Monday, August 29, 2011

Growing up in Los Angeles (Part Two): Outlines

Part 2: Outlines

By Armando Ortiz

Another memory that comes to mind, when the citipati comes out and circles around my mind, is the sudden appearance of two images in the middle of the playground of our elementary school. Our school didn’t have a grassy area, it was just one long asphalt field where kids played basketball, tetherball, kickball and other games. In the summer the black playground seemed to radiate more heat than the sun’s rays. The images resembled astronauts spacewalking, suspended in space, like the image of the first cosmonauts that orbited the earth. In between these two images was something that we believed to be a light-saber, like the ones used in the space wars film.

The unnatural beings appeared to be suspended in mid flight within a petrol background, giving the impression that time had suddenly stopped for the astronauts. Space, in this case, was where we played kickball. A black lake of asphalt with solid yellow lines indicating where kids lined up in the mornings and played during the day. Outlines, these were the only remnants the travelers had left behind, as if the black grounds had made them disappear.  The ground was hard, and we ran from one end to the other. We stepped on the outlines and bounced the basketball over the images for days, weeks and months until the rubber of our soles and soccer balls finally made them disappear. Those that had laid there were no longer present, leaving behind a cookie cutter image of themselves. Maybe it had been kids writing on the ground, dreaming and drawing what they would be when they grew up, space explorers. Similar to the assignment every kid gets by outlining one’s body on a piece of paper, cutting it out and drawing in personal details.

Who had been outlined on our playground and why hadn’t the markings been removed soon afterward is something that I ask myself. Why did these images give the impression that they were men in space, lethargically moving and floating in a cold environment that very few people get to experience. Is death an experience so individual and so haunting that even as a child I ignored it and believed that quite possibly these images were of two people break dancing to the music that was popular back then. For a long time my naïve mind wasn’t able to conceptualize what the white outlines were. Looking back now I realize that this was a crime outline of two people who had lost their lives on our playground.

Across the street from the school was a house that was covered with evergreen vines, and everyone in our class thought it was not only haunted but kept by a solitary strange lady. We’d heard that an old lady lived inside. Next to our school was also an abandoned house that sheltered occasional vagrants and unknown people. Strange things were said to happen inside that house, things that as kids we didn't want to dwell too much on, like wandering spirits and those that loved the night. These residential areas were creepier and haunting than the images that had been aero-soled on the ground. We thought twice about going near those places, yet we didn’t care if the outlines were possibly of two people who had been characters in a real life game of Street Fighter. 

These images revealed things that kids were too young to understand, the increasing problems that the city was facing was one part. What kept us preoccupied most back then was going to recess, eating lunch and playing with our buddies. After school we all went back home and watched cartoons. Occasionally stopping to look at the supposedly haunted houses next to the school. It was believed that at night screams could be heard from the empty house. From the outside we could see the acronyms sprayed on the walls of the house and the nicknames of unknown ghosts painted on the stairs, names like Spooky, Tecolote, and Sombra. Everything seemed to exist in the magical realms of cartoon reality and primitive necessity. The perceived unknown was familiar to us, like a gun fight taking place in front of our homes, and the stories told by parents and what we saw on the screens brought fear to our thoughts, like the wicked witch of the east.


Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Growing up in Los Angeles (Part One): Drawings

Part 1: Drawings

By Armando Ortiz

Memories of my elementary school years suddenly dance out from the hidden catacombs of the mind, like citipati. Salsa or Cumbias are not emanating from the bowels of my subconscious; it’s more like simple ritual dances meant to honor the moon and ancient spirits. Images seen with the eyes but not lived or experienced become more and more haunting as I become older, and at times can only understand or explain things under the hypnotic rattling coming from an old tortoise rattle. 

I was in the second grade, and on a particular day was drawing on a notebook. A bunch of buddies of mine were drawing spaceships and rockets.  Each one had their own notebook or piece of paper to draw their image. One of them, who was from El Salvador, kept drawing some strange things. We found it strange the way he drew his bombs, and couldn’t pinpoint what were the things drawn or how those instruments could be used. Generally speaking, projectiles with bombs flew to the heavens, but this was different. The drawing he made looked like pointy dreidel tops that are used for games where one spins the tops, and instead of having markings that told the player what they had won after the spinning had stopped his bombs were left blank. There was no reason to draw these funny looking things, but that is beside the point. The point is that it created vexation amongst us because it couldn’t be identified; maybe I was the only one from the group that was unable to see the meaning behind what the kid drew. 


