Download or read book Mexican Americans and the Environment written by Devon G. Peña and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2022-09-13 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mexican Americans have traditionally had a strong land ethic, believing that humans must respect la tierra because it is the source of la vida. As modern market forces exploit the earth, communities struggle to control their own ecological futures, and several studies have recorded that Mexican Americans are more impacted by environmental injustices than are other national-origin groups. In our countryside, agricultural workers are poisoned by pesticides, while farmers have lost ancestral lands to expropriation. And in our polluted inner cities, toxic wastes sicken children in their very playgrounds and homes. This book addresses the struggle for environmental justice, grassroots democracy, and a sustainable society from a variety of Mexican American perspectives. It draws on the ideas and experiences of people from all walks of life—activists, farmworkers, union organizers, land managers, educators, and many others—who provide a clear overview of the most critical ecological issues facing Mexican-origin people today. The text is organized to first provide a general introduction to ecology, from both scientific and political perspectives. It then presents an environmental history for Mexican-origin people on both sides of the border, showing that the ecologically sustainable Norteño land use practices were eroded by the conquest of El Norte by the United States. It finally offers a critique of the principal schools of American environmentalism and introduces the organizations and struggles of Mexican Americans in contemporary ecological politics. Devon Peña contrasts tenets of radical environmentalism with the ecological beliefs and grassroots struggles of Mexican-origin people, then shows how contemporary environmental justice struggles in Mexican American communities have challenged dominant concepts of environmentalism. Mexican Americans and the Environment is a didactically sound text that introduces students to the conceptual vocabularies of ecology, culture, history, and politics as it tells how competing ideas about nature have helped shape land use and environmental policies. By demonstrating that any consideration of environmental ethics is incomplete without taking into account the experiences of Mexican Americans, it clearly shows students that ecology is more than nature study but embraces social issues of critical importance to their own lives.

Download or read book Jesus in Our Wombs written by Rebecca J. Lester and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Jesus in Our Wombs, Rebecca J. Lester takes us behind the walls of a Roman Catholic convent in central Mexico to explore the lives, training, and experiences of a group of postulants--young women in the first stage of religious training as nuns. Lester, who conducted eighteen months of fieldwork in the convent, provides a rich ethnography of these young women's journeys as they wrestle with doubts, fears, ambitions, and setbacks in their struggle to follow what they believe to be the will of God. Gracefully written, finely textured, and theoretically rigorous, this book considers how these aspiring nuns learn to experience God by cultivating an altered experience of their own female bodies, a transformation they view as a political stance against modernity. Lester explains that the Postulants work toward what they see as an "authentic" femininity--one that has been eclipsed by the values of modern society. The outcome of this process has political as well as personal consequences. The Sisters learn to understand their very intimate experiences of "the Call"--and their choices in answering it--as politically relevant declarations of self. Readers become intimately acquainted with the personalities, family backgrounds, friendships, and aspirations of the Postulants as Lester relates the practices and experiences of their daily lives. Combining compassionate, engaged ethnography with an incisive and provocative theoretical analysis of embodied selves, Jesus in Our Wombs delivers a profound analysis of what Lester calls the convent's "technology of embodiment" on multiple levels--from the phenomenological to the political.

Download or read book Triumph of Our Communities written by Gary D. Keller and published by Bilingual Review Press (AZ). This book was released on 2005 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With more than 600 full-color images, this book celebrates the art organizations that have promoted Mexican American art and served as art education centers for their communities. Their efforts have produced a significant body of collectible works that inspire through their artistry. Vividly showcasing many of these works on generously sized pages, this coffee-table book is the fourth volume in the series that began with the award-winning Contemporary Chicana and Chicano Art: Artists, Works, Culture, and Education. A companion DVD is planned for release in 2006.

Download or read book We Became Mexican American written by Carlos B. Gil and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2012-08-17 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a story of Mexican family that arrived in America in the 1920s for the first time. And so, it is a tale of immigration, settlement and cultural adjustment, as well as generational progress. Carlos B. Gil, one of the American sons born to this family, places a magnifying glass on his ancestors who abandoned Mexico to arrive on the northern edge of Los Angeles, California. He narrates how his unprivileged relatives walked away from their homes in western Jalisco and northern Michoacán and traveled over several years to the U.S. border, crossing it at Nogales, Arizona, and then finally settling into the barrio of the city of San Fernando. Based on actual interviews, the author recounts how his parents met, married, and started a family on the eve of the Great Depression. With the aid of their testimonials, the author’s brothers and sisters help him tell of their growing up. They call to memory their father’s trials and tribulations as he tried to succeed in a new land, laboring as a common citrus worker, and how their mother helped shore him up as thousands of workers lost their jobs on account of the economic crash of 1929. Their story takes a look at how the family survived the Depression and a tragic accident, how they engaged in micro businesses as a survival tactic, and how the Gil children gradually became American, or Mexican American, as they entered young adulthood beginning in the 1940s. It also describes what life was like in their barrio. The author also comments briefly on the advancement of the second and third Gil generations and, in the Afterword, likewise offers a wide-ranging assessment of his family’s experience including observations about the challenges facing other Latinos today.

