The Filiberto Ojeda Rios Film Festival 2008 is an initiative of the ProLibertad Freedom Campaign to showcase films that speak to our experience as a colonized people fighting for independence and self-determination!

We have named the film festival after assassinated Machetero leader Filiberto Ojeda Rios because his death raised consciousness throughout the Puerto Rican Diaspora; his murder illustrated the colonial oppression Puerto Rico faces and has radicalized a generation of young activists to continue the fight for independence.

We hope these films will do the same. Join us on our three consecutive Fridays!

Don’t support the Hollywood machine that feeds you nonsense, sex, violence and cheap humor! Learn about yourself, your people, and your struggle!

This Friday's film is la Operacion, a film I have written about and referenced often. Pero for those who have not been paying attention:

La Operacion/The Operation
This documentary brings to the foreground the problem of widespread
sterilization among Puerto Rican women through the use of personal testimony, newsreels, and government propaganda excerpts. The procedure is so common that more than one-third of all Puerto Rican women of childbearing age have been sterilized. Begun in the 1930's as a means of curbing the surplus population, it continues to be reinforced politically and socially in the Puerto Rican communities.

$5 donation/Best offer at each film!

Friday November 21st, 2008 @ 8pm @ The Brecht Forum 451 West Street (that's the West Side Highway) between Bank & Bethune Streets.

This is not just history. It is directly tied into how women's cuerpos are used today as projects and not respected, how the language of choice is often manipulated to help some while harm others and devalue our lives and how and when we continue to bring forth new lives or not.

So it's great to see that Peru is fighting to get their own historical treasures returned:

Peru plans to sue prestigious Yale University in the United States, to recover storied Inca archaeological treasures which Lima says the school refuses to part with.

Labor Minister Jorge Villasante on Sunday confirmed the plans to pursue legal action. He is on a government panel leading the charge, along with Education Minister Jose Antonio Chang and Foreign Minister Jose Garcia Belaunde.

...

Lima is demanding the return of more than 46,332 documented pieces. Yale, in the northeastern US state of Connecticut, has proposed returning a much smaller number.

What are you dressing up as today? In Casa Mala we have turtle and a mime.

Image of Skull Made from Kitchen Utensils Via / boingboing

Via / The Mex Files

Columbus Day Observed 2006

I wanted to sleep in today,

Warm beneath my sheets,

Warm inside my house,

Leaving the early crisp October chill just beyond my comprehension,

Behind barred and shaded windows

That keep me and the public shielded from reality

But the sound of US sponsored bullets

Ricocheting off of innocent Iraqi skin

Shook me from my sleep and pulled me out of bed

A screaming reminder me that no matter what the calendar says

It’s still the same colonization invasion game going down

On this so called U S of A holiday.

I wanted to mourn today

Stay home and dress in black for the Palestinians and Lebanese killed by Israeli soldiers today.

I wanted to light candles for Afghanistan

Burn incense for the first nations

And cry my eyes out for Filiberto y Puerto Rico.

The 514 year old wounds bleed fresh

Spilling raped, mixed blood.

And I wanted to fast today

Deny my body the comfort

Of first world fast food disposable genitically modified drugs

But my children,

Born and yet to be born

Demanded to be fed

Demanded answers for their homework from the halls of miseducation.

Because she has off today

to celebrate her so called discovery

And I am left nervous

Wondering if when I remind her of the truth

She’ll agree that we were better left uncivilized.

I wanted to celebrate today,

By torching court houses and tearing down prison walls,

bombing national monuments

And taking back every last thing that has been stolen from me and those before me

From us.

I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs a huge

“FUCK YOU y VETE PA’L CARAJO”

to the spirit of Columbus marching down Fifth Avenue

and the Italianos using genocide as costume for their pride

But I was too busy struggling to survive today.

I was too busy working today.

I was too busy counting change to get onto the under constant terror alert subway today,

With its cops with machine guns standing in front of NYPD recruitment ads

the ones with the White cop hugging a Latina viejita?

I had to get to my job

as a 12 dollar an hour corporate whore for hire

Watching billions of bloody dollars

Being robbed from the third world and the third world within.

Finally when the day comes to a close

And I return

Defeated by another day

I can drown my sorrows in the made for t.v. scripted news

Falling asleep to the drone of lies we’ve gotten too used to.

In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue

And got lost

But not lost enough.

