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La Calle: Spatial Conflicts and Urban Renewal in a Southwest City
On March 1, 1966, the voters of Tucson approved the Pueblo Center Redevelopment Project--Arizona's first major urban renewal project--which targeted the most densely populated eighty acres in the state. For close to one hundred years, tucsonenses had created their own spatial reality in the historical, predominantly Mexican American heart of the city, an area most called "la calle." Here, amid small retail and service shops, restaurants, and entertainment venues, they openly lived and celebrated their culture. To make way for the Pueblo Center's new buildings, city officials proceeded to displace la calle's residents and to demolish their ethnically diverse neighborhoods, which, contends Lydia Otero, challenged the spatial and cultural assumptions of postwar modernity, suburbia, and urban planning.
The author examines conflicting claims to urban space, place, and history as advanced by two opposing historic preservationist the La Placita Committee and the Tucson Heritage Foundation. Otero gives voice to those who lived in, experienced, or remembered this contested area, and analyzes the historical narratives promoted by Anglo American elites in the service of tourism and cultural dominance.
La Calle explores the forces behind the mass an unrelenting desire for order, a local economy increasingly dependent on tourism, and the pivotal power of federal housing policies. To understand how urban renewal resulted in the spatial reconfiguration of downtown Tucson, Otero draws on scholarship from a wide range of Chicanx, ethnic, and cultural studies; urban history, sociology, and anthropology; city planning; and cultural and feminist geography.
The author examines conflicting claims to urban space, place, and history as advanced by two opposing historic preservationist the La Placita Committee and the Tucson Heritage Foundation. Otero gives voice to those who lived in, experienced, or remembered this contested area, and analyzes the historical narratives promoted by Anglo American elites in the service of tourism and cultural dominance.
La Calle explores the forces behind the mass an unrelenting desire for order, a local economy increasingly dependent on tourism, and the pivotal power of federal housing policies. To understand how urban renewal resulted in the spatial reconfiguration of downtown Tucson, Otero draws on scholarship from a wide range of Chicanx, ethnic, and cultural studies; urban history, sociology, and anthropology; city planning; and cultural and feminist geography.
288 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 2010
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About the author
Lydia R. Otero
3 books9 followers In 2011, the Border Regional Library Association presented a Southwest Book Award to Lydia Otero for La Calle: Spatial Conflicts and Urban Renewal in a Southwest City. Being born and raised in Tucson with deep family roots on both sides of the Arizona-Sonora border inspired the author's interest in regional history. In 2019, Otero received the Dolores Huerta Legacy Award for their activism and scholarship focusing on bringing awareness to Mexican American and local history. The author is currently a tenured professor in the Department of Mexican American Studies at the University of Arizona and lives in Tucson, Arizona. Learn more at lydiaotero.com.
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
May 18, 2017
This is one of the most important books I've ever read. Otero provides a historical context desperately needed with stories and reports every Tucsonan should reflect on. If you love Tucson, you need La Calle.
May 24, 2021
This is hands down the most important book I read this year. Heartbreaking, but immaculately written and thoroughly researched, this book will shake you up if you are a native Tucsonan and Mexican-American. Highly recommend.
January 8, 2021
The story of the destruction of the historic Mexican neighborhood to make room for the TCC is a sad and interesting one, but the telling of that story in this book is a little dry in my opinion. It is one of those books that reads like someone’s PhD thesis grudgingly forced into becoming a book for public consumption. I wish this book was written by an investigative journalist; it would’ve been less dry. Even though it’s a familiar story — Anglo interlopers destroy (while appropriating) local native culture — it is still sad, like it always is. I remember living there and seeing the statue of the people pointing from Barrio Historico towards the TCC where the rest of their neighborhood used to be. Very sad indeed to think of them just standing out there pointing for all of time.
