Preguntas de repaso

I. Término. Favor de responder/explicar a sólo 10 de los siguientes términos, fechas, o datos. (10X2=20)

Industrias culturales

Pedagogías nacionales

Foraker Law

Jones Act

Esfera pública

1898

Grupos subalternos

Discurso vs. historia

Estudios fronterizos

Latino

Hispano

Chicano

HUAC

Nicholas De Genova

Los femicidios


II. Contextos. Favor de responder con claridad a las siguientes preguntas o propuestas. (4X5=20)


¿Cómo se relaciona el cuerpo transexual/travestí con el estatus político de Puerto Rico en la novela de Mayra Santos Febres Sirena Selena Vestida de Pena?

¿Cómo se relaciona la contracepción y “la píldora” con el (neo)colonialismo en Puerto Rico?

¿Qué estrategias usa Junot Díaz en The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao para resaltar las diferencias entre “historia”, “Historia” y “discurso”?

¿Qué propone Gloria Anzaldúa en Borderlands/La Frontera y por qué es tan importante para los “estudios fronterizos”?


III. Ensayo cortos. ¿Quíen es Guillermo Gómez Peña y cómo intenta criticar la idea de “la frontera” tanto cómo los perjucios sobre los Latinos en los EU que discutimos en clase? (10 pts.)


IV. Ensayos. Responda en forma de ensayo a 2 de las siguientes preguntas/propuestas. Recuerde que un ensayo requiere una introducción, un cuerpo que desarolla su respuesta, y una conclusión. (2X25=50)

Discuta las semejanzas y las diferencias entre el personaje Ángel Obregón de la película Giant y la figura de José Antonio Gutiérrez en las selecciones (clips) discutidas de The Short Life of José Antonio Gutiérrez que se presentaron en clase (presentación de Jacklyn).

Haga un análisis semiótico de su favorita novela leída en clase siguiendo el formato “TCI” estudiado en clase.


¿Piensa Ud. qué ha cambiado la vida de los Latinos en los Estados Unidos después del Tratado de Guadalupe Hidalgo? ¿Cómo sí o cómo no? Use los textos leídos/estudiados para apoyar sus respuestas.

Discuta la diferencia entre historia y discurso en por lo menos dos de los textos estudiados.

Para discutir

Gaspar de Alba:

1.Discuta el género de la novela de Alicia Gaspar de Alba.

2.¿Cómo interviene la novela en los debates sobre los femicidios de Juárez?

Carlos Fuentes:

1.¿Cómo representa Fuentes la relación entre Marina y Rolando en "Malintzin de las maquilas"?

2.¿Qué actitud asume el narrador frente al sujeto femenino?

3.¿Qué importancia tienen las maquilas en la organización del mundo social de Marina, sus amigas, et.?

Gurba:

1.¿Qué significado tiene la palabra "cruising" en la comunidad gay?

2.¿Qué fronteras cruza el narrador/la narradora de "Cruising?

Arizona SB 1070

Senorita Extraviada

Gómez-Peña

De Jacklyn:

Presentación de Jacklyn

The Short Life of José Antonio Gutierrez Trailer

The Short Life Of José Antonio Gutierrez | MySpace Video

Junot Díaz: Una introducción

Sirena Selena

¿Cuáles son las características principales del bolero? (http://www.salsa-in-cuba.com/esp/danza_bolero.html)

Relacione el bolero con la novela. ¿Rompe la novela la trayectoría afectiva del bolero? ¿Por qué sí o no?

Relacione la novela con la Odisea de Homero (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odyssey).


Relacione el episodio de las sirenas con la función caracterológica del personaje de Sirena (http://www.2020site.org/ulysses/sirens.html).

¿Cómo ataca la novela los patrones tradicionales de la heterosexualidad? Dé ejemplos específicos (capítulos, páginas, etc.)

Señale un capítulo en particular que ud. quiera discutir. Señale por qué lo ha elegido.

Sirena Selena

Alambrista! (1977), dir. y guionista Robert Young

I. Actores

Domingo Ambriz ... Roberto
Trinidad Silva ... Joe
Linda Gillen ... Sharon

Ned Beatty ... Anglo Coyote
Jerry Hardin ... Man in cafe
Julius Harris ... 2nd Drunk
Ludevina Mendez Salazar ... Roberto's Wife
Maria Guadalupe Chavez ... Roberto's Mother
Rafaela Cervantes de Gomez ... Midwife
Feliz Cedano ... Tomato Field Mayordomo
Edward Lopez ... Contratista
Evelyn Chieko Saito ... Strawberry Field Owner
Tom Tar ... Strawberry Field Owner
Gabriel Segura ... Strawberry Field Mayordomo
Paul Berrones ... Berto

II. Reseña en el NYT

III. Robert M. Young

Giant (1956), George Stevens, dir.

* Elizabeth Taylor as Leslie Benedict
* Rock Hudson as Jordan "Bick" Benedict Jr.
* James Dean as Jett Rink
* Carroll Baker as Luz Benedict II
* Jane Withers as Vashti Snythe
* Chill Wills as Uncle Bawley
* Mercedes McCambridge as Luz Benedict
* Dennis Hopper as Jordan Benedict III
* Sal Mineo as Angel Obregon II
* Rod Taylor as Sir David Karfrey
* Earl Holliman as "Bob" Dace
* Paul Fix as Dr. Horace Lynnton
* Judith Evelyn as Mrs. Nancy Lynnton
* Fran Bennett as Judy Benedict
* Elsa Cárdenas as Juana Guerra Benedict
* Nick Adams as Jett Rink - Giving Banquet Speech (voice)
* Dan White (uncredited) as Truck Driver in Diner
* Monte Hale as Bale Clinch
* Max Terhune as Dr. Walker
* Alexander Scourby as Old Polo


Escena en la cafetería



Entrevista a Dennis Hopper

Repaso para el examen parcial

La HUAC y _Salt of the Earth_ (1954), Herbert J. Biberman, dir.

