Regional Pride Research Articles

Performative politics: The Camba countermovement in eastern Bolivia

ABSTRACTEvo Morales, the indigenous, leftist president of Bolivia, has faced serious challenges to his social‐democratic project. His new constitution and proposals for redistributive legislation have sparked much resistance from white elites in the country's eastern region. In this article, I explore the component elements of right‐wing movement building in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, which include festive and celebratory performances of regional pride and paramilitaristic carnivals of violence. I suggest that these kinds of spectacles—one of invented cultural tradition, the other of aggression and brutality—represent the desperate attempt of a minority white, mestizo population to restore political and economic order through extralegal means.

Thailand. Performing political identity: The Democrat party in southern Thailand By Marc Askew Chiang Mai: Silkworm, 2008, Pp. 391. Bibliography, Index, Notes.

Performing political identity: The Democrat party in southern Thailand By MARC ASKEW Chiang Mai: Silkworm, 2008, Pp. 391. Bibliography, Index, Notes. doi: 10.1017/S0022463409990191 This is a very informative book on an enormously important topic in contemporary Thai politics: the virtual hegemony of the ruling Democrat Party in southern Thailand. The party's stronghold is so firm that even the mighty Thai Rak Thai Party (led by Thaksin Shinawatra) could win only two of the region's 54 parliamentary seats in the 2005 election. Based on his extensive fieldwork in Songkhla Province, Marc Askew presents the first comprehensive analysis of this party and its following. The fieldwork specifically targets four multi-level elections held in Songldala in 2004-05. In doing so, Askew provides a blow-by-blow, first-hand account of these elections to unravel the mechanisms underlying the Democrat's domination. The account is further enlivened by his interviews with candidates and their supporters, both Democrat and non-Democrat. Askew makes two essential claims in regard to the party's significant position in Thailand's political arena. First, that the Democrat Party has made effective use of its organisational resources; in particular the reliance upon its tightly knit informal groupings called phuak. He argues that despite regarding themselves as the 'cleanest' party in Thailand, the Democrat Party has resorted to vote buying, although he points out that it has done so with restraint and on a limited scale. Thus, at one level, he grounds his explanation in the less-than-savoury practicalities of Machiavellian politics. If Askew had stopped here, his book would be little different from much of the literature on rural Thai politics. Instead, he gives a second and far more interesting answer: that the Democrat's dominance hinges on the politics of culture--the invention and manipulation of 'southern Thai culture' for political purposes. This notion refers to the romanticised, essentialising myth that 'southern Thailand' constitutes a distinctive community that has always upheld the noble values of integrity and loyalty. At election time, the Democrat mobilises a range of symbolic and rhetorical instruments to project itself as a party that embodies and champions such putatively timeless political principles. Those instruments include election slogans and posters; the dissemination of rmnours; and well-attended campaign rallies, where candidates adept in oratory skills evoke and appeal to the image of 'virtuous southerners' and simultaneously demonise their opponents as endangering the 'morality' of southern Thailand. A diverse mix of people who comprise this imagined political community--old and young, rich and poor--has been socialised into believing that they must support the Democrat Party as a matter of principle and loyalty. Thus, their voting behaviour is based on their deep emotional attachment to the Democrats. Southerners reaffirm their regional identity and pride by supporting Democrat candidates. One might categorise this as a case of ideological domination in a Marxist sense. Askew, however, avoids using such a label, presumably because 'ideology' carries the connotation that ordinary people are passive and gullible. He assigns more agency or autonomy to the southerners' decisions to behave and express their politics in the manner that they do. The question of whether southern Thailand is unique or not is unimportant to Askew. Rather, the book focuses on how these images about southern Thailand represent particular ideas about the Thai nation and its future. Askew's rich analysis raises several questions, however. According to him, many southerners are dissatisfied with the Democrats' poor performance on specific issues (e. …

