La Barca de Guaymas

Yo soy el marino 

que alegre de Guaymas 

Salí una manana 

Llevando en mi barca 

como abil piloto 

Mi dulce esperanza 

Por mares ignotos, 

mis santos anhelos 

Hundí en la borrasca

 

Por eso están rotas mis velas

Y traigo la muerte en el alma 

Te fuiste cantando 

Y hoy vuelves trayendo 

La muerte en el alma 

From Independence to the Revolution

""the colony, like the metropolis itself, was now only a form" (117)

"terrible inertia of the dying person who raises his hand and claws at the air"(118)

"finally receded after collapsing into a thousand fragments" (119)

"ideas disguise reality instead of clarifying or expressing it" (120)

"the newness of the new Spanish American nations is deceptive; in reality they were decadent or static societies, fragments and survivals of a shattered whole" (121)

"triple negation: of our Spanish inheritance, of our indigenous past, and of Catholicism" (126)

"The Reform movement founded Mexico and denied the past. It rejected tradition and sought to justify itself in the future" (126)

"Mother Nature...I was born without hope and fear, I return to you without hope and fear" (126)

"the Indians with their own theocracy destroyed, their gods dead or exiled, and without lands to develop other regions to which they could emigrate, embraced the Christian religion as a mother. She was a womb, a resting place, a return to origins, like all mothers, but at the same time she was a devouring mouth, a woman who punished and mutilated them, a terrifying mother" (127) reminds me of la llorona....

"geometry (form?) cannot take the place of myth" (127) what is form?

"in breaking ties with the past, it also broke its ties with Mexican realities" (128)

"if the history of Mexico is that of a people seeking a form that will express them, the history of the individual Mexican is that of a man aspiring to communion. The fecundity of colonial Catholicism resided in the fact that above all, it was participation...Communion is festivity and ceremony"(134)

"this will to return, the consequence of solitude and desperation, is one of the phases of that dialectic of solitude and communion, reunion and separation, which seems to rule our whole history" (147).

Cancion Mixteca

Qué lejos estoy del suelo
donde he nacido,
inmensa nostalgia invade
mi pensamiento;
y al verme tan solo y triste
cual hoja al viento,
quisiera llorar,
quisiera morir de sentimiento.

Oh tierra del sol,
suspiro por verte
ahora que lejos
yo vivo sin luz, sin amor.

Y al verme tan solo y triste
cual hoja al viento,
quisiera llorar,
quisiera morir de sentimiento.

Oh tierra del sol...

Esta cancion resuena mucho con la experencia Mexicana que yo conosco mas, no porque la he vivido yo misma, sino porque los de mi alrededor la estan viviendo. Este estado esta lleno de personas lejos de la tierro donde han nacido. La dedicacion de Glberto estuvo apropiada.

Cual hoja al viento...

De ahi viene la tristeza no? Del sentimiento que no le valemos a nadie, no?  La hoja (el hilo) destrozado por el viento (las navajas). El viento tan cortante. El viajero, el mariachi anonimo entrando a la ciudad. Entrando al pais de los dolares, 

Quien es el anonimo en el cuadro? Nadie? Alguien? Importa su rastro si es anonimo?

El mariachi anonimo... es aninimo para todos? o es una persona par algunos cuantos? De ahi viene la tristeza no? De falta de un amor incondicional...

 Cual hoja al viento...

La cancion me puso a pensar mucho en como hubiera sido mi vida si hubiera crecido en Puebla con toda mi familia. Veo como mis primos se llevan, como se han llevado toda su vida, como han pasado por tanto juntos. Y mi abuelo, con quien me identifico mucho. El es curioso como yo y tenemos un amor insaciable por la lectura. Y su corazon es aun mas grande que el mio, muy generoso y sin rencores o orgullo, es muy lindo mi abuelo. Pero puedo contar en dos manos las veces que lo he visitado. Como hubiera sido mi vida si pudiera verlo todos los dias? Seria el mismo el amor? No se me escapa las oportunidades y privilegios que tengo por haber nacido y crecido de este lado. Soy muy agradecida, pero...valio la pena?

Oh tierra del sol,
suspiro por verte

mi "CASA"

 

 

 

 

 

The Conquest and Colonialism: selected quotes

"their cyclical conception of time..a force or sustance or fluid perpetually being used up" (93)

"We should remember that fascination with death is not so much a trait of maturity or of old age as it is of youth"(94).

"At noonday everything stops for a moment, vacillating life, like the sun, asks itslef whether it is worth the effort to go on" (94).

"the death wish and the will to live conflict in each one of us...The victory of the death wish shows us that the Aztecs suddenly lost sight of their destiny" (95).

"fought in the knowledge that he would be defeated" (96).

"they died as orphans" (96).

"Mexico was the child of a double violence, imperial and unifying" (100).

