| This dissertation examined the intersection and interaction of Tejanos and Anglos, the dynamics of race relations, internal migration, adaptive networks, and the creation of a Tejano community in the Red River Valley of Minnesota, 1920 through 1976. The intersection and interaction of two diverse cultural groups, Tejanos and Anglos, in a small Midwestern agricultural-based community provided an examination of the strategies of adaptation and accommodation to each other. Dependence on the agricultural productivity of the land and the development of an internal migratory pattern connecting two distinct regions, the Winter Garden of South Texas and the Red River Valley of Minnesota were crucial for the development of a permanent Tejano community in the Moorhead area.;I argued that outmigration from Texas was precipitated by a highly racialized hierarchy that limited economic, educational, and social access to Tejanos in Crystal City, Texas and was facilitated by the expansion of the sugar beet industry in Minnesota. I found that displacement from what was familiar---home, family, culture, customs, and traditions---strengthened Tejano solidarity and ethnic identity in the Red River Valley of Minnesota. Moreover, cultural continuity in the adopted homeland underwent a process of adaptation and accommodation as these newcomers constructed a new collective identity and a new cultural orientation as permanent residents rather than seasonal migrant farmworkers.;My thesis is that this first generation transferred ethnic Mexican cultural elements to Moorhead and these elements were crucial to the genesis of a permanent Tejano community. I argue that, although Mexican nationals introduced cultural elements to the Red River Valley in the early decades of the twentieth century, it was the Tejanos from the Winter Garden area of South Texas who nourished and sustained the ethnic community and allowed it to flourish. The social networks Tejanos developed at the personal, familial, and community level facilitated the subsequent entry of new immigrants from Mexico and Central America into the Red River Valley in the decades that followed. Consequently, the ethnic Mexican culture in Moorhead was characterized by the hybridized customs of Tejanos. |
