Reaching Towards UPR

The project I am researching is complex and long term. The resources required include musical talent, visual talent, a promotional network, and organizational support. If all goes well, I will be in Puerto Rico this winter to record folk music around the active University of Puerto Rico (UPR) student movement as it resists paralyzing fees and privatization at the hands of the government administration. These recordings will be used in promotional campaigns through Radio Huelga, a student run internet radio station in Puerto Rico, to support the student's cause. The project may contract or expand according to available resources and participants' wants. I am currently assessing this project's feasibility by contacting students in the movement and organizations in the US who might provide support. I am also becoming familiar with the student's situation, the island's political history, and possibilities for the future.

This is not the first time I have attempted an activist project well beyond the scope of my experience. The failures of my past has taught me one lesson: nothing can be done alone. If I find I am the only one working on something of considerable scale, I should stop working on it. The initial step in achieving my goals is attracting other participants and researching the best way to achieve the impact desired by those I aim to serve. That has been the bulk of my current research.

My main contact in Puerto Rico is Richie Kent, a law student, long time activist, and dear friend who participated in the massive UPR strike last Spring and has close ties with leaders in the student movement. He keeps me informed about UPR politics, the issues being dealt with as the movement moves forward, and who I can contact for collaboration. On the subject of another strike, Richie explains it may be self destructive. Many students believe the Puerto Rican government is engaging in class warfare by installing large fees which effectively block poorer students from university degrees. If another strike hits UPR, the administration may simply shut down the campuses indefinitely. They would then be able to reform the university to their prerogatives, perhaps transforming the university into a middle class science/research based institution, a far cry from the widely accessible, progressive institution it has been for decades. This means I could be entering a desperate situation in December.

I have had brief contacts with several other students. Raul Mastre is a member of Papel Machete, a political puppetry group active on the island since 2006 and exemplary during the Spring strike. I would like to work with them on footage for music videos. Isa Abreu is a faculty assistant and Radio Huelga manager. She will be essential is coordinating my intentions with the station and gaining support from UPR staff. I need to be sure I am not interfering with the university's business. Jenaro Abraham is a local musician and Radio Huelga member. I hope to rely on him for musical contributions and attracting other talents into the recording process. I have not heard from these students recently. The movement has been active with building occupations and demonstrations. And midterms are due. I expect to converse with them more regularly in the weeks to come.

My most pertinent question: how useful can I be? While I have many ideas about how to involve myself with the students, I do not want to force my ideas on them. That would be invasive and unproductive. Until I gather feedback about how the students' own ideas regarding my involvement, I can not be confident in my effectiveness.

For organizational support, I have been contacting several radio and media groups in the US for advise. Most prospects have fallen flat, but a few remain promising. Last weekend I spoke with Jen Abrams, an artist and organizer with the internet barter network OurGoods. She will be providing advise on my work over the coming months in exchange for some help archiving her media. Most promising is a meeting with City Lore later this week. City Lore archives and create projects around diverse modern folk expressions. We have a lot of commonality as my project is rooted in new uses of Puerto Rican folk music. From them I hope to gain a network for promotion and further advise as I proceed.

The greatest frustrations so far have been the difficulty in finding organizational support and the irregular contacts from inside the movement. I expected this difficulty. While Richie has been informative, my other contacts have not been able to provide any concrete information, neither on their commitment to my ideas nor on ideas of their own. Patience is necessary, but if December approaches without definite plans or support I will have to drop the project for want of certainty. I may still go to Puerto Rico to visit Richie and make some recordings, but politically pertinent media would not be the goal. In the meantime I aim to create a prototype of the products I would like to create for Radio Huelga and the movement. I will be identifying Puerto Rican folk music groups in New York to be recorded and used in a studio composition. The original composition will be made available for download and remix. This will serve to gain further interest from organizations and students. 

Papel Machete puppet at a UPR student demonstration:

Papel Machete performance:

Radio Huelga on PaperTigerTV:

Street Bomba during the strike

Clown Police street theatre group

Veiled Woman demonstrator

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Probando

Probando by Jesse Ricke


As the culmination of my time abroad I offer this piece of art. Stories of joy and home sickness and death and transformation emerge from the chaotic ambience coalescing into music.  

