"Sólo tú sabes lo que traes en la mochila."
For years my mother's been telling me only I know what I'm carrying in my knapsack. Duh! It was the most recent time she told me, on the phone, about a month ago when it finally hit. Maybe because at this point in my life I feel the backpack bulging. Maybe I have to unload some things.
At the bottom, weighing it down, tezontle; the porous volcanic rocks, like the ones used to build the chapel of San Miguel, in Tlatelolco, Mexico; where I was baptized. The stones are wrapped in the translucent, gum wrapper-size used bus transfers from the Tijuana bus lines of my elementary school years.
There are the late 1970s, early 1980s dollar bills. Folk sayings, aphorisms and advice are written on the margins, mostly by the sun-worshipping seniors at Oakwood Garden Apartments on San Diego Ingraham Street. "Save it, son." I still hear them say.
Then there's all the public school correspondence sent to an upper middle-class address that wasn't mine. Over the decades though, my mother kept that house clean.
At the bottom of that stack is the letter granting amnesty, and I pull off old, chewed Chiclets stuck to the U.C. San Diego acceptance letter. A varsity soccer ball's long deflated. The warped rock en español records found at the store next to Calimax at the Cuauhtemoc traffic circle: "Lobo hombre en Paris," "Nada Personal," "Apañon."
Pages from my old columns easily rip: Más Vale Tarde Que Nunca, Fronteras Diabólicas, Cada Chango a Su Mecate. I can use them to make a papier mache media idol.
My eight year old press pass is dirtied with MacArthur Park soil that's come off from the four rubber bullets and steel casings from last year's May Day melee.
The mini disc recording from that day and lots of others are there too. I often keep tape rolling. My friend's ex wife used to say, "All life is cinema verite."
As I pull out and discard these and more items from the mochila, the only proper tribute is several paragraphs and an adiós.
2 Comments
Adolfo,
You write: "My eight year old press pass is dirtied with MacArthur Park soil that's come off from the four rubber bullets and steel casings from last year's May Day melee. The mini disc recording from that day and lots of others are there too. I often keep tape rolling."
I am working (actually finished) a ms on the television news reporting of that May 1st, and May 2nd. I hope you have a place to permanently download that tape. It is important for our future. My students and I found, that television news reporting was most accurate and tentative immediately following the police attack. On the following day, however, the reports became inaccurate when the events were framed in terms of violent marchers who instigated excessive police response. Television news thus blamed the victims for the violence they suffered. We did not study radio or even newspapers, just the TV guys.
I wonder if your tape captures the sounds of Police Misconduct.
On May 1st the LAPD Chief immediately held himself and his officers to account for their actions, and commissioned the EMD (LAPD internal report) for a thorough review. In contrast, the tv newsrooms who established a RIOT SUPPRESSION frame on May 2nd never repudiated their widely repeated rendition of the May 1st events.
Five months after the LAPD attack the EMD was released to the public. In the following days, 16 local Los Angeles news stories aired the EMD findings. No networks did. On the day before the report, some news rooms still had not reframed the events of May 1st in their own minds, and continued to report from a riot suppression frame. However, after the release of the EMP, all local news teams recast the events using the POLICE MISCONDUCT frame, which some of them had used on the evening of May 1st.
Where are you archiving your audio recordings of this history?
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Ophelia Chong says :
If I was to clean out my backpack, I would be pulling out wool sweaters, legal papers, saved pennies that I found on the sidewalk, letters from people who are now ghosts, all the bits that have floated through my life would land inside that bag. Whether I want to clean it out is not the issue but what is, is whether I want to let go. Not yet. Soon. :O)