AmericaLatina

David Samuels, a University of Minnesota professor of Political Science will speak on “The Evolution of the Workers’ Party: Implications for Understanding Brazilian Politics and Society” on Tuesday, Dec. 1 at noon at UW-Madison.

The talk is part of a series of lunchtime lectures sponsored by the campus Latin American and Caribbean and Iberian Studies Program. The event, which includes a light lunch, will take place in room 206 of Ingraham Hall.

Haitian writer Edwidge Danticat

Edwidge Danticat will deliver a lecture on Nov. 23 at the Wisconsin Room of the UW-Milwaukee student union at 7 p.m.

The award-winning author is a Haitian-born author whose written several books including her latest, Brother, I’m Dying, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2007. She won a Granta Regional Award for the Best Young American Novelists for her first book, Breath, Eyes, Memory, which was a selection in Oprah Winfrey’s Book Club. Danticat’s writing has appeared in the New Yorker and other anthologies. Named “One of 20 people in their twenties who will make a difference” by Harper’s Bazaar, and featured in New York Times Magazine as one of “30 Under 30″ creative people to watch, Danticat has also taught at New York University and University of Miami.

Tickets are $8 for students with ID.

A film by a young Argentine director is among the upcoming offerings by the Union Theater in — surprise! – the student union on the campus of UWM.

The film, “The Headless Woman” or “La mujer sin cabeza” is by Lucrecia Martel of Argentina. It will be shown Nov. 20-22 at 7 p.m. It is in Spanish with English subtitles and lasts 87 minutes.

Here is the description from the Union-Theater series schedule:

The Headless Woman is an elliptical, subtle and unnerving third feature film from Lucrecia Martel (director of La ciénaga and The Holy Girl).

Vero (Maria Onetto), an affluent dentist, is driving alone on a dirt road, becomes distracted and runs over something. In the days following this jarring incident, she is dazed and emotionally disconnected from the people and events in her life. She becomes obsessed with the possibility that she may have killed someone. The police confirm that there were no accidents reported in the area and everything returns to normal until a gruesome discovery is made.

Scene from "The Headless Woman"

Portrait of Adelita

          Professor Pilar Melero admits that it is partly her family roots in Durango state that feed her interest in the Mexican Revolution. Historians call that northern zone of Mexico “the cradle of the revolution” because of the leaders, battles, and ideas that nurtured the upheaval that erupted in 1910. Dr. Melero spent most of her childhood in Durango before immigrating to the U.S. Her research into the literature of the revolution focuses on women. She explained in a talk to our Latin American Culture seminar that she once discovered that her own family contains women revolutionaries. This was like a revelation. As celebrated as the revolution is, why have so many women been forgotten?

          The fact is that there is a certain type of woman in the revolution that has been mythologized – a pretty, agreeable complement to the men. The image of “Adelita” comes immediately to mind, because she is celebrated in a famous ballad (or corrido). The work of Dr. Melero aims at bringing more of the women who fought and led attacks, and were perhaps not pretty and subservient, into the image of all those who participated in this movement.

"Yesoterapia" The artist was encased in a body cast for five days

The Guatemalan artist Regina José Galindo is compared to Iowa’s Ana Mendieta or Serbian Marina Abramovic for the audacity of her body-based work and the attention it directs toward themes of women and politics.

Her first solo show in New York is up this month at the gallery Exit Art.

Here is a letter from my great-aunt in Maracaibo-just a few things about life in Venezuela.

Hola,la vida en Maracaibo es muy caliente,la temperatura sube a 47ºC,llueve poco y todo es muy seco.El sol es muy hermoso y tambien el bello lago con un extraordinario puente.Por todo el Lago hay torres petroleras.El nativo es muy alegre,le gusta un tipo de musica llamada gaita,con tambores y marracas.Hay muchos indigenas llamados Goajiros,las mujeres usan mantas y se pintan la cara,ellos viven en la ciudad pero conservan sus costumbres.La comida de navidad se llama hallaca,parece tamal Mexicano pero es mas rico,tambien se comen arepas y mandocas hechas de maiz.                   

Hello, the life in Maracaibo is very hot, the temperature climbs to 47 degrees Celsius (116 degrees Fahrenheit!), it rains little and everything is very dry.  The sun is very beautiful and there is also a beautiful lake with an extraordinary bridge.  Over all the lake there are petroleum towers.  The native is very happy, he likes a type of music called gaita, with drums and maracas.  There are many indigenous people called Goajiros, the women wear ponchos and paint their faces, they live in the city but keep their customs.  The Christmas food is called hallaca, like a Mexican tamale but is richer, also they eat tortillas and mandocas made of corn.

