Forgotten Frontera: The Mexican American Southern Plains

FAIN: AC-284513-22

West Texas A & M University (Canyon, TX 79016-0001)
Alex Hunt (Project Director: May 2021 to present)
Alexandria Janette McCormick (Co Project Director: December 2021 to September 2022)
Katelyn Denney (Co Project Director: January 2023 to present)

A curricular and co-curricular enrichment initiative focused on the cultural and historical roles of Mexican Americans in the Southern Plains region.  

The Center for the Study of the American West (CSAW) at WTAMU undertakes “Forgotten Frontera: The Mexican American Southern Plains” to preserve cultural heritage and to further teaching/learning in the humanities, including Spanish language and culture, through curricular innovation, faculty development, and community outreach. To build strength in humanities through HSI status, the project emphasizes a marginalized ethnic regional history and the under-appreciated importance of that group’s contribution to regional culture. Visiting scholars will address annual topics of “The Llaneros,” “Mexicanidad,” and “Becoming Mexican American.” WTAMU faculty will develop and offer thematically aligned humanities and language courses each year. Working between the university, its museum, and the community, CSAW will oversee curricular development, discussion of HSI best practices, delivery of new research, and student internships.

Associated Products

Forgotten Frontera Ethnography (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Forgotten Frontera Ethnography
Author: Alex Hunt
Abstract: This paper and this panel are envisioned with an audience primarily of New Mexicans and Texans; our papers would be appropriate for any community group or club interested in regional history and literature. The “forgotten frontera” explored is that borderland between eastern New Mexico and western Texas, the isolated llano, the southern Great Plains. In 1786, peace treaties between Span and the Comanches led to a period of peace and trade. For the next 90 years, New Mexican pioneers ventured further east onto the plains to hunt bison, trade with the Comanches, and herd sheep. By the time this period came to an end in the 1870s and 80s, New Mexican sheepmen had established ranchos and small settlements in the Texas panhandle and beyond. This period is paid little attention in New Mexican histories more focused on the Rio Grande valley and other more populated areas of the territory. More troubling, the history is largely omitted and whitewashed in Texas because it implicates Texas cattlemen in a violent territorial takeover. This project is thus engaged in analyzing two ethnographic texts, Fabiola Cabeza de Baca’s We Fed Them Cactus (1954) and Samuel Leo Gonzales’ The Days of Old (1993). Multivalent and genre crossing, these books include rich oral tradition that recount pioneer days, lifeways, and the end of the period with the coming of the Texans.
Date: 09/20/2022
Primary URL: https://www.westernlit.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Program-2022-for-distribution-side-by-side.pdf
Primary URL Description: Western Literature Association conference program 2022 see page 15

Plazas, Cañones and Acequias: A Cartographic Narration of the Mexican Llano Estacado (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Plazas, Cañones and Acequias: A Cartographic Narration of the Mexican Llano Estacado
Author: Andrew Reynolds
Abstract: The southern plains of West Texas has a rich Mexican cultural history that is also a history of indigeneity, mestizaje, and colonialism. The 19th century American cartographic archive of the region maps the development of settler culture while also recording remnants of Mexican and indigenous presence and subsequent removal. This presentation, as part of the West Texas A&M University “Forgotten Frontera” NEH-funded project, uses the region’s map archive to create a toponymic storytelling of the Mexican cultural and historical record of Llano Estacado. The spatial reconstructions of place names and geography in maps recount historical and cultural authority. Toponyms also serve as generalizing metaphors that erase narrative and fail to pronounce plot lines, conflict, stories, and histories. Nevertheless, a critical reading of maps can reveal unseen trail ways, riverbeds, and plaza structures that help to reconstruct new stories of the southern plains. A new narrative cartography of the Mexican cultural history of the region resists White Supremacist settler colonialism through the recovery of stories, histories, and cultures with lasting legacies of colonial resistance, agricultural ingenuity, and an ecology of preservation and care.
Date: 09/20/22
Primary URL: https://www.westernlit.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Program-2022-for-distribution-side-by-side.pdf
Primary URL Description: Western Literature Association, 2022 conference program see page 15

