Join the Arizona Historical Society and Dr. Cynthia Radding for an installment of AHS Summer History Talks: Spanish Period in Arizona!

Power, knowledge, and religion converge in the imperial networks that created the sinews of early modern globalization. In consonance with the historical frameworks that guide this celebration of the historical and cultural legacies of Tucson, Arizona, this presentation focuses on the peoples of the Sonoran Desert, the borderlands of imperial power, and the re-working of institutions and performative expressions of spiritual power. For both Amerindian and Iberian peoples of the early modern world, the spiritual and political realms of religion were not inseparable; rather the exercise of power through ritual was closely interlaced with the institutions of local governance and imperial rule. Set in the cultural and ecological borderlands of the Iberian imperial spheres in northern New Spain (northwestern Mexico), this presentation highlights the spiritual dimension of “the shining desert” as expressed by the Tohono O’odham and neighboring peoples. It places the founding of Tucson as a presidio on the borderlands of the Spanish imperium, in a O’odham village along the Santa Cruz drainage within the environmental and historical contexts of the enduring peoples of the Sonoran Desert.

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