Tjebbe van Tijen on Sat, 7 Nov 2009 12:49:12 +0100 (CET) |
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<nettime> The Shrimp Prince in Mexico: sabotage or poetic inspiration by La Chingada? |
Prins Garnaal in Mexico/ The Shrimp Prince in Mexico: sabotage or poetic inspiration by La Chingada? November 6, 2009 by Tjebbe van Tijen When we shout ?Viva Mexico Hijos de la Chingada!? we express our desire to live closed off from the outside world, and above all, from the past. In this shout we deny our origins and deny our hybridism. [Octavio Paz "The labyrinth of solitude: and the other Mexico" (first edition published in 1950 as "El laberinto de la soledad"] Prince Willem Alexander spiced up his state visit lecture in Mexico on environmental issues on November 4 2009 (as he likes to change his color from orange to green) with this little sentence: ?Let me conclude by giving you a Mexican proverb. ?Camaron que se duerme se lo lleva la chingada?. (intended as ?a shrimp that is sleeps is washed away by the tide?) The rather short speech (a full copy can be found on the web-site of the Dutch Royal House and I kept a copy in PDF format just in case the translation may be lost for posterity) had some other references to the Aztec empire as ?children of the sun? linking that to solar energy and the natural partnership of Mexico and the Netherlands as providers of oil and gas and at the same cautioning his audience about the needed restraint in its usage. The word ?chingada? does appear in the official State Information Service (RVD) both on the Royals House web site and elsewhere signed © RVD . It had to be ?corriente? instead of ?chingada? with its historical connotation of violence as started by conquistador Cortes: molesting, pricking, wounding, killing, the violated mother and many more negative associations. The prince thus has created himself a new emblematic personality ?THE SHRIMP PRINCE? or in Dutch PRINS GARNAAL (with its connotation of the word Prinsgemaal, the Dutch attribute given to the husband of a queen). ========== These are the opening sentences of a day and night long attempt to research all the sources and put this seemingly silly incident in its historical context, also documenting the lazy and low level rendering of the event in the mainly royalist Dutch press. My search did lead me me not only to the past and the special meaning of the word Chingada for Mexicans, but I also discovered a lead to what seems to be a corrido music group that has played and publish a song with exactly the same "mistaken" title as the lapses of the Dutch crown prince in Mexico. All this can be found at my blog The Limping Messenger, fully illustrated and documented. http://limpingmessenger.wordpress.com/2009/11/06/prins-garnaal-in- mexico-the-shrimp-prince-in-mexico/ Tjebbe van Tijen Imaginary Museum Projects Dramatizing Historical Information http://imaginarymuseum.org web-blog: The Limping Messenger http://limpingmessenger.wordpress.com/
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