VOA标准英语2010年-Exhibit Explores New York's Latin Root

A new exhibit in New York explores the city's long history of cultural and political connections with Spain and Latin America - ties that have affected¹ virtually every aspect of the city's development.

Whether it's the bilingual signs, the ever-present corner bodega grocery stores, or just the spicy² rhythms of life in the Big Apple, it's hard to walk down a street in New York City and not sense its Latino flavor.

Marci Reavin is the curator at "Nueva York," a new exhibit on the subject mounted jointly³ by the Museo del Bario and the New York Historical Society. She says the roots of this influence go back to the 16th and 17th centuries, when the Spanish Empire controlled a swath of land extending from Central South America north through the Caribbean and into North America, from Florida to California.

 
Courtesy The New-York Historical Society and El Museo del Barrio
The Nueva York exhibit explores the roots of Latino influence on the city.
"So some of the objects we have in the show are the kinds of things that would have been taken from Spanish treasure ships," says Reavin, "like a 16th century bar of silver or the beautiful piece of fabric⁴ which shows the red dye that was called 'cochenille.'"

Cochenille is the rare and beautiful scarlet⁵ dye made from South American insects. Europeans used it to make its finest royal, clerical and military cloth. It's just one of the New World's riches that imperial Spain exploited. But by the late 18th and early 19th centuries, that empire was beginning to weaken from a series of financially ruinous European wars, the cost of supplying and fortifying⁶ their outposts in the Americas, piracy⁷ and other factors.

The Spanish Empire was especially challenged during the 1850s, as the United States - with New York as its financial capital - sought to expand its influence south to Cuba, Puerto Rico, northern South America and other lands claimed by the Spanish monarchs⁸.

 
Courtesy The New-York Historical Society and El Museo del Barrio
Venezuela's first president, Gen. José Antonio Páez went into exile in New York in 1850. Here, the general's son, Ramón Páez, depicts⁹ a war scene from 1818.
"But they are also challenged by Puerto Ricans and Cubans who live in New York and are running the liberation struggles out of New York with the goal of freeing Cuba and Puerto Rico from their Spanish imperial masters," says Reavin. "New York is a free city. We have political freedom here. So revolutionaries from all over the world can meet here and plan for revolution in their home country. And they do that in New York during the 1850s and 60s and all the way up to the 1890s when the final war for Cuban liberation starts."

Other trends would couple the destinies of Latin America and New York, as Wall Street investment capital flowed south and raw Latin American goods and produce like tobacco, silver and sugar flowed to northern factories, where they were made into consumer export products. Nueva York historian Mike Wallace says that by the late 1880s, the metropolis¹⁰ was the sugar refining capital of the world.

"So New York, in an odd way, becomes a kind of second capital of Latin America," says Wallace. "And it's a place where many Latin Americans come to get an education, to see the wonders of modernity, to glimpse the future."

Wallace adds that during the early to mid¹¹ 20th century, Latin rhythms became an important part of American popular culture. Latin American Nueva Yorkers like Machito, for example, teamed up with African American jazzmen to create new musical hybrids¹³.

 
Courtesy The New-York Historical Society and El Museo del Barrio
The Sea Witch exchanged goods in silver-rich Spanish America before its voyages to China broke multiple world records.
And out of this comes Afro-Latin jazz which eventually develops into salsa.

"Salsa people tend to think it is coming out of Latin America. But no. It's coming out of Latin Americans who come to New York City, interact with both blacks and Puerto Ricans and Cubans who are here already and their music is picked up by the music industry," says Wallace. "And you get this incredible dynamism that explodes in the 60s and 70s into salsa, an international phenomenon."

Latino immigration skyrocketed following World War II. Between 1945 and 1965, 800,000 Puerto Ricans came to New York. During the 1960s and 70s, hundreds of thousands of Dominicans arrived following the death of the dictator Rafael Trujillo and the escalating¹⁵ U.S. intervention¹⁶ in Dominican political affairs.

Ric Burns, who made a documentary film about postwar Latino New York for the exhibit, says that these newcomers could keep in close touch with their homelands in ways earlier generations could not.

"This is a telephone and airplane migration¹⁴. People can call home," says Burns. "They are hours from home. It's a very modern change."

Mexicans are the latest comers in Latino New York. In 1984, there were 40,000 Mexicans here. Today, there are a half million. According to Burns, New Yorkers experience this change every day.

"So it's food. It's culture. It's dance. It's music," says Burns. "And what's really amazing is that all those things are mixing it up here. So although they are coming from Latin America and the Caribbean, this Pan Latino identity is an absolutely homegrown American product."

