On March 20, 2012 Anayansi Diaz-Cortes and Eric Pearse-Chavez came to my class and played a radio recording for us done by NPR. The recording featured real-life accounts from students and civilians who lived during the 1968 Massacre of Mexican college students. The best part of the recording was being able to hear the accounts directly from the speakers and not from a translator. When someone is telling such an emotional story, the only way to feel their pain is to hear it directly from them and not from an emotionless translator.
The Massacre was covered up by the government because in 1968 Mexico was hosting the Olympics that could put them on the map finally and they couldn't have people knowing that they had just killed innocent students. In 2008, the 40 year anniversary, NPR's Anayansi Diaz-Cortes, Eric Pearse-Chavez and some others did all they could to research and find the truth about what happened that day. They still don't know to the extent of how many students were murdered but it could be up to two-thousand.
The NPR crew mixed up their radio production by intertwining first-hand accounts, news broadcast and traditional music from the protest movement that the students were involved in prior to the massacre. The students were protesting for their rights to be who they wanted to be.
This brings me back to the importance of speaking English. I learned that radio is about letting people tell their own story rather than telling it for them. Diaz-Cortes and Pearse-Chavez put a lot of hard work and dedication into finding students that were not only involved in the movement 40 years before, but students that spoke English. This was extremely hard for them because the newspapers didn't print anything and there was never a record of the students who died or who was even involved. They took the investigation into their own hands and were able to bring the emotional factor back to the story by finding the students and adding in music that was sang during the time.
Diaz-Cortes suggested a great book for learning how to write well: "On Writing Well," by William Knowlton Zinsser.
She says that radio is hard because you have to take 3 hours of material and turn it into 30 seconds without leaving out the good parts. But, Pearse-Chavez says having a partner makes it that much easier, because you always have two opinions. The two plan to continue telling stories together in the future and wouldn't have it any other way.
-Mariko Cree Mosher
-Mariko Cree Mosher
This is a good summary of what happened in class. I was not here on this day, but reading this piece I get a sense of the key points the speakers were trying to make. It would look even better with another photo!
ReplyDelete-Alexis