SOUTHWESTERN HISTORICAL QUARTERLY最新文献

Reviewed by:

• Cattle, Cotton, Corn: A History of Central Texas Middle-Class Ranches, 1880–1930by Watson C. Arnold
• Richard B. McCaslin

Watson C. Arnold was a medic in Vietnam and then became a prominent physician in Fort Worth, in his native state of Texas. Approaching retirement, he took courses in history at TCU and wrote a dissertation about his family members who operated farms and ranches in Central Texas. That study became this book, which should become an essential building block for broader studies of agriculture in the Lone Star State.

Arnold discovered that some of his relatives had kept the daily business records of their operations, as well as those of their fathers and grandfathers. Others were eager to talk, adding their personal stories to bring the dry records to life. He quickly amassed a “mother lode” (p. xi) of information on the Caufields, Cavitts, Footes, and Youngs, but this is not a family history. Instead, it is a case study of how these families coped with economic and social change in a state [End Page 465]and region shifting its primary financial focus from agriculture to technology. Arnold’s ancestors mostly began as subsistence farmers, then became ranchers, cotton farmers, grain producers, and finally livestock raisers again. Different family members raised sheep, cattle, pigs, cotton, corn, wheat, milo, and maize. Many of these choices marked changes in epochs as the railroad came, markets fluctuated, and technology advanced. The shift from cotton to grain after World War II, of course, was also greatly influenced by negative factors such as boll weevils, cotton root rot, and droughts.

The story begins when, as part of a broader migration of Scotch-Irish Presbyterians across the South, Arnold’s ancestors began arriving in Texas about 1834, with other relatives joining them over the next two decades. Some did well, investing in land, slaves, and cotton, as well as sheep, cattle, pigs, and horses. Others focused more on livestock, either cattle or sheep, and subsistence crops, representing the other end of the southern antebellum economic spectrum. After the Civil War, during which most of them stayed in Texas, cattle provided the means for economic recovery. Arrival of the railroads, with the building of new towns such as McGregor in McLennan and Coryell counties, led to the installation of barbed wire fences and windmills as beef production changed. It also led many more to plant cotton. Meanwhile, some of Arnold’s ancestors continued to raise sheep, aided by connections with textile mills

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• Mexican Americans in West Texas: The Borderlands of the Edwards Plateau and the Trans-Pecosby Arnoldo De León
• Alex Mendoza

Preeminent Tejano scholar Arnoldo De León provides a much-needed study that fills a historical gap in the Mexican-American history of Texas with this work. It explores the story of people of Mexican descent from colonial times to the modern era in West Texas, highlighting their contributions to the region and perseverance in the world around them. De León maintains that the story of Mexican Texans in the Edwards Plateau and Trans Pecos regions is just as valuable, if not more so, than that in the cradle of Tejano history along the Texas-Mexico border and in South Texas. This is not new. De León has maintained this premise in articles and edited works during the previous six years. Yet, his study is a culmination of his earlier research and conveys the most thorough account of Tejanos in the western part of the state.

De León traces the history of Tejanos in West Texas chronologically, from the period of the first arrival of Spanish pobladoresin the 1600s to the impact of the twenty-first century. But this is not a standard year-by-year account of Mexican American history in the region. Rather, there is quite a bit to investigate in each chapter. The subjects that readers can explore, arranged thematically with helpful subheadings, range from labor and religion to the significant question of accommodation, a recurring theme of De León’s which maintains that Anglos and ethnic Mexicans found common ground to interact despite disparate cultural and “racial” backgrounds. Through the use of economic alliances, the need for frontier defense, and interethnic marriages, the two groups forged ahead by accommodating to a common purpose of perseverance.

