What were the catalysts that motivated Mexican American youth to enlist or readily accept their draft notices in World War II, Korea, or Vietnam? In Soldados Razos at War, historian and veteran Steven Rosales chronicles the experiences of Chicano servicemen who fought for the United States, explaining why these men served, how they served, and the impact of their service on their identity and political consciousness. As a social space imbued with its own martial and masculine ethos, the U.S. military offers an ideal way to study the aspirations and behaviors that carried over into the civilian lives of these young men. A tradition of martial citizenship forms the core of the book. Using rich oral histories and archival research, Rosales investigates the military’s transformative potential with a particular focus on socioeconomic mobility, masculinity, and postwar political activism across three generations. The national collective effort characteristic of World War II and Korea differed sharply from the highly divisive nature of American involvement in Vietnam. Thus, for Mexican Americans, military service produced a wide range of ideological reactions, with the ideals of each often in opposition to the others. Yet a critical thread connecting these diverse outcomes was a redefined sense of self and a willingness to engage in individual and collective action to secure first-class citizenship.

"In the pursuit of the modern, the armed forces served as instrument, model, and metaphor for national progress. I examine in this book how the military experience, as representative of the process, failed or fulfilled aspects of the broad national transition towards hegemony and sovereignty. This is the first work combining personnel records and military literature with cultural sources to address the setting of military life for soldiers and their families rather than politics or officers. In connection with nation formation and identity, this book moves away from studies of the army as an institution to broaden understandings of inculcations and the limits and fault lines of building Mexico as a nation. More social and cultural in historical outlook, I examine the creation of political cultures rooted in or derived from the personal experiences of the lower ranks. In doing so, the book removes some of the privileged view that official narratives emphasize in order to explain the making of a bureaucratic institution from the bottom up, and to more clearly describe how this process both encouraged the development of nationalism and limited it in important ways. In this fashion I build on the works of scholars whose focus has centered more on officers, education, and political conflicts"--Introduction.

Women serve in, help finance, and give permission for the activities of this country's armed forces, yet those who serve remain unknown and those who are accountable often forget their responsibility.

How the military defined homosexuality and the ways that shaped the gay and lesbian identity and movements.

In summer 2014, a surge of unaccompanied child migrants from Central America to the United States gained mainstream visibility—yet migration from Central America has been happening for decades. U.S. Central Americans explores the shared yet distinctive experiences, histories, and cultures of 1.5-and second-generation Central Americans in the United States. While much has been written about U.S. and Central American military, economic, and political relations, this is the first book to articulate the rich and dynamic cultures, stories, and historical memories of Central American communities in the United States. Contributors to this anthology—often writing from their own experiences as members of this community—articulate U.S. Central Americans’ unique identities as they also explore the contradictions found within this multivocal group. Working from within Guatemalan, Salvadoran, and Maya communities, contributors to this critical study engage histories and transnational memories of Central Americans in public and intimate spaces through ethnographic, in-depth, semistructured, qualitative interviews, as well as literary and cultural analysis. The volume’s generational, spatial, urban, indigenous, women’s, migrant, and public and cultural memory foci contribute to the development of U.S. Central American thought, theory, and methods. Woven throughout the analysis, migrants’ own oral histories offer witness to the struggles of displacement, travel, navigation, and settlement of new terrain. This timely work addresses demographic changes both at universities and in cities throughout the United States. U.S. Central Americans draws connections to fields of study such as history, political science, anthropology, ethnic studies, sociology, cultural studies, and literature, as well as diaspora and border studies. The volume is also accessible in size, scope, and language to educators and community and service workers wanting to know about their U.S. Central American families, neighbors, friends, students, employees, and clients. Contributors: Leisy Abrego Karina O. Alvarado Maritza E. Cárdenas Alicia Ivonne Estrada Ester E. Hernández Floridalma Boj Lopez Steven Osuna Yajaira Padilla Ana Patricia Rodríguez

Examines the birth of the American middle class as white-collar workers used their growing consumer identity to organize politically