Symbols of power

                                                        Documentary: The Power of the Boss

This is the third consecutive piece on tyranny inspired by the novel 'The Feast of the Goat' (2000) by the Peruvian writer, Mario Vargas Llosa. 

We will come on to why sinvergüenza (a noun describing a person without shame) was so apt for the whole Trujillo family and at least one of the descendants today.

But what is the psychological process that allows a tyrant to bypass the shame that stops most people behaving with total unaccountability and pride in that? It is because they live in a parallel a world, a construct, a fantasy, in which they are saviours, God, enlightened among self serving, idle fools They are right and everyone else is wrong and that is how they justify their actions. It is an act of convincing themselves and then of pulling the wool over other peoples eyes, or, if they are powerful enough, brute coercion of others. The seeds of tyrants are in the people you know who are never wrong.

The ends, for them, justifies the means. Actually, once you have persuaded yourself of so much, why admit any error at all? Leave no chink! Your enemies will only exploit it! By this logic there is nothing wrong with the means either. In the pitiless world of the tyrant, means and ends are all fine when acting against some perceived evil - anything goes. Everyone who manipulates, coerces, bullies, intimidates and uses violent means for their own convenience, greed and power has, necessarily, to justify it to themselves in some way.  Only a madman would admit they do it because they like it. On the contrary, the tyrant often sees themselves as performing a service that others are too weak to do themselves. If spoils come their way in the process, well, it's only well-deserved.

Like narcissists the tyrant is unable to see, still less accept, the reality of themselves in a wider moral context.   

It is often said a liar is found out, by their colleagues, their family, their children.  My husband is prone to saying this.  It calms his spiking blood pressure. I have always had good blood pressure, until just lately.  But are they found out? The novelist, in the case of Trujillo, did the accounting, the reckoning, for the long term.  This book is world famous, one of the great novels on dictatorship and yet so few people know about the Trujillo dictatorship. Was it in Peru? said a thirty-something Spanish/Ecuadorean at the weekend. I asked a smart Argentinian in his late twenties what dictatorships  he was aware of on the continent.  The Argentinian military junta he replied, and Pinochet.  The same seems to go for an awareness of the history of their own continent in general.  When I mentioned the War of the Triple Alliance between Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil against an over-confident Paraguayan leader that wiped out 70% of the men of that country, at the end of the nineteenth century, the thirty-something PhD student from Chile had never heard of it. 

So how liars, tyrants, found out or accountable? Consider Israel: nearly an entire country brainwashed from infancy and backed by the worlds strongest power even while it bombs an imprisoned and defenceless civilian population and all of their infrastructure into oblivion. Perhaps that national tyrants, the individuals are eventually found out in the wider context, but the everyday tyrant in miniature who steals and controls under the cover of paperwork and lies,  less so.

In many cases, the deformity of tyranny is passed on to the children.  It is the model the children grow up with.  Ramfis was easily as sadistic as his father, perhaps more so but, since the definition of a tyrant is at least a caricature of a bully, it was almost a foregone conclusion that Trujillo would both spoil and disparage his sons for the wastrels they largely were. Radhamés, the younger son  ended up tortured and killed, a pawn of the Colombian drug cartels. The parents, though, will educate the children into “looking out for the family”, which is just another way of saying self-centered. On a larger scale this  is the them-and-us ugliness of nationalism.

The whole Trujillo family was implicated in the dictatorship.  Doubtless they convinced themselves that they, too, were doing this for the good of the country. The wider Trujillo family were certainly motivated by greed. But in Trujillo himself, he had so much, he didn’t need more.  His greed was sexual and it was about power. Money buys you things but once you are sated, if you still want more, money is really about personal power. Trujillo, like many dictators, had all the characteristics of a narcissistic: from the charisma, to the obsession with medals and grandiose honorifics.

For Trujillo, power was represented by virility.  

" Rugía y robaba. ¿Por qué le ponían tantas pruebas? La cruz de sus hijos, las conspiraciones para matarlo, para destruir la obra de toda una vida. Pero no se quejaba de eso. Él sabía fajarse contra enemigos de carne y hueso. Lo había hecho desde joven. No podía tolerar el golpe bajo, que no lo dejarán defenderse. Parecía medio loco, de desesperación. Ahora sé por qué. Porque ese güevo que había roto tantos coñitos ya no se paraba. Eso hacía llorar al titán ¿Para reirse, verdad?"

