Author: Marcia Hatfield Daudistel
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
ISBN: 0875657060
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 146
Book Description
Once there was a place called Smeltertown, and it was known as the largest industrial city on the banks of the Rio Grande. The smokestacks of the American Smelting and Refining Company, which polluted the air for three miles in every direction, grew so tall over the decades that they became a landmark just inside the El Paso side of the US-Mexico border. In a community of small adobe houses, many with dirt floors and without indoor plumbing, both the men employed at the smelter and the women who raised families and made homes there form the history of Smeltertown. Through interviews with the women and their now middle-aged children, the realities of everyday life in Smeltertown are revealed—as is the strength of the women who forged a community and preserved a culture in these primitive conditions. Current photographs of the interviewees and historical photographs of Smeltertown illustrate the history of an area not even native El Pasoans knew.
The Women of Smeltertown
Author: Marcia Hatfield Daudistel
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
ISBN: 0875657060
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 146
Book Description
Once there was a place called Smeltertown, and it was known as the largest industrial city on the banks of the Rio Grande. The smokestacks of the American Smelting and Refining Company, which polluted the air for three miles in every direction, grew so tall over the decades that they became a landmark just inside the El Paso side of the US-Mexico border. In a community of small adobe houses, many with dirt floors and without indoor plumbing, both the men employed at the smelter and the women who raised families and made homes there form the history of Smeltertown. Through interviews with the women and their now middle-aged children, the realities of everyday life in Smeltertown are revealed—as is the strength of the women who forged a community and preserved a culture in these primitive conditions. Current photographs of the interviewees and historical photographs of Smeltertown illustrate the history of an area not even native El Pasoans knew.
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
ISBN: 0875657060
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 146
Book Description
Once there was a place called Smeltertown, and it was known as the largest industrial city on the banks of the Rio Grande. The smokestacks of the American Smelting and Refining Company, which polluted the air for three miles in every direction, grew so tall over the decades that they became a landmark just inside the El Paso side of the US-Mexico border. In a community of small adobe houses, many with dirt floors and without indoor plumbing, both the men employed at the smelter and the women who raised families and made homes there form the history of Smeltertown. Through interviews with the women and their now middle-aged children, the realities of everyday life in Smeltertown are revealed—as is the strength of the women who forged a community and preserved a culture in these primitive conditions. Current photographs of the interviewees and historical photographs of Smeltertown illustrate the history of an area not even native El Pasoans knew.
Smeltertown
Author: Monica Perales
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807899569
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 350
Book Description
Company town. Blighted community. Beloved home. Nestled on the banks of the Rio Grande, at the heart of a railroad, mining, and smelting empire, Smeltertown--La Esmelda, as its residents called it--was home to generations of ethnic Mexicans who labored at the American Smelting and Refining Company in El Paso, Texas. Using newspapers, personal archives, photographs, employee records, parish newsletters, and interviews with former residents, including her own relatives, Monica Perales unearths the history of this forgotten community. Spanning almost a century, Smeltertown traces the birth, growth, and ultimate demise of a working class community in the largest U.S. city on the Mexican border and places ethnic Mexicans at the center of transnational capitalism and the making of the urban West. Perales shows that Smeltertown was composed of multiple real and imagined social worlds created by the company, the church, the schools, and the residents themselves. Within these dynamic social worlds, residents forged permanence and meaning in the shadow of the smelter's giant smokestacks. Smeltertown provides insight into how people and places invent and reinvent themselves and illuminates a vibrant community grappling with its own sense of itself and its place in history and collective memory.
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807899569
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 350
Book Description
Company town. Blighted community. Beloved home. Nestled on the banks of the Rio Grande, at the heart of a railroad, mining, and smelting empire, Smeltertown--La Esmelda, as its residents called it--was home to generations of ethnic Mexicans who labored at the American Smelting and Refining Company in El Paso, Texas. Using newspapers, personal archives, photographs, employee records, parish newsletters, and interviews with former residents, including her own relatives, Monica Perales unearths the history of this forgotten community. Spanning almost a century, Smeltertown traces the birth, growth, and ultimate demise of a working class community in the largest U.S. city on the Mexican border and places ethnic Mexicans at the center of transnational capitalism and the making of the urban West. Perales shows that Smeltertown was composed of multiple real and imagined social worlds created by the company, the church, the schools, and the residents themselves. Within these dynamic social worlds, residents forged permanence and meaning in the shadow of the smelter's giant smokestacks. Smeltertown provides insight into how people and places invent and reinvent themselves and illuminates a vibrant community grappling with its own sense of itself and its place in history and collective memory.