I remember asking him, “What are those things?,” and he replied with a blank stare, “Bombs.”

“Bombs?,” I replied with an incredulous wave of intonation.

“Yes,” he said.

The only images I had of bombs back then were of dynamite sticks that resembled large firecrackers. Big red dynamite sticks that had ACME plastered on the sides and came out in cartoon programs. The missiles that projected out of the television were always shooting up to the heavens. Interestingly these missiles, as they were drawn by me were always pointing up or passing through clouds.  I recall going back to my desk and drawing a version of what proper bombs looked like to show him, drawing them all cool and explaining to him how real bombs went up and how sometimes if they were made of gunpowder its fuse could be lit with a match. Dynamite sticks could also be turned into rudimentary rockets that could be ridden, like the coyote who was always chasing the roadrunner.

Almost anything that was related to bombs or missiles always went up into the heavens, hypnotizing audiences across the US while in other places bombs were falling projectiles that struck their target. On the other hand, here in the states we were busy stargazing, looking up at the shooting rockets or at stars that came out on television every day. Living a reality that was carefree and easy going and detached from the life of those that were migrating to the US, more specifically Los Angeles. 

Our classmate had escaped a civil war. His depictions of bombs were based on his personal experiences. What he drew were actual hand grenade sticks, RPGs and mortar shells that had fallen on people from his neighborhood, ammunition that he’d seen guerrillas and government forces carry by the loads. The bombs he drew actually fell, landed and blew up, bursting with loud bangs, giving sudden roars, raining showers of blood, brains and dirt. Unlike the coyote though, people that survived a bomb explosion rarely continued going about their business or had a quick recovery like he had.

Kids born in the US had no idea what war was, and what real bombs were. We were in second grade, it was the mid-1980s, and the Civil Wars in Central America were at its peak. People from El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Guatemala were flooding the streets of Los Angeles, more specifically Alvarado and Pico. They hadn’t had time to recover from the violence that was happening around them, but quickly left those places, and unlike the Coyote didn’t fully resume with their daily lives. It was during an era of Michael Jackson, Madonna, Pink Floyd, and Guns n Roses were at the top of the pop charts. The War on Drugs against urban centers and the poor was just beginning to take effect. Punky Brewster hadn’t had her breast reduction and Gary Coleman was being swindled by his own family. We were growing up in fast times, gazing up into the heaven looking at stars, and at school playing kickball at recess and tetherball for lunch was our main concern.

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Genetically Modified Oragnism: Rice and Future Implications on Culture

Vienes caminando
y no sabes tu destino
coquistando suenos
suenas llegar a ser deidad

Sigues caminando
sobre viejos territorios
invocando fuerzas
que jamas entenderas

Y vienes desde alla
donde no sale el sol
donde no hay calor
donde la sangre
nunca se sacrifico por un amor
pero aqua no es asi

Vienes caminandp
ignorando sagrados ritos
pisoteando sabios templos
de amor espiritual

Largas vidas siguen 
velando el sueno de un volcan
para un alma eternal
cada piedra es un altar

Y vienes desde alla
donde no sale el sol donde no hay calor
donde la sangre 
nunca se sacrifico por un amor
pero aqua no es asi

- Saul Hernandez, Caifanes


The vulture was perched on the highest branch of a ceiba tree, the eagle spotted him and flew toward the branch landing besides the vulture. They began to talk about things past and present. Then the eagle asked, “Why do you like eating dead animals, and things that are decomposing?,” The vulture replied, “Well, why do you like to kill your prey?”
-Central America folk tale.



Genetically Modified Organism: Rice and Future Implications on Culture

Introduction
Rice is one of the most important staple grains we have on this world, and almost every country consumes rice.  Science is a leading source of answers to the problems people have in our modern times. We rely on science to improve our lives. It was not until recently though that science drastically altered the evolutionary process of rice. For centuries, people depended on this grain so much so that in some parts of Asia ideas and folk beliefs evolved from the harvesting and production of rice.

