The Emotional Weight of the Past

 

 (Written on Sept. 17, 2013)

We have a resplendently full moon tonight. As I was exercising in the cool of the early evening, I couldn’t help but notice how it grew brighter and brighter as darkness descended. The moon rose gracefully until it dominated the landscape, one of the few celestial objects able to pierce the atmospheric haze, and as it did, I felt the tug of the past once again.

According to whimsical legends, the moon is supposed to affect us in unusual ways. In past centuries, before the advent of widespread artificial illumination, when we were forced to rely on bonfires and lighted candles, it must have been an eerie and dominating sight. Before gaslight fixtures in our major cities, before cities were anything more than collections of ramshackle buildings arrayed in a haphazard fashion, interspersed here and there with monuments to powerful institutions, most people lived in the countryside, and night must have descended upon them like a hawk, smothering everything in blackness. It governed our daily rituals, and life back then must have been wearying enough, if most of our ancestors were peasants who lived in straightened circumstances. Such a bright disc suspended up in the sky, in a firmament that was furthermore perceived to be dotted with a myriad of stars, and the glorious vision of the Milky Way, back when our nights actually were dark and not glowing with the reflected lights of our vast cities. No wonder that legends arose about people being driven mad by the influence of this vivid specter, one that is almost ghost-like, and why we associated it with transformations, as people became overpowered by fear, anxiety, and panic.

It is hard for us, we who are used to the widespread illumination of the modern age, to countenance how those in the past must have reacted. We are attuned to different rhythms nowadays, and for the modern sensibility, we tend to imbue moonlight with a certain romanticism. The young feel a certain thrill at being able to divorce themselves from the daytime drudgery of school and less-than-satisfying jobs, and plan social outings for the night hours. We are different at night, more glamorous somehow, creatures of artifice like the sweeping panoramic view of skyscrapers at night, and we find the moon romantic. We have need of different symbols, those that allow us to distance ourselves from the glare of what we perceive to be literalism taken to extremes (such as our imprisonment in cubicles during the day, a predicament calling out for release).

But the sight of the moon affected me as well. For some reason, on this early evening, it transported me out of myself, as I was walking around the track with a small crowd of hardy individuals who also exercise during the early evening. I was thinking, in particular, about ghosts, and about the imprint they (and we) leave on this world. Can we not view the moon, after all, as a type of ethereal other, Selene, not as beguiling young woman but as old crone whose profile some of us are able to see, the grandmother that we associate with the past, looking down on humanity with a sort of detachment and dispassionately viewing the flow of the centuries, the roiling passions and energies that boil over but that then are dissipated, over and over, time after time? Do things ever really change?

It prompted me to think of the people I had known before, for I ascended for a few seconds of eternity up to join the moon, and to look back as if from a height at the panorama of my own past, the planet below around which I orbit. I may not measure time in millions of years, but the epochs of my life have become distinct in my imagination, and I could not help but return, obsessively, over and over to the period of my late adolescence, to those final years in high school, where I yearned for nothing other than to be able to escape the grip of my current circumstances, and to find my destiny somewhere else, anywhere else but this town that I thought back then constricted my possibilities.

We think about the people we met, many of whom we never truly leave them behind. They pull on us with their own gravity, and if I may say so, this gravity is felt in terms of emotional weight. There were times when I wish I could disencumber myself of unpleasant memories, of slights and insults I received when I was a child, wishing to forget times to erase what I had done, to go back and shake my younger shoulders and try to bring sense to play. Back then I felt that the world was hurtling forward inexorable and leaving me behind, here in this backwater town of Corona, a town on the outskirts of our great metropolitan center, a sleepy town of citrus groves and small dreams. But for a moment, my vision was expanded, and I was able to reflect on the world with a grander scope, and yes, to perceive more clearly the ghosts that haunt me.

I was thinking in terms of history, and the panoramic view that it represents. With regards to this academic field, the idea is that we are able to look back on our past (viewed in terms of grander cohesive units, in the movement and experience of communities, groups, institutions and, much later, civilizations and nations) and parse it into periods that are understood in terms of the elaboration of certain factors in play. For a young man of 15 years of age, I thought it offered a framework that would help me to escape the prison of my own personal subjectivity, by looking at moments and phenomena in the past that were piercing in their significance. It is a commonplace to think that history involves the study of momentous events, turning points that have lasting consequences, moments when battles were won, treaties were signed, empires were established, new people were “discovered” and social movements as well as economic patterns shaped our way of life and our very identity. It isn’t the story of individuals, although so much of history is studied in this way, with textbooks that used to offer us a never-ending pageant of kings and princes and generals and inventors, because they represented stories that were easy to understand.

As we age we recognize that there are of course hidden institutional factors at play, and that it is too simplistic to think in terms of narratives, even though we are hard-wired to think in this fashion. Rather than think in terms of the Age of Capital, it is easier to think of industrialists, and of inventor of the cotton gin, of the steam engine, of Eli Whitney and James Watt, and of the framework provided by theorists such as Adam Smith and the elaboration of the theory of markets. When we think of episodes such as the Civil War, we think of compelling personalities, of Abraham Lincoln and Robert E. Lee, of emancipators and rebels, and of great causes, when history was in fact much more nuances. We might review economic factors, and also, general ideological impulses as well as institutional factors, for institutions also exert and defend their interests, but this demands a perspective that is more in tune with structuralist theory, that which is taught in our universities and is endlessly quoted by university students in clumsy term papers.

I was thinking more along the lines of stories, and what it meant to study history and to appreciate it as a form of moral but also uplifting and, yes, entertaining instruction. I had been fortunate to have a teacher in junior high school, Mrs. Cotnoir, who had fully recognized the potential of history to entertain us, and we had regaled us by dramatizing in her own way the Age of Pericles. We as young students loved the pageantry and drama of her approach, and she brought to life the characters involved in the era of the Persian Wars, describing the invasion of the Persian emperor, and the way in which the Greeks had banded together if only for one brief moment to repel the outside invader.

We heard about generals while she drew diagrams of bays and harbors and the disposition of naval forces, doing her best to draw those ships of the classical age, the triremes, and to evoke the otherworldly quality of the oracle at Delphi, the one of the inscrutable prophecies that warmed of disaster to come, but also seemed to speak of the possibility of being safeguarded behind wooden walls (that of the triremes, of course, and not any walls constructed around any city). She described the strategies of generals such as Themistocles, and the haughtiness and discipline of the Spartans, and the brilliant but also quarrelsome nature of the Athenians, they with their messy democracy that we were to inherit over two thousand years later.  We students enjoyed these lectures, especially since we were not encumbered with any obligation to adhere to strict historical protocols, to a dispassionate view of history, for of course our modern history was taught from the vantage point of what were considered “western” values, and it was easy to reduce the Persians to the status of barbarians, a line of thinking that scholars have noted signaled the commencement of what Palestinian scholar Edward Said was to brilliantly describe as an “Orientalist” mindset.

It was a memorable year for me, but by the time I entered high school, I was ready for another approach to the study of history. By then I think I had already discovered the show “Jeopardy”, and had heard of historians such as Barbara Tuchman, and felt the power of being, so to speak, a privileged and somewhat detached observer of human endeavor. I still believed and continue to do believe (we are hardwired as a human species to do so, once again) in the power and seduction of stories, but I thought that there was also a vision that could encompass a more scientific approach, something along the lines of what I had read in the famous Foundation series of books by Isaac Asimov.

