Un Homenaje a Juan Luis Guerra: If you're wanting to learn about Latin music here's a start

Juan Luis Guerra, if you haven't heard of him, is a musical giant in Latin America.  He might even possibly be equal to what Michael Jackson meant to pop. His concerts are replete with adoring fans--from the smallest of dancing three year olds to the oldest of grandparents.  At Jet Set, a club I went to on my last trip to Dominican Republic, at the mere sound of one of his hits the dance floor overflowed with excited people, loosing themselves in collective memories while singing the lyrics.

Whenever his name comes up I'm ashamed to admit that I always include the story about the time an old friend Uziel Colon played with him at Berklee College of Music. Hey. Don't judge, it's my distant claim to fame. That someone I knew played with this man who represents so much to so many of us.

His  music brings me close to the heart of Dominican Republic, even when I'm an ocean, an entire adolescence and an upbringing away.  Even when I'm tempted to think I am not all that Dominican, he reports what is going on at the other side of my mother's journey. His music covers everything from immigration to love to the desire to come to the United States to poverty to lack of democracy to Dominican patriotism. When I hear, "Ojala que llueva cafe en el campo,"I imagine that its safe to assume that thousands of other Dominicans/Dominican-Americans are singing it with me; conjuring up images of the poor Dominican Republic's outskirts and their desire for the most basic of Dominican goods--or not--maybe just enjoying the sound and remembering the early 1990's.

  I image that he might elicit the same feeling for me as Johnny Cash might for some or Nas or Nirvana might for others. Just as the mention of truly American themes or urban-American themes elicit a sort of catharsis and nostalgia for one's country, one's experience, identity and brings us back to the core of our childhood.

I, for instance, remember the checkered drape that covered the table our TV sat on in the living room. And myself, dancing around the living room in my underwear at five or so, listening to Juan Luis Guerra on Univision*. 

 In similar ways to when Johnny Cash mentions "trains" or boxcars" or "railroads" and cigarettes or as The Arcade Fire might help others recall memories of a suburban adolescence through mention of milestones such as learning to drive ("In the suburbs I learned to drive/ And you told me we'd never survive/Grab your mother's keys we're leavin' ). In ways similar to when Nas utters the words "freedom" or talks about the streets and ponders, "If I ruled the world, I'd free all my sons." At the mention of food stamps and watching parents struggle, some of us remember our parents together with Eminem in "Loose Yourself." 

When Juan Luis Guerra prays that "cafe" and "yucca" and "te" would rain, and especially when he prays that all the children in the "campos" could sing that coffee, yucca and tea would grow from the ground, I am stirred. 

 His songs are political in nature and he has written some of the most beautiful romantic ballads I've ever heard. In Burbujas de Amor Juan Luis Guerra uses aquatic themes, as he expresses desire to decorate her waist with shells and make silhouettes of love under the moon. In Visa Para un Suen~o he describes the desperation of wanting a "visa" to make our dreams come true, telling of the perspective of the United States that exists in DR. In El Niagara en Bicicleta, Guerra tells of the kind of treatment he received in the hospital and, in doing so, criticizes the Dominican medical system:

They sent me to a hospital for people, supposedly

Don't tell me that the doctors left, don't tell me that you don't have an anesthesia, that the alcohol was consumed and that the thread for surgery was used for a mantel. Don't tell me that the stethoscopes are having a party and that the x-rays rotted away.

A few years ago, with the release of Para Ti, Juan Luis shows a more spiritual side as he sings Cancion de Sanidad,

And most recently, he tells of world travels to Paris and to Africa where he brings this "Bachata" just to dance with you. 

A man after my own heart, studied philosophy and literature at the Universidad Autonoma de Santo Domingo, has performed and composed songs with dozens of artists, has won dozens of awards from five Latin Grammy's in one night in 2007 to Grammy's to Billboard Music Awards. A guitarist, singer, composer; a man of wisdom and insight, who represents our country well. Juan Luis Guerra, te queremos. 

By the way, for those of us States-side who have been wondering all of our lives but singing along anyway, What exactly is la bilirrubina que le sube a Juan Luis Guerra when he sees her*? La Bilirrubina de Juan Luis Guerra.  It's kind of scary....

*Univision: The main Spanish TV station that every Latin person in America relied upon for news, soap opera's, music and counsel. Univision, as in, "Annery, on Univision I heard that you have to wash the lettuce thoroughly, maybe even with soap because there's bacteria in it that can make you sick."

*Juan Luis Guerra sings a song about how his bilirubin goes up everytime he sees her. I think most of us sang along to the catchy and beautiful song, but never really knew what it was. Apparently it's a heavy medical term. 

