The Mexican American Heritage - Softcover

Carlos M. Jimenez

9780892290277: The Mexican American Heritage

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0892290277 ISBN 13: 9780892290277

Publisher: TQS Publications, 1993

In 1968 at the height of the "Chicano Movement" Mexican American students walked out of their high schools in protest. They demanded to be instructed in the history and literature of their people. Thus were born classes in Mexican American studies and literature which filled a void in the high school curriculum . Thereafter, however, for twenty-four long years, until 1993, the University of California totally refused to acknowledge that high school courses in the history of Mexican Americans had any value whatsoever in the education of students who were interested in a college education. For year after year, the University of California steadfastly refused to recognize Mexican American history as a valid elective for admission. If you were such a student, what would you think if you were told by a large public university that your history was worthless? The scope of The Mexican American Heritage encompasses tens of thousands of years, from the prehistoric native peoples as they make their way across the Bering Strait to become the "Indians" of Mexico, to the extremely advanced civilizations of the Toltecs, Aztecs and Mayans: the coming of the Spaniards to Mexico and the birth of the Mestizo people and culture: Mexico's flight for independence from Spain; the 19th century wars between Mexico and the United States; Mexico and the United States; Mexico''s epic Revolution of 1910 with its mythic figures such as Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa who forged the basis of today's Mexico; the northward migration of millions of Mexicans back into the Southwestern United States; the Mexican teenagers of the 1940s (zoot suiters); the Chicanos of Cesar Chavez's farmworker movement; and he struggle of Mexican Americans as they fight for a better life and proper representation in an evolving democracy.

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