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Introduction
- Indiana University Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
IntrodUCtIon today the systematic study of Mexicanos in the United states is known as chicana/o studies.1 its genesis is to be found in the turbulent decade spanning the late 1960s and early 1970s, when Mexican American students at california and texas colleges and universities, inspired by the tenets of chicanismo, hence calling themselves Chicanos, initiated a search for the historical roots of the movimiento (movement). from its inception, this discipline, like ethnic studies generally, met with considerable skepticism and resistance in established academic departments across the country. traditionalists were disdainful of the first works in the fledgling field. Among the most vocal of these critics were the historians Arthur schlesinger Jr., Jacques Barzun, and diane ravitch. And, truth be told, these early efforts in the new ethnic scholarship suffered from a number of academic deficiencies. Many pioneering works in chicano studies lacked a strong theoretical framework . other early attempts by chicanos to record the story of their people for the first time were unabashedly celebratory, calling into question their intellectual objectivity. yet, the mainstream criticisms of these young iconoclastic scholars were often exaggerated, and in many cases completely misguided. it should be noted, too, that the foundational literature of any new discipline is bound to lack the intellectual rigor others might desire. this was as true of the emerging social sciences in the late nineteenth century as it has been for the plethora of other new disciplines spawned in the 1960s and 1970s. nevertheless, fair or not, the integrity of the entire discipline was called into question, which represented a challenge that needed to be addressed sooner or later. i am reminded here that the icy reception accorded chicana/o scholarship was not unlike that encountered by another group of would-be revolutionaries who were also on the cutting edge of their field—the french impressionists of the late nineteenth century. the establishment scoffed at the paintings of these young uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu mexicanos 2 Parisians; they seemed amateurish and lacked substance. distressed by this widespread criticism, and yearning for some degree of respectability in the art world, Paul cézanne famously charted a new path. Breaking with impressionist colleagues, cézanne, an outsider from the provinces, resolved to move in a new direction, what art historians would later label “Post-impressionism.” He yearned, as he put it, to create works as “solid and lasting” as those hanging in museums. ten years ago, in this same spirit, i felt that it was imperative to embark on a fresh path in tracing the history of Mexican-origin communities in the United states, to initiate a new, or at least a different, kind of ethnic history than what was being attempted by chicano scholars, one that would win the respect of the gatekeepers of academe. trained in european history, i did not fully identify with the emerging chicano perspective. As with the example of cézanne, this outsider status allowed me to question some of the assumptions of the new wave. However, like him, i had no desire to repudiate the efforts of maligned colleagues but to build on them. What was needed in these studies was a greater degree of objectivity. Ultimately, i wanted to construct a realistic portrait of Mexicans in this country, warts and all. in an effort to win wider credibility for the emerging field of chicana/o studies, i wished to examine Mexicanos in the same way as other U.s. immigrant communities had been scrutinized by respected scholars in the past, for example, the Jews by nathan Glazer or the irish by Kerby Miller. Judging by the number of times Mexicanos has been cited in the bibliographies of mainstream U.s. history textbooks in recent years, it seems reasonable to conclude that these efforts have not been in vain. And, of course, the book’s modest success largely reflects continuing demographic trends, notably the massive immigration from Mexico and other Latin American countries—allowing Latinos to overtake blacks as the country’s leading ethnic group—and the transformation of Mexican Americans from a regional into a national minority. Unlike many other minorities in the United states—blacks and native Americans , for example—the history of Mexicanos has largely been written by insiders, members of the ethnic community.2 However, this is not completely true. indeed, the first serious attempt to uncover their history was made by the eminent journalist and civil rights activist carey McWilliams (1905–1980), whose enormous impact has been so widely recognized by...