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Mike Mathes was a brilliant historian, a champion of both Californias, and a
grán sabio
of
the Mexican borderlands. An incredibly productive writer in Spanish and English, Mike
was also an inspiring teacher and spirited lecturer.
William Michael Mathes was born in Los Angeles on April 15, 1936, to a family with
deep roots in Texas.The name “William” had already been claimed within his family, so
W. M. Mathes came to be known from a very early age as Michael, Mike to his friends.
Mike grew up in the City of the Angels and at a comparatively young age developed an
interest in Mexico. He learned Spanish in order to get around, and began exploring with
his family the fascinating country just a few hours away to the south. By the time he was
13, Mike, now going by
Miguel
south of the border, was the proud owner of a war-sur-
plus jeep, and was driving himself down to northern Baja California and beyond every
chance he got.
Mike entered Loyola Marymount University in 1954, and graduated as a history major
in 1958. His specialization was, of course, Mexico, and his area of interest within Mexico
was Baja California. During his undergraduate years, Mike would take off for Mexico
and be gone for weeks at a time. He would usually return, flat broke, but happy and content
from having explored yet another abandoned mission site, or an out-of-the way archive
that had somehow escaped the anti-clerical flames of the Mexican Revolution.
Mathes entered the University of Southern California, and enrolled in the Masters program.
At the same time, 1960, Mike expanded his intellectual horizons by going to Spain to
work in the civil and ecclesiastical archives most relevant to his ongoing research on Baja
California, and Spanish Colonial Alta California. He received his Masters in History from
USC in 1962, and took a job as a Librarian at the University of New Mexico
shortly afterwards.
In Albuquerque Mike finally was being paid to do what he liked best, archival research
and archival organization and expansion, and when not in harness at the library, continued
to take off to do fieldwork in Mexico. He also decided that what he really wanted to do
was teach on the university level, so he enrolled in the Ph.D. program at the University
of New Mexico while still working there as its best-informed librarian on Spanish
Colonial sources both in the New World and the Old. It was while back in Spain yet
again that Mike was approached by one of the Jesuit deans of the University of San
Francisco, and offered a teaching job in history at that institution provided he could
complete his dissertation in time for the new semester. So, in 1966, Mike not only
earned his Ph.D. in History from the University of New Mexico, but moved back to
California, this time the Bay Area, so as to begin teaching that subject at USF.
Mike was loved and celebrated by his fellow scholars in Mexico and in Spain, yet never
really got the recognition or the appreciation he truly deserved in
gringolandia
. In the
country of his birth, despite his remarkable publication record and solid career as a
teacher, he was often the odd man out. Mathes’ intellectual honesty would not permit
him to compromise with the academic fad of the moment, and he stuck to his guns no
matter how the chips might fall both in historical research and in contemporary politics.