Karen Vega 🌸🌸🌸 : Oaxacan Model

“cigarettes… in tiny liquor bottles.

just what you’d, expect.

inside her new,

Balenciaga.”

You just posted like ten different things about potatoes in the span of maybe five minutes, and I gotta know your take on "The Martian".

Like, the (fictional) man alone on a planet literally only survives because of potatoes shrink-wrapped in plastic for a Thanksgiving meal. If they weren't slated to be on Mars for Thanksgiving, he would have died.

And Andy Weir (author of the original novel) did such a good job with the science of every other element to the story, I honest-to-god believe that potatoes could actually manage to grow in Martian soil (even if that's not been proven for certain afaik).

Which means..... could potatoes terraform Mars into sustaining life??? Are potatoes the key to the universe???

Haha sorry for going so hard on them! Those were mostly all posts from 2020 when gardening and fantasy worldbuilding were lockdown fixations for me. One of them blew up recently so I wanted to give The People more of the content it seemed they were looking for. I don't actually know a lot about potatoes. I just think they're neat.

I do not want to take apart the concept of "colonizing Mars" as some kind of woke gotcha. I want to take your question seriously and charitably. However, I just am the kind of person who's like "Hmm, 'colonize', we should really stop and unpack that word," so let's do that, without forgetting the potato element.

(What "I don't know a lot" means: Potatoes were a crop my family grew several acres of for a few years on our farm before we switched our focus to sheep. I am about 50% as reliable as a horticultural brochure on various potato diseases and growing condition issues. I have listened to two University lectures and read perhaps four historical journal articles beginning-to-end on how the Columbian Exchange affected early-modern Europe, that and half as much again on medieval and early modern European farming practices and population changes, and perhaps three science/history articles specifically on the domestication and proliferation of the potato. I am a white Canadian who actively seeks out information and training in Indigenous history and culture in the Americas, but that's probably still only equal to like, two Native Studies classes in university. I know more than the average person on this topic, but I am also not an expert compared to people who have devoted serious time to learning about this.)

But I have some intuitions in a couple of ways:

The Martian is probably being wildly over-optimistic about its potatoes. They would probably have been irradiated into sterility before being vacuum-packed, and I don't think you can split and propagate them that quickly or successfully. However, potatoes can definitely grow in all kinds of conditions (including under my sink).

They might not be the world's healthiest or happiest potatoes, tho. Soil quality definitely affects the end product. Presumably Watney, being a botanist studying Mars' soil composition, knew how much he had to ameliorate his soil with latrine compost (which would definitely have needed a LOT of processing, since human waste is generally not good for plants, but maybe he used chemicals to speed that up?) to get good soil. However, we would probably need to add a LOT of shit to Mars' soil (and air, and water) for it to host plant life.

Mark Watney makes a joke about having "colonized Mars" because "colony" is Latin for "farm" and he farmed on Mars so haha, funny joke! And we talk about colonies on Mars partly because that's what science fiction did, and a lot of science fiction has been into that colonialism aesthetic. But colonialism and empires actually aren't great, not just because they necessitate huge amounts of racism, oppression, and genocide—I know, you asked me a fun question about potatoes and did not sign up for this, I'm not here to drag you, hear me out—but because they're also really sucky models for agriculture and successful societies generally.

My British ancestors tried to be colonial farmers in a place that is sometimes colder than Mars (Canada's Treaty Six), and let me tell you: IT SUCKED. Most of the crops and herbs and vegetables and flowers that settlers here brought from home and are used to? DON'T FUCKEM GROW. For the Canadian prairies to become conventional farmland, farmers and scientists had to scramble to find, or produce, cold-hardy varieties of everything from wheat to roses. A lot of flowers and plants that are unkillable invasive zombie perennials in other climates don't survive our winters no matter hard we try. The trees and flowers that hold cultural or sentimental attachments for us often don't grow here. The climate is so harsh and population is spread so thin that we cannot do the 100 mile diet and eat foods we're familiar with, and can hardly even manage the 1000 mile diet. (Not that I try, but, my family did once look into it)

A huge number of colonial homesteads, where the pioneers go out on their little covered wagon and build little houses on the prairie? Failed miserably and got bought up by land speculators. My own family came out to Alberta in the 1880s and moved around from land assignment to land assignment, like, six times before settling at their current place in the early 1900s.

Meanwhile: POTATOES

Potatoes are less than ten thousand years old! I am not any kind of expert on archaeology, please nobody throw things, but humans showed up in the Andes (think: high, cold mountains) of South America roughly 9,000 years ago. There are hundreds of wild potato varieties, but they generally produce fairly tiny tubers. It took active work of Indigenous Andean people around 8,000 years ago around Lake Titicaca to cultivate specific strains of potato, doing oldschool genetic modification to make them bigger, more delicious, and hardier. From that cultivation effort around a single species of wild potatoes, they produced thousands of cultivated potato varieties.

