Tall Raspberry Mocha, Please

This drawing is based on Mesoamerican speech scroll iconography, a visual representation of speaking that incorporated flowers, flames, bones, etc. to indicate types of discourse.

Romance del farmacéutico andante

Llegaba al puente de hierro

el farmacéutico andante—

enderezador de tuertos,

surtidor de mil jarabes.

De un pueblo lejano vino

llevando su único traje

y en su bolsa de remedios,

vendas, frascos, hierbas, sales.

Hacía generaciones

que había aprendido su arte,

desdibujando las fiebres

y esponjando los calambres.

Ya había cortado muchos

cordones umbilicales,

cada uno un regalo tierno.

¡Cómo lo amaban las madres!

El sabio siempre asistía

en la hora de las verdades.

Y siempre les recetaba

lo mismo, sin contrariarse:

gotas de agua en la cabeza,

bien dejen secarla el aire,

para su inocencia calva;

y para la piel tan suave,

leche de madre, seis meses,

porque su color agarre.

Y así decía a los ciegos

llorar con té de aguacate,

y besarse con canela

sugería a los amantes.

Llegaba al puente de hierro

el farmacéutico andante—

estrenando canas ahora

y jaula de costillares.

Pero apenas cruza el puente,

cual hielo duro le cae

la mezquindad de las sombras.

Su bolsa en el suelo yace.

Lo golpean lo desnudan

unos gritos de azabache.

Todo remedio le quitan.

Todo abuso y daño le hacen.

Lanzan vendas, gasas, yesos

al río negro de esmalte,

donde se revientan peces

secos, sucios, jadeantes.

Se esfuman en humo y bruma

las hierbas medicinales,

cenizas que cicatrizan

los pulmones y las calles.

Rompen los frascos de vidrio,

jarabes y alcoholes salen,

los que abusan el cerebro

charcos en la acera lamen.

Roban polvos y pomadas

viles narcotraficantes.

Se llevan los bisturíes

y pagan con monedas de sangre

y pervierten los signos alquímicos en

grafiti

y tuercen las palabras, las quiebran, las dejan

a perder a

pudrir

y violan la sagrada entereza desnuda del cuerpo

sin misericordia y

sin consciencia

siquiera

nada

De la Farmacia de Dios

lo echaron en el umbral.

Sufrió la muerte de quien

vislumbró la luz final.

American Tropics

I’ve had a particularly productive month in the London area as a visiting research fellow at University of London’s Institute for the Study of the Americas . Neatly bisecting my four weeks in England was the University of Essex-sponsored conference, “American Tropics: Toward a Literary Geography." Given my current research on representations of the body in Latin American literature of the 1920s and 30s, and also an investigation into contemporary Amazonian theater, I particularly enjoyed new perspectives of the American Tropics seen/scene from London.

At the very well organized conference, of the ideal size and duration for getting to know people (about 70-80 participants over parts of four days), I met fellow Latin Americanists as well as colleagues in fields related to my own but outside my specialty: anthropology, geography, the US South, the Anglophone and Francophone Caribbean. And among the many general concepts I learned figure the following:

The names, titles, and a rough idea of the creative styles of Wilson Harris (Guyana) and Elizabeth Nunez and Harold Sonny Ladoo (Trinidad), important contemporary writers of the Anglophone Caribbean;

Of the successful and prize-winning efforts of the Saramakas of Suriname to map their ancestral lands in order to protect them from logging interests;

Very useful general ideas about place, space, map and body, and the interplay between language and landscape;

That the emplacement of New Orleans as a city of the Americas (and not just an American city) is an ongoing critical endeavor among several disciplines and with much enthusiasm;

That James Fenimore Cooper wrote a high-seas novel in which the Florida Keys play a particularly symbolic role regarding the liminality of gender roles;

That Guantánamo Bay has a long history of use as a detention center; and the US-Cuban history of the legal ambiguities on which the Bush administration relied for purposes of acting outside the law;

That the University of Essex holds a first-class collection of Latin American art, mostly on display in its library;

Details and examples regarding the historical process of musical and marketing styles presenting São Paulo, Salvador, and the general Brazilian imaginary to the world;

