Richard A. Garcia

Ethnic Community Builders: Mexican-Americans in Search of Justice and Power is an oral history of Mexican-American activism in San JosZ, California, over the last half century. The authors present interviews of 14 people of various stripes—teachers, politicians, radio personalities—who have been influential in the development of a major urban center with a significant ethnic population. These activists tell the stories of their lives and work with engaging openness and honesty, allowing readers to witness their successes and failures. This vivid ethnography of a Mexican-American community serves as a model for activism wherever ethnic groups seek change and justice.

Ethnic Community Builders: Mexican-Americans in Search of Justice and Power is an oral history of Mexican-American activism in San José, California, over the last half century. The authors present interviews of 14 people of various stripes—teachers, politicians, radio personalities—who have been influential in the development of a major urban center with a significant ethnic population. These activists tell the stories of their lives and work with engaging openness and honesty, allowing readers to witness their successes and failures. This vivid ethnography of a Mexican-American community serves as a model for activism wherever ethnic groups seek change and justice.

San Antonio, Texas, lies geographically and culturally at the crossroads of Mexico, Texas, and the larger United States. During the Great Depression it lay also at the crossroads of these cultures' myths, memories, and identities. Between 1929 and 1941, in this city's West Side barrio, a generation of Mexican immigrants developed into a new middle class and forged an identity that has shaped Southwestern experience since then: the identity of the Mexican American. Richard Garcia presents an innovative study of the tension between change and continuity in thought, culture, and community that characterized this transformation. His analysis focuses on both the conservative Mexican-exile ricos, who promoted a perspective of "Lo Mexicano" and a return to la patria, and the rising Mexican American middle class, who sought a life of Americanism that stressed social integration, education, political rights and power, and economic betterment for both individuals and the ethnic community. Members of this middle class wanted to be Americans politically while remaining Mexicans culturally. Garcia's argument is the first to link the ethnic identity of the Mexican American generation to the rise of the middle class within the immigrant community. He also takes into account the Mexican community's structural relationship to the city, the process of class differentiation within the barrio, and the role of family, church, education, and politics. Through the microcosm of San Antonio, this pioneering study explores the process of changing consciousness that was occurring throughout the United States during this important period.

Profiles both prominent and important but less-familiar people who have made significant contributions in their fields

When farm worker and labor organizer César Chávez burst upon America's national scene in 1965, U.S. readers and viewers were witnessing the emergence of a new Mexican American, or Chicano, movement. This biography of Chávez by Richard Griswold del Castillo and Richard A. Garcia is the first to approach Chávez's life-his courageous acts, his turning points, his many perceived personas-in the context of Chicano and American history. It reveals a shy, quiet man who was launched by events into a maelstrom of campesino strikes, religious fervor, and nonviolent battles for justice. Among his friends and supporters he counted Martin Luther King Jr., Robert Kennedy, Jimmy Carter, and millions across America who rallied to his cause.In Griswold del Castillo and Garcia's biography, Chávez's life mirrors major events in Mexican American history: Mexican immigration during the 1920s; forced repatriation in the 1930s; segregation in public schools; Mexican American contributions during World War II; the Zoot Suit Riots in Los Angeles; formation of Mexican American organizations to advance civil and political rights; the Chicano movement of the 1960s and early 1970s; the emergence of a conservative political backlash in the 1980s; and, finally, the ""new immigration"" in the 1990s. César Chávez was touched by all these events, and his story is both private and part of a collective experience.Ultimately the authors see Chávez's significance as moral. In an age notable for its confusion about-if not lack of moral values, César Chávez stands as proof that America still has people of rare courage and conviction who devote their lives to a righteous cause, to self sacrifice and nonviolent struggle against overwhelming odds. Chávez consistently respected all ethnic and religious groups, rejected materialism, and, above all, fought for justice. Griswold del Castillo and Garcia's biography tells the inspiring story of a man who lived a simple life and preached a simple guiding dictum: Si Se Puede-Yes, it can be done.