Chicanonautica: Pandemic Nostalgia With Gómez-Peña’s Mex Files

by Ernest Hogan

 

Is it too early for pandemic nostalgia? Please excuse me if it is. I’m a sci-fi vato, a mutant for whom the future never comes soon enough. I get high on future shock. 

Also, I’m a futurista because I’m not allowed to exist in the present. Just ask whatever bureaucracy is watching over us right now.

The chaos of the last few years has had me running myself ragged keeping up with it transformations. Nothing like a global monkey-wrench smashing into everybody’s business to do that. Suddenly, the word surreal is in news reports. The pandemic did that.

Now we are under the delusion that it’s over, but Covid ain’t gone. It’s just going through some mellower mutations. Even though a lot of people want to forget it ever happened, there’s wisdom in the meme, “That which does not kill us, mutates and tries again.”

Note that you also see the word mutation in news reports these days.

Back in the thick of the lockdown, Guillermo Gómez-Peña started reporting on it on his radio show/podcast (the terms are becoming interchangeable–the internet is absorbing radio), Gómez-Peña’s Mex Files.

I tried to be a loyal listener at first but turned out I was an essential worker and ended up in a bandido bandana and an orange, glowing vest running stuff out to cars in the library parking lot instead of finishing my novel in the summer of 2020. I also learned about Zoom, thanks to Guillermo and his wife, Balitronica.

Recently, Facebook reminded me about Mex Files, so I binged what was on the website.

¡Guao!

Not only does it deliver the Mad Mex’s harrowing, transborder Covid experiences that outweird the latest science fiction, it provides an excellent introduction to his work and the incredible world of performance art.

How can I describe it?

There are similarities with my work–Gomez-Peña and I both arrived on this planet in 1955, him in Mexico City, me in L.A.  we overlap over Chicano territory. He writes, and also performs, which takes him to interesting places. Art and politics cohabitate. It’s often funny but is more than satire. Alternate realities aren’t just described—they come to life, threaten to alter our world.

Sometimes it gets sci-fi (Chicano is a science fiction state of being) but is never restrained by the limits of the genre. 

And it adapts well to different media, live performance, gallery and museum installations, film and video, and radio. 

Sometimes it’s like bizarre comedy skits, other times it’s music that has been altered. Still other times, it’s honest accounts of fantastic experiences. 

And it’s not all nonstop dystopian bring downs. Often there are flashes of the kind of utopias we could create if we could just let La Cultura ride free on new technologies.

Where does the sci-fi end and the real life begin? Or should I say magic realism? Or is magic realism from a high tech society indistinguishable from science fiction? Is it all performance art?

Our bizarre times are masterfully captured here. I know that a lot of folks just want to forget it. Some would erase all the memory, the history. But we need this knowledge. 

You think the last few years were something? Just wait for the future. How long before 2020 is considered the good old days?

We need the wisdom of the Mad Mex to help us navigate the weirdness.

Ernest Hogan, the Father of Chicano Science Fiction has been in touch with Guillermo and Balitronica. Expect some wild stuff soon. He also highly recommends the documentary 100 Ways to Cross the Border.

Chicanonautica: Unplugged Con Gómez-Peña

by Ernest Hogan

El Maestro Guillermo Gómez-Peña needs no introduction in the Latinoid Continuum, but I have to do some explaining when discussing him with my colleagues in “science fiction” that includes fantasy, and often intersects with other realities. Funny how people who consider themselves connoisseurs of other worlds have problems with things outside this planet's Anglo/Caucasian ghetto. I’ve spent a lot of my career explaining myself to them, even though I’ve been involved in the genre since I was a snot-nosed punk.

My standard line is that he does on performance what I do in science fiction.

Then I usually have to explain what performance art is . . .

A better tactic would be to show some of his work. Flipping through Gomez-Pena Unplugged: Texts on Live Art, Social Practice and Imaginary Activism (2008-2020) by Guillermo Gómez-Peña, edited by Emma Tramposch & Balitrónica Gomez, guest editors: Elaine A. Peña & William Stark, would provide a clue of why I think GP's work is something that those who enjoy the outer reaches of global cultural phenomenon known as science fiction should be following. Too bad a copy won't just materialize when I need it.

