1.
El Paso, Texas
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El Paso is the seat of El Paso County, Texas, United States. The city is situated in the far corner of the U. S. state of Texas. El Paso stands on the Rio Grande river across the Mexico–United States border from Ciudad Juárez, the region of over 2.9 million people constitutes the largest bilingual and binational work force in the Western Hemisphere. The city hosts the annual Sun Bowl college football post-season game, El Paso has a strong federal and military presence. William Beaumont Army Medical Center, Biggs Army Airfield, and Fort Bliss call the city home, Fort Bliss is one of the largest military complexes of the United States Army and the largest training area in the United States. Also headquartered in El Paso are the DEA domestic field division 7, El Paso Intelligence Center, Joint Task Force North, Border Patrol El Paso Sector, and U. S. In 2010, El Paso received an All-America City Award, El Paso has been ranked the safest large city in the U. S. for four consecutive years and has ranked in the top three since 1997. As of July 1,2015, the estimate for the city from the U. S. Census was 681,124. Its U. S. metropolitan area covers all of El Paso and Hudspeth counties in Texas, the El Paso MSA forms part of the larger El Paso–Las Cruces CSA, with a population of 1,053,267. The El Paso region has had human settlement for thousands of years, the evidence suggests 10,000 to 12,000 years of human habitation. The earliest known cultures in the region were maize farmers, when the Spanish arrived, the Manso, Suma, and Jumano tribes populated the area. These were subsequently incorporated into the Mestizo culture, along with immigrants from central Mexico, captives from Comanchería, the Mescalero Apache were also present. El Paso del Norte was founded on the bank of the Río Bravo del Norte. El Paso remained the largest settlement in New Mexico until its cession to the U. S. in 1848, the Texas Revolution was generally not felt in the region, as the American population was small, not being more than 10% of the population. However, the region was claimed by Texas as part of the treaty signed with Mexico, during this interregnum, 1836–1848, Americans nonetheless continued to settle the region. The present Texas–New Mexico boundary placing El Paso on the Texas side was drawn in the Compromise of 1850, El Paso County was established in March 1850, with San Elizario as the first county seat. The United States Senate fixed a boundary between Texas and New Mexico at the 32nd parallel, thus largely ignoring history and topography, a military post called The Post opposite El Paso was established in 1854. Further west, a settlement on Coons Rancho called Franklin became the nucleus of the future El Paso, a year later, pioneer Anson Mills completed his plan of the town, calling it El Paso
2.
Sinaloa
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Sinaloa, officially the Free and Sovereign State of Sinaloa, is one of the 31 states which, with the Federal District, compose the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico. It is divided into 18 municipalities and its capital city is Culiacán Rosales and it is located in Northwestern Mexico. It is bordered by the states of Sonora to the north, Chihuahua and Durango to the east, to the west, Sinaloa has a significant share of coastline on the Gulf of California. The state covers an area of 57,377 square kilometers and it is known to be a stronghold territory for the Sinaloa Cartel. In addition to the city, the states important cities include Mazatlán. Prior to the coming of the Spaniards, much of Sinaloa was inhabited by the Cáhita peoples, in 1531, Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán with a force of over 10,000 men, defeated a force of 30,000 Cahíta warriors at the site of Culiacán. Beltrán de Guzmán established a Spanish and allied Indian outpost at San Miguel de Culiacán, over the next decade, the Cahíta suffered severe depopulation from smallpox and other diseases the Spanish brought. The Spanish organized Sinaloa as part of the gobierno of Nueva Galicia, the first capital of Nueva Vizcaya was located in San Sebastián, near Copala, but the capital moved to Durango in 1583. Starting in 1599, Jesuit missionaries spread out from a base at what is now Sinaloa de Leyva and by 1610, in 1601, the Jesuits movement into the eastern part of Sinaloa led to the Acaxee going to war. The Spanish eventually managed to reassert authority in the Sierra Madre Occidental region, after Mexican independence, Sinaloa was joined with Sonora as Estado de Occidente, but it became a separate, sovereign state in 1830. Sinaloa is traversed by rivers, which carve broad valleys into the foothills. The largest of these rivers are the Culiacán, Fuerte, Sinaloa has a warm climate on the coast, moderately warm climate in the valleys and foothills, moderately cold in the lower mountains, and cold in the higher elevations. Its weather characteristics vary from subtropical, found on coastal plains, temperatures range from 22 °C to 43 °C with rain and thunderstoms during the summer months and dry conditions throughout most of the year. Numerous species of plants and animals are found within Sinaloa, notable among the tree species is the elephant tree, Bursera microphylla. Culturally, it is known for its popular styles of music banda and it is the only place in the continent where the ancient Mesoamerican ballgame is played, in a handful of small, rural communities not far from Mazatlán. The ritual ballgame was central in the society, religion and cosmology of all the great Mesoamerican cultures including the Mixtecs, Aztecs, the Sinaloa version of the game is called ulama and is very similar to the original. There are efforts to preserve this 3500-year-old unique tradition by supporting the communities and its rich cuisine is well-known for its variety particularly in regard to mariscos and vegetables. Sushi is a popular dish here, the Sinaloa Cartel has significantly influenced the culture of Sinaloa
3.
Mexico
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Mexico, officially the United Mexican States, is a federal republic in the southern half of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States, to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean, to the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea, and to the east by the Gulf of Mexico. Covering almost two million square kilometers, Mexico is the sixth largest country in the Americas by total area, Mexico is a federation comprising 31 states and a federal district that is also its capital and most populous city. Other metropolises include Guadalajara, Monterrey, Puebla, Toluca, Tijuana, pre-Columbian Mexico was home to many advanced Mesoamerican civilizations, such as the Olmec, Toltec, Teotihuacan, Zapotec, Maya and Aztec before first contact with Europeans. In 1521, the Spanish Empire conquered and colonized the territory from its base in Mexico-Tenochtitlan, Three centuries later, this territory became Mexico following recognition in 1821 after the colonys Mexican War of Independence. The tumultuous post-independence period was characterized by instability and many political changes. The Mexican–American War led to the cession of the extensive northern borderlands, one-third of its territory. The Pastry War, the Franco-Mexican War, a civil war, the dictatorship was overthrown in the Mexican Revolution of 1910, which culminated with the promulgation of the 1917 Constitution and the emergence of the countrys current political system. Mexico has the fifteenth largest nominal GDP and the eleventh largest by purchasing power parity, the Mexican economy is strongly linked to those of its North American Free Trade Agreement partners, especially the United States. Mexico was the first Latin American member of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and it is classified as an upper-middle income country by the World Bank and a newly industrialized country by several analysts. By 2050, Mexico could become the fifth or seventh largest economy. The country is considered both a power and middle power, and is often identified as an emerging global power. Due to its culture and history, Mexico ranks first in the Americas. Mexico is a country, ranking fourth in the world by biodiversity. In 2015 it was the 9th most visited country in the world, Mexico is a member of the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, the G8+5, the G20, the Uniting for Consensus and the Pacific Alliance. Mēxihco is the Nahuatl term for the heartland of the Aztec Empire, namely, the Valley of Mexico, and its people, the Mexica and this became the future State of Mexico as a division of New Spain prior to independence. It is generally considered to be a toponym for the valley became the primary ethnonym for the Aztec Triple Alliance as a result. After New Spain won independence from Spain, representatives decided to name the new country after its capital and this was founded in 1524 on top of the ancient Mexica capital of Mexico-Tenochtitlan
4.
Hunter S. Thompson
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Hunter Stockton Thompson was an American journalist and author, and the founder of the gonzo journalism movement. Born in Louisville, Kentucky, to a family, Thompson had a turbulent youth after the death of his father left the family in poverty. He was unable to finish high school as he was incarcerated for 60 days after abetting a robbery. He subsequently joined the United States Air Force before moving into journalism and he traveled frequently, including stints in California, Puerto Rico, and Brazil, before settling in Aspen, Colorado, in the early 1960s. Thompson became internationally known with the publication of Hells Angels, The Strange, for his research on the book he had spent a year living and riding with the Angels, experiencing their lives and hearing their stories first-hand. The work he remains best known for, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream, politically minded, Thompson ran unsuccessfully for sheriff of Pitkin County, Colorado, in 1970, on the Freak Power ticket. Thompsons output notably declined from the mid-1970s, as he struggled with the consequences of fame and he was also known for his lifelong use of alcohol and illegal drugs, his love of firearms, and his iconoclastic contempt for authoritarianism. He remarked, I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, after a bout of health problems, Thompson committed suicide at the age of 67. In accordance with his wishes, his ashes were fired out of a cannon in a ceremony funded by his friend Johnny Depp and attended by friends including then-Senator John Kerry, hari Kunzru wrote that the true voice of Thompson is revealed to be that of American moralist. One who often makes himself ugly to expose the ugliness he sees around him and his parents were introduced to each other by a friend from Jacks fraternity at the University of Kentucky in September 1934, and married on November 2,1935. Thompsons first name came from an ancestor on his mothers side. On December 2,1943, when Thompson was six years old, on July 3,1952, when Thompson was 14 years old, his father, aged 58, died of myasthenia gravis. Hunter and his brothers, Davison Wheeler and James Garnet, were raised by their mother, Hunter also had a much older half-brother, James Thompson, Jr. from his fathers first marriage, who was not part of the Thompson household. Virginia worked as a librarian to support her children, and is described as having become a heavy drinker following her husbands death, ultimately he never joined any sports teams in high school. Thompson attended I. N. Bloom Elementary School, Highland Middle School, also in 1952, he was accepted as a member of the Athenaeum Literary Association, a school-sponsored literary and social club that dated to 1862. Its members at the time, generally drawn from Louisvilles wealthy upper-class families, included Porter Bibb, during this time Thompson read and admired J. P. Donleavys The Ginger Man. As an Athenaeum member, Thompson contributed articles to and helped produce the clubs yearbook The Spectator, the group ejected Thompson in 1955, citing his legal problems. Charged as an accessory to robbery after being in a car with the perpetrator and he served 31 days and, a week after his release, enlisted in the United States Air Force
5.
Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo
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Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo is the first novel by Oscar Zeta Acosta and it focuses on his own self-discovery in a fictionalized manner. An autobiography, the plot presents an alienated lawyer of Mexican descent and this character survives on drugs, alcohol, and counseling sessions until he transforms into a Chicano activist. At the end of the work, the protagonist adds the name of Zeta. By traveling to his birthplace, the lost character discovers himself, the first five chapters take place on July 1,1967, the narrative, however, is frequently broken up by flashbacks that explain the narrator’s relationship with various characters. The story begins in the morning as the narrator is preparing to go to work, standing naked in front of the mirror, he reflects on his large brown body and his general health. He is both constipated and suffers from ulcers, which cause him to vomit, while looking in the mirror, he seeks advice from his “three favorite men”, Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, and Edward G. Robinson. He also hears the voice of Dr. Serbin, his psychiatrist, who seems to be following him, the narrator masturbates in the shower while fantasizing about a friend’s wife. The narrator leaves his apartment in San Francisco and drives to Oakland where he works as a legal aid lawyer and he has worked in the office since he passed the bar exam 12 months before. When he arrives at work he avoids going into his office and he assumes they have all been beaten by their husbands over the weekend. When he finally goes into his office, he learns that his secretary Pauline has died from cancer, Pauline has supported him in his job and has helped him negotiate the bureaucracy. The narrator did not know she was seriously ill and he decides that without Pauline’s support he cannot continue in the job. He leaves the office and heads back to San Francisco, on the drive he talks to himself and Dr. Serbin. He remembers the three years before when he was sick for months with mononucleosis. During this time he met a neighbor in his apartment building, Cynthia, Cynthia introduced the narrator to marijuana and LSD. Through Cynthia he also met a couple, Alice and Ted Casey, while he was bedridden, Alice and Cynthia cared for the narrator by bringing him soup. Later he became friends with Ted and Alice, regularly visiting their apartment, the friendship ended when the narrator tested Ted’s liberal views on relationships by broaching the subject of his sleeping with Alice while Ted was away on one of his trips. Ted acted as though he was indifferent and that it was Alice’s decision but later, through a friend, returning to the central focus of the narrative, the narrator arrives at Ted Casey’s house and rings the bell. He then goes to the office of his psychiatrist, although the psychiatrist is meeting with a patient the narrator bangs on the door
6.
The Revolt of the Cockroach People
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The Revolt of the Cockroach People is a novel by Oscar Zeta Acosta. The novel is a fictionalized account of the August 29,1970 Chicano Moratorium. In addition to political protest, the characters engage in insurrection against religious, educational, during the Moratorium, demonstrations are held while buildings are bombed and people die. The protagonist, Buffalo Zeta Brown, represents the rioters who were indicted unjustly, eventually, the pressures from the court, the community, and his life become too overwhelming, and Buffalo Zeta Brown decides to leave town to start afresh in San Francisco. The title of novel and its references to cockroaches is a metaphor for societys undesirables, particularly minorities. Study resource for The Revolt of the Cockroach People
7.
Chicano Movement
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Socially, the Chicano Movement addressed negative ethnic stereotypes of Mexicans in mass media and the American consciousness. While most people of Mexican descent still refused to call themselves Chicanos, Chicanos did this through the creation of works of literary and visual art that validated the Mexican American ethnicity and culture practices. The term Chicanos was originally used as a label for the sons. Some prefer to spell the word Chicano as Xicano and this new generation of Mexican Americans were singled out by people on both sides of the border in whose view these Mexican Americans were not American, yet they were not Mexican, either. In the 1960s Chicano was accepted as a symbol of self-determination, the Chicano Movement also addressed discrimination in public and private institutions. Early in the century, Mexican Americans formed organizations to protect themselves from discrimination. One of those organizations, the League of United Latin American Citizens, was formed in 1929, the Chicano Movement had been fermenting since the end of the U. S. –Mexican War in 1848, when the current U. S–Mexican border took form. Since that time, many Chicanos and Chicanas have campaigned against discrimination, racism, the Chicano Movement that culminated in the early 1970s took inspiration from heroes and heroines from their indigenous, Mexican and American past. The movement gained momentum after World War II when groups such as the American G. I, Forum, which was formed by returning Mexican American veterans, joined in the efforts by other civil rights organizations. After the Longoria incident, the AGIF quickly expanded throughout Texas and by the 1950s, there were several leaders throughout the Chicano Movement. In New Mexico there was Reies López Tijerina who worked on the land grant movement and he fought to regain control of what he considered ancestral lands. He became involved in civil rights causes within six years and also became a cosponsor of the Poor Peoples March on Washington in 1967. In Texas, war veteran Dr. Hector P. Garcia founded the American GI Forum and was appointed to the United States Commission on Civil Rights. In Denver, Rodolfo Corky Gonzáles helped define the meaning of being a Chicano through his poem Yo Soy Joaquin, in California, César Chávez and the farm workers turned to the struggle of urban youth, and created political awareness and participated in La Raza Unida Party. The most prominent civil rights organization in the Mexican-American community is the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, founded in 1968. Although modeled after the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, MALDEF has also taken on many of the functions of organizations, including political advocacy. This led Chicana women to form the Comisión Femenil Mexicana Nacional, in 1975, it became involved in the case Madrigal v. Quilligan, obtaining a moratorium on the compulsory sterilization of women and adoption of bilingual consent forms. These steps were necessary because many Hispanic women who did not understand English well were being sterilized in the United States at the time, sVREPs mission is to empower Latinos and other minorities by increasing their participation in the American democratic process
8.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
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Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream is a novel by Hunter S. Thompson, illustrated by Ralph Steadman. The book is a roman à clef, rooted in autobiographical incidents, the work is Thompsons most famous book, and is noted for its lurid descriptions of illegal drug use and its early retrospective on the culture of the 1960s. Its popularization of Thompsons highly subjective blend of fact and fiction has become known as gonzo journalism, the novel first appeared as a two-part series in Rolling Stone magazine in 1971, was published as a book in 1972. It was later adapted into a film of the name in 1998 by Terry Gilliam, starring Johnny Depp and Benicio del Toro who portrayed Raoul Duke and Dr. Gonzo. The novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is based on two trips to Las Vegas, Nevada, that Hunter S. Thompson took with attorney and Chicano activist Oscar Zeta Acosta in March and April 1971. Thompson wrote that he concluded their March trip by spending some 36 hours alone in a hotel room feverishly writing in my notebook about his experiences and these writings became the genesis of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream. He had first submitted a 2, 500-word manuscript to Sports Illustrated that was aggressively rejected, Thompson joined the array of Vegas experiences within what he called an essentially fictional framework that described a singular free-wheeling trip to Vegas peppered with creative licenses. The novel lacks a narrative and frequently delves into the surreal. The basic synopsis revolves around journalist Raoul Duke and his attorney, Dr. Gonzo, however, this job is repeatedly obstructed by their constant use of a variety of recreational drugs, including LSD, ether, cocaine, alcohol, mescaline, and cannabis. The preface quotes Samuel Johnson, He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man, Thompson posits that his drug use is intended to render him a mess, that he is the poster boy of a generation of cripples and seekers. Their erratic behaviour depicts the failure his generation feels. The wave speech is an important passage at the end of the chapter that captures the hippie zeitgeist. Strange memories on this night in Las Vegas. It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era—the kind of peak that never comes again, san Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe not, in the long run… but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda. … You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a universal sense that whatever we were doing was right. Not in any mean or military sense, we didnt need that, there was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs
