Category Archives: Essays

The Liberation Day Tapes – Jihad Seeds

The Liberation Day Tapes – Jihad Seeds by vagabond ©

In this final episode of The Liberation Day Tapes we take on Jihad Seeds, the second song on RICANSTRUCTION‘s album Liberation Day. Although Liberation Day was a concept album centered on the Puerto Rican liberation struggle, Jihad Seeds didn’t directly or overtly relate to the Puerto Rican liberation struggle. A few of the songs on the album didn’t directly associate to the struggle for Puerto Rican liberation (both on the island and in the diaspora) but they all held a kind of indirect association to that struggle. Jihad Seeds was no different.

The word Jihad in Arabic or Muslim circles is a much more complex and nuanced word than it’s narrow western definition of simply meaning “Holy War”. The word Jihad in Arabic and among Muslim’s means “to struggle” or “to strive” or “to exert” or “to fight”. In the Holy Quran the Prophet Mohammad describes the military struggle to defend Islam as “jihad” but he goes on to explain that this physical struggle, this “holy war” is “the little jihad”. The Prophet Mohammed in the Quran also makes the distinction that the internal spiritual struggle with oneself to remain righteous was the greater struggle – “the great jihad”.

i think that RICANSTRUCTION’s Jihad Seeds is using both “the little jihad” of the “holy war” and “the great jihad” of the spiritual struggle and exploring how the two can be interrelated. The nature of that interrelation between ”the little jihad” of fighting for the independence of Puerto Rico juxtaposed against “the great jihad” of the internal struggle to decolonize ones mind, body and spirit was something that fit perfectly into the themes i was struggling to express in MACHETERO.

Liberation Day by RICANSTRUCTION

To check out the other episodes in the web series check out THE LIBERATION DAY TAPES

MACHETERO Poster by vagabond ©

MACHETERO opens in New York City for a one week limited theatrical run.

WED. JUNE 12TH – TUES JUNE 19TH
CLEMENTE SOTO VELEZ
KABAYITO’S THEATER (2ND FLOOR)
107 SUFFOLK STREET
NY NY 10002
(BTWN RIVINGTON & DELANCEY)

TICKETS $10 http://machetero.bpt.me
SCREENING TIMES • 1PM • 3PM • 5PM • 7PM • 9PM
F Train to Delancey Street or J , M , or Z Trains to Essex Street.
Walk to Suffolk Street, make a left.

Shortlink: http://wp.me/p1eniL-14M

Imperfect Cinema & MACHETERO

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For An Imperfect Cinema – Julio Espinosa & MACHETERO

“Art will not disappear into nothingness; it will disappear into everything.“
- Cuban Filmmaker Julio Garcia Espinosa

When i was nearing the end of production and beginning the edit on MACHETERO i came across this essay/declaration… For An Imperfect Cinema by Cuban filmmaker Julio Garcia Espinosa written in 1969. The essay/declaration calls for a new way of working with cinema. It calls for a paradigm shift in the production of filmmaking and calls on filmmakers to prioritize their ideas over their technical expertise. It also calls into question the reasons for making a film and the inherent conflict that arises with having the critic be a mediary to the audience. The essay had a huge impact on me in the post production phase of MACHETERO. Rather than trying to explain it, i reprinted the essay/declaration below… A warning to those looking for a quick read… Look elsewhere… If you take the time to read this you’ll get something invaluable out of it as i did and as reflected in my film MACHETERO…

MACHETERO opens in New York City for a limited one week theatrical run.

WED. JUNE 12TH – WED. JUNE 19TH
CLEMENTE SOTO VELEZ
KABAYITO’S THEATER (2ND FLOOR)
107 SUFFOLK STREET
NY NY 10002
(BTWN RIVINGTON & DELANCEY)

TICKETS $10
SCREENING TIMES • 1PM • 3PM • 5PM • 7PM • 9PM
F Train to Delancey Street or J , M , or Z Trains to Essex Street.
Walk to Suffolk Street, make a left.
Get Tickets Here http://machetero.bpt.me

FOR AN IMPERFECT CINEMA
by Julio Garcia Espinosa
Havana, Cuba - December 7th, 1969

Nowadays, perfect cinema — technically and artistically masterful — is almost always reactionary cinema. The major temptation facing Cuban cinema at this time — when it is achieving its objective of becoming a cinema of quality, one which is culturally meaningful within the revolutionary process — is precisely that of transforming itself into a perfect cinema.

The “boom” of Latin American cinema — with Brazil and Cuba in the forefront, according to the applause and approval of the European intelligentsia — is similar, in the present moment, to the one of which the Latin American novel had previously been the exclusive benefactor. Why do they applaud us? There is no doubt that a certain standard of quality has been reached. Doubtless, there is a certain political opportunism, a certain mutual instrumentality. But without doubt there is also something more. Why should we worry about their accolades? Isn’t the goal of public recognition a part of the rules of the artistic game? When it comes to artistic culture, isn’t European recognition equivalent to worldwide recognition? Doesn’t it serve art and our peoples as well when works produced by underdeveloped nations obtain such recognition?

Although it may seem curious, it is necessary to clarify the fact that this disquiet is not solely motivated by ethical concerns. As a matter of fact, the motivation is for the most part aesthetic, if indeed it is possible to draw such an arbitrary dividing line between both terms. When we ask ourselves why it is we who are the film directors and not the others, that is to say, the spectators, the question does not stem from an exclusively ethical concern. We know that we are filmmakers because we have been part of a minority which has had the time and the circumstances needed to develop, within itself, an artistic culture; and because the material resources of film technology are limited and therefore available to some, not to all. But what happens if the future holds the universalization of college level instruction, if economic and social development reduce the hours in the work day, if the evolution of film technology (there are already signs in evidence) makes it possible that this technology ceases being the privilege of a small few? What happens if the development of videotape solves the problem of inevitably limited laboratory capacity, if television systems with their potential for “projecting” independently of the central studio renders the ad infinitum construction of movie theaters suddenly superfluous?

What happens then is not only an act of social justice — the possibility for everyone to make films — but also a fact of extreme importance for artistic culture: the possibility of recovering, without any kinds of complexes or guilt feelings, the true meaning of artistic activity. Then we will be able to understand that art is one of mankind’s “impartial” or “uncommitted” activities [via actívidad desinteresada]. That art is not work, and that the artist is not in the strict sense a worker. The feeling that this is so, and the impossibility of translating it into practice, constitutes the agony and at the same time the “pharisee-ism” of all contemporary art.

In fact, the two tendencies exist: those who pretend to produce cinema as an “uncommitted” activity and those who pretend to justify it as a “committed” activity. Both find themselves in a blind alley.

Anyone engaged in an artistic activity asks himself at a given moment what the meaning is of whatever he is doing. The simple fact that this anxiety arises demonstrates that factors exist to motivate it — factors which, in turn, indicate that art does not develop freely. Those who persist in denying art a specific meaning feel the moral weight of their egoism. Those who, on the other hand, pretend to attribute one to it, buy off their bad conscience with social generosity. It makes no difference that the mediators (critics, theoreticians, etc.) try to justify certain cases. For the contemporary artist, the mediator is like an aspirin, a tranquilizer. As with a pill, the artist only temporarily gets rid of the headache. The sure thing, however, is that art, like a capricious little devil, continues to show its face sporadically in no matter which tendency.

No doubt it is easier to define art by what it is not than by what it is, assuming that one can talk about closed definitions not just for art but for any of life’s activities. The spirit of contradiction permeates everything now. Nothing and nobody lets himself be imprisoned in a picture frame, no matter how gilded. It is possible that art gives us a vision of society or of human nature and that, at the same time, it cannot be defined as a vision of society or of human nature. It is possible that a certain narcissism of consciousness — in recognizing in oneself a little historical, sociological, psychological, philosophical consciousness — is implicit in aesthetic pleasure, and at the same time that this sensation is not sufficient in itself to explain aesthetic pleasure.

Is it not much closer to the nature of art to conceive of it as having its own cognitive power? In other words, by saying that art is not the “illustration” of ideas, which can also be expressed through philosophy, sociology, psychology. Every artist’s desire to express the inexpressible is nothing more than the desire to express the vision of a theme in terms that are inexpressible through other than artistic means. Perhaps the cognitive power of art is like the power of a game for a child. Perhaps aesthetic pleasure lies in sensing the functionality (without a specific goal) of our intelligence and our own sensitivity. Art can stimulate, in general, the creative function of man. It can function as constant stimulus toward adopting an attitude of change with regard to life. But, as opposed to science, it enriches us in such a way that its results are not specific and cannot be applied to anything in particular. It is for this reason that we can call it an “impartial” or “uncommitted” activity, and can say that art is not strictly speaking a “job,” and that the artist is perhaps the least intellectual of all intellectuals.