Today, activists y amantes de la libertad, call for a day of solidarity with Puerto Rico, a colony hidden behind the name of a commonwealth. A country and a people that are pandered to for votes when needed by presidential wannabes when the island's very status doesn't allow for the U.S. citizens by birth to vote for the person under whose laws they must live.

Originally Hispanics only got a week pero since we're always late anyway, they decided to extend it to a month so that as soon Hispanics realized that they were being celebrated (seriously why else would the company cafeteria suddenly offer quesadillas) the party would be halfway done.

Hispanic Heritage Month runs from September 15 to October 15. The celebration began as National Hispanic Heritage Week, which was authorized and requested by Congress in 1968 (Public Law 90-498). It was officially proclaimed as such by President Ford in 1974, calling “upon the people of the United States, especially the education community and those organizations concerned with the protection of human rights, to observe that week with appropriate ceremonies and activities.” In 1988 a joint resolution of the Senate and House of Representatives authorized the change to National Hispanic Heritage Month (Public Law 100-402). President Ronald Reagan proclaimed the change official that same year.

Part of the personal struggle I deal with on 9-11 is the straddling of grief and confronting the egocentrism that is United States culture. In general people in the United States have short term memory. Selectively people remember and claim dates and tragedies as if they belonged to no one else before them. 9-11 is one of those dates.

Five years ago today I was on my way to my job in the financial district of Manhattan, blocks away from the World Trade Center. A man came into the subway at one point yelling something about planes hitting the Twin Towers. As one of a trainful of jaded New Yorkers, I ignored him. As long as the subways were still running , nothing was really wrong.

Minutes later as my train approached Canal Street and the conductor announced that the train would go no further, something became apparently wrong. While underground it was unclear the extent of what was happening above. I called my mother, who worked in one of the World Trade Center towers and no one answered. I soon was trapped for hours in a dark smoke filled subway car as the Twin Towers collapsed above me, as my mother watched bodies falling from those buildings and she ran for safety. For hours she thought I was dead. For hours I thought she was dead. Between us we lost collegues but not each other. We both walked from downtown Manhattan back home to Queens.

But 9-11-01 wasn't my first 9-11 and it wasn't the world's either. 10 years ago I didn't stayed holed up in a Providencia, Santiago de Chile apartment I shared with gringo college students. I went to the Universidad de Chile to remember what happened on 9-11-73, when democratically elected Socialist president Salvador Allende was overthrown by Augusto Pinochet backed by the good ole U.S. of A.

My children, half Chilean, half Puerto Rican (which by default means United States citizens) carry these multiple tragedies in their blood line. My partner woke up this morning to watch not the numerous memorials on U.S. network television but to watch the commemoration of another fireball that was the Moneda palace. On 9-11, in different years, different buildings were on fire in different countries. Both led to secret prisons, summary arrests, murder and disapearances. Both remain linked forever by the same politics.

The city of La Habana is commemorating Joseíto's life all this week with roundtables, singing contests and other events, even a serenade of the song at the late artist's residence, joined by his now elderly children.

Aside from the international appeal the song has enjoyed, perhaps the most fascinating thing about the Guantanamera phenomenon is its mutation, which continues today. Venezuela's El Universal reports that the song was written in its original form by Joseíto, but through its constant performance has benefitted from improvisation in the lyrics, with artists adapting the words to suit a certain situation, ranging from political strife to personal problems. The most popular version, the one we hear the most today, includes the words of Cuban hero José Martí, intregated into the music -- ironically -- by American folk singer Pete Seeger.

Guantanamera the song was composed when Joseíto was just 20, and itself turns 80 years old this year.

Via / El Universal

Benicio del Toro has already won some praise for his work on the film but will such a long , two part movie about a Latino revolutionary get a distributor here in the U.S?

Via / Ain't It Cool News

"Today represents a milestone in our nation's efforts to remedy the ills of our past," said Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick, D-Mich., chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus.

The resolution, passed by voice vote, was the work of Tennessee Democrat Steve Cohen, the only white lawmaker to represent a majority black district. Cohen faces a formidable black challenger in a primary face-off next week.

Shakira and Uribe are joined by Brazilian President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva and Peruvian President Alan Garcia. Eleven of the hostages that were rescued together with Ingrid Betancourt were also present in Leticia.

The Colombian pop idol called on guerrillas, who still are involved in a war against the government to demobilize and work with the government towards peace.

Later she performed together with fellow Colombian singer Carlos Vives. Hundreds of thousands of people were visiting the border concert.

Via / Colombia Reports

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