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furthernotes · 4 years

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On Spaces and Lines (Or the Things That Connect and Separate)

In her essay A Hero is A Disaster: Stereotypes Versus Strength in Numbers, Rebecca Solnit talks of our preoccupation with lone victors that often leads us to make light of the potency of collective action. She writes of her friend, legal expert and author Dahlia Lithwick, who was laying groundwork for a book on women lawyers who have argued and won civil rights cases against the Trump administration in the past two years. Her goal was to diffuse the spotlight from famed individuals—such as Ruth Bader Ginsburg, about whom many advised her to write instead—and onto lesser known lawyers. Elsewhere in the book, in City of Women, Solnit writes of the names which we give to our built environment: The rivers, roads, statues and colleges named after prominent, often white men; generals and captains whose shadows drape over their armies. One essay over, in Monumental Change and the Power of Names, she writes of the demolition and renaming of such monuments; changes that have shifted narratives and righted histories. She declares: “Statues and names are not in themselves human rights or equal access or a substitute for them. But they are crucial parts of the built environment, ones that tell us who matters and who will be remembered.”

I live in a quaint old neighbourhood in Singapore known as the Cambridge Estate. The vicinity is made up of roads named after idyllic English counties: Kent, Dorset, Durham, Norfolk, Northumberland; all a few minutes of walk away from the Farrer Park subzone—named after Roland John Farrer, who presided over the Singapore Municipal Commission, a body tasked to oversee local urban affairs and development under the British colonial rule. My block, an old building owned by the Housing Development Board, along with the streets that surround it, have seen some construction and renovation work in the past months. As Singapore went into lockdown at the start of April (which they prefer to call Circuit Breaker, God knows why, I’d say it’s some kind of a performative attempt at benevolence), most of the work have ceased. The roadwork at the intersection of Dorset and Kent, however, continued up until a week back. I eyed the workers, many of them migrants, from behind my mask as I crossed the street. They toiled away under the blistering sun, and I was reminded that elsewhere, on the outskirts of the city, the outbreak has reached the foreign workers’ dormitories; making prisons out of their rooms.

***

“Singapore Seemed to Have Coronavirus Under Control, Until Cases Doubled,” read a headline on the New York Times. When the city was first hit by the pandemic, its efficiency in controlling the spread was lauded as a model response. Now, its cases total to over 8,000, the highest number reported number in Southeast Asia. The number of infections climbed rapidly as the virus reached numerous foreign workers’ dormitories across the state—housing about 300,000 people—which are notoriously overcrowded and ill-equipped. The pandemic has gone on long enough, I think, for all of us to recognise that its effects have carved our social divides deeper than ever before. “The outbreak doesn’t discriminate, but its effects do,” is a sentiment that has been widely spread across social media and news outlets, inviting incisive criticisms on an array of issues, from capitalist policies to eco-activism and celebrity culture. A dominant theme, however, runs through their veins: the far-reaching power of privilege; and how it pervades even the smallest units of our lives. As “social distancing” and “stay home” were made law, it became clear that space is a luxury few share—at least, fewer than we thought. Instructions such as “stay home” and its varieties, writes Jason DeParle for the New York Times, assumes the existence of a safe, stable and controlled environment. DeParle notes that inmates, detained immigrants, homeless families and, I would add, victims of domestic abuse, are some of the discrete groups facing a dilemma amidst such instructions. He asserts: “What they share may be little beyond poverty and one of its overlooked costs: the perils of proximity.”

Close quarter is the very calamity confronting Singapore’s foreign workers community during this outbreak. Contagion hit a record high on 20 April, with over 1,426 confirmed cases, a vast majority of which coming from numerous dormitories across the state. Since early last week, active testing has been carried out since in the dormitories—which might explain the figures—but the City had been glaringly unprepared, which made for a peculiar sight. Immediately, I found myself questioning its renowned vigilance and extraordinary prescience; qualities that I often contrast with my hometown of Jakarta and its outrageously lethargic response to the pandemic. But the dorms had always been “ticking time-bombs”, Sophie Chew writes on Rice Media, and the City had turned a deaf ear to forewarnings from activists and NGOs that went back as far as February. The dorms are overcrowded, she reports: a single dorm can house over 10,000, and up to 20 people are pushed into a space the size of a four-room flat. A resident of S11 Dormitory located in Punggol, one of the first to be gazetted as an isolation site, says he shares the same shower facilities as about 150 others. The dorms are unlivable, Chew says; detailing that they are “notoriously filthy”, and some workers told The Straits Times that toilets were not regularly disinfected. This condition makes the concept of safe distancing “laughable”, writes the NGO Transient Workers Count Too (TWC2) on their website. To Chew, it is clear that Singapore’s “celebrated, ‘gold standard’ response had a citizenship blind spot.”

The blatant ignorance to the livelihood of the migrant populace is inexcusable, but it is hardly a shock for anyone from the outside looking in. The racial divide is patent; and—in the case of foreign workers—the tension is heightened by a system that enables the production of precarity and abets exploitation (Chuanfei Chin from the National University of Singapore wrote a concise paper detailing the network complicit in producing the social vulnerabilities experienced by temporary foreign workers, which you can read here). Yet, when news outlets started reporting on the crisis, they had been either clinical or deeply prejudiced, and the comment section only compounds the horror. These have not only mapped public opinion, but also reiterated the value that is given to the lives of foreign workers, and delineate further their standing in the Singapore society. The lines on this map are both psychological and structural: Yong Han Poh, writing for the Southeast Asia Globe, reminds us that their dormitories are built in isolated areas far from the public view. They are, quite literally, segregated from the wider population. The kind of treatment we afford them, the lines we draw, brings to my mind a passage from Solnit’s essay Crossing Over, where she talks of territories and migration: “The idea of illegal immigrants arises from the idea of the nation as a body whose purity is defiled by foreign bodies, and of its borders as something that can and should be sealed.” The concept, when taken in a literal manner, is eerily familiar: Almost immediately after the outbreak reached the dormitories, Facebook comments became unbearable, with an alarming number of people pointing fingers at the foreign workers’ habits and personal hygiene; insinuating that the contagion rates has more to do with their insanitary culture than the ill-equipped and overcrowded dorms (of course, they would not be the first to be at the receiving end of such narrative, which has shifted throughout history to serve the interests of those in power. Pan Jie at Rice Media offers a succinct chronicle of this.) Solnit calls this the “fantasy of safety”, where “self and the other are distinct and the other can be successfully repelled.” We are seeing, right now, that fantasy wielded by those with power; one they enforce out of suspicion and out of fear of losing security and authority. But all who have been subjugated, too, understand and yearn for this fantasy: To be liberated from the constant invasion of freedom and autonomy.

Image courtesy of Sumita Thiagarajan via Facebook. Taken on Keppel Island.

