Aqui y Alla; The Return of Lencho

Two recent films share the theme of Latino men returning to their native countries and all the dislocation this entails. The first is “Aquí y Allá” (Here and There), a film that has been making the film festival rounds this year, including a screening at the NY Film Festival at Lincoln Center last month. The other is “The Return of Lencho” that opens today at the Quad Cinema. Both are modest efforts financially and not without the flaws often found in first-time feature films. But they more than make up for that in dealing with issues of some urgency, namely the continuing failure of Mexico and Guatemala to provide a social and economic framework for full human development.

“Aquí y Allá” tells the story of Pedro, a thirtyish man who has just returned to his small mountain village in Guerrero after working in the U.S., presumably as an “illegal”. He has hopes of making it as a musician, pouring much of his hard earned money into an electric keyboard and other equipment. His group is “Copa Kings”, named after his village. They play the cumbia, a Colombian style that has made its way into Mexico. He starts out trying to assemble a band and lining up bookings but runs into obstacles of one sort or another. The men he tries to recruit are reluctant to take a chance on such a venture and the pay per performance is barely enough to pay for the basics of living.

After years of living in the U.S., his teenaged daughters have trouble bonding with him even though he tries hard to win them over. When he plays the guitar and sings for them, they giggle uncontrollably. It is not so much the laughter of a young girl at a Justin Bieber concert but the nervousness that comes from a barely-suppressed fear that their father is wasting his time and money.

After Pedro’s wife becomes pregnant, she develops complications that threaten her life and that of her embryo. She checks into a hospital that Pedro visits every chance he gets. When the doctor tells him that a certain medication is necessary, the only option is for him to go to local pharmacies to see if they have it and pay for it out of his own rapidly declining funds. It is about as stunning an indictment of the Mexican health care system as you are likely to see anywhere.

Despite this ostensibly melodramatic part of the narrative, “Aquí y Allá” is understated, almost to the point of minimalism. Much time is spent listening to people making small talk or working in the nearby cornfields, as dry and as unpromising as the lives they face.

If and when “Aquí y Allá” comes to your local theater, I suggest putting it down on your calendar. Whenever I see a Mexican in my neighborhoods slaving away as dishwashers, take-out food deliverers, or non-union construction workers, I often wonder what kind of life they led at home and why they would take a chance at being arrested as an “illegal” and to work in such brutal and underpaid conditions. This film allows you to understand their conditions better than any newspaper article.

As a side-note, I was fascinated to see that the production company is led by an Israeli émigré who used to work in the Fixed Income Electronic Trading group at the now defunct Lehman Brothers. I dare say that this evolution would form the basis of a screenplay in and of itself.

“The Return of Lencho” refers to Lencho Aguilar’s return to Guatemala City after spending some years in the U.S. developing his career as an artist. He is the son of a journalist who was murdered by the army during the “dirty war” against the leftist guerrillas in the 1980s. Lencho’s time is divided between art projects in Guatemala City and researching his father’s death in the newly released archives of the dictatorship.

Despite the end of the dictatorship, Guatemala is still a dangerous place for leftists. Not long after he returns home, the cops begin plotting to kill the young artist who they assume will be taking the side of Indians just like his father.

Unlike the 1980s, there is no mass movement for artists to hook up with. When Lencho and a friend spot a small demonstration against a Canadian mining company, they take heart despite its smallness. But most of his rebelliousness is tied up with street graffiti of the sort that became popular in places like New York and San Francisco in the 1990s. Lencho feels it gives him “street cred” even though his girlfriend worries about the dangers involved and the hit-or-miss messaging of most graffiti artists. She urges him to stick with murals since they generate income and don’t risk arrest or beatings, something he suffers almost the first time out with a spray-paint can. The cops have obviously been tailing him.

