Episodes

  • Vanessa Fonseca-Chávez and Anita Huízar-Hernández eds., "meXicana Roots and Routes: Listening to People, Places, and Pasts" (U Arizona Press, 2025)

    Vanessa Fonseca-Chávez and Anita Huízar-Hernández eds., "meXicana Roots and Routes: Listening to People, Places, and Pasts" (U Arizona Press, 2025)
    Sep 30 2025
    Community voices are often an underrepresented aspect of our historical and cultural knowledge of the U.S. Southwest. In this episode, we sit down with Vanessa Fonseca-Chávez and Anita Huízar-Hernández, editors of meXicana Roots and Routes: Listening to People, Places, and Pasts (U Arizona Press, 2025). In this collection, established and emerging scholars draw upon their rootedness in the U.S. Southwest and U.S.-Mexico borderlands. The meXicana contributors use personal and scholarly inquiry to discuss what it means to cultivate spaces of belonging, navigate language policies, and explore and excavate silences in various spaces, among other important themes.From the recruitment of Latinas for the U.S. Benito Juárez Squadron in World War II, to the early twentieth-century development of bilingual education in Arizona, to new and insightful analyses of Bracero Program participants and their families, the book details little-known oral histories and archival material to present a rich account of lives along the border with emphasis on women and the working class.As the inaugural publication of the Arizona Crossroads series, readers will find Arizona featured as a central node of borderlands roots and routes. Each section of the book intentionally centers Arizona within broader comparative and cross-state dialogues. Throughout, this volume highlights the ways in which personal experience, community building, and scholarly perspectives can provide a powerful space for community voices.Contributors: Vanessa Fonseca-Chávez Lillian Gorman Gloria Holguín Cuádraz Anita Huízar-Hernández Christine Marin Valerie A. Martínez Alina R. Méndez Karen R. Roybal Yvette J. Saavedra Liliana Toledo-Guzmán Andrea Tovar Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    22 mins
  • Enrique C. Ochoa, "México Between Feast and Famine: Food, Corporate Power, and Inequality" (U Arizona Press, 2025)

    Enrique C. Ochoa, "México Between Feast and Famine: Food, Corporate Power, and Inequality" (U Arizona Press, 2025)
    May 7 2025
    As the birthplace of maize and a celebrated culinary destination, Mexico stands at the crossroads of gastronomic richness and stark social disparities. In México Between Feast and Famine: Food, Corporate Power, and Inequality (University of Arizona Press, 2025), Dr. Enrique C. Ochoa unveils the historical and contemporary forces behind Mexico’s polarized food systems. México Between Feast and Famine provides one of the first comprehensive analyses of Mexico’s food systems and how they reflect the contradictions and inequalities at the heart of Mexico. Ochoa examines the historical roots and contemporary manifestations of neoliberal policies that have reshaped food production, distribution, and consumption in Mexico. Dr. Ochoa analyzes the histories of Mexico’s mega food companies, including GRUMA, Bimbo, Oxxo, Aurrera/Walmex, and reveals how corporations have captured the food system at the same time that diet-related diseases have soared. The author not only examines the economic and political dimensions of food production but also interrogates the social and cultural impacts. As debates around food sovereignty, globalization, and sustainable development intensify globally, México Between Feast and Famine provides a timely analysis that counters conventional narratives about Mexican cuisine. Even as it looks back, this work looks to the future, where more equitable and sustainable food systems prioritize social justice and community well-being. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 hr and 7 mins
  • Radio Broadcasting Along Mexico's Northern Border, 1930-1950

    Radio Broadcasting Along Mexico's Northern Border, 1930-1950
    Apr 17 2025
    Sonia Robles, an assistant professor of history at the University of Delaware, talks about her book, Mexican Waves: Radio Broadcasting Along Mexico’s Northern Border, 1930-1950 (University of Arizona Press, 2019), with Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel. Mexican Waves tells the fascinating history of radio stations entrepreneurs set up along the Mexican side of the Mexico-USA border, primarily to reach laborers working in the United States. Robles covers fascinating dimensions of the radio broadcasting industry, including advertisements that played over the airwaves, how regulation shaped the behavior of radio station owners, and how radio fit into the lives of touring performers. Robles and Vinsel also discuss recent efforts of historians to capture the history of local radio stations throughout North America. Lee Vinsel is an associate professor in the Department of Science, Technology and Society at Virginia Tech. He studies human life with technology, with particular focus on the relationship between government, business, and technological change. His first book, Moving Violations: Automobiles, Experts, and Regulations in the United States, was published by Johns Hopkins University Press in July 2019. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 hr and 16 mins
  • Natasha Varner, "La Raza Cosmética: Beauty, Identity, and Settler Colonialism in Postrevolutionary Mexico" (U Arizona Press, 2020)

