Malintzin is by far the most controversial figure of the 1519 Mexican invasion. Was she a traitor, or a feminist national hero? Was she the mother of Mexico, or the Eve-like bringer of Mexico’s original sin? Was she a collaborator, bystander, or victim of the Spanish? In terms of her Read more…
Like many of the Spanish conquistadors who made their way to the Americas, Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca joined an expedition to explore “Florida” in search of glory and, ideally, an encomienda of his own. (“Florida” is what the Spanish called all of the land around the Gulf of Mexico, Read more…
When the Spanish conquered Mesoamerica, they conquered cacao. Mixing the bitter cacao seeds with sugar and other spices – spices that were often also obtained through European conquest – the Spanish created a commodity that stimulated the European comestible market. Its luxuriousness grew first out of its expensiveness and rarity Read more…
When and where public baths have been popular, they’ve meant different things to different cultures. They might be sites for socializing, religious purification, spiritual/bodily cleanliness, relaxation/pampering, public health/hygiene, homosocialiality, and, of course, sex, or some combination of those things. At the start of the twentieth century, single-gender communal bathhouses were Read more…
Why NAFTA is important. Also, where jeans come from. Elizabeth and Averill talk Maquiladoras, NAFTA, and manufacturing in Mexico and the US.
The Bracero Program began in 1942, and was an agreement between the United States and Mexico, which started the legalization and control of Mexican migrant workers along America’s southern border area. The US was recovering from the social and economic damages caused by the Great Depression, while also sending many Read more…
When we think of immigration we tend to think of people crossing over nation-state borders, from one country to another. These borders seem somehow solid in our collective mind, yet they normally only exist within treaties, maps, and in perceived ideas of community. But in many ways, borders are arbitrary Read more…