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Five Questions with Beaule and Douglass on ‘The Global Spanish Empire’

Posted on May 4, 2020 by Mari Herreras

May 4, 2020

The Global Spanish Empire tackles broad questions about Indigenous cultural persistence, pluralism, and place making using a global comparative perspective grounded in the shared experience of Spanish colonialism. Edited by Christine Beaule, and John G. Douglass, the volume’s eleven case studies include regions often neglected in the archaeology of Spanish colonialism. The time span under investigation is extensive as well, transcending the entirety of the Spanish Empire, from early impacts in West Africa to Texas during the 1800s. The contributors examine the making of a social place within a social or physical landscape.

Here, Beaule and Douglass discuss the book, and the unique approach of looking at Spanish colonization globally.

This book has a unique wide scale approach in looking at the colonial Spanish empire beyond the Americas. What drove you to bring this book together?

Christine Beaule: John and I proposed an electronic symposium for the SAA meetings in 2018 on ethnogenesis because we were both very interested in identity formation processes in Spanish colonial contexts. We ended up with 16 papers, and a very well attended symposium. The discussion between the participants and audience members that day was highly engaging and interesting. Winning the SAA-Amerind Foundation prize meant hard decisions about how to winnow the papers down to ten (plus an introduction), but our workshop at Amerind was one of the most personally and professionally rewarding experiences we have ever had. Everyone learned so much from each other, particularly about case studies and regions that we rarely bring into conversations about the archaeology of Spanish colonialism. Moreover, it quickly became apparent on day 1 of the workshop that our ethnogenesis theme was not going to work for the book. The opportunity to talk it through in person, and to put our heads together to work out new themes and a different organizational schema, was invaluable. We believe that the volume is much more cohesive and focused because of the process. From the electronic symposium through several days of working together in person on our chapters, without interruptions or distractions, the process was ideal.

John Douglass: Christine and I went to grad school together many years ago and had wanted to collaborate on something. We both have been researching different aspects of Spanish colonialism for quite some time in different parts of the world from one another, so it seemed like a good match to work on this project together. We both wanted to learn more about other parts of the Spanish Empire than what we were familiar with because, in the end, we wanted to learn more about the parts of the world we did know through comparison. The group of colleagues we worked with on this project really were fantastic as their work spans close to 500 years, and is situated all across the globe.

Why is it important to look at colonialism on a global scale?

Christine Beaule: There is much to learn from in-depth analyses of the impacts of colonialism in a single community or region. However, a comparative approach allows us to see patterns over a longer span of time, as well as bringing disparate regions into conversation with each other. In doing so, we gain perspective on local impacts and local agencies that would not be visible otherwise. As Americanists, John and I do not always have time to keep up with the abundant literature produced by our regional colleagues, let alone cutting edge scholarship about other colonized regions of the world. Comparative projects like this one help us see those all-important similarities and differences in the ways that Indigenous cultures were impacted by and responded to colonialism. Although we often speak of colonists and Indigenous communities in binary terms, each of these groups was itself multicultural, so identity categories such as native and Spanish are problematized when we take a global perspective. Finally, I think that it is important to include cases in which strong Spanish footholds were not successfully established, or where efforts to incorporate peoples in regions outside colonies failed. Although they’re harder to see archaeologically, they remind us that Spanish colonialism was not monolithic or homogeneous, and that its impacts on local religious practices, political organization, and economies were similarly varied in scope and kind. Scholarship in regions such as Central America, Africa, the U.S. southeast, Pacific and Caribbean islands, and the Philippines help us all see the full range of impacts and responses, in ways that focusing on single colonies or heartlands of colonialism do not.

John Douglass: This book focuses not just on the global scale, but the global scale through time, which is an important piece of the puzzle. Chris DeCorse’s chapter looks at the very early spread of Spanish colonialism in west Africa in the 1400s and the last chapter is Steve Tomka’s work looking at what is now southern Texas and northeastern Mexico, and all the other chapters in the book are in other portions of the globe between these two points in time. To me, one of the main utilities of looking globally is that we are able to have comparative viewpoints on the ebb and flow of Spanish colonialism and the diverse actions and reactions by indigenous peoples the Spanish worked hard to colonize (with mixed results). I was also so impressed at the way different chapters were able to communicate with one another due to this global approach. The cultural, linguistic, and social historical connections between the Pacific and South America, between the Philippines and Mexico, between Colombia and west Africa, and many more such examples in the book, all led to extremely interesting conversations.

How does this approach possibly change the way we look at the studies of colonization?

