Category: World Affairs

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A Christian hero warrior who lived among Arabs, a book review.

Pérez Reverte, Andrés. Sidi. Un relato de frontera (Miami: Alfaguara/Penguin Random House, 2019), pp. 371.

[Spanish below] El Cid Campeador, Spain’s favorite Christian warrior, appears here with the Arabic name that his own comrades in arms gave him, according to the author. And, indeed, it is a frontier tale, as the subtitle claims, referring to the imaginary line in the Iberian Peninsula that separated the Christian Goths from the Islamic Moors in the eleventh century, before Spain emerged.

The author warns us that Sidi “is a fictional story… that combines history, legend and imagination.” And, for me, that combination was satisfying because I think I can understand something of the past, trusting that he investigated enough before executing the final drafts. He relied on his understanding of the historical trends that slowly unfolded over centuries serving as a background for the actions of his characters. There is no doubt that integrating in the twenty-first century events from the eleventh century with legends embellished by the imagination demands certain caution for us readers. Worse in this case when historians warn of us of how little documentation remains of this warrior who continues to enjoy mythical glory. Perez Reverte includes gory descriptions of throat slicing and beheadings but medieval history in general confirms the enormous sacrifices of life that occurred often enough in the name of loyalty to man and god.

But the fact is that, despite the fiction woven into his tale, I have been able to confirm, for example, more than anything else, the social intertwining that must have existed between Christians and Muslims at that time. The fact that Pérez Reverte baptized his novel with the Arabic name of the famous warrior says a lot. I believe he hit the mark in choosing the title for his novel. I think that this social and economic intertwining represents the main argument in this book, better than a historical essay. It was a very good read. An English version is quite probable.

El Cid Campeador aparece aquí con el nombre árabe que sus propios compañeros en armas le pusieron, según el autor. Y, efectivamente, es un relato de frontera, como reza el subtítulo, la línea imaginaria en la península ibérica que separaba los godos cristianos de los moros islámicos en el siglo once, antes de que surgiera una España. Pérez Reverte incluye descripciones sangrientas de cortes de garganta y decapitaciones, pero la historia medieval en general confirma los enormes sacrificios de la vida que ocurrieron con bastante frecuencia en nombre de la lealtad al hombre y a dios.

El autor nos advierte que Sidi “es un relato de ficción donde…combina historia, leyenda e imaginación.” Y, para mí, esa combinación me ha satisfecho porque creo poder entender algo del pasado, gracias a este autor que investiga algo antes de escribir sus borradores finales. Confió en su haber entendido las tendencias históricas que se desenvuelven lentamente a través de los siglos y fungen como trasfondo en el comportamiento de los personajes. Es innegable que el compaginar en el siglo veintiuno hechos del siglo XI con leyendas embellecidas por la imaginación requiere exigir cierto cuidado para nosotros los lectores. Peor en este caso cuando poca documentación queda del domador de la frontera tal como nos avisan los historiadores, en contradicción a la gloria mítica que le asignan los españoles.  

Pero el hecho es que, a pesar de la ficción entretejida aquí, he podido, como lector, confirmar, por ejemplo, más que nada, el entrelazo social que debió haber existido entre los cristianos y los musulmanes en esa época. El hecho de que Pérez Reverte bautice su novela con el nombre arábico del insigne guerrero dice mucho ya. Intitular su novela de esta manera me parece una decisión acertada. Por último, pienso que ese entrelazado social y económico representa el argumento principal de este libro y de esto el autor ha hecho un excelente repaso, mejor que un ensayo histórico. Fue una lectura muy buena.

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The Monkeys Have No Tail in Zamboanga–A Growing Up Story (a book review)

Wolfe, Reese. The Monkeys Have No Tails in Zamboanga (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1959) pp. 169.

An old friend, gone by and by, wrote this wonderful memoir a few years before I met him. He confessed he was an author when we worked together, but I did not read his work until decades later. Now I’m glad I finally read this part it; it may have been his most satisfying.

The Monkeys Have No Tails is Reese’s memoir of growing up and becoming a man. He told me, when I knew him, that he had grown up in the Berkeley-San Francisco area in a well-heeled family, an assertion confirmed in this book. I discovered I was vaguely familiar with his growing up years, as chronicled here, most probably because we talked about his early life when my wife and I visited him and his wife, Dorothee, and I started learning the little matters that underpinned our work. We were cultural attaché’s in Central America, he the older, I the younger (much younger).