Rice is grown in hot places where shallow marshes are located, and where water is abundant. There is an estimated one hundred twenty thousand rice seeds in the world. There are many categories from which to study rice production, ranging from the methods of cultivation, the use of fertilizers, ways of storing rice, milling and controlling the economic value of harvested rice. 

There are four simple steps involved in the process of harvesting rice, and these are “(1) planting the seeds, (2) the flooding of rice, (3) the maintenance required during growth stage, and (4) the reaping of the harvest” (Grist).  In between these important steps are many other steps that involve the production of a plentiful rice harvest, such as the use of fertilizers, insecticides, and the amount of water used in rice fields. 
Scientifically improving the quality of rice for better harvest yields and increasing its nutritional value affected traditional ways of harvesting. For centuries, farmers used rudimentary methods to inter breed rice with other types of rice, slowly creating a better quality rice. However, a few decades back, with the increasing dependence of petroleum products and the rapidly growing population scientist replaced simple age old ways of harvesting rice by developing insecticides to kill off pests that lived off rice and apparently helping farmers have greater yields. 

Rice is mostly grown in Southeast Asia, mainly to support its own population. The US is a big exporter of rice and has had a significant scientific impact on the quality of rice strains. In the past, growers saved their seeds from their harvests and used them to replant the seeds the following year. However, we have become so involved in the process of rice production that new super-seeds are being made, but these seeds and other scientific advancements do more harm than good. In addition to the ecological impact, these super seeds make farmers dependant on the producers of these genetically modified seeds. The farmer no longer depends on nature for the seeds, but on companies that manufacture the seeds. Companies such as Monsanto, sell agricultural products that are useful to farmers but dangerous to the environment.
The obstacle for some companies is not the use of insecticides to control pests, but how to get the greatest output from the little land available, and a preoccupation on monopolizing their newest discovery. This is the reason why “genetically enhanced” seeds appear to be the solution to this increasing problem. Currently, the entire production of rice in the world is six hundred seventy eight million tons, but it must increase to eight hundred eighty million tons of rice by 2025 in order to feed the earth’s population.


A Bit of Historical Background
Rice seeds native to certain geographical areas of the world have evolved natural defenses unique to their environment. For example, in West Africa rice grows with very little water and through time, have evolved natural defenses that protect it from heat and periodic drought. With the evolution of human cultures and further development of agricultural techniques people began to crossbreed seeds from different regions. Crossbreeding is a simple form of modifying seeds genetically that man used in the past to create new seeds for climates where other seeds would never grow. This continued for many centuries until we reached the twentieth century.

Thirty years ago, Asia had to double its rice production because of overpopulation. Different kinds of tests were done, like altering water levels to see optimal growing conditions. Soon it was discovered that it was better to keep water levels low for rice to grow and become strong, thus producing considerably more yields than high water levels. Cross breeding became more refined  and quicker, which produced a new seed strain which was strong and could “generate a greater harvest”(Ecos).

Today, most rice is harvested with the use of chemicals. According to manufacturers insecticides aids rice by killing “natural predators,” such as “beetles, grasshoppers, caterpillars, snails and worms” (Grist 290). The Monsanto company claims:

                   “Integrated pest management, conservation tillage, chemistry and biology applied in concert can increase yields, improve the quality of our food and save our soil, Monsato’s contributions to food production can and will meet the requirements of sustainable agriculture to provide for basic human food and fiber needs, enrich the quality of our lives, preserve natural resources, enhance environmental quality and ensure the economic viability of farming,” (Monsanto).

Some tests reveal that where insecticides are used, “larvae were significantly more abundant in the no-insecticide plots, but numbers were not related to a yield difference”(U.S. 52). Genetically engineered seeds, like insecticides, fight against disease and insects offering resistance to pollution and water levels, but both alter the ecosystems and most of the time the genetically modified seeds that are harvested are sterile, only good for one harvest and nothing else.