Repaso para el examen parcial

Walt Whitman (1819–1892), "Pioneers! O Pioneers!", Leaves of Grass (1855)

¿A qué modalidad política decimonónica pertenece este poema de Walt Whitman?

¿Cómo se representa al oeste? ¿La problemática de la raza?

¿Cómo funciona el pasado en el presente mediante su "traducción" en el anuncio de Levi Jeans? ¿Qué se pierde en la traducción?

Según la lectura que hicimos de García-Canclini, las industrias culturales crean nuevas memorias culturales mientras relegan otras al olvido. ¿Cómo se ve esto en el anuncio?





1
COME, my tan-faced children,
Follow well in order, get your weapons ready;
Have you your pistols? have you your sharp edged axes? Pioneers! O pioneers!

2
For we cannot tarry here,
We must march my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger,

We, the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend, Pioneers! O pioneers!

3
O you youths, western youths,
So impatient, full of action, full of manly pride and friendship,
Plain I see you, western youths, see you tramping with the foremost, Pioneers! O

pioneers!

4
Have the elder races halted?
Do they droop and end their lesson, wearied, over there beyond the seas?
We take up the task eternal, and the burden, and the lesson, Pioneers! O pioneers!


5
All the past we leave behind;
We debouch upon a newer, mightier world, varied world,
Fresh and strong the world we seize, world of labor and the march, Pioneers! O pioneers!

6
We detachments steady throwing,

Down the edges, through the passes, up the mountains steep,
Conquering, holding, daring, venturing, as we go, the unknown ways, Pioneers! O pioneers!


7
We primeval forests felling,
We the rivers stemming, vexing we, and piercing deep the mines within;

We the surface broad surveying, we the virgin soil upheaving, Pioneers! O pioneers!

8
Colorado men are we,
From the peaks gigantic, from the great sierras and the high plateaus,
From the mine and from the gully, from the hunting trail we come, Pioneers! O pioneers!


9
From Nebraska, from Arkansas,
Central inland race are we, from Missouri, with the continental blood intervein’d;
All the hands of comrades clasping, all the Southern, all the Northern, Pioneers! O

pioneers!


10
O resistless, restless race!
O beloved race in all! O my breast aches with tender love for all!
O I mourn and yet exult—I am rapt with love for all, Pioneers! O pioneers!


11
Raise the mighty mother mistress,
Waving high the delicate mistress, over all the starry mistress, (bend your heads all,)
Raise the fang’d and warlike mistress, stern, impassive, weapon’d mistress, Pioneers! O

pioneers!

12
See, my children, resolute children,
By those swarms upon our rear, we must never yield or falter,
Ages back in ghostly millions, frowning there behind us urging, Pioneers! O pioneers!


13
On and on, the compact ranks,
With accessions ever waiting, with the places of the dead quickly fill’d,
Through the battle, through defeat, moving yet and never stopping, Pioneers! O pioneers!



14
O to die advancing on!
Are there some of us to droop and die? has the hour come?
Then upon the march we fittest die, soon and sure the gap is fill’d, Pioneers! O
pioneers!

15
All the pulses of the world,

Falling in, they beat for us, with the western movement beat;
Holding single or together, steady moving, to the front, all for us, Pioneers! O
pioneers!

16
Life’s involv’d and varied pageants,

All the forms and shows, all the workmen at their work,
All the seamen and the landsmen, all the masters with their slaves, Pioneers! O pioneers!


17
All the hapless silent lovers,
All the prisoners in the prisons, all the righteous and the wicked,

All the joyous, all the sorrowing, all the living, all the dying, Pioneers! O pioneers!

18
I too with my soul and body,
We, a curious trio, picking, wandering on our way,
Through these shores, amid the shadows, with the apparitions pressing, Pioneers! O

pioneers!

19

Lo! the darting bowling orb!
Lo! the brother orbs around! all the clustering suns and planets,
All the dazzling days, all the mystic nights with dreams, Pioneers! O pioneers!


20
These are of us, they are with us,
All for primal needed work, while the followers there in embryo wait behind,
We to-day’s procession heading, we the route for travel clearing, Pioneers! O pioneers!


21
O you daughters of the west!
O you young and elder daughters! O you mothers and you wives!
Never must you be divided, in our ranks you move united, Pioneers! O pioneers!

22
Minstrels latent on the prairies!

(Shrouded bards of other lands! you may sleep—you have done your work;)
Soon I hear you coming warbling, soon you rise and tramp amid us, Pioneers! O pioneers!

23
Not for delectations sweet;
Not the cushion and the slipper, not the peaceful and the studious;

Not the riches safe and palling, not for us the tame enjoyment, Pioneers! O pioneers!

24
Do the feasters gluttonous feast?
Do the corpulent sleepers sleep? have they lock’d and bolted doors?
Still be ours the diet hard, and the blanket on the ground, Pioneers! O pioneers!


