Transcription
Extra I:
ROSIE HERRERA
I have been poor my whole life. And I think part of that is tragic and sad. But another part of that is that there's ways that when you're poor, you have to sort of trace the line of energy between you and another person, like, oh, you know, you're my cousin, Miguel, I can't stand you, you're an asshole. But I need a ride to the airport, to you. And so I have to, like, "comer me la lengua" (eat my tongue), and ask you for a ride to the airport. And when I'm sitting in that airport next to you, not, you know, can't stand you. But I have to trace that line of energy between me and you have to, it's not about swallowing your pride, but it's about understanding how to navigate the world in a way that's the world is not built for you. And as a person of color, as a woman as a, you know, a child of immigrants is like, you know that, you know that, you know, you know that right away, and then as an adult, and as you go to a liberal arts school, then, you know, in a conscious way, but you know, it, you know it. And so I'm grateful for that experience, because, you know, when the economy crashed in 2008, and I was, you know, go dancing, and doing cabaret and doing burlesque and everybody's like, what are we going to do? And I was like, Y'all lost money. I never had it. I never had it, moving on. Like, what's, nothing's changed for me? I'm still doing the same thing. I'm still like hustling, you know. Um, and so, you know, I think some there's like a recent study that said, like, 78% of Miami is immigrant or, or first generation which I was just like, wow, that's so beautiful. There's an air and an energy here that is just like fresh and new and looking to redefine it. People are coming out here to like, looking for opportunities looking to redefine looking for freedom. And so that permeates everything. Like I don't want to get too esoteric with this question about finance. But that's, but that's, that's real, you know, you feel it. And a part of that is that I understand, you know, I can choreograph your cousin's quince for you to do the costumes for my show or, those negotiations are those negotiations are more organic, pero (but) at the same time, hustle culture and hustle energy has its own has its price, you know, that's why traffic sucks. I always say this, but it's like in New York, people are cutting you off in traffic, because they are getting to a meeting. In Miami people are cutting you off, because they're getting their nails done. It's like an energy. It's like a, it's like a, it's like a mind set. It's like me before you before you! You know, like. So it's, so we have in a sense, you know, what I think I've traveled, I've been on panels with you, and other people and heard so much about like, the competitiveness of the modern dance community. And I gotta say, you know, I live in this like bubble in Miami that exists outside of that, like, when Pioneer Winter gets a grant, everybody's like, posting it on the Facebook "Oh, my God Pioneer got a grant!" or "Adam Benz just got this residency!" like, it's truly, truly supportive. In that sense, both the artist supporting each other the organizations like, you know, how not many people are sitting by their pool, having an eggplant Parmesan with their producer the way that I am here in Miami. And there's something for that, there's something to be said for that there's value in that. And there's all the unpaid time that they have in helping me figure out how to write my first invoice, or how to write a contract for a dancer. And so that is sort of unpaid labor in those ways as well. But yeah, I mean, we're just as, the rent in Miami is just as expensive and sometimes in certain places even more expensive than New York, and it's insane. It's insane, you know, where the overwhelming majority of our community is living below the poverty line, and the prices of, of property and the rent prices are going up, up, up, up, up. And now because the COVID, we have all these, like tech bros coming from California, and that are paying $100, $200, $300 thousand more for a house in cash. And now like the majority of the properties here in Miami, are owned by real estate, real estate, I mean, or Wall Street people. So it's like, who gets to define what our community is, it's no longer the people in that community. It's like some douchy Boston, bro, you know, that comes into this neighborhood and says, "This is going to be this now." You know, I used to live in Little Haiti and the gentrification of that neighborhood, and the way that it happened so like, pornographically, quickly and violently and obviously, in a way and everybody was seeing it happen and just, that's just what happened. Somebody comes in and decides that the name of the cities should not be a Little Haiti anymore. It should be something else. And so that's something that we deal with and I think in this the scale is different. But it has, things happened very quickly in Miami. So like, for example, one person can move to Miami, this happened recently. She who shall not be named but... purchased a bunch of land in a historic and historical location neighborhood. How many buildings do you think this person bought? 10 blocks.
MIGUEL
10 BLOCKS?!
ROSIE HERRERA
10 blocks.
MIGUEL
Oh, I can't even imagine.
ROSIE HERRERA
So. So what's her definition of what this community should be? Sure. I mean, yeah, we're freaking Miami. We been had Cuban coffee. We don't need another freaking coffee shop. We don't need to replicate what happened in New York as a sort of successful it's just like white supremacy, gentrification bullshit that I can talk about forever and I'm not gonna do it.