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Russell Contreras Profile picture
Russell Contreras
@RussContreras
Race and Justice reporter for @axios. #MFA @ColumbiaSOA @UHouston grad. Alum: @AP @bostonglobe @abqjournal He/Him. Email: russell.contreras@axios.com
Mar 6, 2021 • 10 tweets • 4 min read
Mexican Americans make up the nation's largest Latino group (37M). They remain politically outshined by more recently arrived Cuban Americans (2M). Mexis fought Jim Crow, mass deportations, poverty, racism. CAs got automatic protections and had money.
axios.com/political-powe… Mexican Americans also have faced racial terror and lynchings like African Americans throughout US history. This is often overlooked abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/m…
Sep 16, 2020 • 10 tweets • 6 min read
The Underground Railroad to Mexico. Across Texas and parts of Louisiana, scholars are working to piece together a puzzle of a largely forgotten piece of American history: a network that helped thousands of Black slaves escape to south of the border. apnews.com/d26243702f11e2… This was a deeply personal story to research and write. During my reporting, I found out that my great grandfather’s mother was born in Monclova, Mexico. That was a stop on the Underground Railroad to Mexico. Her name was Francisca Martinez
Jul 4, 2020 • 13 tweets • 5 min read
July 4th has always hurt me. I could have a long line of Mexican Americans who couldn’t vote, couldn’t buy homes in certain places and had hide from the KKK and Texas Rangers. Then I remember Uncle Ciprian. He suffered a concussion at Iwo Jima. And then:

apnews.com/d2e7ef2f384817… Complicated or angry about our position in the US, we still always paused on the 4th of July. Here is Ciprian Contreras with his family in the 1970s
Feb 2, 2020 • 5 tweets • 3 min read
There are many white writers who have tackled issues around Mexican Americans and Mexican immigrants. Those books were widely praised by Latinos and still read today. Here are a few on my shelf in Albuquerque @lwmunoz is one my former colleagues (1of5) My amazing high school and undergrad classmate @HistoryBrian wrote a badass book on Mexican American and black civil rights in Texas. He’s a habitual outside-the-comfortable-space stepper. (2of5)