Roundup: January 11, 2017

Almansor Court – 700 S. Almansor, Alhambra, CA.
Social Hour: 5:00 PM
Dinner: 6:00 PM

Our Speaker: Brian Dervin Dillon
His Subject: California, U.S.A. and the Mexican Revolution

The Mexican Revolution began in 1910, and lasted for more than a decade.  It was the most cataclysmic and traumatic event of modern Mexican history, and the precursor of following revolutions in China (1911), Ireland (1916) and Russia (1917).  America and Americans participated in every aspect of the Mexican Revolution, in all of its many different factions, yet this involvement, overshadowed by our participation in World War I immediately afterwards, is largely forgotten. The Revolution took place on both sides of the California border:  it was born in places as surprising, yet familiar, as the University of California, Berkeley, and Los Angeles. The California end of the long international border was where the Revolution began, yet also where, through the efforts of enlightened men in both countries, it never went spinning out of control, as was later the case farther east.

Brian Dervin Dillon is a fifth-generation Californian. An archaeologist, he is both the son and the father of historians.  A Phi Beta Kappa and Fulbright Fellow, at age 25 he was the youngest Ph.D. in his field since his UC Berkeley department’s founding. For more than forty years Brian has done archaeological, ethnographic and historical fieldwork in almost every California County, in all parts of Guatemala, and in three other Central American countries.  Dr. Dillon publishes in three genres:  archaeology, history, and firearms history. He has taught and lectured at UC Berkeley, UCLA, UCLA Extension, CSU Long Beach, The Southwest Museum and for the California State Department of Forestry. Brian is the recipient of more than two-dozen grants, fellowships and awards. He has traveled through every Mexican state for the past 50 years. Dr. Dillon’s two-part study on California and the Mexican Revolution was published in 2013, earning him one of the five consecutive Coke Wood Awards for historic writing from Westerners International he has been honored with.

Brian Dervin Dillon, Ph.D.
Deputy Sheriff