The Military Footprint of the Presidio of San Francisco By
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Becoming a Place of Institution: The Military Footprint of the Presidio of San Francisco By Eric Brandan Blind A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in Charge: Professor Kent G. Lightfoot, Chair Professor Ruth E. Tringham Professor Paul E. Groth Fall 2015 Abstract Becoming a Place of Institution: The Military Footprint of the Presidio of San Francisco by Eric Brandan Blind Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology University of California, Berkeley Professor Kent G. Lightfoot, Chair This dissertation aims to illuminate the role of institutions in crafting a future that both enables and constrains future generations. Previous research on institutions has focused almost exclusively on physical institutions and more so on total institutions, such as prisons and asylums. A deeper examination of the literature shows another strain of institutional theory that uses the lens to look at more conceptual institutions, such as marriage or belief systems. In bridging the two, a more coherent model of institutional analysis is pursued. This dissertation involves an in-depth case study of the military institution at the Presidio of San Francisco. It focuses on the creation and re-creation of this place over generations and through imperial and national regimes, including the militaries of Spain, Mexico and the United States. Throughout this place-based analysis multiple lines of evidence are used and integrated through the device of storytelling using the biographical paths of individuals or life histories of artifacts to understand the larger institutional projects each intersected with and was instrumental in perpetuating. The approach illustrates how storytelling is not only an integrative device, but also an approach that elucidates the values that lie at the heart of any institutional project. It demonstrates how places are the locus for the manifestation of those values, one that is both setting for the social reproduction of the institution and the product of its reproduction. The findings prompt a re-thinking of place based-approaches and the role of institutional theory in examining historical trajectories. Given the import and magnitude of the US military presence in the world today it also calls for greater study of this institution to not only understand its impacts abroad, but also to better understand the role it plays at home. Finally, but most importantly, this study calls for more research into this institution, because as it is demonstrated in this study, the legitimacy and success of the US military institution today will surely lead it to be referenced in the future. 1 Table of Contents: Dedication page ii Acknowledgements page v Chapter 1: Introduction………………………………………………………page 1 Chapter 2: Telling Stories about Place………………………………..page 10 Chapter 3: Making your Place…………………………………………….page 27 Chapter 4: Making it all seem Natural………………………………..page 48 Chapter 5: Establishing the Institution……………………………….page 65 Chapter 6: Setting the Stage………………………………………………page 81 Chapter 7: Building the Community…………………………………..page 105 Chapter 8: Following in the Footsteps……………………………….page 129 Chapter 9: Conclusion……………………………………………………….page 147 References Cited……………………………………………………………….page 152 i Dedication: When I was an undergraduate at Saint Mary’s College of Maryland I worked in the summers at a former plantation called Cremona Farm. It was situated along the meandering shores of the Patuxent River. There were about 1500 acres to the property with about half of that shrouded in woodland forest typical of the Chesapeake, and another half covered in crops, mostly corn and tobacco. Each set of fields was tended by share croppers who lived in one of the 6 or 7 homes connected by dirt roads outside the manicured grounds of the big estate house, where the owner lived. I lived in a cozy shack just in front of the big house that was rumored to be the old slaves’ quarters. On my first day I met my lone coworker, Joe Winters, an 87 year old black man with thick glasses, a slight hunched frame and bald head capped with a baseball hat. He had worked that land since he was 7. Joe told me his first job was to come on the farm before school to start a fire and put on some oatmeal for the elderly farmhands who had been born into slavery, had never left the farm, and were slowly dying there. He saw them go, then saw new owners come and go, he worked the fields, was brought into the big house as a servant, had his way with every pretty woman who came through that house (according to him) and at some point he got married and moved into one of the sharecroppers’ houses to raise 10 kids on that farm. They all moved away and never visited. The newest owners asked him to move out and off the farm, but then brought him back as a farmhand to keep up the land around the estate. Apparently he asked them to come back or else he just kept coming back. I’m not sure if he would know what else to do with himself and told me he was afraid the wicked woman he lived with was gonna kill him in his sleep. One morning the sharecropper who picked him up for work came in empty handed. We found he was in the hospital, and showed up the next morning with a long and deep gash on his forehead. He said she gave it to him in his sleep. So maybe there was something to that wicked woman. I was a farmhand too, but a novice, unlike Joe. He knew the land, the tides, the clouds better than anyone. He knew the owner’s wife liked irises and so we tended them real careful and planted more around each fork of the long dirt road to the big house. We would split the bunch and transplant the bulbs to make more bunches over and over again. Each time we did he pointed to the long greenhouse he built for just this purpose, which was then just a ruin of rotted wood and broken glass sheltering a random collection of weeds. He would chastise me every time I would complain about the old tractor with the busted clutch that jerked you like a bronco when you made each turn in the fields. Of course his chastisements were always historical and involved comparing that crappy old tractor to the ornery donkeys he used for the same work before there were tractors. He pointed out trees he planted that looked older than Adam and travelled every inch of that land except the area out on the point around the real slave house where he started ii his work on the farm. I was a young and silly 20 year old. So I would sometimes nap in the shade of the tree on the backside of the slave house, knowing he wouldn’t look for me there. I worked hard but most days we had the run of the place and it was easy to blow off work. Especially in the beginning of the week, because the owners only came down from Washington DC on the weekends. So come Monday it always felt like my parents had left town and Joe and I would kick back a little. Joe’s age was my excuse not to work so hard on those days. Joe on the other hand treated it like an act of defiance that he relished. It was on these slow days that Joe would regale me with tales of his real acts of rebellion when he was my age, which mostly involved him sleeping with one of the servant girls in the master’s bed. One day I coerced Joe into a new act of rebellion, one which I hardly suspected would be new to him. Just outside the estate house was an old pool and pool house, where Joe and I would tend the irises and I would occasionally eat lunch and often swim. The pool was unchlorinated water pumped in fresh from the cool depths of the slow river. It was glorious on a sweltering day. One day late in the week Joe caught me stepping gingerly out onto what was left of a diving board and told me to come on. Once I tested the board, feeling it was miraculously still sound, I told him to come on in before trying to splash him with my cannonball dive. Joe refused to come in. I said come on. He refused. I splashed and finally he told me he’d never been in the pool. I only gave Joe two things in my time at Cremona, the first was the pure joy of swimming in the cool clear waters of that pool on a hot summer day. If you saw the big prideful grin on his face that day floating in the pool you’d know why I call it a gift. The second was a raise I negotiated for us without him knowing it. One day at the end of the summer the owner said he liked the work I was doing and wanted to entice me to stay on during the school year by giving me a raise from $5.00 an hour to $5.50. So I responded that I would love the raise as long as it meant I didn’t make more than Joe. The owner said, of course that would never happen, that Joe already made more than that. I knew better having gotten his paycheck by accident earlier that year and seeing we made the same.