Text: Julie Schwietert Collazo
Photos: Brayan Collazo Alonso

As a travel writer who has written openly about traveling to Cuba, I receive frequent e-mails from people who would like my advice about doing the same.

Just last week, I was chatting with a friend–another travel writer–an American citizen who is planning on traveling to Cuba. “I was trying to decide… whether to write about it [the trip],” she said. She maintains a popular travel blog with a loyal readership, and the comments of her readers indicate that she clearly exerts a positive influence over their travel decisions.

“Here’s what I think,” I said to her:

“From a philosophical/activism perspective, the more people who write about traveling to Cuba, the better. It proves, for one thing, the importance of going there, seeing things for themselves, and rendering their own judgments and opinions. It also proves that the travel ‘ban’ is ridiculous and that travel is not threatening to anyone.”

Writing about travel, like traveling itself, is a form of diplomacy, of politics, and even, I argue, of patriotism. Travel writing is not an act of objectivity or passivity. It requires the writer’s full engagement, both while traveling and while sitting down and writing.

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A few months back, I attended a reading of prose pieces written by travel writers. A writer and editor was asked by a member of the audience if he had traveled to Cuba. The writer shuffled uncomfortably from one foot to the other, his head down, as if trying to decide whether to answer the question. Finally, he looked up and said, “Yes.”

That was it.

“And have you written about it?” the audience member continued. The writer responded something along the lines of he’d never written about the experience–or at least not published anything about it–because he didn’t really want to leave a paper trail of his travels to the forbidden island. He was worried about the consequences.

While I respect his decision, I think there’s something to be said for travel writing that takes people places where they can’t go or where they’re afraid to go. There’s something to be said for writing that’s courageous, that says, “This is what I believe, and this is why,” and that gives places and people without voices a medium for expression.
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My friend and colleague, Eva Holland, recently blogged about her 2009 travel and writing resolutions.

“I will give everything I write the same time, care and attention that I would have when I first started out, and every submission felt like life and death.”

It’s a resolution all writers should adopt for 2009.

And I’ll add one more, for all of us:

Write like you believe in your subject. Write through your fear, through your ego, through your anxieties. Write about places like they matter… because they do.

Text: Francisco Collazo

[Julie's note: Francisco has always loved subway music. Fair enough: here's his reflection from today's subway concert.]

It’s a cold Saturday afternoon in New York.

The news– television, radio, and print– is depressing: the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Israeli attacks on Gaza, the economy, the interest rate, the housing market.

I am heading to the city with all this on my mind.

Train service is changed due to maintenance; the #7 isn’t going to Manhattan. Instead, take the Q or the N to Lexington Ave., switch to the 4, 5, or 6 if you want to go to the East Side; do other changes and maneuvers if you want to go to the West Side.

Ah, well… this is New York City, and it’s a weekend, I tell myself. I am used to this, like millions of New Yorkers.

I get to the Union Square stop. The music is loud, pleasing, refreshing, and moving. People are dancing in the station.

An Oriental man with a Caucasian woman, a Black woman who is visiting New York with another woman.

People are clapping, photographing, and having fun. The spirit is high, the problems of every day forgotten, at least for a moment. It all seems suspended by the melodies and the lively steps of the dancers, the cameras’ flashes, the coming and going of the pedestrians thru the subway tunnels.

It is very therapeutic and refreshing at the same time.

I want to dance, sing, be one among the many.

The music is the best Americana; you can’t get better than that in the New York City subway on a cold day.

We are all here, Puerto Ricans, Chinese, Russians, Bangladeshis.

This is who we are and I wish you were here with us. We are receiving the unplanned and unexpected gift of music and joy.

This is New York City at its best.

Let’s dance!

Text & Video: Julie Schwietert Collazo
Photos: Francisco Collazo

There was a moment last year when I realized–suddenly–that subway music pisses me off.

I was making my way through the masses of people waiting to catch the N train when I heard drum sticks beating on an overturned plastic bucket. An irrational annoyance flooded me that hasn’t really left since.

