Customer Reviews

Batos, Bolillos, Pochos, and Pelados: Class and Culture on the South Texas Border

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Many an anthropologist and sociologist has described SouthTexas borderlife along with all its cultural nuances, customs, and practices. Dr. Chad Richardson is the most recent social scientist to take on this challenging task and none has done it better. This book is filled with stories of cultural conflicts, clashes, and mutual cooperation among the various inhabitants of this historically significant and culturally rich region. The cultural confluences of this region are among the strongest and most potent of any multicultural mecca in the world. The region and its people play out the conflicts of two vastly important and different cultures, embedded in economic, power and class struggles for survival. Among the third world colonias, the numerous 'Winter Texan' gated-communities, and the exponential growth of 'macquiladoras,' can be heard the loud sucking sound of NAFTA accompanied by the cries of 'La LLorna.' The region and its people have never been so well documented. Dr. Richardson's observations are based on empirical studies and surveys, richly supported by ethnographic histories collected from archives and interviews with hundreds of families over several generations of Mexican, Mexican American and European Americans who have lived, worked, and invested together to make this region a powerful force for the future of America. This book tells the 'true' story of South Texas. Dr. Richarson doesn't hide anything. He tells it like it was, and how it continues to be, for an important, fast growing, often overlooked, underestimated, and often wrongly stereotyped, minority population. His science represents years of work. His product is most impressive, despite an unfortunate title.

This is a great book that tells it like it is. It describes the lives of many of us in South Texas.

Fast and in excellent condition as published. Actually rec. book within a couple of days.

Many an anthropologist and sociologist has described SouthTexas borderlife along with all its cultural nuances, customs, and practices. Dr. Chad Richardson is the most recent social scientist to take on this challenging task and none has done it better. This book is filled with stories of cultural conflicts, clashes, and mutual cooperation among the various inhabitants of this historically significant and culturally rich region. The cultural confluences of this region are among the strongest and most potent of any multicultural mecca in the world. The region and its people play out the conflicts of two vastly important and different cultures, embedded in economic, power and class struggles for survival. Among the third world colonias, the numerous 'Winter Texan' gated-communities, and the exponential growth of 'macquiladoras,' can be heard the loud sucking sound of NAFTA accompanied by the cries of 'La LLorna.' The region and its people have never been so well documented. Dr. Richardson's observations are based on empirical studies and surveys, richly supported by ethnographic histories collected from archives and interviews with hundreds of families over several generations of Mexican, Mexican American and European Americans who have lived, worked, and invested together to make this region a powerful force for the future of America. This book tells the 'true' story of South Texas. Dr. Richarson doesn't hide anything. He tells it like it was, and how it continues to be, for an important, fast growing, often overlooked, underestimated, and often wrongly stereotyped, minority population. His science represents years of work. His product is most impressive, despite an unfortunate title.

This book is a bit of a puzzle. I'm not sure if its purpose is to go beyond mere description in dealing with the "batos, bolillos, pochos and pelados" of its title. The author does do a good job of decribing the various socioeconomic relationships that exist within and between various population groups in the Rio Grande. He does this with the aid of various interviews and surveys performed by the Borderlife Project at UT-Pan Am. There are excellent summaries of the data from these surveys, and some attempt is made at explaining some of the results. But the whole book is too shallow to function as a critical work, and I'm not sure if it was the author's intent to leave the analysis at a minimum or not. (I know it would have made for a larger book). An example: the book designates "Anglo" as one of the cultural/socioeconomic groups in the Valley, and yet nothing in the book really examines what the term might mean or refer to. When Mexican immigrants were surveyed and interviewed for the Borderlife project, were they using "Anglo" in the same senses? Is there a difference between "Anglo" and "White" or do the two terms refer to the same thing? These questions are never cleared up, even though a proper analysis of the surveys would seem to require just this kind of clarification. This seems to me a critical failing of the book. Another salient failing is the fact that the book doesn't account for the fact that not all immigrants or people of Hispanic origin in the Valley are Mexican. Many are from Latin American countries other than Mexico. Richardson makes no effort to discuss the differences in culture and socioeconomic status between these groups (e.g., Nicaraguans, Colombians) and the other groups (Mexicans, Anglos, etc.), even though he does spend some time discussing a black population that is arguably less important. There are many more examples like this, but the point is that the book fails to engage in any serious analysis of the interview and survey materials. This is disappointing, especially considering the high quality of the student-led interviews.