History: "Just one damn thing after another":
The Life, Adventures, and Miraculous Escapades
of a Wandering Historian."
by Thomas Schoonover
for Phi Alpha Theta banquet, LHA Conference,
New Iberia, 8 March 2002

I wish to thank the members, officers, and advisor, Professor Mary Kaiser, of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette's Phi Alpha Theta chapter for inviting me to talk to this Phi Alpha Theta banquet luncheon. Mary asked me to repeat myself-something historians and most academics develop great skill at. This is a revised version of a talk I gave at the UL at Lafayette's chapter initiation last April. Indulge me, then, as I talk about myself and about my adventures in history and while doing history. The wanderings described will be both intellectual and physical; and some of the adventures will be, I think, real adventures. But as historians, we should be skeptical, even of eye-witness accounts. The human mind and human senses play tricks on everyone, including historians. These words will, I hope, educate, morally challenge, inspire, amaze, and at times amuse you, my audience of young and old historians and well-wishers of history, in the best tradition of P.T. Barnum (periodically I teach a course on leisure in the late 19th and early 20th centuries). For your astonishment and edification, I'll relate three sets of experiences which shaped my life as an historian in the hope that they might instruct you in some indirect way, to make your journey in and through history enlightening, satisfying and, perhaps, a bit adventurous and amusing. We will follow three roads with long names: the first road is "things are not always what they appear, and any way they can change"; the second route is "be careful what you wish for, you might get it"; and the third road is "even when things appear proper and normal, fate and Clio intervene in mysterious ways." As one wit said: "history is one damn thing after another."

First, "things are not always what they appear to be." You can become many things if you make your undergraduate and graduate education in history as broad and expansive as possible and eschew a narrow, restrictive perspective: be curious. History is a subject for nosy people. Remember, historians are paid for doing what others (with the exception of the CIA, FBI, and military intelligence agents) would be arrested and jailed for doing. We read other people's mail. Learn historical methods and techniques, historiography, and acquire the widest range of bibliographical, archival, and resource information during your education. Put as much as you can in your head and rely upon the web and net to amplify and expand your memory, not substitute for it. Then you should be able to pursue whatever opportunity arises and also change your course and goals in research, teaching, and learning with relative ease. Such shifts of fate and fortune have fallen upon me.
a) I have some modest reputation in U.S. foreign relations-but I never took a course or seminar as an undergraduate or graduate in U.S. foreign relations;
b) I have some modest reputation in Latin American history-but, you guessed it, I never took a course or seminar as an undergraduate or graduate in Latin American history;
c) I have little or no reputation in U.S. military or Civil War era history-but I took a dozen or more courses and seminars in those fields. Indeed, my first publication in the reputable national journal, Civil War History, was an undergraduate paper. As an undergraduate and into my graduate studies, I was a Civil War nut.
d) My interests as an undergraduate and graduate student were not narrow. I eagerly pursued British history from the 18th to the 20th century; 19th and 20th century European history and toyed with the study of the Middle East. I took courses in all aspects of U.S. history from the colonial to the modern era. In all of these areas, I labored to acquire methodology, interpretive perspectives, familiarity with reference works and guides, and the historiographical literature. My mental wanderings taught me how to find material on almost any topic in history.
e) When I finally decided to "switch, rather than fight" (that is, to leave U.S. military studies for U.S. foreign relations with Latin America) the task of learning U.S. foreign relations and Mexican/Central American/Latin American history was time-consuming, but not daunting.

If you are well trained and have been receptive to new ideas, I suspect, you can wander through almost any place you wish in the mental geography and chronology of history.

How do you become an historian? I know.

Follow the second road: "Be careful what you wish for, you might get it." Poetically this street is sometimes called: "The best laid schemes a' mice and men gang aft a-gley. An' lea'e us nought but grief and pain for promis'd joy." (Robert Burns, To a Mouse, stanza 7--to locate the source of these well-known lines, see John Bartlett, Familiar Quotations).

