Samuel Truett will present “A Cossack Warrior on the U.S.-Mexican Frontier: Masculinity, Family, and the Border Crossings of Emilio Kosterlitzky” on Wednesday, Sept. 26, at noon in the Student Union Building Fiesta room. Truett, associate professor of history at UNM, will discuss the story of Emilio Kosterlitzky, an enigmatic transnational wanderer who spent his life crossing borders and taking on new identities.
In 1872 Kosterlitzky deserted from a Russian ship in Puerto Cabello, Venezuela. He made his way to northern Mexico and became a frontier cavalryman. In 1913, after losing a revolutionary battle for the border town of Nogales, Sonora, he became a U.S. prisoner-of-war. After his release, he moved with his Mexican wife and children to Los Angeles. There he became a spy for Bureau of Investigation, using his talents as a policeman and linguist to defend his new homeland until his death in 1928.
Truett will discuss Kosterlitzky’s story with an eye to the ways that he used his masculine identity and networks of family and fraternity to build his reputation and move with relative ease across borders even as he devoted his life to policing these same boundaries.
The lecture is free and open to the public. Refreshments will be served.
Media Contact: Sari Krosinsky, (505) 277-1564; e-mail: michal@unm.edu