[This is the exact text of my talk. You can download a pdf version of all the slides: NACCS though I haven’t been able to reach Maria Teresa Fernandez to get her permission to repost them to the internet. She did give me permission to use them in my research when I spoke to her at USC in 2010. If anyone has a current email address for her, please send it to me at annemarie (dot) perez (at) me (dot) com ]
“for those who dream of roses / swallow thorns”: Aztlán as Cosmopolitical Space
I’ve included in this talk a photographs by Mexican artist Maria Teresa Fernandez. She’s documented the building of the Wall between the US and Mexico and the increasing militarization of the border. These first images are about the demise of Friendship Park, the point where the US and Mexico meet the Pacific ocean. Here’s the park as it was, a space for meeting friends and family on the other side.
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Here it is as the barricade was erected in 2009, creating a yards wide distance between US residents and the border fence, dividing people.
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New rules are in place forbidding contact that was, until recently, relatively casual and free.
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Modern usage of the term Aztlán dates from the 1960s-1970s civil rights movements. . The poet Alturista gave Aztlán’s mythology in his poem introducing the journal Aztlan… Read the rest