CMAS Publication Series in History, Culture, and Society with the University of Texas Press

CMAS actively produces scholarly work in Mexican-American Studies through a book series, History, Culture, and Society, published with the University of Texas Press. These cutting-edge disciplinary and interdisciplinary inquiries now include:

Felix Longoria's Wake
by Patrick Carroll
Private First Class Felix Longoria earned a Bronze Service Star, a Purple Heart, a Good Conduct Medal, and a Combat Infantryman's badge for service in the Philippines during World War II. Yet the only funeral parlor in his hometown of Three Rivers, Texas, refused to hold a wake for the slain soldier because "the whites would not like it." Almost overnight, this act of discrimination became a defining moment in the rise of Mexican American activism. It launched Dr. Héctor P. García and his newly formed American G.I. Forum into the vanguard of the Mexican civil rights movement, while simultaneously endangering and advancing the career of Senator Lyndon B. Johnson, who arranged for Longoria's burial with full military honors in Arlington National Cemetery.

In this book, Patrick Carroll provides the first fully researched account of the Longoria controversy and its far-reaching consequences. Drawing on extensive documentary evidence and interviews with many key figures, including Dr. García and Mrs. Longoria, Carroll convincingly explains why the Longoria incident, though less severe than other acts of discrimination against Mexican Americans, ignited the activism of a whole range of interest groups from Argentina to Minneapolis. By putting Longoria's wake in a national and international context, he also clarifies why it became such a flash point for conflicting understandings of bereavement, nationalism, reason, and emotion between two powerful cultures—Mexicanidad and Americanism.

Remembering the Alamo: Memory, Modernity and the Master Symbol
by Richard Flores
"Remember the Alamo!" reverberates through Texas history and culture, but what exactly are we remembering? Over nearly two centuries, the Mexican victory over an outnumbered band of Alamo defenders has been transformed into an American victory for the love of liberty. Why did the historical battle of 1836 undergo this metamorphosis in memory and mythology to become such a potent master symbol in Texan and American culture?

In this probing book, Richard Flores seeks to answer that question by examining how the Alamo's transformation into an American cultural icon helped to shape social, economic, and political relations between Anglo and Mexican Texans from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries. In the first part of the book, he looks at how the attempts of heritage society members and political leaders to define the Alamo as a place have reflected struggles within Texas society over the place and status of Anglos and Mexicans. In the second part, he explores how Alamo movies and the transformation of Davy Crockett into an Alamo hero/martyr have advanced deeply racialized, ambiguous, and even invented understandings of the past.

The Illusion of Inclusion: The Untold Political Story of San Antonio
by Rodolfo Rosales
To many observers, the 1981 election of Henry Cisneros as mayor of San Antonio represented the culminating victory in the Chicano community's decades long struggle for inclusion in the city's political life. Yet, nearly twenty years later, inclusion is still largely an illusion for many working-class and poor Chicanos, since business interests continue to set the city's political and economic priorities.

In The Illusion of Inclusion, Rodolfo Rosales offers the first in-depth history of the Chicano community's struggle for inclusion in the political life of San Antonio during the years 1951 to 1991. Drawing from interviews with key participants as well as archival research, he focuses on the political and organizational activities of the Chicano middle class in the context of post-World War II municipal reform and how this led to independent political representation for the Chicano community. Of special interest is his extended discussion of the role of middle-class Chicano women as they gained greater political visibility in the 1980s.

Barrio-Logos: Space and Place in Urban Chicano Literature and Culture
by Raúl Homero Villa
Struggles over space and resistance to geographic displacement gave birth to much of Chicano history and culture. In Barrio-Logos: Space and Place in Urban Chicano Literature and Culture, Raúl Villa explores the use of expressive culture by Chicano activists, journalists, writers, Barrio Logosartists, and musicians in California to oppose the community-destroying forces of urban-renewal programs and massive freeway development, and to create and defend a sense of Chicano place-identity.

Villa opens with a historical overview of Mexican American communities and culture, tracing their growth in response to conflicts over space since the U.S. annexation of Mexican territory in the 1840s. Then, turning to the work of contemporary members of the Chicano intelligentsia such as Helena María Viramontes, Ron Arias, and Lorna Dee Cervantes, he demonstrates how their expressive practices re-imagine and re-create the dominant urban space as a community-enabling place. In doing so, Villa illuminates the endless interplay in which cultural texts and practices are shaped by and act upon their social and political contexts.