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Posts from the ‘social history’ Category

Dec 21

21. Statue of the holy burial

By Savannah Pine (@savannah_pine)

El Paso has two of the oldest Spanish missions in Texas. Both were founded in 1682 by Spanish Franciscans and converted Pueblos who fled Santa Fe for El Paso during the Pueblo Revolt of 1680.[1] One of the missions, la Misión de San Antonio de Ysleta del Sur, is still in use today and the building, its objects, and its congregants, Tigua Pueblos, connect the past and the present.

One of these objects is el santo entierro Cristo en el sepulchro, the holy burial Christ in the tomb. The statue of Jesus is draped in purple, with nail holes in its hands and feet, and is meant to represent Christ lying in his tomb. Dating from 1722, it is the oldest statue in the Ysleta Mission. It was brought to El Paso from Mexico, ferried across the Rio Grande.[2] El santo entierro has been used for centuries, up to the present day, in the church’s Good Friday services.[3] The congregants process with the statue, starting in the main church, then through the neighbouring streets, before returning to the church itself. Each year when the congregants process with el santo entierro, they connect themselves, and the present, to all of the other people who have commemorated Christ’s death by using the exact same statue for nearly 300 years.

References:

  1. El Paso Mission Trail Association, ‘El Paso Mission Trail: Tourist Guide.’
  2. http://ysletamission.org/2017/06/29/the-saints
  3. Photos from the 2018 service – http://ysletamission.org/2018/03/31/good-friday-2018-photos/

Featured Image: El santo entierro Cristo en el sepulchro, author’s own.

Image in text: La Misión de San Antonio de Ysleta del Sur, author’s own.

Jan 21

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Victim Personal Statements: Are We Restoring a Wrong Right?

By Kevin Bendesky

Beginning in the 1960s, the Victims’ Rights Movement had profound impacts on English law. One result, Victim Personal Statements (VPS), raised the important question of whether the victim should have the chance to say how the crime affected them. A VPS happens after the adjudication of guilt, but before the sentence is determined. It is not supposed to influence the sentence, yet judges often refer to the VPS in their sentences.[1] Some studies demonstrate that the statements do not harshen penalties; but still, victims report that they sometimes hope their VPS will affect the sentence.[2] Clearly, then, the VPS is still a topic of debate. The Victims’ Movement was grounded in the common desire to “restore” the rights of crime’s many victims.[3] But what was there to “restore”? A careful retracing of the victim’s role in English history complicates this effort.

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Oct 8

Dreams of ‘something better’: Exploring childcare alternatives from the First Neighbourhood Co-operative Nursery to ‘My Mum is on Strike.’

By Rosa Campbell @rrrosavalerie

In the late 1970s, parents in Walthamstow, London started the first neighbourhood co-operative nursery which officially opened in 1986 and closed in 1993. To celebrate this, the oral history collective On the Record has put together an exhibition at the Mill, a community centre in Tottenham called ‘Doing it Ourselves.’ Read more

Aug 27

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‘Experience doesn’t pay the bills’: a lesson from medieval England

By Rhiannon Sandy (@RhiannonSandy)

A few weeks ago, in my daily perusal of Twitter, I came across a retweet which made me angry enough to write a blogpost. Questioned as to why interns should be paid if they’re ‘getting experience for their résumé’, US Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez posted a short video answer – ‘experience doesn’t pay the bills’. This was retweeted by Piers Morgan, who called it ‘nonsense’ because ‘the free teaching is the salary’.[1] This is a very privileged stance. Unpaid internships are exploitative and exclusionary, limiting experience to those whose financial situation allows them to work for free. This limits diversity and prevents institutions from being enriched by new ideas and perspectives, because their interns are almost always going to come from a similar background.[2]

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Jul 9

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Serving ex-servicemen? Demobilisation schemes in India after the Second World War

By Mobeen Hussain (@amhuss27)

The demobilisation of soldiers has always been fraught with questions regarding jobs, re-skilling, pensions, rehabilitation and transition into peace time society. Such challenges were particularly pronounced at the apexes of the First and Second World Wars due to the sheer scale of demobilisation. Read more

Jun 11

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Gallipoli and national memory

By Stephanie Brown (@StephEmmaBrown)

On 22 May 1915, ‘a gay-hearted youth’, William Fielding Sames, sat outside his dug-out in Gallipoli (modern-day Turkey) drinking a cup of tea.[1] Even though he was just 22-years-old, William had been in the Army for five years, been promoted to Lieutenant and served in Egypt.[2] Yet, the decision to sit and drink this cup of tea was to prove fatal. While he sat with his tea a bullet penetrated his lung.[3] William died nine days later while on the way to a military hospital in Greece. He was buried at sea on 31 May 1915.[4]

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Nov 20

Mike Leigh’s Peterloo: Inequality and resistance in nineteenth-century British society

Aoife O’Leary McNeice (@aolmcn) and Helen Sunderland (@hl_sunderland) review Mike Leigh’s film Peterloo which came out earlier this month.

Mike Leigh’s Peterloo recounts the weeks leading up to the infamous massacre of peaceful working-class protestors by the yeomanry at St Peter’s Field, Manchester on 16 August 1819. It is hard to identify a single protagonist, Leigh presents the viewer with a naturalistic bird’s-eye view, sweeping from mass meetings chaired by self-proclaimed ‘radicals’, young and old, male and female, to the intimacy of a husband and wife discussing the upcoming march in bed before going to sleep. Read more