http://www.azstarnet.com/sn/gadsden/9492.php

Mexico now is 'populating land we lost'
(archives 2-12-2004)
By Ignacio Ibarra
ARIZONA DAILY STAR

She has studied and taught history in her native Mexico, Europe and the United States and for more than three decades has been among Mexico's most noted historians.

As a student at Harvard University in the 1960s, Josefina Zoraida Vázquez y Vera, now professor emeritus at El Colegio de Mexico, saw female friends in Boston forced to resign their teaching positions in their third month of pregnancy. At the time, she recalls, Mexico's laws were more progressive, allowing women to obtain medical leaves.

"Fortunately, I think things have changed in both countries and things have improved. But for women it has always been harder to stand out and move ahead because we are women," said Zoraida Vázquez, who at 70 has built a career filled with accolades that include Rockefeller, Guggenheim and Fulbright scholarships and fellowships.

She is a member of Mexico's Academy of History and the 1999 recipient of Mexico's National Arts and Science Award.

Her academic career has focused on 19th-century Mexican history, and she has published numerous books and articles on the relationship between Mexico and the United States in the century of Mexico's founding.

Despite her own extensive academic efforts, she said more work is needed to gain a fuller understanding of U.S. and Mexico relations in the mid-1800s. Perhaps it's no surprise that most U.S. textbooks spend little more than a few paragraphs on the subject, she said, but even in Mexico there are people who don't know the full story.

"We lost all of that territory in essence because we were unable to populate it. … Today, because of the demographic explosion beginning in the 1940s, we are populating the land we lost," Zoraida Vázquez said. "These are people who at least should be received and recognized for their contribution to a land that after all was once theirs."