Aztl N And Arcadia

In the wake of the Mexican-American War, competing narratives of religious conquest and re-conquest were employed by Anglo American and ethnic Mexican Californians to make sense of their place in North America. These “invented traditions” had a profound impact on North American religious and ethnic relations, serving to bring elements of Catholic history within the Protestant fold of the United States’ national history as well as playing an integral role in the emergence of the early Chicano/a movement. Many Protestant Anglo Americans understood their settlement in the far Southwest as following in the footsteps of the colonial project begun by Catholic Spanish missionaries. In contrast, Californios—Mexican-Americans and Chicana/os—stressed deep connections to a pre-Columbian past over to their own Spanish heritage. Thus, as Anglo Americans fashioned themselves as the spiritual heirs to the Spanish frontier, many ethnic Mexicans came to see themselves as the spiritual heirs to a southwestern Aztec homeland.

Contemporary observers often quip that the American Southwest has become “Mexicanized,” but this view ignores the history of the region as well as the social reality. Mexican people and their culture have been continuously present in the territory for the past four hundred years, and Mexican Americans were actors in United States history long before the national media began to focus on them—even long before an international border existed between the United States and Mexico. North to Aztlán, an inclusive, readable, and affordable survey history, explores the Indian roots, culture, society, lifestyles, politics, and art of Mexican Americans and the contributions of the people to and their influence on American history and the mainstream culture. Though cognizant of changing interpretations that divide scholars, Drs. De León and Griswold del Castillo provide a holistic vision of the development of Mexican American society, one that attributes great importance to immigration (before and after 1900) and the ongoing influence of new arrivals on the evolving identity of Mexican Americans. Also showcased is the role of gender in shaping the cultural and political history of La Raza, as exemplified by the stories of outstanding Mexicana and Chicana leaders as well as those of largely unsung female heros, among them ranch and business owners and managers, labor leaders, community activists, and artists and writers. In short, readers will come away from this extensively revised and completely up-to-date second edition with a new understanding of the lives of a people who currently compose the largest minority in the nation. Completely revised, re-edited, and redesigned, featuring a great many new photographs and maps, North to Aztlán is certain to take its rightful place as the best college-level survey text of Americans of Mexican descent on the market today.

‘We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like, “I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive ...”’

While the North End has long been the beginning of the American dream for many peoples including African Americans, Southeast Asians, and Anglo Americans, it is perhaps the Mexican American community that most visibly embodies the hopes and struggles in this part of the city. The first wave worked in the packinghouses, and communities with names such as El Huarache, La Topeka, and El Rock Island emerged nearby. As the 20th century unfolded, their children and grandchildren established a vibrant neighborhood along Twenty-First Street and Broadway. In recent years, the old industries of the area have faded, while a new wave of immigrants from Latin America has been able to redefine an area. Today, the Mexican American heritage in the North End has become one of its most defining features, an example of a broader diversity that has always made this part of the city special.

In and Out of View models an expansion in how censorship is discursively framed. Contributors from diverse backgrounds, including artists, art historians, museum specialists, and students, address controversial instances of art production and reception from the mid-20th century to the present in the Americas, Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. Their essays, interviews, and statements invite consideration of the shifting contexts, values, and needs through which artwork moves in and out of view. At issue are governmental restrictions and discursive effects, including erasure and distortion resulting from institutional policies, canonical processes, and interpretive methods. Crucial considerations concerning death/violence, authoritarianism, (neo)colonialism, global capitalism, labor, immigration, race, religion, sexuality, activism/social justice, disability, campus speech, and cultural destruction are highlighted. The anthology-a thought-provoking resource for students and scholars in art history, museum and cultural studies, and creative practices-represents a timely and significant contribution to the literature on censorship.

Part of the self-image of Phoenix is that the city has no history and that anything of importance happened yesterday. Also that Phoenix, the Arizona state capital, is a "clean" city (despite a past of police corruption and social oppression). The "real" Phoenix, easygoing, sun-drenched, a place of ever-expanding development and economic growth, guarantees, it is said, an enviable lifestyle, low taxes, and unfettered personal freedom and opportunity. Little of this is true. Phoenix has been described as one of the least sustainable cities in the country. This sixth largest urban area of the United States has an alarmingly superficial and tourism-oriented discourse among its leaders. This book examines a series of narrative works (novels, theater, chronicles, investigative reporting, personal accounts, editorial cartooning, even a children's television program) that question this discourse in a frequently stinging fashion. The works examined are anchored in a critical understanding of the dominant urban myths of Greater Phoenix, and an awareness of how all the newness, modernity and fun-in-the-sun mentality mask a uniquely dystopian human experience.