It is critical to examine, Rebecca Solnit writes, who is meant by “we” in any given place. One way to do this is by looking at the lines drawn by the semantics of names and categories. The term “migrant” has come under scrutiny in recent years: What separates the group—defined as “a person who moves from one place to another, especially in order to find work or better living conditions”—from expats, for instance, could be only a matter of nationality and skin colour. As Indonesian author Intan Paramaditha states in her essay on LitHub: “We can read the map, but the map has read us first.” Further in her essay, she continues to say that these categories determines how one experiences mobility, whether one would “encounter bridges or barriers, hospitality or displacement.” Making the distinction even more severe are neoliberal policies that have turned lives into pawns and commodities and made decent livelihood a due owed and never paid (while “errant employers” is often cited as the reason for foreign workers’ exploitation and abuse, research have shown that the legal framework protecting them, while comprehensive, is flawed). This points to the central criticism against the term “worker”, which, as Yong writes in her essay, reduces them to factors of production and labour units. Recently, online platform Dear.sg, which describes themselves as a “media conglomerate steeped in culture and grounded in locality”, befouled this already murky waters: With an article titled We Need Foreign Workers More Than They Need Us—a headline that might deceive one into thinking it’s an innocent op-ed designed to galvanise empathy by tugging at one’s guilty conscience—they concluded that migrant workers are valuable because they are essential to our material needs. “Construction sites might have to be abandoned for a while and projects will take a longer time to be completed,” it says in one passage. It then implores its readers to “think of your Build-To-Order flats…the new airport terminal, street repairs and maintenance…”, and reminds them that now, “we have to wait even longer.” What is meant by “we” had never been so grossly exclusionary. The article has narrowed migrant workers into tools of prosperity, and never once suggested that they be a beneficiary (they have received a number of backlash on Instagram, and as of yesterday they are still actively deleting comments). At the end, under a heading that says Modern Slavery Or Not (sans question mark), they ask if we should start ringing the alarm on exploitation of cheap labour. Does all this leads to the so-called modern slavery, it asks, grammatical error intact. “Maybe,” it answers, aloof. “Forced contracts and bonds, who knows.”

Evidently, this pandemic is not “the great equaliser”. If anything, it has magnified privilege and heightened insecurities. Solnit offers us hope in what she calls “public love”: collective action; a sense of meaning and purpose that belongs to a community. She refers to the 1960 earthquake of San Francisco, and outlines a shared sentiment of loss among the people, that is “if I lose my home, I’m cast out among those who remain comfortable, but if we all lose our homes in the earthquake, we’re in this together.” Perhaps the nature of this pandemic bears little resemblance to a natural disaster, but we experience collective loss all the same: Much of our freedom and flexibility—to work, travel, or to socialise—have been suspended for the foreseeable future. But they are losses felt more profoundly by vulnerable groups, and let it not be forgotten that they were cast out before any disaster—the precarity of their livelihood a disaster in its own right—and they bear distress many of us are precluded from. These inequalities have been laid bare in the weeks following the outbreak in dormitories, and there had been no shortage of care from the ground: Comedian and YouTuber Preeti Nair ran a fundraising campaign to aid two NGOs, TWC2 and HealthServe, in meeting the urgent needs of migrant workers that have been put under quarantine. As of 21 April, they have raised over S$316,000—more than triple their original goal of S$100,000. There are spreadsheets detailing efforts of different organisations and how we can contribute (Yong included one at the end of her essay, and a local community library, Wares, published a Mutual Aid and Community Solidarity spreadsheet). Many Singaporeans who are able and secure have donated their Solidarity Payment to non-profit organisations working with vulnerable groups. Corporations, too, have started partnering NGOs to raise funds and distribute masks at affected dormitories. It’s not just in Singapore: Worldwide, the pandemic has fostered record numbers of philanthropic donations and vast networks of mutual aid—a new map, if you will, with unmarked territories and nameless seas. There is a growing recognition of mutual dependence, a survey by the New York Times shows, and while there is no guarantee that the shift in moral perspectives will last beyond the crisis, there is hope in knowing that we are re-examining—if not redrafting—the map that we were given.

Yet I still find evidence of a divide: I have heard more and more that we need not need to worry; most of the cases are from the dorms, I hear, there are less in the community, I hear, directly from the official WhatsApp updates, and I recognise once more the gulf that has yet to be bridged. Between the lines, I find the seeds of amnesia, which—Solnit writes in her essay Long Distance—holds us “vulnerable to experiencing the present as inevitable, unchangeable, or just inexplicable.” She talks then of the term “shifting baselines”, coined by marine biologist Daniel Pauly, and stresses the importance of a baseline; a stable point from which we can measure systemic transformation before it was dramatically altered. This pandemic, one can hope, will alter how dormitories are managed and equipped for the better. Beyond this pandemic, Manpower Minister Josephine Teo said in a statement in early April, “there’s no question” that standards in foreign worker dormitories should be raised, and appealed for increased cooperation from employers. Meanwhile, measures taken to manage this crisis—particularly with the issue of overcrowding and hygiene—have been widely criticised; prompting authorities to move residents of the dormitories to vacant Housing Board flats, military camps and floating hotels to reduce crowding. The Prime Minister further addressed these measures in a live address to the nation yesterday—in which he also announced the 4-week extension of the Circuit Breaker—promising stricter safe distancing measures, increased on-site medical resources, closer monitoring of older workers, and distribution of pre-dawn and break fast meals for Muslim workers who will start fasting on Friday. “The clusters in the dorms have remained largely contained,” he says, and pledges their best effort to keep it that way. When this crisis is over, I tell myself, we must not forget the baseline of their predicament, or be too quick to acquit those in power from any wrongdoing—if only to preserve a benchmark of assessment. Without a recollection of the past, Solnit warns us, change becomes imperceptible, and we might slip to “…mistake today’s peculiarities for eternal verities.” Nevertheless, the Prime Minister sounded assured. He even wore a blue shirt—that must have meant something. I, for one, am hopeful, as I always try to be. There’s still much reason to be.

***

I stopped at the traffic light at the intersection of Dorset and Kent. I glanced at the street sign, green as they’ll ever be. Solnit writes: “Pity the land that thinks it needs a hero, or doesn’t know it has lots and what they look like.” Indeed, we do not know it. I wondered then if the crisp white paint will ever spell a different name. For all the transformations construction workers have made to our built environment, will there ever be a monument in their name, like the kind we have bestowed our tycoons and presidents and—oh God, I groaned as I realised this—counties of former occupants? In a few weeks’ time, this intersection will be vacant once more; the deafening drill and temporary fences suddenly vanishing from sight. Their mark will go undetectable and nameless; swallowed whole by the scorching sun and the picturesque imagination of the Dorset and Kent of another continent. The light turned green. As I crossed the street, I remember Solnit saying that the truest lines on this map are only those between land and water. “The other lines on the map are arbitrary,” she says, they have changed many times and will change again. One can hope.

Whose Story Is This? Old Conflicts, New Chapters, Rebecca Solnit, 2019.

POSTSCRIPT

As I am finishing this essay, I wonder how big of a role I play in this equation, and if I tip the scale further towards inequality. I realise how small we all are; how powerless we might all be without the aid of top-down political action. I am not under the delusion that individual responsibility counts a great deal in this narrative (David Wallace-Wells calls accusations of personal responsibility a “weaponised red herring”), but I also refuse to trivialise the weight of our own actions (the great Gloria Steinem reminds us that “a movement is only people moving”). This being so, you will find below some spreadsheets and relevant, verified fundraising campaigns where you can extend your care. Every dollar counts, and every hand have the power to soothe.

Fundraising Campaigns

Preetipls x UTOPIA for Migrant Workers NGOs

Support migrant workers through Covid-19 and beyond, a campaign by Humanitarian Organisation for Migration Economics (HOME)

Vulnerable Women’s Fund by AWARE

Donate Your Solidarity Payment. Funds will be channelled to Boys’ Town, Hagar Singapore, Singapore Red Cross, AWARE and HOME

Entrepreneur First supports The Food Bank - Feed the City #Covid-19. Funds will be channelled to the Food Bank. You can also donate food to Food Bank Boxes available island-wide.

Spreadsheets

Mutual Aid and Community Solidarity – Coordination by Wares Infoshop Library

COVID-19 | Needs in the migrant community as included in Yong Han Poh’s essay

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seniorstrong1 · 3 years

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What Are Your Homecare Options in Today's Society?

There are actually various choices for treatment in the property today. It utilized to become that any person not able to maintain on their own will be actually put in a domestic healthcare facility or even resource, for regular like be actually on call to all of them all the time. Nowadays, there are actually a number of Homecare alternatives to pick from.

