The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 98, July 1994 - April, 1995 Page: 229
682 p. : ill. (some col.), maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Deconstructing La Raza
The idea of a group called the gente decente is to some degree, like the
concept of a working class, an analytical construct; there were no card-
carrying members of the gente decente. They did, however, have a group
identity which they expressed through their newspapers and social orga-
nizations. The gente decente do not fit into a strict economic class catego-
ry, and cannot be adequately defined only by their relationship to the
means of production. Anyone from a skilled worker, to a poorly paid
teacher, to a wealthy landowner may have been part of the gente decente.
Belonging to the gente decente depended upon one's education, com-
portment, family background, and participation in Laredo's civic soci-
eties. Although this cultural category, gente decente, lacks the "objectivity"
and specificity of the class-based categories, proletarian and bourgeoisie,
its subjectivity and flexibility reflects more accurately the alliances that
occurred in Laredo. Recognizing the salience of cultural and ideological
affiliations, rather than a strictly defined class identity, helps to explain
why workers may have adopted middle-class values while some educated
elites identified with the struggles of workers. Although the lines be-
come blurred on the edges, the gente decente can be characterized on the
whole as wealthier and "whiter" than other Mexicans.
The gente decente identity emerged at the end of the nineteenth centu-
ry as a way to express the political and economic alliance that formed
between old-timer and newcomer elites. This era marked a period of
great economic and cultural transition for Laredo. After the railroad
lines reached Laredo in 1881, commercial agriculture, wholesale mer-
chandising, and industrial manufacturing began to steadily supplant
ranching as the main economic activities. With the advent of railroads,
came a flood of Anglo-Americans and newcomer Mexicans. In A Border-
lands Town in Transition, Gilberto Hinojosa finds that Laredo's popula-
tion nearly tripled, from 3,811 in 188o to 11,319 in 1890, after the
railroad reached the city.4 This economic and demographic transforma-
tion led to a restructuring of power in Laredo in which the old-time elite
entered into a tenuous alliance with the newcomer capitalists. The ten-
sions between these two groups came to the foreground in the mid-
188os as the newly formed Citizens Party (referred to as Las Botas),
of Chihuahua as the gente culta. He argues that the middle classes attempted to impose their
work ethic and morality onto miners. The permanent mine workers, aspiring to be middle class,
subscribed to these beliefs, while the temporary mine workers, what he calls the "floating popula-
tion" (p. 4), resisted them Many of the Laredoan ehte came themselves from northern Mexican
wealthy families. Although many of the same characteristics mark the Chihuahuan and Lare-
doan middle classes, the term gente decente, or alternatively gente de educac6n, was used more fre-
quently in Laredo.
' Gilberto Miguel Hinojosa, A Borderlands Town in Transitzon. Laredo, z755-i870 (College Sta-
tion: Texas A&M University Press, 1983), 98.1994
229
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 98, July 1994 - April, 1995, periodical, 1995; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101216/m1/267/: accessed May 1, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.