Social Change, Cultural Redemption, and Social Stability

This chapter analyzes the First Mexicanist Congress and its offshoot, La Liga Femenil Mexicanista (hereafter referred to as the League of Mexican Women), as organizations that reflect a sophisticated and gendered transborder political culture that developed in response to racism and poverty facing both diasporic and indigenous Mexican communities. This political culture borrowed ideas across borders and reflected three distinct discourses and strategies: social change, cultural redemption, and social stability. The chapter emphasizes the liberal capitalist ideas undergirding the lives and public work of transborder activists and addresses the privileges gente decente enjoyed while many méxico-tejano families did not.