Wed, 23 May 2012 08:59:07 -0800WeeblyWed, 19 Jan 2011 10:52:11 -0800http://www.imagefactorybelize.com/1/post/2011/01/andy-palacio-globalization-and-central-americanization-of-the-garifuna-people.html Wednesday 19 January 2010
Image Factory, Belize City

Andy Palacio –
Globalization and Central Americanization of the Garifuna People

By Dr. Joseph Palacio

Introduction

            It is now three years since our brother Andy Vivien Palacio made his transition from this earth on his way to Seiri, the final resting place for all souls, according to the belief of our Garifuna ancestors. It is certainly timely to reflect on some of the profound impacts that Andy left us in Belize and especially the Garifuna people in Central America and further in the diaspora. There are two related themes that I would like to elaborate with you this morning, both of which were dear to Andy as he promoted his music within the wider world. They are globalization and Central Americanization. I am certain that had he been still alive he would be pushing his involvement in these two fields. I will try to do justice to them in a way that he would have approved.

Globalization and Central Americanization

            There is no need to start with a definition of globalization and Central Americanization.  But there is a need for us in Belize to understand that both are referring primarily to a change of attitude about ourselves and our regional and international environment and commitment. Globalization does not mean flying to Miami or Houston and looking forward to migrating to North American cities where thousands of Belizeans are now found. Similarly, Central Americanization does not mean crossing the border to Melchor de Mencos or Puerto Barrios to purchase consumer goods at lower prices, especially at Christmas time.

            Globalization means taking our place as active players at the world stage; becoming the best that we can be; and proving to the whole world that we are the best – that we are numero uno! Similarly, Central Americanization means showing to our neigbours that we have a commanding presence in this subregion and that we are leaders in areas where we want to be. In the rest of my presentation I will give a brief profile of younger Andy as an active player in Central America. I then focus on the Garifuna nation’s historical experience of globalization in the island of St. Vincent in the Eastern Caribbean and subsequently in Central America. Finally, I return to how Andy has championed the Garifuna culture firstly in Central America and secondly at the pinnacle of world music achievement.

The Central Americanization of Young Andy

            We start with a spotlight on Andy and the theme of Central Americanization. Everybody has heard the story that it was in Nicaragua that Andy first came face to face with the slow but surely reversible death of the Garifuna language. I quote from writings on the jacket of the world acclaimed Watina CD. “… he travelled to Nicaragua and met an old man who was among the last in the country to still speak the Garifuna language. The elder couldn’t believe his ears when he heard the young Andy greet him in Garifuna, crying out, “Are you telling the truth?” Andy replied, “Yes, my uncle; I am Garifuna just like you.” And the man embraced him and would not let go. He could not imagine that someone so young could speak Garifuna, having thought that the language would perish with him.”

            What was Andy doing in Nicaragua at that time when most in his peer group would have been migrating to the United States? He was working with a cadre of young volunteers teaching reading and writing to Creole-speakers along the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua. He was part of a team of Belizeans lending much needed support and solidarity to the government and people of Nicaragua. Nicaragua realized that Belize had some talents that it needed and asked us for help. In return we gladly obliged and Andy, along with a few others, was the beneficiary.

            Before going to Nicaragua Andy’s Central Americanization had started in his home village of Barranco. As a transboundary community in Belize a short distance away from Guatemala, Barranco at that time did much trading in fish with buyers from the neigbouring towns of Puerto Barrios and Livingston. Andy’s father was a fisherman who relied on a good part of his annual income from selling corned fish to his customers during the Lenten season. A friend of Andy’s confirms that one of his first recollections of Andy was hearing him bargaining in Spanish with a fish buyer from Puerto Barrios.

             Facility in the Spanish language came to young Andy from the scores of visitors from the neigbouring Guatemalan province of Izabal, including his own close relatives, who came regularly to Barranco. He would have heard it from the radio stations that beamed their broadcast to southern Belize. It is not surprising, therefore, that he early developed his skills to sing in three languages – Garifuna, English, and Spanish. From these examples that I have given Andy’s early introduction to our surrounding portion of Latin America was certainly no different than what continues to take place among young persons living today in the Toledo, Cayo, Corozal, and Orange Walk Districts. Further below we will answer the question what transboundary experience has to do with excellence at the global level.

