Title List
Author: Kimberly Moore Buchanan
Southwestern Studies No. 79
ISBN: 0-87404-154-6
6x9, 60 pg., paper, Photos, maps, biblio.
$15.00
"Apache Women Warriors" challenges the popular literature and film stereotype of the passive Indian woman. Apache women were able to assume a variety of roles which gave them more prestige and freedom than most of their eighteenth and nineteenth century female counterparts. They were the main providers for their families, could attain and use supernatural power, and participated in raids and wars.
A major portion of the study centers on Lozen, a warrior, said to have been the unmarried sister of the famous Warm Spring Apache chief Victorio. She allegedly possessed amazing supernatural powers and was an excellent equestrian and fighter. Only in the last fifteen years has Lozen emerged as a figure of interest in native American history.
Women warriors were a relatively small, but by no means miniscule, faction among native Americans. Their accomplishments call for a revision of the erroneous popular belief that characterizes native American women as passive characters in American history.
"The subject of women warriors is an esoteric one that has long cried out for the sort of skillful research and deft narrative touch she [Buchanan] brings to the topic." (Southwestern Historical Quarterly)
Boer Settlers of the Southwest
Author: Brian Du Toit
Southwestern Studies No. 101
ISBN: 0-87404-197-X
Paper, 94 pg. photos, appendices, biblio.
$12.50
Following the Anglo-Boer War, large numbers of malcontents would not, or could not, return to the land of their birth. In what emerged as the Afrikaner diaspora, some emigrated to Argentina, others to East Africa, and a third group settled in the American Southwest. Most of the latter became farmers in the Texas-New Mexico area. Raised in the Boer tradition in South Africa, Brian Du Toit recounts the cultural background of these early settlers. In "Boer Settlers of the Southwest," he traces the family traditions and provides genealogical charts for the Viljoen and Snyman families.
First settling in Chihuahua, Mexico, most of the Boers moved north into the English-speaking regions where they established farms and excelled at grain and vegetable farming rather than ranching. The settlement held together for a number of decades but gradually dissolved as economic conditions necessitated other forms of employment.
One of the leaders, and a person who left a lasting imprint on the Mesilla Valley, was General Ben Viljoen. Locally he introduced farming innovations and modernized irrigation, preparing for water from Elephant Butte Dam. He was a delegate in negotiations for New Mexico statehood, involved in the Mexican revolution, and was Mexico's representative to pacify the Yaqui Indians in Sonora. Viljoen and other Boers firmly established the production and marketing of local produce in emerging towns such as El Paso.
Brian Du Toit grew up in South Africa, earning an M.A. degree at the University of Pretoria and completing his doctoral studies at the University of Oregon. He has conducted fieldwork among Native Americans, in the highlands of New Guinea, among settlers in Argentina and on various subjects in South Africa. His studies and publications have been concentrated on urbanization, drug studies, aging, and migration. Extensive travels have served to satisfy an insatiable appetite for "other cultures."
Author: Alfonso Toro, adaptation by Frances Hernández
ISBN: 0-87404-247-X
Cloth, 7 x 10, 525 pp., 2002
$50.00
The Carvajals is the historical account of one Jewish family's adventures in the New World. The fascinating gallery of characters, their voyage from Europe to New Spain, their initial business successes, their passions, friendships and intrigues, their networking with other Jews to avoid persecution by the Inquisition, and the ultimate indignities and horrific tortures inflicted upon them by the Holy Office are re-created by author Alfonso Toro in captivating detail.
Mr. Toro, an employee of Mexico's National Archive during the 1930's when this book was written, bases his narrative on exhaustive documented research of inestimable value to students of history and religion, yet his tale is full of life and of the vivid personalities of the characters whose saga he recounts in meticulous and loving detail.
Dr. Frances Hernández's translation of Alfonso Toro's study of the Carvajal family was for her a labor of love. Her untimely death in 1999 prevented the final touches she may have wished, but the work stands as a monument to her dedication.
Civil War in West Texas & New Mexico
Editors: John P. Wilson and Jerry Thompson
Southwestern Studies No. 108
ISBN: 0-87404-283-6
Paper, 6x9, 193 pp., biblio. 2001
$18.00
In 1862, far from the bloodied fields of Virginia and Tennessee, some 2,000 miles west of Washington and Richmond, the Civil War raged in the mountains and deserts of the Southwest. With an army of zealous Texas recruits, many of them in the fullness of their youth, Gen. Henry Hopkins Sibley marched what became the Army of New Mexico across the burning deserts of the Texas trans-Pecos to Fort Bliss. Driving north into the verdant Mesilla Valley, Sibley hoped to overrun the Union adobe bastion of Fort Craig, push up the Rio Grande and seize the supply depot at Alburquerque, raise the Stars and Bars over Santa Fe, and march on Fort Union, another vital supply depot and the gateway to Colorado. The eventual objective of the campaign, as Sibley purportedly told one of his artillery officers, was the eventual conquest of California. "On to San Francisco" was to be the battle cry of Sibley's army of conquest. A continental Confederate States of America stretching from Richmond to San Francisco might well speed diplomatic recognition by Great Britain and France, a vital component, Jefferson Davis realized, for the independence of the infant southern republic.
Civil War in West Texas and New Mexico provides new and exciting details to Sibley's ill-fated and grandiose dreams for a Confederate empire in the Southwest. Of the 147 individual letters the letterbook contains, only eight have been identified as having been published in the Official Records. In particular, the letters show how Sibley organized his small army, enlisted officers at the brigade and regimental levels, and sought to supply it with arms and equipment. In addition, as many as 150 individuals, many of them well known, are named in the letterbook. "This new study makes for important reading for anyone interested in the Civil War."
