The University of Arizona Press

March 11, 2026

In Forging a Mexican People, scholar Pablo Zavala shows how illustrated print culture helped to construct and deconstruct versions of “a people” in postrevolutionary Mexico. The author demonstrates how print culture provided alternative—sometimes contradictory—collective subjectivities that challenged hegemonic conceptions of a so-called national people in the formative years of the Mexican state. Today he offers an inside look at some of the archival works discussed in his new work.

By Pablo Zavala

Doing archival research is always simultaneously an adventure and an investigation. El Machete, the one-time newspaper of the Mexican Communist Party, is not digitized anywhere; rather, its original issues live in Mexico City’s archives. Located at the Autonomous University of Mexico City, the CAMeNA generously allowed me to look through their copies of the radical newspaper. As I put on the latex gloves and donned a surgical mask to flip through the timeworn pages, I slowly entered a time warp that took me to the days after the revolution (1910-20), when Mexico experienced a wave of optimism that promised a more equitable country. Such enthusiasm floods the pages of the periodical, shown in the picture here in its different sizes that include a smaller version published when the newspaper was outlawed during the late 1920s and early 1930s.

At other times, the archival investigation for Forging a Mexican People consisted not so much of a geographical exploration but a quest to acquire the publishing permissions. In the case of The Masses (1935), I contacted José Clemente Orozco’s grandson who has been extremely kind in this regard. I think that such collaboration allows the world to continue studying and preserving historical memory through cultural artifacts, Orozco’s images in this case, especially in light of new ways of thinking about the past and present. I like this image because it shows the different, cacophonous, and often contradictory ways there have been to portray a people.

Some images, fortunately, are also stored in archives outside of Mexico. I found Celia Calderón’s 1960 Mexico, Owner of All Its Resources in a public library in Milwaukee where the librarians in the Rare Books Collection have been very helpful in giving patrons access free of charge and providing, with an appointment, a special viewing room. According to their website: “The Milwaukee Public Library’s rarities collection gathers, preserves, and provides access to significant materials of historic and aesthetic value for the people of the City of Milwaukee and future generations of residents.” The image’s portrayal of the people as a giant Leviathan recalls Thomas Hobbes’s allusion to a powerful state, but Calderón subverts that interpretation by vesting a woman of color with the ability to safeguard the nation’s sovereignty.

When Mexican students protested their repressive state in the summer of 1968, their prints were often done anonymously and quickly, responding to the exigencies of the situation. Arnulfo Aquino and Jorge Perezvega, present at the protests, subsequently gathered, categorized, identified, and eventually published the prints over the years in collections distributed by the Autonomous National University of Mexico (UNAM) in Mexico City. They also donated the primary artifacts to the UNAM’s art museum, now called the University Museum of Contemporary Art (MUAC). This particular print references the biases of some of the mainstream mass media at the time, like the newspaper El Sol de México, toward the government’s narrative that blamed the students for the skirmishes.

Finally, Ester Hernandez’s La Virgen de Guadalupe defendiendo los derechos de los Xicanos shatters the society-imposed gender confines by representing a radical Virgin of Guadalupe. Such iconoclastic narratives are fundamental in challenging exclusionary practices, like the kind Chicanas faced then and continue to encounter today. Hernandez’s graphic art is iconic of the Chicano movement and beyond and prominent cultural institutions like the Smithsonian Institution have recently recognized her work (e.g., in ¡Printing the Revolution! The Rise and Impact of Chicano Graphics, 1965 to Now. I was fortunate enough that Hernandez responded positively to my work and granted me permission and a high-resolution version of the print to include in my analysis.  

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About the Author

Pablo Zavala is an assistant professor of Spanish and Latin American Studies and director of the Center for Latin American and Latinx Studies (CLAXS) at Loyola University New Orleans. He was born in Ciudad Juárez and now resides in New Orleans.

February 5, 2026

The Borderlands Regional Library Association (BRLA) selected The Molino: A Memoir by Melani Martinez and Frontera Madre(hood): Brown Mothers Challenging Oppression and Transborder Violence at the U.S.- Mexico Border, edited by Cynthia Bejarano and Maria Cristina Morales for the 2025 Southwest Book Awards. The BRLA is an organization founded in 1966 for the promotion of library service and librarianship in the El Paso/Las Cruces/Juárez Metroplex. Current membership includes over 100 Librarians, Paraprofessionals, Media Specialists, Library Friends and Trustees from all types of libraries in the Tri-State area of Trans-Pecos Texas, Southern New Mexico and Northern Chihuahua. The complete list of award-winning books is here.

Congratulations Mele, Cynthia, and Maria Cristina!

About The Molino:

Set in one of Tucson’s first tamal and tortilla factories, The Molino is a hybrid memoir that reckons with one family’s loss of home, food, and faith.