"He shouted and begged. Why was he given so many trials? The cross of his sons that he had to bear, the plots to kill him, to destroy the work of a lifetime. But he wasn't complaining about that. He knew how to beat flesh and blood enemies. He had done that since he was young. What he couldn't tolerate was the low blow, not having a chance to defend himself. He seemed half-crazed with despair. Now I know why. Because the prick that had broken so many cherries wouldn't stand up anymore. That's what made the titan cry. Laughable, isn't it?"

There is a memorable artwork of a prick symbolising power and sexual violence 

A tyrant's symbol exposes them for what they are.  It is always about them, their hold on power, what represents power to them. He should have had a symbol less prone to vagaries than his own ageing, flimsy prick. It is interesting that that a  prick is chosen as the symbol. Used the way he used it, to rape women, it represented power over more vulnerable people. Because he cultivated a macho society in which women were objectified, diminished, stereotyped and used, other men rallied round that symbol of so-called strength.

The chameleon

This is the second consecutive piece on tyranny inspired by the novel 'The Feast of the Goat'  (2000), by the Peruvian writer, Mario Vargas Llosa. 

One of the remarkable depictions In 'The Feast of the Goat' [see first post] is the puppet president, Balaguer, portrayed at first as a bureaucrat, an abstemious non-entity who became a real head of state, three times over.  

The title of the book comes from a Dominican merengue (music and dance), Mataron al Chivo (They killed the Goat) written after the generalissimo's murder. A chivo is a young goat, as opposed to a cabra, which is an adult. Trujillo was called the Goat for his sexual appetite and the associations with machismo, considered an admirable trait in that time and place. Trujillo himself liked the nickname:

 RB: Was is clear to you from the first that a woman would have to play a central role? 

 MVL: Well, yes, because, after all, women were brutalized by the machismo of Dominican socie to be called "The Goat," with everything that attitude towards women, which were shared by his opportunities. (Exhilaration & Completeness: An Interview with Mario Vargas Llosa, 2007, in Salmagundi, No. 155/156)

Goat though was also a derogatory term used by his opponents instead of the official Generalissimo, El Benefactor de la Patria (Benefactor of the Country) and the more usual, informal El Jefe (the boss).

If Trujillo was the Goat, Balaguer was the Chameleon.

The book does not refer to Balaguer's darker side, being almost at pains to paint him as moderate, clever, almost ascetic. Yet for someone who served in Trujillo’s government for so long, it is hardly surprising when Listín Diario, one of the Dominican Republic’s main papers, and its oldest, reported in 2013 that there were 11,000 victims of torture, murder, disappearances and more during the middle term alone (1966-78) of Balaguer’s time in the presidential office. 

Balaguer was fiendishly clever and a consummate diplomat, some would say hypocrite.  He had to be fickle to survive such thuggery and changes of regime.  

His mutability was copied by some of his more astute colleagues, like the fictional “Constitutional Sot”, Trujillo’s legal advisor and propagandist with a keen intellect and a nose for a change in the wind:

"Permítame congratularlo, señor presidente, exclamó, accionando como trepado en la tribuna. Siempre pensé que el régimen debía abrirse a los nuevos tiempos. Desparecido el Jefe, nadie mejor que usted para capear el temporal y conducir la nave dominicana hasta el puerto de la democracia. Cuente conmigo como su colaborador más leal y dedicado."

“‘Allow me to congratulate you, Mr. President’, he exclaimed, gesturing as if he were on a speaker's platform. ‘I've always believed that the regime ought to open up to modern times. With the Chief gone, no one better than you to weather the storm and steer the Dominican ship of state into the port of democracy. You can count on me as your most loyal and dedicated collaborator.’”

Vargas Llosa had three conversations with Balaguer:

 ''He was so clever to evade difficult questions. He was -- how do you say it? -- an anguila, an eel. I said to him: 'Dr. Balaguer, you are a cultivated man. How could you serve a gangster with such loyalty and competence for 31 years?' He answered that he wanted to be a politician and could only do so in the Dominican Republic by working for Trujillo, but vowed not to participate in sexual orgies with Trujillo and not to steal one dollar. Proudly he said he kept his vow.” New York Times

The capricious mob

It wasn’t just Balaguer who was fickle and hypocritical, although these seem to be considered assets in a politician. When Trujillo was killed, great masses of the public came to pay homage to the man who had terrorised and murdered them: 

"La multitudinaria cola de miles y miles de dominicanos de todas las edades, profesiones, razas, y clases sociales, esperando horas de horas bajo un sol inclemente para subir las escalinatas de palacio, y en medio de exclamaciones histéricas de dolor, desmayos, alaridos, ofendas a las luases del vudu, rendir su último homenaje al Jefe, al Hombre, al Benefactor, al Generalísimo, al Padre."

