Guatemala, Guatebuena, Guatemaya 1

(Title stolen from an article by Edelberto Torres-Rivas you can find here.)


I've been meaning to post some details of my 10 day trip to Guatemala here, but the increasing stress from dissertation elements and long distance relationship, coupled with a sense that blogs are decreasingly useful mediums for communicating has delayed me significantly. 


Guatemala is a beautiful country with a systematically violent but also profoundly, richly political history. It is, by way of military, solidarity, and refugee discourses, a place think about somewhat in my dissertation. The motivations for going were therefore mixed. My boyfriend gets paid vacation time every year and he wanted a jaunt somewhere to help me at least "inhabit" the subject of my dissertation somewhat, even if that means I would be there having drinks and chilling by a giant, beautiful lake while reading about genocide. My friend B is also in Guatemala City (the capital) doing fieldwork for her anthropology PhD, so we had a potential person with who we could visit.


Because my bf doesn't have any free time in his job that demands he work 12 hour days, I did much of the planning on my own, consulting travel guides, friends, and also various internet review sites. Roughly sketched out the trip involved flying into Guatemala City, heading immediately out to Tikal, coming back to Guatemala City and shooting West toward Lago Atitlan for several days, hitting the Pacific Coast by way of Monterrico, spending a day and night in Antigua, back to Guate to see B. All compacted unrealistically into very little time.


Arrival in Guatemala City:


Pittsburgh is freezing during the Winter and it is also bleak, so banking off of clouds to see an overwhelmingly green landscape and warmth was a rather welcome sight. I had basically left us six hours to check out Anthropological Museums and eat in Guatemala City before catching a late night bus (on Linea Dorada) to Tikal. My plan was to get to a museum, stash our bags at the coat check, immerse ourselves in the anthropological material of the museum and then plan our next move, to hit a coffee or dinner, check el centro. We arrived the day after Christmas and I hadn't realized that the museums would be closed for a week for the holiday. We asked our cab driver to take us to another museum, which was also closed. Since we were near the center of town anyway we had him drop us off there so we could at least wander around and get some coffee or street food. I was at this point a little overtaken by panic, I foolishly internalize things like Guatemala's 200,000 genocide and the torture of thousands more as some sign that we too would be targeted and murdered, as obvious tourists. As irrational as I knew these feelings were, I couldn't quite keep my fear under control for the first hour or so in the city. 


We managed to find a decent coffee shop and we wandered around the plaza which was lovely, strung with lights, vendors selling elotes, etc., a cathedral with a few minor nondescript monuments to the genocide, and well kept flowers. Avenida 6a running down from the center of the plaza has been closed off to automobile traffic producing a very pleasant pedestrian avenue where we familiarized ourselves with the various iterations of the faux hawk popular amongst the nations young men. We managed to find a vegetarian restaurant at the end of the avenue where we munched on odd, but not altogether bad veggie variations of guatemalan traditional foods like tamales (in this nation wrapped in banana leaves rather than corn husks, as in Mexico). We split some overpriced beers and caught our overnight bus. (Incidentally Guatemalan beers aren't very good, as with other Latin American nations lagers are the preferred form, but the Gallos and Mozas were not particularly tasty.)


The bus was packed and the bus ticketing agent giggled at my gigantic internet print out tickets. Linea Dorada operates what seems comparable to Greyhound buses in the United States with semi-reclining seats and powerful aire acondicionado. I managed to not sleep very well and the bf snuck our arms around each other beneath our blanket (note to the homos: Guatemala is not a tolerant nation for homosexual peoples, it's best to travel on the DL if you can, although it is much more common for heterosexual men to touch other men and put their arms around friends or loved ones in public more than in the United States).


Tikal:

In order to visit Tikal National Park, an archeological treasure of an ancient Mayan city sitting at the edge of the jungle, you first fly or bus into Flores, a small island town where you either obtain a bus to the site or enjoin a tour company to get you to the site and guide you through was is a very confusing set of paths where tourists lose their way annually. After working on some miscommunication with our tour company we managed to get a bus over to the site, and checked around for guides who spoke English, so that my boyfriend (J from here on out) could also understand the tour. The tour lasted three hours and the site was beautiful, massive and impressive temples rising out of the jungle, ancient Maya stelae, and the odor of copal (a pine sap incense) which seemed to permeate much of Guatemala or at least infected my senses for the duration of the trip.


For the remaining evening hours in Flores, J and I snuck into an alley to throw on swim trunks and we hit the lake surrounding Flores during at sunset. The lake is pleasantly cool, but warm enough that one could spend some time there. Our dinner was fine, a little overpriced and not as good as breakfast. My favorite meal in Guatemala tended to be breakfast tipico, which consists of two eggs, black beans, toast, chirmol (a non-spicy tomato onion sauce), and fried plantains. This breakfast is to be found everywhere in Guatemala for cheap in even the smallest comedores. 


Toward Lago Atitlan:


We caught another overnight bus back to Guatemala City that night, arriving a half hour shy of 6am. Our guidebooks were fairly old, 2007 I believe was the most recent one we had between us, and we had plans to catch a camioneta to Panajachel, a city along Lago Atitlan, that morning from a particular site in Zone 1 Guatemala City. Our cab driver suggested that our books were wrong and the camionetas (or "chicken buses" as they are called by Anglos) picked up somewhere in Zone 8. Again I was confronted with a moment of First World panic (or maybe Mexican?--kidnapping is a national industry there) as I imagined another scenario in which we would again be robbed and murdered. We arrived and were told we need to catch a bus to a midpoint in Encuentros where we could catch a bus to Solola and onto Panajachel. Taking camionetas I think is a definitive experience for anyone visiting the country for the first time. These are former American school buses that are tricked out with bright colors, chrome plating, and have sound systems blasting reggeaton. Our driver looked like he was 19, his assistant 14, as they throttled up mountains at 90 mphs. 

