During the early 1940s, young Mateo's favorite pastime is exploring the mountains near his home. He and his friends have heard the rumors about the seven mysterious cities of Cibola where the walls and streets are covered with gold and gemstones and Aztlan, the ancestral homeland of the Aztec. The friends intend to find the treasures buried within the lost cities. Seeking to escape the poverty in his small ranching community, Mateo continues to search the mountains at every opportunity, and he narrowly escapes dying there after finding what he imagines are veins of gemstones and other precious minerals. He also finds a grotto with a strange obelisk and several mummy-like individuals. Since his best friend, Modesto, has moved to California, Mateo confides in the village blacksmith, an old man who has been there for more years than people care to remember. But a greedy villager overhears their conversation, and that person becomes Mateo's mortal enemy.

"Aztlán: Essays on the Chicano Homeland gathers articles published over a period of twenty years, offering in one volume the divergent ideological interpretations engendered within Chicano studies in relation to the legendary origin of the Aztecs."--Roberto Cantu, California State University

Discusses the exploration and settlement of the Southwest, and the conflicts resulting when its defenders and its builders were unable to blend their distinct cultures.

“A rich and moving chronicle for our very present.” —Julio Ortega, New York Times Book Review The United States is still typically conceived of as an offshoot of England, with our history unfolding east to west beginning with the first English settlers in Jamestown. This view overlooks the significance of America’s Hispanic past. With the profile of the United States increasingly Hispanic, the importance of recovering the Hispanic dimension to our national story has never been greater. This absorbing narrative begins with the explorers and conquistadores who planted Spain’s first colonies in Puerto Rico, Florida, and the Southwest. Missionaries and rancheros carry Spain’s expansive impulse into the late eighteenth century, settling California, mapping the American interior to the Rockies, and charting the Pacific coast. During the nineteenth century Anglo-America expands west under the banner of “Manifest Destiny” and consolidates control through war with Mexico. In the Hispanic resurgence that follows, it is the peoples of Latin America who overspread the continent, from the Hispanic heartland in the West to major cities such as Chicago, Miami, New York, and Boston. The United States clearly has a Hispanic present and future. And here is its Hispanic past, presented with characteristic insight and wit by one of our greatest historians.

An extensively illustrated and ambitious overview of the continuities in culture between the American Southwest and the adjacent northwest of Mexico supported by an argument that a drastic socio-religious transformation occurred in the Southwest region during a period called Aztlan.

Anaya draws on the Spanish-American folklore with which he grew up in this unique depiction of a Hispanic childhood in the Southwest.