HISTORY OF MY SITE

1996

OCTOBER: I receive a modem and a subscription to the internet as a gift. I begin to surf, but as a spectator only. I searched for pages related to nature and astrophysics.

NOVEMBER: I decide to open up a site in Enchanted Forrest, the neighborhood for kids within Geocities. In my pages, made with Geocities automatic editor, I talk about the things I like and I don't like, following the layout of many other pages.

DECEMBER: on the 1st I include a section with "My Complaints". On the 9th I manage to add a counter. By the 30th I've had 900 visits.

1997

JANUARY: Pictures of myself and my friends, For Kids Only, Letters Received and Links. For now it is only in Spanish, but on the 18th an American friend, JIMMY, sends me these pages translated into English. The problems start. On the 21st, Theresa Goebel, community leader of the Enchanted Forest, sends me a letter inviting me to change neighborhoods. Since there is nothing in my pages that goes against their "guidelines", the excuse she uses is that I cannot have a link to a west Hollywood page, the gay neighborhood and she invites me to move there myself. I tell her that I am not gay, but I will listen to her because I do not feel like arguing, but that I would move to Athens, the neighborhood of the philosophers, because I believe that I cannot corrupt them, they already are all by themselves. On the 31st I already have 3,200 visits. I begin to get a ton of mail.

FEBRUARY: My Hobbies, Visit Peru. On the 15th I add music to some of my pages, thanks to YODA's help. On the 28th I've already had 8,700 visits.

MARCH: Friends, For my Friend, Manifest Against the Centers for Mental Hemiplegia. Thanks to JUAN I can get my pages translated into English almost simultaneously as I write them in Spanish...he is the greatest! (you don't have to edit this part out David...it's true!). STEFFEN sends me the German translation of "My Complaints". The counter now shows 16,500 visits on the 31st.

APRIL: Manifest against the army, against the churches, questions about sex. On the 18th with several internautical friends we opened up the pages of the Virtual Madmen, a space filled with poetry and human sensibility. On the 22nd my brother Miguel opens up his pages on literature. They ask my permission to use some of my poems as lyrics for songs. They ask my permission to use my pages in two scientific magazines and in some other general information magazines. An American, ultraconservative, religious organization classifies my site as extremely dangerous and encourages its followers to boycott it. I send them an e-mail thanking them for the link pointing to my web site (one must be grateful for free publicity; I am not as well educated and do not place a link to their site). This incident confirms to me that my pages do have a purpose: to fight against this type of intransigents that want to impede others from thinking or feeling any different from themselves. They made me happy, I did not know I was so dangerous or so important. On the 30th the counter is up to 24,000 visits.

MAY: From my friend. Geocities erases my site on the 2nd, after I posted a tribute to the heroes killed in the raid on the Japanese Embassy in Lima and I put up a link to the pages of the TupacAmaru. They give no explanation, they simply erase the pages. I suppose it is the excuse they needed. I adhere to the French hospitality and publish my web site on a French Server. On the 24th I change over to a Swedish server, due to some technical problems. ROLAND begins to translate some of my pages into French and TONICO into Portuguese. They continue to ask for my permission to use my ideas in some publications. On the 31st the counter indicated that there were already more than 31,000 visits.

JUNE: Jail and jailers. On the 12th, I once again change servers due to some technical problems that prevented me from uploading new pages onto the Swedish server. MARIO sent me several pages translated into Italian. I start a new section with icons. On the 30th the counter shows 40.000 visits.

JULY: Protect yourself from abuse. I put in place some rules to write to me, because the volume of mails that I receive has me overwhelmed. The majority of the letters are in English and, regrettably, my English is still pretty much chronic. I am offered to recite some of my texts as backgrounds for a song. I start to study the Cyrillic characters, since my pages are going to be translated into Russian. I hope they don't ask me to translate them into Chinese {¦-) that would be too much for me. There are links to my site (as far as I know because they've asked for my permission previously) in some 50 web sites. I received a letter in which I am told that after profoundly analyzing my texts, they have come to the conclusion that I do not exist, that I am simply a "cyberboy" invented by a group of adults that are very intelligent. I like the idea, even though I do not think that any adults exist that are that intelligent. I encourage them to make a doctoral thesis on this theme. By the end of the month there had already been 47,500 visits.

