#californios

[chiropteracupola]

Doña Catalina Simplicia Tavárez y Lázaro, artist unknown.

[nextwarden]

today I met and lost a soulmate

it all started with a simple message:

immediately i was intrigued: what's a fulturle? is it like a turtle? does it imply the existence of a fultoise? so many questions, so few answers... so i replied:

surprising, but I'm curious (of course I remain ever cautious, it could be a bot!)

hmmm, which one? my pfp (Magellan from the anime One Piece) or actually me and not at all famous actor Leslie Nielsen?

also, getting carded for the first time in 50 years was quite nice

but I needed answers:

yes, nice!

huh? could it be... the famous p0rn I've heard so much about?

ah, right, I'm on Tumblr, the no porn site, so, no

but soon my disappointment was overshadowed by an interesting offer!

art and money! what more can a humble tumblerina such as myself ask for?

maybe not my brightest business decision, but I wanted to close this deal so badly!

unfortunately, god things only last for so long... and that thing about Discord dredged up some painful memories I hadn't thought about since the Accident™

but luckily for me, they seemed understanding:

I, however, am not such a kind soul and have more difficulty letting my dark past go...

but like the good businessperson they seem to be, they cleared pas this awkward moment brilliantly (and with much empathy!)

I see they try to engage but I cannot let go, this is my last reminder of her after all... I will not sell!

and then, the worst case scenario happens:

they suddenly reminded me of what I had to look out for out there, where the grass shine greener than the Sun

you see, I owe Ted my life, he pulled me out of the darkest times of my life with the strength of his two human sized bare hands when I was in the metaphorical jungle but also in the middle of a very real (and dangerous!) jungle.

but they remain steadfast, so i try to emulate their strength fo soul

I also attempt to be more forthcoming and open to amend my previous impetinence:

I am not happy with the reaward I reap for my efforts, however...

so I make it clear I do not like to be demeaned in such a way and I wish to be treated like the perfectly normal sized human that I am:

sadly, this is the last contact we ever have, no message, no phone call, no letter...

I am lost without my soulmate, lost and alone, at 67 years old in front of the cold blinking cursor, reminding me of all that could have been but never will be.

Goodbye sweet angel, with love and many XOXOXO,

Ted Bank from Californio

[minniti]

love mexican men in cowboy hats. vaquero tuxedo excellence.

[junkalow]

Junior Mesa - Caroline

Been losing my ship over this dude's music. Good stuff.

[hillsidehippierites]

I’ve got trail stories. They’re all true.

[authorkarajorgensen]

Random Flowers and Flourishing Update

I spent like 2+ hours researching Californios cuisine in the 1800s for like two throwaway lines (to readers), but there’s a difference between Mexican food and Californians of Mexican descent. In this essay, I will...

Anyway, it’s fascinating and sweet pumpkin empanadas sound amazing.

PS- Flowers and Flourishing will be free to newsletter subscribers and will go out in late January (link to sign up)

[countesspetofi]

Today in the Department of Before They Were Star Trek Stars, Leonard Nimoy guest stars in "The Tiburcio Mendez Story," episode 26 of the fourth season of Wagon Train (original air date March 22, 1961). If you're playing along at home, you probably remember that Gene Roddenberry originally pitched Star Trek to the studio as “Wagon Train to the stars.”

Nimoy plays Joachin Delgado, the protégé and future son-in-law of the titular character. Mendez is the leader of a ragtag group of Californios who were displaced fifteen years earlier when the United States annexed California at the end of the Mexican-American War, and the Gold Rush brought a wave of prospectors and settlers west into the new territory. They've been living rough in the hills at the edge of the desert and robbing the occasional wagon train, partly to survive and partly to try to stem the tide of Anglo settlers.

A magistrate traveling with the wagon train believes he can get the group's original land grants restored to them if the individual members who actively committed the robberies agree to turn themselves in and stand trial. Seeing how his people, especially the children born in exile, are suffering from the harsh life in hiding, Mendez agrees to the plan. But the younger men, led by the hot-headed Delgado, resolve to stay and keep fighting.