Why then does the artist feel the need to justify himself as a “worker,” as an “intellectual,” as a “professional,” as a disciplined and organized man, like any other individual who performs a productive task? Why does he feel the need to exaggerate the importance of his activity? Why does he feel the need to have critics (mediators) to justify him, to defend him, to interpret him? Why does he speak proudly of “my critics”? Why does he find it necessary to make transcendental declarations, as if he were the true interpreter of society and of mankind? Why does he pretend to consider himself critic and conscience of society when (although these objectives can be implicit or even explicit in certain circumstances) in a truly revolutionary society all of us — that is to say, the people as a whole — should exercise those functions? And why, on the other hand, does the artist see himself forced to limit these objectives, these attitudes, these characteristics? Why does he at the same time set up these limitations as necessary to prevent his work from being transformed into a tract or a sociological essay? What is behind such pharisee-ism? Why protect ones self and seek recognition as a (revolutionary, it must be understood) political and scientific worker, yet not be prepared to run the same risks.

The problem is a complex one. Basically, it is neither a matter of opportunism nor cowardice. A true artist is prepared to run any risk as long as he is certain that his work will not cease to be an artistic expression. The only risk which he will not accept is that of endangering the artistic quality of his work.

There are also those who accept and defend the “impartial” function of art. These people claim to be more consistent. They opt for the bitterness of a closed world in the hope that tomorrow history will justify them. But the fact is that even today not everyone can enjoy the Mona Lisa. These people should have fewer contradictions; they should be less alienated. But in fact it is not so, even though such an attitude gives them the possibility of an alibi which is more productive on a personal level. In general they sense the sterility of their “purity” or they dedicate themselves to waging corrosive battles, but always on the defensive. They can even, in a reverse operation, reject their interest in finding tranquility, harmony, and a certain compensation in the work of art, expressing instead disequilibrium, chaos, and uncertainty, which also becomes the objective of “impartial” art.

What is it, then, which makes it impossible to practice art as an “impartial” activity? Why is this particular situation today more sensitive than ever? From the beginning of the world as we know it, that is to say, since the world was divided into classes, this situation has been latent. If it has grown sharper today it is precisely because today the possibility of transcending it is coming into view. Not through a prise de conscience, not through the expressed determination of any particular artist, but because reality itself has begun to reveal symptoms (not at all utopian) which indicate that “in the future there will no longer be painters, a rather men who, among other things, dedicate themselves to painting” (Marx).

There can be no “impartial” or “uncommitted” art, there can be no new and genuine qualitative jump in art, unless the concept and the reality of the “elite” is done away with once and for all. Three factors incline us toward optimism: the development of science, the social presence of the masses, and the revolutionary potential in the contemporary world. All three are without hierarchical order, all three are interrelated.

Why is science feared? Why are people afraid that art might be crushed under obvious productivity and utility of science? Why this inferiority complex? It is true that today we read a good essay with much greater pleasure than a novel. Why do we keep repeating then, horrified, that the world is becoming more mercenary, more utilitarian, more materialistic? Is it not really marvelous that the development of science, sociology, anthropology, and psychology is contributing to the “purification” of art? The appearance, thanks to science, of expressive media like photography and film made a greater “purification” of painting and theatre possible (without invalidating them artistically in the least). Doesn’t modern-day science render anachronistic so much “artistic” analysis of the human soul? Doesn’t contemporary science allow us to free ourselves from so many fraudulent films, concealed behind what has been called the world of poetry? With the advance of science, art has nothing to lose; on the contrary, it has a whole world to gain. What, then, are we so afraid of? Science strips art bare, and it seems that it is not easy to go naked through the streets.

The real tragedy of the contemporary artist lies in the impossibility of practicing art as a minority activity. It is said — and correctly — that art cannot exercise its attraction without the cooperation of the subject. But what can be done so that the audience stops being an object and transforms itself into the subject?

The development of science, of technology, and of the most advanced social theory and practice has made possible as never before the active presence in the masses in social life. In the realm of artistic life, there are more spectators now than at any other moment in history. This is the first stage in the abolition of “elites.” The task currently at hand is to find out if the conditions which will enable spectators to transform themselves into agents — not merely more active spectators, but genuine co-authors — are beginning to exist. The task at hand is to ask ourselves whether art is really an activity restricted to specialists, whether it is, through extra-human design, the option of a chosen few or a possibility for everyone.

How can we trust the perspectives and possibilities of art simply to the education of the people as a mass of spectators? Taste as defined by high culture, once it is “overdone,” is normally passed on to the rest of society as leftovers to be devoured and ruminated over by those who were not invited to the feast. This eternal spiral has today become a vicious circle as well. “Camp” and its attitude toward everything outdated is an attempt to rescue these leftovers and to lessen the distance between high culture and the people. But the difference lies in the fact that camp rescues it as an aesthetic value, while for the people the values involved continue to be ethical ones.

Must the revolutionary present and the revolutionary future inevitably have “its” artists and “its” intellectuals, just as the bourgeoisie had “theirs”? Surely the truly revolutionary position, from now on, is to contribute to overcoming these elitist concepts and practices, rather than pursuing ad eternum the “artistic quality” of the work. The new outlook for artistic culture is no longer that everyone must share the taste of a few, but that all can be creators of that culture. Art has always been a universal necessity; what it has not been is an option for all under equal conditions. Parallel to refined art, popular art has had a simultaneous but independent existence.

Popular art has absolutely nothing to do with what is called mass art. Popular art needs and consequently tends to develop the personal, individual taste of a people. On the other hand, mass art (or art for the masses) requires the people to have no taste. It will only be genuine when it is actually the masses who create it, since at present it is art produced by a few for the masses. Grotowski says that today’s theater should be a minority art form because mass art can be achieved through cinema. This is not true. Perhaps film is the most elitist of all the contemporary arts. Film today, no matter where, is made by a small minority for the masses. Perhaps film will be the art form which takes the longest time to reach the hands of the masses, when we understand mass art as popular art, art created by the masses. Currently, as Hauser points out, mass art is art produced by a minority in order to satisfy the demand of a public reduced to the sole role of spectator and consumer.

Popular art has always been created by the least learned sector of society, yet this “uncultured” sector has managed to conserve profoundly cultured characteristics of art. One of the most important of these is the fact that the creators are at the same time the spectators and vice versa. Between those who produce and those who consume, no sharp line of demarcation exists. Cultivated art, in our era, has also attained this situation. Modern art’s great dose of freedom is nothing more than the conquest of a new interlocutor: the artist himself. For this reason, it is useless to strain oneself struggling for the substitution of the masses as a new and potential spectator for the bourgeoisie. This situation, maintained by popular art, adopted by cultivated art, must be dissolved and become the heritage of all. This and no other must be the great objective of an authentically revolutionary artistic culture.

Popular art preserved another even more important cultural characteristic: It is carried out as but another life activity. With cultivated art, the reverse is true. It is pursued as a unique, specific activity, as a personal achievement. This is the cruel price of having had to maintain artistic activity at the expense of its inexistence among the people. Hasn’t the attempt to realize himself on the edge of society proved to be too painful a restriction for the artist and for art itself? To posit art as a sect, as a society within society, as the promised land where we can fleetingly fulfill ourselves for a brief instant — doesn’t this create the illusion that self-realization on the level of consciousness also implies self-realization on the level of existence? Isn’t this patently obvious in contemporary circumstances? The essential lesson of popular art is that it is carried out as a life activity: man must not fulfill himself as an artist but fully; the artist must not seek fulfillment as an artist but as a human being.

In the modern world, principally in developed capitalist nations and in those countries engaged in a revolutionary process, there are alarming symptoms, obvious signs of an imminent change. The possibilities for overcoming this traditional disassociation are beginning to arise. These symptoms are not a product of consciousness but of reality itself. A large part of the struggle waged in modern art has been, in fact, to “democratize” art. What other goal is entailed in combating the limitations of taste, museum art, and the demarcation lines between the creator and the public? What is considered beauty today, and where is it found? On Campbell’s soup labels, in a garbage can lid, in gadgets? Even the eternal value of a work of art is today being questioned. What else could be the meaning of those sculptures, seen in recent exhibitions, made of blocks of ice, which melt away while the public looks at them? Isn’t this — more than the disappearance of art — the attempt to make the spectator disappear? Don’t those painters who entrust a portion of the execution of their work to just anyone, rather than to their disciples, exhibit an eagerness to jump over the barricade of “elitist” art? Doesn’t the same attitude exist among composers whose works allow their performers ample liberty?

