Spanning from the early nineteenth century to today, this intellectual history examines the work of Latino writers who explored the major philosophic and political themes of their day, including the meaning and implementation of democracy, their democratic and cultural rights under U.S. dominion, their growing sense of nationhood, and the challenges of slavery and disenfranchisement of women in a democratic republic that had yet to realize its ideals.

Over the course of two centuries, these Latino or Hispanic intellectuals were natural-born citizens of the United States, immigrants, or political refugees. Many of these intellectuals, whether citizens or not, strove to embrace and enliven such democratic principles as freedom of speech and of the press, the protection of minorities in the Bill of Rights and in subsequent laws, and the protection of linguistic and property rights, among many others, guaranteed by treaties when the United States incorporated their homelands into the Union.

The first six chapters present the work of lesser-known historical figures—most of whom have been consistently ignored by Anglo- and Euro-centric history and whose works have been widely inaccessible until recently—who were revolutionaries, editors of magazines and newspapers, and speechmakers who influenced the development of a Latino consciousness. The last three chapters deal with three foundational figures of the Chicano Movement, the last two of whom either subverted the concept of nationhood or went beyond it to embrace internationalism in an outreach to humanity as a whole.

Latinos and Nationhood sheds new light on the biographies of Félix Varela, José Alvarez de Toledo y Dubois, Francisco Ramírez, Tomás Rivera, Rolando Hinojosa-Smith, and Gloria E. Anzaldúa, among others.