On History

In January of 2012, The Rothko Chapel hosted  internationally acclaimed Pakistani writer and filmmaker Tariq Ali. Oliver Stone engaged with   Tariq Ali in a probing, hard-hitting conversation on the forces that shape history and how that history gets told. The book On History chronicles their dialogue and brings to light a number of forgotten episodes of American history. Tariq Ali shared provocative insights from the book in front of a packed auditory.

By Tariq Ali

Illustration: Eunkyung Kang

Oliver Stone is making a set of ten documentaries for Showtime called The Untold History of the United States. In the course of making those films, he interviewed me specifically about the 20^th Century for about seven or eight hours. The essence of what I said is what is contained in the book On History. We talked about how history has been devalued in the world, of how people have become almost frightened of history. Essentially, the elite groups that rule this world, not simply in the United States, are not interested in history. For a long time within academic institutions, history is being downgraded too. In Britain, entire history departments have been closed down. In older universities, they are not teaching anything but 20^th Century history. Nobody can understand contemporary history without understanding the preceding centuries’ history. It is a very narrow vision of the world, and this suits certain people. My point is that History has not simply disappeared; it is often used badly and abused.

A starting point has to be the idea that the historical process is not linear. It goes up and down. Progress, rationalization, defeat, the rise of irrationalism, certainly for the last thousand years... There is nothing pre-ordained that says history has to progress and take the world with it. That is important to understand, though of course the technological and scientific processes that have turned the world are difficult to turn back. I am talking about politics and sociology where it is perfectly easy, as we have seen, to reverse the status quo for the sake of what has been considered to be for the general good. Roosevelt’s New Deal, for instance, was taken for granted once it had been established. People assumed that was fine and moved forward. This was not only the case in the United States, it was the case for most European countries after the Second World War where there was some form of social democracy, or governments which said that certain elementary things had to be achieved because the people had been through too much.  For the most part in Europe, this meant subsidized housing, free health, free medicine, subsidized public transport and utilities. All were controlled by the state to make life better for those who needed it to be made better. There was no actual health service as such, and attempts create one failed—even Nixon had a very good health program that was defeated by the resistance of the medical professionals. The world created after WWII is now gone.

A new consensus emerged from the Reagan and Thatcher years: the dogma or fundamentalist idea that the state cannot be allowed to do anything for ordinary people. That it is not the right of the state to intervene in any way, and that the market was the only determining factor and would essentially be able to solve the problems of humankind. People have forgotten—especially the younger generations who have grown up in the last twenty to twenty-five years—what it used to be like in the realm of social and political changes that took place, and many people have even forgotten how much better, in a number of ways, the culture of society used to be. The plays that were put on, the films that were made, the books that were read and encouraged—all of this used to be much better and, incidentally, much more diverse than it is today. Of course, to find the reason for that, we must look in history. The principal enemy of the Western powers of the time as they perceived it, was a particularly ruthless, distorted, degenerated and bureaucratic form of communism which forbade these essential freedoms, did not permit diversity of thought, segregated people for having different views and which executed people without trials or due process of the law. Against that particular political structure, the Western world, under the leadership of the United States, wanted to show what it could be like. That 70 year gap produced some of the most creative things in western society, but with the defeat of that political system and its disappearance or implosion, it was no longer necessary to be that creative. Societies all over the capitalist world are returning to what they used to be in some ways prior to WWI. Where this becomes very noticeable is after the Wall Street crash of 2008.

This crash continues to affect, not only the US, but also the entire world. Europe is in a total mess, as are other parts of the world. This particular economic crisis arose from the practice of creating money and using said money to make more money. It is very unproductive and based on fictitious capital. What happens when this crisis takes place? Was the market allowed to determine how the crisis took shape? No. Had the market been allowed to determine the outcome, a lot of banks would have gone under. The reason they did not want those banks to go under was not because of the small shareholders or depositors of those banks, but because huge amounts of money were involved. It was almost as if the cycle had come full circle. The state had denounced and attacked for years this particular system, and then it poured billions of taxpayers’ money to save these banks without ever considering the people. Therefore, the question that should be raised is: if the state can be used to bail out the rich, why should not it be used to bail out the poor?

The government carries on as if nothing has happened, while four of the top economies of the world are arguing that this is sticking plaster at best and that the economy is going to fall apart if everything carries on like this. The lessons of history have been forgotten. One reason people cannot come up with any alternatives or advocate for them is because they do not know them. That poses a problem on a very fundamental level concerning the necessity of learning from and understanding history.

