The Long-Legged-Short-Torso Diaries

My pet names in Quechua

2010-08-08T08:54:00.001-07:00

Here are the list of petnames my host family calls me in the house:

Wawachay -My little baby- This is especially used when I'm hungry.

Juk'ucha-Rat. This is used when I don't finish my food.

Munay Sipas--Pretty young girl. This is used when I finish my food.

Yunk'u--Kiss ass or suck up. This is used when I am trying to convince Doña Petra to give me something I want.

Umasapa--Big head. This is used when I'm rude. So I hear this one very often.

Huch'uy sikiyoq kanki--You have a small ass. This is said arbitrarily to me at any hour of day. I still don't know why.

Collection of my favourite quotes

2010-08-07T09:33:00.001-07:00

1. When my mother landed in Bolivia I took her straight home. Doña Petra was thrilled to meet her. She asked me jokingly in Quechua if now that my mother was here I was going to drink breast milk instead of eating her cooking. The word for "teta" (breast) in Quechua is chuchhuy.
My mother said out loud [in English], "oh wow that word sounds like "chupi-chupi."
Everyone in the room gasped.
I replied, "No Mommy. That's big vagina."
My mother's first words in Quechua were "chupi-chupi-- big vagina". Well done Mommy! You might want to keep that to yourself though next time.
Doña Petra interjected "Y bien lo ha dicho también." [And she said it so well too].

2. My mother starts removing items of clothing at the dinner table. Doña Petra asks, "¿Tienes calor? Como vienes de Jamaica, pensaba que ibas a tener mucho frío acá en Cochabamba. [Are you hot? Since you're coming from Jamaica I thought you would be very cold here in Cochabamba]
My mother replies, "No, no. Solo es la menopausia" [No, no. That's just menopause].

3. One of the students that lived with my host family five years ago came to the house with his Peruvian girlfriend to visit. They hadn't seen him in forever. His girlfriend was not as easy on the eyes as he was and her personality was not as memorable as his is. (I know: euphemism to the rescue). My host mother Doña Petra said that she waited for him to come at 5am and then: " Pero cuando salió con la chica [but when he came out of the car with his girlfriend] (insert LOUD GASP here)....AYYYYYYY [Shaking her head] Quieta me he guedado. [I was speechless]"
You don't know how hard it is for my host mother to be speechless.
When my mother saw her she said, "Danielle, I wonder if she obeah him?" [I wonder if she has used witchcraft to get him.]

Later on when they had the goodbye party for him. My host mother was completely drunk and she said to him sadly, "Te quiero. Pero ayyyy! (Shaking her head) La mejor carne...la ha comido la perra". [I love you. But AYYYY! (Shaking her head) The best meat has been eaten by the female dog.]
In case you miss the reference here, the best meat is him and the female dog is the girlfriend.
Say it with me:WOW!
Hmm Do you think she was a hit with the family?

Favourite quote: La mejor carne...(Shaking head) la ha comido la perra. (The best meat has been eaten by the female dog).

Evo and the Water Wars in Cochabamba

2010-08-07T07:09:00.000-07:00

As my time in Bolivia comes to a close, I wish to chronicle some of the criticisms of the Evo Morales MAS government I have heard in my conversations with Bolivians and to also outline some of the problems surrounding the social movements in Cochabamba particularly as it relates to the water wars. My arguments below are in no way based on extensive research; they are simply detailing my own observations and the critiques of the Bolivians I live and study with, Ph.D students from abroad studying politics and the water wars in Bolivia, former revolutionaries who have been tortured in the 70s and 80s as well as Bolivian feminists and Marxists. All of these people politically identify on the left.

Outside Bolivia, Evo Morales is idealised by those on the left for his socialist, anti-imperialist rhetoric and his celebration of Andean culture and way of life. However, many of the Quechua people living in the Barrio have criticised him for his co-optation of Andean discourse and values as a political strategy. According to them, he blends much of Quechua and Aymara philosophy in ways that dangerously conflate contrasting and complex principles of Andean culture. Suddenly diverse indigenous practices and philosophies have been collapsed as one Andean culture/way of life in the public political discourse. Moreover, while he adopts Andean philosophy --particularly PachaMamaism/Love of Mother Earth-- in his political platform, he simultaneously panders to the business groups seeking to extract and exploit the natural resources and labour of indigenous communities. The exploitation of Bolivia's natural resources to capitalist ends are completely incompatible with the principles of Pacha Mamaism. In fact, the very indigenous people who voted for Evo have come out in numbers across the Andes against his attempts to extract the country's natural resources and displace thousands of indigenous people in the last few months.

Secondly, while Evo enjoys overwhelming support of much of the indigenous working class, many middle class Quechuas like my host family feel alienated by him and feel that he only represents and governs for indigenous people of a certain class. The difficulty however, I have had with their argument is that it is often filled with clear classist underpinnings. They support another indigenous candidate Felix Patzi who is middle-class, fully educated, published and and juxtapose him with Evo who they feel is a "poor, ignorant campesino". I am suspicious of their claims that Evo is just "not educated enough" nor does he speak Spanish "well enough" to be president. These arguments emerge out of a colonialist paradigm and linguistic hegemony that declare Spanish as the language of the "civilised" and the "superior". Needless to say I am somewhat skeptical about the intention of the argument itself. However, I will concede that Evo is forced to carry a burden of representation that fixes indigenous people as belonging to a certain class--the campesino class-- and erases the fact that there are indeed middle-class, educated, indigenous people.

Another point of interest is the water wars and the state of social movements in Bolivia under Evo's ruling party. In the international scene the water wars in Cochabamba have been praised as a moment of triumph for the will of the people. However, from what I am seeing on the ground and through my conversation with Anna a ph.d student from Whales studying the water wars in Cochabamba, I have come to see a completely different picture. First of all, people in Zona Norte have full and complete access to running, clean water. People in the Zona Sur do not. The MAS government has sanctioned the social movement fighting for water wars but members of that movement are forced to go to at least three meetings a week. Failure to attend these meeting will result in a fine of 10 bolivianos. This fine is also extended to those who fail to attend the rallies and protest whose images we see proudly being displayed in the local and international media. I am not kidding. To what extent are these people voluntarily protesting if they will be fined for not showing up? If this is not a clear example of co-optation of social movements by Evo's government, I don't know what is.Instead of licensing the movement itself, forcing people to fight for the right to access to running water and fining them if they do not show up, why doesn't MAS just give the people from Zona Sur the access to running water that has already been granted to the people living in Zona Norte? Why not just set up the same/similar mechanisms that are in place in Zona Norte in the Zona Sur? Anna has explained that the difficulty is building the infrastructure to reach the Zona Sur as its geographical layout is very different from the Zona Norte. While the umbrella group has done a good job of getting funding from Europe and has provided access to some parts of the Zona Sur, there is still a lot more work to be done. Moreover, the most marginalised groups of people still do not have access to running water.

Also while the water wars stopped those in power from making the changes they wanted to make, none of the people in authority at SEMAPA controlling water distribution for Cochabamba was fired or replaced. With the same authorities in power and no new policy put in place, no real structural change has actually taken place concerning the water problem in Cochabamba. It is the communities who have been forced to unite and to figure out how to get access to running water in their barrios on their own. I don't know what has come out of these alternatives but I have often seen people in Plaza Colón stealing water from the fountains with buckets when the police aren't looking. Needless to say, the problem is far from solved and the war definitely has not been won. Something more needs to be done on the structural level.

These are just critiques from my small observations and anecdotal evidence from the people I have spent much of my time with Bolivia. I do not know how much of what they say is true. However I will say that there needs to be a more critical approach to Evo Morales and the MAS government from those of us on the left outside of Bolivia. There is certainly a lack of real critical engagement on our part and a romanticisation of Latin America's first indigenous president. Such romanticisation prevents us from critically engaging in/with the struggle for equality in Bolivia and ultimately from working in solidarity with those on the front lines.

¿Anos?

2010-07-20T17:49:00.000-07:00

I needed an extension of my visa to stay in Bolivia so I went to immigration. A guy from Holland was standing in front of me in the line. The immigration officer asked him, "¿Cuántos años tienes? [How old are you?]

The Dutchman replied, "Tengo 27 anos." 'Años' in Spanish is years but 'ano' is anus. He had said, "I have 27 anuses."

The immigration officer smiled and replied dryly, "Ah ¿sí? ¿Tantos tienes!? ¿Y en dónde los guardas? Sabes qué, no se lo voy a contar a nadie. No te preocupes." [Really? so many! And where do you keep them? You know what, I am not going to tell anyone. Don't worry!]

The Dutchman looked on in confusion.

Oh the beauty of learning a language!

Uyuni: No baby llamas

2010-07-19T09:04:00.000-07:00

I spent the last four days in Uyuni. It is impossible to visit Bolivia without seeing its most famous attraction: El Salar de Uyuni--one of the 25 wonders of the world. Since the trip is only done in groups of six over a span of three to four days, I decided to gather a bunch of my school-mates to go. Before leaving Cochabamba, I received ample warning from the my Bolivian friends, teachers, administrators and my host family that Uyuni is deathly cold, that we were going there in the dead of winter and in the midst of a rare cold-front in South America.
I therefore took precautions and packed my heaviest winter clothes. Rebecca, Kenedy, Alexandra and I took the bus to Oruro. In Oruro we were able to snatch the last four available seats on the train to Uyuni. It took us a day to get there. We had to meet Manuel and Patrizia there so we were staying an extra night in the town of Uyuni.

When we arrived there, I was wearing a spaghetti-strap top, two long-sleeve undershirts, a turtle-neck sweater, my jacket, scarf, gloves, my hat, long-johns, fleece socks and sneakers. Our travel agent David was waiting for us at the train station. He asked how I was feeling, whether it was too cold or not and explained that he had booked a hotel with internal heat (a luxury in Uyuni) for our first night. He spoke Quechua so I was able to practice with him. I told him that I was fine because although I was from the Caribbean, I had gone to college in upstate New York and was amply prepared for the winter. But before I could even finish my sentence, I felt something inside my jacket.

Something that was penetrating my various layers of clothing and entering my lungs.

It was a gush that happened so quickly. In only about 2 seconds, it was in and out of my body.

I finally figured out that it was a strange, silent, piercing wind entering my body. And my mouth was moving but no sound was coming from my being.

Because when that wind touched me, I immediately lost something

deep

down

in

my

soul!!!

that I am

STILL

trying desperately to claw back!!

David took one look at my face and he quickly took me to the hotel.

Our first night in the hotel was an absolute disaster because the heat just wasn't working. We slept in most of our clothes and since the hotel was still under construction and our room had just been painted, we were inhaling a strong stench of paint throughout the night. I was feeling sick to my stomach and I threw up in the morning. We decided immediately to check into another hotel. We checked into a place that provides heating by lighting up a small container of gas in your room. The problem is that this gas is unsafe because it emits carbon monoxide as it heats your room. Consequently, they only use it to warm your room for about half-an-hour at night and then take it out. Tourists who have left it on in their rooms throughout the night have been found dead in the morning so we had to be careful. I was sure to take a very long shower in steaming hot water in preparation for our trip to the Salar the next morning since I knew it would be even colder. We woke up early and left Uyuni for the salar in a land-cruiser. There were 6 of us packed in the back with the chofer-guía (chauffeur-guide) Saúl, and the cook, Zulma sitting in the front.

Day 1
We arrived at the salar through Colchani. The salar was absolutely incredible. It is just miles of endless nothing. It is you, the blue sky and miles of white salt. We went to the island Isla Incahuasi in the middle of the salt planes that is home to humongous cactus and hiked to the very top to take pictures. It was incredible even though there was a strong wind blowing. Then we visited caves, watched the sun set before heading to our little hotel in a tiny village near the salar. The rooms were built of salt. The walls were made of salt and we were walking on piles of salt on the floor. Its amenities were very basic: a bed with 4 blankets on top and a small table. There was also a communal bathroom with a shower with hot water. It was just too cold to bathe. Electricity came on for around 2 hours so we could charge our cameras but spent the rest of the night in total darkness. As the sun went down, a deathly cold started to seep in. I went to sleep in three shirts, my fleece, long-johns, fleece pants and three pairs of fleece socks. I slept inside my sleeping bag under the four blankets on the bed but my face was freezing. I placed the jeans I would wear the next day under the four blankets so it would be warm when I had to put it on in the morning. I eventually managed to stop shivering as my body warmed but I couldn't sleep. Then we all got up at 4 am to leave for the desert and the coloured lagoons.

Day 2
As we headed towards the Atacama desert, our car started shutting on and off. We had to stop in a village so that Saúl could fix it. He fixed it in about two hours. Then as we drove along towards the border of Chile and Bolivia, the wind from the desert started picking up. It got stronger and stronger and stronger. It was hard to stand outside because it was so windy. Our guide told us that we couldn't go to the Laguna Verde (The green lake) because the little rocks from the wind would hit the windshield and break it. The weather was just too bad. The further we went into the desert was the higher above ground we went. So it was windier and colder. Before we knew it we were at 4,800 mts above sea-level entering the Reserva Nacional de Fauna Andina Eduardo Avaroa. By now the wind had transformed into a sandstorm. The back windows of the land-cruiser couldn't close properly and so we were doused with sand and gushes of wind as we drove along. We finally arrived at a small hostel in the middle of nowhere. The hostels' windows were not strong enough either and so the sand would enter the hostel with every gush of wind. It was difficult to breathe at times. Our guide said he doubted we would be able to go to see the Laguna Colorada but we insisted on trying since it was only fifteen minutes away. When we arrived the lake was frozen.
As I watched the icy wind hovering over the lake from inside the jeep, I turned to Rebecca, handed her my camera and said: "Leave me behind. Go forth without me!" Because it was at that moment, that I accepted my limitations as a Caribbean national.

We went back to the hostel. It was getting dark and before we knew it, it was 15 degrees centigrade below 0. I slept in every single item of clothing I had in my bag: 4 undershits, a turtleneck sweater, gloves, my hat, my fleece, four pairs of socks, long-johns, fleece pants, a sleeping bag, four blankets. Saúl offered us hot water bags to put at our feet in our sleeping bag so our feet wouldn't freeze. I grabbed mine.

Manuel asked the guide if he by any chance had a small llama that he could also have to put inside the sleeping bag. He was dead serious. When Saúl handed him the hotwater bag, he literally was like, "Uhm...I'll have a llama with that. Yeah I'ld like to supersize my hotwater bag. A baby llama to go please?....No baby llamas?........Ok. Alexandra, do you by any chance have an application on your Iphone that produces furry baby llamas you can put in your sleeping bag? No? Ok"

Other tourists groups put their beds together so they could huddle together for the night. I almost joined them. It was so cold, I was willing to sleep with a stranger just for warmth!!

Anyway I went to bed. I was shivering.

And then the unthinkable happened.

It was around 3am. The sandstorm was at its most powerful. Gushes of sand were entering the hostel.

And I had to pee.

It was in that moment that I knew I had a life-changing decision ahead of me.

I am 25 years old but I asked myself, would it really be that bad if I wet myself at this age? What about the danger of exposing my private part under these circumstances? I mean I would be required to remove several items of clothing to pee. And with all that wind entering??? At 25 degrees centigrade below 0??? Why risk it? Was it really worth risking my most vulnerable, prized possession?

But then I thought, all of my clothes would smell. The sleeping bag would smell. We would all be crammed in the car together for the next few days. I wouldn't have a change of clothes because I was already wearing everything. But it would only be one day and I may never see some of these people again? I mean what happens in Bolivia stays in Bolivia right? Wait but I go to school with a few of them. Everytime they would see me we would have an unspoken awkwardness. But no one would have to know. Oh wait, Rebecca goes to NYU with me and we may have class together in the fall. Damn it!

It was the decisive moment of my silent internal debate. So I mustered all the courage of my 108- pound body and went to the bathroom.
...
...

And you know what?

Some things are just better left unsaid...

....
and

unfrozen.

...

Day 3

Some of the tourists returned to Uyuni. They decided it just wasn't worth it and they couldn't see some of the sights due to the wind anyway. We went on to the Aguas Termales, we stopped in a few pueblos, passed through another salar and finally arrived back in Uyuni.

We were exhausted. I was the only one who had showered twice in our four day trip. Everyone else hadn't showered for four days straight. Not that they needed to. Its too cold to sweat anyway.
The biggest problem with Uyuni is not just that its cold. It is that at no point in your time there do you experience warmth. In the First and most of the Second world: America, Europe etc, there is heating in buildings so you only experience the cold when you go outside. You also sleep in a warm bed at night. However, in Uyuni, the cold is a penetrating one that goes through everything you're wearing. Saúl and Zulma explained that it was the first time they had experienced a wind like that. We were really in the midst of a bizarre cold front passing through South America. I say that to explain that its not usually as cold as it was when I was there and that we were in an extremely rare moment. But, I still would NOT recommend going to Uyuni in the winter. Its not worth the risk.
Saúl told me that he was so sorry, that this was just an extremely unlucky moment for us to have come to Uyuni. I told him we had as much of a good time as we could. He said that I should come back in about 2 years at the end of winter to see the things I missed.

Now in Quechua there is a form "puni" that allows you to say something emphatically. So if someone asks how you are doing and you want to say, "I am definitely definitely, always, doing extremely incredibly, amazingly well!" you add "puni" and say "walejpuni" So I used that form and replied:

"Sumaq karqa Uyuni chaywanpis MANAPUNI kutisaqchu! "Uyuni was nice and everything, but I will definitely definitely never, ever, forever and ever, for as long as I live (!!!!!!)) return!"

Quote of the week: The Virginity Question

2010-07-09T10:02:00.000-07:00

Everyone at my school speaks English. My friend Alexandra from Liechtenstein is always practicing her English with me. We have class at school everyday but we all take a break at the same time and hang out on the patio of the school. In out most recent conversation, I asked her what her sign was. She didn't understand at first. Then I asked her when her birthday was and she told me it was in late August.

So I said, "Oh thats great, then you're a virgo. I'm a virgo too".

She replied, "WHAT? What's a virgo?"

I said, "You know Virgo the virgin!"

Then she said, emphatically, really loudly with all the professors and the administrator standing nearby: "NO I AM NOT VIRGIN! I AM NOTTTT VIRGIN!"

There was dead silence on the patio as everyone looked on in confusion. I said to the Administrator: "Ahh, virgo. She means virgo! Alexandra, at no point was I calling your virginity into question."

To which Alexandra replied: "Oh! But you know, sometimes I wish I was."

Quote of the week: "NO I AM NOT VIRGIN! I AM NOT VIRGIN!"

Alexandra has decided to put that on t-shirts for sale when the program is over.

New Quechua phrases

2010-07-08T14:24:00.000-07:00

So I have learnt a few Quechua words/phrases that are crucial for navigating life in the Andes. I suggest using them yourself in any country. (Please remember that whenever a word includes an apostrophe in its spelling you are required to pronounce the letter before it with a popping/explosive sound.)

1. Q'ara chupa: This is the word used for white person in Quechua. It means a tail without hair. They use it to describe someone who has come with nothing but leaves with everything. Now that I know that word, I have heard several Quechua speakers using it while offering to sell products to white people in the local market. Of course, the tourists are oblivious to this and smile back at them the entire time.

2. Supaypa(q) wachasqa kanki-- It means "you are the child of the devil".When used, it sounds almost like "You Daughter/Son-of-a-b*tch!" I know you find this confusing. I don't mean that it literally sounds like they're speaking English. I'm referring to its equivalent meaning in English. Clarity first!

3. Supay apasqan: "Go to hell!" (I swear no one has said this to me)

4. Ch'oto mat'i siki--"You're a tight ass" or "You have something stuck up your ass!" I have found this phrase to be useful when vendors refuse to give me a discount on products I wish to buy.

5. waqachiy--I've only included this word because I like its translation. They use this word in Quechua as the verb for "to play an instrument". Its literal translation is "to make [others] cry."

Tunari: Conquering Altitude sickness

2010-07-08T12:07:00.000-07:00

In my earlier posts, I have outlined my spectacular bouts of altitude sickness. I had never experienced it before going to Bolivia so I thought I would try to find a way to get my body accustomed to altitude. I decided to go with fellow students from my school to hike up the Tunari, the highest point in Cochabamba.

My travel partners were Patrizia and Manuel from Switzerland, Rebecca and Kenedy from the U.S and Alexandra from Liechtenstein. Yes Liechtenstein. Liechtenstein is a country of about 30-40,000 inhabitants beside Switzerland. It is a constitutional monarchy and the country is ruled by a Prince. I had never heard of this country before meeting Alexandra so when I met her, I was sure to ask for her autograph because I am certain I probably will never meet someone else from her country. In fact, I may post a picture of me and her on this blog just so we never forget her country exists.

I made sure to have a big dinner the night before the hike and went to bed extremely early to ensure my body was fully rested. The day of the hike we were advised to have a decent breakfast but to eat foods at regular intervals along the way. These foods had to be either fruits like bananas or sweets for your body to use as energy boosts. We drove out of Cochabamba to the starting point of the hike to Tunari. The starting point was about 3,800 mtrs above sea-level. It was the equivalent of beginning just below the altitude of El Alto airport where I landed in La Paz. I was prepared for it so as soon as we got to that altitude I started sucking on cocoa-leaves so my body wouldn't feel the effect of the change in altitude.

First we walked on a flat plain and crossed a lake. Then we slowly started walking up the mountain surrounding the lake. The mountain on the far left of the picture is the first of about 4 that we climbed. Now this is where the challenge begun: The more you climb, the thinner the air becomes. So while the hike itself may not be that long or far, the problem is the more you hike, the less oxygen your body has access to. Consequently your heart starts pumping harder and faster because it is searching for oxygen.

In case you are wondering why I know this, I walked for about 5 minutes uphill and then told our guide Cesar, that we had to turn back immediately because I was sure I was having a heart-attack. My heart was beating so fast I could actually hear it and feel it throbbing through my arms and shoulders. He told me to stop, drink mate de cocoa and to breathe through my nose and exhale slowly through my mouth. He explained what was happening to my heart and told me that my body would get more oxygen if I took slow deep breaths through my nose and not my mouth as I walked. So we stopped. I caught my breath. Manuel offered to carry my bag and Alexandra made me take off my coat and carried it for the remainder of the hike. Since it was so hot, I decided to also remove my jeans and hike in my long johns that turned out to be a little too big for me. So when I took off my jeans, there was an audible gasp emitted from my fellow travelers. Then silence. Manuel broke the silence and said, "ahh sexy long johns". I told him I was thinking the exact same thing when I decided to put them on back-ways that morning.