The author argues that West Texas is different from the rest of the Lone Star State, with which most lifelong residents would agree. This influenced how Mexican Americans in West Texas forged their communities For instance, the tensions that came with the spillover of the Mexican Revolution, 1910–1920, did not have as significant an impact on the region, adding to the complexity of Tejano history and reinforcing how it is not as monolithic as people assume. Significantly, De León suggests that even the violence and racism present in the era of lynching in the early 1900s, known as “ la matanza,” was different in West Texas, where the prejudice and discrimination derived from western customs and values, in contrast to th

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• Continental Reckoning: The American West in the Age of Expansionby Elliott West
• Matthew Babcock

In Continental Reckoning, historian Elliott West presents a compelling, expansive, and exceptionally well-written history of the American West, placing it in both national and global contexts, from the 1840s to the 1880s. Historians commonly refer to the period from 1865 to 1900 as the “Age of Transformation” because of the dizzying social, economic, and political developments occurring across the United States in that era. West contends that the nation’s transformation began much earlier and was intensified by the discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill and the acquisition of California and the Southwest in 1848, when the West was born “as a region” (p. xix). Rejecting an east coast-driven, Civil War-centric conception of American history, West employs his Greater Reconstruction thesis, convincingly arguing “The Civil War and the birth of the West” were linked and equally important for understanding the cascading changes in “national life” from the mid-1840s to 1880 (p. xx). Offering insights into everything from hydraulic mining to locusts, West’s book is significant for its extraordinarily rich synthesis of California and Great Plains history during this age of expansion.

West’s well-researched twenty-three-chapter study is divided into three chronological sections. Part I, “Unsettling America,” describes the “continental unsettling” that the nation experienced from 1845 to 1865, fueled by westward territorial and economic expansion, violence against ethnic minorities and native peoples, and the Civil War (p. 2). During that conflict, the federal government asserted firmer control over the West, the author posits, by turning back the Confederate invasion of New Mexico and subduing and confining Native Americans. The next two sections primarily address the postbellum era to the 1880s. Part 2, “Things Come Together,” shows how the United States government constructed an infrastructure of roads, railroads, and telegraph wires across the West, binding it to the nation and facilitating its exploration and scientific study. Einally, Part 3, “Worked into Being,” focuses on the exploitation of western resources and the region’s environmental and scientific transformations through ranching, agriculture, and mining.

Any historian looking to update and enliven their lectures on the nineteenth-century American West, particularly on California and the Great Plains, will find a mother lode of material here. Readers learn that San Eranci

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• Under the Cap of Invisibility: The Pantex Nuclear Weapons Plant and the Texas Panhandle by Lucie Genay
• Terry Furgerson

As the Cold War recedes into the past, it increasingly falls under the purview of historians. This includes author Lucie Genay, a professor at the University of Limoges in France. In this book, Genay examines the controversies surrounding the Pantex ordnance plant, located near Amarillo, Texas. Established in 1942 to build conventional bombs, during the 1950s it began to assemble atomic weapons. The plant was an economic boon for the area, creating large numbers of jobs in a location where employment opportunities were limited. However, the secretive nature of the work meant that the public knew few details about the facility. Some residents felt uncomfortable with the fact that nuclear weapons were being built nearby, while others believed that the plant was a likely target for an attack by the Soviet Union. But economic benefits combined with a sense of patriotism to sustain local support for the plant. Panhandle residents treated Pantex like the elephant in the room; ever present but seldom discussed. Genay refers to this as a "cap of invisibility," a phrase she credits to Grace Mojtabai, who authored an earlier work about Pantex. (p. 7)

This cap was maintained for decades, but public discussion of Pantex increased during the 1980s. Debate over the proposed production of the neutron bomb led to protests outside of the Pantex facility. From there the arguments continued. The winding down of the Cold War led to a consolidation of weapons facilities, and Pantex faced the possibilities of either closure or expansion. The former would harm the local economy, while the latter might boost employment. But an expansion would involve the dismantling of nuclear warheads and the recycling of the plutonium within them, with the accompanying hazardous waste. Battle lines were soon drawn between those who favored expansion and those who had environmental concerns, such as the possible contamination of the underground aquifer that sustained local agricultural.

These controversies are the focus of this social and intellectual history. In nine chapters this book explores the motives of various groups and their positions on the possible expansion of Pantex. For religious leaders it was a debate on morality, while farmers were anxious over environmental issues. Local business leaders looked through an economic lens, while workers worried about safety and health issues concerning hazardous materials. Each chapter

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• New Mexico's Moses: Reies López Tijerina and the Religious Origins of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement by Ramón Gutiérrez
• Maggie Elmore

Perhaps no Mexican American civil rights leader's legacy is more contested than that of New Mexico's Reies López Tijerina. A land rights activist, religious leader, indefatigable defender of the poor and disposed, and mastermind of an armed takeover of a federal courthouse, López Tijerina's story reveals complexities of the Chicano Movement. López Tijerina was simultaneously an activist and religious visionary. It is this intricate story Ramón Gutiérrez seeks to capture in his deeply researched biography.

