More stories

  • in

    Marvel Superhero and Indigenous Actress Holds Fast to Maya Roots

    After filming her part in “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” María Mercedes Coroy returned to her “normal” life of farming and trading in a Guatemalan town at the base of a volcano.SANTA MARÍA DE JESÚS, Guatemala — For her big underwater scene in “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” the Guatemalan actress María Mercedes Coroy had to hold her breath as her character, Princess Fen, gives birth in a hazy ocean world to a winged serpent son.She emerges from the watery depths as a rarity even in Marvel’s fantastical universe: a female Maya superhero.The day after filming her final scene in Los Angeles, Ms. Coroy, rather than hanging out in Hollywood, headed home to Santa María de Jesús, a Kaqchikel Maya town of about 22,000 at the base of a volcano in Guatemala. By nightfall, she was curled up in bed in her family’s bright pink cinder block house with vegetables growing in the backyard.“I felt like my bed was hugging me,” said Ms. Coroy, 28, one of nine siblings in a family of farmers and vendors.The next morning she resumed her usual life. She and her mother put on their hand-woven huipiles, or blouses, and cortes, or skirts, to catch the 5:30 bus to the small city of Escuintla to sell produce in the bustling market, a job she started after fifth grade when she had to drop out of school to help her parents.The main square of Santa María de Jesús, Guatemala, Ms. Coroy’s hometown.Daniele Volpe for The New York TimesSome days she walks two hours with a mule to the family farm to cultivate cabbage and pumpkins. In her spare time, she weaves colorful huipiles with motifs of birds and flowers on a backstrap loom.“People ask me what I do after filming,” said Ms. Coroy, who is working on her third Guatemalan movie after appearing in two in the United States. “I go back to normal.”Ms. Coroy represents a new generation of Maya actors determined to hone their craft while holding onto their customs and helping expose a legacy of discrimination against Guatemala’s Indigenous population.While she said she enjoys acting in the United States — and posing in a pink and blue huipil at the 2021 Golden Globe Awards — she is more interested in her own country’s burgeoning film industry.But whether she’s working in her homeland or Hollywood, acting can be draining, and she relies on Santa María de Jesús to recharge her.“I love my life, but filming is physically demanding,” Ms. Coroy said, relaxing on a bench in Santa María’s central park. “This is my community.”Ms. Coroy’s first role was the lead in a school play production of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.”A mural depicting the actress on a wall of her hometown.Daniele Volpe for The New York TimesSanta María de Jesus has long been locally famous for its street theater, and a decade ago, the Guatemalan director Jayro Bustamante came to the town to prepare for his first feature film, “Ixcanul” (“Volcano”). He wanted to tell a story of Maya women that addressed issues like endemic poverty and inequities in education and health care, and he was determined to cast Maya actors speaking the Indigenous language of Kaqchikel.Mr. Bustamante initially put up a sign in the town’s central park: Casting Here. No one showed up. A few days later he posted: Work Here. He was overwhelmed with prospective actors.Ms. Coroy missed the audition. But a friend put her in touch with the director the next day.“He told me I was the only person who looked him in the eye,” she said. When he offered her the lead, she balked. “I had no experience. I was afraid I would ruin the movie.”But he convinced her to join the cast. For the next several months, they trained at the country’s first film academy, founded by Mr. Bustamente.“When we began filming, they were no longer amateur actors,” Mr. Bustamente said.“Ixcanul,” which won the Alfred Bauer Prize at the 65th Berlin International Film Festival, focuses on a poor family in the mountains that arranges for the daughter to marry a plantation overseer. The daughter secretly gets involved with a young man, a drunk and a dreamer, who promises to take her with him to the United States. But he leaves without her and she finds herself pregnant while still engaged to the other man.After she gives birth in a hospital, a staff member tells her that her baby has died. When the young woman finds out later that her child had lived and had possibly been sold for adoption, grief consumes her.Ms. Coroy, center, with her neighbors. Daniele Volpe for The New York Times“Quiet and fearless,” the Los Angeles-based film critic Manuel Betancourt wrote of Ms. Coroy’s understated performance, which revealed anguish behind a still face.“I mouthed the words I was feeling in my head,” Ms. Coroy said, explaining her acting method. “It was easier then because I was naturally timid. I’m much more animated now.”Her second film with Mr. Bustamante, “La Llorona,” transformed a traditional Latin American ghost story into an indictment of a fictional dictator, but one clearly reminiscent of the Guatemalan leader, Gen. Efraín Ríos Montt. Five years before his death in 2018, General Ríos Montt was found guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity for the systematic slaughter of Maya men, women and children in the 1980s after he took control of the country in a coup.Ms. Coroy plays Alma, a Maya housemaid whose son and daughter were among those murdered. A spectral figure in white, she haunts the dictator in his home.A casting director saw her in the two Bustamante films and picked her for the part of an Indigenous guerrilla in “Bel Canto,” an American film starring Julianne Moore. For two-and-a-half months, Ms. Coroy filmed in Mexico and the United States, the longest she had ever been away from her family. She froze in New York, she said, and didn’t like the food.The actress prefers not to discuss politics. But Mr. Bustamante said artists in Guatemala worked in an increasingly hostile climate.“You realize you’re in a country where there is a dictatorship without that name,” Mr. Bustamante wrote in an email interview. “There is a murky sort of oppression and no rights or freedom.”In “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” Ms. Coroy’s character gives birth underwater. When “Ixcanul” was released, he wrote, “there was a general rejection by the Guatemalan people of this sort of subject matter. With La Llorona, it was much more dangerous. We received anonymous threats.”“Wakanda Forever,” a global blockbuster distributed by Disney, also addresses the oppression of the Maya.Ms. Coroy’s character, Princess Fen, catches smallpox brought by the Spaniards to the Yucatán Peninsula in the 16th century. A shaman gives her a drink that allows her to live and give birth underwater. When her winged son Namor, played by the Mexican actor Tenoch Huerta, returns to the Yucatán, he sees Spaniards beating the Maya they have enslaved.In Guatemala, some Maya families encourage their children to speak only Spanish and wear Western clothing to escape ongoing rampant discrimination. But that’s not how Ms. Coroy was raised.“My parents tell me I should be proud,” said Ms. Coroy, who eventually returned to night school and finished college. “There is no way that you can hide that you’re Indigenous.”She has recently begun delving into Maya spirituality. Her grandmother was a natural healer who taught her about the curative properties or herbal teas and flowers. While she worships in a Catholic church, she also studies with an Indigenous spiritual teacher and reads the Maya creation story, the Popol Vuh.Central to Maya religion is Maximón, a trickster deity both benevolent and hedonistic. In ceremonies, adherents smoke and drink in front of his wooden figure in the hopes he will hear their entreaties. Ms. Coroy attends ceremonies without imbibing, she said.“People ask me what I do after filming,” Ms. Coroy said. “I go back to normal.”Daniele Volpe for The New York Times“I respect Maximón,” she said. “I have connected with him in dreams. He said, ‘You neither speak well of me nor poorly, so I will protect you.’”While she’s famous enough in Guatemala that people in the colonial tourist city of Antigua, a UNESCO World heritage site, approach her politely for autographs, her neighbors in Santa María avoid singling her out. Walking in the town’s park, she might as well be any other vendor.“There’s no movie star culture here,” Ms. Coroy said. “There are no paparazzi.” More