Christine Beaule: Work on this project and others like it has taught me to question assumptions and generalizations about colonialism and colonization. Living in Hawaiʼi, an island archipelago that was colonized and overthrown relatively recently by the U.S., colloquial conversations about colonialism and indigeneity are part of daily public life. The opportunities I have had to work with so many brilliant archaeologists studying Spanish colonialism around the world have equipped me to challenge others’ generalizations about European and American imperial histories. When we are able to see the failures of colonization efforts, the pluricultural actors in these histories, and patterns of cultural persistence through time, it teaches us to talk about colonialism in more nuanced ways. For me, that more nuanced understanding is a gift, one that I try to share with family, friends, students and colleagues here in Hawaiʼi, and one that I look forward to developing further in our next academic project.

John Douglass: Again, to me, the comparative approach of our volume helps bring us to fresh and new ideas about Spanish colonialism and indigenous actions and reactions to it. I’ve done a lot of research on Spanish colonialism in Alta California over the years and my eyes have been opened up in numerous ways by learning more the Spanish colonial experience – including both successes and failures – in other parts of the world. California was relatively late in the sequence and by then the Spanish has honed their models significantly. At the same time, we see some of the same difficulties and gains that were previously experienced in other parts of the world.

Was the Spanish approach to colonization the same globally? How?

Christine Beaule: Oh my goodness, no! Like all imperial powers, the Spanish borrowed an imperfect model from others (in this case, the Portuguese in west Africa), and modified it over time. There were certainly patterns that colonial decision-makers in Europe and in local contexts outside of Iberia tried to impose. Spatial patterns in planned colonies in Central America and missions in Texas and Guam provide one set of examples. Restricted access to sartorial and other material goods under racialized sociopolitical hierarchies are another category. These impositions, like ideological elements of Catholicism, were imperfectly adopted or enforced. The realities of each situation throughout the empire, and through time, meant that translations of beliefs and practices were incomplete. Local geographies and resources (material, capital, and human) meant that outside ideals, categories and standards required modifications. And, of course, Indigenous resistance and cultural persistence meant that, like many other non-colonial cases of intercultural interaction, people did not simply passively substitute one culture for another. The Spanish approach to colonization, as a result of these and many other axes of variability, had to adapt. Even then, they often failed, or some of their successes (e.g., with planned communities) were short lived and incomplete.

John Douglass: To parallel Christine here, while the Spanish did try to adapt in different ways through time, it was a mixed bag in terms of methods and results. I think the Spanish were good, in some ways, in approaching their goals through the lens of the local perspective and situation, although, again, there were varied actions and courses within the same general region. In the case of the Maya, for example, early on the general theme was to do whatever the Spanish could to destroy Maya culture through, among other things, burning almost all examples of their bark paper books. Several hundred years later, the way the Spanish taught local indigenous populations in the highlands of Guatemala about Christianity was through understanding the local oral and written traditions and belief systems, and then recasting Christianity through those same local perspectives. At the same time, like Laura Matthews and Bill Fowler’s example of Ciudad Vieja in San Salvador in the book, the Spanish did try to recreate colonies as they had elsewhere, with poor results.

Looking at all the contributions to this book, were there any surprises that surfaced in Spanish colonization?

Christine Beaule: … our journey began with a focus on documenting variability in processes of ethnogenesis. Once we got a subset of the original symposium’s participants together in a room, we collectively realized that our case studies (with only one exception) did not address ethnogenesis at all the way we were defining it narrowly! The two themes of the edited volume, place making and pluralism, emerged in the course of an intensive discussion of the points of overlap between chapter drafts. That rapid shift in focus informed the workshop discussions for the rest of our time together in Dragoon. I do not believe it would have been possible without the opportunity to work through these issues together, and so the book’s focus turned out to be the first big surprise.

The other surprise was just how powerful the concept of place making turned out to be for our comparative study of Spanish colonialism. We wrestled with conceptions of space and place that incorporated geographic, social, and agency considerations. What we all came up with is a theoretically powerful framework that helped us all to understand and explain patterns in material culture, diverse conceptions and uses of space, and the roots of Indigenous resistance and resiliency.

Because there were so many points of connection between all of the different case studies, despite big differences in their foci and details in their historical trajectories, we came to deeply appreciate how the two related themes wove all of the chapters together into a coherent whole. John and I are proud of both the journey and the final product. We treasure the friendships we fostered and the joy of pure intellectual exchange and growth that this book represents.

