University of New Mexico UNM Digital Repository English Language and Literature ETDs Electronic Theses and Dissertations 7-3-2012 A River of Voices: Confluences and Cross-Currents in the Discourse of the Colorado River Paul Formisano Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/engl_etds Recommended Citation Formisano, Paul. "A River of Voices: Confluences and Cross-Currents in the Discourse of the Colorado River." (2012). https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/engl_etds/15 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Electronic Theses and Dissertations at UNM Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in English Language and Literature ETDs by an authorized administrator of UNM Digital Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Formisano i Paul A. Formisano Candidate English Department This dissertation is approved, and it is acceptable in quality and form for publication: Approved by the Dissertation Committee: Gary Harrison, Chairperson Vera Norwood Michelle Kells Tom Lynch Formisano ii A RIVER OF VOICES: CONFLUENCES AND CROSS- CURRENTS IN THE DISCOURSE OF THE COLORADO RIVER by PAUL A. FORMISANO B.A., HUMANITIES, BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY, 2002 M.A., ENGLISH, UNIVERSITY OF NEVADA, RENO, 2005 DISSERTATION Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY ENGLISH The University of New Mexico Albuquerque, New Mexico MAY 2012 Formisano iii Acknowledgments In 2003, I spent six weeks traveling throughout the Colorado River watershed with Project WET, a U.S. based water education organization. This experience solidified my fascination with the river and provided the early inspiration for this dissertation. I am greatly indebted to Dennis Nelson, Valerie Gates, and Justin and Lissa Howe who invited me to participate, and to my wonderful travel companions who made the journey so memorable. Many thanks go to my committee and especially to Dr. Gary Harrison with whom I enjoyed many long conservations about my work and the general state of affairs in the watershed and throughout the West. I have greatly benefitted from his support and that of the English Department’s faculty, students, and staff who have provided much energy and motivation throughout the writing process. I am grateful for Osvel Hinojosa-Huerta’s and Edith Santiago’s assistance in locating texts and contact information for their colleagues in Mexico. I thank Francisco Mosqueda, Joaquin Murrieta, and Carlos Valdez for their patience with my Spanish; they have graciously permitted me to use their photographs of the delta region. Also, I acknowledge the Sonoran Institute which has a played a significant role in supporting the restoration efforts along the Colorado and its tributaries in Mexico and offered direction and support in locating documents from this region. More information about their important work can be found at www.sonoraninstitute.org. I reserve my most heartfelt thanks for my family. My parents first introduced me to the river on our many trips across Colorado and have been an unwavering support Formisano iv through many years of schooling. Most importantly, however, I express my love to my wife and daughters: Shanna, Olivia, and Maren. Without you this project would not have been possible. I look forward to our many adventures together. Formisano v A RIVER OF VOICES: CONFLUENCES AND CROSS- CURRENTS IN THE DISCOURSE OF THE COLORADO RIVER by Paul A. Formisano B.A., Humanities, Brigham Young University, 2002 M.A., English, University of Nevada, Reno, 2005 Ph.D., English, University of New Mexico, 2012 ABSTRACT This dissertation argues that the Colorado River and its watershed face a crisis of representation as privileged nineteenth-century myths portraying the American West as a frontier, garden, and wilderness have limited an understanding of what and whom the river is for. It examines the contribution of “tributary voices” or the lesser known perspectives from the region to reveal new lines of thinking about this river and its surroundings as they engage the traditional views of the river shaped by these myths. The voices examined at length in this study include contemporary nature writer Craig Childs, recent female boating narratives by Patricia McCairen, Laurie Buyer, and Louise Teal, and AEURHYC, a Mexican water-users association from the Colorado Delta region. Through an interdisciplinary “watershed” approach that draws on ecocritical, bioregional, Formisano vi and rhetorical frameworks, this project considers how these tributary voices appropriate, complicate, and often reject the discourses and genres that have traditionally represented the river and watershed. Negotiating these conventional viewpoints, the tributary voices offer new lines of thinking that reveal the river’s importance to a broader range of stakeholders. As impending water shortages threaten the region, this dissertation initiates a much needed conversation about the role literary and rhetorical production has in shaping attitudes and behaviors toward the Colorado and its finite resources. Formisano vii TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION: Riding the Waves of Myth: Tributary Voices and the “Lords of Yesterday” ..............................................................................................................1 American Literary Rivers and Representation .........................................................5 The West as Myth ....................................................................................................9 Charting New Directions for Colorado River Scholarship ....................................18 CHAPTER 1: Toward a New Western Rhetoric: Watershed Aesthetics and the Aims of Discourse .................................................................................................26 New Western History, Bioregions, and the Watershed .........................................28 Moving Metaphor into the Realm of Rhetoric .......................................................42 CHAPTER 2: The Paradox of Desert Writing: Science Meets Story in Craig Childs’s The Secret Knowledge of Water ............................................................50 The Watershed’s Deserts and the Early Explorers ................................................56 From Natural History to Nature Writing ...............................................................71 Dialoguing with the Desert: Contemporary Desert Literature ...............................76 The Desert on Its Own Terms ................................................................................84 The Voice of the Desert .......................................................................................102 CHAPTER 3: New Currents in Colorado River Boating Narratives: Westerns and the Female Experience of Wilderness ..............................................................108 Colorado River Narratives as Westerns ...............................................................113 Female River Westerns: Navigating the Rough Waters of Convention ..............131 Patricia McCairen ................................................................................................144 Laurie Buyer ........................................................................................................157 Formisano viii Louise Teal...........................................................................................................165 CHAPTER 4: From Green Lagoons to Delta Blues: The Changing Tides in the Mexican Delta .....................................................................................................175 United States-Mexico Water Relations: 1848-1973 ............................................180 The Tides Begin to Shift ......................................................................................193 The “Voz Local”: A Mexican Perspective...........................................................203 The Delta’s Future and the Role of Collaboration ...............................................226 CONCLUSION: Gathering Waters: The Future of Colorado River Discourse ......236 Future Considerations ..........................................................................................239 Humanism, Ecospeak, and Alternative Discourses .............................................242 Toward Tomorrow’s Confluences .......................................................................253 WORKS CITED.............................................................................................................257 Formisano 1 Riding the Waves of Myth: Tributary Voices and the “Lords of Yesterday” “A people unaware of its myths is likely to continue living by them, though the world around that people may change and demand changes in their psychology, their world view, their ethics, and their institutions.” —Richard Slotkin, Regeneration Through Violence, 4-5 Deep within the heart of the American Southwest, two rivers converge to form one of the most famous rivers in the world. From this secluded confluence surrounded by the multi-colored sandstone spires and towering cliffs of Utah’s Canyonlands National Park, the Green and the Colorado rivers emerge from deep canyons stretching north and east as far as the eye can see. The Green flows from the north, laden with the particles of distant mountains and surrounding deserts that mark its roughly 750 mile journey from its headwaters in the Wind River Rage in west-central Wyoming through eastern Utah. Entering from the