Daniel D. Arreola

RESURGENT MEXICAN PHOENIX

ABSTRACT. Popular impressions of Phoenix, Arizona perpetuate the notion that this metropolitan area is an overwhelmingly Anglo place. We challenge this assertion and demonstrate that the city has substantial Mexican roots and is presently being shaped by a vibrant, resurgent Mexican population. Employing historical records, surveys, and landscape data, we articulate the Mexican character of early Phoenix and highlight how the revival of Mexican Phoenix has transformed the urban landscape. We then relate how Phoenixs Mexican population is a more nuanced regional subculture formed through both historical and contemporary connections with specific Mexican states. We conclude with a call for greater understanding of the internal heterogeneity of Mexicans in the United States and how this can inform our geographical interpretations of the growing Latinization of American cities.

Mexican American exterior murals.

M URAL art became popular in the United States during the great depression, when wall paintings, sponsored by the Federal Arts Program of the WPA, were executed in public buildings across the land.1 Currently mural art has become important on exterior walls of buildings and thus is part of an evolving pattern of street art.2 This essay focuses on these murals as an element of the built environment that lends insight to cultural heritage, preferences, and change in a community. Exterior murals are now distinctive features in many urban landscapes, particularly in Mexican American districts of many cities. Here mural art is not only an artifact that embellishes the barrio landscape but also a vehicle for political and social expressions.3 Art and landscape are not new themes for geographers, but their emphasis has been on traditional art forms like canvas painting. A focus on less traditional forms like exterior murals presents several challenges not usually encountered in conventional studies of landscape art. Mexican American, or Chicano, mural art is relatively recent and not well documented in traditional sources. Much of the data presented here were collected in the field and through interviews with artists and art historians. Because these murals are part of the everyday landscape, they are exposed to the elements and can be ephemeral. Dating murals and ascribing artistry are not always easy tasks. Many early street murals and some recent ones have no date of execution or information about the artists. Whenever the

PLAZA TOWNS OF SOUTH TEXAS

Most towns in south Texas were founded after the area had become part of the United States, yet plazas as traditional Spanish-American features were included in town layouts. The decision to construct a plaza resulted from a strong Hispanic identity among ethnic Mexicans in these communities and from the recognition by influential Anglo-Americans of the forms symbolic role. Plaza towns are more numerous in south Texas than elsewhere in the Hispanic-American borderlands. AS a physical form and social space, the plaza is a common feature of settlements throughout Hispanic America that varies in type, form, and landscape characteristics (Stanislawski 1969; Elbow 1975; Gade 1976). In the borderland region shared by Mexico and the United States, differences of this sort are more pronounced than in Latin America, in part because of the interactions of Hispanic and Anglo-American traditions. This article examines the plaza as a townscape form in the Hispanic- American borderland and shows that the plaza is diagnostic of regional culture identity there, especially in south Texas. Among the issues addressed are why some but not all Hispanic-founded or predominantly Hispanic- populated towns of south Texas have plazas; the nature of plaza variability according to morphology, social function, and landscape characteristic in selected towns; and how plazas have functioned as landmarks of Hispanic identity in the past and the present. The plaza as a symbolic social form can be a telling signature of Mexican American regional variation in the Hispanic- American borderland.

Mexican medical border towns: A case study of Algodones, Baja California

Abstract Health insurance in the United States has become increasingly expensive and unavailable to large numbers of Americans. As a result, many in the U.S. rely on less expensive foreign sources of pharmaceuticals and health services, especially Canada and Mexico. Mexicos proximity to large population centers and communities of elderly winter visitors has resulted in thriving tourist‐oriented medical retailing in several Mexican border communities. This article explores this form of cross‐border retailing by illustrating the spatial distribution of tourist pharmacies across the Sonora‐Arizona border and into adjacent areas of Baja California. We also show the typical distribution of tourist pharmacies within Mexican border communities that draw large numbers of American visitors. To elaborate on the broader spectrum of cross‐border health care retailing, we present a case study of Los Algodones, Baja California, a community that has transformed itself into a hub of health services provision and pharmaceutical retailing.

Photographic Postcards and Visual Urban Landscape

Picture postcards are visual data that have great utility in urban research. This Research Note examines the use and application of photographic postcards to urban landscape analysis through a case study in Agua Prieta, Sonora, Mexico on the U.S. border directly across from Douglas, Arizona. Postcards are especially valuable for visualizing landscape change in cities. Arranged and analyzed systematically, picture postcards permit the researcher to visualize a serial view of people and place, thereby enhancing our understanding of landscape change. Serial visual imagery presents a quality to seeing urban landscape that is difficult to achieve with more conventional historic photographs or from land use data like maps and archival records alone.

Fences as Landscape Taste: Tucson's Barrios

Fences are an important feature in the residential landscapes of Mexican-American neighborhoods in Tucson, Arizona. Initial findings indicate that fences and fence varieties can be used as keys to the identification of Mexican-American households and give evidence of traditional attitudes toward enclosure in the urban landscape.

Placemaking and Latino Urbanism in a Phoenix Mexican immigrant community

Latino immigrants are remaking residential landscapes in Phoenix, Arizona. This case study explores Garfield, a Mexican immigrant neighborhood, where transformations to residential landscape have altered existing community space creating Latino cultural space. Landscape study and visual documentation in Garfield demonstrate how Latino immigrants transform the living environment of a once decayed inner-city neighborhood. Findings suggest that placemaking changes brought by Latino immigrants, particularly residential housescapes, can be a culturally sustainable practice that enhances the neighborhood aesthetic. It remains problematic whether Mexican housescapes can be successfully incorporated into Latino Urbanism because the creation process carries social meaning that is difficult to reproduce.

The Texas-Mexican Homeland

South Texas is proposed as the Texas-Mexican homeland. Twenty-five contiguous counties in this region have populations that are more than half Mexican American. In 1990 a core of 17 counties along the Rio Grande contained over one million people 85% of whom were Mexican Americans. While several cultural elements distinguish this subregion from others in the Hispanic-American borderland, demographic concentration and political heritage are especially telling indicators.

Placing Latino Civic Engagement

This study presents survey data assessing the civic and place engagement of Latino residents of three inner-ring Latino neighborhoods in Phoenix, Miami, and Chicago. We utilize a Latino/a Studies-inspired conceptual framework to assess the civic and place engagement of Latinos on its own terms, rather than as in-transition toward a mainstream or as a variation of Black American patterns of engagement. Although we find levels of sociability and trust to be uniformly high in our study neighborhoods, these social capital building blocks do not necessarily translate into civic and place engagement. Rather, we find civic and place engagement to be high in Pilsen, low in Little Havana, and mixed in Garfield. We conclude by suggesting that Latino/a civic and place engagement is predicated on the full cultural citizenship of Latinos; in addition, we suggest that Latino cultural citizenship is a notion that must become more attentive to place-based differences.

Mexican Restaurants in Tucson

Americans are increasingly electing to eat in Mexican restaurants, especially in the Southwest where Hispanic traditions are strong. This study draws upon survey and directory information in an attempt to analyze the changes in number, distribution and landscape attributes of Mexican restaurants in Tucson, Arizona. It concludes that as Mexican cuisine attracted a greater clientele, the landscape of these restaurants changed to enhance the ethnic character of the establishments.