scholarly journals El Es Dios!

2022 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 121-147
Author(s):  
Ruben A. Arellano

This article outlines a brief historical sketch of the Danza Azteca-Chichimeca, or danza for short, which is becoming ubiquitous in areas of the United States with a significant Mexican American population. It looks at its origins during the early colonial period of Mexico, especially its mythological beginnings, to help elucidate the deep foundation of the dance tradition. This sketch also addresses the evolution of danza after it spread from its place of origin in the Bajío into major urban areas like Mexico City, where, once there, it changed due to ideological and political trends that circulated in the post-revolution period. The article also looks at danza’s pseudo-militaristic undertones to suggest that it might have contributed to the growing discontent among peasants and indigenous people, leading to Mexican independence. Some scholars have suggested that it, as a revitalizationist tradition, belongs in the “crisis cult” category. This analysis became evident when danza encountered neo-Aztec philosophies that promoted nationalistic and restorationist ideologies. In sum, the article touches on the popularity of danza in the United States despite the current climate of xenophobia and anti-migration, and nods at its growing international and global appeal.

2005 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 143-147 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victor M. Rivera ◽  
Samuel Landero

Multiple sclerosis (MS) prevalence has notably increased in Latin America. Although people of Mexican ancestry make up most of the Hispanic population in the United States, studies addressing MS in US- or foreign-born Latin Americans are scarce. Of the first 3000 consecutive individuals diagnosed with clinically definite MS at a specialized MS clinic in southeast Texas, 128 were identified as Mexican or Mexican American and are discussed in this article. The sample had a wide age distribution (6–71 years), with most patients diagnosed between the third and fifth decades. Of the patients studied, 68.2% had relapsing-remitting MS, 28.9% had secondary progressive MS, and 2.3% had primary progressive MS. The female-to-male ratio was 4.6:1.0; 60.9% of the patients were US born and 28.9% Mexican born. Sixteen patients commuted between countries. The study suggests that increasing frequency of MS among Hispanic people may augment the prevalence of MS in certain areas of the United States. Epidemiological observations, clinical characterizations, and possible genotypic therapeutic responses may derive from further studies.


2015 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
pp. 521-550 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Gratton ◽  
Emily Klancher Merchant

Recent scholarship on Mexican Americans in the United States, relying largely on qualitative evidence, sees racism and exploitation as the major explanatory factors in their history. Using representative samples of persons of Mexican origin, we argue that immigration is fundamental to their historical experience. A small, beleaguered community in 1850, the Mexican-origin population grew during the late nineteenth century due to greater security under US jurisdiction. However, immigration between 1900 and 1930 created a Southwest broadly identified with persons of Mexican origin. Economic development in Mexico, restriction of European immigration to the United States, and extreme cross-border wage differentials prompted extensive emigration. Despite low human capital, circular migration, and discrimination, immigrant Mexicans earned substantially higher wages than workers in Mexico or native-born Hispanics in the United States. They followed typical immigrant paths toward urban areas with high wages. Prior to 1930, their marked tendency to repatriate was not “constructed” or compelled by the state or employers, but fit a conventional immigrant strategy. During the Depression, many persons of Mexican origin migrated to Mexico; some were deported or coerced, but others followed this well-established repatriation strategy. The remaining Mexican-origin population, increasingly native born, enjoyed extraordinary socioeconomic gains in the 1940s; upward mobility, their family forms, and rising political activity resembled those of previous immigrant-origin communities. In the same decade, however, the Bracero Program prompted mass illegal immigration and mass deportation, a pattern replicated throughout the late twentieth century. These conditions repeatedly replenished ethnicity and reignited nativism, presenting a challenge not faced by any other immigrant group in US history.


Author(s):  
Gabriela González

The concluding chapter explains how race had served defenders of slavery by providing them with an excuse to hold men and women in bondage. For their inhumane treatment of Africans during the Age of Enlightenment to be justified, their humanity needed to be ideologically stripped away—scientific racism served that purpose. Racist theories also kept other groups in subaltern positions. Mexicans with mestizo, mulatto, and Indian genealogies experienced racialization in the United States. Simply put, Americans, proud of their liberal political heritage and their democratic institutions, needed to see oppressed groups as somehow sub-human in order to reconcile their political beliefs with the nation’s less than egalitarian realities. It is for this reason that the politics of redemption practiced by Mexican immigrant and Mexican American activists merits attention.


Author(s):  
Glenn Vorhes ◽  
Ernest Perry ◽  
Soyoung Ahn

Truck parking is a crucial element of the United States’ transportation system as it provides truckers with safe places to rest and stage for deliveries. Demand for truck parking spaces exceeds supply and shortages are especially common in and around urban areas. Freight operations are negatively affected as truck drivers are unable to park in logistically ideal locations. Drivers may resort to unsafe practices such as parking on ramps or in abandoned lots. This report seeks to examine the potential parking availability of vacant urban parcels by establishing a methodology to identify parcels and examining whether the identified parcels are suitable for truck parking. Previous research has demonstrated that affordable, accessible parcels are available to accommodate truck parking. When used in conjunction with other policies, adaptation of urban sites could help reduce the severity of truck parking shortages. Geographic information system parcel and roadway data were obtained for one urban area in each of the 10 Mid America Association of Transportation Officials region states. Area and proximity filters were applied followed by spectral analysis of satellite imagery to identify candidate parcels for truck parking facilities within urban areas. The automated processes created a ranked short list of potential parcels from which those best suited for truck parking could be efficiently identified for inspection by satellite imagery. This process resulted in a manageable number of parcels to be evaluated further by local knowledge metrics such as availability and cost, existing infrastructure and municipal connections, and safety.


