Literatura Chicana. La experiencia colonial interna en las obras de Rudolfo Anaya

In 1848, the signing of the Guadalupe-Hidalgo Treaty turned thousands of Mexicans into foreigners in their own land. More than half of the Mexican territory was absorbed by the United States, and its population was assimilated in California, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, etc. Since then, the so-called "Chicanos" (Mexican-Americans) join the already swollen ranks of the racially segregated of North America along with African-Americans, Asians or Italian-Americans. Rudolfo Anaya's literature, which this work is close to, reflects what it means to be a Chicano, the struggle for the survival of idiosyncrasy, history and personal values -as individuals and as a society— that Chicanos have to face in the so-called “internal colony”. They are a “colony”, as they constitute a population colonized by a foreign metropolis and with greater economic potential, and “internal” since the colonization appears within the North American society itself -to which they legally belong-, it is encrusted there and remains visible to this day.