Junot Díaz Symposium

I. Review
Junot Díaz: A Symposium

Interview

II. Sleep Dealer (2008) dir. Alex Rivera

Bilingual Aesthetics

Warm-up exercises

I.  Cultural amnesia misinformation, lying or all the above?

Exhibit A:

Exhibit B:
Colbert Report

Exhibit C: Apropos of Precious Knowledge: Critical Race Theory and Bilingual Aesthetics

Ethnic Studies à la Jon Stewart

In Arizona, Censoring Questions About Race

Why Bilinguals Are Smarter

II. Desert Blood: Discussion, analysis and commentary


III. Bilingual Aesthetics


After Luis and David’s presentation, be prepared to explain Sommer’s argument in “Bilingual Aesthetics: An Invitation.” For example, What does she mean by:

“[T]he challenges to a democratic society in times of globalization”? (see page 8)

“[O]ne way assimilation”?

“[F]air and fulfilling contemporary life”?

“[T]he monolithic system of language and cultural assumptions that we inherited from an early and outmoded project for national consolidation”?

[...] “What if I said that multilingualism coordinated by a lingua franca promotes fair procedure and effective education, while one way assimilation derails progress on both counts? Would you be curious about the arguments and perhaps willing to change your mind if you have been feeling that bilingualism is irrelevant or even damaging? I invite you to consider the cultural conditions for fair and fulfilling contemporary life. Or maybe you already intuit the benefits of bilingualism. But if you're not curious enough to hear and to heed arguments, that inertia may itself be a symptom of the monolithic system of language and cultural assumptions that we inherited from an early and outmoded project for national consolidation.” 

--Doris Sommer, “Bilingual Aesthetics: An Invitation”


IV. Susana Chávez Silverman, Ambientes, "Magnetic Island sueño crónica": Discussion, analysis and commentary

Seminar Discussion for 3/28

0. Review
Gloria Anzaldúa's, "How to Tame a Wild Tongue":

I. Please be prepared to discuss the legacy of Moraga and Anzaldúa’s contribution to Latino literature in the assigned stories we did not get to last week. These are:

1. Charles Rice González, Puti and the Bandits,” pgs. 57-74
2. tatiana de la tierra, “Porcupine Love,” pgs. 75-83
3. Horacio M. Roque Ramírez, “This Desire for Queer Survival” pgs. 96-111. Note 2003 backdrop for Ramírez's testimonial about queer survival, "Operation Iraqi Freedom":

Presentation:
4. Irene Mata, “Writing on the Walls: Deciphering Violence and Industrialization in Alicia Gaspar de Alba’s Desert Blood” (BB) 

Be prepared to discuss a representative chapter of your choosing in detail and explain how it relates to the rest of the novel:
5. Alicia Gaspar de Alba, Desert Blood: The Juárez Murders

Links related to Gaspar de Alba's framing and context for her novel:

Señorita extraviada

II. Updates from previous class discussions: "La ley de la mordaza": Other incarnations

St. Petersburg 

Decolonizing Writ Large

Aztlán and the Legacy of the Chicano Civil Rights Movement:

I.
Precious Knowledge


II.
What does Moraga mean when she says in "La güera," “In this country, lesbianism is a poverty-as is being brown, as is being a woman, as is being just plain poor" (250).


What does Anzaldúa mean when she says, "Wild tongues can't be tamed. They can only be cut out" (255)


III. Ambientes


Presention


Rice-González


de la tierra and


Ramírez

Decolonization and el Plan espiritual de Aztlán

Rodolfo Corky González, "Yo soy Joaquín" (1928-2005)

Chicano Moratorium

The Chicano Moratorium, formally known as the National Chicano Moratorium Committee, was a movement of Chicano anti-war activists that built a broad-based coalition of Mexican-American groups to organize opposition to the Vietnam War. Led by activists from local colleges and members of the "Brown Berets", a group with roots in the high school student movement that staged walkouts in 1968, the coalition peaked with an August 29, 1970 march in East Los Angeles that drew 30,000 demonstrators.

James Baldwin (1924-87): Education as a practice of freedom or enslavement?

