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...

Winner, Clotilde P. Garcia Tejano Book Prize and Texas Institute of Letters Most Significant Scholarly Book Award "Thompson's book provides not only a powerfully written history of a Mexican American who symbolizes 'resistance to oppression and intolerance, ' but also a clear, cogent explanation of the relationship between the United States and Mexico as they face each other across the Texas border." -Journal of American History "With stunning research and a crisp narrative, Jerry Thompson takes us beyond Juan Cortina's famous 'war' against Anglo-controlled Brownsville and into Cortina's...