​Walking and Other Such Actions

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by Jahaira Rios Campos y Gálvez
edited by Beláxis Buil

4/12/2020


A few years ago I took an action I often neglected very seriously: walking. I decided to consider it during a long walk with some time to reflect. I’m not sure if it was necessarily on that day I chose to take it seriously or if it was that I consciously asked myself- ‘Why do I walk'? I had to lay out those reasons and based on those reasons decide if my question was worth making a commitment.  So I did. I decided to make a serious commitment to walking.


My resolution was: first, I'd walk for my health, second, for the love of my battered knees (and occasionally inflamed heels), and finally, as a way to honor my family. To this day my battered knees (and inflamed heels) serve as a painful reminder of wrongfully running on pavement nor understanding the concept of form for athletes. On top of all that there’s the many years of dancing on concrete floors (because I’d practice in the back room of my church with a hard concrete floor). There wasn’t an appropriate room where I could practice. It was all cold, hard concrete flooring- not even an inch of carpet was to be found. So, I beat my knees (and heels) pretty bad. But now I try giving my lower extremities the love they so deserve. 


Then when I was a very young child I was told that I had ‘ugly’ feet- and because my feet were so ‘ugly’ I wouldn't be able to wear sandals. And maybe (just maybe) I would need surgery to correct my ‘unsightly’ curved big toe problem: because after all, as a woman I should not have ‘ugly’ feet. I don’t know why but between God’s compassionate grace and my inclination to prove others wrong, I pushed all the negative comments away. Thankfully my resiliency helped me to not become psychologically scarred or affected by any of the negative comments I received as a child. Today I wear sandals to let my feet walk in their natural glory (letting the whole world see and know that they have arrived!). Despite what was said, I encouraged myself to display the lovely shape and dexterity of my feet. And yes!- I am one of those individuals that can pick up all kinds of oddities with my feet. SOOO!- yes, my feet kind of look like hands. Anyone who is put off by that can just stare at them a little longer!



Another reason I chose to walk is to not use my car unnecessarily. It seems that Miami's lifestyle culture and city planning infrastructure can influence us into thinking ‘it's way too hot’ to walk a few blocks to the market. Realizing that these points of view are so different than the views my family has back home (in Nicaragua), only gave my reason to walk more value. I think of my family back home as the real seeds that planted and nourished  my love for walking. I have moments where I envision my grandmother walking through towns to get some milk or pick up some detergent for the clothes she used to hand wash in her pila. The people in town  paid for her laundry service. She’d walk long distances just to pick up items for work. I also picture my cousins visiting the town plaza to play in the evening, or simply venture out on a walk to the plaza just to spend time with other family members. Their lives were free and mobile, unlike my sentiments about freedom and mobility in Miami.  Walking in my family’s hometown was an activity used to connect with others. It was social and signified a way to connect with family (and others) in a way that went beyond the way I think of it in a big city. Just thinking about how far my family lived from an ‘ideal’ urban setting (not as privileged or convenient as to my own location) means so much when I realize the great distances they walked every time they needed something, had to go to work, or wanted to have fun. Now when I take a walk I imagine my whole family joining me. And during these walks I pray for their well-being, that their basic needs be met- and acknowledge my privilege when I look up and see my  ‘North Star’. I mean, how lucky am I knowing that I can walk a short distance from work to my house to prepare a hand-made tortilla dinner for my family- in no time?


I walk to remember where I came from, where I’ve been, and where I am going. I walk to breath in fresh air, clear out my lungs and welcome in thoughts of new beginnings. I walk to honor my family I left behind in Nicaragua and my ancestors who have walked this earth for many, many generations before myself. I walk to connect with God through nature and enter into one harmonious breath of  life: one that surrounds me. I envision myself as an abuela (hopefully, many years from now ) walking to the marketplace to buy some milk. You might see me then, as the abuela wearing a Mayan shawl, a  silver braid hanging to my hips or wrapped around my head with my feet girded in sandals (so my feet can get all the attention they want!). I’ll smile all the way to the marketplace knowing that my ancestors- and especially my grandmother- would be proud of me for taking on the tradition of our family’s long walks. And for them, I’ll  show my feet, keep my head up high and walk in pure joy.

