Mexicans in the Making of America
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2.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $29.99
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- $29.99
Publisher Description
A Choice Outstanding Academic Title of the Year
According to census projections, by 2050 nearly one in three U.S. residents will be Latino, and the overwhelming majority of these will be of Mexican descent. This dramatic demographic shift is reshaping politics, culture, and fundamental ideas about American identity. Neil Foley, a leading Mexican American historian, offers a sweeping view of the evolution of Mexican America, from a colonial outpost on Mexico’s northern frontier to a twenty-first-century people integral to the nation they have helped build.
“Compelling…Readers of all political persuasions will find Foley’s intensively researched, well-documented scholarly work an instructive, thoroughly accessible guide to the ramifications of immigration policy.”
—Publishers Weekly
“For Americans long accustomed to understanding the country’s development as an east-to-west phenomenon, Foley’s singular service is to urge us to tilt the map south-to-north and to comprehend conditions as they have been for some time and will likely be for the foreseeable future…A timely look at and appreciation of a fast-growing demographic destined to play an increasingly important role in our history.”
—Kirkus Reviews
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this compelling sociological study, noted historian Foley reaches back to the Spanish explorers of what became Mexico and forward to today's headlines, with Hispanics most of them of Mexican descent the fastest-growing segment of the U. S. population. He moves with uncommon lucidity through a thicket of litigation and legislation, finding a key point in the Census Bureau's 1977 decision to designate Mexicans and other ethnicities under the "pan-ethnic identification" Hispanic, chosen instead of other options like "Latino" or "Spanish-origin." He also traces conflicting impulses toward inclusion (1942's Bracero Program; recent attempts to pass the DREAM Act) and exclusion (1954's Operation Wetback; California Proposition 187). Putting a face onto these bureaucratic details, Foley covers the stories of individual political and labor activists, including Cesar Chavez and Reies Tijerina, and myriad cases of discrimination in public places and in hiring and work conditions. The phrase "comprehensive immigration reform" invariably referring to Mexicans and other Hispanics slips all too easily from the lips of conservatives, liberals, Democrats, Republicans, leftists, and rightists. Readers of all political persuasions will find Foley's intensively researched, well-documented scholarly work an instructive, thoroughly accessible guide to the ramifications of immigration policy.
