Chicanonautica: Blazing Silver Nitrate

by Ernest Hogan 

During a summer where the world seems like it’s on fire, what we need is a book that burns like silver nitrate. In case some of you don’t know, in the early days of movies, the film was made with silver nitrate, which is highly flammable and dangerous. It’s also the title of the new novel by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. It’s so hot it’ll make you think it’s cooling off outside.

Silver Nitrate also isn’t an arbitrary title. The substance, and its use in film, particularly old film, is central to the novel. How can this be? Silver is often used in witchcraft. It makes sense that it could be used in connection with the magic of movies. 

Like in her earlier novel Signal to Noise, it takes place in Mexico City. Technology—in this case, audio cassettes-- and witchcraft intersect. There are also intersections with a lot of real life strangeness that is so well researched and presented in such rich detail that it’s hard to tell where the reality ends and the fantastic begins. There’s occultism—Aleister Crowley is evoked, along with Nazis and the incredible world of Mexican horror movies.

I’m kinda obsessed with this twisted branch of the cinematic arts. I wouldn’t call myself an expert, but I knew right away that the character Abel Urueta was named for the actor Abel Salazar and the director Chano Urueta. (Which reminds me I need to see  El Barón de Terror–called The Brainiac in K. Gordon Murray’s dubbed English version–again sometime soon).

It also has one of the most badass, intelligent female heroes ever (somehow the antiquated term “heroine” isn’t quite right here). Some reviewers have complained about Silvia’s characters not being likeable enough—but speaking as a writer, a good fictional character doesn’t have to be “likeable,” they need to have a knack for interesting trouble, and entertaining ways of getting out of it. Montserrat, Momo to her friends, is amazing. I would like to see more of her.

What I enjoyed most wasn’t the noir/thriller aspects, or the imaginative and original horror elements (Stephen King, watch out), but that it presents the joy of investigation and doing research. And in the pre-internet era! It’s an intellectual adventure. I was hesitant to say that, since the mantra of the bestseller reader as imagined but the major publishers is “I don’t like to think when I read.” But Silver Nitrate is a thrill ride, and those thrills will cause a few synapses to fire triggering the imagination. Some readers appreciate that.

I also need to make it clear that even though it deals with what some call trash culture, this is not a trashy novel—not the literary equivalent of telenovela or a grade Z horror flick. This book is a class act, and so is its author.

All this, and it will make you forget about this being the hottest summer on record, too!

Ernest Hogan is trying to sell a trashy novel, and his first story collection, Pancho Villa’s Flying Circus, is coming out soon.

Chicanonautica: The Phantom of Colonialism

by Ernest Hogan

Just about everyone has heard of The Phantom of the Opera. Gaston Leroux’s original novel is considered a classic, and then there are all those horror movies, both direct adaptations, and variations on the theme like Ishiro Honda’s Human Vapor, and Brain De Palma’s The Phantom of the Paradise.

And of course, there’s the Andrew Lloyd Weber musical.

Most people don’t know that Leroux wrote other things. These were prototypes for what would later be called pulp fiction.

I ran across one recently, thanks to Gutenberg. It is titled, The Bride of the Sun.

So, why does this deserve the attention of Chicanonautica, here at La Bloga?

Originally published in 1915, it happens to be an early example of and is perhaps the great granddaddy of a plot that not only is found in pulp fiction and horror movies,TV episodes, cartoons, etc., but illustrates the origins of the fears that lead to prejudice against and repressive laws against brown people. 

The bride turns out to be Maria-Teresa de la Torre, daughter of a Spanish marquis. It is pointed out that she is white. These days we could call her a Hispanic. Not a Latina, or Latinx. No native blood. She has come to Peru to marry her fiancé, Dick Montgomery, a white, Anglo dude. 

There is a lot of detail about Peru, almost like a travelogue. If Leroux hadn’t been there, he did a lot of research. Much is made of the "brutish" natives (the Quechua, that is spelled “Quichua” in the translation I read) and their conflicts with the black servant class. There are also guerrillas in the hills, and rumors of a secret society that wants to bring back the good old days before the coming of the white man–including human sacrifice.

 

Maria-Teresa acquires a bracelet, marking her as a target for the Inca revival cult, and the merry chase begins. There’s a lot of rip-snorting excitement, thrills, chills, and Mari-Teresa is rescued in the nick of time. As if there was any doubt.

It’s all based on the fear of the melanin-enhanced people of the world, that also happen to be most of the human race, a good number of which are us, La Raza.

Poor white folks, they can’t go anywhere without being threatened by swarthy savages . . .