Director Mario Morales, a Guatemalan who went to CUNY, originally intended to make a film more about graffiti than politics but decided to combine the two after an incident traumatized him:

El Regreso de Lencho was born out of anger. After six months of research for the film about the violent situation in Guatemala, my younger brother and a friend were kept captive by the police in Antigua, Guatemala for no reason, besides of course, being young and having tattoos.

A police patrol car randomly started shooting at them; my Brother’s friend, the driver, crashed and they both got out of the vehicle with their hands in the air, clearly communicating that they had no weapons or drugs on them. Four police officers bearing AK-47 and AR-15 weapons approached them and started beating them with out any provocation. They hit them on the chest with back of their rifles and then kicked them. As soon as one of them realized that my brother had a tattoo on his calf, he was shot in his lower hip and the bullet exited below the knee.

They were taken to the police station without being offered any medical attention. My brother was handcuffed to a window bar and was left in a standing position all night.

The police department did not answer any questions regarding the case until the next morning, when our Mother went to the station with a lawyer. My Brother was being charged with illegal gun and drug possession; those charges were dropped the moment the lawyer stepped in the station. Days after my family took steps to take the case to court, we started receiving calls from friends in the Government advising them to stop the process, and that my brother needed to leave the country.

This is the case for many young Guatemalans, but very few can afford a lawyer. Young Guatemalans are killed daily by the PNC (Guatemala’s national police department), in connections with alleged gang membership. The PNC has become a military police force. The use of heavy caliber weapons and military style operations aimed at suppressing any kind of youth movement has defined them as a force against intellectual and artistic expression.

Clear proof of the Government’s plan to destroy any youth movement is the case of a young member of our cast, Carlos Chacón, who belonged to a hip hop collective. Two years after finishing the shoot for my film he was killed by the PNC in his neighborhood public school were he was teaching break-dancing to 11 year-old children. The film is dedicated to his memory.

Although I tend to mute my criticisms of earnest and socially aware films such as these, the flaw contained in both is so similar that I will mention them now in the hope that the directors might take them into account in their next film. Although I found both films compelling and just the sort that my regular readers will seek out, they both neglected to consider the key element that makes the best films work—namely a conflict between principal characters. This could have been between Pedro and his daughters in “Aquí y Allá” or Lencho and the cops in “The Return of Lencho”. In the first film, the feelings of alienation remain underdeveloped and the cops in the second function more as a deus ex machina at the end. But to repeat, both of these films are important works that should be sought out given the growing ties—both negative and positive—between the imperialist colossus of the north and our compañeros to the south. The negative, of course, is based on economic exploitation and the positive on the growing political collaboration that will be necessary to take imperialism down.

Alamar

Opening today at the Film Forum in New York, Alamar, a documentary directed by Pedro González-Rubio, deals with some of the most basic relationships in existence–between father and son, and between human beings and nature. It is also an implicit call for preserving the stunningly beautiful region of Banco Chinchorro, an Eden-like home near Belize to thousands of different species and the largest coral reef in Mexico, now threatened by tourism and urbanization according to the press notes. Since much of the film’s action takes place in the waters off the east coast of Mexico, one viewing it cannot help but be reminded of the impact that the BP oil spill is having on another natural wonder to the north.

The film begins with a brief introduction to a foundering marriage between Jorge Machado, a Mexican fisherman, and Roberta Palombini, an Italian with a preference for urban life as she openly admits. Just before she returns to Rome with their five year old son Natan, she agrees to let Natan join his father on a trip to Banco Chinchorro where he will see how his father makes his living alongside an older man named Néstor Marín, nicknamed Matraca (rattle).

Jorge and Matraca introduce Natan to life on the waters, starting with the shanty-like dwelling on stilts that they share on an inlet. They own few possessions except for a motor boat, fishing tackle, some hammocks, a few other pieces of furniture, and some pots and pans. Without a single word of commentary, the movie makes a powerful point about our kinship with nature. The movie had a particular resonance for me since the only time I was ever to bond with my own father was when we were fishing in the lakes and ponds of Sullivan County in the Catskill Mountains. The loss of marine life due to unregulated commercial development in this area saddened me not just for what it meant for nature, but also for the loss of the one connection I had to my father.

