Two features of the region most clearly exemplify the Southwest's
geologic-climatic-demographic circumstances. These features constatute
two "natural geographic corridors" or focal areas concerning the
relationship
between people and the Southweses physical environment:
Arizona's Mogollon Rim Corridor and New Mexico's Rio Grande Rift
Corridor (see map 11).
The Mogollon Rim Corridar
Arizona's magnificent Grand Canyon may be the number-one geological
wonder of the world, but the Mogollon Rim, an escarpment running in a
northwest-to-southeast diagonal line fifty to one hundred and
fifty miles south of the canyon, serves, by far, as the most purposeful
Arizona geologic feature. The Pacific Plate and the North American
Continental Plate tectonics have wrinkled and stretched Arizona's
geologic crust, forming the states mountain ranges and valleys, ridges
and depressions, and mineral outcroppings. The Mogollon Rim is an
extended and uniform geologic monocline or fold consequent to the
region's plate tectonics, which formed it about thirty million years ago.
The fold has eroded in such a way as to create a three hundred-mile-long
escarpment that has retreated north-northeastward in an impressive
uniformity
at a pace of about six hundred feet every million years. Along
this rim, evidence of geologically recent volcanic activity is plentiful
and
dominates the landscape for hundreds of miles. The San Francisco
Mountains, including Humphrey's Peak, Arizona's highest (12,633
feet), are among these volcanic creations.
The rim's influences dramatically illustrate the causal relationships
between Southwest landforms and the region's climate and human activity.
The rim's existence explains many local weather events, and its drainage
system accounts, in a direct way, for the state's most significant
runoff patterns and other hydrologic drainage characteristics, including
erosion, alluvial soil types and deposits, hydroelectric energy, aquatic
recreation, biotic qualities, floods, and irrigation. These hydrologic
conditions
made possible the settlement of and today serve the needs of the
sprawling and rapidly growing megalopolis of Phoenix, with its proximate
Maricopa County satellite cities. The Mogollon Rim's influence
also accounts for the climatic features of the Colorado Plateau and the
highland regions of Arizona and New Mexico.
In the summertime, moisture-laden warm air masses originate over
the Gulf of Mexico, move westward between the 20th and 30th Parallels,
and curve toward the northwest above the Mexican Sierra Madre
Oriental and Sierra Madre Occidental. Some of these air masses follow
the Rio Grande and Pecos River valleys of New Mexico northward upstream,
where they eventually meet with colder air. This convergence
combines with convection dynamics to create precipitation on the east
side of the two valleys' western flanks. Other much greater moist air
masses at first go farther westward and then, due to the Coriolis effect
and air-mass convergence pressure, deflect northeastward over
south-eastern
and east-central Arizona and southwestern and west-central New
Mexico. When these moist air masses reach the Mogollon Rim, they rise
and meet the rim's higher and drier but also colder air masses. Here the
Gulf of Mexico-bom moist air condenses, releasing most of its burden
on the southwestern, windward side of the rim.
In this orographic process, the Mogollon Rim also casts a rain
shadow on thousands of square miles of northern Arizona and western
New Mexico, thereby producing an effect which helps explain the aridity
of the Colorado Plateau in northeastern Arizona and northwestern New
Mexico. Moreover, in the summertime, this continuous infusion of
oceanic moist air contributes to daily convection patterns. In the warm
mornings of July and August, precipitation from the previous day
evaporates
and ascends by convection, thereby also pushing up the moist air
masses moving in from the south. By mid-afternoon, upon reaching the
dry cold air above the rim, the warm moist air condenses and falls. The
now-colder air cools off the ground, by late afternoon or early evening
the skies clear, and the diurnal pattern starts all over again. In the
higher
elevations this diurnal process may start earlier and last longer and
generate
a greater amount of precipitation. Eventually the evaporation and
air pressure involved in this process move moist air eastward, passing
over northeastern Arizona and western New Mexico in masses that do
not intensely condense again until they reach the higher elevations of
central New Mexico. In the meantime, however, the substantial Mogollon Rim
drainage toward the west and southwest has been established.
The Little Colorado River-which drains the rim's leeside and flows
in a southeast-to-northwest direction into the Grand Canyon and the
Colorado River-possesses a catchment system which draws and conducts
very little water from its very large watershed area. Due to the rain
shadow effect on the Mogollon Rim lee side, the Little Colorado usually
is no more than a trickle, and often is even dry. Because there is not
enough moisture to penetrate the ground and leach out the high salt
content in this watershed's soil, a strong alkaline concentration
characterizes
the Little Colorado's runoff water.