For the pluri-etnicos out there

They say that to be successful you must choose one thing.
I've heard this phrase or something like it at least three times this week. I heard it through blogs and through TED and through Zen Habits and through the podcast my housemate was listening to this afternoon.
I've been searching for that one thing for a while now, and every time I try to boil down my many interests--in philosophy, in psychology, in empowering the disenfranchised, in art, in dance, in yoga, in writing---to one thing, I conclude that for Annery Miranda this task is impossible.
But then tonight I had a thought: Maybe my spastic personality, my many thoughts and my looong list of interests is actually rooted, not in a learning disability (maybe), but in something very essential to my development. And this variable is, as the couchsurfer I met in DR called it, "es que tu eres multi-etnica."
After reading through many blogs written by Americans; after thinking about achievement and personal growth, I stumbled upon "Hispanic New York Project" and immediately remembered another interest of mine.
Herein lies the problem! I am extremely multi-faceted. I learned to navigate various communities and people groups and cultures from a young age, causing me to almost always lean towards the bird's eye-view and missing the trees for the forest. But maybe I'm wired to see the forest and it's many colors and how it lies next to rivers and mountains. Maybe I don't have to choose to focus on the mountain or to focus on the forest or to focus on the river alone. Maybe I can keep learning about what it means to see them all at the same time, and maybe that means I'll never understand the mountain's ridges or the makeup of a tree or how to extract maple or how the current in the river works, but maybe there is a gift in seeing the juxtaposition of the different wonders of the world. Maybe that's the gift of being pluri-etnica. 

An experiment in spinning

As I was blog-browsing today, I stumbled on the following words, 

"We'll spend months thinking about and arguing about a product supposedly doing nothing (even for just a speed bump of a Mac.) and then start spinning." 

How many times do I find myself paralyzed by perfectionism? How often to I give myself the space to "think and argue about ______, supposedly doing nothing?" And it seems as though I'm missing out! Because in my search for results I end up doing a heck of a lot of nothing anyway. So what would happen if I took an idea, wrote "shitty first drafts"--as Anne Lammott likes to say-- and second and third shitty drafts on it? What if I let myself spend hours listing questions I have about how this idea might turn into something? 

To come to think of it, a lot in my life that has worked for me has involved a similar process; of just knocking on doors until one opens and avoiding paralyzing discouragement when two or three or five close. I kept knocking and breathing and reaching until I got into that yoga pose; until I get the community I longed for; until I get the job. 

Maybe judging our "non results" is where we make our first mistake. Maybe if we dwell in the "non results" phases enough we too will start spinning. 

Stringing Together Pieces of You

I've gathered pieces of information here and there, stringing them together like an awkward collage of newspaper, opinion, anecdote and coffee: I interviewed my father's old friend over coffee, read El Listin Diario on my way to Puerto Plata. I asked my cousin questions about Dominican universities under the loud TGI Friday's sign--the hang-out spot for people our age in Santo Domingo. Mmmmm.....Dominican versions of American food--not what I came to Dominican Republic for. I saw extensions of his blood line in Dominican churches, in the boulevard he must have walked through in the afternoons, in the small house that punished him for being so tall, where he would repeatedly hit his head. I saw him in the museums and in the painting my uncle painted which hangs in the Museo Bellapart in Santo Domingo. I searched for him in the Zona Colonial and in the streets of his home town.  I asked all of those who knew him--What was he like?

Augusto Jesus Miranda. Born on December 24, 1925.
I think....
Augusto Jesus Miranda, member of the Catorce de Junio, an anti-Trujillo movement, for which he was arrested.
Was he tortured? 
His brother was.
And I am his daughter.
Augusto Jesus Miranda was saved by his American citizenship, so as to not call too much attention to the international community about the atrocities that were being committed in Dominican Republic in the mid-1900's. So he fled. He fled to the United States to preserve his life.
From what I understand and have heard....


Where can I get information that will help me know for sure who this man was; this man who's eyes and forehead I carry? Is it possible to know for sure whether my father was as justice oriented as I try to be or just caught up in the crew his friends hung out in?
 And is it true what the man on the airplane told me? That sometimes when the older generation passes away and their dreams and visions die with them, these dreams are resurrected in the next generation. 
He told me that I carry my father's dream for a just Dominican Republic.

I wandered the halls of the "Sala Memorial A Los Heroes" and read a loud to myself,

"No puede haber tirania en una sociedad donde la mayor parte de los ciudadanos conoce sus derechos, respeta los ajenos y esta siempre lista a defender los unos y los otros."
("There cannot be tirany in a society where the greater part of the citizens know their right, respect those of others and are always ready to defend one another")

I stood beneath the Hermanas Mirabal monument and looked up at them in admiration. I stared at their faces in the billete of 200 pesos. 

 I bought "El Golpe Del Estado" by journalist, Miguel Guerrero, to search through the pages of history for Dominican Republic's democratic and revolutionary spirit.

As an onlooker-- as an outsider looking in-- I see widespread corruption and worse, complacency, in the land of my parents. Where are the politically-active university students? Where are the spinning wheels of the thinkers in the country? 


Balaguer killed many of them, following Trujillo's example.

Could it be that the Dominican people are traumatized by the suppression of their speech and inalienable right to critically think? Or am I perceiving the situation ignorantly? 


I only have a few pieces of information.