For those who perform certainly not require clinical interest and care all the time, a part-time home care alternative is actually optimal. Using this choice, a health professional is actually chosen to explore for a couple of hrs each early morning, help along with regular duties, and brush. The perk to this homecare choice is that the caretaker deals with what needs to have to become carried out, leaving behind the person to his personal regimen and personal privacy for the rest of the time. This enables the person to experience additional totally free and also private to set about his personal everyday schedules without continuous aid or even input coming from any person else.

For those that are actually much less individual as well as need to have extra considerable treatment throughout the time, there are actually homecare possibilities where nurse practitioners are actually chosen to function fulltime times. These caretakers are actually for those demanding a lot more continual treatment and also support throughout the time. They might require routine does of a drug, critical examinations, transit and/or aid with motion, and various other day-to-day regular duties. Through this homecare alternative, the nurse practitioner will leave behind for the evening and come back the upcoming early morning, leaving behind the individual his evenings and nights to themself. This choice permits the individual to reside in his very own residence and still obtain a handful of alone-time hours at nights, evenings, and mornings, one thing they would certainly not have actually privy to in a non-commercial establishment.

For people that are actually fully dependent on their caretakers, the ideal homecare alternative would certainly be actually a 24 Hour Homecare and/or Live-in Nurse Companion. These nurse practitioners stay within their individual residence and exist all the time to aid along with each of their necessities, health care, etc. This choice still brings the perk of permitting the client to continue to be at his personal house, which is actually truly the offer buster when needing to have all the time treatment and the absolute most crucial opportunity to preserve.

Today, homecare choices are actually lots of. This is actually therefore valuable, certainly not just for the people that call for some sort of support along with their day-to-day residing, yet to the loved ones that currently perform certainly not need to create the tough, however at times essential selection to put an enjoyed one in a non-commercial location. That is actually a selection that many individuals have a hard time with as their liked ones shed their self-reliance and call for some support along with their day-to-day lifestyle schedules and tasks. What leads to the absolute most heartache concerning creating that inescapable selection is actually having actually the really loved one cleared away from their treasured property and the reduction of their personal privacy and flexibility. Through possessing the homecare possibilities our team possesses today, those are actually no more issues.

What You Need to Acknowledge Before Hiring a Homecare Agency

When selecting a home care organization, there are actually numerous points to look at. Coming from understanding what concerns to inquire to discover the particular caretaker that will be actually taking care of your aged moms and dad, working with the correct home care organization includes some analysis and investigation. Take care certainly not to become waned into a misleading complacency when it relates to history inspections, the skills of the caretaker, and so on. Given that a caretaker happens to come from a company carries out certainly does not imply he or she is actually educated and trustworthy.

Depending on a research study executed due to the American Geriatrics Society:

Only 55 percent of organizations really carry out a history inspection

Only a 3rd of companies do medication tests-though all professed to

Only a 3rd examined their health professionals for competency-though they all declared to

Supervision was actually rare-ranging coming from none to when a full week

By being actually an informed individual, you may guarantee that the homecare company you tap the services of is trustworthy and secures your enjoyed one mentally, literally, and psychologically. There are actually credible companies that carry out carry out typical medication exams, proficiency tests, and also history examinations, and also these are actually the firms you intend to look into better. Furthermore, there are actually traits you need to take a look at to observe exactly how extensive the firm is actually and also the amount of problem it takes into locating the ideal health professional for your enjoyed ones.

Online reputation and also History

Being actually a big firm performs certainly not always imply that the provider is actually reputable-it might merely imply it operates in quantity. As an alternative, try to find a homecare organization that has actually stayed in business enough time to develop a tough track record in the area. Receive recommendations coming from the firm and talk to doctors and people you leave for suggestions they eat homecare firms in your metropolitan area.

Get the best homecare service, visit: www.seniorstrong.org

Sponsoring Practices

Given that you are actually employing a company performs certainly does not imply it possesses a really good process when it arrives to sponsor, merely. Talk to the homecare agent you talk to about just how the provider discovers its own applicants-such as paper advertising campaigns, staffing companies, and so on. Make inquiries concerning the home care organization's hiring demands through talking to:

What lowest education and learning serves?

What previous knowledge proves out?

How numerous years must a caretaker invite previous jobs to train?

Does the caretaker need to have a permit or even qualification?

Prior to you choose a home care company, ensure the firm you are actually looking at displays screens its own applicants. Does it carry out unlawful history checks-both federal government and also condition? Does it execute a medicine display?

At the moment chosen, exactly how performs the homecare company calculate if the caretaker can perform the tasks she or he will be conducting? Performs she or he possess constant oversight and also instruction? Many reliable firms are going to give hands-on instruction, featuring CPR and also emergency treatment.

Create certain the company you work with is actually guaranteed and also bound. To come to have adhered, the firm must supply history inspections, medicine display leads, learning past History, as well as fulfill various other criteria to acquire its own adhered certification-thus showing the provider is actually professional.

Client Satisfaction

When tapping the services of a home care organization, you really want to take pleasure in the adventure. You wish to count on the firm, particularly considering that its own health professionals will definitely be actually entering your house. Be sure the organization you work with permits you to examine several caretakers as well as provides you the choice to shift health professionals if you identify they are actually certainly not a great suitable for your liked one. Very most significantly, are sure the firm appoints one irreversible caretaker to your liked one to ensure that he possesses a friend as well as a lasting connection along with them rather than a blend of complete strangers every week.

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From understanding what concerns to inquire to know regarding the details health professional that will definitely be actually looking after for your aged moms and dad, employing the best homecare firm entails some investigation and investigation. Through being actually a taught buyer, you can easily guarantee that the homecare organization you work with is actually respectable and defends your enjoyed one mentally, literally, and psychologically. There are actually reliable organizations that carry out execute basic medical exams, expert assessments, and also history examinations, and also these are actually the firms you yearn for to look into better. Receive endorsements coming from the firm and talk to medical doctors and various other folks you count on for suggestions they possess for homecare organizations in your area.

As soon as worked with, just how does the homecare organization identify if the health professional is actually qualified for the responsibilities he or she will be carrying out?

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source https://seniorstrong.blogspot.com/2021/04/what-are-your-homecare-options-in.html

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smarthinking702 · 4 years

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courtneytincher · 5 years

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The United States is Losing Latin America to China