            History can also be abused. One way is by, of course, forgetting it all. Another way is by inventing mythologies to justify current policies, whatever they may be. One very striking example of this is the case of Israel. A very distinguished Israeli historian, Shlomo Sand at Tel Aviv University, wrote a book that created a storm of controversy. He became a bestseller in Israel. It just took the country by storm, and it took some time before it was published in the West, but it eventually was. He essentially deconstructed all of the myths of Zionism and prevented their use for the justification of the existence of Israel. To be clear, Israel is here to stay and all citizens of Israel, whether they be Jews, Palestinian-Arabs, Christians, and Muslims should have the same rights. The right of return should be stopped. However, in order to put this argument forward, he really did a lot of historical and anthropological work. He argued that after the destruction of the Temple in AD 70, contrary to mythology, there was no expulsion of Jews in the region. He pointed out, correctly, that the Romans were not in the habit of expelling people from the lands that they conquered because they needed people to cultivate the area. Not only were there no expulsions, but there were Jewish communities numbering up to 4 million people (which was large for that time) in Persia, Egypt, Asia minor, and elsewhere. He argued that there notion was a notion of a separation of the Jewish faith that was actually a reform movement, known as Christianity. Therefore the idea that there was a proselytization is totally false.  Many people were converted and some others some converted themselves. The Ashkenazi Jews in particular grew out the mass conversions on the edge of the Caspian Sea between the 7^th and 10^th Centuries of the Khazars. They finally adopted Hebrew and converted to a more wholesale Judaism. The Ashkenazi Jews were the people in the ghettos of Europe, and who suffered under the Holocaust. These are those people who descended from the Khazars. They are the people who compose the bulk of the Zionist movement, who had absolutely no connection to the Arab lands at all. If Palestine is not the unique ancestral homeland of the Jews, what happened to all the Jews in these countries? He says by and large in their majority, they converted to Islam—most of them, not all of them, as many other people did in that region at the time. The Palestinians, who we have been expelling and oppressing, are the direct descendants of the Jews supposedly expelled. This is a remarkable book and it is creating a huge debate. The debate, he says, is not in Israel. It is interesting, most Israeli historians accept this as accurate. Their response to Sand is that every nation creates its own mythology, and ask what the big deal is. Well, this also true, but this mythology is very potent and powerful because of the conflict it has unleashed that is still going on. No one would mind the mythology if everything had been settled and some agreement had been reached. But because it hasn’t, it becomes a very disruptive force. Shlomo Sand himself is by no means a radical figure. He says he is not a hardcore Zionist, but he believes in Israel. He thinks all citizens should have equal rights so they cannot prohibit Palestinians to come back to lands that were taken away from them while telling Jews, wherever they may be in whatever part of the world, that they can come whenever they want. The reason he wrote the book was to fight for equality. The big attacks on the book have come from the Diaspora. The New York Times ran a big review of it that created a huge controversy. In France and Britain there was some controversy, but by and large it was mostly accepted. The historians who reviewed the book said it was accurate. However, the Diaspora was angry that this had even been said, to which Sand replied, "If you are so keen on saying I’m wrong and what I’m doing is harming Israel, why don’t you put your money where your mouth is and leave the Diaspora and come and settle in Israel?”

This is an example of how history is being abused, and the abuse is triggering a huge and very creative debate. However, debates and books alone do not sway the minds of powerful politicians or rulers, because ultimately they do not rule on the basis of myths—the myths are to keep the people in line. They rule for other reasons: to keep themselves in power, to keep control of society as it is.

The failure to understand what has happened over the last two centuries makes people accept some of the things going on today. The 19^th and 20^th Centuries were the periods when European imperial powers more or less dominated the world: Africa, Asia, and then North America for a while. The British were the largest empire in the world, and then France followed soon after. The Germans wanted their share, which triggered two world wars. No one at that point in time within the political classes of any of the European countries questioned occupying large tracts of the world. They thought they were bringing civilization to it. That was a widely-held view. It was only in the 20^th Century that nationalist movements erupted and began to find support in the metropolitan imperial countries amongst minorities. It was well accepted. Might is right and might is also civilization. I’ve always liked the reply by Gandhi to an American journalist who asked him what was his view on Western Civilization. He said, “I think it would be a good idea.” It’s very simply stated but very understandable, because the people who suffered under them didn’t see them as civilized empires.

Contrary to some aphorisms coined by some of the great philosophers of the past, history very rarely repeats itself. In fact, it never repeats itself, it echoes. And these historical echoes are extremely important wherever and however they come. These echoes are never a repetition as such. What is happening in the 21^st Century is essentially an old fashioned struggle for mastery of the world occurring in new conditions. The struggle takes place with a unique situation that has never existed in the world at any time since humanity began, which is the domination of the world militarily by one single power. There have been different powers in the past. Romans were all-powerful, but they were in the Mediterranean. They fought the Persian Empire, which they knew and recognized. They did not even know what the Chinese were doing or how much more advanced Chinese civilization was compared to them. In today's world, the U.S. is the single most important power, largely because of its military strength. It has more military power than the next hundred countries put together. Therefore, the notion that it can be challenged militarily by another state is unthinkable. The only way it can be challenged is when it occupies a country and the people fight back, as it has happened to a certain extent in Iraq and in a very big extent in Afghanistan. Contrary to the European Imperialist model, the U.S. imperial reach has ruled through indirect relays, whether it is through the military in one country or politicians aligned with them in another. That is traditionally the way the U.S. has had a presence in Latin American dictatorships in Argentina, Brazil, Chile and others throughout the Cold War. They do not like to occupy countries, but that has by and large remained the pattern of American hegemony today.

Viaje de vuelta

El martes 27 de marzo a las 7:00pm se presentará Viaje de vuelta de Malva Flores en la librería Rosario Castellanos del FCE. Aquí un adelanto del libro:

"Para Vuelta, los lectores no fuimos consumidores, sino ciudadanos. La vocación minoritaria de sus miembros no respondió a un afán “elitista”, en términos de clase, sino a la convicción de que el artista, el rebelde, el crítico, no podían ser productos de maquila. Su intransigencia política o literaria apuntó más bien al reconocimiento del individuo, de su capacidad para admirar el mundo y para criticarlo desde una postura independiente, discrepando de la unanimidad.

Dije antes que Vuelta podía leerse como un diario, pues sus colaboradores no habían sido apologistas o teóricos, sino protagonistas del siglo pasado en distintos ámbitos y regiones. Al revisar sus páginas se pueden encontrar pistas de vida, amores, traiciones, arrepentimientos y reconsideraciones intelectuales; fechas de encuentros que el azar o la voluntad construyeron y que susurran al lector nadie me lo contó: estuve allí.

