En la escuela y en
tu casa,
Vos portate diez
Con tu gente y tu trabajo
Apuntate, diez
En el día y en la
noche
Debes estar 10
En este día todos
decimos
Que te vaya diez
Diez! Diez! Diez!
At school and at home
Be sure to 10
With your buddies and at work
Tune into10
During the day and at night
You should be on 10
Nowadays, everyone says
May you go 10
10! 10! 10!
So much is lost in my extremely rushed translation. But the dance is pretty great.
Channel 10, the most popular canal in Nicaragua, can be heard on
televisions in Nicaraguan pueblos at literally any time of the day or
night. It's such a part of life here that I felt the need to write about it a
little bit, especially since I got its extremely catchy theme song in my head,
where it will likely remain for days. For me, Canal 10 encapsulates so many of
the things I love about Nicaragua: solidary and industrious/hustling nature of
its people, the strength of its cultural traditions. It also represents so many
things of the things that I mentally struggle with here: normalization of
violence, valoration of whiteness, economic monopolies and low levels of
education.
Beyond the omnipresent Canal 10 theme song, Canal 10's programming provides
a certain rhythm to life here. Right around the time of the morning health
segment, there's the adorable morning catch of cumpleañeritos y cumpleañerotes
(little birthday girls/boys and grown up birthday girls/boys), complete with
the requisite awkward photos with photo shopped birthday backgrounds. After a
day of (mostly) Mexican serial or re-run novelas,
featuring the whitest people on the planet, there's the 7 o'clock news, with a
more gruesome catch, the auto/motorcycle accident of the day, bloodstains, missing
appendages and all. They generally blur nothing out. People are grossed out by
it but don't seem to think there's anything particularly wrong with it. I can't
help but wonder if the normalcy of seeing dead or bloodied bodies dates back to
the war years. Being that it's a pretty small country, literally any accident
with a body count makes it on Canal 10. And if it's a really bad day, there
might be a femicide. The Canal 10 team can also be seen interrogating local delinquents,
generally in the back of police trucks, being hauled off to justice. They
generally have nothing interesting to say. There are 10 million things wrong
with the US justice system, but at least those in police custody don't get
interrogated by the Canal 10 journalists. The whole "right to remain
silent" thing is pretty nifty. There are also happier news bulletins,
generally about upcoming Patron Saint Festival celebrations somewhere or other.
And then on to international news, generally meaning "News from Latin
America" and inexplicably involving a lot of fires. To close off the day,
there's the eight o'clock movie, generally featuring dubbed American action
movies from the 70s or 80s. We're talking Rambo, the original Planet of the
Apes, etc.
Other interesting Canal Diez
traditions:
-La adivinanza del dia-
Riddle of the day- They show it all day but don't give the answer until the
night.
-Rifas- There are always
raffles going on for something or another. Commonly the prizes are money or
motorcycles.
-El trabajo del dia- Job of
the day!
-Saludos desde Costa Rica-
Nicas living in Costa Rica send their best wishes to friends and family back
home.
-Fundacion 10- They show heartrending reports of people in dire situations and give a
number to call for where you can make a donation to help the person
As frustrating as the constant presence of Canal 10 can be when one wants a
sense of what's going on in the larger world beyond Nicaragua, I'm going to
miss its hegemony when I'm back in the States.
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