John Douglass: I think Christine makes good points. The only other thing I would add is that I was surprised as we discussed our draft chapters during our workshop at the Amerind Foundation how many interesting and pointed connections there were between papers: geographically, thematically, culturally, and the list goes on. This relates to one of my answers above. These connections were clear between the inhabitants of colonies and expeditions even in situations where they were separated vastly geographically or temporally. As one example of many, the papers by Chris DeCorse (west Africa) and Juliette Wiersema (western Colombia) are focused on two regions of the world thousands of miles apart and their papers analyze events hundreds of years apart. Yet, as we discussed the papers in the workshop, we all came to realize that the enslaved, and later freed, Africans working in mines and along the rivers of western Colombia Juliet wrote about were from the region Chris detailed in his paper. These kinds of surprising connections help us better understand the deep, and poignant, history of colonialism across the globe which have created complicated webs of relationships both in the past and present.

Escape the News with University Press Books

Posted on May 1, 2020May 1, 2020 by Savannah Hicks

May 1, 2020

The university press community has compiled an “Escape the News” reading list! The escape theme was interpreted broadly: submissions range from music history and poetry, graphic novels, photography and illustrated books, short stories, novels, memoirs, and natural history. There is also an international flavor to the list—especially in the areas of creative literature, fiction, poetry, and fine arts—indicating the global nature of the university press community. The goal for the list is to offer readers a way to entertain and inform in a time when reading allows us a portal to other worlds, when we can’t quite get there in person.

Our book picks for this “Escape the News” reading list are Kafka in a Skirt by Daniel Chacón and Ladies of the Canyons by Lesley Poling-Kempes.

“Daniel Chacón’s collection of stories challenges convention and resolution, offering us thought-provoking insights into our current (and oftentimes surreal) political climate. Kafka in a Skirt breaks new ground in the art of social commentary that highlights the strangeness of our human condition and the follies of the skewed perceptions we maintain of ourselves, our neighbors, and the troubled world we live in.”—Rigoberto González

“Poling-Kempes has done an admirable job scouring archives for these women, who have been largely left out of the historical record of the West. It’s a kind of prequel to our common history of the Southwest, peopled by women with long skirts and cinched waists in the desert heat, riding cowboy style, trying to do right by the land they all loved.”—Los Angeles Times

Discover more books from this reading list here.

Emmy Pérez Selected for The Big Texas Read

Posted on April 27, 2020April 27, 2020 by Savannah Hicks

April 27, 2020

Readers in Texas now have the opportunity to be part of statewide book clubs, which have started recently as a way for readers to connect while they are staying home and staying safe. We are thrilled that Texas Poet Laureate and University of Arizona Press author Emmy Pérez is one of the featured authors in The Big Texas Read! Her collection, With the River on Our Face, will be one of the books bringing Texans from all over the state together during these stressful times.

“In Texas, the organizations Writing Workshops Dallas and Gemini Ink have joined forces for The Big Texas Read, a statewide book club that will take place over Zoom every two weeks from April 29 through June 10. As described on Writing Workshops Dallas’s site, “[W]e’ll be reading ONE work of prose or poetry written by a Texas author every 1-2 months from now until the bug is squashed…Think of it as a big virtual book club, only you get to stay home, mix a cocktail, eat a big piece of chocolate cake, and snuggle up on the sofa.” Organizer Blake Kimzey told The Dallas Morning News, “Most people are siloed at home with their families, or they’re by themselves. The goal of this is to bring back interactivity with people. Not just to read the books, but to have a release from the current moment.” Independent bookstore partners of the event include Dallas’s Interabang Books and San Antonio’s The Twig Book Shop, where readers can order the titles for home delivery or curbside pickup.”
Rachel Kramer Bussel for Forbes

Read the entire article for Forbes here.

Emmy Pérez’s poetry collection With the River on Our Face flows through the Southwest and the Texas borderlands to the river’s mouth in the Rio Grande Valley/El Valle. The poems celebrate the land, communities, and ecology of the borderlands through lyric and narrative utterances, auditory and visual texture, chant, and litany that merge and diverge like the iconic river in this long-awaited collection.

“In divided times, Emmy Pérez’s voice speaks not only from America, but from the Americas, north and south. A wise, healing poetry.”—Sandra Cisneros

“Emmy Pérez is a word musician and magician. This book has a powerful pull—it has secret places where part of you will reside. It is a good season when work like this is in bloom.”—Luis Alberto Urrea

Two Podcasts with the Authors of Unwriting Maya Literature

Posted on April 17, 2020April 17, 2020 by Savannah Hicks

April 17, 2020

Paul M. Worley and Rita M. Palacios discussed their new book, Unwriting Maya Literature, in two podcasts. If you’ve been wanting to hear more about their work, here is your chance!

The first podcast is for SECOLAS’s Historias series can be listened to here.

Historias is a SECOLAS (Southeastern Council of Latin American Studies) production and it has been around for a little while. Until recently, their focus has been History, but its shifting to include other disciplines.

