The University of Arizona Press

August 19, 2025

Mimbres Far from the Heartland: Identity at the Powers Ranch Site of East-Central Arizona offers a unique investigation into the complexities of Mimbres identity and social dynamics beyond the traditional Mimbres Valley heartland. Situated at the western edge of the Mimbres region, the Powers Ranch site is a professionally excavated Classic period settlement in Arizona’s Gila River Valley. Through excavation and analysis of architecture and a rich array of artifacts, including ceramic sherds, projectile points, and shell artifacts, authors Mary E. Whisenhunt and Patricia A. Gilman provide a detailed look at the lives of Mimbres people on the periphery.

Today, the authors answer five questions about their work.

What inspired you to write this book?

Gilman: I was interested in the Powers Ranch site because it would help me address one of my research interests—what were the lives of Mimbres people like beyond the Mimbres Valley heartland? It was becoming more apparent to us Mimbres archaeologists that things were different outside the Mimbres Valley, but how and why? Powers Ranch, being located 119 kilometers west of the valley, would help me consider these questions. Although parts of the site were excavated in 1983, the materials were never analyzed, and the excavation was never written up. My students at the University of Oklahoma and I analyzed the ceramics and the projectile points, and so I had a bit of an obligation to write up the site.

Whisenhunt: I was thrilled when Pat asked me to co-author this publication! The Powers Ranch site lies about 5 kilometers north of the area where I did my 2020 dissertation research on precontact settlement patterns in the Gila River Valley between Duncan and York, Arizona. We first visited the site in 2016 and were fascinated by it. Almost all the Classic sites on or near the Gila River in Arizona are on private property, and all have been looted. We’re extraordinarily blessed that the Powers family allowed us access to the property and supported the early investigations on which the book is based. Only one other Mimbres Classic site besides Powers Ranch has been professionally excavated in Arizona’s Gila River Valley, so the data from the Powers Ranch site really filled in a lot of the gaps in our knowledge.

What do you mean when you talk about an “edge community” in archaeology?

Gilman and Whisenhunt: Archaeologists tend to emphasize “core areas” or cultural heartlands where distributions and types of material culture, site layouts, burials, and architecture are strongly patterned. Research focused on the edge communities or regions at the boundaries of these archaeological core areas offers insights into the creation and manipulation of social identity and cultural change. Based on site organization, ceramic types and distributions, and architecture, the Powers Ranch site and several other Mimbres Classic settlements in the Gila River Valley in south-central Arizona represent edge communities of the greater Mimbres cultural region in New Mexico.

What are examples of ceramic items found at the Powers Ranch site in Arizona that helped you connect this site to Mimbres sites in New Mexico?

Gilman and Whisenhunt: We analyzed pottery distributions and designs to determine whether and how those who lived at the Powers Ranch site were affiliated with Mimbres people in the heartland. To represent a Mimbres connection, the painted ceramics in the Classic (CE 1000-1130) parts of the site would have been dominated by Mimbres Classic Black-on-white pottery. We found there were higher proportions of Mimbres pottery at the site than any other kind of painted ceramics, supporting the idea that people living there in the Classic period were affiliated with others in the core Mimbres area. We also found that Classic painted pottery designs at the Powers Ranch site were generally like those in the New Mexico heartland, although there were significant differences in certain design elements. For example, the core area had much higher ratios of pots with figurative designs than those in Arizona’s Gila Valley, and some of the geometric design elements were different. Those differences suggest the Powers Ranch site and the other occupations on the Gila River represent a distinct Western Mimbres identity, but one still affiliated with the Mimbres heartland.

What do you hope readers and researchers take away from this work?

Gilman: I hope that researchers and others interested in Mimbres archaeology will see that people can be fully Mimbres, even though they lived beyond the Mimbres Valley heartland. Their lives were different in that they either chose not to participate in the religion/cosmology that involved the Hero Twins and scarlet macaws, or they were not allowed to participate.

I also hope that readers will see that it is possible to gain insights from analyzing materials that were excavated long ago using different methods than we use today. Publication makes appropriate data available to everyone for thinking about life and lives in the past.

Whisenhunt: I think we know quite a bit about very large Mimbres sites in the core Mimbres area, so I hope this book will be of interest to those who seek to understand Mimbres community life on a smaller scale. And of course, how they were similar or different than others who lived in the Mimbres Valley heartland, and whether the site layout and material culture mirror those further downriver in the Gila River Valley. Like Pat, I hope readers, including other archaeologists, will see the value in analyzing data from sites excavated in the more distant past. My current project focuses on something similar—examining data derived from a Works Progress Administration archaeological excavation from the 1930s.

What is your next project?

