El Big Easy Amigo Blogger: May 2011

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

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

ALIENS ARE COMING Lecture at TULANE University's Freeman Auditorium 7PM - FREE

After a national four-city tour of the ALIENS, IMMIGRANTS & OTHER EVILDOERS performance piece, I am back in New Orleans to present a multimedia lecture called ALIENS ARE COMING: Fears of a Brown Invasion & the Vilification of Latino Immigrants in the USA. This lecture is the accompanying program to the ALIENS performance piece, and it is informed by the research I have conducted over the past three years on the rise in hate crimes against Latino immigrants.

ALIENS ARE COMING TULANE, FRIDAY, MAY 13 Freeman Auditorium:
Latino immigrants in the United States are no longer living la vida loca of Ricky Martin’s 1990s popular anthem, and I find myself longing for those days when we were supposedly ushering in a new Latino boom. ALIENS ARE COMING explores the widespread hysteria, driven by political zealots, concerning “illegal aliens”. Right-wing conservatives and Tea Party Candidates (is there a difference?) have divisively stoked the fires of xenophobia to a mad frenzy, and they have inspired hideous hate crimes against Latinos—whether they are rightful citizens, legal residents, or undocumented workers.

They have employed fear mongering against Latinos across the United States, and the word “immigrant” itself has become synonymous with criminals and terrorists. In ALIENS ARE COMING, I comment on the current vilification of Latino immigrants as a strategic cultural practice not uncommon to a country that has engaged in the accepted genocide of American Natives, the enslavement of Africans, the demonization of Muslim culture, and the imprisonment of more than one-tenth of its current population while proudly calling itself the capital of the free world.

This is a heady and humorous performance analysis of a brief history of abuse of power in the U.S.A., and I will open the program with an excerpt from the ALIENS performance piece. In addition, I will present a collage of the best hits of "illegal aliens" 2010 campaign ads produced by the pushers of fear. You know who they are.

ALIENS ARE COMING will be presented at the Tulane University Freeman Auditorium inside the Woldenberg Art Center (Drill Road and Newcomb Circle) on Friday, May 13 at 7pm.

http://www.tulane.edu/~newcomb/lectures.html

The lecture is FREE and open to the public. The program will serve as the opening event for a photography exhibition called The History of the Future/La Historia del Futuro at the Newcomb Gallery, which brings together the photographic collaborations of Michael Berman and Julian Cardona. Their fine art images document the people and the landscape of the U.S./Mexico border region. www.newcombartgallery.tulane.edu

My lecture presentation at TULANE has been made possible with support from Tulane University’s Interdisciplinary Committee for Art and Visual Culture (ICAVC), Roger Thayer Stone Center for Latin American Studies, and Department of Spanish and Portuguese.

CONGRESS OF DAY LABORERS MAY FIRST MARCH:
Also, I will explore the contributions of Latino immigrants to the reconstruction of post-Katrina New Orleans. This glaring fact of the reconstruction remains conspicuously absent from most of the mainstream post-Katrina media narratives. This August, it will be six years since the reconstruction, and the remaining Latino immigrant workers and their families, who have reconstructed this city with their sweat and blood, are a persecuted people. They are being targeted and deported in greater numbers. Their labor has been exploited by an ungrateful city, and it is becoming harder for many to live in the Big Easy,

“The city that care forgot” has never officially cared to acknowledge the contributions made by the thousands of Latino immigrants who have been invaluable to our recovery. It is the greatest untold story of the post-Katrina rebuilding, and I continuously repeat it because it is one of the most egregious omissions of our recent history. Official governmental and cultural institutions remain suspiciously silent about the abuses many immigrants have suffered during the reconstruction. Thousands of private businesses and local homeowners, the many galleries/museums and cultural arts organizations, and the general public have all benefited from their arduous labor.

Some day soon, it will be recognized for what is: one of the greatest perpetrations of extensive labor abuse in the history of this country, which has an insatiable appetite for labor exploitation. As much as it breaks my heart, the exploitation of labor should come as no surprise in the port City of New Orleans, which was once built by the slave labor of an African people. Since the storm, the new slaves of color have been the brown Mestizo Latino immigrants, and they transformed "chocolate city" into an enchilada village, rebuilding a destroyed metropolis that would not be where it is today without their labor.

Latino immigrant workers were responsible for bringing the Big Easy back from the dead with a committed work ethic of epic proportions. Like a locusts of reconstruction angels, they descended upon the fragile pueblo, and restored the engines of the viable tourist industry by salvaging the many flooded hotels before they were condemned. They put up roof after roof on house after house that allowed residents to return home. They refurbished the now majestic Superdome, and it has become the most iconic symbol of our progress with the New Orleans Saints football team reigning as the 2010 Super Bowl Champions.

