July 9, 2001
Subject: Re: [AztlanNet: ARTS|LETTERS] Rudy
y Señorita de Guadalupe
Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 23:38:58 -0600
From: "rudy fernandez" <elbulldog69@hotmail.com>
Reply-To: AztlanNet@yahoogroups.com
To: AztlanNet@yahoogroups.com
Pedro,
In this country freedom of expression is right
not a privilege,thanks to the powers that be. If it were a privilege we would
never have been allowed to carry on politically in the sixties and seventies.
On the floor of the senate, Charles Rangel called for the stomping on of the
snake before it was allowed to strike. The snake he spoke of was we Chicanos
whom were busting our asses to open the doors to the institutions of higher
learning and stop the persecution and harassment of our leaders, Tijerina,
Corky Gonzales, Ricardo Falcon and Kiko Martinez, to name just a few from
our area of the country.
I become very passionate when speaking of this
particular right because it has cost us so dearly. We need only look back
at Los seis de Boulder that you have spoken of in previous postings. These
people were not just martyrs to be remembered fondly and admired, they were
personal friends of mine, fighting In part, for the right to express ourselves.
Pedro, what I am trying to express is the importance
fact that we can not pick and choose when it is going to be a right or a privilege
and that the dominant culture in any one area of this country can not cancel
this right out just because it becomes uncomfortable at times to allow it
to function.
The other thing I would like for you to please
explain to me is how the Alma piece became a direct attack on Los Hermanos
Penitentes. Maybe there is something I have missed on the net while I've been
traveling.
Adelante,
El Bulldog
Subject: Re: [AztlanNet: ARTS|LETTERS] Rudy
y Señorita de Guadalupe
Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 20:04:17 -0000
From: "Pedro Romero Sedeno" <romesedeno@hotmail.com>
Reply-To: AztlanNet@yahoogroups.com
To: AztlanNet@yahoogroups.com
In response to El Bulldog :
Rudy, come home to northern NM. Get in
a morada and listen to what your Penitente manito brothers have to say about
the Cyber circus at the Museum. You are out of touch and maybe forget
where you came from. .
Yes, we all have rights, to express and dissent;
I have a right to dissent and to submit my heresies or "rants" against
the AlmaNet party line. As to name-calling, this began when dissent
in my community was characterized by Alma Lopez as "inquisition",
"conspiracy of seven men", etc. and that the sole arguments refuting
her premises was coming from only the Catholic religious right, here in NM.
I am an artist in this community and have presented my voice, in addition.
The "supreme arbiter of intelligence" you refer to is actually the
Museum of New Mexico, as well as Tey Marianna Nunn, the curator of CyberArte.
As long as this Museum in my backyard installs a computer on an altar, spoofing
Catholic forms of ritual, spoofing what is the matrix of the folk art tradition
of NM, i.e. the Catholic Penitente experience, i feel an obligation to address
this error. And I have, not just on AztlanNet. Responding to a
call for "ofrendas" to this computer-altar in the CyberArte installation,
I conceived and delivered a postmodern performance called the Santa Fe Ofrenda
Project, a cultural intervention performed several times, and with community
collaboration. People who never experienced assemblage or performance
participated in this Project, and we gained international news coverage through
this statement (Univision May 3, 2001). In an attempt to educate the
Museum that it is not intelligent to spoof religious and cultural
traditions as in making Ofrendas, we brought in "offerings" that
were not convenient for the Museum's little game: decorated with paint
and crepe paper, I brought in 6 car tires (yes, llantas) to the Museum
of International Folk Art and left them on the CyberAltar April 30.
On May 3, community members, mostly women, brought their "ofrendas", assemblages
that included an enema bag labelled "Cultural Constipation Cleanser"
with a white candle (as curanderas would use to relieve constipation), another
assemblage composed by Belen Rodriguez , Mejicana y Guadlupana, which included
a toilet bowl on a dolly with a branch from which hung numerous kotex
napkins. On May 3, The Museum censored the Santa Fe
Ofrenda Project, even calling in 6 Santa Fe police to stop us from taking
our ofrendas to the CyberAltar. And this Project was invited by
CyberArte's sign on the altar asking for "ofrendas". So much
for my and the community's "freedom of expression".
Our rights to engage in peaceful artistic expression were violated, but who cares? The media did its bit to distort the whole thing, the Catholic Church: silence, do you care? and now the Museum has censored its own CyberArte show by removing the sign from its installation calling for ofrendas. Tey Nunn's exhibit, and all its hipocricy about defending free expression, has censored itself, why? to shut down my performance and community participation in performance expression, (those natives can cause such bad publicity). Rudy, "freedom of expression" is a privilege of the cultural gatekeepers here in Santa Fe. Be consistent in your liberal defense of it.
"License masquerading in the garments of liberty is the forerunner of abject bondage", -the Urantia book, 1934, p. 613