There’s a widespread tendency in modern art to make the spectator participate ever more fully. If he participates to a greater and greater degree, where will the process end up? Isn’t the logical outcome — or shouldn’t it in fact be — that he will cease being a spectator altogether? This simultaneously represents a tendency toward collectivism and toward individualism. Once we admit the possibility of universal participation, aren’t we also admitting the individual creative potential which we all have? Isn’t Grotowski mistaken when he asserts that today’s theater should be dedicated to an elite? Isn’t it rather the reverse: that the theater of poverty in fact requires the highest refinement? It is the theater which has no need for secondary values: costumes, scenery, make-up, even a stage. Isn’t this an indication that material conditions are reduced to a minimum and that, from this point of view, the possibility of making theater is within everyone’s reach? And doesn’t the fact that the theater has an increasingly smaller public mean that conditions are beginning to ripen for it to transform itself into a true mass theater? Perhaps the tragedy of the theater lies in the fact that it has reached this point in its evolution too soon.

When we look toward Europe, we wring our hands. We see that the old culture is totally incapable of providing answers to the problems of art. The fact is that Europe can no longer respond in a traditional manner but at the same time finds it equally difficult to respond in a manner that is radically new. Europe is no longer capable of giving the world a new “ism”; neither is it in a position to put an end to “isms” once and for all. So we think that our moment has come, that at last the underdeveloped can deck themselves out as “men of culture.” Here lies our greatest danger and our greatest temptation. This accounts for the opportunism of some on our continent. For, given our technical and scientific backwardness and given the scanty presence of the masses in social life, our continent is still capable of responding in a traditional manner, by reaffirming the concept and the practice of elite art. Perhaps in this case the real motive for the European applause which some of our literary and cinematic works have won is none other than a certain nostalgia which we inspire. After all, the European has no other Europe to which to turn.

The third factor, the revolution — which is the most important of all — is perhaps present in our country as nowhere else. This is our only true chance. The revolution is what provides all other alternatives, what can supply an entirely new response, what enables us to do away once and for all with elitist concepts and practices in art. The revolution and the ongoing revolutionary process are the only factors which make the total and free presence of the masses possible. And this will mean the definitive disappearance of the rigid division of labor and of a society divided into sectors and classes. For us, then, the revolution is the highest expression of culture because it will abolish artistic culture as a fragmentary human activity.

Current responses to this inevitable future, this uncontestable prospect, can be as numerous as the countries on our continent. Because characteristics and achieved levels are not the same, each art form, every artistic manifestation, must find its own expression. What should be the response of the Cuban cinema in particular? Paradoxically, we think it will be a new poetics, not a new cultural policy. A poetics whose true goal will be to commit suicide, to disappear as such. We know, however, that in fact other artistic conceptions will continue to exist among us, just like small rural landholdings and religion continue to exist.

On the level of cultural policy we are faced with a serious problem: the film school. Is it right to continue developing a handful of film specialists? It seems inevitable for the present, but what will be the eternal quarry that we continue to mine: the students in Arts and Letters at the University? But shouldn’t we begin to consider right now whether that school should have a limited lifespan? What end do we pursue there — a reserve corps of future artists? Or a specialized future public? We should be asking ourselves whether we can do something now to abolish this division between artistic and scientific culture.

What constitutes in fact the true prestige of artistic culture, and how did it come about that this prestige was allowed to appropriate the whole concept of culture? Perhaps it is based on the enormous prestige which the spirit has always enjoyed at the expense of the body. Hasn’t artistic culture always been seen as the spiritual part of society while scientific culture is seen as its body? The traditional rejection of the body, of material life, is due in part to the concept that things of the spirit are more elevated, more elegant, serious and profound. Can’t we, here and now, begin doing something to put an end to this artificial distinction? We should understand from here on in that the body and the things of the body are also elegant, and that material life is beautiful as well. We should understand that, in fact, the soul is contained in the body just as the spirit is contained in material life, just as — to speak in strictly artistic terms — the essence is contained in the surface and the content in the form.

We should endeavor to see that our future students, and therefore our future filmmakers, will themselves be scientists, sociologists, physicians, economists, agricultural engineers, etc., without of course ceasing to be filmmakers. And, at the same time, we should have the same aim for our most outstanding workers, the workers who achieve the best results in terms of political and intellectual formation. We cannot develop the taste of the masses as long as the division between the two cultures continues to exist, nor as long as the masses are not the real masters of the means of artistic production. The revolution has liberated us as an artistic sector. It is only logical that we contribute to the liberation of the private means of artistic production.

A new poetics for the cinema will, above all, be a “partisan” and “committed” poetics, a “committed” art, a consciously and resolutely “committed” cinema — that is to say, an “imperfect” cinema. An “impartial” or “uncommitted” (cinema), as a complete aesthetic activity, will only be possible when it is the people who make art. But today art must assimilate its quota of work so that work can assimilate its quota of art.

The motto of this imperfect cinema (which there’s no need to invent, since it already exists) is, as Glauber Rocha would say, “We are not interested in the problems of neurosis; we are interested in the problems of lucidity.” Art no longer has use for the neurotic and his problems, although the neurotic continues to need art — as a concerned object, a relief, an alibi or, as Freud would say, as a sublimation of his problems. A neurotic can produce art, but art has no reason to produce neurotics. It has been traditionally believed that the concerns of art were not to be found in the sane but in the sick, not in the normal but in the abnormal, not in those who struggle but in those who weep, not in lucid minds but in neurotic ones. Imperfect cinema is changing this way of seeing the question. We have more faith in the sick man than in the healthy one because his truth is purged by suffering. However, there is no need for suffering to be synonymous with artistic elegance. There is still a trend in modern art — undoubtedly related to Christian tradition — which identifies seriousness with suffering. The specter of Marguerite Gautier still haunts artistic endeavor in our day. Only in the person who suffers do we perceive elegance, gravity, even beauty; only in him do we recognize the possibility of authenticity, seriousness, sincerity. Imperfect cinema must put an end to this tradition.

Imperfect cinema finds a new audience in those who struggle, and it finds its themes in their problems. For imperfect cinema, “lucid” people are the ones who think and feel and exist in a world which they can change. In spite of all the problems and difficulties, they are convinced that they can transform it in a revolutionary way. Imperfect cinema therefore has no need to struggle to create an “audience.” On the contrary, it can be said that at present a greater audience exists for this kind of cinema than there are filmmakers able to supply that audience.

What does this new interlocutor require of us — an art full of moral examples worthy of imitation? No. Man is more of a creator than an innovator. Besides, he should be the one to give us moral examples. He might ask us for a fuller, more complete work, aimed — in a separate or coordinated fashion — at the intelligence, the emotions, the powers of intuition.

Should he ask us for a cinema of denunciation? Yes and no. No, if the denunciation is directed toward the others, if it is conceived that those who are not struggling might sympathize with us and increase their awareness. Yes, if the denunciation acts as information, as testimony, as another combat weapon for those engaged in the struggle. Why denounce imperialism to show one more time that it is evil? What’s the use if those now fighting are fighting primarily against imperialism? We can denounce imperialism but should strive to do it as a way of proposing concrete battles. A film which denounces those who struggle against the evil deeds of an official who must be executed would be an excellent example of this kind of film-denunciation.

We maintain that imperfect cinema must above all show the process which generates the problems. It is thus the opposite of a cinema principally dedicated to celebrating results, the opposite of a self- sufficient and contemplative cinema, the opposite of a cinema which “beautifully illustrates” ideas or concepts which we already possess. (The narcissistic posture has nothing to do with those who struggle.) To show a process is not exactly equivalent to analyzing it. To analyze, in the traditional sense of the word, always implies a closed prior judgment. To analyze a problem is to show the problem (not the process) permeated with judgments which the analysis itself generates a priori. To analyze is to block off from the outset any possibility for analysis on the part of the interlocutor.

To show the process of a problem, on the other hand, is to submit it to judgment without pronouncing the verdict. There is a style of news reporting which puts more emphasis on the commentary than on the news item. There is another kind of reporting which presents the news and evaluates it through the arrangement of the item on the page or by its position in the paper. To show the process of a problem is like showing the very development of the news item, without commentary; it is like showing the multi-faceted evolution of a piece of information without evaluating it. The subjective element is the selection of the problem, conditioned as it is by the interest of the audience — which is the subject. The objective element is showing the process which is the object.

Imperfect cinema is an answer, but it is also a question which will discover its own answers in the course of its development. Imperfect cinema can make use of the documentary or the fictional mode, or both. It can use whatever genre, or all genres. It can use cinema as a pluralistic art form or as a specialized form of expression. These questions are indifferent to it, since they do not represent its real alternatives or problems, and much less its real goals. These are not thebattles or polemics it is interested in sparking.

Imperfect cinema can also be enjoyable, both for the maker and for its new audience. Those who struggle do not struggle on the edge of life, but in the midst of it. Struggle is life and vice versa. One does not stuggle in order to live “later on.” The struggle requires organization — the organization of life. Even in the most extreme phase, that of total and direct war, the organization of life is equivalent to the organization of the struggle. And in life, as in the struggle, there is everything, including enjoyment. Imperfect cinema can enjoy itself despite everything that conspires to negate enjoyment.

