Henry C. Schmidt

With the publication of Profile of Man and Culture in Mexico (1934) Samuel Ramos launched the modern search for Mexican national identity, shifting examination of that country's problems from a physical to a psychological plane. But Ramos' work crystallized a long inquiry into the meaning of Mexican civilization, discernible from the 1920s on. From 1900 to 1934 Mexicans made the difficult transition from a culture largely foreign in spirit to one created in the aftermath of the 1910 Revolution, insistently and proudly Mexican. In the decades following the revolution the term lo mexicano (meaning both the Mexican ethos and its study) became a sacred phrase in the reappraisal of Mexican civilization, a concept analogous in the history of ideas to the quest for Mexican authenticity in painting, music, the novel, and education. Schmidt examines the origins and development of lo mexicano in the work of Ramos' intellectual antecedents, particularly that of Justo Sierra, Antonio Caso, Jose Vasconcelos, Alfonso Reyes, and Daniel Cosio Villegas. Schmidt shows why and how Mexican intellectuals went about the task of defining national character during this period. His analysis establishes a context for viewing Ramos' admittedly seminal work, shows the growth of Mexican self-awareness as the intellectual foundation of nationalism, and extends our understanding of the central driving force within the complexities of Mexican society today.

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.