Reasons We Fight
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€44.99
A01=Alex Mendoza
American wars
Author_Alex Mendoza
Category=NHK
Category=NHWR
Category=WQH
Civil War
Cold War
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eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_new_release
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
Korea
Mexican American
Mexican American history
Mexican Texans
Military history
military service
nationalism
Tejano
Tejano identity
Tejano military experience
Tejano military service
Tejanos
Texas history
Texas Revolution
Vietnam
war
World War I
World War II
Product details
- ISBN 9780806196541
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 28 Feb 2026
- Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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Since the Texas Revolution in 1836, Tejanos have fought in American wars. Why, with sometimes divided loyalties and ambiguous cultural status, Texans of Mexican descent would fight for the U.S. is a question Alex Mendoza takes up in this book. Exploring the American military experience of Tejanos over nearly two centuries, Reasons We Fight discovers a complex landscape of shifting loyalties, motivations, and notions of nationalism reflecting Tejanos' conflicted relationship with America as it changed over time.
Mendoza's nuanced history reveals that Tejano military service since the Texas Revolution often had less to do with nationalism or patriotism than with individual decisions. A soldier might be motivated by local allegiances, ethnic pride, a desire to defend his home, escape poverty, or seek adventure in a foreign war. By World War II, these notions had become stronger, and the Tejano community responded to the attack on Pearl Harbor with the patriotic fervor of their Anglo-American neighbors. Reasons We Fight traces a growing sense of nationalism through the mid-twentieth century, as Tejanos sought to refute their second-class status as "inferior" individuals—and to demonstrate their warrior tradition, thus confirming their rights to citizenship through battle. In essence, by the Second World War, Tejanos who joined the ranks of the military adopted the characteristics of American nationalism—sentiments that would only expand during the Cold War era conflicts in Korea and Vietnam.
The first comprehensive record of Tejanos in war, Mendoza's account documents the forces and circumstances that shaped military attitudes among Mexican Texans, along with the challenges they faced navigating a complex of shifting ideas about identity, community, and nationalism—and America itself.
Mendoza's nuanced history reveals that Tejano military service since the Texas Revolution often had less to do with nationalism or patriotism than with individual decisions. A soldier might be motivated by local allegiances, ethnic pride, a desire to defend his home, escape poverty, or seek adventure in a foreign war. By World War II, these notions had become stronger, and the Tejano community responded to the attack on Pearl Harbor with the patriotic fervor of their Anglo-American neighbors. Reasons We Fight traces a growing sense of nationalism through the mid-twentieth century, as Tejanos sought to refute their second-class status as "inferior" individuals—and to demonstrate their warrior tradition, thus confirming their rights to citizenship through battle. In essence, by the Second World War, Tejanos who joined the ranks of the military adopted the characteristics of American nationalism—sentiments that would only expand during the Cold War era conflicts in Korea and Vietnam.
The first comprehensive record of Tejanos in war, Mendoza's account documents the forces and circumstances that shaped military attitudes among Mexican Texans, along with the challenges they faced navigating a complex of shifting ideas about identity, community, and nationalism—and America itself.
Alex Mendoza is Associate Professor of History at the University of North Texas. He is author of Confederate Struggle for Command: General James Longstreet and the First Corps in the West and coeditor of Texans and War: New Interpretations of the State’s Military History.