Reese tells us in his book that he became a man at sea. That is what this memoir is about; that at the age of eighteen he left home and made it to the old wharfs in San Francisco where he committed himself as an apprentice mariner on a rusty old merchant marine ship. He thought it was the beginning of an exotic adventure but was soon put to work cleaning and polishing the entire ship, day after day, then later shoveling coal into the steam boilers. This is how came to sail the briny blue for countless weeks. He became overwhelmed with regrets when the fabled ports of call turned out to be a big disappointment.

He couldn’t get back home quickly enough.

In between, he discovered, among other things, that in Zamboanga monkeys have no tails but more importantly he learned lifelong lessons: who he was and who he wasn’t. He admired the first assistant engineer so much that he began aping him, but soon came to terms with himself, with who he was—and to return to finish up college in Berkeley.

He writes in a light and friendly manner and includes songs he sang on the ship’s foc’sle, strumming his banjo-ukulele to ease the long days on deck.

Reese Wolfe and his daughter, Mimi.

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Walla Walla Penitentiary in the 1970’s, a book review

Stastny, Charles and Gabrielle Tyrnauer. Who Rules the Joint? (Lexington MA: Lexington Books, 1982) pp. 234.

The authors of this book, a man and wife team, write that they were personally affected by the violent uprising at the Attica Correctional Facility in Attica, New York, in 1971, in part because they lived nearby. As professional scholars, they had previously studied survivors of the Nazi regime. Coincident with Attica, they learned of the unusually progressive changes that were being reported at the first Washington State Prison (WSP) also known as Walla Walla. Determining that these were exceptional circumstances they turned their investigative capacity to the goings on in Washington State, producing this book as a result.  

Who Rules the Joint? begins by offering a perspective on what appeared to be significant reforms at Walla Walla in the late 1970’s. One of their findings is that the prison policy revisions there in those years were among the most progressive in the United States.

To help the reader grasp the meaning of this assertion the authors review the growth of prisons in the United States. Their analysis allows them to develop a typology of “power configuration” in American penal institutions. In other words, they sort out their understanding of the application of authority in a prison and come up with the following categories: unicentric (“keepers over prisoners”), bicentric (“keepers vs convicts”), tricentric (“keepers, remediators and inmates”) and polycentric (“Mass society, Prisoners, keepers, guards’ unions, courts, legislatures, mass media, etc.”). Authority exercised by the “keepers” of a prison is most strict in a unicentric situation because the power is concentrated in one place, it is unified at the top with the wardens. At the other end of the continuum, authority is polycentric because it is spread among several actors, or in many places, theoretically, at least.

Chapters 5 and 6 contain the key findings of the study and the information most specific to Walla Walla. Spurred by Dr. William R. Conte, reform-minded administrators endorsed new ideas at a time when progressive change was rising in American society. WSP saw the rise of a polycentric arrangement of authority that endured from 1971 to 1973, a condition not seen anywhere else. A Resident Governing Council (RGC) made up of elected prisoners who could sit down with the superintendent to decide how the prison was going to be run is a remarkable example of this period. The fact that inmates published their own newspaper also stands out as a notable demonstration of inmate influence. In the chapters noted, the authors weigh and analyze the relative strength of inmate power, but they also report the decline of the experiment. The RGC was eliminated by 1979 and things returned to a more authoritarian configuration, somewhere between unicentric and bicentric. A multitude of factors intervene in the process and they are discussed in detail. The manner of reversing the “power configuration” from many points of influence to only one or two is punctuated with reports of significant violence taking place all the way to 1979.

One of the final conclusions I make is that the late 1970’s were undoubtedly the toughest years in Walla Walla for everyone concerned. Another is that penal directors at the very top along with high state officials necessarily took stock of the situation and decided to reinstate the fullest control possible.

The authors of this seemingly neglected volume include copious end notes filled with important explanatory notes and a bibliography about prisons that appears quite comprehensive up to the point of publication. I consider Who Rules the Joint? a primer for anyone beginning to understand prisons in America.

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LIVING AS AN UNDOCUMENTED PERSON IN AMERICA, A BOOK REVIEW

Marcelo Hernández Castillo. Children of the Land: A Memoir (New York: Harper Collins, 2020), pp. 362.

Every American should read this memoir because it offers a real, personalized story about what it means to live as an undocumented person in the United States. Most Americans have no idea.