If you had been an observant, thoughtful mouse at Winona High School in Minnesota many decades ago, you would have been certain that my future would be in science and mathematics. Before the National Science Foundation began national-wide tests, Westinghouse Company sponsored a nation-wide competitive test in science and mathematics. My quarterfinal result led to a scholarship to the University of Minnesota large enough to pay my tuition, books, and leave me some spending money (room and board was at home). After doing from fair to exceedingly well in accelerated math, chemistry, and physics courses for several years, the rakish history took advantage of my tender, naïve youth. I switched before my junior year. My clouded and beguiled senses rejected the honest, reliable, and honorable sciences for the deceitful, dishonest, and seductive tramp called history. My chemistry and physics classes demanded about 10 hours of lab per week in my sophomore year; my history class made no demands nor revealed anything about archival work. Looking out of the lab windows at the University of Minnesota in the fall and spring at the leaves turning or the birds returning (I was and still am an outdoors person) made my virtue an easy target for Clio. Only years later, as a fallen historian, did I learn about the scores of hours in archives and manuscript collections. False and deceptive history took me from dust free, well-lit and well-ventilated labs with large windows into the stale air and windowless research room where dusty, musty, worm and insect-marked old paper collections awaited me. A sad tale of the moral decline of a once upon a time honest, clean, upstanding chemist.

And the third road, "Clio and fate operate in mysterious ways and with astounding outcomes," led to adventures and escapades. And what adventures and escapades? Perhaps dodging falling stacks of documents; responding to multiple paper cuts; surviving the dust and insect droppings of ages; all of these are commonly confronted during archival work in exotic materials in seldom used archives or collections.

Well, certainly I survived all of these traps, but also other more heroic adventures which my wife (and friends) have been telling me to write down for over three decades. Better late than never and, hopefully, I'll borrow a bit of style and humor from Mark Twain in narrating my daring deeds, but I will try not to borrow his memory. Late in his life, Twain said: 'as I grew older my memory got better, I could remember things whether they happened or not.' But I am reasonably convinced that the following death-defying events are true and really happened, or at least perhaps happened.

My first experience with Latin American revolutions occurred in the fall of 1968. I was in Mexico City, the Olympic site, researching for my dissertation on U.S.-Mexican relations in the 1860s. My research led me to various archives, including a major collection housed on the 32nd and 33rd floors of the Torre Latinamericana. One day in October, I descended from my perch atop Mexico City's tallest building and stepped outside. There, right on the corner, 15 feet away, was a machine gun in a sand-bag nest, across the street was an armored half track, down that street, half way to the Zócalo, Mexico City's central plaza, was a large vehicle, apparently a bus, turned over and burning. There were lots of armed soldiers and military vehicles on all four corners of the street. This was the heart of Mexico City, the junction of Avenida Juárez and San Juan de Letrán-kitty corner was Bellas Artes, the principal stage and concert hall in Mexico City, and the expansive city park, La Alemeda. Before me unfolded part of the long summer and fall of the Mexican student rebellion of 1968. Students protested recent corrupt elections and the waste of money hosting the Olympic games, rather than spending it to help the poor. Mexico remained a semi-armed camp until just before we left in January of 1969.

Three and a half years later, I undertook research in U.S.-Central American relations with a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for the academic year 1972-1973. In July 1972, after passing immigration and customs inspections on the Mexican-Guatemalan border, we (the whole family was underway) were stopped a mile or two inside at a second checkpoint, this time by the Guatemalan army. The soldiers asked for our passports and my driver's license. Several experienced Central Americanists had warned us not to show any university documents or to claim faculty or student status. My colleagues advised saying we were tourists just enjoying Guatemala and Central America. The Guatemalan military often detained, sometimes tortured, and occasionally killed university students and faculty. Guerrilla groups were smuggling weapons and explosives across the border, and this checkpoint was the second of three that day. As the soldiers examined our documents, I looked into the rear view mirror and behind us, hidden by large bushes, were soldiers in ambush, aiming a large machine gun at our VW beetle. The Guatemalans looked into and under the car, but they found no explosives, so we went on our way. At the third checkpoint-a few miles further into Guatemala, we had to unload the car; the Guatemalan officials opened boxes, suitcases, and even had my wife empty her purse. We were allowed to proceed after about an hour.

