Visiting Center for Regional Studies (CRS) scholar in residence, Anita Huizar-Hernández, present a talk titled “Forging the Southwest” on Wednesday, April 18 at 2 p.m. in the Waters Room at Zimmerman Library.
In the late 19th century, a man James Addison Reavis, forged archives around the world in order to invent and then attempt to claim the Peralta Grant, a fake Spanish land grant that stretched over 15,000 square miles across the territories of Arizona and New Mexico. The talk, titled “Forging the Southwest,” explores the creation and collapse of Reavis’ Peralta Grant and what this bizarre episode suggests about the cultural legacy of the U.S. Southwest.
Huizar-Hernández is an assistant professor of border studies of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Arizona. Her talk is part of her semester-long research project through the CRS. While at The University of New Mexico, Huizar-Hernández is conducting research to complete “Forging Arizona: The Peralta Grant and the History of Mexican American Identity in the West,” a book under contract at Rutgers University Press.
To accomplish her research goals, Huizar-Hernández is making extensive use of the U.S. Surveyor General records and archives in the Center for Southwest Research and at the New Mexico State Records Center and Archives in Santa Fe.
For more information about the Center for Regional Studies and its Scholar-in-Residence Program, visit the CRS website.