“The line of countless thousands of Dominicans of all ages, professions, races, and social classes, waiting hours on end, under a merciless sun, to climb the stairs of the palace and, with hysterical exclamations of grief, with fainting and screaming, an offering to the loas of Voodoo to pay their final homage to the chief, the man, the benefactor, the generalissimo, the father.”

Six months later the tide of public opinion turned. 

Depending on the context and their own implicit guilt, the mob too will bend with their leader in a symbiotic movement, or turn against. When the British public turned against Boris Johnson and his government, they were angry at the arrogance of the politicians’ failing to follow the COVID rules they themselves had set while people whose relatives were dying alone did follow them.  

But in the case of the Dominican Republic, many people had supported or felt forced to support the dictatorship, because their jobs or lives or those of their family depended on it. So when, finally they were led into enlightenment, and when, more particularly, the dangers of Trujillo’s avenging son and uncles and their control of the army was no more, there was a collective turning against the former leader, a wave which Balaguer readily caught or rather, created.

"Al día siguiente de la partida de los Trujillo, se dio una amnistía política. Comenzaron a abrirse las cárceles. Balaguer anunció una comisión para investigar la verdad sobre lo ocurrido con los <ajusticiadores del tirano>. Las radios, diarios y la televisión dejaron desde ese día de llamarlos asesinos; de ajusticiadores, su nuevo apelativo. Pasarían pronto a ser llamados héroes. Y no mucho después, calles, plazas y avenidas de todo el país empezarían a ser rebautizadas con sus nombres."

“The day after the Trujillo brothers left the country, a political amnesty was declared. The jails began to open. Balaguer announced a commission to investigate what had happened to ‘the executioners of the tyrant’. From that day on, radio, television, and the newspapers stopped calling them assassins; executioners, their new designation, would soon become heroes, and not long after that, streets, squares, and avenues all over the country would begin to be renamed for them.”

Trujillo’s killers were hunted down, denounced, tortured, murdered.  Two of them survived in hiding for six months.  And yet suddenly they became heroes to the same populace  who had queued and wailed for hours over their previous leader's assassination.  One of those 'executioners' went on to lead the country. 

Balaguer the dealmaker

Balaguer was able to steer the country towards democracy even while Ramfis, Trujillo’s son, was hunting down and torturing the perpetrators. Balaguer couldn't get rid of the sons and uncles because they were too powerful.  To do otherwise was to risk his own death and a coup. Instead, he gradually evolved what seems to have been a deal with Ramfis: you do your thing [“get revenge”], I’ll do mine [democracy] on the perhaps initially unspoken and gradually crystallising understanding, that once all Trujillo’s executioners had been killed, that would be the end of Ramfis & Co in the Dominican Republic.  Thus Balaguer arranges the exit of the Trujillo family by a combination of appealing to their greed and letting Ramfis execute revenge while reasoning with the older son’s diabolical intelligence towards a pragmatic solution. 

Writing is freedom

“Writing is freedom and to hell with everything else” - Martin Amis.

So if writing, really good writing, serious writing is about freedom, it follows that anyone who cares about that kind of writing would be interested in the things that threaten it.  And what threatens it, more than anything is tyranny, the tyranny of humans or the biological tyranny of dementia, that robbed Amis of his father  and is robbing me of my mother, while the physical part of her has already been stolen by our own family’s human tyrant.

There isn’t much we can do about human tyranny, not alone, at any rate.  But it is at least worth recognising it. Or is it?  I was sent today a recent parody of a conspiracy theorist:

One of the attributes is “knows what tyranny looks like”.  But considering how smug and knowing, such types are, one could also add: “Ne s'accord jamais, cherche à saper, se croit toujours le plus malin...  “[Translation].  I have met enough of them to know. In the end, isn’t the conspiracy theorist just another kind of tyrant-in-waiting.  “Four legs good two legs bad …four legs good, two legs better.”

In ‘The Feast of the Goat’, the story of the Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic (1930-61) Mario Vargas LLosa explores the threat to human freedom.  It is not easy bedtime reading.  The early pages were challenging in that many names and backstories are introduced pertaining to the men involved in Trujillo’s assassination. The novel switches between before and after the assassination, changes viewpoints within that period  and also reaches forwards (and back again) to the 1990s and the story of one of the survivors.