In that series, which encompassed a narrative that extended far into the future, when the human species had expanded to the stars and had formed a galactic empire, I was introduced to the idea of history as a psychosocial process that could be analyzed in accordance with certain scientific principles. It was a way of divesting it of a certain chaotic nature, converting it, on the contrary, into a predictive science. We could predict the scope of human history if we understood the underlying social and institutional impulses, a view that was, when you think of it, inherently conservative, for it posited that we as a human species would never be able to transcend in a fundamental way certain universal principles that defined our social dynamic. This is still the view that is posited, in slightly different form, by certain social scientists, notably those who publish books that wish to posit an evolutionary framework behind our most fundamental impulses. I have to admit, it does sound convincing when I read these books and these theories, but I think that at times, it is actually much too flexible a theoretical framework that can be stretched to encompass every single human act, almost a tautology to say that we do things because we “evolved” to do so (the triumph of Richard Dawkins’ Selfish Gene).

Maybe I am not such a confirmed materialist, after all.

But I was ready for another approach, and when I entered high school, amidst all the other turmoil involved in adjusting to another hostile and indifferent habitat that involved its’ own dynamic of insiders and outsiders, I was left to fend for myself, and I was fortunate enough to make the acquaintance of Mr. Zadra. He was my American history teacher when I was a junior, and he made a lasting impression upon me.

There was something old-fashioned about him. He seemed very much to come from another age, and didn’t have the typical relaxed persona or patterns of speech of a dyed-in-the-wool Californian. He was a tall man, maybe in his late fifties, and he had a rather prominent nose and a nasal voice to match. He would lecture to us without the need to “ham it up” or dramatize the episodes we were studying, taking care to note the importance of the periods and the circumstances that were at play. Of course, we had a different type of textbook at that point, a high school textbook that was more in line with a more subtle and formal understanding of historical phenomena, and we were able to read about the great processes (by great, I don’t mean to suggest appreciation or admiration, but only, to speak in terms of a grander scope) of American history. He opened my eyes, and stimulated my critical faculties.

As may be imagined, high school students were still, by and large, squirming adolescents who were little able to concentrate at times on the subject matter being taught. In my worst moments I thought that all teenagers were incapable of letting go an opportunity to belittle or ridicule someone else, and it was a difficult time for me. I sat in the front row, and I took notes, and I responded to Mr. Zadra, all of which earned me reprobatory and jeering looks from so many who sat around me. I would stay to discuss current events with Mr. Zadra after class, or drop in during lunch time, and I always appreciated that he would take the time to give serious consideration to my questions and to offer thoughtful responses. I never obtained a sense of where his political inclinations lay, if he was a conservative or a liberal, although I do remember that he did seem to question the educational priorities of the Reagan administration. He told me, after all, that Jimmy Carter had been “good for education”, when I was falling into the trap of criticizing him for our domestic as well as international policies.

I remember that we would hold what were known as history tournament a few times during the academic year. I can’t describe how much I looked forward to them, and we would be placed in small teams, to compete against each other in what would be considered a game-show format. It was a nice change of pace, and I bounced and squirmed in my seat, desperate to answer each question, and being a little dismissive of the rest of the students involved in the tournament. It gave me an opportunity to emerge from anonymity, for I knew that wherever I was placed, my team would always look to me to provide the answers, and we almost always won. It is embarrassing for me to think about my mindset now, and now I squirm to recall how I behaved. I mentioned that during that year my team won almost all the contests, because it was the case that we did lose one. It happened when I found another opponent I had never seen before, a blonde and lanky teenager who wore glasses and who must have joined the class in the middle of the year. He similarly answered all the questions for his own group, and it narrowed down to a duel between the two of us.  I was a little too overconfident, and that loss hedged on one question the answer to which had escaped me back then because it was offered in what seemed to be a footnote in our text, but that has been engraved in my memory since then: Who invented the first elevator? Elisha Otis.

I relished being in Mr. Zadra’s class, the way I would come to relish other teachers who similarly stimulated my imagination, and who let me escape for a time from what I considered the dreary social pageantry of high school, the routine cruelty, the anti-intellectualism and the lack of what I would consider was a grander historical vision. The kids were quick to insult and mock others, and everyone was a target. I even saw a drug sale take place in one class, and I question whether the teacher actually missed seeing this act or chose to ignore that transaction as I saw her become more and more discouraged during that semester.

It is probably the case that many public school teachers fail because they can’t make the mental adjustment necessary for teaching in public schools. They are all college graduates, and they are used to the idea of discipline and to the respect that they themselves gave to their college instructors. As I was reminded by one of my friends during a recent lunch when we were discussing a junior high teacher we both had, one who was famous for expressing what could only be considered open hostility towards all students, she (and other beginning teachers) can’t get into the mindset that most classes in public schools are not approximations nor analogues of the college experience. We are talking about wholly different animals, two entirely different species, those 18 and younger, and those 18 and older. The psychology is different, although at times I am willing to recognize that there are high school environments where the experience is much closer, an intermediate zone so to speak. When asked, I always say that I consider my year taking English classes with Mr. Philips at Corona High School as my first real experience of a college class.

But in Mr. Zadra’s American history course, despite the best efforts of our teacher, there were moments when student behavior became somewhat uncontrolled. I remember one instance, in which he asked a student to discontinue her disruptive activity, and she lashed out verbally at our teacher. It seemed shocking to me, because it was occurring with a person who I respected so much as a mentor, and who was very mild and could hardly be said to merit such treatment. He tried to defuse the confrontation, and thought me a lesson that it is never in the best interest of classroom dynamics to engage in arguments or to answer in kind. It is a lesson that I am ashamed to say I forgot over and over when I was a substitute teacher for two years, leading to many unpleasant clashes that lingered in my memory.

On the last day of high school, I remember that I was released from certain classes and was allowed to go to library or to visit with other teachers rather than to take the final exams. This was the case in Mr. Engle’s Chemistry class, as I was able to verify when reading my high school diary, part of which I have uploaded to the web. One of the noteworthy things that I did, to compensate for so many other mistakes when I didn’t reach out to individuals or take a more active in the social environment or when I wasn’t as supportive as I should have been of school spirit, was to go to visit a few of my teachers. I recall that I visited Mr. Zadra, and I thanked him sincerely for his instruction and his support. His class had meant so much to me, and more than the gentle but respectful way in which he had taught the subject, I appreciated that he saw something in me, and took the time to continually encourage me. He always did have a gentle and hearty bearing, if somewhat formal, and it is hard for me to see him as a military officer, although I did know he had served in that capacity. I think I circulated around the campus and thanked a few other teachers as well. I was in a daze because I would shortly be entering the summer school program at UCLA, and this was the culmination of so many of my dreams of finding a more compatible environment. I also would venture to say that I felt what we all felt, a certain amount of sadness at leaving these teachers behind.

While at UCLA, I took a few history courses, although this was very much discouraged among engineering students. My first year I remember that I took a course in modern European history with Professor Wohl, and performed very well,  writing with abandon on my blue book.  I always thought that if I had been born under different circumstances, I would have liked to continue my study of history, but it was a luxury that I didn’t have as a working-class student. I thought my deliverance would come with solving formulas, the traditional kind, not the ones that were based on psychosocial and quasi-scientific principles a la Harry Sheldon in Asimov’s Foundation trilogy.

I found out while at UCLA that Mr. Zadra had passed away a year after I had graduated, when I had a chance to chat with a fellow Corona High School alumnus. It filled me with sadness, for it really felt as if I had lost a part of my soul at that moment. It also left me with regrets over not ever having taken the time to go back to my high school, and to reach out to my former teachers, to thank them once again for their support during that trying time of my life. It was a battle that, like the incursion of the “barbarians” upon the Greek mainland so long ago, had been won against long odds, and it was an experience that, decades later, I had come to recognize merited its own Greek historical epic, in the manner perhaps of a Herodotus who combined strict observation with fanciful explanations that involved the intervention of the gods (i.e., science and storytelling melded together). Well, I am joking, of course, but I still think there is much to be gleaned from this experience, and I find it frustrating that I haven’t found the way to share my emotional experiences with other students.