The second podcast is available in both Spanish and English, and was recorded for Mesoamerican Studies Online’s On Air series. The English version can be listened to here and the Spanish version can be listened to here.

Mesoamerican Studies Online and On Air is a fairly new project by Catherine Nuckols-Wilde, a PhD student of Art History and Latin American Studies from Tulane University. She began the podcast a short while ago, and she interviews experts on Mesoamerica from all different disciplines.

As Rita M. Palacios says, “Listening to these podcasts is like going to a conference but with the ability to space out the talks you attend. That, and you can do it in your PJs. So, do yourself a favor and subscribe to Mesoamerican Studies On Air and Historias.” So, enjoy listening!

Unwriting Maya Literature places contemporary Maya literatures within a context situated in Indigenous ways of knowing and being. Through the Maya category ts’íib, the authors propose an alternative to traditional analysis of Maya cultural production that allows critics, students, and admirers to respectfully interact with the texts and their authors. Unwriting Maya Literature offers critical praxis for understanding Mesoamerican works that encompass non-Western ways of reading and creating texts.

To learn more, visit Rita’s website and Paul’s website.

Los Angeles Review of Books: A Conversation with Casandra López

Posted on April 15, 2020April 14, 2020 by Mari Herreras

April 15, 2020

In a recent interview with University of Arizona Press author and poet Casandra López published in the Los Angeles Review of Books , author Isabel Quintero asked López about grief and more specifically about navigating the space of grief and violence as an Indigenous and Chicana woman.

López ‘s book with the Press, Brother Bullet, is a deeply personal collection of poetry revisiting the memory and lasting consequences of her brother’s murder in lyrical narrative poems that are haunting and raw with emotion, yet tender and alive in revelations of light.

From the interview:

I think a lot about the ethics of writing about trauma. My own grief is very much linked to experiences of trauma. It’s something that I think about so much because I’m writing about my family, and my brother who is no longer here. So, I think it’s important to always be aware of that privilege and the responsibilities I have. In a very literal sense, I want my family to be physically protected but also protected emotionally.
In the memoir, I’m not just writing about myself. I’m writing intimately about my family, bringing in the history of California and the Inland Empire, along with some community stories. So, I do feel more of a weight to not retraumatize others or to make sure what I’m writing is going to be of service to those in my community and family.
I sometimes hear criticism that too many Native writers write about tragedies or that readers don’t want to read stories about gun violence. But this is part of my reality, as well as of many others in my communities, so it is not something I am going to turn away from.
It has been useful to think about some key questions that Daniel Heath Justice asks in his book Why Indigenous Literatures Matter (2018). He poses certain questions to analyze Native literature, but I have used his questions to guide me as a writer:
1) How do I represent the complexities of my contemporary Indigenous life? What does my work say about what it is to be human?
2) What responsibilities do I have to others when I write about myself, my communities, my family, my ancestors, and the nonhuman world? What meaning can be explored in these relationships and kinships?
3) What can my work provide to my future kin?
4) How can my work encourage balance and healing?

Read the full interview here.

The Latest in Latinx Studies from the University of Arizona Press

Posted on April 15, 2020April 21, 2020 by Savannah Hicks

April 15, 2020

We are really missing the NACCS annual meeting right now, so here is a roundup of our latest titles in Latinx studies that we would have been proudly displaying at the conference this year.

Use the code AZNACCS20 to receive 30% off and free shipping on all of the titles mentioned in this post!

Our editor-in-chief, Kristen Buckles, acquires in this field. To propose a project, contact her atKBuckles@uapress.arizona.edu.

Latinx Ciné in the Twenty-First Century is a timeless volume and a significant analysis of the burgeoning field of Latinx filmmaking. Editor Frederick Luis Aldama has gathered together some of the best writing on Latinx ciné in the twenty-first century. Today’s filmmakers show the world a rich Latinidad informed by a complexly layered culture replete with history, biography, and everyday experiences.

In Reel Latinxs, experts in Latinx pop culture Frederick Luis Aldama and Christopher González explain the real implications of Latinx representation in mainstream TV and film. They also provide a roadmap through a history of mediatized Latinxs that rupture stereotypes and reveal nuanced reconstructions of Latinx subjectivities and experiences.

Read a conversation between the editors here, and watch a video on the topic here.

Daniel D. Arreola’s Postcards from the Chihuahua Border is a colorful and dynamic visual history of Mexico’s northern border. Drawing on more than three decades of archival work, Arreola invites the reader to time travel, to revisit another era—the first half of the last century—when the border towns of Ciudad Juárez, Ojinaga, and Palomas were framed and made popular through picture postcards.

Read an excerpt from the book here.

