The Culture of Tourism, the Tourism of Culture: Selling the Past to the Present in the American Southwest (review)

2??8Book Reviews221 The Culture of Tourism, the Tourism of Culture: Selling the Past to the Present in the American Southwest. Edited by Hal K. Rothman. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2003. Pp. xii+250. List of contributors, photographs, illustrations , tables, notes, index. ISBN: 0-8263-2928-4. $34.95, cloth.) Hal Rothman, an historian at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and a leading scholar of cultural tourism, edited this excellent interdisciplinary anthology. The conuibutors include professors from a variety of disciplines as well as consultants in the area of cultural tourism. The twelve essays address a wide range of subjects, among them the impact of a changing American economy on tourism, consumption of Native American crafts and artifacts, appropriate cultural tourism, reducing the negative impacts of tourism through cross-cultural planning , and the future of cultural tourism. The majority of the essays focus on New Mexico and Arizona, but there is much here for anyone interested in cultural tourism in the greater Southwest or across the nation. Two essays should be of particular interest to Texans. Phoebe S. Kropp chronicles the development of California's historic Camino Real as a tourist attraction in the 1920s. Promoters of this paved, "Autoists Royal Road" (p. 40) that linked a chain of mission ruins stretching from San Diego to San Francisco, "began to employ the Spanish past to develop the region, both physically and imaginatively" (p. 58). Unfortunately, as she notes, the white Californians who followed the path of the missionaries developed a "powerful myth . . . [that] celebrated a romantic past and its colorful inhabitants at the same time that it applauded the progress following their fall" (p. 59). There is much here for Texans who wish to develop their own state's Camino Real. Most notably, the California Camino was, in the heady days before the Great Depression, a major tourist attraction, but it was not a long-term success. Perhaps visitors experienced its treasures once and moved on to other adventures. Char Miller's "Tourist Trap: Visitors and the Modern San Antonio Economy," is an insightful analysis of San Antonio's longtime dependence on tourism and the consequences of this dependence. In the nineteenth century, TB tourists" (p. 212) came with false hopes that the climate would cure their malady, and cattlemen stopped in search of food, drink, and sex. This dual tourist trade sustained the local economy through the first decade of the twentieth century, but as Miller argues, the city had missed the "brutal messiness of the industrial revolution " and set itself on a course to become a "post industrial service center" (p. 217). The emphasis on tourism stimulated the development of facilities for visitors "and closed off the possibilities for a richer, more substantial local economy" (p. 217). Likewise a "boon and bust cycle" that first developed in the nineteenth century continued into the twentieth (p. 217). The Alamo, Hemisphere '68, the River Walk and surrounding hotel complex have not cured the economic ills of a city that remains one of the poorest in America. Whether one agrees with Miller's analysis or not, his essay should stimulate dialogue about the city's past and future. This reviewer hopes the author will follow this article with a muchneeded monograph detailing San Antonio's historic ties to tourism. 222Southwestern Historical QuarterlyOctober The Culture of Tourism, The Tourism of Culture will find an audience among graduate students, academics, and anyone seriously interested in cultural tourism. Texas State University-San MarcosJeffrey G. Mauck A Lawfor the Lion: A Tale of Crime and Injustice in the Borderlands. By Beatriz de la Garza. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2003. Pp. xviii+142. Illustrations, epilogue, afterword, works cited, acknowledgments, index. ISBN 0-29271614 -1, $39.95, clodi; ISBN 0-292-70189-6. $17.95, paper.) In A Lawfor the Lion: A Tale of Crime and Injustice in the Borderlands, attorney and author Beatriz de la Garza investigates a brutal 1912 double-murder in Laredo, Texas, and die resulting trial. The word "tale" in the subtitle correctly indicates that this is not a formal academic study. The events are as follows: Two members of a prominent Tejano landholding family, patriarch Don Francisco Guti...