Mendoza in Hollywood by Kage Baker

Author:Kage Baker [Baker, Kage]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: General, Fiction, Science Fiction, C429, Extratorrents, Kat
ISBN: 9780613494458
Publisher: Tor Books
Published: 2000-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

IT HAD BEEN A great movie, all the same.

Thinking about it all, about Babylon and France and Jerusalem and that cold urban future, one tended to forget one was living in the midst of a historical upheaval just as impressive. France was finding that it was a great deal harder for the Second Empire to crush a bunch of ignorant mestizos than had ever been expected, while England and Spain sat back and watched in disgust. The North Americans were busy filling up the history books too: the Emancipation Proclamation was issued, for example. In future cinema it would be depicted by black hands stretching up toward beams of sunlight, broken manacles dangling from the wrists, to the accompaniment of a swelling chorus of this or that hymn, usually fading into a long shot of the Lincoln Memorial.

So sentimentally is the birth of a baby presented. The reality is far more an occasion of blood, of fear and uncertainty, of shock that displaces the joy that should be felt on such an occasion. While not one of those people to whom that piece of paper meant so much would ever have gone back to being slaves again, they must have known that the chains would be ten times as hard to break now that they were invisible and intangible.

But how could any of it matter to us? We went on about our daily life in a world where Watts and South Central were still Spanish land grants where vaqueras roped steers, and the longhorns herded down from the Tejon Ranch bore a brand of Cross above Crescent, commemorating the ancient victories of the Spanish Crusaders over the Moors, and I still thought of black men as turbaned kings with scimitars. What did this Civil War have to do with me?

You see? I had no sense of Realpolitik at all. Not that I wasn’t warned.

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