Back in Dock Sud

Drum circle of high school students & cooperativa workers

Despite my roommates trying to convince me of my impending death by fast, the first few days of my fast went very well. I stayed to myself mostly, reading and writing and soaking up whatever vestiges of the sun that I could find on my back porch. The third day, however, the outside world called me back.

Marcelino, the Cape Verdean activist from Dock Sud called me to come down to participate in some exciting activities that were going down in the barrio. Gerson, a local teacher who also works with the community, was able to create a program with his students to help some of the chicos in the cooperatives in Dock Sud. About 12 students from a wealthy, private, English-Christian school excitedly volunteered to come with Gerson to meet and help out with the activities in a barrio outside of the city limits of Buenos Aires that most people warn them not to go to.

One of the many projects that Marcelino has been successful in implementing is a cooperativa of young boys, paid by the government, working collaboratively to provide the neighborhood with much needed services in construction and beautification. Gerson’s students, all impressively comfortable, friendly, and eager to make new friendships, also donated enough money to feed all of the cooperativa workers lunch for the week.

So they went to work: children of Shell Oil Corporates, the government supported, those who’ve traveled all over the world, those who only leave the barrio to go to a bigger boliche, and if I do say so myself, the projects were very successful.

Gerson, Brian, & Crew planting their tree together.

Check out some more pictures of the activities:

-Organizing and folding clothes the community collected to donate to a super rural community called Chaco.

-Cleaning up a vacant lot and converting it into a parklet and community space.

-Planting trees in the parklet.

-Making and setting cement tables and benches for the parklet. (Each will represent one island of cape verde..with one extra to represent the diaspora.)

I do have to admit that this was also my hardest day of fasting. First of all, Marcelina, wife and fellow activist, is an amazing cook who is always keeping the food coming from everywhere in the diaspora. She cooks food from her birthplace of Cape Verde, from Brazil, from Argentina and everywhere in between. Feijoida, Catchupa, Lengua, Empanadas, Pizzas. Her cooking, her smile, her spirit, her heartful commentary always hold every meeting, birthday party, event together.

Secondly, everyone and their mother kept trying to feed me. Yes of course, they were gestures of kindness, but

“how about some homemade cheese”

“just a little bit of dulce de leche?”

“come on, how about a café con leche?”

After explaining to people that there was actually technically religious reason that I was choosing not to eat, I realized how silly it can be to explain to people who sometimes don’t know where their next meal will come from, that you are fasting for choice.

It’s these moments that inspire my gratitude for exactly how blessed that I’ve always been, but also my commitment to try to live outside of excess. Though of course, it is always hard to draw specific causality between my financial position and someone elses but it is in our living excess that someone else does not have enough.

Remember to check out how awesome this community is...

Cumple de Christian

A week after I had met after I had met a Cape Verdean activist at a political rally in Buenos Aires, there I was, headed to his son's 12th birthday party.

He called me with very specific directions on how to arrive. I was told which buses to take, from where, and what corner to get off at. After the 45 minute trip, and a little bit of help from the bus driver, I nervously got off of the bus hoping that my embarrassing sense of direction hadn't struck again. I was ecstatic to see Marcelino and a round faced teenager waiting for me. I was greeted and introduced, then he focused completely on making sure that I knew the way to the house.

He walked rapidly and recounted his steps.

"You get off here, you go straight here, left here, then right. You’ll know the house because of the broken down van in front."

He joked jovially that he had accompanied me because of how dangerous the neighborhood was, but it was understood that he came to gently show me the ropes, and that I wouldn’t be picked up from the bus stop like a school child again. If I was going to be a part of the community, I wouldn’t be coddled, I wouldn’t be treated any differently then the others that lived in the community. This meant, if I didn’t feel safe walking around the community by myself, well, then I shouldn’t come.

True to his description the front door to Marcelino’s house was literally open and without locks in a “dangerous” neighborhoods inside of Gran Buenos Aires. After a corridor of car parts and other recyclables hastily covered with blankets, we entered into Marcelino’s home—the nucleus of the neighborhood. Quaint, but powerfully consolidated, the small space was one kitchen, living room, and dining room without walled separation. It is a space for the public, a space to solve problems, to plot strategies, to feed hungry mouths; a space to laugh, to raise a glass of whiskey, a place to dance.

As I walked in, Marcelina, his wife and fellow keeper of the neighborhood, rushed from behind the sink with arms open.

