EVENT: Annexation, Autonomy, or Independence? The Politics of Cuban Identity in the Émigré Communities of New York and Florida, 1840s-1890

Via 171 bus:

ElProductorEvan Daniel, Queens College, City University of New York

“Annexation, Autonomy, or Independence? The Politics of Cuban Identity in the Émigré Communities of New York and Florida, 1840s-1890s”

Thursday 18th April 2013, 2 pm – 3.30 pm

Seminar Room, Pauling Centre, 58a Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 6QS

Hosted by the ESRC Centre on Migration Policy and Society (COMPAS)

This seminar will explore the changing modalities of diasporic identities among émigré Cuban workers in the nineteenth century, including tensions between Creole and Peninsular orientations, and tensions between different conceptions of nationalism and internationalism in the anarchist and labour movements.

For information, please contact Ben Gidley, COMPAS ben.gidley@compas.ox.ac.uk

Directions and map at: http://www.compas.ox.ac.uk/about/how-to-find-us/

free_cuba_cigar_label

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Published in: on April 5, 2013 at 5:23 pm  Leave a Comment  
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Today in 1939: Spanish refugees

At Getty Images:

01 Feb 1939
1st February 1939: Two members of a rescue party assist an elderly woman fleeing the Spanish Civil War. (Photo by Topical Press Agency/Getty Images)

 

 
01 Jan 1939
circa 1939: Wounded Loyalist at the special commissary’s office at Le Perthus, Spain. (Photo by Three Lions/Getty Images)
By: Three Lions
Collection: Hulton Archive

 
01 Jan 1939
FRANCE – CIRCA 1939: War of Spain. Exodus. France, February 1939. RV-221838. (Photo by Gaston Paris/Roger Viollet/Getty Images)
By: Gaston Paris
Collection: Roger Viollet

Via Jonathan Woods

Published in: on February 19, 2012 at 10:47 am  Leave a Comment  

Today in 1939: Returning from Spain

From Getty Images:
01 Jan 1939
Irish volunteers injured during the Spanish Civil War arrive back in Dublin. (Photo by Keystone/Getty Images)
By: Keystone
Collection: Hulton Archive
Published in: on January 1, 2012 at 10:53 am  Leave a Comment  
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Le Chemin de la Liberte

Via Martin Black, I came across this article.

Part of the "Chemin de la Liberte" in the Pyrenees

Every year, hikers trek the “Chemin de la Liberte” in the Pyrenees, to commemorate the 800 or so Allied airmen and Jewish refugees who risked their lives on a 60km (40 miles) route escaping Nazi-occupied Europe during World War II.

“The good escaper,” says a 1944 British military document called Tips for Escapers and Evaders, “is the man who keeps himself fit, cheerful and comfortable.”[…]

Reflect on what it was like, for example, to be shot down over Belgium when you are only 19 years old. Your parachute works – something of a surprise in itself, since you have had only the most rudimentary training – and when you land you find yourself behind enemy lines, with most of Nazi-occupied Europe between you and freedom.

You have to ask someone for help, even though you know they are risking their lives if they give it to you. And if you are lucky and they do not turn you in, there is still the long journey south to negotiate, past German checkpoints and patrols with, at the end of it all, the climb over these massive mountains.

Or think of the Jewish families who attempted the Pyrenees just one step ahead of arrest and deportation to the death camps.

I was told the story of a woman who carried her two-year-old daughter across in November snow. When the child cried in the cold their guide said she should be suffocated because the noise might alert the German patrols.

And what of the French helpers? One local supporter of the Chemin remembered his mother hiding escaping Allied airmen in her mountain bed and breakfast, where she was providing lodgings for German troops at the same time. (more…)

Published in: on November 26, 2011 at 5:28 pm  Leave a Comment  
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Music Mondays: Aurelio Martinez

Aurelio Martinez: Tio Sam

Aurelio Martinez, Garifuna musician and activist from Honduras, sings about migrants in the US. The album, Laru Beya, is on Real World, and is a tribute to the late, wonderful Andy Palacio. Part of it was recorded in Senegal, and the title, meaning “On the beach”, refers both to the coastal lives of the Garifuna and to the experience of seeing the coastal forts where Africans were taken out of the continent into New World slavery.