But the main reason it is difficult is the catalogue of horrors it describes. As well as the [true] well-known murder of the three Mirabel sisters who opposed the regime, we hear about the manipulation, murders and torture that led the Trujillo assassins to that deed.  We hear how, less for sexual satisfaction and more to test the loyalty of his closest men he would have obligatory sex with their wives. 

"Llegaba a jactarse de <las hembras que se había tirado>, algo que también celebraban los cortesanos. cortesanos, aun cuando ello los hiciera potenciales enemigos de Doña María Martínez, la prestante dama, y aun cuando aquellas hembras fueran sus esposas, hermanas, madres, o hijas."

“He even boasted of ‘the cunts he had fucked’, something his courtiers also celebrated, even when that could make them potential enemies of Doña María Martínez, the bountiful first lady, and even when those cunts were their wives, sisters, mothers, or daughters.”

His manipulation of the men closest to them is described, keeping them in his favour then pushing them out so they all craved his approbation.  There is a fictionalised but plausible account of the the choice of one of these, who had fallen out of favour, to sacrifice, for his own security and restoration to favour, his fourteen-year-old daughter to the sexual appetites of the seventy year old with prostate cancer. Men did, apparently, offer up their daughters to the generalissimo, and not just from self-interest but for the sheer honour.  

Almost as excruciating is book’s cataloguing, in graphic detail, of the capture, four month torture and assassination by Trujillo’s son, of his fathers executioners.

I found it in the local Oxfam recently and bought it because of the theme and because I had recently met some Dominicans at a Latin party in Edinburgh.  They were described to me as a people of “mucha labia” by a sober Peruvian professional.  He warned me to beware of people from that area - all talk. A line from the novel says: “The gringos are beautifully frank, they don’t have our delicacy, they don’t know how to sugarcoat the pill.”

 In my brief acquaintance with them then and later, I found the Dominicans fun-loving, friendly, respectful, with, like many Latin Americans I have met great affection for their folk traditions.  I also had a sense of why I had been given that warning.  But to find that such seemingly happy people had endured a dictatorship was surprising, later, that they had suffered such barbarity was a shock. 

So many Latin Americans blame the United States for every conceivable ill, even their own dirty politicians. The Venezuelan, Carlos Rangel, wrote a controversial book about the topic in 1976: ‘Del buen salvaje al buen revolucionario’ (From the noble savage to the noble revolutionary). They excuse their dictators as being puppets of the US.  Milei is made in Trump's image so the catastrophe of Argentina’s economy is down to the gringos. 

There is no doubt that the United States has much to answer for in their destabilisation of & intervention in many regimes for their own interests. It is hypocritical about democracy, claiming to defend human rights while propping up regimes with no record of the same.  Meanwhile, that country is profoundly unequal, materialistic and torn apart by gun violence. The US has claimed its interventions are down to the politically destabilising threat of communism, or immigration, or drug crime, depending on the era.  It claims to seek to establish stability - and how well that worked out in Iraq. Sometimes it just wants to throw its weight around to prove it can compete with the other heavy hitters. 

These justifications it has given might legitimately worry a state, but have the interventions of the most powerful country in the world worked? Not objectively, not, at least, if the measure is, indeed, the justifications cited.  There are and have been many socialist states in Latin America, not least for decades including Cuba, on the US doorstep. Human rights abuses continue, war continues - it’s good big business, at least if you are on the supply side.  Immigration continues, drug crime continues.  The one thing that the US has got from intervention is business, deals and resources. It is no surprise.  That is what we would expect from the cradle of capitalism and consumerism.

So I appreciate Vargas Llosa’s recognition that Trujillo was regularly frustrated by the United States, their sanctions via the OSA, the threat of another invasion and occupation by them as they had done 1916-1924.  He did not fail to  emphasise that Trujillo grew up with US marine training, which evidently shaped him, but he did not blame the US for Trujillo or overblow their complicity in his overthrow.

Vargas Llosa’s own politics have changed.  He began supporting the Cuban revolution but gradually moved right more recently endorsing Brazil’s right wing presidential candidate, Jair Bolsanaro over Lula da Silva (who won), all while  supporting gay rights and drug decriminalisation.

“It is remarkable that the author of Conversation in the Cathedral and The Feast of the Goat, two of his greatest novels, which examine the moral corrosion of Latin American societies caused by the dictatorships of military men, would prefer a thuggish ex-army captain [Bolsanaro] openly calling on his supporters to arm themselves ahead of October’s election over a flawed but genuine democrat [Lula da Silva].” - Tom Hennigan in the Irish Times.

