With the publication of "Profile of Man and Culture in Mexico" (1934) Samuel Ramos launched the modern search for Mexican national identity, shifting examination of that country's problems from a physical to a psychological plane. But Ramos' work crystallized a long inquiry into the meaning of Mexican civilization, discernible from the 1920s on.
From 1900 to 1934 Mexicans made the difficult transition from a culture largely foreign in spirit to one created in the aftermath of the 1910 Revolution, insistently and proudly Mexican. In the decades following the revolution the term "lo...

San Antonio, Texas, lies geographically and culturally at the crossroads of Mexico, Texas, and the larger United States. During the Great Depression it lay also at the crossroads of these cultures' myths, memories, and identities. Between 1929 and 1941, in this city's West Side barrio, a generation of Mexican immigrants developed into a new middle class and forged an identity that has shaped Southwestern experience since then: the identity of the Mexican American.
Richard Garcia presents an innovative study of the tension between change and continuity in thought, culture, and community...