Posted by paulrivas on: February 10 2010
Before the 11th of September became 9/11/2001, it was el 11 de septiembre de 1973. On this day in Chile, a Nixon-backed military coup put the murderous dictator Pinochet in power in place of the democratically elected government of Allende. The members of Allende's cabinet were rounded up as prisoners of war and confined to a military camp on Dawson Island, at the southernmost tip of South America, where they remained for one year until their release was brokered by the Red Cross, United Nations and Teddy Kennedy.
Dawson Isla 10 is a fictionalized but realistic account of the prisoners' experience, based on the diaries of Sergio Bitar, known at the camp by his assigned prisoner name of Isla 10 (Island Barracks prisoner #10).
As the guy in charge of preparing 40 UCSB students per year to spend a semester or two in Chile, Rivas Cultural Services was very keen to seen this film. Feel free to leave a comment expressing surprise and/or dismay that only one of the 27 students going next fall was in attendance. She was in good company, though, as such local luminaries as Dick & Mickey Flacks and Victor Fuentes were there, as were local celebrities Ed & Toni Holdren.
Perhaps most remarkable about the movie is that it was actually filmed on Dawson Island, in an environment so forbidding that the crew could not have been enjoying conditions much better than those of the prisoners in the film, minus the beatings, forced labor and worse. The first minutes included documentary footage of a humanitarian delegation's visit to the premises, during which a guard stumbles over his words to try and explain the concentration camp vibe of the prisoners' accommodations.
The prisoners' will to get out alive and the personal conflict on the part of some of the guards at the fact that they were imprisoning their fellow countrymen - which even led to incidents of outright compassion - were also extraordinarily well portrayed. There's even some humor, as one would imagine there must always be, even in such dire circumstances. At one point, the lieutenant in command asks one of the more sympathetic soldiers, "¿Usted es tonto, o se hace?"
Go see Dawson Isla 10 tomorrow at 1:15pm at the Metro 4.
Posted by paulrivas on: February 08 2010
If you haven't been paying attention to the hundreds upon hundreds of unsolved femicides that have taken place in Juárez, Mexico in the past decade or so, no te preocupes, now's your chance!
All the crucial elements of these murders of Mexican women just across the border from El Paso, Texas are present in this film: indigenous women migrate to the border to work in the maquiladoras (factories made possible by NAFTA), where they labor in what we in sunny Santa Barbara would describe as abhorrent conditions. They're barely allowed to pee, they're paid about $1 an hour and if they get pregnant they lose their jobs. Meanwhile, there are vice lords with Mexi-mullets, serial killers, organ traffickers, pornographic snuff filmmakers and old-fashioned machistas loo king to sexually assault them, kill them and dump their bodies in the desert. If a victim is lucky, someone finds her body and paints a pink cross with her name.
All of this is in the movie, which Rivas Cultural Services associate Patricia Ordaz says Mexicans in Mexico are calling, "muuuuuuy impresionante, real y cruda." There were about 12 Latino faces in the crowd at last night's screening, which is more than you're going to find at any SBIFF event save for the Youth CineMedia project.
There's some great Mexican Spanish in the film, including, "No seas mamón, Hernández," and, "Te voy a quitar lo indio, verás," which comes when an established Lomas de Poleo slum resident styles her recently arrived cousin's waist-length hair into chola bangs. There's also quite a bit of dialog in Tzetzal, a language spoken by some Mayan groups in southeastern Mex.
Lack of resources, corruption and complacency all contribute to the inability of Mexican law enforcement to solve any of these murders, which continue unabated. This systemic failure is summed up by the light-skinned police chief of Juárez, who's only goal is to land a cushy gig in Chihuahua: "Acá las palabras básicas son: no hay, no se puede, y no se pudo."
Go see Backyard on Tuesday at 10pm at the Metro IV.
Posted by paulrivas on: February 06 2010
A friend of mine who has the word GOLETA tattooed across his beer belly refers to the members of our own local military-industrial complex as dolphin-bombers. If you know any dolphin-bombers, or have anything to do with the University of California, then The University of Nuclear Bombs is for you. See it before someone over at Raytheon gets drunk at Pepe’s on his lunch break and accidentally blows us all sky high!
The documentary provides a historical examination of the UC’s involvement in the production of American weapons of mass destruction at the Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore nuclear labs. Despite the popular UC Regents excuse that, “the University is basically doing science”, 85% of the labs’ federal funding is for weapons. In fact, every nuke in America’s arsenal was designed by the University of California, with the help of the $7 TRILLION that the US has spent on nuclear weapons since World War II.
