Walls and Mirrors: Mexican Americans, Mexican Immigrants, and the Politics of Ethnicity

"Walls and Mirrors is an exemplary book not only because it provides readers with a longue-durée of the history of Mexican migration, which most such studies do not provide, but also because of the author’s brilliant insights about the complex relationship between Mexican migrants and Mexican Americans. While many Americans see these groups as interchangeable, Gutiérrez demonstrates the complex and often hostile relationship that existed between them. Mexican Americans’ attitudes towards Mexican migrants, he shows, “often reveal more” about Mexican Americans’ “own sense of ethnic and political identity than about their feelings concerning the immigration debate.” Walls and mirrors refers to the “differences that divided and the commonalities that bound” Mexican Americans with Mexican immigrants. As I noted earlier, Mexican Americans often tried to distinguish themselves form Mexican migrants—they often tried to build walls between the two communities—but they sometimes saw mirrors."