Throughout the last part of the nineteenth century, Mexicanos in the Southwest engaged in a defensive holding action against the encroachment of Anglo-America. In this book, Rosenbaum argues that numerous community and individual rebellions by Mexican Americans failed to result in a unified revolutionary movement because of the local and particularistic frames of reference endemic to Spanish-speaking society.
The author explores the cultural, economic, and political differences between the Southwestern Mexicanos and Anglo-Americans. There is a discussion of individual social bandits like Tiburcio Vásquez and Gregorio Cortéz. Community rebellions in New Mexico are given a great deal of emphasis: especially the Maxwell Land Grant conflict, the Lincoln County War, las Gorras Blancas, and El Partido del Pueblo Unido. Disturbingly, there is no treatment of the El Paso Salt War or the Cart War in San Antonio, two major community uprisings that affected urban populations. Indeed, the focus of the book is more on the rural peasant tradition as it conflicted with the Anglo capitalist order. Rosenbaum pretty much follows Eric Hobsbawm’s theoretical approach to social banditry.
This book brings new conceptual dimensions and analytical insights to what is by now, thanks to recent publications by scholars in the field of Chicano history, a well-known series of resistance movements. Mexicano Resistance in the Southwest is a valuable addition to the historical literature on the Chicano experience.
