Following the Mexican American War in 1848, Tejanos routinely lost their land, political influence, and social standing in an Anglo society. Economic institutions such as ranching, railroads, and oil needed land. Land provided opportunity and has traditionally been a commodity that provided a way for individuals to provide for their family. It also was used as a productive economic resource. Manifest Destiny ideology associated with Anglo expansion trumped the protections supposedly in place to protect Tejanos in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Such that actions resulted in the continued disenfranchisement of the Tejano population, particularly in West Texas. Anglos dehumanized and relegated Tejanos to second-class citizenship in order to control Tejano land and increase Anglo superiority. Tejanos experienced prejudice, racism, violence, and a legal system that failed them, one that perpetuated Anglos to enforce Tejano disenfranchisement. Exploring Tejano disenfranchisement through the dispossession of Tejanos’ land is important to the understanding of how Tejanos lost their land to Anglo institutions in West Texas.

Featuring a side of Tejano history too often neglected, author Arnoldo De León shows that people of Spanish-Mexican descent were not passive players in or, worse, absent from West Texas history but instead were active agents at the center of it. The collection of essays in Tejano West Texas—many never before published—will correct decades of historiographical oversight by emphasizing the centrality of the Mexican American experience in the history of the region. De León, a true dean of Tejano history, showcases the continued presence and contribution of Mexican Americans to West Texas. This collection begins in the 1770s when settlers of Mexican descent first began migrating to Presidio and then to other sections of the Big Bend. De León then turns his attention to the nineteenth century when Mexican immigrants and other Texans searched for work throughout the West Texas hinterland, and his coverage continues onward through the twentieth century. Mexican American and Texas history scholars will find Tejano West Texas to be an invaluable addition to the Tejano narrative.

Featuring a side of Tejano history too often neglected, author Arnoldo De León shows that people of Spanish-Mexican descent were not passive players in or, worse, absent from West Texas history but instead were active agents at the center of it. The collection of essays in Tejano West Texas—many never before published—will correct decades of historiographical oversight by emphasizing the centrality of the Mexican American experience in the history of the region. De León, a true dean of Tejano history, showcases the continued presence and contribution of Mexican Americans to West Texas. This collection begins in the 1770s when settlers of Mexican descent first began migrating to Presidio and then to other sections of the Big Bend. De León then turns his attention to the nineteenth century when Mexican immigrants and other Texans searched for work throughout the West Texas hinterland, and his coverage continues onward through the twentieth century. Mexican American and Texas history scholars will find Tejano West Texas to be an invaluable addition to the Tejano narrative.

"Between Here and There is the first history of the creation of modern US-Mexico migration patterns narrated from multiple geographic and institutional sites. This book analyzes the interplay between the US and Mexican governments, civic organizations, and migrants on both sides of the border and offers a revisionist and comprehensive view of Mexican migration as it was established in the early twentieth century and reproduced throughout the century as a socioeconomic system that reached from Texas borderlands to western agricultural regions like California as well as to Midwestern farming and industrial areas. The book illustrates how large-scale migration became entrenched in the socioeconomic fabric of the United States and Mexico. Mexican migration operates through an interconnected transnational migrant economy made up of self-reinforcing local economic logics, information diffusion, and locally based transnational social networks. From central Mexico, the book expands across the United States and back to Mexico to show how the migrant economy spread and reacted to the political and economic crisis in the 1930s. In the 1930s, migrants fought for recognition in both societies. Those who returned to Mexico used an expansive vision to lay claim to citizenship and land there. Those who stayed in the United States joined efforts to lay claim to better pay, working conditions, and rights from the New Deal state, creating a base for later organizing. These dynamics shaped the establishment of the Bracero Program that brought in more than four million workers and has continued to frame large-scale Mexican migration until today"--

A revisionist portrait of Mexican American life in nineteenth-century Texas, The Tejano Community combines extensive research, penetrating insight, and critical analysis to support De León's contention that Tejanos were active agents in establishing communities and a bicultural heritage in Texas because of the resilience of their social institutions and a commitment to hard work. In this pioneering study, De León examines politics, urban and rural work patterns, religion, folklore, culture, and community. Overturning earlier views, he shows that the Tejanos were energetic, enterprising, success-oriented, as well as interested in and active participants in politics. De León's work has initiated a reevaluation of the Tejano experience in Texas. First published by the University of New Mexico Press in 1982, The Tejano Community is now considered a minor classic and remains a core study of Tejano life that continues to stimulate scholarship throughout the field of ethnic studies.

In Spatial and Discursive Violence in the US Southwest Rosaura Sánchez and Beatrice Pita examine literary representations of settler colonial land enclosure and dispossession in the history of New Mexico, Texas, and Oklahoma. Sánchez and Pita analyze a range of Chicano/a and Native American novels, films, short stories, and other cultural artifacts from the eighteenth century to the present, showing how Chicano/a works often celebrate an idealized colonial Spanish past as a way to counter stereotypes of Mexican and Indigenous racial and ethnic inferiority. As they demonstrate, these texts often erase the participation of Spanish and Mexican settlers in the dispossession of Indigenous lands. Foregrounding the relationship between literature and settler colonialism, they consider how literary representations of land are manipulated and redefined in ways that point to the changing practices of dispossession. In so doing, Sánchez and Pita prompt critics to reconsider the role of settler colonialism in the deep history of the United States and how spatial and discursive violence are always correlated.