“Diane!” she exclaimed like I was her child returning home from my first year at college. She gave me the customary peck on the cheek then pulled me close for a hug.

Marcelina is a short and round woman with soft curves, a disarming smile, with hands always in a giving position. She's quick with a hug, and kind words, and her voice is certain and coaxing. With her hand softly on the small of my back, she led me around the room to meet the family, all eyeing the newcomer from the sidelines.

There were three teenagers on the futon next to the dining room table. Tatooed, pierced, and with the general air of youth disgruntlement, I was surprised to know that they were all much older than me, and spoke to me with timidity. After twenty minutes of tattoo and music comparisons, we were all speaking easier. They reclined onto the futon comfortably and I slumped back into my chair.

Though makeshift, and short for space, the room had a definite order. Marcelina seemed to always be in the kitchen when I arrived, moving with ease and a magic spoon, constantly serving and preparing. The youth would come in and out of the corridor. If they stayed in the room they’d sit on the futon listening vaguely, or whispering among themselves. Sometimes they’d fiddle with the community computer, and their selections of cumbia, and fulana, were always appreciated by "The Marce's".

Marcelino and I would sit at the dining room table that sat in the middle of the room. I would realize soon after that business was done around the table, but only after a good meal, and a few cups of coffee or on better days, whisket. This day wasn’t a business affair. Este dia fue una celebracion perras —and my induction of sorts into the Cape Verdean family.

Christian, the birthday boy, eventually strolled in, baby-faced and flanked with his gang of compañeros. He reminded me of my older brother, Paul, whose skin is a soft blanket of brown and whose silky black hair earned him nicknamed Chinese Boy. Christian's confidence was obvious by his stance and his careful questioning would always show a social awareness that betrayed the 12 years that he was turning.

“Cuantos anos me das?” He asked, placing his hands on his hips.

How old do you think I am?

“Ya me dijieron que estás por cumplir 12."

They already told me you were turning 12

It was a few weeks later that he would ask me if he seemed older to me, and I would tell him truthfully that he did. He took a second to measure my sincerity by looking me rightly in the face, then he nodded, satisfied, and walked off.

The birthday was the introduction to the inner circle. Not only did I meet all of Marcelinos five children and all of the neighborhood friends, but other Cape Verdeans who work with and around Marcelino.

Among other honors, it was the first time I tried the amazing food blessed by the hands of Marcelina. First there constant rotation of homeade pizza and empanadas, but after the kids got full of the appetizers Marce brought out the real food CapeVerdean food of fried fish and cow tongue for the grown ups.

After we had laughed, and drank, and ate way past contentment, the tables were moved to the perimeter of the living room and we danced. Cumbia, Reggaeton, Fulana. (MUSIC LINK HERE) Christian had the job of making sure I learned the moves, and he never missed a step, although his stature didn’t permit him to lead me too much.

After a few hours of dancing, it was Christians time to steal the spotlight! Everyone had told me that Christian was a dancer but Good Lord! We cleared the dance floor and Christian grabbed a black top hat. He turned towards the door and somebody hit the music. The unmistakable first bars of Billie Jean came on and Christian slid across the floor, moonwalking, gyrating, and getting his full MJ on. The kid killed it!

After all of us contributed our own pitiful MJ impression, the cake came out.

With the lights dim and the room still smoky from birthday candles, I appreciated just how lucky I was to have found this home away from home. As Marcelino and Marcelina constantly repeated,

"we want you to be a part of this family. What you can do to help the community is great, but primarily we want you to know that you’re welcome here and that you’re home here."

Though finding ways to share my gifts with others is definitely apart of my goals in Buenos Aires, Marcelino and Marcelina's organization is first based around a family, and it was there that I’d found my home.

Marcelino..Intro to Dock Sud

About two weeks ago I ran into Marcelino, an activist from Dock Sud , the most cohesive community of Afro-descendants in the Great Buenos Aires. I met with Marcelino in a coffee shop so we could find a mutual understanding--what was it that brought us together? I didn’t know what the guy was about, or what his organization was, and he wasn’t sure why I was in Argentina bothering with black people, but we were certain that there was a reason that we had met each other. We sat with a beer and a few empanadas while he questioned me intently about what it was I was doing here. The question for me is still a bit difficult as sometimes I can’t answer it myself. Am I a researcher writing about hip-hop sometimes, am I an activist in the black community interested in music…am I photographer on vacation?