As the hike continued, Rebecca had to stop because she felt dizzy and her head was spinning and her heart was pounding. Soon every single person had to stop to breathe at regular intervals. By regularly, I mean every ten metres. Cesar explained that this was completely normal. The trick to climbing the Tunari is to go as slowly as possible and to stop as often as possible. Many experienced hikers have come to the Tunari and have tried to go quickly. None of them make it to the top. Your body just cannot handle it. He also told us to condition ourselves to thinking we were actually trying to breathe underwater. The higher up you get, the more you must stop to come up for air. The terrain gets steeper and steeper to the point where I had to crawl on my hands and knees to get over a couple of the hills...in my sexy long johns! I ensured that I was the last one up the hill so my fellow travellers would not have any distractions that could potential obstruct their view of what was in front of them. Its also really slippery with loose rocks so when you skid, you may slide all the way back down the mountain you just climbed up. Anyway I got over a couple hills and looked back at the lake. I was shocked at how far away it was!

Then we came upon another lake and stopped to have lunch by it. This lake was incredibly beautiful! As we had lunch beside the lake I learnt two very important things:
1) Bananas are really powerful energy-giving fruits. They have a high concentration of sugar that your body absorbs very very quickly. They are best had with mate-de-cocoa as against bottled water because together they simultaneously help your body fight altitude sickness and raise your sugar level.

2) Switzerland is the most dangerous country on earth. Did you know that Switzerland is neutral about EVERYTHING? They didn't take a stance on any of the world wars, nor have they taken stances on any contemporary dictatorship. Historically, they have always taken the following position: "Do what you have to do. We'll keep your money." Switzerland has officially replaced the word "neutral" in my vocabulary.

Anyway so the great thing about continuing our hike was that we could now actually see the peak. Seeing your destination really helps but the problem was we had now reached an altitude of 4,800 metres above sea-level. Alexandra is epileptic and so she stopped and said that she didn't think she would make it. Kenedy said her lungs were hurting her. Rebecca's head was spinning. My heart was pounding. We didn't know whether we would all actually continue. We evaluated how we were feeling and whether we could do it or not. We surveyed the group to see whether or not we would continue to the top. And the two Swiss people on our trip...

were neutral.

They did however, offer to take our cameras for us and take pictures from the peak if we decided to stay.

But we kept going and one by one we made it to the peak. The closer we got to the peak, the fewer steps we could take without stopping to breathe. Then finally we got there. The lakes were so far away now. It had taken us five hours to get to the top. We were at 5035 metres above sea-level and had a breath-taking view of Cochabamba all the way to the Illimani mountain in La Paz where I landed in Bolivia. It was crazy! It was beautiful! By the time I got there my mouth was stained from drinking mate de cocoa and chewing cocoa leaves. But I was thrilled that I made it. Would I do it again? Absolutely not!

Andean Solidarity: My favourite quotes of the week

2010-07-02T06:04:00.000-07:00

My Quechua teacher Hilda has the special gift of speaking matter-of-factly and authoritatively about everything. Here are a few comments she made to my friend Anna from Whales:

1. Hilda's response to Ana when her camera was stolen:
You know, the person that stole your camera was definitely from Peru because... [insert nodding head and matter-of-fact facial expression here] there are no thieves in Bolivia.
All the thieves here are from Peru.

2. Hilda on a student who lived with her to learn Quechua:
He was gay but he was a lovely guy. Actually, he was from Peru. You know... There are no gay people in Bolivia.
All the gay people are Peruvian.

3. (Last but certainly not least) Anna to Hilda: What's the word for "midget" [or little person] in Spanish?
Hilda: "Enano". But you know... There are no midgets in Bolivia.
Midgets are from Peru.

Warmi Pacha Kuti: Wañuchiy Machismo! (Down with Sexism)

2010-06-29T04:48:00.000-07:00

When I first arrived in Cochabamba, I met members of a singing group called Warmi Pacha Kuti and later travelled with them to commemorate Andean new year. The group has 18 members, all of whom are female and they sing traditional Andean music (Música Autóctona). There are only 6 traditional Andean music groups in Cochabamba and theirs is the only all womyn group. So I decided to interview one of the members Alejandra, an indigenous womyn born outside of Cochabamba.

According to her, the presence of an all womyn's group in the city is important because other traditional music groups are notorious for their exclusion of indigenous womyn. A few of the groups prohibit female members from playing instruments and only allow them to participate as dancers. Other groups seek to "compromise" by allowing womyn to play instruments provided they wear male clothing in their performance. Here womyn must pass as men to be legitimate performance artists. Alejandra claims that some womyn have been publicly insulted by their male counterparts during performances and it is very hard for indigenous womyn to partcipate in much of Andean performance art. She argues however, that is not the indigenous male elders who discrimnate against female artists but it is mostly the young, newly-arrived sons of migrants who currently run the music groups. Hence, the Warmis as a performance group signify an intervention in predominantly masculinist performance practices and has created a space for womyn to participate equally and fully in preserving Andean traditional music and culture in Cochabamba.

The groups political stance on gender politics is most apparent in its Quechua name Warmi Pacha Kuti. Warmi means woman, Pacha means [mother] earth and Kuti means return. Pacha Kuti literally means the return of the earth but it can also be interpreted in other ways. Pacha Kuti is the name of the 9th Incan King often referred to as the "Napoleon of the Andes". Under his rule, the Incas expanded and conquered all across Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Chile forming the Great Incan Empire called Tawantinsuyu (the four provinces). It is believed that Machu Pichu was built as an estate for him and he was the father of the great Incan warrier Tupac Yupanqui. He is a pivitol figure in Andean mythology which claims that many of the ancient Inca leaders will return to help indigenous peoples fight against and overcome their oppressors. The group named itself Warmi Pacha Kuti to engage not only the forthcoming return of ancient leaders but also to ultimately engage Andean liberation practices themselves from a womyn's perspective. While some of the members do not necessarily identify as feminists, they all share the group's fundamental philosophy that each of its members is an individual with equal rights to participate and share in Andean cultural practices as women. There are no leaders in the group and 2 of its members are foreigners from Spain and the U.S. Alejandra says that they allow non-Bolivians to participate because they believe that all womyn are children of the Pacha Mama (mother earth). Therefore, it is crucial to create alliances across race and nationality, and to act in solidarity with womyn from different backgrounds. This encourages them to find commonalities in their experiences as women emerging from different historical and contemporary contexts and ultimately ensures that their political vision against oppression arises out of a diversity of perspectives and opinions.

Of particular interest is the fact that within the group, some womyn do not identify as indigenous even if they have indigenous physiological features and speak Quechua. According to Alejandra, there is a split among many people living in the Andes as to whether to identify as indigenous or not. For some, if you live in the countryside (el campo), and speak Quechua then only then you can identify as indigenous. For others, if you are Quechua-speaking but live in the city then you identify as an "indígena urbanizado/a" (Urbanised indigenous people). This distinction is important and forms part of a debate surrounding the definition of indigeneity in a school of thought called "indianitud". Indianitud thinks through indigeneity by engaging in questions such as "how do we name ourselves--are we indios or indígenas?", "what does our liberation entail or look like?", "what is our relationship to Pacha Mama (the earth) and modernisation?" etc. Amidst this ongoing debate, I therefore cannot say that all the Bolivian members of Warmi Pacha Kuti are indigenous even though, my initial reaction upon seeing them perform was to assume that they would all identify as such.

Labels and definitions aside, the group performs at several cultural events and local bars and I've posted a brief video of their performance at Andean New Year below. After three years of existence, they are fairly well-known and respected by other Andean music groups. So cheers to their shout in Quechua to audience members during their performances "Wañuchiy Machismo!" (Down with Sexism) to which we all respond "JALLALLA!"

First Joke in Quechua

2010-06-23T21:04:00.001-07:00

I am always interested in discovering the type of humour of any country I visit. Joaquín claims that much of Andean humour is smutty and shared the following joke with me:
(If smut is not your type of humour, stop reading here!)

An old woman's husband died on his way to the store. They carried his body home, cleaned it and prepared it for burial. When they were getting ready to bury him, the old woman exclaimed, "Orqopuaychis chaypi, phakinmanta, piernas chawpinpi, ukhunpi!" (Please remove and take out what is between his legs!)

Everyone was confused.

Someone asked "Imata nisanki?" (What are you saying?)

She repeated, "Orqopuaychis chaypi, piernas chawpinpi, ukhunpi!" (Please remove and take out what is in there, in between his legs!")

A member of the town said to her in Spanish, "Ahhh, Señora, mira, con un poquito de tiempo...puedes encontrar otro..." (Ahh Maam, you know, look, with a little bit of time, you can always find another one...)

The old lady interjected, "Mana, Mana. Ahinata manañapuni tarisaqchu!" ("No, no, one like that, I will definitely never ever find!")

Everyone was scandalised.

But they agreed that he was, afterall her husband.

So they stepped aside.

She approached his body.

And proceeded to remove...

...

a small sack of money from his crotch.

In Andean culture, people bury their dead with the person's favourite, most important things such as money, food, drink, jewelry etc. Even today, people have found cadavers from Pre-Incan times with pieces of gold hidden in their clothing. Also, in Cochabamba, just as women hide their money in their bras, so too do men hide their money in their crotches. So take your mind out of the gutter! The Señora was thinking of something else...

Incidentally, Doña Petra has demonstrated for me on several occasions how to put my money in my bra before heading to school everyday. But I have told her not to worry. I am a professional and I know what I'm doing.

Quote of the Week

2010-06-23T15:49:00.000-07:00

"Sikiyta much'away!" (Kiss my ass!)

---Doña Petra's response to her husband Don Lino when he tried to contradict something she taught me in Quechua.

Yes. Love after over 50 years of marriage...

Happy Andean New Year

2010-06-22T14:50:00.000-07:00

According to the Incan Calendar, June 21 is the beginning of the New Year. In the Andean world, we are not in 2010. We are currently living in the year 5557. The Incas worshipped the sun and so to commemorate the New Year, each person hikes to some of the highest mountains to watch the sun rise. When the sun rises, you must raise your hands to receive its first rays and that will give you energy for the rest of the new year. The hike to the top of the mountain is treacherous and the altitude is outrageous so I decided to swallow my adventurous pride, just take the bus up and leave the hiking to the experienced locals instead. That turned out to be a very wise decision. I am a seasoned traveller but altitude sickness in Bolivia is very real! My host family warned me that I would not be able to handle the cold and advised me against doing the hike. Doña Petra also dressed me personally which annoyed me but I thanked her for it later. When I arrived on the mountaintop, I was wearing an undershirt, a long-sleeved shirt, a fleece and a bubblejacket as well as long johns, thick socks, jeans, some legwarmers, a scarf and a hat. I looked like an eskimo and for the first time in my life, I had an idea of what it must feel like to be a fat person. I was carrying so much weight on me, I was breathing heavy.

Anyway when we got there, there was much singing and several bonfires. I sat beside one of the bonfires and enjoyed the singing and dancing taking place. The one thing about celebrating Andean New Year is that you are required to share chicha with everybody. So every random person who is there, comes up to you, pours out some chicha, toasts and drinks with you. You have to put your hand in the chicha and sprinkle some outside, look the other person in the eye when you say cheers, drink and then they take your cup and drink from it as well. Now thats a lot of germs to share with people you don't even know. I tried to say no but its offensive to do that and so I have never shared so much food and alcohol with so many RANDOM strangers in my life.

After a few hours, my body was exhausted and so I decided to take a nap by the bonfire. Suddenly, there was much noise and commotion because the sun was about to rise. So I jumped up but my head was spinning and right before the sun was about to rise, I threw up in the middle of the crowd of people....TWICE! Without my knowledge, (and my host family later explained this to me), I had eaten a mixture of things that one NEVER mixes in Bolivia or anywhere for that matter. Not only had I eaten some buñuelo, then eaten a sandwich with egg, plaintain and chicken, but I had also drank api (a corn based drink)-- made by someone in the street which probably wasn't clean--, shared chicha--a heavy alcoholic beverage with a bunch of strangers-- and had some mate de coco while standing at the highest altitude my body has probably ever endured. And while I was vomitting a Llama was being sacrificed a few yards away. In the midst of my vomitting spree, I looked up and asked my friend, "Is that a llama?" Because I don't know about you, but I always ask about Llamas when I'm vomitting. My friends in Jamaica would attest to that. Seriously.

What a way to end year 5556!

Anyway, a Bolivian friend of mine grabbed me and pulled me up. She stuffed coco leaves in my mouth and told me to suck and chew on it. My Australian friend Kylie gave me some water to drink. Then the sun finally rose and there was dead silence among the crowd. I took off my gloves and let the first rays touch my hands and face, closed my eyes and like everyone around me, I silently said a prayer to the sun.

Then everyone began to sing and dance, the Llama was being cooked and people were drinking more chicha but I decided that throwing up was my cue to go home.

Getting home was difficult. I told my friends I would be fine and went alone like an idiot. I had to take a bus from the mountain top to Sipe-Sipe. The bus stopped a couple times for people to vomit and there were representatives from a local radio show that interviewed me and some other passengers about the New Year celebration. I am sure I was at my most articulate and by their facial expressions during my interview I am sure they would agree. Then, I took another bus from Sipe-Sipe to Quillacoyo, another one from from Quillacoyo to Cochabamba's main plaza and then I took a cab home from there. It took me a little over two hours. My head was spinning, my body was weak and by the time I got home I had a fever. Doña Petra nursed me back to life and explained that I was coming down with the flu. As much as this experience sounds horrible, it was actually really worth it because the celebration was so exciting and fun. However, its one of those things that I would probably only do once. You know, the first time was enough. I mean, I feel much better now and everything. But I have to say that my entrance into 5557, just was not sexy enough.

Days of The Week in Quechua

2010-06-22T14:43:00.000-07:00

When I had just started learning Quechua, I had been told that they didn't have days of the week but since I've moved to the Andes, I have learnt that they actually do have them. I am so in love with them that I have started using their translations when referring to the days of the week in English just so I don't forget. Here they are:

P'unchaykuna --Days of the Week

Intichaw--- Sunday (Day of the Sun)
Killachaw-- Monday (Day of the Moon)
Atichaw-- Tuesday (Day of Power)
Quyllurchaw-- Wednesday (Day of the Stars)
Illapachaw-- Thursday (Day of the Lightening Bolt)
Ch'asqachaw-- Friday (Day of Venus)
K'uychichaw-- Saturday (Day of the Rainbow)

Favourite Quote

2010-06-17T20:10:00.000-07:00

Ama suwa, ama qhella, ama llulla (Don't steal, don't be lazy and don't lie)---A greeting the Incas used to say.

I recommend using this completely out of context. It helps to kill awkward silences, especially in elevators, enclosed spaces (crowded busses for example) where people are looking at you funny.

Aqhata munani ujyayta...When in doubt, speak italian!

2010-06-17T19:37:00.000-07:00

Learning a language is the source of a lot of confusion in the house. Needless to say, the first few days are the most difficult for both the hosts and the guest. My host mother Doña Petra has had three run-ins with me that I am sure have left her feeling very confused:

1. I am not a morning person. After my 30 hour journey to Bolivia I decided to rest and to go to school at 1pm instead of 8am like the other students the next day. Joaquín was completely okay with that since I was exhausted when I arrived. Doña Petra woke me up at 7 to ask if I wasn't going to have breakfast before I go to school. Now by her own admission and that of her children, she speaks quechua extremely quickly and spoke for about 5 minutes. The only part I caught was that she asked me if I wasn't going to school. Now at that time of the morning, when my body is exhausted, I don't speak any language. So half asleep I responded, "Oggi non devo andare a scuola. Joaquín ha detto che posso andare verso l'una quindi rimango a casa." Yep, I responded to her in ITALIAN! Of all languages?!?! Somehow, my brain is programmed so that if the language I am hearing is not English or Spanish, then it must be italian. So in my state of between sleep and consciousness, I spoke not in my mother tongue, but in Italian. My response lasted for about 30 seconds and I noticed she was looking at me blankly. Then she said, "Imata ninki? (What are you saying? but her face was more like "what the hell???") Then finally I go, "Mana kanchu yachana wasi kunan pacha. Yachaywasiman rini a la una. Chayqa wasipi qhepakuni. (I don't have class right now. I'll go to school at 1. So I'll stay home). That was a lot of confusion for 7 am. I'm used to confusion at any time after say around noon... but not that early.

2. In Bolivia, they have a typical drink called Chicha. In quechua, the word for chicha is "aqha". The problem is Quechua is a language of explosive, popping sounds so you have to distinguish words sometimes by sound. For example, you have the word tanta which means together, thanta (th is pronounced like hindi so the t sound is heard and the h sound is heard almost separately. It sounds something like ta-hanta) which means old by means of excess use and t'anta (t has a popping sound) which means bread. Now qh is pronounced like you're breathing into the h. It takes a lot of effort and I was really tired so I didn't breathe into the h so it came out as the word "aka". So I was very lazy and said to Doña Petra, "akata munani ujyayta" (I want to drink chicha) "Aqha" is chicha but Aka is sh*t. So she looked at me and just burst out laughing. I had said "I want to drink sh*t." She was like "In Bolivia, we don't drink that." I was sure to clarify that that was a genuine linguistic error and not a cultural one. Jamaicans find drinking that to be apalling too.

3. Janine had told me a story about Bolivian slang. She went to the market with Joaquín and a lady asked her if she liked plátano boliviano (Bolivian plaintain). Janine responded that she loved it because in Switzerland they don't have it and when they import it, its usually very green. In Bolivia however, its so great. They have all this variety in different colours and sizes and she could eat it everyday etc. So of course, Joaquín and the lady burst out laughing because in Bolivia, plátano is slang for penis. So we thought that was really funny and made fun of Janine for the rest of the ride. When I got home, Doña Petra asked me if I liked plantain so of course I just start laughing. She asked me again. So I paused before I responded and eyed her with some suspicion. She assumed I didn't understand and then decided to explain in Spanish that its like a banana, she is going to make it for dinner. I can have it boiled or fried. If I don't like it, I don't have to eat it etc. The whole time I was smiling and then I said, "yeah I'll have it for dinner." I didn't bother explaining but I think I will tomorrow since she continues to look at me awkwardly.

Ima Rayku runa simita munani yachayta? (Why do I want to learn Quechua?)

2010-06-01T23:35:00.000-07:00

The hiatus of The Long-Legged-Short-Torso Diaries has come to an end. I restart my blog to chronicle my own process of learning to speak Quechua in Cochabamba, Bolivia. My decision to learn an indigenous language is related to my research on political humour and social change in the Americas as this experience is part of my own engagement with linguistic hegemonies and racist structures of power that shape Latin American humour.

Quechua is a racialised language in the Southern cone that marks its speakers as "outsiders", "inferior", "uneducated/uncivilised", "dangerous" and "backward". There has always been rampant discrimination against indigenous peoples including campaigns of genocide, economic exploitation, political and social marginalisation, imposed assimilationist practices that begun in colonial times and continue to today. (For more information, I would say, just google it!) Indeed, the pressure to assimilate remains and many indigenous people have changed their names, stopped wearing traditional clothes and refuse to teach their children to speak Quechua in order to protect them from discrimination. In fact, during colonial times, speaking Quechua was punishable by death. So of course, my decision as an outsider to learn the language has been greeted with confusion by some Spanish-speakers in Bolivia. A light-skinned Bolivian looked at me as if I was crazy to have decided to learn "that" language. On the other hand, I am greeted with elation by the average Quechua speaker when I start speaking to them in Quechua. I also notice that if I speak quechua in the market, the asking price for any item I am buying is IMMEDIATELY cut by, at least half. So in many ways, learning the language is just a good economic decision.

Apart from the bargaining tools that Quechua offers me, I chose to learn the language because while many Latin Americanist on the left engage with questions of indigeneity and comment on the overwhelming silencing and exclusion of indigenous voices in institutions of power, I know very few who have actually invested in learning an indigenous language. In this way, there continues to exist a certain distance/disconnect between the academic and the indigenous subject despite the presence of rigorous academic debates on indigeneity. I am not suggesting here that learning the language now makes me an authority on everything to do with indigeneity, nor that if they do not speak an indigenous language, then they have no right to critique linguistic hegemonies/structures of power in the Americas. Rather, I argue that the language gives access to realities that have been systemically invisibilised, undervalued and ignored and knowledge of such realities will help me not to participate in and perpetuate the exclusion of indigenous peoples in my academic work. So learning to speak Quechua is an attempt on my part to reduce the distance between myself as a Latin American scholar and the Andean world, to ensure that I place value on the culture and stories of the most disenfranchised and marginalised in my own work and to generate the broadest possible perspectives of the realities that shape performance practices especially humour in Latin America.

Maypi? Where?
It is winter in South America but Cochabamba is one of the warmest cities in the country because it lies in the centre of Bolivia. However, the weather moves from extremely cold weather in the morning (sweaters, hats, underpants and gloves are a must) to very hot temperatures in the afternoons. The constant climatic shift from one extreme to the next in the span of 24 hours can be very hard on your body so I had to take it easy for the first few days.

I am now living with a young professional Roxana, her son Elias and her parents Doña Petra and Don Lino. Her parents and the cook Julia are quechua speakers and her younger brother Eric studies Engineering at the University. Although, only the parents and the cook speak Quechua, Doña Petra insists that I speak to all of them in Quechua especially her grandson Elias because everyone in the family understands it perfectly. They are a middle-class indigenous family from the countryside of Potosí and they run a shop from the house itself.

I am studying at the language school: Escuela Runawasi. It is run by Joaquín and his Swiss wife Janine. Joaquín was part of an armed guerrillero movement in Bolivia. He was tortured in Chile for three months then exiled to Switzerland where he met his wife. After his involvement with the armed struggle, he now defines himself as a pacifist but politically he remains on the ultra left. He is one of my Quechua teachers since it is his mother-tongue. My other professor is an indigenous womyn called Ilda who defines herself as a staunch socialist. She has done a lot of work in adult literacy with indigenous, quechua speaking womyn, indigenous workers unions and is very vocal about womyn's rights.

I live in Villa Juan XXIII and many of the people living in the barrio are indigenous people who migrated from the countryside looking for work. The people in this area voted overwhelmingly for Evo Morales (the first indigenous president) and they mostly identify on the left. There is much elation right now in the community because a new law has just been passed requiring that Quechua be taught in all schools across the country and that all public servants learn to speak the language. Of course, this is a historic moment for the country, as it has created a new space not only for indigenous languages and cultures but also for indigeneity itself within the national imaginary. I will provide a summary documenting reactions to the new law in another post.

The journey to Bolivia
Now I have travelled a lot but I think my 30 hour journey to Bolivia is worthy of mention. I bought the cheapest ticket I could find without paying attention to the length of the journey from NYC to Cochabamba, Bolivia. I flew from NYC to Miami, Miami to Lima Peru, Lima to Santa Cruz Bolivia, Santa Cruz to La Paz, La Paz to Cochabamba. I left on Monday at 3 30pm and got to Cochabamba on Tuesday at 8:00pm. Needless to say I was exhausted. As we flew to La Paz, I noticed we were flying over mountains with snow on their tips and then we landed in the airport El Alto just below a few of the mountains. When I landed in La Paz I exited the plane and noticed the strangest thing: there were oxygen masks at each of the passport/ immigration/customs booths. In fact, below the "Welcome to Bolivia" sign, there were a few tanks with more oxygen masks around them. I thought to myself, "how strange that the message you would send to tourists visiting for the first time is "welcome to Bolivia, have some oxygen...you're gonna need it!" Anyway, I collected my luggage and went on my merry way. I checked into my connecting flight to Cochabamba and as I started walking to pay the airport tax I realised that my heart was racing, my head was spinning and I could hardly breathe. Then I remembered that La Paz's airport: El Alto stands at 4,000 metres above ground. That's higher than CUZCO! But I thought to myself, "I've never gotten altitude sickness. I can handle this. Just look at all these locals walking around just fine." I took a moment to collect myself. Then I looked behind me and the flight attendant who checked me in was no longer standing. She was just on the ground...motionless.

