HIFC Archive Index

e-culture newsletter, March 16, 2005
[ CURRENT ]   [ ARCHIVE ]


e-culture: The Irish in Mexico, Chiricahua Apache, Regional Events
March 16, 2005



IN THIS ISSUE

The Irish in Mexico
The Irish in New Orleans
The Chiricahua Apache
The King of Western Swing
Upcoming Houston Events


Happy St. Pat's! Around the world people of many persuasions will be wearin' the green this St. Patrick's Day to celebrate a man who is believed to have driven the snakes from Ireland. Not only can people identify with the hardship many Irish have endured and their persevering spirit, but they may also have stood side by side with the Irish during their struggles in distant lands.

Throughout their history, Mexico and Ireland have experienced many similar events, in spite of their physical distance. Because these events have had such an impact on Mexico, it is often said that there is a real Irish presence in Mexican soil.

Read about the Irish Presence In Mexico by Rose Mary Salum:
http://www.houstonculture.org/mexico/irish.html

____________________________________________________
The Irish in New Orleans

Before the advent of the Civil War, the Irish population in New Orleans rivaled the combined population of free and enslaved African Americans, with the Irish edging above 14 percent.

Landowners used slave labor to work the fields and meet the domestic needs of sprawling plantations. They considered slavery to be an investment for which they reaped vast profits. When there was work to be done that owners considered too dangerous to risk the lives of their investments, they employed the Irish.

Irish immigrants came to New Orleans because of King Cotton, as they traveled in the empty hulls of ships that unloaded their cargo of cotton bails in the ports of Great Britain and returned to Louisiana for more, but they built the high steel bridges, dug the canals, and reloaded cotton bails on east-bound ships. They led the workforce in these dangerous industries that also employed free Blacks, White and Black Creoles, and growing numbers of Eastern Europeans, who provided the cheapest source of labor to replace slaves after emancipation.

The Civil War is said to have made the Irish Southerners, and World War I to have made them Americans, but they were known among New Orleans' mostly Catholic communities as the pious, even as they were scorned, relegated and segregated by Protestants for much of their early history in New Orleans.

While most of New Orleans' Catholics attended the grand St. Louis Cathedral on old Jackson Square, the Irish built their own pius palace, St. Patrick's Church, near the Irish Channel District, where many middle class Irish lived. Most Irish immigrants spread out across New Orleans and lived openly and much differently than their Texas Irish neighbors, whose persecution in the Lone Star State made some of them feel a strong allegiance with Mexico.

Today, historic Irish communities in New Orleans are based very little on the sections where the Irish lived, but more on the locations where they worked and the pubs they frequented when the hard workdays were done.

This week's Irish celebrations center around bars with legendary Irish names - O'Brien's, O'Flaherty's, and Parasol's.

While Italians made up only one percent of New Orleans' population in 1860, by the turn of the century they built a strong presence in the Crescent City. To replace slave labor as African Americans followed the River Road, the famous Highway Route 61 to Chicago, and settled in urban centers, Italians, lured by promising advertisements and carried by German ships, settled across southern Louisiana. Mostly Sicilians, they eventually made their mark in politics and political intrigue, but as most were poor, they made their cultural mark by serving distinctive South Louisiana-influenced food to workers, like the Po' Boy and Muffuletta sandwich. On March 19, much of Louisiana celebrates Italian benevolence during St. Joseph's Day.

Learn more about St. Joseph's Day:
http://www.houstonculture.org/laproject/stjo.html

Cabbage is one of the main foods offered to the working poor and homeless on St. Joseph's Day, served by the hundreds of pounds in church soup kitchens. And where does all that cabbage come from? It's thrown from Irish floats two days earlier, on St. Patrick's Day. It's all part of the harmonious cycle of New Orleans' diverse celebrations and historic repressed brotherhoods.

