Mexican American Exceptionalism: Competing Ideas of Race and Identity in the American Southwest

New Mexico's long-standing Mexican American population, known as "Nuevomexicanos," often see themselves as distinctive from other Mexican-origin people across the Southwestern United States. In this book, Casandra Salgado theorizes this distinction as "Mexican American exceptionalism," and interrogates how present-day Nuevomexicanos residing in Albuquerque make sense of race and racism within this context.

Nuevomexicanos' view their long history and numerical dominance in New Mexico buffers...