A Novel Discusses Asian Latin America

Monkey Hunting: Asia meets Latin America in a novel

The newest novel by Cuban-American writer, Cristina Garcia, narrates the story of five generations of a Chinese-Cuban family

"What do you get when you cross thousands of years of Chinese dynasties with the sugarcane plantations of 19th Century Cuba and the rhythm of the African slaves? Well, in addition to an exciting travel in time, you get Monkey Hunting (Alfred A. Knopf, 2003) Cuban-born Cristina Garcia’s latest novel.


“This was the hardest thing I’d ever written because it was so far from my own experience,” Garcia said in a recent interview with the independent paper, LA Weekly. “I had to keep fighting off self-inflicted charges of ‘Fraud!’ every working day of it. Basically, my main character is a 19th-century Chinese male. Need I say more?”


That man is named Chen Pan, a failed farmer who left China after signing a contract to work “beyond the edge of the world to Cuba.” But as soon as he arrives at the island, he’s sold to slavery and forced to work in a sugarcane plantation. The novel spans five generations of the Chen family, including Chen Pan’s granddaughter, Chen Fang, who’s raised as a boy in China, and Domingo Chen, Chen Pan’s great-great-grandson, who after the Revolution migrates to New York and ends up in Vietnam...."

Original link: http://www.laprensa-sandiego.org/archieve/may16-03/monkey.htm

Asian Ancestry in the Americas

The visitors are descendants of Koreans lured to the Yucatan Peninsula a century ago by false promises. In ensuing decades, they spread to other parts of Mexico and abandoned the Korean language.

By Hector Becerra, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
August 16, 2008

The teenagers and young adults struggled as they rehearsed an ancient Korean song, a kind of lamentation to leaving home.

"Uno, dos, tres," began Fermin Kim, 48, a chaperon for the group.

Arirang, Arirang, Arariyo. . . .

The words burbled out in a discordant drone, tentatively and unsteadily -- sounding very much like, well, Mexicans suddenly asked to sing in Korean.

The young Korean Mexicans had arrived from Mexico City, Tijuana and the Yucatan Peninsula on a recent afternoon and come to a sprawling Lynwood shopping center designed to look like Mexico. As they were dropped off by shuttles, they passed a statue of Mexican independence leader Miguel Hidalgo and a replica of the Angel of Independence in downtown Mexico City.


They came, perhaps fittingly, to Plaza Mexico -- a place that was created by a Korean American who has a habit of slipping into Spanglish.

Los Angeles is a city where the large Mexican and Korean communities co-exist in ways that both bring them together and separate them. They share the immigrant experience and communication barriers that come with it. But the different languages -- Spanish and Korean -- can also be an obstacle.

Here, however, the fusion was literal. The teens and twentysomethings bear strong Korean features but consider themselves true Mexicans. Even their older chaperons, Fermin Kim and David Kim, 70 (not related), no longer spoke Korean -- though they are third- and fourth-generation Korean Mexicans who have no Mexican blood.

The group of 20 were to perform that night for Korean and Mexican dignitaries in one of the banquet halls. They practiced the Korean folk song over and over, as Korean Americans and Latino waiters looked on. They only really felt comfortable when they started to consider which Mexican song to perform.

"And all for what, and all for what, if in the end you lose?" Rafael Kim, 23, of Mexico City crooned.

They were the descendants of Koreans lured in 1905 by ship to plantations on the Yucatan Peninsula in southern Mexico. Instead of finding a better life, they were sold to plantation owners and forced to cultivate henequen, a plant whose tough fiber was used to make things like rope.

The Koreans and their descendants would come to be known as the Henequen, in part because they were so hardy and hard-working. They had fled a Korea that was under Japanese rule, and despite their struggle, they sent money back home, hoping to help their countrymen gain independence. But few ever saw their homeland again.

In the ensuing decades, they spread to other parts of Mexico -- and increasingly intermarried with Mexicans. Little by little, they abandoned the Korean language. Alberto King, a 23-year-old college student in Tijuana, said that although his mother looked Korean she spoke only Spanish. Her own parents had stopped speaking Korean.

"The Mexicans at first would not accept them. So their own parents decided to cut off the language and just talk Spanish," King said. "It went really badly for them because of the language."

Fermin Kim said fights were a part of life in grade school, when they would be called chinos (Chinese). In the beginning, intermarriage was strongly discouraged. He said he had a Mexican girlfriend and his grandparents reacted by asking, " 'Where did you find her?' They got mad." He ended up marrying another Korean Mexican. David Kim, his fellow chaperon, said that despite being one of the older Henequen, he married a Mexican woman.