Here are a few of New Orleans' diverse cultural events that take place in March:

Calling of the Tribes Pow-Wow (March 18-20)
Grand Bois Park, Bourg, LA. (near Houma)
504-879-2373

St Patrick's Day, St Joseph's Day and Related Events in the New Orleans vicinity:

Downtown Irish Club Parade (March 17)
The 28th annual downtown St. Patrick's Day parade begins on the corner of Burgundy and Piety in the Bywater, proceeds roughly up Royal, across Esplande to Decatur, up Bienville to Bourbon. Bywater/French Quarter, 6:30pm

St. Patrick's Day Block Party (March 17)
Parasol's Bar, 3rd Street at Constance, Irish Channel, 12:00pm to 5:00pm

Italian-American Marching Club's St. Joseph Day Parade (March 19)
The annual walking parade follows its traditional route through the French Quarter. French Quarter, 5:00pm
504-561-1006

Los Islenos Fiesta 2005 (March 19-20)
Los Islenos Heritage and Cultural Society Ducros- Islenos Museum Complex, 1345-57 Bayou Road, St. Bernard; (Saturday, 11:00am Opening Ceremony - 7:00pm) (Sunday , 11:00am - 6:00pm)
504-682-0862
http://www.losislenos.org

Irish-Italian Parade (March 20)
Parade beings at Cleaview Shopping Center (Veterans @ Causeway) and rolls along Veterans Blvd. Metairie, noon.
504-616-4930 or 504-362-7700

Super Sunday (March 20)
The Mardi Gras Indians make their appearance around St. Joseph's Day. Generally, the processions begin around Bayou St. John & Esplanade Ave. and Washington & LaSalle streets.


Upcoming Topics

When we return from our latest research adventure in the south Louisiana Parishes next week, we will consider Black Indian celebrations of New Orleans, and the Buffalo Soldiers, many of which were recruited in New Orleans following the Civil War.

____________________________________________________
The Chiricahua Apache

Native Americans weren't practiced at war on the scale of European warfare. They were, however, great hunters. And among the most skilled hunters were bands that ranged from central Texas to Arizona, which intruders called Apache. The Apache faced ongoing conflict with neighboring groups before the arrival of Europeans. They were nomads who wandering into a region of highly sophisticated groups that occupied constructed cities and farmed irrigated valleys. Their range brought them into contact with Zuni cities in the northern modern states of Arizona and New Mexico and Tarahumara in the Mexican states of Chihuahua and Sinaloa.

The Apache migrated to the southern regions of New Mexico and Arizona prior to the sixteenth century, shortly after their relatives, the Navajo migrated into northern Arizona. In the language of the two groups they were Dineh (Diné), or "the people." (In contrast to Europeans, who mostly identify themselves by their national origin, Dineh is an identity for humans in a natural world that represents all life forms.)

A Zuni word meaning "enemy," or possibly a Yuma word for "fighters," may have become the basis for the general identity Europeans gave the Apache. At the height of the Apache struggle to preserve their way of life and the land they depended on, they came to know themselves as Indeh ("the dead").

Early Spanish incursions into the lands they called Apacheria were either repelled or abandoned. The first Spaniards to journey across Apacheria sought legendary cities of gold in northern New Mexico. An African Moor named Esteban, who lived among indigenous populations across Texas and Mexico for six years with a lost expedition that included Cabeza de Vaca, was chosen to guide an expedition led by Fray Marcos to find the golden cities of Cibola. (The Spanish imagined Cibola to be even wealthier than the Aztec empire.) After crossing Arizona's rugged Mogollon Rim in 1539, Esteban was killed on his approach to a Zuni settlement. Fray Marcos returned by way of eastern Arizona to Mexico empty handed. In 1540, the Spanish sent a powerful force of mounted Spanish troops and Indigenous Mexican allies under Francisco Vasquez de Coronado to search for Cibola, but after numerous conflicts with the Puebloans of the Upper Rio Grande and further Don Quixote-esque excursions into modern Texas and Kansas, they too returned empty handed in 1542.

When the Spanish colonized the upper Rio Grande more than 50 years later, they followed a route north from El Paso and avoided the Sonora-Arizona frontier region. Juan de Oñate established a Spanish capital north of Santa Fe in 1598. The route of El Camino Real ("The King's Road") crossed the sparsely populated Apache range along southern New Mexico and West Texas.