Elegido por el mercado editorial para encabezar las listas del Top Ten de la narrativa hispanoamericana a inicios del presente siglo, el rebelde Bolaño de los años setenta se convirtió en alimento precioso del voraz hoyo negro de un mercado que busca engullir a los marginales y los convierte en mercancía para después mostrárnoslos como estrellas de la “civilización del espectáculo”. Pero el caso de Bolaño, independientemente de sus méritos estéticos, es sólo ejemplo de un problema mucho más amplio y más antiguo, que Vuelta percibió siempre como una amenaza: la del poder del mercado que socavaba el de la tradición."

Por Malva Flores

MEXICO’S DRUG WAR AN EXCUSE FOR IMPUNITY AND INCREASING VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN

By Patricia Gras

Photo Courtesy Judy Rand

When Stieg Larsson wrote the first of his famous trilogy known as the “Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” before he died, the actual title of his book was the “ Men Who Hate Women.”

As a teenager Larsson had witnessed a gang rape of a young girl. Her name was Lisbeth like the main character of his books who was also a victim of rape.

You don’t expect anyone to notice this type of misogyny against women in a socialized country like Sweden where women tend to have more equal and human rights than other nations, but Larsson was sensitive enough to notice this is an international problem that is seldom discussed. Some men simply hate women and though they sleep with them, have children with them or are related to them in some way or another, they have no trouble raping, mutilating, trafficking, harassing or forcing them to disappear under the guise of war, political conflict or economic gain.

I had seldom heard the term “femicide” often defined as the misogynist murders of women because they are women. This includes the mutilation, murder, rape and beating of women. Recently, feminists in Latin America have started to use the term to describe the massive murders of women in Juarez and other parts of Mexico and Central America.

Violence against women has increased around the world. The United Nations Development fund for Women estimates that at least one out every three women globally will be beaten, raped or otherwise abused during their lifetime. During war, the stats get worse. According to UNIFEM, since the 90’s, 90 percent of war’s civilian casualties are women and children, not soldiers and this is what we corroborated in Mexico.

In January of this year, I was part of a delegation of Nobel Peace laureates led by Jody Williams, who won her peaceprize in 1997 for her work banning landmines around the world. I had met Ms. Williams while doing a local follow up television program to the Women War and Peace PBS series by award winning documentarian Abigail Disney. (You can watch the unprecedented series online http://www.pbs.org/wnet/women-war-and-peace/.)

In the 80’s she had worked defending human rights especially in Central America and is now leading a campaign to stop violence against women worldwide.

The Women Nobel Laureates had gathered a diverse group together from the US and Canada. Besides journalists, there were human rights activists, an Oscar winning documentary filmmaker, a celebrity folk singer/songwriter, a comedian, and a movie star. We were there to listen to human rights activists in Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala. I was a participant in the Mexican portion of the trip.

The goal was to listen and find out why there were so many violations against human rights activists, especially females who are fighting injustice and insecurity, and to guarantee the Mexican Government protects them.

When the most violent drug war started in the beginning of 2006, the Juarez murders of hundreds of women became common in other parts of Mexico as well. The violence increased towards civilians, journalists and human rights activists. The violence was often brutal. The female editor of the Primera Hora newspaper in the border town of Nuevo Laredo for instance was beheaded for using social media to report on criminals. Right now Mexico is the most dangerous country in the world to be a journalist and if you are female the danger increases.

Living in Texas, we hear more about Mexico and the impact the drug war has on its people and the US but I never imagined I would hear the stories I heard and the ramifications for a nation threatened by a what appears to be a protracted silent war claiming thousands of innocent victims, many of them women.

One of our delegates was Laura Carlsen, the director of the Americas Program of the Center for International Policy. She has been writing about the current drug war’s impact on women in Mexico. She reports that the more than 50,000 Mexicans who have disappeared on the government’s assault on the drug trade are civilians and that murders of women have increased dramatically. She also cites a recent survey of Mexican women human rights defenders that found government national state and local security forces are responsible in 55% of cases of violence and threats of violence to women defenders.

The President of Mexico says they are mostly related to the drug dealers but what would he know when only 2 percent of crimes are investigated.

In two days we heard over 50 women, the common word that came out of their accounts was “impunity.” They say there is no justice in Mexico, even for those who demand it. For example, women who seek to find why a daughter disappeared or a son was murdered or why a human rights activist was raped by police.

In the last few years, six prominent human rights defenders have been murdered. And though women make up a small portion of murders in Mexico, they are the ones in the frontline, demanding justice, investigating cases, standing up for the disappeared, the raped, trafficked, tortured or dismembered.

There will be a report prepared by the Nobel Women’s delegation with all the accounts, each with its own characteristics, victims and anonymities since almost all lack any formal investigation.

As we listened to each account, the victims were no longer just tragic, cold and hard statistics. Each story had a face, and included a family’s suffering, an unsolved mystery and a high level of frustration and disappointment with authorities. They were accounts of real people seldom heard in their country or the world.

We heard the story of Araceli Rodríguez who is part of a movement for peace. Her son, a police officer disappeared like hundreds do in Mexico and there was no investigation. She like many with similar accounts of family members who disappear started the peace movement to carry out the investigations themselves. “I have learned to turn my own pain into collective strength. “ My soul has been mutilated by the absence of my son.”

María Herrera Magdalena shared a similar account. Her face stricken with grief while she spoke. Her four sons disappeared along with 19 other people. Again their cases were never investigated. Today she says spends every day tired of crying and begging for information. She is now committed to helping other families find their loved ones and demanding justice from the government. She like so many others call for a cease fire of a war that claims innocent and seemingly forgotten victims. “All governments in the world must come together to learn what is going on in Mexico. This is a national tragedy. We have been betrayed by our government.”

One of the most difficult cases we heard was fraught with tremendous brutality and violence. A young woman from Chiapas shared how working as a health provider with native women led to her torture and rape by several police agents. She can no longer find work. Her kids can’t go to school and she has no place to go though she suffers from PTSD.