But by the time the Grammy-nominated album Watina was released in 2007 by his Belizean friend Andy Palacio, Aurelio was off the radar. He’d gone into politics – spending four years in the Honduran congress, the first   politician of African descent in the country’s history.

Four years was long enough: “Corruption, discrimination, everywhere. No one was interested in indigenous rights, only in getting rich. And I had no time for music,” he says. “But through music I can reach out to everyone.”

Related articles (more…)
Published in: on November 21, 2011 at 1:56 pm  Comments (1)  
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Monday music: Lhasa: I crawl under the sky And the clouds of winter

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Published in: on September 5, 2011 at 1:54 pm  Comments (1)  
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Music Mondays: Maria Irena

Ry Cooder: Maria Elena

Flaco Jimenez on accordion

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Previous: Flaco Jimenez: Viva Seguino; Ry Cooder: Christmas in Southgate.

Published in: on February 14, 2011 at 11:08 pm  Leave a Comment  
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Music Mondays: Christmas in Southgate

Ry Cooder, a couple of days late

Published in: on December 28, 2010 at 3:11 pm  Comments (1)  
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A month of music Mondays: Flaco Jimenez

Flaco Jimenez: Viva Seguin

Published in: on September 6, 2010 at 12:20 pm  Comments (1)  
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A month of music Mondays: Arlo Guthrie

Arlo Guthrie: Deportees

Music elsewhere: check out Sin Dios at Entdinhlichung, Spanish anti-fascist punk.

Published in: on August 23, 2010 at 12:17 pm  Comments (4)  
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La Linea: Labour news from Molly

TAKE ACTION ON THE ANNIVERSARY OF MARIA’S DEATH:

One year ago today 17 year old Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez became another grim statistic in the all too frequent deaths of agricultural workers in the heat of California’s fields. Today the United Farm Workers is asking that you remember her death by joining them in pressing the government of California to pass a bill removing some of the impediments to unionization of agricultural labourers in that state. Only strong unions can prevent such unnecessary deaths. Here is the UFW’s appeal.[…]

The following story and appeal for a “virtual vigil” is from the United Farm Workers.
Join the virtual vigil for heat victim Eladio HernandezTake action to prevent future deaths:
 Fifteen farm workers have died of heat-related complications since July 2004. We will be conducting vigils on the anniversary of each of their deaths–where we will share the worker’s story–and invite you to join in virtually by telling legislators and Gov. Schwarzenegger that enough is enough, farm workers need a tool where they can protect themselves.[…]

This is another item that has been all over the “anarcho-net”. I have chosen to reprint the version in the Polish anarchism news service Centrum Informacji Anarchistczej . The original source is the Venezuelan anarchist magazine El Libertario.
The following is about yet another case of the so-called socialist government of Venezuela versus the workers of that country. To say the least this comes as no surprise to Molly, as she is very doubtful of the “good intentions” of a new ruling class such as the ‘Boli Bourgeoise‘ (as they are called in Venezuela) whatever their ideological pronouncements. Self interest tends to weigh very heavy in the scale. The situation described below will undoubtedly reoccur time after time in the future, barring the end of the Peronist Chavez regime. The word “Peronist” is important in the previous sentence. Without going off the ideological deep end in describing the present regime in Venezuela as “fascist” it is very important to note that this regime stands in a long line of dirigiste populist movements in Latin America, of which the Peronist regime in Argentina was the original model, regimes that use the rhetoric of “popular power” to actually undermine any real attempt at such.[…]


Published in: on May 21, 2009 at 9:07 pm  Comments (1)