Sancho’s Journal presents a rich ethnography of daily life among the “batos locos” (crazy guys) as they joined the Brown Berets and became associated with the greater Chicano movement. Montejano describes the motivations that brought young men into the group and shows how they learned to link their individual troubles with the larger issues of social inequality and discrimination that the movement sought to redress. He also recounts his own journey as a scholar who came to realize that, before he could tell this street-level story, he had to understand the larger history of Mexican Americans and their struggle for a place in U.S. society. Sancho’s Journal completes that epic story.
David Montejano is Professor of Ethnic Studies and History at the University of California, Berkeley. His fields of specialization include community studies, historical and political sociology, and race and ethnic relations. In addition to his books Anglos and Mexicans in the Making of Texas, 1836–1986 and Quixote’s Soldiers, he is the editor of Chicano Politics and Society in the Late Twentieth Century.