Oddly enough, the movie reminded me very much of Arctic Son, another movie about the clash between nature and “civilization” focused on a father and son relationship now available from Netflix, in that case a Gwinchin Indian from northern Canada and his son who lived with his mother in Seattle, where he was losing track of his native heritage and abusing drugs and alcohol. He goes to live with his father who teaches him how to hunt and fish and see nature from a native’s perspective.

While this film would be compelling on visual terms alone, as we see the three main characters at work in the crystalline-blue waters, it is much more about unalienated human relationships. Indeed, it is difficult to refer to their activities as work since millions of people pay a small fortune each year to go spear-fishing in the same waters. You obviously begin to think about the nature of work from watching the film and wonder how much mankind has gained from “evolving beyond” the village-based economies of the pre-Conquest era.

Director González-Rubio was fortunate to happen on the three males who are just perfect on camera. Jorge Machado is a striking presence with shoulder-length hair and a feline grace, bearing a striking resemblance to the late Bob Marley. Matraca is a grizzled, gray-haired man with a sweet smile and a lively sense of humor. Natan completes the group, about the most relaxed and amiable five year old I have ever seen on or off camera.

This is an exceptional movie that will linger in your memory for a long time after you see it. Highly recommended.

The USSR, Mustafa Kemal and “reactionary anti-imperialism”, part 2

Lazaro Cardenas: the Mexican Kemal

Perhaps no other incident in history better illustrates the old cliché that politics makes strange bedfellows than the Soviet-Turkish ties in the early 1920s.

This relationship had two phases. In the first that occurred during War Communism, the USSR made common cause with Turkey because they both were anxious to fend off British imperialism. 40,000 British troops were part of a 13 nation expeditionary force that was determined to overthrow Bolshevism.

Meanwhile, Britain used Greece as a surrogate invading power to control what would become Turkey in the aftermath of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Mustafa Kemal relied heavily on Soviet arms and material during 1920.

Within a couple of years, the policy of War Communism had been abandoned in favor of the NEP. This meant that the Soviet Union would put a high priority on establishing peaceful relationships with any and all countries, including Britain. This was also the period in which the Comintern looked Eastward in the hope that Asia would rise up against imperialism. It viewed national liberation movements as progressive, even when they were led by someone like Mustafa Kemal. Given this turn, it would make sense that the USSR would bend over backwards trying to link up with Turkey.

The definitive statement on Soviet-Turkish relations came from Karl Radek, whose articles England and the East and The Winding-Up of the Versailles Treaty, a report to the fourth Comintern congress are must reading. It is a shame that Goldner made no attempt to evaluate such material since it would at least have given the reader the assurance that he was considering all sides of the debate. In the second article, Radek zeroed in on the Treaty of Sevres that put the WWI victors in charge of the Ottoman finances and extracted other concessions. It was analogous to the Brest-Litovsk treaty that punished the infant Soviet Republic for having the temerity to withdraw from the WWI bloodbath. Radek wrote:

Whatever may be the result of the Near Eastern crisis, one thing is quite patent: the Sevres Treaty has been smashed by Turkish cannon. The popular masses of the Near East, who in the eyes of the Allies are not only a quantité négligeable, but simply the scum of the earth, have been set in motion against no less a thing than the Versailles Treaty. They are at present beginning to play their part. Among the diplomats who think to be able to control the course of history through clever formulae and secret conferences, there is disunity. Great Britain has experienced one of her deepest humiliations in her long history, when after the defeat of her Greek vassal, she durst not come in shining armour to his assistance, and after having pronounced a sentence of death upon Turkey, had now to flatter her and even to offer her a place in the League of Nations. This fact is the irrefutable proof of the break-up of the Sevres Treaty. Popular masses on a low level of civilisation can only be kept in subjection as long as there is unity among the slaveholders, but not when these come to loggerheads. As soon as the slaves perceive that the oppressors are trembling, they begin to rebel. The East of to-day which sees Great Britain trembling, is no more the East of the days of the Sevres Treaty. The Turkish victory finds an echo in India and the whole Islamic world. This echo is the best proof that we have to do with an important episode in the growth of the world revolution, with a success of the world revolution, though the organisers of the victory are far from being revolutionary in the modern sense of the term.