That there is a rich vein of literature pertaining to the border dispute in the region of Amazonia shared by Colombia and Peru, but that residents of the area relate more closely to each other across the border than they do to the faraway Andean capitals of Lima and Bogotá;

That the practice and spirit of shamanic kanaima remain extant not only in areas of Amazonia but also in comics and online gaming phenomena;

Of the importance of the five directions quincunx in the Mesoamerican conception of thinking about place in the world, and of the vitality behind the blue-green color associated with the center;

That with regard to the three tropical zones in the Americas, Africa, and Asia, the American tropics (or neotropics) host the longest continual stretch of land (along with the greatest biodiversity and river system on the planet); and that the mouths of the Amazon lie almost exactly along the equator.

I state these, unabashedly, as facts I have learned or added to already built contexts: let no one forget that learning is, and always should be, a lifelong process, for everybody’s benefit. And I state them without giving the names of the presenters who illuminated me, to protect the innocent, although I am willing to provide them to a courteous inquirer. Beyond the limits of the conference, I add the following incomplete list of further concepts I learned:

That I am most grateful for contacts established with colleagues at my host institute along with the Institute of Germanic and Romance Studies, independent scholars, and colleagues met at the conference;

That the Institute for the Study of the Americas sponsors the excellent series through Palgrave Macmillan, “Studies of the Americas” , along with the editorial offices of Journal of Latin American Studies;

That the British Library, which has an outstanding Latin American collection, will be hosting an exhibition in 2010 on the bicentennial of the independence of the Spanish American republics ;

That the London area can experience an almost tropical climate for a few weeks in late June and early July;

That historian Charles Boxer (1904-2000) and statesman George Canning (1770-1827) are important and intriguing figures in the history of Latin American studies in Britain; the latter’s house in posh Belgravia now hosts a very nice public library on all things Latin American along with frequent concerts and lectures sponsored in conjunction with Latin American embassies;

That the Department of Portuguese and Brazilian Studies at Kings College (where Boxer, above, once held the Camões Chair) was the first of its kind in the UK and continues to be unique in many ways;

Of the existence of Peepal Tree Press and its first-rate selection of titles by Caribbean and Caribbean-diaspora writers;

That the British Museum , which houses an impressive pre-Hispanic Mexican collection, will be sponsoring the September 2009-January 2010 exhibition “Moctezuma: Aztec Ruler” congregating artifacts from prominent museums in the Americas as well as Europe; it is to be the first such exhibition based on the life of the Aztecs’ “last elected ruler”;

That the Kew Gardens display narrative posted underneath its rubber tree specimen rather blithely states that the tree became widely planted throughout Asia by the turn of the 20th century, without mentioning the involvement of Kew Gardens in the cultivation of the seeds stolen by Henry Wickham from Amazonas state, in what has recently been labeled one of the original acts of biopiracy, for propagation in the British colonies of Asia.

That I heard as much Portuguese as Spanish spoken on the streets of London, with both languages represented amply in non-European as well as European variants.

To avoid continuing on too long, I’ll stop here, and heartily thank my family, for their key emotional support for this opportunity, and my employer, the University of Tulsa, for its fundamental financial support in helping me fulfill the research fellowship.

100% Homogenized Mexico

Mexico’s is one of the world’s greatest cultures. The manifestations of its Mesoamerican and Colonial pasts—tamales and piñatas, Aztec iconography and Baroque churches—are immediately recognizable from Australia to Zimbabwe. A recent issue of Vuelo, Mexicana Airlines’ in-flight magazine, profiled the twelve greatest Mexican exports; among them figure, of course, food products such as corn, chilies, tequila, chocolate, and vanilla, but also cultural concepts like mariachis, Mexican wrestling, the fanciful handcrafted paper-mache creatures known as alebrijes, and the oft-commented, peculiarly Mexican imagery of death.

Yet the perception, as much outside as inside Mexico, of Mexican culture’s unmistakable identity depends on an insistent and mythical homogeneity that strangles diversity. It seems ridiculous to have to point this out, but there are poor and rich Mexicans, Catholics and Jews, tall and short Mexicans, Afro-Mexicans and Chinese-Mexicans. Folks from Puebla tell jokes about the stingy citizens of Monterrey, while the regiomontanos tell jokes about the stuck-up poblanos, and everybody takes shots at the chilangos, as residents of the sprawling capital are somewhat jokingly known.