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​The Monster

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All photos courtesy the artist, Jahaira Rios Campos y Gálvez

​by Jahaira Rios Campos y Gálvez
8/5/2020

​edited by Fara Greenbaum



I sit up, early, in near darkness. I see subtle flecks of light pouring in through my curtains and I turn to look at the two dark masses next to me in my bed. One large the other a little more than half its size. I listen to the rhythmic exchanges between oxygen and carbon dioxide. I just sit and try to take in as much of what is in my space. The masses begin to turn into the roundness of backs and the gestures of limbs with articulating joints, for me these are endearing sights. Everything I observe brings me to recall events of the past few weeks as I consider the value of what is before me. I recall some of the conversations I've had with my children even before all of the commotion surrounding our everyday functions. 

I think to myself…”somehow we must’ve felt it on a spiritual level that this was coming?”

I sit here just trying to take in the dark masses next to me, one is my youngest of four who comes to lay next to me almost every night no matter how many times we move him back to his bed with complaints of varying categories. We've stopped moving him, especially now, since there is a monster lurking about these days -- you may have heard. The other larger mass is my husband. The smaller fitting neatly within the space of the other. Both of them with shaggy hair unkempt, with faces relaxed and aloof of the monster out there. There is enough light in the room now that I notice the red marker lines on my son's face from the night before. It seems he fell asleep drawing. He insists on doing so in his sketchbook as his night time ritual. I'm not sure if it relaxes him or energizes him. What matters is that it keeps him quiet and focused ever since it took the place of reading a book. As the light swells in to show more of my room, my thoughts return to the monster that has already claimed so many peoples loved ones and the reality that it hasn't finished it's rounds. As of yet, as it has been explained by many experts, it will make a couple rounds swallowing other precious lives before we can figure out it's weakness. Once we find that key there has to be an action plan to tackle it but even then when it is subdued we don't really know all the details of what may be of this life we have been used to. 

My kids and I used to ask each other if there was a zombie apocalypse where should we go? What should we take? How would we protect ourselves? It was a critical thinking game of sorts that we played. When this monster started going on it's rampage my children did not become visibly anxious, we spoke clearly and calmly with them about how things were going to be for a while, how we would deal with it day to day. Their calmness made me wonder what it was that kept them from panicking. We have heard some parents in our own microcosm share their own children's anxiety in many instances by way of a screen. I came to the conclusion after a conversation with my daughter that it must have been all the zombie what if conversations we previously had. Because of this, the recent events did not seem abrupt to them, they had unknowingly mentally been preparing for this. It seemed to me that somehow in our psyche we knew that someday something this big would happen.Or maybe we are just victims of inception thanks to movies, TV shows and books. Though there are no zombies involved- the loss of life, the danger to one's own life, the supply runs, sheltering in place, even being afraid of interacting with others not a part of your group all sounds like the trappings of a zombie apocalypse show we have watched before. This is what makes our own life experience at this time feel so surreal. Reality that surpasses what you thought could be possible in your own space and time... And I turn my head to look back at the two forms next to me and I listen attentively to their breaths creating a harmony that brings me back here. They bring me back to my small home full of life and grounds me to this patch on the earth. I pay attention to the scuffling that is starting to fill in the spaces of the rest of the house. As I listen, I am filled with gratitude that we can remain safely in this shelter of ours no matter how crowded or cluttered it may get, that we make it through without losing any capacities or anyone along the way as there is still a long way to go. I affix my hope that everytime my husband or I go on supply runs we don't unwittingly lead the monster back to our shelter. I pray we remain vigilant and present and more appreciative than ever before. Even as shelter-in-place orders are lifted, the monster is still roaming......... so I pray.

