The singing of capeyuye (the Mascogo—Black Seminole people—equivalent of the U.S. spiritual) became a significant token of individual and communal identity in that population. The life and career of Gertrudis Vázquez are studied as emblematic of that tradition. The technical aspects of capeyuye are described and its performance is examined with the context of Mascogo society, particularly its connection with important events such as funerals, birthdays, and other festive occasions.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
213 p., A ollection of stories about the lives of 10 remarkable people in the region. From Trinidad, Grenada, St. Lucia and the Dominican Republic to Columbia, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Mexico, readers will come to know individuals whose lives reflect the history and immense changes underway in these countries.
James F. Evans Collection, In the state of Jalisco, Mexico, results from postgraduate training for production oriented private consultants have been dramatic. The program is backed by FIRA (Fondo de Grantia y Fomento para la Agricultura Ganaderia y Fideicomisos Agricolas), a part of the agricultural branch of the Bank of Mexico. Results clearly show that yields of corn and other grains in west-central Mexico can be increased and that unit cost of production can be reduced.
Located in the eastern Brazilian Amazon roughly three hours by boat from the open Atlantic, the port city of Belém do Pará has been an important point of convergence for transnational flows of commodities, people, and culture, including a vast array of up-tempo Caribbean dance genres known locally as lambada. Since the late twentieth century, inhabitants of Belém and surrounding areas have sought to make a virtue of their liminal position between the hegemonic centers of southeastern Brazil and the circum-Caribbean. This article shows how musicians, dancers, listeners, and culture brokers draw on the local history of Caribbean cosmopolitan musicality to articulate an alternative Amazonian regional identity, one characterized by connectedness and proximity to their Caribbean neighbors rather than by isolation and provincialism. In so doing, the article contributes to the remapping of the cultural contours of Brazil, the Caribbean, the Amazon, and Latin America.
INTERPAKS; see also C07214, Aims to show that it can be of great advantage to the design of a rural development project if the cognitive strategies which lie behind farmers' decisions to adopt new technology are understood. This is done by using a case study of an agronomic recommendation of the Plan Puebla in Mexico which did not diffuse. Of the 1973-4 recommendations, the one to increase the number and change the timing of fertilizer applications was the non-adopted recommendation. The theory of choice used in this study assumes that people choosing between two alternatives do not make complex calculation of the overall worth or utility of each alternative. Instead people tend to use procedures which simplify their decision making calculations.