Okay she wasn't. I'm kidding.

But my suitcase was on the ground.

And I was on top of it.

M-O-T-I-O-N-L-E-S-S

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I hadn't actually lost consciousness (YET!) but I could barely move. Then I got up and started hugging the wall really tight like a crazy person. A older lady approached me and asked if she needed to notify security so they could bring me an oxygen mask. I told her I was okay, got a hold of myself. She told me to eat something sweet so I bought a cinnamon roll. I know that sounds strange but all the other foods on sale were unfamiliar so I went with what I already knew. It gave me a boost, I thanked the lady, got on my flight and left.

Moral of the story: Cinnamon rolls save lives.

Backpacking South India

2007-09-11T14:02:00.000-07:00

Once I got to India, I made a plan to travel through Tamil Nadu and kerala. Travelling alone is always difficult but I am particularly proud about having been able to make it through India because I didn't speak any of the languages and bargaining became my sixth sense. Things to see in India are endless. I just had to pick a region and decide where I wanted to go. I must confess that I got tired of temple seeing and was disappointed that I didn't get to see the bridge that used to connect India to Sri Lanka in Rameswaram. I also lost my cell phone early on and got sick of taking busses by the time I got back to Mumbai. Anyway, I'm leaving you some photos of the trip through South India.

I landed in Chennai (Madras) from Mumbai and when I saw what a horrific city it was, I decided I needed to get out FAST! Apparently I hopped into a 'three wheeler'/auto/rickshaw a little too quickly and lost my cell phone. That was the scary part because I couldn't contact Mumbai immediately if anything happened. Anyway, I took two long bus rides to get to the Main Bus station and was on the next bus to Mahabalipuram. I saw the five rathas and the Shore temple while the guide explained that they are still rebuilding the town after the tsunami. Mahabalipuram is a fishing village with alot of scultures so its gorgeous to walk around and visit for just a day. But I wouldn't sleep there because the sleeping accomodations were very very sad..so I'm glad I left early. I was disappointed that I couldn't get to send an email to Mumbai when I got there because the internet was down in the entire village. But I just took a local bus and made my way to pondicherry.

Pondicherry is a relaxing place for a lot of people because they have a famous ashram where you can meditate and do yoga. Half of the town has a strong french influence so the architecture is very different from what I saw in other parts of South India. Apart from just spending the day resting and looking out at the beach, I didn't do much there which was nice because the crowded busses can take a lot out of a foreigner. I had to bargain HARD to get the autorickshaw driver to drop me to the bus station at 3am so I could leave for Trichy.

Trichy has sooo many temples and I felt like sites to see there were endless. On my way to Trichy, I became friends with a university student Abirami who became my guide in Trichy. She invited me to her house and arranged for me to visit all the temples. It was great to eat a home cooked meal and to make a friend. She really took care of me. I saw many temples and they explained the history of each one of them. I have a picture of my favourite temple.

I did a couple more temple stops and hopped on the next bus to Madurai. I stayed in a very nice hotel in Madurai which was a little more expensive but a lot more comfortable than the places I had crashed before. I decided to take a day trip to Rameswaram where a bridge was built by Rama connecting to Sri Lanka. Needless to say that I was disappointed when I got there because it was a 7 kilometer walk and I was definitely not up for it especially when I had no guide and needed to get back to my hotel in madurai which was four hours away. I spent the day in the fishing village looking at the beach and then heading back to my hotel in Madurai in the evening.

I decided to check out even more temples in Madurai which I actually found to be less impressive than the ones in Trichy. Madurai is a lot more touristy than Trichy because it is definitely a center for many tourists even though the tourist attraction there is far less impressive. When I entered the Temple in Madurai I was alarmed to find an elephant inside which was all part of the attraction and so I was sure to be a good tourist and to take my picture with the elephant. However, the elephant saliva or snot or whatever it was made it very difficult for me to smile.

After that I made my way to Kanyakumari. The ride to Kanyakumari was quite an eventful, bumpy bus ride that took place in the wee hours of the morning. Eventful because I was made to sit "shotgun" on a little ledge connected to the windscreen as the bus tossed and turned and almost toppled over at every corner since our driver was moving at the speed of lightening. Anyway, I made it and got to Kanyakumari at 4am and stayed at the dingiest place I had ever seen for 200 rupees. I avoided the cockroches in my room by sleeping with one eye open and hugging my backpack REAL tight. Anyway, I got on the first boat jetty and was excited at what I felt was one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen. Kanyakumari is GORGEOUS! It is the southern most tip of India where the Bay of Bengal, the Arabian Sea and the Tibetian Ocean meet. Its wonderful and the colour of the water varies so the sea looks like a painting. I tried to watch the sunset but the monsoon season ensured that it was too cloudy... but I still thought that Sunset point was worth a visit.

I left Kanyakumari and entered Kerala. My first stop was Trivandrum and I found Kerala to be far more peaceful and no where near as hot as Tamil Nadu. Kerala just seemed less chaotic to me and so it was nice to be more relaxed. I spent a night of well-needed rest in Trivandrum before heading out to Fort Cochin to see the famous backwaters of Kerala. I liked it a lot but there was a Bengali family on the raft who insisted that the tour was way too boring and decided to cut the tour short and leave. I didn't mind because I was bored after the first hour but it was really quite a nice, peaceful ride. If you go to Kerala it is an absolute MUST-SEE! Its really peaceful. I also went to check out the Kathakhali dances, see some Chinese fishing and had an Ayurvedic massage which left my dreds incredibly oily. The oil from the massage was potent and when I entered my flight, the passenger beside me smiled and said: You just had an ayurvedic massage...and I nodded even though I was a bit embarrassed. Anyway, it was a nice ending to the trip and then I headed back to Mumbai. All in all, Southern India was a great trip.

another quote

2007-08-22T11:47:00.000-07:00

"I'm so glad I'm not that smart..." --Heeya

A reflection on Dharavi

2007-08-20T16:56:00.001-07:00

I did a tour of Dharavi, one of Asia's largest slums, when I first got to Mumbai. I went with the expectation that it would be like Kibera (one of Africa's largest slum) which I visited when I was in Kenya three years ago but the two were less similar than I imagined they would be. Dharavi had a lot more small business enterprises than Kibera even though the general living conditions were about the same.
My guide was a male student, born and raised in Dharavi and explained that he was working as a tour guide to raise enough money to get his masters in commerce. Our tour consisted of visiting the small business enterprises that exist throughout the huge slum. It examined the local industry and livelihood of Dharavi in order to dispel the notion that its residents there are poor because they are 'lazy' or 'naturally prone to violence' and all the other stereotypes about poor people that we know exist everywhere. It also outlined the institutional problems with governmental involvement (or the lack thereof) in the slum.

Dharavi is made up of migrants from Gujurat, Tamil Nadu and different parts of Maharashtra so it was common to find people working with family members or people of the same ethnic group. The first small business enterprise I visited was the plastic recycling business. The residents of a part of Dharavi built a business where the womyn collect and clean the plastic, then the men work the machines to crush it, dry it and resell it to companies. The first obvious advantage of this business was the fact that it is so environmentally friendly and I was lucky enough to see all the machines and watch the whole process of recycling plastic. The second business enterprise that I saw, and for which Dharavi is known, is the leather industry. People were producing and using leather to make lap top bags, clothes, shoes and sold items to companies and store owners. The other two industries I looked at were the pottery and baking industries. The business were thriving to the extent that people actually had employment but the elite business class' exploitation of these businesses is common knowledge for the people of Dharavi. For example, the average person working in the leather industry would make only 18 rupees per bag while the buyers resell each bag for 118 rupees. The guide explained that there is little people can do about this because they are so desperate for any money they earn that they have little choice but to continue selling it to these buyers anyway.

The guide explained to me that some of the major challenges that Dharavi is facing apart from the exploitation of the buyers who benefit from the small business enterprises, have to do with the lack of investment on the government's part in developing the infrastructure of the slum. The government had pledged to build new buildings and homes for Dharavi residents but he explained that only the bottom floor of one or two of the new buildings were for slum dwellers and most buildings were put on the market for sale. He explained that the government's investment in the new buildings did not have Dharavi residents at heart and was really a way for the rich to make money. Also, when we went to his house, he told me that they were going to knock down his own home to build another building which he was sure would be too expensive for his family to rent anyway. He also explained that with the construction of the buildings came the destruction of a lot of the spaces for the small business enterprises to the detriment of people's livelihood and way of life.

He suggested that the government develop Dharavi by cleaning the sewage and re-organising their dumping systems. Also, while building homes for the residents is a basic necessity, any development of the infrastructure of Dharavi should compliment and sustain all local industry and business of the community.

Favourite Quotes

2007-07-24T14:27:00.000-07:00

Me talking to Shraddha on my way from the airport to her house in Bombay: Shraddha, I don't know what I'm going to do when I leave. I'm going to miss you so much.
Shraddha: "dude, you just got here"

-So what does your mother do for a living?
My friend Heeya: "She's a feminist..."

Exporting South Asian Bargaining

2007-07-24T05:11:00.000-07:00

So I always have a favourite quote and this one has definitely taken the cake:

I was in London Heathrow Airport with my friend Pragyan from Nepal and I was getting ready to board my plane to Mumbai when the attendant informed me that the new checked baggage allowance didn't allow me to carry one of my suitcases. I asked her how much they charged for excess baggage and the total amount was 150 pounds. I was dumbstruck and a little annoyed so Pragyan grabbed me aside and said (dead serious):

"Talk to her, see if we can work something out..."
...
?????????????????????????????????????

I looked at him in wonder. I know that bribing happens everywhere, especially in Third World countries like Nepal/India/Jamaica etc but dude, we're in London!

Can you imagine me pulling the British lady aside and whispering: "Psst, hey, how about if I offer you ten rupees to sneak the second suitcase on the plane..." I mean Can we PLEASE be serious?

I thought to myself, I know that every one of us continues to bring our own cultural norms as we travel to different countries but Pragyan was prepared to take this to a whole new level. I know it was 'well-intentioned' but can we please know when and where to utilise out precious bargaining skills. I mean its a airport in a first world country, not a Bazarre! We may just get arrested in London just for trying.

But thanks Pragyan, I'm definitely going to try that when I have a problem with airport security: "Hey, let's talk about this and see if we can work something out...nobody has to know about this man?"...

Poverty: your honeymoon dream

2007-07-12T00:57:00.000-07:00

I was visiting some family friends in Italy and struck up a conversation with some newlyweds. I asked them where they went for their honeymoon and they told me that they went on a cruise through Spain, Greece and Morocco. When I asked the bride which country she liked the most she told me she liked Morocco and said: "the poverty just fascinated me..I loved it."

I was dumbstruck. I mean I didn't know that poverty was now being included in cruise packages. Wow! So I guess we can all start looking forward to 'camel rides' in the Arab world, 'exotic' jewelry and henna and last but certainly not least: poverty as part of our honeymoon experience. She was dead serious too when she said it. It was just like "Oh poverty, its great! I just love it!"

Her statement got me thinking some more about what poverty meant to her-a wealthy European white womyn living in the First World. For her, poverty was not only distant but part of constructing Morocco, an Arab country as the other. However it wasn't done in the typical racist way, instead, just like the other things consumed on a honeymoon trip, poverty becomes just another commodity, an exotic item to be looked at in wonder, to never be conceived as a reality.

But even more importantly, it continues to mask the systemic problem that traces Europe's historical exploitation and imperialism to the underdevelopment of many Third World nations. As long as poverty is constructed as exotic, then Morocco, like the rest of the Arab world can continued to be constructed as "different", "far away", and not Europe- read the 'norm' or 'standard' for development.

When she finished telling me about the rest of the honeymoon, I hadn't heard a word she had said because I was still thinking: "Oh the privilege of the rich first world, I tell you, it never ceases to amaze me."

Top Humourists of Latin America

2007-07-12T00:18:00.000-07:00

So as you all know my research was about Political Humour and Social Transformation in Latin America and I spent my year meeting several artists, cartoonists and comedians. Here are a list of my favourite humourists whom I met and interviewed. I have included a lot of womyn because I am actually drawn to them but also because since there are so few female comedians, it is necessary to give them as much publicity as possible:

Nicaragua
Manuel Guillen
Guillen is a cartoonist who produces a very popular show entitled 'Los Hulosos.' His critique has shifted in recent years because he has become a born-again Christian but he is one of the most successful comedians/cartoonists in Central America.

Luis Enrique Calderon
He is Nicaragua's only stand-up comedian who imitates several politicians, news-broadcasters and presidents. His ability to sound exactly like politicians is what has made him so famous and loved by the Nicaraguan public.

Els Van Poppel
She is the director of a popular theatre group entitled MOVITEP_SF (Movimiento de Teatro Popular Sin Fronteras) and does a lot of street theatre that has to do with HIV/AIDS, womyn's rights and sexual exploitation of children.

Honduras
Bey Avendano and Miguel Angel Montoya are some of the most radical cartoonists in Honduras. They pride themselves in speaking for poor people and try to reach out to the most marginalised groups in Honduras. Miguel Angel Montoya also published under authoritarian regimes in Honduras and was recently honoured for his work and his courage to dare be a voice of dissent during Honduras most difficult periods.

Napoleon Ham
He is a cartoonist working towards producing new comedians and cartoonists. He has recently opened a cartoon school for children and supports development of all young artists-both male and female.

Argentina
Martin Rocco
A self-trained stand-up comedian, he was the first to bring stand-up comedy to Buenos Aires. He learnt the art of stand-up comedy by watching videos of comedians all over the world but particularly those in the United States. He started performing in local clubs and later taught stand-up comedy at one of the local universities in Buenos Aires.

Gabriela Acher
One of Argentina's most famous and loved comedians, Acher brought issues of gender and sexuality through her writing and her performances on various television programs. A self-proclaimed feminist, her humour traces the experiences of middle-class womyn and the difficulties of motherhood, childrearing etc.

Andres Cascioli
One of Argentina's finest cartoonists, he is the founder of groundbreaking magazine HUMOR which critiqued the military junta in the 1970s. The legacy of HUMOR lives on today and is recognised as one of the greatest comic magazines in South America.

Patricia Ianigro
One of the directors of Teatro Por La Identidad, Ianigro works with the Abuelas de la Plaza de Mayo towards reuniting families by finding children and relatives of the people who disappeared under the military junta in Argentina. She uses theatre to take her work to the people and to tell the stories of those who died or who survived Argentina's authoritarian regimes.

Peru
Sergio Paris
One of the founders of the Improv Group Keto, this Argentian actor and director moved to Lima, Peru and has contributed to the art of improvisation in Peru's capital.

Nazira
As an actress she trains young people to become great actors and improvisers at the Keto school. It is her belief that improvisation is essential to creative growth for any artist and the building of one's self confidence.

This is a small list of my favourite comedians but only a small reflection of many artists and comedians I met throughout my time in the region. I am confident that the humourists I mentioned will add to the legacy and tradition of producing deeply political humour in South America that lead toward social change.

Latin American lessons and tips

2007-07-08T04:22:00.000-07:00

So after a total of ten months in Latin America, my Spanish has become a mixture of every country I lived in. The use of Latin American slangs has been beneficial for blending in but at times, you also forget that different places have different meanings for various words. This led to the following 'misunderstandings':
The first was when I was living in Nicaragua and was celebrating my birthday. I had just finished a meal and decided to ask the waiter for the cheque. So I said: "Pasame la cuenta por favor" In Nicaragua, this is actually a pick up line which means something like "give it to me" but with sexual connotations. So of course the waiter looked at me with a grin on his face: "Quieres que te pase la cuenta?"(You want me to give it to you?) and all my friends burst out laughing. They then explained what it meant and once I recovered from my embarrassment, I asked the waiter to 'give me the cheque.'

The second language mishap took place when I was having a conversation in Honduras with people from Chile. A young womyn was on a tour with her mother and her 6 year old niece and I struck up a conversation with them. She told me she was going to say goodbye to her boyfriend and went away. When she came back I asked "Se dieron un pico?" (You gave him a little kiss?") 'Pico' means a peck almost or chuups as we say in Jamaica but in Chile it means to give a blowjob. Needless to say, the young womyn, her mother and the six year old girl all looked at me in horror as if I was the most vulgar womyn they had ever met. I asked what was wrong and said "un besito..no" "a little goodbye kiss?" Then they said "OHHHH u meant kiss...in Chile it means oral sex." Needless to say, I was incredibly embarrassed and was silent for the remainder of the tour.

These two mishaps have encouraged me to write out all slang I learnt after my time in Latin America for any of you who may find it useful:

Los Ticos-Costa Ricans
Los Catrachos-Hondurans
Los Nicas-Nicaraguans

Chick/Guy: Chavo/a (honduras), Chavalo/a (Nicaragua), Pata-guy, flaca-girl (Peru)

"A la gran puta"-Nicaraguan exclamation for almost anything

"Te voy a montar un machete"-I am going to whoop your ass

Valeverguista-Nicaraguan slang for someone who doesn't care about anything
Money-Plata (most of central America), Guita (Argentina)

Dude and sometimes Idiot: Boludo/a, Pelotudo/a (Argentina)

Well...so...: Che (Argentina)

Work/Job: Chamba (Peru)

Preppy/Uptown/Elite/Upperclass: Gente Cherry (nicaragua), Gente guegue/yeye (Panama), Gente Fifi (Panama/Costa Rica)

Bus: Colectivo (Argentina), Bus (the rest of latin America)

You: Vos (Argentina and central American spanish) Tu (Most of South America)

Pipe: La llave, El Grifo, La Pluma, (You just have to guess most of the time)

Idiot/Dummy: Ordinario/a (Argentina) Tarado/a

Servant/Maid: Chola (Peru)

You know what I mean?/You understand?: Cachai? (Chile)

Sure:Si po--like si pues-- (Chile)

Very: 'Re' usually in front of an Adjective (Argentina)

Another interesting things are names of currency in different Latin American countries. This may seem uninteresting to you but when you move from country to country, you have to remember the name of the currency and understand the value.

Nicaragua: Cordoba

Honduras: Lempira

Costa Rica: Colon

Panama: Dollars/Balboa

Argentina: Pesos

Uruguay: Pesos

Chile: Pesos

Peru: Soles

Another point of interest is the food that you MUST eat in each country. I had to buckle up and pretend to like some of them but for the most part its good stuff:

Nicaragua: Quesillo (god deliver you if you're ever cornered into trying it. I confess I HATED it!) But they do have wonderful alcohol which you should definitely try: Flor de Cana

Argentina: Asado (Good stuff but if you're vegetarian...FORGET IT!). You can never go wrong with Argentinian wine. They have the world's best wine and my favourite is Trapiche. I am a white wine drinker so can't tell you anything about red wine.

Peru: Ceviche (A seafood dish which is good but only if you actually like seafood) Of course, I fell in love with their famous beverage: Pisco Sour. There is a huge conflict between Peru and Chile about who invented the beverage. I stand with the peruvians and I do highly recommend that you check it out.

I'm not a food person as most of you know so most of the other countries's foods have been neglected. Find out for yourself if you can.

Latin American Top Places to See:

So after ten months of travelling all over Nicaragua, Honduras, Costa Rica, Panama, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile and Peru, I would like to leave some 'must see's' if you decide to visit any of these countries:

Honduras: Copan is the MUST SEE. They are wonderful ruins to check out. Also visit Roatan or any of the islands off the coast of Honduras, Valle de Angeles and Santa Lucia. These are really cool 'pueblos' to check out in Honduras.

Nicaragua: If you end up in Managua which isn't a 'fun' city to say the least, just visit the Tiscapa Park or the Malecon but they are not to die for. Your best bet is heading out to Leon to hike volcanoes and spending a day in Masaya. Then of course there is very touristy Granada which is probably more interesting than everything else.

Costa Rica: It has beautiful things to see and fun things to do because of the fact that it is such an environmentally friendly country. If you're into Nature its the place for you. Go bunjee jumping there because they have an established tradition. Other than, check out Punta Arenas for the beach and La Fortuna for its active volcano.

Panama: Panama city is a fun city with its booming economy and lots of restaurant. Panama viejo and Casco viejo are good places to hang out. Bocas del Toro is really fun because you get to take tours for 15 bucks to go from island to island.

Uruguay: I only saw Colonia and I recommend it for a day trip but nothing else.

Argentina: This has to be the most beautiful of all South American countries that I visited. Buenos Aires is to die for. It has everything from Break-dancing to tango to great restaurants (My favourite is La Cholita). My favourite part of Buenos Aires is La Boca. Don't miss it if you're there. I travelled the North of the country so have no recommendations for the South but everything I saw was fantastic: Cafayate, Salta (Do the salt planes!) and the indigenous villages of Humahuaca and Purmamarca. And of course IGUAZU!

Chile: I found Santiago to be a bit dull but if you're there, check out the Bella Vista/Buena Vista neighborhood because they have nice bars.

Peru: If you're into history and learning about Indigenous ANYTHING, Peru is the place to be. Cuzco is to DIE FOR! Do the packaged tour of ruins around Cuzco: Ollytantambo, Sacsahuaman, Chincheros and Macchu Picchu..trust me you save money that way even though its expensive. The North was not particularly interesting to me but you could like it. If you're in Lima then try to stay in Miraflores and spend one day in the Center of the city itself. In Miraflores you can check out Larcomar and paraglide over the beach and Calle de Las Pizzas. If you dance Cuban Salsa, check out my second home in Lima "Son De Cuba"

This is it for now of my favourite parts of Latin America. I have left out many things but if you're interested in one particular thing I mentioned and want more info, just comment and I'll let you know.

Goodbye Lima

2007-07-08T04:17:00.000-07:00

The finals in Peru were incredibly competitive and everyone who participated was quite professional. In the end, a professor of stand-up comedy won and a famous actor came second. I didn’t win but had a really great time with my routine. There are still a couple things that I think I could’ve worked on to make the routine even better. The first problem I encountered was the fact that I didn’t have an ending for the routine itself. A joke is a lot like a storyline and you have to have a beginning, climax and resolution with the punch line being the resolution. I didn’t have a punch line to close my routine. It wasn’t a fatal mistake but it still meant that the routine wasn’t as tight as it could’ve been. Secondly, my rhythm in the routine was off at times; I would say a line too fast or didn’t allow the audience to laugh enough before moving on to the next joke/line. In other words, I went so fast that at times I didn’t let the audience laugh enough. Thirdly, it just wasn’t a win night but it was still a good routine and I did enjoy myself. I have a copy of both routines, so if you speak Spanish or if you just want a copy of the DVD, let me know by posting a comment and I’ll be sure to give you one.

