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Conference Abstractsin order of presentationHave we Arrived?Class, Museum Class, and Mexican AmericaJosé E. Limón, Ph.D.In this paper, I argue that the relatively new social formation of a Mexican-American middle—and even an upper—class offers an unprecedented opportunity for the expansion of a Mexican-American public culture with a concomitant opportunity for the institutional development ofmuseums and exhibits keyed to such a culture. The paper recalls Tomas Rivera’s classic shortnovel, Y no se Lo Trago la Tierra, and its poignant, political refrain, repeated by the farm workerprotagonists, “when we arrive… when we arrive” speaking about the difficult arrivals at theirlabor sites but metaphorically to their dubious arrival as full citizens in American society. Rivera’snovel offers a point of departure, both to note the image of the farm worker and its encompassingrepresentation of Mexican America and to raise the question: Have Mexican-Americansarrived? I suggest that in some real sense we have with the dramatic emergence of a Mexican-American middle and upper class in our time. The paper then offers an historical and sociologicaleconomic but also literary description and delineation of this new social formation. From thisinterdisciplinary description alone, one may begin to fashion an argument for the potentially creativenexus between the new class and the public culture of museums. As a cultural anthropologist,I also base my speculation on fieldwork conducted among members of such an upper-middleclass in southern Texas with specific reference to the arts. These Mexican-American uppermiddleclass professionals, mostly MDs, offer telling evidence of the potential importance of thisnew class to the development of a Mexican-American “museum culture,” by which I mean a publicculture that places some emphasis and value, perhaps often ethnically marked, on patronageof the arts and historical and science exhibits, and thereby on museums.Aztlan in ArizonaCivic Narrative and Ritual Pageantry in Mexican AmericaDolores Rivas Bahti, Ph.D.A cache of primary sources and photographs about Spanish Discalced Carmelite parishes assembledover a decade of public history exhibits at the Arizona Historical Society have revealed aworld within a world, a window in time that describes Mexican America in Arizona during earlystatehood. In these literary and visual narratives, actors and audiences distinguished by gender,generation, occupation, and spirituality played out dramas of Mexican-American identity formationin a geo-historical region called Gadsden, Arizona. In this homeland, also named Aztlan, amigrant nation connected by memory and experience to Mexico engaged public ritual to demon-The Interpretation and Representation of Latino Cultures: Research and Museums– A National Conference at the Smithsonian Institution 31