Stacy Vlasits, Author at Not Even Past

“The End of Austin” – A new online publication

By Randolph Lewis, Editor TEAO and Associate Professor, American Studies, UT-Austin

A city of perpetual nostalgia, Austin is a vivid place where rapid change pulls against profound attachments to the way things are (or how they are imagined to be). Perhaps this dynamic is what gives such poignancy to the idea of endings in Austin. Austinites are always afraid of losing what we love about the city: the vibe of a particular neighborhood, the murmur of the so-called creative class, the beauty and health of Barton Springs. The end of Austin, or at least some beloved facet of it, always seems around the corner, haunting our sense of place. Austin will probably never end in a literal sense, but our project is dedicated to marking and mourning the small endings that are happening on its streets each day. Certainly, there are those who believe that Austin is already dying, as my animation of actual Austin laments might suggest.

Screenshot of the homepage of The End of Austin website

What is The End of Austin? It is the beginning of a much-needed conversation about the identity of Austin. Bringing together writers, scholars, and artists from Texas and beyond, TEOA is a place to wrestle with the hype and hope of living in what is now “the fastest-growing city in the US.” How do we preserve what we love about this place as it moves toward a projected population of 3.5 million in 2040? What have we lost already? Is urban nostalgia a productive fantasy that bonds us to a particular vision of place or a dead-end lament for the way we never were? Those are the essential questions for TEOA, a new online publication that will appear twice a year with a robust mix of art, music, scholarship, creative writing, photography, and video about Austin’s shifting identity.

Why try to create this sort of collaborative work on the boundary between art, journalism, and scholarship? The answer reflects our roots in the American Studies Department at UT-Austin. For us, American Studies is a constant invitation to try new things, and perhaps the best place to experiment is in our own backyard. We hope to make American Studies into something ever more evocative, powerful, and relevant to people inside and outside of the academy. Traditional forms of academic output are important, but we have other contributions to make, other voices in which to address a multitude of publics, including right here in Austin.

I think Austin is particularly ripe for this sort of endeavor because the city defines itself so passionately in terms of its recent past. In many ways, Austin came of age in the 1970s and 1980s, in the sleepier decades of “cosmic cowboys,” Stevie Ray Vaughn, and Slacker. For the first time, a Texas city seemed cool in a way that impressed bi-coastal style mavens. What had been a laidback small city with a large university and the vast machinery of state politics suddenly became the epicenter of “third coast” style. By the late 1990s, Austin was a national brand that meant music festivals, serious cycling, high tech industry, and a gentle spirit of lone star weirdness. Yet something seemed to complicate this sunny (and some would say inflated) self-regard almost as soon as it emerged. Rapid population growth and sometimes ill-considered development led to a new Austin reality: endless sprawl, epic traffic jams, unaffordable real estate, and gentrification that pushed out communities of color in favor of noise-hating neo-yuppies and yarn-bombing, beard-sporting, artisan beer sipping hipsters.

Indeed, Austin has struggled mightily with its own success in the past decade. Locals began to complain that their beloved city was turning into just another sunbelt metroplex—or even worse, Dallas. Not being Dallas remains a point of pride for many Austinites, who define themselves in funky opposition to the rest of Texas in general and the big D in particular (sorry Dallasites: I’m describing here, not endorsing). Our detractors might see our obsession with “keep Austin weird” as pretentious and hollow, but it reflects a genuine anxiety about the shape of things to come. Would glitz and growth push aside the quiet charms that once made Austin so attractive (I’m thinking back to when my parents met here in 1961, or when my wife and I met in 1985)? Would Austin lose its soul?

The results so far have been mixed. It’s always tough slowing “progress” in the name of history, aesthetics, community, or even social justice, but old school Austinites have staved off the “end of Austin” with occasional success. The continued health of the Treaty Oak, Cactus Café, Barton Springs, and Broken Spoke suggest that it is possible to preserve the old places, even if it means literally surrounding an old honkytonk joint with a towering maze of new condos, as is happening to the Spoke right now. Such victories, partial as they may be, have required an appeal to our shared history. After all, an awareness of what happened here, an appreciation of how things evolved, even a bit of melancholy over what has disappeared—this is what anchors us emotionally to a place and makes a city into a home. I wouldn’t choose to live in Austin if it became interchangeable with Phoenix, Atlanta, or Houston, simply because I am invested in our unique “texture of place,” as my colleague Steve Hoelscher calls it. And that texture, I suspect, cannot thrive without a shared awareness of the interplay of past and place. If we do not collectively mark, mourn, and respect our urban history, we risk spending our lives in a sterile built environment that provides material comfort, but none of the spiritual, communal, and intellectual pleasures that a great city can offer. We will find ourselves in the proverbial “geography of nowhere,” and that is a dull and dusty place indeed.

Rather than the dreary exhortation to “keep Austin weird,” I would rather “Make Austin Great.” I am devoid of boosterism when I say this. Despite all of the hype, we are not a great city: we remain too segregated by class and race; too marred by failing infrastructure; too uncertain of how to manage our rapid growth. But with the right conversation between scholars, community members, artists, and activists, I am hopeful about what Austin might become.

This is the rationale behind TEAO. With American Studies grad students Carrie Andersen, Sean Cashbaugh, Greg Seaver, and Emily Roehl, I’ve formed an editorial board to assemble new issues of TEAO that explore Austin’s changing identity. With an eye toward our next issue in Summer 2013, we are looking for original voices from across the US with something to say about Austin’s changing identity. We hope you’ll join the conversation.

Responses from Authors of the NAS Report on Teaching US History at UT

Below you will find two responses we received to my blog about the report of the National Association of Scholars on the teaching of US History at UT and TAMU. (I am posting them in this form because we are in the process of installing a spam filter and have had to shut down our Comments function.)

From Peter Wood:

There are so many mischaracterizations in this post it is hard to know where

to begin. Maybe here:

“As a university professor, I consider it a primary part of my job to teach

students to read carefully, to learn to understand multiple sides of any

historical issue, and to draw conclusions based on the documents they read,

rather than on the assumptions they bring to class. The NAS report fails to

do all of those things. If a student turned in this study to a college level

course, I suspect they would be asked, at the very least, to rethink the

questions they are asking and to do more research.”

The study in question took about two years. It examined every single one of

the 85 courses that these two universities put forward as meeting the state

requirement. We took the syllabi from these 85 courses and acquired all 625

of the assigned readings—625 of them. We read and classified those 625

readings, using in the first cut an independent researcher otherwise detached

from the study. Then several other researchers independently reviewed his

classifications. We prized rigor at every stage of review and analysis.

For Professor Neuberger to claim (on what basis?) that the NAS report

wouldn’t pass the elementary tests of evidence that he expects his students

to meet in college level work suggests several possibilities: (1) she never

read our report and is talking out of her hat; (2) she is not truthful about

the standards to which she holds her own students.

As for drawing conclusions based on the documents rather than

“assumptions,” I would make two points. First, we began the study with

no particular interest in race, class, and gender as foci of courses in

American history. We didn’t know what we would find. Race, class, and

gender emerged conspicuously from the first cut of the data and we

subsequently framed some of our questions around these themes. The report

wasn’t shaped by assumptions but by the observed realities. Second, we

would wish Professor Neuberger would follow her own stricture. She has made

an audacious and wholly inaccurate assumption about our report—that it was

founded on ideological animus—and built the entirety of her commentary on

that phantasm.