As we travelled through the rainy landscape we were treated to another Guatemala's surprising features: a wandering evangelical Protestant Preacher. For the course of an hour we were force fed a stream-of-consciousness sermon about finding Jesus amidst family tragedy and several songs. One feature of the counterinsurgency wars in Central America has been the increasing presence and power of evangelical Christianity both as a corrective to Vatican 2s enabling of liberation theology (a significant element of revolutions in Guatemala and El Salvador) and to defuse political energies elsewhere than resistance to the mandates of the landed oligarchy and the army. After switching buses twice at a fairly efficient rate (both buses were waiting to pick up passengers and almost immediately left after we boarded) we arrived at a sunbaked Panajachel. After getting our bearings, consuming coffee and breakfast, we loaded onto a lancha headed for a hotel I had arranged for us in the small village of Jaibalito. Lanchas are the cheapest way to get around the lake towns as the lake is surrounded by forested volcanos. Typically you load onto a lancha with 15-20 other passangers making stops at villages and towns along the way. Atitlan has to be one of the most beautiful natural locations I have ever been so riding in the lancha was a rather amazing way to see the bright blue of the lake and the life surrounding the water.

Set in a beautifully manicured garden the hotel (called Vulcano Lodge) was a set of bungalows a bit off from the lake, and as soon as we arrived was the first time we had significant time to relax since the trip began. J and I snuck over to a neighboring hotel's patio/dock and spent the afternoon basking the beautiful surroundings, swimming, and reading, my recommended book of the trip El Presidente by Guatemalan novelist Miguel Angel-Asturias (which depicts the abjection and experience of living in the surveillance culture of a military dictatorship). As relaxing and restorative as the time at the lake was the way our hotel was set amidst a rather impoverished looking village with little in terms of public plumbing and not apparent school or medical services within reach (perhaps there is a hospital nearby)? It was a good reminder of the deeply inequitable and exploitative economic situation upon which the tourist economy sits in Guatemala (and also the degree to which the United States has been responsible for destroying its conduits for unrest about the inequality, as in overthrowing the first president to enforce a land reform). 


The hotel offered a family-style meal with other residents and seeing no other options for eating dinner we joined what appeared to be several incredibly boring MidWestern American and their Canadian equivalents for dinner. The food was relatively good, even for two vegetarians, and with the dull families we agreed to share a shuttle the next day to visit Chichicastenago, a mountain town famous for it's large markets vending "indigenous" textiles, pottery, and other goods as well as for a still very active syncretic Maya-Catholic culture. We arrived relatively early to Chichicastenago so the longer we paced the streets, the more narrow they became as vendors divided the streets with proliferating stalls. Many of the textiles, for which Guatemala is famous, were clearly made in factory contexts and not really the handicrafts one might expect, which is not surprising but it didn't stop the vendors from haggling with you complaining about the lack of value "mi trabajo" was receiving. We bought a few really nice pieces, but as the streets became more claustrophobic the process of haggling made me incredibly anxious; anxious because of an awareness of my position as someone coming from the core of the world economy and all the privileges it affords me arguing for a better price against someone with less prospects, in all probability a shorter lifespan, in a language I failed to maintain because it was easier to learn English than to try and maintain any semblance of my culture in the overwhelmingly homogenous MidWest of the US. More tension emerged later, J had suggested we try and find some decent street food which seemed in short supply in the streets we were exploring. On finding on stall we purchased some small tortillas and warm black beans, seeing not much else for vegetarians to consume. A potentially homeless man shoved himself next to us asking for money and a few tortillas, which spurred a fight between me and J over why I let said dude paw the food we had only just begun to eat. After a fight and a long session of lesbian-style processing we decided that despite the very cool tapestry we bought and getting a chance to see the interior of its Maya-Catholic church (reeking of copal incense) Chichi should have been a 3 hour trip, not one lasting the whole of a day.

5 Tips for Queer Boys

From Yossimar Reyes's Tumblr:

Mic-checking and the Occupy Movement

An clear summation of the principles behind the Occupy Movement, to my mind, from PJ Rey in Inside Higher Education:

"The current debate surrounding Occupy’s mic-check tactic is in desperate need of an updated notion of free speech that accounts not only for negative freedom (i.e., freedom from constraints) but also for positive freedom (i.e., freedom to be recognized) as well. That is to say, for the right to free (political) speech to have a practical significance, it must also imply a right of equal access to the public sphere. Of course, there are practical limits to equal access. Attention given to one individual or group usually comes at the expense of attention to others. But what the Occupy movement seems to be rejecting is the current (arguably anti-democratic) reality where distribution of access is left to be determined by market forces. Occupiers are struggling for the democratization of political speech. The primary purpose of Occupy’s use of the human microphone at public speaking events is not to disrupt, but to be heard. It is not an assault on free speech but a tactic for obtaining it.

The logic of this debate over access and control extends beyond issues of free speech and the human microphone. Political opponents have made similar criticisms of the Occupy movement's tactic of indefinite encampment on (often privately owned) public spaces. These detractors have argued that by camping in a public space, Occupiers are, simultaneously, denying others the freedom to use that space. Again, this concept of freedom is blind to power. Like speech, space is not evenly distributed. If the mic-check tactic aims at the democratization of speech, encampments aim at the democratization of space."

Not Allowed: Hats Festooned with Animal Ears, for Adults

I'll admit it, when it comes to the culture of punk (and its affiliates) I accept and embrace punk terminology that denotes youth exuberance and juvenility, particularly the use of terms like "kids" to refer to others in the scene. I recognize these efforts as attempts to distinguish the punk community as somehow outside the confines of those who are responsible to state and capitalist efforts, a rejection of the public demand that as adults we assume the role of citizen-consumer, etc. At the same time as a generation (punk or not) I think we are not doing ourselves any favors when we consciously wear things that infantilize us. 


