Based on oral histories and archival documents, this book reconstructs the unwritten history of the Mexican-origin community of Santa Paula, California. This previously unwritten history contrasts sharply with the official version, which focuses on Anglo American accomplishments and excludes the area's earliest settlers and longest inhabitants--Native Americans and people of Mexican descent. This ethnographic account focuses on Mexican Americans' memories of marginalization and social injustice and shows how past forms of discrimination have evolved into subtle and modern manifestations of dominant group racism involving a system of interethnic "social apartness." Chapters are: (1) "Political Relations and Land Tenure Cycles in Santa Paula: Chumash Indians, Mexicans, and Anglo Americans": (2) "White Racism, Religious Segregation, and Violence against Mexicans, 1913 to 1930"; (3) "School Segregation: The Social Reproduction of Inequality, 1870 to 1934"; (4) "Mexican Resistance to the Peonage System: Movements To Unionize Farm Labor"; (5) "Movements To Desegregate the Mexican Community, the 1940s and 1950s"; (6) "The Segmentation of the Farm Labor Market, 1965 to 1976"; (7) "Interethnic City Council Politics: The Case of the Housing Cooperative Movement"; (8) "Modern Racism: Social Apartness and the Evolution of a Segregated Society"; (9) "The Impact of Anglo American Racism on Mexican-Origin Intragroup Relations"; and (10) "Historical Reconstruction." The third chapter discusses the educational exclusion of Mexican-origin students until the first segregated"Mexican" school was built in 1913, the inferior conditions in schools for Mexican-origin students, and the various creative rationales by which school districts justified segregation. Forms of modern de facto school segregation are discussed in later chapters. Contains references in chapter notes, an extensive bibliography, photographs, and an index. (SV)