While making a film about the incursion of Christopher Columbus in the Caribbean, a Mexican director, and a Spanish producer find the Bolivian indigenous people protesting contemporary exploitation and claiming the rights to water and ultimately dignity and survival.
Instructions:
Watch Even the Rain (Icíar Bollaín, 2011) and choose ONE prompt. Post your answer in the comment section down below. 200-word minimum. The deadline is 4/6 before the class.
If you do not have access to Netflix you can rent it on iTunes.
OPTION ONE
The Cochabamba natives understand that water is sacred and a human right. How does the film Even the Rain showcase these notions?
OPTION TWO
Discussing at least two scenes, answer this question:
.How does the film crew WITHIN the film reproduces the same colonial mentalities and practices they are representing in their Christopher Columbus movie?
OPTION THREE
Discussing at least two scenes, answer this question:
.How does the contemporary issue of access to water connects to the Taino people’s resistance in the Caribbean?
OPTION FOUR
Respectfully interactwith ONE of your classmates’ responses. Do you agree with their arguments and interpretations? Do you disagree? What other observations about Even the Rain do you want to bring into the discussion?
Everywhere there are more compañeros and compañeras who are learning to relate to persons from other parts of Mexico and of the world. They are learning to respect and to demand respect. They are learning that there are many worlds and that everyone has their place, their time, and their way, and therefore there must be mutual respect between everyone.
We are also going to go about raising a struggle in order to demand that we make a new Constitution, new laws that take into account the demands of the Mexican people.
4:25-7:00
.Mal gobierno (bad government)
We saw quite clearly that there was no point in dialogue and negotiation with the bad governments of Mexico. That it was a waste of time for us to be talking with the politicians because neither their hearts nor their words were honest. They were crooked, and they told lies that they would keep their word, but they did not. The politicians from the PRI, the PAN, and the PRD reached an agreement among themselves, and they simply did not recognize indigenous rights and culture. We saw that blood did not matter to them, nor did death, suffering, mobilizations, consultas, efforts, national and international statements, encuentros, accords, signatures, commitments. And so the political class not only closed, one more time, the door to the Indian peoples, they also delivered a mortal blow to the peaceful resolution – through dialogue and negotiation – of the war.
.Neoliberal globalization
Neoliberal globalization wants to destroy the nations of the world so that only one Nation or country remains, the country of money, of capital. And capitalism wants everything to be as it wants, in its own way, and it doesn’t like what is different, and it persecutes it and attacks it, or puts it off in a corner and acts as if it doesn’t exist.
Then, in short, the capitalism of global neoliberalism is based on exploitation, plunder, contempt, and repression of those who refuse. The same as before, but now globalized, worldwide.
*See interview with Subcomandante Marcos 7:00-8:15
.Juntas del buen gobierno (autonomous municipal governments)
This method of autonomous government was not simply invented by the EZLN, but rather it comes from several centuries of indigenous resistance and from the zapatistas’ own experience. It is the self-governance of the communities. In other words, no one from outside comes to govern, but the peoples themselves decide, among themselves, who governs and how, and, if they do not obey, they are removed. If the one who governs does not obey the people, they pursue them, they are removed from authority, and another comes in.
All the juntas work toward equitable housing, land, work, food, health, education, information, culture, independence, democracy, justice, liberty, and peace.
Zapatistas call their educational practice “otra educación,” another education, based on the video, why do you think they call it that way? How their approaches to pedagogy are different from mainstream educational methods?
Women’s Rights and Leadership
Complete ONE of these sentences.
Zapatista women took conscience of_______.
Zapatista women are organizing for ________.
In conclusion
Ongoing Zapatista Principles
1 – We are going to continue fighting for the Indian peoples of Mexico, but now not just for them and not with only them, but for all the exploited and dispossessed of Mexico, with all of them and all over the country. And when we say all the exploited of Mexico, we are also talking about the brothers and sisters who have had to go to the United States in search of work in order to survive.
2 – We are going to go to listen to, and talk directly with, without intermediaries or mediation, the simple and humble of the Mexican people, and, according to what we hear and learn, we are going to go about building, along with those people who, like us, are humble and simple, a national program of struggle for justice, democracy, and liberty for the Mexican people.
3 – We are going to try to build, or rebuild, another way of doing politics, one which once again has the spirit of serving others, without material interests, with sacrifice, with dedication, with honesty, which keeps its word, whose only payment is the satisfaction of duty performed.
2. Pick ONE of the following options and respond in the comment section down below. The deadline is 3/30 before the class. (200-word minimum)
OPTION ONE
Pick ONE of the topics down below and discuss:
How do the Zapatistas create alternative practices to improve the living conditions and sovereignty of the indigenous people in Chiapas? Which of the approaches and ideas interested you the most and why? Do you think these ideas and models could help marginalized communities in the U.S.?