As I was telling my childhood friends Frank and Richard during a recent lunch, in my mind, emotionally, I harbor the illusion that things have not changed since I left Corona High School. I know intellectually that they have, for I have seen the campus transformed dramatically, and have furthermore been to the campus to attend not only the graduation of two of my nieces (a third is set to graduate in June of 2014), but also to complete a few substitute teaching assignments a few years ago during that inglorious period of my life. There are parts of the campus that seem excruciatingly the same, and when I was on the campus, I found myself walking about as if in a dream.

It is easy and, perhaps, emotionally comforting to think that were I to sit around long enough, I might see familiar figures on campus. I don’t think anyone from my time in the 80s remains on at that school, but I can imagine that if I were to sit in the central quad area long enough, during an early evening as the moon shines brightly above, a night such as tonight, I might see the ghost of Mr. Zadra walking along to his classroom, he wearing a dark blue blazer and dressed formally as he always seemed to be dressed, carrying his textbook in one hand or maybe a briefcase. I imagine him taking note of me as well, another disembodied spirit on campus, looking down from the vast distance of three decades past, and seeing how I wished that we could have had all the discussions such as we used to have when I was his student. We could have both shaken our heads about the wonders we have seen, about the scope of historical events since that period in the 80s, commenting as we would about the dissolution of the Soviet Empire, and also about the rise of China, one that had been made possible by the reforms instituted by Deng Xiapeng, a leader whose rise to power he would have seen. We could have discussed the impact of globalization, and the way in which we seem to have entered a new Gilded Age in this country, one of robber barons in the guise of Wall Street technocrats who so willfully gambled and nearly brought down the economy, and in which income disparity has increased to levels that were only seen 100 years ago.  And we could have discussed the enduring saga of the Middle East, and the epic struggles that have been witnessed in that region, and the way in which so much of history seems to depend, once again, on hidden but enduring paradigms, where autocracy, for example, has been reestablished in countries where social movements sought to abolish it, as in the earnest but failed revolution in Egypt.

It seems as if I am a million miles away, floating in space and orbiting my past, and it is difficult to say who is more unreal, whether I am or the memory of past friends and mentors. Looking at the moon put me in this reflective mood, and it made escape, for a moment, the sullen grip of the now, to dream once again about another unearthly period of my life. I miss Mr. Zadra, and wonder if we are not all ultimately phantasms in human history.

Will I haunt anyone when I am gone? The moon carries with it, as ever, a heavy emotional weight.

 OGRomero © 2013
(Copyrighted by OGRomero, 2013)

 

 

Review of "The Salt of the Earth"

 
                                                              "What can you do?"
                                                              "I can weld."
                                                              "I'm sorry, but all we have for Mexicans is labor."

                                                                     (Dialogue between Juan Chacon and personnel man at  
                                                                      Kennecott Copper Mining Co., reproduced in The Revenge of
                                                                      the Saguaro, p. 121)

I’m ashamed to say that I hadn’t seen the film The Salt of the Earth until recently. It is a classic film that details an episode of labor strife in the Southwest in the early 50s, that of the strike by the overwhelmingly Mexican-American members of Local 890 against Empire Zinc. It furthermore expands its scope to treat other struggles for emancipation, including racial and gender equality as well as the labor struggle. It was a film that was produced under difficult circumstances, as described by the writer Tom Miller in a chapter devoted to classic Southwestern films incorporated in his book Revenge of the Saguaro, and it is filled with charismatic performances, by professionals and amateurs alike, and by a poetic reflection of what emancipation means.  

 

After my confession about this film, I would have to add that I was no stranger to labor fights. My father was a union man, and he worked for over three decades for a company that manufactured industrial clay pipes to be used for construction projects. It was a labor-intensive occupation, and almost all the laborers were Mexican immigrants (like my father) or Mexican-Americans, with the supervisory and managerial staff consisting overwhelmingly of people of Anglo descent. As a child I always wondered about this disparity, and why it was that the company seemed not to want to recruit workers of other ethnic groups. Perhaps they thought that it made for a much more subservient labor force, one that as I grew older I came to realize was easier to exploit.

When I was an adolescent, I remember that my father’s union found it necessary to engage in a strike action. It was a calamitous affair, and as a family we were hard put to make ends meet. There was a strike fund, of course, but it wasn’t nearly enough, and we had to rely on donations from the food pantry run by our local church. I was taken to the strike line by my father from time to time, and it was a shock to me to see these middle-aged Mexican men, the overwhelming majority of whom spoke little English and had received little formal education, who were hard pressed to define the term “proletariat” but who knew, deep down inside, that they were the “trabajadores”, the workers who made the company run. It was winter, and they stood awkwardly in a line, holding firm with their picket signs, ones that I would venture to say they couldn’t understand because they were written in English.

The surrounding landscape then as now, as one traverses south on the 15 freeway and leaves the Inland Empire to enter San Diego county, is ringed with bare and rocky hills, features that have a certain majesty to them.  There is little vegetation, and these bare and stark hills that were slowly being gouged out by quarries and other industrial enterprises served as a bleak background to a strike that was similarly facing long odds. Unfortunately the pressure became too much, more so than could be endured even by the clay pipes that these workers molded and fired in immense furnaces, to be subsequently attached and shipped to construction sites, and the workers gave up. Their resolve broke, and they were forced to settle, because quite simply they could not budge the management which proved harder than the surrounding rocky hills. I think my father actually compared the workers to the landscape, that was forced to slough off layers, that was being graded for future development projects and that was little able to resist the earth movers brought to bear by company owners and the apparatus of industrial capitalism. I suspect, also, that the strike failed because they were unable to rally public support to their side. There were numerous fissures in play, here, and one of these involved the fact that this ethnic workforce of Mexican immigrant laborers was little able to garner the attention, much less the sympathy, of the surrounding Anglo-American community, one which felt little affinity for their situation, and was more likely to see them return to being an invisible community.

As indicated before, we struggled during the course of this strike, and it became quickly evident to me when my father lost his resolve. In the beginning it must all have been novel to him, my father, who had moved up from being an agricultural laborer who traveled up and down the length of California in the decade of the 60s, and who bragged about having met César Chávez. I was taken to the picket lines by my father to catch a glimpse of the reality of working class struggle, and perhaps, so that I would learn to appreciate his struggles and overcome our mutual estrangement. He communicated to me his stark vision of Capitalism, and spoke to me of supervisors who treated them contemptuously, of haughty executives who arrived in luxury cars and refused to speak to workers, and of owners who from time to time condescended to visit the plant, descending as if from the stars. They, the workers, labored in unsafe conditions, with gauze masks that little protected them from the fumes and the clay residue that filled the air when they cut into these massive pipes, and in my father’s case, labored in furnace-like temperatures as they clay was tempered, barely earning above minimum wage. They lost this strike, and had to return in all humility to accept a token grant of consideration of their issues, and he never forgot his bitterness, especially at the taunts of management who relayed to him that had the workers maintained union solidarity for just a few more weeks, they would have won.

I was prompted to remember this episode while viewing The Salt of the Earth, an independent film from 1954. It was produced, filmed and directed by a group of blacklisted Hollywood professionals, those who, during the climate of the times, had come under suspicion of harboring Communist sympathies. It detailed the struggle of Mill and Mine Workers Union Local 890, which had engaged in a bitter strike against Empire Zinc. This was a long struggle that lasted approximately 15 months, notable for the intransigence of company management, for the collusion of the local New Mexico authorities who tried to suppress this mine action, and for the ideological awakening of an entire community, the Mexican and Mexican-American working classes of the region.

