I felt so vulnerable in class this week, an emotion only appropriate to feel when contemplating el tema “Máscaras.” It was more than the piece that I had made, though that carried its own share of vulnerability. I had come to class after spending the day protesting the appointment of Janet Napolitano as the UC president, my voice raw from shouting rounds of, “el pueblo unido, jamás será vencido.” I have been politically involved in radical efforts/groups since I moved to Berkeley at 17, so the 250-person group was neither the largest nor the smallest turnout I’ve seen for a campus demonstration. But it was the first political action on campus in a good while… in the air hung the sense of outrage and solidarity and optimism that is so particular to protesting over-and-against systems so much larger than one’s self. I believe strongly that Napolitano has no place in our university, that her legacies of deporting thousands of undocumented immigrants is deplorable, that she is emblematic of a systemic privatization of the university and education as a whole. But I also believe strongly that she is only a puppet (a mask?) for a system that could replace her in an instant with another. The energy being directed to forcing her resignation is so necessary to keeping hope afloat, and to standing in solidarity with undocumented students whom are personally affected by her xenophobic and racist policies. And simply, for remembering how to use your voice. However, I found myself so discouraged in realizing that even her resignation would do nothing more than irritate the ego of the capitalist and racist system that dominates the world. Or perhaps more accurately, only hardly dent the mask while maintaining the form… I spent the day moving from the intense hopefulness of “what lies beyond” and coming back again to realization of the immensity and breadth of what exists here… Hope is a mask I wear, but it shares time with weariness…
Threading this with Don Octavio Paz, with the idea of disimular, the mask of México seems to straddle this hope and weariness, too. In Paz’s analysis… “El mexicano considera la vida como lucha, concepcion que no lo distingue del resto de los hombres modernos." Always fighting to hide oneself and reveal oneself, to know oneself and to deny oneself… As the Mexican individual and collective identity forms, it’s indivisible from the competing and contradicting friction of hope and weariness. Aun así no te rajes.
This was some of the sentiment I hoped to convey through my piece- a bifurcation of self standing on either side of an uncrossable río rojo… One figure standing on empty shore, longing for another who stands amongst the lupin, who longs just as strongly. Referencing the duality of health and disability that I bestride, though this moment/post is not the space or time to elaborate… A very patient friend and housemate of mine (and another former student of Dubovsky!) Chris Lesnett taught me the basics of perspective drawing… Words are my medium of expression and place of comfort, and I find it so humbling to wander so shakily into a new kind of creativity. More vulnerability, again, but I appreciate the ongoing gentleness of the class in receiving the work I put on the walls.
Luis Fernando, tu película me rajé por completo. Thank you for baring yourself, for taking off at least that particular mask, and encouraging me to do the same. Loving oneself after trauma indeed is a revolutionary act and I have a lot of respect for the work you’re doing. Thank you.
It has been such a pleasure to listen to each of you so far… I’m learning and thinking through a lot, incited by each of you. Thank you.
In the style of Octavio Paz, I end with a contradiction to the tone of some of this piece. A quote from Arundhati Roy...
“Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”
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