Book
Border visions: Mexican cultures of the Southwest United States
University of Arizona Press • Tucson • Published In 1996 • Pages:
By: Vélez-Ibáñez, Carlos G..
Abstract
Vélez-Ibáñez examines the effect of the Mexican-U.S. border on Mexican American history, identity, and culture. He begins by establishing the fact that there is a long history (and prehistory) of north-south movement of people between what is today central Mexico and southwestern United States. He then discusses how Anglo-Americans dispossessed Mexican Americans of their land after the Mexican war (1846), turning the latter into a pool of cheap labor and creating what he calls a 'Mexican commodity identity.' He next discusses survival strategies based on ritually maintained household clusters, which were involved in various levels of exchanges. Household clusters were also the basis for identity, socialization, and education. Vélez-Ibáñez recounts the terrible toll poverty, drugs, war, and crime have taken and the final convulsive reaction in the 1960s Chicano movement. He analyzes the mural art and literature from this period and the particular kind of hybrid cultural and ethnic identity it reflects.
- HRAF PubDate
- 2002
- Region
- North America
- Sub Region
- Regional, Ethnic and Diaspora Cultures
- Document Type
- Book
- Evaluation
- Creator Type
- Ethnologist
- Document Rating
- 4: Excellent Secondary Data
- 5: Excellent Primary Data
- Analyst
- Ian Skoggard ; 2001
- Field Date
- not specified
- Coverage Date
- 1848-1994
- Coverage Place
- Southwest United States
- Notes
- Carlos G. Vélez-Ibáñez
- Includes bibliographical references (p. [323]-341) and index
- LCCN
- 96010100
- LCSH
- Mexican Americans