Comments (0) Best Mirror on the City - 2008
"The Mexican American Mirror/El Espejo México Americano: Reflections of Our City's Heritage"
Trinidad Escalante crossed the border into Arizona about a century and a half back. While we could all sit around and argue about whether or not she did it legally, one fact can't be debated. Trinidad is yo' mama, Phoenix. In 1864, she married a man named Jack, and the two rounded up a bunch of their day-labor Mexican friends to work on a fancy canal system roughly 90 miles north of Tucson. That irrigation system became the foundation for a thriving southwestern community that we all know and love. For their act of desert insanity, we've christened Trinidad Escalante Swilling and Jack Swilling (indeed, the city's first mayor) the mother and father of Phoenix.
Trinidad is just one of the brown babes you'll meet at the Phoenix Museum of History's latest exhibit that showcases the stories of local Latinos from the Wild West days of the 1860s through the politically charged 1960s. It turns out that when Phoenix was founded in 1870, the population was over 50 percent Hispanic. Take a closer look at your Latin roots by peering into "The Mexican American Mirror" exhibit through October 2009.
