El Barrio Research Articles

Capitalist and anti-capitalist placemaking through street art

ABSTRACT Street art can function as a tool of placemaking. It shapes how we experience, move through, and attach meaning to space, as well as how space is territorialized and bounded. Street art can be a restructuring force that changes how a space is legible or interpretable to its users, how it is used, how it is experienced, and how it forms a territory with insiders and outsiders. But how street art does this along with what kinds of impact it has varies dramatically from neighborhood to neighborhood. More specifically, the relationship between street art, placemaking, and capitalism is remarkably different in different neighborhoods. Street art can support capitalist placemarketing, or it can work toward secession from the capitalist landscape, either by preserving or by creating alternative place identities. I use three different neighborhoods in New York City—The Bowery, El Barrio, and the South Bronx—as case studies for each of the three phenomena, respectively. I end by examining a paradox that street art faces: explicitly anti-capitalist street art is easily coopted by capitalist forces that seek to commodify its aesthetic, so attempts to use street art to combat capitalist appropriations of space often (though not always) backfire.

Systematics and paleobiology of new bison occurrences from the Late Pleistocene of central Mexico

This study presents new findings of bison remains associated with alluvial plains in central Mexico dating back to the Late Pleistocene. These discoveries encompass eight sites in Hidalgo (Conejos, Ventoquipa, Barranca del Berrendo, Barranca Jagüey Viejo, Las Cajas, El Barrio, Monte Alegre, and San Gabriel Azteca) and two sites in Puebla (Barranca Policarpio and Barranca Xocoa). Biometrical analysis was conducted on the herein studied material, consisting of a horn core fragment, a skull fragment, two mandible fragments, five isolated teeth, and several postcranial remains. A comparative study with selected specimens indicates the presence of Bison antiquus and B. cf. latifrons. The record represents the first reported occurrences of these species for the states of Hidalgo and Puebla respectively. Furthermore, the analysis of carbon (δ13C) and oxygen (δ18O) isotopes in tooth enamel apatite from the material of Hidalgo and Puebla was used to characterize the bison's diet and habitat, providing evidence of the flexible dietary regime observed in Pleistocene bison populations and that were common inhabitants of mixed environments. Body mass estimation of some individuals (average weight ≈ 450 kg) is in the lower limit of B. antiquus populations from the Late Pleistocene of North America. New knowledge about the geographical presence of Bison antiquus and B. cf. latifrons in central Mexico is provided. Comparison with another bison record of these species from North America suggests a biochronological delay between them, representing a younger time interval for Bison antiquus (maximum age at 50 ka), allowing us to biostratigraphically constrain some Mexican localities containing bison remains.

A call for critical and open pedagogies in Spanish heritage language instruction: Students as knowledge producers of Open Educational Resources (OERs)

This paper stresses the urgent need to implement critical and open pedagogies in language teaching, especially in the Spanish heritage language classroom. Language courses are often compulsory in secondary and higher education and typically employ traditional pedagogical models that are structured by grammar and/or communication tasks. This study introduces how heritage language teaching emerged as a field of study in the United States and offers a brief overview of critical and open pedagogies and their connection to open educational resources. This paper then introduces critical and open pedagogies to teaching Spanish as a heritage language, followed by a critical look at the existing Spanish teaching material. As an alternative to this material, this article shares a project titled “Discovering El Barrio” which addresses an innovative and productive pedagogical practice carried out by a Spanish heritage language class at Lehman College, CUNY. In this project, Spanish heritage language learners (HLL) became producers of authentic teaching and learning materials for second language (L2) Spanish learners.

