Catolicos: Resistance and Affirmation in Chicano Catholic History. By Mario T. Garcia. (Austin: University of Texas Press. 2008. Pp. xii, 366. $60.00. ISBN 978-0-292-71840-1.)

The role of religion has not received due attention in most histories of U.S. Latinos or Hispanies, the people living in the Linked States whose roots derive from the Spanish-speaking countries of Latin America. Most histories of American religion are still centered on Euroamerican traditions.

Mario T. Garcia, a professor of Chicano studies and history at the University of California-Santa Barbara, aims to correct this deficiency by studying Catholicism within a subset of Latinos called Chicanos. The term Chicanos became very popular in the 1960s and 1970s for Mexican Americans who were self-conscious of their history and identity, and used that self-consciousness as part of a liberation movement from racist oppression.

The book consists of eight chapters, and the first...