The author was brought to the United States in 1991 as a youngster by his undocumented parents, making him a DACA person. This means that, like his parents, he too was undocumented but received protection from deportation in 2012 from President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (hence DACA). He was one of a great multitude in similar circumstances, but different from most of them because he obtained a green card visa later, after all, as he explains.

Like most DACA folk, Castillo became Americanized to the point of losing fluency in Spanish, relying on over the counter drugs, wearing a nose plug, and even getting tattooed. And, like many of his fellow Dacas, he also achieved what most mainstream Americans do not: a master’s degree from a leading university. He does not expound on the challenges he encountered doing this, but they must have been enormous. Instead of becoming a lawyer or a doctor, he became a poet. Here are the reasons he admits for this:

I wanted to write poetry because I believed any practice in the English language would distance myself from my identity as an immigrant and I thought (naively ashamedly so) that the farthest association from an immigrant was a poet How foolish I was. Little did I know the lineage of immigrant poets I came from…(p. 75).

Then, again he explains regarding learning English:

I wanted to write and speak English better than any white person, any citizen, because in the unthinkable case of ever getting caught by immigration, I thought I would impress them enough with my mastery of English to let me go. What a stupid idea. (pp.75-76)

Castillo’s memoir is framed around the agonizing challenges of obtaining his own residential visa, then trying to get his father’s and later his mother’s. I found this part particularly gratifying because he unabashedly divulges the psychological and social strains involved. Just driving to be interviewed at the ICE offices to qualify for the visa he became fearful of committing a mistake that would get him pulled over and arrested obliterating his dream of holding a visa. Paranoia and trauma are words that he uses to describe his feelings—and those of his family. The rest of us would be better Americans if we could appreciate these experiences.

He is a poet writing his memoirs, so the biographical elements mentioned in the paragraphs above are veiled in his often florid text and fluid structure. Reading the text with care will help.

Why Castillo’s family chose to immigrate without documents in the first place is a crucial point addressed only tangentially because it is, after all, a memoir, not a history book. He works as a professional poet.

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“Mamita Yunai” is about the United Fruit Company

Fallas, Carlos Luis. Mamita Yunai (San José, C.R.: Editorial Costa Rica, 1941, 2019), pp. 267. [See Spanish below] The author was a unionized banana plantation worker in Costa Rica in the 1930s who learned to read and write despite conditions to the contrary. Mamita became his best known work. It is an excellent piece of literature, on its own, yet it also accomplishes what the author most wanted: to unveil the unquestionably villainous working conditions that made it possible for Americans to consume their bananas in those years. Have these conditions changed today?

Mamita Yunai is the ironic nickname that Spanish speaking workers used to refer to the company that employed them and which dominated the banana industry: The United Fruit Company. Yunai was the closest they could come to saying “united,” and they regarded the American firm as a wicked mother, which she apparently was. Apt title.

This is Fallas’ fictionalized memoir of the years he worked in the banana fields of Costa Rica, on the Caribbean coast, first as a liniero or line man and later as a labor union representative. In the novel he calls himself Sibajitas and describes himself as a member of a squad of laborers opening the dense jungle to install the narrow-gage rail lines that would help extract the elongated perishable fruit. Sweating from insufferable humidity and heat, swamps, snakes and swarming mosquitos, the author convinced me of the improbability of human survival especially with little or no medical services. He writes that countless men died as a result, most of them left to rot in the muddy morass, as in the case of a close friend. Local government officials are described as enablers of this situation because they were in the company pay.

The north coast of Central America is the home of many African-origin folks who appear here as United Fruit workers, alongside their Hispanic-origin co-workers. They speak pidgin English and Spanish and reside in Costa Rica or are passing through from Honduras headed to Panama looking for canal jobs there. Aboriginals from Talamanca also appear in the story because the banana fields intruded into their long-guarded territory. They’re regarded as proud enemies of Spanish conquerors but their condition, in the 1930’s, had been reduced to wretched survival.

By the way, the Prologue’s author scorns Fallas’ many critiques for suppressing this book because of his membership in the local Communist Party, crushed long ago.  The book has been translated into English.