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by Carla Forte
8/5/2020

Como mujer latina y artista me gustaría hacer una breve reflexión; mujer, latina, artista; no es acaso un todo lo que me conforma? Tendemos a categorizar, sí!; es una manera de poner cada cosa en su lugar, de entender, entendernos. Pero sí es cierto que esto funciona para las cosas, realmente funciona para nosotros como seres humanos? Como humanidad?

Cada día se abre paso a nuevas etiquetas y de una u otra forma somos nosotros mismos quienes de a poco nos vamos imposibilitando por la edad, el sexo, la raza, la nacionalidad, inclinación sexual. Y a veces me pregunto: Es realmente necesario? Si pudiéramos ver a los otros como un todo, no tendríamos qué hacer ninguna pregunta, no tuviéramos que mentir o mentirnos.

Si a la vista de otros soy mujer, latina y artista, esta condición no me hace distinta a ningún otro ser humano, rescatar el respeto por el todo porque la existencia ha perdido la atención que merece. Tengo la impresión que categorizar nos hace leves y poco a poco anulamos la importancia del ser. 
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Si usted me preguntara mi inclinación sexual, yo pudiera responderle, muchas o ninguna; pudiera darle un beso, pudiera abrazarlo. Seria usted capaz de percibirlo de esta manera? Menos leve y con más peso, o tendríamos que inventar una certificación y especializar a un grupo de personas que sean capaces de hacerlo? Es posible detectar al ser como un todo? Acaso ya no lo somos?
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Hay una búsqueda constante en el poder y el reconocimiento, si tan solo nos viéramos a la cara para descubrirnos en el otro, no harían falta las etiquetas ni los espejos; solo cosecharíamos mas compasión y respeto hacia el otro, los otros, que somos todos.

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Familial Specter

​by Jahaira Rios Campos y Galvez
10/23, 2020
edited by Global English Editing



The earliest I can remember my mother telling me the stories was when I was between five and six years old. I remember my age because, at the time, we lived in a white house not too far from Ella Boulevard in Houston, Texas. It was the house I lived in when I began kindergarten. It was where Hurricane Alice knocked down a pecan tree in the front yard. I was lying in bed with her, in the dark as we often did at bedtime. My father wasn’t home, which was common on weekends, so we spent a lot of time alone going to Mexican movie theaters and watching Cantinflas or La India Maria movies. We would lie in bed and stare at the walls as shadows made by the streetlights danced opposite us. That’s how I remember hearing about Los duendes, El cadejo blanco, El cadejo negro, La llorona, La Sucia, La Segua, and so many others. In my culture, it seems the first folktales we hear tend to be scary ones. Maybe it’s something that the colonizing Spaniards left us mestizo children as an inheritance.


As I listened to my mother’s stories, I quickly learned the morals were usually centered around being good children and obeying your parents. In my five-year-old mind, I knew it was important to be “good”. However, when I contemplated the plight of those affected by these spectral characters, one of the tales that often struck a chord with me was the case of La Segua. She was a woman, as many of these spirits are, and was very beautiful. Her unsuspecting targets were men who would become enchanted by her from behind, when they could only see her long dark hair flowing down her back.  Only later would they see her true form when they approached her in an attempt to seduce her. Her dark hair helped to hide her true face: that of a horse-like creature. It was characteristic of her to taunt these men with a song as they discovered her hidden form. The song she would sing stuck in my memory: toma tut eta que soy tu nana, toma tu teta que soy tu nana… “Take your breast for I am your momma, take your breast for I am your momma.” The rhythm of those words would play over and over in my head, and I could almost see it in my mind’s eye as she would approach the man she was about to have her way with, and not in the way he may have hoped. 