Forgotten Frontera: Latina/o Histories and the Center for the Study ofthe American West (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Forgotten Frontera: Latina/o Histories and the Center for the Study ofthe American West
Author: Alex Hunt
Abstract: Roundtable Discussion, "Latinx Public History:Taking Our History Out of the Shadows." Hunt presentation discussed the whitewashing of Lantinx history on the southern plans and CSAW's Forgotten Frontera program goals, including visiting scholars and oral history project.
Date: 09/14/2022
Primary URL: https://www.dropbox.com/s/0doown54mjb4lve/2022%20WHA%20Conference%20Program_Final%20-%20V2.pdf?dl=0
Primary URL Description: Western History Association 2022 conference progam see page 36

ENGL 4360: Ethnic Homelands, Migrations, and Place (Course or Curricular Material)
Title: ENGL 4360: Ethnic Homelands, Migrations, and Place
Author: Alex Hunt
Abstract: This course will first provide an overview of literary regionalism as it developed in the US. It will then focus on Mexican American southwest regionalism as a study of issues of place, the geography of ethnicity, and the meaning of regionalism at a time of globalism and increasing migration. The course’s regional focus includes the Texas Panhandle/Southern Plains region and is connected to CSAW’s “Forgotten Frontera” program, which will include some special features and opportunities.
Year: 2022
Primary URL: https://www.wtamu.edu/_files/docs/ENGL%204360%202022SP%20Hunt.pdf
Primary URL Description: Link to course syllabus found on CSAW's Forgotten Frontera webpage.
Audience: Undergraduate

SPAN 2315: Hispanic High Plains (Course or Curricular Material)
Title: SPAN 2315: Hispanic High Plains
Author: Andrew Reynolds
Abstract: This course will enhance your Spanish language skills by providing you with new and important contexts for the use of Spanish. Through various forms of media such as literature, non-fiction, journalism, television, and film, you will be able to address questions about bilingualism, immigration, national and cultural borders, oral history, and globalization that will expand your language proficiency. This course is not designed to “reform” your language abilities, but to add to them specific proficiencies directly related to professional activities, community interaction, and cultural awareness. Additionally, this course will introduce you to several important social and cultural themes. While the first semester of Spanish for Heritage Speakers explores questions of Latina/o identity in the United States more generally, the second semester will delve into the impact of Hispanic people, cultures, and language on the Panhandle of Texas and the High Plains, also known as the “Llano Estacado.” We will explore how Spanish-speaking people travelled, settled, and worked in the High Plains, and how the deep historical and cultural roots impact the region today.
Year: 2022
Primary URL: https://www.wtamu.edu/museum/csaw/forgotten-frontera-2022/Forgotten%20Frontera%202022.html
Audience: Undergraduate

ENGL/SPAN 4392/5392: The Llaneros (Course or Curricular Material)
Title: ENGL/SPAN 4392/5392: The Llaneros
Author: Andrew Reynolds
Author: Alex Hunt
Abstract: This course, cross-listed between English and Spanish, undergraduate and graduate, is connected to a National Endowment for the Humanities grant, concerns Hispanic culture on the high plains. In particular, we will read Spanish, New Mexican, and Mexican American texts from or concerning the era of “discovery” through the nineteenth century. Our readings will be diverse, including exploration narrative, historical scholarship, folklore, and fiction. Reading with such breadth is necessary for the “recovery” of Mexican American legacies in our region. Students in this course will have the opportunity both to learn about this legacy and to contribute new knowledge to the field.
Year: 2022
Primary URL: https://www.wtamu.edu/_files/docs/Syllabus%208.19%204392%20Llaneros%20Fall%202022.pdf
Audience: Graduate

Oral History Resources (Web Resource)
Title: Oral History Resources
Author: Alex Hunt
Abstract: This website includes links to two documents, the oral history best practices guide and the oral history interview consent form. The resources are here made readily available to grant personnel, associated faculty/staff, and students involved in oral history collection.
Year: 2022
Primary URL: https://www.wtamu.edu/museum/csaw/forgotten-frontera-2022/Overview.html
Primary URL Description: CSAW's NEH Forgotten Frontera Overview page, including Oral History Resources

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