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Mexican Americans of Texas: A History of Tradition and Struggle

Author(s): EMILIO ZAMORA, Andres Tijerina, Sonia Hernandez, AMY M. PORTER, GUADALUPE SAN MIGUEL JR

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Rooted in the heart of American history, Mexican Americans of Texas: A History of Tradition and Struggle revisits the history of Texas and connects the Mexican Americans to the history of the United States as well as the history of Europe and the rest of the world. The textbook features seven sections and 15 chapters that follow the chronological order of history. Each chapter begins with learning objectives, key terms and a timeline that aims for each student to learn how Mexican Americans came to be Texans and how their story is as American as the pilgrims of Massachusetts. Mexican Americans of Texas are different Texans and provided Texas with distinctive culture, Texan vocabulary and its independence from Spain. Mexican Americans are the only Texans who have been in Texas under all six flags over Texas and their story begins at the time the Spanish flag was planted on American soil. The first chapter dates back to 30,000 years ago – 1,500 and discusses the early migrations, first migration, the various peoples, agriculture and geography of Texas Archaic Indians, agriculture in the Americas and ends with Chapter 15, the Post Nationalist Era, covering 1980-2015.

Section 1 A Global Perspective
Mexican Americans in History
Indigenous Communities 
CHAPTER 1 The First People: Migration and the Americas, 30,000 Years Ago–1500 

Section 2 A Global Perspective 
La Reconquista, 711–1492 AD 
The Columbian Exchange (1492–1821) 
CHAPTER 2 Contact and Conquest: Indigenous and European Encounters in the,Americas, 1492–1689 
CHAPTER 3 Early Spanish Settlement in Texas, 1690–1800 

Section 3 A Global Perspective 
The Enlightenment in New Spain 
The Napoleonic Armies in Spain (1808–1812)
CHAPTER 4 The Tejanos: Building a Democratic Texas, 1800–1821 


Section 4 A Global Perspective 
The Frontier Exchange (1821–1893) 
CHAPTER 5 The Tejano Struggle for a Democratic Government, 1821–1836 
CHAPTER 6 Tejanos in the Republic of Texas, 1836–1845 


Section 5 A Global Perspective 
The Mexican American Exchange, 1846–1865
CHAPTER 7 The Mexican-American War, 1846–1848 
CHAPTER 8 Incorporating the Mexican and the Lost Territory, 1848–1865 
CHAPTER 9 Continuing Incorporation,1865–1900 


Section 6 A Global Perspective 
Mexican Americans in the City 
CHAPTER 10 Incorporating Mexicans into Texas Society, 1900–1930 
CHAPTER 11 The Great Depression and World War II, 1930–1945 


Section 7 A Global Perspective
Mexican American Youth as Agents of Change 
CHAPTER 12 Mexican Americans during the Cold War Era, 1946–1960 
CHAPTER 13 The Chicano Movement in Texas, 1960–1978
CHAPTER 14 The Moderate Agenda during the Chicano Movement, 1968–1978 
CHAPTER 15 The Post-Nationalist Era, 1980–2015 

EMILIO ZAMORA

Emilio Zamora is a Professor in History at the University of Texas at Austin. He has prepared or collaborated in the production of nine monographs: three single-authored books, a translated and edited World War I diary, three co-edited anthologies, a co-edited e-book, and two Texas history texts. Zamora has received seven best-book awards, a best-article prize, and a Fulbright Gracia-Robles fellowship. He is a lifetime ember of the Texas Institute of Letters, a lifetime. Fellow with the Texas State Historical Association (TSHA), an appointed Fellow of the George W. Littlefield Professorship in American History at the University of Texas, a former Fellow with the Institute for Historical Studies, and former President of TSHA (2019-20)

Andres Tijerina

Andrés Tijerina is a Professor of History at Austin Community College. He received his B.A. from Texas A&M University, his M.A. from Texas Tech University, and his Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin.

Dr. Tijerina has received state and national book prizes for his books Tejanos and Texas Under the Mexican Flag and his other major book Tejano Empire: Life on the South Texas Ranchos. His most widely read work is the publication of his Vietnam War combat memoirs in the Time-Life Books series The Vietnam Experience. As a pilot in the Air Force, Dr. Tijerina flew over 100 combat missions in Vietnam, receiving the Air Medal and the Distinguished Flying Cross, and he retired as a Major of the U.S. Air Force Reserve and Liaison Officer for the U.S. Air Force Academy. He is co-editor of the online Handbook of Tejano History.

He has received Teaching Excellence Awards and received the 2012 Equity Award from the American Historical Association. He was appointed by the governor to the Historical Representation Advisory Committee and to the Review Board for the Texas Historical Commission. Dr. Tijerina is the General Series Editor for Texas A&M University Press, a past-Committee Chairman of the O.A.H., and a Fellow of the Texas State Historical Association. He is President of the Texas Institute of Letters and a Director of the Board which erected the Tejano Monument at the state capitol in 2012. He was the founding chairman of the first Texas Hispanic Genealogy Conference held in Austin, Texas in 1979, and has served as the History Expert Witness for numerous landmark cases before federal courts and the U.S. Supreme Court.

Sonia Hernandez

Sonia Hernandez is Professor of History at Texas A&M University. She is the author of the award-winning Working Women into Borderlands (Texas A&M Press, 2014), Mujeres, Trabajo y Región Fronteriza (Mexico City INERHM, 2017), and For a Just and Better World: Engendering Anarchism in the Mexican Borderlands, 1900-1938 (Univ. of Illinois Press, 2021). She is a former UT System Board of Regents Teaching Excellence Recipient, a former Fulbright Garcia-Robles Fellow, has garnered fellowships from the NEH, Humanities Texas, and awards from the WHA, NWSA, OAH, and the AHA. Funded by an NEH-HSI fellowship, she is currently at work on her book project, which revisits the 1901 Gregorio Cortez near lynching incident and its ramifications. She is a co-founder of the nonprofit public history project Refusing to Forget that
seeks to create awareness of anti-Mexican Violence in Texas. The public history project has received awards from the WHA, AHA, and the AASLH (American Association for State and Local History).

AMY M. PORTER

Amy Porter is a Professor in History at Texas A&M University-San Antonio. Her research focuses on women in the Spanish Borderlands. Her 2015 book Their Lives, Their Wills: Women in the Borderlands, 1750-1846 was a co-recipient of the Fabiola Cabeza de Baca Prize from the Historical Society of New Mexico and a recipient of the Lou Halsall Rodenberger Book Prize in History, Culture, and Literature from Texas Tech University Press. Porter has published several book chapters and articals on Spanish Borderlands topics. 

GUADALUPE SAN MIGUEL JR

Guadalupe San Miguel, Jr., is a professor of history at the University of Houston in Houston, Texas. He is a renowned scholar in the history of Texas Mexican American/Chicano education and has written on educational struggles in the community and on language, politics, and education. He has published extensively and is best known for the following books: Chicana/ o Struggles for Education (2004), Tejano Proud: Tex-Mex Music in the Twentieth Century (2002), Brown, Not White: School Integration and the Chicano Movement (2001) and Let All of Them Take Heed: Mexican Americans and the Quest for Educational Equality (1987). He has also published over fifty scholarly articals in journals such as the Harvard Educational Review, the American Educational Research Association Journal, Svisl Science Quarterly, and the History of Education. He is a lifetime Fellow with the Texas State Historicals Association and former President of the Natianal Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies.