Tana Chy Bruhns

I am starting to think more practical and saying that, well we have got to help the people around this area, because it is great to have ideals, but, it is like, you feel for those people that are over there, you know, like, I was born in Thailand, in this third world country, and I have got family that is going through a lot of shit there that they were forced into because of the economy, they have got to go to Bangkok, they have got to leave their kids at home there with their grandparents, not knowing their kids at all, send money back to the farm.

[talks about his career goals, meeting people]

[talks about meeting Brice with the African banner, Chac]

I had extra cash from the federal government, and I was like, ‘Well, I had just gotten back from overseas, seeing students demonstrating on the streets in Seoul, because a lot of stuff is going down there.’

[talks about the sunshine policy in N and S Korea]

Through this policy South Korea is having with North Korea, they are letting it go slowly, giving them funds, trying to help them out as much as they can, especially with the reactors that they have been giving North Korea. And the students are on the street for that.

[describes policy]

Now, this totally inspired me, and [I went] down to Cancun I guess to see the experience. I wasn’t there to.. I didn’t get a chance to share my actual thoughts about how society ran. I just wanted to go there and see, and observe. I was there as an observer, not, like, a person to partake in the action. Even though I did participate in the actions, it was still all observation.

I guess being the observer, an observer is pretty much a person that goes around… And, because I didn’t really stick to a particular group in Cancun. There were particular groups that wanted volunteer work; of course they are very cautious of new people coming in. You can never trust anybody anymore. And, I guess, volunteer work. I think it was the Mayan goddess people, I helped paint one of the ears. Whatever little things I could do. I still find that to be an observer. A participant would probably be more focused on a certain group of people and stick with them for the rest of the thing. So, as an observer, I took a taste of every palate and then did not follow through on one thing. I guess that is how I differentiate.

[small talk]

Well, the first day, when I went there, I saw the Korean group. It was kind of inspiring because I had just left Seoul and then seeing a bunch of Korean farmers in Cancun to do what they do best, be on the streets. They are really organized over there, especially the unions. Even, people were complaining that the unions have too much power. I guess it is a good thing. Or a bad thing. As for that, I didn’t get a chance to talk to them too much because I don’t know Korean, and I didn’t know Spanish. So that was the bad part for me. I just pretty much hanged out with them, like a nod here and a smile there.

[talked about another friend]

[talks about helping with the puppet and moving Chac]

Cancun was a really strategic location for them. It was on the strip and they had, like, five gates. When I got off the airplane, I was talking to a bunch of journalists on there that were covering the WTO. We were just talking to these other tourists that were going to Cancun, and they were saying that, ‘Oh the WTO would have been last week…’ I guess those tourists really didn’t know what they were doing.

It was tense. You are going to deal, you are down there, the possibility of not having a, I didn’t have emergency health insurance for overseas, so I didn’t have that if I were to get hurt. So, I wouldn’t know what the heck would happen.

I didn’t know what Mr. [Lee], the guy, the Korean farmer, that stabbed himself, was stabbed, until after the march, but I saw an ambulance leave when we marched up to the fence. I went to the front to take a few photos. There was a whole shitload of police standing on the side, and it was something because since I was rolling the [Mayan] god, Chac, we were pretty much at the end of the parade, so we didn’t really get to go up there, we just, at some points, Brice, or any of the other people, would just, like, stay at the [Mayan] god and we would just go back and forth, taking turns, checking it out.

It was kind of interesting to see the independent media there. Lots of kids, lots of these activist kids have expensive cameras! Oh my goodness! Thousand dollar digital cameras and everything!

(it should be noted that Tana Chy also has an expensive still camera J )

This one old lady from the pagans, during the march, she goes, ‘This is like the best time of my life!’ And she would say that to me, like, not to be my best time, it was her best time. And I am like, ‘Well, no..’ It is great to have a thrill off of something, because your adrenaline is pumping, but we are supposed to be here for what we believe in: anti-capitalism, for not exploiting the masses no more, giving them the right to take care of their kids when they are at home, and don’t work their ass off. Americans won that right, and we think that the rest of the world should win that right also. We are also there so that corporations don’t rule our lives and have advertisements all over the place and ingrain slogans into our head.

[talks about red stripe]

I wanted to be there for those reasons, but some people were there for the thrill, some people were there for, especially the second day, when they moved the gate back, there were just a group of people just throwing rocks over there at the police. I mean, you are no supposed to do that shit. I mean, you don’t. Especially with the police that is under a non-democratic society, because, I don’t know much about Mexican government, but third world governments, they still have their organized crime, and their military has some power, and that is what I know for Thailand government at least. I can do that comparison. I don’t know very much about Mexican government, so I am going to admit my ignorance about the Mexican government there. But you don’t do that with any organized military or police that could hurt you in any other way in the middle of the night.

