The Latino Big Bang in California

The Diary of Justo Veytia, a Mexican Forty-Niner

Edited and translated by David E. Hayes-Bautista, Cynthia L. Chamberlin and Paul Bryan Gray

Epilogue by Luis Jaime Veytia Orozco

Querencias Series

Published by: University of New Mexico Press

328 Pages, 6.00 x 9.00 in

Paperback
9780826368140 | April 2025

$34.95

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9780826365514 | December 2023

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9780826368157 | April 2025

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9780826365507 | December 2023

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Description
Contributors
Acclaim
Table Of Contents

The Latino Big Bang in California presents a Spanish transcription and English translation of a diary written by Forty-Niner Justo Veytia, a Mexican immigrant seeking riches during California’s Gold Rush. Veytia’s diary offers insights into the dilemmas and choices of an adventurous and ambitious young mexicano and provides a detailed glimpse into the life of Latinos who participated in this tumultuous moment in California history. In doing so, Veytia’s diary demonstrates that the US-Mexico War together with the Gold Rush constituted a Latino “big bang” in California that attracted large swaths of fortune seekers from across the Spanish-speaking world throughout the latter half of the nineteenth century. Combining archival research with quantitative methods to extrapolate demographic information about the persistent presence of Latino communities in California from the mid-nineteenth century to today, The Latino Big Bang in California shows how Latino migration and labor forever changed the course of California history.

David E. Hayes-Bautista is a Distinguished Professor of Medicine and the director of the Center for the Study of Latino Health and Culture at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. He is also the author of El Cinco de Mayo: An American Tradition.

Cynthia L. Chamberlin is the historian, editor, and translator at the Center for the Study of Latino Health and Culture at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. She is also the coauthor of a number of CESLAC’s publications on the history of Latinos in California.

Paul Bryan Gray is a California lawyer and historian and the author of A Clamor for Equality: Emergence and Exile of Californio Activist Francisco P. Ramírez.

“David E. Hayes-Bautista and Cynthia L. Chamberlin convincingly contest the fable of a California emptied of Latinos in the wake of the 1849 Gold Rush. The book’s recovery of Mexican prospector Justo Veytia’s diary gives voice to a population of historical actors rarely acknowledged in previous studies of the US West.”—Anna M. Nogar, coeditor of El feliz ingenio neomexicano: Felipe M. Chacón and Poesía y prosa

“This gem of a book offers a poignant glimpse into the life and times of Justo Veytia, a twenty-eight-year-old Guadalajara native whose quest for California gold took him on a two-year odyssey that left him penniless, yet undaunted. Veytia’s journal, translated and richly annotated, chronicles the “Latino Big Bang”—that formative moment when Latino migration and labor changed the course of California history.”—John M. Nieto-Phillips, author of The Language of Blood: The Making of Spanish-American Identity in New Mexico, 1880s‒1930s

Preface
Acknowledgments

Introduction. The Latino Big Bang in California and Justo Veytia, a Mexican ’49er
David E. Hayes-Bautista
Spanish Text of Justo Veytia’s Diary
English Translation of Justo Veytia’s Diary
Epilogue. After Justo Veytia Returned to Mexico, 1850–2022
Luis Jaime Veytia Orozco

Appendix 1. Relative Population Composition Factors for San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Luis Obispo, and Tuolumne Counties and Combined Counties for 1850, 1860, and 1870 Censuses
Appendix 2. Data to Estimate Latinos as Percent of California Population, 1860 and 1870
Notes
Index