Smeltertown
Author: Monica Perales
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807834114
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 351
Book Description
Traces the history of Smeltertown, Texas, a city located on the banks of the Rio Grande that was home to generations of ethnic Mexicans who worked at the American Smelting and Refining Company in El Paso, Texas, with information from newspapers, personalarchives, photographs, employee records, parish newsletters, and interviews.
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807834114
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 351
Book Description
Traces the history of Smeltertown, Texas, a city located on the banks of the Rio Grande that was home to generations of ethnic Mexicans who worked at the American Smelting and Refining Company in El Paso, Texas, with information from newspapers, personalarchives, photographs, employee records, parish newsletters, and interviews.
Even the Women Are Leaving
Author: Larisa L. Veloz
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520392698
Category : Immigrant families
Languages : en
Pages : 309
Book Description
"The first decades of the twentieth century were a crucial era for the development of Mexican circular family migration, a process shaped by family and community networks as much as it was fashioned by labor markets and economic conditions. Even the Women are Leaving explores the bidirectional migration across the U.S.-Mexico border from 1890 to 1965 and centers the experiences of Mexican women and families. Highlighting migrant voices and testimonies, author Larisa L. Veloz depicts the long history of family and female migration across the border and elucidates the personal experiences of early twentieth century border-crossings, family separations, and reunifications. The book offers a fresh analysis of the ways that female migrants navigated evolving immigration restrictions and constructed binational lives through the eras of the Mexican Revolution, the Great Depression, and the Bracero Program"--
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520392698
Category : Immigrant families
Languages : en
Pages : 309
Book Description
"The first decades of the twentieth century were a crucial era for the development of Mexican circular family migration, a process shaped by family and community networks as much as it was fashioned by labor markets and economic conditions. Even the Women are Leaving explores the bidirectional migration across the U.S.-Mexico border from 1890 to 1965 and centers the experiences of Mexican women and families. Highlighting migrant voices and testimonies, author Larisa L. Veloz depicts the long history of family and female migration across the border and elucidates the personal experiences of early twentieth century border-crossings, family separations, and reunifications. The book offers a fresh analysis of the ways that female migrants navigated evolving immigration restrictions and constructed binational lives through the eras of the Mexican Revolution, the Great Depression, and the Bracero Program"--
Environmental Health Perspectives
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Environmental health
Languages : en
Pages : 260
Book Description
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Environmental health
Languages : en
Pages : 260
Book Description
Writing the Range
Author: Elizabeth Jameson
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 9780806129525
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 676
Book Description
In mythic sagas of the American West, the wide western range offers boundless opportunity to profile a limited cast of white men. In this pathbreaking anthology, Jameson and Armitage brings together 29 essays which present the story of women from that era. Clearly written and accessible, "Writing the Range" makes a major contribution to ethnic history, women's history, and interpretations of the American West. 27 illustrations. 3 maps.
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 9780806129525
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 676
Book Description
In mythic sagas of the American West, the wide western range offers boundless opportunity to profile a limited cast of white men. In this pathbreaking anthology, Jameson and Armitage brings together 29 essays which present the story of women from that era. Clearly written and accessible, "Writing the Range" makes a major contribution to ethnic history, women's history, and interpretations of the American West. 27 illustrations. 3 maps.
