Latinos and the New Immigrant Church (review)

1 20Southwestern Historical QuarterlyJuly contracts organizing the clearing ofwoodland and moving stone for construction and railroad companies. As such, Gomez's experience demonstrates how Mexican workers made significant contributions to the building of Texas's economy and infrastructure. These stories contain strains ofmelancholy when talk turns to family ties south of the border and to Mexican history and the land lost to the United States. They also speak ofMexican workers deceived by company con men and die unpredictable nature of their legal rights, along with brushes with violence that reveal the racism endemic to the time and place. A black brakeman, for instance, comes in for some stinging rebukes from Gómez. However, the harsh language is brought on by the fact that the man is brandishing a pistol and forcing Gómez tojump from a train. But the pages also sparkle with references to die enjoyment offood and drink, the warmth of companionship and the generosity of both Anglos and Hispanics, all of whom are trying to move themselves and the state forward. Crossing the Rio Grandeprovides a valuable and accessible resource to a reader familiar with the fundamentals ofTexas's immigration history. References to sending money back home and dealing with Anglos who have learned Spanish and Hispanics who speak English as their primary tongue resonate with the current debates about immigration's effect on the U.S. economy and society. It also shows the historically rich, fluid nature ofour borderlands. The exchange of population and culture between the United States and Mexico has gone on for more than 150 years. This book demonstrates that those involved in the process are people, not fragments of data for politicians to spin. Texas A&M International UniversityS. M. Duffy Latinos and theNewImmigrant Chunk By DavidA. Badillo. (Baltimore:Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006. Pp. 302. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. ISBN 0801883873. $60.00, cloth. ISBN 0801883881. $22.95, paper.) U.S. historians have shown little interest in Latino religion. A decade elapsed between the publication ofMoisés Sandoval's edited volume, Fronteras:A History ofthe LatinAmerican Chunk in the USA Since 1513(1983), and the series published under the general editorship ofJay P. Dolan, The Notre Dame History ofHispanic Catholics in the U.S. (1994). Since then, few monographs have appeared. The publication of Latinos and the New Immigrant Chunk by urban historian David Badillo adds to this slowly growing historiography. In eight chapters Badillo seeks to explain the role ofCatholicism in the incorporation of the three largest and longest-present Latino groups—Mexican Americans , Puerto Ricans, and Cuban Americans. He compares their experiences in San Antonio, NewYork, Miami, and Chicago against the background ofthe converging histories ofMexico, the Caribbean, and the United States from the sixteenth to the early twenty-first century. Badillo begins by tracing the New World clash of empires that allowed the United States to swallow Spanish and Mexican territories, noting a prominent 2007Book Reviews121 element among the newly absorbed Latinos destined to influence their incorporation into U.S. society—their Spanish-Indian-African racial and religious hybridity. The next two chapters describe the experiences of Mexican Americans in San Antonio and ofPuerto Ricans in NewYork from the late nineteenth century to the 1 930s, pointing out ways in which Catholicism promoted community-building and ties to their homelands. An examination of four powerful figures between 1 940 and 1965—Archbishop Robert Lucey of San Antonio, Cardinal Francis Spellman of NewYork, and Cardinals Samuel Stritch and Albert Meyer of Chicago, who "assumed unprecedented powers in addressing issues brought on by Latin American migration and settlement beyond merely parochial concerns" (p. 91)—follows. In a chapter spanning 1959 to the present, Badillo explains the development of"exile Catholicism" (p. 92) among Cuban Americans in Miami, a blend of religiosity and fervent anti-Castro nationalism whose dominance has begun to weaken in the face of generational change coupled with Miami's more diverse immigration patterns of recent years. The last three chapters focus largely on globalization, religion, and ethnicity and how these have become increasingly intertwined in the post-1965 era. One chapter is a case study that examines these issues among Mexican Americans and Puerto Ricans in Chicago; here Badillo...