Download or read book Occupying Our Space written by Cristina Devereaux Ramírez and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2015-04-02 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winifred Bryan Horner Outstanding Book Award Winner Occupying Our Space sheds new light on the contributions of Mexican women journalists and writers during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, marked as the zenith of Mexican journalism. Journalists played a significant role in transforming Mexican social and political life before and after the Revolution (1910–1920), and women were a part of this movement as publishers, writers, public speakers, and political activists. However, their contributions to the broad historical changes associated with the Revolution, as well as the pre- and post-revolutionary eras, are often excluded or overlooked. This book fills a gap in feminine rhetorical history by providing an in-depth look at several important journalists who claimed rhetorical puestos, or public speaking spaces. The book closely examines the writings of Laureana Wright de Kleinhans (1842–1896), Juana Belén Gutiérrez de Mendoza (1875–1942), the political group Las mujeres de Zitácuaro (1900), Hermila Galindo (1896–1954), and others. Grounded in the overarching theoretical lens of mestiza rhetoric, Occupying Our Space considers the ways in which Mexican women journalists negotiated shifting feminine identities and the emerging national politics of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. With full-length Spanish primary documents along with their translations, this scholarship reframes the conversation about the rhetorical and intellectual role women played in the ever-changing political and identity culture in Mexico.

Download or read book Hispanics and the Future of America written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2006-02-23 with total page 502 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hispanics and the Future of America presents details of the complex story of a population that varies in many dimensions, including national origin, immigration status, and generation. The papers in this volume draw on a wide variety of data sources to describe the contours of this population, from the perspectives of history, demography, geography, education, family, employment, economic well-being, health, and political engagement. They provide a rich source of information for researchers, policy makers, and others who want to better understand the fast-growing and diverse population that we call "Hispanic." The current period is a critical one for getting a better understanding of how Hispanics are being shaped by the U.S. experience. This will, in turn, affect the United States and the contours of the Hispanic future remain uncertain. The uncertainties include such issues as whether Hispanics, especially immigrants, improve their educational attainment and fluency in English and thereby improve their economic position; whether growing numbers of foreign-born Hispanics become citizens and achieve empowerment at the ballot box and through elected office; whether impending health problems are successfully averted; and whether Hispanics' geographic dispersal accelerates their spatial and social integration. The papers in this volume provide invaluable information to explore these issues.

Download or read book A Look at Mexico written by Helen Frost and published by Capstone. This book was released on 2002 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Simple text and photographs provide an introduction to the geography, animals, culture, and people of Mexico. Includes a map.

Download or read book Making Hispanics written by G. Cristina Mora and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2014-03-07 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How did Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, and Cubans become known as “Hispanics” and “Latinos” in the United States? How did several distinct cultures and nationalities become portrayed as one? Cristina Mora answers both these questions and details the scope of this phenomenon in Making Hispanics. She uses an organizational lens and traces how activists, bureaucrats, and media executives in the 1970s and '80s created a new identity category—and by doing so, permanently changed the racial and political landscape of the nation. Some argue that these cultures are fundamentally similar and that the Spanish language is a natural basis for a unified Hispanic identity. But Mora shows very clearly that the idea of ethnic grouping was historically constructed and institutionalized in the United States. During the 1960 census, reports classified Latin American immigrants as “white,” grouping them with European Americans. Not only was this decision controversial, but also Latino activists claimed that this classification hindered their ability to portray their constituents as underrepresented minorities. Therefore, they called for a separate classification: Hispanic. Once these populations could be quantified, businesses saw opportunities and the media responded. Spanish-language television began to expand its reach to serve the now large, and newly unified, Hispanic community with news and entertainment programming. Through archival research, oral histories, and interviews, Mora reveals the broad, national-level process that led to the emergence of Hispanicity in America.