What is missing entirely from Goldner’s analysis is any sense of how important Kemal’s victory was in pushing Greece and Britain out of Turkish lands. This was not only important for the defense of the USSR, it was also a genuine anti-imperialist victory on a par with Nasser’s seizure of the Suez Canal or the British being forced to leave India. It does not matter that Nasser or Gandhi were bourgeois nationalists simply interested in capitalist development. Marxists, at least those not addled by philosophical idealism, have always considered colonial struggles as worthy of support even if they are not being led by communists.

In 1882, Engels wrote a letter to Karl Kautsky that was very much in the spirit of what Radek wrote. You will notice that he does not make communism some kind of litmus test. He is for the independence of oppressed nations even under bourgeois leadership:

One of the real tasks of the 1848 Revolution (and the real, not illusory tasks of a revolution are always solved as a result of that revolution) was the restoration of the oppressed and dispersed nationalities of Central Europe, insofar as these were at all viable and, especially, ripe for independence. This task was solved for Italy, Hungary and Germany, according to the then prevailing conditions, by the executors of the revolution’s will, Bonaparte, Cavour and Bismarck. Ireland and Poland remained. Ireland can be disregarded here, she affects the conditions of the Continent only very indirectly. But Poland lies in the middle of the Continent and the conservation of her division is precisely the link that has constantly held the Holy Alliance together, and therefore, Poland is of great interest to us….

I therefore hold the view that two nations in Europe have not only the right but even the duty to be nationalistic before they become internationalistic: the Irish and the Poles. They are most internationalistic when they are genuinely nationalistic. The Poles understood this during all crises and have proved it on all the battlefields of the revolution. Deprive them of the prospect of restoring Poland or convince them that the new Poland will soon drop into their lap by herself, and it is all over with their interest in the European revolution.

Maybe Goldner does not consider Engels to be a real communist, only one of those people promoting “reactionary anti-imperialism” but Engels is good enough for me.

All that being said, the question remains: was the USSR correct to try to maintain a close relationship with Turkey after Kemal unleashed his repression against the Communists? In some ways, this is a difficult question to answer since time was drawing near when it would become moot. By 1923, when Kemal was mopping up the Communists, the USSR was on the verge of isolating Leon Trotsky and other critical-minded Marxists who objected to what was becoming a policy of accommodation to the national bourgeoisie. In four short years, the disastrous policy in China would unfold prompting Trotsky to open a full-scale assault on Stalin’s class collaborationist politics. Under directions from Stalin, the Chinese CP had subordinated itself completely to the Kuomintang, leading to the slaughter of far more many working class militants than was the case in Turkey.

If the USSR was no longer able to serve as an example of how a revolutionary society relates to governments such as Kemal’s, there is one that is close at hand facing almost identical paradoxes and contradictions, namely Cuba. As I have already pointed out, Goldner is completely hostile to the Cuban government, linking it with North Korea in one of his articles:

Fewer still look to surviving relics such as North Korea or Cuba. The most radical elements of the 1960’s and 1970’s upsurge, from Socialism or Barbarism in France, Eastern European “Marxist humanism” (Kolakowski, the Yugoslav Praxis group), the Situationists, or the Italian workerists mainly rejected these regimes as viscerally as they rejected the (Keynesian) Labour and Social Democratic welfare states of the 1945-1975 period.

If they were the most radical elements of the 60s and 70s, I am glad that I went my own way. Frankly, there was about as much chance of me hooking up with the Situationists as there was with the yippies. I don’t begrudge someone like Guy Debord having a grand old time at the expense of middle-class propriety but I was far more interested in organizing mass demonstrations against the Vietnam War.