A great many college history professors who teach in the race, class, gender

area regard their focus as important and legitimate and are in no hurry to

deny that that is indeed their focus. Is it such a surprise that a

systematic examination of lower-level American history courses at two major

universities demonstrates that among the consequences of this emphasis is

diminished attention to other topics of study? We haven’t called for

leaving these perspectives out of teaching American history, but only for

ensuring that the rest of history also receives due attention.

Professor Neuberger links us to a supposed opinion that historians should

“offer a less critical view of US history” and focus instead on

“positive elements of the past.”

To the contrary, we have not called for teaching “positive elements of the

past,” but for teaching history in its fullness, with neither antagonism

nor cheerleading.

Numerous historians these days, taking their cues from post-Enlightenment

epistemologies, deny the possibility of a de-politicized study of history,

which leaves them, like Professor Neuberger, ill-equipped to respond to a

report that calls for teaching history from a perspective detached from any

form of advocacy. Professor Neuberger confidently declares, “There is no

history that is politically neutral.” How would she know? Has she ever

tried it? The best they can do is imagine that we don’t really mean

it—that we have a hidden agenda in favor of advocating something they

don’t like. But we do mean it. We aren’t looking to replace one form of

partisanship with another but with a sturdy effort to avoid partisanship.

Imagine that.

From Richard Fonte:

The NAS believes that all American History courses should involve significant

reading assignments covering the topics of slavery, American Indians, Labor

Union, women’s suffrage, prohibition, civil rights, immigration, 19th

century & 20th century, poverty, and yes, even popular culture. We do not

demand a simple and one-sided history of just a few people—an elite view of

history. But, we believe that Political History, intellectual history,

military history, religious history and diplomatic history must also be

reflected in the student reading assignments. Frankly, we found that this

approach to history is more characteristic of Texas A&M for these required

undergraduate courses than at UT, Thus we do believe our report

recommendation is asking for something that is not being done better

elsewhere.

What the NAS believes was that the intention of the 1971 law was that

students would be provided a comprehensive survey of American History to

fulfill their two course requirement in American History. Frankly, we do not

find that the “special topics” courses at the University of Texas meet

the comprehensive standard. While many of these topics are interesting in

themselves, they are intentionally not comprehensive.

We had no prior knowledge as to the content of these readings and frankly we

were somewhat surprised by what we found. We were surprised that the reading

assignment coverage was so different at the University of Texas versus Texas

A&M. While not ideal, A&M does have broader coverage in its reading

assignments.

You reference your own interest in teaching approaches and suggest that it

would desirable to focus on that issue rather than the political versus

social history debate. On that point, we were also pleasantly surprised that

those faculty even with strong Race, Class and Gender research interests who

used broad readers or reader style textbooks had much broader coverage of

historical themes than other faculty. Also, we thought intriguing those

faculty that used dual and conflicting textbooks, such as Zinn and Paul

Johnson. Both these approaches were used at UT and I think merit discussion

within the department. Those that used anthologies, in particular allowed

student access to a broader assortment of historical themes and topics. We

also recognize that some faculty members do this through their blackboard

sites. Why not initiate a departmental discussion on such approaches to

increasing course coverage of historical themes. What would be wrong with

that?

The biggest disappointment is the partial abandonment of survey courses by

the University of Texas to fulfill the 1971 law. We were not aware of this

prior to the study and would urge the department to reconsider whether these

courses should fulfill the 1971 requirement. On this point, we suggest that

the University of Texas is clearly out of the mainstream on how the law is

being implemented across the state.

Let me [JN] briefly respond to these comments.

Clearly, Mr Wood and I have different ideas about what constitutes careful research. Whether you spend two years or two minutes doing it, “classifying” syllabi and readings still leaves the researcher with conclusions that don’t accurately reflect actual classroom practice. I have no doubt that the classification was done with rigor, but such tagging alone produced inaccurate results. It is necessary, as every other commentator has pointed out, to set foot in the classroom to see that teaching on race, class, and gender is often contextualized in the broader, fuller context the authors of the report would like.

It is also necessary to think about our courses at The University of Texas at Austin in the context of the courses our students have already taken in high school. As the flagship institution in the UT system, I believe that we can expect more from our students who have had to work harder and further develop their skills and talents in order to get into the flagship university. We can assume that UT-Austin students have learned something about the broad outlines of US History in their middle and high school classes and do not need to repeat those courses here. This allows us to teach more complex courses that focus on specific issues, and that deepen knowledge of less well known subjects. Some students can skip the comprehensive surveys they have already mastered in order to specialize, to study specific topics in more depth. So while I agree with everyone else who has pointed out that our courses are more comprehensive than syllabi seem to show, it is not necessary for all classes to offer the kind of comprehensive curriculum that Mr. Wood and Mr. Fonte would prefer.

As for a priori assumptions guiding research and the possibilities of politically neutral history, I would point out that I did not invent the report’s assumptions, I quoted them from the text itself. Mr. Wood’s belief that politically neutral history exists is another assumption that seems to guide his thinking and perhaps guided the production of the report as well. Mr. Wood asks me to try to produce neutral history, but, curiously, offers none of his own.

He’s right that I can’t imagine an analytical or even descriptive history that doesn’t contain bias of some kind. But biased history still isn’t the same thing as partisanship. It is our job is to identify and understand the biases of our sources, to acknowledge our own biases, and to teach students to do the same. Give us examples of politically neutral history if you think it exists. I’d love to read something they consider neutral. Although Mr. Wood doesn’t mention it in his response to me, at the press conference announcing the report, he called for his “friends in the Texas Legislature” to intervene in the way US History is taught here. Nothing political or partisan in that, is there?

Joan Neuberger
Editor, Not Even Past

The Ottoman Age of Exploration by Giancarlo Casale (2010)

by Christopher Rose

In The Ottoman Age of Exploration, Giancarlo Casale contests the prevailing narrative that characterizes the Ottoman Empire as a passive bystander in the sixteenth-century struggle for dominance of global trade. Using documents from archives in Istanbul and Portugal, Casale shifts our attention east and demonstrates that the Ottomans were actively engaged as rivals to the Portuguese for control of the lucrative spice trade and sea lanes of the Indian Ocean.

Casale’s study is a reaction against two historiographical trends: the first is a Eurocentric version of history in which the so-called Age of Exploration is posited as a purely European phenomenon, conditioned by the intellectual tradition of the European Renaissance and focused on New World colonization. This perspective focuses on the opening of direct trade between Europe and Asia as the catapult that launched Europe forward and started the Ottoman Empire’s slow road toward decline and eventual demise as the “sick man of Europe.” The second is the new trend toward a non-Eurocentric view of world history, that seeks to write the history of the global community that is independent of Europe. The Ottoman Empire tends to get short shrift in the early modern period in both of these narratives because it did not focus on Atlantic exploration or colonization. Indeed, a cursory review of nearly every map published in world history textbooks that depicts trade routes in the 16th and 17th centuries will show a swirl of arrows around, but never through, Ottoman and Safavid lands in the eastern Mediterranean.

Casale proposes instead that Ottoman participation in the Age of Exploration focused on maintaining, expanding, and defending Indian Ocean trade against the Portuguese expansion there. For the Ottomans, the Indian Ocean seemed likely to be far more lucrative than the colonization of a new continent whose economic viability was anything but assured. The income was substantial and the Ottoman and Portuguese navies were well-matched, challenging the Eurocentric narrative that suggests that European exploration was boosted by superior technology and weaponry.

While the phenomenon of Indian Ocean trade in the pre-colonial era has been well documented by Janet Abu-Lughod, Andre Frank and others, Casale provides the Ottoman perspective for the first time through new discoveries in the Ottoman archives. We are introduced to previously unknown heroes and villains, giving familiar events new interpretations. The Ottomans were introduced to this new milieu in 1517 following their conquest of Egypt, a province that had grown rich from its geographic position at the head of the Nile, the head of the Red Sea, and from the their monopoly on trade between the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean world. The Portuguese sought to challenge Egyptian dominance of Indian Ocean trade by circumnavigating Africa and establishing their own trading ports in South Asia. The Ottomans, Casale proposes, were motivated in part by Egypt’s riches, which they needed to support, among other things, their never-ending military rivalry with Safavid Iran. Once in Egypt, however, the Ottomans discovered that the Portuguese had established a blockade of the Red Sea to disrupt Egyptian trade with India and a military outpost at Hormuz to control access to the Persian Gulf. In order to restore trade and income, the Ottomans had to deal with the Portuguese menace and increase the flow of goods and their resulting tax revenue. Over the course of the sixteenth century, this led to the annexation of Yemen and Eritrea in order to enforce a Muslims-only shipping policy in the Red Sea and to prevent the Portuguese from striking at the symbolic heart of the empire, Mecca and Medina, or the imperial shipyards at Suez. Similarly, Basra at the head of the Persian Gulf was incorporated into the empire outright, and Casale documents several negotiated attempts at alliances or outright annexation of territories across the Indian Ocean basin as the Ottoman sphere of influenced waxed and waned over the course of the century.

The Ottomans employed a combination of military might, intelligence and espionage, diplomacy, propaganda, science, technology, and cartography in order to counter the Portuguese as they made a serious bid to expand what Casale refers to as a “soft” empire, where trade, rather than political and military power, connected disparate territories across the Indian Ocean, stretching from Yemen and Hormuz to Gujarat, Calicut, and as far as the sultanate of Aceh on the northern tip of Sumatra. Casale suggests that by 1580, the name of the Ottoman Sultan was read out during Friday khutbas from Central Africa to China, their reward for a propaganda campaign against the Portuguese. In telling this story, Casale’s brings us not only the voices of players in Istanbul, Cairo, and Lisbon but also the voices of the Indian and African rulers for the first time as they played these two powers—Ottoman and Portuguese—off of one another in an attempt to secure their dominions.

Casale might exaggerate the originality of his findings and the vision of some of his historical figures but he makes an interesting, readable, and meticulously detailed case for the Ottoman Empire as an active participant in the first century of the Age of Exploration, along with a well-justified explanation for its decision not to pursue expansion at the century’s end. European and World historians alike will find compelling evidence for a new narrative outlining a perilous balance of power in the Indian Ocean during this era in which Europe’s eventual ascendency was not a foregone conclusion. His readers will gain a new appreciation for all of the players involved—not just European and Ottoman, but also the Indian and African rulers who are finally given voice through Casale’s archival work.

Photo Credits:

Fragment of a 1513 Ottoman map depicting the coasts of Western Europe, Northern Africa and Brazil (Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

A 1606 map of the Ottoman Empire (Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

Women Shaping Texas in the Twentieth Century

By Cristina Metz

Throughout the twentieth century, women began occupying influential public roles. A new exhibit at the Texas State History Museum, Women Shaping Texas in the Twentieth Century, tells the history of Texas women who revolutionized key areas, such as healthcare, education, civil rights, the workforce, business, and the arts. The objects on display in the exhibit, curated by Dr. Paula Marks, professor of American Studies at St. Edward’s University, include historic photographs of women’s social clubs and political activism, and other examples of material culture, such as a World War II nurse’s uniform, as well as several works of activist art. There is even a formal dress straight out of Texas Governor Ann Richard’s closet! In addition to the exhibit, the museum will host a lecture series that will expand on central themes in Texas women’s history and it will soon open a related exhibition called Enduring Women: A Photography and Oral History Project about women living and working on the land in west Texas. These will undoubtedly enrich the experience of visitors to the museum and promote a deeper appreciation for the accomplishments of thousands of ordinary women.

To inaugurate the exhibit and related events, the museum held a symposium on December 8, 2012, titled The Future of Texas Women’s History. Moderator Paula Marks, posed a series of questions to a panel of distinguished historians—Nancy Baker Jones, Judith McArthur, Cynthia Orozco, Merline Pitre, Rebecca Sharpless, Jean Stuntz, and Elizabeth Turner—that focused on the past and current state of historical scholarship about Texan women. The panelists represented a cohort of professional historians who began expanding the fields of women’s and gender history, especially that of the U.S. South and Southwest in the last three decades. Their responses reflect this unique position as professionals in a male-dominated field and suggest ways of expanding what we know about women’s lives.

One question that Marks asked was why women’s history became popular in the 1970s. The panelists pointed out that it took a long time for U.S. women’s history to develop. Not only was the scholarship lacking women, so was the historical profession itself. Dr. Merline Pitre recalled, for instance, that she went through her entire undergraduate and graduate career without having had a single female historian for a professor. A 2005 report of the AHA Committee on Women Historians shows that Dr. Pitre’s experience accurately reflected the dismal state of the field for women given that they filled only 5.9 percent of full professorships in American universities. What accounted for an increase in the number of women historians—and historians doing women’s history—said another panelist, was a growing cadre of women’s liberation activists turned academicians.

Women’s history is today a field unto its own, with its strengths and weaknesses. Several panelists lauded the richness of the scholarship on Texan women. It is growing in quantity and improving in quality. Persistent challenges, however, stem from the struggle for sources. Professional historians spend years gathering primary source material that undergirds their historical analyses, as opposed to what one panelist called descriptive histories of “‘gee wiz’ spectacular women.” A lack of research funding makes it that much harder for historians to produce the texts that today’s readers need in order to engage critically with the legacies of women’s key roles in Texan politics, culture, and society.

Another strength of current scholarship is the growing body of work that details minority women’s experiences. Scholars like Ruthe Winegarten have published books about tejanas and black Texas women. In this area, however, there is still room for improvement. Cynthia Orozco, a professor of History at Eastern New Mexico University, underscored the persistent scarcity of Latina and other minority historians. She was emphatic in her challenge to current historians to support Latina/o students who show a potential for historical research and writing. Her own academic trajectory is replete with examples of the immense challenges that women of color face along the path toward becoming academic historians. She received her B.A. from The University of Texas at Austin in 1980, but was advised to accept an offer of graduate admission at UCLA because it was one of the few institutions where she would have enough support to become a historian of Chicana/o history.

These challenges highlight the promise of future research on the history of U.S. women, especially right here in Texas. The distinguished panel identified areas in need of investigation including, for example, women in grassroots politics, the Texas women’s movement of the 1970s and its response to issues beyond the Equal Rights Amendment, and the struggle for black women’s suffrage. The symposium pointed the way for those who aspire to write women’s histories. It also highlighted the importance of collaboration among scholars to continue to expand the field since, as the exhibit proves, women in Texas have made great strides in many areas, but, as the panelists agreed, there is still more work to be done.

Enduring Women: A Photography and Oral History Exhibit, February 2 – May 19, 2013

You may also enjoy:

Michael Gillette, “Liz Carpenter: Texan”

Photo Credits:

Portrait of former Texas Governor Ann Richards (Image courtesy of user: Clarkwrichards/Wikimedia Commons)

Women shipyard workers, Beaumont, Texas, 1943 (Image courtesy of Library of Congress)

Images used under Fair Use Guidelines: See Wikipedia:Non-free content.

