Recovering History, Constructing Race: The Indian, Black, and White Roots of Mexican Americans

Martha Menchaca

Jan 2002 · University of Texas Press

About this ebook

“An unprecedented tour de force . . . [A] sweeping historical overview and interpretation of the racial formation and racial history of Mexican Americans.” —Antonia I. Castañeda, Associate Professor of History, St. Mary’s University

Winner, A Choice Outstanding Academic Book

The history of Mexican Americans is a history of the intermingling of races—Indian, White, and Black. This racial history underlies a legacy of racial discrimination against Mexican Americans and their Mexican ancestors that stretches from the Spanish conquest to current battles over ending affirmative action and other assistance programs for ethnic minorities. Asserting the centrality of race in Mexican American history, Martha Menchaca here offers the first interpretive racial history of Mexican Americans, focusing on racial foundations and race relations from preHispanic times to the present.

Menchaca uses the concept of racialization to describe the process through which Spanish, Mexican, and U.S. authorities constructed racial status hierarchies that marginalized Mexicans of color and restricted their rights of land ownership. She traces this process from the Spanish colonial period and the introduction of slavery through racial laws affecting Mexican Americans into the late twentieth-century. This re-viewing of familiar history through the lens of race recovers Blacks as important historical actors, links Indians and the mission system in the Southwest to the Mexican American present, and reveals the legal and illegal means by which Mexican Americans lost their land grants.

“Martha Menchaca has begun an intellectual insurrection by challenging the pristine aboriginal origins of Mexican Americans as historically inaccurate . . . Menchaca revisits the process of racial formation in the northern part of Greater Mexico from the Spanish conquest to the present.” —Hispanic American Historical Review

Ratings and reviews

My name is Betty Valencia and I am mentioned in my sister inlaws book more than once. Marta is correct in saying that I spent time with her during some of her research in Santa Barbara and Santa Ynez California. But with regret, I must correct her statement..."Betty claims to be a full-blooded Chumash"... My statement to Marta on that issue is as follows: "I and a few others in my family are enrolled with the Coastal Band of the Chumash Nation - CBCN. The CBCN is currently applying for federal recongnition which is a very long drawn out process (years). When the application is finally submitted along with the rolls of the CBCN, all listed will enter the process as full blooded. During the review process by the BIA, blood quantum will be decided. Some enrollees will be crosses off the list others will remain." I have never claimed to be "full blooded".

About the author

Martha Menchaca is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Texas at Austin.