The City of Tucson vs. Robert D. Kaplan :: Essays Papers

The City of Tucson vs. Robert D. Kaplan Robert D. Kaplans articles Travels into Americas future day present a description of Tucson, Arizona as it stood in 1998. His articles argon based entirely on his personal experiences with the city and with its Mexican neighbors to the south, and while somewhat entertaining, contain vast oversights and discrepancies that make his outsider rest obvious to whatsoever native reader. The article begins with Kaplans trek northwards from Mexico City and describes many of the sights he sees along the way. He describes dirt roadstead lined with trash, and cinder-block houses with corrugated roofs. Then he goes into great detail more or less the economic divisions between social classes and the booming America-bound drug industry that causes the division. Kaplan spends a great deal of time hold forthing the local historical significance of Coronado, Cortez and Compostela. He speaks of the hero worship the Mexi can citizens display for these men in each(prenominal) city he visits, and then calls these men crude zealots who massacred Indians, built Christian altars where they had smashed idols, and went mad at the sight of gold, while he calls the dust coat protestant settlers on Americas east coast children of European Enlightenment. While somewhat interesting and slightly strange, this nurture seems to have microscopic bearing on the rest of the article. If he understood what the significance of this information was, he failed to make the connection apparent to his audience. He does not discuss any historical figures with connection to the American Southwest and therefore any relevance is lost. It almost appears as though he was sidetracked for three or four paragraphs. When Kaplan enters the United States at the Nogales port of entry, what he calls the Rusty put right Curtain, he speaks of a transformation in socioeconomic structure, which he essentially summarizes b y comparing to hotels. A Mexican one, only two days old where the doors dont close properly and the walls are cracking, and an American one, which after more than a quarter century is still in excellent condition, from the fresh paint to the latest-model fixtures.