FREEDOM TO HEAR YOUR VOICE

Quite a few of them walk around La Placita, some are drug addicts and some are plain poor, very poor, have given up on trying to make a life like the one required by the “sálvese el que pueda” philosophy of the type of capitalist society where we all live in. They are not intrusive, walk around, help the non-homeless with finding a parking or show where is this bar or that restaurant. At times, they ask for money; at times, they just ask to be invited to a coffee. At times they are shadows moving around, keeping a distance. They all keep a distance. Careful, self-protective against the possibilities of facing people who are too powerful or not happy to have them around, and be mistreated (I have seen quite a few people who have been very abusive with them). One very late night during these quarantine times, I heard these people yelling at each other, so loud I thought it was happening right in front of my apartment balcony. It was not. Then I looked in the distance and saw a  few of them talking to each other, moving around the sidewalk, into the street, back to the sidewalk, disagreeing, agreeing, taking positions on issues I could not completely understand. Real loud, it was quite obvious they felt free to hear their own voices. 

EDUARDO MENDICUTTI: GANAS DE HABLAR Y PODER HACERLO SIN ESTAR COLONIZADO POR EL SÍNDROME DE ESTOCOLMO

Cuando leí hace unos años  (de “una sentada”)  su novela Ganas de hablar, Eduardo Mendicutti me dejó con muchas ganas (valga la redundancia) de leer otras de sus novelas, de saber más sobre este autor, y sus ideas sobre la escritura. No había vuelto sobre Mendicutti hasta esta noche insomne. El buscador incluyó esta conferencia, que aquí enlazo, sobre  la novela y el lenguaje coloquial, las voces que el autor maneja.  

“A mí, no hay cosa que me descoloque más cuando estoy leyendo una novela y es que un personaje hable de manera inapropiada a lo que es y a lo que suponemos que es y lo que sabemos de él. Y a veces ocurre, por ejemplo, unos niños que hablan de una manera insólita para ser niños y, a menos que sean muy precoces o muy repipis o tengan una especial capacidad para absorber el lenguaje de no sé quién, resulta raro, ¿no?” 

Al margen del lenguaje coloquial, si leen Ganas de hablar descubrirán un tratado sobre el síndrome que tanto afecta a muchos, el de Estocolmo, colonizados y anticolonizados, que, como he escrito en este blog, no hay que nacer en una colonia para estar colonizado; interiorIzar las ideas y formas de sentir o o escribir el mundo que otros han impuesto, explícita o tácitamente, sobre los sujetos, objetos de la colonización, sin que éstos, tantas veces, reflexionen o estén al tanto de lo que guia sus palabras, gustos, comportamientos, interpretaciones de lo que leen.

Ante los garabatos que trazó en el papel, el niño, muy seguro de sí mismo, contó una historia que él controlaba. Toda niña o niño de esa edad hace lo mismo: inventa, dice lo que cree es la historia. Lee lo que escribe porque lo escrito representa lo que el autor decide qué es lo contado en el “garabato”. Años más tarde o meses, quizás, puede que sepa que lo escrito no lo controla por completo el escritor, y cuando le preguntan qué dicen las letras o garabatos o números contesta: “No sabo”. 

“Literacy literally changes the human brain. The process of learning to read changes our brain, but so does what we read, how we read and on what we read (print, e-reader, phone, laptop)", escribió Maryanne Woolf. (“Screen-based online learning will change kids' brains. Are we ready for that?”, The Guardian, August 24, 2020.) 

El lector que lee mis escritos con tono y temas costumbristas y los reduce a esa tendencia literaria, falla al no darse cuenta que los costumbristas anteriores no escribían sobre travestis sin tapujos, comiendo alcapurrias en la Placita de Santurce, o sobre jíbaros “aguzaos” en los niuyores, autosuficientes, nada patéticos a lo Enrique Laguerre o Abelardo Díaz Alfaro o Miguel Meléndez Muñoz, ni tampoco son ahogados por la historia. Mucho menos, se dará cuenta de que lo escrito con aparentes influencias de otras tendencias, puede que sea una crítica travestida, revertida de cómo son abordados ciertos temas. No es lo mismo escribir sobre una draga que se llama Miss Mira Mira en el Niuyork de los ochenta, que recrear sin miramientos a una copia casi exacta de la Judy Garland. 