According to Google, The Bride of the Sun “has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.” Which in a way is true. The views shown in the book have been recently expressed by politicians in Arizona, Florida, and Italy.

Note that the cover I used as an illustration is a piece of Mayan, not Incan art. Two cultures, two continents, and denizens of the Western World still get them mixed up.

While reading it, I kept fantasizing about Bride as a Broadway musical. Maybe someone should give a copy to Lin-Manuel Miranda.

Ernest Hogan, author of the Días de los Muertos science fiction novel Smoking Mirror Blues, will be judging the finalists in the 2022 Extra-Fiction Contest, so Raza writers, send your fantastic stories now!

Chicanonautica: Aztlán Zombie Massacre

by Ernest Hogan

I don’t usually like the zombie apocalypse subgenre. Zombies are uninteresting non-characters. The mindless carnage gets tedious, even boring. It's usually an excuse for sliding into the paranoid/schizophrenic mind set of seeing other people as disgusting nonhumans, so better crank up on the firepower and blast them into smoldering roadkill—very close to racism, depending on how you fine-tune it.

Don't shoot until you see their decaying faces. Though you'd probably literally smell them a mile off. They'd make you gag long before you could see them. Better get a gas mask while you're at it.

And what are you going to do when the ammo runs out?

I’m familiar with the subgenre since its birth with Night of the Living Dead in 1968. For years it was an obscure cult film with an underground reputation (this was the Vietnam/Nixon era). It wasn't until it started appearing on the late night horror movie circuit, and the advent of video cassettes that it infiltrated mainstream pop culture. Now you have to staple your eyes shut to avoid all the manifestations of the living dead.

A lot of young people think that the zombie apocalypse is inevitable, the way my generation thought about nuclear holocaust. It's actually impossible—going against the laws of thermodynamics, zombies kick out way more energy than they take in, like biological perpetual motion machines. If they did exist, scientists would be studying them to find out how they work the opposite of the way the rest of the universe does, and harness this limitless energy source.

But now and then something comes up that that’s worthy of my praise, and this one is LaBloga/Chicanonautica material.

It's called Savageland. That's what local Anglos who can't deal with Spanish call the Arizona town, Sangre de Christo (it is never mentioned that it means Blood of Christ). One night, all inhabitants are killed. Except for one unemployed, undocumented Mexicano.

It's a faux documentary and an ingenious take on the found footage story. And it steps out of the usual white people's pop culture viewpoint early on when onscreen African American filmmakers start giving editorial comments.

The one survivor is accused of being the most horrific serial killer of all time, but he left some evidence--photographs he took during the incident. Bad news for gorehounds, there's no onscreen splatter scenes, just still photos of blurred mayhem. It's mostly unsettling interviews, still images, and animated computer diagrams, that make it all seem very real, plausible, like a grisly true crime show.

Sheriff Joe and Rush Limbaugh-style law enforcement and radio pundits are both stereotypical and dead on. Their rhetoric has gotten people elected in Arizona, even put a guy in the White House. They argue that the bad hombre is what Americans need to protect themselves from.

The filmmakers argue that the suspect couldn't have been in all the places he needed to be to kill everyone who was killed, and that this was a genocidal race riot.

The whole zombie issue in never brought up directly. The z-word in never used. “Just the facts, ma'am,” as Sergeant Joe Friday would say on Dragnet.

No, I won't reveal the ending

And if this show's on cable where people can surf into it without knowing what they’re watching, they may think it’s a real documentary--there’s a strong possibility of hysterical reactions as in Orson Welles’ radio adaptation of War of the Worlds.

Mind-blowing, gut-wrenching entertainment for post-Charlottesville America.

Ernest Hogan is the author of High Aztech and is trying not to confuse bizarre fantasies with grotesque realities.

The economic times, they are a-weirdin'

I didn't think it was weird when the Internet bubble burst because I knew it would happen. It wasn't my prediction; I was just repeating conclusions others had come up with.

It wasn't weird to me when the housing boom turned into a fragile bubble, because I expected it for the same reason--again, from others' ideas, not my own.

Same goes for gas nearing five dollars a gallon and the present chaos in financial sectors. Some of what's yet to come is too weird to repeat here, even though again they're suggested from other's work, not mine.

So what do I think would be good to share today? What's appropriate for these times? What might help you make sense of the depths into which we plunge?

Actually, I don't think this is the best time to share anything constructive. Weird times sometimes call for something weirder to take you out of reality's stiffling madness, if only for a short breath.

Consequently, below I reprint something which does happen to be my own original thoughts. It won a British spec-fiction website (AlternateSpecies.com) contest a few years ago.

