Daniel D. Arreola - Postcards from the Sonora Border: Visualizing Place Through a Popular Lens, 1900s–1950s

Postcards from the Sonora Border is the second installment in a project that involves four separate books about the visual history of towns along Mexicos northern border. The inaugural publication in this ongoing research enterprise was Postcards from the Ro Bravo Border: Picturing the Place, Placing the Picture (University of Texas Press, 2013). In that book, I studied the Mexico border towns of Matamoros, Reynosa, Nuevo Laredo, Piedras Negras, and Ciudad Acua that face the Texas boundary along the Ro Bravo/Rio Grande. The framework followed in the initial volume was thematic and used examples from the five Ro Bravo border towns to illustrate landscapes within and surrounding the towns exhibited by photographic postcards from the 1900s to the 1950s. Chapters explored subjects such as gateways (bridge crossings), streets, plazas, attractions, businesses, landmarks, and everyday life to visualize how the popular photographic postcard captured peoples and places during the first half of the twentieth century.

In Postcards from the Sonora Border, I continue my exploration of the visual history and historical geography of the Mexican border to understand how five towns on the Sonora border facing Arizona are revealed in the photographic postcard from the 1900s to the 1950s. The framework for investigation follows a geographic template where individual chapters are presented for each of the five towns studied: Agua Prieta, Naco, Nogales, Sonoyta, and San Luis Ro Colorado. Within these chapters, I develop a geographical and historical analysis of each town using text, maps, and visual imagery to narrate the particular places and events captured by the postcard photographers lens. In this approach, emphasis is given to the towns themselves rather than to the larger geographic themes followed in Postcards from the Ro BravoBorder. In each instance, however, the goal is nearly the same: to understand how a popular image format shaped the way we came to see these towns as both tourist destinations and lived places. The project continues beyond these installments. In future volumes I will utilize postcards from the Chihuahua border to investigate the towns of Ciudad Jurez, Ojinaga, and Palomas and postcards from the Baja California border to examine Tijuana, Mexicali, Tecate, and Algodones.

Postcards from the Sonora Border was made possible, in part, through the generous contributions of the Comparative Border Studies program of the School of Transborder Studies at Arizona State University, which enabled field and archival study in 20122013, and the School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning at Arizona State University, which provided resources for a small publication subvention in 2016. Beyond the assistance provided by librarians and archivists at numerous institutions, the following repositories, including their staffs and resources, were especially helpful to this project: Arizona Historical Society; Douglas Historical Society; Bisbee Mining and Historical Museum; Fort Huachuca Museum; Pimera Alta Historical Society; Library and Archive, Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument; Arizona State Library and Archives; Special Collections of the University of Arizona Libraries; and the Arizona Collection of the Hayden Library, Arizona State University.

Special thanks are extended to freelance writer, researcher, and grassroots historian Cynthia Hayostek of Douglas, Arizona, who kindly shared her Douglas historic materials and who read and commented on , Nogales; and two reviewers who read the entire manuscript and made valuable suggestions. Original maps were prepared from my sketches by cartographer Barbara Trapido-Lurie in the School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning at Arizona State University, Tempe. Scott Warren extended hospitality and shared his knowledge of resources about Papaguera during visits to Ajo, Arizona. Sue Rutman of Ajo, Arizona, generously shared her files about Ajo-Sonoyta and the histories of those communities. Thanks are extended to Kristen A. Buckles, acquiring editor; Amanda Krause, editorial, design, and production manager; and Leigh McDonald, art director and book designer, at the University of Arizona Press for their support of the project, and to C. Steven LaRue who efficiently copyedited the manuscript, improving clarity.

Preliminary findings for Postcards from the Sonora Border were shared in illustrated lectures and exhibitions at the School of Transborder Studies at Arizona State University in 2012; 7 Congreso Mexicano de Tarjetas Postales, Monterrey, Mxico, in 2014; and Border-land Stories, a series of public programs in Douglas, Bisbee, Nogales, and Sells, Arizona, made possible by the School of Historical, Philosophical,and Religious Studies at Arizona State University, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and Arizona Humanities in 2015.