The Latino Big Bang in California presents a Spanish transcription and English translation of a diary written by Forty-Niner Justo Veytia, a Mexican immigrant seeking riches during Californias Gold Rush. Veytias diary offers insights into the dilemmas and choices of an adventurous and ambitious young mexicano and provides a detailed glimpse into the life of Latinos who participated in this tumultuous moment in California history. In doing so, Veytias diary demonstrates that the US-Mexico War together with the Gold Rush constituted a Latino big bang in California that attracted large swaths of fortune seekers from across the Spanish-speaking world throughout the latter half of the nineteenth century. Combining archival research with quantitative methods to extrapolate demographic information about the persistent presence of Latino communities in California from the mid-nineteenth century to today, The Latino Big Bang in California shows how Latino migration and labor forever changed the course of California history.
Recenzijos
"David E. Hayes-Bautista and Cynthia L. Chamberlin convincingly contest the fable of a California emptied of Latinos in the wake of the 1849 Gold Rush. The book's recovery of Mexican prospector Justo Veytia's diary gives voice to a population of historical actors rarely acknowledged in previous studies of the US West." - Anna M. Nogar, coeditor of El feliz ingenio neomexicano: Felipe M. Chacón and Poesķa y prosa
"This gem of a book offers a poignant glimpse into the life and times of Justo Veytia, a twenty-eight-year-old Guadalajara native whose quest for California gold took him on a two-year odyssey that left him penniless, yet undaunted. Veytia's journal, translated and richly annotated, chronicles the "Latino Big Bang" - that formative moment when Latino migration and labor changed the course of California history." - John M. Nieto-Phillips, author of The Language of Blood: The Making of Spanish-American Identity in New Mexico, 1880s-1930s
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction. The Latino Big Bang in California and Justo Veytia, a Mexican
49er
David E. Hayes-Bautista
Spanish Text of Justo Veytias Diary
English Translation of Justo Veytias Diary
Epilogue. After Justo Veytia Returned to Mexico, 18502022
Luis Jaime Veytia Orozco
Appendix
1. Relative Population Composition Factors for San Francisco, Los
Angeles, San Luis Obispo, and Tuolumne Counties and Combined Counties for
1850, 1860, and 1870 Censuses
Appendix
2. Data to Estimate Latinos as Percent of California Population,
1860 and 1870
Notes
Index
David E. Hayes-Bautista is a Distinguished Professor of Medicine and the director of the Center for the Study of Latino Health and Culture at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. He is also the author of El Cinco de Mayo: An American Tradition. Cynthia L. Chamberlin is the historian, editor, and translator at the Center for the Study of Latino Health and Culture at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. She is also the coauthor of a number of CESLAC's publications on the history of Latinos in California.
Paul Bryan Gray is a California lawyer and historian and the author of A Clamor for Equality: Emergence and Exile of Californio Activist Francisco P. Ramķrez.
