Mexican America - Bibliography
Mexican America: Bibliography
Ahlborn, Richard, ed. Man Made Mobile: Early Saddles of Western North America. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1980.
Altman, Ida. "Spanish Society in Mexico City After the Conquest." Hispanic American Historical Review (1991) 71:3.
Arizpe, Lourdes. "The Rural Exodus in Mexico and the Mexican Migration to the United States ." International Migration Review. Volume 15 (4) (1979): 626-649.
Bouvier, Virginia. Women and the Conquest of California, 1542-1840: Codes of Silence. Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 2001.
Cline, Sarah. "The Spiritual Conquest Reexamined: Baptism and Church Marriage in Early Sixteenth-century Mexico ." Hispanic American Historical Review, Vol. 73 (3) (1993): 453-480.
Cortés, Hernán. Letters from Mexico . New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986.
Davalos, Karen Mary. Exhibiting Mestizaje: Mexican (American) Museums in the Diaspora. Albuquerque: The University of New Mexico Press, 2001.
Díaz del Castillo, Bernal. The True History of the Conquest of Mexico . New York: Robert M. McBride & Company, 1927.
Driscoll, Barbara. The Tracks North: The Railroad Bracero Program of World War II. Austin: The University of Texas Press, 1999.
Fernández-Aceves, María Teresa. "Once We Were Corn Grinders: Women and Labor in the Tortilla Industry of Guadalajara, 1920-1940." International Labor and Working-Class History, No. 63 (2003): 81-101.
García, Mario. "The Chicana in American History: The Mexican Women of El Paso, 1880-1920—A Case Study." Pacific Historical Review, Vol. 49, no. 2 (May, 1980): 315-337.
Garcíagodoy, Juanita. Digging the Days of the Dead: A Reading of Mexico’s Días de Muertos. Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 1998.
Gaspar de Alba, Alicia. Chicano Art: Inside/Outside the Master’s House. Austin: The University of Texas Press, 1998.
Glantz, Margot, ed. La Malinche, sus padres y sus hijos. Mexico:Taurus Ediciones, 1994.
González, Gilbert. Labor and Community: Mexican Citrus WorkerVillages in a Southern California County, 1900-1950. Chicago:University of Illinois Press, 1994.
Goodwin, Lee. "Field Notes: Heritage and Change through Community Celebrations: A Photographic Essay." Western Historical Quarterly 29 (Summer 1998): 215-223.
Kessell, John. Kiva, Cross, and Crown: The Pecos Indians and New Mexico 1540-1840. Washington, D.C.: The National Park Service, 1979.
Lafaye, Jacques, and Lockhart, James. "A Scholarly Debate: The Origins of Modern Mexico - Indigenistas vs. Hispanistas." The Americas , Vol. 48, No. 3, 315-330.
Limón, José. American Encounters: Greater Mexico , the United Status, and the Erotics of Culture. Boston: Beacon Press, 1998.
Oles, James. South of the Border: Mexico in the American Imagination 1914-1947. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993.
Rodríguez, Jospeh. "Becoming Latinos: Mexican Americans, Chicanos, and the Spanish Myth in the urban Southwest." Western Historical Quarterly 29. Summer 1998: 165-185.
Root, Regina. The Latin American Fashion Reader. Oxford: Berg Publishing, 2005.
Sánchez, George. Becoming Mexican American: Ethnicity, Culture, and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles, 1900-1945. New York: OxfordUniversity Press, 1993.
Sando, Joe. Pueblo Nations: Eight Centuries of Pueblo Indian History. Santa Fe: Clear Light Publishers, 1992.
Semo, Enrique. The History of Capitalism in Mexico : Its Origins, 1521-1763. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993.
Viola, Herman, and Margolis, Carolyn, ed. Seeds of Change: Five Hundred Years Since Columbus. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991.
Wells, Miriam. Strawberry Fields: Politics, Class, and Work in California Agriculture. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996.
"Mexican America - Bibliography" showing 15 items.