Burning sorrows: la Solemnidad de los Santos Pedro y Pablo

Palermo-Holywood street: Francisco Gonzalez

While searching for the tango / poem about the angry guy in the cajón [coffin] I stumbled upon a tango about the night of San Pedro and San Paulo.  The cajón mentioned here is a box, not a coffin. The images created evoked a captivating spirit of social winter festivity. 

Saint Peter and Saint Paul

Music: Ismael Spitalnik

Lyrics: Julio Huasi

Los purretes trajeron la madera,

The kids brought the wood,

tablones, sillas rotas, un catre y un cajón.

planks, broken chairs, a cot, and a crate.

La montaña se hará pronto una hoguera,

The mountain will soon become a bonfire,

las viejas tendrán brasas, no gastarán carbón.*

the old women will have embers, they won't waste coal.

Y las casas serán rojos fantoches*,

And the houses will be red puppets  

millares de fogatas habrá por la ciudad,

thousands of bonfires will fill the city,

surgirá la mañana en plena noche,

morning will rise in the middle of the night,

paloma y papa asada los pibes comerán.
the kids will eat pigeon and roasted potato.

Fantasmas de aserrín*,

Ghosts of sawdust,

y a aquel viejo violín

las cuerdas le sacaron

el alma en el Dzhin-Dzhin (Yin Yin).

And the strings of the old violin brought out it's soul in the Dzhin-Dzhin (Yin Yin).

Cantando un "Capuchín"

Singing a "Capuchin"

pebetas de carmín,
young girls with crimson lips,

un viejo distraído

a distracted old man

chamusca su botín.

scorches his boot.

Se cortará el piolín,

The string will break,

la noche tendrá fin, y el viento hará milongas

the night will end, and the wind will make milongas*

de cenizas y de hollín.

of ashes and soot.

Un incendio crepita en... cada esquina,

A fire crackles on... every corner,

en medio del invierno todos tienen calor,

in the middle of winter everyone is warm,

las muchachas de risa cantarina

the girls with laughing voices

los ojos se les queman: fogaratas de amor.

their eyes burn: little fires of love.

Yo quisiera poner algún muñeco

I would like to place some doll

llenarlo con las penas, la angustia y el sufrir,

fill it with sorrows, anguish, and suffering,

y tirarlo cual pobre palo seco

and throw it like a poor dry stick

y que se vuelva humo por siempre en mi vivir.

and may it turn into smoke forever in my life.

---

* las viejas tendrán brasas, no gastarán carbón - old women will benefit from the heat without spending money on coal, maybe implying they will take home the embers later.

* las casas serán rojos fantoches - possibly in the flickering light of the fire the houses seem animated by the fire & therefore under it's control. It adds a slight air of menace contrasting with the festivities which is picked up later.

* Fantasmas de aserrín - the sawdust remains from the furniture & wood cut up for the fire, whipped up by the wind or heat. Possibly a metaphor for the soul.

*Dzhin-Dzhin - It occurred to me, backed up by the views of an Argentinian friend, that Dzhin-Dzhin is the sound of the violin and rhymes with Capuchín. Perhaps its capitalisation is a regional variation, typo or quirk of the author.

* Capuchín - evidently a song although I could find no more information about the form. Similarly, the word is capitalised whereas in English we would not capitalise a musical genre - if so it is.  Perhaps that suggests that Dzhin-Dzhin is not the proper noun suggested by its capitalisation. 

*Se cortará el piolín - the song will end when the string breaks. Possibly a metaphor for the end of life. There are contrasts in the poem between elderly and younger people. 

* la noche tendrá fin, y el viento hará milongas - milonga here probably means "disturbance" or maybe also party, which is one of the meanings of the word.  When milonga doesn't mean a musical genre or a dance venue, a dance party, not just of tango music, it also means a lie, a disturbance, a confusion. In Spain, milonga is understood as a lie. In Latin America it is is more understood as a party.  Essentially the wind will whip up the soot and ashes.  Given the connotations of milonga, you could say the wind makes the ashes dance as is not uncommon in English, although the general idea is more of the evening coming to an end.

