Venho contar pra vocês
um cordel de três irmãs
simpáticas e bonitas,
inteligentes e sãs,
porém elas são humildes,
não altaneiras nem vãs.
Moram numa ilha tranqüila
bem no meio da Bahia---
a que é de Todos os Santos--
nadando a periferia,
brincando e cantando estranhas
e aquáticas melodias.
Elas nadam nuas sempre--
assim descoberto o peito--
sem malícia, sem pudor,
naturais, sem preconceito,
porque estas irmãs são iaras.
Vivem nuas desse jeito!
Moqueca é a irmã mais velha.
Alta, negra, responsável,
toma conta da família,
mantém a harmonia estável.
Quando acha oportunidades,
procura a recomendável.
A segunda é Mariscada.
Moreno tem o cabelo,
pele canela, olhos verdes,
e um balanço muito belo
pois nada contra a corrente
seguindo um sonho sem vê-lo.
A mais nova, ainda pequena,
de nome Macarronada,
é ruiva, baixa, gordinha.
Disposição animada
tem, pois em todo momento
atua precipitada.
Macarronada é produto
de outra família; é adotada.
Não é baiana; é mineira.
Tem a pronúncia alterada.
Mesmo assim ela faz canto
e com suas irmãs nada!
O caso é que resolveram
cuidar da Praia da Barra
protegendo-a de inimigos
de uma maneira bizarra,
pois vão ouvir como elas agem
segundo este cordel narra.
Foi numa noite de nuvens,
acesa a luz do farol,
o lampião quase visível
como faíscas de sol,
que apareceram dois barcos
da frota do rei espanhol.
As três irmãs, espreitando,
ouviram esta conversa:
"Estos brutos de Bahia
tienen su armada dispersa."
"Después de nuestro saqueo,
¡cómo quedará de adversa!"
"Ataque!" as iaras gritaram,
e agitaram as correntes
fazendo bater as caudas.
As águas ficaram quentes
e os madeiros dos navios
soltavam fumaça, ardentes.
Com raiva na água fervida,
fizeram-se cozinheiras.
Moqueca mudou de canto,
pediu favor das palmeiras
mandarem voando os cocos
pelas brisas passageiras.
Atingiram nos navios,
dando leite em goteirões.
Chamou os outros ingredientes:
cebolas e pimentões,
alho, azeite de dendê,
tomates e alguns limões.
Chegaram voando no ar
e cairam perto dela.
Então tudo misturou.
Fez da bahia panela,
e cozinhou quanto fruto
do mar que cabia nela.
Mas Mariscada achava ruim--
sacrifício insuportável--
deixar tanto peixe morto,
pois curtia o "sustentável."
Então com Macarronada
fez um plano formidável:
Magicamente teceram,
usando uns grandes novelos
feitos de uma coleção
familiar de seus cabelos,
uma rede limitando
a área desses bons apelos.
Assim ficaram presos
os espanhóis nos seus navios:
a zona interior fervia.
Protegidos pelos fios,
na zona exterior pulavam
peixes e animais sadios.
"¡Por Dios! ¡Nos están guisando!"
os marinheiros berraram.
Suando, desesperados,
rapidamente tiraram
casacos, camisas, calças
até despidos ficaram.
As iaras os viram nus,
desarmados e perplexos.
Aí falou Macarronada:
"Os jeitos não são complexos.
A comida já está feita e
pro baile, ambos os sexos!"
Adotando aquela idéia,
lembraram dicas maternas:
morderam-se os rabos, jeito
de dar mudanças internas,
transformando o que é de peixe
numas belas e fortes pernas.
Convertidas em mulheres,
subiram nas caravelas
trazendo moqueca quente
numas mágicas tigelas.
Os homens, maravilhados,
não desistiram de vê-las.
De novo elas cantaram,
os guerreiros convidando
a comerem e dançarem
toda a noite, desfrutando
a festa náutica e nua,
o farol iluminando.
Os espanhóis aceitaram.
A festa foi um sucesso.
Foi mostrada a cortesia
naquele alegre congresso.
Quanto aos bons fins diplomáticos,
A nudez virou progresso!
Muitos fazem homenagem
à mensagem dessa lenda.
Com apreço se reúnem
a fazer da nudez, senda
da humanidade instruída
a ver o mundo sem venda.
Por isso é que o dia de hoje,
quando vem alguém à praia
dançar e comer ao sol
sem sunga, tanga, nem saia,
deve ter zona marcada,
todos respeitando a raia!
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Monday, September 13, 2010
El oratáculo
Anduvo por el desierto
los cuarenta y tres días
con su unánime noche.
Supo lo que es la intimidad con los escarabajos,
el convivio con las lagartijas,
el comerse las agrias ansias
y volver bien redondas las dudas
de tanto reciclarlas.
