Morons of the Frontier: a morning in the hemeroteca

Sadly, yesterday's triumph was not repeated today.  But perhaps it's one day on, one day off...and there's still tomorrow.

I must say that the archivists of Seville are - individually and as a group - the most kind and helpful I have met.  Yesterday's nice people in the municipal historical archive suggested that if I was researching a journalist I might want to consider the hemeroteca, the collection of local periodicals one floor down, to see if she had written any articles.  It had never occurred to me that Peterson might have published while she was in Sevilla, but as most of her (few) published works are articles, that struck me as logical.  So this morning I presented myself at the hemeroteca after a quick stop in the provincial historical archive to check for her "certificado de buena conducta" which was fruitless ("was she arrested?" asked the friendly man in the white coat brightly.  "Because we have all the prison records from then."  He seemed distinctly less sure of her presence in the archives when I said she hadn't had brushes with the law.)  I looked quickly at the little exhibits in the provincial archive, about the flag of California (for not completely clear reasons) and the letters of nineteenth century novelist Juan de Valera, and also took their little flyer about "international archive day" which has the heading (in "Andaluz"):  ¿Pero qué eh Ud?  ¿Archivista?  Bueno, hay gente pa' to'o.  ("What're you?  An archivist?  Well, it takes all kinds.")  In a sweet attempt to democratize an archive which basically runs to prison records and state control, they also have a little poster saying that everyone has old photos and letters and so on, and that if you contribute them to the provincial archive they will be digitized so we can keep records of "our Sevilla" as it was for all, and another little form to take which you can fill out to make donations of photos or other personal papers.

Anyway, back to going around the corner and up the stairs to the hemeroteca.

A discreet plaque directs people to the municipal archives

I received a printed copy of the hemeroteca's catalogue (I get the impression their budget doesn't run to digitizing finding aids) which runs to three hundred and fifty pages.  It is alphabetized by publication.  This is not helpful since I don't know which (if any) publications Peterson wrote for.  I settled down and spent an hour skimming the column with "dates" and copying the references for all the local papers from the 1960s.  Fortunately, the 1960s was a lousy decade for disposable cash and press freedom here, so there aren't that many periodicals.  After getting a list, and explaining what it was for to the two archivists there, they suggested I go upstairs again to do a "consulta" with "Rafael el bibliotecario" who might have further ideas about my research.  That is on the agenda for tomorrow, as I spent the rest of the morning looking through what I thought at first might be the mostly likely candidate for Peterson's writings, namely the only English-language periodical published in the province in the 1960s, the weekly Frontera News.

Sadly, though I went through an enormous folder of Frontera News from 1960 and 1966, no luck.  Frontera was a US Air Force publication, aimed at the personnel on the base of Morón de la Frontera, or "Morón" as the paper regularly calls it.  Interestingly, in spite of generally being monolingual, that accent on the second ó is firmly in place in all articles, and I'll bet the most linguistically challenged of airmen (and a lot of the paper is devoted to encouraging people to get their GED, since the air force thinks high school graduates are better flyers) managed something approximating the correct pronunciation.  The Brits who turned Ypres into Wipers would have happily said "moron" and been witty about it.  But for Americans it cut too close to home.  (It's bad enough that a lot of the headlines use the abbreviation AF, which I kept reading as an obscenity and then remembering stood for "air force.")

I don't know when the strategic air command ("Be a SAC Man not a Fat Man" urges an early ad campaign against obesity in 1960 which obviously did not work) stopped accepting people who didn't already have a GED.  But I will say that the difference in terms of tone and general intelligence of the articles between 1960 and 1966 is impressive.  It might have been that in 1960 Morón was considered a hardship posting, at the back of the beyond, and thus got the - er - morons and in 1966 there were much worse places to be.  It might have been that both Spain and the US had changed significantly between 1960 and 1966.  Whatever the cause, the 1966 paper is far less paternal in tone, and takes a far greater interest in local affairs, running a regular column "Around Southern Spain" with activities and events of interest, and even employing a Spaniard (fascista, bien entendu, but still) to write the comparative history of the Spanish air force in a column called "Know Your Counterparts."  All in all, in 1966 Dorothy Peterson could have written for it, but sadly, it appears that she didn't.  (It did amuse me that one of the regular "women's" columnists - who wrote stuff aimed at wives of airmen about social services and family stuff and so on, as well as fashion shows and charities and what all - was named Marilyn Klinger.  Seemed very M*A*S*H*.)

Sadly, the only issues available of the university publication in the hemeroteca were from the schools of sciences and veterinary sciences, so Peterson did not contribute to them.  However, the archivist urged me to check the university's archive as well, because "the archivist there is a lovely person" and they have a lot.

