Gabriela Galeano Batres
Chiquita
Wax
Soap
Saulė Vaivilavičiūtė
Oscar Juul-Sørensen
Manifesto
Me
Instagram
Carrying a life inside of you, a life constantly feeding off of your nutrients. A baby you’re willing to give everything up for. Working your utmost hardest to give them all the opportunities that they deserve. You aspire to help them become the best version of themselves they can be.
You hope they lead a successful life across the river, across the pond, in the utopia.
You name him U.S.Mail as that is what was printed on the side of a cargo box you saw dragged ashore some weeks back.
Even though you might be unaware of the meaning of this word it must be something grandiose given its origin. This is a common practice where you come from. Names from the promised land are set to wish your sons and daughters the greatest lives.
A name like this will give him all the best opportunities in life on his way to becoming them.
Usmail did everything right.
He worked hard to get the best education he could
Sucked the life out of those books as best he could
And so he was able to move to the United States of America, promised land.
He ran as far away from home as he could think of.
Usmail:
“I am finally free.
Finally free of my home.
Free from going to church every Sunday.
Free from the limits present in my society.
No more superficial judgement
From my families’ unreasonable expectations
I am not part of a herd anymore.
I am me.”
His identity remained a question mark.
‘Where are you from?’
He said Honduras.
Heritage.
Contact with the Lenca side of Honduras.
Something Usmail had never touched before, had never wanted to touch before.
Was never told was relevant before.
By taking himself out of his usual context he obtained his desire to be an outlier instead of being part of the herd.
Yet unconsciously he replaced himself within his mother’s nest.
Usmail is simply the product of a mishmash of everything.
Usmail was asked if we still lived amongst the monkeys
After repeatedly mentioning Honduras, Usmail was still constantly asked how Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Costa Rica, etc., was different from here, how big had been the impact from moving into a different society.
On the same day he was asked if we had to collect drinkable water from the rain.
Asked if back home he had internet access and smart phones.
Vll. Emancipation
The day has come when the rest of the races have discovered our glowing beauty.
Waking up every morning and casually slipping into our skin as we have done vice versa for many years.
I want to collect the sweat that overflows through your pores.
Boil it and make myself a cup of tea. Mix it with my favourite brand of corn flower and make myself tortillas, throw some pulled pork and pickled onions inside the ‘you’ taco and feast on it while watching some Netflix.
Take a blade and shave all of the hair off of your body and use it as stuffing for a pillow so I can sleep with you every night.
I’ll take bottles of your clear piss on those days when you drink a lot of water and combine it with the essence provided by your lands, contain it and use it as perfume.
Whichever and whatever ways there are to convert us into one I will do. and so will you.
Wake up in the morning, take a shower, lather your body with their sweat, brush your teeth, apply deodorant, dab ‘them’ perfume behind you earlobes on you neck, change into clothes and then eat them for breakfast.
Rise into the living totem that you were destined to become.
The modern world has torn us from our roots.
For years and years now we’ve been eating at each other’s flesh turning a multitude into a singular entity, but have we been eating at each other in the wrong way?
Our tumultuous journey through colonisation and war has been in vein.
The hard work of our ancestors has led to a life where individuality is scarce and hybridity reigns.
Down with hair relaxants.
Down with bleaching our skin, bleaching our hair.
Down with green and blue contact lenses.
Down with liposuction.
We have spent our whole lives praising those who came to conquer us.
Believing their culture and customs are superior to ours. Embarrassed by our upbringing.
Devaluating our language, our people, our products because we want the european or american lifestyle.
At one point in history we decided to turn a collective blind eye to the horrors that were done to us. They used and abused us and named us inferior.
But when did we embrace ourselves as inferior creatures and deem ourselves unworthy?
The torture has stopped and all we have left are the ruins of our civilisation.
Yet instead of appreciating it, caring for it, being it, we turn our backs to it and look longingly towards our oppressors.
We’ve been working so hard on blurring the periphery that we have forgotten to look within its lines.
How are we any better?
Why must we follow Usmail’s mother?
You say that the times have changed, we say they stay the same.
Although the literal slavery and genocide has ended there will always be a repressed sentiment towards us and towards you.
The terms “Us” and “them” remains relevant.
Ever since the discourse of ‘post-colonialism’ began in the 1960s, Latin America was marginalised from this term.
Our situation was described as dependancy.
We were viewed through a Eurocentric tunnel vision and our races and ethnicities were completely disregarded.
The current matrix of power will continue being a reminder of white power.
Discrimination can be discreet
It can be seen in the simple act of confusing one country with another
It can be seen in your harsh immigration laws
In that side eye you give when we walk into a room
In the compliment: “you really help diversify this classroom,”
We demand the replacement of the old system.
We must go back to the roots where we originated from, together,
And bring back the power that was ours.
We will do this by consuming our adversary.
‘mejorando la raza’
improving your race
What if that was the right mentality? Reproduce with your God given opposite. Given that if God was the one that gave the Spaniards the right to our lands then he has been the one who made them our adversary.
Consume them.
Bed them and bear their children as a way to consume them.
Generations and generations of us have been told this is the right way.
That beauty lies in pigment-less hair and cyan eyes and that by birthing their children we will be closer to becoming them.
Yet unavoidably we give them our thick hair and black eyes.
Entrusting them with the tropical, sexual, loud, violent power that comes with being born in the tropics.
And so we continue improving the so called races.
If we are not human-being enough then we will force you to view us this way by merging ourselves with you.
Literally and metaphysically
I am part of a herd.
Freedom only exists within a particular context,
Freedom is circumstantial.
If I take myself completely out of a situation that what am I free from?
What limitations are there for me not to be free?
I have no idea what my limitations are.
It would all be illusory.
Therefore I am part of a herd.
Happily part of a herd.
My history and that of my father and mother and grandfather and grandmother and so forth all define what my current freedom is.
My acts are a reflection of my opinion of everyone.
Everyone's acts are a reflection of their opinion of me.
We are free.
The power that comes with freedom should not be underestimated.
The power that comes manifests itself as resistance.
Resistance to the ever-growing covers placed over our eyes that the best is yet to come. The best has always been there, the best must be resurfaced and honoured for what it was born to be.
I should not have to choose what parts of who I am are acceptable to live with in your world.
I should not have to explain why the words I have written are relevant and important today and always.
I am not mad, I do not need to rage and rant in order for you to listen I am reasoning and conversing in order for you to see me as an equal while I still remain a savage.
We are redefining the rules set in place by oppressors.
Redefining the circumstances that you have set upon us. We will sit quietly no more.
We will devour you.
We will devour you and make you ours just like you have before.
We will become stronger than ever embracing those identifiers you set in place and making them our greatest attributes.
We will be acknowledged for what we are,
grand.