Ancient Andean farmers and botanists also played a big part in cultivating quinoa from wild amaranth, as well as producing modern food crops you probably haven't heard of, like oca, olluco, mashua, and yacon, and also coca, which may get a bad rap because it's what cocaine and coca-cola are made from but you cannot deny it's got kick.

Basically, Indigenous people of the Americas (South, Central, and North) went all in on botany and plant cultivation. Plants that we take for granted now have mostly been developed by Indigenous people in the past few thousand years: Tobacco, sunflowers, marigolds, tomatoes, pumpkins, rubber, vanilla, cocoa, sweetcorn, maize, and most kinds of pepper except peppercorn. These things were not found; they were made, by careful cultivation of the world as it was.

This gives us a vision of the future. Colonization, and industrial agriculture, both lean us towards the vision of a totally uniform end product, with the same potato varieties grown on each farm because we have made every farm the same. Instead we could embrace biodiversity and focus on privileging local knowledge and considering the interactions of environment, plants, microbiota, and people. We could create potatoes that were happy on Mars. We could create Mars that is happy to have us. We could create a society that can accept what Mars has to offer.

A lot of why we dream about colonizing Mars is the idea that the Earth itself is dying, that we are killing it, and we need to abandon this farmstead and seek out a new frontier. I acknowledge that shit is bad, but I don't agree with that framing. I am increasingly persuaded that there is a third path between ecological destruction and mass exodus, and I think we need to reject European colonial mentality that creates the forced choice. I find far more use in privileging the knowledge of people who live on and with land than their landlords and rulers, and I especially find value in Indigenous knowledge of land management practices and food production.

I am absolutely not saying that Indigenous people were or are wonderful magical ~spiritual beings~ who frolicked in an Edenic paradise that only knew death and disease once white people showed up. This isn't noble savage bullshit, nor am I invoking people who existed once but whom I have never met. I am saying that I have Indigenous neighbours, colleagues, relatives, and elected representatives. I have learned about mental health, leatherworking, botany, and ecology from Metis and First Nations elders and knowledge-keepers. And like. They have good and useful shit to say.

This is about culture, not race. It is not that their biological DNA means that they know more than me about how to get food from this landscape. It's about cultural history and what we learn from our heritages. What have our cultures privileged? Like, Europe has historically been super into things like metallurgy, domesticating livestock, and creating dairy products. If I want to smelt iron or choose animals to make cheese from, European society would have a lot of useful information for me! And what Indigenous cultures in the Americas have historically focused on instead of cows and copper* include 1) getting REAL familiar with your local flora and figuring out how to make sure you have lots of the herbs and grains and roots and berries you need, and 2) how to make a human society where people can live and have good lives, but do not damage the environment enough to impair the ability of future generations to have the same sort of life.

*Several indigenous American cultures did practice various forms of metallurgy. It's just one of those proportional things, about what societies really go for

Conclusion

I think we could use the processes that formed the potato to find and foster forms of life that could survive on Mars. It would involve learning to think that botany is a sexy science, and understanding just how rich and complicated the environment is. To oxygenate the atmosphere, we'd have to get super enthusiastic about algae and lichen and wetlands. We would have to learn to care deeply about the microorganisms living in the soil, and whether the potatoes are happy.

We'd have to create an economy that counts oxygen and carbon dioxide production on its balance sheets. To learn how to wait for forests to grow back after a fire, instead of giving up in despair because the seedlings aren't trees yet. To do the work now and be hopeful even though we might not see the payoffs for decades, or our victories might only be witnessed by future generations.

So yes, I think we could totally plant potatoes on Mars

But I also think that if we ever got there, we'd have turned into the kind of people who could also save Earth in the first place.

Which makes it a good enough goal in my opinion.

Hi! You don't have to answer this if you don't want to, that's totally fine! But you talking about Orville Peck's appropriation of indigenous culture with his fashion choices made me realize that I had never considered that there might be some aspects of "cowboy clothes" that white ppl shouldn't wear and that was super wrong of me. Again, you totally don't have to answer this, but I was just wondering what ways a white person could wear "cowboy clothes" in a manner that wasn't disrespectful? Or perhaps, should we not wear them at all? I can't afford T yet, but when I can finally get it I was planning on getting a cowboy outfit to embrace my trans mascness, but if that would be wrong of me I can scrap that plan no problem!

Ehhh again this is actually SUPER HARD to answer because almost everything about cowboy fashion & the cowboy "aesthetics" are lifted directly from Native American fashion and culture, either because a lot of cowboys back in the day were Native American themselves (including Afro-Natives & Indigenous Mexican vaqueros) or they were White & just kinda. stole the look from the Native cowboys due to a number of factors.

If you google "cowboy jewelry" the first thing that comes up is silverwork & belts & turquoise jewelry, which is taken from Navajo metalwork. Fringed leather clothing? Again, many Native tribes did that (& in some tribes the fringes could mean something, its not just for looks), most popularily with vests, jackets, and pants. A lot if the leather jackets were a result of Native women just sewing their clothes the same but in a European styled cut. Compare this "cowboy" look below to a Lakota war shirt: both have hair embellishments dangling from the arms.

