Agosto 2010
“Until women can attain not only a genuine independence in relation to men but also a new way of conceiving themselves and their role in sexual relations, the sexual question will remain full of unhealthy characteristics and caution must be exercised in proposals for new legislation. Every crisis brought about by unilateral coercion in the sexual field unleashes a ‘romantic’ reaction which could be aggravated by the abolition of organized legal prostitution. All these factors make any form of regulation of sex and any attempt to create a new sexual ethic suited to the new methods of production and work extremely complicated and difficult. However, it is still necessary to attempt to create a new ethic…The truth is that the new type of man demanded by the rationalization of production and work cannot be developed until the sexual instinct has been suitably regulated and until it has been rationalized.”
—Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks (via post-theory)
Mi nombre - nutukay
Kuyut quiere decir “coyote” en lengua Nahuat de El Salvador. Tambien me gusta porque parece como la palabra cute de ingles, que significa “lindo.”
Nahuat es un pariente de la famosa lengua Nahuatl de Mexico, la que fue la lengua franca de la región mesoamericana en los tiempos de la conquista. Una diferencia que tiene con el Nahuatl de Mexico, es que carece del sonido “tl” *
Por ejemplo: en Nahautl de Mexico, “luna” se dice metztlin. Pero en Nahuat de El Salvador, “luna” se dice metzti
Todavia se ve “tl” en muchos nombres de lugares salvadoreños, porque el Nahuatl de Mexico fue usado por los aztecas que acompañaban los españoles durante la conquista. Esto se preserva en el nombre Cuzcatlán, “lugar de joyas”, el nombre precolombino de El Salvador occidental. Pero el pueblo Pipil, que todavía habla el Nahuat (sin L) y habitó la mayoría del territorio occidental de El Salvador probablemente diría Cuscatán. Imagínense si se cambiara los nombres a el departamento de Antiguo Cuzcatán o Banco Cuzcatán.
*fuente: “Monografía de El Salvador” de Roque Dalton
Reality of Transnational Identities I...
So like a big nerd I bought an expensive online academic journal article about the experiences of an Australian-Salvadoran girl returning to her home country. I’m not done reading it but I found a lot to be true throughout my stay here in the motherland. Some background: El Salvador is a poor country,with a very disproportionate wealth distribution and about a third of it’s citizen’s live outside the country. Most ex-patriots live in the United States but notable diaspora’s in Europe, Australia, and Canada. This mass exodus of citizen’s started in the 1980’s Civil War (topic for another day), and the migration hasn’t slowed down but rather increased. Because of these factor’s Remittances, money people send back their families in El Salvador, comprise a very important part of the nation’s economy.
The Article states, that remittances “have not only economic but emotional consequences as well.” As someone from a rich, English speaking nation, visiting the homeland conjures “feelings of competitiveness and resentment [that] are often directed at visitors by locals, even if they are family.” Just my being here, be it for school or vacation, is just sign off my relative affluence and privilege to travel. I’ve had to learn how to approach getting close to family here tactfully, to resist globalization’s real-life emotional constraints on my geographically displaced kin. The maintaing of a diaspora group is difficult and complicated. There’s some family and people because of this I rather not deal with, c’est la vie. Something I learned on this trip is rescuing and making the best of what’s still there and salvageable, especially having faced lots of challenges the first few days of this endeavor. What I see clearer now is that we’re all brothers, sisters, and share the same roots, history and 500 years of struggle weather we’re in the US, Australia or San Salvador.
The Article I quoted:
Ramirez, Marcela , Skrbiš, Zlatko and Emmison, Michael ‘TRANSNATIONAL FAMILY REUNIONS AS LIVED EXPERIENCE: NARRATING A SALVADORAN AUTOETHNOGRAPHY’, Identities, 14:4, 411 - 431
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