[talks about finding friends of Fife Symington shirt in thrift store, while on welfare, dad’s passing away]

[talks about how he got financial aide and the conventions and meetings that he does for the university, his mom, family, trying to keep himself in check]

It was a worthwhile experience because it taught me to organize, to say, ‘Go back to your home and organize locally. Locally is totally the key. You hear about these total idols and all these stupid leaders that people look up to and read books from, but…

Organize locally and focus on what you have to do at home more than overseas, because you go overseas and you start telling people what to do, like you are hired as a new supervisor. Employees won’t respect you whatsoever. I guess I was exoticizing too much when I was doing anthropology as my major. I was partly thinking that, oh, I was going back to Thailand to help out, I mean, you know, I have my Thai language skill and all that. But as for that, I am thinking to myself, well I probably won’t get the chance to do this now, because that is a different situation. I haven’t grown up in that situation; if I had grown up in that situation, and then have the luxury to get education in Thailand and know what was going on, then perhaps I would know and be a lot more help in that environment. I know what is going on here, in Tempe, with at least working immigrants. Not with the middle class or high class. And that is why I want to work here, now, rather [than] overseas. That’s what I want to focus my work in. All that in relation to Cancun… all that taught me just to pretty much organize locally.

I saw some people throwing rocks at the fence. I saw a whole shitload of media on the fence. They were climbing all over the place. They wanted to get a fight. They wanted to get something caught. They wanted to get somebody burning or something. So they got Mr. Lee, stabbed, and I guess that was their piece of cake. It was just too bad that somebody had to die. And then, like, they spoofed all that. Even though it might be our independent media, we still, one person died, we still exploit it so much. I mean, his family was in debt and everything, so, I don’t know. That’s a sad situation.

I saw, pretty much, a huge gathering of people. From either Mexico… Hispanic farmers, there was the campesino group which had a pickup truck out there. They were out there with their speakers. I couldn’t understand what they were saying because I don’t know Spanish. So they were out there tying to rally up the farmers, they wanted to… There was no negotiation whatsoever to get past the fence. The police were just standing with their shields. They are going to do what they are told. Some of the stuff, I just saw a few individuals who had police riot shields and clubs, that were, you know, either wanted to show off for a girl or something, and hen they went up to the police and, you know, played a little baton game.

[talks about masks]

There was a little island, a grass island in the middle, where they had a fountain, so people started, that very night, the Korean farmers, they set up a little encampment there for their fallen leader, which was the leader of their farmer’s union. And they did a little memorial there that evening. That is when I met up with you guys, that very evening, also.

[talks about seeing IMC, lunch]

That very morning, Brice and I painted the African one; it was a miniature march towards the second fence. I think it was at 12:00. African delegation, from South Africa. It was kind of fun just to watch them, take pictures, make a tourist thing out of it. Sort of an issue thing out of it. It was good to see them there because they came all the way from South Africa about the AIDS issues, on how the pharmaceutical companies are not letting the generic companies make medicine for the poor people. They are from a nursing college, I believe, the Africans.

[talks about meeting up with friends]

I met up with some Thai farmers, which was kind of interesting, it was good to hear, I guess, a familiar language. So I went to talk to them a little bit later on that day.

[chronology, kicking fence,]

When I hung out with the Thai farmers? One was from the railroads union, one was from ****Eissan****, which is northeast Thailand, I think another, an organic farmer from the south of Thailand, perhaps near the beaches, the Pookad*I**** region. It was a pretty cool experience because, I guess I pretty much told them about what I do here as a student, and my family. Pretty much when you talk to Thai people, you gotta to tell them everything about your family and stuff. You don’t really tell them, you tell them why you are there, because you are here to support the farmers, and their lives are being taken away by these people, these huge corporations that are buying up their land and all of that stuff, and pretty much forcing them to put these expensive vitamins and everything into the grain and not letting the farmers, the grain that they put the vitamins into is too expensive for the farmers and the farmers can’ afford it and they start starving. That is when there are really poor situations.

It was really neat. I didn’t get to hang out too much unless it was on the, I believe it was on the fourth day, when we came back from the interventions inside, near the complex. We came back by bus, I go to meet up with the Thai farmers and the Koreans. It was the last day when we heard the delegation broke up, everybody had a big festive party. The Koreans bought chicken and we drank a bunch of beer, good ol’ Korean style, I gue4ss. Everyone was sitting on the mats. And that was when I guess we switched our contact information. I haven’t been able to contact them for a while.

I learned about why they came all the way down to Mexico. These Thais couldn’t get US visas, so they couldn’t skip to the USA and them to Mexico. They had to go to Berlin and change like three planes and come all the way down there.

I learned about what they were there for. It was pretty much bonding. No issue learning.