Globalization – the St. Vincent Experience

            Let us make some quantum leaps backwards from Andy Palacio in Barranco to the larger context of the Garifuna nation, more especially its formation within the Eastern Caribbean during the second half of the 18th century. We will show that globalization has always been at the core of the Garifuna experience. At that time the small island of St. Vincent, the home territory of the Garifuna, was the crown jewel of the Caribbean, for whose control the two most powerful empires on earth were vying – the French and the British. For over 150 years the fierce Caribs had held the Eastern Caribbean at bay from European domination and the centre of Carib domain was the island of St. Vincent.

            When there were desperate efforts to expand the profitable sugar trade within the Caribbean, only the Eastern Caribbean had new lands that could be converted into sugar plantations. St. Vincent had some of the richest volcanic soils in the subregion. It had been the most populated during the pre-contact period. And it gave the most problems for subjugation. The Caribs and their progeny, the Garifuna, became experts in playing the two imperial powers one against the other – doing this through negotiations, fighting, yielding territory when necessary, and when possible re-bounding. The image of the Caribs as primitive cannibals wielding bows and arrows was far away from the truth toward the end of the 1700s.

Central Americanization of the Garifuna Nation

            Because these experiences inexorably drew the Garifuna into westernization, the Garifuna exiles from St. Vincent arrived in Central America in 1797 as a virtually globalized nation.  They had acquired applied expertise in diplomacy; many spoke English and French and quickly learned Spanish in Central America. They were among the best fighters, soldiers, and sailors. Given the relatively low priority that the Spaniards gave to their Caribbean coast of Central America, they relied on the Garifuna to implement the sundry tasks of empire building, such as constructing and maintaining forts, growing and producing food, and starting new settlements. The reality of the Central Americanization of the Garifuna up to this day stems from the fact that along the Caribbean coast of the mainland we make up the largest bloc of black people from Yucatan to Panama.

            From the Belize side, the Garifuna people have been among the most influenced by Central America, pulling along a Belize that has always been ambivalent of its Central American identity. The Garifuna who came from Honduras and Guatemala to settle in Belize often went back and forth, forever putting a stamp on themselves as a nation across borders.

            On exhausting the mahogany on Belizean territory by the early 1800s, British loggers jumped over to the Mosquitia in the border area of Nicaragua and Honduras, bringing along Garifuna workers from Belize, many of whom had originated in the same parts of Honduras.

            The Roman Catholic Church, which has the largest proportion of its adherents from among the Garifuna people, established its large scale presence in Belize from Guatemala through the intermediary of the Garifuna. The first Jesuit priest to start a mission in Belize, Fr. Genon, came this way after working with the Garifuna in the Puerto Barrios/Livingston area. He became convinced that he should dedicate himself to working with them but the only concession that he received from the church was to found the mission in Punta Gorda in 1861. As the only resident priest, for years he travelled bringing the sacraments from Barranco to Dangriga until the church was able to send more priests to assist him. For a long time the Catholic Church was called the “Spanish” church in Belize in contrast to other sects that were not Spanish-speaking. The disproportionate representation of Garifuna among the clergy is a reflection of the prolonged association it has had with the Garifuna people.

Andy Palacio’s Globalization

            We have already seen that Andy’s exposure in southern Belize was greatly influenced by the neigbouring parts of Guatemala and Honduras. We can add that his success in Cancun, Yucatan also helped in pushing him toward taking his rightful place as a global musical icon. In the end Andy P was an artist promoting his Garifuna culture whether it originated from Belize or other parts of Central America. He no longer saw Belize separate from Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua. He saw them as all parts of a globalized world. He drew his inspiration, the soul that drove him along, from Central America. But the exciting challenge for Andy was to massage the source of the inspiration, give it his own unique style and then project it on the world stage. It is the work of the consummate artist.

            A brief overview of the work he did on his Watina CD will show his indebtedness to Central America. From the twelve songs on Watina at least three were based in Honduras and at least another two could have also taken place there. Watina [1], Miami [3], and Sin Precio [4] were certainly rooted in Honduras. Watina [1] is the lament of a man refused a ride because of being black and appearing to be poor. Miami [3] is a land claims protest song about a man being prevented from visiting a tourism development project along the north coast of Honduras. Sin Precio [4] is a woman’s cry against her poverty and the ill repute she is consequently suffering at the hands of her community. The themes in these songs could be found in any rural community – whether Garifuna or not. Through the Watina CD Andy projected them onto the world stage, giving them a global seal of approval as Garifuna music.

