CPUSA

Although problematic like most documentaries, this somewhat sympathetic history of the Communist Party is full of interesting anecdotes about the experiences of its members. Furthermore, the documentary recognizes how the Communists played a pivotal role in numerous progressive social causes, particularly during the Depression. For that reason alone, closer scrutiny of the CPUSA is required. Of course, my reasons for any interest in it at all is related to its connections with Caribbean organizations and figures. 

Operation Bootstrap

A short video on Puerto Rico which praises Operation Bootstrap. It appears to be propaganda for the PPD and Operation Bootstrap, and presents it as being part of the economic miracle of the island and a model for economic development across the Global South. Since Haitian intellectuals like Cary Hector have called attention to the Puerto Rico model for understanding transformations like the rise of garment assembly factories in Port-au-Prince, a look at Operation Bootstrap in Puerto Rico is useful. Ayala and Bernabe show how it did little to weaken Puerto Rican reliance on the US, but it did play an important role in industrialization. This video, clearly a product of its time, ignores these contradictions but exemplifies the cultural politics of the PPD at the time (praise Puerto Rican culture or identity while maintaining a dependent relationship on the US). 

Haiti in the 1950s

This above video, directed by Leonard Forest in 1957, not 1953, depicts numerous aspects of Haitian social, economic, and cultural life worthy of our attention. It also depicts how the Haitian government and economic elites in Haiti wanted their country to be represented in Canada. For instance, the film touches upon Canadian involvement in mining, Haiti's coffee and sisal exports there, Francophone ties with Quebec, and Haiti's tourist sector. Believe it or not, at the time, Haiti was one of the tourist hotspots in the Caribbean, and the film promotes it through video footage of nightclubs, mention of new hotels, and Haiti's cultural displays (mostly music). A French version was also released, Bonjou' soleil which features Jean Price-Mars. 

Unsurprisingly, then, the film focuses on folklore, dance, and music while also promoting an image of Haitian industrial development, dams, economic diversification, and tourism. Intriguingly, although presenting Haiti as Francophone in some respects, it also acknowledges the Creole-speaking majority and literary developments in the language, particularly a segment of a scene from a play of Morisseau-Leroy. The folkloric dancers must have been from some of the formally trained troupes in Port-au-Prince, but, sadly, none are identified. However, for those who have read subsequent studies of the period, this short-lived belle époque of Haitian culture and economy was built on glass, and crashed spectacularly with the fall of Magloire and the rise of Duvalier. The cultural nationalism plus modernization favored by the likes of Price-Mars and others failed.

Stanley Crouch

Stanley Crouch speaking at a bookstore in Washington to promote one of his books. A certain autodidact who runs an amazing online resource can be clearly seen sitting in the front row. Crouch is a great curmudgeon whose writings, criticism, and wisdom excite and infuriate. 

A Puerto Rican in New York and Other Sketches

Although I must confess a great ignorance of Puerto Rican and Latinx literature, Jesus Colon's A Puerto Rican in New York and Other Sketches is an excellent collection of vignettes of Puerto Rican life in the American metropolis. A pioneer in English Puerto Rican migrant literature, Colon was also of African descent. Hence, my reason for reading his experiences in New York were related to my larger interests in Afro-Caribbean radicals of the first half of the 20th century. Winston James, for instance, includes Jesus Colon in a chapter on "Afro-Hispanic" radicals in his magisterial Holding Aloft the Banner of Ethiopia: Caribbean Radicalism in Early Twentieth Century America, but sets up a potentially problematic dichotomy between Colon and Arturo Schomburg. 

Colon, according to James, was mainly interested in class, Puerto Rican, and Latin American struggles, which is no surprise considering Colon's early contact with socialists and Communists. Schomburg, on the other hand, is depicted as black nationalist and the anomaly, at least in terms of the political inclinations of Puerto Ricans of African descent. Colon, supposedly, represented a more typical experience for Puerto Ricans engaged in radical politics and the Communist Party of the interwar years. Any overt black nationalist politics is supposedly an aberration for Puerto Ricans in New York. However, this dichotomy implies race consciousness must lead to a form of black nationalist or "race first" politics.