While this piece of fiction won't convince you to put your money into energy, gold, foreign markets, euros and yuans, it might help you forget that the devalued dollar in your wallet soon won't buy much more than fish guts. Even if it doesn't accomplish that, at least it might make you feel luckier than Weird Ronnie's neighbor.

RudyG

Weird Ronnie's fish guts

I saw Weird Ronnie yesterday, the third-grader who lives down the street and around the block from me. As his obvious, roly-poly shape comes closer, I see he's up to his usual--kicking through a fence at a pit bull, catching wasps and pulling their wings off, and chasing first-graders and threatening to pull their legs off. I take a break from weeding discarded whiskey bottles from my cactus garden and ask him what he's doing 'cause he looks kind of sad.

"Nuttin."

He says that a lot. Like that time I saw him in an empty lot burying some red shoes and pink socks and asked him what he was doing, he said, "Nuttin." I take it to mean he's thinking of things to keep himself busy. Idle hands, you know.

Anyway, as I crouch there, pulling prickly pear needles out of my forearm, I ask him if he knows anything about the boy up the street who was reported missing.

"Nope."

"You know the boy," I say, "the one that use to call you loco. What'd you do, kill him?" I say jokingly, before I can catch myself.

I remember too late that the last time I made a remark like that my car wouldn't start for days. Whatever I worked on--the battery, plugs, wiring--when I tried starting it, nothing happened, except, Weird Ronnie'd be standing nearby, smirking his ghoulish little grimace. Finally I told him I was sorry if I'd hurt his feelings, and his beamy little eyes lit up and my car started--all by itself.

So I'm wondering now if I'm in trouble for joking with him about the missing kid, when he says, "Nope, he's okay. I made sure he had enough air and water for a couple of days."

Since that kid's already been missing for four days, I get distracted, my hand slips off a rock, and I get a cheek full of cactus. While I'm yanking those out, I decide to change the subject.

I'd also noticed Weird Ronnie looked a little thinner than usual. If you've never seen him, well, he's definitely plump, though he wasn't always that way. When he was real young he was pretty skinny, up until the time those kidnappers left that scrawled ransom note about getting his little sister back. His parents never could read the note to figure out where to send the ransom, so they never got her back. But Weird Ronnie did plump up. Go figure.

Anyway, I say, "You're looking trimmer. You been working out?" I can't help letting out a nervous chuckle.

"Nope."

"What you been eating?"

"Nuttin."

"Nuttin? Haven't your parents been feeding you?"

"Nope."

"Why not?"

"Ain't been home since Tuesday."

I'm worried again. The first time this happened, it took the cops a week, a subpoena and two court orders to get them to come back. I hoped this wasn't going to last as long because the neighborhood lost a lot of cats during that episode.

So, I have to ask, "Want something to eat?"

"Yup." (He also says that a lot.)

"What would you like? How 'bout some tamales?"

"Nope. Got any fish guts, or chicken lips?"

I laugh and say I don't think I have either one, but I take him in and fix him a peanut butter sandwich, with a little tuna laid on, and tell him it's close to fish guts. He gives me a big smile that shows his cracked, black teeth. While I'm looking for something for him to drink, I ask how school is.

"Okay."

"How the sixth-graders treating you?" I always hear they tease him something awful, for his weight, teeth, and all the rest.

"Fine."

We don't talk much while he finishes the tun-- ... uh ... fish guts sandwich.

Then he tells me, "You're always building things. You got any extra wood?"

"Yup." (Sometimes I say that.)

"You know how to build a cross, like a big crucifix?"

"Sure, that's easy. What size you need it?"

"Big enough for a sixth-grader."

I manage to think up a quick lie and tell him I don't have the right kind of wood for something like that. I'm not sure about the stare he gives me, but I can tell he's thinking.

As we head out onto the front deck, Weird Ronnie grabs my hand, jerking me so I have to look into his eyes. "You know, I know that wasn't at all like fish guts, right? It was tuna, huh? My uncle Mario used to give me tuna."

I don't know if it's his clammy hand or his tone of voice that bothers me more. Like the feeling your skin gets during a nightmare about swimming, when something underwater grabs your leg and you can't get away no matter how much you try to shake and shake it off.

The tone of his words bothers me 'cause I remember his uncle Mario was never the same after he babysat Weird Ronnie one week. Last I heard, the uncle had been transferred to a federal institution 'cause the state hospital decided they couldn't help him.

"I'll try to do better than tuna next time," is all I can think of saying. With that he lets go of my hand and strolls away down the sidewalk. He seems to have given my wrist a rash, but I'm glad he at least leaves with a half-smile on his face. I always try what I can to get along with him.

