Sin Fronteras: A Historiography on the Evolution of Perceptions of the San Diego/Tijuana Region as Separate & Unified Territory

Below is a link and an excerpt of a paper I wrote a few months ago for a course in Mexican history. It is a historiography on the development of the San Diego/Tijuana region of southern California + Baja California as separate territories with an emphasis on people’s understanding of the territory as a separate & unified territory.

The paper can be downloaded at my Academia page.

Below is an excerpt:

Early writings and writings of the San Diego/Tijuana (or vice-versa depending on which side of the literal fence one stands from) border region’s early history after the Mexican-American War illustrate the growth of the region as the emergence of two distinct zones that lures the citizens on each side with different promises. This non-symbiotic relationship between the two nations then steadily changes into a symbiotic one as scholars and academics begin to study the region’s evolution from a pair of separate and individual states to a pair of separate and strongly interconnected states. This interconnection occurs on multiple levels but is most typically understood via socio-cultural and economic lenses.

In recent years, new understandings of the border region have come from the experiences of people, Mexicans and Americans, whose daily lives consist of nearly equal time spent on each side of the US/Mexico border. Some of the writings on this topic began with the analysis of the flow of workers and consumers of both regions that began blending the flow of each country’s economics and labor with one another. Beyond this phenomenon, scholars have also recently defined the experiences of some of these citizens as a “ transborder/transfronterizo” persons who have experienced a lifetime of bi-nationality, that is, a lived experience of traversing a physical, international barrier that begins in childhood and extends into adulthood. Finally, activist groups that understand the border region from a highly politicized lens have also established their own framework of thinking about the border region in SD/TJ as well as other borderland areas.

Barcelona: The Spanish Civil War Tour

I spent nine days in Barcelona this past April. This is the first of a few posts about that trip.

I began my second, full day in the city at the Plaça de Catalunya, which is the beginning and ending point of the Spanish Civil War walking tour. Nick Lloyd created the tour nearly a decade ago and offers it multiple times a week with the aid of Catherine Howley, who was the guide for my group.

The Spanish Civil War walking tour traverses the Plaza and part of the area across the way in and around Las Ramblas covering various important locations and events of the era. You can read more about the tour at the official site.

All photos taken with my ZTE Z983 and edited on PSCC19.

The tour begins with quick introductions at Café Zurich across from Plaça de Catalunya where the history lessons begin at the monument dedicated to Francesc Macià, president of the re-established Generalitat de Catalunya of 1931.

Above is a pin promoting the Olimpiada Popular (People’s Olympiad) of 1936. The event was a response and protest against the official 1936 Summer Olympics hosted by Germany and the Third Reich. Thousands of athletes from 22 countries were set to compete under the watchful eyes of Catalans and journalists from all over the world on July 19th when war broke out on July 17th.

A view of Las Ramblas as we walked over to…

…the Hotel Continental! George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair) stayed here multiple times during the civil war and included it in Homage To Catalonia.

One of the many narrow streets around Las Ramblas.

The Santa Maria del Pi church. The large, circular window is new as it was destroyed during the civil war.

An art store across from the church.

A box of matches featuring the logos of the CNT, Confederación Nacional del Trabajo, and the AIT, Asociación Internacional de los Trabajadores.

A combat helmet of the era.

And a gas mask of the era!

The remains of a case of a rocket-propelled grenade.

STRONG CONTENT WARNING for the next photo!

Spanish Republicans published this image as part of its propaganda campaign against Francisco Franco and the Nationalists. The child in the image was killed in an air raid.

First aid bandages.

A matchbook.

A shaving kit.

The above two photos are from the Plaça Sant Felip Neri. The façade of the church remains scarred by damage from the shrapnel of two bombs dropped onto the square during the war.

The sign outside the plaza (first photo) gives the details of the bombing: on January 30th, Italian fascists bombed Barcelona from 9am until 11:20am. The church in the plaza provided refuge to many children during the war and 20 of them died during the bombardment. Pro-Franco propaganda claimed that the damage to the building was the result of the slaughter of Catholic priests at the hands of anarchist firing squads.

A copy of the New York Times from January 31st, 1938 with an article about the bombing.

The Hotel Rivoli on Las Ramblas was once the headquarters of the POUM, Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista, which Orwell was a member of.