Topics:
.respect for the land and ecological consciousness
.community self-rule structure
.healthcare
.education
.agriculture
.collective work
.women’s rights
.global solidarity network
OPTION TWO
Respectfully interactwith ONE of your classmates’ responses. Do you agree with their arguments and interpretations? Do you disagree? What other observations about The Uprising of Dignity do you want to bring into the discussion?
Propose a question on “Maroon Logics” for Pedro Lebrón Ortiz. (Re: Presentation: “An Indestructible Life: Reflections on Marronage”)
I. Review
In five groups, discuss the following key points from our sources and class discussions.
Euro Modernity: Enter the West
.Conquest (war against the natives) and Imperialism (turning lands into territories) (Lenape/ Zavala Guillén)
.Indigenous genocide and displacement (Lenape)
.Cultural erasure
.Ecological catastrophe
.How to return/regenerate cohabitate in ancestral lands? How to recuperate and center on ancestral knowledge and ways of being in the present? (Lenape/Gumbs)
The Slave Trade
.Labor shortage (mining and agriculture) due to indigenous genocide and displacement.
. European powers decide to capture Africans to supply a forced workforce in the Americas. Race as a modern phenomenon/construct emerges (Mbembe)
.Indigenous and African people become the other to whiteness (Mbembe/ Girmay)
.Slavery changes from an institution based mainly on the subjugation of prisoners to the subjugation of racialized people. (Mbembe)
The Subject of Race
.The noun Black is conceived of through two distinct perspectives/discourses:
(1) less than human (those who are not us [European men]); objects; brute workforce; those without culture, language, civilization, beauty; those we don’t need to document in the official archive. (Mbembe/ Zavala Guillén/ Lebrón Ortiz)
(2)Africans and Afro-descendants in cultural and socio-political solidarity. How to return/regenerate ancestral cultures/languages/ecosystems? How to recuperate and center on ancestral knowledge and ways of being in the present? (Mbembe/ Lebrón Ortiz/ Diegues and Gil/ Girmay/ Brown)
Black Resistance and Rebellion
.Marronage: self-emancipation; fleeing from the plantation; waging war on colonial authorities or creating remote settlements without confrontation (Zavala Guillén/ Lebrón Ortiz/ Diegues and Gil/ Brown/ Girmay)
.Analectical marronage: It is an affirmation of the humanity, knowledge, and value of African people. Made manifest in the exteriority of Euromodernity. (Lebrón Ortiz/ Diegues and Gil/ Girmay)
.Communities of in-betweenness: hybrid cultural spaces (Black, indigenous, marginalized/radical criollos); negotiations with colonial authorities (freedom and political power at the price of being co-opted) (Zavala Guillén/ Diegues and Gil)
The Past is the Present is the Future
Anti-blackness and nationhood: the possibilities of national belonging are fractured because of racism (micro and macro aggressions), state-sanctioned violence, and socio-cultural erasure (Girmay/ Brown)
*the issue is NOT the color of anybody’s skin but race as a structure of power (Mbembe/Girmay)
Learning from Maroon Communities: survival skills, creativity, resourcefulness, drive towards freedom and worlds otherwise, cut the dependency on the state and coloniality at large (Lebrón Ortiz/ Girmay/ Brown)
Maroon communities and ecological thought/practices: relating not just between humans but between all living organisms. Recognizing the duty to take care of life, the whole of life on the planet. (Lebrón Ortiz/ Girmay)
III. Midterm Workshop: In Pairs
Instructions:
1. Think about these questions:
What project are you inclined to do?
What question are you planning to choose?
Where are you at in the process? What steps do you need to take to complete the project?
What topics from the sources we have discussed during the first half of the semester would you like to see included in the midterm? Propose a preliminary question
Maroon Logics as Ecological Thought- Pedro Lebrón Ortiz
[Maroon communities] break down notions of individualism, the foundational fallacy of Euromodernity, in the sense that maroon logics are guided by the primacy of the community for the sake of survival. (11)
The revelation of community is not limited to the human-human relationship. The concept of proximity should be understood as relating not just to the face-to-face experience between human subjects but between all living subjects. A person, being born from another person, is born in a particular geographic location, in a particular ecosystem in which each plant, each animal plays a role in maintaining its balance. The community that is revealed when faced with annihilation is a community that involves every organism. It is the understanding that human subjects, as self-conscious and reflexive subjects, have the duty to take care of life, the whole of life on the planet. (15)
How does Aracelis Girmay integrate these ecological ideas in her essay?
Poet Aracelis Girmay is of Eritrean, African American, and Puerto Rican heritage. Her poems trace the connections of transformation and loss across cities and bodies. Her poetry collections include Teeth (2007), Kingdom Animalia (2011), and The Black Maria (2016).
In the essay “From Woe to Wonder,” Girmay reflects on how to equip her Black children to fight for racial justice and “dreaming in the long, constant work of our trying to get free.” She equates the work of poets with that of maroons. In these ancestors who flew the euromodern institution of slavery (Lebrón Ortiz), she finds inspiration. She wants her and other Black children to learn that “there were people who, even while under the most unimaginable duress, had the mind to find and keep refuge.”