Many of these women dealt with disappearances of family members and couldn’t get any relief from authorities so they joined groups to do the work of those who are supposed to serve them.

The next day we went to Chilpancingo the state capital of the mountain region of Guerrero, one of the poorest and most violent states in Mexico. Here indigenous peasant women suffer daily indignities by the police, the military, local governments and even their own tribes which have little regard for them.

80 percent of the natives here live in the mountains and in utter poverty.

Jody Williams shared at a press conference. “I was struck by the total lack of justice for indigenous women. The have no access to justice.”

Tlachinollan, the human rights center which welcomed us struggles to keep its doors open for human rights workers and those in need in this area providing all kinds of social and legal services and making sure mining (gold and silver) corporations or any corporations for that matter don’t step on their rights. The needs are much greater than the services, especially now under increasing militarization of the area. These indigineous communities are also plagued by domestic violence and to this day there are no women’s shelters to escape. If women have the courage to stand up for themselves, government officials won’t likely speak their native language and care little to meet their needs.

This extends to health care. We heard Juana Anairis whose sister passed in her twenties because the doctor refused to see her during the weekend. She died of a staff infection right after birth.

Two widows Margarita Martín and Marta Morales lost their human rights activist husbands and are trying to raise kids alone without a job because there is no work.

A young woman shared the story of her repressive family. Her own mother told her women in this culture were worth nothing. She refused to believe it and left her tribe at the age of 14 to study in another city. When she returned she was rejected because she was actually working and successful. This story was repeated by other women. They are discriminated outside and inside their communities.

Yet the courageous women who spoke don’t give up. They found radio stations, lead environmental groups, join the police force or defend women’s productive rights despite the harassment and danger. They continue to seek justice, though they are often re victimized, ignored or simply blamed, threatened for even speaking out. In Mexico, if you are a human rights leader, or a grassroots organizer or a journalist or indigenous and you happen to be female, the government will most likely turn you away.

We did visit the office of CONAVIM, the (Comison Nacional Para Prevenir y Erradicar la Violencia Contra Mujeres) ”The National Commission to prevent and eradicate Violence Against Women.” Dilcya García Espinosa de Los Monteros is respected for what she’s done in the short period there. She did promise the delegation leaders she would continue the dialogue with the network of human rights defenders and their office and create a protocol for the protection of the activists. She is also leading the creation of “Justice Centers” for women to protect their rights but she did admit they lack funds to confront such a widespread problem. This is also a political post which may end with the new administration.

Jody Williams shared she was happy CONAVIM was trying to make a difference. “They are people of action and as a woman activist myself with 40 years of experience, I know the only thing that works in these cases is action.”

Lisa Vene Klasen Director of Just Associates, an international women’s rights organization athat partnered with the Nobel Peace Laureates in the fact finding mission expressed CONAVIM was an ally and agreed to continue the dialogue between human rights defenders and the commission, especially to create a protocol to protect them.

What this agency can do however has a lot to do with the priorities of the new administration that will take over the country in July of this year. One of the most popular candidates Enrique Peña Nieto of the PRI party served as governor of the state of Mexico from 2005 to 2011, during one of the worst periods of violence against women and human rights violations in its history.

So whether it is the government, the cartels, priavate security companies hired by national or transnational companies, the police or the military, women or their defenders become targets, the victims of a society which generally doesn’t value them. Maybe Stigg Larsen has something to say about that but his voice is silenced not only by his passing but also by the loud violent voice of some weak, violent, and cowardly men who hate women.

If you want to help stop the violence against women. Here are some of the recommendations by the Nobel Women’s Initiative.

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY:

� Prioritize human rights and women’s human rights in particular, in Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala. We urge you to work with the governments of Honduras, Mexico and Guatemala to ensure that it follows through on its responsibility to properly investigate all complaints of human rights violations against women, prosecute violations and compensate the survivors.



� Publicly denounce violence against women, including the targeting of women human rights defenders. Diplomats and members of the international community can help end the climate of ‘tolerance’ for targeted violence against women by denouncing specific cases of such violence as they arise.



� Tie aid and funding to human rights. We urge you to ensure that technical and financial support provided by different international organizations and governments to the governments of Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras fully complies with, and respects, human rights standards.



� Monitor the principal of judicial independence. We urge you to push the governments of Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala to guarantee judicial independence and effectiveness in order to combat impunity for violence against women and ensure fundamental rights are protected.



� Implement effective mechanisms for dispute resolution. We urge you to work with the governments of Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala to implement effective mechanisms to resolve disputes over land rights and titles, labour rights, environmental and collective rights. This will help ensure that women’s human rights defenders do not become targets of intimidation and aggression as a result of their involvement in these disputes.



� Support women at the community level to help bring an end to violence in the region. Investing in grassroots women’s organizations working to end violence in their community is a cost-effective, efficient and very sustainable way of improving security for people in Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala. We urge you to earmark a greater proportion of foreign assistance to women’s organizations. This community-based model will reduce a dangerous dependence on armed solutions to security challenges.
For more information on the delegation, please visit the Nobel Women’s Initiative website: www.nobelwomensinitiative.org.
For media interviews, please contact: Rachel Vincent, Media Manager, Nobel Women’s Initiative rvincent@nobelwomensinitiative.org | 613-276-9030; 613-569-8400, ext. 113

Librotraficante Caravan Smuggling Banned Books Back to Arizona Sparks National Movement

The Librotraficante Caravan is a movement that started in Houston when some books were banned from the Arizona education system.The caravan is intended to raise awareness of the prohibition of the Mexican American Studies Program and the removal of books from classrooms. It´ll work on the promotion of banned authors and their contributions to American Literature.

It´ll create a network of resources for art, literature and activism.