Coca leaves taste like $%!#.


The dusty hallway I walked up with Richie and Molly to buy my charango from a old man covered in sawdust and filled with music.


Banana on pizza.


The lightness of the woman sleeping in the bus seat beside me.


Playing Nirvana with a lumberjack, attracting attention in the sun.


Little plastic cup filled from a bottle of beer, both of which are passed to me. Drink, fill, pass it on.


Following brass bands and kids up and down the crumbling streets.


Derby hats on little old ladies that go up and down and up and down the mountain.


The churro lady.


Matt in the galleries of the smiling god.


Pulverized, not mashed, potatoes.


School kid sing-alongs and the digitized wonder of seeing ones self sing, like a maniac, for the first time.


San Luis grande, sin gas.


Thanks for sharing the summer with me. To everyone, get out into the world and get a little of the biggness on you.

PRX » Piece » Probando

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Jugando y Muertos

The Brit told me about a school with a large field marked by large circles.  The word 'muertos' is written large in one of the circles.  The school is in a town frequented by mudslides and quakes, and afterwards the survivors need a place to pile the less fortunate.  They use the large circle drawn in the school's field where the children play.  What does everyone think of that?  If you can't make up your mind about it, then I'm with you.

The final school was up a final mountain.  Mark and I ran into the schools director on our way up.  She didn't stop talking, which usually doesn't impress me, but when I'm hiking up my morning mountain talk is less then comfortable as nearly all my air is busy keeping my blood oxygenized and my brain un-passed out.  She was a firecracker.  The school is efficient, fun, even clean.  The computer room has a little hand wash station with bars of soap.  The teachers are greedy for help.  They're building a garden behind the school to teach the kids nutrition and math and anything else.  A little ambition goes a long way and it was a good ending to my time in the Andes.

Matt gave us that tour of the Chavin ruins.  Its more or less a man made cavern of rocks and stones, carved by hand and 3000 years standing.  In its day the priests of the temple drugged out their congregation and whatever visiting royalty and blew their minds with conch trumpet blowing and incredible sculptures of their maddening gods.  Thats how they gained control of the Peruvian region without lifting a spear.  Something like that.  No one's really sure.  But they left behind some cool stuff.  The pic is of a statue of their major god, a grinning feline carved into a flat slab of stone and hidden in the temples labyrinth.  

Then there's the trip back to Lima.  I might have taken the long way.  Perhaps I passed Lima on the way to Arequipa, hung around with Europeans, watching the World Cup final and drinking.  Then I could have gone white water rafting before hitting up Cusco to enjoy the food and debauched atmosphere of hostel bars.  Maybe I ran into a swiss lumberjack and ... holy hell, is that Richie?  It just might be.  And maybe we hung out with some rockers that night and passed around a strat and smoke and such.  And its quite possible that I took a long ride in the front of a bus up the pan-american highway between ocean and desert and mountains.  The fog zones are hypothetically killer, at 70 mph passing oil trucks on a cliff edge.  And maybe, just maybe, I chill out in a dessert oasis and go sand boarding with a lovely German woman and a cadre of beautiful internationals and we all faded off into the evening on pisco sours.  It could just have been a string of phantoms, but either way here are some pics.

In Lima we do an hour of paperwork in about 12 hours - bure-fucking-aucracy -  and wave the ministry farewell.  Goodbye Ministry.  May you get over your bullshit.  I like that.  And I coast on through the remainder of my Peruvian days with a pair of Taiwanese women, drinking and eating and perusing piles of skulls in the Catholic as all hell monasteries.  One of the ladies suggests a buffet joint called Embrujos.  The food was homely and plentiful and I looked forward to my parents fridge.  My last day was oddly fog-less as  I watch Kathy and Yvon, the Taiwanese, parasail over the cliffs and beaches, and with my last night the Brit and I recorded stupid songs we made up and smoked his cigarettes. 

The tough times were left in the distance behind me as I transformed into a tourist.  I loved it.  Those kids in the mountains are on my mind.  I did not learn enough.  Its when I close my eyes and drift through the images that I get a clue.  It was sweet and heavy.  But I can't keep it in line or make up my mind about it.  One more post coming. 

