Beginnings

Culture shock during the first weekend wasn´t terribly bad, but I´m glad I planned on flying in to give me time to adjust before heading to the Archive. My host family is awesome. A friend of mine I met in Xalapa, Veracruz recommended I stay with his friend, who has interests similar to mine (Firefly, Halo, etc) and speaks a little English. His cousin works at the airport, speaks English rather well, and gave us a ride to the house on Friday, before we headed to a pub crawl birthday party. I managed to keep up with conversations until we got to the louder, second bar.

Today my new friend went with me to the Archive to make sure I figured out the bus system and paperwork okay. Registering prompted him to say "It´s still pretty much a prison!" I had to sign a few forms, sit at a computer to make sure the forms were entered correctly, and be photgraphed and fingerprinted. I set off the metal detector and no one cared, though, so who knows. Got a lecture about making copies, which worried me for a minute until I realized it amounted to needing to ask for permission and wait several days for copies or microfilm to be made. Ideally I can still request several microfilms worth of material.

Either the flight or Windows Update damaged my computer´s hard drive, but an extended family member here is a computer engineer and should have it fixed soon. Instead of continuing at the Archive during the afternoon without my computer I went to the center of Mexico City to see if I could snag any good books on Calle Donceles, a colonial street right behind the Aztec Templo Mayor. Wandering around on my own was great; I never get lost, I only go exploring.

I was surprised to see a reasonably-priced hardcover Juan Pardo Expeditions (for $300 pesos, with I think another 20% discount) tucked between various editions of Bartholeme de las Casas and Cabeza de Vaca. In another store I bought an edited volume about 18th century blacks in Mexico which confirms, in some cases with particularly convincing statistics, the idea that the caste system was never more than a guideline. Various authors use local archives to paint the picture of societies in Veracruz, Oaxaca, and other cities, very similar to Shannon Lee Dawdy´s use of the Louisiana Superior Council records. Carrying a book about African Mexicans while playing "spot another gringo" was mildly entertaining, but the book will surely help my interpretations of Pensacola as an extension of Mexican society and follow Dawdy´s idea of "rogue colonialism." Tucked away in the AGN somewhere should be documentation at a level corresponding to this and other research into societies at the local level.

I´ll update with a few photos, hopefully from my own computer. I have the most important files on my flash drive, so either way I´ll finally sit down tomorrow with the original colonial documents.