When I saw the face of the man in my imagination, it was always the face of my father. Since her victims were said to be children and men that were up to no good, I figured I was safe—she had no reason to come after me, because I was a good girl. My father, however, was another case entirely. The men La Segua targeted were out late instead of being at home with their wives and children. I wondered if she would go after him. I wondered what she would do to him. I wondered if I would miss him or would we finally be free to breathe calmly. He wasn’t a bad man, he just walked around with his machismo preceding him. That was the basis of La Segua going after these men, wasn’t it? Those that went around letting their machismo think for them were the ones that headed towards an unknown, possibly deadly fate. I wondered what life would be like if she would do us such a favor. Maybe he would escape her claws and come back home a different sort of man—a man that would come home after work and tell me stories, just like my mother did. Maybe he would realize that we were worth living for. Could she have the power to change him? The story of La Segua was meant not only to keep children in line, it was also meant to work on husbands who spent too much time out drinking, especially as this was so common and culturally acceptable when I was a child. It is a wonder that there was not much of an effect on the men. Maybe the effect wore off.
 
Maybe La Segua was a made-up story, but I could still hear her singing back then, and I can still hear her now in the voice of my mother: toma tu teta que soy tu nana, toma tu teta que soy tu nana. Incredibly, La Segua may have finally tracked my father down. It’s been a while since I’ve seen or heard from him. There are comments from family about where he may be, or who he might be with. My mother tells me she has seen his spectral figure on the bus a few times, laughing. She’s seen him across the street looking at her. She wonders if he sees her and she covers her face in order to not be recognized.  My mother still tells me stories, but they are different now. They are stories about seeing my father.
 
These days, I turn my thoughts towards La Segua in an attempt to analyze these stories. What made her so hideous? What made her turn into this creature that would go looking for children and men in the dark of night? Of course, I was a little girl when I first heard about her, and it would be a while before I was able to realize the darker connotations of her story. She was a woman turned monster, but how? What did she lose? What was she seeking revenge for? Did her husband leave her and her children to tell stories alone at night? Did she lose her mind because of the pain inflicted upon her? The five-year-old child inside of me thinks she is looking for someone that was not there to tell her stories, someone who took her for granted and preferred life away from home. Maybe she is looking to bring home someone that reminds her of her father?

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​Tio Polo, Paul Anka, and me

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All photos courtesy the artist, Jahaira Ríos Campos y Gálvez

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​by Jahaira Ríos Campos y Gálvez
edited by Global English (Rachael)
2/15/2021


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I was rummaging through my closet when a little resin angel dropped from the edge of a shelf and shattered on the way down. It happened as I was getting ready for my dance class. I wasn’t sure why I was holding onto it, or why I felt compelled to hold onto the wing either. It was as if I was trying to let go of it in pieces because I recognized an attachment that I couldn’t yet identify…


… He was my angel was my cousin’s response; appearing on my screen as I waited. That was the same way I would describe him.


When I was growing up in the early 80s, my uncle—mi tio—known to everyone by his nickname, “Polo”, sported a tan accompanied by a glow around the eyes and coiffed hair reminiscent of a younger Julio Iglesias. He played Paul Anka cassette tapes as often as he could and once gifted me my own cassette when we moved in with him in Miami. That was when I obsessively played “The Longest Day” over and over.


“He was my angel” were words that resonated with me, punching me so hard in the gut that all I could do was let out a gust of air as I silently sobbed. The weight on my chest left me breathless and knocked me out on my bed for the afternoon. I woke up and my first thought was that mi tio Polo was gone. I could no longer reach out to him if I needed to vent to the closest person I’d ever had to a healthy father figure.


He visited us often from Nicaragua when the height of the Sandinista regime painted every visitor as a suspect of some sort. He would visit us bearing gifts like embroidered and smocked Nicaraguan dresses and rag dolls for me, along with Central American beans and cheeses for my parents. He would also occasionally bring my aunt’s jewelry or clothing for my mom.