Nonetheless, when one peruses the pages of A Puerto Rican in New York, one cannot escape the constant references to racialization, anti-black discrimination, and the interplay between race and class. While Colon did not allude to Garvey or black nationalist politics, his roots among the artisans and working-class of Cayey and San Juan, which would have been comprised mainly of African-descended people, likely indicates a more nuanced view of the tangled relationship between race and class. A Puerto Rican in New York is definitely proletarian literature, identifying the Puerto Rican experience in New York entirely with anti-imperialism, working-class cultures, ghettoization, and the larger proletarian world of New York. And this proletarian world included Vito Marcantonio's Puerto Rican supporters, Jewish radicals, Panamanian West Indian workers, African Americans, and Latin musicians.

Experiences with reading in bed or the bathtub, leftist camp groups, strikes, monolingual Spanish-speaking Puerto Ricans getting lost in the city, and more abound in the book. And while African-Americans and West Indians are clearly distinct from Puerto Ricans, I don't think James was entirely fair to Colon and his growing racial consciousness as an "Afro-Latino." The mainly black and mulatto workers, artisans, tabaqueros and working-class Puerto Ricans of Brooklyn were certainly aware of their commonalities with African-Americans and West Indians, but those rooted in the early Puerto Rican labor movement, like Colon, would have, not surprisingly, been attracted to the socialists and Communists. Others, like Schomburg or M.A. Figueroa, turned to Garvey and the UNIA. Colon himself was involved with the NAACP and civil rights campaigns. His penetrating "Little Things are Big" make it demonstrably clear that he knew he was black. Yet, like the Anglophone West Indians, Colon remained firmly attached to his colonized homeland, Puerto Rico. Black and Latino, Afro-descendant and Latin American. ANd clearly he saw US rule, plus the centuries of Spanish colonialism, as part of the ongoing oppression of Afro-Puerto Ricans in the island and New York. 

Fringe

Fringe is the X-Files for the 9/11 era. Clearly influenced by X-Files in its early seasons, the show developed its own unique approach to the X-Files format. Further, the show's writers were far better at developing story arcs and preventing it from becoming too convoluted, in spite of some rather absurd science fiction mumbo jumbo: parallel universes, alternate timelines, and even soul magnets. Now, I will have to be on the prowl for another endearing and quirky science fiction series with the soul of Fringe.

Although the series started off rocky in the first season, and took some missteps in the fourth and fifth seasons (why would you remove Peter from several episodes of the fourth season when his relationship with Walter was part of the show's moral and emotional development?), its second and third seasons were spectacular science fiction television. Double agents, conspiracies, the conflict between the prime and parallel universes, and the perfect antagonists, like David Robert Jones, made for suspenseful television. Sure, Astrid is basically a glorified maid. Yeah, season 4 was clunky and season 5 was, while entertaining, lacking in the monster of the week format of the show's earlier seasons. But, one must acknowledge the creativity of the show in its willingness to explore all kinds of fringe science and take risks on the character development. 

Fringe was an amazing television experience for examining how science evolves faster than our morality, so we're forced to see Walter Bishop come to terms with the consequences of his actions. Watching Walter's relationship with Peter and, in turn, Olivia's relationships with the two were beautiful occasions. Peter and Olivia still aint nothing compared to Scully and Mulder, but their blossoming relationship nicely matches our growing affection for the world of Fringe. Shoot, now I want to go to Boston because of this show. Leonard Nimoy's presence, even though he does not appear in many episodes, also brought a degree of SF culture and history to the show, especially providing humorous moments such as Olivia's consciousness under the control of William Bell. Seeing Nimoy's character's other side in the fourth season, a result, ultimately, of the lack of Peter in that timeline, was likewise an interesting way to reset the show. X-Files has bequeathed to posterity an excellent science fiction show.

Ntyilo Ntyilo (Little Bird)

Although lacking the heavenly voice of Miriam Makeba, this exceptionally beautiful interpretation of Xhosa song "Nytilo Nytilo" is too gorgeous.