Minerals, Collecting, and Value across the US-Mexico Border

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments So many people have helped me with this project, it is hard even to know where to begin. However, I will start in Guanajuato, where I first got the idea from seeing miners sell minerals, use them as religious offerings, and give them as gifts. My particular thanks go to Cirilo Palacios and his family, Pancho and Domingo Granados, Alejandra Gómez, Elia Mónica Zárate, and Ada Marina Lara Meza. In Mexico City, thanks to María Guadalupe Villaseñor, Juan Carlos Miranda, Oscar Irazaba, and Oscar Escamilla. Among those whom I met in Tucson and Colorado, I am particularly indebted to Dennis Beals, Peter Megaw, and Wendell Wilson, as well as to Terry Wallace, Steve Smale, Tom Gressman, Mike New, Herb Obodda, Gene Schlepp, and Carole Lee, among others. In Cambridge , Massachusetts, thanks to Carl Francis, Alden Carpenter, and the members of the Boston Mineral Club, especially Jim Catterton and Nate Martin. In Mapimí, Lázaro de Anda and Mario Pecina were particularly kind and helpful. At the Smithsonian Institution, Pamela Henson, Jeffrey Post, Pete Dunn, and James Luhr went out of their way to educate and guide me. Lawrence Conklin, William Panczner, and George Hoke provided me with valuable historical information and materials. Rubén Lechuga Paredes and Vera Regehr, both, at the time, doctoral students at the Universidad Iberoamericana, served as gifted research assistants in Mapimí. Thomas Moore of the Mineralogical Record reviewed the geological and mineralogical discussions in the book and went above and beyond in editing my prose. The project has also benefited from the tremendous help of my anthropological and other colleagues, particularly: Mark Auslander, Manduhai Buyandelger, Josiah Heyman, Sarah Hill, Robert Hunt, Smita Lahiri, Sarah Lamb, Ann Marie Leshkowich, Mandana Limbert, Caitrin Lynch, Roger Magazine, Carlota McAllister, Janet McIntosh, Paul Nadasdy, Richard Parmentier, Heather Paxson, Smitha Radhakrishnan, Leslie Salzinger , Karen Strassler, Ajantha Subramanian, Christine Walley, and David Wood. My thanks go, as always, to my advisors and mentors, especially to Katherine Verdery, Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Sidney Mintz, Gillian FeeleyHarnik , and Fernando Coronil. Many thanks to Robert Foster for his support for this project in an early phase and his patience as I slowly got x Acknowledgments it finished. Thanks to my editor and assistant editor Rebecca Tolen and Sarah Jacobi for all their help and guidance and to two anonymous reviewers for Indiana University Press. I am also indebted to the Smithsonian Institution Fellowship Program, The Newhouse Center for the Humanities at Wellesley College, and the Brandeis Latin American and Latino Studies Program and Norman Fund for Faculty Research. Audiences at Brandeis University, Cornell University, Harvard University, Wesleyan University, SUNY Albany, Boston College, el Colegio de Michoacán, and Universidad Iberoamericana heard earlier versions of some chapters and provided useful comments. An earlier (and quite different) version of chapter 5 was published in American Ethnologist under the title “Geologies of Power: Value Transformations of Minerals from Guanajuato, Mexico.” Minerals, Collecting, and Value across the U.S.-Mexico Border ...