QatzelOk wrote:As I wrote earlier, the sounds of people talking loudly, moving around, and the sounds of animals and nature... are pleasant. Electronic bass sounds clashing with other electronic bass sounds is dystopic and hell-ish. Noise pollution also suppresses thought, and the people of the islands require all their wits to improve their economic situations.
What you are trying to brand as "the charming noisiness of the tropics" is actually "the nefarious effects of electronic devices." And the prevalence of electronic devices (and tropical noise-ophilia) means that Cuban kids can now watch TV on their phones all day, can animate public spaces with videogame noise and electronic music, and basically ruin their ability to think or concentrate on anything for long enough to come to conclusions.
Before electronic devices, one would need to get a group of friends together to play salsa. It would have been impossible to hear seven salsa bands playing on the street at one time in every hood. Today, this is the norm because of electronic devices. It is also possible to raise your children without talking to them very much by ... handing them a device to play with.
This is a disaster, but it was nice to see how this disaster plays out in a noise-positive culture.
Then peaceful reflection is impossible there. What a social disaster this is.
Muslims who follow the Muslim Brotherhood would call the resulting hellscape Jahiliyyah. Drunk, dumbed-down people listening to factory noise ("music") all day...
This has absolutely nothing to do with Cuba's communist system. The jahiliyyah of Cuba is a result of the history of the slave islands it is part of. Right? The killers of the local natives, kidnappers of African slaves... are unable to live peaceful, well-organized lives because... their countries were created out of human atrocities... created out of other people's hell.
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Oh and Tainari88, you provided two videos of music in your last post. If you play them both at the same time, do you still enjoy the melodies and instrumentation? Because Havana sounds like four or five different music videos being played simultaneously.
You bring up an interesting perspective I have never fully given deep thought to before Q.
What I can tell you is that no one (no human-populated nation in today's world is truly isolated), whether for good or bad we are all being influenced by each other.
You are right about that noise being anathema to self-reflection. But, you also have to realize that the Cubans want to be a part of modern life. They get bombarded just like the Puerto Ricans do with negative messages about their being inferior to the mainland USA how poor we all are, and how much we can become part of the modern world by adopting the habits of the mainland.
Very few people have the thought process that the people they are trying to be accepted by and imitate are actually lacking in qualities that the Cubans, Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, etc have.
That is being colonized mentally, culturally, and politically too in our case Q.
Many Puerto Ricans tried to paint in the past the thought that PR by being ruled by the Greatest Nation on the Face of the Earth had the good parts of that. For them, it meant access to technology, living a modern life, and being free to consume and buy twenty different types of detergent to wash their clothes with. By being an American the most wealthy nation on Earth, etc. it will rub off on us. Make us into a better culture. That was the fucked up message most Puerto Ricans got in the past, in the present, and so on. That is the message.
My husband went to a public school in which they would discuss the PR-US relationship. The teacher would say to him, 'Puerto Rico is tiny. So tiny compared to the USA. The amount of times Puerto Rico could fit into the USA is .............. And then, we make less than any state in income. We have a lot of Africans and Indians, and they are people who never had written language and sophistication. Our ways are of people who have nothing civilized to contribute to the world.'
That was the rap for the Puerto Ricans. They even prohibited Spanish in the public school system from
probably 1898 until the 1940s. Here is a timeline of the Spanish language's repression as the common vernacular used on the island.
https://www.timetoast.com/timelines/pue ... age-policyThat is why most Puerto Rican children still address their female teachers as Miss or Missy. Even though that policy has been abolished for a while. The kids were punished in the past for speaking to their teacher often from the mainland sent to the island to teach the kids....as Miss or Missy. Had to say everything in English. The military-appointed governors all used to emit decrees in English even though no one spoke it fluently for a long, long time Q.
Now, my following point. The Spanish crown forced all kinds of unfavorable terms on the Puerto Ricans. Especially those from the lower and peasant classes like the Africans of West African descent that lived in townships like Loiza Aldea, and Guayama, and other areas of the island.
