UNC Press - Beyond the Alamo

320 pp., 6.125 x 9.25, 16 illus., 4 tables, 2 figs., 1 map, notes, index

Sponsored by Published in association with the William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies, Southern Methodist University

Paper

ISBN 978-0-8078-7124-9

Published: March 2010

Beyond the Alamo

Forging Mexican Ethnicity in San Antonio, 1821-1861

By Raúl A. Ramos

Awards & Distinctions

2011 San Antonio Conservation Society Publication Award

2008 T. R. Fehrenbach Book Award, Texas Historical Commission

2010 NACCS-Tejas Book Award, National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies, Tejas Foco

Cleotilde P. Garcia Tejano Book Commendation, Texas State Hispanic Genealogical and Historical Association

Introducing a new model for the transnational history of the United States, Raúl Ramos places Mexican Americans at the center of the Texas creation story. He focuses on Mexican-Texan, or Tejano, society in a period of political transition beginning with the year of Mexican independence. Ramos explores the factors that helped shape the ethnic identity of the Tejano population, including cross-cultural contacts between Bexareños, indigenous groups, and Anglo-Americans, as they negotiated the contingencies and pressures on the frontier of competing empires.

About the Author

Raúl A. Ramos is associate professor of history at the University of Houston.

Reviews

"Ramos perceptively notes that despite their subordinate status, Tejanos resisted the status quo and sustained a measure of political influence through the century."
--Journal of American History

"Succeeds in 'bringing contemporary insight and relevance to the study of the past' and Texas history. . . . Recommended."
--Choice

"[Ramos's] first fine book demonstrates [that] history has no conclusion; it evolves in response to our present. . . . [Ramos has] an insider's passion for local detail and an academic's instinct to set this evidence in its broadest cultural context. . . . [Ramos] reveals how deeply this revolutionary era penetrated individual lives."
--San Antonio Express News

"An interesting and readable contribution to the discussion of identity formation in borderlands and Texas history from a Tejano point of view."
--East Texas Historical Journal

"Clearly written and thoroughly researched . . . not only a significant addition to scholarship on Chicano/a history, immigration, and nationalism, but also a work accessible to academics and students alike."
--Canadian Journal of History

"Impressive . . . tells a fascinating story of how the population of Texas, under a developing republic, created a tapestry of regional identities."
--Ethnohistory