July 29, 2014
This book is a treasure that addresses multidisciplinary questions about cities, order, identity, history, philosophy. I didn't approach it as a historian, the way Lydia Otero presents this work. I came simply as a student of literary criticism in Latin American contexts, and I found some profound revelations here. Where to begin-- it is shocking just to see the photos of La Placita and La calle prior to 1967 and after, when it becomes an arid suburban mall that no one visits. But even more shocking to see the methodical writing of text and signs that would eventually bring the white population that was desired in Tucson by city planners. Adds for the "modern city" by the Tucson power company that feature a cartoon, "Reddy Kilowatt." And the poster by the Chamber of Commerce with a white father and son dressed as cowboys representing the Tucson opportunity and "way of life." Otero not only traces the resistance of the community to the redeveloping-- and flattening of Tucson-- but also shows how to read the text that shows Tucson as nothing but cacti and desert, rewriting history, replacing memory.
I see connections to the idea of a dreamed up order in the design of cities in the Americas, as analyzed by Angel Rama in La ciudad letrada, and also a bitter irony in the rewriting of Mexican heritage in a U.S. city that mirrors the rewriting done by the Spanish in the XVI and XVII centuries. Anyway, I loved this book and I'm still reading it.
I see connections to the idea of a dreamed up order in the design of cities in the Americas, as analyzed by Angel Rama in La ciudad letrada, and also a bitter irony in the rewriting of Mexican heritage in a U.S. city that mirrors the rewriting done by the Spanish in the XVI and XVII centuries. Anyway, I loved this book and I'm still reading it.
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August 25, 2019One word (or two, depending on your persuasion): BADASS. Now I understand why this book still has such clout nearly a decade after its publication. Seriously though, this is a gutsy book that almost amounts to an exposé of Tucson's elite, both Mexican-American and Anglo. And in addition to gutsiness, I'm impressed by Otero's brilliant weaving of sources--interviews, archival research, art and architecture criticism, history, sociology, geography. It's an incredible, tight, hard-hitting, relevant piece of scholarship and I see why it continues to get attention.
I think a lot about this essay (http://ediblebajaarizona.com/the-ther...) by Megan Kimble about Tucson's downtown, which sparked a lot of urgent questions for me: What should a place look like? What are the connections that make life good here? How can we protect those connections, now? How can we make those connections too strong to be displaced or demolished? La Calle does have meaningful answers, though I'm sure there is new scholarship that could round them out. This is at least a part of what I am looking for.
I think a lot about this essay (http://ediblebajaarizona.com/the-ther...) by Megan Kimble about Tucson's downtown, which sparked a lot of urgent questions for me: What should a place look like? What are the connections that make life good here? How can we protect those connections, now? How can we make those connections too strong to be displaced or demolished? La Calle does have meaningful answers, though I'm sure there is new scholarship that could round them out. This is at least a part of what I am looking for.
June 17, 2013
I was so blessed to wander across this stellar work of locally-grounded ethnography. Any anthropologist should read this book and it should probably be required reading for any incoming freshman college student living in Tucson. This is a book that explains the heart of Tucson, or rather the chunk missing from it.
As an anthropology undergraduate at the University of Arizona, I did fieldwork on the gentrification of the Barrio Viejo area, an intensely rewarding experience in its own right. My professor, Dr. Susan Shaw, was kind enough to point me in the direction of this awesome and then recently published book. It was perfect, and though I relied more a bevy of primary sources for my paper, it was quite a treat to find a secondary source of this caliber waiting for me.
This is an important book for anyone who lives in a city and wants to understand the process of urban renewal. It is an essential book for any resident of Tucson who wants to know the history of their city.
As an anthropology undergraduate at the University of Arizona, I did fieldwork on the gentrification of the Barrio Viejo area, an intensely rewarding experience in its own right. My professor, Dr. Susan Shaw, was kind enough to point me in the direction of this awesome and then recently published book. It was perfect, and though I relied more a bevy of primary sources for my paper, it was quite a treat to find a secondary source of this caliber waiting for me.
This is an important book for anyone who lives in a city and wants to understand the process of urban renewal. It is an essential book for any resident of Tucson who wants to know the history of their city.