For decades, as Korea struggled under foreign rule and wars, the Korean Mexicans were largely forgotten. Various estimates place their numbers at up to 30,000. But as South Korea began to prosper economically and the centennial of the Koreans' arrival in Yucatan drew near, attention focused on them.

They were visited by South Korean politicians and were invited to their ancestors' homeland. Korean Mexicans were flown to South Korea to get special job training. South Koreans built hospitals and schools in Mexico and were feted by Mexican officials.

"When the centennial happened in 2005, we almost got celebrity treatment," Fermin Kim said. "That's something we never had in 99 years."

That year, a group of Korean Mexicans was brought by the Korean-American Foundation to Plaza Mexico in Lynwood. The visitors were surprised by how many people of Korean descent live in the Los Angeles area.

"We didn't even know there was such a large Korean community so close by," Fermin Kim said. "We didn't even know there was a Koreatown. We hadn't integrated with Koreans here."

Plaza Mexico, which opened in 2002, was the vision of Donald Chae, a Korean American who grew up among Latinos and who has traveled throughout Mexico. Chae tells people that, "I don't speak Spanish. I speak Mexican."

"I am a Korean American Mexican," he quips. "I'm still waiting for my pasaporte."

The center was built with Mexican stone and boasted touches like a swap meet with a facade designed after the colonial-era governor's mansion in Guadalajara and a shrine for the Virgin of Guadalupe.

Chae said that when he spoke to the young Korean Mexicans, he could tell they were surprised he spoke Spanish fluently. He in turn was struck by how strongly their identity was rooted.

"They're real Mexicans," Chae said. "They have a real Mexican way of talking. They use a lot of doble sentidos (double entendres). Mexicans use a lot of double meanings."


But he said it was important that they learn about the other culture that informed their lives and those of their ancestors.

"When you don't know your culture," Chae said, "you get lost."

By 6:30 p.m., the spectators had taken their seats. A Korean woman dressed in a blue sequined dress sang the American and Korean national anthems. A few of the Korean Mexican youths tried to gamely mouth the words of the latter.

The consul generals of Mexico and Korea gave speeches. Four of the Korean Mexicans performed a tea ceremony as Hyun Kim led them with hand signals. Then a Mexican folkloric group and a Korean dance troupe took turns on the stage.

Dressed in their mix-and-match outfits, the young Korean Mexicans looked on with mouths slightly agape as the teenage Korean girls used wooden sticks to rapidly beat elevated drums.

Then the 20 Korean Mexicans took the stage.

Arirang, Arirang, Arariyo. . . . The song describing a woman, looking as her husband walked away up a crooked road.

The audience smiled and clapped. Moments later, the youths jumped into the Mexican song they had decided to sing: "Cielito Lindo."

From the brown Sierras,

Heavenly one, they come descending,

A pair of dark eyes, heavenly one. . . . .

Ay ay ay ay, sing and don't cry. . . . .

As people streamed out of the hall, Rafael Kim said he was moved most of all by the Korean girls who danced so gracefully and full of purpose, as if they knew full well who they were.

"You feel a sensation of pride, because you're a Korean descendant, just like them," he said in Spanish. "I see them dance so beautifully, and that I didn't know of things like this as a child, it makes me a little sad. It's a feeling of discovered feelings."

As he walked away, Woo Jun Lee, a stocky middle-aged Korean American, ran over to Kim so they could all take a picture together.

Waving his hand, Lee cried out: "Hey, paisano!"

hector.becerra@latimes.com

"The Indigenous Intifada"

The trigger of South America
By Hamid Golpira


The Indigenous Intifada of the Americas has won another victory.

With 90 percent of the ballots counted, it seems that Bolivian President Evo Morales received over 60 percent of the vote in Sunday’s recall election, ensuring that he will stay in office until his term ends in 2011.

Morales, who is a member of the Aymara ethnic group, became the first indigenous leader of Bolivia in nearly 500 years after his inauguration in 2006.

The indigenous people of Bolivia and the rest of South America have suffered through five centuries of oppression, which began with the European invasion and conquest of the Americas.

In Bolivia, the situation has been terrible for the Native Americans, even though it is one of the few indigenous majority countries of the Americas.

The “white” upper class of Bolivia has monopolized power for 500 years while the indigenous people have lived under a caste system which places them at the bottom as virtual serfs.