By the late seventeenth century, as the Spanish settled the Sonoran desert region and established Jesuit missions among Papago and Pima villages, conflicts with the Apache escalated. The Spanish maintained their settlements along the Rio Santa Cruz in southern Arizona, in the land they called Pimaria Alta, with indigenous groups and the Santa Rita Mountains as a buffer between themselves and the Western Apache.

The Western Apache were made up of numerous bands, including the Central Chiricahua (called "Chokonen"), who ranged across Arizona's modern Cochise County. East of the Santa Rita Mountains, the Dragoon and Chiricahua Mountains formed their homeland. As trade increased between the Spanish and Pima (who called themselves O'odham), settlements expanded into the fertile San Pedro River Valley east of the Rio Santa Cruz. The Apache raided settlements on the Rio San Pedro for horses and Spanish farm animals, forcing abandonment of the settlements by 1762. The Pima were also guilty of raiding Apache settlements.

Influenced by the Spanish, the Pima lived in a constant state of preparedness for war with the Apache.

Mexico gained its independence from Spain in 1821 and Anglo pioneers soon showed up in the lands of Pimeria Alta. While Mexico paid bounty hunters for Apache scalps, the Apache tolerated Americans in the territory until 1835, when zealous American adventurers slaughtered members of the Southern Chiricahua band.

The United States gained control of land north of the Gila River following its war with Mexico in 1848. American filibusters and state-sanctioned ranger militias continued their campaigns to take even more Mexican territory all across the northern frontier, from Tamaulipas to Sonora. All of the Pima and Apache lands in modern Arizona, New Mexico and Texas finally came under U.S. control following the Gadsden Purchase in 1854. Under the treaty, the U.S. was responsible for preventing raids into Mexico from the Apache homelands, which were now mostly in the United States.

Shortly after the Gadsden Treaty, Mexican troops left Tucson in 1856 and the Butterfield Overland Mail marked its route across southern Arizona in 1857. The stage stopped routinely at Apache Springs. And railroads would soon crisscross the Arizona-Sonoran desert.

Chief of the Southern Chiricahua band, Magnas Coloradas, went to war with the United States in 1861, when gold was discovered at Piños Altos, bringing hundreds of unruly prospectors to the New Mexico territory. Magnas Coloradas and his warriors exacted revenge on hundreds of Mexicans and Americans for the years of oppression the Apache suffered.

Lieutenant George N. Bascom falsely accused Chiricahua Apache chief Cochise of abducting Felix Ward near Fort Buchanan. Bascom's attempted arrest of the Chiricahua leader near Apache Springs ("The Bascom Affair") set off an 11-year war with Cochise and his followers, who previously desired peace with Mexicans and Americans.

During the Battle of Apache Pass, Cochise and Magnas Coloradas, with a band of Chiricahua Apache, overwhelmed U.S. Union troops, who were en route from California to New Mexico to fight Texas Confederates. Brigadier General James H. Carlton ordered a military post, Fort Bowie, be constructed at Apache Pass to control access to the pass and precious water at nearby springs.

From the end of the Civil War in 1865 through 1872, waves of Anglo settlers brought increased conflicts between Apaches and Americans, and increased demand for military posts. One-fourth of the post-war U.S. army was soon engaged in the campaign to subdue the Apache nations.

Peace came when the Chiricahua Apache (Chokonen) reservation was established by a peace agreement between U.S. General Oliver O. Howard and Cochise. The reservation included the Chiricahua Mountains, the Sulfur Springs Valley and San Simon Valley on either side, and the Dragoon Mountains (including the Cochise Stronghold where Cochise is buried). The Apache lived in relative peace in their homeland through 1876, when the U.S. government revoked the Chiricahua reservation.

Cochise, the Apache chief who matched wits with his military contenders, died in 1874, leaving the Apache vulnerable to relocation to the San Carlos Reservation. Disgruntled warriors, Geronimo, Victorio, Gordo, Juh, Nolgee, and others vowed to fight the military again. The U.S. hired Hualapai Indians from northern Arizona to pursue the renegade Apaches. Forts were permanentely established where temporary camps once stood to protect mining boomtowns, like Tombstone and Charleston. Black riders ("Buffalo Soldiers") of the 9th and 10th Cavalries were called on to re-enforce the U.S.-Mexico border in campaigns against Geronimo and Victorio.