October 23, 2024
Absolutely essential reading for anyone moving to Tucson. Powerfully contextualizes how Tucson got to where it is now, and how the Anglo powers intervened to take control of Tucson’s direction and disenfranchise the established Mexican American (Tucsonense) community.
She elegantly and powerfully undermines the Anglo justification for Urban renewal based in pure “economics”, by laying out the economic damages Tucson inflicted on itself by destroying the main consumer and tax base in the areas that became the Tucson Convention Center (a multi-million tax dollar funded disaster that destroyed hundreds of homes) and contemporary downtown.
The Anglo authorities created the visions of Tucnonense communities they needed to justify their destruction and expropriation from “valuable” land. From exporting the saloons frequented by white cowboys to southern Mexican-American neighborhoods and then labeling them debaucherous, to denying Tucsonense’s in the path of destruction funds to renovate their homes and then calling them “dangerous” and “slums” in order to justify their destruction and replacement.
I would have loved some more visibility of the indigenous communities in the area (she occasionally mentions Tohono O’odham and US collaboration, and the roll of certain places as gathering places for Mexican-Americans and Yaqui communities,) but it would have been nice to have more color to these interactions. Additionally, there are times when Otero makes claims without directly connecting them to evidence in the same paragraph. It would be helpful to have that info directly connected to the claims she makes, which inevitably make their way into the chapter, but just more spread out. Loved this book.
She elegantly and powerfully undermines the Anglo justification for Urban renewal based in pure “economics”, by laying out the economic damages Tucson inflicted on itself by destroying the main consumer and tax base in the areas that became the Tucson Convention Center (a multi-million tax dollar funded disaster that destroyed hundreds of homes) and contemporary downtown.
The Anglo authorities created the visions of Tucnonense communities they needed to justify their destruction and expropriation from “valuable” land. From exporting the saloons frequented by white cowboys to southern Mexican-American neighborhoods and then labeling them debaucherous, to denying Tucsonense’s in the path of destruction funds to renovate their homes and then calling them “dangerous” and “slums” in order to justify their destruction and replacement.
I would have loved some more visibility of the indigenous communities in the area (she occasionally mentions Tohono O’odham and US collaboration, and the roll of certain places as gathering places for Mexican-Americans and Yaqui communities,) but it would have been nice to have more color to these interactions. Additionally, there are times when Otero makes claims without directly connecting them to evidence in the same paragraph. It would be helpful to have that info directly connected to the claims she makes, which inevitably make their way into the chapter, but just more spread out. Loved this book.
May 25, 2022
I've lived in Tucson since 1988 and this book filled in a lot of blanks for me. At times the research was a bit repetitive but so thorough that I forgave this. I skimmed some of the very detailed sections in part because I didn't want to concentrate on them and in part because I was motivated to finish the book for a book club meeting. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in the history of Tucson.
January 1, 2023
A great investigation into a troubled period of history. I think I would have followed along better if the information had been presented chronologically overall instead of per-chapter, and sometimes per-section.
June 13, 2019
Should be required reading for all white folks living in Tucson... especially those in positions of power.
September 28, 2019
Every Tucsonan or future Tucsonan should read and consider the history in this book and deeply consider how we can learn from and not repeat it.
August 19, 2022
Read this as a geography and development student in Tucson at the University of Arizona. It was HIGHLY impactful on my thoughts of environmental and social justice in urban development.
