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Literacy Among Inmigrantes in Texas, 1850-1900

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 October 2022

Kenneth L. Stewart  and
Arnoldo De León
Kenneth L. Stewart
Affiliation:
Angelo State University
Arnoldo De León
Affiliation:
Angelo State University
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Few studies have focused on the subject of literacy among Mexican Americans in the nineteenth century. Richard Griswold del Castillo's “Literacy in San Antonio, 1850-1860,” stands out as one of the few studies of Mexican American reading and writing skills in nineteenth-century Texas. Its limitations are obvious, however. As a research note, it made no pretense at comprehensiveness. It focused on only one town, and the ten-year span it covered is rather narrow. Griswold del Castillo nevertheless touched upon an often neglected aspect of Tejano history—the immigrant dimension of the Chicano experience.

Type
Research Reports and Notes
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 20 , Issue 3 , 1985 , pp. 180 - 187
Copyright
Copyright © 1985 by the University of Texas Press

References

Notes

1. Richard Griswold del Castillo, “Literacy in San Antonio, Texas, 1850-1860,” LARR 15, no. 3 (1980):180-85.

2. Data reported in this paper are part of an ongoing analysis of the federal census for Texas in the nineteenth century. The data base contains computerized information pertaining to some thirty characteristics of more than one hundred thousand individuals who resided in twenty counties in Texas between 1850 and 1900. The twenty counties were selected to provide a representative sample of the residents of the regions of South, Central, and West Texas; individuals were chosen on a random basis from the original census returns.

3. Our figures for San Antonio correlate even more closely with those of Griswold del Castillo. The immigrant literacy rates for San Antonio were 10.8 percent and 39.0 percent in 1850 and 1860 respectively, according to our sample.

4. This speculation is not fully supported by comparison of literacy rates for San Antonio with those of the region of Central Texas. Generally, immigrant literacy was higher in the region than it was in the city. In 1860, for example, the San Antonio rate of 39.0 percent compared to a 43.7 percent level for the region as a whole, and similar differences held for 1850 and 1870. These comparisons suggest an alternate speculation that the more literate immigrants from Mexico were attracted to areas of more advanced economic development rather than to urban environments per se.

5. In 1870 the Census Bureau began to distinguish between individuals with complete literacy skills and those who had only partial skills, such as the ability to read but not to write. Hence the distinction between complete and partial degrees of literacy is made in these comments.

6. Griswold del Castillo, “Literacy in San Antonio,” 182.

7. Regional calculations show that in the period of declining literacy between 1860 and 1870, immigrant literacy fell by as much as twenty percentage points in Central Texas and as little as five percentage points in West Texas. Among native Tejanos, however, literacy rates did not fall at all in South and Central Texas during this time, with the only decline among Tejanos being ten percentage points in West Texas. Again, after 1870 the regional calculations show that immigrant literacy rates grew at a faster pace in all sections than did the native levels. By 1900 native Tejano literacy ranged from about 45 percent in South Texas to 52 percent in Central Texas. The immigrant rates ranged from 31 percent in West Texas to 35 percent in the central region.

8. Griswold del Castillo, “Literacy in San Antonio,” t. 4, p. 184.

9. Our figures for San Antonio show that immigrant school attendance grew from a negligible level of less than 1 percent in 1850 to 25.5 percent in 1860. The calculations also show that native Tejano school attendance increased dramatically from 16.4 to 41.4 percent. Griswold del Castillo's data do not show such an increase for native school attendance.

10. Immigrant school attendance in West Texas, primarily El Paso, may have paralleled the magnitude of increase in San Antonio during the 1850s. The 1860 rate for West Texas was 21 percent, thus suggesting the possibility of growth from 1850. The 1850 level of attendance is not available, however.