There has been a rash of wearing winter hats, over the last few years, with all sorts of animal-like adornment, most popularly hats with some sort of mammalian-ears (cats, fox, etc) that seem to infantilize its wearers. This has been particularly noticeable at various Occupy movements throughout the country, which has struck me the wrong way. Not because I want to use a fashion accessory to critique the underlying seriousness of the protests. I'm not going to do that, because then I might sound like Roger Ebert's (glib) recent post on Occupy Wall Street that suggests his utter lack of understanding of the motivations of these protests, just how out-of-touch he is with the status working and poor America, and just another reason why we don't turn to mediocre film critics for appropriate political vectors (I might be stabbing myself in the back with this last statement). I am clearly someone who supports these movements and sees them as the far-left return to the focus of politics for which I have waited all of these years. Fuck arguments about how we look as indicative of the credibility of our politics. But...


Get it the fuck together youth of America! Being "cute" in the sense of being 4 years-old is not useful, but is embarrassing! YOU ARE NOT A CHARACTER OUT OF A JAPANESE ANIME CARTOON!

2nd Accident, Hateful Insurance Companies

After being hit by a car earlier this summer I was still resolved to commute around Pittsburgh once the fog of the concussion lifted and I had the opportunity to adjust and build up a spare bicycle I had purchased from a friend a year before. 


Needless to say the accident before made me much more careful of how I conduct myself on the road, the risks I'm willing to take, and the attention I pay to others on the road. 


On one such careful commutes to school from my home I was sitting at a red light in a very busy intersection (actually approximately 2 blocks from the previous accident) and preparing to cross. This red light is particular because it is on a very busy road that is also between two university campuses. In order to allow pedestrians the ability to cross said road without having the potential threat of being struck by a turning vehicle the pedestrian walk sign lights up 10 seconds before the green light for vehicles headed in the same direction. 


At one such moment, sitting at the red light, I looked at each light in turn making sure all reds were illuminated as with the pedestrian light. I saw no vehicles in the intersection. I started pedaling into the intersection. I hear the roar of acceleration coming from my left turning just in time to see a red Suburban slamming into me and the tanned, chubby, blonde-hair ringed face of the driver staring down at me as she attempted to brake. She failed to run me over, and I looked up at her weepy face and yelled, "not another time this fucking year!" I limped to the corner dragging my bent (steel frame bicycle) behind me.


The driver parked and ran up to me weeping and shrieking to see if I was ok. Other drivers and bicyclists stopped and circled around checking on me, calling the police, and helping get the driver's insurance information. The Pittsburgh police did their usual bang up job by insisting that they were not going to write a report, nor were they going to issue the driver a citation for running the red light and hitting me. They were instead much more interested on whether or not the driver who was helping me was properly respecting their authority. (This is no shock as the Pittsburgh police are known to have a hefty history of violating resident's constitutional rights) 


The driver continued to hyperventilate and since I didn't detect immediately any broken bones and any real emergency, I was surprisingly lucky, I limped to my office to call the driver's insurance company and start the claim process. During the call I notice my left ankle swelling more and more, turning blue. The student health center determined that I had no significant bone breaking, mostly soft tissue damage, and eventually an injured tendon. 


Although I know I probably could have sued this woman's insurance company I didn't really have the time and emotional energy to get into a legal battle. So I gave the insurance company my statement expecting at least some sort of minimal recompense besides the medical costs associated with the accident. That was a semi-delusional attitude, as I later learned, moreover, NEVER GIVE AN INSURANCE COMPANY A STATEMENT IF YOU EXPECT THEM TO GIVE YOU A DECENT RECOMPENSE FOR THE SHIT YOU GO THROUGH, OR DESTROYED PROPERTY. First, speak with a lawyer, that is if you are certain you are not at fault. 


The insurance company gave me the run around offering me at the end around $500 for future medical costs, and for my destroyed bike because the frame was older. Little did they know or care was that the frame was a very sturdy 30 year-old frame which I had augmented with newer parts. I had to argue with them and suggested a much higher amount of a few thousand dollars. After hearing my objections they tacked on another couple of hundred dollars which frustrated me, and I started to object to which the agent, replied by insulting me. She insisted, "I know you got in another accident earlier this year and this makes me wonder..." Because I didn't want to hear the bullshit insurance company logic that dictated this incredibly soft-voiced, soprano midwestern woman I suggested that I would seek legal action and then hung up. I was in a rage for hours following that interaction, the notion that I would just liberally ride my bicycle in the way of cars only to wheedle money out of insurance companies had to be the largest deposit of feces I had ever been asked to ingest. Why the fuck, I thought, as a PhD student just recovered from a concussion would I ever risk my brain like that again? For a few hundred bucks? That is insane.


In the end I gave in. I have a prospectus to write, mounds of grading, and at the time a controversial argument to write for a panic inducing bilingual conference. I took the money so that I could eventually get a new bicycle and get on with my life and not endure anymore of the insults leveled at me by this woman, who for a second, almost got me to question my recollection of the collision itself. Fuck insurance companies. 


(Part 2, coming shortly, discusses the uselessness of university administrators in cases like these).

Fuji - Connoisseur

I am seriously considering purchasing this bike. It's chromoly steel, which I value in the rough terrain of Pittsburgh's warped and battered roads. It also beats the Soma "Smoothie" I was thinking about getting in terms of price.

One thing is certain--waiting for the bus and sitting in traffic for an hour once a day is not a pastime I prefer and would be better spent at the pool or reading for my dissertation prospectus.

@ Nashbar, for half regular price.

A car collided with my bicycle and me

Everyone I know who commutes by bicycle long term has had some kind of accident. These accidents might be minor, as in breaking one's finger defending oneself against an opening car door, or, major, as in brain swelling resulting from a collision with a motorcycle. I myself avoided getting hit for my seven years until May 26th, hours before the birthday barbecue I had planned for myself.