 

 

The film used a combination of professionals as well as amateurs to write, produce and act in the film.  This arrangement arose not only from practical considerations for a film that was being prepared on location, but also because few professionals could be attracted to participate in the project, it being subject to sanction by the official Hollywood Labor Unions who were still reeling from the scrutiny of the McCarthy era.  It was also a quite conscious decision that revealed the ideological underpinnings of the producers. It was to be a work that was to serve as a social document, one that would chronicle a social struggle in a sensitive as well as authentic way, although it was to be revealed later that the screenplay that was written by Paul Jarrico was altered to delete scenes that members of the working community, almost all Mexican and Mexican-American as state before, felt would have reflected poorly on their (our) culture. This doesn’t change the fact that this was a film that brought attention to issues that had escaped consideration, especially that of gender inequality.

The film initially seems like an exercise in socialist realism. By this I am referring to the approved genre of filmmaking that was common in the Eastern bloc, as well as in the work of western authors and directors who wished to focus on the plight of the working classes (think of the work of the Italian Vittorio De Sica). It was filmed in black and white, and the barren landscape of New Mexican llanos figured prominently as a reflection of an almost metaphysical condition of isolation for this community. The working classes have always faced long odds, and in this case, we have a one-company mining town with all that this implies about their dominance over the local institutional framework. The judicial apparatus, the law enforcement apparatus, the economic infrastructure, and even the cultural values all were subservient to the interests of the company, one that looms like an “octopus”, if we can refer to the title of the famous Frank Norris novel of the 19^th century that detailed the machinations of the railroad barons.

We are introduced to a Mexican-American couple, Ramón and Esperanza Quintero, and we immediately become aware of the bleakness of their situation. Because this situation is presented in such stark fashion, and one suspects, is magnified and exaggerated to accentuate this dramatic aspect, we can well view this approach as one that is thesis-driven. It is meant to illustrate an argument in clear and stark terms, wishing to advance the argument that the strike action was justified because the conditions were quite manifestly exploitative and unjust. We see this exaggerated quality (which is not to say that they were false, but only that they are accentuated by the film) in the intensity of the conflicts presented, in the confrontations both with the mine executives as well as among the mine workers themselves. And this dramatic quality is evident in the quiet but also at times desperate voiceover narration of the character of Esperanza Quintero, who was played by the Mexican actress Rosaura Revueltas.

 

This family lives in dire poverty, and the workers are forced to labor in unsafe conditions. They feel discriminated against, for it is claimed over and over that the Anglo mine workers not only receive better pay, but also, have running water in their company housing and better conditions in general. It is a classic strategy used by the executive and managerial classes to foment workers disunity, pitting one group of workers against another, and in this case, resisting the demands of the Anglo workers by asserting that they are better off than the “Mexicans”. We see in this film a process whereby the prototypical worker comes to an class awakening and slowly sees the “larger picture” (a phrase that is repeatedly bandied about in the film by the characters as it is amplified to encompass different struggles). The protagonist was played by an actual miner who participated in the real-life strike, Juan Chacón, who was not the first choice of the director. He proved a revelation in the film, managing as he did to convey the honesty and emotional struggle of a man who had reached the limits of what he could endure, and yet chose to struggle with quiet and uncompromising dignity. He was also pushed, we might add, by the character of his wife, who brings to the front her own issues.

We are fighting a multi-pronged fight, and because of the fact that the screenplay chose to acknowledge these enduring concerns we have a film that has aged gracefully, and continues to engross current audiences. It illustrates the drama of a company town and the fight waged by ethnic working-class miners who wish to assert their right to equal treatment, “No more, No less”, according to the placards they carry. But it also illustrates the struggle wage on the domestic front, bringing to attention the oppression of women within these same households.

We have the situation presented by Esperanza Quintero, who in her demeanor in the beginning of the film seems to be shell-shocked by a barren life that has been stripped of all hope, but who slowly comes awake as she comes to believe in her own dignity. This is portrayed quite convincingly by the actress, whose face slowly comes to life as the struggle progresses, and whose first awakening occurs when she is serenaded by her husband who has to be reminded by his son that it is her saint’s day. Esperanza slowly becomes politicized and finds the language to express the grievances and concerns that characterize her situation. She becomes an “organic intellectual” for her own class of oppressed women, to use Gramscian terminology, and she is able to elaborate her own arguments with an eloquence that becomes one of the hallmarks of this film.

As relayed by the real-life striker Juan Chacón in subsequent interviews concerning the real-life strike, this company housing was very sparse. It consisted of only two rooms, a kitchen and a bedroom, and these families had little in the way of consumer luxuries. In the film the character of Esperanza feels anguish over the threat of impoundment of the radio that was bought on credit, and we come to realize that the radio represents more than just an idle luxury. It symbolizes more, an aspirational goal, the idea that people of their class can aspire to dreams and to recreation, to living a more complete existence, and not settling for one that is circumscribed by the struggle to acquire the bare necessities. The radio is important to her, Esperanza asserts, and in one memorable scene, it serves as the excuse to invade the space that has been carved out by the men who have gathered to play poker. The women barge out of the bedroom, turn on the radio, and force the men to dance, with festive scenes as always representing a space of community engagement.

In the midst of their struggles, we are also witness to moments of drama. The workers hold firm in their picket line, even as they are intimidated and insulted by the town authorities, who do their best to break this line. There are racial slurs, beatings, imprisonment and the grating paternalism of company executives, especially the president and chief executive officer who is almost a caricature of the evil Capitalist owner. Thus the contrasts are set, and we see once again that the film is, perhaps, too ideological and programmatic at times, and perhaps did settle into using common stereotypes (the men seem much too noble at times also). But there is honesty to these portrayals, as well, and while the workers may frequently express themselves with a certain lapidary quality, with diction that is far too eloquent and too poetic to seem spontaneous and authentic, we see that the film nonetheless condenses many of the feelings so that they may be expressed in a memorable way. The script, one must remember, did have input from the workers, an action that was deemed necessary by the producers to accord with the ideological purity of this film. It is certainly not the way that I remember my father and the other striking men of a later age and struggle expressing themselves, with all the bitterness, ethnic slurs, and rough humor of the working classes. (Quite honestly, I don’t think that many of them ever saw the “big” picture as it related to gender equality.)

The dialogue is engaging and poetic, nonetheless, and lingers in our minds. In moments of emotional excitement, the characters speak in Spanish, and there are no subtitles, although the audience can well determine the gist of what is being said because it is usually subsequently elaborated in English. And, we have the narration of the female character of Esperanza who puts things into perspective as she narrates how she herself has changed as a consequence of this struggle. After the men are served with a court order to desist picketing (workers are prohibited to continue forming a picket line), the women’s auxiliary decides to step in, and they take the place of their husbands, forming a picket line that draws the incorporation of other women from the town many of whom had no direct involvement with the company. It is an issue that has expanded, and has become an assertion of a right to gender equality, for the struggle is being undertaken on many fronts.

Esperanza has a hard time convincing her husband, nonetheless. As with many men who come from a working-class background, Ramón has difficulty accepting this struggle that his wife advocates. Their marriage becomes troubled because he refuses to see her as a partner, and in one harrowing scene, we have him attempting to reassert his authority over her in a way which echoes the way in which the mine owners and executives attempt to repress workers’ demands. She exclaims, “Whose neck shall I step on to make me feel superior? I don’t want anyone lower than I am. I am low enough already”, a bitter recrimination and appeal to his better senses, as well as a searing statement of her own condition. It is this dialogue that condenses so many of these concerns in poetic fashion and it proves irresistible to the viewer, forming part of the staying power of this film among contemporary audiences.