Weaving together history, culture, and Mexican food traditions, Melani Martinez shares the story of her family’s life and work in the heart of their downtown eatery, El Rapido. Opened by Martinez’s great-grandfather, Aurelio Perez, in 1933, El Rapido served tamales and burritos to residents and visitors to Tucson’s historic Barrio Presidio for nearly seventy years. For the family, the factory that bound them together was known for the giant corn grinder churning behind the scenes—the molino. With clear eyes and warm humor, Martinez documents the work required to prepare food for others, and explores the heartbreaking aftermath of gentrification that forces the multigenerational family business to close its doors.

About Frontera Madre(hood):

The topic of mothers and mothering transcends all spaces, from popular culture to intellectual thought and critique. This collection of essays bridges both methodological and theoretical frameworks to explore forms of mothering that challenge hegemonic understandings of parenting and traditional notions of Latinx womxnhood. It articulates the collective experiences of Latinx, Black, and Indigenous mothering from both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border.

Thirty contributors discuss their lived experiences, research, or community work challenging multiple layers of oppression, including militarization of the border, border security propaganda, feminicides, drug war and colonial violence, grieving and loss of a child, challenges and forms of resistance by Indigenous mothers, working mothers in maquiladoras, queer mothering, academia and motherhood, and institutional barriers by government systems to access affordable health care and environmental justice.

January 29, 2026

The University of Arizona Press, in partnership with Path to Open and the libraries that support it, has opened up access to four important works of scholarship. These books bring a new lens to archaeology in eastern North America, urban Indigeneity, conservation labor in Madagascar, and Central American migration in the twenty-first century. Path to Open is an initiative with JSTOR that supports the transition of high-quality scholarly monographs to open access at scale.

Our four newest OA titles are part of the first 100 books, which were originally published in 2023 and are now available to readers around the world.

Our Hidden Landscapes

Our Hidden Landscapes introduces people to eastern North America’s Indigenous ceremonial stone landscapes (CSLs)—sacred sites whose principal identifying characteristics are built stone structures that cluster within specific physical landscapes. This volume presents these often unrecognized sites as significant cultural landscapes in need of protection and preservation. Chapters from Indigenous community members, archaeologists, and anthropologists provide a variety of approaches for better understanding, protecting, and preserving these important sacred spaces.

Urban Indigeneities

Increasing numbers of Indigenous peoples are living in cities, yet the vast majority of studies focus solely on rural Indigenous populations. This is the first book to look at urban Indigenous peoples globally and present the urban Indigenous experience—not as the exception but as the norm. Dismissing the false idea that indigeneity is only “authentic” when it is practiced in remote rural areas, these wide-ranging essays show that a vigorous, vibrant, and meaningful indigeneity can be created in urban spaces too and offers perspectives and tools to understand a contemporary Indigenous urban reality.

Hottest of the Hotspots

Continually recognized as one of the “hottest” of all the world’s biodiversity hotspots, the island of Madagascar has become ground zero for the most intensive market-based conservation interventions on Earth. This book details the rollout of market conservation programs, including the finding drugs from nature—or “bioprospecting”—biodiversity offsetting, and the selling of blue carbon credits from mangroves. It documents the tensions that exist at the local level and provides a voice for community workers many times left out of environmental policy discussions, ultimately in the hope of offering critiques that build better conservation interventions with perspectives of the locals.

Central American Migrations in the Twenty-First Century

Central American Migrations in the Twenty-First Century tackles head-on the way Central America has been portrayed as a region profoundly marked by the migration of its people. The essays use an intersectional approach to demonstrate the complexity of the migration experience. This volume opens a dialogue between humanities and social sciences scholars on the complex migratory processes of the region.

December 16, 2025

We’re excited to share a selection of recent paperbacks from the University of Arizona Press. These titles span the full breadth of our publishing program, from anthropology and Indigenous studies to history and Latin American studies.

These books offer a compelling look at our world. Leading writers and scholars share their work on how communities interact with one another, how they relate to their environments, how they have lived in the past and continue to shape the present. Together, these works illuminate the diverse ways humans create and re‑create their worlds—insightful scholarship that connects us all.

Arizona, the Southwest, and Beyond

Anthropology

Archaeology

Latinx and Latin American Studies

November 13, 2025

Islands in Infinty: Galaxies 3-D, by Derek Ward-Thompson, Brian May, and J-P Metsävainio was published in the United Kingdom this week by our partner press, The London Stereoscopic Company. To celebrate, we’re offering a discount code when you pre-order the North American version of the book, which will ship in late February 2026.

Order this week and get 45% off using code AZGALAXIES45, and next spring you will see galaxies in a whole new way! Act now, because this amazing discount is only available for a short time.

This groundbreaking book brings the cosmos to life like never before. Featuring more than two hundred stunning color photographs from the world’s leading observatories and eighty detailed diagrams, this large-format book offers a mesmerizing journey through the formation, nature, evolution, and classification of galaxies.

