This book would not have been written if my colleague Stephen Aron, a professor of history at UCLA, had not put me straight one day over lunch at the Faculty Center.
He encouraged me to expand my focus from writing a large number of papers to writing one or two books. I had outlined about half a dozen papers on the topic of Latinos in California during the Gold Rush and the American Civil War but had not thought seriously about putting the material into a monograph. Stephen’s suggestion intrigued me; I took it; and the result is the book you now hold in your hands.
A large number of people provided invaluable support and input at critical times as this project moved from idea to reality. Two incredibly important people on staff at the Center for the Study of Latino Health and Culture (CESLAC) at UCLA served as my right and left hands. Cynthia L. Chamberlin performed triple duty as editor, fact checker, and translator of all the Spanish and French passages, in addition to her regular function of digging around in archives, discovering and transcribing primary-source documents. Margarita Reyes used all her skills as a media producer to manage the hundreds of images that were considered for use in this book, eventually winnowed down to twenty-six, ensuring that each was of appropriate quality and had all the required permissions, releases, and other legal clearances. Providing support to their efforts was another pair of talented people: Werner Schink, a colleague of thirty years’ acquaintance, prepared the maps; and Paul Hsu, a colleague for nearly fifteen years, helped organize the massive amounts of data. I also want to acknowledge the contributions of former CESLAC staff members who helped extract and process data from public records and nineteenth-century newspapers: Marta VanLandingham, Gloria Meza, Karen Milian, Azucena Puerta-Díaz, Ernesto Medina, Branden Jones, Juan Carlos Cornejo, Carlos Martinez, Cecilia Cañadas, Mariam Iya Kahramanian, and Jennifer Wei-Li. The professional genealogist Ted Gostin provided invaluable information on nineteenth-century Latino families and individuals in Southern California.
I have relied on the collections and key individuals of a number of institutions: John Cahoon and Betty Uyeda at the Seaver Center for Western History Research at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County; Mary Morganti, the director of Library and Archives, and Debra Kaufman, the library reproduction and reference associate, of the California Historical Society; Polly Armstrong (formerly) and Mattie Taormina (currently) of Special Collections at the Cecil Green Library at Stanford University; David Kessler and Susan Snyder of the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley; the staff of the Ahmanson Reading Room at the Henry E. Huntington Library; and the staff of the Special Collections Department of Young Research Library, UCLA. Also at UCLA I would like to acknowledge the support of my division chief, Martin Shapiro, and the extraordinary administrative support of Mark Lucas, as well as the support of Jade T. Reyes and Maria T. Jauregui.
A number of close acquaintances provided emotional support during the long gestational period that producing a book requires, and I thank them: Steve Soto of the Mexican American Grocers Association, State Senators Gil Cedillo and Richard Polanco, María Luisa Rodríguez Sala and José Luis Talancón of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), and Samuel Schmidt of the Universidad de Guadalajara. Family members who encouraged me include Raúl and Ana Ofelia Bracamontes of Guadalajara; Hugo, Patricia, and Hugo René Wingartz of Mexico City; Cristina Bautista and José Oviedo Bautista of Ozumba; Ana Raquel Poe and Aaron Edsinger of San Francisco; Diego Hayes-Bautista of San Diego; and Catalina Hayes-Bautista and my new son-in-law, Alejandro Rodriguez, in Sacramento.
A small group of individuals provided feedback on the manuscript and helped develop activities to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the first battle of Puebla: Jorge Mettey, Juan José Cué, and my sobrinos— José Adrian Gabriel Camacho, Carlos Anaya, and Hector Ortiz—of Puebla, Mexico; Gabriela Tiessier and Dina Rodriguez of the television station KMEX, Los Angeles; Judge Michael Stern; my colleague and coauthor Paul Bryan Gray (Don Pablo); and Ana T. Valdez of the 650 Company. Even more involved were my editors at University of California Press, Naomi Schneider and Kim Robinson.
And, of course, I want to thank my greatest supporter and most supportive critic, my wife Teodocia María de Jesús Rodríguez Menchaca de Hayes-Bautista, also known, simplemente, as María.