I was reading William Everdell’s superb book, the First Moderns, the other day, and came across an unfamiliar name: Valeriano Weyler y Nicolau . Everdell’s book explores the emergence of the “vortices” of modernism by tracking the various conjunctions of theory and practice not only in the obvious places, the big metropoles, but on the periphery. And, indeed, even in the metropoles modernism was a negotiation between outliers and the establishment. One of the monuments of modernism, Everdell claims, was invented by Weyler y Nicolau: the concentration camp. Or campos de reconcentraciòn, as he named them. It is an interesting story. According to Everdell, Weyler y Nicolau, fighting against the Cuban insurgents in 1897, decided to experiment with an American invention, barbed wire. Why not string barbed wire around areas that were insurgent strongholds? Since insurgents weren’t formally organized, it seemed like a good way to contain them, a sort of cordon sanitaire. No sooner thought of
“I’m so bored. I hate my life.” - Britney Spears
Das Langweilige ist interessant geworden, weil das Interessante angefangen hat langweilig zu werden. – Thomas Mann
"Never for money/always for love" - The Talking Heads