After the 10th U.S. Cavalry Buffalo Soldiers blockaded the West Texas border and guarded scarce water resources, Victorio died in battle with Mexican troops in 1880. With his warrior following devastated by General George Crook's relentless pursuit and limitless enlistment of Indian scouts, Geronimo finally surrendered to Major General Nelson A. Miles near the Arizona-New Mexico border and was deported to a Florida prison in 1886, bringing an end to the Apache quest for freedom.

View a Southern Arizona Timeline:
http://www.houstonculture.org/vc/azmextime.html


Camp Dos Cabezas will take place in the Chiricahua Apache homeland, giving deserving Houston children the chance to be inspired, to learn and use their imaginations by standing on tops of mountains where historic events happened.

In our next "Camp Experience" summary, we will describe the Buffalo Soldiers, and survey Indigenous Cultures in Sonora.

____________________________________________________
The King of Western Swing

A major milestone came and went this month with little of the fanfare that characterized Bob Wills' life and his Western Swing music -- a music tradition that was born with Bob Wills 100 years ago and emerged from diverse Texas cultures that inspired the swinging cowboy.

While we are holding on to a story about Bob Wills in Tulsa that we want to offer (for reasons of timeliness) in June, and we will certainly encourage our readers to visit Bob Wills Day in Turkey, Texas on the fourth Saturday in April, it seems there was little to report of the anticipated statewide celebrations of Bob Wills' 100 year anniversary of his birthdate on March 6, so we will offer an earlier article of our own on the King of Western Swing...

He wanted be a cowboy, but he was a cotton farmer in the poorest and dustiest of times in Texas. His only treasures were the hokum blues, spirituals, work songs and humorous dialogue he learned in the cotton fields, and his fiddle, which he pawned to buy food during the depression in Fort Worth.

Read more about the life of Bob Wills:
http://www.houstonculture.org/cr/wsm.html

____________________________________________________
Upcoming Houston Events

Lost Film Fest from West Philadelphia

Lost Film Fest from West Philadelphia is a traveling multimedia spectacle incorporating live performance and video. It's a truly independent, anti-authoritarian, anti-corporate grassroots DIY media extravaganza hosted by Festival Director Scott Beibin (Bloodlink Records, Evil Twin Booking). Beibin travels the globe telling stories and spinning movies like a DJ using a videoprojector, dvd player, and backpack filled with goodies. The roadshow incorporates a sexy, smash-it-up, radical anti-capitalist anti-globalization perspective. Beibin will attend this showing.

Suggested donation $5; no one turned away
Thursday, March 17, 8:00pm
Rice Media Center
Rice University
Entrance 8 into campus off University.
http://www.lostfilmfest.org

====================================

Teleconference call conducted by Congressional APA Caucus chair Mike Honda

Congressman Honda has planned a press call-in briefing on Social Security reform's impact on the Asian Pacific American community. In addition to Congressman Honda, a senior service provider will also provide the community/consumers' perspectives on the proposed reform. This is a good opportunity to hear about the impact of proposed changes to Social Security. If you have any questions, please contact Grace Rodriguez, Community Liaison in the Office of Council Member Gordon Quan, at 713-247-3919, or email grace.rodriguez@cityofhouston.net.

Thursday, March 17, 1:30-2:00pm
Southern News Group Building
11122 Bellaire Blvd. (2nd Floor Conference Rm.)

====================================

Bayou City Art Festival Memorial Park

Houston's Memorial Park will be awash in color, music, vibrant entertainment and interactive art at the Bayou City Art Festival. The 33rd annual juried fine art event boasts 300 acclaimed artists from around the world, including Hungarian-born Agnes Rathonyi, selected the Spring 2005 festival's featured artist. Her painting "Inspirations" will grace the festival's commemorative poster.

There will be installation art, clay, drawing/pastel, fiber/textiles, furniture, glass, jewelry, leather, metal, mixed media, painting, photography, printmaking, sculpture, watercolor and wood. Attendees will enjoy wine cafes, an interactive Creative Zone for children of all ages, restaurants, the Broadway in Houston's Broadway Café and the performing arts stage with ongoing multi-cultural musical and dance entertainment presented by the Cultural Arts Council of Houston/Harris County.