Imperfect cinema rejects exhibitionism in both (literal) senses of the word, the narcissistic and the commercial (getting shown in established theaters and circuits). It should be remembered that the death of the star-system turned out to be a positive thing for art. There is no reason to doubt that the disappearance of the director as star will fail to offer similar prospects. Imperfect cinema must start work now, in cooperation with sociologists, revolutionary leaders, psychologists, economists, etc. Furthermore, imperfect cinema rejects whatever services criticism has to offer and considers the function of mediators and intermediaries anachronistic.

Imperfect cinema is no longer interested in quality or technique. It can be created equally well with a Mitchell or with an 8mm camera, in a studio or in a guerrilla camp in the middle of the jungle. Imperfect cinema is no longer interested in predetermined taste, and much less in “good taste.” It is not quality which it seeks in an artist’s work. The only thing it is interested in is how an artist responds to the following question: What are you doing in order to overcome the barrier of the “cultured” elite audience which up to now has conditioned the form of your work?

The filmmaker who subscribes to this new poetics should not have personal self-realization as his object. From now on he should also have another activity. He should place his role as revolutionary or aspiring revolutionary above all else. In a word, he should try to fulfill himself as a man and not just as an artist, that its essential goal as a new poetics is to disappear. It is no longer a matter of replacing one school with another, one “ism” with another, poetry with anti-poetry, but of truly letting a thousand different flowers bloom. The future lies with folk art. But let us no longer display folk art with demagogic pride, with a celebrative air. Let us exhibit it instead as a cruel denunciation, as a painful testimony to the level at which the peoples of the world have been forced to limit their artistic creativity. The future, without doubt, will be with folk art, but then there will be no need to call it that, because nobody and nothing will any longer be able to again paralyze the creative spirit of the people.

Art will not disappear into nothingness; it will disappear into everything.

MACHETERO Poster by vagabond ©

Shortlink: http://wp.me/p1eniL-11V

Terrorist Semantics

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Terrorist Semantics by vagabond ©

“In our age there is no such thing as ‘keeping out of politics.’ All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia.”
- George Orwell

With the reported discovery, attempted capture and assassination of Osama Bin Laden, the attacks on the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya and the recent terrorist attacks in Boston, questions left lingering in the shadows since the terrorist attacks on the US on 9/11/2001 have once again stepped into the light. Questions that have not been answered and that haunt us not on a conscious level, but on a subconscious level. Questions like what lead to the US 9/11/2001 attacks. The exploration of those questions leads to other questions about American foreign policy and hegemony. Those questions lead to who and how are the terms “terrorism” and “terrorists” reshaped and to whose benefit. Those questions open up a whole new round of examination and each level of inquiry seems to only lead us further down the rabbit hole.

i was living in Harlem when the attacks took place. i watched the television news cameras trained to the aftermath of the first plane hitting the World Trade Center and thought it to be a horrible accident. When the second plane hit it became clear that this was an attack of epic proportions. Whoever planned this knew that with the first plane hitting there would speculation as to what happened, judgement would be withheld on whether or not it was an attack or an accident. In the process of trying to figure out what happened, every available camera would be trained on the World Trade Center and when that second plane hit all the hope of a horrible accident would be drained from us and there would be no doubt that this was an attack.

The second plane hitting the World Trade Center just a few minutes after the first would change the world. In the moment that second plane hit, the US would experience the fear, vulnerability and insecurity that is common place around the world due in large part to US foreign policy. This is a lesson that the US never heeded when Malcolm X commented on the assassination of President Kennedy with his famous “chickens coming home to roost.” The same can be said of the terrorist attacks of 9/11/2001. The terrorism sponsored by the US to achieve its own dominance in the world was coming back to haunt us. What kind of terrorism? The Iran-Contra Affair that lead to the crack cocaine epidemic in the US. The overthrow of governments who put their own interests ahead of US interests. The backing of dictators who put the interests of the US ahead of the interests of their own country. The use of torture in Afghanistan, Iraq, Guantanamo and other CIA black sites around the world. The karma laundry list goes on and on…

In the years following those attacks i struggled with the questions of defining “terrorism” and “terrorists” and how those terms are defined and by who and to what benefit. This is the question that you chase down into the rabbit hole. It was something that would not leave me alone because these were terms that i was already wrestling with in terms of the way US political prisoners and prisoners of war (PP & POW) are treated. People like Oscar Lopez Rivera, Russell Maroon Shoatz, Leonard Peltier, Sundiata Acoli, Herman Bell, Marshall Eddie Conway, David Gilbert, and many others who had decided that they couldn’t stand by and allow US hegemony to exercise its will over Puerto Rican, African-American and Native American Peoples. They stood up in defiance to US empire within its own “borders” and in doing so their actions were often labeled as “terrorism” and they were often labeled as “terrorists”. With these recent terrorist attacks on the US the definition of these words “terrorism” and “terrorist” changed.

Within the zeitgeist of 1970 – 1980 the terms “terrorism” and “terrorist” didn’t hold the same kind of weight that it does in a post US 9/11 world. The US government and corporate media had refined and redefined “terrorism” and “terrorist” to now encompass anyone who disagreed with the American empire. The US was drawing a line in the sand and it couldn’t be more clear than when President Bush declared “You’re either with us or you’re with the terrorists”. The US government and the corporate media had now found a way to compress all dissent to American Empire by expanding the definition of “terrorism” and “terrorists”. As an added bonus this new refinement of the definition of “terrorism” and “terrorist” now seemed to remove any doubt that the actions that US PP & POW’s were accused of, convicted of and were serving incredibly long sentences for, were anything but “terrorist” actions and that they couldn’t be anything but “terrorists”.

In the days, weeks, months and years following those attacks the supporters of members of the Black Liberation Army, Weather Underground, American Indian Movement and Puerto Rican separatists groups languishing for three and four decades in the US now had to fight to keep them from being categorized in this new expanded definition of “terrorism” and terrorist”. We were saddled with the responsibility of having to explain that they were not terrorist’s, because their actions were not acts of terrorism. They were freedom fighters who fought against US oppression.

This issue of “grandfathering” in US PP & POW’s was one that led me to the writing of my film MACHETERO. It was this expansion of the terminology of “terrorism” and “terrorist” in the post US 9/11 attacks that inspired me to make a clear delineation that would exclude US PP & POW’s from the new “terrorism” and the new “terrorist” definition. The film takes a stand against including US PP & POW’s within this all-encompassing and ever-expanding terminology. In trying to get people to think about how and who defines these terms i needed to stay away from the US 9/11 attacks because they were so polarizing so i used a different approach to begin a dialogue that would get people to think outside of the parameters that were being defined within this post US 9/11 zeitgeist.

The issue of US imperialism in Puerto Rico is an issue that unfortunately most people don’t know about. Oddly enough it was the fact that many people didn’t know about the colonial relationship that the US has with Puerto Rico that allowed me to bring up the issues of how and who defines “terrorism” and “terrorist” in a kind of hermetically sealed bubble that could possibly circumvent post US 9/11 polarization. Within that hermetically sealed bubble these issues could spark a potential dialogue that could safely allow that to re-think the issues of 9/11/2001 while at the same time educating them on the US colonial relationship with Puerto Rico.

Now that the issues of terrorism and terrorist are on the minds of many once again i invite you to explore some of these issues through the prism of my film MACHETERO…

MACHETERO Poster by vagabond ©

MACHETERO opens in New York City for a one week limited theatrical run.

WED. JUNE 12TH – TUES JUNE 19TH
CLEMENTE SOTO VELEZ
KABAYITO’S THEATER (2ND FLOOR)
107 SUFFOLK STREET
NY NY 10002
(BTWN RIVINGTON & DELANCEY)

Shortlink: http://wp.me/p1eniL-13T

MOVE 35

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MOVE 35 by vagabond ©

Twenty-eight years ago today on May 13th of 1985 the Philadelphia Police Department under orders from Mayor Wilson Goode dropped a 2 pound bomb of C4 explosives from a Police helicopter onto a row house at 6221 Osage Avenue in the Cobbs Creek area of West Philadelphia in an act of domestic terrorism. That address was the home of a commune know as MOVE, a radical environmental organization of mostly Black people who aggressively promoted a return to natural living. They held a staunch belief in eco-sustainability, promoted animal rights and advocated a strict green politic. They ate raw food, wore their hair in dreadlocks, and changed their last names to Africa in honor of that continent that is the motherland for all people.

The city of Philadelphia and MOVE had been at odds with one another going back at least a decade before the bombing. In 1978 there had been a violent year-long standoff with police that ended with the storming of the MOVE home by police. In the raid Philadelphia Police fired some 2000 rounds into the home. In the ensuing chaos Police officer James Ramp was killed. Nine MOVE members, Chuck, Debbie, Delbert, Eddie, Janet, Janine, Merle, Mike and Phil Africa were arrested and charged with the third degree murder of Police officer James Ramp despite the fact that he was shot in the back of the head suggesting that it was friendly fire and not MOVE that killed officer Ramp. The MOVE 9 have been in prison since then and were denied parole in 2008.

