Journal of the Southwest articles from December 2001

Journal of the Southwest archives from December 2001

Preface.
December 22, 2001... One of the most dynamic regions in the Americas, if not the world, is the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. This collection of essays offers a number of eclectic perspectives on the history and cultures of cities in this region. The issue begins...

The mining boom in Baja California from 1850 to 1890 and the emergence of Tijuana as a border community.
December 22, 2001... In the period following the Mexican War of 1846-1848, many of the hordes of prospectors who participated in the California gold rush also became interested in mining possibilities in the Mexican northwest. During the 1850s, a series of gold and...

Anticipating the colonias: popular housing in El Paso and Ciudad Juarez, 1890-1923.
December 22, 2001... The visitor who arrives in El Paso with the idea that it is a barren waste, desert-like, where, of course, nothing green, like flowers and trees grow, is subjected to an immediate disillusionment. El Paso Times, May 25, 1922...

La cerca y las garitas de Ambos Nogales: a postcard landscape exploration.
December 22, 2001... Charting the cultural geography of Mexican border cities is an ongoing project. Early writings laid a foundation for understanding spatial patterns and place characteristics of these cities (Herzog 1990; Arreola and Curtis 1993; Mendez Sainz...

A note on homosexuality in Porfirian and postrevolutionary Northern Mexico.
December 22, 2001... Scholars of Queer history in Mexico have tended to focus on a series of scandalous events--most notably those documented in the Inquisition files or the quintessential modern gay scandal, the 41 affair in the Porfiriato--and in doing so have...

All night at the Owl: the social and political relations of Mexicali's red-light district, 1913-1925.
December 22, 2001... What is in the name Mexicali? Engineers and planners at the turn of the century crafted the place-name Mexicali and that of its border twin, Calexico, as monuments to the transborder irrigation project that integrated Baja California's Mexicali...

The "shame suicides" and Tijuana.
December 22, 2001... Thomas M. Peteet, his wife Carrie, and their daughters (twenty-six-year-old Clyde and nineteen-year-old Audrey) presented refined and cultured airs to new acquaintances. The Peteet family claimed "the best Southern blood" from New Orleans,...

Low-budget films for fronterizos and Mexican migrants in the United States.
December 22, 2001... During the 1980s and 1990s a new movie genre was mass-produced by the Mexican film industry. It incorporated the old cabaretera (dance hall) theme with contemporary topics of drug trafficking, police corruption, foul language, shootouts, road...

Tex-Mex, Cal-Mex, New Mex, or whose Mex? Notes on the historical geography of Southwestern cuisine.
December 22, 2001... Residents of the United States often have a peculiar view of Mexican food, drawn more from Mexican American restaurants or from fast food simulations than from actual experience south of the border. While the combination plates at local...

U.S. ports of entry on the Mexican border.
December 22, 2001... U.S. and Mexican ports of entry are the historical bases of most twin border cities, and their importance continues today. San Ysidro, between Tijuana in Lower California, and San Diego County in Upper California, is the most heavily traversed...

Slab City: squatters' paradise?
December 22, 2001... Every American is a squatter at heart. --W.W. Robinson, Land in California On the southeastern edge of the Salton Sea in Imperial County of Southern California lies a place called Slab City (see figure 1). It is a popular wintering...

Juan Soldado: field notes and reflections.(John the Soldier, Tijuana folkore)
December 22, 2001... In February 1938, an eight-year-old girl was raped and murdered in Tijuana, Mexico. The next day a twenty-four-year-old Mexican soldier named Juan Castillo Morales was arrested as a suspect. The following day, according to newspaper accounts,...

The Oaxacan enclaves in Los Angeles: a photo essay.
December 22, 2001... Immigrants from the state of Oaxaca have gravitated to California in large numbers since the 1980s. They are largely indigenous Mixtecs, Zapotecs, Mixes, Triques, and Chontales. In Los Angeles, the majority are Zapotecs, from the Isthmus of...

Mike Davis, Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the imagination of disaster (New York: Metropolitan Books, 1998).
December 22, 2001... The dust has settled, at least temporarily. The convulsions shaking Los Angeles in the early 1990s--riot, fire, earthquake, recession--largely subsided by the end of the decade. Meanwhile, city boosters and area real estate developers scored...

How would you like an El Camino? U.S. perceptions of Mexico in two recent Hollywood films.
December 22, 2001... With a hunch that they might find something "newsworthy," North American media giants CNN, ABC News, America Online, and Time magazine (all part of the Time/Warner mega-conglomerate) recently sent reporters to various sites along the nearly two...