  • in

    ‘Split at the Root’ Review: A Powerful Lens on Immigrant Families Split Apart

    This documentary shows the plight of one woman as she tries to reunite with her sons and make a permanent home in the United States.When news of the Department of Justice’s zero-tolerance policy for unauthorized entry into the United States came out in mid-2018, a group of moms in Queens sprang into action. They created an organization called Immigrant Families Together, aimed at reuniting mothers held at Eloy Detention Center in Arizona with the children taken from them by the government. “Split at the Root” follows one of these women: Rosayra, an asylum seeker from Guatemala who had crossed into the U.S. with her two sons. The documentary, directed by Linda Goldstein Knowlton, is a heartbreaking reminder of the cruelty of these separations, showing that reunification is often only the beginning of a long journey for the families torn apart.Rosayra’s path toward gaining asylum shows the Catch 22 many face: One must be in imminent danger to be admitted as a refugee but must also remember to get a police report from the country they were leaving; immigrants must prove they will not be a burden to the country but are not allowed to work. The emotional toll on the families is acute, including inhumane conditions, bureaucratic hurdles and personal trauma. Before Rosayra meets up with her boys in New York City, her teenage son, Yordy, takes charge of his younger brother, Fernando Jose, and in an interview expresses the challenges of becoming a de facto parent at age 15.“Split at the Root” is a powerful lens into the emotional plight of the thousands of immigrants who cross the border into the United States, the danger they are fleeing and the people trying to help them.Split at the RootNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 36 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

  • in

    ¿A qué suena el alma de Guatemala?