HISTORICALLY SPEAKING, the United States has been sensitive about foreign powers involving themselves in the affairs of the Western Hemisphere. Yet with the collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of the Cold War, Washington seemed to forget about its “backyard” in the Americas. Instead, the U.S. foreign policy establishment focused on Eurasia, particularly after 9/11. Sensing an opportunity to attain influence in the region at the expense of the United States, China has stepped into Latin America—strengthening diplomatic ties, expanding trade relations and pouring tens of billions of yuan into infrastructure investments.Beijing’s intentions were stated outright in a 2008 policy paper that, apart from a few China and Latin America hands, was largely overlooked at the time. Though China and Latin America are separated by the breadth of the Pacific Ocean, the paper stated that both sides “enjoy a time-honored friendship” and “are at a similar stage of development and face the common task of achieving development.” The region’s then mostly left-wing governments, often ignored and at times antagonized by the United States’ cavalier attitude towards them, welcomed China’s message of harmonious and collaborative development. After all, China’s own model of state-led economic development has advanced its economy by leaps and bounds over the past four decades, lifting over 800 million people out of poverty and significantly increasing the ordinary citizen’s standard of living. Latin American countries could not help but covet achieving similar results.Now, over a decade later, China’s efforts have borne fruit. Beijing wields sizeable economic and diplomatic influence in the region, much to the consternation of a Washington that is now thoroughly hawkish on China. Yet despite this new attitude, American policy towards the region has not seen much of an improvement. Under President Donald Trump, the U.S. government has imposed tariffs, cut off aid to countries that do not do more to stop migration to the United States, and is seemingly determined to build a literal wall along the southern border with Mexico. But beyond the day-to-day whims of the Oval Office, there is a much deeper internal conundrum that U.S. policymakers must face: China has proven that government-led industrial policies can work. These have been so successful that they have lifted millions of people out of squalor and have enabled China to compete with the United States in economic development, high-tech industries and more.In defending its preeminence over the New World, the United States will have to do more than merely recalibrate its regional policies: Washington’s political establishment will have to confront its own ideological assumptions—particularly those that inform its approach towards geo-economics. Doing so will require overcoming a long-held aversion to state-led economic initiatives and the notion that the free market holds unquestionable authority over matters of economics and finance. The best way to start this journey is to examine what, precisely, China has achieved down south.CHINA’S POLICY papers from 2008 and 2016 are rather clear in proclaiming the “goal of establishing a comprehensive and cooperative partnership featuring equality, mutual benefit and common development with Latin American and Caribbean countries.” The emphasis on development is encouraging for Latin American governments, as it indicates that China wants to help address a sore need in the region—one that has always existed and continues to exist even now. With more than 60 percent of the region’s roads remaining unpaved, 70 percent of sewage going untreated, and unreliable power grids resulting in enormous losses in electricity, there is plenty of work to be done.The United States is certainly aware of Latin America’s needs. It was only a few years ago that, in the 44th Annual Washington Conference on the Americas, then-Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker noted that there are significant U.S. investment opportunities available in Latin America, especially in infrastructure. But while the United States must convince private companies to invest down south, China, with its state-owned enterprises (SOEs), can move and build faster. And so, with China signaling that it could commit to substantially increase its presence in the region, and that it stood ready to deploy billions of dollars to promote much-needed trade, investment and infrastructure development, how could Latin American governments possibly turn Beijing down? After all, this is a country that since 1978 has, according to the World Bank, “experienced rapid economic and social development. gdp growth has averaged nearly 10 [percent] a year—the fastest sustained expansion by a major economy in history—and more than 850 million people have lifted themselves out of poverty.” It is a track record that speaks for itself, and one that many developing nations wish to emulate.China took up the invitation of Latin American governments and immediately got to work. Between 2000 and 2017, according to Red-ALC China, Chinese companies invested over $109 billion in Latin America; separately, the Inter-American Dialogue’s China-Latin America Finance Database estimates that, since 2005, Chinese policy banks (the China Development Bank and the Export-Import Bank of China) have disbursed more than $141 billion in loans, with 87 percent of those funds directed towards energy and infrastructure projects. A more recent report from the Inter-American Dialogue and Boston University’s Global Economic Governance Initiative puts the loan amount at over $150 billion, which exceeds the combined lending of the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank and the caf-Development Bank of Latin America.Out of the aforementioned $141 billion in policy bank loans from 2005 to 2017, $96.9 billion (68.5 percent) has gone into energy-related projects, $25.9 billion (18.3 percent) into infrastructure development, $2.1 billion (1.5 percent) into mining projects and $16.2 billion (11 percent) into other ventures (including government bonds, trade financing, business development and more).One might ask: why are the majority of these loans going to the energy sector? Perhaps the answer lies in the Global Energy Interconnection proposal put forward by State Grid Corporation of China Chairman Liu Zhenya. The plan, designated a “national strategy” by Chinese president Xi Jinping, can be described as the energy equivalent of the transportation infrastructure-focused Belt and Road Initiative: it seeks to build a global electricity grid mainly based on ultra-high-voltage (UHV)—a technology that enables electricity to be carried across enormous distances with greater efficiency than current high-voltage lines.Who would control this grid? Chinese officials say that, like the Internet, “no one” would. Yet such a claim cannot be so readily accepted. For starters, China itself is, in the words of a study from the Paulson Institute, “intensifying its efforts to set indigenous standards for homegrown ultra-high voltage transmission technology” and seeking to “contribute to UHV standards internationally.” This sort of standards-setting in the international arena, along with the network effects that come with it, is concerning to Western political and security analysts. After all, this is a traditional area of great power competition, since states whose technology becomes the dominant standard can use it against others. By establishing a global standard in energy infrastructure, China could conceivably shut out American firms from entire markets due to a lack of technological interoperability.Additionally, the best way to secure control, or at least influence, over this hypothetical global power grid would be through controlling or influencing the power plants that contribute to it. In Latin America, there are dozens of such projects: the San José hydroelectric plants in Bolivia, the Reventazón Dam in Costa Rica, two nuclear power plants in the Patagonia region of Argentina, the natural gas Martano power plant in Panama, and so on and so forth.In addition to energy infrastructure, there is also the usual transportation infrastructure that is invoked by analysts when they discuss the Belt and Road Initiative. Chinese SOEs, such as the China Harbour Engineering Company, have been busy building and acquiring container ship terminals across the region, from the Panama Canal to Manzanillo in Mexico’s Pacific coast. Meanwhile, Chinese giants Huawei and ZTE have built telecommunications networks in many Latin American countries.And all of these various projects, of course, have been or are being built by companies that are either close to China’s government or are outright SOEs.THOUGH CHINA’S presence in the United States’ sphere of influence is troubling for Washington, it is hard to deny that Beijing isn’t helping the region meet its enormous infrastructure needs. But Latin American countries may not be benefiting as much as many think they are.Take China’s loans as an example. Of the aforementioned $141 billion in loans calculated in 2017, $115.3 billion came from the China Development Bank (the remaining $25.8 billion from the Export-Import Bank of China). These loans have a higher interest rate on average than their international counterparts, leaving recipients having to pay back more over time. This comes with a presumed upside for developing countries though: unlike loans from Western institutions, Chinese loans do not have governance and environmental conditions attached to them. In other words, there is no need to conduct lengthy, time-consuming environmental surveys, cost-assessment studies, inordinate transparency measures and more.Yet what has happened to Ecuador perhaps best demonstrates the kind of negative repercussions that can occur when massive loans are made to developing countries with no governance or environmental strings attached. According to data from the Inter-American Dialogue, as of late 2018, Ecuador has taken around $18.4 billion in loans from China’s policy banks—adding up to about a third of Ecuador’s public debt. This money was used to fund a number of projects, the largest of which (to the tune of $1.7 billion) is the Coca Codo Sinclair hydroelectric dam. Unfortunately, as an in-depth investigation by The New York Times has revealed, the Coca Codo Sinclair project has been an embarrassing disaster. For one, against all common sense, it was built near a volcano that has been active since the sixteenth century. Not only is the area seismologically active, but a 2010 independent review of the project “warned that the amount of water in the region to power the dam had not been studied for nearly 30 years.”Then there are issues with the construction of the dam