Maggie Rivas Rodriguez. Texas Mexican Americans and Postwar Civil Rights.
University of Texas Press, 2015.

The purpose of this book is to shed light on important advancements in post-war Mexican American civil rights efforts, specifically in Texas. Rodriguez highlights 3 milestones, two take place at the local level in West Texas and the third examines the creation of a national civil rights organization catering to the legal needs of the underrepresented Mexican American population of the United States. In highlighting these events, Rodriguez is aiming to educate not a specific racial or socioeconomic group, but rather to a general audience as well as to those who may already be educated in Chicano civil rights endeavors.
Rodriguez succeeds in doing so in the easy to read and straight forward language of the book. It very much gives the feel of having a conversation with an elder of the community, in that it quotes many people directly and recollects certain pieces of the story from the protagonists themselves in present day. The interview transcriptions are left in Spanish as to “preserve and convey the flavor of the interview…”. The book focuses on three case studies and breaks them into two parts, Part 1: Claiming Rights on a Local Level and Part 2: Claiming Rights on a National Level. In the first chapter the reader learns of the efforts taken by Mexican American parents of Alpine, TX to integrate their children’s schools, and go as far as the capitol to do so. The second chapter delves into the rise of the first Mexican American Mayor of El Paso, TX and the integration of their public safety ranks. The third chapter explores the creation of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund – MALDEF, a sorely needed support to Mexican Americans of the 1960s and 70s.
Rodriguez’s central argument is that a united people can achieve much more than a