Savage barbecue: race, culture, and the invention of America's first food

This book describes America's first food as an invented tradition.Barbecue is a word that means different things to different people. It can be a verb or a noun. It can be pulled pork or beef ribs. And, especially in the American South, it can cause intense debate and stir regional pride. Perhaps then, it is no surprise that the roots of this food tradition are often misunderstood.In Savage Barbecue, Andrew Warnes traces what he calls America's first food through early transatlantic literature and culture. Building on the work of scholar Eric Hobsbawm, Warnes argues that barbecue is an invented tradition, much like Thanksgiving - one long associated with frontier mythologies of ruggedness and relaxation.Starting with Columbus' journals in 1492, Warnes shows how the perception of barbecue evolved from Spanish colonists' first fateful encounter with natives roasting iguanas and fish over fires on the beaches of Cuba. European colonists linked the new food to a savagery they perceived in American Indians, ensnaring barbecue in a growing web of racist attitudes about the New World. Warnes also unearths the etymological origins of the word barbecue, including the early form barbacoa; its coincidental similarity to barbaric reinforced emerging stereotypes.Barbecue, as it arose in early transatlantic culture, had less to do with actual native practices than with a European desire to define those practices as barbaric. Warnes argues that the word barbecue retains an element of violence that can be seen in our culture to this day. Savage Barbecue offers an original and highly rigorous perspective on one of America's most popular food traditions.

Statehouse Struggles

Just a few years ago, with health care reform at the national level going nowhere, the states were going to be the laboratories for change. Nimbler, closer to the people, brimming with regional pride, and armed with budget surpluses after years of economic expansion, they were eager to tackle the social problems that had proven too tough for Washington.

Using Japanese: A Guide to Contemporary Usage (review)

Reviewed by: Using Japanese: A guide to contemporary usage by William McClure Paul A. Watters Using Japanese: A guide to contemporary usage. By William McClure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Pp. 336. ISBN 0521641551. $65 (Hb). Japanese has the eighth largest number of speakers in the world, with the native population of Japan comprising more than 125 million people. Japanese is well known for its myriad of forms marking politeness—verbs can take polite, honorific, humble, and familiar forms. For modern English speakers, navigating these levels of politeness can be tricky, as interest in formal speech and writing in Western societies has declined throughout the twentieth century. McClure’s contemporary guide to Japanese usage is both timely and highly insightful, providing needed practical advice. The first section deals with syntactic and phonological aspects of Japanese, showing the range of expressions available to express degrees of meaning, even in the neutral form. Some insightful examples of actual dialogue are presented to highlight various complexities, such as word choice being affected by the gender of participants in a conversation. For native English speakers, strategies for communicating apologies and honorifics are reviewed in detail. Regional variation in Japanese dialects is also presented, as speakers often express regional pride through both intonation and vocabulary. In the second section, native word meanings and formation, as well as the effect of word borrowing, are discussed. Japanese words can have Japanese, Chinese, or ‘foreign’ origins, each variety having its own grammar. Word formations are particularly important for correct homonym usage, and the role of furigana symbols in guiding pronunciation is elucidated through examples. Almost one third of the book is devoted to word usage, and this is certainly not excessive given its central role in constructing contextually appropriate language. The third section is concerned with individual grammatical elements and their nuances, covering the particles wa, mo, no, de, and to. This section includes discussions of topic marking and topic changing, direct and indirect objects, locations, limits, and idioms. The difficult area of omissions is handled masterfully. The final section examines how language is used in various social rituals, including greetings, condolences, and congratulations. Students will find it helpful to review the material presented in the first three sections in the context of various social customs. The combination of strictly grammatical aspects of Japanese along with examples of usage in these different contexts makes M’s book a valuable resource for intermediate and advanced speakers of Japanese. Paul A. Watters Macquarie University Copyright © 2005 Linguistic Society of America

Apple Stack Cake for Dessert: Appalachian Regional Foods

How is the culture of Appalachia conveyed through its foods? Local experts in Appalachian counties were asked to create a hypothetical menu for a meal that was representative of their home region. Fried chicken and ham were the preferred main dishes and dessert selections focused on apple pie and peach or blackberry cobbler. Virtually everyone would serve iced tea. Other Appalachian specialties that appeared regularly included apple stack cake, ramps, and soup beans. Several tradition foods, survivors in isolated settings, are now being revived as symbols of regional identity and pride.