Studded belts? Inspired by Cheyenne mirror belts, which often also have metal studs in them & you'll still see Native pow wow dancers have this in their regalia. Floral vests? A lot of the inspiration comes from Plains floral beadwork. Geometric patterns and blankets? Came from Southwest or Mexican Native American blankets & designs, ask any Navajo weaver & they'll tell you the same. Feathers in cowboy hats? Who else is famous for wearing feathers on their heads--? Native Americans. The look is still popular with older Native men.

Hell, if you visit this site that sells Western/cowboy fashion, you'll see a SHITTON of appropriation going on, taking Native imagery & designs, including one taken from Native American ledger art, all on White models.

The appropriation of Native culture and fashion in the cowboy/western sphere is ongoing, and the influence that Native fashion & culture has in Western/cowboy fashion as it is is absolutely MASSIVE. I once said in another post that the cowboy/western aesthetic essentially belongs to Native Americans, Latines (especially Mexicans), and Black people. And the history of White cowboys has been one largely of colonialism, racism, and displacement of Indigenous peoples, and the masculinity associated with White cowboys especially is also steeped into racism & American patriotism (think John Wayne. There's a reason he's an American icon who played cowboys & killing Indians in films.). I think the only thing that isn't influenced from either appropriation or colonization is like, jeans. Even the style of cowboy boots themselves and potentially chaps were influenced from vaqueros.

So if you're White I'm not sure that'd exactly be a good route to take because trying to seperate Indigenous elements from this fashion/look (nevermind the problematic history of White cowboys) is almost impossible. Obviously I can't force you to do anything, but honestly if I were you, I'd try a different direction, because otherwise I think you'll find trying to do this will be very hard.

let's learn about spanish with haikyuu!

if you’re an argentinian animanga fan, you might have seen this image before. this is a panel from ivrea’s edition of haikyuu which has gone viral a few times in our country. if you’re not a native spanish speaker and you’re interested in knowing what makes this panel so special, i got you!

as you know, spanish has many different dialects and their own regional variations. and when i say many, i mean it. here’s a list of dialects you can find in the americas only (and that’s not even all of them). of course, spanish speakers from different countries can understand each other, but these dialects vary so much from one another when it comes to slang, pronunciation, accent and even grammar that we can easily get lost when we hear fellow hispanics speak. back in the 20th century, this was a problem for foreign companies that wanted to enter the hispanic market. making dozens of different translations that catered to each hispanic country was too expensive, so they came up with a more profitable solution: they created español neutro (neutral spanish), español internacional (international spanish) or standard spanish. this type of spanish is an artificial variation of spanish used exclusively for commercial purposes. it's limited to latin american only, while peninsular spanish speakers (the standard spanish dialect spoken in spain) have their own standardized version.

español neutro is supposed to be a variation of spanish that speakers can’t associate to any specific place or region. that’s why it omits any type of slang, colloquial language or intonation that might be confusing for its audience (though it’s modeled after standardized mexican spanish). that’s the spanish we’ve seen in many books, tv shows, movies and games growing up. people don’t actually speak español neutro. but it's been around for a long time, so we're used to it by now. obviously, we can recognize why this type of spanish feels unfamiliar to us. imitating how characters speak in tv shows is even an on-going joke here. 

(disclaimer before i go on: i don’t want you to think our dubs are bad because of this, they’re great. though i’d say our most beloved dubs are the ones where voice actors have more freedom and they choose to include slang and intonation. the dub for adventure time’s jake the dog is an all time favorite here in latin america, but after five years of giving life to to jake, cartoon network told his voice actor to stop using “mexicanisms” and stick to the script.)

as i said, we’re used to it. maybe too much. people are so accustomed to it that they find it weird when they read or watch localized media in their own dialects of spanish. that's where manga comes in. the two biggest argentinian manga publishers, ivrea and panini, localize their works. they’re translated to español rioplatense or rioplatense spanish, which is the standard dialect of argentina and uruguay. that’s a rare translation choice. and, of course, people complain about it. they say it's vulgar or too informal, that it's not "pure spanish" like español neutro or that it just makes them uncomfortable, and even more.

