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

The City of Tucson vs. Robert D. Kaplan Robert D. Kaplan’s articles â€Å"Travels into America’s Future† present a description of Tucson, Arizona as it stood in 1998. His articles are based entirely on his personal experiences with the city and with it’s Mexican neighbors to the south, and while somewhat entertaining, contain vast oversights and discrepancies that make his outsider standing obvious to any native reader. The article begins with Kaplan’s trek northward from Mexico City and describes many of the sights he sees along the way. He describes dirt roads lined with trash, and cinder-block houses with corrugated roofs. Then he goes into great detail about the economic divisions between social classes and the booming America-bound drug industry that causes the division. Kaplan spends a great deal of time discussing the local historical significance of Coronado, Cortez and Compostela. He speaks of the hero worship the Mexican citizens display for these men in each city he visits, and then calls these men â€Å"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 white protestant settlers on America’s east coast â€Å"children of European Enlightenment.† While somewhat interesting [and slightly strange], this information seems to have little 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 â€Å"Rusty Iron Curtain,† he speaks of a transformation in socioeconomic structure, which he basically summarizes by comparing to hotels. A Mexican one, only two years old where the doors don’t close properly and the walls are cracking, and an American one, which after more than a quarter century is still in â€Å"excellent condition, from the fresh paint to the latest-model fixtures.