At this point my explanation was that I was researching youth in the black community and how they use music to express their Afro identity. My interest is his work did not come from a research interest but from a personal interest in participating in a community organization that was really helping diasporic peoples. I explained that I was tired of people talking about how much they were doing when they had hardly been outside of a conference room. I told him that I had just finished doing work for a really exciting non-profit in my home town and so I was ready to use a bunch of new skills that I had just learned.

He nodded sympathetically, and always with an “uh-huh”, a deep throaty affirmative response that seemed calculative, and introspective. His eyes were deep and probing…his emotions at his beck and call. He would pour my beer, but his eyes stayed fixed in mine. He was sizing up my intentions with my talk, was feelin out the vibrations of my heart.

He'd been in the game for more than 25 years, he had heard it all before. He'd seen a million politicians with the cara de buena and with ganas de hacer leave his organization cold after they'd gotten what they wanted out of it. He'd been left with battle scars and suspicions about those outside of the community coming in.

Marcelino was born in Cape Verde, a tiny group of islands off of the coast of Africa, and came to Argentina on a scholarship some 40 years ago. He moved directly to the neighborhood of Dock Sud, where he joined numerous other ex-patriots from his homeland. More than 100 years ago, a large wave of Cape-verdean immigrants settled to work at the docks, and their presence continues to dominate the neighborhood. It is probably one of the only places in Buenos Aires that you can find a "black neighborhood" because though Africans and Afro-descendientes continue to immigrate to Argentina, there isn't much of a pattern to where, how, and when they settle. In contrast, the Cape Verdeans through proximity, social and political action, have maintained their family, their language, and...their color.

Marcelino's mission has always been to focus on his community, to understand their needs and to respond to their problems before they found alternative ways to address them.

Yet, Marcelino does not divide his dedication by color.

Though his neighborhood is completely inhabited by those who most Porteños would call "negros" many are not "Afro-descendientes"--many are not phenotypically black.

In Argentina, the word negro has generally been disassociated with the racial phenotype. Inline with Argentine discourse, the word negro is used very emphatically and yet paradoxically.

It can be used as a term of endearment for anyone, most often for those who have darker hair, or have a bit of brown in them.

"Ay mi negra querida"

But in regards to Marcelino's barrio "Dock Sud", when people call them "esos negros" it is usually a derogatory term to describe their social and economic state.

Negros are:

poor people.dirty people.brown people.unfortunate people.dishonest people.

Those who live in the "conventillas" shanty towns

"Cabecita Negras":

Bolivians, paraguayans, those from the provincias of Argentina and general outsiders to Buenos Aires who come to "steal jobs" from the "hard working" Porteños.

"Negra de Mierda"

Nigger (or the closest you'll get with a completely distinct slavery narrative)

This is why his organization Amigos de Cabo Verde en Dock Sud does not follow a racializing ideology. Many of the youth that come in and out of his house, that work for his cooperatives, who he's taught to fix bikes and pour cement aren't black--but are still 'negros'.

He admitted to me that he was pretty uninvolved and had been uninterested in the "Afro" political community in general in Buenos Aires.

"Congresos and Actos pero no hacen para nostotros. Todos hacen por su propio bosillo."

In other words: they talk a lot of shit but they don't back it up. They are actively activist-ing for their own pockets, not the rest of the community that needs the money.

And he's right. There is a serious problem in the community in terms of distribution of money. A few of the older politicians and activists run things like super-cargo, as they've completely replicated the slave master oppressor formula, and they act as intermediaries to the victimization of their communities so that they can have careers. They prefer to have conferences lamenting the poor ideological state of the community rather than set up concrete plans of auto-ayudo where those that truly need in the community can speak for their own needs.

"Almost always, during the initial stage of the struggle, the oppressed, instead of striving for liberation, tend themselves to become oppressors, or "sub-oppressors." The very structure of their thought has been conditioned by the contradictions of the concrete, existential situation by which they were shaped. their ideal is to be men; but for them, to be men is to be oppressors. This is their model of humanity." (Friere, Pedagogy of the oppressed)

I talked very little in general except in very empathetic nods, his thoughts and ideas dominated the conversation. The conversation was just in this way. I told him what little I knew of myself at 22 and he tried to paint me a picture of what he knew in his sixty odd years to be true with only 2 hours of words.

Then, he invited me to his sons birthday party.

otld me