Californiana Legacies: Family and Popular Memories in California’s Borderlands

This paper examines how Spanish Mexican women in the Southwest claimed their family’s historical legacy and their cultural authority to maintain their family’s prominence in a shifting cultural and social terrain that was increasingly falling in to the control of Anglo Americans during the 1870s. With tourist boosters and city builders defining the cultural identity of Southern California, the del Valle women sought out moments to preserve their cultural traditions and narrate their version of the region’s history.