Mental Geography

Oregonians searching for gold killed American Indians in the middle of the nineteenth century.

Recently the UCLA historian Benjamin Madley published a book on an anthropological topic, which you can read about at the website of Cabrillo College here.

The Amazon link to the book is :

Amazon

The Republican Presidential candidate went to Mexico yesterday, but he did not learn these facts, or others which are documented in many sources, so I write these ideas to help those who do want to know about the conflicted relationship between Mexico and the US.

Besides the real geography, which I define here as the physical description of the surface of the planet we inhabit, there is a more important, and less understood Mental Geography. Our mental map of lands and people is a mere approximation of the real one.

If you live in the border, you can just walk to Mexico, nevertheless you may not record some facts on your mental map, which are plainly evident to those with a mind in tune with some aspects of justice.

I witnessed these American mental maps while I was a graduate student in California during a few years of last century, and have plainly witnessed them now during these presidential campaign in the US.

For some Americans, Mexico is a place to separate the US from. Not a place to find help and friendship.

To be fair, some Mexicans do not want to know about the ten million or so Mexicans, who do not speak Spanish, and have lived there for over ten thousand years.

The longer we wait, the real Geography will come to haunt us with a bigger impact.

During these moments of environmental stress, we have to come together to save our planet.