On one of those visits, he was detained by INS and accused of contraband for all he was bringing into the country and the frequency of his trips. Along with my parents, I visited him at the detention center where he was held for a couple of months. I saw him on the other side of the glass, forced to watch him waste away. On one such visit, he sat across from us with a fever.


Eventually, they let him go. I didn’t understand the technicality of it all—at that moment all I cared about was that he free to stay with us. When he did, there was a pause of tranquility in my home. Those were the only times that my father didn’t raise a hand towards my mother or slam his hand on the table because I wasn’t eating the way he liked. Being his older brother, my uncle stood up to him and put him in his place. He always made it clear to him that kind of behavior was not allowed during his time with us. My family spent weekends in the common areas of our apartment complex with neighbors, enjoying a couple of beers and smokes while the kids ran around playing hide and seek, but I usually hung out with the grown-ups, sitting right next to my tio Polo. I would listen to him belt out “Ohhhhh pleeeease staay with me Diiiianaaa…” and “Puuut your heeead on my shooooulders…”. He used the beer can he drank from as a mini drum, holding it between his legs like a tiny bongo and tapping a rhythm on it with his fingers. It was a time I got to play without worrying about my dad’s threats because with tio Polo around he wouldn’t dare touch us.


Those words, he was my angel, punched me in the gut. They reminded me that he was not my father and that my proximity to him was short-lived. He had his own family; they got to have his protection all the time. I had to understand that it was not his responsibility to be my angel. No longer did I get to have the leftovers; the semblance of a paternal figure. I could no longer walk up to the parking lot where he worked for years just to say “hello” and enjoy the company of my closest paternal relative and know I would not be judged for trying to stay safely away from my own father. He never thought I was a heartless daughter, never thought it was my duty to accept all of my father’s faults no matter what was expected in traditional Nica culture, as my father himself often reminded me.


Gone is the timbre of his voice and the way he would look up at the sky in a side-glance as he considered his words and reflected on what was fair and just. As a loving, genuine catholic soul, he tried to love me as he did his own children, even though he kept his distance. I guess that is what hurt the most: the distance. Now, that distance is even farther than I can cross in my living day. God only knows how long it will be before I can hear his voice again. In this life, I will no longer be able to convey how much I loved him.
Why he stayed away and didn’t let me know that he was sick, I can’t understand. I can only assume that he knew how difficult it was going to be for me and didn’t have the strength to make the effort in the end (I am told he no longer had a voice and could only signal things with his hands). That’s what I have to believe.


In reality, he left me long before he even knew that he was sick. He had retired from his parking lot job and told me he was going back to Nicaragua. I later found out he had come back and that he was going to Canada. He had remarried fourteen years after losing his wife and his new wife took him away again. He was always just out of reach. We spoke very shortly a few times on the phone, though I think it was not too long after that that he may have found out he was sick. That was when the texts and calls stopped. I never heard anything again. My father reached out to my brother with a message to let me know that mi tio Polo was gone.
I now know why I couldn’t get rid of the little resin angel. My spirit knew what it had lost even when I couldn’t put it into words, long before my heart started to mourn.


My cousins have since over to see me. Tio Polo’s son is his spitting image. As I listen to him speak, I have to make the extra effort not to cry in front of him because even the tone of his voice brings me to tears. I can’t bring myself to let him know how much his presence grieves me because of his likeness.


My thoughts turn to questions that roam around in my head: how do I begin to heal when I have lost what I never had? I know my heavenly father holds me close and cares for me. It is the negligence of those who were supposed to protect me as a young child that created the void. It is the natural turn of events that have made me more aware of the void and that makes it difficult to come to terms with what I have lost as a child and what I have lost in my uncle.


