Reflexiones sobre los Gusanos de Miami ya que Cuba y Gringolandia van a retomar relaciones

19 de diciembre 2014

Me da un placer y tranquilidad no estar en la gusanería de mi origen con todo las discusiones y opiniones sobre Cuba. Solo digo esto, muchas de las personas en los EE.UU., sin importar su lugar de origen, asumen actitudes y formas de hablar que da entender que creen que su mirada, su perspectiva, sus experiencias son las únicas o por lo menos las más importantes y "reales" (claro esto sucede en toda parte pero mira la política extranjera y medios de comunicación de dicho país). Esto sobre todo tiene que haber con los que llegaron pre-Mariel y uno que otra después. Llega a tal punto que uno encuentra artículos de hijxs o nietxs de cubanxs o cubanxs que no han tocado la isla por 60 años y escriben y se asumen como si la voz e ideas de ellxs es lo que necesita Cuba, por que "ellxs si son los que saben" (esto no es nada nuevo, ocurre desde antes que nací). Estos actos muchas veces emocionalmente reaccionarias, pocas veces pensadas y inconscientemente prepotentes se invisibiliza experiencias y personas, principalmente de las personas que viven en Cuba y siempre han vivido en Cuba, digo las personas que están allá no por que no pudieron salir, están allá por que tomaron la decisión consciente de aquí me quedo, aquí me muero. La otra, son las personas que salieron de Cuba y tomaron la decisión consciente de migrar a otro país de Latinoamérica y no a los EE.UU. o Europa. Sabes que amigxs de sangre cubana en la USA, estas experiencias, voces y perspectivas son de igual importancia, probablemente de mayor coherencia y más aterrizados en hechos reales que las de ustedes. A lo bien ustedes pierden puntos cuando salen con pataletas de que riqueza material perdieron con la revolución. Como los gringos dicen "check you priviledge". La voz de ustedes es de los descendientes de Cubanxs, nacidos en EE.UU. o nacionalizados en los EE.UU., hasta el momento, por lo menos en Miami, no se permite escuchar la voz de Cuba (la población no el Estado), y solo de esta población auto denominado en exilio. Que queda claro una cosa, ustedes se pueden creerse Cubanxs, en algo puede ser bueno la normalización de relaciones entre Cuba y los EE.UU., aunque yo veo que Obama tiene ganas de convertir Cuba en otro Puerto Rico (que la mitad de ustedes les encantaría), pero Cuba, igual que Borinken es de la región mal llamada Latinoamérica (Caribe, Centro y Sur América) y no del Norte, entonces aunque esto toca sensibilidades por que ya no viven (o nunca han vivido) en Latinoamérica y unos ni me entienden en esta letra castellana, entienden que mientras tus emociones y pensamientos son importantes no son más de las personas de esa isla, Cuba, ni del resto del Abya Yala.

Who tells whose stories

3 de diciembre 2014

this may seem excessive, and maybe i need to think it out better, but can folks just stop studying other peoples, or publishing their photos, mapping their territory or making films about them or recreating their art, medicine, maternity practices, etc. beyond your good intentions that practice is at best voyeuristic and very colonial, it gives your view and perspective as an outsider more weight and validity than the ppl who are actually a part of the "peoples" that are being discussed. i say this as someone who has come from a relatively short life of living and working in communities of nations and peoples different than my own, in this context i feel the best work to be done is supporting the folks from those communities to be the ones to share their stories, whether it be written, film, audio, visual, etc. after years of doing this i came home to my grandfather´s home community in 2011 to find this happening, only outsiders telling our stories, our lives, our problems and even though they have good intentions, they are outsiders, they do not know what growing up and life is like here just like I am not the person to tell the stories of people who grow up in berlin or rome. the world´s peoples do not need more privileged folks with cameras, tablets, pens and notebooks telling their lives to the rest of the world, what peoples need are the space and tools to tell their own stories. stop being the protagonist and be a true ally. i am open to discuss this. this is just a thought after reading about this guy... http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2014/11/photo-controversy-over-indigenous-people-20141117103356815649.html

donde estoy...

2 de oct 2014

 

i go to the river, or one of the dos ríos, everyday, todos los días. sometimes miss a day when i am in other local territorios... but for the most part, everyday i go down to las peñas or sometimes san jose or el peñon, las bovedas is more low key and once in a while el parche will take a trek to la junta or even as far as aguacaliente. and on really special days visitamos cascadas, waterfalls. everyday i walk these paths, caminos i walked as a child following my abuelo or mi tío. swimming in the river, tubing, jumping off trees and peñas of various heights into the río, fishing with caña or atarraya. everyday we are surronded by all of our people, pueblo. gente fishing, los guambitos playing in the sand, artisanal mineros on the shores, and many that come to consultar their thoughts de corazón o cabeza with the río whose capacidad of absorbiendo what you put into it is as delicado as it is impresionante. siempre tenemos las cámaras in hand we try are best of creating a audiovisual memory of all the inabitants here.... the chachalacas or guacharacas, the jacamaras, colibri, caricara, loros y loritos, all sorts of parrots, zarigueya-opossums, otters, ibis, tortugas, snakes, frogs, peces, lizards and other crawlers and hoppers... most of these are rare now and in super special moments, totally unexpected we´ve seen the rare monkeys, anteater, armadillo, deer, kinkajou, jaguarandi and ocelote. not to mentoin the arboles and forests, flores, fruit, fungi and other plantas. its not easy to see estas relaciones when the landscape is dominated by cows, horses, gallinas y perros (no tienen la culpa) and monocultivos of tabaco and not to mention the Emgesa construction sites that are consolidated the destrucción of our territorio in away agro-industria had´nt. to go to sacred areas like las cuchas we have to time our entries as to keep the security guards unaware of our presence so they don´t keep tabs on us and scare away all the other animals. apparently unearthing over 250 of our ancestros resting places dating between 1000-3000 years of antiguity is not enough for them and they have to destroy what little ecosystems are left in la jagua like what is las cuchas. and to see anything being unearthed you have to go through Emgesa, and no pictures, video or drawings allowed of our own ancestors physical remains and their belongings. the whole situacción and burocracia leaves such a horrible taste in your mouth, perdemos esperanza with ideas like el museo.... long exhale.... we are doing lo que podemos, what we can under not easy circunstancias. there are places folks from the outside, even most folks here, no conocen, and as we continue to traverse our surrondings as has been our existance forever and more and more areas become privatized que ya ni podemos pasar, and a libertad of movimiento that we one knew, ya no es. we are trying to figure out what to do, and the only thing that is clear is that we need land. land in our territory that we can heal, nurture, recuperate and take care of so that it can take care of us, give life and strength.... hopefully we can do it here, even though cada día este territorio is more overrun con destrucción and so much from our local realities son estatisticas globales that académicos study about young people having to leave their comunidades rurales to find economic opportunity. i keep telling myself, that todas partes is or will be the same, so just stick to where you are from and defiende de donde eres. we know donde queremos, but we trying to find the help to put it into action. allí vamos.... poco a poco, lil by lil....

