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| Contact: | Sylvia Rodriguez 277-4524 or Carolyn Gonzales 277-5920 |
July 10, 2001
UNM'S RODRIGUEZ TO SPEAK ON "ENCHANTMENT" IN NEW MEXICO
As
Albuquerque gears up for the Diamond Jubilee celebration of Route 66 and the
throngs of visitors the state hopes to receive, University of New Mexico Anthropologist
Sylvia Rodriguez looks at tourism from another perspective.
Rodriguez presents, "Tourism and Power in the Land of Enchantment,"
a community seminar, on Wednesday, July 11 at 7 p.m. at the First Unitarian
Church located on Carlisle and Comanche NE.
The seminar is the eighth in a series of Institute for Public Life seminars
on politics, history and culture of New Mexico presented by Albuquerque Interfaith
and the New Mexico Organizing Project and co-sponsored by the UNM Alfonso Ortiz
Center for Intercultural Studies.
Rodriguez will address the focus question: What are the causes and consequences
of enchantment? After she presents the topic, the audience will break into small
discussion groups.
"We will be talking about the cultural and social impact of tourism in
New Mexico. We'll talk about industry, tourism's impact on race relations, and,
basically the causes and consequences of 'enchantment,' the tag tourism put
on New Mexico," she says.
Rodriguez says that as an anthropologist, she studies how being a tourist attraction,
or "ethnic, exotic other" affects the state's Native American and
Hispanic people. "How does the idealized version of Native Americans and
Hispanics differ from the reality? The reality is that there are many poor New
Mexicans in isolation living in trailers. The tourism industry took a third
world place and mystified it as the 'Land of Enchantment' and it stuck, but
there is a disconnect between that and the reality," she says. Rodriguez
adds that the idealized version makes social and political change difficult
because people want to hold on to the idealized version.
The Institute for Public Life series is presented to help community leaders
become effective organizers by becoming educated and informed citizens.
The seminar is free and open to the public.
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of New Mexico
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Telephone: (505) 277-5813
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