Radio Sports Talk and the Fantasies of Sport

Rhetorical analysis of radio talk shows in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, home of the Louisiana State University “Fighting Tigers” college football team, revealed that the talk shows gave Tiger fans opportunities to share creative interpretations of events. This helped them cope with moments of perceived crisis when the team lost, and solidified their identity as tied to regional pride and the values of work, race, and masculinity. The talk shows also promoted fantasies about college athletics, essentially designating the university's athletic tradition as the most important activity on campus. In this sense, radio sports talk helps blur the line between amateur and professional sports and oversimplifies the complex mission of higher education.

Newcastle Gateshead Quayside: Cultural investment and identities of resistance

The news that, in the aftermath of the bidding process for the UK's representative for the European Capital of Culture in 2008, the UR government is investing 15 million [pounds sterling] in the Urban Cultural programme, raises some key issues about the way we think about culture and, in particular, about urban culture, as a source of resistance to globalisation. There is always an overwhelming temptation to conceive of identity and resistance in a misleadingly fundamentalist way. But resistance is as much about the habitual and the symbolic as it is about the isolated, heroic act (Thrift, 1997). In what follows, I will suggest that the cultural developments in the NewcastleGateshead Quayside development can, counter-intuitively perhaps, provide a renewed focus and confidence for the revitalisation of regional cultural identifies that, in turn, amounts to a complex and contradictory form of symbolic resistance to the homogenisation of globalism. Many commentators felt that NewcastleGateshead would win the UK nomination to become a contender for the title of 2008 European Capital of Culture. The investment of millions of pounds in the Quayside--a former industrial site with no previously existing leisure or cultural facilities--and into developments such as the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, The Sage Gateshead Music Centre and the Millennium Bridge, on the back of the apparent success of Anthony Gormley's Angel of the North, certainly stimulated a degree of public confidence and regional pride. This much is indicated by ongoing longitudinal research into the social, cultural and economic impact of the Quayside, which illustrates not only increased cultural attendance at and awareness of such developments, but also that the Quayside is playing an increasingly significant role in the way the people of the region perceive themselves (Bailey et al., 2004). The regeneration of the Gateshead site, driven by iconic cultural projects, has somehow managed to complement the consumer-led Newcastle waterside economy, which encompasses restaurants, bars and an emerging retail sector. Unlike other reconfigured waterfront sites, NewcastleGateshead Quayside apparently retains its stubbornly democratic character, with its market and night-time crowds appearing to sit happily alongside the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Arts, which has itself far exceeded initial visitor targets. The fact that NewcastleGateshead won the 'popular' BBC television viewers' vote shortly before the official Capital of Culture announcement, certainly reinforced the view in many quarters that Newcastle-Gateshead 'deserved' the nomination. Cultural investment on the Quayside appeared to be contributing to a 'feel-good factor' in NewcastleGateshead and in the region beyond. In the end, however, the nomination was awarded to the city of Liverpool. But more interesting than the question of who won and why was the way the bidding process highlighted the increasingly high profile of culture, most notably on the urban regeneration agenda. This reflects a broader debate preoccupying the cultural sector and politicians alike; a debate typified, perhaps, by Richard Florida's work on the creative classes, in which he argues that, 'The combination of where we live and what we do has come to replace who we work for as a main element of identity' (Florida, 2002: 229). In Florida's version of events, we live in a world of less and less secure social ties, in which 'the city allows you to modulate the experience: to choose the mix, to turn the intensity level up or down as desired, and to have a hand in creating the experience rather than merely consuming it' (Florida, 2002: 232). On the surface, he appears to describe a highly-adaptable society underpinned by processes of flexible specialisation. The creative classes are shown as playing an increasingly important role in constructing identity for cities and their people. …

The Madrigal and its Outcasts: Marenzio, Giovannelli, and the Revival of Sannazaro's Arcadia