Between them, John P. Wilson and Jerry Thompson have written or edited over twenty books, as well as countless articles, many of them on the Civil War in the Southwest.
Author: Dorothy Jensen Neal
ISBN: 0-87404-280-1
Paper, 6x9, 135 pg., photos, endnotes 1998
$15.00
The Cloud-Climbing Railroad was first published more than 30 years ago, in 1966. At the time, Dorothy Jensen Neal little anticipated the high level of interest in an almost forgotten chapter in history. The first edition of the book, however, sold out almost instantly, and the book went through several reprintings in the late 1960s. The book has been out of print for several decades, but interest has remained high. In the intervening years, a number of individuals have continued to research the history of the Sacramento Mountain railroads, and new facts have come to light.
When The Cloud-Climbing Railroad was being considered for reprinting, a complete rewrite of the book was considered. However, it was concluded that changing the book would destroy Neal's inimitable style and change the unique flavor of her writing. Thus, the book is being reprinted exactly as it was written in the original edition, and certain situations in the book, particularly as they pertain to individuals, remain frozen in the time frame of 1965.
Cynthia Ann Parker, The Life and the Legend
Author: Margaret Schmidt Hacker
Southwestern Studies No. 92
ISBN: ISBN 0-87404-187-2
Paper, 6X9, 68 pg., photos, biblio.
$15.00
Although Cynthia Ann Parker never recounted her experiences as a captive of the Comanches (1836-60), her story is probably the most familiar of all the pioneer women captured by Indians in the Southwest. Margaret Hacker's five years of research have produced a balanced and dependable account of this tragic story.
"With excellent documentation and bibliography, this compact volume earns a place on the bookshelf of anyone who is interested in probing deeper the settlement of the American frontier." (True West)
"Margaret Schmidt Hacker's slim volume 'Cynthia Ann Parker: The Life and the Legend' is a must if you want to cut through the froth, misinformation and polemics that Parker's life inspired." (The Houston Post)
"...Hacker sought accuracy in an impressive array of published sources, manuscripts, newspapers, census records, and oral histories. As a result, 'Cynthia Ann Parker: The Life and The Legend' is a well-researched and interesting account of an intriguing woman in southwestern history." (New Mexico Historical Review)
Author: Jerry D. Thompson
Southwestern Studies No. 97
ISBN: 0-87404-192-9
Paper, 6X9, 84 pg., photos, map, biblio.
$12.50
During the Civil War, no soldier in Gen. Edward Richard Sprigg Canby's Federal Army did more to help drive the Rebels out of New Mexico Territory than Capt. James "Paddy" Graydon, a pompous but incredibly daring 32-year-old Irishman and veteran of the First Dragoons. Best known to Civil War historians for his witty "mule raid" on the rebel camp the night before the Battle of Valverde, Graydon came to New Mexico as a bugler with the dragoons, fought against the Mescalero Apaches and established a hotel on Sonoita Creek in Arizona Territory. He also became a fierce defender of law and order in the Gadsden Strip and one of the best scouts and Indian fighters in the Southwest before his role as the "eyes and ears" of the Federal Army in New Mexico.
Thompson has drawn on a host of untapped sources to bring to life this flamboyant yet little-known figure who died in a gunbattle at Fort Stanton in 1862 and is buried in the shadow of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in Santa Fe.
"Thompson's brief biography (about half of it deals with the Civil War) is a fast-paced and entertaining look at the personal side of the war in the southwest." (Journal of the West)
Dr. Lawrence A. Nixon and the White Primary
Author: Conrey Bryson
Southwestern Studies No. 42
ISBN: 0-87404-100-7
Paper, 6X9, 92 pg., photos, endnotes
$12.50
"I know you can't let me vote, but I've got to try."
With this simple statement in an El Paso polling place on July 26, 1924, Dr. Lawrence A. Nixon quietly began opening the doors to disenfranchised black citizens of the United States. The late El Paso Historian Conrey Bryson tells that story expertly in "Dr. Lawrence A. Nixon and the White Primary," originally published by Texas Western Press in 1974. This revised edition contains a new introductory essay by Bryson.
Dr. Nixon, a physician and respected El Pasoan, had voted regularly over a period of years. Since the black community of El Paso represented a three percent minority in the city, its vote constituted no political threat. But when the time came to test a 1923 Texas law which took voting privileges away from blacks, Dr. Nixon was willing to file the historical lawsuit.
He came to El Paso in 1910, the same year he had joined the fledgling NAACP. Fourteen years later he and his attorney, Fred Knollenberg, cooperated with the NAACP in taking the case of Nixon vs. Herndon to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote the opinion in a unanimous ruling in favor of Dr. Nixon.
Twenty years were to pass before Dr. Nixon's pathmaking legal challenge would completely open the door to the black franchise, and the gentle El Paso physician, who died in 1966, would live to see most of the work accomplished.
Edge of the West and Other Texas Stories
Author: Bryan Woolley
ISBN: 0-87404-214-3 cloth, $25.00
ISBN: 0-87404-216-X paper, $15.00
6x9, 220 pg.
Twenty-four true Texas stories include subjects as diverse as H. Ross Perot, Doak Walker, Roy Orbison, Barefoot Sanders, Ralph Yarbrough, playing poker with the poker champion of the world, visiting Washington on the Brazos, and following the Trail of Beers en route to the Texas OU game, by one of the state’s great journalists and novelists.