When the Philadelphia Police dropped that 2 pound bomb of C4 explosives from a helicopter on the MOVE house in 1985 it ignited the whole building. The temperature of the fire reached some 2000 degrees. MOVE members were in the basement when the bomb was dropped and as the fire grew hotter and spread they tried to escape the inferno. As they tried to escape Police fired gunshots into the building. MOVE was caught between burning to death or being shot by Police. In the end eleven people were killed. Among the eleven were five children. Only two MOVE members escaped the atrocity. Ramona Africa and 13-year-old Birdy Africa crawled through a basement window and into an alley only to be captured and arrested by Police. Ramona was charged with conspiracy, riot, and multiple counts of simple and aggravated assault. Ramona could have served 16 months if she would just renounce MOVE but she refused and instead served 7 years in prison for the crime of not dying when she should have.

The MOVE house was not the only one to burn to the ground. Sixty-five other homes were destroyed by the bombing. As the fire engulfed the MOVE home and spread the Philadelphia Fire department stood by and watched the blaze consume other homes for an hour. Neighboring homeowners sued the city for their negligence and only received restitution after years of legal battles with the city.

Ramona Africa was released in 1992 and still lives with MOVE in Philadelphia. She has advocated for the release of the MOVE 9 and Mumia Abu Jamal and other US held political prisoners. She has become a spokesperson for MOVE and continues to struggle for justice… An “investigation” into the bombing of the MOVE house was done but neither Mayor Frank Rizzo nor the Philadelphia Police Department, nor the FBI or any of the “law enforcement” entities were held responsible for the terrorist bombing of the MOVE house or the murder of those six adults and five children…

Shortlink: http://wp.me/p1eniL-13s

RICANSTRUCTING VIEQUES

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RICANSTRUCTING VIEQUES design by Sam Lahoz

Vieques is a small island off the eastern coast of Puerto Rico that was used for decades by the US military as training ground. For 200 days out of the year war games were played in Vieques with live ammunition much to the consternation of the over 10,000 Puerto Ricans who call Vieques home. In 1998 the NYC based Puerto Rican Hardcore Punk Band RICANSTRUCTION was invited to play a Kick The US Navy Festival Out in Vieques, Puerto Rico. i decided to bring a camera along to document the trip but had no inclination to make a documentary.

When we got back from Vieques we found that many people really didn’t know what was happening in regard to the destruction of the environment, the pollution, the depleted uranium shells, the unexploded ordnance, the high cancer rates, or any of the other long list of abuses by the US military in Vieques. So we decided to look at some of the footage i’d shot to see if a documentary could be put together. At the end of March 1999 we finished a short 25 minute punkumentary and decided to call it RICANSTRUCTING VIEQUES. A few days later on April 19th David Sanes Rodriguez, a civilian Puerto Rican guard was killed in an accidental bombing. A F18 fighter jet dropped a 500 lb. bomb too close to his guard post. His death sparked a global movement to end war games on the island of Vieques.

The people of Vieques led a protest in which they occupied the bombing ranges of the US military effectively becoming human shields. International media began to pay attention to the plight of Vieques and semi-permanent encampments began to spring up in the bombing zones. Celebrities and politicians began to take notice of the struggle and began to lend not only their voices but their bodies to the movement. Famous Puerto Rican singers Danny Rivera, Robi Draco Rosa and Ricky Martin, lent their support, Puerto Rican boxer Félix “Tito” Trinidad, writers Ana Lydia Vega and Giannina Braschi, actor Edward James Olmos and Guatemala’s Nobel Prize winner Rigoberta Menchú supported the cause, as did Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Al Sharpton, and the Rev. Jesse Jackson. Even Pope John Paul II mentioned that he wanted peace for Vieques.

After many years of protests, occupations of the bombing zones and violent skirmishes with law enforcement, the US military relented and pulled out of Vieques on May 1st of 2003. Today marks ten years since the US military pulled out of Vieques but the struggle is far from over. The unexploded ordnance and depleted uranium and other environmental damage has yet to be cleaned up and the land that was once used by the US military is still off-limits to the people of Vieques.

This May Day is the ten-year anniversary of the US military leaving Vieques. In honor and remembrance of that struggle i’m re-releasing RICANSTRUCTING VIEQUES on the internet so people can begin to have an understanding of how destructive the US military was in Vieques and how it continues to be with the lack of clean up. As i write this i’m back in Puerto Rico and heading out to Vieques this May Day once again to try to document the ongoing struggle to get the US government and the US military to clean up the mess it left behind, so stay tuned for the follow up and in the meantime check out the punkumentary RICANSTRUCTING VIEQUES…

Shortlink: http://wp.me/p1eniL-12O

John Penley Anarcho Yippie Pt. 1

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JOHN PENLEY ANARCHO YIPPIE by vagabond ©

John Penley is an Anarcho Yippie is a new web series that i’m launching today with a new episode coming each week for the next few weeks. The story of how John became an Anarcho Yippie and what an Anarcho Yippie is, has everything to do with NYC in the 1980′s… John first moved to the Lower East Side of New York City in 1985 and became a freelance photojournalist. His photos were featured in all the daily newspapers like the The Daily News, The NY Post, The New York Times and many other publications. His archive of some 30,000 images was recently acquired by the Tamimnet Library at NYU.

At the end of the summer of 2011 John became homeless. Since then he’s been a part of various Occupy movements in New York, Washington DC, and Asheville NC. In March of 2013 John returned to New York to work on his archive in the library. In true Anarcho Yippie fashion John is also holding a protest against NYU by sleeping on the sidewalk in front of the library that houses his archive to bring attention to NYU’s contribution to the rapid gentrification to the Lower East Side and it’s planned expansion into Greenwich Village. In this episode John talks about his days as a photojournalist and how he came to NYC after serving a federal prison term for jumping bail to join the Yippies on Bleecker Street.

Tune in next week for Part 2 of John Penley Anarcho Yippie…

Shortlink: http://wp.me/p1eniL-12o

The Liberation Day Tapes – Pedro’s Grave

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THE LIBERATION DAY TAPES: PEDRO’S GRAVE vagabond ©

On April 21st of 1965 the great Puerto Rican independence leader Pedro Albizu Campos died of radiation experiments that were done on his body by the US government while he was in prison serving a sentence for fighting for the independence of Puerto Rico. The US has been a colonial power in Puerto Rico since they invaded the island nation in July of 1898. Albizu was the leader of the Nationalist Party and was a staunch, ardent, charismatic and outspoken opponent of US colonialism in Puerto Rico and advocated independence by any and all means necessary, including the use of violence.

To get a better sense of who Albizu was check out the trailer for this documentary that is being made on him called Who Is Albizu Campos?

To give you an idea of how powerful a figure Albizu was let me tell you about the first time my mother heard the voice of Albizu Campos, after half a century. i had been working with RICANSTRUCTION on Liberation Day, their 1st full length album and the first album to be released by CBGB Records. The opening track on Liberation Day is Pedro’s Grave and Pedro’s Grave opens with a sample of Albizu giving a speech. i wanted to play Pedro’s Grave mostly because of the Albizu sample as my mom isn’t into Hardcore Punk. When i pressed play on the CD and she heard the first few seconds of Albizu’s voice she went into a state of shock and told me to turn it off. i asked why and she demanded that i turn it off. i turned it off because something was upsetting her. After a few moments she was able to compose herself and proceeded to tell me that when she was a little girl in Puerto Rico every time Albizu spoke on the radio the threat of a large-scale revolt loomed large. Her father, my grandfather was a follower of Albizu and after almost 50 years of not hearing that voice my mother was transformed into a little girl afraid of the impending revolution that Albizu’s voice might bring. That’s the kind of power and influence and dedication that Albizu had.

My film MACHETERO features several songs from Liberation Day which was a concept album centered around the liberation struggle of Puerto Rico. While writing the script I listened to Liberation Day and found the songs influencing the narrative and the way in which the film could be structured. The songs from Liberation Day became a kind of modern-day Hardcore Punk Rock Greek chorus to the narrative of the film. Imparting important information through the songs into the narrative of the film.