Hacia finales de los setenta, durante un congreso literario en City College, algunos niuyoricans, liderados por Nicholasa Mohr, plantaron  cara y criticaron con severidad a dos o tres autores boricuas de moda y llenos de sí mismos, la “creme de la creme’ de las letras puertorriqueñas en la isla, por representar en sus cuentos y ensayos a los migrantes boricuaa en los EEUU como seres que no saben hablar ni inglés ni español, cafres, incapaces de ser sujetos activos en sus vidas y en la comunidad. Los muy reconocidos autores isleños se fueron a la defensiva. Una de ellas hasta lloró. Los niuyoricans pudieron leer más allá de lo que los autores no esperaban haber escrito. 

Un número significativo de estudiantes latinos en el Programa de Educación Bilingüe en CCNY, que estudiaron sus pregrados en Latinoamérica, tenían mucha dificultad comprendiendo los escritos en español de autores latinoamericanos que investigaban, exploraban los distintos modos de pensar que tienen los estudiantes frente a la escritura o lecturas. En parte la dificultad se debía a lo complicado y nivel abstracto de las ideas; pero no menos importante, por causa de la actitudes conservadoras hacia el aprendizaje de la lectoescritura que ellos cargaban consigo. 

(Para lograr que comprendieran los textos hice uso de los planteamientos que sugieren métodos didácticos fudamentados en lo que es conocido como “teorías de cohesión textual”. Para cada artículo asignado, preparaba preguntas y ejercicios que sirvieran de guía a los estudiantes de maestría. En otro escrito publicado en este blog exploro cómo distintos grupos de estudiantes, lectores "latinos" y  “americanos” que hablan español como segunda lengua, respondienron a los poemas afroantillanos de Palés Matos, Cabral y Guillén. Leer no se reduce a estrategias y contenidos, incluye sensibilades y predisposiciones.)

En el libro Sor Juana Inez de la Cruz o las trampas de la fe, Octavio Paz habla sobre las muches veces que tuvo que volver a leer a la monja poeta. Nada nuevo sobre el tapete, yo no paro de leer a José Ángel Buesa, me ayuda a conocer y disfrutar del amor desde tantas y distintas maneras, edades, pandemias. Y con Buesa le digo a los textos, igualito a cómo he leído los deseos en cada una de las edades del hombre: “pasarás por mi vida sin saber que pasaste// te diré sonriente: «No es nada... Ha sido el viento». Me enjugaré una lágrima... ¡y jamás lo sabrás!”. 

(anuncio no pagado y colado: mi novela inédita, Montevideo a Punta en voz de la Tellado, escrita en bolero, explora las distintas lecturas del amor que el amante, bailarín, bolerista de clavo pasado a lo "moi" hace en momentos diferentes, a través de distinas versiones -sea Tito Rodríguez o María Marta Serra Lima- de algunas piezas, representativas del género musical que es y fue tan influenciado por la poesía de Buesa: “Quizá pases con otro que te diga al oído”, o que te lea de otra forma y logre sensaciones nuevas, apabulladoras, con “esas frases que nadie como yo te dirá”, escribirá.) 

*(FORO COMPLUTENSE - Escritores en la Biblioteca: Conferencia de Eduardo Mendicutti. La novela y el lenguaje coloquial. Modera: Rosa Falcónhttp. //complumedia.ucm.es/visorContenido.php?contenido=q5ebOm9Vpf-y0ksg9kRrPg) 

IMPOTENCE AND THE CONFORMIST WHEN FACING HURRICANES

For one of my classes in film studies, required by my Masters degree in Communications and Education I had to view and critique the film, The Conformist (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1970). It is a case study in the psychology of conformism and fascism. Marcello Clerici is an intellectual largely dehumanized by an intense need to be 'normal' and to belong to whatever is the current dominant socio-political group. He grew up in an upper class, dysfunctional family, raped as a child by an older man, and terribly affected by a gun violence episode in which he long believed (erroneously) that he had killed his chauffeur. He accepts an assignment from the fascist government to assassinate his former mentor; a move that results from lack of principles in the interests of building a supposedly socially integrated life; marked by a strong feeling of impotence. 

For reasons that cannot be explained in their totality the movie appears in my memory radar the day a hurricane was expected to pass over Puerto Rico. During this volatile season in the Caribbean, a lot of preparations are required: bottle water, canned and dried goods, food that does not need to be refrigerated, gas stoves, flashlights, protect windows and doors, to know where the nearby shelters are located in case the apartment is blown away by the winds, flooded. I did not do any of that; laid on my bed, staring at the ceiling, motionless, waiting for the Arawak named, "jurakán", nature created, destructive or earth cleansing system, force. The hurricane changed routes. Glad it did not take me with it. I felt, somehow, cleansed, without any heavy weight inside me, light, connected to the community, neither sucked-in or overwhelmed by it, alive. 