Page 1 of 2
China Poblana Dress
- Description
- Mariachis, groups comprised of vocalists, trumpeters, violinists, and various bass and guitar players, are today considered Mexico's traditional musical ensemble. Originally from the state of Jalisco, mariachi music transformed itself from a regional to a national music between the 1930s and 1950s. Its accompanying attire is the fancy charro costume for men and the china poblana dress (like the one pictured here) for women. The thriving song, music, and dance culture surrounding mariachi today is the product of pioneering work by Mexican American educators and performers in the early 1960s. Mariachi instruction programs have since grown in popularity across Mexican American communities, with student mariachi ensembles beginning to perform as early as elementary or middle school. But Mexican American musical traditions began much earlier than the mariachi movement—they include styles as diverse as the choir music of the California missions and the corridos and ballads of San Antonio's Rosita Fernández (1925 1997). This china poblana dress, made in the 1960s, belonged to Fernández who, though performing a wide repertoire of Mexican song styles, is most identified with música norteña, rather than mariachi. Her sixty-year career as a local radio, TV, and theater star garnered her the title, "San Antonio's First Lady of Song."
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1960s
- user
- Fernández, Rosita
- maker
- Tenis, Mr.
- ID Number
- 2001.0130.01
- accession number
- 2001.0130
- catalog number
- 2001.0130.01
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
1879 Almanac
- Description
- Titled Un Calendario Curioso para 1879, this almanac was printed in Mexico at the beginning of the Porfiriato—the period between 1876 and 1911 dominated by the presidency of Porfirio Díaz. This was a period of intense foreign investment in Mexico. U.S. corporations were especially active in Mexico's mining industry, which was now connected to the United States by an ever-expanding web of railroads. While many fortunes were made during this era of peace and economic growth, the boom did not trickle down to the rural poor or the urban working classes. Many small farmers and indigenous communities lost their fields to powerful landlords and plantation owners. The middle and upper classes also grew disgruntled as the political elite stifled the country's democracy in the name of progress. This almanac offers a window into the everyday lives of Mexicans living in the late 1800s. In addition to a year-long forecast, it includes a timeline of world and Mexican history, highlighting dates such Noah's flood and the execution of Emperor Maximilian. A section at the end offers an elaborate list of recipes selected by "people of good taste" for "people of all classes."
- Location
- Currently not on view
- ID Number
- CL*300959.14
- catalog number
- 300959.14
- accession number
- 300959
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Saddle
- Description
- The Spaniards who invaded Mexico brought to North America a well-developed equestrian tradition. Over the centuries, horses, saddles, and other riding paraphernalia were altered by the landscape and the lifestyles of both Spanish and indigenous riders. Accompanied by mariachi music, la charrería is the elaborate and spectacle-driven tradition of horsemanship in Mexico. As a national sport rooted in the everyday demands of ranching, the crafts and techniques of charrería were adopted and modified by American settlers in the 19th century. They in turn developed their own rodeo tradition. This elaborate saddle with embossed silver medallions was given to General Philip Sheridan by a Mexican friend in 1866. In that year, General Sheridan armed Mexican nationalists led by Benito Juárez, and headed a 50,000-man army along the U.S.-Mexico border in order to pressure France to end its occupation of Mexico.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- ca 1865
- associated date
- 1865
- associated user
- Sheridan, Philip H.