Arturo Rodriguez the bass player and Joseph Rodriguez the drummer and percussionist are two-thirds of the song writing trio for the band with singer Not4Prophet (who also plays the lead character of Pedro Taino in MACHETERO) being the final piece. When we were doing the final mix for MACHETERO Arturo and Joseph came by to talk about the how the songs for Liberation Day came together. In this segment they talk about the song Pedro’s Grave…

Pedro’s Grave is a kind of poetic history lesson that names various Puerto Rican revolutionaries like Hiram Rosado and Elias Beauchamp who assassinated a police chief in Puerto Rico, Griselio Torresola and Oscar Collazo who attempted an assassination on President Truman. Pedro Albizu Campos is mentioned, as well as the famous Puerto Rican freedom fighter Lolita Lebron who along with three others shot up the US House of Congress in 1954 and served 25 years in prison for doing so. The song also lists a few of the towns in Puerto Rico in which their where important uprisings against US colonialism in Puerto Rico. Towns such as Ponce where a group of protesters were massacred in 1937 and Jayuya and Utado where in 1950 there were violent uprisings against US colonial rule. The very famous mountain town of Lares where there was a violent uprising against Spanish colonial rule in 1868 is also named in the song.

Using Pedro’s Grave in MACHETERO allowed me to impart part of that history in a compact and efficient way. The visuals could stay within the context of the film and continue to tell the story as the song with the lyrics placed across the screen gave a historical context to the visuals. Using the lyrics to be subtitled onto the screen allowed people to get an idea that their was a historical context for the violence that follows in the visuals. The various individual elements of the song, the lyrics and the visuals made a more cohesive whole that allowed more information to be passed onto the viewer than any one of those elements separately.

Check out the video interview of Arturo and Joseph Rodriguez talking about how Pedro’s Grave came to be followed by the song’s incorporation into MACHETERO.

MACHETERO opens in New York City for a one week limited theatrical run.

WED. JUNE 12TH – TUES JUNE 19TH
CLEMENTE SOTO VELEZ
KABAYITO’S THEATER (2ND FLOOR)
107 SUFFOLK STREET
NY NY 10002
(BTWN RIVINGTON & DELANCEY)

Shortlink: http://wp.me/p1eniL-129

Amilcar Cabral And MACHETERO

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Amilcar Cabrial And MACHETERO

“In fact, as a nation colonized for over half a millennium, we might well argue that our only sovereign territory is our cultural production, and this may be why our music, our poetry, our film, our plastic arts, and our orature are so richly textured and perpetually reworked. Generation after generation, we Boricuas work out the complications of our own cultural identity in our own uniquely inclusive and exclusive ways. Those performances, like our existence, also covertly and quite carefully confuse, straddle, and trespass generic and essentialist boundaries at will, by whatever means necessary. Our clandestine presence—the deliberate occupation of sovereign and creatively politicized spaces otherwise denied to us—is the way we make sense of ourselves, for ourselves, often secretly, beyond the eyes of outsiders who have the power to disturb our aesthetic process by projecting the colonists’ fears and neuroses onto us. “
- Lisa Sánchez González – from her book
The Stories I Read To The Children: The Life And Writing of Pura Belpré, The Legendary Storyteller, Children’s Author and New York Public Librarian

While doing research for MACHETERO i came across this brilliant African brother Amilcar Cabral from Guinea-Bissau. He was a leader in the movement to de-colonize Guinea-Bissau from Portugal. He was a supporter of not only his own countries struggle for independence but also active in the struggles of neighboring Guinea and Cape Verde and of course a staunch opponent of South African apartheid. A true outspoken Pan-Africanist thinker.

Amilcar Cabrial was a agronomic engineer (the science of using plants for food, fuel, feed, and fiber) and passed on his expertise to both his guerrilla troops and local farmers. Even requiring his troops to work in the fields along side the people. He managed to help lead his people to freedom but like Moses in the Old Testament never got to see the promised land. He was assassinated in 1973 a few months before Guinea-Bissau gained its independence.

He was an amazing thinker. In this essay National Liberation And Culture he outlines the intertwined importance of culture in national liberation movements. This speech was given on February 20th, 1970 at Syracuse University in Syracuse New York as part of a lecture series in memory of Eduardo Mondlane who was the first President of the Mozambique Liberation Front (FRELIMO) and assassinated by the Portuguese on February 3rd of 1960.

When i came across this essay i was immediately struck by how relevant it was to work that i was doing with MACHETERO. In a way i have a mixed bag of emotions about this essay. Not in terms of its content but in terms of its continued relevance. In many ways it speaks directly to the Puerto Rican independence struggle because so much of the sovereignty that is undisputed is the culture of Puerto Ricans. The speech references the decolonization of Africa but could easily be applied to the situation of Puerto Ricans as i mentioned before, Africa-Americans and Native peoples here in the United States.

On one level it saddens me that something written 40 years ago about imperialist domination and its ills has such relevance today and at the same time its good that someone has laid down a firm foundation from which we can build upon. For me (and perhaps many others) MACHETERO is salvo against this cultural imperialist domination. When i was making MACHETERO i was trying to think Puerto Rican. Trying to make a Puerto Rican film and asking myself what does that mean and how does one go about expressing that. i tried to incorporate the culture of my people in the film and tried to create a piece of cultural resistance. Reading Amilcar Cabral’s speech now, some 40 years later helped me to understand what it was that i was struggling with.

- vagabond

NATIONAL LIBERATION AND CULTURE
by Amilcar Cabral

When Goebbels, the brain behind Nazi propaganda, heard culture being discussed, he brought out his revolver. That shows that the Nazis, who were and are the most tragic expression of imperialism and of its thirst for domination–even if they were all degenerates like Hitler, had a clear idea of the value of culture as a factor of resistance to foreign domination.

History teaches us that, in certain circumstances, it is very easy for the foreigner to impose his domination on a people. But it also teaches us that, whatever may be the material aspects of this domination, it can be maintained only by the permanent, organized repression of the cultural life of the people concerned. Implantation of foreign domination can be assured definitively only by physical liquidation of a significant part of the dominated population.

In fact, to take up arms to dominate a people is, above all, to take up arms to destroy, or at least to neutralize, to paralyze, its cultural life. For, with a strong indigenous cultural life, foreign domination cannot be sure of its perpetuation. At any moment, depending on internal and external factors determining the evolution of the society in question, cultural resistance (indestructible) may take on new forms (political, economic, armed) in order fully to contest foreign domination.

The ideal for foreign domination, whether imperialist or not, would be to choose:

• either to liquidate practically all the population of the dominated country, thereby eliminating the possibilities for cultural resistance;

• or to succeed in imposing itself without damage to the culture of the dominated people–that is, to harmonize economic and political domination of these people with their cultural personality.

The first hypothesis implies genocide of the indigenous population and creates a void which empties foreign domination of its content and its object: the dominated people. The second hypothesis has not, until now, been confirmed by history. The broad experience of mankind allows us to postulate that it has no practical viability: it is not possible to harmonize the economic and political domination of a people, whatever may be the degree of their social development, with the preservation of their cultural personality.

In order to escape this choice — which may be called the dilemma of cultural resistance –imperialist colonial domination has tried to create theories which, in fact, are only gross formulations of racism, and which, in practice, are translated into a permanent state of siege of the indigenous populations on the basis of racist dictatorship (or democracy).

This, for example, is the case with the so-called theory of progressive assimilation of native populations, which turns out to be only a more or less violent attempt to deny the culture of the people in question. The utter failure of this “theory,” implemented in practice by several colonial powers, including Portugal, is the most obvious proof of its lack of viability, if not of its inhuman character. It attains the highest degree of absurdity in the Portuguese case, where Salazar affirmed that Africa does not exist.

This is also the case with the so-called theory of apartheid, created, applied and developed on the basis of the economic and political domination of the people of Southern Africa by a racist minority, with all the outrageous crimes against humanity which that involves. The practice of apartheid takes the form of unrestrained exploitation of the labor force of the African masses, incarcerated and repressed in the largest concentration camp mankind has ever known.

These practical examples give a measure of the drama of foreign imperialist domination as it confronts the cultural reality of the dominated people. They also suggest the strong, dependent and reciprocal relationships existing between the cultural situation and the economic (and political) situation in the behavior of human societies. In fact, culture is always in the life of a society (open or closed), the more or less conscious result of the economic and political activities of that society, the more or less dynamic expression of the kinds of relationships which prevail in that society, on the one hand between man (considered individually or collectively) and nature, and, on the other hand, among individuals, groups of individuals, social strata or classes.

The value of culture as an element of resistance to foreign domination lies in the fact that culture is the vigorous manifestation on the ideological or idealist plane of the physical and historical reality of the society that is dominated or to be dominated. Culture is simultaneously the fruit of a people’s history and a determinant of history, by the positive or negative influence which it exerts on the evolution of relationships between man and his environment, among men or groups of men within a society, as well as among different societies. Ignorance of this fact may explain the failure of several attempts at foreign domination–as well as the failure of some international liberation movements.

Let us examine the nature of national liberation. We shall consider this historical phenomenon in its contemporary context, that is, national liberation in opposition to imperialist domination. The latter is, as we know, distinct both in form and in content from preceding types of foreign domination (tribal, military-aristocratic, feudal, and capitalist domination in time free competition era).