In the 1580s Ruggero Giovannelli and Luca Marenzio published a series of madrigals drawn from the pastoral book Arcadia (1504) by the Neapolitan poet Jacopo Sannazaro. There was something unusual about this choice. The texts featured sdrucciolo lines, a verse type that was traditionally excluded from the Petrarchist canon and, consequently, from the repertory of the musical madrigal. In the dedication of his first book for four voices to Ferrante Penna, Giovannelli justified his decision to publish an entire collection of sdrucciolo as an homage to Sannazaro, to whom he referred as the pride of the kingdom of Naples. He clearly meant to capitalize on a distinctively southern sense of cultural identity that took pride in Sannazaro's poetic legacy. Why, in Rome in the 1580s, did it become so important, and potentially remunerative, to reaffirm the glory of a Neapolitan poet of the caliber and popularity of Sannazaro? Why did this celebratory act focus on such a specific aspect of his poetic output (namely the cultivation of sdrucciolo lines)? And above all, why did it take the form of a musical offering? By tracing the musical reception of Sannazaro's Arcadia in the 16th century, this article investigates the relationship between deviation from the norm and regional pride in the musical culture of the 1580s. Concomitantly, it aims at demonstrating that the study of the musical fortunes and misfortunes of Sannazaro's text has something distinctive to contribute to an understanding of the rhetoric of stylistic selection that surrounded the development of the Italian madrigal.

American Art Deco: architecture and regionalism

Art deco architecture flourished in large cities and small towns throughout America in the 1920s and 1930s. Many of the best examples office buildings, movie theaters, hotels, and churches are still in use. Deco architects, artists, and designers drew on European styles but were most committed to a style that grew organically, as they saw it, from their native soil. Two themes bound Deco buildings and their decorative schemes together: a regional pride that tied buildings to their specific locales and functions, and a growing national symbolism that asserted the buildings' identity as uniquely, independently American. American Art Deco features description sand over 500 color photographs of seventy-five lavish and innovatively designed buildings across the country that have been preserved both outside and in, giving the full scope of this beloved, exciting style.

Was It Only Yesterday? The Last Generation of Nigeria's "Turawa"

Trevor Clark, ed. Was It Only Yesterday? The Last Generation of Nigeria's Turawa. Bristol: British Empire Commonwealth Museum Press, 2002. xi + 352 pp. Photographs. Maps. Appendixes. Bibliography. 5 £25:00. Cloth. 5 £15:00. Paper. This is a remarkable book. Yet it may discomfit many Americans, for it makes clear why the boy scout approach to imperialism may in the end be more successful than the bluntly commercial variety. Indeed it is possible that the subtleties of Indirect Rule, as demonstrated so brilliantly in Turawa (White Men) may yet gain appreciative consideration in Washington as options are pondered in these increasingly difficult days of post-Saddam occupation in Iraq. Aside from compiling a masterly portrait from an enormous variety of highly individual, brightly colored creations the Turawa canvas, Trevor Clark has edited a book with several strengths. First, from his selection of topics and arrangement of contributions, the reader gains a panoramic yet detailed feel for the country of the north, a land of astonishing variety, great power, and appeal. I was particularly captivated by descriptions of the well-forested and watered Cameroonian border territories: their wild, remote, mountainous terrain and their fiercely independent animist peoples, many of whom have managed to hold out over the centuries against the sword of Islam and dominance of the Fulani. To the consternation of the correct, these same peoples voted against independence in the U.N.-monitored 9 199 59 plebiscite. Turawa's second major contribution is the picture it conveys of the north-south politics of colonial Nigeria, and more specifically, of Ahmadu Bello, the Sardauna of Sokoto, leader of the north's approximately 30 million people during the turbulent, politically intense 1950s and early '60s, who figures in nearly every section. What comes through is the extent to which Bello was a fiery autocrat of almost lethal force, with the result that successive governors had to handle all administrative matters-which perforce were almost always highly political-very carefully. Supported by most of the Muslim north and many fiercely loyal British officials, the Sardauna wanted nothing to do with the south, with democracy, or with Nigerian independence. To the Sardauna, opposition party leaders were enemies of the state. One British DO who spoke up for the opposition leader Joseph Tarka so enraged the Sardauna that he demanded his execution. Yet it was along the democratic path that Whitehall had decreed Nigeria must go, and quickly. How then to keep the Sardauna, supreme leader of the vast and numerically dominant north, on board? Comments made by many contributors offer compelling insights into the persistent efforts requiredingenious initiatives at which the British, under pressure, excelled. The concluding observations in chapter 30 add still another dimension. Rather surprisingly, the immediate public response of many northerners to the assassination of the Sardauna in the January 1966 coup was not one of shock and sadness, but rather indifference, even suppressed elation, as though a great weight had been lifted (312). Yet at a deeper level, other more powerful and dangerous feelings connected to regional pride and outrage at perceived religious sacrilege had been ignited. We are all-too-aware of the horrific results that came about when these burst forth. …

