In this wide-ranging biography, historian Cynthia Orozco examines the life and work of one of the most influential Mexican Americans of the twentieth century. Alonso S. Perales was born in Alice, Texas, in 1898; he became an attorney, leading civil rights activist, author and US diplomat.
Perales was active in promoting and seeking equality for “La Raza” in numerous arenas. In 1929, he founded the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), the most important Latino civil rights organization in the United States. He encouraged the empowerment of Latinos at the voting box and sought to pass state and federal legislation banning racial discrimination. He fought for school desegregation in Texas and initiated a movement for more and better public schools for Mexican-descent people in San Antonio.
A complex and controversial figure, Alonso S. Perales is now largely forgotten, and this first-ever comprehensive biography reveals his work and accomplishments to a new generation of scholars of Mexican-American history and Hispanic civil rights. This volume is divided into four parts: the first is organized chronologically and examines his childhood to his role in World War I, the beginnings of his activism in the 1920s and the founding of LULAC. The second section explores his impact as an attorney, politico, public intellectual, Pan-American ideologue and US diplomat. Perales’ private life is examined in the third part and scholars’ interpretations of his legacy in the fourth.
“Overall, Orozco’s well-researched biographical account of Perales is especially useful for those interested in LULAC, Mexican American civil rights organizing during the early-twentieth century, and the history of civil fights in Texas more broadly. In particular, Orozco’s study is recommended reading for those seeking to better understand the successes, limitations, ideologies, and leadership central to LULAC, a fulcrum of the Mexican American civil rights movement.” —Diana Johnson, Pacific Historical Review
“Orozco, a history professor, paints a fair, balanced and comprehensive portrait of the man.” —Zapata County News
“Over the span of this expansive biography, Orozco makes a compelling and well-documented case for Perales’s great importance as a pioneer of Mexican American civil rights.” —Journal of Southern History
“The book contributes to the increasing volume of scholarly literature on LULAC and the early Mexican American civil rights movement. It is a timely piece given the current continuing challenges the Latino community faces. Although the book centers on South Texas, it is relevant to our broader under-standing of the Southwest and the Borderlands.” —New Mexico Historical Review.
CYNTHIA E. OROZCO, a history professor at Eastern New Mexico University, Ruidoso, is the author of No Mexicans, Women, or Dogs Allowed: The Rise of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement (University of Texas Press, 2009) and Agent of Change: Adela Sloss-Vento, Mexican American Civil Rights Activist and Texas Feminist (University of Texas Press, 2020).
