María Amparo Ruiz de BurtonSince the recent republication of her novel The Squatter and the Don, Mara Amparo Ruiz de Burton (183295) has become a key figure in the recovery of nineteenth century Mexican American literature. An aristocratic Californiana, she championed the rights of Mexican Americans in novels, plays, and letters. Her 1885 novel called attention to the illegal appropriation of Mexican land by the United States government, and she critiqued the political mores of