The film argues that UC scientists are not just servants of the Department of Defense but actually policymakers, and shows H-bomb wiz and UC professor Edward Teller urging President Reagan to increase the country’s nuclear program. Reagan’s appearance elicited hisses from the audience, but even President Obama’s new federal budget calls for an increase in funding to these Armageddon salesmen.
Unfortunately, it’s not as easy as engineering death to the enemy; fuck-ups happen all the time at these labs. Dig even two inches deep in the park beside the Lawrence Livermore lab and you'll find elevated amounts of plutonium (doh!), a substance the lab has previously stored in ordinary paint cans. In 2008, a mock terrorist team sent to the Lawrence Livermore lab was able to carry out its two objectives: to create a poor man's WMD and steal plutonium, despite the lab having a year to prepare and being told to within two hours when the pretend extremists would be arriving.
Along with such famous faces as Noam Chomsky, UCSB sociology grad student and the author of Goleta, the Bad Land, Darwin Bond-Graham, is frequently quoted in the film, and Goleta native Steve Stormoen (DPHS 2003) also appears. Rivas Cultural Services associates Vanesa Ledesma and Ben Tolksdorf were also named in the credits.
In the Q&A following the screening, Bond-Graham paid the filmmakers the highest compliment an activist can issue when he said, “I’ve been causing trouble for the Regents since 2002. I've had a lot of people tell me they want to make a documentary about this, and these guys have been the only ones to follow through.”
Go see The University of Nuclear Bombs on Monday at 1pm at the art museum.
Posted by paulrivas on: January 18 2010
Dear Family and Friends,
Clare and I got married on December 22 in the Cayman Islands. Clare’s younger sister Julie was the only guest and served as Witness #1. The photographer doubled as Witness #2, something he hadn’t been expecting. I’d insisted we not tell him ahead of time so he couldn’t charge us extra.
Julie has a Santa Barbara friend living on Grand Cayman. This led to Clare and I booking a trip there and Julie booking a flight there, too. When a friend of Clare’s heard about our vacation plans, she accused Clare of conspiring to elope. In fact, it had never occurred to us that getting married in the Cayman Islands was easy.
I signed us up for the Simply Basic: location, ceremony and $200 in Caymanian paperwork for one low price. They even threw in the wedding vows. Once the official learned we weren’t Christians, she gave us a choice between Mystic Union and Visitor Type 1. We went with Visitor Type 1, which seemed to be exactly what we wanted and one more step to happiness skipped entirely.
The location choices were beach or tropical gazebo. Not wanting to get my nice shoes dirty, I chose gazebo, which ended up being in the official’s front yard in a down-market and occasionally dodgy part of the town of West Bay. The gazebo had a crimson astro-turf runway, and the photographer insisted on abandoning it for the beach as soon as the ceremony was over.
We stayed at a fancy B&B run by lovely people, whose other guests included a guy called Paul Reavis. This Paul Reavis guy works on drones for Northrup Grumman in Afghanistan, which their website says means, “bringing new combat multiplier capabilities to the warfighter faster”. I asked him if when he left Afghanistan in a military cargo plane he got to wear one of those seatbelts that comes down over the shoulders, like in the movies. He said he did, and I got a kick out of it.
Julie arrived two days later than expected after being snowed-in in Boston. By the time we got back to our room after picking her up from the airport is was 3:45 pm on the day of our five o’clock wedding. Clare only got to freak out about her wedding for an hour instead of months, and I only got two tries to tie my tie a passable length. Julie had to help us both.
Clare drove us from our place on Sticky Toffee Lane to the ceremony, on the left side of the road, as she had done expertly all week. “Here Comes the Bride” played on the gazebo boombox until the official told Julie to pause it. We each wore a ribbon of tartan flair around one wrist and had tropical flowers. Our rings weren’t made yet, so we used twine. When the official said “holy” the first time, we thought she was just being nice. Then she surprised us with a prayer not previously discussed in Visitor Type I, and all we could do was do our best.
We ate an extravagant dinner that saw me devour the biggest lobster ever on my first time ever eating lobster. Julie’s friends joined us later and treated us to desserts that included the sticky toffee pudding after which our little lane was named. The next day Clare and Julie played with dolphins at the lagoon down the road. I took pictures and talked to Joe Tourist from Connecticut and tried to remember that this was my life and to refer to Clare as my wife.
