Using historical statistics and key indicators, data were synthesized to identify longitudinal trends and patterns in the social, economic, and political status of El Paso's Chicanos. Data related to group achievement were analyzed. A framework adapted to local conditions based on the internal colonialism model was used for the periodization of El Paso Chicano history. Data indicated a historical division between the Anglo and Chicano communities along economic, political, and social lines. This separation was partially explained by the perpetual presence of poor immigrants and protracted job competition from cheap labor in Juarez. Such factors affected local wage, working, and living conditions and caused some outmigration. Yet structural discriminatory barriers such as job exclusion and wage differentials, segregation, lack of educational opportunities, and political domination have greatly reinforced such disadvantages and created others, thus contributing to a marked absence of progress among local Chicanos until recently. Several stages were identified in the Chicano community's evolution. There was an initial period of "traditional internal colonialism" (1848-1900), followed by "modified internal colonialism" (1900-1945), and the years 1945-1965 characterized by the emergence of "conditions for incipient decolonization". With the onset of the Chicano Movement in 1965, El Paso's Chicanos entered into "incipient decolonization", and this phase continues to the present. (Author/NQ)