Archive for the ‘Southwest’ Category
Tuesday, December 1st, 2009
Cities of Gold
A Journey Across the American Southwest in Pursuit of Coronado
Douglas Preston, 1992
463 richly researched and documented pages detailing 450 years of southwest adventure and discovery! Very hard to put down!
Douglas Preston literally takes you in his saddle bag on two 900-mile horseback/roughing-it odysseys with his cantankerous Santa Fe artist friend Walter Nelson. Two journeys cover the same geography: Coronado’s 1540 epic exploration from New Spain/Mexico through Arizona, New Mexico and Kansas.
The chapters and episodes are written from multiple viewpoints: New Spain’s (Mexico’s) culture, Coronado’s expectations in planning and leaving New Spain, Coronado’s experiences en-route, various and numerous native American initial encounters with white Europeans – Mexican Aztecs – and black Africans, And last, but not least by a long shot, … Doug and Walter’s experiences and observations of both what had changed and how little had changed in the intervening 450 years.
I found this a tremendous context piece to open my understanding and appreciation of the nearly complete uniqueness of New Mexico in particular and America’s great southwest in general. You will be exposed to amazing repeating patterns of history from 1540s Spain and New Spain right up into today’s New Mexico business and politics.
Cites of Gold is a thoroughly charming, entertaining, amazing, irritating, enlightening, frustrating, and fulfilling read! Check it out for yourself!
Tags: Apaches, Arizona, Comanches, Coronado, Esteban, Estevanco, Mexico, Navajo, New Mexico, New Spain, Pueblo Indian, Southwest, Spain, Zuni
Posted in Albuquerque, Ethnic/Cultural events, History, Mexico, Native American, New Mexico, Pueblo Indian, Santa Fe Trail, Southwest, Spain, Uncategorized | No Comments »
Friday, October 9th, 2009
My sister in Colorado’s San Luis Valley recently brought me an old, old book with cover and publication pages missing. Based on historic event references, the book appears to have been written around 1911-1912 for the Santa Fe Railroad promoting passenger travel to the southwest. This fits interestingly with Ken Burns’ recent series on PBS on how the railroads used the National Parks to entice people to travel westward. Two early paragraphs stuck out for sharing in the context of this blog.
On page 20, the author riding the train has just come out of the half-mile Raton Pass tunnel from Colorado into New Mexico. “The landscape is oriental in aspect and flushed with color. Nowhere else can you find sky of deeper blue, sunlight more dazzling, shadows more intense, clouds more luminously white, or stars that throb with redder fire. Here the pure rarified air that is associated in the mind with the arduous mountain climbing is the only air known – dry, cool and gently stimulating. Through it, as through a crystal, the rich red of the soil, the rich green of vegetation, and the varied tints of the rocks gleam always freshly on the sight.”
And just a bit further along, on page 22, “You feel that this place has always worn much the same aspect that it wears today. Parcel of the arid region, it sleeps only for thirst. Slake that, and it becomes a garden of paradise as by a magic word. The present generation has proved it true in a hundred localities, where the proximity of rivers or mountain streams has made irrigation practicable.”
This is what the Sandia foothils looked like in August 2004 after some perfect thirst-slaking rain; for the previous 3 and past 5 years these same hills have been parcels of the arid region – can you pick out the rabbit in the last photo?
Tags: Colorado, New Mexico, Raton, Raton Pass, Sandia, Sandias, Santa Fe Rail Road
Posted in History, New Mexico, Southwest | No Comments »
Tuesday, September 8th, 2009
A number of people ask me, “Where and how can I buy a copy of the Timeline?” Here is the info if you are one of those folks and have a couple of hundred bucks lying around – and – a large wall space to fill.
There are a couple of things you will want to know if you would like to purchase your very own copy of the Albuquerque Historical Timeline:
- the 2 ft x 8 ft size is the smallest that is easily eye-readable
- each copy is a full-color exact replica of the 4 ft x 16 ft Convention Center original
- each copy has a very resilient laminate protecting it
- a single copy reproduction goes for $200, and that includes any tax and shipping
New Mexico Big Prints are the good folks that produced the 4 ft x 16 ft copies of the Timeline at the Convention Center and at the Airport. They also produced the smaller, 2 ft x 8 ft copies for high school and middle school use throughout Albuquerque and the Archdiocese, and it’s this size that is available for purchase. I suppose you could order a 4 ft x 16 ft size, but expect to come up with about $3,750 or so per copy.
The URL to contact the good folks at New Mexico Big Prints is http://www.nmbigprints.com/index3.html.
