Claiming Citizenship spotlights a community where Mexican
Americans, regardless of social class, embraced a common ideology
and worked for access to the full rights of citizenship without
confrontation or radicalization. Victoria, Texas, is a small city
with a sizable Mexican-descent population dating to the period
before the U.S. annexation of the state. There, a complex and
nuanced story of ethnic politics unfolded in the middle of the
twentieth century. Focusing on grassroots, author Anthony Quiroz
shows how the experience of the Mexican American citizens of
Victoria, who worked within the system, challenges common
assumptions about the power of class to inform ideology and
demonstrates that embracing ethnic identity does not always mean
rejecting Americanism. Quiroz identifies Victoria as a community in
which Mexican Americans did not engage in overt resistance, labor
organization, demonstrations, or the rejection of capitalism,
democracy, or Anglo culture and society. Victoria's Mexican
Americans struggled for equal citizenship as the "loyal
opposition," opposing exclusionary practices while embracing many
of the values and practices of the dominant society. Various
individuals and groups worked, beginning in the 1940s, to bring
about integrated schools, better political representation, and a
professional class of Mexican Americans whose respectability would
help advance the cause of Mexican equality. Their quest for public
legitimacy was undertaken within a framework of a bicultural
identity that was adaptable to the private, Mexican world of home,
church, neighborhood, and family, as well as to the public world of
school, work, and politics. Coexistence with Anglo American society
and sharing the American dream constituted the desired ideal.
Quiroz's study makes a major contribution to our understanding of
the Mexican American experience by focusing on groups who chose a
more subtle, less confrontational path toward equality. Perhaps,
indeed, he describes the more common experience of this ethnic
population in twentieth-century America. ANTHONY QUIROZ, an
assistant professor of history at Texas A&M University-Corpus
Christi, received his Ph.D. from the University of Iowa. A former
resident of Victoria, Texas, he has written several articles about
the role of Mexican Americans in that city's history. This is his
first book.
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