Download or read book Anglos and Mexicans in the Making of Texas 1836 1986 written by David Montejano and published by Univ of TX + ORM. This book was released on 2010-07-05 with total page 493 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A benchmark publication . . . A meticulously documented work that provides an alternative interpretation and revisionist view of Mexican-Anglo relations.” –IMR (International Migration Review) Winner, Frederick Jackson Turner Award, Organization of American Historians American Historical Association, Pacific Branch Book Award Texas Institute of Letters Friends of The Dallas Public Library Award Texas Historical Commission T. R. Fehrenbach Award, Best Ethnic, Minority, and Women’s History Publication Here is a different kind of history, an interpretive history that outlines the connections between the past and the present while maintaining a focus on Mexican-Anglo relations. This book reconstructs a history of Mexican-Anglo relations in Texas “since the Alamo,” while asking this history some sociology questions about ethnicity, social change, and society itself. In one sense, it can be described as a southwestern history about nation building, economic development, and ethnic relations. In a more comparative manner, the history points to the familiar experience of conflict and accommodation between distinct societies and peoples throughout the world. Organized to describe the sequence of class orders and the corresponding change in Mexican-Anglo relations, it is divided into four periods, which are referred to as incorporation, reconstruction, segregation, and integration. “The success of this award-winning book is in its honesty, scholarly objectivity, and daring, in the sense that it debunks the old Texas nationalism that sought to create anti-Mexican attitudes both in Texas and the Greater Southwest.” —Colonial Latin American Historical Review “An outstanding contribution to U.S. Southwest studies, Chicano history, and race relations . . . A seminal book.” –Hispanic American Historical Review

Download or read book Undocumented Lives written by Ana Raquel Minian and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2018-03-28 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Frederick Jackson Turner Award Finalist Winner of the David Montgomery Award Winner of the Theodore Saloutos Book Award Winner of the Betty and Alfred McClung Lee Book Award Winner of the Frances Richardson Keller-Sierra Prize Winner of the Américo Paredes Book Award “A deeply humane book.” —Mae Ngai, author of Impossible Subjects “Necessary and timely...A valuable text to consider alongside the current fight for DACA, the border concentration camps, and the unending rhetoric dehumanizing Mexican migrants.” —PopMatters “A deep dive into the history of Mexican migration to and from the United States.” —PRI’s The World In the 1970s, the Mexican government decided to tackle rural unemployment by supporting the migration of able-bodied men. Millions of Mexican men crossed into the United States to find work. They took low-level positions that few Americans wanted and sent money back to communities that depended on their support. They periodically returned to Mexico, living their lives in both countries. After 1986, however, US authorities disrupted this back-and-forth movement by strengthening border controls. Many Mexican men chose to remain in the United States permanently for fear of not being able to come back north if they returned to Mexico. For them, the United States became a jaula de oro—a cage of gold. Undocumented Lives tells the story of Mexican migrants who were compelled to bring their families across the border and raise a generation of undocumented children.

Download or read book Esperanza Rising Scholastic Gold written by Pam Muñoz Ryan and published by Scholastic Inc.. This book was released on 2012-10-01 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A modern classic for our time and for all time-this beloved, award-winning bestseller resonates with fresh meaning for each new generation. Perfect for fans of Kate DiCamillo, Christopher Paul Curtis, and Rita Williams-Garcia. Pura Belpre Award Winner * "Readers will be swept up." -Publishers Weekly, starred review Esperanza thought she'd always live a privileged life on her family's ranch in Mexico. She'd always have fancy dresses, a beautiful home filled with servants, and Mama, Papa, and Abuelita to care for her. But a sudden tragedy forces Esperanza and Mama to flee to California and settle in a Mexican farm labor camp. Esperanza isn't ready for the hard work, financial struggles brought on by the Great Depression, or lack of acceptance she now faces. When Mama gets sick and a strike for better working conditions threatens to uproot their new life, Esperanza must find a way to rise above her difficult circumstances--because Mama's life, and her own, depend on it.