The counterpart to the 100% homogenized Mexican is the 100% homogenized gringo. And stereotypes work both ways: to be a gringo in Mexico, as Carlos Fuentes paraphrases American satirist Ambrose Bierce in Gringo viejo: ah, there can be no greater euthanasia. Even the use of the term gringo—ubiquitous, unflinching—would seem to reveal a uniformity of Mexican mindset; some might venture that, as the favorite Other, the gringo even helps define that uniformity. Most Mexicans will insist that there is nothing insulting about the term, that it’s just easier to say than the polysyllabic norteamericano or estadounidense. Believe that and I’ve got a bridge to sell you, in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, where former President Fox’s administration grandly opened an extended puente that cuts three hours off the driving time between Mexico City and Tuxtla Gutiérrez, the state capital. Even in Chiapas, where the residents proclaim proudly that the Revolution never arrived, the stereotyped gringo represents someone powerful but woefully ignorant and rude who will screw you over as fast as he can mispronounce Buenos días.

Couldn’t the same be said for the image of the American in Paris, in Istanbul, in Luanda, or just about anywhere outside the United States? Yes, but the Mexican’s relationship to the gringo hinges on the “Tortilla Curtain,” the delicately porous and sometimes transparent scar that pretends to be a border between our nations. Theorists speak of “Greater Mexico,” an area including the Mexican Republic in addition to the full third of current US territory that used to belong to New Spain and then Mexico, plus other Mexican enclaves in the cities of North America. The term’s significance, however, is more contemporary than historical, and although it embraces a kind of cultural unity, it better serves to break down exactly this siesta-under-the-cactus homogenized stereotype. Vast and various populations roam and home in Greater Mexico, spawning a more intimate familiarity amongst them, and creatively thwarting the stability of not only “American” and “Mexican” identities, but also and especially that of the “Mexican-American,” who may or may not want to embrace the label “Chicano/a.” Many people, definitely the most opportunistic and perhaps the cleverest, play it both (or several) ways, assuming whichever identity is more convenient at any given moment.

Confronted with a gringo who doesn’t conform to type, the 100% homogenized Mexican response is to adopt a monumental indifference, the impassivity of an Aztec monolith. For the stereotype is that the Mexican believes he already knows the gringo’s secrets. Anyone can tell you the gringo’s basic belief systems—just watch the US channels on TV, go to a Hollywood movie, listen to the US pop hits on the radio, talk to your cousin who worked in Dallas, your aunt who lives in Los Angeles. Similarly, on the north side of the Curtain, the more that folks support the homogenized beer-marketing Cinco de Mayo and other staples of the grand old imagery of serapes and tacos, burros and sombreros, the less is truly known about real Mexican wants and needs.

Unfortunately, even earnest and talented students of Mexican history, literature, and culture who travel to that country may be met with suspicion and perhaps derision if they do not happen to share the mestizo phenotype of the Mexican majority. Will Mexico ever open up? There has been hope since the 2000 presidential win which overthrew seventy years of one-party control. Yet in spite of the large number of Mexicans who struggle to become American citizens, Mexico itself is notoriously xenophobic when it comes to nationalizing foreigners. In his fashionable-to-deride essay El laberinto de la soledad, Nobel laureate Octavio Paz sought the image of the Mexican in his mask. I would clarify, that despite all evidence to the contrary, a common perception on either side of the border is that all Mexican masks are alike, and thus they allow only one view of the gringo from behind the mask. Herein lies the easy strength of closed unity, the promiscuous resemblance of comfort to conformity.

Copão de Pão

Click on the image to see a larger version. These are short experimental poems in Portuguese on the theme, and form, of pão-de-queijo, a special, spongy kind of delicious cheesebread.

