Author: Raúl A. Ramos

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Introducing a new model for the transitional history of the United States, the author places Mexican Americans at the center of the Texas creation story. From the perspective of San Antonio Tejanos, Anglo-Americans were immigrants and the battle of the Alamo was a war between brothers. Ramos explores the factors that helped shape the ethnicity of the Tejano population after the battle and demonstrates that Bexareños turned to their experience on the frontier to forge a new ethnic identity within dominant American culture. The author is the son of noted San Antonio physician, Raúl Ramos M.D. Illustrated. Chapel Hill, 2008 University of North Carolina 1st Ed., 297 Pgs., 6 x 9, HB.

Author: John H. Rappole

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A comprehemsive look at birds in this area featuring Habitat, Similar Species, Abundance and Distribution, Where to Find, Range, and Season. Contains a color plate section of the species described. College Station, TX, 2000 Texas A&M University Press 1st Ed., 6x 9, 329 Pgs., PB.

Author: Antonio Rios-Bustamante

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According to Professor Luis L. Arroyo, The author argues correctly and perceptively that Los Angeles to the 1850s was a vital and growing community, whose development must be understood within the larger context of Mexican history. This dispels the notion that the area was isolated and static. This is the first coherent and comprehensive story of the Los Angeles region covering the Colonial and Mexican periods. B&W illustrations. Encino, CA, 1992 Floricanto Press 1st Ed., 7 x 8&1/4, 274 Pgs., PB.

Author: Maria F. Rollin

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This is Southwestern Studies # 110 by UT El Paso Press. Father Edward Bastien O.M.I. was assigned just after World War II to the Catholic Church in the poor border town of Zapata, Texas, soon to be flooded by the building of the U.S.-Mexico Falcon Dam. His tenacious efforts to help his parishioners fight for equitable land condemnation values earned him the honorary moniker of the Fighting Father of Zapata. After realizing that bureaucratic mix-ups and power struggles would keep his parishioners from fair compensation for long-held family homes and property he unleashed one of the most prolific and determined letter-writing campaigns to affect such a project before or since. With unbending courage and wit he wrote to the likes of then U.S. Senator Lyndon B. Johnson and even President Eisenhower both of whom eventually responded to his humble yet persuasive pleas. He kept a steady stream of letters flowing to the Laredo Times under the pen name I POZ, which stood for Irate People of Zapata. Bastien eventually succeeded in his mission but was transferred from the parish and died in 1972 "Worn out by his ceaseless labor and solicitude for the poor" as noted in the Oblate archival files. He entrusted Rollin's family with his Zapata letters interspersed with his personal musings and anecdotes of the time. Rollin realized that the manuscript was a humorous yet powerful account of bureaucracy gone amok, of poor South Texans forced into a Diaspora, and the story of a talented and courageous priest willing to fight for social justice. This is his story, a great addition to the history of the borderlands. El Paso, TX 2003 1st Ed., 265 Pgs., PB.