In the White Mountains, an area with the highest elevations in the
Mogollon Rim monsoon pattern, can be found Arizona's wettest precipitation
rates-more than forty inches annually, as opposed to Phoenix
with about eight inches or Yuma with less than four. The windward and
high precipitation side of the Mogollon Rim accounts for most of the
runoff in the Lower Colorado River's drainage basin. Heavy rainfall on
the Rim's windward escarpment, particularly in July and August, drains
into the Black River, the White River, and the Verde River.
These three streams are the primary perennial tributaries of the Salt
River, Arizona's most bountiful water source, which provides water for
the highly populated Phoenix metropolitan and agrarian areas. In even
greater quantity, considerable winter precipitation that originates over
the Pacific Ocean falls on the rim in the form of snow. In February,
March, and April the snow's melt-off occasionally creates serious flood
conditions, particularly along the Salt River in and around Phoenix.
Hydrologically, the Salt is a tributary of the Gila River, Which
empties
into the Colorado River near Yuma. But only during infrequent-but
unpredictable and occasionally devastating-flood periods does runoff
water advance downstream past the dams built on the Salt's system. In
addition, the Gila system rises in that part of the Mogollon Rim located
in western New Mexico, and it includes another and smaller Mogollon
Rim tributary, the San Francisco River, which also originates in westen
New Mexico. Almost all of Arizona lies within the Colorado River
watershed.
The natural geographic corridor created by the Colorado Uplift and
its Mogollon Rim escarpment has made possible Arizona's mining industry,
its irrigation projects, and most of the state's hydroelectric power
including that from Hoover Dam, Glen Canyon Dam, and Roosevelt
Dam. Altogether, eleven dams located on the Verde (Bartlett and
Horseshoe),
Salt (Roosevelt, Horse Mesa, Mormon Flat, Stewart Mountain,
Granite Reef, and Gila (Coolidge, Hayden-Ashurst, Gillespie, Painted
Rock) rivers, not counting those on the Colorado River, control the
rim's runoff, impounding and diverting the water to provide flood control
and lakes for water storage and recreation. This hydrologic pattern
has been a source of much twentieth-century political and legal trouble
for Arizona, including years of litigation with the state of California
over rights for the water which falls in Arizona as a consequence of the
hydrologic activity associated with the Mogollon Rim.
Because the Mogollon Rim monoclinal corridor is such an integrated
feature of the obvious heartland of this region, its intrinsic nature as
well as its geographic influence should, logically, be considered a "core
feature" of the "Southwest." Prehistoric cultures flourished and endured
due to the soil and water made possible by the Mogollon Rim. Historically,
the rim comprises part of the intimidating tierra incógnitay
despoblado
(unknown and unpopulated land) that sixteenth-century Spanish
explorers such as Fr. Marcos de Niza and Francisco Vásquez de
Coronado
had to penetrate in order to reach the Southwest's heartland.
For late nineteenth-century American mineral seekers, the rim's
erosion
exposed gold, silver, and copper ores, the primary explanation for
settlement in the region from 1870 to 1900. More than 90 percent of
Arizona's highly profitable mining activity has taken place within the
Walker-Texas lineament, which runs from Reno, Nevada, to Silver City,
New Mexico, and of which the Mogollon Rim is a part. The rim's eroded
soil, spread broadly along the Salt and Gila rivers' floodplains, and the
rim's precipitation runoff makes possible south-,central Arizona's
agriculture
and its domestic water supply, thus enabling industrial and urban
development. The high-altitude and comparatively well-watered Colorado
uplift, at least close to the rim, makes possible a prosperous lumber
industry that takes advantage of the largest stand of Ponderosa pine trees
in the world, and the rim provides cool summer retreats for refugees
from the torrid summers of the low desert areas. Boating, tubing, fishing,
water-skiing, and numerous other aquatic activities are all made
possible by the influence of the Mogollon Rim on the region's hydrologic
system. The Mogollon Rim and its associated features constitute a
true fundamental and unique regional component, central to any definition
of the "Southwest."
