Overview

For centuries Mexican people of the plains—or los Llaneros—have inhabited and embodied the borderland region known today as the Southern Great Plains. Yet their central presence in the area is often forgotten. This diverse collection of essays brings much-needed attention to the ethnic culture and history of the Llano, the vast grassland plains encompassing the Texas Panhandle, eastern New Mexico, and corners of Colorado, Kansas, and Oklahoma. Los Llaneros covers a broad period, beginning with the Coronado entrada of 1540 and ending in the big ranch era around 1900. It is a unique colonial history, involving Nuevomexicanos, Comanches and other Indigenous peoples, the Spanish, and Anglo-Texans. The volume is interdisciplinary in its approach, embracing archeological, folkloric, literary, and cultural knowledge. Through these multiple perspectives, Los Llaneros achieves a singular goal: counteracting a long silence—and at times silencing—of Mexican people. Collectively the contributors to this volume make a compelling argument that this region's ethnic history must be recovered and reinterpreted to understand fully the cultural, environmental, and racial dynamics of the Southern Plains. A timely reconsideration of an important borderland region, Los Llaneros opens new pathways for future examination of the Llano and its diverse peoples.

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9780806197005

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Reviews

""With a scope as broad and sweeping as the Southern Plains itself, Los Llaneros charts the region's centuries-long, but mostly forgotten, ethnic Mexican and Native Plains past. Delightfully revelatory, these essays uncover a rich tapestry of Llano Estacado's peoples, inter-relationships, economies, politics, art, and literature. Forgotten no more, thanks to this deeply grounded volume, the Southern Plains' fascinating history now rests in your hands.""—Sherry L. Smith editor of The Future of the Southern Plains ""What a group of truly superb scholars has fashioned with Los Llaneros is no less than a re-invention of the Southern High Plains sense of self. Long summed up as stories of Comanches, Palo Duro Canyon, Charles Goodnight, and Georgia O'Keeffe, Llano Estacado history has been overdue an epiphany. This book provides a stunner."" —Dan Flores, New York Times bestselling author of Coyote America and Caprock Canyonlands: Journeys into the Heart of the Southern Plains ""This edited collection undergirds the editors' proposition that since the 16th century, the Southern Plains have persisted as a 'historical and cultural homeland' of ethnic Mexicans. Sound in analysis and firm in its contention, this groundbreaking study fortifies the long-existing scholarship in the fields of Borderlands and Chicano history."" —Arnoldo De León, author of Mexican Americans in West Texas: The Borderlands of the Edwards Plateau and the Trans-Pecos ""Los Llaneros is a provocative meditation on the vexed meanings of Mexican ethnicity and influence in the so-called American West. The volume, taken as a whole, invites readers to think hard about the nature of identity, especially the binaries between 'Indigenous' and 'colonial.' Los Llaneros is a must-read for students of the Southern Plains' deeply complicated past.""—Paul Barba, author of Country of the Cursed and the Driven: Slavery and the Texas Borderlands ""This groundbreaking volume bridges disciplinary boundaries, offering a llanero sensibility that highlights the complexity of borderlands subjects navigating contested cultural and spatial claims on the Southern Plains.""—Aimee Villarreal, Texas State University

Author Information

Joel Zapata is Assistant Professor at Oregon State University. He has previously been a Mellon Foundation Fellow in Latino Studies at the School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe.  Andrew Reynolds is Professor of Spanish at Texas Tech University. He is the author of The Spanish American Crónica Modernista, Temporality and Material Culture: The Unstoppable Presses of Modernismo.  Alex Hunt is the Vincent/Haley Endowed Professor of Western Studies at West Texas A&M University. He is author of Cornelia's Empire: The JA Ranch of Texas and the Global West.  John Beusterien is Professor of Spanish at Texas Tech University. He is the author of Transoceanic Animals as Spectacle in Early Modern Spain. 

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