itself. Chinese loans, while usually free of governance and environmental requirements, do come with certain conditions—namely that infrastructure projects must employ Chinese SOE construction firms and use Chinese equipment, barring other competitors from partaking in infrastructure development contracts. These sorts of conditions can exclude international, and more importantly, domestic firms from participation in the building process. Additionally, this limits the potential positive impact on the local economy—little to none of the construction work is sourced out to local workers, nor is there an increased local demand for food/products/services. Most importantly, the lack of transparency measures can result in lax standards for material acquisition and construction. In Coca Codo Sinclar’s case, over seven thousand cracks have developed due to the usage of substandard steel and an inadequate welding job by Chinese builders.In short, for a $1.7 billion loan, Ecuador received a faulty, overly-large, crumbling dam that can only work at half capacity due to the country’s wet/dry seasons—and that is when everything is working well.So how will Ecuador pay for this dam, and everything else, to the tune of $18.4 billion? That remains an unanswered question. In the meantime, it is paying back China with its most valuable export: oil. To be more specific, China gets to keep around 80 percent of the country’s oil (which makes up around 58 percent of Ecuador’s exports) at a discount due to the loan contracts, which stated that debt is to be repaid in oil instead of currency.This pursuit of commodities also serves as another instance of how China’s economic behavior isn’t necessarily benefiting Latin American countries as some might think. On paper, there is a blossoming trade relationship between China and the region: a 2018 report from the un’s Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean shows that the value of the trade of goods between China and Latin America has grown from a few billion in 2000 to around $266 billion in 2018. However, what matters is what’s being traded. As it turns out, in 2016, manufactured goods accounted for 91 percent of Latin America’s imports from China, compared to 68 percent from the rest of the world. Meanwhile, commodities (particularly, in order of importance, soybeans, copper ore, iron ore, refined copper and oil) accounted for 72 percent of Latin America’s exports to China, compared to 27 percent for the rest of the world.Keeping Latin American economies concentrated in commodities and resource extraction does not benefit them. Aside from not adding much value to the lives of domestic consumers, these are highly cyclical industries that often go through periods of booms and busts. When a commodities cycle ends, as one did following the 2008 financial crisis, governments can suddenly experience a loss in income and political stability. Ideally, developing economies should aim to develop their domestic manufacturing sectors, which provide more jobs, reduce the dependence on manufactured imports and open the door for more domestic entrepreneurship.Unfortunately, the growth in the import of Chinese manufactured goods has meant stiff competition for Latin American companies. A 2017 report from the International Labor Organization found that, between 1995 and 2011, employment in “computers, textiles and footwear, as well as trade – was reduced by 1 million jobs due to the Chinese imports” in Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Mexico alone. A separate analysis found that, “from 2008 to 2013, 75 [percent] of the region’s manufactured exports faced a threat from China,” though this is an improvement from the period between 2003 and 2008, when the figure stood at 83 percent. Additionally, this report finds that “it is unlikely that the reduced threat comes from better labor productivity in the [Latin American] manufacturing sector, because China’s productivity continues to outpace labor productivity in [Latin American] manufacturing.”Overall, China’s economic expansion into Latin America has been extremely favorable for Beijing. Investments in infrastructure either enable greater economic activity that favor Chinese interests, and/or thrust Latin American countries into debt traps, effectively turning them into economic vassals. Either way, China benefits. Over the long term though, this is a dangerous proposition: local populations in these countries could grow disgruntled at what they see as a new imperialism originating from the East. This is not lost upon Chinese policymakers. With keen foresight, they supplement their economic statecraft with diplomatic initiatives and unconventional security measures. These, too, are visible in Latin America.ON PAPER, when it comes to international diplomacy, China is focused on promoting “the construction of a new type of international relations with win-win cooperation at the core.” It seeks to achieve this through “exchanges and mutual learning, as well as carrying forward the [China-Latin America] friendship from generation to generation,” according to the 2016 policy paper on Latin America. In practice, this means that China uses its diplomatic heft to shape local agendas and viewpoints, all to create an environment where it can operate with minimal disruption.An example of this is the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), a thirty-three-member regional bloc that notably excludes the United States and is seen as an alternative to the U.S.-led and headquartered Organization of American States (OAS). Beijing has engaged CELAC rather enthusiastically via the China-CELAC Forum and a cooperation plan for the years 2015 to 2019. This plan lays out how China and Latin American countries can more closely cooperate with one another on matters of economic development, fostering ties and so forth. It also provides China, in the words of Juan Pablo Cardenal, the author of a 2017 report from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), “a convenient policy framework to introduce and promote its soft power agenda” in the region.Some of this is plainly visible in the plan itself. China, for example, provided “CELAC countries with 6,000 governmental scholarships, 6,000 training opportunities and 400 opportunities for on-the-job master degree programs in China between 2015 and 2019.” The NED report adds that Beijing also provided more funding for international scholarships, with official figures estimating “377,000 foreigners studied in China in 2014, up from 84,000 a decade earlier. Furthermore, the Chinese government plans to raise that figure to 500,000 by 2020.” This spree of seemingly generously philanthropic funding actually helps serve China’s interests: it presents an opportunity to influence the views of current and future Latin Americans, giving them a rose-tinted view of Chinese society and achievements. Chinese state-sponsored media training, for example, probably does not cover the necessity of a free press, editorial independence and investigative reporting. In fact, the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission found that many of these media training programs—managed by Xinhua, China’s official state-run news agency, and the People’s Daily, the official newspaper of China’s Communist Party—“are explicitly political and are intended to improve foreign perceptions of China and legitimize the ruling party.”In Latin America, this sort of influence is already manifest. Since 2018, the nonprofit research group Global Americas has, for example, been reviewing articles aimed at Latin American audiences provided by Xinhua and the People’s Daily, and has found that they present an overly positive view of China’s economic ties with the region. Meanwhile, media partnerships help expand China’s influence even further: Brazil’s Agência Brasil, Cuba’s Granma, Venezuela’s TeleSUR and Chile’s La Tercera frequently republish material from Xinhua, People’s Daily and China Daily, another state-run publication. Similarly, China Daily has a “China Watch” supplement in the Argentinian newspapers Diario Uno, La Capital and Cronista.Washington shouldn’t be too surprised at such overt influence campaign though, seeing as similar efforts are also underway at home. Look no further than the presence of Confucius Institutes within U.S. universities, the funding of think tanks by entities linked to the Chinese Communist Party, and of course, paid inserts in high-profile Western newspapers. Even The New York Times and The Washington Post, often regarded as the U.S. newspapers of record, run and have run (respectively) insert sections with content created and paid for by China Daily. This strategy, which Chinese officials call “borrowing foreign newspapers,” illustrates how Beijing can shape political discourse overseas at a relatively low cost.CHINA’S MILITARY and security activities in Latin America are understandably subtler than their economic initiatives—anything too bold, like stationing military units in the region, would set off alarm bells in Washington and other capitals. Rather, Beijing has focused on importing something into Latin America that is far less provocative but is no less worrisome: its internal security model.Ecuador, for example, has set up ECU-911: a 4,300-camera national video surveillance and emergency response system designed and built by Chinese companies Huawei and China National Electronics Import and Export Corporation (CEIEC). Meanwhile, Bolivia has a similar system also built by CEIEC called BOL-110, though it is currently operating at a far smaller scale (around six hundred or so cameras) than its Ecuadorian counterpart. Both are touted for bringing down crime and helping local police, firefighters and first aid responders do their jobs more effectively, and are now widely accepted in these countries. However, an investigation by The New York Times earlier this year found that, in Ecuador’s case, some surveillance footage “also goes to the country’s feared domestic intelligence agency, which under the previous president, Rafael Correa, had a lengthy track record of following, intimidating and attacking political opponents.” That they are being monitored does not seem to bother Ecuadorian citizens all that much. After all, privacy concerns and possible political implications take a backseat to the daily realities of drugs and gang violence in Latin America. Nonetheless, it is not hard to imagine a future where a Latin American ruler decides to use such a surveillance network for more sinister purposes, such as tracking or sanctioning political opponents, government dissidents/critics, protestors and so forth.If anything, some governments might decide to go further. Venezuela, for instance, turned to China to help design a national identity program. Seeing