"Bryan Woolley is more than a journalist, he’s someone who likes other people, loves Texas and is a heck of a good writer. This collection will draw you into Texas, whether you’re already there or not." (Dallas Morning News)
El Paso: A Borderlands History
Author: W. H. Timmons
ISBN: 0-87404-246-1
Paper, 6 x 9, 473 pp., photos, illustrations, bibliography, index, 2005
$40.00
This fine study of El Paso's life and times, then, is worthy of the city's long and fascinating history. Anyone interested in El Paso or in the larger border region that it dominates, whether resident or outsider, scholar or general reader, will find that W.H. Timmons' El Paso is the first book they will want to consult.—David J. Weber, Dedman Professor of History, Southern Methodist University
Dr. Timmons received his graduate degree from the University of Chicago and the University of Texas at Austin. He is a professor emeritus of history at the University of Texas at El Paso where he taught from 1949-79.
Author: Earl Lovejoy, revisions by William C. Cornell
Second Edition, Revised
ISBN: 0-87404-065-5
Paper, 6x9, 66 pg., photos, biblio.
$15.00
Since 1980, when "El Paso’s Geologic Past" was first published, this book has been popular with El Pasoans and visitors alike interested in the unusually rich geologic setting of the El Paso community. In this new edition, the text has been updated by William C. Cornell, Ph.D., of the University of Texas at El Paso Geology Department. New photographs have replaced the originals, the self-guided tour is revised, and a brief discussion of the Rio Grande Rift--a major geologic feature only begining to be recognized in 1980--is added, along with an updated bibliography.
In 1965, Professor Lovejoy joined the geology faculty of Texas Western College (Now the University of Texas at El Paso) where he remained until his death in 1981.
Elfego Baca in Life and Legend
Author: Larry D. Ball
ISBN: 0-87404-223-2
Paper, 6X9, 146 pg., photos, map, biblio., index
$15.00
New Mexico's Elfego Baca (1865-1945) earned a place in Southwestern legend in 1884 as a young deputy of Socorro County.
In the town of Frisco he held off a gang of rioting cowboys for thirty-six hours, killed four of the gang, wounded eight others, and walked away without a scratch. But there was more to Baca than this sensational and celebrated incident.
He rose in his accidental profession of law enforcement to a political career that lasted half a century. He served as sheriff of Socorro County, practiced law, operated a detective agency ("Discreet Shadowing Done," his business card read), published a Spanish language newspaper, La Opinion Publica, became associated with the Victoriano Huerta movement in the Mexican Revolution, and engaged in real estate and mining speculation.
"Ball, a history professor at Arkansas State University, presents a factual and full account of one of the Southwest's most extraordinary figures." (Abilene Reporter-News)
"...readers who are particularly interested in the outlaws and the lawmen of the southwest, Ball's works are the definitive sources on this subject for the late 19th and 20th centuries. An example is this monograph on a notable lawman of the New Mexico Territory." (The Tombstone Epitaph).
The Fighting Padre of Zapata: Father Edward Bastien and the Falson Dam Project
Editor: María F. Rollin
Southwestern Studies No. 110
ISBN: 0-87404-285-2
Paper, 6 x 9, 265 pp., biblio., 2003
$18.00
Father Edward Bastien was known in each of his South Texas parishes as a priest who would happily join in his parishioners' latest plumbing or electrical battles at home at the same time that he worked toward their spiritual well-being at church. But only when he arrived in the poor border town of Zapata, soon to be flooded by the building of the U.S.-Mexico Falcon Dam, did his tenacious efforts to help his parishioners fight the battle of their lives earn him the honorary moniker of the Fighting Father of Zapata.
When Father Bastien realized that a series of bureaucratic mix-ups and power struggles at the federal level would keep his parishioners from being fairly compensated for their long-held family homes and property, he began one of the most prolific and determined letter-writing campaigns to affect such a project before or since. With equal parts wit and unbending courage, Bastien wrote a deluge of letters to the likes of then U.S. Senate Lyndon B. Johnson and even President Eisenhower, both of whom eventually responded to his humble yet persuasive pleas. At the same time he kept a steady stream of letters flowing to the Laredo Times under the pen name I. POZ, which stood for Irate People of Zapata.
Maía Rollin knew Father Bastien when she was a child. He gave her family a copy of his Zapata letters interspersed with his personal musings and anecdotes of the events of that time. Later Rollin realized that this man's manuscript is a humorous yet powerful personal account of bureaucracy gone amok, of poor South Texans forced into a diaspora, and of a priest who was willing to fight for the temporal as well as the spiritual needs of those who had no voice. This is his story.
María Rollin has a diploma of Hispanic Studies from the University of Madrid, Spain. She holds an M.A. in Spanish from the University of Texas at Austin and an M.A. in Applied English Linguistics from the University Texas at El Paso. She has taught Spanish and English in Spain and Spanish in Japan. She currently teaches Spanish and English as a Second Language at Laredo Community College, Laredo, Texas.
Author: Marcos E. Kinevan
ISBN: 0-87404-243-7
Cloth, 6x9, 450 pg. biblio. 1998
$35.00
The author uniquely presents an informative and lively narrative of frontier army life of a black regiment in the late 1870s through the chronicles of John Bigelow, a young Cavalry lieutenant in Texas. The book addresses the arduous life of these "Buffalo Soldiers" often stationed in small, ramshackle posts in the hottest areas of the country. Kinevan also examines the attitudes towards black soldiers and how these changed when black and white soldiers fought common foes side by side.
Generations and Other True Stories
Author: Bryan Woolley
ISBN: 0-87404-235-6
Cloth, 6x9, 295 pg.
$25.00
This third collection of true stories from award-winning journalist and novelist Bryan Woolley includes the deeply moving title story "Generations," originally published in Redbook magazine, as well as feature stories and personality profiles from the Dallas Morning News. In this volume of twenty-five pieces, Woolley explores Dashiell Hammett's San Francisco; recalls the lost golden age of Mineral Wells, Texas; returns to the site of a mysterious 1947 crash, believed to be a UFO, in Roswell, New Mexico; and attends a "bulldogging" school in Madisonville, Texas.
