Oct 1, 2020
Journal #6
So I was gonna write this by hand at first, and then my brain was like lol no girl.
Day One — September 24th.
Today in class we finished with chapter 5, the chapter on Philoctetes. Boy this was a fun chapter wasn’t it. I think I found the story of Philoctetes most interesting because its not one that has really been adapted again, has it? Alot of stories end up getting retold right, like Romeo and Juliet, Lysistrata, etc. But I’ve never really seen someone adapt the general plot of Philoctetes, so reading it, with the context it was written a super long time ago but never re-used, was an interesting, yet foreign read to me. Honestly, if I were Philoctetes I would’ve just shot Odyseuss and been done with it. Oh you think I’m disgusting because of my leg wound? Here, have one!
In terms of groups of people who have been dehumanized, boy could I just go on forever. But, I did just finish an assignment on indigenous genocide during the American colonial period so we’re gonna talk about that. First off, here’s a super cool timeline I made! Not really, I started crying around the second massacre of Alaskan natives, but it's cool.
Ok so I wanted to share this timeline with y’all for two reasons. One, to demonstrate the oppression and dehumanization of the indigenous people and how we got to this point, and to also demonstrate the way that I attempt to make their humanity visible again. Also yes, I’m totally counting my timeline as part of my word count, considering I actually extended it a bit an elaborated a TON on my points, in order to fulfill the first point of the assignment. Do you know how much work I put into it? Naw chile.
So if you click through the slides, there’s a couple of important things I did. The first, which you’ll notice in the first slide, is I chose to only use indigenous or indigenous approved sources. Why? Because a major part of the dehumanization of indigenous people has been the erasure of their history in order to mask their suffering. I wanted to make sure the same thing didn’t happen when I talked about their history, so I made sure to use sources that represented the reality of what happened to the indigenous, not the fake history made up to cover the tracks of Americans. The second thing I did was I focused only on the actual genocide of the indigenous, not their other interactions with Americans. This is because other interactions, like negotiating treaties, have often been used to excuse American behavior, and cast doubt on the treatment of the indigenous. Well how bad could the Americans have been, they signed treaties and the indigenous still kept killing them. False, the Americans signed bullsh*t treaties, with stupid conditions, and then violated them. So I just didn’t want to give them that kind of clout, period.
What I’m trying to say, through the example of my timeline, is that the best way I can help the indigenous reclaim their humanity is by making sure to portray their history accurately and decolonizing my concepts of history. Because boy, did my high school history classes not prepare me for everything that happened to the indigenous, and I’m pretty sure my elementary and middle school history classes deliberately held back this kind of information in favor of a pro-America narrative. Huh, it’s almost like propaganda, isn’t it?
Day 2. September 27th.
Okay, so while normally I talk about the assignment for the new chapter and the actual class, but I actually want to take this time to talk about my personal thoughts on the story in terms of my own heritage (Colombia). I really did not like this story. Not because of its content but because of the overwhelming amount of machismo that reminds me of my mother’s country entirely too much. Now don’t get me wrong, I love Colombia. Its an absolutely incredible place to be and there’s something huge to be said for a city (Cali) where everyone feels like your aunt or uncle. Now that being said, Colombia has some really fucked up bits, especially when it comes to misogyny. Its absolutely impossible to exist in Colombia as a queer person, even less as an AFAB person who still, unfortunately, presents as female but wants to present otherwise. The standards that women are held to are terrifying frankly, and the same can be said for men there. Its almost built into their personalities in such a way that doesn’t seem harmful at first, like oh that’s just the culture, but then gets really bad if you deviate. Oh, and to be female in Colombia, by yourself? Absolutely terrifying. Scary as hell. You think its bad walking home by yourself in a major US city? Try walking around Cali by yourself at any point in the day. There’s always fear there, in the back of your mind, an uncertainty that rolls in the bottom of your stomach. And honestly, it probably wouldn’t have gotten to be so bad, if it weren’t for the concept of machismo in Latin culture.
Machismo is a term for the masculine pride that exists in Latin cultures, similar to the concept of toxic masculinity in America, except worse, but in Latin America, it usually means femicide, objectification, and a whole lot of rape. Not to mention a culture where men feel like they constantly have to prove their physical strength to be the best, which combined with higher rates of poverty and gangs, means a lot of fighting, a lot of rivalries. Think of the Crips vs. Bloods in the 90s, except each city has their own version of it, the police are 100% in on it, there’s little to no recourse, and the infighting is constant. That’s basically what's happening in El Muerto. So trust me when I say, reading this story was not fun, especially reading the way the female character (who I’m pretty sure didn’t even have a name, how’s that for objectification) is treated. It's just too similar to the cultural experiences I’ve inherited. I mean for god's sake, my mother was almost killed at a protest against the guerilla militias that was originally a funeral for her best friend who was killed by the militia.
So basically, this kind of stuff is just everywhere in Latin America, and it sucks big time. A good documentary to watch about it would be Cartel Land (2015) that follows different gangs and resistance in Mexico. The documentary itself isn't about machismo but god is it literally everywhere in the film. Anyways, I hate machismo and this story made me want to hit my head and all this to say, no shit Otalara was an awful mentee, look at the culture around him. How can such a culture that dehumanizes both men and women (because men being reduced to just their power and pride is definitely dehumanizing, even if they do it to themselves), create good leaders? Its set up to fail, constantly, cause being a leader isn’t about power or pride, its about care and dedication. You don’t lead for yourself, you lead for others and that's just not the message that machismo promotes.
Conclusion
So yea that's my long rant thanks for coming to my ted talk. Here are the recommendations I leave you with. One, go watch Cartel Land, its fabulous. Two, this painting called Vanity by Frank Cadogan Cowper. Third, and lastly, this video. Just watch it, please, and recognize my sacrifice of having to actually open twitter to find it. God, twitter is a scary place. No thank you. I don’t care how cringe Tumblr is, I’ll take it any day over twitter.
-Ollie Mason
