Who has a right to language?

The follow is an excerpt from an interview. I found this particular piece interesting due to the interviewee's childhood offense that a Chinese man should speak better Spanish than a West Indian boy. One of the first large Chinese migrations to Panama was in the 1850s to build the Panama Railroad. Another wave came in the early 1900s for Canal construction, and from then, at different points. The largest West Indian immigration wave to Panama was the early 1900 for canal construction.

Language-- who speaks it, how they know it, how well they know it, and when they use it-- has become a central piece to my investigation. (his real name is not Sr. Fulano just fyi lol)

Me: In your home, were you raised speaking Spanish and English?

Sr. Fulano: I did not speak Spanish until I was 12 years of age. I mean and I probably knew a few words. But for conversation uh uh. When we moved from the Canal Zone to Juan Diaz, mom sent me to the store, just a small store. I was sent to get cooking wine, kerosene oil, which was just for cooking, for burning, flour, I think some eggs or something like that, and the last item I had. I was very organized at that time. Mom told me to get this stuff so I said ok. My brother Enrique, the one that follows me, we both went. I have always been somewhat arrogant, self-confident. Give me A, B, C and last give me “arena”, You know what is arena? (Ariana laughing)

Me: Sand. (Laughing)

Sr. Fulano: And the man said, I don’t sell “arena”. And that smart smart me said, "oh? What is that white stuff there eh? Eh? Eh?" And he said, "No, that is not 'arena' that is 'harina'[flour]”. So when a Chinese can tell you, can correct you, you are in trouble!

So then I recall. I went home. I got the dictionary. And I actually went through the dictionary page by page, by page, by page. And I actually spoke Spanish, conversational Spanish, for a purpose at 12 years of age.

Me: And your schooling----

All of my brothers that came from the Canal Zone, we speak Spanish with an accent. My other brothers that came up in Chorrillo, natural. And spoke English also. With an accent then. So you know… it’s good.

first impressions (notes from the field)

Aleida is from Ocú, Panama, in the province of Herrera. She left her town to pursue a better future in Panama City. Alone, a little scared, and very “campesina” (she described herself), she took a job as a domestic to help finance her educational pursuits.

“Todo el mundo sabía que yo no era de la ciudad de solo una vista. Everyone knew I was not from the city with just one look,” she confessed. No matter where she went, she felt people were always looking at her a little funny, due to her clothes, her accent or her “forma de ser”.

One day she was on the bus when a little girl and her mother sat in the seat directly next to her. The little girl was fixated on Aleida’s hair, a single black braid that hung past her waist. “ En aquellos dias, mi cabello era tan largo. Mas alla de *motioning to her butt*. Casi siempre lo ponia en una sola trenza. In those days my hair was so long. It was past my butt even and I almost always wore it in a braid.” Happy that someone in the city was finally showing her kindness, Aleida smiled at the little girl, and the little girl smiled back. “she was probably drawn to my hair because it was different from hers. The girl was 'afro-antillana' and had ‘pelo de negro’. I don’t think that hair grows as long as mine, does it?”she asked me.

The little girl continued to stare at Aleida’s braid, so Aleida pulled the braid from behind her back and put it over her shoulder to make it easier to reach. As the little girl reached out to touch Aleida’s hair, her mother slapped her hand away and harshly scolded the little girl.

Aleida said she will never forget what that mother said to the girl. “No entendí ingles, pero yo sabía que lo que me dijo la madre fue una crueldad. Siempre lo recuerdo.’ No la toques. Ella es ‘bullchip’’, I didn’t understand English, but I knew the mother said something negative about me. I will always remember. Don’t touch her. She is ‘bullchip’”

The mother grabbed the little girl by the wrist and changed seats. Aleida said she stared straight ahead in confusion. She did not want to make eye contact with anyone on the bus. She did not know exactly what happened, but she knew the mother disrespected her in some way, and in English.

A few days later she asked someone what ‘bullchip’ meant. She was pissed to learn it was “caca de vaca. (cow poo)”

That was her first encounter with English speaking afro-Antilleans in Panama City.

Anytime she tried to suggest I interview a friend or associate of hers, it was never a person of any Antillean heritage. She seemed to take delight in telling me a story (will post later) where an antillano child was much worse off than the family lead people to believe.

