Full Description
Winner, NACCS-Tejas Book Award, National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies, Tejas Foco, 2011
NACCS Book Award, National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies, 2012
In the mid-1960s, San Antonio, Texas, was a segregated city governed by an entrenched Anglo social and business elite. The Mexican American barrios of the west and south sides were characterized by substandard housing and experienced seasonal flooding. Gang warfare broke out regularly. Then the striking farmworkers of South Texas marched through the city and set off a social movement that transformed the barrios and ultimately brought down the old Anglo oligarchy. In Quixote's Soldiers, David Montejano uses a wealth of previously untapped sources, including the congressional papers of Henry B. Gonzalez, to present an intriguing and highly readable account of this turbulent period.
Montejano divides the narrative into three parts. In the first part, he recounts how college student activists and politicized social workers mobilized barrio youth and mounted an aggressive challenge to both Anglo and Mexican American political elites. In the second part, Montejano looks at the dynamic evolution of the Chicano movement and the emergence of clear gender and class distinctions as women and ex-gang youth struggled to gain recognition as serious political actors. In the final part, Montejano analyzes the failures and successes of movement politics. He describes the work of second-generation movement organizations that made possible a new and more representative political order, symbolized by the election of Mayor Henry Cisneros in 1981.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part One: The Conflict Within
1. The Leaking Caste System
2. Barrios at War
3. Organizing Unity
4. A Congressman Reacts
5. Kill the Gringos!
6. The Berets Rise Up
Part Two: Marching Together Separately
7. Women Creating Space
8. Batos Claiming Legitimacy
9. Fragmenting Elements
Part Three: After the Fury
10. Several Wrong Turns
11. A Transformation
Appendix: On Intepreting the Chicano Movement
Notes
Glossary
Bibliography
Index