Tags: Albuquerque, buy, Copy, historical, New Mexico Big Prints, purchase, Timeline
Posted in Albuquerque, Ethnic/Cultural events, History, Mexico, New Mexico, Southwest, Timeline, Uncategorized | No Comments »
Monday, July 27th, 2009
In doing research for the Mexican Immigration video, I Googled across this video viewpoint by Paul Rodriguez on the topic. The explanatory text comes from the YouTube link.
New America Foundation, December, 2007 — CA Event: Mexican Immigration and the Future of Race in America
In the recently published, Mongrels, Bastards, Orphans, and Vagabonds, Gregory Rodriguez takes an in-depth look at the largest immigrant group in American history. Rodriguez examines the complexities of the heritage and the racial and cultural synthesis–mestizaje–that has defined the Mexican people since the Spanish conquest in the sixteenth century. Vis-a-vis the present era of Mexican American confidence, Rodriguez argues that the rapidly expanding Mexican American integration in to the mainstream is changing not only how Americans think about race but how we envision our nation.
Gregory Rodriguez is an Irvine Senior Fellow and Director of the California Fellows Program at the New America Foundation. Rodriguez has written widely on issues of national identity, social cohesion, assimilation, race relations, religion, immigration, ethnicity, demographics, and social and political trends in such leading publications as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, The Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times, where he is an op-ed columnist.
I hope you enjoy the watching … and the pondering. It seemed to fit very well with the video I just posted Mexican Immigration Through New Mexico And The Southwest. Please feel free to leave your comments; I’d love to know who’s out there listening/reading/watching.
Tags: America, American, ethnicity, Hispanic, History, Immigration, Mexican, Mexican American, Mexico, race, Spain, Spanish
Posted in History, Immigration, New Mexico, Southwest, Timeline, Uncategorized | No Comments »
Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009
I just put the finishing touches on this video overview of Mexican Immigration through New Mexico and the Southwest and uploaded it to YouTube at http://twurl.nl/gmqs07 . This was about a month in the making, what with the researching, scripting, recording, editing and all, but it holds together pretty well. It’s a nine-minute summary or overview “from 30,000 feet,” so it covers quite a lot of ground in a short time.
It follows the 600-year period from 1400 to 2009 covered by the Albuquerque, New Mexico Historical Timeline, and correlates historical events in Mexico, New Mexico and the Southwest. It begins with the thousand years of native populations trading from New Mexico into Mexico and over to the coastal areas that would become California. It covers the northward pull of silver mining from Mexico City to Zacatecas and Chihuaha in the 1500s, and Oñate’s extension of El Camino Real an additional 700 miles northward, establishing the first permanent settlement in Nuevo Mexìco in 1598. Other events affecting Mexican immigration in this period include:
• The 1803 Louisiana Purchase
• 1821 Independence from Spain and the Mexican Republic period
• Creation of the Lone Star Republic of Texas in 1835
• The 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo’s massive land transfer
• Railroads arriving in the 1880s
• The Mexican Revolutionary period from 1910 to 1930
• The Great Depression and the Mexican Repatriation Program
• The Bracero “guest worker” program from 1942 to 1964
• Operation Wetback in 1954
• The Maquiladora Program from 1964 to now
• 1994 NAFTA
• Corporate globalization
• The 2005 California Apology Act for the 1930s Mexican Repatriation Program
• The effects of the current economic downturn
In these events, you can see a “we want you – we don’t want you” pendulum swinging for over 150 years, and some acknowledged racial profiling of U.S. citizens of Mexican descent in the Mexican Repatriation Program of the ‘30s and Operation Wetback in 1954.
The intent of the video is to bring some hopefully neutral historical information and perspective to the current discussion of immigration. If you have comments or observations, I would appreciate your sharing them with me on this blog post so interested individuals may see and appreciate them.
If you’d like to know more about the Timeline itself, click on 5 Perspectives On Albuquerque or Creating The Timeline.
Tags: Albuquerque, Albuquerque Timeline, Apology Act, Bracero, Bracero Program, Camino Real, Cezar Chavez, Chihuahua, Cibola, di Niza, Esteban, Estevan, Gadsden Purchase, globalizing, Immigration, Louisiana Purchase, Maquiladora, Mexican independence, Mexican Repatriation, Mexican Republic, Mexican Revolution, Mexico, NAFTA, New Mexico, Onate, Operation Wetback, Santa Fe Trail, Spain, Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, U. S., Zacatecas
Posted in History, Immigration, New Mexico, Southwest, Timeline, Uncategorized | No Comments »
Thursday, July 2nd, 2009
In creating the Albuquerque Historical and Cultural Timeline, I was struck with the many layers of interactions between Mexico, New Mexico, the Southwest and the U.S.
