Border Citizens: The Making of Indians, Mexicans, and Anglos in Arizona by Eric V. Meeks (review)

Border Citizens: The Making of Indians, Mexicans, and Anglos in Arizona. By Eric V. Meeks. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2007. Pp. 342. Illustrations, maps, figures, notes, selected bibliography, index. ISBN 978-0-29271-699-5. $24.95, paper.) Eric Meeks’s first book is one of the most interesting and insightful works in either American Indian or Latino history I have seen for some time. In spite of the title, Meeks largely does not give us a broad survey of the experiences of all Indians, Mexicans, and Anglos in Arizona, but focuses on those instances where the racial definitions as they relate to citizenship were being contested. He especially focuses on the Yaqui and O’odham peoples. This is welcome. While the Yaqui do not suffer from a lack of study, the O’odham definitely do. The deficiency is so great that most of the students whom I taught at Arizona State University had never heard of the O’odham, in spite of many growing up in the same metro area as the Ak Chin and Salt River reservations. Meeks details how, as Arizona fell under U.S. control following the war with Mexico and the Gadsden Purchase, incoming Anglos imposed a racial definition for citizenship. In the debates over statehood, Anglo Arizonans faced an obstacle in the belief held by many whites outside the region that Arizona Territory had too many Mexicans and Indians to be allowed to become a state. White Arizonans reacted by emphasizing their standards of what they perceived western civilization to be, and forced both Mexicans and Indians to live up to racialized definitions, which affected citizenship, language, and even agriculture. European Americans were at the same time also arguing amongst themselves defining what “white” meant, since many eastern and southern European immigrants themselves faced suspicions from the more established descendants of European immigrants from northern and western Europe. Both the O’odham and the Yaqui were seen as more agricultural and sedentary , thus more allegedly civilized by white standards. Yaquis, as simultaneously indigenous and immigrants from Mexico, challenged Anglo notions of “Indian” and in turn even debated amongst themselves whether they were more Mexican than Indian, or some combination of the two. The border had split the O’odham nation. Later the BIA imposed a tribal government that replaced village councils of male elders, causing many O’odham to redefine themselves more as a nation than as members of autonomous villages. State authorities even used a racial basis for decisions governing water use, diverting water from O’odham lands, forcing them to shift from subsistence agriculture to wage labor and seasonal migrant farm work. Intermarriage and the adoption of many Mexican customs by both O’odham and Yaqui, such as the Catholic faith, compadrazgo (godparenting ), and devotion to patron saints and festival days led many whites to argue as recently as the 1980s that Yaquis were not truly Indian. The place of Mexicans and the choice made by Mexican/Hispano leaders to claim to be white has already been covered extensively in other works, as has a growing body of literature studying whiteness. Wisely, Meeks chooses to limit the focus solely to Arizonans’ interactions with the groups whose racial categories were the most under dispute. One of the questions I would have liked answered 2009 Book Reviews 335 *jan 09 11/26/08 12:00 PM Page 335 was the place of the Cocopah during these struggles, another Native people split by the border. But this is an extremely minor quibble. Meeks’s work is a welcome study of how Natives, Latinos, and whites come to be viewed as such, a useful work for anyone in multicultural studies, critical race theory, or southwestern history. Alamo Community College District Al Carroll Iron Horse Imperialism: The Southern Pacific of Mexico, 1880–1951. By Daniel Lewis. (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2007. Pp. 196. Illustrations, map, notes, bibliography, index. ISBN 0-81652-604-4. $35.00, cloth.) This well-researched book makes use of previously untapped archival material to offer a detailed picture of the day-to-day operations of the Southern Pacific of Mexico, as well as insight into the interactions between United States companies...