Conclusion

            What is my final message on Andy P within the context of globalization and Central Americanization? Andy was a perfectionist. His band members had difficulty keeping up with him as he kept striving for that perfect sound. His aim was to start with concrete situations on the ground and to move them ever higher to reach a world appeal. He took his inspiration from his Garifuna culture based in Central America and moulded it to reach the highest level of excellence. And the world responded giving him the accolades that he truly deserved. Are there still some budding Andy P’s out there in Barranco, Seine Bight, Hopkins, Livingston, La Ceiba, Trujillo, and Plaplaya? I think that his humble answer would be in that inimitable smile of his “I tried to show them how to do it and I hope they have learned.”

            There was another aspect of artistic expression that Andy was painfully aware of. It is the political dimension that is so essential to enable the artist to produce to his best ability. The political directorate can stifle or empower the artist. And – more than we often realize – Andy did pay the price of not receiving political support when he most needed it. But did he migrate to the greener fields abroad? No, he battened down and tried various sources of livelihood while working his music as the opportunities presented themselves through such friends as Ivan Duran. So, we can say that he achieved the global achievements despite not always receiving political support. The lesson for us is that our artists should infuse into our governance system their rightful political space within our democratic framework. In the 1960s and 1970s the refrain was “power to the people”. We can now change that to “power to the artist among the people”. Thank you.

]]>Wed, 30 Dec 2009 12:57:43 -0800http://www.imagefactorybelize.com/1/post/2009/12/the-1st-andy-palacio-lecture.html ART + CULTURE
WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO?
Decade 2 / Century 21

The Andy Palacio Lecture

By Yasser Musa
Bliss Centre for the Performing Arts, Belize City, Belize
Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009 10:00am

Good morning welcome to the first Andy Palacio lecture.

Why the Andy Palacio lecture?
We are living in the ‘glocal.’ Here at the end of 2009, on the birthday of an artist who dared to become relevant, we must be grateful, thankful and never forgetful.

The Andy Palacio Lecture is a platform for the expression of new ideas in culture says the press release. I wrote that line, so I feel responsible to clarify what it means.

Andy dreamed big, stayed serious and transformed into a captivating and inspirational human being. Today I want to zoom in on what I believe is Andy’s greatest contribution to Belize. As an artist Andy spent most of his life in the “acceptable” formula of the Punta Rock art form. Then he entered a period of real collaboration, exploration, experimentation and ultimately re-definition. He ejected from the stereotype of his own identity, leaping into a soul searching mode, pulled the plug on his art and started new. With Wátina Andy led a team of people into unknown territory to a place where the world stage was never too big for the boy from Barranco.

Wátina is not just a music album, but an awakening. In the 1990’s KREM radio, then a fresh, new and emerging media had a slogan “Play Big Bouy.” That was a national call to action, a provocative chant to awaken the expression of the Belizean people. Wátina is the greatest manifestation of the Play Big mantra, so brilliant, bold and beautiful.

Artist speak – finding mentors
I am going to be as frank as possible. Many times I’ve spoken with masked words, but now that I am becoming comfortable in my political after life and having drunk enough green tea to develop a new immunity, I stand here with some pressing thoughts, and the hope of a new generation in front of me.

In the next ten years artists will have to fight for themselves. Nothing new, yes, but the fight must reach beyond the scale of their art process and venture into the social, the political, and the educational. We can’t hide behind the work. In August 2008 at the landings 9 forum the artists of Central America and the Caribbean declared in unity that we must become warriors.

Artists must spend more time reading, learning about the world of science, technology and art, leaping across their media, collaborating and integrating with each other developing the new systems of tomorrow. While watching 60 minutes this past weekend I learned that life can exist without the sun, or the energy of the sun. An underwater explorer Robert Ballard, known for finding the Titanic, recently discovered life forms  beyond the reach of light many thousands of feet below the ocean floor. Science is hard work, so is art.

Artists must find mentors. People they can rely on. Talk to. Bounce the truth, back and forth, like ping pong. Mentors are like living libraries, sponges of experience where you can go to calibrate your ideas and concepts. Artists must become thinkers who can act.

Artists should wake up early in the morning. Wake up with the fishermen, the garbage collectors and folks heading to market. At this time of the day the air feels like a thousand kisses deep.

