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Working With the Pearson Foundation, who do i represent?

Have been working with the Pearson Foundation since returning to NY.

One class is taught by a mousy caucasian girl with glasses, soft-spoken. In the class are two boys making a narrative revolving around their coming to the United States from the Caribbean. I recorded one boy’s voiceover, from Antigua which he pronounces An-Ti-Ga. His narrative revolves around the events shortly before his plane leaves. His partner, also from the West Indies, also has a narrative revolving around the day he came to the US. They have the most interesting stories, though it's so hard for them to express themsleves.

The rest of the students are writing personal narratives revolving around what they like to do, what music they like, what clothes they wear. Some students write about their neighborhoods—“we represent Bedstuy to the fullest, even though we moved to Canarsie, so it’s just straight Brooklyn we represent." Many of them are Jamaican or from Caribbean islands in general.

As if universal, the need to represent who you are, where you come from, prevails in the projects we are making.

flinting w/ sufjan

the factory

Please God, forgive us for not posting to this blog for two months. we promise we have been very busy tending to your flock....

as you can tell, Mexico took over our senses, although we had internet access throughout our, the overall power of the culture gave us little time to collectively look away just for one second to relay the subtle changes in light, the great food, los primos y primas.... tios and tias,. so this piece of internet history will remain silent forever. maybe.

the news is as follows:

* Luiseño Films has mutated into the Luiseño Artists Colllective, the focus remains the same, we just wanted to bring light to any other artists that we meet who share our vision of community expression.

*The Luiseño Artists Collective is now comprised of members from the following communities: Gridley, CA; New York, NY; Huejuquilla el Alto, JAL, MX; Guadalajara, JAL, MX; Zacatecas, ZAC, MX; San Jose, CA; Chico, CA; Oroville, CA; and Biggs, CA.

* The Luiseño Artists Collective, held its first exhibition in the North Valley. December 31st, 2006.

*Luiseño will be working in NYC for the next few months teaching video and filmmaking skills to public school students through the city.

*A film festival is in the works for community radio KZFR in chico, the theme will be building community via the independent media.

*Two mural projects are in the works for the Gridley California community, the first is already underway and has being initiated by Youth First of Gridley, the second will be proposed by the Luiseño Artists Collective in the next few months.

*Music.

* General Happiness.

Reflections/Thoughts of Beginnings

Toward future engagements, the day after our “inaugural exhibition” to the Gridley community.

I fiddle with normal things on my computer—the nytimes, Zapatista updates, music, my writing (this very document). I glimpse the photographs from yesterday. Another day documented, the beginning of an engagement with the community.

I think about yesterday’s events, I think about all the people we saw.

I slept from 7pm to 10:30 in the morning! Slept right through the New Year’s countdown.

Youth Group students took pictures of themselves lying on the ground like roadkill, good pictures.

My mom made posole.

First Gridley Exhibition

THE LUISEÑO ARTIST COLLECTIVE
Presents

Chapter 1:
NUEVO IDEAL

Photography, Video, y Radio
of
Gridley, CA, New York, NY USA Huejuquilla, Guadalajara JAL. MX

May 1st, 2006-December 31st, 2006

Born in Gridley, CA, the Luiseño Artist Collective is dedicated to supporting the arts in the communities it serves.

Nuevo Ideal marks Luiseño’s first engagement with the Gridley community. In this inaugural exhibition, artists featured are the Sacred Heart Youth Group, Shannon Bowers, Ricardo Ramirez and Tony Gannon, all of whom are Gridley locals.

Photos and video result from months of documentation in the Gridley area and during visits to New York City, Huejuquilla, Jal. MX, and Guadalajara, Jal. MX. The Luiseño Artist Collective is always seeking contributors from these regions and beyond.

The Luiseño Artist Collective will continue to seek out local voices deserving recognition. In fact, Luiseño hopes that this is the first of many regular exhibitions within the community.

