HCAR Brown Bag Talk–Joel Zapata

Join us at the Helmerich Center for American Research for a Brown Bag Talk featuring Joel Zapata, Assistant Professor of History, Oregon State University.

“Mexicans in the Oklahoma Plains”

For centuries, Mexican people have significantly influenced the economy, infrastructure, and culture of the Southern Plains, including an Oklahoma portion of the 240,000 square mile region. Initially, Mexicans traded with Indigenous plains people, negotiated peace treaties, hunted bison, and grazed livestock on the grassland. After the U.S. Army dispossessed Indigenous people of their Southern Plains territory during the 1870s, Mexicans from New Mexico were among the first to occupy the region and establish communities. Throughout the twentieth century, Mexicans became the laboring class of much of the Southern Plains, building the region’s rail and road infrastructure along with growing its agriculture. By the 1980s, they started becoming the majority in towns and cities across the plains—keeping one of the globe’s breadbaskets and energy centers from depopulating and spiraling into economic decline.

Wednesday, May 1, 3:00-4:00 p.m.
Jackson Seminar Room, Helmerich Center for American Research