I asked if that first experience on the bus has had an effect on her attitude toward antillanos or the animosity that I felt from her stories.

"tu crees? eh. puede ser. que se yo. You think so? Could be. What do I know..."

links for pictures!

Not everyone has facebook, so here are my photo albums so far. I need to upload pictures from hotel washington in Colon as well as the Jazz festival. coming soon

Costa Rica : my 90 day visa ran out... so I made a not-so-quick trip to San Jose, Costa Rica. I arrived late, went out drinking, decided not to go to sleep, then went on a self-guided walking tour, and returned to Panama. This was in the first week of January. Happy New Year! lol

General Panama : you might have seen these.This is the first album I made, but I continued adding pictures to it

December in Panama : this album includes an art exhibit in rio abajo, the 20th anniversary march in memory of the US 89 invasion, Christmas, and the Christmas villages

and for newer readers,

Festival of the Black Christ : Oct. 21st, Portobelo, Panama (atlantic coast)

Fiestas Patrias en Playa Blanca and more : mostly november

in the spirit of blog updating...(E.Canela!)

There is a dead mosquito on my bathroom floor.

I had a moth incident last week where I thought I deftly sprayed the moth to death with the MangoPapaya air freshner, but it flew up in my face when I attempted to scrape its body from the ground. trickery!

Having learned a valuable lesson, I watched the mosquito closely, fearing an attack in my vulnerable moments.

No need. It was, in fact, dead.

I wonder if that mosquito is the reason why I have 3 bites on my trasero...

Remembering MLK, Jr.

In the spirit of the day, I would like to remind everyone that Martin Luther King, Jr. fought for civil rights. Too often the Civil Rights movement is re-defined as a movement for Black rights. That was part of it. That was how the main group was identified. But please believe this movement included Latinos, gays, immigrants, Whites, Asians. This was not a movement only about race. It was not a homogeneous movement to make black=white in the US. It was a social movement to bring all of our rights closer to equilibrium.

With that in mind, I would like to post a few quotations from Rev. MLK, Jr. that mean something to me. I hope you too take something from his words and continue to live your own lives remembering that black and white are not the only labels that exist in this world and the fight for social justice & civil rights continues today.
___________________________

"We will never have peace in the world until men everywhere recognize that ends are not cut off from means, because the means represent the ideal in the making, and the end in process. Ultimately, you can't reach good ends through evil means, because the means represent the seed and the end represents the tree."

"Many people fear nothing more terribly than to take a position which stands out sharply and clearly from the prevailing opinion. The tendency of most is to adopt a view that is so ambiguous that it will include everything and so popular that it will include everybody.
Not a few men who cherish lofty and noble ideals hide them under a bushel for fear of being called different."

"A religion true to its nature must also be concerned about man's social conditions....Any religion that professes to be concerned with the souls of men and is not concerned with the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that strangle them, and the social conditions that cripple them is a dry-as-dust religion."

"Direct action is not a substitute for work in the courts and the halls of government. Bringing about passage of a new and broad law by a city council, state legislature, or the Congress, or pleading cases before the courts of the land, does not eliminate the necessity for bringing about the mass dramatization of injustice in front of a city hall.
Indeed, direct action and legal action complement one another. When skillfully employed, each becomes more effective."

"I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, quality and freedom for their spirit. I believe that what self-centered men have torn down, other-centered men can build up."


"All too many of those who live in affluent America ignore those who exist in poor America. In doing so, the affluent Americans will eventually have to face themselves with the question that Eichmann chose to ignore: How responsible am I for the well-being of my fellows? To ignore evil is to become an accomplice to it."

my piece in AU magazine

I googled myself to see what new and crazy personal information can be found on the internet, and cam across this story about me and other AU merit award winners. I was asked a few questions in my first few weeks here in Panama and asked to submit a colorful picture. I hadn't done much by way of site seeing in my first month, so I submitted a picture from the festival of the Black Christ. Vida had issues using my camera so they were all blurry. Ms. Frank said the photo quality was not up to printing standards and I never heard from her again

surprise!

