Political Ecologies of Cattle Ranching in Northern Mexico: Private Revolutions

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments First, thanks go to Bill Doolittle in the Geography Department at the University of Texas at Austin, who served as chair of my studies and dissertation , and who continues to serve as adviser and mentor long after my exodus from Austin. Second, I am grateful to the committee members who critiqued and carefully appraised a much older version: the late Terry Jordan, Francisco Pérez, and the late Robert C. West. Terry consistently asked, “When is this thing going to be a book?” and I only wish, in hindsight , that I had heeded his words earlier and before his untimely passing. Third, my fellow cohort of graduate students at the time was invaluable to my approach and perspective. This extended family has also kept the fires burning since graduate school. Andrew Miles and Rachel Waldinger provided an air-conditioned respite from Austin’s heat during the summer of 2006, as I moldered in the welcome stacks of the Benson Library at the University of Texas at Austin; Taco XPress ensured that none of us forgot what was important. Much of this work has been presented in a variety of forms at the annual meetings of the Association of American Geographers (AAG) and at the Conference of Latin Americanist Geographers (CLAG), with the latter group serving more constructive purposes in refining the perspectives and findings you will read in these pages. ¡Saludos a mis amigos CLAGistas! Incidentally or not, several postgraduate school colleagues were crucial to the development of this work: Peter Klepeis, Paul Robbins , Eric Keys, and Rinku Roy Chowdhury. Access to and from Sonora was greatly aided by a few folks, namely Diana Liverman and Bob Meredith, who generously allowed my pit stops with patience and great humor. Diana’s input, suggestions, and critical probing pushed me to examine further some of the economic and structural constraints that play so heavily in the decision making of ranchers. Institutional support during my extended stay of 1996–1997 was provided by the Centro de Investigación en Alimentación y Dessarollo, A.C., and especially by Ernesto Camou-Healy, Emma Paulina Pérez López, and Shooko Doode. I thank them all for their very generous help and hospitality during my days in Hermosillo. My work has been funded by a variety of agencies, none of whom necessarily agree with, or should be held responsible for, my positions or statements: the Institute of International Education Fulbright-García Robles, the National Security Education Program Fellowship, the Tinker Foundation, the Institute of Latin American Studies, and the Center for Mexican Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Further funding for recent visits and work were obtained from the College of Arts and Sciences at Stetson University (2002–2003). But my current institution, Colorado College, has provided generous funding , from the Social Sciences Executive Committee in 2006 and 2008 to a generous Mrachek Fellowship during the summer of 2006. A minisabbatical during the winter of 2007–2008 provided time for the eventual transformation, and total rewriting, of this volume. Christine Szuter first courted the idea of this volume at the University of Arizona Press. But it needed some contemplative updating and another editor, Allyson Carter, to pry it from me. She bravely read through three complete versions of the manuscript in your hands. Two blind reviews on the first version of this manuscript and the valuable comments and suggestions of those reviewers have improved the quality of the work. Shortcomings and oversights that remain are my own doing. Jan Monk and Nathan Sayre were vital in providing early comments, feedback, and context for the work and audience I had in mind: students at a liberal arts college. Pat Cattani, the copy-editor extraordinaire, helped me avoid textual and graphical embarrassment during final production of this manuscript. My new home base at Colorado College (CC) comes with a clutch of valuable colleagues who have shared their thoughts and critiques about my work. I am also back in the West, where such questions about landownership , land use, and range ecology actually matter to most folks. Anne Hyde has been unfailing in her collegial support and encouragement, maneuvering my schedule to allow for writing time and providing critical feedback on my first chapter. Anne, Mike Taber, and Sally Meyer made my teaching xiv Acknowledgments loads manageable and arranged it so that CC students in the environmental science program also got a first...