Professor conducts research on 8,500-mile bicycle tour

A professor of Chicano studies is taking a bicycle tour around the United States to study the nation's “Latino-ization.”

Louis Mendoza, chairman of the Department of Chicano Studies at the University of Minnesota, left Santa Cruz on his touring bike in July headed to New York and is returning via the Sun Belt. He recently left El Paso.

At his very insightful A Journey Across Our America blog, Mendoza writes about the increasing presence of Hispanics in large and small cities all across the country. He told an El Paso newspaper that he chose to travel by bicycle because “I'd be more likely to have unpredictable experiences along the road.”

Home state

The 47-year-old professor has most recently been bicycling across Texas, his home state. He wrote about his perceptions in his blog:

“Riding this road brings back childhood memories of “backwards” rural towns where Mexicans were not welcome and were confronted with a Jim Crow small-town culture as harsh as existed anywhere else in the South. But I also know that reality has changed. Mexicans now exist in substantially larger numbers in these small towns; social, cultural, economic, and political inroads have been made. Though I suspect that this hasn’t necessarily translated into real power or a progressive social order based on equity and respect, one could reasonably say that the quality and character of life is different, less tense, more bicultural if not multiethnic.”

This is an interesting trip that Mendoza is taking on his fully loaded Cannondale touring bike. Surfing through his blog, I see that he writes about his interviews with local Hispanic leaders as well as men waiting for work at a day labor sites. Some of those he meets have been here for generations, while others are recent arrivals with family in Mexico or deeper in Latin America.

Small towns

Mendoza told the El Paso Times that he was struck by the number of Hispanics present in small towns, their entrepreneurial spirit and “how well we're all getting along,” despite the political rhetoric.

“There was real gratitude expressed by elderly white people about how Latinos have saved their communities by working in the fields or in mills when the younger generations did not want to do these jobs anymore.”

The professor also writes about the issue of building the fence across the southern border to keep out immigrants and some of the problems that has caused in those communities.

He estimates that his 8,500-mile tour will take about six months. He then plans to write a book about his trip and what he learned.

In addition to his blog, there's a video about his ride.

Picture from Mendoza blog, A Journey Across Our America.