In last year's epic BP oil spill disaster, it was Latino laborers who did the heavy cleaning on the soiled Louisiana shoreline. This entire Gulf Coast state and its people have benefited tremendously from the Latino immigrant labor force, yet they are now fighting to remain. The RIGHT TO REMAIN was the prevailing theme of the recent May 1 demonstration by el Congreso de Jornaleros/The Congress of Day Laborers. They took to the streets of downtown New Orleans to proclaim their human rights and ended their march at City Hall. The series of new images here are from that march.

Make art that matters,

José Torres-Tama
ArteFuturo Productions
2426 Saint Claude Avenue
New Orleans, LA 70117
www.torrestama.com
504.232.2968

http://elbigeasyamigoblogger.blogspot.com

NEW ORLEANS FREE PEOPLE OF COLOR
OGDEN MUSEUM ART BOOK available at
http://www.torrestama.com/ogdenbook/index.html

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The Disappeared Immigrants, Photo Retablo

A member of the Congress of Day Laborer demonstrating on Canal Street in New Orleans for a public protest, and carrying a name placard of an immigrant who has disappeared in the NOPD jail system. This demonstration took place on International Workers' Day on May 1, 2011. Demonstrators carried dozens of name placards with silhoutted figures of immigrants who have gone missing in the notorious jails of the New Orleans Police Department. While the NOPD has been rightfully castigated for its mistreatment and murdering of African American civilians in the days after Katrina, the press has not engaged in investigating the many immigrants who have gone missing in the NOPD jails. Immigrants live in a parallel unverse and their suffering goes unnoticed.

When an Immigrant Dies in Chocolate City, Photo Retablo

Members of the Congress of Day Laborers/El Congreso de Jornaleros demonstrate in front of the offices of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on Poydras Street in New Orleans, across from City Hall, to demand answers for the mysterious death of Jose Nelson Reyes-Zelaya. He died in the custody of ICE agents within twenty-four hours of being picked up by the New Orleans Police Department and handed to them. ICE agents would not release any evidence and claimed that Reyes-Zelaya commited suicide. They would not even release any informaton to the Consulate of El Salvador in New Orleans. This demonstration took place in July 2010.

LUCHA LIBRE MAN UP CLOSE

LUCHA LIBRE MAN UP CLOSE is one of many New Orleans immigrant workers who demonstrated on International Workers Day on May 1st, 2012. The march was organized by the Congress of Day Laborers, and immigrant workers, their families, allies from the African American community, Unitarians and other church groups, and local Union organizers all met at Louis Armstrong Park on the edge of the French Quarter. From there, a good hundred plus demonstrators marched through downtown New Orleans and ended at City Hall, where many immigrants presented testimonials of worker's abuse, unjustified jailing, and cases of brutality at the hands of the local police.

ALTO AL ODIO! STOP THE HATE!

At no other time since my arrival in 1968 have I been witness to such blatant defamation of immigrants as I am seeing today, and the passing of Arizona’s SB 1070 by the Republican Governor Brewer in 2010 has spawned other copycat anti-immigrant laws in states like Georgia (May 2011), Alabama (June 2011), and South Carolina (June 2011). In these three Southern states, it’s been Republican Governors signing these odious laws to criminalize immigrants and anyone suspected of looking illegal, as in brown Latino men, women, and children. Basically, people who look like me because I, too, am a brown Mestizo Latino male, and based on the discretion of local police in any of these states, I could be detained and made to present my passport or green card to prove my status. This demonstrator's placard petitions us to stop this hatred and the persecution of immigrants in the so-called land of the free.

WE ARE ALL AMERICANS

The phrase of the “American Dream” itself has done much to place the United States as the sole proprietor of a name shared by all three continents of a sizable landmass, which is also referred to as the “New World.” For the geographically challenged, let me remind you that America is South, Central, and North America. Unfortunately, the U.S. citizenry and its politicians often suffer from a collective denial that the entire hemisphere is called the Americas, and as part of a measure to deconstruct the inherent biases of this pompous stance, many us us born in Latin America need to refrain as much as possible in referring to the United States as the absolute possessor of the moniker of “America.” The rest of us born in the “other Americas” also dream, and the phrase exemplifies a continuous act of condoned cultural appropriation. It posits the U.S. as the sole beneficiary of a geographical ideology akin to all that is good, noble, and warrants praise, while degrading the “other” Americas as lesser than, or even non-existent, as Eduardo Galeano states, “a Sub-America.” NO MAS! We are all Americans!

