Book Review of Tejano Diaspora

EJOURNALoF

UTHTEXAS a journal devoted to the history and heritage of South Texas

VOLUME 26 NUMBER 2 FALL 2013 MANAGING EDITOR Dr. Alberto Rodriguez EDITORS Dr. Larry Knight, Dr. Roger Tuller BOOK REVIEW EDITOR Chuck Parsons LAYOUT / DESIGN EDITOR Dr. Manuel Flores PUBLISHED By Texas A&M University - Kingsville

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for The South Texas Historical Association Homero Vera, president Copyright © 2013 South Texas Historical Association ISSN: 1099-9310

Pttge 147 Valerio-Jimenez' study puts the Rio Grande b rd r region alongside other works that depict Spanish Mexican societies and their interactions with Anglos in areas like New Mexico and California. Like these previous studies, Valerio-Jimenez examines the colonization effort led by the Spanish Crown to prevent other imperial powers from encroaching in their territory and how residents' interaction with the United States and Anglos led to the Spanish colonists' loss of status and power. This research will spark the interest for others to study race, class and border issues, not only in the Rio Grande border region, but in other areas like the Arizona border as well. With this book Valerio-Jimenez has brought much needed attention to an area worthy of scholarly research. His work will surely shed light and understanding to the ideologies, culture and relations ofthe Rio Grande-Mexico border region that many outside the area fail to comprehend. Veronica Duran Texas A&M University-Kingsville

The Tejano Diaspora: Mexican Americanism and Ethnic Politics in Texas and Wisconsin. By Marc Simon Rodriguez. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011. Pp. xviii + 238 Maps. Illustrations. Endnotes. Index. Bibliography. ISBN 978-0-8078-3464-0. Cloth $ 39.95. Although a small book, Tejano Diaspora: Mexican Americanism and Ethnic Politics in Texas and Wisconsin by Marc Simon Rodriguez has gained much traction since being published in 2011, and deservingly so. Winner, for example, ofthe 2012 Tejas Nonfiction Book Award by the Tejas Foco ofthe National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies, the book examines how notions of community activism--what Rodriguez calls "Mexican Americanism"--was reflected in Texas and Wisconsin, from the post-World War Two period of the 1950s into the Chicano movement era of the 1960s and 1970s. In chapter one, the author begins his story by examining how the veterans of war returned to their respective communities in South Texas and sought to challenge the persistent forms of racial inequality in the region through participation in the American G.!. Forum, one key civic organization during the post-World War Two period. Rodriguez particularly

-D cus H III ntion n challenges to local political representation in Crystal ity which, while unsuccessful, served as part of the grounding for.a subsequent electoral campaign in the same small Texas town. For Me.xIcan American students who volunteered in the latter Los Cinco campaign in the Crystal City, as the author documents in chapter two, they "learned the basics of electoral organizing," and their respective commitments to activism continued in various forms and places (39). As some migrated with their families for agricultural labor as part ofthe Tejano diaspora, for example, the author highlights how they became critical to the development of the farm worker movement in Wisconsin, particularly in the founding of an independent labor union called Obreros Unidos and which is examined in chapter three. In chapter four, as Tejano migrants began to settle-out of the migrant stream in Wisconsin, Rodriguez shows how community activism manifested through local and national participation in programs created under the War of Poverty, including a social service agency called United Migrant Opportunity Services, Inc. in Milwaukee. And in chapter five, the author traces the significance of political representation again in Crystal City through the formation of La Raza Unida Party, which built upon past experiences and social networks among Tejano activists both in Texas and beyond. Overall, as the title suggests, the emergence of a Tejano diaspo~a from South Texas in the mid-twentieth century was the key component in all expressions of community activism examined in this book. In this .way, Rodriguez was able to make connections between and across seemingly disparate historical periods, topics, and regions, an accomplishment which, in turn, expands the literature on Mexican American history in

Texas. Antonio L. Vasquez Michigan State University The Big Thi ike Iutdebook: Exploring the Backroads and History of Southeast Te as, I Y Lorraine G. Bonney, edited and with contributions by Maxin' Johns! n and Pete A. Y. Gunter. (Denton: University of North Texas PI' 'SS, () II. Illu trations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. 850. ISBN 97 -I· 7 II· I -2. $29.95. Cloth. For mor \ thllll I I

r , Lorraine Bonney and her late husband