Students will be acquainted with how particular historical conditions such as Spanish European colonization of the Americas, Manifest Destiny, slavery, the Mexican-American War, urbanization and industrialization, immigrant and nativist movements, and free-trade and globalization have worked to hold Chicanas/os in disadvantaged social, economic, and political positions.  For example, students will be able to articulate how past and present economic and political forces in the United States and Mexico have produced the waxing and waning for Mexican immigrant labor in the U.S. for well over 100 years.