They will travel from Houston, Texas, to Tucson, Arizona, carrying a payload of contraband books, creating networks of Underground Libraries and leaving community resources in its wake. One of many responses to Arizona’s unconstitutional laws prohibiting Mexican American Studies, the Librotraficante Caravan has captured the imagination and hearts of activists, writers, educators, and students from all walks of life who want to preserve freedom of speech.

The Librotraficante Caravan will launch from Houston at 10 a.m. on Monday, March 12, from Casa Ramirez Folk Art Gallery (241 West 19th Street, Houston, Texas 77008.) It will stop in San Antonio and El Paso, Texas; Mesilla and Albuquerque, N.M., and culminate in Tucson, Ariz., on Friday, March 16. On St. Patrick’s Day, Saturday, March 17, they’ll host a huge literary celebration of El Batallion San Patricio at 6 p.m., celebrating Irish and Mexican collaboration of the past. The caravan celebrates Quantum Demographics, or multifaceted cultural unity, throughout its tour also highlighting African American and Native American literary contributions along the route. The entire schedule is available online. 

“Every great movement is sparked by outrage at a deep cultural offense,” said Tony Diaz, founder of Nuestra Palabra: Latino Writers Having Their Say, which has led the charge, “When we heard that Tucson Unified School District administrators not only prohibited Mexican American Studies, but then walked into classrooms, and in front of young Latino students, during class time, removed and boxed up books by our most beloved authors - that was too much. This offended us down to our soul. We had to respond.”

Diaz added, “With their record of anti-immigrant legislation, politicians in Arizona have become experts in making humans illegal. We did not do enough to stop that, thus that anti-immigrant legislation spread to other states such as Alabama and Georgia. Now, these same legislators want to make thoughts illegal. If we allow this to happen, these laws, too, will spread. Other branches of ethnic studies will be prohibited, and other states will follow suit.”

With its radio program and blockbuster literary showcases, Nuestra Palabra: Latino Writers Having Their Say has 13 years of experience promoting Latino literature and literacy with authors and thinkers from across the country. This once informal alliance of artists, activists, educators, and professionals has galvanized to create cornerstone structures for a network that will remain in place for future causes as well.

The full spectrum of this network links the talents of such people as Genius Mac Arthur Grant recipient Sandra Cisneros, whose beloved novel HOUSE ON MANGO STREET has been prohibited in Tucson High School classrooms. 

Among the supporters are Sandra Cisneros, who kicked off their fundraising efforts by making a generous donation; Guggenheim Fellow Dagoberto Gilb, whose work recently appeared in the New Yorker and Harpers simultaneously; and best selling author Luis Alberto Urrea, with multiple titles found on the banned book list, was the first to enthusiastically support the project through Twitter. Other literary giants participating in the Librotraficante Caravan include Rudolfo Anaya, whose seminal novel BLESS ME ULTIMA is banned; Denise Chavez, FACE OF AN ANGEL, who is hosting the caravan in Mesilla, N.M., and who organizes the Annual Border Book Festival; Lalo Alcaraz, creator of the syndicated comic LA CUCARACHA and who coined the phrase “Self Deport”; and Rene Alegria, founder of Boxing Badger Media and www.mamiverse.com, who attended one of the impacted high schools in Tucson. Institutions that have already confirmed to host the caravan include the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center in San Antonio, Texas, and the National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque, N.M.

Specific outcomes:

1. Underground Libraries: Librotraficantes will donate copies of the banned books a local nonprofit in Houston, San Antonio, Albuquerque and Tucson. These sites will not only be given copies of the banned titles, but from now on, all multicultural authors are encouraged to mail copies of their books to these sites when they are published, so that our community will always have access to our literature.

2. Teach-ins and a Supplanted Book List: Workshops that include free curriculum guides with literary excerpts and lesson plans that can be used in class and immediately applied to other works.

3. Network of Librotraficantes across the country: This is a case of new media saving the classic media of books. Had Arizona done this ten years ago, we most likely would not have heard about it until it had impacted a second generation of youth. However, because of new technologies and the network of writers and activists who are communicating on multimedia platforms, we were not only able to hear about Arizona’s actions, but to also utilize new media tools to organize some classic activist strategies to respond - from now on!

ORGANIZERS: Tony Diaz, Liana Lopez, Bryan Parras, Lupe Mendez & Laura Acosta

To become a part of history in the making, visit www.librotraficante.com and click on Donate.

El regreso del cine mudo

Por Jaime Perales Contreras

El artista (2011) es una película sui generis. Es muda y en blanco y negro. Dos elementos que generalmente el cine de hoy omite. ¿Cuántos filmes de este tipo se han realizado en la época moderna? Muy pocos.

Como ejemplos se pueden encontrar algunos experimentos, como la película Film (1965), escrita por el premio Nóbel de literatura Samuel Beckett, y que tenía como protagonista a Búster Keaton; leyenda del cine cómico mudo y a quien Beckett admiraba profundamente. Se encuentran también La última locura de Mel Brooks (Silent Movie) (1976),  una  divertida  parodia de las películas cómicas de los veinte, en donde no se escucha, a lo largo de dos horas, más que una sola  palabra.  Hay, asimismo, algunos directores nostálgicos de la época, como Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas y el historiador fílmico Kevin Brownlow, que se les ocurrió restaurar Napoleón (1927), el titánico e incompleto filme de  Abel Gance, e incluir con él un hermoso soundtrack compuesto en 1980 por  el padre de Francis Ford, Carmine Coppola. También se dieron algunas adaptaciones musicales pop, como es el caso de Metrópolis (1927), del director alemán Fritz Lang, que Giorgio Moroder, junto con un mosaico de canciones de diferentes grupos musicales, compuso para la película una banda original en 1984.

