Julian Samora – författare

Today in five Southwestern states there are more than four million Spanish-speaking Americans. It is the largest ethnic group in the five-state area of California, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and Colorado and among the largest minorities in the United States. The action potential of this group is so great that area politicians refer to it as the "sleeping giant."The purpose of this book is to bring together a summary of material about this group in the related subjects of religion, political activity, civil rights, and the emerging middle class. This compilation attempts a general assessment of the current status of the Spanish-speaking people of the Southwest and implication of their future growth and development.The circumstances of history formed this minority. The colonizing efforts of Spain in North and South America, the mission chains, Indian resistance, the assimilation of the conquerors, the open Mexican Border, and the elements of resistance and aggression were so strongly persistent that sixteenth-century Spain and modern Mexico survive today in the Southwest. Isolation was geographic as well as ethnic, and the main stream of Anglo-American political thought and historical evolution bypasses this part of the world. Through the Mexican War the United States acquired a substantial part of Mexican territory. Although the Spanish-speaking people have gone through a triple integration of essentially Spanish-Mexican and are still in many instances highly resistant to complete acculturation.The plan of presentation in this study includes the areas of history, church participation, labor problems, living conditions, education, civil rights status, and the difficulty minority groups encounter in participating in the politics of a dominant society. In this research in one of the largest ethnic groups in the United States today, past, present, and future are thoroughly examined and the conclusion is one of current activity and future development. The results of this study indicate that the Spanish-speaking people are achieving a new sophistication in terms of education, the labor market, action programs, minority status, and language.

When A History of the Mexican-American People was first published in 1977 it was greeted with enthusiasm for its straightforward, objective account of the Mexican-American role in U.S. history. Since that time the text has been used with great success in high school and university courses. This new, revised edition of the book continues the history of Mexican-Americans up to the early 1990s.Samora covers such topics as the exploration and northward Spanish expansion into what is now the United States, Mexico's independence from Spain, the Treaty of Guaddalupe Hidalgo that ended the Mexican-American War, the impact of the Mexican Revolution on both sides of the border, and the effect of mass migrations from Mexico to the United States. This edition also contains a revised chapter on Chicano contributions to the art, literature, music, and theater from the mid-1950s through the early 1990s, as well as a new chapter on the religious life of Mexican-Americans.