“An unprecedented tour de force . . . [A] sweeping historical overview and interpretation of the racial formation and racial history of Mexican Americans.” —Antonia I. Castañeda, Associate Professor of History, St. Mary’s University Winner, A Choice Outstanding Academic Book The history of Mexican Americans is a history of the intermingling of races—Indian, White, and Black. This racial history underlies a legacy of racial discrimination against Mexican Americans and their Mexican ancestors that stretches from the Spanish conquest to current battles over ending affirmative action and other assistance programs for ethnic minorities. Asserting the centrality of race in Mexican American history, Martha Menchaca here offers the first interpretive racial history of Mexican Americans, focusing on racial foundations and race relations from preHispanic times to the present. Menchaca uses the concept of racialization to describe the process through which Spanish, Mexican, and U.S. authorities constructed racial status hierarchies that marginalized Mexicans of color and restricted their rights of land ownership. She traces this process from the Spanish colonial period and the introduction of slavery through racial laws affecting Mexican Americans into the late twentieth-century. This re-viewing of familiar history through the lens of race recovers Blacks as important historical actors, links Indians and the mission system in the Southwest to the Mexican American present, and reveals the legal and illegal means by which Mexican Americans lost their land grants. “Martha Menchaca has begun an intellectual insurrection by challenging the pristine aboriginal origins of Mexican Americans as historically inaccurate . . . Menchaca revisits the process of racial formation in the northern part of Greater Mexico from the Spanish conquest to the present.” —Hispanic American Historical Review

“An unprecedented tour de force . . . [A] sweeping historical overview and interpretation of the racial formation and racial history of Mexican Americans.” —Antonia I. Castañeda, Associate Professor of History, St. Mary’s University Winner, A Choice Outstanding Academic Book The history of Mexican Americans is a history of the intermingling of races—Indian, White, and Black. This racial history underlies a legacy of racial discrimination against Mexican Americans and their Mexican ancestors that stretches from the Spanish conquest to current battles over ending affirmative action and other assistance programs for ethnic minorities. Asserting the centrality of race in Mexican American history, Martha Menchaca here offers the first interpretive racial history of Mexican Americans, focusing on racial foundations and race relations from preHispanic times to the present. Menchaca uses the concept of racialization to describe the process through which Spanish, Mexican, and U.S. authorities constructed racial status hierarchies that marginalized Mexicans of color and restricted their rights of land ownership. She traces this process from the Spanish colonial period and the introduction of slavery through racial laws affecting Mexican Americans into the late twentieth-century. This re-viewing of familiar history through the lens of race recovers Blacks as important historical actors, links Indians and the mission system in the Southwest to the Mexican American present, and reveals the legal and illegal means by which Mexican Americans lost their land grants. “Martha Menchaca has begun an intellectual insurrection by challenging the pristine aboriginal origins of Mexican Americans as historically inaccurate . . . Menchaca revisits the process of racial formation in the northern part of Greater Mexico from the Spanish conquest to the present.” —Hispanic American Historical Review

“An unprecedented tour de force . . . [A] sweeping historical overview and interpretation of the racial formation and racial history of Mexican Americans.” —Antonia I. Castañeda, Associate Professor of History, St. Mary’s University Winner, A Choice Outstanding Academic Book The history of Mexican Americans is a history of the intermingling of races—Indian, White, and Black. This racial history underlies a legacy of racial discrimination against Mexican Americans and their Mexican ancestors that stretches from the Spanish conquest to current battles over ending affirmative action and other assistance programs for ethnic minorities. Asserting the centrality of race in Mexican American history, Martha Menchaca here offers the first interpretive racial history of Mexican Americans, focusing on racial foundations and race relations from preHispanic times to the present. Menchaca uses the concept of racialization to describe the process through which Spanish, Mexican, and U.S. authorities constructed racial status hierarchies that marginalized Mexicans of color and restricted their rights of land ownership. She traces this process from the Spanish colonial period and the introduction of slavery through racial laws affecting Mexican Americans into the late twentieth-century. This re-viewing of familiar history through the lens of race recovers Blacks as important historical actors, links Indians and the mission system in the Southwest to the Mexican American present, and reveals the legal and illegal means by which Mexican Americans lost their land grants. “Martha Menchaca has begun an intellectual insurrection by challenging the pristine aboriginal origins of Mexican Americans as historically inaccurate . . . Menchaca revisits the process of racial formation in the northern part of Greater Mexico from the Spanish conquest to the present.” —Hispanic American Historical Review