I went out, walked around shopped, decided to give money to the neighborhood homeless, many of them addicts, so they could buy food; perhaps, drugs that will make them feel powerful, free for a few minutes. After coming back home, I read an article on a young a Czechoslovakian, Adolf Kolinsky, who was able to join the German military during the Second World War, and got assigned to a concetration camp, where he served as a spy for the allies; met a prisoner, another Czechoslvakian, Julius Fucik, a newspaper writer, providing him with blank pages that later on became the material for the book, Reportaje al pie del patíbulo, edited by Gusta Fucikova after the war. She was Fucik's wife and had also been incarcerated in a concentration camp, and was able to put the book together with the help of Kolinsky, who had also gotten the manuscripts out of the camp and had them distributed among different allies to be saved for future generations, not only to know about the horrors, but about how to face human-made hurricanes. Conformism and impotence come and go.

THE FEMININE MYSTIQUE, THE PUERTO RICAN MARGINS

Whenever I hear Euro-centric academic discourses explain what is considered the ideal beauty, this image of Iris Chacón -as well as how the poems by Vizcarrondo, Guillén, Palés Matos, and other Caribbean writers represent their "mamasotas"- come to mind.  Even among artists on the margins, their borders are determined by the constraints of their histories. Esthetics are not solely controlled in particular centers of power or by universal principles free of histories, but are shaped by specific contextual sensibilities and desires. The margins are defined by all types of forms, volumes, lines, "nalgas, tetas, pelos, remeneos"; have different kinds of, "valga la redundancia", margins. 

ON THE PLEASURE OF NOSTALGIA WHEN ONE KNOWS IT CANNOT BE REPEATED AND IS ABLE TO LET THE FLOW FLOW

The novel Ignorance by Milan Kundera paints a poignant picture of love and its manifestations. It also explores people’s selective memories as a precursor to ignorance in order to avoid recalling certain disturbing events. Nostalgia can also be an uncomfortable sensation: to feel, discover, know one cannot repeat what was once lived, enjoyed. 

Kundera’s novel helped me -a colonial migrant in New York City- to deal with issues such as memories and how they can mislead the person by formulating false or partial or blurred visions of the past. Furthermore, it gave me a window into how so many of my adult students faced their new “culture”, different ways of doing things. Immigrants themselves, quite often, they were having a difficult time making adaptations to the new society, idealizing their past lives in their countries of origin, and struggling, trying to understand how their own children approached life related issues that were so different from how they had done it “back home”; including deciphering the new hybrid languages/codes (Spanglish, Portoñol, German/Turkish) developed by what the literature calls “first generations”. 

My psychoanalyst friend and woman with a proven and documented social and political activism history says, “It [the past] feels more real than the present” for so many who prefer to lounge in the nostalgia realm than facing the present. One can continue exploring “nostalgia” and find so many deeper alleys, corners, paths that can be used to explain it. From playful activities (read Philippe Aries’ chapter on games in his book Centuries of Childhood and link it to today’s obsessions with computer games), that can be enlightening, refreshing, to those nostalgia mindsets that can be frightening and dangerous. I saw so many children falling into the traps of parents or adults who were not able to make a smooth transition into their new “cultures”, understand what was happening. These were kids that became tools of manipulative, dogmatic, nasty or confused adults and parents, falsified copies, fossils, of what they left behind. 

In one of the most eloquent poems on nostalgia and clash of values, "Valle de Collores", Luis Lloréns Torres explores the conflicts experienced by a well travelled and educated man, who, after achieving glories and power, desires for a return to his past and simple life in the village of Collores, but knows it would not be possible. So many young lives, products of industrial societies, were lost during the sixties, when these idealists went to live in “primitive villages” all over the more rural world in search of Nirvana, recreate a past that never existed for them.