25
Has the night descended?
Was the road of late so toilsome? did we stop discouraged, nodding on our way?
Yet a passing hour I yield you, in your tracks to pause oblivious, Pioneers! O pioneers!



26
Till with sound of trumpet,
Far, far off the day-break call—hark! how loud and clear I hear it wind;
Swift! to the head of the army!—swift! spring to your places, Pioneers! O pioneers.


John Gast, "American Progress" (c1872)



Emanuel Leutze, “Westward the Course of Empire Takes its Way” (1861). The title was inspired by a line from the philosopher George Berkeley’s poem, “On the Prospect of Planting Arts and Learning in America” (1726) which resonated with Leutze as emblematic of “American” enterprise through westward migration.



by George Berkeley (1685-1753)


On the Prospect of Planting Arts and Learning in America


The Muse, disgusted at an age and clime
Barren of every glorious theme,
In distant lands now waits a better time,
Producing subjects worthy fame:

In happy climes, where from the genial sun
And virgin earth such scenes ensue,
The force of art by nature seems outdone,
And fancied beauties by the true;

In happy climes, the seat of innocence,
Where nature guides and virtue rules,
Where men shall not impose for truth and sense
The pedantry of courts and schools:

There shall be sung another golden age,
The rise of empire and of arts,
The good and great inspiring epic rage,
The wisest heads and noblest hearts.

Not such as Europe breeds in her decay;
Such as she bred when fresh and young,
When heavenly flame did animate her clay,
By future poets shall be sung.

Westward the course of empire takes its way;
The four first Acts already past,
A fifth shall close the Drama with the day;
Time’s noblest offspring is the last.

[See original for accurate stanza breaks as they don't render well on blogger.]

Jorge Luis Borges wasn't as thrilled with Berkeley's philosophical idealism as Leutze was. In his story, "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" (1940) Borges renders the country of "Uqbar"as an invention deprived of ontological substance and, thereby, incomplete. The story begs to be read as emblematic of the creation of "America," and of Berkeley (whose name graces the city where UC has its flagship campus) as a mere peddler of philosophical curios. (I understand Borges could be harsh, very harsh.)

Salt of the Earth (1954), Herbert J. Biberman, dir.

"Salt of the Earth" was produced, written and directed by victims of the Hollywood blacklist. Unable to make films in Hollywood, they looked for worthy social issues to put on screen independently. This film never would have been made in Hollywood at the time, so it is ironic that it was the anti-communist backlash that brought about the conditions for it to be made. In many ways it was a film ahead of its time. Mainstream culture did not pick up on its civil rights and feminist themes for at least a decade.

"Salt of the Earth" tells the tale of a real life strike by Mexican-American miners. The story is set in a remote New Mexico town where the workers live in a company town, in company-owned shacks without basic plumbing (Congress admitted New Mexico as the 47th state in the Union on January 6, 1912). Put at risk by cost cutting bosses, the miners strike for safe working conditions. As the strike progresses, the issues at stake grow, driven by the workers' wives. At first the wives are patronized by the traditional patriarchal culture. However, they assert themselves as equals and an integral part of the struggle, calling for improved sanitation and dignified treatment. Ultimately, when the bosses win a court order against the workers preventing them from demonstrating, gender roles reverse with the wives taking over the picket line and preventing scab workers from being brought in while the husbands stay at home and take care of house and children.

This film was selected for the National Film Registry in 1992 by the Library of Congress. It became public domain after its copyright was not renewed in 1982.

Juan Chacón as Ramon Quintero
Rosaura Revueltas as Esperanza Quintero
Henrietta Williams as Teresa Vidal
Ernesto Velázquez as Charley Vidal
Ángela Sánchez as Consuelo Ruiz
Joe T. Morales as Sal Ruiz
Clorinda Alderette as Luz Morales
Charles Coleman as Antonio Morales
Virginia Jencks as Ruth Barnes
Clinton Jencks as Frank Barnes
Víctor Torres as Sebasatian Prieto
E.A. Rockwell as Vance
William Rockwell as Kimbrough
Floyd Bostick as Jenkins
and other members of Mine-Mill Local 890




Reseña del New York Times
Movie Review
Salt of the Earth (1954)
March 15, 1954
THE SCREEN IN REVIEW; ' Salt of the Earth' Opens at the Grande -- Filming Marked by Violence
By BOSLEY CROWTHER
Published: March 15, 1954

Against the hard and gritty background of a mine workers' strike in a New Mexican town—a background bristling with resentment against the working and living conditions imposed by the operators of the mine—a rugged and starkly poignant story of a Mexican-American miner and his wife is told in "Salt of the Earth," a union-sponsored film drama, which opened last night at the Grande Theatre on East Eighty-sixth Street.

It is the story of a husband's firm objection to women—and, especially, his wife—mixing in the grim affairs of the strikers, and of the strong determination of the wife to participate, along with other women, in the carrying on of the strike.

This is the film that occasioned controversy and violence when it was being made near Silver City, N. M., just one year ago. The facts were then widely noted that members of the independent company making it, including the director, Herbert J. Biberman, and the producer, Paul Jarrico, had been identified before the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities as past or present Communists and that the organization sponsoring the picture, the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers, had been expelled from the Congress of Industrial Organizations for left-wing leanings.

Threats of Vigilante Action

Rosaura Revueltas, the Mexican actress who plays one of the leading roles, was seized as an illegal alien while the production was underway, and fisticuffs and threats of vigilante action occurred in Silver City while the company was there.