The Gendered West
Author: Gordon Morris Bakken
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135694265
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 433
Book Description
First Published in 2001. This anthology of western history articles emphasizes the New Western History that emerged in the 1980s and adds to it a heavy dose of legal history, a field frequently ignored or misunderstood by the New Western historians. From first contact, American Indians knew that Europeans did not understand the gendered nature of America. Confusion regarding the role of women within tribes and bands continued from first contact well into the late nineteenth century. The journal articles that follow give readers a true sense of the gendered West. Racial and ethnic heritage played a role in female experience whether Hispanic, Japanese or Irish. Women's work was part western history, but women did not confine themselves to plow handles or brothels. Women were very much a part of most occupations or in the process of breaking down barriers of access. They worked in the fields for wages as well as for family welfare and prosperity. Women demanded access to the professions whether teaching or law, accounting or medicine. The process of eliminating barriers varied in time and space, but the struggle was constant. Yet the story of women in polygamous Utah or Idaho was different and an integral part of the fabric of western history. Because of their beliefs and practices these women suffered at the hands of the federal government and persevered.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135694265
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 433
Book Description
First Published in 2001. This anthology of western history articles emphasizes the New Western History that emerged in the 1980s and adds to it a heavy dose of legal history, a field frequently ignored or misunderstood by the New Western historians. From first contact, American Indians knew that Europeans did not understand the gendered nature of America. Confusion regarding the role of women within tribes and bands continued from first contact well into the late nineteenth century. The journal articles that follow give readers a true sense of the gendered West. Racial and ethnic heritage played a role in female experience whether Hispanic, Japanese or Irish. Women's work was part western history, but women did not confine themselves to plow handles or brothels. Women were very much a part of most occupations or in the process of breaking down barriers of access. They worked in the fields for wages as well as for family welfare and prosperity. Women demanded access to the professions whether teaching or law, accounting or medicine. The process of eliminating barriers varied in time and space, but the struggle was constant. Yet the story of women in polygamous Utah or Idaho was different and an integral part of the fabric of western history. Because of their beliefs and practices these women suffered at the hands of the federal government and persevered.
Freedom's Frontier
Author: Stacey L. Smith
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469607697
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 341
Book Description
Most histories of the Civil War era portray the struggle over slavery as a conflict that exclusively pitted North against South, free labor against slave labor, and black against white. In Freedom's Frontier, Stacey L. Smith examines the battle over slavery as it unfolded on the multiracial Pacific Coast. Despite its antislavery constitution, California was home to a dizzying array of bound and semibound labor systems: African American slavery, American Indian indenture, Latino and Chinese contract labor, and a brutal sex traffic in bound Indian and Chinese women. Using untapped legislative and court records, Smith reconstructs the lives of California's unfree workers and documents the political and legal struggles over their destiny as the nation moved through the Civil War, emancipation, and Reconstruction. Smith reveals that the state's anti-Chinese movement, forged in its struggle over unfree labor, reached eastward to transform federal Reconstruction policy and national race relations for decades to come. Throughout, she illuminates the startling ways in which the contest over slavery's fate included a western struggle that encompassed diverse labor systems and workers not easily classified as free or slave, black or white.
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469607697
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 341
Book Description
Most histories of the Civil War era portray the struggle over slavery as a conflict that exclusively pitted North against South, free labor against slave labor, and black against white. In Freedom's Frontier, Stacey L. Smith examines the battle over slavery as it unfolded on the multiracial Pacific Coast. Despite its antislavery constitution, California was home to a dizzying array of bound and semibound labor systems: African American slavery, American Indian indenture, Latino and Chinese contract labor, and a brutal sex traffic in bound Indian and Chinese women. Using untapped legislative and court records, Smith reconstructs the lives of California's unfree workers and documents the political and legal struggles over their destiny as the nation moved through the Civil War, emancipation, and Reconstruction. Smith reveals that the state's anti-Chinese movement, forged in its struggle over unfree labor, reached eastward to transform federal Reconstruction policy and national race relations for decades to come. Throughout, she illuminates the startling ways in which the contest over slavery's fate included a western struggle that encompassed diverse labor systems and workers not easily classified as free or slave, black or white.
Migrant Longing
Author: Miroslava Chávez-García
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469641046
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 279
Book Description
Drawing upon a personal collection of more than 300 letters exchanged between her parents and other family members across the U.S.-Mexico border, Miroslava Chavez-Garcia recreates and gives meaning to the hope, fear, and longing migrants experienced in their everyday lives both "here" and "there" (aqui y alla). As private sources of communication hidden from public consumption and historical research, the letters provide a rare glimpse into the deeply emotional, personal, and social lives of ordinary Mexican men and women as recorded in their immediate, firsthand accounts. Chavez-Garcia demonstrates not only how migrants struggled to maintain their sense of humanity in el norte but also how those remaining at home made sense of their changing identities in response to the loss of loved ones who sometimes left for weeks, months, or years at a time, or simply never returned. With this richly detailed account, ranging from the Mexican Revolution of the 1910s to the emergence of Silicon Valley in the late 1960s, Chavez-Garcia opens a new window onto the social, economic, political, and cultural developments of the day and recovers the human agency of much maligned migrants in our society today.