I in fact already knew this, since after the triumphs of yesterday morning I went on a slightly longer walk than anticipated to the archive of the Universidad de Sevilla, which is in the Biblioteca Antonio Machado, a beautiful building in a lovely complex beyond the Parque María Luisa, and the old tobacco factory where the facultad de filología and the more scenic parts of the old university are located.  The library is new, and open and filled with light, and manages to be a friendly and welcoming space, not least because it's completely possible for just anyone to walk in and look at the exhibits, or go into the salas de lectura (packed at this season with people panicking about exams), or up the stairs of the light filled atrium to the archives.  I stopped at the information desk the first time I went because I wanted to know where to go and what to do, but when I hesitantly asked about "normas" to enter the archive I was told to go up the stairs and through the door on the left without so much as asking for an ID.  Snotty university libraries that don't let people in without ID, take note.  (I'm looking at you Columbia and NYU.)

The university library "Rector Antonio Machado" (aka the Rector "we're really sorry about those index cards with the expedientes de sancionados from the early forties up on the second floor" library)

The Biblioteca María Zambrano at the Complutense in Madrid has the same open glass front, but it's tucked under a strange courtyard dotted with what look like entrances to underground parking garages, and heavily graffitied, whereas the Biblioteca Rector Machado is set on a flawless lawn with (as you can see in the picture) lots of students wandering around.  (Also a few peacocks, for reasons which are unclear to me.  Maybe the peacocks are also students.)  In fairness, it's also right next to the Jefatura Zona Andalucía of the Guardia Civil, which is a rather large and fortified compound, so it might take a bold student to spray any tags around here.  (Side note: what I assume are the barracks of the Guardia Civil headquarters for Andalucía look out over the Parque María Luisa, and are surrounded by a wall dripping with bougainvillea.  All in all, they're prettier than some beach condos I've seen in Puerto Rico -- or for that matter on the Costa del Sol in Spain.  Large, but nicely landscaped.)

The university archives - through the pink door

The interior of the library atrium, between the ground floor and the archives

Anyway, after heading up the stairs and through the pink door as directed, a kindly archivist directed me to the card catalogues outside in the hallway, that I had noticed but assumed were simply put there for show, as an archaic display.  Nope, they're card catalogues.  With actual large index cards not hole punched and on a metal rod, as in library card catalogs, just sitting loose, as index cards, in order, with the blind faith that no one will pull them out and reshuffle them. 
 

The index cards with file numbers for the administrative files of the university.  Oh, and also anonymous works between 1600 and 1955, and also incunabulae.  Basically, whatever's not on the computer.

The index cards are hand written, in various hands.  I was so hoping to find Dorothy Peterson's card under "Personal docente" under P.  I flipped through all the Perezes (there were a lot) with shaking hands three times to make sure it wasn't out of order and I hadn't accidentally skipped from Perez to Petit.  But alas, no Peterson. 

Resigned, I looked in other drawers, beyond the expedientes de personal.  I found the horarios and cuadros de estudios for the years when I know (according to Peterson's correspondence) that she was teaching English at the university, and noted their call numbers down, in case her name appeared along with the actual course she was teaching.  That was what I looked at this afternoon after the hemeroteca.  As with the hemeroteca, no luck.  Interesting to see the course offerings for 1964-68 though.  I'm still trying to figure out why Veterinary Science included a religion class in all four years, and medicine, law, and liberal arts didn't.  Also, I felt my usual "oooh, this looks cool, I'd like to take that class" feeling going through the offerings for filosofía y letras, although their modern languages offerings were actually rather meager.  Nice variety of Spanish philology classes though, with both classical and Medieval Latin, Greek, and Arabic, as well as several history of Spanish classes.  (I begin to see why Carnicer was shocked that students majoring in Spanish language hadn't studied Latin or Arabic and didn't see how they could possibly understand the evolution of the language without it.  They seem pretty standard subjects here.)  Also some paleography courses.  I was also impressed that the facultad de ciencias apparently scheduled organic chemistry classes at 9:00 in the morning on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.  If there's anything that can make organic chemistry more fun it's probably taking it at nine o'clock on a Saturday morning.  This is what happens when you don't let your students riot.  Anyway, that was my afternoon today, which (like the morning with the Morons) was amusing but unproductive.  Yesterday I looked optimistically at something labeled "memorias de profesores" organized by year in the card catalogue, that I hoped would be something like memoirs, but it turned out was more like the dreaded annual self-evaluations or productivity reports.  Once again, I didn't find Peterson's, but it was amusing to see how various professors wrote their (obviously required) report demonstrating how they had shown "plena dedicación" by teaching such and such classes, and doing such and such research, and supervising such and such doctoral theses and so on.  We think that there was a Golden Age before such paperwork to justify an academic existence.  Ha.  (I'm pretty sure that a lot of the reports were fiction anyway, but it was interesting to skim and see which professors got caught up in explaining how they had varied a little from their curriculum because it turned out the students were less prepared than they thought, but then they did something extra that was a cool project and so on, and which professors wrote strictly to formula, and which -- mostly in the sciences -- submitted one paragraph saying "in compliance with regulation XXX I have shown plena dedicación in teaching and research for the preceding school year."  There was one snotty one that described teaching duties and then said that he would not give a summary of the course because it was detailed in the "already required syllabus" he had submitted earlier -- translation, "stop annoying me, stupid bureaucratic people."  It's amazing how much personality even a bland formula based on pure imagination can take on.)

