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Constituting Terra Incognita The “Mexican Question” in U.S. Print Culture Of all strange corners of our strange West, this is the strangest; and it is a chosen and beloved abiding place of the strangest and least comprehensible of all those who make up our national character. . . . In the burning noontide comes a slow gray burro, meek and patient ; his head drooped, his eyes mere glinting peepholes in his outward shagginess,—every line, curve, and movement full of unobtrusive dignity. And this sedate aspect eminently befits his estate, for he is no ordinary beast; he is bearer of the presiding genius of the desert,—the mestizo, the Greaser, half-blood offspring of the marriage of antiquity and modernity. Time cannot take from him the unmistakable impress of old Spain. But his Spanish appearance is not his dominant characteristic. His skin has been sunbrowned for centuries; his nose and cheeks are broad; his lips are thick; his brows are heavy, his sheltering eyes soft, passionate, inscrutable. King in his own natural right, master of a blessed content, he is the strange progeny of parents who waged warfare against each other, and all but perished in the strife. . . . Anomalous as he is, he is one of the few distinct types in our national life whose origin is fully known to us. . . . As all this goes to make manly character, the Greaser is a mere fragment of a man in stature. According to the artistic dictum, which pronounces the curve and the line of beauty, the Greaser should assuredly be beautiful, for his make-up is superlatively rich in curves. His pudgy head and face bear an obtrusive lot of curling lines, which wriggle sinuously down the neck and shoulders, until they are lost in the portentous curve of his waistband. For he is fat. Rich or poor, idler or loafer, he never runs to leanness. The women are like the men. Perhaps you have heard or read of beautiful mestizo maidens? Traveler’s tales! Save in the pictures of susceptible romanticists , I have never seen a beautiful Greaser girl. —William Lighton, “The Greaser,” 1899 2 51 Imagine, if you will, that it is August 28, 1899 in New York, and it is a bit warmer than usual in the growing industrial city. Because of the hot, humid day, Mr. Drake decides not to take the new trolley system . Too many people, he recalls, so he decides to walk home from his job on Wall Street. He has been working with the Wall Street banking firm, Smith and Barney, for more than thirty years and was recently made a full partner of their commercial real-estate division, putting him in charge of their expansion into the west. Walking home will also allow him to continue his monthly ritual, a quick stop at Ransom’s Drugstore to buy the Atlantic. Although he reads other literary and cultural magazines , he is particularly fond of the Atlantic and has read the magazine since its first issue. Mr. Drake lives in a rather elegant apartment by Central Park. He is a bachelor, which is part of the reason why he took on his firm’s economic expansion into the west; he will have to move to New Mexico in three months. It all began with his trip to the World’s Fair in 1893. He heard a historian , Frederick Jackson Turner, declare that the frontier was closed and economic expansion was entering into its final stage in the once Mexican lands. Indeed, Turner’s speech gave him the idea to expand Smith and Barney ’s banking firm into the frontier. He vividly remembers looking over the map of the United States with his boss, Mr. Holcomb: “It is public domain ,” he told his boss; “someone will have to control the land titles.” And yet, despite the riches that await him in the southwest, he no longer is sure if he is ready to leave his New York world of high society, with its Friday night operas and late-night excursions to local restaurants. He would even miss the trolley, he thinks. His family has lived in New York for four generations, and he will be the first to leave. Maintaining his long-standing reading ritual, Mr. Drake sits in his parlor and opens the pages of the Atlantic. He usually reads the magazine from cover to cover, but this month will be different. Last month’s issue noted that it would have a special story on...

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