Long before the Spanish colonizers established it in 1598, the “Kingdom of Nuevo México” had existed as an imaginary world—and not the one based on European medieval legend so often said to have driven the Spaniards’ ambitions in the New World. What the conquistadors sought in the 1500s, it seems, was what the native Mesoamerican Indians who took part in north-going conquest expeditions also sought: a return to the Aztecs’ mythic land of origin, Aztlan. Employing long-overlooked historical and anthropological evidence, Danna A. Levin Rojo reveals how ideas these natives held about their own past helped determine where Spanish explorers would go and what they would conquer in the northwest frontier of New Spain—present-day New Mexico and Arizona. Return to Aztlan thus remaps an extraordinary century during which, for the first time, Western minds were seduced by Native American historical memories. Levin Rojo recounts a transformation—of an abstract geographic space, the imaginary world of Aztlan, into a concrete sociopolitical place. Drawing on a wide variety of early maps, colonial chronicles, soldier reports, letters, and native codices, she charts the gradual redefinition of native and Spanish cultural identity—and shows that the Spanish saw in Nahua, or Aztec, civilization an equivalence to their own. A deviation in European colonial naming practices provides the first clue that a transformation of Aztlan from imaginary to concrete world was taking place: Nuevo México is the only place-name from the early colonial period in which Europeans combined the adjective “new” with an American Indian name. With this toponym, Spaniards referenced both Mexico-Tenochtitlan, the indigenous metropolis whose destruction made possible the birth of New Spain itself, and Aztlan, the ancient Mexicans’ place of origin. Levin Rojo collects additional clues as she systematically documents why and how Spaniards would take up native origin stories and make a return to Aztlan their own goal—and in doing so, overturns the traditional understanding of Nuevo México as a concept and as a territory. A book in the Latin American and Caribbean Arts and Culture initiative, supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

During the Chicano Movement in the 1960s and 1970s, the idea of Aztlán, homeland of the ancient Aztecs, served as a unifying force in an emerging cultural renaissance. Does the term remain useful? This expanded new edition of the classic 1989 collection of essays about Aztlán weighs its value. To encompass new developments in the discourse the editors have added six new essays.

This expanded new edition of the classic 1989 collection of essays about Aztlán weighs its value.

Mexican Americans/Chicana/os/Chicanx form a majority of the overall Latino population in the United States. In this collection, established and emerging Chicanx researchers diverge from the discipline’s traditional Southwest focus to offer academic and non-academic perspectives specifically on the Pacific Northwest and the Midwest. Their multidisciplinary papers address colonialism, gender, history, immigration, labor, literature, sociology, education, and religion, setting El Movimiento (the Chicanx movement) and the Chicanx experience beyond customary scholarship and illuminating how Chicanxs have challenged racialization, marginalization, and isolation in the northern borderlands. Contributors to We Are Aztlan! include Norma Cardenas (Eastern Washington University), Oscar Rosales Castaneda (activist, writer), Josue Q. Estrada (University of Washington), Theresa Melendez (Michigan State University, emeritus), the late Carlos Maldonado, Rachel Maldonado (Eastern Washington University, retired), Dylan Miner (Michigan State University), Ernesto Todd Mireles (Prescott College), and Dionicio Valdes (Michigan State University). Winner of a CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title.

Louie Pérez is a master musician and innovative visual artist who has spent the last forty years as founding member and principal songwriter for the internationally acclaimed group Los Lobos. Working with his songwriting partner, David Hidalgo, Pérez has written more than four hundred songs. Many of those songs, along with previously unpublished poems and short stories as well as paintings, sketches, and photos, are collected in this deeply personal, yet universally appealing volume. The book also features essays by musicians, artists and scholars who artfully dissect the significance of Pérez' work. Good Morning, Aztlán is, without question, a different kind of memoir.

A collection of writings that explores the experiences of Mexican-Americans during the Vietnam War, both on the warfront and at home; featuring over sixty short stories, poems, speeches, and articles.

"Creating Aztlâan interrogates the important role of Aztlâan in Chicano and Indigenous art and culture. Using the idea that lowriding is an Indigenous way of being, author Dylan A. T. Miner (Mâetis) discusses the multiple roles that Aztlâan has played atvarious moments in time, engaging pre-colonial indigeneities, alongside colonial, modern, and contemporary Xicano responses to colonization"--