Performing Piety: Making Space Sacred with the Virgin of Guadalupe by Elaine A. Peña (2011)

by Cristina Metz

A Google image search for “Our Lady of Guadalupe” returns millions of images. This Catholic icon appears on paintings, coffee mugs, tattoos, and more. Her image is an international symbol for Catholics and non-religious alike. For Mexicans in particular, la Virgen (as she is known to them) is more than a religious symbol; she is a national symbol. In Performing Piety: Making Space Sacred with the Virgin of Guadalupe, anthropologist Elaine A. Peña explores the intersection of religious practice and national identity through the embodied practices of Marian devotees at three shrines: Tepeyac, Mexico City, Mexico; Des Plaines, Illinois; and Rogers Park, Chicago, Illinois.

The story of la Virgen begins in December 1531, when she appeared to Juan Diego, an indigenous peasant, as he walked along a hill in Mexico City called Tepeyac. This apparition story culminates in the Virgin imprinting her image onto Juan Diego’s tilma, a cloth garment. The site of her apparition became an important shrine in the newly-colonized city. Holy places like this one served an instrumental purpose for the Spanish spiritual conquest. Colonial officials reinforced the legitimacy of the shrine by incorporating it into the actual infrastructure of the city so that by 1748, the path leading to the shrine had become a major entryway into the city. The site’s importance as a holy place has grown tremendously since the colonial period. Together with the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, which houses Juan Diego’s tilma, Tepeyac is today one element of a much larger holy space known as La Villa. This Marian shrine attracts millions of visitors from around the world each year.

One important group of annual visitors are women pilgrims, peregrinas. There are four official, all-women’s pilgrimages to la Villa that set out from Mexican states, such as Michoacán and Morelia, usually in the days leading up to December 12, the holy feast day of la Virgen. The peregrinas walk from their hometown for days, braving heavy traffic, weather, muscle cramps, fatigue, sleep deprivation, and other hardships. Women perform this “devotional labor” for a variety of reasons. Some walk out of a sense of tradition, others are holding up their part of a bargain they made with la Virgen, and still others do so as a reprieve from family and other day-to-day obligations.Once they arrive at the Basilica at Tepeyac, the women attend an early-morning mass then take a ride on a conveyor belt that will transport them to the sixteenth-century image of the Virgin. Peña describes the moment of passing in front of Juan Diego’s tilma as a profound one for which words do not suffice. Peña joined two of these groups on their ritual of devotion to la Virgen. Her active participation, which Peña calls “co-performative witnessing,” helped her realize that while the Virgin of Guadalupe brought people together to a specific location, it was their embodied practices—prayer, song, dance, shrine maintenance—that imbued these sites with holiness.

Devotees of the Virgin who migrated to the United States have created new sacred spaces. In 1987, Joaquín Martínez, a Mexican national living in Des Plaines, Illinois, received a statue of the Virgin from his family in San Luis Potosí. He began soliciting the help of architects and collecting donations to build a shrine for the statue. After nearly two decades, Martínez and the Guadalupan community in Des Plaines inaugurated what came to be known as the Second Tepeyac, a replica of the Tepeyac outdoor sanctuary in Mexico City. High-ranking clergy from Mexico City’s Basilica also assisted the 2001 inauguration. Though it imitates the original, Second Tepeyac has become a multipurpose site. It is a devotional destination for the local area and community organizers hold citizenship workshops there for an increasingly diverse congregation. As Peña sees it, this site is “a sacred space and an inclusive international political haven.”

While Second Tepeyac has achieved a degree of local and transnational legitimacy, a Guadalupan shrine in Rogers Park, a neighborhood in Chicago’s far north side, has not. The area’s early settlers were European immigrants. Today, the population of Rogers Park is divided equally among white, Black, and Latino residents. Demographic changes have caused tensions, especially among longtime white residents and their new Mexican neighbors. These came to a head in 2003 over a contested Guadalupan shrine.

In July 2001, the Virgin appeared to a woman, originally from Guanajuato, while she waited at a bus stop. The woman and area residents built a shrine around the tree where the Virgin’s image appeared and they venerated her by singing traditional songs, such as “Las apariciones Guadalupanas,” which narrates the Virgin’s apparition at Tepeyac. This and other songs are also the ones that female pilgrims in Mexico sing on their pilgrimages. The neighborhood Catholic church kept its distance from the shrine and its keepers because it has strict guidelines in determining whether or not to sanction an apparition. This one did not meet those requirements.

The Rogers Park shrine also encountered resistance from other area residents, city officials, and law enforcement. Devotional practices like prayer meetings and special celebrations at and around the shrine raised the ire of neighborhoods who associated the shrine with immigrants, especially from Mexico, and saw it as an encroachment on what used to be their exclusive space. Police officials also responded negatively. When devotees sought out police protection for their holy site after vandals had destroyed it, they received an offer they could not take. Police officials claimed that the shrine attracted gang activity. They also viewed shrine devotees as potential informants. Through her own participation in meetings with the police and in conversations with community members, Peña observed how police reaction to the shrine only helped to accentuate immigrant fears and distrust of city and law enforcement officials. By November 2003, the Rogers Park shrine had been dismantled. Candles, pictures, letters and other relics that people had left for the Virgin were haphazardly stuffed into city garbage cans.

This study of performing devotion and creating sacred spaces is valuable for many reasons. It offers an insider view of modern-day women’s pilgrimages that exposes the contradictions between a centuries-old practice and modernity. Peña’s study also details the ways beliefs and practices travel, how they stay the same, and how they change. Finally, it also helps us understand the many ways that newly-arrived migrants begin building community in their new home and how they become politically empowered through community-based self-help projects.

Photo Credits:

A 16th century rendering of the Virgin of Guadalupe (Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

A devotional doll of the Virgin at the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City (Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

You may also like:

Janine Jones’ review of Devoted to Death: Santa Meurte, the Skeleton Saint

Kristie Flannery’s review of 2012 and the End of the World: The Western Roots of the Maya Apocalypse

Why is Anne Hathaway So Sad? The History Behind “Les Misérables” (2012)

By Julia M. Gossard

As a French historian, I was bombarded with questions from friends, family members, and even strangers about whether I was excited to see “Les Miz,” the film version of the wildly popular stage musical, which was released in December. For some reason, knowing that someone who studies French history is excited to see Les Misérables makes people want to see the film more. A film adaptation of a stage play is always a risky venture. A film adaptation of a stage play, that itself was a musical adaptation of a novel, especially such a well-known and prodigious novel like Victor Hugo’s 1862 Les Misérables, is even riskier. But after the opening weekend alone, the new Les Misérables is already considered a commercial success with an estimated $18.2 million in box office receipts and many favorable reviews. Overall, Les Misérables is an intense, moving, and beautiful film that will undoubtedly receive numerous award nominations in the next few months and I highly suggest that you add it to your holiday season watch list. But while the 2012 Les Misérables is a moving and entertaining film musical, it lacks historical context and may leave viewers scratching their heads about basic plot elements.

The film follows the life of paroled criminal, Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman) in his struggle for redemption, from 1815 to the June Rebellion of 1832. After breaking parole, Valjean is chased by Police Inspector Javert (Russell Crowe) for nearly fifteen years. Under one of his assumed identities as a factory owner and mayor of Montreuil, Valjean meets Fantine (Anne Hathaway), his former factory worker and now a prostitute who is dying. Valjean promises Fantine that he will rescue her child, Cosette (Amanda Seyfried) from her life with a cruel innkeeper, Thénardier (Sacha Baron Cohen) and his wife, Madame Thénardier (Helena Bonham Carter), and raise Cosette as his own. Escaping from Javert twice, Valjean and Cosette move to Paris where Cosette falls in love with Marius (Eddie Redmayne), a French Republican and member of the “Friends of the ABC.” Marius, along with the leader of the “Friends of the ABC,” Enjolras (Aaron Tveit), plan a rebellion against Louis Philippe’s monarchy that will coincide with General Lamarque’s funeral. This rebellion, known as the June Rebellion of 1832, is chronicled in the last half of the film, with Marius, Valjean, and Javert all becoming involved.