The Aviary

A hallucinated rhapsody

Primeiro foi a gritaria da papagaiada imperial:
Amo el canto del cenzontle,
pájaro de cuatrocientas voces
pero amo más a mis hermanos:
We’re three caballeros, three gay caballeros
They say we are birds of a feather
X-polynation:
Colibird, Humming-flor, Beijabrí
Minha terra tem palmeiras
onde canta o sabiá;
as aves, que aqui gorjeiam,
não gorjeiam como lá:
¡Cuac! ¡Cuac! ¡Acucuac!
Um papagaio verde de bico dourado
principiou falando numa fala mansa,
muito nova, muito:
Ya viene viene la golondrina
Viene viene la golonchina
va que vuela la golonmaya
pero el cielo prefiere el rodoñol
su niño querido el rorreñol
el roquetzal, que vive en tu escudo
el rorroner, the coyote’s after you,
Roadrunner, if he catches you,
transfórmate:
¿Altazor o Altazur?
A hawk or a handsaw?
Toucan or not tucán, that is the question.
A guacamacarara
foi pra Araraquara
deitou numa rede e compôs
Cuculzornaíma, o Un viaje en hamaca
Maculcantazur, O Herói sem Nenhum Pudor
Altacunaimacán, Pluma envuelta en serpientes.
Ya los pajarillos cantan:
Qui-qui-ri-doodle!
1 pássaro na mão > 2 voando
Pájaro cascabel, pájaro chupamiel,
chupa la bella cracker de miel
Polly wants a galleta maría
donde el águila paró
y su estampa dibujó
el cóndor pasa,
se la pasa criando cuervos
entre cuatro zopilotes
volverán las oscuras golondrinas
Little bird, little bird, ‘neath the cinnamon tree,
¡Cómo canta la zumaya!
¡Ay, cómo canta en el árbol!
¡La rama en que cantaba el tecolote!
Little bird, little bird, do you sing for me?
Pajarillo verde, quoth the Raven, ‘Nevermoré,’
Pajarillo verde, ‘Nevermore’ voy a llorar
The Trumpet of the Swan:
¡Cuac! ¡Acucuac!
Make Way for Ducklings!
¡GuaCuac! ¡MaCuac! ¡AraCuac!
Eram centenas e centenas de colheireiras cor-de-rosa…
Tive uma tal sensação de lindeza,
fiquei tão comovido,
de repente deitei no chão da lancha…




References: Above all, Vicente Huidobro in structure, style, and a few well-known verses, as much as Mário de Andrade, to whom I give first, last, and middle words here, and from whom I borrow “hallucinated rhapsody” from different titles. Strongly present: Miguel Angel Asturias, whose Guacamayo squawks throughout, and Oswald de Andrade, whose general idea of antropofagia informs the methodology here. Cameos: William Shakespeare (with and without anthropophagy by Oswald de Andrade), Nezahualcóyotl, Walt Disney, Gonçalves Dias, Nicanor Parra, Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, Pepe Guízar, Federico García Lorca, E. B. White, Robert McCloskey, Ignacio Manuel Altamirano, Joe Darion, Edgar Allen Poe, Warner Bros., José Joaquín Palma and José María Bonilla Ruano, y varias frases y canciones de dominio público.

Smoking Murphy

If Murphy,

he of Murphy’s Law,

had been an ancient Nahua,

he’d have been Tezcatlipoca,

Smoking Mirror, The Master Mocker,

He Whose Slaves We Are,

The Enemy on Both Hands

who extends to us the merciless choice:

Damned if you Do, Damned if you Don’t.

Deceit, the Double Take, Catch-22,

La Ley de Herodes, a Mal Aire who

infiltrates,

impregnates,

like booze or ‘shrooms,

hallucinates,

in the hazy gloom,

something glimpsed but not quite seen.

Smoking Murphy,

he even tricked Quetzal “The DUDE” Coatl

on a nasty night of drunken debauchery.

Who is that?

Is that you over there, caught in the act?

No, it’s your reflection, dude,

can’t you recognize your sorry self?

Fall for it—

trickery.

If something can go wrong,

it will.

Not your will: it will.

Worship this.

Fall

for

it,

fall like fate,

and you will no longer

your will no longer

will

power.

Smoke that, Murphy,

and your will

never

know what hit ya.