During the past fifteen years, historians of Mexican American, or Chicano, experience have contributed significantly to understanding the early twentieth-century history of the second largest ethnic minority group in the United States. Influenced greatly by recent trends in the nation's historiography—particularly the "new" social, labor, and urban histories—historians focusing on the Mexican American experience have begun to uncover a past long ignored by academics. Two recent books, Ricardo Romo's East Los Angeles and Mario Garcia's Desert Immigrants, make important contributions to Mexican American history.
Romo's study documents the impact of urbanization from 1900 to 1930 on the Mexican American pueblo society that had existed in the historical downtown plaza area of Los Angeles, California, since the mid-nineteenth century, and on the development, after 1900, of new immigrant barrios (neighborhoods) east of the Los Angeles River. He shows convincingly how Mexicans were excluded from the jobs that would have provided them some avenue for upward occupational mobility after the First World War. Romo also effectively analyzes the process of migration, resettlement, and adjustment of Los Angeles's Mexican immigrants, most of whom left Mexico after 1910 because of the Mexican Revolution. During this period a record number of Mexican American immigrants came to the United States, particularly to Los Angeles, which had the largest Mexican American population in the United States as early as 1930.
Overall, East Los Angeles bridges a critical gap in early twentieth-century Mexican American urban history. Garcia's Desert Immigrants, focusing primarily on the years 1900 to 1920 in El Paso, Texas, also examines the formation of a Mexican American urban community. Well researched and engaging, Garcia's study demonstrates that Mexican immigrants played an essential role in the dramatic expansion of the local economy by becoming the backbone of the labor market. Garcia skillfully portrays the ethnic and class factors in El Paso society that created significant problems for early Mexican immigrants and that were overcome only as the Mexican American community in El Paso became more firmly established after 1920. Desert Immigrants also examines the special role that El Paso, as a border city, played in the political and cultural life of local Mexicans.
While advancing our understanding of Mexican American urban history, the books do not raise the question of whether the history of these two urban communities provides a general understanding of Chicano life in American cities. Neither study offers useful comparisons to other southwestern communities, nor does either adequately compare the urban experiences of Mexican and other immigrant groups. Did El Paso's proximity to the border and its function as a labor depot for Mexican workers in the United States make its historical trajectory significantly different from that of other Mexican American urban centers? Is East Los Angeles's meteoric rise as a mecca for Mexican immigration comparable to developments in San Antonio, Texas—the second largest urban community of Mexicans—during the first decades of the twentieth century?
