Tag: Mexico

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Maps in Tijuana

The opening of the Changing Boundaries map exhibit has been posted on the CECUT web site.  You can help me a bit by going to the link and liking it on Facebook.  Do it now.

If you are in the San Diego area this Friday night come across the border for a pretty cool bi-cultural event.

http://www.cecut.gob.mx/article/2312

To see this announcement on the CECUT website is pretty exciting.  I have taken a collection of maps that I made 20 years ago and over the last three years I have leveraged it into an opportunity to talk about the history of the US-Mexico relationship at the biggest cultural institution in Tijuana.  This is cool.  Thanks to Charles Pope at USD for being the first person to see the potential of this exhibit and to Raul Rodriguez at CETYS for the introduction to CECUT.

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Cancun Mexico

I have been to Cancun three times. The first was about thirty years ago with Nurit. The second was about fifteen years ago with Lillian and this year with Howard and Aty.

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The changes have been remarkable. Both physically and in the nature of the experience. The first time we came there were just a few hotels on the beautiful beach. Now all ten miles of beach are lined with hotels, condos and private homes and it is still beautiful.

But the biggest and most encouraging change has been in the nature of the service. The workers here have changed from acting like wage slaves resentful of the rich outsiders to really helpful, caring, friendly people. All of them seem to be focused on quaking sure that the tourist economy keeps working. For example they have hundreds of busses that allow you to go anywhere from town to the end of the tourist zone for about a dollar. The drivers happily take any kind of money and make change. In LA or London if the driver had cash like that around he would be robbed hourly. In the flea market the hustlers tell lies and hawk crap just like before but they no longer physically confront you. And in the “all inclusive” hotel where we are staying everybody from the pool waiter to the room cleaner is trying really hard to speak English and make you happy.

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It appear that an entire people have had a change of attitude. They are working communally to keep the tourism business going and it happened in a little more than a generation. This is really good news for the world. Angry, distrustful people don’t have to stay angry and distrustful.

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Map Colloquium ASU

If you read this blog even occasionally you know that I have been exhibiting my collection of border maps around the West.  We held a colloquium to celebrate the exhibit at ASU on January 19, 2012.

Changing Boundaries Map Event

During the talk Dr Carlos Velez-Ibanez and I announced that after the exhibit in Tijuana at CECUT the collection is being donated to the School of Transborder Studies at ASU.

Changing Boundaries Map Event

I am delighted to have found such a good home for the collection and Carlos and his group will be getting a tool that will enhance their programs in many ways.

More photos from the STS/ASU Exhibit and Colloquium

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San Diego to Ensenada circa 1930

In the 1930’s the Auto Club of California issued a strip map of the route from San Diego to Ensenada.

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I bought a copy of the little map on eBay and am going to use it in the Fronteras Cambientas exhibit at the CECUT Museum in Tijuana that opens on February 24, 2012.  The opening reception is on March 2, 2012. 

Fronteras Cambientas is Changing Boundaries in Spanish

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There are lots of very interesting thing to see on the map.  One of them is that, based on the size of the city names and confirmed by my research, in 1930 Ensenada was larger than Tijuana.

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Even Translations have Biases

Here is a common quote from Plato:

“One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferior!”

Unfortunately it is a bastardization of a much longer quote that is probably translated as:

“If the decent are not willing to rule, they are punished by being ruled by worse men.”

Here is someones full translation that is almost unreadable:

“Hence, necessity and a penalty must be there in addition for them, if they are going to be willing to rule – it is likely that this is the source of its being held to be shameful to seek to rule and not to await necessity – and the greatest of penalties is being ruled by a worse man if one is not willing to rule oneself.“

This came to my mind when a friend posted on Facebook: “Con esperanza intermitente”  which the new Facebook translator said in English was “With intermittent hope”  but I think really means “with a bit if hope”

It is hard to know what people mean in English let alone in other languages.

Even translations have biases.

 

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Colloquium

The Changing Boundaries Map Exhibit at Arizona State University is closing on February 10, 2012.  The next show is in at the CECUT museum in Tijuana Fronteras Cambientes opens on February 24, 2012.

In the meantime the last planned event at ASU is a Colloquium on January 19, 2012 at 5:30 pm.

I love the idea of being involved in a colloquium it sounds so much more important than being on a panel or speaking to a meeting. And this one has some super panelist with lots of knowledge about the border.

Anyway come if you can and forward the announcement to your friends in the Phoenix area who might be interested.

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Capirotada

Capirotada is a book about Nogales written by Alberto Rios.  Capirotada is also a Mexican bread pudding.  Read the book and you will learn about food and the border and immigrants.

Here is my review on Amazon:

Capirotada is a special book.  Its simplicity moved me and the small stories that it told helped me feel how Nogales was in the 1950’s and 60’s.  I usually find memoirs to be too orderly for literature and to self-serving for nonfiction. This one is different.  Rios’s memoir is beautiful literature.

Alberto Rios writes in the same way that a great abstract painter paints.  He draws an outline and leaves blank spaces.  He admits that he doesn’t know things.  The pieces that he puts in are enough so that you can accept the unknowns and the uncertainties of his life or yours and just see enough of the picture so you can feel how it was without knowing everything.

Capirotada is brilliantly written book that is a marvelous tribute to his parents, to Nogales, and to immigrants everywhere.

I bough the book many years ago and found it the other day while looking for another book with a map of Tijuana.  I was going to send it to Maria Sedgewick since she lives and works in Nogales but I read a few pages and was captivated.  I ended up with four connections to the book.  Rios’s mother came to the US from England on the same Cunard ship that I came on.  I was about six years behind her.  Rios teaches at ASU where the Changing Boundaries Map exhibit is currently and he has, according to his web site an interest in maps.  And finally there is our shared connection to Nogales.

 

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Immigrants and Food

I wrote a story about the miners from Cornwall, England’s contribution to the cuisine of Mexico.  I know it sounds strange but Cornish Pastys are part of the food heritage of Moreles, Mexico.

I posted the story on my Rational Immigration site.  But I though I should share it here if only because it made me think about Elizabeth C and her empanadas.   And it raised the eternal question:  Which came first the Empanada or the Pasty?

English food suffer from a bad naming issue.  Which would you prefer egg pie or souffle?