front cover of Edible and Useful Plants of the Southwest
Edible and Useful Plants of the Southwest
Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona
By Delena Tull
University of Texas Press, 2013

All around us there are wild plants useful for food, medicine, and clothing, but most of us don’t know how to identify or use them. Delena Tull amply supplies that knowledge in this book, which she has now expanded to more thoroughly address plants found in New Mexico and Arizona, as well as Texas.

Extensively illustrated with black-and-white drawings and color photos, this book includes the following special features:

  • Recipes for foods made from edible wild plants
  • Wild teas and spices
  • Wild plant dyes, with instructions for preparing the plants and dying wool, cotton, and other materials
  • Instructions for preparing fibers for use in making baskets, textiles, and paper
  • Information on wild plants used for making rubber, wax, oil, and soap
  • Information on medicinal uses of plants
  • Details on hay fever plants and plants that cause rashes
  • Instructions for distinguishing edible from poisonous berries
  • Detailed information on poisonous plants, including poison ivy, oak, and sumac, as well as herbal treatments for their rashes
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front cover of El Milagro and Other Stories
El Milagro and Other Stories
Patricia Preciado Martin
University of Arizona Press, 1996
Ticking clocks and tolling bells, scents of roses and warm tortillas: this is the barrio of years past as captured in the words of Patricia Preciado Martin. Cuentos, recuerdos, stories, memories—all are stirred into a simmering caldo by a writer whose love for her heritage shines through every page.

Reminiscent of Like Water for Chocolate, the book is a rich mix of the simplest ingredients—food, family, tradition. We see Silviana striding to her chicken coop, triggering the "feathered pandemonium" of chickens who smell death in the air. We meet Elena, standing before the mirror in her wedding dress, and Teodoro Sánchez, who sleeps under the sky and smells of “chaparral and mesquite pollen and the stream bottom and the bone dust of generations. There’s the monsignor sitting on the edge of a sofa, sipping Nescafé from a china cup, and here is Sister Francisca "with her warm, minty breath" warning us away from impure thoughts. Be on your best behavior, too, in Tía Petra’s Edwardian parlor—la Doña Petrita, descended from conquistadores, might just deliver a tap on your head with her silver-handled walking stick. Then, with Mamacita, spend a summer afternoon bent over your embroidery with trembling hand and sweaty upper lip, and all the while wondering what in the world it feels like to be kissed.

Intermingled with the author’s stories are collective memories of the barrio, tales halfway between heaven and earth that seem to connect barrio residents to each other and to their past. These cuentos are mystical and dreamy, peopled with ghosts and miracles and Aztec princesses dressed in feathers and gold. Come, sit down and have some salsa and a tortilla—fresh and homemade, it goes without saying; people who buy tortillas at the market "might as well move to Los Angeles, for they have already lost their souls." Then open the pages of this book. Help yourself to another feast of food and flowers, music and dancing, sunshine and moonlight—everything glorious and mundane, serious and humorous, earthly and spiritual, poignant and joyful, in la vida mexicoamericana.
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front cover of Empowered!
Empowered!
Latinos Transforming Arizona Politics
Lisa Magaña
University of Arizona Press, 2021

Empowered!examines Arizona’s recent political history and how it has been shaped and propelled by Latinos. It also provides a distilled reflection of U.S. politics more broadly, where the politics of exclusion and the desire for inclusion are forces of change.

Lisa Magaña and César S. Silva argue that the state of Arizona is more inclusive and progressive then it has ever been. Following in the footsteps of grassroots organizers in California and the southeastern states, Latinos in Arizona have struggled and succeeded to alter the anti-immigrant and racist policies that have been affecting Latinos in the state for many years. Draconian immigration policies have plagued Arizona’s political history. Empowered! shows innovative ways that Latinos have fought these policies.

Empowered! focuses on the legacy of Latino activism within politics. It raises important arguments about those who stand to profit financially and politically by stoking fear of immigrants and how resilient politicians and grassroots organizers have worked to counteract that fear mongering. Recognizing the long history of disenfranchisement and injustice surrounding minority communities in the United States, this book outlines the struggle to make Arizona a more just and equal place for Latinos to live. 

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front cover of Excavations at Punta de Agua in the Santa Cruz River Basin, Southeastern Arizona
Excavations at Punta de Agua in the Santa Cruz River Basin, Southeastern Arizona
J. Cameron Greenleaf
University of Arizona Press, 1975
The Anthropological Papers of the University of Arizona No. 26. Salvage archaeology explores Indian cultural development during Rillito, Rincon, and Tanque Verde phases.
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front cover of Expanding the View of Hohokam Platform Mounds
Expanding the View of Hohokam Platform Mounds
An Ethnographic Perspective
Mark D. Elson
University of Arizona Press, 1998
For more than a hundred years, archaeologists have investigated the function of earthen platform mounds in the American Southwest. Built by the Hohokam groups between A.D. 1150 and 1350, these mounds are among the few monumental structures in the Southwest, yet their use and the nature of the groups who built them remain unresolved. Mark Elson now takes a fresh look at these monuments and sheds new light on their significance. He goes beyond previous studies by examining platform mound function and social group organization through a cross-cultural study of historic mound-using groups in the Pacific Ocean region, South America, and the southeastern United States.

Using this information, he develops a number of important new generalizations about how people used mounds. Elson then applies these data to the study of a prehistoric settlement system in the eastern Tonto Basin of Arizona that contained five platform mounds. He argues that the mounds were used variously as residences and ceremonial facilities by competing descent groups and were an indication of hereditary leadership. They were important in group integration and resource management; after abandonment they served as ancestral shrines. Elson's study provides a fresh approach to an old puzzle and offers new suggestions regarding variability among Hohokam populations. Its innovative use of comparative data and analyses enriches our understanding of both Hohokam culture and other ancient societies.
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