2020 ◽  
Vol 52 ◽  
pp. 127-146
Author(s):  
KRISTINA F. NIELSEN

Abstract (Spanish/English)Forjando el Aztecanismo: Nacionalismo Musical Mexicano del Siglo XX en el siglo XXI en Los ÁngelesHoy en día, un creciente número de músicos mexico-americanos en los Estados Unidos tocan instrumentos indígenas mesoamericanos y réplicas arqueológicas, lo que se conoce como “Música Azteca.” En este artículo, doy a conocer cómo los músicos contemporáneos de Los Ángeles, California, recurren a los legados de la investigación musical nacionalista mexicana e integran modelos antropológicos y arqueológicos aplicados. Al combinar el trabajo de campo etnográfico con el análisis histórico, sugiero que los marcos musicales y culturales que alguna vez sirvieron para unir al México pos-revolucionario han adquirido una nuevo significado para contrarrestar la desaparición del legado indígena mexicano en los Estados Unidos.Today a growing number of Mexican-American musicians in the United States perform on Indigenous Mesoamerican instruments and archaeological replicas in what is widely referred to as “Aztec music.” In this article, I explore how contemporary musicians in Los Angeles, California, draw on legacies of Mexican nationalist music research and integrate applied anthropological and archeological models. Pairing ethnographic fieldwork with historical analysis, I suggest that musical and cultural frameworks that once served to unite post-revolutionary Mexico have gained new significance in countering Mexican Indigenous erasure in the United States.


Author(s):  
Michael R. Woods ◽  
Susana V. Rivera-Mills

AbstractThis sociolinguistic study explores linguistic attitudes of Salvadorans and Hondurans living in the United States towards the use of voseo, a distinguishing feature of Central American Spanish. Using sociolinguistic interviews and ethnographic observations, the Central American experience in Oregon and Washington is examined regarding linguistic attitudes toward voseo and tuteo and how these influence Salvadoran and Honduran identity in U.S. communities that are primarily Mexican-American. Initial findings point to participants developing ethnolinguistic masks and an expanded use of tú as a strategic approach to integration into the established Mexican-American community, while at the same time maintaining a sense of Central American identity.


Polar Record ◽  
1973 ◽  
Vol 16 (104) ◽  
pp. 701-705
Author(s):  
Daniel Wilkes

The T-3 ice island case involved two trials in the United States of a Mexican-American, Mario Escamilla, for allegedly causing the death of a Negro coworker, Bennie Lightsey, on an ice island then at lat 84°45.8'N, long 106°24.4'W, on the High Seas, about 240 km north of Ellesmere Island on 16 July 1970. A federal judge in Virginia allowed Escamilla's first trail to proceed without definitively deciding on objections to jurisdiction, for he expected a ruling on this point on appeal. Issues raised by that trial are covered elsewhere (Pharand, 1971; Wilkes, 1972).


2012 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 161-172 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rowland Atkinson ◽  
Oliver Smith

The move to gated communities has been linked to both rising affluence and anxiety. These attempts to withdraw from the perceived dangers of urban areas are also predicated on the pursuit of a neighbourhood ideal, and freedom from danger is usually central to this ideal. This paper critically reconsiders these propositions by examining news reports and media narratives surrounding the nature of homicidal violence occurring within such developments. We have analysed fifty news reports from the last decade that address murder committed inside gated communities. In our analysis of these reports we suggest that attempts to neutralise danger in high crime societies are by no means guaranteed—even via the most strenuous efforts at deploying walls, gates and guards. Building on the arguments of Low (2003) and Zedner (2003), we suggest that demands for security are not only unending but that an outward-facing orientation that positions risk outside gated neighbourhoods is a denial of the continued danger of intimate and other forms of violence within communities and households behind gates. In this context the move to enclosure is more than a pragmatic attempt to defend against threat; it appears to reflect the impotence of efforts associated with addressing deep ontological insecurities. Studies continue to record high levels of fear in gated developments, and highly gendered risks of violence continue to be a part of the social reality of the segregated neighbourhood.


Author(s):  
Natalie Mendoza

Abstract This article argues that historical narrative has held a significant role in Mexican American identity formation and civil rights activism by examining the way Mexican Americans in the 1930s and 1940s used history to claim full citizenship status in Texas. In particular, it centers on how George I. Sánchez (1906–1972), a scholar of Latin American education, revised historical narrative by weaving history and foreign policy together through a pragmatic lens. To educators and federal officials, Sánchez used this revisionist history to advocate for Mexican Americans, insisting that the Good Neighbor policy presented the United States with the chance to translate into reality the democratic ideals long professed in the American historical imagination. The example of Sánchez also prompts us to reexamine the historiography in our present day: How do we define the tradition and trajectory of Mexican American intellectual thought in U.S. history? This article posits that when Sánchez and other Mexican Americans thought about their community’s collective identity and civil rights issues through history, they were contributing to a longer conversation driven by questions about identity formation and equality that first emerged at the end of the U.S. War with Mexico in 1848. These questions remain salient in the present, indicating the need for a historiographic examination that will change how we imagine the tradition of intellectual thought in the United States.


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