Mexicans in the Making of America

by Neil Foley

Overview

A Choice Outstanding Academic Title of the Year

According to census projections, by 2050 nearly one in three U.S. residents will be Latino, and the overwhelming majority of these will be of Mexican descent. This dramatic demographic shift is reshaping politics, culture, and fundamental ideas about American identity. Neil Foley, a leading Mexican American historian, offers a sweeping view of the evolution of Mexican America, from a colonial outpost on Mexico’s northern frontier to a twenty-first-century people integral to the nation they have helped build.

“Compelling…Readers of all political persuasions will find Foley’s intensively researched, well-documented scholarly work an instructive, thoroughly accessible guide to the ramifications of immigration policy.”
—Publishers Weekly

“For Americans long accustomed to understanding the country’s development as an east-to-west phenomenon, Foley’s singular service is to urge us to tilt the map south-to-north and to comprehend conditions as they have been for some time and will likely be for the foreseeable future…A timely look at and appreciation of a fast-growing demographic destined to play an increasingly important role in our history.”
—Kirkus Reviews

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674975354
Publisher:	Harvard
Publication date:	05/08/2017
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	368
Sales rank:	350,611
Product dimensions:	5.60(w) x 8.80(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Neil Foley holds the Robert H. and Nancy Dedman Chair in History at Southern Methodist University.

Table of Contents

Preface ix

Prologue: "America's Changing Colors" 1

1 The Genesis of Mexican America 13

2 No Estás en Tu Casa 39

3 Becoming Good Neighbors 64

4 Defending the Hemisphere 96

5 Braceros and the "Wetback" Invasion 123

6 The Chicano Movement 148

7 Brave New Mundo 179

8 Fortress America 200

Epilogue: "We Are America" 225

Abbreviations 241

Notes 243

Acknowledgments 320

Index 323

Editorial Reviews

08/11/2014
In this compelling sociological study, noted historian Foley reaches back to the Spanish explorers of what became Mexico and forward to today’s headlines, with Hispanics—most of them of Mexican descent—the fastest-growing segment of the U. S. population. He moves with uncommon lucidity through a thicket of litigation and legislation, finding a key point in the Census Bureau’s 1977 decision to designate Mexicans and other ethnicities under the “pan-ethnic identification” Hispanic, chosen instead of other options like “Latino” or “Spanish-origin.” He also traces conflicting impulses toward inclusion (1942’s Bracero Program; recent attempts to pass the DREAM Act) and exclusion (1954’s Operation Wetback; California Proposition 187). Putting a face onto these bureaucratic details, Foley covers the stories of individual political and labor activists, including Cesar Chavez and Reies Tijerina, and myriad cases of discrimination in public places and in hiring and work conditions. The phrase “comprehensive immigration reform”—invariably referring to Mexicans and other Hispanics—slips all too easily from the lips of conservatives, liberals, Democrats, Republicans, leftists, and rightists. Readers of all political persuasions will find Foley’s intensively researched, well-documented scholarly work an instructive, thoroughly accessible guide to the ramifications of immigration policy. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

A usefully compact yet abundantly revealing history.

New York Review of Books - Julia Preston

Neil Foley has produced a sweeping account of Mexican American history with the publication of Mexicans in the Making of America. Using a broad lens, he emphasizes the long legacy of people of Mexican descent in the United States and analyzes the many contributions that the Mexican American community has made to the nation. He argues that Mexican Americans and Mexican immigrants are ‘central to the story of the making of the United States.’

Journal of Southern History - Shannon Baker

Mexicans in the Making of America offers a rich narrative history rooted in politics and international relations that brings a sweeping historical dimension to contemporary immigration debates. Foley demonstrates the ways in which U.S.–Mexican relations reverberate across the border, often with unanticipated outcomes.

Vicki L. Ruiz

Foley provides a panoramic lesson about ‘Mexican America’ that begins with the Spaniards, mestizos, and Indians of the 16th­-century colonial province of Nuevo Mexico. He carries the timeline through its five-­century stretch to a future in which one in three U.S. residents will be Latino.

Pasatiempo - Casey Sanchez

2014-06-25
A scholar specializing in the American Southwest tells the underappreciated story of the Mexicans who have helped build America.Hundreds of years before any Anglo crossed the Mississippi westward, Mexicans lived in the present-day American West and Southwest. Ever since, their descendants have occupied a peculiar position in our history. With more than a little justice, Chicano activists, protesting their treatment in the United States, declared during the 1960s, "We didn't cross the border, the border crossed us." Foley (History/Southern Methodist Univ.; Quest For Equality: The Failed Promise of Black-Brown Solidarity, 2010, etc.) sets forth the genesis of Mexican America with an introductory, potted history of the Spanish conquest. He devotes more space to the border-altering U.S. land grab of a third of Mexico's territory, first with the annexation of Texas and then with 1848's Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. The bulk of the narrative centers on the Mexican experience in America during the 20th century, the decadeslong push/pull between the United States and Mexico, the unceasing controversies over generations of legal and illegal immigrants, and the indispensability of Mexican-American labor to our economy versus the accompanying fear of the foreign. Foley's narrative becomes too crowded with passages discussing 1942's Zoot Suit Riot in Los Angeles, Mexican-American wartime contributions, the Chicano Movement of the 1960s and '70s and the "Decade of the Hispanic" in the '80s. The author touches on the creation of the United Farm Workers, the "English First" movement and instances of recurring racism, ranging from the forthright "No Mexicans" signs of the 1940s to the "Frito Bandito" advertisements of the '60s. For Americans long accustomed to understanding the country's development as an east-to-west phenomenon, Foley's singular service is to urge us to tilt the map south to north and to comprehend conditions as they have been for some time and will likely be for the foreseeable future.A timely look at and appreciation of a fast-growing demographic destined to play an increasingly important role in our history.

Kirkus Reviews

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