Some random quotes to warm up
“we live in constant delusion. Not illusion.” – Katie Usher, facebook updater

“Computers make wasting time more easy.” – Andy Rooney, 60 Minutes, 29 Nov.09

“The internet is more revolutionary than originally thought.”  - Bill Gates, Meet The Press, NBC, Sunday November 29, 2009

“Low expectations are the new racism.” – Rev. Al Sharpton, Meet the Press, Sun Nov 8/2009

The WORK of artists
Today, feeling Andy’s spirit and his call, “Watina” I turn to my fellow artists to offer some ideas about the course we could take over the next ten years. I have a personal stake in this too. By the end of the next ten years I will be 50 years old and as the poet Federico Garcia Lorca said:

All Clocks deceive us.
Time at last has horizons…

 In Belize cultural development is in crisis because of a multiplicity of forces that distort our national aspirations and desires. This crisis did not begin yesterday, but has been marinating and maturing over decades. If we are to create change we must accept that we are people that “like to fool ourselves.”

I love the MEDIA!
For over two decades we’ve blamed the media, the government and cultural leaders for our social and cultural dysfunction. Ok blame them, but realize that the media, the government and the cultural leaders are themselves caught in the process of transformation trying to see where they will land.

The media is not just a mechanical monster that controls us, but something that we consciously embrace, accept and propagate.

Face it. We need new reference points. When helicopters land on the top of hospitals they are guided by a circle marking the spot, the point of reference. We need to make a new circle, a target and aim to hit it. I am still thinking about this idea of new reference points, but it has to do with a better space, electronic or physical, from where we would create, distribute and consume cultural activity.

 “The internet is the new template of our time.”
Unfortunately, in Belize, the state and enterprise control the access and use of the internet. They push a pornographic concept of data and information unto our nervous systems. Our High School, Junior College and University students are prisoners to the “text” mafia, the instant messaging drama and the double and triple up syndrome. Like crack heads they anxiously wait for the day when they can get more bundles of “text”. But all this texting is not making them into anything useful. Are they writing better sentences in their English classes because of all their Smart practice? NO. Don’t panic, “things will work themselves out.” These are just the beginning seconds of a transformative moment.

Access to the internet must become a right. Once we accept it as a right we won’t be kowtowing to telecommunication providers to bless us with access to “their” system. The state must regulate the internet, and organize access to it in terms of essential services like vaccines, school books…etc. The internet is the contemporary backbone of our need for knowledge and information.

The Ministry of Digital Defense
We will soon need a super Ministry of digital defense. This Ministry will have to protect its citizens from the toxins of hyper pornography, invasion of personal privacy and distortion of real data by the likes of Wikipedia, to name one glaring example.

The real job of the new Ministry of Digital Defense will be to properly plan and organize the nation’s records – births, deaths, social security numbers, land titles, health data, education statistics, agricultural production….

Notice I make no mention of economic records. The old way of measuring a nation’s economic health via GDP and GNP is a joke. The new measurements must include how many students are moving from primary to secondary school, how many children die from poor health care, how many farmers went bankrupt because of deviant banking practices, and the pain of collapsing mortgages.

Art and Cultural Education are now within our orbit
One of the greatest failures of the cultural bureaucracy since Independence is that too many citizens have been locked out of the production, and participation in the arts.

How can we expect our children to develop creatively, and think creatively if they have no contact to art and cultural activity?

It is within this generation’s grasp to include the arts as a forceful part of the program of learning in our schools. We continue to make excuses that we don’t have time or resources.

The truth is that all it takes is a pencil and some pieces of paper. The greatest resource is the imagination of our children. If we just let them write, draw, sing, dance, dramatize, and think we would see a new generation of citizens bold, confident and caring about community and society.

In the 2nd decade of the 21century emphasis must be placed on social studies, cultural studies and history as a merger to a meaningful understanding of self, society and civility.

We continue to insult the population with lies and myths about the past. We show apathy, apprehension and even indifference toward the teaching of African and Maya History. I call on the next generation to search your souls and come to clarity of thought about what we should be learning and thinking in terms of history.

Lessons from landings
From 2004 to 2008 I participated with over 70 artists from the Caribbean and Central America on a set of exhibits from Havana to Taipei, Washington to Cokal, Mexico. This has been the greatest experience of my artistic education because in a real way I connected with like minded individuals who are aspiring/strugging/working at being/becoming artists.

