New Mexico Books

Jackson's book uses the community of Cochabamba as a case study to examine life in rural Bolivia from colonial times to the present. Relying on archival materials from Cochabamba to develop his analysis, Jackson challenges the tendency to portray Andean natives as hapless victims of modernity. His examination of agrarian, economic, political, and demographic history clearly demonstrates that peasant natives of Bolivia have played, and continue to play, an active role in that nation's development.

Much like Nils Jacobsen's excellent book, Mirages of Transition: The Peruvian Altiplano, 1780-1930, Jackson's book depicts a highly resilient peasant population that continues to flourish despite centuries of exploitation and displacement. This book is an example of how to do research using rural archives. It is a must-read for students of Bolivia and the Andes generally in addition to those interested in demographic or economic history.

Architect Thomas L. Lucero and scholar Thomas J. Steele, S.J. present Religious Architecture in Hispano New Mexico, a slender yet detailed study of the structure and architecture of churches. Setting forth a classification system that can prove most helpful when comparing distinct types of Hispanic religious architecture in New Mexico, Religious Architecture in Hispano New Mexico is filled with black-and-white diagrams and photographs as well as extensive text description, historical summaries, and more. A thoroughly researched and invaluable guide for architecture students, designers, and scholars seeking to better understand the form, purpose and function of Hispanic New Mexican places of worship.

Roque Dalton met Miguel Marmol in Prague in 1966. Marmol had survived a firing squad in 1930 after being arrested along with 18 other Communists suspected of organizing the rebellion of poor peasants in western El Salvador. Over ten thousand peasants were killed by the El Salvadoran military in putting down the uprising. One of the persons killed by the military was Farabundo Marti. A later group of rebel guerillas in El Salvador named itself after him. One of the government death squads during the civil conflict in El Salvador in the 1970s and 1980s named itself after the general who was president in 1932 directing the brutal reaction to the rebellion which became known as "Matanza," the massacre.

The three authors on university faculties investigate the development, use, and effects of political symbols in the historical events of El Salvador. The military which had seized power in El Salvador only two months before the uprising held on to its power for another fifty years. After the journalist and poet Dalton wrote a book on Marmol from a series on interviews, Marmol, along with the executed Marti, became a symbolic focal point for the domestic and the international opposition to the tyrannical military rule in El Salvador. Dalton's 500-page work on Marmol first published in Costa Rico in 1972 was "one of the earliest examples of testimonial literature, a genre of international proportions that emerged primarily out of Latin America during the civil conflicts of the 1970s and 1980s." Parts of Dalton's book based on the Marmol interviews, other writings of Dalton's, and documents from other authors and sources are recorded in the appendix of about 100 pages.

The work is not basically one of historical fact-finding. For the facts of the Matanza are well-known, and are not disputed by either side of the long-running civil conflict in El Salvador. The authors interest is how each side came to view the 1932 insurrection as it did. Each side developed opposing interpretations; which interpretations were rationales and justifications for its actions during the long conflict. The anti-government forces of the Communists and others found inspiration and encouragement in Marmol's story as written by Dalton. This especially calls for attention since it is not the "official" record. The government forces would as soon have had the rebellion and massacre covered up and forgotten about. But the memory was kept alive by survivors and strengthened years later when Marmol's memoir written by Dalton was published. Though the two met by chance in Prague, as these coauthors show, the resulting memoir along with the memory of the deadly events which had been kept mostly in silence played a key role in eventually ending El Salvador's military dictatorship.

The writings of Diego de Vargas, commander of the re-conquest of New Mexico after 15 years of terror following the revolt of 1680 are now available in English. This book is a must for anyone interested in New Mexico history. This is history straight from the source through the eyes of the man who created the history.

It's a pity this elegant book is now out of print, since it traces the artistic evolution of Mark Klett, one of our foremost American landscape photographers. Combining his knowledge of geology with his interest in photography, Klett saw himself originally as a direct artistic descendant of great 19th Century American photographers such as Carleton Watkins and Timothy O'Sullivan. Indeed, one of his earliest projects was to photograph again the same locales these photographers photographed during their work as official photographers to several U. S. government scientific surveys. Klett's work shows a deep affection and appreciation of the American landscape, especially the Southwest. Yet it is also a series of cautionary visual tales noting how we have inadvertently ruined that landscape through pollution and other signs of human activity. Hopefully this splendid book will be published again soon.

McAllister Hull had a distinguished career as a nuclear physicist and university administrator but in the fall of 1944 he arrived at Los Alamos to work as an explosives technician. His story of how that happened gives a view of the Manhattan project different from the well told histories of the eminent scientists and military leaders. Hull knew who Oppenheimer and Groves were but his role was a niche producing critical chemical explosive components at the more isolated S-site. For that matter he knew Klaus Fuchs with out any idea of the Soviet connection.

That Hull was a scientist to the depths of his psyche is apparent when he describes his thoughts while careening down a hill driving a truck with failed breaks: "I knew that if even a slight misalignment occurred, the truck would translate its forward momentum into a rotation about an axis across the road."

