Numbering over a third of California's population and thirteen percent of the U.S. population, people of Mexican ancestry represent a hugely complex group with a long history in the country. Contributors explore a broad range of issues regarding California's ethnic Mexican population, including their concentration among the working poor and as day laborers; their participation in various sectors of the educational system; social problems such as domestic violence; their contributions to the arts, especially music; media stereotyping; and political alliances and alignments.

Contributors are Brenda D. Arellano, Leo R. Chavez, Yvette G. Flores, Ramon A. Gutierrez, Aida Hurtado, Olga Najera-Ramirez, Chon A. Noriega, Manuel Pastor Jr., Armida Ornelas, Russell W. Rumberger, Daniel Solorzano, Enriqueta Valdez Curiel, and Abel Valenzuela Jr.

Dancing across Borders: Danzas y Bailes Mexicanos focuses specifically on Mexican dance practices on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. The essays explore various types of Mexican popular and traditional dances and address questions of authenticity, aesthetics, identity, interpretation, and research methodologies in dance performance. Contributors include not only noted scholars from a variety of disciplines but also several dance practitioners who reflect on their engagement with dance and reveal subtexts of dance culture. Capturing dance as a living expression, the volume's ethnographic approach highlights the importance of the cultural and social contexts in which dances are practiced. Contributors are Norma E. Cantu, Susan Cashion, Maria Teresa Cesena, Xochitl C. Chavez, Adriana Cruz-Manjarrez, Renee de la Torre Castellanos, Peter J. Garcia, Rudy F. Garcia, Chris Goertzen, Martha Gonzalez, Elisa Diana Huerta, Sydney Hutchinson, Marie "Keta" Miranda, Olga Najera-Ramirez, Shakina Nayfack, Russell Rodriguez, Brenda M. Romero, Nancy Lee Chalfa Ruyter, Jose Sanchez Jimenez, and Alberto Zarate Rosales.

Chicana Traditions features essays from professionals engaged with a broad and ever-expanding Chicana expressive culture. Professors and students, performing artists and folklorists, and archivists and activists merge personal experience with formal discussion to share fascinating inside stories. The topics include a professional woman mariachi performer; the creation and evolution of the escaramuza charra (all-female precision riding team) within the male-dominated Mexican rodeo; the ranchera music of the transnational performer Lydia Mendoza, the complex crossover of Selena's Tejano music, and the bottle cap and jar lid art of Goldie Garcia. An eye-opening journey through a borderland where cultures and identities converge, Chicana Traditions reveals how Chicanas continue to invent, reshape, and transcend their traditional culture.

Each year, for three days in September, the citizens of Jocotan, an ancient indigenous community near Guadalajara, Mexico, symbolically reenact the Spanish conquest of Mexico in mock battles between Santiago, the patron saint of Spain, and the Tastoanes, the leaders of the indigenous resistance. Paradoxically, the Jocotenos honor Santiago, their special protector, and incorporate both Christian and indigenous practices and beliefs in their fiesta. Employing the concept of hegemony, the author explores what the festival means culturally to the community and shows how it enables Jocotenos to adapt to Christianity and to resist the social order it symbolizes. Through the festival, Jocotenos address their collective identity, the preservation of their folk culture, and their relationship to the social-political power structure of Jocotan. Students of Mexican culture and of syncretic religions worldwide will find this study stimulating and informative.