The principal characteristic, common to every kind of imperialist domination, is the negation of the historical process of the dominated people by means of violently usurping the free operation of the process of development of the productive forces. Now, in any given society, the level of development of the productive forces and the system for social utilization of these forces (the ownership system) determine the mode of production. In our opinion, the mode of production whose contradictions are manifested with more or less intensity through the class struggle, is the principal factor in the history of any human group, the level of the productive forces being the true and permanent driving power of history.

For every society, for every group of people, considered as an evolving entity, the level of the productive forces indicates the stage of development of the society and of each of its components in relation to nature, its capacity to act or to react consciously in relation to nature. It indicates and conditions the type of material relationships (expressed objectively or subjectively) which exists among the various elements or groups constituting the society in question. Relationships and types of relationships between man and nature, between man and his environment. Relationships and type of relationships among the individual or collective components of a society. To speak of these is to speak of history, but it is also to speak of culture.

Whatever may be the ideological or idealistic characteristics of cultural expression, culture is an essential element of the history of a people. Culture is, perhaps, the product of this history just as the flower is the product of a plant. Like history, or because it is history, culture has as its material base the level of the productive forces and the mode of production. Culture plunges its roots into the physical reality of the environmental humus in which it develops, and it reflects the organic nature of the society, which may be more or less influenced by external factors. History allows us to know the nature and extent of the imbalance and conflicts (economic, political and social) which characterize the evolution of a society; culture allows us to know the dynamic syntheses which have been developed and established by social conscience to resolve these conflicts at each stage of its evolution, in the search for survival and progress.

Just as happens with the flower in a plant, in culture there lies the capacity (or the responsibility) for forming and fertilizing the seedling which will assure the continuity of history, at the same time assuring the prospects for evolution and progress of the society in question. Thus it is understood that imperialist domination by denying the historical development of the dominated people, necessarily also denies their cultural development. It is also understood why imperialist domination, like all other foreign domination for its own security, requires cultural oppression and the attempt at direct or indirect liquidation of the essential elements of the culture of the dominated people.

The study of the history of national liberation struggles shows that generally these struggles are preceded by an increase in expression of culture, consolidated progressively into a successful or unsuccessful attempt to affirm the cultural personality of the dominated people, as a means of negating the oppressor culture. Whatever may be the conditions of a people’s political and social factors in practicing this domination, it is generally within the culture that we find the seed of opposition, which leads to the structuring and development of the liberation movement.

In our opinion, the foundation for national liberation rests in the inalienable right of every people to have their own history whatever formulations may be adopted at the level of international law. The objective of national liberation, is therefore, to reclaim the right, usurped by imperialist domination, namely: the liberation of the process of development of national productive forces. Therefore, national liberation takes place when, and only when, national productive forces are completely free of all kinds of foreign domination. The liberation of productive forces and consequently the ability to determine the mode of production most appropriate to the evolution of the liberated people, necessarily opens up new prospects for the cultural development of the society in question, by returning to that society all its capacity to create progress.

A people who free themselves from foreign domination will be free culturally only if, without complexes and without underestimating the importance of positive accretions from the oppressor and other cultures, they return to the upward paths of their own culture, which is nourished by the living reality of its environment, and which negates both harmful influences and any kind of subjection to foreign culture. Thus, it may be seen that if imperialist domination has the vital need to practice cultural oppression, national liberation is necessarily an act of culture.

On the basis of what has just been said, we may consider the national liberation movement as the organized political expression of the culture of the people who are undertaking the struggle. For this reason, those who lead the movement must have a clear idea of the value of the culture in the framework of the struggle and must have a thorough knowledge of the people’s culture, whatever may be their level of economic development.

In our time it is common to affirm that all peoples have a culture. The time is past when, in an effort to perpetuate the domination of a people, culture was considered an attribute of privileged peoples or nations, and when, out of either ignorance or malice, culture was confused with technical power, if not with skin color or the shape of one’s eyes. The liberation movement, as representative and defender of the culture of the people, must be conscious of the fact that, whatever may be the material conditions of the society it represents, the society is the bearer and creator of culture. The liberation movement must furthermore embody the mass character, the popular character of the culture–which is not and never could be the privilege of one or of some sectors of the society.

In the thorough analysis of social structure which every liberation movement should be capable of making in relation to the imperative of the struggle, the cultural characteristics of each group in society have a place of prime importance. For, while the culture has a mass character, it is not uniform, it is not equally developed in all sectors of society. The attitude of each social group toward the liberation struggle is dictated by its social group toward the liberation struggle is dictated by its economic interests, but is also influenced profoundly by its culture. It may even be admitted that these differences in cultural level explain differences in behavior toward the liberation movement on the part of individuals who belong to the same socio-economic group. It is at the point that culture reaches its full significance for each individual: understanding and integration in to his environment, identification with fundamental problems and aspirations of the society, acceptance of the possibility of change in the direction of progress.

In the specific conditions of our country–and we would say, of Africa–the horizontal and vertical distribution of levels of culture is somewhat complex. In fact, from villages to towns, from one ethnic group to another, from one age group to another, from the peasant to the workman or to the indigenous intellectual who is more or less assimilated, and, as we have said, even from individual to individual within the same social group, the quantitative and qualitative level of culture varies significantly. It is of prime importance for the liberation movement to take these facts into consideration.

In societies with a horizontal social structure, such as the Balante, for example, the distribution of cultural levels is more or less uniform, variations being linked uniquely to characteristics of individuals or of age groups. On the other hand, in societies with a vertical structure, such as the Fula, there are important variations from the top to the bottom of the social pyramid. These differences in social structure illustrate once more the close relationship between culture and economy, and also explain differences in the general or sectoral behavior of these two ethnic groups in relation to the liberation movement.

It is true that the multiplicity of social and ethnic groups complicates the effort to determine the role of culture in the liberation movement. But it is vital not to lose sight of the decisive importance of the liberation struggle, even when class structure is to appear to be in embryonic stages of development

The experience of colonial domination shows that, in the effort to perpetuate exploitation, the colonizers not only creates a system to repress the cultural life of the colonized people; he also provokes and develops the cultural alienation of a part of the population, either by so-called assimilation of indigenous people, or by creating a social gap between the indigenous elites and the popular masses. As a result of this process of dividing or of deepening the divisions in the society, it happens that a considerable part of the population, notably the urban or peasant petite bourgeoisie, assimilates the colonizer’s mentality, considers itself culturally superior to its own people and ignores or looks down upon their cultural values. This situation, characteristic of the majority of colonized intellectuals, is consolidated by increases in the social privileges of the assimilated or alienated group with direct implications for the behavior of individuals in this group in relation to the liberation movement. A reconversion of minds–of mental set–is thus indispensable to the true integration of people into the liberation movement. Such reconversion — re-Africanization, in our case — may take place before the struggle, but it is completed only during the course of the struggle, through daily contact with the popular masses in the communion of sacrifice required by the struggle.

However, we must take into account the fact that, faced with the prospect of political independence, the ambition and opportunism from which the liberation movement generally suffers may bring into the struggle unconverted individuals. The latter, on the basis of their level of schooling, their scientific or technical knowledge, but without losing any of their social class biases, may attain the highest positions in the liberation movement. Vigilance is thus indispensable on the cultural as well as the political plane. For, in the liberation movement as elsewhere, all that glitters is not necessarily gold: political leaders–even the most famous–may be culturally alienated people. But the social class characteristics of the culture are even more discernible in the behavior of privileged groups in rural areas, especially in the case of ethnic groups with a vertical social structure, where, nevertheless, assimilation or cultural alienation influences are non-existent or practically non-existent. This is the case, for example, with the Fula ruling class. Under colonial domination, the political authority of this class (traditional chiefs, noble families, religious leaders) is purely nominal, and the popular masses know that true authority lies with and is acted upon by colonial administrators. However, the ruling class preserves in essence its basic cultural authority over the masses and this has very important political implications.

Recognizing this reality, the colonizer who represses or inhibits significant cultural activity on the part of the masses at the base of the social pyramid, strengthens and protects the prestige and the cultural influence of the ruling class at the summit. The colonizer installs chiefs who support him and who are to some degree accepted by the masses; he gives these chiefs material privileges such as education for their eldest children, creates chiefdoms where they did not exist before, develops cordial relations with religious leaders, builds mosques, organizes journeys to Mecca, etc. And above all, by means of the repressive organs of colonial administration, he guarantees economic and social privileges to the ruling class in their relations with the masses. All this does not make it impossible that, among these ruling classes, there may be individuals or groups of individuals who join the liberation movement, although less frequently than in the case of the assimilated “petite bourgeoisie.” Several traditional and religious leaders join the struggle at the very beginning or during its development, making an enthusiastic contribution to the cause of liberation.

But here again vigilance is indispensable: preserving deep down the cultural prejudices of their class, individuals in this category generally see in the liberation movement the only valid means, using the sacrifices of the masses, to eliminate colonial oppression of their own class and to re-establish in this way their complete political and cultural domination of the people.