The book is tantalizing in its brevity as when he alludes to Edward Teller during the Oppenheimer hearings: "He helped a petty man, Lewis Strauss, to harass a man better than either of them." The memoir is a quick summary by someone who had a view of the birth of atomic weaponry from the nuts and bolts up through a thorough comprehension of the underlying theory. It adds to the understanding of how the great wealth of technical talent was put together in the remote New Mexican country side and managed to achieve the unimaginable.

Illustrations by the author's son round out the mid-century feel of the narrative and the bibliography has Hull's comments on nine of the more important accounts of the development of atomic and hydrogen bombs.

Jan Reid has composed a unique anthology of writing on one of the two great southwestern rivers in his book "Rio Grande." Its main fault, if it has any, is that it is much too short. I could argue with the selections, but found them all of note and so would prefer more, rather than changing the ones Reid used in this book.

I grew up along the other great southwestern river, the Colorado. Both rivers originate in the Rocky Mountains and wind through canyons between mountains in the desert, one reaching the Gulf of California and the other the Gulf of Mexico. Both have fascinating geology, biota and human history. Reid is primarily concerned with the latter. From the beginning of the river in the San Juan Mountains in Colorado to its mouth (if you can call it that) between the border cities of Brownsville, Texas and Matamoros, Mexico, he brings us samples of fiction and non-fiction about the great Río de las Palmas, Río Bravo del Norte or, as we Norte Americanos know it, the Rio Grande (pronounced " Rio Gran" in much of Texas). Modern and relatively modern authors from John Nichols ("The Milagro Beanfield War") and Paul Horgan ("Great River") to Woody Guthrie ("Seeds of Man") and James Carlos Blake ("In the Rogue Blood") and older writings, such as John Reed's "Insurgent Mexico" (1914) and Robert T. Hill's "Running the Cañons of the Rio Grande" (1901), all cast their spell and the spell of the land through which the Rio Grande travels, even if it is sometimes not as nice as we would like it to be.

The most heart-rending chapter is "Ciudad de la Muerte" by Cecilia Balli. This chapter is about the three hundred women murdered in the border city of Juárez, over the last ten or so years. As I live only about 50 miles north of the border between El Paso, Texas, and Juárez, Chihuahua, I have some personal interest in these monstrous crimes. I am quite happy that we forbade our children to ever go across the border when they were in their teens, despite the fact that all of the victims so far have been Mexican and our kids were decidedly American. Also several teenagers who crossed the border (especially at night) have gotten into major trouble. I just don't trust the situation and Balli's essay really gets to the heart of that fear of the border city. Still, I have crossed the border on a number of occasions, but only a few times at Juárez.

Despite all this the border lands and the Rio Grande have a rich history and culture. Reid has caught this, but I still would like more. Where is La Llorona, the wailing woman, who morns the children she allowed to drown in the river or the Confederate invasion up the Rio Grande of New Mexico in 1861? Both center on the river and both have a lot of local color. Still, I guess it is better to be left asking for more than wishing you had not read the book in question!

I highly recommend this book for anyone wanting to gain some of the historical and literary flavor of this once great river, now polluted and tamed, squeezed, like the Colorado, of nearly every drop, before it finally reaches the salty waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

Full of great ideas for a host of diverse rides! The author has a voice that reaches out and describes each ride. All rides include a precise description of elevations, views, interests, etc.

From El Planeta Platica Lawrence Taylor and Maeve Hickey's The Road to Mexico (University of Arizona Press, 1997) offers a delicious narrative and evocative photos on the blue highways stretching from Tucson, Arizona to Magdalena de Kino, Sonora. "The Old Nogales Highway is a road, like the fabled Route 66, shares in an American romance different from that of that of the interstate. Here, the up-to-date sits awkwardly, unstylishly cheek by jowl with the embarrassingly eccentric and the downright ugly." (p. 58) Proving that travel is best enjoyed when it's not rushed, the authors take time to talk to the people who live in the Sonoran Desert. Anthropologist Taylor quotes a wide range of people from American Automobile Association clerks "Lots of cars get stolen down there" to muralists to cattle ranchers. The book finds its voice in this regional chorus and turns its focus on picturesque characters, such as the U.S.-borne mariachi who won't cross the borderline: "Fernando was not about to risk the Mexico of his imagination, of his mariachi, by penetrating that border. He would consider flying over it, landing in the center of the nation, in the Guadalajara of Mariachi Vargas, but Fernando Sanchez was not going to take the road to Mexico." (p. 9)

I grew up spending weekends and long vacations in the town of Ruidoso, New Mexico, and I thought I knew everything about the place. Then, one day I got my hands on a copy of this book and devoured it with absolute pleasure. Do you know the story of the haunted hotel that stood where Bonito Dam now stands? Do you know the speculations about the dissapearance of Albert Fall at White Sands? Did you ever wonder how the world's finest quarterhorse race came to Ruidoso Downs? Ever wondered what it was like to grow up in a cabin along the Rio Ruidoso? Can't get enough about Billy the Kid? If these questions intrigue you, you NEED this book!