I was pressured by my boss to attend a "grading-calibration" with other graduate instructors to discuss how best to mark papers and give appropriate feedback. After a pretty big fight with my boyfriend, I rode with an irritated and distracted mind. I flew down the hill toward the parking garage, entered the garage at an uphill angle, slowing me down significantly. I started making my way back to a point at which I would turn left and then head to my office. But my memory is blank but for the brief moment of the collision, where I see the driver's beige Mazda hit me from the side as I collide with the hood of the car, and then another blank space.

I came to sitting on the curb as a police officer attempted to gather information from me. The collision between my head the pavement had split my helmet, and the front fork of my bicycle was badly dented. I was walking and that was a good sign. Nonetheless an ambulance hustled me to the hospital; all the while making phone calls to see if previously-mentioned boyfriend could meet me at the hospital and alerting my boss that I wouldn't make it to the session. At that point I felt, not so much confused--I felt relatively lucid--but caught up in the ridiculousness of the scenario. I persisted in asking the doctors who stitched me up and the care-providers who cleaned off my wounds questions like, "Is it true that human mouths are ten times dirtier than dog mouths?" I think at that point the whole thing seemed so surreal for me.

After some tests and about twenty minutes of CAT scans it was confirmed that I had escaped with only three deep abrasions on my face and a minor concussion. The doctors decided that I should stay overnight so that they might monitor my concussion. Luckily, the trauma clinic room I inhabited for the night I shared with an older gentleman who had recently undergone surgery for his hernia. This man proceeded to spend all night watching Fox News loudly, tossing and turning in bed, complaining, and demanding room temperature ginger-ale for his ailing stomach. My boyfriend was terribly concerned and kept threatening to get the driver, a Chinese national, deported. But after washing off the blood and stank in my morning hospital shower I was free to go (incidentally, the hospital stay, x-rays, ambulance, etc. totally around $33,000 for those of you who want to argue that market mechanisms keep healthcare costs down).

Returning to find my bike I discovered the frame to be fucked (on consultation with a local shop) apparently it buckled from the collision. Because the frame is aluminum it is useless to repair as any hammering back into shape would produce a weaker frame. Moreover, the police report after much bureaucratic hassle indicates that there were no witnesses and the driver claiming he was driving 10 mph (downhill?!) and I on the other hand was going "quite fast." After discussing the matter with a lawyer he suggested that the case didn't look good precisely because it would be my speculations against the driver's word. This was rather disappointing to me precisely because I am now without my central means of transportation. Moreover, how could I have a concussion from colliding with someone driving 10 mphs? That has to be a lie!

More irritating, perhaps, is the fact that the concussion for about 2 weeks made it difficult to concentrate on anything for more than an hour seriously inhibiting my ability to work on my dissertation.

WEAR A DAMN HELMET! I don't give a fuck if it messes up your coiffure!

I gave up drinking for a 4th month stint once...

...just to prove to myself that I could do it. I have to say the experience was refreshing, and sobering in the best of ways. It helped me reconsider my priorities, and how those corrolated with my behavior. But I noticed a strange craving for ice-cream creeping up in me those 4 months that hasn't completely gone away. This video represents that new and disturbing craving:

Peru, Part 1: Aguantando Los Andes

I've been waiting to revisit my trip to Peru mostly because of pressure to get back into school work and to face the mountain of grading I had piling up on the days I spent not working, but I guess I have a moment tonight to spend some time deliberating on the things I've gleaned from Peru.

The more I look back on the trip the more it seems to culminate a lot of the ongoing processes of life for me in generative and positive ways.

I decided to educate myself more about Peru, it's history, and the struggles between left-guerillas in the countryside and an increasingly authoritarian state all verge on issues I want to explore for the dissertation, although mostly tangentially. Peru had a rather unique group emerge out of the late-70s/early-80s insurrectionary struggles going on throughout Latin America. They were dubbed Sendero Luminoso (The Shining Path), a break off group from other Maoist currents in Peru at the time. It's leader, a former political philosopher, Abimael Guzmán, insisted on the necessity of crossing "the river of blood" into a glorious post-capitalist world for which Peru was its threshold. This meant a strategy of attempting to choke the remnants of colonial social relations, capitalist exploitation, and neo-colonial arrangements from the society and the people through guerilla operations, reeducation, and terrorism. I don't know enough about them to say much beyond that their rhetoric seems born of a kind of mode of prophecy as much as politics, as killing in the name of the future seems to be highly valued for Sendero Luminoso (see Vice Magazine's article on contemporary musical dispatches from the group). Mario Vargas Llosa, the most recent winner of the Nobel Prize for literature, and perhaps one of the more right-wing members (he ran for president of Peru once on a neo-liberal platform, ugh!) of, what America's literary public likes to define as Latin America's New Narrative form, has written a novel on the issue called Lituma en Los Andes or Death in the Andes which I am still reading despite having visited Peru over a month ago. Llosa apparently once got into fisticuffs with Gabriel Garcia Marquez, perhaps over Marquez's wife (this part could be a rumor), in the Museo de Bellas Artes in downtown Mexico City.

The Inca too, offer a unique counterpoint to some of my thinking about the indigenous histories of Latin America (I have read mostly about Meso-American peoples and their traditions) insofar as the history of human sacrifice seems highly contested (between my tour guides of various destinations, but also a short piece I read from a feminist anthropologist). Apparently although their societies enforced strict gender segregation and roles, they tended to be roles with a great deal of gender parity, insofar as women served similar ritual roles as men with gender specific power and knowledge-sharing kinship structures. Women in these powerful roles were then targeted by the Spanish Inquisition post-conquest as witches.

