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This article focuses on Mexican immigrants in Texas. The Mexican immigrant presents many of the problems which are found among any other immigrant group. But is with the specifically Mexican aspects of this immigration insofar as it is represented in Texas, that this paper is concerned here. The unusually casual character of a good deal of this immigration strikes us at first sight. No other immigration has come to us which shifts back and forth between the U.S. and the home country as much as does the Mexican immigration. It is not at all a serious undertaking for the Mexican to come to the U.S., certainly not nearly as serious as the undertaking of any other immigrant group that has come to the U.S. heretofore. This gives the Mexican population a kaleidoscopic character which strikes one very forcefully when he visits a Mexican community in Texas at an interval of eight months or even less. Texas is the corridor and clearing house for the majority of the Mexican casuals who are disturbed over the country. In matters of health they present a serious problem. Tuberculosis, syphilis and gento-urinary diseases take an exceedingly heavy toll among them. Of course, the terrific overcrowding has something to do with it, also the exceeding sensitiveness to cold of the Mexican and his insufficient and unwise clothing.

The town of Tecolotlan, Jalisco contains generic features of culture and society which are roughly representative of the many communities from which Mexicans migrated to the United States. A mestizo, Spanish speaking community, Tecolothlan is a farming center with some small household industries. Over the past forty years it has undergone a number of changes incidental to the transformations of the system of land tenure, and the development of altered means of transportation. The change from economic and political domination by large haciendas to partial ascendency of agrarian communities has altered the form, if not the significance, of social stratification. Major segments of institutional arrangements, such as education and the schools, religion and the church, and the family are briefly analyzed and their functional roles are described. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This article discusses a study which examined variations of cultural patterns among three generations of Mexicans in San Antonio, Texas. 45 families made up the sample for the study. 15 families were selected, each from the first, second, and third generation of Mexican people. The primary research tool used in this study was the personal interview. Library research produced a fairly rich source of secondary materials. Participant observation over a period of two years served to broaden and deepen the author's understanding and appreciation of the findings in the study. Cultural patterns as used in the study may be defined as a composite of specific ways of thinking, feeling, and acting which differentiates one group from another; or the historically derived system of explicit and implicit designs for living which tend to be shared by all members of a group. The first-generation group verbalized disapproval of the change in attitudes and practices of the second and third generations. Conflict would arise when the first-generation group attempted to pull the second- and third-generation groups back to its familiar and traditional patterns of living. The practice of folk medicine was found to have survived throughout the three-generation group. However, many in the second generation have also accepted some of the ideas and procedures of scientific medicine.