Alianza Hispano Americana

Benefits and Protections

After Arizona became part of the United States under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo of 1848, and had its inclusion expanded under the subsequent Gadsden Purchase Treaty of 1854, Mexicans in the region faced challenges from Anglo Americans to their land, economic well-being, and political power. They also faced challenges to the maintenance of their culture, language, and religion. Anglos who settled in the late 19th century formed a chapter of the American Protective Association in 1894 in Tucson, an organization that was anti-Catholic and, in the case of Arizona, anti-Mexican. Responses to Anglo American encroachment in the Southwest—not only physically but also economically, politically, and culturally—were met with a variety of responses, ranging from social banditry and armed resistance to benign accommodation through intermarriage.

Tucsoneses, native Mexicans from Tucson, viewed Anglo American settlement in the area a threat to their way of life, and more wealthy citizens saw the Alianza as an important response. Lodges sprang up quickly in mining areas, where interactions with Anglo American capitalists were particularly intense. Membership in the Alianza increased after the first wave of Mexican migration into the United States during the Mexican Revolution of the early 20th century, although a few Alianza chapters existed in Mexico. This transnational insurance and benefit can be seen in the more contemporary organizing and benefits provided to members of the agricultural labor union Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) in Ohio. The FLOC published a regular newsletter, Alianza, which featured the work of local chapters, or lodges.

The fraternal insurance movement began in the late 1800s in the United States to combat the limiting of life insurance to the wealthy. Immigrants, black Americans, and Mexicans, included by conquest or migration, viewed the benefits of mutual aid societies and fraternal insurance organizations as providing a modicum of security in hostile and insecure times and locations. Not all mutual aid societies were as financially solvent as Alianza, and they collapsed because of unsound financial structuring during the Great Depression and post–World War II periods. In Texas, University of Texas scholar George I. Sanchez assisted the Alianza with a project to desegregate prisoners.

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