Journal of the Southwest Radio

The School Garden Workshop (SGW) is an immensely impactful program in the University of Arizona and Tucson Unified School District communities… as well as throughout the city of Tucson and greater southern Arizona region. School gardens can be powerful educational tools. SGW enables teachers to tap into their students’ energy and curiosity through integrating active, hands-on lessons in convention...

Dr. Marcela Vásquez-León is the Director of the Center for Latin American Studies and Professor of Anthropology in the School of Anthropology, University of Arizona. She has conducted research and outreach for over two decades with smallholder agricultural and fishing communities throughout Latin America and the U.S. Southwest. Her focus includes collective organization, common property resources,...

Dr. Tom Sheridan is a research cultural anthropologist in the Southwest Center and professor in the University of Arizona School of Anthropology. Sheridan has been a longtime student of ranching and ranch lands in southern Arizona, which led him, starting in the 1990s, to participate in the development of Pima County’s Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan, the SDCP, one of the most innovative and succ...

Brian Powell, currently a Parks Superintendent with Pima County’s Natural Resource, Parks and Recreation department, has spent the past two decades working to understand and protect biodiversity in the Sonoran Desert of Southern Arizona. In 2007, he was tapped by Maeveen Behan to develop a biological monitoring program for Pima County. In this interview, Powell describes efforts leading to the cou...

Última entrega de una serie de tres lecturas bilingües extraídas del número de otoño de 2004 del Journal of the Southwest, un número especial que incluía la traducción del libro Entre Yoris y Guarijíos: Crónicas sobre el quehacer Antropológico, escrito por la doctora María Teresa Valdivia Dounce, investigadora y profesora del Instituto de Investigaciones Antropológicas de la Universidad Nacional A...

Last episode of a three-part bilingual excerpt taken from the autumn 2014 issue of Journal of the Southwest, a special issue featuring a translation of the book, Entre Yoris y Guarijíos: Crónicas sobre El Quehacer Antropológico, written by Dr. María Teresa Valdivia Dounce. Dr. Valdivia is a researcher and professor in the Instituto de Investigaciones Antropológicas at the Universidad Nacional Autó...

Dr. Maribel Álvarez is the Jim Griffith Chair in Public Folklore in the University of Arizona Southwest Center, Associate Dean of Community Engagement in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, and an Associate Research Professor in the School of Anthropology. She founded the Southwest Folklife Alliance, a non-profit organization that supports folklife throughout the U.S. Southwest and Nort...

Dr. Sallie Marston is professor emeritus in the School of Geography, Development, and Environment at the University of Arizona, where she held the distinguished title of regents professor before retiring in May of 2021. Marston is the author of numerous influential publications in political and human geography and has mentored more than 50 graduate students. Her research and writing on the politic...

Ésta es la segunda entrega de una serie de tres lecturas bilingües extraídas del número de otoño de 2004 del Journal of the Southwest, un número especial que incluía la traducción del libro Entre Yoris y Guarijíos: Crónicas sobre el quehacer Antropológico, escrito por la doctora María Teresa Valdivia Dounce, investigadora y profesora del Instituto de Investigaciones Antropológicas de la Universida...

This is the second of a three-part bilingual excerpt taken from the autumn 2014 issue of Journal of the Southwest, a special issue featuring a translation of the book, Entre Yoris y Guarijíos: Crónicas sobre El Quehacer Antropológico, written by Dr. María Teresa Valdivia Dounce. Dr. Valdivia is a researcher and professor in the Instituto de Investigaciones Antropológicas at the Universidad Naciona...

With this third installment of the JSW Radio Archive we begin a three-part bilingual reading taken from the autumn 2014 issue of Journal of the Southwest, a special issue featuring a translation of the book, Entre Yoris y Guarijíos: Crónicas sobre El Quehacer Antropológico, written by Dr. María Teresa Valdivia Dounce. Dr. Valdivia is a researcher and professor in the Instituto de Investigaciones A...

Con esta tercera entrega del JSW Radio Archive iniciamos una serie de tres lecturas bilingües extraídas del número de otoño de 2004 del Journal of the Southwest, un número especial que incluía la traducción del libro Entre Yoris y Guarijíos: Crónicas sobre el quehacer Antropológico, escrito por la doctora María Teresa Valdivia Dounce, investigadora y profesora del Instituto de Investigaciones Antr...