The poem puts me much in mind of 'The Fair', by Vernon Scannell, about gaiety and festivity with a much darker undertone:

---

The evoked spirit of the thing is only half of what gave me pause.  In the vidalas and many tangos there is often anguish.  Women cry over their lot, men rail, albeit artistically, in song.  The idea of dispersing sorrow as proposed here is equally poetic, if of unknown efficacy.  But there is a difference. Sometimes in song, one wonders if the anguish is an end in itself whereas here the speaker is, if nothing else, trying to rid himself of it. It is poignant that ultimately Julio Ciesler did not manage to escape his demons. 

Nowadays therapists propose mental solutions to problems akin to the one described.  For instance, a therapist friend explained that if you had some feeling or issue bothering you, you might try to turn it into some mental object.  Then you ask the troubled person what they feel like doing with the bothersome thing.  They might say burn it or dissolve it or throw it in a lake or smash it with a hammer.  Usually it is some way of crudely getting rid of it.  It occurs to me one might perhaps more gently transform it in to something beautiful: perhaps cocoon it then watch it transform into a butterfly that flitters away.

Nonetheless, if one is are troubled, one might do worse than burn ones sorrows.  Considering this poet met a sad end which it compels me  - pace rationalism - to suggest perhaps not doing it in the shape of a doll-person:  

Yo quisiera poner algún muñeco
llenarlo con las penas, la angustia y el sufrir,
y tirarlo cual pobre palo seco
y que se vuelva humo por siempre en mi vivir.

The event referred to is that of St Peter and St Paul [licensed image of the event in Mendoza].  An explanation appears in this article.  

"June 29th is a commemoration in honor of Saint Peter, the first pope of the Catholic Church, and Saint Paul, the great apostle of the Gentiles, who were executed around the year 67 by order of Nero. Peter was crucified upside down, according to his wish, as he considered himself unworthy to die in the same manner as his master, and Paul was beheaded in the city of Ostia." [translated]

For obvious reasons, therefore it is not called a festival but a "solemnidad", a solemnity.  Popularly, it is referred to as the "day of" St Peter and St Paul - although the fires take place at night.

The article is another memory of  the event from the barrio Palermo-Hollywood, a part of the Palermo neighbourhood which became home to movie and TV companies.  At the time remembered, it was an area of quintas, estates where wealthier families might have bigger, second homes in the country. The idea, at any rate, is of a larger home with some green space.  The goal was what the kids called the fogarata [a corruption of fogata], a huge bonfire on the appointed day. They removed a cobblestone from the street and inserted a long pole into the hole, spliced with another to achieve a significant height.   At the top of this they placed what we call a "guy"  - the scarecrow-type creature placed on a fire.  It was made with branches and straw, and old clothes donated by the neighbours. The old furniture and boxes the kids had gathered was piled around the pyre which was lit at nightfall.  The neighbours gathered, sang and laughed, warmed themselves by the fire and watched the flames. When these died down, on the hot embers they would cook hot peppers, potatoes or sweet potatoes on the ends of wires or sticks.   

The ceremony combined the religious commemoration with the winter rite of a bonfire of pagan origin.  The "guy" in this case does not, as on the UK's "Bonfire Night" [5 November], represent a historic personage but is apparently "a collective expiation to pay homage to the innocent saints". I don't quite understand how that "collective expiation" works.  That people still enjoy burning a representation of a human figure on a bonfire makes me rather shudder at the apparently thin veneer of our supposed civilization.

The word used in the article for this gathering is a neighbourhood tertulia, where it is worth pausing for a curious footnote. I see these often in Spain - whole streets sitting down to a meal together - almost any reason will do, even - in fact only - in the big cities which is where I go.  Urban social isolation is apparently less of an issue in Spain.  

Tertulias used to be private literary salons, initially held in people's homes from at least the 17th century.  Later, they were held in cafes and some became more formalised.  The DLE definition today is "A gathering of people who regularly meet to talk about a certain topic" The Chilean etymological dictionary calls it "an informal gathering where people discuss a certain topic."

Why tertulia?  The same source says that in the seventeenth century it was fashionable to gather to read the works of Quinto Septimio Florente who was apparently three times ("Ter") better than Marcus Tullius Cicero.  Thus the former became better known as the Tertullius who apparently gave his name to tertulia.  Far-fetched? 

The author of the 'La Nación' remarks that those neighbourly events exist no longer and contrasts them with the fires and burning tyres on the streets seen nowadays (the piece was written in 2011) which fragment rather than unify society.  He says he writes to show the younger generations what it was like, this neighbourly camaraderie which he says was moneda corriente - common currency.

