Nuevo Gringo

Tuesday, November 26, 2002

It is interesting to notice that an important group of young Mexican writers work on distant environments, not related to Mexico. I am thinking in young and successful writers such as Pablo Soler Frost, which novels are situated in exotic and foreign environments, as ancient battles or European countries; Mario Bellatin, who works in rare ambients some located in Austria or Japan; Jorge Volpi, whose most successful novel is situated in Germany; Juan José Rodríguez is working in a novel about Pompeii. I think in the romantic movement in the XIX century, when artists presented their works in remote environments, like Persia or the Far East as a response to an adverse reality. This de-territorialisation is helping to construct a new identity of young Mexican Literature, far from a simplistic and folkloric look of Mexican art.
posted by Salvador 1:27 PM

Monday, November 18, 2002

Just two verses in spanish from a Cuban poet Eugenio Florit:

Siempre es triste volver
pero volvemos.

It is always sad to come back
but we're back.
posted by Salvador 4:58 PM

The word "naco" is indeed a term related to class. It is also a term widely spread due to media (a comedy showman used it some years ago in a TV program). Naco is offensive, but it talks badly from the person who uses it (discriminatory). Normally it is used more in jokes, or in a wealthy but not very educated social environment.

In Mexico city, the weather is very different from Merida (I guess it is so in the rest of your cities). Ximena and I went to a wedding party in Cuernavaca. Differences between cities are also differences in the routes, in the way the transit is structured, in the space we inhabit and the reach of sight. Mexico, for instance, has a very caotic sky, full of billboards and painted with a yellow-dusty pollution layer. Transit is always partial for us; we use a very restricted route from the studio to our house, to the university, to specific services, living in a small city immersed in one of the largest cities in the world (if not the largest). Going back home is always recovering our usual routes, our limits rediscovered.
posted by Salvador 4:49 PM

Friday, November 15, 2002

Friday night and you've all left Rosalie and Fred to finish up the San Juan. We went to Amaro's for our last group-of-two meal. I had the stuffed squash and Rosemarie had the eggplant and we washed it down with cokas. During our conversation we also briefly mentioned the word "naco" which I've been trying to figure out in terms of "class." Can anyone help with a definition of this term? Someone said it might be an offensive term, but I don't mean to offend anyone. Just looking for translational clarity. My last email from Calle 55.
posted by Fred 6:46 PM

Wednesday, November 13, 2002

Talking about frontera, there is a significative art show, every two years, in Tijuana, at the north-western border. This show is basically dedicated to in-site pieces, which obviously contemplate border issues. A friend of mine, Gustavo Artigas, developed an interesting piece for the show. It was a racquetball using the border wall as the main wall. It was very descriptive of the relationships between Mexico and the US.
posted by Salvador 1:33 PM

Wednesday, November 06, 2002

Frontera
I want to say "borderline" or "border crossing" - some remnant of the state story. At the same time, "frontera" can be a "pry" word, to pry open, or reopen itself, to recuperate some of the friction behind the idea of "border." Gloria Anzaldua's poem, "To live on the Borderland means you" -

are neither hispana indea negra española
ni gabacha eres mestiza, mulata, half-breed
caught in the crossfire between camps
while carrying all five races on your back
not knowing which sides to turn to, run from

I notice, in my dictionary definition, that “fronterizo” and “frontero” are adjectives that include the notion of “opposite” and “facing.” For me, as a Canadian, those connotations are stronger than our usual, until recently, softer and sometimes invisible southern border. “They” and “Us” are pretty much alike and the differences seem minor and transparent.

I’ve always thought of Mexico’s northern border with the US as much more of an edge of defference and contention – i.e. defended and patrolled (from what?). And, whereas Canadians imagine only that single southern border, I wonder how Mexicans juggle their three borders as either sites of opposition or complicity. Certainly the imagination of the “new gringo” has recently converted some of the opposition and imbalance along the northern border to something more digestible, culturally and economically, as Canada has always.

I’m interested in what further senses others in our “exchange” might offer regarding this term “frontera.”

posted by Fred 5:58 PM

Friday, November 01, 2002

A "contact zone" lexicon generated primarily around the Canada-Mexico Photography/Writing exchange 2002-2003.
This blog is intended to highlight some of the language (both linguistic and photographic) that the participants encounter during this Merida/Banff Proyecto de intercambio.
Fred Wah and Salvador Alanis have initiated this blog as means to address instances of the activity and articulation across culture and language to which they and the other participants in the exchange might wish to draw attention.
As artists we are interested in playing within what Mary Louise Pratt has coined the "contact zone": "the space of colonial encounters, the space in which peoples geographically and historically separated come into contact with each other and establish ongoing relations...in terms of copresence, interaction, interlockng understandings and practices..."
This dialogue seeks to reveal differences and intersections in the image-text noise Mexicans and Canadians experience as they engage a world of hybridity and conversion.
We've named this blog "Nuevo Gringo," a term one of our colleagues, Juan Jose Rodriguez, has offered as a description of his own generation, faced, as it is, with adapting to the media and corporate colonialism of the US. Since nothing seems particularly out of place anymore, perhaps "Nuevo Gringo" is an identity we norteamericanos might take some measure of.
posted by Fred 6:33 PM