Paul Del Bosque (The University of Texas, Austin)
This paper contributes to the weather-lore tradition through a recovery of Mexican American voices that reveal the unique dimensions of natural disasters in a transnational space. Using poetry, corrido recordings, and an oral history archive interpreted for the first time, this paper presents the stories of Mexican American hurricane survivors during an intense period of storm activity in the Texas-Mexico borderlands. Carla '61, Beulah '67, and Celia '70 are all addressed in these archives, as well as the correlations between these storms, the rise of the environmentalism movement, and the struggle for Chicano civil rights during this critical decade.
Part of 07-02 Sounding Board 1: Space and Place, Saturday, November 04, 8:30 am–10:00 am