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469641046
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 279
Book Description
Drawing upon a personal collection of more than 300 letters exchanged between her parents and other family members across the U.S.-Mexico border, Miroslava Chavez-Garcia recreates and gives meaning to the hope, fear, and longing migrants experienced in their everyday lives both "here" and "there" (aqui y alla). As private sources of communication hidden from public consumption and historical research, the letters provide a rare glimpse into the deeply emotional, personal, and social lives of ordinary Mexican men and women as recorded in their immediate, firsthand accounts. Chavez-Garcia demonstrates not only how migrants struggled to maintain their sense of humanity in el norte but also how those remaining at home made sense of their changing identities in response to the loss of loved ones who sometimes left for weeks, months, or years at a time, or simply never returned. With this richly detailed account, ranging from the Mexican Revolution of the 1910s to the emergence of Silicon Valley in the late 1960s, Chavez-Garcia opens a new window onto the social, economic, political, and cultural developments of the day and recovers the human agency of much maligned migrants in our society today.
Anaconda
Author: Laurie Mercier
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 9780252069888
Category : Anaconda (Mont.)
Languages : en
Pages : 340
Book Description
Mercier depicts the vibrant life of the smelter city at full steam, incorporating the candid, sometimes wry commentary of the locals ("the company furnished three pair of leather gloves . . . and all the arsenic dust] you could eat"). She documents the early history of the town and the distinctive culture of cooperation and activism that residents fostered in the 1930s and 1940s. Ultimately, their solidarity and discontent with the company converged in the successful 1934 strike and sustained five decades of devoted unionism. During the cold war years, Anacondans held to their communal values and to unions in the face of antilabor and anticommunist pressures, embracing an "alternative Americanism" that championed improved living standards for working people, rather than unlimited corporate power, as the best defense against communism. Mercier chronicles the bitter struggle between two rival unions--the anticommunist United Steelworkers of America and the red-tainted International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers--that undercut the town's labor solidarity in the postwar years. She also explores how gender definitions--especially the male breadwinner ideology and the limits placed on women's political, economic, and social roles--shaped the nature and outcome of labor struggles. Mercier carries her investigation through the closing of the smelter in 1980, covering debates over the environment and the community's transformation into a deindustrialized, nonunion town. Underscoring the role of the community in molding working-class consciousness, Anaconda offers important insights about the changing nature of working-class culture and the real potential for collective action under the midday sun of American industrial capitalism.
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 9780252069888
Category : Anaconda (Mont.)
Languages : en
Pages : 340
Book Description
Mercier depicts the vibrant life of the smelter city at full steam, incorporating the candid, sometimes wry commentary of the locals ("the company furnished three pair of leather gloves . . . and all the arsenic dust] you could eat"). She documents the early history of the town and the distinctive culture of cooperation and activism that residents fostered in the 1930s and 1940s. Ultimately, their solidarity and discontent with the company converged in the successful 1934 strike and sustained five decades of devoted unionism. During the cold war years, Anacondans held to their communal values and to unions in the face of antilabor and anticommunist pressures, embracing an "alternative Americanism" that championed improved living standards for working people, rather than unlimited corporate power, as the best defense against communism. Mercier chronicles the bitter struggle between two rival unions--the anticommunist United Steelworkers of America and the red-tainted International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers--that undercut the town's labor solidarity in the postwar years. She also explores how gender definitions--especially the male breadwinner ideology and the limits placed on women's political, economic, and social roles--shaped the nature and outcome of labor struggles. Mercier carries her investigation through the closing of the smelter in 1980, covering debates over the environment and the community's transformation into a deindustrialized, nonunion town. Underscoring the role of the community in molding working-class consciousness, Anaconda offers important insights about the changing nature of working-class culture and the real potential for collective action under the midday sun of American industrial capitalism.