On Wednesday, April 9 at noon in the UNM History Commons Room (1104 Mesa Vista Hall), Dr. Katherine Massoth will present the Annual Snead Wertheim Endowed Lecture entitled Borderwomen: Tracing Matriarchal Business Networks in Territorial Tucson. 

Abstract

In this paper, Dr. Massoth starts unraveling the matriarchal networks that led to Federico José María Ronstadt starting a successful business in Tucson after 1882. Questions she will consider are: How did his mother’s kin networks lead to Tucson? How did the gendered epistolary bonds stretching from Magdalena, Sonora to Tucson, Arizona, foster a transborder identity across generations? Unraveling these small kinship details exposes a more intricate and delicate story of maternal kinship networks and borderland entrepreneurial projects. Instead of the Horatio Alger-like story about Fred Ronstadt, popular in Tucson, we can get a more nuanced narrative. By uncovering matriarchal networks, we find that his mother was in the background, interlacing familial and entrepreneurial webs across the newly established U.S.-Mexico border. This talk explores and outlines some of the early ideas that will form the basis of my second book project on the transnational networks of women who led multi-generational families on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border.

The Snead Wertheim Endowed Lectureship is made possible through the generous donations from James and Georgia Snead and Jerry and Mary Carole Wertheim.  The lectureship rotates between the UNM Department of Anthropology and the UNM Department of History.