 Romero tells the story of the civil war that wracked the country of El Salvador three decades ago, and of the mild-mannered Catholic Archbishop Oscar Romero who grudgingly entered the conflict on the side of the poor. Romero evolved into one of the most visible and outspoken critics of the outrages committed during the Cold-War conflict and gave consistent voice to the principle of nonviolence. For his activism, Archbishop Romero would pay with his life.

This movie does not pull punches in the images of violence that it presents. This is righteous anger from the director, who wanted to wake people up with something hard, not fuzzy. You will find this hard to believe, but the movie stops just as the war begins. In other words, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

Some attending the funeral of Romero are shot for doing so by government soldiers, some circling above in a helicopter and firing down on the public.

A guerrilla group is formed from many parties – some Marxist — in the following year. It was called the FMLN for the Faribundo Mart National Liberation Front. They launch a civil war against the government, and the government earns the backing of the U.S. in the name of fighting the Cold War. The U.S. will vastly increase its military aid and training to El Salvador, totaling an average of $1.5 million dollars per day for the next 12 years.

The death toll is between 60,000 and 75,000 killed over the war, varied depending on when you start the war and the death count. This is in a country of 6 million. So the share of dead to the total population would equal, if this were to happen to the U.S., would be as if the U.S. lost 3.25 million people. Think of this way, their loss would be as if the U.S. had suffered death on the scale of the 9-11-2001 attacks every three days since the day of those attacks.

Professor Diane Soles of the Sociology Department at UW-Whitewater sees Cuban film taking a new direction.  Dr. Soles is a specialist in Cuban film and has conducted research in the Cuban Film Institute in Havana. She offered her perspective on Cuban film past and present during our Latin America seminar on Nov. 4.  

 The Cuban Film Institute (Instituto cubano del arte y industria cinematograficas) was an early part of the new revolutionary state put in place under Fidel Castro in 1959. The institute did what it was designed to do. That is, it promoted and controlled a type of film that contrasted with Hollywood by challenging an audience to think, by focusing on the collective rather than the individual, and by bringing film to everyone including the poor.  One example of films in the heyday of the institute in the 1960s were those by the late director Tomas Gutierrez Alea, such as “Memories of Underdevelopment” or the comedy “Death of a Bureaucrat”.

 Since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 when Cuba entered an economic crisis, the resources of the institute have collapsed and a new group of filmmakers rely on foreign funding. This means that many newer films operate farther outside the umbrella of the state.  Two new directors and examples of their work are Pavel Giroud and his film “La edad de la peseta” and Alejandro Brugués and “Personal Belongings”. 

Robert Almonte, a retired Deputy Chief of the El Paso Police Department, spent most of his career investigating Mexican drug dealers and the Mexican drug trade.  During his research, he began to encounter many of the same saints displayed in the stash homes, in vehicles and even on Mexican drug dealers.  Almonte came to learn that these saints are being used as protection against law enforcement officials.

The most common saints:

La Virgen de Guadalupe: Patron Saint of forgiveness for past crimes

Torimo Romo: rescued migrants in the desert

Santo Nino de Atocha: the boy pilgrim, patron saint of prisoners and travelers

St. Jude: Patron Saint of lost causes-helps to get through difficult situations (like trafficking drugs)

St. Ramone: Patron Saint of secrets and silence.  Drug traffickers will tape a penny over St. Ramone’s mouth to keep their deals a secret.

Jesus Malverde: Angel of Poor, Mexican Robin Hood

San Simone: from Guatemala, gaining popularity in Mexico-Patron Saint of undocumented immigrants as well as Patron Saint of Gamblers and Drunkards

Juan Soldado: Patron Saint of illegal aliens.

The most famous: La Santa Muerte (Saint Death): La Santa Muerte is not canonized by the Catholic Church, in fact, she is not even recognized by the Catholic Church.  La Santa Muerte is a skeleton dressed similar to the Virgen Mary.  Whereas the Virgen Mary only listens to the wealthy and well-off, it is believed by many Mexicans that La Santa Muerte hears prayers from the poor and criminal-minded.  La Santa Muerte is usually seen wearing three colors: red=love, white=good luck, and black=protection.  La Santa Muerte has recently become associated with violence in Mexico, where drug dealers will execute people and offer their heads to La Santa Muerte.  Violence linked to Saint Death has not been seen yet in the United States.

These saints are usually seen as images on candles with prayers on them.  The other most common way these idols are displayed are on small cards that can be kept in a wallet or displayed on the dashboard of a vehicle.  Besides the saints, another common card is the Mano Poderosa-which is the image of Jesus’ hand with a religious figure on each of His fingers.  Mexican drug traffickers carry this around to literally have God’s hand protecting them from law enforcement.  Pendants of the saints worn around the necks of drug traffickers are incredibly common as well.