Trade and immigration between “Mexico” and “New Mexico” has ebbed and flowed for more than a thousand years and most certainly will continue into the future.
The thought arose that it might be interesting and perhaps timely to use the Timeline to explore the history of Mexican immigration into/through New Mexico and the U.S. in the next video.
The Timeline could focus and correlate events taking place over time and geography and through politics – economics – cultures.
At a first look, I began noticing patterns of human and economic behavior of push-pull and supply-demand that seemed to emerge and persist right up into today’s news:
- Borders are arbitrary lines drawn on a map and then arbitrarily agreed upon
- People, nature and commerce do not necessarily adhere to these lines
- Cheap(er) labor can be seductively important to business profitability
- Cheap(er) labor consists mainly of needier than average individuals
- “Needier than average” can arise from strong financial need or desire, weak education, weak political awareness, shaky legal status, drought-flood-disease-war; the pool is large and constant
- Globalizing and internationalizing production and trade has usually sought access to untapped resources, such as: needier than average labor, cheaper than average minerals and materials, weaker than average laws, more available than average land
- Economic profit can be a stronger incentive than laws or penalties
- Enforcement of laws can vary widely for many different reasons and to many different advantages (and disadvantages)
Exploring the Timeline this way should be interesting; plus, by posting this I’ll create the incentive to really get the thing done!
Tags: border, business, economic, economics, globalization, Immigration, international, labor, law, Mexico, New Mexico, profit, profitability, Southwest, supply-demand, Timeline, trade, U. S.
Posted in History, Immigration, Mexico, New Mexico, Southwest, Timeline, Uncategorized | No Comments »
Monday, June 8th, 2009
Welcome to the Albuquerque, New Mexico, Historical and Cultural Timeline blog.
The idea for the Albuquerque Historical and Cultural Timeline arose from a 2004 conversation with Albuquerque Mayor Martin Chavez. His mention of the upcoming 300th birthday of the founding and naming of Albuquerque stimulated me to put two years into creating the Albuquerque Historical and Cultural Timeline, correlating and displaying 600 years of historical and cultural events across New Mexico, the U.S., Mexico, Europe and Asia-Pacific.
I need to express deep appreciation here for the following individuals who very graciously provided information, assistance, support and guidance throughout:
- Elizabeth Chestnut – Historian, Indian Pueblo Cultural Center
- Dr. Linda Hall – History Professor, UNM
- Scott Meredith – History PhD candidate, UNM
- Dr. Cynthia Radding – Director of Latin American & Iberian Institute, UNM
- Rubén Saláz – Historian, author, Tri-Centennial History Task Force
- Dr. Joseph P. Sánchez – Superintendent of the Spanish Colonial Research Center, a partnership between the National Park Service and the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque
- Joe S. Sando – Historian, author, Archive Director for Indian Pueblo Cultural Center
- Deb Slaney – Curator of History – Albuquerque Museum of Art and History
- Dr. Jane Slaughter – Professor and Chair of History Department, UNM
- Juan M. Solana – Mexican Consul and Alberto Bernal Acero – Deputy Mexican Consul
- Claude Stephenson – State Folklorist and author of The Albuquerque Arts Alliance “Albuquerque Cultural Survey”
- Sandia Laboratories Graphic Arts Department
- Don Couchman – Historian and Chairman of the Tricentennial History Task Force
- Craig Newbill – Executive Director, New Mexico Humanities Council
- Jerry Geist and Vicky Osborne – El Jefe and La Jefecita of the Tricentennial Committee
Without their support and assistance, the Timeline would not be visible to the public in the East Wing of the Convention Center and in the passenger waiting area of the Albuquerque International Sunport.
I intend through this blog to explore and present interesting historical and cultural stories contained within the Timeline in a series of blog-post and video formats. I hope you enjoy the very first video, “5 Perspectives on Albuquerque,” which is an overview of the structure and ‘how to read’ the timeline.
Your comments, thoughts and suggestions are welcome.
Tom
Tags: Albuquerque, Asia, cultural, culture, Europe, historical, History, Indian Pueblo, Martin Chavez, Mexican, Mexico, New Mexico, Pacific, Spain, Timeline, U. S., United States, University of New Mexico, UNM
Posted in Albuquerque, History, Mexico, New Mexico, Southwest, Timeline, Uncategorized | No Comments »