Los Tucsonenses: The Mexican Community in Tucson, 1854-1941.
By Thomas E. Sheridan. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1986.
Bibliography. Illustrations. Index. Maps. 327 Pages. $22.50.
Reviewed by Richard Griswold del Castillo, Professor of
Mexican American Studies, San Diego State University, author of The Los
Angeles Barrio (1980) and La Familia: Chicano Families in the Urban
Southwest (1984).
This is the first monograph surveying the history of the
Mexican American community in Tucson. The author, Tom Sheridan, has masterfully
collated and analyzed an impressive body of information that has been gathered
by the Mexican Heritage Project, sponsored by the Arizona Heritage Center in
Tucson. This book is a fine example of how Mexican American history can be
discovered and recreated on the grassroots level through the diligent,
sustained and coordinated effort of a local historical society.
The result is a pioneering study that not only is the first
full length study of Mexican Americans in Arizona, but is also one of the first
"modern" studies of Tucson's history through the skillful use of the methodology
and sources of quantitative history. The Mexican Heritage Project gathered a
wealth of census data about the Mexican American population and Sheridan has
used this material source to document demographic and economic changes of the
city.
The main thesis of the book is that despite an early history
of inter-ethnic harmony and a relative absence of violent racial conflict
between Mexican and Anglo in Tucson, long term discriminatory patterns in
employment, schooling, and residence have come to characterize interethnic
relations within the city.
But this is more than a social history of victimage.
Sheridan, an anthropologist, presents us with a sensitive and detailed
ethnohistory of the Tucsonenses' culture as it evolved from pueblo to barrio.
One of his best chapters is entitled "Peacock in the Parlor" referring to Don
Estevan Ochoa's house pet symbolizing the gentile life style of the Tucson
Mexican upper classes. This chapter describes the life and vision of the
influential Mexicans who guided their community in the early years of the
American era. His subsequent description of the Mexican professional classes and
Tucsonense involvement in the arts presents often neglected aspects of urban
Spanish-speaking life.
The book analyzes many aspects of life in the twentieth
century: the family, religious practices, schooling, the effects of the
depression, and economic and demographic changes. The author confirms most of
the generalizations that have been made about the social history of Mexican
Americans in other urban areas. The Tucsonenese experience is a variation on the
theme of the considerable influence of race and class on the creation and
maintenance of ethnic boundaries. In the twentieth century for Tucson Mexican
Americans geographic enclavement was accompanied by relegation to inferior
socioeconomic status. This occurred simultaneously with change and renewal of
cultural and familial vitality.
Sheridan's book is a very thorough, gracefully written local
history that establishes comparative links to larger social historical issues.
There is more to be done, as the author readily admits, in the area of the
educational history of the Tucsonenses. The influence of the Mexican revolution
on the barrio is also another topic that could be elaborated upon in more
detail. Fortunately the archives of the Mexican Heritage Project are readily
available. Los Tucsonenses provides an excellent model for future
historical study.
