Conflicts of Interest: The Letters of María Amparo Ruiz de Burton ed. by Rosaura Sánchez, Beatrice Pita (review)

4 6 6 W e s t e r n A m e r ic a n L it e r a t u r e W in t e r 2 0 0 5 tographer and pitchman for Colorado tourism who had a keen eye for what is now called product placement and brought to Western films authenticity of background, if not of plot. Here and throughout ShootingCowboys, Smith traces carefully and clearly the ways in which technology, commerce, and audience reaction caused the Western to expand in length and change in themes. Perhaps even more important, he traces changes in the location not only of films but of the manu­ facturing process, especially the factory ofThomas H. Ince, who “turned Santa Ynez Canyon into an elaborate outdoor studio” that ultimately had its own power plant, telephone exchange, and on-site vegetable and beef production for cast and crew (115). Smith foregrounds a number of forgotten or ignored people and issues prominent in early Westerns but later shunted aside: very active female heroines, Indians as leading men and women, even Mexicans. Then he shows how—because of the influence of Wild West shows, of fear of the growing independence and influence of women, and of the emphasis on muscular Christianity—the Western cowboy hero evolved away from theatrically trained actors like Hobart Bosworth, William S. Hart, and Gilbert M. (Bronco Billy) Anderson, né Max Aronson, into the action hero figure represented by Tom Mix, Buck Jones, and Tim McCoy and culminating in John Wayne and Clint Eastwood. By “minimizing the erotic element in the creation of cowboy heroes,” he argues, “studios encouraged the growth of the largely male subculture that surrounded the production and consumption of the genre” (209). This and many other generalizations are well-supported by archival still photos, sketches, and cartoons. Smith has gathered a great deal of material and integrated it into a coher­ ent and readable account of an important aspect of the American film indus­ try. His book is an example of historical and cultural analysis at its best. Conflicts of Interest: The Letters of M aría Amparo Ruiz de Burton. Eds. Rosaura Sánchez and Beatrice Pita. Houston, Texas: Arte Público Press, 2001. 647 pages, $17.95. Reviewed by Michelle P. Baca University of New Mexico, Albuquerque In traversing the interstices of race, class, gender, and national identity, María Amparo Ruiz de Burton’s two novels Who Would Have Thought It? (1872) and The Squatter and, the Don (1885) establish positionality as the pervasive theme of the author’s life. Though shifting California borders and the expanding U.S. Empire constantly determine Ruiz de Burton’s position in life and in text, she does not, however, simply allow herself to be passively positioned. As much as history, empire, and geography move her, she uses her shifting identity to give herself an agency that controls the movements, both B o o k R e v ie w s national and personal. It is this agency and Ruiz de Burton’s use of positionality that Rosaura Sánchez and Beatrice Pita explore in Conflicts of Interest. Having recovered, edited, and republished Ruiz de Burton’s two nineteenth -century historical novels, Sánchez and Pita turn to Ruiz de Burton’s copious letters and legal documents. Sánchez and Pita’s extensive and impres­ sive research has uncovered letters to Ruiz de Burton’sprimary correspondents: Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo, Jose Matias Moreno, and George Davidson. Written in both English and Spanish, these letters illustrate Ruiz de Burton’s bilingual and binational construction of self and concern both political and private matters. Other letters to figures such as President Benito Juarez and to Ruiz de Burton’s children, mother, and sister have not been found. Still, the documents recovered and republished attest to Ruiz de Burton’s life as a multilayered subject of an emerging nation. Conflicts ofInterest is organized chronologically and geographically. Sánchez and Pita historicize Ruiz de Burton’s letters with their own analysis and inclu­ sion of useful contextual details. This method of organization situates Ruiz de Burton within her moment and within Sánchez and Pita’s ongoing scholar...