The first noticeable thing is visuals. The art is packed with the complex language of symbolism that is the dominant trait of la Cultura. They say instantly in images what a writer has to say with a lot of words--or at least use them with like as master. Here it is. Who we are. What we are. How we live. They would make great covers and illustrations for my work.

Some people from outside of the Latinoid Continuum raise eyebrows at this point. What? Why is it all so weird and threatening? Where are the nice Latinos that will fit into our neoliberal infrastructure and get wealthy patrons to want to invest in us?

Like I’ve said before: Chicano (and its mutating variants) is a science fiction state of being. I use the term “science fiction” loosely, the way “ordinary” folks do, as a name for things they don’t understand. It could easily be surrealism, magic realism, or some new term being cooked up in a university Zoom meeting as you read this.

Speaking of reading, it just gets better as you read Gómez-Peña. These performance texts, poems, and “philosophical tantrums” (sometimes they’re all of the above all at once) are as much a joy to read as they are to experience as part of a performance. Watch out, they inflame the imagination and are powerful Chicano sci-fi, and I say this as the recognized Father of Chicano Science Fiction.

I caught a lot of these through the miracle of the interwebs, but when reading them assembled in a book (my compliments to the editors) they take on a larger dimension, form an epic panoramic vision of what's happening on this planet, this civilization, these strange rumblings in the Global Barrio . . . 

I find myself drifting into a fantasy where I go back in time and show this book to myself back in 1971. His adolescent mind is blown. He’s reminded of the “new wave” speculative fiction he was reading at the time, but has questions:

“It’s like the great new wave novel, but you say it’s also real? You mean the future will be that . . . bizarre?”

“What the last several decades have taught me is that the fatal flaw of science fiction is that it all tends to be too conservative.”

He’s obviously shocked, I show him the references to “Ernest Hogan” in the book.

“He really thinks that the world is becoming more like your . . . my work?”

“Well, yes.”

My younger self’s eyes twitch. Beads of sweat appear on his forehead. Foam leaks out of his mouth . . .

But seriously, if you want a handle on the way the world is going, Gómez-Peña Unplugged will give you a good start.

Ernest Hogan is adjusting to changes that haven’t happened yet, and working on that novel. 

Chicanonautica: La Pocha Nostra Anthologized

by Ernest Hogan

Not even COVID-19 can keep La Cultura del Continuum Latinoid down. Didn’t have anything planned for the next Chicanonautica, but I didn’t worry. These are active times. Things are happening. Something will come. And it did.

I was fooling around, scanning through Facebook when I came across and announcement for San Francisco Living Archives’ La Pocha Nostra: An Experimental Anthology. It was a film, the sort of thing I would like to see being a fan of Guillermo Gómez-Peña (he does in performance art what I do in science fiction—we should probably collaborate someday . . .), his wife Balitronica, and the whole Pocha Nostra troupe in all its manifestations. I was going to file it under be on the lookout for, but noticed that the premiere was going to be special a weekend event online.

And there was a trailer:

I dropped everything and watched it.

¡Guao!

More than thirty years of video, cleverly assembled, makes for one helluva movie. It’s as much avantgarde sci-fi as art retrospective documentary. Science fictional conceptualization and characterization mix with out there aesthetics, bleeding into snippets from various pop cultures, creating new worlds—which is what we need with the world in the sorry shape that it is.

It’s the sort of thing I’d show in the drive-in theater/all-nite cable movie marathons I host in my dreams, snuck in between ancient monster movies, bizarre cult classics, and other cinematic outrages, demonstrating that performance art has become what science fiction convention hallway culture showed a promise for, before cosplay became devoted to worshiping corporate franchises.

We need more non-corporate culture.

I’m pretty sure this film will be popping in venues of various kinds, some the likes of which we have never seen before, soon.

Gómez-Peña, being a creature driven by social and audience interactions, was frustrated in the early days of the quarantine, but he’s bounced back, heroically adapting to the new virtual, cultural environment. He, Balitronica, and La Pocha have been doing so much, I can’t keep up with it, which is a good thing. 