Sown in Earth is a collection of personal memories, which speak to the larger experiences of hard-working migratory men. By crafting a written journey through childhood traumas, poverty, and the impact of alcoholism on families, Fred Arroyo clearly outlines how his lived experiences made him want to become a writer. Sown in Earth is a shocking yet warm collage of memories which serve as more than a memoir or an autobiography. Rather, Arroyo recounts his youth through lyrical prose to humanize and immortalize the hushed lives of men like his father, honoring their struggle and claiming their impact on the writers and artists they raised.

Read an interview with the author here.

Meditación Fronteriza is a beautifully crafted exploration of life in the Texas-Mexico borderlands. Written by award-winning author Norma Elia Cantú, the poems flow from Spanish to English gracefully as they explore culture, traditions, and solidarity.

Watch a conversation between Norma Cantú and our publicity manager, Mari Herreras, here. Then, read an interview about the collection and a poem here.

Kafka in a Skirt is not your ordinary short story collection. In his newest work, Daniel Chacón subverts expectation and breaks down the walls of reality to create stories that are intriguing, hilarious, and deeply rooted in Chicano culture.

Read an interview with Daniel Chacón by Tim Z. Hernandez here.

Indigenous Interfaces rejects the myth that Indigeneity and information technology are incompatible through its compelling analysis of the relationships between Indigenous peoples and new media. The volume illustrates how Indigenous peoples are selectively and strategically choosing to interface with cybertechnology, highlights Indigenous interpretations of new media, and brings to center Indigenous communities who are resetting modes of communication and redirecting the flow of information. It convincingly argues that interfacing with traditional technologies simultaneously with new media gives Indigenous peoples an edge on the claim to autonomous and sovereign ways of being Indigenous in the twenty-first century.

In Saints, Statues, and Stories, beloved folklorist James S. Griffith introduces us to the roadside shrines, artists, fiestas, saints, and miracles of northern Mexico. Full-color images add to the pleasure of this delightful journey through the churches and towns of Sonora.

Listen to an interview with “Big Jim” Griffith here.

Reading Popol Wuj offers readers a path to look beyond Western constructions of literature to engage with this text through the philosophical foundation of Maya thought and culture. This guide deconstructs various translations to ask readers—scholars, teachers, and graduate and undergraduate students—to break out of the colonial mold in approaching this seminal Maya text.

The early 1960s are remembered for the emergence of new radical movements. One such protest movement rose in the Mexican state of Chihuahua. With large timbering companies moving in on the forested sierra highlands, campesinos and rancheros did not sit by as their lands and livelihoods were threatened. Agrarian Revolt in the Sierra of Chihuahua, 1959-1965 is the story of how they organized and demanded agrarian rights—ultimately with deadly consequences.

How did men become the stars of the Mexican intellectual scene? In Dude Lit, Emily Hind examines the tricks of the trade and reveals that sometimes literary genius rests on privileges that men extend one another and that women permit.

Advocating for and demonstrating the importance of an intersectional, multidisciplinary, activist understanding of Chicanas, Intersectional Chicana Feminisms provides a much-needed overview of the key theories, thinkers, and activists that have contributed to Chicana feminisms.

Explore other books in the Mexican American Experience series here.

Divided Peoples addresses the impact border policies have on traditional lands and the peoples who live there—whether environmental degradation, border patrol harassment, or the disruption of traditional ceremonies. Anthropologist Christina Leza shows how such policies affect the traditional cultural survival of Indigenous peoples along the border. The author examines local interpretations and uses of international rights tools by Native activists, counter-discourse on the U.S.-Mexico border, and challenges faced by Indigenous border activists when communicating their issues to a broader public.

Reclaiming and reconstructing one’s spirituality based on non-Western epistemologies is central to the process of decolonization. Voices from the Ancestors brings together reflective writings and spiritual practices by Chicanx, Latinx, and Afro-Latinx womxn and male allies in the United States who seek to heal from the historical traumas of colonization by returning to ancestral traditions and knowledge.

Watch a recording of a live Zoom event with the editors and several contributors of Voices from the Ancestors here, then read an interview with the editors, Lara Medina and Martha R. Gonzales, here.

Mexican Waves takes us to a time before the border’s militarization, when radio entrepreneurs, listeners, and artists viewed the boundary between the United States and Mexico the same way that radio waves did—as fluid and nonexistent. Author Sonia Robles explains how Mexican radio entrepreneurs targeted the Mexican population in the United States decades before U.S. advertising agencies realized the value of the Spanish-language market and demonstrates Mexico’s role in shaping the borderlands.

