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Smeltertown: Making and Remembering a Southwest Border Community Paperback – Illustrated, September 13, 2010

by Monica Perales (Author)
4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 26 ratings
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Company town. Blighted community. Beloved home. Nestled on the banks of the Rio Grande, at the heart of a railroad, mining, and smelting empire, Smeltertown--La Esmelda, as its residents called it--was home to generations of ethnic Mexicans who labored at the American Smelting and Refining Company in El Paso, Texas.

Using newspapers, personal archives, photographs, employee records, parish newsletters, and interviews with former residents, including her own relatives, Monica Perales unearths the history of this forgotten community. Spanning almost a century, Smeltertown traces the birth, growth, and ultimate demise of a working class community in the largest U.S. city on the Mexican border and places ethnic Mexicans at the center of transnational capitalism and the making of the urban West. Perales shows that Smeltertown was composed of multiple real and imagined social worlds created by the company, the church, the schools, and the residents themselves. Within these dynamic social worlds, residents forged permanence and meaning in the shadow of the smelter's giant smokestacks. Smeltertown provides insight into how people and places invent and reinvent themselves and illuminates a vibrant community grappling with its own sense of itself and its place in history and collective memory.
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Previous page
  1. Print length
    352 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    The University of North Carolina Press
  4. Publication date
    September 13, 2010
  5. Dimensions
    6.12 x 0.78 x 9.25 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    080787146X
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0807871461
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

Not just a narrative history . . . but also a look at how the community was created by Anglos and Hispanics, citizens and immigrants, rich and poor. . . . This well-researched and well-documented work would be a good addition for academic libraries, especially collections related to borderlands studies or labor issues.--Library Journal



In addition to telling the story of the birth, life, and demise of a vibrant community, Smeltertown provides valuable insights.--Humanities Texas



Historian [Perales] chronicles [the] birth, growth, and death of her family's neighborhood. . . . [in] the first in-depth book about Smeltertown.--El Paso Times



Perales chronicle[s] the journey of Mexican-Americans and their role in the industrialization and globalization of a small community near El Paso. Her book . . . tells their story where families thrived and business excelled.--Houston Chronicle



Smeltertown is an engaging exploration of the intersections of globalization and transnationalism." --The Journal of American History



Smeltertown is an important contribution to the growing body of research in Mexican American, gender, and social history.--Journal of Southern History



A significant contribution to our understanding of Chicana/o and labor history. . . . Aside from being thoroughly researched, Perales's book is excellently composed. . . . It will be of use to labor, gender, environmental, and social historians.--Southwestern Historical Quarterly



Highly recommended.--Southern Historian

Review

From beginning to end, I was deeply impressed with the pacing and flow of Perales's narrative, by her vivid descriptions, by her oral historical work and archival digging, and by the many actors (including her family members) whom she brings to broad attention for the first time.--Stephen J. Pitti, author of The Devil in Silicon Valley: Race, Mexican Americans, and Northern California

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ The University of North Carolina Press; Illustrated edition (September 13, 2010)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 352 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 080787146X
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0807871461
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.19 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.12 x 0.78 x 9.25 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 26 ratings

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Monica Perales

Monica Perales

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Customer reviews

4.7 out of 5 stars
4.7 out of 5
26 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Magdiel Paz
5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing work from an amazing modern-day Historian
Reviewed in the United States on March 13, 2022
Verified Purchase
Rather than writing about the quality of the physical book, which was fine, I would like to present my opinion on this book. Smeltertown: Making and Remembering a Southwest Border Community is such a fantastic read and was from start to end engaging and comprehensive. Perales presents an intensely personal history of a very commonly disregarded aspect of U.S. history, that being the experience of industrial workers caught in the mega-complex that is worldwide capitalism.

The author presents the stories of Smeltertown residents as they lived their lives and focuses on their experiences while also regarding the bigger picture of racial discrimination and corporate subservience. Much in the vein of Howard Zinn's peoples' histories, the book, Smeltertown, is fundamentally a People's History in its focus. A fantastic book that I would recommend to any history buff or anyone who appreciates well-written nonfiction, for that matter.
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Sebastian Lopez
5.0 out of 5 stars Perfect read
Reviewed in the United States on October 11, 2020
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Love it recommended it the book emphasis the el paso area and its past perfectly not bad or evil just people living their life the best they could
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rose in texas
5.0 out of 5 stars Smeltertown is a State of Mind
Reviewed in the United States on February 7, 2011
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This is an academic book, well-researched, and an especially fascinating immigrant story. The author is a descendent of the Smelter Workers who labored in the smelting plant in El Paso, and lived in a vibrant community in the shadow of the smokestacks of the smelter.