Highlights include:

• A look at the universe in three dimensions with Brian May’s patented 3-D viewer,
• Accessible science, offering a non-mathematical review of modern cosmology and astronomy
• An exploration of the chaotic beauty of colliding and merging galaxies,
• A reference section on historical galaxy catalogues, plus a comprehensive index.

About the authors:

Derek Ward-Thompson (MA, PhD, FRAS) is director of the Jeremiah Horrocks Institute of Mathematics, Physics and Astronomy, and head of the School of Physical Sciences and Computing at the University of Lancashire.

Sir Brian May (CBE, PhD, ARCS, FRAS) is a founding member of the rock group Queen, a world-renowned guitarist, songwriter, producer, performer, 3-D photographic authority, author, publisher, and passionate campaigner for animal rights.

J-P Metsävainio is a Finnish visual artist and impassioned astronomical photographer who uses scientific and computational tools and methods to reveal the nocturnal world of wonders.

September 16, 2025

In Tucson during the 1950s, nearly everyone knew, or wanted to know, the southwestern artist Mac Schweitzer. Born Mary Alice Cox in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1921, she grew up a tomboy who adored horses, cowboys, and art. After training at the Cleveland School of Art and marrying, she adopted her maiden initials (M. A. C.) as her artistic name and settled in Tucson in 1946. With a circle of influential friends that included anthropologists, designer-craftsmen, and Native American artists, she joined Tucson’s “Early Moderns,” receiving exhibits, commissions, and awards for her artwork. In Mac Schweitzer: A Southwest Maverick and Her Art, author Ann Lane Hedlund draws from the artist’s letters, photo albums, and published reviews to tell the story of Mac’s creative and adventuresome life. Today, Ann answers five questions about the book.

What first sparked your interest in Mac Schweitzer?

Mac was the mother-in-law I never knew because she died fifteen years before I met her son Kit in 1977. Kit and I married five years later, and our house filled with artworks made by Mac, Kit, his father Jack, and other artists whom we both knew. Family members and friends often focused on the tragedy that Mac died when not quite 41, leaving a toddler and teen-aged son, but few people could recall the variety of works she made, the energy she put into her career, and the awards and honors that she earned. All that was forgotten until I started researching her background through scrapbooks, photo albums, and hundreds of newspaper articles and announcements.

How did Mac fit into the ethos of modernism in Tucson?

Tucson in the 1940s and ‘50s was a lively arts colony, where galleries, festivals, and a nascent museum of art promoted local and regional artists. Arriving in 1946, Mac joined the Tucson Fine Arts Association and showed in several prominent downtown galleries, where she became known as an innovative artist. The modernist movement championed stylized geometric patterning, shifting perspectives, textured materials, and mixed media, among other things. Mac used all these, adding a Southwest twist with her rustic subject matter and distinct coloration. Collectors loved her work, which fit into the modern homes and offices that well-known Arizona architects designed and built at that time.

What was Mac’s process for creating animal paintings while she lived in the Tucson Mountains?

Since high school when she drew caricatures of her teachers and fellow students, Mac was a careful observer of people, places, wildlife, and plants. From the patios and kitchen window of her remote desert bungalow, she watched coyotes, javelina, deer, rabbits, rodents, and many birds up close. She also visited the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum where she could study the more elusive mountain lions and bobcats. She made quick pencil sketches, working mostly from memory, not from photos. Her drawings and prints capture the animals’ personalities and surroundings, not just their forms. Her paintings bring to life each critter’s character.

How was Mac (an outsider/white woman) welcomed onto northern Arizona’s Indian reservations?

When she started exploring and camping in the Four Corners area, Mac was a single mother whose grade-school-aged son Kit traveled everywhere with her. Together they visited the homes and herding grounds of Hopi and Navajo families, first introduced to them by anthropologist-friends from Tucson. Mac always shared food, art-making supplies, and other goods, while Kit played with the local children. Both mother and son regarded their new friendships as open-hearted, two-way connections. Their friends met them at least halfway, exchanging invitations to attend ceremonial dances and feasts with opportunities to visit Tucson museums, schools, and events. Mac and Kit recognized the privilege to learn about distinct cultures, the importance of privacy and boundaries, and the reciprocal nature of integrating experience into art and life.

What is your next research or writing project?

Well, continuing with that theme of “the privilege to learn about distinct cultures,” I’ve become interested in looking back at my own career as a cultural anthropologist who documented and collaborated with Navajo weavers and other artists. What paths led me to learn about their creative lives? What pitfalls and challenges did I encounter along the way? How was the “arts and crafts scene” when I started, compared with the modern art world today? So many loose ends to follow, so many adventure-filled tales to tell! I don’t yet know whether these musings might result in a single essay, a memoir-esque book, or something in between, but at this stage it’s exciting to look ahead and behind.