The Rio Grande Rift Corridor
In many ways, in terms of human occupation, the role of the Rio
Grande Rift has been even more significant for New Mexico than the
Mogollon Rim has been for Arizona. Unlike the Mogollon Rim, however,
the Rio Grande Rift is a depression in the earth's crust rather than
an uplift. Geologically, a rift takes place when the earth's crust is
extended
or stretched so that, eventually, it separates or sags. In either case, a
geologic
depression is formed. The Rio Grande Rift is a "spreading center,"
and like the Rocky Mountains and the Mogollon Rim, was formed as as
natural result of the Southwest's tectonic activity. The Rift developed
five to ten million years ago.
The Southern Rocky Mountains reach southward from central Colorado
into north-central New Mexico. Between several ranges of these
mountains lie the basins of the northern Rio Grande Rift. One of these
basins, the San Luis Valley, includes a substantial part of south-central
Colorado and extends southward to New Mexico's Espafiola Valley. At
its southern boundary, the Españiola Basin connects with the
Albuquerque
Basin. Continuing southward and extending in an almost exact
north-south direction, the Rift lies within the Mexican Highland Section
and the Sacramento Landform Section, and extends down into
Texas and Chihuahua. Surrounded by such dry and rugged land forms
as the Colorado Plateau and the Basin and Range Province, the Rio
Grande Rift provides a course for the Rio Grande that serves as a long,
narrow oasis and travelway for this part of the Southwest. It has provided
a transportation, development, and survival corridor for thousands
of years.
New Mexico ranks as one of the most and of the nation's fifty states.
Ninety percent of the state averages less than twenty inches of
precipitation
per year, and most of this precipitation takes place in the state's
extreme
high elevation areas. More remote than Arizona from the sources
of warm, moist air masses-the Pacific Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico-
New Mexico depends more than does Arizona on precipitation resulting
from local convection patterns and less on moist air-mass intrusion. In
order to reach the state, moist air masses must travel great distances
during which they give up much moisture through both air-mass convergence
and orographic-convergence processes. This situation constitutes a
precipitation
pattern less generous and less dependable than the one found in Arizona.
Most West Coast winter storms pass to the north of New Mexico.
In addition, high-pressure conditions in the wintertime dominate the
state and inhibit storm development. New Mexico's wettest season,
the monsoons, lasts from July through September; it receives
most of its moisture from air masses created in the Gulf of Mexico.
New Mexico has fewer demographically useful perennial streams than
does Arizona. Both the San Juan River basin, in New Mexico's extreme
northwest corner, and the Arkansas River basin with its two main New
Mexico-born feeder streams, the Cimarron and Canadian rivers in the
extreme northeast corner of the state, drain runoff from the Southern
Rockies away from and out of the state. In a like manner, the Gila River,
which rises in New Mexico's far west-central drainage area-the Mogollon
Mountains and the Pinos Altos Range-supplies Arizona with more
New Mexico runoff water. So, ironically, New Mexico, extremely arid
and runoff-poor to begin with, loses much of its internally generated
precipitation to states such as Arizona, Oklahoma, and Texas . However,
an agreement exists that allows New Mexico to draw off some Colorado
River drainage-basin water into the Chama River in order to compensate
for water the state loses to the Colorado River watershed elsewhere.
There are then, for all practical purposes, only two importantly useful
rivers in New Mexico: the Rio Grande and its major sub-stream, the
Pecos River, both of which can be very puny at times.
In most places the Rio Grande's course does not possess the rapid
descent or "head" of water flow that enables the water impoundment
and gravity-induced pressure to enable large-scale corporate hydroelectric
developments, such as those that characterize the Colorado River
system. Only one hydroelectric station, that at Elephant Butte Dam,
generates power for New Mexico, and only one percent of New Mexico's
electrical energy comes from this generating operation. One site on the
Rio Grande in northern New Mexico, where it appears the topography
might be favorable to dam-building-the Rio Grande Gorge a few miles
west of Taos-lacks bedrock formations suitable to found and buttress
the dam. What is more, the heavy deposit of silt carried down from the
river's upper reaches would accumulate rapidly in the dam's lake. These
negative factors have thus far precluded construction at this location.
