The Chicanos: Life and Struggles of the Mexican Minority in the United StatesForeigners in Their Native Land: Historical Roots of the Mexican Americans | Hispanic American Historical Review (2024)

Hispanic American Historical Review (1975) 55 (2): 386–389.

López y Rivas’s book is a short introduction to Chicano history and the current Chicano Movement. The Chicanos, intended to be read by those who have the barest acquaintance with the social reality of Chicanos, was directed towards a Mexican audience, and it was subsequently translated into English. Perhaps because of this, the work is overly fundamental and too sketchy. The text is comprised of a concise historical review of the Chicano people written by the author, and this is followed by eleven selected readings written by Chicano activists. The author’s essay analyzes the fundamental causes of Chicano oppression, which he generally attributes to capitalism. The readings are meant to introduce the reader to the ideology of the Chicano Movement; however, these are too few to be representative of any one tendency within the Chicano Movement. Moreover, the readings are not introduced with an essay by the editor (López y Rivas), and thus are not integrated in any way. In some cases there is little relationship between them except that they are written by individuals who are Chicanos. Consequently, the reader must make the connection between articles.

In his short historical review the author uses a variation of the Internal Colony as a key to understanding the oppression faced by Chicanos, but the analysis is not developed satisfactorily. For example, López y Rivas cites Stalin’s theory on the national question to support the thesis that Chicanos are an internal colony; however, in his writings of the question of national minorities, Stalin differentiated between that which is a nation and that which is a national minority and he never considered a nation of people to be an “internal colony.” López y Rivas on the other hand combines both concepts; thus national minorities are, in essence, nations. The unorthodox argument pursued by the author opts for a struggle for national liberation as the direction toward which the Chicano Movement should proceed. However, he offers no programs or guidelines to success in such a struggle, except that it be combined with a total revolution in the U.S. (which fundamentally is in agreement with Marxist-Leninist principles of national revolution).

One serious lack of the book is the absence of any critical discussion of the left in Chicano political activity. The author notes in only two paragraphs that the Chicano Movement is moving towards a class consciousness, away from cultural nationalism. This aspect of the Chicano Movement, the most important development in recent years, even though clearly a gathering wind among Chicanos, unfortunately does not seem to attract a profounder interest from the young anthropologist.

Tire Chicanos does not offer new data on the history and struggle of the Chicano people for social injustice. However, his theoretical analysis does represent a sharp turn away from simple ethnic, cultural chauvinism, and because of this is part of a new force on the left: Chicano intellectuals.

Weber’s book is a fine addition to the young, but advancing scholarship in Mexican American history. The major thrust of the book is the culture conflict between Mexican and Anglo in the nineteenth century and of the political and economic situations that led to that culture conflict. Weber describes the colonization of the Southwest, Yankee economic infiltration, and the subsequent victory of the United States. Parallel to the above, the author chose to describe the cultural conflict that accompanied the infiltration, consequent subjugation, and integration into the U.S. Implicit in the work is the hypothesis that cultural differences, beginning with cultural animosities, between England and Spain in the colonial period, continued to collide through the centuries and into the American period, and manifested in the conflict between Anglo and Mexican in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Weber’s work is a collection of 50 articles, divided into five chapters covering the colonial period to the early twentieth century. Each of the chapters is presented by a thorough, concise, and informative introduction by the author, which provides a framework for understanding the material. In addition, each article is prefaced by a succinct and informative paragraph or two, placing the article in perspective. The book will undoubtedly be used in history classes; the collection is a well integrated, very readable and welcome addition in an area of study still in its early stages.

The author does not present a simple good or bad picture on either side, but he is definitely sympathetic to the Mexican American in the struggle. Nevertheless, he criticizes some aspects of Chicano cultural nationalism, such as the “return to Aztec roots,” as unreal and unfounded in Chicano history. Yet he retains some of the nationalist’s peculiarities. For example, the author dedicates his efforts to restoring to Mexican Americans their “rich colonial heritage.” In so doing he places himself well within a popular current within the Chicano Movement. This book is a response to the Chicano Movement but charts an independent course. Thus, when facts prove otherwise he is not swayed by nationalist sentiment. Nevertheless, even though the author strives for academic independence, he still falls within the social science tradition that he severely criticizes for racist distortions of the Chicano. The concept of culture as the key to understanding any given society falls squarely within the theoretical constructs of the traditional social sciences. He states: “Although the frontier environment affected both westward-moving Americans and northward-moving Mexicans, the difference in the cultures of the two groups assured the development of dissimilar frontier societies.” Therein lies the key to understanding the border conflict between Anglo and Mexican in the Southwest. Now, Weber attempts to clear Mexicans of any social science smear with respect, for example, to the persistence of poverty among Chicanos, yet unwittingly uses the same theoretical argument, proposed by social scientists who argue that it is Chicano culture that is responsible for Chicano problems. Weber apparently believes that it was culture that was at the heart of two dissimilar societies— one developing economically, the other stagnating—and that the clash between them was culturally determined.

Perhaps a more productive line of study would have perceived that the conflict was not just a cultural one. Anglos came into the Southwest to get rich at the expense of Mexicans, but why did not Mexicans develop the region? Weber would answer “culture.” Yet, the Southwest was a feudal society during the American occupation. The bourgeoisie had not made its appearance and consequently landowning patterns, relations between church and state, and production were still feudal in form. Anglo America on the other hand was a bourgeois society, and much of what the Anglo saw in the Southwest he found alien because it, indeed, was the opposite of what bourgeois ideology favored. For example, bourgeois individualism was not to be found in the preconquest Southwest; neither were democratic structures, nor separation of church and state. These were bases for conflict, but they were not merely cultural; its roots were to be found in two different modes of production: one bourgeois, the other feudal. It may be said that the bourgeois revolution came to the Southwest from the U.S. and destroyed feudalism and its cultural components. May this be the basis for the conflict of the nineteenth century between Anglo and Chicano? This line of inquiry has still not been investigated. Weber’s collection is a beginning point for such a study.

Copyright 1975 by Duke University Press

1975

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