He meets such people as Kinky Friedman, musician and mystery writer; talks to the residents of Alpine, Texas, about their famous newcomer, Robert James Waller, author of "The Bridges of Madison County"; and mourns the retirement of cartoonist Gary Larson.
"Generations and Other True Stories" is vintage Woolley; warm, funny, evocative and wise. This is a welcome addition to "The Edge of the West and Other Texas Stories" and "The Bride Wore Crimson and Other Stories."
Guadalupe Mountains, Island in the Desert
Author: W. C. Jameson
ISBN: 0-87404-232-1
Paper, 6X9, 94 pg., 30 photos and maps, biblio.
$15.00
Jameson has compiled the first comprehensive overview of the rugged Guadalupe Mountains. This book provides thousands of visitors to the Guadalupe Mountains National Park and the people of the Southwest the fascinating story of this rugged area in Far West Texas. Chapters include:
- Geologic origins, the massive tectonic forces that sculpted the mountains.
- Early explorations.
- Encounters with Lt. Howard B. Cushing and the Mescalero Apaches.
- Profiles of early settlers.
- The precarious ecological balance between mankind and wildlife, predators, and livestock
- Folktales of lost and buried treasure.
Home Country: An Elroy Bode Reader
Author: Elroy Bode
ISBN: 0-87404-244-5
Cloth, 6x9, 450 pg. 1998
$30.00
This anthology, spanning the author's thirty-year writing career, draws from some of Bode's popular early works as well as some pieces not previously published in book form. These "word portraits" trace his growing up in the Hill Country of Central Texas and his experiences as a teacher at Austin High School in the border region of El Paso/Juarez.
Imagining Texas: Prerevolutionary Texas Newspapers, 1829-1836
Author: Carol Lee Clark
Southwestern Studies No. 109
ISBN: 0-87404-281-4
Paper, 6 x 9, approx. 193 pp., biblio., 2002
$18.00
Texas-big, rugged, independent, rebellious--few states evoke such immediate reactions with the mention of their names. Texas--gun toting, maverick spirited, patriotic. But why did those images become part of the legend that surrounds Texas and how did the word spread?
Between 1821-1836, Texas belonged to the state of Coahuila and Texas, Mexico; fought for independence from Mexico; established itself as an independent country; and became the twenty-eighth state of the United States of America. In the middle of this turbulent period, in 1829, Godwin Brown Cotton established the first permanent press in Texas. The Texas Gazette was a largely promotional press used to communicate Stephen F. Austin's reports of the status of Texas to the Mexican government, to recruit new settlers, and to provide news and entertainment to the people of Texas.
Nine days after the first shot of the Texas Revolution was fired in October 1835, the "unsinkable" Telegraph and Texas Register went to print. Established with the intention to promote the "accumulation of wealth and consequent aggrandizement of the country," the paper quickly became the news source for the events of the revolution.Contained in these early newspapers are the images that continue to define our perception of Texas. Author Carol Lea Clark delves into how the settlers, fragmented, independent, competitive, and the publishers of the papers "wrote Texas" into existence. Read the original "tall tales," accounts of life on the "highly favored . . . earth, where the God of nature has scattered choicest blessings," as well as news of the surrender of the Spanish army in Mexico and the seeds of the revolution through the introduction of Mexican troops into Texas.
This is the birth of mythic Texas.
Carol Lea Clark's interest in early Texas newspapers comes from her family heritage. Her great-grandfather, Montgomery Lafayette Hair, published a weekly newspaper beginning in 1886 in Cornhill, Texas, now a ghost town near Austin. Her grandmother, grandfather, father, and mother also published weekly newspapers in Texas. Clark's earliest memories feature printing presses, linotypes, and typewriters at her parents' newspaper in Pilot Point, Texas. In addition to her academic career, Clark has written for newspapers and magazines, making her a fourth-generation Texas journalist/writer.
Clark holds a Ph.D. in rhetoric and composition from Texas Christian University and is an associate professor at The University of Texas at El Paso.
Inflationary Studies for Latin America
Editors: Cuauhtémoc Calderón Villarreal and Thomas M. Fullerton, Jr.
ISBN: 968-7845-20-1
Paper, 6x9, 168 pp., biblio. 2000
$12.50
This book contains a series of theoretical, empirical, and descriptive studies regarding inflation in Latin America. All of the chapters are reprinted from refereed academic journals. Coverage includes countries such as Colombia, Ecuador, and Mexico, with overview material provided for all major South American economies. Methodologies utilized encompass univariate and multivariate time series analyses, as well as small and large econometric systems of equations.
Cuauhtémoc Calderón Villarreal is Profesor of Economics at Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad Juárez (UACJ). He also serves as Director of the Graduate Program in Economics at UACJ. A member of the Sistema Nacional de Investigadores of the National Council on Science and Technology in Mexico, Calderón is a Fullbright Professor of Economics at the University of Texas at El Paso.
Calderón also manages a regional ecnomic research project for the National Council on Science and Technology in Mexico. Additionally, Calderón directs an international colloquium series sponsored by the government of France and University de Nice Sophia-Antipolis. Calderón is an advisor to the Department of Budgets and Planning for the State of Chihuahua.
Tom Fullerton is an Assistant Professor of Economics & Finance, University of Texas at El Paso. Fullerton previously held positions as Senior Economist at the University of Florida Bureau of Economic and Business Research, International Economist at Latin America Service of the WEFA Group (formerly known as Wharton Econometrics), and Economist in the Executive Office of the Governor of Idaho. At WEFA, Fullerton was in charge of modeling, forecasting, and policy analysis for the South American economies of Colombia, Ecuador, and Venezuela. His research has been published in academic journals in Asia, Africa, Europe, North America, and South America.