[translation of the post: Why does IVREA use so many localisms? It ruins the immersion and they seem excessively forced, you can use "girl" instead and it sounds much more natural.]

i can assure you that denji saying power es buena mina is extremely natural. it's slang, we say that all the time in everyday conversation. es buen pibe (he's a good guy) and es buena mina (she's a good girl) are common expressions. besides, denji's not the type of guy who speaks formally. this choice goes well with the tone of the work. the only difference between chica and mina is that the latter comes from lunfardo, which was the jargon of the lower classes in buenos aires in the late 19th/early 20th century. lunfardo was influenced by european, african and indigenous languages, integrating words and phrases from all of them. over time, it became part of our own vernacular, and many of its words and phrases are used now in everyday language, regardless of class. if you ever heard argentinian words like laburar, chamuyar, pibe, boludo, facha, etc., those are lunfardo.

so, let’s get back to manga. personally, i love these translations, and a lot of other people enjoy them as well. what some consider unfamiliar or weird, others consider refreshing and fun. the panel i used to introduce this post is a great example of rioplatense localization in manga. in this scene, hinata and kageyama ask tsukishima to help them study and he refuses. in the original japanese, hinata calls tsukishima kechishima (kechi: stingy + [tsuki]shima). the official english translates it to "stupishima" (though i should add that "stingyshima" is the more popular nickname, popularized by the official anime eng sub).

ivrea’s translation does the same pun here, but instead of using spanish equivalents like tacaño, mezquino, egoísta (or even more colloquial language like agarrado o amarrete), it chooses the word ortiva/ortiba. 

ortiba is also lunfardo. this word is the result of reversing the order of the syllables in batidor (whisk). this word formation mechanism is called vesre (revés: reverse). it’s similar to back slang in english. this is extremely common in argentina. some popular examples of vesre are garpar (pagar: to pay), jermu (mujer: woman), garcar (cagar: to cheat, to swindle). here’s an example of vesre in dorohedoro:

sopermi = permiso (excuse me)

the term ortiba was originally used to refer to informers that worked for the police, snitches. nowadays, that meaning mostly fell into disuse. it’s more common to use ortiba for people who usually refuse to take part in certain activities or plans (which has some similarity to its original meaning, someone that betrays their peers). you can also be called ortiba if you’re someone grumpy or someone who doesn’t let other people enjoy themselves. there’s not really an agreement on the spelling, people use both ortiba and ortiva interchangeably. it can also be used as a verb (no te ortives). i think buzzkill, spoilsport, killjoy or party pooper are english nouns that are similar in meaning. let’s give an example:

rioplatense spanish:

a: ¿te pinta salir hoy?

b: no, ni ahí.

a: fua, qué ortiba.

english:

a: feel like going out today?

b: no, no way.

b: wow, what a buzzkill.

so, you probably get the gist of that haikyuu panel now. hinata is calling tsukishima un ortiva because he doesn’t want to help them with their studies, and suggests they should call him ortishima. i fear this will only be funny to you if you’re argentinian, but at least you learned something new about spanish today! yippee!

Similar problems arise with Vettese and Pendergrass’s contention that “the easiest—and perhaps only—way to achieve large-scale reforestation and feed the world at the same time is through widespread veganism.” They defend this contention by feeding into their model per capita estimates of land requirements for different dietary regimes based on agricultural figures within the coterminous United States and multiplying these by global population numbers. Notably, even the article from which these estimates are drawn observes that a smaller total number of people can be supported by a vegan diet than a vegetarian or low-meat mixed one, as the former is unable to use land suitable to grazing. Although this may be less of a problem in the context of the United States—as even the lowest estimate of the maximum population fed by U.S. agriculture is 1.3 times the size of the 2010 U.S. population—it becomes a much more dangerous assumption when applied to more arid regions, such as parts of Africa, Latin America, and Asia, where attempts to impose sedentary agriculture on Indigenous populations have undermined pastoral livelihoods with disastrous social and ecological consequences. It also runs counter to the nonprofit organization GRAIN’s contentions that struggles around agriculture and sustainability need to start from the premise that “farming communities should also be able to decide by and for themselves, and without pressure, the type of land tenure they want to practice”—a sentiment echoed by movements such as La Vía Campesina and in the Marseille Manifesto. These complexities do not negate the fact that shifting that portion of the world’s population presently consuming large quantities of industrially produced meat to a more vegetable-based diet would have numerous health, ecological, and ethical benefits. Rather, a more comprehensive ecological approach suggests that there are problems with assuming that experiences and conditions based on a single U.S. metropolitan view are directly translatable into global realities. As Rob Wallace and Max Ajl point out in response to a piece co-authored by Vettese that advocates Half-Earth Socialism, planetary veganism, and synthetic meat in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, many vegan criticisms of the social-ecological effects and suffering inflicted by industrial animal husbandry are valid. Nevertheless, they lose their moral and empirical backing when they adopt a series of settler-colonial biases that facilitate the careful drawing of distinctions between industrial and sustainable cultivation of plants while treating industrial and peasant animal husbandry as an undifferentiated whole. That is, the differences between peasant and pastoral animal husbandry practiced by countless peoples around the world and industrial livestock operations are as great as those that Vettese and Pendergrass recognize between industrial and organic agriculture, in terms of their ecological consequences, their contributions to and imbrications with cultural identities, and the amount of harm inflicted on the animals involved. In this sense, Vettese and Pendergrass’s universal condemnation of all “animal husbandry as one of the most consequential and dangerous ways humans shape life on Earth” is both inaccurate and reflects what Wallace and Ajl refer to as “specific values, specific devaluations, and pathological externalizations” undergirding a project “that consents to the brute confiscation and erasure of peasant and pastoral particularisms in the name of ‘universal’ ideals: rewilding Earth upon the bones of supposedly atavistic peoples poor and brown.”

on the Latin anon. It's just so hard to find representation for latin or indigenous features - in all the latin diversity. I went through the tag latin and mostly found afro latina. Would just love to see more representation of copper and olive skinned people as well.

