Winter of Reading: The Dawn of Chicano Poetry

As Anglophone settlers moved into the traditionally Hispanophone areas of Colorado and New Mexico after the U.S.-Mexico War, a period of tense cohabitation existed. One outlet for the linguistic majority, but now political minority, was in Spanish and bilingual newspapers. Spanish poems published after 1848 were a way for Spanish-speakers to express their opinions, keep alive a way of life quickly disappearing, connect with the Mexican homeland, and promote solidarity on both sides of the border. This English presentation analyzes and critiques several data-mined poems from digitized newspapers using optical-character recognition (OCR) technology.

Presented by Nicolás Cabrera, DPL librarian.