Deambuló por ambos lados de la frontera
de la lucidez.
Y ahora, en extremos de fertilidad desatada,
chorrea disparates que envuelven--
de manera ya cotidiana--
alguna que otra profecía.
Está como nublado, obnubilado,
emitiendo un perpetuo chipichipi
de nostalgias hipotéticas
y fantasías cimentadas
cuando rederrepente se despeja,
se escucha el acorde sostenido y triunfante
de un coro angelical,
y estalla de su rostro iluminado la expresión
inconfundible pero instantánea
de la Verdad,
para luego seguir ensartando
otras sandeces insospechadas.
Entre azul y buenas noches,
cuando no es orate, es oráculo.
Acaso viene siendo lo mismo.
los cuarenta y tres días
con su unánime noche.
Supo lo que es la intimidad con los escarabajos,
el convivio con las lagartijas,
el comerse las agrias ansias
y volver bien redondas las dudas
de tanto reciclarlas.
Deambuló por ambos lados de la frontera
de la lucidez.
Y ahora, en extremos de fertilidad desatada,
chorrea disparates que envuelven--
de manera ya cotidiana--
alguna que otra profecía.
Está como nublado, obnubilado,
emitiendo un perpetuo chipichipi
de nostalgias hipotéticas
y fantasías cimentadas
cuando rederrepente se despeja,
se escucha el acorde sostenido y triunfante
de un coro angelical,
y estalla de su rostro iluminado la expresión
inconfundible pero instantánea
de la Verdad,
para luego seguir ensartando
otras sandeces insospechadas.
Entre azul y buenas noches,
cuando no es orate, es oráculo.
Acaso viene siendo lo mismo.
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
Europe Syrup
There's a kind of a sticky-sweet pap that pervades Latin American cultural discourse: a syncretic residue, patina of questionable glories, that many accept at face value. It is a treacle preferred worldwide, and its main ingredient is Eurocentrism.
A majority of us in the Americas speak and write European languages, but try as Neruda might to declare that the barbarism of the Spanish conquest was forgiven by the wondrous gift of the Castilian language, European languages merely replaced indigenous ones. Many of these were already quite complex, and although they did not have, at the time of European contact, the chirographic and even typographical advances that some of the European languages had so recently developed themselves, they were rich in other ways, including synesthetic picture writing in Mesoamerica, and the tactile essence of the Andean quipus as well as the stelae of several cultures. In the case of Nheengatu, the língua geral of colonial Brazil, the vocabulary of an indigenous language (Tupinambá) was grafted onto the syntax of a European one (Portuguese). The happily wed pidgin functioned fine, far and wide, over several centuries and is still spoken today.
It is telling that nouns are the part of speech in which the indigenous languages most greatly enriched the European ones. Flora, fauna, and objects unfamiliar to the Europeans were either assimilated via their indigenous signifieds (often mispronounced or "adapted" to European pronunciations) or misnamed to fit European experience (i.e. tigre for jaguar). But verbs, as in ways of doing and being and thinking? Precious few. And yet certain cultural practices and cognitive processes persist in the Americas, evident in behavioral preferences. For example, why does traditional Mexican pedagogy continue to focus so intensely on penmanship, to the detriment of content, in the instruction of writing skills? Perhaps it is the result of a double legacy: the Mexica tlacuilos--scribes whose job was to copy words as objects, not produce new sequences of them--and the colonial New Spanish Catholic focus on teaching Latin, more than Castilian, as a language already set in stone, a language to memorize in inalterable prayers.
Inquisitorial proscriptions (among other factors) delayed the establishment of printing presses in the Iberian colonies.Yet in the Lusophone world today, Brazil dominates the publishing industry as well as film and television production. Huge and powerful Brazil is the "gigante acordado"; however, in the Spanish-speaking world, the majority of the main publishers are now Spanish-owned, despite strong growth in the publishing industries of Mexico, Argentina, and Chile in the late 20th century. Nonetheless, this imbalance pertains only to print. The Spanish American countries, and Brazil, compete very well with Spain and other countries in terms of television and film output. Such video productions often aim to promote, say, Mexican tourism or Brazilian landscapes, foregrounding contemporary interpretations of the autochthonous for viewers both domestic and foreign.
It is perhaps surprising that so many manifestations of autochthonous lifeways survived the Iberian invasions. But I find it more surprising that there still exists, in the 21st century, so much deference to Europe. European writers, especially theorists and philosophers but even creative writers, continue to be more widely studied in Latin America than their homegrown counterparts. But those European theorists and thinkers have so much to say, and they've said it so well, and produced so much over a longer period of time in the language, and it's so widely discussed!, one might object. Well, one thing leads to another, doesn't it? I would suggest that the underlying assumption is that certain kinds of thinking don't happen outside Europe or the Anglo West. As much as we like to think about how the expressions of a given language can shape (and thus limit) thought in that language, to assert that philosophy has not and cannot be expressed in a non-European language is absurd. The challenge is to not just take for granted that philosophy is all about the Germans or the French.