Into the Far, Wild Country: True Tales of the Old Southwest
Author: George Wythe Baylor
Text illustrations by José Cisneros
Cover painting by Tom Lea
ISBN: 0-87404-237-2
Cloth, 6X9, 450 pg., photos, maps, biblio., index
$30.00
Jose Cisneros: An Artist's Journey
Author: John O. West
ISBN: 0-87404-231-3
Cloth, 8x11, 195 pg., photos, b&w and color illus., appendices, biblio.
$50.00
Winner of the Historical Society of New Mexico’s Ralph Emerson Twitchell Award for significant contribution to history in the area of fine arts and allied professions and the Border Regional Library Association Southwest Book Award.
This book is about the life and work of an extraordinary man and artist, El Paso’s legendary wizard of pen-and-ink, Jose Cisneros. Cisneros’ works have been exhibited throughout the United States and in Mexico City. His remarkable horses and horsemen, his first love as subjects, were the subject of a 1984 book from Texas Western Press, "Riders Across the Centuries," a book still in print and among the Press’s all time best selling productions.
In "Jose Cisneros: An Artist’s Journey", the artist’s long time friend, John O. West, has written the most extensive biography extant and, with the artist’s cooperation and blessing, has compiled a retrospective collection of Cisneros works--magazine, newspaper and book illustrations, calligraphy, cartography, sculpture, even stained-glass.
John O. West is a professor of English at the University of Texas at El Paso, a noted folklorist and author.
Jose Cisneros has done for the vaquero (cowboy) his mounts and gear related to the vast southwestern border country, as much or more than Charles M. Russell did for the Montana west. Cisneros’ work is of the highest order. This book is a wonderful overdue tribute to a master. (Max Evans).
This truly beautiful book is graced with hundreds of Cisneros’ drawings, and the text by his friend of 30 years, John West, exudes warmth and love for this exceptional human being. (Book Talk).
Juan Cortina and the Texas-Mexico Frontier, 1859-1877
Editor: Jerry D. Thompson
Southwestern Studies No. 99
ISBN: 0-87404-195-3
Paper, 6X9, 108 pg., photos, maps, endnotes, appendices, biblio.
$12.50
Texas folklorist J. Frank Dobie, in his "Vaquero of the Brush Country," called Juan Nepomuceno Cortina "the most striking, the most powerful, the most insolent, and the most daring as well as the most elusive Mexican bandit, not even excepting Pancho Villa, that ever wet his horses in the muddy water of the Rio ravo."
"Juan Cortina and the Texas Mexico Frontier, 1859-1877" is the story of an illiterate Brownsville ranchero who rose to become a rugged and fearless frontier "caudillo" and governor of Tamaulipas.
Jerry Thompson has compiled the first schorlarly work on Cortina in 40 years. Using nine of Cortina's pronunciamentos," Thompson sees his subject as more than a "social bandit," someone who simply reacted to the evils of a racist society that suppressed the Mexican-Texans socially, economically and politically.
Thompson says, "He shot the Brownsville marshal, ambushed Texas Rangers, captured the U.S. mail, defeated the Matamoros militia, battled the U.S. army, harassed the Confederate Army, ambushed French Imperialists, attacked Mexican liberals, and fought anyone who dared get in his way."
Thompson shows Cortina to have been among the most important political and military figures on the border during much of the 19th century, a folk-hero to many Tejanos and Mexicanos, a man whose disputed legacy remains an integral part of the history of both Texas and Mexico.
"...he [Thompson] provides extensive introductory notes as well as a collection of documents pertaining to the career of the colorful and controversial border figure Juan Nepomuceno Cortina....Each pronouncement is preceded by an individual introduction explaining the historical context which produced it and its source. The pronouncements provides the reader with a good indication of why the historical interpretations of Cortina have varied so dramatically....this collection will be of interest to students of Texas and Mexican history...." (Southwestern Historical Quarterly)
Ma Kiley: The Life of a Railroad Telegrapher
Author: Thomas C. Jepson
Southwestern Studies No. 104
ISBN: 0-87404-275-5
Paper, 6x9, 100 pg.,photos, endnotes, biblio. 1998
$12.50
A moving and personal account of the life story of Ma Kiley, a Texas-born railroad telegraph operator who worked as a "boomer" in the American West, Mexico and Canada in the early 1900s. This book also provides a background on telegraphy, a little known area of women's work and the struggle these women faced on gaining access to the field of telegraphy and in trying to establish their own identities.
Making of a Mexican American Mayor: Raymond L. Telles
Author: Mario T. Garcia
Southwestern Studies No. 105
ISBN: 0-87404-276-3
Paper, 6x9, 187 pg., photos, endnotes, biblio 1998
$12.50
Based on newspaper sources and extensive oral histories, this biography examines the political career of Raymond Tellez, the first Mexican American mayor of El Paso. Tellez' political career began in 1948, when he won a hotly contested election for county clerk. The author details the life of the most significant Mexican American politician in El Paso's history.
Mario T. Garcia is a native of El Paso, Texas, and a Professor of History and Chicano Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of "Desert immigrants: The Mexicans of El Paso, 1880-1920" and "Mexican Americans: Leadership, Ideology and Identity, 1930-1960."
March to Monterrey: The Diary of Lt. Rankin Dilworth
Editors: Lawrence R. Clayton and Joseph E. Chance
Southwestern Studies No. 102
ISBN: 0-87404-198-8
Paper, 6x9, 100 pg., paper, illustrated, biblio.
