WEBVTT

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And this particular poem
is probably the last--

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one of the last
screenshares I'll do.

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[LAUGHS] This particular
poem was a challenge

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to translate because it plays
on a song by Ismael Rivera,

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I don't know if you
know it, but it's

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called "Las tumbas,"
which means "the tombs"

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but is also the name of a very
famous prison in the United

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States where a lot of
Puerto Ricans were sent.

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And the song is simultaneously
about being imprisoned

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but also, like many
of Maelo's songs,

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about his struggle with heroin.

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And it's one of the
most beautiful songs

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I've ever heard in my life.

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And this was a common theme
in salsa songs of the time.

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For example, there's one song
that actually has a refrain

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in English that's--

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(SINGING) I'll never
go back to Georgia.

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And it's because
Puerto Ricans were

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sent to a prison in Georgia.

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And this particular
epigraph, Las

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tumbas son pa los muertos,
y de muerto no tengo na,

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would translate
roughly as "The tunes

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are for the dead, and with
the dead I share nothing."

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And this was the structure
of El Oso Blanco.

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So this was how it was designed
to have an interior patio

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and then to have the person
around that interior patio,

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and this became more
and more intense

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as I moved forward in my
investigatory work, which

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was very difficult because
there are actually so few books

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written on the carceral
system in Puerto Rico.

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It's shocking.

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But part of what made
this very intense

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was that there were even like
pigs in the original design

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and all kinds of livestock.

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And later, as conditions
of the prison got worse,

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prisoners depended
actually on the things

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they were growing in this
interior garden to eat.

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So this is a play, of
course, on blanco, which is--

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and blanco has many meanings,
but blanco means white,

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but it also means--

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it can mean "blank,"
like "blank space."

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