The strike was eventually won, after numerous other dramatic episodes. It leads to a lasting change in the protagonists, in Ramón and Esperanza, whose consciousness has been expanded as a result of this struggle. It is an optimistic film, and it harks back to a period when the labor movement was stronger even if it was as ever embattled. There was a certain paternalism even within the unions, and it took some time for them to open up to address the concerns of other groups, for it was the case that many unions of the period were not sympathetic and were, furthermore, hostile to the incorporation of, for example, African Americans. As it was being filmed it was subject to derogatory characterization and hostile press, and was derided as a “racial issue propaganda movie” by The Hollywood Reporter, while labor columnist Victor Reisel asserted that the film constituted a dangerous precedent because it “brought two carloads of Negroes into the mining town” for a scene in which the film was, one gathered, to condemn an incident of mob violence against African-Americans (p. 128). It was a difficult time, and of course, it was filmed in a period during which the Civil Rights movement was gestating, to bloom subsequently in the 60s and 70s.

It is, indeed, an ideological film, and it does have a thesis, which strives to equate the emancipation struggles being waged on several fronts. It is possible to appreciate the movie for what it is, which is a social document of an era (one which rings close to home for me, because the issues were much the same as nowadays, because I witnessed this oppressive family dynamics in my own case, and because we continue to deal with an economic structure that is as divisive as it ever was, and has furthermore become more and more alienating as power has accrued to vast corporations), but it also offers an inspirational view that seeks to counter the deep-seated cynicism that has infected so many of us. It reminds me, of course, of other films, such as Norma Rae and Bread and Roses, among others, but in this case, the honesty of the workers and the earnestness of their characters combine to invest them with a timeless quality.

The issues are much the same, yes, and we can only hope that the epic of these latter day struggles, whether it be the gender, ethnic and labor movements, will soon have a successful conclusion. It may perhaps always be the case that these increased rights are won on a piecemeal basis, but it is necessary nonetheless to draw attention to them, and to have the courage to promote artistic works that highlight these issues, rather than the eternal tsunami of apolitical and anti-ideological films (read, all the action adventure big budget sequels and facile comic adolescent films a la Judd Apatow that seem to have little relation to current issues) that have been all the rage in recent decades.

 

Copyrighted OGRomero (C) 2013

Copyrighted by Oscar G. Romero 2013

El interior (2nd version)

This is the story of the little one who was thrown into the bowels of a proud and ornery mountain and lived to tell about it.

Although times have changed, and the land has similarly been changed beyond all recognition, some forms remain the same, like stories that survive because they speak about things that have been and always will be. The land may assume different appearances and may be transmuted into different forms, but the relationships persist, because the forms are connected and because they work out of similar logic. This land, like everything else, was born and grew and matured, facing its own set of eternal challenges, before it declined and changed and gave way to new forms. The ocean speaks to the clouds, which in turn weep on the land that receives these tears and in turn crumbles seeps away, flowing eventually back to the ocean. And the rhythm of these processes has its own patterns and music, punctuated by the cracks of lightning and icebergs that fall away during the summer, or percussive like the throbbing of hail on the vast drums of the plains, or soft and shimmering like the fall winds and gentle breezes that, like the caresses of a nurturing mother, lull the land to sleep as night advances. It is never completely quiet for those who know how to listen, nor are the mountains and valleys, lakes and deserts and clouds and oceans ever truly alone.

This land has seen the arrival of new peoples and new ways that have swept away what came before. There is an ebb and flow to these movements, an eternal retreat and advance. Can we compare the wonders of a windswept valley that is surrounded by peaks and dry air, burning in its time in accord with the seasons and yet ever renewing itself in a new profusion of growth, with the pale and ultimately ephemeral vistas of towers and bridges and vast and teeming anthills that are crisscrossed by asphalt rivers and that are visited by innumerable and ponderous winged creatures that constitute our modern-day urban agglomerations? If one were to stop and consider but only for a moment, one would see that the likeness of forms persists eternally, and that the ghost of the past are ever-present. The air might have been cleaner in the past, less permeated with sulfur and carbon and the residue of eternal combustion, but the fact is that combustion was ever-present, and had its seasons and its purpose. The exuberant forests that once stretched as far as the eye could see have now been receded into disconnected parcels, lingering like refuges after the rise of the storm waters, and the metallic flood of the present with all the fury of destruction will be but a moment in time as well. And the land will persist, and the Rumbling One will wake from its dream and take stock of what has changed, and will proclaim things much as they always were.

Long ago, before the arrival of the steel buttresses and the shimmering lights of dotted the urban anthills of modern times, there was a mountain that occupied a range of land that was seeded with many others of its type. It had a wide base, and it rose to dominate the terrain, being taller and older than its sisters and brothers that dotted the landscape in a string of family that stretched to the west. It was a simpler time back then, for as the mountains grew taller, there were always distractions, and the cold at their cusp somehow dulled their senses. Back then the air was more transparent, and the mountains talked to each other, answering in the language of their kind, which was a mix of deep grumblings, sustained grating sounds punctuated from time to time by fiery outbursts. The noise of the one could be felt on the other side of the Earth, for the roots of the mountains lay deep, and they were all ultimately connected, like family.

There was little use for empty and showy language, with formulas of courtesy or with the vivid and creative snap of invective. The land communicated in a straightforward way, and because it had all the time in the world, it merely repeated the same stories, filling them in with details that were revealed in innumerable hues and traces and sensations, of colors, sounds, and mineral dispersal, among the other languages that were spoken. The clouds wept, but not always, and the wind chilled and refreshed, but could at times be deathly quiet, and the minerals and metals and ores underneath the mountain flowed and dispersed and imparted their own taste to the mountain that was ever digesting them, engaged as it was in an eternal repast. But the mountain also communicated with the little ones who inhabited its slopes, and who were like a shimmer at the edge of its vision.

The mountain had need of communication, and while its senses were multifaceted, and glacial in scope, it had taken note of the companionship offered by the little ones. These communities of overgrown and upright ants had gathered on its sides, having come thousands of years ago from the north, and had settled on the mountain, tending to it in their own way. The mountain felt them as they scraped their plots of land on its side, created terraced fields, and as they cleared away groves of upland pine and other trees, and channeled the streams of water so that they were used to soothe away the itching of the skin that was poked by these little ones. It took note of their activity, and of the way in which these communities shaped the mountain in their own modest way, grooming it after their fashion. And for the most part, it tolerated them, for it had little orientation towards malice.

The people who lived on the mountain were a hardy sort, patient and tolerant and hardworking. They lived according to rhythms that had not changed substantially over thousands of years, ever since their first ancestors had arrived to this land, finding it to be suitable to their needs. They tried their best to treat the mountain with respect, for they were naturally appreciative of any sign of hospitality, and because they viewed it as an elder, one who was not remote but instead took an active part in their lives. These people called the mountain the Rumbling One, and offered it companionship, talking to it often, offering their service and treating it with honor. Most of the time the mountain was quiet, although many said that that it was never fully silent, for they could feel the pulse of its heartbeat under their feet, and they were well aware of its red heart that swirled deep inside, deep in the caldera. They proclaimed their intent to help beautify their mountain, to stabilize it when parts crumbled or were swept away during occasional storms, and when it had need trees and bushes to provide cover for those areas that must surely have grown otherwise sunburnt and calloused under the weight of the sun’s rays.

