Author: Andrea Gonzales

On December 5, 2018, our IDC class went to see “The Jungle” a play based on true events about a city built entirely by refugees. They built the Jungle to be a temporary living situation because they believed and hoped that one day, it would be a good day, and they would come to the UK so they can live happily, and safely. This play was an incredible experience, possibly the most important things I have ever watched in my life. I just wish there could have been a warning. I know about the life of emigrants too well. My parents had to survive through so much to get to this country, to make sure that when they have children they will be safe and they will have everything they need. Watching this play reminded me of all the intergeneration trauma that I have to battle through every day. I know the story of refugees too well. My job as an activist is to listen to the traumas of others and then make sure their stories are being included; I can still remember the first time someone told me that they were raped. I can still remember the first time a mother came to me and told me the story of her daughter, and how she got shot the day before Mother’s Day. and how my activism gives her hope. And now after watching this play, I hold the stories of the people of the Jungle.

I spent most of the play crying; I couldn’t stop myself from shaking because this is happening to my people as we speak. At the southern border of the United States, mothers and children are being tear-gassed. At the southern border, a boy got shot in the head because he was throwing rocks. At the southern border, people who are begging for asylum (a completely legal action) are being treated like animals. They aren’t considered humans, they are between worlds where they can see the doors of “freedom” and they have come so far and they are so close but they can’t get in.

The part that scared me the most was between two moments when they began to lift the roof and the part when one of the young boys in the Jungle shot the firearm. The part where the roof was being lifted was an experience I will never forget. The smoke and the police officers made me scared for my own life. I was completely aware that it was all a play, but my body had a physical reaction to this image of terror and destruction. I imagined how it must have felt to be there in the present; where there was no audience, only violence, and destruction. I imagined how this must have been similar to the way they destroyed civilizations in the Western hemisphere. When the colonizers came and destroyed everything they could see for their own greed—and they didn’t care who died in the process, they just wanted to show power over an innocent group of people. The gun going off in the play also made my body react in a negative way. I felt my spine shaking and I couldn’t breathe. That’s a sound I will never get used to. I am a gun violence prevention activist so sounds like that are incredibly traumatic for me. I remember that I instinctively I grabbed the nearest person and tried to protect them as I covered my own head. I didn’t think it was going to make such a realistic noise. I began to cry almost instantly and I am grateful that I was with friends who were there to comfort me.

The lack of a trigger warning was concerning but at the same time, I believe that we can’t censor images like these. Empathy is what is needed to actually create change. Being apathetic to human suffering will never solve anything and I believe that this is what people need to see, they need to see the reality of situations in their face, where they are unable to turn away because, in reality, the majority of the people in the room at that show contributed to the problem. Although they may not have directly committed a genocide, and they may not have actually taken a gun and murdered an innocent person, someone they know or maybe even themselves, contributed to the problem by electing officials that depend on a power imbalance.

I am happy that so many people went to this show, but the fact of the matter is that I cannot stand to see any more people saying that they hate the current administration while letting people die. My activism is based on love and empathy but I have no sympathy for the people who can sit and watch people die and only post something on Facebook. I am a firm believer that if we are not all free, then none of us are free and that if you stay silent the situations of injustice, you chose to defend the side of the oppressor. Silence comes in many forms, but the one that is most dangerous is when you don’t hold others accountable for their actions and their words. It is up to each of us individually to talk to our friends and family about what we need to do as a community to create equity between all people. We need to talk about the stories of the people who died at the hands of a police officer, we need to talk about the stories of the refugees, we need to talk about the young man who was lynched only 2 months ago in the United States, we need to talk about starving children in Yemen.

Empathy is so crucial at this moment, we need to see each other as our siblings and our people, and I think that was the goal of play “The Jungle”, to show how people create communities especially when there’s so much chaos around you. I am so grateful for this experience. Although I spent a lot of the play crying and not breathing, I have learned that turning pain into empowerment is the most important thing you can possibly do for you and your community.

