Forgotten people: a study of New Mexicans

Published originally in 1940, Forgotten People is a classic of Depression-era social protest scholarship. Directly challenging Turnerian frontier history, Sanchez argues that conquest, marginalization, and impoverishment have dominated the history of Spanish-speaking New Mexicans since the Mexican-American War. Ninety years of social and economic marginalization defined Mexican-Americans as a distinct indigenous group. Anglo educational systems culturally discriminated against Spanish-speaking children, while federal and state land policy economically strangled New Mexican families. Focusing his study on Taos County, New Mexico, during 1938 and 1939, Sanchez holds that the federal government should recognize the unique history and place of Spanish-speaking citizens in the Southwest and create educational and economic programs to empower and acculturate them.