AUGUST: Chronicle of The Tease News (in Spanish languaje only). A friend, SERGEY, begins to send me the translation into Russian. This is a boring month and almost nothing happens, so I open up a news section. I am tired of seeing how the newspapers and the television distort and twist everything to their liking. I do not want to be any less and start my own electronic magazine, in the end, there is no difference between my news reports and theirs. On the other hand, since I want to cut loose some ideas --with great desperation on the part of my host on this server :-) since I overwhelm all of the contracted traffic provisions in their contract--, I open up some new pages with poetry, only in Spanish, which I name Bajel Pirate as a tribute to the poem by Espronceda. I definitely give my authorization to use some of my ideas (and my voice) in an electronic musical CD, with the condition that any benefits go to the School for Liberty that is explained in my page titled "Friends". I have also been asked permission to use my complaints in a book on intergenerational love. On the 31st there have been 55,000 visits.

SEPTEMBER: My things (poems, what I am reading and listening to, thoughts, phrases and opinions, in Spanish only). For my father. It is better to forget this month of September, nothing worthwhile telling about. Even though the counter has not been working for a long while this month, it indicates that up to the 30th there have been 60,000 visits.

OCTOBER: For my mother. Lots of new problems with the server, which has not been working for many days due to technical problems. On the 20th I switched to a new U.S. based server and on the 21st this new server begins to receive pressure from a group of puritan women that threaten with a commercial boycott if it continues sponsoring my pages. I think it is very interesting for me to know that they constitute a threat to the morals of American youth ( it must be that these ladies do not read the news on the behavior of their own government). After five months of silence, I receive a letter from GeoCities advising me they have erased my web site because it goes against their guidelines, specifically for "child exploitation." In all honesty, they must not have read my page, they possibly also received pressure from those puritan groups and decided, just like that, to close my page. I would have liked to have known where do they specifically see exploitation, unless they think I am the exploited. If that is the case, they are right and I thank them very much for their interest in me, they are really thoughtful of my well being. On the 31st the counter registers 66,000 visits.

NOVEMBER: My current pictures. There is nothing special to mention for this month. I update some of my pictures, since some of the ones on my pictures pages are almost two years old and I have changes somewhat physically. Since I have put these new pictures, my mail has been reduced to a quarter of what it used to be. Something to meditate about, don’t you think? The counter, which works daily on and off, indicates 71,000 visits on the 30th.

DECEMBER: An American friend gives me my own domain, Arlekin.com, as a gift for my 14th birthday . At the same time, GeoCities erases the page that Sergey had translated into Russian. I significantly quit updating the page, since my parents almost do not let me into the Net due to the high telephone bills and also because I cannot continue mooching a friend’s computer. Patience. On the 31st the counter indicates 79,000 visits.

1998

JANUARY: Nothing special to point out for this month. On the 31st the counter indicates 92,000 visits.

FEBRUARY: I do not have time to update the page, my studies are first, I am sorry. During several days the server is stuck, but soon everything returns to normal. By the end of the month the counter is over the 100,000 visitors, 100,000 friends of freedom

MARCH: For my little sister. For my brother. I write an open letter to my sister Anabel and another one to my brother Miguel. Two letters written for different reasons. The counter indicates 110,000 visits by the 31st, which averages to 325 daily visits.

APRIL: Spring. I do not have time for anything, I have so many things to do… The intransigent attack again and desperately try to silence me. They say I am perverting youth. What does that sound like to me? Fascism has not died. It keeps hiding behind false ideas of protection. I read in the "Quijote": "Freedom, my friend Sancho, is
one of the most precious gifts the heavens gave to man." On the 30th there have been 120,000 visitors.

MAY: There is nothing new. The counter indicates 129,000 visitors by the end of the month.

Last revision: 30 of mai of 1998

INDEX