Art is incredibly vital to any political movement. It is used to motivate people to join a cause and it is used to show the reasons for a revolution. At the Jewish Museum, we saw two different exhibits showing revolutionary art; art criticizing government and art that moved people emotionally to take part in a revolution. In the exhibit regarding Russian Avant-Garde from 1918 to 1922, I found a piece by David Yakerson named “Red Guards”. It grabbed my attention because it reminded me of the art that my peers create and put on signs when it comes time to organize our communities. It was a simple piece of art. There were 3 basic colors on it, red, blue and yellow, but that is all you need to capture someone’s attention. The foreground of the painting is very symmetrical and repetitive, and the background shows an image of a factory.
I was very intrigued by this art that I even went home to learn more afterward, but it was difficult to find out more, there were not many articles about it and there was only 1 photo of the piece online when you typed the title and artist name into the search engine—I have never had this happen before. It was painted in 1918 and it was designed to be on a banner for the first anniversary of the October revolution according to the blurb alongside the painting. Marc Chagall approved of this painting and even wrote on the back how many copies he needed and how large they had to be.
This art is considered experimental for various reasons. The minimalism of the art is interesting, it isn’t clear as to what is going on—all you know is that there’s a factory along with red soldiers carrying guns. It took a bit more research to understand that art of red army soldiers were common symbols of the revolution and was intended to reflect the issue of class struggle. It is a mimesis of the revolution—people arming themselves and fighting back is a common theme in any movement that demands action from the people. The art is minimalist, there is not a lot of details but it is enough to catch your attention and somehow it also is able to evoke emotion without seeing many details.
This painting is demanding your attention without overworking your senses. It is remembering the October revolution with life and passion. The way that the soldiers march together and are a reflection of each other show the unity of the people who want change; they could not remain silent in a situation where they are unequal. This type of art greatly influenced the political banners and posters of today. As I am writing this post, I look up at my bedroom wall and see all the posters I have used at protests and see the resemblance. Although they are not the same, Yakerson’s work and the work of other revolutionary artists have helped pave the way for artists use their art to demand liberation.

A photo from the summertime on the secret patio.

The graffiti near the 145 street train station.

In the afternoon, I finally decided that I needed to take a break. School work and my activism have really started to pile up on top of me. I didn’t know if I was going to regret taking a break later, but I decided that fresh air is what I needed so I could continue to work later. I packed up my things and left the Baruch cafeteria. It was a decent day, it wasn’t rainy, but was a little cloudy and gloomy which only added on to my stress. I wasn’t sure where to go but I knew I wanted to go somewhere I haven’t been before. After thinking for a long time, nothing came to mind. So, I just walked to the R train to take it to Times Square and then transferred onto the 1 train, since it’s my favorite one.
In the summer of my junior year of high school, I had to take the one train to 137th street every day for 6 weeks for an internship called Sadie Nash. It was the first time my mom let me into the city without friends or parental supervision. I took the 1 train early in the morning, I had to be in Harlem at 10:00 am every day (but I could be a little late as long as I let my deans know, but I never wanted to miss a second of this internship). Sadie Nash completely changed my life, I think that if I didn’t attend this internship, I would have still been set on being a history teacher or a therapist when I grew older. Being on the 1 train reminded me of that long commute for Sadie Nash, so I decided to pay a visit to the campus that hosted us for that summer.
I usually transfer to the 2 train and then back to the 1 to get to City College faster, but it was the beginning of rush hour and I knew I wouldn’t be able to find a seat if I transferred. My favorite part of traveling on the one train to 137 street is when the train goes above ground for one stop and then back under to get to 137th. 125th was the stop where the train was above ground, I remember seeing the blue skies in the summertime, and now the sky was grey, but I didn’t mind, I was able to see all of Harlem from a different view. Whenever I was coming home a bit later in the day from Sadie Nash; I could see how the golden sunlight shined through all the windows of the buildings and through the subway car windows.
I finally got to 137 street and I was reminded of the steep hill that I had to walk up every morning to get City College. It was hard walking up the hill especially since it was a little windy. I should have brought a scarf with me. I did not like that campus personally, there were barely any windows in the classrooms and the layout of the building was confusing. I decided to stay on the outside of the campus since it was school time and I didn’t want to disturb any students. I wish it was summer time again, so I could visit my secret patio where my friends and I used to go eat lunch. It was a gigantic patio, and it was abandoned completely for some reason. The patio surrounded a building that also appeared abandon (but my friend swore she saw someone walking out of it). There were weeds and daisies growing in-between the stone and the chairs were rusting but it was beautiful. I hope I get to go back there soon with some friends so that we can lay in the sun again and sing and dance on top of the tables.
I walked to the train again because it was getting late and I still had work to do. But I walked to a specific train station. I walked to the A train on 145 street and hoped to find a man selling necklaces. Last time I saw that man was two years ago, and I couldn’t buy a necklace from him because my friends and I had to catch a train; I knew he wouldn’t be there selling necklaces again, but I knew I had to try. I also walked there because I remembered there was very cute graffiti near the train station that I never got to take a picture of, I remembered that it was on a green wall and had little flowers around it. I ended up finding it and I finally got a picture of it. When I got onto the A train, a man came up to me, he had long straight brown hair, and was wearing a fur coat. He told me that he loved my hair and the color of it, all I could say was thank you because he immediately got off the train after he told me. I hope he heard me say thank you.
I have a lot of memories in Harlem. I remember how I went to the pool at Riverside Park for a field day with Sadie Nash. I remember getting halal for lunch every day and laughing with my friends about nonsense. I remember running across St. Nicholas Park and buying flowers for my deans during our lunch break (we only had an hour and we forgot to eat lunch that day but it was worth it; our deans were so happy). I remember marching down the streets of Harlem demanding justice for victims of police brutality. Back then I wasn’t worried about having to balance my time between activism and my school work. My main worry was my summer homework and hoping I would be able to finish it all before September. But this is what Sadie Nash trained me to do, this program and my deans were dedicated to making sure every young woman of color that attend the program came out as a leader and as an uncensored, strong activist. I haven’t talked to my dean for a long time, but I am sure that she’s proud of me. I hope she comes back to New York soon.

