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288 Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies crimination, repatriation, and physical assaults were countered by continued pride in their origins and in their achievements in a hostile setting. This argument has a persuasive quality. Clear evidence of prejudice in the labor market, the legal system, and in schools suggests the "racial" reading now dominant in Chicano historiography. From this point of view, Mexicans, like blacks, are so stereotypically viewed that they have little chance to move toward parity with native-born persons. The weakness in this position, evident in Rebirth and in most Chicano scholatship, is that little attention is given to die fate of other immigrants and migrants, and little to the traits of Mexicans , rather than elites, in the results. This is especially apparent in the tendentious interpretation of economic mobility (158-64). One ofthe most critical group features is proximity to Mexico; a constant stream of new immigrants and ease in remigration, once common to all immigtants, was an almost exclusively Mexican condition by 1920. This proximity strongly sustained fiist-generation cultures. Another problem lies in exactly what Monroy and Vicki Ruiz have discovered in interfamilial conflict: like the second generation in all ethnic groups, the children of Mexican parents rebelled against old country notions (such as oppressive patriarchy), and eagerly sought aspects ofthe dominant culture. Stylish clothes and American movie stars were not imposed on young people; they desired them, just as the world now, for better or worse, thirsts for American culture. In order to test whethet such assimilation occurs (and assimilation is what it is, not acculturation), one can't rely on sources from East Los Angeles and other barrios. These are, by definition, expressive of México lindo. The scholar has to go to the suburbs and see whether anyone of Mexican origin ended up out there, married to a non-Mexican , speaking only English, and crazy for Betty Grable. Rebirth concludes in 1940. Despite the lack of comparative evidence, its findings strongly suggest that assimilation was slight to this point, a product both ofthe dominant culture's discriminatory practices, and ofthe particular features of this immigrant group. Hence, a vibrant México afuera, which, despite its economic and political struggles, had its great charms. Monroy is not immune to these, and his affection fot this place and these people is an evident and attractive feature in this book. Brian Gratton Arizona State University. An Account ofthe Antiquities ofthe Indians Duke UP, 1999 By Fray Ramón Pané Introductory study, notes, and appendixes by José Juan Arrom Translated by Susan C. Griswold Fray Ramón Pané is sometimes called the "first ethnographer of the Americas" because his 1498 report to Christopher Columbus represents the first Eutopean description ofthe indigenous inhabitants of this continent. Of couise, ethnography as a discipline would not emerge until centuries later, and Pané did not know he was in the Americas. However, he might have agreed with the "first" part of the epithet history has given him: Pané did know that he was recotding the initial encounter between radically different worlds. Pane's fascinating account relates everything he could learn from native interpreters about the history and beliefs of the Tainos, who soon would be exterminated by the fitst Spanish colonies in Hispaniola. He describes his observations ofthe native life ways and lexicon, resistence to early colonial abuses, and disputes over how to contend with the Spanish invaders. José Juan Arrom's 2 5-year-old translation and study of Pane's account is an outstanding text for Duke University to make available in English in their series Latin America in Transiten/ En traducción/ Em traduçâo. This volume brings to anglophones a text of undisputed primacy among Spanish colonial documents. Additionally, die history of the text itself provides a remarkable example ofthe interlinguistic and intercultural complications that should concern a book series focused on translation. Pane's report to Columbus Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies 289 has disappeared, but a copy of it was transcribed and intercalated in Columbus's biography by his son Fernando. Also lost, Fernandos book only survives in Alonso Ulloa's much-criticized Italian translation from 1571. All extant versions of Pane...

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