That summer and fall of 1972, I (with the help of my wife Ebba) worked in Guatemalan, El Salvadoran, Honduran, Nicaraguan, and Costa Rican archives. We experienced episodes of angry domestic reaction to U.S. cultural imperialism in El Salvador, Honduras, and Costa Rica. El Salvador's National Archives were located on the 2nd floor of the Presidential Palace. One day, it got noisy outside in the courtyard area. Motivated by curiosity, Ebba and I looked outside. The interior passage ways of all three floors, the courtyard below, and all the stairways were packed with people. We listened to leaders of a teachers' union from across the country protest U.S. interference in El Salvador's Ministry of Education and that nation's educational program.
A few weeks later, we were in Tegucigalpa, capital of Honduras, staying at the Hotel Prado. One evening the Prado, in the center of Tegucigalpa near the Parque Morazán, was awash in tear gas. A look out of the hotel revealed a few burning cars or other objects, people running in the streets, some with bandanas over their faces, and troops, with gas masks, moving on the other side of Morazán park. Curious, and fortuitously wearing tennis shoes, I took to the streets and followed some of the protesters down a street. While hiding behind a turned over but not burning car, I inquired what was up. Of course, I asked in a heavy North American accented Spanish. The young people hiding with me told me that there had been a demonstration heading to the U.S. Embassy to protest U.S. cultural imperialism in the education system of Honduras. Honduran forces had intervened with violence. Fortunately, these students did not hold their grudge toward the U.S. government against me, and also, fortunately, the Honduran police and army people, admittedly at a distance, either did not shoot at me, or missed. After a few more minutes in the streets and running to a few more spots with the students, I headed back to the Hotel Prado to celebrate my five minutes as a Latin American revolutionary (in Mexico I had been a mere observer). Incidentally, to undergraduate or graduate Phi Alpha Thetaites, I trust my colleagues who are instructing you in research writing at Louisiana universities have not been remiss in your historical training. Undergraduates and graduates are supposed to run at least 10 miles and do 25-100 yard sprints each week. At UL Lafayette, we have recently renamed our History 390 and 505 courses as "Research, Writing, and Running" I and II. I hope the young historians present are receiving adequate preparation.

As we left Honduras to enter Nicaragua, we encountered President Anastasio Somoza's fear and suspicion. The border officials noticed several books in German; they were Grimms brothers and other German fairy tales. My wife Ebba is German and our son Paco, almost 5 at that time, spoke and understood German well. Somoza's officials may not even have been certain the language was German, but they were certain it was not Spanish or English. Since Somoza ran a tight and quite unforgiving ship, the officials made a series of urgent phone calls to various people and then waited for orders. After most of an hour and various questions, we were finally allowed to proceed. Later, at a routine stop in Nicaragua, I had to talk fast and magically when the police official, who had trouble with the language and information fields on my Louisiana driver's license, thought he detected an expired document. He had, but I somehow persuaded him to doubt himself. He let us continue, but I drove with an expired license until we returned to Louisiana.

About three weeks later in San José, Costa Rica, I left the side street connecting the University of Costa Rica with the main thoroughfare from the east to the center of San José. I had a bit of trouble entering the street because there were many vehicles and people walking slowly along toward the center of the city-where I was also headed. A gap opened and I got my vehicle situated in a dense body of cars, trucks, flatbeds, and pedestrians. I rolled the windows down to inquire in my Yankee Spanish what was happening. Students or young Costa Ricans who strolled beside my VW, threw flyers into my front seat, and informed me that U.S. cultural imperialism was trying to manage the schools, curricula, and the education ministry in Costa Rica. I looked around. A flatbed truck that was sharing the street with me had a straw-dummy image of Uncle Sam in a red-white-blue outfit swaying in the wind-Uncle Sam was hanging from a gallows. But everyone seemed friendly.

