Abstract
In September 2016, debates surrounding a new textbook introduced in Texas made national and international news. In order to historically contextualize the controversy over Mexican American Heritage, this chapter analyzes how several US textbooks published in the middle decades of the twentieth century portray Mexico and people of Mexican descent. It presents historic perspectives on Mexico in order to shed light upon how the denigration of Mexico and people of Mexican descent furthers American Exceptionalism in modern history. Many of the textbooks highlight the emptiness of the western lands, drawing upon the myth of the frontier as wilderness and of North America as a “Virgin Land”. In the nineteenth century, racist stereotypes of Mexicans informed debates around the US-Mexico War. The persistent stereotypes of people of Mexican heritage, as evidenced in the 2016 case, is a manifestation of the ways in which an ideology of American Exceptionalism—built upon a sense of Anglo-Protestant superiority—continues to shape contemporary society through US textbooks.