As I watch him turn the corner of the block, I remember the nice house that used to be on that vacant lot, before all the arsons. But since most of the adults do pretty much whatever Weird Ronnie wants now, luckily the fires don't happen as often anymore.

Just before I go in for the evening, I'm thinking how much could real fish guts cost. And what could it hurt to make him one measly cross?

© Rudy Ch. Garcia

Manuel Ramos, Friday's regular contributor, returns next week.

Las Tertulias at La Semana Negra

Exclusive reports from Crime Fiction's international big-bash by our roving reporter.

I've been looking for a word to correctly translate “tertulias.” Since unfortunately I didn’t bring my big and thick Oxford dictionary with me, I relied on wordreference.com. The definition it gives doesn’t transmit the same meaning to me, but then again, I think about all the translations in the world, from the classics of literature to Latin American literature translated into English, and I convince myself and say "don’t be so stupid, translations are not that bad."

So, according to my online translator tertulias are: literary gatherings, and I’m sticking to that term. At La Semana Negra, every day at five, there are tertulias where the invited writers discuss a topic. It’s an hour-long debate where they give their own opinions and even get into arguments with the other writers.

The first three literary gatherings where dedicated to the “monsters” of literature or film. The panel included Mexican writer, Miguel Cane, Spanish writers, Elia Barceló, Cristina Macía, Rafael Marín, Daniel Mares, Marc R. Soto, Victor Condé, Federico Fernández Giordano, Rodolfo Martínez, Juan Miguel Aguilera, Eduardo Angulo and Manuel Nonídez.

Right off the bat, the debate heated up. Some said Mr. Hyde is the worst monster of all time; others thought it was zombies and of course the always scary vampires. Although the list of monsters was very long, Mr. Hyde took the prize. Rafael Marín took the discussion to another level by saying Mr. Hyde scares us because he demonstrates that “we could be monsters, too.”

After that “Alien” made an appearance in the discussion and writer Elia Barceló defended him, affirming that “the only thing Alien is trying to do is defend himself.” Some agreed, some didn’t, but what made the literary gatherings more interesting was the great number of people listening to this conversation full of some very nerdy details on movies and books.

Although at the beginning in the “Carpa del encuentro”, Semana Negra's main tent, there weren’t many people, as time went by more slowly started coming. I would look around at the puzzled faces: some were ready to get up and say something, and others nodded when they agreed with what one of the writers said.

The guys next to me confided in me (I think because I was taking notes the whole time), “Yeah, I know it’s so cool to find out that you are not the only one that talks endlessly about these things.” These tertulias bring people closer to the writers so they have the opportunity to get to know them in a more personal way. After the debates are over, you see spectators coming up to the writers, saying they agreed with what they were saying, that the other writers were wrong, or something of the sort.

After the “monsters” tertulias, the next two followed the theme entitled “El mal y sus protagonistas” (wordreference.com again: “Evil and its main characters"). This time it was Paco Ignacio Taibo, II, the Cuban Lorenzo Lunar, Colombians Mario Mendoza and Nahum Montt, Mexican writer Eduardo Monteverde, the Chilean Roberto Ampuero, the Chicano Rolando Hinojosa, and Spaniards Ángel Tomás González, Kama Gutier, Juan Ramón Biedma and Achy Obejas.

This tertulia focused on evil in these writers' own literature, why they write detective fiction, hardboiled, gothic and such, summarizing why their characters or stories are in some way evil. Juan Ramón Biedma at one point, firmly and passionately said, “Because good characters are boring.”

Simple and clear as that, but Roberto Ampuero, the Chilean writer who teaches at the University of Iowa, said “I live in a country (USA) that is constantly trying to separate good from evil, and of course George W. Bush is always saying that we are good, but it’s a lie and it makes no sense. That’s something that intrigues me--why people are always trying to differentiate good from evil, if in reality we are both.” The debate continued on that note, and most of the writers agreed evil is very ambiguous and that we all have the possibility of being the hero or villain, because evil is something within us, something natural.

I don’t want to scare anybody--I know Vampires and Mr. Hyde are not the prettiest things--but I definitely wanted La Bloga readers to know what topics are discussed at La Semana Negra and to make sure everyone gets a feel of the types of discussion that happen here. But not only that; I also wanted to pass on the excitement and happiness that people who attend this gathering feel.

I’m sure some of you reading this will love hearing your favorite writer talk about his horror characters or why they write the way they do and how they build their characters. It’s a special thing and the spectators certainly recognize this, because during the discussions, they didn’t stop taking photos and notes. As someone behind me said, “I’m posting this on my blog.”

Saludos desde Gijón!
Thania Muñoz