However, despite the militaristic missionary work of much of the Spanish empire the emissaries from Spain encouraged and pursued aesthetic cultural syncretisms with Andean/Inca culture to facilitate conversion. I saw a great deal of this fascinating cultural blending in the facades of churches and cathedrals throughout the country (in one case I was informed that St. James, who was in some cases interpreted as the Moor killer, was repurposed as a ritual figure for the practice of Andean black magic).

The Spanish also had a difficult time destroying what were the foundations on Incan temples, buildings, and city walls so instead they often built on top of them. We saw a number of churches and walls in the Sacred Valley and in Cusco built on the former Incan foundations.

Cusco (or the "navel"), formerly a major city for the Inca, was our first significant stop of the trip before the hitting the Inca trail. It is a beautiful city involving a great deal of Spanish colonial architecture, lush plazas, and an altitude that might inspire illness (I had a headache for the duration of our stay). It is replete with tourists and those catering to tourism (too many pizza shops to count) which is after all one of Peru's largest industries. In addition to tourists and those in the tourism industry (including young women who would not stop offering massages) we encountered those who kept to some element on Andean native traditions: women with braids, wearing fedoras, and traditionally patterned sarapes in which they carried goods for sale or their children, kids carrying baby goats and lambs insisting that you hold them for a photo for a few soles (Peru's currency).

The soundtrack I would have stuck with was this volume of Peruvian cumbias (Afro-Latin rock) from the 1960s titled The Roots of Chicha, which I heard throughout the trip. My iPod broke on the plane ride, which was fine as I was on a hiatus from technology for the whole trip. This was one of the better decisions I made.

Regardless, I did prepare for the trip by imbibing this album in the weeks leading up to the trip. A decent track I would recommend from this album is as follows:



Another noteworthy and fascinating artist from Peru is Yma Sumac who had a five octave voice and I unfortunately discovered her only after the trip had ended. A few examples of her extraordinary and eerie talents below:

One of the drawbacks of the trip that was simultaneously a benefit for me was that we were traveling a group of people, the reason behind the trip affordability, few of which understood Spanish and even fewer who spoke any semblance of the language. Although the trip itinerary had been prepared ahead of time there are of course a numberless set of interactions one has to have in order to figure out where one is headed, confirmations, questions, and difficulties that arise as one travels. I was responsible for translating on almost all of these occasions. This pushed me to practice my Spanish a great deal. Although at times I resented it I think this experience made me feel like a more adequate traveller, someone who can handle and take care of themselves in Latin America with a little research and some occasionally tortured grammatical constructions. The only times I wanted to strangle the other travelers in my group was when they insisted I help them haggle for fractions of the dollar off of stupid shit they were buying, and forgetting that I wasn't being paid to help them in the first place, i.e. making stupid demands for my skills.

After a day in Cusco we awoke early to hit the trailhead of the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu. When we arrived after several stops and starts it was revealed that some of us had the wrong tickets for the type of traveller we were and thus 3 of us could not proceed onto the trail (for those of you thinking you are a graduate student and deserve to pay student prices for admission in Peru you should note that if you are 25 or older you are too old to be considered a student, unlike in the United States and Europe). This fact was devastating for the 3 left behind as the trip was centered around this element of Peru to begin with and for whatever opaquely bureaucratic reason they were not allowed to pay the remainder owed for a different ticket. Nor could they purchase tickets for any of the following days because the government limits the number of hikers on the trail, requiring that travelers prebook tickets.

Despite this setback I have to say the hike was challenging, beautiful, and fascinating. My boyfriend, his friend Becca, and I seemed to take to the altitude pretty well despite my constant headache and so we stayed ahead of the other hikers in our group most of the time, giving us space to talk as we liked and enjoy the sights together. It was the end of the rainy season so clouds were pouring over the mountains like rivers of the air making the hike between and around them all the more dramatic. The Inca believed (or so I was told) that the mountains were holy so the hike was more of a pilgrimage through the mountains and their passes, moving through multiple ecosystems and temperatures along the way on the way to Machu Picchu.

The second day was by far the most physically challenging. The altitude and steepness of the climb (which incidentally the trail is made out of uneven stone stairs carved by the Inca) made the highest points difficult to maintain a steady pace for very long. The lack of oxygen at times made my limbs feel as if they were heavier and more difficult to move. Towards the end of the highest pass we were stopping every 20 feet or so to catch our breaths, but with every break we felt completely rejuvenated and ready to tackle more. At the highest point that day the bf, Becca, and I looked at each other, bundled up against the cold and laughed at the joy of the accomplishment.

A note about the labor that made this trip possible: So even as we were looking at each other happy and satisfied by the hard work it took us and our backpacks up the hill, we had to notice the porters who were resting around us as well. The Peruvian government mandates that everyone who enters the Inca trail has to have a porter that goes along with them. I am not clear on the reasoning for this, perhaps, it just frees up a bunch of seasonally available jobs. If you are part of a tour group which most everyone was, they arranged this for you. The porters for our group carried food, cooking supplies, and tents which they set up before we arrived at the campsites. They usually kicked our asses on the trail, usually with nothing more than a sweater, shorts, and a pair of canvas golas scampering across slippery stairs. This reality made me relatively uncomfortable, several of us got together to put together some decent tips for the porters (because it turns out they don't make a great deal of money for 4 days of labor) and I was enjoined to make a speech to honor their labors (again as the only Spanish speaker) where I got to acknowledge this even as there seemed little I could do beyond this.