Gilman: I am working on three projects right now. My co-authors and I have almost completed a monograph on West Baker, another Mimbres site far beyond the Mimbres Valley that was excavated in 1964 but never analyzed or written up. This site has a water shrine—a pit with layers of turquoise, shell, and other artifacts—a unique feature in Mimbres archaeology.

Other co-authors and I are also working on a monograph for Mogollon Village, a Pit Structure period site (CE 200-1000) in west-central New Mexico. Emil Haury defined the Mogollon Tradition in part using material from his 1933 excavation there, and we are incorporating unpublished data from his work as well as more recent excavations that we did. Mogollon Village is particularly interesting because it appears that one or just a few families lived on the site relatively continuously for several hundred years.

My third project, again with other co-authors, is investigating the presence of scarlet macaws, birds of the tropical rain forests, on southwestern archaeological sites from about CE 950-1400. We suggest that ancient people raised these birds locally and perhaps even bred them, an interpretation far different from the traditional one of trade in these birds from Mesoamerica.

Whisenhunt: I’m working with two co-authors on a book about the Morhiss mortuary site in south Texas. Dating back more than 7,000 years, and with more than 250 recorded burials, it’s one of the largest and oldest hunter-gatherer cemeteries in the U.S. The Works Progress Administration fully excavated it back in the 1930s. Using data derived from original excavation records, radiocarbon dating, stable isotope analysis, and diagnostic lithic material, we’re exploring the evolution of precontact hunter-gatherer dietary and mobility patterns in response to population and environmental pressures.

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Mary E. Whisenhunt has conducted archaeological research in the U.S. Southwest since 2014 and has worked at the Center for Archaeological Research at the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) since 2020 and at Statistical Research Inc. (SRI) in Tucson since late 2024. Patricia A. Gilman has done archaeological research in the Mimbres region of New Mexico and Arizona for more than fifty years. One of her research interests is the role of small Mimbres Classic sites beyond the Mimbres Valley.

August 5, 2025

Today, University of Arizona Press Art Director, Leigh McDonald, shares a behind-the-scenes look at the process of designing a new cover for the paperback edition of Pat Mora’s Encantado, the poetic monologues of an imagined southwestern town.

First published in 2018, each poem forms a story that reveals the complex and emotional journeys we take through life. Mora meanders through the thoughts of Encantado’s residents—the mothers and sisters, brothers and fathers in whom we see slivers of ourselves and our loved ones—and paints a portrait of a community through its inhabitants’ own diverse voices. Even the river has a voice we understand. Inspired by both the real and imagined stories around her, Mora transports us to the heart of what it means to join in a chorus of voices. A community. A town. Encantado.

Can you tell us about the artwork you chose for the paperback edition of Encantado?

This cover was a particular challenge because Encantado is a fictional place, but one based firmly in the humanity, emotions, and landscape of real Southwestern towns. Most of the artwork I found that had the right feeling for the book also had something else about it that was too specific to fit—a recognizable real-world location, or a person or setting that was too at odds with the descriptions in the book. When I came across Ed Sandoval’s work, I knew I had finally struck gold. His warm, colorful paintings of quiet moments in a remembered New Mexico evoked the sense of place and the people of Encantado perfectly; through a different medium, they tell a similar story.

Are there certain themes, tones, or other connections to the poems that you see reflected in the new cover? 

The river in Encantado is not just a beautiful piece of landscape, but actually a figure with its own voice and place in the journey—it was a key feature to include in the landscape of the cover image. We also knew from the beginning that we wanted artwork with people and buildings in it, because at its heart, that’s what the book is about: the human experience, in community.

Were there other directions or artworks you were considering?

The hardcover edition of Encantado was designed as a beautiful abstraction that would feel like a small, precious gift of a book. We knew for the paperback that we wanted to go in a new direction, one that reflected the content and tone of Pat’s work more directly, so I immediately began looking for representational art. Ed’s work was, however, the only existing artwork I found that I felt was right for this edition. It really stood out as a match head and shoulders above everything else I considered.

Are there any special considerations for redesigning covers? Were there author requests? Constraints?

Redesigning covers for a paperback is different from designing for frontlist titles because there is an existing cover you want the new book to be in conversation with, and yet also distinct from. It’s an opportunity to reimagine how the cover can reflect the work, but also an additional challenge. The time and resources for design are also typically more limited at this stage, but I really wanted to make sure that Pat felt the artwork I chose reflected Encantado as she had envisioned it. Fortunately, both she and her daughter were thrilled at the choice.

What is something you love about this cover?

One of my favorite unexpected moments in cover design is when I am able to link an artist and author who really appreciate and want to support each other’s work. Ed was absolutely fantastic to work with, and graciously offered to donate the use of the piece in support of a fellow New Mexican artist. Similarly, Pat and her daughter were delighted to learn about him and his beautiful work and so thankful to make the connection. There is something special about bringing wonderful, creative people together!