Imagining New England: explorations of regional identity from the pilgrims to the mid-twentieth century

Imagining England: Explorations of Regional Identity from the Pilgrims to the Mid-Twentieth Century. By Joseph A. Conforti. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: The University of North Carolina Press, 2001. 400 pages. $49.95 (hardcover).Using a wide variety of cultural artifactspromotional literature, Puritan spiritual histories, works of geography, fiction, visual artifacts, and magazines-Joseph A. Conforti traces England's evolution from the first generation of Puritans down through the first half of the twentieth century. Imagining England is a cultural history that contends both on the ground and in the country of the imagination England has been an ever-changing region (315). The crux of his argument, however, relies on the works of a few carefully selected and elaborately explained cultural interpreters whose works illustrate the shifting conceptions of the region.Central to England regional identity were the Puritans and their sense of mission to the World. The first generation of Englanders did not conceive of themselves as New Englanders; rather, they viewed their settlement as a middling sort of second England, religiously reformed and modified to conform more closely to the idealized days of the English past. Succeeding generations mythologized the first as a Great Migration of heroic, inspirational figures whose errand into the wilderness brought forth a new English Israel worthy of honor and emulation. This sense of regional pride and exceptionalism was wedded to a re-Anglicized identification with the glory of the British Empire transformed by the political legacy of the Glorious Revolution and the material prosperity of the consumer revolution. The England region, in their eyes, was a place apart from England and the rest of the colonies, but not too far apart.With the political and social upheaval of the American Revolution and independence, Englanders' sense of place began to drift from its religious moorings. Concern with the difficulties of fashioning a republic of virtue led them to fashion a republicanized version of the Puritan past, one that set Englanders up as a political city on a hill for the new nation to follow. Led by the Rev. Jebidiah Morse's highly political work in cultural geography and echoed by Timothy Dwight's musings in his Travels, Englanders came to see themselves as a model of the kind of republican virtue needed to sustain the new nation. The England heritage of community life centered on town meetings, churches, schools, and militias provided a model that could serve as an example for the other regions to follow.In the mid-to-late 1800s, England's self-image shifted again, this time as a result of three key cultural inventions. First, there was the invention of the ideal orderly community-the white village with its churches, picket fences, and ample commons. Inhabiting these communities were the Yankees, men and women known for their republican virtues of self-denial, restraint, order, frugality, simplicity, self-discipline, and economy. …

Two Tales of Southern Success: Diversity Helps Chart a Community

PI erseverance and optimism frequently fought with regional pride and self-interest in the post-Civil War South. While farsighted southerners envisioned a modern South to com pete with the industrialized North, too many remained engulfed in commemorating their lost past. Thus, the South's agricultural economy lagged far behind, with earnings that were half the national average (1). By the 1890s, northern investments had made inroads, but these were overshadowed by Old South values. Virginia replicated the other southern states. It was agriculturally based, relying predominately on tobacco but increasingly expand ing into crops of wheat and corn. Industry was centered mainly in Richmond, while railroads expanded throughout the state. In northern Virginia, the railroad was the lifeline to the world beyond for residents of the hamlet of Manassas. It figured in the successful contributions of two townspeople of diverse back grounds: Robert Portner, a German immigrant, and Jennie Dean, a former slave. For both individuals, 1894 was a key year. Reflect ing upon thei experiences can provide insight into the personal reality of national events during the 1890s. The drama of their individual lives illustrates how one person can make a difference within a community.