Hooper’s decision to focus on the actors’ faces and upper bodies in lieu of wider shots that could establish the Parisian setting, was particularly striking in comparison to other musicals. When you attend a musical in a stage theater, you typically focus on the cast as a whole, their interactions with each other, and the setting, but rarely on the facial expressions of the actors since they are far away. By employing so many close-ups Hooper brings attention away from the setting, nineteenth-century Paris, and places it onto the individual characters. Shockingly, the only time the viewer may

really realize that Les Misérables is set in Paris is during Javert’s two solos when he teeters precariously on the ledge of the Palais de Justice in front of Notre Dame and later on a bridge high above the Seine. Even then, the viewer only sees a quick and blurred view of Paris at night. Since much of Victor Hugo’s original novel, Les Misérables, describes the deteriorating living conditions of the poor in the increasingly industrial and dirty Paris, this was rather disappointing. I would have preferred to see Paris as a character itself, as it is in the novel, instead of the out-of-focus background that Hooper created.

This is not the sole fault of the current filmmakers as there is little historical context in the original musical composed by Alan Boubliland and Claude-Michel Schönberg for the stage in 1980. Instead of focusing on republicanism, the failures of the 1789 Revolution, antimonarchism, the increased suffering and austerity of the poor, the changing nature and architecture of nineteenth-century Paris, and issues pertaining to religion that were fixtures in Hugo’s Les Misérables, Boubliland and Schönberg chose to concentrate on Hugo’s more romantic themes of individual redemption and simplified ideas of social justice as they are more easily expressed in emotionally powerful songs. By continuing to have these themes drive the plot of the movie, Hooper and William Nicholson, the main screenwriter who adapted the musical for film, overlook Hugo’s sharp political criticism and even the reasons why particular characters were so angry and so opposed to monarchy. Although many viewers are likely to be satisfied with the romantic plot and the great songs, many, especially those unfamiliar with the historical context, are undoubtedly perplexed. Throughout the nearly three-hour film, my dad nudged me and whispered, “Why is Cosette living with the Borat guy (Thénardier played by Sacha Baron Cohen) and his wife? Why are the boys mad? Who’s General Lamarque? Why does it matter that he died? Who’s Louis Philippe? Is this in Paris? When is this?” In fact, exiting the movie theater I overheard a woman asking her friend, “So that was the French Revolution and it was unsuccessful?”

This woman’s question pointed out a common misconception about Les Misérables: that it is set against the backdrop of what historians call the French Revolution which began in 1789. That revolution lasted until 1799 and at first overthrew Louis XVI’s absolutist monarchy in favor of a constitutional monarchy and later, after Louis XVI’s execution in 1793, created a republic, or a democratically elected

government without a monarch. But the 1789 revolution is not the backdrop for Les Misérables. Instead, Hugo’s novel and the musical take place during The Bourbon Restoration (1815-1830) and the very beginning of the July Monarchy (1830-1848). Although Hooper includes a quick five-second text at the beginning of the film that reads, “1815, twenty-six years after the Revolution there is once again a French king on the throne,” few understand the implied, complicated historical context these words are supposed to provide.

Unless you just took a course on French history, you might not remember that 1815 marked the end of the First French Empire. Following his defeat at the Battle of Waterloo and his subsequent exile to St. Helena, in 1815 Napoleon abdicated as Emperor. From 1815 until 1848, France was ruled by a monarchy, but unlike the earlier absolutist French monarchy, often referred to as the “Ancien Régime,” the Restoration was a constitutional monarchy that began with Louis XVIII who was later succeeded by Charles X. Under the Charter of 1814, a constitutional monarchy meant that even though the king still held considerable power over policy-making, his legal decrees had to be passed and legitimated by Parliament before they went into effect. But in 1830, Charles X tried to amend the Charter of 1814 to restrict the press and create a more absolutist form of government. Unhappy with this attack on their rights, many Parisians mobilized in July 1830 and forced Charles X to abdicate his throne in what became known as the July Revolution, or the Trois Glorieuses in French, referring to the three days of the uprising. The July Revolution is only glossed over in the novel and not addressed in the musical though it impacted the future June Rebellion of 1832 which is showcased in Les Misérables.

Louis Philippe succeeded Charles X and was initially very popular. But, like constitutional monarchs before him, he became more conservative, wanting to increase monarchical power. Working and living conditions of the poor rapidly deteriorated under Louis Philippe and the income gap between the working classes and the bourgeoisie widened considerably, resulting in increased opposition, antimonarchism, and civil unrest. One of the leading members of the opposition was Jean Maximilien Lamarque, referred to in the novel and the musical as “General Lamarque.” Once an enthusiastic supporter of Louis Philippe, Lamarque quickly became one of his biggest opponents, insisting that Louis Philippe’s form of constitutional monarchy was an affront to civil rights and political liberty. In the novel, General Lamarque is portrayed as a champion of the poor, working classes. Although this is implied in the film, his role beyond being a supporter of the poor is left unexplained, leading many to wonder why his death was the catalyst to the unsuccessful June Rebellion led by Enjolras, Marius, and other “Friends of the ABC.” Led by Parisian Republicans, most of whom were schoolboys, who wished to incite another rebellion like that of July 1830 and dissolve the monarchy, the June Rebellion was defeated and resulted in an estimated 800 casualties in Paris. Despite Enjolras mentioning that the “other barricades have fallen,” in the film we do not get a sense of just how many other barricades there were or how many other people were involved in the uprising. Only about twenty men are shown with Enjolras and Marius in the film, leading the viewer to believe that this was nothing more than an attempt by a handful of schoolboys to overthrow the government, when in actuality it was a somewhat larger movement than suggested. Their motivations for wanting to overthrow the government are only superficially explained with the song “Do You Hear the People Sing?” Although a sort of battle cry in the film, the song does not actually explain why these men, French Republicans, were opposed the constitutional monarchy.

Victor Hugo, himself, was originally a royalist and a member of Louis Philippe’s government, but became discontent with the monarchy. In the 1830s he supported republicanism that favored a constitutional form of government with more freedom of the press, increased self-government, and a fairer justice system. When the Revolution in 1848 brought an end to monarchy and created another new French republic, Hugo was elected to the Constitutional Assembly and the Legislative Assembly, taking an active role in the elected, republican government. However, this Second Republic was short lived. Napoleon III, originally elected as President of the Second Republic in 1848, took power as a monarchical ruler in 1851 and declared himself Emperor in 1852. Following this, Hugo publically declared Napoleon III a traitor and was exiled to Guernesy. It was here, during his exile, that Hugo wrote Les Misérables in the 1850s and early 1860s. Therefore, Les Misérables was not only intended as a political criticism of Louis Philippe’s reign in the 1830s and 1840s, but also of Napoleon III’s rule over France in the 1850s. Hugo hoped that Les Misérables would reveal the social injustices that occurred under any monarchical or imperial rule, spurring support for the French Republic. By focusing on the death and suffering of the poor and the revolutionaries, Hugo also made sure to explain that more freedom would come with a price and attempts to overthrow a government would sometimes be unsuccessful, but were worth fighting for.