Even those familiar with López Tijerina and the land rights movement in New Mexico will find something new in this volume. There is much to celebrate about this book. Gutiérrez shifts our attention from civil rights activism in California and Texas to civil rights activism in New Mexico. In [End Page 366] so doing, he makes land rights a central issue of the Chicano Movement. He likewise links López Tijerina's work as a faith leader and his efforts to establish a faith community to his political activism. Indeed, as Gutiérrez shows, these cannot be separated. Scholars and students of Southwestern history will find this an important intervention.

New Mexico's Moses puts religion at the center of the Mexican American civil rights movement. Like Rudy Busto in King Tiger: The Religious Vision of Reies López Tijerina (2005) and Lorena Oropeza in The King of Adobe: Reies López Tijerina (2019), Gutiérrez argues that Tijerina's evangelism informed his activism. Gutiérrez joins a small but growing number of scholars in Latinx history such as Felipe Hinojosa, Delia Fernández, Anne Martínez, Lloyd Barba, and Lilia Fernández who use religion as a lens for understanding Latinx community formation and social movements.

Gutiérrez is not the first historian to argue for a scholarly look beyond Catholicism to Pentecostalism to see the imprint of religion on the Mexican American civil rights movement. Daniel Ramírez and Lloyd Barba have also argued for increased attention on the relationship between the Chicano Movement and charismatic Christianity. Where Gutiérrez's work shines is in its deep dive into López Tijerina's religious visions.

Finally, it is impossible to talk about Reies López Tijerina without considering his crimes against his family members. There is a real moment of reckoning both in the a

Reviewed by:

• Steeped in a Culture of Violence: Murder, Racial Injustice, and Other Crimes in Texas, 1965–2020 ed. by Brandon T. Jett and Kenneth Howell
• Vincent Giardino

The editors and authors of Steeped in a Culture of Violence took on a perilous task for historians and academics: exploring the not-so-distant past. Many readers will have vivid memories of, and perhaps strong opinions concerning, events discussed in this book. However, if newspapers provide the first draft of history, this collection serves as a useful second draft. The contributors provide a detailed account of the reasons for, responses to, and early outcomes of Texas' present battle against violent crime. The collection is well-sourced and free of political bias.

The editors provide a concise review of violence in Texas, from native behavior before Cabeza de Vaca walked across the state up to the early 1960s. The contributors focus on their topics in turn: murder, intimate partner violence, hate crimes, racial violence, urban gangs, prison violence, and mass shootings—confining themselves to the last 55 years. One important chapter covers intimate partner violence, which has seen a dramatic shift in attitudes from the beginning of the studied period through today. Ashley Baggett details the work of early advocacy groups [End Page 361] and the slow transformation from the unspoken "private matter between a husband and wife" to the later understanding of the generational nature of intimate partner violence, and how it spreads beyond the home into the community. Another fascinating chapter is Mitchel Roth's survey of violence in the Texas prison system. He reviews the evolution from the previously denied practice of using older, more violent inmates as proxy guards to the cliques fighting for control of today's prison yards, and the homemade weapons used along the way.

The editors chose the mid-1960s as the starting point of this book but omit any review of the effects of deinstitutionalization and the broader understanding of mental illness and its impact on violent crime. County jail facilities have since become the largest mental health care centers in their communities, and the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) says more than a third of inmates in state and federal prisons have a history of mental illness. Professionals in law enforcement and criminal law can attest to the nexus between mental illness and violent crime. Though it is not always well-tracked or understood, better t

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• Historic Buildings of Waco, Texas by Kenneth Hafertepe
• Maggie Valentine

To those who can see beyond the atrocities of the Branch Davidians, the pop culture of the Dr. Pepper Museum as a cultural institution, and the current trendiness of Magnolia, the city of Waco, Texas, holds a treasury of 19^th-20^th-century architecture that reflects both national and regional trends. Professor Kenneth Hafertepe captures this history and demonstrates how to research it, in a well-documented sequel to his history of domestic architecture of the city. In contemporary photographs and solid text, the author reveals the built history of the city and demonstrates how both the history and the passage of time affect the present experience. As an architectural historian, he shows an appreciation of order, classification, and integration that is never sentimental, but connects the past and present.

