Ramón Eduardo Ruiz Urueta “Memories of a Hyphenated Man” Presented by the IHC Chicano/Latino/Mexican Studies Research Focus Group Wednesday, November 19 / 4 P.M./ Free McCune Conference Room, 6020 Humanities and Social Sciences Building Ramón Eduardo Ruiz Urueta discusses his new book, Memories of a Hyphenated Man (The University of Arizona Press, 2003) at 4 P.M. on Wednesday, November 19. Courtesy of the UCSB Bookstore, copies of Memories of a Hyphenated Man will be available for purchase and signing at this event. About the Book: Ruiz would be the first to admit that he is not your typical Mexican American. But he has always known who he is. Historian, author, and intellectual, Ruiz has established himself through such books as Triumphs and Tragedy: A History of the Mexican People and Cuba: The Making of a Revolution, and in 1998 he was awarded the National Humanities Medal. Now he turns his pen on his own life to offer a personal look at what it really means to be American by birth but Mexican by culture. Little has been written by or about persons of Mexican origin who have achieved the academic stature of Ruiz, and his memoir provides insights not found in the more common biographies of labor leaders and civil rights activists. His early life straddled the social worlds of his parents’ Mexico and semi-rural America, where his father’s success as an entrepreneur and property owner set his family’s experiences apart from those of most other Mexican Americans at the time. His parents reinforced in their children an identity as mexicanos, and that connection with his ancestral roots was for Ruiz a life jacket in the days of acute bigotry in America. In making an early, self-conscious commitment to a life of the mind, Ruiz became aware of his unique nature, and although not immune to prejudice, he was able to make a name for himself in several endeavors. As a student, he attended college when few Mexican Americans had the opportunity, and he was one of the first of his generation to earn a Ph.D. As an intellectual, he navigated the currents of the historical profession and charted new directions in Latin American research. As a teacher—in Mexico, Massachusetts, Texas, Oregon, and California—he taught hundreds of Chicanos and at the University of California, San Diego, trained one of the largest groups of Chicano Ph.D.’s. Memories of a Hyphenated Man is the story of a unique individual who, while shaped by his upbringing and drawing on deep cultural roots, steadfastly followed his own compass in life. It tells of a singular man who beat the odds as it poignantly addresses the ambiguities associated with race, class, citizenship, and nationality for Mexicans and Mexican Americans. About the Author: Ramón Eduardo Ruiz Urueta is presently Professor Emeritus at the University of California, San Diego, where he served as chairman of the Department of History from 1971 to 1976. He has spent all of his seventy-seven years living "within hailing distance of the Mexican border, at one time or another calling Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California home." "You could call me a Mexicanist," Ruiz says. He was born to Mexican parents, living and working in the U.S., but who never became U.S. citizens because they "were very proud of their heritage and instilled this pride in their children." As a historian and scholar of Mexico and Latin America, Ruiz may indeed have been born to his work. Ruiz said his birthplace and experiences inspired him to concentrate his studies on the Mexican border. The border is described in his book, On the Rim of Mexico, Where the Rich and Poor Rendezvous, “as one of the longest international boundaries in the world, setting apart two entirely different countries for more than two thousand miles. Nowhere else does a poor, third world country like Mexico share a common border with a wealthy, powerful neighbor. "The Mexican border," he writes, "brings back memories of my youth and forebears. My mother, her father and mother, and her grandparents, as well as patriarchs before them, were born and matured on the outskirts of Parral, a mining town in the border province of Chihuahua that dates from the early seventeenth century. . . . My mother and two of her sisters were the exceptions; they married, migrated north, and then succumbed on this side of the border." Ruiz was born September 9, 1921, just a few miles from San Diego where his father worked for the legendary landowner Kate Sessions, one of the pioneers in the development of San Diego. Sessions was an expert on plants and horticulture, and Ruiz's father, Ramón, worked for her, learning the business and then opening his own nursery. His mother, Delores Urueta, worked alongside his father in their own nursery. "My mother was intent on reminding us of our heritage and we always spoke Spanish at home, even though we all also spoke English," he said. As the author of fifteen books and numerous articles about Mexico and Latin America, Ruiz’s work is used as standard reference for Hispanic scholars. In addition, he has avidly studied Cuba and, in 1968, his book, Cuba: The Making of a Revolution, was named one of the twenty-one best history books that year by the Washington Post Book World. His 1980 book on the Mexican Revolution broke new scholarly ground and further enhanced Ruiz’s standing as a historian. The Great Rebellion: Mexico, 1905-1924 disagreed with the view that the revolution was a social change that freed an oppressed people from foreign bosses and military dictatorships and established popular rule and economic justice for workers. Instead, Ruiz wrote, the revolution was "essentially a face-lifting of Mexican capitalism" and "one of the last bourgeois protests of the nineteenth century, and not the precursor of the socialist explosions of the twentieth century." Writing in the New Republic, reviewer John Womack, Jr., called Ruiz's book "the first major statement by an eminent American historian of Mexico that the real revolution was not a triumph of the people at large, but a long, violent, specifically bourgeois reform which crushed other popular uprisings for the sake of better business." In On the Rim of Mexico, Ruiz has entwined the richness of his own family and remembrances with extensive research, travel, and interviews with the people who live on both sides of the border. The book transcends the topical issues of the border, such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and lurid accounts of Mexican drug lords, killings, and political corruption. Instead, it addresses the economics and personal identity of those who live and die next door to Uncle Sam. "A huge majority of Mexicans depend for their livelihood, either directly or indirectly, on the United States, but just the same, American border cities would slumber were it not for cheap labor and customers hungry for American goods. The exchange of goods and services underlies the dynamics of border economics," Ruiz argues. Ruiz graduated from San Diego State College (now university), received his Master’s degree from Claremont Graduate School, and his Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley. He served in the Pacific as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army Air Force during World War II. Beginning his teaching career in 1955 at the University of Oregon at Eugene, Ruiz has also taught at Southern Methodist University and Smith College. In 1970, he joined the University of California and in 1991 became professor emeritus. There he has worked to build a strong Hispanic studies program. Ruiz has held visiting professorships at numerous colleges and universities in the United States and Mexico. A civic and community activist, he was one of the early protestors of the Vietnam War and supported the late Chicano leader, Cesar Chavez, in his efforts improve the lives and welfare of migrant farm workers. This event is cosponsored by the IHC Chicano Studies Research Focus Group and the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center. Top of Page <<Back