Thank you again for your blog. Celebrating models of color is really empowering and inspirational particularly from non conventional sizes

Hey , love 🩷 Idk if you and this anon are the same person but now I understand the question fully . Thank you for mention the Indigenous Models bc they do exist , if you want to support them on social media : Khadijha Red Thunder , Lizzy Yusuff , Denali White Elk , Karen Vega , Cherokee Jack , Celeste Romero , Quaana Chasinghorse , Valentine Alvarez , Heather Diamond Strongarm , Phillip Bread

I will do my best to check more often the models you're looking for . Thank you for supporting my blog

could you please suggest some of your favorite latin face claims that need to be used more ???

𝙝𝙞 𝙗𝙖𝙧𝙗𝙞𝙚! reminder that i've been out of the scene for a long while, so i'm not exactly up to date on who's super popular in the rpc at the moment! but here are some lovely fcs who have very little or no resources, or just some who i love and who aren't as well known names ♡ if you ever gif anyone on one of my underused masterlists, please feel free to tag me in the packs!! you can honestly tag me in just about anything #fcsources

Andrew M. Gray ( 1987, actor, part mixed Mexican-Miwok )

Bobby Cannavale ( 1970, actor, half Cuban )

Daniela Lopez Osorio ( 1993, model, Colombian )

Dario Yazbek Bernal ( 1990, actor, at least half Mexican && parts Lebanese and white )

David Castaneda ( 1989, actor, Mexican )

Debora Nascimento ( 1985, actress, Afro-Brazilian-Indigenous )

Eva Mendes ( 1974, actress, Cuban )

Freddie Prinze Jr. ( 1976, actor, one quarter Puerto Rican )

Genesis Rodriguez ( 1987, actress, half Cuban && half Venezuelan )

Giovana Cordeiro ( 1996, actress, Afro-Brazilian )

Harvey Newton Haydon ( 1988, model, part Cuban )

Izzy Marshall ( age unknown, actress, unspecified Latina-Indigenous )

Jorge Lopez ( 1991, actor, Chilean )

Juliana Herz ( 1989, model, Costa Rican )

Justin Johnson Cortez ( age unknown, actor, part Mexican-Indigenous )

Laura Archbold ( 1989, actress, Colombian )

Lisette Olivera ( 1999, actress, Mexican )

Lizeth Selene ( 1999, actor, Afro-Mexican-Indigenous, non-binary )

Luna Blaise ( 2001, actress, half Mexican )

Manni Perez ( age unknown, actress, unspecified Latina )

Mark Consuelos ( 1971, actor, half Mexican )

Natalia Castellar ( 1999, model, Puerto Rican )

Nessa Barrett ( 2002, musician, Puerto Rican )

Otmara Marrero ( 1989, actress, Cuban )

Phoenix Calderon ( age unknown, model, unspecified Latina, plus-size )

Raul Esparza ( 1970, actor, Cuban )

Renata Notni ( 1995, actress, Mexican )

Rodrigo Santoro ( 1975, actor, Brazilian )

Ruben Cortada ( 1984, actor, Cuban )

Sivan Alyra Rose ( 1999, actor, half Apache && half Puerto Rican, non-binary )

Tashi Rodriguez ( 1994, model, Afro-Puerto Rican )

Taylor Lashae ( 1988, model with acting roles, half Colombian )

Teresa Ruiz ( 1988, actress, Mexican )

So something that’s kind of funny is that a few years ago, back when I was living in California, I saw a post where someone said that Christianity is antisemitic and genocidal.

My personal experience with Christianity was neither, but I knew that Evangelical Christianity, particularly in or from the United States and Britain, certainly was, and that even the history of my church was not free from guilt, and that even a neutral reckoning of the American spiritual milieu would identify Christianity as invasive, if only because, despite Mormon and Anglo settler “Eden” mythology, no element of modern Anglo Christianity can be considered endemic. So I sent them an ask that said actually Christianity is not evil per se, because certain of its manifestations even in America or the Americas are liberating and sources of community in the context of antisocial, misanthropic Anglo industry’s war on community. You know, Christianity was a charity network before the Roman Emperor made it fit orthodoxy, canon, and hierarchy, so colonized peoples can refine away the imperial slag and find the liberating philosophy thereunder.