The Limited Impact of the Usatges de Barcelona in Twelfth-Century Catalonia

The twelfth-century legal compilation known as the Usatges de Barcelona holds an important place in the history of Catalonia. Recognized as authoritative by kings and parliaments alike from at least the thirteenth century, the Usatges were integrated into the official collection of Catalan law commissioned by the Corts and the new king of Aragón, Fernando de Antequera, in 1412–13. The work of the jurists who carried out this task was eventually fixed in print (in Catalan) in 1495 as the Constitutions y altres drets de Cathalunya, which was reissued in 1588–89 and again in 1704. The Usatges thus formed part of the law of the region for over 500 years, until the suppression of Catalan local law in the Decreto de Nueva Planta of 1716; thereafter, they survived — and still survive — as a focus of Catalan nationalism and regional pride. For medieval historians, the Usatges usefully supplement Catalonia's abundant documentary evidence, evidence unaccompanied before the thirteenth century by significant narrative sources. Individual articles cover such diverse topics as composition payments for injuries, guidelines for judicial proceedings, inheritance rules, military obligation, the status of Jews and Muslims, marriage, rape, treason, and public highways. Drawn from and influenced by a wide variety of sources — including the Visigothic code, Roman law, comital charters, and royal decrees — they provide valuable information about legal traditions and reasoning in Catalonia.

Social capital and producer organizations in Japanese political economy

Although the small and medium‐sized firms have been an integral part of Japan's economic growth patterns, the way these firms are organized has mostly been studied only in relation to the more glamorous keiretsu organizational patterns. Japan's small and medium‐sized firms did not develop only in the shadow of the keiretsu, but rather grew out of collective self‐reflection and self‐determinism that persisted, and indeed thrived in the late twenties century. Japanese producers of small and medium‐sized firms have struggled to realize their interests by creating a specific social system. The identities of producers of small and medium‐sized firms also have deployed along the development of regional system and local pride.

Tackling Identity with Constructionist Concepts

Tackling Identity with Constructionist Concepts

Testing the west: Consumerism and national identity in eastern Germany

With unification, Western‐style consumerism washed over East Germany in a gigantic wave that stood in marked contrast to the socialist reality of limited supply and suppressed demands. This article examines the impact of consumerism as a repository of national identities in the new Länder in the aftermath of 1989. It argues that from a quantitative perspective East Germans firmly internalised consumerism by approximating to the consumption levels of their Western compatriots. Easterners also filled consumerism with political meaning. By buying certain products they expressed emerging regional pride, defiance against the sweeping transformation processes and a nostalgic and romanticised reference to the GDR past. These mass‐cultural expressions of national identity serve as telling indicators for the continued separation of the publics’ psyche in east and west.

Philip II and the Art of the Cityscape

Philip II and the Art of the Cityscape As mundane as they may seem, city views occupied an important place in the art and architecture of the Renaissance. The number and variety of these views multiplied rapidly during the first half of the sixteenth century, and, by 1550, the cityscape had developed into an independent genre, claiming numerous artists for whom the representation of cities was a particular speciality. Underlying this development was a growing demand for urban panoramas of various types. Cityscapes, along with maps, became a popular form of wall decoration; popes, monarchs, nobles, and burghers alike commissioned artists to adorn their residences with portraits of cities, either alone or in series. An even larger market existed for cheap, single sheet engravings of individual cities, and another for city atlases, the most ambitious of which endeavored not only to publish views of European cities, but also those of Africa, Asia, and the New World. Yet, despite their number and appeal, city views have attracted relatively little scholarly attention. In general, they have been interpreted as a response to the growth of European cities and towns, as well as one facet of the growing interest in geography sparked by the discovery of the Americas. They have consequently been considered as a demonstration of European interest in mapping the world as faithfully and accurately as possible. Yet city views had other uses. In some cases they served as expressions of local patriotism and regional pride; in others, they were used as demonstrations of suzerainty, both secular and spiritual. However, the personal and political uses of these views have rarely been considered, and this is the principal concern underlying this article, which focuses on a series of commissions offered by Philip II of Spain (1556-1598) to Anton Van den Wyngaerde (c. I512-I571), a Flemish artist who specialized in topographical views.