The Selkie of the City Tells All

The Selkie of the City Tells All Jd Scott (bio) We meet at the Mermaid Parade on Coney Island three years in a row. We meet on a rooftop on the Fourth of July, the air smoky with bodega-bought salutes. We meet on a broken-down B3 bus on Avenue U. We meet in front of Macy’s between holidays, the arm of an animatronic elf waving in the window display. We meet over dollar pizza. We meet at a concert in an empty pool basin in McCarren Park. We meet in Marble Hill. We meet during intermission. We meet at a rent party. We meet over a rent boy. We meet at a LAN party in Fordham. We meet through the divorce. We meet over hotpot in Flushing, our hands gunning for the same ladle in a tub of sesame sauce. We meet through mutual friends. We meet when the body is discovered. We meet at a rave in an auto-something warehouse beneath the BQE. We meet on DMT. We meet at the Bowery Mission. We meet on the same ferry for forty years. We meet at the Diptyque sample sale: your nose down by a candle, its name spelled in elongated French. You are a classically trained painter who makes do drawing sidewalk signs. You are an electrician with nine fingers. You are on the lam. You are a Slavic Studies major at Columbia. You sell nutcrackers every July at Jacob Riis. You are a piragüero perched up in El Barrio. You make a 524 on your MCAT. You are half-retired, playing dice on the sidewalk in summer, playing a temporary snow laborer in winter. You are a deaf waiter at Tavern on the Green. You read tarot on Grand. You are an absentminded dog walker. You have a stutter. You have the cutest button dimples. You are fighting for your life on Rikers Island. You own a beautiful home in Astoria. You rent a basement beneath a bakery in Sunset Park and break in at night to steal cháng zĭ bāo. You make the best chicken mandi rice in Morris Park. You were born (and will die) in Queens. You are twins who don’t know how to share. I remind you of a dentist, of a doorman, of a brother. I remind you of a son, somebody’s ex-best friend. We make small talk. I play it shy. I play it tough. I get real sweet when we get close enough. [End Page 126] Then I take my skin off. I am the city, and my skin is cigarette butts and piss-summer scent. It’s the same magazine sample of Santal 33 from Le Labo coated onto my pulse. My skin is neon and concrete and sakura blossoming at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden each May. My skin is high rise with all the lights on. It’s Times Square. It’s this is a Howard Beach bound A train, the next stop is Broadway Junction. It’s a warm cup of broth in a blizzard, a margarita in a Styrofoam to-go cup in June. My skin is sweat. My hair is kinky, slick, tight, loose, long, buzzed, gone. When you see me, you see the part you need. That’s when I stop being the city and become something you can perceive. That’s when I grow hands and knees. You see the twenty-three-minute affair at the Christopher Street’s westside piers. You see me for twenty-three years in your bedroom. When I take off my skin, you feel comforted. Most of you end up loving me. Sometimes I love you back. Always you see me until our end. Rarely do you see me until your end. It never gets easier, that part. I cannot give you eternity. I change for you, sure, but I change for myself, too. I compromise; I make amends. When I fold my skin like a coat in your closet, I become the only knowable part of me. When I give up my secret, it seldom goes well. Inevitably, you start plotting to keep me. You hide my...

Trabajando en ambos: Toward a Race Radical Mode of Study in Urban Latinx Educational Research and Politics

Background/Context: Over the last 60 years, U.S. Latinxs have become the largest minoritized ethnic groups in the United States and U.S. schools, and despite progress and investments attained through activism in the streets, in the courtroom, in policy, and in research, schools chronically underserve Latinx youth, and they are as undereducated and underprepared today as they were in the 1960s. Findings like low rates of participation in early childhood programs, low graduation rates, and underpreparation for college success have led policymakers and scholars to declare that we are in the midst of a “Latinx education crisis.” Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study: In this article, I think through the late Jean Anyon’s political economic “mode of study” as part of working toward a race radical approach to understanding and addressing the complexities of U.S. Latinx urban education. Setting/Population: The study takes place in the New York City neighborhood of East Harlem (El Barrio) and focuses on individuals and institutions involved in neighborhood politics and education. Research Design: The first half of this article is a theoretical analysis and discussion of Jean Anyon’s mode of study. The second half is drawn from a participatory historical ethnography I conducted with the Barrio Education Participatory Action Research (PAR) collaborative (#BarrioEdProject), which was comprised of myself and two college-aged youth co-researchers from El Barrio at the time of the study (2013–2014). The research collaborative designed and implemented the study, which included a series of multigenerational interviews, archival research, and observations of public events. Conclusions/Recommendations: If we are to robustly understand and address these issues, we must engage in a mode of study that attends to the ways the combined forces of capitalism and structural racism, or racial capitalism, give shape to the urban and educational ecosystems. We need to employ ways of knowing that are historical, holistic, and justice oriented.

Lunfardos: Queerness, Social Prophylaxis, and the Futures of Reproduction in Fin-de-Siècle Argentine Dramaturgy

Early twentieth-century nativist dramaturgy explored Conservative Argentina’s dreams of racial purity and “peace and administration” in the context of transatlantic migratory flows and major changes in the urban design of Buenos Aires. Nativism aimed at identifying and preserving ways of being criollo by turning to the Pampas as an idyllic space of agglutination of national values, particularly in the figure of the gaucho. But nativist drama not only grounded its ethics on principles of moral conduct but also functioned as a space for the distribution and popularization of the latest expert knowledges imported from Europe, mainly degeneration theory. This article explores a series of dramatic texts that staged the lives of the extremely impoverished, criminalized, and destitute, whom a series of scientific and literary works, ranging from criminology to psychiatry and philology, called lunfardos. Trash pickers, sex workers, unwanted immigrants, petty criminals, beggars, and marginalized children composed a living tapestry that illustrated the conditions of homeless life and its successive displacements and migrations. Enrique de Vedia’s Transfusión (1914)—a novel written almost entirely in dialogue form—and the plays En el barrio de las ranas (1910) by Enrique García Velloso, ¡Al campo! (1902) by Nicolás Granada, and Yerba Mala (1908) by José Eneas Riú warned of the endangered biological futures of healthy sectors of the population. Before the emergence in the political field of figures of deviance, drama culture put on a show to suggest that Argentine society needed to be defended against the abnormal. Animated by dreams of social prophylaxis, these fictions suggested that deviant forms of life were disassociated from progress.

Building El Barrio Bikes: Lessons from a Community Bicycling Collaborative.

Community collaboratives have been shown to be effective in changing environments and systems to promote health by facilitating and coordinating programs, services, and practices. East Harlem, a New York City neighborhood, recently experienced a growth in bicycling infrastructure and resources. However, community concerns raised about safety, equity, and inclusion highlighted the need for a coordinated effort to reduce barriers to biking. To describe the formation of and activities of El Barrio Bikes, a community biking collaborative by providing examples of community engagement strategies, evaluation methods, and lessons learned. A values-driven community engagement framework was used to form a multi-sector community collaborative to reduce barriers to biking in East Harlem. El Barrio Bikes conducted monitoring and evaluation activities to evaluate community engagement strategies used, to ensure that the group's goals were being met, and to make improvements or adjustments when needed. The use of a community engagement framework was critical to the evolution of El Barrio Bikes from a group of individual partners to a model of shared leadership. Collaborative decision-making, extensive outreach efforts, and feedback surveys were time-intensive, but essential in in developing a sustainable and equitable partnership. Carefully selected community engagement strategies were integral to the success of creating a community biking collaborative to promote biking. Collaboration between community stakeholders can strengthen community ties and power, which are key to implementing an effective strategy to reducing barriers to biking in East Harlem.

Book Review: In Search of Respect

In this paper, the author will analyze and critique the book: In Search of Respect. The author will explain how the author of the book successfully used the ethno graphic qualitative method to examine social and cultural influences on ethnic groups in East Harlem (El Barrio), New York (Bourgois, 2003). The author will illustrate how Bourgo is built close relations with participants including gang members and drug dealers and explain how Bourgois demonstrated social problems by observing participants' activities and interviewing local residents (Bourgois, 2003). In addition, the author will analyze how Bourgois investigated labor conflicts by living in the targeted area with Latino and African American immigrants. Moreover, the author of the book analyzed evidence for searching the dynamics of the social structure and power relations between different ethnic neighborhoods. The author will utilize Bourgois's research as an example to demonstrate how to conduct interviews in qualitative research.

Politicizing Vulnerability: Representing a Crisis of Parenthood in Empar Fernández’s Mauricio Tedesco Stories

Using the medium of the crime fiction short story and focalized through Inspector Mauricio Tedesco, Empar Fernandez’s “Rojo infierno” (2016), “Triscaidecafobia” (2016), and “El barri numero 9” (2017) represent the immigration and the gender violence crises in Spain by chronicling the delinquency of ordinary citizens in a fictional format. Rooted in the gray asphalt of Barcelona’s neighborhoods that are still suffering the repercussions of 2008, Fernandez’s stories give visibility to a crisis of parenthood, and take us to the peripheral spaces where these crises have unfolded. In “Rojo infierno” and “El barrio numero 9,” the focus is on immigrant parents and crimes that are committed in fear of having to leave Spain, whereas, in “Triscaidecafobia,” a mother’s mistreatment at the hands of her son is depicted. Spatiality, vulnerability, and visibility are intimately linked in these stories as the spaces of delinquency and crime are (re)explored in this alternate “gris asfalto” formula, a term coined by Fernandez in a 2016 article. Through Tedesco’s investigation of these crimes, the stories problematize what constitutes delinquency in an era of crisis and heightened vulnerabilities and how the boundaries between the criminal and the non-criminal have become blurred.

MOBILIZING NETWORKS TO ADDRESS DEMENTIA IN A LATINO COMMUNITY

Many Latino older adults delay seeking help for symptoms of Alzheimer’s Disease or Related Dementia (ADRD) due to substantial barriers to services. Community-based Natural helpers (NHs) can increase health-related knowledge and can serve as full partners in health education and promotion. This paper presents the process and product of the first phase of a community-based participatory research study to develop a culturally-tailored intervention increasing knowledge about ADRD and services in East Harlem, NY. We describe the results of the initial survey and development of El Barrio SHARE, an intervention that recruits and trains community residents to provide information and referrals about dementia, tapping into natural community networks of people (hairdressers, bodega clerks, mail carriers) who interact with and have longstanding relationships with older adults in the course of their work. NHs are well-positioned to observe and detect problems, and can link elders to relevant, culturally-sensitive resources, accessible support, and treatment.

TAPPING NATURAL NETWORKS TO ADDRESS DEMENTIA IN A LATINO COMMUNITY

The need for health education regarding Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRD), specifically designed for Latinos, has been well-documented. Many Latino older adults and their families delay seeking formal help for ADRD symptoms due to lack of information and access to culturally sensitive services. This paper presents preliminary findings of community-based participatory research to develop El Barrio SHARE, a culturally-tailored intervention tapping natural helpers (NHs) to address a need identified by community members in East Harlem, NY. It trains people who often interact with elders in the course of their work (e.g., hairdressers, bodega clerks), and are well-positioned to observe and detect ADRD-related problems and potentially link elders to relevant services. Findings from a process evaluation developing the 10-module NH training suggest that (a) participants seek information that debunks myths and stigma surrounding ADRD, and (b) the need for culturally-tailored, participant-centered interventions in marginalized communities is critical.

Inmigración y deseo en la ciudadde la bailanta de Washington Cucurto

Taking a panoramic perspective as a starting point, the analysis proposed here of the short stories of the Argentine writer Washington Cucurto intends to relate them to the pornoerotic literature that has been booming in the cultural milieu of Buenos Aires in recent decades. First, the author will be contextualized as an heir of such literary aesthetics and second, a brief overview of the changes that have occurred in the literary representation of eroticism from the '80s to the first years of the 21st century will be provided. The second part of the research will focus on the analysis of three of his most read stories - El barrio de las siervas, El Rey de la Cumbia contra los fucking Estados Unidos de America, and Paraguayito de mi corazon - with the purpose of observing the dialogue that occurs in them between the literary approach to the theme of sex and its political significance. From the patterns that build the pornoerotic scenes in these stories, an answer to the following questions will be proposed: What political referentiality underlies the texts under analysis? What relationship could be established in them between the representation of the body and its social environment? What do the stories of Cucurto denounce? The main result will be the observation that deviant and excessive forms of sexuality represent the most visible symptoms of the degradation of the politico-social body.

Year One

Year One Jaquira Díaz (bio) It begins like this: an assembly outside the university, students and professors and factory workers and taxi drivers, everyone, all holding up their protest signs, el presidente more than an hour late, the Alliance Police strapped head-to-toe in body armor guarding the stage where the country's Alliance-backed president will make his first public speech since stealing the election. Aurora, whose fourteen-year-old brother was last seen with Alliance cops outside the governor's palace, is among the protestors. She is nineteen, a first-year student, political science. Edgar, her only brother, was just a kid, a prankster, caught spray painting graffiti on the palace's south wall—stop negotiating with colonial overlords—probably something he'd heard their father say. He was taken away to answer for his crime. This story she got from his friends, Monchi and Chapo, who ran before the cops caught them. The bill for repainting the south wall was hand-delivered to her parents' house in Carraízo, but news about Edgar's whereabouts never came. Aurora's phone calls to la policía had been useless—they'd never heard of her brother or the graffiti incident, and if he was caught by the Alliance, well, he was shit out of luck, no offense, seńorita. The Alliance didn't even have an office she could call, and the receptionist at the palace just laughed when she asked to speak with el presidente, or el gobernador, ese maldito vendepatria. She visited el palacio at least four times, demanding to see a captain, a sergeant, somebody, anybody, but was turned away again and again. Her mother wrote letters, got other women in el barrio to write letters, which was useless according to her father. These men don't care about letters, her father had said. They only care about one damn thing. He had withdrawn all of their savings from el Banco Popular, had borrowed from everyone he knew. A ransom, that's what it was. The Alliance was holding Edgar hostage and he would get him back. Her father had returned penniless and beaten and without her brother. He had returned, and for that Aurora was grateful, but she had known then that her brother was dead, that he would not come home, not ever, that he was killed by a foreign government in his own country, for words he had written on a wall. When el presidente takes the stage, Aurora begins to make her way up front, sliding in between students and factory workers, ducking elbows to the head and pushing people out of her way. Her brother is dead. She once thought that knowing this would break her. But now she understands—can feel it in her bones—that being a colonial subject is even worse than being killed. Freedom is all that matters anymore. Viva Puerto Rico libre. She holds the gun against her body, in the front pocket of her Universidad de Puerto Rico hoodie, her sleeves scrunched up to the elbows. Her brother is dead and the cops notice her moving through the crowd, notice her making her way toward the podium, notice her meeting their eyes and not looking away because she is not afraid. Her brother is dead, and they are recognizing her from her many visits to the palace. Her brother is dead and el presidente is speaking—el gobernador watching from the side [End Page 70] of the stage after selling out his own people—addressing the assembly of farmers who have lost their crops, their lands, mothers and fathers who have lost their children, sisters who have lost their brothers. She feels the weight of the gun in her hand, and just like she'd imagined, protestors all around her with their makeshift signs, the heat rising rising rising like a breaking wave inside her, her brother, her brother's face, her brother's ghost-voice a whisper in her ear, Take the shot. And Aurora takes the shot. Immediately, she's surrounded by cops. A blow to the face from the buttstock of a rifle, more shots, the crowd pushing, running...

Noticias sobre los judíos de Candelario (Salamanca)

En el siglo XV se establecen comunidades hebreas en el señorío de Béjar: Hervás (Cáceres), Candelario y La Calzada (Salamanca). Poco tiempo antes de la expulsión, el duque de Béjar impone ligeras restricciones comerciales a los judíos de Candelario. Es posible que tras el edicto de expulsión los conversos de Candelario habitasen en el «barrio de los Perros».

