In this book the authors seek to answer the question of why Tejanos, Mexican Texans, were left out of the socioeconomic progress that characterized Texas’ growth in the last half of the nineteenth century. They draw the bulk of their explanation from their analysis of a sample of more than one hundred thousand Texas residents as enumerated in the U.S. Census between 1850 and 1900. Secondarily, the authors seek to discover how Mexicans and Anglos responded to modernization in this period.
The approach to these complex and delicate questions is an interdisciplinary one, blending sociological discussion with historical narrative. It includes a very good summary of Texas history up to 1900, with attention to non-Mexican immigration and data on the industrial and agricultural growth in the state after 1850. When they analyze socioeconomic change, Kenneth Stewart and Arnoldo De León find that Téjanos were increasingly pushed into the unskilled working class and excluded from specialized labor and white-collar jobs. They document the emergence of a discriminatory labor structure in Texas, much as De León and David Montejano have done in other books. The explanation for this phenomenon is the proliferation of a racial ideology to give the Anglo-Americans a competitive advantage in the race toward modernity.
In the political arena, Stewart and De León document a continuing vitality in Tejanos’ public involvement at the county and local levels, despite their exclusion from the state capital. The authors suggest that Tejano political responses ranged from accommodation to revolution, revising the view that Tejano politics was an outgrowth of the Mexican patronal system. Bossism, the authors point out, was widespread in U.S. political culture of the era as well. In education and literacy, the authors find tremendous inequalities between Anglos and Tejanos. They reason that Tejanos were victims of racial discrimination in this arena; job expectations did not motivate a desire for learning. Later, when job and educational opportunities improved, so did Tejano educational levels and literacy.
The chapter on households and families does not rely much on statistical evidence but is largely concerned with the evolution of Anglo attitudes toward Mexican and Tejano family life. Here the authors find that anti-Mexican stereotypes of families were not as prevalent in this period as later, when a rationale was needed for Americanization programs.
This book’s strengths are that it is interdisciplinary and comparative. In addition, the questions it addresses are clearly posed, and the answers it offers are sophisticated and subtle. It is a well-balanced and judicious effort to include Tejanos in the epic of Texas’ modern history.