what was possible with the help of Chinese telecoms giant ZTE, Nicolás Maduro’s government took inspiration from China’s social credit system to create the “fatherland card” ID system. This system collects a vast amount of data on any particular individual—including personal information, state benefits received, voting records and more—making it very easy for the Venezuelan government to exert control over the daily lives of citizens.Latin American rulers holding this sort of sway over their respective domestic populations suits Beijing’s purposes quite well, as it makes it easier for governments to crush political dissent—particularly any that is aimed towards Chinese economic interests. If that isn’t enough, and if certain facilities require more protection than the usual, China may decide to up the ante by stationing its own forces within these countries. China’s own 2015 defense strategy white paper notes that, “in response to the new requirement coming from the country’s growing strategic interests, the armed forces will actively participate in both regional and international security cooperation and effectively secure China’s overseas interests.” Indeed, safeguarding “the security of China’s overseas interests” is deliberately listed as a strategic task of China’s armed forces. A more blunt assessment comes from retired People’s Liberation Army (PLA) colonel Yue Gang, who said that “the PLAin the future will need to go abroad to protect China’s overseas interests in countries along the Belt and Road Initiative.” In Latin America, there are a number of possible sites. For example, there is a satellite and space control station in Argentina that was built by the Chinese military and is currently being leased rent-free to China for a period of fifty years. Likewise, any number of the dozens of commercial shipping ports in the region, particularly those that were originally built or expanded by Chinese companies, could be acquired and converted to military bases under the pretext of safeguarding Chinese commercial and economic interests.WITH CHINA expanding its footprint in Latin America, it is no surprise that U.S. policymakers and defense officials have begun to sound increasingly anxious. Part of it is recognition that China is indeed becoming very much involved in what Washington considers to be its own local sphere of influence. More broadly and more importantly though, part of it is the fact that the U.S. foreign policy establishment has finally awakened from what journalist James Mann back in 2007 called “the China fantasy”—the neoliberal ideal that economic liberalization in China would inevitably also result in political and social liberalization. It is this conceited point of view, so doggedly self-assured of the inevitable triumph of neoliberal economic policies and liberal democratic governance, that prevented U.S. policymakers from acting sooner.Yet while Washington seems to have woken up to this new challenge on its doorstep, it apparently has no idea how to address it. The Trump administration’s current policy, for instance, reads like something straight out of the Cold War, with an undue focus on the region’s left-wing governments and a not-so-subtle unspoken desire for CIA-backed regime change operations. Even some of the actors are still the same: look no further than the decision to appoint Elliott Abrams, a diplomat known for his involvement in the Iran-Contra scandal, as U.S. Special Representative for Venezuela.The end of the post-Cold War interregnum of U.S. preeminence implies a return to a multipolar, or at the very least, bipolar, world order. National economic policy can no longer be separate from military and diplomatic policy: all must be coordinated together in order to ward off the strategic and economic consequences of a changing international environment. If the United States intends to retain its leadership in high-tech industries, global finance, and most importantly, international aid/development, it is apparent that it too must develop a long-term economic strategy that addresses both domestic and international concerns.This is something that America’s allies seem to have already realized: Germany’s federal minister for economic affairs and energy, Peter Altmaier, has declared that the German government should be able to purchase stakes in systemically important companies if it means preserving national security. Separately, Altmaier and his French counterpart, Bruno Le Maire, have put out a joint manifesto proposing “a European industry policy designed to better protect and promote ‘European champions.’” The United States will have to start thinking along similar lines. Presidential, as well as Congressional leadership, will be necessary. The question is, where to begin?A good starting point would likely be to do some house cleaning: the U.S. government is currently not capable of putting together a unified geo-economic strategy. All the relevant organizations are spread out across Washington in various offices. The U.S. Trade Representative, for example, is located with the Executive Office of the President, while the International Trade Administration is in the Commerce Department. Meanwhile, the Export-Import Bank, the U.S. Trade and Development Agency, the International Development Finance Corporation (USIDFC) and many more are independent entities. Consolidating these various agencies and offices into a single department (whether new or existing) headed by a cabinet-level official charged with formulating and implementing geo-economic policy would put the United States in equal standing with its peers.Next, policymakers must embrace the challenge of devising cost-effective yet still-effective international development strategies as an instrument of U.S. power. China, as we have seen, is prepared to spend billions of dollars in building infrastructure, sponsoring educational opportunities and more. By way of comparison, the USIDFC, which is the U.S. agency responsible for financing private development projects, only has $60 billion in funding for the entire world—a mere two-fifths of the amount China has lent to Latin American countries alone. Washington will have to get creative to ensure that it gets the most bang for its buck. The best way to achieve this is by supporting efforts that help developing countries help themselves. For instance, the United States can help in infrastructure development by financing the environmental assessments or community consultation stipulations that come with World Bank loans. Alternatively, perhaps it can fund urban planning or engineering departments in Latin American universities, producing better-trained experts that can properly oversee local and regional infrastructure projects. Separately, the United States can tap into its greatest asset—the sheer financial might of its private sector—by encouraging it to buy and refinance Latin American debt to China with longer repayment terms. Akin to the “Brady Bonds” pioneered in the 1980s, this initiative could temper Chinese influence and reduce the payment burdens that these countries face.Finally, the United States must work to improve its diplomatic relations with Latin American countries. This will be a difficult task, to say the least, given both the current administration’s recent moves and, more broadly, Washington’s rather colorful history with the region, which includes military interventions, multiple coups, economic impositions and more. Critics usually have a favorite grievance they can recite from memory. Overcoming this will require reexamining the Monroe Doctrine in its original context: not as a pretext for imperial domination of the Western Hemisphere, but rather a responsibility to protect our “sister republics” in the New World from the political machinations of the Old. One possible avenue for this change is the OAS. Latin American critics of the institution perceive it to be dominated by the United States, while Washington often feels it holds little power over it. In reality, the organization is struggling due to an ill-defined mission, an unclear focus, and an overabundance of programs and projects that have proliferated out of control but lack the necessary budget to work. Reforming the OASto serve as a more reliable platform for regional economic collaboration, educational opportunities and advocacy of democratic norms could yield multiple benefits. More importantly, delegating power and responsibility to Latin American countries would send a signal that the United States is capable and willing to listen to the views and concerns of its peers. All this can be achieved relatively cheaply too: the OAS’ current annual budget is a paltry $84 million. Adding a few more million, not even a fraction of a fraction of what the U.S. government spends elsewhere, would yield enormous diplomatic returns.IN ROBERT Sobel’s For Want of a Nail, an alternative history book, fictional Mexican politician Pedro Hermión gives a truculent foreign policy address at his party’s national convention. He declares:In Mexico del Norte the Mexicanos have a game – some call it a sport. The peasants put two scorpions in a large bottle, and then take wagers as to which will win the struggle. Slowly the scorpions circle each other, until one lashes out at the other, and strikes him dead. So it is on our continent.Though the context is very different, Hermión is certainly right about one thing: the Americas are, in reality, a small place, and having two great powers like China and the United States competing over this landmass is a precarious proposition. In order to uphold and sustain regional stability, Washington must stop using its might like a club (heavy-handed, blunt and dumb), and relearn the art of wielding influence like a rapier (swift, elegant and precise). Above all else, what is intolerable is the casually irresponsible attitude towards power and its use.If there is one unbeatable advantage that the United States still possesses over China though, it is that it can still project a cultural and moral authority that people around the world admire. Individuals still aspire to the idea of a fair and democratic government that respects the rule of law, free speech, freedom of religion and so on. China, for all its economic advancement, reveals its own weaknesses every time it oppresses religious minorities, silences internal dissent, or otherwise fails to successfully persuade other countries to become subservient in a greater Chinese cultural whole. It cannot convince, so it must compel. In Latin America though, hard power is of limited utility; soft power through economic and diplomatic influence will carry the day in the region. This is something that Washington ought to ponder.Carlos Roa is the senior editor of the National Interest.Image: Reuters