Fight for the monopoly of the violence. The night rounds of the residents of "El Barrio" (Guatemala city)

No abstract available. ECA Estudios Centroamericanos, Vol. 73, No. 752, 2018: 11-23.

Atributos y significados en torno a una plaza. El Barrio Mágico de San Agustín de las Cuevas

Estos parrafos pretenden contribuir a la construccion de una cultura urbano-arquitectonica entendida como dispositivo primordial de sensibilizacion social hacia el espacio publico que es un bien patrimonial. Esa es la gran pretension que da rumbo a nuestros afanes que buscan dar una promocion, desde un nivel de la microfisica social, pertinente al lugar emblematico de la Plaza del Barrio Magico de San Agustin de las Cuevas, que es un lugar cuya antiguedad le mantiene dentro de la tension tradicion-modernidad. Asi, la idea es interesar por la reflexion de la forma como las personas se relacionan con el espacio publico y construyen los significados inmersos en la valoracion binaria belleza-fealdad y discernir si existe lo feo en la percepcion de las personas a traves del analisis de sus formas de interaccion en y con los objetos y las expresiones materiales que bordean la Plaza, inmersas como estan dentro de un juego de oscilaciones centrifugas y centripetas, visibles en la defensa por mantener el estado de las cosas frente a los deseos de evolucionar y estar acorde con el tiempo, pero con la idea aparentemente compartida por resguardar sin alterar, mantener sin innovar, que se ha puesto de manifiesto en las intervenciones de remozamiento recientes.

My Brother the Mexican

El “Piti” le decían, I never knew why. We lived just outside “El Barrio,” at least that’s what they called it, ‘cause it took too long to say “Tlachichilco del Carmen.” Nobody called it that, but my mom. She would make us go to El Barrio a vender “panquecitos.” Two little gringüitos selling cupcakes en la plaza. 
 
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Estudio del impacto de la actividad apícola en el Istmo de Tehuantepec, Oaxaca, México

En la presente investigación se analiza la factibilidad de que la apicultura, como actividad complementaria de la unidad familiar genere ingresos adicionales en las unidades rurales de producción agropecuaria de la Región del Istmo de Tehuantepec. El estudio se realizó en los municipios de: Matías Romero Avendaño, El Barrio de la Soledad, San Juan Guichicovi y Chahuites, con un total de 24 encuestas, y tiene un enfoque cuantitativo y cualitativo. Se apoyó en trabajo de gabinete y trabajo de campo, este último realizado en el mes de agosto de 2013. Los resultados indican que la explotación apícola es una forma pertinente de diversificar el ingreso, dado que además de generar empleo en tiempos de menor actividad en las actividades agrícolas es rentable y constituye una opción para las unidades de producción rural, en especial para las más pequeñas. En los escenarios analizados pudo constatarse que lo invertido en la actividad supera la recuperación de una inversión equivalente en pagarés de renta fija.

¿Cómo escribe el etnógrafo?. Una mirada hacia la metodología de Bourgois desde la idea de autoridad etnográfica

El objetivo del presente artículo es analizar la propuesta metodológica que Philippe Bourgois desarrolla en su obra En busca de respeto. Vendiendo crack en Harlem. Para ello, revisaremos la forma en que construye sus categorías teóricas y la estructura del libro, a partir de las observaciones realizadas y de las experiencias y opiniones de los habitantes de East Harlem. En este recorrido, repasaremos las perspectivas teóricas que el autor pone en juego, como así también los elementos que utiliza en la construcción de los relatos. Finalmente, reflexionaremos sobre la idea de autoridad etnográfica presente en el trabajo del antropólogo norteamericano.

Comentario a Philip Burgeois: In search of respect: selling crack in "El Barrio"

Comentario a Philip Burgeois: In search of respect: selling crack in "El Barrio"