Indeed, as the Nueva York exhibit shows, New York is a hybrid¹² mix, as immigrants from hundreds of countries each add their own flavor to urban life, and continue to change the meaning of the word, "American."
 

1 affected   

adj.不自然的，假装的

参考例句：

• She showed an affected interest in our subject.她假装对我们的课题感到兴趣。
• His manners are affected.他的态度不自然。

2 spicy   

adj.加香料的；辛辣的，有风味的

参考例句：

• The soup tasted mildly spicy.汤尝起来略有点辣。
• Very spicy food doesn't suit her stomach.太辣的东西她吃了胃不舒服。

3 jointly   

ad.联合地，共同地

参考例句：

• Tenants are jointly and severally liable for payment of the rent. 租金由承租人共同且分别承担。
• She owns the house jointly with her husband. 她和丈夫共同拥有这所房子。

4 fabric   

n.织物，织品，布；构造，结构，组织

参考例句：

• The fabric will spot easily.这种织品很容易玷污。
• I don't like the pattern on the fabric.我不喜欢那块布料上的图案。

5 scarlet   

n.深红色，绯红色，红衣；adj.绯红色的

参考例句：

• The scarlet leaves of the maples contrast well with the dark green of the pines.深红的枫叶和暗绿的松树形成了明显的对比。
• The glowing clouds are growing slowly pale,scarlet,bright red,and then light red.天空的霞光渐渐地淡下去了，深红的颜色变成了绯红，绯红又变为浅红。

6 fortifying   

筑防御工事于( fortify的现在分词 )； 筑堡于； 增强； 强化（食品）

参考例句：

• Fortifying executive function and restraining impulsivity are possible with active interventions. 积极干预可能有助加强执行功能和抑制冲动性。
• Vingo stopped looking, tightening his face, fortifying himself against still another disappointment. 文戈不再张望，他绷紧脸，仿佛正在鼓足勇气准备迎接另一次失望似的。

7 piracy   

n.海盗行为，剽窃，著作权侵害

参考例句：

• The government has already adopted effective measures against piracy.政府已采取有效措施惩治盗版行为。
• They made the place a notorious centre of piracy.他们把这地方变成了臭名昭著的海盗中心。

8 monarchs   

君主，帝王( monarch的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Monarchs ruled England for centuries. 世袭君主统治英格兰有许多世纪。
• Serving six monarchs of his native Great Britain, he has served all men's freedom and dignity. 他在大不列颠本国为六位君王服务，也为全人类的自由和尊严服务。 来自演讲部分

9 depicts   

描绘，描画( depict的第三人称单数 )； 描述

参考例句：

• The book vividly depicts French society of the 1930s. 这本书生动地描绘了20 世纪30 年代的法国社会。
• He depicts the sordid and vulgar sides of life exclusively. 他只描写人生肮脏和庸俗的一面。

10 metropolis   

n.首府；大城市

参考例句：

• Shanghai is a metropolis in China.上海是中国的大都市。
• He was dazzled by the gaiety and splendour of the metropolis.大都市的花花世界使他感到眼花缭乱。

11 mid   

adj.中央的，中间的

参考例句：

• Our mid-term exam is pending.我们就要期中考试了。
• He switched over to teaching in mid-career.他在而立之年转入教学工作。

12 hybrid   

n.(动，植）杂种，混合物

参考例句：

• That is a hybrid perpetual rose.那是一株杂交的四季开花的蔷薇。
• The hybrid was tall,handsome,and intelligent.那混血儿高大、英俊、又聪明。

13 hybrids   

n.杂交生成的生物体( hybrid的名词复数 )；杂交植物（或动物）；杂种；（不同事物的）混合物

参考例句：

• All these brightly coloured hybrids are so lovely in the garden. 花园里所有这些色彩鲜艳的杂交花真美丽。 来自辞典例句
• The notion that interspecific hybrids are rare is ill-founded. 有一种看法认为种间杂种是罕见的，这种看法是无根据的。 来自辞典例句

14 migration   

n.迁移，移居，（鸟类等的）迁徙

参考例句：

• Swallows begin their migration south in autumn.燕子在秋季开始向南方迁移。
• He described the vernal migration of birds in detail.他详细地描述了鸟的春季移居。

15 escalating   

v.（使）逐步升级( escalate的现在分词 )；（使）逐步扩大；（使）更高；（使）更大

参考例句：

• The cost of living is escalating. 生活费用在迅速上涨。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The cost of living is escalating in the country. 这个国家的生活费用在上涨。 来自辞典例句

16 intervention   

n.介入，干涉，干预

参考例句：

• The government's intervention in this dispute will not help.政府对这场争论的干预不会起作用。
• Many people felt he would be hostile to the idea of foreign intervention.许多人觉得他会反对外来干预。