The musical not only omitted Hugo’s scathing political criticism of Louis Philippe, and Napoleon III, but also the anticlerical sentiments espoused in Hugo’s novel. With the reestablishment of the monarchy in 1815, the Roman Catholic Church once again became a powerful force in French politics and society. Hugo displays the importance of the Catholic Church to French society during this period by emphasizing the importance of Bishop Myriel to his community and by staging numerous scenes in convents and other religious houses. However, his inclusion of these characters and

scenes is not to be confused with praise. As he became increasingly opposed to monarchy, Hugo also became increasingly opposed to the Church. Despite being raised as a Catholic and remaining a believer (the last line of his will reads “Je crois en Dieu” or “I believe in God”), he found little use for organized religion and often viewed the Church as responsible for increasing the suffering of the poor thanks to its reduction in public services and what he saw as a general apathy of the people. But, based on the musical and the film, one might conclude that Hugo was a strong supporter and admirer of the Catholic Church.

Another issue that could have been better addressed in the film was the peculiar living situation of Fantine and Cosette. We learn early on that Fantine, who initially is working at Valjean’s factory, has an illegitimate daughter who she sent to live with an innkeeper, Thénardier, and his wife. After seeing the film, both my dad and one of my friends asked me, “Why in the world would Fantine send her daughter to live with an innkeeper and pay for it if Cosette works for them?” Sending children, especially girls, to live and work in other households was a rather common practice throughout this era. Similar to indentured servitude, young girls were employed as domestic servants in households throughout Europe. Paid at the end of their terms, these domestic servants were usually allowed to live in the household in provided quarters and, under coverture laws, were legally dependent upon the head of the household they lived in. For many single mothers like Fantine who could probably not afford to care for Cosette completely, let alone watch her during the day, sending a child away to work and live would have been a difficult, yet necessary decision.

Les Misérables is a musical masterpiece and a thoroughly enjoyable movie-going experience, even without the historical context. However, if you are distracted by lingering contextual questions, I suggest that you browse the Wikipedia page on Les Misérables (the novel) before you see the film. This article will provide you with a brief synopsis of the plot, the characters, and enough historical context so you do not feel lost. And maybe forward that information to your friends and family beforehand so you aren’t the one being nudged every few minutes for answers to historical questions.

Photo Credits:

An 1886 engraving of the Les Misérables character “Cosette” (Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

Louis Philippe I, the King of France from 1830 to 1848 (Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

Painting of the July Revolution of 1830 in Paris (Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

1849 caricature of Victor Hugo (Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

Images used under Fair Use Guidelines

From the Editor: On the Report by The National Association of Scholars about US History at UT

by Joan Neuberger

This week the National Association of Scholars released a report critical of the ways US History is taught at the University of Texas at Austin and at Texas A & M. The authors of the report, entitled, “Recasting History: Are Race, Class, and Gender Dominating American History?” claimed to have studied all sections of lower-division US History courses taught at the two universities in all 2010. They concluded that:

“all too often the course readings gave strong emphasis to race, class, or gender (RCG) social history, an emphasis so strong that it diminished the attention given to other subjects in American history (such as military, diplomatic, religious, intellectual history). The result is that these institutions frequently offered students a less-than-comprehensive picture of U.S. history.”

In other words, the stated goal of the NAS is to ensure that introductory, required courses in US History are broader and more comprehensive. But the study was so poorly researched and its conclusions are so flawed, that one is forced to ask whether the goal was simply to attack the teaching of histories that include race, class, and gender.

As Editor of Not Even Past and of our sister site, 15 Minute History for K-12 teachers and students, one of my main concerns is to balance the kinds of history we offer to the public, so I am automatically interested in a study that examines such an important set of university courses. As the report points out, since 1971, students at public universities in Texas are required to take two courses in US History. The purpose of the requirement was always political and contemporary: to produce citizens who have at least a rudimentary knowledge of the history of the country where they live and vote. (Whether required university courses can do that is a debate for another day.)

It is tempting to dismiss the report as just another conservative critique of the liberal academy. For decades, politically conservative sectors of the public have been calling for us to offer a less critical view of US History and a focus on what they see as the positive elements of our past. They often claim, as the NAS report does (p. 49), that teaching about race, class, and gender has politicized the teaching of history, while teaching more political, economic, intellectual, and military history would depoliticize it. In these assessments, social and cultural history are depicted as either trivial or as left-leaning, while political, military and intellectual history are seen as important and politically neutral. The NAS report attempts to mask that critique by claiming to call for all-inclusive courses:

“A depoliticized history would provide a comprehensive interpretation of American history that does not shortchange students by denying them exposure to intellectual, political, religious, diplomatic, military, and economic historical themes.”

But this call for a “broad” approach — which is favored by people on all sides of the issues — follows from the conclusion that:

“The root of the problem is that colleges and universities have drifted from their main mission. They and particular programs within them, increasingly think of themselves as responsible for reforming American society and curing it of prejudice and bigotry. When universities and university programs consider it necessary to atone for, and help erase, oppressions of the past; one way in which they do so is by depicting history as primarily a struggle of the downtrodden against rooted injustice.”

As a university professor, I consider it a primary part of my job to teach students to read carefully, to learn to understand multiple sides of any historical issue, and to draw conclusions based on the documents they read, rather than on the assumptions they bring to class. The NAS report fails to do all of those things. If a student turned in this study to a college level course, I suspect they would be asked, at the very least, to rethink the questions they are asking and to do more research.

The methods used to study the US History courses are deeply flawed. The problems with the methodology are most apparent at the very beginning and the very end. The statement quoted above, that “colleges and universities…think of themselves as responsible for reforming American society,” is not a conclusion drawn from study of courses taught, but an assumption that the authors brought to the project. There is nothing in any of the syllabi or assignments that this study examines that leads to that conclusion. We teach students to ask open-ended questions so they don’t end up simply finding evidence to prove what they believed all along. The question “Are race, class, and gender dominating American History?” is designed to be answered “yes.” (A better question would be: “what role do race, class, and gender play in teaching US History?”) The authors, not surprisingly, “found” only evidence that supported their assumptions. The most important kinds of evidence in doing any research are the documents that challenge our assumptions, because that evidence forces all of us to think harder about whatever we study and to defend our ideas more persuasively.

The assumptions underlying the study are themselves problematic. There is no history that is politically neutral. Anyone who pays any attention to the decisions of the Supreme Court or any debate in Congress must realize that the Constitution itself is a political document that can be interpreted in multiple, conflicting ways. Teaching the important political, intellectual, and economic documents of our history, which we all do already, adds to the politicization of History teaching, if those documents are read carefully and discussed openly.

More important, the authors of this study relied on superficial and misleading evidence about what goes on the classroom. As others have now pointed out, the absence of the Declaration of Independence or the Gettysburg Address from the syllabus does not mean that those documents are not being discussed in the classroom. And as UT History Professor Jeremi Suri said in his response to the report, one cannot teach political or military or economic history in any meaningful way without teaching race, class, and gender.

One of the most important lessons we can teach students about history is to examine any subject in its full context. Every document, whether the Bill of Rights or a personal letter from a soldier to her mother, has to be understood in context. But the authors of the NAS study didn’t visit a single classroom or interview a single professor. They didn’t open themselves up to finding any evidence that challenged the assumptions with which they began. The purpose of research is not necessarily to change one’s mind about a subject, but to learn more about it, to see the past in a more complex way, with more possibilities for interpretation and outcome. When we do research that confirms what we already knew, or leaves us with another simplistic either/or picture of the world, we haven’t learned anything at all.