$12.50
The March to Monterrey:The Diary of Lieutenant Rankin Dilworth, U.S. Army A Narrative of Troop Movements and Observations on Daily Life with General Zachary Taylor's Army During the invasion of Mexico, from April 28, 1846 to September 19, 1846
This diary documents the sights and sounds of the beginning of the Mexican War, as observed by young Rankin Dilworth, an officer recently graduated from the United States Military Academy. Dilworth's first entry of April 28, 1846, is from the garrison at Jefferson Barracks; his last entry of September 19, 1846, is from Monterrey, Mexico. As a member of Zachary Taylor's Army, Dilworth led his company of the 1st Infantry in an attack on the fortresses scattered along the eastern side of the city. Dilworth documented his transit down the Mississippi River to New Orleans, his travel by Gulf steamer to Brazos Santiago, and the long, hot trek overland to Monterrey. In the attack of September 23, 1846, on the eastern side of Monterrey, Dilworth was mortally wounded by a cannonball, but lingered on in agony just long enough to learn that American forces had captured Monterrey. He died on September 27, 1846.
The diary contains his observations of the Mexican cities of Matamoros, Reynosa, Camargo, and Cerralvo and how they appeared in 1846.
NAFTA and the Maquiladora Program
Editor: Van V. Miller
ISBN: 0-87404-304-4
$33.00
For those who find the U.S.-Mexico border and its legends to be stimulating, the beginnings of the Mexican Maquiladora Program can best be visualized in a dusty border town along the Rio Grande (known as the Río Bravo in Mexico) during 1966. That was the first full year of the program, which had been sanctioned by a countervailing Mexican presidential decree in late 1965. The legend is not wrong, but it fails to capture the complex fullness of the MMP. That fullness cannot be appreciated without the realization that the program is actually a bi-national institution. To function, it has required specific rules, defined routines, and hybrid governance structures on both sides of the border. The most fundamental rule has dealt with tariffs and their assessment. Without special tariff treatment from the United States for products assembled off shore, the MMP could have never begun.
In practice, the MMP was an export processing zone that was initially along the border but then quickly expanded to the whole country. By the late 1980s, its growth and future seemed secure; however, in 1994 NAFTA became the institutionalized trading regime for North America and stipulated the demise of the MMP in 2001. Why? The logic was straightforward-an export processing zone with zero tariffs is quite redundant inside a free trade area, also with zero tariffs. Nevertheless, 2001 has come and gone, and the MMP has still not disappeared. Why and how it remains are the questions that this book addresses in its examination of the MMP and NAFTA-two international institutions with competing claims on legitimacy.
Van V. Miller holds an M.B.A. from the University of Missouri as well as an M.A. in Latin American Studies and a Ph.D. in International Business from the University of New Mexico. He was awarded a Fulbright Research Fellowship to Central America during 1988.
NAFTA negotiations and the Mexican Maquiladora Program have been Miller's main research interests since 1991, and NAFTA and the Maquiladora Program: Rules, Routines, and Institutional Legitimacy represents a milestone in those efforts. He continues to study and write about labor practices in maquilas and is also engaged in a joint effort to compare and contrast off-shoring outcomes. Miller was appointed to the board of the International Sustainable Development Research Society in 2006 and is researching the feasibility of maquiladora industrial parks evolving into eco-industrial parks.
Reaching Out ∕ Dame la Mano: Utilization of Mental Health Resources in El Paso and Mexico
Authors: Guido Barrientos and Harmon Hosch
ISBN: 0-87404-240-2
Paper, 6x9, 167 pg., biblio 1998
$15.00
University of Texas at El Paso psychology professors Barrientos and Hosch, the authors of this bilingual edition, conducted a survey as part of their research to identify the types of stress-producing problems experienced in urban families and the extent to which they utilized mental health professionals and facilities as resources to help them cope with stress.
The survey conducted in El Paso, a bilingual/bicultural city located on the border of the United States and Mexico, included not only families of Hispanic origin, but also those of Anglo-American origin, allowing for important cross cultural comparisons. The survey also extended to Mexico and similar data was obtained from residents of Guadalajara and Saltillo, giving the authors much-needed cross-national comparisons.
Interestingly, the survey revealed that Hispanics in the United States underutilized mental health services, more so than their Mexican counterparts.
Red, White, and Green: The Maturing of Mexicanidad 1940-1946
Author: Michael Miller
Southwestern Studies No. 107
ISBN: 0-87404-278-X
Paper, 6x9, 227 pg., endnotes, biblio 1998
$15.00
Avilacamachismo guided Mexican culture and politics from 1940-1946, placing Mexico among the world's leaders in the sponsorship of the arts during that period. With the election of Manuel Avila Camacho as president of Mexico in 1940, a philosophy of cultural nationalism, known as avilacamachismo and which embraced popular and high levels of culture, took root in the country. In the six years of its existence, avilacamachismo funded and supported a national film industry, a national ballet, a national symphony orchestra, art exhibits, museums, a publishing industry, and a wealth of creative citizens. In Mexico's commitment to the arts was the underlying principle of national unity.
Avilacamachismo appealed to the youth of Mexico. The movement was aimed at citizens under the age of fifty and was led by individuals in state positions who were often closer in age to forty than fifty. Artists became the basis of a mass-media effort to redefine the country's culture. Radio-aired music reinforced and encouraged a youthful and stylish redefinition of Mexican national identity which complemented and enhanced the new nationalism being built upon unity, internationalism, and industrialization. Films that portrayed values and virtues consistent with those of the avilacamachismo were subsidized.