The Festival's Creative Zone is an interactive area for children and adults to create their own individual take-home art projects. Fun-filled projects include costume photos, picture frame decorating; fancy pinwheels; rock painting; plant a flower; paper marbling; potato die stamping; wax hands; face painting; airbrush art; and giant bubbles. Five charity partners, Alley Theatre, Lawndale Arts Center, MECA, Museum of Fine Arts Houston and YMCA Downtown Youth and Urban Services, will oversee the area and benefit from donations made by the Creative Zone artists and their parents or guardians. Over the past 32 years, the Festival has raised more than $1.9 million for charity.

$8; free for children 12 and under
March 18-20, 10:00am to 6:00pm
Memorial Park
713-521-0133
http://www.bayoucityartfestival.com

====================================

The Czech Cultural Center Grand Opening

The Czech Cultural Center Houston Celebrates Grand Opening/Dedication in the Museum District. Grand Opening Events continue...

Through April 10 - Czech Moravian emigree impressionist artist Kamil Kubik exhibit.

Friday, March 18 - 7:00 p.m. Garnet exhibit. Reception. RSVP

Saturday, March 19 - 6:00 p.m. Prague Hall - Annual Members and Friends Meeting and Dinner.

Dedication/Grand Opening/Concert $10.00 donation appreciated.

713-528-2060
Email: czech@czechcenter.org
http://www.czechcenter.org

====================================

Judith Ortiz Cofer
Presented by Inprint's Margaret Root Brown Reading Series

Mexican novelist and journalist Elena Poniatowska and Puerto Rican-American writer Judith Ortiz Cofer will read from their work as part of Inprint's Margaret Root Brown Reading Series. Poniatowska is the author of more than 30 fiction and nonfiction books, the latest, The Skin of the Sky, won the Alfaguara Prize, the top Spanish-language literary prize for "New World" writers. Cofer, a "writer of authentic gifts, with a genuine and important story to tell" (The New York Times) is the author of several works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Her memoir Silent Dancing: A Partial Remembrance of a Puerto Rican Childhood (published by Arte Publico Press) received the PEN/Martha Albrand nonfiction award.

Admission is $5, free for students with ID
Monday, March 21, 7:30pm
Cullen Performance Hall
University of Houston
713-521-2026
Email: inprint@airmail.net

====================================

"Media in Times of War" with panel discussion
Sponsored by the Harris County Young Democrats

A panel discussion related to the role mass media has played in promoting the case for invading and occupying Iraq, followed by a showing of "Media in Times of War," featuring Amy Goodman. On the panel will be Harvey Rice, reporter from The Houston Chronicle, Garth Jowett, professor of journalism at UH, and Bob Buzzanco, professor of History at UH.

$5 donation requested. Food and drinks provided.
Tuesday, March 22, 7:30-9:30pm
The Artery
5401 Jackson at Prospect
http://www.arteryhouston.org

====================================

Nuestra Palabra's March Showcase features Himilce Novas

Nuestra Palabra: Latino Writers Having Their Say will host Cuban-American author Himilce Novas as she presents her new novel, Princess Papaya. Taking us from the 9-11 tragedy in new York City to the political dungeons in Cuba to the vineyards of Santa Barbara, author Himilce Novas weaves Santeria; gender, transgender, and sexuality politics; and the resistance movement in contemporary Cuba. Novas will be joined by Mexican American-Writer Loida Ruiz in celebration of Women's History Month.

Admission is $5, free for students with ID
Wednesday, March 23, 7-9:00pm
MECA: Multicultural Education and Counseling through the Arts
1900 Kane St.
Houston, TX 77007
713-867-8943
Email: np@nuestrapalabra.org

====================================

S.H.A.P.E. Youth CD Benefit Concert

The S.O.S. (Sisters of S.H.A.P.E.) is hosting their 3rd fundraising event for 2005. It will feature songs written by the young people who participated in the S.H.A.P.E.'s 2004 summer camp. They'll be joined by professional musicians like Baba Alafia, lead vocalist of D.R.U.M.; John Rochelle, saxophonist, vocalist, and songwriter; and Miss Keshia, poet and rapper. All proceeds will support the Freedom Tour, a multi-state tour of sites prominent in the Civil Rights struggle.