  El artista, realizada por el francés Michel Hazanavicius no se compara con ninguno de estos ejercicios. Es una película moderna, un drama, en donde somos testigos del ascenso y caída de una estrella del cine mudo, a fines de la década de los veinte, cuando ésta es desplazada por el filme sonoro.

El director  de El artista vuelve  a utilizar a los dos actores principales de su primer filme: Jean Dujardin y Berenice Bejo. Y, aunque la película perdió la Palma de Oro, en el pasado festival de Cannes, Dujardin ganó el premio como el mejor actor.

El filme, asimismo, ha sido recibido con beneplácito por la crítica y por el público debido a que, inicialmente, se exhibió de manera muy limitada por el temor de la reacción que se tendría al ver una película muda. El artista actualmente cuenta con 10 nominaciones para el Oscar de la academia, entre las que se incluyen las de  Dujardin y Bejó para el mejor actor y actriz respectivamente, y la de mejor película.

La idea de hacer una película en donde no hubiera sonido, no se había tomado muy enserio. Sin embargo, las dos parodias sobre los filmes de James Bond, OSS 117: Le Caire nid d'espions, (2006) y OSS 117: Rio Ne Répond Plus (2009) ambas éxitos internacionales y realizadas por el mismo director, hicieron que la situación fuera favorable para producirla.

Algunos han mencionado que El artista podría reformular el cine para que se vuelvan a realizar películas mudas. Es difícil de pensar que una sola película pueda cambiar la actitud del cine contemporáneo. Sin embargo, la idea no deja de  generar curiosidad.  Ya que ver un filme mudo actualmente es casi como ser un lector de poesía. Sin embargo, la poesía, aunque con un público menor, tiene sus seguidores y, no se debe de olvidar, que el género poético fue el precursor de otros parientes artísticos más populares,  como es la novela. Sin la poesía no habría literatura y sin el cine mudo, simplemente, no habría cine.

A Conversation with C.M. Mayo After Translating Madero´s Spiritist Manual

Rose Mary Salum: You decided to translate Francisco I. Madero's Spiritist Manual 100  years after it first was published. What triggered your desire to work  on this project when, even at the time the book was released, he was mocked in newspapers as a crazy man who talked until he was blue on the face?

CMMayo: The decision was not something I thought out-- it was intuitive, sudden, and strangely compelling. Though I'd been living in Mexico on and off for over two decades, I hadn't given much thought to Madero or the Revolution; my interest in recent years has been the French Intervention (the subject of my novel). What happened was, to make a long story short, I had the opportunity to view Madero's archive in Hacienda (Mexican Ministry of Finance), and when I saw the Manual espírita, I knew it needed to be translated. Before I could stop myself, I offered to do it. Because of my previous research on the French Intervention, I had a keen appreciation for the need to translate basic works. So much history is badly misunderstood or not even acnowledged for want of a translation! And the fact is, Madero was the leader of Mexico's 1910 Revolution and his Spiritist Manual, completed in that same year, though published in early 1911, is a statement of his personal and political philosophy. Ergo, it is a basic document for understanding both Madero himself and the Revolution.

RMS: What is your personal opinion on Madero´s beliefs and this book after you´ve gotten so close to it?

CMM: I really had a rollercoaster of a ride with this, from thinking he was naive, wise, good, nuts, way ahead of his time, an old fuddy-duddy, heroic, daring... If you were to ask me a year now I might say something very different but right now, January 2012, my take on him and his beliefs is this: I don't think he was crazy; he would not have been able to achieve what he did as a businessman and political leader without his druthers. As for his Spiritism, whatever one may think of it, the fact is it was not something he invented but adopted. (Note: it is similar to but not the same as Spiritualism.) Though always at the far esoteric margins of mainstream thinking, in the late 19th century when he was studying in France and first took it seriously, Spiritism had developed a large following and the main books by Allen Kardec were all relatively easy to find. (Madero's own father had a subscription to the Spiritist magazine, Revue esprít.) Apart from reading the classics by Kardec (Book of the Spirits, The Book on Mediums, and others), Madero also adopted ideas from Edouard Schuré, who claimed to have relied a Greek medium to channel information about Hermes, Krishna, and Jesus, among other "divine messengers." Much better known in France than in the US or Mexico, Schuré was a close friend of the composer Wagner and also a friend and colleague of Rudolph Steiner, the founder of Anthroposophy and the Waldorf schools. In sum, Madero's Manual Espírita should be considered as a work solidly within European esoteric traditions.

RMS: Allow me to pose the same question you ask in your video: can a secret book get its author killed?  Why?

C.M. : I pose it as a question, suggesting that this may have been the case. What we do know is that when Huerta staged the coup and had President Madero arrested, he and U.S. Ambassador Wilson discussed what to do with their prisoner-- put him in a lunatic asylum?I think a good argument can be made that, like many people, Huerta and Wilson held Spiritism in deep contempt and that very contempt made it that much easier to kill Madero. When I say "secret" book I mean it in the sense that Madero tried to keep his identity as author secret by using a pen name, Bhima. But the book itself was not meant to be secret, quite the contrary: it had a print run of 5,000--- very substantial for the time--- and its very purpose was to evangelize.

RMS: What were the consequences of publishing this book at that time?