Recent sub rosa difficulties of the film's producers in getting a theatre in which to show it here have further evidenced the pressures against it and the obstructions placed in its way.

In the light of this agitated history, it is somewhat surprising to find that "Salt of the Earth" is, in substance, simply a strong pro-labor film with a particularly sympathetic interest in the Mexican-Americans with whom it deals. True, it frankly implies that the mine operators have taken advantage of the Mexican-born or descended laborers, have forced a "speed up" in their mining techniques and given them less respectable homes than provided the so-called "Anglo" laborers. It slaps at brutal police tactics in dealing with strikers and it gets in some rough, sarcastic digs at the attitude of "the bosses" and the working of the Taft-Hartley Law.

But the real dramatic crux of the picture is the stern and bitter conflict within the membership of the union. It is the issue of whether the women shall have equality of expression and of strike participation with the men. And it is along this line of contention that Michael Wilson's tautly muscled script develops considerable personal drama, raw emotion and power.

Conflict of Personalities

For this conflict of human personalities, torn by egos and traditions, is shown in terms of sharp clashes at union meetings, melees on dusty picket lines, tussles with "scabs" and deputy sheriffs and face-to-face encouners between the husband and wife in their meager home. It is a conflict that broadly embraces the love of struggling parents for their young, the dignity of some of these poor people and their longings to see their children's lot improved.

Under Mr. Biberman's direction, an unusual company made up largely of actual miners and their families, plays the drama exceedingly well. Miss Revueltas, one of the few professional players, is lean and dynamic in the key role of the wife who compels her miner husband to accept the fact of equality, and Juan Chacon, a non-professional, plays the husband forcefully. Will Geer as a shrewd, hard-bitten sheriff, Clinton Jencks as a union organizer and a youngster named Frank Talevera as the son of the principals are excellent, too.

The hard-focus, realistic quality of the picture's photography and style completes its characterization as a calculated social document. It is a clearly intended special interest film.


SALT OF THE EARTH, screen play by Michael Wilson; directed by Herbert J. Blberman; produced by Paul Jarrico. Presented by the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers and the Independent Productions Corporation. At the Grande.

Kathryn Hepburn HUAC Speech

Alberto Gout, Aventurera (1950) y "la cabaretera"

Alberto Gout, Aventurera (1950) y "la cabaretera"

Ninón Sevilla--Elena Tejero
Tito Junco--Lucio Saenz ("El guapo")
Andrea Palma--Rosaura de Cervera
Rubén Rojo--Mario Cervera
Miguel Inclán--Rengo
Jorge Mondragón--Pacomio Rodriguez
Maruja Grifell--Consuelo Tejero, mama de Elena
Luis López Somoza--Ricardo Cervera
María Gentil Arcos--Petra
Miguel Manzano--El Rana



Agustín Lara, "Aventurera" (letra)

Vende caro tu amor, aventurera
Da el precio del dolor, a tu pasado
Y aquel, que de tu boca, la miel quiera
Que pague con brillantes tu pecado
Que pague con brillantes tu pecado

Ya que la infamia de tu ruin destino
Marchito tú admirable primavera
Haz menos escabroso tu camino
Vende caro tú amor aventurera

Ya que la infamia de tu ruin destino
Marchito tú admirable primavera
Haz menos escabroso tu camino
Vende caro tu amor aventurera

"Border Studies": Un acercamiento

I.Según Scott Michaelson, "Border Studies is, perhaps, the most significant theoretical turn of the last decade. This 'field' lies at the border of cultural studies, ethnic studies, multicultural studies, and postmodern anthropology, and it opens onto timely questions of disciplinarity, identity, and cultural politics." Siguiendo esta línea, José Villalobos, et al., acierta "In a global society, Border Studies produces knowledge that facilitates encounters between cultures as they come together.... Regardless of where one lies with regard to the geographic or metaphoric uses of the term, Border Studies is a rich category precisely because it comprises the obvious physical borders that separate countries but also divisions of class, gender, genre, language, time, and discipline", a lo cual se debería añadir también la sexualidad como una frontera que puede desarmar a los binarios "hombre/mujer" de la "normalización" social y los límites que esta normalización impone sobre la imaginación afectiva y política.

II.One Man's Hero


III.La balada de Greorio Cortez

One Man's Hero (1998), Lance Hool, dir.

* Tom Berenger - John Riley
* Joaquim de Almeida - Cortina
* Daniela Romo - Marta
* Mark Moses - Colonel Benton Lacey
* Stuart Graham - Corporal Kenneally
* James Gammon - Gen. Zachary Taylor
* Stephen Tobolowsky - Capt. Gaine
* Carlos Carrasco - Dominguez
* Patrick Bergin - Gen. Winfield Scott
* Don Wycherley - Brian Athlone
* Jorge Bosso - Colonel Maximo Nexor
* Gregg Fitzgerald - Paddy Noonan

Estudios Fronterizos: Un Acercamiento

Según Scott Michaelson, "Border Studies is, perhaps, the most significant theoretical turn of the last decade. This 'field' lies at the border of cultural studies, ethnic studies, multicultural studies, and postmodern anthropology, and it opens onto timely questions of disciplinarity, identity, and cultural politics." Siguiendo esta línea, José Villalobos, et al., acierta "In a global society, Border Studies produces knowledge that facilitates encounters between cultures as they come together.... Regardless of where one lies with regard to the geographic or metaphoric uses of the term, Border Studies is a rich category precisely because it comprises the obvious physical borders that separate countries but also divisions of class, gender, genre, language, time, and discipline", a lo cual se debería añadir también la sexualidad como una frontera que puede desarmar a los binarios "hombre/mujer" de la "normalización" social y los límites que esta normalización impone sobre la imaginación afectiva y política.

