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The purpose of this thesis is to introduce a young Mexican dramatist and to situate his plays within the context of contemporary Mexican theater, highlighting how Alejandro Ricano's work reflects and differs from his theatrical heritage. Later in the introduction, I describe the theoretical framework and the process that I followed in translating Idiots Contemplating the Snow. / Master of Arts

This thesis discusses the life and works of the Mexican novelist Mariano Azuela, who lived and wrote during the time of the Mexican Revolution.

The sharing of Mexican food in Tucson at festivals, restaurants, and grocery stores between Euro-American and Hispanic groups performs a number of functions beyond nutrition: it signifies the desire for harmony, it perpetuates negative cultural stereotypes, and it re-enacts the social drama of 500 years of contact. In this gift exchange, a hybrid cuisine--"Sonoran style"--is invented, mytholigized, and marketed as authentic. Food sharing both engenders cultural exchange and turns a profit, and ethnicity reinvented as an "orientalized" tourist commodity. "Eating the other" requires a symbolic supply/demand economy, and the recognition and negotiation of ethnic identity and cultural taboos and boundaries. The result of cross-cultural eating is complicated by the implications of consuming and incorporating the other in order to understand and negotiate difference. An introduction posits the "gastronomic tourist" as a model for food sharing and cultural cannabalism. The events taken as texts and read as examples of Victor Turner's social drama, are secular ceremonies and rituals that often resemble the touristic. One such arena is Tucson Meet Yourself. Unlike carnivalesque festival, this local celebration cultivates neutral ground where diverse groups assemble and sample "otherness" through food, music, and dance. Ethnic food initiates and sustains the communitas of this temporary quasi-pilgrimage even though actual performances of traditional foods are truncated to serve large crowds. The third chapter offers a close reading of Bourdieu, and considers local restaurants where distinctions of Sonoran style and its constant reinvention suit the supply/demand of producers and consumers, and show how ethnicity is invented and authenticated by powerful consensus, and mediates across boundaries; yet it also perpetuates stereotypes through the rigid "grammar" of the Sonoran style meal. A final chapter focuses on the enormously popular commercial salsas where non-Hispanics can meet Hispanics anonymously. The rhetorical and experiential frames surrounding the label and its advertising are examined, following Goffman and Barthes, and are revealed to mass-market ethnic stereotypes in general, and in particular, to depict Hispanic women's bodies on labels and advertising in order to exploit connections between food, women and sex.

The pachuco culture is a rich contemporary tradition born in the southwestern United States in the early 20th century. The innovative youth culture emerged in U.S.-Mexico border towns, but contemporary, urban-hip cholo forms are now found in cities in both countries, many distant from the border. Among working-class and informal sector youth partial to a particular dress style, (the zootsuit is best known), and a cryptic, hybrid language, being pachuco is a form of life with demonstrable continuity over sixty years, in social organization, language, and style. This research is the first ethnography with older men and women of the earliest Southwest generations associated with the culture. Their life history and linguistic narratives speak of the formative moments of being pachuco in Tucson, Arizona. The interpretive frameworks used by consultants are explored as they discuss history, culture, language and identity. To do this, I use recently developed theoretical tools in linguistic anthropology, especially the concepts of metapragmatics and indexicality (Silverstein 1985, 1979) and dialogicality (Bakhtin 1984, 1929). Uniquely among ethnographies of pachucos, I attend to the language use of women, their experiences and perspectives. The major findings are: (1) The youth culture was present in Tucson and the Southwest in at least 1929, if not earlier; (2) research on the regional Indian roots of the culture has been neglected; (3) females have participated in the youth culture from early on; (4) stigmatization and criminalization of the culture continues today in forms resembling the dynamics surrounding the so-called "Zootsuit Riots" of 1943; and (5) in linguistic theory, formulations relating to the transmission of indexical information may need reformulation to account for languages like Pachuco where the interplay of a number of systems creates a high degree of symbolic ambiguity.

For the past 35 years, borderland industry has opened employment opportunities for women in the community of Nogales, Arizona. However, the expansion of free trade with the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has aggravated economic instability by promoting the flexible use of labor, a practice that women have increasingly accommodated. Case studies of women engaged in the retail and maquiladora industries illustrate the interplay between flexible employment, reproduction, and education. These cases suggest that a strong connection between flexible employment and reproduction is sustained by ideologies that see these as mutually complimentary. At the same time, the connections between education and employment and reproduction activities are notably absent or weak. We argue that investing in the education of women, which could lead to more predictable employment, is in this way subverted by regional economic instability. The alienation of education from the other two realms of women’s activities works to the advantage of flexible employment practices and advances the underdevelopment of human capital on the U.S.-Mexico border.

Illegal Immigration: Six Stories from an American Family is a collection of stories derived from and inspired by the author's personal life experiences, dreams, and family history, as a Mexican American woman. The stories also hold distinct archetypal patterns, images, storylines and symbolism due to the author's connection to the collective unconscious through meditation. The stories tell character driven stories of adversity, and the search for home, and identity by linking main characters to their family members in each story. The collection as a whole reveals generational patterns, histories and connections not only present in the matriarchal bloodline of the collection, but from one human to another. The stories beckon the reader into an alternate reality created by these archetypal patterns inherent in all humans, in an attempt to transcend genres and find a place within the psyche where anything is possible. / Illegal immigration -- Marco and Margarita -- La muerte de mi padre -- Together again -- Vivi and Ricardo -- The healer. / Department of English

In the decades following the Revolution, government officials and industrialists attempted to strike a balance between preserving a unique national identity and asserting Mexico's place in global affairs as a competitive, modern nation. Veneration of the aviators' bravery and technological mastery cut across political and cultural boundaries, setting standards for the model citizen of a modern world. The symbolic figure of the pilot proved an adept vessel for disseminating the values championed by the country's ruling party. Aviators validated the technological determinism that underpinned the government's development philosophy to domestic audiences, while projecting an image of strength abroad. This study explores the spectacle of aviation in cultural events including film, airshows, goodwill flights, and state-sponsored funerals, connecting the history of aviation to often-conflicting discourses of Revolutionary nationalism and modern cosmopolitanism that were espoused by both national and regional elites.

To determine whether or not systematic desensitization treatment would produce a significant reduction in negative affect evoked by racial discrimination, 60 Mexican-American college students who scored above average on the Terrell Racial Discrimination Index were selected and assigned randomly to one of three treatment conditions: systematic desensitization (DS), therapist contact (TC), and no-treatment control (NTC). Before undergoing treatment, subjects completed the Background Information Questionnaire (BIQ), and three measures of negative affect: the Multiple Affect Adjective Check List (MAACL); the Profile of Mood States (POMS); and the Treatment Rating Scales (TRS). After concluding treatment, subjects completed the three measures of negative affect only. Results were nonsignificant with respect to two of the affect measures—the POMS and the MAACL. However, significant differentia1 treatment effects were observed for the TRS measure. Relative to the TC and NTC conditions, subjects in the DS condition evidenced significantly less anger, depression, and anxiety. No other group differences attained the level of statistical significance (p < .05). Several explanations are offered for the negative findings of the MAACL and POMS. These explanations include the possibility that the measures themselves are insensitive to treatment effects. Nevertheless, due to the significant findings of the TRS, it is concluded that systematic desensitization proves effective in alleviating the negative emotional responses of Mexican Americans to racial discrimination. The implications of these findings are discussed.