This golden age in Mexican culture marked a time of tolerance: women, youth, opposing opinions and lifestyles were accepted in the state's quest for national unity and identity. Michael Nelson Miller holds a Ph.D. in Latin American history and is the director of the Center for Higher Education Ministry at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Austin, Texas.
Riders Across the Centuries: Horsemen of the Spanish Borderlands
Drawings and text by José Cisneros
Biography by John O. West
ISBN: 0-87404-209-7
Paper, 8 x 11, 199 pp., 3rd printing, 2002
$35.00
This third printing of "Riders Across the Centuries", first published in 1984, demonstrates the enduring nature of José Cisneros' art. Cisneros fans will agree with Paul Rossi, former director of the Gilcrease Institute of American Art and History, who says that the artist is "beyond any doubt, the leading authority in the country, concerning the many varied horsemen of Spanish American history and the horsemen of our own Southwest."
In addition to being a visual celebration of Cisneros' art, "Riders Across the Centuries" is a testament to the late Carl Hertzog, whose genius as a typographer and book designer is recognized internationally, and whose advice concerning this book was indispensible.
Dr. John O. West, author of the Cisneros biography in this book, is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Texas at El Paso.
Winner of 1985:
- Western Heritage Wrangler Award for best art book, National Cowboy Hall of Fame and Western Heritage Center
- Westerners International Board Special Recognition "for beautiful, artistic detail and definitve research"
- Award of Merit, Western Books Exhibition sponsored by the Rounce & Coffin Club of Los Angeles
- Southwest Book Award of Border Regional Library Association
Sacred Violence, Vols. 1 and 2
Vol 1: Cormac McCarthy's Appalachian Works
Vol 2: Cormac McCarthy's Western Novels
Editors: Wade Hall and Rich Wallach
ISBN Vol 1: 0-87404-249-6
Paper, 6x9, 179 pp., biblio. 2002
ISBN Vol 2: 0-87404-248-8
Paper, 6x9, 231 pp., biblio. 2002
$30.00 each or $51.00 for both
In response to the rapidly growing critical interest in one of America's leading authors, twelve brand new essays and articles have been added to the original set of critical articles from the 1993 First Conference on Cormac McCarthy in this revised double edition of Sacred Violence. In volume I, which concentrates on McCarthy's Appalachian-based works, New York Times best-selling author Robert Morgan recalls the emotional impact that watching The Gardener's Sun had on him and its subsequent impact on his decision to write prose. Mike Gibson introduces you to the real-life east Tennesseeans McCarthy recasts into the unforgettable supporting characters of Suttree, and Caroline Morris considers the toxic impact of hubris in The Stonemason.
In Volume II, which focuses on the Western novels, Harold Bloom, one of the preeminent literary critics of our time, discusses McCarthy's use of language and landscape in Blood Meridian, Nick Monk and Jay Ellis offer complex analyses of the epic Border Trilogy, Raymond Todd reflects upon the Film of All the Pretty Horses and Edwin Arnold reevaluates the importance of The Orchard Keeper as a preliminary crafting of future McCarthy themes and character.
Other articles include eminent historian Richard Marius's keen reminiscences of Suttree's Knoxville, the city he and McCarthy inhabited as children; author/artist Peter Joseph's meditation on reading Blood Meridian aloud; and Dianne Luce contributes a trenchant character study of All the Pretty Horses' John Grady Cole. Other distinguished scholars examine issues of violence, religious imagery, the tradition of black humor, the remarkable characters--like Blood Meridian's Judge Holden--and the idiosyncratic styles of McCarthy's novels and dramatic works.
San Elizario: Spanish Presidio to Texas County Seat
Authors: Rick Hendricks and W. H. Timmons
ISBN: 0-87404-242-9
Cloth, 9x9, 200 pg., photos, endnotes, biblio 1998
$35.00
The beautiful cloth-bound book, "San Elizario: Spanish Presidio to Texas County Seat" by Rick Hendricks and W. H. Timmons traces the colorful history of this small town near El Paso, Texas. This is a captivating look at this rapidly growing town that began as a presidio and evolved into the town of San Elizario, which became El Paso's county seat. Through county records, the authors reveal the struggle of the Mexican-American leadership in San Elizario as it faced the problems of incorporation, crime, taxes, schools and an inadequate water supply.
Showtime! From Opera Houses to Picture Palaces in El Paso
Author: Cynthia Farah Haines
$45.00
"From the wild-west saloons through vaudeville, opera, silent movies, talkies, and finally the golden age of cinema, El Paso was the “Broadway of the Border.” Cynthia Farah Haines’ "Showtime!" describes the entrepreneurs, actors, promoters, audiences (all both American and Mexican), the buildings, the deals, the politics, and the society that constituted, supported, and enjoyed El Paso’s rich variety of theatres." -- Conrey Bryson
Author: Bryan Woolley
ISBN: 0-87404-238-0
$18.00
"Some Sweet Day" is the story of the Turnbolt family in 1944, as told by six year old Gatewood Turnbolt, the eldest son. His relationship with his father, Will Turnbolt, a volatile, sometimes violent man, is a combination of wariness and love.
"Without wasting a well-chosen word, Mr. Woolley fills in family ties, relationships with neighbors, the tone of the country. He suggests a raison d' être for Will's bitterness if not for his brutality. And he gets it all together in a commanding novel of childhood that surges with life." (New York Times Book Review)
With this new Southwestern edition, "Some Sweet Day" comes home to Texas to take its place with the well-beloved classics of the great Southwest.
Texas Kickapoo: Keepers of Tradition
Author: John Gesick, Jr.
Photography: Bill Wright
ISBN: 0-87404-239-9
Cloth, 12x9,150 pg., duotones, biblio.