Download or read book Decade of Betrayal written by Francisco E. Balderrama and published by UNM Press. This book was released on 2006-05-31 with total page 438 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the Great Depression, a sense of total despair plagued the United States. Americans sought a convenient scapegoat and found it in the Mexican community. Laws forbidding employment of Mexicans were accompanied by the hue and cry to "get rid of the Mexicans!" The hysteria led pandemic repatriation drives and one million Mexicans and their children were illegally shipped to Mexico. Despite their horrific treatment and traumatic experiences, the American born children never gave up hope of returning to the United States. Upon attaining legal age, they badgered their parents to let them return home. Repatriation survivors who came back worked diligently to get their lives back together. Due to their sense of shame, few of them ever told their children about their tragic ordeal. Decade of Betrayal recounts the injustice and suffering endured by the Mexican community during the 1930s. It focuses on the experiences of individuals forced to undergo the tragic ordeal of betrayal, deprivation, and adjustment. This revised edition also addresses the inclusion of the event in the educational curriculum, the issuance of a formal apology, and the question of fiscal remuneration. "Francisco Balderrama and Raymond Rodríguez, the authors of Decade of Betrayal, the first expansive study of Mexican repatriation with perspectives from both sides of the border, claim that 1 million people of Mexican descent were driven from the United States during the 1930s due to raids, scare tactics, deportation, repatriation and public pressure. Of that conservative estimate, approximately 60 percent of those leaving were legal American citizens. Mexicans comprised nearly half of all those deported during the decade, although they made up less than 1 percent of the country's population. 'Americans, reeling from the economic disorientation of the depression, sought a convenient scapegoat' Balderrama and Rodríguez wrote. 'They found it in the Mexican community.'"--American History

Download or read book Inventing Latinos written by Laura E. Gómez and published by The New Press. This book was released on 2022-09-06 with total page 137 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Named one of the Best Books of the Year by NPR An NPR Best Book of the Year, exploring the impact of Latinos’ new collective racial identity on the way Americans understand race, with a new afterword by the author Who are Latinos and where do they fit in America’s racial order? In this “timely and important examination of Latinx identity” (Ms.), Laura E. Gómez, a leading critical race scholar, argues that it is only recently that Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, Dominicans, Central Americans, and others are seeing themselves (and being seen by others) under the banner of a cohesive racial identity. And the catalyst for this emergent identity, she argues, has been the ferocity of anti-Latino racism. In what Booklist calls “an incisive study of history, complex interrogation of racial construction, and sophisticated legal argument,” Gómez “packs a knockout punch” (Publishers Weekly), illuminating for readers the fascinating race-making, unmaking, and re-making processes that Latinos have undergone over time, indelibly changing the way race functions in this country. Building on the “insightful and well-researched” (Kirkus Reviews) material of the original, the paperback features a new afterword in which the author analyzes results of the 2020 Census, providing brilliant, timely insight about how Latinos have come to self-identify.

Download or read book Mexican Phoenix written by D. A. Brading and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Juan Diego, to whom the Virgin Mary appeared in 1531 miraculously imprinting her likeness on his cape, was canonised in Mexico in 2002 by Pope John Paul II. In 1999, the revered image of Our Lady of Guadalupe had been proclaimed patron saint of the Americas by the Pope. How did a poor Indian and a sixteenth-century Mexican painting of the Virgin Mary attract such unprecedented honours? Across the centuries the enigmatic power of the image has aroused fervent devotion in Mexico: it served as the banner of the rebellion against Spanish rule and, despite scepticism and anti-clericalism, still remains a potent symbol of the modern nation. This book traces the intellectual origins, the sudden efflorescence and the adamantine resilience of the tradition of Our Lady of Guadalupe and will fascinate anyone concerned with the history of religion and its symbols.

Download or read book Our Man in Mexico written by Jefferson Morley and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2008-03-11 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mexico City was the Casablanca of the Cold War—a hotbed of spies, revolutionaries, and assassins. The CIA's station there was the front line of the United States' fight against international communism, as important for Latin America as Berlin was for Europe. And its undisputed spymaster was Winston Mackinley Scott. Chief of the Mexico City station from 1956 to 1969, Win Scott occupied a key position in the founding generation of the Central Intelligence Agency, but until now he has remained a shadowy figure. Investigative reporter Jefferson Morley traces Scott's remarkable career from his humble origins in rural Alabama to wartime G-man to OSS London operative (and close friend of the notorious Kim Philby), to right-hand man of CIA Director Allen Dulles, to his remarkable reign for more than a decade as virtual proconsul in Mexico. Morley also follows the quest of Win Scott's son Michael to confront the reality of his father's life as a spy. He reveals how Scott ran hundreds of covert espionage operations from his headquarters in the U.S. Embassy while keeping three Mexican presidents on the agency's payroll, participating in the Bay of Pigs fiasco, and, most intriguingly, overseeing the surveillance of Lee Harvey Oswald during his visit to the Mexican capital just weeks before the assassination of President Kennedy. Morley reveals the previously unknown scope of the agency's interest in Oswald in late 1963, identifying for the first time the code names of Scott's surveillance programs that monitored Oswald's movements. He shows that CIA headquarters cut Scott out of the loop of the agency's latest reporting on Oswald before Kennedy was killed. He documents why Scott came to reject a key finding of the Warren Report on the assassination and how his disillusionment with the agency came to worry his longtime friend James Jesus Angleton, legendary chief of CIA counterintelligence. Angleton not only covered up the agency's interest in Oswald but also, after Scott died, absconded with the only copies of his unpublished memoir. Interweaving Win Scott's personal and professional lives, Morley has crafted a real-life thriller of Cold War intrigue-a compelling saga of espionage that uncovers another chapter in the CIA's history.