After completing my work in Costa Rica, we started our return trip in November 1972. When we had entered Costa Rica, we had spent some time at the border clarifying exactly what we needed in documentation for our later departure. In San José, we went to the various bureaucracies to follow the correct procedures and to have the right documentation. Despite these efforts, at the border as we wanted to leave, Costa Rican officials claimed we lacked one item. After much effort to clear up the matter at the border, I had had enough. Aware of the peaceful nature of the Costa Ricans and the fact that there were few weapons visible and none of the guards actually held a gun, I devised a plan. Acting as if I would return to the next city-about 1.5 hours away one way, I headed, in fact, over the border into Nicaragua, deaf to the shouts of the unarmed Costa Rican guards. Since Nicaragua and Costa Rica were having a tiff at that time, I assumed the Nicaraguans would welcome the chance to tweak the Costa Ricans. Ebba thought we were dead. We were both wrong. I was compelled to return to the Costa Rican border station and then head to the next city after ascertaining that the Costa Ricans were not going to arrest us. History teaches us to assess phenomena from all sides. In that given situation, my scientific and historical training suggested that what I tried was not unreasonable. It was, however, unsuccessful, an, certainly, it was embarrassing as hell when it did not work. As historians, we learn to live with our capacity to analyze, interpret, and comprehend.

Finally, one more episode in the life of a wandering historian. Hard work has its own reward; historians know the national myth-stereotype. If we are god-fearing, diligent, honest, persevering, helpful, family-oriented, and hard working, our reward is prosperity and success. This myth-stereotype does not have to be true. Hard work, however, gave Ebba, Paco, and me a special reward in the winter of 1972-1973. We had originally planned to spend Christmas in Managua, Nicaragua, at a hotel we knew from a previous trip. But with Ebba's help, I finished the research early, and in mid--November we passed through Nicaragua, did a week's work in Honduras, then through El Salvador and Guatemala, and back into Mexico City so I could finish some research for my first book on U.S. and Confederate roles in the French intervention in Benito Juárez's Mexico. Had we not worked so hard and efficiently, I might not be here today to talk to you and to enjoy Phi Alpha Theta's banquet in New Iberia. The hotel we had planned to stay at in Managua was leveled, like Carthage, in the major earthquake that struck Managua in December 1972.

Besides my wife, Ebba, I had another unsuspecting yet very influential assistant in my work. My 5-year old son Paco would disappear each day on the hand of a young staff person at the Banco de Nicaragua-their national central bank. Only near the end of my research in Managua did we learn that Paco had spent part of every day playing in the corner of the office of the director of the Banco de Nicaragua-the Alan Greenspan of Nicaragua--because he had neat stuff in his office and windows that overlooked most of Managua. A few weeks later, at the Archivo Nacion of Costa Rica, Paco again disappeared daily with a young staff person. At the end of that stay, all three of us were called into the office of the director. We thanked him for the cooperative staff and he thanked us for the regular visits of Paco and gave his buddy Paco various momentos, including a pre-Colombian artifact. With two such accomplished aides, I gathered enough stuff to write about Central America for two decades.

Most likely, as you future and present historians continue to pursue history, you will have adventures (probably more mental than physical, but hopefully some of both), confront decisions about your career, and wonder if you took the correct path. I hope my stumbling adventures, as I recall them, might give you courage, or confidence that whatever your decisions, things might not turn out so bad after all.

Thanks for indulging me on this nostalgic revisit of a wandering historian's adventures and escapades in the pursuit of a better understanding of "one damn thing after another."