This plaque is located on the Hotel Rivoli. It marks the date when POUM co-founder Andreu/Andrés Nin was kidnapped from the POUM’s office by pro-Stalinist Spanish Communists and disappeared, tortured and killed.

Orwell covers many of the events leading up to Nin’s capture in Homage to Catalonia and narrowly avoided being kidnapped by Stalinist forces himself.

The final set of photos are from the interior of the Bar Llibertària. The bar features numerous artifacts connected with the POUM and CNT.

Above: “The Revolution Has Placed The Earth In Your Hands”

Above: “Comrade! Work and fight for the revolution.”

A pin of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade a.k.a. Lincoln Battalion, composed of hundreds of volunteers from the USA. The battalion was a member of the XV International Brigade, a brigade composed of foreign volunteers who fought alongside the antifascist/anti-Franco forces in Spain.

A framed portrait of Buenaventura Durruti.

The Samba Music of ’70s Brazil Did More Than Make People Dance — It Resisted a Dictatorship

samba-society-brazil-70 — Beto Gonzalez (center) and Samba Society

My latest piece in LA Weekly:

Brazilian-American musician Beto Gonzalez was too young to understand the country around him when his family returned to Brazil in the 1970s. It was only as he grew older, after coming back to the U.S., that he learned of how samba music became an important tool in the struggle against the country’s military dictatorship from 1964 to 1985.

Now, as the founder and artistic leader of Samba Society, Gonzalez hopes to share that history with a local audience during a time when the current political climates in the two countries he calls home have slid towards the types of attitudes that led to Brazil’s dictatorship.

Samba Society’s Brasil 70: Samba/Soul/Resistance, which they’ll perform this Friday at the newly restored Ford Amphitheatre, explores the rise of samba music in a decade marked by political censorship, repression, kidnappings and torture. Samba, forro and other genres of Brazilian music kept the spirit of resistance alive among the masses as the movement against the dictatorship grew, a resistance Gonzalez learned about during his studies at UCLA and in Rio de Janeiro as an ethnomusicology major.

Click this link to read the rest.

The Historical Battles That Inspired Battlefield 1’s Operations Mode

Electronic Arts’ Battlefield series of games took a strong turn towards historical accuracy this year when the company released Battlefield 1 this past October. The game is a first-person shooter that takes place in a few countries during the Great War/World War I.

BF1 includes a new multiplayer mode with stages inspired by real battles that occurred during the war. I wrote about some of these battles for Gamecrate.

It’s no surprise that Battlefield 1 has raked in buckets of cash and praise in equal measures since its release in October. The latest installment of Electronic Arts’ first-person shooter series introduced The Great War/World War I to the series’ legions of fans, as well as a number of new, historically accurate weapons, vehicles, and new multiplayer modes.

One of the new multiplayer modes is “Operations,” which aims to replicate some of the large-scale battles fought during the war. The four battles represented are spread across numerous sections on two maps (three for maps in the Ottoman Empire) and combine aspects of Rush and Conquest: attackers must seize control of one to three control points to advance while defenders can regain any lost territory until all points are lost.

The maps and battles are also based on real-life events, and do their best to replicate the atmosphere of what were then new modes of warfare: trench and aerial. In this article, we take a look at the historical conflicts that influenced some of the battles in the game.

http://www.gamecrate.com/historical-battles-inspired-battlefield-1s-operations-mode/14984

Finally, a Celebration of Afro-Latino Music That Doesn’t Ignore Hip-Hop

kahlil — Kahlil Cummings is one of many performers scheduled at AfroLatino. Photo by Safiya Dawuni.

The sounds and rhythms of West African drums, the sharp slaps on the djembe and the cavernous thumps on the dunun, will echo and bounce out of the recently reopened John Anson Ford Theatres and off into the hills surrounding the Cahuenga Pass this Saturday, Sept. 10. Those drums will mark the first lesson of many in a two-hour session about the long history of musical collaboration between the African and Latino diasporas that continues today in Los Angeles.

“AfroLatino – A Celebration of the African and Latino Diasporas” is a dive into understanding the Afro-Latino identity with an ethnomusicological twist. Numerous artists from L.A. and beyond will trace the history of African people in the Western hemisphere through the impact and influence of their music.

Continue reading at LA WEEKLY.