When it comes to La Cultura, you can’t have too much.

Ernest Hogan, the author of High Aztech, Cortez on Jupiter, and Smoking Mirror Blues is surviving through these troubled times, working a novel, other writings, and other art forms.

Chicanonautica: José Torres-Tama, Part Two: Getting on the Taco Truck

by Ernest Hogan

Last time, in trying to define “sci-fi Latino noir,” things got audiovisual/multimedia. Latino Lit reaching out into new frontiers. José Torres-Tama has been busy with this kind of stuff. He’s been doing films and video like a proper 21st century artist.

He sent me a link to Hard Living in the Big Easy, a “short film doc (15 mins) that debuted last year at the Orange County Museum for the 10th Annual Latino OC Film Fiesta there.” It serves as a good intro to Torres-Tama in performance makeup and regalia, that includes a NO GUACAMOLE for Immigrant Haters, T-shirt presenting an artistic/political manifesto, history lecture (he studies history, and makes it an essential part of his work), and as well as a editorial on the post-Katrina influx of Latin American immigrants to New Orleans and their struggles since including their disappearance from New Orleans and the World, the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities’ tricenential anthology. Also his artwork, that can be seen in his book New Orleans Free People of Color and Their Legacy, is used to make the point.

This arrival of new people to new territories is an issue that is going ignored. Not only do we have Mexicans and Central Americans in New Orleans, but Guatemalans in Philadelphia, Spanish-speaking communities popping up in Chicago, and other areas. It’s even got traditional vatos and cholas nervous: “These new gente, they don’t do stuff the way my nana taught me.”

There we go, creating new identities, new cultures again. Maybe a new term, Latinx, Latinoid, whatever the chingada, is needed.

He also sent links to what he’s been doing during the Coronavirus lockdown:

VIDEO CORTADITOS & Picante Poems is an audio visual series of spicy YouTube shorts created in collaboration with Bruce France on dynamic video designs, the hallucinatory soundscapes of long-time music collaborator known as BAIII, and the politically charged performance poetry of José Torres-Tama.The stage performance photos are captured by Craig Morse.

These Cortaditos, available on his YouTube channel, “Español is Verboten Here,” “And What If After So Many Words,” “Can I Get aWitness?,” and “Symbolic Opponent Syndrome.” They are performances adapted to video. The texts started as poems that can be found in his book Immigrant Dreams & Alien Nightmares, and his CD Speaking Truth to Perverse Power Vol. 1, and keeps being updated to keep them current. It’s astounding how the struggle against racism doesn’t get dated--all you have to do is change the cast to the current participants. Similar to rap, and poetry readings, with musical visual accompaniment bring the message to a new medium.

Which brings us to This Taco Truck Kills Fascists . . .

Relax, it’s only a movie. And it’s not about concerned citizens in a taco truck, doing drive-bys on gatherings of fascists. Which wouldn’t be a bad idea for a movie . . .

No, This Taco Truck Kills Fascists is a documentary about the Taco Truck Theater / Teatro Sin Fronteraswhere Torres-Tama brings his performance art to the masses: filmed and directed by Rodrigo Dorfman, our brilliant Chilean-American filmmaker who has created this hybrid-genre documentary. We WON best Louisiana Feature at the 2018 New Orleans Film Festival. 

It follows Torres-Tama as he goes about his business with the Taco Truck, and has a lot of behind-the-scenes shots of his life, often showing him being a performance artist, activist and father all at the same time. It also: introduces my sci-fi performance persona “El Obie-JUAN Kenobi” in some outrageous comedic Intervention bits. He’s the Last Latino Jedi fighting for immigrants rights on the Living La Vida Loca pirate planet to escape a GrinGoLandia that has migrated deep into the “Dark Side”. IMDb categorizes it as “Documentary, Comedy, History.” It’s quite a show. And: it's FREE until August 9th! So check it out on Vimeo now!

Whew! All this and before I even got around to talking (texting don’t count) to him. Guess we’ll have to continue this on the next Chicanautica, in two weeks, here at La Bloga . . .

Ernest Hogan is working on projects that he will reporting on soon . . .

Chicanonautica: José Torres-Tama, Part One: ¿Que es Sci-Fi Latino Noir?

by Ernest Hogan

Back in 2012, Melinda Palacio got me in touch with José Torres-Tama. We talked about something about him for Chicanonautica/La Bloga. Somehow we never got around to it. Damnear a decade steamrolled by. We went from SB-1070 and Sheriff Joe Arpaio to our current dystopian/apocalyptic stituation. He got his Taco Truck Theater. I became the Father of Chicano Science Fiction.

Suddenly, the chaos caused by the current administration was amplified by COVID-19, like the impact of a dinosaur-killing asteroid. Was this the sociological equivalent of an extinction level event? What are artists, writers, and creatives of all kinds to do when we have to be quarantined like the beginning of some sci-fi flick? I hunkered down, and bashed away at my novel. Then, via the internet, things began to happen. Zoom, and Guillermo Gomez-Peña, pulled me into a new, evolving reality. You can read about this in earlier Chicanonauticas. Torres-Tama was part of this migration to another alien environment, after his event/presentation, we got in touch after his Dreamocracy in America event, and decided that it was about time we did that interview/write-up.

There was a flurry of text messages. Texting was something I had been resisting for years, but here I was again, being pulled, kicking and screaming into a future not-of-my-own making. He also sent me a lot of emails with attachments to documents and videos. There would be no lack of material here.

I thought a good way to begin was to ask him what he meant by “scifi Latino noir” as he describes a lot of his work. He sent me a series of images. Right away, we entered a different culture from the usual Anglo/Americano sci-fi, which tends to be verbal/cerebral, coming from the reasoning part of the brain, even when showing us monsters and exploding spaceships. Latinoid (pardon me if I feel justified in using my own term in this context) tends to be visual, sensual, art/image-oriented.

The images, interspersed with the text here (uh-oh, I’m combining the visual with verbal, making this into a multimedia experience . . .) were of his performances. There he is as various “alien” characters, the alienness is both sci-fi, and the Latinoid experience, the props reference religion and politics. These are not just pretty pictures, they mean something. Latinoid artists love to slather on layers of meanings. Marshall McLuhan said that the medium is the message, but with us messages are our media. No pure abstraction, art for art’s sake, “politics just distracts from the sort of stuff that makes rich patrons feel good and spend money”sort of thing.

After more communications at that same time that he was doing other things, like being interviewed on Nuestra Palabra, a program out of Houston from Pacifica Radio, and writing an Op-Ed piece on immigrants trapped in Louisiana ICE Detention Center for Colorlines, a social justice daily, as well as dealing with landlord troubles. “I do have my Activist Bat Utility Belt on because it's essential gear during this pandemic.” He texted me the following:

My “sci-Fi Latino noir” perspective was imposed upon me by a country that labeled me a “permanent resident alien” when I first entered its territory in 1968. To add to the “alien” theme, I was given a “Green Card.” So being an “alien” in this U.S. sci-fi reality was written into the script for me and for “other aliens” with such a designation in the so-called land of the free. This is the “alien” prism that launches my point of departure and perspectives here in the United States of Amnesia... JTT

Yeah, I understand. As a born-in-East L.A. Chicanonaut, I had a similar identity thrust on me, by the same society from the opposite direction. I see how an Ecuadorian with Quechua blood, growing up in New York, living in New Orleans, working as a writer, poet, journalist, renegade scholar, educator, visual and performance artist, an activist, and father, equals a powerful kind of sci-fi that is not just a genre of light fiction to entertain the masses as they go about the business of helping transform the entire planet into liquid assets.

We needed to talk more . . .

I’ve used all this space and I’ve been just introducing. I’m going to have to do like they did with the ancient, black&white Flash Gordon serials, and continue, in two weeks . . .

Ernest Hogan's day job at the Phoenix Public Library is back online, albeit in a newfangled “curbside service” model, where he wears a mask, and the public isn't allowed into the building. He's also writing like crazy, as editors and publishers get back to him. Buy Latinx Risng. Watch for big news soon!

