Summary Of Omar S. Valerio Jimenez's River Of Hope

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In the book River of Hope: Forging Identity and Nation in the Rio Grande Borderlands, the author Omar S. Valerio-Jimenez examines different aspects of civilization in the lower Rio Grande region during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Valerio-Jimenez discusses the cultural and social changes which occurred in Native, Spanish, and American populations following the Spanish colonization of the southwestern United States. He speaks upon how political and ethnic identities changed due to shifts in territory and power between the United States, Spain, and the Native populations. One of the book’s largest arguments is that the individuals who lived in the Rio Grande region changed their identities to better their lives from existing social structures more than based on identifying with a single colonial power or national identity. This makes an interesting contrast to the current notion of identifying as simply American or Mexican based on the existing border. However, during the colonization there was borders set upon existing settlements, with colonizers telling the Native who had been living there for a long time who or what they were. In the midst of the fight for power in this region by colonizers, those living in this situation used the existing conditions to give themselves the most power. Using identity for …show more content…
Americanos tended to use terms like white inhabitant, American citizen, and Anglo Saxon interchangeably, in an attempt to tie American citizenship to the entitled trait of whiteness and put themselves over Mexicanos (Valerio-Jimenez, 232). They also marked those with darker skin as Mexican Texans as non citizens, and poor Mexicans as degenerates (Valerio-Jimenez, 234). Social structures and social hierarchies also provided a way for how people were classified and therefore how they ended up being

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