Organic harvesting disregards insecticides or any other chemicals and allows insects to live. Masajo, interviewed by Ecos magazine, believes that “ insects control insects” that would otherwise kill or destroy the rice plant. He also states, “All animals must be preserved, no matter how harmful a ‘pest’ might be perceived, because any reduction in biodiversity ultimately will damage the quality of human life”(Ecos). Organic harvesting not only promotes a diversified ecological cycle but also creates a healthy food cycle. Masajo also said,  “Yes, there are insects in my crops. Yes, there is some visible damage to foliage. But this doesn’t translate automatically to an economic cost, to a detrimental impact on yield” (Reinventing).
Using genetically modified rice benefit us in many ways, but nature’s equilibrium is drastically altered with these seeds. Scientific intervention in rice harvesting and other areas of agriculture has had a great impact. Livestock used to till the land, and animals raised for human consumption have not been immune to science and the industrial companies that promote their antibiotics and steroids. So far these advancements although good, have created scenarios where serious ramifications might arise for not properly understanding how some companies are drastically altering the earth’s ecology for the worse.


Effects on Nature and Humans
Chemicals in the insecticides kill insects affecting the ecology of nature at the micro level, which is a vital source of food for other creatures. The natural ecological cycle serves as a symbiotic defense mechanism for rice and other harvested grains. Birds eat bugs that live in the rice fields, which have eaten other insects that destroy the rice. However, when insecticides such as “DDT, carbon bisulphide, BHC, chloropicrin” and other products are introduced into the harvesting process, this delicate cycle is broken, causing insects to disappear (Grist 291) . As one insect disappears so do other kinds until they have all disappeared, forcing birds to migrate to other areas where there is food. In addition to birds, predators begin to leave their surrounding areas, and move to habitats where they don’t belong.

One approach to this problem is the development of an improved seed which doesn’t need the aid of insecticides or chemical agents to grow and produce large numbers of seeds. These seeds have a defense mechanism, so that they can be “drought resistant and pest resistant” (Reinventing). Seeds that were going to Bangladesh probably can be made to be flood tolerant. These new seeds can be made to produce in virtually any kind of environment, but instead big companies have decided to take it a step further by creating seeds that are genetically altered, and their seeds end up producing a sterile harvest making farmers dependant on their product.

Scientist have created new seeds using “more than 100,000 samples of rice” that are stored in large inventories (Reinventing). From these seeds, companies such as the International Rice Research Institute construct super seeds by using genes gathered from rice already growing under harsh conditions like West African seeds.

The Monsanto Company is one of the first to create similar type of seeds, and have filed “patent applications in several countries” (Kluger). Patents are important to a company like Monsanto because it prevents other countries and companies from copying their seeds or even replanting them. These patents make a company richer because they have a monopoly over seeds. Monsanto seeds can produce so much that the harvester would gain enough money to buy seeds the following year since these new seeds are sterile after one harvest season.

The way Monsanto produces “sterile seeds” is: (1) taking a seed-killing toxin from another plant and then inserting it in the genome of rice, (2) they add a blocker in order to keep the toxin dormant until exposed to an enzyme that removes the blocker, (3) the seed is planted and begins to grow. Finally, the toxin is produced and sterilizes the seeds. These new seeds cannot be combined with other seeds, making the farmers dependent on this type of rice. These seeds still harm the environment where buyers grow their new rice, as Kluger states in his article, “the company has also developed plants with a built-in toxin that is harmless to humans but lethal to insects”(Kluger).

For the past several years, the population of the world has been growing rapidly, through industrialization and other technological advancements drastically altering age old ceremonies that revolved around the planting and harvesting of rice. In addition, to the concerns that this paper is focused on, animals are also being injected with antibiotics and steroids to apparently immunize animals from potential diseases, and to extend the use of particular animals used for tilling the land, further degrading the natural cycle.


