The Rise Of The Border Culture And What It Means For Today's Southwestern Communities. By Emil Franzi Border Visions: Mexican Cultures of the Southwest United States, by Carlos G. Velez-Ibañez (University of Arizona Press, 1996). Paper, $19.95 THE BORDER BETWEEN the United States and Mexico, now patrolled so earnestly, was just a line on a map until about 60 years ago. Nobody cared who--or what--went back and forth. In other words, there once was free trade with Mexico, and Velez-Ibañez, a native Arizonan currently the Dean of the College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences at the University of California at Riverside, with a UA doctorate in anthropology, tells us what happened to it and why. Velez-Ibañez was born in Nogales, Arizona, in 1936. His family was divided between Arizona and Magdalena, Sonora, where his grandfather once made wagons which he sold to the Ronstadt family of Tucson at the beginning of the century. They didn't need a treaty. Border Visions explains the unique Mexican-border cultures, but there is no way they can be grasped without greatly expanding our knowledge of all the cultures composing our Southwestern heritage. Velez-Ibañez first employs his anthropological skills to explain the movement of populations from south to north that has transpired for more than 2,000 years. The movement of peoples from East to West is a newer phenomenon. The book is a fascinating combination of anthropology, history, sociology, and political science. While it deals mainly with the Arizona border area, much is obviously applicable elsewhere. And if there is an overall sense one gets reading the stories and anecdotes, it's a sense of foreboding, the perception that a noose is tightening, that walls are going up, that fences now exist where they were neither needed nor wanted. This truth is revealed in a style totally lacking in rancor or hyperbole, both of which would often be warranted. We are told, at times almost peripherally, about the many indignities a proud people have suffered. For example, we learn there were as many single mothers in the last century as in this one, but for different reasons, not the least of which was the high casualty figures, a consequence of a frontier society constantly warring with native populations, often Apaches armed by Anglos to reduce the Mexican population. Women working in department stores, cowboys and miners had different pay scales, both here and sometimes in Mexico, with Anglos receiving double or more the wages of Mexicans performing the same work. This practice occurred in Tucson well into the 1960s with laundry workers and other blue-collar occupations. The author also clears up one troublesome detail about our land-use history: So much of Arizona is, or was, federal land not because those who ran this state and nation were conservation minded, but to negate the large Spanish and Mexican land grants covering much of the state prior to the American conquest. The federal ownership was simply land nationalization, designed to remove the Mexican owners. Some of the exploiters were Mexicans themselves, who made book with "the man," as always happens when a culture is conquered by foreigners (try the Church of Ireland). Pima County and the rest of the Gadsden Purchase were part of that conquest--the "purchase" was an offer Mexico couldn't refuse, and Santa Anna ripped off the proceeds. (It seems more than appropriate that this area started off as a land swindle.) One long-time Tucsonan, a conservative Republican, stated after reading this book that she now understands why Mexicans have a right to dislike gringos. But Velez-Ibañez doesn't merely tell a sad tale of oppression, he describes a pattern of survival; and, in so doing, he brings us all closer. He illustrates the strength of a proud culture in many ways, from family anecdotes to historical trends, the formation of the barrios and the rise of the mural in preserving cultural identity in the face of burgeoning urbanization. Border Visions is one of the more relevant books to appear on the Southwest in years. It's highly recommended to anyone who wants to understand how this valley and many more communities came to be the way they are.

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