    La imbaluna, uno de los instrumentos inventados por Joaquín Orellana que se exponen en la Americas Society.Credit…Victor Llorente para The New York TimesSkip to contentSkip to site indexPara expresar el sonido de Guatemala, él inventó nuevos instrumentosLas creaciones del compositor, inventor y escritor guatemalteco Joaquín Orellana son el tema de la exposición ‘The Spine of Music’ de la Americas Society.La imbaluna, uno de los instrumentos inventados por Joaquín Orellana que se exponen en la Americas Society.Credit…Victor Llorente para The New York TimesSupported byContinue reading the main story28 de febrero de 2021 a las 07:00 ETRead in EnglishNUEVA YORK — En un relato, el compositor, inventor y escritor guatemalteco Joaquín Orellana se imagina a un músico que, insatisfecho con los instrumentos de la civilización occidental, se propone crear el sonido del hambre. Poseído por el deseo de plasmar el sufrimiento de su pueblo, se va matando de hambre poco a poco y luego graba su voz alterada y delirante. En su delirio, ve cómo las partituras cobran vida con gritos angustiosos y violentos: el sonido del hambre.Orellana, de 90 años, es uno de los compositores más respetados de Guatemala y el centro de una cautivadora exposición en la Americas Society, The Spine of Music (La espina dorsal de la música) que da a conocer instrumentos —esculturales, surrealistas y oscuramente sensoriales— de su invención. Como protagonista de su historia, Orellana busca expresar el sufrimiento de un país traumatizado por el genocidio y la guerra civil, mientras evita usar los materiales de la música occidental.Orellana con el herroím, uno de sus “útiles sonoros”Credit…vía estudio de Joaquín OrellanaLa mayoría de los compositores escriben música para instrumentos que ya existen. A excepción de Wagner, quien creó un híbrido entre una tuba y un cuerno para su ciclo del “Anillo”. El compositor experimental Harry Partch inventó instrumentos adaptados a su sistema de afinación poco ortodoxo. En una entrevista en video desde Ciudad de Guatemala, Orellana habló de su proceso como un intento de liberar a la imaginación musical de las formas preconcebidas.“El compositor está imbuido de su realidad social”, dijo. “El compositor es una especie de filtro y su sensibilidad social está insertada en ese filtro”. Agregó que cuando las ideas musicales inundan la imaginación del compositor, “en esa mente auditiva están los conceptos y las imágenes de un contexto social, una realidad sociopolítica; y la música está inevitablemente en deuda con estas cosas”.Orellana comenzó a experimentar con los materiales de producción sonora en los años setenta. Estudió violín y composición en el Conservatorio Nacional de Música “Germán Alcántara” de Ciudad de Guatemala y después obtuvo una beca de dos años en el Centro Latinoamericano de Altos Estudios Musicales de Buenos Aires, Argentina. El centro era un imán para los compositores innovadores de todo el subcontinente, y contaba con un estudio de música electrónica de última generación que despertó la imaginación de Orellana.Sebastian Zubieta, director musical de la Americas Society, toca el sinusoido pequeño de Orellana.Credit…Victor Llorente for The New York TimesCredit…Victor Llorente for The New York TimesA su regreso a Guatemala no tenía recursos técnicos comparables y se sintió ajeno a la escena musical centrada en las tradiciones folclóricas expresadas a través de la marimba, el instrumento nacional.Sin embargo, Orellana se sentía fascinado por la marimba. Es muy probable que este instrumento haya llegado a Guatemala a través de las rutas de la esclavitud desde África occidental y que la población rural lo haya acogido como un símbolo de las esperanzas, el dolor y las injusticias de su país. Así que lo deconstruyó y le dio nuevas formas.Orellana llama a sus inventos “útiles sonoros”. “Mediante los útiles sonoros”, explica, “la marimba se extiende en el espacio acústico y físico como en una especie de Big Bang”.La imbaluna, una contracción de marimba y lunaCredit…Victor Llorente para The New York TimesLa primera herramienta sonora que recibe a los visitantes de la galería de la Americas Society es la esquelética imbaluna, con un teclado de