{"id":15598,"date":"2021-05-21T09:09:50","date_gmt":"2021-05-21T14:09:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/letters-science\/?p=15598"},"modified":"2023-12-04T15:29:30","modified_gmt":"2023-12-04T21:29:30","slug":"a-thread-tying-ancient-peru-to-modern-chicago","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/letters-science\/in-focus-2021\/a-thread-tying-ancient-peru-to-modern-chicago\/","title":{"rendered":"A thread tying ancient Peru to modern Chicago"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>For nearly 20 years, David Pacifico has traversed the terrains of Peru. First, helping colleagues interview Spanish-speaking locals as an archeology intern. Then, excavating areas in the ancient city of El Purgatorio, about 200 miles north of Lima.<\/p>\n<p>Pacifico also has close ties to Chicago, where he did his graduate and postdoc work. Which explains, the assistant art history professor says, the inspiration for some of his latest research.<\/p>\n<p>Pacifico juxtaposed neighborhoods in 14th-century El Purgatorio and 20th-century Chicago \u2013 namely, Bronzeville \u2013 to explore how diverse communities form. Despite their historical and cultural differences, the origin stories of both neighborhoods share some unexpected commonalities. \u201cLooking at Bronzeville and El Purgatorio was about studying individual houses and seeing how they fit into the broader community,\u201d says Pacifico, who\u2019s also director of the <a href=\"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/arthistory\/gallery\/art-collection\/\">UWM Art Collection<\/a> and Emile H. Mathis Art Gallery. \u201cThat\u2019s where you can start reconstructing these kinds of stories.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s a common misconception, Pacifico says, that neighborhoods evolve because pods of homogenous people naturally come together in a neighborhood. Instead, migration of various types of people \u2013 who often share broad characteristics \u2013 into an area is the building block upon which populations grow and neighborhoods form. And the neighborhoods Pacifico examined became nexuses, housing diverse people arriving through several historical processes.<\/p>\n<p>El Purgatorio\u2019s residents, for example, are believed to have arrived from the surrounding countryside due to climate change and to escape the imperial Chim\u00fa culture. Migration to Bronzeville, meanwhile, stemmed from people seeking industrial work due to World War I and to escape oppression in the South. Bursts of mass migration to both communities provided access to jobs and resources, so diverse neighborhoods blossomed despite racial segregation in Chicago and class-related segregation in El Purgatorio.<\/p>\n<p>There was the inevitable factioning, but those internal divisions also helped create the individual characters of the neighborhoods.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI was thinking about neighborhoods as special kinds of communities,\u201d Pacifico says, \u201cbecause neighborhoods are based in places and residences. They speak to the way we really experience our lives with people who, at the very least, seem familiar to us.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><small><strong>By LaBreea Watson<\/strong>, University Relations<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For nearly 20 years, David Pacifico has traversed the terrains of Peru. First, helping colleagues interview Spanish-speaking locals as an archeology intern. Then, excavating areas in the ancient city of El Purgatorio, about 200 miles north of Lima. Pacifico also &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28112,"featured_media":15602,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","uwm_wg_additional_authors":[]},"categories":[1715],"tags":[1855],"class_list":["post-15598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-in-focus-2021","tag-may"],"uwm_unpublish_requested":false,"acf":[],"meta_fields":{"_edit_lock":["1624284482:28112"],"_edit_last":["28112"],"_yoast_wpseo_content_score":["30"],"_yoast_wpseo_estimated-reading-time-minutes":[""],"_expiration-date-status":["saved"],"_thumbnail_id":["15602"],"_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":["48"],"_wp_old_date":["2021-06-21"],"_uwm_wg_content_review_log":["a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:11:\"reviewer_id\";i:0;s:6:\"status\";s:5:\"reset\";s:10:\"entry_date\";s:19:\"2026-03-01 02:10:24\";s:16:\"priority_content\";s:0:\"\";s:4:\"note\";s:43:\"Content review reset at start of new cycle.\";}}"]},"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-11-02 09:36:23","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/letters-science\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/letters-science\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/letters-science\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/letters-science\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28112"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/letters-science\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15598"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/letters-science\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15598\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15603,"href":"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/letters-science\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15598\/revisions\/15603"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/letters-science\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15602"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/letters-science\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/letters-science\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/letters-science\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}