We were supposed to do an action, I believe it was on the third day. We all snuck down there, because everybody was keeping on the DL, telling certain individuals to sneak down to Cancun. There was a bus that was going for the workers that were working for the tourist industry, so we took the workers’ bus all the way down to the strip. And some individuals got stopped, got carded and IDed. Pretty much, we saw the group. Christine and I, which was the girl from Berkeley, we were walking around, trying to, I guess we had telephone numbers and we were doing our secretive code thing, for when we were supposed to initiate the protest. As soon as we got the signal, we would have done it, but we didn’t get any signal, whatsoever, because the stupid phone cards on that little strip were not working. So we have got this junk phone card, and we couldn’t find a telephone that worked. So we just walked around, looked for some familiar faces and followed them. And then we turned around. All of a sudden, traffic was stopped. Christine and I were just walking down the road. We saw a, there was a bunch of security, and then there was a circle there, doing a little dance, and sitting down in front of the convention center. We pretty much talked the security guard into going in there, acting like a bunch of disgruntled tourists. Christine did all the talking, I just stayed quiet, pretty much. She pretty much made that poor security guard feel so shitty about him working on that strip of land, for the hotels and Cancun security, because she was saying all this stuff about, ‘I want to see your supervisor, I can’t believe this is happening, why is traffic stopped? You have got to let me through because we have got to get to our hotel, we were supposed o meet up with people, we were supposed to go to dinner!’ All these little fibs. And we eventually got in and started dancing around. That was an interesting experience after they pretty much blocked everybody off and had no traffic going through there. Then, all of a sudden, we stopped dancing around. The police captain came up to us and started negotiating with us. We talked with them for at least an hour and a half. One of the negotiation ideas was for us to go march all of the way down to ground zero, which is where we had the first march, that was at the first gate. The students, I guess, and the protestors wanted them to pretty much open up all of the gates that were leading to that area, so that we could walk all the way down there. That was out of the question for the police. Okay, another negotiation was that, what they were saying, is that we put all everybody in the WTO tour busses, and bus them all the way back to ground zero, going out the other route that we came in from, the hotel workers’ bus route. So we finally decided to do that.

There was a certain group of individuals who represented the group. There was the person who was doing the translation to the rest of the group, and of course, there was the Hispanic [liaison]… Pretty much all the vocal people that were doing the decision making, of course there was older people there for advisement. And, it was kind of like negotiating, you get your representatives and you get your translators and you go back and forth. I didn’t feel like, there was at least sixty people there, so we couldn’t all hold up our hands and say, ‘Okay, we all agree, and one says nay.’ We couldn’t do a jury decision. So I guess you are right, a group of people just did the choice. I think there was all Latin American. Majority, seventy five percent at least. And then the rest of the pagans were Anglo. Most of them from Oregon or the went coast.

Since I am brown, they thought I was Hispanic. They started speaking Spanish. As I was talking to the Thais, it was kind of strange seeing a Thai person on the streets. Because you wouldn’t really see that. Students in Thailand would get shot, and that is pretty much what happened, the police were out of control in 1992 when they started; I believe it was a religious group that was, it wasn’t a religious group, it was another groups that was getting a lot of power, not a lot of power, but political power, and they were on the streets doing heir demonstrations and stuff. It was weird for them to see someone who was biracial and a Thai to do that, because you are subordinate, you are born in a culture that even linguistically you have to be respectful to older people, younger people, you have different languages for kings, talking, different languages for monks. It is totally patria.., I am not going to put a gender on it, because I believe it is patriarchical, but it a controlled monarchy style language system. A king made it, you know, made by the kind. So, anyways, it was strange for them to see a Thai person. Of course, since I am brown, no trace of whiteness was shown, but I was on the bus, and I think it was for the second demonstration, one of the security guards came up and asked for my ID and stuff, and I showed them my ASU ID.

I went there for nothing ethnic. No ethnic ideas were in the back of my head when I went to the streets of Cancun. It was all class system or economics.

I was standing outside in the rain for the Lee ceremony stuff, and we went up to the fence and kicked it a couple of times, and we came back and saw the people with the torches, and that is how we met up with the people, and they were spray painting stuff and having slogans and shouting.

All the stuff that happened, I am glad that nobody got hurt, but it was all for show. There were workshops on all these other days and everything, but, sometimes these workshops were not so organized. There was a Zapatista workshop in which everybody got into a circle and started talking, and there were no Zapatistas there to represent themselves. There were people to talk about them, but nobody to tell of the experience that they are going through. So, it makes a good issue/discussion roundtable, to talk about stuff, but, you haven’t experienced it. What is valid from my information, from your information, even though they are good ideas, you are not sure what’s correct.

[talks about walking to the pizza place and signs]

[talks about learning information from Koreans, word of mouth, not being able to read the newspaper in Spanish, sea turtles, doing research at home]

[Saturday march was fun, talks about word fun, meaning]

When you are there by yourself, you have got to start talking to people, and getting names down.

There was a lot of people that weren’t allowed to do the rope pulling, because people are paranoid about people doing sabotage and everything, so I got yelled at a couple of times by a few Latin Americans for being in there, but the Thais said, I met with the Thais in the middle of the rope pulling, because they were inside the little barrier thing, and they vouched for me, which was a good thing. So I was in there, pulling rope.

No, [the Thais] didn’t at all [speak Spanish], whatsoever, they came there without knowing any Spanish. The Koreans also. I talked to a couple of Korean individuals that were there, and this one Korean fellow , he just said, ‘Yeah, just pull,’ and he taught me how to say ‘pull’ in Korean.

[talks about rally, the sitting down, switching languages]

[smaller groups used more consensus methods]