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Pat Mora is an author, speaker, educator, and literacy advocate. She has written more than forty-five books for adults, teens, and children. The recipient of two honorary doctorates and a poetry fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, she lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

April 1, 2025

In Publishing Latinidad: Latinx Literary and Intellectual Production, 1880–1960, Jose O. Fernandez meticulously examines the works of notable figures like José Martí, Arturo Schomburg, Jesús Colón, José de la Luz Sáenz, Adela Sloss-Vento, and Américo Paredes, illuminating their innovative approaches to circumventing exclusionary practices in the publishing world. He demonstrates how these writers and intellectuals entered literary, cultural, and intellectual discourses through alternative modes of literary production: crónicas, translations, paratexts, bibliographies, archival practices, sketches, diaries, biographies, unpublished fiction, and scholarly monographs.

Today, Fernandez answers five questions.

What inspired you to write this book?

When I began writing about post-1960s Latinx writers, I became interested in early authors, intellectuals, and civil rights activists that could be considered their predecessors in relation to a shared interests in articulating their unequal treatment within American society. Publishing Latinidad is a continuation of my previous book in which I explored the historical background of certain Latinx literary genres and forms. When I was a graduate student, for example, I was unaware of the rich tradition of early Latinx writers and intellectuals who came before the writers of the Chicanx and Nuyorican movements. I still remember my surprise at finding José Martí in The Norton Anthology of Latino Literature, but this should not have been the case. A larger part of Martí’s writings originated in New York City, and his literary and intellectual legacy directly influenced other Latinx writers after him. In this book, I wanted to study these connections in more detail, and specifically how early nontraditional Latinx texts and print forms fit within Latinx literary history.

How do you choose the intellectual analyzed in each chapter?

For the last couple of decades, if not longer, there has been an increased interest in the study of writers and intellectuals who can be considered precursors of Latinx writers who came of age after the 1960s. For this book project, I wanted to highlight writers from the turn of the twentieth century to the mid twentieth century since this is the literary period that I concentrated on in graduate school. There are a number of writers who could have merited a chapter in the book such as Sotero Figueroa, Bernardo Vega, Juan Antonio Corretjer, Eusebio Chacón, Jovita González, and especially Alonso Perales. The authors I selected are connected to each other when divided in two geographic areas, New York City and Texas. My book seeks to explore literary and intellectual ties; for example, Jesús Colón wrote about Arturo Schomburg, who in turned was directly influenced by the writings of Martí. The same happened in Texas as Adela Sloss-Vento met and corresponded with José de la Luz Sáenz and Alonso Perales, and Américo Paredes was aware of the writings and civil rights activism of Perales at the time when Paredes’s poetry was being published in Spanish-language newspapers during the 1930s.

When Texas Mexican soldiers serving in World War I returned to the United States, what was the state of race relations in Texas?

Racialization through legislation and the courts affected the lives of both Mexicans and Mexican Americans in Texas. Their social lives were dictated by “Juan Crow” segregation, which was similar to the segregation and racial violence experienced by African Americans at the time. Sáenz, who fought overseas during World War I, writes about segregated barber shops, restaurants, and public accommodations in Texas after the war. The racial discrimination Mexican communities experienced in Texas before and after the war influenced Sáenz’s writings and social activism. There is an increasing body of scholarship that has focused in detail on the extent of these systems of racial control and racial hierarchies affecting Mexicans and Mexican Americans not only in Texas but across the Southwest. The list of scholars who have written about this is extensive, but in relation to the various Mexican American civil rights activists who emerged after the war, it is important to note the scholarship of Benjamin Johnson, José A. Ramírez, Emilio Zamora, Martha Menchaca, and Cynthia Orozco. What I attempted in Publishing Latinidad was to connect this history with writers such as Sáenz, Perales, and Sloss-Vento, who wrote about this through nontraditional texts and print forms.  

What are the connections between Mexican American civil rights and African American civil rights and Indigenous civil rights?

Unfortunately, the prevailing commonality among the experiences of these groups was their shared racialization and exclusion from mainstream social, political, and cultural participation in the United States. At the same time, Latinx, Black, and Indigenous groups during different periods in history also shared their fight for inclusion and for their rightful place in society and inclusion of their cultural and intellectual contributions. Another shared trait of these groups in their fight for civil rights was that while they gained their citizenship at different periods in American history, their social thinking and literary writings have been marked by their attempts to gain full citizenship rights. To bring back Sáenz as an example, some of his arguments when he articulates the need for full rights for Mexican Americans after World War I uncannily resemble some of the claims made by W.E.B. Du Bois when he makes a case during the war for the end of racial violence against African Americans. Sáenz also specifically makes the argument in his war diary that Indigenous groups in the U.S. should be granted citizenship based on their war sacrifices.

What are you working on now?

