Recovering History, Constructing Race: The Indian, Black, and White Roots of Mexican Americans (Joe R. and Teresa Lozana Long Series in Latin American and Latino Art and Culture) 1st edition by Menchaca, Martha (2002) Paperback

Latin American and Latino Art and Culture

by Martha Menchaca

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.

Genres: History, Race

Paperback

First published December 31, 2001

Reviews

[celia · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an incredibly dense read. Menchaca's premise was interesting, and even as someone who has studied Mexico's colonial history, there was so much that I had never read to this level of specificity or even at all before.
I will say, though, Menchaca doesn't quite achieve the recovery of history she aims for as she doesn't dedicate much if any time to really examining the Black roots of Mexican Americans and Mexican afrolatinidad. For those interested in the Indian and White roots of Mexican Americans, though, this will be a wonderful source.

[Brittany Brown · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a Black Mexican Chicana, I found this book incredibly illuminating. It's a must-read if you want to learn more about the racialization processes of mestizos, afromestizos and indigenous peoples in Mexico.

[Synful · Rating 5 out of 5]

It took me 3 months to finish this book, but I pretty much figured that going in. Anyone expecting a book laid out prettily for people in some sort of story-like format shouldn't pick up this book. It can be dry in the sense a history book is dry. It's one of the history books we should all be getting taught as Americans, but don't.

For the most part, I picked up this book to get more depth on a topic I already knew a good bit about. In addition, it was to expand my knowledge out of Texas, which I know the most about, to the rest of the former-Mexico-now-the-U.S. Southwest. Also, I was interested in a book covering the then-too-taboo subject of Black ancestry in some of our families. As others have noted, unfortunately in this book there wasn't a lot of that or at least not as much as many are used to reading, focusing instead on Indigenous ancestry and only glancingly mentioning the other group. Unfortunately, that's what almost always happens to Mexican Americans in books and articles.

It was a "great" to learn so many of the varied ways that Spaniards and Anglos found to terrorize and steal from Indigenous and multiracial people. That's part of why it took me so long to make it through because a lot of the time I was only reading 10 pages at a time before I had to put the book down and digest and/or not be tempted to throw the book at the wall. Angering and sad how so many people were harmed. Most of the specifics in how Spaniards went about things was new to me, though, in particular that the Church actually protected (in their twisted way) land for Indigenous people. Then, at one point near the end of the book I felt like I was making it through all the begats in the bible or reading "The Silmarillion" (for the Tolkien fans) when it came to a section talking about all the land theft first after Anglos took over Texas and then again when the U.S. took the Southwest/made the Gadsden purchase. Just as I did a little skimming because it was the same over and over, it was over, so thankfully I skimmed very little.

Finally, the book interestingly closes with a personal connection to all of this history, showing how it effected people in their family. It showed how in so many instances some history may be hard to recover or fully know because the people it involves had to go underground, if you will, and the actual ancestry may be lost forever because of the real-world consequences not to mention the stigma of being from an oppressed group. Ethnic identities are often based on feelings rather than "fact" at the end of the day.

Highly recommended for Americans who should learn more about the U.S. history of the largest ethnic minority group in the country.