Las Tejanas: 300 Years of History.
By Teresa Palomo Acosta &
Ruthe Winegarten.
Austin. University of Texas Press.
456 pp. 142 b&w photos.
ISBN 0-292-70527-1,
$22.95 paperback.
ISBN 0-292-74710-1,
$45.00 hardcover.

They were warriors for civil rights, business innovators, cutting edge artists, labor leaders, public officials, and educators -- and frequently unacknowledged.
In Las Tejanas: 300 Years of Texas History, Teresa Palomo Acosta and Ruthe Winegarten have gathered and distilled a wide range of information to offer the first detailed accounts of Tejanas lives, ranging from the colonial period up to the present day.
"Several generations of Mexican American women historians, both professional and untrained, wrote histories before this book," notes Cynthia Orozco in the foreword, "but only now in the new millennium has a book-length survey been written."
Giving Tejana achievements the recognition they have long deserved, this groundbreaking book is at once a general history and a celebration of Tejanas' contributions to Texas over three centuries, as well as a highly readable account of their human, economic, and political struggles and triumphs. From the Dallas arts scene to the most rural reaches of Texas, the authors follow Tejana women though every part of society.
The story of Tejanas is frequently a story of overcoming adversity, so Las Tejanas pays special attention to Tejana "firsts" that opened professional and cultural doorways for succeeding generations. These include the first Tejana to enter West Point (Lt. Col. Debra Lopez Fix), the first Tejana elected to the state legislature (Irma Rangel), the first Tejana to become a registered pharmacist in Texas (Martha X. García Rodriguez), and the first and only Mexican American woman to be president of the Texas Folklore Society (Jovita Gonzales).
When Tejanas succeeded, they pioneered paths for all women. In 1986, Judith Lee Pappas Zaffirini became the first Tejana elected to the Texas Senate and the first woman elected to the legislature from Laredo. In her first campaign, a male voter told her that he thought women belonged at home cleaning house instead of running for office. She responded, "Yes, sir, that is exactly what I am doing. I dusted off in May, I swept up in June, and I'm going to mop up in November."
Tejanas played a key role in giving Tejanos a voice in politics and in courts, helping to establish advocacy groups such as La Raza and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF). In building these organizations from the ground up, they tried to avoid the mistakes they saw in other organizations. "We have practiced a different kind of leadership, a leadership that empowers others, not a hierarchical kind of leadership," Rosie Castro, a Tejana feminist who joined the Chicano movement of the 1960s and 1970s, told the authors.
The struggle for equality in a culture that regarded them as outsiders also took place beyond the well-known civil rights struggles for voting and economic rights. Las Tejanas records these unexpected fights, such as the walkouts in the late sixties protesting the lack of Tejana representation on a Crystal City high school cheerleading squad. Students marched with banners reading, "Brown Legs are Beautiful Too: We Demand Chicana Cheerleaders." The walkout succeeded, and one of its organizers, Severita Lara, years later became mayor of Crystal City, showing how a struggle now can open doors down the road.
Las Tejanas includes a timeline, a list of 50 notable Tejanas, and extensive footnotes and bibliography.
Teresa Palomo Acosta is a Chicana poet whose collection Nile & Other Poems appeared in 1999. She was formerly a research associate with the Texas State Historical Association, where she worked with the team of writers who added new and major entries on Mexican Americans and women for the New Handbook of Texas. Ruthe Winegarten is an independent scholar and writer of Texas women's history. Two of her books, Black Texas Women: 150 Years of Trial and Triumph and (with Nancy Baker Jokes) Capitol Women. Texas Female Legislators, 1923-1999, received the Liz Carpenter Award for Research in the History of Women from the Texas State Historical Association.