Friday, March 25, 7-10pm
S.H.A.P.E. Community Center
3815 Live Oak

====================================

Cultural Narrative: Maniza Naqvi
Presented by Voices Breaking Boundaries

Born in Lahore, Pakistan, Maniza Naqvi now lives in Washington DC and works at the World Bank. Her work is in the areas of peace, poverty alleviation, demobilization of militaries and building good governance at community levels in post conflict countries. Her first novel, Mass Transit (Oxford University Press, 1998), is set in Karachi, and focuses on the integrations and disintegrations of migration and immigration, through the lives of three families. Her second novel, On Air weaves its plot around the theme of loss, love, desire and death. Naqvi will be reading from her newest novel, Stay With Me, which tells about the trauma of torture. She says: "As a writer, I'm particularly interested in the reassembling of memory into visions, then deconstructing it into a story, then reconstructing it and mapping it differently as imagination. Itıs my evidence that time exists. Perhaps I work out of fear, of losing and fear of having no evidence of time passing. But most probably, itıs just the sheer joy of it, a celebration, of passing through time."

The event will feature performances by Kokoy Severino, with musicians from kayumanggi, and Marvin Caravantes.

$5 (no one will be turned away)
Sunday, March 27, 7:00pm
The Artery
5401 Jackson Street
Houston, TX 77004
http://www.arteryhouston.org
http://www.voicesbreakingboundaries.org

====================================

Rashid Khalidi
A lecture by Rashid Khalidi, professor of Arab studies and director of Middle East Institute at Columbia University. Dr. Khalidi is often interviewed on CNN and other news media to talk about the current situation in the Middle East, especially Palestine.

Monday, March 28, 6:00pm (meet and greet at 5:00pm)
Jones School at Rice University

====================================

Peacemaking in the Villages and Refugee Camps
An African Quaker talks about his grassroots work in Rwanda and Burundi bringing together the Hutus and Tutsis to heal the trauma of the 1994 genocide. Adrien Niyongabo is the Regional Coordinator for Trauma Healing and Nonviolence Training for the African Great Lakes Initiative (AGLI) of the Friends' Peace Teams. Sponsored by Live Oak Friends Meeting, TSU, and KPFT's Critical Progressive Review.

Monday, March 28, 7:00pm
Robert James Terry Library
Texas Southern University
3100 Cleburne between Scott and Ennis
Use Parking Lot G

====================================

India on the Modern World Stage

Dr. Philip Oldenburg, former associate director of the Southern Asian Institute at Columbia University, will speak on "India on the Modern World Stage." The lecture will focus on India's economic evolution and rising global prominence. Currently, Oldenburg is a senior lecturer at UT. His research interests include comparative politics, politics and government of South Asia, and grass-roots government in India. Sponsored by the Asia Society Texas.

Tuesday, March 29, 4-5:30pm
Houston Community College's West Loop Auditorium
5601 W. Loop South

====================================

Independent Media in the Time of War with Amy Goodman
Celebrate KPFT's 35th anniversary with Amy Goodman. She will talk on "Independent Media in the Time of War" and autograph copies of her recent book, "Exception to the Rulers."

$15 general, $12 KPFT members, students, seniors, fixed income.
Tuesday, March 29, 7:30pm
River Oaks Theatre
2009 West Gray
713-526-4000
http://www.kpft.org



Thank you for supporting great educational and cultural activities.

____________________________________________________
M  a  r  k @houstonculture.org


Traditions of Mexico:
http://www.houstonculture.org/mexico

Latino Music Initiative:
http://www.houstonculture.org/musica

Texas-Mexico Border Issues:
http://www.houstonculture.org/border




Home | Tenets | Goals | Features | Calendar | Resources | Registry
Workshops | Volunteer | Comments | What You Can Do | FAQ


Cultural Crossroads | Terra Incognita | World Music | Contents