Testimonio: A Documentary History of the Mexican-American Struggle for Civil Rights

Francisco Arturo Rosales

Aug 2000 · Arte Publico Press

About this ebook

New from the author of the best-selling Chicano! comes a major overview of crucial historical documents in the Mexican-American pursuit of life, liberty, and justice in the United States. Beginning with the early 1800s and extending his survey up to the modern era, Rosales has pursued and meticulously put in order a wealth of essential, illuminating papers such as petitions, correspondence (both personal and official), government reports, political proclamations, newspaper items (both news articles and editorials), first-hand accounts, manifestos, congressional testimony, memoirs, and even international treaties. Rosales proceeds chronologically in a commanding and thorough examination of such topics as Mexicans in the nineteenth-century Southwest; the internal, and international, effects of the Mexican Revolution of 1910 and the regimes that followed; massive immigration during the 1920s; the establishment of a M?xico de afuera by nostalgic exiles; the mobilizing of Mexican Americans in civil-rights groups to combat discrimination, particularly following World War II; workplace and labor groups such as the United Farm Workers; and the rise of militant groups and movements such as the Brown Berets, the Raza Unida political party, and the Chicano Moratorium. Each chapter begins with an extended introduction, in which Rosales carefully sets the scene and establishes the context in which these records were produced. In addition, each individual item is given its own particular preface, and Rosales has also carefully documented his sources for further exploration. All sides_from the fervently militant to the accommodating to the rabidly xenophobic_are heard from; and the voices Rosales has selected range from the famous and powerful to the wholly obscure. In Testimonio, Arturo Rosales has produced a touchstone volume, a definitive work for reference and study that scholars and students will soon find indispensable.

About the author

F. ARTURO ROSALES is the author of Chicano! The History of the Mexican-American Civil Rights Movement (an acclaimed PBS television series), Hispanics and the Humanities in the Southwest and Pobre Raza: Violence, Justice, and Mobilization Among Mexico Lindo Immigrants. He is Professor of History at Arizona State University in Tempe.