Skip to Main Content

Hispanic American Heritage: Historical Perspectives

A Celebration of Hispanic/Latinx American Culture

The Blending of Culture

Spanish Influence in the Americas

Spanish Empire in the Americas

Empire Maps: Colonization (atozmapsonline.com)

Your Vote is Your Voice

Books

Our America

With the profile of the United States increasingly Hispanic, the importance of recovering the Hispanic dimension to our national story has never been greater. This absorbing narrative begins with the explorers and conquistadores who planted Spain's first colonies in Puerto Rico, Florida, and the Southwest. Missionaries and rancheros carry Spain's expansive impulse into the late eighteenth century, settling California, mapping the American interior to the Rockies, and charting the Pacific coast. During the nineteenth century Anglo-America expands west under the banner of "Manifest Destiny" and consolidates control through war with Mexico. In the Hispanic resurgence that follows, it is the peoples of Latin America who overspread the continent, from the Hispanic heartland in the West to major cities such as Chicago, Miami, New York, and Boston. 

Mexican Americans in Texas

This third edition of our ground-breaking publication, the first survey of Tejanos, has been completely updated to present a concise political, cultural, and social history of Mexican Americans in Texas from the Spanish colonial era to the present day, a time when people of Mexican descent are poised to become the demographic majority in the Lone Star. Writing specifically for the college-level student and careful to include a consensus of the latest literature in this strong and continually growing field, Professor De León portrays Tejanos as active subjects, not merely objects, in the ongoing Texas story. 

The Hispanic Presence in North America

This work offers an insight into the origin and growth of Hispanic settlements in the USA. Divided into two sections, the first gives a state-by-state account of the Spanish exploration and colonization of America, and profiles of every major explorer, missionary and settler in the making of the modern United States, from Christopher Columbus to the present day. The second section comprises a series of appendices which give useful listings of all officials, media, organizations and institutions which are operational in today's Spanish-speaking community.

The Latino Americans

 Latino Americans chronicles the rich and varied history of Latinos, who have helped shaped our nation and have become, with more than fifty million people, the largest minority in the United States. This companion to the landmark PBS miniseries vividly and candidly tells how the story of Latino Americans is the story of our country. Author and acclaimed journalist Ray Suarez explores the lives of Latino American men and women over a five-hundred-year span, encompassing an epic range of experiences from the early European settlements to Manifest Destiny; the Wild West to the Cold War; the Great Depression to globalization; and the Spanish-American War to the civil rights movement.

Multiple Origins, Uncertain Destinies

Given current demographic trends, nearly one in five U.S. residents will be of Hispanic origin by 2025. This major demographic shift and its implications for both the United States and the growing Hispanic population make Multiple Origins, Uncertain Destinies a most timely book. This report from the National Research Council describes how Hispanics are transforming the country as they disperse geographically. It considers their roles in schools, in the labor market, in the health care system, and in U.S. politics.

Latin American Migrations to the U. S. Heartland

This collection examines Latina/o immigrants and the movement of the Latin American labor force to the central states of Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Arkansas, Missouri, and Iowa. Contributors look at outside factors affecting migration, including corporate agriculture, technology, globalization, and government. They also reveal how cultural affinities like religion, strong family ties, farming, and cowboy culture attract these newcomers to the Heartland. Throughout, essayists point to how hostile neoliberal policy reforms have made it difficult for Latin American immigrants to find social and economic stability. Filled with varied and eye-opening perspectives, Latin American Migrations to the U.S. Heartland reveals how identities, economies, and geographies are changing as Latin Americans adjust to their new homes, jobs, and communities.Contributors: Linda Allegro, Tisa M. Anders, Scott Carter, Caitlin Didier, Miranda Cady Hallett, Edmund Hamann, Albert Iaroi, Errol D. Jones, Jane Juffer, László J. Kulcsár, Janelle Reeves, Jennifer F. Reynolds, Sandi Smith-Nonini, and Andrew Grant Wood.

Testimonio

Beginning with the early 1800s and extending to the modern era, Rosales collects illuminating documents that shed light on the Mexican-American quest for life, liberty, and justice. Documents include petitions, correspondence, government reports, political proclamations, newspaper items, congressional testimony, memoirs, and even international treaties.

The Afro-Latin@ Reader

The Afro-Latin@ Reader focuses attention on a large, vibrant, yet oddly invisible community in the United States: people of African descent from Latin America and the Caribbean. The presence of Afro-Latin@s in the United States (and throughout the Americas) belies the notion that Blacks and Latin@s are two distinct categories or cultures. Afro-Latin@s are uniquely situated to bridge the widening social divide between Latin@s and African Americans; at the same time, their experiences reveal pervasive racism among Latin@s and ethnocentrism among African Americans. Offering insight into Afro-Latin@ life and new ways to understand culture, ethnicity, nation, identity, and antiracist politics, The Afro-Latin@ Reader presents a kaleidoscopic view of Black Latin@s in the United States. It addresses history, music, gender, class, and media representations in more than sixty selections, including scholarly essays, memoirs, newspaper and magazine articles, poetry, short stories, and interviews. While the selections cover centuries of Afro-Latin@ history, since the arrival of Spanish-speaking Africans in North America in the mid-sixteenth-century, most of them focus on the past fifty years. 

The South Americans

Discusses the history, culture, and religion of the South Americans, their place in American society, and the problems they face as an ethnic group in North America.

The New Latinos

Videos

Harvest of Empire: The Untold Story of Latinos in America

This powerful documentary exposes the direct connection between the long history of U.S. intervention in Latin America and the immigration crisis we face today. From the territorial expansionist policies that decimated the young economies of Mexico, Puerto Rico and Cuba, to the covert operations that imposed oppressive military regimes in the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Nicaragua and El Salvador, Harvest of Empire provides an unflinching look at the origins of the growing Latino presence in the United States. Adapted from the landmark book written by journalist Juan Gonzalez, the film tells the story of an epic human saga that is largely unknown to the great majority of citizens in the U.S., but must become part of our national conversation about immigration.

Dolores

Dolores Huerta is among the most important, yet least known, activists in American history. An equal partner in co-founding the first farm workers unions with Cesar Chavez, her enormous contributions have gone largely unrecognized. Dolores tirelessly led the fight for racial and labor justice, becoming one of the most defiant feminists of the twentieth century--and she continues to fight to this day, at 87.

Hispanics in America

A history of the recent immigration of Hispanics to the United States, beginning with the Cuban exiles in 1959.

Heroes Hispanos

 

Documentary film, in English, relates the significant military contributions of Hispanic Americans from 1775 to 1993.

The Last Conquistador

The story of sculptor John Houser's dream to build the world's tallest bronze equestrian statue for El Paso, Texas, to memorialize the Spanish conquistador Juan de Oñate and to honor the contributions of Hispanic people in the American West. But Native Americans are outraged, remembering Oñate as the man who brought genocide, cut off their feet, and sold their children into slavery. As El Paso divides along lines of race and class, Houser must face the moral implications of his work.