Luiseño is presently seeking donors who support building community through art.

Please contact Luiseño at:
contact@luisenofilms.com
www.luisenofilms.com

The Myth of the Petroglyph, or the Petrified Revolutionary

We are in Africa. We are on a journey to observe the causes of hunger in Africa. We visit farmers, we talk with them. We are in an area that is rural yet connected to a Metropolis nearby. It is called Juarez, and it is, in my mind, the future Juarez, Mexico, where people fight for justice, where noble people are prevailing against corruption.

I am there with my family, friends, former co-workers. We are meeting farmers, chefs. Amidst our visit, wind of a letter from arises. Young Tim Farrell mentions the letter, claiming “it’s pretty good, it may work.” I am curious and search out the letter; sitting in an idyllic pasture amongst the misty crags of a sierra where farmers receive assistance to grow their primary crops, I read the letter

It reads:

We seek out people who may be interested. We seek out the best of them. [Image of two men shouldering a tree, lifting]. We must raise money amongst ourselves—say $1000 dollars, and we give it to the chosen farmers. They use the money for the benefit of their crops, to farm unimpeded…

The money is not to be reported, its existence is to remain a secret between us and the chosen farmers. When the farmer succeeds (and he will succeed), we return next season and do it again. The success of the farmer puts him in a position to receive official aid, vast quantities of money. Our money serves him underground, but it’s for a worthy cause, namely to help his people.

I am reading the letter accompanied by imagery, as though the events had already been documented. As I read the letter I have a notion of the perfect farmer to begin the project.

The letter is hopeful, full of ambition, idealism.

The letter continues:

When the time comes, the country will be in a position for revolution.
Based on our efforts, we will be cultivating a revolutionary contingency of people, not only loyal to us because of the funding we will provide, but loyal to ideals, since the first man will be a man of ideals. When the time comes, children will be schooled in the ways of the revolutionary…

I stop reading the letter here. I look up and look at the rolling meadows, the mist setting on the mountain ranges. An image of a boy learning methods of farming that would replace current ones. An image of the words: hegemony replacing hegemony. This is the text the boy is reading, and I no longer want to read the letter.

What does it benefit us to have a revolution if the children are brainwashed from such an early age?

This is the myth of the petrified revolutionary:

The revolutionary was working to save his people. Money would arrive and he would put it in the cookie jar. Everyday he would put his hand in the cookie jar, to drop money off. Or so people thought. It came to the attention of the people that he may be taking money out as he puts the money in, or perhaps he was only pretending to put the money in, and removing his hand with the money intended for the people, or perhaps more. So they came to observe him, a man in a kitchen, allegedly putting his hand in the cookie jar for the benefit of his people. The revolutionary stuck his hand in the cookie jar, only to freeze there, his face looking out at the people he claimed to have been serving, a look on his face that told the people neither what they wanted nor what they feared.

And that is the myth of the petrified revolutionary.

As our visit continues, the makings of the letter become more widespread. A white woman whom everyone adores becomes a target of the letter-writers. She is sought after because she is a great chef and has a wonderful personality on top of that. She has carisma.

She is cooking something one day as she is accosted by two of the letter-writers. At first she politely rebukes their advances, but finally blurts out “I will not be your hero, I’m not even African!” As she is saying this, one hand is balancing a large pot while the other is stirring. An image of a man sticking his hands in a cookie jar, his hand stuck, his body frozen. The image comes to me because she is in exactly the same position. “Let me tell you a story,” she says, “of the petrified revolutionary.”

Huejuquilla and the Global Economy

A man comes to town from his ranch. He makes pottery and sells his work at the weekly market. Once or twice a year a Norteño couple comes down, a married couple, the woman with orders to fill Texas houses with his pottery. He makes good money off these orders alone. He talks about not having electricity a few years back, about his efforts to have electrical lines installed, as well as a road.