Many Mexican drug dealers and traffickers also believe in brujas (witches) and curanderos (healers).  Brujas are used to make hexes against particular narcotics officers.  Curanderos are known to prepare medicines from herbs and plants.  They also lead their followers in prayer and perform a “limpia” where they used a branch to “clean” the drug trafficker.

Many Mexicans are now becoming involved in Santeria, which is the combination of African Gods and Catholicism.  The drug traffickers want as much good luck as they can get, so they are trying this religion that is popular in Cuba and the Caribbean.

Other commonly seen idols among Mexican drug traffickers are: Tweety Bird-who in cartoons always seems to escape Sylvester, and Scarface.

Many drug traffickers have more than one idol, believing that “more is better.”  Besides just praying to these idols, drug traffickers have gotten creative.  In Kentucky, pounds and pounds of marijuana were found being transported in a four-foot statue of St. Jude.

Narcotics officers now have an extra clue to look for when searching a suspected stash house or when pulling over a suspicious driver.  As more law enforcement agents learn about the Patron Saints of the Mexican Drug Underworld, one can’t help but wonder, who’s side are the saints on?

When I was 16, I got the opportunity of a lifetime-I got to travel to Guatemala City with 7 other youth from my church to do mission work at our sister church, Cristo Nuestr0 Paz (Christ Our Peace).  We stayed in a convent in Zone 2 of Guatemala City and took a bus everyday to Zone 18, where our sister church is.  There are 21 zones in Guatemala City.  1-4 are where the wealthiest live and the government buildings are.  The higher the zone number, the poorer the area.  So essentially, Zone 18 is the 4th poorest in all of Guatemala City. 

The convent we stayed at in Zone 2 was very nice.  It even had a pool with a slide!  Only one of the nuns spoke English, but they all tried very hard to keep us fed and comfortable.  They made money to support their convent by educating young girls.  Although the nuns did not wear the traditional habits we see in movies, they were always fully clothed in long dresses and usually had some sort of long fabric covering their hair.  It was funny to sit in a room full of pictures of saints while the nuns hovered around the television cheering on the Guatemalan soccer team!

Zone 18 was quite different from the business buildings and McDonalds we had seen in Zone 2.  The church was over a century old.  Connected to the church was Padre Pedro’s house.  Padre Pedro was the only priest at Cristo Nuestro Paz, and he and his adult son, Mario, were seen as local heros and were known by everyone in Zone 18.  On the other side of the church was a combined medical and dental clinic.  After a quick tour, it was obvious that they were far behind us when it came to technology.  The medical center was just being introduced to computers-old, bulky things I had not seen since kindergarten.  Up the hill from the church was the two-room grade school.  The children were delighted to see us, and performed a song and dance for us.  I couldn’t help but notice how clean the kids were, after seeing all those Christian Foundation commercials back home, I was expecting everyone to be sick and dirty looking.

A tour of the rest of Zone 18 proved how poor this area is and how much they needed our help.  Houses were one- roomed tin huts.  Most homes have one bed the entire family shares made of wood, with one lightbulb dangling from the rusty roof.  One corner of the house was usually a shrine to the Virgin Mary with religious icons and candles.  Most of the land in Zone 18 is owned by wealthy businessmen that live in Zones 1-4 who charge exorbitant rent.   The water is polluted from the locals bathing and doing laundry in the river. 

Violence and prostitution are two huge problems in Zone 18, our “gringo” group was always led and followed by at least two locals for our protection.  We met a mother of two of the children families at our church sponsor to send to school.  Her husband had been murdered so to make ends meet she made and sold tortillas all day, and worked in a sweatshop at night.  She said the sweatshop was tedious work for little pay, but it was the only option she had.

After seeing how terrible the living conditions were here, I was surprised how hopeful everyone was.  It was also obvious how important religion was in their lives.  They prayed more than anybody I had ever known before.  They prayed before all meals, prayed in the morning, and at the end of all our visits, they prayed for our protection. 

With the majority of their population being under age 18, the inhabitants of Zone 18 are hopeful of change.  Padre Pedro visits the grade school and guarderia (daycare) kids regularly.  He preaches about Jesus and miracles, hoping that the youth will have faith to work for change in their poor neighborhood.

For more information on how St. Paul Parish helps Cristo Nuestro Paz: http://www.stpaulgenesee.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=34:christ-our-peace-parish-guatemala&catid=7:sister-parishes&Itemid=9