sey023

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...

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 networ...