Emilio Zamora

In Claiming Rights and Righting Wrongs in Texas, Emilio Zamora traces the experiences of Mexican workers on the American home front during World War II as they moved from rural to urban areas and sought better-paying jobs in rapidly expanding industries. Contending that discrimination undermined job opportunities, Zamora investigates the intervention by Mexico in the treatment of workers, the U.S. State Department's response, and Texas' emergence as a key site for negotiating the application of the Good Neighbor Policy. He examines the role of women workers, the evolving political struggle, the rise of the liberal-urban coalition, and the conservative tradition in Texas. Zamora also looks closely at civil and labor rights–related efforts, implemented by the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) and the Fair Employment Practice Committee.

The contributions and influences of Mexican Americans in Texas history have been many and significant. Only in recent decades, however, have historians adequately told this story. The enormous strides made in the study of Mexican-origin people in Texas are reflected in this important new book of essays.In May 1991 the Texas State Historical Association cosponsored a conference, “Mexican Americans in Texas History,” which brought together some six hundred participants, including nearly one hundred leading scholars in the field of Mexican American Studies. In the words of the editors’ introduction, this highly successful conference “confirmed and celebrated the existence of a substantial body of literature in Mexican American history.” It showed that “Mexican American history was on its way to assuming its rightful place of importance.”This groundbreaking volume, which contains eleven essays from that pivotal conference, corrects and amplifies the historical record. Mexican Americans in Texas History will be of great interest to students, scholars, teachers, and general readers, and it is well adapted to classroom use.Selected essays include:; Old Roads, New Horizons: Texas History and the New World Order, by David Montejano; Occupied Texas: Bexar and Goliad, 1835–;1836, by Paul Lack; Mexicanos in Texas During the Civil War, by Miguel González Quiroga; Union, Paz y Trabajo: Laredo’s Mexican Mutual Aid Societies in the 1890s, by Roberto R. Calderón; Mutualist and Mexicanist Expressions of a Mexican Political Culture in Texas, by Emilio Zamora; The Tejano Revolt of 1915, by Rodolfo Rocha; Agents of Americanization: The Houston Settlement Association and the Mexican Community, 1900–;1950, by María Cristina García; Trini Gamez and the Texas Farm Workers: Toil and Trouble on the Texas Plains, by Yolanda García Romero; Carlos E. Castañeda: The Historian and the Critics” by Félix D. Almaráz; The Borderlands of Culture: Americo Paredes’s George Washington Gomez, by Ramón Saldívar; Estudios Tejanos: A List of Historical Literature on Mexican Americans in Texas, by Arnoldo de Leon; Selected Bibliography on Mexican American, Tejana, and Tejano History, by Cynthia Orozco