Chicanonautica: Zooming into Susto Futuro

by Ernest Hogan

Along with COVID-19, there is another pandemic sweeping across the planet. A new technology is coming for us, sneaking into our lives. Maybe it'll take over if we don't watch out.

I'm talking about the internet video meeting. I know, a lot of you have been doing it for a while. I'm old and don't keep up with all the latest chingaderas, like computers, the interwebs, smart phones. I tend to get into them after it's become impossible to live in the latest version of society without them.

Somehow I never get consulted when a new version of society is installed. It's usually—BLAM!--your life is different now, get used to it. I keep getting future shock, or maybe these days we should call it Susto Futuro.

So there I was, minding my own business, sheltering in place, staying home, trying to finish my novel, when I hear from Balitronica Gomez, wife of the performance artist Guillermo Gómez-Peña. He was going to do a “Creative Conversation to Save America” for something called Dreamocracy in America, “a take-no-prisoners time-traveling transdisciplinary tour of America that picks up Alexis de Tocqueville’s journey into the American character where he left off” led by Victor Payan and Pocha Peña. I would have to download something called Zoom.

I had heard about Zoom. Schools were using it, along with business people in the lockdown. I didn't think I needed it, but in this case, I was willing to do the download and registering thing.

Even though I'm a sci-fi dude, me and technology have an uneasy relationship. Sometimes all I have to do is touch some newfangled gizmos to release a new kind of chaos into the ecosystem.

It seemed okay, but there was some snafu stuff when I tried to log on. I shot some panicky messages to Balitronica, and somehow I was able to experience Guillermo's performance.

Guillermo was his usual, wild, brilliant self. I was also impressed by the way he has managed to make himself comfortable in this brave new environment.

Not only was he on the screen doing his thing, but we—the audience—were there. It's not like a live performance. He could see us, we could see him, but no eye contact could be made. At the same time, we became part of the performance. We could see each other and see into everybody's home. Things happened in the background. At one point my wife came in . . .

I see how we may be doing more of this in the future.

A couple of weeks later, another performance artist, José Torres-Tama was doing one. Since I was already an experienced Zoomer, I signed up for that one, too.

Unfortunately, my talent for attracting technical difficulties reared its ugly head. I kept getting messages telling me about a Password Error, and  nothing I could do fixed it. I couldn't get on.

I sent a message to José, apologizing for incompetence.

He said there was no problem. I could watch the recording the next day. Which I did. Again, step into the future. I did feel that I missed out on something by not being one of the tiny people on the screen.

José then texted me, an electronic conversation that resulted in an interview that he and I have been trying to arrange since 2012. I will translate that into a Chicanonautica post very soon.

Meanwhile, Scott Duncan Fernandez of Somos en escrito: The Latino Literary Online Magazine asked me if I would like to be on an panel for Weekend of Words, a virtual literary festival. It would be put on by something called the Shuffle Collective. The subject would be, “Chicano Scifi: Speculative Existence.” It would also happen through Zoom.

Yeah, some glitches made me a few minutes late, but I managed to stumble my way on to join my fellow Latino writers Kathleen Alcalá, David Bowles, Rudy Ch. Garcia, Rios de la Luz, and Armando and Scott Duncan Fernandez from Somos in a grid of tiny screens.

It was a blast. Even though we were a diverse group (the Latinoid continuum is vast), we had a lot in common. Even though a lot of us had corresponded, and knew each other through Facebook and Twitter, this felt more direct.

We all agreed that we are not magic realists. I got a chance to say, “Any magic realism from a sufficiently technologically advanced culture becomes indistinguishable from science fiction.”

I must have done well, because Scott from Somos wants to interview me—on Zoom.

Maybe I'll eventually get the hang of it, and shake my susto futuro.

Ernest Hogan's “Flying Under the Texas Radar with Paco and Los Freetails,” the origin story of Paco Cohen, Mariachi of Mars, will be in Latinx Rising, coming out in June, pre-order now!