Even scholarly paper questions Laredo's Washington birthday celebration



Pocahontas 1600s, George Washington 1770s: No Wonder our kids are failing History


I came across this rather scholarly article in the website allacademic.com and figured I'd share it with you.  I know that to most of us the entire WBCA is a joke and a half so I'm just posting a portion of it. At least one of the authors is a Laredoan, maybe both. They are Dr. Norma Cantu and Cordelia Barrera. The name of the piece is entitled Recreating what never was: The George Washington Celebration in Laredo, Texas.

As Renato Rosaldo and other scholars have studied, communities will often exhibit nostalgia for past events, events that exist in the imagined pasts of subjects who now occupy different spaces and who yearn for a long-lost ideal past. We agree with Rosaldo that what he calls “imperialist nostalgia” can foment an oppressive ideology and that citizen subjects who labor under such conditions and recreate that imagined ideal past are indeed celebrating an oppressive condition. While this is seen in a number of celebrations such as Fiesta in San Antonio, that celebrates the defeat of the Mexican Army in the Battle of San Jacinto, it is the particular celebration in Laredo, Texas, a mostly Mexican-American town on the border, and its annual 3-week long celebration of George Washington's Birthday that is at the center of our study.

The celebration recreates events following an imagined script that includes an "indigenous" pageant and a colonial ball along with popular events such as a jalapeño eating contest and a grand parade. Given that Laredo did not become part of the United States until 1848 when the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the war between Mexico and the United States, and given that there is little connection of this geographical site to the actual events in the life of George Washington, it is odd that the celebration that dates back over a hundred years remains a mainstay in the cultural life of the community.