Joel Zapata

The Erased Homeland: Mexicans’ Long Past, the Southern Great Plains, and America’s Future

The United States’ Mexican population has come to the forefront of public and academic exchanges amidst the past two presidential campaigns and ensuing political debates regarding immigration policy and border security. Yet, these discussions consistently neglect Mexicans’ long-term history in what is now the United States, along with their enduring social influence throughout the nation. A prime example of this neglected history is the ethnic Mexican past of the Southern Great Plains, a vast transregional grassland larger than California that stretches from southeastern Colorado and southwestern Kansas, down across eastern New Mexico and western Oklahoma to central Texas.

Using manuscript materials from over twenty archives spread across the United States, personal papers, hundreds of archived and original oral histories, combined with art, photographs, print media, archeological studies, songs, and folklore, Dr. Zapata follows the physical, economic, cultural, and even emotional connections ethnic Mexicans have long had with the plains. His project reveals how Mexican people have made the Southern Plains into one of their homelands since the late eighteenth century. Since then, ethnic Mexicans have shaped the region’s continually changing economy, physical infrastructure, and social-cultural milieu.