       

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Borros de Fuego

Not really a plop.  Not quite a smack.  Almost a rustling, as the the donkey doo collided with the back of my neck, head, and upper right shoulder, provoking in response only a slight "fuck?" and a few darted looks around for the origin of this globulous projectile.  I mean of course I knew the origin, but was this an intentional assault, or had a farmer mis-shoveled, or had the originating donkey somehow hoisted its hindquarters atop and over the high wall at my side.  I reasoned that donkeys are the type to conserve their energy and are not privy to acrobatic amusements, and I deduced that, as the fecal torrent had mercifully ceased, I had not wandered into the work area of any local.  This must have been a deliberate insult.  Someone had insulted ME!  

Well, I preceded to do what any self respecting man in a foreign country would do when confronted with such an audacious effrontery.  My rampage swallowed the small Chavin borrio of La Florida in flames, leaving dozens of citizens maimed, a few donkeys psychologically devastated, and countless guinea pigs digested in my vengefully ravenous gut.  No, I just washed my self under my water bottle, went to the gringo cafe near the local tourist attraction, and had a cup of coffee.  It was some hours later when I got all the donkey doo picked free from the joints of my glasses.

So there is coffee in Chavin, and most of the locals are perfectly sweet.  Two in particular: our hostel hostess and the kind restaurant keeper who makes us dinner every day.  There are also a number of other gringos in town: a 15 strong family of missionaries with us at the hostel, and a wonderfully nerdy archeologist named Matt.  Chavin holds one of the most extraordinary sites of ancient cultural remains on the planet.  Before the Aztecs, the first pan peruvian civilization made this valley its center, and it was on their precedent that all other South American empires made their bones.  Or something like that.  Like Greece.  Sorta.  We're taking the tour on Monday and that'll set me straight.

The first night here I sat in the pristine central plaza and watched the high school dance with Matt and the rest of the town, listening to the sloppy brass of the local dance band and the feedback ridden harp/bass/vocal band on the town PA.  With few exceptions Peruvians can't really dance.  All they know is a short two step and their Catholic restraint forbids them from doing any spins or dips.  Still, they managed to pick a few winners from the participants.  And then the fireworks.  We American have got to appropriate this one.  They build these structures of wheels and joints, load them with sparklers and volcano type explosives, set the fuse and stand back, though not very far back.  I can't believe no one gets cooked.  Its truly beautiful and surreal.

   

My work this week was brief, just two days, but arduous in its commute, the steepest climb of the climbs so far.  The town of Nunupata is tiny and the kids are of simple desires and darling.  Lots of Chechuan, the local indigenous language, so my broken spanish is little understood.  The teacher is cool and she appreciates my work.  We fixed a classroom door together by ripping the useless decorative metal away so the mechanics could work freely.  For a few moments I had my own youth noise orchestra as I conducted several apt sections of preteen Nunupatians performing random XO noises.

4th of July was a deal.  The Huarez crew came on over to visit the Chavez crew and we got drunk on sunlight shining off the churning water and 4 bottles of $4 champagne and 1 bottle of Pisco, a cheap Peruvian rum type thing that reminds me more of gin.  We lounged next to the Chavez river among the stacked stone ruins of the future home an older sweetheart of a man.  Sweetness in the air and fine conversation and cigs with Adam the Brit.  It's good to get a buzz on in the early afternoon sun and to keep it on like a pancho in the rain.

Excuse the late posting.  Internet is pushing a chain.  More to come.

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Moviendo

Cuy is a specialty in the Andes, which the locals invest with a certain status.  Its a guinea pig, gutted and fried, its arms spread wide and its face wholly intact.  The fortunate diner picks around the fat and bones for the few morsels of meat clutching to the ribcage, jawbone, spinal column, etc.

I've been spending a lot of time on the hostel roof overlooking Huari.  The town got into my guts again this week, leaving me vomiting and bed ridden for most of Wednesday, but the visage of its buildings, lounging and crumbling in the mountain shade, and the echos of the school kids and buses and donkeys and brass bands sounding their presence put a real piece in me and I'm happy to have been there.  We're now back in Huarez, enjoying the semi cosmopolitan busyness and dining selection, awaiting our next deployment to Chavin, a town smaller than Huari but with tourist attractions that may lend it some Americanized comforts.  Where go the gringos, so go the coffee shops.