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Look Closer: Reexamining the Visual Primary Sources of San Francisco

I'm coming back to my home state of California to give a free book talk, open to the public, in the Skylight Gallery on the top (6th) floor of the Main Branch of the SF Public Library: Thurs. 8/23 from 6:30-8pm. It's right across from the Civic Center BART station. This event is co-sponsored by the San Francisco History Center, the SF Mechanics' Institute, and the CA Historical Society. I hope you can make it! Here is my blog post for the SFHC to accompany my talk:

Think about your office. Your home. Your phone. What do all three have in common? Aside from the fact that they are where Americans spend most of their time, I’m willing to bet that they are also all adorned with pictures that carry some import for you. Above all, those spaces—whether virtual or literal—are filled with pictures of your loved ones, and probably also yourself. The centrality of images in our daily lives has become the stuff of cliché—the ubiquitous advertising, the pop-up ads, the magazine stands by the grocery checkout counter. Pictures can carry real import, as evinced by the most frequently polled response to the question: what would you rescue if your house was burning down? As too many fire-ravaged Californians have demonstrated in recent weeks, the answer usually has to do with old photo albums and cherished family snapshots or portraits.

This state of affairs may be changing in the digital age, but that’s also interesting from a historical perspective. We may be among the last generations to have physical photograph albums—or at least printed albums that are irreplaceable, as opposed to being stored on photo websites or in the nebulous Cloud.  People nevertheless continue to adorn their walls with pictures of family and friends, not to mention ourselves. If you haven’t gotten around to scanning every old photograph, as I suspect most of us have failed to do, then those images become all the more irreplaceable and valuable.  This sense of pricelessness evokes elements of nostalgia and a deeply individualized sense of worth that is based on personal identity and family ties. Yet its value also yields tangible profit in our capitalist economy: in April 2012, Facebook bought Instagram for one billion dollars, evincing the power of images and their centrality to both companies’ platforms (it is, after all, called *Face*book).

How did this cultural fascination with images and identity begin? Some might argue that it evolved along with humans themselves. Berkeley historian Martin Jay has noted that sight became particularly important to homo erectus once we began standing on our hind legs. The sense of sight enabled us “to differentiate and assimilate most external stimuli in a way superior to the other four senses.” Smell, which is so vital to animals on all fours like dogs, was reduced in importance for humans during this fateful transition—indeed, Freud conjectured that this shift was “the very foundation of human civilization.” Vision was “the last of the human senses to develop fully,” and is still “the last of the senses to develop in the fetus.” The eye also possesses far more nerve endings and operates at a much greater speed than any other sense organ, and at the fastest rate of assimilation among the entire sensorium. For all this unparalleled speed, vision entails more than the simple recording and assimilation of sensory data; neurobiologists note that it requires considerable brain function to understand or interpret what we see. A disproportionate amount of the human brain is devoted to visual processing; research indicates that the neurons responsible for sight “number in the hundreds of millions and take up about 30 percent of the cortex, as compared with 8 percent for touch and just 3 percent for hearing.” Only within the last few generations have scholars in the humanities and social sciences begun grappling with the implications of such an influential and yet subjective framework for human experience and perception.

My first book, Consuming Identities, examines a particular chapter in this much larger story: the growth of a commodified image industry in nineteenth-century San Francisco, one of the most diverse and dynamic cities in the United States. I argue that visual images shaped the way that Americans presented themselves, portrayed and related to one another, and framed their world view; thus wielding considerable cultural power in nineteenth-century society. This cultural phenomenon was not simply a matter of perception but of practice and policy: it shaped popular ideas about race and identity, censorship and immigration laws, criminal justice policies, and entire industries such as the transatlantic market for celebrities and fiercely competitive photography and printing businesses in San Francisco, among many other cities around the world.

San Francisco was at the forefront of these changes, and it has gone largely overlooked as an epicenter of modern spectacle and visual culture—a culture that was only expanding in a rapidly urbanizing and diversifying country. The most popular genre within the visual medium was the portrait photograph, which played a pivotal role in mediating intimacy, facilitating new modes of identity formation, and creating a public culture of spectatorship amidst the capitalist crucible of the gold rush metropolis. Few places could more dramatically evince these characteristics than San Francisco, a place largely defined by its distance from every other non-indigenous point of origin for its tens of thousands of polyglot nineteenth-century inhabitants.

In my San Francisco Library talk, I will showcase examples from the seven thematically organized chapters of Consuming Identities—particularly those I uncovered at the San Francisco History Center and the California Historical Society, with some references to the importance of the Mechanics Institute in the cultural and professional dimensions of San Francisco history. For now, I want to focus on one of the many versions of roughly letter-sized illustrated gold rush stationery—known as letter sheets—that did not make it into my book: “Miners at Work with Long Toms.” This lithograph from San Francisco firm Justh & Quirot (active in San Francisco from 1851-53) was likely published by Cooke and Le Count, and dates to about 1851. It illustrates the posters advertising my upcoming book talk. (A lithograph is a design drawn and inked on stone, and printed with that stone—the technology was developed at the turn of the nineteenth century and proved much more efficient and durable than previous methods of wood or metal engraving.)

In the main image spanning the upper third of the sheet, ten miners work at unearthing their fortunes in a creek, using several iconic implements of the gold rush: shovels, long toms (expanded rockers, with troughs measuring 10-20 feet), and gold pans. Their cabins are visible in the distance, interspersed with the jagged rocks and the conifers of the Sierras. Beneath this vignette is an open space for the correspondent—usually a homesick miner—to pen his letter. The space is framed by two trees on the left and right margins, another long wooden span separating the upper illustration from the lower portion of the sheet (and adorned with serene naturalistic details like two birds perched on one end and a couple of squirrels on the other), and along the bottom there appears to be a Native American spear. Stacked vertically on the left-hand margin are two illustrations: an archetypal miner above an Indian, whose quiver of arrows and shield seem to be hung up above him on the leafy bough that demarcates the left margin. I will have more to say about these figures below, but first I want to contextualize this uniquely Californian version of a much larger visual genre.

Letter sheets communicated various perspectives, but they were usually informational, humorous, nostalgic, or moralizing. Several varieties of letter sheets were destroyed in a series of catastrophic San Francisco fires in the 1840s and 1850s and the devastating earthquake and fire of 1906, but scholars have estimated that between 340 and 750 varieties of sheets were produced—primarily by firms operating in San Francisco and a few smaller ones in Sacramento and the surrounding area. Eastern firms supplemented these sheets, often acquiring their artwork from associates in the Sierra foothills. But as lithograph collector and researcher Harry T. Peters noted in his book on the subject back in 1935, most eastern letter sheets differed in content, quality, and quantity from their western counterparts: few of them were mass produced, most were printed on low-quality paper, and tellingly, the overwhelming majority depicted serene views rather than caricatures, comics, or historic events. The California letter sheets, as “Miners at Work” exemplifies, evoked exceptional artistic quality, balanced representation of detail, and California artists strove for a distinctive linear perspective that created a three-dimensional effect. They centered on gold rush themes—particularly the archetypal miner—until the mid-to-late 1850s, long after the placer gold deposits had dried up around 1852-53. The sheets nonetheless continued to command a market for decades after the end of the Civil War, by documenting new themes that reflected public interest. German festivals and street scenes from Chinatown highlighted the diversity of the city’s inhabitants while providing viewers on both coasts and beyond with a rare glimpse at the exotic, the spectacular, and the unknown.

The contemporary popularity of these precursors-to-the-postcard is evinced by the fact that they were often pirated, or reproduced with subtle variations. U.C. Berkeley’s Bancroft Library has two other versions of this same letter sheet, with the same illustrations and title. One of those versions lacks the subtitle: “Copied from a Daguerreotyp [sic] sketch by Justh & Quirot Lithographers” (the other includes the subtitle but adds the address of the lithographers, at 28 Jackson St.). The daguerreotype was the first version of the photograph, simultaneously developed by a number of inventors in different countries, but formally introduced to the world in 1839 as the eponymous creation of Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre. The fact that the term itself is missing the last “e” may have been a simple abbreviation of a widely known term by the gold rush era, or one of the chronic American misspellings of the French word. As I explain in Consuming Identities, this “from a daguerreotype” annotation was a commonly invoked claim, and whether accurate or not (too many original daguerreotypes have been lost to say with any certainty), publishers intended it to enhance the authenticity of their artist-rendered views for audiences wary of inaccurate depictions from the many artists who never actually ventured to California or the gold fields. In an age of false claims known as “humbug” and confidence schemes, daguerreotypes were widely considered beyond reproach as unaltered, frozen moments in time—though I also detail in my book the ambivalence that many nineteenth-century San Franciscans expressed about the extent to which photography could or could not convey deeper, underlying truths.

