"Using territory that is now New Mexico as a case study, Manifest Destinies traces the origins of Mexican Americans as a racial group in the United States, paying particular attention to shifting meanings of race and law in the nineteenth century. In this work, Laura E. Gomez explores the central paradox of Mexican American racial status as entailing the law's designation of Mexican Americans as "white" and their simultaneous social position as non-white in American society. She tells a neglected story of conflict, cooperation, and competition among Mexicans, Indians, and Euro-Americans, the region's three main populations who were key architects and victims of the laws that dictated what one's race was and how people would be treated by the law."--BOOK JACKET.

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