New Mexico agriculture suffers from these limitations of the Rio
Grande, too. Even though in many places the fertile soil of the Rio
Grande's floodplain makes possible irrigated agriculture, the descending
elevations needed for large-scale, gravity-flow irrigation such as is
found
in Arizona do not exist. The number of acres in irrigated cultivation in
the two states are not significantly different. But, due to its high
elevation,
the Rio Grande Valley lacks the necessary growing season and
prolonged high temperatures needed for crop variety, the high-volume
and biseasonal or long-season productivity that would match the
agricultural
productivity found in Arizona's Salt River Valley. Yet, for all of
these limitations, the Rio Grande Valley produces a substantial variety
of crops suited to the vauey's conditions-and to New Mexican dietary
preferences.
Down through the ages and in its own ways the Rio Grande Rift has
served its human occupants faithfully and well. For many thousands of
years trade and travel routes have always, we can be sure, followed this
river's course. New Mexico's past and present are closely related to the
Rio Grande Valley. Small-scale and local irrigation made possible by this
geologic trough has always been important to New Mexico's inhabitants.
Prehistoric people in the upper Rio Grandes basins and in the
valleys of the river's tributaries used stream diversion and field
channeling
for centuries to grow their crops. During their centuries in the Rio
Grande Valley, Hispanics have utilized the river's water to cultivate
vineyards;
orchards; certain vegetables like chilis, corn, beans (staples for the
Hispanic diet); pecans; and livestock food. Due to a longer and warmer
growing season, crop yields are greater in the southern than in the
northen
part of the Rio Grande Valley. Except for locations on the Llano
Estacado, the majority of New Mexico's feedlots and bonded beef packers
are found in the Rio Grande Valley. More than half the citizens of
New Mexico live within twenty miles east or west of the Rio Grande.
The close proximity of El Paso, Texas, intensifies the demographic
significance
of the Rio Grande.
Topographical elevations decrease and annual precipitation rapidly
increases from the Llano Estacado escarpment toward the east; in fact,
so much so that, unlike within the climatic Southwest, growers dry-farm
on the Llano Estacado near the Texas border, the only large area in New
Mexico enjoying the necessary seasonal precipitation and minimum-duration
growing season to allow this type of agriculture on large scale.
Here, as in the rest of the Great Plains with which the Llano is properly
classified, farmers depend on direct precipitation to grow sorghum,
cotton, corn, wheat, and alfalfa. This dry-farming area differs greatly
from the "typical Southwest" agriculture areas. It seems fair to say that
the eastern New Mexico precipitation line which marks an increase in
rainfall as elevation declines-as opposed to the conventional
South-western
precipitation pattern-also marks the eastern boundary of the Southwest.
By comparison with Arizona, New Mexico is an economically poor
state. New Mexico lacks the physical resources and other attractions that
make Arizona much more prosperous. Arizona's mineral wealth, due
again to its geologic past, has brought that state great income in the
past
hundred years, despite the fact that most of the profits from Arizona's
mines have wound up in the hands of eastern corporate stockowners.
Arizona's low desert offers a warm winter climate that tourists, retirees,
and "high-tech" industry find so attractive, giving the state a more
extravagant
and luxurious image than New Mexico possesses. Arizona's
superior irrigation water sources and broad, fertile, warm, low-altitude
river valleys-the Salt, the Gila, the Santa Cruz, and the Colorado-enable
year-round and abundant commercial crops.
However, physiographically and climatically the two regions possess
more similarities than differences and in many ways appear to be
complementary.
The Walker-Texas geological lineament extends into New
Mexico, and here this geology, as it does in Arizona, exposes
mineral-bearing
ore, primarily copper. This feature makes possible New Mexico's
richest mining area, the Silver City-Santa Rita region, in the state's
southwest corner. In sum, both states strongly evidence those
geologic-climatic
patterns which identify them as being a solid part of the unique
geographic region called the "Southwest."
Environmental Determinism
The concept of "environmental determinism," sometimes called
"environmentalist"
which is oftentimes confused with another and more
recent use of that word1,
originated in classical Greece. Hippocrates
presented an argument that human character was "determined" by
environmental
influences. Down through the Middle Ages philosophers
and scholars argued similarly. Age of Reason intellectuals such as
Montesquieu believed political behavior to be the consequence of climate.
In more modem times, the nineteenth-century writer Victor
Cousins asserted that if you gave him a map of a country that "I pledge
myself to tell you, a priori, . . . what part that country win play in
history,
not by accident, but of necessity; not one epoch, but in all epochs."
The Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset wrote: "Show me the
place in which you live, and I will tell you who you are."
