Introducing a new model for the transnational history of the United
States, Raul Ramos places Mexican Americans at the center of the
Texas creation story. He focuses on Mexican-Texan, or Tejano,
society in a period of political transition beginning with the year
of Mexican independence. Ramos explores the factors that helped
shape the ethnic identity of the Tejano population, including
cross-cultural contacts between Bexarenos, indigenous groups, and
Anglo-Americans, as they negotiated the contingencies and pressures
on the frontier of competing empires.