SOMOS HUMANOS / WE ARE HUMAN

A Congress of Day Laborers' demonstrator carries one of the more poignant signs contesting the inhumanity implied in the demonizing and stigmatic label of "illegal aliens." The definition of “alien” means foreigner, nonnative, and immigrant according to the dictionary. It also means a hypothetical or fictional being from another world, as in nonhuman, as in a non-sentient being that should not be treated with the accords of decency and humanity. They are inhuman and have no rights, even if they bleed the same red blood that the “legal” oppressors bleed. The term “illegal aliens” is being used strategically to exact a precondition that dehumanizes undocumented immigrants (men, women, and children), people whose labor the United States has always exploited to its benefit, and immigrants have become associated with other terms that scare the populace such as “terrorists,” “criminals,” and “disease carriers.” Aided by conservative media advocates and bombastic personalities like the former Lou Dobbs of CNN and the powerful buffoon Rush Limbaugh, some Republican right-wingers have made outrageous claims that immigrants crossing the border are bringing diseases and infecting U.S. citizens. Let’s dare to see this scarlet letter “a” of the “alien” for what it really is. Let’s dare to call it the calculated classification of the dehumanized that benefits the de-humanizers.

Stop Wage Theft

Latino immigrant workers are still doing much of the reconstruction work in New Orleans, but many are still victims of wage theft by ruthless local and national contractors. Instead of the promised wages, contractors often call Immigration Agents to have the workers deported after many a construction job has been completed. This practice has been going on for the nearly seven years since Hurricane Katrina's pounding and the consequent federal levee breaches flooded the historic port city. Thousands of immigrants have worked hard to rebuild the Big Easy and thousands have been cheated. The Southern Poverty Law Center's 2009 study revealed that 80% of the immigrants who aided the reconstruction have been victims of wage theft. The undocumented status of many workers has been used against them. Welcome to the big "21st Century Slave Labor Fiesta" in these United States. New Orleans was built on the slave labor of African Americans when "cotton was king," and it continues to exploit the labor of a new people of color. Brown is the new black to abuse--not only here but across the so-called "land of the free." While their labor is exploited, immigrants are criminalized by right-wing political zealots, and the Democratic President deports them in record numbers. It's an insidious cycle of labor exploitation that is reaching epic proportions. Don't think for a minute that this is all by accident. This country's corporations are addicted to labor exploitation, and since the domestic reconstruction cannot be outsourced, the most vulnerable workers are the best to abuse.

Respuestas/Answers for the Death of José Nelson Reyes-Zelaya

On July 29, 2010, members of the Congress of Day Laborers held a vigil for the mysterious death of José Nelson Reyes-Zelaya, a 28 year old immigrant from El Salvador. He died in the custody of ICE after twenty-four hours of being picked up by them. Their press release on his death noted that Reyes-Zelaya committed suicide and died of apparent asphyxiation. ICE refused to give out any more information. The CDL presented a Freedom of Information petition to ICE agents, but to this day, they have not heard anything more. There was hardly any news coverage in the local media about this tragedy, and it exemplifies how little immigrant lives matter in New Orleans, a city that has been rebuilt by thousands of Latino immigrants after the storm. The CDL protested on the same day that Arizona's infamous anti-immigrant law SB1070 when into effect. All photos and captions by José Torres-Tama.

UNDOCUMENTED & UNAFRAID

These photographs document El Congreso de Jornaleros/The Congress of Day Laborers May 1, 2011 demonstration through the streets of New Orleans. Organized by the New Orleans Workers' Center for Racial Justice, the gathering began at Louis Armstrong Park on North Rampart Street. It continued on Canal Street, up Poydras, and ended at City Hall. The theme for the march was THE RIGHT TO REMAIN! Demonstrators proclaimed that Latino immigrant workers and their families have aided the post-Katrina reconstruction of New Orleans, and are now experiencing persecution by the NOPD and rampant ICE deportations since most of the city has been rebuilt. All photos by José Torres-Tama. www.torrestama.com

José Torres-Tama as the ALIEN character with Cross of Dollars/Los Dolorosos Dolares.

Congress of Day Laborers on July 29 in New Orleans

Day Laborers with Wooden Cross

The dirtiest little secret of the reconstruction of the Big Easy is that it has been rebuilt by hard working Latino immigrants who have risked their lives in a city where many have been victims of random police brutality. There is no Arizona law here like SB1070, but immigrants are criminalized, arrested, and jailed daily in the Crescent City, with NOPD's finest even robbing some of them because they can. As devastating as the BP oil spill disaster has been to our Gulf and wetlands, this human tragedy has been unfolding for the past five years. It is time to give the Latino immigrants who have labored to restore a devastated city their rightful gratitude and stop the condoned official violence against them.