Download or read book Mexican Gothic written by Silvia Moreno-Garcia and published by Del Rey. This book was released on 2020-06-30 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “It’s Lovecraft meets the Brontës in Latin America, and after a slow-burn start Mexican Gothic gets seriously weird.”—The Guardian IN DEVELOPMENT AS A HULU ORIGINAL LIMITED SERIES PRODUCED BY KELLY RIPA AND MARK CONSUELOS • ONE OF TIME’S 100 BEST MYSTERY AND THRILLER BOOKS OF ALL TIME • WINNER OF THE LOCUS AWARD • NOMINATED FOR THE BRAM STOKER AWARD ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, NPR, The Washington Post, Tordotcom, Marie Claire, Vox, Mashable, Men’s Health, Library Journal, Book Riot, LibraryReads An isolated mansion. A chillingly charismatic aristocrat. And a brave socialite drawn to expose their treacherous secrets. . . . From the author of Gods of Jade and Shadow comes “a terrifying twist on classic gothic horror” (Kirkus Reviews) set in glamorous 1950s Mexico. After receiving a frantic letter from her newly-wed cousin begging for someone to save her from a mysterious doom, Noemí Taboada heads to High Place, a distant house in the Mexican countryside. She’s not sure what she will find—her cousin’s husband, a handsome Englishman, is a stranger, and Noemí knows little about the region. Noemí is also an unlikely rescuer: She’s a glamorous debutante, and her chic gowns and perfect red lipstick are more suited for cocktail parties than amateur sleuthing. But she’s also tough and smart, with an indomitable will, and she is not afraid: Not of her cousin’s new husband, who is both menacing and alluring; not of his father, the ancient patriarch who seems to be fascinated by Noemí; and not even of the house itself, which begins to invade Noemi’s dreams with visions of blood and doom. Her only ally in this inhospitable abode is the family’s youngest son. Shy and gentle, he seems to want to help Noemí, but might also be hiding dark knowledge of his family’s past. For there are many secrets behind the walls of High Place. The family’s once colossal wealth and faded mining empire kept them from prying eyes, but as Noemí digs deeper she unearths stories of violence and madness. And Noemí, mesmerized by the terrifying yet seductive world of High Place, may soon find it impossible to ever leave this enigmatic house behind. “It’s as if a supernatural power compels us to turn the pages of the gripping Mexican Gothic.”—The Washington Post “Mexican Gothic is the perfect summer horror read, and marks Moreno-Garcia with her hypnotic and engaging prose as one of the genre’s most exciting talents.”—Nerdist “A period thriller as rich in suspense as it is in lush ’50s atmosphere.”—Entertainment Weekly

Download or read book Our 50 State Border Crisis written by Howard G. Buffett and published by Hachette Books. This book was released on 2018-04-03 with total page 371 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From one of America's most prominent philanthropists, an eye-opening, myth-busting new perspective on the crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border. Howard G. Buffett has seen first-hand the devastating impact of cheap Mexican heroin and other opiate cocktails across America. Fueled by failing border policies and lawlessness in Mexico and Central America, drugs are pouring over the nation's southern border in record quantities, turning Americans into addicts and migrants into drug mules -- and killing us in record numbers. Politicians talk about a border crisis and an opioid crisis as separate issues. To Buffett, a landowner on the U.S. border with Mexico and now a sheriff in Illinois, these are intimately connected. Ineffective border policies not only put residents in border states like Texas and Arizona in harm's way, they put American lives in states like Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Vermont at risk. Mexican cartels have grown astonishingly powerful by exploiting both the gaps in our border security strategy and the desperation of migrants -- all while profiting enormously off America's growing addiction to drugs. The solution isn't a wall. In this groundbreaking book, Buffett outlines a realistic, effective, and bi-partisan approach to fighting cartels, strengthening our national security, and tackling the roots of the chaos below the border.