María Amparo Ruiz de Burton (July 3, 1832 – August 12, 1895) was a Californio author and intellectual, best known as the first female Mexican-American writer to be published in English.

Ruiz de Burton's work is considered to be one of the first instances of Mexican-American literature, and gives the perspective of the conquered Mexican population that, despite being granted full rights of citizenship by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, was a marginalized national minority.

[2] Her grandfather, Jose Manuel Ruiz, commanded the Mexican troops along the northern frontier in Baja California and served as governor of the region from 1822 until 1825.

[2] While the marriage did not bring Ruiz de Burton any specific power or property, it did offer a new social status and opportunities that were previously out of reach to her as a Mexican woman.

As Rosaura Sanchez and Beatrice Pita see it, "While birth gave María Ruíz de Burton a sense of family, regional, and national identity, migration and marriage determined citizenship, social status, and access to a variety of social strategies in the United States"[5] Although Ruíz de Burton was not shy to take full advantage of these insider connections over the course of her life, it is clear that she often found herself in contradictory positions, and simultaneously holding opposing views, while attempting to balance her heritage with her ideals.

In 1869, soon after she returned to the West Coast, Ruiz de Burton formed the Jamul Portland Cement Manufacturing Company with her son Henry and other financial backers.

[9] She is a Chicano author not just because of her race but because her novels investigate issues at the core of Chicano/a history and literature: identification, disidentification, dual nationality, citizenship, latinidad, and gender constraints.

"The novel scrutinizes the pettiness and racism of a Northern Abolitionist family and discourses on issues of democracy, liberalism, women's suffrage, imperialism, political opportunism, and religious hypocrisy.

This group was created in 1990 and its main goal is to recover literary texts by Hispanic writers and obtain narratives of their lives since the sixteenth century through sources such as memoirs, prose, fiction, poetry and histories.

The victim pool increases from the Californios to the squatters... the city of San Diego, and in the long run, the entire state population now subject to tyranny of the railroad monopoly.

The U.S. conquering California was not natural or inevitable, and that the "result of discriminatory laws would be serious, possibly irreparable injury of its new citizenry.”[15] A review in the San Francisco Chronicle calls the novel “a strong presentation of the influence of two evils which have done much to retard the growth of the state and to harass honest settlers.” Ruiz has the task of demolishing stereotypes set up by popular portrayals of Californios.

Californios appear to be the middle man in sense of racial hierarchy because the strive to embraced by the Anglo community is apparent, but unachievable which also applies to the Indians.

David Luis-Brown argues that since Ruiz constantly links feelings to whiteness and likens the Alamars to the Anglo-Americans, Squatter and the Don is complicit with, rather than resistant to, Anglo American imperial racism.

Though most of her argument is political, a religious aspect is added here as she starts and ends the conclusion quoting Utarian minister William Ellerly Channing, saying the Californians "must wait and pray for a Redeemer who will emancipate the white slaves of California" (344).

Though this book did not get the recognition it deserved, it ” continues to educate and persuade, providing insights into complex race relations that exist in California to this day and helping to undermine the myth of the "independent" West by pointing up the reliance of the railroads upon government subsidy and favor.”[15] María Ruiz de Burton has a few consistent themes running through her major works.

[19] The Squatter and the Don was inspired directly by her own experiences in the disputes over her land claims, and sought to contest official American histories of the conquest of California.

The story targets squatters who attempted to claim the land that had previously been granted to Californios by the Mexican and Spanish governments, as well as corruption in the US judicial and legislative systems.

After her husband's death, Ruiz de Burton returned to her ranch only to find it occupied by numerous squatters whom she could never successfully force to leave through the US judicial system, treatment that she considered to be unfair and biased.

The doctor however, attempts to vouch for her, because he knows the truth of her background, and explains that she is not in fact "other" as her appearance suggests, but rather has "pure Spanish blood" of potentially royal lineage[22] and deserves to be treated with due respect.

Don Quixote's character is transformed from a Hidalgo into a Mexican-American, who rides through stolen lands believing that he is a Spanish savior who must right the wrongs that have injured his people and end the enchantment imposed by the occupiers.

[23] In Ruiz de Burton's own experience, she spent much of her adult life defending her aristocratic lineage despite her poverty and second-class citizenry on lands that have become American through the actions of rogue squatters.

If it were not for this terrible, this fatal influence - which will eventually destroy us- the Mexicans, instead of seeing anything objectionable in the proposed change, would be proud to hail a prince who, after all, has some sore of claim to this land, and who will cut us loose from the leading strings of the United States.

Many scholars read Quixote's character in Ruiz de Burton's play as being the author herself, a California Hidalgo out to defend the fading culture of the Hacienda life.

Don Quixote then is a California Hidalgo, transformed into a Mexican American, who rides through stolen lands believing he is a Spanish saviour with the duty to redress the wrongs of his people.

The final defeat and imprisonment of Don Quixote at the hands of the jokesters is a symbolic death to Ruiz de Burton's aristocratic heritage and her land rights.

"Her use of satire and parody unmasks the rhetoric of Manifest Destiny and displays the hypocrisy among New Englanders who espouse piety and condemn the South's alliance with slavery, yet demonstrate the opposite through their actions".

Here, Ruiz de Burton references a term conceived by white southerners, "carpet baggers," used to hinder northerners from moving to the South during the Reconstruction era of the United States.

Indeed, The Squatter and the Don depicts "political views that emerge from this liberalism as naive, weak, and ineffectual in defending Mexican interests against "Yankee" aggression.

[40] María Ruíz de Burton's unique position as an insider (and consequently an outsider) on both sides of the US/Mexican border afforded her an ideal perspective from which to view the political tempest taking place between the two nations.

She would always see the rising hegemony of the Anglo-American cultural, economic, and political spheres from a Latin-American frame of reference, but she was uniquely able to penetrate that same dominant society and manipulate its system to serve her purposes.