In the general framework of contesting colonial imperialist domination and in the actual situation to which we refer, among the oppressor’s most loyal allies are found some high officials and intellectuals of the liberal professions, assimilated people, and also a significant number of representatives of the ruling class from rural areas. This fact gives some measure of the influence (positive or negative) of culture and cultural prejudices in the problem of political choice when one is confronted with the liberation movement. It also illustrates the limits of this influence and the supremacy of the class factor in the behavior of the different social groups. The high official or the assimilated intellectual, characterized by total cultural alienation, identifies himself by political choice with the traditional or religious leader who has experienced no significant foreign cultural influences.

For these two categories of people place above all principles our demands of a cultural nature — and against the aspirations of the people — their own economic and social privileges, their own class interests. That is a truth which the liberation movement cannot afford to ignore without risking betrayal of the economic, political, social and cultural objectives of the struggle.

Without minimizing the positive contribution which privileged classes may bring to the struggle, the liberation movement must, on the cultural level just as on the political level, base its action in popular culture, whatever may be the diversity of levels of cultures in the country. The cultural combat against colonial domination–the first phase of the liberation movement–can be planned efficiently only on the basis of the culture of the rural and urban working masses, including the nationalist (revolutionary) “petite bourgeoisie” who have been re-Africanized or who are ready for cultural reconversion. Whatever may be the complexity of this basic cultural panorama, the liberation movement must be capable of distinguishing within it the essential from the secondary, the positive from the negative, the progressive from the reactionary in order to characterize the master line which defines progressively a national culture.

In order for culture to play the important role which falls to it in the framework of the liberation movement, the movement must be able to preserve the positive cultural values of every well-defined social group, of every category, and to achieve the confluence of these values in the service of the struggle, giving it a new dimension — the national dimension. Confronted with such a necessity, the liberation struggle is, above all, a struggle both for the preservation and survival of the cultural values of the people and for the harmonization and development of these values within a national framework.

Shortlink: http://wp.me/p1eniL-11w

MACHETERO opens in New York City for a one week limited theatrical run.
WED. JUNE 12TH – TUES JUNE 19TH
CLEMENTE SOTO VELEZ
KABAYITO’S THEATER (2ND FLOOR)
107 SUFFOLK STREET
NY NY 10002
(BTWN RIVINGTON & DELANCEY)

TICKETS $10
SCREENING TIMES • 1PM • 3PM • 5PM • 7PM • 9PM
F Train to Delancey Street or J , M , or Z Trains to Essex Street.
Walk to Suffolk Street, make a left.

The Liberation Day Tapes: Breakfast In Amerika

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THE LIBERATION DAY TAPES

On April 4th 1980, Elizam Escobar, Ricardo Jiminez, Dylcia Noemi Pagan, Carmen Valentin, Adolfo Matos, Alfredo Mendez, Alicia Rodriguez, Luis Rosa, Maria Hayde Torres, Carlos Alberto Torres, and Ida Luz Rodriguez were arrested in Evanston Illinois. They were all members of the clandestine Puerto Rican organization Fuerzas Armadas de Liberacion Nacional or the Armed Forces of National Liberation. The FALN were an armed underground organization that were dedicated to ending US colonialism in Puerto Rico by any means necessary.

The FALN considered itself to be at war with the US government and didn’t recognize the US government as having any legitimate power over Puerto Rico. When they were arrested they took a ‘prisoner of war’ status as per the Geneva Convention and refused to participate in their trials outside of an opening statement declaring that they were captured combatants in an anti-colonial war and according to UN regulations were within their rights to achieve liberation in whatever means they chose. Only Alfredo Mendez eventually cooperated with the US government for a reduced sentence and induction into a witness protection program. The other members of the FALN did twenty years in prison except for Carlos Alberto Torres who did thirty years. They were all freed after an international campaign led by Puerto Ricans pressured the US government to commute their sentences.

There is still one member of the FALN who is languishing in prison and his name is Oscar Lopez Rivera. He’s been in prison since May 29th of 1981. Oscar is 70 years old, and there’s an ongoing campaign to free him. To learn more about Oscar check out his new book put out by PM Press, Between Torture And Resistance.

There are more than a few links between what happened on April 4th with those captured FALN combatants and my film MACHETERO. Dylcia Pagan, who was among those who were captured on April 4th, is one of the lead characters in the film. The film’s other lead character Pedro Taino is an amalgamation of two currently held US political prisoners Oscar Lopez Rivera and Black Unity Council member and Black Liberation Army soldier Russell Maroon Shoatz. (Check out the 11 part documentary web series ‘An Ongoing Cost To Be Free’ on Maoon that i recently did.) i chose to use this day, April 4th, to launch a new weekly web series on the songs that were used in MACHETERO that came from the NYC based Puerto Rican punk band RICANSTRUCTION. The web series kicks off this week with Breakfast In Amerika because it’s April 4th and that song is relevant to this day…

While writing the script for my film MACHETERO, i played RICANSTRUCTION’s 1st album Liberation Day for inspiration. As I went through the writing process the songs started to spill over into the script and seep into the very structure of the film. In a way it made sense that this would happen, Liberation Day was a concept album about Puerto Rico’s violent struggle for independence. MACHETERO was turning out to be the same thing shaped in part by the songs from the album.

MACHETERO’s narrative was literally shaped by Liberation Day. The songs are like a modern day Greek chorus that add another level of narration to the film. A level of narration that brings a macro perspective to the film. Breakfast in Amerika was the 8th track on Liberation Day. The first half of the song talks about the how US political dissidents quickly become US held political prisoners. The history of US political dissidents to US political prisoners is more common than you’d care to think. The Black Panther Party, the Weather Underground, the Black Liberation Army, the American Indian Movement, the FALN and many others can attest to this dynamic. Breakfast In Amerika captured this dynamic…

Soldiers sectioned off the street while I was sleeping
something ‘bout the company that I was keeping
crashing throughout the bedroom door one early morning
mashing me onto the floor without a warning
sons of bitches wanted I to give ‘em an answer
meddlers were to my surprise government gangsters
didn’t they know that I was sleeping?

Barrio in barricades without a reason
rounded up in midnight raids and shot for treason
mothers, daughters, fathers, sons placed in detention
bullets beating torture guns to cruel to mention

Sons of bitches wanted I
to tell them my mission
jury declared that I should die
for sedition
didn’t they know that I was just sleeping

The second part of the song is a call and response for Latin American nations to awaken. The call and response comes from Africa and it’s been incorporated into Puerto Rican music. Breakfast In Amerika is essentially a Salsa with distorted guitars. Joseph Rodriguez and Arturo Rodriguez talk about the ideas they were trying to incorporate in Breakfast In Amerika in the video below. Following the interview i did with them is the scene from MACHETERO that incorporated Breakfast In Amerika. The scene is of one of the lead characters Pedro Taino (played by Not4Prophet lead singer of RICANSTRUCTION and author of the lyrics to Breakfast In Amerika) getting arrested in the small hours of the morning. The song was a kind of ode on a certain level to political prisoners and the scene in MACHETERO is a reflection of that… Check it out…

Liberation Day is available on iTunes

Liberation Day by RICANSTRUCTION

MACHETERO opens in New York City for a one week limited theatrical run.

WED. JUNE 12TH – TUES JUNE 19TH
CLEMENTE SOTO VELEZ
KABAYITO’S THEATER (2ND FLOOR)
107 SUFFOLK STREET
NY NY 10002
(BTWN RIVINGTON & DELANCEY)

TICKETS $10
SCREENING TIMES • 1PM • 3PM • 5PM • 7PM • 9PM
F Train to Delancey Street or J , M , or Z Trains to Essex Street.
Walk to Suffolk Street, make a left.

Shortlink: http://wp.me/p1eniL-10N

MACHETERO As Avant Garde Musical

#nothingtobegainedhere

less than ideal art, ideas and ideals for a less than ideal world…

Category Archives: Essays

The Liberation Day Tapes – Jihad Seeds

Imperfect Cinema & MACHETERO

FOR AN IMPERFECT CINEMA
by Julio Garcia Espinosa
Havana, Cuba - December 7th, 1969

Terrorist Semantics

MOVE 35

RICANSTRUCTING VIEQUES

John Penley Anarcho Yippie Pt. 1

The Liberation Day Tapes – Pedro’s Grave

Amilcar Cabral And MACHETERO

NATIONAL LIBERATION AND CULTURE
by Amilcar Cabral

The Liberation Day Tapes: Breakfast In Amerika

MACHETERO As Avant Garde Musical

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Follow “#nothingtobegainedhere”

FOR AN IMPERFECT CINEMA
by Julio Garcia Espinosa
Havana, Cuba - December 7th, 1969

NATIONAL LIBERATION AND CULTURE
by Amilcar Cabral