I got blocked, so I doubted. Maybe Christianity really was fundamentally antisemitic and even genocidal, after all because of standpoint epistemology I am not qualified to say that something is not antisemitic, even if my own experience with it didn’t involve any hatred. So I researched and researched the history of the church and of Judaism. I strengthened my knowledge of Koine and learned Hebrew. I learned about the disconnect between Paul and Peter, between indigenous and Roman, between English and Catholic, between Latin and Greek—and Aramaic! I learned why and how so much of Christianity was antisemitic and I was not at all surprised to find that the problem with Christianity, like any religion or cultural medium, was Empire. The Greeks, the Romans, the British, and the Americans all make the Kingdom of Heaven conveniently eschatological rather than, as indigenous people have clearly identified all throughout history, the immediate model of a just society. Empires disarm a philosophy of resistance by making it a religion.

But of course I do all of this defensive intellectual self-improvement rooted in self doubt because of the judgement of a person found in the Zionist block list, so their position as an arbiter of antisemitism is, to say the least, a little fragile. To them, a people’s identity is antisemitic because they will not deny their own indigeneity and roll over when a colonizer tells them to stop existing. The slogan “from the river to the sea” is threatening for correctly identifying where their people lived before they were confined to Bantustans. Violently resisting the genocidal project of an ethnostate is somehow itself antisemitic.

Yeah, no, maybe you should try to educate yourself before using your book tumblr platform to justify crimes against humanity.

ik you're not our secretary but to make myself clear: i am not stating Spain didn't influence latino colorism and racism. It is obvious they did, 500 years of colonization are no joke. I'm saying that the USA also influences how we view race due to its closeness and its pervasiveness. Both systems are anti-black and discriminatory towards indigenous people but who gets to be "white" differs. I'm saying that nowadays who gets to be "white" is dictated by usian standards, not by spanish ones.

The spanish caste system wasnt based on genetics or our modern view of race, they thought you could change color depending on what you ate. The modern category of race was invented somewhere in the XIX Century and the categorization of race based on heritage (genetics) "how many parents and grandparents are white/black" was invented by usians. This is more or less the current view we also have of race as latinos too. Before there wasn't a clear cut link between genetics and physionomy because those didnt exist, and nowadays those concepts are key when discussing race.

Which actually gives you a point: Spain and LatAm aren't interchangeable and "hispanic" is a dumb category. Brazilians and Colombians have more in common than Colombians and Spaniards.

"The modern category of race was invented somewhere in the XIX Century and the categorization of race based on heritage (genetics) "how many parents and grandparents are white/black" was invented by usians"

The US did not invent casta. That entire thing was based on "how many parents and grandparents are white/black."

Spanish/Portuguese colonial status quo was defined by strictly controlled racial integration. English/Dutch colonial status quo was defined by strictly controlled racial segregation. Interracial sex was taboo in English/Dutch colonies but widespread in Spanish/Portuguese colonies. This is the main difference in historical race relations.

In the 20th century, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay had open immigration policies that attracted Europeans. Most white Latinos are descendants of 20th century European immigrants. Most white people in the US and Canada are descendants of European settlers who came here in the 1700s. While Southern European colonists were intermarrying, Northern European colonists were mostly inbreeding the entire time.

20th century US conceptions of race were not defined by TV executives or modeling agencies. They were defined by Teddy Roosevelt, the most influential macho figure in US culture. He did not invent US imperialism of Latin America for economic reasons. He invented it for race reasons. Teddy could've economically exploited Canada. But according to Teddy, it isn't right for white people to exploit each other. And Teddy believed Latin America needed to have a white overlord. It didn't matter how Spanish or indigenous anyone was because in Teddy's worldview, Spaniards were not white.

Teddy's racial pseudoscience is influential but not eternal. Italian Americans managed to change their racial social status from brown to white. Maybe US Latinos want to be like Italian Americans and break out of the racial category Teddy assigned them. But I don't think that's politically possible at the moment. Race is not how you identify. Race is how society identifies you. It's about creating an other in order to define who belongs in society and who doesn't. Southern Europeans were able to become white in the US because the Cold War ended. Americans no longer needed to define themselves in opposition to the peasants that introduced unions to the US. Now, US society defines itself in opposition to Latino immigrants. Every piece of US policy comes back to that from housing and infrastructure to the war in Ukraine.

Mari Wapichana with her Amazon Parrot friend🌿🌿🌿

Somebody I follow has decided to hate men. Saying feminists don't hate men enough.

I think being bitter towards men is fine.

But I think I want to think about that further.

I firmly encourage to anyone who supports feminism to do some reading on the subject.

I am no expert, all of my knowledge comes from a "feminism 101"-type of book.

It's called "Las mujeres que luchan se encuentran" (Or "The women that fight find each other" in English) by Catalina Ruiz-Navarro. This book talks about everything you'd like to know about how latin american feminism works.

It talks about social classes, race, gender, sex, body biology, colonialism, abortion, flirting and uh yeah, about men too.

There is even a section named "Do feminists hate men?" under the Gender Violence chapter. In this same chapter, the sections also go through "differences between flirting and harassment, online misogyny, the Me Too movement, Is romance dead?, what are the men's roles?, can men be feminists? advice for men who want to be feminists" and such.

