Mexican descent were frequently treated as an inferior underclass by the White population that moved into Texas after it became the twenty-eighth US state in 1845. While Idar and many Mexican Americans like her held US citizenship as their birthright, they nonetheless experienced unchecked discrimination that relegated them to secondary status in their own country. Historians note that in Texas and other parts of the southern and southwestern United States, Mexican Americans with US citizenship were routinely intimidated and victimized by acts of violence to prevent them from exercising their civic rights or organizing to revolt against socioeconomic injustices.
After launching her career as an educator in the inferior Texas schools designated for use by the Mexican American community, Idar became increasingly active politically during her young adulthood. She went on to work as a journalist for La Crónica, a Mexican American newspaper run by Idar’s family. The newspaper became an important outlet for Idar’s activism, and she used it to lobby for social reforms including an end to anti-Mexican discrimination and strong support for first-wave feminist causes and the women’s suffrage movement.
Overview
Idar and family member Clemente Idar co-organized the Mexicanist Congress of 1911. The Idars envisioned the Mexicanist Congress as a statewide organization that would include Mexican Americans and Mexican immigrants from across Texas. However, Clemente Idar was unable to personally attend the meeting. As a result, Jovita Idar assumed a primary leadership role during the event, which ran in Laredo, Texas, from September 14 to 22, 1911.
Prior to the meeting of the Mexicanist Congress, the event was heavily promoted to the local Mexican American community in La Crónica. Organizers invited delegations to represent various societies, social organizations, and lodges with strong Mexican American membership, as well as sympathetic journalists, Texas-based consuls to Mexico, and Mexican American women from throughout Texas. The meeting was well-attended and specifically scheduled to coincide with major cultural events including Mexican Independence Day (September 16).
The Mexicanist Congress included both general meetings and themed workshops, which focused intently on problems such as social inequality and discrimination, the economic status of Mexican American communities, education, and women’s rights. It also established two key organizations: the Great Mexican League for Benefit and Protection, and the Mexican Women’s League, known in Spanish as the Liga Femenil Mexicanista. Idar was elected president of the Mexican Women’s League, and another of her family members, Nicasio Idar, assumed the leadership of the Great Mexican League for Benefit and Protection.
In her subsequent leadership of the Mexican Women’s League, Idar advocated for free public education for impoverished Mexican American children. She later went on to work as a journalist for another high-profile progressive Mexican American newspaper, El Progreso. During Idar’s tenure with El Progreso, the newspaper published an editorial that was highly critical of US military interference in the ongoing Mexican Revolution (1910–1917). Members of the Texas Rangers were then dispatched to destroy the newspaper’s offices but were bravely confronted by Idar, who refused to allow them access to the property.
The Mexicanist Congress was highly significant because it marked one of the first major examples of organized social and political activism by the heavily oppressed Mexican American community. Historians note its influences on later political movements including Chicanismo, which emerged in the mid-twentieth century and notably tied the Mexican American identity to its Indigenous roots. Commentators note that while the Chicanismo movement was widely viewed as a novel ideology as it gathered momentum during the 1960s and 1970s, many of its ideals directly echoed those held by the membership and activists of the Mexicanist Congress.
Bibliography
“1911: Meeting of the Mexicanist Congress.” Library of Congress, guides.loc.gov/latinx-civil-rights/mexicanist-congress. Accessed 19 June 2023.
Acosta, Teresa P. “Congreso Mexicanista.” Texas State Historical Association, 1 June 1995, www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/congreso-mexicanista. Accessed 19 June 2023.
“El Primer Congreso Mexicanista Convenes in Laredo in 1911.” Oregon Education Association, 14 Sept. 2022, grow.oregoned.org/eye-on-equity/historical-calendar/el-primer-congreso-mexicanista-convenes-in-laredo-in-1911. Accessed 19 June 2023.
“Jovita Idar: Mexican American Activist and Journalist.” Public Broadcasting Service, 2020, www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/jovita-idar-mexican-american-activist-and-journalist-e6zgar/15329/. Accessed 19 June 2023.
“Life Story: Jovita Idar Juarez.” New York Historical Society Museum and Library, 2021, wams.nyhistory.org/wp-content/uploads/print/3223‗whole‗page.pdf. Accessed 19 Jun. 2023.
Limon, Jose E. “El Primer Congreso Mexicanista: A Precursor to Contemporary Chicanismo.” Aztlan, vol. 5, no. 1–2 (Spring–Fall 1974): pp. 85–117.
Leininger Pycior, Julie. “Mexican Protective League.” Texas State Historical Association, 24 Sept. 2016, www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/mexican-protective-league. Accessed 19 June 2023.
Saul, Abby. “Sept. 14, 1911: El Primer Congreso Mexicanista Convenes in Laredo.” Zinn Education Project, www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/jovita-idar. Accessed 19 June 2023.