Monday, October 16, 2006
Liberal Arts faculty colloquium: A personal diary of the Gold Rush
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Dr. Guillermo Latorre, professor of Spanish, will offer a first-hand account of the California Gold Rush as part of the College of Liberal Arts Faculty Colloquia Series. He will present “The Eye and Mind of the Traveler: Vicente Pérez Rosales on the California Gold Rush, 1848-1849” at 3:30 p.m. Friday, October 27, in Kleymeyer Hall in the Liberal Arts Center. Pérez Rosales was a member of Chile’s ruling class. He traveled extensively, including a trip to California, during which he kept a diary about the state’s colonization, native peoples, and Gold Rush, in 1948. The diary has never been published in full because of allegedly indecent language and illustrations. “His character is very unusual,” Latorre said. “He was a man who loved trouble and adventure. He was a restless soul until the end of his life, and participated in a number of ventures that would have killed another human being. He was a smuggler and a bootlegger. He got into prospecting, hotel-keeping, and buying and selling. He was so many things in his lifetime - one of his activities would occupy a whole life for a normal human being.” Latorre learned that the diary had very limited publication. Only 100 copies were published in Chile in 1949. “It never circulated as a book, but as a binder with loose sheets in it, and the drawings are separate, in an appendix.” When Latorre studied the original diary in the Chilean National Archives, he found that the text and sketches were meant to go hand in hand. “He’s illustrating what he’s writing in the text.” Pérez Rosales’ scatological poetry created another problem with publication. In the one English translation of the diary, published in California in 1970, the poems were left in Spanish. “They are so peculiar that translating them would have created problems for the translators,” Latorre said. Latorre will read examples of the poetry in his colloquia presentation. The diary reveals Pérez Rosales' attitude toward native Californians. “He was in favor of segregation and annihilation. His view is extremely disturbing; he can be very callous,” Latorre said. Pérez Rosales was not an admirable character, but he provided a first-hand account of frontier democracy. “The justice system was not a reliable system. From time to time you’d get a person appointed as a judge, and his position would be contested and overturned by force. California was in the process of changing from Mexican control to American control and Pérez Rosales records that flux and confusion. There was a very weak government and weak political and social institutions. It was every man for himself. “He was from very good family, and he went to California knowing he would risk his life with hardship and uncertainties. Yet he went and made it to San Francisco. He returned to Chile a year later having won absolutely nothing. No money, no prestige, no nothing.” The colloquium is a free lecture series featuring faculty research in the College of Liberal Arts. For more information, contact Dr. Teresa Huerta, associate professor of Spanish, at 812/465-7053. |
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