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Alianza Hispano-Americana founded
On this day in 1894, the Alianza Hispano-Americana was founded in
Tucson, Arizona, by Carlos I. Velasco, Pedro C. Pellón, and Mariano G.
Samaniego, as a fraternal benefit society. It fanned out across the rest
of the Southwest over the next sixteen years, spreading to Texas by June
1906. It grew into the biggest and best known of the Mexican-American
sociedades mutualistas in the Southwest. AHA was set up to offer
life insurance at low rates and provide social activities for Mexican
Americans. Its goals were similar to those of other fraternal aid groups
in the United States, which began to multiply in the late nineteenth
century among European immigrants. When AHA was established, most United
States citizens could not depend on government social security programs,
labor unions, or commercial life insurance to provide economic
assistance to a family upon the loss of the chief family provider,
usually the father. Besides tendering such services, AHA, like other
mutual-aid groups, also sought to preserve the culture of its
constituents and taught its members democratic traditions, such as free
speech, by involving them in organizational activities.Texas-based AHA
lodges were established in major cities, such as San Antonio and El
Paso, but there were some affiliates in such small towns as Luling and
Lytton. Expansion into Texas and other Southwestern cities in the 1910s
improved services to the immense Mexican immigrant population that had
been driven across the border by the Mexican Revolution. After 1929 the
establishment of the League of United Latin American Citizens cut Texas
participation in the AHA, and the AHA faded away in the 1960s.
- Links to Related Handbook of Texas Online Articles
- ALIANZA HISPANO-AMERICANA
- SOCIEDADES MUTUALISTAS
- MEXICAN AMERICANS
- LEAGUE OF UNITED LATIN AMERICAN CITIZENS
- Other Texas Day by Day Articles for This Date
- War effort proceeds as huge Texas base is activated (1942)
- Governor urges Texans to make sacrifices (1865)
- Former governor Alan Shivers dies (1985)
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