There are iconic paintings paired with large cartoony text announcing the contenders for upcoming regional elections in the area.  These works are everywhere, in every town, often coating a full wall or several full walls of a person's business or home.  I have noted two top contenders, a least judging by the proliferation of propaganda.  Anabal is represented by a stout figure in red and white stripes, and Manpe is represented by a condor in a barrette, clutching the stoic sun in its talons.  I'm told by Dhyana and Diego that South Americans have a conviction for regional politics that Americans can hardly understand.  Its not about moral issues or personal scandal.  Its about whose going to have the resources next year, to feed their families and expand their crops.  Its about bread and butter, life and death, material power over your life.  I asked if I could engage the kids about their political experiences, but was told that kids were left out of such matters, and even if they had some opinions the classroom is not the place for it.  A child could get beat up for their political affiliations and teachers may even ostracize them.

This weeks school had five students and a little girl who wasn't old enough for school but just liked to hang out.  She liked my camera and smiled like a greedy imp.  So cute.  The last day we attended none of the kids showed up because of the weekend festival and all the dancing and church services that were going on.  Twitchy folk moves to drums and flutes.  I chilled with the band dudes a bit this week but got turned off when all they could focus on were the gringas I was supposed to bring along for their charms to work on.  The festival parties go past midnight, the town grooving to harp, bass, and singer doing this melodic minor/pentatonic folk music that I'm really getting into.  I saw a more commercial version here in Huaraz yesterday, on a booming beer ad of a stage in a dusty field surrounded by old bricks and families.  I drank my beer for an hour or so, contemplating hybridity, and was invited to dance and converse with a rotund older woman who knew every word and mouthed them as she masde her little steps and spins, and this younger woman cut in and showed me some real moves and we all sat back down and the younger one was several sheets to the wind and grabby like she was looking for something in my chest.  Right now I'm in this gingo joint with Bob Dylan on the speakers, eating french toast and drinking the last cup of real coffee I'll have for a while.

            

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Un Semana con Las Mejores de los Andes

We're doing alright.  Health has returned and we've decided to fill our diet with mostly bread and fruit, though I have a large preference for cereal bars.  Anything not greasy, please.  

This weeks morning commute was more seldom and mostly on foot.  The first two days we didn't make it to the school because the teacher had meetings and the last day was a short one and we would not have made it to class in time to be of any use.  The trek began with the same mad taxi down and up the dirt roads and was followed by about an hour of panting straight up a mountain.  Wednesday morning found me not so happy about this, a lot more work than the first week for what I expected to be the same disappointment.  But once we got to the place I changed my mind.  Such a lovely little Andes village full of bulls and little irrigated streams of babbling water.

The school was new, fresh paint and educational posters on the wall.  The teacher was a pro, handling about ten kids in different grades, making games of multiplication and nutrition, and the kids were bright-eyed interested.  They called me Tio, meaning uncle but also the local slang for 'dude,'  and we played futbol during recess.  Bekka taught them volleyball moves and learned their names.  Lunch is made by a different local mama each day, and let me tell you, fresh homemade farm food sucks, but that's alright.  This one little booger decided to gun down the gringo with his plastic pistol, and he nailed me several times to everyones maniacal delight.  Savages.  The XO work was fruitful, drawing admiration from the kids and the teacher.  With only two days we couldn't do everything we might have liked, but I think they'll be using them more often for our being there.  I feel encouraged that this job could be worth something.

There was a parade on Thursday, a one year anniversary for a local grade school.  Bread box sized transparent plastic lanterns imitating flowers and airplanes and swans and cars and one glowing spiderman were swung about by their preteen creators.  They marched down the alleys and through the squares to the beat of a local brass band, much like that rooftop band from Juarez, and the players were sloppy and rocked.  The parade ended at the school, with the kids taking to the swing set and the parents commiserating and the musicians opening bottles with their teeth.  I joined the band and asked them about how and where they practice and if I could bring a mic and they fed me some beer and were entertained by my shameless spanish-inept whiteness.  

