Claiming Citizenship spotlights a community where Mexican 
Americans, regardless of social class, embraced a common ideology 
and worked for access to the full rights of citizenship without 
confrontation or radicalization. Victoria, Texas, is a small city with a 
sizable Mexican-descent population dating to the period before the 
U.S. annexation of the state. There, a complex and nuanced story of 
ethnic politics unfolded in the middle of the twentieth century.

    Focusing on grassroots, author Anthony Quiroz shows how the 
experience of the Mexican American citizens of Victoria, who worked 
within the system, challenges common assumptions about the power 
of class to inform ideology and demonstrates that embracing ethnic 
identity does not always mean rejecting Americanism. Quiroz 
identifies Victoria as a community in which Mexican Americans did 
not engage in overt resistance, labor organization, demonstrations, or 
the rejection of capitalism, democracy, or Anglo culture and society. 
Victoria's Mexican Americans struggled for equal citizenship as the 
"loyal opposition," opposing exclusionary practices while embracing 
many of the values and practices of the dominant society.

    Various individuals and groups worked, beginning in the 1940s, to 
bring about integrated schools, better political representation, and a 
professional class of Mexican Americans whose respectability would 
help advance the cause of Mexican equality. Their quest for public 
legitimacy was undertaken within a framework of a bicultural identity 
that was adaptable to the private, Mexican world of home, church, 
neighborhood, and family, as well as to the public world of school, 
work, and politics. Coexistence with Anglo American society and 
sharing the American dream constituted the desired ideal.

    Quiroz's study makes a major contribution to our understanding of 
the Mexican American experience by focusing on groups who chose 
a more subtle, less confrontational path toward equality. Perhaps, 
indeed, he describes the more common experience of this ethnic 
population in twentieth-century America.

_________________________________________________________

ANTHONY QUIROZ, an assistant professor of history at Texas A&M 
University–Corpus Christi, received his Ph.D. from the University of 
Iowa. A former resident of Victoria, Texas, he has written several 
articles about the role of Mexican Americans in that city's history. 
This is his first book.


Number Three: Fronteras Series, sponsored by Texas A&M 
International University


What people are saying about this book

"Anthony Quiroz's book is a milestone in Mexican American 
historiography."—The Journal of American History 

". . . well-researched, well-written work. . . . Quiroz makes every effort 
to present both sides of every issue . . ."—Jose Roberto Juarez, Texas 
A&M International University (retired)

". . . extremely valuable because it speaks to a side not well developed 
in other works."—Ignacio M. Garcia, Brigham Young University

"While early writings on Mexican American history rebuked political 
styles that did not resemble the confrontational method used by 
Chicano Movement militants during the 1960s and 1970s, Anthony 
Quiroz argues that in Victoria, Texas, Mexican Americans have 
historically adhered to a more consensual course—pressing through 
conventional avenues for greater access to education, political 
representation, and economic opportunity—in efforts to achieve the 
American dream. The political model seen in Victoria . . . Claiming 
Citizenship suggests, has been the one traditionally employed in other 
Texas Mexican communities. Claiming Citizenship thus makes a strong 
case for studying the politics of consensualism and reconsidering older 
interpretations that impugn the accommodationist approach."—Arnoldo 
De León, Angelo State University

". . . a fine example of the newest generation of Chicano historical 
scholarship. Exploring the complexities of the Mexican American 
experience in Victoria, Texas, Quiroz explains how Mexican Americans 
there quietly sought equal citizenship by accepting and working towards 
the American Dream and co-existence with Anglo-American society."
—Richard Griswold del Castillo, author of The Treaty of Guadalupe 
Hidalgo: A Legacy of Conflict