Culture of Rice and Harvesting
For centuries, Chinese planted and harvested rice that fed lots of people, and the process of harvesting deeply affected their culture. Aijmer, author of the Dragon Boat Festival says, “The concern of the whole community and the participation of the officials in the ceremony should be connected with this communal interest” (112).  For Chinese, the Dragon Boat Festival was a ceremony closely linked with planting and harvesting that was “concerned mainly with the cultivation of rice”(Aijmer 13). They did not have control over the harvest but something greater was in control. It was thought that ancestors lived in the spiritual realms and their ceremonies guided the “rain-producing lung dragon” to the rice fields via the help of ancestors (Aijmer 112). The symbiotic relationship between the divine and mundane realities was acknowledged through the ceremony. A connection with “the transplantation of rice” and the dead existed and was recognized in the Dragon Boat Festival (Aijmer 108). In the past, there weren’t as many people living on the earth as there are today making it possible to reap plentiful harvests. There was always a balance between nature and man or at least there existed an attempt to keep a balance with nature.

Genetic engineering is leading us into a new era of agricultural and social change where, in order to survive, we have to compromise with what is available and what nature allows us to create. Humanity is reaching a point where it is no longer in balance with nature. We are exhausting the land of its resources, trying to get as much out of it as we can, and in the process seeds that have been used for thousands of years are now quickly disappearing from the face of the earth. Human intervention in nature will not magically solve population and harvest yield problems. There will certainly be ramifications, one example of these problems is that some countries can not compete against countries that use genetically modified seeds, while at the same time the pollen of these super seeds kill off the naturally occurring seeds of staple grains. We have developed super-seeds that can kill insects and still produce “high volumes” of rice in very limited areas of land, and in some cases, we use insecticides to kill insects that are vital to the food cycle in order to reap a greater harvest. We are continually destroying nature’s balance to meet our needs, and still expect more from the land.

It seems perfectly logical to follow this course of living, but in reality, this is not healthy. Nature has already placed its boundaries and we have reached them. Instead of accepting reality as some ancient people seem to have done, we become arrogant and refuse to accept the destruction and dangerous cycle that is being made. Mother earth is the source of all creation and almost everything here is composed of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen. There is always an imbalance of things but this imbalance is always fluctuating from one extreme to the other. Currently, humans are on one side of the extreme that’s heavily exploiting and demanding much from nature, and eventually, nature will restore that balance, whether through our own destructiveness or ignorance. We are now living in a period of time where aside genetically modified seeds being used for agriculture, antibiotics and steroids are being given to animals we use for agriculture and consume on a daily basis. Now, when there are outbreaks of e coli or foot and mouth disease the viruses are also stronger and tougher to eliminate precisely because what we have thought was good for some few businesses has turned out detrimental to more people. 

Older cultures on this earth had an understanding of the balance that needs to exist, and it is seen through the ceremonies they performed before and after planting rice and other staple foods. They wanted approval from their ancestors and their gods in order to have a good harvest. Whether their beliefs about their ancestors and gods were true or not they knew they could only do so much to ensure a good harvest. Constraining nature will only make it harder to grow healthy crops, because we need to submit to nature’s boundaries and keep the balance that is necessary for insects and humans to live. We will be eating unnatural food that has anti-pollutant, anti-insect, and anti-disease genes. Cases have already been found where cows injected with antibiotics and steroids, after dying severely affect the cycle and kill other animals, like the vultures which are sacred in some cultures. In his article Brittenden states, “Ancient rites of farmers to save their plants may soon become a thing of the past. Science is threatening a farming practice as old as agriculture itself” (Brittenden). The technological advancements in rice production is making us forget that we once depended on nature to stay alive. Farmers planted and waited for nature to do its work. We can’t have control of rice yields and its surrounding environments, therefore we cannot intervene with a process that has existed for many years. Some maize strains have been genetically altered, and now in the US only two types of maize are grown, sweet corn and industrial corn. We went from growing several types of corn ranging from small cobs, multi-colored corn, small and big kernels to two types of corn, eighty five percent of which is genetically modified. 

Memory and ceremony cannot be linked to giant industrial companies, they should not be allowed to have control over basic things that humans have practiced through out time. A collective memory of harvesting and raising animals is being shattered to pieces. In ancient times cultures had various types of gods that had their origins in agricultural production, god of wine and excess, the god maize, the god of rain, and currently we have this concept of mother earth which is being quickly replaced with father scientist and mother chemical factory.