Hafertepe draws heavily from primary and contemporary sources—how places were seen in the past, combined with beautiful contemporary photographs, showing how the buildings have changed with time, and accompanying text highlighting what makes them special and significant still. He uses primary sources, citations, and historical documents to great advantage, including Sanborn maps, guidebooks, and previous scholarship. The text supplements and complements the images, so they are more than coffee-table memories, but seen as vestiges of history still vital to the evolving urban context.

The city of Waco was laid out in 1849 and named for the native American village of Tawakoni (later spelled Hueco by the Spaniards) who first settled the site on the Brazos River, until they were driven out by the Cherokees who razed the existing settlement. It was famous in Anglo history as a frontier town with gambling halls, hotels, and a Methodist church. It was the site of race riots in the 1860s; an important stop on the cattle trails for the next two decades, playing a vital role in the Texas cotton industry; and a case study of urban renewal as a part of HUD's Model Cities program. It has been home to the bucolic Baylor University since 1886, the oldest university in Texas.

The architecture of Waco reflects almost every style and trend in post-Civil War American architecture, from early skyscrapers to Georgian Revival, Spanish American Revival, Mission Revival, and Regional Eclecticism, as well as some nice surprises. There is a wonderful homage to San Antonio's Mission San Jose done in 1928–1931 by Roy E. Lane, a surviving (although modified) Hippodrome movi

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• For the Sake of the Song: Essays on Townes Van Zandt ed. by Anne Norton Holbrook and Dan Bellar-McKenna
• Joe W. Specht

When Fort Worth native Townes Van Zandt died of a heart attack at age 52 in 1997, he already had a devoted following. In the twenty-five years since his passing, the awareness of his talents has continued to swell far beyond the Red River and Rio Grande. The subject of two biographies plus documentaries, tribute albums, and the like, Van Zandt's catalog is available via music streaming services and back in print on 180-gram vinyl. Sacred Bones, a specialty label, has even released six of his early albums on 8-track tape, much to the delight of retrogradehipsters.

And now there is For the Sake of the Song: Essays on Townes Van Zandt. In the editors' words, an "eclectic collection … intended [not] only for scholars [but also for] enthusiasts of Van Zandt and the modern singer-songwriter tradition." (p. 6). Indeed, Townes is an exemplar, the personification, if you will, of the modern singer-songwriter … with a distinctive Texan flavor. Not to be forgotten is the romanticized public image of the tragic troubadour whose personal demons inspired his art while at the same time enabling the substance abuse that resulted in his death.

The chapters in the collection are wide-ranging. Brian T. Atkinson provides a succinct overview of Van Zandt's recorded legacy, along with a brief review of books and films on the subject. Robert Earl Hardy focuses on Townes as "poetic songwriter" and the diverse influences on his work ranging from Robert Frost to Lightnin' Hopkins. Ann Norton Holbrook deconstructs the role that gender plays in several of Van Zandt's compositions. And Jim Clark takes a similar literary approach in his chapter, "Macabre and Mirth."

In separate chapters, musicologists Dan Beller-McKenna, Nathan Fleshner, and Travis D. Stimeling probe Van Zandt's oeuvre within the context of minor and major modal scales, its rhythmic and metric complexity, and the use of 1960's pop production practices on the early albums. Blase S. Scarnati explores how Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard's version of the Van Zandt classic, "Pancho and Lefty," and accompanying [End Page 375] music video added another dimension to appreciating the spirit of the song.