On one of our last days in Huejuquilla we meet a man who installs solar plates on homes outside of the electrical grids. These are largely for Huichol indians; he can’t quite install a system to power a refrigerator, but for a television, a computer, home appliances, it is possible. He talks about how much this benefits the people--Huicholes using the internet to connect to people in the US. I wonder how it’s possible to get internet where they live if there are no phone lines, much less fiber-optic cable.

The obvious benefits of solar electricity aside, there is a question here, a broader question. It's the question of progress--Is this it?—electricity, a telephone line, fiber-optic cable for the Huichol Indians? Not unlike the vision presented by Microsoft in their commercials, a diverse world, enacting their dreams, participating in the global economy, on their terms. Cut to a beautiful shot of a monk somewhere in China on a computer, a business transaction in the morning before getting down to the real work of being…spiritual. Is this the future, the indigenous people winning back autonomy by joining the global economy?

La Batalla del Pueblo

We went to la Señora's rancho today. 'Cardo’s mother is hesitant to get out of the car at first, but we finally convince her. Later I learn she hasn’t been back to the rancho in 20 years.

Here is the deep well that once had water. Here are the steps Chato used to play on. Here was the casa de las gallinas. Irma wants a shot of a cross on a hill. It’s so far away, I try to hide my disappointment in the ability of my lens, but I take the picture anyway.

We leave the ranch and head toward the capilla. We stop along the way to take a picture of the school, La Batalla del Pueblo. We see two kids who we’d seen on a previous visit. At the capilla, we decorate the cross with a tinsel string boa, the kind one sees on Christmas trees. The cross is already decked out in an elegant white fabric that looks like the fabric of a wedding dress. Someone else has placed 4 mirrors on the cross and flowers. Lupe explains that people decorate the cross to try to outdo other ranchos. She looks into a Jesus statue’s eyes and coos in adoration; she loves Jesus. The three women decide to recite a rosary while we wait outside.

At the end of their prayer they sing and it’s beautiful. Ricardo and I are miles away, even though we're right outside.

I wonder about the land, who it’s belonged to. Who died over this property? How close by do the Huicholes live?

At night, the windows of our bedroom are directly adjacent to the sidewalk. Footsteps and clear voices pass the house at night. A group of Huichol musicians pass by, a car blasting banda music, drunken revelers. A truckload of cars with drunken young men. I heard celebratory screams deep into the night last night, distant yelps and whistling.

Huexuquilla

Talking on the phone with Hong, Pancho rides up on his bicycle. He’s in his 30’s, a good looking guy with a thick mustache. He came over to the house the first night we arrived with a present for Don Adolfo. He told me he spent a couple years in Las Vegas doing chrome on cars (I imagined him working on lowriders, but that's just me). He’s got two kids, a wife: he's settled down. One night, I ask him if he's going out to the dance. He chuckles, and says, no, I don't dance anymore. He's got two boys, adorable, happy. There's something that tells me he used to by quite the dancer. He sees I'm busy on the phone and says he'll be around.

Hong tells me she’s applied for a job within HBO Latino, and all I can think about is that the capitalist agenda of HBO doesn’t necessarily fight the exploitation of the Latino community.
A man rides by on a horse. A kid walks by whistling, Hong asks me if it’s me. I get off the phone and make my way to Pancho over at the farmacia. I tell him about my girlfriend, that she's Korean. He tells me to bring her here to Huejuquilla.

I sometimes get the impression that everything is perfect in Huejuquilla. People work, they talk and seem content. I don’t see too much poverty—some Huicholes sleeping in the town square, a man asking for cans. I'm sure there's poverty...but people seem so much happier here. They don't seem discontent, they don't seem to be tortured by everyday life...

But am I not experiencing the town through some grotesque prism? I’m an outsider, people know that I didn’t grow up here, I'm treated differently. It occurs to me that I am, in many ways, still a tourist.

