Quixote's Soldiers: A Local History of the Chicano Movement, 1966–1981

by David Montejano

Winner, NACCS-Tejas Book Award, National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies, Tejas Foco, 2011
NACCS Book Award, National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies, 2012 In the mid-1960s, San Antonio, Texas, was a segregated city governed by an entrenched Anglo social and business elite. The Mexican American barrios of the west and south sides were characterized by substandard housing and experienced seasonal flooding. Gang warfare broke out regularly. Then the striking farmworkers of South Texas marched through the city and set off a social movement that transformed the barrios and ultimately brought down the old Anglo oligarchy. In Quixote's Soldiers , David Montejano uses a wealth of previously untapped sources, including the congressional papers of Henry B. Gonzalez, to present an intriguing and highly readable account of this turbulent period. Montejano divides the narrative into three parts. In the first part, he recounts how college student activists and politicized social workers mobilized barrio youth and mounted an aggressive challenge to both Anglo and Mexican American political elites. In the second part, Montejano looks at the dynamic evolution of the Chicano movement and the emergence of clear gender and class distinctions as women and ex-gang youth struggled to gain recognition as serious political actors. In the final part, Montejano analyzes the failures and successes of movement politics. He describes the work of second-generation movement organizations that made possible a new and more representative political order, symbolized by the election of Mayor Henry Cisneros in 1981.

Genres: History, Race, Nonfiction

360 pages, Paperback

First published June 23, 2010

Reviews

[Rohit · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great look at the history of the West Side of San Antonio and its central role in the Chicano Movement. Well-researched and presented in a colorful and engaging manner, overall a very easy read. You get a good sense of all the different currents and factions of the movement, their social roots, their strategies and tactics and internal and external squabbles, etc., ranging from the lumpen-proletarian street gangs to the first generation of college students to the more polished politicos.

Definitely a must-read for anybody in San Antonio, and its a real treat to see up-close maps of the West Side, pointing out various landmarks and areas of mobilization, gang territories, restaurants that served as organizing hubs, etc.

The book's structure can be a little odd sometimes, even unwieldy, going into lengthy asides about a particular person or event - but that just adds to the color of the narrative, if anything.

[Marisol Cortez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Frankly, I loved this book. So much more readable and engrossing than his more famous Anglos and Mexicans in the Making of Texas--which although deserving of its canonical status within Chicanx Studies for its historical rigor is quite the slog to read (at least, was for me many years back). This book is just as meticulously researched but is much less dry, much more fun. Some passages I'd even describe as humorous, as when Montejano describes Henry B Gonzales taking a swing onstage at young MAYO activists. I feel like this is because the history depicted here is neither temporally or geographically sweeping; rather, it's intimate and close knit--about neighborhoods and people the author knows, and history he lived during a moment of coming of age. It feels like a book he wanted to write at the time but only could decades later, looking back with all the other heavy scholarship under his belt.

What's cool, as the daughter of someone from Montejano's same generational/cultural/geographical onda, is to realize the lines of continuity that have shaped my own political formation. I gained a new understanding of the barrio activists that shaped the organizations which shaped my own generation of activists. Much thanks to these activists, to Montejano for chronicling it, and for the careful way he demonstrates the national resonance of the movements that first grew, intimately, out of SA's Westside neighborhoods.

[Jose Yznaga]

The best book when you want to know about the Chicano movement in San Antonio