Do I get this from you, dad? This burning in me that doesn't let me succumb to the cynical suggestions of my elders, "Don't worry, you'll become cynical too. This is just your youthful idealism." Do I get my stubborn insistence to climb the structural ladders for answers to structural problems that affect the poor, from you? 

I want to know you. Where have you left the remnants of your soul?

Se Fue la Luz (part 2)

From the U.S Department of State 

Electricity
"An ongoing concern in the Dominican Republic is the inability of participants in the electricity sector to establish financial viability for the system. Three regional electricity distribution systems were privatized in 1998 via sale of 50% of shares to foreign operators; the Mejía administration repurchased all foreign-owned shares in two of these systems in late 2003. The Fernández administration purchased the third distributor, which serves the eastern provinces, in June 2009. In 2010, the current head of the state electricity company called for the re-privatization of the electricity distributors. The World Bank records that electricity distribution losses for 2009 totaled about 40%, a rate of losses exceeded in only two other countries. Due to low collection rates, theft, infrastructure problems, and corruption, distribution losses remain high. Subsidies to the electricity sector exceeded U.S. $1 billion in 2008. Congress passed a law in 2007 that criminalized the act of stealing electricity; it entered into force in February 2009. The 2009 IMF standby specifically targets six areas of improvement for the electricity sector. Debts in the sector, including government debt, amount to close to U.S. $500 million. Some generating companies are undercapitalized and at times unable to purchase adequate fuel supplies."

Goodbye

While Thursday was a fake-out. The cosmos said, "You thought you were leaving Thursday, but Saturday it is!" It's Saturday and it's time to go back to Massachusetts.
In many ways I feel like I'm walking a plank, back to a life of stress and the constant feeling that everything is out of balance. Draggin myself out of bed in the morning, feeling gross on the car ride to work, drinking two cups of coffee at my desk to wake up, gathering papers together to run out of the office to see a client or fearing that someone is going to chew my head off for doing something wrong. The peer pressure to skip lunch because there's just too much to do--What a contrast! Everyone here, no matter how hard working, takes a two hour break during the day to nap--college students, my aunt who is an executive secretary at a large company, my other aunt who is a supervisor at a pharmaceutical company, my uncle who is a bus driver. Everyone takes a nap.
What does it mean to take this sense of balance and peace with me into the workweek that awaits me? Dominican Republic, has my stay with you only been a tease or did you actually teach me something that I can take back with me?

Serious examination of the explanations for why we shout: Se Fue La Luz!

In the United States I can always take a warm bath, so I take hot showers that last a while without thinking about it twice. I let the water run while I brush my teeth all the while hearing the voice of my environmentally conscious roommate in the back of my head. Since I'm paying for it, I have gotten better about turning lights off, but I still expect there to be electricity whenever I want it.
I remember Dominican Republic when I was a child. When, at 8pm, people would run around screaming, "Se fue la luz!" This was especially scary for me when I was already making my bed at night and all of the lights would go out without any consideration for my fear of the dark.
This was always a mystery to me. I knew that in DR la luz se va*, but I never knew the cause. It was a supernatural phenomenon for me that I left unquestioned, kind of like El Cuco--the Dominican equivalent of the Boogie Man which your parents would threaten you with when you disobeyed them. "You better wash that plate or the Cuco is going to get you." "If you don't come here right now, the Cuco is going to get to you."
When I was a teenager I began to hear rumors that the lights went out frequently because DR owed a German power plant money. But this trip, I wanted to know for reals.
My uncle who is an engineer and worked for the government during the Balaguer years, supervising the construction of aqueducts and such, explained that the problem is a very basic supply and demand problem. As rural-urban migration occurs; i.e. more people move from the campos to the cities (which is evident when you drive past Villa Mella and see the hill filled with little houses made of tin that look like cardboard boxes), the demand for electricity and water and other energy sources increases. Dominican Republic has not been able to meet this demand. This alone doesn't factor in the tourists who come and consume the islands resources, creating an even greater demand. Many folks have found ways to access electricity and water for free and use it inefficiently, leaving the light on for hours because they're not paying for it. No incentive.
So while my aunts and uncles in Dominican Republic always have running water and electricity because they have inversores, others who do not have the money to purchase these additional energy supplies are often without the ability to flush the toilet or to take a shower or to read at night. So what do they do? Like good Dominicans they get around it. They save tubs and buckets of water and use them to shower; they flush the toilet with this same accumulated water supply, often leaving little jugs in the bathroom to scoop the water with and to pour on your hands for washing. As you can imagine, hand sanitizer is popular in the poorer areas.
"Pero tio, I asked, are you saying that the problem is a statistical one? Knowing that population growth in cities is occuring, why not build more aqueducts to increase water supply?"
-That's precisely the problem, m'ija. The projections are inaccurate and the problem is governmental.
Seems simple, right? So why is it still a problem? Why are there not more intitiatives to get the numbers straight?
Or, once again, is this particular explanation also akin to the rumors I heard about the origins of this phenomenon when I was a teen?


*Se fue la luz: The lights left.
La luz se va: The light goes.