| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 91.3

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 91.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

A Century of Chicano History: Empire, Nations, and Migration. By Gilbert G. Gonzalez and Raul A. Fernandez. (New York: Routledge, 2003. xvi, 206 pp. Cloth, $80.00, ISBN 0-415-94392-2. Paper, $22.95, ISBN 0-415-94393-0.)

Reviewing the historical literature written during the last few decades, Gilbert G. Gonzalez and Raul A. Fernandez propose a reconsideration of the guiding premises that have dominated approaches in Chicano history. For too long, the authors note, historians have taken for granted that the Chicano experience began in 1848 with the ending of the U.S. war with Mexico and that race and culture stand as the primary determinants shaping Chicano life in the United States. But for Gonzalez and Fernandez, the origins of Chicano history lie in the rise of U.S. corporate capitalism in the decades after the Civil War, during which time the United States came to impose its economic weight on Mexico's economy. U.S. investments in Mexico made the latter country an economic colony of the United States, and by the early twentieth century that economic domination began upsetting population in Mexico's countryside and forcing people to relocate to the U.S. Southwest, where they sought their livelihood as cheap laborers. Migration northward has remained unabated, and new arrivals unceasingly reinforce older Chicano communities. For Gonzalez and Fernandez, therefore, U.S. corporate power over Mexico in part explains the origins of Chicano history.

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