Análisis de anuncios

I.El análisis semiótico
Texto:
*Autor/es o director (la función autorial)
*Género
*Forma
*Estilo (irónico, impresionista, directo, etc.)
*Recursos (cromatismo, oscuridad, etc.)
*Función caracterológica
*Contenido

Contexto/s:
*¿Cómo se desarolla el contenido?
*¿A base de qué especificidad histórica?
*El contexto explica cómo el texto se relaciona con la historia
*¿Con cuáles otros textos dialoga el texto en cuestión?


Interpretación/es:
*A base del texto y el contexto, ¿cuáles son las interpretaciones del texto más probables?
*Tensión entre el texto y el contexto y cómo estos ofrecen una/s interpretación/es lógica/s y verificable/s
*¿Qué significa el texto y cómo? ¿Qué quiere decir el texto dentro y fuera de la presencia autorial?


II. Vean los siguientes anuncios para comentarlos en relación a la lectura de Nestor García-Canclini, "Las industrias culturales". Tomen en cuenta la función caracterológica (según Robert Rushing) de "los protagonistas", tanto como la materia semiotizable que se encuentra en los anuncios publicitarios.











III. Califas: Meg Whitman, aspirante al puesto del gobernador Arnold Schwarzenegger, se ha distanciado de Bob "I'm a proud racist" Kellar.



IV. Análisis de Sleep Dealer (2008)
Trama

El futuro en el presente


Personajes
Leonor Varela ... Luz Martínez
Jacob Vargas ... Rudy
Luis Fernando Peña ... Memo
Giovanna Zacarías
Marius Biegai ... cámara
Emilio Guerrero ... Ricky
Jake Koenig ... el gerente
Ursula Tania ... la prostituta


La frontera digital

Industrias Culturales: La función caracterológica de la "latinidad"

La frontera en la imaginación popular

I.HISTORY'S AFTERLIVES
A. MAPS AND MEMORY

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - The distillers of Sweden's Absolut vodka have withdrawn an advertisement run in Mexico that angered many U.S. citizens by idealizing an early 19th century map showing chunks of the United States as Mexican.

The billboard ad has the slogan "In an Absolut World" slapped over a pre-1848 map showing California, Arizona and other U.S. states as Mexican territory. Those states were carved out of what had been Mexican lands until that year.

Although it was not shown in the United States, U.S. media outlets picked up on the ad, and after a barrage of complaints, Absolut's maker said on Sunday the ad campaign would cease.

Defending the campaign last week, Absolut maker Vin & Spirit said the ad was created "with a Mexican sensibility" and was not meant for the U.S. market.

"In no way was this meant to offend or disparage, nor does it advocate an altering of borders, nor does it lend support to any anti-American sentiment, nor does it reflect immigration issues," a spokeswoman wrote on Absolut's Web site.

"Instead, it hearkens to a time which the population of Mexico may feel was more ideal," she wrote.

Absolut's blog cite has received more than a thousand comments since the ad campaign was launched a few weeks ago, with many calling for boycotts of the Swedish company.

"I have poured the remainder of my Absolut bottles down the sink," one blogger wrote.

A war between Mexico and the United States from 1846 to 1848 started with Mexico's refusal to recognize the U.S. annexation of Texas and ended with the occupation of Mexico City by U.S. troops.

At the end, Mexico ceded nearly half of its territory to the United States, forming the states of California, Nevada, Utah and parts of Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico and Wyoming.

Mexicans remain sensitive about the loss and the location of the border. At the same time, the United States is fortifying barriers to keep out undocumented Mexican migrants.

Some Mexicans use the term "Reconquista" (reconquest) to refer to the growing presence in California of Mexican migrants and their descendants.

France's Pernod Ricard is taking over Absolut vodka, one of the world's top-selling spirit brands, after buying Vin & Spirit from the Swedish government at the end of March.

(Reporting by Noel Randewich, editing by Philip Barbara)

B. Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo


On January 4, 1848, almost four weeks before the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, Senator John Calhoun (1782-1850) of South Carolina appeared on the Senate floor to state his disdain for the annexation of Mexican territories to the United States. Calhoun, though an expansionist, vehemently expressed his disdain for the Mexican people in a last ditch effort to prevent the signing of the treaty:

"We have never dreamt of incorporating into our Union any but the Caucasian race—the free white race. To incorporate Mexico, would be the very first instance of the kind of incorporation of the Indian race; for more than half of all Mexicans are Indians, and other is composed chiefly of mixed tribes. I protest against such a union as that! Ours, sir, is the government of a white race. The greatest misfortunes of Spanish America are to be traced to the fatal error of placing these colored races on an equality with the white race. That error destroyed the social arrangement which formed the basis of society. . . .
Sir, it is a remarkable fact, that in the whole history of man, as far as my knowledge extends, there is no instance whatever of any civilized colored races being found equal to the establishment of free popular government, although by far the largest portion of the human family is composed of these races."

Quote from: The Congressional Globe, United States Congress, Senate, 30th Congress, first session, 1848, 98-99.





II. STOP THE HATE CAMPAIGN

Lou Dobbs attributes pseudo-rise in leprosy (Hansen's Disease) to immigration. His "source," Madeline Cosman, can be seen below.