Huey Newton (1942-89)

 

Quest for a Homeland

"Plan espiritual de Aztlán" and Seale and Newton's "Ten Point Plan"

1. WE WANT FREEDOM. WE WANT POWER TO DETERMINE THE DESTINY OF OUR BLACK AND OPPRESSED COMMUNITIES.
   We believe that Black and oppressed people will not be free until we are able to determine our destinies in our own communities ourselves, by fully controlling all the institutions which exist in our communities.
2. WE WANT FULL EMPLOYMENT FOR OUR PEOPLE.
   We believe that the federal government is responsible and obligated to give every person employment or a guaranteed income. We believe that if the American businessmen will not give full employment, then the technology and means of production should be taken from the businessmen and placed in the community so that the people of the community can organize and employ all of its people and give a high standard of living.
3. WE WANT AN END TO THE ROBBERY BY THE CAPITALISTS OF OUR BLACK AND OPPRESSED COMMUNITIES.
   We believe that this racist government has robbed us and now we are demanding the overdue debt of forty acres and two mules. Forty acres and two mules were promised 100 years ago as restitution for slave labor and mass murder of Black people. We will accept the payment in currency which will be distributed to our many communities. The American racist has taken part in the slaughter of our fifty million Black people. Therefore, we feel this is a modest demand that we make.
4. WE WANT DECENT HOUSING, FIT FOR THE SHELTER OF HUMAN BEINGS.
   We believe that if the landlords will not give decent housing to our Black and oppressed communities, then housing and the land should be made into cooperatives so that the people in our communities, with government aid, can build and make decent housing for the people.
5. WE WANT DECENT EDUCATION FOR OUR PEOPLE THAT EXPOSES THE TRUE NATURE OF THIS DECADENT AMERICAN SOCIETY. WE WANT EDUCATION THAT TEACHES US OUR TRUE HISTORY AND OUR ROLE IN THE PRESENT-DAY SOCIETY.
   We believe in an educational system that will give to our people a knowledge of the self. If you do not have knowledge of yourself and your position in the society and in the world, then you will have little chance to know anything else.
6. WE WANT COMPLETELY FREE HEALTH CARE FOR All BLACK AND OPPRESSED PEOPLE.
   We believe that the government must provide, free of charge, for the people, health facilities which will not only treat our illnesses, most of which have come about as a result of our oppression, but which will also develop preventive medical programs to guarantee our future survival. We believe that mass health education and research programs must be developed to give all Black and oppressed people access to advanced scientific and medical information, so we may provide our selves with proper medical attention and care.
7. WE WANT AN IMMEDIATE END TO POLICE BRUTALITY AND MURDER OF BLACK PEOPLE, OTHER PEOPLE OF COLOR, All OPPRESSED PEOPLE INSIDE THE UNITED STATES.
   We believe that the racist and fascist government of the United States uses its domestic enforcement agencies to carry out its program of oppression against black people, other people of color and poor people inside the united States. We believe it is our right, therefore, to defend ourselves against such armed forces and that all Black and oppressed people should be armed for self defense of our homes and communities against these fascist police forces.
8. WE WANT AN IMMEDIATE END TO ALL WARS OF AGGRESSION.
   We believe that the various conflicts which exist around the world stem directly from the aggressive desire of the United States ruling circle and government to force its domination upon the oppressed people of the world. We believe that if the United States government or its lackeys do not cease these aggressive wars it is the right of the people to defend themselves by any means necessary against their aggressors.
9. WE WANT FREEDOM FOR ALL BLACK AND OPPRESSED PEOPLE NOW HELD IN U. S. FEDERAL, STATE, COUNTY, CITY AND MILITARY PRISONS AND JAILS. WE WANT TRIALS BY A JURY OF PEERS FOR All PERSONS CHARGED WITH SO-CALLED CRIMES UNDER THE LAWS OF THIS COUNTRY.
   We believe that the many Black and poor oppressed people now held in United States prisons and jails have not received fair and impartial trials under a racist and fascist judicial system and should be free from incarceration. We believe in the ultimate elimination of all wretched, inhuman penal institutions, because the masses of men and women imprisoned inside the United States or by the United States military are the victims of oppressive conditions which are the real cause of their imprisonment. We believe that when persons are brought to trial they must be guaranteed, by the United States, juries of their peers, attorneys of their choice and freedom from imprisonment while awaiting trial.
10. WE WANT LAND, BREAD, HOUSING, EDUCATION, CLOTHING, JUSTICE, PEACE AND PEOPLE'S COMMUNITY CONTROL OF MODERN TECHNOLOGY.
    When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
    
    We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and, accordingly, all experience hath shown that mankind are most disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But, when a long train of abuses and usurpation, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.