Almost 10 years in New York, the musicians of the underground (varying considerably in both genre and quality)–the nearly hunchbacked Jewish man pulling his worn horsehair bow across a beaten violin at Grand Central; the Mexican trio playing accordion, guitar, and singing on the 7; the Chinese man playing the ehru at 14th and 8th–don’t bring me pleasure anymore– if they ever did, which I can’t really remember.

They were a novelty, perhaps– coming, as I did, from the South (where we rode in cars–not subway trains)–but I can’t say I ever really liked the music on the trains or in the stations. They seemed invasive, intrusive, even obnoxious, making me think about lots of things I don’t like to have on my mind when I’m shuttling between points A and B, nose in a book: the intersections of poverty and creativity, immigration, 9 to 5 jobs, the intense need creative people have to be heard or recognized.

There were occasional exceptions– the doughy woman sitting on the platform of the E train at 5th Avenue, who sang like Ella reincarnated. God, she could sing. Hearing her, I got off the train and listened and listened and left a dollar and thought about her all afternoon…and think about her still.

And today. January 3. The Tin Pan Blues Band, who blew so hard and sang so gravelly and grooved so fine that I was certain they’d been swept here from some crazy wind blowing up from New Orleans. Couples danced– really–in a space that had opened up in the middle of one of the busiest stations in the city.

Later, a six year old kid would play his two song repertoire (”Fur Elise” and “Jingle Bells,” one followed by the other and then a medley of both) on a Casio keyboard, over and over while a man on the other side of the platform had a heart attack. The boy’s father (dressed just like his son from the waist up) would sit and read from religious tracts while adults wondered what to feel and whether they should drop a buck in the bucket regardless (”What’s their story?” “There’s a recession.”). I waited for the train and tried not to think about it–about what made the man bring his kid down here to play the horrific mashed up tune again. And again. And again.

Instead, I thought of Tin Pan….

Text & Photos: Julie Schwietert Collazo

Happy 2009!

One of our big projects this year (there are so many!) is to really get Voces de Mompox/Mompox Voices up and running.

If you’re new to CollazoProjects, Voces de Mompox is an after-school program we started in Mompox, Colombia back in July during our month-long visit to this geographically isolated town. We met an incredible group of 9th graders, who began learning how to use cameras, videos, writing, and web technology to tell the world about themselves and their country.

The kids were both moved and motivated by readers’ comments, and by the outpouring of support for their writing, photos, and videos. So far, we’ve raised just over $500 for the project, and we’ll be partnering with other social entrepreneurs to get the kids a physical space and the equipment they need to continue their reporting from Colombia.

A digital camera is currently on the way to the kids, so expect to hear and see more from them soon.

In the meantime, here are a few of our own photos from Colombia, a preview of the stories we have to share with you in 2009….

A father and son continue the more than century-old tradition of hand-crafting gold and silver filigree jewelry.

Images from the Escuela de Taller, a trade school that teaches men–and women!–the craft of ironwork, simultaneously offering rehabilitation opportunities to men who were once members of paramilitary forces.

Text: Julie Schwietert Collazo

When was the last time you used traveler’s checks?

I know; I can’t remember either.

These days, you can find cash machines around the world.

The ubiquity of ATMs doesn’t necessarily mean you know how to use them, though.

On my recent trip to Chile, I was embarrassed to ask colleagues to loan me cash when I couldn’t make a withdrawal from a series of ATMs. I knew I had money in the bank–that couldn’t be the problem. I read Spanish, so I was pressing the right series of buttons. Why couldn’t I get any cash?

An amused saleswoman watched as I punched buttons and cursed an ATM. She called me over to her kiosk. “It happens to all foreigners,” she said.

The problem was that I kept looking at the ATM–which seemed exactly the same as the machines back home–and going through the same rote motions of button pushing that I use in the US. Thus, I kept missing the option at the bottom left of the screen: “Conduct Foreign Transaction.”

That’s it.

So that’s how you use an ATM in Chile.

It’s also how you slow down and remember how to be present in every moment.

Photo: BigBlue (Flickr creative commons)