The rest of the hike which probably could have been consolidated into fewer days was peppered with smaller Incan ruins along the trail either food depots or guard towers (the tour guides seemed to be at odds about which at certain points), and amazing Incan mountainside terracing that we could see as the clouds slid across the faces of mountains and cliffs. The Inca also carved smooth rectangular tunnels into rock faces to ease the trail through which we easily passed, amidst rainforest limbs dripping with vegetation, moss, and moisture. On the last day we waited at the Sun Gate to see if the clouds would part so we could behold Machu Picchu from a good distance. Seeing the pockets of air open up the clouds and the former Incan city was really pretty amazing at the moment, mostly because we had been immersed in its environment for so long, and that we had worked to get there. I unconsciously approach tourism scenarios, I think most consumers of Western media do this, like I would instances in which I am a spectator--with a half-bored interest. Marching up the trail made seeing the city that much more spectacular.



One interesting element of the city is not only the resilience of it's foundations to the elements (it was discovered at the turn of the 19th-20th century), but also the ways in which debates about restoration seemed very much alive in the tour. Our guide was of the opinion that ruins should remain ruins, there is something unique in how ruins enable more open interpretations that restoration tends to foreclose upon, ignoring the history of the site since its abandonment.

We rounded off the trip with mineral baths in the public hotspring pools in Aguas Calientes (a nearby town) and a really expensive burrito I bought (burritos are not Peruvian food, but I was feeling rushed to catch a train) made out of a crepe and lima beans.

Rubber Stamps I Wish I Had When Grading Student Papers

I'm not in love with McSwenney's the way most people seem to be these days, but this entry is consonant with a lot of the feelings I have about marking papers in general.

Rubber Stamps
I Wish I Had
for Grading
Freshman
Composition
Papers.

BY KATHERINE PERRY

- - - -

1. RUN-ON

2. DANGLING MODIFIER

3. WTF?

4. TRANSITION?

5. I CAN'T TELL IF YOU'RE REALLY BAD AT THIS OR JUST NOT TRYING AND AM THEREFORE UNABLE TO MAKE CONCRETE STATEMENTS ABOUT YOUR ESSAY AT THIS TIME.

6. "ESCALADE" IS A KIND OF VEHICLE; DO YOU MEAN "ESCALATE"?

7. THIS IS AN INTERESTING OVERVIEW OF YOUR TAKE ON ZOMBIES/VAMPIRES/LEGALIZATION OF MARIJUANA, BUT IT HAS LITTLE TO DO WITH THE ASSIGNMENT. PLEASE GO OVER THE HANDOUT AND LET ME KNOW IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS. I WOULD ALSO LIKE TO POINT OUT THAT DESPITE THE FACT YOU WERE TEXTING FRANTICALLY UNDER THE TABLE AND MAKING LEWD GESTURES WHEN I EXPLAINED SAID HANDOUT IN CLASS TELLS ME IT'S A WASTE OF MY TIME TO READ OR THINK ABOUT YOUR ESSAY AT ALL (LET ALONE FOR HALF AN HOUR ON A SATURDAY NIGHT ON WHICH YOU ARE CERTAINLY HAVING MORE FUN THAN I AM), I HAVE GONE AHEAD AND MADE CAREFUL COMMENTS ANYWAY, WHICH MAKES ME HATE MYSELF A LITTLE, WHICH YOU WILL SEE REFLECTED IN YOUR PARTICIPATION GRADE AT THE END OF THE TERM.

8. THAT'S WHAT SHE SAID.

I'm going to Peru, to climb Machu Pichu in a month!

(actually this video has nothing to do with Peru besides being in Spanish and evoking a tropical climate, but you get the idea).

2010 Review Part 2

Promising elements of 2010:

1) After a discussion with Robert Perkinson, author of Texas Tough: The Rise of American's Prison Empire and associate professor at University of Hawaii, I had all but given up on the possibility of the emergence of prisoner led movements at all given 2 facts he shared: 1) the capacity of prisons to warehouse people and also use solitary confinement as a means of quelling prisoner dissent, was highly effective, and; 2) and Bill Clinton's reduction of requisite journalist/scholarly monitoring of prisoner conditions (as well as suspending all prisoner led reform cases) make the system almost opaque to reform-minded folk and the general public. Even as tougher laws continue to dispossess prisoners of basic citizenship rights and more and more adult American's (over 10%) are currently serving time, it would seem that even momentary fulminations of resistance should arise somewhere.

A recent prisoner strike in Georgia suggests a different picture that was both organized and peaceful. From Final Call:

Fed up with bad food, unjust treatment, poor education and inadequate health care, thousands of inmates in Georgia's prison system staged “Lockdown for Liberty,” a peaceful protest on Dec. 9, according to activists.

The Black, White, and Latino inmates from Augusta, Baldwin, Hancock, Hays, Macon, Smith, and Telfair State Prisons refused to leave their cells for work and other activities, partly because they feel the Georgia Department of Corrections treats them like slaves, according to supporters who are not jailed.

“I'm talking to these brothers every day, every other minute really, and particularly in Macon, Telfair, Hays and Smith, their decision is they're not going to stop this strike now. One brother told me, ‘We will ride until the wheels fall off,' and that's been the sentiment amongst the men when they started this,” said Elaine Brown, a spokesperson for the strike.

More specifically, the inmates are demanding: a living wage for work, opportunities for higher education, better health care without excessive fees, and an end to cruel and unusual punishment for minor infractions.

They also want more fruits and vegetables, more vocational training, an end to some restrictions on family access, and an end to excessive telephone charges and just parole decisions.

“Part of our purpose for doing this is that Georgia is the only state that does not pay it's inmates at all. Some guys in here work seven days a week and they don't get a dime,” said Dondito, one of the strikers, who requested anonymity.

He said despite reports by the Department of Corrections that no inmates have been hurt, several in Augusta have been beaten up to unrecognizable points, according to their families.

[...]

Ms. Brown, former chairman of the Black Panther Party, said she doesn't know how long the men are going to strike but doesn't believe they are prepared to give up after just after one or two days, despite the beatings in Augusta.

