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Southwest to Whom - An Analysis of the Historiography of the American West

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===Andres Resendez===

Like Chicano political culture, southwestern national identity is another complex subject that cannot be successfully explained through Turner’s frontier process. An understanding of Anglo-American national identity can benefit from an understanding of the place of the frontier within popular culture, and the idea that the American West signified the historic “struggle with the wilderness [that] turned Europeans into Americans.”<ref>Limerick, pg.20</ref> However, this perspective obscures the identities of nonwhite inhabitants of the West. Andres Resendez’s 2005 book, <~~a target="_blank" href="~~I>[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0521543193/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0521543193&linkCode=as2&tag=dailyh0c-20&linkId=705be5ac66302b4499e75f455efaf2fc">Changing National Identities at of the Frontier: Texas and New Mexico, 1800-1850]</aI>~~<img src="//ir-na~~, examined the identity choices of Tejanos, Nuevomexicanos, Mexicans, and Americans in the Southwest in the first half of the nineteenth century.~~amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=dailyh0c-20&l=am2&o=1&a=0521543193" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" />~~

Like Chicano political culture, southwestern national identity is another complex subject that cannot be successfully explained through Turner’s frontier process. An understanding of Anglo-American national identity can benefit from an understanding of the place of the frontier within popular culture, and the idea that the American West signified the historic “struggle with the wilderness [that] turned Europeans into Americans.”<ref>Limerick, pg.20</ref> However, this perspective obscures the identities of nonwhite inhabitants of the West. Andres Resendez’s 2005 book, <I>[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0521543193/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0521543193&linkCode=as2&tag=dailyh0c-20&linkId=705be5ac66302b4499e75f455efaf2fc Changing National Identities of the Frontier: Texas and New Mexico, 1800-1850]</I>, examined the identity choices of Tejanos, Nuevomexicanos, Mexicans, and Americans in the Southwest in the first half of the nineteenth century. The region transitioned from the periphery of the Spanish empire, to the northern states of Mexico, and ultimately into the American Southwest, and the people that lived on the borderland faced stark choices between Mexican and American national identity. Resendez found that identity choices of people living on the frontier did not derive from inherent identification with either national project, but instead grew out of “situational” logic, as Southwesterners were buffeted by the forces of the American economy and coerced by the Mexican state.<ref>Andres Resendez, <I>Changing National Identities on the Frontier: Texas and New Mexico, 1800-1850</I>, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).</ref>

Resendez used evidence of Mexican state-formation, southwestern market choices, cross-cultural marriages, ethnic literature, and violent resistance to explore the forces that influenced identity choices among Southwesterners. He integrated history of the Spanish heritage in the region, and the nation’s colonial legacy, with a rich variety of frontier inhabitant experiences to explain the construction of national identity on the Mexican-America border. He treated the Southwest as a region and an idea in order to understand the ways its inhabitants understood themselves and navigated their positions to competing national claims. Examining an era of changes and choices, Resendez also showed the continuity of the Southwest through his decision to treat the region as a discrete location, with a rich past and a dynamic cultural heritage that included the contributions of many cultures.

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