THE DARWIN REGIONAL STRUCTURE PLAN

English journalist Ian Woolridge wrote in 1982 that the Northern Territory's inhabitants ‘have a regional pride I have met previously only in Alaska’. To this regional pride was added self-government in 1978. The opportunity for Territorians to contribute to their community destiny since then has expressed itself in a new vitality which forms an important background to contemporary planning and development and to the recently published “Darwin Regional Structure Plan—1984”. Here is a planning document, endorsed by Government, which anticipates a virtual tripling of the present population of around 70,000. Whatever else it is, the plan is a statement of faith. In Darwin there is no more question of “if”, it is a matter of “how” and perhaps “when”. An underlying assumption of Government reflected in the plan is continued rapid population growth.

Manufacture of mescal in sonora, Mexico

Mescal, the popular liquor of Mexico, is a brandy distilled from the fermented mash of the cooked stems of certain wild and cultivated agaves native to the arid and semiarid regions of Mexico and the American Southwest. The most famous mescal (also spelled mezeal or mexcal) is tequila, the generic name for mescal made in or near the town of Tequila, Jalisco (Crist, 1940; Helbig, 1960). Although tequila and mezcal de Oaxaca (known for the agave moth grub suspended in the liquor of some bottles) are made legally, most mescal is bootlegged. The state of Sonora is particularly renowned for its bacanora, a bootleg mescal made in the region of the town of Bacanora from wild Agave pacifica (Fig. 1). In Sonora, the drinking and making of mescal is not only traditional and common, but expected behavior of men living in the scattered ranches and small riverine agricultural villages. In many years, the sale of mescal accounts for much of the income for many poor rural Sonoran households, especially when droughts limit the success of farming and ranching. In some small villages, nearly a quarter of the households make and sell mescal. Owen (1959, p. 28) reported that 13 of 59 households in Meresichic made and sold mescal in the late 1950s. Although largely the liquor of the Sonoran lower classes, mescal bacanora is commonly consumed at upper-class social affairs in major cities, not only because it is a source of regional pride, but because its flavor and proof are superior to some of Mexico's finest tequilas. Indeed, aficionados of mescal often spend long hours discussing its merits and even its healthful properties. Unlike tequila, which is made from cultivated Agave tequilana, Sonoran mescal is made predominantly from 2 wild agaves: Agave pacifica (maguey) and Agave palmeri (lechuguilla). The former, most preferred for mescal, is abundant in the coastal thorn and short-tree forests of southern Sonora, while the latter is common in the oak woodland and grama grassland communities of northern Sonora (Gentry, 1972). The word mescal is derived from the Nahautl words metl (the general word for agaves) and ixcalli (a word meaning cooked or baked) and refers not only to mescal liquor but to the agaves themselves (Bruman, 1940, p. 11). According to Bruman (1940, p. 7), the baked hearts of certain agaves were the most important aboriginal food in arid and semiarid Mexico and the American Southwest before the development of agriculture. Agaves served a considerable variety of purposes: as food, ceremonial objects, nonalcoholic and alcoholic beverages, fiber, and medicine (Castetter et al., 1938). Glyphs of agaves and agave products in the Aztec codices point clearly to the traditional economic and social significance of these singularly American plants in Mexico (Gongalves de Lima, 1956; Bottorff de Barrios, 1971, pp. 10-21). Lumholtz (1902, I, p. 256) reported that the Huichol