    Natasha Varner, "La Raza Cosmética: Beauty, Identity, and Settler Colonialism in Postrevolutionary Mexico" (U Arizona Press, 2020)
    Apr 17 2025
    A close friend and muse of many of postrevolutionary Mexico's greatest artists, Luz Jiménez's likeness appears across Mexico City in the form of painting, photography, and sculpture. Jiménez's ubiquity has earned her the titles of "the most painted woman in all of Mexico" and "the archetype of Indigenous Mexican woman." And yet the details of her complex life as an Indigenous woman at mid century have long remained shrouded by artistic depictions of her face and body. Jiménez's experience of hypervisibility and simultaneous erasure in postrevolutionary Mexico is no anomaly; during the early to mid-twentieth century, Indigenous women were idealized and objectified as relics of Mexico's past as cultural elites sought to manufacture a distinctly mestizo future. The experiences of modern Indigenous women constitute the focus of Natasha Varner's new book, La Raza Cosmética: Beauty, Identity, and Settler Colonialism in Postrevolutionary Mexico (University of Arizona Press, 2020), a vivid recovery of the intersections of settler colonialism, gender, visual culture, and modernity. Varner employs methods from the fields of Native American and Indigenous Studies and settler colonial studies in an innovative new study of postrevolutionary Mexican visual culture. Drawing upon a range of midcentury media - including newspapers, photography, film, postcards and tourism materials, and more - Varner weaves together narratives of visibility, erasure, survivance, dispossession, and identity that ultimately center upon on Indigenous women's experiences and livelihoods. Despite efforts to erase Indigenous women from Mexico's future, La Raza Cosmética impresses upon us a powerful reminder of Indigenous women's persistence in Mexico - at midcentury as well as in the present. Annabel LaBrecque is a PhD student in the Department of History at UC Berkeley. You can find her on Twitter @labrcq. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    41 mins
  • Andrew Canessa and Manuela Lavinas Picq, "Savages and Citizens: How Indigeneity Shapes the State" (U Arizona Press, 2025)

    Andrew Canessa and Manuela Lavinas Picq, "Savages and Citizens: How Indigeneity Shapes the State" (U Arizona Press, 2025)
    Apr 17 2025
    Although Indigenous peoples are often perceived as standing outside political modernity, Savages and Citizens: How Indigeneity Shapes the State (University of Arizona Press, 2025) by Dr. Andrew Canessa & Dr. Manuela Lavinas Picq takes the provocative view that Indigenous people have been fundamental to how contemporary state sovereignty was imagined, theorized, and practiced. Delving into European political philosophy, comparative politics, and contemporary international law, this open-access book shows how the concept of indigeneity has shaped the development of the modern state. The exclusion of Indigenous people was not a collateral byproduct; it was a political project in its own right. The book argues that indigeneity is a political identity relational to modern nation-states and that Indigenous politics, although marking the boundary of the state, are co-constitutive of colonial processes of state-making. In showing how indigeneity is central to how the international system of states operates, the book forefronts Indigenous peoples as political actors to reject essentializing views that reduce them to cultural “survivors” rooted in the past. With insights drawn from diverse global contexts and empirical research from Bolivia and Ecuador, this work advocates for the relevance of Indigenous studies within political science and argues for an ethnography of sovereignty in anthropology. Savages and Citizens makes a compelling case for the centrality of Indigenous perspectives to understand the modern state from political theory to international studies. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s episodes on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    58 mins
  • Kathleen Hull and John Douglass, "Forging Communities in Colonial Alta California" (U Arizona Press, 2018)

    Kathleen Hull and John Douglass, "Forging Communities in Colonial Alta California" (U Arizona Press, 2018)
    Apr 17 2025
    Between 1769 and 1834, an influx of Spanish, Russian, and then American colonists streamed into Alta California seeking new opportunities. Their arrival brought the imposition of foreign beliefs, practices, and constraints on Indigenous peoples. Edited by Kathleen Hull and John Douglass, Forging Communities in Colonial Alta California (University of Arizona Press, 2018), reorients understandings of this dynamic period, which challenged both Native and non-Native people to reimagine communities not only in different places and spaces but also in novel forms and practices. The contributors draw on archaeological and historical archival sources to analyze the generative processes and nature of communities of belonging in the face of rapid demographic change and perceived or enforced difference. Contributors provide important historical background on the effects that colonialism, missions, and lives lived beyond mission walls had on Indigenous settlement, marriage patterns, trade, and interactions. They also show the agency with which Indigenous peoples make their own decisions as they construct and reconstruct their communities. With nine different case studies and an insightful epilogue, this book offers analyses that can be applied broadly across the Americas, deepening our understanding of colonialism and community. ________________________________________________________________________ Ryan Tripp (Ph.D., History) is currently an adjunct in History at Los Medanos Community College and Southern New Hampshire University Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 hr and 17 mins
  • Gregory McNamee, “The Only One Living to Tell: The Autobiography of a Yavapai Indian” (University of Arizona Press, 2012)

    Gregory McNamee, “The Only One Living to Tell: The Autobiography of a Yavapai Indian” (University of Arizona Press, 2012)
    Apr 17 2025
    Late in 1872, as the United States sought to clear the newly incorporated Southwest of its indigenous inhabitants, a company under Capt. James Burns came upon an encampment of Kwevkepayas (a branch of Yavapais) sheltering in the shadow of rock overhang above the Salt River Canyon. The soldiers wasted no time on the formalities of battle. They rained down fire, bullets ricocheting from the roof the cave, felling the refugees below. They even pushed down boulders. None survived. Well, almost none. A few days prior, the advancing soldiers had come across a young boy of eight or nine looking for a missing horse. “They made a rush for me,” Hoomothya would later write. “They pulled me over rocks and bushes. The men didn’t care whether I got hurt or not.” But unlike Burns’ Kwevkepaya siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandfather, the invaders did not kill him. In fact, the man responsible for his family’s extermination would adopt the young Hoomothya as something between a son and a servant, renaming him Mike Burns. Over a century later, the prolific writer and editor Gregory McNamee has brought us Burns’ remarkable story. In The Only One Living to Tell: The Autobiography of a Yavapai Indian (University of Arizona Press, 2012), Burns recounts his survival of the massacre, his time as a scout for the U.S. military on the campaign against Geronimo, his education n white schools, and eventual reconnection with his Yavapai community. “Mike Burns lived in two worlds,” McNamee tell us, “and he was at home in neither.” But his intelligence, humor and compassion illuminates both in profound and unexpected ways. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    49 mins