Ellsworth Huntington's early twentieth-century works earned him
the reputation as the modern spokesman for environmental determinism.
Huntington argued that people who lived in the tropics, with their
monotonous and enervating heat, would be doomed forever to relative
poverty, and he argued that "the geographical distribution of health
depends on climate and weather more than on any other single factor."
In the 1950s Thomas G. Taylor stated that the role of humans is to study
"the character of the environment ... so that [they] can best follow the
plan 'determined' by nature."
In the 1930s and 1940s such scholars as Richard Hartshorne and
Robert Platt strongly challenged this kind of deterministic thought. The
environmentalism debate continues, with the skeptics apparently holding
the higher ground. Genes, physical skills, religious values, education,
technology, cultural traditions, outside influences, political ideologies,
conquest, and many other factors not directly influenced by the
immediate physical environment, these men say, shape the human condition.
Somewhere in the middle, the truth, no doubt, can be found.
Obviously one's environment does dictate ones behavior and beliefs
in at least a few ways. It is clear that certain physical regional
determinants-in
particular, the geologic and climatic ones-have strongly influenced
human activity and habitation in the Southwest. The region's
unique and complementary geological, climatic and hydrologic factors
have, over thousands of years, affected travel and transportation, mining,
agriculture and other economic features of the Southwest. These influences
appear to fall into two categories: inclusive factors (those traits
that have enabled enduring human habitation) and exclusive factors
(those traits that have discouraged or prevented human habitation).
Inclusive Factors
The Southwest's environmental inclusive factors, ironically enough,
are the most demanding in terms of human survival. Situations in which
there are limited useful survival resources necesssary to support people-
water, fertile soil, warm temperatures-actually demand and stimulate
"sedentary" (as ethnologists term norunigrant cultural groups) societies.
Just as sophisticated "cradles of civilization" such as early Egypt and
Mesopotamia developed in arid but riparian circumstances, so in a similar
way and for the same reasons did the pueblo and other stationary and
communitarian cultures of the Southwest rise and maintain relative
permanence.
Because the region's aridity makes dry-farming in the Southwest so
difficult, up until the middle of the twentieth century irrigation played
a dominant role in determining whether or not humans could survive
here. An irrigation economy requires-or allows, whichever way one
wishes to perceive it-people to develop permanent abodes and plan
their economic and other survival styles on a predictable and year-round
schedule of cyclical activities. At times, probably aided by "sun
calendars"
such as those found at Chaco Canyon and other sites, prehistoric
peoples learned to chart, anticipate, and prepare for the changing
seasons.
The persistent irrigation economies established during the region's
prehistoric period continued to survive only if the indigenous peoples
implemented, over a long period of trial and error, certain organized,
disciplined, and stable patterns of life. To understand further this
region's
way of life, one needs to remember that the key requirements for
irrigated crop cultivation-suitable water, soil, and temperature-were
limited to only a tiny portion of the entire land surface of the Southwest
(see map 12).
These same survival traits have characterized more recent and
currently
extant Pueblo cultures as well as the region's older Hispanic settlements.
And so, for example, the early Spanish settlers of the high-elevation
Rio Arriba area of north-central New Mexico and south-central
Colorado discovered and accommodated the same geographical conditions
that characterized the region's older cultures: irrigation and permanence.
While the Rio Arriba may at times seem harsh and forbidding,
particularly in the winter, the larger streams and small creeks in this
area,
including the Pecos River, the Rio Chama, and the Rio Grande, do
provide both small and large riverine areas which have supplied
acequias
to irrigated Hispanic plazas and placitas for many
generations now.
Exclusive Factors
Exclusive physical determinants have characterized the Southwest,
too. Factors that discouraged human habitation within the region are
conspicuous-and, in some cases, identical to inclusive factors. The rugged
topography and hot, dry climate made new settlement and development
within the region difficult. Isolated and entrenched pueblos, both
pre- and post-Columbian, could not only protect themselves well from
plundering marauders, but could also hold out against long-term siege,
drought, and deprivation. Actually, archaeologists have found little
evidence
that such warfare ever took place. In fact, peaceful trade and commerce
appear to be the dominant traits of the Pueblo peoples. The climate and
geology and consequent carrying capacity were simply on the
side of the long-established permanent inhabitants.
These ensconced residents of the land did not escape territorial
threats
from challengers, the new would-be occupants of the limited areas of
subsistence. If the entrenched residents became too complacent in the
defense of their territory, they would lose out to the more desperate
invaders.
