Corazón de Dixie

While ethnic Mexicans appear as relative newcomers in current political and historical descriptions of the American South, Julie M. Weise’s sweeping examination of Mexican people in the region forces readers to rethink their ideas of Southern history, labor history, and the history of race in America. Mexican people appear everywhere in the South but, more importantly in Weise’s treatment, not as a monolithic, homogenous community. Rather a diverse set of experiences unified by their connections to the Mexican state, changing labor and racial structures and the need to build community encompass Mexican life in the South. Corazón de Dixie provides a model to understand both the continuity of social ideas across national boundaries and the situationally specific forces that shape communities over time and place. Weise turns to oral histories, personal photo albums, and consular records to recover the lives of these families. The book provides a new kind of labor history that applies to transnational migrant workers. Photographs serve as a source to understand working class ideology and allow these workers to place themselves in a story of progress and upward mobility. When faced with challenges in the workplace or at home, Mexicanos responded by connecting with available resources at the time, such as Mexican consulates, bracero program institutions, philanthropic churches and local officials, and each other.

Ethnic group · Genealogy · Ideology · Labor history · Oral history · Political science · Politics · Race (biology) · Sociology · Anthropology · Asian American and Pacific Histories · Gender Studies · History · Latin American and Latino Studies · Law · Race, History, and American Society