A historical overview of Mexican Americans' social and economic experiences in Texas For hundreds of years, Mexican Americans in Texas have fought against political oppression and exclusion—in courtrooms, in schools, at the ballot box, and beyond. Through a detailed exploration of this long battle for equality, this book illuminates critical moments of both struggle and triumph in the Mexican American experience. Martha Menchaca begins with the Spanish settlement of Texas, exploring how Mexican Americans’ racial heritage limited their incorporation into society after the territory’s annexation. She then illustrates their political struggles in the nineteenth century as they tried to assert their legal rights of citizenship and retain possession of their land, and goes on to explore their fight, in the twentieth century, against educational segregation, jury exclusion, and housing covenants. It was only in 1967, she shows, that the collective pressure placed on the state government by Mexican American and African American activists led to the beginning of desegregation. Menchaca concludes with a look at the crucial roles that Mexican Americans have played in national politics, education, philanthropy, and culture, while acknowledging the important work remaining to be done in the struggle for equality.

2013 — NACCS Book Award – National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a majority of the Mexican immigrant population in the United States resided in Texas, making the state a flashpoint in debates over whether to deny naturalization rights. As Texas federal courts grappled with the issue, policies pertaining to Mexican immigrants came to reflect evolving political ideologies on both sides of the border. Drawing on unprecedented historical analysis of state archives, U.S. Congressional records, and other sources of overlooked data, Naturalizing Mexican Immigrants provides a rich understanding of the realities and rhetoric that have led to present-day immigration controversies. Martha Menchaca's groundbreaking research examines such facets as U.S.-Mexico relations following the U.S. Civil War and the schisms created by Mexican abolitionists; the anti-immigration stance that marked many suffragist appeals; the effects of the Spanish American War; distinctions made for mestizo, Afromexicano, and Native American populations; the erosion of means for U.S. citizens to legalize their relatives; and the ways in which U.S. corporations have caused the political conditions that stimulated emigration from Mexico. The first historical study of its kind, Naturalizing Mexican Immigrants delivers a clear-eyed view of provocative issues.

People of Mexican descent and Anglo Americans have lived together in the U.S. Southwest for over a hundred years, yet relations between them remain strained, as shown by recent controversies over social services for undocumented aliens in California. In this study, covering the Spanish colonial period to the present day, Martha Menchaca delves deeply into interethnic relations in Santa Paula, California, to document how the residential, social, and school segregation of Mexican-origin people became institutionalized in a representative California town. Menchaca lived in Santa Paula during the 1980s, and interviews with residents add a vivid human dimension to her book. She argues that social segregation in Santa Paula has evolved into a system of social apartness—that is, a cultural system controlled by Anglo Americans that designates the proper times and places where Mexican-origin people can socially interact with Anglos. This first historical ethnographic case study of a Mexican-origin community will be important reading across a spectrum of disciplines, including anthropology, sociology, race and ethnicity, Latino studies, and American culture.

A Companion to Latina/o Studies is a collection of 40 original essays written by leading scholars in the field, dedicated to exploring the question of what 'Latino/a' is. Brings together in one volume a diverse range of original essays by established and emerging scholars in the field of Latina/o Studies Offers a timely reference to the issues, topics, and approaches to the study of US Latinos - now the largest minority population in the United States Explores the depth of creative scholarship in this field, including theories of latinisimo, immigration, political and economic perspectives, education, race/class/gender and sexuality, language, and religion Considers areas of broader concern, including history, identity, public representations, cultural expression and racialization (including African and Native American heritage).