There is an increased interest in the current role of mainstream publishers in the publication and promotion of authors of color. When it comes to Latinx authors, this exclusion is not new; it is the result of their historical exclusion in cultural, publishing, and academic spaces. One of my current projects focuses on the role and significance of Arte Público Press, the most successful nonprofit Latinx publisher for the last fifty years. This project focuses on the history of Arte Público and its founder, Nicolás Kanellos, and how several of the authors and books published by the press have shaped the trajectory of Latinx literature.

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Jose O. Fernandez is an assistant professor in the Latina/o/x Studies Program at the University of Iowa. He is the author of Against Marginalization: Convergences in Black and Latinx Literatures. His research focuses on the emergence and development of the Latinx literary tradition through a comparative ethnic studies lens and the influence of the publishing dynamics that have shaped Latinx literary and intellectual production in the United States.

March 20, 2025

Carlos G. Vélez-Ibáñez’s latest work, The Rise of Necro/Narco Citizenship investigates the intricate and often harrowing dynamics that define the borderlands between the United States, Mexico, and beyond. This groundbreaking book provides a comprehensive cultural, economic, social, and political-ecological analysis, illustrating how various forms of violence and militarization have reshaped the daily lives and identities of the region’s inhabitants.

Today, Dr. Vélez-Ibáñez answers five questions.

This work has been described as “distressing but essential.” What compelled you to undertake this project at this time?

I have looked at many global and regional indications of this latest version of global capital at this late stage, and it is not serving the livelihoods of millions of communities. I characterize this as “Wars of Omission,” forcing some 80 million globally to try to relocate to more positive conditions only to meet with equivalent situations. Or worse, such Wars of Omission have created conditions in which psychotropic drugs are adopted as a means of dulling the stresses imposed by these processes, generating “Wars of Commission” in response. Both wars generate their attending necro/narco citizenships. The southwest American and northwest Mexican border region, which I refer to as the Southwest North America Region, is the central focus of this narrative. This region is larger than western Europe and Great Britain and is undergoing these process with greater and greater dependence on forced and voluntary migrations of families on both sides of the border bifurcation as well as those seeking to escape through the production, distribution, and consumption of drugs. I am most concerned about the impact on youth and following generations as the primary targeted population.

You have written many books and articles. What are three of the key threads that tie your work together across your long career?

First, finding answers to the question of how people survive economic and social frailties when they should not be able. Second, finding answers to the question of how people manage to excel when everything is stacked up against them. Third, how do following generations utilize and benefit from (or not) those survival and excelling strategies. And now, fourth, understanding how people manage to survive both Wars of Omission and Commission, both much beyond their influence or control.

The Rise of Necro/Narco Citizenship draws on the theorization of Necrocitizenship and takes it further, specifically deploying it for the U.S-Mexico Transborder Region. How do you explain this theory (briefly) to the lay reader?

The manner in which I use necrocitizenship and its companion narcocitizenship is to describe the unquestioning willingness to succumb for an empire, nation, region, or locality in its name. This willingness is commonly formed by highly ritualized practices as it is learned, transmitted, and operationalized. It eventually leads to service, injury, or the death of a participant. Its modern companion of narcocitizenship is its moving from necrocitizenship by offering fulfillment of omitted economic and social functions with alternative rewards, symbols, and rituals. These lead to equivalent service, injury, or certain death because of seeking to ensure the control, production, distribution, and consumption of drugs and range in acquisition from full-fledged membership to muted compliance.

An interview with you appeared in the PBS series American Historia in the second episode “Threads in the American Tapestry.” What was that like?

It afforded me a chance to reemphasize the short duration of the political barrier imposed by war between present populations since it is only two grandmothers old, which is usually referred to by some sort of innocent referent like annexation, integration, appropriation, or sequestration, instead of its simple reality of conquest. The same is true for the Spanish version of conquest three hundred years earlier. Both were unwanted impositions with long-lasting consequences for their original constituents and colonially created populations.

What is one thing you hope scholars in the future will take away from your work and then build on?

Pay attention on the ground to what populations are doing for survival and achievement and their costs and benefits to themselves and following generations. For the most part, there are not only just good guys or bad guys, though it may seem to be so simple. Staying focused on the ground provides the best differentiation and similarities.

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Carlos G. Vélez-Ibáñez received a PhD in anthropology from the University of California, San Diego (1975). His intellectual interests are broadly comparative and applied, and his publications include thirteen books in English and Spanish, as well many articles and chapters. Three of his English-language books have been translated into Spanish. He held tenured professorships in anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the University of Arizona, where, in 1982, he founded the Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology. He is Regents’ Professor of the School of Transborder Studies and the School of School of Human Evolution and Social Change and the Motorola Presidential Professor of Neighborhood Revitalization at Arizona State University. He was elected as Corresponding Member of the Mexican Academy of Sciences and Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.