Jan Reid's Río Grande : a beautiful book that bears the weight of water

By María Eugenia Guerra

Newly released by the University of Texas Press, Río Grande is a beautiful selection of writings about a river that is a lifeline, an international demarcation, a vessel through which flows the history and culture of two nations, an ecosystem in peril. This collection of stories by writers about the border, the river, and its populace is assembled and edited by Austin wordsmith Jan Reid, a much admired writer.

Who better than Reid, a founding contributor and writer-at-large for Texas Monthly and the author of The Bullet Meant for Me: A Memoir, to assemble so varied a collection of writing to tell one story with many, the story of a river.

Reid writes, “The Río Grande's narrative is like the silt of its bottomlands and delta -- a complex layering of many locales and traditions. The river belongs to two countries, and as a consequence it is protected and managed by neither. It is a broken river now, over-used and abused and in peril. Yet it still glows, emerald-like, in a collective imagination. And that mystique is its best hope for salvation.”

Reid's prologue and his beginning of “Part I, Río del Norte” set the tableau for the story of a river in peril and a river of immense real and symbolic significance in the lives of millions over centuries. With the last line of his epilogue, Reid tells us that if not cared for, we could lose this great river. “We have let the Río Grande become the river that can no longer find its way to the sea,” he writes.

In this anthology of writings about the river, you will no doubt come across stories you've read before -- selections from Paul Horgan's Great River, John Nichols' Milagro Beanfield War, Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove. You'll also come across some treasures you may not have read -- Poniatowska's text from the Guerrero Viejo book she wrote in 1996 for Los Amigos de Guerrero, accompaniment to Richard Payne's beautiful black and white photos, of which two are featured in this volume.

When Reid, one of my favorite writers, asked me for stories about the Río Grande for consideration for inclusion in this project, I sent him a short story I wrote called “Nothing to Declare” and another by former Laredoan and LareDOS contributor Robert Mendoza called “A Piece of Land.” Both appear in this volume alongside stories by literary legends like John Graves, Woody Guthrie, John Reed, James Carlos Blake, Poniatowska, Molly Ivins, and Gloria Anzaldúa.

I'm humbled and also very excited to share pages in a section called “Crossings” in the company of Poniatowska, Reid, Stephen Harrigan, and Elmer Kelton.

The photographs of Laura Gilpin, Robert Runyon, Bill Wittliff, Frank Armstrong, Ave Bonar, Earl Nottingham, Alan Pogue, Payne and others accompany the stories.

The book itself has a wonderful weighted quality to it, as though it might be something more than a book, as though it bears the weight of water.

(Copies of Río Grande are available at B. Dalton Booksellers in Mall del Norte and also from the University of Texas Press at www.utexas.edu/utpress.)

Here are notes on other UT Press selections.

Mary, Mother and Warrior, The Virgin in Spain and the Americas, by Linda B. Hall, is a wide-ranging and highly readable book that explores the veneration of the Virgin Mary in Spain and the Americas from the colonial period to the present. Hall, a Professor of History at the University of New Mexico, begins the story in Spain and follows it through the conquest and colonization of the New World, with a special focus on Mexico and the Andean highlands in Peru and Bolivia, where Marian devotion became combined with indigenous beliefs and rituals. Moving into the 19th century, Hall looks at national cults of the Virgin in Mexico, Bolivia, and Argentina, which were tied to independence movements. In the 20th century, she examines how Eva Perón linked herself with Mary in the popular imagination; visits contemporary festivals with significant Marian content in Spain, Peru, and Mexico; and considers how Latinos in the United States draw on Marian devotion to maintain familial and cultural ties.

Another coffee table beauty of a book is the Denver Art Museum's Painting a New World, Mexican Art and Life, 1521-1821, which features the Museum's spring 2004 exhibition of Mexican colonial painting. The collection, which included 60 masterpieces from public and private collections in Europe, Mexico, and the United States, is considered the largest exhibition of Mexican colonial painting ever assembled outside of Mexico.

Many of the stylistic traditions found in Mexican colonial painting have their roots in the artistic currents of the early modern era, such as the latent maniera of Michelangelo and his followers, the tenebrism of Caravaggio, the classicism of the Carracci school, and the full-blown baroque of Rubens. Many of these imported artistic traditions were creatively assimilated and altered to include distinctive American and Asian characteristics and iconography that resulted in an art of the New World. The contributors discuss these artistic innovations and also draw analogies to the contemporary colonial experience in the United States.

Contributors to Painting a New World include Donna Pierce, Rogelio Ruiz Gomar, and Clara Bargellini.

Gardens of New Spain, How Mediterranean Plants and Foods Changed America by William W. Dunmire traces the journeys of plants from the gardens of Spain to the gardens of Xochimilco and to gardens of the American Southwest. Replete with maps, illustrations by Evangeline L. Dunmire, and tables, this is a beautifully executed reference that follows the plants and foods of Spain -- wheat, melons, grapes, vegetables -- as they were introduced by missionaries and colonists across the New World.

This intermingling of Old and New World plants and foods was one of the most significant fusions in the history of international cuisine and gave rise to many of the foods that we enjoy today. One of the most valuable components of Dunmire's book is a Master Plant List for herbs, fruits, and vegetables listed by common, scientific, and Spanish names, and where it was first cultivated and when.

This is very good reading.

Author Dunmire of Placitas, New Mexico, is a retired National Park Service naturalist and writer-photographer on natural history topics.