Posts Tagged ‘Southwest’

Great Albuquerque/Coronado History Read

Tuesday, December 1st, 2009

Cities of Gold PPBKCities 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!

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Posted in Albuquerque, Ethnic/Cultural events, History, Mexico, Native American, New Mexico, Pueblo Indian, Santa Fe Trail, Southwest, Spain, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Albuquerque Historical Timeline – Spreadsheet Now On-Line

Sunday, August 23rd, 2009

For over three years folks have asked if I could put the original Albuquerque Historical Timeline spreadsheet on-line, and I believe I found a solution.

There are a few caveats.

1. With all large spreadsheets, and this one is 96 pages large, it’s impossible to have everything appear on one screen and still have the font size readable. That means you will have to scroll left/right through time, and up/down through geography and ethnic/cultural events. It took me a while to get used to all the scrolling when building the spreadsheet, but there wasn’t any good alternative. There have been many suggestions and ideas about interactive, hyperlinked formats, but none have panned out as yet.

2. You will need to zoom in to the spreadsheet 3-4-5 times until you can comfortably read the text. When I do that, the text at the top of the page kind of ‘disappears,’ but using the up-down scroll bar can bring it back into view quickly.

3. I believe the spreadsheet is ‘read only’ protected, so information can’t be added or changed, which may well be a source of some consternation to revisionist-oriented historians.  It is possible, however, to copy and paste from the timeline cells. The timeline is copyrighted with the U.S. Copyright Office (VAu674-484) so thanks in advance for asking permission via a comment before you copy/paste any content from the timeline.

4. In the original Excel spreadsheet on my hard-drive, all of the dates neatly lined up at the left of each cell for ease of reading (and yes, lining up 740+ dated events in 341 separate cells was a goodly chore). Uploading caused some events to shift within the cell so their dates follow the text of previous events rather than lining up neatly on the left on their own separate line. Tweaking that may take place at some future time when (a) I can take the time to figure out how to do that, and (b) I have the time to really dive in and actually clean each of them up.

So, with that as preface, I heartily invite you to click this link to browse: The Albuquerque History and Cultural Timeline. I would enjoy hearing your thoughts in a comment to this post.

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Posted in Albuquerque, Ethnic/Cultural events, History, Timeline, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Planning a video on Mexican immigration

Thursday, July 2nd, 2009

tomsausalitoIn 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!

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Posted in History, Immigration, Mexico, New Mexico, Southwest, Timeline, Uncategorized | No Comments »