You’re invited to a talk by Professor Kara McCormack for a special symposium on Critical Mystery Studies at the University of New Mexico. The symposium takes place 19 and 20, and a graduate symposium on 21 November; Dr. McCormack’s presentation is on 20 November.
Check the schedule:
https://criticalmysterystudies.com/schedule
Register:
https://criticalmysterystudies.com/registration
Alien Encounters: Race, Memory, and UFO Tourism in Roswell, New Mexico
Kara L. McCormack, PhD
Abstract:
When people think of Roswell, New Mexico, a ranch and cattle town in the heart of the Pecos Valley, they may think of the UFO landing story from 1947. This narrative has become such a large part of popular culture that Roswell has made UFO tourism – an industry that sociologists argue appeals predominantly to white men – one of its central business endeavors. By focusing on this singular event, Roswell has rendered nearly invisible a rich and vibrant Native and Mexican history of migration, settlement, and cultivation along the Rio Hondo. Indeed, Roswell’s official history begins with white settlement and incorporation. The UFO landing story and the businesses that have embraced the iconography of aliens and UFOs to attract visitors today also obfuscate a 20th century history defined by racism and segregation.
This paper asks what historical, economic, and cultural factors impelled Roswell to embrace UFO tourism in the 1990s. Relying on reports of police brutality and profiling in the 1970s, oral histories of ancianos about life in Roswell in the early decades of the 20th century, ethnography, and conversations with people in Roswell today, it argues that a history of anti-Mexican racism played a central role in the decision of Roswell officials to assume an identity that marks the city as Anglo. By making the question of race and ethnicity central to the analysis, this work sheds a different kind of spotlight on Roswell, one that is concerned less with government conspiracy and UFOs and more with drawing connections between the city’s racialized past and white-washed present that currently remain hidden from touristic view.