El autor fue un trabajador sindicalizado en las plantaciones bananeras de Costa Rica en la década de los 1930’s y aprendió a leer y escribir a pesar de tener todas las condiciones a su contra. Mamita Yunai es su obra mayor y la más conocida. La considero un trabajo literario excelente y pienso también que el autor logró lo que más quería: dejar ver las condiciones de trabajo incuestionablemente desgraciadas, que hicieron posible que los estadounidenses pudieran disfrutar de sus bananas en esos años. Han cambiado las condiciones en estos días?

“Mamita Yunai” es el apodo mordaz que los trabajadores de habla hispana usaban para referirse a la United Fruit Company, la empresa que los empleaba y que dominaba la industria bananera. “Yunai” era lo más cerca que podían llegar a decir “united,” y consideraban a la empresa norteamericana como una madre malvada, lo que aparentemente era. Título apto.

Esta es una memoria novelizada del propio Fallas cuando trabajó en los campos bananeros de Costa Rica, en la costa del Caribe, primero como “liniero” y luego como representante de un sindicato. En la novela se auto llama Sibajitas y nos dice que fue miembro de un pelotón de obreros que abría la espesa jungla para instalar las líneas ferroviarias que ayudarían a extraer la fruta amarilla y perecedera. Sudar a chorros a causa de la humedad y el calor insufrible, caminar en pantanos, aguantar serpientes y enjambres de mosquitos, el autor me convenció de la improbabilidad de la supervivencia humana, especialmente con poco o ningún servicio médico. Escribe que incontables hombres murieron como resultado, la mayoría de ellos pudriéndose en el fango, como en el caso de un amigo cercano. Describe a los oficiales de gobierno como achichinques por estar al pago de la empresa.

Gente de origen africano reside en la costa norte de Centro América y por eso aparecen aquí muchos de ellos como trabajadores de la United Fruit, al lado de sus compañeros hispanos. Hablan inglés pidgin y español y residen en Costa Rica o los describe el autor como emigrantes de Honduras dirigiéndose a Panamá en busca de trabajo. Los aborígenes de Talamanca también aparecen en esta historia porque los campos bananeros invadieron en su territorio, el que habían protegido durante la época colonial. Se les considera orgullosos enemigos de los conquistadores españoles, pero su condición en los 1930’s se había reducido a una resistencia miserable.

Por cierto, el autor del Prólogo rechaza a los críticos de Fallas porque suprimieron este libro debido a su membresía en el Partido Comunista, desbaratado ya hace mucho tiempo.

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THE ‘GIL’ SURNAME AND THE NAZI HOLOCAUST

Our Mexican-origin surname, Gil, appears in the Holocaust archives! Yikes!

I had the occasion recently to learn of the Arolsen Archives, in Germany, the largest repository of documents concerning the millions of Jews and other people who were killed by Hitler’s Nazi government  just for being who they were.  Remember the gas ovens? Most were burned to get rid of their bodies.

Apparently, all these documents (see the types of documents below), were scooped up by our soldiers at the end of World War II, after we bombed the Nazi’s into oblivion. Our GI’s gathered the papers and they were stored and placed into this archive and research organization.

Since I like archives, I went into the online collection, just to check it out, and decided to put in our surname, doubting I’d find anything, because it’s not a name normally associated with the Hitler era.

In just a few minutes of searching, up came the name, Antonio Accolti Gil. It seems he was an Italian with our surname (I don’t know whether the Gil is patronymic or matronymic). See a registration document about him below. He was picked up for whatever reason on February 5, 1944, and imprisoned at the Mauthhausen Camp, one of many built to hold these unfortunate people. He may have survived because the Germans were losing the war by 1944.

Prisoner’s Personal Card for Antonio Accolti Gil

I also searched with the word “Mexico,” and it produced about 50 results, to my surprise! These poor folks were Spaniards or Mexicans who had fought against the Nazis in Spain during its bloody and brutal civil war (about the time I was born) and the Germans picked them up and put them in the concentration camps, alongside the Jewish prisoners.

What does all this mean? 1) That the Holocaust (the genocidal elimination of millions of people by the German Nazis) was real, contrary to people who deny it today, unbelievably. The truth is hard to take, sometimes, and people can deny things all their lives. And, 2) it included many who were not Jews, like our Antonio Gil and the Mexicans and Spaniards mentioned.

Types of documents in the Arolsen Archive includes prisoner files of various sorts, documents about medical experiments on humans, testimonies from camp personnel and former prisoners, death registers, execution lists, deaths after liberation, Red Cross reports, and so on. Germans are expert record keepers, to this day.