Tempe History Society Lunch Talks: Con Artists in the Archives by Dr. Anita Huizar-Hernandez

The bizarre 19^th century “Peralta Land Grant” scheme in Arizona tests the limits of how ideas about race, citizenship, and national expansion are forged. Drawing from a wide variety of sources including court records, newspapers, fiction, and film, Dr. Huizar-Hernandez argues that the creation, collapse, and eventual forgetting of Reavis’s scam, forgeries, and fraud reveals the mechanisms by which narratives, real and imaginary, forge borders.

Dr. Huizar-Hernandez’ essays have appeared in a wide variety of journals and edited volumes, and she is the author of Forging Arizona: A History of the Peralta Land Grant and Racial Identity in the West (2019). She is also part of the project team for multiple digital humanities projects, all of which focus on the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. In 2023, Dr. Anita Huizar-Hernandez received the Arizona Humanities Public Scholar award.