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El Norte : the epic and forgotten story of Hispanic North America
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2019
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NonFiction
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New York Times Review
one hundred years before the arrival of the Pilgrims, Mexicans were already here. (With typical dark humor they used to say that when God ordered Fiat luxi, Híspanles were late with the bill for the electric company.) Carlos Fuentes was 10 years old when his father, a Mexican diplomat in Washington, took him to see a film that included the secession of Texas from Mexico; the boy stood up in the dark and cried, "Viva Mexico!" It was a sense of duty he carried all his life. Gabriel García Márquez journeyed to the South, following in Faulkner's footsteps. In his own Faulknerian accounts of too many years of solitude he adds that the Americans, with the excuse of eradicating yellow fever, stayed in the Caribbean far too long. Fuentes was once forbidden to disembark from a ship in Puerto Rico, and García Márquez was asked to strip naked at customs. "El Norte: The Epic and Forgotten Story of Hispanic North America" is the book that Americans, Anglo and Hispanic, should read as an education on their own American place or role. The author of "Empire's Crossroads: A History of the Caribbean From Columbus to the Present Day," Carrie Gibson takes on the task of accounting for the relevant and telling cases of our modern process of national formation and regional negotiations. This is a serious book of history but also an engaging project of reading the future in the past. Crossing borders has become a formal rite de passage toward identity, and Latin Americans are experts in dealing with the walls, fences and barriers of misreading - as Mexican, Hispanic-American, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Caribbean and Latin American, not to mention Latino, mestizo, mulatto, Native and every other wall of misrepresentation. This formidable display of categorization has produced a complex and intricate cultural system of representing ethnic territories, racial mappings and exclusionary perceptions. To split the atom has proved to be easier than to split a prejudice. The civil society reinforced what is not-inclusive: skin color, religion and language. Identity was forged from the color of the others, languages of origin, religions and bone size. Gibson recounts this forgotten epic, but one can also read her story as a reliable travel guide, a long ride along the path of an elusive but powerful history. And even if that history is new to most of us, it is a familiar tale for many nations moving beyond the walls into a territory of common goals. In most of the cities there have been people writing and protesting, forging from modest presses a regional demand for a possible public space, voices of a civilization and of a law against intolerance and violence. They are the forgotten heroes of the press, journalists and chroniclers, travelers and booksellers. Some of the cases in "El Norte" are more tragic than others, like the painful history of Puerto Rico, where the Arawak people, or Tainos, the pacific society that Columbus encountered, had an easy laugh and were as curious as children. We now know, thanks to the Spanish historian Consuelo Varela, that Columbus stopped their baptism as Christians in order to sell them as slaves; he even managed to get a percentage from the first bordello in the Americas. The Tainos, of course, disappeared, but others in the Caribbean did not. They didn't appreciate Columbus's gifts of marbles, and they would have returned to Donald Trump the paper towels he threw to the victims of Hurricane Maria. History repeats itself, now as shame. What is particularly fascinating about this book is that its encyclopedic project is not a rewriting of history but a recitation of readings. Almost each historical event is retold through memory, recording, evaluation and discussion. This is history as dialogue. It leaves the mourning authority of archives and takes its place as a long conversation, presupposing that truth can be reached through an extended pilgrimage, a journey through violence, discrimination, racism, exploitation and the inferno created by occupation. The narrative becomes not a tribunal but a hospice to language, shelter to the loss of meaning imposed by violence. Mexico lost half its territory and many lives, but the voices of Thoreau and Lincoln are here to sound an alarm and to hope. The model of replacing a tribunal with a conversation is reminiscent of Montaigne: Lacking friends, he lamented that Plato was not around to talk about the wonders of the New World and its inhabitants, who ignored the distinction between "mine" and "yours." GIBSON LETS THE FACTS speak. But one would also like to read the saga of memory, that is, the version of the epic of "El Norte" through literature and fiction. The writer and critic Domingo F. Sarmiento came to the United States to learn from the American example of progress, and as president of Argentina to replicate those monuments of civilization that he saw: schools, railroads, immigration. Each of them fell short of his expectations. The Cuban poet and activist José Marti loved New York, but found that the people were composed of the "yeast of tigers." In "One Hundred Years of Solitude," García Márquez retells the American arrival in the South through the town of Macondo - where they discover the banana, move the river, bring modern tools. But it all ends in a massacre. Fuentes relates the story of an old writer who moves to Mexico: "A gringo in Mexico, that is euthanasia." Roberto Bolafto recounts the number of women killed around the maquiladoras. The border but also the migration, narcotics but also life in-between are elaborated in Yuri Herrera's fiction. The displacement of women in the novels of Carmen Bullosa and Cristina Rivera Garza, as well as the chronicles of Heriberto Yépez on dying-daily in Tijuana, explore new discourses of sorrow. The North has also become a growing space of rereading. The Mexican-American novelist Rolando Hinojosa-Smith used to say that as a kid from El Valle, he started reading fiction that had been translated into Spanish. He thought that all writers were Mexicans, despite some strange names - Dumas, Chekhov, Dos Passos. It seems that el Norte is not only a cemetery. It is also a national library. Mexico lost half its territory, but Thoreau and Lincoln were there to sound the alarm. JULIO ortega, a professor at Brown, is the author, among many other books, of "Transatlantic Translations." "La Comedia Literaria," his memoirs, will appear this year.
Library Journal Review
Hispanic peoples and cultures have shaped North America for 500 years, ever since Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León landed in what is today Florida in 1513. Gibson (Empire's Crossroads) delivers a timely reminder that Anglos are but one European wellspring of U.S. national identity. With insight and verve, the author weaves the myriad Hispanic/Latino influences on North American histories and cultures, addressing everything from immigration, wars, civil rights, tacos, and salsa, along with figures such as Fidel Castro and Cesar Chavez. She further recounts stories elided from public memory, chronicling mass lynchings of Mexicans in Texas; uprisings and bombings waged by Puerto Rican nationalists; and the history of Tampa's Ybor City neighborhood, home to Cuban émigrés long before Miami's Little Havana. Gibson contends that Anglos and Hispanics share the same centuries-old story of North America-a memory vital for our time of border walls and racist rhetoric. Few historians have attempted so sweeping and holistic a survey. Though Gibson can be more detailed about political events than the intersection of Anglo and Hispanic cultures, her evidence is clear: Latin America includes North America. VERDICT A thorough, relevant, and insightful survey of Hispanic North America.-Michael Rodriguez, Univ. of Connecticut, Storrs © Copyright 2019. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publishers Weekly Review
Historian Gibson (Empire's Crossroads: A History of the Caribbean from Columbus to the Present Day) provides a sweeping and accessible survey of the Hispanic history of the U.S. that illuminates the integral impact of the Spanish and their descendants on the U.S.'s social and cultural development. In contrast to the widespread downplaying of this history in favor of Anglo-American perspectives, Gibson recognizes the country as "part of a larger Latin American community." Gibson uses this inventive and appealing lens to guide readers chronologically from the initial European incursions into the Western hemisphere to the present day. Focusing primarily on Mexico, Cuba, and Puerto Rico, the main topics covered are Spanish colonization (often violent) and evangelizing (which was "bound up with the colonization project for Spain and Portugal from the beginning"), the creation of Latin American republics, U.S. territorial expansion, immigration, challenges faced by Latin Americans in the U.S. (including housing discrimination, immigration raids, and prejudiced treatment in the military), and how Hispanic racial, ethnic, and cultural identities are interpreted in the Americas). Though it doesn't present new research, this unusual and insightful work provides a welcome and thought-provoking angle on the country's history, and should be widely appreciated. (Feb.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
CHOICE Review
Distant origins underpin the anti-Mexican slurs that plague the US. Emphasizing the presence of Spaniards and primarily their Mexican descendants from Florida to California from the 16th century to the present, historian Gibson examines their shared history with Anglos and other "whites" who have considered them inferior and often labeled them "non-white." In chapters 1--9, the book surveys the centuries of Spanish rule in the "borderlands" prior to the US victory in the Mexican-American War in 1848. Chapters 10--11 carry the story to 1898; the remaining five focus on Texas, New York, California, Florida, and Arizona, and continue the analysis to 2018. The story of the early Spanish presence is familiar, but the remainder of the book, especially after 1898, will introduce general readers to the arrival, reception, and current status of Mexican, Puerto Rican, and Cuban immigrants and their descendants after 1959. The hostility that legal and illegal immigrants often face has been and continues to be widespread. Limited Hispanic political participation and underrepresentation are apparent in most locales. Public and academic libraries should purchase this substantial, well-written, thoroughly researched, and timely book. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty. --Mark A. Burkholder, emeritus, University of Missouri--St. Louis
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Gibson (Empire's Crossroads, 2014) has written an ambitious history of the U.S. that focuses on the country's often overlooked Hispanic origins. Her quest begins in the present day Mexican border town of Nogales, Arizona, and comes almost full circle to her hometown, Dalton, Georgia, where Mexican immigration has brought profound changes. Gibson covers five centuries of events, people, and immense cultural shifts, from the Spanish conquistadors' exploits in Mexico, Florida, and the Atlantic coast to the wars and growing pains of independence to the significant U.S. expansion according to so-called manifest destiny to the upheavals of the twentieth century. Throughout, Gibson gives full personhood to indigenous groups and tribes, placing their experiences in context, and she takes care to elucidate the evolving concept of race and the toxic trope of the U.S. as a white nation, an idea that stubbornly refuses to fade, resurfacing in our own divisive times. The chapter on Texas offers a key reminder that at one time Anglos themselves were illegal aliens, defiantly ignoring Mexico's laws against slavery. Well-organized and containing useful maps, a time line, selected bibliography, and notes, Gibson's exhaustively researched and well-written chronicle is an essential acquisition for all American history collections.--Sara Martinez Copyright 2019 Booklist
Kirkus Review
A long but readable history of the Spanish presence in North America from the time of the first European arrival to our own era.What does it mean to be Hispanic? Is one Hispanic if one does not speak Spanish or Portuguese, or does ethnicity extend beyond the borders of language? So Gibson (Empire's Crossroads: A History of the Caribbean from Columbus to the Present Day, 2014) wonders at the opening of her synoptic history of the Spanish in North America. Much of that history has not figured in textbooks until recent times, since, as the author observes, Americanness was largely equated with northwestern European ancestry. Yet that Spanish presence is everywhere. Gibson's first extended look into that history begins at Parris Island, South Carolina, best known as a Marine Corps training center but also the site where Spain and France contended to establish outposts of empire. The author's account includes well-known historical figures such as Christopher Columbus and Bartolom de Las Casas, the latter a cleric who decried violence against the Indigenous people of Mexico and inadvertently helped promote the "Black Legend" of Spanish avarice and tyranny. Refreshingly, however, Gibson also embraces lesser-known figures such as the French cartographer Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues, whose engravings introduced European readers to scenes of Native American life, and Po'pay, the organizer of a revolt of Pueblo Indians against the Spanish in New Mexico in 1680. Interestingly, as Gibson notes, Po'pay is now one of the two people from New Mexico's history depicted in the hall of statues in the U.S. Capitol, while controversy has arisen around one of California's representatives, the missionary Junipero Serra, who has since been implicated in violence against his native charges. Gibson soundly concludes that the history of the Spanish "is central to how the United States has developed and will continue to develop," lending further utility to her work.Though much of this history is well-documented in the scholarly literature, it's undeniably useful to have it in a single survey volume for general readers. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Summary
Because of our shared English language, as well as the celebrated origin tales of the Mayflower and the rebellion of the British colonies, the United States has prized its Anglo heritage above all others. However, as Carrie Gibson explains with great depth and clarity in El Norte , the nation has much older Spanish roots--ones that have long been unacknowledged or marginalized. The Hispanic past of the United States predates the arrival of the Pilgrims by a century, and has been every bit as important in shaping the nation as it exists today.

El Norte chronicles the sweeping and dramatic history of Hispanic North America from the arrival of the Spanish in the early 16th century to the present--from Ponce de Leon's initial landing in Florida in 1513 to Spanish control of the vast Louisiana territory in 1762 to the Mexican-American War in 1846 and up to the more recent tragedy of post-hurricane Puerto Rico and the ongoing border acrimony with Mexico. Interwoven in this stirring narrative of events and people are cultural issues that have been there from the start but which are unresolved to this day: language, belonging, community, race, and nationality. Seeing them play out over centuries provides vital perspective at a time when it is urgently needed.

In 1883, Walt Whitman meditated on his country's Spanish past: "We Americans have yet to really learn our own antecedents, and sort them, to unify them," predicting that "to that composite American identity of the future, Spanish character will supply some of the most needed parts." That future is here, and El Norte , a stirring and eventful history in its own right, will make a powerful impact on our national understanding.

Table of Contents
Mapsp. xi
Author's Note: The Search for El Nortep. xiii
Introduction: Nogales, Arizonap. 1
Chapter 1Santa Elena, South Carolina, ca. 1492-1550p. 13
Chapter 2St. Johns River, Florida, ca. 1550-1700p. 39
Chapter 3Alcade, New Mexico, ca. 1540-1720p. 59
Chapter 4Fort Mose, Florida, ca. 1600-1760p. 82
Chapter 5New Madrid, Missouri, ca. 1760-90p. 106
Chapter 6Nootka Sound, Canada, ca. 1760S-1789p. 129
Chapter 7New Orleans, Louisiana, ca. 1790-1804p. 143
Chapter 8Sabine River, ca. 1804-23p. 154
Chapter 9San Antonio de Béxar, Texas, ca. 1820-48p. 182
Chapter 10Mesilla, New Mexico, ca. 1850-77p. 221
Chapter 11Ybor City, Florida, ca. 1870-98p. 260
Chapter 12Del Rio, Texas, ca. 1910-40p. 288
Chapter 13New York, ca. 1920s-'60sp. 323
Chapter 14Los Angeles, California ca. 1920s-'70sp. 347
Chapter 15Miami, Florida, ca. 1960-80p. 382
Chapter 16Tucson, Arizona, ca. 1994-2018p. 402
Epilogue Dalton, Georgia, 2014p. 427
Time Line of Key Eventsp. 439
Acknowledgmentsp. 447
Selected Bibliographyp. 451
Notesp. 457
Indexp. 541
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