Armed conflict breaks out between the two sides, and Mendez is fatally wounded. In tears at the deathbed of his surrogate father, Delgado promises to take Mendez's place as leader of the reunited group and see them back to California to reclaim their land.

Other Trek Connections:

This episode was written by Gene L. Coon, one of the Founding Fathers of Star Trek. He wrote or co-wrote 13 episodes of The Original Series and produced 33. Working closely with Roddenberry and Justman, he introduced such elements as as the Klingons, the United Federation of Planets, and the Prime Directive into the Trek lore.

Tiburcio Mendez is played by Nehemiah Persoff, who also played the delightfully bitchy Palor Toff in the Next Generation episode “The Most Toys.”

[ask-nyc-boroughs]

my tendency to ramble endlessly is strong 😔🙏 so I’ll try my best to keep this short. Anyways this is the result of a month long doodle page of a few of my westerners: Ramona “Mona” Sanchez/ California, Roberto Velasco “Rob McDaniel”/ Texas, & Pedro Ortega/ New Mexico + Aurelie Bayon/ Louisiana (c. @gardenkeeper ).

Under the cut, I’ll explain each doodle briefly from left to right, & I’m just gonna include the most important details. I’ll def be talking about Mona & Rob more so in the future.

Doodles left to right

Mona is like 12, a bit angsty, and boy crazy when she’s starting to think of being independent of Mexico. She thought the cute blonde boy (Alfred/USA) who was also fighting Mexico was totally gonna help her cause he’s y’know famously so good hearted (lolllll). That didn’t pan out well.

Mona on a horse cause why not. She’s usually trying to be this influencer-esque, health conscious, “spiritual” fake bitch, but like she can’t hide at her core she’s a bit of a cowgirl.

Mona & Rob talking when they’re US states. Rob just has a compulsive urge to tease her. And he does reveal stuff about her that she doesn’t necessarily want revealed (Californios are mostly castizos if you will and began identifying as Spanish rather than Mexican as they did not want to be associated with Mexico as Mexico was sending people with more mesitzos or just non-white ancestry to the region. Mona upon entry to the US would’ve identified herself as being Spanish as a means of asserting her distance from Mexico by trying to assert greater proximity to whiteness and Rob knows what she’s doing and just causally pokes holes in her story lol. Not that Rob is much better).

Rob & Aurelie just being affectionate together. I’ll save a greater discussion about them for another time. But their story begins when Rob is basically a neglected Spanish colonial outpost who’s forced to rely on the good will of his presumed French colonial enemy, Aurelie. They become friends throughout the years. Rob always had a crush on Aurelie. She began to like him more romantically towards the 20th century, and I think they bond over a shared love of music - especially genres from that region: Jazz, Blues, Ragtime, & Zydeco.

Rob in the late 19th & early 20th trying to impress Aurelie

Rob & Alfred are BFFs, they’re friends before the civil war but they really become BFFs post-civil war. They’re like highkey the same person. Loud, obnoxious, head strong. Except Rob has more of a lighter, jokester energy to him. Rob is slower to anger whereas Alfred could hold a grudge forever (New England ass).

A design of Pedro / New Mexico. I need to do more research on him. But so far I feel bad he’s stuck btwn Mona & Rob. They’re both objectively crazy lol. And Pedro just wants to be left alone.

Mona confronting Rob towards the end of the US Civil War.

[californiastatelibrary]

Happy #LatinoHeritageMonth! This image of Francisca Benicia Carrillo de Vallejo was taken in 1871. Francisca was the wife to Mexican General Mariano Vallejo and the California town of Benecia is named after her. Francisca was born in 1815 in San Diego to a Californios pioneer family and moved to Sonoma after her marriage. On the day of her wedding, she gave her dowry to the church. From our online catalog 

[newhistorybooks]

"The Grapes of Conquest examines how wine producers used racialized discourses to erase California viticulture’s Indigenous, Spanish, and Californio roots, while uplifting white agricultural citizenship and defining wine as a civilizing agent. It recuperates the multilayered ethnic history of grape production and labor while illustrating the racialized complexities involved in creating space, identities, and citizenship during the long nineteenth century.”