An Argentinian friend from the AMBA (Área Metropolitana de Buenos Aires) remarked: "Sí, hemos participado de esa fiesta popular pero cuando eramos chicos, tal vez hasta los 10 u 11 años de edad. Después, comenzaron a ser cada vez menos personas que se enganchaban hasta que se dejaron de hacer en general. Lo mismo ocurrió con los carnavales y con los bailes de fin de año en las calles." Sadly, modern life seems to have done for this and other similar neighbourhood festivities.

This tango is not played in the milongas and while I prefer the poem on the page to the Troilo / Goyaneche version from the late 50s, the song (for listening) is growing on me. 

The words of the poem were written by a journalist and, unsurprisingly, for the vivacity of the images, poet, Julio Ciesler whose pen name was Julio Huasi and who was highly esteemed in Argentina and internationally.  He was radical, committed to socialist causes, and sadly committed suicide in his early 50s. 


Thanks to JCM for his comments

Coplas de penas - remembrance from beyond the grave

Coplas de penas

Years ago, I asked "Geraldo" for help with a translation. It was almost certainly a Rodriguez track. I remember him shocked but laughing at the man who took bitterness so far that he imagined himself in his coffin, still with the woman in mind who had set him on the path to self-ruin, at least that is how I understood what he said. I remember the song included flowers and and coffin and was indeed particularly bitter, even for a tango, so it is likely it was that it was La Gayola, translation with excellent notes by the late "sleepmeister", TangoDecoder, Michael Krugman. Now that my Spanish is much improved that isn't quite how I read that tango but it was what I was remembered when I heard the last lines of these coplas:

Diez años después de muerta

la tierra me preguntó

si ya te había olvidado

y le contesté que no.

They have less of the angry rencor of the tangos written by men, sung by men and more a profound sadness. 

Cada vez que lo recuerdo
Each time I remember it

no me quisiera acordar
I wish I didn't have to remember

que los gustos son del cuerpo
that pleasures belong to the body

y el alma lo ha 'i de pagar.
and the soul will have to pay.

Allá va mi corazón
There goes my heart

dirigido en un papel
written on a piece of paper

llorando gotas de sangre
crying drops of blood

por un ingrato querer.
for an ungrateful love.

Los pajaritos y yo
The little birds and I

nos levantamos a un tiempo
get up at the same time

ellos a cantar el alba
they to sing at dawn

yo a llorar mis sentimientos.
I to weep over my feelings.

Canta y divierte tus males
Sing and enjoy your sorrows

no des a entender tus penas
don't let your sorrows show,

que aquel que te quiere bien
for the one who truly loves you

y en verte triste se alegra.
rejoices in seeing you sad.

Diez años después de muerta
Ten years after my death

la tierra me preguntó
the earth asked

si ya te había olvidado
if I had forgotten you

y le contesté que no.
and I replied that, no.

Music and lyrics by Mariana Carrizo.

Salon Canning revamp

I was catching up with Janis' blog and saw a post from April about the revamp in Salon Canning.

It looks so clinical now not the "home" Janis mentions and that I remember. Salon Canning has featured on the banner of the Outpost for years, and you can just see the mural on it. The photo above shows all of it. Janis talks about the place being like a theatre where people watch the "show" of the social dancing, which is exactly what is happening here.  

I only danced at Canning a couple of times I think. The DJ was Mario who played mostly good music, similar to Dany. [Buenos Aires DJ's Dany Borelli and Mario Orlando] I am still astonished that I meet porteños here who say they play traditional music but who have not heard of Dany Borelli. 

It was in Canning that I met one of the best local dancers during my stay in Buenos Aires, Roberto who spoke English. 

Now I remember that was the unusual thing about that milonga. The men could be seated mixed in with the women. I checked it in the photos. That didn't happen in nearly all the other traditional milongas I attended, except maybe Gricel.

Te he i' de olvidar - [I must forget you] and the vidala form

This song is another vidala.  It is the same song that featured partially in Vidala Triste, mentioned here.  It isn't clear who wrote Te he i' de olvidar.  Mariana Carrizo has interpreted many songs on love, often her own, but this is one of the simplest linguistically and is probably my favourite, musically. 

he i': The more standard phrase would be Te he de olvidar, "He de"  is a form much used in songs and poetry to say "I have to" do something.  So I am not convinced that he i' is a contraction exactly, as suggested by the apostrophe.  So it must be variation, stylistic or phonetic. You can say Te he de olvidar without adding an "i", but singing, it becomes convincing to add the i.  That still leaves the mystery of the apostrophe without a contraction.  Perhaps the apostrophe serves to guide the singer's delivery, such that the "i'" is not a fully enunciated word but rather a brief vocal sound.  Pata i'lana is a bit like that: an omission replaced with a very different sound, "i". 