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About the Author

Ann Lane Hedlund is a cultural anthropologist who collaborates with Indigenous weavers and other visual artists to understand creative processes in social contexts. From 1997 to 2013 she served as a curator at Arizona State Museum and professor at University of Arizona, Tucson, where she also directed the nonprofit Center for Tapestry Studies. She is author of Navajo Weaving in the Late Twentieth Century and Gloria F. Ross & Modern Tapestry, among other works.

May 28, 2025

The Texas State Legislature appointed Octavio Quintanilla to be Texas Poet Laureate for 2025-2026. He is the author of Las Horas Imposibles / The Impossible Hours, winner of the 2024 Ambroggio Prize from the Academy of American Poets.

Quintanilla, who writes and teaches in San Antonio, was one of several state artists appointed by the Legislature. In the press release about state artists, State Representative Will Metcalf, Chairman of the House Committee on Culture, Recreation, and Tourism said, “It’s a pleasure to recognize the 2025-2026 State Artists for their official designations. The arts in Texas are extremely important to a vibrant and thriving state.” Gary Gibbs, executive director for the Texas Commission on the Arts, said, “These Texas State Artists are the best of the best. Their work defines our character of place and reflects the distinctive qualities that make Texas unique.”

Congratulations, Octavio!

About the book:

In Las Horas Imposibles / The Impossible Hours, Octavio Quintanilla takes us on a profound journey to witness what it means to erase those boundaries devised by genre and politics intent on stifling memory, imagination, and creativity.
 
Presented in Spanish with English translations, this poetry collection comprises lyric and concrete poems—or frontextos—that explore intimacy and different shades of violence as a means to reconcile the speaker’s sense of belonging in the world. From the opening poem to the last in the first section, Quintanilla captures the perilous journeys that migrants undertake crossing borders as well as the paths that lovers forge to meet their endless longing. These themes are skillfully woven by Quintanilla, guiding us back and forth across the Rio Grande to encounter the apparitions of the disappeared and to witness the willingness of many to risk life and limb for a better life.

May 9, 2025

While all poets paint pictures with words, some poets also literally paint pictures: Leo Romero’s paintings are currently featured at Big Happy Gallery, on exhibition with the work of his wife, Elizabeth Cook Romero. Leo Romero also painted the image on the cover of his book, Trees Dream of Water: Selected and New Poems, seen in the header image above.

The opening reception will be on May 9, 5-7 p.m., MDT. Big Happy Gallery is located at 1300 Luisa St., Ste. 3A, Santa Fe, New Mexico. The show runs through June 14, 2025. Gallery hours are Saturday and Sunday, noon to 5 p.m., and by appointment.

About the book:

“The poems in this collection began as a search for a history of my ancestors in a small, isolated valley in northern New Mexico. But no one wrote it down, and I was left to construct a poetic history where there were no written records . . .”

Leo Romero stands as a foundational figure in Latino letters. With six books of poetry and a book of short fiction to his name, Romero’s contribution to the literary canon is profound and enduring.

Bringing together for the first time his new and selected poems, Trees Dream of Water reflects Romero’s journey from youth to maturity as a person and a poet, and his deep connection to New Mexico and its culture. Traversed by memory, myth, and observation of the natural world, these poems explore family, community belonging and conflict, life as an artist, and the cycles of life and death. This lyrical anthology includes accompanying essays to illuminate Romero’s life and work for longtime admirers and new readers alike.

April 8, 2025

Writing That Matters: A Handbook for Chicanx and Latinx Studies, by L Heidenreich and Rita E. Urquijo-Ruiz, received the 2025 Catrióna Rueda Esquibel Recognition Award at the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies (NACCS) Annual Meeting in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on April 3, 2025. Rita E. Urquijo-Ruiz accepted the award on behalf of both authors during the Plenary Session.

Gabriella Sanchez and Veronica Sandoval, Chicana Caucus Co-chairs, said that the book “exemplifies the kind of scholarship we aspire to produce and engage with as part of Chicana Studies.”

Congratulations, L and Rita!

About the book:

Have you ever wanted a writing and research manual that centered Chicanx and Latinx scholarship? Writing that Matters does just that.

While it includes a brief history of the roots of the fields of Chicanx literature and history, Writing that Matters emphasizes practice: how to research and write a Chicanx or Latinx history paper; how to research and write a Chicanx or Latinx literature or cultural studies essay; and how to conduct interviews, frame pláticas, and conduct oral histories. It also includes a brief chapter on nomenclature and a grammar guide. Each chapter includes questions for discussion, and all examples from across the subfields are from noted Chicanx and Latinx scholars. Women’s and queer scholarship and methods are not addressed in a separate chapter but are instead integral to the work.