José Torres-Tama is an award-wining multidisciplinary artist, and he received a prestigious MAP Fund Grant for his "Taco Truck Theater / Teatro Sin Fronteras" ensemble performance on wheels, which challenges the anti-immigrant hysteria. "This Taco Truck Kills Fascists" is the project’s documentary that won Best Louisiana Feature at the 2018 New Orleans Film Festival. "Aliens, Immigrants, & Other Evildoers” is “a sci-fi Latino noir” solo that exposes the rise in hate crimes against Latin American immigrants in a country that dehumanizes them while exploiting their labor. Northwestern University Press will publish the full “Aliens” script in the anthology titled “Encuentro: Latinx Performances for the New American Theater” due in May 2019. Vanderbilt, Duke, Cornell and others have presented his solos, and international presenters include Roehampton University in London, Bluecoat Arts Centre in Liverpool, and Centre for Performance Research in Wales. From 2006 to 2011, he contributed commentaries to NPR’s Latino USA, and exposed the human rights violations Latin American immigrant workers faced in post-Katrina New Orleans. (Top blog photo from “ALIENS” by Craig Morse, and bottom image by Ben Thompson.) www.torrestama.com

Monday, January 19, 2009

My New Year's wish for New Orleans: if only we could govern as well as we party!

Mis queridos bloggers of cyberspace,

This is my first post in this new medium, and as we begin a season of mythic change at the U.S. capital under disturbing economical currents, I offer my "New Year's Wish" for the recovering city of New Orleans. This is the text of a commentary that will soon air on the NPR program "Latino USA" (latusa.org), and it will run in the Crescent City on the local public radio station WWNO/89.9 FM later this week as well.

cheers,

El Amigo blogger
www.torrestama.com


King Cakes are emerging from bakery ovens, the purple, green and gold is ubiquitously coloring our recovery landscape, and soon we will bear witness to the uncanny efficiency of local government meeting the daunting challenges in directing the massive performance spectacle called Mardi Gras in New Orleans. Preparations are already visible, and like carnival magic, the observation bleachers for the parade crowds are up on Saint Charles Avenue.

Processions large and small, funky and ostentatious will map out intricate routes, and cars will be towed immediately if they dare block the thoroughfares for the celebration. The millions of tourists we hope to join us will express communal awe at how well the city operates, and like atypical clockwork, small armies of garbage men will clean up the mountainous mess on the Ash Wednesday after Fat Tuesday.

My New Year's wish is to have this same governing body exhibit its best during the rest of the year, responding to other civic duties as well as it orchestrates the biggest free party on earth. In this season of mythic change where the first man of color will soon inhabit the white house, I can be allowed to dream for responsible legislators who can deliver the many community initiatives we still desperately need.

Three and a half years after the storm, and we continue waiting for a supermarket in my downtown area of the Marigny, Bywater, and Treme historic neighborhoods. Thousands of residents would be served, but we wait as our lives in New Orleans perpetually oscillate between comedy and tragedy.

It is now month two of my wait for a garbage can from Metro Disposal, the trash collector I am obligated to use for my Saint Claude Avenue home. One neighbor recently rejoiced at finally getting her plastic container after six months of an epic struggle with this company. Waste management is their business, and they have managed to waste plenty of my cell phone minutes with countless calls I’ve made to no avail.

Neglect is the one constant bad medicine our district can normally expect from City Hall. Their master plan for us must be “Let them eat King Cake”. So let’s fill our many moon crater-like potholes with Mardi Gras beads instead of asphalt. Rebuild our dysfunctional public schools on the parade line to attract more attention, and I’ll costume for the big show pleading, “Throw me something, Mister!” A new mayor would be a fine catch, but we’ll have to wait until the end of the year for such fortune.

Everyone knows New Orleans throws a great party. If only good government was not a contradiction in terms here, we would have even better reasons to celebrate.