Margaret E. Dorsey examines the liaison of “borderlands music, U.S. politics, and transnational marketing” as they come together in the event called “pachanga” in the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas. She is to be credited for identifying and exploring the recent permutations of this subject. These contributions, however, are marred by turgid, theoretically overwrought, repetitious and occasionally infelicitous writing. This problem is compounded by an uneven gathering and management of her data, lapses in scholarly referencing, and minor errors.

The central term, pachanga, is thrice-used, once at length (p. 4), before it is defined on page 5 as “a gathering of friends and family that incorporates music, food and drink.” Dorsey briefly references the work of Paredes, Limón, and Pena in this same area, saying they “focused on the role of verbal and musical artistry … for expressing resistance to Anglo domination.” She offers, as a seemingly novel thought, “The system of domination—neither now nor in the past—cuts crisply along ethnic lines. Economic interests and forces must be more closely considered” (p. 11). A cursory reading of the authors she mentions, however, shows their clear concern for intraethnic class divisions. Later, in discussing the economy of the “gift” (p. 94), she ignores Flores’s important work on just this concept in south Texas, and her food discussion (p. 39) bypasses Limón’s and Montano’s respective work on food in south Texas.

With a left-of-center academic’s amused distaste for the middle and upper classes, she wryly explores the permutation of the “traditional” pachanga into the political, spectacular pachanga involving transnational market forces such as the Anheuser-Busch beer conglomerate, makers of Budweiser beer. (In a hypereffort to note Budweiser’s obvious capitalist character, readers learn on page 53 that “Budweiser is the top-ranked beer in the United States and the signature product of Anheuser-Busch,” only to be told again on page 55, “Budweiser is the signature product of Anheuser-Busch, a tremendously powerful company,” exemplifying a penchant for repetition seen several times in the book.) This new pachanga is at some distance from “a gathering of friends and family,” the latter (following, but not citing, Limón) understood as a site of complicated resistance. These corporate pachangas only appear to celebrate the “triumph of Mexicano [Mexican American] capital,” as her key informants seem to believe. For Dorsey, however, “the type of pachanga spectacle used by local marketers … to sell further erases contradictions or reflections that might arise at more active family associations” (p. 167).

A major example is Budweiser’s sponsorship of the Hispanic Scholarship Fund Extravaganza. The printed invitation to the event is interpreted (at tedious length) as part of an insidious hegemony. Of an unneeded accent over the letter i in the word fiesta, she says, “A ‘parodic pejoration’ of Spanish expression reduces Spanish speakers and Spanish to a subordinate status, as it is strategically used to reduce the Hispanic community to marginality” (p. 77). But what if the English-dominant hegemonists who crafted the invitation simply made a common mistake in adding the accent mark? More significantly, “The Hispanic Scholarship Fund Fiesta Extravaganza brought together the powerful members of the community: public servants mingled together with private entrepreneurs” (p. 86), but Dorsey tells readers very little about these particular actors: Who are they biographically, and what do they say about this event? My own field participation among these same people—in background talk, mostly in Spanish—reveals exactly the contradictions and reflections that she says are erased by this spectacle: yes, capitalist consumption and self-display, but also critical intelligence; a continuing ethnicity and pride in their achievement, given backgrounds of poverty; as well as a palpable sense of a successful community, one still enlisted against adversity on behalf of others. One central figure is a prominent, wealthy real-estate developer misidentified as “Albert” Cantu (Alonzo Cantu) whose major real-estate development is in Sharyland not “Sherryland.” From Dorsey, readers learn of his “power,” but they do not learn that he is a major figure in promoting health and higher education in the area, a Democrat, a major contributor to the Clinton (Bill and Hillary) campaigns, and a former farmworker. Moreover, Dorsey wholly ignores the social-educational outcome of the considerable funds raised at this event for scholarships by the unwitting t(f)ools of capitalism in attendance. A deeper exploration of life trajectories and social context might seriously qualify Dorsey’s conclusions about the seemingly nefarious mix of power and culture in this community, now experiencing high social achievement compared with the past. Together with much close editing and better referencing, the yield would be a much more interesting book.

[map, photographs, tables, references, index.]