Note, the Spanish lyrics are listed on Ensalta,com and refer to the album version of the song where she sings vidalitay but in the video above, vidalita  I have heard both used by various singers across the genre.

I used to think that when vidalita or, here, vidalitay appeared in songs, it was in referral to a beloved, coincidentally using a word similar to the musical genre, vidala.  But now I think the singer sings to the song itself which is not something we tend to do in English.

In the Youtube version, she sings para acompañarme a llorar, instead of para ayudarme a llorar as on the album and in the published lyrics.  Thanks to JS for pointing this out.

There are quite a few variations she sings.  When I sing Vidala para mi sombra sometimes I sing  Pobrecita si me muero / con quien va a andar I often change va a andar to se irá because I think it sounds better but I can't remember if I picked that up from some version that Mariana or someone else.

It is beautifully sung, delicately accompanied by the accordeonist, Chango Spasiuk. I am always struck by the strength, humanity, energy and depth of feeling conveyed through the performance. The drum she is beating is the caja, affectionately referred to as cajita. 

There are some notes on the vidala form following the lyrics.

Esta cajita que toco

This little drum that I play

vidalitay

vidalitay

tiene boca y sabe hablar

has a mouth and knows how to speak

mi bien, ay mi dolor.

my love, oh my sorrow.

Solo le faltan los ojos

It only lacks eyes

vidalitay

vidalitay

para ayudarme/acompañarme a llorar

to help me cry / to accompany my lament

mi bien, ay mi dolor.

my love, oh my sorrow.

Te he i' de querer

I will love you

te he i' de adorar

I will adore you

te he i' de llevar a donde

I will take you where

nadie nos pueda encontrar

no one can find us

tan solo muriendo

only by dying

yo te he i' de olvidar.

Will I forget you - strictly, "Will I be able to forget" you but we often contract this in English, especially in poetry.

There is an interesting article on the form, La vidala del noroeste argentino: un compendio de silencios, coplas y energías cósmicas with a useful title in English:  The Vidala of Northwest Argentina: a compendium of silences, coplas and cosmic energies, which summarises the gist of the abstract. 

Map of provinces of Argentina
By Bleff - Own work based on File:Argentina - Político.png, CC BY-SA 3.0
, 

The article says that the vidala is tied to the landscape of north west Argentina: Catamarca, La Rioja y Santiago del Estero, although it can reach as far as Jujuy, Tucumán y San Juan.  

Chango Spasiuk's documentary La Vidala cites it in La Rioja. 

Some interesting points from the piece:

- vidalas are about the lives of the people in this area, inseparable from the wilderness itself. 

- the place, the stories about the place and the poetry all contain mysteries, enigmatic auras and ancestral secrets, an idea apparently expounded by the folk singer Atahualpa Yupanqui, who was influenced by the santiagueño writer, Ricardo Rojas.

- the poetry tends to be sorrowful

- there is no dance associated with the vidala

- it is sometimes considered the first first Argentine folk genre because it developed in parallel with the Nation-State  The Tucumán musician Juan Quintero, says "It was born as a Creole folk genre, mixed with cultural elements typical of Spanish culture." 

- unlike the baguala and the tonada, in the vidala other instruments are also used, such as the bombo legüero, the guitar, and the violin.  But the characteristic instrument that accompanies the vidala is the caja, a percussion instrument of Andean origin.

- The caja also accompanies the tonada and the baguala musical forms 

He provides two quotations, the first by Atahualpa, the second by Leda Valladares who dedicated her life to recording, singing and promoting Argentinian folk music. 

 “La música es un accidente de la tierra misma, por eso en las montañas, selvas y llanuras americanas, la canción es el resultado de una fusión admirable: el paisaje y el hombre”

Music is an accident of the earth itself,  so in the American mountains, jungles and plains, song is the result of an admirable fusion of the the landscape and man. 

“La libertad es la esencia del grito y el grito significa sangría, parto, develamiento de fuerzas ocultas. Por ese alarido se expresa la historia del hombre largado a la tierra, imantado por el cosmos, agredido por la muerte”

Liberty is the essence of the scream, and the scream means bloodletting, childbirth, the unveiling of hidden forces.  Through this scream, the history of man is expressed, thrown to earth, magnetised by the cosmos, assaulted by death. 

With thanks to JS for his remarks