The American Southwest Audrey Goodman, Translating Southwestern Landscapes: The Making of an Anglo Literary Region (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2002, $40.00). Pp. 250. ISBN 0 1865 2187 5. Molly H. Mullin, Culture in the Marketplace: Gender, Art, and Value in the Amerian Southwest (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001, $64.95 cloth, $19.95 paper). Pp. 248. ISBN 0 822 32610 8, 0 8223 2168 3. Curtis M. Hinsley and David R. Wilcox, The Lost Itinerary of Frank Hamilton Cushing (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2002, $50.00). Pp. 450. ISBN 0 8165 2269 3. Hal K. Rothman (ed.), The Culture of Tourism, the Tourism of Culture: Selling the Past to the Present in the American Southwest (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2003, $34.95). Pp. 250. ISBN 0 826 32928 4.

2006 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 391-397
Author(s):  
MARTIN PADGET

Scholars have been debating what constitutes “the Southwest” for decades. Thirty years ago, geographer D. W. Meinig began his landmark study Southwest: Three Peoples in Geographical Change, 1600–1970 by stating: “The Southwest is a distinct place to the American mind but a somewhat blurred place on American maps.” For Meinig, the crucial determining factor in constituting the geographical parameters of his own study was the coincidence of Native American and Mexican American settlement patterns in Arizona, New Mexico and around El Paso, Texas. The watersheds of the Gila River in Arizona and the Rio Grande in New Mexico provide the focus of his study of the historical interaction of Indians, Mexican Americans and Anglos through the successive periods of Spanish colonialism, Mexican independence and American rule. The historical geographer Richard Francaviglia has challenged the relatively narrow focus of Meinig's study by calling for a more expansive consideration of the Greater Southwest, which, in addition to the core of Arizona and New Mexico, also includes parts of Colorado, Utah, Texas and the northern states of Mexico. He rationalizes, “The southwestern quadrant of North America is, above all, characterized by phenomenal physical and cultural diversity that regionalization tends to abstract or simplify. The more one tries to reduce this complexity, the smaller the Southwest becomes on one's mental map.”2

Author(s):  
Jonathan Credo ◽  
Jaclyn Torkelson ◽  
Tommy Rock ◽  
Jani C. Ingram

The geologic profile of the western United States lends itself to naturally elevated levels of arsenic and uranium in groundwater and can be exacerbated by mining enterprises. The Navajo Nation, located in the American Southwest, is the largest contiguous Native American Nation and has over a 100-year legacy of hard rock mining. This study has two objectives, quantify the arsenic and uranium concentrations in water systems in the Arizona and Utah side of the Navajo Nation compared to the New Mexico side and to determine if there are other elements of concern. Between 2014 and 2017, 294 water samples were collected across the Arizona and Utah side of the Navajo Nation and analyzed for 21 elements. Of these, 14 elements had at least one instance of a concentration greater than a national regulatory limit, and six of these (V, Ca, As, Mn, Li, and U) had the highest incidence of exceedances and were of concern to various communities on the Navajo Nation. Our findings are similar to other studies conducted in Arizona and on the Navajo Nation and demonstrate that other elements may be a concern for public health beyond arsenic and uranium.


2020 ◽  
pp. 135910532097765
Author(s):  
Jennifer J. Salinas ◽  
Roy Valenzuela ◽  
Jon Sheen ◽  
Malcolm Carlyle ◽  
Jennifer Gay ◽  
...  

Most Mexican-Americans do not meet current physical activity recommendations. This paper uses the ORBIT model of obesity intervention development as a framework to outline the process of establishing three employer-based walking challenges in El Paso, Texas, a predominantly Mexican American community. The walking challenges were planned and implemented through the Border Coalition for Fitness and participating partnering organizations. Over 2000 participants and several employers took part in the walking challenges. Results from this ORBIT Phase 1 design intervention suggest that walking challenges are a feasible approach to increase physical activity in Mexican-Americans.


2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 179-194 ◽  
Author(s):  
Casandra D. Salgado

Existing research inadequately addresses the variation in Mexican Americans’ patterns of ethnic identification. Drawing on 78 interviews, I address this question by exploring how conceptions of ancestry and nationality shape ethnic identification among New Mexico’s long-standing Mexican American population, Nuevomexicanos. I find that Nuevomexicanos emphasized their ties to Spanish heritage within the history of New Mexico to explain their ethnicity and to construct their identity in opposition to Mexican immigrants. Although Nuevomexicanos varied in their claims to Mexican ancestry, they generally prioritized their roots in the original Spanish settlement of New Mexico to emphasize distinctions in ancestry, nationality, and regionality from Mexican immigrants. Moreover, despite Nuevomexicanos’ persistent claims to Spanish ancestry, they did not perceive themselves as racially White. Instead, Spanish ancestry was integral to Nuevomexicano identity because it enabled them to highlight their regional ties to New Mexico and long-time American identities. Thus, I argue that Nuevomexicanos’ enduring claims to Spanish ancestry represent a defensive strategy to enact dissociation from stigmatized Mexican immigrants. Overall, these findings show that Mexican Americans’ dissociation strategies are contingent on how they define themselves as members of an ethnic and national community. These findings also indicate that “Mexican American” as an identity term is a loosely maintained membership category among “Mexican Americans” because of their intragroup heterogeneity.


2012 ◽  
Vol 82 (2) ◽  
pp. 202-225 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rubén Donato ◽  
Jarrod Hanson

The history of Mexican American school segregation is complex, often misunderstood, and currently unresolved. The literature suggests that Mexican Americans experienced de facto segregation because it was local custom and never sanctioned at the state level in the American Southwest. However, the same literature suggests that Mexican Americans experienced de jure segregation because school officials implemented various policies that had the intended effect of segregating Mexican Americans. Rubén Donato and Jarrod S. Hanson argue in this article that although Mexican Americans were legally categorized as “White,” the American public did not recognize the category and treated Mexican Americans as socially “colored” in their schools and communities. Second, although there were no state statutes that sanctioned the segregation of Mexican Americans, it was a widespread trend in the American Southwest. Finally, policies and practices historically implemented by school officials and boards of education should retroactively be considered de jure segregation.


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