And they also discouraged teaching about Taíno Indian history. They actually would tell the kids in the schoolroom that the Taino culture was extinct and the vast majority of the Puerto Rican people were mostly European only and a bit African. They tested with DNA analysis the majority of the Puerto Rican population samples and the truth painted a very different but more accurate picture of what was the truth. About 60% of all Puerto Ricans in some fairly close to their present gene codes had a matrilineal ancestor that was Taíno Indian and it was mostly Taino mothers and Spanish fathers from specific places like Tenerife Canary Islands, Seville Andalucia, Cádiz, Málaga, and mostly the Southeastern parts of Spain. Because they were the poorest parts of Spain with a lot of Moorish influences and had the most need to make money or inherit land since in Spain they were repudiated a lot.
The picture gets interesting between evidence and what is taught in the public school system as the truth.
My main point is that the Americans came in and reinforced with actual segregationists from the Indian Wars and Manifest Destiny stage and Jim Crow laws from the USA the idea of inferiority. They made it a given. Riggs hated Don Pedro Albizu Campos not because he was good at organizing sugar cane workers and forcing the sugar industries to double the wages and causing nationalist rebellion in a people who dared to REJECT US citizenship making the US narrative of 'aren't you grateful to be part of this great nation who is BETTER than you are!' but because he was half Spanish of Basque origins (his father was of Basque Spanish heritage and origin and his mother was half Indian and West African), and his father never recognized him as a legitimate son. He was brilliant. Spoke six languages was a great lawyer and helped draft the Irish Republican constitution for Ireland.
Q, what all this means is that Puerto Rico has been battling on many fronts. For many centuries. All those centuries have been about being subject to messages that have had a profound effect on the psyche of Puerto Ricans. On their ability to think, to reflect, and to be self-aware. But dancing and music are kind of therapeutic always. At least it has been for me in my own experiences dancing for many hours eh?
It is not just the noise pollution. It is the pollution related to being seen and treated as slaves and as people with absolutely NOTHING important to contribute to the world. Expendable people of absolutely no worth. How does that affect people in terms of voting and civic responsibilities? Puerto Rico has never had the responsibility EVER really of being fully responsible for its own nation, or its own society.
In Mexico, the Mexicans know that if something fails in Mexican society they have the power and the duty and responsibility to rectify it because they have SOVEREIGNTY. Meanwhile, in Puerto Rico, if something goes wrong NO ONE has the responsibility to rectify it because if they try to do so? It will be overridden by the PROMESA board, the US Washington DC codes on unincorporated territories, and actually US military troops can be deployed, and bombs dropped (that actually happened in PR various times) to give the message that if you resist we will kill you. And taint you are primitive, dumb people who do not know the joys of being US citizens. That justifies too the right to withhold full constitutionally guaranteed citizenship from us.
What I find remarkable given that horrible history Q, is that the Puerto Ricans still believe in themselves, they are starting to vote for independence now more than ever, and they are moving fast on creating an alternative to the constant colonial rule of the island.
But it will not happen if you think trying to remove that message from the psyche of millions of Puerto Ricans in the USA and on the island itself is going to happen without LOVE, compassion, and respect and realizing that the more you care about people and accept them for who and what they are NOW, the more you will be able to open a dialogue with them of real meaning.
Not seeing all of the circumstances that lead to a certain behavior is being blind as well Q.
The Southern part of Spain's culture is very into dance, music, and having a good time, the Taino culture also had dance and so on and having a good time in the Batey. The West Africans loved dance and music and having a good time. All three of those cultures mixed for a long time in the Caribbean and clashed on power relationships, land use, and cultural legacies left behind. But they sure did agree on one thing. Strongly. They loved MUSIC. And dance. And play. And you see it in that noise pollution. Lol.
They want to play music all the time. None of them are alienated Q. They will not be like in the USA where you stop to ask for directions and no one answers you. No one wants to talk to you because they are busy with their agendas and taking time out of their day is a bother.
You can always reach the Puerto Ricans, the Cubans, and the Dominicans because they still believe that despite it all, their first obligation is to human society. Their families and their friends. And since they have not lost it all to alienation yet. And the lights get turned off frequently and the water is shut off frequently and they are without first-world power and first-world lifestyles frequently? They go out and socialize, in the street. Without the boomboxes on they can't get generators or gasoline. LOL.
They are forced to live primitively. Which means, talking to your neighbor. Sleep in the hammocks in the night time and outside where it is breezy.
Look for what works and build on what already is positive Q. If you emphasize what is wrong only you lose in this world—got to build on love and connection to others. You know how powerful that is. You have been advocating for it for YEARS on PoFo.
That is the answer to the dystopia. It always has been.