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The Library of Congress has recently acquired the Mapa de Ecatepec-Huitziltepec , a manuscript that was prepared in 1593 and is one of the few original documents surviving from 16th-Century Mesoamerica. It was apparently created by indigenous Nahuatl cartographers but reflects the rapid transition of a society under Conquest. LOC screenshot of the Codex. Follow link above for the full story, and the link below for a more detailed view. An image of the map is directly viewable (with panning and zooming) on the Library of Congress web site. The entry includes important metadata, including some modern landmarks to orient the viewer. I have included them in the map below to give readers a sense of the area covered by this treasure. My favorite librarian and I spent the summer of 1989 in the region covered by this map , and encountered evidence -- four centuries later -- of the imposed fusion of cultures that it manifests.

PLEASE CLICK MAP for a BETTER VIEW The map (above) that ESRI geographer Krista Schlyer chose for the top of her photo-map essay response to the so-called border wall is indicative of the care she and the rest of the ESRI team have taken with this entire exhibit. As a geographer who lived in this map for seven years (1990-1994 in Tucson and 1994-1997 in Pharr), I notice a few important things that this map captures nicely. First, the borderlands are identified by the border, but not strictly defined by it. As Oscar Martinez argues in  Border People , it is a zone that extends approximately 100 miles in each direction from the line that gives the region its identity. In every sense except strict legalities, this region is neither the United States nor Mexico. It is a third entity that is both divided and united by a line that meanders through its center. In addition to Border People , I recommend Tom Miller's On the Border  as an introduction to the place; I had the privilege of know

The most important qualification for most Cabinet-level appointments in the current administration has been hostility toward the mission of the department or agency to be led, and to the implementation of policies that the Congress has assigned. In most respects, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has fit this mold. As the most anti-stewardship steward of public lands since James Watt, he has been good company for secretaries of State, Education, Environmental Protection who have a similar antipathy toward the programs with which they have been intrusted by an administration that values only chaos and a Senate that does not value its advisory duties. This post, however, is not about Secretary Zinke's failures to protect Bears Ears, or whether he shares the libertarian fringe's fear of "massive federal land grabs." Rather, it is this counter-intuitive story about Sec. Zinke's support of a new  National Monument that would provide added protection to federal lands in his

Sometimes I learn about U.S. music because of my interest in the music of Latin America . I knew nothing of the Black Eyed Peas, for example, until they recorded with Brazilian bossa nova great Sergio Mendes. Thus my "discovery" of Major Lazer comes with a mild sense of déjà vu -- I learned of the group when journalist Michel Martin (whose work I did know) interviewed a fellow known as Diplo about the group's 2016 concert in Havana . The occasion of the interview was not the concert itself -- it was almost two years ago that 450,000 people turned out for the show on the streets of Havana -- but the rather the release of  Give Me Future .  I have not yet seen this making-of film, but it reminds me of Buena Vista Social Club , another making-of feature that has deeply shaped my thinking about Cuba and the U.S.-Cuba relationship. Major Lazer -- apparently a big deal The project unfolded during a period of slowly increasing freedom for U.S. citizens visiting Cuba, but the fi

Recent discussions about trade have included an odd discussion of whether it was Mexico or the United States got the better of the other in the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (which also, of course, includes Canada). My main concerns with NAFTA -- and with the even more comprehensive World Trade Organization (WTO) agreement -- had to do with the likelihood that they would weaken labor and environmental protections. The increase in trade -- and the vulnerability of workers to distant competitors -- was already underway before NAFTA went into effect, and it is difficult to know how much the agreement contributed to the downward spiral in the compensation and protection of workers. But that spiral does continue, and the corn farmers of Mexico continue to be among those most adversely affected. This short report by journalists Todd Zwillich and Franc Contreras puts the opposition of these farmers in the century-old context of the conflict that led to the modern Mexican state. To

I'm hoping for two kinds of students in my New Bedford course next summer : those who know the city, and those who don't. In other words, everyone is welcome (despite the 400-level course number). This combination works well in my classes about other places, whether they be Brockton or Latin America . Students who know a place directly bring something extra to the class, but they also gain something from applying a geographic lens to a place they have known in other ways. I hope that the geographic lens is exemplified by the informal photo essay I just completed, based on a walk I took in the city one morning at the end of the summer. Acushnet Avenue -- A Avenida -- is a great place for geographers.

Just last month, we had the great privilege of attending a  forum on information integrity  led by journalist Sasha Pfeiffer, a print reporter who is also very present on public-radio airwaves in the Boston area. Upon finally viewing the film  Spotlight  for the first time this week, I learned that she is an even more formidable journalist than I had realized. The  diligent work  of her entire  team , including upper management at the  Globe , is a reminder of the importance of professional journalists in the protection of democracy. Reporters take great risks and great care in finding facts. Among many  cogent insights  in the film is attorney  Mitchell Garabedian's  assertion that "if it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a village to abuse one." The film makes clear that one of the biggest barriers to exposing the criminal conspiracy surrounding pedophilia was Boston's winged-tipped tribalism. Self-reinforcing networks of elite business, education, and reli