CMM: I don't think there is a definitve answer because I think it is the nature of a book-- a thoughtform in a package (whether paper or digital) that allows it to travel through time and space-- to enter into reader's mind individually and privately. Who actually reads it? When do they read it? Where do they read it? How attentively, and how thoughtfully? I just finished reading War and Peace. Well, how do you know I actually read it? You just have to believe me. And here I am in 2012 in Mexico City-- far from being the reader Tolstoy envisioned when he published it in 1869! But OK, I'll take a flying guess: I think the consequences of Madero's publishing the Spiritist Manual were extremely damaging to his political career and personal prestige because any and all Spiritist activity was extremely disturbing to most people in positions of authority at that time. I should underline here that the Catholic Church considered the seance, a key ritual in Spiritism, to be communing with the Devil and the Vatican had banned all works by Allen Kardec, Spiritsm's founder. For any political leader in Mexico at that time, accepting, never mind espousing Spiritism, was to venture far beyond the pale of the acceptable. That said, Spiritism did have adherents, among them, Ignacio Mariscal, and in France, such well-known intellectuals as Victor Hugo and Flammarion. No doubt, somewhere in Mexico, some people, perhaps a few hundred, read the Manual espírita and found it both convincing and consoling. Perhaps someone else could answer this question better than I can.

RMS: You mention in your introduction that  Madero´s book is one of the  earliest Spanish language manifestos of this new religion. What other books on the same subject were printed in Mexico after that?

CMM: I am more familiar with what was published before that, primarily translations of works by Allen Kardec and other French Spiritists. After Madero, Spiritism in Mexico, as in Brazil and the Philippines, has taken on its individual character, mixed in with indigenous and other traditions, over the 20th and into the 21st centuries. Apart from Madero himself—and also in a distinctly more rustic vein—El Niño Fidencio is considered Mexico's best known Spiritist, though it would more accurate to say that he was associated with Spiritism. I talk about this at length here.

RMS: This is a question from an editor´s point of view: Is there a market for this book in the English speaking language?

CMM: There is a market for anything on Madero and the Mexican Revolution in English, albeit a slender one, and this is why I decided to do a digital edition. I have had some interest in the book from Spiritists, but as I have not been connected with that community it is hard for me to gauge. I am thinking about other editions and possibilities; I would like to see it in paper with a proper spine.

RSM: How has your experience been so far with your first eBook?

CMM: After having published several books with various pubishers, it was wicked fun to design the covers and the website without having anyone second guess or even block my choices. On the other hand, I have a renewed appreciation for the sometimes ginormous amount of tedious work editors and marketing staff do for a book. It's encouraging to see how quickly and easily one can sell a book on amazon.com, however. I am also thrilled to see what iBooks are turning into--- much more interesting than amazon's Kindle. 

RSM: Will you publish more eBooks?

CMM: Yes, and in fact I have two almost ready right now-- a short story, "Manta Ray," and Marie de la Fere's My Recollections of Maximilian, a brief eyewitness memoir of Maximilian von Habsburg.  Right now the way I see it, each book has its own destiny: some may be best off placed with a commercial publisher, while others may be best self-published, and perhaps only digitally. What's exciting is that with the very low cost of digital publishing, so many books that would not have been feasible to publish can now come out of their boxes and drawers and musty old archives. As a reader, I am in heaven!

RSM:  Could you advise our readers when and where to get this and the other books you plan to launch?

CMM: The website for my publishing endeavors is www.dancingchiva.com The ebooks are available on amazon.com's Kindle and will also be available soon as iBooks on iTunes. I also post links and information about all my works on my website, www.cmmayo.com

Behind The Scenes in The Launching of the Latin American Digital Archives

Houston Jan 20.- The MFAH along with the ICAA organized a colloquium about the arts to celebrate the launching of the Latin American Digital Archives. For the first time in history, we will have free access to more than 10, 000 documents about Latin American Art and Latino Art. 

The mission of the ICAA, which was established in 2001 at the MFAH, is to pioneer research of the diverse artistic production of Latin American and Latino artists—from Mexico, Central and South America, the Caribbean, and the United States.

Literal had the opportunity to talk with some of the organizers, participants and curators who, behind the scenes, made this historical event possible.

Image

Gego (Gertrud Goldschmidt), Venezuelan, born Germany, 1912–1994

Reticulárea, 1975

Stainless steel wire

Gift of AT&T

© Fundación Gego

Landmark Digital Archive of 20th-Century Latin American and Latino Art Launches in 2012

The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and its research institute, the International Center for the Arts of the Americas (ICAA), have devoted ten years and $50 million to initiatives in 20th-century Latin American and Latino art. In January 2012, the MFAH and ICAA has launched a digital archive of some 10,000 primary-source materials, culled by hundreds of researchers based in 16 cities in the U.S. and throughout Latin America. The online archive is available worldwide, free of charge, and is intended as a catalyst for the future of a field that has been notoriously lacking in accessible resources. The phased, multi-year launch begins with 2,500 documents from Argentina, Mexico and the American Midwest, capping the 10th- anniversary year for the Latin American program. Documents from other countries and communities will continue to be uploaded and made available. The first volume in a companion series of 13 annotated books will be published with the archive launch, with subsequent volumes in the series published annually.

The online archive is rich in artists’ writings, correspondence and other unpublished materials, as well as in texts published in newspapers and period journals by artists, critics, scholars and others who have played a vital role in shaping the cultural fabric of the countries and communities where the Documents Project has had a presence. The material brings to life the ferment of international cultures, ideas and personalities that swept across 20th-century South America, the Spanish-speaking Caribbean and Latino communities in the United States as artists, writers and intellectuals sought to define or challenge notions of a national art; art movements emerged in response to changing local political regimes, as well as to what was perceived as the onslaught of North American culture; and the contribution of Latin American artists to the early stages of global avant-garde movements. The archive also highlights the common interests and affinities shared by Latin artists working in North and South America, allowing for first-hand comparative studies of these broad-based, highly heterogeneous groups. Documents from Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Peru, Puerto Rico, Venezuela and the United States will continue to beadded to the website over the next three years, with the entire selection of holdings to date available by 2015. As the ICAA research initiatives progress, the website will continue to develop in perpetuity, making it an indispensable provider of Latin American and Latino primary-source documents.

