Reference no: EM133304997

Assignment:

The few articles we have shared with you notwithstanding, scholars have overlooked the study of the Nuevomejicano pioneers of the llano. From New Mexico, the eastern plains have been neglected as more population and power has been concentrated in the Rio Grande valley and northern mountain regions. From Texas, there has been a reluctance to study seriously the historical depth of New Mexican settlement and the residual effects of this cultural footprint-and this all gets submerged beneath the heroic narrative of the cattleman/cowboy. The books written by Fabiola Cabeza de Baca and Samuel Leo Gonzales are thus very important to our recovery work.

Cabeza de Baca and Gonzales, though quite different people writing decades apart, seem to be writing narratives that are similar in important ways. They are both ethnographic works that highlight oral tradition, memory, and cultural tradition. They are also both what we might call narrative cartographies, as they include a great deal of detail on places, landscapes, boundaries, and related geographical description. Layered on to this geographic description is a great deal of emotion, as well, including nostalgia, anger, regret, sorrow, hope, and so on.

For your paper, analyze one of the techniques (you'll have to identify this) these authors use to create this narrative cartography and what they achieve (politically, culturally, aesthetically?) through such geographically-oriented writing. Whether you write on one author or both, you definitely need to focus your analysis on one or maybe two particular passages and ideas.

Ideas for focusing include limiting your response to your consideration of a particular aspect of the history like the Cibolero, Comanchero, or Pastore/Ranchero experience; an issue related to race, ethnicity, gender, or class; particular geographical locations/placenames; particular incidents (like outlawry); religious cultures; affective or emotional responses in the texts; elements of colonial history etc.