$45.00
Bill Wright’s new photographic study continues his series on American Indian tribes in Texas. Historian John Gesick contributes a historical essay that tells the story of the tribe’s migration from the woodlands of the northeast to the deserts of Texas and Coahuila, Mexico.
Wright and Gesick followed the Kickapoo during the summer as they worked as migrant farm workers and to their sacred homeland of Nacimiento, Coahuila, where they still live in traditional wickiups and practice the religion of their forefathers.
Among the many highlights of the text, is a Kickapoo story in the oral tradition, relating Col. Ranald MacKenzie’s raid into the Kickapoo hunting camp near Remolino, Mexico, in 1873--a story never before in print; a description of the Kickapoo social infrastructure, detailing the construction and meaning of their dwelling, language, religion, and political organization in Texas and Mexico; a recounting of Wright’s and Gesick’s experience when they accompanied three young Kickapoos on a hunt and the significance of deer to the tribe.
The Kickapoo of Texas pride themselves in safeguarding their traditions amid the overwhelming momentum of western culture. Historical photographs of the tribe collected from family albums as well as from national museum collections document the visual history, and Bill Wright’s contemporary photographs illuminate the present life and culture.
Mary Cristopher Nunley, Ph.D., anthropologist and Kickapoo scholar, in her introduction to "The Texas Kickapoo" provides an insight and understanding into the Kickapoo culture.
Tiguas: Pueblo Indians of Texas
Text and Photography by Bill Wright
ISBN: 0-87404-229-1
Cloth, 12x9,161 pg., duotones, biblio.
$40.00
Winner of the Border Regional Library Association Southwest Book Award.
Abilene photographer Bill Wright worked among and studied the Tigua Indians of Ysleta, Texas, for more than six years, making his own distinguished images and collecting documentary photographs of the tribe from among the Tigua themselves and from sources across the United States. His research in their history, his interviews with Tigua leaders, tribal members, and his magnificent collection of photographs, rare historical pictures and his own incomparable contemporary images, combine to make a unique modern study of these, the oldest Texans. Included is an extensive bibliography of sources and a list of Tigua tribal officers and members.
"This book demonstrates a powerful sense of identity among the Tigua represented here." (Heritage)
"Another book that was sorely needed one beautifully and sympathetically produced." (Book Talk)
Editors: Rebecca Carver and Adair Margo
ISBN: 0-87404-234-8
Cloth, 8x11, 185 pg., photos, b&w and color illus. appendices, biblio.
$50.00
Winner of Border Regional Library Association Southwest Book Award
Tom Lea, internationally known artist and author, in early 1994 recorded a series of interviews with Adair Margo for the University of Texas at El Paso's Institute of Oral History. In the spring, a retrospective exhibition on his art work was held at the El Paso Museum of Art, UTEP's Centennial Museum, and the Adair Margo Gallery.
This book, developed from the interviews and illustrated by exhibition pieces and photos from Lea's personal collection, serves as Lea's autobiography.
Born in El Paso in 1907, Lea was the son and namesake of the city's mayor. In the early days of World War II, he became a war correspondent for Life magazine, executing paintings of action in the North Atlantic, the South Pacific, China, North Africa, and Europe. Lea's career thereafter involved both painting and writing, on a variety of subjects but generally reflective of his roots in the Southwest. He has won recognition in both fields and his art work is in permanent collections nationwide. Lea's brief autobiography, A Picture Gallery (Little, Brown, 1968), has been out of print for many years. This new book is the first extensive autobiography with the retrospective exhibition pieces spanning his career.
Craver is the director of the Institute of Oral History at UTEP, and Adair Margo, a lifelong friend of Tom Lea, owns and operates the Adair Margo Gallery in El Paso.
Vietnam War: Its History, Literature, and Music
Editor: Kenton J. Clymer
ISBN: 0-87404-277-1
Paper, 6x9, 195 pg., endnotes, biblio 1998
$15.00
In March 1996, "A Public Symposium: The History, Literature and Music of the Vietnam War," was held at the University of Texas at El Paso. Nationally renowned experts on the Vietnam War offered lectures, poetry readings and music related to this turbulent era in American history. Although more than twenty years have passed since America's involvement in Vietnam, the participants in this symposium put forth deeply passionate and moving analyses of the topics they addressed.
The Vietnam war: Its History, Literature, and Music is a compilation of the papers presented at the symposium. They cover a broad range of themes and ideas, but the overall thematic unity in all of these works is the trauma the war caused, both in Vietnam and the United States. James Fallows opened the symposium with reflections on the impact the war had on major American Institutions. William Duiker and Ngo Thanh Nhan addressed on the effects the war had on Vietnam itself. Sandra Taylor explores the role of American and Vietnamese women who took part in the war. Phillip Beidler and Ray Pratt, in their surveys on the literature and music of the war, also confront the war's impact on Americans. W.D. Ehrhart and John Balaban, who are among the best writers the war produced and both veterans, contribute deeply personal reflections on how the war affected them.
Zack Lamar Cobb: El Paso Collector of Customs and Intelligence During the Mexican Revolution 1913-1918
Author: John F. Chalkley
Southwestern Studies No. 103
ISBN: 0-87404-199-6
Cloth, 6x9, 100 pg. biblio. 1998
$12.50
An illuminating examination of a period in history and the role Zach Lamar Cobb played in the United State's military involvement in the Mexican Revolution. In addition to serving as the El Paso collector of customs, Cobb also acted as an intelligence agent for the Department of State. His role as an intelligence agent brought him in contact with Pancho Villa, Alva Obregon, the future president of Mexico and General John J. Pershing, and his intelligence reports often influenced American policy during this turbulent era in U.S.-Mexico history.