Spain and

Abstract

Two contrasting visions of Spain and its colonial legacy in Sonora (andArizona) existed in Tucson’s newspapers at the end of the nineteenth century. One vision, present in the town’s English-language newspapers, portrayed Latin American territories once under the control of Spain’s colonial empire as abandoned and ready for Anglo-American business interests to claim and profit from. In this conception, Spain was typically depicted as either an archaic, cruel master of Latin America or as the original European pioneer of regions that would ultimately be dominated by Anglo-Americans. In contrast, Tucson’s Spanish-language newspaper, El Fronterizo, insisted that Spain’s empire was never abandoned and that Mexico’s autonomy rested on both the repudiation of Spanish domination and legal continuity from the viceregal era. While depictions of Spain as a colonial power were often negative in El Fronterizo, the paper also emphasized the potential for Spain, Mexico, and even the United States to work together as equal partners in liberal capitalism. This vision, however, was incompatible with the Anglo-American image of Sonora’s abandoned Spanish past, an image that proved to be more influential as Tucson increasingly incorporated into U.S. economies and cultures following the arrival of the Southern Pacific Railroad in 1880. Nevertheless, El Fronterizo’s vision of Spain persisted until at least the end of the nineteenth century, giving tucsonenses access to a narrative with the potential to contest both U.S. and Spanish domination.