- maker
- Felipe del Aguila
- ID Number
- CL*035293
- catalog number
- 35293
- 35,293
- accession number
- 89849
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Spur
- Description
- This spur, worn over a riding boot, was made in Mexico in the mid-1800s. Rubbed against the animal's side, spurs are one of the instruments that riders use to direct horses. The spikes on this spur are set on a small wheel called a rowel, making this a rowel spur. Horses and good riding equipment, such as spurs, saddles, stirrups, and leather coverings, played a fundamental role in the European conquest, exploration, and settlement of wide areas of North America. Much of the technique and craftsmanship of riding culture that was found in the American West among both Native Americans and later U.S. settlers was introduced by the Spanish in Mexico within the first century of colonization (1500s). During this period, huge herds of cattle and sheep (both newly introduced species, like horses) flooded the dry grasslands of northern Mexico and were tended by men who would later be called vaqueros—cowboys. The ranching culture that they developed, as well as the ecological destruction that grazing produced, stretched from Texas to California. This economy of raising livestock on the open range was embraced by settlers coming overland from the American East along routes like the Santa Fe, Old Spanish, and Gila trails. To this day, ranching remains a vital economic and cultural force in both the American West and northern Mexico.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1840 - 1860
- ID Number
- CL*004841
- catalog number
- 4841
- accession number
- 2007.0144
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Market Plaza Mexico
- Description
- This aquatint, titled Market Plaza by Geoge O. "Pop" Hart, was printed about 1925, a period of peak migration for workers streaming to the United States seeking opportunity in the United States and escape from the chaos of the Mexican Revolution (1910 1921). Many of the married men settled in the United States and brought their wives and families—from 1900 to 1932, the Mexican-born population of the United States grew from 103,000 to over 1,400,000. Other Mexican workers returned to their homes in Jalisco, Guanajuato, or Michoacán, and came north periodically in search of seasonal or temporary work. Replacing recently banned workers from Asia, these men provided cheap labor for the newly irrigated cotton fields of Texas and Arizona, the copper mines of Utah, the fruit processing plants of California, and the railroads that connected all points in between. An abundance of factory jobs also increasingly attracted Mexican migrants to cities like Chicago and Milwaukee. But many of these hard-earned economic opportunities in the United States came to an end during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Mexican workers in areas like California had to compete with economic refugees from across the country. Many were targets of discrimination and anti-immigrant violence. Thousands of American citizens were among the 500,000 men, women, and children forcibly and suddenly moved to Mexico on buses and trains from Texas and California during the Great Depression. This print is one of a series of images created by American artists traveling in Mexico.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- ca 1925
- Associated Date
- 20th century
- graphic artist
- Hart, George O. "Pop"
- ID Number
- GA*14183
- catalog number
- 14183
- accession number
- 92987
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Mariposas en Patyenaro
- Description
- With the lucrative growth of tourism in 20th century, stereotypical and processed images of Mexico have often been marketed to the American imagination. In them, "South of the Border" becomes a sunny pre-modern place of vacations, trinkets, and convenient lawlessness. But contrasting and complex images of Mexico have pervaded the American imagination since well before the Civil War. Mexico, itself defined by cultural and racial exchange, has historically represented a starkly different social order to most Americans. A country with cheap land and labor and bountiful mineral and agricultural resources offered economic opportunities to many Americans, from white financiers and mercenaries to black oil workers and baseball players. Mexico was also a refuge for many American artists, of Mexican descent or otherwise, who imagined Mexico in different ways. Some artists sought inspiration from its ancient history, and others came looking for a pristine and exotic landscape. This lithograph, titled Mariposas at Patyenaro was drawn by Alan Crane in 1943. It depicts the picturesque, butterfly-shaped nets of Mexican fisherman paddling their canoes on a lake. Alan Horton Crane (1901–1969) was a Brooklyn-born illustrator best known for his landscapes and genre scenes of life in Mexico and New England. Similar prints by Crane showing scenes of idyllic Mexico are housed in the Graphic Arts Collection of the National Museum of American History.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1943
- maker
- Crane, Alan
- ID Number
- GA*23830
- catalog number
- 23830
- accession number
- 306563
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Night of the Dead
- Description
