Reasons We Fight: Tejanos and American Wars, 1836-1972

Since the Texas Revolution in 1836, Tejanos have fought in American wars. Why, with sometimes divided loyalties and ambiguous cultural status, Texans of Mexican descent would fight for the U.S. is a question Alex Mendoza takes up in this book. Exploring the American military experience of Tejanos over nearly two centuries, Reasons We Fight discovers a complex landscape of shifting loyalties, motivations, and notions of nationalism reflecting Tejanos' conflicted relationship with America as it changed over time.

Mendoza's nuanced history reveals that Tejano military service since the Texas Revolution often had less to do with nationalism or patriotism than with individual decisions. A soldier might be motivated by local allegiances, ethnic pride, a desire to defend his home, escape poverty, or seek adventure in a foreign war. By World War II, these notions had become stronger, and the Tejano community responded to the attack on Pearl Harbor with the patriotic fervor of their Anglo-American neighbors. Reasons We Fight traces a growing sense of nationalism through the mid-twentieth century, as Tejanos sought to refute their second-class status as inferior individuals—and to demonstrate their warrior tradition, thus confirming their rights to citizenship through battle. In essence, by the Second World War, Tejanos who joined the ranks of the military adopted the characteristics of American nationalism—sentiments that would only expand during the Cold War era conflicts in Korea and Vietnam.

The first comprehensive record of Tejanos in war, Mendoza's account documents the forces and circumstances that shaped military attitudes among Mexican Texans, along with the challenges they faced navigating a complex of shifting ideas about identity, community, and nationalism—and America itself.