[a-god-in-ruins-rises]

speaking as someone with some mexican heritage, i would take up arms to defend america if mexico ever tried to "reclaim" the territory they lawfully ceded.

but honestly, anyone seriously talking about this just isn't a serious person at all. lmao. like, ignoring the fact that mexico does not remotely have the ability to press a claim like this (lol can you imagine?) but it doesn't even account for the fact that most mexican-americans wouldn't support it and most mexicans probably don't care that much about it and even if they did somehow manage to get the popular support and somehow magically create a military that can tango with the american military, what would they even do with this territory? if mexico can't even manage its country as is, what could would acquiring more territory do? it'd just make it more difficult to manage.

i mean that was exactly the issue back in the day. before the mexican-american war "the californias" were really only nominally a part of mexico. in practice, they essentially independent. the mexican governors were resented and resisted as if they were foreigners. the californios even rebelled against and deposed mexican governors. ultimately they were only really pacified when allowed to be ruled by california-born governors.

this land was never really mexico's. this land has resisted mexican control from the beginning. this land is harsh and doesn't yield easily. it took america to properly tame it. and it's been america's longer than it was ever mexico's (this land was a part of mexico for like 20 years).

plus, if you want to go down this path, it'd be just as valid to say that these territories (and all of mexico) are actually rightful spanish territory.

but that's absurd, right?

[brownie-pics]

あなたの写真は素晴らしいです。 あなたは崇高なものを見る能力を持っています。 しかし、より目立たない透かしを使用することをお勧めします。

@el-californio さま。助言ありがとうございます。写真に透かしを入れることによって、その写真の見た目に影響を与えることは理解しています。ですが、拡散する性格を持つSNSに投稿する場合において、何かの表示は必要であると私は思っています。それを踏まえてもし私の写真をあなたがまた鑑賞していただけたとしたら、私は嬉しいです。

[arsgoetiq]

Trono de San Juan Evangelista (Californio) por Mariano Benlliure y Gil, detalles y la Alegoría del Ángel ♡

[ask-wttsh-california]

Do you get along with Alaska? Ik that I’m the 19th century native Alaskan and native Californio relationships were pretty common.

Yeah, he's pretty chill. Most of the time we hang out we're doing our own seperste things together

[nathangraves]

My needlessly overthought headcanons for Soma's family background

Soma is half-Hispanic, half-Japanese. His dad is a Californio named Elio Cruz who immigrated to Japan, became a naturalized citizen and changed his name to Kurusu Erio (来須栄利雄).

Erio met his future wife, Yoshitsugu Kazuki (吉嗣一月) on a train. Kazuki was getting harrassed by assholes, and Erio kicked up a loud stink and scared them off.

Kazuki's family are traditionalists, as her father was the master of a kenjutsu dojo[1]. As such, they weren't super happy about Kazuki wanting to marry a foreigner, but Erio's devotion won them over.

In late 2016 Erio's company wanted to temporarily transfer him to their new American branch office, as he was the only one on payroll who was fluent in both English and Japanese.

Erio wasn't thrilled about leaving Kazuki alone in Japan for up to a year, so he takes her with him. Complications arise when Kazuki suddenly gets pregnant while they're in America.

They talk it out and decide to wait until after the baby's born to come back to Japan.

And that's the story of how Kurusu Souma was born on the 21st of August 2017, at 6:26 PM, during the totality of a solar eclipse, in Hopkinsville, Kentucky.[2]

Incidentally, this means Soma has dual citizenship, and he’ll need to give up his American citizenship by the time he turns 21 or he’ll lose his Japanese citizenship.

[1] Soma learned kenjutsu from his grandfather and uncle, and that's why a Japanese high schooler knows how to fight with a sword. [2] The nearest large-ish metropolis to the greatest eclipse, i.e. the point where the moon is closest to the surface of the earth.

[karnakthegreat]

tell us all about the german folk music you like

I think they’re classed German folk music so I could be wrong. I like Santiano as well as dArtagan. These are some of my favourite songs.