Lou Dobbs "source" on health source and immigration said, as quoted on Lou Dobbs' show:




This is Madeline Cosman, Dobbs' source. Yes, source, Did you get that?:





III. THE LATINO BODY POLITIC

José Antonio Gutierrez

(Duke students: These sources require updating. Please forward updates to me at the email address on the top right hand corner of this media blog.)

Myth: Immigrants don’t pay taxes

Fact: Immigrants pay taxes, in the form of income, property, sales, and taxes at the federal and state level. As far as income tax payments go, sources vary in their accounts, but a range of studies find that immigrants pay between $90 and $140 billion a year in federal, state, and local taxes. Undocumented immigrants pay income taxes as well, as evidenced by the Social Security Administration’s “suspense file” (taxes that cannot be matched to workers’ names and social security numbers), which grew by $20 billion between 1990 and 1998. Source

Myth: Immigrants come here to take welfare

Fact: Immigrants come to work and reunite with family members. Immigrant labor force participation is consistently higher than native-born, and immigrant workers make up a larger share of the U.S. labor force (12.4%) than they do the U.S. population (11.5%). Moreover, the ratio between immigrant use of public benefits and the amount of taxes they pay is consistently favorable to the U.S. In one estimate, immigrants earn about $240 billion a year, pay about $90 billion a year in taxes, and use about $5 billion in public benefits. In another cut of the data, immigrant tax payments total $20 to $30 billion more than the amount of government services they use. Source: “Questioning Immigration Policy – Can We Afford to Open Our Arms?”, Friends Committee on National Legislation Document #G-606-DOM

Myth: Immigrants send all their money back to their home countries

Fact: In addition to the consumer spending of immigrant households, immigrants and their businesses contribute $162 billion in tax revenue to U.S. federal, state, and local governments. While it is true that immigrants remit billions of dollars a year to their home countries, this is one of the most targeted and effective forms of direct foreign investment. Source

Myth: Immigrants take jobs and opportunity away from Americans

Fact: The largest wave of immigration to the U.S. since the early 1900s coincided with our lowest national unemployment rate and fastest economic growth. Immigrant entrepreneurs create jobs for U.S. and foreign workers, and foreign-born students allow many U.S. graduate programs to keep their doors open. While there has been no comprehensive study done of immigrant-owned businesses, we have countless examples: in Silicon Valley, companies begun by Chinese and Indian immigrants generated more than $19.5 billion in sales and nearly 73,000 jobs in 2000. (Source: Richard Vedder, Lowell Gallaway, and Stephen Moore, Immigration and Unemployment: New Evidence, Alexis de Tocqueville Institution, Arlington, VA (Mar. 1994), p. 13.

Myth: Immigrants are a drain on the U.S. economy

Fact: During the 1990s, half of all new workers were foreign-born, filling gaps left by native-born workers in both the high- and low-skill ends of the spectrum. Immigrants fill jobs in key sectors, start their own businesses, and contribute to a thriving economy. The net benefit of immigration to the U.S. is nearly $10 billion annually. As Alan Greenspan points out, 70% of immigrants arrive in prime working age. That means we haven’t spent a penny on their education, yet they are transplanted into our workforce and will contribute $500 billion toward our social security system over the next 20 years. Source

Myth: Immigrants don’t want to learn English or become Americans

Fact: Within ten years of arrival, more than 75% of immigrants speak English well; moreover, demand for English classes at the adult level far exceeds supply. Greater than 33% of immigrants are naturalized citizens; given increased immigration in the 1990s, this figure will rise as more legal permanent residents become eligible for naturalization in the coming years. The number of immigrants naturalizing spiked sharply after two events: enactment of immigration and welfare reform laws in 1996, and the terrorist attacks in 2001. Source

Myth: Today’s immigrants are different than those of 100 years ago

Fact: The percentage of the U.S. population that is foreign-born now stands at 11.5%; in the early 20th century it was approximately 15%. Similar to accusations about today’s immigrants, those of 100 years ago initially often settled in mono-ethnic neighborhoods, spoke their native languages, and built up newspapers and businesses that catered to their fellow émigrés. They also experienced the same types of discrimination that today’s immigrants face, and integrated within American culture at a similar rate. If we view history objectively, we remember that every new wave of immigrants has been met with suspicion and doubt and yet, ultimately, every past wave of immigrants has been vindicated and saluted. Source

Myth: Most immigrants cross the border illegally

Fact: Around 75% of today’s immigrants have legal permanent (immigrant) visas; of the 25% that are undocumented, 40% overstayed temporary (non-immigrant) visas. Source

Myth: Weak U.S. border enforcement has lead to high undocumented immigration

Fact: From 1986 to 1998, the Border Patrol’s budget increased six-fold and the number of agents stationed on our southwest border doubled to 8,500. The Border Patrol also toughened its enforcement strategy, heavily fortifying typical urban entry points and pushing migrants into dangerous desert areas, in hopes of deterring crossings. Instead, the undocumented immigrant population doubled in that timeframe, to 8 million—despite the legalization of nearly 3 million immigrants after the enactment of the Immigration Reform and Control Act in 1986. Insufficient legal avenues for immigrants to enter the U.S., compared with the number of jobs in need of workers, has significantly contributed to this current conundrum. Source

Myth: The war on terrorism can be won through immigration restrictions

Fact: No security expert since September 11th, 2001 has said that restrictive immigration measures would have prevented the terrorist attacks—instead, the key is effective use of good intelligence. Most of the 9/11 hijackers were here on legal visas. Since 9/11, the myriad of measures targeting immigrants in the name of national security have netted no terrorism prosecutions. In fact, several of these measures could have the opposite effect and actually make us less safe, as targeted communities of immigrants are afraid to come forward with information. Source:Associated Press/Dow Jones Newswires, US Senate Subcommittee Hears Immigration Testimony, Oct. 17, 2001.)


IV. STRATEGIES

Reading: Susan Bibler Coutin, "Being En Route."

Topics:
Thinking through "immigration," as a category of analysis, requires us to think less about the location of the subject and more about the location of knowledge about the Latino subject (always seemingly in question).

Take for instance popular renditions of the immigration problem: Heather Mac Donald, et al., The Immigration Solution

PRODUCT DESCRIPTION: "Heather Mac Donald describes how an epidemic of crime, gangs, and illegitimacy is creating a new Hispanic underclass, and how the Mexican government aids and abets illegal immigration to the United States and thwarts state and local attempts to resist it. Steven Malanga shows how, despite much argument to the contrary, Hispanic immigrants produce a net cost to the American economy, not a net benefit, and he goes on to outline the kind of immigration policy that would be both liberal and in America's interest. Victor Davis Hanson writes about his own experience growing up in California's farm country and watching the Hispanic immigrant influx transform his state for the worse. The Immigration Solution proposes the same kind of policy in place in other advanced nations, one that admits skilled and educated people on the basis of what they can do for the country, not what the country can do for them."

What are the factual errors related to the book's description? What is elided in the description? How are "Hispanics" blended into the category of "Mexican"? How does the national signifier "Mexico" become associated with "illegality" itself?

Heather Mac Donald's other recent work can be found in "Is the Criminal-Justice System Racist?"

Lázaro Lima, “Sleep Dealer and the Promise of Latino Futurity”

Lázaro Lima

Sleep Dealer is set on the U.S.-Mexico border where high-tech factories allow the protagonist, Memo, and other migrant workers, to plug their bodies into a network to provide virtual labor for the North. Sleep Dealer constitutes one of the first instances of “Latino Sci-Fi” film and genre making and this is significant. Why? Because there is no tradition of Latino science fiction writing or film to speak of. There are no Octavia Butlers or Samuel Delanys, as in the African American tradition, no Laurence Yeps or S. P. Somtows, as in the Asian American tradition, to engage in a sustained critique of the ideology of genre as it pertains to a future subject position yet to be imagined; an ideation of Latino futurity that has not yet achieved an ideology of form in the present. What are we to discern from the absence of science fiction writing in Latino literary and cultural studies? What are we to make of this and how should we read this absence?

As I’ve noted in The Latino Body and elsewhere, from “the American 1848” to the present, Latino literary and cultural interventions have been surprisingly consistent in making their relationship to the state historical. From one the earliest “Mexican American” novelist like Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton writing in the XIX century to the extreme contemporary of Latino memoir, literary production has sought to create a logic of presence in the past, anticipating one of the fundamental conundrums raised by Fred Jameson’s recent work; namely, how to own the "inevitable failures" of the past without making defeatism the foregone conclusion of their inheritance. Understood from the confines of a "Latinocentric" perspective, Jameson’s observation might be rendered in the form of a question: By haunting the cultural sphere of the past, do we depoliticize the possibility for a viable Latino future? Or, even better, Why have we allowed the very futures of Latinidad to be colonized through an insistence on the narrative renderings of our stories, our lives, our Latinidades, in the preterite and imperfect tense of the historical imagination?

Exile, diaspora, loss, memory, trauma, history, U.S. military campaigns in our countries, language barriers and borders, all emblematic of the Latino experience in the U.S. and carved into niche marketing strategies for publishers, only tell, retell, and package part of historical desire. What those stories can’t imagine is the possibility of making our relationship to the state anything other than historical. In the process, I believe we run the risk as cultural agents in the academy of allowing majortitarian political actors to colonize the very futures of Latinidad.

One of the fundamental questions of Latino studies, then, should be: How do we decolonize the future? If following Jameson, “History is what hurts,” then how might, say, Latinos in space redress that hurt by imbricating our “ethno-racial” particularisms in a future imagined from our present as owners of that future before it is wrested from us like our seemingly unwritten past? I believe that such a decolonizing move, both in the theoretical gesture of investigating why this is so as well as the creation of futurity projects, might have us instantiate the emancipatory potential of a Latino studies project for our moment. A paradigm shift within our inherited race and ethnic studies models would require a recognition that what is at stake is not the location of the known but, rather, how the location of the knower dictates what counts as a legitimate object of study.

Ethnic studies, after all, exists because other disciplinary formations aren’t doing their job. Yet the move requires that our students learn to ask more than how they can identify as social and political beings in a racist culture, but how the unequal distribution of social and material resources is in part managed through understanding the ethnic subject as a fractured subject who must answer the inevitable “Who am I?” before being allowed — if at all — to state the declarative “I will be.” And we, all of us in the academy, are imbricated in this impasse. Being able to move away from just such navel gazing makes it more difficult to substitute culture for the state, thereby preventing us from confusing culture with the politics of the state. As when Memo's father in the movie asks, "Is our future a thing of the past?," Sleep Dealer, along with the histories it haunts, admonishes us not to sleepwalk through history lest we be tempted to dream somebody else's dream.