So what was this routine about? I used my experience at a Nicaraguan club (see previous post: Nicaragua Take one: Lights Camera, Action) and took it to the point of the absurd: I said that I thought that the power outage was actually a pause where the DJ lets the audience sings one line in the song and then puts the music back on. Obviously, since it was a power outage the music didn’t come back but the audience kept on singing. They even started singing whole new songs and then half an hour later when the power came back, the music miraculously started playing the exact same song at the exact same point that the public was singing. I also said that a Nicaraguan womyn explained to me that the Nicaraguan public education system teaches its citizens to sing and to continue singing when there is a power outage. Although I didn’t win,, the audience did laugh and I still feel good about having participated because I really felt like I was performing among real professionals who knew what they were doing and had a lot more experience with the craft. I hope to continue doing stand-up so Peru was just a starting point for a skill that I hope to certainly develop.

My time in Peru differed from my time in other countries because instead of interviewing comedians, actors, cartoonists, I used my time there to put into practice everything that I had seen in the previous countries I had visited. My aim was not to simply study humour, rather it was to produce it and to see if I had what it takes to actually be a ‘humorista.’ So I started taking improv classes and it helped me to come up with new ideas on the spot when I was doing my stand-up comedy routines. I don’t have a deep analysis of the humour industry in Peru but I can say that stand-up was one of the hardest things I have ever done and the new knowledge I gained about humour was from my own personal experience of seeking to make others laugh instead of observing people who make me laugh. Not only is it no easy task but also you have to be prepared to fail and to let yourself be vulnerable to your audience and to equally congratulate yourself when you get not just a burst of laughter but even a smile. A smile is an appreciation of a joke and so don’t feel bad if instead of dying with laughter someone just smiles because it still means that they have appreciated your joke. So I left Lima with the knowledge that I can actually produce humour and hope to do so again in the future.

Improv Definition

2007-05-06T10:02:00.000-07:00

I asked Nazira my improv professor to define Improvisation and she said:
Improvisación para mí es hacerte caso, es fluir, es este poder entrar en un estado, a ver le digo como un trance de percepción entre tu cabeza y tu cuerpo y tu corazón y decir que sí. Es decir que sí a una situación y creertela y jugar y fluir jugando.
To me, improvisation is to pay attention, to flow, it is to be able to enter a state [of mind/being] it is like a critical moment of perception among your head, your body and your heart. And it is to say yes. It is to say yes to a situation and to believe it and to play and to play as you flow.

Careful with the Menu

2007-05-06T09:47:00.000-07:00

When I was travelling Northern Peru, I went to a restaurant to have a meal. I decided to go to a nice restaurant and they had candles lit on the table. Everybody looked at me since I was obviously a foreigner and it wasn't high tourist season. I asked for the menu and I opened it and put it near the candle to read it. But I put it too close to the candle and so my menu caught on fire. I didnt realise at first but when I realised I panicked and so I start slamminng the menu on the table to out the fire. So the people are looking at me like Im a maniac but the fire wouldnt go out so I just took the glass of water and threw it all over the table. And the fire went out. Of course I was really embarassed and everybody in the restaurant was laughing at me. Then the waiter brought me a new menu and once he moved me to another table he moved the candle away from me to avoid another 'fire' and as he stifled his laughter, said 'Cuidado con el menu por favor.." (Careful with the menu please). I was like 'ok.'

Improv in Peru: DI QUE SI! [SAY YES!]

2007-05-04T08:33:00.000-07:00

So before I got to Lima, I had no exposure to improvisation as a branch of comedy apart from the Drew Carey Show. For some reason, I had neglected to even look for an improv group when I was in other parts of Latin America but I finally took the time to do it when a friend of mine told me he was taking classes at an improv school. I decided to take classes and interview the professors to learn more about what it means to do improv and its function in the peruvian context.

Improvisation has not been in Peru for a really long time but it has become increasingly popular within the last five years. I started taking improv classes with a group called Keto. Doing improv requires complete coordination of your mind and body. The first warm-up exercise was to walk around the room and to point to an object and to call it a different name for each step that you take. This is a means of getting you to rethink what you assume to be 'normal' or 'basic' knowledge and to open your mind to re-creating things.
Then you have a conversation with someone where you must make up a story from what the person says by starting each sentence with "si y..."("yes and..."). For instance, a conversation would start:
Person 1: John went to brush his teeth
Person 2: Yes and then he ate his breakfast
Person 1: yes and he did not finish because the breakfast was not well cooked
Person 2: yes and so he ate his shoe
...
So you basically create a whole new story for about 5 minutes without hesistating at any moment in the conversation or you have to start over and when that happens, your partner usually wants to kill you.

They then have you climb on top of a ladder and fall back into the arms of fellow students standing below you. I didn't have a problem doing that since I had already done bunjee jumping and I felt like there was no real danger involved but some people really couldn't let themselves fall back from the top of the ladder. But then again, I may just be a psycho in love with physical danger.
The purpose of these basic exercises are the following:
1. Mind and body coordination
2. Teamwork
3. Trust

The exercises often seem simple at first but they require you to think on your feet. They also have exercises where they have each student come up with a 2 minute story about any one topic. My first day at class each person had to tell a story about a carpenter but they would change the terms of telling the story once you stood up to talk. So when you get up to tell the story they will say: you must sing a song about the carpenter and the genre of the music is a western...Go!" Or they will tell you that the Carpenter is a Science Fiction movie and you must lay out who directed it, where it was made and give a summary of the movie in 2 minutes.

Director Sergio Paris explained that many scholars, actors or directors often look down on improv until they actually do it and they realise it is even harder to think on your feet in front of a paying audience when there is no script. Improv is probably the hardest form of theater that exists because it is so spontaneous. However, there are actually structures to doing improv that they teach you but they will all tell you the way to be good at it is through practice and experience.

The Relationship between Improv and Humour
So the intention of improv actors is never to actually produce humour. Humour is usually a bi-product of the improvisation itself. Every professor and every student at the improv school told me that they do not consider themselves comedians and that in trying to come up with a response or in trying to tell the story and often generate inadequate, senseless responses, you end up being funny. There was a game that we played where you had to tell someone some important news and the person would say "Que dijiste?" (What did you say?) and you would have to say something that rhymed with the last phrase you said. So for example, we created a scene where a guy had to tell his best friend that he was in love with the best friends' girlfriend. So he said:
"Guillermo, estoy enamorado de Ale." (Guillermo, I'm in love with Ale)
-"Que dijiste?" (What did you say?)
"Si quieres tomar un cafe?" (I said do you want some 'cafe' [coffee])
And the conversation continues until the other guy hears what he says and his angry reaction to the news is tempered by the fact that he has to rhyme the swear words that he said when he tells off his friend.
I hated that exercise because I had to rhyme in Spanish on my feet and that was NOT fun because at one point I just started inventing words but the professor thought that it was pretty funny so it wasn't that bad.

Because improv requires you to think on your feet, it means that any knowledge you have--even the most random knowledge-- becomes useful. According to a fellow improv student Teresa, she told me that she was learning to cook and she sometimes used knowledge about cooking when she needed vocabulary or needed to invent things in her improv stories. This was particularly necessary when they would have you act as a deaf mute translater as someone explains an arbitrary question like "Why do bees instead of ants make honey?" Obviously, nobody actually knew this which is why the explanation was usually very funny and became even funnier as the translator uses his/her body and face to 'translate' each phrase or word that the person said. Teresa used her cooking knowledge to tell the story and it made absolutely NO sense which is why it was so funny.
Humour as a bi-product adds to the fun of improv and is what keeps the audience entertained. So it is never the trying to be funny, it is to let humour happen organically. In many ways, improv has a strange relationship to humour because it is not like stand-up where you want people to laugh, nor is it like cartoons where you're using humour to communicate a message; humour is not at the center of the art of improv itself but is naturally produced in the development of an improv story.

Improv and Social Change
Keto as an improv group did not have some romantic vision about changing the world but the professor believed that improv was a way of working and changing the way individuals see the world. Nazira, the improv professor explained that the Carpenter exercise is about 'possibilities'. She believes that through that exercise her students will see how many different, interesting possibilities can come from any single idea. She says that when people see the various possibilities coming from the Carpenter story, then they can apply it to their daily lives and open their minds to new things. She said that the carpenter exercise coupled with the falling from the ladder exercise is how improv is a way to 'generar confianza' (generate trust). She told me: "El tema de ayer era la confianza y las posibilidades entonces las posibilidades eran el ejercicio del carpintero no? Cuántas posibilidades hay con una sola cosa? A veces uno en la vida se hace problemas y no puede salir de ellos pero si estás en un estado más positivo, encuentras respuestas y para una pregunta puede haber muchas respuestas. No todo es blanco ni negro. " [Yesterday's theme was trust and possibilities so the possibilities theme was the carpenter exercise right? How many possibilities are there with just one thing? At times one has problems in life and you can't solve them but if you are in a positive state of mind you can find answers and there may be many answers to that one question. Everything isn't black and white]

In response to my question as to what impact does she want improv to have on her audience she said: "Que la gente disfrute... y que la gente sepa que hay más formas de ver la vida y si viendo un grupo de locos que se paran allí, y no saben qué mierda va a pasar, y que [el grupo de gente] se lanzan al vacío y todo el mundo la pasa bién, uno también va a decir “hoy día voy a decir que sí a más cosas no?”...Hoy día voy a aceptar más. Voy a aceptar más al otro, voy a aceptar más a mí. Creo que si se pueden llevar algo a eso sería genial. " [may they (the public) have a enjoy it and let everyone know that there are many more ways of seeing life. And if watching a group of crazy people standing there without knowing what the hell is going to happen next, but those people launch off into an emptiness and have a good time then maybe the public too will say "today I am going to say yes to more things." Today I am going to accept more...I am going to accept someone else more, I am going to accept myself some more. I think that if improv can push them to that place then it would really be great.]

The Banana Boat in Lima

2007-04-06T09:49:00.000-07:00

I went to the beach on Saturday and had an escapade with a banana boat. You know how the banana boat is being dragged by a speed boat and you have to try to stay on for the entire ride? Well I got on the banana boat and started falling off immediately because you already know that I am not the fattest person in the world. But since Im a stubborn idiot I held on to the boat for dear life.

Then the water started beating against my body. So now I was being dragged alongside the banana boat and the boat was moving at the speed of lightening as I simultaneously used my hand to cling to it for dear life. The force of the water started pushing off my bikini bottom. So then I start hanging on to both my buttcheeks and the side of the boat in fear of being stripped naked in my quest not to be knocked off the boat. But at the same time the people still on the boat were looking at me like Im a psycho. Then I say to myself "Danielle people think you're a psycho because you're grabbing your ass while your body is being dragged by a banana boat..sometimes you gotta cut your losses dude"
Then I start thinking to myself, what if your bikini bottom really falls off and you're pantsless when you get back ON the boat.

So I let go.

And I was immediately clobbered by a giant wave. I then pull my bikini bottom up before the boat comes back to get me. When they come get me they pull me back on and it gave me a really huge wedgy so my buttcheeks were screaming "HELLO " to the world. When I finally get on the boat with my two buttcheeks hanging out, I looked at the other people on the banana boat and said "In Jamaica showing your buttcheeks to strangers is how we say HOLA"
And they burst out laughing..

My First Stand-Up Comedy Routine

2007-03-19T13:55:00.000-07:00

Copy and paste this link to see the video of my performance:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1256034188226198379&hl=es

So on March 14, 2007, I performed my very first stand-up comedy routine in front of 200 strangers at the local club "The Satchmo" and competed against 4 other amateur comedians. And I WON!
I was convinced to enter by the director Sergio, an improv director who after my interview with him told me that he was convinced I had it in me to be a stand-up comedian. Doing stand-up comedy in any language is hard. But doing it in Spanish was an absolute and total nightmare to me and even though I told him I would do it, I spent the next 10 days sweating and going to the bathroom regularly. I was SOOO nervous.

Stand-up is one of those things that you either fail or succeed at. There is almost never an in between. The first second you get on stage requires that you have an immediate connection with your audience. It also requires that you sustain their attention for your entire routine. Keeping 200 people interested in you is pretty hard. I am of course extremely proud of myself because I won and have attached pictures so that people can see it. And to confirm my parents' decision to boast about this to as many people as is humanly possible.

So here is the question everybody asks: What did you talk about?

So here is what I did:
There is an assumption by the average South American that every black person is from Brazil. So my routine started with me talking patois/Jamaican dialect which took the audience offguard and got their attention. After speaking in dialect I said "Oops, nobody understood that no?? uh oh!" After that I had the entire audience saying YEAH MAN! and ended by saying "NO I AM NOT FROM BRAZIL!" That was hilarious to them because they were all thinking I was Brazilian that the moment I stepped on stage.

YEAH MAN became the running gag of the show. A running gag is a line that a comedian uses to see whether or not the audience is with him/her. Its an interactive line that the audience repeats with you so you keep their attention throughout your act. You have to find the right balance and know when to use it and how not to overuse it. The line also has to be short and catchy. Luckily yeah man is short and catchy for spanish speakers who pronounced it "Jay man" but it worked.
So I said (in spanish)
everybody having a good time?
and they responded "jay man"
--.wanna have a beer?
-Jay man!
Wanna have sex with me?
---Jay man!
---Very good..thank you so much for that..my phone number is..no kidding.

Then in the routine I went on to say that I blame my mother for everything. I dont blame her becuase I am irresponsible, blaming my mother is a medical recommendation from my psychologist who always said to me "Echale la culpa a tu madre que te pario" That line means blame 'yo momma!'
I explained that I swear in my routine because bad words are the first words you learn when you start to speak another language. Given that I have travelled so much, I have mixed the swears from different countries. (Only spanish speakers can understand this) So I used a sentence where I mixed mexican swears with swears from Spain and I explained that I do this because I respect the equality of all swears. This is how world peace can begin...swearing. I also clarified that I dont actually know what the swears mean, nor where they come from, nor what I am swearing about...
but I swear
....
so please put up with me and my incoherent profanity for the remainder of the show.

The swears were a joke in and of themselves because in the peru context they make absolutely no sense and given that Im combining from swears from different countries, Im not saying profanity..Im talking gibberish.

I continued by explaining that my mother sent me to other countries because she realised that I couldnt learn anything in Jamaica. She sent me to NY to learn to drive, then to Spain to learn to cook and when I came back she was watching the olympics and sent me to Kenya to learn how to run. (I officially apologise to Wangechi for fulfilling the Kenya stereotype).
Anyway, when I came running back from kenya she told me that she was going to send me to Latin America to learn Spanish and when I said no, she used intellectual arguments and psychology..in other words she beat the crap out of me and when I regained consciousness I was in Lima, Peru.
Then I invented that there was a pedestrian street in Lima Centro (there is no pedestrian street there so the audience found it funny that I invented one) and said that I looked for a restaurant to eat. Looking for a restaurant was a joke in and of itself becuase Peru has a reputation of having bad restaurants that give you loose bowel movement for extended periods of time. So I told them how I told my mother I was learning to 'cagar' (to take a dump) for my entire time in Lima until I found a clean restaurant in the invented pedestrian street.
Anyway, I find a restaurant and before I enter the restaurant I was hit on by a giant sausage who of course thought that I was from brazil. The giant sausage story is in a previous post on this blog and was the highlight of the routine. (see Salchicha Gigante)
Being hit on by a giant sausage is a fairly easy story to get people to laugh at. So I exagerrated and made it into a show down between me and the sausage. So when the sausage realised that I was more psycho than he was , he ran away. But then I got really upset that he ran away and was like "A sausage cannot reject me" and the roles were reversed and I started pursuing the giant sausage. So I told the audience to imagine the image of the only Jamaican in Latin America having a show down with a giant sausage in an invented street in lima center. I was yelling at the sausage until I realised that people around me on the imaginary street were hearing me scream "Sausage don't leave me..sausage I love you..sausage give me a chance!"
Then after that, I ran into a family from guatemala--see previous post "Guatemala hospitality" and they loved the story of course.
I ended with the moral of the story being: If you have a run in with a giant sausage, get told off by the someone's wife and don't learn to swear properly in spanish, blame "yo momma!" Jay man!
And that was my presentation in a nut shell. Of course I am not putting up all the jokes told in my routine but once I get the link from the group I will transcribe what I said at each point.

I do want to say that I respect every comedian who has the nerve to stand in front of an audience for hour long shows to make them laugh. It is not easy! If you do not seduce your audience in the first five mins, you have already failed. And a failed routine is a form of severe torture for both the comedian and the audience.
I send my condolences to all comedians who have been booed off stage.
(to the left is a photo of me and the runner up)

(How ironic that I put my winning photo here while I send my condolences to comedians..its kinda like..sucks for you but yay for me right?)

Another thing that came to my attention after my performance was how it is that humour has become totally commercialised. Comedians often tell the stereotypical jokes they tell (including myself with the Kenya jokes) because it assures you an easy laugh. Doing stand-up comedy is not about changing the world because as a comedian you are providing a service that your audience has paid for. So there is a way in which Stand-up comedy has been coopted by capitalism and has become a harder space for creating social change.
Secondly, stand-up comedy is a space of dialogue between the comedian and the audience. It requires you to be totally natural and to make the audience feel like they're in a room with a friend who's telling them a story. You are dependent on the audience's approval and have to choose a topic that the audience is familiar with. People use easy jokes and fall back on stereotypes because they feel that it is 'common knowledge' that the audience can relate to.
I am not saying that it is impossible to do progressive humour that gets people to laugh. But I am tracing the difficulties for stand-up comedians when they prepare a routine.
But also, there are comedians who harbour their own beliefs about distincts group of people anyway so they themselves believe some of the jokes they crack. Comedians have to figure out better ways to make a difference through stand-up and not just--how can I make people laugh here?
There is a way to do both.
So I guess that I hereby vow to make no more kenya jokes.

Also, part of the reason that certain racist/sexist/homophobic jokes are told is because only certain people have access to stand-up comedy. Out of the five comedians two of us were female and last week and this week there will only be one female comedian per show. It is not that womyn do not have a sense of humour, but it has to do with who monopolises stand-up comedy as a space. In other words, we have to think about stand-up comedy in terms of who owns the space. I will explain why stand-up comedy is male-dominated in another post.

It is empowering to make so many people happy in 12 mins but it is also the most vulnerable I have ever been. To be a comedian is to be completely vulnerable to your audience in some ways. For me being in front of a bunch of strangers doing stand-up is kind of like standing naked in the middle of a highway in front of a speeding truck where you hope the driver will see you in time to jam on his brakes.
Thank God my audience stepped on their brakes!
Enjoy the photos and wish me luck for my next routine.

P.S The picture on the right is a picture of the first person to ever ask for my autograph. Since he was so hot I gave him my phone number..although I think he's gay...

Machupicchu--the tax relief

2007-03-10T14:17:00.000-08:00

Since my sister came to visit, we headed straight to Cusco to see the Wonder of the World Machupicchu. But before I show you that I want you to see a picture of Ollytantambo near the Valley of the Sacred Inca. I had never heard of it before but I thought it was really nice and if you're ever in Peru, be sure to check it out.
Photo of Ollytantambo.

From there we headed to Machupicchu. Macchupicchu is referred to as the Lost Inca city because it was built during the 15th century and then abandoned by the Inca Empire because of civil war. Nobody actually lived there for centuries but to get there people would do the Inca Trail which is a four day trek to get to Machupicchu. The Inca Trail has become a huge tourist attraction but I did not fool myself into thinking that my body could handle going all the way up there. Especially if you can get there by bus and train anyway.

Machupicchu sits high at over 7000 feet above sea level and it is hard to believe that the city made of white granite was built using human, manual labour and not the machinery that exists today.
The city was 'discovered' by a North American Professor Hiram Bingham who went to Peru doing research on the Inca Empire in 1910. Well lets not say 'discovered' since peruvians knew that it existed; but since it was abandoned and Peru has SO MANY ruins, they kind of just didn't really pay that much attention to it. They say that only 10% of the ruins in the country has been discovered so that goes to say how much there is to see. Most of the other ruins haven't been found yet because they sit at very high altitudes in the mountains and are so hard to reach. The altitude sickness that you experience is enough to deter you from trying to find these places. You have to move so slowly anyway because of the lack of oxygen when you are climbing some of the ruins around Cusco.
But what I think is a better way of saying this is that the Professor was the first to make Machupicchu public to the rest of the world. The people who lived near Cusco knew that Machupicchu existed but no one actually went there becuase it was so hard to reach. Anyway, with the help of a young indigenous boy as his guide, the Professor made his way to Machupicchu.
When they got to Macchupicchu they found two families living there. And can you believe why the two families were there i.e 2,430 mtrs/some 7970 feet above sea level?
You'll never guess this...
They had moved to Machupicchu--the middle of nowhere--

to

avoid

paying

taxes.

...

?
??
???

WOW!

Is anyone flabberghasted by this?? Because I really am!!
I mean I understand that times were hard but come on!! I guess if you thought Jamaicans were bad, or people in the States were bad about filing taxes, those two indigenous families just kinda took the cake for me.
I guess Machupicchu is not only one of the 7 Wonders of the World, it may just be the best way to escape the IRS.
Anyway below are the pictures of Machupicchu..until you go there, you just can't believe it exists.

Here is my sister:And here I am:

Photos taken by Danielle and Shani Roper

The Best of Gabriela Acher

2007-02-25T10:08:00.000-08:00

Unlike Nicaragua and the rest of Central America, the Argentina Political Humour circle not only has a wider variety of humour, but it also has a substantial, recognized presence of feminist comedians and humourists. The most famous of feminist comedians is Maitena, a cartoonist whose humour is directed towards deconstructing and ridiculing notions of gender. There are also several upcoming stand-up comedians such as Nathalia Carulias and Dahlia Gutman who talk about notions of gender in their work. In the interest of clarification, there is a difference between a female humourist presence and a feminist humourist presence. The humourists that I am labling as feminist, are those who identify as feminist and describe their work as feminist. Argentina has a presence of both feminist and female humourists in the political humour industry.

But one feminist humourist that drew my attention when I got to Buenos Aires was the actress and writer Gabriela Acher. Acher has several books that deal with gender, relationships, love, sexuality and motherhood. Some of her books include “La Guerra de Los Sexos Está Por Acabar” [The Battle of the Sexes is about to End], “Si Soy Tan Inteligente Por Qué Me Enamoro Como Idiota” [If I Am So Smart, Why do I Fall in Love like An Idiot] and my absolute favourite “Algo Sobre Mi Madre (Todo Sería Demasiado) [Something About my Mother (Everything would be Too Much).

A self-proclaimed feminist, Acher uses her work to dispel the notion that Feminist humour is ‘anti-man’ and to talk about the challenges that women face throughout childhood until adulthood all in the name of fulfilling patriarchal constructions of womanhood. She uses her childhood experiences with her mother, growing up in a Jewish family and then traces her own experiences to when she too becomes a mother. I liked the fact that she actually took the time to talk about motherhood because a book on motherhood is typically not considered a ‘feminist’ topic. Acher demonstrates that indeed it is…

Lets take a look at her book "Algo Sobre Mi Madre Todo Sería Demasiado":
The book is a satirical analysis of the Freud’s theory that our mothers are to blame for everything. It suggests that you can never please your mother who will forever be your biggest critic; but in public a mother’s pride will proclaim that no one is as good as her child. The story of her Jewish upbringing begins when her older sister finds her crying hysterically as a little girl and she explains that she is crying because she believes her father is seeing other children. Her mother takes her to a psychiatrist and at the end of the interview, the psychiatrist concludes that it is the mother and not Gabriela who is in need of psychiatric help. After that her mother stops believing in psychology.
Anyway, I can't go through the entire book but I wanted to leave some of my favourite excerpts with you according to the themes that she discusses:

1.Over-protection
Mi mama comenzó a preocuparse por mí el día en que nací. Cuando estaba en la cuna, entraba al cuarto cada diez minutos, para ver si yo estaba respirando. My mother began to worry about me the day I was born. When I was in the crib, she would enter the room every ten minutes to check if I was breathing.
Cuando tenía diez años, entraba a mi cuarto para ver si yo estaba estudiando. When I was ten years old, she entered my room to check if I was studying.
Cuando tenía diecisiete, entraba a mi cuarto para ver si yo estaba teniendo sexo, sola o acompañada. When I was 17, she entered my room to check if I was having sex—alone or with someone else. (pg. 36)

2. Your mother is your biggest critic:
It was impossible to please her mother because her mother was never happy with herself. She believed that her mother was Jewish and did not accept Jesus as the messiah because her mother would have liked to have personally carried the cross. There was always something to complain about, something to be unhappy about or something to feel guilty about.
She explained this as part of being Jewish but reiterates throughout the book that you do not have to have a Jewish mother to have a mother with Jewish characteristics. This is borne out in her chapter “No hace falta ser judía para ser una madre judía” You don’t need to be Jewish to be a Jewish mother. A mother’s criticism is universal: Here are some of the most historic lines by mothers:

¡Ponete los calzoncillos adentro, como todo el mundo! Wear your briefs on the inside like everyone else!
–Superman’s mother

No sé de qué te reís con lo gorda que estás. I don’t know what you’re laughing at with all that weight you have on.
---Mona Lisa’s mother

¿Por qué nunca escuchás a tu madre? Why don’t you ever listen to your mother?
--Ludwig Van Beethoven’s mother

¿Cuándo vas a pintar algo que se entienda? When are you going to paint something that somebody can understand?
---Pablo Picasso’s mother

¡Operate esa nariz de una buena vez! Operate on that nose for once!
---Barbara Streisand’s mother

¿Todo el tiempo jugando con esa estúpida cometa? ¡Entrá inmediatamente y ponete a hacer los deberes! Playing with that stupid comet all the time? Go inside and do your homework!
---Benjamin Franklin’s mother

¿Cómo que vas a viajar a la luna? ¿Y si está llena de antisemitas? What do you mean you’re going to travel to the moon? And if its full of anti-semites?
---A Jewish Astronauts mother

¿Y a eso le llamas comida? You call that food?
Gandhi’s mother

¿Otra vez haciendo garabatos? ¿Por qué no te peinás un poco y salís con alguna buena chica? Doodling again? Why don’t you comb your hair a little and go out with a nice girl?
--Albert Einstein’s mother

¡Cambiate el calzoncillo antes de salir a la calle! ¿Y si tenés un accidente? Change your underwear before you go on the road..what if you have an accident?
---James Dean’s mother

¡Nunca vas a llegar a ningún lado si estás siempre en las nubes! You’re never gonna get anywhere if you’re always in the clouds!
--Amelia Earhart’s mother (pgs 117-119)

3. The pressure to get married.
She said that the pressure started on mother’s day when she bought her mother and gift and said “Happy Mother’s Day!” and her mother replied “Pity I can’t say the same to you!” If she didn’t get married then her mother would never have a grandchild. Her mother sought to introduce her to the dating scene by encouraging her to put an ad in the newspaper to look for a husband. Some of the ads went like this:

Joven Profesional de 29 busca compañera con quien ir a la sinagoga, encender las velas de shabat, celebrar las festividades, construir la Zucá juntos, asistir a Bar-Mitzvas. Tu religion no es importante. Young Professional, Male, 29 yrs old, looking for a partner to go with him to the synagogue, light the Shabat candles, celebrate the festivities, build the Zucá together, go to Bar Mitzvas together. Your religion is not important.

Joven Judío atractivo, 38. Nada oculto. Nada de equipaje. Nada de Personalidad. Young attractive male Jew. 38 yrs old. Nothing to hide. No baggage. No Personality.

Soltero de 29. Me gusta la música disco, escalar montañas, esquiar, correr pista y campo. Tengo una leve cojera. Single 29 yr old male. I like disco music, to hike mountains, skiing, long distance and cross country running. I have a slight limp.

Feminista judía radical. Busco compañero que acepte mi independencia. Aunque probablemente no lo hagas; ¡mejor olvídalo! Jewish radical feminist. I am looking for a partner who accepts my independence. Even though you probably won’t actually accept it...you know what, forget it.

Soy un sensible joven príncipe judío a quién puedes abrir tu Corazon, y con quien podrás compartir tus pensamientos y secretos más profundos. Confía en mí. Comprenderé tus inseguridades. Abstenerse gorditas, por favor. I am a sensitive Jewish prince to whom you can open your heart and with whom you can share your deepest thoughts and secrets. Trust me. I will understand your insecurities. Fat women stay away please.

The purpose of the advertisement itself explains how marriage has become completely commercialized and both men and women fall into the trap of needing to complete themselves by finding the right partner.

Acher then takes us through what she herself begins to think when she becomes a mother. What was interesting about her experiences as a mother is that while she does not say so explicitly, her own experiences display the difficulties of single motherhood as she tries to raise a son. She starts having what she labels as a mother's thoughts:

Pensamientos Maternos A Mother's thoughts

Honrarás a tu madre más que a ti misma. You shall honour your mother more than yourself
Reíte ahora que ya vas a llorar mañana. Laugh now, you’ll cry tomorrow
Vos casate que el amor viene después. Just get married, love will come afterwards
No solo hay que ser decente, hay que parecerlo. Don’t just be decent, look decent too.
Lo haces para mortificarme. You do it to mortify/annoy/bother me.
Tengo palpitaciones. I have palpitations
Abrigate que tengo frio. Please put on your jacket, I am cold.
¡Ya vas a ver cuando tengas tus propios hijos! You’ll see when you have your own children.
Si Dios hubiera creído en la permisividad, nos hubiera dado “Las diez sugerencias” If God believed in ‘permission’ he would have given us The Ten Suggestions”
No te divertirás por nada del mundo. You will not enjoy anything in the world.

In the second section of her book we see her turn into a ‘technological mother’ when she has her own son. . I say technological because she describes her contact with her own son as stable communication by email even though they live in the same house. By showing how she too evolves into a ‘technological’ version of her mother-who is equally impossible to please- you leave the story viewing motherhood in a human way. The very thing her mother used to do, she begins to do with her own son. So her mother is not demonized in the story…instead at the end of the book you end up thinking that it is not the mother who is impossible to please, rather it is the child.

In my interview with Acher, she explained that writing a story about her mother was important to her because so many people have a love-hate relationship with their mothers. She explained to me that while the entire story was invented, many people who have read her book can completely relate to difficulties with their mother and the absolute horror of discovering how they too become their mother when they have children. For her, humour was not the message of tracing stories of Jewish motherhood, it is the means of doing so. So when you read her book, you can laugh at your own mother and laugh at yourself.

She also presents other themes in her book such as sexuality, aging and the body image via discussions about the boom of plastic surgery in Latin America. She explains at one point that plastic surgery is so rampant that you must look at women’s child to figure out what she (the mother) looked like before the surgery.

Now of course, I felt like Acher fell into the tired 'fat jokes' or even ableist people jokes at points in the book but she puts them out there because these are issues that come up when people are looking for partners and also things that mothers say to their children--especially to their daughters. So I could forgive her for it because of the other great things she had in the book itself.

Acher told me that being a humourist is important simply because people can never read her work and believe that feminists do not have a sense of humour.

I hope that some day they will translate her book into English so that all you English-speakers our there can share in the feminist laughter.

All excerpts taken from the book "Algo Sobre Mi Madre Todo Seria Demasiado"
Find photo of Gabriela Acher above
©Danielle Roper

Humor: Definition

2007-02-19T13:01:00.000-08:00

El humor es un secreto que se comparte
Humour is a secret that one shares...
--Gabriela Acher femenist Argentine Comedian

Paragliding in Lima

2007-02-15T11:08:00.000-08:00

Just leaving photos of my Paragliding experience in Miraflores, Lima-Peru...enjoy!
Ready:
Take off:
The View from above:

Me:
Another view from up above:

Me and the Pilot:

Looking up at the paraglide:
Don't look down:
Landing:
All photos taken by Danielle Roper

The Argentine identity crisis

2007-01-31T13:06:00.000-08:00

In my interview with David Rotemberg an Argentine comedian, he was explaining to me why Argentinians believe that Argentina is the Europe of Latin America. According to him, Argentinians have an internal conflict because Argentina is a wanna be or fake first world country. The following is a discussion between two Argentines as to how Argentina can stop being third world and finally get into the first world club:

Argentine 1: Como podemos ingresar al primer mundo? How can we get into the first world

Argentine 2: Alemania les hizo una guerra a los EEUU y perdió ahora son una potencia. Japón les hizo una guerra a los EEUU y perdió son una potencia, hagamos una guerra a los EEUU.
Germany went to war with the USA and lost and now they are a world power. Japan went to war with the USA and lost and now they are a world power. Lets go to war with the USA!

- Dale... Che..y si ganamos? Sure dude...ahh and if we win?

Favourite Quotes from my mother's visit to Argentina

2007-01-31T12:49:00.000-08:00

So we all know that Jamaicans in general have a way of saying things but no one can describe things quite the way my mother does. I don't know, my mother just has a way with words. Here are examples of what I mean:
1. My mother on Florencia's incapacity to work a full time job and be a full time university student at the same time:
"Wappen, Florencia caant waalk and chew gum same time?"
Explanation: Its kind of self-explanatory, Florencia can't walk and chew a bubble gum at the same time.

2. My mother describing the obstacles a Spanish corporation is facing in its attempt to establish a hotel chain in Jamaica:
"Danielle, yuh know like when Hawk siddung inna pitcheery chest?"
Explanation: This is in reference to a visual image of when an eagle or a hawk is about to capture a pigeon and it uses its claw to grab the bird by its chest.

3. My mother telling one of my siblings that he has absolutely lost his mind:
"YUH MUSSI DRINK MAD PUSS PISS!"
Explanation: Based on the notion in rural Jamaica that when a feline is crazy if you ingest its urine, you too will become crazy.

Argentina: Los Desparecidos, Popular Theatre and National Identity

2007-01-26T10:56:00.000-08:00

The enforced disappearances of up to 30 thousand Argentinians during the Videla dictatorship from 1975 to 1983 is a horrific moment that continues to plague the country's citizens even today. The story of the disappearance is both personal and public and this post seeks to trace the stories of some of the victims and the role that popular theatre can play in the search for justice.

Every Thursday afternoon the Abuelas de La Plaza de Mayo march in front of congress in memory of their children and relatives who disappeared under the reign of the military junta in the 1970s. Time has revealed that the capture and torture of their relatives was also accompanied by the kidnapping of the victims’ children, some of whom continue to live with the torturers themselves or with friends and families of members of the armed forces. The march is therefore referred to as the march of the grandmothers who have been forced to accept the disappearance of their children but who seek justice through the search for their grandchildren. Let me share with you the story of one such case:
In 1978, Paula Eva Logares disappeared with her parents Claudio Logares and Monica Grispon on the 18th of May in Montevideo, Uruguay. Her maternal grandmother Elsa Pavón de Aguilar, did not know what the word ‘desaparecido’ meant until that moment but knew that her daugher and son-in-law were activists who moved from Argentina to Uruguay because their lives were in danger under military rule. When they disappeared in 1978, Elsa continued to tidy her daughter’s room for one whole year both in denial of their disappearance and also with the belief that her daughter and her granddaughter would eventually return home. Paula Eva Logares was 23 months old when her parents were kidnapped, tortured and murdered in Montevideo, Uruguay. It was not until Elsa joined the Abuelas (grandmothers) de Plaza de Mayo that she discovered that while Monica was probably dead, her granddaughter, Paula was still alive, living with one of the torturers Lavallén and his wife in La Plata, Argentina. Lavallén, like many other members of the military, took Paula as a ‘war button’ and testimony of his ‘conquest’ of her activist parents. He renamed her Paula Eva Lavallén and officially re-registered her as his own daughter born 2 years after her real date of birth. He ensured that Paula had no knowledge of her real parents, teaching her that he and his wife were her parents and officially erasing any evidence of her previous life with her biological parents. It was not until Paula turned four that one of her next door neighbors identified her in a photograph that Elsa had published in their neighborhood and reported her to the Abuelas that the truth of Paula’s past was revealed.

Paula’s next door neighbor agreed to secretly meet Elsa and the Abuelas and told them that Paula’s relationship with Lavallén was frightening because he told Paula that men were disgusting and that he was the only man she ought to trust. He also told her that she would marry him when she grew up; at that time Paula was seven years old and Lavallén was forty-six. Elsa found this to be alarming and vowed to do everything in her power to rescue her granddaughter immediately. Little by little Elsa secretly began gathering information and enough evidence to take Lavallén to court but she had to wait until the ending of the dictatorship to officially press charges. When Elsa and the lawyers of the Abuelas de la Plaza de Mayo officially pressed charges and had Paula removed, their first obstacle was to prove her official date of birth as Lavallén had gotten Paula legally renamed and re-registered. With the help of scientists, photographs and radiographic tests, they were able to prove Paula’s real identity. The court ruled that Paula was to be returned to her biological grandmother and charged Lavallén and his wife for falsifying information on legal documents as well as the kidnapping of the child. However, the sentence is a suspended sentence and Lavallén and his wife continue to live in freedom even today and have continuously attempted to contact Paula over the last 20 years. Lavallén and other members of the military are yet to be charged for the murder of Paula’s real parents because the system behind the disappearances has never completely been dismantled.

Perhaps the greatest obstacle that Elsa faced was to prove to Paula herself that she was indeed her granddaughter. The day the court ruled that Paula was to be sent to live with Elsa, her grandfather and her uncles and aunts, the child threw a tantrum and cried uncontrollably. Psychologists accompanied Elsa when she first spoke to Paula who although was (biologically) 7 years old at the time, was two years behind in her mental development. Elsa said that it was as if Paula were a big baby and although she was tall for her legal age, she was still physically underdeveloped for her biological age. Psychologists explained that this was a result of her traumatic separation from her parents. When Elsa showed Paula pictures of her real parents and told her that Lavallén had lied to her, Paula screamed at her and called her a liar. Elsa then showed her a picture of herself with her mother that she had taken 2 weeks before she was kidnapped and Paula stopped crying as if she had recognized her. Elsa then said to her “Do you know what you used to call her father? Instead of saying Claudio, you would say ‘Calio.’” Paula repeated it and burst into tears. She remembered. Psychologists say that Paula remembered because she actually knew her parents at the time of the kidnapping and that the moment of re-remembering them was a terribly painful one for her. She moved in with her grandparents and psychologists stayed in the house with her for an extended period of time to ease the emotional and psychological difficulties of reintegration. Paula’s story is not the only story that I read and heard about when I was living in Buenos Aires, nor is it the only country where disappearances occurred. The military junta in Argentina collaborated with the military dictatorships in Chile, Paraguay, Bolivia and Uruguay to enforce disappearances of thousands of citizens including activists, homeless people, homosexuals, drug addicts and prostitutes. Cases are still being fought today.

When I had arrived in Argentina, the story of the 30,000 ‘desparecidos’ was just a story that I thought had already been resolved. To my absolute shock and horror, this was not the case. When my friend Erick came to visit me in Buenos Aires, we went to a gay pride rally and saw several signs saying “¿Dónde está Jorge Julio Lopéz?” At the time I didn’t take notice of it and it was only when I started interviewing popular theatre groups that I begun to ask questions. I asked the people I lived with who he was and they told me that he was one of the ‘desparecidos’ who had survived and was currently testifying against Etchecolatz, a former police chief convicted of crimes against humanity and after he testified, he disappeared. So I asked Martín and Irma (the people I lived with) in what year did this happen and Martín looked at me incredulously and said “Danielle, vos no sabes, se lo llevaron hace 3 meses.” Danielle, you don’t know? They kidnapped him three months ago!” It is only now, under Kirchners government that Argentina has really begun to prosecute members of the military and to officially search for the grandchildren of those who disappeared.

The relevance of the mass disappearance of thousands of people hit home for me when Martín and Irma told me that their brother is also one of the ‘desparecidos’ and that they too continue to search for at the very least, his body. It made sense to me because I had been renting a room in their house for two months and had met all the members of their family except him and his picture was still up in the living room. Irma explained that she was the last to see him. Her daughter Florencia was just born and she had met her brother in a park the same day. He had told Irma he needed to run an errand before going over to meet his niece for the first time. He was also an activist. She said that he asked her to accompany him but she was tired and told him that she needed to take care of Florencia. He left and took a taxi but didn’t show up at Irma’s house that afternoon. Irma found it strange until her father informed her that he had called saying not to worry and that he was okay. Irma’s father said, “Estas seguro hijo, es que te escucho la voz rara…”Are you sure son? Your voice sounds strange.” And he said he was fine and would meet Florencia the next day. Irma said that her brother was one of many victims that the military got to call home so that the family would not look for him. Martin told me that they had spoken to everyone and gone to every authority in the city to find him until the bishop from their local church told them to stop looking because the military had threatened to kill anyone who searched for their brother. For Irma, the alliance of the church with the military during the dictatorship was the most frustrating part and explains why so many people, including many of the Abuelas who used to be practicing Catholics, left the church when their children and grandchildren disappeared. The same night that Irma and Martín told me about their brother, we saw a breaking news report that another activist and peronista Luis Gerez, a key witness against another police chief Patti ‘reappeared’ after president Kirchner announced a national search for those who had kidnapped him.

My conversation with Martin and Irma and the breaking news report inspired me to interview the theatre group ‘Teatro Por [X] La Identidad,’ which is a popular theatre group that works with the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo to use theatre to create awareness and also to find grandchildren now aged 25-30 that may be children of ‘desparecidos.’ They use their plays to provide information so that those in doubt can learn the truth of their own identity and several people have come forward after seeing their work and been reunited with their family. Patricia Ianigro, director of "Teatro X La Identidad" told me that she started working with Las Abuelas when her twin brother disappeared. She launched "Teatro X La Identidad" to participate in the search because she said that “[El teatro] es el espacio de militancia para mí…es poder desarrollarme en aquello que en algún momento fue privado…para mí era el grito que a muchos lo quedó ahogados y que el grito también fue torturado y matado" [Theatre] is a space of militancy for me, it is to be able to develop that which was private at one point…for me it was a shout/scream that was silenced/suppressed for many of us…that shout/scream was also tortured and murdered. She explained the role of popular theatre in the search for the ‘desaparecidos’ as “históricamente fue la manifestación más clara de lo que se vivía en ese momento SI...a través del teatro independiente estaba la independencia y la libertad de decir lo que se querría decir sin pocos recursos." “Historically, it was the clearest manifestation of what was lived in that moment, it was through popular theatre that there was independence and freedom to say what you wanted to say [and] with very few resources.”

To understand the function of popular theatre in this instance, we also need to understand the purpose of the disappearance itself. Why would you kill, torture, murder so many people and keep their children? The armed forces in Argentina, used enforced disappearances as a weapon of generalized terror. A former police chief and another torturer, Silvio explained that he took the child of his victims to re-train her and to instill patriotic values in citizens when they are very young. But the impact of the disappearance is even more important because when someone disappears, that entire family and those close to the individual live in total fear because they never know what actually happened to that person. Without the body of the person itself, there is no evidence of the crime committed and simultaneously there is no perpetrator. When no wrong is done, there can be no accused, no one to be held accountable and no grounds to demand justice. Also, the disappearance embodies the silence of the wrong and of the person’s life so finding a grandchild represents an acknowledgement of the parent’s life, their death and the rewriting of a personal story.

Therefore, Ianigro has explicated two things about popular theatre in Argentina as it relates both to the personal and the public impact of the disappearance of so many citizens. It is first personal for her because it allows for her to express her personal grief and loss and it is secondly public because it breaks the silence surrounding the history of the nation itself. A nation is imagined as an entity with a specific history and what is included or excluded from that history is what determines the nation’s identity. One cannot imagine Latin America as a region today without thinking about its history of colonization, dictatorships and revolution because history is the foundation upon which a nation’s identity is constructed. So when a popular theatre group like ‘Teatro x La Identidad’ decides to break a silence with its work, what is at stake, is not only the personal grief being expressed by those who participate; It is the rewriting of Argentina’s history and the creation of a space to re-imagine the nation’s identity.
©Danielle Roper

For more information:
Anything published by the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo is useful.
Information on Paula Logares's story taken from the book Identidad: despojo y restitucion" by Matilde Herrera and Ernesto Tenembaum
Photos of Teatro X La Identidad and Patricia Ianigro

Photographer: Danielle Roper

Political Humor definition

2007-01-06T10:14:00.001-08:00

El Humor es esa canción que tienes que cantar cuando te toca cruzar un cementerio a la noche
Humor is that song you have to sing when it is your turn to cross a cemetery at night...
-David Rotemberg, Argentine Comedian

Salchicha Gigante

2007-01-05T13:02:00.000-08:00

So when I was in Northern argentina I was walking along the main road and you know how they have those mascots like ronald mcdonald and that stuff stand outside of restaurants or cafeterias? Well here in Argentina they have those kinda mascots. So I was standing outside of a restaurant in Salta that sold hot dogs and there was this mascot and since it was a hot dog place the mascot was a giant sausage.
He gave me a flier and then said "You're a really pretty woman...are you from Brazil?" So I look at the giant sausage and think...I am not really being hit on by a giant sausage then I go, thanks.. no Im from Jamaica.
And then he said "JAMAICA..wow...!" and I started walking away before he could say anymore but he kept following me and hitting on me. So I started walking faster and faster and by now I had drawn a lot of attention to myself because people were looking at the only black girl in town running from a giant sausage. But he just wouldn't stop...he kept following me and hitting on me no matter how fast I walked.
So it got to the point where I couldnt ignore his tauntings..and it was so annoying because I can't actually see his face. I don't know if its an old man, a young man or what because its literally a giant sausage wearing white stockings on his hands and feet saying: You dont want to go out with me..have a drink or eat with me?
So I just turned around and go "DEJE DE PERSEGUIRME QUE NO QUIERO SALIR CON USTED! No, PLEASE STOP FOLLOWING ME, I DO NOT WANT TO GO OUT WITH YOU.
He goes: but Why not?
Me: PORQUE ERES UNA SALCHICHA GIGANTE! y No...No me das hambre, me das MIEDO! Because you're a giant sausage!!! And no...You're not making me hungry, you are making me afraid!
And then yes, he went away.

A Reflection on Nicaraguan Humor

2007-01-05T12:59:00.000-08:00

What are you laughing at and with whom are you laughing?
A Reflection on Nicaraguan Humor
As I conduct a study of political humor and social transformation in Latin America, I come to various conclusions about the kind of humor that each country produces, the way it is used and the social norms that Latin American humorists embrace or uphold in order to make you laugh. Nicaragua was my base for three months but I ventured over to other countries to interview cartoonists and comedians to compare and contrast different types of political humor in Central America. My study is not as simple as what is ‘funny’ or not because often times that is dependent on personal taste as well as social locations; rather my study is to find out to what extent can humor be an instrument of social change and a means of giving voice to the voiceless.
During my three months in Nicaragua I volunteered with a feminist NGO Puntos De Encuentro which produces a television and radio show entitled Sexto Sentido while I conducted interviews with comedians, cartoonists and popular theatre groups. Nicaragua has a long history of using humor as a tool of resistance starting with the dance/play “El Güegüence.” This play confronts colonization through humor with the main character as a dishonest man who deceives those in power. El Güegüence is celebrated and admired in Nicaragua and started a tradition of using humor as a form of protest against institutions of power that continues to appear in the humor produced today.
Daniel Paz, an Argentine cartoonist told me that humor is always a result of a historical, social and political context as well as the ideological norms of any given society. So in other words, Nicaraguan humor, like humor in any country is a product of the economic, political and social conditions of the society. Nicaragua has seen many conflicts of all sorts: from natural disasters (hurricanes, volcano eruptions, earthquakes etc) to dictatorships, to bloody revolutions, poverty (one of the poorest countries in Latin America) and corruption. All these difficult periods did not only make laughter necessary but has also caused Nicaraguan humor to become a kind of dark humor. I found that Nicaraguans are capable of laughing at almost anything and finding humor in the most difficult period. So for instance, while human rights activists around the world threw a fit when a dog fatally attacked a Nicaraguan immigrant in Costa Rica, the average Nicaraguan had several jokes about the fact that the victim’s name was Natividad. When I read the jokes about his name, I thought if this had been an American citizen, the U.S government probably would’ve been preparing an invasion of Costa Rica. But Nicaraguans laugh at the things or people they laugh at because laughter is a means of emotional ‘alivio.’
When I first moved t o Nicaragua, I found that undertaking my study would require me to divide my project into two parts: El Humor Político partidario and El Humor Político Social.
El Humor Político Partidario is humor directed against the ruling class and which typically makes fun of politicians or public figures themselves. I found that this kind of humor is probably the most dominant type of humor to be found in Nicaragua. It exists in what we can understand as mainstream political humor: cartoons in newspapers such as La Prensa and El Nuevo Diario, comedy shows on television such as Los Hulosos, radio shows such as El Tren de los Volteados by Valentín Castillo and the work of stand-up comedian Luis Enrique Calderón. I refer to this as mainstream humor because it is political humor sponsored by the press: newspapers, television and radio and is the most public, most visible type of humor. Stand-up comedian Luis Enrique Calderón is the only exception to this as he goes on tour and works with his own agents and managers but I have included him in this category because of the fact that his routines are imitations of politicians and people in the ruling class.
El Humor Político Partidario as it exists in the public space is usually against or for a certain political party. The vast majority of shows whether it be Los Hulosos- produced by cartoonist Manuel Guillén which predominantly makes fun of the Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega or the work of stand-up comedian Luis Enrique Calderón who imitates former and present political figures in his routines- the vast majority of the time, the humor is about ridiculing the politicians and not about generating strategies to change the system. For instance, I am yet to see an episode of Los Hulosos where there is no reference to ‘El Bachi Ortega’ Sandinista leader and his wife Chamuca Murillo portrayed as a witch. In one episode ‘El Bachi’ is represented singing with his wife “Jodida Nicaragua, Yo triunfo” or arguing with the late Herty former leader of MRS referred to as ‘Zorrillo Judillo’ in a fake television program hosted by Nano Banano. In another episode, ‘Zorrillo Judillo’ who refers to himself as the ‘former Zorro del Bachi’ comes back from the dead to argue with ‘El Bachi’ about the election and continuously uses profanity as reference to his “controversial” use of the word ‘mierda’ in his campaign. These episodes basically portray the leaders in a humorous way and doing humorous things but provide no real criticism of their proposed policies, campaigns or even their role in the famous pact.
Luis Enrique Calderón also makes fun of politicians by perfectly imitating their voices and their speeches and replacing campaign slogans with humorous things like “Soy la Bestia…vota por la Bestia” or ending each imitation with “En el nombre del pacto…y el espíritu santo.” He also typically ends his routines with the song ‘Nicaragua, Nicaragüita’ after having a question and answer session with the audience as part of the routine. What was useful about the question and answer session was that not only did the audience participate in producing humor but he also gave them the opportunity to question policies implemented by certain politicians always with humorous responses. In this way, he as a comedian becomes both creator and mediator of a space between the people and institutions of power where people can actually have a voice. However the downside to it is that Calderón can only imitate certain politicians or journalists, some of whom are no longer in public life. Also, in my interview with him he revealed that he supported a certain political party and does little to allow for criticism of that party in his routine. Personal persuasion towards a particular political party is an issue that appeared in my interviews with almost every cartoonist/comedian in Managua. It is natural for a humorist as an individual to support a certain party but it meant that their humor presented criticisms of some parties and not others.
I was able to find some exceptions to shows like Los Hulosos and the work of Calderón. There is an early morning radio show on Radio Tigre entitled El Tren de Los Volteados produced by Valentín Castillo who told me that at that moment, his show was directed towards getting people to go out and vote in the then upcoming presidential elections. He believed that getting people to vote is the only way to bring about change in Nicaragua. He also told me that he refuses to make fun of women in his radio show because of the oppression that they experience in Nicaragua. However, in conversations with some Nicaraguans about the show and my interview, they debunked what Castillo had to say and provided examples of sexism and homophobia they had listened to on the radio program in the past. I didn’t get that impression listening to the show and some of its early recordings but given the fact that I was in the country for a relatively short period, their criticism of the show may have been valid.
Several people recommended cartoonist Pedro Molina as an objective voice who openly criticizes institutions such as the church and the ways in which they oppress ordinary people. But given that I went to Nicaragua right before their presidential election, I found that his humor was also directed toward the political class and fell into similar traps like other cartoonists and comedians of poking fun at politicians and little else. What I saw of political humor in Nicaragua was essentially a reflection of the historical moment in which it was operating. So, we can explain the focus of the comedians and cartoonists on the politicians and members of the ruling class as part of the fact that I went two/three months before the elections. During a political campaign where every vote counts, humorists pick a party and take sides. The goal of political humor in that moment is not about opening the hearts and minds of people nor speaking for the voiceless. It is about getting people to vote for whomever you as a comedian believe they should vote for with little or no discussion about a politician’s positions on social issues.
My interviews and conversations with cartoonists and comedians themselves demonstrated that the vast majority of Nicaraguan humor as it exists in the public space has little to do with issues of social equality such as sexism, domestic abuse, HIV aids, gay rights etc—and when it does, it is often used to reinforce societal norms. The most common themes that do appear are poverty, unemployment and corruption. Frankly, I find these to be relatively easier to talk about than a controversial issue, say like abortion or even gay rights. When Nicaraguan leaders repealed the Penal Code allowing “el aborto terapeútico’ overnight in order to gain the support of religious citizens it brought about little or no visible outrage in the work of humorists in Nicaragua. It is not a coincidence that humorists choose to speak about some issues and not others. The themes that appear and that do not appear in political humor are impacted, but not always determined, by the humorist’s social location. It is important to bear in mind that humorists are not immune to the internalization of racist, sexist or homophobic views and this can also be reflected in their work. So here are some of the issues that do NOT get talked about among humorists in Nicaragua.

Gender
The absence of female humorists in the mainstream political humor industry in Nicaragua is a reflection of the sexism of the society itself. There are no female cartoonists in Nicaragua and the only stand-up comedian in Managua is a guy. This was the case in most of Central America as throughout my time in Honduras, Costa Rica and Panama, I had never met nor heard of a single female cartoonist. This was somewhat puzzling to me when I considered other parts of Latin America especially South America, in countries such as Argentina with huge female cartoonists like Maitena and stand-up comedians such as Natalia Carulias and Dalia Gutmann. However, in Argentina, women still occupy a relatively small space in the political humor industry. But at least, there is a female presence doing humor about women’s issues. The absence of women in Central America does not mean that ‘women are not that funny’ as one cartoonist told me, it means that women do not have access to political humor in the public space, the way that men do.
Also, I noticed that in comedy shows on television, men are more likely to dress up and act as women rather than have women in the casts playing their own role; this is also linked to notions of gender and sexuality as a man dressed as a woman can garner a laugh since it insinuates homosexuality. Also, when there are female characters such as the Sandinista leaders wife in the show Los Hulosos, they are portrayed as a witch or a ‘weirdo’ as reference to what has been described as her ‘strange’ religious practices. In my conversation with a writer German Pomares Herrera, producer of the new comedy show NNN (Nicaragua News Network) he said that absence of women comedians is partially due to the envy of male coworkers that she will ‘steal their limelight’. He explained that in his own experience, many male actors do not want a woman on the show because they are afraid she will get more attention and become more famous than they will become. Rene Blanco, writer for the show Sexto Sentido in Puntos de Encuentro, explained that this is mainly because of ‘machismo’ in the society where women do not have equal access to the working world including jobs in the media. When I interviewed Honduras’ most famous cartoonist Miguel Angel Montoya, his explanation for the absence of female cartoonists and comedians in Central America was simple: “Porque somos unos machistas!”(Because we’re sexist!) All these explanations are true and undoubtedly, the person who has access to the media is the person who determines what you laugh at. Now I am not making an essentialist argument about women and men, nor am I suggesting that women do not internalize notions about race, gender etc the way that men do. What I am suggesting is that the lack of female representation demonstrates how the political humor industry perpetuates systemic exclusion of women by way of being a masculinist space. What you laugh at is never separate from the person who is making you laugh.

Race
The lack of discussion about race and racism in Nicaraguan political humor is all part of the general invisibility of Nicaragua’s Atlantic Coast whose citizens are people of African, Miskito and Indigenous descent. Nicaragua’s Atlantic Coast continues to be the poorest region in the country even though up to 60% of the country’s export are produced in that region. Also, several different languages are spoken on the Atlantic coast, apart from Spanish even though very rarely do you hear people speak about Nicaragua as a multi-lingual country. Unemployment and drug abuse are rampant on the Atlantic coast and it is the least developed part of Nicaragua. In my discussions with people from the Atlantic Coast-mainly Bluefields, they believe that the government’s neglect of the region is all part of the conflict that existed during Colonization between the Spanish and the British. The separation that the colonizers implanted continues to foment the division between the two sides of the country. In response to my question as to why their was no discussion about the Atlantic Coast in their work, cartoonist and comedians told me that people from the Pacific side could not really relate to the life of people on the Atlantic side or that the coast is so detached from the rest of the country that there is no real ‘demand’ for humor about them and their experiences. The centralization of power on the Pacific coast and the history of conflict between the two sides of the country make the invisibility of race and racism in political humor part of a discourse that defines the Nicaraguan identity as Pacific, Spanish-speaking and Mestizo. Also, if humorists are really to fight against poverty, to ignore the poorest part of the country is to have no real discussion about poverty itself. This was a problem I found in most of Central America which has several indigenous people and people of African descent living on the margins of society. The only country in Central America to have a comedy show directed towards experiences of people of indigenous and African descent was Panama and the show itself (entitled Chombo Visión) outlined the racism that people in the country consistently experienced in a comical way. If the Atlantic coast is constructed as separate or ‘too far away’ or different in political humor then the underdevelopment and neglect of the region will continue to be invisible.

Sexuality
The underlying representation of sexuality in political humor is riddled with hetero-normativity and when it isn’t, it is typically the hypersexual, effeminate gay male character-almost never a lesbian- acting in the show simply for comical relief. There are some cartoonists who absolutely refuse to touch on the topic like Guillén who told me that while “God has taught him to hate the sin but love the sinner” he does not make fun of them because it is “too complicated an issue” to talk about with children. Whatever the representation of sexuality in political humor, unless it is about a love affair among politicians as seen in the work of Honduran cartoonist Napoleon Ham, any non-heterosexual representation is personified by a generally non-threatening, silly, gay man.

The invisibility of these issues has to do with the lack of representation of women, openly queer and non-pacific humorists based in Managua. I do not suggest that voting and seeking for a change in government is not a means of securing some form of social change. However, when humorists maintain silences about the experiences of the most marginalized, oppressed people in society, they participate in the very injustice that they claim to fight against.

El Humor Político Social
Unlike some other Latin American countries where comedians or cartoonists suffered severe persecution when working under authoritarian regimes, the experiences of comedians, actors, playwrights and cartoonists were somewhat different given the fact that the Sandinistas supported Nicaraguan culture. El Humor Político Social is humor that seeks to address some of the social issues mentioned above and often exists through popular theatre movements in Nicaragua. Unlike other countries, Nicaraguan theatre exists on the streets and not necessarily in a traditional “salon” because it is the most accessible to poor people.
In my interview with Els Van Poppel, director of a theatre group MOVITEP-sin fronteras, she told me that during the late 80s, early 90s under Sandinista rule, there were up to 200 theatre groups in Nicaragua and that even the police force had there own popular theatre group. This is because it is under the most difficult circumstances that collective creativity is born. Although there are no longer as many theatre groups, Nicaragua has a very strong tradition of popular theatre. Humor has always been a central part of theatre productions because it would sustain the attention and presence of your audience on the street. Van Poppel described popular theatre as “el teatro que presenta los temas sociales, se trata de lo que vive la gente…con lo que se puede identificar, se hace reflexionar…” (Is theatre that deals with social issues that people live, that people can identify with and that calls for reflection…). Some of the themes that appear are: AIDS/HIV, gender equality, human rights, domestic violence and the sexual exploitation of children. It is within this space that taboo topics get talked about and silences about painful experiences can be broken and shared.
While popular theatre does not have the reach the political humor in the mass media can have, it is an alternative use of political humor that Nicaraguans continue to consume. In previous years, actors had to contend with censorship by the government during the Sandinista revolution as well as opposition from the church when dealing with HIV/AIDS and sex education. Nowadays, the major challenges for popular theatre groups are that they often do not know the impact their work has on the audience. Also, given that they are not doing commercial theatre work, popular theatre groups face economic challenges such as the cost of production and find themselves dependent on donations to fund their shows. This limits their creativity because donators often stipulate the theme of their productions as part of the conditions of funding. Also, while there is some female presence among theatre groups, female members often leave the group once they get married and become housewives. However, for the most part, the popular theatre movement breaks the silences that exist in the mainstream political humor industry and with a little more access and investment could have an even larger impact in the struggle for equality and social change in Nicaragua.

Political Humor and Sexto Sentido
I begun this reflection essay talking about volunteering with a feminist NGO Puntos de Encuentro and in their television program Sexto Sentido they deal with youth issues and talk about sexuality, drug abuse, HIV/AIDS, domestic violence, gender and much more. I believe that Sexto Sentido could utilize humor to educate and reach people because it has the access to the media (television and radio) that popular theatre groups do not have.
Some of the strategies I propose to incorporating humor in the show are the following.
1. Understand humor as a project.
This means having specific goals as to why you are using humor in the show. Is it being used as a breather after dealing with a very intense or difficult issue or is it being used as a means of communicating a message? Are you using it just to make people laugh? You can decide as to whether or not you want a certain person to be funny, or if a scenario in and of itself is funny. Also, it is important to be clear as to whether or not a joke is about making an issue visible that is difficult for people to talk about or if it is about changing the audiences mind about an issue.

2. Humor as a form of ‘teatro del choque’
There is always the challenge as to how not to use humor to invert power dynamics and to exclude the ‘oppressor’ by making him the object of ridicule. One of the strategies to avoid this is to take stereotypes and throw it back in the face of the oppressor. Sometimes exaggerating a stereotype and acting it out can break the stereotype itself. Remember that stereotypes are based on some truth taken outside of a context. Try using the stereotype itself outside of context and see what happens.

3. Taboo topics
Sexto Sentido addresses a number of issues that people do not like to talk about and portraying the difficulty about talking about issues especially when it comes on to sex-ed can also be very humorous. Acting out or portraying the lack of vocabulary or discomfort a character may experience around a certain issue can be humorous if done the right way.

Tips as to how to be funny
Before you use humor you always want to be clear about your audience: especially age groups before using it. Once you figure your audience out, here are a couple tips as to how to use some humor in your show:
1. Humor is almost always based on an inherent contradiction. So if you look at a comedy duo, there is always a strange combination of two very different kinds of people that makes them funny. Contradictions in characters or scenarios are simple ways of being funny because contradictions are part of being human. Humor often operates with either a chaotic person living in a ‘normal’ world or a ‘normal’ person living in a chaotic world.
2. If you want to make a dialogue funny, use of language is crucial. Try using one line and repeat it adding something every time you repeat it or taking a word/phrase out of context when you would least expect it. Playing with double meanings on words are clever and subtle ways of being funny, especially when two people misunderstand each other because of the different meanings of a single word or phrase.
3. Going back to an earlier joke after a long period of time.

Remember that a joke works like a small play with a beginning, climax and end and given that you’re doing a television show you have enough time and space to work with a joke. Use that to your advantage.
Using humor in a show like Sexto Sentido means taking risks but it also means making issues of social change more visible and easier for people to talk about. Sexto Sentido bridges a gap between El Humor Político Partidario and El Humor Político Social because it has the access to the public that marginalized people don’t have and has a vision truly dedicated towards speaking for those who cannot speak for themselves. Let Humor be a part of that.

Breaking News from BBC

2007-01-03T16:10:00.000-08:00

Here's whats going on in the world today:

Article number 1:

Condoms 'too big' for Indian men

By Damian Grammaticus
BBC News, Delhi

There is a "lack of awareness" over condom sizes

A survey of more than 1,000 men in India has concluded that condoms made according to international sizes are too large for a majority of Indian men.

The study found that more than half of the men measured had penises that were shorter than international standards for condoms.

It has led to a call for condoms of mixed sizes to be made more widely available in India.

Article number 2:

Large condoms for S African men

South African men might enjoy buying extra large condoms

A range of extra-large condoms has been launched in South Africa, to cater for "well-endowed" men.

"A large number of South African men are bigger and complain about condoms being uncomfortable and too small," said Durex manager Stuart Roberts.

Yes, thank you BBC for that global perspective.

Footnote:
for entire articles see:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4155390.stm
and
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6161691.stm

Abrazos Gratis (Free Hugs) in Chile

2006-12-17T18:35:00.000-08:00

So this past weekend I went to Chile and this was only a few days after Pinochet died. In the same street you could find people crying and other people popping open bottles of champagne to celebrate the death of the 'asesino.' I walked through the center of Santiago and ended up following a protest against the sexual exploitation of children.
As I walked through the protest I saw a woman holding up a sign saying 'abrazos gratis' free hugs and hugging people who came up to hug her. There were about three of them with these signs so I asked her what it was all about. She told me its simply just a way to be cool with people and its part of a global campaign to just give hugs because there are days when people want to be hugged and have no one to hug them or when people want to hug somebody and don't have anybody to hug. She asked me if I wanted a sign so I said okay no problem.
I held up the sign and the first guy who hugged me started crying and told me that he had just lost his job. And I thought wow, thats pretty sad. Then the second was an old lady who hugged me and thanked me because she said she really needed it and I thought "man people in chile really need some love." Then of course, little children ran and hugged me and grabbed my hair because they had never seen dredlocks on somebody that looks like me before so that was fun for me but NOT for my dreds. Anyway, when a couple shady guys started hugging me I gave up the sign and thanked her for letting me participate.

Then I thought, what would've happened if this were done in Jamaica?

Here are some of the responses I would probably get from stereotypical Jamaican men if I held up a free hugs sign in Half-Way-Tree.

1."Den baby yuh neva need no sign!"
2."So no free kiss nah give out too?"
3. "Yuh can give me yuh numba so me can hug yuh lata?"

4. "Yuh sure is jus a hug yuh need? me can give u more tings u nuh..and it would be for free still baby."
5. "So yuh fren nah give out no free hug too?"

Yep, there would be a lot of groping going on in Half-Way-Tree if the free hugs campaign ever made it to Jamaica.

Gender and Stand-up Comedy

2006-12-17T17:03:00.000-08:00

Political Humour as it exists through stand-up comedy operates in a public space that becomes a contact zone between individuals and institutions of power. In many ways, within that public space, marginalized people can talk back and the comedian functions as mediator. In other moments he or she reinforces social norms and participates in the perpetuation of notions/beliefs we have about each other.
So for example, when I was in Nicaragua, their stand-up comedian Luis Enrique Calderón (and yes there is only one) was known as the grand imitator of several politicians and public figures. Not only did he mock them and their policies but he also had a question and answer session in his routine where the audience engaged with him and the personaje he created in order to produce comedy. The questions the audience posed were usually about scandals that the public knew that the politicians would deny. So questions would range from 'is it true that, how can I ask this..hmmm did you sleep with so and so? to '...what happened to the 6 million dollars you were gonna use toward...?' and responses would range from 'the question is not did I sleep with...its who DIDNT sleep with so and so' and 'yeah, I've been looking for those 6 million dollars too...'
In circumstances such as the one above, stand-up comedy becomes a space in which criticisms of the ruling class are made visible, silences are broken and the reaction of the common people is made public. In this way, the comedian both creates and mediates a space where people can talk back and therefore, he/she gives them voice. This is important because there is a gap between 'public figures' and 'common folks' where people do not have access to the president or a politician. So the simulation between the comedian and the audience intends to change that.
This is one side of stand-up but there is a way in which Stand-up comedy can also be about the reinforcement of social 'norms' about gender, sexuality, race etc. What I am seeing now of stand-up comedy in Argentina is that it often draws upon and reinforces social norms to make people laugh.
So a cartoonist Demetrio Lopez from “El Mosquito” told me that female comedians and male comedians talk about different things. He said “los hombres hablan sobre lo que pasa y las mujeres hablan sobre lo que les pasa a ellas” Men talk about what happens while women talk about what happen to them…He continued “Las mujeres hablan sobre cosas femeninas mientras que los hombres te pueden hablar de cosas 'normales' como la economia no..?” Women talk about feminine things while men can talk to you about the economy etc. Now anyone who knows me will know that my own feminist ideologies strongly disagree with him so I want to describe what happened yesterday when I went to a stand-up comedy show.
It was a meeting of many cartoonists, comedians and writers to celebrate the publication of a new comedy supplement “El Mosquito” in Argentina and after a discussion about the state of humour today and fifty years ago, four comedians: two men and two women did stand-up comedy routines.
Here are all of the opening jokes from their routines:
The first male comedian started his routine by saying. “Hoy mi mujer me sirvió desayuno en la cama, yo empujé la cama hacia la cocina y me dió el desayuno” “Today my woman served me breakfast in bed, I pushed my bed to the kitchen and she gave me my breakfast”
The Second Male comedian started his routine: Ayer mi mujer me dijo que está embarazada y yo dije “en serio?” me dijo “si, felicidades sos tio! Yesterday my woman told me that she is pregnant and I said, “really” and she said “yes, congrats, you’re an uncle.”

The first female comedian “Chicas, hay sólamente dos tipos de hombres “el que te quiere coger y el que ya te cogió...y basta. Sí, es que es tan sencillo,” Girls, there are only two types of men, those that want to f---k you and those that already f---ked you…and that’s it…yes, its just that simple.
The second female comedian said: “¿Miren, ustedes han visto esas publicidades en que la mujer intenta comer el chocolate y el hombre se lo quita la mano de ella y la ofrece una pastilla de dieta...y ella SONRIE?!?..mire...si un hombre me hace eso...lo matare! Que tengo hambre idiota!" Hey, have you guys seen those ads with the woman trying to eat the chocolate and the man pushes her hand away and offers her a diet pill....and SHE SMILES??? Look, if a guy does that to me...I will kill him! I'm hungry you idiot!

Each comedian begun their routine with some statement alluding to habits, stereotypes or events with the person of the opposite gender. It is not true that women talk about gender and men don't. They speak about gender in different ways. It is not a coincedence that these jokes happen nor is it just natural that a man or a woman would talk about these things. These jokes are supposed to be things that are believeable and most importantly, things that the audience is supposed to identify with.
So what are the notions about gender that are at play: one is the image of the woman who is watching her weight and the man ensuring that she sticks to her diet. What a perfect patriarchal image right? Then there's the notion that all men just want to have sex with you because that is the way that patriarchy defines manhood. If the comedian had switched genders and said that 'there are only two types of women: one that wants to... and one thats already...' it just wouldn't be that believable would it? Then there is of course, ideas about social institutions i.e the bad marriage ideology at work...the cheating wife or the 'I can't be bothered to really serve you in bed anymore' one which is really identifying a marriage thats losing its steam. Calling upon notions about gender and social institutions is important for the comedian because it allows him/her to connect with the audience. Comedians' explanations for this is that comedy is supposed to reflect social reality not change it. Stand-up comedy is a mirror to what happens in the day to day life of ordinary people.
Now I think this is true to some extent but I want us to return to the final joke I posted about the woman talking about the ad, 'the I'm hungry you idiot!' line. For me, I thought that this joke went against what has been constructed as normative. The notion that a woman is more worried about her body image than eating when she's hungry. It was interesting to me because it wasn't a fat comedian saying it, she was slim and in shape so she wasn't using her weight to make the joke funny. What I felt like that female comedian did in that instance was to challenge the notion that it is okay to tell her to watch her weight. In essence, she made a criticism of how the media feeds us (no pun on feed) with how we ought to behave and how women supposedly look at our bodies. For me, in that instance, the 'norm' was broken and more power to her for it because her joke basically said, "listen thats just dumb that they are telling us that we can't eat whatever we want and that we need to watch our image and if you mess with me like that, dude, I might just murder you." What I am curious about is whether or not a woman like that is therefore constructed as less desirable or as a glutton? It could be. But for me, it was an instance where social norms were challenged and reveals that a comedian chooses to reinforce or to challenge social norms. So if stand-up comedy is supposed to be a mirror, then it is the comedian who decides what is being reflected because he/she does not exist outside of social reality. Social change through stand-up comedy can only happen when a comedian decides that he/she wants it to happen.
©Danielle Roper

fav quote from gay pride rally in Buenos Aires

2006-12-11T10:59:00.000-08:00

"Saca tu rosario de nuestros ovarios"
Take your rosary out of our ovaries

--Gay Rights Advocate speaking on abortion

Comedy at its Worst

2006-11-28T12:53:00.000-08:00

I chose to study Political Humour and Social Transformation because I truly believe that it can be a space for marginalized people to speak out and that Humour can be an instrument of change. However, like every profession, the comedy industry is not immune to society’s inequities and comedians often have to buy into prejudices or stereotypes about certain groups of people to be successful. An Argentine cartoonist, Daniel Paz told me that in order for a joke to be funny, it must be based on a common social norm or assumption that everybody shares. So if you want to make a joke about your mother-in-law, you have to use all the stereotypes and associations that the public has about the mother-in-law in order for the joke to be funny. Basically, a joke requires that you use notions about gender, race and sexuality so that people can laugh. He told me that a joke is always a result of a cultural, social, and political context as well as the ideological norms of any given society; And the comedian must know this to make people laugh. Comedians themselves are not immune to having racist, sexist or homophobic views of different groups of people. So when Mr Paz told me this, I knew he was right but when I saw Micheal Richards' (Kramer from Seinfeld) racist outburst at a gig at a local comedy club, I thought, geez, did he really have to be that right about it?
Find video below:

Now the question is not whether or not his outburst was racist, I mean that goes without saying right? Like duh! But what is important to consider is that he felt that he could say it. That outburst probably would not have happened had he been performing in front of an all black audience or if the owners of the club were black. Kramer felt that the comedy club as a public space was a white space that belonged to him and other white people. So the intimidation and attack on the black man is not just a personal feud between two individuals at the comedy club, it is the establishment of his authority and control over a public space that must only be accessible to whites. The ‘interruption’ of the black man at the comedy club is more than a distraction in a comedy routine; The black man’s mere presence is an intrusion upon a white hegemonic public space and a public threat to Kramer’s white authority over that space.
Perhaps the most obvious display of white solidarity and privilege is the fact that the owners of the club allowed him to perform the very next day and have not released the official copy of the video showing his entire performance. Had a member of the audience not videotaped and leaked it out, we probably would not have known about it. The comedy club’s position or their failure to publicly take a position on the issue is important because Kramer as a performer is also representing them. A comedy club is a business which has policies about what can and cannot be said at their show so not taking a stance or remaining silent is to endorse his racist behaviour.
However, let us not forget that there were white people who walked out at the performance and who were also disgusted by his behaviour. So it is not that all white people sat there in support or his racism, there were those who allied themselves with the people of colour in that moment.
Lets take a look at his apology:

There are several problems with the ‘apology’: 1. He has not come out to the media himself and apologized. Why is Seinfeld giving him the opportunity to do so? Is it not Michael Richard who should have come forward and done it himself? 2. The terminology of the apology: Who are Afro-Americans? At any rate, African-Americans are not a ‘community’ they are individuals and ought not to be clumped into one group. Also, given that they are citizens like everybody else, he as a public figure with fans etc, owes the Black man and the public an apology for his actions. 3. The ‘I’m Not even a Racist remark.’... I won’t elaborate on this, I think you all get it.
Additionally, given the laughter from the audience and then the thunderous applause after his apology, it is safe to say that his apology is not being taken seriously and has prompted no real discussion about his racism.

But what about what the African Americans had to say:

African American response:

What I think is of most importance, is that a white woman is defending the African Americans in this scenario. This is important because white women have a long history of functioning as/positioning themselves and being positioned by white men as mediators between people of colour and white people. So if you watch a movie like King Kong, which is really a conversation about civilization and barbarianism where civilization- read white, refined city etc- defeats barbarianism- read gorilla/animal with black cannibal natives from the wilderness- you’ll notice that it is a white woman who is kidnapped by the gorilla and who understands him in the end of the movie. A white woman in that movie as mediator and investigator of the ‘unknown’ or ‘incomprehensible’ becomes the site of negotiation between the powerful and powerless who does not have the legitimacy to speak for himself. In this scenario, two black men with a white female lawyer mirrors King Kong to me because she as mediator is speaking for the black man who has no authority to speak for himself. Don’t get me wrong, it is strategic to have a white woman represent the black man because it shows that white people were impacted too and that white people stand in solidarity with people of colour. However, it also falls into an endless cycle where in order for black people to challenge white authority they cannot do it directly, they must be spoken for or represented by a white person. What is a stake is who has the authority and the legitimacy to directly challenge white privilege and in this scenario, blacks do not possess such authority.

I also want to comment on the fact that one of the black guys in his interview on the Today Show referred to Latinos as Mexicans. When are we going to get with the program and realize that all Latinos are NOT from Mexico and should NOT be referred to as Mexicans? They are LATINOS! While it is true that they (the African-Americans)have internalized stereotypes about Latinos, their own prejudices do not have the same systemic impact that white prejudice has because they live in a white dominated society. This doesn’t mean that clumping Latinos is okay, it just means that it does not have the same impact.
Similarly, calling Kramer a ‘cracker’ at the show is not okay either but given the fact that racism as a system that historically and presently privileges white people and oppresses people of colour, black prejudices do not have the same consequences for whites. In other words, blacks also have their own prejudice against white people but do NOT possess the power to enforce that prejudice in a systematic way.

Perhaps the biggest problem with this horrific display of anti-black racism is that no one sees it as the display of a larger problem: systemic and systematic racism. Micheal Richards/Kramer has internalized prejudices against black people but we only acknowledge that racism exists when hate speech occurs. Even though statistically, people of colour do not have equal economic, social and political access we only think America has racism when white people use racial slurs or epithets. So the conversation switches to why all comedians should stop saying 'nigger' and 'bitch' without thinking about how a whole system is set up that privileges whites and disadvantages people of colour. The discussion on hate speech is not about dismantling white privilege in a systematic way, it is about making that privilege less visible. So we end up thinking when hate speech stops then racism no longer exists instead of thinking how can we dismantle the myth of the meritocracy.
©Danielle Roper

All videos coutesy of www.youtube.com

Point of interest:
Check out the latest article about the killing of an unarmed black man by police officers before his wedding: http://la.indymedia.org/news/2006/11/189611.php

Favourite Quotes from Erick and Keya during their stay in Buenos Aires

2006-11-28T12:49:00.000-08:00

Erick describing red tango shoes:"Toto we're not in Kansas anymore"

Keya: Dude, Oprah is so unfortunate looking...
Erick, the inside of my nostrils and I describing unfortunate looking:

Erick:Dang, Life is REAL in Injah

Argentinian hospitality

2006-11-22T12:03:00.000-08:00

So when I got to Argentina, I spent the first night with Johanna at her señora's house. So she said to me: Hey do you know that my señora is a painter and wants to give me one of her paintings before I leave"
As she says this I look across the room and see the painting below

Then Johanna goes: I don't think my señora likes me very much
Me:Johanna...she doesn't dislike you..she wants to kill you

An Indian, Jamaican and Gay Cuban watching a man and woman dancing Tango in Argentina

2006-11-22T11:59:00.000-08:00

Keya (The Indian): Wow, that woman has such great posture. Tango is such a sensual dance..
-Danielle (the Jamaican): Yeah, it really requires so much grace and practice to do this dance...
-Erick (gay cuban):That guy must use a lot of shampoo!

Jamaican and Indian Response: ??????

Political Humor definition in Argentina

2006-11-14T11:16:00.000-08:00

El humor politico no existe para cambiar la sociedad..es mas bien un compañero durante momentos dificiles

Political Humor does not exist to change society, rather, it is a companion during difficult periods.
Daniel Paz, Argentinian Cartoonist

La Recoleta: Argentina a Friend from the past

2006-11-14T11:00:00.000-08:00

Ok so the number one, must see site in Buenos Aires is La Recoleta. It is a cemetery where all the rich upper class people bury their dead and the graves are like apartment buildings. The thing to do is to walk through the cemetery and to find Evita Peron's grave. Now it is indeed a site to see but I have to be honest and tell you that I don't know how I feel about going to see dead people as part of enjoying Argentina. It also weirds me out that Argentines are so proud of it, its like, "Welcome to Argentina, come check out our dead people!" But since thats the thing to do I checked it out and you won't believe whose grave was at the entrance...look for yourself:

Photographer: Danielle Roper

Guess Luz Maria never made it back to Guatemala after all.

(Please read my previous post Guatemalan Hospitality to understand this post)

Protesting in Nicaragua: El Aborto Terapeutico

2006-11-14T10:40:00.000-08:00

Two days before leaving Nicaragua I joined the feminist movement in protest against the Parliament’s then pending decision to repeal Penal Code 165 that allows for ‘el aborto terapeútico/therapeutic abortion.” I’m no longer sure how to say El Aborto Terapeútico in English but it is the abortion that they perform when the mother or fetus’ life is in danger so if anyone knows how to say it in English please send me an email or comment on this post. Anyway, Nicaragua is one of the first and few countries in Central America to allow El Aborto Terapeútico and established the law in 1893 as a ‘circumstancial clause’ that protected a woman’s life in the event of a risky pregnancy. Penal Code 165 has also been used in the past for women and little girls who decide not to follow through with pregnancies conceived through rape. Perhaps the most touching story, and where Penal Coded 165 proved to be even more pivotal was when Rosa, a Costa Rican nine year old girl who got pregnant after being raped on her way to school. Given that Costa Rican law disallows abortion irregardless of the circumstances, Rosas’ parent were forced to take her to Nicaragua and have the abortion performed there. So why is it that all of a sudden, the Nicaraguan government and parliament decided to repeal a law that people established 100 years ago to protect a woman’s life?

Answer: Election Time
Last year the FSLN, the ALN and the PLC made a pact to disallow the creation of new parties and to control all legislative and legal institutions in Nicaragua and to keep power among themselves. (please see footnote) Three weeks before the election, they needed the vote of poor people in Nicaragua—most of whom are catholic. Shifting the discourse from saving the life of the woman to killing unborn children and clumping el aborto terapeútico with all forms of abortion is not really about ‘morals’, as much as it is about votes and getting as many of them as possible at election time. So after a night of protest with various feminist organizations in front of the National Assembly, on October 26, 2006, the Nicaraguan government, president Bolaños, the Frente Sandinista de La Liberación Nicaragüense (FSLN) and the catholic church voted to repeal Penal Code 165 and eliminated all forms of abortion in Nicaragua. And of course, on November 5, 2006, the FSLN won the elections and regained power with 35% of the vote.

But what was important for me was to be part of the protest the night before the law was passed. First of all, protests in Nicaragua are nothing like protests in Jamaica where people block the road and go home after the media leaves, a protest in Nicaragua lasts for several days with thousands of people chanting in front of the Assembly “DIPUTADOS, SI NO RESPETAN MI VIDA…NO OBEDEZCO LA LEY!” (DEPUTIES, IF YOU DON’T RESPECT MY LIFE, I WON’T OBBEY THE LAW!)

These people brought food, placards, showed movies about the life of Rosa from Costa Rica and slept outside the Assembly because that is what real protest means. These people were hardcore! I noticed that when the police and soldiers surrounded the protestors, we just gave them food and it kept them quite for the rest of the night. There’s nothing like a ham and cheese sandwich to keep the cops away. I guess they give them snickers to avoid speeding tickets. The Nicaraguan police force I tell you…can’t beat it.

The second point of interest for me was the fact that so many men were at the protest. Men and women were showed up in equal number to fight for women’s rights and to represent feminist movements as well as the Evangelical church who also stood against the repeal of the law.
So many men spoke out at the protest against the government ‘para salvar a la vida de mi hermana, de mi mama, de mi novia, de mi hija (in order to save my sister’s life, my mother’s life, my girlfriend’s life and my daughter’s life). The presence of men who openly and actively identified as feminists at the protest was fascinating to me and important because it debunked all the myths about who a feminist is (i.e a lesbian and not a man) and demonstrated that the whole notion that these issues are only women issues’ who don’t matter to anyone is just not true. Yes, that protest was a lesson to me. Not because I don’t know any feminist men or because I believe that only women can be feminists but because in the past when I saw men at feminist conferences, they were often tokenized. Also, as progressive as I am, I too had internalized the Macho third world latino man image that I used to see on television. So their involvement was an eye-opener for me and I left the protest believing that the Nicaraguan feminist movement may be even more inclusive and diverse than other feminist movements I’ve seen in other parts of the world. Cheers to the face of feminism…because this is what a feminist looks like:

Footnote:
Please read up on the pact: here is the link to an article in English:
http://www.opendemocracy.net/democracy-protest/nicaragua_3041.jsp

Favourite Quote in Buenos Aires

2006-10-29T13:39:00.000-08:00

Johanna:"Argentines dress so horribly Danielle...Its so bad...I wanted to be an Argentine for halloween."
(She decided not to in order not to scare the animals and the kids)

Guatemalan Hospitality--you just can't beat it

2006-10-24T14:51:00.000-07:00

When I went to Roatan, Honduras, I decided to take a glass bottom boat tour at one of the beaches in West End. Sitting beside me, was a man from Guatemala so I introduced myself to him. His name was Jose Luis and he introduced his family to me: his wife, Luz Maria and their two children.
We spoke for a really long time and they told me to write them if I decided to go to Guatemala so they could show me around and recommended a cheap hostel where I could stay. When I got back to Nicaragua, I wrote to Jose Luis and we corresponded for about a week until I headed to Costa Rica.
After my time in Costa Rica, I was considering a trip to Guatemala for a few days and decided to take up his offer so last week I wrote the following to Jose Luis:

"Hi Jose Luis and Luz Maria, I'm heading to Guatemala on Tuesday, could you please recommend a place to stay. I look forward to seeing you and the kids again. Danielle
P.S Will send the picture I took of you all soon..."

This is the response I received two days later:
Esta es la esposa de Jose Luis no la puta de Luz Maria
que andaba con el en Roatan. Desafortunadamente no te
puede recomendar ni mierda porque al hijo de puta no
se lo permito. No vuelvas a comunicarte con el y mejor
si ni vienes a Guatemala.

Translation: "This is Jose Luis' wife and not that slut Luz Maria who was with him in Roatan. Unfortunately, he can't recommend you sh*t because I won't allow the son of a bitch to do so. Don't write to him again and at best, don't bother coming to Guatemala."

Say it with me folks: WWWOOOOWWWWWWW!
SHE SURE TOLD ME!!!!!
Can you believe that this guy was on a rendezvous with his lover and ..well I don't know whose kids they were in Roatan, Honduras! But can't you just hear his wife saying all that to me in a stereotypical African-American accent: This is Jose Luis wife and not that HO Luz Maria... and he can't recommend Sh******T and if you come to Guatemala I'll skin yo ass like I skinned dat catfish last night(snap, snap, head bop head bop snap).

Thank God I didn't actually attach the picture in the email.

On second thought, I'm actually grateful to her for writing because can you imagine if I had actually gone to his house and been like "here's the picture of us in Roatan and where's Luz Maria?" because well...Yep, that would've been the end of the Long-Legged-Short-Torso Diaries and I guess you'ld all be saying "Its a shame what happened to Danielle in Guatemala..."

Yes Wangechi, I know what you're thinking after reading this post:
"What is wrong with these Jamaicans, who writes snap, snap head bop snap...Is this a dance?"

Nicaragua's Atlantic Coast: The 'Other' side of Nicaragua

2006-10-24T12:59:00.000-07:00

Political humour emerges from the specific historical and cultural nuances of any country; Nicaragua is no exception to the rule. I have decided to write about the Atlantic side to contextualise my forthcoming post which will outline my own conclusions and analysis of political humour in Nicaragua as I prepare to move on to my next country, Argentina.

A summary of the Caribbean coast, the 'other'side of Nicaragua:

So since the day I got here, everyone has asked me 'sos de Bluefields' "are you from Bluefields?" or from the "Caribbean/Atlantic side" of Nicaragua. This was initially confusing until I actually met people from the Atlantic side of Nicaragua who look, talk, eat Jamaican food and sound almost exactly like me.

Nicaragua is divided into two parts: the Pacific side and the Atlantic side: The Pacific side was colonised by the Spanish and the Atlantic side was colonised by the British. Hence, on the Pacific side, they speak Spanish and on the Atlantic side they speak English..well sort of-They speak Jamaican English to be exact and most of the time its not actually Jamaican english, its Jamaican dialect. The blacks who migrated to the Atlantic side: Bluefields, Puerto Cabeza, Ramas, Corn Island, Monkey Point etc were from Jamaica and New Orleans.
While the Pacific side is 100 percent spanish speaking, and 96% mestizo--mostly catholic, the coast is a totally different world. The coast has an interesting mix of indigenous (Miskito), Black and Spanish--6 different ethnic groups and 4 different languages-- who are living NOT so happily together. While the Spanish practically anihalated the indigenous people on the Pacific side, the British decided to use the indigenous people (the ones that escaped the massacres)to implement colonisation. They did not directly colonise the Atlantic side, instead they gave the indigenous people arms to control the territory until 1894 when the Nicaragua military-with the support of the U.S government, invaded the coast. Needless to say, the divide and conquer methodology of the British during colonisation was the starting point of the division among the people living on the Atlantic side that exists today.

The conflicts between the two colonisers set the foundation for the power struggle between the Pacific side and the Atlantic side.
It is this power struggle that explains the political, economic and social inequality that exists between the two regions. For instance, although up to 60 percent of goods produced in Nicaragua comes from the Atlantic coast and the coast comprises 57% of the National territory, it is still the poorest and least developed part of Nicaragua. There is no running water/portable water on the Atlantic side, every house has a well, they have pit toilets instead of bathrooms inside the houses, it has the highest rate of unemployment and the highest percentage of drug abuse in the country. The fact that packages of Crack and Cocaine wash up on the shores of Bluefields and Corn Island almost every day explains the rampant drug abuse on the Atlantic side of Nicaragua.

Travel to the Atlantic side of the country is incredibly difficult (at least a day by bus and the highway is broken down) and expensive (about 100 U.S dollars roundtrip by plane from Managua to the coast). Perhaps the complete rejection of Caribbean roots and cultures as part of the Nicaraguan identity is personified by the fact that while bilingual education has been introduced on the Atlantic side so they all speak spanish, people on the pacific side don't learn english. Nicaragua does not officially recognise itself as a multilingual country. While it does seek to integrate the Atlantic side and it has granted the region a certain level of autonomy (which exists in theory but not in practice) the absolute neglect and lack of investment in the region that accompany the indiscriminate exploitation of the region's resources reflects an institutionalisation of the Nicaraguan identity as the Pacific identity. The power struggle plays out in all levels of society including the government with few people from the Atlantic coast in power. It is our hope that with some more time, and maybe a change in government that this will change.

For information of the Atlantic coast in english see the following links:
http://www.yorku.ca/cerlac/URACCAN/Coast.html)
http://www.cedehcanicaragua.com/)

Afterthought: Doesn't this sound like the U.S relationship with Puerto Rico and Mexico? hmmmm...

What does political humour mean in a political campaign

2006-10-17T15:34:00.000-07:00

Una campaña electoral es un guión y el candidato es el personaje principal. Una campaña es como una obra de teatro y el candidato es como un producto entonces el humor es pues…una estrategia.
An electoral campaign is a script and the candidate is the main character. A campaign is like a theatre production and the candidate is like a product so I guess, humor is well...a strategy.
Giovanni Bulgarelli--Costa Rican advertiser

Political Humour: friend or foe in Costa Rica and Nicaragua

2006-10-17T13:30:00.000-07:00

The use of political humour in political campaigns in both Nicaragua and Costa Rica is testimony as to how political humor functions as a means of connecting with the people. Cristian and Giovanni Bulgarelli are Costa Rican brothers who work in advertising and for the last few years have used humour in political campaigns both in Costa Rica and in Nicaragua. Their most memorable work is their work with the Otton Solís of PAC (Partido Acción Ciudadana) campaign against the popular presidential candidate and winner of a noble peace prize, Oscar Arias. Initially, there was no doubt that Arias would win as he had been in power for many years and had 80 percent of the country's support three months before the election. The first thing that Cristian and Giovanni did was to challenge the perception that Arias would be sure victor and there was no competition. So they presented a boxing match between Oscar and Otton (yes I'm on a first name basis with them) with Otton pummeling Oscar and ending each advertisement with: Are you sure Oscar is going to win? (Then the symbol of Otton Solis) Vote/Rock the vote! Soon after this they presented cartoons of Oscar reading the publication of Otton's party in his bedroom or in the shower or in his kitchen. Their campaign became popular in only a matter of days and soon the polls were listing Otton Solis as an equally popular candidate.

Perhaps the most compelling advertisements in the Otton Solis campaign were those that dealt with gender and race. Costa Rica was shocked when Otton Solis listed Epsy Campbell, a dark-skinned, woman from Limon (the African Atlantic side of Costa Rica) as his would be vice-president. The party was of the view that given that women make up over half of the population and that there is a distinct need to connect with the people of Jamaican and African descent living on the Atlantic/Caribbean coast, the party and the electoral campaign must cater to their needs and their voices must be heard. They therefore referred to their party in the campaign as the "gobierno de las madres" (government of the mothers) to demonstrate the importance of the female vote and that the party had poor, single mother's interest at heart. To demonstrate this, the Bulgarelli brothers had urban and rural women wearing a cartoon mask of Otton Solis and removing it saying that this is the government of the mothers. Women, your vote counts too---Otton Solis--Rock the vote!”

Use of language has probably been the best way of using humour in electoral campaigns. Two days before the election between Solis and Arias, they had two ads of two puppets of a famous Costa Rican ventriloquist using a popular phrase among rural Costa Ricans: "El domingo es por la madre"” This phrase is a pun and translates to something like: sunday is the day of the throw down, its the day for the mothers." The two puppets were a rural young boy dressed as a hip hop artist and the second was a grandmother saying the slang and then saying "Did I say it right? Are we gonna win YIPPEE!!" Rock the vote! This advertisement was equally popular two days before the election and although Oscar Arias won 41 percent of the vote with Solis with 39 percent of the vote, the campaign allowed for both afro-Costa Ricans and women to be represented in congress. (Below is a photo of Epsy Cambell, for more information in spanishplease see:ttp://www.pac.or.cr/sitio1/paginas/noticias.php?id=627&seccid=1®istrar=1

Their work in Nicaragua has also received equal attention due to their use of humour. They started out working with Herty an opposition candidate of the MRS party. Herty's campaign was a controversial one because his catch line as an anti-corruption statement was: "vamos a acabar con toda esta mierda...We're going to end all this sh*t! This slogan was a direct criticism of the other candidates who had made a pact with the governing party to prohibit the formation of new political parties so that power would remain among the traditional established ones. He represented these parties as a big fat fly coming out of a limosine being interviewed by the press. Soon after, Herty died/was assasinated (please see footnote) and the Bulgarelli brothers had ten days to come up with a whole new campaign for the new candidate. Edmundo Jarquin had worked outside of Nicaragua for almost 15 years and only 11 percent of the population had ever heard of him. So three months before the election, the Bulgarelli brothers needed a catchy line to make the new candidate as popular as Herty and even more popular than Ortega, the Sandinista candidate. Hence, the beginning of the campaign of el Feo que quiere una Nicaragua Linda...the ugly dude who wants a pretty Nicaragua. The first advertisement was a breaking news report with interviews of ordinary people asking whether or not the new candidate Edmundo Jarquin was ugly, the overwhelming response was "affirmative." In ten days 93 percent of the country was talking about the ugly dude and now he does indeed have a shot at winning the election scheduled in early November.

This story is important because there is a huge debate in the political humourist circle as to whether or not institutions of power should use humour. The criticism by many cartoonists and comedians is that these campaigns disallow the people from engaging in real issues and that humour is simply an escape mechanism. A second criticism is that it is an absolute and total insult to the people to have a candidate run as the ugly dude and it delegimitises the authority of the candidate himself. Thirdly, in both Costa Rica and Nicaragua, there was real resistance to the use of language which they thought was too vulgar or just too ‘common folk.’

Political humour as any other tool, is in danger of commercialisation and cooptation by institutions of power. However, both the PAC and MRS as political parties have the most progressive social views in both Costa Rica and Nicaragua in regards to women's rights, race and poverty. They are both centro-izquierda, left wing parties, unlike the right-wing conservative parties in Honduras who pay cartoonists to silence them. This does not mean that they would never misuse political humour; rather, given their connection to the people and the progressive policies that both propose and implement to the benefit of people of African descent, women and poor people, the use of political humour is a positive way of reaching and representing these different groups of people. For instance, el gobierno de las madres campaign in Costa Rica, the "Vamos a acabar con toda esa mierda" campaign in Nicaragua and "El domingo es por la Madre" lines are only funny because the use of language is that of the 'common folk.' Both parties have also been radically criticised by religious and conservative groups because of their incorporation of women in leadership positions and their views on abortion, gay rights, as well as housing and education in rural areas. To place the image and the talk of the common folk in the mouth of those in power as they appear in the campaigns allow ordinary people to be visible in such a way that their identity and culture are reclaimed as part of the nation.
At any rate, the people most upset by the use of language both in Costa Rica and Nicaragua were people of the upper and middle class...how interesting is that? Well here are a couple theories: some say they just couldn't relate to the El domingo es por la madre while others say they didn't feel comfortable with politicians speaking like common folk. Their rejection or reaction to these campaigns are really reactions to and rejections of what they believe their national identity ought to be; and that identity is not rural, nor urban lower class, not african and not the single mother with five children. Campaigns like those of MRS and PAC force us to rethink who is the ordinary Costa Rican/ Nicaraguan and leave the people to decide whether the cartoon character on t.v is me/us or him/them.

Sali a Votar...Rock the Vote!

Footnote
Herty died when he went for a minor ten minute operation. The doctor who performed the operation is the doctor of the head of the Sandinista movement Daniel Ortega. This doctor did not close the wound properly after the operation and Herty bled to death. There is still a controversy as to whether or not his death was just tragic or if it was indeed murder.
©Danielle Roper

Favourite Story in Costa Rica: Bungee Jump

2006-10-16T15:02:00.000-07:00

So while I was in Costa Rica I decided to go bungee jumping. I stayed in San Jose with a Columbian friend of mine who reluctantly accompanied me to take the picture. I said to him: Edinson, don't worry, I'm not asking you to jump with me, I just need for you to take the picture of me when I'm in the air. Okay?"
So he said sure and came along with me. Bungee jumping is one of those things that you can't think about, you just have to get on the bridge and jump. They count down from 5 to 1 and if you don't jump by the time they say 1, you're not gonna jump. When they got to 3...I jumped and it has to be the craziest thing I have ever done.
When I came back up, I found Edinson drinking water so I said: "Edinson, are you okay? why are you shaking? Where's the camera"
Response: Cuando usted se tiró me dió tanto susto, no pude sacar la foto. Y cuando pegó el grito yo dije AYY, se mató, que le voy a decir a su mama! No pude..ayyy Me tenian que traer agua por el susto...casi no sobrevivi.
When you jumped I was so scared I couldn’t take the picture. And when you screamed, I said “AYY, She’s killed herself, What am I gonna tell her mother…I just couldn’t take it. They had to bring me water because I was so scared. I almost didn't make it.
Me: Edinson, you didn't jump.
-- lo se, pero fue tan dificil verlo...dios mio..I know, but it was just so hard to watch, good god..

So although, I have no picture of me actually jumping off the bridge, I don’t know about you but I am just glad Edinson made it out alive.
Below are the pictures of the jump. Just click on the photo to make it bigger.

Photographer: Edinson Ruiz

Los Hervideros de San Jacinto

2006-09-13T12:19:00.000-07:00

So I spent the weekend in Leon and Granada because I decided I wanted to leave Managua for some time. I went to see Los Hervideros de San Jacinto in Leon which are basically mud pits that are boiling because they are right below the volcanos Telica and Cerro Negro. It was interesting because you could actually feel the heat under your feet as you approached the mudpits. So my friend from Israel and I got carried away and starting taking all these pictures wherever we saw smoke rising. So the smoke went all the way up to the volcanoes themselves. A little boy approached us asking for money and we said no. Then I asked him:
"So the mudpits go all the way up to the volcanos? Look at all that smoke!"
And he goes:" ahh, no thats actually people burning garbage"

...Talk about killing the moment

Above is a picture of the actual mud pits and the smoke on the volcanos from people burning garbage.
Photographer: Danielle Roper

Food for thought

2006-09-13T09:54:00.000-07:00

El Humor politico es un arma...hay que usar responsablemente. Pues, el humorista es alquimista.
Political humour is a weapon to be used responsibly. Well, the humourist is an alchemist---Manuel Guillen(Nicaraguan Cartoonist and producer of T.V program Los Hulosos)

I confess:I don't really know what he meant with the alchemist part but that's all he said so figure it out.

My first film

2006-09-11T16:12:00.000-07:00

Practically every comedian and cartoonist that I have interviewed believes that political humour is important because it forces us to laugh at ourselves particularly in times of hardship. When I arrived in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, the streets were lined with soldiers. Unlike the other tourists in the bus, I didn't stop to take pictures of them. Instead I called Romina and her mother to pick me up. Our conversation went a little like this:
Romina and Rosalina: Welcome to Honduras, We're a bit surprised that you decided to come at this time.
Me: Yeah, thanks. Whats up with the soldiers?
--"We're having some strikes right now--the teachers want more money so they've been blocking roads and stuff...you know how it goes.
Me: Yeah, well its okay.
---"Thank God you came by bus...At least you didn't fly into Tegucigalpa"
Me: Why?
---"Well because our runway is too short."

...
I will say no more at this point and let you hear the story for yourself. Below is a link to a video I have made of my conversation with Romina and her mother about the airport in Tegucigalpa. This is my very first film and I took the time out to make it with subtitles for those of you who don't speak spanish. I'm not a film major so the editing isn't that great but I did what I could. Check out the link to the film below: Enjoy!

©Danielle Roper

Definition:

2006-08-31T15:03:00.000-07:00

El humor politico es ataque, batalla, desahogo!
Political Humor is attack, battle, relief!----Miguel Angel Montoya, award winning Honduran Cartoonist & Bey Avendaño Honduran Cartoonist

Political Cartoons in Honduras

2006-08-31T14:53:00.000-07:00

Photographer: Danielle Roper

Above are photos of Miguel Angel Montoya & Bey Avendano as well as Montoya's first cartoon in El Cronista
A political cartoonist is different from other cartoonists who draw for kids, for tv or comic books because the political cartoonist must capture and critique social reality in one image. Hence, a cartoon is often a million words spoken through an image. During my time in Honduras I met with four cartoonists, one of whom is Miguel Angel Montoya. Miguel Angel Montoya is one of Honduras’ first and greatest cartoonists. He started out in the 30s and published cartoons in El Cronista under a fake name when the Military was in control of the country. He was recently recognized and awarded a prize in 2002 for all his work and contribution not only to the art of political humor but also for his revolutionary and radical criticisms of the authoritarian regimes in the mid 20th century. After my conversation with him and two other cartoonists: Bey Avendaño and Napoleon Han, I have come to the following conclusions about the function of political cartoons:
Firstly, political cartoons are the most common and widespread form of political humor in Central America. They appear practically everywhere: in grafitti, on the back of cars, in newspapers, in magazines, posters etc. This has been important for each of the cartoonists with whom I spoke about spreading their messages and mobilizing people. What is so important about cartoonists as against comedians on tv or radio is the fact that anyone can understand a cartoon: a deaf person, a child, an adult etc. Bey Avendaño told me that the only person he feels he is unable to reach with his cartoon is a blind person but with a little help, he says, he will figure out how to do a cartoon in Braille. Also, for people like Montoya, the use of cartoons was important because he could use them to critique the military regimes in power under the pretext that cartoons are not supposed to be taken seriously. Therefore, the advantages of political cartoons are its accessibility and the protection that the art itself can sometimes provide for the cartoonist.

Secondly, political cartoons function as a means of helping literacy in small towns in Central America. For example, both Miguel Angel Montoya and Bey Avendaño grew up in poor communities where most of the people around them could not read. This explains the limited dialogues in the cartoons in Honduras. Even in Nicaragua, which is a poorer country in Central America, you will probably find more dialogue in the cartoons than you can find in Honduran cartoons. Napoleon Han told me that knowing when to use words in your cartoon, and when not to, is the key to becoming a good cartoonists and the key to getting the poorest of the poor on your side. For instance, when Avendaño and Montoya drew a cartoon, they would use one word and the people who couldn’t read would ask “What does that word mean” and they could associate the image in the cartoon with a word and learn to read at least one word that way. For them, this was a way of helping to make people in poor communities literate. This is important because according to both Avendaño and Montoya, critiquing institutions of power is not enough; cartoonists must find a way to be part of the process of solving the problem.
Thirdly, political cartoons are important ways of recording the history of each country. The images that I saw from Montoya’s work tell you what exactly was happening at the time to how times have changed. He also says, that while some of the presidents during the time of conflict are dead, his cartoons live on and by the very least, if you don’t know the president’s policy at that time, you can still laugh at the "pendejo" (assh*le—please see footnote)

One of the major challenges facing political cartoonists today in Honduras is the fact that they are undervalued and earn very little. However, Avendaño says that this has proven advantageous for him because he is able to stay in touch with the people. So he takes the bus, he doesn’t drive, he lives in a relatively poor neighborhood and people have approached him saying “why don’t you do a cartoon about this or that etc?” and he’ll do it and that very person will feel like his voice was actually heard. Essentially, a political cartoonist cannot be out of touch with the people if he is to speak for them.
Consequently, a political cartoonist has a responsibility to the people which is why people like Montoya and Avendano stand so adamantly against the increasing commercialization of political cartoons in Honduras and Central America. In one of Honduras’ presidential elections in the early 1990s, politicians hired young cartoonists to draw and publish images of them to get the vote of poor people. One presidential candidate continuously used the image of “El Guapo” (The Handsome One) with a strong muscular arm reaching for Juana Catracha the damsel in distress. (see footnote). This helped his campaign and he actually won and served as one of Honduras’ most corrupt presidents of all time. For Avendaño and Montoya, this is the most harsh and obvious misuse of the art of political cartoons. The offer of thousands of dollars to cartoonists from these presidential campaigns is a way of keeping cartoonists quiet about the problems in the country. Avendaño says that there is nothing he can actually do about this problem other than to remain true to the people as “un caricaturista combativo.” (combative cartoonist)

Footnotes
*I have spelt the word Assh*le with an asterick because my mommy and daddy read this blog and it is wrong to swear in front of them…but would you like to buy a vowel?

*Juana Catracha and Juan Catracho are the characters cartoonists use to represent the Honduran people. Catracho is the popular/slang word in Central America for Honduran.
© Danielle Roper

Fav Quote of the week in Honduras

2006-08-31T12:29:00.000-07:00

Fav Quote of the week: Hay algunos caricaturistas hondureños que dibujan los políticos como animales. A mi no me gusta dibujar los políticos con caras de animales, no me gusta hacer una crítica tan fuerte. Yo prefiero hacer una crítica más sutil… para no ofender a los animalistas...claro.
There are some Honduran Cartoonists that draw politicians as animals. I don’t like to draw politicians as animals (in my cartoons) because I don’t like to make such a harsh criticism. I prefer more subtle criticisms… so as not to offend the animal rights activists, of course!---Napoleon Han, Honduran cartoonist

Clarification of "the Beginning

2006-08-31T12:25:00.000-07:00

In my very first post entitled, “The Beginning” I encouraged everyone to read up about the middle east. I said that if you do read about the region you will be surprised that Chicken Soup for the Terrorist Soul does not appear on your reading list. Since the publication of that post, a number of you have contacted me asking if this book actually exists. I would just like to clarify that (fortunately) this book does NOT actually exist. However, if you are interested in learning about the day to day life of a terrorist, please check out www.howtobeaterrorist.com (scroll down)
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Just to avoid any more confusion: www.howtobeaterrorist.com is not a real website

Definition:

2006-08-31T12:21:00.000-07:00

Political Humor definition:
El humor politico es la crítica al sistema de forma chistosa.
Political humor is a criticism of the system done in a funny way---Luis Enrique Calderon, El gran Imitador y humorista Nicaraguense (The great Nicaraguan Imitator/comedian)

Nicaragua take 1: Lights, Camera Action!!

2006-08-08T11:13:00.000-07:00

Nicaragua take 1: lights camera action!
Political humour must represent social reality in order for its critique of institutions of power to be legitimate. Case in point:
There is a muppet show featured on local television entitled Los Hulosos written and produced by one of Nicaragua’s cartoonist Manuel Guillén.. In one episode he had the muppet character President Bolaños responding to critics at a muppet press conference declaring that we ought not to worry about the national debt and the state of the country. As soon as he says this, there is a power cut and total darkness in the scene. The president comes back with a candle and continues talking about how things are going so well in the country and commends the increasing affordability of candles. So I think…haha pretty funny.
Two days after I see this episode I go to the local club Chamán with two friends. It’s a Saturday night, the music is pretty good, its loud, everybody’s dancing, drinking and having a good time. Everybody is singing along to the song “Rompe, Rompe, Rompe” and then all of a sudden the lights go out and the music stops…I kid you not, there was a power cut at the club. I am sitting there like a typical foreigner shocked out of mind but then I saw the workers light the candles at every corner of the club and continue serving beer. Not only were they prepared for this but also everybody just continued talking and chilling like nothing happened. Twenty minutes later the lights come back on and the party continues. I guess Manuel Guillén was on point. Say it with me: W-O-W!

If you speak Spanish the link to Los Hulosos is: http://www.canal2.com.ni/
The shows’ episodes is on the right side of the page
In the mean time, Nicaragua take one: Lights..ahh lights??…ahh LIGHTS?!!

My fav quote

2006-08-08T10:49:00.000-07:00

In case you don’t already know, Nicaragua’s general elections will take place on November 5 so there is no shortage of political humor in Managua at this time. Every politician has a new promise and a catchy campaign slogan. My favourite slogan which has won the competition for my favourite quote of the week is the MRS presidential candidate El Mundo Jarquín’s campaign slogan: “Soy feo pero no ladrón”---I may be ugly but I’m not a thief…” "Vota por el Feo que quiere una Nicaragua linda---Vote for the ugly dude who wants a pretty nicaragua"
And yes, he is ugly. I guess its the kinda ugliness we just had to talk about. My interview with the head of his campaign management team headed by a Costa Rican comedian is forthcoming….

The beginning

2006-07-22T09:44:00.000-07:00

The long-legged short torso diaries is my own sad attempt to be a Jamaican, feminist version of Che Guevarra traveling all over Latin America for one year. My project on Political Humor and Social Transformation in Nicaragua, Argentina, Peru and Paraguay really emerges from a real need for all of us to deconstruct and rethink our images of Latin America. I suppose images of Latin America are quite akin to those of the “Middle East” and the first thing that comes to mind when we think about those two regions have very little to do with laughter. So when we hear Latin America we think: Revolution, communism, Fidel Castro, romanticized versions of Che, Colombian drug lords, lazy Mexicans, backward indigenous people, and an angry, crazy Hugo Chavez. It is my hope that my own journey and these diaries about my trip will show you not only that Latin America is not in perpetual crisis, but will also give you an opportunity to really take laughter seriously. Laughter I believe makes us all a little more human and the history of political humour from political cartoonist, stand-up comedians and popular theatre in these countries has been completely ignored by the first world press and completely down-played by citizens of each of the countries I will visit.

It is also my hope that we will take this opportunity to understand violence in regions such as the ‘Middle East’ and the Arab World and make connections to what happens there with what happens in other third world countries. The death toll of 330 people in Lebanon at the start of the war, the ‘shock and awe’ bombings of schools in the south of Lebanon, the legitimizing narratives used by the Israeli government, the endorsement of the violence by the U.S government makes me ask myself “has the world gone crazy?” Is the displacement of thousands of Lebanese people, the murder of Lebanese children as ‘casualities,’ the soon to be rape of Lebanese women by Israeli soldiers and the reconstruction of Lebanon for the next couple decades really worth the lives of two soldiers? I mean lets be serious, there’s more than just the two soldiers lives that are at stake.

Now mommy, don’t worry, this doesn’t mean that I’m taking my project to the ‘Middle East’ but what I am saying is with the constant coverage of war in Israel, Iraq, Palestine and Lebanon, the ordinary humanness of the people that live there gets lost in the minds of all of us. What I mean is, when there was no big war in Beirut, they barely appeared in the news—well at least Jamaican news. For instance, how many sitcoms have you ever seen about an Arab/Arab-American family, or seen a movie where the Arab character was not a terrorist or a suicide bomber---very few. And if you have seen these movies then you are probably mixing it up with a bollywood movie and those people are indians/south asians...NOT Arab. Stop clumping dude!
But the danger is not just the clumping but also the fact that these people i.e Arabs and people who confuse south asians as arabs get stuck in one role i.e the evil, terrorist role. And then we forget that they're human like us, I mean Arabs fart too. Can you imagine if they started an association like that? AFA: the arab farting association--Arabs farting for peace in the middle east...alright I'm getting off track....

Similarly, Nicaragua practically disappeared from the news after the 80s and when the Somoza regime came to an end it just seemed like there wasn't that much to talk about there. So that explains why when I say I’m going to Nicaragua everyone starts getting worried that I may be kidnapped by the FSLN or something or that some civil unrest will unfold when I’m there.
Now I am not arguing that we ought not to report on violence in the Arab world and Latin America but what I am saying is do not let that be the ONLY image you have of these regions. So if you want to learn about some Arab/Arab American comedians as part of a broader vision of Arab people check out Scott Blakeman, Maysoon Zaid and Dean Obeidallah: www.standupforpeace.com. They are hilarious of course and talk about whats going on in the “Middle East.” And when you start reading about the Arab World you may be surprised that Chicken Soup for the Terrorist Soul just didn't turn up on your reading list.

Anyway, in closing the long-legged-short-torso diaries is set out to give you a new perspective, a broader vision of Latin America and the uses of political humour…Enjoy!