If we look at the issues raised in the NAS report in historical context, we learn that the teaching of race, class, and gender in history today is a corrective to the way history was written and taught before the Second World War. No one liked history that’s “all names and dates,” especially when all those names represented the people with power. When historians began studying racial minorities, women, workers, and people at the bottom of other hierarchies, they discovered a much richer story. They discovered that we can’t understand the US Civil War if we don’t know anything about slavery, and we can’t understand slavery if we don’t study the life experiences of slaves as well as slave owners—men and women both. We can’t understand economic and technological progress if we only study the people who benefited from change and we can’t understand military or diplomatic history if we only study generals, diplomats, and presidents.

Most important of all is that the NAS report fails to recognize that we already teach the introductory surveys they are asking for: broad studies of US History that include the major political, economic, and military developments as well as the intersection of the powerful people who make policy and the lives of ordinary people. History is a complicated, messy experience that produces triumphs and tragedies, large and small.

There are always ways we can improve what and how we teach. Instead of this familiar debate about political vs social history, I wish we were talking about how we can activate student learning in the classroom like Mills Kelly does here or William Turkel does here, or how we can use smart, focused internet projects to engage students with online activities they already enjoy, as The Pew Internet Project reports here. But mostly, I wish NAS had sent their researchers here to our classrooms, where our professors are winning teaching awards for using innovative techniques, or our offices and hallways and meeting rooms where we talk to each other every semester about teaching.

The National Association of Scholars claims to want broader, more inclusive courses in US History, but since we are already teaching broadly and including the topics they ask for, and since their report seems designed to prove the opposite, one can’t help but suspect that the real goal of this report is to swing the pendulum all the way back to a study of history that erases the discussion of class, gender, and race, from the curriculum. We are not going there.

The NAS Report:

Recasting History: Are Race, Class, and Gender Dominating American History?

Responses:

Jeremi Suri, What Kind of History Should We Teach?

Joseph Adelman, The Value of Studying Politics in Context

University of Texas at Austin Statement on National Association of Scholars Report

Responses posted on the NAS website

Texas Tribune article on the NAS report

Another excellent response by blogger Historiann, “A Dumb and Dishonest View of American History Education in Texas.”

Devoted to Death: Santa Muerte, the Skeleton Saint by R. Andrew Chesnut (2011)

by Janine Jones

During a recent drug bust in Houston, Texas, officers discovered a shrine to a skeleton statuette, robed in green and holding a scythe wrapped in dollar bills in her right hand, tobacco lying as an offering at her feet. Votive candles of various colors surrounded the statuette, as well as regularly replenished glasses filled with water and Mexican tequila. The officers had found Santa Muerte.

In Devoted to Death, R. Andrew Chesnut tells the tale of the recent rise in popular reverence for the Mexican folk “saint of death.” A non-canonized, non-sanctioned saint nicknamed “La Huesuda” (Bony Lady) and “La Flaquita” (Skinny Lady), Santa Muerte rivals Mexico’s beloved Virgin of Guadalupe in popular appeal, yet the majority of her devotees are drug kingpins, gangs, the poor and the dispossessed. Angel of death, protector of the impoverished, and provider of love, prosperity, and healing, Santa Muerte combines the powers of what is commonly considered magic, witchcraft, the occult, and religious tradition. Yet, rather than a lurid exposé of the cult surrounding this patroness of criminals, in his book Chesnut offers an insightful ethnographic exploration of the limits of “true” religion and of the practices outside its borders.

In seven chapters, each named for a color of candle lit to the Bony Lady, Chesnut recounts the rainbow of qualities ascribed to Saint Death, and the gifts she bestows on believers. Prayer requests to her must be accompanied by correctly colored candles, believers explain: red brings love and passion; purple, healing; gold, prosperity and abundance; green protection from – or through – the law. As is common in folk religions, Chesnut explains, the relationship between believers and Santa Muerte is “contractual” and based on reciprocity; devotees expect to be rewarded for their devotion. As “godmother and sister” Santa Muerte mends relationships and nurtures the weak, and as angel of death she metes out justice and vengeance. She is “a supernatural action figure who heals, provides, and punishes,” making her “the hardest-working and most productive folk saint on either side of the border,” in many ways “supplant[ing] God himself with her ability to perform miracles.” Perhaps most surprising, particularly for those who associate religiosity with peaceful, morally-focused living, is that though her devotees come from all walks of life, Santa Muerte has a significant following among Mexico’s notorious narcos. Criminal cartels light black candles to her for protection – both from rivals and from the reach of the law – and for death and vengeance to their enemies. Though she is decidedly not an orthodox Catholic saint, devotees model their ritual observance of her upon traditional Mexican Catholic practices, creating shrines with robed skeleton statuettes, leaving devotional offerings – often of tobacco or marijuana – and, of course, lighting votive candles.

Worshipers of Santa Muerte raise devotional dolls to the deity in Mexico City (Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

An ethnographic work based largely on personal interviews and media research, Devoted to Death is written for popular readers. The lack of historical context, along with scant citations, minimal background research or discussion of devotional practices generally, will frustrate scholars. Still, though it is more of a jumping off point than a definitive work, Devoted to Death opens a new window on the nature of religion. Its unusual subject matter makes it a fascinating read.

Further Reading:

More images of the Santa Meurte from Time

And two Houston Press articles about the Santa Meurte:

“Know your Narco Saints: Iconography of the Drug Trade”

“Santa Muerte: Patron Saint of the Drug War”

An “Act of Justice”?

By Juliet E. K. Walker

We knowed freedom was on us, but we didn’t know what was to come with it. Wethought we was going to get rich like the white folks. We thought we was going tobe richer than the white folks, ‘cause we was stronger and knowed how to work, andthe whites didn’t, and they didn’t have us to work for them any more. But it didn’tturn out that way. We soon found out that freedom could make folks proud, but itdidn’t make them rich.
–Texas slave-born Felix Hayward, 1937

Plantation slavery was the nation’s most profitable enterprise before the Civil War and, with the onset of military hostilities, White America, southerners as well as northerners, businessmen and the working class, hoped the institution could be preserved, but only where it existed. Slavery had proved profitable not only to a slave-holding oligarchy in the South but also to northern business interests in banking, transportation, shipping, insurance, investment and manufacturing. In the North, moreover, not only the white urban working class but also small businesspeople depended on profits from the processing, sale and transportation of slave-produced commodities for their economic livelihood.

slave_forced_to_fight — “Slaves Forced to Fight for the Confederacy,” Harper’s Weekly, May 10, 1862

Indeed, until the Civil War, slave produced cotton comprised more than 50% of America’s exports and was the basis of the nation’s wealth. White America profited from this race-based institution of forced unpaid slavery, the engine of enterprise that propelled the nation’s pre-Civil War, pre-industrial economy. Moreover, the results of America’s first modern war were transformative. The nation emerged from the war, subsequently building on an unprecedented profitable economic foundation derived from its newly developing military industrial complex.

Yet, for African Americans, while a de jure freedom would be accomplished with the three Civil War Amendments in 1865, 1868 and 1870, the historical reality was the continuation of a de facto subordinate status of racial inequalities. For African Americans in the march from slavery to freedom, significantly, racial economic iniquities persisted, even after the Civil Rights Acts of the 1960s and well into the twenty-first century.

walkerrecruitment_poster — Recruitment Poster

Initially, on April 15, 1861, in response to the Confederate firing on Fort Sumter, President Lincoln called for 75,000 new enlistees in the Union Army to shore up its then military force of only 16,000, but with unanticipated Confederate victories the first year of the war, more Union troops were needed. Even so, Lincoln’s call for 300,000 volunteers in July 1862 yielded only 88,000 new recruits. How could the Union win a war without a substantial military force that could defeat the Confederacy? Fear of the destruction of slavery, however, was the Confederate’s Achilles heel and, as a matter of military necessity, Lincoln capitalized on this fear with his preliminary draft of the Emancipation Proclamation.

