“The border has not always been a barrier and there is no reason to think that it will not become something else in the future.”
Rachel St. John
Line in the Sand: A History of the Western U.S.-Mexico Border
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.
Goepolitical Thinking III
“The American example is our most powerful export.”
Marco Rubio, US Senator
Senator Rubio was speaking to the Federalist Society when he made the above remark. We as a nation are going to have to refocus on making this an opportunity society. Not by having more programs and tzars, as some on the left propose, but by having a well regulated and transparent marketplace and keeping the governments small.
One measure of if our example is working is whether people are trying to move here. One measure of whether we are setting a good example is whether we let them. The world will be a better place if people are allowed to move from bad places to better places and the nations that let it happen will be stronger for it so it will happen.
Simon Says Postcards 1/10/2012
“Poverty needs no
passport to travel.”
Former President of Costa Rica
Winner 1986
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.
Tijuana Jews
Tijuana Jews from Isaac Artenstein on Vimeo.
Tijuana is not just a place that has crime and drugs and lawlessness. It also has a Jewish Community and peaceful people raising families and living marvelously ordinary lives.
A Decent World
“The right to go where you want should be a principle in a decent world.”
Noam Chomsky
Braceros
A week or so ago I went up to Cal State University Channel Islands (CSUCI) in Camarillo to view the Bracero Exhibit. The Bracero Program was a mid 20th century guest worker program. The result was, as the subtitle of the exhibit explains, a “bittersweet harvest.” It may be the best guest worker program possible but it still was demeaning to the participants, fraught with corruption and caused some exploitation of workers. On the other hand it gave millions of Mexican workers: jobs, money and a vision of another life.
I asked Jose Alamillo the Professor at CSUCI most responsible for the exhibit if in balance he thought the bracero program was a good thing for the workers. His response was equivocal just like mine. In balance it might have been good for the participants but couldn’t we find a better way.
CSUCI is a very beautiful campus built on the grounds of the old Camarillo Mental Hospital. It represents a modern version of turning your swords into plowshares. The only new structure I saw was the Broome Library. Which spans the area between two of the old mission style buildings.
Visually the exhibit is a series of fourteen illustrated explanatory panels from the Smithsonian with some very interesting artifacts collected by Professor Alamillo and his students. The best part however is the audio. You can hear the voices of the workers telling the story of getting the bracero jobs. The oral histories were collected by the Smithsonian over the last five years in a project with CSUCI and others.
Click here to read more about where I stand on guest worker programs.
Map Exhibit to Close
The border map exhibit at the University of San Diego is closing this week. It has been one of the most successful project I’ve been involved in about immigration so I’m working hard to get a new venue in LA or Arizona.
Thanks to Charles Pope and the entire staff at the Trans-Border Institute at USD for helping make it such a success.
I Love Migrants
A new organization in the UK has put together an excellent fact sheet about immigration. You can go directly to the I Love Migrants site . Or cut and paste this link: http://ilovemigrants.wordpress.com/i%E2%99%A5home/
An exerpt: “Migrants will look after the old: Only through migration will there be enough young people to look after the elderly.” read more
In reality the presentation of facts will only work to convince those with open minds. Most minds are made up already and dismiss facts that don’t confirm their beliefs. But this is the beauty of I Love Migrants. Their main appeal is to the emotions. And they claim the emotional high ground. Love is better than hate.