Yolqui, a Warrior Summoned from the Spirit World is a testimonio, a historia profoundo of the culture of extralegal violence against the Red-Black-Brown communities in the United States that operates with impunity. Framed by Roberto Cintli Rodríguez’s personal testimony of police violence, this book is a clarion call to end that violence and those philosophies that permit such violence to flourish.

Read an excerpt from the book here, and read summaries of two book events held on the University of Arizona campus here and here.

The increasingly militarized U.S.-México border is an intensely physical place, affecting the bodies of all who encounter it. The essays in The Border and Its Bodies explore how crossing becomes embodied in individuals on the most basic social unit possible: the human body.

Read an excerpt from the book here.

Land Uprising reframes Indigenous land reclamation as a horizon to decolonize the settler colonial conditions of literary, intellectual, and activist labor. Simón Ventura Trujillo argues that land provides grounding for rethinking the connection between Native storytelling practices and Latinx racialization across overlapping colonial and nation-state forms.

Listen to a conversation between Simón Trujillo and New York City-based artist Vick Quezada here.

Unwriting Maya Literature provides an important decolonial framework for reading Maya and other Indigenous texts. Through insightful analyses of Maya cultural productions—whether textiles or poetry—this perspective offers a point of departure for the study of Maya literature and art that is situated in an Indigenous way of performing the act of reading.

Listen to two podcasts about the book here.

New in paperback!

Based on more than twenty years of border activism in San Diego–Tijuana and El Paso–Ciudad Juárez, Coloniality of the US/Mexico Border is an interdisciplinary examination that considers the 1984 McDonald’s massacre, Minutemen vigilantism, border urbanism, the ongoing murder of women in Ciudad Juárez, and anti-border music. It is a theoretical and pragmatic analysis of the future of violence at—and because of—national territorial borders, and it offers a call for epistemic and cartographic disobedience.

In Pasadena Before the Roses, historian Yvette J. Saavedra shows how Indigenous, Spanish, Mexican, and American groups each have redefined the meanings of land use to build their homes and their lives. This social and cultural history illustrates the interconnectedness of power, ideas of land use, and the negotiation of identity within multiple colonial moments.

Don’t forget, the University of Arizona Press is offering 40% off all e-books right now! Use the code AZEBOOK40 at checkout. Also, keep an eye on our social media for a different free e-book of the week every week!

A Conversation With Norma Elia Cantú

Posted on April 13, 2020April 13, 2020 by Mari Herreras

April 11, 2020

Maestra Norma Cantú, author, activist, and scholar, took time to talk with the University of Arizona Press from her San Antonio home about life during COVID-19, community, family, and her poetry collection, Meditación Fronteriza: Poems of Love, Life, and Labor.

Life in Cantú’s Texas-Mexico borderlands is centered in these poems, a collection that celebrates culture, tradition, love, solidarity, and political transformation from Spanish to English.

Cantú, author of Canícula: Snapshots of a Girlhood en la Frontera, currently serves as the Norine R. and T. Frank Murchison Professor of the Humanities at Trinity University. She is founder and director of the Society for the Study of Gloria Anzaldúa.

Xicanx And Latinx Spiritual Expressions And Healing During COVID-19

Posted on April 13, 2020April 14, 2020 by Mari Herreras

April 13, 2020

Lara Medina and Martha Gonzales, editors of Voices from the Ancestors: Xicanx and Latinx Spiritual and Healing Practices, published by the University of Arizona Press, were joined by contributors Sandra Pacheco, Marta Lopez-Garza, and Berenice Dimas in a recent online discussion on the book’s themes, wisdom, and importance during this challenging time.

Voices from the Ancestors brings together the reflective writings and spiritual practices of Xicanx, Latinx, and Afro-Latinx womxn and male allies in the United States who seek to heal from the historical traumas of colonization by returning to ancestral traditions and knowledge.

The editors and contributors want to share these practices from the book that relate to the online discussion on dreaming, one and two; on house blessings; on spiritual limpias; rituals and remedies; and honoring the Four Directions.

More information on Voices editors and contributors:

Berenice Dimas shared information on herbs and wellness practices. Dimas is a queer writer, community-based herbalist, health educator, wellness promotora, and full-spectrum birth doula. Find out more about Berenice’s work by visiting her website and her Instagram pages @hoodherbalism y @brujatip.

Martha R. Gonzales, whose partner is currently battling COVID-19, shared her experience caring for her partner and turning to traditional ways to help him fight the virus and heal. Gonzales was raised in East Los Angeles, earned her bachelor’s degree in philosophy and literature from University of California, Santa Cruz, and her doctorate in literature from University of California, San Diego. She lectures in the Ethnic Studies Department at Glendale Community College, Glendale, California.