Despite the care that was given by these people, the soothing of its side with the flow of water that was collected and used for irrigation, and the chipping away at the callouses of its skin as the years flowed, the Rumbling One had always had difficulty breathing. It was one of the great afflictions of its kind, and it was due perhaps in large measure to the fact that its heart was too fiery. From time to time it had need to catch its breath, for it was in danger of suffocating, and while it appreciated the clear and chill air of the uplands, the pure and crystalline essence of the sky, this air was thin, and it did little to fill cool its heart.

So the mountain would from time to time catch its breath, clear its throat, cough and, from time to time, sneeze violently. It had little knowledge of what this meant for the people who lived on its sides, and who would wail at the first warning signs of an impending fit. The Rumbling One needed to breath, and it needed to cool itself off, and these were natural functions that could no more be repressed than the emanation of gases that emerged from its depths, and that bubbled forth out of vents and caves as well as bubbling out of the creeks that emerged from its sides. The mountain had a great wide gaping mouth, but it also had many nostrils, and these breathing passages from time to time grew clogged, and the air of its summit became too still, and its heart grew hotter, and maybe, just maybe, it simply felt like calling out mischievously to its sister hundreds of miles away, who was babbling in her sleep and who would jump if the brother coughed, it taking great pleasure in reminding itself that it had its own family. And because of these and other reasons, the Rumbling One would release part of its pent-up energy.

The people did their best to anticipate these events. They were ever attentive to the signs, for their lives depended on it, and because they knew that the mountain at time took little stock of its power and of how it could affect the lives of the community. They had prepared places of refuge, and paths that made any possible evacuation much easier. They knew of the many caves that dotted the mountain, and did their best to keep them clear, for they furthermore knew that noxious gases could accumulate within them, and for those who ventured too deep into these caves, they risked being overcome by the fumes and falling asleep, never to awaken again. The fumes, oddly, dried out organic matter, and they had found it useful to store part of their harvest of crops in some of these caves, to preserve them through the seasons, but they took care not to stockpile their inventories too deeply, for these were the passageways the Rumbling One needed to breathe. And, if the mountain were quiet, the tunnels could be useful during the winter, for they were always dry and warm, but only if the mountain were sleeping, for otherwise, the deadly fumes that normally lingered deep inside the cave might be pushed to the opening, and then the danger was all the greater of being overcome was all the greater for those who might wish to seek shelter there. So, it was best to evacuate and flee down the mountain, and for that purpose, it was best to maintain good relations with the people of the lowlands as well.

For the most part the people lived peacefully. There were other groups that lived on the mountain, for it was a very big and expansive area, and these people were shaped by their experiences so that they came to share similar beliefs. The people of the other half were also faithful in their attentions to the mountain, and they referred to each other as brothers. They came together for certain shared rituals and they traded stories that were very much alike, but that delighted for the difference in details. Their hospitality was somewhat more limited when it came to the people of the lowlands, who didn’t share many of the same affinities as those that resided on the mountain. Those who lived in the valleys and the flat areas where the water gathered in vast pools and the forests teemed with wild and exotic fruits and screeching animals such monkeys and macaws were of a different temperament. They seemed somehow busier, and were more forward, and also, most notably, louder. It was nonetheless necessary to maintain good relations with them, for they had useful products they could trade to the people of the mountain, and because one never knew if they might need to seek out refuge in their midst when the Rumbling One awoke.

The need for refuge was one that extended as well to the people of the valleys, for from time to time they were beset by their own troubles. It wasn’t only that they depended on the water that came from the mountain ranges and that flowed into their lakes, but also, that they were exposed to invasion by other groups from the north and east. There were aggressive communities that periodically made incursions into the valley, driven by the impetus of imperial ambition or, perhaps, by drought and pestilence or other factors, and they would attack the lowlanders. The signs were always clear to those of the mountains, and even before the first wave of refugees reached their highest slopes, they could often distinguish burning fires in the lowland settlements, and from time to time, catch the faint echo of cries, and the urgent warning of the drums that announced the call the arms.

For the most part the lowlanders were able to repulse the attack of these invaders. They gathered their armies, and proceeded to their battlements, waiting to withstand the inevitable sieges while their mobile forces rallied and struck at the flanks of their enemy. But it was also the case that at times the invading armies were too large and too desperate to be easily repulsed, and the lowlanders would send their armies to the mountain to gather strength, received as they were by the mountain dwellers, who helped them to restock and rest their forces to venture back down and resume the fight. The mountain was the ultimate battlement, and with the deep and intimate knowledge of the terrain, as well as with the use of obsidian knives that were mined in the upper reaches and attached to poles, as well as control of all routes of ascent, it was almost always the case that the lowlanders emerged to retake their valleys, renewing thus their bonds of friendship and obligation with the mountain dwellers as a sign of gratitude. But this didn’t change the fact that the lowlanders had a different temperament that was not entirely to the liking of the mountain dwellers. For one thing, they seemed to feel no similar reverence for the Rumbling One, and they instead expressed their devotion to the sun, and to the thunderclouds, and to the Deep One that they insisted swam contentedly at the bottom of their lake.

The matter of this lack of devotion to the Rumbling One was troubling to the mountain dwellers. They had little knowledge of the Deep One, and thought it at best a comical invention to terrify the simple-minded among them, for after all, did this Deep One ever make its presence felt the way the mountain did? And it was troubling as well to them that the valley dwellers spoke of so many entities, of the Dark One in the forests, and of the bears and snakes and their assorted menagerie. It sounded somewhat sacrilegious to the mountain dwellers who nonetheless stilled their tongues when in the company of valley dwellers, for they perceived this system as one that was unnecessarily complex and diverse, with little of the clarity they had come to value. Which is not to say that the mountain dwellers didn’t have a varied cosmology of their own, one that furthermore incorporated different entities and that was configured as a family of sorts.

There was the moon, of course, and the stars, and the eagles that soared majestically above it all. There were the winds which were given different names, and which were thought to be alive in their own right, embodiments of spirit that could wish one ill or good, and were quite treacherous at times, for they could arise suddenly and blow a person off a cliff and into the rocks below. There were the clouds, and the shadows that traversed the landscape, and which at times took their own volition and seemed to control their counterpart. There were the beetles and snakes and the insects, and of course, there were the plants that congregated in certain places, not in the way that the potatoes and chilies did when planted, but instead in huddled at the base of trees, or near streams, or even the fields of poppies and leaves that satisfied no appetite but instead increased it, dulling the senses and leaving the people in a dazed condition from which it was difficult to awake them. (These leaves were much prized in the commerce that was held with the people of the lowlands and valleys.) But there was never any doubt that the main source of power was the Rumbling One and his family, because he grew from the ground on which they and all the others including the valley people stood, and because he (for it was perceived as a “he”) was held to be the ultimate source in their cosmology for the sun, it being a tenet of their world view that this sun had been spit out by one such as the Rumbling One long ago, and that it had learned to fly out of envy for the eagles, who were also held to be sacred. The mountain gave signs of its awareness at every juncture, and while it could at times be forgetful, it wasn’t necessarily filled with malice, and it shared much the same temperament as their own elderly ones, but on a vaster scale. It could be called upon in times of need, but for the most part, it was best to groom and cultivate it quietly, and to do their part to insure that it sleep peacefully.

 

To be continued


Copyright OGRomero (c) 2013
Copyrighted by Oscar G. Romero 2013

A Summer Potboiler: A Review of "The Darwin Elevator"

One of the pleasures of the summer has always been having the time and disposition to be able to read widely and deeply. There is something about the bright sunlight and the vista of expanded time that invites us to enter a recreational mode.  Some people bicycle, others hike, some people work on their cars in their garages, others just settle down with a beer and watch a baseball game. There was always the illusion that we have more time than we can dispose of, that we have a surplus, so to speak, and so we are less harried than we normally are. For those with a more practical bent, they might plan to undertake home improvement projects, for this is undoubtedly the time, and the sunlight is enervating. I’ve always been on the opposite scale, and have preferred to read, a taste that is shared by others, since we have institutionalized what has come to be known as the summer reading list.

