The film, Chinatown, starring the fabulous Faye "NO WIRE HANGERS!!!" Dunaway and the overrated Jack "I've made a career playing a one-dimensional caricature" Nicholson represents a slice of L.A. history at odds with the impending demographic future of the city, the state, and the Southwest--Latinas/os and Asians will comprise a majority. Unfortunately, we are currently waging the same water wars, as the hubris of our species continues to rape the land of its moisture by watering greedy border-crossing ryegrass, illegal alien palm trees, and undocumented eucalyptus trees. People refuse to recover the memory of the desert below their sweatshop Pradas. The illegal vegetation brought by the equally invasive foreigners have doomed this city because they could not appreciate the beauty of the desert landscape. In the film, the people of color including Mrs. Mulwray's butler, the Mexican boy with the burro in the dry riverbed, and the Chinese onlookers at the conclusion of the film are part of the geographic landscape, little more than a topographical feature. The white people are represented by the lavish Mulwray home front lawn and ostentatious backyard—complete with water feature—and hopelessly fragile. Mrs. Mulwray's father, Noah Cross, is an ironic moniker for a man who desired to own the public's freshwater and the Biblical Noah survived the wrathful God's epic flood. Considering his crime of incest and the arrogance of owning such a vital public resource, Noah "Inverted" Cross fits well with the violent patriarchs of the Abrahamic cults that continue to infect our species. Another irony is the director of the film, Roman Polanski, a convicted child rapist plays a small but violent role in the film when he slices Gittes' nose. This city was built on the sordid activities of the film industry. Men like Polanski are above the law; it is amazing he spent any time in jail before he fled the country. I find it disgusting that anyone in Hollywood would respect him or be willing to work with a man who drugged and raped a 13-year-old girl. The riverbed, Chinatown, and the other few locations where people of color reside are third spaces where angels fear to tread, where white people can commit their shady crimes without fear of reprisal. What is the "ghostmap" Chinatown is attempting to resurrect? The criminal nature of Anglo invasion and their water-sucking flora? The disappearance of the natural resources and the people of color? The "ghostmap" of L.A. is underneath the colonial rubble imposed by the U.S., Mexico, and Spain on the bodies of the indigenous flora and fauna and the corpses of unknown numbers of native peoples. This brings me back to the "ghostmap" found in the opening of Leslie Marmon Silko's monumental text, The Almanac of the Dead:
PROPHECY
When Europeans arrived, the Maya, Azteca, Inca cultures had already built great cities and vast networks of roads. Ancient prophecies foretold the arrival of Europeans in the Americas. The ancient prophecies also foretell the disappearance of all things European.
THE INDIAN CONNECTION
Sixty million Native Americans died between 1500 and 1600. The defiance and resistance to things European continue unabated. The Indian Wars have never ended in the Americas. Native Americans acknowledge no borders; they seek nothing less than the return of all tribal lands.
This concrete wasteland does not represent progress, rather egress—we must expel Western ontology and embrace an earth-centered epistemology if we intend on continuing as a species.
PROPHECY
When Europeans arrived, the Maya, Azteca, Inca cultures had already built great cities and vast networks of roads. Ancient prophecies foretold the arrival of Europeans in the Americas. The ancient prophecies also foretell the disappearance of all things European.
THE INDIAN CONNECTION
Sixty million Native Americans died between 1500 and 1600. The defiance and resistance to things European continue unabated. The Indian Wars have never ended in the Americas. Native Americans acknowledge no borders; they seek nothing less than the return of all tribal lands.
This concrete wasteland does not represent progress, rather egress—we must expel Western ontology and embrace an earth-centered epistemology if we intend on continuing as a species.
I witnessed the womyn/magick below at Mujeres de Maiz five years ago. Afro-Peruvian legend Susana Baca accompanied by Quetzal, La Santa Cecilia, and Puerto Rican dancers and drummers. This night opened a portal towards my own decolonization that I had read about in Silko and Anzaldua.