Speakers Bureau Speaker
Edward Williams, Prescott
Ed Williams is Professor Emeritus of Comparative Politics and Latin American Studies, University of Arizona, and teaches, lectures, and writes on Mexican and borderlands public policy and politics. Williams earned an AA degree at Potomac State Jr. College, received his BA and MA from Duquesne University, and earned a Ph.D. from The Johns Hopkins University. He has served as a Rockefeller Research Fellow, Fulbright-Hays Senior Lecturer in Mexico, Fulbright Senior Scholar with the Viadrina European University on the German/Polish border, Visiting Research Scholar with the U.S. Army War College, Visiting Professor at the University of Tampere, Finland, the American Graduate School of International Management (Thunderbird), and the University of Arizona Study Abroad Programs in Orvieto, Italy, and Guadalajara, Mexico.
Williams has served as President and Executive Director of the Association for Borderlands Studies, on the National Advisory Board of the NAFTA Agreement on Labor, and as a board member of the Arizona-Mexico Commission. In Tucson, he served as an officer or on the board of the Tucson Committee on Foreign Relations, UN Association of Southern Arizona, and Fundacion Mexico.
Fences and Walls: Which Side Are You On? Perspectives from the Smithsonian, Arizona and Beyond
The presentation celebrates the Smithsonian Exhibition scheduled to tour six Arizona rural communities from mid-October 2007 through early August 2008. It prepares one to visit and appreciate the exhibition set to tour Nogales, Ajo, Globe, Topawa on the Tohono O’odham Nation, Cottonwood, and Winslow.
The presentation also explores how the Smithsonian’s Museum on Main Street (MoMS) program brings educational and cultural experiences to small American communities. The Smithsonian reputation expands awareness of smaller museums and increases their attendance. It nurtures additional private and public support for the local museum, and provides a vehicle for evolving partnerships in the community and beyond.
A major emphasis also centers on fences in American history and culture, including the present American panorama. An historical perspective features the role of fences from the Pilgrim’s palisades to the gated community, and touches the disputes surrounding fences during the westward expansion of the American frontier into Arizona. The conflicts are storied: ranchers and farmers clashed, cattlemen and sheepherders disputed land, and homesteaders challenged established interests.
The role of private property defines a focus of the story. Fences and walls manifest property in many ways. They enhance, decorating yards, gardens, and patios. They mark and define our property, informing us, and them, of what is ours. Most importantly, fences provide security. They protect "us" from "them." Historically in America, "they" have often been hungry hogs and meandering cattle. Now, neighborhood mutts and ill-mannered kids define the culprits. And, of course, American society fastens on the pros and cons of walls and fences on the boundaryline.
The immigration issue rivets the nation. The immigration controversy and gated communities once again crystallize our innate ambivalence about walls and fences. They decorate or blight the land; they spark contradictory love-hate emotions; they protect, but they separate; they define "ours", but they isolate "us."
The Southern Connection: The Meaning of Mexico for Arizona and the U.S.
Mexican influences in Arizona and beyond range wide and deep. They include intermarriage, and family members on both sides are keenly sensitive to the blessings (and complications) of cross-cultural unions. Mexican and Mexican-American residents of Arizona spread their culture in dozens of other ways – at work, in clubs and organizations, at church, in the markets, in restaurants, and at the mall. Arizona counts nearly 25% Mexican-American population.
Tourism involving millions also contribute to cross-cultural influences. Arizonans recreate and live in Mexico; Mexicanos reside in Arizona; thousands of Mexican students attend Arizona’s school, colleges and universities.
Economic interaction implies the same message. Reciprocal trade and investment burgeon. Arizonans work in Mexico’s border assembly plants and with border related services. Mexico is Arizona’s most important trading partner. Mexicans invest and spend billions in Arizona; Arizonans have enormous economic investments in Mexico.
In sum, Mexico exercises profound influence in Arizona. We should be sensitive to that influence. We may learn from it and adapt it more productively to Arizona’s societal economic norms.
A Third Country? Cultural and Economic Melding on the Arizona/Sonora Border
Borders form more than a dividing line. They define a meeting ground where two peoples interact, where the two influence one another, where a new synthesis emerges from the blending of the two.
Cultural, economic, and political interaction pervades the U.S.-Mexican border region. Border dwellers borrow and combine English and Spanish in wondrous ways. Artistic styles like muralism progress from the South. Mexican Northern ballads and American Western music enrich the region. Baseball invades Mexico from the North. Sartorial styles distinguish Mexicano and Gringo borderlanders. Vaqueros and cowboys dress in ways never imagined in New York or Mexico City.
The economies and polities of the two nations also interact in the border region – sometimes for the better of both, but sometimes not.
Many have studied the special qualities of the border. Mexican social psychologist Rogelio Diaz Guerrero speaks of value convergence. American social historian Oscar Martinez highlights the complexities of border life. And, Mexican sociologist Jorge Bustamante defends the "Mexicaness" of Mexican borderlanders.