When presented to his cabinet in July 1862 Lincoln, however, was advised by Secretary of War William Steward to wait until the Union won a significant battle before making a public announcement. On September 22, 1862, five days after the first major Union victory at Antietam September 17, 1862, Lincoln officially announced his preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. And, the document, indeed, was as much a matter of military necessity as it was an “act of justice,” especially when Lincoln proclaimed that on January 1, 1863 slaves in the states of rebellion would be free. As he stated: “[U]pon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution, upon military necessity, I invoke the considerate judgment of mankind, and the gracious favor of Almighty God.”

On January 1, 1863, the eleven-state Confederacy, obstinately prepared to defend to death the institution of slavery, did not withdraw from the war. The Supreme Commander of Union military forces, equally determined that the nation would be preserved, gave up any public political pretense of winning the hearts and minds of Americans who supported the Confederacy. Yet, prospects of slave emancipation also heightened fears of the northern white working classes. In the New England, Mid-Atlantic and Midwestern states, whites comprised over 98% of the population. Yet, fear of some four million slaves, 14% of the American population, flocking to the North to take their jobs and hold down wages, simply put, was not the kind of incentive white workers needed as a basis to fight a war.

For the northern white laboring classes slave emancipation, it seemed, would work to their economic disadvantage, unless the entire black population could be removed from the nation. Consequently, President Lincoln attempted to mitigate concerns of the white laboring class. Just one month before the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect Lincoln announced in a speech made on December 1, 1862 that, while the Emancipation Proclamation would free slaves in the states of rebellion, the possibility existed that, with a Union military victory, the colonization of all blacks could be accomplished thereby eliminating the threat of job competition.

According to Carl Sandburg in his Abraham Lincoln: The War Years, as Lincoln explained: “Reduce the supply of black labor by colonizing the black laborers out of the country, and by precisely so much you increase the demand for, and the wages of, white labor.” So, while the white working class in the North, potential recruits for the Union Army, would not be enthusiastic about fighting a war to bring down slavery, doubtless, they would support a war where a Union victory might lead to the complete removal of the nation’s black population, both slave and free.

Throughout the war, the President’s continued support of black colonization also underscores the extent to which the Union’s Commander-in-Chief’s priority, “preserving the union,” took precedent, even if meant that the only free people in America would be those who were white. Indeed, in a New York Times review of William Miller’s Lincoln’s Virtues, historian Eric Foner proffered an analysis suggesting that: “Lincoln’s support of a policy [colonization] that might be called the ethnic cleansing of America was no transitory fancy.” Moreover, as historian Charles Wesley noted, even during the final month of the war, when Lincoln supported the idea of granting some deserving blacks the right to vote, he also continued to support colonization.

Consequently, Lincoln’s December 1862 Colonization edict, preceding his Emancipation Proclamation, which stipulated that slaves in the state of rebellion would be free on January 1, 1863, were brilliant strategies of military necessity. If the Confederacy withdrew from the war, the institution of slavery would be preserved. If the Union won and Lincoln followed through on black colonization, not only northern white workingmen, but also the southern white working class would not have to compete for jobs with some 4.5 million free blacks. What else could the “Great Emancipator” do? To win a war, he needed an army and the masses of men who could fight in the Union army were the white workers.

Even so, as Lincoln was drafting the Proclamation in the summer of 1862, Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune, published an open letter on August 19, 1862 to the President. Entitled “The Prayer of Twenty Millions,” Greeley pleaded to the President to free the slaves, emphasizing that slave emancipation would weaken the Confederacy. Responding in a letter written August 22 Lincoln wrote:

Colonel Robert Gould Shaw and the men of the 54th Massachusetts are depicted in this chromolithograph, “Storming Fort Wagner,” by Louis Kurz and Alexander Allison, printed, c 1890 July 5. Repository: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA. The July 18 assault on the fort is dramatized in the 1989 Academy Award winning film, Glory.

My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union, . . . I have here stated my purpose according to my view of Official duty: and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free.

While Lincoln could personally wish that “all men everywhere could be free,” as President, his priority was to save the Union. Whether blacks were slaves or free or, even if it meant the complete removal and colonization of all blacks, the Union would be preserved! More than 100,000 slaves came under Union control as contraband. Also, a significant number of blacks who comprised the 180,000 United States Colored Troops (USCT) were former slaves. Their enlistment was encouraged in the Emancipation Proclamation for Lincoln stated: “And I further declare and make known that such persons of suitable condition will be received into the armed service of United States to garrison forts, positions, stations, and other places, and to man vessels of all sorts in said service.”

“The Fall of Richmond, Refugees, April 2, 1865.” Courtesy of the Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division.

Still, over 3 million Blacks remained in bondage during the Civil War. The experiences of those who came under control of Union forces during the Civil War is instructive of the prospect for their economic advancement. Historian Willie Lee Rose reviewed the life of contraband freedmen in Union occupied Port Royal, South Carolina during and after the Civil War as a “Rehearsal for Reconstruction.” When Union military troops occupied the Sea Islands off the coast of South Carolina in 1861, white plantation slave owners fled, abandoning their property, including some 10,000 slaves. They remained and worked the confiscated lands, growing cotton as well as their own crops for sale. Profits enabled some to purchase land, but in 1865 the new President Andrew Johnson returned the land to the former owners.

Yet, the virulent urban race riots that took place in the North during the 1850s ”Decade of Crisis” as well as on the northern home front during the Civil War, provide a more prescient prelude for the post-Civil War Black American’s search for economic freedom. From the end of the Civil War through the post-Civil Rights era, racial intolerance and racial violence as well as the persistent unconscionable economic and societal subordination of African Americans persisted. In many ways, then, the race-based labor conflicts that took place during the Civil War and the exclusion of blacks as skilled and even unskilled laborers in the manufacturing sector of the North’s incipient military-industrial complex presaged what would be the reality of life for urban blacks in post-Civil War industrial America.

Frederick B. Schell, “The first Mississippi Negro cavalry bringing into Vicksburg Confederate prisoners captured at Haines’s Bluff.” From Frank Leslie, The Soldier in our Civil War: A Pictorial History of the Conflict 1861-1865, illustrating the valor of the soldiers as displayed on the battle field. (New York: Stanley Bradley, 1893).

Ultimately, as William E. B. Du Bois noted in his 1903 The Souls of Black Folk: “To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships.” Indeed, those who were horrified by media presentations of New Orleans refugee blacks in the 2005 Katrina disaster found little that distinguished their economic suffering from that of black refugees during the Civil War in their efforts to escape the devastating effects of slavery. Still, the Emancipation Proclamation provided the basis for the beginning of freedom for African Americans. Particularly in the twenty-first century, the 2008 election and 2012 re-election of the first African American president of the United States, Barack Obama, contributed to the pride of Black Americans, as an acknowledgment of their freedom. But as Texas slave-born Felix Hayward said in 1937, “We soon found out that freedom could make folks proud, but it didn’t make them rich.”

Still, Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation that began as a “matter of military necessity” marked the beginning of an “Act of Justice” by the President as he pursued full constitutional sanction to end the inexorably unconscionable institution of the forced unpaid servitude of black people held as slaves. In 1864 President Abraham Lincoln, “the Great Emancipator,” took leadership in securing constitutional sanction for the freedom of blacks from slavery, achieved with the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865. Yet, some 150 years after the document went into effect and despite the access of African Americans to leading national political positions, full racial equality, particularly the end of race-based economic iniquities, has yet to be achieved. Perhaps, by January 1, 2113?