Mexicanos: A History of Mexicans in the United States (review)

Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies 315 Uo elite imagined its "others" and itself, and the problems associated with reaching a unified disThis shift in the fictional portrayal of the pirate reflects the absence of a hegemonic discourse capable of defining the nation's identity and of controlling the official imaginings that help secure a collective national consciousness . Thus, the pirate becomes a 'social signifier,' an icon embodying both enemies and heroes battling the wais of national identity. (72) By discussing this process of national identity -formation through literature (in the fashion opened by Anderson, I would say), GerassiNavarro also addresses the problems ofthe use of memory and the invention oftraditions—a rather pressing issue during the nineteenth century (Hobsbawm)—and how these negotiations were conducted in the frame of the historical novel. She also discusses the ideology and morality ofthe melodrama, a basic narrative frame of this kind of novel. Gerassi-Navarro highlights a numbei of good points in diis respect, for example the differences in rhe form and ideological character ofthe Spanish American historical novel, in comparison to the canonical European historical novel (mainly Scott), in relation to the differences in the processes of nation-foimation in both cases. I would like to close these lines with both an appraisal and a critique ofthe book Pirate NoveL· undoubtedly opens a new field of research, sheds light onto a problem, and onto a paicel of the Spanish American literary corpus quite left in the dark. This book will turn out to be a seminal text from which a distinctive body of schokiship may grow. My only critique ofthe book would be the author's involuntary reliance upon the viewing of literature as a reflection and an expression of a given, always already formed ideology. This assumption prevents her from moving a step foiward into a more in-depth consideration ofthe role ofthe metaphor as a cultural "object," of relations between literature and ideology, and ofthe process of identity formation in literary texts. Juan Pablo Dabove University of Pittsburgh Mexicanos: A History of Mexicans in the United States Indiana University Press, 1999 By Manuel G. Gonzalez In this survey ofthe history of Mexicans in the United States, Manuel Gonzalez boldly challenges longstanding paradigms in die field of Chicano history. He minces no woids in attacking what he consideis to have been the detrimental impact of "activist scholais" whose political agenda strongly colored their historical scholarship and led to the creation of stereotypes. Of such scholais , Gonzalez claims: "Many of them pride themselves on being scholar activists; consequendy they believe that it is imperative not simply to describe what happened in die past, but to change it" (82). The present study successfully steeis away from simplistic dichotomies (Mexicans as victims, Anglos as oppressors) and offers a long-term vision ofthe main economic, social and demographic currents that have shaped the lives of Mexicans in the United States. Yet in his effort to depart from past trends, Gonzalez swings the pendulum somewhat fai in the opposite direction so that impottant issues of race and identity take on a secondary importance in his narrative. Gonzalez offers a broad ranging synthesis ofthe history of Mexicans in the United States with a detailed discussion ofthe historiography. His nanative covets successive historical periods going back ovei five hundred years to the Spanish conquest of Mexico, and even includes a brief discussion of pie-Columbian peoples. It covers the issues addiessed, and the omissions resulting from the tradition of activist scholatship. The book constitutes a particulaily valuable pedagogical tool and should piovoke good discussion among ad- 316 Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies vanced undergraduates and graduate students, particularly when read together with some ofthe criticized texts. At each historical peiiod discussed in the book, Gonzalez challenges the approach taken by Chicano historians and offers a corrective to what he sees as their biases. The term itself "Chicano," needs to be questioned in light of the fact that most Mexicans in the United States do not identify with it. He reinterprets key events and points to prevalent stereotypes. For example in his discussion ofthe peiiod 1848-1900, Gonzalez discards the labeling of certain Mexicans as "vendidos" (sell...