An Evening in Huejuquilla

Leave the house to go the cyber-cafe to check email. Stop and talk to the dude outside of El Nene, a tiendita that sells music, dvds, car stereos, miscellaneous electronics. Talk for a minute, tells us that too much technology isn’t good for you. A friend of El Nene rolls by and gets out of his car. Talk for a minute more. Leave, round the corner and stop at the family farmacia. Cardo’s father is there, we chat for a minute. Go next door with the intention of stopping at the cyber-café, which turns out to be full. The lady next door, distantly related to 'Cardo, stops to talk to us. Asks us how we’ve liked our stay so far, what we've seen. We tell her about Huejuquilla, Guadalajara. She recommends a natural thermal spring outside of Huejuquilla. She also tends an art gallery right next door to the cyber-cafe, which she opens for us and shows us. Say goodnight and head to the public internet café, run by the pueblo, or the government. Check email, but they’re about to close. Manage to finish right before. Outside we look at our options for stores to buy some cigarettes. I want a beer so we go to the liquor-store nearby. We’ve been there before, and the man there asks us how we’ve liked Huejuquilla so far. He tells us he’s been to the USA, that he’s retired now. He worked for years in San Jose before it turned into Silicon Valley. He knows Chico, Lodi--even Gridley. We tell him we’ll be back to pick up a couple of bottles of tequila. Outside Cardo spots the man with the laptop he’s seen around town. It turns out he’s the engineer doing work with 'Cardo’s father on his property. We talk for a minute about the laptop, his work, etc. We leave, go across the plaza to the other convenience store, but they don’t have the kind of cigarettes i want. We head back toward the house, stop at the farmacia again. Maria is there with her father, along with Betty and Norma and Tia Goya. We say goodnight. We drink a beer outside of the house. Ricardo’s father walks up with someone. He's tall and lanky, has a family in Huejuquilla, but used to work in Gridley, thousands of miles away. He talks to us for a bit about working in the United States, throws out some English words. We say goodnight.

It's late!

Additional Notes on the Subject of La Perrada

I ask my cousin Karen about this expression, la perrada. I want to know how much it’s used by people, if it’s considered offensive. Its meaning: People – Gente – The Masses – The Herd – Common Folks – The Rabble – and more literally -- Dogs.

Despite it's being potentially offensive, i latch onto the word. The movie Amores Perros comes to mind, the opening dog-fight amidst an expanding urban existence. We get what we can take, even if its the scraps.

Guadalajara has been expanding dramatically in the last 30 years. The city where my father met my father, once the city of roses, is now over-crowded with people from the country. How many of these recent arrivals contemplated heading al norte, and how many have relatives in Los Angeles, or Idaho, or Virginia? My cousin Tako talks about the city's over-crowding as we pass through a neighborhood that's cropped up in the past 10 years. "Aqui es pura perrada." Families walk the streets, take their dinners at taco stands. Women sit outside their doors. The houses are close together, many of them joined.

I can't process this herd of people sometimes, the urban organization of people into struggling consumers. I'm greatful to be at the heights of Tonalá.

!Estoy en la Chamba!

We're driving through the streets of Guadalajara, Mexico with my cousin Taquin. Men and women approach the car selling fruit, water, candy. Ricardo takes a picture of a man selling large calculators. Later, also with Taquin, we get a card with a girl on it wearing a bathing suit, a phone number. We turn our heads to a performer walking on his hands. Check it out, Cardo says. Tako was tired and grouchy. “Pues asi lo hacen aca,” he says, “para el dinero.”

The slang for "hustle," we learn soon enough, is "chamba." It's not exactly a verb, though one can say, "estoy chambiando." I prefer using it as if it were an all-enveloping mode of existence--"estoy en la chamba" (literally: i'm in work).

Making money in Mexico seems more honest, somehow.