There is more than we can possibly read, and during the year, I accumulate far too many books. I stare at them guiltily, and try to at least open up them and read a few pages before putting them down again, because during the other seasons, I have far too much to do. Summer is different. This is when many of us feel that we actually have the time and, indeed, almost obligation to make a dent in the pile of projects we have been accumulating, and our inventory of books certainly qualifies as a project. We can’t watch television all the time, can we?

Whether it be mystery or crime novels, spy novels, the latest Stephen King or Tom Clancy or Robert Ludlum thrillers, or more conventional fare that we would rather not confess to reading otherwise, there is plenty from which to choose. I would like to think that this would be a good time to read those earnest historical treatises we have always told ourselves we would read, the biographies of Lyndon Baines Johnson, or maybe a more polemical tract, such as Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed, Christopher Hitchens’ god is not Great, or Jorge Castañeda’s Mañana Forever?, a provocative title that hits a nerve for Latin Americans and those of Latin American descent such as myself. But somehow, it isn’t the season for it, and we settle into more well-worn tracks, which usually involve escapist fare.

Rather than read the turgid prose of an Edward Gibbon narrating the end of the Roman Empire, who wouldn’t want to put themselves into the mindset of a hardboiled detective, or of a hallowed explorer such as Earnest Shackleton? Of all the ways to while away the time, I return to favorite characters and genres, and in this instance happen to prefer novels by Martin Cruz Smith, whose stolid investigator, Arkady Renko, has been a favorite ever since I read Gorky Park as a teenager. There are other characters that I can return to again and again, even if they aren’t part of a series, but the essence of them is that they are always perhaps a little perplexed, never truly happy, and can be considered outsiders in the true sense of the word.

Others prefer romance novels, those with the colorful book covers and even more evocative titles, suggesting a perpetual dreamlike stoking of erotic energies. There is twilight, there are dark and mysterious characters, there are exotic locales, there are vines and lush tropical verdure, and all of it seems to contour itself around the parameters of what we can term “literary masturbation”. Am I being dismissive of this genre? I don’t wish to be, because even if I don’t read romance novels, I recognize their equivalent in other genre fiction I have read, most notably, the “Gor” novels of John Norman, or recognize similarly how these elements (titillation, fantasies of rescue and/or seduction, and rivalries and contests in which sexual gratification in the form of a queen or princess or seductive other) is evident in genre writers dating back to H. Rider Haggard and others. There is an element of passivity in the object of sexual conquest, whether it take place in a colonial realm (colonial eroticism) or in an imagined future scenario that serves as the spice for action, without any need for a lurid Frank Frazetta cover (he of the impossibly muscled warriors and the similarly exaggerated female sex objects).

I have long come to understand that it is precisely the formulaic aspect of these works that affords such pleasure to the reader. They want familiar characters, memorable characters and familiar settings, a contest, a quest, a romantic triangle, a puzzle waiting to be solved. They appeal to the need for engagement that we all feel as readers, and as with all genre fiction, it is we readers who project our own fantasies and desires and mold them so that they are contained within the distinct form that is assumed by this literature.  We collaborate with the author by faithfully anticipating the plot twists and the complications that will arise, and by feeling satisfied that the correct sequences (the complication, the climax, the denoument) are followed, as well as the devices, for example, in the mystery or crime novel, take the form of the obligatory summation of the parameters of the case that has just been solved. The characters emerge as they always do, not much changed, and there is a certain cognitive comfort in this as well, for we recognize a pattern that has once again been upheld. When we speak of escapism, we do it on familiar grounds, ironically.

In my case, I have always enjoyed reading science fiction. This genre affords many familiar pleasures to me, ever since I was a boy and picked up my first volume of Ray Bradbury short stories, R is for Rocket, S is for Space. I could always lose myself in those stories, me being a kid from a working class immigrant background, and who didn’t quite fit in with the other kids on my block. It always felt like familiar territory to me, this feeling of instability that took place on familiar ground, this feeling that there was a puzzle that had to be cracked, as if it were the analogue to my own social situation. As I grew older, I always reflected on the points of similarity between comic books, science fiction, crime novels (especially Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot novels) and other genre fiction that I always read, and could even recognize points of similarity with works that explored the experiences of ethnic communities, from Jewish to African-American or Mexican-American authors.  The idea was that we had a set of circumstances and we were carrying out, so to speak, a thought experiment, with a familiar catalogue of crisis and conflict scenarios that we saw over and over again. It was perhaps also comforting to see that there was always a point of resolution, because literature relied on the grammar of storytelling, and there was always a resolution, even if in life this tended to escape us, or at least, me.

Science fiction is in reality a compendium of genres, and it can conform or at least incorporate aspects of travel literature, potboilers, crime fiction, Modernist analysis, psychological thriller, and other genres. When I was young I remember reading the somewhat caustic travel narratives of Paul Theroux, especially his The Old Patagonia Express, and feeling as if the old colonialist view of Latin America was still very much at play in his work. Fortunately, I was later able to read a more sympathetic and enchanting book that detailed a sojourn to Ecuador, Tom Miller’s The Panama Hat Trail, and found myself entranced by the incorporation of folk lore and the ability of the author to describe his encounters with people of all socioeconomic backgrounds, whether or not these encounters were accurate and not romantic cuadros de costumbres (quaint character sketches). There was also the lyrical account by a writer such as Bruce Chatwin of the psychic landscape of Australia, The Songlines, or Alex Shoumatoff’s evocation of Brasilia and the eternal frontier, The Capital of Hope. These books were powerful hallucinatives for a young man such as myself, and perhaps, they could also be classified as a form of escapist literature.

This being the summer, I was desperate to read a good science fiction novel, and after hearing a positive review on NPR, I decided to pick up Jason Hough’s debut work, The Darwin Elevator. This book presents another dystopian scenario, one set approximately two hundred years in the future, in which humanity has been struck by a plague, one that is somehow connected to the arrival of unseen aliens who have built a giant structure (an elevator) that reaches into the sky. We know little of the motives of these aliens, since there is no contact with them, but in their wake we have a plague that arises and devastates humanity, converting the majority into sub humans (or in the modern parlance so popular nowadays, “zombies”). Humanity teeters on the brink of extinction as a consequence. It is a shameless potboiler, a page-turner in the classic tradition of summer reading, with a first time author who nonetheless manages to capture a sense of wonder.

This seemed like a promising scenario, and it couldn’t help but bring back memories of so many other works I have read. While I tend to prefer quieter and more introspective science fiction novels, especially those of Ursula K. Le Guin, I was intrigued by the way in which this work promised to incorporate several elements (and formulas) that are so common in science fiction. One of these involves the idea of first contact, a trope that has figured prominently from the very beginning, havng been used to satirical effect in Voltaire’s Micromegas, and which was explored by H.G. Wells in his early The War of the Worlds as a critique of imperialism. Another involved the idea of dystopia, one that in this case may simply have been catalyzed by alien intervention, for the underlying circumstances of a humanity that was ever in crisis were ever present (overpopulation, intractable political conflict, opposing cultural spheres that seemed to echo the ideas of Samuel Huntington who had written in past decades of a coming “clash of civilizations” where cultural blocks emerged to subsume and replace nationalism, ecological devastation, etc.) The world is ever coming to an end, and we as a culture are obsessed with these scenarios of coming apocalypses, for don’t they tie in to the idea of human history as a story, with a much needed conclusion about to be revealed?

