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Viva Kennedy: Mexican Americans in Search of Camelot. By Ignacio M. Garcia. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2000. 227 pp.
In Viva Kennedy: Mexican Americans in Search of Camelot, historian Ignacio M. Garcia chronicles the development, activities, and impact of the Viva Kennedy clubs of the 1960 presidential campaign. Focusing on Texas, with occasional forays into California and the Midwest, he argues that Mexican-American leaders, frustrated with the lack of racial progress at the local level, turned to national politics in the hope of having their grievances redressed. In communities from California to Texas to Indiana, they formed Viva Kennedy clubs to boost voter registration, get out the vote, and generally support the candidacy of John Kennedy, a fellow Catholic and a fellow ethnic, for the presidency of the United States. In the aftermath of the election, Mexican Americans took pride that in at least two states, Texas and Illinois, they provided the margin of votes that propelled Kennedy to victory. The experience of participating in a national campaign, Garcia argues, spurred Mexican Americans to increased political activity in subsequent years.
Garcia begins with an overview of the conditions...