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Tejano Religion and Ethnicity: San Antonio, 1821-1860. By Timothy M. Matovina. (Austin: University of Texas Press. 1995. Pp. xiv, 168. $24.95.)
This reviewer apologizes for delaying so long in bringing this important monograph to the attention of the readers of this journal. This small book offers a lot more than its title might indicate to the unaware. It is a timely landmark in ethnic studies, Mexican-American studies, and studies of religion in the United States.
In ninety-three pages of text and sixty-two pages of critical notes and bibliography, Matovina presents a thoroughly researched and tightly packed analysis of the complex interplay of ethnic, religious, and political allegiances in the formation of the self-identity of Tejanos (Texas residents of Spanish or Mexican descent) in the first crucial decades of their interaction with Anglos in San Antonio. That town was the first major Mexican population center to be gradually absorbed into the expanding Anglo-American empire. In 1821 it was still a Mexican Catholic town in the new nation of Mexico,...