The upper class of Bolivia identify themselves as descendents of the white European settlers, although many are actually light-skinned mestizos, so there is also an element of denial in the country’s racist caste system, which is often the case in racial caste systems.

The indigenous people of Bolivia were kept down, their rights were trampled upon, and they were given little or no access to social services, adequate health care, and higher education. In addition, they were rarely given the opportunity to acquire higher-paying jobs and most are still not even earning a proper living wage in Bolivia, which is one of the poorest countries in the Americas, despite its vast natural gas reserves.

The “white” upper class retained their privileged status through this caste system, which marginalized the Native Americans for centuries.

And these are the same people who are behind the efforts to oust Morales and the illegal autonomy referendums recently held in the provinces in the eastern lowlands of the country, where many of the “whites” live.

Morales’ victory in the 2005 presidential election struck fear into the hearts of the “white” upper class because they realized that they were beginning to lose power.

When Morales took office and began implementing his plan to restore the indigenous peoples’ rights, rewrite the Constitution, redistribute wealth to the poor, and renationalize the country’s hydrocarbon assets, the “white” community became even more desperate.

The illegal autonomy referendums were a part of their counter-revolutionary response to the threat to their power and privilege.

Che Guevara was killed in Bolivia and his remains were interred in a secret grave there for 30 years until they were discovered in 1997 and sent to Cuba for reburial in a more dignified grave.

It is said that the revolutionary sprit of Che lives on in Bolivia.

Indeed, in one of his first acts after taking office in 2006, Morales hung up a portrait of Che Guevara in the presidential palace.

Commenting on the importance of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Frantz Fanon once said: “Congo is the trigger of Africa.”

And across the ocean, in Africa’s twin continent, South America, which separated when Pangaea broke up millions of years ago, Congo has a sister country, Bolivia.

For today, Bolivia is the trigger of South America.

Bolivia is now the center of the Indigenous People’s Movement of the Americas.

The winds of change are blowing across the continent of South America, from Tiahuanaco to Ecuador and Venezuela.

In the early 1990s, the Native Americans decided that they could no longer tolerate the fact that an official holiday named Columbus Day was being celebrated on October 12 to commemorate the arrival of the European conquistadors and settlers, so they renamed the day Indigenous People’s Day.

On October 12, 1992, Native Americans across the hemisphere united from Kalaallit Nunaat to Tierra del Fuego to celebrate Indigenous People’s Day, on the very same day the European settlers were celebrating the 500th anniversary of the invasion of the Americas. Many say it was the first time that the Indigenous People of the Americas had ever united for a common purpose.

Something really changed on that day and things will never be the same. The collective consciousness of Native Americans was reawakened.

At one of the many ceremonies held throughout the double continent of America on October 12, 1992, a traditionalist Native American made a speech in which he said that most of the Indigenous People of the Americas believe that time is cyclical.

He went on to say that Indigenous People’s Day 1992 marked the end of the 500-year cycle of oppression for Native Americans and the beginning of a positive cycle for the Indigenous People of Great Turtle Island, which is a very ancient name for the double continent of America first mentioned in the Walam Olum of the Lenni Lenape nation.

In addition, according to the Maya calendar, the current time cycle began in 3114 BC and ends on December 21, 2012.

Bolivia is the trigger of South America. And Bolivia is also the trigger of all of Great Turtle Island.

And what will happen when the trigger is pulled and the shot is fired? Changes that we can’t imagine.

As the I Ching says: “Change proves true on the day it is finished.”

Original source: http://www.tehrantimes.com/index_View.asp?code=175270

Much respect to Intelligent Indigena for the post.

Indoamerica

Chavez proposes renaming Latin America to Indian America

MEXICO, August 12 (RIA Novosti) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has proposed renaming Latin America to Indian America, the Mexican media reported.

"Let's call our continent Indian America instead of Latin America," Chavez told a meeting of the Indian community in Caracas, capital of Venezuela.

He said the notion Latin had been enforced by the Europeans, while Indians were the continent's indigenous population.

The outspoken Venezuelan president, who has led his country since 1999, said his move was aimed at restoring "historical justice."

Mexican political analysts believe Chavez' surprising idea stemmed from his nationality.

Chavez is of mixed Amerindian, Afro-Venezuelan, and Spanish descent. He is an outspoken opponent of globalization and U.S. foreign policy.

Originally posted by "The Latin Americanist"; Original source- http://en.rian.ru/world/20080812/115976867.html