Mexicanos Unidos

Mexicans: tall, short, lanky, bearded, dark, blond, squat, skinny, wavy, pudgy, fit. How many times have i gotten the "you're Mexican?" Mostly it comes from people who have a notion of what Mexicans look like from the Mexicans they encounter--in New York, they're from Puebla, so they have a certain set of characteristics they've maintained from their indigenous ancestors. Yet the Homies, a Northern California pop-cultural creation based on Mexican stereotypes (or should i say archetypes?) , look generally pretty different than the people of Puebla.

Class divisions are strong in Mexico. In the US we have the luxury of forgetting this, realizing it's a much more powerful tool to unite with all Mexicanos--and Central and Latin Americans, and the oppressed black populations, and the Hmong people of Northern California, and hell, why not even some disenfranchised white folks while we're at it? But in Mexico, it's back to that old racist shit: the lighter one is, the more likely it is you're simply not living in poverty. Just look at the soap operas.

Dia de la Revolucion, o la Perrada

Of all places to go on November 20th, I end up at Zapo-Poom, a "carnival" organized, seemingly, by a group of investors, corporations, or both. The whole experience is marked by the crisp white tents housing "exhibits," markets, restaurants, small dance venues: a showroom for new Dodge trucks, a room containing miniature models of Mexico's biggest tourist sites, a Chivas exhibit showcasing the new stadium still in the works, a "flea-market". A schedule of the nightly performers tells me i just missed Maria Daniela y su Sonido Laser the night before! It's Mexican culture enveloped, masked, by whiteness, and with the undeniable sense of making you want things. It's the whiteness of corporations: New!ness, Stability, Safety, Control.

When deciding where to eat, we have basically a couple of options--a row of tents down the carnival's main drag, featuring restaurants with outdoor seating, menus, waitstaff, etc, and a single large pavilion where you have a bunch of taco stands to order from. We choose the larger tent with various food stalls. “Vamonos aca, con la Perrada,” says my cousin Taquin.

Questions

Here's a contrast: Mexico’s economic poverty and its cultural riqueza.

What causes an economy where a range of socio-economic classes--from the poverty stricken, to farmers to educated people---are forced to flee their country in search of better, paying work?

Specifically, what role does the United States play in creating poverty in Mexico?

How do Americans not see the importance of a stronger Mexico?

Why should we let corporations determine the quality of life in developing countries?

First Days of Huejuquilla

We're fortunate to arrive just before the celebration of Huejuquilla's patron saint, San Diego. A perigrinacion makes its way through town, it's destination the iglesia. Dansantes perform in front of the church. The feathers and the cross, this is Mexico.

At night the town gathers around the town square. In the church courtyard: music, theater, atole. Later, the traditional fireworks. This is really the holiday season now--in a week is November 20, Dia de la Revolucion, a secular celebration of course, but a reason for the pueblo to come together nonetheless. Following that is the Dia de la Virgen Guadalupe, and then of course Christmas, New Year's, Dia de los Reyes...Did I miss one? In between there's no reason not to have carnivales and bailes.

This is an aspect of small town living that I long for in good old Gridley, California: the regular rhythms of town gatherings and celebrations--days of explosions set off by days of work and peace. Maybe I'm idealizing the life of a Mexican pueblo, but Gridley by contrast seems constantly on the verge of exploding, and everyday is an effort to repress this urge, to control one's self.

Is Gridley poised for a riot, you're asking? No--far from it, actually. Gridley is under control, and any notion of resistance is quickly diminished by the rapid passage of Time. Time passes in astonishing ways in the US: one goes to work, one ends his/her day, and then it seems there isn't much left but sleep or TV. Time in Mexico, meanwhile, seeps by, it comes and goes like families visiting. Sometimes time is their, and sometimes it's not. At 11pm one still feels it's early--an hour before bed is so much time! The next day begins early, and it's oh so far away.

vosotros

mcmcmcmcmcmcmcmcmcmcmcmcmcmcmc donalds asta que bastan.

leaving the place, do not drink the water, watch for thieves, protect your cyber-family.