The Persistence of Unfree Labor in the American Southwest

2021 ◽  
Vol 52 (3) ◽  
pp. 259-280
Author(s):  
William S Kiser

Abstract This article explores the continuities of forced labor in the Southwest, where peonage and the partido system lasted for more than a century after the Thirteenth Amendment outlawed slavery, and places it within the broader context of modern global slavery. Debt peonage and peasant sharecropping—known locally as the partido—are usually classified as two different forms of unfree labor, but in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century Southwest they had much in common and were oftentimes mutually reinforcing. Through the legal and cultural intricacies of the partido system, thousands of landless Hispanos in the northern half of New Mexico and southern reaches of Colorado worked full-time in exchange for a small share of the annual wool harvest. Many of those same men became debt-bound to the tiny percentage of wealthy families who owned the sheep herds and grazing ranges. Through these means, partidarios (sheep renters) lost much if not all of their autonomy and became, to varying degrees depending on the disposition of their creditor and benefactor, debt peons.

2015 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 245-252 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. G. Moore

The coverage of natural history in British newspapers has evolved from a “Nature notes” format – usually a regular column submitted by a local amateur naturalist – to professional, larger-format, presentations by dedicated environmental correspondents. Not all such environmental correspondents, however, have natural-history expertise or even a scientific background. Yorkshire's Michael Clegg was a man who had a life-long love of nature wedded to a desire to communicate that passion. He moved from a secure position in the museum world (with a journalistic sideline) to become a freelance newspaper journalist and (subsequently) commentator on radio and television dealing with, and campaigning on, environmental issues full-time. As such, he exemplified the transition in how natural history coverage in the media evolved in the final decades of the twentieth century reflecting modern concerns about biodiversity, conservation, pollution and sustainable development.


Author(s):  
Melissa J. Homestead

This book tells for the first time the story of the central relationship of novelist Willa Cather’s life, her nearly forty-year partnership with Edith Lewis. Cather has been described as a distinguished artist who turned her back on the crass commercialism of the early twentieth century and as a deeply private woman who strove to hide her sexuality, and Lewis has often been identified as her secretary. However, Lewis was a successful professional woman who edited popular magazines and wrote advertising copy at a major advertising agency and who, behind the scenes, edited Cather’s fiction. Recognizing Lewis’s role in Cather’s creative process changes how we understand Cather as an artist, while recovering their domestic partnership (which they did not seek to hide) provides a fresh perspective on lesbian life in the early twentieth century. Homestead reconstructs Cather and Lewis’s life together in Greenwich Village and on Park Avenue, their travels to the American Southwest that formed the basis of Cather’s novels The Professor’s House and Death Comes for the Archbishop, their summers as part of an all-woman resort community on Grand Manan Island, and Lewis’s magazine and advertising work as a context for her editorial collaboration with Cather. Homestead tells a human story of two women who chose to live in partnership and also explains how the Cold War panic over homosexuality caused biographers and critics to make Lewis and her central role in Cather’s life vanish even as she lived on alone for twenty-five years after her partner’s death.


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.


2017 ◽  
Vol 82 (2) ◽  
pp. 397-413 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. Sunday Eiselt ◽  
J. Andrew Darling ◽  
Samuel Duwe ◽  
Mark Willis ◽  
Chester Walker ◽  
...  

Previous research on agriculture in the American Southwest focuses overwhelmingly on archaeological survey methods to discern surface agricultural features, which, in combination with climatological, geological, and geographical variables, are used to create models about agricultural productivity in the past. However, with few exceptions, the role of floodplain irrigation and floodwater farming in ancestral Pueblo agriculture is generally downplayed in scholarly discourse. Using a variety of methods, including Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV), satellite imagery, pedestrian survey, and supervised classification of remotely sensed imagery, we examine this issue through a consideration of how ancestral Ohkay Owingeh (Tewa) people solved the challenges of arid land farming in the lower Rio Chama watershed of New Mexico during the Classic period (A.D. 1350–1598). Based on acreage estimates, our results indicate that runoff and rainwater fields in terrace environments would have been insufficient to supply the nutritional needs of an ancestral Tewa population exceeding 10,000 individuals. Based on these observations, we present a case for the substantial role of subsistence agriculture in the floodplain of the Rio Chama and its associated tributaries.


1995 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 117-132 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian S. Shaffer ◽  
Christopher P. Schick

Prehistoric horticulturalists of the American Southwest relied on crop complexes for much of their vegetal diet, but also relied heavily on hunting and trapping. Permanent settlement by the Mogollon resulted in resource depression of larger animal taxa (primarily artiodactyls) in some areas that could not withstand sustained human predation. This resulted in the predation of smaller animals (primarily jackrabbits, cottontail rabbits, and rodents) that could withstand intensive predation. The extent to which small animal taxa were incorporated into the prehistoric food regime is closely tied to the inability of the site catchment environments to support viable populations of larger taxa capable of withstanding human predation. This scenario is exemplified by five Mogollon sites from western and southwestern New Mexico.


Author(s):  
Teresita Majewski ◽  
Lauren E. Jelinek

The archaeology of the territorial and early statehood periods (1850–1917) in the American Southwest was virtually terra incognita until the advent of government-mandated archaeology in the 1960s. Subsequent work has shown that historical archaeology has much to contribute to a fuller understanding of this dynamic and formative time in U.S. history. Historical-archaeological investigations have demonstrated that although the United States formally exerted control over Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico by the last half of the nineteenth century, the interactions among its Indigenous, Spanish, and Mexican inhabitants strongly influenced the territory’s historical trajectory into the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This chapter provides a historic context and a selective overview of archaeological studies that relate to the key themes of shifting economies and cultural heterogeneity.


2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (32) ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Cláudia da Mota Darós Parente

The article systematizes the main concepts, arguments and characteristics of multipleshift schooling in the international context and in Brazil, through bibliographic and documentalresearch. The presentation of the specificities of the multiple-shift schooling in different countries provided elements for the analysis of the Brazilian case. The article highlights the emergence of multiple-shift schooling in the early twentieth century, its widespread nationwide, the emergence of experiences of extended school day, the naturalization of the multiple-shift schooling in the country, the diversity of shifts, school day and schedules and the recent goal of full-time education. Expanding the provision of full-time education does not necessarily mean eliminating multiple-shift schooling. There are still numerous challenges for public schools (half-day or fullday). Analysis of school day and full-time education associated with multiple-shift schooling may bring new perspectives to the formulation and implementation of educational policies.


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