Caribe Pop Starter Pack: A Manifesto

Caribe Pop Starter Pack: A Manifesto

Today Mediático presents a manifesto written by cultural critic and video artist Nicolás Gerardi translated by regular Mediático contributor José Arroyo (Principal Teaching Fellow in Film Studies at the University of Warwick) who blogs on film at notesonfilm1.com. The translation, like the original text (reprinted below in Spanish by kind permission of the author) is illustrated with still images and gifs from a super short film by Andrés Farías Cintrón (Tiznao), also reproduced with kind permission from the director. Farías Cintrón is a young filmmaker from the Dominican Republic who is also exploring the imaginary world of writer Rey Andújar.

 

‘Caribe Pop’ is about catastrophe and calamity, about the unsustainable luck of bearing reality and savouring it to its last molecule. Of wanting to leave your country because it’s corrupt and corrupting, a minor place, subjected and subordinate, because at heart you’re a stupid subject of the unexpected, of misfortune and misappropriated luck, of richness, of disaster, of decadence, addicted to rice, grains, pig, of counting every penny.

carbepop

Caribe Pop is a form of surviving tied to the unusual, to the imported, to the foreign and exogenous, but also tied to the familiar, the occult, the darkness. It’s no coincidence that Masons have so much power, that the Rosicrucians, the Opus Dei, the Narcos and the Evangelicals have so much power.

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To be Caribe Pop is to experience misfortune after fortunate forgetfulness, to not have memory, to howl and to hunger. To transvestise into a million unrealisable fantasies, see TV and know you’re never going to have what’s shown, that you don’t live the American dream that for you is North American. To be Caribe Pop is to see Tiznao [1 http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03cqvy8] and know that he’s your cousin who’s indebted to loansharks, there’s fat numbers guy with the gold, and the mess you don’t want to return to, that you dance and don’t dance, that time is a convention and cataclysm a future.

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To be Caribe Pop is to come and go but without moving, to cry every night, to be pained by your roots, to want a better future that’s always in the future. It’s a Judeo-Christian moral that you can steal from every house. It’s about the devastating fact of living like a parasite.

There goes Nicolas Bourriaud saying that Latin America throbs strongly to the beat of unusual behaviour, always pulsating, always incomprehensible, erased by a thousand greeds, obliterated by a million memories, addicted to sacrifice and to ritual, to pain and to danger.

To be Caribe Pop is to find oneself again and shine; to hope that chance will bring luck, get dollars, do business and support one’s Mom, which is sacred. To live through paternal abandonment, lack sustenance, hurdle through bad choices, and choose reading as escape from furore. To forget the bad times, abortions, aggressions, mistreatments, stabbings; the key is to look straight at the horizon and blink only for a moment.

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To be Caribe Pop is to have gall whilst mortified, to beat a bitter cacao of events into a froth of excitement, to seal one’s mark in the heavens, to speak a Castillian invented in jail. To summarise, to be ‘Caribe Pop’ is to enjoy the masochism of failure, to give our time moderate doses of love; to use Anglicisms because our language is reduced through domination, to dream of New York’s tropical sun when it’s -15°, to use the metric system and not the imperial, to accept our impertinent faith as the key to life. To play the lottery as a solution to poverty, to be marginalised and on the margin, to accept telenovelas are the only system that shapes us.

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Andrés Farias made the introduction, a ritual of initiation, he showed me the ‘literary and performative universe of Rey Andújar’ from where comes Tiznao, and we spoke of the Narco states, of the eternal torment that is to divide the island of man in two. We shared the faithful belief in the hurricane, and our tropical innocence persuades us because we are Caribe Pop and disaster will fall in love with us.

Nicolás Gerardi (translated by José Arroyo)

 

•••

El Caribe pop

El Caribe pop se trata sobre catástrofe y calamidad, sobre el insostenible azar de soportar la realidad y gozarla hasta su última molécula. De querer salir de tú país porque es corrupto y corruptor, un lugar menor, sometido-sometidor, porque en el fondo eres un estúpido subordinado de lo inesperado, de la desdicha y de la dicha malversada, de la ricura, de lo atroz, lo decadente, adicto al arroz, a los granos, al cerdo, a contar cada centavo.

El Caribe Pop es una forma de sobrevivir atada a lo inusitado, a lo importado, a lo externo a lo exógeno, pero también a lo propio, a lo ocultista, a lo oscuro. No es coincidencia que los masones tengan tanto poder, que los rosacruces, que los opus dei, que los narcos que los evangélicos tengan tanto poder.

Ser Caribe Pop es experimentar la desdicha desde la dicha de olvidar, no tener memoria, aullar y ayunar. Travestirse en mil fantasías irrealizables, ver la televisión y saber que nunca lo vas a tener, que no vives el sueño americano que para ti es norteamericano. SerCaribe Pop es ver Tiznao y saber que es tu primo que debe centavos, que ahí esta el gordo del oro, y el burdel al que no quieres volver, que bailas y no bailas, el tiempo una convención y el cataclismo un futuro.

Ser Caribe pop es ir y venir pero nunca moverte, llorar todas las noches, que te duelan las raíces, querer un futuro mejor siempre en el futuro, es una moral judeo-cristiana que te puedes robar de cualquier casa, se trata del fulminante hecho de vivir como un parásito.

Por ahí pasa Nicolas Borriaud diciendo que América Latina late fuerte por su inusitado comportamiento, siempre inusitado, siempre incomprensible, borrado de mil códices, obliterados de millones de memorias, adicto al sacrifico y al rito, al dolor y al peligro.

Ser Caribe Pop es rebuscarse y brillar, esperar que el azar brinde un fruto, conseguir dólares, hacer el mercado, mantener a la mai que es lo sagrado. Vivir el abandono paterno, carecer de sustento, sobre volar las malas opciones y elegir la lectura como escape a todo el fermento. Olvidar los malos momentos, abortos, agresiones, maltratos, puñaladas, la clave es mirar recto el horizonte y pestañar solo un momento.

El Caribe Pop es jugar al vivo pero muerto, batir el chocolate, amargo cacao de los hechos, firmar una de lacra en el firmamento, hablar un castellano inventado en la cárcel. En resumen el Caribe Pop es disfrutar el masoquismo del fracaso, administrar en dosis moderadas el amor a nuestra era. Usar anglicismos porque nuestra lengua se queda corta y rebajada-dominada, soñar con el sol tropical de NY a -15° grados, usar el sistema métrico y no el sistema imperial, asumir nuestra impertinente fe como clave para la vida. Jugar la Lotería como solución a la pobreza, ser marginado y marginal, aceptar las telenovelas como único sistema formativo.

Andrés Farías hizo el ritual de iniciación, me mostró “el universo performático y literario de Rey Andújar” de dónde nace Tiznao y hablamos sobre los narco estados, y sobre la tormenta eterna que va a dividir a la isla de los hombres en dos. Compartimos la fiel creencia en el huracán y nuestra inocencia tropical nos persuade porque somos Caribe Pop y el desastre se va a enamorar de nosotros.