Bekka and I took our day off to do laundry in the local river.  I don't mind the work, but when you don't have a spot in the sun to hang your drenched threads, just a bed post and a tv antenna in a cold room, well it just don't do much good.  Last night my fellows finally joined me in getting a proper buzz on, very much thanks to Julio, one of the local bandsman, who passed around beer mixed with coka-cola and laid the flowery promises of wedlock thick on the ladies.  Good guy, though desperate and hung up on his moneyless life.  Relatable.

By the by, Billy Bragg & Wilco rules.  Ripped it from Tiffany and I'm listening to it constantly.  'Eisler on the Go' melts me.  Had it ringing in my head as we walked to a local waterfall yesterday.  It's a curtain of energy unfolding from the high rocks and I wanted to reach out and touch it.  We followed the path to where the rocks got slippery and sunk into the black wet dirt and felt the mist drench us as we stood above its crashing down.  You don't touch it, it touches you.

           

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Enferma en La Tierra de Dios

I remember when things were different.  When I knew what I went to work for and by working hard I could feel appreciated.  I remember when I could get a buzz on at the end of each day and not feel sick from it.  When I wasn't afraid of food.  When toilet paper was compulsory and my stool was solid.  That's not how things are right now.  

We've all been ill this last week, fatigued and sore, but worse is the difficulty of our work.  The schools that we go to have laptops but rarely use them.  It's our job to turn their interets on, but inspiring excitement for this technology is foolish when the teachers we're working with have little use for it.  For them, just getting through the day comes first.

In Huaytuna, mine and Bekka's first deployment, we mostly kept to the schools computer lab, an incredible resource considering the student population of 30+, where the laptops are taken out for us to use with different groups of kids.  Some take to it.  Others, mostly boys, see it as just another venue for aggression.  We play games and go through menial tasks, all fruitless as the laptops will not likely be used again for months after we leave.  There are glimmers of interests from teachers and students, when they enjoy sharing photos or singing together, but mostly we just hang out.  On our last day there, physical education day, the director ran the kids through some exercises.  Bekka found out from one of the kids that other weeks they just play with balls or whatever.  We can't really tell how much of the schools performance is just a show for our reports to the Ministry.  

Here's the real punch in the gut.  We were in a restaurant where a handful of local educators were having a meeting, and they figured out that we were involved with OLPC.  One of the educators came over to talk with us, asking if we could somehow get laptops to her school where computers are non-existant.  It turns out her school was overlooked because it's too close to a metropolitan center and the project had decided to focus on rural schools.  But the rural schools need more paper, books, and some kind of internet before they can make any use of the laptops.  Classic misalocation.  The Ministry never asked the schools what they wanted.  They just presumed to know what was good for everybody.  And the XOs end up collecting dust.

The highlights are stellar.  We get ourselves into the mountains to the hidden lakes and wish our eyes were bigger so we could take in more of it.  Peru is the kind of landscape that my mind finds difficult to believe.  And there are moments of revelry despite our sicknesses and weariness.  There was this music in Huaraz, a bangin' brass band, and I heard it like it was right next to me but I couldn't find it, so I look up and see a rooftop fiesta.  The Brit and I come back later and he talks his way into the building and we're up on the roof dancing and drinking with these old close-talking Peruvian assholes.  They pass around glasses of beer, sticky from many hands and mouths, and stutter over their curiosity at the gringos.  This one guy would not leave me alone.  Another man's adoration can be flattering, but have some class fellas.  The band was a 12 piece, clarinets and trumpets and sousaphones and trombones and a bass drum, all boracho.  Sorry I don't have any pics.  There had better be another chance.

So now we're back in Huari.  We were supposed to begin our second deployment but our guide never showed up to guide us, so we're back in bed.  I'll spend my afternoon doing homework for my online class on radio production and audio art - great stuff - and data entry for Fanatic, a NY record whose payroll I'd like to jump onto this Fall.  I want to pull some art out of my time here, but the illness and the language and the bureaucracy are dragging me down.  What can I do but toughen up and get back to work.                  

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