Cruzando la linea is a project that investigates the different trajectories and ways of crossing the equator. The research starts from a family story, when during a boat trip between Buenos Aires and France, my grandfather is invited to represent Neptune in an initiation ritual when crossing the equator. The representation of the ritual, in this case in a festive environment linked to tourism, hid a centuries-old tradition of a tortuous maritime ritual with strong colonialist and patriarchal contents. The ritual implied that, transformed into men, the crew members could face the events that occurred on the voyage south. Crossing the equator towards the South meant the entrance to savage territory. How to think of an opposite trajectory? How does the equatorial crossing from the South to the North take place? Using different devices, such as video, archival photography, testimonies, objects and textiles, the project reconstructs both the stages of the ritual and the work of repairing the nets that the xarxaires and illegal immigrants carry out in the port of Vilanova i La Geltrú, Catalonia. In the port coexist the women who perform this unique trade that historically was allowed to them, along with illegal immigrants who, being fishermen in their places of origin, cannot return to the sea because of their status before the law.
During a boat trip from Buenos Aires to France, my grandfather is invited to personify Neptune in an initiation ritual when crossing the equator. The representation of the ritual truly hid a centuries-old tradition of a tortuous maritime ritual with strong colonialist and patriarchal contents. Starting from this family history, the project proposes to trace the origin of this initiation ritual which apparently begins in France at the beginning of the 16th century and later spread to several Anglo-Saxon countries.Since the beginning of the 16th century, with the expansion of colonialism after the conquest of America, European sailors traveling to an unknown territory promised the sea or their gods to make a sacrifice, a kind of offering in exchange for a safe journey. Those crew members who had not previously crossed the equator line - which will soon separate the global South from the global North - were initiated into a ritual where they entrusted their lives to King (or Father) Neptune. During the tortuous ceremony, the uninitiated were subjected to a radical transformation under the subordination and domination of those who had already crossed the equator. During the ritual of passage, reserved only for men, the neophytes were dressed as women and subjected to blows and different types of humiliation, with the purpose of abandoning their feminine features, considered weak. Thus they would finally be transformed into sailors, which was synonymous with being a man, and they could face the possible confrontations that might occur on the journey to the South. Crossing the equator to the South meant entering wild territory. At certain moments of the ritual, the uninitiated adopted animal features, controlled by crew members whose faces were painted black, a distinctive symbol to represent black people, in a practice that stopped after their incorporation into the navy. As for the ritual, the investigations carried out so far detail that it began when Neptune took the ship, preceded with a flag with skulls and bones and accompanied by his court: the eldest of the crew, who had crossed the line previously, approached to the other sailors with blackened faces, a hat and a sea book in their hands. The freshmen <or uninitiated> were waiting for him with kitchen utensils in their hands, iron grates, kettles or bells to announce with sounds the arrival of the King. Neptune sat at the foot of the main mast, in the magistrate's court, where each of the initiates swore on the book and a map that they would repeat the same ceremony when circumstances demanded it. After a series of tests, attacks, and humiliations, they were baptized with frozen sea water and dark marks on their foreheads made of fat and dead fish and thrown through a tunnel with garbage simulating a birth canal.
︎︎︎Spanish version here
