Tonight UNC-TV is broadcasting The Guestworker, a documentary by Cynthia Hill and Charles Thompson.
I composed the music for the film. Here are some mp3’s from the soundtrack:
Filed by chuck j at 1:11 pm under events, sounds
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Views from the Tower of Latin America, high above the central historical district.
Bellas Artes
Neill attacked by a mime, blocks from the Zocalo.
Fire dancer in downtown Coyoacán.
Milagros in the National Cathedral.
Browsing bootlegs.
Filed by chuck j at 12:37 am under travel
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Leon Trotsky and Natalia Sedova’s exile home is blocks away from Neill and Ellie’s apartment in Coyoacán. The fortified house (and the site of Trotsky’s murder in 1940) is now a modest museum with an adjacent building dedicated to photographs and biographical materials. The house has been preserved, with the couples belongings, clothes, furniture, etc left in place.
Seeing such romantic glorification of the Leninist-Trotskyist Communist ideal brought me back to twelve or so years ago, when I attended a screening of a video about Mumia Abul-Jamal at the UNC Black Cultural Center. I found out after the screening that the people presenting the video were from the International Communist League. And while this didn’t bother me (I was glad they brought the Mumia video because I knew nothing about him before) I didn’t really feel like sticking around and talking to them afterwards. But they were in recruitment and fund-raising mode - “We’re communists but we’re not Stalinists. We’re Leninist-Trotskyist!” - so in order to get out of the corner I was backed into I agreed to donate ten bucks.
My donation was rewarded with a subscription to the Workers Vanguard for the next several years. The paper provided an unorthodox perspective on current events (to say the least) and entertained my roommates with urgent headlines about the ICL activists “standing up to the Fascists” by picketing white supremacist rallies and other mutually marginalized conflicts.
Anyway, it was good to remember those days as I strolled through the Trotsky courtyard, which is actually quite beautiful. Leon was an avid gardener and the keepers of the estate have maintained a very rustic feel to the place.
Filed by chuck j at 12:12 am under travel
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Yesterday Neill and Ellie hosted a Thanksgiving dinner for some of their friends and co-workers from the prep school. It was the first time any of us had cooked a turkey but it went off very well. The turkey was hard to find, but poinsettias are everywhere.
I spent the first half of Thanksgiving Day exploring Coyoacán…
Filed by chuck j at 5:10 pm under travel
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…last day of classes - Tecnologica de Monterrery preparatory school, Mexico City.
… Neill explains Borat to 11th and 12th grade English students.
Filed by chuck j at 12:20 am under travel
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