JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. Desde la conquista por los Estados Unidos del territorio nortefio de Mexico durante la decada de 1840, la frontera norteamericana-mexicana ha sido una realidad para los mexicanos que permanecieron al norte de la nueva frontera. Sin embargo, la frontera tambien ha sido un simbolo de la nueva condicion hist6rica para los que pueden ser apropiadamente considerados mexicoamericanos. Este estudio analiza la frontera como simbolo y realidad durante tres periodos hist6ricos en la historia mexicoamericana: La Epoca de Inmigraci6n (1900-1930), la Epoca Mexico-Americana (desde 1930 hasta principios de 1960), y la Epoca Chicana (las decadas de 1960 y 1970). Cada periodo y cada generaci6n aqui presentada desarroll6 distintos puntos de vista sobre la frontera y lo que la frontera significa para ellos. Estos puntos de vista revelan no solamente el caracter natural de la frontera, sino los cambios fundamentales, generacionales, sociales y culturales que afectan a todos los mexicanos tanto ciudadanos estadounidenses como inmigrantes a los Estados Unidos.
For almost a century and a half the United States-Mexican border has influenced theMexican-American experience. The result of the U.S. conquest of northern Mexico during the mid-nineteenth century, the border separated some Mexicans from the motherland and made them part of a new and significantly different society. Hence, people of Mexican descent, in what became the American Southwest, have had to relate in one degree or another to the border. It is both symbol and reality in the Mexican-American experience and has confronted each generation with questions: What does it mean to be a Mexican in the United States? How should Mexican Americans relate to the continual influx of Mexican immigrants? How much of Mexican culture and identity Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos 1 (2), Summer 1985, ? 1985 Regents of the University of California. 195 This content downloaded from 194.29.185.230 on Wed, 18 Jun 2014 14:46:44 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Mexican Studies/ Estudios Mexicanos should one retain? How should Mexican Americans relate to Mexico? These and other questions assume relevance because of the propinquity of Mexico and the heavy concentration of Mexican Americans in the Southwest and along the U.S.-Mexican border. How each generation has responded has determined particular political strategies for coping with the ethnic, race, class, and cultural positions Mexican Americans have occupied in different historical periods. An examination of the concept of the border in Mexican-American thought provides a view of the changing nature of ethnic and cultural nationalism among Mexicans in the United States. The meaning and ramifi...
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