Despite recurrent feast and famine surges, the population would
increase very little because, for the most part, the region possessed such
a predictable, demanding and inelastic carrying capacity. The magnificent
"Chaco Phenomenon" began to collapse after a century of serious
droughts that began in 1030. By the middle of the twelfth century few
of the Chaco pueblos remained in use. Eventually, for reasons not yet
altogether clear to archaeologists, by the year 1400 most of the South-
west Indian settlements today designated as "prehistoric" had been
abandoned.
But not all of them. Such Pueblo cultures as Hopi, Zuñi, Acoma,
and several groups in the Upper Rio Grande Valley have persisted to the
present day.
The sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century explorers and conquerors
met considerable resistance from the unsuspecting-and technologically
overmatched-remaining Pueblo Indians during the original Spanish
entradas
into the Pueblo region of the northern Rio Grande Valley.
Eventually, however, the Spaniards prevailed. Using their
superior tactics and weaponry, they were able to occupy much Indian
territory. But these colonials discovered the reality of the indigenes'
defensive
strength when in 1680 the Pueblo Indians rose up and drove the
Spanish southward to El Paso del Norte. VVhile it is true that twelve
years later the New Mexico pueblos capitulated to Diego de Vargas and
his re-occupation forces, the Hopi of northern Arizona, a collection of
clans normally noted for their peaceful behavior, closed the door on De
Vargas, and he had to retreat shamefaced back to Santa Fe. Later, in
1700, after two priests had reopened the Catholic church at the Hopi's
most eastward village, Awatobi, warriors from the other Hopi villages
to the west sacked Awatobi, killed them, leveled the church, and took
the Awatobi Hopi into captivity. The Spanish showed their respect for
such exclusivity, and did not again attempt to colonize Northern Arizona.
In 1837, sixteen years after Mexico had won its freedom from
Spain, the northern Rio Grande Pueblo Indians again arose in revolt
and seized control of the New Mexican government at Santa Fe. But six
months later the Mexicans regained their rule. Anglo-Americans, too,
had to overcome exclusivity. In 1846, during the United States' war
with Mexico, American troops occupied northern New Mexico. Sensing
a degree of Anglo situational vulnerability, local Indians allied with
some remaining Mexican loyalists and in January 1847 rose up and,
exploiting the advantages of the area's topography, took control of
strategic positions. Quickly, the numerically inferior but militarily
superior American forces quelled the rebellion.
Earlier, native groups other than the Pueblos resisted conquest, too.
Several different tribes of Apache Indians in what is today southeastern
Arizona and southwestern New Mexico, as well as Comanche Indians in
east-central New Mexico, made Hispanic penetration and settlement of
the Southwest ever more hazardous and difficult. Eventually, of course,
the Spanish did endure if not prevail, but only in small, isolated, and
very defensible pockets of their own, primarily in the Rio Arriba section
of northern New Mexico. The Pueblo Indians and the Hispanics, except
for the initial conquests by the Spanish and a few short-lived uprisings
by the Indians, have lived in peaceful coexistence for three hundred
years.
Throughout the eighteenth and most of the nineteenth centuries, the
Southwest's canyons and mountains, its deserts and volcanic malpais,
together with the region's remoteness, scorching sun, and barren,
waterless
"wasteland" offered little encouragement for settlement by Anglos
and other Europeans. With no usefully navigable rivers other than the
quite peripheral Colorado and only a very few wagon trails suitable for
transportation, the region discouraged travel and settlement. In New
Mexico, Spanish and Mexican enclaves existed more or less unmolested,
except by occasional Indian raids and the snooping of a few curious
americanos such as Zebulon Pike and the Patties. Arizona, on the
other
hand, due to its still more formidable geography, experienced even less
Hispanic and Anglo-European intrusion prior to the late nineteenth
century.
Not until the railroads became a part of the region were
Anglo-European
immigrants able to feel comfortable and secure enough to
settle the inhospitable region. The small and isolated Indian and Hispanic
riparian pockets continued their economic and social traditions
relatively unmolested, even though by the 1860s Anglo immigrants
recognized
the region's commercial potential for irrigated agriculture. The
Southweses few colonial mining outposts constituted the only substantial
magnets for Anglo newcomers, although by the turn of the century
numerous "lungers" (respiratory victims such as tuberculars) and other
health seekers discovered the region's salubrious dry air and warm days.
