'Rumembering', Transforming, Migrating

Such a simple, but complicated phenomenon as migration. We migrate from our homeland to somewhere else looking for an opportunity: we migrate because of choice. We migrate because of an obligation to set the route of our lives a new destiny: we migrate forcefully. But even though migration can be simple to identify and classify into different cause-effect processes, it’s a dilemma that has modified history’s fate by changing, moving, and modifying the peoples that populate the world. Personally, as I travel throughout the world, when I glance at a different culture, I am indirectly taking parts of that culture into my own culture.

Through this poetic film, Merina characterizes this phenomenon of migration through the example of the 17th century trade route between the Phillipines and Mexico known as the Manila Galleon Trade. By taking it, describing it through images, and immersing the reader in the momentum through the voice of the narrator, the video is able to make this simple example and example of a universal dilemma: migration. Through the use of repetition, and listing of words and elements, “the simple chemistry of this / distillation of a kiss / thirst / and a word like rum / and a word like rum / and a word like… / achuete / atole / avocado / balsa / banqueta” (2:15-2:32), Merina is able to mimic the context of the ship, the trade route, the migration of all these objects, if we may call them so. This technique of mimesis reminds me of Saul Bellow’s Seize The Day, in which the author imitates the atmosphere of 1950’s New York and the life of its main character Wilhelm.

But even though the main attraction this poem sets, or at least the first thing we recognize as we hear it, is the mentioning of a handful of objects. Of these, I found quite attracted towards rum, he mentions it a couple of times, actually: “rum is the cane’s sugar water” (1:36-1:38). Rum’s meaning here, or symbolism might refer to the transformation undergone through the process of migration. As people migrate, they change. A similar change that rum undergoes: a metamorphosis from sugar can to liquor. Hence, here, as we travel across the waters from place to place, we are transforming. We are migrating.