Also, I find myself asking, what is this obsession that popular culture seems to have with zombies? I don’t think it is entirely new, and in the past, we used to express it in terms of becoming as it were automatons, clogs in a vast and anonymous institutional apparatus. It was also transmuted into ideas of transformation and the blurring of differences, in ideologies that one can’t help but perceive as being based on racial differences, a fear that I can’t help but see expressed in the fear that many conservative sectors in this country have of a “One-World” scenario in which everyone has blended in, and in the cry of the Tea Partiers that they look around and they “can’t recognize this country anymore”. It is a fear, of course, directed against people like me, mestizos to begin with, who have yet oppose this ideology with visions that details a more optimistic and, quite frankly, realistic outlook. (Tracts such as José Vasconcelos’ La raza cósmica are early works in this vein, utopian but not grounded in real-life considerations the way, for example, Héctor Tobar’s much more recent Translation Nation is.) And is it not possible that there is another element at play as well, one that has to do with the way our economic system has morphed to assume a much more predatory and expansionistic guise, the Super-Capitalism of the 21^st century that it is said is elevating many from a life of poverty, but which seems to have stumbled badly in the industrialized world, with the watchword being that consumption is necessary to fuel our economies. Is that all we are? Mindless consumers, stuck in a system that demands that we never have enough, that we consume more and more in a compulsive fantasy that is quite frankly ultimately unsustainable for the instabilities it implies? I can’t help but think that these are part of the underlying elements that underscore the fascination that zombies hold in our popular culture at this point.

In this novel we also have a mystery, for the have the encounter with an alien culture. It isn’t first contact, not yet, for the aliens don’t reveal themselves, but we have instead contact with their artifacts, those that are stunning to behold and evoke the feeling of wonder.  I couldn’t help but hark back to the classic science fiction novel of the 1970s that I read as a child, Ringworld, written by Larry Niven, and which details the exploration of a massive engineering artifact left behind by an advanced civilization. When it comes to these narratives, I can’t help but view them also as imperialist fantasies, for they allude to imperialism in all its facets, whether it be in the way one culture is reduced to the status of scavengers who try to glean what they can from the objects, or to the darker scenarios that involve conquest, the seeding, for example, of blankets with smallpox and other germs, to be distributed to Native American tribes in order to devastate them and make them easier to displace. In this scenario, after all, we have the arrival of a plague that devastates humanity, after all, even if it isn’t thoroughly established yet if this plague was brought by the aliens who constructed the mysterious elevator.

I am reminded of Jared Diamond’s book Guns, Steels and Germs, which attempts to offer an explanation for the destructive nature of these contacts, signaling mechanisms and ideological foundations that help to explain why one culture so dramatically changed and impacted another one. These are, one would imagine, mechanisms that are in play on a grander scale, and that is part of the fascination that I think we derive from these types of works, the idea that powerful civilizations decline and, as with our current obsession with zombies and our anxieties about the rise of China, that the world order (or in this case, American predominance) is being challenged, while another hidden order is yet to be established.

It was with these ideas in mind that I began to read The Darwin Elevator, hoping that these issues would be explored. But perhaps I was expecting too much from this novel. It is a classic summer read, in the fact that it is characterized by nonstop action, and by somewhat one-dimensional characters who react in clumsy ways that may be familiar, but that are nonetheless clumsy and lacking in the magic of writers of more considerable literary skill, such as Robert Charles Wilson or Olaf Stapledon. We have the pilot, Skylar Leukin, who gathers together a crew of like-minded adventurers who are immunes, that is, part of the minority of people who for some reason are immune to the plague and thus have more leeway for movement in the wreck of a world that has been left behind. We have also the eccentric but also visionary entrepreneur, Neil Platz, who has taken charge of the space stations that are constructed as a last refuge for humanity, and that gather together the remnants of the technological and scientific elite of this culture. And we have villains, which it pains me to say, are portrayed in heavy-handed fashion, almost in cartoon fashion, as is the case with the governor of the last human outpost of Darwin, Australia, a character named Russell Bleilock, who is singularly bloodthirsty.

The action is nonstop, and one is pressed to decide if the sub humans who have taken control of the rest of the planet and who, amazingly, are able to survive even as they are reduced to animal state, or if the manipulative directors and actors in this drama pose the greater threat. I am struck, over and over, by the mechanisms whereby these symbols of accentuated appetite (call them “subs” as they are called in this novel, or “zombies”) are able to survive in such numbers. To continue with the speculations above, are they just symbols for the projections of the fears of a bourgeois culture that sees in them the working classes of the present age, those that are supposedly destined to be the unproductive “takers”, to use the jargon of presidential candidate Mitt Romney? I wonder over and over about the layers of this obsession we seem to have with zombies, and even if they do revert to the background as dangerous “natives” that recall the nastier colonial narratives of our own past (they are anonymous, they are incoherent, they have immense appetites, they are singular physical specimens with little culture), they serve as a layer to the novel that all-too-briefly offers a limited measure of social commentary. They are an ideological construct that is used, over and over, to illustrate fears we share as a culture, at least bourgeois fears, for I can’t help but see in them familiar markers in the way ethnic and racial minorities are portrayed in this culture.

There is not enough exploration of these complexities in this novel. Instead, we have a thriller that relies on action sequences, in which the pilot Skyler always gains the upper hand, and we have a political situation that become more and more unstable as the novel progresses. The haves in the space station are in conflict with the have-nots on the ground, who are increasingly besieged by the sub humans who are pressing in and who threaten to overwhelm them. And, it turns out, the aura which the elevator had emitted, and which seemed to confer protection from contamination, is failing, and now there are outbreaks of the plague both within the city of Darwin as well as in the space station, a situation which was unimaginable.

While this novel was an undeniable page turner, I found myself ultimately unsatisfied with this novel. The dialogue was choppy, and the interaction between the characters was rendered in a way that seemed clumsy. Perhaps it was foolish to hope for anything like the lyricism of Ursula K. Le Guin or Gene Wolfe, and it is certainly the case that the author did not capture the psychological intensity of characters who seem too one-dimensional. It is hard, in other words, to distinguish at times between the subs (the zombies) and the normal humans, for what we have are characters who all seem to be driven by basic impulses, by fear, by jealousy, by anger, by ambition, and by the recourse to violence.

I look for more in the books that I read, but yet I was seduced at certain moments by this novel. I found this in the evocation of the gritty world of Darwin, the last human city, where an increasingly desperate human population, shielded by the aura of the elevator, struggles to survive. It is an underworld that reminds me in many ways of the movie Bladerunner. And, I found it in the twists and turns of the characters, who form alliances as well as betray each other, in ways that seem too melodramatic, but then, melodrama is a pleasure that I’m not prepared to renounce yet. And ultimately, I found it in the evocation of the aliens and their astounding technology. We may not actually see an alien yet in this novel, but there is something of a lurking presence that colors this novel. We may yet turn out to have merely another War of the World scenario where these aliens are yet another example of a culture bent on imperial expansion, but it may also be the case that the aliens are indeed benevolent, or at least, not as easy to characterize.

I hope that is it the latter. Aliens as angels or demons, yet another topic that I would like to explore in future posts concerning science fiction, for ultimately they must be seen as mirrors for our deepest anxieties as well as hopes. While Jason Hough doesn’t yet have the chops of the best science fiction writers, and this novel isn’t Solaris (the classic by Stanislaw Lem), he draws on the rich catalogue offered by this genre.

 

OGRomero © 2013
(Copyrighted by OGRomero, 2013)