marimba en forma de media luna, sustentada por resonadores puntiagudos (los nombres de los inventos de Orellana suelen ser portmanteaus poéticos, en este caso, compuesto por el prefijo “imba” de la palabra “marimba” y la palabra luna).El circumar tiene la forma de una gran tetera con teclas de marimba suspendidas en sentido perpendicular al suelo. Para el sinusoido, suspendió las teclas de la marimba siguiendo la forma de una curva sinusoidal, parecida a una montaña rusa. Ambos instrumentos se tocan pasando una baqueta por su interior en un movimiento continuo, una acción que exige al intérprete mover todo el brazo y el torso y que produce sonidos tintineantes. Sebastián Zubieta, director musical de la Americas Society, comentó que en las creaciones de Orellana “es el gesto el que da la forma”.Estos instrumentos —y otros con formas similares, que usan carillones de metal o cañas de bambú— pueden tener un sonido increíblemente parecido a la música electrónica. Zubieta comentó que no era casualidad que los sonidos creados en un instrumento con forma circular o sinusoide se parezcan a los creados a través de los bucles y la secuenciación electrónica. “Es como una pieza de cinta antigua”, dijo. “Es una solución de baja tecnología para un deseo vanguardista”.El herroímCredit…Victor Llorente para The New York TimesEl cirlum pequeñoCredit…Victor Llorente para The New York TimesEl periominCredit…Victor Llorente para The New York TimesThe prehimulinho.Credit…Victor Llorente for The New York TimesEl ingenio de los inventos de Orellana oscila a menudo entre el juego y la crueldad. El periomin es una especie de perchero mecedora que, cuando se pone en movimiento, hace que los carillones o campanas de viento se balanceen de un lado a otro a lo largo de cuerdas de cuentas de plástico, que producen el sonido de una cascada vidriosa. El pinzafer consiste en una enorme lámina de hierro con forma de cola de langosta, suspendida de un armazón de hierro. Al pasar un arco, encordado con cuerda de piano, por un recorte dentado, se produce un gemido oscuro y metálico. Al pasar el arco (esta vez con cuerdas de acrílico) por el tubarc, un tubo de aluminio con un orificio en el centro montado sobre un marco rectangular, se produce un silbido que de tan agudo hace rechinar los dientes.En sus composiciones, Orellana suele utilizar sus inventos junto con cantos corales, sonidos ambientales grabados e instrumentos occidentales. En 2017, compuso “Sinfonía desde el Tercer Mundo” para la edición número 14 de la Documenta, la exposición de arte contemporáneo en Atenas; llenó el escenario con coros de adultos y niños, una orquesta sinfónica y sus útiles sonoros. Fue una réplica a la Sinfonía n.º 9 de Dvorak, subtitulada “Desde el Nuevo Mundo”.Un instrumento llamado CF A.Credit…Victor Llorente para The New York TimesPara la exposición de la Americas Society, compuso una nueva pieza exclusivamente para sus creaciones. La pieza, titulada “Puntos y efluvios”, estaba pensada para ser interpretada por cuatro percusionistas dentro de la galería y tenía la intención de invitar a los miembros del público a participar en ciertos momentos con gritos, aullidos y llantos en un lenguaje inventado por Orellana.Debido a las limitaciones de la pandemia, Zubieta grabó por su cuenta cada parte de su composición; la pieza editada, con sus tintineos de alfileres y sus ráfagas de estruendos, ahora ronda por la galería a intervalos regulares. Un video de acompañamiento alterna entre tomas del intérprete inmerso en los gestos ritualistas de la música e imágenes de la partitura gráfica de Orellana, que, con garabatos rítmicos, grupos de puntos y diagramas coreográficos, remite a la visión de su relato de los pentagramas de las partituras que se derriten.Zubieta toca lenguatón.Credit…Victor Llorente para The New York TimesAl rememorar su carrera, Orellana hace una reflexión: “Hacer música para mí nunca fue un proceso determinado, sino una forma de liberarme de las obsesiones: la obsesión por manifestar el sonido y una cierta necesidad compulsiva de sacarlo de mi ser”.“He llegado a la conclusión de que lo que intento es liberar el sonido”, resumió.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More