"Catholicism ... a living faith..,thanks to religion the colonial order was not just a superimposition of new historical forms but a living organism" (101)

"This possibility of belonging to a living order, even if it were at the bottom of the social pyramid, was cruelly denied by the to the Indians by the protestants of New England' (102).

"The important thing was that their social, human and religious relationships had been reestablished" (102).

"The grandour of Mexico ....

tbc









'

La Llorona

The slim sticks of metal (death) and the flower in a broken vase (life despite aversion). This representation of LA LLORONA is my personal take on it, It comes from fragments of a myth told by my cousins and of a later interpretation from Professor Juan (who cited Paz). La Llorona kills her children because they are not accepted into either world. They are born into a world of solitude and rather than have them suffer this way, La Llorona kills them while condemning herself to wander the lands, forever alone. I began to pick up on the similarities immigrants and children of immigrants experience into the current extension of Mexico in the United States. The screen implies the shadowy nature of a ghost while also serving as a border limiting who passes. Though all the strings stem from the same story of life and death not all of them pass through and are weakened in the process. 

LA LLORONA is a story of thresholds. Invisible thresholds that define peoples lives and experiences. How many Mexican immigrants live in constant fear of being found  and deported? The loneliness of children who were brought here so young and don't know Mexico yet they cannot feel safe here... Isn't that so similar to the story of LA LLORONA? She followed us across another invisible border, LA FRONTERA, she has experience with them. 

...

The frame is thick and raw giving off an aura of authority and with LA LLORONA trapped inside the frame. Partially in the shadows. Broken glass adorns her. There is something in the legend that implies that  she is broken or has been broken. Caught in a web and unable to move on to the world of the dead. 

Una flor de un foco roto y navajas... Como se materializa la muerte?...

Es La Llorona La Muerte?

Para mi La Llorona es una herida habierta. 

Me acuerdo haber leido hace tiempo que las mujeres nacieron con una herida entre las piernas.....

"She does not resist violence but is an inert heap of bones, blood,  and dust. Her taint is constitutional and resides, as we said earlier, in her sex. This passivity OPEN to the outside world, causes her to lose her identity. She is the CHINGADA. She loses her name; she is no one; she dissapears into nothingness. She is NOTHINGNESS. 

And yet she is the cruel incarnation of the feminine condition." (Paz 85-86)

Or is it all in our heads? Because workers cannot be heros...

Fracaso

Amor y Traicion y Fortaleza

I see my project divided in two parts.
The first is more about amor y traicion. I attempted to materialize the senses of amor y traicion.

I know that the heart is just a pump, making sure that blood is MOVING through our body, and in doing so, making sure that we keep MOVING. And yet, when our heart is broken, isn't that where you feel it. You feel it being stretched, tugged, in tension. Maybe its the invisible strings connecting you and that person, the ones that were once filled with joy. As the person becomes distant from you, physically, emotionally, and spiritually, you feel that tug, that pull. You feel them disappearing into the world without you. Without you. I can no longer reach out to touch, there's so much distance.

The overexposed film that is never to reveal the intended images, the intended moments. Me voy a rajar... its the pictures we took two days before you decided I wasn't enough, the sweet betrayal, the end. I don't know what to call it. What would I see on our faces if I hadn't accidentally ripped and ruined the film as I was taking it out....What would I see. It haunts me and yet part of me is grateful that it happened, that I don't have those images to come to again and again as I rerun the memories frantically through my head. So I don't feel the invisible strings pulling at my heart. It still feels so raw...the image from my last post referenced this one...

El dia estaba tan bello y tan claro sin nubes. Te lleve a mis lugares mas sagrados...

Cuantas cosas quedaron prendidas 
hasta dentro del fondo de mi alma 
cuantas luces dejaste encendidas
yo no se como voy a apagarlas 

I decided to stay with Toni's original words because they rang so true. Part of it is because of recent events in my personal life, but the other part comes from the universal experience of loving. I once read the moment in which one feels in love is forever plagued by a shadow of knowing that it will end or change...traicion que se manifestia en la distancia entre la realidad y lo que esperabamos...

Now we come to the second part. And then there's the growth that comes afterwards although it might not be so obvious. LA FORTALEZA. THE EMPOWERMENT.


The member is structurally in failure, yet it can still support itself. We are more resilient then we give ourselves credit for. Octavio Paz talked about the FIESTA and its cleansing powers. I'm not completely sold on it. Growing up, it was this kind of experience that my parents protected me from and when I grew up they taught me that a temporary party solved nothing, The noise is not enough. I've fallen into the trap of the quest for noise before...

So instead of looking for noise, I look for quiet. I am whole, I am true to myself and that is where my empowerment, mi fortaleza comes from. It's a quiet happiness. And it makes all the difference...