Apparently I made the cut, but as a web exclusive. That's nice I guess. I sound like a cornball lol but she asked about advice to younger students who might be nervous about going abroad!!

ok. finishing off a very busy week with interviews. Wednesday's interview took well over 4 hours. The interview itself was 3.5 (!!!!) but with all the starts and stops it was an all day affair. That is tiring.

Today, first one at 10:00am. Well, it is more of a meeting than an interview. Wish me luck! Today is a completely Spanish day. (usually my interviews are in English or Spanglish)

Have a wonderful weekend.

el 9 de enero (en Colon)

I did not realize until today that the mural I saw at the university in 2005 (above) was based on an actual photo from the 1964 riots (below)!!

prensa.com Panamá - Panorama

Here an an article in today's prensa about the martyrs in Colon. To be honest, I had no idea the first vicitims were in Colon or that the city had any role in the events of 9 de enero at all. I will contact this journalist and see if I too an interview some of the people she spoke with for the story.

I am embarassed that I lost track of the date. I am blaming that Costa Rica trip which put me out of sorts, but also my new computer. I have been busily trying to transfer files and programs from one to the other. The software migrations are the most taxing. All of the bookmarks and such-- is there a way to transfer those??

ok back to el 9 de enero, as this is one of the events I am asking people to describe.

CLICK HERE for a website that has pictures, quotes, and stories that ran in Life magazine in January 1964

In summary (and I admit I need to double check facts. this is off the top of my head here!):

The Canal Zone was a US territory embedded in the country of Panama and was always a point of contention. In 1947 the Filos-Hines treaty (which would have extended the use of 140 US military bases and sites used in WWII in Panama) was defeated in the national assembly. In 1958 Eisenhower passed a law (or decree?) that says the US and Panamanian flags can fly at certain locations. Cuban Revolution in 1959 makes US nervous and encites many in Latin America. On Panamanian independence day, 1959, a group of students attempt to march into the Zone to fly the Panamanian flag, but US troops turn them away. In 1963 Kennedy passed a law (or decree?) which gave Panama the right to fly their flag alongside the US flag at all non-military sites in the Canal Zone.

Well. After Kennedy was killed, the Canal Zone governor decided that rather than fly both flags, NO flags would be flown. Americans/Zonians did not like this and started flying the American flag at different locations in the Zone. On January 9th, a group of Panamanian students marched to Balboa High School in the Canal Zone with the intention fo flying the Panamanian flag. They were met by Zone students and police, pushed back and the flag was torn in the process. From this point, fights broke out, police open fired, word spread, more people, both Zonian and Panamanian, came to the scene. Basically, riots broke out. People were killed, property damaged-- for multiple days. In declassified documents, (which I have not read) they say extremely excessive force was used by Zonian police force. I have no trouble believing that, but I just wanted to qualify that I have not read that for myself, I just remember reading that from a secondary source.

In the end, 21 (?) Panamanians died (I have no idea if this includes the 3 from Colon) and 4 American soldiers were killed.

9 de enero= dia de los martires/day of the martyrs.

INTERESTING (or not): It is prohibited to sell alcohol on this day.

here is the link (click me!) for Ruben Blades' song about the event. Click here! for lyrics.

I am up and running again!

project: I purposely took a break for the holidays, which worked out well because I got sick. I had a cold for about two weeks and an ugly crusty case of pink eye. I missed my paid vacation, but hey, I can't win it all. I had a nice Christmas Eve, Christmas day, and New Year's Eve with my family. Then, Panama's laws decided it would be in my best interest to run to Costa Rica and come back to renew my visa. After an 18 hour bus ride, I spent 20 hours in San Jose, then a 16 hour bus ride back to Panama. More about that later. That deserves its own entry. Interviews will re-commence next week!

technologically, I have a new computer! I was trying to wait until I got to the US but my computer became worse and worse until the desktop stopped loading and I had to manually open programs (ctl+atl+delete, new task, find program in the menu). As you might imagine it was difficult and annoying to really get anything accomplished. Thank God for my external harddrive so I was at least mentally at ease. I know all of my files are safe.

I decided on the Asus ul-50vt. Really I wanted the ul-80vt because it is a little smaller, but it was also more expensive. No point in paying more for less. So far, so good. (it has been less than 24 hours). Now I have to learn all of the ins and outs of windows 7!

good people of the world, please do not steal my laptop. Thank you.