From Indians to Chicanos: The Dynamics of Mexican-American Culture

I got the book because I needed it for one of my college courses, and I'm glad that it was part of the class curriculum. The book was super insightful as well as easy to read. It has lots of information that I learned for the first time and that helped me see things a bit more differently.

Although this text is 10 years old (as of this writing), I chose to use vigil's text for my Intro course (Chican@ Experiences in Contemporary Society) as opposed to the "classic" by Rudy Acuna (Occupied America). I teach in the Pacific Northwest so the classroom dynamics and demographics are much different from the southwest where Acuna's text resonates. I have found that my chican@ students find the 6-Cs model that Vigil presents useful to understanding the process of colonization and its effects. As a sociologist teaching this course, I appreciate that Vigil combines a macrostructural and macrohistorical theoretical framework (his 6-C's framework for Class, Culture, Color, Contact, Conflict, Change) to present the history of the Chican@s in the US. As such, I can still use the model to help them understand contemporary issues in our community. This is the most useful aspect I believe. We can understand how racial stratification occurred and still occurs (especially in our families, work, education) from a historical "point in time" and extrapolate to our current experiences and situations. you will need to supplement with a texts, films, and articles on women but I believe he incorporates women more successfully than Acuna.

I had to read this book for an Anthropology class I am taking and I am so glad. It is very insightful and easy reading. Once I started I could not put it down, very informative. Highly recommend to anyone interested in the Mexican-American culture.

James Diego Vigil does a great job presented readers with a basic, yet in-depth, account of 500 years of Mexican-American history in From Indians to Chicanos. The Spanish conquest of the Americas, life in colonial Mexico, Mexican independence, conflict with the United States, the Mexican-American War, migration to the United States, the Great Depression, and the rise of the Chicano movement and its aftermath are all detailed quite niceley. Vigil points out the various Mexican/Chicano identities and modes of acculturation and incorporation that those of Mexican descent living in the United States have pursued. This is a very good book for an introductory course in Chicano or Latino studies.