The main image of “Miners at Work” certainly looks as though it was copied from a daguerreotype: most of its figures appear to be looking directly at the viewer, who would have been in the same position as the photographer, and they are paused in their work. This conscious posing would have been necessary on the part of the photographic subject, because the longer exposure times of early photography did not allow for action shots without considerable blurring. In other words: nineteenth-century subjects knew that they had to hold still if they wanted the camera to capture them for posterity. Thus the man on the far left hunches over his shovel, his arms crossed above the handle, and six men at the center of the image appear to be posing with their shovels in a gesture of the digging that they performed with such frequency that their camps soon acquired the nickname of “diggings.” Two men are in seated or crouched positions, and the one in the right foreground appears to be the only one not looking towards the camera as he carefully studies his pan for gold deposits—or pretends to be doing that work, demonstrating the labor but also the implicitly performative dimensions of the miner archetype.

The miner was inherently performative, as contemporaries well knew and documented by referring to his—and their own—appearance as his (or their) “costume.” Historians like Brian Roberts have estimated that most of the young men who journeyed to California in the late 1840s and 50s were in fact part of the burgeoning middle class, as few proletarians could afford the steep fees for passage, let alone equipment and supplies, that such a long journey entailed. These self-dubbed “Argonauts” (in reference to the Greek legend of Jason and the Golden Fleece) were not necessarily accustomed to hard manual labor, and even those who did arduous work like farming would hardly have been as well prepared for mining as many of their experienced Chilean and Sonoran competitors in the gold fields. They nonetheless reveled in their chance to look and act the part of the phenomenon that the whole world was talking about—and viewing, in the form of the widely distributed illustrations on letter sheets and in a host of publications such as books and magazines, not only across the United States, but in Paris, London, Havana, and many other places.

The “Miners at Work” letter sheet illustrates the archetypal miner—along the left margin of the lower portion—and in its main image, a collection of men who evoke that archetype’s power in their attempts to look and act the part. They all don wrinkled shirts, pants, and several pairs of (doubtless mud-spattered) boots, just like the archetype. Most of them are wearing floppy hats, though one miner at the center of the upper image appears to have retained his top hat in a seemingly comic juxtaposition with his decidedly informal surroundings. At least two of them boast “whiskers,” as the long and unkempt facial hair was often dubbed in boastful letters back home, in which thousands of formerly clean-shaven and perhaps white-collar Americans reveled in their conformity to the decidedly racialized and masculinized miner archetype.

That the miner was racialized as an epitome of white masculinity is literally illustrated on this sheet, with the juxtaposition of the upper and lower figures on the left-hand margin. The Native American man is visibly and spatially separated from the identity and the work of gold rush mining. The difference isn’t just sartorial; he does not carry the iconic implements of the trade, such as the pickaxe, gold pan, or shovel of the miner standing above him. Instead, he reclines on the ground, apparently lost in a moment of contemplation, passive and even relegating his own tools—the arrows and shield—to a place hanging above his head on the tree trunk. There may be a tomahawk or club beside him, but his right hand has relinquished it on the ground. He seems resigned to literally sit out this internationally famous rush for riches, along with all the conquest, industrialization, and modernization (or “civilization”) that Americans proclaimed it would entail. A visual rendering of the then-popular “vanishing savage” myth, he could easily be interpreted as passively receding into the background, temporally and figuratively. He signifies the past, while the archetypal miner stands poised for action, his eyes focused on the horizon. Such seemingly naturalistic depictions masked the real violence and dispossession that lay behind the conquest, as historians of California Indians like Benjamin Madley have amply documented. There is no evident indication of this indigenous man’s tribe, if he was in fact based on a specific individual, but his moccasins, fringed shirt (likely of deerskin) and feather headdress may be reminiscent of the Maidu people of northern California. The larger point here is that most potential customers who purchased this sheet, or the viewers who received it, would not have known or much cared about the particular tribal affiliation and identity of this token representative of California’s indigenous population—a people who were associated with the region’s past.

Every letter that correspondents penned on the letter sheets was unique; yet every letter-sheet illustration was, by definition, mass-produced and identical to hundreds or thousands of others circulating throughout San Francisco and the postal system. Photographic technology did not allow for mass-reproducible portraits in the peak years of the gold rush, but advancements in steam printing and lithography (as detailed in the introduction to Consuming Identities) enabled artist-rendered illustrations to be created in very large numbers. The most popular gold rush letter sheets were printed in runs that stretched well into the tens of thousands, and may have approached one hundred thousand, according to some accounts. They were also extremely affordable, just like their counterparts in the East, and usually sold for mere cents per sheet (one California letter writer noted that he paid five cents for his, though they could easily be between ten and twenty cents). Engravers, printers, and stationers sold them individually or in bulk to resellers such as hotels, for anywhere from $10 to $15 per hundred in the mid-1850s. The genres of lithography and photography captured the period’s tension between uniqueness and homogeneity. For all the individuality that Argonauts expressed through their commissioned photographic portraits and their personal perspectives in letters, their appearances, experiences, and identities were bound up in the mass movement that was the gold rush. Neither of the Bancroft Library versions of this “Miners at Work” sheet contain any visible annotations, but the San Francisco History Center specimen does: along the bottom of the page, in the faded brown ink familiar to any historian of nineteenth-century manuscript correspondence, someone has written “On the other or inside will be found something—.” This tantalizing reference appears to beckon the reader to open up the letter sheet (they were often folded to allow more space for writing inside), or flip it over to the verso side. The Society of California Pioneers possesses an annotated version of this letter sheet, in which someone has penned a letter dated August 26, 1851 (though that dateline has been crossed out, whether by the correspondent or someone else, we don’t know).

Though historians have often utilized the handwritten correspondence of these letter sheets in their chronicles of gold rush life and culture, they have not paid sufficient attention to the distinctive visual medium that the California sheets represented. The correspondents themselves often reacted to the images printed on those pages, whether to reinforce their accuracy or undermine their message with contrary accounts. Some purposefully reserved their remarks for the verso side or for enclosed pages, so as to allow their recipients the chance to display the letter sheets as household decorations. Other purchasers may have adorned their makeshift cabins and tents with the sheets, just as they displayed the photographic portraits of their distant kin on their walls and at their bedside tables. Of all the myriad changes in daily life and culture between our own time and the gold rush, the ubiquity and talismanic power of human images remains as true as it ever was. Pictures still adorn our walls, and they still channel deep emotions. This history has something to tell us about where we came from and how our society came to be, but it also has plenty to teach us about ourselves.

Those interested in conducting their own close readings of these wonderful primary sources, and mining them for their rich details (pun intended), are welcome to do so by clicking on the hyperlinks to the different versions of the sheet provided below. We are all indebted to the hard work that went into scanning and digitizing high-resolution versions of these letter sheets, through fantastic archival websites like the Online Archive of California and Calisphere.

“Miners at Work with Long Toms” [c. 1851]. California Pictorial Lettersheet Collection, San Francisco History Center version: https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c8b85dww/

Bancroft Library version with subtitle and address:

https://calisphere.org/item/ark:/13030/tf2x0nb4s4/

Bancroft Library version without subtitle:

https://calisphere.org/item/ark:/13030/tf2g5007vp/

Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco version, courtesy of the Achenbach Foundation:

https://art.famsf.org/anonymous/miners-work-long-toms-3899740

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