“I’ll Bring Some Empanadas to the Rally…”
Dan Albert, son of immigrants from Alicante, Spain, in the kitchen at his home in Monterey, California. Dan's parents were just children when their families were recruited to work on the sugar-cane plantations in Hawaii. They later re-emigrated to California, and eventually settled in Monterey. Though he can't remember the lyrics, Dan --born in 1930-- can hum the tune of his mother's favorite song: "¡No pasarán!"
Don Harris, founder of latienda.com, an on-line purveyor of fine Spanish foods, recently invited me to contribute a post to his blog. My short piece, on the foodways of Spanish immigrants in the US, is currently featured there:http://blog.tienda.com/
As I mention in the post, it was while conducting research about how Spanish immigrants in the US responded to the war in Spain that I came across several lists, published during the war, of immigrant organizations all over the country that had banded together to form the Sociedades Hispanas Confederadas.
Those lists have enabled me to begin to map the diaspora of the waves of working class Spaniards who found their way to this country during the first decades of the twentieth century, and settled in unlikely and far-flung places, like Barre (Vermont), Donora (Pennsylvania), Cherryvale (Kansas) and Monterey (California).
Once the war breaks out in Spain, the picnics, dances and soccer tournaments organized by these organizations of Spanish immigrants will become occasions to raise funds for the Spanish Republic.
Please have a look and leave a comment.
