Changes

The American Southwest – the title hints at the meaning, history and mental imagry attached to the region by inhabitants and observers. The “Southwest” is not southwest of Mexico City, so the geographic nature of its designation implies its conquest by the United States in 1848, as if the American nation’s sovereignty over the region could change the spatial position of the land and the people that occupied it.  Popular American conceptions of the American West have underpinned this proprietary definition of the Southwest, but the historical treatments of the region, its people, and its place within the larger narrative of human experience have changed over the last few decades. The American Southwest was once defined by American historians as part of the rewards of Manifest Destiny, and its incorporation into the nation was explained as the implementation of God’s plan for the Anglo-Saxon race.