The Rebel Music Americas Tour
Comes to Peterborough
Common Frontiers was a co-sponsor of one of the tour stops for the Rebel Music Americas Tour, which played to a full house at Peterborough's Cinema 376. The evening featured a documentary film and live music.
Also helping host this event were OPIRG and IDST from Trent University, Horizons of Friendship, and CUPE-Peterborough. Special thanks to CAW Local 222 for their generous support.
(Click on any photo to see a larger image)
Documentary Rebel Music Americas
The evenings introductory comments were made by filmmakers Marie Boti and Malcolm Guy, co-Directors of Rebel Music Americas (produced by Lucie Pageau and Productions Multi-Monde, 2004).
Following the RMA documentary we heard a few words from:
Maria Ligia Chaverra (on the right in the photo, with tranlator Rona Donefer) is an Afro-Colombian elder who sits on the Community Council of Curvarado in the Choco province of Colombia. These communities were also forced to abandon their lands during the same military operations that ravaged the Cacarica. Today, they are refugees in an adjoining region where they have united in a civilian resistance process to claim their right to ancestral land. They are opposing the drive to set up agro-industrial plantations of African palm on their territory.
And words from:
Raúl Gatica is a poet and spokesperson of the CIPO, Indigenous People's Council of Oaxaca, Mexico. CIPO groups a number of indigenous communities including Zapotecs, Chinantecas, Nuu Savi, and Mixes in the state of Oaxaca where they face constant repression, disapearances and assassinations. Raul Gatica has himself been a political prisoner and victim of torture because of his work, and even now he is followed, harassed, and threatened daily.
The CIPO communities, who follow the Flores Magon tradition, work together to promote self-government, direct democracy, and free association of peoples. In so doing they are fighting against the poverty and discrimination they face as native people in Mexico.
Final comments from:
Rick Arnold, coordinator for Common Frontiers, (shown in the photo at the right) spoke about the III Peoples' Summit November 1-5 in Mar del Plata, Argentina.
The cultural event followed with music from members of the group Santa Revuelta From Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Santa Revuelta's singer-songwriter Anibal Kohan (on the left in the photo, with Carlos de Hoz on the right) takes his inspiration from the struggles of Argentina's militant unemployed workers, the piqueteros. The group are prominent performers on Buenos Aires' latest stage : the street.
Anibal's songs describe the piquetes (road barricades), the neighbourhood assemblies, the daily lives of the people whose movement shook the ruling system that was bankrupting the country and toppled presidents in 2001. An economist by training, Anibal has also published a book - ¡A las calles! - on the history of the piquetero and cacerolero movement.
Carlos de Hoz (Charly) : Charly is a guitar virtuoso and talented music producer who found himself reeling under the impact of the economic crisis along with thousands of other Argentines. Since then, he has become a fellow traveler of the people's movements performing with Santa Revuelta on the picket lines and at neighbourhood assemblies. He runs a small recording studio, called faremostrium (triumfaremos) which he calls a peoples' studio and makes available to musicians with little means.