Girmay is also interested in educating her children on the “subjects of race” (Mbembe) so that when they are told a Black man was killed because of his skin color. He is able to say something like, “Well, actually, there is an idea called Whiteness. Some people think that they are better and deserve more of everything because they are White and their ancestors are from Europe. Their ancestors hurt people and hurt the land to get the power that they gave to their children and that their children keep keeping, and keep using to hurt, even today.” Just like we have seen so far, Girmay understands race not as biology but as a societal construction that allows hierarchies of power and privileges.
In groups or individually pick ONE of the following quotes and “translate” it into your own words. Trace a connection with one of the previous readings.
1. When a White person with a White child points to my child, even lovingly, as an example of a Black life who matters, I would also like that person to teach their White child about White life and history, and about how they are going to have to work really hard to make sure that they are not taking up more air, more space, more sidewalk because they have been taught wrongly that the world is more theirs.
2. This year we go to the marsh. It is cold and so windy that almost no one else is out there, so we take off our masks and turn our backs to the wind. What was here before us? Who was here? What is here still though we maybe cannot see it? We are teaching the children to ask. This is Lenni Lenape land. There was a wilderness once. When the Dutch arrived in the seventeenth century, they began their colonial project by waging war with the land and its people. The tide is high, and we do not see the crabs or clams or snails, but we know that they are there.
3. Whenever it is that my partner and I begin to teach our children about the brutality, by design, of this moment and this country, the continuum of catastrophe we are alive and loving and breathing in, I know now that a vital part of what we teach them must have to do with the beauty and power of the imaginative strategies of Black people everywhere. Maroons planting cassava and sweet potato, easily hidden, growing secret in the ground…The mind that attempts, and attempts again, to find a way out of no way.
1. Read the essay “From Woe to Wonder” by Aracelis Girmay. Pay special attention to the second half of the text.
2. Pick ONE of the following prompts and respond in the comment section down below. The deadline is 3/9 before the class. 200-word minimum.
OPTION ONE
Reflecting and responding to racially motivated crimes in the US, Girmay suggests learning about “an idea called whiteness.” What is Girmay’s logic?
OPTION TWO
As part of an education that emphasizes social and racial justice, Girmay wants her children to learn about the invisibilized indigenous world in NYC and its ecosystems. Explain.
OPTION THREE
Girmay says that she considers that “a vital part of what we teach [children] must have to do with the beauty and power of the imaginative strategies of Black people everywhere.” How she incorporates maroons into this idea.
OPTION FOUR
Respectfully interactwith ONE of your classmates’ responses. Do you agree with their arguments and interpretations? Do you disagree? What other observations about “From Woe to Wonder” do you want to bring into the discussion?
What connections do you notice with previous sources?
Keywords
Euromodernity- the multiples structures (political; social; racial; legal; religious; economical; philosophical; educational; discursive, etc.) established in Europe, especially after 1492, and brought to the Americas via conquest (war) and colonialism.
Marronage-consists in flight from the plantation, in many cases, without any confrontation, and the establishment of a new society that was a product of the fugitives’ syncretic social and political imaginary. But it also refers to flight from oppressive institutions through permanent institutional reconfiguration (revolutions) as well as to an existential state of Being outside of colonial estrauctures (coloniality.) (2)
Sociogenic Marronage-It operates within Euromodernity, seeking to excise remnants of coloniality through permanent institutional change. It refers to permanent institutional change. It seeks a material restructuring through a reconfiguration of the foundations of the Euromodern world (for example the Haitian Revolution). (2,3,8)
Analectical Marronage- denotes resistance to the coloniality of being. The coloniality of being refers to the degradation of the racialized/colonized Other to the realm of the sub-human. It is an affirmation of the humanity, knowledge, and value of African people. Made manifest in the exteriority of Euromodernity. (2-3)
Group Question
Marronage as practiced by those residing in Palmares, for example, can be characterized as analectical marronage inasmuch as it was flight from the Euromodern world to affirm another world, in addition to flight as self-preservation from premature death in bondage. It is an effort to resist being reduced to the realm of the sub-ontological by means of flight from a colonizing/racializing world. (9-10)
Using examples from the film Quilombo discuss how the maroons created a world outside of the Portuguese colonial world. Think of political, cultural, ecological, gender, and social practices portrayed in the film.
How does the maroon society differ from the colonial society?
They break down notions of individualism, the foundational fallacy of Euromodernity, in the sense that maroon logics are guided by the primacy of the community for the sake of survival. (11)
The revelation of community is not limited to the human-human relationship. The concept of proximity should be understood as relating not just to the face-to-face experience between human subjects but between all living subjects. A person, being born from another person, is born in a particular geographic location, in a particular ecosystem in which each plant, each animal plays a role in maintaining its balance. The community that is revealed when faced with annihilation is a community that involves every organism. It is the understanding that human subjects, as self-conscious and reflexive subjects, have the duty to take care of life, the whole of life on the planet. (15)
How does the film demonstrate maroon logics as an ecological practice?
