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Roots of Chicano Politics, 1600-1940. By Juan Gomez-Quinones. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1994. xiv, 540 pp. Cloth, $40.00, ISBN 0-8263-1471-6. Paper, $19.95, ISBN 0-8263-1431-7.)
The author has provided us with a wide-ranging and comprehensive work on Chicano political history spanning the colonial period to World War II. Like other recent works (Ramon Gutierrez, When Jesus Came, the Corn Mothers Went Away, 1991) it properly anchors the discussion of Chicano history in the colonial period rather than starting it in 1848. It problematizes our understanding of the past by examining the many disparate, uneven, and contradictory processes that shape Chicano identity. Juan Gomez-Quironez states that "there are no simple polarities or absolutes in the historical development of the Mexican people . . . in the Southwest." He nonetheless synthesizes an incredibly complicated history of peoples of Mexican origin in the United States. The narrative is constructed along the lines of capitalist development, state building, governance,...