Commercial agrarian activities in the region grew rapidly after the
development
of the Salt River Project in the early 1900s, but not until the
post-World War II years, thanks to the advent of refrigeration and an
affluent national economy, could the region's hitherto forbidding traits
be overcome in a way to make the area an attractive one in which to live.
In other words, both inclusive and exclusive factors simultaneously
played a role in shaping the Southwest's demographics down until the
late nineteenth century. By the 1890s the impact of the Industrial
Revolution
and a rapidly growing United States altered or made more bearable
the environmental circumstances. So great was this technological
influence that many of the older selective traits of physical geography no
longer played such an important role in shaping the economic and cultural
characteristics of the Southwest. In addition, these changes dramatically
increased the Southwest's attractiveness and carrying capacity.
As the roads and railroads developed, concurrent with the exploration
and occupation by the Americans, the United States' political hegemony
in the nation's developing physiographic Southwest, increasingly
reinforced
by a growing military, commercial, and industrial presence, created a
new kind of economic, political, and cultural exclusiveness. Such
national policies as the Monroe Doctrine and Manifest Destiny, together
with imperially large railroad and mining corporations, sealed
off the region to free and open occupancy by non-American people. As
a consequence of this exclusive colonial attitude on the part of the
United States "government" (i.e., Wall Street), Arizona-New Mexico
became the last region within the contiguous United States to acquire
statehood. With these diverse yet integrated qualities exclusivity
isolated
the Southwest from the rest of the world and gave it a special identity
and
a special reputation, a reputation at times more mythical than observable.
"Formalism" vs. "Functionalism"
Essential to the concept of environmental determinism is the issue of
free will. This concern addresses the question of to what degree humans
can willfully and predictably bring about desired effects through the use
of empirical reasoning followed by enlightened and deliberate action.
The country of Mexico is a good case in point. From Mexico's example
one can argue that a region can effectively deny itself envirorunental
influences and opportunities if other circumstances affect it so. Mexico's
natural assets-its climate, location, physical resources, and proximity
to international markets, particularly the United States-favor a strong
agricultural and industrial base which would enable a moderately high
carrying capacity. Even with consideration of today's skyrocketing
population,
the free-will argument would claim that Mexico possesses the
natural assets to support a prosperous and affluent society, although
that capability, due to increasing population, is rapidly becoming more
elusive and improbable. But ever since winning its independence from
Spain in 1821 Mexico has stubbornly refused to capitalize on this
opportunity.
Instead, despite a history of economic and political discontent,
the country continues to wallow in its cultural legacy of fatalism,
religious
mysticism, status-quo inertia, fascination with death, illiteracy,
poverty, disease, high birth rate, relatively short life expectancy,
corrupt
and inefficient politics at all levels, an extreme and rigidly stratified
society,
and economic and cultural ennui. These traits, as the Mexican writer
Octavio Paz has explained to us, at once hide and make manifest the
Mexican culture's "labyrinth of solitude." It could be argued that
Mexico's
fecund semitropical environment offers a cornucopia of edibles and
wearables that discourages planning, stockpiling, scientific agriculture,
and the like because there is "enough" for everyone the way it is. In
reality, of course, there is not enough productivity for everyone to live
above the poverty line, and millions of Mexicans live below that line,
living far short of what could be their maximum life expectancy if the
resources and manpower of Mexico were more carefully and intelligently
understood and organized and husbanded.
Mexico's standard of living and quality of life are, then, not so much
determined by climate and other environmental factors, as by the country's
cultural traditions, most of which were brought to Mexico from
Spain. (To be sure, many conspicuous-as well as shadowy-vestiges
of prehistoric culture appear there, too.) In this regard, it would appear
that Mexico never did obtain its independence from imperial Spain. This
example illustrates another method with which scholars interpret regional
demographics. This method draws its criteria from considerations
that attempt to determine to which degree a region might be a product
tied to and "determined" by its cultural traditions. If a region's
cultural
qualities seem to be inflexible and archaic, the region is said to be a
product of "formalism"; if cultural traditions frequently yield to
"pragmatic"
experiment and change, the region is said to be "functional." In
this respect, the United States and Mexico approach antipodal extremes.