Mourning has been a lifelong process for me. It is a process I have been too familiar with since my early childhood. The lack of protection and safe spaces, the lack of a voice, the lack of kindness, the lack of affirmation, the lack of acceptance—these are qualities my uncle always offered to me. Knowing that he never denied these to me and that they are no longer available causes a sense of instability; my legs buckle as well as my heart. I wonder if I’ll mourn my father when the time comes. Maybe, but probably not even close to how I mourn my uncle. In some way, I know I can only nestle closer to my heavenly father who also mourns with me. He too knows what it means to lose someone so dearly loved.

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​by Meghan Moe Beitiks
​4/10/2021


​Untitled (Hinkley) is the re-performance of a single sigh from the 2000 movie Erin Brockovich, filmed around the real-life town of Hinkley, California, infused with imagery and audio from the film and local environmental research.


Spoiler alert: the original  movie is heroic. Erin Brockovich, a (real-life) working class mother played by Julia Roberts, leads a small firm in a lawsuit against PG&E on behalf of  the town of Hinkley, California, seeking compensation for its known pollution of the local ground water with hexavalent chromium. She wins. It’s amazing. Little kids with cancer get tons of money. A woman fights her way through a patriarchal system to protect the average person. And she does it wearing miniskirts and looking gritty and stunning. Rah!


In Untitled (Hinkley), I’m not pretty: the landscape’s not pretty: the aftermath of toxic pollution’s not pretty.  The sigh I’m re-performing is from Albert Finney’s depiction of Ed  Masry. In Erin Brockovich, the sigh is  a mix of things. It comes at a point where Julia Roberts/Erin Brockovich has been yelling at him for quite some  time:  to stand up  and  fight for what’s right, be more active, take responsibility, take on the important fights. He sighs. He sighs in exasperation and acceptance. It is a gendered sigh of resignation and surrender. It’s the moment he seems to  accept the challenge to his patriarchal programming  and  move a bit past it.


In the video, I sigh,  dressed in  a dress shirt  and tie, as the viewer hears audio text from a 2012 Environmental Impact Report on Hinkley. The toxic plume of hexavalent chromium has not stopped spreading, even though the bulk of the town got huge payouts and moved on. The  Environmental Impact Report details the continued  spread of the plume, as well as microbial, physical and chemical efforts to slow or halt it. The  heroic  movie has ended,  the  people have mostly left, but the plume is its own  epic sequel,  a plot  point  that  was never fully resolved, a confirmation that the story was never quite about  remediating the  land.


In and amidst all of that, the viewer can hear audio clips of dialogue from the movie: mostly emotional/political  exchanges between Julia/Erin  and  Albert/Ed. He accuses her of being too  emotional: she fights for her right to be heard and respected. Both the land and their gendered  dynamic being hotly contested. In the meantime, I’m sighing.


I filmed the sighs in 2014 and had a tremendous creative block  about them, for years. I knew I needed to  re-perform the sigh, I knew I needed to juxtapose it with the Environmental  Impact  Report, I knew this was a question of undoing the heroic narrative of western environmentalism.


But  part  of  the  issue was that  my  own  body was  tremendously  vulnerable in  the  piece.  In the  video, I’m not “pretty.” My  hair’s messed up, my chin is smashing into my neck, my  face  reads of exasperation and weirdness. If there were such a thing as “ugly  sighing” I  am doing it. There was a level of self-sacrifice in the work I wasn’t ready to give  away.  I  needed  something  else to  contextualize and  protect me.


The  glitch  emerged  as  a  tool  in an attempt to  burn a copy  of the movie  from  an  old DVD. Julia  Roberts, Albery Finney,  all  became  distorted  in the digital attempts  to grab  data  from a   disc.  The glitch filters me: it distorts the Hollywood material, it shapes my  frustrations, it articulates  a  fractured landscape. It layers Julia Roberts over everything as a distortion of feminine ideals of beauty and feminist heroism. It is its own digital plume. I finished  the  video in 2018. Sigh.


Thanks to Marissa Lee Benedict, Lindsey French, Elise Cowin and Christine Shallenberg.

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Video Link: https://vimeo.com/289005373

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