This episode is part of a series exploring the ancestral geographies of what we refer to as the Southwest. Through interviews with Dr. Matthew Sakiestewa Gilbert and Rosalie and Patty Talahongva, host Patricia Schwartz had the opportunity to re-learn critical aspects of history and hear from inspiring folks exploring decolonial futures through the telling of Indigenous stories.

This second installment of JSW Radio Archive contains a brief excerpt from British lieutenant W. H. Hardy's epic travelog "Travels in the Interior of Mexico, 1825, 1926, 1827 & 1828." Harvey was both a keen observer and awfully misinformed, producing important descriptions and maps, but making many errors due to his poor grasp of the Spanish language and the cultural superiority believes and racis...

Dancing for Water is written by Stanley Crawford, and originally appeared in the autumn 1990 special issue of JSW, partly focused on water rights in northern New Mexico. With this audio essay we are launching a new experiment that we're calling the JSW GSW Radio Archive. For each episode of the archive we will read short essays or excerpts of essays that have appeared in the JSW. We'll also be rea...

The third installment of our ongoing series about water in the American West, written and produced by Patricia Schwartz, looks at a largely obscured but incredibly pervasive threat to both our natural resources and our general wellbeing. One that the COVID-19 pandemic has brought even further into focus. Toxic trespass is the non-consensual infiltration of our homes, bodies and bloodstreams by har...

Jeff Banister talks with Dr. Natalia Mendoza-Rockwell about her work documenting the effects of drugs and human smuggling in the communities across the US-Mexico borderlands. A Sonoran native from the town of Altar, Dr. Mendoza-Rockwell is a professor of anthropology at Fordham University, and one of the few scholars analyzing the politics and social geography of smuggling from an ethnographic per...

Rivers have long been the lifeblood of human civilizations. But taken for granted, many of them are bleeding out. Restoration is still possible… but is it a priority? With unexpected optimism, our guests make the compelling case that it should be. Written, produced, and narrated by Patricia Schwartz, a graduate student in the School of Geography, Development and Environment, University of Arizona....

Depending on where you're standing, summer rains in the desert can mean rejuvenation or destruction (or both). Rapid urbanization has put borderlands cities out of touch with the storm waters that sustain them, an oversight for which they pay dearly in flood damages and eroded soils. What predictions can we make about the future of the monsoon in the Sonoran Desert? What are we doing to make use o...

In the second part of the conversation, Dr. Coronado reflects on and contextualizes the current crisis triggered by the COVID pandemic, commenting on the lack of referents in the last generations and the ascent of populism in America, from South to North.

Dr. Coronado is the Director of SBS Mexico Initiatives in the University of Arizona. A law and history scholar, he has studied the cultural and intellectual history of XIX and XX century Mexico, largely through the lens of celebrations and public rituals. Luis has published articles, books and book chapters on Mexican law, history, historiography, and legal philosophy. In his most recent work, he...

Laiken Jordahl details in this second part of the interview how the pandemic is being used to accelerate work in the construction of the wall and the most immediate damage it is causing to specific areas and fauna of the borderlands, apart from the health threats posed by COVID-19. nowall.org, @LaikenJordahl, facebook.com/laiken.jordahl

Laiken Jordahl, borderlands campaigner for the Center for Biological Diversity, discusses his work protecting wildlife, ecosystems and communities along the US-Mexico borderlands. Laiken shares his experiences at the National Parks Service and his struggle to alert about the damage caused by the wall and the militarization of the border.

Second part of our morning coffee with Dr. Rubio, reviewing six decades of research, community activism, and the very history of Mexico and the US. Raquel shares her rich anecdotes from her academic and militant experiences, and her invaluable insights on the present of migrations flows across the Southwest.

Dr. Rubio-Goldsmith is the co-director of the Binational Migration Institute in the University of Arizona's Department of Mexican-American Studies. A professor of History at Pima College for three decades, she has participated since the late sixties on a diversity of human rights initiatives in Tucson and the greater Southwest, and has led numerous community-based research projects focused on the...