The opening episode of  Modern Family  Season 9 is about a vacation organized around watching a  total eclipse of the sun , presumably on August 21, 2017. And yet! ... I failed to realize what was going on when various characters began to channel their inner Bonnie Tyler in honor of the greatest comeback of an MTV icon in some while. (The very strange video above has had over 342  million  views.) All of which is by way of saying that we have been making some big plans for the next total eclipse of the sun. Not the next eclipse to reach totality in the U.S., as did the one we missed in 2017 (jury duty kept us close to home): the next total eclipse on the planet. It will happen on July 2, 2019, and we will be there! The path of totality will mostly be over water, but the continental portion will traverse South America farther south than any place I have been. Map:  timeanddate.com It coincides with the birthday of our geographer friend Jeff.  Actually, we have at least three geographer

I was recently tagged in a popular challenge in Facebook that began: "Seven-day black-and-white picture challenge! Seven days, no people and no captions! Cheers to day 1/7!" Loving photography and having plenty of photos to choose from, I took up the challenge, though instead of tagging individuals, I decided to "challenge whomever is inspired." I am not sure whether anyone was. After posting a couple of photographs -- using an easy Macbook trick to make them monochrome -- friends asked questions about where they were taken. I decided not to caption any of them until my week was complete. I did hint that each day's challenge was met by a photo (or two) taken in a different country. To avoid spoilers under the original posts, I have decided to post all of the captions here. And at the suggestion of a geography alumna, I am entering approximate coordinates, rather than place names. Wednesday (1 of 7): Science! One of the world's great telescopes. (2016) 18°21

Thirty-two years and six hours after Mexico City was shaken by its most devastating earthquake, the city was rocked again, and this just two weeks after a strong quake shook the southern state of Chiapas. Sept 7 & 19 earthquakes in Chiapas and Mexico City. Photos: BBC Immediately after the September 19, 2017 earthquake, hundreds of its citizens ran towards  its many collapsed buildings. The September 20, 2017 edition of The Takeaway  begins with a detailed interview with a former Mexican diplomat, who explains the lessons residents of Mexico City have learned, and compares the experience of the capital with that of rural Chiapas, which was struck by a quake earlier this season. No longer available on WNYC, this segment is on iTunes . A few days later, journalist Maya Kroth described the response in detail , especially the work of Los Topos (The Moles), the volunteers known for their extraordinary rescue efforts. Her interview with Todd Zwelick is followed by a conversation with Ja

Thank the Farmers I love coffee. Most people who know me know this about me. I have a lot of fun with coffee and the many ways it intersects with geography and popular culture. I am, in fact, enjoying my umpteenth cup of fine coffee of the day, even as I write this. But as most people who know me realize, my love of coffee is exceeded by my love of the people who produce it and the lands from which the best coffee is grown. I end almost every coffee story with the hashtag #thankthefarmers for that reason. It is good to remember that however much fun we can have with coffee and however much we can appreciate the social and environmental benefits of coffee that is grown carefully and traded fairly, coffee can also be a very serious matter indeed. A reminder come from a March 2016 Guardian article that has been sitting on my desktop since someone shared it with me a couple of months ago. For all this time, I have not know quite what to do with Nestlé admits slave labour risk on Brazil cof

Beginning with Ronald Reagan embraced the Mujahideen in the 1980s as part of his multi-pronged effort to topple the already-teetering Soviet empire, tactics in Afghanistan have been unable to redeem strategies that landed the United States there in the first place.  As many of us suggested at the time -- and were dismissed as not sufficiently rabid against the USSR -- Afghanistan has never been a good place to invade. Obviously. We are there now, however, in a long occupation. As I write this Veteran's Day, I am saddened by how much has been sacrificed by our (mostly young) men and women in uniform, many of whom I have known, and some of whom never came home. I am also mindful of those out of uniform -- both Afghan citizens who want a normal life and our own men and women who serve in diplomatic and development roles. According to Tom Bowman's recent reporting , they are essentially confined to barracks. The current administration came to office in part on the basis of mischara

Whenever my favorite librarian is reading a book, she keeps sticky notes nearby to mark any passage that mentions libraries. Even a single mention will get the book reviewed on her  "Library" Books  blog, a sort of metablog about the representation of libraries in written works. (She uses a digital equivalent of the sticky-note process for e-books.) When we are reading a book together, I ask her to do the same for me, writing the letter "J" on the notes she attaches to passages that interest me as a geographer, coffee maven, or both. As she adds library references to her blog posts, she removes her notes, and I follow up, usually with a shorter post either on this blog or on social media (my "microblogs"). Looking at the drafts folder of this blog, I see that I am half a year behind her very important  Timbuktu post . Before I catch up there, though, I need to make a few notes about another book we read together recently, and about which she wrote more ext

Essential reading for the next century of fires. The relationships between humans and forest fires are becoming increasingly complicated and harrowing. I was fortunate to begin learning about some of the counterintuitive parts of this relationship -- most notably that suppressing fires eventually makes them more likely -- from an excellent landscape ecologist with whom I studied briefly just a year after the famous Yellowstone fires. Since then, I have been able to draw on collaborations with forest ecologists and on David Foster's excellent text  Thoreau's Country  as I explore this increasingly important topic with students. I have even had the good fortune of working with a couple of students with forest-fire expertise. This has all been very much on my mind, as my Land Protection class once again coincides with a particularly damaging fire season in the western United States. I was therefore very interested to hear a recent  Living Lab Radio  interview with Firestorm autho