The - deserted - university archive reading room

In between looking through these folders I chatted with the archivists, since I was literally the only person there for the whole time, so there wasn't much need to "guardar silencio."  One of the nice archivists took my search to heart especially when she found out that I was looking for a professor who was "una señora" and suggested that although the mandatory fifty years had passed since the 1960s when I was looking and they should have the material in the historical archive, I might want to look in the facultad de filología which had their own archives, especially if this was someone who retired later, because they tended to hang on to things, and they might well have material.  (The facultad de filología is on my list for tomorrow.  And I get to go into the pretty Tabacalera building that way too.  Very cool.)  Another asked (after I had returned materials) where I was from, since she couldn't identify my accent, and then asked me "how things were with Trump."  I gave my standard not very optimistic reply and she said reassuringly, "bueno, los Estados Unidos es un gran país, a pesar de sus políticos.  Ya sobreviveréis."  I said I was less certain, but it was nice of her to say so.

Sevilla is, after all, the ultimate cautionary tale of a fallen empire.  In between the hemeroteca and the university today (and after lunch) I stopped in the historic section of the Archivo de las Indias, which had a couple of interesting exhibits, including one on "Four Centuries of Engineering in the Archives" to celebrate the three hundredth anniversary of the official Spanish corps of engineers.  (Mostly their cool engineering was before they were an official society, hence the four centuries.)  I had intended to stop in the working archive, as it were, to ask if on the off chance they kept any records of the researchers who had worked there in the past, and see if I could find any trace of Arthur Schomburg's presence there nearly a century ago.  (Granted, the trace in his case would probably be receipt for bill of sale.  The man was a squirrel when it came to collecting.)  The security guard explained to me very kindly that the working archive was around the corner and across the street, but that it had already closed at 3:00 for the day.  (It's very annoying to only have archives open in the morning, because if you spend time in any you can't get to all of them.)  Still, if possible I'll try to get there by three either tomorrow or Thursday, just to check, though Peterson is the priority. 

In any case, the history of Spanish engineering en el ultramar is certainly interesting, since the exhibit casts a wide net, and includes urban planning (there's something creepy about painted layouts of Havana and Manila next to each other, drawn by the same hand), water engineering (irrigation good, floods bad), mining (unsurprisingly a big concern in South America, where the real technological breakthroughs were in refining mercury by making it condense from vapor -- very toxic and highly polluting, but more efficient than what came before), industrial sugar refining (in the Caribbean) and paper-making (in the Philippines, some Spaniard figured out an improvement on Chinese produced rice paper, but got his patent rejected by the then-new government of Felipe "El Deseado" because Mr. Restored-Populist-Absolute-Monarch wasn't doing any sissy bourgeois intellectual property stuff).  All in all, it's four centuries of considerable ingenuity and a certain amount of ripping off of other people's property, intellectual and otherwise.  (Spanish engineers were really really good on irrigation.  It turns out that when it came to issues with flooding and ways to absorb flood water they should have listened when their Aztec counterparts said "ummm...you probably don't want to drain that" about the lake around Mexico City.)  It's all a fine counterpart to the Morons of the Frontier, who set off boldly to conquer worlds new to them, which they then weren't quite sure what to do with.  As the makers of the recently broadcast miniseries La Peste, set in sixteenth century Sevilla (against repeated plague outbreaks, obviously) pointed out, Sevilla was genuinely a cosmopolitan city in the late 1500s, with people and goods from all over the world flowing into an overcrowded and fast paced metropolis.  (They were defending their casting choices for a "diverse Sevilla" by pointing out that the city's African and Asian population in the late sixteenth century was probably the same or greater by percentage than it is now.)  And now Sevilla is....pretty.  Like Bruges (though bigger and livelier than Bruges).  The exo-skeletons of formerly great ports are always a gentle cautionary tale.  No country is great in spite of its leaders forever.  (Today's local paper, which I looked at over coffee, mentions that the new super-large cruise ships will be docking at Cádiz, since the Guadalquivír is too shallow, even when dredged, for them to make it to Sevilla.  The optimistic take of the paper was that more ships in Cádiz meant more tourists in Sevilla.  A ver.) 

But I do have an embarrassment of archives to choose from tomorrow morning.  And I had excellent fried fish for dinner tonight.  So all in all, even though Sevilla is full of American tourists (doubtless still overflow from Morón and Rota, as well as the university which has a huge exchange program, and just general wanderers who are interested) it is a pretty place, and I think I'm having a fairly productive time, though it's sad to keep not finding traces of Peterson.  She apparently had the talent of being self-effacing, even in a dictatorship where you practically had to sneeze in triplicate.  Oh, well.  Fingers crossed for tomorrow.