El imaginario Chicano

The Hispanic population, largely made up of people of Mexican origin, should according to informed estimates represent the largest demographic group of people in the in the United States of America in the middle of the 21st century. Even today, its influence on the political, cultural and social events in the country cannot be overlooked.
This book provides a key towards a better understanding of the current situation of Mexicans in the United States. It first places it into the broader political and cultural history of the United States, and then focuses on the manifestation of politicization of that portion of the post-war generation of Mexicans (the "Chicanos"), which in the context of the civil rights movement in the 1960s and 1970s joined in the growing criticism of the traditional way of understanding American identity. Their politicization was accompanied by the imagination of a new opposing identity for Mexicans in the US which called for equal rights and opportunities in the country where many had lived for generations, while others had arrived only recently.
The core of the work is a catalog of the visual language, the most commonly used icons and symbols through which the Chicanos attempt to define themselves, sources of political inspiration and the key themes of the Mexican diaspora in the USA. Through a critical interpretation of their iconographic world, the book documents the types of imagination of the collective identity of Mexicans in the USA, as well as the fundamental changes they went through between 1965 and 2000.