- Though anchored in local Roman Catholic traditions, many of the religious beliefs and symbols of Mexican Americans have roots in indigenous notions about the soul and our universe. Between October 31st and November 2nd, Día de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, is celebrated with family, decorating home altars and visiting the graves of loved ones. A holiday with much regional and individual variation, it is traditionally an occasion to commemorate parents and grandparents with altars of marigolds, candles, alcohol, skeleton-shaped sweets, and other foods and personal objects favored by the dearly departed. Day of the Dead celebrations were reinvented across many Mexican American communities beginning in the 1970s, as the Chicano movement promoted and readapted Mexican cultural practices. Many artists since then have seized on the visual power of the altar as a conduit for personal and public memory. In the United States, Day of the Dead altars can be found interrogating life and critiquing politics in public places. Contemporary Day of the Dead celebrations have memorialized those who have died from AIDS, gang violence, the civil wars in Central America, and crossing the border. This lithograph, titled Night of the Dead, was originally drawn in ink by Alan Crane in 1958. Alan Horton Crane (1901–1969) was a Brooklyn-born illustrator best known for his landscapes and genre scenes of life in Mexico and New England. This image is part of a series of prints by Alan Crane housed in the Graphic Arts Collection of the National Museum of American History.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1958
- maker
- Crane, Alan
- ID Number
- GA*23836
- catalog number
- 23836
- accession number
- 306563
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Toluca Market
- Description
- This scene of the Toluca market was depicted by Alan Crane in 1946. Housed in the Graphic Arts Collection of the National Museum of American History, it is one of a series of lithographs of Mexican landscapes and genre scenes he printed during the 1940s. The growth of the tourist industry, rebounding after WWII, created a market for images of an idyllic Mexico—peaceful, scenic, and premodern. The elements of everyday life shown here—the densely packed stands of the ceramics vendors, the pulquería (a cantina that serves pulque, the fermented juice of the maguey plant), and the traditional dress of the marketeers—were as foreign to the urbanized Mexican American youth in Los Angeles, El Paso, and San Antonio as they were to American tourists seeking a memento of "Old Mexico." The generations of youths who grew up in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s were fundamental in negotiating the language, aesthetics, and political vision that would constitute the contemporary culture of Mexican Americans. These young men and women, many of whom were war veterans as well as industrial and agricultural workers, created empowering images of Mexican Americans as they defined new roles for themselves as activists during the civil rights struggles of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1946
- graphic artist
- Crane, Alan
- ID Number
- GA*23825
- catalog number
- 23825
- accession number
- 306563
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
La Malinche
- Description
- La Malinche, the title of this lithograph, was the indigenous woman who translated for Cortés between Maya, Náhuatl, and Spanish during his first years in Mexico. Considered either as a traitor or a founding mother by some Mexicans, La Malinche was Cortés's lover and the mother of his favorite son Martín. She and Moctezuma are also central figures in the Matachines dances that are performed in Mexico and New Mexico. Originally commemorating the expulsion of the Moors from southern Spain in 1492, the dance was brought to Mexico where it was treated as a means for Christianizing native peoples. The historical figure of La Malinche, known in Spanish by the name Doña Marina, is also credited for playing an almost miraculous role in the early evangelization of central Mexico. This print, made by Jean Charlot in the 1933, shows a young girl in the role of La Malinche, holding a rattle or toy in one hand, and a sword in the other. Jean Charlot, a French-born artist, lived and studied in Mexico in the 1920s and 1930s. He depicted stylized scenes from the daily life of Mexican workers, particularly indigenous women.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1933
- graphic artist
- Charlot, Jean
- ID Number
- GA*23401
- catalog number
- 23401
- accession number
- 299563
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Work and Rest
- Description
- The Graphic Arts Collection of the National Museum of American History houses an extensive series of prints by archeologist and artist Jean Charlot (1898–1979), and prominent Los Angeles printer Lynton Kistler (1897–1993). Charlot, the French-born artist of this print, spent his early career during the 1920s in Mexico City. As an assistant to the socialist painter Diego Rivera, he studied muralism, a Mexican artistic movement that was revived throughout Latino communities in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s. This lithograph, titled Work and Rest contrasts the labor of an indigenous woman, grinding corn on a metate, with the slumber of her baby. Printed by Lynton Kistler in Los Angeles in 1956, it presents an image of a Mexican woman living outside the industrial age. This notion of "Old Mexico" unblemished by modernity appealed to many artists concerned in the early 20th century with the mechanization and materialism of American culture. It was also a vision that was packaged as an exotic getaway for many American tourists. It is worth contrasting the quaint appeal of an indigenous woman laboring over her tortillas with the actual industrialization of the tortilla industry. By 1956, this woman would likely have bought her tortillas in small stacks from the local tortillería, saving about six hours of processing, grinding, and cooking tortilla flour.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1956
- graphic artist
- Charlot, Jean
- printer
- Kistler, Lynton R.
- ID Number
- GA*23355.05
- catalog number
- 23355.05
- accession number
- 299563
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center