Best wishes,
Paul
P.S. Clare’s back in Manhattan now. I’m going there for six days in February and she’s coming to Goleta for eight days in March. If you’ll be in either of those places, please look us up: Clare Nisbet or Paul Rivas. (But we’re married now.)
Posted by paulrivas on: December 13 2009
I lived on El Sueño until I was eight. My dad had worked at Stop 'n' Shop back when Miratti still owned it. My mom said Miratti was shady and my dad said he was shady but he was a good guy. My grandma lived on Old Mill Road, in the mobile home park next to Blue Skies.
I used to have to lie and say I lived on Old Mill Road. So that I could go to Monte Vista school and not Foothill, I was made to lie as a six-year-old. It sounds insane now. By third grade I was at Foothill anyway but still felt like a creep. Every year we had Thanksgiving and Christmas at my grandma's house on Old Mill Road. I saw a lot of this sign as a kid. I guess that's why I like it.
What does the Blue Skies sign mean to you? Is it in Santa Barbara?
Posted by paulrivas on: November 19 2009
...and yes, that Kevin Greene jersey is autographed.
He's local boy Dan Najera, of Rancho Najera, and he also invited Rivas Cultural Services to go see Amy Goodman last night.
Contradiction? Nope. American, baby!
Posted by paulrivas on: November 14 2009
What do you make of this sign? Can’t you just see a bilingual fellow saying “tese” out loud as he types “this”? Typos can happen to anybody, and Wednesday’s a doozy, but only an English language learner would ever sign a company message “Habit Management”. Drugs? Gambling? Late-night pints of ice cream? No problem!
Posted by paulrivas on: October 29 2009
To a Mexican who knows no English, this beer-sponsored sign in downtown Goleta would read, "Special - the brand of leche called Milk - 2 gallons for $4.99". To a bilingual person, it's just a special on milk. Either way, if you speak Spanish, you're buying this leche.
If you don't speak any Spanish, you're probably not in downtown Goleta. But if you're there anyway looking for milk and the word MILK catches your eye, the sign would read, "Especial - the brand of milk called Leche - 2 gallons times $4.99". Of course this doesn't make total sense, but if it's a milk emergency then this Leche stuff certainly warrants further investigation.
Two weeks ago, Santa Barbara Man About Goleta found evidence of American-born Spanish-speakers going after the Mexican dollar in downtown Goleta. This beer sign for milk appears to be an example of a bilingual business owner going after both the Spanish-speaking and English-speaking dollars! That's twice as many dollars!!
Rivas Cultural Services thinks this is awfully crafty, and redolent of the Chapulín Colorado rubbing his hands saying, "¡No contaron con mi astucia!"
Posted by paulrivas on: October 22 2009
Imagine you're a writer, and you write "MBS", "SIM", or "BASIK". Nobody knows what it stands for except you and your bros. But which name would you rather have people think was your name?
"Mad Balls, Son!" or "More Bull-Shit"?
"Secret Information Man" or "See, I'ma Menace!"?
"Bad-Ass Subversive Intelligence Knetwork?" or "Big And Shitty Ink Krimes"?
Rivas Cultural Services will be at its Manhattan desk for the next four days, listening to the Wild Style soundtrack over and over again and contemplating the significance of tagging on a document destruction truck.
We'll also be liaising with Nisbet Nursing Services and their associates Anderson Concierge Services. New York contacts are encouraged to call 805.689.7708 and leave a message in Spanish to arrange a meeting.
Posted by paulrivas on: October 19 2009
'Member the VIP ramp that was on this very spot, demolished in 2006? Rivas Cultural Services associate and life artist Bubba Ray Robison worked at the Cinema for so long, he literally saw it all. Once he even caught a homeless gentleman barbecuing on the roof. True story. He was changing the reel and heard a ruckus, and up top was a bum with a Hibachi and sliders.
The worst movie I ever saw here was Jingle All the Way. I reviewed it for Mal Parker's San Marcos High School Spanish 9-10 class newspaper in 1996. The headline translated to, "Let's hope this is the last we see of Arnold!".
Posted by paulrivas on: October 15 2009
Note the date: not the Mexican 1-11-09 for the first of November, but the American 11-1-09 for November the first. Rivas Cultural Services suspects this was posted by an American-born Spanish-speaker going after the Mexican dollar. Gotta love it! Ni modo; apparently there's nothing but desmadrosos in downtown Goleta anyway.
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Santa Barbara Man About Goleta celebrates local color with bilingual humor and California style. Rivas Cultural Services are international advisers expert in Latin America, budget travel and language acquisition.
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