The Squatter and the Don

This novel adopts the narrative perspective of a conquered Californio population that is a "capable, cultured, even heroic people who were unjustly deterritorialized, economically strangled, liguistically oppressed, and politically marginalized" despite the stipulations of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo of 1848, in which the United States agreed to respect the rights of Mexicans and Spanish citizens who were subsumed into the United States. The story of The Squatter and the Don fictionally documents the many Californio families that lost their land due to squatters and litigation. The novel demonstrates how the burden of proof of land ownership fell not on the US government, nor on the squatters who settled on the land, but on the Californio landowners.