Beyond the Alamo: Forging Mexican Ethnicity in San Antonio, 1821-1861

by Raúl A. Ramos

Overview

Introducing a new model for the transnational history of the United States, Raúl Ramos places Mexican Americans at the center of the Texas creation story. He focuses on Mexican-Texan, or Tejano, society in a period of political transition beginning with the year of Mexican independence. Ramos explores the factors that helped shape the ethnic identity of the Tejano population, including cross-cultural contacts between Bexareños, indigenous groups, and Anglo-Americans, as they negotiated the contingencies and pressures on the frontier of competing empires.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807871249
Publisher:	The University of North Carolina Press
Publication date:	03/01/2010
Edition description:	1
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.20(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Raúl A. Ramos is associate professor of history at the University of Houston.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments xi

Introduction: Forging Identity in the Borderlands: Situating San Antonio de Béxar 1

Prologue: Life in a Norteño Town 15

Part I Three Worlds in l821

1 Making Mexico: Insurgency and Social Order in Béxar 27

2 Indigenous Identities: Locating "lo Indio" in the Tejano World 53

3 American Immigrants: Colonization and Tejano Identity 81

Part II Becoming Tejano

4 Disrupting the Balance: Colonization Troubles, 1828-1834 111

5 La Pérdida de Tejas: Tejanos and the War of Texas Secession, 1834-1837 133

6 Tejanos as a Suspect Class: The End of Secession, 1837-1848 167

7 Voting and Violence: Tejanos and Ethnic Politics, 1848-1861 205

Conclusion Challenging Identities: Transnational Becomes Local 231

Notes 239

Index 281

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

Raul Ramos makes an important contribution to the growing body of historical studies concerned with how the Mexican heritage population of the American Southwest met the challenges of Anglo-American ascendancy in the decades before the American Civil War.—Jesus F. de la Teja, State Historian of Texas, author of San Antonio de Bexar: A Community on New Spain's Northern Frontier

Ramos's approach to the histories of Texas, Mexico, the Borderlands, and the United States, as well as his ability to engage with, speak to, and cross between these fields, is refreshing and thought provoking. He uses the tools of these varying fields to recast the origins of Texas and bring to light the importance and intersection of race, nation, identity, and ethnicity, rendering them fluid categories rather than impenetrable, set notions that are fixed in time and space.—Ernesto Chavez, University of Texas at El Paso

Editorial Reviews

“Ramos perceptively notes that despite their subordinate status, Tejanos resisted the status quo and sustained a measure of political influence through the century.” — Journal of American History

“Succeeds in 'bringing contemporary insight and relevance to the study of the past' and Texas history. . . . Recommended.” — CHOICE

“[Ramos’s] first fine book demonstrates [that] history has no conclusion; it evolves in response to our present. . . . [Ramos has] an insider’s passion for local detail and an academic’s instinct to set this evidence in its broadest cultural context. . . . [Ramos] reveals how deeply this revolutionary era penetrated individual lives.” — San Antonio Express News

“An interesting and readable contribution to the discussion of identity formation in borderlands and Texas history from a Tejano point of view.” — East Texas Historical Journal

“Clearly written and thoroughly researched . . . not only a significant addition to scholarship on Chicano/a history, immigration, and nationalism, but also a work accessible to academics and students alike.” — Canadian Journal of History

“Impressive . . . tells a fascinating story of how the population of Texas, under a developing republic, created a tapestry of regional identities.” — Ethnohistory

“Ramos captures a community’s survival through the turmoil of changes in sovereignty; from Spanish to Mexican, to Texan, to American, and then to Confederate, he traces the evolution of the Tejano identity.” — Southwestern Historical Quarterly

“Illustrates with a vivid style the vicissitudes local elite families embarked upon as they functioned as cultural brokers between two competing national projects.” — Journal of American Ethnic History

“Engaging and compelling. . . . A significant contribution to the study of race, ethnicity, and nation and deepen[s] our understanding of how Tejanos met the incredible challenges posed by manifest destiny and American economic transnationalism.” — The Journal of Southern History

“A thorough treatment of Tejano ethnic identity and race relations. . . . A great aid for those teaching histories of the American south-west, and a good fit as a required text for upper division and graduate seminars in Chicana/o history and the history of the West.” — Social History

From the Publisher