January 27, 2025
This should be required reading for people living, visiting, or studying here
December 27, 2020
I took too long to write this review to do the book justice. This is a wonderful, deep local history documenting the intentional dispossession and displacement of indigenous, Spanish-speaking, Mexican-American, Black, and immigrant people from downtown Tucson to make way for a corporate, white imagination version of a 'Mexico-inspired' shopping center and a wasteland of a mega parking lot and big-box convention center, all, now, more or less empty, a giant square gash on the bird's eye view of the heart of the city. I use the term "wonderful" in the sentence above because of how lovingly Otero centers the people who made this part of downtown Tucson into a city and a home over decades, honing in on the multi-faceted forms of resistance to urban renewal through the 1990s led by women of color in groups advocating for historical preservation and as individuals who simply refused to budge. You come to love the characters, feeling their confusion, pain, and exhaustion as city politicians and businessmen manipulate the story of the city and the physical 'facts on the ground' through obliteration-- first as cultural obliteration, historical revisionism, erasure (creation of an empty frontier, white cowboy myth to attract white tourists and white settlers), and then the physical obliteration of eviction and bulldozing.
Otero's detailed, human-scale narrative of a recent urban renewal is a gently told horror story. The reverberations are everywhere in Tucson today, where multiple urban renewal projects continue to colonize land, gentrify, homogenize, and displace Latinx and other people of color and poor people, through a process of mysterious inevitability: undemocratic, shrouded development plans cooked between pols and developers. The story of La Calle is raw, recent, and ongoing.
The book is hyper-local and a little dry despite the generalizable story that could have been contextualized as an example of urban renewal as a larger, national method of white wealth accumulation through Mexican-American, Latinx, Black, and Indigenous land dispossession. I wish Otero had treated the Jewish immigrants who found homes and places to worship in Tucson during the expulsions and pogroms of the early 1900s era with the same nuance and care as she did the class and power diversity within Mexican-American, Latinx, and Chinese communities. She makes a few comments about the role of wealthy Jewish businessmen that felt jarring and sweeping-- lumping together a community under the guise of criticizing the actions of a powerbroker--out of place in a work otherwise careful to discern and pick apart power. I'd recommend readers also visit the exhibit on Tucson's Jewish community in and around the Bario Viejo/5 Points neighborhood at the Tucson Jewish History Museum, as a supplement to this book.
Otero's detailed, human-scale narrative of a recent urban renewal is a gently told horror story. The reverberations are everywhere in Tucson today, where multiple urban renewal projects continue to colonize land, gentrify, homogenize, and displace Latinx and other people of color and poor people, through a process of mysterious inevitability: undemocratic, shrouded development plans cooked between pols and developers. The story of La Calle is raw, recent, and ongoing.
The book is hyper-local and a little dry despite the generalizable story that could have been contextualized as an example of urban renewal as a larger, national method of white wealth accumulation through Mexican-American, Latinx, Black, and Indigenous land dispossession. I wish Otero had treated the Jewish immigrants who found homes and places to worship in Tucson during the expulsions and pogroms of the early 1900s era with the same nuance and care as she did the class and power diversity within Mexican-American, Latinx, and Chinese communities. She makes a few comments about the role of wealthy Jewish businessmen that felt jarring and sweeping-- lumping together a community under the guise of criticizing the actions of a powerbroker--out of place in a work otherwise careful to discern and pick apart power. I'd recommend readers also visit the exhibit on Tucson's Jewish community in and around the Bario Viejo/5 Points neighborhood at the Tucson Jewish History Museum, as a supplement to this book.
December 30, 2015
A detailed, documented, and readable account that explains how the heritage of Mexican Americans was erased during the urban renewal projects of the 1960's and 1970's in downtown Tucson. The author gives an intimate portrait of the people moved out wholesale from long time neighborhoods to make way for a faux city center that, in my opinion, even today lacks any coherent character. The author, in cool and logical fashion, leaves this reader thinking that perhaps if the city had restored and invested in the authentic barrios, the attraction to tourists might have been greater than the whitewashed version of the downtown that was chosen. An interesting read that helps one understand how Tucson came to look the way it does today.
December 21, 2017
I read this text for my uni course, and I loved it. Otero weaves in history, marketing, architecture and so much more with this work. I loved it from beginning to end.
May 7, 2017
Important story about urban renewal and cultural histories, very well-researched. Compelling material occasionally weighted down by academic language, but rewarding nevertheless.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews