¡Viva George! : celebrating Washington's birthday at the US-Mexico border /

¡Viva George! : celebrating Washington's birthday at the US-Mexico border /

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Bibliographic Details
Author / Creator:	Peña, Elaine A., 1979- author.
Edition:	First edition.
Imprint:	Austin : University of Texas Press, [2020]
Description:	1 online resource.
Language:	English
Series:	Jack and Doris Smothers series in Texas history, life, and culture Jack and Doris Smothers series in Texas history, life, and culture.
Subject:	Festivals -- Texas -- Laredo -- History. Festivals -- Mexico -- Nuevo Laredo -- History. Political customs and rites -- Texas -- Laredo. Political customs and rites -- Mexico -- Nuevo Laredo. Festivals -- Texas -- Laredo -- International cooperation -- History. Festivals -- Mexico -- Nuevo Laredo -- International cooperation -- History. Ethnosociology -- Mexican-American Border Region. Ethnosociology. Festivals. International relations. Political customs and rites. Laredo (Tex.) -- Relations -- Mexico -- Nuevo Laredo. Mexico -- Nuevo Laredo. North America -- Mexican-American Border Region. Texas -- Laredo. Electronic books. History.
Format:	E-Resource Book
URL for this record:	http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/12655843

Hidden Bibliographic Details
ISBN:	9781477321454 1477321454 9781477321430 1477321438 9781477321447 1477321446
Summary:	"For more than a century, the border cities of Laredo, Texas, and Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, have celebrated George Washington's birthday with parades, pageants, and other festivities. This project uses that long-standing tradition as a lens to examine binational relations and cross-border cooperation, especially during times of crisis (e.g., the 1954 flood, currency devaluations, present-day drug violence). It is a work of both ethnography and archival research (as well as a few uncatalogued documents the author received from private collections), and it argues that the tradition of meeting in the middle of the international bridge is more than a goodwill gesture or an exercise in identity-consolidation. Peña maintains the GWB celebration is a repository of bicultural memory, a negotiation platform, a reconciliatory course of action, and even an efficacious mode of border security"--
Other form:	Original 9781477321430 1477321438 9781477321447 1477321446
Govt.docs classification:	Z UA380.8 P370vi

Description
Summary:	2021 Jim Parish Award for Documentation and Publication of Local and Regional History, Webb County Heritage Foundation<br> <br> For 120 years, residents of the cross-border community of Laredo/Nuevo Laredo have celebrated George Washington's birthday together, and this account reveals the essential political work of a time-honored civic tradition. <br> <br> Since 1898, residents of Laredo, Texas, and Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, have reached across the US-Mexico border to celebrate George Washington's birthday. The celebration can last a whole month, with parade goers reveling in American and Mexican symbols; George Washington saluting; and "Pocahontas" riding on horseback. An international bridge ceremony, the heart and soul of the festivities, features children from both sides of the border marching toward each other to link the cities with an embrace. ¡Viva George! offers an ethnography and a history of this celebration, which emerges as both symbol and substance of cross-border community life. Anthropologist and Laredo native Elaine A. Peña shows how generations of border officials, civil society organizers, and everyday people have used the bridge ritual to protect shared economic and security interests as well as negotiate tensions amid natural disasters, drug-war violence, and immigration debates. Drawing on previously unknown sources and extensive fieldwork, Peña finds that border enactments like Washington's birthday are more than goodwill gestures. From the Rio Grande to the 38th Parallel, they do the meaningful political work that partisan polemics cannot.
Physical Description:	1 online resource.
ISBN:	9781477321454 1477321454 9781477321430 1477321438 9781477321447 1477321446