“The tactical squad went in to trash their property and give them a shake down to try and break their spirits and force them into some violent confrontation. They cut off visitation for everyone, and are really reacting very violently to what is a non-violent protest,” Ms. Brown told The Final Call.

Dondito said the prisons are doing all they can to break their spirits and the strike, like cutting off the heat and hot water, taking away recreation, feeding them cold sandwiches, and refusing to wash their clothes.

He said strikers intend to stand for as long as it takes to force a change in horrible living conditions, which include being beaten when taken to or in solitary confinement and receiving bad food.

2) Wikileaks continues to churn out important diplomatic leaks, as well as business/banking leaks, despite Amazon and Paypal's decisions to bump the site from their server and from accepting funds in the name of the organization.

Some Worsts:

1) The failure of the DREAM Act. Let's be clear U.S. policy toward Latino, particularly Mexican, illegal immigrants has been an exchange of the promise of citizenship for status as cannon-fodder for various U.S. wars. This lead to some positive outcomes after WWII for example where veterans of the Mexican-American and Puerto Rican persuasion becamed disillusioned about their chances in already racially/ethnically stratified societies and in many cases this produced some radicalization, beyond assimilation. The Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act, offered a disenfranchised, subordinate, and racialized underclass the same opportunity, with the added possibility of citizenship through college graduation. On the one hand the cannon-fodder element consistently suggests the value for racialized and immigrant lives and its consistent application suggests a continued devaluation of non-white, non-"native" citizenry. That said, the act's failure by five votes also leaves many who immigrated the United States as children without a path to citizenship and enfranchisment; producing an underclass much like the "sans-papiers" of France who remain unintegrated into the nation for generations.

2) Break-ups from long-term relationships can thrust your life into a series of deeply self-engrossed bouts of confusion and self-loathing. Avoid them (or prolonging them), when possible.

3) Haiti, 1 year later, according to community activist Jordan Flaherty:

One year after an earthquake devastated Haiti, much of the promised relief and reconstruction aid has not reached those most in need. In fact, the nation's tragedy has served as an opportunity to further enrich corporate interests.

The details of a recent lawsuit, as reported by Business Week, highlights the ways in which contractors – including some of the same players who profited from Hurricane Katrina-related reconstruction – have continued to use their political connections to gain profits from others' suffering, receiving contacts worth tens of millions of dollars while the Haitian people receive pennies at best. It also demonstrates ways in which charity and development efforts have mirrored and contributed to corporate abuses. 

[...]

The disaster profiteering exemplified by Ashbritt is not just the result of quick decision-making in the midst of a crisis. These contracts are awarded as part of a corporate agenda that sees disaster as an opportunity, and as a tool for furthering policies that would not be possible in other times. Naomi Klein exposed evidence that within 24 hours of the earthquake, the influential right-wing think tank the Heritage Foundation was already laying plans to use the disaster as an attempt at further privatization of the country's economy.

Relief and recovery efforts, led by the US military, have also brought a further militarization of relief and criminalization of survivors. Haiti and Katrina also served as staging grounds for increased involvement of mercenaries in reconstruction efforts. As one Blackwater mercenary told Scahill when he visited New Orleans in the days after Katrina, "This is a trend. You're going to see a lot more guys like us in these situations."

[...]

Haitian poet and human rights lawyer Ezili Dantò has written, "Haiti's poverty began with a US/Euro trade embargo after its independence, continued with the Independence Debt to France and ecclesiastical and financial colonialism. Moreover, in more recent times, the uses of US foreign aid, as administered through USAID in Haiti, basically serves to fuel conflicts and covertly promote US corporate interests to the detriment of democracy and Haitian health, liberty, sovereignty, social justice and political freedoms. USAID projects have been at the frontlines of orchestrating undemocratic behavior, bringing underdevelopment, coup d'etat, impunity of the Haitian Oligarchy, indefinite incarceration of dissenters, and destroying Haiti's food sovereignty essentially promoting famine."

4) Arizona's racist new laws were co-written by the prison industry.

Favorite new vegetarian and vegan recipe:

Chickpea/Seitan Cutlets, at PostPunk Kitchen. For those of you who are like me, and have been vegetarians for most of your lives the possibility of new alternatives to meat, are always welcome. This particular recipe combines ground chickpeas, various spices,, bread crumbs, with vital wheat gluten to produce some tasty fried alternatives to steaks.

Favorite new find, that is already not that new in really any sense:

Pissed Jeans, combining hardcore with noise rock in the vein of Jesus Lizard:



Favorite new accessory, that redudantly fills a need (although it's smaller):

The Scout Pack, by Duluth.

Favorite viral video of 2010:



Favorite DIY Porn Auteur:

Despite my general distaste for the world of twink, The Black Spark represents rather well shot and interesting, but also incredibly hot short films for x-tube, including actual filtering in lenses, play with color, and skilled use of handheld cameras.

2010 Review Part 1

One of my graduate school friends labelled the 2009-2010 complex as "one of the worst years of our lives." So, because I haven't posted in sometime, and want to find some positives from this year, I will do my best to keep some positives in mind as I proceed, to compile some bests.

Best Tracks of 2010, for me:

Kanye has always been an interesting producer, but here he's becoming a much better songwriter. Also Nicki Minaj's portion of the track makes it to my mind. The psychotic killer vs. the profit motivated gangster cold blooded killer I think is an interesting variation for pop-hip hop



Justin Pearson's musical career shaped my personal aesthetic and sensibility probably more than it should have in the last few years of the 20th and the first few years of the 21st centuries. That said, this turn toward the more danceable and slightly more gay in these two tracks is just what the doctor order (although the quasi-hawk not so much):





I already posted this, but I love British lesbian art music.



Not really one for the ages, but a motivator for right at the end of the semester:



A like songs that occasionally make you feel like your life will or should be over in whatever way. Here is one the years most important with a stunning queer video (sometimes verges on a parody of itself I'll admit. As in, why are those women playing tennis with a liver?):



Kylesa, I will always love Male/female dueling vocals. Spiral Shadow is a fantastic new album:



The lyrics are trite and the video is a little overblown, but I really love this track, and Kelis' lesbic style here:




Best Continuing/ Resurgent Musical Trend:

Homocore!!

Brontez Purnell of, being a black gay man of note in the San Francisco punk scene has his own band:



Homo Black Flag cover band with appropriate American Modeling Guild Video:



Last.fm recommended this to me and they were absolutely correct:

First Book Review Published

My first publication is here, at Reviews in Cultural Theory, a new online journal.

Edu-Factory

Check out Jeff Williams' review of education based left movement Edu-Factory:

Edu-factory is a new group trying to revolutionize higher education. It is a relatively small, web-based collective (around 500 on its list) but casts an international net. It began as a listserv of those doing radical criticism of higher education and has since published a book (Toward a Global Autonomous University), developed a journal (see Edu-factory.org), and sponsored occasional “days of action,” calling for strikes among students and faculty in universities. Its organizers are largely European-based, intellectually coming out of the Italian autonomist movement and historically spurred by something called the Bologna Process.

The Bologna Process sounds as if it might be a political thriller at your local theater, but it’s an agreement of forty-six European countries oriented toward standardizing college degrees. It’s not an act of the EU, but it arises from work issues in the EU. In many ways, its goal sounds reasonable—European universities have a cacophony of regulations and degree requirements, in contrast to the U.S. system, which is more uniform and translatable, particularly after the credit hour was formalized in the early twentieth century. But Edu-factory sees the Bologna Process as instrumentalizing higher education, operating in the interests of capitalism rather than learning, particularly in its focus on assessment and “outcomes” and its orientation toward the vocational use of a degree.

It Does Get Worse

A Season in Hell

In a recent visit to Chi-town I made a stop at Quimby's my source for underground smut, etc. While I was there I noticed a new translation of Arthur Rimbaud's A Season in Hell by Nick Sarno, someone who claims little expertise in French but promised a dying friend he would read the book, and completed a translation in homage to his friend.

Despite my now much more centered research foci I have always had an intense interest in French Modernist writing, particularly the work of homos like Jean Genet and Cocteau, etc. Although I find myself having very little to say that might be new with regard to these interests which is why they remain largely diletantish diversions than anything of the strong academic interest. Thus, Sarno's cottage industry publication appealed to this amateurish and personal fascination with this era. Passages like:

     Beneath the leaves the wolf howls,
     Bright feathers bursting from his mouth.
     The remains of a freshly-eaten fowl:
     Like him I consume myself (80).

get me going with narcissistic reverie. Alack.

Anyway, back to immigrant literature.

Beyond Gay Placation. Toward Queer Liberation

Reteaching Gender and Sexuality from Sid Jordan on Vimeo.

Costumes, Halloween and Otherwise

In order to engage in Halloween in a genuine way I have to come up with a costume idea that really engages me in some kind of persona that I either inhabit for the night, or at least some sort of mythology that makes the repeated narration of just who I am "supposed to be" throughout the night remains worth the effort. Last year I didn't do much an essentially recycled a footballer outfit I found in a dumpster, along with a football jersey I found at the thriftstore with the words "Far East" emblazoned on the front (yeah, Edward Said, I'm looking at you), and some smudges of gold to add a little homosexual pizzaz.

This year I selected "El Barbie," or Edgar Valdez Villareal, to be my assumed persona for Halloween.





El Barbie, was so nicknamed for his blonde hair and green eyes, an anomaly amongst the Mexican-American community from which he originated. After some success in high school football he went on to sell drugs and crossed the border, quickly climbing the ladder of the Beltran Leyva drug cartel in Mexico. Eventually he became the kingpin of said cartel and he was known for the torture and decapitation of his victims in the cartel wars with the Zeta cartel.

Personally I'm a little fascinated by the informal market interchanges of the drug cartels in Latin America and how often they are tied directly by a customer base to the United States, or by the internecine combat perpetuated by the proxy wars and Cold War policies of the United State, as in Colombia's FARC. His national origin makes him more interesting still, much like other Latino notables, e.g. the president of the Dominican Republic grew up mostly in the Bronx.

Anyway, I based my costume off of the outfit from his capture video, which isn't that remarkable admittedly. I added a great deal of dried blood and gore bits (achieved by gluing fake-blood soaked cotton balls with rubber-cement) to my arms and fists as if I had been beating and decapitating all day, as well as a few tactically placed blood smears as if I had made casual attempts to wipe my hands clean. The key with this was to make it not look like I was to be some attempted suicide, I achieved this by outlining my knuckles with much blood and gore and making my right arm appear to be more caked with blood and gore.

Unfortunately my attempt to spray my hair blonde with the cheap costume paint yellow made my hair much greener than blonde, a disappointment, but given how good my arms looked, I didn't mind.

I attended a graduate student party for my department that evening and was received with not much fanfare, and the rather irritating effect of having one of my friends follow me around and introduce me to others as an abortion doctor, alack!

Anyway, next Halloween I plan on being much more proactive. After a discussion with my roommate who wanted to play of the sorority girl tendency to make all Halloween costumes sexy + ________ (as in "sexy zombie," "sexy lady-bug," "sexy crack whore"), we decided to do similar but more hilarious versions of the theme such ideas like sexy raincloud, sexy roadkill, sexy orange traffic cone.

Still I kind of want something a little more dramatic + the element of sexy, so I've been considering being a Minotaur inspired by Picasso's own:

2 of the better acts from VIA electronic music festival

Expensive Shit (featuring a former member of Modey Lemon, current member of !!!)



Dominique Young Unique (a grouping only possible in Florida)



(VIA)