So, let me translate what Catalina Ruiz-Navarro wrote for "Do feminists hate men?":

"The short answer is no. Feminism is about looking for justice and equality between men and women, and the feminisms (She is using plural here to talk about the general intersection of feminism from all types of women and people), each one from their corner, offer a critique on how gender inequality joins forces with other types of oppression and exploitation. The feminist movements go against systems, of structural problems, not against individual men in particular. The feminisms also take different postures in front of cisgender men, but there are not universal rules in which us feminists should present towards men in general (In a previous chapter, Catalina shares how feminists from indigenous groups have other ways of life among men). However, the short answer is also Yes. What we call Man, cisgender, heterosexual, white, educated, Man, is a power model, and the people in these bodies many times abuse of that power. And the truth is, if you are a woman who understands what feminism blames, one cannot help but feel a certain type of fury for these unjust acts. We have the right to be angry. Women have gotten their rights negated and received violent exploitation in systematic ways. In some parts around the internet "thank goodness women want equality and not revenge" can be heard around. This anger is valid. What matters is telling the difference between hatred, which is a personal feeling, from discrimination, which is a structural problem that removes our rights. Same with misogyny, it is not enough to hate somebody to perpetuate violence on them and negate their rights. You would need a culture, an inequality structure, to favor discrimination."

but like yeah, I love this book anyway :D

Next chapter is titled "Sex" and opens with a section called "How are feminists supposed to fuck now?" which I think is funny.

Totally recommend reading the whole thing.

biography : alfred f. jones

COUNTRY INFORMATION

Official Name: United States of America

Capital: Washington D. C.

Largest City: New York City, New York

Official Language/s: English (de facto)

Government: Federal presidential constitutional republic

Demonym: American

Continent: North America

Area: 3,796,742 sq mi / 9,833,520 km2

Population: 333,287,557 (2022 estimate)

GDP: $26.855 trillion ($80,035 per capita) (2023)

Currency: US Dollar

Internet TLD: .us

Leader: President

HUMAN INFORMATION

Human Name: Alfred F. Jones

Meanings:

Alfred – "Elf counsel", Old English origin. Derived from "Alfred the Great", the first King of England. F. – Initially a very Puritan "Fly-Fornication". But he gives a different meaning every time when asked. From "Franklin", to "Francis", to "Fitzarthur"– and even joke-y ones like "Fuck-Off" and "Freedom". However, "Frederick" was the first one he ever picked himself, right after the American Revolution. Jones – "son of Jonathan", Welsh origin. Derived from John Paul Jones.

Nickname[s]: Al, Freddie

Age Appearance: mid-20s

Sex: AMAB

Gender: Cis Male

Orientation: Pansexual

Birthday: July 4th

ABOUT

Personality:

Positive Traits: Gregarious, optimistic, cheerful, outgoing, sociable, generous, determined, passionate, open-minded, eager to learn, protective, resourceful, adaptable Negative Traits: Domineering, obsessive, impulsive (or at least seems to be), "doing/talking without thinking", traditional in the oddest sense of the word/in a way that only makes sense to him, stubborn, dishonest

MBTI: ESFP (Se Fi Te Ni)

Enneagram: 8w7

Tritype: 829 (2w3, 9w1)

Instinctual Variant: sp/sx

Socionics: ENTj / LIE

Attitudinal Psyche: EFLV

Temperament: Choleric-Sanguine

Jungian Archetype: The Hero

Hobbies: The real question is "what hobbies does Alfred NOT have?"– Watching and making movies, assembling models of planes and tanks and what have you, archaeology, sports (baseball, football, basketball, etc.), dancing, cooking, carpentry, husbandry, "quick-draw", coding, playing instruments (guitar, harmonica, trumpet, percussion)

Languages Spoken: English, French, Latin, Spanish, Dutch, Filipino, German, Russian, Chinese (Mandarin), Various indigenous

Education: Various undergraduate degrees in the sciences and a few graduate degrees

Extras:

voice claim : talking / singing

Physical Description:

Alfred is young, tall and handsome— a Rockwell-esque, Hollywood-glam poster child for the most powerful Nation in history. He stands at around six foot and four inches, or roughly 193 centimeters. He has sandy blond hair cropped short, wide blue eyes ringed gold around the pupils, freckled tan skin, a powerful, muscular build, and a signature megawatt smile. Usually dressed casually, he’s most often seen in blues, reds, oranges or browns, or with some type of jacket on.

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i want good cc so i can make my indigenous and latine sims but the only cc i can find is Whyte ppl being like "exotic ethnic witchy shaman dark magic" or "[blantant shitty racist stereotype]" or "ethnic patterned bikini [models on thin white sims]" or "ethnic nosering"

I think it helps to explain US racial categories by starting with the entire Western Hemisphere. The Americas were a place people came to and there were similar patterns. Large numbers of Europeans immigrated, large numbers of Africans were forcefully brought as slaves, especially to the US, Caribbean, and Brazil. At the turn of the century, as there was a new wave of European immigration to the US through Ellis Island, people also immigrated to South America. There are large communities of Italian and Jewish people in New York, and also Argentina and Southern Brazil. Many Japanese immigrants settled on the US Pacific Coast, and also Peru and Brazil. Mexico and Central America have large numbers of people with indigenous heritage. It helps to understand that the reasons people came from Europe and Africa and Asia were similar no matter where they ended up. But where they ended up influenced their future nationality, culture, the language they would speak.

