Robert Sylvan Kelvyn Park High School

This book is a narrative history of the Chicano Movement in the United States. It is a good overview of the history of this movement in the United States. The book does try to cover too much ground in a short space. It seems in many places that he glosses over some of the important parts of the movement. I felt that many of the topics he covers could be individual books in themselves. At times as a reader I felt frustrated in trying to see where he was leading me. He seems to be disenchanted with the people of the movement. There is a general feeling to me that the movement died somewhere in the late 1970s.

Mr. Rosales takes the reader on a journey from the 1820s to the modern day in his analysis of the Chicano movement. In his analysis he portrays the loss of Chicano rights to the treaty that ended the Mexican-American War in 1848. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was supposed to guarantee the rights of the Mexicans absorbed by the United States. He attributes the loss of property and political rights to a lack of enforcement to this treaty. The problem with this idea is that Rosales does not really fully explain the United States vision of Manifest Destiny. The United States dreamed of expansion to the West Coast of North America. To achieve this dream war with Mexico was a certainty. The United States in its history up to 1848 was one of expansion. It was also a history of removal and expulsion of indigenous peoples. The Cherokee Indians of Georgia are the best example of this. He comments about how the treaty was not enforced. The people lost property and rights, but this was not new to anyone that was conquered by the United States. Hawai'i and Puerto Rico are still under the yolk of American Imperialism. What happened to the Mexican people of the newly conquered territories was inevitable. Manifest Destiny and the former Mexican national s rights were in conflict from the beginning. The United States was not going to allow what it perceived as foreigners to control what was now part of the United States. So the loss of rights was a foregone conclusion even as the treaty was signed.

The book outlines a how the movement began and where it is today. I have gotten the impression that he sees the movement lacking leadership. He details the different parts of the movement and explains how they originated and where they are today. He seems to come to the conclusion that the movement has now dormant. It is expressed in the displays of Mexican pride and nationalism that the Mexican-Americans now have. He realizes the radical days of the movement are gone. He compares the movement to the other radical movements of the 1960s that have become watered down over the passing of time. What he does not seem to understand or draw the link to this is part of the enculturation process of immigrants to the United States. He needs to make more comparisons to other immigrant groups. He does not explain how the United States encultured them into being Americans. This process has been well documented in American history. The United States wants people to be Americans and to speak English and not their native tongue. This destruction has happened to many immigrant groups in America.

Also, Mr. Rosales speaks of how the Anglos treated the newly incorporated Mexicans into the United States. He says that they do it with disdain. This was not something new. Americans do like people who are different from them. They want people in the United States to assimilate. What is needed is a comparison between other immigrant groups and Mexican-Americans. The topics he chooses in the book could be expanded to be a book unto themselves.

The book should be titled: Chicano! A History of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement. Changing the title from The to A history better describes the book. This is not the definitive work on the Chicano movement. It is however a good survey of the movement. Also the book needed to be better edited. I found some historical flaws in the book. On page 34 he describes a fear of Mexico becoming one of the Axis powers. This is wrong . Germany was a member of the Central powers in World War One. In World War II it is a member of the Axis powers. Also in citing the Brown vs. the Board of Education of Kansas Supreme Court case, he gives the year. He says it is 1964, not 1954. So it seems as if his fact checking was not as good as it could be. These leave in doubt whether some of the facts presented in the book were truly accurate.

Ultimately the book is about change and how economics and the desire to succeed in the United States helped to create the Chicano movement and the desire for equal opportunity and civil rights.

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