Blog Archives

choose your own conquest!

Posted on May 28, 2013 by ctb — 4 Comments

I taught a miniterm class over the last three weeks on the Spanish Conquest of the Americas. We met for roughly 2:30-3:00 per day, which posed its own set of challenges. Reading expectations were lowered with this schedule. And, I…

this american life and dos erres

Posted on May 28, 2012 by ctb — 1 Comment

The latest episode of This American Life features a full-episode-length story on the Dos Erres Massacre and its aftermath. The Massacre took place on December 6, 1982, when some 250 members of the village were murdered. Their bodies were left…

eighty square blocks of data

Posted on February 17, 2012 by ctb — 2 Comments

I had walked the streets of Quito’s Centro many times before I encountered it’s old parishes in the manuscripts of the Archivo Nacional del Ecuador (ANE). Yet, in reading, and writing, of events from the city’s criminal archives in the…