Language has no weather : field notes from Unseen California

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  Aspen Mays, Dionne Lee, Karolina Karlic, Mercedes Dorame, Tarrah Krajnak : field notes from Unseen California

  Rare Books

  "In their ongoing interdisciplinary work, exhibited for the first time, the artists of Unseen California respond to the role photography has played in defining attitudes toward the iconic Western landscape by its omission of multi-valent histories embedded in the land. The dominant canon of American landscape photography is inextricable from a colonial orientation to the land and its resources: from the photographic surveys of the 19th century, to the "untouched" vistas depicted in the 20th century, and later the encroaching sprawl of the built environment documented in New Topographics. Rather, the artists here propose new epistemologies and ways of belonging."--Exhibit website, https://www.penumbrafoundation.org/project-gallery-current

  642345a

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  "Expropriation of Land in Lower California." File 089-4, Part 1. From (~1.5"). Includes some U.S. govt. docs, such as an item on the American Mexican Claims Commission, dated 1943 ("Established pursuant to the Settlement of Mexican Claims Act of 1942.") Talk about an irresistable force meeting an immovable object: the SP, king of the land-grabbing railroads, versus the Carranza/Cardenas/Camacho land-redistributing agrarian machine! In this body of material, the SPM is trying to reclaim lands they considered theirs by some earlier precedents and agreements, most of which predate the 1917 Constitution. But it's clear from this that even the U.S. govt., in the form of the Agrarian Claims Commission, doesn't think the SP has any claim to certain contested lands in Mexico. On Oct. 8, 1940, ACC Executive Officer George H. Winters politely but firmly responds in a three-page letter to SP VP W.A. Worthington that "It is not clear how the agreements of Dec. 28, 1915 and June 22, 1916 [which he details at the start of letter] can, of themselves, properly be regarded as establishing any interest on the part of the Southern Pacific Company in the lands in question." He goes on to note that "From the language of the first of those arguments it seems to be obvious that the creation of any interest in the lands here involved on the part of the claimant depended upon the performance of a number of conditions subsequent. The record contains no direct evidence as to the performance of those conditions...," etc. This letter is quite revealing of U.S. policy with regard to American land claims. The FDR government's Good Neighborhood-ism colors a lot of this, in fascinating ways. This also involves the SP-sheltered venture known as the "Compa-ia de Terrenos Y Aguas de La Baja California," which is noted elsewhere in this survey (specifically, see II:4, XIII:1, XIII:4). Also contains large envelope with maps, other materials; didn't look inside envelope

  Manuscripts

  These materials, consisting primarily of correspondence but also including maps, news clippings, photographs, and blueprints, are arranged and bound by topic according to the Southern Pacific's internal organizational schema. There are 160 individual bound items in these 23 boxes. Each grouping is in reverse chronological order as it was originally filed by SP de México administrators. Collection has material in English and Spanish.

  mssSPdeMéxicocollection