Purificación e Historia

René Marqués, _Los soles truncos_ (1958)

Context: 1900 The Foraker Law

The island was surrendered to the United States military authority in 1900.

On March 19, President McKinley asserts the need for free trade with Puerto Rico.

On April 2, the Foraker Law, officially the Organic Act of 1900, is approved, establishing civil government and free commerce between the island and United States. "Free commerce" created the first tax-free zone in a U.S. territory. The law was introduced into Congress by senator Joseph B. Foraker. Puerto Rico became the first U.S. unincorporated territory. The new government had an American governor, with 5 Puerto Rican Cabinet members. The first civil governor (Charles H. Allen) of the island under the Foraker Act was inaugurated on May 1, in San Juan.

The Department of Education was formed with Dr. M. G. Braumbaugh (later governor of Pennsylvania) the first Commissioner of Education. The method of of teaching was entirely in English with Spanish treated as a special subject.


1917 Jones Act

On March 2, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson signed the Jones-Shafroth Act. This law gave Puerto Ricans U.S. citizenship. The Jones Act separated the Executive, Judicial, and Legislative branches of Puerto Rican government, provided civil rights to the individual, and created a locally elected bicameral legislature. The two houses were a Senate consisting of 19 members and a 39-member House of Representatives. However, the Governor and the President of the United States had the power to veto any law passed by the legislature. Also, the United States Congress had the power to stop any action taken by the legislature in Puerto Rico. The U.S. maintained control over fiscal and economic matters and exercised authority over mail services, immigration, defense and other basic governmental matters.

II. "La ley de la mordaza"

El 11 de junio de 1948, el Gobernador de Puerto Rico, Jesús T. Piñero, firma una ley que hizo ilegal la advocación pública de la independencia, la cual era congruente con los proyectos aprobados el mes anterior. La misma se le llamo la Ley Número 53 que estipulaba la "ilegalidad" de la libertad de expresión. La impidió el,

“...declarar..., fomentar, abogar, aconsejar o predicar, voluntariamente o a sabiendas, la necesidad, deseabilidad o conveniencia de derrocar, destruir o paralizar el Gobierno Insular, o cualquier subdivisión política de este, por medio por medio de la fuerza o la violencia; y el imprimir, publicar, editar, circular, vender, distribuir o públicamente exhibir con la intención de derrocar, paralizar o destruir el Gobierno Insular o cualquiera de sus divisiones políticas, cualquier escrito o publicación donde se fomente, abogue, aconseje o predique la necesidad, la deseabilidad o conveniencia de derrocar, paralizar o destruir el Gobierno Insular o cualquier subdivisión política de este, por medio de la fuerza o la violencia, así como el organizar o ayudar a organizar cualquier sociedad, grupo o asamblea de personas que fomenten, aboguen, aconsejen o prediquen tal cosa y para otros fines.”

Como objetivo de esta Ley Mordaza era investigar y detener el nacionalismo militante, el Partido Nacionalista y su líder, Albizu Campos ya que se le había acusado como el que inicia los movimientos de huelgas en la Universidad de Puerto Rico.

III. 1954



IV. René Marqués (1919-79), _Los soles truncos_ (1958)

Los soles trunco opens at the Teatro Tapia de San Juan, PR, en 1958. The play shown for the first time in the Primer Festival de Teatro Puertorriqueño del ICP.

Actors:
Johanna Rosaly, Sandra Rivera and Olga Sesto. Gilberto Valenzuela was the director.

René Marqués fue un miembro de lo que en Puerto Rico se conoció como "La generación del 50". Era un grupo de intelectuales cuyo líder llegó a ser Marqués. En la década del 1950 y 1960, junto con otros miembros de este grupo, Marqués trabajó en la División de Educación de la Comunidad de Puerto Rico (DIVEDCO); dentro del cual Marqués, muy a menudo entraba en conflicto con Luis Muñoz Marín. Marqués creía en la completa soberanía de su país, motivo por el que con frecuencia criticaba a Muñoz Marín, especialmente cuando éste fue electo gobernador de la Isla por su posición de aceptación de la soberanía estadounidense sobre Puerto Rico.