Mongrels, bastards, orphans, and vagabonds : Mexican immigration and the future of race in America / Gregory Rodriguez

Includes bibliographical references (p. [265]-304) and index.

The birth of a people -- The rise and fall of the Spanish colonial racial system -- The Spaniards venture North -- Mexicans and the limits of slavery -- The Anglos move West -- Caught between North and South -- Becoming Mexican American -- The Chicano movement -- Mongrel America and the new assimilation.

"Wide-ranging and provocative, Mongrels, Bastards, Orphans, and Vagabonds offers an unprecedented account of the long-term cultural and political influences that Mexican Americans will have on the collective character of our nation." "In considering the largest immigrant group in American history, Gregory Rodriguez examines the complexities of its heritage and of the racial and cultural synthesis - mestizaje - that has defined the Mexican people since the Spanish conquest in the sixteenth century. Rodriguez delineates the effects of mestizaje throughout the centuries, traces the northern movement of this "mongrelization," explores the emergence of a new Mexican American identity in the 1930s, and analyzes the birth and death of the Chicano movement. Vis-a-vis the present era of Mexican American confidence, he argues that the rapidly expanding Mexican American integration into the mainstream is changing not only how Americans think about race but how we envision our nation."--BOOK JACKET.