10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A portrait of the failed dominion of empire., October 13, 2007
Samuel Truett's Fugitive Landscapes traces the history of the borderland between Arizona, United States and Sonora, Mexico. Truett divides his analysis into four parts. Part one paints a broad picture spanning from colonial attempts at domestication until the coming of the railroad in the nineteenth century. Part two narrows the focus, switching from a broad, regional scope to a narrower view focusing on the interactions between the state and local inhabitants during the turn of the century. Part three focuses even more narrowly on the narrative of a few men and their attempts and failures at empire building during the first two decades of the twentieth century. Truett states that Fugitive Landscapes "is a forgotten story of failed dreams, of the messy and often unintended consequences of crossing national borders to control nature and people...it is the story of people and places that endured, and why."
Part one offers the narrative of Spanish conquest and a push to secure a continental empire. Truett offers a dualist approach to the narrative. Truett tracks the movements of empire. Spanish missionaries and military governors carved out official spaces on the map of the Sonora/Arizona borderland. Simultaneously, however, unofficial spaces existed: spaces where locals existed despite imperial efforts to bring `civilization' to the `empty' spaces on the map.
Truett begins by looking at the journal of John Russell Bartlett, an ethnographer from New York City who in 1853 set out to survey the new U.S.--Mexican border. What Bartlett found was an empty space--regardless of the fact that many peoples (Yaqui, Opata, Mexican) existed within that space. Bartlett's `empty space' was punctuated by the crumbling remains of prior imperial intrusion. Desecrated catholic missions and crumbling corrals dotted the landscape.
The imperial narrative opens a cyclical history of the region. The Spanish Jesuits and military governors claimed the land in the sixteenth century effectively stealing it from native inhabitants (Apache, Yaqui, and Opata). Imperial and clerical control failed to retain its grasp and--as evidenced by Bartlett's surveyed ruins hundreds of years later--were eventually displaced and reclaimed by locals and nature.
Part two shifts from considering the failure of colonial ventures to the rise of capital interests. Truett traces the shift from expansionism to mercantilism as "Americans were beginning to `value dollars more, and dominion less.'" A new empire desired to tame the wild borderlands for its own ends. Rather than seeking political control, capitalists wanted to enrich themselves from the rich ore veins which riddle the Sonora/Arizona borderlands.
The silver and gold mining moguls worked closely with state officials in Sonora to secure rights to establish transnational links. Telegraph lines, roads, and shipping links to ports were key to ensuring a profit from the mining ventures. Establishing mining empires proved to be as troublesome for companies such as Phelps Dodge as establishing political empire had proven for the Spanish. The borderlands were a `fugitive landscape' which "was distinguished not only by isolation and mobility, but also by lawlessness...not all border crossers sought respectable fortunes. In the early 1880s, a shifting group of outlaws and cattle thieves known as the cow-boys haunted the countryside around Tombstone."
The composition of a `fugitive landscape' is the primary focus of Truett's argument throughout his work. Landscapes are `fugitive' when they are isolated, mobile, lawless, `uncivilized,' and difficult to fix spatially. Both colonial ventures and mining barons faced the same problems of attempting to impose `civilization' and spatial fixity in an area dominated by patterns of mobility and resistance to fixity. New technological innovations--including the railroad, telephone lines, and improved mining/smelting processes--should have increased the capacity for the mining companies to solidify their regional control. However, resistance by labor and indigenous resentment served to undermine these attempts. As part two closes, so do the mines.
Part three further narrows its focus to concentrate on individuals rather than corporations. Emilio Kosterlitzky and William Cornell Greene both sought to bring a renewed order to the region. Greene re-established the dream of successful mining ventures while Kosterlitzky served as a liaison between Mexico (his adopted homeland) and the mining elites. Personal relationships underpinned the imperial venture, yet ultimately Greene's new mining empire fell just as both the Spanish colonial empire and the Phelps Dodge silver empire had fallen.
Truett's overarching claim is that `fugitive landscapes' are resistant to empire. The inherent mobility, independence, and local-centric culture is identified as linked with nature. Empires come and go while the local people, their backwoods trails and migration patterns remain. While relating an interesting--albeit oftentimes fairly lackluster--narrative Truett argues that the cyclical failure of imperial ventures should serve as a caution to the current transnational/global corporations seeking to impose stronger commercial foundations which cross the borderlands. Historically, such ventures have failed again and again.
Truett's analysis contains several troubling elements. Primarily, the overarching narrative, while offering both Mexican and U.S. perspectives, largely recreates Frederick Jackson Turner's frontier mythos in terms of Othering indigenous people. The Yaqui are divided into `peaceful' (those who work for the mines) and `wild' (those who resist both Mexican and U.S. incursion into their historic homeland). Apaches are bandits who threaten both Mexican and U.S. settlers. In fact, Truett points out that one of the binding relations between Mexicans and U.S. mine managers is their shared heritage as `Indian killers.' Both sides of `civilization'--Mexico and the United States--construct their identity through the oppression and displacement of indigenous people.
Overall, Truett's analysis is interesting and thoroughly researched. Truett's ultimate argument would perhaps have a stronger impact had less effort been devoted to meticulously telling a story and more effort been devoted to deeper analysis. Ultimately, however, Fugitive Landscapes offers an interesting insight into the impact of subaltern voices on imperial failures in the borderlands.
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1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
At first a bore, then became interesting, August 22, 2011
This review is from: Fugitive Landscapes: The Forgotten History of the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands (The Lamar Series in Western History) (Paperback)
For me, this book was hard to get into. I read this for a college course. I wrote my final paper over it. At first, I hated it, wanted to hate it, and avoided it because of its seemingly lackluster feel. However, the stories in it became more and more interesting, painting a true picture of an almost forgotten account of history. I can appreciate this for it's unique take on a history I had otherwise not known of before.
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