It is also speaks to the history of El Paso and the Mexican-American contributions to the city. Home is not so much a place, but a web of relationships and experiences that bind a group together.
9 people found this helpful
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Elvia T. Matias
5.0 out of 5 stars Good
Reviewed in the United States on March 21, 2019
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Great story, bought for class.
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James Wegener
5.0 out of 5 stars As listed
Reviewed in the United States on February 17, 2014
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All good. Its a book. It has a cover on both sides and .lots of words on pages in between
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VLADIMIR ARKHIPOV
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United States on August 17, 2014
Verified Purchase
very good
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Shawn M. Warswick
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Study of a Southwestern Community
Reviewed in the United States on November 30, 2014
Monica Perales is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Houston, having earned her Ph.D. in history from Stanford University where she studied under historians Richard White and Albert Camarillo. Perales also studied history at the University of Texas El Paso, where she earned an MA in history and counts historians Yolanda Leyva, Cheryl Martin and Ernesto Chavez as having influenced her academic work. Smeltertown is Perales’ first work and is based on her doctoral dissertation.

With the above in mind, Perales crafts a sophisticated work in which she analyzes the growth of both Smeltertown (a company town where workers employed by the American Smelting and Refining Company) and El Paso, arguing that the company town was not just a single entity, but in fact was composed of a number of real and imagined social worlds created by the people of Smeltertown and the company both “in the past and in the present.”(3) Additionally, Perales postulates “A critical examination of Smeltertown thus reveals how globalization, free trade, transnational capitalism, and trans border flows of people and products…have profound roots in the history of the region.” (6) Thus, she situates her work in the larger overall story of American history and shows the importance of her work stretches beyond the local level and sheds light on an important subarea of U.S. history-Mexican-American (or Chicano/a) history.

With this in mind, Perales divides her work into three parts; part one of Smeltertown, titled “Making Places,” is divided into two chapters. Chapter one discusses the development of El Paso as an economic center in the transnational commerce which developed between Mexico and the United States in the late nineteenth century (as well as a major point for immigrants entering the U.S. from points south). Chapter two, titled “Creating Smeltertown” looks at life for the residents of the barrio and “the multilayered worlds created by the company and the residents themselves.” (12) Part two, “Making Identities” explores how residents of Smeltertown, in the face of discrimination, were able to make their own identities rather than simply adopt the identities others created for them. The final third of the book looks at the importance of historical memory and it’s importance to the former residents of Smeltertown. The epilogue is particularly poignant and showcases the authors’ talents not only as a historian, but also as a writer.
Perales work draws upon numerous primary sources including newspapers, ASARCO company archives, INS records as well as interviews conducted by the Institute for Oral History at the University of Texas El Paso. Her secondary sources include numerous works central to Borderlands and Chicana/o historiography including works by Albert Camarillo and Richard White, to name a few. Perales uses numerous methodological tactics to create her monograph including the lenses of transnational history, urban history, historical memory and, to a lesser extent, the core/periphery analytical framework. Furthermore this work is a work of Chicana/o history and fits in well under western history.

Unsurprisingly Perales work is a major contribution not only to the historiography of the western United States, but to borderlands history as well as to the literature dealing with Chicana/o issues. In the last three decades numerous studies have been done on various cities in the American southwest and Mexican-American peoples including Los Angeles, Tucson and San Antonio amongst the most notable. Perales now adds El Paso to that list and in doing so she has made a major contribution to the field.
5 people found this helpful
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D. Kanter
5.0 out of 5 stars exemplary Mexican-American history
Reviewed in the United States on May 24, 2013
I'm an academic, but even I open a monograph with trepidation, fearing boredom and pretension. SMELTERTOWN is not the usual monograph.
Monica Perales has done strong research and she knows the scholarly debates, but her engaging stories and clear writing make this a breezy read. She relies heavily on a range of oral histories, and fluidly shares anecdotes from the women and men of this working-class community. She argues that despite the constraints of ethnic prejudice and poverty, "los Esmaltianos" created lives and "a place that mattered to them." (p. 93) The lessons from Smeltertown could apply to Mexican-descent communities well beyond the border and El Paso.
Written with verve and balance, SMELTERTOWN stands as one of the best scholarly works in Mexican-American/immigration studies. Highly recommended.
5 people found this helpful
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