The Lone Ranger (1949)

Asignaturas:
Border Battles Organization



Angela Davis en UCLA

Género, sexualidad y nación en la frontera


Aventurera (1950)

"Cabaret or brothel? If only poor Elena had known the difference!"

BY GARY MORRIS

In the late 1940s, Mexico experienced an economic boom that shifted the cultural and artistic energy from country life — the worn-out world of rancheras and haciendas — into the cities. Movies were inevitably affected by this trend, and Mexican filmmakers quickly responded by creating a new genre to bring the city and its multiple temptations to the masses. This genre was the cabaretera, a bizarre amalgam of music and melodrama and noir, with liberal doses of sex (especially sadism) and what we now would call high camp, set in the squalid whorehouses, cheap bars, and dark glistening streets of "sin towns" like Ciudad Juarez. Not that these were the exclusive backgrounds of the cabaretera; there’s a strong element of class conflict that also demanded contrasting wealthy environments, typically populated by hypocrites, that were just out of reach of the fallen singers and dancers who dominated these films.

The cabaretera became a staple of postwar Mexican cinema and yielded many stars, but none as popular as Ninón Sevilla, a Cuban rhumba dancer who became an international success on the basis of her spirited performances in films with sleazy titles like Victims of Sin, Sensuality, I Don’t Deny My Past, and the unquestioned masterpiece of the genre, Alberto Gout’s Aventurera (1950). Sevilla is not a typical beauty but has ferocious vivacity as both dancer and actress in a persona that dazzlingly combines innocence and sensuality.

The opening scenes of Aventurera ("adventuress") in Chihuahua show a happy-go-lucky Elena Tejero (Sevilla) with her loving parents in their cozy bourgeois home. When shady admirer Lucio (sexy Tito Junco) tries to lure her on a date, she refuses, saying "I won’t lie to Mama." Mama, however, has no such compunction. When Elena returns, she discovers her mother in a lustful embrace with a family friend. Dazed and disheartened, she wanders through the streets, and discovers when she returns that her father has shot himself.

The plot of Aventurera kicks into byzantine mode almost immediately, as Elena goes to Ciudad Juarez and tries to find a respectable job. Instead, she’s drugged and forced into prostitution by her admirer Lucio, who supplies young girls to Rosaura (the thrilling Andrea Palma), a crime queenpin who runs a lucrative whorehouse fronted by a cabaret. Elena, as it happens, is a fine dancer and singer and becomes a popular star of the nightclub. She is less successful as a whore, however, refusing to go to bed with the customers and getting into catfights with men and women on the dance floor. Rosaura, of course, won’t stand for such stuff and threatens her with disfigurement or worse.

Sevilla
Ninón Sevilla
Elena’s musical numbers display Sevilla’s charms to lurid advantage. The splashiest is "In a Persian Market," and her body is almost entirely visible through her Arabian "costume" (really just a few threads) as she energetically thrusts at the camera, predating Elvis by several years. This and her other routines combine elements of Busby Berkeley choreography, Maria Montez otherworldly kitsch, and even Carmen Miranda fruit hats. Some of the songs also serve an important dramatic function, particularly the title tune sung by Agustín Lara, which reminds Elena of the price of being a fichera (trashy B-girl) and stops her in her tracks when she hears it: "Sell your love dearly, it’s the price of your past. And he who wants the honey from your lips must pay the price in diamonds for your sin."

This bittersweet reminder of the "wages of sin" can’t compete with Elena’s hunger for revenge against Rosaura and Lucio. Her conversion from goody two-shoes to immoral slut continues when Rosaura instructs a scarred, mute killer named El Rengo (Miguel Inclán) to carve up her face. Lucio arrives to rescue her from El Rengo and the "club," and she becomes an accomplice in a failed bank robbery that lands Lucio in jail. Ever on the move, Elena flees to Mexico City, where she again becomes a star. She meets a respectable lawyer Mario (Ruben Rojo), from "one of Guadaljara’s oldest families." At this point, the film begins to play its highest cards, with a breathtaking new plot twist about every three minutes.

Aventurera will surprise viewers who associate the ‘40s with repression and conventionality. The film’s attitudes, particularly toward Elena, have a distinctly modern feel, in spite of the many period trappings in the form of the musical numbers, the location settings, and especially the cautionary and redemptive aspects of the story. The film unfalteringly supports Elena’s tortured odyssey through the lowest realms of Mexico’s urban nightlife, reveling in scenes of her power as artist and woman even when she’s using it seemingly beyond reason to punish those who have betrayed her. The feminist subtext here is rich and often blatant — really as much text as subtext.


With its velvety black-and-white photography, parts of Aventurera look like film noir or Italian neo-realism, connections confirmed by the film’s fixation on crime and class struggle. At other times, it looks like a Hollywood musical with its transporting environments and camp-erotic suggestiveness. Evident too are aspects of classical narrative, too — particularly in the singers in the nightclub, a kind of Greek chorus whose songs comment obliquely on Elena’s moral struggles; and in the character of El Rengo, the silent killer who represents implacable fate but emerges with his own peculiar pathos. Aventurera brilliantly manipulates these diverse elements.

In addition to the riveting Ninón Sevilla, watch for wonderful, classic musical performances by Perez Prado and his Orchestra, Pedro Vargas, Ana Maria Gonzalez, El Trio Los Panchos, Los Angeles del Infierno, and Ray Montoya and his Orchestra.

Devaluación humana fronteriza: Border Patrol