And then within the hemisphere, the US is a place people immigrate to. And when they come to the US the social rules around race and ethnicity change. Someone who considered themselves white in their home country might not be seen as white in the US because the social ideas around those constructs are different. But being from Latin America doesn't negate whiteness. A white Guatemalan (Oscar Isaac) is not going to face the same kind of racial discrimination as an indigenous Guatemalan. Not within Guatemala and not as an immigrant to the US. There are white Brazilians and Black Brazilians for the same reason there are white and Black US citizens. Brazilian model Gisele Bundchen, whose ancestry is 100 percent German, is white and is perceived as white in the US, until perhaps her nationality confuses someone. Because Americans are not good at grasping that the racial complexity of Latin America is actually really similar to theirs. But you know what? People from the Eastern Hemisphere aren't good at grasping it either.

In the US, demographic information is collected by race (White, Black, Other) and also ethnicity (Hispanic/non-Hispanic). This at least recognizes that someone who is Hispanic can be of any race.

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True, but I guarantee that a person like Oscar Isaac going by that after a winter indoors will be treated differently than if he has a tan and is going by an obviously Latino name in the US.

The argument revolves around civilization and barbarism as a trope reanimated, reimplanted, and at times denied in varying spheres of social life at distinct points in the construction of the Brazilian nation. [...] This [...] is about human beings and colonial ruins made both marginal and central to the construction of Brazil [...]. The city of Salvador, capital of the state of Bahia, is typically celebrated as the mythic site of Brazil’s African soul. It thus appears in nationalist thought as the proper place for defining tradition and locating blackness [...]. The State Government of Bahia has sought to reinforce this contested narrative [...]. Salvador has been portrayed for over a century as an African pole in the accounts of tropical creativity [...] that prop up modern Brazil. [...]

Here was a text by the engineer and newspaper reporter who, in 1902, published Os Sertões. Translated as Rebellion in the Backlands, Os Sertões describes da Cunha's travels to hinterlands with troops sent to quell a rebellion by former slaves and peasants in the Bahian village of Canudos, a space inscribed in the nation's consciousness as a sign of barbarity as well as resistance ever since.

The positivist ethnography of a community of sertanejos, or backlanders, slaughtered by an army in which the author was embedded stands as one of the clearest expressions of the 19th‐century dialectic of “civilization and barbarism.” [...] Da Cunha's À Margem da História, like Rebellion in the Backlands, examines an ostensibly barbarous corner of the nation, in this case the Amazonian borderlands. And, again like its antecedent, the description is ambivalent and strategic: Da Cunha worries about Peru's nomadic, “wastrel adventurers … opening up with rifle balls and machete strokes new paths … where they would leave behind … in the [form of] fallen‐in buildings or the pitiful figure of the sacrificed Indian, the only fruits of their …role as builders of ruins” (2006:55, emphasis added). But then he celebrates Brazil's Amazonian territories' colonization by sertanejos, the same people whose supposed backwardness and slaughter fascinates him in Rebellion in the Backlands. And even as he laments the destruction of indigenous lifeways, da Cunha draws on models gleaned from the Union Pacific, from comparisons of the Punjab to the Amazon, and from the British projects in India he took as indicative of state‐of‐the‐art engineering.

However, in working to authorize Brazilian control by importing ideas from European imperial ventures, he celebrates the sertanejos' “practical knowledge” (da Cunha 2006:82), rather than Europeans' calculations. But again, these sertanejos are the putative barbarians who captured his fancy as they were wiped out by the troops with whom he traveled to Bahia in the 1890s. [...]

Brazil spent 1808 to 1888 as an American regency and empire: In a maneuver catalyzed by Napoleon's 1807 invasion of the Iberian Peninsula, the British Navy transported Portugal's Royal Court to Brazil. There Emperor Dom João VI oversaw, albeit fitfully, possessions stretching from the Amazon to Angola and on to Macao and India until his return to Lisbon in 1822. Thus Rio de Janeiro served as a metropole, and an independent monarchy, at a moment when British troops sacked Washington and Latin America's creole republics waged wars of independence. [...] Monuments of Brazilianness the state sought to make compelling through racial mixture and national sentiment were for residents little more than ruinas, or ruins made significant only by their own labor.

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John Collins. ‘“But What if I Should Need to Defecate in Your Neighborhood, Madame?”: Empire, Redemption, and the “Tradition of the Oppressed” in a Brazilian World Heritage Site’. Cultural Anthropology. May 2008.