I quickly learned that:

1)   To borrow a line, “The global art world is run by a system that has nothing to do with us.” For those younger artists reading this, let me save you some years. The issue is about Belize and your courage to make it better, not about the flicker of Face Book and YouTube. 

2)   That we should not be satisfied with the “left over crumbs of the old empires.” I feel now with more time to reflect on those landings years that we were able to resist comodification and enter a new space, a vision larger that ourselves.

3)  We were able to work through some generational conflict, coming to terms sometimes with astonishment that we are responsible for the path we take. That in this age of vampirism, we must resist the deteriorating pressure on our creative state. That shaping identity is constant, changing and still possible, even if we are under the wet blanket of indifference, laziness and apathy.

A few cultural concepts for the next 10 years
1.  Create projects involving new media – cell phone video competitions, text messaging poetry contests, arts retreats for young people, new art and music festivals..

2.  Develop a contemporary art space, a small area for new and innovative art projects

3. Focus on books and e-books. Encourage writing and performing contests

4.  Place new emphasis on the dramatic arts

Establish a skills centre for craft making and economic arts manufacturing. Collaborate with Mexico in this area. They are one of the world leaders in craft making and connecting this practice to a modern tourist industry. 

5.    “Content Management is the biggest issue in culture going forward. What is content? Face book profiles, YouTube videos, cell phone videos, flip camera videos, nano videos digital picshas, blogs, vlogs... get to some kind of unified harmonized digital content creation and dissemination platform, promoting a real time living history log requiring access to greater bandwidth, server farms, unitary interchange platforms and protocols to float Shit that is blue-toothable, uploadable, hyper-textable, because at the end of the aughts the greatest shift in the past decade has been the ability to instantaneously create and disseminate content and that has to be harnessed as a kinda ontogenic survey from the clarion to today, prelapsarian to proto-post.”

A call for more discussions centered on cultural action
Within the next ten years we need to sit together and discuss the following topics and more and make a simple map of where we want to go

1.            On music

2.            On art education

3.            On culture policy

4.            On the museum of the future

5.            Online cultural activity

6.            On reading and writing

7.            On video, photography and other visual arts

Some references used to develop text:

·                     Lorca, Federico Garcia Suites, originally published by Sun & Moon Press in 1988
·                     Mehmedinovic, Semezdin Nine Alexandrias, translated from Bosnian by Ammiel Alcalay, Pocket Poets Press, 2003
·                     Re: Delay, email from Joan Duran, Thursday November 26, 2009 6:11pm
·                     No Subject, email from Jules Vasquez, Wednesday November 25, 2009 6:41am
·                     Eriksen, Thomas Tyrany of the Moment: Fast and Slow Time in the Information Age, Pluto Press, 2001
·                     Conversation with Kate Perez, at the Image Factory, Belize City, November 27, 2009 9:30am
·                     Conversation, with Ivan Duran, at the Image Factory, Belize City Friday, November 27, 2009 1:40pm
·                     Conversation with Gilvano Swasey, at the Image Factory, Belize City Friday, November 27, 2009 , various times
·                     Younger Than Jesus, The Generation Book, New Museum, New York, Steidl, 2009
·                     An Author Without Borders: William T. Vollmann by Charles McGrath, article, The New York Times, Wednesday July 29, 2009
·                     20 Years of Parkett, The Encounter With Reality, page 109, No. 70, 2004
·                     Economist, The Life and views of Ayn Rand, Capitalism’s Martyred Hero, page 95, October 24, 2009
·                     Klein, Naomi NO LOGO, Knopfm 2000
·                     Robert Ballar, underwater explorer on 60 Minutes report by Lara Logan, November 29, 2009
·                    Dixon, Anklin The House on the Cliff, The Hardy Boys # 2, Grossett and Dunlap, 1987

 

 ]]>Wed, 30 Dec 2009 09:29:12 -0800http://www.imagefactorybelize.com/1/post/2009/12/first-post.htmlNext year will be #15 for us at the Image Factory. We are in a small crisis of vision. Technology is crashing into us and we feel helpless sometimes. Communication has radically changed. The community is under stress. So how do we proceed?

Is there still room for art in the 2nd decade of the 21st century?
Who will emerge to take on the production of new works or art?
How will we engage each other?

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