in case your curious...

(12 de sept 2014)

and you did not get this on social media....consider this an english language update of my life. si no te gusta o no puedes con el ingles podemos hablar en castellano luego si quieres.  i´ve been thinking of my friends and family north of the caribbean, north of the isthmus... i miss you all, i miss soo many things about being and living in the Imperial USA, but i am happier, better balanced down here... it has the challenges that come with it, things about everyday life that i much more prefer up there, i have to look over my shoulder more down here, but in the big picture, i am digging the transformation... i´m looking for balance in my relation to the north... and as a water creature, we are strong but also vulnerable and sensitive to what is around them, i have had a hard time finding that balance... which is a life walks, a constant task... you know, there are so many things i love about up there, but there are other things that are at best a deep discomfort. i reflect a lot of cultural norms there and here, which of these i have slowly lost and which of these are more of a struggle to loose. the task of being present to these cultural norms and not internalizing and reproducing them is a difficult yet rewarding one.

as i watch our global struggles unfold from my corner of the world… my internet accustomed, multi-cultural-globalized-urban gaze sees gaza, ferguson , tar sands, the usa/mexico frontera, so many other places and i feels kinda out, disconnected. us, gente, pueblo, peoples, we are everywhere, in all those place and in Huila, but from the upper guacacayo valley where we are facing off resource extraction companies, the impacts of the free trade agreements on farmers, illegal military recruitment of youth, the destruction of ancestral and sacred areas and for speaking up being in the aim of a constant surveillance, gossip and threats (kinda like everywhere else... right??),..... shit gets mad lonely sometimes. those tear gas canisters they use in palestine, syria and ferguson , they use the down here too, was hit by one last year.

i miss being nomadic, and still am in some ways but also much more rooted, so i feel the pull to come back to the village constantly, even when i am having an awesome time in other places... i could not begin to explain all that we are doing down here on a local, regional, national, continental and global level, it amazes me and i am constantly humbled to be able to do the weird array of arts, communications, territory/nature-loving promoting and consciousness raising popular education in my region and in many other places and have it so valued and appreciated by folks. why? all of this in dreams and visperas of putting my grain of effort to inspire folks to desire autonomous-horizontal self -organized communities for themselves. preferably with some wilderness nearby with all sorts of non domesticated plant and animal friends.

if it were up to most ppl here, i´d stay in huila forever, but the people in huila is not cauca, it´s not chiapas, or oaxaca, or wallmapu, or coast salish territory or kanehsatake, it may have been 480 years ago but it´s not today, it is not any of that and it is filled with deeply conservative and catholic people who are adherents to gossip and are in denial of who they are and where they are from, this is the population dominated by hypocritical morally corrupt regional elites who dream of colonial era social structures and that use their privileged role in capitalism with the tools of state bureaucracy and violence to participate in the extractivist feeding frenzy of dams-oil extraction-fracking-mining-gmo monocrops that is poorly disguising it as progress and development as it destroys the territory of Huila and displaces the peoples. there are not many good local examples of how to self-organize and hierarchical leftist dinosaurs abound. we use a lot of films and documentaries- popular education and theater/performance work and just now starting to get heavy into the audio-visual production.

it has been nearly four years that i stay with other people on sofas, mats on floors, hammocks and have yet to have my own space, except these four months we are in the project geochoreographies we have a house rented. not having my own space is definitely tiring and exhausting and still hope to have a home soon, at least a plot of land to have a shack while I gather forces to build the structures the process and i needs. living with other folks has also been beautiful, enriching and humbling. while there are many things i do not like about where my family is from, i feel the strong need for coherency, to be grounded, to be consecuente, with the ideas and beliefs i have. to resist and build from where my grandparents and ancestors did it. i do not know if i want to live here forever and organizing, weaving and resisting from here or if at some point i will yearn for a different place to call home. it is hard… to think of a male bodied person who is trying to form a family with another male bodied person to try to find a rural setting where that family will be accepted. hard anywhere on earth i would imagine. i still day dream of being part of the founding of a community in an area with more wilderness than farmland, where our type of relations are not a big deal. we will see, in the meanwhile, life is good with its challenges, i have hopes of securing a good living situation next year and be able to receive visitors, hint, hint, and folks who want to collaborate and create ties and build with the processes in Huila and elsewhere.