"Latin American art can now fully become part of the worldwide discussion of Modernism. For graduate students especially, this project will be of immense use and interest,‖ commented Dr. Edward Sullivan, The Helen Gould Sheppard Professor of the History of Art, New York University, and advisor to the Documents Project. The access to material written at the moment when the art was happening is a major tool to understand the development of artistic movements in Latin America. This project has the potential to integrate the lost chapter of Latin American art into the discipline of art history as it is taught at Western universities."

"This project is just the beginning of the effort to recover the intellectual production of 20th-century Latin American artists, critics and curators and to further research and awareness of this production in the United States and elsewhere,‖ said Mari Carmen Ramírez, MFAH curator and ICAA director. 


"It will be up to future scholars to really make something out of this project and to continue to build what could truly be an amazing resource for the long-term development and consolidation of the field."

"The ICAA Documents archive and book project is unprecedented in its scope and depth,‖ said MFAH interim director Gwendolyn H. Goffe. ―The research teams have included the artistic production from countries that have been overlooked, opening up whole new avenues of scholarly investigation to as broad an audience as possible."

El archivo digital de arte latinoamericano del siglo XX

El Museo de Bellas Artes de Houston (Museum of Fine Arts Houston - MFAH) y su instituto de investigación, el Centro Internacional para las Artes del Continente (International Center for the Arts of the Americas -ICAA), han dedicado diez años y 50 millones de dólares a iniciativas referidas al arte latinoamericano y de origen latino en los EE.UU. del siglo XX. En enero de 2012, el MFAH y el ICAA han lanzado un archivo digital con más de diez mil facsímiles de fuentes primarias, seleccionadas por cientos de investigadores con sede en 16 ciudades de Estados Unidos y de Latinoamérica. El archivo digital está disponible a nivel mundial, sin costo alguno y su objetivo es servir como catalizador para el futuro de un campo de estudio que ha carecido notablemente de acceso a fuentes primarias de información. Este lanzamiento se realizará en varias etapas escalonadas durante los próximos años. A partir del 2012, el archivo contará con 2.500 documentos de Argentina, México y la región norte- centro de Estados Unidos. Los documentos provenientes de otros países y comunidades se agregarán paulatinamente. El primer tomo de una serie de 13 antologías que acompañarán esta iniciativa será publicado junto con el lanzamiento del archivo, sumándose cada año un nuevo tomo a la serie.

El archivo disponible en Internet consta de escritos de artistas, correspondencias y material inédito así como textos publicados en revistas y periódicos por artistas, críticos, eruditos y personalidades que jugaron un papel vital en la formación del ámbito cultural de los países y comunidades donde el proyecto de Documentos ha estado presente. El material recopilado deja en evidencia el momento cumbre de las corrientes internacionales, ideas y personalidades que destacaron durante el siglo XX en Sudamérica, los países de habla hispana del Caribe y el ámbito latino en los Estados Unidos en la medida que los artistas, escritores e intelectuales buscaron definir o desafiar las nociones de un arte nacional. Además estos documentos rebasan temas tan variados como los movimientos artísticos que emergieron como respuesta de cambio a los regímenes políticos locales, así como a lo que fue percibido como la invasión de la cultura de América del Norte y la contribución de artistas latinoamericanos a las primeras etapas de los movimientos mundiales de vanguardia que dieron como resultado manifestaciones artísticas originales. El archivo también destaca el interés común y las afinidades compartidas por los artistas Latinos que trabajaron en Norte y Sudamérica, lo que permite realizar estudios comparativos entre estos grandes grupos altamente heterogéneos y con sedes en diferentes lugares del continente. En los próximos tres años se agregarán al sitio de Internet documentos de Brasil, Chile, Colombia, Perú, Puerto Rico, Venezuela y Estados Unidos. La selección completa de material estará disponible para el año 2015. A medida que las iniciativas de investigación de ICAA progresen, el sitio de Internet continuará su desarrollo indefinidamente, convirtiéndose así en un proveedor indispensable de documentos de primer orden del arte latinoamericano y de origen latino en Estados Unidos.

“Ahora el arte latinoamericano puede incluirse completamente dentro de la discusión sobre el modernismo a nivel mundial. Especialmente para los estudiantes de posgrado, este proyecto será de inmensa utilidad e interés”, comentó el doctor Edward Sullivan, profesor de historia del arte de la Universidad de Nueva York (The Helen Gould Sheppard Professor) e integrante de la Junta Editorial del Proyecto de Documentos. “El acceso al material escrito en el momento en que se producía el arte es una gran herramienta para entender el desarrollo de los movimientos artísticos en Latinoamérica. Este proyecto tiene el potencial de integrar el capítulo olvidado del arte latinoamericano en la disciplina de la historia del arte como se enseña en las universidades occidentales”.

“Este proyecto es sólo el comienzo de un esfuerzo por recuperar la producción intelectual de los artistas, críticos y curadores latinoamericanos del siglo XX, para ampliar la investigación y conocimientos de estas producciones en Estados Unidos y el mundo”, aseguró Mari Carmen Ramírez, curadora del MFAH y directora del ICAA.

“En el futuro, quedará en manos de los estudiantes y académicos sacar provecho de este proyecto y continuar sumando material para construir algo que podría ser, verdaderamente, una fuente invaluable para el desarrollo y consolidación a largo plazo de este campo [de estudio]”.

“El archivo del Proyecto de Documentos del ICAA y el proyecto editorial no tienen precedentes en su alcance y profundidad”, dijo Gwendolyn H. Goffe, directora interina del MFAH. “Los equipos de investigación han incluido la producción artística de países que habían sido pasados por alto, abriendo nuevas vías de investigación académica a una audiencia tan amplia como sea posible.”