Monday, April 30, 2012

Photo by Instantáneas "Exacta" Mexico, D.F.

Today I read with interest in my Vancouver Sun a feature piece on the business page on Lionsgate Entertainment (Hunger Games pays off for Lionsgate Entertainment). At the end of the story after getting quotes from Lionsgate Entertainment vice-chairman Michael Burns, Lee reveals that the company is now run out of Santa Monica.

I did my best to discern if the article was a phoner, a Skyper or an emailer. I consulted with my friend and lawyer  Christopher Dafoe (a former arts reporter for the Globe & Mail) who told me that the piece, not being a profile on Burns was most probably a phoner. He said that my journalistic standards may be to tough in an age when there is so little face to face interview in a globalized and much aggregated world.

This set me to thinking that the photo placed here which is my proof that I indeed did not make up in my mind the existence of the Mayan princess Nicté-Ha is probably a sham. I want to believe that I met Nicté-Ha even though the internet has left no trace of the beautiful woman I once saw and that my mother so often talked about. Could it have been my imagination?



I found this picture recently. It has my aunt  Fermina Miranda (on the left) and my mother in the middle both wearing Filipino dresses. I have no idea who the ugly man on the right is except that I remember him being Mexican. Who is the mysterious and exotic woman between my mother and my aunt? Could that be Nicté-Ha the Mayan Princess? I thought so until I noticed that she had a Tilaka (a caste forehead mark). Could that mark really be an age spot on the old photograph taken around 1954? In any case I removed it with Photoshop so that I can at last state that Nicté-Ha in fact did exist. And the proof is the photograph.