The Quechua language is an oral language spoken by more than 10 million people today. This was the language of the Inca Empire which was destroyed and in turn, the Spaniards assimilated the majority of the population into Spanish tradition by forcing them to abandon Quechua and most of their practices. My family is from the Pomabamba province in Ancash and we, like the majority of the population kept our indigenous traditions even though colonizers desperately tried to remove our culture. Statistically, 84.83% of the population in Pomabamba speaks Quechua, but when my family moved from the Ancash region to Lima, they were forced to leave the language behind. My dad told me about his childhood in Lima; the kids at his school would bully him and his siblings for speaking in Quechua, and since my dad was young, he ultimately lost all his knowledge of the language. He can understand it, but he was unable to pass it on to me. When the opportunity came to see the reading of the first comic book written in Quechua, I knew I had to go see it.
The comic book was about the life of Rasu-Ñiti, a famous danzante de Tijeras, which means a scissor dancer (a traditional dance from the southern Andes mountains in Peru. The dance consists of two or more dancers, followed by their respective orchestras of a violin and a harp. The dancers dance in turns, doing explicit moves and challenging steps, such as dancing with just one foot which can also result in a lot of agony and pain due to the complexity of the dances). It was originally written by the Peruvian writer José María Arguedas; it was collected from oral tradition. Rasu-Ñiti dies in trance, so Wamani, who is the spirit of the mountains (who manifests in the form of a condor and is also an Andean god) comes to help Rasu-Ñiti become part of the Andean vision.
The reading was hosted in an auditorium at New York University (NYU) in Manhattan. The speaker was the translator of the comic book, Professor Odi Gonzales. Both the professor and the students from the Quechua Program at NYU helped translate the book into Quechua. The writer of the translated version was answering questions from the audience and also reading excerpts of the book. He was reading it very quietly; it was a small group of people for the reading which could explain why he was quiet. His posture was also very relaxed along with his tone. I think I would have preferred to read this comic book on my own because I would have added so much more feeling to the characters and words. However, I always prefer to listen to poetry being read. Most of the questions asked to the translator of the comic book were about the logistics behind creating a comic book out of an oral language.
When I went home to tell my parents about the reading I asked them about the writer José María Arguedas, and my dad told me about how he was a professor at his university, Universidad Agraria, back in Perú. Arguedas was an activist for the Indigenous community in Peru, which is why he wrote a comic book about the scissor dancers from the Andes, to help the people from the urban areas in Peru better understand the culture that still exists in Peru, and also educating people about how that is their own ancestry. Through his writing and his studies, he won a Noble Peace Prize. My dad told me at the end of this conversation that he took his own life in his office at the university after seeing all the suffering of the indigenous community and feeling as if he could not help them. As an indigenous Peruvian activist, I can understand the pain of Arguedas; it’s hard to see your community suffering and not being able to fix all the systemic problems.
Coming to this reading was interesting but difficult. I feel as if I was stripped of my culture because of the assimilation my father had to go through. I hope I will be able to learn Quechua in the future so I can finally read the copy of the comic book that I bought at the reading.

Henri Rousseau’s “The Dream”

The painting above, “The Dream” was created in 1910 by the French painter, Henri Rousseau. He was a post-impressionist painter in the Naïve or Primitive manner according to the Henri Rousseau official website. This is one of the 25 paintings of the jungle he created in his lifetime (even though he has never traveled outside of France). This work was inspired by his visits to the Paris zoo, museum of natural history, the botanical garden, and the way literature presented ideas of the jungle. This painting was completed in the same year that he passed away. The medium used was oil on canvas and the dimensions are 6’8 ½” by 9’ 9 ½”.
The two lions in the painting “The Dream” are slightly hidden behind all the plants and slowly creeping towards a white woman on the sofa. This painting takes place in the night and the moonlight creates a dim light in the jungle. The way they were painted are slightly realistic. One lion has a mane while the other does not. Also, Rousseau gave the two lions round eyes and a short fur all over their bodies. The male does not have a large noticeable mane which is interesting since most artists like to focus on that aspect of the male lion. Their facial expression does not seem aggressive. The lioness is looking towards the woman who is calling to her, meanwhile the male lion is looking straight the viewer of the painting which is interesting and catches your attention along with the way Rousseau painted the lions in general. The male lion has a more intense face compared to the lioness who looks more entranced with the strange woman on the couch. The lion that is moving towards the white woman came from behind another woman who is playing the flute; as if she is calling to other animals in the painting. The other woman is not afraid of the lions nor are the lions afraid of her.