Now Cuba faces many of the same problems as the infant Soviet republic but with the added complication of having a much smaller resource base, a narrower geographical space that is additionally vulnerable due to its proximity to the USA, and—more recently—without socialist allies internationally.

Cuba faced a similar quandary in 1968 when the Mexican government unleashed a terrible repression against the student movement, many of whose leaders were likely Fidelistas politically. Although this is not quite the same situation as took place in Turkey in the 1920s, the Cuban government was as low-key as the Soviets were when the 15 Turkish Communists were drowned.

As I have pointed out myself to uncritical Fidelistas on Marxmail, there was no response from the Cuban government. If you go to the Castro speech database and do a search on Mexico during 1968, you will not find a word of protest.

Now it is no accident that Turkey and Mexico are connected in this fashion since both exemplify the paradoxes of national liberation movements led by the bourgeoisie and governments that have become calcified after it takes power. The Mexican PRI and Kemal’s Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi (Republican Peoples Party) were both political leaderships of arguably the last hurrah of the bourgeois revolution.

And, interestingly enough, both republics gave asylum to Leon Trotsky. For all of Mustafa Kemal’s hostility to Communism, he was willing to host Trotsky in the first leg of his exile. While Trotsky does not exactly sing Kemal’s praises in “My Life”, there are some accounts that he enjoyed his stay in Turkey immensely on a personal level. I recommend the documentary Exile in Buyukuda for the modern Turkish take on his stay in their homeland.

Despite Mexico’s more democratic functioning during Trotsky’s stay there, not much differentiated it from Turkey in economic terms. Both Kemal and Cardenas were committed to national development and considered labor and capital to be co-equal partners in a bid to modernize the respective countries. Of course, this was just propaganda. The way it worked out in practice, as it does everywhere in the world, is to the benefit of the bourgeoisie. In both the case of Turkey and Mexico, the lip-service paid to labor and the actual benefits it received declined the longer the two hegemonic bourgeois parties remained in the driver’s seat.

No matter how degraded the Mexican PRI had become, there was still a residual spark that motivated it to stand up to imperialism when it came to Castro’s Cuba. In a paper titled Capitalizing on Castro: Mexico’s Foreign Relations with Cuba, 1959-1969, Renata Keller makes clear how important Mexico was to Cuba. The article begins:

In the decade immediately following Fidel Castro’s 1959 revolution, Mexican leaders consistently distinguished themselves from their Latin American counterparts by acting as outspoken defenders of the Cuban people’s right to self-determination. Influential politicians such as Lázaro Cárdenas threw their support behind Castro, and in 1960 Mexican president Adolfo López Mateos welcomed Cuban president Osvaldo Dorticós in a lavish state visit. At the July 1964 meeting of the Organization of American States (OAS) in Washington, D.C., Mexico was the only Latin American country that refused to adopt the resolution to break diplomatic relations with Fidel Castro’s Cuba and impose economic sanctions. Mexico thereafter maintained diplomatic relations with Cuba, which effectively established Mexico as the sole link between Castro and the rest of the hemisphere because none of the other Latin American governments recognized Cuba’s revolutionary regime until after 1970.

So in order to fend off American economic pressure and to find an ally, sincere or not, in diplomatic initiatives against the counter-revolutionary OAS, Cuba found itself in bed with Mexico.

While it is difficult to quantify what this relationship meant to Cuba, it very likely helped Fidel Castro to survive. No matter how politically bankrupt Mexico and the USSR were, they were necessary allies against imperialism. If Castro refused to denounce Mexico in 1968 or the USSR for invading Czechoslovakia in the same year, he more than made up for this in assisting liberation movements in Africa and Latin America.

In the real world, politics can be very messy. My advice to my anarchist, situationist, left, council and libertarian communist friends who want to keep their hands clean is to stay out of politics altogether.