The opposite can also happen, when one remembers the pleasures of the past without feeling the need to be back in time, or recalls its pains without experiencing them as if they would be happening again. I see a poster of 1980’s New York City, relive the time, the places where I used to hang out, feel quite happy to have been there, not wanting to return to the past, but so glad to be in the present, seeing how the world is moving thru its eternal changing phases, a critique here and there, wondering where the pandemic would lead us, while being served by a member of the tattoed generation, more universal than mine ever was: a young woman wearing hot pants and a t-shirt printed with Bad Bunny’s mantra, “deja que el flow fluya” (let the flow flow). 

ENTRE LAS LLADRÓ Y CAPRI EN RIO PIEDRAS

Con sus sistemas y circuitos los mercados y distintas plataformas en la red recogen información, datos, los procesan, interconectan, reducen a posibilidades, ensartan y usan para atraer o convencer o embaucar usuarios sin poder juzgar la actitud que tiene el sujeto y objeto del mercadeo hacia lo presentado. Escribo, burlándome de los pequeño burgueses latinoamericanos, gays y straights cutres bien cutres, que decoran sus casas con Lladrós; para ser castigado por la compañía que produce las famosas porcelanas, plantando anuncios en cada una de mis búsquedas en el internet, para que compre y decore con lo que para mí son el prototipo del mal gusto y falsa presunción de clase. “Tacky, tacky, tacky": decía mi querido amigo Ariel. 

Si supieran que yo a lo Duchamp y su famosa escultura: un urinal; las ideas sobre la cultura material, sus funciones planteadas por Karl Marx en el Prólogo a la Contribución, donde sostiene que cuando se estudian los cambios ocurridos en las sociedades, se debe diferenciar entre los conflictos ocurridos en en el terreno de las relaciones sociales fundamentales y aquellas formas ideológicas expresadas a través de las expresiones artísticas, los objetos, el material que sirve para proyectar las ideologías de un grupo o un individuo; también exploradas por Leslie White en The Science of Culture; y por  James Deetz en su libro In Small Things Forgotten, y trabajadas por  Frank Gehry en sus decoraciones y proyectos arquitectónicos, solo decoro con “objects d’art” de las tiendas Capri. 

ON THE NEW YORK TIMES’ ARTICLE: HOW LATINOS CAN WIN THE CULTURE WAR - QUE QUÉ?

The title of this essay is partially taken from an article that appeared in the NYT on 2nd of September 2020 (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/02/opinion/latinos-trump-election.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage). What the authors fail to understand or rather not deal with it, has to do with the fact that while Puerto Ricans can be considered “Latinos”, they are not immigrants. Puerto Ricans are colonials and, contrary to other USA colonies, we are winning the “culture war”. To place the discussion on what happens in the continental USA overlooks what Puerto Ricans have achieved and stood for during the last 122 years of USA colonization, and must not be limited to the “continent”. It has to include “la isla del encanto -o ‘del espanto’ como dicen los fanáticos de Bad Bunny”; and a good “ueeepa” can begin to further explain the idea. 

For the authors of the New York Times’ article, the “culture wars” are won if Latinos get to be hired by the stuffy New Yorker or the “hollywodense” Los Angeles Times. While it is a noble and enriching move and goal, it is quite limiting to reduce the “culture wars” to the climbing of the career ladder or to be able to participate in the dissemination of information from the pulpits of the large media conglomerates, and this “reductivism” plays into a certain mentality that can serve to justify a particular form of colonization; therefore, “encabuyen y vuelvan y tiren, que les salio batata”. The “culture wars” have also been fought from the bases, and as far Puerto Ricans go, they have done a very good job: beginning with the defense and continuous use of the Spanish language, development of rich and quite unique cultural expressions (not to forget the tattoed hipsters serving “pastelillos rellenos de morcillas o alcapurrias with salsa bechamel” in La Alcapurria Quemá, near La Placita de Santurce); and, in Niuyork, setting up the “Clubes de Pueblos” and many other long lasting institutions during the forties, fifties. 

On Latinos with specific identities (racial ethnic, class) and the effects these have on how they relate with each other, “pues, al pan, pan, y al vino, vino”; but not here: the “borujos” formed by these social dynamics deserve a much longer essay and would require “sacarle en cara”, challenge those who otherwise would not face the words of Fortunato Vizcarrondo: “y tu abuela, dónde está?”. At the College where I worked for over thirty years, I met quite a few Latinos who were not that “solldarios” nor willing to face their double standards, “caras de yagrumos”, but I will not expose them in this essay, since so many of them are leading multiculturalists, antiracists in the fields of education and linguistics, and would not look nice if I do so, and my readers will have to change their perceptions and say, “Que qué?”