Marta López-Garza, shared information on how to do a blessing for a house or sacred space. López-Garza is a professor in gender and women’s studies and Chicana/o studies departments at California State University, Northridge. She co-facilitates Revolutionary Scholars, an organization of formerly incarcerated students and is a cofounder of Civil Discourse and Social Change, a campus-wide initiative combining education, community involvement, and sustained activism. Her scholarship focuses on formerly incarcerated womxn.

Lara Medina (Xicanx) was raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, earned an
MA in theology from Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California, and a PhD in history from Claremont Graduate University. She is a professor in the Chicana/o Studies Department at California State University, Northridge.

Sandra M. Pacheco is a professor and independent scholar. Her teaching and research focuses on Chicana/Latina/Indígena feminisms and spirituality. Sandra cofounded Curanderas sin Fronteras, a mobile clinic dedicated to serving the health and well-being of Chican@/Latin@/Indígena communities through the use of curanderismo.

Indigenous Persistence in California: Five Questions with Lee Panich

Posted on April 7, 2020April 15, 2020 by Savannah Hicks

April 7, 2020

Based on fifteen years of archaeological and historical research in the two regions, Narratives of Persistence charts the remarkable persistence of the Ohlone and Paipai alongside a synthesis of Native Californian endurance over the past five centuries. Lee M. Panich draws connections between colonial events and processes of the deeper past and the way the Ohlone and Paipai today understand their own histories and identities, offering a model for how scholars of Indigenous histories may think about the connections between the past and the present.

Below, read an interview with Lee M. Panich about his new book.

What inspired you to embark on this research?

Narratives of Persistence has its origins in my dissertation research in Baja California, back in 2005, for which I conducted an archaeological excavation at the site of Mission Santa Catalina, in the heart of the Paipai reserve of Santa Catarina. The initial idea for my dissertation was to compare the Dominican mission system of Baja California to the contemporaneous Franciscan missions of Alta California. However, Paipai community members quickly convinced me to change my research questions to center on the tribe’s long-term history. They downplayed the importance of the mission, saying in effect, “We’re still here, while the mission is just ruins now.”

This idea became the central focus of my dissertation and stuck with me when I shifted my research to the San Francisco Bay area about ten years ago. I saw a similar situation with local Ohlone groups, who had persisted in different ways during and after the mission period. Given the variables involved—different Indigenous cultural traditions, different missionary orders, differences between the U.S. and Mexico—I thought the two case studies would make an interesting comparison. I hope readers agree.

Why do the Ohlone people lack popular recognition and official acknowledgement from the U.S. government, even though they share a similar colonial history to the Paipai people?

That’s a great question and one of the key issues I try to address in the book. There are, of course, a lot of reasons for this discrepancy. One reason has to do with differences in how central California and northern Baja California were colonized by the United States and Mexico, respectively. Despite maintaining community cohesion, the Ohlone lost ancestral lands and were demographically outnumbered in the Bay Area shortly after the Gold Rush. The Paipai, in contrast, were able to hold onto portions of the ancestral homelands at the same time that Mexican settlement in the region remained relatively small well into the twentieth century.

But, for the Ohlone in particular, I think the biggest issue is simply that outsiders have always had essentialized notions of what Native people should be like. This can be seen in the early twentieth century when anthropologists and government officials alike pronounced the Ohlone extinct. The people were still there, but they didn’t fit rigid stereotypes about American Indians. One of the arguments I make in the book is that expectations about authenticity continue to do harm to Native Californian communities today.

A portrait of Inigo, taken in 1860. Inigo was an Ohlone man who joined the missions as a child, rose to the rank of alcalde, and eventually received part of the former mission lands as a grant from the Mexican government in the 1840s. Use of this image is courtesy of the Santa Clara University Archives & Special Collections.

What do you think the biggest lasting changes colonialism brought to the Ohlone and Paipai peoples are? How do those changes manifest today?

Perhaps counterintuitively, people in both communities are quick to acknowledge how their ancestors incorporated aspects of colonial lifeways into their own. For example, Paipai men are well regarded vaqueros, or cowboys, and my hosts in Santa Catarina credited the mission system for teaching their ancestors how to rides horses and drive cattle. Here in the Bay Area, many members of the Ohlone community remain practicing Catholics, another direct legacy of missionization. In both cases, people today are adamant about the fact that their communities have suffered unjustly under different colonial regimes, but they also recognize that the issues are not always black and white.