In Larry Baxter's novel The Mayan Glyph, the cure for an unknown epidemic hinges on the deciphering of classic-era Mayan glyphs that show that at least one Mayan scientist was on the track of the periodic table of the elements. The visual design of his discovery had been expressed in a way unfamiliar to Western convention. The premise is fictitious though not implausible, given how much we know about Mayan advances in math and astronomy. One wonders just how much can be recovered, or rediscovered, regarding American indigenous and also African attainments in the various fields of knowledge, including definitions of (or variations on) epistemology itself. It all comes down to language: visual, oral, even tactile.
Hold the syrup.
A majority of us in the Americas speak and write European languages, but try as Neruda might to declare that the barbarism of the Spanish conquest was forgiven by the wondrous gift of the Castilian language, European languages merely replaced indigenous ones. Many of these were already quite complex, and although they did not have, at the time of European contact, the chirographic and even typographical advances that some of the European languages had so recently developed themselves, they were rich in other ways, including synesthetic picture writing in Mesoamerica, and the tactile essence of the Andean quipus as well as the stelae of several cultures. In the case of Nheengatu, the língua geral of colonial Brazil, the vocabulary of an indigenous language (Tupinambá) was grafted onto the syntax of a European one (Portuguese). The happily wed pidgin functioned fine, far and wide, over several centuries and is still spoken today.
It is telling that nouns are the part of speech in which the indigenous languages most greatly enriched the European ones. Flora, fauna, and objects unfamiliar to the Europeans were either assimilated via their indigenous signifieds (often mispronounced or "adapted" to European pronunciations) or misnamed to fit European experience (i.e. tigre for jaguar). But verbs, as in ways of doing and being and thinking? Precious few. And yet certain cultural practices and cognitive processes persist in the Americas, evident in behavioral preferences. For example, why does traditional Mexican pedagogy continue to focus so intensely on penmanship, to the detriment of content, in the instruction of writing skills? Perhaps it is the result of a double legacy: the Mexica tlacuilos--scribes whose job was to copy words as objects, not produce new sequences of them--and the colonial New Spanish Catholic focus on teaching Latin, more than Castilian, as a language already set in stone, a language to memorize in inalterable prayers.
Inquisitorial proscriptions (among other factors) delayed the establishment of printing presses in the Iberian colonies.Yet in the Lusophone world today, Brazil dominates the publishing industry as well as film and television production. Huge and powerful Brazil is the "gigante acordado"; however, in the Spanish-speaking world, the majority of the main publishers are now Spanish-owned, despite strong growth in the publishing industries of Mexico, Argentina, and Chile in the late 20th century. Nonetheless, this imbalance pertains only to print. The Spanish American countries, and Brazil, compete very well with Spain and other countries in terms of television and film output. Such video productions often aim to promote, say, Mexican tourism or Brazilian landscapes, foregrounding contemporary interpretations of the autochthonous for viewers both domestic and foreign.
It is perhaps surprising that so many manifestations of autochthonous lifeways survived the Iberian invasions. But I find it more surprising that there still exists, in the 21st century, so much deference to Europe. European writers, especially theorists and philosophers but even creative writers, continue to be more widely studied in Latin America than their homegrown counterparts. But those European theorists and thinkers have so much to say, and they've said it so well, and produced so much over a longer period of time in the language, and it's so widely discussed!, one might object. Well, one thing leads to another, doesn't it? I would suggest that the underlying assumption is that certain kinds of thinking don't happen outside Europe or the Anglo West. As much as we like to think about how the expressions of a given language can shape (and thus limit) thought in that language, to assert that philosophy has not and cannot be expressed in a non-European language is absurd. The challenge is to not just take for granted that philosophy is all about the Germans or the French.
In Larry Baxter's novel The Mayan Glyph, the cure for an unknown epidemic hinges on the deciphering of classic-era Mayan glyphs that show that at least one Mayan scientist was on the track of the periodic table of the elements. The visual design of his discovery had been expressed in a way unfamiliar to Western convention. The premise is fictitious though not implausible, given how much we know about Mayan advances in math and astronomy. One wonders just how much can be recovered, or rediscovered, regarding American indigenous and also African attainments in the various fields of knowledge, including definitions of (or variations on) epistemology itself. It all comes down to language: visual, oral, even tactile.
Hold the syrup.
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