people. In the 1960’s, Mexican Americans formed
(30) community-based political groups that emphasized ancestral
heritage as a way of mobilizing constituents. Such emerg-
ing issues as immigration and voting rights gave Mexican
American advocacy groups the means by which to promote
ethnic solidarity. Like European ethnic groups in the
(35) nineteenth-century United States, late-twentieth-century
Mexican American leaders combined ethnic with contem-
porary civic symbols. In 1968 Henry Censors, then mayor
of San Antonio, Texas, cited Mexican leader Benito Juarez
as a model for Mexican Americans in their fight for con-
(40) temporary civil rights. And every year, Mexican Americans
celebrate Cinco de Mayo as fervently as many Irish
American people embrace St. Patrick’s Day (both are major
holidays in the countries of origin), with both holidays
having been reinvented in the context of the United States
and linked to ideals, symbols, and heroes of the United
States.
1. Which of the following best states the main idea of the
passage?
(A) In their definitions of the nature of ethnicity,
sociologists have underestimated the power of the
primordial human need to belong.
(B) Ethnicity is best defined as a dynamic process that
combines cultural components with shared
political and economic interests.
(C) In the United States in the twentieth century, ethnic
groups have begun to organize in order to further
their political and economic interests.
(D) Ethnicity in the United States has been significantly