Certainly, one of the biggest changes has been a long process of social and political coalescence. Prior to colonization, people in both regions were organized into myriad autonomous communities – communities that have come together in various ways over the past 250 years. What I think most people misunderstand about that process is that it was both intentional and shaped by enduring cultural practices. In the missions, for example, Ohlone and Paipai people drew on existing marriage patterns to expand the pool of potential spouses amid devastating population losses. Later, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Ohlone and Paipai communities opened their doors to other Native people seeking refuge from violence and exploitation. These changes look dramatic when one compares the situation in 2020 to that in, say, 1780. But when you view it from the perspective of lived experience, the overall picture is one of individuals and families striving for community continuity. That’s the perspective I hope readers take away from the book.

Could you please tell us more about the persistent Indigenous traditions of the Ohlone and Paipai peoples? What do those traditions and traditional ways of knowing look like in contemporary life in California?

There is so much amazing work that is happening across Native California, and especially in the Ohlone and Paipai communities. Here in the Bay Area, for example, you can get a meal of acorn bread and venison at Cafe Ohlone in Berkeley. Run by Vincent Medina (Chochenyo Ohlone) and Louis Trevino (Rumsen Ohlone), the café honors traditional knowledge, serves as a hub for Native cultural events, and simultaneously educates the non-Native public about continued Ohlone presence. There is also an active program of language revitalization. In addition to reintroducing Chochenyo Ohlone language to everyday usage, the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe regularly renames important ancestral sites in order to undo the processes of erasure that have written them out of their homelands for the past two centuries.

South of the border, the Paipai are similarly working to maintain Native languages – there are several spoken in Santa Catarina today, including Paipai and Ko’alh. Paipai artisans are also renowned for their pottery, as Santa Catarina is the only Native Californian community with an unbroken ceramic tradition stretching from precontact times to the present. The potters, nearly all of whom are women, and other Paipai artisans are in high demand at workshops and cultural events throughout northern Baja California and southern California. In fact, many Native artisans from Baja California regularly connect with tribal communities in the United States—ranging from Kumeyaay groups in San Diego County to the Hualapai, Yavapai, and Havasupai in Arizona—to share knowledge and to rekindle connections.

The Paipai community of Santa Catarina in Baja California, taken in 2005. Use of this photo is courtesy of Lee M. Panich.

What are you working on now?

For the past year or so, I’ve been involved in several interrelated projects focused on bringing Ohlone perspectives to a wider audience, particularly at Santa Clara University where I work. Our campus is on the site of Mission Santa Clara, where thousands of Ohlone people lived and labored during the colonial period. To date, their descendants have been largely left out of the public interpretation of the mission and the ways we teach the history of the SCU campus to our students and visitors.

This is all changing rapidly, and we’ve been working closely with the Bay Area Ohlone community — particularly those groups who trace their ancestry through Mission Santa Clara, including the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe and the Ohlone Indian Tribe. This work is both top-down and bottom-up. We’re working with the University administration, for example, to assess official monuments and markers on our campus and to make sure we do a better job of acknowledging Ohlone history and continued presence. Along with faculty colleagues and undergraduate students, we’re also working with the Ohlone community to build pedagogical resources that instructors here at Santa Clara and elsewhere can use and that feature Ohlone voices and perspectives. The coronavirus situation has obviously put these efforts on the back burner for the time being, but the story of the Ohlone—like that of the Paipai—is one of overcoming obstacles big and small.

Lee M. Panich is an associate professor of anthropology at Santa Clara University, specializing in the archaeology and ethnohistory of colonial California, particularly the Spanish mission system.

Why Latinx Pop Culture Matters: A Video Discussion with Frederick Aldama, Ilan Stavans, and Christopher González

Posted on April 6, 2020April 6, 2020 by Savannah Hicks

April 6, 2020

In a new video, Reel Latinxs authors Frederick Aldama and Christopher González discuss why Latinx pop culture matters inside and outside of the classroom with Sor Juana author Ilan Stavans. Below, watch their discussion, or view the video on YouTube here.

Don’t forget, Sor Juana is available as a free e-book download until Wednesday, April 8, 2020! Use the code AZJUANA when you check out on our website.

Sor Juana: Or, the Persistence of Pop encapsulates the life, times, and legacy of Sor Juana. In this immersive work, essayist Ilan Stavans provides a biographical and meditative picture of the ways in which popular perceptions of her life and body of work both shape and reflect modern Latinx culture.

Latinx representation in the popular imagination has infuriated and befuddled the Latinx community for decades. These misrepresentations and stereotypes soon became as American as apple pie. But these cardboard cutouts and examples of lazy storytelling could never embody the rich traditions and histories of Latinx peoples. In Reel Latinxs, a grand sleuthing sweep of Latinx representation in mainstream TV and film, pop culture experts Frederick Luis Aldama and Christopher González call us all to scholarly action.

The University of Arizona Press