The same contrasts, although not so dramatically pronounced,
characterize
the Southwest's two primary states, Arizona, the New England
colony, and New Mexico, the Spanish one. In New Mexico, some powerful
vestiges of early Spanish colonialism pervade much of that state's
society. Certain modern cultural habits display this formalism. The Indian
Pueblos of the upper Rio Grande Valley, for example, still appear
much the way they did four hundred years ago when the conquistadores
first entered the region. Among the Hispanic population, the riparian
and agrarian plazas and placitas with their acequias
and
casas adobes, now increasingly moribund, have changed little in the
past three hundred years. Up until the second third of the twentieth
century,
oxcarts, antiquated grain mills, primitive tools, and other "quaint"
features of pre-Industrial Revolution technology were conspicuous in many
parts of
the state. Since the founding of the atomic laboratories at Los Alamos
in 1942, however, the state has found a place in the vanguard of the
American high-tech mainstream.
Catholicism's strong presence can still be felt in the more highly
populated
northern half of New Mexico. The state did not keep pace in the
area of public education and other reforms within the United States
during the mid-nineteenth century. Strong extended-family ties, relatively
low
levels of literacy, and a lack of political concern or sensitivity
have kept alive this area's traditional Hispanic culture. Paradoxically,
the
old authoritarian rule of Spain and church during the second quater of
the ninteenth century, after the withdrawal of centralized Catholic
church and Spanish colonial authoritarianism, developed local religious
and political institutions that were, respectively, lay-and
populist-dominated.
While Catholic leaders reappeared in New Mexico, populist politics
characterize New Mexico to this day.
In this regard, Arizona differs dramatically from its sister to the
east.
"Traditions" have meant little in this state. Instead, the "Tradition of
the
New" has provided the perspectives and procedures needed to control
and exploit a region which for the most part appeared to be a useless
wasteland prior to the 1880s. Arizona's character quite clearly reflects a
practical and "functional" orientation. Anglo-Americans, representing
mainly the colonial interests of San Francisco, Washington, New York
and Boston, exploited Arizona's natural resources to help develop the
Industrial Revolution in America. The state was industrial before it was
agricultural. Arizona's economy developed out of the investment of big
eastern capital, the application of advanced technology, and the
extraction
of great mineral wealth together with a highly industrialized and
commercialized agriculture.
While it is true that Arizona, too, has Native Americans-more, by
far, than any other state in the Union-these Indians live in more isolated
regions than do their New Mexico cousins, and for the most part
Care removed from conspicuous view. They are removed, too, from the
warp and woof of the Arizona political and economic fabric.
Some of Arizona's political institutions grew out of the
congregational
seeds sown by New England Yankees, whose own heritage goes
back to the Puritan concept and ideal of self-government. Whatever
"democracy" can be found in this state was brought here by eastern
colonists, not forged on the "frontier." For the most part, however, the
Yankee businessman's concept of using politics ("pragmatic functionalism")
to serve "special interests" has characterized the dominant nature
of Arizona's politics. While it is true that the state has always been a
colony of the East and of California, certain permissive New England
sparks of reform-women's rights, public education, tolerance for misfits
and various religious groups, including the Mormons-have flickered
and even flamed from time to time. While ecclesiastic authority has
characterized
New Mexico from the days of Fr. Marco de Niza, Coronado,
and other conquistadores, only in the latter half of the twentieth
century
has organized, denominational religion achieved and maintained a potent
presence in Arizona. And the influence of religious values and attitudes
in Arizona remains quite inconspicuous if compared with neighbors such
as Utah or Texas. Only after World War II did the state manifest
the religious, political, and cultural conservatism that marks it today.
Due to the ability of improving technology-such as refrigeration-
to mitigate the state's more forbidding traits, Arizona has attracted
high-paying
high-tech industries and a large and growing population of affluent
retirees. By employing "functionalism" the state has made the land
not only habitable, but seductively so. And the state's climate and its
mineral resources still generate significant revenue. Thus Arizona is the
more "functionally altered" of the two states. Its most operant and
determining
factor was the Industrial Revolution, while in New Mexico, until
World War II, the formalistic legacy of Hispanic conquest did the most to
stamp the economics and culture of that part of the Southwest. The
cultural
and technological influences forced upon the natural environment
compel us to limit significantly the still conspicuous and in many lesser
ways the substantially valid "environmental determinism" application.
1. Over the past thirty years "environmentalism" has also popularly become a term associated with the worldwide "human ecology" issue.
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