Bruce Quaglia examines Van Zandt's history of mental illness, comparing it with two other similarly-affected legends of the Austin music scene, Daniel Johnston and Roky Erickson. And in the final chapter, Norie Guthrie selects Van Zandt-r

Reviewed by:

• Battle for the Heart of Texas: Political Change in the Electorate by Mark Owens, Ken Wink, and Kenneth Bryant Jr.
• Joel Webster

It is often hard to go a week without seeing an article or a pundit offering an overreaction to potential political changes in Texas. This is [End Page 369] why three scholars from the University of Texas at Tyler—Mark Owens, Ken Wink, and Kenneth Bryant Jr.—collaborated with the Dallas Morning News to assess the many political implications of changes in the Texas electorate in recent years. In addition to county- and state-level voting data, their discussions focus on 23,750 interview responses taken between 2018 and 2020.

This data allows them to track any changes in voter's mindset across broad political issues that one would expect, like immigration, gun laws, or responses by Republicans to the Covid-19 pandemic. However, their examination of how the complexities of a vast and diverse Texas affect the mindsets of voters is their best work. They show the impact of race/ethnicity, urban vs. rural, and geographical differences that all make the future of Texas politics a complex game of navigating these various and competing voter groups that all possess their distinct needs, problems, and expectations.

There are, however, some concerning occurrences throughout the book. Only five pages in, readers are confronted with historically questionable and incorrect facts surrounding "three key elections" where "Texas split from the Solid South." For the 1872 election they oversimplify the target of Texas's votes—Horace Greeley—who did not run only as a Liberal Republican, as they assert, but also ran as the Democratic candidate. More troublesome is the statement that "in 1928, Texas was the only Southern state to vote for Herbert Hoover (R) over Al Smith (D-NY)." Texas was far from alone among Southern states; Florida, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia also voted for Hoover. Finally, in 1948 Texas did not break with the Solid South (at least in its usual application) and sided with most of the region to support the Democratic nominee, Harry S. Truman, instead of supporting the Dixiecrats.

This is a worrisome way to start a book that centers on Texas politics and political change. Such mishandling of the past might stem from their limited engagement with other scholarly works about Texas politics. The focus is largely on the notion of Texas being only a Southern state without speaking more to the uniqueness of the forces that have shaped it as part of the American

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• These Ragged Edges: Histories of Violence along the U.S.-Mexico Border ed. by Andrew J. Torget and Gerardo Gurza-Lavalle
• Trinidad Gonzales

These Ragged Edges: Histories of Violence along the U.S.-Mexico Border edited by Andrew Torget and Gerardo Gurza-Lavalle provides a chronological overview of violence along what is today the U.S.-Mexico border from the early nineteenth century to the present. Most of the chapters focus on the Texas-Mexico border. All the chapters provide important insights that contribute to our understanding of the forces that shape border violence. The only defect of the book is that one author engaged in a marinization of another scholar's work through non-citation.

Torget and Gurza-Lavalle stated that the aim for their collection was to provide a structural understanding that illuminates circumstances that create and perpetuate violence on the border. They refer to the chapters as "case" studies (p. 6) that should be viewed collectively to find the "evolution of conditions" (p. 9) for why violence occurs, as opposed to the view that violence is "endemic and natural" (p. 9) to the border.

The collection is divided into four parts. In "Livestock, Markets, and Guns" three chapters focus on how weak sovereign control and the United States' market economy contributed to livestock theft and smuggling. From the U.S.-Mexico War to the post-Civil War period, the lack of state control over the newly created boundary allowed Comanches and other livestock rustlers to commit cross-border theft and find sanctuary from prosecution on either side. Of historiographic note is Joaquín Rivaya-Martínez's rejection of Hämäläinen's imperial desires and DeLay's vengeance explanation for Comanche raiding in Chapter 2. Instead, he argues Comanche raiding resulted from economic opportunity.

The second section, "State Power in Transition," examines the rise of strongmen. Interestingly, Alice L. Baumgartner rejects Miguel Ángel González-Quiroga's intra-ethnic cooperative violence thesis by focusing on the issue of citizenship as disrupting cooperation. J. Gabriel Martínez-Serna [End Page 358] ends this section noting the Porfiriato did not monopolize violence during its early phase, as traditionally understood.

The third section "Violence at the Turn of the Century," centers on state-sanctioned violence. Brandon Morgan examines the Santana Pérez insurgency against the Díaz regime during the late nineteenth century, and Sonia Hernández uncovers the tra